Experimenting with Carb Cycling

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I’ve been doing a lot of body type research for my blog. I have an endomorph body type which means my body quickly adjusts to diets and that’s why I normally stall out. The research I have been doing suggests carb cycling through the week to burn weight and inches off and stop a stall.

I am writing this blog post as I go, therefore I will be adding bit by bit over the next two weeks. I am one week in, I have found doing a higher carb diet while lifting my weights has helped A LOT. I have more energy, less muscle soreness(I still get sore though) and my appetite has changed. I don’t crave unhealthy foods like I used to, and I overall feel better about myself and my progress.

I decided for face, I’d step on the scale and weigh myself today. I have lost 2.2lb in one week. So, not really much of a change since I lost 11lb last month just counting calories and working out. I also have gained inches in some places. I have no idea if that’s an inch of muscle or if it’s fat from doing a low carb diet on my off days. At this point, I have no clue. 

I’ve noticed on my low carb days I am super hungry and more prone to want to cheat on my diet. Today, I couldn’t help myself but to have a donut. My binge disorder has more control over my mind during these days than on days where I am eating higher carbs. I have tried increasing my fat intake, for these days, to see if it helps. So far, it has not. My body doesn’t seem to feel full on my low carb days and I feel constantly starving. 

I will weigh in tomorrow and decide if I will continue to carb cycle, or if I will just go back to logging my food with myfitnesspal and trying to keep it more or less clean. I do allow myself small cheats. For example, yesterday was Valentine’s Day and I had a hot chocolate bomb. It honestly gave me the biggest sugar high and instead of sitting there doing nothing I decided to be productive and get my step count up.

The last two weeks my mindset has changed. I find that I want to be more active. I want to increase my step count from under 5k to over 7/8k a day. Eventually, the goal is to get over 10k steps a day. It also gives me more hopes for summer. I daydream about riding bikes with my children, playing soccer and baseball, going swimming, and nice long hikes with my dog Kronos. 

So, even if this carb cycling didn’t help me lose weight. It did aid in helping me learn what is good and isn’t good for my body. It helped promote more mental change. It has made me more hopeful for my future losing weight and keeping the weight off. I have also been able to help other women with ideas on meal prep, healthy recipes, and overall support of what may or may not work for them. 

So, I honestly weighed in at 4lb down. So, it really isn’t a big change at all. I see better results just using my calorie counting app and not going overboard with my fat intake. I do believe that part of sticking to this diet would be to figure out how to feel full on low carb days. This seemed to be the worst part of carb cycling for me. I have decided to go back to just eating clean and working out. Stick to whole foods and eating the correct amount of calories seem to help my muscles more than what I have been doing. All in all, I do believe when I am lower in weight I will try to carb cycle again. For now, I am going to keep doing what I am doing.

What Works For Me..

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I promised myself that I would make a blog post every week. Some days I know finding something to write about is going to be hard. Some days it seems like I have 100 topics to write about. So, since I have been drawing a real blank for this week, since I know what next week’s topic is going to be about, I figured I’d write to you about the program I am doing. What has helped and what hasn’t really helped. 

Off the bat, I will say this is basically mind over everything. I didn’t quite understand people when they said it was all a matter of will power. I still don’t. I guess it could be linked to what people assume is will power, for me though, it is a matter of what benefits myself and my body. Before you can understand I should probably explain what I mean. Back before November, I started getting these weird chest pains. I went through a bunch of heart testing, all negative, because I seriously thought I was eating myself to death. I was not making good choices for myself. I also have a lot of influence around myself that don’t make good choices. I used to blame them for my poor eating habit, but now I realize that everyday I have a choice. I started getting these pains and feared that my three children wouldn’t have a mom in a couple a years and that scared me. 

For about three weeks, I went through all of the foods I used to eat and started linking them with a pattern. A lot of unhealthy foods gave me this pain. You guessed it, Gerd. So, when I started to eliminate these foods I started to feel a lot better. I don’t eat pork, red meats, heavy creams, a lot of salad dressings, and a lot of other things. It is kind of what sparked this blog. I figured a lot of other people were dealing with these issues and like myself did research. The only difference is a lot of those people will give up after a month or so of not eating these foods because “it’s unrealistic.” Trust me, I used to tell myself that all the time. It was unrealistic to restrict my diet when I couldn’t eat like that all the time. But, I’ve held on for a few months now and can tell you that the more I keep on myself, the more I feel 100% positive I made the right choice. I started to realize that the food I was eating wasn’t actually worth the pains I would feel. It isn’t about my will power to stay out of the timbits, that are now sitting on my counter. Or say the big macs my dad would bring home for us to enjoy. It was about what makes me feel good and what doesn’t. Those foods don’t make me feel good at all and I avoid them because I feel like I matter.

This sparked linking my new eating habits with losing weight. When you feel better about yourself you try to do better for yourself. I logged all my information through a calorie counting app(you can go into whatever software store you have and download one) and started getting to work. Even to this day, I still log every thing that goes into my mouth. It can be a bit of an inconvenience but I work hard at it. I don’t skip days unless I am sick. When i’m sick all of I end up eating is soup and water anyways. I then added in a HIIT workout(again, you can youtube whatever you’d like) and added lifting weights. Since November, i’m down 20lb total. Likely more since my scale day is next week. I have made great strides in my health, both mental health and physical. I find my depression and anxiety aren’t getting out of hand as much anymore. 

What hasn’t worked for me is crash diets. I have found that I always end up miserable, moody and out of control. That I end up mentally quitting before I am even down the weight. I end up getting a foggy mindset and I am super forgetful. This could be for a lot of other reasons, but doing what I am doing right now has seriously changed the way I feel about losing weight. What also hasn’t worked for me is letting other people have control of my diet and exercise. I found a workout program I could see myself doing every single day for the rest of my life. I didn’t grab a “coach” and talk to them. I tried different programs and I just settled on this program. It is 4 days a week, and I get my weekends off. This is incredibly helpful as I am a single mom and use my weekends to spend time with my children. Giving people who aren’t you more say in what you do only leads you down a rabbit hole for disaster. 

I can say finding something I love, making changes I am okay with(even if at first I am hesitant) has given me more inner strength which is what I believe people link to as will power. I just believe that I matter more than having those special foods matter. Maybe that is what will power does. But, I don’t “sustain” from them. They don’t call to me unless my binge mind appears(totally different topic). I actually look at these foods and just don’t want them or feel the need to have them. I don’t find inner strength to not have them because I just have that interest in them. 

Eating Disorders…

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What it’s like being a fat girl with an eating disorder…

“You can’t possibly have an eating disorder, maybe an over eating disorder.” Something I’ve heard quite often from unaware people. People with “good” intentions just trying to point out I’m fat and that the reason I’m fat is because I love food. They don’t seem to understand how much of a struggle it is for me, for women like me. Big or small women who suffer in silence because unaware people seem to know just how they work and just how to overcome them.

“You just need to exercise more, and not be so lazy. You need to just eat proper foods.” I hear them singing to themselves like they somehow don’t seem to know that those words are deadly to someone like me. Someone who’s life consists of avoiding mirrors. Someone who exercises 4 times a week, doesn’t eat over 1500 calories, and still manages to take care of three children.They see a fat person staring back at them because she doesn’t want to take care of herself. I see my worst enemy.

I see someone who’s emotion is directly tied with the foods she loves. That one bad day could turn into an epic binge that could last days, weeks, months. That when I become so entirely health obsessed I cry more because my pictures all look the same, even if I’ve lost 10,20,50lb. They have such good intentions. “Be patient with your body it will come.” But, they don’t live with the constant battle inside their head. One day you’re fitting better into your tight leggings and the next your brain screams “check the scale, you’ll surely have lost” only to step on the scale and sabotage yourself. Your brain doesn’t work the same as their does. Your brain and Food is constantly the enemy.

You can eat completely healthy, exercise an hour a day, take 10k steps and none of it matters. You spend your time alone. Not because you want to be alone but because all your other friends want to eat foods that trigger your binges. Not because you want to feel utterly depressed but because you get constant stares and whispers. I don’t even want to keep track of how many whispers I’ve gotten because I’m a fat girl. Even though they don’t know I have been working my ass off to be healthy. It’s only the size they see.

I struggle everyday to tell myself that size means nothing. The number on the scale is just a number. That what I’m doing it working. Just trust the process…. Just fricken trust the process. But, how do you trust the process when your brain is broken. How do you trust it when all these “well intentioned” people are shoving their non-helpful advice down your throat. You can’t be a fat girl with an eating disorder… Oh no, because then people would have to admit that they have no clue and their “good intentions” are just an escape goat to fat shame.. 

For anyone reading this, you’re better than those dark thoughts in your head. You’re stronger than that loud voice screaming at you, trying to dictate your worth to you. You don’t have to suffer in silence. I’m here for you, I know all too well.Don’t tell me that I’m just a fat girl with a food problem. If you knew the demons I faced daily on this journey you wouldn’t survive. 

My Back Story…

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Hello and welcome to my blog. First off, I’d like to take this time to tell you how much I appreciate you reading my blog. I have always known I am gifted with words and I finally have figured out a productive way to use them.

A little about myself, I am just your average plus size woman. I am a mom of three, I have a therapy dog named Kronos, and I have a white cat named Polar. I have been overweight most of my life. Even as a young teen, I was heavy. As I went through each of my pregnancies I backed on more and more weight. In early 2015, I was at my biggest at almost 300lb! I decided to try to lose the weight and had some success. I dropped 60lb but didn’t keep it all off. By end of 2017, I was back up to 275lb.

I’d call myself a yo-yo dieter. I’ve done them all. In July 2017, I underwent a procedure that burned the inside of my uterus. I lost my ability to have children and it absolutely destroyed me. When I went to go see my doctor late 2017, he recommended weight loss surgery. I was absolutely eager and ready to start living my best life. But, life has a way of pushing you away from things you shouldn’t do. I quickly realized the surgery wasn’t for me and tried to lose weight myself.

Lets fast forward to recently. In November 2019, I weighed in at 250lb. I was excited and still depressed. I had gone two years and only dropped 25lb. I decided to start doing things for myself again. Something inside of me just broke. I realized it was my healthy self or likely an early death. I had gone through kyphosis, heart issues, gerd, and phantom gall attacks(my gallbladder was removed in 2012). I was fed up of being miserable and upset with myself.

The last three months I have dedicated each and every day to becoming the best healthy self I can be. Each week, I will be blogging to you about how I am doing with my weight-loss. I’ll let you know what I am doing, how I am doing it and everything in between. Each and every emotional step I take I want you to take with me. I hope whomever stumbles across my page knows that there is a light at the end of the tunnel. We can do this together. Don’t be afraid to reach out.

Instagram: bbwtofit

When IG tries to fail you

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Let me know if you’ve heard this before from a IG trainer who doesn’t know your story?

‘I don’t see progress. What you’re doing isn’t working. I’ve done *insert how many years* and *insert bodybuilding training*”

Here is the thing with these trainers, they don’t get to know you. They don’t find out your body type. They don’t measure you weekly. They don’t do research for you, or even talk to you about things like eating disorders, body plateaus or anything in between. They do this and say these things to GAIN CLIENTS.

Some of these people pray on the weak-minded. They think because they’ve bulked for years that they know what it’s like to lose weight as another body type. They believe progress has to only show in pictures. When that is furthest for the truth.

If some trainer tells you that they see nothing from your pictures after a few weeks that is OKAY! Why? Because not everyone loses 20lb a month. Not everyone gains it in a month either. That pictures lie the same way a scale does. That our bodies take about two full months to show progress from the outside. While after a month the progress for your health has truly benefitted.

I want you to ask yourself these questions. When you measure are the numbers going down? Are your clothes fitting better? Do you feel mentally better about yourself? Can you walk a little longer than you could before you started? Are some of the exercises you are doing getting easier? Are you able to lift a heavy weight this week? Did you say yes to most of these questions? Then yes, the process is working.

Remember, a health journey is your own journey. It isn’t some trainers journey who knows diddly squat about you. It is about you truly finding yourself. Those trainers have no idea what you’ve overcome or done to get where you are right now. Don’t let their gimmick and sales pitch bring you or your progress down. There are billions of people losing weight without the help of these people. I will always be one of those people. It’s your journey whether or not it’s slow or fast. Enjoy it, don’t let others bring you down for it.

Embrace your power for change.