I am not kidding. Last year in June when I visited Phoenix, my brother and I ate a wfpb diet and I got down to between 135 and 137 pounds. He is great support, including ordering salad with me in restaurants. He says I always do best when I am with him because he keeps an eye on me. Not true. I never, never cheat. But at home I am freer to eat more of the good stuff and have less to keep me busy as I do when on vacation. It has been a whole year and my weight has varied on average between about 131 and 133. Not much of a weight loss in one whole year. Couldn't budge it much more. Don't really know if I need to get down to my college weight because I look good and feel good now. Was eating lots more vegies than starches. Probably even more than on the MWL plan. I always thought Dr. McDougall was rather blasé about vegies in the diet by using such terms as --throw in a few vegetables. As opposed to Fuhrman.
So I read about Doug Lisle's challenge to AJ to eat more starches without worrying. And she lost more weight, even though she was already quite thin. So I figured, what the heck. I'll try it and when I gain I can always exercise more, up the salads and green things and lose it again. I would not have let it go beyond about three pounds. Because then I could still fit into all my great new clothes. In less than a week I lost three pounds. I did not even experience what I normally do--increase in water weight from starches, especially popcorn which I haven't had in a long while---don't like to see that scale move even temporarily.
Now in my family if you lose weight without trying (I was not actually trying or restricting calories, just wanted to see what would happen by really upping the starches.) it means you are very sick or dying. I can still eat like a horse and still have a good appetite but I do find that the starches do fill me. So because I am not cutting back (I don't think) and it seems like I am eating more. I am losing weight. Only dying people do that right?
Either that or I am defying the laws of thermodynamics. Because rice and potatoes and oatmeal (I increased my morning oatmeal to one cup dry instead of the 2/3 I normally eat and was previously thinking of reducing the portion to 1/2 cup dry) are more calorie dense than vegetables. If I am not dying, and I haven't discounted this, then the only other thing I can think of is that I was really eating a whole, whole lot of calories via all those vegies and might be eating less with all the starches. I also do not think I am getting all the nutrients I was because I am only eating normal sized portions of vegies, not whole bowls full. And besides fuhrman, both Bill Harris in Hawaii and Esselstyn seem to say, more greens, less grains.
We will see if this is an anomaly and I regain. This is really creeping me out.
didi
PS My post prandial blood sugars are a lot higher eating so many more starches. I am still debating the wisdom of letting them run a lot higher. The only thing that would prompt me to drastically decrease starches.
PPS I also am adding that desiring to lose weight is not vanity. I look great now. And I know that two or three pounds if not more of my present weight is loose skin from having been fat and I will never lose that without surgery. No. I have t2 diabetes and was once diagnosed with a fatty liver and I figure the less fat I have on my body,especially visceral fat, the more insulin sensitive I will be and the better the chance of having good liver function.
