After my impromptu appendectomy in December followed by travelling to visit family and friends, I checked-in with myself and my health and I decided that The Vegan Experiment has not been working for me.

Health-wise, I had not gotten that boost of energy that everyone writes about with all plant diets and as a sufferer of fatigue from the double-dose of autoimmune illnesses, I was really hoping for that.  In fact, I was finding myself dragging more and more.  I actually was beating myself up every weekend because I wasn’t getting anything done except sleeping all day.

My skin was actually rather itchy though it didn’t seem dry and my scalp was growing increasingly itchy as it usually does during the Winter months, despite the expensive all-natural organic restoritive shampoo and conditioner for sensitive scalps with fine hair.  In fact, my hair was getting thinner and rather lack-lustery.  I just couldn’t do anything with it.  My nails, which got new life after my 2 years with braces in high school, have always been long, relatively hard, and appeared as though they had a French Manicure all of my adult life; however in the last few months of 2009, they had become fragile, weak and brittle.  They tore, broke, bent, and dented at the mere touch of anything — open the car door and I’d lose a nail; grab my keys and I’d lose a nail; brush my teeth and I’d lose a nail; file one nail and I’d lose another nail.

Then of course, I felt like shit for the last few months of the year as well.  I really had thought that I would have the same reaction I’d had when I’d given up beef and poultry a few years ago when I gave up dairy, eggs and fish.  I honestly thought I’d immediately feel as if a layer of fog had been lifted from me and weights had been pulled away from me.  I dreamed of feeling immediately better.  Yet, I didn’t.

Not to mention that I realized how hard it is to eat that strictly, especially when you are recovering from surgery and there are very few things you can or want to eat — or when the hospital doesn’t ask you and they serve you scrambled eggs and oatmeal with milk in it, neither of which I care for even when not eating the vegan way.  Bleh.  Plus, I walked all over Terminal B in the Atlanta airport and there is only one place that sells one vegan sandwich and both coming and going, they were sold out.  Considering how paranoid the TSA is these days, I don’t know how vegans can travel anywhere and not starve.

I felt badly for my family and family friends throughout my holiday vacation because I seemed like a burden with my nutrition restrictions.  My mother and her friend really wanted to accommodate, but that meant that two Christmas Eve dinners and two Christmas day dinners had to be made and when I say “dinner”, I mean “feast” for both occasions.  I wonder how real strict vegetarians handle such situations.  In the past, being only a pescetarian, I stick to non-meat parts of the meal as long as it has not been prepared with the meat or meat fat in those scenarios — for example, last year at my aunt’s house, she served spaghetti and meatballs; the meatballs were cooked separately so I had my spaghetti and red sauce and everyone added their meatballs to their dishes.

I believe that because of my gastroparesis, I wasn’t getting all of the vitamins and minerals I should have been, even with my multi-vitamin and other supplements.  It’s possible that some medical disorders make it harder to eat the vegan way, just as some medical disorders don’t mix well with meat and potato diets.

I found that I really missed butter and cheese.  I am not a big eater of eggs unless they are baked or cooked into things and, well, I admit that it is definitely more convenient to buy bread, pasta, and other things with eggs (and dairy) in them.  Plus, I like having butter on my bagel occasionally and on my rice always.  And you can never have too much cheese.  Never.  Melted all over something or sliced on a cracker.  Cheese is proof God wants us to be happy.  Now, raw milk doesn’t agree with me so I didn’t miss it all that much since I already drink soy milk but I’m glad to be able to have more choices when buying yogurt again.  I like making my own soy yogurt, but sometimes it’s fun to try some of the exotic flavors you see in Whole Foods and I’m sorry to say that the soy yogurt flavors are pretty limited.

Shortly after January 1rst, after returning home and returning to work, I returned to eating the pescetarian way.  It’s too soon to tell if there’s been any great improvement — but I didn’t spend all of last weekend in bed and that’s a start.  And I must say, gooey cheese on pizza is just dreamy, better than I remember, better than that soy stuff any day.

The following post may have moments of too much information, but I swear there won’t be any dirty underwear.

Tuesday before last, I had a cable repair person scheduled to arrive during the specific hours of sometime between 9am and 5pm EST; so I arranged with my manager to “Work At Home”, which is an almost impossible status of being to gain permission to be. For example, my Director believes that you cannot Work At Home for personal reasons such as home repair, sick children, sick self, snow storms or broken automobiles; however, if you have a provable reason to need to do your real work at home, such as you can only get it done due to too many distractions, if you work from home for one day, you can apply for a Work At Home day. My Manager convinced my Director that I needed to work on some documentation from home coincidentally the same day the cable person was coming to my home.

Now, I happened to notice there was a giant snow storm coming to Maine scheduled for that Wednesday, so I called my Manager and suggested that an extra Work At Home day would be needed for this documentation. It worked. I woke up on Wednesday morning with a small stomachache, nothing unusual for someone who is used to being in pain. In fact, I now believe that the two types of people most in danger of unexpected illness are those that feel no pain and those that suffer chronically from it. The pain in my stomach grew such that by lunch time, I no longer could work or do anything except think about the pain; it was sharp, cutting and spread through my abdomen top to bottom and cut to my back, as my stomachaches always do. I began to assume this stomachache similar to two previous ones that took me to the E.D. — once in New Orleans when after spending a whole night of unbearable pain and not being able to find a comfortable position to sit, lay, or stand, I stumbled down the street and up the ramp to East Jefferson General Hospital, and then once here in Maine, when I collapsed at work from the blinding, shooting pains. Both times, tests revealed nothing definitive and I was sent home with painkillers and continued discomfort.

So, since I was watching the first big snow storm outside my picture window and I was sure I knew that going to the ED was a waste of time — that is if I could manage driving myself into Portland to go to the ED, which would have been 40 min on a day without a snow storm — I decided I could tough it out. Of course, part of my problem was that though my GP had given me a prescription for Oxycodone for my migraines just the week before, I had not had time to get it filled because I am a workoholic. Plus, by the time I thought about going to get it filled, the storm was in full force and so even though the pharmacy was just 5 minutes away, it was not open. Following my mother’s advice, I doped myself up on muscle relaxants and went to bed, trying to sleep. Eventually I found a position that didn’t hurt as bad as any of the other 100 other positions though it was completely awkward.

The next morning, the pain was not as bad but still awful, so I called in sick. I also ignored my mother’s and my Manager’s advice to call the doctor, because the doctor was in Portland and in my mind, if I was too sick to drive to work in Portland, I was too sick to drive to the doctor in Portland. By Thursday evening the pain was less. Not better. Just less. I was planning to go to work the next day and I was planning ahead. I needed to spend the weekend cleaning house — I had a house appraiser coming the following Thursday (hoping to refinance based on home improvement home value increase) and I was going out of town a week from Sunday and my house had gotten into that condition where you think you’d be embarrassed if your mother came by, let alone a stranger.

Friday morning, my furnace seemed to have had a thermostat issue overnight and I had no hot water — note, this is part of the “always leave home wearing clean underwear rule” nightmare I’ll be coming to. Because of this, I couldn’t wash my hair or shave my legs; thus, I put on a cute “newsboy” hat to wear to work. My mother called as I slowly got ready and again, my mother told me to call the doctor since I was still experiencing pain, though it was now only 20% of what it once was.

I was getting things done at work, feeling accomplished, and placed a call to the doctor’s office while I had a minute. They felt I should come in just to have a look-see. I thought it was going to be no big deal, so I mentioned it to my Manager and zipped down the street. The next thing I knew I was being told that I needed to have CT Scans and stat labs and go to the ED. They couldn’t tell if it was my always-in-danger kidneys or my appendix. I was a little freaked but for the most part, all I could think about was how boring it was going to be sitting in the ED for hours, so I stopped back at the office to borrow the Duty Officer laptop — workohlic, anyone?

I was actually feeling better, almost fine, except extremely thirsty. I was working wirelessly, watching CNN report the latest about Tiger Woods every 20 minutes, between blood- letting and CT scans and the next thing I know, it’s my worst nightmare. Dirty hair, unshaved legs, house so messy I wouldn’t want the cats to see it, and suddendly I need surgery and need to ask neighbors to feed & walk the dog, & God, I am so embarrassed. Plus, the house was not going to be cleaned before appraisal or trip to New Mexico, which surprisingly I can still take. This is why you should not put off what you can do today.

After the emergency appendectomy, because I didn’t have anyone to come to the hospital to get me, I didn’t have after surgery meds so I could drive myself home.  I actually stopped at the grocery store too.  I was in massive pain.  I barely managed to put everything away and take care of the cats and my Pug baby, and change into PJs and take pain meds and call everyone I was supposed to before I passed out in bed.

Sunday night I woke up to discover the furnace was still not working. Had to call for emergency maintenance I could have done myself if I could move and bend and lift. And while that was happening, a second snow storm was occurring.

I’ve spent the last few days sleeping with no appetite and lots of nausea, but I’m always thirsty.  Every time I  eat anything more than a popsicle or a cracker, I have extreme nausea or worse.  I’ve got lots of migraine to share and I can’t decide if I’m hot or cold but I do not have a fever.  Plus, I’ve had some really weird dreams — like going to Martha Stewart’s house which is like Toyland or having to abandon the planet due to environmental crisis but the Republicans are dragging their feet on something yet blaming the Democrats for stalling on something specific  or invasion by some sort of Klingon-Decepticon hybrid invasion where the guy from Law & Order who used to be on KVille also plays a cop in the new Star Trek movie and there is a reference to Law & Order.  I also dreamt I went back to college and roomed with this girl I was best friends with then, but who I had a falling out with since — this is a reoccurring dream where the roommate changes.

I’ve had to cancel my hair appointment, reschedule the home appraisal, and Loki can’t come with me to New Mexico now because I can’t carry him — he’s off to boarding at doggy daycare.   Actually, I can’t take my laptop, semi-professional camera, or much of anything on my trip.  I haven’t finished knitting my mother’s present.  Or shopping.  I’ve been trying to backup my laptop for 8 days, but haven’t been awake enough to do things correctly; so I can’t upgrade to Windows 7.  I wanted to work from home this week and amazingly the Director finally agreed but I haven’t been able to stay awake or focus.

It’s a typical J. Lynne holiday season.  Historically, December, especially right around December 12th, is really not good for me.  Seemingly catastrophic things seem to occur around that date.

So, it turns out that Maine doesn’t get much sun.  Or, rather, it doesn’t get as much sunlight as other states, like those that aren’t in the most upper northeast corner of the U.S.  (Did you know that about 5 years ago, there was talk of moving Maine into the Atlantic Time Zone so Maine’s days wouldn’t have to be so short — and there’d be more sunlight at night to ski?) I knew I’d been suffering from Seasonal Affective Disorder since I moved here in 2004, which basically means that once we get to the Winter switch of Daylight Savings, my body automatically starts shutting down at 4pm every day.  I can physically feel the sunset like a heavy blanket covering me, weighing all of my muscles down; I don’t even have to be near a clock or a window to know it’s happened either.  I just feel it’s happened.  By 6pm, I want to be in my PJs, and I just don’t know what to do with myself because technically it’s too early to go to bed.

Interestingly, it turns out that Maine’s short days have had another affect on me as well — or rather, they have likely helped along my poor health by denying me that vitamin-D everyone always talks about.  Supposedly, we should be able to get enough vitamin-D naturally without having to ingest it from dairy and food products that have had it added, like store-bought orange juice or cow milk.  Theoretically, just walking around, living our lives, we should get enough vitamin-D from the sun to be healthy.

That’s not true for everyone, I guess.  It probably doesn’t help that I spend 8+ hours 5 days a week sitting in a building with few windows sitting in a chair typing on a computer during the usual daylight hours and then on the weekend, I’m not really an “outdoorsy” kind of gal, though I want to embrace my inner-gardener and house-maintenance home-owner.  The normal levels for vitamin-D labs are 30 – 100 ng/ml; my result was 16 ng/ml — it’s been suggested that any  results below 20 ng/ml are considered serious deficiency states and increase your risk of breast and prostrate cancer and autoimmune diseases.

Hmmmm…there might be something there. After doing some research, I discovered some studies indicate that sufferers of chronic musculoskeletal pain may be suffering from symptomatic vitamin-D deficiency.

Dr. Michael Turner from the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, indicated in a news release last March that this is especially likely in many patients labeled with fibromyalgia when certain risk factors are present, such as obesity, darker pigmented skin, or limited exposure to sunlight.  The news release was in connection to a study published in the journal Pain Medicine in November 2008 in which Dr. Turner was the lead investigator;  the study suggests a correlation between vitamin-D deficiency and the amount of narcotic medication taken by chronic pain patients.  Turner’s group discoered that vitamin-D deficient patients who required narcotic pain medication were taking much higher doses — nearly twice as much — as those with adequate levels of vitamin-D.  Plus, these patients also felt they had worse physical function and worse overall health.^*

Since I have such a low vitamin-D deficiency and such a high level of pain and no one will give me anything more than Tylenol, which doesn’t help, these studies do sound hopeful and promising.  My rheumotologist seems to think so anyway; I have a nifty new prescription for vitamin-D.  Yep, none of that random convenience store pharmacy vitamin-D for me.  He says you can’t trust what’s in those bottles; you can’t be sure the dosages are really what they say they are, especially if they aren’t made in the States.  So, I have a prescription for a daily dose of 2000mg of vitamin-D.

We’ll have to see if it helps.  At the very least, it should raise my vitamin-D levels.  I’m not so sure about how it’ll do with reducing the chronic pain – it turns out there haven’t been many successful studies where treatment of vitamin-D benefited chronic pain sufferers; the vitamin-D might just be a red herring.

Well, I have been doing my own version of an elimination diet rather than the McDougall elimination diet as planned.  I honestly cannot be sure if the cause was some sort of stomach virus, the caffeine withdrawal, my gastroparesis, or the swine flu — I’m only throwing that last one in there for my mother’s benefit.

Starting on Monday night, my stomach started feeling just a little off, but I didn’t think anything of it.  However, I had no appetite on Tuesday, which I attributed to the really bland elimination diet food — cream of rice with mashed bananas for breakfast and unseasoned vegetable soup for lunch.  I couldn’t finish lunch.  My stomach was doing this lurchy thing and hinting that if I kept trying to filling it with spoonfuls of broccoli, cauliflower, mushrooms, carrots, and green beans, then it was going to teach me some sort of lesson.  Throughout the rest of the day, every move I made, just upset my stomach, leading to increasing visits to the powder rooms.  I ended up staying home on Wednesday, where I attempted to lay as still as possible — and I don’t recall there being anything good on t.v. and eat nothing until late in the day when I attempted stale saltines and applesauce which were o..k…

I lost 5 pounds in 2 days.  Not the way I wanted to.  I continued on what I consider a “white” diet on Thursday with ginger ale, a plain bagel, a white potato, and white rice with some soy butter.  I still had what I assumed was the caffeine withdrawal headache on Thursday night.  My new gastroparesis medication, domperidone, which my mother picked up for me “across the border”, arrived while I was on “bed rest” so I took the first dose on Thursday too, hoping that it was going to have a positive impact after months of digestive deterioration.

This morning I didn’t have the caffeine headache when I woke and though I had some of the heartburn and some of the icky stomach feeling all day, while continuing my “white” diet, I feel slightly better.  Again, I can’t tell if it’s because it’s the 7th day after giving up caffeine — some websites say caffeine withdrawal can last up to 10 days, but it didn’t seem so bad the first few days — or a regular stomach bug — which should be going away on its own by now, right? — or my gastroparesis — which now has the domperidone fighting it.

Of course, now that I’m under 190 on the scale, I’m tempted to just get back on the Maximum Weight Loss Diet once I can start eating correctly again to see if I can lose weight now or if I’m going to gain back that weight and slip back into the same stuck place I was before.  I also have The McDougall Program 12 Days to Dynamic Health, which Dr. McDougall recommended to me as a push off point after the elimination diet.

I know I’m just trying not to think about that cream of rice and that vegetable soup.  You know how it is when you get sick after eating something, you just need a long vacation before you try it again.  Oy.

Well, I’m not going to think about it for another day or two.  It’s going to be “white” diet until then.

My low metabolism mixed with the gastroparesis continues to be a problem for my attempt at weight loss.  I have just been gaining and losing the same 3 pounds since I started Dr. McDougall’s Maximum Weight Loss Plan.  As excited as I was at the possibility that this plan might work for me, I am not surprised that it was thwarted just as every other attempt for the last 5 years.

I exchanged e-mails with Dr. McDougall, explaining my health condition — after all, the physicians I’ve been to see in person have had nothing  useful to advise other than eat less and exercise more.  Dr. McDougall suggested I might find some answers to my health issues through a rather drastic method called the elimination diet.  According to Dr. McDougall’s December 2002 newsletter, “this is the last step in searching out a dietary cause for health problems and is not recommended for the average person seeking relief from obesity, high cholesterol, and generalized fatigue.  The standard McDougall approach of a low-fat, vegan diet and exercise will solve the problems for most people.  And the Maximum Weight Loss Program that eliminates refined foods (including flour products) and sugars will help even the most calorie efficient person lose weight…The ‘elimination diet’ is truly for those people who are desperate and want to get well NOW – and who feel they have tried everything else.”

I guess I fall into the classification of desperate.

During the first week of an elimination diet, you eat only certain foods that are least likely to cause any type of adverse reaction.  (Some elimination diets require you to do this for two weeks.)  At the end of this “elimination period”, your body should be “clear” of the problem foods that you were eating before the diet.  In other words, you should be relieved of your problems, especially if they were allergic in nature.

During that “elimination period”, all foods should be thoroughly cooked, because cooking alters the proteins, making them less likely to cause an adverse response.

At the end of the “elimination period”, each week,  you will add one food, and only one food, back in to your diet to determine if it causes any unpleasant reaction.  For testing purposes, each “new” food should be eaten in large quantities 3 times a day for two days.  If the food does not cause a reaction, you can conclude that it is not a troublemaker.  Most reactions occur within a few hours, but some may not show up for several days.  When you have a reaction to a food, you must wait 7 days  before testing the next item.  This interval gives your system time to clear itself of the allergy-causing food.

Foods to Avoid: chocolate, nuts, caffeine, onions, green pepper, cucumbers, corn, radishes, all citrus fruits, strawberries, tomatoes, wheat

Starches to Eat: brown rice, sweet potatoes, winter squash, taro, tapioca, rice flour, puffed rice

Condiments: salt only

Beverages: water only

Note: fruits & vegetables must be cooked

In preparation for this diet, which I’m hoping to start tomorrow, I decided that I should give up caffeine first and then wait a few days to recover from the caffeine withdrawal before attempting anything else.  I remember the last time I tried to give up caffeine and it wasn’t pretty.  Within 36 hours, there was a migraine, my brains felt like they were oozing out of my ears, I was sick to my stomach, I could barely see to walk — I did not make it.  I gave in.

However, I’m proud to say that I am now on day 3 of no caffeine and so far it hasn’t been too bad.  Just a constant dull ache in my head and a pain in my neck.  This is tolerable.  I read somewhere that caffeine withdrawal can last up to 10 days.  I hope it doesn’t last that long, but I can survive this if it does.

So on to the rest of the elimination diet.  Adding stuff back in sounds agonizingly long so I better get to it.

I’m trying not to get too excited or jinx myself, but a preview step on the scale indicates that since last Wednesday, I am already down 2.8 pounds.  Since I have not engaged in that “diet” fad of drinking excesses of water and  I have not even changed what or how much I drink in a day, I know it can’t be that “water weight” that most people lose the first week.

Still, it’s not even a whole week and I’ve been through this whole “weight loss program” thing before.  I’m not going to get excited until I’ve lost at least 10 pounds and it doesn’t feel like a struggle to lose each ounce.

I will say that eating the McDougall way isn’t that difficult.  Except for once yesterday when I wasn’t feeling well and a Frosty commercial spoke to me personally, I haven’t felt as if I was missing anything.  Part of the key though is having food in the house that is already prepared.  I don’t know how I might feel about it if I hadn’t baked those 6 potatoes in the oven all at once so they could just be warmed up throughout the week or if I hadn’t prepared one cold bean dish and one hot bean dish and a salad that I could scoop servings out of to take to lunch or eat for dinner throughout the week.  I’m damned tired at the end of the day and too sleepy in the morning; if it’s not easy to grab, then I’m more likely to get take-out and let’s face it, it is not easy to find fat-free healthy vegan food within walking distance of anywhere on a 30 minute lunch break or on the Turnpike.

Cooking Spree

Back when I did Weight Watchers and lost all that weight, I was so successful because once a month or so, I would get together with a WW friend and we would cook 3 or 4 WW-friendly meals each; then we would portion them out into plastic containers and split them up.  That way, I would get half of what she made and she would get half of what I made and we’d each have a nice variety for the month.  Plus, we each got to try things we probably would never have tried otherwise.  My freezer would be stuffed with plastic containers that I could just grab and microwave.  All the work was done in one day and the rest was easy.

It’s a little harder to get motivated to do all that on my own and it’s not as fun when the only one you have to gossip with is your dog while you’re doing it.  However, it really is worth it if you are like me and subject to stopping at take-out if you are too tired to cook.

Val lifts 40 lb Pumpkin

Have you seen that new Jenny Craig commercial where Valerie Bertinelli compares her lost 40 pounds to a giant pumpkin? When she lifts it she really has to put her back into it and even kind of stumbles like she might drop it.  She says she can barely lift it.

Visually, that’s really quite inspiring.

Back in 2002 when I did Weight Watchers, every time we lost 5 pounds, I remember my WW Leader telling us to go to the grocery store and pick up a 5 pound bag of potatoes so we could realize just how much weight we’d gotten rid of.  She advise us to imagine us to multiply that bag by the multiples of 5 we had lost.  I never really did that and even though I lost 55 – 60 pounds over the year, I never put it into that kind of perspective.

However, last week when I saw this commercial I was really struck by the mass of the weight that came off her small frame.  The truth is that Val and I are about the same height and other than the fact that I’m slightly more curvier in spots, our frames are both naturally petite.  So, it was easy for me to imagine that all of my extra weight is a giant pumpkin, a 65+ pound giant pumpkin, and suddenly I understood why my back hurts when I do chores that require standing, in part why I’m so easily fatigued, why I’m out of breath walking up the parking garage ramp, why I feel like I’m waddling, in part why I’m tired all of the time…

Before 2002 I had no memory of being a thin adult and thus couldn’t even imagine myself as a thin person.  However, because I was 130 – 135 lbs for the first part of 2003, I have very vivid memories of seeing my thin reflection in the mirror and looking down at my wanna-be flat stomach and my tiny arms and legs.  I recall how it felt to wear size 8 – 10 clothes and how good I felt about myself.

The image of Valerie Bertinelli and that 40 lb pumpkin has stuck with me, inspired me, motivated me.  I finished reading The Mcdougall Program for Maximum Weight Loss and then I obsessed about putting together the perfect one week menu.  I sometimes get a little overwhelmed by the details and, thus, never get around to actually starting things.  But Val and her Great Pumpkin pushed me on and I actually made it to the grocery store last night.  I didn’t actually get anything cooked, however, because by the time I got home and got the refrigerator cleaned out then refilled, I was exhausted and in a load of pain — my feet still hurt this morning!  I did try to stick to most of the principles though today.  Lunch was mostly McDougall, but it was leftovers that needed to be eaten, and I’ve snacked on veggies.

So, I’m basically going to try to stick to the following for a bit and see if I lose weight and start to feel better — plus, it’s all vegan!

Breakfast: starch with fruit and optional soy or rice milk

Snack: rice cakes, corn thins, or veggie crudities with optional fat-free bean dip

Lunch: starch-based entrée with very-low-calorie salad

Snack: rice cakes, corn thins, or veggie crudities with optional fat-free bean dip

Dinner: starch-based entrée with veggies (preferably green and yellow)  with very-low-calorie salad

Snack: fruit

For the “maximum” weight loss period, there’s no oils, no high-fat plant foods like nuts, avocados, seeds, olives, coconut, or soybean products, and no flour products.  Salt, sugar, and fruit all have limitations.  But like the old WW Core program, there’s a big focus on eating until satisfied — according to McDougall, carbohydrates will not only quickly satisfy, but keep one feeling full much longer.

There seems to be some sort of potato cult on the McDougall forums…if you have trouble with hunger, the advice is to just fill up on potatoes.  Considering the fact that my mother tried to “rip me a new one” the other day because twice in a row she talked to me and I had just eaten oven French fries for dinner, I can imagine my mother would not be impressed with this diet; she certainly will not buy into the nutritional science behind it.

Carbohydrates are our primary source of energy. They alone provide energy for red blood cells, and certain cells of the kidneys, and the preferred fuel for the central nervous system, including the brain. Fat, on the other hand, is a secondary source of energy that can be used by some tissues, such as muscle, but is more often stored for use in times of famine.

Humans were designed by nature to crave carbohydrates – or, to put the matter in more practical terms, to crave sweet-tasting foods. Because of the sweet-tasting taste buds are on the tip of our tongues we are designed to seek starches, vegetables and fruits – which supply us with both energy and maximum nutrition. In fact, carbohydrates, with their unique combination of sweet-flavor, energy, and nutrition, regulate our hunger drive. Unless you eat enough carbohydrate foods, you will remain hungry and looking for food.

There are no carbohydrates in red meat, poultry, fish, shellfish, or eggs. Most dairy products are deficient in carbohydrates. Cheese, for example, contains only two percent carbohydrate. This is one important reason people who eat a diet rich in animal foods never satisfied and become compulsive overeaters. (Dr. McDougall’s Health and Medical Center, Plant Foods)

My mother’s reaction to the French fries was to tell me that they were just going to be converted to fat.  I tried to explain to her what I read in McDougall’s book that carbohydrates are energy and that it’s the oils and the fats that actually get stored as fat, but she didn’t want to hear it.  She just went on a rant about how she knew this vegan thing was a bad idea.  It was just like the last time when all I ate were potatoes and starches and no vegetables.  Now I tried to explain to her that I had been feeling bloated from the gastroparesis and thus I had broken down my meals so that I would eat my protein at one sitting, my veggies at another, and my starch at another, which I’ve explained before, but she didn’t want to hear it.  I think she just wants to be right even if that means I’ll end up sicker.

Anyway, since I had rice for lunch, I think I may try to make some sort of beans and potato dish for dinner.  I got the recipe from the potato cult.  If it’s any good, I’ll post it.

I began reading The Mcdougall Program for Maximum Weight Loss over the weekend.  I’m about two (2) chapters into it, which I realize isn’t far compared to those of you super readers who manage to read a book a day, tweet 100 things every two hours, talk to everyone on Facebook once a day, stay up-to-date on your e-mail, keep up with 20 blogs on your RSS reader, cook a family meal every night, which you photography and post about on your cooking blog before you either scrapbook, knit or do some other crafty thing I’m jealous of, which you will also blog about, and you will still have time to go to your full time job.  sigh!

I got almost to the end of the 2nd chapter and decided I had to reread what I’ve already read but with a highlighter.  So, really I’ve almost read four (4) chapters.  So there.

Anyway…I have found Dr. McDougall’s very straightforward, non-patronizing, non-guilt-mongering tone to be very refreshing.  First of all, his book doesn’t read like so many other weight loss books do — either overly perky or dramatically preachy.   In fact, he lets on straight away that the feelings of guilt and failure that most mainstream marketed diet programs lead to are not right and unnecessary.  Not only that, but the starvation method that generally leads to those feelings is absolutely wrong.

The notion that these two very basic instincts [-- the desire to look beautiful or the desire to eat -- ] are in opposition is not only wrong, but downright self-destructive.  It is this cultural delusion that promotes guilt and frustration, and…helps to keep people overweight. (The McDougall Program for Maximum Weight Loss, Chapter 1, p. 1)

If you feel hungry, your body is telling you something important.  Don’t ignore it.  I suppose it’s like what they say if you feel pain.  If you feel pain doing something, stop doing that something.  It’s your body’s alarm system letting you know that something is wrong that you should correct right away.  Like when the oil light comes on in your car, if you don’t do something immediately, long term damage can occur.

Your body will turn on you the longer you go without food or the longer you eat less than it needs to operate healthily.  This is because your body has a built in self-preservation mechanism and food deprivation is one of those things that triggers the shields to go up and all hands to be called on deck as they say.

The most familiar defense mechanism, the one we all have experienced on these strict calorie counting diets, is a lack of appetite once food is made available again or rather when any excuse is made available — office birthday cake, family 4th of July picnic, home alone and no one is looking?

Unfortunately, people who have been starving, whether they did it to themselves or otherwise, may also experience improved efficiency of their intestines.  What this means is that they become much better at absorbing nutrients so when they start eating again, the weight gain is much quicker than before.  This is probably why you feel like it takes two days to gain back what it took two months to take off.

Another survival mechanism is a lowered metabolic rate.  That’s right, all of those folks, who think they are going to quickly drop weight by skipping meals and starving themselves, are actually making it harder because once the body realizes it’s not getting enough to eat, it slows down the metabolism and starts conserving calories; thus, losing weight requires more and more effort and willpower.

Unfortunately, you aren’t just losing fat either.  When you diet, you lose muscle mass along with the fat, especially if you don’t exercise.  Then when you “give up” the starvation method and start to regain the weight, you regain fat, not muscle.  Muscle consumes more calories than fat tissue.  Even while a person is resting, healthy muscles burns calories while fat mostly just stores calories.  (Fat is a hoarder, y’all…no wonder I’m unable to embrace my inner neat freak…)  Therefore, when you replace muscle with fat, you are basically sabotaging your future attempts at losing weight, taking away the tissue that would help you lose weight just sitting there, making it more likely that you will continue the cycle.

And your body learns from experience just like you learn from experience.  You know how you’ve learned to put away a little extra money to pay for the extra heating oil in the Winter?  Well, your body learns from each time you diet how to be more efficient at using food.  Thus, the next time you diet, losing weight will be slower and harder.

By trying to lose weight via a starvation method such as calorie counting, you are surrendering to the mainstream marketing belief that your need for food is wrong, that nature designed you wrong, that your hunger drive must be changed or corrected.

So, can’t someone choose to be beautiful and choose to eat?

Three things are required to keep each of us alive:

• Without air a person can only survive for 3 minutes.
• Without water a person can only survive three days.
• Without food a person can only survive three weeks to three months.

Everything else is nonessential.  (No matter what the subliminal messages tell you.)

Have you ever heard of anyone who over-breathed?  What about someone who over-drank water?  You never hear of someone who limits herself to just eight glasses of water a day and if she’s still thirsty, “just goes to bed because she’s out of water for the day” — as my old WW leader might have said in the context.

The problem might be that the air isn’t pure enough or the water isn’t clean enough, but you can’t ever have too much air or drink too much water.  So if you trust your body to tell you how much air and how much water you need, why can’t your body be trusted to tell you how much food it needs as well?

Was the hunger drive designed incorrectly?  Do we really need to count every calorie?  Keep track of every morsel?

Perhaps the problem isn’t how much we eat but what we eat?

I think perhaps many of us just don’t know how to listen to our bodies.  Most of us have grown up always with processed food from grocery stores and fast food joints on every corner.  Our bodies never had a chance to learn anything else.  But like polluted air and unfiltered water, our bodies know poison is mucking up the machinery.  It doesn’t help that we’re on this starvation cycle while we’re pumping it full of chemicals and pesticides and synthetic and mutant  foods.

Several years ago, before my IgAN diagnosis, I unconsciously stopped eating pork and sausages, with a few exceptions.  Then I unconsciously started eating less and less beef.  Before I knew it I was technically a “flexitarian”, eating about 75% vegetarian meals.  It was not difficult for me to switch to a “pescetarian” when I received my diagnosis.  The truth is that my body had been speaking to me for years, telling me that meat made me feel icky.  You could visibly tell the difference the day after I ate meat just how bad I felt.

That’s why I am trying out this dietary vegan thing now.  I’m trying to listen to my body; I really feel that the more wholesome and natural my diet, the more healthy my body will be.  I also believe that after years of trying to lose weight through various calorie counting diets that left me hungry so much of the time, my metabolism is stalled.  There has to be a way to revive it through healthy eating  and exercise.

I’ve done some backsliding and in the tradition of the chicken and the egg, I don’t know whether the backsliding is the catalyst of my massive migraine and general feeling illish or if those led to a seeking of comfort foods which are the road to backsliding.

Cheese and shrimp are the hardest to give up, I think. Shrimp probably would not be so hard if I could find a Chinese restaurant that made tofu fried rice take out. Cheese however is like my kryptonite. Melted gooey cheese is the food of gods and goddesses and it is best served on calazones, pizzas, cheesy fries, grilled cheese sandwiches, baked potatoes, pasta, lasagna, etc… Mostly, it’s been the Italian foods with cheese that I’ve been craving of late.

It doesn’t help that I’ve figured out how to use my TomTom to tell me where the nearest Amatos is on my route home from anywhere. They have some sort of cheesy bread I can eat in the car while the eggplant parm tempts me the whole drive home.

I really need to try some of those recipes where tofu is used as a cheese substitute. It’s just so hard to cook when you feel so miserable.

Recently I discovered there’s a whole shade of green I can’t see.  I find that particularly odd since green has long been one of my favorite colors.  However, while my mother and I were hunting through fabric shops for exactly the right material recover my futon sofa with, I was growing quite annoyed by my mother’s consistant choices of beige or taupe when what I really wanted was something kiwi-colored or brighter to brighten up the living room, which is painted a shade of orange that changes from peach to cream of orange through out the day.

It was actually a re-occuring argument.  My parents kept insisting their car was green as well, but all I see when I look at it is taupe.

It suddenly occured to me that — o.k. maybe — two of them could be right and one of me could be wrong.  Maybe.  When questioned, it turned out that all of the greens involved were all in the same shade.

And to think, I might have gone the rest of my life without knowing I couldn’t see that shade of green had it not been for those series of small arguments so close together.  After all, how am I to know what I can’t see?  Or how am I to know if I feel something or don’t feel something everyone else does or doesn’t?

For example, over the last two years, I have come to discover a number of such things.  I have always had pain in my hand when holding a pen or pencil longer than 30 – 60 seconds which is why I constantly have to readjust the writing utensil — so I can ease the pain for a little bit; otherwise I would have agonizing shooting, cramping, stabbing pain in my fingers and hand as I wrote.  I did not know that this was unusual, that not everyone found writing to be awkward and uncomfortable until two years ago.  My father asked me why I never mentioned it before and I said, “Well, I didn’t know I was supposed to.”

You know, in school they told us to tell if a person is hurting you and I remember that I was shipped around from specialist to specialist about my headaches and no one knew what might be causing them — sinus or something else?  But fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue syndrome hadn’t been heard of back then and I’m sure my mother, the nurse, wouldn’t have believed me anyway — she once sent me to school with the Asian flu and the school had to call her to come get me and keep me home for a week.  I think children of nurses weren’t allowed to be sick.

I used to believe that sufferers of chronic pain were actually more resistant to pain than other people, but only in the last year or two have I learned that it’s the opposite that’s true — medically.  I still feel that we’re hardier mentally.  I know people who think sufferers of fibromyalgia and/or chronic fatigue syndrome are whiners, who just cry wolf for pitty and attention, and I know some people who fit into that stereotype.  However, I have found most of the copers, the ones who attempt to live day to day, go to work, have families, take care of their households, appear normal,  and do it while in constant pain are hardier mentally than most people attempting to live day to day.  The pain wears you down.

On one hand, I think my parents’ work ethic — go to work (or school) no matter how bad you feel — has been a benefit to me because I have managed to continue working despite the chronic pain and fatigue; I can push myself on because I was raised to do so.  On the other hand, I think it’s done me a disservice because I have failed many times to mention when I was feeling unwell or what was hurting or how it was hurting or where it was hurting.  Who knows what might have happened if I had mentioned the problems with my hands when I was young instead of waiting until I was in my late 30′s?