June 2018 McDougall Weigh In Thread

[Jobet]

I'm up .7 this week. I haven't changed anything food wise, still totally on plan. We are going through tons of rain again, and I haven't walked as much, so I'm guessing that is a clue to my gain.

[midnight87]

Sorry guys, I'm up 3.2 lbs this week. Went to visit the family last weekend and this always seems to happen . I need to plan better.

[moonlight]

I'm still weighing in at 181 -- 0lbs lost this week.

[moonspirit]

This is my first post. Just finished my first week. I "lost" 6 pounds this week, but I think some of it was just bloating. Before starting, I was eating "retreat food" at the retreat center I work at, and it is richer than my normal pre-McDougall diet.

I went from 155 to 115 in the early 90s when I was in my 20s. Looking to get to 130 this time. And then I'll go from there.

No fat or oil for a week, and I'm not missing it. Remembering how nice it is not to clean oil off my dishes.

Next week, I'm planning to stay the course with my very simple meals. And to go for a walk each day (I managed 4 this week). I live at 9000 feet, in a hilly area, so even 3-4 miles is a good workout.

[amandamechele]

Hi Everyone!

Thank you for checking-in this week. I also really want to thank those of you who shared a bit about how you're doing. It's encouraging to see positive progress and informative to learn about what have been barriers to consistent adherence. Many of us tend to learn through making the mistakes ourselves, but sometimes we can sidestep issues by learning how others did it in the past.

I've been trying to maintain a high level of motivation while I work to get closer adherence to the MWL principles. I decided to re-watch a few lectures and interviews to try and solidify some of my recall of specific teachings. Over the next few months I'll write a summary or two of some of the lectures that I haven't been able to find a summary for. My thought was maybe some of you don't have the time to watch a 1 hour lecture but would be willing to take a scan through a summary. Since this is a weight loss thread, I thought I'd start with the following:

Losing Weight Without Losing Your Mind: Dr. Doug Lisle

Eating less than we want to won't work in the long run, and neither will trying to outrun your fork. You may ask Why are there weight problems in the world?, Why are humans, dogs and cats the only animals who have weight issues?
The behaviour of all animals, including us, is driven by a few basic motivational factors. Doug calls these The Motivational Triad and they consist of pleasure seeking behaviour (food & sex), pain avoidance, and energy conservation (efficiency of action). Understanding why we do things will help you avoid falling into inaccurate thinking about why you may struggle with your weight. Typical responses to the above question include emotional eating, childhood trauma, portion control, lack of exercise, stress, genes, fast food and too much snacking. Some of these lines of thought are just plain wrong, as will be explained.
The Law of Satiety: (to understand the regulation of food intake) Animals eating to full satisfaction (satiety in their natural environment) will - over time - eat neither too much nor too little for optimum health. To gain some perspective on this concept Doug compares food regulation to the regulation of air intake, or breathing. We neither breath too little or too much.
We have mechanisms that estimate caloric intake. There are stretch receptors for volume control and nutrient receptors to analyze caloric density. We are designed, or evolved, to eat just the right amount of food. However, our modern food environment has changed the food that we eat by removing much of the fibre and water which then affects the ability of those caloric estimation receptors to work properly in some people. When eating a super concentrated stimulus, like say cheese, some people's mechanisms can get it right and they stop eating and maintain a normal body size. Other people may have mechanisms that aren't quite as accurate (which provided them an evolutionary advantage in the context of famine) and when they eat the cheese they need just a few more calories of it to feel just as full as the first group. This is genetic variation. Thin people today are lucky enough to have been born with mechanisms that can unconsciously calculate their calorie intake just slightly more accurately, which can lead some of them to believe that they have superior self-discipline. Doug explains that everyone eats into the pain every once in a while, so we all know what it feels like to overeat. It's a tug-of-war between pleasure seeking and pain avoidance. A naturally slender person thinks that the overweight person must be eating into the pain all of the time. This may have them thinking that they are making better conscious choices than the apparently indulgent people around them who are wearing a bit more extra weight.
What is actually happening is that the hyper-concentrated convenience foods of today are fooling the mechanisms of a great many people. This interplay between genes and artificially concentrated food in the diet is evidenced by the slow march of the North American population to greater and greater weights over the past 40 years or so.
What should we do? Do we have to then choose to eat less (meaning restrict our intake) in order to get back to a more optimal weight? NO!
Doug introduces the concept of YOWEL circuits. "You're Overweight Eat Less". It would make sense that we have a set of mechanisms that will induce a slight decrease in hunger drive after a period of abundance. In nature, every once in a while, high caloric foods became available all at once and it behooved the recipients of that bounty to make the best of it for a period of time because scarcity was always looming in the future. However it would be dangerous to let this run on for too long so there had to be a signal to slow down the eating for other more efficient behaviours. Here Doug explains the biological underpinnings of that signal. But as we have already learned, all of these signals can be subverted if we super-charge the input stimulus.
How do we best optimize our YOWEL circuits while eating this way?
Doug's Religion of Eating:
1)Start with Salad
2)Next Veggies
3)Finally Concentrated carbs
Here's a visual from Jeff that contains some of this:


In closing, human beings sometimes appear like moths flying into the flame doing things that are obviously self-destructive, but have difficulty stopping themselves anyway. Why do we do this? Simple, we have an internal compass telling us to eat the most calorically dense foods possible and in the modern environment engineered unnatural food is just too calorically dense for most of us to eat ad libitum and stay a healthy weight (much less be healthy).
This is the Pleasure Trap.
The best thing that you can do for yourself is to continue to learn: read the books, watch the lectures and do the work. This will keep you moving in the right direction.
It gets a little bit easier and a little bit easier over time.

That's it for the summary. It's a great lecture; to save space I eliminated all of the fabulous art and witty jokes....for those you're just going to have to watch it.

Best wishes this next week, let's all try to lose some weight without losing our minds!

Amy XO

PS. Dr. Lisle also did a great interview this week about compassion and the prejudice faced by overweight people in society. It's what had me thinking back to this lecture. Just like Dr. McDougall and Jeff Novick, he has been teaching the same thing for so many years always trying to rephrase it in a way that resonates with different groups of people. It wasn't until I re-listened to this lecture today that I realized just how consistent his message has been. I can't say enough how grateful I am to these teachers, who give so freely of their understanding to try and help us find balance, happiness and true health.

Amy

Here are the results for the fourth week in June:

Next Weigh-In is on Friday, June 29th, 2018

Total group loss reported in 2018: 264.9 pounds

June 2018 Weight Loss Group :: Monthly Weigh-In Results
Total group loss in January 2018: 54.7 pounds
Total group loss in February 2018: 49.3 pounds
Total group loss in March 2018: 52.5 pounds
Total group loss in April 2018: 26.9 pounds
Total group loss in May 2018: 50.8 pounds
Total group loss in June 2018: 30.7 pounds

Week ending 06/22/2018: 11 participants reported a total loss of 8.7 pounds
---------------------------------------
Squealcat - 4.6
Jobet - 0.7
Midnight87 - 3.2
---------------------------------------
Total gains: 8.5
--------------------------------------
Svenja - 2.0
Landog - 1.0
VegSeekingFit - 1.8
Arewethereyet - 3.8
Rosey - 1.8
Victw - 0.8
Moonlight - 0.0
Moonspirit - 6.0
---------------------------------------------
Total losses: 17.2
---------------------------------------------

Total group loss in June 2018: 30.7 pounds
Week ending 06/22/2018: 11 participants reported a total loss of 8.7 pounds
Week ending 06/15/2018: 9 participants reported a total loss of 8.3 pounds
Week ending 06/08/2018: 10 participants reported a total loss of 3.4 pounds
Week ending 06/01/2018: 18 participants reported a total loss of 10.3 pounds

[amandamechele]

Jobet - Yes, it is most likely exactly what you think, normal variation. Sorry to hear how rainy its been . I hope the weather is much better for you this week. The rain has just moved in my area....

Midnight87 - Keep at it, this is not always an easy transition. For the longest time whenever my sister and I got together, heck you can include whenever I visited my whole immediate family, it was like we had an unofficial rule that we get a free pass to eat especially junky foods and lament about how hard it is to lose weight. It was quite the juxtaposition. I eventually had to figure out a plan to navigate that situation because I knew it was going to occur over and over again, and I knew that it would be tricky to start refraining from joining in on the food and still get to commiserate on diet difficulties without looking like I was complaining about getting an A- when everyone else was not ready to do more than B+ effort. Dr. Lisle's Getting Along Without Going Along has some very helpful tips. My family's pretty cool about things, hopefully yours will be too. Bring some food, or eat first, maybe? They're going to love you no matter what you eat!!

Moonlight - Mandatory 15 minute break; your metabolism will get back to work shortly...XO. Just keep up the GREAT effort. Your journal is very inspiring!

Moonspirit - Welcome! Between Midnight87 and Moonlight, you are in the company of many night owls.
I may not be a night owl, but sometimes my tea keeps me up later than I should be...like tonight.

How has the week been going so far? When you lost weight in your 20s was it using the McDougall plan as well, I'm just curious? Dishes certainly do become much easier to clean, which is a great trade off to the increased chopping needs...LOL. Best wishes this week and I hope to hear from you many more times!

[victw]

amandamechele & landog,

I started the FMD on Sunday. This is my third go with it. I am following Dr. Longo's protocol.
It's discussed in this thread.
viewtopic.php?f=1&t=55140&hilit=longo

If you are curious I strongly recommend picking up a copy of the book from your library. It's an interesting read. But it was really the mice in the fasting video on Amazon that got me hooked.
https://youtu.be/t1b08X-GvRs?t=40m18s

I'm really intrigued by the idea of giving your immune system extra gas. I am not doing bloodwork before and after - so who actually knows.

landog - I'm eating what I normally eat but less of it - and more fats than I would normally eat. My calories for the week will be:
1072 yesterday and 737 on days 2-5.
With the principles of calorie density I can make it a little more manageable - but it's still challenging.

I made a pot of the Red Posole minus the beans. I've had it for 6 meals now. And will eat it until it's gone. The fat part is challenging - because we know 700 calories could actually be a large volume of food. Except the protocol is 44% fat on days 2-5. So that impacts the volume of food.

I'm not a big avocado fan - but for this purpose it works. I'm not eating more nuts than I normally would. I did pick up a package of flackers for some variety.

My protein always ends up being higher than the protocol. But I'm not too worried about it.

Amy the recommendation is to extend your window. I think this week will be easy for me to do that - but normally it's hard for me because I usually do my exercise after work which means I eat a little late. I'm taking walks this week - but no hiking.

It's an experiment - an interesting experiment. Mostly reminding me that I don't have to eat just because I'm "hungry." I can wait for the appropriate place and food.

Vic

[amandamechele]

amandamechele & landog,

I started the FMD on Sunday. This is my third go with it. I am following Dr. Longo's protocol.
It's discussed in this thread.
viewtopic.php?f=1&t=55140&hilit=longo

If you are curious I strongly recommend picking up a copy of the book from your library. It's an interesting read. But it was really the mice in the fasting video on Amazon that got me hooked.
https://youtu.be/t1b08X-GvRs?t=40m18s

I'm really intrigued by the idea of giving your immune system extra gas. I am not doing bloodwork before and after - so who actually knows.
***
My protein always ends up being higher than the protocol. But I'm not too worried about it.

Amy the recommendation is to extend your window. I think this week will be easy for me to do that - but normally it's hard for me because I usually do my exercise after work which means I eat a little late. I'm taking walks this week - but no hiking.

It's an experiment - an interesting experiment. Mostly reminding me that I don't have to eat just because I'm "hungry." I can wait for the appropriate place and food.

Vic

Hi Vic,

Cool thanks for responding to mine and landog's questions. It sounds like a fun experiment, and the link from the lounge that you've posted is the perfect place to discuss your observations with others. I have read the book The Longevity Diet by Dr. Longo. I sometimes experiment with my feeding window... and have done water fasting before for the reason that you list for your interest - immune modulation. Have you read any of Roy Walford's books? (One of them is also named The Longevity Diet.*


Jeff Novick has some pretty in depth discussions on this research, and I believe his conclusion has been that for long term success in getting down to a minimal weight (and thus receiving the benefits possibly related to CRON) and staying there the MWL approach is the most efficacious.
Protein After 65 Years of Age

Reflecting on the 5:2 diet and Intermittent Fasting

Irked By Great yet biased Scientists, gratitude for you (Jeff didn't name this thread!)


Best wishes this week!
Amy

(Edit - I was going by memory there, I'm home now and looking at my bookshelf, it's Walford's daughter who is the co-author of the other Longevity Diet book...Roy Walford's books that I have are the 120 Year Diet and Maximum Lifespan)

[moonspirit]

How has the week been going so far? When you lost weight in your 20s was it using the McDougall plan as well, I'm just curious? Dishes certainly do become much easier to clean, which is a great trade off to the increased chopping needs...LOL. Best wishes this week and I hope to hear from you many more times!

Thanks for asking, amandamechele.

Yes, my weight loss in my 20s was also McDougall. I lost 40 lbs in 4 months. I kept it up until I got pregnant, but maintained a vegan pregnancy. I introduced more fat when I was pregnant and nursing.

Moving to Eugene, OR from Bryan, TX made a lot more vegan "junk food" available to me, unfortunately. I stayed vegan for 13 years, and then introduced fish. That was about 15 years ago. Slowly, chicken, eggs, and cheese re-entered my diet to join the oil and sugar that had been there for a while. While my diet was healthy by SAD standards (all organic and minimally processed), it and my sedentary job have made me gain about 55 pounds in the last 10 years.

In the last year, my asthma has gotten worse, I had a pulmonary embolism, and now my blood pressure was starting to go higher. I know McDougall works, so I'm back. BP and asthma are already better after just a week and a half. Walking the hills near our home is getting easier.

This week's been going well so far. I know how to keep things simple. And I'm enjoying it. My husband is supportive (my two kids are grown up and still live in Eugene; we live in Colorado). I'll continue to weigh in on Saturday, if that's OK. That is my established pattern.

[Svenja]

Heya!

I will miss weigh in this week.
My train leaves 5 am tomorrow morning. Attending a conference on body-(psycho)-therapy with some interesting international speakers and workshops.
Back on Monday ... and off work for the rest of the week! ... oh yeah!

I think I maintained my weight, but will be back with numbers next week.

Svenja.

[landog]

Another week, another pound!



June was fun - looking forward to July!

-dog

[moonlight]

I'm down 2 lbs (179). Yay! I attribute this to Amy's efforts here in the Weigh-In group. Thanks, Amy, for all your wonderful suggestions - and cool pictures. I love the bird-man drinking tea.

Best wishes to everyone this week! Pay due diligence to yourself. You are worth it!!!

[VegSeekingFit]

Hi to the Group!!!

Happy to report .8 lb. loss for the week...

Perfected the potato waffle this week. Guess patience was the element missing in my prior attempts. While I haven't grown any patience, I now do other things for the 25 ish minutes it takes for the right degree of crispy... Yum!!

Wishing all success on this Program!!

"It does not matter how slowly you go so long as you do not stop." - Confucius

Cheers,
Stephanie

[Idgie]

I'm new to the boards, but I started on the 10th at 330 lbs, and today I'm at 317.6.

[victw]

143.8 this morning
Down 3.4 lbs.

On the last day of my FMD. Earlier in the week it was easier because I had a soup made with a low calorie density. Today is the killer - higher calorie dense foods - means less volume. I woke up hungry - which isn't a horrible thing.

The 3.4 lbs looks good but I'm expecting a 2 lb rebound gain next week. That's about what I saw with the last FMD.

Vic