Lynn,
It's good to see the scale moving in the right direction again. You've made a key discovery on the oil. It is really bad for your health. You might want to go to youtube or the Veg. Soc. of Hawaii and see some of Dr. Esselstyn's lecture. He is adamant about "NO OIL" and explains how much damage even small amounts can do to your circulatory system. In his DVDs, Jeff explains how oil is the most calorie dense substance in the universe. A good video to watch at VSH is anything by Dr. Shintani. One of his demos is to fill a container with the same calories of, e.g., potatoes, apples, m&ms, and oil. There are a lot of potatoes and apples and barely a drop of oil. Getting the oil completely out of your diet will make a big difference.
The unsweetened Almond Breeze is exactly the brand that Jeff recommended for me. Not the flavored versions of Vanilla or Chocolate, but the plain unsweetened. Even here you have to be careful. As a processed food, this is something that again is best left out of your diet. I have learned to leave it out - but you may find you do better with it, at least for awhile. But be aware that both the almond milk and maple syrup (i.e. sugar) counts towards the 5 per cent of calories that do not come from the whole plant food. You may want to measure the amounts that you use. It would be helpful to know how many ounces of the milk and how many ounces of the syrup you typically use. Neither of these products are things that can be eaten freely.
It's great that we are weeding out some big problems so soon. Keeping this up should pay off soon. But what can happen if you get complacent is finding another, lower, plateau that is still too high.
I can give you an abbreviated version of Jeff's approach to label reading.
First, favor foods without labels - whole plant foods. For foods with labels, look at the calories per serving and then the calories from fat per serving. You would like the percentage of calories from fat to be less than about 20%. Next look at the number for sodium. You would like that number to be no greater than the number for calories per serving. Next look at the ingredients list. At best, the list should be short and contain no oils or their equivalents (e.g. lecithin) and no sugars or equivalents (evaporated cane juice, high fructose corn syrup).
For examples of meals from whole foods, you could check my blog
http://sactobob.blogspot.com/
Last edited by SactoBob on Tue Oct 18, 2011 10:48 am, edited 1 time in total.