Down -4.2
(This is, happily, an almost complete loss of the five pound gain last week!!)
Last week 159.0
This week 154.8
1.Start each meal with a soup and/or salad and/or fruit.
2.Follow the 50/50 plate method for your meals, filling half your plate (by visual volume) with non-starchy vegetables and 50% (by visual volume) with minimally processed starches. Choose fruit for dessert.
3.Greatly reduce or eliminate added sugars and added salts. This includes gourmet sugars and salts, too. If either is troublesome for you, you can eliminate them.
4.Eliminate all animal foods (dairy, meat, eggs, fish, seafood).
5.Eliminate all higher fat plant foods (i.e., nuts, seeds, avocados, tofu, soy).
6.Eliminate any added oil.
7. Eliminate all higher calorie-dense foods including flour products (i.e., bread, bagels, muffins, crackers, dry cereals, cookies, cakes), puffed cereals, air-popped popcorn and dried fruit.
8.Don't drink your calories (especially from juices & sugar-sweetened beverages).
9.Follow these principles, eating whenever you are hungry until you are comfortably full. Don't starve yourself and don't stuff yourself.
10. Exercise daily.
Mark Cooper wrote:Noella - Don't despair! Falling into the Pleasure Trap is never fun, but you know exactly the pattern of behavior that will lead you back out again; it just takes adherence + time. That number on the scale, which I'm sure felt shocking, can be erased in due course. What is most important is to get directly back on track, and preserve
the many quality of life improvements you've worked so hard to attain. Do you feel like there was some specific development or change in your day to day context, environment or preparation that opened the door for the detour into non adherent food? If so, tackling that obstacle should help. Make it as easy as you can for yourself to reach for the recommended foods whenever you feel hungry, and block your access to anything troublesome, as best you can. I know you can do it; after all, you've done it before, right?
Hi Mark, Thanks, always, for being such a wonderful moderator. I have read, and reread your message to me from last week, and It really helped me to get back on track. Reading (and rereading!) everyone’s posts and your cheerful positive and encouraging responses to each person really helped me so much this week! I can totally relate to everyone’s challenges, victories and questions. Thanks so much to Jeff and Wildgoose, too. special thanks tho Dr. McDougall for making his books and this forum available to us.
I feel happy to be back on track this week.
Thank you Mark! I owe this to you! I heeded your advice, Mark, referring to your supportive and kind words many times daily, as you reminded me to simply, “...get directly back on track and preserve the many quality of life improvements you’ve worked so hard to achieve.”
I also thought carefully about the weight loss obstacles I face from time to time; the same obstacles that everyone who wants to make a major lifestyle change like this faces, and I want to focus on overcoming these. I spoke to my husband, from my heart, about how I need, benefit from and appreciate his support as I follow MWL and I provided him with a couple specific ways he can help me. I feel encouraged to be communicating with him more clearly. The social/cultural aspects of fitting in with, hosting and entertaining family and friends who eat the standard foods is an ongoing challenge and I am continually trying to improve my menus and cooking skills to accomodate my needs and theirs so that there are ample MWL foods available at every meal and a few non-adherent embellishments for my husband and guests to add at the table. This is easiest if guests only stay for three nights, lol. I can only be creative for so long, haha.
I also owe some of this week’s success in getting back on track, to some backcountry camping and alpine hiking we did in Lake O’Hara, Yoho National Park, for three nights/four days. We hiked in the high alpine about 250 meters of elevation gain over six-seven km each day. I planned out our meals to be 100% MWL adherent. Everything must be carried to the campsite in our packs, stored in the bear proof shed that is shared with several other groups. Every meal was compact, pre-cooked and measured into exact servings. I took ten small potatoes for extra starch, if needed, to add to meals or eat as snacks. (Pre-loads were bananas and oranges, breakfasts were ministone soup with potatoes or Spanish rice & beans with potatoes, lunches were steel cut oats with cherrries and cinnamon --which is easy to eat on the trail-, dinners were spaghetti with Pomodoro sauce with carrots or Indian spiced veggies with rice. Snacks, if needed were a potato. I brought along some additional high calorie dense foods for my husband (non MWL adherent foods). Pre planning, cooking and preparing what you eat really helps a lot!
While in the mountains, I chatted briefly with a man (a retired police officer) who had taken a job with Parks Canada for his 'recreation'. Even though he was a complete stranger to me, he suddenly confided to me, in a few sentences, how he was feeling transformed, not by the alpine air, but by his new lifestyle: “I am a completely new person,” he said, ‘I have new passion for life, renewed energy, and better health at 66 years old. In the past 18 months I have lost 85 pounds, gone from waist size 44 to size 34!! I now believe I have a lot of life left to live. I stopped drinking beer and going to restaurants. I started cooking my own food, and buying vegetables, you know, peppers, and making salads of kale and other greens. I really love eating salads and vegetables now. I started hiking and using my exercise bike (that I used to put my laundry on), and doing some floor exercises!” He was beaming with pride to tell me what he had accomplished in such a short time. I chuckled softly, smiled and responded, ”Way to go! That’s fantastic! I've got to tell you that I must be your secret twin because I have lost 85 pounds and experienced a similar lifestyle change over the past 18 months, too!!”
That short converstaion immediately bonded us; we have both experienced the joy of weigh loss. Much like our weekly postings hereon this MWL forum bond us and inspire us to continue on with our journey towards better health! This week has inspired me to continue on and get the last ten-fifteen pounds off! I am committed to following MWL and while the last few pounds seem so stubborn and the hardest to budge, I feel reassured that, in time, by following the 10 MWL behaviours and eating my starch and vegetables, it will happen. I will eventually get there.
Additional quality of life im provements I, or my husband, noticed this week while hiking in the mountains:
-1. My stamina is AMAZING. I never got out of breath or tired on the uphill sections.
-2. My husband commented that I don't snore anymore, something that had apparently bothered him last year. Yay! I didn’t actually know I used to snore but I am very pleased to hear that I don t snore any more!
-3. My knees: they don’t hurt nearly as sharply with each step on level ground as they did last year. So, it’s definitely worth losing even more weight to help my knees. This year I could walk on the level and the uphills without pain; just a bit of discomfort from time to time. Doing the downhills wasn't sharply painful but I had to go slow when it was very steep and I took occasional 30 second rests to let my knees recover from the downhill force. I used two hiking poles for the downhills and one for the uphill sections. I took longer two-three minute rests and these really helped my knees to feel better. Once I was back on the more level trails my knees felt okay again. So the recovery time is good, and it's promising to think that my knees are healing. My knees got stiff and sore during the night so I woke up and did stretching exercises several times during to ensure my knees would be somewhat flexible in the morning. I really love hiking in the high alpine, along with cross country skiing it's my favourite thing in the world to see the turquoise colours of glacier fed lakes, so a little discomfort with my knees is manageable for me to do what I love.It's what I live for. If I had gained weight over the past 18 months rather than losing weight I could not of hiked one single step in the mountains this year. I am so thankful to MWL, Dr. McDougall. Mark, Jeff and Wildgoose!.
-4. Our hiking trip photos are mostly of the mountains, lakes, trees and wildflowers but... Yay! I look like a normal sized hiker in the couple photos that include people!
All the best to you all for a great week of MWL!
Noella
P.S. Photo of Lake O Hara
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Seven_Veil_Falls,_Lake_Ohara_-_panoramio.jpg In this photo you can see from (left to right) Wiwaxy Gap, Mount Huber, Mount Lefroy , Glacier Peak, and Yukness Mountain. This fantastic alpine circuit goes from Lake O'Hara up to Wiwaxy Gap then, then there is a marked trail on the rocky ledges of Mt Huber and Mt. Yukness.
P.P. S. My husband says: "I, too, am very thankful to Dr. McDougall et. al because Noella has been able to influence me to lose over fifty pounds over the past year. And like Noella said, I also wouldn't of been able to hike as well as I did this year if I hadn't lost weight."