Does anyone else every feel like a slave to food while they are living this WOL? Recently I have not only been craving carb foods like mad, and I never did until this week. I also have been educating myself on the "hidden" carbs in food and have become obsessed with counting every single one - which makes eating really hard on a 20g a day diet. I mean spices, salami, bacon, etc. All these things have hidden carbs that I never counted while on strict induction, but now I am and it's freaking me out!

I KNOW that I am hormonal and that much of my cravings are due to this in conjunction with my unmoving scale, but I just ran down to my local yogurt shop and had 4oz of carbolite ice cream. And I feel guilty. Not only because I ate 1/2 an avacado, 4 olives, 3 slices of Lebenon balogna, and 1 slice of American cheese trying to NOT eat the stupid yogurt...then went and had some anyway because I just couldn't _stand_ it anymore! Now I'm over on carbs

I never craved like this on strict induction - so why now? All i wanted on induction was berries. Now I eat those occasionally and all I want is freaking chocolate, french fries, chips and salsa, etc. I never even craved these that often when I wasn't dieting.

This is horrible and I feel horrible about FEELING horrible when I know that on the "cheating" scale I haven't really been that bad. It is just the loss of control this week. *sigh*

Gosh I don't even know what I need. Has anyone else experienced these feelings of guilt? Does anyone else feel that this WOE has turned them into a slave to numbers and food???

I never thought I was neurotic about food before...well not too much so anyway. My food allergies have always forced me to eat healthily, and cutting out my produce was the hardest part- not cutting out the bread. So now why this CRAZY need for stuff I only ate occasionally before! ARRGGGG! I am so frustrated, and I hate feeling like a complainer to boot - MEH!

Yes and Yes!
I know exactly how you're feeling. I definitely felt that way for the first few months. I was feeling very fanatical about what I ate. It was frustrating having to be so focused on food. Now it has finally become second nature. I've stopped tracking my food in Fitday and just eat what feels right. I've learned by now what my body can and can't have and how it affects me. So now I just go with it and everything seems to fall into place.
Oh and by the way, eat yogurt! Check out this thread for more info.

Cait is exactly right. The obsession with food will pass. We all went through it. It takes a while to learn what our bodies need.

I went through a period of cravings too after a craving free induction. The solution for me was to eat more protein and fat. It seems if I don't have red meat and keep my fat at least 70% of my calories, I have cravings and want to snack continually. That happened to me yesterday. We went to the fair and my meal schedule was all out of whack. So last night was bad. Finally strawberries with lots of heavy cream did the trick.

Hope this helps. Good luck!

I know exactly how your feeling. Its DAY 5 for me on induction and I am now startingto feel better and the cravings have lessened a bit. The whole purpose and goal of induction is to detox your system of the dugar inbalance it was going through pre your low carb plan. Whether you were eating more fruit than u should hvae , or bread or even potatoes and grains on a regular basis this still causes people who are sensitive to carbs to gain. These so called "healthy carbs " just beacuse aren't pure sugar or chocolate can still be unhealthy if eaten in quantity and on a regular steady basis.

How long have u been on induction?

You don't have to cut out your veggies. AND may I STRESS please eat the SALADS and veggies that will fulfill your 20 gram limit. They really make getting the extra fat and fiber you need right now when your body is screaming for SUGAR.

I too really didn't crave the bad sugar carbs and junk carbs before starting induction. But the first two days I was going nuts from the cravings and headaches. I almost caved in becasue the cookie jar was screaming my name so loud to have just one. lol But I preservered and came here and whined and ranted a bit, and felt sooo much better as I learned taht I needed to eat more FAT and lower the protein grams. ONce I started ading more oil, butter and leaving fat on my meats my cravings calmed right down. It was that simple , well for me. You may be different. My fat is at 79% of total cals, and I don't even think about food as much as I was when I was craving.

Maybe if you adjusted your fat intake, your cravings would subside and you wouldn't think of food as much. When I did that i wasn't "neurotic" about everything that sat in my fridge.

hope this helps, let us know how your doing.

Piera

In my view, I don't think you should feel guilty, and just move onwards with your LC eating the following meal. For me, "cheats" for lack of a better word is inexoriably going to occur on this eating regimen. Feeling compulsive on counting carbs, like in a cough drop for instance, isn't conducive to your long-term success.

Accept the inevitable high carb treats, but make every effort to keep them in moderation and return to the discipline of LC eating during your next meal. I can't imagine that would deter your long term success in either health or weight loss efforts.

Best of luck,

Frederick

I still have those every once in a while. But, I have been making substitutions. For example, I had been craving a hamburger with the bread. Finally, I went to a health food store and they had some there that were only 3 net carbs per bun! They were expensive at $2 for only 4. But, I found it wasn't the carbs I was missing. Just the bread on the burger And, just last night, I had been craving BBQ beef. So, I bout some Walden Farms Honey BBQ sauce (which says it has no carbs per serving. But, I am counting .5 carbs per serving since I know it has some and they don't have to report it unless it is below that level). So, maybe it is just the taste and not the carbs you are craving

Maybe it is time for you to move on to OWL and introduce (gradually) more options and a slightly higher carb level.

When my cravings get out of hand I generally retreat to induction for a few days. It helps most of the time.

Also,as we were discussing in another thread (Extreme Atkins Disorder? in this forum) I had a real struggle to allow myself to be less than perfect. Occasionally, I feel it does no real long term harm to for ONE meal, let myself have what I want, then NOT beat myself up for it. For me, the guilt seemed to be the "binge trigger" more than the carbs! I found the foods I was craving and driving myself crazy wanting weren't as wonderful as I thought they would be, and not feeling like a failure for having them once a month or so takes away the "forbidden fruit" appeal that made me literally daydream about them!
It really helped me to take the focus off obsessing about food, and put the effort into finding out what emotional issue were/are driving me to overeat.

Ah, someone else who's experienced what I have; the realization that my worst eating habits are linked to stress, not hunger. I was always a "stress snacker"--when things get tough I'd reach for the candy bowl or the bag of chips and just graze. That was a lifelong habit that was second only to surrendering sugar in difficulty.

Once I finally identified that trigger, it went a long way towards helping me get past it. And, as has already been pointed out, lowering one's stress about each morsel that you take in will help. A lot. I've finally arrived at a place where I can relax if I have one high-carb day; over the course of the days and weeks ahead it will all balance out. This is the way I plan to eat for my longer, healthier lifetime, and it's all about balance. Rather than let myself get tightly wound about each meal every day, I look at it as a whole.

This may not work for everyone, and it's a tough mindset to adopt. I'll step back from it for a bit and point out that the daily discipline was important to me when just starting out, before it became habitual to shop for, prepare and eat LC all the time. I needed to break some lifelong habits and form new ones, and watching my weight daily and tracking my foods in FitDay helped me to ease into the new routines, so that I can relax about it now.

The day that I began to relax on the plan was the day that I was more successful at the plan.

Case in point: I was obsessed with LC during my first time around at it; truly obsessed. I thought about the diet 24x7. I read and re-read DANDR and Protein Power. I did Fitday. I created and assiduously maintained spreadsheets and graphs that charted just about everything related to my weight loss.

I think we all get this way, at first. And I think that we need to be, at least at first and during induction, so that we can train ourselves to our new way of eating.

A cautionary tale: the downside to this for me is that I continued to expect induction-level losses, so therefore I continued to eat near-induction level foods for too long—about four months. And once I had one "cheat", I spiraled out of control. My one "cheat" turned into a six-month long hiatus from LC.

Now I'm on my second time around and I am both older and wiser. I did induction for just one week to "prime" my body, and went straight to OWL/pre-maintenance. And I know that this might make some purists shudder, but I actually have planned "cheats". (Once per month I will have one meal where I will have whatever I want. Note that this isn't a cheat day. It's just one meal—maybe a cheat hour at best.)

And to make some purists shudder even more, I do have the occasional piece of fruit that's in season. Plus I even have beans here and again, or bite (just a bite or two, nothing more) of rice or potato.

But I still eschew flour and sugar.

This is what works for me. Is my weight loss a little slower? Yes. But it's slow and steady. Yet more importantly, this for me is a way of life that I can live with.

-G.

p.s. YMMV

Its almost like an escalation for me too...I havent cheated yet though! I do have sugar free treats here to help with my cravings....I am trying to change the way I think about eating...Instead of eating to comfort or feel good...I eat to nourish my body

Wow! Thank you all for the support and advice. I have been slowly moving from strict induction to a more liberal one with occasional fruit and nuts, but since my scale hasn't been moving I have been afraid to go any further. As to the carbs yesterday. I had an extra 4 and I gained a 1 lbs. *sigh* I am NOT going to obsess about it though! Infact I had 1/2 cup of plain full fat yogurt w/ blueberries and felt GREAT about it. Now lets just hope the scale doesn't get revenge.

It feels good not to be alone. All of you are wonderful and I am SO glad that no one minds my moaning!

I'll probably be a Thread Killer here But..anyways, I can relate to this post. My loss has been so slow..so yesterday I decided to add fruit..I had a peach Today I had a slice of cantelope..
Tomorrow I will back off and see what happens. But really...if I'm not losing very much weight..adding fruit is a good thing..right?
csolyn..I have been at this for almost 12 weeks...counting carbs and not losing very much gets VERY frustrating...sometimes I just eat what I know is low carb & don't count

candyluver - thanks for being honest. I don't think I could not countmy carbs, but since losing is SO slow and I feel like I have been SO good, I deffinately have days where I tell myself I am not going to care....but then I do. Today has been a good day. I don't know if it was finally having the carbolite yogurt yesterday, or if it was the fruit and yogurt today (I crave dairy and fruit like mad on Atkins), but I had not one craving and didn't even think about food. The last week I have been OBSESSING about it. I really have no issues with food. I am on Atkins because of my genetics. I am a bored overeater, but I just don't let myself get bored. But there is deffinately something about me on this diet, at this stage, that has made me obsessed w/ what I am eating. Hopefully, as many of you have pointed out, it is normal and will go away.

Everyone - keep up the good work. I gained 1 lbs today, but tomorrow is a new day...and since deciding to not stress about my carbs as much, and allow myself to give into cravings with a minimal carb food...I feel better!

Remember.. you can't have gained a whole pound of FAT from 4 grams of carbs. I'm trying to break myself of daily weigh-ins, but am considering doing what they suggest in the Carbohydrate Addicts book, and weigh every day, then AVERAGE them for the week to get a better idea than watching water weight make it jump all over...

I have to keep reminding myself that it took TEN YEARS of overeating to get to my highest weight, I need to allow myself time to get rid of it. If you want to get "deep", my fat served me by "protecting" me from the things/people around me who made me hurt, but it's time to face the world on my own terms!