When success isn’t a habit

They say the habit of success creates more success.

What if you don’t have a habit of success?

My weight loss has currently stalled, and it’s messing with my head.

When I was in my early 20s, I did Optifast. Very unhealthy, but I didn’t know that then. I don’t have any records, but I’m pretty sure I lost around 100 lbs. I do know I ended up as a size 18, 2 sizes smaller than I wore at my HS graduation. Unfortunately, while Optifast was great for fast weight loss, they don’t teach you anything about dealing with any emotions that might affect your eating, nor do they actually teach you much about how you actually need to eat going forward. At least, that’s how it was in 1990.

In 2005 I went on the Atkins diet and I lost 100 lbs in 9 months. Unfortunately, I didn’t do it in a really healthy way. I didn’t know I was allergic to soy, which is in absolutely everything (salad dressing in particular) and it made me throw up a lot. I was intentionally eating low carb and unintentionally also really low calorie. I got down that 100 lbs and then I was stuck. I have journals from that period. I was not cheating. I was not over eating for my weight at the time. I was diligent, obsessive, and really, really frustrated.

In 2007 I developed another hernia and the surgeon told me that if I didn’t lose more weight they couldn’t fix it and I would die. So I stuck to low carb and got a little crazy with the calories and I lost another 20 lbs. I also lost my hair, my libido, my energy, my tolerance to cold, and my menstrual cycle went insane, but my TSH was still fine, so it couldn’t possible be a thyroid problem.

In 2011 I finally paid out of pocket for a Reverse T3 test and was not even slightly shocked to see that is was really, really out of range. So then I paid out of pocket to see an Integrative medicine specialist (the doctors who have an MD, but have also studied holistics, herbals, and non standard treatments.) He finally diagnosed my very low thyroid. He diagnosed my trashed adrenals (too many years of extreme dieting, another not-surprise). He diagnosed my trashed gut biome. That was kind of a new thing in 2011.

Then we moved unexpectedly and I lost access to my great new doctor. My weight ballooned with stress and bad eating. My hormones went insane. It was a nightmare. I tried several diets and got absolutely nowhere. Not even the 20 or so lbs I should have been able to count on just from water weight.

Utterly demoralizing.

So I studied more. I fixed my food sensitivities. I lived on homemade soup for about a year trying to solve nutritional deficiencies. I got my thyroid properly propped up. I sorted out my adrenal issues and support as necessary. I spent an entire summer focusing on fixing my gut biome.

I have high hopes that I have fixed the basic non-food issues that caused my problems in the first place.

But what if I didn’t?

My early Weight Watchers results have been good, but I’m now at a set point I’ve been to at least twice in the past. This is the weight I was when low carb stopped working. This is the weight I was when I first did Optifast.

I am absolutely panicked that this is the best I’ll get.

Intellectually I know that isn’t likely. I know that plateaus and stalls are normal. I know that my body is reshaping itself because my clothes are fitting differently. I know that I’m weighing and measuring and following the program. I know there is absolutely no reason that it should stop working right now.

But what if I’m wrong?

I tried telling myself that this new place is better, much better, than where I started. That isn’t helping in the slightest.

So I’m working out my panic in a blog. Because that’s what bloggers do.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Not your mother’s WW

Back at the beginning of October, Mike and I started Weight Watchers after his cardiologist complained about his weight again, even though all his tests were excellent. I had an epic meltdown dealing with my own issues, and then we settled down.

We both started losing right away. Mike lost nice and steadily, because men are horrible that way, and as a premenopausal woman, I lost in fits and starts, but my progress was acceptable, and I wasn’t really invested in it anyway. I was there for Mike, I was tracking for Mike, and my body, which had declined to pay attention to many diets in the past, would do whatever it was going to do.

We made it past things that were traps for a lot of people in our group. We avoid Halloween candy by ignoring the holiday. We were getting very few trick-or-treaters anyway. We don’t have family nearby, so I bought one portions worth of a few treats for Thanksgiving, and that was that. No issues with leftovers. I had a lovely little birthday party and ate what I felt like for one day, having skipped treats on Thanksgiving, and I felt fine about it.

Then I wound up in the hospital. Twice.

I must say, hospitals are fabulous for weight loss. There was the 4 days I wasn’t allowed to eat while they waited for my gut to wake up after surgery. There were the 2 weeks of recovery when I had the appetite of a toddler. 6 bites every 2 hours. Then there was the week I got progressively sicker and lost my appetite again, the week I was horribly ill on ivs and anti-emetics and barely managed protein bars or shakes once or twice a day. And even after that, I was still healing and recuperating, which are energy intensive.

From my last official weigh in the week after Thanksgiving to the weight taken in my primary care doctors office the week after I got out, I lost 30 lbs. On the one hand, I feel a little weird about ‘claiming’ that, because I didn’t do anything intentional, it just happened. On the other hand, it looks awesome on my graph.

The thing is, in the 2 months since I’ve been home, I’ve dropped another 20 lbs. That I’ll definitely claim, but it’s still been pretty effortless. WW did that for me. This is not your mother’s WW in the days of starvation and shaming. This latest iteration, based on ever changing and improving science, is pretty easy. Here are what I consider the high points.

Points.

It’s a joke. Points are the current cornerstone of the WW system, and they are the reason it works so well for us.

Based on the WW esoteric formula, which probably includes weight, age, and gender, I get a number of points. My meals are made up of a combination of points and zero point foods. Most everything your cardiologist thinks you should eat is zero points. Lean chicken or turkey, salmon, all fresh veggies and fruits. Points are for other stuff like buttered toast, olive oil, or even cookies. It’s all on you, but there is no reason to be stuck with things you don’t like, and no need to ever be hungry. And, as you lose, you also lose points, which is a little sad to see, but it means you don’t have to constantly worry if you are eating too much, or to sit down and do your own math.

Points encourage you to eat real, whole foods. If you have a cup of chopped pineapple and a banana, it’s zero points. If you blend them up into a smoothy, you’re losing some of the benefits of the fiber, and it’s no longer zero. It also digests a lot faster. I have no trouble at all working the points around my various food issues, although I resent a bit that gluten free foods are higher in points then non gluten free.

The food point database makes things very easy. I’ve tried food tracking in the past and it made me completely crazy. Figuring out grams of this and sorting through a huge database of unrelated things all the time. The search function works really well, it’s easy to adjust your portion of whatever according to how much you ate. It remembers what you had the past few days, so your favorites are easy to find.

I have to say, I’m surprised, but ecstatic at my progress. I’m really glad this came up after I spent the summer rebuilding my gut biome and I was really ready for it. It is much, much easier for me than all the years I low carbed when I never felt satisfied. I would highly recommend it.

 

Unico 20.87- the Food.

Food, glorious food!

One of the questions we always have to ask is, can they handle a guest with food allergies. Yes, they did, and they did a fantastic job.

Breakfast and lunch every day was at the 20 87 restaurant, which is an enormous buffet. In the US I am particularly leery of buffets because you can’t be certain what is actually in the food, and cross contamination is a big problem. I ate at their buffet twice a day for 5 days and never had a single issue. You should be impressed.

While they did have all the traditional things an American tourist will expect, made to order omelettes, scrambled eggs, bacon, sausage, waffles, and pancakes, that was the very least of the breakfast offerings. There was an array of things to make breakfast tacos, which I never fully investigated. There were so many things, I often wished they were still offering breakfast at lunch so I could try things I missed. Every day I had beautiful creamy scrambled eggs and bacon and gluten free bread. Other offerings that rotated were various preparations of potatoes. Poached eggs with salsa, with salsa verde, and some creamy cheesy sauce that I sadly skipped. Several times shredded beef or chicken that was beautifully seasoned. An entire section…six or seven trays…of sliced meats specifically a salami type item that I ate for breakfast and lunch every day. Trays of cheeses that made me sad I can’t eat cheese any more. Tray after tray of cut fruit, the expected watermelon and pineapple, cantaloupe, mango, something I didn’t recognize, and sliced peaches and plums, which was a very nice treat for me.

And a huge selection of every possible pastry that my Beloved enjoyed ruthlessly. On the weekend they offered a selection of gluten free muffins that were lovely.

The juice flowed endlessly, and if you’re a fan of watermelon, I’d just like to recommend fresh squeezed watermelon juice to start your day. Or strawberry juice, if that’s your thing. Definitely my thing, along with orange juice, which was always fresh squeezed and far superior to what I can usually purchase here in the DC area.

Lunch was the same layout. More fruit, cheese, and sliced meats. Made to order lunch steaks, hamburgers, or fish. Tacos. Curries. Random veggies. Interesting potatoes. So much variety every day. Beloved was particularly enamored of the no less than 5 varieties of ceviche that were presented every day. And of course, desserts, if you possibly had any room. The gluten free chocolate chip cookies were very nice.

For less formal lunch or afternoon snacks there were several choices. There were some areas around the pools that were just walk up bars. One specialized in fried fish, one had a big brick pizza oven, one seemed to specialize in sandwiches. I never had room to try them.

For dinner, things were just a bit more formal. The space that was a buffet two meals a day became a steak house. I had to most amazing flank steak possible. It didn’t taste like anything but flank steak, but it was the richest, most tender flank steak you can imagine and I have no idea how they managed it. Beloved had something they called a strip roast, which seems to be what a rib roast would be if you cut it the other direction along the ribs. It was also very good, but we agreed mine was the best tasting.

There was a Italian restaurant that I admit we didn’t try. They do offer a gluten free pasta, but neither of us were particularly intrigued by the menu.

Mura House is their Japanese restaurant. We ate there twice because Beloved adores sushi. Everything he ate was beautiful and he raved about the freshness. They offered gluten free soy sauce, so all the sushi was available to me, except that I don’t care for it. Instead I had custom prepared teppanyaki, which wonderful. They also offered a specialty beverage called a Momo which went down so smooth on a hot day that it’s only by careful pre-planning that I didn’t over do. They are saki, peach liqueur, peach juice, and something else I think. Really spectacular. In this picture Beloved has received his tempura, but we’re still waiting on our drinks. With multiple open grills, I found it a bit warm, hence the fan.

Cueve Siete is their Mexican signature restaurant. It is not what you think of as Mexican, but it was amazing anyway. One night there was table-side fresh to order guacamole. My favorite dish was a beef and sheep’s tongue appetizer that was just amazing, tender and flavorful. Both nights we were there I had the duck as my main course. It was rich and tender and not under cooked the way it often is here where it’s practically raw in the middle. It is not done to lick the plate, but it was difficult to maintain my composure. Sex on the Beach was the drink of choice those nights.

And on the off chance you might possibly still be looking for more food, Cafe Inez was on the walk from the restaurants back to our room and they offered a dangerous selection of desserts, baked goods, and they had a little three-tier case with three lovely gluten free choices, a fantastic apple tart with an almond base, a super rich frosted chocolate brownie-thing, and a lovely crumbly round pastry with a rich sweet taste and a light chocolaty layer in the middle. I’ve never seen one before, but it was delicious.

They took being accessible to those of us with food allergies very seriously. After check-in I was presented with a laminated card with all the food allergies I’d submitted printed on it. I showed this at every restaurant and it was noted down. I think that as they go along they’ll come up with a better method for keeping the information on file, but for now, in their first year of operation, they are obsessively keeping statistics.

It made our experience that much more stress free.

And because it matters to me, so maybe to you, in a conversation with part of the customer care team we ran into on the way back to our room one afternoon, I learned that almost all the food is local, either organically or hydroponically grown. They have a very aggressive recycling policy and have a whole team devoted to minimizing their impact.

Here at home I eat organic as much as possible, and I try to make the freshest choices, but the difference in the  food is astounding. Everything just tasted better there, and I don’t think it was solely because I didn’t have to cook it myself. I think real, fresh, untainted food is a gift it’s hard to get here. I’m not sure we as a culture even know where we’re missing any more.

If you missed the first part, it’s here.

 

 

Unico 20.87-The property

Unico 20 87 on the beautiful Riviera Maya is where we spent our amazing vacation. The 20 87 are the longitude and latitude, although it may be the other way around. It’s about an hour outside of Cancun, and the property is owned by the same people as the Hard Rock resorts. But it’s their latest upscale idea.

Oh boy is it up scale.

It’s new. It’s beautiful. Someone put a LOT of thought into how it looks and what their clients need. As you can see, the property is built in an arc so everyone has good access to the restaurants in the main building, the pools, and the beach. The buildings are narrow, so almost all the rooms are ‘good’ rooms with great views. Most of the ground floor rooms are ‘swim up’ rooms, with a little river area you can access right from your room. Many of the upper floors have enormous jacuzzi tubs on the balcony. This was ours.

 

The rooms are big and luxurious. The floors are textured concrete, I think. They look like stone, but they had a rougher texture. I didn’t ask anyone so I can’t say for sure. They were lovely and cool after coming in from the warm outside. There were heavily textured rugs around the seating area and bed. I think everything was designed to wear well in a hot humid environment, and yet still look and feel expensive.

I think the rest of the world uses some other size for ‘king sized bed’. We technically have a king sized bed at home, but this bed was possibly the most enormous I’ve ever slept in, much bigger than the one at home. We’re both big people, and we never touched at all when sleeping if we didn’t do it on purpose. The mattress was really deep. The sheets barely fit. It’s just the mattress on slats, but it’s so thick it was one of the more comfortable hotel beds I’ve ever slept on. No trouble with sleeping and the linens were soft and silky. And all the pillows you want. I requested extra.

But my actual favorite part of the room was the shower.

Textured floor so it isn’t quite so insanely slippery. Check. Bench for sitting on while I was my waist length hair and bask in endless warm water. Check. Shower wand and rainfall overhead fixture, check. You can’t see it, but it’s there. The shower wand fixture swiveled in multiple directions. The bath products were so fantastic I tried to bring them home. (The bottles are slightly too big, they didn’t make it through security.) I have permanent shower envy. I’d also like to point out the safety bar on the wall. Just in case. The water pressure was good and the wand head was adjustable. My favorite shower ever!

We didn’t take a picture, but the toilet closet was generously sized. I hate the ones that have 4.2 inches on either side of the commode and the door almost touches your knees. This one had plenty of space so it didn’t feel claustrophobic, even to me at my size.

There was bottled water everywhere. 2 bottles every morning in the bathroom to remind you not to drink the tap water. Half the in-room fridge was full of water. And then gatorade, wine, beer, and eventually the Fanta I requested. It was restocked every morning. There was a drawer of snacks just in case you needed a nibble instead of going out to one of the many amazing restaurant options or just calling room service.

I really liked the feeling of space. I had a nice bench to sit on at the end of the bed to put on my shoes or just to sit. The couch was firm so I didn’t have trouble getting up off it.

I talked to some managers. They put a lot of thought into making the place accessible to those with mobility issues. Except for the pool, I don’t think I climbed any stairs the whole time. The pool had wide stairs and a sturdy railing. My one very minor complaint was that with some of the distances, it would have been nice if there were a few more benches, maybe strategically placed so people could sit and watch the fountains. There were sun beds everywhere, but those are very low and hard to get off of. But other than that minor issue, I was able to get everywhere I needed to. They put a lot of effort into being accommodating. I would return here without question any time, and I definitely recommend it.

They were also particularly accommodating with the food. Which is up next.

 

Good news and bad news.

The good news is, I reacted beautifully to the cortisone shot. I’m moving better than I have in probably 3 years. I genuinely had no idea how much my knee hurt. Being pain free on one side is amazing.

The bad news is, it doesn’t actually fix anything. And they wear off. And there is a limit to how many you can get in a year. And it doesn’t fix anything.

At my next appointment I’m having a shot in the other knee. I want to see what that feels like. I also have a long list of questions about which OTC pain relievers are recommended for long term. There is a joint lubricant they can inject and I want to get that set up and try it. I need to know when and how they can overlap.

I’m going to ask if they know an actually China trained doctor of Chinese medicine. Acupuncture is supposed to do really well for arthritis and I’ve had good results from it before.

I saw a podiatrist. Unfortunately my insurance doesn’t cover custom orthotics  Pity, because even just the commercial ones he gave me have helped some.

Plans are building. Things are happening. We shall see.

 

Drip.

We are having a cool wet spring. It has been 12 days since the last smidgen of sunlight.

I have lost any vestige of ability to be productive unless every possible light is on and the music is up slightly too loud. It’s a real challenge.

I have a friend in San Francisco. She gets a lot of grey weather too. We’re complaining-buddies. SAD buddies. When it’s grey for too long our will to live slowly drips out the bottoms of our feet, a little with each rain drip. Erm, drop. Possibly that’s a little melodramatic. It’s that sort of day. Drama produces it’s own energy.

Full spectrum lights help. If your vitamin D levels are low, certainly fix that immediately. But some people just don’t do as well.

I found this article. I think it’s hilarious.

People with Sad have an unhelpful way of controlling the “happy” brain signalling compound serotonin during winter months, brain scans reveal.

Unhelpful. Yes, a bit.

Lead researcher, Dr Brenda Mc Mahon, said: “We believe that we have found the dial the brain turns when it has to adjust serotonin to the changing seasons.

“The serotonin transporter (SERT) carries serotonin back into the nerve cells where it is not active – so the higher the SERT activity, the lower the activity of serotonin.

“Sunlight keeps this setting naturally low, but when the nights grow longer during the autumn, the SERT levels increase, resulting in diminishing active serotonin levels.

So not only does my body hoard calories, apparently we’re also socking away seratonin for…obviously not rainy days. What are we storing it for I wonder?

Sunshine is due to resume briefly on Sunday. I hope.

 

Ironing out a few things.

I always associate canker sores with stress. When my mouth was suddenly covered in them even though nothing really exciting was going on, I turned to Dr. Google. Where I discovered that nutritional deficiencies can cause them. Particularly iron and B12.

Well, B12 should have been fine because I’d recently had a conversation with a friend who mentioned that metformin causes B12 malabsorption. Really? ‘Cause I’ve been on metformin over a year and I don’t recall anyone mentioning it to me. I did my research and have both a liquid and a spray. I think it helped my energy levels some.

Iron though. I’ve never had any trouble giving blood and I’ve always eaten plenty of red meat, so my iron levels were probably fine. Right? Not so much.Iron can also be a cause of peeling flaking nails, which I’d suddenly come down with too. Hmm. My favorite thyroid site has a lot to say about iron. Specifically ferritin vs serum iron. I talked with my usual group of fellow sufferers and got myself an iron supplement.

Wow.

Talk about flipping a switch. Nothing has made that big a difference since I found selenium. Which, by the way, is also much discussed by my favorite thyroid site.

Before selenium, I just hurt, everywhere, all the time. Life was a lot better once I started supplementing. I’ve leveled off at about once per week. But I was still pretty limp and my default state was something I call ‘couch zombie’. A state where I had things to do, and I’d sort of like to do them, but it just isn’t possible to find forward motion, or even to sustain it once moving. It was fairly horrible. Iron is the key to defeating the couch zombie. Who knew? It isn’t in the apocalyptical literature. But it’s helped me a lot. My canker sores went away almost immediately. My nails have stopped shredding. But moving past couch zombie has been huge.

If nothing else, I’m certainly blogging more regularly!

I’m not where I’d like to be, but I no longer feeling like I’m traveling the road of life on a cart with square wheels. Time to work on picking up some speed!

How many ACES in your hand?

I love TED talks. They make it so easy to find out about new research, old research put together in new ways, or ideas that really make you think.

Today’s TED is about a new finding in how your past affects your future.

The basic premise is, Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACES) affect your health over the course of your life.

The experiences they studied were:

• Physical, emotional, or sexual abuse
• Physical or emotional neglect
• Divorce or separation
• Incarceration
• Parental substance abuse
• Parental mental illness
• Domestic violence

I don’t know about you but the list of people I know who didn’t experience at least one of those is pretty darn short.

They figured out that if you have 4 or more, then your risk for certain kinds of problems goes up a lot. My mind immediately jumped to risky behaviors. Of course people with difficult pasts are more likely to have issues, their experiences with drugs, eating disorders, smoking, and other things cause consequences. The thing is, the risk stays higher even when they control for those behaviors.

I’m sorry to hear she reports that this isn’t being pursued more aggressively, because they can interrupt the process if they do it early enough. It would be great if more people had heard about it.

What if depression isn’t in your head?

This morning I came across a fascinating article from The Guardian discussing a new theory about depression. What if depression is a side effect of inflammation?

The answer to that seems to be yes, and the best candidate so far is inflammation – a part of the immune system that acts as a burglar alarm to close wounds and call other parts of the immune system into action. A family of proteins called cytokines sets off inflammation in the body, and switches the brain into sickness mode.

There are a number of experiences in my own life that make me really, really want to see more research on this possibility.

In my early 20’s I had a horribly stressful job with a crazy boss. I spent several years on anti-depressants.

I have always had a tendency towards depression. At some level, I was able to manage this without additional medication by watching my diet and supplementing regularly with Vit B6 and Vit D both of which are known for an anti-inflammatory effect.

Everything got much, much better once I got my thyroid properly treated, and inflammation is both a cause and an affect of low thyroid.

Food allergies and possibly one of the biggest and most misunderstood and undertreated causes of inflammation in my opinion. I only have to go a little overboard on dairy to start sniffling and wheezing again, and asthma is a leukotrine inflammation response, among other things.

Stanford Professor Robert Sapolsky gave an amazing lecture on depression which is available on YouTube in which he discusses a lot of diseases that cause or are associated with depression. A quick review shows that many of those conditions are also associated with inflammation.

Obviously it’s too soon to say anything for certain, but I can say that this one rat is going to spend the rest of the dreary dark season experimenting with increased use of turmeric and staying carefully on top of my vitamins.

 

A time for rethinking.

I’m pretty excited to see some people thinking the conclusions of mainstream medicine. I’ve posted some really exciting things from Lissa Rankin, today’s TED is by Peter Attia, who found out the hard way he was being a jerk.

He starts his TED by telling us a story of a woman with a diabetic ulcer. He had no empathy for her, because medical dogma is clear. If you are fat and diabetic, it’s your own fault for not taking better care of yourself. If you ate right and exercised, this would never have happened. Case closed.

Three years later he discovered how very, very wrong that is. He followed the food pyramid to the letter, exercised hours every day, and he still developed metabolic syndrome. Oh. If it could happen to him, even following the rules, then maybe there’s more to it…

What if obesity isn’t the cause, but rather the effect. It’s wonderful to me to hear someone with a ‘perfect body’ and medical credentials suggest that. He’s gotten together with Gary Taubes, author of “What if it’s all been a big fat lie?” and a very weighty book titled Good Calories Bad Calories. They have gathered a group to research the issues some more, going ‘where ever the science takes them’.

I for one am eager to see what comes of it.