We’ve been very bad since Jane’s birthday back in October. Now we have to get serious.
So…
Breakfast: we split a hand-cut slice of toast, with butter and jam—you need something to go on.
Lunch: probably yoghurt; maybe a Caesar salad, once a week a half a cup of soup.
Supper: Caesar salad with half a chicken breast diced and re-heated with olive oil, rolled in parmesan, no croutons, measured helping of salad dressing as per the bottle; sometimes chicken stir fry or half a cup of homemade steak stew with squash instead of potatoes.
That’ll be typical. The main object of the diet is to have very little grain, very little fat, very little meat, no processed starches or sugars; and keep to the federal guidelines (on the cans and bottles) for serving size of everything except green vegetables—of which you can have as much as you want. Wine, one glass per day.
The object is actually to lose weight, and lose it fairly expeditiously, so you feel better. Then you can add back in the things you’ve cut, but keep the portion sizes down and pad it out with veggies, mostly green-leafy type: salad dressing has to be held to 1-2 tbs, measured, not eyeballed.
Hi, CJ!
You might consider doing Hydrogen peroxide therapy. I was surprised by the loss of two pant sizes when I did it.
I wasn’t trying to drop weight. I gave all that behavior up after my stint in the military where I had to keep my weight artificially low. And since then, going on 15 years now, pleasingly plump has been my weight; never gained more, never really dropped any until the hydrogen peroxide therapy.
I didn’t change the way I ate, at all, which was why it totally surprised me. I’m guessing it may have been killing an internal yeast infection (which a lot of folks have but don’t realize since it tends to be relatively symptom-less other than being tired a lot), and the weight and bulk were lost because the yeast was gone.
http://www.educateyourself.org has info about hydrogen peroxide therapy, and a protocol to follow, if you care to find out more.
And again, LOVE your work! Any plans for more of the fortress in the eye of time series?
Dragonrider Gal, you might provide a more direct link, because the one you gave seems to only be advertising.
Forgive a fan for being forward, or for worrying, but… I see such a little bit of food planned for breakfast and lunch, and I’d hate for either of you to have health problems or to be too hungry. Take care of yourselves, please. Diet and weight loss won’t help much if either of you wind up feeling bad or cranky.
That said, my own diet has changed slightly, better portion control slightly, a few other things, so I’m trying to lose a little weight too. Partly, this is natural (grieving process) and so I’m taking advantage of that, trying to train myself back down to something more sustainable, and… well, exercise hasn’t picked up any; having to keep motivated. I think I’ll get there. (No idea what, if any weight loss yet.)
Best wishes for you both and for Lynn, this New Year!
Smokey is now officially past two. He and Goober are quite happy being spoiled!
I do hope you do not plan on that diet for more than a week or two. That does not seem like enough calories for a sustainable diet. It really all comes down to calories, and you need to eat enough calories or your metabolism will slow. The “right” amount of calories will allow weight loss and still keep your energy high. “Enough” is relative to each person. of course. You obviously know about portion control, which many Americans have not learned, thanks to super-size marketing. An important facet we have learned is to continue to eat “treats”, but in small-small portions, so as to avoid the “deprived” emotion.
We are back to being serious about diet and exercise in my household tomorrow as well. Good luck to us all.
As I may have mentioned before, I was told to go no lower than 800 Calories and 50 g of protein per day.
Use your scale! For example, those chicken breasts from Costco are very inconsistent in size. Also, it may be easier pour 15 g of dressing on your salad instead of using a tablespoon–less cleanup, too.
I keep a number of low cal. sauces on hand so I have a choice and don’t get bored. Soy sauce is pretty much salt–which is okay as long as you don’t have high BP. That it’s bad for everyone is nonsense.
Over here, 800 kcal would be taken as seriously too low for everybody but a very small person.
The minimum for the average woman would be at 1500 kcal. Less than that for a longer period of time (with long meaning anything from one day to two weeks) and the body goes into starvation mode, aka lets kill insert some desire to binge eat and in the longer term, hello headache, byebye hair, hello constantly freezing, among other things.
And after one starts eating more again – not necessarily what would normally be enough – the body goes all “Omg, lets prepare for the next starvation period, fill all those reservoirs and create some new ones to prepare for next time.”
But then it’s also said, that if one does low-anything, it should be either low-fat or low-carb not both at the same time since the body serioulsy needs both and vegetables totally do count towards calories.
There was a recent study done which could show in the blood that the body was still primed to get as much extra food as possible a year and longer after the starvation occured. http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa1105816
It’s not a maintenance diet. It’s a burn the fat I already have diet. I’m not diabetic (nor do I want to be!) but the diet is essentially ketogenic. http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0018604 Clearly, there’s a bounce back tendency, but actually the diet is quite comfortable. After all, surviving starving wouldn’t do you any good if you were so distracted you died because a saber-tooth tiger snuck up on you!
I learned a trick re salad dressing – have it on the side and dip the tines of the fork in it, then fork to the salad. you don’t use nearly as much and you get a very satisfactory dressing flavoring.
My dietician told me that I needed to watch the size of servings for garden peas. She said they’re high in starch/sugar, which then transfers to various places on the body as fat. But conversely, she said sugar snap peas are okay. So confusing. Corn is another one. Instead of using catsup, ketchup, whatever, I use salsa. No added sugar and it’s very low fat, but adds zing to the food. I don’t eat my salads with any dressing except lemon juice, so there’s no fat there, either.
that is a shockingly small amount to eat during the day and I would have thought would immediately do the starvation mode thing.
how difficult it is, the weight thing, a nightmare.
thought it was better for the metabolism to have a good breakfast, or is that old hat these days?
anyway, good luck with it, just keep healthy!!! 😀
Actually, you can eat your fill on it. Mind—you can have all the veggies you want. We get the daily allowance of fat and protein. It’s that food pyramid thing. We have a lot of dairy, excluding eggs: but cheese, and mind I said hand-cut bread. It amounts to a full slice apiece, as a machine cuts it.
I wouldn’t be doing well on that amount of food, I have to say. But, the real question is, do you and Jane feel OK with the meals like this? Would low-calorie snacks – oh, something like a piece of fruit or another shared slice of bread – throw things off? The breakfast in particular seems like it might not be *enough* to get through a morning…you both are quite active, as I understand it? I’d just be concerned about dizzy spells.
But you’re certainly aware of what you need. I’ve never had any success whatsoever in trimming out fat in my own diet, so what is healthy and good for you (and probably would be healthy for me!) seems shudderingly restrictive to my mind. Every person is different and has specific needs and cravings, though.
Please do take care – weight loss can make you feel better, but as others have mentioned, starving is not a good path to get there. *hugs*
No dizzy spells: my homemade bread is pretty substantial; and we skate. Lunch is just a calorie fillup before dinner: anything will work. We don’t often drink sodas—carbonation leaches calcium from bones; I drink black coffee (too much of it)and Jane drinks water. We do quite nicely until supper, when we try to hold it to reasonable. Carbs are kind of addictive: your body gets used to overdoses, and throws a blood sugar snit when the clock rolls around to the time when you used to get them—that cutback is the toughest thing to get through, and last night we had sweet potato chips (more than we should have) to fill out the Caesar salad. Main thing is eating just what you need, not what routine says is on the schedule, ie, we had the chips because we needed the chips that evening, when going back on the restricted intake, but we won’t continue to have the chips. Fats are mostly real butter (flavor) on toast, and I cook with olive oil.
Warning signals we watch for:
1. chill. If your body doesn’t have enough calories to keep warm on the ice rink.
2. dizziness. never good.
3. cravings—if you want it and it’s on the list, have a measured serving, not a bagful.
Plus we take vitamin and mineral supplements to be sure we don’t miss anything. We have pasta occasionally; we have rice occasionally. But ‘occasionally’ does not mean more than once a week.
Veggies are full of vitamins and minerals, and some fat, and some starch (anything that dries to a powder, eg potato or corn or peas)—and some carbs.
I can also do a hamburger that is far more pyramid-friendly than anything you get at a restaurant: small patty of lean ground beef, or veggie-burger, on one of my homemade buns—with veggie fixings and sweet potato chips. One is pretty filling. Ditto my pizza is not so bad: you definitely eat the crust (homemade and thick-style)and about 2 pieces will be filling enough: eating the whole thing would leave you pretty miserable: the equivalent of downing a loaf of bread, half a jar of spaghetti sauce, two cups of mozzarella and a half pound of sausage—all at once. The stuff you get at restaurants is often heavy with fat and oil, and ours does not leave a grease spot.
So DIY definitely helps on the fat reduction.
So we’re far from starving.
I know everyone seems to have a diet theory these days. I eat only organic non-processed foods (or minimal processing like raw cheese or yogurt). I know that I do just fine without fussing about fats….but I only eat healthy fats (mostly from plants). So, lots of organic unsalted nuts and avocado….daily fish or poultry (I really don’t enjoy mammal meats). It’s the starchy carbs that are extremely bad for me….so I avoid bread/baked goods like the plague as well as root veggies, and most grains. I do eat organic oat flakes (usually 50:50 with steel cut oats), quinoa or long grain brown rice (grains highest in protein)….often daily. And I don’t eat ANYTHING with added sugar and zero alcohol (not a sacrifice….my body doesn’t enjoy it at all). Lots of whole fruits (apples, unsweetened blueberries and cranberries etc). Lots of non-starchy veggies. Right now I’m trying to decide whether to eliminate dairy….mostly for prion disease risk….I have no problems eating dairy and LOVE LOVE LOVE my non-fat organic live-culture yogurt. Blame it on reading Sector C (enjoyable read) and a life-long terror of prion disease.
And remember that if you have elevated reverse T3 levels, all bets are off when it comes to weight loss (sigh).
Or you could lose weight the way I just did.
Russ was home for a week. The day after he arrived, I became so ill I could barely get out of bed and survived several days on no more than half a cup of water once or twice a day.
Yeah, I lost weight. It was not pleasant and the timing was both good and bad. Bad because Russ won’t be home again until April and we were really looking forward to the time together — and good because it was good to have him here to help take care of things. I still have shaky, touch of fever stuff, but I’m able to drink to nice herbal teas and have a bit of soup or the like each day. And sit at the computer. I’m days behind on getting Vision: A Resource for Writers updated, but I’m slowly working at it.
Not the best way to start the new year. Or maybe the weight loss is what I should focus on.
Bummer, Zette!
Everyone has to tailor their diets to their own bodies; everyone is unique, so every diet is also unique. (Zette’s diet is maybe a little extreme . . . what a horrible holiday! So VERY sorry to hear it!)
My husband had bypass surgery two years ago — abrupt wake-up call! The nutritionist at the hospital told me not to worry about calories, to cut fats and salts drastically instead. I did, and he controlled his snacking habit and took up walking (power walking, someone said, watching him charge down the street). In about a year he went from 255 to 185 and has kept in the 180’s since. I’m losing weight too, not as much, mostly by (non-power)walking, outside when the weather is decent, inside when it’s, well, indecent. Wintery, in fact!
I find “Just say no,” is as hard for food as it is for any other substance, and the best antidote for a craving is to fill your time with motion, deadlines and projects. There was a day not so long ago when television did not exist at all, and when you just worked or did projects until the light went.
One thing I think is very smart about CJ’s plan is eating something for breakfast. It breaks the body out of its “fasting mode” and kicks up the metabolism.
If you haven’t checked out the American Diabetic Association’s recommended diet, it’s really a pretty good long term plan for everybody. Nothing drastic balanced diet, moderation in fats, proteins, carbs, calories. Emphasis complex, high fiber carbs, mono-unsaturated oils (olive, nuts, even avocados), foods with an inherently high water content can be a clue (unprocessed). Avoidance of saturated fats, sugars, high fructose corn syrup, simple carbs.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diabetic_diet