Post
by Kathleen » Fri Dec 31, 2010 11:19 pm
January 1, 2011: Cultivating the Virtue of Temperance
Aristotle, in his Ethics, argues that the practice of virtue is what leads to the establishment of habits of virtue which is what forms the character of a virtuous person. It is so obvious that it almost seems like a tautology, but it is not: the way to be thin is to cultivate habits that result in being thin. People often think dieting is a matter of willpower, but willpower when discussed in the context of dieting often means the superhuman effort to constantly restrict portions (eg. Weight Watchers) or types of food (eg. Atkins). Successfully following these types of diets means overcoming the body’s instinct to avoid starvation. There was just too much of a survival instinct in me because I managed to diet my way up to 215.0 pounds by the time I started The No S Diet on September 8, 2008!
For me, the focus is on establishing habits that are sustainable for life. The big question is this: "What habits should I culitivate?" Here is what I am trying as of January 5, 2011:
1. Eliminate snacks and sweets on all days except Sundays: This idea is a modification of the plan from The No S Diet. When I was following conventional diets, I felt hungry all the time. Now I rarely think about food between meals because I only eat between meals. I “tune out†hunger signals outside of mealtime. At each meal, I can eat as much as I want, but I don’t have sweets and everything must be in front of me before I take one bite. The elimination of sweets on all but four days per month seems to have reduced the amount of sweets I can tolerate eating when I do have sweets. If I do have snacks or sweets on days other than Sundays, I record what I ate and the circumstances. If I can't even do that, then I label the day as a failure.
2. Fast, when possible, on Fridays until 6 PM and on days I attend Mass until after church: I think there is a benefit to periodic fasting in that I learn to experience hunger, and I learn how much I need to eat in order to feel satisfied. My fast does involve the elimination of all calories, including milk in my coffee. This idea came from a book by Gary Taubes called Good Calories, Bad Calories. Taubes explains how both the Atkins diet and fasting create an effect of only mild hunger because of the severe restriction of carbohydrates. I also was impressed by the arguments in Brad Pilon's book Eat Stop Eat about the health benefits of intermittent fasting.
By fasting, I am reaching back to Catholic wisdom that was practiced for hundreds of years. Fasting was the norm, especially on Fridays, and it was the custom to fast until after communion on church days. I have modified this custom to fit my own needs in that I do allow myself to have liquids but nothing caloric.
3. Wear a pedometer, if possible, from Monday through Saturday, and try to walk at least 6,000 steps per day: I invested $30 in an Omron GoSmart pedometer with a watch and a record of steps for the prior seven days. My inspiration for this habit was from the book Move a Little, Lose a Lot by Dr. James Levine of the Mayo Clinic. He argued that it is important to build exercise into your daily routine rather than to attempt to go to a gym regularly.
The No S Diet:
(Month 1) Day 1 - Monday, September 8, 2008: 215.0 (goal to lose one pound per month)
Cultivating Temperance:
(Month 1) Day 1 - Saturday, January 1, 2011: 207.0 (Goal of 187.0 pounds: behind schedule by 20.0 pounds)
Status and Exception Events for the Month:
Day 1 – Saturday, January 1, 2011: 207.0
Exception Event: one caramel handed to me by a friend when we were picking up our sons from a week-long Boy Scout trip
Day 2 – Sunday, January 2, 2011: 205.8
Day 3 – Monday, January 3, 2011: FAILURE
Day 4 – Tuesday, January 4, 2011: FAILURE
Day 5 – Wednesday, January 5, 2011:FAILURE
Day 6 – Thursday, January 6, 2011: SUCCESS!
Day 7 – Friday, January 7, 2011: SUCCESS!
Day 8 – Saturday, January 8, 2011: 205.6
Day 9 – Sunday, January 9, 2011: 203.8
Day 10 – Monday, January 10, 2011:
Day 11 – Tuesday, January 11, 2011: 204.8
Day 12 – Wednesday, January 12, 2011: 203.8
Binge
Day 13 – Thursday, January 13, 2011: Fail
Day 14 – Friday, January 14, 2011:
Day 15 – Saturday, January 15, 2011: 203.8
Day 16 – Sunday, January 16, 2011:
Day 17 – Monday, January 17, 2011: 203.4
2 cuties, a small square of chocolate, and several pieces of bread made by Tommy
Day 18 – Tuesday, January 18, 2011: 203.4
Day 19 – Wednesday, January 19, 2011: 203.4
Failure
Day 20 – Thursday, January 20, 2011: 204.0
Day 21 – Friday, January 21, 2011: 203.0
Failure
Day 22 – Saturday, January 22, 2011: 202.8
Failure: time to return to two Exception Days per month
Day 23 – Sunday, January 23, 2011:
Day 24 – Monday, January 24, 2011:
Day 25 – Tuesday, January 25, 2011:
Day 26 – Wednesday, January 26, 2011: 203.0
Day 27 – Thursday, January 27, 2011: 201.4
Day 28 – Friday, January 28, 2011: 200.8
Day 29 – Saturday, January 29, 2011: 199.8
Day 30 – Sunday, January 30, 2011: 200.8
Day 31 – Monday, January 31, 2011: 202.2
Day 1 – Saturday, January 1, 2011: 207.0 I cannot believe it, but this is what happened: I went to the airport to pick up my son from his Boy Scout High Adventure trip to the Florida Keys, I met up with another mother and father of a Scout, and we sat down at a Caribou Coffee because the other mother wanted coffee. She came back with a caramel for her husband and me. I looked at that caramel and thought that I either ate it and thanked her and broke my diet or tried to hide that I hadn't eaten it. I opted for eating it. This results in a change in my diet. I think I'm just going to record Exception Events and not have Exception Days at all. This was what I thought of doing last month but then didn't because I didn't want to record a piece of cheese that my husband had handed to me. Well, maybe, just maybe, it's better to feel a little silly recording something like this than it is being obese! Besides, if I call this an Exception Day, I'll be eating for the rest of the night, and I don't want that.
8:15 PM: Tommy had no screen time for an entire week, and now all he wants to do is watch the Netflix movie he ordered. That's OK. I feel bad that this diet, which I wanted to follow for one month, went up in flames by late afternoon. Exceptions are necessary. It would have been asocial to refuse a caramel, but it is those little things that have pushed me over the edge into a binge. I think that Sundays can be all-day relaxation of the rules, but those Exception Days should just be events. There is no need for an all-day event.
It's incredible to me how little need there is for a change in diet due to social events, including holidays and birthdays. People simply aren't spending time evaluating your eating habits. There seems to me to be nothing worse than being fat and obviously on a diet. Really, it's plain silly. I do have a need for a let up on the pressure of keeping to a diet plan, but that's the purpose of S Days. That's why I only need one S Day. The Exception Events are strictly to deal with social events or unusual circumstances. I didn't want to record them, but that's how I can keep myself honest.
Day 2 – Sunday, January 2, 2011: 205.8 I did not wake up until 8:15 this morning. I was awake several times last night, thinking about my diet. I had tried having only one S-event on Sundays, but that didn't seem to accomplish the goal of an S-day, which is to feel fully satisfied. I also dreamt about the agony of those days of portion control: of literally carving out nine days per month when my entire focus was on limiting my caloric consumption to 1000/day. That's why I think of a "portion control" approach as narcissistic. At least for me, when I was counting calories, my diet was my priority number one.
A "portion control" approach almost seems diabolical, at least to me now, although I never thought of it that way when I was thin and decided that it was important enough to put up with the discomfort in order to be thin. Now I ask myself: what is in my future if I continue at this weight? Diabetes? Arthritis? Cancer? I had presumed I would live to 100, since grandparents lived to 76 (he was a smoker, though), to 83, to 89, and to 97. My parents, in the mid-80s, are in excellent health. Still, I don't think I will live that long because of the punishing effects of both portion control when I was thin and obesity now.
Have I given up? No. I think there is a world of difference between "portion control" and intermittent fasting. Intermittent fasting teaches resiliency. Also, the fast itself seems both relaxing and pleasant. Outside of the fast, I can eat to full satisfaction at every meal. I also can feast on Sundays.
Will I lose weight this way? Time will tell. I need to be patient and follow this diet at least one month to see.
Years ago, I was friends with a woman from our parish who moved to a nearby town. I haven't kept up with her much, but we exchange Christmas cards. This year, she had a picture of each person in her family on her card. Apparently, the family had taken up running. There was a picture of her, and I had not recognized her. She looked terrific. You could see big arm muscles and a very slim physique.
She has made choices, as have I. I can change my choices, and the diet started yesterday is, I hope, a course change for my life.
Day 3 – Monday, January 3, 2011: A local Minneapolis Star Tribune columnist, Katherine Kersten, had this to say in the paper on Sunday: "Honesty, generosity and self-restraint don't come naturally to human beings. These traits are difficult to acquire, and require suppression or rechannelling of base human instincts. Only a society with a moral system based on claims of transcendent truth can help its citizens overcome their selfish tendencies and successfully cultivate virtue."
I have been pursuing a method of eating that would allow me to eat as much as I wanted. I have wanted to lose weight on a diet without portion control. It was a noble venture to find a way to avoid the misery I certainly experienced with coventional diets, but now I realize that it was all a dream: the key to successful weight loss is moderation, and moderation means portion control.
Sometimes long-cherished beliefs are hard to let go, and sometimes they are a relief when you let them go. Years ago, I fell in love at first sight, and I dated the guy for about 8 months. He was as convinced of his superiority as I was. When I finally broke up with him, I was devastated. Two years later, he returned to propose, and the easy answer was: No.
I've had a long break-up with this notion that portion control isn't necessary, either, but I think the recovery is going to be much easier.
Today I'll have black coffee instead of a latte. Today I'll begin the realistic journey of deliberately reducing how much I eat.
Day 5 – Wednesday, January 5, 2011: FAILURE Pathetic. It's pathetic that I have had three straight days of doing fine until dinner and then gorging. There is no way I'm weighing myself. I think I misjudged the impact on me of even thinking about fasting. I decided now that I need to set aside the strengthening exercises and focus on just getting through one day of fasting per week. My job is ending at the end of the month. It was supposed to be a 4 - 6 week assignment that stretched to 8 weeks. I've been thrilled by the work and think I've done well, but there just isn't a fit for me outside of this one task that I got. That's OK. I got enough money in those two months of working that we can pay the Catholic school tuition which we usually pay at the start of the year. We'll be fine financially. I think the uncertainty and the hope that maybe I would be extended hurt me in sticking with the diet plan. Going forward, I'm going to rely on the recruiting firm who placed me this time to get me another position. I hated jobhunting. When I'm home, I can focus on exercise and building needed skills in business analysis. Still, I sigh because it was fun to work. I hope I can get another short term assignment before summer when I really don't think I should work because the kids are home.
I want to focus on following my diet perfectly rather than having overblown expectations. The pedometer walking is going well with just daily monitoring. I'm at 7,700 today, for example. That means all I need to do is go back to what I was doing for almost two years with no snacks and no sweets and just add one day of fasting. I should be able to manage that.
Meanwhile, my jeans are really tight. It's discouraging.
Day 6 – Thursday, January 6, 2011: SUCCESS! It occurred to me that, if my goal is to cultivate habits, then maybe I should be tracking how I do in cultivating those habits and set aside the daily weigh in so that the focus is on the habits. I got through today. Tomorrow is a Fast Day. I want to have only black coffee and water until 6 PM. I'll see how I do.
Day 7 – Friday, January 7, 2011: SUCCESS! I fasted until 6 PM, having only water and coffee. To my surprise, it did not affect me much at all. I was busy. In fact, Tom and I went out to dinner while the kids were skiing, and I think I didn't eat until 6:30 PM. We ate at Eddington's, the soup place. I am reading Taubes' new book, and one thing that it talks about is that you need to look at what you eat as causing overweight. Well, fasting makes you not want to eat heavy foods.
Day 8 – Saturday, January 8, 2011: 205.6 I decided perhaps to try a weekly weigh-in so that I don't feel too worried about my weight. Yesterday was very easy, and then I didn't want to have a heavy meal. I think fasting may be the way to change dietary habits for the rest of the week. In fact, fasting is really an extension of The No S Diet concept, since you fast between meals on most days. It's highly likely I'll have an employment gap starting in February, so I don't think I'll do much thinking about dieting until then. I'll just read the Taubes book, make notes while I read, and prepare for my discussion with BrightAngel!
7 PM: Today, I made Toll House cookies. I did not eat any. Tomorrow is my Feast Day, so I know that all I need to do is wait and enjoy what I want tomorrow. Is my willingness to wait today all that I need to do in order to lose weight?
Day 9 – Sunday, January 9, 2011: 203.8 I feel good about my weight today and also about how I feel. After several failed attempts at fasting, I finally fasted until 6 PM on Friday and the effect did carry over to Saturday. Part of my success on Saturday was telling myself I could have whatever I wanted and as much as I wanted after church today. I think there may be church wisdom in having a feast day two days after a fast day, and I think it may be that the day in between would naturally become a day when you don't eat much, either. I do attribute part of my success on Friday to the Eat Stop Eat book as well, since I was afraid that there would be problems with my ability to work and even to drive if I fasted. Well, I was so busy I didn't have much time to think about an effect. At 1 on Friday, I was preparing for an interview and considered that perhaps I should eat before it, but then I just plain ran out of time and I look back now and think there was zero impact. The interview went fine. Then I left work early to run home to pick up my teens for skiing, and it was rush rush rush. I didn't feel hungry at all because I was too busy to belly gaze. Now I'm back to thinking that you don't need to control portions if you fast: fasting is a natural alternate. A cautionary note to me, however: do I need to believe that fasting has this effect in order for it to have this effect, or does it actually and necessarily have this effect? I don't know. Since I am not skeptical, I'll never know.
10 PM: Today was a Feast Day. Let's see: I had two personal size Haagen Dazs ice cream cups, 2 Toll House cookies, several M&Ms with pretzel, and almost an entire Ritter Sports milk chocolate bar. That's my total indulgence in sweets. I didn't finish the chocolate bar and don't want to finish it. I did eat a lot of food as well, but I ended the night with Cheerios with milk. While this list of sweets may seem very excessive, to me it is very moderate for a Feast Day (I rather like that name and may continue to use it). I can compare this amount to eating almost an entire jar of caramel macademian clusters, which I will never ever do again unless threatened with the life of a child! All I can remember is how terrible I felt after that binge! With this approach, there is a built-in contrast between how I felt with my fast and how I feel now. Surprisingly, the word that best describes my fast day is relaxing. I think the book Why We Get Fat explains why a fast could be relaxing: there's no expenditure of energy for digestion.
I have a very deep love of and appreciation for my faith, and I think that there is much wisdom in Catholic teaching. It's not so much that I understand and appreciate the value of fasting as it is that I have a limited knowledge of the extensiveness of past Church laws regarding fasting. There just may be something to this which is reflective of human nature: after all, humans used to endure feast and famine cycles all the time. In fact, I remember reading once that Lent coincided with the time of least food, when winter stores of food were dwindling to nothing and the spring plantings had not yet yielded any food. It may well be that our human body was designed for periods of feasting and fasting, but we have lost an appreciation of the value of fasting.
The Sunday Feast sets to zero the craving for food. I have absolutely no craving for food right now. In fact, if anything, I feel a tad too stuffed. I can easily go through the week just having my three meals per day eaten to satisfaction and no sweets. After all, I can have an entire jar of caramel macademian clusters in six days if I want. That's not long to wait. I only have to wait to the next meal to eat to satisfaction.
Friday is one day of fasting, and that one day is a day that is set aside for giving my body a rest from food.
Could it be that a diet that is this easy will lead to permanent weight loss? Well, we'll see. I've got one successful Fast Day behind me. We'll see if I continue like this or if there is some reversion as there have been countless times previously. Last week, when I had my three failures in a row, it reminded me of the beginning of The No S Diet when I couldn't even get through a day without snacks. I'd really love it is this is the end of the journey: if all I need to do is keep this up, and I'll be thin.
One step enough for me... I'll work on being consistent with Sunday Feasts, Friday Fasts, and no snacks or sweets on other days.
Day 10 – Monday, January 10, 2011: I'm still uncomfortably full. When I was following conventional diets, when did I ever feel uncomfortably full? I felt relief that I finally ate. Over time, will I eat less and less on Feast Days? That's what I think. I still am eating a gluttonous amount, but it is less than I used to eat.
8 PM: Today, I had cereal for breakfast, 1/2 cup of a combination of nuts and raisins for lunch, and a helping of a potato and ham dish for dinner along with milk and chips. It was a very moderate day for eating. When I drove into the garage tonight from work, I realized that I had an somewhat empty stomach, and I was fine with that. It didn't feel painful at all. Is fasting helping me to adjust to less food? Time will tell.
Day 11 – Tuesday, January 11, 2011: 204.8 Up only a pound from Sunday morning is not bad. I feel really good about this approach to dieting because it is so easy. Fasting is a time of rest, not a time of endurance. If this continues, I should be able to lose weight quickly and easily.
8 PM: It may be that I have at last figured out how to lose weight without a constant feeling of deprivation. On Sunday night, facing six days without sweets, I didn't want to finish off a chocolate bar. It's been a long six years of trying to figure this out. I started in January of 200 when I saw my then nine year old daughter come in from school and race to the kitchen to eat, as if she was half-starved. I wanted to find a way to control weight without constant deprivation. She may not choose to follow what I am doing, but I can show her a way. That's my motivation. I never would have stuck with it for six years, always above 190 and almost always above 200 pounds, if I had not had a daughter whom I love with all my heart.
Day 12 – Wednesday, January 12, 2011: 203.8 I now am at the weight I had on Sunday morning, the day of my Feast. If this trend keeps up, I can expect to spend the first part of the week losing the weight gained on the Feast Day and the second part of the week losing weight for keeps. If I can trend to more than one pound per month, then I can expect to make up for lost ground in all my failed experiments since the summer before last. I still want to average a weight loss of one pound per month, but I'm behind schedule now by more than 15 months!
8 PM: Tom brought home some sushi and coffee ice cream as a peace offering because he'd gotten upset with me this morning. I ate and then I ate more and then I kept eating. This is a clear case of emotional eating -- or is it? Am I simply adjusting slowly to fasting? Today I realized several times that my stomach was empty and close to growling, but that recognition didn't send me into a panic. I think that what might be going on is I am adjusting to a normal state of not being stuffed. It's silly, but all those years of dieting turned my sense of hunger into one of either stuffed or not stuffed. No wonder I became obese!
9 PM: A change of Dad's address came out for a Dad who has a child in our sixth grader's class, a child in our fourth grader's class, and a younger child. It's sad. Life is so full of hardship. I keep on thinking of the prayer that includes the line "One step enough for me." I can do nothing about tonight's binge. I can just go on.
Day 13 – Thursday, January 13, 2011: Tom was upset yesterday when he realized that the money I'm earning is gong for school tuition, band trips, $60/hour bassoon lessons, and ski club. He had assumed we could save all of it. He brought home sushi last night as a way to apologize, and I just kept eating after having some. In retrospect, I really don't think it was emotional eating. We all have ups and downs. I think it's more that my body needs to adjust to the feeling of hunger. When I started The No S Diet, I was literally gripping the edge of my chair to get from one meal to the next without snacking. It took me several attempts over several months to get through one 24 hour period without eating. Now I am not trying to make any changes to my diet but am simply trying to adjust to it. That may well take months. That's OK. I think this approach has real potential for long-term weight loss because I am finding that I can adjust to having a stomach that isn't stuffed and actually am finding it preferable to being stuffed. There's no doubt this will be tough sledding, but I think I may already be through the worst of it. Adjusting to a 24 hour fast was easier than adjusting to no snacks, and now all I need to do is plug along until I am in the rhythm of Sunday Feasts, Friday Fasts, and all other days of no snacks and no sweets.
10 PM: I'm not too upset about tonight's overeating. I was at a holiday party put on by the consulting firm that hired me, and I was as nervous as could be. I had appetizers and then had a small meal of scallops and rice. When I got home, I ate several Toll House cookies, pistachio nuts, and a bowl of cereal with craisins. Tomorrow is a Fast Day. I want to focus on doing well on the fast and then have the fast be a restart. I made it fine until mid-week this week. My goal will be to make it find until later in the week next week.
One step at a time.
Day 15 – Saturday, January 15, 2011: 203.8 Yesterday was another easy day for me with fasting. I ended up not having dinner until 7:30 PM due to traffic to get to the skiing hill where our kids were skiing. Tom and I went to Denny's and I had what I wanted -- a cheeseburger with fries.
I look at my weight today and see it is the same as last Sunday, and I'm oh so impatient. When, I ask myself, did I get above 200 pounds? Why am I still so fat after all this time? I toyed with the idea of going to a two time per week fast, but I think I need to get this habit of one fast per week down. Then, after I'm done with work, I'll turn my attention to an exercise program.
1 PM: It's risky, but I think I'm going to try fasts on Wednesdays and Fridays. My nephew is getting married in mid-May, and I want to have at least 20 pounds off by then. There is no reason to think I'll make that weight of 180 by sticking with a no portion control approach, but I think I'll give it a shot by fasting twice per week instead of once. Will I be able to stand it? We'll see. My work will be busy for the next two weeks as I finish up, but I can stand anything for a two week period. Curses. I hate hate hate being fat. I hope my impatience doesn't ruin my success for last Friday and this Friday. It's particularly stupid that I am doing this because I had failures this week, but I have to weigh the potential risk of failure by my being too aggressive against the known date of May 14 for a wedding when I get to see my family and don't want to look like the porker I am today. Choices. Choices. Choices. I'm wiling to face that this choice is a risk and am willing to take the risk.
8 PM: Well, the thought of fasting first made me grumpy and then I binged. Yes, I can say I think it may be necessary in the future. Still, I think I have enough work just to take the one day per week approach. I think it would be better to get this down. It took many attempts before I went from two S Days to one. I think I should give it until the summer before I try a second fast day.
Day 16 – Sunday, January 16, 2011: I've hit my physical limit, and today I'm staying in bed. This reminds me of 1998 when I went months with undiagnosed walking pneumonia. At one point, I had jury duty, and I cancelled out. My husband stayed home with the kids, and they called back and asked that I come to the phone. I had to walk about 6 feet to the phone and was so exhausted that I lay there for a couple of hours before I returned to bed. I don't feel anywhere near that bad right now, but I want to go back to bed and give my body a chance to recover. I've been doing too much. After this work ends, I really need to set up what the kids can do. It's just too much. I'm not sure I would have lasted through this little 8 week job had I not had several days off over Christmas.
3 PM: I just got up. I have been in bed resting, and Tom took the kids to the Science Museum so I could have some quiet. Surprisingly, I have not had a caffeine withdrawal headache. I got The Diet Alternate and have read parts of it. The terminology in the book is Protestant, with references to being born again and strongholds. Still, I am trying to see past the terminology and appreciate what actually is being said and trying to see if this applies to my life. There seem to be something very relevant to me, but I am not yet grasping it. The author makes an analogy of overeating to drug or alcohol addiction. While I've heard it before, I've always discounted it. Maybe not. Maybe there is something to this. The author promotes fasting as both a physical and spiritual way to attack the sin of gluttony. I'm too tired to really be able to read and evaluate. The book is planting seeds of thought for me to consider. Now, though, I need to go back to sleep.
Day 17 – Monday, January 17, 2011: 203.4 I've been drinking tons of coffee, and yesterday I didn't have any. I woke up about 1 with a terrible headache but got back to sleep. Maybe I can just not have coffee going forward, although I still have a mild headache right now. It's frightening to me that I was so tired. It makes me wonder if there isn't something more serious wrong with me than being overextended. The job will end in 10 days, and then I can rest again. I think the kids need to help more. As it is, they do very little. Between work and shuttling them to activities, I have little time to do housework and even less time just to relax. This journal and reading have been the times for me to unwind. I can't continue like this.
8 PM: It was not a problem to skip lunch. It was a little bit of a problem, but I survived, for me to not have coffee. Between breakfast at 7 and dinner at quarter to 7, I only had water.
Day 18 – Tuesday, January 18, 2011: 203.4 The fat in my tummy seemed distinctly less today, and I was happy about that. Usually, I lose fat first from my arms, so I'm not sure why there is a change -- unless fat distribution is altered by frequency of eating. Last night, Tommy made some bread for a cooking class, I tried a small piece, and then I had more and more and a chocolate square I was saving for Sunday and two cuties. I'm not very good at restraining myself once I break my guidelines.
6:30 PM: Easy. It was easy to skip lunch, although I did have black coffee. It never occurred to me to skip meals: I had to get that idea from The Diet Alternative. There is a world of difference between constant portion control and fasting. With constant portion control, you are hungry now, and you are resolved to be hungry for the rest of your life. Isn't that incredibly stressful? With fasting, you're hungry, but the hunger will end with the next meal. My stomach growled today. It was not painful. I could still work. I am hungry now. Tom is on the exercise bike, so we'll eat late. That's OK. I can tolerate hunger.
Fasting is the alternate to portion control. It took six years for me to figure this out. Here I am, above 200 six years after going on a fool's quest to figure out how to maintain a lower weight without portion control, and I think I finally figured it out! Rather, I learned from reading. What a relief.
Day 19 – Wednesday, January 19, 2011: 203.4 I was disappointed to be at this same weight for three days in a row, but I remember how devastated I would feel when I destroyed three days of my life to lose weight and didn't! This diet is easy. The problem is: will I lose weight? Am I just shifting food intake to a different time, or is my appetite being affected by infrequency of eating? This is an experiment, and I'll only know the answer if I make myself the test patient. Even then, I'll only know the answer for me. I've already found out the answer to calorie restriction for me, which is that it no longer works. This path is a possible path out of obesity, so I want to take it.
Day 20 – Thursday, January 20, 2011: 204.0 Yesterday was another valuable lesson. Tom had to cook something for a class, so we ended up not having dinner until 7:30 or so. By then, I had the familiar feeling that I had had on my many failed diets of the past: I had already eaten dinner before dinner. What I learned is the importance of the 24 hour fast because it strengthens me for a situation like last night. When I went to bed last night, I sensed that my search for a diet had ended, that I really had a solution which is workable and can be followed, but I need the strength to actually follow it.
Yes, there may be many failures in the next several weeks, but I think I have my diet selected.
8:30 PM: I managed to get through the day and the evening while following the guideline of no food or caloric drinks from breakfast through dinner. What I need now is self-discipline.
Day 21 – Friday, January 21, 2011: 203.0 Today is my Fast Day. I won't eat until dinner. Yesterday, I noted my stomach growling at 11:53 AM and making another noise, maybe not a growl, after 2 PM. That was it. It was much easier to give up lunch than I had imagined. Giving up breakfast and lunch is slightly harder, but it is easy to do knowing I can have as much as I want at dinner. I think that the time of fasting reduces the amount of food that is needed when the fast is broken. I am viewing my daily fast as a time when I have no calories, but I can have calories before breakfast or after dinner. Last night, for example, I had milk and some wine.
I look upon this diet as being something I can follow because it fits within my constraints:
1. No portion control: I can eat as much as I want every time I eat.
2. No blanket restriction on any food: I can eat whatever I want at least some of the time.
3. A weekly time of unconditional permission to eat: I can have as much as I want of whatever I want at least some of the time.
4. The ability to follow the diet with perfection: I can develop a habit that I follow 100% of the time.
Day 21 – Friday, January 21, 2011: 203.0 I lasted until 4 when I ate my dinner, and then I munched at 8 and then I ate again just now. I have to face that I don't have the strength yet to do what I am doing, and I need to take baby steps. I'll go back to having lunch and just focus on adjusting to a Friday fast.
Day 22 – Saturday, January 22, 2011: 202.8 I am more and more convinced that 90%+ of the obesity epidemic is due to an understanding of hunger that is not reality-based and <10% is due to lack of self-discipline. I need to figure out truth before I can be thin. Still, it's frustrating that my progress is through failure. Yesterday, I recorded when my stomach growled: at 12:44 PM, at 2:51 PM, at 2:53 PM, and at 2:58 PM. It was the coldest day of winter so far this year, starting out at - 16 degrees, and I got a text message from my daughter at 3 PM that she didn't get a ride home. I didn't pick it up until 3:20 or so, and I tried texting her and calling her to no avail. Finally, I left work to come home, only to find that she got a ride from someone else from the bus stop and the phone was continuing to have problems. Since I was home, I ate. Then I returned to work, leaving before 7 to continue south to get our two younger daughters at ski club. There was leftover food, and I ate, first a cooking, then three, then a peanut butter sandwich... When I brought them home at 9:30, I ate some more.
What did I learn? First, the experience of the gradual development of hunger which is then satisfied by a meal is completely foreign to me. The type of hunger I experienced yesterday is not the type of hunger I experienced when counting calories. It's more superficial. It's like the difference between the Appaliachian Mountains and the Rocky Mountains. It's much milder, and it's not urgent. It's like our dog growling when we pick her up to put her out before the end of the night, which my 11 year old interprets as "Five more minutes, please..." My stomach yesterday was just in the process of indicating a desire for food, and this is in sharp contrast to the insistent, panicky, almost survival-mode hunger of a diet when there never is complete satisfaction.
What I need to do in order to be thin, I think, is reaquant myself with that gradual development of mild hunger. My mistake this week was trying to do it every day by skipping lunch. No, I'll start just with a Friday fast.
Sad to say, I am thinking of a big Congressional bill that had something about "hunger-free" or "hungry-free" in it. Kids are being taught that hunger is awful and to be avoided so much that there is a Congressional bill about preventing it. Instead, it needs to be taught as natural. I know I had a book which had this saying in it, and it's true: "Hunger is the best spice."
3:30 PM: I ate after lunch, and I just ate about 5 cuties. It may be that I'm sick that I would want so much, but I also am convinced that I have an on/off switch: I tend to binge if I break the rules at all. Sadly, "the road to hell is paved with good intentions", and it seems to me to be much easier to break rules when all I have to do is record what I've eaten.
I'm going back to the two Exception Day per month idea.
Day 23 – Sunday, January 23, 2011: This morning, I didn't just feel the desire to fast. I actually felt the need to fast. I was debating about giving up the Sunday morning fast because we were considering going to 6 PM Mass and I didn't want to fast that long, but what I found was the desire to give my body a break from digesting food. That was a bizarre and totally unexpected reaction.
My well-meaning father sent me the Mayo Clinic diet book which is a very well done book on the portion control approach to dieting. In it, hunger is described as what you try to avoid. I find it quite strange that I actually want to get to a certain level of hunger.
I'm thinking I'll stay away from the scale until the beginning of February and just focus on habits. The Sunday habit, of course, is easiest to follow -- no food until noon and no limitations after that.
I'm not sure what I'm doing about lunches this week. Maybe I'll fast and maybe I won't. It seems to me that it's like business analysis in that you have a reference architecture (where you are today) and a target architecture (where you want to be tomorrow). How do you get there? I think it may be best to move gradually, and a Friday fast may be a good step but just not the final step to habits of thinness.
Day 24 – Monday, January 24, 2011: I woke up not feeling too great, with a feeling of way too much in my stomach. This is the intuitive eating way to lose weight: experience what it feels like to eat too much. That way didn't work for me because I learned to adjust to eating too much, just not way too much. I think the trend was clearly upward. With this diet, I am learning to appreciate how I feel when I fast, when I eat within rules that are no snacks and no sweets, and when I eat whatever I want. I think that the fasting will having an impact on the bingeing, but we'll see. Yesterday, we went to a buffet lunch with some other couples, and I stopped after one plate. My body was telling me "Enough!" It would have been perfectly acceptable to have a second plate, especially since those around me were having second plates. Still, I simply didn't want more. After I got home, however, I did end up eating cereal and other food. The buffet food hadn't appealed to me because it was so rich, and I think that fact has to to with fasting, too. We'll see, but I think my food preferences are shifting as a result of fasting.
8 PM: I debated about skipping lunch and then forgot about making a decision until I took a break at 2:15 and realized I hadn't yet had lunch. It was easy to skip lunch. I think that my problem is more Saturday than weekday lunch, so maybe I'll try skipping weekday lunches but not Saturday lunch.
I also wrote down when my stomach growled. It growled at 3:44 PM, 4:46 PM, and 4:48 PM. After work, we went to Costco to pick up pot pies, and I didn't eat until 6:30 PM. Still, my stomach didn't growl again.
What's strange is that I rather like the feeling of my stomach emptying. I almost feel as though that sense of emptying has been what I've been missing in my attempts at weight loss. Can I remember back to when my mother didn't want me to eat before dinner because I would spoil my appetite? The idea was to have an appetite before dinner. Now, there's something terribly wrong if there is any sense of hunger.
I once thought that the defining characteristic of an obese person is a naive acceptance of what authority says is true.
Day 25 – Tuesday, January 25, 2011: I'm reading in Taube's book Why We Get Fat and totally agree with him that the real question is why people get hungry and overeat. I don't think it's just a matter of self-discipline. I've read to the point where he distinguishes between fat cells floating around in the blood stream and fat in fat cells. It's very interesting. It will take a second read other than what I've read while blow drying my hair. My job is done in three days, and I can hardly wait. Tom is so stressed about the house that he got upset with me about how I loaded the dishwasher. I can understand, though: there is laundry piled on top of the dryer, and I stocked up this week on pot pies and other microwave meals so that I could focus on work. Tomorrow afternoon I make a presentation, and then I clean up documentation and am done on Thursday. It was a terrific first consulting assignment, and I hope to continue getting more. I just need a break.
My thought on what I had read in Taubes is that what he might argue as the reason why people get hungry could be applied to fasting. I'm reading the book to try to understand if fasting is a good approach, so my read isn't exactly unbiased. It's too bad because the timing is bad, but Taubes is actually here at the University of Minnesota to promote his book. I'd love to go but can't. If he'd been here next week, I most certainly would have gone.
The conventional wisdom today is to lose weight by having six mini meals per day with very small portions. I'm doing the exact opposite: striving to eat only 12 times from Monday through Saturday but allowing myself to eat as much as I want each of those 12 times.
8 PM: It was another easy day for skipping lunch. I am doing my best to finish up at work. I have a 50 page summary of my interviews of about 40 people, and I'll be presenting it tomorrow to six people. Tomorrow morning, all I'll need to do is correct any typos and print off copies. I'll also make notes in my copy of points I want to make. My manager should be arranging a time for me to hand in my laptop and turn over my badge, but he hasn't yet. This was actually a good week to be testing giving up lunch because I'm too busy and focused on work to think much about food.
9 PM: I am feeling grumpy, and that was one of the side effects of dieting. I think, however, that I'm on edge about tomorrow's presentation. Also, I'm starting to think ahead to how I can handle home better once I'm not working. Tonight, I asked Tom to put out the trash and the recycle. I wanted him to put the recycle in bags, and I told him that I need more help if I'm working. He said, "You're not working anymore so you can do it." Well, I am working two more days, and he needs to get in the habit of doing it so that I can work without ending a 9 week assignment with the house in a disaster zone.
Day 26 – Wednesday, January 26, 2011: 203.0 I go back and forth on whether to weigh myself, and today I did. I was happy that today's weight is just .2 pounds above Saturday's weight. Plus, I didn't have a failure either Monday or yesterday. I hope I'm on track now. The difference between my version of The No S Diet which I followed for more than a year and got to a low of 196.6 and this diet is that I skip six meals on this diet: M - F lunch and Friday breakfast. Will my overall calorie consumption decrease because of my restrictions in when I eat, or will my calorie consumption remain the same and I just shift calories from one time to another? That is the question. So far, it is looking like I eat less. Last night, I had a pot pie and a bowl of cereal. Of course, last night was a rushed affair: I was home with the kids 1/2 hour before I left for a volunteer meeting at the school. The bigger test will be when I'm home and have more time on my hands. Will it still be easy to skip lunch? Will I still eat less at dinner?
7 PM: The presentation at work went well, and I'm happy with how the contract position is ending. I did not have lunch and barely noticed until my stomach growled at about 4. When I picked up Tom from swim team and then Katie and Ellie from After School Care, we went to Jimmy Johns to get sandwiches. I got home and then took the dry cleaning in before I came home to eat. It occurred to me that my choice to take in the dry cleaning first meant I was by no means ravenous. In fact, I didn't even feel hungry! Is it possible that people become hungry on a schedule, the schedule of prior meals? This is absolutely great!! I've gone from feeling hungry all the time to having occasional and very fleeting feelings of hunger. Now if I just lose weight doing this...
Day 27 – Thursday, January 27, 2011: 201.4 I'm thrilled by today's weight! I was reading last night in Why We Get Fat, and an interesting fact that came up was that you secrete insulin before you eat. It made me chuckle to read that because all I could do was think that this was the reason why the intuitive eating approach failed for me: food was always available, so my body was probably busy pumping out insulin. In contrast, when I know I won't eat, maybe my body don't pump out insulin. Maybe that's why fasting feels almost relaxing.
4 PM: I am done, and I am relieved. Now I need to become a Chinese mother to my 11 year old and clean up this house. I'm starting with the refrigerator. A couple of days ago, I asked Tom to put recycle in bags an bring the recycle to the garage. He objected because I'm a stay at home Mom now and can do it. I told him I'm working for two more days and cannot go back until we are more organized at home.
I think this diet approach is 99%+ knowledge and <1% willpower. It's easy. I was in Costo with all the taste tests around, and I knew I wouldn't have any and felt good. I had a bowl of cereal with craisins at 6:30 this morning, my stomach first growled at about 11:30 AM, and I managed just fine. The next hurdle will be avoiding snacking as a way to avoid cleaning.
7:30 PM: This afternoon, my stomach started growling around 5. I did not die. Surprise. Surprise. I am learning to tolerate hunger. I also thought back to the day, in January of 2004, when I saw my then nine year old daughter race in the door after school to go to the refrigerator. I knew then she would have a weight problem, and it was then that I started trying to figure out a way to maintain a normal weight without a constant feeling of deprivation. On Sunday, when I realized that I had not finished eating my chocolate bar, I thought that maybe I had finally found the answer. Maybe. Time will tell. My father sent me a note saying he was sending me The Mayo Clinic Diet. I already got that diet from the library and it was the same old same old "portion control" approach. My daughter is overweight, and I hope that she can see a way to be thin and not have to restrict her portions. She will have a great summer this year since she will be a camp counselor. I'm happy for her. She's the typical teenage daughter who thinks her mother is awful, but I love her more than she can imagine. Never would I have continued on trying to find a way to be thin without portion control had I not wanted to find a path that she could choose to follow. My motivation is for her.
Day 28 – Friday, January 28, 2011: 199.8 Today is my Fast Day. It is by no means a day of deprivation and agony. Rather, it is almost a day of reflection, a day of grace. I don't go into work today. Instead, I go back to volunteering as a reader in first grade, and I clean. I told the kids last night I think I finally figured out how to lose weight, and Anne said, "That's what you said about the Novena Diet and the Peanut Cluster Diet and the No S Diet..." Yes, it's true. Time will tell. I like the trend today, but only time will tell if the weight loss continues and if following the diet continues to be easy.
10 PM: I didn't eat until 7:30 PM but then had a delicious pasta and chicken dish from Ruby Tuesday. After that, I had some root beer. Can losing weight really be this indulgent and easy?
Day 29 – Saturday, January 29, 2011: 200.6 Last night's meal at Ruby Tuesday was Parmesan Chicken Pasta at 1,1418 calories with 77 grams of fat, 7 grams for fiber, 8 grams of protein, and 104 grams of net carbs. Other than that, I had a 12 ounce cup of root beer (I don't restrict pop as a sweet because I rarely have it) and about an 8 ounce cup of lemonade. I did not eat from Thursday night until Friday night at 7:30, and it didn't bother me a bit. Taubes, in his book Why We Get Fat, argues that insulin is what determines whether the food you eat gets stored as fat or still circulates in your bloodstream. If it gets stored as fat, then you feel hungry. If it is still circulating in your bloodstream, then you don't feel hungry. Whether it circulates in your bloodstream depends on how much you eat of carbohydrates or even if you think of eating carbohydrates. It turns out to be true that insulin is released in anticipating of eating, so people who say "I get fat when I think of eating a doughnut" are actually correct. What happens when you think of eatng a doughnut is insulin in your body moves fat in your bloodstream into your fat cells for storage in preparation for being able to handle the fat in the doughnut. With a habit of fasting, there is no anticipation of any food, including carbs. My body yesterday was using up fat in storage. Now, this morning, about 11 hours after my dinner, I'm still full. My body had plenty and is still moving it to fat storage. I'm not that hungry. Intermittent fasting results in my body keeping fat in the bloodstream rather than moving it to storage. I think I've got this right, but I will read the book more thoroughly a second time. The experience of fasting has been surprisingly easy, especially since my giving up snacks at the start of my No S Diet was so traumatic.
9:30 AM: After getting up at 6 and weighing myself at 200.6, I went back to bed, slept for another three hours, and just got up and weighed myself at 199.8. It was very gratifying. I think I'm on the right path with this diet, and it was nice to see a weight below 200 for the first time since October 2. I have so much on my plate now as I turn from work to home. My hands shake from the excessive amount of caffeine I've been having, so much so that Tommy commented on it last night. The house is improved from yesterday's cleaning, but there is still a long way to go. I was contacted about a three month contract position downtown and said I didn't want to pursue it, and Tom was upset with me about that decision. He doesn't understand that I'm just plain worn out. He was in Philadelphia from Monday morning until 9 PM last night and has to work this weekend. He's taken our son to a swim meet. Care of the home is almost completely on my shoulders; he does some repairs and snow shoveling and that's it. He works hard and cannot be expected to contribute much. I need to delegate to the kids more who have been so spoiled that they leave their socks all over the house. Being a stay at home Mom does have it's advantages, but at some point the kids can look to you as only the chauffeur and maid, and that's bad. There needs to be a sense of responsibility and gratitude rather than entitlement. I need to focus on my family for a time. If the perfect job - short term and within a short commute -- lands in my lap, I'll take it. Other than that, I'll focus on the family. As for my diet, I think I just need to wait and see the outcome of this approach and record my observations about how I feel as I learn to fast. As I type, I observe my daughter eating breakfast. She is very big. She may now weigh as much as I do. I feel very sad about that, but I'd rather she be big than endure what I endured, years and years of feeling like I was starving and then bingeing as a result. There has to be a better way, and maybe this is that better way. I've always had a long term perspective for dieting because my motivation has been to pass on to this child, now almost 17, the knowledge of another option. It will be up to her to decide to try to follow it.
6 PM: I slept part of the afternoon, since I am still recovering from the double job of work and home, and I feel just very different. There seems to be a cumulative effect kicking in from just two weeks of Friday fasts and skipping lunch on weekdays. I feel as though I am losing weight, especially now in my stomach and hips and face. I don't feel all that hungry. Applying what I have learned from a quick read of Why We Get Fat, I wonder if intermittent fasting results in the body circulating more fat in the bloodstream rather than storing it in fat cells since there is a possibility that the next meal won't be for quite some time. With very frequent and very consistent eating, the opposite effect could be true: the body can send the fat right to storage because the next meal predictably is right around the corner. I'll take my time on the reread of this book because its ideas of how and when the body stores fat seem very important for someone like me, a person intent on solving my obesity problem through study, a person on the hunt for the truth and convinced that conventional wisdom must be wrong.
Day 30 – Sunday, January 30, 2011: 200.8 I ended up deciding against the Sunday morning fast because sometimes we go to church on Saturday night or Sunday night. Today, I had a doughnut, a personal size coffee ice cream, and several Toll House cookies. That amount of sugar was too much for me, and I ended up skipping dinner. I wonder if the reduced number of meals is affecting how much my body can handle. I'm someone who rarely gets sick, but I seem to be really affected by this change in diet. I'm also still tired from the full time work stint, so tonight it's bedtime at 8.
Day 31 – Monday, January 31, 2011: 202.2 I think that my body can no longer tolerate a lot of sweets. Is this because intermittent fasting has caused my body to continue circulating fat in my bloodstream rather than in fat cells? I don't know, but something has changed.
Last edited by
Kathleen on Mon Jan 31, 2011 2:29 pm, edited 67 times in total.