The Peanut Cluster Diet with Restrictions
Posted: Sat Nov 22, 2008 1:35 pm
DAY 1 - 9/8/08: FAILURE Starting Weight of 215.0 pounds
DAY 76 - 11/22/08: SATURDAY 205.0
From all my research on weight loss, I have to pull up the scariest quote I found. This is from page 10 of The Obesity Epidemic:
“Even the most motivated patients have difficulty losing a significant amount of weight and keeping it off. Many people can maintain a loss of ten or twenty pounds by watching what they eat or exercising more; few can sustain a loss of fifty, 100, or more no matter what the technique. The reason for this difficulty lies with the body’s weight-regulating system, which works to keep the body at a certain preferred weight, or set point. If you gain weight much above your set point, the extra fat stores produce more leptin, which acts as a signal to your brain to reduce your appetite and rev up your metabolism until your weight returns to normal. Conversely, if you lose weight much below your set point, your brain responds by increasing appetite and decreasing metabolism…Thus when an obese person loses fifty or 100 pounds, the weight-regulating region of the brain interprets the loss as a sign of a major problem and responds accordingly. The appetite is set on high, the metabolism on low. Doctors who have studied the so-called “reduced obese†– patients who were formerly obese but who have dropped their weight to near-normal levels – find that they share many psychological traits with victims of starvation. They think constantly about food, for instance, and they are deeply hungry in a way that a single big meal cannot assuage. If a fat person is to lose a significant amount of weight and keep it off, he must, in essence, maintain himself on a starvation diet.â€
This diet, like no other that I have seen, addresses the problem of maintenance in a way that does not result in a person feeling like "he must, in essence, maintain himself on a starvation diet."
In fact, this diet is the same whether you are losing weight or on maintenance.
My daughter calls this diet The Peanut Cluster Diet with Restrictions. I think of it as The Set Point Lowering Diet, but I find her name for this diet to be very charming. On December 15, 2007, at a weight of 205 pounds, I started a diet based on the concept from the book Intuitive Eating called "unconditional permission to eat." The theory behind the diet was that people are obese because they diet and their bodies feel like they are starving so they react to the self-imposed starvation of dieting by bingeing, and this leads to weight gain. The way to end the cycle of dieting and bingeing is to give yourself "unconditional permission to eat". My kids immediately called this diet The Peanut Cluster Diet because I started the diet by eating bags and bags of peanut clusters, a food I had denied myself for 30 years. My weight got up to 214 pounds before I gave up on the diet in June. I then tried an approach that I called the Hunger Satisfaction Diet, which was that I had "unconditional permission to eat" but only after my stomach growled. What a dreadful, dreadful diet. I was skipping meals with my family and eating huge amounts of food the second my stomach made a noise. That was my diet through the summer. My weight dropped to 212 pounds and, within six days of giving up the agony of the diet, I had gained back the two pounds I'd lost all summer and added four pounds. I topped out in my weight at 216 pounds on September 4, 2008.
On September 8, 2008, at a weight of 215 pounds, I started The No S Diet which was also a diet based on the idea that there are times of "unconditional permission to eat" as well as times of restriction. My diet started with four straight days of failure before I managed to get through one day following the 3S guidelines. It was about a week before I made the modification that you could accumulate two Special Days per month to be used however you want, and you must use a Special Day rather than classify a day as a failure. Since then, I have not had one failure and have used two Special Days, one for my birthday and one to take the kids out to celebrate our son making the rank of Star Scout.
Today is a significant day for me. Today I have lost 10 pounds on this diet. I have wiped out all the weight gain from The Peanut Cluster Diet. My 14 year old daughter, who is probably 25 pounds overweight and has observed years of diet failure on my part, has decided to follow this diet as well. It works. It is also easy. It's not as easy as The Peanut Cluster Diet, but it is easier than any other diet I've been on, and it actually results in weight loss.
I don't feel like I am on a starvation diet. Today was an S Day, and I had a Haagen Dazs bar in the bathtub. Now that's decadence!
Kathleen
DAY 76 - 11/22/08: SATURDAY 205.0
From all my research on weight loss, I have to pull up the scariest quote I found. This is from page 10 of The Obesity Epidemic:
“Even the most motivated patients have difficulty losing a significant amount of weight and keeping it off. Many people can maintain a loss of ten or twenty pounds by watching what they eat or exercising more; few can sustain a loss of fifty, 100, or more no matter what the technique. The reason for this difficulty lies with the body’s weight-regulating system, which works to keep the body at a certain preferred weight, or set point. If you gain weight much above your set point, the extra fat stores produce more leptin, which acts as a signal to your brain to reduce your appetite and rev up your metabolism until your weight returns to normal. Conversely, if you lose weight much below your set point, your brain responds by increasing appetite and decreasing metabolism…Thus when an obese person loses fifty or 100 pounds, the weight-regulating region of the brain interprets the loss as a sign of a major problem and responds accordingly. The appetite is set on high, the metabolism on low. Doctors who have studied the so-called “reduced obese†– patients who were formerly obese but who have dropped their weight to near-normal levels – find that they share many psychological traits with victims of starvation. They think constantly about food, for instance, and they are deeply hungry in a way that a single big meal cannot assuage. If a fat person is to lose a significant amount of weight and keep it off, he must, in essence, maintain himself on a starvation diet.â€
This diet, like no other that I have seen, addresses the problem of maintenance in a way that does not result in a person feeling like "he must, in essence, maintain himself on a starvation diet."
In fact, this diet is the same whether you are losing weight or on maintenance.
My daughter calls this diet The Peanut Cluster Diet with Restrictions. I think of it as The Set Point Lowering Diet, but I find her name for this diet to be very charming. On December 15, 2007, at a weight of 205 pounds, I started a diet based on the concept from the book Intuitive Eating called "unconditional permission to eat." The theory behind the diet was that people are obese because they diet and their bodies feel like they are starving so they react to the self-imposed starvation of dieting by bingeing, and this leads to weight gain. The way to end the cycle of dieting and bingeing is to give yourself "unconditional permission to eat". My kids immediately called this diet The Peanut Cluster Diet because I started the diet by eating bags and bags of peanut clusters, a food I had denied myself for 30 years. My weight got up to 214 pounds before I gave up on the diet in June. I then tried an approach that I called the Hunger Satisfaction Diet, which was that I had "unconditional permission to eat" but only after my stomach growled. What a dreadful, dreadful diet. I was skipping meals with my family and eating huge amounts of food the second my stomach made a noise. That was my diet through the summer. My weight dropped to 212 pounds and, within six days of giving up the agony of the diet, I had gained back the two pounds I'd lost all summer and added four pounds. I topped out in my weight at 216 pounds on September 4, 2008.
On September 8, 2008, at a weight of 215 pounds, I started The No S Diet which was also a diet based on the idea that there are times of "unconditional permission to eat" as well as times of restriction. My diet started with four straight days of failure before I managed to get through one day following the 3S guidelines. It was about a week before I made the modification that you could accumulate two Special Days per month to be used however you want, and you must use a Special Day rather than classify a day as a failure. Since then, I have not had one failure and have used two Special Days, one for my birthday and one to take the kids out to celebrate our son making the rank of Star Scout.
Today is a significant day for me. Today I have lost 10 pounds on this diet. I have wiped out all the weight gain from The Peanut Cluster Diet. My 14 year old daughter, who is probably 25 pounds overweight and has observed years of diet failure on my part, has decided to follow this diet as well. It works. It is also easy. It's not as easy as The Peanut Cluster Diet, but it is easier than any other diet I've been on, and it actually results in weight loss.
I don't feel like I am on a starvation diet. Today was an S Day, and I had a Haagen Dazs bar in the bathtub. Now that's decadence!
Kathleen