Tip: Low-Carb and Low-Fat Both Win when It Comes to Losing

Snowbound!

In the “battle of the diets,” both low-carb and low-fat diets win, when it comes to losing. A two-year study paid for by the National Institutes of Health and published in the Annals of Internal Medicine, found that the low-carb diet had a slight health edge, however. While both plans resulted in similar changes in total cholesterol, blood pressure, percentage of body fat, and bone density, the dieters in the low-carb group had about two times better improvements in their good (HDL) cholesterol than people in the low-fat group. Read the whole article at http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/weightloss/2010-08-03-battleofthediets03_ST_N.htm.

I never felt an affinity for the low-fat plan, because it involves too much caloric restriction and often calls for foods I don’t find tasty. I must admit that a little fat on my meat, a little butter in my oatmeal, a little fat-filled dressing on my salads all give my taste buds the lift they need to keep me satisfied with my meal. I’ve followed the low-carb plan, therefore, primarily avoiding starches. For six months, now, I’ve spurned or eaten only small quantities of white rice, white potatoes, pasta, bread, and sugar.

Both low-fat and low-carb group in the test kept food diaries. A food diary is something I use when I start a plan, but I let it fall by the wayside at times. When I do, the fat stops falling off. That darned diary is a godsend to me. It not only reminds me not to snack on bad things, because I have to write down every item that goes down my gullet, but it also gives me a record to review, if I see my weight at a standstill or rising. I can read my food diary and see what I changed. Did I add a new item that might be tipping the scales in a bad direction? Did I skip breakfast too often? Breakfast is a downfall for me; I forget it often, and it’s important to set my metabolism for the day by eating something in the morning. Even as I write this blog entry, it’s quarter past eleven, and I forgot breakfast again. Darn it!

Both groups in the study also exercised regularly, starting slowly and adding more exercise per week. Exercise. Ha! This week has been a true challenge to me, when it comes to exercise. Atlanta had a record snowfall eight days ago, followed by freezing rain that added a layer of dangerous ice to the roads and made my steep, curving, shaded driveway impassible. As a result I could not get my car out of the garage to get to the gym and couldn’t even walk down the driveway to walk my dog, for almost a full week. The car is still in the garage after eight days, but on the fifth day after the snowfall, I was finally able to break through the ice enough to walk to my neighbor’s driveway, which was clear, walk down it to the street level, and take the dog for a decent walk. I usually don’t think of those walks as exercise for me, only exercise and enrichment for him, but in truth, when I don’t take him for walks, I become mighty sedentary.

I heard the weather reports and knew the ice was coming, so I went to the gym the Sunday the snow was predicted to fall, but I didn’t know I wouldn’t get back to the gym until the next Saturday. That’s when friends gave me a ride to the gym. I still couldn’t risk backing my car down my icy driveway.

Exercise, darn it, is vital to weight loss, and my inactivity resulted in no weight loss this week.

I’m having to be more realistic with my weight loss. I know people lose more weight per week when they first begin a food plan, as I did. I couldn’t realistically maintain my rapid weight loss forever, but I did want it to last a long time. Now I’m in the phase of weight loss where I can’t lose a pound a week, but I could lose a pound a month, if I stick to the plan, stay active, and keep my eye on my goals. Instead of beating myself up mentally for the slowdown in my weight loss, I’ll accept that I’ve entered a new phase of my plan. I have accomplished some of my goals. I lost fifty health-endangering pounds, relieved the pains in my knees, returned to being able to walk without pain, improved my cholesterol levels, reduced my blood pressure, reduced the volume of my daily medication, went down two or more clothing sizes, improved my appearance, and increased my flexibility. While I won’t stop and rest on my laurels, I will accept that my weight loss will continue, but at a slower rate than it did in the first six months of my plan, and at this point, exercise becomes vital to my continued weight loss.

Up to this point, my exercise involved walking the dog and performing water aerobic exercises and lap swimming. As I reported earlier, last week a friend showed me how to use some of the exercise equipment in the gym. I’d thought working out on the equipment would not be much fun, so I’d avoided it. I don’t like feeling like I’m sweating, which is why working out in a pool works well for me. Still, I had a blast learning about and trying out various machines in the gym. The time went by quickly, and the next day, I enjoyed the feeling in my body, muscles I rarely used. As a result, the next time I went to the gym alone, I worked out on some of the same equipment, tried a few new machines, and did water aerobics and laps as well. I’ve used a combination of machines and water aerobics only three times, and I already love the new feeling in my body. My abdominal muscles are tightening, and I feel more strength in my back. I intend to continue the combination of machine workouts as well as water workouts. I’ve also read that weight lifting helps bone density and is therefore vital to older folks. Yes, yes, I fit that category.

Guess where I’m going this afternoon. Yup, back to the gym. My nephew asked if I was turning into a gym rat. I can only hope!

I must admit to humility and lack of self-confidence, though, when people turn to me as some sort of weight-loss guru. I didn’t invent anything new, I simply pulled together all the things that work for me and have worked for others. Part of me says I won’t be a guru until I reach my ultimate weight-loss goal, but even then, I’ll feel the same way, that I’m just an ordinary person who put information to good use. If I can inspire others, that’s a bonus, but I’m not the originator of any weight-loss information and don’t claim to be. I’ve gotten help from every source I’ve researched, and I get inspiration from writing this blog and getting feedback and/or praise from readers. In other words, if you’re reading this blog, you’re helping me, rather than vice versa, so thank you all.

Starting weight: 245
Weight last week: 195
Goal weight for this week: 194
Actual weight this week: 195
Total pounds lost: 50
Goal weight within next three weeks: 194
Goal weight: 150
Mini goal: 190 by February 28

Stalled, but Not Disheartened!

I am officially disappointed that my weight stayed the same again this week, which makes two weeks in a row. Ugh! In the past, such a disappointment would have been enough to throw me off a food plan, make me stuff my face in frustration, lose faith, and lose momentum. Not this time. I have more than myself to disappoint, if I were to do such a thing. Now I have more than a 1,600 readers of my blog that I’d let down. Writing this blog definitely keeps me going. You folks keep me going. Thank you!

To encourage myself and prove that I’m making progress, I pulled out my old photos and took some new ones in similar poses, to see—and confirm—that I’m getting better and better, even if I am still far from my goal weight. I’ll include “before” (left) and “during” (right) shots in this blog entry. I can’t take an “after” shot until I reach my goal weight, but expect more “during” shots to come.

How do I plan to put an end to this languishing period and start losing weight again? Exactly what I did before: Eat fewer white carbohydrates. Eat more salads. Keep food portions within boundaries. Work out. Make wise choices.

The news isn’t all disappointing. This morning I received the report from my latest blood test. My cholesterol has fallen into the normal range, so I have stopped taking statins, no longer exposing myself to their potential side effects. I will stay off statins for six months and see what my next report says. My fasting blood sugar count was down, too, at 101. Normal glucose levels fall between 70 and 150 mg., with 99 or less being ideal, but my number used to be higher than 101. No, I can’t remember the exact figure, but it wasn’t in the diabetic range of above 150. Again, the doctor advised fewer white carbohydrates, including sugar. I promised I’m already following that regimen, so things should be even better on my next test.

I also was able to reduce my blood-pressure medication, because my blood pressure has fallen within normal range. Two medications I can strike off my list and keep out of my body! Hooray! I’m definitely seeing definitive, recordable progress in my health, which explains why I feel so much better today than I did six months ago. It’s also why I plan to be the Energizer Bunny and keep going and going.

Here’s today’s weigh-in results:

Starting weight: 245
Weight last week: 200
Goal weight for this week: 199
Actual weight this week: 200
Total pounds lost: 46
Goal weight for next week: 199
Goal weight: 150
Mini goal: 195 by New Year’s Eve

Even Thanksgiving Didn't Throw Me Off Track

I've enjoyed finding old, fat photos of myself and posting them at the top of my blog, so readers can compare them to the new, improved me when I post new photos.

I thought Thanksgiving at my brother and sister-in-law’s house would be the most tempting of all days, but it turned out to be a breeze. First, my family members praised me for my weight loss, which reminded me to make wise choices when the food was served. Next, my sister and I have a ritual dating back to our childhood. We used to fight over who got the tail of the turkey, but now we simply share it. Yes, a turkey tail has a tiny piece of meat and a huge amount of fat. We know that, but I’ve learned that meat-related fat isn’t bad in moderation; instead, we gain weight from eating starches and sugars, which turn to stored fat in our bodies. She and I therefore indulged ourselves, giggling and eating half a turkey tail each for our guilty-pleasure appetizer.


When dinner was ready, I chose a small piece of turkey, a small piece of ham, a big batch of string beans, and a small bit of cranberry and fruit Jell-O salad. I spurned the broccoli casserole, which sounded healthy but was loaded with cheese and cream. I ignored the sweet potatoes, normally healthy eating, but that particular casserole included brown sugar and marshmallows. I passed up the stuffing and anything else that looked calorie-laden and starchy.

After dinner, out came a huge buffet of alluring pies, candies, cookies, and puddings. In the past I would have eaten a plate filled with samples of each sweet. This Thanksgiving, I ate a little fruit for dessert, and that was it; I felt perfectly satisfied.

How did I resist all those temptations? My blog keeps me motivated, because I know I have to report my weight in a few days. I hope that for the first time in my life I will be able to report that I actually lost weight during the week of Thanksgiving.

Stay tuned for my weigh-in on Monday!

Tip: Say Yes to Sweet Potatoes

Yesterday was Monday, and I stayed too busy to report the results of my weigh-in, or maybe I’m ashamed to admit that I didn’t lose any weight this past week. I knew my weight loss would slow down at some point, but I trust it hasn’t come to a dead stop. I’m still way ahead of my scheduled goals, and I’m still eating right, so I’m not concerned by a one-week idle.

Today I visited my doctor for a regular checkup, and she told me I should be very proud of myself for losing forty-five pounds since I last saw her in April. She’s right. I am proud, and one week of staying the same weight is no big deal. It’s only the second week my weight stayed the same since I began my food plan in July. I’m sure I’ll still meet my mini goals and overall goal. Heck, I already met my first mini goal, which was to weigh 200 by New Year’s, and it’s not even Thanksgiving yet.

Yes, I am proud and excited that I’ve lost forty-five pounds, and more and more people are asking how I did it. My plan is simple, and it’s not about depriving myself, just making wise choices. One of the main components of my plan is to consume starchy foods in moderation. I can’t resist a little corn, rice, or pasta now and then, so I don’t deny myself, because if I did, I’d crave it even more. Instead I eat starchy foods in moderation, no more than half a cup at a time, and less than that is even better. For example, at lunch yesterday, the chicken wrap I ordered arrived with French fries on my plate, even though they were not in the description of what I had ordered. “I don’t want the fries,” I told the server.

“They come with the meal,” was her answer.

My lunch companion said, “I’ll take some,” so I tried to put all the fries on her plate, but she wouldn’t let me.

I took one small fry, put it in my mouth, and chewed. I had to admit that it did not taste nearly as good as losing weight felt, so I left all the other starchy fries on my plate and ate half the wrap I’d ordered and a small bowl of soup that came with it. I took the other half of the sandwich home and ate it for dinner with another small bowl of soup. Good choices.

Some starchy vegetables are fine, though, and one of my favorites is the sweet potato. The Center for Science in the Public Interest ranked the sweet potato number one in nutrition of all vegetables. Points were given for content of dietary fiber, naturally occurring sugars and complex carbohydrates, protein, vitamins A and C, iron and calcium. Points were deducted for fat content (especially saturated fat), sodium, cholesterol, added refined sugars, and caffeine. The higher the score, the more nutritious the food. With a score of 184, the sweet potato outscored the next highest vegetable by more than a hundred points. No wonder I love them! No, I don’t add brown sugar to them, but a pat of butter and a little sea salt, and they’re out of this world.

When my family went to a hamburger restaurant a few weeks ago I ordered a grilled chicken breast on a bowl of lettuce, rather than a beef burger on a bun, so I didn’t feel guilty about eating some of the delicious sweet potato fries and onions rings we ordered as an appetizer. I left the table feeling that I’d had great treats without overeating things that are bad for me. Sweet potatoes have more fiber than oatmeal, more vitamin A than carrots, more potassium than a banana, and more flavor than white potatoes. A small sweet potato has only about 150 calories, and all of them good for me.

So am I depriving myself? Am I starving or craving things I can’t have? No way! That is why I deny that I am on a diet at all, and without dieting, I’ve lost forty-five pounds. Yay, me. Now on to the next forty-five…!

Starting weight: 245
Weight last week: 200
Goal weight for this week: 199
Actual weight this week: 200
Total pounds lost: 45
Goal weight for next week: 199
Goal weight: 150

Tip: Pause before You Plunge

First the great news: I hit a major milestone this morning. My mini goal had been to weigh 200 by New Year’s, but guess what. It’s only November 15, 2010, and I already hit that goal this morning, when I stepped on the scale and weighed 200 pounds. Oh, heavens, that number still looks awful, doesn’t it? I have so much more to lose, but hooray for me, because I’ve lost forty-five ugly, health-threatening pounds. I hope the next forty-five pounds are as easy to lose as the first forty-five. I trust they will be, because I am in the habit of making good choices, and I constantly read more good information to keep me on track.

Most recently I read an interesting tidbit in AARP The Magazine that said that the Cornell Food and Brand Lab studied 213 people while they helped themselves to a buffet. Seventy-one percent of the thin people scouted the buffet table first to see what they wanted to put on their plates before they even picked up a plate. Three-quarters of the heavy people grabbed their plates first and began taking food before they even had a good idea of the choices available.

At lunchtime last Saturday I went to an opening of a new business in the neighborhood that offered a free buffet. I had read the article about thin people who perused the buffet before making choices, but honestly, I didn’t think about it at the time. I instinctively scrutinized the offerings at the food table before I put anything on my plate. I’m not sure, now, though, whether I actually took a plate first or not, but I certainly didn’t put anything on that plate until I had made my healthy choices.

Remember my blog entry about thinking like a thin person? It’s working. More and more, I’m thinking like a thin person. That buffet table had green beans, broccoli, white rice and beans, two types of dried-out-looking meat, and a cabbage-based salad. I chose the salad, broccoli, and green beans, and without any effort bypassed the dried-out meat and white rice, plus, without even thinking, I also bypassed the entire table of sweets, which included cookies, cakes, and my absolute favorite, whipped cream. Well, it was probably the fake kind, loaded with hydrogenated oils, but in the past that fact wouldn’t have stopped me from glopping it onto a piece of cake and eating it with gusto. That’s the past, though. Now I automatically scan buffets before I put anything on my plate.

I know I will be faced with more buffets, especially during the holiday season, and I feel confident that I’ll pause, scan the selections, and make my choices before I put a drop of food on my plate. In that way I’ll fill my plate with the best choices and not be tempted by the starch-laden ones. Getting through Thanksgiving and Christmas while sticking to a food plan may be tough, and actually losing weight over the holidays may be even tougher, but I swear I’m going to do it. I have a goal in mind, and nothing can stop me.

Because I’ve met my first mini goal, I’ve set another one. My new mini goal is to lose five more pounds before New Year’s and weigh 195 by January 1.

On another topic, one of my many readers said to forget the digital scale that has become my nemesis, because it says I weight more than my dial scale says. I think I will use the digital scale when I want to see incremental changes in my weight, but for now will ignore it and stick with the dial scale, which, by the way, agrees with the expensive dial scale at my gym, where I weigh in wearing a bathing suit. Today is weigh-in day, so here’s my official report:

Starting weight: 245
Weight last week: 204
Goal weight for this week: 203
Actual weight this week: 200
Total pounds lost: 45
Goal weight for next week: 199
Goal weight: 150

Tip: Eat Starches in Moderation

I’m excited. The weight is dropping off, and my neck, knees, and are all feeling better every day. I know I am doing the right thing for my health. The photo at the left was taken in 2006 at Christmastime. Some of that fat chin is already going away.

Yesterday I ate a small container of yogurt for breakfast, a big salad for lunch, and a piece of pork steak, spinach sautéed with fresh basil, and a sautéed yellow squash for dinner. I didn’t have the urge to eat any midday snack, as I often do, and I felt satisfied in my tummy and mind, all day.

My food plan is something I created from information I gleaned in one meeting with a nutritionist and the booklet she gave me from the American Diabetes Association that explains exchange lists. Exchange lists, the booklet explains, are foods listed together because they are alike. Each serving of a food in the list has about he same amount of carbohydrate, protein, fat, and calories as the other foods on that particular list, so the foods can be exchanged with one another. It gives as an example that a slice of bread can be traded for one-half a cup of cooked cereal, because each of the foods equals one starch. The whole concept got too complicated for me, though, so I created my own plan, once I read about starches and that the body quickly turned them into sugar in the body. Too much sugar in the body not only creates havoc for diabetics, but it also doesn’t bode well for people who want to lose weight, because the body stores the extra sugar as fat.

I became aware of the foods that turned too easily into sugar in my body, and I decided to moderate my intake of starchy vegetables, such as beans, corn, peas, plantains, and potatoes. Notice I did not say I would deprive myself of these tasty treats, because if I tell myself I can’t eat something, I start to crave the very item I have denied myself. Instead I learned how to portion out my meals and learned I can eat anything I want, but in moderation. I like to eat, so I learned to choose foods I could eat more of, and still be within the same exchange rate of other foods. For example, a slightly larger portion of sweet potatoes or yams (one-half a cup) equates to a smaller serving of white potatoes (three ounces), so if I feel like eating a potato, I choose sweet potatoes, rather than white potatoes. To make matters even better, a half a cup of sweet potatoes is a large serving, in my opinion, so I can eat even less and be satisfied.

Other starchy foods I limit include breads and crackers, chips, lentils, and even miso soup. Would you believe that sipping only three savory tablespoons of miso soup is equal to consuming half a cup of sweet potatoes? Knowing the difference in portion size, which would I rather eat? The sweet potatoes, of course.

Starches abound in popcorn, noodles, waffles, pancakes, oatmeal, rice, grits, croutons, and most granola, too, but I’ve learned tips such as the fact that I can eat three cups of popcorn, and it equates to eating only six croutons, so you bet I’m going for the popcorn, instead.

Starches provide B vitamins, and many starchy foods also contain fiber and protein, all of which is good for me, so I’m not saying people who want to lose weight should never eat starch. Instead of depriving myself, I keep portion size and moderation in mind, and together they make all the difference. Yesterday I consumed starches only at lunchtime. I ate one small cracker with my salad, plus the salad contained peas. I had also added almonds and sunflower seeds, which contain fats, but nuts in moderation also are good for me.

If you’re interested in learning more about exchange lists, contact the American Diabetes Association or the American Dietetic Association or go to http://www.diabetes.org/ or http://www.eatright.org/.