Chocolate Cream Cheese Muffins recipe here.
________________________________
If you had told me in my 20s that I would be finally happy with my body when I was in my 40s.
And that I wouldn’t be running every day to do it. And that I would actually have a flat stomach (apart from the occasional bout of bloating).
There is no way I would have believed you.
I probably also wouldn’t have believed that I’d have diabetes.
But here we are.
Since I’ve been on this path of learning to manage my blood glucose with my lifestyle, I’ve really found that it is a journey.
There are ups and downs.
When I find myself in a more of a ‘down’ situation, the most helpful approach is to treat it as an experiment.
To imagine myself as a detective, trying to figure out what’s working and what’s not.
To try different things and see how they make me feel.
Instead of beating myself up for not reaching my goals, I have the belief that I can figure it out. It’s a subtle shift but it makes all the difference.
WHAT YOU’LL LEARN TODAY:
- 6 most common reasons you may not be meeting your health goals. And what to do about them.
1. Getting Too Hungry
Have you ever felt yourself just eating and eating like some ravenous tiger? It used to happen to me all the time.
Especially in the early days of my Low Carb journey.
Then I realized there was a simple cause. I wasn’t eating enough during the day so I really was super hungry.
Solution:
Experiment with eating more during the day. Especially including more fat in your breakfasts and lunches. You might like to review Day 16. for a refresher on making meals more satisfying.
2. Broken Hunger / Satiety Meter
If you’re not meeting your health goals another common cause is general over eating.
Trying to ‘eating less’ using will power will backfire because you end up getting too hungry and stoking your ‘hunger tiger’.
I know. I’ve been there many times.
The only thing I’ve found that works is to reconnect with your internal hunger / satiety cues and let your body do it’s job of guiding you how much to eat.
Solution:
Review the lessons and exercises on Day 13. Intuitive Eating.
3. Over Exercising
While there are many benefits of physical activity, it is possible to over do it.
If there’s one way to make me hungry, it’s to go for a long run. When I ran my marathon I actually gained weight even though I was running 100km (lots of miles!) per week because I was just soo hungry.
Solution:
Experiment with cutting back on your exercise or switching to a more gentle form such as yoga or walking. Watch out for our bonus lesson in a few weeks which goes deeper into which forms of exercise are the most beneficial.
4. Carb Creep
This is when you start to allow more and more carbs back into your everyday foods. When you notice thoughts like ‘surely a little bit of brown rice can’t hurt’, it’s a sign carb creep is happening.
This is completely normal so don’t beat yourself up.
I definitely go through phases of how many carbs I choose. It’s part of being human!
But when I find my fasting glucose being consistently higher than I’d like or the number on the scale is heading in the wrong direction or I just feel ‘blah’, I go back to keeping the carbs to a minimum.
Solution:
Take an honest look at your food choices every day. Are you allowing too many carbs? Are you eating out too often? If the answer is yes, it’s time to make some changes.
5. Sugar Addiction
I’ve seen studies where mice are given the choice between addictive drugs (I think cocaine) and sugar water. And the mice choose the sweet stuff every time.
There’s no doubt in my mind that sugar is especially addictive.
I’ve noticed in myself and in the people I’ve coached, the more carbs you eat, the more you want.
One mechanism driving this is that when you eat lots of sugar it encourages sugar loving bacteria in your gut to grow.
And these crafty devils then send messages to your brain to eat more sugar so they can get their fix.
It’s a vicious cycle.
Solution:
Experiment with taking a break from sugar. Try at least 2 weeks, then review and see how you feel.
6. Emotional Eating
This is heading into territory way outside my expertise but I wanted to include this because it has been a personal struggle for me in the past.
And occasionally still comes up for me.
Emotional eating is when we use food to ‘buffer’ or avoid feeling our emotions.
Back in 2004 during the worst year of my life when my first marriage fell apart, I used food. A lot.
Since then I’ve discovered the importance of learning to actually ‘feel’ your feelings as the best way to process them.
It’s hard and definitely takes some practice but as I learned to ‘sit with’ my feelings I found I was turning to food less.
Solution:
Get help with feeling emotions not using food. The best resource I’ve found is the Intuitive Eating website and book I mentioned on Day 13.
SUMMARY
Here’s what we’ve covered:
- Getting too hungry is a really common reason for over eating.
- Other common causes include having a broken hunger / satiety meter, over exercising, carb creep, sugar addiction and emotional eating.
- When you’re not meeting your goals imagine yourself as a detective figuring out what the problem is and how to fix it.
ACTIVITY
Review this list of common problems.
Do any of them resonate with you?
If yes, choose the one which resonates most strongly and spend a few minutes thinking about how you could experiment with solving this problem.
Looking forward to our second last day tomorrow!
Cheers,
Jules x
ps. This work can be quite personal, so you might prefer to write about it in your journal or some other personal place. But if you’re happy to share your struggles we’d love to help you the comments below.
____________________________
IMPORTANT NOTE: The Low Carb Love 28-Day Program is where I share my personal journey of managing my blood sugar eating (mostly) Low Carb. I am not a doctor and this information is not intended as specific advice. Please discuss with your doctor or dietician before changing your food intake. Especially if you’re on medication or have any special medical concerns.
Leave a Reply