Am I Doing This Right ?

For those questions and discussions on the McDougall program that don’t seem to fit in any other forum.

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Am I Doing This Right ?

Postby Oceania » Sat Aug 29, 2015 5:52 am

Hey lovely Vegans !

I just want to know, whether I'm doing this whole diet right, because I don't noticed any weight loss but really want to stick to this way of eating !

I'm vegan for about a year now, but ate lots of higher-fat and soy products like tofu, soy pudding, nuts and bread spreads before and since 3 weeks I'm on the starch solution. I'm a 22 year old student and for the last half year I really enjoy having a more active lifestyle and exercise. I usually ride my bike ( 20-25 km/h ) at least one hour a day, but mostly two hours. I visit the gym 2-3 times a week to do a light weight training and on the weekends I love to go hiking or having parties, where I dance intensely a lot ( without alcohol consumption ).

Usually my days look similar to this ...

Breakfast : 100g of oats with half of an apple, 2-3 dates or figs chopped, about 10 g of unsweetened cornflakes ( just corn, no salt, no sugar ) and 150ml of Oatly Oat Milk ( without any oil or sugar, just 0,5g of fat per 100ml )

Snack: mainly just fruit, like 1 banana and 1 mango or 2-3 peaches, a bunch of grapes - depends on what I have in the house. Sometimes I like to have some rice or corn crackers ( no salt ) with some mashed chickpeas or a few dates ( 3-4 ) or a green smoothie out of 2-3 bananas and spinach or kale, or banana icecream with berries

Lunch: Potato Wedges with lots of veggies ( carrots, bell peppers, brokkoli, mushrooms ) and beans
OR
parboiled rice with lots of veggies and beans a little bit of nutriononal yeast or chopped tomatoes as a sauce
OR
1-2 baked sweet potatoes

Dinner: big green salad with different types of salat, cucumber, carrot, green bell peppers and a dressing out of 50g frozen raspberries and a little bit of vinegar, topped with a few sprinkles of buckwheat to add a little bit of crisp

My calorie intake usally is between 1400-1800 calories a day and I with my actual exercise routine I burn about 500-900 calories a day additionally. I know its a very low intake, but I really want to lose some pounds to fit in my old clothings ( about 25 pounds to loose ).

I feel very good with this way of eating and it's affordable and healthy for the enviroment and myself, but I have a few questions ...

1. I really like to snack fresh fruits ! I've ever had a sweet tooth since I can remember and when the feeling for something sweet and fresh comes up, I feel happy as a child to have a few peaches or half a watermelon or a banana icecream with berries. I can have dried fruits in the house without eating them in one sitting, I usually just have a few chopped over my morning cereal. The Starch Solution book says, that it's better to limit fruits to 2-3 servings a day - but I really don't want to - I love fresh fruits more than anything else - there nutrient dense and have a high water and fibre content - should I really limit them ? I even have an active lifestyle, so I burn a lot of carbohydrates daily - and I don't want to miss a nice fruit picknick with my friends in the woods :-(

2. It's very hard and strict to me to stay really low-sodium at the moment. I buy my beans without salt and eat my veggies fresh and the Oat-Milk has a very low salt conent too. But in my main dish I really love to have a good pinch of herb-salt to it - it's so much more satifying for me with the salt - like I eat less and feel more easily "full" and satiated when I use herbs and salt as usual to my rice dishes for example. And sometimes I like to have a little bit of organic ketchup ( no added sugar ) to my potato wdges - which has salt in it too ... - is this really a problem or unhealthy ? What about the iodine content ? Doesn't we need iodine to have our thyroids function well ?

3. I tried to have brown rice instead of parboiled rice for a week but I really don't like the taste that much. I can eat it, but I tend to end up eating and snacking on anthing else to have the same satisfaction from the parboiled "white" rice. The rice I buy is a "parboiled" long-grain rice - which should have 80 % of the nutrients the brown rice has, because the vitamins and minerals are tranfered into the inner part through heat (?) - is it okay to stick with the parboiled white rice ? I have a load of veggies to the rice usually anyway - so I think I'll get enough vitamins and minerals from the veggies, beans and greens

4. Where do you get your omega-3 and omega-6 from ? Isn't this WOE lacking in omega sources ? Should I add a tablespoon ( 15g ) of chiaseeds to my oatmeal or salad to have a full source of theese ?

5. Is it okay to have a quarter of avocado to my salad everyday ? I don't have ANYTHING fatty in my food intake except for the oats which are naturally a little bit higher in fat. So when I would have an quarter of avocado daily I just end up with 18-20g of fat per day, which is 10-12 % of fat of my overall calorie consumption.

6. Have you tried intermittent fasting ( 16:8 ) where you basically fasting 16 hour a day ( So for example you have breakfast at 11am and the last meal at 7pm ) - is this effective to speed up your weightloss a little bit ?

7. When I have a pasta dish, which is like once or twice a month - not very often - should I take the whole wheat pasta or the corn pasta ? Which one is more healthy for me ?

8. When I reached my weightloss goal and want to up my calorie intake - should I make this in slow steps ? - like every week + 150 calories ? I want to end up to having a minimum of 2500 calories daily due to my exercise routine ...

Thanks alot for your answers - it's a big help for me ! :)

Greetings,
Oceania
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Re: Am I Doing This Right ?

Postby baardmk » Sat Aug 29, 2015 7:01 am

Ok, I'll take a stab. I'm sure you'll get some other answer as well. :)

Your diet seems A-ok, to me.

Fruits. You're young, active and healthy. No particular need to limit them for losing weight, triglycerides or anything. Eat them since you like them. They're not calorie-dense, and many think (like Jeff Novick), that therefore they should NOT contribute less to overeating than calorie dense foods. If you're eating between meals and lots of meals, you may need to be extra vigilant about dental care, acidic and sweet foods.

Maybe search dr. McDougall's newsletter archive on weight loss, and on the Maximum weight loss protocol. One of his tips would be to limit variety, because simplicity may lead to less eating.

Sodium. Have you tallied up your daily sodium intake? It shouldn't be much above about 1500mg, I believe. Using herbs and sprinkling it on your food instead of cooking with it will help to reduce overusage.

Omega3/6. Yes, you will get lots of this from your veggies, starches, salads and seeds. Just a very small amount of seeds like hempseeds, flaxseeds, chia seeds or walnuts will certainly get you to your RDI of about 1g of omega 3. But it can be quite easily done without those seeds/nuts as well. Omega 6 requirements are about the same as those for omega 3, and there are plenty of those in your relatively low-fat foods.

Avocado is A-OK.

Intermittent fasting. Many are very positive. Some are quite skeptical. The jury is out.

Weight-loss. It is mostly calories in and out. Whatever makes you comfortably eating less calories or expend more calories without a proportionally bigger appetite will make you lose weight. The jury is out on many of these topics. Try some of the suggestions you are motivated to do and go from there. Health is infinitely more than one number! :)

Rice. You can have whatever rice you enjoy, but there are some choices which probably are a little bit healthier than others. Stick with your likings, but be assured they can change. I used to cook my brown rice straight-up righ from the bag. Now I soak it maybe 12-24h ideally (or longer), rinse it and then cook it, but turning off the heat when it has started to cook to let the rice absorb the residual water/moisture. A rice cooker, a steamer or just cooking it with the residual heat is a big improvement over just cooking it all the time through, I think.

RE: 7. I don't think it matters much.

Re: 8. I don't know, but I suppose it wouldn't matter very much over the longer term, which is the most important thing.
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Re: Am I Doing This Right ?

Postby colonyofcells » Sat Aug 29, 2015 8:06 am

Can read the free picture book for all the answers about the Starch Solution :
https://www.drmcdougall.com/2014/06/30/food-poisoning/
For snacks, I prefer munching on whole grain bread. I currently buy the costco 2 pack from alvarado street bakery : 1 complete protein sprouted wheat + sprouted lentils, 1 sprouted wheat.
I get iodine from seaweeds that I buy in bulk from mountainroseherbs com. I avoid kelp and kombu which have too much iodine.
I don't like white rice bec it has very little fiber and very little micronutrients. I like brown rice, red rice, black rice and wild rice. Starch Solution allows white rice as a compromise with asians who have some tradition of eating white rice. Even in asia, brown rice was the staple before the switch to white rice which did result in vitamin b deficiencies. Nowadays, I heard they add b vitamins to white rice. On weekends, I soak my brown rice and beans overnight and boil them in the morning. I get my organic brown rice from costco. All my current starches including the beans were from costco so maybe I should call it the costco solution.
Starch Solution does not require the use of flax seeds and chia seeds. Many people follow Dr Esselstyn in taking a little bit of flax seeds or chia seeds.
Starch Solution does not promote intermittent fasting and water fasting. I currently eat 4x a day and am doing just fine.
Any type of whole grain pasta is ok.
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Re: Am I Doing This Right ?

Postby grid » Sun Aug 30, 2015 1:52 am

Oceania wrote:I just want to know, whether I'm doing this whole diet right, because I don't noticed any weight loss but really want to stick to this way of eating !


You might want to start journalling what exactly you put in your mouth. If you write every day what you ate/drank, people who could successfully found their healthy shape will help you how to tweak your diet to lose those extra pounds.

Oceania wrote:1. I really like to snack fresh fruits ! I've ever had a sweet tooth since I can remember and when the feeling for something sweet and fresh comes up, I feel happy as a child to have a few peaches or half a watermelon or a banana icecream with berries. I can have dried fruits in the house without eating them in one sitting, I usually just have a few chopped over my morning cereal. The Starch Solution book says, that it's better to limit fruits to 2-3 servings a day - but I really don't want to - I love fresh fruits more than anything else - there nutrient dense and have a high water and fibre content - should I really limit them ? I even have an active lifestyle, so I burn a lot of carbohydrates daily - and I don't want to miss a nice fruit picknick with my friends in the woods :-(


I share your feelings regarding to fruits. When the first really fresh fruits appears in late spring, early summer, I get very excited and can eat nothing else but fruits all day :D

But fruits can interfere with weight loss. One of our great Star McDougallers, Katydid wrote about it, please check her post here.

Oceania wrote:2. It's very hard and strict to me to stay really low-sodium at the moment. I buy my beans without salt and eat my veggies fresh and the Oat-Milk has a very low salt conent too. But in my main dish I really love to have a good pinch of herb-salt to it - it's so much more satifying for me with the salt - like I eat less and feel more easily "full" and satiated when I use herbs and salt as usual to my rice dishes for example. And sometimes I like to have a little bit of organic ketchup ( no added sugar ) to my potato wdges - which has salt in it too ... - is this really a problem or unhealthy ? What about the iodine content ? Doesn't we need iodine to have our thyroids function well ?


Since we eat our veggies and starches grown in different soils (even in different parts of the world), I don't think we should be concerned about not having some nutrients from our veggies, as long as we eat enough calories to live. Salt is a difficult thing though. Not everyone can eat without added salt. I'm one of them who can't. If I do, I get weaker and weaker, so I add some salt on top of my food, which is cooked without any salt. I use Himalayan salt, not because it's fancy, but because the simple salts you can buy here is full of small stones that I don't want in my dish. Try what works for you. Since you're young and healthy, a little bit of salt will not harm you, but it's better to cook your food without salt and add it on top of the food, than add it into the cooking dish.

Oceania wrote:3. I tried to have brown rice instead of parboiled rice for a week but I really don't like the taste that much. I can eat it, but I tend to end up eating and snacking on anthing else to have the same satisfaction from the parboiled "white" rice. The rice I buy is a "parboiled" long-grain rice - which should have 80 % of the nutrients the brown rice has, because the vitamins and minerals are tranfered into the inner part through heat (?) - is it okay to stick with the parboiled white rice ? I have a load of veggies to the rice usually anyway - so I think I'll get enough vitamins and minerals from the veggies, beans and greens


Taste buds can change if you let them to change. But you can be fine on white rice. I started this way of eating with white rice because I could not afford buying brown rice. I felt way much better almost immediately. Later I could find affordable brown rice, so I switched to that, I felt great. Then that source of brown rice closed, I switched back to white rice, I felt no difference. Then found another source of affordable brown rice, I ate that for a while and now I eat white rice again because of the same reason as before. It's OK, I think you don't have to worry about it too much :-D

Oceania wrote:4. Where do you get your omega-3 and omega-6 from ? Isn't this WOE lacking in omega sources ? Should I add a tablespoon ( 15g ) of chiaseeds to my oatmeal or salad to have a full source of theese ?


The simplest answer is: no, this WOE is not lacking in omega sources. The food you eat should not be felt greasy to contain the adequate quantity of omega fatty acids. There are omegas in almost every veggies and that source is enough for most people. Not for me because I have asperger's, so I found I feel much better if I include some high omega seeds into my diet (I eat about a tbsp of freshly ground flax/day), but this is not the case for others. Even if you try to lose weight, you might want to avoid these high fat foods at least for a while.

Oceania wrote:5. Is it okay to have a quarter of avocado to my salad everyday ? I don't have ANYTHING fatty in my food intake except for the oats which are naturally a little bit higher in fat. So when I would have an quarter of avocado daily I just end up with 18-20g of fat per day, which is 10-12 % of fat of my overall calorie consumption.


Avocado is a very fatty food and since our bodies can turn dietary fat into body fat very easily and it's programmed to do so to be prepared for future starvation, I would avoid it in your case. Once you're happy with your weight, you could try to include it again, but I think you will not lose weight easily if you eat fat instead of whole starches, which cannot be converted into body fat so easily by our body.

Oceania wrote:6. Have you tried intermittent fasting ( 16:8 ) where you basically fasting 16 hour a day ( So for example you have breakfast at 11am and the last meal at 7pm ) - is this effective to speed up your weightloss a little bit ?


I don't know the answer but I would eat low fat, whole foods when I'm hungry and eat until full instead of overcomplicating my life with rules. If that doesn't help on it's own, I would try intermittent fasting or other contentious methods. It might work, it might not work, but since you have a lot to learn about this WOE, I would start learning about food and then about the different approaches of eating schedules.

Oceania wrote:7. When I have a pasta dish, which is like once or twice a month - not very often - should I take the whole wheat pasta or the corn pasta ? Which one is more healthy for me ?


Doesn't matter, as long as they are both SOS free :)

Oceania wrote:8. When I reached my weightloss goal and want to up my calorie intake - should I make this in slow steps ? - like every week + 150 calories ? I want to end up to having a minimum of 2500 calories daily due to my exercise routine ...


I don't think you should go into those tiniest details now because by the time you reach your weight loss goal you'll learn so much about food, eating and yourself that everything will be crystal clear :-D

Hope it helps
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Re: Am I Doing This Right ?

Postby Katydid » Sun Aug 30, 2015 7:03 am

What I see when I look at your post is a diet that has a bit too much high calorie density snacks: corn flakes, rice crisps, dried fruit, smoothies. Even in small amounts these things can trip you up. A couple of suggestions:

Dr. McDougall has a program that is a subset of the Starch Solution called the Maximum Weight Loss Program that is designed to restrict processed foods and simple sugars (yes that means fruit). A few weeks on this program would let you know if it is your sugar addiction (aka sweet tooth) that is preventing your weight loss. You can find the MWL guidelines here:
viewtopic.php?f=11&t=26620&start=135#p265094

An app that I have found very useful lately is called YouFood (used to be TwoGrand) that is a photo journaling program. You simply take a photo of everything you eat and post it to your page. All the controls are built-in so it's super easy - and free. A number of the posters here are members do you can get ideas what others are eating if you "follow" them. I mention this program because I was having trouble losing 15 pounds I gained when I hurt my ankle two years ago. It took only three months after I started photographing my food to lose the 15 pounds :D I realized as soon as I started taking pictures that my snacking was way out of control and I was eating too late into the night. And that's the beauty of the app - self awareness- something that we sometimes lack.

Good luck and welcome.

Kate
This diet can save your life - it saved mine! Read my story at:
http://www.drmcdougall.com/stars/cathy_stewart.htm
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Re: Am I Doing This Right ?

Postby Lesliec1 » Sun Aug 30, 2015 2:24 pm

I agree with Katydid.

Find the "Maximum Weight Loss" section of this discussion board. I think it's the 5th one down if you're in the general section. The guidelines to the MWL plan are right there in the second entry. Basically, when you read the guidelines you will see that your diet can be tweaked for faster weight loss. No nut milks, less processed food like corn flakes, much fewer fruits, etc.

I know it sounds very strict but if you follow those guidelines, you will be able to eat more food and lose weight pretty fast. Remember to eat the recommended amount of veggies. That's always been key for me.
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Re: Am I Doing This Right ?

Postby Dougalling » Sun Aug 30, 2015 5:46 pm

Hi
Since you like sweet fruits you might also like boiled red potatos. I find them a good sweet starch. You don't seem to have enough starches in your diet.
I would get rid of the dates and other dried fruits. They are basically sugar which will make you retain fat (IMHO).
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Re: Am I Doing This Right ?

Postby docscience » Mon Aug 31, 2015 8:22 am

Whenever I am hungry, I eat stuff like a whole cauliflower, half cooked and half raw, or any combination. Or maybe a whole broccoli, cucumbers, tomato, or anything else really low in calories per 100 gms. I do use salt for taste, as it does not have calories and you can only retain so much water. I find that salt makes these vegetables taste good.
"Go ahead - use a little salt if you want."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aVtOzOROUqE
.
I really HATE my profile picture, but it reminds me to watch my eating. For me, that is a good motivator.
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Re: Am I Doing This Right ?

Postby Dougalling » Mon Aug 31, 2015 8:34 am

The MdDougall diet is based on starches .. potatos, rice, squash, pasta, etc
See the McDougall color picture book and you'll see how it's different than what you are doing now.
https://www.drmcdougall.com/wp/wp-conte ... -Book1.pdf
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