Last 20 lbs Series - Why this plan?

I suppose the first attraction is that it is really working for Helen. She is losing weight easily. She is able to follow the plan. She feels like it is detoxing her from processed foods. I think the plan is making her more aware. It is taking the wants and the personal feelings out of it - it seems to be more of a scientific process for her. And I identify with that.

I eat very few processed foods. But I - like most everyone else - gravitate toward carbs. My carbs (now) are mostly fruit, beans, rice, sweet potato, squash - but I still gravitate that way. I guess what I am saying - is that my mind still goes toward carbs - I have just gotten rid of the impulsivity that makes me act on what my mind thinks. I think a carb down program is an important eye opener. And maybe I need to reopen my eyes - every few years or so.

And as I have built up the intensity of my exercise - over the course of the last six months - I realized that on my higher workout days - I need several small meals. And I understood that I need to have a carb UP day every now and again.

I have tried this a few times on my own - to see what it does to the WANTS. To see if I was now capable of telling myself NO. To see if I still had the food impulsivity of a two year old or if I had actually grown up. So, three different weeks - on one selected day - I ate something that is a carb up - to see if I could have ONE and then walk away. And by the third week I could. The first week I ended up having three, the second week two, and then the third week one. And I was able to trust myself. And I was able to NOT have it impact my mind for the rest of my eating.

I am very much a food scheduler. I like having categories that I fill with whole foods for each of my set meals. I eat like a nutritionist filling a diabetics lunch order at the hospital - veggie, protein, carb, dairy. I have been eating the same set combinations. But when I upped my exercise - this wasn't working. And it wasn't working to eat the same volume/composition each day. Some days I need more FOOD, other days I seem to need less. And I need different combinations for different meals.

I am not so naive to think that magically I can do this on my own and maintain. I can't willy nilly decide to eat more or less. I can not think that I intuitively am going to do this - because - for me - that would be the addict on my shoulder whispering all kinds of things.

I would gain weight. I would start to have physical symptoms. I would get sucked into a vortex. I have NO illusions over this.

This plan - at the end of the 8 weeks - will have me back in my food categories - with two carb up type days - and different food combinations - safely built in - measured and scheduled - not willy nilly. And hopefully (in 8 weeks) most/all? of my bits of excess fat pockets g-o-n-e.

And that is why this plan is a good choice for me. It is taking the same premise of what I have done successfully for 3 years (the last year of losing and the two years of maintaining) and tweaking it a bit.

It just worked out that while all of the above was going on in my brain - Helen was trying this new system and writing about it - and I recognized, from her writing, that it filled much of what I needed to tweak in my current system.