further diet update

I'm doing better today. Yesterday was a bit of a low point. I was depressed about everything but especially about my size and my body. All of my old body image demons were appearing and taunting me with images of myself as repulsive and gargantuan and just plain old fat. Those that know me know that those demons are not telling me the truth, but it is hard for me to not hear them and to not believe them. I realized yesterday that I've been struggling with sugar addiction and figuring out how to cut it out for the past five years. Five years! I hadn't realized that it had been so long. Then if you add the previous ten years to that. It's not a pretty picture. If I had a scanner I'd put in a picture of myself from my senior year in college. I'm skeletal, barely a hundred pounds and remember thinking it was a compliment when somebody told me they could blow and I'd fall over because I was so thin. Yay me! I had accomplished the feat of being thin. That was all I could think. I did better through grad school but still not that great and I've been trying really hard for the past five years to silence those demons.

One good thing about this diet, is that I'm not craving sweets. No other low carb diet that I've tried have I been this successful at quieting those cravings. It would take me six weeks into a no sugar challenge before I could feel like I wasn't thinking constantly about not eating sweets and when I could eat them again. It was really hard to keep sweets out of my diet. I'm three weeks into this plan and sweet wise, I'm doing good. I would be happier if I could manage to lose weight like Schwarzbein says happens once you're in balance. I'm trying to focus on improving my metabolism and my health. It feels weird saying that when most people would find aspects of the Schwarzbein plan unhealthy - especially fat content. But it's not Atkins by any stretch of the imagination. You eat a lot of vegetables and protein and you still can have fruit and whole grain carbs. In some ways it feels really strange and in some ways perfectly normal. I'm still willing to give it more time.