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I finally got my Traineo password reset - the total amount lost and pounds to go values are correct now.

Playing With Fire

This weekend was my first wedding anniversary, and to celebrate, my husband and I went to Stowe, Vermont.

On Saturday, when it rained, we visited the Cider Mill, shopped and walked the recreation path in the rain (we don’t own a car, so we’re used to being out in all kinds of weather).  On Sunday, which was sunny, we took a gondola ride up a mountain whose name I can’t remember and I now think of as Mount Moriah and walked/ran the steep twisty switchback back down (that was two days ago, and we are both still sore).  And of course, we ate.  One of the beauties of the low-carb approach to food is that virtually every restaurant offers at least one dish I can eat, either exactly as described on the menu, or with a very slight modification (for example, “hold the croutons” or “please don’t bring the potatoes”).  Even the pizza place offered an antipasto salad (we didn’t eat there, but we could have).

I do, however, believe in the occasional treat (and by occasional I mean “once every few months,” not days or even weeks; you’ll see why below), so I allowed myself to eat one cider donut.  Verdict:  pretty good, but donuts were better when I was a kid and everybody fried them in lard or tallow, and this one was no exception - it was just a little too greasy, which may be a weird thing for a low-carber to say, but there it is.  I like fat just fine, and Dean Ornish would probably die of apoplexy if he saw what I ate for breakfast on Saturday, but to make a donut greasy you have to either fry it at too low a temperature, or use the wrong kind of fat.  Shame on the cook if the temperature is wrong; shame on the “fat is bad, and saturated fat is the worst” people if the donut was fried in nasty canola oil.  (One of the other beauties of the low-carb lifestyle is that I never have to eat canola oil again.  Yuck.)

I also allowed myself to eat a dessert at our anniversary dinner.  Please note that this does not mean I binged on carbs.  I ate a normal low-carb meal:  an appetizer of Italian sausage and shaved fennel, and an entree of steak with grilled onions and a double portion of broccolini, skip the mashed potatoes.  Then I ordered a dessert that was not pure carbs - crême brulée, which contains eggs and cream in addition to sugar.

The good news:  no weight gain, and no return of most of my other symptoms.

The bad news:  I was ravenous all day yesterday, and I would’ve killed for a chocolate croissant.  The only thing that restrained me is that I’ve been reading Gary Taubes’ new book, which reinforced in my mind that overindulging in carbohydrates is a very bad idea.  That, and the fact that I know from experience that eating the chocolate croissant would’ve led to another, and another, and pretty soon I’d be fat and sick again.

I bring this because it shows one of the truths of low-carb that many people find unwelcome at first.  It is not a diet; it’s a way of life.  My experience with eating two small high-carb treats over the course of a weekend shows why:  there’s some truth to the notion that one or two little treats won’t hurt.  Most people can probably have a slice of pie once every few months without gaining weight.  I didn’t gain any, that’s for sure.  But the way that one or two little treats can hurt is that they cause the kinds of cravings that lead to two or three more treats, which lead to three or four more treats, which lead to an all-out binge.  So my advice is:  don’t set yourself up for this kind of temptation lightly.  Limit those treats to just a few times a year, or even better, redefine your notion of treat.  (How about some real crabmeat, or a nice juicy steak, or a handful of Marcona almonds?)  Don’t play with fire without gloves.

The good news is, if you think you can’t give up potatoes, pasta, and sweets for the long haul, I assure you that you can.  The first few days are hard, and then it’s like you never even heard of a potato before!  But the problem with cheating is that, if you eat high-carb foods even once a week, and then try to switch back, in effect, every day of your low-carb diet is the first few days all over again.  If you stick to the diet, you need three or four days of sheer willpower to avoid high-carb foods, and then it isn’t a question of willpower at all.