weigh-2-go.org

In previous posts I have commented on Radiant Recovery’s 7 steps, at www.radiantrecovery.com. Here is a synopsis of the last 3 steps.

Step 5 is challenging: Shift from white foods to brown foods.

• White foods include alcohol, sugar, baked goods made with white flour, and regular pasta.
• Brown foods include brown rice, whole grain bread, and a potato with the skin.

Many people I talk to say they can’t live without pasta. Three years ago, I thought I might be one of them. But pasta is a food I can live without. But bread is a tough habit to break for me.

The difference between white foods and brown foods is the complexity of the carbs. Simple carbs have fewer molecular bonds, break down faster in the bloodstream, and cause a sugar rush. Complex carbs break down more slowly, providing energy in a slower burn.

Step 6: Reduce or eliminate sugars.

This is the step that I jumped to, cold turkey, when I began losing weight 3.5 years ago. The more I read about sugar sensitivity, the more convinced I am that, as a sugar sensitive person, I owe my weight loss success to this step. I also suspect that all the anecdotal evidence about the success of Atkins is due to sugar sensitive people having the same breakthrough.

I’m glad that Dr. DesMaisons recommends that people do whatever works for them–go cold turkey, or eliminate sugar gradually. For me, only cold turkey works.

Step 7: Create a new life.

Wow, this is an important step–one that I skipped and need to come back to. This step involves replacing sugar–and the highs and lows of sugar sensitivity–with other, more fulfilling and rewarding things in life. On the Radiant Recovery web site:

Early Step 7 can be boring

You no longer have the rush of sugar feelings. It takes a while to settle into this new way of living. Over time you learn to create those things that raise “soft” beta endorphin – the kind that flows rather than spikes. Work on building these things into regular life everyday.

All the horror stories we hear about people regaining the weight they lose–could they be due, in part, to not replacing food with something better? This step rings true to me.

“Potatoes Not Prozac” and “The Sugar Addict’s Total Recovery Program” are on my immediate reading list, and I’m going to be investigating this program carefully in the coming weeks.

So my friend P emails me:

…I’m at the 3rd stage on SparkPeople and wondered if you would be interested in doing any of [list of suggestions] together, any time soon…”

And I’m, like, “SparkPeople? Like, what’s that?”

And she writes back: “Ah–I should back up. So, do you know about SparkPeople? Free weight loss site used by millions!”

I guess I’m the last to know–unless, of course, I’m the first to inform you, dear Reader.

The SparkPeople site is very cool. And it has so many features that I can only scratch the surface before my enthusiasm compels me to blog it.

• Personal blogs and forums for members to share their progress, motivation, setbacks, and stories. A more robust and accessible community than the one on WeightWatchers.com, and it’s free.
• A wonderful food tracker, with a database that appears to be about as deep as Weight Watchers, but it tracks many other nutrients (like sodium, saturated fat, fiber and protein)
• Online fitness programs with tools to schedule and track activities.
• A “Reports” page with information such as “Calorie Differential Over Time–You set the dates to see your calories in versus calories out over time.” Cool–can’t wait to have some data for them to analyze.
• News headlines related to health.

SparkPeople is funded by ads. The site is well crafted and professional, and the ads are not in my face.

Today I logged my food on SparkPeople instead of Weight Watchers, just to give it a try. It is possible to log on SparkPeople, and then calculate POINTS from Calories, Fat, and Fiber totals per meal on Weight Watchers. I’ll be giving this a try to see which I like better over time.

A strange thing happened to me yesterday. I got hungry–alarmingly, distractedly, uncomfortably hungry.

I had lunch with friends, consisting of a big green salad with chicken. That is a normal lunch for me–but i waited too long to eat it. I got too hungry.

Two hours later, I was home to work, and I couldn’t concentrate. “Feed me,” the voice said. “Anything–just feed me.” I had cottage cheese–a good low carb snack.

The voice would not be satisfied until I ate–oatmeal. Healthy, but high carb.

And then a bad thing happened, and that little switch in my head flipped. “Forget it,” or some other F-word, said the voice. “I’m hungry, I’m out of groceries, I’m going out to dinner.” Tofu scramble with salad–and a biscuit. White flour. Lots of simple carbs.

Today, I was ravenous again at lunch time. I ate two lunches–another tofu scramble (jonesing for the tofu with sauteed veggies), and also a large burrito, including tortilla, rice, and beans.

What does it all mean?

• When I lost 50 pounds on a low-carb diet, I had 80 pounds to lose. Perhaps my body at 150 needs more carbs than it did at 220.
• When I lost 50 pounds on a low carb diet, I didn’t worry about how much I ate–I ate low-carb foods until I was satisfied. Perhaps a low-carb regimen and trying to control the size of my appetite don’t mix.
• After 4 weeks being carb conscious, I do still crave bread, cereals, and corn. But I don’t crave sweets–that is a blessing, and a worthy benefit of this entire experiment.
• I’m no nutritionist, and perhaps I am playing with proverbial fire. But I do feel fine, and I am eating healthy foods. Although my compliance with the requirements of the experiemnt is rocky, the results are still interesting.
• I’m going to consider adding some starchier foods back into the regimen, such as beans and rice.

It’s about as scientific as a sample of 1 can get in three weeks, but here are the results so far of my low carb experiment.

Bottom line: I have way exceeded my allotment of Weight Watchers points, but I have not gained weight.

Here’s how to read the graph:

• It is really 2 graphs. Green and Yellow are Weight Watchers Points per day (numbers on axis on the left). Yellow is where Weight Watchers wants me to be: 20 points per day. Green is what I ate.
• Blue is my weight (numbers on the axis on the right).

In this brief time frame, there is a correlation between points and weight–note that my weight spikes a few days after my points spike. But with an allocation of 25 points per day (20 daily plus 35 weekly), Weight Watchers expects me to gain steadily as I consume more than that most days.

What does it mean? Here’s what I think. All these are hunches so far.

• Sugar sensitivity impacts my success in weight loss, and in Weight Watchers specifically, because the types of points I consume matter–that is, a high carb point “counts more” than a low carb point for me.
• Carbs affect me more than they affect most people. Otherwise, all of Weight Watchers’s science would be consistent with my experience.
• I hear friends say, “Weight Watchers doesn’t work for me–I stay within my points and still gain weight.” Maybe these people are sensitive to carbs like I am.

I’m not out to prove Weight Watchers is wrong or bad. I adore WW. But WW alone doesn’t help me control carbs–in fact their products wreak havoc on my appetite and make me crave carbs. And I’m curious to know whether all points are created equal. For me, I suspect not.

I’m going to keep charting (although my food journaling is admittedly less than perfect–there will be gaps in the numbers).

Three weeks since I started a low-carb regimen. Sunday, my Weight Watchers weigh-in was a good one–I re-lost the weight I gained the previous week. My appetite has gone down a bit, so that my Weight Watchers points are within a reasonable range (not way beyond my WW limit, like the first week).

Although I would love to report that the low-carb life is giving me the same weight loss benefits it did in 2006, when I started at 219 pounds, I must admit that my weight has fluctuated in a 2-pound range for the last 3 weeks. The data are not yet conclusive (and of course, a statistical sample of 1 is not even scientific), but I’m certainly not seeing the dramatic effects I had seen on the scale before.

Consider, of course, that I have a different body than I had last time I did this. I do not have 80 pounds to lose; I have less than 20. It seems logical to me that people who lose more have more to lose.

There are positive effects, however,t hat are not evident on the scale:

• My mood is greatly altered. Perhaps there’s a psychological explanation, but I can’t deny that the timing of my elevation in mood coincided exactly with giving up sweets. I am grateful that I altered my diet before considering anti-depressants. (Next, just think what a potato before bed might do for me.)
• Cravings for sweets have diminished. Surpringly and fortunately, my longing for chocolate chip cookies vanished first. Next, I more slowly lost the craving for crispy crunchy carbs. Now my most carbolicious cravings are for fruit, nuts, oats, and granola (though that last is a lot like cookies). And gin.

I am keeping enough data to prepare some charts and graphs on my Weight Watchers POINTS and weight through the experiment. I plan to publish these for a 4-week period.

In two previous posts I have commented on Radiant Recovery’s 7 steps, at www.radiantrecovery.com. I admit I have not yet read Dr. Kathleen DesMaisons books, or embarked on her program in earnest–but I’m looking at the steps carefully on the web site, and comparing and contrasting to Weight Watchers and some of my own experience.

Step 3 sounds simple: Three meals a day. Yeah, yeah. But specifically, Dr. DesMaisons prescribes:

• The right amount of protein for your body
• A complex carb
• Eat meals a intervals no greater than 6 hours
• Nothing between breakfast and lunch

This is profoundly different from Weight Watchers, which suggests that you snack. (Some may argue that Weight Watchers makes its money selling small portion low point snack foods, so naturally they encourage snacking. I don’t believe WW is purely profit-motivated in their advice to snack–but yes, this case can be made. This article excerpts another blog’s post–all of which merits a discussion on its own.) I’m intrigued to learn why there are no snacks between breakfast and lunch.

Also, as in Step 1, the combination of complex carbs and the “right amount” of protein (calculated by body weight) is important on this plan.

Step 4 is the most intriguing of all to me: Take Vitamins. Have a Potato Before Bed.

First of all, I have always wondered which vitamins and how much are conducive to weight loss and maintenance. Dr. DesMaisons recommends Vitamin C, B-Complex vitamins, and Zinc. She refers to her book Potatoes Not Prozac for the full details. It’s on my reading list.

And that brings us to potatoes. Wow. I refer to you to the Radiant Recovery web site for the dish on potatoes. I’d a never thunk it. I am eager to try potatoes as recommended here and gauge the effect on my mood and sleep pattern. Another experiment to look forward to.

Ironically, potatoes were the food I missed the least when I first lost weight, along with pasta. What a relief to discover that I can live without a food that used to be a “go-to” food for overeating. But it sounds like potatoes, used well, could be beneficial after all. Fascinating stuff.

It’s true. I just jogged for about an hour and I smell funny.

Bear with me–I won’t get too graphic.

It isn’t the usual sweaty smell that we all get after exercise. This smell is different.

I remember this smell.
It’s the smell I smelled when I was losing the major pounds.
I think this is the smell of fat burning.

I’m no scientist, but I know that when my body is burning fat instead of glucose, the chemical reaction is different. My body breaks down fat and the result is ketone bodies in my blood stream. (Here’s the article about ketosis on About.com.) Ketosis occurs on a low-carb diet, when the blood stream doesn’t have enough glucose to burn for energy, so the body resorts to burning the fat.

My hypothesis: I am in ketosis, and the ketones come out in my sweat. And I can smell them.

Wow. I admit, it’s a little disgusting. But wow.

Last week, I blogged about Dr. Kathleen DesMaisons’s 7 Steps to radiant recovery on RadiantRecovery.com. I wrote:

As for me, I think I am skipping straight to Step 6.

To which Dr. DesMaisons immediately commented,

Whoa!!!!! Wait, no, no, please oh please…

skipping straight to step 6 misses the point of the whole program

…

For the entire exchange, see the original post with comments here.

Dr. DesMaisons’s Radiant Recovery is worth a serious look, especially from me, who has felt the effects of sugar sensitivity. And the good news is, I haven’t really skipped straight to Step 6–I have also followed some of the other steps, even though I made these changes before I was aware of this program. So I’d like to examine these 7 steps here.

Step 1. Eat breakfast with protein.
Complete information: http://www.radiantrecovery.com/1r.htm

The recommendation is a breakfast consisting of one-third of your daily protein (protein grams needed = your weight in pounds / 2), plus a complex carbohydrate.

Personally I have always been a breaksfast easter. Dr. DesMaisons explains why some people avoid breakfast (which I cannot fathom–I love breakfast, even if it is just a yummy protein shake).

She recommends combining the protein with a complex carb, and provides several menu ideas.

Step 2. journal what you eat and how you feel.
Complete information: http://www.radiantrecovery.com/2r.htm

Food journaling is a tried-and-true technique, but adding how you feel, both emotionally and physically, is an inspired idea. How else can we know how food habits correlate with real results to our bodies and minds?

Weight Watchers gives me eTools for the food and activity tracking, but there are no POINTS for feeling blue, energetic, euphoric, or cranky. I’m an avid journaler, but I put feelings in a separate book. Should I combine my journaling systems? Something to think about.

More steps in future posts.

I wasn’t good on Saturday. I had a margarita. I cannot tell a lie, Blog Readers!

Also, I weighed in at Weight Watchers on Sunday, and my weight is back up, with a net loss overall of 0.2 pounds in two weeks.

On the traditional Atkins plan, the goal in the first phase, which they call the Induction Phase, is to reach a state of ketosis,in which the body switches gears from using glucose for energy to burning fat, which produces ketones. (Here’s an explanation on About.com.)

Given my recent leniency, I have certainly blown my attempt at reaching ketosis. I vow to begin again immediately. No gin, no margaritas, and I am also going to watch caffeine. (Notice I said “watch”–I’m not sure how strict I can be all at once.)

As I post this, I can report a very good Monday–all low carb, featuring a cheeseburger salad for lunch and eggs for dinner. I believe the weight numbers will stay in contol, and I will give this experiment at least two more weeks and watch how the numbers trend.

Low carbs for ten days. The desire for sweets has diminished drastically. I do still gaze wistfully at the baked goods at the coffee shop, but I don’t have a taste memory for them–my tongue doesn’t tell me what they taste like; I only know by sight that I would love them if we could be together.

I do crave crispy baked and fried carbs–like the golden top of a biscuit or the crispiest cracker. Why? No idea.

Another interesting taste memory I’m having is gin. Yes, the alcoholic beverage. By itself. And I’m not a big drinker of anything, let alone gin. I have indulged in a jigger before bed time to satisfy this urge. The complex flavors in a really good gin are marvelous. Why I sense a tantalizing ghost of a taste of gin, and not chocolate chip cookies, I have no idea. It must be a matter of brain chemistry.

A hoped-for side effect: I am duty-bound to confess that I was looking for more than a health change with my low carb plan. I was looking for euphoria. In the past, I have experienced an elevation of mood when I made this change. Ten days in and I am expecting to feel lighter and happier, but no such results today.

I can’t say I’ve been following my plan purely, though. Today at a restaurant the wisest choice was a spinach quesadilla, complete with flour tortilla. I also had some of the corn tortilla chips that come with it–and corn is my nemesis. Between that and the gin, I have spoiled the ketosis effect promised by Dr. Atkins. So I will strive toward purity and see if my results change.