So for the last couple of months, I’ve chronicled how I lost weight over the summer through a combination of eating better, exercise, and getting enough sleep. After some analysis though, I realized how I got fat in the first place.
While lack of exercise certainly had to do with it, I’ve come to accept that it was my diet that really added on the pounds. Before I only focused on not eating a lot of fat. I didn’t pay a lot of attention to carbohydrates which was my undoing. While I was working at PopCap, I had some terrible eating habits. Often my breakfast would consist of either an English muffin or potato chips. The muffin was probably better but it contained carbs. For lunch, I’d fall victim to more carbs. My go to lunch was from the Chinese place from the food court. It was kinda fast food lunch where you’d pick from several items which they’d stuff into a take out container. I’d usually select three items but invariably at least one item was either noodles or rice but very often it’d be both. The third item would be meat or vegetable one but there was a lot of carbs from the noodles and rice. Then in the afternoon, I’d snack on more English muffins or potato chips. Imagine doing that five days a week for months on end.
It continued to get worse after I got home. I remember for a week straight, for whatever reason, I became enamoured with teriyaki chicken on fried yakisoba noodles for dinner. It might have been more than a week actually. Imagine a huge helping of noodles with teriyaki chicken on it. I ate the whole thing for dinner. The noodles were chock full of carbs.
Now that I’m working again, I’m trying real hard to avoid both fats and carbs. I had a sandwich for lunch today but that’s ok. The bread itself won’t get me fat. I didn’t have potato chips today nor any English muffins. Let’s see if I can keep the weight off going forward.
You have discovered one of the biggest contributing factors to obesity that is plaguing Western societies. Refined carbs! When I started to cut my carbs, I started with not eating any if it was after 2 pm. That brought good results for the first six months. I now omit all processed carbs for dinner, and lunch including pasta which I miss. Another HUGH factor to me slimming down was not eating any cereal in the morning. This has brought the most notable change to my overall feeling of good health. My body is no longer subjected to that big insulin spike each morning. I thought eating granola or ‘mini-wheats’ was healthy, but it was quite the opposite.
Good luck on your new low-carb eating habits.