I need help! This just isn't doing anything and I'm stuck for ideas. page 8

[Moey4164]

The easiest way to cook veggies is to put a layer of asparagus, butternut squash, zucchini, whatever you like, on a cookie sheet. I use a stone baking sheet and melt a spoon full of coconut oil and drizzle that on veggies and add some garlic, and sea salt and bake at 400 for 15 to 30 minutes, delicious!! Also wrap chicken or pork tenderloin with uncured bacon and cook in oven at 400 for 25 minutes

[Eve2206]

My metabolism is definitely deranged! Yo yo dieting does that I believe. But I've never (truly) been a big eater. It's the sweet stuff that gets me, every time, on top of my normal meals. But the last five years I've been suffering all sorts of ailments, maybe due to getting older but after what I've read now I believe many are due to poor diet - too much reliance on bread and wheat products. I didn't realise the stuff was so dodgy. My tummy gets all sorts of pains for no reason, plus the gall bladder history, lethargy, depression, insomnia, joint aches etc. I'm not that old! I used to be so fit and energetic as well.

Anyway, my daughter is pregnant with her first child and I want to be around to enjoy this. So my journey is mostly about better health. I know the weight will take care of itself ultimately if I make these changes.

I will see how I get on for a month or so, then tweak the intake in terms of fat/protein and so on if needs be. I am going to order Mark's book today too so I can re-read whenever I need to.

Off to the shop now to buy some food.

Thanks for sharing your own stories and experiences with me as these are really helpful. Especially the parts where you tell me not to expect instant results (weight wise anyway) - no scales for me just for a while.

[marcadav]

I am trying to be healthier. I've done a ton of reading this weekend and I've realised that many of the 'ailments' I have (which are relatively minor compared with some) appear to be diet related. I have been eating crap for so long and have been 'conditioned' to try diets, as though weight gain and ill health was all my fault. Today, finally, the penny has dropped. It's not me, it the food I eat.

It's like a light bulb moment. I feel so happy like I've been set free. I'm going to have at least a month of not counting anything, just eating really clean, unprocessed, fresh foods. No junk, no grains. taking the advice here about big fresh salads, olive oil, fish, eggs etc. I'm looking forward to the journey. And I will be ordering the PB book - not just for me but for my family too. I don't want my daughter, and her daughter etc to get caught in this same trap and mind conditioning I've been stuck in for years.

And yes, I will learn to cook and pick up some recipes from here. How hard can it be???

When I started this journey, after suffering from undermedicated thyroid disease and other issues for almost 10 years, I gave myself permission to stay obese IF I got and stayed healthy. Healthy was defined, for me, as having optimal health marker numbers, making healthy food choices daily and exercising about 5x week.

A perk of focusing on getting/being healthy was that I lost about 50 lbs. Those pounds are still gone 3+years later.

More importantly, I'm healthy-- to the point where I have to fight my doctor to get some health screenings run each year.

[oxide]

Thank you for the story, costahobo! There are people who can eat a lot and stay skinny, there are those who eat very little and stay fat. I wonder what's in the McD's in Costa Rica. Is it the corn oil GMO? Corn-fed CAFO beef? What about HFCS? Soybean oil? Is the wheat dwarf hybrid or the older wheat? 10 years is quick. Did Costa Ricans suddenly stop exercising? Nobody has it all figured out yet so we need all the data we can get.

[costahobo]

Thank you for the story, costahobo! There are people who can eat a lot and stay skinny, there are those who eat very little and stay fat. I wonder what's in the McD's in Costa Rica. Is it the corn oil GMO? Corn-fed CAFO beef? What about HFCS? Soybean oil? Is the wheat dwarf hybrid or the older wheat? 10 years is quick. Did Costa Ricans suddenly stop exercising? Nobody has it all figured out yet so we need all the data we can get.

Costa Ricans did used to walk everywhere; but the banks now offer financing much easier to buy a car; so many more people are driving. Also, just about every American fast food restaurant is here. When my wife was in college, they had no American fast food options. Zero. If she wanted something "fast food", it was still typical Costa Rican food (pretty much the same as mexican food) that she could buy on the go. Empanadas, burritos, "tacos", or a dish of meat/fish/chicken, rice, beans, salad.

I have no clue what is in the food here, as we don't have the labeling requirements that American food has. Many foods don't even have nutrition/calorie labels on them. All of our cows are grass-fed, free-range. GMO seed was banned; Monsanto tried to get in, but the government denied them. This issue is currently being re-decided by lawmakers, so we'll see. HFCS is not used in our sodas (we use real cane sugar), but it is in a lot of our processed food. Wheat isn't grown much here, so it's imported. Our main crops are tropical fruits and coffee

[noodletoy]

Very well, if June walked everywhere on speed and Ward was the lazy one with the car and office job, then why wasn't Ward fat? And come on, we've all seen the trend.

ward probably smoked.

in no way am i suggesting that americans are anything but terribly fat and horribly sick.

was being more than a little flip, but as costahobo points out, it's not just one boogey-monster, but the incremental changes really add up and can do so in the blink of an eye.

when ward and june took the boys to mickey d's, their options were the equivalent of today's small fry, small burger and a much smaller soda than what is today's small. the fries were cooked in animal fat. the beef was not as hard-core cafo as what we have now. the condiments weren't made with hfcs. nor were the drinks and buns. they went as a treat, not for dinner a few times per month, or even per week.

wally and the beav played outside after school, until dinner. they weren't snacking on nutri-grain bars and fruit roll-ups, because it would spoil their appetite. they ate 3 square meals.

the family watched some tv after dinner, but weren't snacking on the couch an hour after finishing the dishes and went to bed at a reasonable time, without electronics humming and buzzing just inches from their beds.

i am a child of the 70s and my upbringing was just like this.

whenever i use my mother's china, i marvel at how much smaller the plates are compared to my everyday dishes. we ate home-cooked meals on her plates most nights, i was never hungry and both she and i were pencil thin.

[sbhikes]

too much reliance on bread and wheat products. I didn't realise the stuff was so dodgy. My tummy gets all sorts of pains for no reason, plus the gall bladder history, lethargy, depression, insomnia, joint aches etc. I'm not that old!

This sounds like auto-immune stuff happening most likely from the wheat. If not full-blown auto-immune or celiac, then it's general inflammation which also can happen because of sensitivity to wheat and also from vegetable oils (high in Omega 6). Especially that joint aches part.

[costahobo]

I was born in 78, so I consider myself a child of the 80s. I was incredibly lanky, no fat on me at all. I was your typical nerd, not too much athletic ability, and I was just a bag of bones covered with skin. I suppose my parents were classified as lower middle class. We ate a lot of pasta, rice and beans, macaroni and cheese, chili, beef stew, soup, hamburger helper, etc. I never had my 1st steak or lobster until I was in my 20s.

We had 1 Pizza Hut in the small country town I grew up in, and that was the only national fast food joint in town. We got to eat there once a year for our birthday, so since my parents had 3 kids, we got to eat pizza 3 times a year. There was no mcdonalds. There were some small diners and fried chicken places, but my parents didn't have money for that.

We lived on carbs. Sugary cereal for breakfast, bologna (no cheese!) sandwiches for lunch, and maybe some spaghetti made with 75/25 ground beef. My entire family were literally knees and elbows.

So what happened? I just can't believe that grains/carbs are the enemy, because if I didn't eat them growing up, I would've starved. I would say that even a can of Spaghetti O's would have been luxury for us - spending $1 for meal per person would've been too much money - it was much cheaper to make a huge pot of spaghetti or chili.

I never even had my 1st tv dinner until I went to college at 18. I've gone around in circles and circles trying to figure this out - and my logic keeps taking me back to past experiences and my childhood. We ate what we could, and we were as thin as can be. I think the one thing that has always been constant is the amount of food. We never had bags of chips or cookies in the house; those were luxuries we got to have.

One of my favorite childhood memories is my dad waking me up at 5am every Saturday morning to go to garage sales with him and my grandpa, and we'd stop at the donut shop. I'd get to get 2-3 donuts and a cold chocolate milk. My grandpa would always get a bag of 6 donut holes and a coffee. That was usually my one treat of the week, and I greatly cherished it.

I guess the point to my long post is that I really think it all boils down to the amount of food that we ate. I never went hungry as a child, and I was very skinny. Even as an adult, when I abstain from processed foods and eat whole (mostly unprocessed) foods, I also never go hungry and get to eat as much as I want - and I lose weight like crazy.

[Eve2206]

This sounds like auto-immune stuff happening most likely from the wheat. If not full-blown auto-immune or celiac, then it's general inflammation which also can happen because of sensitivity to wheat and also from vegetable oils (high in Omega 6). Especially that joint aches part.

I agree, after what I've read this weekend. But the only way I can find out is to cut out the grains, sugar, processed food and see whether I get any changes. I suspect things will improve. We'll see. I'd be surprised if they didn't

Interesting to read the threads on how people lived and ate when growing up. I was the same - three meals a day, no snacks, always out playing. It's a shame that recently healthier (??) countries are now heading the same way as USA/UK/Europe.

There is a post on the forums about NYC mayor's plans to legislate against large size drinks and so on which I thought was interesting - but our governments still push the same food pyramid. I doubt anyone could make people go back to some of the old ways now. I guess it's up to individual parents. But I sometimes think we are reaching a 'peak' with poor lifestyles and that, over the next 5 years or so, there will be a big push for change. But hey, that's a whole new post/topic I guess.