There’s a theory that’s bantered around that after years of yo-yo dieting, and I have about 40 years of up and down and up, that we actually cause change to our metabolism which makes our bodies resistant to losing weight and it’s the only thing I’m able to come up with that explains what’s going on.

Here’s how the theory goes: Our body takes in calories as energy and metabolism is the process by which those calories are burned to keep our body fully functioning. The calories that aren’t burned as energy are either expended as waste or stored as fat; fat being the body’s warehouse supply for backup energy. In case you’re sent to Mars in a space ship and forget to pack lunch as a for instance. When we reduce our calories through dieting our body isn’t getting enough energy in and so it turns to the back up supply, burning stored fat which leads to weight loss. When we stop dieting and raise the calories we’re taking in again, the body stops tapping from the stored fat and returns to it’s usual process of processing all the energy from what’s incoming and then sending the extra to storage or waste.

It’s a good system. The problem is that when the amount of incoming calories radically fluctuates from scarcity to abundance repeatedly as it does through dieting and binging, dieting and binging, at some point the body makes the calculated decision to reset the metabolic rate to burn fewer calories permanently so it can continue to function consistently regardless of the unpredictability of the incoming energy supply. The effect that has is that to lose weight it takes eating fewer calories to lose the same amount of weight that could have been lost years earlier with more calories and the only way left to raise the reduced rate of energy (calorie) burn is to increase physical activity, forcing the body to convert more incoming calories and stored fat (reserve calories) into energy.

Thus concludes all I know about metabolism 101.

So this is my best guess as to what I’m currently experiencing in terms of my weight. Through years of yo-yo dieting my metabolism has been reset to function at a much lower rate that it once was and because my physical activity has been severely reduced as a result of my surgical recovery time and now that physical limitations are again in place to not aggravate my hernia until it’s repair in another month, my body is needing very few calories to keep going. That leaves me with three options.

1. Feel sorry for myself, throw in the towel and hurry down the street to In-N-Out for a double-double animal style burger. Not an option.
2. Stay with my bare-bones food plan and accept where my weight goes until I can return to my full activity level, allowing me to gradually lose any increase that’s occurred in my weight. While this seems the most sensible route to take, my weight is so unstable that I have genuine concerns as to where my weight would be by the first of March when I would be back to my full activity level.
3. Return to the full liquid fast until I can bring my weight back to the range where I feel it needs to be for optimal health and to achieve a 25 BMI I should weigh between 145-152 pounds. I decided a couple days ago to go with option 3 which reduces my caloric intake to well under 1000 calories and has already caused my body to release about four pounds.

Obviously I don’t want to be fasting. It’s not fun and I don’t like it. Call me crazy but I enjoy eating food. I like sitting down at the table with my adorable little portions of chicken, veggies and rice and spending a few minutes together. But the honest truth is, that after the surgeries I’ve had to remove the excess skin and the new shape that came with them, the anxiety level around shifts in my weight has been heightened off the charts. You know how it is after you’ve worked really hard to stick with a diet that you’ve had some success with and then to come off that diet and see the pounds slowly start to add up again? Multiple your feelings by five and you have some idea of how this feels.

So for now, until the weight settles back down (hopefully within a couple weeks) and I can get my crazy head together (I suspect that might take a little longer), I’m back on the fast. Aside from my whining in this post, I realize there are just some things I’m going to need to learn how to accept in terms of my body, how it responds, how it looks, and where it will ultimately end up leveling off poundage wise. I can only do what I can do and then leave the rest to God and my metabolism to work out together.

I am of course equally irked to learn at this point in my life that they were right all along.

The past couple months have been uncharted territory for me and more than a little complicated around issues of weight loss, body image, and adopting a lifestyle that includes a sustainable activity level and satisfying plan of eating that will allow me to maintain my weight and lead me into my golden years.

Here are the stats. I set my original goal weight at the first of this year at 160-165 pounds. I weighted 217 at the time. I reached 165 when I had my first surgery to remove some of the excess skin I’d accumulated over the years. Following my second surgery about two months later my weight had reached 147 (for about an hour and 15 minutes) but then tenuously balanced off around 152.

Now, this word tenuously is important because while it’s normal for body weight to fluctuate between a 3-4 pound range, my weight can leap anywhere from 3-6 pounds overnight. I don’t even need to eat a quart of ice cream or a large pizza with extra cheese to do it. It literally just takes a little more salt or fat or rounding up my portions of my usual food plan and my weight will bounce up like a Wham-O Super Ball. I’d love to tell you that my weight bounces back down just as effortlessly but then I’d be creating a work of fiction rather than reporting on the facts. Instead it takes not only paring back down to a bare bones food plan but kicking up my normal activity level to have it drop back down again.  People who don’t know me might think I’m making this up; that I’m eating more than I realize or making poor food choices that are dense in fat and calories but that’s not the case. There’s no question as my blog attests, I’m a full-blown foodie at heart. I appreciate food and I love cooking and baking. I thoroughly enjoy pouring over cookbooks and creating a beautiful meal or baking something ridiculously decadent but when I’m whipping up the baked goods and other gooey wonders, except for a bite or a taste, they all go out the door to church or to my eager neighbors or are tossed into a shipping box headed to family or friends.

A month ago I weighed in at the medical clinic (where I go every week to attend my follow-up maintenance meetings) on a Wednesday afternoon at 153 which I held for a couple days. That Saturday D and I went out for dinner at The Slanted Door, a most excellent Thai restaurant at the Ferry Building in San Francisco where I ate too much of a good thing and by good thing I mean the menu leaned heavily toward vegetables and low-fat protein sources. If memory serves me, which it seldom does, I don’t remember whether I had dessert or not but looking at their online menu nothing stands out as familiar so I’m hazarding a guess that I passed. Passing on desert is my default. But as I said, I ate more than I normally do with my indulgance in white rice and some other off my normal food chart ingredients like eggplant cooked in coconut milk and caramelized tiger prawns. The next morning I weighed in at 160 (7 pounds overnight) and have held steady at that weight through this morning. And as a side note, while others might be having their annual Thanksgiving meal over-stuffed regrets, I’m okay with how I handled the meal we had at Cafe Beaujolais in Mendocino. I had a diver scallop appetizer, two ounces of turkey (hold the gravey), a half-cup of brussel sprouts, one single bite of each other item served on my plate, and for a rare happening I admittedly didn’t pass on dessert.

It comes back again to a fact I’ve resisted accepting. I’ve blogged about having a survivor’s type metabolism; an explanation given to me by a doctor with more than 30 years of experience with bariatric patients when explaining how my weight held numerous times for 2-3 weeks in a row with no weight loss while on the liquid fast causing me to lose weight at a much slower rate than most other patients. My body tends to grab onto calories with a tight fist and then refuses to let go without a rigid food plan and stepping up physical activity. Is there a hereditary factor involved? Is it a consequences of 30 years of extreme dieting and equally extreme overeating? Does it happen when the moon is in the seventh house and Jupiter aligns with Mars? Don’t know. Doesn’t matter. All I can tell you is that while I’m not particularly happy about things being this way, I’ve come to learn this is what is and I can either accept and adapt accordingly or continue to ignore the evidence and go all delusional which is going to ultimately lead to some miserably tight pants.

So here I am at 160 at the low end of my original weight loss goal but at up 8-13 pounds from where I was a couple months ago at the end of the fast and surgeries. I have a whole world of body image issues that are going on in my head that are making it extremely difficult for me to decide what weight is right for me and where I can be with my body and be satisfied. That’s too big of a discussion for this long enough already post but I’ll be blogging more about it in the coming days because body image is something we don’t talk enough about when talking about obesity or weight loss. I just know that to maintain any particular weight on the scale, I’m going to have to accept how my body responds to nutritional fuel and eat accordingly. I’ve taken a couple months to find my way around with the food and now the time has come to return to a clearly defined plan of eating….and for anyone interested, if anyone is still with me, I’ll spell that in detail tomorrow.

And just so you know, I’m being totally honest and out there with all this. I tend to not soften the edges much or paint the picture in unrealistic colors. Instead it’s about keeping it real both for myself and for anyone who might find themselves struggling with similar issues or celebrating similar successes in the future.

• 3 ounces of either chicken, fish, or turkey
• 1 small salad
• steamed vegetables
• 2/3 cup brown rice or one small potato

The vegetables are on the low calorie, low starch, low sugar end of the vegetable spectrum. Green beans, salad greens, cucumbers, mushrooms, bean sprouts and at least 40 other choices. I’m still not to use any added fats and so for the time being that means Pam Spray and a few non-fat items like non-fat sour cream, non-fat salad dressing can be used in moderate servings (about 2 T each).

It’s not much in terms of how I use to eat, especially when you consider that at 325 pounds I was eating Chinese Take-Out for 4 people in a single setting that included as much rice as would feed me now for a full week, let along the sweet and sour pork, fried shrimp, fried spring rolls and oh yeh, don’t forget the fortune cookies and the quart of ice cream for dessert.

Nope. Now, you could put everything I have for a meal side by side and it would probably fill up 1/3 of the average dinner size plate. But I’m not using your average dinner size plate because research studies have consistently shown that people who use big plates on an average eat bigger portions. And that’s why our regular plates are stored away in boxes in the garage and we’re using smaller plates and bowls we’ve been collecting throughout the fast. Many are from places like Cost Plus and are intended as side plates for appetizers and not as main course service ware. The wonderful thing is that these little plates are usually inexpensive and fun to go searching for here and there. We have a number of Bento boxes like the lacquered checked ones in the top right hand corner of our cupboard; and the tapas trays with multiple dishes on one bamboo plate like the ones in the lower image. Each of those little oval and squared bowls hold just under a cup of water each to give you some perspective on their size.

Over the past week I’ve been sending my Mom photos like this….

and every time she’d write back or call and say, “That has to be more than 3 ounces! That looks like a huge serving!” And that’s the idea. A little food on a little plate tells my brain that tells my body I’m getting plenty to eat. Imagine how different the message would be if the 3 ounces were dropped into the center of the average dinner size plate (10-12 inches in diameter). “Hmmmm, excuse me?! I have spaces between my teeth that are bigger than that tidbit of chicken! If you think that’s going to be enough to satisfy this stomach of yours then Honey, you don’t know who you’re dealing with!”

Between shrinking the capacity of my stomach with the fast and tricking my brain with the size of the plates, so far my stomach seems to be fooled. Shhhh….let this be our little secret so my stomach-a doesn’t figure out-a it’s being played-a.

]]> http://www.anitasblog.com/transition-week-two/feed/ 1 http://www.anitasblog.com/chicken-week-day-four-and-our-weird-homework/ http://www.anitasblog.com/chicken-week-day-four-and-our-weird-homework/#comments Sun, 28 Jun 2009 02:55:24 +0000 Anita http://www.anitasblog.com/?p=253 The main reason that we're only allowed chicken and an all-too short list of condiments to go along with it during the first week of transition is primarily to guard our gall bladders from having an adverse reaction to trying to process certain... Don't stop now...keep reading!

The main reason that we’re only allowed chicken and an all-too short list of condiments to go along with it during the first week of transition is primarily to guard our gall bladders from having an adverse reaction to trying to process certain ingredients (fats). Essentially the gall bladder shuts down during the fast and while we take medication to help prevent complications, it would be a gall bladder attack and surgery waiting to happen to go from a total liquid fast to a beef burger overnight.

The other benefit I’m appreciating to this weeks’ limited food list is that it’s forcing me to think creatively and simply about food with little more than chicken, spices and a few other ingredients (pickles, non-fat mayo, mustard, etc) to draw from when putting “dinner” together. That’s why I’ve been going with international themes, relying on spices and some different table settings to set the mood. Tonight was Dinner by the Ganges. I stove top grilled the chicken with a curry dusting and then made a couple “dipping sauces” that included spices that are unique to Indian food…garam marsala (yum), vindaloo (hot), and curry..always great. I just added those in varying combinations to a base of non-fat mayo and/or yellow mustard and we were set to go. I’m actually having fun trying to come up with different international themes to wrap around three ounces of chicken but so far so good…and I think I might already have a direction for tomorrow’s dinner. You’ll have to stay tuned for that!

During this first week of transition we were given two different projects for homework. The first is that we weigh ourselves FIVE TIMES a day but before we weigh we have to guess what we weigh. We then write the time we weighed, our guess, and the actual numbers on the scale. The point of the exercise is to see how weight fluctuates during the day and from day to day (the average person’s weight goes up and down about three pounds per week), to recognize how the numbers on the scale affect our mood, and then to take the power away from the numbers on the scale but instead be more consciously aware if we’re eating healthy and living actively from day to day.

The second homework assignment is that each of us is to go buy 5-10 dollars of our favorite food and have someone else prepare it for us. They are then to offer it to us by putting it on a plate and setting it in front of us. We say “No, thank you.” They say, “No really go ahead. I made it for you.” We say again, “No, thank you” and then we pick up the plate and take it, putting the food down the garbage disposal. The point is learning how to reject food and to not always eat it just because it’s available. Honestly, this was a hard exercise for me; not because it was hard to say no to the food but it was hard to basically throw 5-10 dollars worth of food away when so many people are in want. Of course, to keep things in perspective, the fact that people were going to bed hungry never stopped me from eating enough food to feed them and myself.

Oh, and what was my food? Two eggs fried in butter with melted cheese on top. We have to do it one more time next week and I can already tell you it will be a “double-double” and fries from In-N-Out. This week we were to do the exercise immediately after we’d eaten dinner and were still satisfied from our meal. Next week we’re to do it before dinner when we’re hungry. I hope I get an A+.

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I can tell you truthfully that after months of no solid food, the chicken not only tastes incredible but 3 ounces is unbelievably satisfying. I push away from the table content. Weird. In the past, eating a 6-8 ounce steak with all the fixings is what I considered a real meal and it seems most Americans aren’t all that different from me. If you travel to any other country, the protein/meat is almost treated as a side dish with vegetables and grains making up the bulk of the meal. In America it’s all about the protein and far more than our bodies need which touches on a couple of the main changes I’m going to be making as I move forward toward coming up with a lifelong way of eating that maintains my body weight and provides optimum health.

• Less food in general.
• 6 small meals instead of 3 big meals that blur together with snacks and nibbling.
• Move protein from center stage in place of grains and veggies.

What I do know is that during the month of transition (adding foods back in), I should continue to lose weight but again, I have to tell you that my weight loss, despite existing on 650 calories a day (plus a bite of bread and a sip of juice every week during communion) has been incredibly slow. All together I’ve lost 50 pounds while other women in my group in the same period of time have lost 15-30 more pounds and don’t even get me started on the men’s weight loss! I’m okay with the slowness of it because it is what it is but still, I hope to lose another 15 pounds in the coming months by eating well (moderately, nutritionally, carefully) and remaining physically active. Hopefully when my body realizes I’m not intent on starving it, it will begin to cooperate a little more willingly.

Anyway, here are a few stats. On January 6 I weighed in at 213 pounds. Today I weight 163. My waist measured 41 inches and is now 32 inches. I was wearing a TIGHT size 16 jeans. I’m now wearing LOOSE size 12 jeans. And I feel great physically. Plenty of stamina, surplus energy, and whatever vim and vigor are, I have both. In other words, I feel good. Really really good.

And still there’s a certain weirdness to the whole thing. I don’t recognize my body in the mirror and some days think I’m just as big as when I started all this. When someone directs me to the smaller sizes in a store, I hesitate for a moment thinking I should mention that I’m actually a big girl and need big girl clothes. Only thing is, the big girl clothes are too big. Weirdness, but wonderful weirdness.

So that’s the scoop for now.

And rest assured, I will be taking a photo of that first bite of chicken.

January 2009

May 2009

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I know! It’s been forever since I posted which might have led you to think I’d fallen face first into a triple chocolate mocha cake with hazelnut buttercream frosting but contraire mon ami! I’m still fasting and to date have lost just over 50 pounds with about 10 more pounds to go. Aside from my 5-7 shakes a day, depending on how much I’ve exercised and how hungry I am, the only thing I’ve eaten in all this time since January is a bite of bread and sip of grape juice at church every Sunday, 1% milk in my daily espresso, two radishes and 1 leaf from a brussel sprout. I know. And yet, my weight loss for a fast has gone slower than I thought. The average weight loss for women is 3 pounds per week. My average is 2.4 pounds a week or 10.1 pounds a month. I talked to the fasting doctor about this during one of my exams (I’m in stellar health FYI) and he explained that some people have bodies that are built for survival. He jokingly said that were I ever stranded on a desert island with others, I would be among the last to survive. So while it’s frustrating to have a “survivor’s body” I’m also grateful to have this information. Not because I anticipate getting stranded on a desert island anytime soon but because it explains why I’ve always had such a hard time losing weight, even when I was moderating my caloric intake and exercising in the past. The downside is that there’s every good chance that to maintain my lower weight I’m going to have to have to set a daily caloric intake that’s lower than others my same size. I’m probably looking at developing a way of eating that has me between 1350 -1450 calories a day. That’s certainly not unmanageable but it just means I’m going to have to be really intentional about what goes in and how much energy I burn out.

So anyway, D and I have been talking and while we still have a little more to lose we’ve decided to begin transition on July 7. Transition is a three week period when you go from a total fast to beginning to SLOWLY incorporate food back into your food and by slowly I mean the first week all we do is substitute 1 shake for 3 ounces of boneless, skinless chicken baked without oil. The second week vegetables and fruit are slowly added and the third week whole grains. I’m planning to continue on a partial fast for some time, meaning that at least one of my meals and snacks a day will be a protein supplement shake and everything I eat will be nutritional, avoiding all empty calories (white flour, sugars…) for a long period of time and when eaten it will be planned and infrequent. As they say, and as you know, the hard part isn’t losing the weight, it’s keeping it off.

I sure have a lot more I could catch you up on in terms of the new adventures in clothes shopping and all the emotional stuff, great and not so great, that comes with reaching a near normal weight after a lifetime of obesity but for now, it’s time to focus on getting a sermon started. More later

After more than three months for me and five for D, we have a real system to this whole fasting thing. When it comes to the liquid protein there are a number of ways to make and consume them. Most people mix the supplement with water and a little ice in a shaker and then gulp it down. Ugh. Not me. When I need to eat a supplement on the go I just mix a supplement package with just enough sugar-free syrup to give it a cookie dough or cake batter like consistency so I can eat it with a spoon. My favorite combo this way is the vanilla supplement mixed a little sugar-free lemon custard extract and a splash of sugar-free coconut syrup. I know. You’re drooling at the thought, aren’t you? But most of the time and especially when I’m making supplements for both of us I make the supplements in a way that by appearance, texture, and taste are just like soft serve ice cream. Seriously, they’re delicious! I’ll take a chocolate-flavored supplement that has already been pre-mixed and frozen with a can of Diet Chocolate Soda and putting it into the blender I’ll whip it with added flavorings (D’s favorite is Chocolate – Peanut Butter, mine is Chocolate – Pomegranate). Yummy! Right now, our freezer has about 30 individual frozen shakes that we’ll end up whipping and eating throughout the week. I just finished making them in a little session I refer to as “Blender Madness” and because we go through 10 shakes each day between the two of us, Blender Madness comes around every week or less. So far we’ve burned out the engine or worn out the parts on about five blenders though we’ve only paid for three of them since Bed, Bath and Beyond has actually allowed us to replace the old ones with new ones when it’s been within a reasonable time frame.

I look forward to the day when our blenders will be reserved for homemade salad dressings and purred soups. Sigh….oh happy day!

Here are some things to report since last I posted.

• My home scales and those at the hospital are off by between 3-4 pounds, the scales at being consistently lower. The exciting news for me is that with this last week’s weigh-in I officially broke through the 180′s into the 170′s which has me at a weight both at home and at the clinic that I haven’t seen since high school. It’s weird, both in a wonderful and an odd way to know that the weight I weigh today I’ve never weighed before as an adult.
• D and I spent the weekend in Mendocino and while we were there we went into a funky (as in cool as in groovy) clothing store, lured in by a pair of striped denim jeans hanging in the window display. When I found the same jeans in the store I noticed they were in 1x, 2x, and 3x and because I think of myself as a something-x girl I held up the 1x just as the woman at the counter called to me and said, “You’ll find those same jeans in regular sizes on the next rack.” Okay. That she thought….no wait….that I am in regular sizes blew my mind and as we walked out of the store (no purchase made) D smiled and said, “That felt pretty good, didn’t it?” Oh yeh. Really good.
• About six years ago I bought a pair of men’s Carthartt jeans (waist 36) that have fit me on and off over the years. Snug sometimes, reasonably comfortable other times. A month ago I realized they were even loose enough that I could tuck my shirt in and because D thinks I look….let’s just say, adorable, in them, needless to say I’ve been wearing them alot lately. They really have gotten too big at this point and so this weekend both D and I bought a pair of Carhartt’s. I bought a 34 waist without thinking and realized after wearing them for an hour I should have gone with a 33 waist but regardless, I’m going to be looking….adorable, for at least a little while longer.
• Yesterday I spent four hours in the kitchen prepping treats for a cookie decorating party I’m doing tomorrow with the kid’s at my church. I molded dark chocolate bird nests, separated jelly beans, dipped marshmallows into pink chocolate and make enough rice krispy treats for the Kebbler elves. I can’t say I didn’t eat anything but everything that passed over my lips was less than a total of a level teaspoon and was less intended as tasting and more as cleaning my fingers. FYI, don’t even bother trying to shape hot rice krispy treats into eggs unless you have an extremely high frustration level. The thing that helped was having one shake right before I started the work and one right after I finished. Framing all the sweets with going through the motions of following the fast was really helpful and honestly eliminated my normal desire to be tasting and nibbling junk. While ideally not having even a single krispy pass my lips would have been the way to go, I’m very happy with the results, not only because the amount I ate was so small but because I had none of the usual desire or obsession to eat any of it nudging at me.