The end of July is here and a new month starts tomorrow. I don't really feel like I've lost much weight over this past month, but I've made progress nonetheless.
My weigh in today showed me at 213.5. That is 1.5 lbs lost since last Sunday. For the month's progress I've lost 5.5 lbs. On my bust I lost .5 inches, waist -1, hips -1, -1 off each thigh, and -1 off each arm. I didn't lose much weight, but I feel like my measurements were good.
I am hoping to lose more weight in August than I did in July. I do believe that the Splenda was a problem for me, as I was over-indulging a bit. One packet of Splenda is listed as no calories and less than one carb. I do not believe that though. The ingredients are Dextrose, Maltodextrin, and Sucralose. How can it be less than one carb (let alone zero calories) if the very fist ingredient is Dextrose? I have no idea why I didn't check the ingredients before, but I really wish I would have. The whole point of a low carb diet is to limit blood sugar, control insulin levels, and burn fat for fuel instead of simple carbs. The first ingredient is exactly what I've been trying to avoid, the evil glucose.
Because of the issue with Splenda, I need to find a different sweetener to use. I suppose if I was really good I just wouldn't use sweetener at all any more, but I'm not sure I could handle that, lol I've been doing some research on Stevia. I have avoided it to date because of hearing that it causes sterility, especially in men and unborn baby boys. My research hasn't been very reassuring, besides I have found articles stating for a man to achieve the same results as the lab rats tested, he would need to eat at least 3 pounds of it per day. There seems to be a lot of debate over it, so we need to weigh the risks and benefits against other sweeteners.
Speaking of sweeteners, I came across something rather shocking that I was completely unaware of. I've been reading about aspartame and the host of negative effects it has on many people. Aspartame is very widely used in sugar-free processed food and diet pop. There was a while where I was having muscle twitches and couldn't figure out why. At the time I was drinking 2-4 cans of diet pop each day. I started having problems with my eye lid twitching. It happened off and on lasting part of a day or a few days, the worst case lasted up to a week. As time went on it was happening more often, only my check started to twitch too. After a few months I was having problems with my thumb, index finger, and middle finger on my right hand twitching. At that point I was getting pretty concerned, but we had no money to go to the doctor. I guess it was a good thing that we ran out of money for extras, because that meant we had to stop buying pop. It didn't take more than a week and all my twitching had stopped and has yet to happen again. I can have diet pop on my diet, but have been severely limiting it because the book "Why We Get Fat: And What To Do About It" by Gary Taubes suggested to stay away from it because it can alter the ph level of your body and slow weight loss. I was shocked to read that headache, twitching, and blindness are all reported dangers of eating foods that contain aspartame. At least now I know what was making me sick and can avoid it.
There really isn't much to report on with my hair, skin, or nails besides to say that several of my nails broke last week for aparently no reason. My nails are thicker, stronger, and harder, so I was perplexed as to why they broke. Anyway, that is all I have to comment on at the moment.
Here's to another week of weight loss!!
My weigh in today showed me at 213.5. That is 1.5 lbs lost since last Sunday. For the month's progress I've lost 5.5 lbs. On my bust I lost .5 inches, waist -1, hips -1, -1 off each thigh, and -1 off each arm. I didn't lose much weight, but I feel like my measurements were good.
I am hoping to lose more weight in August than I did in July. I do believe that the Splenda was a problem for me, as I was over-indulging a bit. One packet of Splenda is listed as no calories and less than one carb. I do not believe that though. The ingredients are Dextrose, Maltodextrin, and Sucralose. How can it be less than one carb (let alone zero calories) if the very fist ingredient is Dextrose? I have no idea why I didn't check the ingredients before, but I really wish I would have. The whole point of a low carb diet is to limit blood sugar, control insulin levels, and burn fat for fuel instead of simple carbs. The first ingredient is exactly what I've been trying to avoid, the evil glucose.
Because of the issue with Splenda, I need to find a different sweetener to use. I suppose if I was really good I just wouldn't use sweetener at all any more, but I'm not sure I could handle that, lol I've been doing some research on Stevia. I have avoided it to date because of hearing that it causes sterility, especially in men and unborn baby boys. My research hasn't been very reassuring, besides I have found articles stating for a man to achieve the same results as the lab rats tested, he would need to eat at least 3 pounds of it per day. There seems to be a lot of debate over it, so we need to weigh the risks and benefits against other sweeteners.
Speaking of sweeteners, I came across something rather shocking that I was completely unaware of. I've been reading about aspartame and the host of negative effects it has on many people. Aspartame is very widely used in sugar-free processed food and diet pop. There was a while where I was having muscle twitches and couldn't figure out why. At the time I was drinking 2-4 cans of diet pop each day. I started having problems with my eye lid twitching. It happened off and on lasting part of a day or a few days, the worst case lasted up to a week. As time went on it was happening more often, only my check started to twitch too. After a few months I was having problems with my thumb, index finger, and middle finger on my right hand twitching. At that point I was getting pretty concerned, but we had no money to go to the doctor. I guess it was a good thing that we ran out of money for extras, because that meant we had to stop buying pop. It didn't take more than a week and all my twitching had stopped and has yet to happen again. I can have diet pop on my diet, but have been severely limiting it because the book "Why We Get Fat: And What To Do About It" by Gary Taubes suggested to stay away from it because it can alter the ph level of your body and slow weight loss. I was shocked to read that headache, twitching, and blindness are all reported dangers of eating foods that contain aspartame. At least now I know what was making me sick and can avoid it.
There really isn't much to report on with my hair, skin, or nails besides to say that several of my nails broke last week for aparently no reason. My nails are thicker, stronger, and harder, so I was perplexed as to why they broke. Anyway, that is all I have to comment on at the moment.
Here's to another week of weight loss!!
No comments:
Post a Comment