dragonwisdom - Member

dragonwisdom

Joined December 2014

Posts

197

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Weight History

Start Weight

198.0 lb

Lost so far: 6.5 lb

Current Weight

191.5 lb
Performance: losing 3.5 lb a week

Goal Weight

179.0 lb

Still to go: 12.5 lb

dragonwisdom's Weight History

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dragonwisdom's Latest Posts

Sugar Addict/Chocoholic!!! Are you one & how do you deal with it?
Hi Diane, Thanks for your post. I have gone from 205 lbs about a year ago to 175 and my goal is 167-169. The last 5-7 lbs is the most difficult. I fully agree with you that a good treat once a week never hurts and that starving yourself has the opposite effect. It is all about balance and the most important thing even more so than exercise is putting whole, nutritious foods into our bodies. I have always eaten healthy foods and have been a vegetarian for many years eating tons of veggies, beans, tofu, etc., but my enemy has been my sugar-chocolate-ice cream addiction. Since I have gotten this under control the pounds have slowly gone away and for once I am starting to feel normal and dare I say it like the athlete I once was in my 20s. Okay, maybe a bit of an exaggeration, but I do now feel fit and healthy and longer have the jello-belly when jogging. Thanks so much for your input. Good luck to you, too.

posted 07 Feb 2015, 07:47

A 12-Hour Eating Window for a Healthy Weight
I think the most important thing is whatever works for someone is the best method. I would not say that one method is stupid over another; rather, whatever suites your lifestyle, personality and you can stick with is the best way to go. For me it works and that is all that matters.

posted 31 Jan 2015, 05:39

A 12-Hour Eating Window for a Healthy Weight
I do daily "IF" or intermittent fasting. It is a great way to control your calorie intake and gives your body a break from eating. The trick is not to gorge yourself with food, especially the very fatty and sugary ones. I usually don't eat after my dinner until after lunch the next day. For example, yesterday I finished my dinner around 8:30pm. I was going to have lunch today, but didn't feel hungry and am now in my 21 hours of fasting. I have been doing "IF" since December after watching the BBC Horizon documentary on it hosted by Dr. Mosley who now has his own books and web site dedicated to this topic. I also read Brad Pilon's book Eat Stop Eat. For me, I also don't like to eat breakfast so it is not problems for me to not eat except for a coffee or cup of tea. When the body is in fasting mode it help to balance the insulin level and also uses the fat reserves for fuel. In addition, if you go for a longer period the body releases more grown hormones which can in fact build muscle. This evening before I eat dinner I did some resistance training using power bands. I must also say that I feel more energetic since I started to eat less and it also helped with my cravings for sugar. I have gone from about 205 lbs at 5'8" to 175 lbs and am starting to finally build muscle and feel somewhat athletic. I came from a marathon and Ironman triathlon background, but along the path of getting older something went wrong and I got fat and unhealthy. I would highly recommend the 12 hour break or longer. Whatever works for you and I would say to "Wholefoodnut" that I would agree about the rat issue, but I have been your guinea pig and it does have positive results.

posted 31 Jan 2015, 02:31

Weight loss jumpstart--intermittent fasting
Hi Alb1986,

I would not say that fasting is a fad diet as it has been around for years. I guess the term that they are using now is somewhat faddish "IF" (Intermittent Fasting), but for me it works. I have done fasting for many years and in my youth (long long ago) I would do 2-10 days.

I began intermittent fasting in February 2014 after watching the BBC Horizon series on IF. I thought it was a great way for me to get motivated to start losing weight and it really worked. In the first month I combined IF with longer periods of fasting (36-72 hours) and lost about 20 lbs. It was too much to continue this strict IF/longer fasting routine, so I began to fine tune it to meet my daily routine/needs and for the past year have done IF almost day.

I prefer to start the IF after dinner until anywhere between 12-3pm. This is usually when I eat my first meal of the day. Sometimes I just don't feel like eating and will go until dinner or maybe just eat some whole fruit. The big issue for me at first was when I came off the IF period I gorged myself. So, it is really a matter of learning to eat slowly and a reasonable amount after the IF.

Nowadays, I am doing IF between 12-20 hours a day (this includes the sleeping period) and I am usually never hungry. I also have a lot more energy, eat less, feel fuller and have dramatically reduced my body fat %. Read Brad Pilon's bood for the science of it. I think the best part of IF is that I learned that much of my hunger is psychological (and I am definitely an "Emotional Eater" who needs to feed his negative emotions with sugar and chocolate and ice cream) and it really helped me with my addictive cravings and food intake. I would highly recommend it as a regular part of your diet.

I don't follow any particular IF regime and there are a number of them. My approach is that I did extensive research on the topic and then experimented and found what worked best for my body/personality. Overall, it really works for me and it makes my day less stressful, but I will add that it took some months to fine tune everything.

Some of the books that I have read on this topic:
The Fast-5 Diet by Dr Bert Herring, MD
Eat Stop Eat by Brad Pilon
Fasting and Eating for Health by Dr Joel Fuhrman, MD
The Fast Diet by Dr Michael Mosely, MD and Mimi Spence (Dr. Mosely was also the host on the BBC Horizon tv documentary Eat, Fast and Live Longer)
Dr John Bernardi This is a very good article. He is not a medical doctor but a PhD in Exercise Physiology and Nutrient Biochemistry. http://www.precisionnutrition.com/intermittent-fasting

For me, IF is a godsend as it helps me to keep on track with my caloric intake, it makes me much more disciplined, I am not a morning person so not feeling stressed about having breakfast really helps, it is a positive psychological feeling not to feel that I have to always eat, and at the beginning of my lifestyle change it really helped me to have a defined eating plan to start my diet and I saw some very positive results early on and stuck to it. I continue to do IF as it suite my personality, but I do know that it is not for everyone. I feel that it will be very positive for you if "IF" suites your personality and lifestyle. Just make sure to tailor it to your needs and don't forget to enjoy the process.

Good luck with IF!

posted 27 Jan 2015, 21:14

Why not being a perfectionist with your diet and why planned indulgences are healthy???
A few days ago, I had a bit of a binge, but I still stayed within my calorie intake. I gave myself permission to binge, but was conscious about my intake by using this site to input my calories. I thought that when I weighed in the following day that I would have gained, but instead my weight was down a little. I was very surprised. The funny thing is that I should not have been surprised as for over the past two weeks I have been doing amazing and my net caloric intake has been way down. However, it is that negative voice within my head that starts the ruminating thoughts such as "your so weak", "why are you such a loser", "why don't you have any control", "you can't stick to anything", and this endless loop of prerecorded messages goes on and on and on and on. I think that the negative thoughts or as they are referred to in the psychological community ruminations are a big part of the thought process of people with weight issues (me being one of them...LOL!).

Not only do the negative thoughts cause us to fall off the wagon, but the anxiety and stress they cause may lead to depression which in turn makes us loose our motivation and will power and also results in the release of cortisol (aka "the stress hormone). As we all know, this chemical can cause weight gain and this results in the endless cycle of feeding our emotions and getting heavier than when we started our diet or lifestyle change.

I think the answer is to have planned positive binges to celebrate our control and weight loss once in a while. Allow yourself to indulge a little. I feel that when we try to be too perfectionist and I am a self-proclaimed perfectionist we are doomed to fail as perfectionism is NOT POSSIBLE. I believe the key is to make it a positive experience and just say that today I can indulge/enjoy some of my addictions and for me it is SUGAR, ICE CREAM and CHOCOLATE. Yes, I am also a self-proclaimed SUGAR ADDICT and CHOCOHOLIC. With all these issues no wonder I feed my problems/emotions as I know I am an EMOTIONAL EATER, especially when stress, anxious and depression take over my life.

Yesterday I had some creamy maple fudge (6.5 glorious oz of it), rich shortbread cookies and a few pieces of dark chocolate along with a few Japanese delights (yokan). The fantastic thing is that I have been doing great for almost 2 months now and was becoming too rigid and perfectionist about my routines around eating and exercise. I could feel that I was getting stressed, anxious, rigid and overly perfectionist about eating and dieting. So, yesterday I gave myself permission to have some treats that I don't normally indulge in nowadays and yet still remained under my intake and in fact I had a negative caloric intake. It surprised me, but with this tool it was possible. I was also able to stop when I wanted to which was very different from my past.

I think that I just needed the release/binge and the psychological change for me this time was that I felt positive about it instead of beating myself up with the endless loop of ruminating thoughts. I gave myself permission to eat these foods, but I also understood what I was doing and had the confidence the next day I would get back on track. Well, today I got back on track, I went for a great run and I celebrated the fact that I allowed myself to indulge in some of my vices and lo and behold my weight is down. It should not have been a surprise to me as my documented number on this site point to a weight loss.

I think that I am going to implement controlled binges in my monthly routine as my perfectionism can make me too rigid and controlled which results in a lack of enjoyment in life. Life is meant to be celebrated and sometimes to have a little excess and the key word is "little" and perhaps "once and a while"! Of course, if you don't feel you have the control to do this you have to wait until you reach a point in your weight loss journey that you feel confident that you can manage it and deal with this approach. Perhaps it is not for everyone!!! For me, I know that after 2 months of getting my addictions (sugar and chocolate and ice cream) under control I am confident that I can do these once or twice a month without any negative impact. I should also point out that I have been dealing with weight issues for years and over the past 3 years of a great deal of work, learning, experimenting and determination with some cul-de-sac along the way, and some dead ends (failures), I have managed to keep moving forward with baby steps and am now very close to my final goal. I think it will be reached sometime this year. As I am now comfortable with my weight I am not so stressed as to when this date comes!!!

What do you think about this approach?

***********While cortisol is an important and helpful part of the body’s response to stress, it’s important that the body’s relaxation response to be activated so the body’s functions can return to normal following a stressful event. Unfortunately, in our current high-stress culture, the body’s stress response is activated so often that the body doesn’t always have a chance to return to normal, resulting in a state of chronic stress.

Higher and more prolonged levels of cortisol in the bloodstream (like those associated with chronic stress) have been shown to have negative effects, such as:

Impaired cognitive performance
Suppressed thyroid function
Blood sugar imbalances such as hyperglycemia
Decreased bone density
Decrease in muscle tissue
Higher blood pressure
Lowered immunity and inflammatory responses inthe body, slowed wound healing, and other health consequences
Increased abdominal fat, which is associated with a greater amount of health problems than fat deposited in other areas of the body. Some of the health problems associated with increased stomach fat are heart attacks, strokes, the development of metabolic syndrome, higher levels of “bad” cholesterol (LDL) and lower levels of “good” cholesterol (HDL), which can lead to other health problems!

posted 27 Jan 2015, 18:18

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	100 g Sweet Potato
	2 cups Blueberries
	Walking (slow) - 2/mph
	Bicycling (leisurely) - <10/mph
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