Thursday, July 1, 2010

This Eater's Manifesto

Like 99.a-whole-bunch percent of American's I have spent much of my life listening to and following the advice of nutrition "experts."  As of this past April, following that advice - paying special attention since the birth of my daughter in the late 1980s - their advice had left me 40 pounds heavier than when I got married, and roughly 50 pounds heavier than I would be if my body were only carrying 20% fat, which is the optimal level for someone who is not an athlete.

My parents had actually started on this journey before I was born, when my paternal grandfather died of a stroke.  At one point, my Mom was rinsing cooked ground beef to get it even leaner.  We grew up on skim milk, and never ate butter, only margarine.  And I grew up thin.  I think that was in part due to the bout of pneumonia I had at age 7, which left me unhealthily skinny for a while. 

I subscribed to Prevention for years.  And their argument, it's the fat you eat that makes you fat, made logical sense to me.  About the time my daughter was born, the food industry, freed from having to mark all altered foods as "imitation", came out with low-fat or fat-free versions of the items we'd been eating all along.  I bought them and tried them and incorporated them into my family's diet.  I selected candy based on fat content - Red Vines are very low in fat.  I substituted Egg Beaters for eggs, used fake salt (Potassium Chloride), and did my part to sustain the boneless, skinless chicken breast industry.  I became a pasta-salad fan, and ate Wendy's pita bread sandwiches instead of burgers - or worse, Arby's deli sandwiches.  We went through bags of baby carrots, and tried to make whole-wheat pastry flour work. 

Diets?  I tried a few - nothing all that organized, mostly.  I never really understood the Peanut Butter diet.  I did do Slim-Fast for a while - can't recall any positive results from it.  And I bought diet books and calorie counters.  I think we tried the American Diabetic Association diet, and I have cookbooks from the American Heart Association and Cooking Light and independent authors, all claiming to be able to get rid of that weight.  Over the nearly 20 years I was dissatisfied with my weight, I only ever managed substantive weight loss once: during a 5-month period when I was training daily to racewalk the Peachtree 10K roadrace and counting every calorie and fat gram that passed my lips 7 days a week.  I lost approximately 20 pounds over that period, and kept it off for a couple of years.

And then, somewhere, I read that a glazed fried donut has only 110 calories.  I think that's where I started replacing that lost 20 pounds.  They all came back, plus a few more.  One slight diet success - following phase 1 of the South Beach Diet - got rid of about 7, but they came back.  And that left me, this past April, staring at the scale, seeing a number I had vowed would never figure in my weight.  And I started doing some reading.

The results?  A way of eating - not, mind you, a diet; this is permanent - that flies in the face of the dietary guidelines established by the government and being pushed on the citizens through many channels.  I am a low-carb, lacto-Paleo eater.  This is what I believe:
  • Refined carbohydrates are responsible for most weight gain and associated diseases of civilization.
  • Fructose should be consumed seasonally, if at all, and in minute quantities.
  • Mankind was never meant to eat wheat or other gluten grains.
  • Saturated fat is good for you.
  • Carbohydrates of any kind are unnecessary for good nutrition.
  • Dairy products aren't something Man evolved to eat, but probably are not that big a problem (right now, I'm still eating them).
Not exactly the Food Pyramid - I've "X"ed out quite a few categories and rearranged the layers.  And I've been eating that way since April.

The results so far: nearly 24 pounds lost, effortlessly.  Including some cheats, like an occasional hamburger bun or pizza crust.  I haven't been hungry, bodyaches have disappeared, my mood has brightened, and next week, when I go in for my annual physical, I confidently anticipate that my blood lipid profile (not all that bad to start with, fortunately) will have improved.

I've been keeping track of my progress on a saved e-mail draft.  I'll be breaking that up by date and posting it here - and adding new posts going forward.  This is primarily for me to track my status and reflect on what is and is not working for me and my family (I've - well, more accurately, my weightloss and other side-effects have - persuaded them to make this change, too).

No comments:

Post a Comment