Low Carb Confidential

I seem to be in a groove right now. This past week, I’ve bounced around a bit, but I’ve also lost the 2 lbs. that doctors think is the maximum rate you can lose without hurting yourself. As I’ve been able to do this without much hardship – there’s no feeling of deprivation, no great effort of willpower required. I think I’ve mentioned before that I think hard work and willpower are overrated – or to put it another way: I don’t believe in confusing effort with results.

Now that I finally am showing some results – about 14 lbs. down from April 13, which is almost exactly 2 lbs per week over the last 6 weeks, I’m looking back at this time and trying to determine just what was I doing differently that all the other times before that where I was still putting in the same effort, but getting squat.

I can guess at the following as potential factors. I don’t think it was a single factor by itself, but rather a combination of some of these factors that account for this. As most researchers say to cover up the fact that they don’t understand the results they got: more research is required.

1. I’ve reduced my vitamin intake. ‘WTF?’ might be your response to this, but I’m reconsidering vitamins based on the fact that the research on them are all over the place – and it is nearly impossible to be sure you are getting what you expect to be getting and that the potency of many vitamins varies greatly from what the label says. I’ve been tapering off – and haven’t had any in the past week – and this coincides with my most rapid weight loss. I plan on taking vitamins again – to see if I notice any difference – we’ll see if any pattern continues. My guess right now is that it’s just a coincidence.
2. I’ve reduced my coffee intake. Going back to my previous post on this – perhaps the reduced hammering on my liver while it tries to metabolize all that caffeine has allowed it to do a better mop-up on the insulin, and thus reduce the insulin resistance and allow for greater weight loss? Beats me – but I can say that there is a correlation between the reduced coffee and the weight loss. Is it a factor? Maybe. BTW – this is probably the change that is requiring the most amount of effort.
3. No Alcohol. Going on month 3 of this. Is there a combination effect with the coffee reduction, and the time period that might have allowed my liver some respite from the extra work? There are two other factors involved in alcohol: it does contain calories, and these take the place of fat-burning. There is also the appetite-stimulant factor – alcohol, as we all know, has a certain ‘disinhibiting’ factor which might make reduced food intake more challenging. So alcohol might have 3 factors that prevent weight loss – and all of them have been removed.
4. Vegetables as a significant portion of my daily food since the beginning of April. Since then, (perhaps because of that hypnosis tape mentioned in this post) I’ve made my weekday routine a large salad with red wine vinegar and olive oil, organic field greens, cherry tomatoes, mushrooms, and maybe some shredded cheese and grilled chicken breast, maybe cucumbers, maybe some brie, maybe some raw squash – you get the idea. My guess here is that, while I feel this is a healthy habit, I’m uncertain as to how much this contributes to my weight loss.
5. No exercise. I think exercise is great – some of my best friends exercise – but I’m not sure that it is critical, or even helpful in weight loss – especially for me. I lost 80 lbs without exercising, had my most sudden weight gains when I experimented with exercise in the late part of 2008, and am now losing at a steady rate without it. I’m reporting here – no recommending, remember that, and my conclusion for myself at this juncture is ‘keep doing what I’m doing’ – if I’m losing weight at a steady and healthy rate without exercise, why would I add it now? My past pattern has been that as the weight comes off, I tend to want to exercise more, so I’ll wait until it’s a desire rather than an effort of will to do it.
6. Nicotine. This is probably my wackiest idea to date – and probably the most effective tool I’ve discovered yet in assisting in my losing weight. As mentioned previously, I’ve started a habit of having about 3 or 4 Commit lozenges a day. I have noticed a pattern where once I start eating, I don’t want to stop – and this is hard to control. Now I know that I can have a reasonable portion of food, then pop a lozenge while still hungry, and the appetite disappears almost instantly. It’s taken me a while to figure out how to use it – and it did take a while for my body to get used to the nicotine, but I find it puts me in control of my appetite rather than my appetite controlling me. My usual ‘don’t try this at home’ admonition applies on this one especially – you have to assume a whole lot of personal responsibility to try this – I don’t recommend this as it might have a slew of unfortunate consequences that I haven’t foreseen. For example: just the other day, I noticed that I had a lozenge in my car that I had used and put into a small Ziploc bag, had disintegrated into a fine white powder and I suddenly thought: if a cop stopped me and asked me what was that white powder in that tiny Ziploc bag, would he believe it was a partially sucked-on nicotine lozenge, or would I be forced to spend a short vacation in the county lockup while they analyze the stuff? The lesson is clear: don’t follow me – I might be a total idiot.

So there you have it. Are there other factors I don’t see? Maybe. My current weight loss might have nothing to do with the above. I’ll just keep observing and continue my hobby of self-experimentation.

Filed under: diet, Exercise, Goals, health, Hypnosis, Nicotine, Personal Journal, Self-Experimentation, Supplements, weight loss