Return to Mundania

Lucyyyyyy! I'm home!

OK, Colorado was really cool, my host was super nice, and while I regret that I had to spend most of it working rather than vacationing, still I'm glad I got away for awhile. Whew! A break from Mundania... and now I have returned.

I hadn't lost much weight for the two weeks prior, despite having low carbs and low cal, but I admit, that (a) I had not been drinking anywhere near enough water, and (b) I'd developed this habit of lowcarb slimfast (LCSF).

While gone (19 days including days travel), I was very ill for a couple days; I had one high-carb day at thanksgiving (I had a great New York strip steak at an awesome restaurant in Glenwood Springs Colorado called "Rivers" -- truly divine! -- but I ate the sides AND a dessert, so...!), but otherwise had very little to eat. I did eat breakfast several times. The rest of the time I mostly didn't eat or had a LCSF if anything.

My host seemed a little surprised. Most people really don't believe me when I say I don't eat much. One of my best friends, whom I love dearly, a Weight Watchers advocate who is working her ass off on the last 20-30 lbs of her own challenge, assures me that if only I keep a food diary, I will see how much I am actually eating throughout a day, that yes oh yes, all those little snacks will add up. I couldn't keep from cracking up over that, but I didn't bother disillusioning her. I don't snack -- lowcarbers, unlike low-calorie folks, are not chronically starving (with some rare exceptions I have heard of) -- usually they're so full of protein you have to force food down their throats. But even aside from that, I just don't eat much, and can easily go a whole day without eating and not notice until late at night (as that was my eating habit for years: no food, then carbfest late at night before bed). Still, once someone knows you weigh like 400lbs, no matter how big a believer in metabolism and insulin issues and so on they may be, there is no way they are going to believe that you don't eat like a pig in heat.

Anyway. Since I couldn't FIT in the train bathrooms, I avoided eating the day before the train and most (not all) of the time on it. The day before I left, more than a little hacked about not being able to eat for such a stupid reason (not eating doesn't bother me, but not being ABLE to is another story! haha!) I ate like 4 candies in obvious defiance. (Nothing else that day.) Surprisingly it didn't seem to toss my K since I didn't feel any cravings or hunger the next day. I ate a couple carby meals (after not eating all day) right after getting home, but am now on the straight and narrow Lord, yay-uh!

o0o

I'd like to talk about my last 5 weeks of very slow weight loss.

Now I know some degree of this is normal. One of my bestest (if rarest) friend-creatures is Don W., a man who used to be a personal trainer. He has taken people from the 400's down to 'normal' weights -- one woman was so inspired by the journey she opened a gym. He warned me that you gotta lose it FAST because the body starts getting a clue and tries to protect you by putting on the brakes and after that point, it's actual WORK.

But.

I mentioned previously how the lowcarb slimfast gave me that slightly 'addictive' response the way I get with milk. Nowhere near as strong, of course. Milk leads to more, and more, until I'm up at 3am drinking out of the carton, gasping with my back against the closed refrigerator door like a heroin addict finally getting a fix.

I was reading yesterday on the net, one doc who said in his opinion, ALL "addiction reactions" to food are a sign of food allergies. This seems reasonable to me, because honestly, addiction to any food does NOT seem reasonable. I mean, many people like beets or asparagus, but do you ever hear of people getting addicted to beets or asparagus? Having trouble eating too much of them? Not real often, haha! For that matter, you don't hear much of that with steaks or pork chops, either.

Most the foods that addict people are high-carb/high-sugar (sugar being addictive), dairy, and grain products. Some researchers now say that a ridiculous % of the population is suspected to be "mildly sensitive to" grains -- not enough to actually have celiac but apparently it's enough to have amped the incidence of bizarre medical disorders like PCOS and Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and other things into the stratosphere.

And obesity. Because the degree of allergic response that causes the addictive response not only pulls more and more of it into the body, but the partly digested allergens create a variety of health problems, some of which directly impact fat to energy processing and metabolism. I should have gotten references on all this stuff I was reading but I was plowing through a lot of stuff just making my own neural connections.

I am not lactose intolerant -- but it seems highly likely I have some kind of response to the protein of Caseine, and that's why milk is very literally a drug to me, to the degree that at a couple points in my life (ironically, not when fat), I could drink a gallon or two a DAY -- unless I get TOTALLY AWAY from it and refuse to drink it at ALL. I don't have any issues with dairy. Although ice cream can make me crave milk. But generally, dairy products and dairy "in" things doesn't bother me -- only when it's a straight shot of caseine-heavy product. If I'm lowcarb and I have even one gulp of milk, I'll have cravings for milk and sugar and carbs all day. I know better.

OK so finally getting to the point here.

I was thinking about my stupid, instant growing-dependence on Low Carb Slim Fast as a whole food group unto itself. Sure, it plays into my existing, primary problem: that I don't eat, don't want to deal with the time or trouble, so it's a great excuse to skip a meal and suck down a can in 20 seconds -- that alone might be good cause to avoid the stuff. But still, I have a general pace of weight loss going, with or without "enough hydration" per day, and when I shifted to more of the LCSF, it dropped.

I got to thinking about this. I looked at the ingredients on it the first ingredient on the list after water is Caseine. That is the main protein source, so there is a heavy dose of it.

Caseine. The difference in quantity of caseine in cow vs. human milk is allegedly one reason why humans gain a certain amount of weight after birth and cows gain a LOT more a LOT faster.

So.... let me see if I have this straight. A protein which is (a) addictive to apparently a good chunk of our population, and (b) which is known to be highly correlated to weight gain, is the primary ingredient in (c) a weight loss product.

What part of this picture isn't clear yet?

I'm afraid I'm going to have to toss out the slimfast and go back to eating normal foods again. Sigh. It's a lot more trouble. And the LCSF is yummy. But... I'm not losing weight on it really and I don't think that's coincidence or only the other factors.

So today I fried up about 8oz of spicy breakfast sausage; 4 eggs scrambled with red pepper flakes, oregano and some natures' seasoning and hot chili sauce; chopped all that up and mixed it and dumped it in a storage bowl. Grated a bunch of colbyjack cheese and put it in a ziplock. Dug out the lowcarb tortillas. So, when I must eat and be quick about it, I can briefly nuke a bit of egg/sausage on a paper plate, heat the tortilla, dump some cheese and the hot stuff in, roll it up and put it on that plate and leave the kitchen with an edible protein burrito/taco. Granted, the tortilla is some carbs plus some "fiber deductible carbs" -- those count, in my eating plan, not as carbs but still as something I must limit per day -- but it didn't take long to make and that should give me several meals.

I'm going to make what my host did while I was out there and if it comes out half as well as hers, I'll post it as one of my fave recipes here on the blog. Have to try it myself before I can post it here.

Also speaking of milkish products... I must try the lowcarb eggnog. :-)

One GOOD thing: around a month ago I lost all interest in food. It was terrible in a way. No more experimenting because I didn't care. I was NEVER hungry, and food was just totally off my radar. I seem to be real slowly coming out of that. I'm starting to regain some interest in it. So I hope to get back to some decent experimenting again now that I'm home!