I Say Put That Stupid Scale Away Today To Keep Discouraging Thoughts At Bay

When it comes to making the decision to start eating right and living healthy, it is a huge leap of faith that takes a great deal of courage and tenacity to go into unchartered territory. Especially those of us who have tried diet and after in the past with merely nominal or no success, this is a shaky proposition even for the most optimistic of people. I admire anyone who makes an effort at it because I've been there!

But we are our own worst enemy sometimes, aren't we?

If we as individuals think our diet is boring or too methodical, then those are merely excuses we use to rationalize getting out of our responsibility to do something about our weight and health problem before it is too late. How many of us have been guilty of doing that? I sure have...in the past.

Low-carb living has never been about being the "perfect diet" (although it's pretty darn close!). Instead, what I've learned is that this way of eating is always a work in progress that you will do for the rest of your long and healthy life. It's been nearly four years and counting for me and I expect it to continue for 10, 25, even 50+ more years that the good Lord keeps me here on Earth.

Despite this undisputed fact, some dieters just can't help trying to sabotage their own efforts (whether knowingly or otherwise) to shed the pounds as evidenced by the following e-mail I received from a reader this week who is new to low-carb and has allowed a silly little electronic device to beat her down and spit her out like some worthless piece of trash. How sad!

Here's what she wrote to me in that e-mail:

My husband and I have been on the low-carb diet for about two months now. He has lost 18 pounds so far and I have only lost 5 pounds.

I have to admit that about every five days or so I eat something that is not low-carb and I know that's silly because I'm only hurting my weight loss efforts.

It has been two weeks now and I have not cheated one time and yet I have only lost one little pound! I'm so very frustrated because I am committed to losing weight now. But it just seems like it won't come off.

I have even started going to the gym and doing cardio workouts to see if that would help me any. I was wondering since you had so much success with low-carb if you would have any suggestions for me.

Thanks so much for taking the time to read my e-mail.

Oh, if I had a dollar for every e-mail I received like this one, then I could afford to have that tummy tuck I need already! Find out what I think this person and anyone who feels the same way about their low-carb plan should do to get back on track again by clicking here.

What To Know When Weight Loss Is Slow

Maintaining a steady weight better than the alternative

It's Week 19 of The "30-In-30" Low-Carb Weight Loss Challenge and I checked in with a 1-pound weight gain this week putting me at 217 pounds. Back and forth, up and down, my weight just refuses to break that 215 barrier for some odd reason or another.

Actually it DID break 215 late last week when I weighed 214 on my Friday morning weigh-in. But the weight came back up by the time I stepped on the scale today. ARGH!

Of course, this doesn't bother me as much since I started using the "Google 15" tool which gives a better representation of where your weight loss actually stands. But at some point I will need to break that 215 if I am ever going to reach my goal of 199. Now I've only got 11 weeks left to lose that last 18 pounds. It's not impossible, but getting more challenging.

This whole thought process about being stuck on a particular weight got me to thinking today (I know, that's dangerous!).

Why do we kick, scream and beat ourselves up when the scale remains on one particular number? What's up with that kind of attitude just because the weight loss stops happening for a few weeks or months? We too often criticize ourselves and want to find fault in what we are doing WRONG that we hardly spend a single moment patting ourselves on the back for what we are doing RIGHT!

Click here to read more about why I believe you should celebrate even if the scale shows you're not losing a single pound on your low-carb plan.

Study: Self-Regulation Maintains Weight Loss

Daily use of the scale can keep the obesity monster at bay, study finds

This Fox News/WebMD story features the results of a new study showing how people who lose weight can keep the weight off most effectively and the answer may surprise you.

Lead researcher Dr. Rena R. Wing, who is a Professor of Psychiatry and Human Behavior at Brown University and works at the Providence, Rhode Island-based Miriam Hospital, was looking for a way to explain why people who experienced weight loss seemed to inevitably begin to gain the weight back and what successful maintainers did to keep the weight off for good.

“Most dieters regain about a third of the weight lost during the next year and are typically back to baseline [their pre-diet weight] in 3 to 5 years,” Dr. Wing explained.

You might recall that Dr. Wing is also one of the co-founders of the National Weight Control Registry (NWCR) project which features over 5,000 people who have lost at least 30 pounds and kept it off for a minimum of one year. I have been critical of their apparent bias against people who are livin' la vida low-carb and I stand by that assertion based on the dietary recommendations included in this study which you will read about in a moment.

But I think they are on to something regarding people who weigh themselves regularly, which I blogged about the preliminary results of this very study one year ago. Now the full results and conclusions have been published.

Dr. Wing and her colleagues observed 314 adults who had shed an average of 42.5 pounds of their body weight within the past two years and split them up into three categories of weight loss maintenance for an 18-month period:

GROUP 1: Met in person weekly.
GROUP 2: Met in an online chat weekly,
GROUP 3: No meetings, just a quarterly newsletter on diet and health.

While GROUP 3 was obviously the control group, GROUP 1 and GROUP 2 both received additional practical application support for keeping the weight off by being encouraged to weigh themselves daily, exercise for at least one hour a day, and to stick with eating a healthy diet. In addition, they were required to report their weekly weigh-in results and were given specific instructions and encouragement for how to best maintain their weight to prevent weight gain.

Study participants were officially weighed at six months, one year and 18 months to determine their progress. GROUP 1 and GROUP 2 were designated into one of three color categories according to how well they were doing at maintaining their weight:

GREEN ZONE: Gained less than 3 pounds
YELLOW ZONE: Gained between 3-5 pounds
RED ZONE: Gained 5+ pounds

The GREEN ZONE group received "green" gifts such as green tea or money to encourage them to keep up the great work. The YELLOW ZONE group were urged to get into the GREEN ZONE as soon as possible. Finally, the RED ZONE group were nudged to get the pounds off by following regular execise and (get this!) by going on a low-fat/low-calorie diet (UGH!) (despite the fact that an internal study by the NWCR showed that more and more of their participants are choosing a low-carb nutritional approach to lose weight, they still INSIST on putting people on an artificial low-fat/low-cal diet! Why would I do that if I lost weight on the low-carb lifestyle?).

Those RED ZONE people were also provided with individualized diet counseling by telephone or e-mail to encourage them to bring their weight back down. They were supplemented with other diet resources, such as weight loss books, journals and any other tool to help them in bringing the weight under control

At the end of the 18 months, the weight gain results were in:

GROUP 1: 5.5-pound GAIN
GROUP 2: Nearly 10-pound GAIN
GROUP 3: Nearly 11-pound GAIN

The percentage of those who gained at least 5 pounds in each group:

GROUP 1: 45 percent
GROUP 2: 55 percent
GROUP 3: 72 percent

GROUP 1 and GROUP 2 had a statistically even chance of gaining at least five pounds, but the average weight gain was lowest among those who met live and in person regularly.

Dr. Wing concluded that self-regulation through weekly meetings with others desiring weight maintenance along with regular weighing on the scale is the best way to prevent the inevitable weight gain that comes for most people who lose weight.

This study was published in the October 12, 2006 issue of The New England Journal of Medicine.

Some retrospect on this study from someone who lost 180 pounds two years ago, gained about 10 pounds and has lost an additional 25 pounds so far this year (and I'm STILL losing!).

I agree that you must keep a constant eye on your weight if you ever hope to keep the weight maintained forever. If you aren't watching the pot, then it very well could boil over on you at any moment. Keeping your eye on where you stand at any given moment is an important factor in weight maintenance.

I've even tried to make it a game by challenging myself to get five pounds BELOW my goal weight so I can have a little cushion room to work with if I decide to indulge for a meal or skip my exercise for one day. Of course, I can't do those things until I create the cushion, but that gives me the extra motivation to make that happen.

Here's my question for Dr. Wing: Why do people who lose weight HAVE to gain weight at all? Every single participant on average gained at least 5.5 pounds. WHY? What is the reason they did this? If people make a commitment to a permanent lifestyle change and stick with that plan for the rest of their lives, then why oh why would there be ANY weight gain at all?

I hate this assumption that people who lose weight are destined to gain it all back. I know, I know, the statistics bear that out at fact in most cases, but I think it's a self-fulfilling prophecy. People KNOW that the vast majority of those who lose weight don't keep it off, so they think they are normal when the weight gain hits them. It's as if gaining weight has become the norm following weight loss that people stop doing those things that helped them lose weight to begin with. I don't get it.

At the end of the day, people who lose weight have put themselves in a better position to be healthy for the rest of their lives. But it is something they must continue to work on forever and ever without letting up one bit. I for one NEVER expect to gain back the weight I worked too hard to lose and I will do everything I can to make that happen and prove it can be done.

You can e-mail Dr. Rena Wing about her study at rwing@lifespan.org.

Accountability: The Forgotten Part Of Weight Loss

In his video last week about resisting temptation while on the Atkins diet, fellow low-carb blogger Kent Altena briefly stated how remaining accountable while losing weight will help you become the eventual success that you so desperately want to be. This is such an important subject that Kent decided to devote an entire video just on the subject of accountability.

He said the title of this video could also be “Temptation, Visualization, Success…Oh My! (Part 2)” since it continues with the same theme. Kent was nice enough to mention my blog among several other web sites that people can use to find encouragement and help while livin' la vida low-carb. THANKS Kent!

Here's his latest video:

ACCOUNTABILITY...



Resisting temptation does indeed take accountability from your fellow friends and family, but also from your virtual friends online. Kent made the excellent point about how you will very likely be more open and honest on the Internet than you would be to those who see you everyday. That's what I noted in this recent blog post.

Kent brought up an interesting point about the scale in the context of accountability. For many that little machine with all of its fluctuations throughout the day can be one big source of frustration. But Kent believes weighing daily helped keep him focused on getting rid of his obesity once and for all. The man lost 200 pounds, so he knows what he's talking about!

Another excellent point from the video is teaming up with someone else to be your weight loss buddy to hold you accountable for not only your weight loss, but also your exercise routine. Kent reminds you that skipping your workout is just as much cheating on your low-carb lifestyle as eating a sugary snack you know you didn't need. Don't neglect your workout. Exercise really needs to be a permanent part of your low-carb life.

One final point that I wanted to highlight from Kent's video is the influence that the naysayers can have on you. I mention this point in my book about how all those people who told me how much the Atkins diet would ruin my health and not work over the long-term actually MOTIVATED me to become the success that I did. I just HAD to prove they were wrong...and I did! LOL! Now what are they saying?! Kent got them, too, so I KNOW he can relate. Feels good, doesn't it, Kent? Na na na na na na! :P

Check in with your comments about Kent's latest video over at his blog and tell him how much you appreciate these excellent videos. Don't forget to sign-up for a YouTube subscription to Kent's videos so you'll never miss one. Got a burning low-carb question you want Kent Altena to address in a future video? E-mail him your best questions and he may choose to answer it. Go ahead, Kent will 'splain it to ya!