I think it was Becky (regandy) who talked about forming a chain or stacking up dominoes - a metaphor for staying on plan vs. cheating. The idea being that the longer your streak of staying on plan, the less you are going to want to break that streak for some carby treat or stress eating binge.

Anyway, I thought it would be fun to turn this into a friendly challenge.

Add a domino (|) to your stack or a link to your chain (~) for every day you stay on plan. See how long a chain you can build. Start whenever you want - if you already have a streak going or if you're just starting today. If you go off plan you start a new chain.

For cleanliness of the thread, I would suggest one "chain" post for each person - just edit that post to update. (Or just put your chain in your sig, but I know a lot of us turn viewing sigs off for faster browsing...) Comments, encouragement, advice, friendly mini-challenges can all go in new posts. I'll probably do some sort of weekly summary - longest chain, new chains started,... ok, I can't think of anything else, but I'm sure we'll think of something.

You stick to whatever weight loss plan works for you and you keep your own chain up to date. There's no diet police to say you can't take a planned cheat day without breaking your chain, or that more than one LC product a day counts as cheating or whatever. If you think you stayed on plan for the day, add a link to your chain. If you cheated, you start over with a new chain.

I'm going to do this to help me stay on plan during the upcoming holidays - it's far too easy to start with a serving of stuffing on Thanksgiving and not stop until New Year's day (if then). That was the beginning of the end for my first go-round with lowcarb 3 years ago. This year I'd like to avoid that mistake, and it'll help if I have a long streak of staying on plan to motivate me.

So who else is interested in a public graphic representation of your success at lowcarbing? And if your post looks like a piece of abstract art because there's a whole bunch of short chains rather than one long one - that's still success

Ok, I'll start us off

Staying on plan for me = unlimited meat, eggs, green veggies, and fats. Eat but watch quantitites of cheese, nuts, mod. carb veggies (spaghetti squash, carrots, peas). No more than 1/day of LC bars, shakes, chocolate, tortillas or SF yogurt.

The last day I ate off-plan was last Tuesday, so my chain right now has a week's worth of links.

9/26
||||||||

Ok, I had the admin move this here since no one was interested in it as a challenge. I'll just keep posting and turn this into my journal.

My first stack of dominoes unfortunately only lasted until the 5th - poor planning on my part led to resorting to eating KFC chicken without the breading on our way up to the apple festival. I did decently well at the festival itself - I did taste a few things like cider and fudge and honey sticks, but I limited it to tastes and didn't go overboard.

The real slip up came on our way back. We stopped at a Ponderosa steakhouse, and I had the wings (breaded), as well as some full-sugar dessert - a whipped cream raspberry thing. I need to find a low-carb facsimile of that because I fall for it every time. It seems like it would be so easy to make it low carb too, so I don't know why I find it so appealing.

Anyway, I got right back on track starting Monday, and I've kept up since then, so my new stack is up to 7.

9/26 |||||||||
10/8 |||||||

I should be able to keep this streak up for quite a while, since we're not taking any more road trips until Thanksgiving. Local outings I can always eat before or take something LC to munch on. Going back to work will be challenging, but it's 8 hour shifts, and I generally have trouble finding time to eat so it should be ok.