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Share your daily McDougall menus and/or keep a journal describing your personal progress.

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No topic.

Postby Trinity » Fri Jan 28, 2022 11:53 am

Hello. I’m an almost-10-year McDougaller waiting until September to officially post on that topic in the Testimonials section (I think). I rarely post here, and it’s because I look back on my previous posts and think, “Ugh, that sounds so dumb!” I even asked Jeff Novick to delete one of my journals awhile back. But, as I realized earlier this week, it’s depressing when people’s previous posts disappear, especially since so many fewer people are posting here, in general, since the new site for the forums was launched. So that’s why I’m starting this.

I am currently trying to lose about 5-10 pounds I put on last year starting in May, when we started the process of moving from Italy back to the US and I wasn’t able to cook at home. My husband and kids mostly eat this way since I’m the cook and buyer of most of the groceries, which is good. But the other night I watched as my husband drizzled olive oil on his Split Pea Vegetable Soup (which is one of the recipes everyone will actually eat, except the 4-year-old, of course) and it got to me. Usually I can ignore that sort of thing but this time it just made me mad. Eww, oil! On split pea soup? At least put on cheese or buttery croutons or something that tastes good. Gah! So—see?—I have no one to vent to about this. Except you! So thank you.
Last edited by Trinity on Thu Mar 10, 2022 10:11 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: No topic.

Postby Daydream » Fri Jan 28, 2022 4:20 pm

Trinity, I would also be upset if I saw my husband drizzle oil on his food because I know it's not healthy. I don't buy olive oil so it's not in our house. Are you able to get rid of the olive oil so that it's not in your house?
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Re: No topic.

Postby Trinity » Fri Jan 28, 2022 9:24 pm

Hi Daydream! I wish, but nah, he’d go nuts and then buy more. Especially if it’s some of his precious olive oil he brought back from Italy. It’s fine, he’s an adult and I have to let him make his own choices. But it really helps me to know someone out there agrees with me! Thanks!
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Re: No topic.

Postby Trinity » Sat Jan 29, 2022 6:53 am

See, now I feel guilty for complaining about my husband on a public online discussion board. I really am happy he and my kids mostly eat what I cook. I’m sorry. I’m not going to delete it though. I just really hate oil. Not only is it useless but it stains your clothes! Anyways, I also try to remember what Dr. McD said in a video, about how people sometimes come to him and say I couldn’t do your program, and he says, “Fine.” That’s the attitude I need to remember.

I’m working on streamlining what I eat. My favorite meal is plain microwaved potatoes. I’ve been adding canned no-salt-added (NSA) green beans that I put balsamic vinegar on, to reduce the calorie density. I lose weight so slowly (about 1 pound per month, or even less, like 0.2 per week) that with the scale numbers bouncing around as they do, nothing seems to be happening. But I know that if I just stick with it I’ll get results, I always have!
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Re: No topic.

Postby deweyswakms » Sat Jan 29, 2022 11:45 am

Hi,

I too would be making faces if my family put oil on my delicious split pea soup! It's so unhealthy, as you know. I never understood the appeal of dipping bread into olive oil either.

It surprises me that more people don't journal. It is how I stay accountable to myself; helps me set my intentions and resolve.

Marsha
start weight 210 on 7/25/14; MWL recommit 7/2019 weight 197. 6/11/2022 weight 165.0. Height 5'8".
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Re: No topic.

Postby Trinity » Sun Jan 30, 2022 6:07 pm

Thanks Marsha! I really appreciate it. The only person I ever actually personally knew who tried to briefly follow a WFPBNO diet was my older daughter’s preschool teacher and I was so excited when I found out. But she basically hated it, despite her heart issues, and added eggs back in, so, so much for that. Everyone has their thing though. Mine is sweets out of the house. The last time I ate eggs (which I used to love!) was in 2011-12 when I was pregnant with my older daughter. I was craving eggs and made an egg-and-cheese sandwich on Ezekiel toast. It tasted pretty good going down but I felt so sick afterward that I have never eaten an egg since (this does not apply to any eggs that are so invisible in baked treats, unfortunately!)
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Re: No topic.

Postby Trinity » Sun Jan 30, 2022 9:01 pm

For the record, in Italy they do not dip bread straight into olive oil! They definitely cook with olive oil, but they use bread to sop up the rest of the sauce after the pasta is gone. Also Alfredo sauce does not exist there. And spaghetti is a first course and meatballs are a second course so they are not served together. Not that we went out to eat very often, as we were there during Covid.
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Re: No topic.

Postby Trinity » Tue Feb 01, 2022 5:32 pm

New month, fresh start. I’ve been self-isolating with my 4-year-old daughter this week. I love not having to leave the house. I’ll get bored eventually but it’s a nice vacation. I’ve just been taking the 2 older kids to and from school and getting groceries delivered to the trunk of my car from the commissary, for free! She has not gotten sick (besides the sniffles) since she was a baby, that I can remember, and out of nowhere was shivering with a fever of 103 Saturday night. Sunday morning she was miserable, feverish, and congested. Now she has no fever but a dry cough and is just more tired than usual. All of this points towards possible Covid so that’s why we’re laying low.

Proof that I definitely have some unwanted pounds is that yesterday and today I decided just to not eat for awhile and see how it felt. I hate wasting food, so despite the fact that I just had vegetable soup for dinner Sunday night (my mom made the Kitchen Sink Soup adapted for the Instant Pot and sent me home with some, she’s the best), I ended up eating too much bread and getting so full. My older daughter eats the soft middle out of a roll and hands me the rest, which sometimes I’m smart enough to put in the freezer for myself for another day, but not that night. I ate someone else’s leftovers too. Anyways, both yesterday and today I didn’t even feel very hungry. I would drink some water and be fine. I ate dinner as normal with my family though. I’m going to try one more day tomorrow and when I start getting hungry will eat some microwaved potatoes and green beans. I peeled and put in water in the fridge a whole 5 pound bag of russets and have a 10-lb. bag in the pantry ($5.49, it makes me so happy, I hate spending money.) I can’t wait until (ALL) my pants aren’t so tight.
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Re: No topic.

Postby Trinity » Tue Feb 01, 2022 5:51 pm

I love hearing how Dr. McD says white rice is okay per the email today. I wish I could eat more white rice, which I LOVE, but I need the fiber if you know what I mean. When I first found McDougall, I was half-heartedly macrobiotic, but those people don’t let you eat potatoes, tomatoes, or very much fruit so I had a hard time getting on board. I’d already been eating differently for about 7 years. I became a “vegetarian” which was really pescatarian after I’d witnessed a bullfight in Spain. Before even the matador came out, some guy on a horse kept spearing the poor bull and my 21-year-old self was completely traumatized. Even though they supposedly “use all the parts of the bull,” the ends don’t justify the means. The one thing I liked about macrobiotics is that they’re specific. Even the China Study is just like, “Eat plants.” I think macrobiotics is something like 50-60% brown rice, 20% vegetables, 10% beans, 10% soup (like miso soup with tofu), and I’m not getting this right because you could eat 3% off-plan. So, about every 1-2 weeks you could eat one meal of whatever.

However, when I first started I was a full-time graduate student with a toddler (who was a boy, and therefore crazy) and a newborn and my husband was a new attorney who worked all the time. I would make a full rice cooker’s worth of organic short-grain brown rice (1 1/2 cups dry, which is 2 Japanese cups) (I love anything with a timer) and throw a banana on top and eat that on my commute, and then the rest of the day eat the rest of the now-lukewarm, plain, brown rice. Actually sometimes I’d bring some soy sauce. At the end of the day I would be about to eat my arm off and would go home and eat an insane amount of oatmeal waffles (equal parts oatmeal, water, and bananas, like 2 cups of each oatmeal and water and 2 bananas) with maple syrup. Good thing I actually eat vegetables now!
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Re: No topic.

Postby Trinity » Tue Feb 01, 2022 6:02 pm

The real reason I got into all this in the first place, is that after my son was born, I nursed him and the extra weight just went away. I was 25 when he was born but I still thought that vegan “bologna” and “cheese” on a white bagel was a good meal. When my first daughter was born 3 years later, I thought this would happen again, no worries! I even treated myself to a slice of cheese here and there since it was summer and I was on vacation with my in-laws in Maine (my mother-in-law expressed her shock about this, as my husband refers to the time before I got pregnant as my “militant vegan” phase). Ruh-roh Relroy, I GAINED weight! Being a scholar by nature, the question was: To be thin, must I suffer hunger? If I eat enough to not be hungry, will I be resigned to fighting my weight the rest of my life? The answer (as we all know): no! Eat starch. Yay and thank you Dr. McDougall!
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Re: No topic.

Postby Trinity » Wed Feb 02, 2022 11:45 am

Ugh, now I have a sore throat. Starting to get this cold (or whatever) must be contributing to my lessened appetite. The scale has gone down 4 pounds since Monday (exactly 2 pounds per day) which I know is not real fat loss but it’s nice to see a lower number. Hopefully just a little of it is fat! I seriously have not been this (high) weight since I was on a steady decline after my 2nd daughter was born. And actually, back to losing pregnancy weight, the McDougall diet absolutely worked when I kicked it into gear. I just fixed the food and gradually, over months and months, I lost the 20 pounds of extra fat I’d put on during that pregnancy. I didn’t get properly started until after Easter, and my daughter has a January birthday, so it wasn’t anything else like eliminating excess blood/fluids from when the baby was in there (sorry, that’s kind of gross). I also exclusively nursed her so I know that helped.

Speaking of whom, she surprisingly fell asleep during our 11 am grocery pickup today so I am sitting with her in the car. It looks like our neighbor 2 doors down is getting their heater replaced—yikes. Anyways, she hasn’t been eating much either. When my 12-year-old son had Covid last September he lost his appetite after a few days and ended up losing 12 pounds overall. Ironically, the day of his 12-year-old checkup, we tried to get him the first dose of the vaccine, but his appt. ran so late that he couldn’t get it that day. He came home and that evening started having symptoms. He’s gotten both doses now though. My 9-year-old daughter gets her 2nd dose this Friday and she is totally dreading it. I feel bad for her because she probably will be miserable. But she’ll get through it with plenty of Tylenol and movies.
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Re: No topic.

Postby Trinity » Wed Feb 02, 2022 11:48 am

You know, something odd happens every time I submit a reply: I get logged off the site and when I try to log back on, it says I’ve exceeded my number of attempts. But if I just put the website back into the address bar thing, I’ll be back on the site and already logged in. Odd but glad it’s easy to bypass.
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Re: No topic.

Postby Trinity » Thu Feb 03, 2022 1:55 pm

Today I am officially hungry. Yesterday afternoon I realized I didn’t feel like doing anything because I didn’t have the energy and it was time to eat food again as normal. I’ve been sticking to potatoes, green beans with balsamic vinegar, and last night I had some tomato soup.

I read a decent book recently, Station Eleven. It was written pre-pandemic but is about a pandemic: a flu pandemic where almost everyone dies. I think one of the more interesting parts is about a bunch of passengers who in the midst of the pandemic hitting Toronto have their planes rerouted to an airport in Michigan. No one on any of the flights has been infected, so they’re just all hanging out in the airport watching the news. Over the next couple of days/weeks the cell service stops, the electricity goes out, and then over the course of the book it’s 20 years later and they’re still living in the airport, hunting in the nearby forests and growing crops. That’s only part of the story and I’m not telling it well but it’s a good read. There’s this initial feeling of, “Well, someone will eventually come rescue us,” but they realize they’re all dead from the flu. Pretty wild.
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Re: No topic.

Postby Lyndzie » Thu Feb 03, 2022 6:48 pm

Hi Trinity.

It’s nice to stumble across your new journal. I’m in a similar boat as you: coming up on my ten year anniversary this summer, gained a bit of weight this past year (a solid 20 lbs, yikes), and have similarly aged kids. I hope you get to feeling better soon, and best wishes on the slow and steady shedding of those pounds.

Lindsey
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Re: No topic.

Postby Trinity » Thu Feb 03, 2022 9:11 pm

Thanks Lindsey! Remember when there was pretty much always some interesting new post to read on these forums? I randomly remembered SudsyMaggie and searched for her username, and found her journal but only everyone’s replies to her posts were there and none of the original posts! Then I remembered that guy pinkrose and he says he only posts on Facebook now and I just quit Facebook for the 2nd and final time. Good thing for you and bunsofaluminum and some other familiar names. Kirstykay was back briefly I think. And one of the Star McDougallers though she said she was wanting to put some weight back on.

Speaking of which, maybe I’m just too much of an American female but can you ever be too thin as long as you’re still getting a period (sorry for TMI)? When I get to a nice low weight I tend to want to celebrate and hence the 5 lbs. or so back and forth, haha. But I guess everyone has their reasons.
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