August 2017 McDougall Weigh In Group

[amandamechele]

Qwerty988 - Congratulations! How very very exciting. New lows feel so good, no matter how little the amount lost was to get there. I hope to celebrate many more with you in the coming weeks and months. Thank you for sharing how you made your way to the McDougall way.

Sue - I'm glad you had a wonderful time with your friend and her family. Great work eating mostly well. It can be a difficult few days after eating highly stimulating treats, but I have no doubt you can get back to this. My mom says thank you! Thank you for sharing your story, I'm so glad you joined our group too.

Kathy - Enjoy the wedding, and thank you for being so dedicated to checking in. I really appreciate it.

Anna - Yay Anna! Best wishes this week...you have me thinking of pirates...lol.

Susan - Wonderful dedication this week. I'd love to hear your family's reaction to the salads. What baked bean recipe did you use?

Lyndzie - Woot woot! I'm impressed you endured a state fair and ate well. That would have been full of temptations (and a lot of foods that are just gross too!). Thank you for the article link. I haven't read it yet, but will. Thank you for sharing your Plant-based story. I'm glad you just keep trying. That's how I've been doing it too. A few years ago, when I was really struggling with medium to longer term adherence (and thus wasn't consistently losing weight, even though my BMI was oscillating between 40-45) my family used to say things like "this isn't working" or "why don't you try this new diet/supplement that I just read about". I would explain to them that just because I am experiencing an application issue doesn't mean this isn't an effective program for weight loss (not to mention all of the other health benefits). And I just kept at it....three steps forward, two steps back. Earlier this year I briefly hit a normal BMI 24-25. I'm up a bit again but I'll know get back there because, just as you have said, when you give it 100% that's just what happens. Did your mom try eating this way? How is she doing now? Good luck with Day 9 and beyond; You're doing fantastic!

Chris - I'm buckling down too! Have a great week as well.

Sirdle - Welcome back and wonderful loss this week. I'm so happy to have you here this month. Cheers!

BeHealthy - Congratulations on your weight loss this week, but more importantly your progress with how you are feeling - less medication, more activity. How wonderful!
What a fortuitous find at that library sale. Thank you for sharing this part of your story. You're not alone in having to do this multiple times to get it right. Practice makes perfect! Have you seen this video of a young Dr. McDougall: The Early Years of Dr. John McDougall?

sarabee - Wonderful loss! Maybe you're right about detoxing and bad breath. Here is a 37 page article on Halitosis: From Diagnosis to Management (a tad more info than you're looking for perhaps?...lol). It mentions possible dietary causes of bad breath on page 8, naming onions, garlic and spiced food. Anyhow, I think drinking more water is a great idea....maybe even sparkling water for its crisp, sharp flavour (in case there is a bad taste as well). Any chance that you're entering into ketosis periodically? That can cause weird smelling sweet breath.
Carbohydrates as fuel vs Fat

[Silver]

I am down 1.0 this week. It's been a hectic week as we're getting ready for company.

[Svenja]

Hey all!

I lost 2 pounds!


Maybe my knee is slowly getting better! Biked to work all week and went on my first little walk yesterday.

My mom, as I mentioned before, is 70-80% on the normal McDougall plan (I am so thankful!!)
She looks healthier than ever.
Just the other day I noticed that her I eyes are different. As long as I can remember she had green/brown eyes, while everyone else in the family has blue eyes. But I never thought about it ... it is just the way it was. Now her eyes are bright blue with one little brown spot left. I mentioned it to her and she was surprised, as she hadn't noticed. Yesterday ... she told me she used to have blue eyes when she was young ... I didn't know that.
It seams like the change in food brought her original eye color back! I take it as a sign of improved health!

Have a great and blessed weekend everyone!

Svenja.

[HeidiH]

Hello everyone! Hope you don't mind me joining in a little late in the month. I'm a long time on-again off-again plant-based eater (basically fall off the wagon periodically). I started the MWL plan the middle of July and have lost 9.4lbs so far. This month I've lost 4.6lbs so far.

I come from a nutritarian background, and have no criticisms on it, but I was curious about trying starch-based because who wouldn't want to live off of comfort food! And obviously it's working for me, plus I think it's easier to stick to. I'm actually really excited about being a starchivore!

This week I lost 3lbs.

We're getting ready to go camping for a few days and I've made a batch of mexican rice & beans, baked up a few sweet potatoes, and will make a few other things to make it easy. It'll be my first time camping and not indulging in junk food.

I also only eat lunch and supper, and try to not eat after 7pm.

Anyway, have a great weekend everyone!

[LadyM]

Good morning everyone:

Zero weight loss for me this week.

How I came to McDougall program. A series of events that started 7 1/2 years ago. Saw a talk show about the documentary Food Inc.(lost my job that's why I was home watching TV) and started to research WFPB. Decided to quit smoking and we all know that what comes next is weight gain. Found Dr. McDougall's program and knew it was the way to go. I was not perfect at the beginning especially with eating out and telling myself I "deserved" a treat once in awhile. I'm still not perfect but a lot closer to perfection than I was back then. Well 7 1/2 years later I am retired, do not smoke and have lost 105 lbs. from my all time high weight of 230 lbs.

My advise to anyone who "falls off the wagon" get back up, dust yourself off and do it again (the eating program not the falling off part). This life style is well worth it. A youtuber, Jill McKeever, said that she did not want to get to be old, sick and medicated and that is why she and her family switched to WFPB. This is how I feel too! At 70 I only take 1 B12 pill once a week and I hope to stay like this until I'm 106 years old.

Hope everyone has a great week.

LadyM
(Dee)

[cambitsgirl]

Hello everyone, I am down 1.6 pounds this week sitting at 198.4. So excited I made it into wonderland! It has been another busy week. Planning my meals, and when the weekend comes and I am on call I am making the best choices I can to stick to foods that I can have. This week I worked my Medic One shift, and we got a call with a transport. We were paged out about 3 am and did not get back into the station until shift change at 8 am. I ran home and another call went out where we went into standby mode at a station I grabbed mixed berries to eat so I had something in me and then we got another call. We did not get back into the station until 3 pm. (the only hospital in our county cannot take critical patients, so we have long transport times) We ended up running around for a couple more hours and finally we were both just plain starving and ended up at our favorite cafe here in town. They are pretty good about accommodating me so I ordered a bunch of food and filled up - finally! Life happens and I try to be prepared for it, but that doesn't always work out. Hope everyone is having a great week!

Carol

[BeHealthy]

amadamechele - Thanks for posting the link to the video with the old clips. It's great that the message and delivery has remained consistent all these years! My favorite clip was the one from the talk show where he showed the clear stomachs and how much food fills them depending upon what a person chooses.

[Mom+Me]

Happy Saturday, All!

Wow--we're already on page 4; that's great. Things are very busy here, so l'll have to read + respond later. I wanted to make sure l got my # in for the tally deadline: -3 this week. I'm glad to have gotten rid of the excess weight from those nasty, salty, greasy tater wedges!

I'm looking forward to checking in soon to "converse" with you all!

[amandamechele]

Hi Everyone,

Another great week! August is shaping up to be a great month for all of us. Thank you for checking in today.

(Background) I was reading through a thread in Jeff Novick's forum, Thoughts on "What the Health". There have been a few reviews of this documentary circulating the net and media in the past month and I have enjoyed reading everyone's thoughts.

In this thread, Jeff mentions an article that he wrote in 2013 and I wanted to check it out, called the Continuum of Health.

When discussing the WFPB diet, it is important to understand that there is no one single program but there are some common denominators among all of the successful programs. While the programs are all very similar, they are not identical. Not all of the programs are vegetarian or vegan. Some of the programs allow for a small amount of certain animal products and some don't. Some allow for a small amount of non-fat dairy and some don't. Some allow for a small amount of oil and some don't.

So, even though we are attempting to eat a very specific version of a whole food plant based diet here in the MWL weigh-in group, there are many iterations of this dietary pattern that are health supporting. Good to know. My take-away is to keep working at the recommendations that you have decided are most important to your particular situation. Then you can slowly add more changes as you feel ready; It doesn't have to be all or nothing from the get-go.
But also remember this is a very successful program for a reason - because of its very specific guidelines.

The Continuum of Health

Here are a couple of other great articles following tonight's theme (and really every week's theme) of gaining a deeper understanding of why we choose to eat this way:

Maximizing Weight Loss: How to Fine Tune Calorie Density

The Calorie Paradox: Is your Plant Based Diet a Vegetable Based, a Nut Based or a Starch Based Diet?

Here are the results for the second week in August:

Next Weigh-In is on Friday, August 18th, 2017

Total group loss reported in 2017: 575.66 pounds

August 2017 Weight Loss Group :: Monthly Weigh-In Results
Total group loss in January 2017: 137.25 pounds
Total group loss in February 2017: 102.91 pounds
Total group loss in March 2017: 111.3 pounds
Total group loss in April 2017: 56.1 pounds
Total group loss in May 2017: 41.8 pounds
Total group loss in June 2017: 44.4 pounds
Total group loss in July 2017: 34.9 pounds
Total group loss in August 2017: 47 pounds

Week ending 08/11/2017: 17 participants reported a total loss of 19.8 pounds
---------------------------------------

---------------------------------------
Total gains: 0.0
--------------------------------------
Qwerty988 - 0.2
Suey51 - 0.8
Yomom - 0.0
Annauk - 1.0
Zsilent1 - 3.0
Lyndzie - 0.5
Galooop - 0.0
Sirdle -1.2
BeHealthy - 1.0
Sarabee - 1.0
Silver - 1.0
Svenja - 2.0
HeidiH - 3.0
LadyM - 0.0
Cambitsgirl - 1.6
Mom+Me - 3.0
amandamechele - 0.5
---------------------------------------------
Total losses: 19.8
---------------------------------------------

Total group loss in August 2017: 47 pounds
Week ending 08/11/2017: 17 participants reported a total loss of 19.8 pounds
Week ending 08/04/2017: 19 participants reported a total loss of 27.2 pounds

[ANNAUK]

Wow what an awesome week for everyone !!!!! ))))
Been watching Jeff's webinars really inspirational I'm on it !!! Stage 4 style xxx

[zsilent1]

Hello Amy & Everyone!

Yesterday was the fam get together. The food I made was a big success and was enjoyed by all. Lot's of compliments. I made a whole wheat pasta salad, a black bean & corn salad, and baked beans. Amy, I used Mary McDougall's recipe for the baked beans. I added some tomato sauce and garlic. I am pleased to report that I wasn't tempted to eat chips, cheese or sweet desserts. Just didn't even want any of that stuff. I had lots of veggies and the good salads and ice cold watermelon. I'm glad I made compliant food cause I had lots of good food choices and didn't feel deprived at all. Everyone gobbled up the healthy stuff. All gone!

Have a great week, People!

Susan

[amandamechele]

Silver - Wonderful loss! Enjoy your visitors.

Svenja - Yay for the weight loss and the McDougalling Moms! I bet her health is so improved! Have a great week yourself. Enjoy the cycling weather.

Heidi - Welcome fellow Canadian! We don't mind you joining late at all. Congrats on all of your success so far in transforming from a nutritarian to a starchivore. I'm glad you're enjoying the process. Good luck this week while camping. You'll do great. Where will you be camping? The last time I was in NB we stayed near the Bay of Fundy National Park (to see the flower pot rocks). It's so beautiful out there.

Dee - Wow what a story Dee. I'm so inspired by how you've successfully made such big changes in your life. I have no doubt you'll be here at 106 helping to motivate and inspire each successive (and growing) generation of McDougallers. That is great advise. What other strategies have you used to maintain your loss?

Carol - I'm doing a happy dance for you! Yippee. Man those are long hours. I hope your transport made it and is recovering. Do you ever end up finding out how things turn out? Every once in awhile, when I was working, I had a call where I just had to know what ended up happening to the people involved. But most of the time I never did find out. I'm glad you've been able to work with local restaurants to help you stay on track.

BeHealthy - You're welcome!

Mom+Me - Awesome job this week! Way to stick to the plan. Looking forward to hearing from you.

Anna - Lol, wonderful! Jeff's stuff is a great way to stay motivated and informed.

Susan - Yahoo! They're all a little healthier thanks to you. I'm glad you got through that social event without eating something you regretted and got to thoroughly enjoy yourself too. That is the best feeling ever. Have a great week too!

[HeidiH]

Heidi - Welcome fellow Canadian! We don't mind you joining late at all. Congrats on all of your success so far in transforming from a nutritarian to a starchivore. I'm glad you're enjoying the process. Good luck this week while camping. You'll do great. Where will you be camping? The last time I was in NB we stayed near the Bay of Fundy National Park (to see the flower pot rocks). It's so beautiful out there.

Thank you for the welcome! We camped about 30 minutes from Fundy National Park, a little closer to home. Although I was tempted to snack a few times in the evening, because that's partly what camping used to involve I resisted and thankfully didn't gain even an ounce.

On towards shrinking a little more this week!

[Suey51]

Hello everyone,
Wow - what a great set of numbers for last week - well done everyone!

0 gain/loss for me this week.

This was a week of two halves. First half, I went off-program with some highly concentrated foods and not much exercise. Second half, I ate on-program and took more exercise. So I'm happy to have held the weight steady.

I'm realising that having one highly concentrated food item tends to lead to having another the same day or the next day. Its easy to think 'Oh, I'll just have that one slice of cake/piece of toast because it's a special occasion or I'm feeling unwell/tired/stressed etc'. But that definitely kicks off the cravings for other items in the following days. I've been re-watching some Doug Lisle videos, getting myself organised with batch cooking etc. I also watched this 20 minute video which is a great reminder of the health benefits of this way of eating Dean Ornish, M.D. at TEDxSF

For next week my goal is follow the program most days and reduce the overall calorie density by having more veg and fewer starches.

xx

[Qwerty988]

Happy Friday everyone

0.0 loss/gain for me this week.

The scale says no, but the mirror says yes