On Being Flexible

I spoke in my page SLD Crash and Burn about the issue of planning. The first time I tried SLD, I did not really plan, I just kind of expected it to happen: some time around ten am I’ll take my SLD dose, no problem. That might LOOK like planning but it wasn’t; I did not plan for when I would have to stop drinking my coffee, or when it would be good to eat lunch, so when I did not finish my coffee until ten am, I was flummoxed. In other words, I was hoping SLD would shoe horn in without much effort on my part.

This time, I set out with a clear idea of a schedule: stop drinking coffee by 9:30am, take my SLD dose at 10:30am, be well and truly ready for lunch by noon.

Not working.

I’ve watched my habits as I try to force myself into this schedule, and the fact is, by 9:30am I am usually barely halfway through my coffee. I’m a sipper, not a gulper, so taking two hours to finish a cup is not unusual for me (this is something I never really knew about myself before!). Turns out I need to move everything UP an hour: done with coffee by 10:30am, SLD at 11:30am, lunch around 1:00. Since that is how everything has been falling out anyway, I think I can manage it. lol!

Diet vs. Way of Life

No one who has tried to lose weight has missed this message: losing weight is about lifestyle changes.

Yeah, got the memo, thanks.

Which is the famous reason diets fail: they are short term solutions to a long term problem. Or you could say they treat the symptom, not the disease. Whatever you want to say, the fact is that (except in extreme cases) being overweight is a condition borne out of an unhealthy lifestyle.

What is most often missed is not the fact that the lifestyle needs to be changed (FIND me a dieter who doesn’t know that, I dare you), but that the changes need to be habits the person can live with FOREVER. Got that? FOREVER. So if lo-carb works for you, great; just know you will be lo-carb until you die. Ditto Weight Watchers. Doesn’t matter the “change”, it has to be doable for the individual.

Bodies are amazingly adaptable. Honest. You can fine tune them but really, they put up with a hell of a lot. The issue isn’t about your body, it is about your MIND.

Or, my mind, rather — and I’m mental so hey! Fun for the whole family.

I’ve tried every diet, or at least versions of them. But what it boils down to is doing something I can live with. I’m not just talking about taste or calorie count, but how well it fits into my lifestyle. I’m not much of a cook, so any diet that relies on every meal being whipped up from scratch in the kitchen using three pans and fourteen ingredients is doomed to failure. I’m also a creature of habit, so I tend to eat repetitively; I know, not ideal, but there it is. That is who I am.

I also LOVE vegetables and fruits, and can (and have) lived without meat for years. I also love cheese.

So I’ve gone back to what I know and love: juicing, salads, and low-intake of refined flour and sugar. In the mornings I juice or make a smoothie; I also juice veggies and take that too work as lunch. Sometimes I’ll take a bit of rice to eat as well, or once in a while forgo the juice for a bowl of soup, but that’s it for variety. Dinner is now centered around salad, with a sandwich or pasta/rice side dish to fill it out.

Overall this isn’t rocket science. But I’ve spent the last year drinking beer, eating ramen noodles and junk food. So this is a sea change, yes; but it is also one I can handle long term. I still get the rich and unhealthy things I love — cheese, pasta, chocolate — but mostly my diet is fresh fruits and veggies.

I can live with that.

Plan, plan, *fail*

I have not failed to plan, and today things will go as I want them too, but what happened this morning is an excellent example of how simple things can get off track.

Right now my schedule is to finish coffee/breakfast by 10am, drink my sugar water SLD dose at 11am, and then have lunch/snacks post-noon. I do not drink coffee at home. I generally get up between five and six am, write, work out, make ‘breakfast’ (which, when I bother with it, is juice or a fruit smoothie; I generally do not eat solid foods in the morning, it does not set well with me). I drink the coffee when I get to work. Ah, but today, the coffee was not ready when I got in, so I did not make my cup-per-usual. Then I got distracted by “office emergency!!!” so it was an hour before I made coffee. Now it is 9:45am and I am just now sitting down to drink my coffee. No way will I be done with it before 10:30am (I am a sipper, not a gulper). And if I get distracted again, as I am prone to do, I won’t finish my cuppa until 11am, and now everything is an hour behind.

This is not a problem today, thankfully, but what if I had lunch with co-workers on the schedule? Well, I could skip the coffee (nooooooooooo!!!), gulp it down (owwww, hot hot hot), or skip the lunch date (bad politics).

I don’t think people ‘fall off’ the SLD wagon because it is complicated but because they simply get sabotagued by life’s pratfalls. Of course the answer is to plan ahead, and that does help; now, I KNOW I’m already behind, and can make adjustments. My first run-through last year? I was floating along, not paying attention, thinking “Oh SLD is so SIMPLE I can’t screw it up!” but I screwed it up BECAUSE it is simple. Easy to overlook, take for granted, and not account for. That is the dangerous part.

This weekend I plan to weigh in for the first time in about a year. Give me strength.

Day 38: The Way the Stomach Rolls

Last night = Bust! Wah. Club had some rocker ska bands in for an early show that, incredibly, ran long! I know, hard to believe that a professional touring act playing to a crowd of 20 underage college students might run long (cough, cough) but that is just the crazy rock and roll lifestyle for ya’. So we had a couple of drinks and we left. Sometimes small town living just blows. Anyway we hit WaffleHouse for a rare, late night snack and I enjoyed my eggs and hashbrowns very much. The waffle was too much, so I split it with Husband, who was willing to take that bullet for me. And that was our wild and crazy weekend, in a nutshell.

Today I took my SW in the morning around 10am, had a fairly larger-sized lunch (because I cannot eat just one cup of rice and tofu…mmmmmm!!!!) and that was it. Fixed husband a large bowl of mac’n’cheese for dinner but I was still full from lunch so did not have any. How about that!?!

I’ve noticed that on weekends, when my adherence to the SLD regimen is flakey (at best), I nonetheless do not experience mad cravings or a need to overeat. It as if the effect of the SLD dosages continues over even when I’m not doing them reliably. Anecdotal evidence on the SLD Forum suggests this is not the case, however; most people report that a day or two off the plan, and their hunger returns in full for or at least they start feeling cravings. Many people who have done SLD for a long time expect to do it for the rest of their lives because of this. I read one post – sorry, can’t find it now – of a person who eventually weaned off SLD dosing to at least short term success, but even that writer understood that they are in the minority.

So what’s going on? Am I just that special? I don’t think so. I think what is happening has more to do with good eating habits and smaller portions than some mystical SLD effect. It is a fact that a stomach can grow or shrink in size; one problem starving people have is that they simply, physically cannot eat as much food as they want. Their stomachs have shrunk and only so much food will fit, before the body starts to purge. Since my portion sizes are noticeably smaller now that I am doing SLD, it is just not easy for me to cram food down. Oh I can, make no mistake. But between my shrunken stomach and my own increased awareness of what “full” feels like, I slow down and simply don’t eat as much.

I think that after a week or so, I could easily counteract these affects and be back to my high-calorie lovin’ ways. After all, I know that I am capable of overeating and would do just that in the right circumstances. I don’t expect change that programming, so I plan on living the SLD lifestyle for a very long time. But there is a bit of comfort in knowing that my body has changed to the point of being able to stay healthy for a couple of days even if I can’t take my SLD dosages.

Day 29: Show and Tell

A note on yesterday’s comment about hoping to get down to the 180s sometime around the first of the year, which might seem an odd thing to look forward to since it is not even close to my goal of 140: throughout my teens and in college my weight scooted between 180 and 190. I remember being about 186 lbs. for a loooooong time. For me, this is a natural “break” in the scales and I suspect, given how long my set point was set in that range, that when I hit those numbers I will plateau. I totally expect it, in fact. I’m not too terrified of a plateau, as the SLD forum has some great advice from others on how to break one. Going in to this knowing it will happen helps prepare me as well, so the disappointment won’t break my resolve. My body will get to that number on the scale and go “ahhh, I remember this! Cool! We can take it easy now!” And maybe that will be a good thing.

As a wrap up to yesterday, we went to our favorite Mexican restaurant for dinner. As is now common place, I ordered and ate far less than I used to, pre-SLD. How much? Let’s just break this down, shall we?

Pre-SLD	Current
Bowl of chips + ½ bowl of cheese dip Guacamole Salad + extra cheese Rice and beans (1 cup mixed, approx.) 1 or 2 cheese quesadillas 1 enchilada 1 tostada 2 beers	½ bowl of chips + ¼ bowl of cheese dip Guacamole Salad 1 cheese quesadilla

Hmmm…this is not rocket science, people. SLD WORKS!!!!

As for today, nothing special. I did get up and jog this morning, and we will be playing racquetball tonight. No big plans other than watching Dr. Who! All is well in the world.

Day 28: On Xylitol, Weigh In, and Xylitol Again

I am one of those funny people who will order a full meal of fish-and-chips (fried, fried, fried), beer (stout, full lead please), and a large bowl of ice cream (chocolate! with syrup! and sprinkles!) for dessert and then put an artificial sweetener in my coffee. Yes, I am the butt of those jokes. But the reason I use the artificial sweetener is not because of the calorie count, which my dinner just blew out of the water anyway: it is the sweet. Artificial sweeteners are sweeter than sugar and dissolve faster than sugar. To be blunt: stirring sugar into my coffee is inefficient and annoying. I have to use three packs of sugar to one pack of Splenda, and then I have to stir it forever rather than give it a quick swish. Call me lazy, I’m sure you will, but I have my limits.

Of course, in the back of my mind, I know that artificial sweeteners are only marginally better than refined white sugar, if at all. They are all suspicious and I read a lot of reports about the health dangers latent in them. Since I don’t like honey in my coffee (some do; not me), and honey requires as much stirring as sugar anyway, I stick with the artificial sweeteners. I’ve been looking for better, though.

Now I’m trying to use xylitol instead of either sugar or artificial sweeteners, because it seems better than either. That could be delusional on my part, but hey, I’m open to experimentation. Alas, it is too much like sugar: not as sweet as the artificial sweeteners, and not as easy to dissolve. This is such a crisis for me, I cannot even begin to explain how I feel. How’s this: aaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrggghhh!!!!!

The moral of the story: you cannot escape what you try to avoid, so just embrace it and live in perpetual annoyance for the rest of your life. Okay?

Today was weigh in day, and to my continued shock, I lost weight AGAIN! I am now at 202.2. Honestly I will not start the party until I break 200 but I’m very close. This morning I slept late, just so tired. My class at FSU last night was intensive and the A/C was not working properly, which in Florida in September is a crisis, I assure you. Go on, YOU try and be outrageously creative and artistically precise when sweat is dripping off your nose onto your work. Watercolor paper is not made for that purpose. Anyway, I was exhausted and so I did not get up for my jog. Naturally, six hours later, I regret that decision. But at 4:30am it seemed like a great idea!

This makes nearly five pounds lost on SLD, over the course of a month. Since I also upped my exercise routine during the same period by increasing my jogging and racquetball frequencies, I suspect some fat loss was off-set by muscle gain. Which, really, is just fine with me! While I would love to have massive weight droppage, I know that “slow and steady wins the race” and I’m here for the long term.

My short term goal is to get down to 180; that would at least put me back into a majority of my wardrobe and I’d feel great. At approx. five pounds a month, I will be in that range sometime after the first of the year. That gets me excited, it really really does.

One odd note: today, I ate a full can of ravioli’s and even had five stick pretzels after that. I admit pre-SLD that would have been an appetizer (and yes, I’m terribly full now), but after a month of great AS I wonder at it. I get fabulous instant AS from the xylitol, but I am beginning to suspect that it is short lived AS. Makes no sense as one aspect of xylitol that I read about is how it slows down stomach emptying; theoretically, I should exhibit more long lasting AS, not less. I’m back to the idea that I am just not getting enough flavorless calories with xylitol (this morning’s dosage was about 75 calories worth). Mind you I’d love to take in more xylitol, but dang I just can’t! It is SO filling that I have a hard time finishing the XW dosage within 30 minutes time. I’m going to stay with my routine as it is for a few more days. If the symptoms continue, I might try mixing ELOO into the mix somehow.

Day 26: Fault line!

Today was day three on xylitol, and I think my body is finally getting used to the stuff. No runs! Yeaaa! For these small blessings we are grateful. I cut back my xylitol dosage to just over 100 calories worth for my morning flavorless calories. The AS was, yet again, very very strong. A few hours later I got some dangerous tummy rumbling action but nothing with serious side effects, if you catch my drift.

However, I think cutting back the caloric intake on the dosage is affecting me later in the day. It was supposed to be a “down” day of juice mix with maybe some fruit in the evening, but that plan got derailed. I took my fish oil caps in the afternoon as usual and that gave me some AS (never that strong anyway, with the fish caps) but by 7pm I was ravenous. I did not have any cravings of the usual kind, and in fact if my head had been on straight I would have chugged my fruit juice/ACV mix to take the edge off. But no, the training runs deep: I went for the double+good peanut butter spoon. The hunger was not so fierce after that but for dinner I did end up scarfing down some sushi, which is NOT what I had planned at all.

Displeased.

I think the problem is that with the xylitol, I’m just not getting enough flavorless calories (and how ironic is that, I ask you?). Between that and the fish caps, my SLD dosage comes to just over 200 calories; when I was doing old fashioned sugar water the total was closer to 350 calories. But UGH the xylitol is so filling, I cannot fathom dosing 200 calories of it in a sitting. No way. So I think I’ll split it: 100 calories worth in the morning, and then another 100 calories in the afternoon with the fish caps. I suspect that will give me AS like there’s no tomorrow.

Speaking of tomorrow, I think I’ll try for a “down” day again, as this one got blown to smithereens. Honestly my overall caloric intake today was less than 2000 calories total, so I cannot bitch too much. Still, hardly a “down” day as planned. Tomorrow, start fresh! I need to weigh in, too, but probably will do that on Thursday.

Day 25: Xylitol, cont.

Today the runs continued through afternoon, but after that everything, er, ran normally. I cut the xylitol dosage down to 130 calories worth – still too much. The AS was very strong and again, I felt that uncomfortably full sensation after drinking the xylitol/water mix. Did not eat any breakfast, ate a bowl of soup for lunch (with chips, though) and fixed my absolutely favorite quickie-dinner, cheese raviolis with spicy tomato sauce and garlic bread. Could barely finish five raviolis, though, and only two slices of bread; used to be, I could eat twice that and still be hungry. In what is no doubt a first, there were enough raviolis left over to pack up for husband’s lunch tomorrow! Leftovers! Amazing!

Took today off from exercising as last night we went out to a club and danced a lot. I felt like a den mother at the place – all those fresh young things! – and I told Husband that it was good that we travel together, or we’d each look like old lechers prowling for lost youth. But no, we just enjoy dancing! So we did, to many fun 80s tracks, and by the time we crawled home at 2am my legs were toasted. We had planned to play racquetball today but I bailed, as my legs were still hurting at 2pm in the afternoon. A day of rest never hurt anyone, I say…

Tomorrow is a “down” day, that is, I’ll be existing on my fruit juice/ACV mix for the day. Might have dinner plans with a friend, if she calls, but otherwise going to take it easy on the intestinal tract for a while.

Day 24: The Runs!

Alas, the subject title for this post is NOT in regards to my jogging. No.

Due to a thread in the SLD Forums on Xylitol, I decided to try it in place of sugar for my SW dose. The claims that it might induce mild laxitive results are not overblown, I warn you! I had the runs all morning. Ugh. However I will say this, as someone who is used to intestinal purges (via senna tea or the MasterCleanse program), this was as inconvenient as a purge always is but not as painful. No cramps of any kind, which in my book is great! I am informed that such a reaction will pass (uh…no pun intended…) once my body acclimates to the Xylitol.

If you are curious, I am trying this because I am one of those people who thinks that refined white sugar is just short of evil. Inescapable, I know, but evil nonetheless. I was very unhappy about using the SW for my AS, because I did not want to run all that corrupting sugar over my nice, pretty teeth or into my chemical system. But the oils (ELOO, walnut) do not have anywhere near as strong AS for me; I can get by with 150 calories in SW while the same yet shorter-lived AS by oil requires 300 calories. I think that Xylitol may be the solution I am looking for.

I will say this: I used about 200 calories of Xylitol for my morning SLD dosage, in about a liter of water. OMG the AS was incredible, so much so, in fact, that it was almost uncomfortable. I mean, I felt full. I think I’ll back down the amount I use. If anything, so far, Xylitol beats sugar hands down on AS and health benefits.

For that, I can take a few days of “running.”

Day 23: Breaking the Pattern

Eh, weekends are a pain. While I truly hate my job and wonder where, oh where! is my trust fund, weekends are a free for all and my careful schedule of SLD dosing is thrown off track. Usually I can work around, but today, I got sloppy. By the time I realized my planning was flummoxed, it was 12 noon and Husband was on his way home from work soon. Not having any idea when we would eat, I forwent the drawn out process of sipping SW and took 2T of ELOO. I also never got around to taking my fish oil caps later. Harumph. The AS was great all day, and while I think I ate more than I normally do, I was still free of cravings or ravenous hunger. All good.

And as I mentioned in an earlier post, I am not experiencing stress-related hunger. I mention this because money is tight; Husband and I are not the best at sticking to a budget (eh, we suck, actually…) so as the savings dwindles and the school fees mount (we are both in college full time right now; he’s getting his A.S. and I’m pursuing both a second bachelors and a masters, yes at the same time) and my dreamed of trust fund remains MIA, I am becoming very nervous. Money is a historic sore point for me and I can be very immature about it. I know, I am the master of my fate; still, I seem to bow down before my neuroses more often than not. I think as things stand financially, I am very blessed not to be trying to stuff my face all day. That fact I put at the feet of Seth Roberts and his SLD plan. Thank you, Seth!

I am most pleased in life about my exercising these days. I am hauling my arse out of bed every morning for a jog, 35-45 minutes long depending on my strength that day, which is a real triumph for me. Especially on weekends, where (as I may have mentioned) my schedule is thrown off track. I have nonetheless been getting up early on even the weekends (miracle!) to jog. Also, we are playing racquetball about four times a week, and I am finally seeing some progress in my game. Husband, who is a good player, still whips me in every game but I am making him work for it these days, where he used to just cakewalk through it. My resting HR is down to 62, when this time last year it was 90. All in all, my health is improving a lot! That makes me very, very happy.

And in a strange moment tpday, I thought about what cool outfit I would wear for our annual family portrait when I got down to my goal weight. Somehow I think I am beginning to believe I will get down to that weight, as in, for real. Wow. That is a major mental shift for me.