CAUTION: WHINING AHEAD
Ignore all those trackers over there on the left - nothing has been updated in weeks although both of the current ones should show the numbers up, instead of the weight ticker going down.
Ever since the Great Celebration Season started last Fall - the time when everyone in the family has a birthday, our wedding anniversary - then Christmas & New Years, and now we just had Saint Valentine's Day, coupled with the news of my vitamin deficiency, I've not been a good McDougaller and the weight has been creeping up again, up almost 10 pounds in 4 months. I've not only started using oil in my cooking but eggs, dairy and even meat have snuck onto my plate.
I've also been experiencing increased muscle and joint pains. Many of these are arthritis-related, some may be vitamin-deficiency related, and some may also be fat related. Increased pains means a decrease in exercise, in both intensity and duration.
Less exercise as well as increased intake of the wrong foods always equals increased weight and blood pressure.
This has got to stop before I do some major damage to this body!
The other day I decided to get back to strict McDougalling, then poured olive oil in the pan when I made hash browns. (sigh)
I bought over $20 worth of salad fixings - which in this economy wasn't much, just a few bags of pre-mixed greens, a bag of romaine, and some carrots, none of which were organic. I think I made three salads so far, preferring to eat heavier fare at lunch and with my husband doing mandatory over-time that meant we ate dinner later than usual, I was too hungry to fill up on salad first and wanted to dig right in to the main dish at dinner time.
I have my dinner menus made out through mid-April, most days have MWLP-appropriate meals planned, others okay for the regular plan, like our weekly pasta days. I'm trying to get away from overly processed foods, like soy analogs, but I already have some in the freezer so will use them up, because I can't afford to throw them away and know no other vegetarians to give them away to.
I'm in a dangerous place right now. I'm bored with veg foods in general. A few decades ago I started eating vegetarian, then the McDougall way, solely for weight loss purposes. I found I had to tweak the plan, even the MWLP version, to keep calories way down if I wanted to lose any weight, although a few others on the official forums said they "easily" lost weight following the plan as-is, but then they mention how they had to greatly reduce the amount of carbs they took in - including potatoes and rice - if they wanted to lose any weight and had to avoid things like bread, pasta, and even more than a piece or 2 of fruit a day. There's a thread going on there right now where a few members are purposely following the "Hasty" version of MWLP, hoping it spurs weight loss, "hasty" meaning that more than half their daily intake is green and yellow vegetables and the starches are the small amount that's left. Very few in the challenge are able to stick to it, and I don't see any mention of great weight loss numbers.
Because of all these, I sometimes think I should switch to a different food plan, one that will give me the variety of foods I want, like dairy and meats, and will give me the vitamins and minerals I need to prevent any future nutritional deficiencies. I spent hours looking over various programs, like South Beach and the Foodmover again. This is why those foods made their way back on my plate, as I mentioned above. But then I remembered that yes, I'm eating more of the foods I love, but again, if I want to lose weight while eating them I have to really cut back on the amounts, even though South Beach, like the McDougall Programs, say portion control isn't necessary, that as long as you eat the "right" foods weight loss will occur.
At one point I got so fed up and contemplated giving up on ever achieving weight loss like Margaret Cho once did and re-embracing fat acceptance. Even if I never lose another pound, even going back to McDougall, I can still follow the Health At Every Size philosophy, right?
No it won't. It's still a matter of calories in/calories out. For a woman my age, my stage of life (post-menopausal), my state of health (all the arthritis and hormone deficiencies which cause metabolic imbalances), my "calories out", calories burned off per day, is a very low number, so to lose weight I have to eat a very low number of calories. A very low number of calories of a very low fat whole food starch-based food plan like McDougall is a heck of a lot more food than South Beach or plain old calorie counting of the Standard American Diet. The successful McDougallers, as I mentioned, even limit their calories, some using Weight Watchers Points! to help them keep track.
I KNOW what I have to do. Now I just have to DO it. Again. NOW!
Just in time for this crisis of faith comes a new video by Dr. Doug Lisle called The Continuum of Evil. Here's the description:
"If you have ever worried that you might not be able to follow a healthy diet and lifestyle program, Dr. Lisle’s lecture on "The Continuum of Evil" is a must-see for you. In this entertaining and eye-opening lecture, Dr. Lisle explains that your success doesn’t require you to be perfect, but that knowing how to score your "misses" on a "continuum of evil" can make all the difference. "
Sounds like a lecture I could use about now. I ordered it as soon as I got the notice of its existence and I'm hoping it gets here today or tomorrow, as Monday is a holiday and no mail so then the soonest would be Tuesday. In the meantime, I'm rewatching a lot of the other videos from Dr. McDougall that I have to get myself back in the right mind-set.
I shouldn't have gone to that Margaret Cho post again. It makes too much sense. Maybe the secret to weight loss IS to stop worrying about it, like not only Margaret but the whole "Overcoming Overeating" and "Intuitive Eating" people say. Why not? I spent over 55 years worrying about every morsel of food I put into my mouth, so maybe I should try a few months (to the rest of my life) NOT worrying. I'm not naive enough to believe that I'll "eventually" lose weight, like those authors claim, but I do believe I'll live a less stressful life.
