17 Days

You may have heard of the 17 Day Diet. I learned of it from a woman I see at the dog park.

I've been struggling with my weight and with Weight Watchers (although I've been a faithful attendee). I realized that I'd been seriously abusing carbs (duh, this blog is call Carb Queen). So, I invested in a Kindle version of the 17 Day Diet. I haven't read much past the first 17 days, but what I have read was insightful  . . . sort of.

The first phase of the 17 Day Diet is a lot like Weight Watchers' "simply filling" plan (although I still think of it as "Core"). The primary difference is that the first phase of the 17 Day Diet allows no grains. Ah ha! The Carb Queen loves grains!

I haven't completely cut out grains but I've drastically reduced them. Last Saturday I lost weight after gaining for three or four weeks in a row. Tonight I'm feeling like I might actually lose weight again this week.

Hmmm, there might be something to this grain-avoidance approach for a Carb Queen!

Back to Basics

I've just spent a good bit of the afternoon planning my meals for the upcoming work week. I've gained almost 10 pounds since I stopped taking oral antibiotics. Oral antibiotics were fine as a weight loss strategy (ahem) but they didn't do much for my Lyme disease.

I'm now doing three months of IV antibiotics, which are much kinder to my stomach but not to my weight. They're not particularly good for my fatigue, either, because I have to take them every 8 hours, the effect of which is that I get 7 hours or less of sleep. When I was healthy I needed at least 7 1/2 hours.

The good news is that the IV antibiotics are making me feel better. Before starting the IV antibiotics, I'd taken three different oral antibiotics at the same time for a year and when I stopped I knew I still had Lyme disease. So even though my insurance company won't pay for the IV antibiotics because I'm not sick enough to be hospitalized, I'm more than happy to dig deeply to pay for them.

When I first started the IV antibiotics, I couldn't have figured out what to eat every day because I was suffering too much brain fog. I'm still suffering some brain fog but I can push through it.

Tomorrow I'll do my shopping and cook for the week ahead. Fingers crossed.

I'm Astonished

I haven't posted since July of last year!

I noted in my last post that I'd lost 52 pounds. I'm still at about that weight.

I continued to do well until October, when Zaphod & I took a train trip to New Orleans. It was a wonderful trip but it undermined my good habits. And then the holidays attacked. I gained some weight and then I lost it.

And now it's February. In January, I stopped taking the antibiotics that made it possible for me to lose weight as fast as I did. My stomach is now mostly recovered, so I have to learn to keep the weight off.

There's not much news here, really, except that I've been flirting with the possibility of actually tracking what I eat. I'm not sure I can track, even though I know it's a key to success. My latest plan is to see if I can develop discipline in other ways.

If I can become disciplined in other ways (can anyone recommend a good cognitive behavioral therapist?), maybe I can start to track my eating. Until then, I'll continue to dip into The Lyme Diet: Nutritional Strategies for Healing from Lyme Disease (downloaded from Amazon) for any wisdom I can glean.