I've never been one to diet...ever. I have been known to cut certain things out of my diet, but I have never quite limited myself completely. I never thought I had the self control to ever do a diet until now. Yes, I have gained quite a bit of weight since getting married and starting graduate school. But I figure, now that we've been married for almost two years and I have graduated that it's about time for me to get my act together.
My sister Erin (who's house we live in) just had a baby and decided she needed to lose some weight too (even thought I think she looks great!). In the past Erin has gone on the Atkins diet and has always lost a lot of weight, so she started it again and a week later I joined her.
So the Atkins diet, as most of you know, is a low carb diet and claims to burn more fat. I've always been a skeptic about these things. It seem intuitively wrong that by eating lots of meat and cheese you can lose weight. But I started this diet hoping it would work for me. I thought it was going to be really hard, but it has helped to have Erin in the house doing it too. (Now I just need to get Phil on board to make it easier for me when we move out!) No matter what foods you eat, you will always eat better when you plan your meals. Each day I like to plan what I'm going to eat the next day, this way I don't just walk into the kitchen and scrummage though the cupboard landing my hand on a big box of crackers. It also helps to only keep things in the house that you can eat (not so easy with a 4 year old and a 2 year old running around).
Erin has shown me around the grocery store and pointed out the foods I can and cannot eat. Did you know they make sugar free Reese's Peanut Butter Cups?? Well, they do and they're delicious. It's always nice to have a piece of candy once and a while, because even when you're dieting, you always have to satisfy your sweet tooth. I have to say that the one thing I really miss is fruit. Fruit has always been so refreshing to me, but at this stage of Atkins it's not allowed because of all the sugar in it.
Yes, there are stages to Atkins. You start at the induction phase, which limits you to 20 grams of carbs a day, which is not a lot at all. You stay in this phase until you have reached a certain weight, or BMI range, or something like that. I'm going to stay at this phase until I lose 20 lbs. Then each week you can add 5 more grams of carbs to your daily allotment. You do this until you're not losing weight anymore and then you scale back 5 lbs until you find your ideal carb count.
So it's been a week now and I have lost (drum roll please...) 6 lbs already! I figure that in a month or so I can reach my 20 lbs goal and move on from there. And no worries, I'm not going to use my blog as my diet journal, I just wanted to tell you all about my new venture, because I figure the more I talk about it and the more people know that I'm doing it, the more accountable I will feel to stick with it!
