Did you find yourself sweeter and kinder after Whole30 reintro?

[Stegner]

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/02/health/biggest-loser-weight-loss.html?_r=0

 

Leptin Resistance to Leptin Sensitive.  LR to LS. 

I read this too, and a lot of the related articles and opinions. Even the comments were so interesting to me - especially the ones by people who said that they had lost weight and kept it off without constant hunger - by eating real food. Vindication! I love it, but like you, try to keep my mouth shut about it. As always, I enjoy reading your stuff, Meadowlily.

[MeadowLily]

You have to tread lightly with friends, relatives, coworkers, hungry dieters in the grocery store around 5:00 PM.  They see you as this if you don't.  (Below)

 

 

 

 

[MeadowLily]

If a tree falls in the forest....does anyone hear?   Of course, they do.  

 

 

 

 

 

If whole foods advice falls on deaf ears...does anyone care?   I do. 

 

I simply keep talking to myself until sticking the landing is not something that's incredibly rare or abby normal.  I know the stats and they really marsh my mellow.  

 

[MeadowLily]

 

Sticking the landing.  I can count those I know on one hand.  Actually, it's only three people.

 

 

 

The prognostication is cloudy with a chance of meatballs. 

 

 

 

 

[MeadowLily]

I am Fruit Loose.  It makes me happy.  

 

Fruit is the hinge that keeps me from swinging back and forth...coming and going through the old saloon door.  I no longer see fruit as forbidden.  

 

Fruit is in my Garden of Eatin'. 

 

Drive-by fruitings are my Nascar in this All-Star race to the Finish Line which does not even exist.  Fruit has kept me from going off the rails, feeling put upon, relegated to standing on a feedlot scale in front of my peers...before I'm sent back down the cattle chute.  

 

The Template Trifecta maintains my blood sugar  but Fruit Loose causes me no noticeable uptick in my blood sugar.    Template keeps me even and fruit makes me feel like I am part of the world where everything is possible. 

 

A small thing. Fruit Loose. One small step for food sanity and one giant leap for my Positive Food Management Plan that I can live with until the end of time. 

 

In my cart I  have cherries, raspberries, blueberries, blackberries that have just appeared in the grocery store after a long, cold, blustery winter.  In my corner of the world this is a bonus. They only strengthen my resolve to keep my positive relationship with food.

[MeadowLily]

 

 

Yesterday, I had the opportunity to speak with my potential WLS relative.  I don't take that for granted.  Not one single conversation.   

 

She was going through the KK drive-thru eating her way through another box of hot donuts. We share the same genetics and similar brain chemistry, age,  behaviors, patterns, cravings, triggers and thoughts.  I get everything about the Fast Food Wheelhouse. 

 

Wheeling and Dealing with the unscrupulously and scheming highly engineered to be craved Fast Foods. 

 

It was hard to get a word in edgewise  when you're all jacked up on donuts and coffee.  There's not much room leftover.   Donuts have shoved all vege off the plate.  You're not equipped to lend your thinking to vege or whole foods when donuts have shoved reasonable thinking off the plate.

 

You're in the moment.  Free wheeling and dealing with the Thrill Eating.  The thrill of the kill of a box of donuts.  I'm trying to talk but the frosting is forming clouds in her coffee.  Please, come back to me.

 

When you're in full mode after Thrill Eating there must be a moment of silence.  This enjoyment will last less than 5 minutes.   The thrill eater is not about quality.  It's the quantity they're after.  That stuffed to the gills "feeling".   Stuffing and shoving emotional hunger down with food. 

 

In these moments before thrill eating, the entirety of life is just too huge to contemplate without the comfort and taste of food. 

 

As a recovering thrill eater,  you have to learn to eat for nutrition and not for taste.  

 

Alcoholics feel the same angst, internal struggle and urges towards rationalization, hair-pulling while imagining their life of no margaritas with nachos, guinness with pizza and wine with popcorn. Like for real, for REAL giving them up.

 

It's why we struggle with the concept of NEVER because of that entirety.   

 

Sugar withdrawal is miserable. You can't talk anyone out of the drive-thru when they're ready to get their hit of a whopping boatload of sugary KK and coffee.  She's talking but her thoughts are darting every which way and completely distracted.  Oooo,  I see a bunny hiding in the grass.

 

Come back to me.   Can you hear me.   I'm sending you some links, please, reconsider what you are about to do to yourself for the rest of your life.   Don't you know I want you around waaay down the road so we can go traveling together.  Think about sitting around the campfire and watching the stars come out.  

 

Fast Food is fast but never easy.   The Big Kahuna trigger foods have taken hold. 

 

I recommend sitting down face to face with a counselor for moments like these.   If you do what you've always done you will get what you've always gotten.   If you think the way you've always thought, you will keep on thinking and giving into the urges to make huge rationalizations about the rest of your life.

 

It takes true grit.   It takes courage to admit the truth that you need help beyond the realms of your own thinking.  

[MeadowLily]

 

If you're exactly where you were one year ago or ten years ago, it is time to deal with it. 

 

Another seige of dieting won't fix it.    More fasting and thrill eating and over-restriction. 

Learn to eat for nutrition and not another hit of  Big Kahuna sugary taste. 

 

Bind yourself to whole foods.  Loose yourself from trickery triggery. 

[MeadowLily]

Our life does not get better by chance.  It gets better by change. 

[MeadowLily]

[MeadowLily]

http://eatingdisorder.org/blog/2011/05/eating-disorders-and-the-all-or-nothing-trap/

 

The all or nothing trap.  

 

"One of the primary cognitive distortions identified by individuals who struggle with anorexia, bulimia and binge eating disorder is often referred to as “all-or-nothing” thinking.  Also called “black-and-white” thinking, this thought pattern is akin to the belief that “If I can’t do it perfectly, I might as well not do it at all.”

 

 

All-or-nothing thoughts may be an initial barrier to seeking treatment.  Its not unusual for individuals to hold off on making that first appointment until they are absolutely, positively, completely 100% ready to get well. 

[MeadowLily]

I fell into the All or Nothing/Black and White Thinking trap in high school.   Perfectionism binge eating patterns.

 

  https://mylifewithanorexia.com/category/rigid-thinking-2/

 

I was 100% ready to recover in 2014.  It shouldn't take a health scare to motivate us but that's human nature.   I am no longer an abstainer or perfectionist.   I am not a moderator. 

 

Our relationship with food merges into our relationships with people.  It Starts With Food is accurate.

 

Difficulty with food can be a mirror reflection of how we 'feel' about people.  It Starts With Food and ends with food. 

 

WLS seldom fixes BED over the long haul..  The desire for taste and satiety does not go away.  You can remove the stomach but the mouth is connected to the brain and longs for satiety.  

 

There is the initial BED earthquake and tremors that follow.  A counselor can help you identify the initial earthquake.  I had to learn how to differentiate between that initial earthquake and the tremors that have followed me all of the days of my life until I was ready to recover. 

 

Tremors = trickery triggery that props up false hunger.  Thrill Eating for that over-stuffed 'feeling' and shoving emotions down with food.  Triggers will chase you every single day until it ends with food.

 

My internal GPS system was without direction for many years.   Speed won't fix it.  Rapid weight loss dieting and the side effects of rebounding  for years on end.   When you learn how to use your internal GPS system, the brain and body will follow. 

 

The false hunger will continue to scream all it wants for trigger foods but it learns that it's no longer having its way and says alright,  that's not going anywhere.  It may try new sneaky tactics...dreaming about trigger foods.   Hyperalertness to food cues/commercials/drive-thru beacons.

 

As my doctor told me,  show me a binge eater that starts in youth and I'll show you a diabetic down the road.  The pancreas has a lifespan.  It can only handle so many of these binge eating cycles before it goes kaput.   You can't put diesel in a gasoline engine without damaging the engine and the diesel won't burn.  

 

When you're 100% ready to recover,  you will.   It Starts With Food.  A positive relationship with food equates to a positive relationship with yourself and others. 

[MeadowLily]

Where my navigational recovery counseling has led me to:

 

How to be comfortable in my own skin. 

 

How to be connected to my core self or inner being. 

[MeadowLily]

On the first part of the journey,  I was fighting for my life.   

 

My recovery process.   You will continue to wrestle with yourself for a long time.  It takes longer than 30 days.  You can be sitting right next to someone in a vehicle or a plane or train, even be rubbing shoulders with them but be wrestling all alone with yourself.   

 

This wrestling process helps you how to learn to be comfortable in your own skin.   No one can 'feel' your feelings for you.   The wrestling helps you come back to life for all of the years that you shoved your emotions down with food.  There will be the counterbalancing/wrestling process going on for a long time.

 

There is no such thing as the Finish Line for creating a positive relationship with food and others. 

[MeadowLily]

My folkaronies grew up without much food to eat.  Both sides.  My father and his brothers developed rickets from not having enough to eat until they were able to fend for themselves.  Even then, times were still lean.  Hard Rock Candy Christmas's can't begin to describe what they endured.

 

They did without.  Both of my parents were sent to school without breakfast and both could not afford a school lunch.  My mother shook erasers out and cleaned the school when she was a young child so she could afford a lunch ticket.   The extra she made she bought groceries for her large family of 12 children.  

 

There was never enough on the table to go around.  Slim pickins and everyone looking like plucked chicken. It was another Christmas miracle if there was food for everyone on Christmas day.  No presents.  None.

 

Has this affected my relationship with food.  Heck-a-toot, yes.  It has and did and does. 

 

Good food is a healer.  There's not a day that goes by when we take over a wonderful meal to my folkaronies that my Paw doesn't go on about how great it is.  He says things like...Ooooooo, what I would have given to have something like this as a kid.

 

He's always thinking about those who have do without.  People sleeping in cardboard boxes in an underpass or laying out in the open on the city streets. These are things he thinks about and I do, too.

 

Looking into the hollow faces and eyes of those who are starving to death.  Refugees and the little children.  These are things I care about.  Paw even thinks about the cattle drovers/pioneers/paleo americans of times gone by.   

 

Can you imagine what they would've said about a meal like this...talking about Bear's ribs, steaks, roasts and wonderful cooking.  It's the best in the west.   Bear says good food fixes everything.  It was meant to be.  Me.  Finding the best camp cook ever.   There's not a thing he wouldn't do for my folks.   He'd go without before he'd ever seen them go without again.   Me, too.   

[MeadowLily]

I have to have a song now because I've pulled up some very, very sad memories.  I use music for healing. 

 

[MeadowLily]

I wonder why a hockey player or ice skater can slam their body on the ice, day after day and year after year and not break all of their bones.

 

Why do said hockey players and ice skaters  walk outside and fall on an icy sidewalk and break their arms and legs.   Is it all in the mind's ability to differentiate between their job and an accident?

 

Why do we jump out of bed every morning and head for the office, plow through snow and rain to get there...but procrastinate when it comes to taking care of ourselves for the long road ahead.

 

The mind is a driver.  It can drive you to extremes and over-restriction and self-imposed starving and massive amounts of cardio.   

 

On the other hand, those brain grooves tell you to get up every morning and head for your job.  Survival.

Automatic pilot. 

 

The brain can drive you to biohack your life away if that's your heart's desire.  Self-imposed starving vs. not having the budget for groceries.   Are the results the same or does the brain differentiate between the two.   

 

The mind is a wonderful thing to employ.  POW's that were starving have been able to survive by activating their imagination and encouraging themselves to survive.   They imagined great buffets of food and daily playing through rounds of golf to keep from going mad.   They were hungry and made it home looking like plucked chickens.

 

Self-imposed starving vs. starving for REAL.   Are the results the same.  

 

I can report that my relatives did suffer from hunger and near starvation.  It did affect their bones and teeth and general overall well being.   Those effects are lasting.   In the brain and bones.

 

Why does the hockey player body slam themselves around without broken bones.  

 

Why do the starved remain hungry for the rest of their lives, regardless if there's food on the table. 
 

[MeadowLily]

Humor is important for recovery.  It's encouraged along with critical thinking skills.  When the blocks to critical thinking are discovered, you're  on the pathway to recovery. 

 

Critical thinking is a measuring stick to reality.  Discernment and a multi-crap detector.

 

Developing critical thinking skills will help you develop your positive food management plan going forward.   Creating your own plan after Whole 30 is encouraged.  This is positive on many levels.

 

Critical thinking is the ability to question.  Check for authenticity and accuracy, test assumptions and develop your own point of view or positive food management plan.

 

Critical thinking looks for solutions to problems.   

 

Critical thinking is the ability to create strategies and ideas.  It is a cognitive skill and testing and checking solutions to guide one's life is critical thinking.   Reintroductions teach you that.

 

The ability to test and check existing ideas, seeking solutions...noting flaws and errors or the negative side effects of certain foods....all part of critical thinking.  

 

There are many types of humor and they play a role in everyday life.  Perfectionism stifles a person's growth.  When you're unable to make mistakes, it keeps you pitted against yourself. 

[MeadowLily]

For all 30 days of my Whole 30,  I was concerned about what I was going to do on Day 31.   I didn't have a roadmap to follow and I searched the backroads of this forum.

 

I read every manifesto, article, thread and chapter in ISWF about reintroductions.  I was thinking about it all of the  time.   What will I do on Day 31.   

 

I read that this was not a diet but I kept searching for a maintenance plan in 2014.  A lifetime of diets with maintenance plans had always been my norm.  I was completely lost.   I did not know what to do.

 

Creating my own plan was a complete mystery because I'd told myself I was an all or nothing person for so long that I believed it.  We are what we tell ourselves.

 

I thought I would never be able to get off that gerbil wheel but I did.

 

Trying to recover in one day won't work.   There is no concrete timetable for recovery.  There is no one formula that works.  Give yourself and everyone a break.  Don't expect perfectionism from yourself or others. 

 

It took me 2 years to find the answers with help of a counselor/dr.   Critical thinking skills.  Huge part of recovery.  

 

Direction is more important than speed.  Going Ooooo Soooo  Sloooow.  

 

I remember in June of 2014 asking where the maintenance plan was.  I reread ISWF this week with new eyes. 

 

Creating your own plan is super positive and a huge part of learning critical thinking skills.  In June of 2014,  I didn't have a pathway to recovery.    I had a gerbil wheel and years of groundhog days. 

 

I was throwing everything up against the wall to see what would stick.  I kept my sense of humor. It was all I really had but I've learned how important humor really is for recovery.  It's huge.

 

Lighten up.  Laugh.  Laugh entirely too much.  Roll around on the floor.  Get yourself a good dose of Tiger Blood and laugh like a hyena.   It does a body good. 

[MeadowLily]

[MeadowLily]

Dragonflies are seen as symbol of harmony and peace.  You have to starve the sugar dragon. You can't make peace with the sugar dragon.  He's a sneaky snake.

 

I've moved onto the dragonfly.   Making harmony and peace with food.

 

 

[MeadowLily]

"But notice this: even though the Whole30 often helps people address their unhealthy emotional relationship with food, none of the things I mentioned about me really fit into that category. And that’s okay. We’re not trying to convince everyone that they have messed-up relationship with food.   I simply didn’t.   I used to eat unhealthy foods basically every day, but I didn’t have any guilt, and I didn’t use food as reward or punishment. It just wasn’t how it worked for me. Of course, that’s not to say that those food choices were good for me, because I’ve since learned that they are definitely not. There are direct and indirect consequences of my choices, but they affect my mood, sleep, digestive tract, and skin instead of an inner-voice-that-scolds-me."

 

Dallas Hartwig

[MeadowLily]

Those^^^ beautiful words are music to my ears. 

 

I've been working on this for over two years.  No moral judgments attached to food.  No good or bad.

Clean or dirty. Reward or punishment. No more...one last big hurrah or thrill eating before a diet - full on food benders.  All or nothing. 

 

There's only choices and consequences. 

 

You can change and get off that gerbil wheel.  

 

[MeadowLily]

"About 5% of people on non surgical weight loss programs can keep off the weight. With weight loss surgery it’s only 7% even with more invasive procedures like the gastric bypass. Many weight loss surgery surgeons don’t expect patients to keep off any more than half their excess weight on the long run even when they are putting in the work, but again, how many seminars tell that to prospective patients who are typically 100 and 200 lbs over their “goal weight”? I know a person who regained 100 of the 200 lbs initially lost with their gastric bypass and they couldn’t for the world, take it off, even with diet and exercise. Apparently their metabolism had been so damaged that eating anything more than 700 calories a day, caused a gain."

 

http://suethsayings.blogspot.com/2011/01/dying-from-elective-surgery.html

[MeadowLily]

I just had the best phone call today.  My relative has decided not to have WLS.  I am so relieved.  I will help her find her own directional and internal GPS navigational - positive food management plan.  I encouraged her to seek help and counseling.  Face to face.

 

I found my way without weigh and whey.  I found my thrill on Blueberry Hill.   The moon stood still on Blueberry Hill and I lingered on until my dreams came true with you.  W30. 

 

Though we're apart,  WD30,  you're part of me still.   I found my thrill on Blueberry Hill. 

 

Come climb the mountains with me

We'll see what we shall see

I'll bring my horn with me

I'll be with you 

Where the berries are blue

 

The wind in the meadow played

Love's sweet melody

Thou we're apart

You're part of me still

For you were my thrill

On Blueberry Hill

 

 

I'm Fruit Loose. 

Happy.

My mellow is no longer marshed. 

 

 

[MeadowLily]

Do you like your family.  I hope so.

 

My relative is cutting heads out of family photos and posting them on facebook..people she can't stand.  I heard it through the grapevine.  Our next reunion is going to be a real doozy.  I have a sense of humor but being crabby all of the time makes you hungry.

 

Don't go there.