Oh man. I’m a wealth of LOLZ with this blog…. I began it on January 1st, it’s about weight loss, and to top it off, I’m a nerdy goth vegetarian doing a low carb diet.
What the heck.
But the good news is that I’ve been down this road quite successfully before, so I’m not terrified of the impending doom that comes with the magic of low carb dieting, I’m just loathing the idea of craving Safeway’s chocolate cookie ice cream. Because as a fat person, thats of course the only thing I ever ate, as well as devouring entire loaves of bread, several costco sized barrels of coke classic and entire thanksgiving turkeys, right!!?!
Wrong. I have enojoyed the magic of overindulgence before, but typically I’ve maintained a fairly low-calorie, yet carbohydrate rich diet. And thats exactly how I weighed 289lbs at the age of 22. I felt like an over inflated balloon- I could feel my skin just stretching painfully to accomodate my weight, and I was totally torn between my angsty riot girl mantra of “Fuck you, love me the way that I am” and “Oh my God, I feel like 10lbs of shit in a 5lb bag….”
Here’s me at 19, 260+lbs….
But I finally gave in and stopped the insanity. It was around the time of the Atkins Diet phenomena, and after dialing up some info on askjeeves.com or something (This was in 2003 or so, remember.) I figured that I could totally do low carb, even though I was a vegetarian. So my life went from enjoying carbs to ignoring them, and thankfully since I was right in the midst of the low carb revolution, there were plenty of places and people who were right on that train with me and were happy to acomodate my insane dietary needs.
An example day for 2003 diet Emily went like so:
Breakfast:
- 2 trimspa capsules (ephedra, baby!)
- 1 Xenadrine low carb diet bar in chocolate
- 1 bottle of diet rite cola (no caffination and no aspertame, can’t have cancer or caffeine when you take ephedra, duh.)
Lunch:
- A huge salad consisting of lettuce, onions, tomato and ranch or poppyseed dressing
or
- A subway low carb veggie wrap made with cheese, mayo, lettuce, onion, mustard, pickles and tomato
and 2 more trimspa.
Dinner:
- 2 veggie burger patties with cheese, pickles and mustard (no catsup, carbs…) and another huge salad made with faux meat, hardboiled eggs and cheese…kind of my vegetarian nod to the chef’s salad
Snack:
- As many pickles and cheddar cheese hunks as I wanted.
Workout regimine:
- 45 mins-1 hour on elliptical or playing Dance Dance Revolution, every day.
This shit was insane, but I totally dropped 90lbs in 6 months. I was so stoked to finally have attention my skinny friends took for granted, it was totally RAD!!!! Except for the fact that I was an emotional wreck and smoked like a chimney to counter it all….
So why do I want to do that shit again???
Well, its not so easy as that. I’m not planning on going about things the same way. I’ll actually be working with my partner this time (who as you’ll see or you know, if you know us in real life) is never and has never had a problem with being overweight- in fact, he is technically underweight at 6’4” and 143lbs. But that’s exactly how thin he has been his entire life- it’s his wacky Romanian genetics- and perfect sexy brooding goth boy figure. He actually has switched to a low/no-carb lifestyle in response to his learnings from this book:
Why we get fat, and what to do about it. By Gary Taubes
And from there, the carb hatred blossomed for him. And it’s rubbing off on me. Slowly, I got rid of my pastas and oatmeals. No more were my fake chicken bits breaded for crispy goodness….but when you’re not only allowed but encouraged to eat REAL butter and full fat dressings… well, you learn to forget bread a little easier.
That concludes todays history lesson, kiddos. More from me as I journey further into the labarynth of my size 22 jeans….
Current/start weight: 250lbs
Mini goal: 235lbs by V-day
Final goal: 175lbs