confused about rungs

[veggiegirl]

Hi, I am on the second rung of OWL, but I'm not sure I'm doing it right. I upped my veggies to 4-5 cups a dayfor a week, then to move on to dairy, I added a serving of cheese, three days of ricotta or cottage cheese, the other days a cheese I'd already been eating in induction.
What I don't understand is, how much variety do I need to have on each rung? I mean I ate more veggies, but didn't add any that weren't allowed in induction. What does 'finishing' a rung entail? Now that I'm in dairy, can I move on to nuts now if I don't stall? I have to admit, today I was freaking out and wanted to cheat so badly, so I bought some macadamia nuts and had one serving...they were so good! I'd like to move on to nuts, but am I going too fast?
If I understand correctly, I can go back and add a new veggie later if I only eat it three times the first week, is that right? I still have a lot to lose, so I am keeping my carbs low, but I need to add variety, or I won't be able to stick with this WOL. :sadblinky

[not2late]

ARe you doing a regular OWL or are you doing a Modified OWL where you stay at Induction level carbs while moving up the carb ladder?

[2big4mysize]

first stop! wanting to cheat so bad is a sign you have some poor blood sugar craving control and something you ate is triggering you so you want to stop drop the new cheese rung and get control back! then slowly add back the cheese and see if the wanting to cheat returns if it does then that cheese rung needs much more exploration. Or for the female low carbers it could be hormones causeing the cravigns wanting to cheats and that has to be eliminatd too.
you can eoither punt the new ricatta and see if only having the cheeses you alreay had in induction fix things with the craving and then you know the total net carbs are okay but the ricotta was the problem or you know that total carb limit is too high for you and you need to back down 5 net carbs and try the cheese again. Confusing? yep we are testingf many things in OWL so we go slow and we repeat repeat repeat the testing when we have a problem so we understand how our body reacts to the new food type the new foods and the new carb level all of which can cause trouble.

Happy OLWing

[veggiegirl]

I guess I'm doing a modified OWL...I upped my carbs to 25 and I figured I would gradually go up from there, but not as fast as 5 carbs a week because I still have a lot to lose.


I should explain, 2Big, I'm not having blood sugar type cravings, I have had those before, but this wasn't it. The problem I'm having is I'm running out of things to eat because I'm a vegetarian, and I am so sick of my limited diet, so when I'm hungry and not at home, I just get tempted to pick something up that's quick instead of waiting til I get home and making something. I was happy eating tofu, but I think that it was making me slow down, so I've cut it out. I ate tons of eggs while I was in induction, but they are really starting to gross me out. So I went into OWL, and things seem to be ok so far, I'm just confused about how to do it. But given what you're saying about testing, I'm thinking I should wait to move on until I'm sure it was the tofu that was slowing my loss and not the cheese? Maybe I was trying to change too many things at once.

So the other thing I'm confused about is if weight loss slows down as we get closer to our goals, how do I know that it's a food or carb level that's slowing me down and not just time being on the diet?

Also, is it better to go through -all- the foods I'm going to eat in a rung before moving on? For example, let's say I'm on dairy, and then a vegetable I haven't tried comes into season, so I want to try it, would that be bad? Should I just try to eat all the vegetables I might possibly eat right away while I'm only on Rung 1? Or is it all right to go back later as long as that's the only thing I'm changing at that point?

Sorry for all the questions...I just want to get this right!

[not2late]

You can increase your carbs as slowly as you want. In fact, I think it's better to find your CCLL, then munch your way through the ladder because that's one less headache you'll have to worry about since you won't have to figure out if the carb level is causing a problem or an indivdual food.

If you can't decide if tofu or cheese is causing you problems, drop them from your menu for a week or two and see what happens. If your loss picks up then add only one back for a week and see what happens.

As for going back and trying out a veggie that comes into season, I do that but I follow the OWL rules with it: 5 net carbs of that veggie every other day for 1 week---see what happens then daily for the following week---see what happens.

The other thing to think about is that the dairy rung are higher in calories than veggies, so you have to be careful when adding them because you might be going over your calories. There's also sentence in the book that says when you add in the fresh dairy, be sure you drop your aged cheese amount a bit.

[2big4mysize]

the best advice I can give you is change one and only one thing at a time so you know for sure that you know how that change effected you. And then cause you are female retest it at a different time in the month to see if the effect was hormonal or really the food or carbs.


As I've said this is the great food experient with you as the scientist setting the protocal and you as the lab rat experienceing the results of those experiments. Going slow and repeating is great. I did the veggie rung 3 sets of 5 net cause I love veggies.

As Megs said the dairy rung is loaded woith pit falls. Very few folk add back all 5 net carbs of cheese here and just check out reaction to the fresh cheeses and the low carb dairy stuff like the milk and yogurt

[veggiegirl]

Thanks, that helps a lot! :nod I guess I'll just have to slow down more so I'm sure as to what's affecting me.