Introducing myself

This is what I wrote to one of my email groups... for those of you who are interested in getting to know who I am...

Robert here, an American man living in Germany. I've joined this group as I am trying to recover from a 5-month spin into "carb hell" with an accompanying 35 lb. weight gain.

My story is really very simple. Life was going along fine, I was maintaining a slender/normal weight for around 2 years (I do a slightly modified version of Schwarzbein). My lifetime high was around 345 - I'm a 51 year old, 6'1" man - but I have fluctuated between 190 and 300 on a regular basis, with two very long, multi-year periods of stable, slender/normal weight. I have a very serious carb sensitivity and can only maintain a normal weight with a nutritionally balanced low-carb food plan with very moderate amounts of complex carbs and no "recreational food", LC or otherwise. As soon as I start adding too many of the "right carbs" - let's not even talk about adding the "wrong" ones! - I'm off on my descent into my personal carb addiction and rapid weight gain.

So what happened? I simply took my normal-weight life for granted and decided that I could handle eating one "thing". Has it ever stopped at one ever before in my life? No!! But I went for it... and once it became ok to eat those sort of things again they slowly took over my life. And it really all started with the naive decision to eat just one! Within a few weeks I was in total addictive mode. Thank goodness I didn't return to my bingeing mode of my early years... but just by letting go of low-carb living and eating everything I wanted in moderation my weight shot up 35 lbs. within 4 months and was continuing to climb. And that was with regular exercise! To be absolutely honest, if my weight would be able to stabilize at around 225-230 and still allow me to eat what I want, I would probably choose the overweight body and the absolute freedom with the food. But this is not what my body's metabolism does. If I go back to eating what I want in moderation, my body will not plateau until I am really obese again and am closing in on the 300 lb. mark. And I cannot and will not live with that: it is too painful on so many levels.

So today was Day 1 back on low-carb living. I do not weigh myself as low-carb cannot be a diet for me... as a diet means that I think that some day will come when I will be able to go back to a "full-carb" way of living and keep a healthy body and a normal weight. And this is NOT in the cards for me! So I see it as a lifestyle change; that's why the scale and counting days/weeks only reinforce the fact that I can return to some other way of eating at some point in the future. If I live nutritionally-balanced low-carb and avoid all "recreational foods" (even the LC ones) my body will return to a reasonable weight without my controlling its progress. In my 30s I could successfully eat low-carb goodies or alternate between "low carb" and "full carb" eating and still manage to maintain a reasonable weight. But this is absolutely impossible in my 50s.

So I am here - sad, depressed, frustrated, quite a bit heavier... but not giving up. A carb addiction/sensitivity/biochemical allergy does not go away after being in a thin body for a long enough time! It sits there in your genes and waits for you to start eating the "stuff" again! And I took the seriousness of my condition too lightly. I keep hoping that this will be the time where I learn the lesson that my family's genetics is trying to teach me.. but I am sooo grateful that I am willing to stop after gaining 35 lbs. and not after gaining 100 lbs.

Thanks for listening to this looong post!