Hi All!
Kimski – I just wanted to thank you again for your post. I hope you were not offended by my asking if it was really that easy for you? Whenever I’m following anyone else’s plan, everything becomes complicated. I fail to follow my own voice of reason and get so trapped in the “do’s” and “don’t’s” of it all. Hey, I like the statement you made in your location marker, “Ohio (should be out west).” We love the West and hope to head out their for a vacation this year.
M1whowaits – thank you for your posts and your good advice. I don’t know what it is (and please, please believe me…this is not a slam in any way, shape, or form – it is so very easy to take things out of context when we are just writing back and forth to each other), but when I got to the sentence where you said that you make casserole dishes “with the proper balance of protein, fat, veggies and carbs” – as soon as I read that, my shoulders became tight and I held my breath. Isn’t that funny? Maybe, pathetic is more like it? There is just something within me that has such a huge problem with and such an adverse reaction to dietary rules and regulations – to the extent that I become completely lethargic over these issues. It’s probably because I’ve been trying for so long, spinning my wheels and getting absolutely no where but sicker and sicker. I truly wish I could be where you are and to have the confidence in this program that you do, because there are many, many that need to hear what you have to say. For many, many people this is exactly what they need to hear. I just wish I could believe it for myself. I truly wish I could “stick” to SP and believe in it like you do. I hope I’m not upsetting others by discussing this.
Someone that I knew once had a distant family member that was from a different country come to America with her family to live. I forget where they were from. But this poor woman (and I use to laugh about it, but now it’s not so funny to me anymore) got to the point where she absolutely hated going to the grocery store because she faced too many options. She only wanted to feed her family well – this was very important to her and she took it very seriously. She started buying more and more of the cheaper, easier to fix food, and began feeling very badly about what she was doing. She actually wound up having a complete nervous breakdown over food. She simply could not handle going to an American supermarket with all of its options….it was something that had been totally foreign to her her whole life. That’s how I feel today. There’s something about what I am doing – the way in which I am approaching food – that is causing a meltdown!
Cavendish – I love your posts! Too funny….maybe you really should go back to school and become a nutritionist. I know of a nutritionist that actually advises her Type II diabetic patients to go off all diets, and to, of all things, listen to their bodies….eat when hungry and stop before becoming too full. She explained that (now I haven’t seen the scientific studies on this, but I have to assume I can believe what she says) even if a person is just thinking about eating a certain food – let’s say a chocolate brownie – their blood sugar rises. She found, in the course of her career, that she has more success with Type II’s with teaching them to just eat when hungry whatever they want in smaller amounts than to have them try to follow a sheet of dietary information (which she says none of them will stick to in the long run). She says that their blood sugar levels remain much more balanced by just allowing them to go ahead and eat a few bites of a brownie, than to have them thinking about the foods that they “should” never touch again. She counsels them consistently on keeping their quantities small and the quality as good as possible. But she’s found something that works for her and her patients. After years of trying to get people to stick to Type II diabetic diets that they will never stick to, she started researching this approach to food and found it much more reasonable and doable. Isn’t that interesting?
Afwife made me laugh – she simply quoted everything I said…..too funny. I think there are a lot of us out there that are just plain tired of having food control our lives. If I could do SP – or anything else, for that matter – without it becoming a “control” issue, I just don’t think I’d have this problem. But then if I could have done that, I wouldn’t be where I am today – over 30 years of dieting, planning out my meals, on and on, with no success. After all, I’m still losing that first 15 pounds I gained back in 1972. And I’m gaining it and losing it over and over and over again. I am having to face the fact that whether it’s a diet or a plan or a principle, for some reason, I just can’t do it anymore and still remain sane and have a life other than food. I have even read that there is some rather hefty studies that show greater health risks for those that go on diet after diet. It seems it’s better for you to keep the 30 pounds of extra weight than it is to lose it and gain it back, over and over again. The Diet Myth went into this a little, but I’ve also read it from other sources.
I certainly hope that what I am saying here does not make others think that I am attacking them or their choices. I would never say that the place where I am is better or more sound or more reasonable. I’m just having to face some things about myself….not any of you – you are all so great! Really, I’ve been on message boards that seem to want to verbally rip others apart just for the fun of it.
BBQgal – I was part of OA for several years. I live in the Chicago area and we had so many people attending the meetings in my area that it was a gymnasium full of people. The problem was that there were so few sponsors that there just weren’t enough to spread around. The sponsor that I approached already had close to 10 people that she was sponsoring and even though she wished she could have sponsored more, she was just plain running out of time! I went for several years about 20 years ago. I couldn’t find a sponsor to “work” the program with me and found myself on the phone all day long talking to others who were having the same problem. As things in my life shifted and I got busier, I just eventually stopped going. I wish you all the best. Since you have a sponsor, be thankful and treat her well (as I’m sure you do).
Momto3boys – oh the joys of nursing. I envy you! We only had one child – after 12 years of marriage. I am SO thankful for her, but surely wanted more. I kept hoping that God would give us more, but it just wasn’t in His plan for us. Our daughter loves being an “only.” Too funny! Since you eat out a lot, I’m sure the SP is very easy to follow, and I would never want to discount the health aspect of what we do and don’t put into our mouths. I mean, it really does come down to whether or not we have healthy blood. The way I think about this is I am, in essence, feeding my blood. Now, I’m not a doctor, but this seems to help me to choose “healthier” options when I have a wide variety of food in front of me. I think about what I’m actually putting into my blood system. I hope that makes sense. But it’s just so absurd for me…the less I try to adhere to some “program,” the healthier I eat. I mean this literally, the ONLY time I eat junk for a prolonged period of time and not just a now-and-then type of thing and the ONLY time I overeat is when I am approaching another diet/program/plan. Because I have been “dieting” for over 30 years, I am in absolutely horrible shape…..all from trying to lose that first 10 pounds. This is just amazing to me as I stand back and look at all of it objectively.
Ksrt – thank you for your words, and I hope you are feeling better? This made a lot of sense to me: “I just think their body works to change what they eat into energy. Dieting is a work around for a body that is not changing food into energy.” The way I think about this, and this is just my little pea-brain talkin’ here, is that we all change food into energy – but like you said, some more efficiently than others – but we do all change food into energy. For me, if I eat a really big dinner, I won’t feel hungry for almost a 24-hour period because I ate just too darn much and my body must still be turning that previous meal into energy. If I then choose to eat again, before I’m truly hungry, I wind up overeating, because I’ve lost track of my hunger level and satiation level. If I’m not hungry going into the meal, I have a hard time figuring out how much to eat. When I get to the point that I’m eating in smaller amounts, the hunger level is increased….I become hungrier more often during the day, and I eat more often, but just enough to feel comfortable. I try to always walk away from the food feeling still just a little hungry. That’s what seems to work best for me.
I’ve also learned to be at that level of hunger that enables me to eat with my family so that that time is not interrupted. That is extremely important to me. I just have to make sure that I don’t eat too much too close to dinner time. For example, if I haven’t eaten much during the day and then all of a sudden around 2 in the afternoon I realize that I am quite hungry, I just make a Triscuit cracker with some spicy cream cheese on top and maybe an apple slice to go with it. Not much at all…enough to keep me from being hungry, but not so much that I won’t be ready to eat with my family again in a few hours. If I find myself just not hungry at all at dinner time because I ate way too much for lunch, then I go ahead and fix a wide variety of food, and just eat a few bites of this and that – whatever tastes best to me at that time. I find if I eat only what tastes best, that seems to be just what my body is asking for and get that feeling of satiation and satisfaction quite easily and don’t tend to overeat. If I eat the protein first, because that is what someone says I “should” do, I lose track of what tastes good and what doesn’t….and then I invariably go on to overeat. I now eat the best (i.e., what I most want to eat at that time) and save the rest for last and might not finish everything on my plate. Whereas in the past, I’d eat everything else first, and save the “best” for last. Now, because I feel up rather quickly, I want to make sure I’m only eating the “best” (i.e., what my body truly wants at that particular time). It winds up being a “low-everything” diet. Low in sodium, because the quantity of food that I wind up eating is low. Low in calories – even though that’s not particularly important to me. Low in carbs, and on and on. If anything, Cavendish, it might wind up being rather high in fat because I find that I do choose high-fat items first (like the cream cheese on a cracker – it’s a little cracker, but I heap quite a bit of cream cheese on top LOL!). I find that when I eat that way (high-fat), I get away with so much less food but feel quite satisfied.
Santabarb – I agree with you totally. I really do believe that SP is a very healthy way to eat. But why is it for me, that what is healthy for my body is so darn damaging to my psyche? And what’s funnier, as I think about how I went through this in the past, I actually wound up eating quite healthfully when I was just approaching food from a hunger/satiation level. For the most part, my meals were more “balanced” in the way that Dr. S recommends, but then there were days when that just was not what I was interested at all in eating. I ate basically what I wanted in those days (in small amounts) and then another day would come along and I’d be craving really healthy food.
Tazzieone – I loved your statement: “I am hoping that will get better now that I don't feel like I am gonna starve to death.” I wish you all the best with SP.
Cavendish – I think we are on the same page – true diet-addicts at heart - too funny! I will look at some of the books that you suggested. Fun! I don’t know where to go with the “Moderation” thing. The last thing I would want to do is to discuss issues that would make things more difficult for someone else. After all, this is a SP message board, and I respect that so much. I would be discussing the eating of certain food items that might really be a problem for someone else. Almost like going on a vegetarian board and continuing to discuss the eating of meat. What to do?
Picaboo, thank you and good for you! You’ve been able to shift away from food issues and onto the more important issues of being fit and active and not caring what others think. Very good advice. I wish I could be more active, but I have chronic nerve damage from the result of a surgery back in 2001 and I’ve never been the same since. Ugh! I try to walk, but can only manage about 3000 steps on a pedometer a day. That’s my limit. I have to be very careful since then or I wind up in a chair for weeks/months at a time depending on how much I have re-damaged the area. Anyway, I will keep you up to day in your journal. Thanks so much for the invite. You’re a sweety!
Mab1224 – you just took the words right out of my mouth. I’m 51. I woke up thinking about this very thing this morning. I look back on when I was 18 and went on my first diet. I’m 5’5” and I weighed all of 123 pounds at the time. However, this was the “Twiggy” era, and I wanted to weigh 115. I went on a severe deprivation/exercise program. I dieted and exercised myself down to 115 and was ecstatic! I stayed there all of one week. Instead of going back up to 123, my body quickly crept up to 130!!!!! To me, it was a nightmare. I had NEVER been overweight one day in my entire life. I look back on those pictures and just weep. On my wedding day, I weighed 125 pounds and thought I was fat! Unbelievable! The next step was Weight Watchers, back down to 125, then off WW and up to 150. Then it was WW again, and again, and again. Then Overeaters Anonymous. Then Jenny Craig. Then Liquid Protein (thank you Oprah). Then on Atkins, then off Atkins…then on a raw food diet, then off a raw food diet….then on a vegan/starch based diet…then off it. And on and on. I know that what I’ve done to my body is horrible. But at this point, food rules and regulations just no longer work. For me now, it’s getting back in touch with what my body seems to need at any given moment, eating as little of it as I can, and then moving on with my life. And your statement about all of the diet newsletters that you get in your daily email made me laugh out loud. I just went through and “unsubscribed” to every last one of them last week. I’m just sick of it…they all contradict each other and they all, invariably, have a book or supplements or whatever to sell. Gosh, we live in America…it’s not wrong to write a book or to sell something to make money off of it….I’m just tired of being the one that supports them! Let someone else do it for awhile. Mab1224, I wish you the very best. Somehow I hope you can keep me up to date on what you are doing. Maybe I really should start a journal and you could start a journal, too?
Oh well, it’s another book here. I just didn’t want to overlook anyone. Thank you all. I was very conflicted about whether or not I should even start this post. I could have put this in a journal, but I wanted to put it on a board so that I could have a conversation about this. I wasn’t sure how many people actually read the journals. Maybe I’ll be the guinea pig here and do the moderation thing again more long term and see if, in the long run, some of these health issues that I’m dealing with will improve. If not, I can always go back to SP, but then I know what will happen!!! I do wish I could find a “moderation” board of some kind. But I appreciate so much for all of you being so kind and considerate. I’m not attacking here in any way…just reaching out for help. I just can’t seem to be on anyone’s “plan” anymore. Boy, I sure do wish this was easier for me and for others as well. M1whowaits….I am very happy for you.
I wanted to edit this to answer Ksrt's question:
"p.s. Were you the one who was trying the glucofast? I would be interested in how that's working out for you!"
I am not the one who was doing glucofast. I don't even know what that is. LOL! That was "Lessmom" I think, or least, she was the one who started that thread.