3 years on keto and old habits are coming back

(Sonia) #1

Hi.

I’ve been on keto for 3 years now. I was doing great till last year when covid hit. I’ve lost 90 pounds but gain 5-10 pounds over the last yr.

I know the reason. I started eating more keto junk. I don’t get hungry and but I Can’t stop snacking. I’ve tried not to keep snacks at home but now my husband is on it too and he likes to have some snacks.

I wish I could get back to that mindset from before! Any suggestions? The answer isn’t as simple as don’t keep snacks at home. Till my mindset isn’t in the right place, I won’t be able to stop.

I feel miserable. I feel like I’m on a SAD diet but really I’m not. Yesterday I ate half a bar of Lily’s chocolate and an entire tub of halo ice cream. There is no portion control for me when it comes to junk. I am good with my meals.

Any suggestion will be much appreciated. I want to feel better and I don’t want to gain all this weight back.

Thank you.

(Jane) #2

You are in a tough spot, to be sure.

My only suggestion would be to start an accountability thread and post everything you eat every day. Perhaps having to post it will help you turn down the keto sweets.

Then when you have a junk-free day you can brag and we can all cheer for you :tada:

(Laurie) #3

For some of us (like me) it has to be black-white, yes-no.

I used to live with a man who ate regular food (but only one meal a day; this was how he had achieved weight loss). At the time, I was on Atkins and succeeded in losing weight. For me, it was easy to draw the line, and recognize that the potatoes and bread were for him only. Perhaps you can do the same with keto junk.

I understand that it can be hard, especially in a couple/family/social situation. Can you train yourself to do it?

Or is it lack of motivation? “Oh well, it’s only 10 pounds …” As @Janie says, an accountability thread can help (or not). It’s certainly worth a try. You could also write your intake on a calendar or elsewhere.

Perhaps reading up on why keto junk is bad would help too. Good luck!

(You've tried everything else; why not try bacon?) #4

What about making sure you have a supply of keto snacks? I like pork rinds, pepperoni, and hard cheeses when I just can’t avoid snacking. I have read advice to the effect that if we need to snack, we should eat more during our meals, but I’m not sure that this advice addresses what Dr. Robert Cywes calls “emotional eating.” Myself, I also find it helpful to follow his advice to keep a cup of coffee at the ready, so as to have something benign to do with my mouth and hands.

#5

The reason why I snacked on food is because I had nothing to do with my life. I bought a pair of On Running cloud running shoes and walk everywhere. Get my 10000+ steps in everyday with the Google fit app and now don’t even look at it anymore and enjoy my walks by the river. We humans are meant to walk long distances. I’m walking right now. :slightly_smiling_face:

#6

I did the same. I am surrounded with carbs, my SO cook carby food, even I cook and bake for him… I shouldn’t consider food that isn’t right for me food at all. It’s not always as easy, it was super easy to stop eating grains, dry legumes, sugar, potatoes (my big old fav item) for years… But some desires came back (potatoes! and I bake great bread too. it’s not a normal food for me at all but nice and exists!)… Fortunately as the years pass, my new habits get stronger.
Sometimes I have a wilder day. But I can stop them. I can’t even continue them as my body loves what I do on my good days.
Actually, making my woe stricter helped me… I’ve read some people raises carbs after some time, well I lowered them drastically and it helps with the part where I want or just eat things I really shouldn’t, what a silly thing but may happen.

If I get full with fatty meat and don’t even start to eat much carbs (like a bunch of berries as it’s a common thing ketoers eat. or nuts), it’s not that hard to stay on track for a while…
But probably most of all need the right level of strictness. Not too strict, not too lax. I surely do!

If it’s boring, I get creative and I do experiments too! Food never will be mere fuel for me :slight_smile: But it doesn’t mean I must eat much carbs.

But when it’s really boring, I still depend on my treats. But they aren’t junk, they are proper things just dessert type (or not but usually) :smiley:
It’s not good to eat without any need but if it’s done with the right items, they probably can’t be that bad… It depends. I can’t overeat from eggs and meat, less meals may help too… So a tiny dairy here and then is fine. My desserts are very heavily egg based and they usually contain a little dairy, it makes it different and more exciting.
But my plan A is big variety, desserts may or may not be a slippery slope - they are usually fine now but I still don’t find it mentally healthy to eat sweets all the time. For me. My SO half-lives on sweets, it works for him. But it’s not for me.

I am on low-carb since… more a decade? I had my phases and everything. It takes time to find our sweet spot, for some it takes a very long time.

I would think a bunch, that is important too - but probably would try to find dishes I am happy with and don’t need something worse. Amounts matter too but if you can’t stop below a tub of ice cream, maybe you aren’t like that… Or the tube is tiny for that kind of ice cream, it’s possible. I only can eat little from very dense or rich treats or it was in the past, now I am good with tiny amounts - as long as my normal food is much enough. But it’s known most people have items they can eat a ton of. It is (was?) carbs for me and added fat and cream… So I avoid them, mostly. A tiny bit is mostly harmless and I trained to be able to eat a tiny bit only. If you know you are hopeless with something and loses control, don’t eat it.

Being nicely full with the right food makes wonders in the case of many of us! Not all “keto food” is good for that. I only have this stop sign with fatty meat. And even desserts can tempt me (much), I just can’t fit more food. And I always had a very impressive separate dessert stomach.

So maybe food choices can help even with the desires. Maybe it’s purely mental, I mean, food choices don’t help. I still need to train myself but without the right keto style, I couldn’t do it right.
And sometimes we need our keto to change, evolve with us…

Hopefully I wrote something that helps or make you think or something?

#7

In situations like this, I go back to what my father said to me (He became a lot smarter after he was gone and I started to listen to what he said years before).
“Can’t never could.” Of course you CAN control your snacking, you don’t want to.
“You don’t need motivation, you need discipline.” I am constantly unmotivated for many things in my life that I need to do. I just have to pull myself together and do it anyway – or in your case, NOT do it.
I don’t mean to be harsh, but changing your way of thinking is the only thing I can see that is going to help you.

(Marianne) #8

I completely understand this, as I’d bet many of us here do, too. It took me from me teens until age 60 to finally “get” this, honestly. I just loved food, mostly things that weren’t good for me. Before keto, I rarely cooked, and if I did, it wasn’t protein or a balanced meal. Tons of sweets, pasta, starch, take-out, fried food, cereal, baked goods - whatever I wanted. Up until 60, I kept trying to figure out how I could “control” how much of this stuff I indulged in. At my lowest emotional low (just pre-keto), I admitted to myself that I was a food addict (I also loved to consume mass quantities of food), and once I started keto, I only had a couple of times when I actually cheated. One was at a wedding. Thank goodness they were isolated incidents and I was able to get back on track next day, but being that out of control gave me huge anxiety, depression and the realization that a binge was just one bite away. Not preaching, that’s just how it was/is for me. I am carnivore now, mainly because that’s just what I prefer to eat, but from the beginning, keto allowed me to be able to rid myself of the cravings for my former binge foods. Now, they can be a passing thought, however, I just know internally that I can’t go there anymore - at least I don’t choose to - and I can resist with no problem. The power is not introducing those things into my system because then I am depressed and powerless. I’m not preaching 12 Steps or anything - this is just how it is for me.

As for suggestions, start from the beginning again. Return to three meals a day, even if you just throw them together. I never made anything elaborate, but it was all good. Make sure you are getting enough fat. Keep the carbs as low under 20 as you can. Don’t eat in between meals. If you do, increase the portion size of your meals. And, sorry to say, I’d get the junk out of the house. You are dancing with the devil keeping it in the house. I wouldn’t weigh myself either. That can really mess with you, good or bad.

Good luck! Hugs.

(Allie) #9

That’s the biggest issue for most people.

#10

I can so relate to what you say about eating. I used to eat 16 hours a day almost. I fell into the “several small meal” lie and would tell myself popcorn was a meal because it’s a veggie. It took me a year to get over my sugar addiction, and I still crave fruit sometimes, but hardy ever candy or baked goods. The most I will do is have a teaspoon of real sugar in my coffee some mornings, but then have a mostly carnivore day afterwards.

My downfall was starches. I was raised in the US South, with either rice or potatoes, sometimes both, at every meal. We didn’t have much money and starches were filling and we thought healthy at the time. I love white rice and potatoes so much, but I cheated the other day and put a half a cup of rice into a chicken soup so now I’m craving it again.

It doesn’t take much of a cheat to get you started back down the wrong path.

#11

Yes, and we are all capable of backsliding, no matter how “disciplined” we are.

(You've tried everything else; why not try bacon?) #12

Let’s be more precise, here, and remember that it’s not really a lie, but rather a strategy for coping with the constant hunger resulting from continually elevated insulin levels (resulting, in turn, from a high-carb diet). The lie resides in the underlying assumption that carbs are “good for us.”

(Allie) #13

But it is a lie in the way it’s sold to people with the “six small meals a day to fire up your metabolism and burn fat”.

#14

Makes no sense to me but I know many small meals suit some people. Me and many others must eat as few meals as possible if the food is already not adequate for satiation. (Or even if it is. If I want to feel good on high-carb, I must eat OMAD. It probably still would be bad eventually, never experimented with it… But more than one meal on high-carb is very bad for me.)

This constant hunger is very odd to me as well as I never personally met people like that… Maybe it’s more for people on HCLF? Or it’s individual? A carby meal easily results in perfect satiation for several hours (6-8) if the one in question is the right type and the meal is big enough, I know that. But it’s fine to get hungry in 3 hours, I have that on every woe except on carnivore where it’s 1-3 hours (sometimes more, carnivore makes odd things to me). It’s fine as long as I am never hungry for long. I always was a bit too proactive as I had a tendency to eat before I could get really hungry. I disliked being hungry.

I never could do much with these things…
I burn fat if I eat fat. Or if I eat in a deficit.

But they say “eat breakfast to restart your metabolism!” too.
My body doesn’t stop having energy just because I stop eating for a little while (not even a whole day) so I don’t need that…

I never understood why triggering even more serious overeating would be good for me… Or forcing myself to all day hunger… Oh well. I am not their target as I can’t be influenced to ruin my life. I am a hedonist.