I looked into the Weight Watchers program and, warming to the idea of weekly weigh-ins and meetings, decided to join up. I can't say I was a model student. After the first three weeks I stopped writing down what I was eating. I didn't drink as much water as the program recommended. But clearly I was doing something right, as the pounds kept coming off, week after week.
Best of all, I felt virtually no hunger. Within 10 months I had lost 55 pounds and reached my goal of 155 pounds, a weight I have now maintained with no effort for six months and counting.
Here's what I think made the difference this time: while resolving to eat healthier foods, I also resolved not to eat any foods I didn't love. That meant no more cottage cheese. No celery sticks. No roast beef. (That's right, I don't like roast beef.) Instead, I built my eating plan around the carbs that feed my body and soul: a heaping bowl of multigrain cereal for breakfast, a giant tortilla stuffed with beans and vegetables for lunch, a mountain of stir-fried veggies atop a steaming plate of rice for supper.
For a snack, I'd grab a handful of low-fat wheat-and-sesame crackers. I figure I ate at least 200 grams of carbs per day -- more than three times the recommended maximum (60 grams) in most low-carb diets.
I also started “wogging” -- my own ungainly hybrid of walking and jogging -- three times a week, three kilometres each time. (I know from repeated experience that anything more ambitious causes my inner toddler to stamp her feet and say no.) Predictably, I began to feel more energetic. I stopped napping. And I no longer had to mumble excuses when my son challenged me to a race around the schoolyard.
Now that I'm in the maintenance phase of my eating program (maintenance being a euphemism for rest of my life), I eat up to 250 grams of carbs every day. That's 1,000 calories per day in carbs, about 55 per cent of my daily total of 1,800 calories. The Canada's Food Guide to Healthy Eating says that's OK. Weight Watchers says that's OK. I think I may be on to something.
Page 2 of 3 -- Both sides weigh-in on the low-carb debate on page 3.
