Zucchini Love

I made Cleochatra's Zucchini Pizza Crust tonight.

I love Cleochatra. I mean, I think I really love Cleochatra!

I like to think I'm reasonably intelligent and creative, but she's got it all over me. It's possible I could have tripped over the cauliflower crust recipe on my own, but chances are excellent I probably wouldn't have made it. I don't particularly like the taste of cauliflower, and besides, the fact that it looks like brains squicks me. But I never would have thought to substitute zucchini instead.

Aside from the fact that the pizza was delicious and OMG so filling (I have leftovers for breakfast AND lunch tomorrow), it reminded me a lot of my grandfather, who died eight years ago. There are two reasons for this.

First, the zucchini. Grampie always had a vegetable garden. A huge, ginormous, half-acre garden. That is, the main garden, he also had bean poles alone the fence and planted herbs in borders out front.

My Nana always said you could always tell if a house was occupied by Italians because you'd see tomatoes planted in the front yard instead of roses.

Anyway, one year when I was about seven, one of his zucchini grew to an incredible size -- it had to be nearly two feet long. That was his pride and joy, and whenever I came over (so long as it was still on the vine) we'd go out back and admire it.

The other thing that reminded me of him was the pizza pan I was using. It's a square, and it came from his first restaurant, which makes it at least sixty years old. Now that's a well-seasoned pan! It's heavy, and sixty years of more or less continuous use have turned it a lovely black. It's one of my more cherished possessions.

So, it was a night of good food and happy memories. Thank you, Cleochatra!

Elle

Today's menu

Christin has a great post up, detailing her maintenance plan, one she was intending to use for Kimkins, until Heidi Diaz -- a morbidly obese fraud with no medical training whatsoever -- put the kibosh on it.

That got me thinking -- we all have different ways of maintaining our weight loss, and while some strategies work better than others, there's lots of little tricks and tips each of us knows that others might find useful. So, I thought I'd periodically post what I'm eating, in case anyone is interested, along with some little strategies that work for me. Your mileage, of course, may vary.

Today's Menu:

Breakfast

• Coffee with cream, no sugar
• 8 oz water
• Four strips of crisp bacon (the texture of bacon fat squicks me, so I George-Foreman-Grill mine until they're basically linear pork rinds)

Mid-Morning Snack

• More coffee
• 16 oz water
• 1 oz peanuts

Lunch (brought from home)

• Curried chicken
• Lentils
• Butternut squash
• 16 oz water

Afternoon Snack

• 8 Strawberries
• 16 oz Water

Dinner (as planned)

• Chicken Caesar
• 16 oz water

I'm usually not hungry after dinner, but if I do want a snack, I almost always have sugar-free jello which I make up every week and keep in the fridge.

You'll notice the abundance of water. That leads me to hint #1 -- drink lots of water, just as much as you do when on Induction or OWL. The 64 oz total I listed above is a minimum, I try to drink 120 oz a day. This is a big one, because I find that the times when my weight starts to creep upwards are pretty well correlated with the times when I'm less than diligent about my water intake.

I also try to get the bulk of my calories in during the day, though I'm not always good about that. I do this for obvious reasons, that's when I'm most active. I'm not too terribly vigilant about when I eat at night, I don't have a hard and fast rule like not eating after 7 PM, for instance. But I try not to have anything too heavy, because it makes me feel yucky in the morning.

Does anybody want to share what their daily menu looks like? Hints? Tips?

Elle

Potato Hell

I've been maintaining for five years now, with a few excursions upwards from my goal weight. Funny how these excursions are never downwards. While these gains are minor and quickly corrected by a brief return to Induction levels, it occurred to me that there's something interesting about their timing. They always seem to happen just before a holiday or a vacation or some other event that promises some higher-carbohydrate food than I would normally eat.

I got on the scale this morning to find that I'd pretty much undone all the damage from my last upwards excursion. Yay! However, my Dance of Joy was interrupted when I realized that today is Easter Sunday, and at approximately 1:00 PM I'd be at my brother's house, confronted with a bunch of high-carbohydrate food.

There are some foods I can pass up with no problem at all. For instance, yesterday found me at my local grocery purchasing a pie for today's feast, a pie I have no intention of eating. That made it a lot easier to buy the cheapest pie I could find -- I've fulfilled my obligations as a guest, and it's not like I have to eat the darn thing! I have no problem buying a dessert I know I'm not going to eat, but I can't say the same for everything else that's going to be served.

My brother J is a potato freak. When we were kids, mom would make a double batch of mashed potatoes, one half for J, the other half for the other three people sitting at the table. Fortunately for J, he's got a high metabolism and a job that requires a lot of physical exertion so he can enjoy his potato habit with no worries. For that reason, it's safe to make an a priori assumption that there will be a vat of potatoes on the table.

Those kinds of foods are the problem, I love potatoes and bread and all kinds of starchy foods like that. Normally I'd just take a little of each and not worry about it, but this holiday dinner is a little different. I'm going to Albuquerque the week after this to see Dancing in Socks Guy and I know I'm going to go way off plan then. This forces me to make a choice -- go off plan today, or go off plan a week from now. I can't do both.

I started low-carbing back in 2003 and I was never under the delusion that there would come a time when, having reached goal, I'd be able to eat whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted. I knew that I'd always have to limit carbohydrate, and I was fine with that. I'm one of the lucky ones -- my maintenance carbohydrate level is quite high, around 80-90 g per day. When I gain a little back, Induction takes it right off.

But I'd be lying if I didn't say that as much as I love what Atkins has done for me, as much as I appreciate the fact that I can eat most of the foods I love most of the time, and can enjoy the occasional treat -- it gets a little annoying at times to realize that I'll always have to make these choices.

I can't eat like other people do. But a little perspective helps. Those "other people" may be enjoying their hot rolls and mashed potatoes today, but come tomorrow (or even tonight) they'll be gnashing their teeth over it. They'll be worrying about their weight, and most of them will be justified in doing so, and they'll be wondering why they just can't seem to lose despite all that diet and exercise.

I'm so lucky that I found the perfect way of eating for me. It's no mystery as to what makes me gain or lose weight. I have all the tools I need to keep myself at a healthy weight for the rest of my life. It does mean that I have to pick and choose my battles, and appreciate that it's up to me to make the right choices, and that this is a lifetime commitment.

But it's worth it.

Elle

Mixed Marriage

That's what Dancing in Socks Guy and I will have. And it's not because he's Navajo and I'm Caucasian.

It's because I low-carb and he does not.

We have two very different ways of eating. He's of the low-fat, lean-protein, starchy-and-non-starchy vegetables, whole grains suasion, and I'm of the higher-fat, protein, non-starchy vegetables, very few whole grains school of thought. And it just squicks him that I eat the way I do because he can't accept the fact that you can eat bacon on a regular basis and not drop dead of a heart attack.

True, a lot of this is because he loves me and basically doesn't want me to die young. I think we're agreed on that last point, I don't want to die young either. He doesn't say much about it, but when we're together and I'm hollowing out my breakfast burrito and just eating the eggs, cheese, bacon and chili, I can see him thinking, "O God O God O God, what is she doing?"

This, despite a lot of empirical evidence that demonstrates he's got nothing to worry about. Okay, he never saw me at my highest weight, but he knows I'm prone to abdominal obesity and that with Atkins, that's gone. My total cholesterol/triglycerides are all low. My HDL/LDL ratio is pretty good too. My blood pressure runs a consistent 90/60, which is pretty low. It's always been that low, though, back in the bad old days when I smoked I used to try and kid my doctor that I had to smoke to keep my blood pressure up to where I wouldn't pass out every time I got up from a chair. She was rightfully unimpressed with that logic. And my humor, because it wasn't funny.

As I said, he doesn't say much about it but every now and then he'll say something like, "Sweetie, you should eat more rice. Brown rice is good." To which I reply, "It's good for some people, but I don't react well to any color rice, which is why it's only an occasional treat." To which he responds, "Well, what about blue corn or buckwheat or (insert grain here)?" Which is my cue to huff, "Look, beans, lentils and dried peas are about all I can tolerate on a regular basis without going into a carbohydrate coma, okay?"

He doesn't give me too much grief about it, but I can tell he doesn't really believe me. His diet works for him because he's 6'3" and a guy. Most of his family is the same way, a bunch of tall, high-metabolism beanpoles. He can really imagine what it's like to be a 5'3" woman with a deranged carbohydrate metabolism, because he's not one. He's a typical guy in that if he gains a few pounds, he just cuts back on the beer and sugar and, presto! he's back to normal. I think he really thinks that I'm malnourished because I avoid most non-vegetable carbohydrates.

I suppose after a few more years he may get over it, but I think I'll aways see that gleam of doubt/fear in his eyes as I breakfast on bacon.

Elle

Thoughts on bulimia and carbohydrate triggers

Weighing the Facts has a great post up about "Why we overeat." It contains part of an article which discusses some of the brain chemistry aspects behind binge eating. Experts have been telling us for years that eating disorders have little to do with food; this is, of course, true to a very large extent. But from my own experience, I wonder if food, particularly our reactions to certain foods, doesn't have something to do with it. The progression may have more to do with control and emotional issues, but the thing that trips that cascade is nearly always tied to weight issues.

For most of my life I ate a "normal" American diet, heavy on the white carbohydrates. As children, my siblings and I were served the usual meat-green vegetable-yellow vegetable-starchy vegetable kind of menu. Mom didn't keep a lot of junk in the house, we never had soda or chips lying around, mainly because she couldn't afford it. Sugary cereals were a rare treat, and my brother M. used to appoint himself Cereal Warden, hiding the box so "you guys won't hog it all down right away!" None of us were truly overweight, though as an adolescent I was carrying maybe 5 lbs extra here and there, which of course seemed disastrous. It was then that I first started experimenting with bulimia. That's often how bulimia starts, wanting to eat without gaining weight, or at least that's how it started with me. But I am convinced that this not so uncommon desire to eat what you want without gaining weight occasionally runs into a messed-up brain chemistry, and the next thing you know, the occasional purge has become a way of life.

Simply put; bulimia made me feel better, albeit temporarily. My disease got worse as I got older and encountered more by way of adult stresses and disappointments. The act of binging and purging requires attention -- the preparation of food, the eating, and the purging all distract from whatever life is throwing at you. It also results in a temporary flood of endorphins which calm and soothe. As a former binge-purge aka bulimia specialist, I'll testify to that. It's funny what happens when an eating disorder runs smack into an over-educated brain. There I'd be, fingers down my throat, thinking "now comes the endorphin rush!" I knew what was going on with me, even as it was happening. Not that I let it stop me.

I didn't truly get a handle on my bulimia until I started low-carbing. In the two years prior to starting Atkins I'd gained the most weight I ever had in my life. I normally hovered around 135-145 for most of my adult life. At 5'3" that wasn't skinny, but given my build, it was hardly fat, either, maybe 10 lbs overweight at the worst. But by May 2003 I found myself weighing 163 lbs, the heaviest I'd ever been. I was also purging at least once a day at that point. I was never a serial dieter, relying as I did on bulimia to keep a handle on things, but it was clear even to my addled brain that bulimia clearly was not working, I was killing myself slowly, and it was time to try something else for weight control and to get help with my disease.

A relative had lost quite a bit of weight on Atkins, so I thought I'd try that first. Due to my body chemistry, I was a perfect candidate for Atkins. Most of my extra weight was abdominal, which seems to respond best to carbohydrate control, I was never much for sweets though I loved pasta and bread, and I loved protein-based foods. Atkins was like a miracle for me. I dropped 13-15 lbs on induction (13 officially, but I didn't get a scale until two or three days into induction so I'm not totally sure what my starting weight was) and lost steadily thereafter.

What I found truly amazing about this was that my craving to purge (and it's a real craving) disappeared almost immediately. I thought at first it was because I'd switched obsessions -- instead of constantly planning the next thing I'd binge on, I was busy counting grams of carbohydrates, and chatting with my new buddies over on Low Carb Friends. But it was more than that. I felt good for the first time in ages. I was sleeping well, I had a ton of energy, my eczema cleared up on its own, and my nearly constant brain-fog had lifted. About two months after I started, I got "official" help for my eating disorder; though I hadn't purged once since starting Atkins, I figured I'd better get help before it started up again.

So I did, and aside from the occasional pothole when things got very stressful, I've been able to control it for years. But, and here is the point of this long-winded post, I am convinced that a big part of the reason why I have been able to control it is that I'm no longer eating on a regular basis foods which trigger these binge-purge cravings. My binge food of choice was nearly always pasta of some form. I hardly ever eat it now, but, when I do and if I happen to eat it during a stressful time, I notice these usually quiescent cravings get quite a bit louder.

The usual advice for those recovering from an eating disorder -- the advice I got and disregarded because low-carbing was clearly working for me -- was to eat a "balanced" diet (aka one with a ton of white carbohydrates) while getting psychiatric help. I can't help but wonder, given my own experience, that more bulimics would be helped in their recovery if white carbohydrate reduction (at a minimum) wasn't recommended instead. Dr. Atkins mentioned in Dr. Atkins' New Diet Revolution that protein binging is self-limiting, it's pretty hard to binge on steak, for example, due to the satiety factor. It's much easier to binge on carbohydrate-laden foods, but aside from ease of use, I think carbohydrates set up a cascade in the bulimic body which triggers binging.

That's what I think, based on my own experience. I think the psychiatric stuff helped tremendously as well, in terms of recognizing stressors and developing more constructive coping strategies. But, and I can't emphasize this enough, I doubt very much I would have been nearly as successful in coping with my bulimia if I'd been following the recommended "healthy" diet with breads and pastas and all that.

Just my two cents.


Elle