Being & Staying Skinny: the journal continues

[roundcoconut]

IOW, allowing one's stomach to empty out between meals, and not overstuffing DURING meals. I know it worked for me, granting me food sanity that I've never experienced, when I adopted the discipline of "No S'ing" ...it really is a good thing to "Save your appetite for dinner".

Also, YES to this.

Even eating a heavily raw diet, I am still susceptible to the idea that it would be fun to eat from sun-up till sun-down, I almost always have just my coffee (or tea) in the morning, (not add any food to that), as a way to get SOME hours in the day that are not about being in that constantly fed state.

Building even a single hour of calorie-free space after a meal, can still be hit or miss for me.

Still needs time and attention, and practice!

I’ve actually got an awesome walk/bike path right outside my door, at my new apartment. And so getting into the pattern of taking an evening walk may stand to help me tremendously!

[Ruff]

Just popping in to say it IS reversible, the eating all day, eating high calorie density food.

I am a formerly obese person who ate one meal a day. (7am-8pm with almost no breaks) I did lots of ‘diets’ they all worked and then I put all the weight back on, plus more. By the end I was hiding in my room (mummy’s half hour with a cup of tea) and stuffing chocolate down my face!

And now I am a normal bmi, I eat plant based. If I fall off the wagon or feast it is vegan chocolate cake (share a pice with my husband....get that SHARE a single piece, and this is not America with American sized portions) or maybe some home baking with coconut cream (I made coconut and banana loaf yesterday) but I am maintaining, and active and all is good.

I have maintained this since 2012. Yes, occasionally I fall off particularly on holidays, but vegan eating is my wall around my food, and you can’t just grap vegan food anywhere, unless you grab fruit...which is fine of course. And after my holidays I do a Mary’s mini and get back on track. I never let myself drift more than 5 lbs.

This year I am considering a Mary’s mini AHEAD of my holidays, a bit like saving money in the bank

So it can be done, honestly, and whilst the cravings never truely go away it is easier to cope with them, they are more moments of desire, rather than all consuming passion. BUT, I do have to say giving in to them brings it all roaring back Ask me how I know!

[roundcoconut]

Just popping in to say it IS reversible, the eating all day, eating high calorie density food.

Ruff, thank you SOOOO much for saying this. It cannot be said enough times, that this is workable, this is doable, and you don’t need to be special to get through to a lot of good “new normals”.

I honestly think the mainstream message is so pervasive from the media, that dieting does not work, dieting is futile, so we might as well just accept our fate and carry on.

In fact, it almost seems as though dieting is seem as a dumb teenage girl thing to do. It’s not even something that competent adult females ever try to dig out of.

(Oprah Winfrey seems to reflect the times, as someone who just wants to do some yoga, and “manage” her weight, and maybe make some subtle changes to her body composition, or even to her blood pressure. But nothing too extreme, of course!)

I am a formerly obese person who ate one meal a day. (7am-8pm with almost no breaks)

Yup, I relate to the idea of one long, continuous meal! I’ve mostly held off on the start time for my first intake of the day — which is about the only thing that has kept me at a healthy BMI for my time on a plant-based diet, but there were SOOOO many days when I start eating at 11am, or 2pm, or even later, but eat somewhat continuously for seven hours of my work shift, and then two more hours at home. Geesh!

I think I finally have such a good handle on the calorie density, that I am getting better at having breaks between feeding.

Honestly, I have been really happy that with enough attention to calorie density, EVEN someone who emotionally eats at times, can stay at a much lower BMI than what was previously possible for them. So, that is super encouraging!!

I also like this:

So it can be done, honestly, and whilst the cravings never truely go away it is easier to cope with them, they are more moments of desire, rather than all consuming passion. BUT, I do have to say giving in to them brings it all roaring back Ask me how I know!

That is exactly on point! Passing ideas of dishing up a too-humongous bowl of who-knows-what, but not really acting on that anymore. Love this soooooo much.

Thanks for sharing, because I just think all this needs to be said again and again. Makes me happy, too!

[roundcoconut]

And now for some semi-frivolous social commentary:

The female aesthetic in many circles has shifted, away from that hideous pornstar look from the 90s (think Baywatch — huge fake boobs on a thin body) and toward something much thicker in the legs and hips. The female aesthetic in the hip-hop community is one example:

https://youtu.be/Ivp-nzg4B2s
(I freaking love this choreography by the way!!)

It is not necessarily an aesthetic that is great for heart health — the girls in the video above are probably each twenty pounds over where a plant-based doctor would like them to be, for the sake of their heart health, their insulin sensitivity, and even just their longevity, but dance (like sports!) is not about being healthy — it’s about performing at a really high level, for the duration of one’s career.

Strangely, in hip-hop dance, there is no requirement that one be fit — one just needs to be able to perform for short bursts. More like a sprint, less like a marathon. So, a lot of people are able to thrive as dancers who could not run a mile if asked.

Also — catty side note — it was reported somewhere, that back-up dancers must always make the artist look good on tour, so an artist like Beyonce or Janet Jackson would not hire dancers who make her look like the fat one on stage. I would suspect that this IS in fact true, but cannot verify it.

For the record, I don’t have any objection whatsoever to pockets of society where a thicker look is appreciated or even aestheticallly preferred. It is just aesthetics! Not health.

I DO prefer that the plant-based community remain clear on whether calorie rich foods are “good for you”, which is mostly “no, they’re NOT good for you” (unless you are a teenage boy or a high performance athlete). If I see one more recipe for a “health raw vegan” salad covered head to toe (because yes, salads have toes) in avocado and dried fruit, I will barf on my computer screen!

[roundcoconut]

Morning note:

I think it really is true that we have One Job — to get our calorie density as low as it needs to be, and get happy with that.

Yesterday, I began a fervent love affair with the (expensive) broccoli florets sold in the frozen section. Admittedly it is a total luxury to buy only the tops, and to buy organic broc to boot. But it really seems as though the extra dollar or so, to keep myself happily on track with a diet rich in fiber content, moisture content, satiety, etc, is an extra dollar well spent.

It is especially worth mentioning that I don’t believe cooked food is in any way inferior to a raw version, if the raw version tastes kinda gross to you. Now, raw broccoli just isn’t my thing (yet). So having a giant bag of cooked broccoli (split between a meal, and a later snack) can only be a good move.

My weight stays steady at (today) 104. I’ve been at the middle of my chosen weight range for about three weeks.

I feel as though I have some latitude to eat up to four servings of fruit some days, and to eat starches some days, and to eat avocado some days. I haven’t been doing them all every single day. I think it can be fun to have a little variety in that way.

In any event, weight is steady and I am working to get my step counts back up — my walking routines got disrupted shortly after moving.

That’s all for this morning!

[roundcoconut]

I DO feel that our way of eating should bring out the best in us. If it doesn’t deliver, it really IS all right to break up with some of the patterns that have been unspectacular.

How much we buy at once, and how much we prepare at once, is one factor. If I buy a week’s worth of food, I (shockingly! The horrors!) find that this brings out inconsistent behavior in me. Maybe i could buy a week’s worth of food and spend three days not doing anything stupid. But that’s not the kind of environment to bring out the strongest and healthiest Traci over the long term.

Well, what if I just read somebody else’s great post about how they make a nice pot of soup once a week, and preportion their meals and they are shining bright like a star now, because that pattern brings out great things in them?

Yep, that’s great — they’re married to a pattern that is compatible with them, and this pattern makes them the kind of sane and rational eater they always wanted to be. See? It is GREAT for them.

Is it great for me? Nope.

Every time I overate, I always had to face the question, “Who decided to make four portions of lentil soup at a go?”

I’ve always gotta find the boyfriend that is a match for me. A big beefy four-pack of lentil soup is not a good match! I have EVERY tendency to do poorly when too much ready-to-eat yummy food is arm’s distance away. So why would I think this is what I have to do?

(I feel a slight rant coming on!)

I really don’t like when people act like they should persist at doing what works for ME, despite all evidence that they don’t thrive on my favorite foods at my favorite times, and grocery shopping the way I grocery shop and exercising the way I exercise.

There is not one plant based diet. There are as many variations as there are people.

A way of eating is as specific as knowing when and where you have dinner, using what bowl, eating what configuration of foods, and closing the kitchen at what speific time for the night.

Some people can allow themselves unlimited hummus, because they would never in their wildest dreams go overboard on hummus. But don’t think for a second that it’s impossible for YOU to go overboard on hummus, unless that’s honestly what you’e seen in yourself, time and again.

I actually think it’s fine to try out somebody else’s strategies, if you are willing to be honest with yourself about whether that brings out the best you.

I was reading the most hilarious rant recently, about a woman who decided to try “intuitive eating” and made a pact with herself to only eat the foods she TRULY wanted to eat, to live like today were her last meal. So, she had banana splits. And cheesecake brownies. And french toast. And kept eating dessert for every meal, thinking that at some point, she would lose her taste for junk food by simply eating as much junk food as she wanted. Well, after months and months of doing this, the woman had to admit that her appetite for sweets wasn’t going anywhere, and if she didn’t put the brakes on it, nobody would.

So, to those who keep a couple months worth of food in their pantries (Katie), I can at least acknowledge that she is in a good relationship with her pantry, but MY pantry should more or less be bare, if I want to bring out the best Traci. (At this moment, I’ve got a can of tomato sauce, and some cauliflower and broccoli and celery, but there is nothing I could recreationally eat on, that is even a moderately rich source of calories.)

Anyhoo! The money we are willing to spend at the grocery store is another aspect of a match made in heaven for one person, which would be a life of hell for another person. I’m happy to spend my money on yummy tomatoes, but that would make somebody else deeply unhappy. Bring out the best in YOU!

[roundcoconut]

I wanted to quickly mention the idea that the principles pretty much work the same for everybody.

I watch how and what my co-workers eat, and I simply know in my heart that if they were to eat what I eat, they would start to weigh what I weigh.

I also look at people on these boards (geo’s Eyes Wide Open journal from several years ago), and I know that if I could get into the grooves of eating how he eats, I would have results like he has (and save a CRAP-ton on groceries while I’m at it.)

The principles pretty much work the same for everybody.

There is a preference factor, for how you want to divide your intake over the day, and how you want to handle that trade-off between exercise and consumption, and also that trade-off between volume and calorie density. So you gotta find someplace on the scale that you can live with.

I DO know that the principles work in much the same fashion, and pretty much nobody gets to have it both ways.

We can’t eat like athletes, unless we are going to put in some time at the gym.

We can’t eat a super-high volume of food, unless we are willing to go low in calorie density.

We can’t eat avocado every day, or tahini every day, unless we’d like to work our calorie budget AROUND your love for those foods.

Pretty much nobody gets to have it both ways, however much wishful thinking may tempt you into believe that other people have it better tha you.

[roundcoconut]

I come bearing MORE enthusiasm!

And MORE awesomeness!

Your bottomless cup of crazy -- right here.

--

Well, there is an irony to the fact that you don't make good choices until you believe you can.

And you don't believe you can, until you've got some good choices under your belt.

So God help us! I can lend out the enthusiasm long enough for anyone here to get a start at this. I have more than enough to go around. (I swear.)

I will share my grocery receipt, because that's how much crazy I've got in me today!:

Yesterday I bought:
- snap peas (fresh) - $3,49
- bartlet pears (two of them) - $2.29
- jicama (one giant beauty!) - $1.84
- asparagus (fresh) - $4.35
- tomatoes (four fresh)- $2.21
- bananas (three) - $.82

I obviously spent more money than I HAVE to, if my only objective were to meet my caloric needs. I bought food that I enjoy, and food that's going to stretch my caloric budget like some kind of Houdini!

But those are foods that nearly anybody could enjoy, without having to do any "prep time" whatsoever. Just pop em in your mouth -- they're ready to go!

Re prices above -- for some reason, I paid big money for lots of organic versions yesterday. But I often DON'T buy organic at all. Mostly, I buy food that's going to taste good, require (almost) no prep, and get me full on a very moderate "caloric spend".

So feel free to borrow some of those ideas, or some of that enthusiasm.

[roundcoconut]

Here’s what I ate today —

I punched this into Cronometer, and it’s a little over 1400 calories. I generally do not count, or even remember what I ate by the end of the day. Right now, i am stable with my weight for about 6 weeks. I weigh 105 this morning.

Breakfast?
- 3 bananas, sliced & frozen
- Two cups of coffee, black
- Two pears
Comment: five pieces of fruit is a little ridiculous, and even I admit this. I couldn’t wait to try my frozen bananas, because it’s so much cheaper for me to buy fresh bananas at the store, and then slice and freeze them myself, rather than to overpay to buy frozen bananas sold by Dole. Oh, and then I was on my way to work and just ate my two pears — I mean, I had a long-ish drive to work (working from a different location compared to my normal), and there is never a chance for me to leave work mid-day and get more food. So, no harm in me eating all kinds of fruit before 8:30am — I had all day to let that digest.

“Lunch”, which was divided up into four or five snack-times throughout the day:
4 tomatoes — larger than a golf ball, smaller than a baseball; plain, not salted or sauced or seasoned
1 whole jicama (about the size of a softball)
A moderate portion of fresh snap peas — maybe 1.5 cups?

Dinner:
1 lb bag of broccoli florets from the frozen section
A whole head of lettuce (wow, that’s a little embarrassing)
Lots of dijon and a ton of ground black pepper on top of that
Comment: My utterly bizarre choice of “dinner” is kind of a weird fascination for me. I haven’t had an urge for broccoli in more than a year, and when I bought a bag of it the day before yesterday, I was smitten. I chopped it fairly fine, and then cooked it even more, in the microwave with vinegar and dijon all over it. That becomes a crazy thick veg-based “tapenade”-type deal, to pile high on slabs of lettuce, and “Get in my belly!”
—

So, today was quite heavy on the fruit. Keep in mind, this is all crazy experimentation on my part! And somehow, I am able to handle having that much simple sugars in my diet, without igniting any difficulties with an inner food-monster. If that changes, then no more 5-fruit days for me! Till then, tentatively OK.

That was NOT a starch-centered day, with the largest portion of my calories (but very little of my satiety) coming from the morning’s fruit. I am eating at a high volume and a low-calorie density, and so far, I am fairly immune to the idea that we HAVE to eat starch, otherwise everything will collapse like a house of cards.

After about a month of not eating an official starch every single day (but certainly eating an official starch every couple of days), I am convinced i am an exception to the idea that “you just can’t fill up without a (official) starch”. I trust my experience. It is probably different for everyone else though!

The coffee is not the healthiest choice, i know, but it’s still something i keep in rotation for various reasons.

That’s all! Tomorrow might easily be a higher-calorie day, but that’s what I’ve eaten so far today.

SIDE NOTE:
I do have plans to probably discontinue journaling here, if it turns out I am non-starch-based, more days than not. I’ll give it till the end of June, and then reassess!

[roundcoconut]

Calories matter. Of course calories matter! There are a lot of people new to this way of eating who would like to believe that if only we could adjust some knob for them, then their Prius could burn as much fuel in a day as a Nascar racing car.

Or, that we have the power to get them to burn like a steel-sided war tank, when they are “only” a hefty Humvee.

We DON’T have that power.

But, we have the power of the fork, and that is a lot of power!

Of course, total calorie intake is what matters at the end of the day (as far as dropping the excess weight that has accummulated for nearly everyone on a SAD diet) —

BUT: calorie density is the metric to pay attention to on a one-by-one basis, when putting meals and snacks together.

If we are putting too many calories into a pound of food, and then lying to ourselves about being willing to decrease the actual amount of food we are eating, then that is just a bad strategy.

If you coulda done it, you woulda done it. Let’s assume that no one who has excess stored body fat, is a good candidate for the “eat rich food, but just eat less of it” camp.

If we change over from a SAD diet, but keep our calorie density very similar, our actual body fat levels won’t change very much. All that will change is, we will be spending more money to sweeten with pulverized dates rather than with sugar, and to fatten our livers up with cashews and avocado, rather than animal fats and vegetable oils.

So calorie density becomes the absolutely RIGHT thing to monitor. Do not monitor other crap.

And especially don’t lie to yourself about putting too many calories into a pound of food, and telling yourself you’ll make up for it later.

Because NOBODY eats a plateful of dates and marinated tofu for lunch, and then genuinely wants to eat romaine and tomatoes for dinner.

If you did it the right way, you honestly COULD put some dates and marinated tofu, on a giant salad of romaine and tomatoes, and you’d be just fine. That totally works. But not the dieting lies of “eat like a king for lunch, and promise to eat like a peasant for dinner”. Nobody ever succeeded that way!

Those are some thoughts for this morning. It’s a numbers game, and if our average meal is calorie dilute, then our overall intake is calorie dilute and we WIN.

[roundcoconut]

And here is one more Brutal Truth to go with your morning coffee:

The healthy eating you do is a LASTING change.

I think Dr Fuhrman had it right when he told people that they are just going to eat a nutritionally excellent diet, and keep eating that way once you are lean. No big dividing line between “I am still suffering from inflammation and need to be good” and “I am healed now, and can loosen up in my food choices”.

We eat for the weight we’d like to be, and then we eat for the weight we would STILL like to be.

I posted my whole day’s intake, just for kicks, because it is proof that I did not get into my skinny jeans and begin going down the aisles, looking for empty calories to ingest. Or even looking for rich foods to ingest.

The food we eat to get rid of inflammation, is the food we eat to keep inflammation OUT of our lives.

There is no 13th step, where the alcoholic gets told that he is now good to loosen up, and allow himself some beer.

That is the brutal truth. Get as healthy as you are willing to get, but do not fall into the fantasy that someday you will be eating richer foods without consequence.

There is only ONE healthy! Not two.

[roundcoconut]

Pictures of plates of food with fairly low calorie density:

The idea machine is putting out for you!

What about the idea of going easy on the beans (especially if you're not particularly hungry and don't need much), and loading up on cauliflower steaks?

3475F4F9-C142-429F-90F1-442EC74DB510 by Pretty Buttercup, on Flickr

Here's another idea: making salad into finger food. There are many videos on using rice paper to make little salad bundles. (One video I watched showed how to soak the rice paper to get it to be pliable, and then let the rolls sit for about an hour so that the "rice gumminess" dries to hold your bundles together):

54063592-89F0-414C-BDBD-4AB9E7725518 by Pretty Buttercup, on Flickr

4ACD53F9-0526-44BF-837B-24A55FDE1796 by Pretty Buttercup, on Flickr

Here's the idea of using fresh bell pepper as your "boat"! I think the filling could be adjusted up or down, depending on your needs.
DBCDFCDD-6E9C-47B4-A306-3FCF3B764C4A by Pretty Buttercup, on Flickr

I like having pics to inspire and beautify our ideas on calorie-dilute meals and snacks!

[roundcoconut]

I got an interesting idea from a blogpost online, where a guy wrote down a sample food menu, and entered it into Cronometer, and wrote next to each food choice, the calorie density of the item.

It seems like an act of brilliance and a total game changer! Check it out:

93A1D82D-00D9-4270-95EC-E5AB2CA80247 by Pretty Buttercup, on Flickr

The execution is perhaps far from perfect (protein powder that is not in the high category? impossible!) , but you could easilly take that visual and put together a quick mental pie chart of where your calories came from.

In this guy’s case, I would label his pie chart and 55% would say “Tropical Fruits - Simple Sugars” — which is the part where he is pounding bunches of bananas and persimmons. (The blogger in question probably IS someone who exercises so intensely that he eats and uses these concentrated sources of calories with no difficulty, but you or I cannot eat like a professional athlete.)

His pie chart would have a not-very respectable 7% labeled “Starches — Good Source of Nutrition” for the plaintains he ate. (Gee, I wonder why he doesn’t havve any room for starches after pounding several thousand calories worth of fruit?)

There would be a section of the pie chart called “CRAP — Horrible Idea” pointing to the 8% of his daily calories ingested as protein powder.

And another portion of his pie chart — 26% more — labelled “Even More Fruit - WTF are you thinking, buddy?” — where his berries and all his papaya live. (Maybe papaya is a tropical fruit also, but it is probably not as crazy-sugary as all those freaking bananas and persimmons. There are actually two entries where he eats fresh papaya, but one is labeled low and the other is labeled medium. Cant be both, right?)

There would be a lowly sliver (less than one half of one percent) showing the part of his day where he ate zucchini and peas.

So that would be the diagram of high-calorie eating, which is more or less the same as high calorie density eating. If you stuff a lot of calories into each pound of food, the size of the pie winds up being very big.

Anyways, that is some bad, back-of-the-napkin math, and my pie chart on this guy’s eating would not exactly add up to 100%, (all my reckless rounding!) but you get the picture.

The visual would be enough to show somebody why their weight is doing what it’s doing. In this guy’s case, he says he DOES need that amount of calories, but I am not a huge fan of his execution. I do believe people like this need much more starch than that, and far less fruit.

[roundcoconut]

Here is my own Cronometer from yesterday, which is over 1500 calories total.

BA7659F4-6207-4210-AF61-1E61BCF0DD79 by Pretty Buttercup, on Flickr

So it is weird — even eating 90% fresh, raw foods can add up to caloric equilibrium, for a 43-year-old female.

Of course, I am not saying you want to spend $6 for two packs of tomatoes (even I thought that was a little excessive in the cost department!) but y’know those little packs of “glories” and “sunbursts”? They are totally freaking delicious, and I can afford to do this once in a while.

Also, jicama is a root vegetable, but one that is sweet and more pleasant to eat raw than a sweet potato. But I really did eat two softball-sized jicamas yesteray, and that’s a fairly large amount of calories.

My cooked food was 20% of total intake yesterday — 1/2 can of kidney beans, plus almost a full 16 oz bag of frozen broccoli florets. It is delicious and is one of my favorite foods.

—
Anyways, if you were to put these into a pie chart based on their calorie density, the kidney beans, and maybe the 1/3 of a banana (I threw it into my water bottle as I was chopping bananas to freeze some) would register as “moderately high calorie density”. The rest would certainly be termed “medium” (jicama perhaps) or “low-medium” (broc, cauliflower, apples, nectarine) or “very low” (lettuce, tomatoes).

But it adds up to a number that is in the right range for me (and keeps me extremely healthy), and that’s what matters.

So there is my TMI post of the day, right down to the partial banana.

[roundcoconut]

Things I ate today:

550686B8-DED5-4310-9426-E8D94982D062 by Pretty Buttercup, on Flickr