Wow okay so apparently part of me thinks I am still 21 and had too many margaritas last night. Yesterday was my "re-feed" day, so I let myself off the hook just a wee bit, still avoiding wheat because it seems to be my big trigger, but not corn (or margaritas - but with lime juice only, no sour mix or simple syrup) just as an experiment. My first meal was just yogurt and whey, in preparation for the night of carbing up that I knew I had ahead of me. I met a friend for dinner at a Mexican restaurant and had chips with cheese dip, a chile relleno, and a side of beans. And margaritas. It was glorious. After two days stalled out, I didn't really expect my weight to go down. I had a couple of glasses of water before bed and a couple this morning when I woke up to start getting my body back to "normal." I slept through coffee time and haven't eaten yet. I just weighed and was shocked to see that I had, in fact, lost another 1.2 lb. If this keeps up I should see the underside of 210 in the next couple of days. That's not too huge for me. I had only gotten above 210 in the last couple of months, really. But it will be nice and I'll feel a bit more "normal" I think. Now I just have to get motivated to actually cook today...(vertical is scary). It will be probably at least Wednesday before I "refeed" again.
Overall starting weight: 219.8
Bulletproof starting weight: 213.8
Day three weight: 211.4
Update: I think I accidentally got "glutened" last night. My knees hurt. Not as badly as before, but there is definitely some inflammation.
Sunday, June 30, 2013
Saturday, June 29, 2013
Day 2 on BPIF
After a somewhat emotional and stressful day yesterday, I am somewhat unsurprised to see no change in my weight (or waist), and I can't REALLY expect to continue losing a pound a day, realistically, no matter how appealing the prospect may be or how hard I try. I can't say I'm not disappointed, but certainly far from derailed. My menu yesterday was two cups of BP coffee, first at 8:00AM and the second at about noon, because I was getting a little peckish. I was late breaking my fast and reached a near-meltdown point, but managed to basically keep my cool and make it through til four, when I had baked salmon and a green salad. I also had some fresh juice right before eating the salmon, which I normally don't put a lot of fruit in, but I think I put too much this time which may have also negatively impacted my fat burning capability. I did not get hungry again for the rest of the day, but ate some more salmon with some zucchini (again, probably a little too high in the carb range, really) at 9, the end of my feeding window, because I knew I would be hungry at bedtime if I didn't. I may not do that again.
Energy levels, apart from the 3:00 meltdown, remained pretty high and I got a pretty good bit done yesterday. Slept well. I have noticed that my ankles and left knee hurt just the teensiest bit again, so I may need to make some adjustments for inflammation. My mother's doctor, or chiropractor, or accupuncturist, or one of the dozen people she's being treated by, has put her on an anti-inflammatory diet that claims that fat is bad for inflammation, which runs counter to what I have been reading lately, but maybe there is something to it? Hard to say yet. I will keep going the way that I am for now, as I am still enjoying it immensely.
Energy levels, apart from the 3:00 meltdown, remained pretty high and I got a pretty good bit done yesterday. Slept well. I have noticed that my ankles and left knee hurt just the teensiest bit again, so I may need to make some adjustments for inflammation. My mother's doctor, or chiropractor, or accupuncturist, or one of the dozen people she's being treated by, has put her on an anti-inflammatory diet that claims that fat is bad for inflammation, which runs counter to what I have been reading lately, but maybe there is something to it? Hard to say yet. I will keep going the way that I am for now, as I am still enjoying it immensely.
Friday, June 28, 2013
Day 1 report
I must say, my first day on the Bulletproof IF plan went fantastic. I had my BP coffee around 8:00AM and nothing but water until shortly after 3:00PM. I went to the gym at 2:00PM and did a quick weight routine, and after I got home had salmon and broccoli. I didn't get hungry much before 9:00PM (the end of my "feeding" period), but I had a couple of bowls of pasture-fed, hormone-free (but not, raw, unfortunately) yogurt with a little extra whey, and a small handful of raspberries in one of them. I had three cups of detox tea with lemon over the course of the day, to help the kidneys and liver process all of the extra fat I was taking in. I did get hungry at bedtime, but unlike the old days when I was still consuming wheat, I was able to ignore it and go to sleep.
Weight yesterday: 213.8
Weight today: 212.6
24 hour loss: 1.2
Mood: Fantastic!
Energy: Through the roof!
Day 1.5 report: Today has been a bit of a roller coaster. I got a little hungry around noon and went home to have an extra cup of BP coffee. Then I got stuck in a meeting and couldn't get my 3:00 "break-fast" on time and hit the wall hard. So, note to self: always travel with nuts. I normally do anyway, but I am going to have to be extra careful on days when I have less control over my own comings and goings. When I hit the wall, I got tunnel vision and short tempered and very confused, just like before going grain-free. But I have never gone eighteen hours without eating before, so I'm not going to beat myself up over it. But more importantly, I've discovered something about the mood elevating effect of being wheat free. Unlike all of the antidepressants so many millions of people are on, being naturally anti-depressed doesn't turn you into a zombie. I learned today that a friend of mine from long ago lost her father. Even though I haven't seen her in fifteen or sixteen years, my heart just broke for her as soon as I heard the news, and I started bawling. I remember the old Effexor days when I could hear the saddest news in the world and barely feel a thing...but I wasn't depressed! It's so nice to be able to experience the full range of the emotional rainbow without spending too much time at the bottom. My heart goes out to Liz and I can't help but think of my own father, whose health is a constant battle, mainly with his own eating habits and stress level. I can only hope that what I am doing right now will help my own parents overcome their food addictions and expectations of failure to start living healthier lives with what they have left, and to make it last as long as possible.
Weight yesterday: 213.8
Weight today: 212.6
24 hour loss: 1.2
Mood: Fantastic!
Energy: Through the roof!
Day 1.5 report: Today has been a bit of a roller coaster. I got a little hungry around noon and went home to have an extra cup of BP coffee. Then I got stuck in a meeting and couldn't get my 3:00 "break-fast" on time and hit the wall hard. So, note to self: always travel with nuts. I normally do anyway, but I am going to have to be extra careful on days when I have less control over my own comings and goings. When I hit the wall, I got tunnel vision and short tempered and very confused, just like before going grain-free. But I have never gone eighteen hours without eating before, so I'm not going to beat myself up over it. But more importantly, I've discovered something about the mood elevating effect of being wheat free. Unlike all of the antidepressants so many millions of people are on, being naturally anti-depressed doesn't turn you into a zombie. I learned today that a friend of mine from long ago lost her father. Even though I haven't seen her in fifteen or sixteen years, my heart just broke for her as soon as I heard the news, and I started bawling. I remember the old Effexor days when I could hear the saddest news in the world and barely feel a thing...but I wasn't depressed! It's so nice to be able to experience the full range of the emotional rainbow without spending too much time at the bottom. My heart goes out to Liz and I can't help but think of my own father, whose health is a constant battle, mainly with his own eating habits and stress level. I can only hope that what I am doing right now will help my own parents overcome their food addictions and expectations of failure to start living healthier lives with what they have left, and to make it last as long as possible.
Thursday, June 27, 2013
What happens when a fat girl goes Bulletproof?
I am a thirty-something graduate student with a busy schedule and a tiny budget. I have been overweight since about the age of eight, and a vegetarian all of my life. It all started when my mother went to work and my grandparents began taking care of me in the afternoon, feeding me ice cream and popcorn to my heart's content. What does an eight-year-old know of nutrition? My grandmother had always been a little on the heavy side (probably about a modern size 14 when she was a teenager in the 1930s, with minor fluctuations up and down in between), but even by the late 1980s-early 1990s, childhood obesity wasn't a thing on anyone's mind, particularly. Kids are active and growing, so they burn it off, right? Obviously, we know differently now. But at the time it all seemed perfectly harmless. So I ate. And ate. And ate. And ate. By the time I reached my teens, I was a chronic weight cycler. I would go from eating nothing but an apple all day to eating everything in sight, and my weight would follow.
As an adult, I have followed similar cycles, accompanied by depression, alcohol abuse and heavy smoking, social isolation, divorce, and general poor decision-making. About 2006, I started to get back on track professionally by going back to college. I finished my degree in 2007 and married for the second time in 2008. All the while my weight bouncing around between 145 and 190 (at 5'4''). I started graduate school in the fall of 2008, and everything in my life outside of school basically spun out of control. As a child, I had a near-genius IQ. That's great, right? Except that when everything comes easy, you never learn to work hard. I suffered from a severe lack of discipline and focus, and used food as a crutch. And lemme tell ya, reading 600+ pages and writing extensive papers on a weekly basis is NOT the same as learning multiplication tables. My self-esteem and general mood suffered, and ultimately my second marriage failed.
I finished my MA and started my PhD in 2011. While writing my thesis, I had managed to get my weight back down to a reasonably-comfortable (if not quite healthy) 165. By the end of my first semester in the PhD program, I was tipping the scales close to 200. Now, here I am, four semesters later, almost done with coursework. My weight this morning was 213.8. I am not an athlete-biohacker trying to trim another 1% off of my 18% body fat. I am a fat girl who has tried everything. Nutrisystem (FAIL), Weight Watchers (semi-fail), anorexia + cocaine (goes without saying). I have just always been hungry. Ravenously hungry. Eat-my-arm-off hungry. All the time.
A couple of weeks ago, I went to visit my parents for the weekend. I only get to see them about twice a year, as they live five hours away and I rarely have a single day off much less multiple for travel. My mother has been suffering from some sort of rheumatoid/fibromyalgia condition for a couple of years now. She, like me, has been overweight her entire adult life, apart from a brief spell in her 20s. She is now 63 and using a walker to get from the den to the kitchen. She's always been reasonably active, a regular walker, who never ate much junk food or even large portion sizes. Yet her weight has hovered between 200-230 for years. The most frustrating part has been the way the doctors have treated her; if you can't walk, it's because you're too fat. One idiot even told her to quit exercising, yet still expected her to just magically drop the weight and suddenly feel better, without giving her any guidelines on how to do it. Watching her suffer has given me extra motivation to get to the root of the issue. My basic philosophy: obesity is NOT A DISEASE. Obesity is a warning sign that something is wrong. Obesity does not CAUSE diabetes, heart disease, breast cancer - it is CAUSED BY the same things that cause those diseases. The problem is, doctors have been treating obesity as the root problem for years - putting the cart before the horse and misdiagnosing god knows how many conditions. But if you simply cut back on calories without changing the basic content of your diet, then you are still fueling the same disorders. Logical. Simple. And, I think, true.
After I got home from the weekend with the folks, I looked up a diet my mother had mentioned, Wheat Belly. It made absolute sense to me. I immediately cut out wheat and cut back on my carbs - voila! Six pounds gone in a week. Better than that, the pain that I have had in my knees and ankles since I was 28 has disappeared. I became obsessed and started scouring the internet for anything else that could be helpful, and came across Bulletproof Intermittent Fasting. I am not an endorser - I am an experimenter (okay, maybe I am a biohacker?) I don't necessarily believe every claim that either the creator of Bulletproof or Wheat Belly make, but after years of failure and one week of smashing success, I think it is worth a shot.
I decided to blog because on my numerous searches, I could not find a single person who was ACTUALLY overweight blogging about their experience. I found a lot of already fit people looking to "tweak" their performance or body fat. So I am the lab rat. What happens when a fat girl goes Bulletproof?
This morning I had a high quality coffee with 1 T of pasture-fed butter and 1 T of MCT oil. I am going to the gym in just a bit to do a quick weight routine (no more cardio!) and then I will break my "fast" with some salmon cooked at a low temp, loaded with olive oile, rosemary, and thyme with a side of steamed broccoli soaked in (pasture-fed, hormone-free) butter.
Starting stats (unfortunately I have no insurance and therefore no doc for bloodwork):
Weight: 213.8 (was 219.8 a week ago, btw)
Bust: 48
Waist: 41
Hips: 48.5
Body fat: 47.5%
As an adult, I have followed similar cycles, accompanied by depression, alcohol abuse and heavy smoking, social isolation, divorce, and general poor decision-making. About 2006, I started to get back on track professionally by going back to college. I finished my degree in 2007 and married for the second time in 2008. All the while my weight bouncing around between 145 and 190 (at 5'4''). I started graduate school in the fall of 2008, and everything in my life outside of school basically spun out of control. As a child, I had a near-genius IQ. That's great, right? Except that when everything comes easy, you never learn to work hard. I suffered from a severe lack of discipline and focus, and used food as a crutch. And lemme tell ya, reading 600+ pages and writing extensive papers on a weekly basis is NOT the same as learning multiplication tables. My self-esteem and general mood suffered, and ultimately my second marriage failed.
I finished my MA and started my PhD in 2011. While writing my thesis, I had managed to get my weight back down to a reasonably-comfortable (if not quite healthy) 165. By the end of my first semester in the PhD program, I was tipping the scales close to 200. Now, here I am, four semesters later, almost done with coursework. My weight this morning was 213.8. I am not an athlete-biohacker trying to trim another 1% off of my 18% body fat. I am a fat girl who has tried everything. Nutrisystem (FAIL), Weight Watchers (semi-fail), anorexia + cocaine (goes without saying). I have just always been hungry. Ravenously hungry. Eat-my-arm-off hungry. All the time.
A couple of weeks ago, I went to visit my parents for the weekend. I only get to see them about twice a year, as they live five hours away and I rarely have a single day off much less multiple for travel. My mother has been suffering from some sort of rheumatoid/fibromyalgia condition for a couple of years now. She, like me, has been overweight her entire adult life, apart from a brief spell in her 20s. She is now 63 and using a walker to get from the den to the kitchen. She's always been reasonably active, a regular walker, who never ate much junk food or even large portion sizes. Yet her weight has hovered between 200-230 for years. The most frustrating part has been the way the doctors have treated her; if you can't walk, it's because you're too fat. One idiot even told her to quit exercising, yet still expected her to just magically drop the weight and suddenly feel better, without giving her any guidelines on how to do it. Watching her suffer has given me extra motivation to get to the root of the issue. My basic philosophy: obesity is NOT A DISEASE. Obesity is a warning sign that something is wrong. Obesity does not CAUSE diabetes, heart disease, breast cancer - it is CAUSED BY the same things that cause those diseases. The problem is, doctors have been treating obesity as the root problem for years - putting the cart before the horse and misdiagnosing god knows how many conditions. But if you simply cut back on calories without changing the basic content of your diet, then you are still fueling the same disorders. Logical. Simple. And, I think, true.
After I got home from the weekend with the folks, I looked up a diet my mother had mentioned, Wheat Belly. It made absolute sense to me. I immediately cut out wheat and cut back on my carbs - voila! Six pounds gone in a week. Better than that, the pain that I have had in my knees and ankles since I was 28 has disappeared. I became obsessed and started scouring the internet for anything else that could be helpful, and came across Bulletproof Intermittent Fasting. I am not an endorser - I am an experimenter (okay, maybe I am a biohacker?) I don't necessarily believe every claim that either the creator of Bulletproof or Wheat Belly make, but after years of failure and one week of smashing success, I think it is worth a shot.
I decided to blog because on my numerous searches, I could not find a single person who was ACTUALLY overweight blogging about their experience. I found a lot of already fit people looking to "tweak" their performance or body fat. So I am the lab rat. What happens when a fat girl goes Bulletproof?
This morning I had a high quality coffee with 1 T of pasture-fed butter and 1 T of MCT oil. I am going to the gym in just a bit to do a quick weight routine (no more cardio!) and then I will break my "fast" with some salmon cooked at a low temp, loaded with olive oile, rosemary, and thyme with a side of steamed broccoli soaked in (pasture-fed, hormone-free) butter.
Starting stats (unfortunately I have no insurance and therefore no doc for bloodwork):
Weight: 213.8 (was 219.8 a week ago, btw)
Bust: 48
Waist: 41
Hips: 48.5
Body fat: 47.5%
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