My Diet, week 10-Summing It Up

I forgot to create this final entry due to vacation. Not really. What I was really doing was worrying about my vacation and my life, and how I would do without the "weight-loss" part of the diet. 
These were my concerns:

• Would I wolf things down?
  I did a little, especially foods I haven't had for three months, like burgers.
• Would I eat the badly combined foods that we all love so much?
  Yup, but I usually fixed the bad combining with legumes.
• Would I resume some of my bad habits?
  A few, but not the obsessive ones (peanut butter cannot live in my house).
• Would I start skipping exercise?
  Strangely, no.
• Would I gain weight?
  Yes and no---gain a pound one day, lose it the next. As long as I quickly resumed the good habits, all was fine.

I lost a total of 12 pounds. At the same time, I gained muscle. Muscle weight is heavier than fat weight, so I lost maybe 14 pounds of fat and put on a couple pounds of muscle. Even pants I bought a few weeks ago are loose on me, while the weight itself is stable. All I can assume is that being in shape compresses body parts, like my thighs. If I maintain this physical condition, I'll have to buy new pants, again. That is both annoying and thrilling.

By using the company gym, I didn't spend money for a gym membership. The convenience was definitely a factor in the frequency of my exercise. I was quite sociable in the gym, took group classes, got the teachers to show me how to tailor exercises for my body and how to use the weight equipment. I met a lot of nice people in the classes. I would certainly miss it if I stopped going, which I haven't.

Looking back, I notice that there was a point where my body made a switch from having to be nagged into exercise to actually wanting to exercise. I'd start to feel restless, which eventually registered with my brain, then I would give my body some exercise. At home, I have not put my dumbells or my exercise ball in a closet. I still use them regularly, though maybe not as vigorously. Yoga is back. I get on the scale every day, but I think sometime soon I will move that to weekly. There seem to be daily gains and losses that balance out at the end of a week. At least, that's my theory. If I'm wrong, I know what to do.

Best Things Last
One of the best things about my diet is that I now know how (and why) to control my weight. It's all here in this blog whenever that skirt starts feeling tight again.

My Maintenenace Diet

Now comes the tricky part: getting out of weight-loss world and into regular eating---without gaining weight. I'm sure there are a million words of advice on this, but I'm going to make it up, based on my experience on my diet and my personal preferences.

Here's what I want from my maintenance diet:

1. Pleasure: Good tasting food, no indigestion.
2. Practicality: Food that's easy to find and prepare. Not expensive.
   
3. Socialbility: Dining with friends, including going to restaurants.
   
4. Nutritious: Keeps me healthy.
   
5. Huge exercise not required. Moderate exercise okay.
   
6. Ethnic is included, especially Mexican, Japanese, Indian, Italian, Chinese.
7. Includes wine, sweets, and coffee.

Am I asking too much of my food?
Are some of these mutually exclusive?

I'm willing to compromise, but these are what I want. If I can't figure it out for myself, I'll happily consult others. I won't give up any of this easily, not unless I start gaining weight back.

Vacation coming up. Time to take my maintenance diet out for a spin.

Recovering My Taste Buds

This is the latest list of foods that I am not restocking:

• Sweet pickles
• Sausage
• Soy sauce
• Hot salsa
• Syrup
• Bacon
• Dried pineapple
• Roasted, salted nuts
• Caesar salad dressing

Can you tell what they all have in common? They are all extreme flavors. That is, very sweet or very salty or very spicy in some way.

I have noticed that when I eat extreme flavors, I am unable to taste subtle flavors. In fact, I am completely uninterested in subtle flavors, bored. People who eat fast food a lot are quite disoriented at a vegetarian restaurant because their taste buds are swollen and numbed by the extreme flavors of pizza, buffalo wings, ice cream sundaes, chili cheese dogs, and so on. Not that I eat much fast food, at least not at the moment. But I want to be able to keep some of the healthier foods in my maintenance diet, and I don't think that will happen if I don't genuinely like them. I fear I will revert back to those highly-flavored french fries and barbecued ribs. How can I learn to like tofu if I can't even taste it?

Mild, Delicate, Subtle
First step was to stop thinking of the non-extreme foods as boring. The following foods are gentle, mild, delicate, subtle:

• Fish
• Melon
• Mushrooms
• Eggs
• Turkey
• Raw nuts
• Artichokes, not marinated
• Carrots
• Oatmeal, Cream of Wheat
• Mozarella cheese
• Custard
• Broccoli, cauliflower, brussel sprouts
• Pasta, without strong-flavored sauce
• Mild salsa
• Carob
• Baked potato, with not much on it
• Spinach, chard, bok choy
• Avocado
• Tofu
• Zucchini
• Papaya
• Pear

I already like many of these. Other foods that I like are not on this list, and not because they are unhealthy. I left off oranges and apples and kiwis and strawberries because they have strong flavors. Ham has a stronger flavor than turkey. Cheddar has a more extreme flavor (and smell) than Mozarella. Tomatoes, olives, chocolate, feta cheese all have strong flavors. Melons are gentler than berries. Tofu is more subtle than yogurt.

This experiment is about recovering my taste buds. It's a perfect time to try because I have been dutifully eating quite a few of these mild-flavored foods for the last eight weeks---maybe not really liking them but eating them anyway. At least I won't go into potato-chip withdrawal.

Chewing
I almost forgot about chewing. If I want to taste subtle flavors, I need to chew the food more. I especially have a tendency to rush through soft food, such as oatmeal, eggs, or fish. Before I notice the subtle flavors and textures, I've already swallowed. Most of us chew a mouthful of food 4 to 6 times, which should be more like 30 times. Plus, we slosh it down with liquids while we're chewing, thus diluting the tastes on our tongues in addition to diluting our digestive juices.

I secretly vow to chew my food more thoroughly, like 20 times a mouthful, and notice all these gentle flavors. No Tai food just yet...

My Diet, week 9-The Big Picture

I lost 10 pounds. Nothing gained back in a whole week. Yow! I easily fit into my slim black skirt, my belly was no longer bulgy, I saw some bone definition in my face, I felt energetic. Double yow!

Now what? Until this week, my focus was on losing excess weight. Cutting out certain foods, exercising at the gym, walking everywhere. I did all this to burn calories---any health benefits were incidental.

Choice time:

A. Continue losing weight, as a cushion against gaining back.
B. Declare my weight-loss diet over and start adding some foods back in.
C. Celebrate wildly and show everybody what I did. Ta da!
D. Look beyond the pounds and start working on my general health.

Of course, I did all of them a little. But finally I chose D, and A. Why not continue and go a little farther? The thrill of looking at my slimmer body wore off as this new (actually old) weight started to feel normal. Time to notice how the rest of me felt and what I wanted to work on for my general health.

Now that my weight was on a good path, I wanted to look at my strengths and weaknesses associated with the following:

• Posture
  back health; bone density; abs strength; sitting habits
• Nutrition
  food labels; organic produce; vitamins; cooking; digestion
• Doctor stuff
  checkups (eyes, teeth, heart, feet, bones, and so on); medications; allergies; hereditary issues
• Mental health
  serenity; sharpness; social activities; rest and relaxation; relationships with family, friends, god, money, work, home

And some new clothes. A fresh haircut. A pedicure.
Go team!

Food Combining and Digestion

As a complete novice, here's what I understand about food combining. (All the details are in Marilu Henner's book, "Total Health Makeover.")

The main reason to do food combining is to improve digestion. That is, efficient, effortless digestion that absorbs maximum nutrition from food with minimum bodily effort. (A side effect seems to be weight control.) Until digestion is complete, our brains can't produce seratonin, which is nature's feel good drug. Our bodies must always handle digestion first.

There are three main types of meals: protein-based, starch-based, or fruit & vegetable-based. Two other food types of foods are more enhancements than meals in themselves: fats and legumes.

• Protein---fish, chicken, meat, eggs, dairy, soy, nuts
  (4 hr buffer needed between meals)
• Starch---pasta, potatoes, bread, rice, grains, corn, carrots
  (3 hr buffer needed between meals)
• Fruit & Vegetable--fruits, vegetables, sugar, honey, whole grains
  (3 hr buffer needed between meals; 2 for fruit)
• Legumes---beans, peas, tofu, peanuts (These are meal balancers)
• Fats---oil, margarine, butter, avocado, mayonnaise, nuts (these are digestion slowers)

The stomach uses different digestive juices to digest different types of foods. When we mix incompatible foods in a single meal, we pit the stomach acids against each other. This not only slows the digestion process, but some food actually rots in our stomachs creating disgestive distress, such as heartburn, nausea, farting, burping, bloating, diarhea, constipation. The more food we eat, the harder the poor stomach and intestines have to work, and who knows when digestion is finally complete, maybe never.

My Rule #1---Don't mix proteins and starches at one meal.  Omigod. This is the American Way! Meat and potatoes. Burgers and fries (and shakes). Chicken and dumplings. Fish and chips. Spaghetti and meatballs. Sandwiches. Even sushi is bad food combining with its protein fish and starch rice. This---no surprise---is the hardest rule to follow.

My Rule #2---Eat fruit by itself.  Fruit digests very quickly, which can cause a problem if you eat fruit with other foods that don't digest quickly. There are three types of fruit:

• Acid---citrus, strawberry, kiwi, pineapple, cranberry
• Subacid---apple, grapes, peach, plum, berries, mango, nectarine
• Sweet---banana, dates, raisins, figs, dried fruit

Don't combine acid fruits and sweet fruits. Subacid and sweet are okay to eat together. Melons should be eaten alone. I get confused about fruit, so I eat fruit alone most of the time.

My Rule #3---If I eat badly-combined food, I try to fix it.  Legumes are great for correction. Legume+starch=protein, so if I eat starch and protein together, I add a legume and the starch magically thinks it's protein. Miso soup automatically corrects the bad combining of sushi. Acid fruit helps neutralize fat, for example, nuts+cranberries or chocolate+citrus. If I make a less than wonderful food choice for one reason or another, I try to keep it simple (peach pie and nothing but the peach pie), then wait four hours before eating or drinking anything else.
          Tip: Some morning-after fixes: An apple after pasta, grapes after sugar, watermelon after salt.

My Rule #4---Don't drink with meals.
This means any liquid, such as soda, water, iced tea (a smoothie is a meal, not a drink). Liquid just dilutes stomach acids, which slows digestion. If I have alcohol with my meal, I sip the alcohol. Yes, even beer. It is best to drink liquids 15 minutes before a meal or one hour after.

Why Do This
Here's why I'm trying food combining, in order of importance to me:

• Get more seratonin in my life
• Lose weight
• Reduce digestive distress

My Diet, week 8-Shock

First thing Monday morning I get on the scale. Oh, cool. Ten pounds lost.

Really? Ten? Already? But i ate peach pie this week, and potatoes just yesterday. And a bunch of rice and noodles at dinner. Hmmm. Did the food combining actually work? I can't think of anything else I did differently. In fact, I slacked off on exercise and had a big calorie-laden juice drink when I felt sluggish in the afternoon. Then I took a nap. It doesn't seem right that I should be rewarded for being bad.

Diet=Guilt+Suffering

I didn't know I believed this. Will I be struck by lightning (or five pounds back) tomorrow? I guess there's only one way to find out---continue with the food combining as part of my diet and see what happens.

Snacks

Traditional diet lore says snacks are bad. Eating between meals is bad. Indulging is bad. I personally think snacks are the perfect place to indulge yourself. Snacks are little. If they aren't, they aren't snacks. You can't count a pizza as a snack, or even a piece of pizza as a snack. That is a meal. Snacking is another area where we need to get real with ourselves

Hmm. I wondered what the dictionary said a snack is: "A hurried or light meal. Food eaten between meals."

Uh, oh. With this definition, I could do an end run around my diet by having endless quick snack-meals. To prevent this, I created my own definition of a snack: "A small portion of a single food eaten between meals to take the edge off of hunger or to savor a taste."

My rule was to have no more than one snack between any two meals. And no more than three meals a day. And no eating after 8 PM. Okay, too detailed, but I had to anticipate all my own tricky thinking. You want a snack to taste good but not be so compelling that you go crazy. By keeping the snack to a single food, you taste that food without distraction. Plus, you are not subjected to the alluring taste complexities that a sandwich or a bowl of cereal can present.

During my weight-loss diet, these were my favorite snacks:

• A small apple
• Raw carrots (one big one or 3 midgets)
• Dried cranberries (about 10)
• Par-cooked broccoli and cauliflower (1/2 cup)
• An orange or two tangerines or a kiwi
• Raw mushrooms (handful)
• Blueberries (handful)
• Dark chocolate chips (about 10)
• Almonds, both salted and unsalted (about 5)
• Cherry tomatoes (about 5)

The carrots, apples, and almonds were crunchy, which seemed to subdue hunger pangs, or at least make me chew more. The cranberries were tangy and chewy, not just sweet. Broccoli and cauliflower are my favorite vegetables (also my dog's). The citrus gave me a shot of juice and tang, as did the tomatoes and the blueberries. The kiwis and mushrooms are weird, which I like (that sense of fun). If I craved salt, I ate the salted almonds, if not, I chose the unsalted ones. Sometimes I combined the chocolate chips with a few almonds to make a sort of candy.

I didn't include any cheese because I gave up dairy for my diet, but a chunk of cheese could be a very nice snack. A spoonful of peanut butter. A fruit juice popsicle. You notice I didn't mention a cookie, or a soft drink, or corn nuts, or beef jerky. This blog is about a healthy diet, so why would I talk about snacks that are not healthy, no matter how favorite they are? You're on your own with those.