I'm Not Here

I have decided to suspend my activity on this blog effective immediately. Feel free to click on the labels at the right side  of the blog to view any articles in which you may have interest.

The good news: I am not suffering a relapse of my lifelong binge eating disorder. In fact, it's about time to stop using the term remission and declare me cured. These days a hungry/reckless day involves eating an extra serving of meat or fruit and I think we can agree that is not a binge. I still have every reason to believe I can lose my remaining 20-30 pounds of excess fat and maintain a healthy weight indefinitely.

No, the real problem is that I'm not a qualified expert in any topic except the experience of being an older woman who used to suffer from binge eating and was quite fat as well as sick from eating the standard American diet of junk food. My solution was to drink water kefir and avoid processed foods and that's all that's really worth sharing.

My only promise is that if/when I have thoughts I'm excited about sharing I'll mention them in 2 places: Twitter and Facebook. It's possible, if it's that major, that I'll post a series of articles here but I make no promises at this point.

Otherwise, if you're reading this you have my sincere thanks for your past interest and friendship and best wishes for a happy and healthy summer and beyond. Now go outside and enjoy Mother Nature and then eat some unprocessed foods. :-))

Update: We Interrupt This Fast With Breaking News ...

Okay, "life happens." Friday morning my friends pulled out and headed for Wisconsin. I was sad but I was fine with it being a fasting day.

An hour later I got a call from school saying the grandkid was being suspended from school again. Oops. I gave it a few hours but finally decided I didn't want to deal with my first all-day fast in over a month on the same day I was coping with family drama. So I ate, but what I DIDN'T do was my traditional "drive to the store, buy a shopping cart full of junk and binge" routine.

On Saturday, I ate but delayed my main meal until 2 pm; I actually ate a little less than usual so I do feel I'm back in weight-loss mode even though I haven't fasted yet. The plan for today is to eat at 4 pm and take another stab at fasting on Monday. Sunday would normally be my no-limits day but since I didn't fast Friday I've changed it to a moderate day.

There's a family meeting planned for Tuesday and it will probably be helpful to be in a fasted state for the meeting as it makes my mind very clear.

Some days it's easy to sympathize with female cats who eat their young ...

Back to Fat Loss ...

Despite my generally impulsive/right-brain nature--or perhaps because of it?--when I want to make a significant lifestyle change the actual decision is spur of the moment but I almost always pick some future day to implement the idea. The delay allows my level of commitment to deepen or lessen and allows me to consider possible strategies.

So, about a month ago I decided to "practice maintenance" during the month of April. There were only 2 rules. One rule was to not eat processed foods and the other was to not eat unless I had strong "gut hunger" (as opposed to brain cravings) and then to use a mix of low- and high-density foods to help achieve the "happily stuffed" feeling without actually ingesting too many calories.

At the same time, I also decided I would wage a final campaign of weight loss this year to reach a weight I feel good about and feel I can maintain. I lost 55-65% of my excess fat last spring/summer so my goals are reasonable.

The final piece of my planning a month ago was to create/identify a trigger that would shift me from the relaxed mode to weight-loss. Without a clear trigger, the starting date can become a rolling "tomorrow." After thought, I decided to make the shift the day my winter friends left to return to their home up north.

They're pulling out this Friday so my shift back to weight loss mode is upon me. What, you ask, does that mean?

It's very simple. Between "maintenance" and "weight loss" modes there are only 3 differences: frequency/type of fasting, dairy allowance and fruit allowance.

Frequency/type of fasting: For maintenance, nearly all fasting is IF (intermittent fasting) but for weight-loss I prefer modified ADF (alternate-day fasting.) My modified version is to fast Monday, Wednesday and Friday, eat fairly low-cal on Tuesday and Thursday and as desired (of unprocessed foods) on the weekend. For long term maintenance, next fall/winter I may still use modified ADF about one week every month or 2 to avoid a gradual erosion of appetite control.

Dairy allowance: For maintenance, heavy cream is as desired, divided between coffee and berries/fruit with cream. I make extra-fat home-made yogurt (3 parts whole milk to 1 part heavy cream) and eat 2/3 c yogurt 3 times per week usually with fruit. I occasionally use Kerrygold butter on cooked vegetables but in the summer I go all-raw on veggies (probably with oil and vinegar) and raw or frozen on fruit.

Fruit allowance: For weight loss, I eat no fruit on fasting days, 1 grapefruit on low-cal days and as desired on weekends (more like 3 total servingson average.) My natural preference for long term maintenance is to eat a generous amount of fruit but I rarely approach 50g of fructose daily. Note: I include water kefir in the fruit category as it contains at least a little fructose. I'm currently drinking 1-2 cups at least 3-4 days per week and that will remain stable this spring/summer.

That's it. I don't tend to overeat meat or vegetables so there are never any specific allowances for those. What I've learned in the past year is that my weight is stable or decreases gradually as long as my brain cravings/binge impulses are in good control. I eat about the same whether or not I fasted yesterday, so fasting tends to accelerate weight/fat loss. We'll see what happens now.

Wish me luck!

Hands-On Eating: The Importance of Finger Food

The other day I was thinking about my history of binge eating and I had an "ah-ha" moment. My personal binge foods list included: burgers, fries, hot dogs, chips, popcorn, crackers, cookies, Hostess  cupcakes, etc. ALL of those are things you eat with your hands. There's a tactile element quite different from the typical use of silverware--which may relate to why so many Americans enjoy playing/eating with chopsticks.

I also realized that one of my favorite meals at present is the "tear and crunch." The "tear and crunch" meal is a large bowl of raw vegetables--today's included large, intact leaves of leaf lettuce (1/4 head?) plus about 5 stalks of celery, a palm-sized chunk of red bell pepper and a similar amount of fresh fennel and cauliflower. I also threw in 2 small skin-on carrots. Since I am not all-raw or vegan I measured 2 tbsp of vinegar and 3 of olive oil and sprinkled that over the lot. I also sprinkled on some kelp powder and RealSalt.

I don't blame you if you say that meal should be called "salad" but I like "tear and crunch" because I left everything in much larger pieces and used no silverware. It felt like a much more primitive way of eating as compared to polite forkfuls of salad.  I wrapped the crunchy vegetables in 2-3 layers of folded lettuce leaves but ate the celery and carrots on their own. I'll freely admit that I could probably eat this meal without the oil and vinegar, but why would I?

Look at the 2 photos below; see the difference?

I'm not saying that silverware caused my binge eating disorder, although there's probably a funny joke in there somewhere, but I'm convinced that part of the comfort I enjoyed from my binges was the tactile involvement of grabbing the food and sucking my fingers, etc.

Based on that, I'm pretty sure part of my enjoyment of fruit and my "tear and crunch" meals is that my hands are involved. To the extent that it's helping sustain my apparent recovery from disordered eating, I'd say finger food aka "tear and crunch" is pretty important.

How about you? Do you enjoy hands-on eating?