I’m liking this whole concept of lowering caloric intake and then seeing corresponding weight loss. I love it when things work they way they’re supposed to.
Because “150 pounds to lose” is a huge goal to look at head-on, I decided to break it into five 30-pound goals. I’m 14% of the way to my first goal.
Note: The rest of this entry carries a severe boredom warning, unless you are here specifically because you are interested either in hearing about my diet or learning about the Inflammation Factor in foods.
The diet I am following is a modified blend of more than one diet plan.
Back in, oh, I think it was 2005, I ordered a diet plan that was advertised on TV. It’s one where you answer a bunch of questions to find out which body type you are and then follow the plan for that body type. I forget what they call my body type, but my type has the slowest metabolism of all the types in their results. The diet is one where you eat five or six small meals each day. It’s sometimes hard to remember to stop and eat every few hours, but I’m getting the hang of it.
When I tried this diet in 2005, I had more trouble sticking to it, which is why I have modified it a little bit. As the diet is written, it is very strict and does not include any dairy products, nuts, bread, packaged foods . . . it’s pretty much lean meats and fish, vegetables, fruits, and carbs like potatoes or rice or sweet potatoes. (That is for the first six weeks, to improve the metabolism, and then it’s ok to slowly add extra items, I think it said – I didn’t stick to it for six full weeks the first time.)
The restrictiveness of the diet was a big part of what helped to confirm my suspicions about my gluten intolerance, however, when I tried it in ‘05. I didn’t start the gluten free diet until ‘07, but having done Atkins in ‘04 and then this diet in ‘05, I really noticed a difference when I cut out bread. In fact, I remember noticing how much better I felt when I started the Atkins diet, and then the moment I discovered low-carb bread, I started to feel bad again.
But I digress.
The proteins, vegetables, fruits, and carbs are broken down into categories on this diet, and the plan allows for x-amount from one category or a different amount from another category, depending on the calories, fats, and sugars. The snacks are always a protein and a fruit and the meals (lunch and dinner) are a protein, a vegetable, and a carb. Breakfast is usually a protein and a carb, but I’ve also seen an example that lists a protein and half a grapefruit, which is the only time I’ve seen a fruit with a meal. I’ve been eating gluten-free oatmeal and hard boiled eggs for breakfast. That’s easy to do and I like it.
The modifications I made were to add cottage cheese and almonds to the foods I eat, as well as apples, even though they are in the category of fruits that I shouldn’t be eating until after the first six weeks. I’m in this for the long haul, and so I’m figuring that as long as it’s working and I’m seeing results, I’m doing ok, and by allowing a few more choices, I’m making it easier on myself.
So anyway, the idea behind a small serving of protein with every meal and snack, as well as the five or six small meals aspect, is to keep blood sugar levels balanced through the day, avoiding big spikes and dips. That must also be the reason that fruits are at snack times and (other) carbs and vegetables are at mealtimes, to keep the carbs/sugars balanced.
The other diet plan I’m working into the mix has to do with the Inflammation Factor. I found the NutritionData web site awhile back and have used it off and on to check calories, carb counts, etc. They also include an Inflammation Factor rating for each item, and I clicked on their “What’s This?” link to find out more. This is what it says:
The IF (Inflammation Factor) Rating™ estimates the inflammatory or anti-inflammatory potential of individual foods or combinations of foods by calculating the net effect of different nutritional factors, such as fatty acids, antioxidants, and glycemic impact.
How to interpret the values: Foods with positive IF Ratings are considered anti-inflammatory, and those with negative IF Ratings are considered inflammatory. The higher the number, the stronger the effect.
The goal is to balance negative foods with positive foods so that the combined rating for all foods eaten in a single day is positive.
I followed the “Read More About the IF Rating” link and ordered the book by Monica Reinagel. I received the book and have skimmed it, but so far haven’t read all of it yet. I understand the basic gist of combining foods so that the total IF rating for the meal (and for the day) is positive, though, and I have been combining my choices according to that.
For example:
2 oz. of pan-fried chicken breast meat = -16
2 oz. canned pink salmon = +280 (I make patties out of it with flax seed and fry them in olive oil. Flax seed and olive oil should raise the IF rating even more.)
1/2 c. baked sweet potato = +186
1/2 c. instant mashed potatoes = -57.5 (This is when prepared with milk, which I don’t use, so my number would probably be slightly better.)
I eat the chicken with the sweet potato and the salmon with the mashed potatoes so that both meals average out with positive numbers (I didn’t list the vegetables here because the ones I eat all have positive ratings anyway). Same with snacks. Four oz. of cottage cheese is -25, four oz. of unsweetened applesauce is -5.5, 1/4 cup of cubed cantaloupe is +16.75 and 1 oz. of salted, dry roasted almonds is +56. I’m eating the cottage cheese with the cantaloupe and the applesauce with the almonds. The cottage cheese / cantaloupe combination is still in the negative, but that will be balanced out with the rest of the day’s numbers.
I just did a quick calculation, and on a typical day, I should wind up with about a 195. The NutritionData web site says a typical target is 50 per day or higher.
The thing that keeps this from being too overwhelmingly complicated for me is that I’m capitalizing on one of my weirder quirks rather than trying to force myself to endure too much change too fast: I’m the epitome of “creature of habit”.
Before I was gluten free (I cringe when I admit this), I would eat the same meal from McDonalds for lunch and dinner every day and not get tired of it. I went gluten free and then started making melt sandwiches with gluten free bread every single night for dinner, and often for lunch on the weekends. I know. Crazy, huh? I suppose that means I’m lazy and unimaginative in the kitchen, though I can cook, if I want to. I just don’t seem to do the whole meal-planning thing very well. Part of the problem has been money – it’s cheaper and less complicated to make sandwiches, despite the high cost of gluten free bread. And part of the problem has been my fluctuating moods and memory / focus levels. Sometimes it’s just too much to plan that far ahead. That has been a problem when I’ve tried to diet in the past. I’d be going along fine and then hit a bit of an icy patch with depression or fatigue and I’d be leaving for work with no lunch prepared and no real plan for what to do about it, and I’d wind up just eating whatever, and blowing the diet.
So instead of beating myself up and trying to force change in two major areas at once (the “creature of habit” thing and my food addictions), I decided to taylor the diet to my established habits. Since I like for dinner to be something I can make very quickly with little fuss and since I am capable of eating the same thing every night without going nuts, I picked out an easy meal I can make every night that can become as much of a habit as my melt sandwiches did (salmon patties, instant mashed potatoes, and green beans).
I’ve been eating the same thing every day for breakfast, too. I eat breakfast at work because I take amino acids in the morning that require not eating any proteins within an hour or so, so every night, I measure my oatmeal into a plastic bowl with a lid and add Splenda and cinnamon for the next morning, and I keep hard boiled eggs in the fridge. At work, I add water to the oatmeal and microwave it.
I can cook lunch meals ahead, once a week, and freeze them to take to work, and I can cook pretty much the same three or four meals to keep it easy and uncomplicated, and on the occasion that I feel especially creative I can change it up with something different. During the next few weeks, I’m going to be working on cooking ahead enough so that I have lunches for about three weeks, of about three different meals, and then each week I can cook a week’s worth of one of the meals and keep rotating them so I don’t eat the same lunch every day, for some variety.
There. I am putting my quirky weirdnesses to good use. At least, some of them.
Coming soon: a post about my exercise plans.
