January 31st Progress Report
Just to back up a little bit, I wanted to share with you where I was and where I am going in my weight loss journey. Two years ago, I lost a significant amount of weight–60 pounds, to be exact–by going Vegan, and then going back to being vegetarian, but avoiding sugar and by exercising. After a while, though, I got really tired and had low energy…got really cranky too. It wasn’t a pretty picture! I started eating meat again, but that didn’t start me gaining weight. Why I started gaining weight back again was because I began eating sugar products, grains (including refined), and fast food crap…
But now I’m back in the game, and actively working on researching the best way to lose weight for the long term, as well as fight off diseases and illnesses. I found the Paleo diet.
I have been following this for the last month–eating only meats, vegetables, and fruits. I changed my caffeine source from Mt. Dew to green and black tea. So, not only do I get the health benefits of the tea, I also don’t have all the sugar and corn syrup that causes weight gain. Grains are out, but I have found some great recipes for using nut flours and meals in baked goods…
For the month of January, I have lost a total of 15 pounds.
So, I have eaten some sugar products here and there. And in the past month, I have had pizza twice. So, while grains are not on the menu most of the time, I realize that it can be a little easier to transition slowly to a no-grain diet, since grains have been a part of my diet pretty much since I was born. And I know that is how many of us grew up. It doesn’t have to be hard to give all that up all at once, but the closer I get to a no grain diet, I know the better I will feel. Already, I have felt so much better when I do not eat grains.
Stay tuned for more of my progress…
Fred Flintstone was Right!
That familiar tune starts out with a bird’s tail getting pulled, followed by Fred sliding down his work dinosaur, hops in his car, races to punch out from work, and then while he’s on his way home, the song starts: “Flintstones, meet the Flintstones. They’re a modern stone age family…” Ya know, Fred always ate a lot of meat–I mean, a LOT of meat! And whenever he was supposed to be on a diet, he was given one leaf of lettuce for a meal. And in the end, he couldn’t keep up the diet, because he was always way too hungry. Can’t say I blame him!
For starters, the cavemen seemed to know a lot more about nutrition than the writers of that cartoon knew back in the ’60’s. They had Fred going on a starvation diet–which, today, we know is just a recipe for disaster. Starving yourself is the last thing you want to do to lose weight, for a number of reasons. First, your body will hold on to as much fat as possible, because it thinks that there is a famine and needs all the fat it can get to keep for survival.
Next, eventually, your organs will not get the nutrients it needs to operate efficiently, and they will eventually shut down. It has been documented several times over how the survivors of the concentration camps from World War II had irreparable damage in their organs from being starved in the camps.
And last, it’s not as simple as calories in, calories out for weight loss. It seems that all the diets out there have it wrong–even most of the low carb diets. For instance, did you know that eating any grain in any form is going to make you fat? Or sick? Or diseased? Carbohydrates that come from grains are going to make it a lot harder for you to lose weight and keep it off, than if you were to get your carbohydrates from fruits and vegetables. Protein and fat have gotten a bum rap in the past 30 years or so, very much to the detriment of our health. I won’t go into it now, but proteins and fats are much better for you than grains…
In the end, if I were to write the diet episode for Fred Flintstone, I would have written that he eat a lot of meat, eggs, fruits and vegetables–he would have never had to join a meeting, nor would he have ever been hungry. And he would have gotten to be an “after” picture.
