Open valves

We are, these days, having some of the worst rainfalls in years. Constant precipitation for almost a week, and neither the ground nor the sewers can take any more water. As they have predicted another  ten gallons of water per square meter (that is about a gallon per square foot) to come down in the next hours, part of it as hail, I have postponed the weekend shopping until tomorrow, hoping that the weather will clear up until then, or at least get a bit drier. 

Somebody please close the valves on those clouds... Luckily, we live neither adjacent to a river (though there is one about a quarter of a mile down from the street we live in, but that has excellent flood protection that was built after an inundation that rose high enough to enable people to navigate our street by boat. I have only seen photographs of that, and with the new measures it should not repeat itself), nor at the bottom of a hill (the rain has led to several muddy avalanches coming down on streets in the area already). 

As the tram lines aren't yet affected, either, I'll do some quick shopping after work for the articles we have run out of (namely bacon and eggs for breakfast). 

At times like these, I am glad to be living right in the middle of a not-so-small city and close to all the amenities one might need. 

Julia

Tracking eye openers

Anyone who has been following my blog for some time knows that I am a bit obsessive about tracking my progress, or lack thereof. Be it FatWatch or Physicsdiet.com, whenever I am near a scale in the morning I weigh in and record my weight. As both of these programs give you long-time averages and trend curves, I can see which way my weight is developing. 

I found that especially helpful on the near-plateau I've been on for over a year. 

Just weighing in daily would have kept me under a false impression of security, because the day-to-day variations were actually rather smallish. Had I not kept those records, I would certainly have believed that what I did was maintaining.

Enter the FatWatch curves for the last quarter and the last year. Ouch.

Only when I looked at these did I recognize that I had been slowly and insidiously starting to Gain It All Back. Not in a big way yet, mind you, but the tendency was pointing in the opposite direction of where I wanted it to go. Had I continued that way, I would perhaps have reached my starting weight in less than a decade, instead of my goal weight next year. 

So, what I am working on is to pull that curve back down. 

Wrecking the train you're on can be as easy as closing your eyes to where you are going. 

Which is why intuitive eating would never work for me. 

Julia

A matter of discipline

Someone claimed that any diet plan works as long as you stick to it. While I would not say that about a lot of plans I tried, and failed to get results in spite of following them to a "t", it is certainly true about what I am doing now. 

I started out recondensing myself in August 2010. That's when I found out that going high-protein, low carb was, for me, what made the pounds come off, something that more carb-heavy plans had not done. I ditched the breakfast cereal for bacon and eggs, I stopped buying bread and sweets, I exchanged my perennial vanilla pudding for protein shakes, and the pounds just melted off. 

Fast forward two years, during which I went from BMI 41 to BMI 29 point something, and I let myself become complacent. An occasional breakfast roll, some potatoes, one more handful of nuts. Nothing extravagant, no binges. Still, those small indulgences added up to a year-long stall. I kept dithering around that limit of obesity. To get things moving downwards again, I had to return to what had worked. 

Only now that I am once more sticking to my plan is that weight curve beginning to point downwards again. The damages of my off-plan year are rather reluctant to leave, and losses are considerably slower than when I first started losing. But that should not surprise me as my basal metabolic rate would be about 300 calories lower from the weight already lost. 

I don't know if I will reach my goal of being normal-weighted before turning fifty, but I am still aiming for it. After all, it's just 12 kilograms to go. And every single one of those kilograms I recondense is one less I have to drag around. 

So, what it amounts to is discipline. If I have that, I can still make goal in time. 

Julia

Skipping the hurdles

I took a few days off work over Pentecost, and once again, we went to visit MIL. I was a bit apprehensive about the effect that five days there might have on my weight, so I went there prepared. 

Namely, for breakfast and supper I took along thickly sliced smoked turkey meat, which I ate with a topping of horseradish sauce or mustard. No bread, no peanuts. On Monday, MIL invited us out. I had a dish of lamb chops and a salad. The two big potato dumplings that came with the meat I left untouched. In the evenings, I kept sipping on my water bottle.

The end result- up a pound from Friday, but that may be due to normal variations. And it's certainly preferable to the four pounds on average I used to gain there over just two days.

And still a good place to continue downwards from. 

Julia

An apple and an egg

In Germany, that's what you call an outrageously cheap price for something, as in "I bought these for an apple and an egg". 

For me, these days, it's also the measure of what I eat between breakfast and dinner. An apple plus a hard-boiled egg. Actually, it's what I eat when I come home in the evening. I have found that it is enough to quelch the hunger that has built during another workday of too-busy-to-eat, and, at less than 200 calories it's a lot less damaging than my former several handfuls of peanuts plus a chunk of cheese which could easily pack more calories than what I allow myself at dinnertime. 

I find that limiting my choices of what to eat is working fine for me. Most of all, it keeps me from grazing on a dozen different things, all the time justifying every bad choice by saying it's just a small portion. 

I used to do that a lot, grabbing one handful of nuts, then a slice of salami, then a piece of cheese, then a cup of yogurt with toppings, without thinking of all that as a meal. The old calories don't count if you eat it standing up or while in your car fallacy at its finest. Today, I keep reminding myself to sit down and eat, trying to concentrate on the act of eating. For someone like me who spent many years chewing almost constantly while doing something else, that sometimes still takes vigilance. But it prevents me from vacuuming a whole bag of cookies without being consciously aware that I am eating. Breaking that habit of constantly moving hand with food to mouth, eating without being aware of it, was hard at first. I would frequently catch myself entering my kitchen, for whatever purpose, and in passing dipping my hand into the cookie jar automatically. 

So I removed the cookie jar. I also stopped buying chocolate and most of these other snack foods. 

And I started to look at food and eating differently. What I used to do was the see-food diet, as in I see food and eat it, and food, to me,used to mean all those highly palatable, processed things that you can munch down mindlessly even if you are not hungry and which never leave you sated, either, just stuffed. 

Today, the processed crap stays at the grocery store. What I have in the house is mostly Real Food, to the exception of a few pre-prepared things like sauces or the occasional pizza (which is far less bad than you'd think because I found a brand that has a spelt crust, vegetable and yoghurt topping and just about 500 calories for a whole pizza). The sauces serve as toppings on vegetable-loaded dishes. Neither food invites mindless grazing. 

The grocery bills have, by the way, taken quite a nosedive. So much for people claiming eating more healthy food is too expensive.

Today's WI: down another pound. Looks like what I do is working.

Finally.

Julia

Adding steps

Having upped my water intake for four days now, the effect better hydration has on my skin is undeniable. And today's weigh-in showed a two- pound loss, so it looks like my body has adapted to the better hydration already. 

On the adding steps from the Whole30 catalogue front, I have nixed the happy hour glass of beer in favor of another glass of water. I'll keep that up for a couple of days and see if that habit was what prevented any further weight loss. If my weight were finally starting to really drop again, I'd know that the choice for me was between keeping that habit or getting to goal. 

Wouldn't it be ironic if the things I had listed up which kept me from doing a Whole30 because I did not want to give them up were what I must give up to get off this plateau.

The points of greatest resistance, so to speak. 

But once everything else has been tweaked and retweaked to no avail, these are the only options left. 

My habits or goal.

Maybe it's time to step out of that comfort zone.

Julia

Nutty slipup

For ten days, I had stayed legume-free. And then yesterday I grabbed a package of nut mix for a quick llunch. The picture on the pack showed no peanuts, so I thought they'd be okay. Not so. Only when I had snarfed down the first handful did I realize that at least a third of what was in that bag were... peanuts. 

What I got for not reading labels? For one, a minor binge because I finished off that bag of nuts. In the evening, only the fact that there were no snack foods in the house kept me from another binge. I ate an apple instead and a big ass salad for dinner, which usually suffices. This time, it felt hard. 

And this morning, well, let's leave it at mentioning I entered our bathroom several more times than usual.

So not worth it. 

And another pointer to the fact that the very peanuts I regularly consume are, to me, a serious overeating trigger and probably also something I am intolerant of. 

I saw that possibility mentioned in a book on food intolerance I once read in the library (I disremember the title and author, sorry). Namely, the author suggested looking at those foods one believes would be the hardest to give up as possible culprits for a food intolerance. 

Looking at yesterday's experience, I should probably stay off peanuts indefinitely. 

I'd never have thought the reaction to reintroducing them after ten days of abstinence would be that obvious. But then again, hadn't I already known that peanuts were one of the foods that I find it hard to eat just a bit of? 

Learning and relearning my lessons. That seems to be the only way I can ever hope to make goal.

In spite of the effect the peanuts had on my digestion, those two extra pounds of water are still around. I have taken to flavoring the water I drink with a few drops of sugar free beverage syrup that is, as by the instructions, supposed to be diluted at a much more concentrated ratio, so if I use just a fraction of it I should be okay calorie-wise. At least it's easier for me to drink up my water that way. One liter while at work, another when at home, minimum. Plus plenty of vegetables. 

Time for things to get moving downwards again.

Julia

Camels and back

Camels are said to be able to carry water stores for several days' worth of desert travelling in their bodies. While that may not be entirely correct zoologically, I have, once again, caught myself acting as if I, too, were carrying such stores. Namely, whenever things get too hectic around here, I forget to drink. One cup of coffee in the morning, one glass of water or beer at night, and nothing in between. Which leaves me at about a quarter of the recommended intake, slowly getting into dehydration with all of the attendant symptoms. Of course, on my scales, that dehydration shows up as a loss. So, when it dawned on me once again this weekend that I might have slipped back into the habit of underhydrating myself, it was clear that by upping my water intake, I would, at first, show a net gain. Which is exactly what happened. But, as I know what that gain (two pounds) is, I'll rather have that than losses that are not fat but water.

What I (and DH who commented about it) have noticed after just two days of forcing myself to drink two extra litres (half a gallon) of water a day is that my skin is already looking better. 

Of course, there was the flip side that regularly happens when I start to rehydrate my body after starving it of water for too long, namely, having cramps in my kidneys and bladder while they are readapting to having to process that much liquid. Fortunately these usually last just one day.

What made the transition back to better hydration even more unpleasant was that I must have made a wrong twist when getting up yesterday, which gave me a bad case of lumbago that kept me mostly chair-bound and immobilized all Sunday and has not gone away completely yet. So, I am moving carefully today, so as to not make it worse. 

OMG this sounds like Lyn. But it really was so bad yesterday that I could not straighten my back even as far as to be able to reach the upper cupboards in my kitchen. 

So, I'll continue watching my water intake, and my back, too. And see which way the scales move without me starving myself of water. 

Julia

Green leaves

...no, not spinach today, but on the bushes beside the entrance to the building where I work. Finally. Ascension day is a legal holiday over here, so I spent the day at home with DH. 

The average weight curve is finally pointing downwards again when I go back for one month, but the quarterly, six- month and yearly averages are still pointing upwards in an accusing red line. 

And the losses are smaller than they would have to be for me to get to goal in time for next year's birthday. At the going rate, I'd take about twice as long as that.

On the other hand, eating cleaner, without bread and legumes but plus plenty of fresh veggies, seems at least to help with the persistent fatigue that had been plagueing me in the last months. 

Which is a good thing after all. But I'm not completely satisfied as long as that condensable matter won't budge. 

The caloric difference between what I am losing and what I should be is... thirty to sixty minutes of exercise a day :(. 

I don't know myself why I am resisting the idea so much. Perhaps because I have never before been trying to juggle as many commitments as I am right now, all of which have to take precedence over my own wishes. Putting another thing on my plate that takes up so much time just doesn't seem doable. 

Actually, the only time I could even think about regularly carving out an hour of anything is in the mornings. Which, in turn, would mean having to go to bed an hour earlier or run an even bigger sleep deficit than I already have. 

Everywhere I look I read about exercise reducing fatigue. Great. If I weren't so fucking tired I might give it a try...

Just where do other people take the energy from?

Julia

Pantry newcomers

Even though some people (hi, Norma!) abhor the expression, to me, recondensing has turned into a veritable journey of discovery. I keep finding out things about myself, and I find myself experimenting with the things I eat. 

Case in point: spinach. For the longest time, the only way I had ever seen that sold was frozen, chopped into tiny particles, and refined with cream. When cooked, that became a semi-liquid mush with a consistency like hollandaise sauce. Then, they introduced "leaf spinach", which was not chopped but still only available frozen. Upon thawing, it was as mushy as the chopped stuff. 

Which is why spinach was almost never served in our household, unless as part of a green pasta sauce. 

I got curious when people kept mentioning spinach as an ingredient in salads. So, when I discovered fresh whole spinach leaves at the grocery store, I grabbed a bag for experimenting. Guess what, the stuff makes for a better salad ingredient than lettuce. Much more nutritients, too. 

And for the dangerous first hour after coming home, there's a big bowl of apples sitting in my kitchen now.

Fresh food in its natural state. 

Isn't it sad that that can become a discovery? For someone who, like myself, has been fighting obesity for a long time, just eating food as the Creator made it is a bit of a revolution. Too many years of low-sugar this and low-fat that, all with the silent assumption that the real thing would not be good enough. So-called fortified foods that make believe they are better than the real thing. Realizing that all and sundry such food-like substances have less nutritients than the real foods they imitate was a big step for me, because it gave me back the right to chose which I had for the longest time delegated to diet or non-diet food processing companies because I was scared of making the wrong choices. What I ended up with were all the wrong choices, and cravings, binges and obesity as a consequence.

Switching to unprocessed foods has made the cravings and binges go away, as evidenced by the fact that they regularly return whenever I have eaten highly processed foods. 

I'm feeling better if I eat clean. And that remaining condensable matter on me? It will leave on its own time. 

The sooner, the better. 

Julia

It works

This morning's weigh-in: down half a pound from Saturday morning. So, that broken record does work.
I am, as per today, still grain-free except for rice and legume-free. The peanuts have been replaced with cashews and almonds. An interesting observation in that context is that those don't trigger the same urge to eat eat eat that peanuts do. I can eat one handful of them as a snack and stop, without having to fight the impulse of returning for another two or three handfuls.
Come to think of it, the same holds true for other legumes. Lentil soup, or split pea soup, for me always meant having at least seconds or even thirds, while a legume free vegetable soup had me satisfied after one bowl.
Which leaves me wondering about what other surprises might be ahead if I were also to ditch dairy. As a matter of fact, pure milk was never something I liked. In elementary school, there was a government-sponsored "school milk" program where every child got a 250 ml pack of either pure milk or cocoa a day. I regularly picked the chocolate version because the pure milk, to me, was disgusting. To this day, I eat cheese and yoghurt, but don't drink milk unless it has some flavoring agent inside to mask the taste. Now is that revulsion to the pure stuff my body trying to tell me something? Cheese and yogurt are both fermented forms of dairy which are supposed to be easier to digest for someone who is intolerant.
Going without bread has been alerting me to another factoid: there are foods that one would probably not eat in their pure state, but when they are put on a slice of bread, it's something that one considers a delicacy. Those Belgian pates, for example. I would probably not manage to eat more than a teaspoon of that stuff without bread, because it's so greasy. Or some high-fat specialty cheeses. Again, four slices on a slice of bread are no problem. The same four slices on a plate without bread would make me feel queasy.
Might it be that bread-eating and eating too-greasy food tie into each other? So that getting rid of the one will automatically reduce the other?
And what is it about foods that one only eats when they are heavily prepared, while the unaltered stuff would make one run? Real food should be so recognizable to the body that the body would also accept and digest it raw, barring cooking it for sanitary reasons.
Perhaps that is another thing to look into. Leaving out those things where my body won't accept the unaltered main ingredient.


Julia

Broken record

One more weekend at MIL's. This time, I went there wildly determined not to come back with a regain. And, while the proof of what I have been eating will be in tomorrow's weigh-in, I know that I did stick to my guns this time. No bread, no potatoes, no cake. The phrase"no thanks, I don't want any..." must have crossed my lips at least fifty times in two days.
Actually, not eating that stuff was not difficult. Having to keep refusing it sometimes was, especially when DH and DMIL would keep trying to persuade me.
So, I switched on the broken record. The one that is stuck at "no thanks".
Guess what, the world did not end. There was no anger, and MIL finished her plate, mostly, even though there was a lot less food on mine and some side dishes I left off my plate completely.
Which in turn means that MIL cannot and should not be a excuse for me to go off plan whenever we visit her. And that broken record should become a permanent fixture in my overnighter bag.

Julia

May I slay that groundhog?

The changes in what I eat are slowly starting to show a payoff, as the reacquired pounds are starting to leave my body again. Still, last year, same time I was at the lowest weight I had reached, and from then on, things went, essentially, up, with some downwards trends in between that effectively did no more than prevent an even bigger regain.
As regains go, the end result was not too terrible when compared to what I kept off. Still, seeing the resulting curve for the year is frustrating. Knowing that being less careful about what I ate was causing that regain, and I have only myself to blame for that, even more so.
Per today, I'm still up four pounds from that glorious day in 2012 when my weight finally went below 80 kilograms. Not obese, but still fat.
So, the damages aren't yet undone.
But I keep working on it.
Which means eating mostly unprocessed foods, watching my portions, nixing wheat, legumes and sugar, and cutting out all baked goods.
What with having fresh raw vegetable salads almost daily, I am already feeling a lot less tired than I had done all winter.
Now if that groundhog day feeling when weighing in were leaving...


Julia

May Day

Today is a legal holiday where I live, so I'm staying at home.
Yesterday's grocery run was quite a success, with a giant pack of pork schnitzels ( unbreaded) on sale which will make five meals' worth of meat. Two of them I put on the new ceramic grill for last night's dinner, and the rest went, bagged up in twos, into the freezer.
That grill promises to be one of the better investments in cooking appliances I made of late. That ceramic coating is absolutely non-stick, and after allowing the machine to cool down, wiped clean effortlessly with a wet microfibre cloth.
And the grill has already found its home. When not used, it sits on top of my microwave. Easy to grab and use.
Being able to fry a piece of meat, fish or poultry with no added grease and in less than half the time it would take if I used a pan will make preparing a home-cooked dinner even faster.
Most importantly, as I can clean it with soapy water, too, I can put fish on it without being afraid of everything after that coming out tasting, well, fishy. Which makes it even more versatile than my favourite cast-iron griddle pan. As those must not be cleaned with soapy water, no way I was going to fry fish in it.
Often, the range of our eating is determined by the range of equipment we have. The worst I had was a place where the only equipment was a fridge and a microwave. I ended up eating reheated prefab crap at home and bingeing on fast food when away from home. That underequipped kitchen was one of the things that conspired to get me above morbid obesity for the first time in my life.
Today, I am reasonably well-equipped in my kitchen. But there's still room for improvement. Especially after I removed a lot of things that were clutter.


Julia