Welcome to a WHEE [Weight, Health, Eating and Exercise] Diary. I volunteered to write something about my 100 pound weight loss (over the last nine months) after being asked to do so by a WHEE reader earlier this week.
My title,"More than a Baked Potato," comes from a film about food, women, and eating disorders called Eating: A Very Serious Comedy About Women and Food. In it, a French journalist (note the book, French Women Don't Get Fat) travels to Los Angeles to interview American women. She attends a birthday party with women of all ages in attendance, everything from grandmothers to would-be movie starlets. When the cake is cut and pieces start being sent around the circle, no one will eat the cake. No One! As the women are interviewed, they all end up talking about food and their dysfunctional relationship to it. One woman, who is particularly pretty, says wistfully, "I'd just like to meet a man who interests me more than a baked potato."
After seeing the film last March, I started a blog called More than a Baked Potato as part of my effort to overcome my own dysfunctional relationship to food—one that has kept me overweight, somethings violently so, for years on end. WHEE has been discussing America's piss-poor relationship to eating for awhile. The community is reading David Kessler's book, The End of Overeating. Previous installment have been diaried by Edward Spurlock and Clio2. I also recommend the documentary, Food, Inc., for a look at how our food industry works. By the way:
WHEE (Weight, Health, Eating and Exercise) is a community support diary for Kossacks who are currently or planning to start losing, gaining or maintaining their weight through diet and exercise or fitness. Any supportive comments, suggestions or positive distractions are appreciated. If you are working on your weight or fitness, please -- join us! You can also click the WHEE tag to view all diaries.
So. I decided to try to outwit the industry that was feeding my obsessions and addictions. It was, in part, a political act. It helped me to think of it that way. I started without any real belief that I could lose a lot of weight. I figured it would be too hard, and it has been hard, but not "too hard," and in fact, the longer I eat this way, the easier it seems to be getting.
Nine months. 100 pounds.
I started by eliminating gluten. I did so on advice from a naturopath. I was having trouble breathing at night, always congested, and the congestion had settled in my throat. Breathing is nice. It motivated me. I also found it difficult to walk very far. I was beginning to feel disabled by my weight. I had to calculate everything, even whether the chair would hold me. Shocking, painful, humiliating, horrifying. I weighed more than I ever had before. I felt completely defeated and discouraged. I did not think I had the personal commitment or "will power" to help myself. I was beginning to resign myself to the idea of my death.
So I started by just tracking what I ate. I decided I wouldn't try to change anything, rather I'd just see how I was eating. It turns out this is the way that Mireille Guiliano, (French Women Don't Get Fat), starts people too. I didn't know that. She recommends you track your eating for three weeks and then decide what you can do to make changes by analyzing what's going on with a cool head, you know—approach it logically, not emotionally, no judgment. I sort of did that. But the minute I started writing things down, my eating changed. I didn't want to write certain ridiculous splurges down, so I just didn't do them, didn't eat as much. I noticed the impact and that encouraged me. It was my first glimmer of hope.
I still write everything down. There's a lot of cheap/free software and internet options to make it easy. I track calories and carbohydrates. I also track fats at times, water, salt... it moves around. I didn't try to exercise at first. I started where I could, with what seemed the most possible. I did go to the naturopath early on and after seeing her, eliminated gluten. She told me it would take about six months to get the gluten completely out of my system. She gave me a number of herbal remedies for support.
Constant Cravings
When I finally decided to address my eating, I was pretty fully engaged in fast food eating. I was addicted on some level to Burger King Double Whoppers with Cheese. I live in a small town where there is no Burger King, only a McDonalds. I was going to McDonalds more and more and to Burger King whenever I went where there was one. I live north of San Francisco, and I knew where every Burger King was along route 101 heading south. It was an obsession, if not an addiction. I was eating very poorly.
I wasn't cooking for myself. When I bought vegetables, they usually went bad before I ate them. I was eating roasted chickens from the deli, sandwiches, popped corn, chips and crackers with cheese and dips, restaurant food, lots of Chinese take out. It was very depressing and very addictive. I didn't think I could stop because I craved fat, sugar and salt, especially fatty, salty carbohydrates.
Eliminating carbohydrates stopped my cravings. That's not true for everyone, I guess, but it works for me. Not perfectly, nothing works perfectly, but enough to give me control most of the time. That's what it's about. We all know more or less how to eat right. The problem is doing it and doing it again and again, as the pattern. I dropped my carbs way down, Atkins low, like around 20 grams (net grams, that means subtracting the fiber) and I stayed that low for quite awhile. (These days I eat from 20 to 40 carbs a day and that keeps the cravings under control.) For me, after three days of low carbs, the cravings go away. I no longer think about bread, crackers, cookies, etc., etc. And then I stop thinking about a plate of rice with Chinese food, or that burger or .... And then the relief of not craving is so real, I want to stay in that place. In other words, the fact that I feel freer around food in and of itself is motivating.
I haven't had bread in nine months. For most people, not everyone, but most people, if you can get through three days of cravings without capitulating, it goes away. Food in general takes on less importance. I don't eat bread these days because I want to let the sleeping dog lay (or is it lie?). I'm so relieved to not feel overwhelmed by a desire to eat, that's what keeps me eating the way I am. I do still have days where it's a battle. I don't mean to pretend it isn't, but, the battles are smaller. I do stand a chance.
I increase my effort as I can. I did, for example, eventually start walking. I do what I can each day. Some days are better than others. Twice on the diet I've gained back three pounds. Very demoralizing, but I lost them again, and in the end, that's all that matters to me. I'm getting there. One step at a time.
Fresh Vegetables, lean protein. I cook for myself.
Another thing from the French Women Don't Get Fat. Cooking. I do cook for myself. I eat a lot of salads, a lot of roasted vegetables. I figured out how to make clam chowder with cauliflower, and other good soups too. Soups are my comfort food. I thicken them with cauliflower, blended or with even with an egg. I've learned a lot of food tricks. I feed myself food that I like. If I want something fattening (like clam chowder) I hunt the internet or low calorie recipe books until I find a way to make myself a substitute version of it. That's how I live, writing it down, counting carbs, counting calories, eating as healthy as I can every day.
I don't know what else to say except that motivation is a mysterious, capricious force. I treat it like a god deserving veneration. I'm very careful not to disturb it, cause when it disappears, nothing is possible.