So Far So Good

Weigh day is tomorrow.

Hope to find the weight loss is continuing. I have moved the scale into my daughters flat next door so I am not continually jumping, or rather carefully stepping, on to it, a la Bridget Jones.

I have starved myself down in the past a couple of times. I usually aim for around 64kg. But within a few weeks the cravings get too strong and I find I am eating my way back to my usual mid 90kg.

At the start of this last attempt I was well over 100kg and feeling really tired with no energy.

What I have found is that giving up the milk has definitely made a difference to my appetite control in the afternoons.

From about 3pm onwards I used to continually want to snack and would be visiting the fridge to find something to eat.

Now I can go 3 or 4 hrs without eating anything and then have a nice hot plate of veg with cheese or a cold salad and easily forget about food till the next meal. I can walk past the fridge without opening it to find a little something.

I am just hoping I have finally found the simple answer to my obesity. Give up milk and white carbs. I dont have any bread either.

I feel my legs are thinner but still plenty to go off the centre area.

Today my husband has bacon for breakfast. So I will have a bowl of green beans, home made tomato sauce, bacon and cheese all heated in microwave for lunch just before 12. Yesterday I topped that with anchovy paste to give lots of flavour.

That will be my first meal of the day.

I have hard boiled eggs in the fridge. I cook 6 at a time and have those with some lettuce, maybe avo and mayonnaise and balsamic in the afternoon.

Then what ever meat we are having with green veg and cauliflower. I managed to find some cauliflowers in the local shop.

I am still on my blood pressure pills but wondering if I will be able to cut back in a few weeks time. Will keep checking at home to see if the numbers are fine.

If milk is my problem I wish I had know 50 yrs ago. It would have saved so much grief and upset over the years!

Three Years Later

At 65 I am fed up with having to continually do this.

I do not want to be the obese woman in the wheel chair and unable to do anything for myself, so this finally has to work and the weight has to stay off.

So even if I have failed on every other attempt over the last 55 yrs I am still going to give it a go.

I got back from holiday 2 weeks ago and decided that enough. I am fed up of looking and feeling like this.

One of the things I have picked up over my reading is that insulin is the main problem when trying to lose weight. Insulin opens the doors to the cells, ushers the fat in and slams the door shut and keeps it shut. The fat cannot get out again if the blood stream is full of insulin. When your body cant get at the fat stores it send panicky messages for more food and the cravings kick in.

I had a fasting insulin text at my last medical. 26, I was told normal is under 10.

One of the most insulicmic foods is milk. I have always drunk milk in my coffee. 6 or 7 mugs of coffee every day. I have switched the skim milk and back again. But never given it up.

This time I have.

My drink of choice is now rooi ( red) bush tea with cinnamon. One tea bag does me most of the day. I just keep adding boiling water to it!

We bought a walking machine and have set it up in the lounge so I can put on a DVD and get some exercise. I am up to 2km a day. Walking only.

I skip breakfast, not really hungry in the morning. I have lunch around 11.30 to 12. Green veg with a tomato sauce ( home made) and a bit of cheese all microwaved.

Mid afternoon I have an egg salad with some mayo and balsamic.

Then evening is meat/chicken/fish and green veg.

I am impressed with Tom Kerridge. Got the book last week.

He talked about enjoying your diet. Maybe I will enjoy this one!

I feel lighter and have noticed more energy and find myself tidying up stuff that has been sitting for months!

About 4kg gone so far.

Cream in my Coffee

Last week our local shop got cream in. Very unusual. I bought a litre and have started having that in my coffee. The way I have decided to work it is to have one mug of coffee with cream and then the next mug is boiling water. If I have a bit of coffee left I will top it up with the boiling water. I really dont notice the difference.

I do feel some hunger about an hour before lunch and maybe 2 hrs before supper, but is it proper hunger and is manageable. Not that brain hunger which drives me straight to the bread bin or cereal packet.

I found some tinned peppered mackerel fillets so will have that with flax toast for lunch. I made a loaf with the golden flax seed this week so that makes a nice change.

Treated myself to a facial this week but also had a dentist app, so did the dentist first followed by the facial.

Now on about 30 BMI. Keen to drop down in the 20's within the next month or so.

My body is finally using up all these fat stores that have hung around for so long.

Eat Fat and Be Slim

Maybe that would be a good title for a book. But would anyone believe it?

Even I cant believe it sometimes. I get on the scale each day ( yes gone back to daily weighing I just cant resist) and find that I either weigh the same as the day before, bit disappointing but then I am eating so much and so well, or I find a 100 to 200gms weight loss. I very rarely see a gain even with all the calories I am eating which is quite remarkable.

It has taken me 14 days to lose the last 1kg or 2.2lbs. The kg before that took 10 days. But am I bothered?
Not at all. All I want to see is a lower figure on the scale and a cure for my eating disorder ( binging) and adding fat into my meals has done that.

This is not a restrictive diet. I can eat most things at meal times as long as I stay away from starch and sugar. I leave the table feeling satisfied. I dont weigh anything or count any calories I dont portion out my plate.

I eat like a normal person and my cravings for starch that used to plague every afternoon have vanished as if they never were a problem.

I have been on endless diets before. All of them restricting fats and oils and some of them restricting protein portions and all of them with fat free veg. Every day I battled on them to stay on the program and not to give in to cravings and to start a binge which I would not be able to stop. I do not have to go to bed early to stop myself eating snacks in the evening.

This is so different. When I do bother to add up my calories from meals they come to about 1600 for the day. Normally on that I would have no hope of losing any weight. I might even gain! But on 1600 with about 600 from fats and oils I am losing, steadily and regularly.

Maybe my fate is not to be the obese person I always have been. Perhaps there really is a smaller body here somewhere.

This is an eating plan not just to lose the weight but for life.

Fats v Carbs

http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303678404579533760760481486?mod=trending_now_1

I was very interested in the above article in the Wall Street Journal.

For over 50 yrs I have been trying the uphill journey of weight loss by cutting out all fat and counting calories. Endless misery for very little result.

Yes maybe I lost 20 or 40 or even once over 60lbs but my insulin problem was still there, still waiting for me to relapse which I always did. The eating disorder would kick in, the cravings would become uncontrollable and the weight would come storming back on.

I have now lost 10kg or 22lbs in 4 months. It has not been a crash diet it has been steady and doable. The eating disorder has gone. I eat a good meal at lunch time and my afternoons now speed by with productive activities and then it is time for dinner. The fats and oils I am consuming during meals are holding back the cravings for carbs and the only 'bread' I eat is flax bread, 2 small slices, once a day. Not 6 slices of toast in a binge mid afternoon.

Can I eat like this for the rest of my life? Yes I believe I can. I can cope with restaurant meals and holidays. My only issue is eating at other peoples houses. Do I take my flaxbread? Do I take a suitable drink just in case they only have wine or sugar filled mixers?

For years I was on a low fat diet. Even when not dieting I still did not deliberately add fat to my meals. So this is a big change. I am not just consuming a normal amount of fat or oil. For me normal was zero. So I have to make sure I put pats of butter on my veg, or add olive oil to my salads. I take sesame oil as a supplement and have 1 tspn per day.

All this is giving me about 600 to 700 calories from fat a day. I am consuming about 1500 cals per day. Far more than on my low calorie diet.

Interestingly when I work out what I think my calorie needs are for the day it used to work out about 1800 cals per day. Food eaten calories plus calorific value of weight lost ( assuming all that was fat). Working that calculation now gives me a figure of 2270 which means my calorie needs have increased by 470 cals per day because I now eat fat instead of carbs.

Another fact I picked up is that the body can waste fat. If it is getting too much and does not need it it can be burned off with the brown fat and can be excreted. All carbs if not needed for energy are stored as glycogen and fat. The body does not waste any sugar or starch.

Slender and Elegant

I have decided that is what I am going to aim for. I really dont know what weight that will be. Most advice is to return to the weight you were as a teenager. That wont apply to me as I was an obese teenager! I am trying to think back as to when my weight problem started. I remember my sister and I going to ballet class, I looked like a pink baby elephant in my tutu, sister looked like a ballerina! I am pretty sure at 6 or 7 I was in the back row.

I saw myself in a mirror in the spare room the other day and thought yes I can see I am looking thinner round the hips. I dont normally look in mirrors. When you are nearly 100kg you try and avoid them.

I am trying to send motivational messages to friends and family who also want to try a low carb diet. At the beginning it is so difficult to get your head around the foods that you can now eat. After 50yrs of low fat, low calorie eating I find it strangely liberating to be able to eat fatty meats and butter and bacon and still see the weight reducing.

This has also given me hope that finally I have found the answer and once I become slender and elegant I wont turn round 6mths later and find myself fat and obese again. None of my previous weight loss attempts have given me a guide book to eating as a thinner person. This one does. I can eat like this happily for the rest of my life.

I have started making the flax bread again since getting home from holiday and having 2 slices with lunch. What I decided to do was add 2 chopped prunes to the 2 cup flaxmeal recipe. I worked that out as giving me roughly 2gms carbs per slice because of the carbs in the prunes. However I feel so much better on adding the prunes. I would not eat them on their own as I have always had a problem with dried fruit. I dont have a stop button. But adding it to the bread gives it a hint of sweetness and does not set off a binge reaction.

This is a slow diet. I hope to lose about 2kg per month. So still got about 8mths to go before getting down to a 'normal' size. That I would be about a 14 UK or 10 USA size. But for now am just happy to get into a smaller size jeans and feel I have healed my body from the binging.

Lost weight on Holiday

I have just got back from two weeks at Mauritius followed by 2 weeks in Joburg. Mauritius was wonderful. We stayed in a guesthouse facing west over the sea and had beautiful sunsets. I had deliberatly not booked an all inclusive holiday with wall to wall buffet foods that we had already paid for. That is a recipe for disaster as far as I am concerned. We had beautiful breakfasts, cafe lunches and take away suppers that we could eat at the guesthouse watching the sunset.

I did have some indulgences, some mini magnums a few days and a tirmisu with rum and coconut. I thoroughly enjoyed them without guilt.

Got back to find I was half a kg less than when I left which I have never ever been able to do before.

Bought some roasted seasame oil in Joburg and taking half a tspn of that after lunch each day.

Its great to be able to go the whole afternoon without a binge. Been able to do that now since the beginning of January.

Started making the flax bread microwave recipe again and this time adding 2 chopped prunes to uncooked mix. That works out at 1gm carb extra per slice so is worth the extra carbs. 

Cravings are Gone

Eating in the afternoons is something I just do not do any more.

Since I started taking 2 zinc at lunch time and a low carb diet I find I dont need will power, I dont need to actively resist food in the afternoons. I no longer need it and that is a big break through for me.

I have my lunch at 12.15, cup of tea at 15.15. Then a alcoholic drink at 5 with a no cal mixer. Then dinner about 6.15. Again no need to eat after dinner. I dont need to go to bed early as I have run out of calories!

I worked out the food intake at about 1400 cals and the carbs about 55 gms per day.

That is giving me a weight loss of about 1.2lbs per week. Not a vast amount but the first time I have been able to lose comfortably each week without a binge to set me back up the scale again.

Wonderful to finally figure what is going on. Wish I had discovered this 40 yrs ago. When I think of the years of misery, low fat low carb dieting only to binge it all back on again it almost makes me cry!

My 'Special' Body

For about a week now the scale had been fixed at one weight. I found that disappointing but it did not lead me to giving up or eating more than is on my meal plan, or less.

I just kept on with the same meal format and supplements and still found that the awful hunger for sugar and starch in the afternoons was kept at bay. So I knew that eventually the scale would have to reflect what I knew was happening in my body.

Have finished my Zone books. Just read the Anti aging Zone but also ordered Age Zone and found they are the same book!

What I am rereading now is Protein Power Lifeplan.

I have a 'special' body. It is not like normal peoples and does not respond like a normal body. Maybe there are many of us like me now. Certainly more than there used to be when I was a child.

My body is intolerant to carbs. My insulin goes sky high when I eat them, All the energy from the carbs is locked into the cells by insulin. My body is then starving for energy as the fat cant escape the insulin trap. My hormones and eicosanoids are all influenced by the high insulin and my system is geared to making bad ones that inflame and cause fatigue. I didnt get enough good essential fatty acids to keep my body processes running smoothly.

Going on low fat, low calorie diets only made the whole sorry mess worse.

I tried the Atkins diet a few years back but I did not get the relief from the binging and un natural hunger that I should have done. I dont know if my carbs were too high or I am just a stubborn case.

Since starting on the 2 zinc a day I have found out what it is like to eat a normal lunch and then not feel any hunger till supper time. Those 5 to 6 hrs when I can concentrate on things other than food have shown me that I dont have to suffer like I have done in the past for the rest of my life. There is light at the end of the tunnel. 

This time because I have got the fundamental body chemicals running smoothly there is no danger of putting the weight back on. It may be coming off a bit slower than I would hope but it is better to lose 1lb and keep it off rather than losing 2lbs and gaining back 4!

Normally diets make me feel tired. I watch the clock in the afternoons to see if it is snack time yet. This one the afternoon just drifts past and I can do productive things and suddenly it is time for dinner. 

I have not yet got to the point of missing a meal because I forgot to eat but food is not my top priority any more!

So happy to be in the 80kg range, now aiming for the 70's.

Plan to never in my life be in the 90kg again now I understand why my eating was so out of control.

I want to be slim

I am not sure about how it will be living as a slim person.

For over 50 yrs I have been at least 4st or 25kg overweight. My meetings with me as a slim person have been very fleeting.

I have struggled and fought with myself to keep my calories low and in the past have lost 40 to 60lbs but the desire for carbs in the afternoons never went away. So inevitably once the diet was finished the weight started to return, slowly at first and then rapidly.

This zinc assisted eating plan feels different. For a start I am not losing weight in the usual places. I have noticed my face and wrists and legs are reducing quicker than I would have expected.

Because of the lack of cravings in the afternoons I can enjoy a no carb drink late afternoon. I have been having vodka and diet sprite. Followed by a substantial low carb supper with meat, chicken or fish and vegetables.

This is what normal people feel like but I did not know as I have never been normal.

Maybe now I have a chance at eating like a normal person and looking like a normal person!

Fragile Diet

I have come to realize how fragile my diet is. As I put each day behind me I congratulate myself on getting through another day without a binge or inappropriate eating.

I have dieted and lost weight many times before. Each time I have felt that was the last time but have put the weight back on. Each time I have eaten what was on the list, done the exercise and have lost weight but have never gone more than a week or so without being overtaken by a binge and have to pick myself up and start again. It just seemed to be the way I was made.

I never understood where the need for sugar and starch in the afternoons came from but the cravings were undeniable and almost uncontrollable. It was eating on auto pilot without a stop button.

Dr Barry Sears says it because of brain starvation. If the brain cant get hold of the nutrients it needs it drives you to eat. It like putting a glorious meal in front of a starvation victim and saying hold off here till tomorrow. Almost impossible to do.

Dr Sears calls it the fat trap. The body has all the fat hanging off the body but it like a prison for the fat. All the doors are locked and insulin is the jailor not letting any fat out of those cells into the corridors and up to the brain. So the brain calls out for a take away!

So the first step is to reduce insulin, give it shorter shifts! So eat less food that produces insulin. Eat more good fats and they and protein can unlock the fat cells doors.

Check for signs of inflammation from Dr Sears book Toxic fat and take steps to increase the levels of essential fatty acids in the diet, fish oils and evening primrose or borage oils.

And last but not least see if you feel better taking zinc tablets. Start with 2 a day and then reduce and see if that stops the cravings and allows you to be in control of the food you put in your mouth.

The beauty of this is that I have always enjoyed my food and looked forward to my meals, I trained as a Home Economics teacher, but because of the binging my evening meal has not been enjoyable as I try to undo the damage done earlier. Now I can have enjoyable evening meals as I know I will not be tempted to overeat in the evenings.

Perhaps this is the final cure for me? Maybe I will be able to get rid of my big elasticated trousers? Maybe this will allow me to lose the weight and never ever put it back on again?

Certainly I am foreseeing a slimmer future for myself and that is a new feeling. 

Zinc and Zone

I am being very cautious with this latest eating plan.

Looking back over my life I can pin point with exactitude the times I have been a 'normal' weight. Last years at school, at my wedding, between pregnancies and recently at my daughter's wedding.

However I never solved the problem. I would struggle for 8 to 10 mths with cravings and will power and feeling terrible to lose maybe 40 ot 50lbs and then within 6 months the weight would be back.

This got to be such a regular occurrence that I began to think what was the point of all the effort and deprivation if I was going to be back at the start weight so soon. Why bother in the first place?

I have clothes in my cupboard running between 4 different sizes. The nice clothes that are too small, then the elasticated clothes that are my regular outfits.

I know there are reports that 95% of obese people who diet return to their previous weight within a year. Those that dont are still on low calorie and doing regular exercise to keep their new figure.

I could never go from lunch time to dinner without some sort of snack. Within 2 or 3 hours of eating I would be climbing the walls with a form of hunger. Once I started on eating when that feeling arrived it was almost impossible to stop till I was bloated and feeling sick. This has been going on since childhood and I never thought it would go away, but it has.

Since I started trying the Zone Diet plus 2 zinc tablets a day my afternoons are what normal people experience. I can forget about food, the hours seems to pass quickly and I can keep busy. I have my tea around 3pm. A vodka and diet sprite at 5pm and supper at 6.30pm. After that I do not need to eat again till the morning.

My crumbling split broken finger nails are suddenly growing beyond the ends of my fingers and I can now shape and polish them. Something I have never managed to do before.

All in all I finally have a shoot of hope in my life that I am finally in a position to understand why I have struggled with this all my life. Too much insulin and not enough zinc.

The zone diet is allowing me to finally access my fat stored in my fat cells so my brain is happy even though my calories are around 1200 per day. The zinc is stopping the cravings and binging in the afternoons and evenings.

Miracle of miracles I am finally enjoying my meals and am satisfied with the choice and quantity I am eating.
As Dr Sears says if you are not hungry losing weight is so much easier.

Zinc is what works for me

Over the last few months I have been again attempting to get my weight down. Seems a never ending job, like rolling stones up hill only to find them back down at the bottom of the hill the next day!

However this time I am working with my body rather than against it. Instead of endlessly punishing my body by depriving it of food I am taking a zinc supplement 2 x 15mg tablets at lunch time and that gives me the ability to not eat during the afternoon and I have a nice meal waiting for me in the evening with an alcoholic drink beforehand.

It is early days yet, but I am 5.5kg down from Christmas. So thats about 12lbs. I have never felt the urge to binge since I started on the zinc. I got the idea from the book Primal Body Primal Mind. I think I have been suffering from zinc deficiency for years, maybe ever since I was a child.

I have had other symptoms of zinc deficiency but at the the time I did not know thats what they were. One is horrible soft flaky breaky nails, the other is lack of smell. That and craving for carbs in the afternoons and evenings are all linked to not enough zinc! Nails are now past the ends of my fingers and worth a manicure and the other day I could smell garlic! Both signs that I have been short of zinc.

On other diets every day I would wake up wondering if this would be the day I failed and ate myself senseless. Now I wake up with hope and looking forward to finding my clothes looser and planning what I am going to eat.

I am not entirely low carb. I allow myself some small biscuits with lunch and an apple a day and some homemade yogurt. I am also having zylitol with my yogurt and apple. Nice to enjoy something sweet without the guilt.

Maybe I have finally found something that works for me.

Ketones, brain starvation and Brain Insulin

All trips and medical visits over so can settle in back at home.

Expected to put on some weight and eating was out of control some afternoons. More on that later.

However overall am pleased that my weight did not go sky high to the point where I would yet again give up!

Have been continuing with my research into my problem. That uncontrollable need to consume glucose in any form in the afternoons.

Found some help in the on line carb smart emagazine. It is from Dana Carpendar and I would recommend you get a subscription.

In there they advertised a book about Alzeheimer's by Dr Newport. She has been doing research on brain chemistry as her husband is suffering from early onset of the disease.

What she found was that they have discovered that the brain makes insulin. So it is not just the pancreas that makes insulin.

Her hypothesis is that in Alzheimer's the brain stops making insulin and the cells of the brain start starving and dying as they cannot receive the glucose they need to stay functional.

She found that her husband improved tremendously with replacing most oils and fats in his diet with coconut oil.

I then transposed this into the obese body. What if the brain is starving but the body is obese?

If the brain cant get the glucose it needs to function it is going to make you eat regardless of what your body looks like and how much extra fat you have available.

If I can get my brain to run on ketones in the afternoon then maybe I wont get the cravings and binging that have caused me to be obese.

Started this yesterday. Have started making bullet proof coffee using coconut cream and coconut oil instead of butter.

Hoping to buy some MCT oil over the next week or so.

Yesterday afternoon I definitely noticed a difference in my brain. Usually I feel lethagic in the afternoon and really dont want to start or finish anything. Yesterday I completed the wage program.

Early days yet but if I can keep my brain happy and content and also lose weight it would be so wonderful.

I did get on the scale this morning for the first time in 6 weeks. Thought if I dont know what I weigh now how can I know this is working?

Other things I am monitoring.

Whether I can slide my rings off my fingers easily.

Whether my new jeans fit.

Whether my muffin top stays away.

Whether hips and waist measurements reduce.

Whether cravings and binging stop.

Hopefully that way I wont get fixated on the scale as I usually do.

Finger Nails, obesity and Essential Fatty Acids

None of my nails have broken, split or torn in the last 2 months. I started on evening primrose 3 months ago and take enough to give me 360mg GLA per day. So that works out at 2 borage oil or 4 evening primrose ( 1000mg).

All my life I have wanted 2 things. To be able to control my weight without starving and to have pretty nails that I could paint and file and that would grow beyond the ends of my fingers.

Looks like I am well on the way to achieving both those goals.Years ago I took a picture out of a magazine showing a hand bag ( louis Vutton!) with a picture of a hand holding the bag with beautiful nails. Not particularly long pointy ones. Just a nice curve to the shape and they were painted red. I now have the same nails.

I keep waiting for this to stop working. For the cravings and binging to come back and my nails to go back to their usual soft flaky tearing selves.

Would be interesting to know if any other obese people have problems with their finger nails. I think Ann Gittleman in her Eat Fat lose weigh said that people who are deficient in GLA will not have strong nails and will not have smooth hair.

I have got enough supplements to last me till the end of this year and will be ordering more then. Reading Inflammation Nation. Not got to the end yet but he also believes part of the problem facing us is a lack of EFA in the modern diet.

I believe first comes the EFA deficiency, that causes cravings for sugar and starch, that causes excess insulin which causes inflammation resulting in obesity.

Sort out the EFA deficiency and the rest will fall into place.

Buy the book Obesity, A Deficiency Disease? on Amazon for your kindle, ebook download.

Dieting with Avocados

Found some very nice avocados in the market yesterday. They are the nice creamy butter ones. Bought 10 as we had a party yesterday evening.

Planned a light lunch so had half an avo with half a tin of tuna in oil. Was not tempted by any of the sugar and sweet treats on offer in the evening.

Had more avo plus cream sauce with steak and farmers sausage for supper.

Drinks were decaf coffee and water.

Just because the food is there I dont have to eat it! I am sure that need to eat and uncontrollable picking at food while preparing food is caused not by low blood sugar but by the body's need to find the essential fatty acids it is missing. If you give it those EFA then suddenly your eating is under control and not something that you need will power to control. You eat meals and then naturally stop after one portion. No deprivation or agonising for hours over whether to eat something or not.

10 bars of chocolate in the fridge! My brain not even thinking about them. Not on my menu any more!

So nice to have the freedom to eat nice food without guilt.

Check out

Obesity, A Deficiency Disease?

Available for download to your kindle from Amazon.

40lbs

Thrilled this morning to find I am at  81.8kg which means I have lost 40lbs since my heaviest.

I have still no idea how my body works! Total mystery. Yesterday I had a nice piece of steak for lunch and then instead of my usual fish had some of the cooked chicken livers for supper.

Was reading the other day about the curlecue graph of weight loss. Thats where you lose weight and then it comes back on for a few days and then you drop lower than the last lowest weight and then up again. That seems to be what my body does. So I will expect that number to go up again tomorrow for no good reason but hopefully it will drop again later in the week.

Have been ordering some little books on evening primrose. The one I got last week said it has been documented that weak and splitting nails improve within 1 month of starting on evening primrose. A Dr went so far as to say that he would say that a deficiency in omega 6 fatty acids, GLA, can cause weak and flaky nails. I have not had a finger nail tear or flake in 2 months now. Getting to the point where I will have to file them!

What I find interesting is that reading the results of adding evening primrose to the diet are all good but very little has been documented on using a low carb diet plus evening primrose. Plenty of low fat plus essential fatty acids, but there I think the effect of the high insulin, due to the high carb of the diet, would negate any effects shown by the adding of EFA.

Like Dana Carpendar in her book 'How I gave up my low fat diet and lost 40lbs" I have done no exercise to lose this 40lbs. I have not been going to the gym, or getting the dance DVD's out.

My body has been more active purely because I have felt better. I am up and doing stuff. Not sitting in my chair watching TV all day!

I have been working out how long it takes me to lose 1kg. This last one took 14 days. The one before took 21 days. I found that for me it is better to take my EPO in the morning and not take my omega 3 fish oil at the same time but take it in the evenings. When I was taking the 2 together that was when it took me 21 days to lose a kg.

Every day on my previous diets could have been failure day. The afternoon I would lose control and eat myself into a stupour. With evening primrose that fear has left me. I have found the cure for me.

At 2kg a month I should have a normal body by Christmas! I will also have a normal eating pattern and a normal appetite and normal size clothes!

Childhood Obesity

I have been reading some books on obesity in childhood. Children who have BMI's over over 30 before they start school. Babies of 6 months being continually hungry and so being fed formula and solids, their weight is then far too much for their age and size.

As far as I know I was a normal size baby. Photos of me aged 3 or 4 show a normal sized toddler, but by the time I got to school age at 5 I was already tubby. I loved my food and would also be ready for seconds. I did not seem to have a stop button when it came to food. We always had starch with our protein, meat and potatoes, rice and chicken etc. And we always had a pudding probably with custard.

I struggled with my weight and trying to fit into normal size clothes all my school years. I did not want to be fat but could not cope with alternative which as far as I could see was to be hungry all the time! Various diets were tried but they all ended in a binge and failure.

From what I have learnt about myself now, 50 years later, is that my body does not make enough gamma linolenic acid from any linolic acid ( sunflower, soya corn oils) that I consume. As most of my diet has been fat free for the last 50 yrs this is not surprising. After my early experiences in dieting the one food I never added back into my diet was fat and oils, until now.

Because I was short on GLA my body was not able to make the good prostaglandins PG1 and any omega 6's that were consumed went to make the PG'2 which are the inflammatory ones. I did  not have much fish oil either so PG'3 were also in pretty short supply. So the only EFA I was ingesting were the ones designed to make my obesity and inflammation problem worse.

I also had cravings for sugar and starch ( notably bread) in the afternoons which I believe were a direct result of the shortage of GLA. As soon as I started adding Evening Primrose and Borage oil to my diet the cravings and binge sessions stopped. From the very first day!

So my recommendations for the obesity epidemic is that all pregnant women should take EPO during their pregnancy so that the unborn child received the EFA he/she requires. While the mother is nursing she should also continue the EPO. This will also help with any weight gain due to the pregnancy.

Babies fed on formula are supplied with EFA in the baby milk. If a baby seems to be continually hungry then I have read that it is possible to pierce open a capsule of EPO and then rub the oil onto the thighs and arms of the baby where it will be absorbed. Please read up about this and check with a doctor first before you do this. Once the child is eating solids it is easy to add EPO to food and to try and cut out as many sources of sugar and starch and trans fat and empty oils as possible.

Children should never be put on a fat free diet. They should be given full fat milk and not skim milk. Water should be given instead of soda. No child should be given fruit juice unless with a meal and then it should be diluted with water. Butter is better and olive oil is good. Breakfast should be protein with fat. Boxed cereals should be banished from the breakfast table.

The last 40 years have been an experiment in how not to advise a population to be healthy. We can all see the results. Good fat and oils do not cause heart disease and do not cause obesity. In fact they do the opposite. They protect the heart by reducing inflammation and if the body gets the EFA it needs, the appetite reduces to normal and weight loss is possible. Calories have very little to do with it!

Evening Primrose stops cravings and binging

Have been rereading my books to see if anyone has written about the effect of EPO on cravings and weight loss. Ann Louise Gittleman wrote a book in 1999 called Eat Fat Lose weight. How the right fats can make you thin for life.

She definitely was on the right track there but I think put more emphasis on the fish oils ( omega 3) compared to the seed oils Omega 6 and GLA. I have found that I get a better result when I take my EFA separately  So EPO in the morning and at lunch time and the fish oils in the evening.

What I did find was the diet she recommended at the end of the book had too much glucose for me. She was advising drinking orange juice with breakfast and or fruit plus a low carb bread. Her lunches and dinner recommendations are fine.

I am much happier having a protein breakfast with fat and that sets me up for the day. I rarely feel hungry and have no trouble sleeping at night.

I am staying away from fruit completely, I may see if I can have one piece of fruit as part of a meal once I have lost the weight I need to. If I find myself binging on fruit then I will have to stop eating it again.

Looking forward to getting to the 40lb loss mark and under 80kg. First should take me about 2 weeks and the second about a month or two.

Finger Nails and Obesity

All my life I have wanted pretty nails. Not particularly long talons but nails that would grow beyond the ends of my fingers and that I could file into a nice shape.

Never happened, unless I paid or bought false ones that stuck on my nails and turned the nail underneath into soft tissue paper!

As regular readers here will know I started taking Evening Primrose and Borage oil supplements just before Christmas last year. I now take 2500gms to give me 350mg GLA each day. I take this with Vit E but I only take my fish oils Omega 3's in the evenings as I believe the GLA and Omega 3's compete for the enzymes needed to process these fatty acids.

The books say it takes 6 to 7 months for a finger nail to grow from the nail bed to the end of the finger so I was not expecting to see any finger nail growth till towards the middle of the year. But surprise surprise it is only 3 months and already I have nails that are so much stronger and more flexible and dont flake and tear and they are just beyond the end of my fingers now. Today they have red nail polish on them! They dont look like my nails!

I have been deficient in essential fatty acids all my life. I dont know if I have not been consuming the mother fatty acids needed to make these, or if my body does not make the enzymes in enough quantity to process the Omega 6's in my diet. I dont use a lot of grain/bean oils so it could be 6 of one and half a dozen of the other.

What I do know is when I take the EPO and Borage oil, on its own, my appetite is completely normal. I no longer get cravings in the afternoon and evenings. I no longer binge. I can eat my supper and then stop eating and dont even think about food for hours at a time.

I never want to be so out of control around food again. It was not hunger it was a deficiency.

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