Tonight I watched the new A&E show, Heavy. Most of the reviews I've read by other bloggers weren't very positive, but I liked it. I wouldn't call it entertainment because it was difficult to watch. It wasn't really educational either because I already know how to lose weight. Yet I was compelled to watch it.
There was a woman that weighed 278 pounds and a man that weighed 555 pounds. I identified with the man because of his weight. I'm positive I have the propensity to weigh 555 pounds. My husband, friends and relatives all tell me I'm crazy to say I could weigh over 500 pounds. They really don't know me. They can't grasp how I view food. They don't understand the ongoing battle in my head about eating.
This is a conversation I had last night with my husband, Jack.
Me: Do you ever eat just because you're bored or lonely or sad, but not really hungry?
Jack: No. I eat when I'm hungry. Why would I eat if I wasn't hungry?
Me: To make yourself feel better?
Jack: How would eating food when I'm not hungry make me feel better?
Me: I don't know. I was just wondering if you've ever done that before.
Jack: No. Never.
No one really knows me when it comes to food. Not even the man I've been married to for almost 23 years. Most people in my life don't understand that I often eat when I'm not hungry. It just doesn't make sense to the normal person. I use it as a way to deal with stress and unpleasantness in my life. If I actually ate when I wanted, I would most likely be eating non-stop. It's a scary thought that I could very easily lose control with food.
I just have to take this a day at a time and continue the fight. 555 is a scary number and it's one I hope I never see.
Tuesday, January 25, 2011
Tortilla Pinwheels
(makes 4 servings)
Ingredients:
- 4 whole wheat tortillas, 8” size
- ¼ cup light cream cheese or Neufchatel
- 12 slices turkey ham, sliced, fat-free
- 1 cup spinach, torn, fresh
- ½ cup grated carrots
Preparation:
- Let the cream cheese come to room temperature. Whip with a mixer, or by hand, to make it easier to spread.
- Spread about 1 tbsp cream cheese onto the tortilla, making sure to reach the edges.
- Place 3 slices of turkey ham onto tortilla.
- Put several spinach in the center of the tortilla and sprinkle with 2 tbsp of carrots.
- Roll tortilla tightly; secure with a toothpick.
- Cut the tortilla into pinwheels by cutting it in half first, then making bite-sized slices along the tortilla until you reach the end. Lay each piece cut-side down on a serving plate. Serve at once, or refrigerate, covered, until ready to serve.
Tip:
- Choose colorful vegetables such as avocado red, cucumber, or red peppers, in your pinwheel.
- Make a fruit pinwheel using peanut butter or jam as the spread, then top with thin banana slices and other soft fruit like strawberries, peaches, plums, nectarines or plums.
Make 12 Servings:
Weight loss recipes Amount Per Serving (1 pinwheel (174 g)): 285 Calories, 21 g Protein, 32 g carbohydrates, 3 g Dietary Fiber, 7 g fat, 3 g saturated fat, 34 mg cholesterol, 1223 mg sodiumMonday, January 24, 2011
Apple Sweet-Zza
(makes 4 servings)
Ingredients:
- ⅓ cup applesauce
- ⅔ cup low-fat ricotta cheese
- 4 English muffins, split (8 halves)
- Pizza toppings, choose 3:
- Apples, sliced
- Pineapple chunks
- Plums, nectarine or peaches slices
- Berries, fresh or frozen
- Banana slices
- Tangerine sections
- Apples, sliced
Preparation:
- Stir applesauce with the ricotta cheese together.
- Spread about 2 tbsp sauce on each muffin half.
- Arrange your favorite toppings on the 'crust' in a single layer. Use at least 3 colors.
- Place pizzas on a baking sheet and bake at 400ºF for 10 minutes or until the cheese is melted
Make 4 Servings:
Weight loss recipes Amount Per Serving (1 muffin (170 g)): 231 Calories, 10 g Protein, 39 g carbohydrates, 1 g Dietary Fiber, 4 g fat, 3 g saturated fat, 13 mg cholesterol, 262 mg sodiumBlinded Wheat Challenge
Self-experimentation can be an effective way to improve one's health*. One of the problems with diet self-experimentation is that it's difficult to know which changes are the direct result of eating a food, and which are the result of preconceived ideas about a food. For example, are you more likely to notice the fact that you're grumpy after drinking milk if you think milk makes people grumpy? Maybe you're grumpy every other day regardless of diet? Placebo effects and conscious/unconscious bias can lead us to erroneous conclusions.
The beauty of the scientific method is that it offers us effective tools to minimize this kind of bias. This is probably its main advantage over more subjective forms of inquiry**. One of the most effective tools in the scientific method's toolbox is a control. This is a measurement that's used to establish a baseline for comparison with the intervention, which is what you're interested in. Without a control measurement, the intervention measurement is typically meaningless. For example, if we give 100 people pills that cure belly button lint, we have to give a different group placebo (sugar) pills. Only the comparison between drug and placebo groups can tell us if the drug worked, because maybe the changing seasons, regular doctor's visits, or having your belly button examined once a week affects the likelihood of lint.
Another tool is called blinding. This is where the patient, and often the doctor and investigators, don't know which pills are placebo and which are drug. This minimizes bias on the part of the patient, and sometimes the doctor and investigators. If the patient knew he were receiving drug rather than placebo, that could influence the outcome. Likewise, investigators who aren't blinded while they're collecting data can unconsciously (or consciously) influence it.
Back to diet. I want to know if I react to wheat. I've been gluten-free for about a month. But if I eat a slice of bread, how can I be sure I'm not experiencing symptoms because I think I should? How about blinding and a non-gluten control?
Procedure for a Blinded Wheat Challenge
1. Find a friend who can help you.
2. Buy a loaf of wheat bread and a loaf of gluten-free bread.
3. Have your friend choose one of the loaves without telling you which he/she chose.
4. Have your friend take 1-3 slices, blend them with water in a blender until smooth. This is to eliminate differences in consistency that could allow you to determine what you're eating. Don't watch your friend do this-- you might recognize the loaf.
5. Pinch your nose and drink the "bread smoothie" (yum!). This is so that you can't identify the bread by taste. Rinse your mouth with water before releasing your nose. Record how you feel in the next few hours and days.
6. Wait a week. This is called a "washout period". Repeat the experiment with the second loaf, attempting to keep everything else about the experiment as similar as possible.
7. Compare how you felt each time. Have your friend "unblind" you by telling you which bread you ate on each day. If you experienced symptoms during the wheat challenge but not the control challenge, you may be sensitive to wheat.
If you want to take this to the next level of scientific rigor, repeat the procedure several times to see if the result is consistent. The larger the effect, the fewer times you need to repeat it to be confident in the result.
* Although it can also be disastrous. People who get into the most trouble are "extreme thinkers" who have a tendency to take an idea too far, e.g., avoid all animal foods, avoid all carbohydrate, avoid all fat, run two marathons a week, etc.
** More subjective forms of inquiry have their own advantages.
The beauty of the scientific method is that it offers us effective tools to minimize this kind of bias. This is probably its main advantage over more subjective forms of inquiry**. One of the most effective tools in the scientific method's toolbox is a control. This is a measurement that's used to establish a baseline for comparison with the intervention, which is what you're interested in. Without a control measurement, the intervention measurement is typically meaningless. For example, if we give 100 people pills that cure belly button lint, we have to give a different group placebo (sugar) pills. Only the comparison between drug and placebo groups can tell us if the drug worked, because maybe the changing seasons, regular doctor's visits, or having your belly button examined once a week affects the likelihood of lint.
Another tool is called blinding. This is where the patient, and often the doctor and investigators, don't know which pills are placebo and which are drug. This minimizes bias on the part of the patient, and sometimes the doctor and investigators. If the patient knew he were receiving drug rather than placebo, that could influence the outcome. Likewise, investigators who aren't blinded while they're collecting data can unconsciously (or consciously) influence it.
Back to diet. I want to know if I react to wheat. I've been gluten-free for about a month. But if I eat a slice of bread, how can I be sure I'm not experiencing symptoms because I think I should? How about blinding and a non-gluten control?
Procedure for a Blinded Wheat Challenge
1. Find a friend who can help you.
2. Buy a loaf of wheat bread and a loaf of gluten-free bread.
3. Have your friend choose one of the loaves without telling you which he/she chose.
4. Have your friend take 1-3 slices, blend them with water in a blender until smooth. This is to eliminate differences in consistency that could allow you to determine what you're eating. Don't watch your friend do this-- you might recognize the loaf.
5. Pinch your nose and drink the "bread smoothie" (yum!). This is so that you can't identify the bread by taste. Rinse your mouth with water before releasing your nose. Record how you feel in the next few hours and days.
6. Wait a week. This is called a "washout period". Repeat the experiment with the second loaf, attempting to keep everything else about the experiment as similar as possible.
7. Compare how you felt each time. Have your friend "unblind" you by telling you which bread you ate on each day. If you experienced symptoms during the wheat challenge but not the control challenge, you may be sensitive to wheat.
If you want to take this to the next level of scientific rigor, repeat the procedure several times to see if the result is consistent. The larger the effect, the fewer times you need to repeat it to be confident in the result.
* Although it can also be disastrous. People who get into the most trouble are "extreme thinkers" who have a tendency to take an idea too far, e.g., avoid all animal foods, avoid all carbohydrate, avoid all fat, run two marathons a week, etc.
** More subjective forms of inquiry have their own advantages.
24/365 - Emotional eating and how I deal.
Right now, writing and working out in the evenings are the best way for me to avoid emotional eating. It's when I don't have substitutions for the behavior that I find myself doing it. I talk about my feelings below:
Déjà vu...January of last year...
I'm working from home today and just pulled a notebook out of my bookshelf to use for writing down some notes. I flipped it open and there, dated January 24, 2010, I had written the following:
Day 1 - January 24, 2010 - 179.0!
* Do NOT screw up today. I work out so hard, I don't want to waste all that work for nothing. Remember, food is not comfort!
This notebook actually has the first date in it of April 8, 2005. I weighed 220 pounds. It's kind of sad to go back and look at five years of me trying to lose weight, succeeding, then failing, over and over again. I feel sorry for this woman.
I really feel like I'm living that movie, Groundhog Day.
Day 1 - January 24, 2010 - 179.0!
* Do NOT screw up today. I work out so hard, I don't want to waste all that work for nothing. Remember, food is not comfort!
This notebook actually has the first date in it of April 8, 2005. I weighed 220 pounds. It's kind of sad to go back and look at five years of me trying to lose weight, succeeding, then failing, over and over again. I feel sorry for this woman.
I really feel like I'm living that movie, Groundhog Day.
Are men smarter than women when it comes to weight loss?
I've noticed men rarely talk about their feelings on their weight loss blogs. Generally, men don't talk about comforting themselves with food or stuffing down sad feelings with food. I wonder if they even think about a connection between food and feelings.
Men don't talk about the self-criticizing voice in their head, constantly spewing out mean comments about themselves. Do they even have this voice, telling them they're fat, ugly and stupid? That they have big thighs and a saggy tummy. No, I don't think so.
With most women, including myself, it's an entirely different story. We constantly analyze ourselves, we try to figure out why we overeat and how we can overcome it. We talk about our emotional relationship with food and how it affects us. We talk about shutting down the mean voice in our head.
I can't recall of a single man writing the kind of things that women write about on weight loss blogs. Men are pretty straight forward about it, eat less, exercise, drink water, lose weight. For them, it's a very simple formula. None of this nonsense about about food and feelings or self-loathing.
Overweight men don't seem to have body image issues either. I know this from personal experience with my own husband. He needs to lose fifty pounds, yet he thinks he's just as sexy now as when I met him (when he weighed fifty pounds less). He thinks nothing of walking around the house buck naked regardless of his weight. It would never occur to him to be embarrassed by his body. I can't relate.
I can't help but wonder if maybe the men are right. Maybe all this self-analyzing, all this worrying about how my body looks, and trying to figuring out what makes me eat is really just a total waste of my time. As I wrote yesterday, I really don't like the hard work of feeling all the sad shit that's happened in my life. Who wants to go back down that road? Not me.
Maybe men really do have the answer. Eat less, exercise, drink water, lose weight. I wonder if they know something we don't.
Men don't talk about the self-criticizing voice in their head, constantly spewing out mean comments about themselves. Do they even have this voice, telling them they're fat, ugly and stupid? That they have big thighs and a saggy tummy. No, I don't think so.
With most women, including myself, it's an entirely different story. We constantly analyze ourselves, we try to figure out why we overeat and how we can overcome it. We talk about our emotional relationship with food and how it affects us. We talk about shutting down the mean voice in our head.
I can't recall of a single man writing the kind of things that women write about on weight loss blogs. Men are pretty straight forward about it, eat less, exercise, drink water, lose weight. For them, it's a very simple formula. None of this nonsense about about food and feelings or self-loathing.
Overweight men don't seem to have body image issues either. I know this from personal experience with my own husband. He needs to lose fifty pounds, yet he thinks he's just as sexy now as when I met him (when he weighed fifty pounds less). He thinks nothing of walking around the house buck naked regardless of his weight. It would never occur to him to be embarrassed by his body. I can't relate.
I can't help but wonder if maybe the men are right. Maybe all this self-analyzing, all this worrying about how my body looks, and trying to figuring out what makes me eat is really just a total waste of my time. As I wrote yesterday, I really don't like the hard work of feeling all the sad shit that's happened in my life. Who wants to go back down that road? Not me.
Maybe men really do have the answer. Eat less, exercise, drink water, lose weight. I wonder if they know something we don't.
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