Tweaking the Low Carb Lifestyle

I'm a tweaker. Yep, I'm (semi) famous for tweaking my low-carb menus. It's a long story, but the bottom line is that, last summer, I discovered "cycling" the grams of carbs, fats and proteins usually helps.

At the moment, I am tweaking on a day-by-day schedule. I used to tweak week by week, but I think (like everything else) the metabolism catches on. Halts, stalls, long-lasting plateaus - they are reality but they are not the reason to abandon the low-carb lifestyle.

After all these months, I realize the battle first must take place in my mind - after that, the "diet" is the easy part! I have no problem sticking with lc or doing what I have to do, as long as it works. These long stalls (plateaus, actually) are a heavy weight (no pun intended) to the mind, but we can never forget the other benefits which low-carbing provides.

Yes, we all fall for the number on the scale to "measure" our success. But what about ALL the other benefits? These are the gifts that low-carbing and water calisthenics have done for me, and I must never forget them:

---Normal blood pressure (no more medication)
---Increased agility (thanks to water exercise)
---Increased energy (ditto)
---Complete disappearance of GERDs (again, no more medication!)
---Decreased pain of fibromyalgia, arthritis, and lupus (as long as I keep up with my water workouts)
---No more need for a cane (after 2 years of using it for short-distance walking, when not using a wheelchair for any kind of longer-term outings)
---Inches, inches, inches off - everywhere!
---Fantastic drop in clothing sizes!
---Increased confidence (and this is just as important)

As for a lower number on the scale, something is working (for now, anyway), since I lost 4.8 lbs. since last Thursday! I tweaked every single day since last Thursday, and now I'm trying to figure out the pattern. The best guess is that I had one day (Saturday) of higher "fats and proteins" to bring up the totals to a maintenance caloric level (which was way too easy to accomplish), but the other days were fairly low carb. Btw, I did maintain on Sunday after the higher fat-higher protein Sat. menu.

Here's what my numbers were for the past 4 days (with all carb grams total, not net):

Thursday: Cals 1525, fat-carb-protein grams: 80-17-157
(Dropped 1.2 lbs. the next day)

Friday: Cals 1617, fat-carb-protein grams: 93-98-76
(Dropped 1.8 lbs. the next day)

Saturday: Cals 2289, fat-carb-protein grams: 163-49-148
(Maintained the next day)

Sunday: Cals 1708, fat-carb-protein grams: 97-46-143
(Dropped 2 lbs. today)

I have a theory about lack of progress (on the scale), especially during the winter months. But more about that in a future post...