Post 728, Day 31 of 2013
- and 762 days since I started this blog -
Daily Comment
- and 762 days since I started this blog -
Daily Comment
I am going to write about diet, which is a boring topic, so if that doesn't interest you, you can tune out now.
This is last year's weight chart:
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| Year 2012 daily weight from December 31, 2011 |
Well, actually, beginning tomorrow.
This means I am going back to basics. And that means going back to a slightly modified Slow-Carb diet. Namely, three meals a day, six days a week, with each meal being based on protein, vegetables and beans. Except, not so much on the beans this go-round.
In fact, though, the diet is described more by what it leaves out during those six days: Starchy carbs (other than legumes), simple carbs, grains, dairy, (anything white except cauliflower).
And one cheat day (anything goes, but after breakfast) per week.
This is how I lost fifty pounds in about six months.
No more fasting days. At least, for now. These were never designed as a weight loss strategy, and clearly, they haven't worked in terms of weight maintenance. Once I drop about ten pounds from the day, I might experiment with bringing back the (day after cheat day) Sunday fast. We'll see.
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Today's Weight: 207.6 lbs
Food and Diet Section
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| First-half year 2013 daily weight |
Yesterday's Weight: 209.2 lbs
Day Net Loss/Gain: - 1.6 lbs
Diet Comment
A drop - I'll take it.
Food Log
BreakfastSkipped.
Lunch
Cocoa-Kale-hemp protein shake (Almond milk, hemp seeds, kale, cocoa, vanilla whey powder (24g protein), cinnamon, stevia-inulin blend).
Dinner
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| Chili (ground beef, red beans, mushrooms, tomatoes, spices) on broccoli. |
Snack
Cole slaw and hard-boiled eggs.
Liquid Intake
Coffee: 34 oz, Water: 116+ oz
Please leave a comment if you visit my blog. Thank you!
Good start.
ReplyDeleteKen, I read your blog because I've been doing something similar, though the particulars may be a little different. For me it was being diagnosed with Type II Diabetes nearly two years ago. The doctor I was seeing at the time prescribed three diabetes drugs after an unequivocally bad blood test. For reasons of both cost and potential side-effects I had no desire take that route, so the alternative was to change my diet and see if that helped. With the help of the local hospital nutritionist I went on a low-carb diet--about 35-60 grams of carbs per meal--and in eight months lost sixty pounds. Then I hit a plateau. Since that plateau was 200 I think there was a big psychological thing going on, but ideally I'd like to get down another twenty to thirty pounds. In any case, my glucose readings average around 100, i.e., normal range, and my a1c is in the low 6.'s. (In all that time I have not taken any diabetes medications.) We seem to be going through some similar things here, and our bodyweights are very close as well, though you've got several inches in height over me. All of which is just a preface to what could have been a very short comment, but I guess I wanted to establish some credentials for going through a similar experience to your own. The comment is this: consider eliminating the cheat days. We are all going to cheat at some point, but for a variety of reasons I'm not enthused about effectively institutionalizing a cheat day. It certainly can't be good for your blood sugar, and it just breaks the pattern you've otherwise established. Plus it keeps you too close to the kind of eating mode you're trying to break out of. Why not, instead, accept the fact that cheating will occur, and when it inevitably does, use it to resolve to do better. We can only SEEK perfection. Realistically, we know it's not going to happen. Anyway, just a thought. I hope it's helpful, but one thing I've learned is that we each must approach this in our own way. --Dan R.
ReplyDeleteDan,
DeleteFirst of all, congrats on your success at reversing/controlling your Diabetes 2. I have been 'pre-diabetic' for almost 30 years now, and 'fear' of slipping to the other side was a big motivation to take control of my weight.
A to the 'cheat' days - I did a series of posts in this blog about that - they aren't really cheats, as off-plan as they are. Calling them that is a total wrong thing, but a lot of the guides I've read have used that phraseology. What they are, and are meant to be, is high-calorie, high-carb days. They are a designed part of the diet, not an actual day off.
The theory behind them is that, when you are eating low carbs (I'll get back to that in a minute) and relatively low calorie, there are some complementary effects on the body: hormonal balance problems, glycogen metabolic adaptation and leptin suppression. These are abnormalities of a diet that limits calories and carbohydrate intake. They can effect your body's healthy functioning and weight loss and maintenance.
The dietary version I started with, that helped me lose 50 pounds relatively quickly and maintain that loss for over a year, began with a day that emphasized very high caloric intake from simple carbs - sweets - one day a week, while limiting any other carbohydrate consumption the rest of the week to legumes and high water-content vegetables (ie, green leafy and cruciferous), completely eliminating grains and dairy (fat and carb combination). The planned cheat day was necessary for a couple of reasons: Ensure healthy functioning of the liver, which, 6 days a week is primarily processing only fat; boost leptin production; boost metabolism; re-energize insulin production (suppressed during the week).
It is not meant to be a psychological release from the restrictions of the diet, although it has that effect. It is meant to be a weight-loss aid, and worked that way for me when I was following the dietary guidelines strictly.
As you point out, it breaks the pattern established six days a week, and that is what it is intended to do, to prevent adaptation. It also better mimics the more normal human cycle, from our hunter-gatherer existence, of feasting after a successful hunt, and then reducing intake until the next successful hunt.
It worked for me before, I'm going to see if it works for me again. I am going to stop calling it a cheat day and refer to it as a high-calorie day, to distinguish it from an off-plan fail.
I agree that there's no universal approach that works for everybody, either physically or psychologically. I would add that a weight-loss, weight-maintenance regime can only succeed if it is one that can be followed without stressing the system, but almost any plan will work if it doesn't impose unacceptable stress on a person.
Your diet worked so well for you, but to me, the daily carbohydrate intake is too high - you allow at a meal what I am comfortable with for a whole day. That may be why it is healthy for you to forgo a high-carb day. As someone with type-2 diabetes, you also have to constantly be aware of and regulate your blood sugar. I think that much regular intake of carbohydrates (outside of my formerly-known-as-cheat days) would have a bad effect on me, and have sought to keep my effective carb intake (carb grams - fiber grams) under 100 g a day for decades now.
Ken, thanks for the explanation of your diet (I had written a response a couple of days ago but apparently it didn't go through). There are many ways of losing weight, and while each of our routines shares some similarities there are also differences. I now have a better understanding of what you're trying to do (though I'm not sure whether you want to lose more weight or just maintain where you're at) and will continue to follow your progress. As I've said before, I find it motivating, even if the approach is a little different. Good luck! --Dan
ReplyDelete