Bridgette has decided to diet. She is sufficiently adverse to going to the gym that exercise is not sufficient for weight loss. Given the choice between overcoming her dislike of the gym and simple abstinence, she is choosing to abstain.
Her regimen is the South Beach diet; we know someone who dropped obscene amounts in a year’s time, and she is convincing. South Beach concentrates on fats and insulin. For the first two weeks, no bread, no potatoes, no sugary-thingies, no foods with sugar in them (like many salad dressings, e.g.), no fruit, no beer or wine. The theory is the fortnight without glucouse/fructose will require your body to rethink how it handles food. Insulin cycles change dramatically. Like that.
In fact, on day one, the lack of insulin cycling through the day was fairly remarkable. We have been going to bed still vital, which is nice.
But I’m going to kill the next person I see eating a cookie. Then I’ll eat his cookie.
I like my carbs. When I need to change weight, I exercise more. It seems to me that, if there is more energy being expended than taken in, there will be weight loss. My experience bears this out. I don’t need this diet, I don’t want this diet, I don’t like this diet.
And, truth, I don’t have to be on this diet. Bridgette isn’t requiring or even requesting this of me. I assessed her intent, and her plan, and the likelihood of success with several variables, and determined that she was likely to be successful if we were eating the same things, and likely to fail if we were eating differently. I put that thought to her, and she agreed with my judgement.
So, supportive and all like that. I went into this with the declaration that I would not be treating this as a lifetime commitment for me; I will be with her for the first month or so, then will begin to enjoy ice cream, chocolate, and beer again, about the time that she is nicely stabilized in her food habits.
I do get some things out of this: a slender wife, good-karma points, and an accelerated weight loss / weight redistribution from exercising at the same time.
[growling]
If a wild doughnut came through the underbrush, I would fall upon it with gutteral snarls and rip its throat out with my teeth, glaze and sprinkles spraying warm and fragrant across my chin and chest.
[checks the underbrush hopefully]
Oh, sympathy and the like.
And the news that I have yielded to my inner madness, and intend to go to Orycon. I await only the news that I can take that Friday off.
WOOT! Most heavily wonderfully good! [does the Ambar-is-coming dance] If you choose to drive, stop at Chez Shanks for stopover, and we’ll convoy up the last six hours.
I can’t see spending the time on driving, so won’t join you there. I do look forward to negotiating at least a little quiet time together while on the premises. 🙂
Skip the negotiating, we’ll just do the time. I cannot promise the quiet.
Frequently, I find that I spend the weekend bouncing from encounter to encounter. But we’ll manage.
It’s hell being popular. 🙂
As you should well know, ducky. It is, in fact a tragic burden, but who better to bear it?
*laughs*
A year ago I started the Atkins diet (a more strict version of the south beach diet). I was in hell the first week as the yeast in my body (the part of us that craves the sugary foods) died off. Yeast doesn’t like to die so it really did a number on me. after that was done with and I was used to the diet for the most part I quit caffeine… after a horrid night with a deadly (i thought so) migraine, I was off that as well.
The only thing that really got me was the fact that I had to eat constantly. Carbs have this great ability to “stick to your bones” and you could literally eat a good carb-filled breakfast and go the rest of the day without eating an ounce and have little less than a growling stomach to show for it. Without the carbs my body was relying on less “Sticky” foods to keep me going, so if I went more than about 3 hours without food… I turned into a rag-doll, I would get horribly weak and slightly ill. A tomato will last a lot less than a cookie or two. 🙂
Working out was difficult, I had to eat before and eat after, if not, I was weak… One good thing that came from all that suffering is I now have a knowledge of the good carbs and bad carbs as well as the good fats and cholesterol and the bad ones. I have lost more weight after the diet because I have a well balanced diet. 🙂
I have experienced the always-hungry syndrome. I’m having to watch that tendancy.
I am certain that I would become accustomed to low-carbs, no-caffeine … if I wanted to. In fact, I am devoutly opposed to giving them up. The reason I run several times a week is so that I can, essentially, eat what I damned well please.
Twelve days. Just twelve more days.
Be careful when you start eating the carbs again.
too much *will* make you feel ill.
your body is used to the lack of carbs now and introducing them back as if you never quit could make you feel very sick among many other things.
…learned that the hard way as well.
I’m not too worried. My biggest sins are:
four to five beers weekly
honey in my morning cuppa
ice cream about one day in four
and about six doughnuts or cookies a month.
Mind you, if we’ve made cobbler or pie, there will be dessert, pie for breakfast, slivers of pie as I pass through the kitchen…pies and cobblers are a definate weakness, and one I don’t care to strengthen.
I love my bad habits. I’m sure they make me a better person.
*laughs* we all have them, and they all make us who we are, so i suppose in a way they do make us better people… granted if my bad habit was bashing babies over the head with nerf balls it probably wouldn’t…
“…bashing babies….”
Ugh. Certainly not. Nerf balls don’t weigh anything close to enough for that job.
Bricks. I realize it’s been done, but traditions stand for good reason. This one has done me well for time out of mind, and many’s the child whose life has been changed because of it.
Bricks. They’re what babies need.
brick-bashing babies…
delectably devilish.
AHA! I KNEW it! that’s why I no think good sometimes!
That’s not the only reason, but, yes, I can reasonably claim that I have had an effect on your thought patterns. Although I am not entirely certain that the bricks are the means.
you always talked about hammering ideas into my head witha brick…
And heavy work it has been. Your head is significantly harder than either bricks or ideas.
Eat less. Exercise more. Look better. Feel better. Works for me. (: Don’t forget to reward yourself, though. Feeling deprived only leads to binging and feelings of failure which lead to binging.
Yes, exactly. Control portions. Get up and do the exercise. Simple black-box algebra. I’ve always liked it.
[shrug] On the other, hand, I’m sufficiently pleased that ‘Gette is Doing Something, instead of regarding her expanding waistline and kvetching. And, for reasons that I cannot explain, the day she took up the diet she returned to the gym. I expect that desireable results will be encouraging to her.
But, oh, I miss my carbs. I cannot WAIT to have them back.
And then there’s the ugh factor. Tonight, after eating well for nearly two weeks, I went to the Bear’s Tooth with Kit and ate a HUGE burrito and a HUGE chocolate shake, and I finished it ALL. And, perhaps if I’d been slightly more moderate in my intake, or if I’d omitted one of the offending items… but, no. There is the ugh factor. (But the burrito and the shake were mighty tastey. And I did survive karate afterward.)
I’ve always dislike that whole actions-consequences business that has infested the world. Except when I’m doing something good, and getting the rewards for it.
Hm.
*points and laughs*
tee hee.
*eats a doughnut*
I think I may have to wrangle up some wild doughnuts and send them your way just to watch you hunt and kill it. if you’re just going with her diet to help her with success, why not cheat during work? if nothing else I know you have the willpower to go through with it, so I see no reason to test that, and the only thing I see tested here is your ability to make you happy. now, I’m all for helping her, otherwise you could endanger yourself in ways unimaginable to mere man. but helping her in her diet and not eating carbs are different things in my eyes. just have a cookie or two at work every once in a while.
“Why not cheat during work?”
Partly because, if I am not as dependent on the fulfillingness of the snacks & meals, then it won’t matter to me as much if they aren’t. I get hungry, grab a cookie, no big deal. She can’t do that … or rather, she can, so it’s better, judgement-wise, to share the ordeal in toto.
Partly because I said that I would, not realizing how dependent I am, mentally and physically, on carbs. I could cheat, lie, and get away with it cold…but I’m such a good liar that I don’t really want to start that habit with her. It’s too easy for me.
I realize that I could just tell her, “I’m going to eat cookies at work.” But then there’s the lack of “I’m going through this at your side” without lying…which brings us back to point #2.
Initially, I just thought “eh. It’s two weeks. A small price to offer for the sake of being supportive.” My issues seem to stem from underselling what personal issues I would have with this diet.
I’ve a week left; we are going to the fair next Thursday, which is declared diet-free, and (since the point of these two weeks is to break the insulin cycle of sugar eating) I will have the choice of starting again or declaring duty is done. Guess which one I’m choosing.
…and don’t think that you’re getting away with eating doughnuts at me. I’ve learned from the Redhead:
Don’t get even.
Get one up.
…I know where you sleep . . . .
not right now you don’t. I’m trusting the lack of carbs will deprive you of someo of your memories around now for later on.
*snort* You’re dreaming.
Do you honestly think:
1. I wouldn’t have a map of current neighborhood, complete with satellite photos
2. That I won’t read the pages-long plans to revenge myself on you?