frustrated.....very very very

[Anette]

Hi all,
it's time for me to start talking about this because I am so dang close to hitting a bag of carbs or something. so. here it what has been going on for about hmmmm 1 week or so.
My food has been clean during the day but during the night I had 2 incidents of eating sweets. one night i ate a brownie (abt 50gr carb) and 2 nights ago I had a protein bar (still 25 gram of carbs). The night eating thing has been a curse for me for the last 14 years. Some nights I do not remember eating, most nights I do rememeber. I have talked to Doctors, hypnotherapists, sleep doctors, you name it.. For the last few months I would get up less and when I did, i ate some protein and my weight loss was fine. so, i had these 2 incidents and my weight is up 4 pounds and seems to crawl up day by day ever since. I have had clean food ever since and i am to be honest "pissed". I did not pig out on carbs and just can't believe my weight is up so much and I feel bloated like a dang toad. is that normal? I have been eating Lindt extra dark chocolate and i count the carbs.. so here is an embarrassing question. could the chocolate cause constipation because my lower abdomen feels tense and bloated. My food has not changed much over the last 3 months an i am just baffled and frustrated and i am so close to calling it quits. grrrrrrrrr. it has worked so well for me and now i am so discouraged, total of 75 extra grams of carbs within 2 day.. 4 pounds extra on for days.. omg.. that is insane. sorry for being such a whine woozle here..... has this happened to you guys? what do you recommend? i am not cutting down on my protein or calories now but i just keep doing what i have been doing for the last 3 months. any feedback is appreciated and any encouragement needed and a kick in the butt is needed too. i know how bad carbs are for me and yet... if things dont work out.. i keep running back to them.. go figure. I am just discouraged because of these 4 pounds... bla bla bla.. i could go on and on... thanks for listening and keeping my head straight.

[Missy]

Anette

Cravings, bloating, gained weight, negative feelings....hummmm...sounds like PMS to me! I ususally have these things hit me 10 days away from my start.

Hang in there Anette! Don't give up. Find some 'legal' sweets, like melon or something appealing like a low carb cheese cake 'treat' if you like those things. I try to find something reasonable to ease me through. I feel your pain.

[laughingW]

Sounds like the monthly thing to me too...

What is your meal timing, meals and snacks? If the carbs are late it can disrupt sleep, in my experience. Have you tried tacking the chocolate onto the end of a meal?

I know it decreases the "hit" from chocolate but it might quiet down whatever is disrupted, and let you sleep better.

[Anette]

thanks for your feedback. it's definately NOT the monthly thing. THis is new to me, nothing has really changed in meal timing and new foods. just those 2 night carb incidents.

[Songwriter]

I dunno, I figure this too shall pass. You can't saw the 4 lbs off. What's done is done. Just keep going, everything will be fine. As for the nighttime eating, I haven't a clue. You might put a chain and padlock around the frig at bedtime. Hey, sounds crazy, might work. I dunno, might be nuts because you might go psycho and kill your husband or something. :lol:

Just keep going, it'll come off.

[Ammy]

I'm just adding my $.02, so take what you want and leave the rest...

You are shocking your system...eating clean, then WHAMMO-massive carbs...I mean 50 is more than you eat in a day, right?

Your body just doesn't know how to respond...so it's messing with numbers.

Also, don't let the number on the scale dictate your life...it's a number...maybe the scale should be put away??:jawDrop::paranoid::suspicious::)

[Relief]

4 pounds up in just a couple of days is WATER. it can't be anything else that quickly and YES the carb up can cause that much water--I've heard of people going up as much as 11 pounds overnight from a carb indulgence. go back to your plan and the addition WILL come off.

Also-- the lindt chocolate may be too much carb for you and is keeping the cravings alive leading to the night time eating. I cannot eat that much real sugar, even in only a tiny amount of chocolate, though I know others can. For me the key at the beginning was finding very low carb legal treats. I don't need them as much anymore ( in fact hardly at all) but when I was changing my eating I really needed the crutch . I use chocoperfection chocolate ( sweetened with only erithrytol and inulin, a fiber--get it at netrition.com. it's delicious) and made a lot of legal treats-- baked custard, chocolate mousse, tiramisu, cheesecake, muffins ( the chocolate variation is good for cravings especially) or pecans toasted in a frypan with butter, maple flavoring and splenda. got me through a lot of rough days.

[Rhyme'n Reason]

Anette,

I agree with Amy. I find my system is very sensitive to carbs after being away from them for a while. They make me feel awful and I just put on a lot of fluid. You might find just getting back on the straight and narrow takes care of those pounds.

On the nighttime eating thing--I would bet that 90%+ of people on this board have had to deal with it. For me, there's just something about the feeling that the world has gone to bed and it's just me and the food. I've been doing much better with it, but if I'm not careful, it just rears its ugly head. If I feel out of control, I just go upstairs, away from the food, and either go to bed or get busy doing something else (ironing works--it takes both hands, as does posting on the board).

Talking about it is a good thing. Hope you're doing better now.

[Claudette]

Anette,
<<<Hug>>>

When things weren't working out, I used to go "back to" carbs also, that is why is has taken me so long on to lose my weight.
Untill I decided that carbs were like "drugs" to me and I had to give them up if I wanted to loose my weight once and for all, I, too, felt the "carb call" to return. Over and over again.

It is maddening to eat clean, then gain 4-5lbs by that one carb indulgance, (I used to call those, my, "this one time won't hurt me" events).

I , too, think you are shocking your system, eating on plan, then whamm, adding the carbs. For me, I'd have a weight gain,right after, then for the next 2-3 days, I'd see the scale keep crawling upward.

Like Relief said, find LC snacks you love, I still use them to keep me straight. Even a tiny bit of real sugar will set me off.

One of my favorites is, Hood carbcountdown milk, regular or chocolate.
It has water, fat free milk, cream added, nutrients, most importantly, the milk sugar removed, splenda added instead.

At 3ecc for 8oz regular, 4ecc for 8oz chocolate, I use it for cooking, baking, drinking. The chocolate is great at bedtime for making hot chocolate w/ splash of whipped topping w/ cinnamon. Guests have never even seemed to notice the difference, except the chocolate is obviously not as sweet.

As for the bedtime, "it's just you and me, food " thing.
I also iron, or post on this site, or take my LC choc treat to bed with me and read my current novel.
Most importantly, I get away from the kitchen and stay away.

Hope these ideas help.

Don't give up, hang in there.


Claudette

[Karole]

Loooove your ticker, Claudette !!

[Mal Lady]

Annette,

Yes, you can get constipated by eating chocolate. When I was a little girl, I would get so constipated that I grew up not liking chocolate very much. I still don't care whether I eat chocolate or not until I got on lc. I picked up a bag of lc dove chocolate drops the other day, and it didn't take long before I was bloated and constipated. It seems like I had a craving for chocolate now that I was on lc. Well, I bought some sf, lc hard candy like werthers, and Baskin and Robbins vanilla ice cream hard candy and they take away that craving - I just don't want to eat more than two a day or I get the runs:jawDrop::eek::(.

I even started out this diet craving m&m's with almonds and now I don't have those cravings. Believe me, they are real and can reek havoc on your weight.

Please, substitute hard sf, candy and you'll feel better and you'll not be as susceptable to the weight gain.

I also think that if you eat a high protein meal a little closer to bedtime you won't have a tendancy to eat othr things because you'll be too full. it worked for me.

I wish you luck and please stay with it!

Sharon

[Gaelen]

My food has been clean during the day but during the night I had 2 incidents of eating sweets. one night i ate a brownie (abt 50gr carb) and 2 nights ago I had a protein bar (still 25 gram of carbs). The night eating thing has been a curse for me for the last 14 years. Some nights I do not remember eating, most nights I do rememeber. I have talked to Doctors, hypnotherapists, sleep doctors, you name it.. For the last few months I would get up less and when I did, i ate some protein and my weight loss was fine. so, i had these 2 incidents and my weight is up 4 pounds and seems to crawl up day by day ever since.

Whoa, Anette...do you mean 'sleep eating,' where you get up from a sleep and eat (since you say some nights you don't remember eating?) If so, that's a true physical/behavioral disorder. One thing that you may need to consider if you are experiencing sleep eating is that you just don't keep off-limits foods in the house at all, and you greatly minimize even the legal treats that you keep in the house.