The Bizarre Shapes of the Body

One thing is certain: if my life wasn't weird enough already, my body is now contributing to the mix. Thanks to lowcarb my body is smaller than it used to be. This is having some unintended, and sometimes disturbing, side effects.

It's kind of like Frankenstein, or The Bride, where you realize that your body is kind of horrible looking but you are stuck with it. And I say this in the nicest way, because I love my body, as a nature spirit symbiote with me; I spend a lot of time lately being truly 'in' it and 'with' it and letting it know how awesome I think it is. But still, watching it morph as I slowly shrink is just... weird.

Psychologically, I mean.

It used to be that I was simply huge. No detail, really; "huge" summed it all up. At 500# you are simply too large to have much of any definition; you're a round refrigerator for the most part.

At the moment I'm hovering around 357. I say 'hovering' because it varies and I think is refusing to go 7 pounds lower out of some perverse desire to delay my meeting my first major weight loss goal for a few more eons.

Currently, my weight is not dropping at any decent speed, which I expect is mostly because I am not really "dieting" anymore but simply eating in a way that is generally lowcarb and mostly gluten free. Despite this, my body continues to... change shape.

I don't know if it is losing fat despite not losing weight, or if it is simply my body's "redistribution of the wealth" so to speak.

The first change was when I stopped, in fear, getting into the shower, realizing I had something oddly hard under the surface on my side. I felt around it in horror. A gigantic, sort of flattened cyst? A tumor of some kind?

Then I realized... those were ribs.

... yes. It had been that long since I'd felt them.

A variety of small changes happened. And then one day in the bathroom at the movie theatre, I realized that my butt had changed. Now, since I carry the vast majority of my weight in the pear shape -- my face only slightly looks fat depending on the picture, my upper body does but not nearly as overwhelmingly as my lower body -- for the most part, the region hereinafter referred to as the "lowertummyhipbuttthigh" region was, for lack of a better term, just a gigantic blob.

But my stomach has lost a lot of fat (I have a waist, unlike most people my size, as I don't store much fat there the way some do). With a lot of extra skin there, the fat sort of hangs down in a roll very low. And then it turned out that my hips and lower butt lost a lot of fat as well, and much of the fat in that region then started sort of hanging down around the top-middle of that area.

This resulted in me standing in front of the mirror, turned to the side, looking and poking in awe at the new weird shape my body had taken. Now there is obviously a huge lump/roll of fat that is basically the lower stomach and then travels all the way around the back. So the top-half of the butt is superfat, with a funky bulge out to each side.

Rolls and bulges were less an issue when my whole body was one big bulge. You know, nobody thinks about the pillsbury doughboy having cellulite, cause he's fat enough to just be "soft and big". But if he started losing weight you could bet he'd start looking pretty funky. ;-)

Recently I apparently started losing some of the fat on my thighs. Well, maybe not losing, maybe it is just moving elsewhere, who knows. In any case, my thighs which were a semi-solid shape from hip to knee -- just very, very large -- are now oddly creased in the middle and to a lesser degree 'here and there', with bulges and a sort of hanging in places that makes clear some of that dreaded "extra skin" of the superfat-dieter is starting to become more apparent now.

With every pound I get lighter, I get one more pound more deformed.

I am trying not to let this freak me out.

I'm not alone. My online buddy Niki has publicly grieved about this too. And I bet everybody who has lost a significant amount of weight has had some of that.

But it's hard to express the sort of horror that comes of watching your body take the most bizarre new shapes, watching your extra skin start to sag, all that fat hanging around in it in very strange, new ways -- when your primary goal is to look better and feel better.

I grant that I feel better. I grant that I can now fit in most chairs and booths (though it's a squeeze in some), and that I can do many physical things I couldn't before, and wear a 5x pants which means I can actually wear pants, unlike the former 8x+ size that does not exist. I am so much happier. I think I might actually live. And I have nothing but good to say for my shift toward eating "real food", which as a side effect is teaching me to cook.

But it is a curious sadness, to know that the more weight you lose, the uglier your body gets. It makes the whole weight-loss process sort of . . . bittersweet.

PJ

The Return of Real Food (+ Almond Muffins)

I realized with a big shock today that every single food that I will be eating in the coming week was something I would not have eaten a few years ago.

Every. Single. Item.

Because they're weird? Because they're lowcarb?

No. Because they're REAL!

*

I was going through a "loosely" planned menu, so I'd know what to defrost, and basing it on what food I have since I can't shop till near next weekend. I eat a lot of the same things each day (eg usually a blueberry and plain yogurt smoothie for breakfast, and eggs, sometimes with sausage if I have it, as a second late-morning meal...) so it wasn't rocket science.

I'm gradually getting my kitchen organized so really, I pretty much always have the same foods available. I can glance at the pantry and see right off what I have few or none of. I can plan a menu without worrying about what I have (normally) because I always have about the same stuff. I can estimate costs because I buy the same stuff all the time.

Most people eat the same things pretty repetitively. I find that I do this naturally. Having menus actually helps me plan some variety, which I consider healthy, and use a little of everything. My produce varies because that has such a short shelf life. Most everything else lasts longer, or if it can be stored or frozen, a very long time.

I think food can be broken down into the following major categories (I'm probably missing something!). This is a list of what I eat/want to eat, and expect to have on hand whenever I can.

Animal Proteins
> eggs-chicken, eggs-duck, chicken-whole, chicken-breasts, chicken-thighs; turkey-whole, turkey-breast, turkey-ground; beef-roast, beef-steaks, beef-ground; pork-loin, pork-tenderloin, pork-cutlets; sausage-italian hot, sausage-breakfast hot, sausage-gourmet jalapeno-jack; bacon-ordinary

Vegetables
> asparagus, lettuce, spinach, broccoli, cauliflower, sweet peppers, hot peppers, zucchini

Roots
> carrots

Fruits
> small organic gala apples, avocados, strawberries, frozen wild blueberry, raspberry, blackberry, tomato

Alliums and Other
> garlic, onions, scallions, mushrooms

Nuts
> pecans

Seeds
> almonds, flax, coconut

Dairy
> cream, cream cheese, sour cream, colby-jack, mozzarella, parmesan, blue

Legumes
> black beans, small red beans

Tubers
> sweet potato

Processed foods

> coffee, cocoa
> seasonings (from extracts to mixed spices to GF soy sauce, condiments)
> sauces (4-cheese alfredo sauce, enchilada sauce, etc.)
> drinks (diet A&W root beer)
> artificial sweeteners (generally sucralose)

*

Back in the days when I worked ALL the time, and honestly thought Subway sandwiches were healthy (healthy enough to combat the bread, Dr. Pepper and Doritos and cookies??), I never ate real food. If I had anything at all at home, it was generally tortillas and bread and bagels and pasta.

My food life has changed so much it's hard to measure.

Last night I made almond muffins. I've seen recipes for this kind of thing in various places but I got this one from my LC buddy Karen.

Almond Muffins
2 cups almond meal
4 eggs
2 tsp baking powder
4 oz (1/2 cup or 1 cube) butter (you can use coconut oil)
1/3 cup sweetener (davinci works well)
pinch salt
Mix the dry stuff, stir in wet stuff, stir very well, bake in 12 muffin tins @ 350 about 15 minutes.
Nutrition counts are here.
You can add extracts, berries, etc. to this for a stronger flavor.

Despite some artificial sweetener, even this yummy "baked good" (and the texture is closer to breadish than most LC stuff) is healthier than the stuff I used to eat and seriously considered healthy.

When I list my foods like above, where the stuff I want least is near the bottom -- I'm working on getting more at the top and less at the bottom -- it really brings home how NOT REAL my eating was prior to lowcarb. There was a day I could not have even imagined eating so much 'real food' -- let alone actually cooking it myself, heh!

I feel so fortunate that I've come to this eating plan. My life is so much better in so many ways. It's almost like finding religion. But I guess the body is so profoundly affected by nutrition that makes sense.

Food is the religious doctrine of the body. You can make it bad or good, but you live with what you focus on.

PJ

What's so hard about low-carb?

Today I was looking at a sample diabetes association daily menu.

I was aghast. I know enough about my body to know that if I were trying to eat that, I would be starving, cold, miserable, obsessed with food, and probably either binging every few days or eventually just giving up altogether.

Lowcarb could save their life. It isn't recommended because apparently the authorities think lowcarb is just so totally impossible nobody could eat like that.

I think the most complicating factor is that there are 1.7 billion items in the grocery store that will kill you, and 200 that won't, 3/4 of which people have never eaten in their life. The situation's worse in restaurants. But that has nothing to do with the eating plan. That's environment. The environment in the home, people can manage.

*

When I first started lowcarb, I joked that it was "like trying to be Amish in New York City." It was HARD. I was constantly faced with the seeming impossibility of getting food together and dealing with eating out somewhere and cooking all-the-freakin-time and so on. I did it, I lost weight, but it was a major pain in the ass.

Now lately, I've been doing fine on LC, imperfect but acceptable, losing weight, as has my kid. And I'm realizing: why was this hard?

What was so complicated about it previously, that it seemed hard?

*

I think some was a mental issue. That is, having grown up where endless varieties of crap were all expected to be put in your body for the fun of it, I had a fundamental misunderstanding of one key thing, which is this:

Food = Meat.
Veggies and fruits are nice treats, except if your meat variety is limited (you don't eat organs, 9 kinds of meat, etc.) they are necessary to add in.

Once I got my head around that, and "animal-based protein" became my priority and vastly dominant food source, a whole lot of everything straightened out on its own.

This doesn't mean that I can't make coconut popovers or flax cocoa muffins or almond cookies or lowcarb pizza or whatever. It just means that everything which is not the primary bodily need is something 'extra'. It isn't really in the category of 'food' except maybe by some percentage of it.

*

I think some was a physical issue.

It is stunning how radically my desire to eat--and WHAT I desire to eat--changes depending on my food intake.

If I eat sufficient protein, veg/fruit and supplements, I pretty much lose most of my cravings for anything else. I don't even think about food except when it's time to eat. And I eat until I'm full and that's fine. And it's a miracle if I can even get as MANY carbs and calories as I'm trying for in my day. I can stand right next to chocolate, cheesecake, pasta, and literally not care. I don't have any desire to eat them.

When I find myself "kinda wanting" things that aren't my basic foods, I know that I haven't had enough protein or fresh foods or supplements or something.

*

I think some was a habit issue.

I buy decent quantities of chicken and ground beef or roast and I cook it all at once in the crockpot or oven usually. On occasion I'll chunk up chicken and bake it with a sauce, or throw the chunks in my wok, or coat 'em with parmesan-herbs and bake, but usually I just cook it all at once. Then I drop it in the freezer or fridge. I can nuke it when I want food, I can mix it in with other foods, whatever. Now that I've started having some decent amounts of things in my freezer, often in serving-size plastic bowls, the stress about 'not having food' has dimmed a great deal.

It used to seem like a nightmare, the planning and shopping and cooking and cleaning. Now I buy mostly the same things, which takes out most of planning and simplifies shopping, I cook more seldom for 'full meals', which simplifies cleaning, too.

*

I think some was a cultural issue.

I grew up with the idea that a meal had several different components to it. You were supposed to have a little meat, a couple of side dishes, a drink, dessert. Except for much of my adult life, the meat took a hike or was barely-there in the midst of pasta or something.

I grew up with the idea that you ate three times a day. As I got older, I ate one time a day. Now I've completely ditched that mentality. Now:

* I have usually dairy+berries for meal 1, like a smoothie.
{1/2cup plain yogurt, 1/3cup cream, 1 egg, 6 ice cubes, 1/3 cup frozen wild blueberries or half a dozen frozen whole strawberries, vanilla, cinnamon, sweetzfree, blendered}

* I have eggs, usually with sausage, and hopefully a tiny bit of veggie, for meal 2.
{3 eggs and 2oz sausage, or 4 eggs 1oz sausage, or 3 eggs, 1oz meat, 1oz cheese, and part of a bell pepper}

* I may not have a meal 3 but if I do, it might be a bowl muffin, or a meat-centered leftover, nuked. It is usually very small (>2oz protein). It may include beans (some of the higher-fiber (lower ECC) beans) or peas, but not a lot.

* For meal 4 I have meat. Lots of it. Like 9-12oz depending on the meat and other meals of that day. It sometimes has a bit of veggie as part of it, in a stew or alongside (like bell peppers and broccoli in stir fry). Or not. Often it's just plain meat. I often make a quick little sauce of some kind for the kid for dipping.

* I may not have a meal 5 but if I do, it might be a tiny gala apple and a few slices of cheese. I only have this if I began eating early and there's at least 2+ hours before sleeping time.

* I take supplements (finally!), and I recently added a 5,000iu of Vitamin D3 from the Drs. Eades's site (proteinpower.com) which I kid you not, within about 6 hours or so greatly improved my "sense of well-being." I think it's made a big difference. I use a potassium salt substitute to make sure I'm not getting too much sodium (I use sauces from jars/cans sometimes) and that I'm getting enough potassium. I drink diet soda, and then guilt (and zits) cure me and I drink only water for awhile, until I forget why I was doing that and go back to diet soda. ;-)

In the end I have about 20-26oz of animal-based protein a day (varies slightly), not enough veggies but some, a little fruit, a little too much dairy but not too extreme, sometimes a bit of legumes (beans or peas) and some supplements.

I'm losing weight on and the important thing is: I feel really good.

I'm deliberately eating more carbohydrates than I used to, but none of it's junk, and none is a ton at once. My highest carb intake is my morning smoothie, except the occasion when I have a meat stew that contains some beans.

I don't feel the way I do in a hard ketosis. I'd be losing weight faster if I were there, but my diet would be a lot more limited.

I don't feel the way I do when I'm eating tons of carbs (like hell).

I actually feel as if for the first time in my life since I can remember, I must be eating in a way that my body is pretty happy with.

*

And it isn't rocket science.

So what I can't figure out is, up until now, why has it been so complicated?

PJ