Triggering the fat genes
I'm putting this here to leave myself some bread crumbs as I try to figure this whole "how to lose weight" thing out. It's shocking and depressing that I can be over 50, an intelligent woman, and not really know this. The state of medical science is so much worse than the common person thinks it is!
I started getting a bit chubby in high school, although I was a three-season varsity athlete. One winter, my junior year I think, I didn't do a sport and I gained ten pounds that winter. I think I hit 140 pounds, maybe? It was all on my butt and thighs and we figured it was just "growing up" into becoming a woman. Then I gained the freshmen fifteen in college, maybe coming in around 155, but still nothing too troubling. I didn't present as fat, just needed a size 14 instead of a 6 like my tinier friends. But I continued to gain. I recall hating buying size 16 career dresses in my early twenties, so I started doing low-fat weight loss things from time to time. I recall loving Jane Brody's "Good Food Book: Living the High Carbohydrate Way". That's the way my mother taught me to eat, lots of whole grains as the base, a little lean meat as a condoment. I got fatter and fatter. I tried exercising more. I counted calories and kept food journals to prepare for my wedding, where I looked lovely in a size 14 dress (that was a bit loose in the bodice: I looked even lovlier in the size 12 going away dress.)
I had pregnancies - three of them - and gained weight in each. By the time my third kid was three years old I was 244 pounds. I was outright obese. My knees hurt. I didn't fit in plane seats well. I could only find ugly clothes. My mother was way worse, but at the rate I was going I'd be as fat as her at her age. My father was way worse, too. Genetics, right? Two of my four grandparents were obese, too, and all of my aunts and uncles were. Except... neither my full-brother nor full-sister were. Just me.
One day, when I was at the doctor's with my eldest son, his pediatrician remarked that the 8 year old was starting to get chubby. He casually said, "I often see that when the mother is obese." It was a slap upside the head - not that he called me obese, I knew that. But that my choices would affect my child! The kids were 10, 8 and 3 when I started doing the "Body for Life" program. It featured lots of water, a chunk of meat and a pile of vegetables and not much else. Maybe some brown rice, beans, whey protein powder. No bread, no white potatoes, no sugar. I ate a salad with a chunk of protein on it for lunch and dinner for months. And something really weird happened. It was almost spooky.
Fat started coming off me in sheets. I lost 80 pounds. My lowest weight, where I was at when doing triathlons, was 162. I'm muscular, densely built: I think I was a size 12 or 14 at that, basically back where I was in high school with a bigger butt. My daughter went through high school without being fat. My son slimmed down, too. My husband lost his belly and got in fantastic shape. (The "Body for Life" program features many small meals and lots of exercise.)
Time passed. I hit a deer on the highway, and hurt my neck: I stopped running. I became a localvore and started eating more locally. I got into cheeses and pie-making. I found a good sourdough bread baker. I gained ten pounds back when I stopped training for triathlons, but was fine with that. I stayed there, sort of. Or so I thought. Actually, I was gaining back weight slowly, about six pounds a year. (I've heard it said that adults gain 5 founds over the holidays each year and just never lose it. That rather describes it for me.) I got up to around 230 again before it just became untenable. I need to look nice for work. I need to be able to fit in airplane seats. I couldn't devote the energy to this until my big business expansion and subsequent contraction were done, but now that they are I've been focused for the last nine months pretty specifically on fat loss.
I tried weight watchers. Hated tracking points. I have tried self-hypnosis. Too boring. I tried listening to podcasts on the "psychology of eating" and reading a bunch of behavioral psychology (sometimes called "positive psychology" on learning how to change behaviors. I'm still doing this and it's helping. I hide all foods I shouldn't eat and put ones I should eat up front and center where I'll find them. I use small, dark plates. I give myself non-food rewards. I try to eat mindfully, I try to check in on whether I need a drink instead of a snack. All helpful.
I started working with a nutritionist. He told me to go off coffee and bread. I bargained for the bread, went off coffee. It went well, going off coffee, but I felt like I was 5 IQ points slower without it, so went back to it: this time *without* cream and sugar, though. After a lifetime of starting each morning with cream and sugar, it was a major shift in my life to go to black coffee. This is such a worthwhile change! Life is way simpler when you don't require cream and sugar in your coffee! But since I'd made a deal, I went off bread. In fact, I went entirely gluten-free. I lost some weight, but some associated gut issues didn't clear up. I took gluten back and dropped dairy, instead. My gut issues cleared up. Apparently I'd become lactose intolerant.
I added dairy back in small doses with lactose tablets. That sort of worked. But weight loss was stalled. The nutritionist suggested I do a really weird diet called "Eat Fat Get Fit" where you cut out most carbs and eat a lot of avacados and nuts. It includes supplements and probiotics, too. I tried it for three weeks and fat just melted off my body.
So, here I sit. I have lost about 18 pounds since January, most of it while avoiding grains. I'm not particularly exercising (maybe once a week weight-lifting, once a week on the NordicTrack, once a week yoga, walking a few times a week for an hour or so. Nothing like training for a triathlon.) I'm not tracking calories, I'm not feeling hungry, I'm not deprived. For dessert last night I had a handful of cashews. My gut issues are fixed.
I'm not eating low calorie. I'm not exercising more. Yet I lose weight far better than when I eat low calorie. What the hell is going on?
One of the things I read had to do with turning on "fat-burning genes". Apparently eating "good" fats makes me stop storing fat and start using fat for energy. I wasn't eating a diabetes-inducing diet to begin with (most of my carbs were "slow carbs"), I haven't eaten candy bars since - ever. Not a soda-pop drinker, either.) So all the olive oil and sardines, nuts and pork chops are actually good for weight loss in me. The "Zero Belly Diet" (a book bought at a used book store) refers to "nutrigenetics" and says to eat leafy greans, green tea and brightly colored vegetables to turn off genes that store fat.
So the next thing I'm going to try (actually started in 10/2) is the Whole30 diet. I am off sugar, dairy, beans, and all grains for the month of October. No cheese, no rice, no dark chocoloate-covered cherries from Trader Joe's (okay, maybe one.)
I'm missing sourdough bread (duh) and pieces of chocolate and pie crust on pot-pies (a staple in our house) and sometimes a bit of cheese for garnish. I'm missing edamame and rice in easy high-quality pre-made frozen dinners I had been buying for lunches. I'm missing chickpeas and beans in stews and chilis. I'm missing "cheat days", where I went off the diet for the day and then climbed back on the wagon. I note all this so I can figure out later how to get what I want so I don't feel deprived. Sometimes the answers appear as I write out the issue.
But I think I need to keep eating a high-fat, high vegetable & fruit diet that is low dairy, but high on fish and nuts. I'll have to see where I land with grains.
I started getting a bit chubby in high school, although I was a three-season varsity athlete. One winter, my junior year I think, I didn't do a sport and I gained ten pounds that winter. I think I hit 140 pounds, maybe? It was all on my butt and thighs and we figured it was just "growing up" into becoming a woman. Then I gained the freshmen fifteen in college, maybe coming in around 155, but still nothing too troubling. I didn't present as fat, just needed a size 14 instead of a 6 like my tinier friends. But I continued to gain. I recall hating buying size 16 career dresses in my early twenties, so I started doing low-fat weight loss things from time to time. I recall loving Jane Brody's "Good Food Book: Living the High Carbohydrate Way". That's the way my mother taught me to eat, lots of whole grains as the base, a little lean meat as a condoment. I got fatter and fatter. I tried exercising more. I counted calories and kept food journals to prepare for my wedding, where I looked lovely in a size 14 dress (that was a bit loose in the bodice: I looked even lovlier in the size 12 going away dress.)
I had pregnancies - three of them - and gained weight in each. By the time my third kid was three years old I was 244 pounds. I was outright obese. My knees hurt. I didn't fit in plane seats well. I could only find ugly clothes. My mother was way worse, but at the rate I was going I'd be as fat as her at her age. My father was way worse, too. Genetics, right? Two of my four grandparents were obese, too, and all of my aunts and uncles were. Except... neither my full-brother nor full-sister were. Just me.
One day, when I was at the doctor's with my eldest son, his pediatrician remarked that the 8 year old was starting to get chubby. He casually said, "I often see that when the mother is obese." It was a slap upside the head - not that he called me obese, I knew that. But that my choices would affect my child! The kids were 10, 8 and 3 when I started doing the "Body for Life" program. It featured lots of water, a chunk of meat and a pile of vegetables and not much else. Maybe some brown rice, beans, whey protein powder. No bread, no white potatoes, no sugar. I ate a salad with a chunk of protein on it for lunch and dinner for months. And something really weird happened. It was almost spooky.
Fat started coming off me in sheets. I lost 80 pounds. My lowest weight, where I was at when doing triathlons, was 162. I'm muscular, densely built: I think I was a size 12 or 14 at that, basically back where I was in high school with a bigger butt. My daughter went through high school without being fat. My son slimmed down, too. My husband lost his belly and got in fantastic shape. (The "Body for Life" program features many small meals and lots of exercise.)
Time passed. I hit a deer on the highway, and hurt my neck: I stopped running. I became a localvore and started eating more locally. I got into cheeses and pie-making. I found a good sourdough bread baker. I gained ten pounds back when I stopped training for triathlons, but was fine with that. I stayed there, sort of. Or so I thought. Actually, I was gaining back weight slowly, about six pounds a year. (I've heard it said that adults gain 5 founds over the holidays each year and just never lose it. That rather describes it for me.) I got up to around 230 again before it just became untenable. I need to look nice for work. I need to be able to fit in airplane seats. I couldn't devote the energy to this until my big business expansion and subsequent contraction were done, but now that they are I've been focused for the last nine months pretty specifically on fat loss.
I tried weight watchers. Hated tracking points. I have tried self-hypnosis. Too boring. I tried listening to podcasts on the "psychology of eating" and reading a bunch of behavioral psychology (sometimes called "positive psychology" on learning how to change behaviors. I'm still doing this and it's helping. I hide all foods I shouldn't eat and put ones I should eat up front and center where I'll find them. I use small, dark plates. I give myself non-food rewards. I try to eat mindfully, I try to check in on whether I need a drink instead of a snack. All helpful.
I started working with a nutritionist. He told me to go off coffee and bread. I bargained for the bread, went off coffee. It went well, going off coffee, but I felt like I was 5 IQ points slower without it, so went back to it: this time *without* cream and sugar, though. After a lifetime of starting each morning with cream and sugar, it was a major shift in my life to go to black coffee. This is such a worthwhile change! Life is way simpler when you don't require cream and sugar in your coffee! But since I'd made a deal, I went off bread. In fact, I went entirely gluten-free. I lost some weight, but some associated gut issues didn't clear up. I took gluten back and dropped dairy, instead. My gut issues cleared up. Apparently I'd become lactose intolerant.
I added dairy back in small doses with lactose tablets. That sort of worked. But weight loss was stalled. The nutritionist suggested I do a really weird diet called "Eat Fat Get Fit" where you cut out most carbs and eat a lot of avacados and nuts. It includes supplements and probiotics, too. I tried it for three weeks and fat just melted off my body.
So, here I sit. I have lost about 18 pounds since January, most of it while avoiding grains. I'm not particularly exercising (maybe once a week weight-lifting, once a week on the NordicTrack, once a week yoga, walking a few times a week for an hour or so. Nothing like training for a triathlon.) I'm not tracking calories, I'm not feeling hungry, I'm not deprived. For dessert last night I had a handful of cashews. My gut issues are fixed.
I'm not eating low calorie. I'm not exercising more. Yet I lose weight far better than when I eat low calorie. What the hell is going on?
One of the things I read had to do with turning on "fat-burning genes". Apparently eating "good" fats makes me stop storing fat and start using fat for energy. I wasn't eating a diabetes-inducing diet to begin with (most of my carbs were "slow carbs"), I haven't eaten candy bars since - ever. Not a soda-pop drinker, either.) So all the olive oil and sardines, nuts and pork chops are actually good for weight loss in me. The "Zero Belly Diet" (a book bought at a used book store) refers to "nutrigenetics" and says to eat leafy greans, green tea and brightly colored vegetables to turn off genes that store fat.
So the next thing I'm going to try (actually started in 10/2) is the Whole30 diet. I am off sugar, dairy, beans, and all grains for the month of October. No cheese, no rice, no dark chocoloate-covered cherries from Trader Joe's (okay, maybe one.)
I'm missing sourdough bread (duh) and pieces of chocolate and pie crust on pot-pies (a staple in our house) and sometimes a bit of cheese for garnish. I'm missing edamame and rice in easy high-quality pre-made frozen dinners I had been buying for lunches. I'm missing chickpeas and beans in stews and chilis. I'm missing "cheat days", where I went off the diet for the day and then climbed back on the wagon. I note all this so I can figure out later how to get what I want so I don't feel deprived. Sometimes the answers appear as I write out the issue.
But I think I need to keep eating a high-fat, high vegetable & fruit diet that is low dairy, but high on fish and nuts. I'll have to see where I land with grains.