wheat Belly

Read a couple of good books which just arrived from Amazon.

When you eat at the refrigerator pull up a chair and Wheat belly.

The wheat Belly is a new issue in 2011. The Dr is saying that he believes the nature of wheat has changed over the last 50 years and this plus the instructions to people to give up fat has lead to the mushrooming obesity and diabetes that we see today.

I know that bread is one of my main downfall foods when dieting and I do need fat to stop the binging so I believe he may have the answer to the problem. It is not sugar so much as wheat.

The refrigerator book made me laugh out loud. I will be passing it on to my daughters as I am sure they will enjoy it too.

Why we need fat

For years as a fat person I have tried to cut fat out of my diet whenever I could. I have non stick pans and learnt to 'dry fry' vegetables so that I would not have to add fat. I would never add butter or cream to my foods. I believed what I was told that the reason I was fat was because I was eating too many calories and that if I cut down on my calories I would lose weight.

Guess what It did not work. Fifty years later I am fatter than when I started.

What no body told me was that our bodies need fat and oil in our diet. Certain fatty acids are essential and the body cannot make them. It is not so much about calories as about carbs and insulin that are the cause of the obesity problem.

Now I add a small amount of butter to my eggs. I fry my veg in a little olive oil. I am losing weight and feeling I have so much more energy.

Ladies Diets

While I love the idea of eating all the protein and fat that I want and it has certainly got my cravings and binging under control for the first time in my life I have been finding the weight loss slower than I would like.

So many of these Low carb books are written by male Drs and I wonder if they are aware of the needs of the ladies.

I decided a couple of days ago I was fed up looking at the same number on the scale so took a look at what I was eating.

Luckily I am just not hungry in the mornings so for the past 2 mornings have changed my normal fried omelette and mushroom breakfast to 2 boiled eggs with a dab of butter on each. It has worked and I am now another lb down. Still found I looked at my watch at 12.10 thinking it was coffee time and it was lunch time. So did not make any difference to the rest of the eating for the day.

Keen to get below 14st again!

Attitude to Binging

Because of my long history of craving and binging I have never really felt slim and normal. I have always had the concern that a binge was only a day away and I would start putting back the weight that I had fought so hard to lose.

Because, by adding fat back into my diet, I have cured the binging episodes I now feel that I am on the right course to normalise my body weight. I dont feel that next week I am going to be 7lbs more than I am today.

However this does seem to be a slower process than I am used to. Its a hare and a tortoise method of dieting.

Is it better to be a tortoise and keep the weight off or a hare where the weight drops rapidly but comes back equally rapidly!

I do hope I will have dropped another lb by the end of the month. Just to give me the encouragement of getting under 200lb.

Funny thing is I feel slimer at this weight than I did when I was 170lbs last year. Something to do with being in control of my eating habits for the first time in my life.

seven hours without food

I had my breakfast as normal yesterday. Mushrooms fried in olive oil and a tomato/onion omelette at around 8.

I set off to sort out my D computers at 10.30am and started the antivirus update at 11am. It was painfully slow as it had not been updated for ages and eventually finished at 2.40pm. I could not leave it as the staff are not very computer savey.

So by the time I got home for lunch it was 3. I was surprised at how well my system coped. I was hungry yes but did not feel the need to send out for a pie or burger or some high carb thing. I had the control to be able to wait for my meal and that is very unusual for me. Previously I have been a clock watcher to see when is my next feeding time!

Life does seem less blaah these days. Dont think activities have changed but my attitude has. Have more spontinaity. Am being less frumpy and stuck to my chair!

Learning not to put on weight

Sometimes I think that is just as important as knowing how to lose weight.

We can go into self denial mode, maybe only for a short time before we binge, but the reward is the scale going down.

I have managed in the past to lose 50 to 70lbs over the course of about 10 months in this way.

Because I never understood the underlying metabolic problem that caused the obesity as soon as I came off the diet the weight started coming back. A lb here a couple of lbs there and then I was on the slippery slide back to where I started and maybe even heavier.

This way of eating with 30 to 50% of calories coming from fat is not a low calorie diet. I am eating about 1500 cals per day. So once I come off the 'diet' I am not going to find myself eating everything in sight. That will mean much more control over what I decide to eat and not have that eating without thought that has troubled me in the past.

Am getting into smaller size clothes and looking forward to being able to wear more of my nice smaller outfits.

Once you start doing this, taking a chance on adding good fats back, it makes losing weight a dream come true.

Tim Noakes

Hi

Some news in SA on low carbing.

Sports guru is now saying that carb loading is the wrong nutrition advice. He has just lost 15kg with Atkins low carb and says that is the diet answer. His father died of diabetes after being told to carry on eating carbohydrates.

Was on TV and in the magazine I bought.

I am still plugging away. Found some woolworths diet drinks in town yesterday with sucralose rather than aspartame which I hate. So bought some of those. Tonics, lemonade and bitter lemon. If I do have a sweetened drink will only have it during a meal to try not to produce too much insulin. I will have to see if the cravings come back after the meal.

So far my cravings and binging are so far in the past I can hardly remember what is was like to suffer like that. Every diet in the past I have had binging episodes in the afternoons. Rarely in the morning but afternoons and evenings were always the worst.

Low carb has cured that.

Diet for Life?

I have been a yoyo dieter all my life. Losing 50lbs this year 60lbs the next. I could never hold my weight at a 'normal' weight.

It is going to be interesting this time, once I have lost the next 42lbs, 18lbs have gone already, to see if I can now hold a low weight. Now that I have learnt that my body runs better on a high fat diet.

My low blood sugar episodes in the afternoons are now a thing of the past. I no longer have cravings and drive to find food mid afternoons.

If I can carry on eating like this I really have hope that I might finally beat my obesity problem for ever.

The diet is satisfying, filling and I have no need to nibble or eat for 5 hours after I have eaten.

Fat free diets dont work

For years I have been having a fat free diet.

Low fat milk, dry 'fry' food in a non stick pan. I truely believed that if I ate fat I would be even heavier than I already was.

Now I know that was a total lie. Eating fat as part of a low carb diet is the dieters answer to prayer.

It is satisfying, you dont eat too much, you leave the table having felt you have had a good meal. It holds you for 5 to 6 hours till the next meal and you dont even think about food. It cures the craving and binging. Yes that has gone for good.

I will never go back to my low fat diet. I buy butter by the lb and big bottles of olive oil. I also add cream to my chicken and mushrooms. Make stronganoff. Add proper mayonnaise to my salads.

Every time I get on the scale my weight is down. Failure is not just lurking round the corner any more.

At last something that works without denial, without starving.

Fat Power and Binging

Back under the 200lb on the scale. I never want to go above that again and maybe, just maybe, now I have found this way of eating I never will be that heavy again.

I do find this very counter intuitive. Before on diets I could make bargins with myself and could see that if I ate less on one day the scale would go down.

This diet I eat practically the same quantity of food each day. I make sure that I have my 15gms of butter at breakfast, 25 grms or so of good fat, butter, olive oil, cream or mayonnaise with each of the other 2 meals. I rarely need a snack but if I do it can be peanut butter or a small apple with some hard cheese.

I have had absolutely no urge to binge in the last 2 months. I cannot believe it was so easy to cure that out of control behaviour. I thought I would always be fighting the urge to binge. I can now walk past the fridge in the afternoon or my husbands open packet of biscuits without even a thought of finding a high carb snack.

How I wish I had discovered this 45 years ago. Dont think my life would have been different but I would have been much happier in my skin.

A diet that works

Seen a new number on the scale this morning.

I cant believe this is working as I am adding butter and olive oil back into my diet. I gave up all fats and oils 50 years ago when I first got fat.

Having never willing added calories to my food I am finding this a very strange way to lose weight. But it is working and I feel so much better. Less hunger, more positive getting things done.

It is not particularly speedy. About a lb a week but I can live with that as long as I can continue to eat like this.

Fat is the answer

Amazing I have found my blog again. Thought it had vanished into the ether.

Not posted for a year. Weight started to go up, carb intake increased and I just gave up again!

This is now something new. 7kg gone and I am not starving. I am consuming fat and oils. Butter cream and olive oil at every meal. Been on this now for 2 months and I have hardly felt hungry.

Dont have any cravings or being tempted to binge in the afternoons.

Weight loss is slow but I am feeling so much better and eating so much better so at present I am prepared to let my body set the pace.