8 Weeks

Drumroll, please!  It’s been 8 weeks since the endocrinologist visit, which means 8 weeks since I wised up to how much damage I was doing with my carb binges.  Since then the highest carb food I’ve eaten was exactly 1 Hershey’s Special Dark Kiss.  I’ve also focused almost exclusively on minimally processed foods – aside from the Kiss, the most processed foods I’ve eaten are natural peanut butter and one meal of nitrate-free hot dogs.

I’ve eaten no grains of any kind (and that includes corn on the cob, which was still in season 8 weeks ago), no potatoes, and nothing sweetened with sugar or any other natural sweetener.  I have eaten very sparingly of legumes (one or two servings of beans during the entire 8 weeks), root vegetables (occasional very small portions of carrots and parsnips), and fruit (a small handful of berries or half an apple or peach once a week or so).  I’ve got a butternut squash that came from the CSA that I plan to cook and freeze in very small portions for later phases of the diet when I add in more carbs.  I have made my husband eat the corn and potatoes that came from the CSA, and if we get any more beets this year, I’m going to pickle them to eat later.

I have eaten virtually every other food you can imagine, except maybe for organ meats, about which I have a typical American’s squeamishness.  Oh, and sardines.  My mother swore I loved sardines as a kid, but every time I open a tin, I try one, nearly gag, and end up feeding the rest to the cats.  It’s too bad, because sardines are really good for you:  a lot of omega-3 fatty acids without a lot of mercury.  (Anecdote:  when we were about a year old, my cousin M. and I were often mistaken for twins.  I wonder if even my mother made that mistake – perhaps she fed sardines to M. all the time.  I really ought to ask M.)

And what are the results?  Drumroll, please:

• The scale shows I am 10 pounds down from 8 weeks ago!

For someone struggling with her weight, seeing that number slide down is reward enough.  But there have been a host of other good effects, too, the icing on the cake – or maybe I should say the Bearnaise on the steak, or the olive oil on the broccoli, or the delicious crispy skin on the chicken?

• My clothes continue to get looser.  The shirt I am wearing today was tight in the upper arms at the beginning of summer and now fits just fine.  I wish I could report that I have to get rid of the biggest pair of Land’s End jeans because they are too big, but I’m frugal enough to keep wearing them until there’s an embarrassing accident involving strangers seeing my panties.  Then they can go to Goodwill.
• My knees and feet really don’t hurt at all.  Oh, OK, my feet hurt if I’ve been on them all day, but they don’t hurt first thing in the morning.
• The neuropathy in my hands is just about gone.
• I’m sleeping more soundly, no mean feat on my busy street.
• My periods have not become more regular yet, but the cramps are much less severe, and I think my PMS this month wasn’t much more than 15 minutes of being cheesed off at a bus driver who made eye contact but refused to pick me up.
• I am still obsessed with food, but as I told Glodsmith, the focus of the obsession has shifted from quantity to quality.  That is to say, instead of eating vast quantities of junk, I am eating moderate quantities of really great meat, fish, eggs, cheese, cream, nuts, plain yogurt and vegetables.
• I was able to go to the convenience store in my building to buy a small bottle of seltzer and come out without a Haagen-Dazs vanilla ice cream bar.  That’s kind of like Keith Richards passing a smack dealer without picking up a bag of China White.

The next big milestone, as far as I am concerned, is the first time someone says, “Hey, have you lost weight?”  In my experience, that usually coincides with dropping a clothing size.  The looseness of the older, bigger clothes disguises weight loss.  So maybe I should get rid of those baggy Land’s End jeans after all.

Why Americans Spend More on Health Care

In the light of my recent criticism of the ADA’s position that diabetics should eat a diet that, by the ADA’s admission, raises blood glucose and then cover it with additional medication, this article on the truffulaseed blog caught my attention.

I will not comment on the question of smoking, except to say that after my recent vacation in France it is truly hard for me to believe that Americans – or anyone else on the face of the planet -smoke more than the French.  I can’t comment on other European countries.  As for obesity, there’s no question that Americans have unhealthy habits, but who’s to blame for this? For every person who just doesn’t care, who sits on the couch night after night with a pint of Ben & Jerry’s, surely there is someone following the official guidelines of the likes of the American Diabetes Association, the American Heart Association, and the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute to cut out fat from our diets and substitute carbohydrates – and despairs because they are still fat.  The article then goes on to comment that the new Medicare bill prohibits negotiations with drug companies to keep costs down.

The ADA wants diabetics to take more medication; the Republicans want to pay Big Pharma whatever they ask for drugs most of us wouldn’t need if we ate properly; and a number of the most respected health organizations in the country tell us to eat the crap put out by the agricultural-industrial complex despite any evidence that this food is good for us, and despite all the evidence that it’s very, very bad indeed.

I’d say that, once again, we’ve gone through the looking glass, except that suddenly it all makes sense.  There is money to be made, big fat giant obscene wads of money, by selling Americans foods that make them fat and unhealthy, then selling them expensive medications that promise to reverse the ill effects of a poor diet.

This is one of the things that pains me about the obesity epidemic – everywhere we turn, we hear that Americans are gluttonous, lazy couch potatoes.  Why is it so rarely considered that we’re just the victims of bad nutritional advice?