The Family

Well, this is probably going to be my last post on my diet.  I thought posting here might help and maybe it did right there at first, but it isn’t really now.

Sadly I am following the same pattern I always follow.  I diet and then fall off the wagon and eat enough to gain back everything I lost.  The process used to take months.  Now it usually happens very quickly.

They say that the brain has a set point for desired weight which is just a little more than you weight right now.  It is quickly reset when you gain but when you lose it takes a year or so for the body to get used to weighing less and stop trying to gain it back.  From personal experience, that’s the way it works for me.  I am probably better off not trying to diet in the first place.

Yeah….  it’s depressing.

Still at it.  Staying with the program most of the time.  I did have a small chocolate lapse and I did eat a cookie which wasn’t all that good, fortunately.

I have no idea if I have lost any weight since I can’t step on the scale.

I keep telling myself that weight loss is not the primary goal; health is, but, of course, I do want to lose weight.  I don’t need to lose all my excess weight.  I know from past diets that I will feel better if I lose 50 pounds.  This time I want to lose 100 pounds.  I will still be fat even with a 100 pound loss, but I think I could manage so much better and that is enough.

I doubt if losing 100 pounds would make much difference in my ability to walk.  I can’t even straighten my left knee any more.  If I can’t straighten it after my weight loss, I can’t walk on it.  I am taking some joint supplements and maybe that and eating better will make that much of a difference.  Who knows.  My chiropractor thinks it is inflammation and when we get rid of the inflammation it will be ok, but I have a feeling it is bone damage due to arthritis and I don’t think that will go away so easily.  But if it is still this bad, I can, at that weight, have the knee replacement surgery.  It would be so nice not to have to, but I am resolved that if I still need it, I will do it.

There is a therapy pool here.  If I could get into it and, more importantly, out of it, I would join, or at least want to join.  But they don’t have a lift to get me in and out and there is no way I could take the stairs.  Maybe one day I can.  I think a pool would do me a lot of good, though the chlorine won’t.  That is the big drawback to pools – breathing and soaking in chlorine.

Ramona had me doing some upper body exercises…  very mild ones I am sure.  With nobody here to make me, I haven’t done any more.  I am so out of shape, I should.  I don’t think it would help me lose weight.  It might help speed up my metabolism a little, but the thing it would do for sure is make me stronger.

I am kind-of down this morning.  Does it show?  Still….  20 days in.  In another 10 days it will be a month.  That is a good thing.

I am so blasted tired of being this fat.  Much as I appreciate being able to do so, I am so tired of scooting around the house in this chair.  Maybe a knee replacement surgery would help, but weighing this much, chances are good that it would only make things worse.   Have you looked at how massive my knees and thighs are?  No doctor, even a skilled one, would find it easy to work with that much flesh oozing around where he is working.  The more a person weighs the harder the surgery is and the more chance that it would be a miserable failure.  Also, the less time an artificial joint would last.  My insurance would pay for one surgery but they are not going to be so willing to pay for another one if the first one fails or if the joint wears out in 5 years.

I have always been so resistant to people lecturing me or telling me what to do that it can actually make matters worse, but here is what might help.  When you see me about to eat something I should not eat, just ask me, “Are you sure you want that?”  Don’t tell me not to.  Let that be my decision either way.  But remind me to think.  You could tell me you love me.  “Mom, I love you.  I don’t want you to do anything bad to yourself.  Is that really something you want to eat?”  Then if I decide to eat that cookie, let me.  It is, ultimately, my decision.

I am getting rid of those chocolate chips.  Luke thought that they were dark chocolate and would be ok, but they aren’t dark enough and I keep eating them anyway.  I put them away, and get them out again.  They aren’t too bad when eaten with more almonds than chips, but, still…  It was embarrassing for you to see them there on the desk.

So what am I NOT supposed to be eating?

Anything sweet, particularly if it is sweetened with sugar.

Anything made with wheat flour.

Anything that is pure carb – rice, corn, potatoes, most fruit – unless they are in a mix with a lot of something else.  Someday I will try to cut all the carbs, but for now, soup that includes potatoes and corn is still legal.  Cornbread made with almond flour instead of wheat flour is still legal.  Salad that includes dried cranberries is still legal.  Mashed potatoes and gravy, hash browns, polenta, a bag of dried fruit, breakfast cereal, or fried rice are not.

Fat is OK on this diet.  Butter or bacon is fine.  (Toast is not.)

Beans are still OK, even though they are carby, because they balance the carb with lots of good fiber.

If you aren’t sure, ask me the question.  I will tell you if it’s OK.

I need to be reminded that I am doing this for a reason.

Saw a motivational sign the other day.  It said, “Don’t give up what you want most for what you want now.”  It spoke to me.

Sugar and wheat flour mess with the brain.  They are proven to be physically addictive.  Sugar, they say, is more addictive than cocaine.

I hate being fat.  I hate being a massive blob in this chair.  I want to go outside without it being an ordeal.  I don’t want to die early.  I have so much to love for.  I want to see my grandchildren grow up.

(yeah, that’s a typo…  love instead of live…..   but I like it)

So we have a refrigerator out in the shop (thank you Ramona and Joseph).  The reason was so Luke could have his cokes and other things that I have a real weakness for and they could be kept where it would be difficult enough for me to get to them that I would not do it.  We have a second refrigerator in the house whose purpose was partly to keep things out of my sight and, thus, out of my mind.  But I do not have to see the cokes to know they are there.  Luke could keep his Mountain Dew in there and there are probably a few other soft drinks that I could resist because I don’t like them, but Cokes, I crave so blasted much that I will give in and get one.

I could ask Luke to take the soft drinks out but I haven’t because when I am not driven crazy with cravings I can resist them and I feel like I should always be able to resist them and I feel like it is silly to make Luke keep them out there.  And when I am driven crazy with cravings, I need to ask him to get rid of them for me, but I do not want to.  I want to give in to my craving.  I don’t want to put them out of my reach.

It isn’t just Cokes of course.  It is crackers, dry cereal, cream of wheat, pastas, bread, jams, rice, so many carbs it isn’t even funny.  Should I keep all of those things out there?  It would be possible, but is it practical?  If it was just me, I could strip my house of everything I should not have.  But it isn’t just me.

I am doing better than I was before I started writing here.  But I am not doing well.  I gave in and had a bowl of cereal tonight.  I didn’t need the carbs and I didn’t need the milk.  (Calcium is a rant I will do some other time.)  I did remember that one of the reasons I never ever want to eat cereal again is because almost all of them are fortified with iron shavings.  I saved a little of it to let get soggy, squash, and run a magnet around in so I could check to see if Wheat Chex (not what I wanted, but what I could reach) has iron shavings.  I found 1 shaving, possibly 2.  They are very tiny.  I am sure there were more but I was impatient and probably didn’t get it mushed enough to find all of them.  Still, if there is 1, then they are there.

I am going to make a list of reasons I do not want cereal and other things.  One reason I had forgotten, which might have stopped me tonight, is the iron shavings.  Maybe reading a list of reasons will remind me of things I do not really think about when I am mad with craving.  Maybe….

The diet has been going pretty well till last night.  Last night, in the middle of the night, I woke up needing to take the pills I had forgotten to take earlier, and needing to eat something for the pills.  There was nothing easy in the refrigerator and in a moment of not caring, I picked up the last piece of apple pie which was still fine even though it was old enough that I expected to find mold,  I ate it.  It was good.  I didn’t care.  I felt rebellious.

Today I have had 2 cheese sandwiches (bread is the no no) with coke.  COKE!  One of the biggest no nos there is.  Then we had cream of wheat for supper.  Then, later, I had another blasted Coke.

I must get back on track tomorrow.  I can feel my blood sugar.

Today was an odd day.  I have occasional days like this, days when I just cannot bring myself to care about much of anything.  I have no idea what causes them.

I just found myself cruising through the kitchen (again) looking for “something.”  And I stopped myself again.  I want something sweet.  I have been here before.  I have failed at about this time before because the craving for sweets defeats me.  Hopefully writing here will give me a little more reason to resist.

Tonight I was watching a commercial for some restaurant.  I became aware, that as each tempting option was shown, I was focussed on the bread.  It looked so good.

It will pass.  I know this craving will pass.  But right now, any time my mind is not fully occupied, it starts nudging me toward the kitchen where the sweet things live.

And then there are the surprise attacks.  Yesterday I opened the back refrigerator for a perfectly legitimate reason and there were the cokes, sweet bubbly cokes.  Dang!  (I need to get those things moved out to the shop where they will not be as attainable.)  You know, when I was on Weight Watchers, I lost weight even though I was indulging myself with Cokes.  They let you eat anything as long as you count up the points.

But this is different.  These days I am trying to break my carb addiction because 1) health 2) weight.  I could have a coke if the goal was only weight.  I could use my calorie allowance however I wanted.  But sugar is bad for me.  Anything that instantly turns into sugar when I digest it is bad for me.  Sugar is even bad for skinny people.  Sugar and all the other delicious empty carbs are threatening my health.

We had roast tonight.  The potatoes and carrots and gravy (thickened with cornstarch) were so good……  They will be going soon… off limits…  high carb vegetables.  This may well be my farewell to potatoes.  Sigh……..   Baked potatoes with butter and cheese and sour cream…….  Yes, I am torturing myself.  Oddly, on a low carb diet I can have the butter, cheese, and sour cream, but not the potatoes.

My stated second step was to stop snacking.  I am working on it, but our life isn’t scheduled any more so it is hard to tell whether is is lunch or a snack.  We need to keep regular hours.  Everything I read on the subject says we need regular predictable sleep and it needs to start way before 1 or 2 or 3 in the morning when we usually go to bed.  And you need to have regular eating times, not breakfast if I feel like it, lunch whenever I get hungry, supper when I think about it and when Luke is ready to come in from the shop.

Problem is neither one of have ever been early sleepers, and, though Luke would like for me to make regularly scheduled meals, I am so tired of cooking and planning meals and thinking about what to make that I cannot stand it.  I go crazy when I have to think about what to have for meals and cook all the time.  Seriously, I can’t do it anymore. When I am hungry I can think about what we should have for supper and if I am hungry I am motivated to cook it, but to do it all the time…AAUUGHHHH!!!!

So, the snacking thing is going to have to be a longer project.

What I have been doing is the usual second step, avoiding wheat.  No bread, no bagels, no spaghetti etc.  I had my last pizza, my farewell to bread.  (I read that the Papa John’s Pizza here had closed.  Recently I found out it isn’t closed!  When I learned that, the pizza cravings began.)

I watched a video the other day in which the guy said that when people stop eating sugar, they often start eating more pasta and bread because highly processed wheat does the same thing as sugar once it gets into your body.

Now, I have not completely given up sugar and wheat.  I have given up anything that is “mostly” sugar or wheat.  For example I am on a slaw kick.  The slaw recipe I use has both sugar and wheat.  The recipe is simple, for a head of cabbage, 1/2 – 3/4 cup red wine vinegar, 1 T sugar, 2 T oil, seasoning packet from 1 package of Top Ramen noodles, crushed Top Ramen noodles, 1 cup slivered or sliced almonds.  It is my modification of a recipe that calls for more sugar and more noodles.  I love the stuff and I think 1 T of sugar and 1 package of noodles with a whole head of cabbage is acceptable.  If I go all the way to no sugar and no wheat, of course, the slaw will have to go.  I can like it well enough without the sugar, but without the noodles, it is too blah.

I could use sugar substitutes, of course. I have, but I haven’t this time around.  I would rather do without sugar than use most sugar substitutes because of the taste, the aftertaste, and, for some of them, my body’s reaction.  It seems to me that if my body reacts badly to sugar alcohols, for example, it is trying to tell me something.  I know everyone says they are fine, but are they really?

I see all these recipes for desserts that taste just like the real thing but are low carb because they use artificial sweeteners, and I think, why?  I want to train my my palate to not crave so much sweetness.  Wouldn’t it be better to come up with a “dessert” that is less sweet?  When I do not have sugar for a long time, I become very sensitive to sweetness.  A honeycrisp apple goes from being pleasantly sweet to decadently sweet.  Why not come up with a dessert based on, say, chocolate and cream cheese that has a little sugar in it, but is more like a 70% or 85% cocoa chocolate bar and less like a traditional cheesecake?

Always, when I have done this, my second step has been to cut wheat.  I have been cutting back on wheat already.  I haven’t had any bread till today when Luke offered me Schlotskies.  I have forgone the bagels I have been enjoying lately.  I haven’t gone full out, but I have been aware.

But I think this time my next step is to stop grazing.  I snack between meals.  I have recently learned that snacking is very bad.  We need to eat and then give our bodies a chance to digest and rest.  3 meals a day…. not 6, not eating little bits all the time.

So step 2 is going to be to stopping the snacks.

Believe me, that is going to be hard.

Maybe if I make it more public I will do better.

I am trying to change my diet again.  Sometimes I wonder why I try after so many failures, but here I am again.  My main fear, these days, when I try, is the the backlash.  Every time I try, I succeed for a time but, when I inevitably go back to my old ways, I do so with a vengeance and end up gaining back more than I lost.  In recent years this gain back takes less time.  Last time was the worst because I dieted for 2 months and didn’t lose a pound.  I think my body had become very good at adapting.  The backlash caused a gain even though there was no loss.

The plan this time is my sneak-up-on-it strategy.  It is what I have found I can do when I can’t work up the resolve to really do it.  The-sneak-up-on-it plan involves cutting out things I do not need one at a time.  The first cut is always sugar.  By sugar, I mean anything that is primarily sugar or whose flavor is primarily sweet: cokes, cookies, jam, etc.  I have been doing this for a week and it is going well.  I am always confused by how easy this first step it.  Why, I wonder, is it so hard to resist coke and the rest of it if I can give it up this easily?

The next step is always wheat: bread, crackers, bagels, etc.  I feel that one coming on because I find myself pondering alternative flours.  I am looking at one that is a mix of tapioca, almond, coconut, and flax. with no added gluten.  Probably, though, I will just use the flours I have which are Almond, coconut, flax, and maybe buckwheat.

I may have even found a solution to cornbread which is chopping up canned baby corn on the cob.  It has less carbs than cornmeal, I assume because you are eating the cob.  I also learned that there is a corn extract that gives a good corn flavor and that the cornbread texture can be achieved with the addition of crushed pork rinds.  Interesting.  I’m not there yet, but it is interesting.  Actually, though, using almond flour for the wheat flour gives is a somewhat cornbread texture. I always miss cornbread when I go full low carb.

Anyway, I need to lose weight and improve my health so bad.  It isn’t even a matter of how I look anymore.  I may even look worse if I lose weight because I will have excess skin, but that would only be if I lost a lot of weight and right now I just want to lose 50 pounds, maybe 100.  I’m striving for improvement, not ideal weight.

And I keep telling myself that eating better and improving my health is enough even if, like last time, I don’t lose.  Last time, eating extremely low carb enabled me to go off my diabetes medicine and still have a good blood sugar level.  Shouldn’t that be enough?

So I hope to be posting periodically about it here.  I hope writing about it will help me do it.  I hope knowing the people I love know what I am doing and are pulling for me will also help.