4 posts tagged “diet”
So. My personal life is a bit...um...complex right now, and I'm officially in "obese" territory according to the height/weight charts (with a BMI of 32), but at least I'm otherwise healthy.
Today I got to do a health assessment through work (where they stick your finger and test your cholesterol, fasting glucose, and other fun stuff). Everything is terrific, including my blood pressure, and especially my cholesterol, all in the optimal range.
I chalk it up in part to my favorite breakfast: bacon and eggs.
Now, I don't eat bacon and eggs every day for breakfast. But I do eat two eggs most days, usually hard-boiled (easier/faster to cook and eat), and have bacon at least once a week, sometimes more, and usually the regular pork kind (although I also like turkey bacon and veggie bacon; although they are not anything like real bacon, they still taste good in their own special way). The eggs I eat are organic, cage free, usually local, and vegetarian fed. Non-vegetarian eggs are from chickens whose feed includes meat by-products, often other chickens. Now don't you think it's worth it to buy the more expensive organic kind? They also taste five million times better than their pale imitators.
While I was waiting for the little machine to spit out my test results, I heard the advice the skinny woman next to me got (apparently her numbers were not as stellar as mine): eat whole-wheat Total or Cheerios if you eat cereal, get lots of fiber, eat good fats (avocados, almonds, etc.). Switch from white to wheat bread.
Even if she follows that advice, it may not help enough -- it didn't help me when I was trying to regain my health, back when my triglycerides were in the triple digits, and the doc was threatening me with blood pressure medication. Have I mentioned that the majority of my immediate family takes statins (cholesterol-lowering drugs) and blood pressure medication?
What did help me was cutting out most grains altogether, except as an occasional treat (I regularly eat flaxmeal and some wheat and oat bran, as well as low-carb tortillas, which have a LOT more fiber than even the whole wheat ones), and eliminating almost all sugar (including most kinds of fruit).
It also helps that I can't stand to spend too much money on meat, so I wind up eating a lot of inexpensive chicken and ground turkey. But I eat full-fat cheese, half-and-half in my coffee, peanut butter (the grind-it-yourself kind is awesome, with no sugar or salt), walnuts, almonds, avocados, olives, and as many veggies as I can stand. And yes, bacon.
Remember when nutritionists said "don't eat fat or you'll get fat"? Turns out they were wrong. I think they are also wrong about dietary cholesterol and cholesterol in the body -- it isn't a direct correlation. Scientists have discovered that artificially created trans fats (all those "partially hydrogenated" oils) are the real culprits in many cases. Eggs are good for you (especially eggs from healthy chickens!). Bacon can be a part of your life. You might want to think twice about that bowl of Cheerios, though -- maybe try some oatmeal instead (or hot oat bran cereal), or something else that your great-grandparents would recognize as food?
My numbers...
Total cholesterol: 138 mg/dl
HDL: 62 mg/dl
TC/HDL Ratio: 2.2
LDL: 65 mg/dl
Triglicerides: 55 mg/dl
Fasting glucose: 79 mg/dl
Blood pressure: 110/65
P.S. - I love coffee too, but it has to be decaf, or I get as jittery as a spider monkey.
Now they tell me! There is now an online service called Stickk, which allows you to create contracts to lose weight, exercise more, stop smoking, etc. You can even wager money, and if you don't make your goal, it is donated to charity or given to the person you designate.
I haven't reported on the weight loss front lately, because there is no good news. I've been gaining and losing the same 5 pounds, and am having to deal with stress in various areas of my life which makes recreational eating look like much more attractive than usual. Time to buckle down, or Sis will come to visit!
If this is totally confusing to you, see my earlier $200 or 200 post.
My sister took the bet, so I'm now on the hook. Well, it's really only half a bet. Here's the deal: I set a weight loss goal, to be at or under 200 pounds by May 13, exactly four months from now. If I make my goal, great. If I don't make it by May 13, I will pay my sister $200.
I got the idea from this economist who wrote about a similar scheme of his in the Wall Street Journal. (He bet $500, but that's too rich for my blood.)
It's already working, too. I went to lunch today with the fam, and everybody else ordered dessert (bread pudding and carrot cake, yum). Of course they offered me some to be polite, but I wasn't even really tempted, because I know in my heart that bread pudding and carrot cake are not worth $200 to me.
I've also told my sister that she shouldn't try to influence the outcome by sending care packages of baked goods. Not that I would ever have a crack at 'em, since my honey has some sort of sixth sense when it comes to baked goods -- she'd probably knock me over at the mailbox.
So after months of the scale slowly creeping up, and me wondering what exactly I want to do about it, I'm four pounds down, thanks to the simplified eating plan I adapted from Tim Ferriss in his provocatively titled blog entry, "How to Lose 20 lbs. of Fat in 30 Days… Without Doing Any Exercise."
I last weighed myself May 6th, and started eating this way about 12 days ago, so I'm pretty sure it's working. I'm feeling better and my clothes are fitting more loosely, too.
You can read his post for yourself (and the many, many questions and answers that follow) but basically, for weight loss he suggests (and this is what he has practiced himself) eating lots of non-starchy vegetables, lean protein, and beans/legumes, and staying away from "bread, rice, cereal, potatoes, pasta, and fried food with breading. If you avoid eating anything white, you’ll be safe." (My adaptation/deviation from his plan: egg yolks. Life's too short to eat egg white omelettes.)
Further, he suggests picking three or four basic meals and eating those for breakfast, lunch and dinner.
One day a week is a designated "free day," when you can eat whatever you like.
This sounded reasonable and easy to follow, but my biggest concern was that free day. It seemed like a good concept -- a pressure valve and chance to go out to dinner with friends and not have to be uptight about what I'm eating. But considering my history with food, I was scared "free day" might turn into "license to binge." So my goal was to be mindful, not artificially restricting my intake on free day, but checking in with myself to be sure that I really wanted what I was eating. (This last statement may puzzle anyone who has never had an eating disorder. If it puzzles you, just go and read any book by Geneen Roth.)
My first free day was last Saturday, and it went well. I ate bacon and eggs, fruit, and a biscuit (I actually only ate about 2/3rds of the biscuit because it was the size of 4 normal biscuits) for breakfast, grazed for lunch, ate two cookies in the afternoon, had a tuna salad pita for dinner, one scoop of coffee ice cream in a waffle cone (they never make sugar-free coffee ice cream, and I don't think I've had it for three or four years), and an assortment of snacks at a dance later that night.
On balance, I ate a lot more crap that day than I normally would have before this eating plan, but I didn't eat nearly as much crap as I would have throughout the week. I also had NO desire to take another "free day" on Sunday, because all that junk gave me symptoms similar to a hangover (nope, had no alcohol at the dance) as my liver struggled to process all that sugar and starch.
Clever observers (like my honey, who spotted this right away) will recognize this plan as the 80/20 principle applied to eating. Other approaches give you more flexibility each day -- like the Weight Watchers points system -- but I have never been able to do "one small treat each day." It has invariably turned into a series of small treats culminating in one big one -- each day.
Tomorrow is my next free day. I'll let you know how it goes...
