We should have a class while we are school age to learn how to listen to our bodies. I know when I was growing up I abused the heck out of mine. I would explore boundaries that perhaps should have been left alone. Silly things such as how would I feel staying up for three days straight. Staying in the winter playing with damp clothes until my skin and muscles became numb and stiff from cold – which is very painful during the thaw out process. Letting myself get badly sunburned when there was no real need to. Taking risks I should not have taken because of the possible long term injuries I could have suffered.
There are other more subtle things I did I never really paid attention to because I didn’t know they were important. Eating that last slice of pizza with my third glass of soda. Experimenting with tobacco and alcohol. Ignoring my body telling me it did not appreciate being poisoned. Trying to get by on too little sleep, or not getting the right kind of exercise.
There are a lot of signals our bodies give us that we should take notice of. I imagine that most people are not aware their body performs much better when properly maintained. I was taught as a young child that my body existed and I was in it. Other than eating, bathing and brushing my teeth, nothing else really needed to be done. My body would happily do its thing while I did mine.
 We eventually reach an age where our body starts giving stronger signals about what it does and does not like concerning how it is being treated. Some of the signs are: indigestion, anxiety, stress, tiredness, lethargy, and so on. We start to notice that we do not feel as good as we used to. At first we tend to project these feelings off on something else. Our body is getting old, we have bad genes, the air is polluted, our work is stressful. We make excuses rather than admit listen to our body.
Some people go on ignoring the signs their body gives them telling them something needs to change. In the mean time our body goes on doing the best it can with what it has to work with. When someone discovers they have acid indigestion they are more likely to take an antacid than give up eating greasy foods. We internalize it is our body failing us, rather than us failing our body. We take a pill to mask our symptoms of poor diet and maintenance.
If our heartburn goes away we think all is well once more. What we do not see, is the internal damage going on inside our body. All that extra fat in our diet is coursing through our blood stream. Animal fats are acidy and etch away some of the walls of our blood vessels. Our body in trying to keep everything working applies a cholesterol patch to the etched away areas. As our body is concerned, as it can do no more, but it creates other health problems.
Something I never knew, and it may be news to you too, is these health problems we develop as we go through life are our bodies way of calling attention to itself. When our bodies speak we need to listen. Instead of reaching for a pill, we should evaluate what we are eating and whether it is good for us or only tastes good.
If we are tired all the time, perhaps we should look at our lifestyle. Maybe more than our diet that needs changing. Better sleep patterns and exercise help. Alternatively finding ways to eliminate stress in our life makes us healthier.
Our bodies I have discovered are wonderful and amazing vehicles for us to toodle around in. Our bodies can take an amazing amount of neglect and punishment without slowing down. Eventually there comes a time when all the abuse and neglect on our bodies is too much, and our bodies respond by signaling us something is not right. When those signals happen, it is in our best interest to slow down and evaluate what we think may be wrong and try to correct the situation.
I see a lot of searches for weight loss and dieting for my few blog posts. I looked for and found my eating journal (really notepad entries) from last year, and decided I would post what I have in order to help anyone looking for ways to lose weight.
 One great side effect of a diet is you have a lot of energy in general. The downside of a diet is you wake up at night, or at least I did from being hungry. After the first few weeks I became used to it, and it became a normal part of the night. Feeling hungry and getting cravings also is part of the process. I also felt pretty poor the first few weeks, and I was told it is not uncommon to feel ill for the first few weeks.
Reasons for feeling ill ranged from going without food to my body using fat that had bad things stored in it that I either ate over time, or breathed in. What the truth is I do not know, but I became ill feeling at any rate.
One of the things most diet programs also do not tell you is what happens to the fat on your body. I have forgotten the specifics, but generally we do not ‘burn’ fat as the commercials tell us we do, other than in a general sense. Our bodies use the fat for calories of course, but we do not burn it up and it is gone. What happens is the fat is used by our bodies and the remains that our body can not use is converted into water and air.
That sounds pretty simple, writing water and air. What that means in reality is dieting will increase your trips to the bathroom, and it will increase your gas output. Not a big deal, but I thought I would mention it. Also it should be mentioned that what your body uses and discards leaves in the liquid for the most part, and what it can not use is generally solids. So you may notice a change in your bathroom routine while dieting.
Instead of sending a list of seven days eating I thought I made a composite list. I ate almost the same foods every day anyway so it made more sense. My diet mainly came from the the book, “The Thirty Day Diabetes Miracle”. It was a diet that I thought I could maintain which is crucial for dieting. If you find any diet ‘severe’ you will not stick to it.
A few last items: First is the reason for the walnut oil. What I ate was almost zero fat, and our bodies need some fat both for maintenance and to burn fat (or so I was told after weight loss stopped). I was told to get a nut oil that was not cooked or heated. It worked well.
FInally, eating this way is cheap! It is a good healthy way to save money. The walking is crucial to speed up the process, so don’t skip it.
Two previous posts you may find helpful:
How I Lost 56 Pounds
Weight Loss, Happy Eating, And Celiac Disease
As with any change to your life style, use you own judgment. I am not a health care professional, and have no idea if what I did to lose weight is healthy or safe for you.
Breakfast:
Most days – 1 cup oatmeal, 1 cup pinto beans or other beans, 1 cup blueberries, six whole almonds, 2 teaspoons walnut oil.
Once in a while – Two scrambled eggs or Tofu scrambled ‘eggs’ w/ onions, bell pepper, and chili, two slices Ezekial 4:9 bread toasted w/ almond butter.
Lunch:
Most days: 1 cup 3 bean chili, one serving Rosarita corn chips (about 10), salad w/ lowest fat strawberry dressing, and some days some steamed chicken breast.
Once in while: McDonalds Southwest salad grilled although the Asian salad is about the same, only it has higher sodium.
Ezekial bread and soy burger, corn chips, and fruit
Dinner:
Most days: Lentil, vegetable, pea, beef and barley, or other soup, less than, or about 30 carbs, and fruit, lately a whole pear
Some days: Ezekial bread and soy burger; chicken wrap and ice cream from McDonalds; steamed chicken on tortilla and fruit at home, beef or sockeye salmon, and either asparagus, or peas, and one slice Ezekial bread; two fruits
That’s about it. Sometimes I make the lunch chili and chips into an almost frito pie. Occasionally I drink some soy milk with these meals, although I use soy milk for refrigerator made oatmeal. The people who wrote the book [thirty day diabetes miracle] have a cookbook coming out, though they also have a weeks worth of menus, but I am lazy….
I walk twenty minutes at least after each meal, and on my days off I like to take a four or five mile walk about an hour after eating, and then walk after lunch and dinner. My after meal walks are about 1 – 2 miles, usually closer to 1.2 – 1.5 miles.
Starting down the path, or perhaps journey of living with celiac disease can be taken two ways. It is a curse upon the person who finds out they have it. The curse is the diet. The food choices for someone with celiac disease is they can eat anything they want to as long long as it does not contain wheat/gluten.
The bad news is just about everything imaginable has some form of wheat product in it. If you eat what is dubbed as, “The Standard American Diet”, you are going to feel pretty SAD. Not only where is that good old standby, white bread, but where did everything else go that people love to eat? Cookies, donuts, candy bars, ice cream, most breakfast cereals, almost everything that is part of SAD. That could make one quite sad indeed.
So what is the problem I wonder? If you read my post about my own journey down the weight loss road, you know I am no stranger to limiting eating choices. What I find exciting about a celiac disease diet, is it is no longer a choice to leave most foods we do not need to eat anyway alone. How liberating it is to be able to erase a whole plethora of calorie packed artificially created foods from consideration as part of, “…what am I going to eat”.
A friend told me when I mentioned celiac disease to him, “Man, I know a little about that, you are going to lose a lot of weight fast, because you can’t eat hardly anything! What you can eat is expensive, so your food bill will probably double.” I sure have not found that to be the case. In fact, except for a few cookies, and peanut butter sandwiches, and some occasional pieces of fried chicken, not much has changed in what I eat, or how much it costs.
From my weight loss experience I learned to eat a lot of fruit, vegetables, and whole grain foods. The whole grains that I was used to eating are out, but everything else is just a little shift in the menu planning. Home cooked beans are cheap and very healthy. Fruits are very healthy and they change with the seasons, vegetables are limited by imagination.
Instead of whole grain foods, corn cereal and corn tortillas are the easiest and cheapest substitute. Although a corn tortilla does not quite take the place of a fresh sopapilla with honey, it is not a big sacrifice. Living with celiac disease for the average american will feel like punishment.
On the other side of things, if one eats a diet rich in vegetables and fruits, plus foods from other cultures, and is not scared of eating a raw unprocessed piece of fruit, eating is no more of an issue than it was before. It just takes a little more planning and for forethought.
If you are looking for a way to eat healthier, especially if your goal is weight loss, the celiac disease way of eating may be your ticket to diet satisfaction and healthy weight loss. You can eat more of some of those foods you like because the list of foods you must ignore is so large. With a little optimism, a celaic disease diet, can be seen as The Joy Of Celiac eating is one road to better long lasting health. Happy eating and remember life is what you make it!
There is a new blog by a young woman, Amy who is very brave and sharing her weight loss saga with the world. I left this on as a comment because she asked what to expect on her blog. I did not come across much about how dieting really feels, and what happens. These are highlights that I jotted down as I typed. I have modified a few sentences from my comments to here.
If you are thinking about dieting, but scared of starting this may be a blog entry for you. If I can do it, so can you.
Between last Christmas and last May I dropped 56 pounds. I learned a couple of things along the way I am happy to share with you.
Eating less of the same food(s) does not work!
For the first two to three weeks I was feeling poorly. I have a friend who’s wife is a dietician, and he told me that is normal to feel fairly ill the first couple of weeks.
For the next weeks, I was teetering between hungry and very hungry. It goes with the territory. I wanted to lose weight at an optimum rate, so I chose to be very hungry. After about three weeks of very hungry it does not bother you any longer. It is like having a sore toe, you get used to it.
I woke up a some nights because I was hungry. I also needed less sleep because I was hungry. Hunger must make us want to go and find food to eat. You get used to it.
I also went through different types of cravings. Calcium, salt, vitamin C, etc. I imagine it was my body adjusting to new foods and not getting vitamins and minerals from junk food. This too does pass.
Over the months, even when I felt really ill in the first few weeks, I remained consistent, both in my eating and my exercise which was twenty to thirty miles of walking each week. Three times a day after eating I hit the pavement for anywhere from a mile to a six mile slow walk depending on how much time I had free.
I can honestly say, that other than the first few weeks when I felt like I was going to fall over from a puff of air, I never ran out of energy walking. I think I may have tanked out from running, but at walking speed my body was able to convert fast enough that I always had enough energy.
If you plateau, it may be you are not getting enough good fat in your body. I had to increase my extra fat intake to two teaspoons of walnut oil a day, up from a little less than one teaspoon to keep the weight loss going.
I find now that many foods I used to love, look and taste terrible! That is a good thing, although I know from experience you can make yourself like them, but the pounds will sneak back on.
Find a diet you can live with, and forget about the word ‘diet’. Think instead, New Lifestyle. Find a plan you can eat/live with/on the rest of your life. There is no going back to the way you used to eat, once you arrive on the other side, so make sure your choice is enjoyable, easy, and simple. Be creative when eating out, a few sides and some mixing makes a good meal too!
I picked the 30 Day Diabetes Miracle Diet, which is a plant based diet. I lost between 2.5 to 3.5 pounds a week. I like it because I like oatmeal, beans, and vegetables, and you can get them anywhere. It is cheap and healthy eating. I enjoy eating these foods even now, and will mostly eat this way the rest of my life, with some meat in the mix now and then.
McDonalds salads and wraps are good choices when you need to eat and are away from home. Salad bars are as bad as burger joints if you do not watch what you are eating – they hide fat and too many calories in soups and bread stuff.
Once you start losing weight, dieting experts will come out of the woodwork and tell you how you are doing it all wrong. Stick to your plan, and politely tell them you are happy with what you are doing. A doctor and a dietician argued against my diet, even though they could not argue with the results, or find anything lacking in it.
Fat breaks down to water and air, so get comfortable to the idea that there will be more output liquid than input.
Mar 06, 2009: I posted a recent entry on diet and weight loss that may be of interest to you if you found this post worthwhile.
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