LowCarbForLife's blog

My husband has been reading the book Wheat Belly: Lose the Wheat, Lose the Weight, and Find Your Path Back to Health out loud to me recently. It started last week when we took a road trip and after five hours and a hundred and fifty pages of mind blowing information, I am anxious to take another car trip so I can hear more.

I am such an extremist that I was ready to go wheat free that same afternoon, but I made a huge mistake at the Chinese restaurant we went to for lunch. I ordered honey walnut chicken and accepted my mistake of not thinking about the chicken being breaded. I enjoyed every bite of my meal and even though I had to postpone my desire to go wheat free, I had no problem following the guidelines of CALP.

My next wheat free mistake came from soy sauce. I wanted our recipe of homemade Chinese marinaded ribs and discovered the soy sauce in the marinade contained wheat. Since the ribs were already marinading in the sauce, I postponed my desire to become wheat free again. I enjoyed two meals of this delicious recipe, delaying my wheat free desire two more days.

I never had any problems giving up flour and bread since my preference has always been to eat chocolate as part of my reward meal. There was a time when I mistakenly thought bread and wheat products were a healthier alternative than the dark chocolate and nuts I was eating. I purposely chose to include wheat in my program until my husband convinced me that my choices of avocado, chocolate, fruit, and nuts, were actually healthier for me. Click here to continue reading, or leave a comment »

My mother, 71, has COPD and she has been off and on oxygen for the last ten years. Breast cancer entered her life over five years ago and she has been dependent on oxygen ever since her surgery. Her breast surgery went well and she remains cancer free, but there is no recovery for COPD. Over the years the amount of oxygen she requires has risen, but I am happy to say that she remains active.

Two weeks ago, mom was hospitalized with respiratory failure. I packed an overnight bag and stayed with her at the hospital and when she was discharged, I helped her at home. She is recovering well and when I left to return home, she was playing her weekly Mah Jong game with her friends.

My motivation in beginning this program was to take control of my health since my genes are not something I can depend on. Before I began this program, I could not control my sweet tooth. The worst part was that I loved food too! Both of my maternal grandparents lived with diabetes and due to my lack of control, I suspected I was heading down the same road.

My paternal grandparents both died from heart attacks and cancer took both of my maternal grandparents. My father, 75, ended up having two heart attacks several years ago and he was diagnosed with diabetes last year when he was hospitalized in a diabetic coma. The emergency room staff were unable to get a glucose reading for the first three hours he was there and when they did, it was 1141, not a typo, eleven hundred and forty one! Needless to say, it took him three days to become aware of where he was and when he was released from the hospital, he was sent home with insulin so he could give himself injections. My father was able to stop giving himself insulin injections after the first month and since he quit eating sugar, he has been able to keep his insulin levels under control. As a matter of fact, he has been doing so well that he no longer believes he is a diabetic, although he continues to monitor it. Click here to continue reading, or leave a comment »

Here's my monthly weight loss chart as of July, 2011.

Grain-Free Experiment Results

I started a 30-day grain-free experiment on 6/11/2011, @ 146.5 lbs. After three weeks, I'm down 6.75 lbs.

The green star indicates the month I started Callanetics. The red diamond marker indicates the month I stopped taking GTF chromium supplements.

I began an experiment beginning on the 11th of June. A friend of ours mentioned to my husband that he lost weight by cutting grains from his diet. I have been trying to introduce other carbohydrates into my diet besides chocolate, and I didn't realize that every carbohydrate that I like to eat besides avocados, chocolate, fruit, and nuts, contain flour.

I was really excited to begin eliminating grains in my diet because I hope to find out how certain foods affect me. I want to know why my scale has been bouncing around so much lately and going without grains for thirty days sounded like the easiest experiment I could try.

Six days after going grain free, I ate lunch at an all you can eat pizza parlor with a group of six of us. My intention was to eat from the salad bar, hoping I could get enough protein. I had already mentioned to some of the group that I had gone grain free and since I had no problem going to the pizza parlor, one of the women asked me if I was going to eat the toppings off of the pizza. I didn't think of that and once she mentioned it, I knew I could get enough protein, not missing the bread at all.

I continue to follow the guidelines of CALP and I have lost weight every single day since going grain free. I have noticed since I have given up grains that I am not as hungry during mealtimes which has lead me to eat less. Is it coincidence, or do grains...flour in my case, affect me negatively. Only time will tell!

Weight
6.11.11 - 146-1/2 lbs.

6.12.11 - 146 lbs., lost 1/2 lb.

6.13.11 - 145-1/2 lbs., lost 1/2 lb., down 1 lb.

6.14.11 – 144-3/4 lbs., lost 3/4 lb., down 1-3/4 lbs.

6.15.11 - 144-1/2 lbs., lost 1/4 lbs., down 2 lbs.

6.16.11 - 144 lbs., lost 1/2 lb., down 2-1/5 lbs.

6.17.11 - 143 lbs., lost 1 lb., down 3-1/2 lbs.

Positive results so far!

I have always considered shopping for clothes too big of an effort since I never liked the way that I looked in anything. On my way to smaller clothes, I discovered thrift stores as a place for me to shop since I did not plan on staying in the same size clothes for very long. As soon as the clothes became too big, I donated them right back, getting more designer clothes that are not available at my local Walmart or Kmart.

Now that I am smaller, shopping is a lot more enjoyable. My upper body went from a size XXL to a S, and the largest pair of pants that I ever owned were a size18W, which I outgrew three months before beginning this program.

I am now a size 6 and when I was at Walmart, I picked up a couple pair of Bermuda shorts for $12 each. When I tried them on at home, I liked them so well that I used them as a pattern and cut a pair of my jeans to match. My shorts look just as good as the ones I bought so I will have several pair of Bermuda shorts this summer by picking up $3 or $4 jeans at the thrift stores and making my own.

I am allowing myself to buy new clothes for my upper body because I can get into a small now. Some are a little tighter around the back/breast area, but they are not anything that I can not wear right now. Between the tank tops and camp shirts, I believe I am set for the summer.