This week, after much research and internal debate, I’ve decided to go low-carb in order to shed the 35 pounds I need to shed. I started this diet on Monday (even though I was sick that day) because I had already determined Monday to be the start day. Last week, when I last weighed myself, I had come in just over 210 pounds (210.6 to be exact). I feel my ideal weight to be 175 pounds even though BMI charts put me close to 160 as an ideal (which seems unbelievably low to me).

So, I’ve gone on a dieting yo-yo since I was about 23. Started with low-fat, lost the weight, got into a job where I was burning loads of calories and went back to eating whatever I wanted), left the job, moved, never stopped eating, gained weight, tried low-fat, no worky, gave up, decided to “live with it” for a while, rediscovered Atkins about 10 years ago as a weight-loss plan, did the Atkins thing and lost a good amount of weight pretty easily… gave up because I couldn’t find the right foods at decent prices, decided to “live with it” again, went on typical diet (low fat, high fiber/carb, exercise, calorie restrictive), lost 20 lbs (usually hungry), moved, gave up the diet for convenience sake, “lived with it” again for over a year, went back on the so “successful” calorie restrictive diet and remembered why I stopped (hungry all the time) and knew it could never work for me, stressed out, researched, back on Atkins.

Atkins was the only diet that ever truly succeeded for me. My problem 10 years ago was there were so few choices when it came to food and it was very difficult from a convenience perspective. Nowadays, that’s no longer the case – there’s a low-carb choice at just about every popular restaurant and many additional low-carb food choices for home as well.

Now, some of you may think I’ve given back into a fad diet… but I believe any of you who think that either don’t really know me or have forgotten how obsessive I am about research and decision-making. It takes me forever to make a decision because I have to read everything I can get my hands on that agrees and disagrees with the decision to see if I can make a value judgment. It’s crazy, but true.

Wow – that’s long… okay, regardless – I’m back on Atkins and it’s been an interesting week. Hopefully, I’ll keep you up with how things go… I’m down to 205 right now, but short-term results aren’t what I’m looking for, so no celebration yet (even though it took weeks to lose that much on the calorie-restrictive).

Thanks for reading.