Day 45: Tension Break + Weigh In

Today was a better day than the rest of the week. I am still on a ragged edge but cleaning up the pieces (you want cryptic? I’ll give you cryptic!).

I was back on the SLD dosage plan of mine and also did a “down day” on food intake; not very much of a down day, but enough to feel better: juice/ACV drink all day, and a small mix of stir-fried tofu and veggies for dinner. Actually that was pretty amazing, compared to how I used to eat tofu-veggies mix: on top of four cups of rice! LOL! Seriously, I love rice. But with SLD it just isn’t a craving any more. I had the tofu with veggies and no rice on it at all, which in the past would have been heretical.

After class I got home and MiKE fed me a slice of cheese. I guess that was dessert?

Anyway things are doing okay. I did weigh in this morning at 199 and that is exciting, but given the emotional issues of this past week I can’t say I’m convinced it is a legitimate loss. Well when am I ever convinced of that, right? But we’ll see. I know it would be FABULOUS to permanently break out of the 200s!!!!

Day 42: Weigh In

Wow, I went down AGAIN! Will I never ceased to be amazed by this? No, probably not…

Anyway, I am down to 201.4!! As I posted at the SLD Forum, this represents about one pound per week loss for me. I’m so impatient, I want it faster pussycat more more more! But I know that slow and steady is healthier, and will be more permanent.

Amazing how easy SLD makes this!

In other news, I’m tearing up my emotional batteries. What a frackin’ terrible week, emotionally. And that is all I have to say about that for now.

Day 33: Weigh In + TOM + Nick Frost

This morning I clocked at 203.2. No surprise there, my TOM just started yesterday so I knew I’d go up. The amazing thing is that I started this at 207, and so even with bloat I’ve not retrograded too much. Last night I wanted some chocolate (well you know, it’s a girl thing) and I had about seven dark chocolate M&Ms out of a small bag, and then stopped. I did not stop because I felt guilty or ashamed or because I was consciously trying to “diet.” I stopped because seven was enough. I did not feel compelled to eat any more than that. I wanted a taste, I got a taste, and I was satisfied. If words could express how incredibly amazing that fact is, I would write them.

I’ve been on SLD for a month. What an life-changing experience! I want to stand out on a street corner and hand out free copies of Seth’s book. While I have not lost a huge amount of weight I am FREE of the crazy cravings that used to rule my world, when it came to food, and if I could give that gift to the many miserable overeaters/bingers/cravers of the world, I would! I hope this blog might serve that purpose just a little. It cannot be enough.

On that note: Nick Frost. I love that man. Adore him. He’s the guy who plays lovable Sgt. Butterman in Hot Fuzz. He was in Shaun of the Dead and has done several Britcoms, usually but not always with his pal Simon Pegg. If you’ve watched his career, you know that he’s gained a lot of weight over the years. It is obvious that he was born to be a bear of a guy (yummy!), but still, his weight gain is noticeable and alarming. I keep thinking of John Candy. I wish more than anything I could send him SLD by telepathy; I don’t need him to be a twizzle stick, but I want him to be healthy and live a long time. He’s a fantastic comedian and a handsome man who needs to make a lot more movies. Please, Nick Frost, try out SLD. Save yourself for us, your fans. Not to mention maybe your family and friends?

Oh, bugger.

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 Fifteen: Weigh In

This morning’s weigh in was honestly disappointing: 205.2. I know that I am eating far fewer calories than I used (and I suspect I’m in ketosis) to so I am wondering what is going on. I am exercising more so it might be that muscle gain is throwing off the results. Possible. Of course I am exercising more so that should also positively impact my metabolism. wtf? Two weeks into SLD and I’ve lost 1.8 pounds, which I can’t even be sure is true because I started right before my TOM, so I could just be down to my normal, not-TOM weight. I don’t know. I don’t notice my clothes fitting differently but…well I suppose I should start measuring. Bah. I hate measuring. For that matter, I hate getting on the scale!

I’m a lot less judgemental of myself than I used to be, so weighing and measuring doesn’t terrify me anymore. Still, old habits die hard (or live free!…sorry, sorry…) and I fight off feelings of inadequacy every time I see high numbers. Of course if my weight drops by a pound tomorrow morning I will be on cloud-nine high. Knowing that, I can take my reactions with a grain of salt.

It could be that I am in just good enough shape and my metabolism is just out of whack enough to make losing a very slow process for me. Of course I wrote earlier that even if I don’t lose any weight, I’m sticking to SLD because it is creating a healthier lifestyle, and I mean it. Still, given the dramatic decrease in my calorie intake, I wonder that I am not losing more.

I guess the next two weeks will tell what is really going on. I don’t mind being in this for the long haul.

Day Twelve: Just a Feeling

Today is more of the same, hunger-wise. The appetite remains at an all time low and my cravings are just simply gone. I was starving after our evening after-work racquetball game (I sucked! And I twisted my foot…bah) so I came home and ate 1/2 cup of edame beans. That’s it. That’s what “starving” gets you on SLD!

Earlier I had a full lunch at a restaurant as a co-worker took some of us out to eat, but still, I only got through one grits cake and half a rainbow trout.

My weigh in this morning came to 205.4 pounds. I think that is okay, especially given that the first week on SLD was also my TOM. I admit, though, that I am very curious as to how the next couple of weeks will shape up. I’m not set on a regular weigh in time (every day? Once a week?) but I’ll try to weigh more often than not.

I re-read an interesting book by Betsy Lerner called Food and Loathing. While it is in a lot of ways more about her bipolarism than her fat, it still captured many of the feelings of shame and frustration a fat person experiences, especially in relation to yo-yo dieting. She is crushing in her breakdown of OA, although she does not vilify it. Books like this are not fun reads, and are certainly of limited appeal, but I think they are important. Too often the voices of fat people and the daily excrutiating hell we live in are marginalized by the word “diet.” Just the word conjures up the idea that we are fat because we just don’t try hard enough, or don’t want to be thin enough, or some other personal failing. The biological element (in Lerner’s case represented by her bipolarism) is dismissed. What this particular book shows is how we do this to ourselves; we don’t even need critics. The stigma is often from the inside out. I was particularly moved by the scene in the book where she is being hospitalized for attempted suicide, her life crumbling around her in all directions, and all she can think about is how wide her hips are in the office chair. Yes, I know that feeling.

During the height of the gay rights movement in the late 90s, my friends and I would laugh about the idea, so popular among the religious right, that queers “choose” their “lifestyle.” At the time (and in some places still) coming out of the closet meant instant social ostrization, and sometimes worse. Who in their right mind would chose that kind of life? One where family and friends would disown you? One where you lost your job and all you had worked for, and possibly the right to see your children again? Just for sex? That’s madness. No one choses that, they just survive it. I think of being fat in the same terms. No, this is not something I chose. It is not something that is comfortable or enjoyable or rewarding. Lerner’s book makes that very clear through her own horrifying experiences, up to and nearly including killing herself rather than be fat. I have to admire someone who is honest enough to admit that she admires anorexics, because sometimes I do to. They may be sick and unhealthy but hey they are thin!

Now THAT is crazy.

Day Eight: Weigh In + On Being Scared

Yesterday was my birthday, BTW. I did not eat any cake or ice cream and did not really miss either (usually I would go get some if not presented with them!). Went out with co-workers and had a drink, as in one drink. Husband and I did dinner after that at our favorite Middle Eastern restaurant. I got a small side salad and bowl of lentil soup and took a few bits of the hummus appetizer my husband loves so much (great stuff!). Could not even finish the soup! Craziness! When I got home I was not snacky at all, either. More craziness!

This morning’s weigh in was disappointing (206.5) but honestly not surprising. I am dead in the middle of my TOM and I knew this was likely. I’m anxious for this week to end so I can see what will happen “free and clear” of the TOM.

This morning I did the three tablespoons of walnut oil + ½ teaspoon of sugar again. Again, instant AS! I even forgot about my coffee later at work. Unheard of! Forget coffee? I only thought that would happen if I was brain damaged. Yesterday I did drink a small portion of sugar water in the late afternoon, but only because I knew I was going out to a restaurant for dinner and was scared. Yes, scared.

Being hungry is scary to me. It represents everything bad about my life: my mother’s poor health; my continual fight with fat and dieting; my poor self-image and accompanying insecurities. There is nothing fun about being hungry. In a perverse way, I admire the Ani Girls who delight in hunger, who feel power from it. The effect is opposite for me: complete powerlessness (perhaps one reason I never became anorexic). When I am hungry I feel that my life is out of control, unpleasant, and unfair. Not to mention I feel hungry, which is not much fun in and of itself! So, the prospect of hunger makes me cringe. I will do anything to avoid it, including eat when I’m not hungry, which of course makes sense only to insane people.

I do not think this irrationality will be driven out by SLD, only tempered. These emotional reactions were ingrained into me from my earliest years. (In fact I was probably the only seven year old at the Y summer day camp who was not allowed to eat camp food because I was on a diet. My mother made my lunches to bring with me, and they were always in tune with whatever diet she was trying for herself at the time. I assure you, the fad diets of the late 70s were even worse than the fad diets of today.) The emotional scars are pretty deep here, and I have no illusion of waking up tomorrow with a healthy perspective about food, hunger, or body image. Nope, not me.

I would like to be done with being scared, though. It is grueling. It is akin to always being on guard against attack: after a while you get cranky and nervous, then you get angry, then exhausted. It is part of the reason “traditional” diets (food tracking/restriction) fail for me. I just, quite simply, get hungry; then all the emotional drama cascades down from there and ends up stuffed along with several thousand calories into my belly.

SLD has pulled me – yanked me – out of that cycle. I’m just not hungry anymore so the emotional triggers never get pulled. They are still there but they are inactive. For now, that is good enough for me!

Day Five: Weigh in + What Seth Taught Me

Today I weighed in at 205.8 pounds. I’m not one to split hairs so I translate that as “one pound in five days.” Not bad for healthy weightloss. I think it also reflects the overall higher level of health I maintain — people who are very out of shape and overfat tend to lose a lot in their first few weeks of SLD.

Two important aspects to add:
1. I have not been purposefully changing my eating habits (i.e. I am not “dieting”), only not eating when not hungry.
2. My TOM (time of month, for you menfolk) just arrived.

The second is most interesting to me, because last time I kept record, my weight would easily go up three to five pounds right about my period.

I think, as I wrote on Day Four, that most people who diet are, to some extent, self-expirimentors. Even at the most simplistic end of the spectrum, they are measuring how their food intake affects their body weight. But the real key to being a self-experimentor is whether you analyze your results in a comprehensive manner, and then apply your analysis to future “trials.” It is one thing to state, “oh, I’m not losing weight on Atkins, I’ll just quit” and quite another to say “I’m not losing weight with this level of carb intake, let me adjust it for a few days and see what results.”

My mother was the latter. Her health was poor and she became obese over the years (that fact alone mortified her into being a hermit). She was a home computer early adapter and as early as 1985 we had computer graph printouts (dot matrix, thankyouverymuch) running down the entire hallway tracking her weight, calorie intake, fat intake, exercise level, and mood swings. That last was particularly important, and in the event, crucial: she was bi-polar and her mood swings were horrifically extreme. This combined with the near primitive state of nutritional science at the time pretty much spelled failure for her, and while I am not going to let her off the hook from her self destructive behaviors, she was in many ways a victim of circumstances too.

Her graphs ended up running into years. She learned about the set-point theory in the late 80s but there was nothing in print other than rank speculation on how to change it. We did discover that eating a diet high in oranges helped us lose weight; that meat made us gain; that we had to exercise for nearly two hours a day if our caloric intake was greater than 2000, in order to lose. We learned that her mood swings were on six month cycles: three months of mania, followed by three months of depression. That those swings got down to a four month cycle when she started menopause. Oh, the DATA!

From this experience you might think I developed a deep appreciation for self-experimentation. Quite the opposite. My view was that Mother’s self experimentation never actually solved anything. The knowledge we gained — how many calories it took for feel full at the end of the day (2200, and for me that never changed), for example. Knowing that did not change it; knowing that without a way to change it made it irrelevant. I felt buried by irrelevant data, and I felt powerless. I think it eventually had the same effect on Mother; when she got cancer, she stopped the graphs. And she died obese in 1994.

A couple of times over the last 15 years I have tracked calorie intake (yep, 2200) or exercise levels and once or twice weighed myself regularly. Still, it all just seemed pointless.

Then I started to run. Specifically, I started to try to run. My uncle the marathoner was and is my coach, and he would email me asking how long I was going for, what my time was, and other stuff which of course I did not know. I began keeping a jogging log in Excel on my computer (ghods what Mother would have done with THIS technology! OMG she would have ruled the world! I’m serious!). That just didn’t seem to be enough so I started tracking my periods, and how much yoga I do, and…it just sorta happened. I was graphing! I am not quite up to tracking calories again and I weigh only sporadically, but still, I am keeping track of the data and this time, I think I know why. Seth Roberts taught me, from his own life and experiments with SLD.

What Seth showed me is that data is never meaningless. Sometimes we don’t have the tools to understand what it is showing us; sometimes (as in Mother’s case) what it shows us cannot be resolved. Yet we are still stronger for the knowing.

Day Two: Weigh In

I weighed in at 207 pounds this morning, which tracks with what I guesstimated yesterday. As I stated then, I’m not sure I can believe I’ll lose weight doing this (oh, so many disappointments!), but I’m willing to find out. All I know for sure is that even last night at dinner time, when I would normally be chewing the furniture in hunger, I had a few crackers with cheese that husband fixed for me and a peanut butter spoon for dessert and that’s IT! And I wasn’t hungry! Wow oh wow ohwowohwowohwow…

Today the same thing has happened. I drank my hummingbird water at 11am (I had stopped all “intake” at 9am, after my coffee). I finished it about 11:35am, and then waited for lunch at about 1pm. However that is inaccurate: I did not wait for lunch, I FORGOT ABOUT IT! A co-worker came by a bit after 1pm and asked me what I ate for lunch, and that’s when I remembered it. I FORGOT ABOUT EATING. Do you understand? Do you feel me? I FORGOT ABOUT EATING.

I do not, as a rule, do that. Usually I am fighting off thoughts of food while I wait a reasonable time inbetween meals. Now I am eating and going very slowly, which is also unusual. Weirder still, I brought a tomato to eat with my rice/beans/veggies mix, as a dessert type of thing (I LUV tomatoes!) and now I’m deciding whether to finish the bowl of rice or eat the tomato. Choosing, you see, is not something I normally do either. My M.O. is to just eat it all.

Some people say they do not have much of a reaction on SLD, and that makes me sad. I can’t imagine a better bliss than not being hungry. I am still in shock.