Never Diet Again - Not This Year 2013

I should really listen to what Angela is saying here. I'll be 60 in a few months and have been on the diet merry-go-round since the day I was born. Even now, while following one of the healthiest food plans on the planet, I'm not losing weight and won't unless I let my calories drop to below 1000/day, something I'm not willing to do, especially since it would put a strain on my already compromised (from decades of dieting and diet pills) heart. 



What can I do, besides point readers to this blog to the official Not This Year web site? Well, it's only the fourth day of the year and already I took a diet book out of my Amazon shopping cart and vowed to not buy ANY food related books this year except for any upcoming cookbooks by Isa Chandra Moskowitz.  No diet books, no other cookbooks, no diet-related videos (I took one of them out of the shopping cart, too). I vow to finally read the MANY fat-accepting books I already own but put aside in favor of diet books I already owned to reread.

And I vow to eat more cookies and other baked goods that taste good, not only are good for me. In fact, as I type I have a batch of raisin-chocolate chip banana bran muffins in the oven, made from this recipe. They're very filling and delicious as well as healthier than bakery made muffins, made with all kinds of artificial ingredients. One of these babies for breakfast and I'm good for hours before even looking for lunch!

You Say You Want A Resolution . . .

Hi, boys and girls! It's that time of year again, the time when every adult (And many of you kiddies) make promises to yourself that you rarely keep. Most people resolve to lose weight, exercise more, eat healthier, better their relationships, and all that good stuff. Kids resolve to do better at school, listen to their parents, get a better score in their favorite video game.

I've even seen people resolve to make no resolutions. Three different comic strips this week used that old joke.

So, what will MY resolutions be for 2012? Let's see . . .

Stop weighing in daily. Why bother?

Allow myself to eat some feast meals without feeling guilty.

Ditto eating from mouth hunger (emotional eating) in times of stress. NOT doing so only adds more stress, which eventually leads to a binge.

Watch more videos and read more books.

NOT buy any weight-loss related videos or books. I *will* allow myself the pleasure of purchasing Dr. McDougall's new book when it's finally released this year - The Starch Solution.

Here's the first chapter for those who care.

The only other books I'll allow myself to buy (as opposed to get from the library) are the few cozy mystery series I'm working on and the rest of the Dresden Files books. I still have 3 to go to be caught up. 





And that's all I'm saying for now. 2011 has been a very crazy, messed-up year, and although I HOPE 2012 will be better, I'm not too optimistic. Fat-phobia is worse than ever, not just in my own life (doctor, extended family, strangers on the street) but in the world in general. The economy still sucks. My son, who graduated with an engineering Master's degree 2 1/2 years ago, still can't get hired to even pick up dog poop and still has about $30k in student loads to pay off, so every spare penny we have goes towards helping him out. And those spare pennies are getting harder to find as prices go up in every facet of life, from a bag of beans to rent on the apartment, while income decreases as companies cut back and tax and insurance rates rise. Everyone and every thing is getting older and in need of repair or replacment, from hormones to car radiators. Winter is coming here and snow won't be far behind. Spring is a long way away. I'm just glad we got the aunt into a nursing home (and her house sold) so she won't be left alone when the roads are closed and nobody can get to her house an hour away to cook, clean, and care for her and her shovel her sidewalks and that long driveway.

Okay, so one good thing to look forward to.

Frustrated and Bored

 I found this old post sitting in my Drafts folder, the original date back in early September.

~~~~~~~~~~~~

I know I've written this probably hundreds of times already, but I'm so frustrated at lack of weight loss and so bored with the bland meals I've been making.

New labwork shows that my thyroid replacement med is at the correct dosage (Doc doesn't care that I still have every symptom of hypothyroid, including a pulse in the 40's). No Hashimoto's disease. No liver problems. No parathyroid disease. But the labs DID show my vitamin d level is plummeting, something it shouldn't do in summer sunshine months, and a positive ANA, which may mean lupus. (sigh)

And what to eat? I had a few lapses in the low-fat vegan food plan, mostly because of being away from home for a good part of the day unexpectedly while caring for the elderly aunt with Alzheimer's disease (Who was finally admitted to a nursing home just 3 weeks ago), and a recent partaking of green smoothies, which are high in fruit as well as greens, which raised my triglyceride level. My HDL went down a bit, LDL went up a bit. But those lapses were no more in number or different from food consumption from previous lapses before other lab tests.

I also gained about 6 pounds in the 6 months between visits.

After getting the lab results I tweaked the food plan a bit to provide for blander, more boring foods. The idea was to make food so unpleasurable I won't eat so much of it. At least that's Dr. McDougall's philosophy - monotonous meals means less pleasure from them so you naturally eat less of them. Of course, it backfires. If a food is not tasty I still eat it, then go in search of better tasting food and eat my fill (or over-fill) of that to get the memory of the monotonous food out of my memory.

So I started eating even more off program foods. Cheese and roast beef sandwiches have had a particular pull. Or more higher fat/salt choices of on-plan foods, like nuts and stews.

And of course, every other web forum I go to tells me to run away from the starch based plant food diet as fast as I can, to avoid gluten, avoid starches, if I want to ever lose any weight. A few cardiologists' sites even say it's better to eat low fat dairy and meats than whole grains and potatoes. Are they trying to drum up business for their professions? They all offer links to as many peer-reviewed articles proving their way of eating is perfectly healthy, that meats and most fats don't raise cholesterol and people haven even lowered their cholesterol levels on their food plans; either that or they say cholesterol levels have nothing to do with cardiovascular health. They, too, show cardiograms with arteries clearing after a week weeks on their diets, just like Ornish and Esselstyn do.

The Last Heart Attack on CNN

This show was pre-empted a number of times due to unforseen factors, and when they did air it it was unannounced so the people who wanted to see it didn't, so I was so happy to see that CNN posted it on-line. So sit back, grab yourself a cup of tea, and watch this hour-long presentation.

How It Is

Today's Hagar the Horrible comic shows how life is when on the McDougall food plan, when people continue to gain weight and are told to increase calorie dense foods, i.e. eat more green & yellow veggies, especially salads.

International No Diet Day

Today is the day we fat people are supposed to proclaim in one loud voice that we will no longer be pushed around by society, that we love our bodies as they are, that we realize the futility of starving ourselves in the name of weight loss and will not do it any more!

So why am I more obsessed than ever today with the scale and my food plan?

Why did I weigh myself as soon as I got out of the bathroom and do a silent cheer when the number was a pound lower than yesterday, which unfortunately was a pound higher than the day before and 12 pounds higher than January 1st?

Why did I then drag open my food journal and menus to see how I can tweak things today to make sure I lose another pound instead of regaining that same one back? In fact, since February I’ve been bouncing up and down the same 5 pound range, whether I follow the food plan strictly and drown myself in water or eat pizza and bakery Texas-sized muffins, sometimes losing on pizza days and gaining on green/yellow veg only days.

Why did I forgo the very low impact workout I had planned because my sciatica has made all movement this week painful, thanks to 11 hours of standing in a hospital ER Sunday with the elderly relative, for a faster, high impact one that’s supposed to burn off more calories? And why did I already choose which strength training video to do tomorrow so I could add a fourth toning day, because as we all know, the more muscle the more calorie burning?

Why do I even want to lose weight now? Studies done show that it’s really not healthy for women over age 50 to lose substantial amounts of weight.

The data show that for these adults there is little relation between weight and mortality, except for those with a very low weight (BMI of 20 or below), who have higher death rates. A low BMI was associated with mortality even after control for a wide variety of measures, including short-term unintended weight loss. A high BMI showed no association with mortality, and the variables considered had little effect except that long-term weight loss had a profound effect on results. People who lost 10 percent of their body weight after age 50 had a relatively high death rate.

So why bother? Even my primary care physician hasn’t mentioned my weight the past 3 visits, after almost 30 years of harping on me about it. My cholesterol and glucose levels are the envy of his practice, even though I have a BMI in the 40’s. I follow a healthy, low-fat starch-based (veg) food plan 95% of the time and get in at least a half hour of exercise daily. The only times I go off the plan are when I get frustrated at the lack of weight loss, then pay the price with achy joints and swollen sinuses. This is better than most Americans of any size do.

So why do I care what the numbers on a piece of machinery say?

Today, I’m going to enjoy my food. I just got 2 new books in the mail – Happy Herbivore    and Unprocessed    – both full of recipes geared towards the McDougall food plan. I already found loads of new things I want to try from both books, although I found Unprocessed to have a large amount of raw recipes and way too many sweets and nuts than any sane McDougaller should even consider eating. Still, now and then as a treat they should be fine, if I can convince my husband to have some with me so I don’t eat too many and work my way into hypoglycemia again.

And I’m going to try get rid of the scale again. I can’t get rid of it completely, as my son and husband do climb on it occasionally, but I want it in a place that’s hard for me to get to so I’m not jumping on it every morning. This way I can concentrate on being a health fatty instead of trying to make this already healthy body thinner.

Need A Fresh Start

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.

Follow-Up on Doctor's Appointment

The Vitamin D was so low it didn't register on the instrument used at the lab, the official count written as "below 4." I'm to stay on the Vitamin D 5,000 iu daily and repeat lab work in 3 months.

Lipids, including triglycerides, were perfect, so the doc said NOT to add meat, dairy, fish or eggs back to my diet, that with the supplements I'll be just fine. No need to see a dietitian, because after talking to me he realizes I already eat better than any food plan they could give me, and I know the science behind everything I eat. I have to thank Dr. McDougall for that. :)

TSH was 0.5. Unbelievable, considering the way I feel, but the doc said all my complaints, including the bouts of hypoglycemia I get, could all be related to the Vitamin D. Time will tell.

He's now no longer concerned about my weight being what it is, but did add that I might lose a few pounds once the supplement kicks in. I already dropped 4 pounds since Saturday's weigh-in. At least my bones and muscles should stop aching so much so I can exercise more so I can be healthier if not lighter. I'm nursing some wicked shoulder and upper back aches right now.

He said once again that he knows I'm sticking to my food plan because of the excellent lab results, that if I was eating off-plan the cholesterol would be much higher.

NOW he believes me! Just like now he believes all the aches and pains I've been having all these years. He has something measurable, in black and white, and not just constant complaints from a human.

D'oh, Indeed!

The scale keeps moving in the wrong direction.

Yes, some non-McDougall foods have crept back into my diet, as well as some higher-fat "approved" foods, like peanut butter and tofu. But I blame a lot of the 5 pound weight re-gain on the lack of exercise due to PAIN.

I posted back in August about the doctor visit where he changed my thyroid med. My last visit a few weeks ago he increased it again because of all the hypo symptoms I continue to have, and besides the over-whelming fatigue, the muscle pains affect me the most. While there he also gave me the yearly flu vaccination and an osteopathic treatment that's supposed to help prevent side effects, because when I had the shot last year I wound up with a 103º fever and the panic from that raised my blood pressure to dangerously high levels again.

Well, the cure was worse than the disease once again. No reaction to the shot but the next morning I couldn't move my head, I had so much neck and shoulder pain! Twice daily Aleeve, many hours with a heating pad with moist heat, and gentle movements like qigong instead of the aerobic type of exercises and three weeks later I still have right shoulder pains. This is on top of my usual aches and pains from the spinal arthritis, neuritis, sciatica and various arthritic joints. I did manage a few gentle and slower Leslie Sansone workouts, but many days I had to stop after 5 minutes, the sciatica pain was too bad.

Today was the first time I was able to do a complete 50 minute very low impact Richard Simmons workout, my all-time favorite on, Silver Foxes. And now, an hour later, my arms and legs are still rubbery and shaky! It's going to take a while to get back to the level I was at last month.

Food-wise, I'm still debating which is the best food plan to follow. The no-added fat vegan diet didn't do that much for my cholesterol levels - the red yeast rice is what brought the numbers down - but the cardiac cath I had last year showed beautifully clear arteries so I know it's doing some good, even after Summer 1999's foray into unrestricted eating, thanks to the Overcoming Overeating philosophy (White Castle sliders and onion rings, donuts, cookies and cakes almost daily, real Italian sausages and turkey hot dogs - all my favorite foods).

I'm drooling just thinking about those foods!

But I know I can never eat them ever again, not if I want to get healthier physically. Mentally, that's another story, for I live to eat, and knowing I will never be allowed to eat another hot dog or piece of cake for the rest of my life is so depressing that life may not be worth living. I didn't even have cake for my birthday a few weeks ago, but that's nothing new. Most of my life I didn't have birthday cakes because I was forever on a calorie restricted diet, usually only 1000, even as a child in elementary school. I only started having birthday cakes when my son was young and he insisted mommy have a cake, because everybody gets a cake for their birthday. Yeah, right.

sigh

I keep watching videos from Dr. McDougall and his associates to get me back in the right frame of mind, to get back to enjoying (or at least tolerating) healthy no added fat starch based veg eating again, but it's not working. Even Jeff Novick's video where he's actually cooking only piqued my interest for a few minutes, until I remembered how those meals actually tasted.

Not bad, just not exciting. I'm the type of person who will seek out more foods to eat if what I did eat for a meal was unpleasant, unfulfilling, unexciting or bland. Dr. McDougall doesn't like exciting foods. He feels we would eat as a recreational activity, overeat, if food was exciting. He says we should strive for monotony in our food plans, to treat food as a medical necessity, taken in the smallest dose possible to sustain life. He even says to fill up on bland things like salad and brothy soups before getting to the cooked vegetables and starch portions of our meals so we fill up on the very low calorie, high water things so we don't eat as much of the filling foods. Yeah, I do that and I'm starving within an hour of the meal because the watery salad veggies and broth are already digested and out of my stomach and now it's empty again. Know what he says to do in this situation? Eat another salad and bowl of brothy soup.

sigh

I'm hungry. And tired. And achy. Brothy soup is not going to give me what I need.

The Chef and the Dietician Videos

Chef AJ, as she's known as, has been one of Dr. McDougall's "Celebrity Chefs" for a little while now, and besides working on her own cookbook she's now posting videos of various foods. Unfortunately, all of them, so far, have on the richer side of the caloric density chart, so those of us with weight to lose really aren't supposed to even think about eating them.

Sorry for Posting Delay

Haven't been posting about my weight loss because there really hasn't been any.

Yes, I'm still following the , and when I had lab work in June my lipids were wonderful - total cholesterol under 150, triglycerides was almost normal at 164, but my TSH was doubled what it was back in March. Because of that my doc took me off the Armour thyroid and back onto Synthroid and increased the dose by half.

It really hasn't helped, as my weight is still yo-yoing back and forth the same five pounds it has since March. I even tried cutting way back on calories, dipping under 1000 many days, with no change.

I can't really increase my exercise or else I injure myself. Since that post about the chest muscle I've been back to the doc for a back injury and yes, did something to that chest muscle again. I can't work longer, either, as my podiatrist is already having fits at the state of my feet just doing the walking I'm already doing.

You would think with 130 excess pounds to lose that a combination hour of cardio and calories as low as 800 per day the weight would melt off, but it doesn't. So frustrating!

One good thing has happened since the last posts - we got ourselves a new computer. Finally. We're keeping our old 1998 Gateway also. In fact, it's sitting right here, side by side to this new Dell. When I use one I move the keyboard for the other over to the side. I'm slowly transferring data files over, re-installing/upgrading old software, learning Windows 7 and finding out there are a lot of things I don't need to install because they're included with the OS. Cool!

We already crashed it once - Blue Screen of Death after being plugged in only 3 hours. My BP meter also gave me a blue screen of death when my pressure went up to over 200/100 right after that. It took about 3 days before the pressure went back to normal and chest tightness stopped. Was it cardiac or asthma related? Who knows. Even if I did go to the doc he would basically tell me to calm down, walk it off.

For September:
Super strict with the food. Tiny portions on ONLY MWLP approved foods, so no bread or pasta, no tofu, no dried fruit or juices, only 2 servings of fruit total per day. Much smaller portions. I know Dr. McDougall doesn't agree with portion control in most of his lectures and newsletter articles, but back in November 2005 he did say that volume eaters, people like me, NEED a restricted portion/calorie food plan in order to lose weight. He praises the Rice Diet. I tried it - I starved. Come on - only 800 calories a day?? WAY too low for humans!

The Rice Diet, like the McDougall Program, has changed throughout the years. Just 2 weeks ago another new version was released, along with a new book, Rice Diet Renewal . They even revamped the web site to go along with it, although many things are missing and a lot of links still don't work. I'm debating whether or not to buy it, but after reading what I did in the preview on the publisher's web site, I probably won't. It looks like most of the book is testimonials of people who lost weight while at the Rice House, the people who lived on 800 calories a day while living in Durham and attending mandatory sessions at the House and getting in mandatory hours of exercise a day. I've read too many other testimonials from people who regained every single pound within 2 years of leaving the Rice House. It's easy to lose weight while institutionalized and being handed all your meals and forced to see the doctor or nurse on a daily basis, much harder in real life. As I said many times before, everybody can lose weight as long as they stay on a restricted food plan. But who can stay on one for the rest of their life?

Better get moving - I need to install MIRC and hit an OA on-line meeting. I haven't been to one since we got the new computer.

Quickie Update

Still following McDougall but in Rice Diet sized portions in my quest to get twenty pounds off between cardiologist appointments. Eating under 1000 calories of mainly vegetables and some oatmeal a day really isn't all that healthy, but my primary care doc said I can most likely treat this cardiologist visit as the last one, so if starving myself for a month will prevent another one of his tirades, so be it. My primary care doc was very satisfied with my weight loss when he saw me three weeks ago, even though it was only 7 pounds down in three months. He knows how hard it is for this sluggish body of mine to release even half a pound! To know that I've lost almost 45 pounds since last summer is miraculous!

After the appointment next week I'll go back to regular McDougall foods, mostly MWLP, in large enough amounts that I'm not constantly thinking and dreaming about food. If I regain some of those pounds, so be it, but starvation dieting to please a doctor is NOT a healthy way to live.

Forks over Knives Trailer

"The feature film Forks Over Knives examines the profound claim that most, if not all, of the degenerative diseases that afflict us can be controlled, or even reversed, by rejecting our present menu of animal-based and processed foods."

Coming Summer 2010

Although I said I was going back to strict McDougall, it was more like 50-50 instead of my usual 90-10, and my body is paying for it with all kinds of aches and pains, blood sugar dips, brain fog out the wazoo, and now my blood pressure is higher than it ever was. I had a nice McDougall soup for dinner last night and every 2 hours had to get up to hit the bathroom. At 3:30am it hit again and I rolled over and stood up and WHOA!

The room started spinning!


I immediately sat back down and started to panic, even though this has happened to me in the past, and thanks to my very sensitive inner ears, will happen again in the future. But at the time, the tailspin of panic sent my blood pressure soaring to 210/104, stroke levels. I eventually calmed myself down enough to go to the bathroom (or else I would pee in my pants and panic me even more) and got back to bed, but by then sleep was out of the question. By 4:30am the dizziness was completely gone, my pulse rate was back to normal, and my chest no longer felt as if were going to burst open from the force of my heart beat. It was at this time I got out of bed and checked my blood pressure and got that reading - who knows how high it was back when my head was spinning?! I've been checking it every hour as the morning goes on and the last reading was back to my normal of around 140/70. Whew!

But what, besides rising too fast, caused the BP to go - and stay - that high? My money is on yesterday's bad food choices, as there were more bad than good ones. For breakfast I finished off the hash brown patties that were in the freezer. That was 6 patties. With about a half cup of ketchup, and not a lower sodium variety, either. Lunch was a balogna and cheese sandwich, and not a lower sodium version of the lunch meat. Dinner was a little something called Paul's 2-Cup Soup from a post on the official McDougall forums that I made with no salt added tomatoes and salt-free broth, thank goodness. But to go with the soup I made a loaf of white flour potato bread that got not just buttermilk powder in it but 4 teaspoons of butter. And because veggie soup and white bread digests fast, when I was hungry again a few hours later I had myself a banana with peanut butter.

Now, why is my blood pressure sky high? Do I really need to ask that question?

Breakfast today was my old-faithful oatmeal & raisins with some brown sugar mixed in. Lunch will be veggies, rice and garbanzo beans with some McDougall Right Foods pea soup poured over the top. Dinner is going to be a McDougallized version of Nava Atlas' Pasta Twists with Cauliflower and Spinach, using California Blend frozen veggies (cauli, broccoli and carrots) instead of the plain cauliflower, and no spinach, mainly because I was positive I bought spinach but the freezer ate it sometimes between Saturday and today. My son was happy about that because he really doesn't like spinach all that much. And if I want a snack tonight, well, I'm thinking of making another banana bread. Maybe this time my husband will leave enough so we can have it more than twice.

I keep saying I have to treat my food plan as if it were medically prescribed, like my thyroid and asthma meds. It's the only way it'll sink in to this swollen throbbing brain.

I took a deep breath . . .

and calmed down a bit. The more I read in the official Thin Within forums the more I see that many others have gone through exactly what I'm going through. For instance, the list in this thread would be identical to mine, except substitute "McDougall" for "Atkins" and "Foodmover" for "Zone."

And the feelings about not being deserving of a thin body that's in this thread looks very familiar - I probably felt this way for decades.

After yesterday's rambling post I spent a lot of time obsessing over "healthy eating" and choosing the "right" foods to eat, going as far as making up a pot of soup because I felt that was all I deserved to eat. I made plans to go back to strict McDougalling, heck, maybe even forgoing my pasta and going on MWLP to jumpstart the weight loss. Then I thought long and hard and realized I didn't want to go back on that food plan because it might lead to weight loss again, as it did once in the past when I followed the super strict form of it.

No, I wanted to go back on McDougall because it's an "eat to satisfaction" food plan and I could fill my stomach again. I like the sensation of being full, even if it is only veggies and rice. Thin Within eating leaves me hungry even after a meal because we're to stop at a 5 out of 10, eat only half of what we usually eat to start, to live in a constant state of hunger. To live the rest of my life with a level 5 being the fullest my stomach ever gets would be sheer torture. I would constantly be thinking of food and how much longer I have to wait until I finally get down to zero again so I could eat again.

This web page compares and comments on some of the popular diet plans out there, and the author has some harsh words about plans like WDW and TW:

Similar to Weigh Down, Thin Within tells members to only eat when they are hungry. The program tracks eating patterns based on a hunger scale where 0 denotes real hunger and 5 denotes fullness. The scale is a way to gage "God-given signals of hunger and fullness." There are no dietary restraints or forbidden foods uses.

According to Gerbstadt, fasting can be unhealthy especially for people who have diabetes and who have a history of binging.

"Food plans that don’t have you eating three to five hours is probably not going to give you a lot of energy – you’re going to have highs and lows in your blood glucose," states Gerbstadt.

"So, any diet that tells you to wait until you’re hungry and it happens to be in six to seven hours, you won’t be at your optimum whether you realize it or not. I’m not against the idea of waiting until you’re hungry but you should be within every five hours."

Because I do have a history of BED (binge eating disorder) and hypoglycemia, and because I can go 12 or more hours without my hunger hitting a zero (and because I feel hungrier after eating than before), I think Thin Within may not be right for me.

As I wrote the other day, I will continue to read the books and see where it takes me, but right now the tide seems to be taking me in a different direction.

Hit Me With A Clue Stick

Actually, I found out it's called the "club of condemnation" in Thin Within parlance. We're told not to beat ourselves up, but to "observe and correct" ourselves when we eat out of anything other than a zero-level hunger or fail to stop before we hit a 5.

But my God is not the flower-child, peace-love-happiness God of born again Christians. No, my God is the vengeful God of the Old Testament, the God who drowns babies, tortures Job and taunts Moses. This is why I had a hard time with Overeaters Anonymous, too. Ask God to help you? My God would toss me down on the ground, stomp on my head, and tell me to pull myself up and take care of my own problems, then like a Marine drill sergeant tell me to drop and give him 20 (Our Fathers, not push-ups in this case).

I spent the three day weekend following Thin Within - not eating until I hit a zero, stopping at 5 or below. I ate what I wanted to eat, including the cake my husband bought for Valentine's Day, even though I told him not to. "Trust God" and follow the rules? I broke the first rule and got on the scale this morning and saw I gained 3 1/2 pounds in the past 3 days. Yeah, this is the God I know. And I've spent the past decade trying to get rid of Him and accept the God within that Tao teaches.The more I read about Tao De Ching and the writings about Jesus Christ, the more I see that the writers of the Bible just rewrote a lot of the old Chinese writings to fit into a new religion, a new deity, just like they changed other pagan holidays and celebrations around to fit in Christmas and Easter with the pagan calendars.

What to do next? Continue along this track and trust that it all turns out right in the end? Trust God? Trust Tao? Trust Dr. McDougall? I already know I can't trust myself if weight loss is my goal.

Interesting article by Dr. McDougall in December's newsletter called Fat Vegan. It's worth a read.

It does seem that Dr. McDougall is eliminating just about ALL prepared foods from his allowable foods list. Boca Burgers have been allowed since the days of his The McDougall Plan book, and now they're taboo. He's now against all mock meats, including seitan. Other foods that were allowed before and are now gone are soy cheeses and Gimme Lean. In previous articles he mentioned how tofu shouldn't be eaten, either, yet Mary McDougall still writes recipes using it. Confusing.

Damn Donuts! And Day 30 of 30

I stepped on the sale yesterday. I didn't want to do it, especially not when fully dressed and after a 24 ounce glass of water, 12 ounce mug of coffee and cup of oatmeal plus fruit breakfast, but it was calling me. When my husband went into the bathroom I gently removed the item of torture and placed in on the flat kitchen floor, took in a deep breath, and stepped on.

It reads 5 pounds heavier than it did at 5 in the morning on November 21st.

I'll get an official reading tomorrow morning at 5am, after my husband goes back to work. I'm certain of a gain - one doesn't share in a few dozen donuts and fudge brownies over a ten day period, plus a few very salty meals (like Chinese food, even though it was low fat and vegan) and not suffer the consequences - but I'm sure it won't be a five pound gain.

I put the sale back into its lair under the bed and promised myself to stick to strict McDougall MWLP until I lose not just those 5 but an additional 130 pounds. We were on our own for dinner again so I made a pot of Broccoli Cheese soup from a post on the McDougall forums earlier this year, and Rainbow Skillet Medley, a MWLP recipe.

Three hours later my husband comes into the room with the dregs of the donuts and insists we finish them off. Like a good little wife I did as he requested. At least those things are now GONE and even he realizes we really can't handle them any more at our age. If either of us feels like something sweet, more than just a piece of fruit, it's going to be made from a McDougall-legal recipe.

Here's to a healthier December!

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!

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.