Random Ramble

[callistra]

Weekly Weigh In!

Starting Weight: 115.1
End of Week :0
Current Weight: 115.1
Current Loss: 0
Cumulative Loss: 0

Starting Weight: 115.1
End of Week :1
Current Weight: 112
Current Loss: 3.1
Cumulative Loss: 3.1

Water weight gone. Time for some serious weight loss now. I'm expecting about a pound a week, but that will vary depending on my period. I will lose a pound for the first three weeks, hold onto a pound on the fourth and then dump it all for a 2 or 3 pound loss after/during my period.

I am now the smallest I have been in probably two decades. I don't know. This is the smallest BMI, the smallest weight. It's both happy making and terrifying.

I have lost 9.8 kilos this year.

Comments

[fred_mouse]

Yay for progress! Also, wow for having got this far!

[yalovetz]

Congratulations, if that's appropriate?

Can I ask how you feel you've achieved this? I know you've modified your diet, but what methods have you used to do that? Did you change your shopping, your cooking, your time management, your serving methods, all of the above, something else?

[callistra]

Gosh, there's a big bunch of questions. :)

How I feel I have acheived it?
Basically, I have figured out that my body dislikes wheat, and constant eating large amounts of it three times a day (or more) for the first 36 years of my life lead to the size I was. If I want to maintain whatever weight I am at, I just avoid wheat and feel free to eat sugar and carbs as much as I like. I do sometimes eat wheat but anything more than once every three or so days makes me bloated, gassy and uncomfortable. The other bad thing is sugar, but the problems with sugar are insulin based and long term.

My basic theory is that excessive weight is a sign there's a problem that is ongoing within your system, and if you can find the problem and remove it, then your body's natural balance will return. Eventually. Ask me about leptin and insulin...

methods have you used to do that?
I had to have a gall bladder removal operation, and my surgeon insisted I do the optifast diet. Which was a VERY interesting experience. I have been reading about diets and stuff for YEARS and YEARS but never really tried lo-carb before. It was fascinating. I wouldn't recommend it for any one, really, but the things it did were ... a) settle my stomach like nothing ever before. I was used to a gently upset stomach, and had never thought to question it. b) show me just how little we need to eat c) confirmed my thoughts that this was unnatural and unhealth way of doing thigns d) taught me about ketosis on an intimate level, since previously all I had done was read about it. Also, optifast is designed in such a way as to guarantee that you will get your weight back when you stop. Optifast does not address food addictions or the basic issues that make us fat.

Once I recovered from the operation, there have been times (usually I go lo/no carb for about 12 weeks, maybe longer) at a time, and each time I learn more about myself and my relationship to food. I have had to unlearn all the comfort foods, examine my relationship to sugar, explore food addictions and lapse back into them, find that food tastes completely different when you manage to lose your addictions, and find satisfaction in so much less food. I eat MUCH less when I am no/lo cartbing, and I naturally sit at about 1400 calories when dieting, even though I can eat as much meat, dairy, coloured vegetables, and 85% cocoa chocolate as I like. I also drink during my diet. I drink less (you get drunker faster) and I am aware that as a toxin, alcohol is processed before carbs or fats.

Also, this diet has solved a personal delimma I have had for years, where I was critical of the normal diets, and vaguely uncomfortable with the emphasis on processed foods, but never actively made changess towards this diet. Paleo/no carb makes *sense* to me. Less processed food, good fats, a working leptin/insulin system... we're designed to create fat n times of plenty. That's what animals do. The problem these days is that we're *always* in the 'plenty' state of nature, and don't have the lean any more. The 'plenty' stage (harvest) is when all the carb heavy fruits and vegetables are ready to be eaten, lay down a layer of fat to survive winter, and then start the cycle again.

I'm not sure if I have rambled extensively or answered your question, but they also tie into the next bunch of questions, so I shall get onto them.

Did you change your shopping, your cooking, your time management, your serving methods, all of the above, something else?

Shopping
I shop for basics monthly and fruit, vegetables and meat weekly. When the system is working LOL when it's not working then I shop monthly for basics and then everything else as we run out! I hate shopping and resent the time spent doing it. I'm planning to buy half a cow. I like to buy chicken legs 12 kilos at a time ($3 a kilo.) It's not changed my shopping habits much, except that now I eat less and I want better quality. It's definitely either 'good food' or 'cheap food' unfortunately.

Cooking
Once I had broken our food addictions, it takes much less to satisfy us. We can have the same meal every night for a week and I don't feel the need to change any more. My favourite meal is porterhouse steak with greens cooked in cream. Or steak and salad. or steak and vegetables. I am sure you're seeing the pattern here. :) Treat meals may include some good quality cheeses, and some 85% cocoa chocolate. I prefer Lindt, but others prefer Green and Blacks. Lunch is a peice of protein and a salad or vegetables. So a chicken thigh, can of tuna, roasted chicken leg, left overs. Our coffee we have cream rather than milk (less carbs) and sometimes I have rocket fuel coffee, which has coconut oil in it, with or replacing the cream. I now cook breakfast every morning, usually bacon and eggs. lately I have fried mushrooms and other stuff and made omelettes or scrambled eggs.

When I am firmly back into the habit, we sometimes skip breakfast on the weekend (intermittent fasting) but I try not to do that until I have completed the switch to ketosis as the primary energy source. (In healthy humans we switch very easily between ketosis and electrolysis (I think? I can never get the carb burning side jargon right.) However, in people with continued insulin abuse, we don't switch between the two correctly and this can cause energy crashes and problems which are temporary but a pita.) Obce I am fully switched the fat burning as my primary energy source, I am happy to move breakfast to *after* my trips to the gym.

Time Management
I no longer have the urge to make long lengthy recipes. I can, and sometimes i do (I make a kickarse curry but then serve it with cauli-rice). But I don't 'cook' every night any more. A steak and vegies makes me full, satisfied and happy, and tastes great. Everything else takes forever and it still gets eaten in ten minutes, same as the steak. I am pretty good at cooking steaks now!

Otherwise, it's pretty much the same time allocation as before. Time management of my kitchen is something of a speciality (I write manuals on how to manage your kitchen better)I have been mealplanning for years, since before the kids were born. I was trying to write a manual for when I had the first child so that JOhn could carry the household without me having to do everything. (Did I mention I write manuals? LOL)

Serving Methods
I use standard size dinner plates as our servng plates, and bread and butter plates for our dinner plates. I remember being able to eat an entire dinner plate of chinese food all to myself, and when I am not dieting, I still can. Chinese food is another hyper-palatable food which is designed to bypass the natural mechanisms of the body and keep us over eating.

Something else?
I have messed around with our diets before, and I like to do a lot of research, so this wasn't a huge problem for me to design and then move to in terms of life changes. I also did a lot of research into going vegetarian, down to isolating the flavours I need to feel satsfied at meals (I'm into umame in a big way, and salt) so that we could make the transition and be happy. Moving to primarily meat and veg wasn't a problem at all. Writing mealplans monthly gives you ENORMOUS power over your own food, snacks, and time. Also, when I am carb free I no longer snack, and this makes me happy. It's so nice to not be thinking about food all the time, or eating all the time. I was getting so pissed off with eating all the time!

Here's my food diary from last year. It includes the original basics of my diet and research back then, and my weigh ins and daily food. You will also find at the end a number of failed attempts to clean up my act again and the crazy mood swings. You have to be positive and determined to beat back food addictions and try to rewire your comfort eating, and if I'm not 100% ready, then I fail. Every time, we make better progress though, and our slides backwards are not as far as they used to be.
http://www.apinchofhealth.com/forum/vbb/showthread.php?9023-Calli-s-Diary

Here's my food diary for this latest kick off
http://www.myfitnesspal.com/food/diary/callistra

and of course, I am writing everything else here this time. :)

I hope I gave you the answers you wanted, and didn't just ramble too much! I have done so much reading and thinking about this, and sometimes I get a bit carried away. It's some seriously interesting stuff, and so much of it goes against conventional wisdom about what we should and should not eat. Feel free to ask me anything. :)

[yalovetz]

Thanks for answering so generously! This is something I've done a lot of thinking and reading and experimenting about also, but I haven't been nearly as successful as you.

I care about this stuff because I have a family history of conditions like type II diabetes and therefore want to make sure that I establish some good dietary habits now in order to prevent chronic disease in my future.

All the reading I've done has also suggested that a low carb paleo style diet is the best option for weight-loss. This is something I've struggled with because I don't like eating a lot of meat and also have reasons for wanting to eat a low fat diet.

I also have a family history of high cholesterol and heart disease. A strict no-animal-fat diet seems to be effective in me for keeping my cholesterol down. This sort of low fat diet is easiest for me to maintain if I don't eat meat, cheese, eggs, or any dairy products other than low fat milk/yoghurt.

The times I've attempted to move to a low carb diet within those parameters I've felt dreadful - tired, migrainous, hungry, craving sugars all the time. When I allow myself starchy foods like pasta a bread I feel so much better.

I haven't ever tried a heavy meat-based diet though, and it's possible that if I were getting enough protein on the low carb diet then I wouldn't feel so awful. The reason I haven't tried this is because I don't like meat, have ethical reservations about a meat-heavy diet, don't know how to cook meat, and resent the prospect of changing my established eating habits (veg, fruit, and wholewheat heavy) that I like in favour of a diet I don't like the sound of.

Anyway, thanks for talking about this and letting me talk about it. I have some shame and awkwardness about thinking about and experimenting with different dietary habits, especially ones that have the potential for assisting with weight loss, because I feel like it's dangerously close to the mainstream unhealthy "dieting" culture, which I abhor.

[callistra]

The times I've attempted to move to a low carb diet within those parameters I've felt dreadful - tired, migrainous, hungry, craving sugars all the time. When I allow myself starchy foods like pasta a bread I feel so much better.

It can take up to 2 weeks for this to go away, or even longer depending on people's bodies. Often it's done within one week though. And you need to drink a LOT of water. When your default is carbs and always has been, switching away from that takes time for your body to construct or adapt to what is needed. It takes me less time to switch each time.

Also, if you do any reading on hyperpalatable foods, they trigger the reward centers of your brain, inducing good feelings.

it's possible that if I were getting enough protein on the low carb diet then I wouldn't feel so awful.

It's actually fats you should care about, rather than protein. Coconut oil, butter, olive oil... So I consider this a high fat diet, not a high protein diet. There are people who do vegetarian keto diets. It's much harder, but they do it. I haven't done any research into it though, and Reddit is down right now so I can't get to their subreddit for Ketovegetarians!

Also, on the topic of cholesterol I was reading some articles that says that the cholesterol figures are suspect. There's two types of cholesterol (LDL and HDL I think? Not sure? But there's google...) and the cholesterol figures don'd differentiate, whereas they should as one is useful and the other less so. Regardless, cholesterol is used in cell repair, and sometimes elevated cholesterol can be caused by an elevated need to repair damage from inflammation (wheat is an inflammatory, for example).

Anyway, thanks for talking about this and letting me talk about it. I have some shame and awkwardness about thinking about and experimenting with different dietary habits, especially ones that have the potential for assisting with weight loss, because I feel like it's dangerously close to the mainstream unhealthy "dieting" culture, which I abhor.

Yes, that's the other hard part of navigating this sort of thing. I have done the low fat and high carb diets as per dr's instructions and put on weight, and he just said I must be doing it wrong. When you eat for your body, you *want* to do more exercize, and hi carb diets just make me want to sloth around more.

I also worry about my kids' diets - I'm the primary carer, yet I let them eat foods I wouldn't eat - sausages, cheap bread, lollies, "health" food full of sugars and wheat and grains... but I also want them to have the collective memories of their childhoods that all the other kids will have. Mum buys them all these packaged foods, and I don't know what to do about that either. I don't have a decision.

I also think we have to be strong to read and examine all the contrary 'health' information out there and test and refine our decisions. You can find a study or research that will support anything.

We also can't *not* talk about diets and how they affect our bodies either. I'm not coming at this from a "I hate my body and wish it to suffer POV" because I don't - my body is *awesome* and I love each of myb bumps and lumps and hunps. But what we could do is be less fat-shaming as a whole. Being very fat is a sign there's something wrong, but our whole society is devoted to keep us fat.

Thank you so much for your questions. I don't talk about it much, as my real message is "read read read read read test make your own mind up" but for me, this is what I have learnt and what i think works. Unfortunately for me, I will be looking at years and years of arguing with medical staff about health and diet. :(