Richard Simmons and Anorexia

Every now and then, in his Message of the Day, Richard Simmons reminds people how he was anorexic in his younger days and would go on fasts and even purge. Every now and again he also tells people that even though he lost his weight the unhealthy way, we shouldn't follow his example, only his current food and exercise plans. He eats 1600 calories and exercises a minimum of an hour a day of cardio, plus 3 days a week weight training and possibly his "day of rest" he walks an hour.

People who follow his food and exercise plans do lose weight, but Richard has also mentioned a number of times that he meets people a year or more later than many have regained all their weight because they no longer follow his plans. Could it be because according to his charts, an average-height woman at her goal weight should only be eating 1200 calories a day, a level about 200 calories below what the World Health Organization says people around the world should be eating for optimal health? And when a body's intake is consistently below it's needs it slows the metabolism down and retains even more of those calories put into it, so when a person who has been on a restricted food plan finally snaps and has a binge (fully explained in the Overcoming Overeating book) their body gains more weight than if they had just eaten normally all along.

Dr. McDougall, on the other hand, reminds us in his MWLP book and lectures that the body is a magnificent machine that knows what it needs. We don't over-breathe, he says, and if we only ate the foods he deems safe we can't over-eat, either, and that by eating only the allowable foods our bodies will naturally go to their correct weight. Well, many of us have proven otherwise and not lost and have even gained weight eating only MWLP-legal foods, and no, we haven's let things slip in, like oil, higher fat foods, or flour products. Not even the couscous (which was added as as editing mistake) or tortillas (which he allows at the live-in program), ONLY foods listed in the MWLP book. For some of us, we just ate too many calories; for others, once they switched jobs and were no longer active for 12 hours a day, the weight first stopped coming off then started coming back on. Dr. McDougall told us we should eat less starch and more green/yellow vegetables. Gee, then it's more Eat to Live than the starch-based McDougall program, isn't it? And for those of us who still continued to gain, he recommended the Rice Diet - the original one, as followed at the Rice House in Durham, NC to this day, that is 600 - 800 calories of only 1 serving of starch (3 ADA exchanges) and 3 fruit exchanges for all three meals a day. Anyone can lose weight for a while at that calorie level, but eventually metabolisms slow down enough that people have even gained while still eating 800 calories and exercising an hour each day - whey they had the energy to, that is.

So what's the point of this post? No idea, except to bemoan once again how fat I am and the depressing reminders that everything I've done to lose this bulk has failed, from the attempts of my first doctors who had my mom water down my formula when I was a newborn infant to my current physician who refuses to give me enough thyroid hormone replacement to keep my TSH in the normal reference range, insist I restrict myself to 1000 calories and do a minimum of 60 to 90 minutes a day of cardio exercise, then gets angry at me when I can't eat that little and can't exercise that much without making myself ill and come into his office showing a gain instead of a loss. I'm due to go back to him again now for an official weight loss check-up visit (I've seen in in-between for other problems). He already knows that I haven't lost any weight since the last official visit. He knows I still feel like crap from my hypothyroid. He already knows I've been in pain and unable to exercise as much as he wants. So what's the point of even going?

And what do I do next? Do I do again what I did before the last weight loss check-up and starve myself by eating half the amount of oatmeal at breakfast and only salad and soup for dinner for a few weeks and then make the appointment when the scale has finally shown a loss? Do I go and tell him where to shove his scale and get off the merry go round and get labeled non-compliant so no other doc will ever want to go near me in the future?

I hate living like this, but I hate to lose this doc. As much as I disagree with him on so many things, his practice is still one of the best in the city. We can get an appointment the same day, we can talk on the phone with one of the doctors without charge, we can easily get referrals and copies of our paperwork, and with 5 doctors in the practice there's always someone around.

I guess I better go change my menus for the next few weeks so there's soup for dinner every night. Either that or start reading up on the Rice Diet (home version) again.

Two More Food Holidays to Go

Yesterday went quite well, with me staying 100% McDougall for all three meals and dessert, too! I figured I ate enough crap during the rest of vacation, and since I had already planned a McDougall-legal Thanksgiving I may as well stick with the plan.

Black Friday today. We spent our money at the laundromat instead of a mall, We'll spend the rest of the afternoon - my husband's last few hours of vacation time - at home. Our son went out so we have the house to ourselves. Knowing us we'll spend the alone-time either watching bad horror movies or catch up on the past few seasons of Scrubs. It'll be back on sooner than we think!

Happy Thanksgiving 2008

Who Knows What Tomorrow Will Bring

Food-wise, that is. Yeah, I know it's Thanksgiving, the great American holiday when the rest of the country eats like we binge eaters would do every day, but in this family we really don't eat anything special or make any special plans except for the taping of the Macy's Parade for me to watch Monday when I get the house to myself again.

And we can sleep late. That's always a good thing when we usually wake up before 5am on work days.

The kid wants mac and cheese for lunch and turkey burgers for the holiday dinner; I would prefer chili, and hubby doesn't care, as long as it's hot and plentiful. I have ingredients for all of those meals, plus a heck of a lot more. Being that I'm in charge of cooking, what I'll probably do is put on a nice big pot of vegetable soup early in the day so the house smells like heaven. Hubby will have tuna salad and the kid his mac and cheese for lunch and I'll have my traditional rice and veggies meal. For dinner we'll have the soup, salad, stuffing, French fried potatoes, turkey burgers for the guys and Boca burgers for me. If we're still awake and plan on watching television as a family later on (We rented Hancock so maybe we'll pop that on) the kid will have chocolate ice cream for his dessert and hubby and I will finish up the stale donuts that he bought the other day.

Sounds like a plan.

Jeff Novick YouTube, plus Overcoming Overeating & McDougalling?

His videos were there all along, but this time he made his own YouTube channel and has a few videos he says are rough drafts of his lectures. I haven't been able to see them yet (Need to borrow a faster computer or I'd be here all day waiting for one to load) but someone said the woman in the videos with him is his cousin.

And on another topic, I'm still trying to figure out how to mesh the principles of both McDougall (or just veganism itself) and Overcoming Overeating together. One restricts half the food in the world, the other says no food/food group is to be avoided except when it comes to your personal health (like diabetics avoiding sugar, celiacs avoiding gluten, people with allergies avoiding their allergenic foods). Maybe once the new group gets a bit better established I'll toss it out there, as avoiding fats and high protein foods but eating the OO way towards all the allowable McDougall foods are for personal health reasons.

30 in 30 - Day 24

But being today is day 1 of my husband's vacation I won't be able to write a long, or even anything bordering on intelligent, post today. We've got some local shopping to do and a few DVD's to catch up on, and perhaps we'll also take naps this afternoon. Excitement, huh?

Overcoming Overeating - New Yahoogroup

I've mentioned Overcoming Overeating a number of times to help curb my binge eating behaviors. For those of you who never heard of it before, here's how the authors of the books describe their philosophy from one of the FAQ questions:

Q: If I let go of my food restrictions, won't I just eat everything in sight?!

A: This is a very common fear of people just starting the OO approach. Everyone naturally assumes that if they let go of the food restrictions that they THINK have kept them from overeating, they'll start eating and never stop! However, in reality, the food restrictions were CAUSING the overeating (binging) and by eliminating the restrictions, we can put an end to the "diet-binge cycle". Once we realize we can eat whatever we want, whenever we are hungry (either stomach or mouth), that urgent need to "eat it all NOW" diminishes greatly! To our surprise and amazement, most of us find ourselves eating much less than we previously did while trying to "control" our eating.

Basically it's non-dieting, intuitive eating, natural eating, and all that jazz.

Over the past year or two I got a lot of information from the ladies who post on the "official" OO Support group on Yahoogroups, but lately there's been a lot of tension over there as the owner and one of the moderators are VERY strict about off-topic posts, or even those that the poster thought was on-topic but didn't suit the owner's narrow definition of being on-topic. Because of that, over the years many people started their own Overcoming Overeating groups on Yahoo and Google Groups, but all seem to have been take over by spam. I found out yesterday that another group was just started, Friends of Overcoming Overeating, and the owner of it is urging those of us who have joined to let others know about it so the group can grow.

So, if you've ever had a problem with binge eating or compulsive overeating and found Overeaters Anonymous doesn't work for you, why not give Overcoming Overeating a try and join the new group if you haven't read any of the OO books or the official group if you have (The owner of the official group won't let anyone join unless they can vouch that they've read both Overcoming Overeating and When Women Stop Hating Their Bodies. The new group has no such requirement).