Interesting Post over at McDougall Board

Jim just started a thread about the holidays over on the McDougall board. I have to confess that I posted a pretty negatively charged reply. Seriously, I cannot deal with the holidays this year, I just can't. I wish I could pull the covers up over my head and not come out until sometime in January.

Summing up, and Some Thoughts on Control Issues and Eating

Thanks, Bob, for giving me a place to post on this blog.
First, I'd like to try and summarize my eating experience over the past seven months. I had thought of myself as a McDougaller for a couple of years. My search for a better way to eat was triggered by a medical checkup which showed elevated cholesterol, and prediabetes. I started the McDougall plan weighing 225 pounds and initially dropped 50 pounds without too much effort. Then I got a lot less disciplined with my eating and was stuck at 175# for a long time. The truth about this "stall" is that I was addicted to food and was lying to myself about that. When I experimented with keeping a food journal, I found that I would be on plan ("good") for about three days in a row and then have a really spectacular cheat. The thing is, I wasn't noticing the frequency of the cheats...or I wasn't LETTING myself notice. I found myself showing addicted behaviors around food: sneaking food into the house, eating in private, wolfing the food down to get it all in before anyone could catch me eating, and having the sensation of watching myself acquire and eat the food, almost as if I were watching someone else. It was almost like some kind of sleep-walking; a deliberate unconsciousness of my actions. It was being in willing denial. When those pieces of the picture came together, I was shocked. At first, I tried to deny that this was happening. What? Addicted? ME!? Seriously, I had stayed away from addicting substances all my life because I'd seen addiction in action and wanted no part of it. Talk about unfair! But once the kicking and screaming was over with (figuratively) I had to admit that what I was doing sure felt and acted like an addiction.

Owning that truth turned out to be strangely liberating. I had been afraid to admit the addiction; feeling that doing that would make me feel weak and powerless. But what actually happened was that I gained a real sense of control. Once the problem was identified, there was a whole arsenal of tools for dealing with it, and I practiced every one I could get my hands on. I made a commitment to go "cold turkey" off all the trigger foods for at least a month. I kept a food journal,just for my own use. I practiced being completely honest about food both in private and in public. I embraced the concept that I was the only one who could be in total control over what I put in my own body.

Learning to plan ahead was a big part of making this all work. You've heard it before; keep the fridge and pantry stocked with the correct foods, don't let the incorrect foods into your house. Especially for the first couple of months, stay strictly away from all the "trigger" foods. Don't take even one bite. "Not ONE bite!" became my mantra. Making sure that there were "grab and go" foods in the fridge, and planning all my meals for each day became a habit, became natural. And the weight started to drop off again.

Right now, I'm at or around 140#, which is still about 20 pounds more than I want to be, but I've got the habits installed now: low calorie density foods; fresh whole plant-based foods; unprocessed foods, If you've read Dr McDougall's free plan or any of the books, you know what I mean. Life is about choices and I'm doing what I can to make sure my choices are good ones. A temptation or a craving is not a command to do something, it's a decision-point where you decide what you are going to do. Keep making the right decisions and those decisions will build on each other. Establish good habits and those habits will also build on each other. Control in one area grows naturally into control in other areas. So, with my food choices more under control, I find that I'm no longer biting my fingernails, and that I'm discovering that a lot of house cleaning can be accomplished, cumulatively, in small spaces of time. Don't try to change everything at once; take on the thing that is blocking you most, conquer it, and the rest will begin to fall into place. Or at least that's how it seems to me.

Right now, without going into too many unsettling details, things in my life feel like they are spinning out of control. It's the kind of feeling that used to send me running for fried foods and chocolate in an attempt to lose the emotional pain under a mountain of comfort food. This time, though, I am not trying to tranquilize myself with food. What I have realized is that there will always be things in life that are outside my control, but my food choices (and thereby, to a very large extent, my health) are completely under my control. There is still a part of me that could murder a bucket of fried chicken followed by a Whitman's Sampler, but it is my choice whether or not to give in to that feeling. And my choice is not to give in to that temptation, because to do so would amount to an act of self-destruction. There are moments when this feels really hard and I want to say "The heck with it. I'm angry and frightened and so very, very sad and I'm going to eat chocolate and damn the consequences!"  but resistance does seem to get easier over time. I am very much a work in progress, but there HAS been progress and that gives me incentive to keep on working toward better times ahead.

Thanks,
Cyn

Back to the Future

For the last year, this blog has been inactive while we tried out a bulletin board concept.  The bulletin board had pluses and minuses, but in the end, we are going back to the blog.  The big advantages of the blog are the relative lack of spam and expense.  What we will miss is the more free interchange of ideas on the bulletin board.  To that end, I would like to invite others to become authors here at this blog.

Being an author does not require any commitment - it just allows the author to write posts here, as opposed to comments.  The posts can be as long as you like and contain pictures and links.  One spectacular success at the bulletin board was Cyn, who really tightened up her eating and achieved great success despite being stuck in her progress for a long time.  I hope that one of her first posts here will summarize her experiences.

But blog entries here can be on any subject you like if related somehow to a healthy lifestyle.  My lifestyle these days includes a lot of home renovation work, and I am off to pick up some siding for my house, so enough for today.

One thing to consider for any readers here - it has been questioned whether this blog should be public so that anybody could view it, or private so that posters could post more freely.  I can see advantages to both approaches and wonder what readers/participants might prefer.  The blog has always been public, which allows everybody access to the information.  We have had a few abusive comments however, and a private blog would solve that.  I could screen for legit members and that would not be too hard.  OTOH, we might miss out on some great members who would have no way to know about a private blog, so what do you think?

A New Healthy Lifestyle Forum

bobandfarley.com
An idle mind is a dangerous thing.  I have been thinking about how the McDougall Board differed from the forum that Farley and I would like to belong to.  We are interested in focusing on people who are really committed to changing their lifestyle, and people who have already done so and want to help spread the word.

While browsing forum software, I spotted a cyber Monday deal that is probably too good to be true.   I don't want to give particulars until I am convinced that it is not a scam.  Buts right now I have a forum up and running, although the service seems slow.

But if anybody would like to drop in and register, I am interested in what people would like to see.  If what we decide becomes popular enough to warrant improved performance, we will do that.  I am really interested in exploring common ground amount our hero plant food docs, and sponsoring a place where controversial ideas may be discussed courteously.   I paid for the year, so if the hosting company stays afloat, this should be a fun adventure.

An offer you can't refuse

Dr. Fuhrman’s Holiday Challenge

Dr. Fuhrman is currently running a Holiday Challenge, which includes a free six week Gold Membership package at his website.  The details are here: http://www.drfuhrman.com/events/holiday-challenge/

Anybody  who is unfamiliar with Dr. Fuhrman’s website should take advantage.  I pay for my Gold Membership, and it has been an extremely worthwhile investment.  After you sign up, one of the first places to check out are the archives of his past teleconferences with members: https://www.drfuhrman.com/members/teleconference_archive.aspx

One of my favorite talks is his Aug. 13, 2008 talk about curtailing overeating.  I like this one because the concept of overeating and toxic hunger has been responsible for me reaching even better levels of health than I have in the last four years.  

I was very successful on the program designed for me by Jeff Novick - reversing heart disease and diabetes and obesity, just to name a few of the problems I solved.  Yet I was still heavier than I thought I should be, even though I was totally adherent over three years plus.  Farley observed, as did I, that I ate dramatically larger portions and more often than did she.  Dr. McDougall had observed people like me and called them volume eaters.  However, he did not treat this problem in depth, and I was unable to solve the problem with what he wrote.  That changed when I started reading what Dr. Fuhrman had to say about toxic hunger.

In the teleconference above, Dr. Fuhrman begins by saying that he has probably been responsible for leading people to believe that they could eat as much as they cared to so long as they restricted themselves to healthy foods.  Some people, like Farley, can eat as much as they like, but not me.

Dr. Fuhrman explains the problem and the solution in that teleconference.  Anybody interested in this concept should also have his Eat to Live book, but for those who do not, he explains in detail about toxic hunger in his website here: https://www.drfuhrman.com/members/tutorial3.aspx

This information was very important to me in getting to an even healthier weight.  I would recommend it especially to anybody who thinks that they have a problem with the volume and/or frequency of what they eat.

New Board - Old Board

This post concerns why I decided to host my own BB rather than continue at the McDougall Board.  By now, everybody who wanted to know has had the chance to read it, and it is time to remove the entry.

Hot Curried Lentils

Hi, Farley here.

Getting cold here.  Today it is very windy and the temperature is a mere 68.  Sounds hot to many of you I'm sure but in Sacramento the weather is taking a real turn to even lower temps and rain in a day or two with snow in the Sierras.  That is always my signal to make something spicy.  So off the top of my head I made a very tasty Hot Curried Lentils.  It's just a variation of many dal type soups I like to make.  But this time I had a new unopened jar of Penzeys Spices, Hot Curry Powder (and many other spices) I shipped back from Wisconsin during my trip there a few weeks ago.  Here's what I did:

Ingredients:

3 cups red lentils rinsed
1 container of Pico De Gallo Salsa (consists of chopped tomatoes, jalapeño pepper, cilantro and onion)
4 ribs of celery sliced
1 large yellow bell pepper diced
2 TBS Penzeys Hot Curry Powder
1 tsp Penzeys Cumin Powder
pinch of Penzeys Cayenne Pepper
6 cups of water (more if it is sticking)
1/2 cup Zinfandel wine or other red wine

Place everything into a slow cooker, heat on "high" for 3 hours or more.

Note:  Any brand of spices are fine, I just love the big flavors of Penzeys.

We served this over our usual greens of spinach and romaine, brown rice with steamed green beans and cauliflower.  I prefer to just enjoy the dal with the cauliflower.  Bob liked it with all the above items.  Anyway you enjoy it, it will warm you all the way through, give you leftovers and the satisfaction of eating something truly healthy.  Freezes well too.

 My first bowl of this curry had a lot of cauliflower...this was all that was left when I had my second bowl and thought to take a photo. The sweetness of the barely steamed cauliflower is a great companion to the heat of the curry.  This is one time that I don't need to add Tobasco!

Bob's bowl with the works.  This is a very filling meal.  Bob also added walnuts as a topper.


I would serve this for a dinner party and add separate bowls of chopped green onions, chopped walnuts and golden raisins for guests to add as toppings.