It was only while cleaning up the kitchen that I realized my fall from low carb grace was worse than I recalled in yesterday’s post. I had hit the baked ziti hard – and some brioche also disappeared down my gullet.
Perhaps I’m doomed to remain this weight. Perhaps I am a victim of ‘False Hope Syndrome’:
People appear to behave paradoxically, by persisting in repeated self-change attempts despite previous failures. It is argued, though, that self-change attempts provide some initial rewards even when unsuccessful. Feelings of control and optimism often accompany the early stages of self-modification efforts. In addition, unrealistic expectations concerning the ease, speed, likely degree of change, and presumed benefits of changing may overwhelm the knowledge of one’s prior failures. It is thus important to learn to distinguish between potentially feasible and impossible self-change goals in order to avoid overconfidence and false hopes leading to eventual failure and distress.(https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11466595)
I don’t seem to get all that distressed over my failures, however. Is this a positive thing or a negative thing though? Am I I determined or just a fool? Is the success I’ve had in the past unattainable now? Do I simply lack the cohones I once had too pull it off again? Have I retired from the kind of effort needed to take off 40 pounds and am just too stupid to know it? Should I call it quits on a 10-year low carb run and find a new diet? Or maybe just walk away from the gaming table with my winnings: down 35 pounds for a decade is still an achievement. Buy new clothes that fit at this size, shut down this blog and maybe start a new one about Fasciest Homeowner’s associations? Mine just sent me 30 pages of regulations on how often I should mow my lawn, how often I should water it, as well as the maximum lawn height: 4.5 inches. The document gently warned: ‘inspections will be made.’
If somebody comes to my house with a ruler to measure the height of my lawn I am going to spray them with a hose.
I decided to say to hell with the diet for the day. I had a Panera souffle with some eggs and toast early afternoon after cleaning the kitchen. Herein lies a big problem with saying to Hell with the diet – even if I don’t lose weight: I feel the difference. Afterward I was real tired and ended up taking a nap.
I woke late afternoon and the wife wanted to go to The Bonefish Grill (she had a coupon). I had never been there, but decided I would order whatever I felt like. We had a great appetizer of shrimp and scallops in a gooey cheese sauce with flatbread, then they brought a nice loaf of hot bread with pesto sauces to the table – then a second because the table devoured it. My main course was a seafood-stuffed tiliapa with au gratin potatoes which was washed down with 2 martinis until I switched to water. My younger daughter had fallen asleep before her main course came – a tempura fish and chips and I must say the few bites stolen of this stuff proved this to be a very good take on the classic dish.
Full to bursting from the meal we all went home and went straight to sleep, though I was thirsty and had no less than 2 big tumblers of almond milk and another glass of water.
I paid for my wanton transgression with indigestion that woke me a couple of times. The fire could only be put out by a few Tums each time.
I can’t eat like most normal people – nor can I seem to stick to my diet. Checkmate.
Low Carb Confidential 
Darlin’ you are my twin! and I am up 35 lbs. from my comfortable weight and every day since October has been the first day of staying on plan.
Although I resonate with every word that you say, fate and destiny are within our control.
It’s so easy to say I can’t eat eat like a normal person and I can’t stick to my diet….but it’s just an excuse. If you had an anaphylactic reaction to carbs and they were gong to kill you….you’d find a way to stick to your diet. My mantra is that losing weight has to be the most important thing in your life if you want to achieve success. We both know why it’s so hard, there’s no point in rehashing it.
I’m not letting you get off easy, I am not accepting your post as defeat. Face it, you just don’t want it bad enough and I guess neither do I….but that makes me sad because I am so desperately unhappy at my current weight and with my eating habits.
We can do this if we chose to, I’m game to try it with a partner, it has worked for me in the past and heck I use all of your recipes:)
I don’t quite know how to respond. First of all, the only reason my blog exists is because I push the ‘publish’ button before I think too much about what I wrote. Hundreds of posts sit unposted because I thought about them. Now I just write a stream-of-consciousness piece and don’t know what the hell I just wrote. Then I get comments like this and have to go back and reread the post to see what I actually said to get the responses I get.
Perhaps you’re right – I don’t want it enough. Last month’s ‘fat, dumb & happy’ posts alluded to that, I think.
Realistically, can my diet be the single most important thing in my life? No – probably not. Work and family prevent that. Some would *already* consider me a monomaniac on the subject: 10 years, over 500 posts, 3 or 4 book manuscripts certainly point to that.
While I never had the success of the first time, I have proven that low carb works for me so I doubt I will ever abandon it, though an aging metabolism, stress, and a house full of carb freaks do make it harder than it might be under different circumstances – but these are the circumstances I need to deal with.
If I was more of a zealot it would probably help – but as I grow older I’ve become more likely to hold *all* my beliefs as subject to change. I am sure that the basic premise of low carb is ‘neat, simple and wrong’ in some sense – but it is less wrong than other approaches – at least for me.
In rereading my post I suppose I was detailing my existential crisis of the moment. But I doubt I’m going to pack it in anytime soon. I’m already reworking my approach in my head, and trying to come up with some novel and possibly hare-brained new scheme to muddle about with.
I’ve always thought that part of success is ‘catching the wave’. Every day, bring your best game. Sometimes the wave isn’t right – sometimes you’re not right. But finally – FINALLY – you and the wave meet up and it works.
Your statement: ‘If you had an anaphylactic reaction to carbs and they were gong to kill you….you’d find a way to stick to your diet’ is interesting. there’s an ancient drug for alcoholics called ‘Antabuse’ that if you take it and drink will cause severe reactions – and possibly death. It has only limited effectiveness because patients have to want to quit drinking to take it.
If there was a similar drug that had the same effect if you ate too many carbs, would I take it? It’s an intriguing thought…
I thought that you were admitting defeat. I took your post literally and I was worried that you were giving up. It was an attempt at moral support, I guess it didn’t do the job:(
Maybe I was exploring what admitting defeat would look like. Sorry for the confusion.
Your post *did* make me think, however, and that’s the only compensation I get from this blog, so while your post didn’t do the job you expected it to do, it did provide me a thoughtful comment to chew on – so thqnks for that.
Me trying to eat like a “normal” person has resulted in a ten pound gain which IS slowly coming off. I try to remember that summer is ahead ~ how uncomfortable it is to be overweight (even a few pounds) in the warmer weather. I have started out with a few more calories than usual (up to 1400-1500 vs. my 1000 or lower) and a few more carbs (probably not more than 50-60) and will lower that once I get to 10 lbs. or so from my goal. Sometimes I start out too low and have no place to change anything up (if that makes sense to anyone!). LCC, I don’t think you would be satisfied at all with your current weight ~ please join us back again. (or I will come and measure your grass! ) (On a quick off-subject, we just got a new water heater ~ needed a Code Enforcement Approved Permit ~ then he had to come by to make sure it was in “compliance” and then we received a letter that it was put in properly.) I, like chefmichelle, love your recipes, too!
You’re right – I’m not comfortable where I’m at, but I am perhaps to complacent. I’ll keep plugging away, though…
Dear LCC – DON’T LEAVE ME!
Through a lot of your posts I’m seeing that your household members are carb-o-holics. I think that has a lot to do with your backslides. In short of creating a Alanon for Carboholics – is there any way they can be more supportive? Or, are they? You don’t really mention that one way or the other. You are a strong man to have all those carbs in the house and do as well as you are doing. I had to get all the things not on the acceptable foods list out of my house. My 21 year old starving college student daughter was thrilled with the bags of carbs I gave her. lol
At any rate, this blog is getting me through induction (which is going to take longer because of my transgressions with Billy Joel last week.) I started over but am doing amazingly well.
I would be so disappointed if you gave up and even more so if you shut down your blog. We all have ups and downs. Now that you have a following here you have to stay!!! We need you.
p.s. I have to have coffee cream. I can not live without it. I have almond milk but am saving that for when i crave a glass of ice cold milk and it does have carbs and I’m not ready to use oil and butter in my coffee..ick. But, i looked up McDonald’s coffee cream and there are zero carbs in those little things. Made my day 🙂