Wow, Week 10!  I’m glad to have gotten this far.  While I admit that I’m not overly thrilled with the progress of my try-on pants, I think it’s a good time to remember some of the important changes that have occurred over these past 10 weeks.

This is a huge one: I am satisfied with smaller portions. When I’ve done low carb previously, I’ve often gone with the idea that you can just eat as much as you want, just watch the carbs.  That does work in the early days, but even Dr. Atkins said that at some point, calories matter.  And if you keep eating as much as you want, your stomach remains used to the volume of food, and both calories and carbs can become a problem. While I eventually counted calories, too, I often ate more protein than my body required.  My diet wasn’t varied.

I’ve been very careful to let the appetite suppression part of doing low carb work its magic, and consequently, my stomach has decreased in size.  When I started this effort, a typical breakfast was 3 eggs, 2 ounces of cheese, a sausage patty.  These days, I’m satisfied with 2 eggs and a pat of butter.  And because I’m satisfied, I’m eating less.  Fewer carbs; fewer calories.

I’ve also been careful to add in vegetables and am working on challenging my palette by adding ones I haven’t previously given much of a chance.  Eating a lot of low carb vegetables has also helped keep my stomach happy.

The bottom line is portion control.  I still remember Susan Powter and her enormous pile of potatoes, claiming that you could eat the whole pile without eating too much fat.  Regardless of the diet plan, though, there’s no free pass that just allows you to eat as much of something as you want, if what you want is an abnormally high amount.  At some point, the amount of food you eat will matter.  Your body is designed to adapt to whatever you throw at it nutritionally.  For instance, if you’re on a low carb diet and eat too much protein because you think that eating five hamburgers is okay, you just might end up storing some of that protein as fat.

Eating less has been a natural consequence of my plan.  I have not intentionally cut back on what I eat; I have, instead, paid more attention to what I’m eating.  It’s been a good learning experience.

I have been consistent with exercise. This is one of the things I’m proudest of; I’ve consistently exercised to my goals every single week since starting, with no lapses.   I found it far too easy to drop out of exercise with any number of excuses the last go-round; not this time.  I have made sure to do things that enhance my experience so that I enjoy exercise.  It’s a darned good feeling, at the end of the week, to know I’ve had a perfect workout week.

I’ve kept my attitude up. Okay, there have been a couple of exceptions where I’ve gotten frustrated, but I haven’t let it overwhelm me.  I think that it’s helped my attitude to know that I’ve been doing things right.  And frankly, staying off the scale has likely been the single biggest reason for keeping my attitude on the positive side.  I’ve also tuned in to my body better, instead of relying on external measurements to tell me if I’m successful.  I have to pay closer attention.  Really, even the pants try-on thing isn’t going to give me the same feedback that paying attention to my body will give.

It’s gonna be a good week.  Thanks for reading.