Positive thinking...

My Mantra

It is the aim of my band to restrict my eating - not to give me an eating challenge!

I will henceforth eat little portions until I feel my band and then stop, rather than challenging my gullet to a dietary trench filling contest.

1.) I have lost weight - currently 16 stone 7 pounds. So that is 1 pound off in 10 days (although in actual fact its more because I never tracked the weight going up a little higher than that during that 10 days... hee hee) 21 pounds in total.

2.) I am roughly 1/5th of the way to my target weight.

3.) It is midday and I am eating my breakfast because I haven't been hungry until now


Today's food stuffs...

Breakfast:
50g Granola (the healthy low GI one)

Lunch:
pitta bread, lettuce and hummous

Snack:
Nakd raw food bar

Dinner... Not decided yet. I guess one of my pouch meals or soups. yummy

Blessed restriction

Ok, I am seriously restricted now.

I need to be really careful.

It seems to take me a little while to feel the restriction, in this case just over a week.

Today's food...

Breakfast:
50g Belgian Chocolate Granola - it's low GI and low everything so it sounds nicer than it actually is!! 234 cals

Lunch:
Raw food bar 100 cals

Dinner: Pea soup - 150 cals, but negligible because I threw up every mouthful... I cant seem to take the whole pea husk thing.
Lamb hotpot. still eating (at midnight) but if I do manage it all then another 200 cals.

Pretty damn fine huh!

I realise that I had this band for restriction... so why the hell am I trying to force food down my gullet. its like I am trying to eat the same amount of food, but with a band and wondering why its not working. I am trying a new method of eating and its going really well.

Ok, I had some issues this evening with the pea soup... but I know that was from the pea husk thing.. Its was really husky (LOL). I could feel it in my mouth that it was like dry on the edges after a swallow... So I am gonna avoid it. But this Lamb hotpot is really tasty and I have pureed it too, just in case. I am eating it with a tea spoon and making sure I chew it and resting between each mouthful (mainly because I am typing too!), and its working really well.

I have been drinking copious amounts of green tea in a quest for STRONG flavoured drinks with no calories in. I don't like the stuff, but it has a great bitter twang-smack at the end of a glug, so I am persevering with the muck.

So far, I have managed 6 half teaspoons of pureed lamb hotpot and all's good.

I have decided that I am not going to force this band to eat anything, or do what I did on Saturday that was just plain STUPID. I was in Aki-Teri and I ordered a prawn curry. It was lush, but I couldn't eat it. I got a couple of spoons of sauce down me and a couple of grains of rice and had to stop. I didn't even get to eat a prawn when I had to throw. So after trying and trying and trying to eat the thing, I said "Forget this, I will eat this gorgeous king prawn and then go puke!" I chewed it and loved it and tasted the sweet meaty thing and then hurled it. I just got so sick of not being able to enjoy something. I am not going to go to restaurants any more because they just make me sad. Eating dinner at the dining table with everyone is bad enough, but I can manage it compared to lush restaurant food. I just want to eat too much.

I am going to try and get this band and me on the road.

It is at this juncture that I have to admit I have an eating disorder. I finally chatted it through with someone and without going into too much detail, I sabotage my weight loss because I don't feel worthy of being thin/don't want to be thin for reasons yet unknown, eat because I am happy, binge because I fear the scales saying I have put on, so therefore fulfill the prophecy. I am in a cycle of binge eating/drinking and unhappy that I cant do more.

I discussed this after I started to seriously look into getting my band removed and 'upgrade' to RNY bypass. However, I can see now that its a psychological problem I have not a problem that surgery will fix, because the problem will not go away even if I have another surgery, and I will not see the results I want from that either because of going in to the whole thing with a wrong psychological attitude.

So, I have to love myself, and part of that is getting rid of things that I don't like.

I hate work. Everyone knows it and I just plain loathe it. I looked at my diary and my Sis said to me today that I can obviously survive with half of my students. I balked a bit, but realised she was right. At the end of the month I only ever earn half of what I could have done because of cancelling pupils or whatever because I cant face it or something. So in that case, what is the point in keeping 'teaching' these ones if I hate it. So I am changing my strategies. I am working on Saturday only. If they cant fit in with that then they can do the other thing. This way I think I will actually like my job, because its over with in one day, in normal working hours. I don't have to rush around at 9pm every evening making dinner etc and eating late. I don't feel rubbish about the fact I cancelled lessons and comfort eat and therefore I think its linked to it all as well.

So that's what I am doing. I have worked out that I could in fact give up work completely if I wanted to - which was a big shock to be fair - but realised that is not what I actually want to do. So I am going to continue, but under my own steam. I don't owe them anything, and if they really like their lessons with me, then they will fit it in around me wont they. I have to put my sanity, sons education, home life and health before them. I feel better already about it! Its nice to have that extra bit of cash, and its nice to know I don't really need to, which I never knew before I actually sat down and worked out exactly what comes in and goes out etc. and analyzed all the things like petrol/groceries etc.

Another thing is I am always so tired that I neglect a serious side of me that needs to flourish. I need that 'me time' - I really do. So this will give me some space to enjoy that as well.

So, tomorrow I am going to weigh myself again and see whats going on. We shall see.

Food Pushers and 5 Day Pouch Testers

Hello Neighbors!Today's 5 Day Pouch Test Bulletin - the free email about the back-to-basics program for weight loss surgery post-ops - gave fair warning for the food pushing season that starts in October with all the Halloween sweets and doesn't end until the ball drops on the first day of 2009. From now through the December we will face food temptations and food pushers around every corner. "

Shout-Out for Mel's Recovering Fatty Website

Hello Neighbors!One of our good Neighbors here, Melinda, has put together a beautiful website and she is enjoying a growing community over at Recovering Fatty. Like the Neighborhood, her site is a licensed IPB board (so it works just like the Neighborhood), it is secure from spammers and flamers, and it is advertising free. Melinda is a special person with a kind heart and giving spirit. She

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Acid-Base Balance

Numerous health authorities have proposed that the acid-base balance of a diet contributes to its effects on health, including Dr. Loren Cordain. Here's how it works. Depending largely on its mineral content, food yields net acid or base as it's metabolized. This is not the same as the acidity of a food as you eat it; for example, lemons are base-yielding. The pH of the body's tissues and blood is tightly regulated, so it must find ways to resist pH changes. One way it deals with excess acid and base is by excreting it. Acidifying food causes the urine and saliva to become more acidic, while alkalinizing food has the opposite effect.

Another mechanism some believe the body uses to neutralize acidity is by drawing calcium from the bones. The modern diet tends to be acid-yielding. Vegetables and fruit are base-yielding while meat, refined carbohydrate, dairy and most other foods are acid-yielding. Some authorities believe this leads to osteoporosis, cancer and a number of other health problems. This is one of the reasons we're told to eat immoderate quantities of vegetables.

I've always been skeptical of the acid-base balance theory of health. This mostly stems from the fact that many hunter-gatherer societies were essentially carnivorous, yet they didn't suffer from osteoporosis, tooth decay or any other signs of calcium deficiency. Also, if acid-yielding diets strip calcium from the bones, how did calcium get into the bones to begin with? The body clearly has mechanisms for creating and preserving bone density in the face of an acid-yielding diet, it's just a question of whether those mechanisms are working properly.

I came across a gem of an article today on acid-base balance by none other than Dr. Weston Price. As usual, he hits it out of the ballpark. There are two tables in the article that sum it up beautifully. In the first, he compares the occurrence of cavities in healthy non-industrial groups to genetically identical groups living on modern foods (wheat flour, sugar). As you know by now if you've been reading this blog, the modern groups have 5-100 times more cavities than their non-industrial counterparts, along with crooked teeth, feeble frames and a number of other problems.

In the second table, he lists the acid-base balance of the same non-industrial and modern groups. There is no real pattern. Some of the non-industrial groups ate a diet that was heavily acid-yielding (Inuit, he calls them Eskimo), while others were fairly balanced or even base-yielding (South sea islanders). The unhealthy modern versions, ironically, were fairly balanced between acid and base-yielding foods. This is not consistent with the idea that acid-base balance contributes to the diseases of civilization.

There was one consistent trend, however. The non-industrial diets tended to be higher in both acid and base-yielding foods than their modern counterparts. That means they were richer in minerals. Just as importantly if not more so, their diets were rich in fat-soluble "activators" of mineral absorption and metabolism that ensure the proper use of those minerals. These are the fat-soluble vitamins A, D and K2. Here's what Weston Price says:

It is not my belief that [tooth decay, dental/skeletal deformity, general poor health] is related to potential acidity or potential alkalinity of the food but to the mineral and activator content of the nutrition during the developmental periods, namely, prenatal, postnatal and childhood growth. It is important that the very foods that are potentially acid have as an important part of the source of that acidity the phosphoric acid content, and an effort to eliminate acidity often means seriously reducing the available phosphorus, an indispensable soft and hard tissue component.

In other words, the acid-base balance isn't what matters, it's getting enough minerals and the vitamins you need to make good use of them.

Why were the diets of healthy non-industrial people so rich in minerals? It's simple: they ate whole foods. "Empty calorie" foods such as sugar, vegetable oil and refined grains constitute more than half of the calories in the modern diet. Eliminating those "foods" and replacing them with whole foods instantly doubles your mineral intake. Properly preparing grains and legumes by soaking, sprouting or fermenting further increases their mineral availability. Add some grass-fed dairy, organ meats, shellfish and eggs for the vitamins and you're in business!

One Last Thought

In Dr. Lindeberg's paleolithic diet trial, subjects began with ischemic heart disease, and glucose intolerance or type II diabetes. By the end of the 12-week study, on average their glucose control was approaching normal and every subject had normal fasting glucose. Glucose control and fasting glucose in subjects following the "Mediterranean diet" did not change significantly. He didn't report changes in cardiovascular risk factors.

Why was the paleolithic diet so effective at restoring glucose control, while the Mediterranean diet was not? I believe the reason is that the Mediterranean diet did not eliminate the foods that were causing the problem to begin with: processed grains, particularly wheat. The paleolithic diet was lower in carbohydrate than the Mediterranean diet (40% vs 52%), although not exceptionally so. The absolute difference was larger since the paleolithic dieters were eating fewer calories overall (134 g vs 231 g). When they analyzed the data, they found that "the effect of the paleolithic diet on glucose tolerance was independent of carbohydrate intake". In other words, paleolithic dieters saw an improvement in glucose tolerance even if they ate as much carbohydrate as the average for the Mediterranean group.

This study population is not representative of the general public. These are people who suffered from an extreme version of the "disease of civilization". But they are examples of a process that I believe applies to nearly all of us to some extent. This paper adds to the evidence that the modern diet is behind these diseases.

A quick note about grains. Some of you may have noticed a contradiction in how I bash grains and at the same time praise Nutrition and Physical Degeneration. I'm actually not against grains. I think they can be part of a healthy diet, but they have to be prepared correctly and used in moderation. Healthy non-industrial cultures almost invariably soaked, sprouted or sourdough-fermented their grains. These processes make grains much more nutritious and less irritating to the digestive tract, because they allow the seeds to naturally break down their own toxins such as phytic acid, trypsin inhibitors and lectins.

Gluten grains are a special case. 12% of the US public is though to be gluten sensitive, as judged by anti-gliadin antibodies in the bloodstream. Nearly a third have anti-gliadin antibodies in their feces. Roughly 1% have outright celiac disease, in which the gut lining degenerates in response to gluten. All forms of gluten sensitivity increase the risk of a staggering array of health problems. There's preliminary evidence that gluten may activate the innate immune system in many people even in the absence of antibodies. From an anthropological perspective, wherever wheat flour goes, so does the disease of civilization. Rice doesn't have the same effect. It's possible that properly prepared wheat, such as sourdough, might not cause the same problems, but I'm not taking my chances. I certainly don't recommend quick-rise bread, and that includes whole wheat. Whole wheat seemed to be enough to preserve glucose intolerance in Lindeberg's study...