Trying this low carb craze for health: Days 1 and 2

Let me start by saying this isn't a diet, it's a change in the way I eat. I would like to lose a few pounds that have become more difficult to lose as I get older. I have felt recently that I just don't have the willpower to run the 6 miles a day and eat the salads it takes to maintain 120 pounds on my frame. I love good food too much! And I don't want to be working out all the time, I value time with friends and family as well. It's always been my food philosophy that if you eat real, whole foods that are delicious and satisfying you will be healthier. My mom and her mother always tried to make food from scratch and grew fresh vegetables in their gardens that were not only nutritious but delicious. I started thinking differently about food when I recently read that saturated fats may not cause heart disease after all. Heart attacks run in my family, so this is a great concern of mine.

I also started thinking differently about food and diet when a friend, Tomas, started talking about the high fat, low carb diet he was on. He has lost 90 pounds, but he also trained for and completed an Ironman race. So I thought it didn't really matter what he ate-calories in would be less than calories out right?  Then his girlfriend Anne also started the diet and lost 10 pounds without exercise. That caused me to think, this diet really can work for us non-Ironman types. So I thought I would at least read the book he recommended, Why We Get Fat: And What to Do About It, by Gary Taubes.

It was a very interesting, eye opening book that challenged my beliefs about weight loss and eating for health. The basic premise is that carbohydrates and sugars make you fat by raising your insulin levels, which is what causes the body to store fat. He points to the low fat revolution of the 1980s which reversed what had been common knowledge for some two hundred years that sugar, bread, potatoes, and other carbohydrates made you fat. Studies that claimed saturated fat gives a higher risk of heart disease were flawed, as has been recently shown. 

This book convinced me to at least try this new way of eating, which really isn't that dissimilar from what I have done in the past. The difference is the increase in fat.  I have tried to avoid carbohydrates and sugar, but without the corresponding increase in fat. This made the diet unsustainable because I felt hungry.  Increasing my saturated fat intake makes me nervous, as we have been told for my entire lifetime that it increases heart disease risk.  I will keep a close eye on my cholesterol levels to ensure that it does not increase too much.  My cholesterol has always been low.  Triglycerides, which also are a risk factor for heart disease when they are high, should be lower from eating fewer carbs and sugar.  I am also avoiding low fat dairy-milk, yogurt and low fat cheese.  This is new to me as milk and yogurt comprise a significant portion of my diet.  According to Gary Taubes, some people can tolerate more carbohydrates than others without gaining weight.  That is why some people are genetically bound to weigh more than others.  It's about finding what your body can tolerate at your ideal weight.  I may add dairy back in later.  I am also still eating small amounts of fruit--I don't want to eliminate those entirely as they are so healthy, but I am making sure that they don't comprise a large part of my diet.

Day 1:

Weight: 129.4

Breakfast: 3 slices bacon, 2 scrambled eggs with cheese and spinach, espresso with cream, few cubes of cheese.

Lunch:  romaine salad with parmigianno reggianno, olive oil and basalmic vinegar, chicken strips with marinara sauce ( I didn't realize breading was not allowed either so I tried to scrape off).
Snack: pear with several cubes of cheese.
Dinner:  Shrimp antipasto salad with olives, peas with butter, salami.
Snack: 2 small squares of chocolate

Notes:  I feel very full and satisfied after meals.   No pressing need to snack, I am eating as much as I want of the allowed foods.  It is so strange (but refreshing) to not try to calorie count.  My hunger is different as well, it is not the crazy, I must eat now, hunger that I am used to.  This may cause less crabbiness in between meals which I am sure my boyfriend Art will appreciate!

Day 2:
Weight:  128.1

I lost 1.3 pounds!!  This may be water weight, but it is the encouragement I need to stay on track!