How to lose weight and keep it off.

Chana Miriam S

Tue, Aug 06 2019, 9:14 am

amother [ Coffee ] wrote:

Please don't hand this out as blanket advice. If someone had hypercholesterolemia, congestive heart failure, renal insufficiency..... this advice can be truly detrimental to their health.

Signed,
A Registered Dietitian Nutritionist who works in the clinical setting of Medical Nutrition Therapy.

So, you’d just tell them to eat potato chips like they usually do? I’m not a doctor and do t play one on tv. Fat and salt stop a Craving in their tracks. Then they stop eating, not binge. You don’t really think someone with congestive hesrt failure is listening to me? And in the mean time, you should learn about cholesterol. There’s plenty of research that says it is protective. Agreement almost across the board that the cholesterol research was fudged.

Chana Miriam S

Tue, Aug 06 2019, 9:16 am

andrea levy wrote:

Also salt. Mass studies across the world have shown that healthy people should be eating salt. Especially if they don’t eat processed garbage. One example, McMaster salt study.

Chana Miriam S

Tue, Aug 06 2019, 9:19 am

rainbow dash wrote:

I have soo many issues with my weight, I know that I can lose 800 grams a week on weight watchers but I have to drink 2 litres a day. I have pain in my ankles, the cartilage in my knees are eroding, I have a discal hernia with sicata. High cholesterol, and now according to my husband I'm snoring plus I need to nap every day. I'm a celiac and lactose intolerant.

Eating the way I eat, my 62 year old friend who used to need to take Advil just to get out of bed, is doing great. Over a year and 3/4 and doing great. I used to take Advil prophylactically and now almost never. My friend, lets call her anna, could not walk and now she can. Both she and the sixty year old friend are not young or thin. The pain relief started sooner than the weight loss.

amother

Salmon

Tue, Aug 06 2019, 9:23 am

andrea levy wrote:

If your friend is me, I do an hr of pilates every day, now. Not for Weightloss, but for strength and joint health

amother

Coffee

Tue, Aug 06 2019, 9:40 am

andrea levy wrote:

Also salt. Mass studies across the world have shown that healthy people should be eating salt. Especially if they don’t eat processed garbage. One example, McMaster salt study.

I just read the study.
It states that people who eat moderate amounts of salt, especially in conjunction with a diet high in potassium, who doesn't have co-morbidities, are not at at an increased risk of heart attack or stroke.
It doesn't say that you should eat salt with abandonment.
Additionally, I guess I am missing some issues of JAMA, ADA, AHA and Harvard Health regarding high LDL Cholesterol not being detrimental.

Do what works for you.
You should be so proud of yourself and I would never want to diminish all of your wonderful success, but please, giving blanket "recommendations " with out having someone's medical history and knowledge of their current status can be detrimental.

Emotional

Tue, Aug 06 2019, 10:10 am

amother [ Coffee ] wrote:

I wouldn't go so far as to say that any health advice given on imamother should be taken with a grain of salt (see what I did there? Hee hee) but most people would understand that if one has a specific medical condition, they should check with their doctor before following advice that they read online.

Chana Miriam S

Tue, Aug 06 2019, 10:20 am

amother [ Salmon ] wrote:

If your friend is me, I do an hr of pilates every day, now. Not for Weightloss, but for strength and joint health

Pretty sure you’re not that friend because she is neuther Frum nor married but yay you!

amother

Firebrick

Tue, Aug 06 2019, 1:14 pm

Intuitive Eating.
Intuitive Eating.
Intuitive Eating.
Intuitive Eating.
Intuitive Eating.
Intuitive Eating.

Chana Miriam S

Tue, Aug 06 2019, 3:02 pm

amother [ Firebrick ] wrote:

Intuitive Eating.
Intuitive Eating.
Intuitive Eating.
Intuitive Eating.
Intuitive Eating.
Intuitive Eating.

I was INCAPABLE of that before. My body chemistry was way too out of whack. Now, from a place of stability I trust my body’s signals. I was WAY too broken before. Way.

amother

Gray

Tue, Aug 06 2019, 3:51 pm

andrea levy wrote:

Also salt. Mass studies across the world have shown that healthy people should be eating salt. Especially if they don’t eat processed garbage. One example, McMaster salt study.

If im following a low carb or keto diet...u are correct that maybe I need salt bec one of the electrolytes...is sodium and one has to be careful during fasting ....so wat foods can I eat with salt??

Or, do I drink salt water as megan ramos said she tells some ppl to drink salt water while fasting???,maybe im not getting enough salt which may be making me weak...

amother

Pink

Tue, Aug 06 2019, 4:02 pm

sirel wrote:

Atkins is high protein, keto is moderate protein.

Some people who have done the atkins diet have had kidney/liver issues later in life bc of too much protein.

I don’t agree,I worked out my numbers to get how many grams protein to eat every day, and both were pretty much the same.

amother

Pink

Tue, Aug 06 2019, 4:08 pm

andrea levy wrote:

I was INCAPABLE of that before. My body chemistry was way too out of whack. Now, from a place of stability I trust my body’s signals. I was WAY too broken before. Way.

Andrea, do you never ever struggle with a craving or just wanting to have a carb (and I don’t mean veggies)? I’ve been doing Keto for close to a year, have lost over 20 lbs b”H but have stopped losing (and I still need to lose lots more!) and I’ve gotten so frustrated that I just got disgusted and started “treating” myself to all the yummy stuff I’ve been deprived of for this whole year! If I’m not seeing results why am I still depriving myself? I know that’s faulty thinking but I’m so tired of the weighing and measuring and discipline since it stopped working! I know you’re also at a standstill and not losing but I’m not ok with just maintaining while I still need to lose lots more!

HelloG

Tue, Aug 06 2019, 7:53 pm

so much for my mind to digest here. wow
thanks

Chana Miriam S

Tue, Aug 06 2019, 8:58 pm

amother [ Gray ] wrote:

Many people use salt crystals and swallow like pills. I use kosher capsules I buy and make pink salt pills. And I add salt to my food.

Chana Miriam S

Tue, Aug 06 2019, 8:59 pm

amother [ Pink ] wrote:

I don’t agree,I worked out my numbers to get how many grams protein to eat every day, and both were pretty much the same.

Yup.

Chana Miriam S

Tue, Aug 06 2019, 8:59 pm

AmGold wrote:

so much for my mind to digest here. wow
thanks

My pleasure!

Chana Miriam S

Tue, Aug 06 2019, 9:10 pm

amother [ Pink ] wrote:

Hm. A few different questions in here.

No, I don’t crave carbs. It’s my experience that most people who do still have something they are reacting to in their food. Could be a sweetener or ingredients in processed product or just something you can’t eat because it doesnt work for you....

This is not to say that sometimes I don’t add a meal. Last night I worked all day fasted, had a meal that wasn’t big enough and ate again before bed. I knew I didn’t eat enough at dinner. It was probably the sum total of working physically hard all day and then mentally hard for 8 hours but I was ravenous. I ate, but I ate things that are ok on my food plan. Could I have fasted through it? Maybe. But I chose to eat to satiety. I fasted to my usual time today and ate more for my meal. You work it out. You do t throw out the baby with the bath water.

I don’t weigh and measure. I spot checked last week, realized I was eating more than I thought and stopped, because measuring feels compulsive to me. It’s necessary for some, compulsive for others. What works for you?

Also, I’m not really at a standstill. Im just losing very slowly. My first fifty pounds dropped with much less effort in three months. The next forty took over 18. But I’m getting to 95. I just keep correcting as needed. I’m working out how to live like this. I’m not killing myself to lose weight because I felt great and happy!

Here’s the most important part: treating yourself will undo whatever you’ve done. If you think about how amazing it is that you’ve lost weight, and if you know that really, this is a life long commitment, then really, how much does it matter how long it takes you to lose weight? Ask yourself when the last time you maintained a weight loss was? Also, it’s not NOT working. Every day you follow your plan, you are recovering- from insulin resistance, from inflammation, it’s incredible what are bodies are doing to repair. I may be fatter than I was at twenty but I feel better than I did at twenty! So go you!

This is a massive victory, maintaining a weight loss. Massive. Most people don’t. You aren’t going up? It’s a WIN!

Chana Miriam S

Tue, Aug 13 2019, 12:51 am

Not being at War With My Body

I have a list of writing topics. I keep it in my phone and when I feel like its time to do some writing, I look at it and see what moves me to write. Today, it was not being at war with my body.

A while back, I was having a conversation with my husband, and to be honest, I don’t actually recall what exactly the context was. At some point in the conversation I said something about not being at war with my body and he was like ‘Wow.’ I asked him to write it down, but unfortunately not the context, of what made me think of it.

This past weekend, I re-read Jason Fung’s Obesity Code. I read it like someone who has read it before, and instead of focussing on the ‘what to do’ focussed on the ‘why.’

As many of you know, I initially experienced a fifty pound weight loss in three months. This was when I didn’t particularly know what I was doing. I’d had a health crisis and did some minimal research, landed on an Atkin’s style food plan ( mostly avoiding garbage processed foods that fit in my food plan.) There were times I ate a dozen chicken wings and a 16 ounce rib eye for dinner and was still down three pounds the next day. Easy-Peasy, right?

After the first three months, things settled down some, and I lost weight more slowly. It’s a good thing my goals initially were 1) to stay on my food plan no matter what, so that my blood sugar would lower, even out and allow my retinopathy to heal. 2) was not regaining any of the weight I lost. It seemed a reasonable goal to me, except of course that I had no idea how on earth that was going to happen.

I wasn’t a virgin when it came to weight control.I had tried most of the usual diets out there and also many of my own plans. I had successfully lost weight in large amounts three times. And gained it right back and then some.

I ultimately was very hopeless and assumed I would, like usual, go blind, need insulin because my diabetes would progress and get fatter and fatter for even having attempted to lose weight.

Imagine my shock as the weight fell off me and continued more slowly for another thirty pounds over the next 7 months.

Now I was ten months in and eighty pounds down. At that point the weight loss just sort of stopped. By that point, I had cleaned up my food to not include processed foods, starches/grains/legumes or fruits and was actually super happy. Since the second day I was in ketosis, it’s magical effects had halted my disordered eating in its tracks, and in addition, there were so many incredible benefits- my pain levels were so much better, my stomach was so settled that I almost never had gas or gas pains ( TMI, I know,) my head was clear, my cravings were gone and over time my HBA1C went from 6.4 down to its current 5.5 ( for Americans- due to different lab reagents, in Canada, pre-diabetes is set at 6.0, but full- on diabetes is still 6.5)

I felt amazing and for the first time in my life, my brain wasn’t trying to kill me. I was struck by the fact that I felt better than I had when I was 20. I had more energy, I woke up clear and ready to go and most of my body’s aches and pains had disappeared. In all honestly, my brain being quiet was probably responsible for a lot of my feeling so great.

I hunkered down to work on maintaining and hoped at some point, I’d continue losing. Feeling so good ( and I soon realized it wasn’t how much I weighed, but how I was eating) it wasn’t a chore to stay on my plan.

So here I sit. I don’t focus much on scale weight because it’s true that it’s fickle. For example, yesterday was a religious fast for Jews (25 hours, no food, no water) and I managed to gain two pounds despite eating a solid meal that wasn’t excessive after. Baffling? Somewhat, but I’ve learned over time that the scale is just a tool.

A scale can’t measure how good I feel or how much less pain I have. A scale can’t cook me food or control how much of it I eat. A scale does not even come close to reflecting how much smaller I’ve actually gotten, even when those numbers don’t change, my body size has.

I think I’m too far gone in this whole being overweight and eating disordered for 95 percent of my life to ever let the scale go completely, and even as I sit here and think about how it’s not really much of a tool, I wonder why I really think that? I guess I need to work on that.

Back to Dr. Fung. I have an appointment with him in September and in addition to monitoring my blood sugar, I really do want to discuss his ideas around set point weight theory. I know that he posits that intermittent fasting can help with it. Also, that lowering calories will lower your metabolic rate whereas fasting will kick it up. I find that 24 plus hour fasts mess with my mind, while eating one meal a day doesn’t. It’s a balance. Stability is still the most important priority in my life.

Stable blood sugar
Stable insulin levels
Complete absence of carb cravings- stable eating with no binging
Stability in my anxiety levels

What it really comes down to, is that I am no longer at war with my body. I’ve done it a lot of damage over the years. A LOT! It’s kind of no wonder that it doesn’t know what to do with itself.

Even when I say my weight is plateaued or is moving slowly, last year at this time, I weighed about 14 or 15 pounds more than I do now, so in addition to all my other progress, it’s not like I’m not also progressing on the scale. It just isn’t the most important measurement of success.

I’m done being at war with my body. I’m done with all the crazy, sick thinking I did for so long. I’m working with my body to coax it to even greater levelsof health and wellness without triggering my massively disordered eating or doing stupid fad like things without scientific backing. My gratitude is profound.

amother

Pearl

Tue, Aug 13 2019, 1:23 am

Thank you so much for sharing all this.
Would you be able to share a typical menu of a few days or one full week? I'm just trying to come up with filling meal options/snacks that don't include grains/sugars and the other things you mention you don't eat anymore.
Is it salad and eggs, salad and tuna, salad and chicken, etc? And if you're making tuna salad, can u add mayo, or is there a substitute for that? And if you prepare chicken, is it just oil and spices, without any sauces? It's in these nitty gritty details that I'm left scratching my head.

amother

Teal

Tue, Aug 13 2019, 4:25 am

At any point of your history in your weight loss struggles, did you ever consider bariatric surgery? If you did, why didn't you pursue it at the time? I came across a Facebook group for the low carb/keto diet tweaked specifically for bariatric patients, and many describe it as a perfect one-two punch against severe obesity.

Please don't misunderstand my question. I have no agenda. I'm looking to learn all perspectives.