Ghosts of Diets Past

As someone with a poor metabolism and too little will power, I have been overweight most of my life. My sophmore year of high school was my most awkward year. Not only did I get glasses and braces that year, but I also somehow, in the midst of puberty, gained a lot of weight the summer between my freshman and sophmore years. I ended up weighing 180 lbs, so I began my long term love/hate affair with the Adkins diet. I was on that diet, on and off, for 3 years. I lost a total of 40 lbs, but every time I went off the diet I just started putting weight on again. I also felt miserable and constipated and never had any energy. At one point I even started taking diet pills with ephedra in them to, in part, give me an energy boost. That didn't last long. I also occasionally woke up in the middle of the night with scream-inducing calf cramps. Of course, once I stopped the diet entirely I gained back all of the weight I had lost.

In short, this is not a diet I would recommend.

Part of the reason that this diet was so unhealthy was that I made it so - I wasn't eating vegetables or taking vitamins regularly and spent all of my free carbs on unhealthy things that I wanted to eat. I'm sure there are ways to do the adkins diet in a way that is more healthy.

My sister has pointed out to me that I am much more successful on a diet with strict rules. It's true- that's part of the reason I lost weight on the Adkins diet. This is why the Smart for Life diet has worked well for me so far, but in this case I am eating a low carb diet in a healthy way. I am eating more vegetables than I ever did before the diet. This is also why something like Weight Watchers probably won't work very well for me. I may transition to something like that eventually, but for now I like this diet and its strict rules, no matter how much I complain about missing chicken curry, chex mix, and booze.

On second thought, maybe I could make spaghetti squash into something like rice and find a suitable replacement for coconut milk....