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Weight Change —2.0 lbsHi, Mark...https://www.drmcdougall.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=610765#p610765My husband does just like you said...
...he puts "some" beans on his plate...
...and "some" rice and "some" vegetables...
...with a couple of scoops of salsa on top...
...and pops it in a 350° oven for 20 minutes...
...proud of himself for making only one dish dirty!
He has no idea how many pots get washed behind the scenes
so that everything he puts in his food bowls is all ready to go!
From time to time, I mention that I'm thinking of showing him
how to perform all these behind-the-scenes tasks for himself...
...it's good for at least three days of him keeping a very low profile!
As for me...
...well, I've worked out three meals I like enough to repeat:
• a "food bowl" with beans, rice, potatoes and vegetables;
• a "taco plate" with homemade tortillas piled high with
beans and fresh pico sauce (chopped tomatoes, onions,
garlic and jalapeño peppers) and lettuce, etc.; and
• a "barley bowl" with flaked barley and oats
and mashed bananas topped with blueberries
Thank You! for clarifying my weight-vs-volume confusion.
You might like to know that I re-checked everything and found
that I'm approximately 50/50 as to *both* weight *and* volume.
I also had a good chinwag with a friend of mine who's a chef.
Whereas I only feed two people every day, he feeds dozens.
His patrons have no more idea of what's behind the plate
of food in front of them than my husband does, but you
can bet the chef does. He'd lose his shirt if he didn't!
Also also, I made a discovery!
You said awhile back that something called "hominy"
(whole-kernel corn) is MWL-compliant, but not "masa harina"
(ground-corn flour).
I had no idea, at the time, what "hominy" is,
but I dug into it and discovered that it's just
a fork in the road in "nixtamalizing" corn!
That is, first you prepare "culinary lime,"
the clear liquid left after the white powder
is strained out through a coffee filter.
Then you slow-cook either white or yellow corn
(the field-corn or dent-corn type, not sweet)
overnight, drain off the liquid and massage the
kernels gently with your hands under running water
so as to remove the pericarp (aka skins).
If you're going to take the hominy fork in the road,
you remove as many of the skins as feasible to make
the kernels as digestible as possible and then you
either cook them some more right then, or chill or
freeze them for cooking later.
If you're going to take the nixtamal fork in the road,
you remove most of the skins but not all because it's
the soluble fiber in the pericarp that contributes
that lovely flexibility to homemade tortillas which,
if you've never experienced it, is just heavenly.
Once you've massaged away most-but-not-all of the skins,
• you can grind the kernels a bit and make hominy "grits," or
• you can grind them a lot and make nixtamal, the dough
from which fresh, hot, succulent tortillas are made, or
• you can dehydrate the dough into masa harina (aka "instant"
corn flour) and then add water later to make reconstituted
nixtamal from which you can make fresh, hot tortillas
in just a few minutes anytime of the day or night!
Now that I understand where "hominy" fits into the picture,
I'm going to try my hand at making it and replacing the
cooked whole-grain rice in my food bowls with cooked
whole-grain corn that has been soaked and simmered in lime
and, by virtue of that extra step, is now nutritionally
superior to corn that has not. In particular, it has ten
times more available calcium, increased iron and greatly
increased B-3, the B vitamin that prevents pellagra.
When I look back at what a scaredy cat I've been about
learning how to cook corn in this way, I'm embarrassed.
Eight-year-old Native American girls do it all the time!
Anyway,
thank you! for bringing it to my attention.
I really appreciate it. Through this MWL program, I've
become aware that rice and wheat are "problematic" for me...
not allergy-inducing, exactly, but somehow I just don't
feel as good after eating them as I'd like to. I've even
switched my oat-n-barley-flakes-hot-cereal meal to evenings
because it makes me feel sleepy...
...and I don't want to feel either sleepy or buzzy.
My goal is what I call "an even keel"...
...a level of energy that holds for a long time.
I don't know if anybody else here has experienced this
as a result of following Dr. McDougall's starch-based program,
but it was one of the first benefits I noticed... and prized.
It's the "gold standard" by which I judge various foods,
both individually and in combination with other foods:
Does it result in a steady, dependable level of energy
that's neither too high nor too low and that sustains itself
through all my waking hours providing I eat regular healthy meals
and don't do any one thing for too long at a time without a break?For me, corn does a better job of helping me achieve
my sustained-energy goal than any other grain.
I've been achieving it with tortillas I make myself from nixtamal
(either store-bought or home-made) simply because I didn't understand
why and how corn kernels have to be treated in order to significantly
enhance their nutritional profile...
...but now that I'm hot on hominy's trail (thanks to you!),
that is going to change. I figured out how to presoak and
cook beans on a regular basis, so I know I can figure out
how to presoak (+lime water) and cook (+rinse skins) corn
(+grind it into tortilla dough later if I choose).
The fact that cooked corn can be refrigerated or frozen
just like cooked beans is a huge plus because cooked-ahead
food makes meal preparation go so much more quickly and easily...
...as I'm sure everyone here can attest!
I'm in the 4th month of my 3rd year of my struggle to follow
Dr. McDougall's program, and I'm happy to report that I'm
within shouting distance, now, of the goal weight I set
when I started.
Chapter 12 — Establishing a Healthy Way of LifeIdentification-of-Health-Goals Questionnaires, pp 128-131These questionnaires are great. They're what originally got me wondering
if there was anything I wanted *more* than to lose the weight I'd gained.
I discovered there was.
I wanted to see if I could *reverse* the process of gaining weight;
that is, if one's average weight *gain* over time is .5 lb per week,
is it possible to *lose* .5 lb per week and, if so, what would have
to happen before that could happen?
Next up is what would have to happen before one could *maintain* one's
"ideal" weight and cease to *either* gain *or* lose weight ever again
as long as ye both shall live?!!
The thing is, while a gain of half a pound a week is no big deal,
if it occurs *every* week, in four years you'd be 100 lbs heavier!
And that *is* a big deal!
Hi, Chuck...https://www.drmcdougall.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=610753#p610753You mentioned that you've followed the McDougall plan before,
with great success, but that you've fallen off the wagon recently
and reverted back to your old habits.
That's the secret nightmare of everybody here, isn't it?
Gaining it back... maybe all of it... and more.
I'm so happy to hear that you're "on the wagon" again and making progress
and getting to where you can stand sideways, stick out your tongue and
look like a zipper!
It was the spectre of gaining it all back again that induced me
to conduct a series of eating experiments designed to keep me
steadily losing weight at what to most people would seem like
a snail's pace but at what I figured was probably about the
equivalent of a couple of tablespoons of olive oil a day.
Half a pound of butter is 8 oz.
One week has 7 days.
1 oz a day ±.
2 TBL.
It took me a couple of months to "fine tune" the program to fit my goal;
but, once I was trucking, I stopped at the "weigh station" once a fortnight
and found that I'd lost just about a pound... sometimes a little more,
sometimes a little less, but on average a pound a fortnight...
...until I joined this group and dropped 2 lbs the first week!
...and dropped another 2 lbs last week!
...which is 1.5 lbs more than my weekly target!
I'm not sure, but I suspect it may have something to do with gluten.
Corn is a gluten-free grain, I discovered, and I'm having it now
for two meals out of three in the form of homemade tortillas...
...and as soon as I can master the art of making hominy
(whole-kernel corn with pericarp aka skin removed from kernels),
I'm going to start having a bowl of hominy in the evening instead of
a bowl of oat-n-barley flakes. I'm keen to find out if a bowl of hominy
makes me feel as sleepy as a bowl of oat-n-barley flakes.
If it doesn't, then I'm switching to hominy for my evening meal
so I can see what an all-corn fortnight (two weeks) feels like...
if it does a better job of keeping me on even keel, energy-wise,
than a two-thirds corn fortnight.
That's all I ask...
• a steady, dependable level of energy all day long, and
• a predictable level of weight loss every fortnight, and
• a weight-maintenance plan that's as effortless as it is effective
and which I found on page 59 of Dr. McDougall's MLW book where he says
that,
when you get within 10 pounds of your ideal weight, your body
naturally achieves an equilibrium between the calories you take in
and those you expend. And I seem to recall Dr. Lisle saying, in response to an interview question
as to how best to go about losing those last 10 "vanity" pounds, that
you can do it by increasing the percentage of raw vegetables you eat.Ain't that a hoot, though!
Once we get where we're going, our bodies are going to just naturally
achieve an equilibrium between the calories we take in and those we expend!
How cool izzat?!!
Elizabeth
by KatieLovesPotatoes » Fri Jan 17, 2020 11:50 am 
Awesome follow-through on the checklist! When I eat sweet potatoes as a breakfast, I often top them with blueberries - it is surprisingly delicious. Sweet Potato Beginnings is also a very yummy recipe.
