Saturday Brunch

Note: I read and enjoy every single comment. At the moment, though, the blog isn't letting me reply to them. I hope to resolve that soon!

Even though I'm retired, I still tend to differentiate between weekdays and the weekend. I'm more apt to do housework and errands during the week and relax or do fun things on weekends.

Usually I have at least one meal per weekend that is designed to be a little different than my typical meal and is large enough to make me feel very full of food. Doing this seems to help me succeed at relegating food to a place of lower importance the rest of the time.

I'm pleased enough with today's Saturday brunch to share it here.

I started with some fresh pork fatback. If you aren't familiar with it, it's basically scraps of fat and meat that aren't pretty enough to sell at a higher price as a more familiar named cut. I bought a large package, enough for 9 portions, for a dollar and change.

I usually use the fatback to season a pan for the main meat and/or veggies of the meal, but 2 servings stuck together in the freezer so I defrosted them both. 

I browned the fatback really well on low-medium heat, which gave me some nice liquid fat in the pan into which I scrambled 3 eggs when the fatback was done and crispy. When the eggs were about done, I dumped a can of cut asparagus onto the mix and prepared a dish of banana and mineola orange.

As you can see from the pic,

this was a larger than usual meal for me. Many of my meals consist of large food volume but lower density due to large green salads. I do that to encourage gradual fat loss, but today was intended to be more of a healthy splurge or maintenance day. 

I did leave some chunks of pork fat uneaten, mainly the centers of pieces from which I chewed the crispy exterior, but I ate everything else.

I don't intend to eat anything else today. Tomorrow is tentatively planned as a fruit/salad/tuber-and-veggie roast day, which should leave me hungry for the beef I'm planning for Monday.

I'm Going to Binge! Oh, Never Mind ...

The past few days have been interesting!

After I made the wonderfully tasty cold banana pudding, I must admit I found my appetite somewhat higher. It not only tasted more like a dessert than the room-temperature version, I reacted as if it were. Nothing bad happened, though, until I was once again exposed to external family-related stress. 

I bought and ate a large chunk of raspberry coffee cake (yes, sugar/wheat/SUGAR) in a "take that world" fit of temper. I fully expected to get sick as a dog but there were NO bad consequences. It's entirely possible I now have a truly healthy gut and one junk-food assault is not enough to make me sick. We could call the coffee cake incident risky or foolish, but we can't call it a binge because I ate one large serving and no more--plus there were no follow-up bags or boxes of junk.

The day after eating coffee cake I ate my normal healthy menu and the day after that was a calorie-deprived day in which I drank my usual coffee with cream and honey but ate no solid food. I'm not recommending that approach in any way but it actually worked quite well. I enjoyed the heck out of the coffee--even had a mug or two more than usual--and my body didn't even notice I wasn't eating until about an hour before bed time so I easily shrugged off the impulse. As usual, I had no acute hunger the next morning (yesterday.)

BUT something interesting happened. At mid-day I made myself a weekend-style breakfast of 3 pieces of bacon, 3 eggs fried in the bacon fat and a large serving (more than a cup but less than 2 I think) of the rice/veg dish which I added to the skillet for a swim in the bacon fat. I actually started the breakfast with 2/3 cup home-made yogurt and a banana. So I think we can all agree it was a huge feed of nutrients. Unfortunately, it didn't turn off my impulse to eat--I was just as "hungry" when I finished the meal as when I started. 

In my binge-eating career, this was how all serious binges started, by eating what should have been a large satiating meal but finding myself totally crazy with an urge to eat junk. So, I found myself thinking this might be it--after a year of healthy eating with splurges here and there I may be about to drive to the store and buy armfuls of junk. Drum roll ... 

What I DID do was make myself a 4-5 cup leafy salad and I ate a whole grapefruit plus the salad. And here's the REALLY weird thing. After I ate this second meal, with more food volume but much lower caloric/energy value than the breakfast I'd eaten an hour previously, the lizard brain impulse to binge WAS STILL THERE but my stomach/gut were so stuffed I found it incredibly easy to do nothing. Over the course of 2 hours the over-stuffed feeling gradually faded and so did the urge to binge. 

This morning I woke up feeling great, not to mention "lean and mean." All physical indications are that I actually lost some weight overnight which makes sense on 2 fronts--one, recent emptying of some fat cells could very well be what triggered the binge impulse and two, when you look at what I actually ate yesterday it was within my normal range of a day's food (just a little out of sequence) and I had been calorie-restricted the previous day. 

So here I am, learning more and more about my body's signals and responses. I'm eating normally today (Sunday) and Monday will be another coffee-only fast and THEN I'll be very interested in how my body responds on Tuesday. Will it be a normal day of eating or will I again have "binge fever" and need to make an extra-large salad to make the lizard brain happy?

Do You Vary Your Eating Routine?

Yep, that's the question for today--how often do you change up what you're eating?

In your "bad old days" that meant switching from burgers to fried chicken, right? I mean, even on the artificially-taste-enhanced SHAD (supposedly healthy American diet) you didn't always eat the same thing every day.

Now that you're buying and fixing/eating real whole foods, variety is even more important for several reasons:  

• boredom is a great way to get tired of eating this way in the fastest possible time  
• good nutrition is achieved by eating lots of different whole foods, each of which contains a different mix of things your body needs   
• your hunger is both stimulated and satisfied by a mix of different foods   

Does that mean you have to eat different things at every meal, or every day? Of course not! If you imagine yourself back on the ancestral plain a successful hunt for meat would be cause for celebration and an initial feast of the choicest bits followed by carefully and thoroughly eating every last scrap of the critter. I assume as you got to the less-favored bits you threw in more and more plant-based tubers, leaves, etc. And if you were out of meat then the gathering of vegetables and fruits was pursued even more vigorously. In that natural environment, you ate a bunch of the particular greens, vegetables and fruits that happened to be tastiest at the time so your menu varied widely on a weekly or monthly basis. 

We're not trying to eat exactly as we really did back in those days--for one thing, I'd be the old granny everyone waved a sad goodbye to when the group had to move out to find food and left me behind because I couldn't keep up. :-))  

But we  can keep our "natural" way in mind and feel free to eat our fill of what sounds/looks good this week knowing that next week we may select a quite different mix. In my case, I find I have times when I eat a LOT of meat and fat but I also have times when I'm really, really hungry for vegetables and fruit and a modest serving of meat--or no meat at all--is fine. If we assume that you've been eating ancestral foods for at least 3 weeks now, your body should be giving you signals now about what is needed and I strongly recommend you follow them.

If you wake up some morning and want a huge meal of fruit and nothing else, go for it unless there's a medical reason not to such as blood sugar response; even if you have to be careful about fruit, just mix it with low-response foods or watch your portion sizes--have what you're hungry for. If you wake up hungry for bacon and eggs--or a slow-fried steak--enjoy and you probably won't want much if any food for the rest of the day. Or maybe you will be hungry, but for other things and that's great too. A lot of raw stuff for a few days followed by a few days of cooked-foods-only is just fine.

I've definitely noticed that my tastes change from week to week and if I allow myself a range of healthy menus I tend to lose weight a little faster even if it seems like I'm eating more. And the good response to variety includes SHAD meals occasionally as long as they don't include wheat. The best "weight loss formula" for me is that there is no set mix of foods to eat--if I always eat the same things I get bored and I stop losing weight.

Yesterday I ate 3 hard-shelled tacos with a few forkfuls each of rice and beans at a nearby cafe. When I got back home I added a few pieces of fruit and a chunk of fried pork rind (I buy large pieces rather than machine-cut products) to complete my daily menu because I was still hungry for those things. This morning, I woke up feeling very hungry and high-energy and that's my typical reaction as long as my splurge doesn't include wheat or manufactured food-like products. I've found the active appetite means my metabolism was stimulated by the food change. I can choose to eat more than usual, with probably no weight change, or I can eat wisely and lose a little more weight than usual this week.

You don't have to eat boring meals with no variety over time to be healthy or lose weight! Be creative, have fun and listen to what you're hungry for even if it doesn't fit a uniform "routine."

How are you doing/feeling?

The first half of January has been pretty uneventful for me. I haven't been tempted to eat any non-healthy foods and I've been feeling great. Of course, I didn't cut back on my yogurt and coffee as I thought I might either. If I go by the signals my body is giving, I've lost a little weight anyhow so I haven't felt the need to be overly-restrictive.


But that's enough about me, how are you doing? Have you been trying to change what or how much you eat? Has that caused any problems for you and, if so, what have you tried so far to get around it?


I can tell you this--health goals rarely if ever unfold in a straight line. A binge eater, for example, almost always has one or more crisis points and may binge a few times while trying to break the pattern. It's not about whether you struggle. It's about whether you get back up when you fall.


Many people who try to leave grains and refined "neolithic" foods behind them suffer withdrawal. Has that happened to you? The lucky folks just look back fondly at their old foods while others are shocked by how strong their cravings are. They have to become obsessed with their goals for a while in order to see past how much they want wheat or other addictive foods. If/when they succeed in breaking the pattern the obsession can be managed and then broken by learning new tricks such as intermittent fasting but that can be a tough period.


Other withdrawal symptoms include feeling what is referred to as the "low-carb flu." If you ate grains and heavily sweetened neolithic foods for many years you have gut flora that include the "bad boys" and they are the source of feeling both cravings and sickness. Cravings mean they're demanding to be fed junk food and sickness means they're actually dying because healthy food encourages the "good guys" who crowd out the bad ones. So being sick for a while can mean you're getting healthier!


If you changed your eating pattern at New Year's and stuck with it, you may be feeling fabulous about now--how cool is that? If you're like me, you hadn't noticed that you hadn't felt GOOD in a long time so you're feeling too good to be legal.


If you tried but couldn't stick with healthy eating, why not give yourself permission to try again? Instead of beating up on yourself, how about being your own best champion and rooting for yourself to feel really, really good after you get through the tough part?


Well, it's a beautiful day here in southern Nevada and I'm going outside to play with my 3 toy dogs and visit with my neighbors. You should do something that gets you outdoors, particularly if the sun is shining--sunshine is very healthy.


Just remember--you own your body and you own your life, so live toward having the one you wish to have.

Weight Loss Tactics for 2012 - Part 5

Review:

In Part 1, we talked about distinguishing between physical and emotional hunger because for weight loss we want to feed one while distracting the other.


In Part 2, we talked about losing weight slowly and steadily rather than trying drastic measures that can back-fire.

In Part 3, we talked about supporting your health and energy by moving around a lot and incorporating walking or other exercise.


In Part 4, we talked about different eating patterns and why I settled on a moderate pattern of eating whole foods and home-made probiotic foods.


Okay, now we get back to the hard part--eating healthier and/or losing weight in the real world, which includes events and circumstances that trigger emotional responses. 


Let's imagine you're walking on a sidewalk. Except, the strap/lace/heel of your left shoe just broke and the shoe wants to fall off. You'd do something about that except, your arms are full of packages. They aren't terribly heavy, but they're all shapes and sizes and make an unwieldy burden. You'd put down the packages and deal with the shoe except, this is a very busy sidewalk and there's a crowd of other people moving briskly past you in all directions. In fact, you're at an intersection so the people are jammed up waiting for the light to turn green. If you step off the curb, your shoe will fall off. If you just stand there, the guy at your right elbow will jostle you and the packages will go flying. What will you do, WHAT WILL YOU DO?


So what, you ask, does the above goofy scenario have to do with your desire to get healthier and/or lose weight? Well, life is a messy business. It was messy before you decided to change how you eat and life isn't going to change just so you can follow your perfect plan for ancestral eating. S*%# happens!


But you're human. You get a promotion, or hit a nice pot at the casino, and you want to celebrate. You get laid off, your son/daughter/grandchild seriously messes up or suffers a tragedy, and you need comfort. You find out your credit card has been hacked and you're furious. Or, maybe nothing has happened for days and you're bored out of your skull. That's a pretty good list of reasons to slide on your eating plan, isn't it? Isn't it?


Or maybe it's not that dramatic. It's just that you go to the buffet and, yes, there are plenty of healthy options but your eyes go straight to all those tempting (think unhealthy, fattening) foods. Decision point: what do you REALLY want? Because if you want to eat for better health and vitality with gradual loss of any excess fat, you will look at the junk foods as if they are plaster figurines and you will walk past them to the real food. You will feel free to fill your plate several times with salad (oil and vinegar please, not dressing) and whole fruit and cooked vegetables and 3-5 kinds of meat. You will walk out of that buffet with your head held high and triumph in your eyes. Or ...


Yes, it's about you. You will be tired, you will be busy, you will suffer emotional highs and lows and you will be tempted. But you won't notice those things so much if you are obsessed with the life you want to have next month and next year.


What will you do? WHAT WILL YOU DO?


I hope you enjoyed this little series focused around the decision to eat for improved health. Possible topics of discussion are endless and I'll be as surprised as you when I select the next one. :-))


'Til then, think of ancestral eating as your new hobby and have fun learning about it and practicing how to make it work for you.


Special note to binge eaters: I didn't talk about us in this post because I've decided to write a self-standing one on the subject. I'm not sure when yet.

Weight Loss Tactics for 2012 - Part I

If you have a goal to lose weight this year, there are a few things you'll want to consider. The points I've listed below will be a series of posts over the next week or so:  

• Your chances for success will be improved if you eat in a way that minimizes physical hunger while helping you to recognize and manage emotional hunger. 
• It's better to let weight loss occur slowly and comfortably rather than punishing yourself with harsh restrictions that may cause you to give up and even gain more weight than you started with.
• Light activity such as walking and doing household chores are helpful for both health and weight loss. Again, you don't have to punish  yourself but the more you can move around the better. 
• It's possible to lose weight on many different diets but you'll enjoy the best health results if you eat healthy whole foods while you're losing and doing so will make it easier for you to keep the weight off.
• Emotional highs/lows must be carefully managed to stay on course with weight loss, particularly if you are a binge eater.

Avoiding/Managing Hunger.  Since you want to lose weight and we're coming off the holidays, I'm going to assume you've been eating at least some highly sweetened foods such as baked goods. If you now change to eating healthy whole foods (meat, vegetables, fruits) you are probably going to experience emotional hunger.

What is the difference between physical and emotional hunger? Physical hunger occurs when you have absorbed and used the nutrients from the last food you ate. Now, if you're like me you're carrying around excess body fat, and you're not in any danger of starving, but your body would much rather work on new food than go to the trouble of releasing stored fat. Physical hunger is fine and it's not going to spoil your weight loss effort. You can and do ignore physical hunger until it's convenient to eat.

Emotional hunger is a different story. Have you ever gone into the kitchen and opened the fridge or cupboard and thought, "There's nothing in here to eat?" That's emotional hunger, because you're looking at a lot of food and if it was physical hunger everything would look GOOD. Emotional hunger is a craving for a specific food or type of food and nothing else will do. It is almost always something that's not healthy or nutritious--think chips or ice cream or cookies. The irony of emotional hunger is that you don't really need the food you're craving but the urge is much more powerful and upsetting than true hunger. You "need" the food and it can become the most important thing in your world at that moment.

So, if your attempt to lose weight is going to succeed it's important to avoid physical hunger by eating the right things. And avoiding physical hunger will also be an important piece in your efforts to manage emotional cravings. How you do that will probably change over time, but for now just remember that you FEED physical hunger and DISTRACT emotional hunger.

Feed your physical hunger. What are your favorite meats, vegetables and fruits? Fill your fridge, freezer and cupboards with them. Read this post about what an ancestral eating shopping list looks like.


One of the best things you can do is get out the slow-cooker and make a nice home-made stew. Buy some meat that includes bones, or separate packages of bones and meat, and cook them in the slow-cooker for a few hours. When the meat/bones are simmering nicely add whatever vegetables you wish (remember that corn, barley, rice and noodles are NOT vegetables.) Cook the stew until all the bones are clean and fish them out. Then refrigerate the stew and re-heat a bowl whenever you're hungry. If you're "hungry" but don't want the stew, guess what? That's emotional hunger and we'll address that in a minute. I recommend a thorough re-heating of the stew every 4 days or so if it's not all eaten yet.

Eat your first meal of the day as early or late as you like but here's the rule: the first meal has to be mostly meat and/or eggs. The goal is to eat a filling meal that will take your body a while to digest. Why? If you eat enough meat/eggs to fill you up, you won't be physically hungry for hours. You could eat your slow-cooked stew, but make sure you eat lots of meat. For the first meal, I'd think of something like chuck steak and eggs and use the stew for later meals. You can have a salad with oil and vinegar any time you like and you can have 1 or 2 cups of fruit per day.


If you are going to work, you'll want to take food with you. A portable salad or cut-up vegetables, a piece of fruit, a can of tuna (in olive oil) or salmon, leftover meat or boiled eggs, etc. Take plenty because you don't want to be at the mercy of vending machines, cafeteria or restaurant.

Distract your emotional hunger. Okay, back to the cupboard "with nothing in it." Make sure that's true--before you begin trying to lose weight, get rid of all the foods you don't want to eat. If you're going to try ancestral eating, that means giving away or discarding foods that include grains or sugar or soy or processed seed oils. Pretty much everything in a bag or a box with a list of ingredients is probably not a good match for ancestral eating. Let's just say, if cravings strike you don't want a cupboard full of chips and cookies!


Since you're not physically hungry, real food won't be appealing and that's your signal that you are suffering from emotional hunger. You don't want to feed that, you want to distract it. 


If weather permits, this is a great time to go for a walk or a drive because movement is good for you and it may temporarily kill cravings. Take a shower or clean out a storage closet. If you have a pet, groom it or play with it. Do a Google search on "ancestral eating" or "paleo diet." If you have a yard, do something outside.


Update 1/15/12: Check out this link on the subject of distracting emotional hunger from Health on TODAY.


If you are at work, catch up on phone calls or change what you're working on (if you can) so you have to concentrate. At lunch time or after work you can get up and do the walk or drive. 


Good options are to go to big-box stores or large businesses that don't offer food such as clothing, hardware or garden centers. Walk around, read labels, etc.


Social contact may be great or risky--being around people can be a great distraction but it needs to be situations or people that won't tempt you with the foods you're trying to avoid.


You will do whatever is most important to you. If losing weight and enjoying better health are what you truly want, your physical and emotional hunger can't stop you and neither can other people. You may need to learn new habits and you may need to fight against old habits and attitudes.


It's about you. You'll only struggle if you aren't sure what you want OR if you believe that you don't have control. Well, you do have control of what you eat and, to a great extent, how you feel. You can make it happen and you aren't alone. There are web sites, books and forums available to provide information and reinforce your new reality.


To go directly to Part 2, click here.