No Longer The Poster Girl for Zero Carb!

So, last night I ate some almonds, and some avocado and tuna. I am no longer the poster girl for zero carb.

What happened?

Well a number of things actually, and together they spell the end of zero carb, at least for the moment.

Yesterday was not a good day. Amongst other things my purse was stolen at the post office. They got my credit card, my business debit card, my EFPOS card (NZ cash card) my driving license, my library card...the list goes on. There were other reasons it was a stressful day as well, but that was the pinnacle.

By 6pm, I was home alone and ready to binge on sons chocolate stash! But I didn't. However later when hubby and I got home again at 8pm we had avocado and tuna. Yum!

So how did I get to this point? It wasn't just the stressful day, although that was the straw that broke the poor proverbial camel. Over the last week or so I have been having fantasies about becoming a vegan! I find myself drooling at the thought of cabbage...or leeks! Have you ever considered just how wonderful a leek is? Tall and white and smelling gloriously of mild onions!

I do know that for dieters "listening to what your body wants" is the kiss of death for a diet. I don't know about yours, but my body wants homemade ice-cream, and special handmade dark chocolate from the SHE community at Governors Bay. Yet when one starts craving cabbage, of all things, one begins to wonder...

And I have been wondering over this last week. The trouble is we want two things. We want to be slim and we want to be healthy. We know that being slim is no guarantee of being healthy, but we want both! And we want them both now!

It is rather like the self-improvement problem. Do we want to read the the Secret (The Secret) and other law of attraction books like this one? Then we can show gratitude and attract all the money we want into our lives. Or do we prefer enlightenment and a life of eternal bliss? Of course we do, so we read Eckhart Tolle (here) or Thich Nhat Hanh (here here and here). And then we find we cannot have both. As Jesus pointed out in the sermon on the mount, one cannot serve both God and money.

And does this apply to weight loss? Actually, the quickest way to lose weight, as any anorexic will tell you, is to simply stop eating. Works every time. Not exactly healthy though, is it?

The trouble with regular diets is that somewhere out there, there is an expert who will tell you that their particular diet is the only way to both weight loss and health. And of course, happiness, success, lots of friends and the ability to eat an occasional piece of chocolate without putting on 5kg overnight.

You want to eat low carb? Sure, try Atkins and co. Want lots of fruit and veg? Try vegetarian, vegan or Paleo. Like baked goodies, but don't want gluten? Then try the Wheat belly diet, or the specific carbohydrate diet. Zero carb? Charles Washington's your man. He'll prove zero carb is the way to live forever!

Maybe it is possible to both diet for weight loss and be healthy and maybe it is possible to be rich and enlightened.

But maybe in order to achieve this we need to start at a different point. If the goal of wealth is to be a philanthropist would you start at a different point than if the goal is to be simply wealthy? Well, maybe. You want want your business to be ethical, for a start, and you would consider ethical investments as well. Maybe environmental considerations would come into it, rather than abiding by the minimum required by law. You would certainly want good working conditions for your employees, even if that means spending a little more upfront. So, maybe it would take a little longer to achieve your goals than it otherwise would.

Can we apply this to dieting?

We want both health and weight loss. Are we prepared to take things a little more slowly in order to achieve both? And if we do, then we simply HAVE to enjoy the journey. If it is going to take 3-5 years to lose the weight, then we cannot sick to an unmanageable diet for that time. It has to be flexible.

And obviously we have to pick the right way of eating. Just like, if we want to be philanthropists we have to look after our own employees, if we want to be healthy we have to look after our own bodies. If we want to be healthy what do we eat? And there I am stuck. The only thing the experts actually seem to agree on is that sugar is bad.

So maybe we start right there. Sugar is bad.

I shall look at sugar in more detail in another post.