Friday, June 22, 2007

More thoughts on a diet I can live with

I wrote a while back about considering a "hunter-gatherer" diet. I successfully lost 100 pounds on Atkins a couple of years ago. But I didn't stay on it -- and I have a million excuses. So the weight came back, because I just can't eat white bread, and potatoes, and sugar, and everything else, and not get fat. Actually, the term is "morbidly obese." Hate to admit that but it is true. So here I am again, thinking that if I want to live a long and happy life with my dear husband, this weight absolutely must come off. And he needs to take this trip along with me. I think that Atkins is a little too extreme, but I am in tune with South Beach. I'm laying that against research on glycemic index and glycemic load, and building an eating plan for us around that. Pizza and beer definitely isn't on the list, at least for now! But lots of lean proteins, legumes, cheese, vegetables, some fruits, and even wine are okay. Most white foods are still not there -- rice, potatoes, sugar, wheat flour, etc. - though milk products are on the list. So far, so good. Lost eight pounds this week, and good food. Duck (grilled breast and confit leg, with cucumber salad and grilled bok choy). Beef, Swiss steak without potatoes. Beef, grilled slices with poblanos, jalapenos, tomatoes, cilantro, and onions. Thai beef salad (yum neua). Grilled Italian sausage with onions and peppers. Grilled pork cutlets. Bouillabaisse-style stew with lobster stock, calamari, crab, clams, and mussels. All good, all working. And all homemade. This week I'll use spaghetti squash with bolognese sauce I have in the freezer. I'm also going to roast and stuff some poblanos with shrimp, onions, cauliflower, and cheese. Probably some beef burgundy, with a thinner sauce of course but lots of mushrooms to soak it up. Enough ruminating -- time to go figure out what's for dinner!

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I recommend to you the book Rethinking Thin by Gina Kolata. It's a discussion of scientific studies (going back decades) which show that dieting doesn't work, that each person has a weight range to which his or her body will gravitate and that it's nearly impossible to get outside that range and actually stay there for the long term, and that not only is being fat not as unhealthy as we keep being told, but that there is a correlation between a society being healthier and living longer and its members being fatter. These studies have been ignored because there are whole industries which require that obesity be considered very very bad by the public, but the evidence is very compelling.

By the way, I'm the very short fat one from AIS who attended Chef Claycamp's pig butchering. We talked a bit beforehand.

ShellyJ said...

Rebecca, I don't disagree. But morbidly obese is unhealthy. I don't mind being overweight (by some measures) and I think I will never be "thin" in society's view. And that is just fine. But right now I'm not healthy, and a lot of that can be attributed to too much weight. So I am going to take some of that off, and make a few moderations in the way that I eat to keep it off. I was overweight and still able to complete a short triathlon, and want to do that again.

Shelly

Anonymous said...

Oh, I understand, and I work to keep my weight down as much as I can, too. But this book has some really fascinating information that helped me understand a lot of things, and it's changed how I think about dieting and my body.