The World Is Spinning By

First of all, I'm sick. It started coming on a few days ago, that sinus yuckiness, the congested and fuzzy head, poor sleep. Yesterday it settled into a full blown sinus infection, complete with the aggravated tinnitus and weird smell in my nose. I'm also a bit on the dizzy side today. A double dose of dizziness - the changing air pressure always makes me dizzy and sinus infections do, too. I'm sitting here at the keyboard holding on because I'm listing to the left with these clogged ears affecting my equilibrium.

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.

Curses! Foiled Again!

I got taken in again with a weight loss plan. Don't eat until your hunger hits zero, stop eating when (or before) you hit a 5 out of 10, eat one bite more than what will satisfy your hunger and you're being a glutton and gluttony is one of the 7 Deadly Sins and you'll make Jesus and God cry, but God loves you anyway because he made Jesus die for you so remember this the next time you want to take a bite to eat if your hunger isn't exactly at zero but don't feel guilty about all this because God (and Jesus) loves you anyway.

ARGH!!

As I wrote in another post, it's an eating disorder waiting to happen, as not eating anything is the safest (theologically) thing to do. I just can't do this any more, even though I've only been doing it this way for a week and didn't even finish reading the Thin Within book and the other book hasn't even arrived yet. I'll probably continue with the reading, but I doubt it's going to change my mind.

Thin Within doesn't seem to be a good program for life-long Catholics. We're into rules and regulations, guilt, confession and punishments for our mis-deeds and sins, and if it's a sin to eat when not at zero or eating beyond a five, a Catholic not following the program 100% would be in confession and doing penance 24/7 and still walk around in a constant state of fear and guilt..

Perhaps I should go back to reading the Overcoming Overeating books, instead. No fear, no guilt, and you still learn to get back in touch with natural hunger signals without all these silly rules.

Viable Food Plan or Eating Disorder in Training?

I don't know when I'm hungry. I get a bit spacy-headed after not eating for 12 or more hours, but there's no change in my stomach's feelings. Not until I figure I better eat something, hungry or not. Once I do start to eat, I feel I've had "enough" after just a few bites. Is that a 5? Was I right for stopping? Should I have instead eaten half a regular meal? Should I just stop thinking and just not eat if I have no gnawing hunger? I hope my Thin Within books get here soon!

But about a half hour after I eat, then I feel ravenous and can eat the pain off the kitchen walls if I could. I've been holding off as long as I can, then go back into the refrigerator about 2 hours later and grab the container with my leftovers. Sometimes I eat one bite and feel just as I did after "dinner," and other times I eat an entire 3-cup container of a casserole plus a banana plus some cookies plus a bowl (2-3 cups) of veggies and still feel ravenously hungry.

This morning I felt no hunger even at 11am, although I haven't had anything to eat since 6pm last night, but my head was spacey (Remember, I have hypoglycemia) so I grabbed a banana. After one bite I really didn't want to eat any more but felt I should or else I would probably pass out from low blood sugar. I'm now telling myself that'll be it until dinner time, when I eat a tiny bowl of salad and one chicken patty on a bun, and hope I can eat it. I know on Thin Within no food is forbidden, that all food is neither good nor bad, it's just food, but after a decade or more of tooling around with low-fat vegan I just feel guilty. I felt the same way Monday with the meatloaf, which is why I ate maybe an ounce and then ate a few teaspoonfuls of potatoes and spinach.

I guess I should pray about it.

1) Scaring people and hoping it will cause weight loss does not work. If it did it would have worked when our parents used it on us as fat kids.

2) Once diagnosed pre-diabetic (a stupid diagnosis started by the pharmaceutical industry to sell more meds) or diabetic and put on meds, people usually GAIN weight because these meds have that exact effect.

3) Fat people have already tried to lose weight, probably most of their lives. Being told they're fat by their doctor is not news to them. Being told (the lies) that being fat causes everything from hang nails to cancer isn't going to make their bodies miraculously release the weight they've been fighting all their lives.

Health Scares Reduce Smoking but Not Waistlines, Survey Finds

By RONI CARYN RABIN

Published: February 10, 2009

Smokers are three times more likely to quit if they get a wake-up call in the form of a heart attack, stroke, lung disease or cancer diagnosis, a new study has found.

But obese and overweight people lose two to three pounds at most after being diagnosed with a serious illness like heart disease or diabetes, according to the same report. The study, which looked at weight loss only in people under age 75, was published on Monday in The Archives of Internal Medicine.

It’s not entirely clear why heart disease would motivate patients to quit smoking but not to slim down, but the author of the paper noted that many health plans don’t cover weight-loss programs, with the exception of bariatric surgery, while many businesses and local health departments offer free or low-cost smoking cessation programs.

“People really are open to changing their behaviors after a health event, and this could really be a window of opportunity,” said study author Patricia S. Keenan, assistant professor of health policy at Yale School of Medicine. “I’m not sure the health care system is capitalizing on it, in terms of giving people the support they need to make these changes as they go forward.”

To do the study, Dr. Keenan analyzed data from the Health and Retirement Study, a survey containing detailed health information about middle-aged and older adults collected every other year between 1992 and 2000. The data included information about 20,221 overweight or obese people under age 75 and about 7,764 smokers.

While only about one in 10 smokers who hadn’t been diagnosed with a serious illness quit cigarettes, almost one-third of smokers who had had a stroke or were diagnosed with cancer, heart disease or lung disease quit, the study found.

When smokers were diagnosed with two serious diseases, they were six times more likely to quit than other smokers, the study found.

Obese people lost very little weight after most diagnoses, though they lost up to half a point from their body mass index after finding out they had diabetes, the study found.

“One of the reasons they may not have found a big weight loss is because physician counseling alone is not going to impact weight loss,” said Sherry Pagoto, an assistant professor at the University of Massachusetts Medical School who co-wrote an editorial accompanying the paper. “The evidence for behavioral weight loss treatment suggests an intensive program is necessary.”

She added, “If there is a window of opportunity for weight loss, we’re missing it.”

OK, if anyone has been reading this blog from the beginning many years ago (many posts have already been deleted, going back to 2001) you know that although I can curse like a sailor moonlighting as a truck driver, I'm a fairly devote Catholic. You also know that I've been on diets for the bulk of my 55+ years on this earth, 99.9% of them unsuccessful for weight loss, gaining weight while sticking strictly to the plan of the day (week, year, decade).

Insanity. Merriam-Webster definitions:

1: a deranged state of the mind usually occurring as a specific disorder (as schizophrenia)
2: such unsoundness of mind or lack of understanding as prevents one from having the mental capacity required by law to enter into a particular relationship, status, or transaction or as removes one from criminal or civil responsibility
3 a: extreme folly or unreasonableness b: something utterly foolish or unreasonable

Nah. Neither of these quite says what I want to say. I much prefer this one, one I've posted here many times before (Which is insanity in itself):

Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. Albert Einstein

Time to stop the cycle of insanity once and for all. What is insane is flitting from food plan to food plan, following all kinds of rules and regulations about what to eat, how much to eat, and when to eat it. Eat this, not that. Don't eat this, eat that instead, but not too much. Eat all you want of this, never let a drop of that pass your lips.

Also insane is thinking I can eat everything that I want, as much as I want, whenever I want, and not suffer any health consequences from it. I know too much sugar causes a reactive hypoglycemia event. I know too much dairy gives me painful joints and clogged sinuses. I know too much salt will raise my blood pressure.

Notice I said "too much" of all of those foods.

I also know that by denying myself all of these things I will crave them, think about them constantly, and eventually eat them anyway and binge on them to the point of harming myself. Then feel not only sick but feel guilty.

ENOUGH!

Thinking about that guilt got me searching for another way of eating, one that will satisfy me physically, psychically, and now spiritually. Who here has not been moved spiritually by some food? Most women I know feel this way about chocolate!

I began investigating various faith-based weight loss programs. Weigh Down Workshops have been around for many years, but in this very-Catholic city of ours none of the few non-Catholic churches are running the program. I read the book when it first came out but laughed at the notion of stopping eating after one bite of food. I recently read that the philosophy of this program has changed so much that it's not quite a faith-based program as a shame- and scare-based one, with people being told they're going to burn in hell for taking one bite more than their body needed for physical nourishment. Sorry, WDW people, but my family and friends tried to shame me into weight loss as a kid and it just doesn't work. Also, I've read that the scripture has been twisted so much to fit their agenda that the originator started her own religion.

Catholics retaliated and there's now a Catholic faith-based program called Light Weigh, but unlike the other programs, this one doesn't have a book or literature so a person can do it at home, on their own, but must go to (and pay for) organized meetings. Many parishes won't allow non-parishioners to participate, I read (It's like that with everything our local churches sponsor in our city since before I was born). Doesn't matter, anyway, as none of the churches in our city sponsor one, anyway.

Then there's Thin Within. I was introduced to this program by a member of the 100-Plus group on Yahoogroups. She had been on it in the past, lost a good amount of weight, but still needed to lose more and lost faith, signing up for Weight Watchers for a year or so, but got so tied up in counting Points and obsessing over every little bite she returned to Thin Within and immediately felt more at ease and peaceful around food. She, too, is Catholic and found the program fits in with the teachings of the Church quite nicely. Thin Within is Christian based, and many members have been "born again," but the program can be followed by a Catholic with no threat to their faith.

I spent the past 4 days reading every post on the Thin Within official message board, and learned a lot. I ordered the books Thin Within and Get Thin, Stay Thin (also known by three other names, so be careful if ordering) from various Half.com vendors. I joined a mailing list and popped about a dozen Thin Within blogs into my Bloglines blog reader. I picked up my Bible and did some reading. I even ordered a Catholic prayerbook to keep in my purse to replace an OA book I have there now for reading when stuck in a waiting room or while sitting down the park. I own a few, but none small enough to carry around comfortably. Now I will.

And I'm not eating. Not totally, no. Just not eating for reasons other than a Zero-level hunger. And I'm not over-eating, either, but stopping at a 5. See The Program page from the official web site to see what the heck I'm talking about. Yes, I may be slightly hungry all the time, but as Sister Mary Martha would say, I just: "Offer it up to God."

I don't think I should say any more at this point. Once I've lived it a bit longer, read the books and blogs, and just live with myself eating this way for a while I'll post more. I will say this - it's certainly different from everything else I've tried in the past to handle my eating, that's for sure! But for now, I've got a lot to learn so I'll shut my mouth (and still my fingers).