Weight Loss

I'm going to discuss here how my body loses weight (and gains it).  It is different than most conventional wisdom on the topic.  For instance, they say it's best to lose weight slowly over time.  Also, I've heard it said that you can't gain a significant amount in only a week or so.


My Body and Weight Gain:
In the week before my wedding (almost 7 years ago!) I found out that YES you can gain a significant amount of weight in less than a week.  When it got to be a week before my wedding, I had already had the last fitting for my dress and I thought, "Whew!  One week can't make much difference so I can just eat what I want!"  So I ate whatever I wanted that week.  Plus, I was stressed and carbs are something I crave when I'm stressed.  Um....well... let's just say my dress was really tight on the wedding day.  It had fit perfectly 5 days earlier, and on the day I thought I wasn't going to be able to zip it up!  (I sucked in and did, but talk about stressy!)


My Body and Weight Loss:
As you can see above, my body gains weight all at once.  As I later found out, my body also loses weight all at once.  Fast forward to September 2009.  My Functional Medical Practitioner put me on a Yeast-Free diet combined with the Specific Carbohydrate Diet.  This means that you either take the Yeast-Free diet and remove all the grains and potatoes from it; OR you take the Specific Carbohydrate Diet and remove the fruit and honey.  Basically, you can only eat meat and veg.  No grains, starches, fruit, or sweeteners of any kind.  Also no dairy because of the lactose (dairy sugar).  If you're thinking this is a crazy, impossible diet - you're right!  (Kinda)  My husband calls it "the worst diet in the world".  I found that after 3 days, it got much easier.  After a week, it's almost automatic.  Once you get used to making all your meals with weird ingredients, it's really not hard at all.

This diet is a corrective diet and is not intended to be used indefinitely.  I was also put on a lot of vitamin supplements for a few weeks before I started this diet and I believe they REALLY helped me stay on it.  I didn't crave things because my nutritional needs were being met.  Also, I got off of all the addictive substances I was on (like caffiene and sugar) before I started this. 


Well, I lost 20 pounds almost over night.  It was crazy!  It came off all at once over a span of about 2 weeks.  People thought I was ill!  I know conventional wisdom says that this is unhealthy, but I felt good doing this and my body became healthier overall.  The other 10 pounds or so came off over the next month.  I never lost this kind of weight on any other diet.  When I was on Weight Watchers, I was eating WAY less calories than I was on this diet but they were from a lot of sugar and processed foods.  This is a real foods diet and you cannot have processed food on it.  (NOTE:  This is NOT in any way like the Atkins Diet.  A lot of people think it is but it's not because you don't count carbs, you can have as many veggies as you want, and things like bacon and animal fat are not allowed!  Also things like Atkins bars and other products are forbidden on this because of all the terrible chemicals that are in them.) 

When I was on this diet, a typical day's food was the following:

Breakfast:  
Ultra Shake (rice protein, almond milk, nut butter, ground flax seeds, flax oil, and ginger)
OR 1/2 avocado with raw flax crackers

snack:  a handful of any kind of raw nuts (except peanuts)

Lunch:  
canned salmon with frozen broccoli and lemon juice
or leftover supper
or chicken soup

snack: raw flax seed crackers with nut butter or tahini
OR veggies and black bean hummous

Supper:
any kind of meat with any kind of veg
(example:  lamb chops with asparagus and kale)


As you can see, this is not a low-fat diet!  In fact, it is very decidedly high fat.  BUT - the fat is all good fat and comes from healthy sources.  I couldn't believe how well it worked.

Today:
I now realize that I need to go back on this diet for at least a week or two.  Right now I weigh 165 pounds and need to lose about 30 more.  My weight has stabilized and I haven't lost any more for a few months.  This is because I eat more carbs now.  (Not bad carbs like white flour and sugar!)  Just things like rice cakes, quinoa, gluten-free bread, brown rice, millet cereal, etc.  This is fine for maintenance, but I'm finding that in order to lose weight I must reduce carbs.  I recently read that a high-protein and good fat diet sends your body a "dump fat" message.  On the other hand, a high carb diet sends your body a "store fat" message.      

Cheating:
Over Christmas, I ate all sorts of things.  BUT - I didn't gain any weight because I made sure that whatever I ate was real.  If I ate a piece of cake, it was homemade with no artificial chemicals, transfats, or high fructose corn syrup.  We were in Greece this Christmas so I ate things like Baklava, tsoureki,  and candied oranges.  The good thing there is that bakeries in Greece do not use commercial chemicals and additives the way they do in this country.  Things are still made with real ingredients.  I KNOW this is why I could eat all those things and not gain a single pound back.  So:  If you're going to cheat, make sure it's REAL!

I'm sure everybody loses weight differently, but this worked for me.  What has worked for you?