JANUARY 2020 Maintenance Thread

[Lyndzie]

Welcome to the McDougall Maintenance support group! Let’s join together for support and camaraderie while we strive to maintain our successes.

Many of us have lost weight and/or reached other health goals. We’re ready for that next chapter, maintaining the gains we’ve accomplished.

This group will have Friday check ins, where everyone can touch base. Weigh-ins are optional, and will not be tracked. Please feel free to share your non-scale victories (NSV) as well.

In order to foster group participation, we do ask that only participants post, so please do join! You can join at any time simply by hitting the “post reply” button and saying something along the lines of “I’d like to join.” As they say, the more, the merrier.


Hi everyone!

Cheers to a brand new year. We have managed to get through the holidays fairly successfully and are no worse for wear. We have celebrated and enjoyed family. It’s already time to look forward to the new year (and decade!).

Sue posted Dr. McDougall’s New Year Resolution in the December thread and that is a wonderful way to reflect on what we’re doing well and what areas are still works in progress.

As for myself, I see the areas of improvement diet-wise is getting my salt consumption down again. A couple years ago I had gotten rather militant about it, but slowly over time I’ve gotten way too lax. I’m pretty pleased with my overall eating. I view it like a lifelong journey, and try to learn from my missteps.

Next check in is Friday, January 3, 2020.

Best to you all,
Lindsey

[Ejeff]

Thanks for posting that link Lindsey, it’s a good read. I will also continue to reduce salt over the next year and have already been doing it somewhat for the past while. Always room for improvement though.

I decided since I had too many off plan treats and snacks over the holidays, for the month of January I am doing a challenge. No oil, no sugar, no alcohol. It’s a good time for me to do this as I have to start fresh with groceries and I therefore won’t buy anything that has oil or sugar in the ingredients. As for the alcohol I don’t drink that often, but zero is better than some health wise.

I think this will be a good reset for me. Looking forward to 2020

[Mark Cooper]

Happy New Year, everyone! I had another fairly good week managing my CRPS pain - mostly mild - moderate. My BMI holds steady, and I'm continuing to adhere to the MWL 10-Point Checklist .

I don't have any real dietary goals for 2020, as I plan to just continue following MWL. I do plan on concentrating on continuing to research and experiment with strategies for better managing and possibly improving my CRPS. It sure would be nice to actually have even one pain-free day sometime this year (even a few pain free hours, to be honest).

Best to all, and especially thanks to Lindsey for facilitating!

Take care & be well.

[Ejeff]

Mark I wish you a pain free day very soon.

Down 3 pounds this week. Happy to be eating very clean right now. It was absolutely the right decision to start this challenge for myself. So many temptations everywhere here, so 100% avoidance makes it easier. Back to playing outdoor pickleball as much as I want and off to Zumba class shortly. Wishing you all a good week.

[Mark Cooper]

Thanks, Erin! And kudos to you that your challenge already feels like the right decision! Have fun at Zumba!

[Suey51]

Happy New Year everyone!

Thanks Lindsey. My favourite 'fancy' drink is an ice-cold lime soda (soda water with lots of freshly squeezed lime and a dash of salt). I've also been trying various non-alcoholic beers and wines for special occasions. I'm amazed how much the range has increased since I first tried an alcohol free beer about 30 years ago. Orangina in a flute glass sounds good!

Erin - so sorry, I'm confused as I had assumed you lived in the USA! Where do you live the rest of the year, is it Canada? Love the sound of all those activities. I enjoy walking, going to the gym and yoga or pilates classes (extra challenging in Spanish!). During our last trip I tried a spinning class and padel so will try those again this time around, as well as taking some Spanish classes. Like you, I enjoy meeting new people so the walking group and gym classes have been good in that respect too. How much time do you typically spend in each RV park? Do you have to book a space in advance? It sounds like a wonderful way to spend the winter Good luck with your January challenges!

Mark - best wishes to you for your ongoing research and experimentation with managing/improving your CRPS this year.

My weight is up 0.6 since last week (1.6 above my goal weight) but most importantly I feel super-well and am enjoying the exercise experiment! The first half of the week I was hoovering up off-plan leftovers and the second half getting back on track. Still, the gain over the festive period was way less than pre-McDougall days.

I've added a couple more tabs to my health spreadsheet as I love to track things! I've realised recently that it really is ALL about the process rather than the end goal. I'm tracking daily activity for the exercise experiment and using a daily MWL checklist for the diet tweaks, rather than outcome-based goals. I'm aiming to get back to close compliance with the regular McD program with a reduction in the richer plant foods that have crept in over the past few months, however, I thought it might be fun to use to the 10 point MWL checklist and aim for at least 80% compliance. Some of the items on the list (e.g. exercise) are pretty easy for me to achieve, others (e.g. starting each meal with a salad, soup or fruit) less so. We'll see how this goes and change if needed. I recently spotted the lovely and very active Mutual Accountability thread so might join some of you there if I feel like I need the extra accountability

Best wishes, Sue x

[Lyndzie]

Mark - I’m so glad you found a few minutes to stop by, with the flurry of activity on the MWL thread, there is hardly enough time to sift through all those posts. I truly hope you get the pain resolved, even if just temporarily. My heart goes out to you.

Erin - 3 pounds is quite impressive, especially when you are so close to your goal! I’d love to hear about what places you are stopping at on your way down. I was hoping to visit Scottsdale (it’s just north of Phoenix) this spring, but my cousin is getting married in Houston in March, and one trip is all I can do this spring.

Sue - I’ve been doing the Mutual accountability thread as well. I’d love to have this thread morph into that sort of free-flowing conversation, but I think we’d need a few more members to keep it moving. As far as N/A beers, Guinness makes a great one that I would enjoy while pregnant called Kaliber (it’s a lager-style, not a stout), which I think is internationally available. You hit the nail on the head about the journey, not the destination. It’s that whole time + adherence equation. Good luck with the MWL check list.

Things are going great in my world. I’ve had really good focus on staying on plan, managing life’s curve balls (like being away from home unexpectedly at meal times) better than previously, and not letting small deviations snowball into multiple meals of regret.

Also, sorry about any typos that get through. This is so silly, but I have fake nails at the moment and it is quite difficult to type with these things! They looked nice for the holidays, but I’m ready to get a more practical nail length.

[Mark Cooper]

Sue, I am so glad to hear you are feeling so well and the exercise is proving enjoyable! You are so right - process is where all the leverage is located. Thanks for the well-wishes.

You are SO right, Lindsey! That thread is definitely a flurry! Thank you for the good vibes. It's great that you are knocking "life's curveballs" out of the park!

I realize my earlier post reads as a bit whiny - I should also say that I do feel very grateful that my condition is fairly well-managed. Many people with CRPS are in wheel-chairs or bed-ridden much of the time, and I'm sure this WOE is one of the reasons that I'm still very functional. So, no more complaining from me!

[Ejeff]

Sue, not to worry, USA and Canada are connected anyway! Yes I live in Canada, Edmonton, Alberta. Very good idea to track things other than weight. I am going to start tracking my exercise also. Yes you normally have to book an RV spot months ahead as they do fill up pretty good. Last year we stayed for 1 month in 4 different cities, this year it will be 2 months in Phoenix and 2 months in Palm Springs. We just want to avoid the long winter months if we can.

Lindsey, we don’t really see much in the way down, we mostly just drive and sleep and we park in truck stops usually. So it takes us 3 nights to arrive at our destination. Your fake nails make me laugh, I found them to be irritating too. Glad things are going so well.

Today I cooked up a huge pot of soup and a batch of pasta sauce so I will be eating that for the next few days. Having very few groceries on hand sure does make it easy when deciding what to eat.

[Suey51]

Erin - sorry I missed your post about a 3 pound loss last week - wow! Well done you Ah, thanks for clarifying that! I just checked my weather app for Edmonton and understand why you have headed South; it looks to be very cold there! It doesn't get that cold where we are its more the general greyness and rain that we are looking to avoid. More drizzle birds than snow birds !

Your food sounds good! We are using up meals or ingredients from the freezer, fridge and store cupboards before we go back to Spain, rather than going to the shops. We have switched off the small freezer in the kitchen after defrosting it and are just using the large freezer in the garage. Not only am I getting in more steps walking out there to get things, it's also reminded me of many items I'd forgotten we had in there

Lindsey - thanks for the tip. I haven't tried that one yet so will keep an eye out for it. So pleased that things are going great for you Using the MWL checklist the past few days has been very interesting. It's made me look closely at some of my current ways of eating and try some different things.

Mark - your post didn't sound whiny at all. I hope you have a good week pain-wise. What a great start to the January 2020 MWL Weigh-In Thread! Exciting to see so many people posting this week.

PS I'm off to watch that Gustavo Tolosa's recent interview with Dr McDougall. In case anyone else missed it, here's the link

Wishing everyone a good week xx

[Suey51]

Hello everyone.

My weight is down 0.8 this week.

Using the 10 point MWL checklist has been enlightening as it's made me reflect on some of the points and make changes to my current eating patterns. Overall I've scored just 8.2 out of 10 across the week which I'm happy with. And yes, I did use fractions in some cases rather than a binary 0 or 1 score.

Consistently scored 0 on point 7: Eliminate all higher calorie-dense foods including flour products (i.e. bread, bagels, muffins, crackers, dry cereals, cookies, cakes), puffed cereals, air-popped popcorn and dried fruit. due to having some bread every day.

Worked consciously at applying points 1 and 2:

1.       Start each meal with a soup and/or salad and/or fruit.
2.       Follow the 50/50 plate method for your meals, filling half your plate (by visual volume) with non-starchy vegetables and 50% (by visual volume) with minimally processed starches. Choose fruit for dessert.

I generally do pretty well with eating proper meals during the day but things unravel during the evening when I graze on more calorie dense items. I realised that I could apply these 2 points to snacks as well as meals. I think I've heard Dr Lisle say when tempted to have an unhealthy snack, have something healthy to eat first, so this was a useful reminder. Also, I decided to try and stop thinking about 'snacks' as a concept and to categorise everything as meals.

With regard to number 9: Follow these principles, eating whenever you are hungry until you are comfortably full. Don’t starve yourself and don’t stuff yourself. I noticed that I eat in the evenings even though not hungry.

Am going to re-watch a couple of Dr Lisle's webinars on The Perfect Personality and The Cram Circuit to help me focus on making further improvements in the coming week.

Did consistently well on the other 6 items on the MWL checklist:
3.       Greatly reduce or eliminate added sugars and added salts. This includes gourmet sugars and salts too. If either is troublesome for you, you can eliminate them.
4.       Eliminate all animal foods (dairy, meat, eggs, fish, seafood).
5.       Eliminate all higher fat plant foods (i.e., nuts, seeds, avocados, tofu, soy).
6.       Eliminate any added oil.
8.       Don’t drink your calories (especially from juices & sugar-sweetened beverages).
10.   Avoid being sedentary and aim for at least 30 minutes or more of moderate exercise daily (i.e., brisk walking).

The exercise experiment is going well. After posting about it here, I learned that my brother is doing a charity challenge to exercise every day in January, so that's given me a bit more motivation in this area. Monitoring daily exercise has caused me to take at least one extra walk, and to try a new yoga class.

How's everyone else doing this week?

Best wishes, Sue x

[Ejeff]

Good going Sue, that’s a nice loss this week! I am up a pound, but I’m okay with that. My challenge is going well, when you can’t have sugar or oil it really eliminates a lot of the processed food. I am still having the same issue as you snacking at night even when not hungry. I need to stop that. I haven’t been good at tracking exercise this week, I should get to that. I do know I’ve tried to do some physical activity everyday and I have done that so far. This week I’m planning to keep meals very simple, I’m missing potatoes so want to eat those and I have lots of brown rice and farro on hand so those will be my starches. And I always have oats so that goes without saying I enjoyed eating bok choy most days this week so I will keep doing that as it’s very high in calcium.

Smart to think about everything as meals as opposed to snacks. I usually eat some oats and fruit for a dessert or snack, but it’s probably more like a meal. I tend to measure out 1/4 cup dry and that seems to be the right portion for me. Does anyone else ever finish their meal with some oats and fruit to get some sweetness in? Or do you just have fruit. I don’t like to eat frozen blueberries on their own which is what I usually have on hand so I just have them with the oats.

[Mark Cooper]

Way to go, Sue! Your exercise challenge is also going to help a charity! That is awesome. I agree with you that the 10-Point Checklist can really provide some useful insights and clarify things that might otherwise go unnoticed.

Hmmm, bok choy sounds VERY appetizing to me, Erin. I may have to add it to my grocery list. I don't snack very often, so I don't have any really great insights, but when I am wanting dessert, I almost always go with an apple - something about the sweetness and crunch really works for me.

Best to all for a wonderful and health-supporting week to come!

[Mark Cooper]

Ooops! I forgot to post that I'm am still following the 10-Point Checklist , and my BMI holds steady. I had a nice week, and my pain was fairly well-managed. I've been enjoying Cosmic Crisp Apples - they are probably the tastiest apples I have ever had.

[Suey51]

Thanks Erin! Glad your challenge is going well.

Thanks Mark! Pleased you had a good week.

I don't generally have dessert straight after a meal, but tend to have something else to eat an hour or two later. This week, I've had a little fruit (banana or satsuma) if I've been hungry between meals. When I originally followed the MWL programme I would have chopped veggies, fruit or porridge with fruit in the evening, but recently I've been having flour based items and dried fruit...