Several of you have asked me to explain a little
more about my diet.
I have hesitated to share, because I think dieting
is a very personal choice. And I am a
firm believer in one size does not fit all, especially when it comes to dieting
and jeggings.
But on your prompting, I’ll lay out the details.
As I mentioned in a previous post, I cultivated my diet slowly. First I gave up sugar, then
bread.
Then I heard from an old college friend who had been
reading my blog. She turned me on to
another blog, about a woman who did lose a hundred pounds. (Although I am not
sure of the time frame). My college friend also mentioned how she and
several members of her family have adopted this way of eating and have seen
great results.
The woman in the blog told a very similar tale to
mine. She'd been heavy most her life, and she couldn't see significant or lasting weight loss, no matter how dedicated she was to
an eating plan or an exercise regimen.
Then one day, she picked up a book called, Why We Get
Fat And What To Do About It by Gary Taubes. He basically says
that it’s carbohydrates that make you fat.
Through her reading of this book and a few others,
she changed her diet to exclude all grains and to include fat, protein, fruits,
and vegetables that are not high in starch or sugar. She has lists of what she eats and you are
welcome to take a look at her blog for yourself.
**Disclaimer: her blog talks about a lot of
things. I’m not saying that I support or
agree with everything she says in her blog.
I am only stating that I read her first few entrees, where she laid out
her eating plan, thought it made sense to me, and am trying it on for size.
The short form is: no to grain, yes to fat. This
means no low-fat anything. Instead I
enjoy whole milk, full fat yogurt, and yes, my friends, butter. She also has small exceptions for treats that
involve full fat items with good sugars, such as maple syrup whipped cream.
You have to understand that when I read about this
diet plan, I had already given up sugar and bread. So I had no trouble turning and burning on a
bowl of brown rice for the siren call of whipped cream.
So I thought I’d give it a try. The real upside of this diet, which she
mentions, is that I’m not hungry. I’m
full after I eat.
So what exactly do I eat? To be honest, a lot of soup and salad. But good soups. Creamy, garlic soups with grass fed beef and cauliflower. Or a crisp green salad with veggies, meat,
raw nuts, and creamy dressing.
Or if I am done with salad and soup, I’ve made steak
with fresh green beans and roasted sweet potatoes.
Or this dish, with curry spice chicken over carrots
and cauliflower in a ginger coconut milk sauce.
(Recipe to come next week)
There is also room in this diet for bacon, wings,
and bacon. (It was worth repeating.)
And surprisingly, I find I don’t miss the grains and
white potatoes as much as I thought I would.
Actually you find them to be bland.
I know this doesn’t make any sense, but when you are eating the really
flavorful stuff like, the vegetables, meats, cheeses, dairy, and nutritious
berries. Everything else feels like what
it is: filler.
It’s working for me.
Now, at the moment I’ve plateaued, but, if I’m honest, I’ve been
slipping in small ways, and I’m just starting to exercise. So I’m going to hunker down with the diet and
keep up the exercise and see what happens.
But I like the way I feel in general. My stomach has gone way down. My waist has thinned out. And I don’t feel shaky and hungry as I have
on diets before.
It takes a little planning and forethought, but I
think every diet does in some way.
So there it is.
Once again this is a plan that is working for me, for now. I know several people who manage their weight
in different ways. And, in the future, I
might need to adjust my diet for other reasons.
But so far, so good.
I will end this post by doing something dangerous: I
will attempt to give two pieces of dieting advice.
1. 1. If
there is something you consume in your life that is not necessarily good for
you, and you feel you cannot go a day without it, maybe ask the Lord if you
should let it go.
For me it was sugar.
I didn’t feel in control, not just around sugar, but around all
foods. Now, I could abstain from most
things for a short amount of time. But
sugar was the real crutch.
It seemed impossible to go a day without it. This didn’t feel right to me. I have explained this in greater detail in an
earlier post. But somehow it became a
spiritual matter for me. I needed to do
something I thought was impossible. I
needed to see what could be done in the strength of the Lord. I needed that for spiritual reasons as well
as health reasons.
So I gave up sugar one day at a time. And the boon of overcoming that hurdle (and
overcoming that hurdle through most of the holiday season) gave me the
encouragement to think I could attempt what I am attempting to do in this year:
the goal, the blog, and so on.
2. 2. Don't
lose the forest for the trees.
When I take on a diet, I tend to obsess. Let it consume my thoughts and conversation
for a while. Until I eventually burn
out. But the verse I keep coming back to
is Romans 1:25.
“For they exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and
worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed
forever. Amen.”
I know that verse might seem a little heavy handed
for a diet post. But every time I diet,
I tend to diet obsessively. When I think
constantly about what I’m eating or what I am going to eat, or how I look or
how I am going to look; I am essentially worshiping the creature over the
creator.
I am not saying not to think about, or be dedicated
to, your diet. But when my diet starts
to cross that line, where I am overwhelmed and making myself crazy, I remind
myself that there are more important things. I remind myself to take a deep breath, and not lose
the forest for the trees. I try to
remember the goal is not just about my health, but also about my heart, and ask
the Lord to keep me from being cuckoo and selfish.
Ask the Lord
what you should do, and try not to get lost along the way.
Keep on! Great start!
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