I’m almost a week in and it’s been a roller coaster….!

I had never heard of the blood sugar diet a week ago. I was trying to lose weight on Tim Ferris’ Slow Carb diet for over a year but the cheat days would always undo me. Once I loaded up on starchy carbs I would get all my carb cravings back, no matter how well I did during the week, and cheat days almost always became cheat weekends. In reality I was slowly gaining weight.

Then I was cruising the forums on MFP looking for other slow carb-ers and found all these mentions of BSD which I googled and found all of you here. I bought the book on kindle and read it ravenously for 2 days. I wasn’t even through it before I started the diet.

I was excited! Finally the right tool? I really hope so..

I hope it’s ok to post a personal journal here. Let me know if not, and I’ll cease and desist! I find that I’m constantly here at the forums looking for some kind of intangible support. But there isn’t always something I can genuinely comment on. So I figured if I started a journal of my experiences I could get some help or encouragement along the way, or help someone else by expressing something relatable?….🤔🙄

So…how did I get here?

… I was married in 2010. I was a healthy BMI, just settling into my first home with the best man ever. Things were really good. Then I started to work regularly with a local musician, an incredibly charismatic guy who could play the guitar like no one I’d ever heard before.

I felt so lucky, he was so charming and flattering and I felt special around him. Before long we started writing music together, which was, in my experience, one of the most intimate things you can do with someone while keeping your clothes on. But then he suddenly started getting out-of-proportion furious with me for no good reason. The silent treatment, rages and I’d have to pull out all the stops to smooth it over.

Over the next year and a half I sank into a constant state of anxiety and started to comfort eat like crazy and the weight crept on. I just wanted him to treat me well again and looking back he had complete control of me. I couldn’t turn to my husband because he was a man my husband instinctively disliked and didn’t want to talk about. In retrospect I don’t think he was comfortable with how obsessed I was with the relationship.

Finally after 18 months of hell I was finally able to admit to myself that the relationship was completely toxic. I was grieving and gathering strength to leave when he did it the dirty work for me in a short, brutal email. He told me (in much more visceral language) that while he respected my musicianship he thought I was a horrible human being and he was hoping to never see me again. I was devastated but simultaneously SO RELIEVED.

The next four years were spent trying to rebuild my sanity and understand what had happened. I had completely lost confidence. Scared to write, create and be myself. I really started drinking a lot and eating like crazy, putting on 45lbs/ 20kg from my wedding weight in 2010. He took on pseudonyms and sent me abusive, threatening messages online for the next couple of years but he always gave himself away.

The fatter I got, the more depressed I felt and the more his dismissal of me seemed almost fair… until I read a Facebook post last year about ‘gaslighting’ and other tools used by people with Narcissistic Personality Disorder to control their supply. I suddenly recognised our relationship in this article, all the alternating flattery then unexpected abuse, the silent treatment, hoovering… all the signs! I felt sane for the first time in my life.

So I’ve had a year now to work through this. To let go and know that I’m not all the awful labels he gave me. The guitarist I work with now is also amazing. Not so technical, but he plays from his heart. He is also a great human who genuinely likes playing with me.

It’s time to come out of my fat cocoon of healing and pump some blood into these wings.

Hi butterfly! As i was reading yr story the words narcissist and gaslighting were going thru my head! And then you wrote those words! Was with a man like this when i was in my twenties..and like you,had a huge sense of relief when i finally got free of him! Like a weight taken off my shoulders…He was a musician as well 🙂
you write really well..and i love yr butterfly analogy..i saw a lovely quote about butterflies the other day..will try to refind..
Good luck on BSD! Plenty of good folk on here always ready to offer support/ the benefit of their experience,and to share the good days and the bad,so just shout if you have any questions x

hugs,

I am 8 years on from a situation with a superior/mentor that had similar tactics of the hot and cold – talking up my potential and treating me as a useless failure, where I simultaneously craved their affirmation yet destroyed by their undermining, and the fact they had power over my progression in my role. I had a breakdown – I was affected with depression before so it may still have happened but it was certainly triggered by this relationship and the toxic nature of it affected my ability to recover which only happened once I was in a different setting.

Recognising what has happened – and the love/hate tensions that get developed which makes it hard to emotionally untangle – is a huge step. Moving on from that is a huge achievement, and you will achieve the weight loss too. You are an achiever not just a survivor.

Oh I’m so sorry to hear that you were unfortunate enough to tangle with a Narc- Yowzer49. They are the worst! Glad you got out so soon, some people get trapped for so long. So hard to make sense of it while you are on the inside.

Thanks for complimenting my writing, you are sweet. 😊 Writing helps me make sense of things. So glad for this safe space!

PS ..this is the quote i loved…
~ Your time as a caterpillar has expired..your wings are ready! ~
Another good one :-
~ If nothing changed,there’d be no butterflies ~ x

Thanks Avila! Seems that there are far more Narc Sharks out there than I ever imagined! Sorry that you had to suffered that kind of emotional manipulation when you were already vulnerable. I think Narcs have a sixth sense for people who are struggling and therefore easier to lure with flattery. I had a pretty bad childhood which sapped my potential for self esteem. So I was easy to hook.

That was then and this is now. I can tell that this is the right time. So pumped for change.

They are AWESOME quotes, Yowzer49! I think my email signature needs updating!🐛

Well,ultimately they do us a favour i guess…these people help us grow! do they do much growing themselves.?
Not as far as i can see so in a way i feel sorry for them.
AVILA…sending hugs to you and to BUTTERFLY..boy those days with a narcissist are a miserable roller coaster..BUT hard times make us stronger!..just like how the caterpillar has to go thru a hard time to then emerge so beautifully!🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟
PS! Glad you like the quotes BUTTERFLY! X

Yes, Yowzer49, I do feel sorry for them too. The best moments in life are ones born of true friendship and vulnerability. Narcs will never know these things.

Thanks for your support, and yours too Avila. It’s given me another shot of energy to DO this thing.

End of week 1 weigh in….. drumroll please…….
***2.8kg/6lbs***!!!! 😮🙃😝😄

Just ecstatic!!! Been dancing around the room. And how am I going to celebrate?!! I don’t know, but it’s gotta be good. Be back later, too delirious to make coherent sentences!!! Can’t believe the scale is actually going DOWN!!!!

Yay!

BUTTERFLY MOVES! So pleased for you..such a good feeling isnt it! Well done! 👏🏽👏🏽👏🏽👏🏽👏🏽👏🏽👏🏽👏🏽👏🏽👏🏽
* thunderous applause* xxx!

So… here I am at day 11 after a pretty amazing weekend.

I had a big function gig on Saturday night which was pretty stressful. It was a new, unrehearsed line-up and a horrible echoey venue with big sub speakers under the stage to make my bass sound simultaneously indistinct and intolerable. On top of that we had to wait for two hours backstage in a room full of high quality wine, beer and food, but I conscientiously ate my lentil salad and nuts and only indulged in a glass of Diet Coke for the sake of a caffeine hit. The gig went well and I left on a high and snuck off with two lovely bottles from the rider which I stashed away for a special occasion.

The next day I spent at my favourite local pub, firstly with a friend who I was so happy to catch up with and then in the evening playing a gig which turned into a jam with a couple of my absolute favourite songwriters. Such music! 🎼 It was blissful! Usually on a day like this I would have had at least 6 glasses of wine from the start of the afternoon and headed right to the end of the gig at 9pm at night. The gig includes a meal of anything we like from the menu and the food is yummy!

So what to do? In the end, I figured it would be an interesting experiment to see what it felt like to deeply indulge in the music without having to deeply indulge in the food and wine. So I passed on the food, sat on one glass of exquisite Pinot Noir for ages and had an incredible night.

My reward for my fortitude? I’ve now lost 4kg/9lbs.!?

Ladies and gents….drumroll please…

My BMI has officially dropped from the ‘Obese’ category into the much less alarming ‘Overweight’ category… *ba-doom-tish!

Yay, that is awesome! I’m not much of a drinker so I’ve never needed alcohol to enjoy music, but avoiding the yummy food would be hard! And getting down into overweight category is so exciting and healthy! Well done.

Thanks @natalie ! I was so excited I spent the whole morning trying on clothes that were too tight, like a demented fashion model. Got a whole bunch of my wardrobe back!

Great work ButterflyMoves. Yep, my weight started to get out of control after the breakdown of two serious relationship with narcs – although I could not see them as that then. Both experiences utterly zapped me of my confidence. Later on I started to explore what made them attractive to me and came across the psychological concept of schemas – deeply ingrained patterns of behaviour that cause us so-called ‘life traps’. Most people have a few schemas going on in their brains, dating back to early childhood experiences. I learnt, via cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) (which is excellent btw) that I naturally unconsciously pick partners who will ultimately leave me, and leave me in pieces at that, because they reinforce my deeply-held beliefs that they’re going to leave anyway and that I’m not worth much. Sad, isn’t it. However, once you start to understand why you make the choices you do, you can start to unpick the thought patterns that got you there in in the first place. I appreciate your experience was not a romantic relationship on paper per se, but it was certainly an intense one which has overtones of being so. I am now applying my CBT learnings in helping me push forward on the BSD, and it is working well for that too. There’s a great book out there called ‘Rewire your brain’ (can’t remember author but it has a yellow cover with a blue/black illustration) which you can get on Amazon. It’s a brilliant read which helps you understand why we have self-destructive behaviour but also how to change your thought patterns. I’ll probably end up recommending it to the 1st Oct group at some point! Good luck with your continued success.

Thanks for sharing your story, @carb_addict . It seems that a few of us who have found our way here suffered at the hands of a narc at some time in their past. I understand what you are saying about the stories we carry around with us that we tend to forcibly re-enact repeatedly. I downloaded the book you recommended as an audio book. Should help me on my 10 hour drive Thursday!

I’m back briefly after a large bout of touring. I reached the halfway mark today. Exactly 4 weeks. This is not easy, but I’m beginning to think that it is not as hard as the low fat diets I’ve done in the past. The BIG difference? The total lack of constant hangriness that plagued me like a small portable black cloud. I may have lost a fair bit of weight in the past but I was a crappy companion the whole time. Constantly wanting to eat and using up every willpower resource so there was little left for the rest of my life.

Not this time. I’m okay. All of my cravings are associated with habits. The worst times are:
-long boring drives
-late night TV
-social cafe appointments
-stressful days
-playing at my local where really good wine is free for musicians playing

But with the help of some sugar free gum or a cup of broth or herbal tea I’m mostly dealing with it. I miss drinking wine because my overactive ADHD brain likes being drunk! It’s the only time I feel hazy and not plagued by an unending stream of unfiltered thoughts. There have been 2 days in my first month of BSD that I had a few glasses of wine. But on the whole it’s starting to not be essential to my life anymore. I’m definitely more energetic in the morning as a result.

On the weight loss side things have slowed down to a crawl, but I don’t care. I feel incredible. Gonna measure myself today and see if there are appreciable changes there to give me a boost…

So.. at the halfway mark I’ve lost 6cm off my waist and 7cm off my hips! HUZZAH!!!!

Yay ButterflyMoves, well done, you can be very proud of yourself👏👏👏👏
Keep going, it really does work.

I’m now on maintenance (for the rest of my life) after losing over 31 kg because I just know that if I go back to eating carbs and sugar, the weight will just pile back on.

Are you getting any exercise in with all your touring? I just walk and do yoga twice a week and it really does help, not so much for the weight loss, that’s been proven, but it’s my way of doing mindfulness and keeping the metabolism moving.

Keep it up, the good feelings will continue!
Any questions or concerns, just ask.
Cheers from sunny Sydney
Linda

Thanks @lindaa !Congrats on getting to your goal!! That’s awesome!!