Diet

Most of you reading this probably already know this, but maybe some don't, so I'm writing about it, anyway. The best way to lose weight is with diet and exercise. You can lose weight by dieting alone, but NOT by exercising alone. You can run and run and run and never lose a pound if your diet doesn't change. Well, since I am running and running and running and putting all that energy into it, I want my body to change right along with it! Sooooooooo...last week (Thursday, to be exact), I started back on the diet. The good news is that this diet is AWESOME! The bad news is that my b-day / anniversary was yesterday, so I didn't worry too much about the diet then. BUT the scale indicated this morning that I didn't do too much damage, so I ain't skeered.

Here is what I'm doing for those who care to know. I will give you some background first. When people go on a diet, they usually fail within a short period of time. If they are able to stay on the diet for a long period of time, they end up gaining quite a bit of the weight back (or sometimes MORE) when they go off the diet. Why? Because diets are too restrictive. They make something that you wouldn't even normally want seem like the most attractive food / drink on the planet. Therein lies the problem.

After Katie was born, I wanted to lose the baby weight, but since I was breastfeeding, I didn't want to do anything drastic that might affect my milk production. I decided to eat healthy during the week, and then on the weekends, eat pretty much what I wanted. I lost about 35 pounds by doing that (and breastfeeding). Very little exercise, other than picking Katie up, putting Katie down, picking Katie up, putting Katie down...you get the idea. That plan worked pretty well for me 'til recently. My body hit a plateau a few weeks ago, and I have been stuck ever since. So I thought to myself that it might be beneficial to just go low-carb for a while. The problem with going low-carb, though, is that while you do lose weight fairly quickly, it comes right back on after you start eating normally again. Same goes for low-cal, low-fat, low anything. I wanted to find a way to do something that I could maintain long-term, that would help me lose a few more pounds, and that would prevent a plateau.

ENTER CARB CYCLING. The term popped into my head one morning, and I knew I'd heard/read about it while getting ready for my figure comp last year, but I couldn't remember what all was involved with it or exactly how it worked. So I started doing some research. Basically it is something that bodybuilders do to prevent a plateau while they are cutting for a competition. You cycle no-carb days (which aren't actually NO carbs, but less than 20-30), low carb days (one carb for each pound of body weight), and high carb days (where you don't count carbs, but eat healthy carbs, i.e. oatmeal, brown rice, etc. until satiated). The order you do them in doesn't really matter, but you just avoid having two high-carb or no-carb days in a row. It's easy to stick with, because the hardest days are the no-carb days, but knowing that you get carbs the next day makes it much easier to get through!

I don't know why everybody doesn't do this, unless they just don't know about it. You still get to have 'unhealthy' or 'bad' foods occasionally, and you feel great because your body is running efficiently! It's working beautifully for me so far (four days now).

I am now on a 12-week weight-loss challenge with (or against) my Mom, and it ends on Nov. 6th, about a week before the half marathon. So it is all fitting together quite well. I love it when that happens! Looking forward to feeling strong and healthy again.

Also looking forward to my run today. Shooting for twenty minutes without stopping; hopefully it won't be too hot out.