Fat, Slow, and Stupid

In the summer of 2009 I had was fat, slow and stupid.   I had lost my edge, I was a slave to McDonald's and copious amounts of chocolate.  I was destroying myself and I new it but could not seem to stop the spiral.  Stress at work and home were being compiled by a kind of feeling of despair that I could not shake.  There were things I wanted to do that I wasn't doing and I was finding that deciding to not do was the easy way to go.   I was literally sugar coating my problems with chocolate!

I wanted a solution but could not face up to the challenge.  A few times I had marched my weight down and it was a good thing but the relapse seemed programmed in.   To beat this I decided I needed some help.  But what kind of help do you get.   There are drugs and diets in every magazine, conflicting reports in the news of what works and general disagreement about what solutions might be.   Doctors have told me to loss a few pounds which really is no help at all, just a source of guilt.   I searched the internet and was finding nothing.  Some phone calls were made and somehow someone referred by to a N.D.   That's a naturopathic doctor.  I had no idea what this was about but I decided I needed to give something a go.

My objective was pretty simple.  Sort through all this food giberish I see in the world and show me how to get healthy again.  I think in general I was pretty confused as to what was good and bad to eat and why I ate stuff that wasn't healthy.

The guy I found, Charley Cropley, an ND in Boulder, actually teaches people how and what to eat.   Back to basics!  http://charleycropley.com/

But first he helps you figure out why your actually in his office.  I came to the conclusion first that I felt Fat, Slow, and Stupid (FSS).   He made me dig deeper and I really wanted freedom.   To be free to do the things I want and not be held back by my health.   That was closer but really didn't get to the heart of the issue.   Digging in further I wanted Freedom.  I want Freedom from the burdens that weight me down.   I want to choose my priorities and not be subject to the whims of the world.  I want to focus my energy on the things that matter to me.  These bindings on my Freedom are what stresses me out, makes me feel trapped, makes me not be myself, and ultimately makes me dishonor myself in the form of bad health - making FSS happen.

What did this mean to me.  It means I need to recognize, reflect on, and take action in response to the burdens I feel.   Most of these are little things.   You really know when you are holding back your real feelings or opinions.   The solution is to find ways to get them out so they don't fester inside you.   Honestly is the root of freedom.

For me, I call this being enlightened.   If you go to wiki you find several definitions but I have my own which is quite literal and really is compatible with the others.
To en-light-en is to make lighter.   This is to reduce a load or burden.   This is to get something off your back.  This is to let your truth shine through. This is to not carry the challenges of the world alone.  This means to be part of a community where you can share the challenges you face. 
If you practice this you are enlightened.

There will be more on this in other posts.

I started this one to talk about my diet plan.  Thanks Charley for being my health hero and teaching me how to understand this. 

The approach and a few simple rules:
The approach taken is part diet and part thinking about what is important about health, why I might want to be healthy, and what is stopping me from taking care of myself.   For me, I lost about 20 pounds and have kept it off for over 18 months now.   Losing the weight really turned out to be the easy part, figuring out how to retain the weight loss when life gets difficult is the lesson that I've been working on for the past year.

The diet is simple.  the objectives are as follows: 
A)  try to keep you blood sugar down.  Why, when you blood sugar is up your body likes to store fuel as fats.   Keeping it down slows down this natural storage and you use what you eat instead of storing it.
B)  Think about food as fuel.  Using a fire analogy:  Protein is a slow burning fuel which is like putting a nice oak log on the fire.  Proteins are slow to digest and provides energy for a long  time;  Natural sugars and carbohydrates are like putting on medium sized sticks.  These burn faster than proteins but in this natural state take a bit longer to process by your body so you can use them slowly and despite having sugars don't digest fast enough to amp up you blood sugar and force your body to store fats;  Processed foods with refined sugars and flours (most white stuff).  These refined products are like throwing leaves on the fire.  they burn instantly and spike your blood sugar and force your body to store fat.   On top of that these processed foods burn off fast adn therefore you get hungry again soon despite having eaten.   

The general rules (quoting Micheal Pollen)
1) Eat real foods,
2) Mostly plants,
3) Not too much.

When he talks about real foods he is basically saying avoid food that is processed.  The more it is processed the less "real" it is.

A daily diet for me:

1)  have a high protein breakfast
        For me this is a piece of chicken, a boiled or fryed egg, with a big glass of water with a bit of lemon juice mixed in.
                 This is the most important thing for me.  I used to eat cereal every morning since birth, I think, and at 10AM I would feel hungry again.  The protein is a slow burning fuel (unlike cereal) and lasts me all morning.   This is a remarkable change for me.   This removed morning snacks from my diet without any real work. 
2)   each more veggies, eat more fruits during the day (historically for me this was about zero)
         Something I never did often in the past.  So I try to get myself a reasonable share of veggies every day.  I generally pack a big salad with every veggie I can find in the fridge and I only put on a little salad dressing and maybe 1/2 an avocado.  I also generally bring some cooked veggies for a snack.    This also includes nuts, almonds, walnuts, pecans etc..
3)   For dinner:  eat what AM cooks.   She cooks good food.  But stop when I begin to feel like I should be done.  

Some of my personal rules:

A)  keep away from adding salt
B)  No more caffeine (surprisingly easy for me it turns out - went cold turkey a bout a year ago and found that after a few weeks I have almost never felt tired at work - surprising change)
C) drink more water.

Old symptoms:

I found that on my old diet I was eating so much garbage that I didn't really recognize when what I was eating was not feeling good.   I knew I was a stress eater but I didn't know how much I was stressed as it was hidden by general poor health.    Also I have learned that when I decide to eat something off my diet there must be a reason so I try to figure it out.   In summary, I have to be honest with myself about what I'm experiencing.   Something else I've learned is that I really feel crappy after eating what I generally ate before this change.  If I go to get a McDonald's lunch I will feel slow for a couple hours - I didn't know that was what that was doing to me. 

How do you follow a routine?
I bought a little notebook and every day I write down what I ate.  If nothing else it helps me realize if I'm off track and give me reason to think about why I'm off track.

Can I stick to it?

Yes, but you have to accept that every once in a while you do slip but you shown yourself that it's not so hard to recover if you just go back the fundamentals for a little while.