I’ve been accused of being “stuck in the sixties”, but the past six months of my life give new meaning to that phrase! We must travel back in time more than six months, though, to begin this story.
Since Thanksgiving 2008, I have lost 77 pounds. I am now four pounds beneath my original goal. Personally, I feel great and profoundly grateful to be where I am. Yet the alleged “experts” and the dratted BMI calculator* say: lose more weight. My body says: “What ‘chu talkin’ ‘bout, Willis?!!! I’m staying right here at 161 and, short of starving me, you can’t make me do any different. You’re not the boss of me!” Yes, my body tends to sport a little bit of a ‘tude sometimes when it says something to me, what can I tell you?
I wasn’t overweight as a child, but I’ve struggled with obesity my entire adult life, and done a lot of yo-yoing, due to following diets that were all wrong for me (if only I knew then what I know now!), which resulted in the inevitable rebound cravings and gaining all the weight back, plus more. Even though I’ve yo-yoed a lot, most of the time, I was just whichever one of the “yo”s is the fat yo. Try as I might (and did), I never managed to get and keep the weight off until now.
I started on Dr. Peter J. D’Adamo’s GenoType Diet on Thanksgiving Day 2008, and reached my goal weight, which was 73 pounds less than where I started, on April 13, 2010. Let’s just put it all out there for the world to see: when I started on The GenoType Diet, I had ballooned up to my fattest weight ever and had been there for approximately three years. I was 238 pounds. 238 pounds and only 5’4.75” tall. Not good, people. But what IS good is that I lost 73 pounds in just under 17 months (precisely 72 weeks/16.5 months, but who’s counting?). My average loss per week over the entire 72 weeks was 1.01 lbs. Folks, that is not too shabby, in fact, it is nothing short of AWESOME, if I do say so myself! For me to sustain an average loss of 1.01 lbs per week for 72 weeks straight is unprecedented in my life. I got down to my goal weight of 165 lbs! And now I’m at 161! That’s the great, continually-amazing-to-me news.
The somewhat frustrating news is that, since reaching my goal on April 13th, my body has put the brakes on any further loss, big time. We are not talking plateau, I’m very familiar with those. I had some longies during the 16.5 month weight loss period, but this is different. Since April 13th, which is just shy of six months ago, I have lost a net total of four—count ‘em, four—pounds, to bring me to 161, where I’ve been hovering. For one brilliant day I was 158 but then back up the scale popped to somewhere between 160 and 162 and that’s where it remains, seemingly no matter what I do. Four pounds in six months, after previously averaging 1.01 lbs per week for the entire 16.5 months/73 lbs I lost to get to my goal. If you listen very carefully, you can actually hear the brakes squealing.
Well, you may be wondering, why are you still trying to lose, anyway, if you already reached your goal? The reason is that I set my original goal very high because I wanted to make it something I could conceivably reach. I didn’t want to set myself up for failure. And when you are 238 pounds, 165 seems very, very far away and impossible (in fact, I set an interim goal of 199 and a date to meet it by, which I did with two weeks to spare). My ultimate goal of 165 was modestly high, yet I knew, if I could just get there, I’d be so much healthier. When I started, I thought: “When I get there, I can decide if I want to try to go further, but whatever happens after reaching 165, I’ll be at peace with it, as long as I can get and stay there. I promise myself now that I won’t get frustrated if I can’t get any lower than that, because that frustration can lead to gaining it all back (been there, done that). I’ll just be so THRILLED if I can even get there.”
Well, when miraculously I got there, I reassessed, as I always had planned to do, and was very enthused and encouraged by my results to try and go further, to try to actually get to my ideal weight. For the first time in DECADES, it seemed like a real possibility! So I set my sights on 135 lbs, which I decided is my ideal weight. Years ago, Weight Watchers (not that I put any stock in them today) said that I should weigh between 126 and 144. 135 is in the middle of that range and I feel that is my ideal...but is it realistic? I thought it was possible, when I decided to forge ahead, but in the almost six months since reaching my goal of 165, it’s been tough to even drop a net total of four pounds. The take-home message from my body seems to be: “You’re done. This is as good as it gets, be grateful that you made it here and that you are healthy at 161 lbs. Now your job is to sustain this for a lifetime.” Okay, fine, thought I, if this is it, this is it, remember what you promised yourself about being at peace once you reached 165. I decided to ask my doctor about it, since I had a check-up scheduled, but I really thought she’d be thrilled with where I am, and I would take that as the official seal of approval to declare myself done with the weight loss phase of my journey. No such luck.
I had my annual check-up last week and the doctor said, very matter of factly, lose more weight. WHAT? I looked at her as if she had just instructed me to bring her the broomstick of the wicked witch. Tell me I’m done! Nope, lose more, said she, even when I politely reminded her that last year she said my goal of 165 was “fine”. Well, now I’m 160 (according to her scale, 161 per the one I have been using all along at work) and she’s telling me I have to lose more. Mind you, I stupidly opened up this discussion by asking her. My bad. WHY did I ask her? She is all of about 110 pounds, max, soaking wet. What does she know, truly, about losing a massive amount of weight and sustaining it? That last part is the key, that’s what the work has really been about for me: learning what diet and exercise I can live with happily for the rest of my life. As I’ve blogged about before, my diet is about abundance, not deprivation. In order to lose any more weight, I very much fear that I might have to switch into deprivation gear and that never can last. A deprivation diet puts you in danger of cravings setting in, your brain chemistry getting out of balance, and you getting off kilter and gaining every speck of weight you lost back, plus more. Been there, done that. Got the extra-large T-shirt. No thank you! I’d rather remain a scant 13 pounds overweight (The BMI calculator says I have to get down to AT LEAST 148 in order to be in the “normal” range) for the rest of my life than to mess with success, throw my body out of balance, and gain 77 lbs back! I have yo-yoed all my adult life and I don’t want to yo no mo’! I can’t afford it, not in any way, shape or form. Where I am is, like I said, a miracle in my life and if I go no lower, I go no lower.
I’ve been trying! I’ve been walking an hour per day, eating my optimal diet, and a four pound loss in almost six months is the net result of all that. Don’t get me wrong, I’m thrilled that I reached my long-elusive goal, and even more thrilled that I am now four pounds BELOW it and holding. That is nothing short of a miracle in my life. Yet I must admit that, much as I promised myself from Day One back on Thanksgiving 2008 that, if I reached my goal, I would NOT get frustrated if I couldn’t get further (as frustration is dangerous and can—and HAS in the past for me—lead to gaining all the weight back), I come to you today LIVE...and at least a tad frustrated.
So, here’s the plan: because of my blasted primary care doctor, the blasted BMI calculator* and my blasted memory of what Weight Watchers told me years ago I should weigh, for the next few months, I will continue to try to lose weight. My revised goal is 148, I’m letting go of 135. Like I said, the BMI says, if I reach 148, my weight is in the “normal” range, the healthy range. I’ll take healthy any day, I don’t need ideal, no matter what the dag-nabbed doctor says--not that she even gave me a number—she just said lose more weight, and that was in the context of a visit in which she was singularly dismissive of every single question I asked her about anything, so I'm really disgusted with, and disappointed in, this doctor (my kingdom for a respectful, collaborative primary care doctor!), but I digress. The relevant point is: I'm not sure how much weight, no pun intended, I should give to what she says about anything, but since virtually all of the "experts" seem to be in agreement that I need to lose more, I will amp up my efforts, fearful as I am of tweaking anything (if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it!). I know from long experience how much harder it is to get BACK to a place of biochemical balance once you get off kilter versus STAYING IN BALANCE once you are there. I am loathe to change ANYTHING about my wonderful, abundant diet that has kept me cravings-free, satisfied, healthy and in balance for 22 months—almost two years now. That said, I’ve thought long and hard and I GUESS I could cut out a LITTLE of the fat I add to things. I do kinda sorta use a LOT of olive oil and organic mayo (the latter of which is not even allowed on my diet, but ANYWAY, moving along…). And I GUESS I could make my portion sizes a LITTLE smaller. As long as I ensure that I get enough high-quality protein in each meal and that I continue to eat the variety of chi-laden, health-bestowing foods I typically eat, I should be fine. So, as of today, color my efforts amped up.
If, by February 1, 2011, I have still not gotten out of the blasted 160’s (mind you, I'm trying to reach my new goal of 148 by that date, but if I'm not at least out of the 160's and making steady progress by then, no matter how slow...), you can color me defiantly and blissfully done (with the weight loss portion of my journey—the maintaining/sustaining portion will be a lifetime thing for me). And, mark my words, I will be completely at peace about that, no matter what anyone has to say about it! Some of us are just a little bigger and that’s okay, as long as we’re healthy. Per the NIH BMI Calculator*, I am only 13 pounds above the top of the “normal” range for me anyway. 13 pounds! That is a hell of a lot better than being 90 pounds above it, which is what I was at my fattest. I had a BMI of 39.9 then. As in “your risk of death is severe.” As in “Obesity, Class II”, just a fraction of a point below “Morbid Obesity”. Morbid, as in “you’re dead”. So it is all relative! I’ll take my current, merely “overweight”, BMI of 27.0, if that’s as low as she goes!!! Besides, during the same check-up last week at which the doctor told me yes, you need to lose more weight, I also learned that my blood work numbers are fantastic. For example, my HDL cholesterol is 91, in the protective range, thank you very much. In fact, an HDL of 91 is kind of in the “unheard of” range. So get off my case, "experts"! I weigh what I weigh.
I’ve learned something on this journey: respect my body. If, despite my best efforts (and my best efforts are pretty dang good, if I do say so myself), my body continues consistently to tell me, in its gentle yet unbudging way, “We’re done, this is as low as I go, short of starvation”, then we’re done. I’m a member of a “thrifty” genotype, per the naturopathic doctor who wrote the diet I follow, and that means that my body is extraordinarily good at storing fat. It thinks it is protecting me, God love it and bless it. It thinks there is a famine around every corner. It is genetically hard-wired to think this and it is not going to change. No power of man or nature is going to change it, and certainly it doesn’t give a hoot about the BMI or some 110-pound MD saying “lose more weight”. In fact, the only reason it reluctantly gave in to my efforts and dropped the huge amount of weight it dropped is because, instead of fighting it and stressing it with deprivation diets, I worked with it and convinced it, through eating foods that are deeply nourishing to it and giving it plenty of stress-busting and muscle-strengthening exercise, that it is OKAY to release some fat—a lot of fat. My body responded beautifully to this diet and now it just may be telling me, enough is enough, this is where you have to trust me and listen to me, and I say we are done. And, if that is the case, as my mom often profoundly exclaims at various and sundry times in life: “Thank God we’re this far!”
You all are my witnesses: I’m giving it until February 1. If, by that date, I am not at LEAST out of the 160’s, then I’ll know it is the 160’s I’m meant to stay in and it will be time to RELAX and drink in the beautiful view from this vista, which I have literally hiked long and resolutely to reach. It’s gloriously good to be here. If I can go farther, fabulous. If not, right here is a beautiful place to plant my flag and build my LEED-certified, solar A-frame, permanent residence, no matter what anyone says about better sites down the trail apiece. I know a good place when I’m in one.
* Link: NIH BMI calculator
Showing posts with label diet. Show all posts
Showing posts with label diet. Show all posts
Tuesday, October 5, 2010
Friday, September 10, 2010
Go With Nature Instead of Under the Knife to Reach And Sustain a Healthy Weight
I had a special request for this blog topic by a wonderful woman named Kate, whom I really respect from the on-line diet community I’m a long-time member of (www.dadamo.com). I had started a discussion on that forum on the topic and she said, quote, "Dude, please write about this on your blog! Your thoughts are both accurate and hilarious." Well, I hope accurate and hilarious will translate into enlightening for at least one obese person out there who needs help--real help, not radical, violent surgeries, pills that suppress and go against nature instead of support it and harmonize with it, and harmful fad diets. I say below that I wish I could shout this from the rooftops. Well, I realize that this blog is my cyber-rooftop and I pray, in this case—actually pray, not merely hope, because I’ve been there and I know what a despairing place obese people can be in—that this blog will reach someone who needs it. There is help out there for you that is so simple and so natural. Even though I’ve now lost 76 lbs on the GenoType Diet and I’m no longer physically fat, I’m still a “fat person” in the sense that I know I could gain it back in a split second if I don’t take good care to acknowledge that this is a lifetime challenge for me and that I need to make choices daily that respect that fact and employ the knowledge, tools and experience that I am blessed to have now to stay at a healthy weight. The wonderful news is that those choices, once you know about them, are joyful, satisfying, balancing and sustainable. That said, I’m now climbing up onto my peppermint rooftop...
When it comes to the diet I follow, The GenoType Diet (GTD) by naturopathic doctor Peter J. D’Adamo, I'm in "wish I could shout it from the rooftops and make every man, woman and child on planet earth understand" mode again. I usually don't get this way anymore. I used to want to make everyone understand how great the Blood Type Diet (BTD, the first D’Adamo diet I was on) is, how much it could help them, blah blah blah. But several years into it, I realized that, as the saying goes, "when the student is ready, the teacher will come." You can't make anyone see anything or do anything that they aren't ready to see or do.
So, yes, I tell people about the BTD and GTD, even urge some to try it, but that's it. If they aren't game, I don't lose sleep over it, or I try not to. I just think to myself, “Fine: more good food/chi for me! Enjoy your NutraSweet.”
But every once in a while...
Like this week. I kept seeing teasers for a show on ABC called “Nightline Prime - Secrets of Your Mind: Why We Do What We Do”, about a “radical” (you can say that again!!!) new procedure to lose weight. Folks, brace yourselves: it is BRAIN SURGERY.
Sweet agave nectar, would you just try this "radical", "unproven" diet FIRST, before you let them CUT INTO YOUR BRAIN?!!!
Oh, but many retort, the BTD and GTD were not researched in double-blind, placebo-controlled studies. They’re not "scientific"! No, better to have a scientific MD in a white coat saw open my head and attach electrodes to my brain. That isn't risky, like some unproven, unresearched diet based on organic, whole foods.
I want to scream.
These poor, desperate, morbidly obese people. I know what that despair feels like. I’ve been there. I just wish I could get to each and every one of them, tell them about the BTD and GTD, and make them try it before doing anything so radical as brain surgery. The simple little BTD and GTD are as powerful--MORE!!!--than any electrodes. They will stop your cravings, they will get your system into balance and normalize your weight.
What the woman in that ABC story needs is one of the Dr. D’Adamo diets (preferably the GTD, in her case, because if I don’t miss my mark, she is a fellow member of my genotype, a.k.a., a “Gatherer”—see link below re the GenoType Diet), not brain surgery! To wit (from ABC's site, linked below, about this story):
"The Brain and Food
Bashir takes a closer look at the brain's mysterious relationship with food and its impact on America's obesity epidemic. Go inside the brain of an obese person and see how the brain responds to fattening foods like chocolate cake.
Bashir reports on a story of an obese woman who has tried everything -- from diets to bariatric surgery -- to lose weight and manage her compulsion to eat all the time. She turns to brain surgery -- the most radical weight loss procedure ever attempted."
Mind you, I'm not blaming the person who is choosing this surgery, I'm just saying I wish I could get to her--get to them all--and teach them about Dr D's diets, before they hurt themselves like this.
Like I said, I usually don't work myself up anymore over people who need the BTD/GTD yet aren't on it. I tell them about it, and then, usually, I just say to myself: horse, water, up to it to drink. But in this case, the horse doesn't even know there's a pool of water for her. I wish I could at least lead all the horses to water. Up to them if they drink or not, but what breaks my heart are the desperately thirsty ones who don't even know about water. They try all these other things and still their thirst is not quenched. When all they need is the quenching water of the B or GTD.
Sad!
What I witnessed on that show was SO MUCH WORSE THAN I EVEN IMAGINED from the teasers. So much worse.
Upshot? This poor, long-suffering fellow member of my Gatherer genotype had "tried everything" (or so she thought--she never tried the GTD, poor thing), and she proceeded to rattle off a list of the most horrifying protocols imaginable, such as fen-phen, bariatric surgery, etc. Nothing worked. So now she was ready to be wheeled in for experimental brain surgery, wherein they drilled holes "ten centimeters into her brain from both sides" (!) to implant electrodes on the THEORY that MAYBE these could impact her cravings, which she was driven by. Her drug of choice, by the way, was Pepsi.
Well, post-electrodes, she was better on the Pepsi--and here is a VERY SAD PART to moi, although it was just a passing comment she made and no one other than a BTDer or GTDer would have probably even picked up on the significance: She said to someone she was shopping with, who was worried that a liter, or whatever it was she had of something among her groceries, was the dreaded Pepsi, quote "You thought it was Pepsi, didn't you? Don't worry, it's Crystal Light." Crystal Light! In other words: post-brain-drilling and electrode implanting, this poor, sweet-natured woman has learned NOTHING about NUTRITION. She is still ingesting toxic junk that TRIGGERS CRAVINGS and that keeps you addicted and out of balance, not to mention unhealthy. She has lost no weight in a year since the surgery, but is happy that she is no longer ruled by cravings. She has them, but they aren't as powerful.
That is the SHORT VERSION, but my strong thing is: God, the GenoType Diet could have "fixed" her. Cravings GONE, weight OFF, nutritional knowledge, IN, daily exercise, TAKING PLACE, balance IN THE HIZZZOUSE, and all without drilling into her brain and implanting electrodes!
This world has gone crazy. In a sad way.
And those "doctors" who did this! OMG, they were like mad scientists, like Frankenstein! They were just having some big fun with their willing guinea pig.
When I watched her "doctors", I kept thinking: "This is like when they used to do lobotomies on people, just to see if it would "work". All for the advancement of SCIENCE, you see (read: their wallets and/or fame in their field)."
I was out of control re food cravings driving me, when I first went on the BTD in 1997. And it took many years, even AFTER that watershed change, and many "slip and falls", lots of fortitude and faith (because I knew the BTD was the right track, I just still had my struggles staying on said track at times), and then finally getting on the GTD and putting it all together--everything I'd learned--to get to where I can now honestly and gratefully report that, not only am I not ruled by cravings, I don't have cravings. Maybe I get what normal people (i.e., non-Gatherers) would consider a "craving", but that is only because they don't know what us thrifty-genotype-sporting Gatherers mean by "cravings". I mean, sure, I get hankerings for certain things. Right now, I'm on a watermelon jag like you wouldn't believe. But that is DIFFERENT. Take a memo: a hankering is not a craving. It is not driving to the supermarket in the driving rain at 9:00 p.m. to clear the shelves of potato chips and sour cream dip, when you DON'T WANT TO BE DOING THAT...yet you do it anyway, like a drug addict drawn to her drug of choice.
The woman in that story could have achieved what she wanted in a natural, healthy way, but she didn't know it, and doesn't know it, poor soul. That's what kills me, so many folks simply don't know. I wish everyone knew.
True, it is more work in some ways to make lifestyle changes than to just pop a pill or even undergo a radical surgery. I have to walk for at least half an hour per day and I try for an hour, or I fear gaining my weight back. And there are certain foods that I have to avoid like the plague which are ubiquitous in our society, so in that sense, it is challenging to avoid them (not because I miss them AT ALL, but because they are in everything) and eating out, in particular, is a challenge. But I’ve learned to go the homemade route and I love it. I work full-time and am busy, yet I find the “slow food” lifestyle to actually be quite a timesaver and far more relaxing than constantly being “on the hunt” for take-out food. There is more of a learning curve, more time, more effort, required to go the natural route, but the pay-off is priceless: once you learn which foods are your friends and keep you cravings-free, satisfied, healthy, energized and in balance, YOU KNOW. No one can ever take that powerful knowledge from you. It, along with proper exercising for your type, can get you to a healthy weight and keep you there for life, with nary a craving, and always feeling very well-nourished and vital.
I implore any obese person out there who is in despair, as someone who has been there in spades: don’t be afraid to try this “radical” diet, versus what to me is the far more radical route of pills or surgeries. You can get there with whole foods, it is all about learning which ones to choose, which ones harmonize with your genetic makeup. This relationship between your individual hardwiring and specific foods is called nutrigenomics, and it is the key to helping you. The power to change your situation, to reach and sustain a healthy weight, comes not from fighting nature, but from working with nature. It comes not from fighting, suppressing and attacking your body and brain chemistry, but from understanding and befriending it, eliminating the foods which throw it out of wack, and giving it the foods that put it into balance.
Informational Links:
Blood Type Diet
GenoType Diet
Nightline Prime - Secrets of Your Mind: Why We Do What We Do
When it comes to the diet I follow, The GenoType Diet (GTD) by naturopathic doctor Peter J. D’Adamo, I'm in "wish I could shout it from the rooftops and make every man, woman and child on planet earth understand" mode again. I usually don't get this way anymore. I used to want to make everyone understand how great the Blood Type Diet (BTD, the first D’Adamo diet I was on) is, how much it could help them, blah blah blah. But several years into it, I realized that, as the saying goes, "when the student is ready, the teacher will come." You can't make anyone see anything or do anything that they aren't ready to see or do.
So, yes, I tell people about the BTD and GTD, even urge some to try it, but that's it. If they aren't game, I don't lose sleep over it, or I try not to. I just think to myself, “Fine: more good food/chi for me! Enjoy your NutraSweet.”
But every once in a while...
Like this week. I kept seeing teasers for a show on ABC called “Nightline Prime - Secrets of Your Mind: Why We Do What We Do”, about a “radical” (you can say that again!!!) new procedure to lose weight. Folks, brace yourselves: it is BRAIN SURGERY.
Sweet agave nectar, would you just try this "radical", "unproven" diet FIRST, before you let them CUT INTO YOUR BRAIN?!!!
Oh, but many retort, the BTD and GTD were not researched in double-blind, placebo-controlled studies. They’re not "scientific"! No, better to have a scientific MD in a white coat saw open my head and attach electrodes to my brain. That isn't risky, like some unproven, unresearched diet based on organic, whole foods.
I want to scream.
These poor, desperate, morbidly obese people. I know what that despair feels like. I’ve been there. I just wish I could get to each and every one of them, tell them about the BTD and GTD, and make them try it before doing anything so radical as brain surgery. The simple little BTD and GTD are as powerful--MORE!!!--than any electrodes. They will stop your cravings, they will get your system into balance and normalize your weight.
What the woman in that ABC story needs is one of the Dr. D’Adamo diets (preferably the GTD, in her case, because if I don’t miss my mark, she is a fellow member of my genotype, a.k.a., a “Gatherer”—see link below re the GenoType Diet), not brain surgery! To wit (from ABC's site, linked below, about this story):
"The Brain and Food
Bashir takes a closer look at the brain's mysterious relationship with food and its impact on America's obesity epidemic. Go inside the brain of an obese person and see how the brain responds to fattening foods like chocolate cake.
Bashir reports on a story of an obese woman who has tried everything -- from diets to bariatric surgery -- to lose weight and manage her compulsion to eat all the time. She turns to brain surgery -- the most radical weight loss procedure ever attempted."
Mind you, I'm not blaming the person who is choosing this surgery, I'm just saying I wish I could get to her--get to them all--and teach them about Dr D's diets, before they hurt themselves like this.
Like I said, I usually don't work myself up anymore over people who need the BTD/GTD yet aren't on it. I tell them about it, and then, usually, I just say to myself: horse, water, up to it to drink. But in this case, the horse doesn't even know there's a pool of water for her. I wish I could at least lead all the horses to water. Up to them if they drink or not, but what breaks my heart are the desperately thirsty ones who don't even know about water. They try all these other things and still their thirst is not quenched. When all they need is the quenching water of the B or GTD.
Sad!
What I witnessed on that show was SO MUCH WORSE THAN I EVEN IMAGINED from the teasers. So much worse.
Upshot? This poor, long-suffering fellow member of my Gatherer genotype had "tried everything" (or so she thought--she never tried the GTD, poor thing), and she proceeded to rattle off a list of the most horrifying protocols imaginable, such as fen-phen, bariatric surgery, etc. Nothing worked. So now she was ready to be wheeled in for experimental brain surgery, wherein they drilled holes "ten centimeters into her brain from both sides" (!) to implant electrodes on the THEORY that MAYBE these could impact her cravings, which she was driven by. Her drug of choice, by the way, was Pepsi.
Well, post-electrodes, she was better on the Pepsi--and here is a VERY SAD PART to moi, although it was just a passing comment she made and no one other than a BTDer or GTDer would have probably even picked up on the significance: She said to someone she was shopping with, who was worried that a liter, or whatever it was she had of something among her groceries, was the dreaded Pepsi, quote "You thought it was Pepsi, didn't you? Don't worry, it's Crystal Light." Crystal Light! In other words: post-brain-drilling and electrode implanting, this poor, sweet-natured woman has learned NOTHING about NUTRITION. She is still ingesting toxic junk that TRIGGERS CRAVINGS and that keeps you addicted and out of balance, not to mention unhealthy. She has lost no weight in a year since the surgery, but is happy that she is no longer ruled by cravings. She has them, but they aren't as powerful.
That is the SHORT VERSION, but my strong thing is: God, the GenoType Diet could have "fixed" her. Cravings GONE, weight OFF, nutritional knowledge, IN, daily exercise, TAKING PLACE, balance IN THE HIZZZOUSE, and all without drilling into her brain and implanting electrodes!
This world has gone crazy. In a sad way.
And those "doctors" who did this! OMG, they were like mad scientists, like Frankenstein! They were just having some big fun with their willing guinea pig.
When I watched her "doctors", I kept thinking: "This is like when they used to do lobotomies on people, just to see if it would "work". All for the advancement of SCIENCE, you see (read: their wallets and/or fame in their field)."
I was out of control re food cravings driving me, when I first went on the BTD in 1997. And it took many years, even AFTER that watershed change, and many "slip and falls", lots of fortitude and faith (because I knew the BTD was the right track, I just still had my struggles staying on said track at times), and then finally getting on the GTD and putting it all together--everything I'd learned--to get to where I can now honestly and gratefully report that, not only am I not ruled by cravings, I don't have cravings. Maybe I get what normal people (i.e., non-Gatherers) would consider a "craving", but that is only because they don't know what us thrifty-genotype-sporting Gatherers mean by "cravings". I mean, sure, I get hankerings for certain things. Right now, I'm on a watermelon jag like you wouldn't believe. But that is DIFFERENT. Take a memo: a hankering is not a craving. It is not driving to the supermarket in the driving rain at 9:00 p.m. to clear the shelves of potato chips and sour cream dip, when you DON'T WANT TO BE DOING THAT...yet you do it anyway, like a drug addict drawn to her drug of choice.
The woman in that story could have achieved what she wanted in a natural, healthy way, but she didn't know it, and doesn't know it, poor soul. That's what kills me, so many folks simply don't know. I wish everyone knew.
True, it is more work in some ways to make lifestyle changes than to just pop a pill or even undergo a radical surgery. I have to walk for at least half an hour per day and I try for an hour, or I fear gaining my weight back. And there are certain foods that I have to avoid like the plague which are ubiquitous in our society, so in that sense, it is challenging to avoid them (not because I miss them AT ALL, but because they are in everything) and eating out, in particular, is a challenge. But I’ve learned to go the homemade route and I love it. I work full-time and am busy, yet I find the “slow food” lifestyle to actually be quite a timesaver and far more relaxing than constantly being “on the hunt” for take-out food. There is more of a learning curve, more time, more effort, required to go the natural route, but the pay-off is priceless: once you learn which foods are your friends and keep you cravings-free, satisfied, healthy, energized and in balance, YOU KNOW. No one can ever take that powerful knowledge from you. It, along with proper exercising for your type, can get you to a healthy weight and keep you there for life, with nary a craving, and always feeling very well-nourished and vital.
I implore any obese person out there who is in despair, as someone who has been there in spades: don’t be afraid to try this “radical” diet, versus what to me is the far more radical route of pills or surgeries. You can get there with whole foods, it is all about learning which ones to choose, which ones harmonize with your genetic makeup. This relationship between your individual hardwiring and specific foods is called nutrigenomics, and it is the key to helping you. The power to change your situation, to reach and sustain a healthy weight, comes not from fighting nature, but from working with nature. It comes not from fighting, suppressing and attacking your body and brain chemistry, but from understanding and befriending it, eliminating the foods which throw it out of wack, and giving it the foods that put it into balance.
Informational Links:
Blood Type Diet
GenoType Diet
Nightline Prime - Secrets of Your Mind: Why We Do What We Do
Monday, July 19, 2010
My Diet is a Delight, not Deprivation: On Lightening Up and Living a Little
As most of my vast legion of 10 blog followers already know, yet I have not blogged about, I joyously follow a certain diet, called The GenoType Diet, by Dr. Peter J. D’Adamo. It, and it’s predecessor, The Blood Type Diet, have helped me tremendously and I’ve been meaning to blog about my diet journey, but haven’t had the requisite combination of internet access and time. I plan to do it at some point, but meanwhile I now want to talk about something specific regarding my diet, so I hope readers who are unfamiliar with the diet and/or with me and my personal diet journey will be able to understand what I’m talking about anyway. You don’t have to be on one of Dr. D’Adamo’s diets to get what I’m going to talk about; it really applies to any healthy, joyous diet that one chooses to adhere to. Here goes:
There is something that many folks, who aren’t on one of Dr. D’Adamo’s highly individualized diets, don’t get. Well-meaning people are forever gently encouraging me to have a piece of birthday cake, or “go off my diet” in some other way. I’m talking about all the poor folk in this world who have not experienced the wonder of what the Dr. D’Adamo diets (The Blood Type Diet, The GenoType Diet, or SWAMI) do for a body. They associate “diet” and “dieting” with deprivation and rigidity. In fact, there is an active discussion thread on Dr. D’Adamo’s message board (see link to his site under my “Mint-Worthy Links”) right now on “orthorexia”, and perhaps, along that sort of vein, some folks mistakenly think anyone who consistently sticks to any certain diet (such as I do) is being too rigid and thus not enjoying life. I mean, what other explanation could there be for turning down birthday cake at office party after office party? Obviously I am in serious need of living a little! But they don’t get it! I don’t want to go off my diet! And it isn’t due to rigidity, it is due to loving being strong, deeply nourished, satisfied, in balance, steady and healthy. What they don’t get is: this diet is abundance. It is going off it that is deprivation to me!
This is the reverse of most diets. Most diets are associated with giving up things you love. But on the GenoType Diet, I love all the foods I’m encouraged to eat. I naturally gravitate to them, which makes sense in light of the diet’s theory that I was designed to thrive on these foods. When you are eating as nature intended for you to eat, you are satisfied, nourished and in balance. Therefore, you don’t crave junk food “quick fixes” for your blood sugar, serotonin level, etc., as you might (and I do) when you are out of balance, deprived in some way(s) and hungry for something(s). Why on earth would I want to throw myself out of this precious place of balance that I’ve worked so hard to reach? It took me years and much trial and error to figure out how to get here, and I LOVE being here, so why would I want to jettison myself out of this long-elusive Brigadoon? I wouldn’t, I don’t! So thanks but no thanks, I honestly don’t want that piece of birthday cake, with the inflammatory wheat and the blood-sugar-spiking-then-crashing corn syrup. I don’t want the hydrogenated transfats and the artificial flavorings and colorings. It is not a “treat” for me in any way. My treat is every naturally colorful, life-filled, gorgeous, delicious, satisfying bite of healthy food that I eat in my diet every day! And no, the fact that I’m highly compliant on my diet does not mean that I, by definition, have “orthorexia." I’m not rigidly compliant on the diet. I’m joyously compliant on the diet. The foods that are recommended for me are a joy to eat, and I also joyously and with much gusto eat some things that are not recommended for me, such as some dairy products, some organic mayo (without mayo, what is the point of life, pray tell?), etc. But the “biggies”, the avoids that I’ve learned through experience are truly dangerous to me being in balance, steady, strong and not ruled by carbohydrate cravings, those I am very, very strict about avoiding. Is this due to “orthorexia”, i.e., being overly rigid on a diet? Hell no, it is due to having worked my butt off (literally) to jettison the cravings and feel steady and in balance, and, oh, by the way, to lose 76 pounds, and to wanting to continue being good to myself, to continue empowering myself and powering myself towards better and better health. Choosing health is a healthy impulse! And it’s a joyous, delicious, satisfying impulse. Again, here’s what a lot of people don’t understand, as they associate consistent compliance on any “diet” as equaling “deprivation”: this diet, and any diet that is truly healthy for the particular individual following it, is not deprivation, it is abundance, it is joy, it is strength, it is balance, it is healthy. If your diet makes you feel deprived, it is not the right diet for you. The right diet will feel right, you will be satisfied and glad and every meal will be a celebration of life.
My family arrives this week from out of state, as they do every summer, for a visit which this year will be of one week’s duration. While it is a sacred, wonderful blessing to have and to see family, it is also stressful for me on several levels, one major one being that we eat out virtually every meal while they're here and I end up in all manner of wheat and corn syrup dispensaries that I never normally frequent. Even though I’m actually not strict with dietary compliance in many ways, the two things that I am extremely compliant on are wheat and corn. And, unfortunately, those are the exact two items that our society is hell bent on sneaking into every food possible, especially in restaurants, so one almost HAS to be rigid, or “orthorexic”, to use that inherently pejorative term, in order to avoid what I, for one, consider to be toxic substances for me. Yet is it some sort of diagnosable disease to choose not to poison oneself? Is it some sort of rigid obsessiveness to avoid known toxins that set in motion a chain of biochemical events in some of our bodies that are akin to what happens if an alcoholic takes that first drink? No one in this day and age would think of urging an alcoholic to “lighten up” and “just have one drink, one drink won’t kill you!” Well, no, one drink won’t kill an alcoholic and one piece of cake, or bag of chips, or whatever the “trigger” food may be won’t kill a food addict, either...but it could and often DOES set in motion a chain of biochemical events that ultimately will kill us, not to be too dramatic about it. It’s just the truth: one drink can and predictably often DOES trigger an alcoholic to drink more and throw them out of sobriety into active alcoholism. Serious stuff. Well it is the exact same thing for a “food addict”, or someone with sensitivities to certain foods, a “carb addict”, or whatever you want to call people like me. So is it “orthorexic”, namely, pathological, to make the healthy choice to avoid something that is poisonous to you, that threatens your "food sobriety"? I submit to you that, by definition, choosing health is NOT a pathology!
I’m a child of an alcoholic family, I know what alcoholism is, up close and personal. I know what addiction is. And I know what my response to certain foods is and what my patterns are, as I’ve now had many years of observing, experiencing and dismaying over my own particular patterns, and I can tell you that a “food addict” is no different from an alcoholic or drug addict, at least, many of us aren’t. Many of us are hard-wired to be biochemically sensitive to certain foods and those certain foods (like wheat and corn syrup) will throw us out of balance and into a whole world of being controlled by carb cravings. And those trigger foods are ubiquitous in our food supply, so is it “obsessive”, if after having learned through many years of hard-won experience, what works and what can threaten that for you, to strictly avoid those threatening trigger foods if you know the serious problems they will cause you, or is it a healthy thing? Answer Key: it is a very, very healthy thing, and don’t let anyone ever tell you anything different!
Why would I EVER willingly choose to threaten my “food sobriety”—the aforementioned place of balance and health—any more than an alcoholic or drug addict would choose to “lighten up” and have just one drink, or just one nostalgic fling with their drug of choice? It’s not worth it!!! The old gray mare (a.k.a., a bag of potato chips and some sour cream dip), she ain’t what she used to be. The thrill is gone! I choose health. Choosing health is the way I “lighten up”. Choosing health is the way I live a little.
There is something that many folks, who aren’t on one of Dr. D’Adamo’s highly individualized diets, don’t get. Well-meaning people are forever gently encouraging me to have a piece of birthday cake, or “go off my diet” in some other way. I’m talking about all the poor folk in this world who have not experienced the wonder of what the Dr. D’Adamo diets (The Blood Type Diet, The GenoType Diet, or SWAMI) do for a body. They associate “diet” and “dieting” with deprivation and rigidity. In fact, there is an active discussion thread on Dr. D’Adamo’s message board (see link to his site under my “Mint-Worthy Links”) right now on “orthorexia”, and perhaps, along that sort of vein, some folks mistakenly think anyone who consistently sticks to any certain diet (such as I do) is being too rigid and thus not enjoying life. I mean, what other explanation could there be for turning down birthday cake at office party after office party? Obviously I am in serious need of living a little! But they don’t get it! I don’t want to go off my diet! And it isn’t due to rigidity, it is due to loving being strong, deeply nourished, satisfied, in balance, steady and healthy. What they don’t get is: this diet is abundance. It is going off it that is deprivation to me!
This is the reverse of most diets. Most diets are associated with giving up things you love. But on the GenoType Diet, I love all the foods I’m encouraged to eat. I naturally gravitate to them, which makes sense in light of the diet’s theory that I was designed to thrive on these foods. When you are eating as nature intended for you to eat, you are satisfied, nourished and in balance. Therefore, you don’t crave junk food “quick fixes” for your blood sugar, serotonin level, etc., as you might (and I do) when you are out of balance, deprived in some way(s) and hungry for something(s). Why on earth would I want to throw myself out of this precious place of balance that I’ve worked so hard to reach? It took me years and much trial and error to figure out how to get here, and I LOVE being here, so why would I want to jettison myself out of this long-elusive Brigadoon? I wouldn’t, I don’t! So thanks but no thanks, I honestly don’t want that piece of birthday cake, with the inflammatory wheat and the blood-sugar-spiking-then-crashing corn syrup. I don’t want the hydrogenated transfats and the artificial flavorings and colorings. It is not a “treat” for me in any way. My treat is every naturally colorful, life-filled, gorgeous, delicious, satisfying bite of healthy food that I eat in my diet every day! And no, the fact that I’m highly compliant on my diet does not mean that I, by definition, have “orthorexia." I’m not rigidly compliant on the diet. I’m joyously compliant on the diet. The foods that are recommended for me are a joy to eat, and I also joyously and with much gusto eat some things that are not recommended for me, such as some dairy products, some organic mayo (without mayo, what is the point of life, pray tell?), etc. But the “biggies”, the avoids that I’ve learned through experience are truly dangerous to me being in balance, steady, strong and not ruled by carbohydrate cravings, those I am very, very strict about avoiding. Is this due to “orthorexia”, i.e., being overly rigid on a diet? Hell no, it is due to having worked my butt off (literally) to jettison the cravings and feel steady and in balance, and, oh, by the way, to lose 76 pounds, and to wanting to continue being good to myself, to continue empowering myself and powering myself towards better and better health. Choosing health is a healthy impulse! And it’s a joyous, delicious, satisfying impulse. Again, here’s what a lot of people don’t understand, as they associate consistent compliance on any “diet” as equaling “deprivation”: this diet, and any diet that is truly healthy for the particular individual following it, is not deprivation, it is abundance, it is joy, it is strength, it is balance, it is healthy. If your diet makes you feel deprived, it is not the right diet for you. The right diet will feel right, you will be satisfied and glad and every meal will be a celebration of life.
My family arrives this week from out of state, as they do every summer, for a visit which this year will be of one week’s duration. While it is a sacred, wonderful blessing to have and to see family, it is also stressful for me on several levels, one major one being that we eat out virtually every meal while they're here and I end up in all manner of wheat and corn syrup dispensaries that I never normally frequent. Even though I’m actually not strict with dietary compliance in many ways, the two things that I am extremely compliant on are wheat and corn. And, unfortunately, those are the exact two items that our society is hell bent on sneaking into every food possible, especially in restaurants, so one almost HAS to be rigid, or “orthorexic”, to use that inherently pejorative term, in order to avoid what I, for one, consider to be toxic substances for me. Yet is it some sort of diagnosable disease to choose not to poison oneself? Is it some sort of rigid obsessiveness to avoid known toxins that set in motion a chain of biochemical events in some of our bodies that are akin to what happens if an alcoholic takes that first drink? No one in this day and age would think of urging an alcoholic to “lighten up” and “just have one drink, one drink won’t kill you!” Well, no, one drink won’t kill an alcoholic and one piece of cake, or bag of chips, or whatever the “trigger” food may be won’t kill a food addict, either...but it could and often DOES set in motion a chain of biochemical events that ultimately will kill us, not to be too dramatic about it. It’s just the truth: one drink can and predictably often DOES trigger an alcoholic to drink more and throw them out of sobriety into active alcoholism. Serious stuff. Well it is the exact same thing for a “food addict”, or someone with sensitivities to certain foods, a “carb addict”, or whatever you want to call people like me. So is it “orthorexic”, namely, pathological, to make the healthy choice to avoid something that is poisonous to you, that threatens your "food sobriety"? I submit to you that, by definition, choosing health is NOT a pathology!
I’m a child of an alcoholic family, I know what alcoholism is, up close and personal. I know what addiction is. And I know what my response to certain foods is and what my patterns are, as I’ve now had many years of observing, experiencing and dismaying over my own particular patterns, and I can tell you that a “food addict” is no different from an alcoholic or drug addict, at least, many of us aren’t. Many of us are hard-wired to be biochemically sensitive to certain foods and those certain foods (like wheat and corn syrup) will throw us out of balance and into a whole world of being controlled by carb cravings. And those trigger foods are ubiquitous in our food supply, so is it “obsessive”, if after having learned through many years of hard-won experience, what works and what can threaten that for you, to strictly avoid those threatening trigger foods if you know the serious problems they will cause you, or is it a healthy thing? Answer Key: it is a very, very healthy thing, and don’t let anyone ever tell you anything different!
Why would I EVER willingly choose to threaten my “food sobriety”—the aforementioned place of balance and health—any more than an alcoholic or drug addict would choose to “lighten up” and have just one drink, or just one nostalgic fling with their drug of choice? It’s not worth it!!! The old gray mare (a.k.a., a bag of potato chips and some sour cream dip), she ain’t what she used to be. The thrill is gone! I choose health. Choosing health is the way I “lighten up”. Choosing health is the way I live a little.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)