I have a love/hate relationship with goals. On one hand, if I don't at least set my sights on something, then well, it's unlikely that it will never happen. At the same time, my primary goal is to make it through the day and meet my children's needs for food, affection, sleep, clothing, physical care, play and learning, have at least one good conversation with my husband, and a few smiles and laughs along the way. That is a pretty daunting daily target to hit (though, it shouldn't be, really) and it is so hard to fit other less urgent things in amongst the "must do" list that comes with each day.
I am really very pleased that I'm finally making progress in one area of my life that has been literally weighing me down... yes, of course, losing weight! I'm not one of the lucky mothers who easily sheds extra pounds with nursing. That might be because, ummm, I was already overweight before pregnancy. I did lose a noticeable amount of weight after Gwendolyn's birth, but over the past three years weight has steadily crept on. I honestly felt so overwhelmed in many ways, and I think that my increasing weight was a symptom of that. It continued to drag me down, sapping my energy and making it even harder for me to get through the day. And no matter what I tried, I was only seeing the scale move in one direction.
I have no patience or desire to do W*ight W*tchers or any such thing. For a number of years I've been reading and learning about traditional foods, and had decided that I was not going to do the "low-fat, high fiber, low calories" route again- though I have done that and lost weight, but it was not sustainable for me, personally. (If it works for you, good for you. I think it's bunk, but anyway...) I really wanted to eat food that is above all else nutritious, filling, nourishing, and that I enjoy eating. So, I added some good things to my diet (eggs, butter, more veggies and fruit, coconut oil, high-quality milk), and started cutting out some processed things. But I kept my bread (whole grain, of course), because I just really loved bread. And I kept too much sugar in my diet, because well I love sweet things.
I had repeatedly read in various places tales of folks cutting out grains and having wonderful results, both in terms of health and weightloss. But that seemed so extreme to me. No grains? Really? What would I eat, then? (yes, I probably relied too much on grains in my diet...) Surely I could find a middle-way and just cut out a bit of bread or something, or make sure that it was properly prepared or soaked.
I was really not open to cutting out grains/reducing carbohydrates until I read a massive, well-documented book by Gary Taubes called "Good Calories, Bad Calories." The book begins by describing "The Banting Diet" which originated in the mid-1800s... essentially a low-carbohydrate diet (resticting bread and starchy vegetables, focusing on meat and other vegetables). He also talks about President Eisenhower's heart attack, and how that widely introduced Americans to the concept of the "heart-healthy" diet, which was low-fat, or using "heart healthy" oils like canola, etc. Pres. Eisenhower's cholesterol kept rising even while his diet became more and more stringent... the very diet that was/is pretty much recommended to prevent heart disease even today. He died of congestive heart failure... and probably his first heart attack was a result of his smoking habit rather than his diet. (Side note: I am a distant cousin of Eisenhower- my uncle actually has a letter that he wrote him during his presidency acknowledging the connection!)
I had several "ah-ha!" moments as I read the book... this quote from an interview with Gary Taubes spot-on "got" me... for most of my adult life I have really struggled with my desire to eat, my cravings for certain foods, a "famished" feeling, occassional dizziness and weakness, creeping weight, and feeling cruddier as time went on. And I typically ate a lot of carbs. I know for sure that a plate of spaghetti with meat sauce will initially fill me up, but an hour later I would feel like I was starving, perhaps even hungrier than I was before eating! From a Frontline interview with Taubes...
"So high-carb diets, even with less energy density, make you hungrier and therefore make you fatter.
That would be the theory. Exactly. You're hungrier. Insulin actually used to be known as a hunger hormone up until about the '60s; the idea being, diabetics are hungry to begin with because they don't have the insulin to push the blood sugar and the fat into the cells, so their cells don't see it. There used to be a treatment for anorexics. You would just inject them with insulin and they get hungry and eat. The question was: Does this cause some kind of hypoglycemia, very low blood sugar? Is that how it works? Or does it work in some other way? It was always assumed that it works by just causing very low blood sugar, which in effect causes a state called hypoglycemia, and you get nauseous and dizzy and tired, and you have to eat.
But [now] everyone agrees that insulin is the hormone that controls the deposition of sugar and carbohydrates and fat in your body. They agree that if insulin levels are high, you'll preferentially store calories as fat; and that as long as insulin levels stay high, you won't be able to get to that fat to use it for fuel. They agree that carbohydrates will raise insulin levels more than -- fat doesn't have an effect on insulin, although if you force-feed enough calories, you can [raise] it. All of that is given.
What they don't agree is that somehow the carbohydrates, the actual macronutrient content of the diet, will do this. [Scientists] will say a calorie is a calorie is a calorie. They'll admit that a calorie of carbohydrates has an entirely different effect on your hormonal system than a calorie of fats. They'll admit that your hormones can control your weight; that insulin and estrogen have effects on weight, hunger, and body weight regulation. But they will never go from the step where they say: Hey, maybe the amount of carbohydrates and the kind of carbohydrates in the diet will have an effect -- through their effect on insulin, through insulin's effect on the deposition of calories, through that effect on hunger -- [on] being a functional diet."
So, after finishing his book, I decided to try it. Also inspired by Nina Planck's book "Real Food," I decided to eat the best quality food I could, balance heavy with light, and cut out/greatly reduce my grain/starch intake. I also make sure that I get plenty of fat at each meal. Yes, fat. It allows for greater absorption of nutrients, many vitamins are fat-soluable, and it increases my satisfaction and enjoyment of my food. Do I eat a stick of butter a day? Nope, I wouldn't enjoy that. Do I cook with butter and put it on my veggies as desired? Definitely!
I find that I do better with a set breakfast, so that I can eat in "auto mode" in the morning. My breakfast always includes two eggs fried in butter (Kerry Gold butter, local farm eggs preferrably, yolks runny), a small cup of coffee with a bit of sugar (sucanat- unrefined dehydrated sugar cane) and 1-2 Tbs of coconut oil. If I want it, I add fruit like berries or cantelope. I am full and satisfied after that and really don't need to eat for quite a while... I typically eat lunch between 1-2 p.m., and usually try to make sure it has a good protein (fish, tuna, leftover meat, eggs, cheese), fat (butter, olive oil) and some fruit or veg (green salad, cut up veggies, bean salad, fruit, etc.) I might do something like cream cheese on a Wasa cracker, heavy on the cream cheese. For dinner, I cook what my family enjoys, usually a main dish "meat" (hamburger, salmon, chicken, pork chop, etc) and 1-3 veggies. I might have a bite of rice along with it. I also drink milk. I generally do not snack. If I eat dessert, it's usually fruit, or something like blueberries with home-made whipped cream.
So far, I've lost 20 pounds. I've lost inches all around. But more importantly, I am not starving, I am not having cravings. My actually tastebuds are changing and my desire for sugar has dropped DRAMATICALLY. Sure, the thought of eating something sweet is appealing, but the craving to eat sweets is greatly dimished. But perhaps most importantly, my energy level has become more "even" and I'm no longer crashing like I used to. My youngest is still not sleeping through every night, though, so I'm sure once she starts doing that, I will feel even better.
This is a post for posterity. I will probably write more as I hit milestones... right now I'm anticipating a milestone of losing 10% of my body weight. I think that will happen sometime in the next month. I would love to lose another 10% by my birthday in November. But I'm aware that I can get back into the diet mentality if I focus too much on that, so it's really a secondary goal to chosing to eat in a way that satisfies me and does not leave me zonked and getting fatter by the week.
Oh, and as further evidence of my love of sugar, I just chuckled as I saw my "Life is sweet... enjoy!" header. I might be updating that soon. It's a goal, we'll see how I do. *wink*
Okay, ending with another quote from the interview with Gary Taubes:
"So this theory would explain a big part of the rise of obesity on the high-carb diets?
This theory would explain a big part of the rise of obesity on the high-carbohydrate diet. Yes. Basically it says: The things that are making us fat -- sugars, high-fructose corn syrup, these kinds of easily digestible sweets, flour -- some people may get fat even if they eat vegetables. I really don't know because they've never done the research. Because they've been so convinced that somehow the type of calorie is irrelevant, I'm not sure this is still an open question. But the theory would explain why we started putting on weight just when we started thinking "if we would just reduce the amount of fat in the diet, that'll make the difference."
It's not just the calories. That's the point. It's the effect of the calories on the hormones, and the effect of the hormones on how your body decides to use the calories you're eating -- is it going to burn them as fuel or store them as fat -- and that effect on hunger.
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What do you hope to achieve, writing your book? You're making a case that there's a lot of bad science, food ideology. Are the vested interests too powerful to change?
It's interesting. In my wildest fantasies, people are sort of liberated from this belief that they have to reduce the fat in their diet, and they "try it. If they're overweight and they want to lose weight, they try going back to the old-fashioned way of giving up sugars and starches and seeing what happens. In writing the book, I want to explain what to me is a fascinating episode in science sort of gone awry, and in the same time write about some fascinating science that's simply been ignored, some beautiful, elegant studies that people have paid no attention to, and maybe show some people not just how body weight regulation works in the human body, why we gain weight, why we lose it, and what to do, but also explain how science works and how it doesn't work, and when it is successful and when it fails, and what's good science and what's bad science. That's what I've been writing about in my whole career."
