I sat down with one of those WebMD diet calculation programs and ran what Jane and I eat, daily. It throws a snit fit if you don’t admit to a snack: wrong. We don’t. Period. So it made me say we have a fruit snack when we, in fact, have nada, zip, NOTHING. We have one boiled egg at breakfast, a cup of granola with low carb, lowfat, or synthetic milk at noon, I may or may not have one skinny no-sugar latte, depending on whether I’m skating or gardening, Jane has only water, and we have typically, half a head of cabbage, 3 carrots and a single 2″ potato for supper. Sometimes Jane has a cocktail. Sometimes I have wine, say 2-3x a week. Our caloric intake is, are you ready? About 800-1000 depending on the alcohol. The calorie-burning that the same program figures for our specific activities (skating and gardening) is 1900. We can hold our weight steady at our activity level with an 800 calorie intake. No snacks, no desserts. We go off our diet now and again (about once a week) and have (gasp) a hamburger and fries or we split an order of nachos, or we have a french dip with side salad. It makes no difference in our weight, but we will gain a pound if we eat out 2 days running, and in a week we can get it back off under the regimen given above. We split a pizza, oh, once every 3-4 months. We never have hotcakes, no syrup, no desserts, ever! no snacks, no chips, nothing but the damn boiled eggs. We don’t eat out any more. And it makes no difference. We DO not gain weight on this diet, but we do not lose appreciably. Name me reasonable people who can maintain on an 800 calorie diet while skating and working power equipment, shoveling, hand-excavating, and moving 14 yards of dirt. We can. Damn! it’s disheartening. It seems to defy the laws of physics. Or at least physiology. But the fact is—we’ll faint of exhaustion, drenched in sweat, before we start burning fat. Whatever ignites it, we haven’t got.
I’ll be interested to see if it makes ANY difference whatsoever that the endocrinologist has given me one more pill a week.
And if it should, Jane will be in to see him like a shot.
For me, it was skating, and then getting a garden—which I wouldn’t have had the energy to do if I hadn’t been skating. I’m not the sort that can stick with a gym, and home exercise equipment tends to gather laundry that needs doing. But the rink is fun and social, and the garden and the waterfall are just plain pleasant to be around. I think the most useful thing is finding a place where you’re happy to be that also involves activity of some sort—preferably not the sort where you meet a bunch of people and go eat and drink! 😉 I got into that mode in my last years in Oklahoma, but when I hit 60, some sort of mental alarm went off that said rise up and do, and I’m so happy I did.
I don’t remember you mentioning pork; ham yes, but how about pork loin as a substitute for chicken and turkey?
oh, yes. Never stand between me and a pork chop.
Well then, all these chicken & turkey recipes you can substitute a lean pork loin. That should leave the recipes pretty much as they are. Well, except for onion, tomato, etc, etc, and so forth.
There is one thing you can use to lessen allergies.
Find a local hivemaster and buy their honey. It works
the same way the de-sensitization therapies do. The
honey has trace amounts of local pollen in it, too
low in concentration to trigger an attack but enough to
make your body start to ignore the stuff.
The real danger in allergies is the mental remapping
that occurs during the attack, they are a serious threat
to mental health but few physicians are aware of the
link and the altered brain chemistry.
So using honey as a sweetener is a good idea except that
it can be far too addictive in tea or coffee..GRIN
You might try refrigerator pickles, just fill a jar half
full of vinegar and toss in chunks of carrot, daikon, or
radishes, beets and turnips, raw of course.
Wait a few days and they are ready to eat. If your can stand
a bit of vinegar these are good snacks. You can add more
as you use up the pickled until the vinegar loses its
potency.
@tyr……isn’t honey great stuff? I so love having so-called Old Wives Tales proven true. You can also add honey to vinegar for a sweet-sour pickle….does not last as long as plain vinegar, but yummy….also nice to add an herb to the vinegar…..dill is classic..tarragon is yummy. I only use one herb at a time and *always* fresh.
” I think the most useful thing is finding a place where you’re happy to be that also involves activity of some sort—preferably not the sort where you meet a bunch of people and go eat and drink! I got into that mode in my last years in Oklahoma, but when I hit 60, some sort of mental alarm went off that said rise up and do, and I’m so happy I did.”
!There you go! Well said and why didn’t I think of that. I detest (well, strong word) gyms. I foxhunt during the Fall and Winter months (yes, even after 60 y/o), but afterwards, we…guess what…eat and drink! I do love barn work and grooming, but that doesn’t seem to be the ticket for weight loss. My husband is skinny and no help at all.
I hear old, friendly voices from the Track Club calling and maybe I’ll answer them and give it another go. It’s social and they don’t eat and drink a lot when done.
Thanks MUCH for the “rise up and do.” That’s just so ….Cherryh. (grin)
Good luck to you!
Hmm… CJ, do you and Jane tolerate citrus? Do you have the same reaction to chicken broth as you do to chicken? And does either of you react badly to peppermint?
Some years ago, I ran across a recipe for Greek egg and lemon soup, which is essentially chicken broth, rice, egg, lemon, and either chives or peppermint. I don’t react well to lily-family vegetables (although my reaction is mild compared to what you’ve said of your reactions), so I tried the peppermint variation.
It was wonderful! And it’s fast; less than 30 minutes from raw ingredients to chowing down. (Good with fresh bread!)
If you’re interested, I’ll post the recipe here.
Cheers,
R.
Do post. I think I’ve had that soup…actually in Greece. Enough butter and chicken broth and I do fine.
Sounds like Avgolemono – a classic Greek dish.
Yes, Avgolemono. Here’s the version I know:
2 cups chicken broth (howsoever you make it–I use flavor packets)
2 tbsp. rice
1 egg
2 tbsp. lemon
1 tbsp. peppermint leaves
Boil the broth and rice for fifteen minutes. While that’s happening, whisk together the egg and lemon. Remove the broth/rice from heat. Add some of the hot broth to the egg/lemon, then whisk the egg/lemon/broth into the broth and rice. Let stand two minutes. Stir in the peppermint leaves. Serves one heartily or two cozily, with bread and/or salad.
I love peppermint, so I put lots in. Ditto lemon. To make a heartier soup, I put in more rice. I do advise removing the soup from heat before adding the egg mixture, because otherwise it foams, but… eh. It’s forgiving. 🙂
Whatever you eat is your diet. I do not believe in “diets for weight loss”. I do believe in exchanging certain items in my diet for something else acceptable, one item at a time. If I fail I would just trade for something else. Sometimes it’s as simple as picking dark chocolate over milk chocolate. Sometimes it’s hard like finding food to eat without hydrogenated oil or high fructose corn syrup.
It’s how MUCH of anything you eat that does you in, for sure! Unfortunately, I tend to find something I like and then overdo it. I gained ten of these pounds on a sudden fondness for oranges, which were in season at the time! 😉
WOW. I just saw this article this morning on HFCS – kind of like fruit on steroids. http://organicconnectmag.com/wp/2010/05/the-impact-of-one-mans-outrage/
MalavethRed, I think if your diet makes you fat then you have a weight gain diet. I would argue you can change that weight gain diet to a weight loss diet if you want to…
That’s scary, Chakaal. I’d like to know the biochemistry of the weight gain trigger, but re my ‘orange’ comment, I’m here to say that overindulging in fructose sure can pile on pounds. When I stupidly ate all those oranges, I was so sure I was doing something healthy—after all, it wasn’t a box of chocolates, was it?
Because we’re just a wee bit sensitive to corn in this household, I tend to dodge it, but I know that fructose (fruit sugars) are not my friend. While fruit has a lot of nice nutrients, I’m not sure *that* nutrient is nice to me. As my body never met a carbohydrate it couldn’t incorporate, it also loooooves fructose!
I think the main part of the fructose problem is that unlike glucose or fatty acids and ketones, fructose MUST be processed in the liver, where it becomes triglyceride. Triglyceride is a blood fat that drives the unhealthy kind of LDL (yes, there are TWO LDLs, one of which seems to be entirely innocuous) by being offloaded in a gradual conversion that gets to LDL via VLDL.
This in itself means that fructose is a mechanism for fat storage rather than energy, because until fructose is put into a fat cell it isn’t in a form the body can use. So in the summer humans would get all the fruit they could and get some extra weight to help them through the worst time of the year – when there were no plant foods ripe and the critters were also skinny and possibly hibernating.
Fructose and humans get along fine, a few grams at a time. a 12 oz. coke has 38 grams of sugars, which means you’re looking at 20 grams or more of fructose if you just drink one can. ENTER THE BIG GULP. 453 grams = l lb. The body’s glucose *requirement* – meaning only the cells that cannot use anything else (red blood cells, cornea, a bit of the kidney) is about 5 grams/hour. For the entire body. When consuming 50 or more grams of sugar at a time you are looking at a serious overage in the supply chain, even if it’s all glucose which can be used by all cells.
But the liver will drop everything to work on fructose. For whatever reason, fructose processing monopolizes the liver until it’s all done – most livers have better things to do than process fructose – for one thing that stuff turns your liver into Foix Gras. We perpetuate equivalent torment upon ourselves, voluntarily, that has to be forced on geese – Non Alcoholic Fatty Liver Disease is a serious health issue in this country now.
So the absolute numbers we are looking at are potentially misleading. After all even HFCS 55 – is only 55% fructose vs 45% glucose. My husband is suspicious of other compounds such as dextrins in HFCS and maybe he has a point – if that is why the liver gets so het up about HFCS it would magnify any effects of the actual fructose. In any case, fructose is well documented to be more lipogenic than glucose.
Also if you look at food consumption in the last 40 years, only a few things have increased, with protein and fat staying stead or even being reduced, grains, vegetable oils and HFCS have increased. I am looking..looking for the link… arg…
blast, can’t find it. I’m at work. arg.
But, this dude has hundreds of articles on this kind of thing; http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com Click on the “diet” tag sometime when you’re not in a hurry…
It would certain explain why a sack of nice oranges equalled weight-gain disaster.
*sigh*
This is a less thorough review of the data than the one I was looking for:
http://www.ethicurean.com/2008/08/10/usda-calorie-data/
Also, google HFCS and Mercury sometime.
One has lurked, anonymously. One has read several of your books. One has thoroughly enjoyed them. And then one saw this.
*blinking in amazement* How few calories? No snacks? Hypothyroid (read: metabolism of dead sloth)? And skating? And gardening/landscaping/earthmoving?
Ye, gods! One is amazed you are able to muck about in the garden, walk in a straight line, speak/write coherently, much less think! This is not much more than the caloric intake for Auschwitz, which has a wide estimated range of 400-1300…one was appalled!
As for the weight, well…not much to add except:
-graze throughout the day–several small meals vs. 2 large(r); raw snacks like fruit or veggie sticks (season to taste)
-eat like your grandparents did (okay, so my grandparents)–lotsa veggies, some meats, homemade sweets when the spirit moves, and homemade breads from simple ingredients (note: the following foods can be detrimental when dealing with hypothyroid, especially in large doses cabbage, brussels sprouts, broccoli, cabbage and cauliflower; eaten frequently and in larger amounts–limit to a few times a week at most)
-do *not* skip your thyroid meds (it’s not good and you’ll feel like dross again…one has learned that the hard way)
-keep moving (don’t see that will be a problem, Ms. Moves Lots of Dirt)
-go easy on the beer
-write lots
Okay, the last one is purely for my own reading pleasure. I admit it. 🙂
Hope things are going better!
I am rather late, but I think that besides eating more, you should put priority on your hypothyroid problem. As long as you have not enough thyroid hormones in your system, you will be unable to lose weight. Low thyroid usually goes with being cold, sluggish, overweight for no reason, feeling unwell, being shaky and hair loss. As long as that problem is not adressed and you get a good substitution therapy (not necessarily only T4 but also T3, ask your doctor) that gets your TSH values in around 1 or lower, you will not succeed in losing weight.
Been there, done that – just the other way round. I am 2″ short of 6 feet and never got my weight up to more than 50kg. With therapy, I did not even have to work to get my weight to a healthy normal level.
–Thea
Herzogenaurach, Germany