So, if you didn't already know, I don't consume carbs in large quantities. Among other things, this means I tend to avoid breads, rices, pastas, sugary foods, and other carby things. This is a way of life that has been working for me for something like four (plus) years, and, other than the occasional, slip up, I find it to be very livable. Once you stop craving carbs, you hardly miss them unless they're right in front of you, and even then, it's not that hard to say, "But I'm losing weight," which I finally am, "so I shouldn't eat that because I like not gaining weight."
But, still, there's the occasional slip-up. And that's more what I'm concerned with today.
So, you're hanging around other people, and they, of course, don't have the same lifestyle as you. Eventually the issue of "Why don't you ever eat?" comes up. My go-to excuse, which is less an excuse an more a statement of fact, really, is that sugar = migraine. Or, sometimes, you'll just give in an have that one slice of pizza, or a piece of bread, or something, right?
First up on the list of things that happens: weight-loss stalls or, worse yet, temporarily reverses. This is an observation based on my own experiences. Errytime I cheat, I do not lost weight, particularly if that cheating happens in addition to your regularly scheduled meals, as opposed to instead of. Honestly, this should be obvious to anyone who stops to think about it. If nothing else, it means an influx of calories, for you calorie counters out there, and I think we can both agree that that's not a good thing.
More interestingly, when I cheat, it affects my dreams.
For example, a few weeks back, I had McDonald's for the first time in God-knows-how long. I'm pleased to say that I will not be frequenting that establishment ever. Anyway, that night I had awful disjointed dreams. Now, normally I don't even remember by dreams, a fact that I'm tempted to believe is probably for the better, and, when I do, they're pretty linear and actually make sense. At least, that's the impression that I get, given that I don't wake up from them and imprint them in my memory by going over them and asking my self, "What the fuck was that?" That night, however, things happened with no sense of direction, and no rhyme or reason. One second I was on a couch, possibly my couch, editing my story for my writing class, the next I was outside, still on the couch, writing a story in my head about a man running with his dog when, suddenly, I saw people I knew down the street and I hailed them over, at which point I woke up. Honestly, that one's not that bad, other than it's lack of sense-making-ability.
Last night, however, I had bread, sugared soda (because coolest bottles ever), and, uh, a small, cold apple tart-pie-thing. Well, and potatoes, but I still eat those on occasion, so they didn't worry me. This morning, I wake up from an awful dream, not awful scary, just awful weird (a group of people are attempting to dig up something at an excavation site, the success of their operation apparently weighing heavily on the use of a variety of dice, only to have awful things befall them in typical horror movie fashion; meanwhile, I'm with friends at a friend's house and weird things start happening, and the world's colors shift from red to blue and grotesque things appear during the blue and it was all quite unpleasant, until at some point one of us fell down a tube or something inside which she could breathe, at which point I woke up to realize I was being smothered by my blankets). So, really, I have to wonder if there's a connection between spazacity of dreams and carbs. Just a thought.
