Pretty good success with the diet so far…

14 pounds apiece. I’m at 194. Jane and I both, though not at the same weight, starting or now—are losing at the same rate. We also both have an important ‘set point’ or previous stable weight level, coming up. Mine’s 192. I won’t say where hers is, but we’re also coming up on it.

Now, I have another set-point just 7 pounds below that set-point, and that would also get Jane past hers. So if I target that, (and sometimes as you approach an old set-point, your body can get cooperative about weight loss, but won’t budge lower) we can begin to moderate this diet a bit. That would be 21 lbs down for me and Jane, which is pretty good. Then we’d laze along, go to a couple of conventions where eating is not as regulated, then come back home and go back on the induction routine again, which would let us shed anything we did gain (though we can subsist on bunless hamburgers for the trip). Then we just continue on to the next set-point, 10 lbs away, approximately.

This is the game plan. That would take me to 175, at which I can fit into designer clothes…not that I’m playing that game any longer. We’ll see from there.

The main thing this diet is doing is not the calories or the low-carb: it’s those little frozen dinners I don’t cook: it’s breaking the cycle of thinking about food (repeating the same five meals [even good ones] for several months will tend to do that.)

The cycle we got into: I like cooking. I plate everything. I was hurting Jane by serving too much. I know that now. So I needed to get cooking off my schedule, out of my head, and get the thing under control. Funny thing, now that I’m not thinking about meals and groceries, I have time to deal with my marine tank and some other things that need doing.

We couldn’t, right now, possibly eat what we’d been eating: we’d splode. We’ve reduced portion sizes to 2 heaping tablespoons of 2 different veggies, a piece of meat the size of a card deck, and a tablespoon of sauce. Now we’re modifying that to go to 1) breakfast omelet 2) small salad for lunch, 1 oz Ranch 3) the Atkins frozen dinner.

BUT! somebody recommended coconut oil as a better shortening than olive oil: wrong for us. We got some, used it two-three days, and weight loss, which had been regular as clockwork, stopped cold, even reversed. We went back to olive oil, no other change, and off came the weight, regular as clockwork. So we’re back on track.

It didn’t arrive overnight, and it’s going to take some time to get rid of, but the biggest thing that’s happening, we’re breaking the food-compulsion and breaking the ties to it. We’re doing other things.

And feeling good. If we get too carb-short, we take a small wheat tortilla, sprinkle bacon bits and cheddar, a little salt and pepper, a little dry basil and broil 3 min. Pizzalina! Eccola!