A Few Changes

I am up in weight, to 116.3.  Payback for eating heavily in calories and the whiskey.

I am determined to make this diet a learning process until I get it right.  I studied up on sugar and alcohol and metabolism.  Let me just say that hard booze has no place in my diet and that my single glass of wine is all I really want.  If we go to the pub, I will allow a pint of Guinness.  I doubt we’ll go to the pub more often than four times a year.  That’s settled.

I also learned something new today about the differences between the US and UK nutritional labels and databases.  The UK uses the ECC on tallying carbs directly on their labels and in their databases.  Although it lists the sugars and fibre, it is already deducted from the carb count listed.  This is why sugar and fibre are listed separate from the carb count on the labels.  So, what happens with this current program I am using, is that it is using the USDA database and only the UK foods I am adding have the EEC.  This is a big deal when my carbs need to be so small.  Very reluctantly I spent the day re-entering all of my meals into the UK program.  There were some differences, but mostly the differences seemed to be brand related and using a similar US product for a UK product.  The dairy has more fat, the sauces here have less carbs, that sort of thing.  So over all, it is more important for me to use the database of the country I am living in than have fancier reports.

I also had a record already going for a few days on the UK program and so I am going to have a new beginning weight and be able to add those two missing days of my first week.  I am also switching back to stones and pounds because I do not trust my husband’s scale, it fluctuates too much.  So, those are the changes I am making this week.  I also created a spread sheet so I can watch the averages for the weeks and when I change my ratios.  This UK program doesn’t do averages and when I change the ratio’s, it changes all the way back to when I start.  Which is fine, but then I can’t see what is working or not as easily.  Gads for the extra work!

Today is right on target on everything.  It wasn’t hard because I was so occupied with the programs.  I see the need to tighten up my numbers, they tend to get slippery each week and that trend is the one that will prevent weight loss.  I will post everything on Sunday, my weigh in day.

Here is the fish I eat frequently for lunch.  Frozen Pollock filets are steamed a the beginning of the week and I can then take as much as I want from the bowl each day, weighing it on my scale and adding mayonnaise.  Much easier than making it up first and trying to figure the fish/mayo ratio from a premade salad.

Saturated fat heaven

Saturated fat heaven!

Deleting this Blog

Ack, where to begin. Changes are needed.

I am deleting this blog.  Starting a new one. 

My Fabulous Diet

After a few days of fence sitting, ruminating and listening to Dr Steve Phinney podcasts, I have decided to let go of the approach I have been trying to take and go back to traditional dieting.  I lost 88 pounds and regained 30 pounds and that is way too much for me to stay “gentle” with.  I am physically suffering from allowing grains back into my diet, my BG is hitting the 180’s again and I am uncomfortable.

I also decided to let go of the last major diet and let it rest as is.  Too much has been happening in the transition periods that I have gone through and I feel I am settled enough to pursue the dream again of getting to a normal weight.  I am calling it My Fabulous Diet because I want to take a really positive and energetic approach to it.  I have been angst-y too long and that needs to stop too.

I will be deleting this blog in a couple of days, so  if you would like to follow me, please sub to the new blog. 

Thanks to everyone who takes the time to comment, I have not always replied as I should and plan on making that a priority.

Inner Symphony

Since eating is the one way I make my being grow, I cannot eat without experiencing  many strong feelings consciously or unconsciously, about myself, about what I am eating and about the environment and conditions under which I eat.

Pg. 18 One Bowl by Don Gerrard

Each bite of food I take initiates dozens of tiny reactions in every part of my being, including and especially concentrating on my digestive system.  From my lips to my intestines I experience fluid secretions, sensations of motion and weight, changes in energy, feelings of pleasure,and just below my conscious perceptions, chemical adjustments and increased molecular activity.  These changes seem to me as complex as a symphony, with many individual parts of my organism working together to make the music harmonious.  This same food symphony goes on within you of course, though you may have been too busy to notice it.  The One Bowl method begins by insulating you from external noise so that you can pay attention to your internal food symphony; then it shows you how to interpret and evaluate these sounds for the important signals that they are.

Pg. 19 One Bowl by Don Gerrard

I have to say that of all the hundreds of diet books I have ever read, this simple small book has been the one that continually opens my mind to gentle truths I would not experience otherwise.  I am the kind of person who lives inside the box and feels compelled to draw on the walls to make it homey.  I am afraid to extend myself beyond it and never before in my life have I been so aware of the fears that keep me inside that box.  It is easier for me to follow food and eating rules than it is to sit and listen to my body.  Although I have practiced one bowl eating for a long time (on and off and not as I should be practicing it) I know that the wealth of experience is almost too “out there” for me to grasp.  I was not raised as a touchy feely person, I was raised in a box with white walls and sharp corners.  I am outside my comfort zone getting in touch with my feelings or my body.  Yet I know that this is the right path, I sense the necessity to me to stop the mindless crazy eating that I do and find what it is I really want.

I did pay attention to how I felt this morning.  I had a headache, my shoulders were stiff, my back feeling tried.  I am not sleeping well on our cot like beds.  The mattress is thin and resting on hard metal bars.  But I tried to sing a little, smile a little and I admired the food as it was cooking, I tasted the food as I ate it, I tried to sense how it felt after being swallowed. I admit, my mind wandered frequently.  So much for trying to stay connected to the process of eating.  I felt frustrated and got up to do wash the dishes.  Then I noticed my headache more, my stiff back and thought this isn’t going to be as I would like it.

Meals Yesterday:

Bowl: 2 eggs, 2 rashers, 2 cumberland, 2 coffee with milk

pot of tea with a small slice of cheddar

Bowl: smoked haddock and mixed veggies cooked in butter, drizzle of mayo on top

pot of tea

Bowl: chicken cooked in coconut milk, with peppers mushrooms and a couple of currants, steamed cauliflower.  2 glasses of wine

2 cups of coffee with milk, 1/2 dark chocolate bar with orange peel

Feeling Good is What it is All About

 

I have learned that I can listen to this inner music, learn to interpret it’s language and literally be tutored by my own body on what to eat so that I feel good all the time!
Pg. 5 One Bowl by Don Gerrard

I have to say, I have always believed this deep down.  I know many diet books like to talk about the mind-set of losing weight, which I have fallen into that particular trap many times, but it makes sense.  I am always trying to think my way into losing weight by using numbers and charts and graphs and thoughtful adjustments, but all I really need to do is listen.  I can remember a time when I could not hear the body talk.  When I read about the suggestions to do so, I though it was crazy talk.  But perhaps with aging my body is now learning to scream at the slightest indiscretion, or perhaps I am just ready to hear it.

I gain weight because my head makes food decisions that ignore what my body wants.
Pg. 6 One Bowl by Don Gerrard

And this is what I do.  I know I do it and on top of it, my mind tries to take control of the whole dieting/binge situations by creating rules and restrictions and all kinds of precise mechanics to feed my body in a more organized plan of action.  I am trying to manage what I cannot manage.  It seems I try to out think my body and make decisions about what it needs from diet books, websites, forums….every conceivable outside source except from within.

The introduction in the book goes on to talk about the idealised body, the one researchers and scientists use to compute formulas and how contrary that is to use it as a standard for our own body.  We aren’t standard.  I remember back in the 1960’s when the space program was at it’s zenith, a food product came out called Space Sticks.  It was in tube form and nothing more than a fudge like brown mass that was chewy.  They claimed that it was what the astronauts ate and was ideal for perfect human nutrition.  They tasted terrible and the novelty soon wore off.  People didn’t want eat a brown sweet chewy mass for food.  Yet…YET…look at what foods the supermarket carries that we all eat that was never grown in the sun or had a life of it’s own.  It’s Space Sticks in the form of nutrition bars and drinks, reformulated to become addicting.  Are they made for the benefit of our body’s health?  Or are they made to make a company a healthy profit?

Isn’t our body suppose to know what it needs?  Didn’t our ancestors figure out what foods they thrived on and which ones made them feel sick?  The book goes on to talk about how we think of ourselves in separate terms, our mind, our bodies, our needs and not as a whole.  I will be interested in learning more about that.  The book is definitely on a Buddhist philosophy direction, but it is definitely the direction I find the most peace with.   Onward…

One Bowl, A Guide to Eating for Body and Spirit

I pay close attention to the sensation of hunger in my body, the opening note of what soon becomes a whole symphony of inner sensations associated with my natural digestive processes.  When I sit down to eat a meal, this symphony of inner sensations begins and it continues as long as I am eating.  It is literally  the background music of my body’s life.

Pg 1, One Bowl by Don Gerrard.

The book starts out by saying that the original intention was to find a way to lose weight, but that along the way, it changed into becoming a way of nourishing the body, soul and psyche.  It has nothing to do with counting calories or restricting eating in any way.  It has to do with nurturing oneself and changing our relationship to food and eating by listening to the body.

As my mind rolled over all the usual diets and restrictions and plans….I stopped as I looked at the clock and wondered why I felt like tea and it wasn’t 9am yet.  Then it occurred to me that it doesn’t have to be 9am to have tea.  I smiled.  I am regulating and restricting out of habit.  I made tea and put milk in it.  I love milk in coffee and tea, it is so soothing and comforting.  I avoid milk because it is fairly carby.  I have avoided milk in the past when I was doing Paleo.  I avoided whole milk when I was doing low fat.  I have gone literally years not having any milk, and yet, I really like milk.  The thought occurred to me.  If I had had milk when I wanted it, without any strings attached, would I have been happier and could it have prevented a binge on other crappy food that I don’t really like?  I love cream.  But I don’t like it in coffee.  I drink coffee with cream in order not to deal with the carbs.  I wonder if this isn’t the same kind of disordered thinking as it is to binge.  Eating or drinking foods for the sake of a nutritional component instead of how it tastes and how I feel afterwards?

I had heard of this idea before.  Eat what you truly love, listen to the inner symphony and you will find peace of mind and help the body self regulate and self heal.  I reached for my One Bowl book and yes, there it was.

I have discovered that when I pay attention to the symphony of my internal sensations, I learn that these signals from my body are telling me something important about the food I am eating.  Like background music, these signals hover at the edge of my consciousness, whenever I sit down to eat.  They comprise a language that, once I learn to read it, is clear, accurate and reliable. 

Pg 4, One Bowl by Don Gerrard.

Guess what I will be incorporating into my life?

Pewter Bowl

Today, my pewter bowl arrived.  I had mostly expected it to be in poor condition and was afraid I would not be able to eat from it.  I also panicked after winning it, that perhaps the size listed was incorrect, the seller saying 5 inches around,rather than across.  I thought later that it may mean the bowl was too small to eat from.  When the postman handed me the box, it was large enough to warrant a larger bowl, with fingers crossed, I ripped it open.

I knew the moment I saw it, held it, it was THE ONE.  The bowl I had been searching for, for literally years.  Exactly the right size and unbreakable, unique and a cover to keep food hot until I can eat.   I never managed to have all those features in one bowl.  The pewter has a fabulous silky smooth finish.  I worked on polishing it, but don’t have any polish on hand.  It will gleam beautifully once I get the right materials to shine it up.  Lots of black patina was washed away, bringing out the design.  It is heavy and high quality.  It is from France.  The only flaws are inside the lid, where someone has etched scratches.  They can be sanded down, I already started that process, getting them smoothed out. These photo’s are before polishing:

 

 

The bowl holds 1 and 1/2 cups of water to the rim. EXCELLENT!  1/2 cup more than the small white bowl.  Yet it is not as large as the blue flower bowl, which continues to give me the sense of excess.  Five inches across, 1.5 inches deep.  It is a porringer, made for hot porridge or soups.

Weight refuses to budget.  I went onto my nutritional software and entered about half of the days in to see if I was really far away from the truth, and I was.  My carbs were just not low enough, often hitting around 30-40.  The brandy is gone, the bowl is here and I am so excited to continue on. 

To Be or Not to Be, Part 1

Yesterday:
1 egg, 1 lorne, 3 mini maloney, 2 coffee & double cream
cubed cheddar, tea
4 mini maloney, mixed veggies, curry mayonnaise
2 white fish fillets, butter, cheddar & cream sauce, 1 glass wine
2 coffee & double cream

Four days of eating so much better (for me), no binges and I can feel the switch happening.  I call it nirvana, because I sense being lighter, more fluid in my movements, everything feels good.  The aches lessen, my stomach deflates, my mood improves.  Only happens in ketosis or at this level of carb intake, whatever it is.  I refuse to check the numbers.  I am not in deep at this point, but I can tell when I am entering it.  Today I feel like smiling.

As always, when I finally reach this point (takes about 3-4 days for me) I cannot fathom how I would ever willingly leave it.  This is the dilemma of all low carbers.  When I am here, in this place, I do not feel the compulsion, the urges to binge and eating normalizes, appetite drops significantly.  The more times I go through this (and I cannot count how many since i first discovered low carb in the late 1990’s) the more it makes me realize that sugar and starch (particularly grains) make me behave as an addict in every sense of the word.

I have faithfully continued to eat from a bowl, but at this point, my mind is shifting there too.  The bowl represents nourishment and containment, a way to focus on the food, the amount and probably half a dozen more subtle things.  But as wonderful as it is and the peace of mind it brings me, the wrong bowl can be jarring to my wellbeing.  Silly, I know.  Most people don’t care about what they eat off of or out of, but I have found it to be a part of the joy.  As an aside, I had to smile, last night, husband noticed two glaze indents in his china bowl/plate because it was sitting in front of him, empty.  He said he had never seen them before, and I smiled and said he’s never seen the bowl empty before (I always serve it to him already full). 

When was the last time you noticed the glaze on your plate, or the way the design pleases or displeases?  I often imagine my bowl to be a sort of external stomach, the food I place in the bowl will be what my stomach receives, like an offering.  If I am feeding my stomach (or body) what would be the most nourishing food to give it?  I like to visually see what I am giving it.

The bowl is like looking in a microscope and seeing what you never realized truly existed.  Don Gerrard (ONE BOWL) says that in the beginning, one can fill the bowl with whatever one wants and how ever many times one wants to.  There are no limits.  Simply pay attention to where your thoughts go, why you chose the foods you do.  He then guides you into choosing the foods that make you hum or sing in wellbeing.  Eventually, even the foods that hum good vibrations mentally start humming (or not) physically.  I wanted to mention this aspect of eating from a bowl because this is what I have been experiencing the last four days of better eating.

When I consistently get the carbohydrate level down, it is like watching my body and mind blossom.  I start seeing the food in the bowl for what it is, what it represents.  Last night, I cooked fish fillets in a pan, the fish released the water it contained while cooking and mixed with the butter in the pan.  I added a bit of double cream and a few shreds of grated cheese which made an instant sauce that was as perfect as any chef could have mustered.  My mind panicked, because I forgot to cook any veggies for me (husband was having the left overs from the night before) and I thought, wow, when I add this fish and sauce to my bowl. there was hardly any food there.  Why did I make such an assumption?  My mind was sure, long before proven, that it was not enough food.

So I sat at the table and looked at the fish in a creamy sauce.  It did not make it up to the blue flowers, so I was very aware that it was a skimpy meal.  My mind calculated that it was less than a cup of food.  I felt cheated out of a full dinner.  I shifted my focus.

It did look appetising.  My mouth watered.  I have not had that sensation in a long time.  Hmmm, mouth watering means my body is preparing to eat!  Hey!  Body talk!  I tried to breathe in the scent without my husband thinking I was getting weirder by the day.  It smelled wonderful.  I took the first bite, noticing the taste, texture, the flavours.  I ate slowly, more so to not finish too soon before my husband finished his meal, but also in a way to please myself.  I tend to eat too fast and furious and I am aware of that.  It takes away from the pleasures of eating to gobble it all down.  So, of course I was full sooner than I thought I would be by eating slowly.  Funny, as I also was taking my time sipping my one frugal allotted glass of wine, I had to admit, this was nirvana.  One glass of Spanish rioja perfectly complimented the delicate flavour of the fish.  Yin and Yang.  And of all things formerly impossible, it was just enough.  I was satisfied not feeling full nor feeling hungry.  Middle, I was in the middle path.  It felt right which in turn gave me a sense of wellbeing.  I suspect my food was humming.  Or was it me?  Or both?

I’ll break this post in two…I have more to say….

UK Sausages and Other Foods

I am posting food photo’s, the ones I eat and have access to here in Scotland.

Sausages that I eat.

Square = Lorne

Round = Black Pudding aka Blood Sausage

Rashers = thin ham

Links = Cumberland, Lincolnshire or Jack Maloney, a bland Irish sausage.

The sausages I have had in the UK are very mild compared to American. The Lorne have a texture of cornmeal and ground pork, although it is not corn.  Black Pudding is mild, grainy and tender, almost a hint of cinnamon.  Cumberlands I think have the most spice, Lincolnshire not as much and the Maloney’s are the least flavourful.  Link sausages here also have a finer grind but not as firm as say an American frankfurter, nor as course as a breakfast link.

I’ll take more cooking photo’s this week with these kinds of items.

Streaky bacon is wider than American.

Cumberlands

Lorne with a slice of cheese and HP sauce

Liver pate.  Love this stuff.

plain yogurt with ground almonds

Cheese cubes with tea.

We really enjoy all the foods here.  However, the teacake debauchery has been difficult for us both.  Once I tried a few, I wanted to try them all.  I have never liked donuts and as much as I loved tarts as a child, they are too much for me now, but my eagerness for food adventure is ever present.  I liked the meringues the best (white with a red dot), and there is a caramel square I like too.

Husband’s favourite teacake, carrot cake from Wellbread

 

Store teacakes:  marshmallow

crisps: much less in the individual bag than in America’s.

Butcher’s window, steak pies (meat and gravy filled)(from the above butcher’s)  Sausage rolls are like having a hamburger in America, the quick fast food bite.

Rashers, egg and yogurt

Week 149 Mental Change, No Weight Change

I thought I was up half a pound from last week, but the more I look at it, the more it seems about the same or a smidgeon more.  I expected a gain.  I have not done well consistently in a long time.  I daresay, I have not done this poorly since I was struggling in Hawaii.

Each day begins well and ends well, but the midmorning continues to plague me.  About every other day or two, I have been bingeing.  Smallish binges, the ones I monitor in the nutritional software hit around 2000-2200 calories for the whole day, not just the binge.  Not extreme by any means.  However, I no longer believe all calories are the same.  These binge calories are the killer kind.  My Blood Glucose has been out of whack.  So has my mood and depression was seriously trying to settle in amongst the madness.

I knew I had to do something, because of the seriously wrong direction my mind was heading in.  My thoughts and reactions became more addiction oriented.  I noticed this reaction in the various mood swings I had, often trying to assign blame to others, thinking negative thoughts that would prompt booze or food to be the release and so on.  I have been rather miserable.

I thought back to what I did to stop this very same thing happening now, that happened while I was in Hawaii.  It was Buddhism that helped me change my way of thinking.  It shifted my thoughts and brought them closer to a middle path, a more comfortable sense of peace.  Why did I set it aside when I needed it the most?  I keep finding a undesirable trait of mine to be the cause of most of my misery….I back down and allow others to be more important than myself.

I was listening to Deepak Chopra and Eckhart Tolle to bring my thinking back to where I felt more calm. Chopra was suggesting a mantra that made me think about my unsavoury trait:

I am superior to no one.  I am beneath no one.

Both Tolle and Chopra reminded me to stay present, stay in the moment.  I sat through my first meditation in 6 months and realized where my missing link was.  I have obsessed on food and eating and completely ignored my need for calmness.  I created a friction within me and did not apply a soothing balm.

Chopra was talking about these points that really hit home:

Be responsible for your emotions.  Feel them, define them, express them, share them and then release them.  Another point I found I needed to hear was that stress was not an emotion, it was an interpretation of what is going on around us.  It is a perception of the events.  Listening to them, I realized that my point of view needed to shift.  I was heading down the wrong path and by doing that, creating my own misery.  Daily meditation, a few moments each day of learning and practicing the teachings of Buddha are the first steps.  The second step is to learn more about  food and the effects on the body.

I watched and read several articles on food.  One that intrigued me was an interview about staying on low carb long term.  It was Dr Phinney who said that for the body to completely shift to metabolizing ketones as a source of energy, it takes from 2 to 6 weeks!  Taking even a one day break from a ketogenic level of carb intake (a cheat day) will knock this body efficiency out and it will take 2-6 weeks to regain it.  It goes beyond just using up stored carbs, it is a metabolic shift.  I was under the typical Atkins understanding that once the stored glycogen was used up and ketones were spilling in the urine, it was a done deal.  Since I usually showed ketones about 3-4 days after dropping carbs below 50g a day, I assumed the metabolism shift had happened.  Something to remember (myself) that these efforts to eat low carb for 2 of my 3 meals a day means absolutely nothing.  And just getting a week under my belt is still not really working at optimum levels. 

I also spent time watching the BBC program on the food industry and the consequences of obesity for the public sector, read several blogs about dieting and came to realize that there is more to it than I thought.  At least I was pushing myself to see a broader picture of it, rather than the narrow confines of my immediate experience.  Seeing my obesity through several different points of view helps me feel less alone in it.  Again, something Chopra talks about, when dealing with a problem, thinking of it from at least 3 different points of view to help yourself see it more clearly.  I am certainly not alone in being obese, dealing with binge behaviour, nor am I alone in the influence food has had over my life.  It is not just me cramming food in my mouth and personal lack of control, it is only one part of the bigger issues at hand. 

I guess I am trying to cram too much information into one post, as I have been going through quite a lot of different issues and motivations this past week.  Tomorrow I will write about the things I want to do to change the path I am on to a more balanced and middle way.

Links this week:

Fat Head » Low-Carb = Ketosis? Not Necessarily.
http://www.fathead-movie.com/index.php/2012/07/09/low-carb-ketosis-not-necessarily/

BBC The Men Who Made Us Fat. (3 Episodes)

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b01kd06l/The_Men_Who_Made_Us_Fat_Episode_3/