Cravings, and fears about off-ramping.

Part homework, part discussion with myself.  You're welcome.

Me vs. my cravings
 
What is a craving, anyway? I struggled with logging them in the beginning.

• Is it when I'm standing in Dunkin Donuts and think, man, a donut would be good?  (I did that this morning.  I don't even really like donuts -- I have a mental block on how much crap they are for like 3 bites of satisfaction, and it's been at least 18 months since I've eaten one.)  
• Is it when I'm sitting at my desk and think, hey I'd love a gluten-free pizza from Fireworks for lunch?  ...and immediately after think, oh, man, I can't have that, nevermind.  
• Or is it when post-Whole30 (the October-November edition) I decided I REALLY NEEDED SOME CHOCOLATE, tore my apartment apart looking for some (didn't find any) and ended up with a bar of 100% cacao baking chocolate (took one bite, spit it out, and gave up.)?

 I don't think that acknowledging something delicious and then letting it go qualifies, but at the same time, some of those are because of ingrained cues.  I want a pizza from Fireworks because I've eaten at Fireworks two or three times a week since I started my job a year ago.  I had my job interview there.  I want a donut because when I walk in to Dunkin' Donuts for a black iced coffee, everything about that place has been designed to make me purchase a donut.  Or a croissant.  With bacon.

But that last one?  The chocolate?  I really don't know. I don't remember it being a certain time of the month, I don't remember being really stressed - but I also didn't log these things then.  So coming off my Whole## (what day are we on again?  I had some yogurt during the on-ramp week so it's not a Whole56...), my job is to be more cognizant of my emotional state when I choose to eat an item off-plan.  Not cheat -- it's not cheating on my "diet".  It's a choice -- "riding my own bike" -- as part of a healthy lifestyle, not just a strict nutrition program, and if I'm going to make it, I'm going to enjoy it, not lace it with guilt.

By sheer force of no other option, I have changed my habits.  I reach for sparkling water instead of Diet Coke.  I have salad instead of pizza.  I know how good I can feel.  And I think that breeds will power -- I want to be healthier more than I want a cookie.  Yes, there is a certain amount of terror associated with coming off a strict program.

Me vs. metformin (and letting the old habits take over)

Anyway, this all leads me to my next point, which is the off-ramp.  When I off-ramped from my last Whole30 (before I went to Puerto Rico and just ate crap and $12 pina coladas all day long anyway), I got a full idea of how I respond to dairy, a decent idea of how I respond to gluten, and some meh reaction on non-gluten grains.  I didn't off-ramp with fruit because I felt it was a gateway drug - until suddenly I was eating fruit three times a day.

I don't want to turn this in to a whining session, but man, some other people who take on the Whole30....  If you were a relatively healthy person beforehand, you can just take your new feelings of awesomeness and energy and run with it and living your life, fully, flexibly.  As for me, I am staring at this awful choice that is slightly gut-wretching in nature.

I've talked before about my PCOS, and it's come up at our nutrition program meetings about how the first drug they put women who are trying to conceive on is Metformin.  Not to mention there is some evidence of insulin-resistant brain cells causing a predisposition to Alzheimer's.

My goal for this program was to get off Metformin, the diabolic and unkind blood sugar medication I have been on since my freshman year of college.  And I did it.  (yes, I am still taking a cinnamon/chromium supplement at night, but this seems to be the least of my worries)  Because of that, I probably feel a lot better eating completely clean than some of my fellow nutrition program-ites.  And I can probably stay off my blood sugar medication.  As long as I keep eating this way.

But how strict do I have to be?  I love fruit, but it might as well be the chocolate lava cake you save for special occasions to my body.  How flexible can I be before my body goes nuts and my blood sugar goes nuts?  Do I have to dose sometimes, like if I'm planning a big meal out?  I don't want  to be on medication that makes me feel like shit.  But how restrictive can I be with my diet for the rest of my life?  It's been said that this isn't the Whole365.  But where is the line in to what I can have, what sends my cravings nuts, what sends my body in to a spiral?

I don't want a grilled cheese (or a hard cider, or whatever) to be a gateway drug back in to a crashing world of pain, carbohydrate-induced sleep, obesity and a body that doesn't understand its own hormones and signals.  I am afraid of slipping out of my new habits and in to the old ones.  I'm frankly terrified of it.  But on the other hand, I also want bourbon when I visit my dad and the occasional spinach dip while laughing with friends. And that's incredibly frustrating.  And there is no easy answer.  Does everything have to be compliant for the rest of my life?  This isn't the WholeForever, either.

The short story is I need to maintain my new habits, and rewrite the old ones that are still skirting around the edges of this program.  I have to continue treating my body kindly, gently -- even when I don't want to, when I've had a bad night lifting and just want to demolish some pasta and wine.  And somewhere along the line, that habit has to become my reality, and I have to accept that the foods that made the old me happy don't make the new me healthy.

It's not really that simple...

Cool, so this is a blog post that circulates around "homework" as we pound down the home stretch in the CFSA Winter Nutrition Program.  The prompt is below, and I'm sure this is invariably snore-worthy to some people, but whatever.  It's important.  And I'm long winded and sarcastic, so take that in to account.

 

Prompt: Many of you are consuming a huge volume of food due on this program.  Inevitably, one of your friends will bring up how it’s not possible to eat so much and be healthy.  Perhaps the most common variation on this theme is the idea of “calories – in vs. calories – out” – that if you don’t burn more calories than you ingest you will put on weight.  Post a blog article (and link it on Facebook) answering why the idea of energy – in == energy – out is false. 

I've made the point several times that never, in my life, including no less than 14 years of struggling with my weight, have I eaten so much food, and so much FAT, and yet lost so much weight (40 pounds, since mid-October, thanks for asking).  In fact, the results of weight watchers PLUS Alli (don't take Alli, ever) would only net me maybe 2 pounds a week, and I was always tired, hungry, and pounding diet cokes.

I was talking to a coworker a few weeks ago about how I had hit a plateau with my weight loss (which I've since broken through) and one of the things she suggested doing was counting calories.  The fact that I'd probably rip my hair out if I had to go back to counting calories again aside, I've spent too long not counting calories and seeing good results to believe that it's as strict as calories in vs. calories out.  

So, the first thing you have to consider is that not all food has the same caloric density.  Yes, I am eating a lot of food, but if I was doing this 100% perfectly, 1/2+ of every plate would be vegetables.  My cup of raw kale, or even cooked spinach with olive oil, is not the same as my roommate's cup of pasta is not the same as your cup of cupcake.  No matter how many vegetables I eat, assuming they are clean "naked" veggies and not the kind I used to buy in "1 Weight Watchers Point" freezer packs that were smothered in cheese sauce, I will never eat my myself in to obesity, and neither will you.

But, I mean, you have the flip side.  I've been to Fogo de Chao three times in the last 60 or so days because my life is awesome and filled with people who enjoy meat.  My concern at an all-you-can-eat Brazilian steakhouse is not keeping my vegetables in proper proportion to my meat and fat intake, it is in thoroughly enjoying as much of a $50+ meal as possible.  But I can still only eat so much -- because meat satiates you.  Their meat also has a tendency to be fatty cuts, and fat satiates you as well.  How much meat and fat, no matter how delicious, can you chew through?  ...how many donuts could you eat in an entire sitting?

Ironically, I couldn't eat as much the second time (about halfway in to the program) I went as the first (when I had just come back from 4 days of gorging myself on Christmas Cookies in Pennsylvania and two weeks of less-strict eating); and I couldn't eat as much the third (two weeks ago and even further in to the program) as I did the second.  I'd like to purport that this is the result of increased sensitivity to leptin -- is it actually?  I have no idea.  I better go eat there again next week as another metric...

On his website, where I took the easy route and did the majority of my research, Gary Taubes also talks about the cause of obesity -- how experts say "well, people take more calories in than they put out".  Well no shit, right?  The question is why do they do that?  You don't look around and see a lot of fat wild animals - they seem to know better, almost naturally.  But you do see obese animals in domestic situations. 

"I obviously believe in calories as a measure of energy, whatever that means to believe in such a thing. (It’s like believing in miles as a measure of distance.) So that’s probably not what my friend meant. What I don’t believe in is that discussions of caloric consumption and expenditure tell us anything meaningful about why we get fat or why we lose fat, and I believe that the mantra that ‘a calorie is a calorie is a calorie” serves only to direct attention away from the meaningful characteristics of the macronutrients in our diets. " -source

So, calories aside, I can't believe that 1200 calories from cupcakes are the same as 1200 calories from kale.  Points being that I'm not even sure you could consume in one day 1200 calories from kale, but also that it's loaded with fiber and nutrients, and cupcakes are loaded with... sugar.   And if you are using your 1200 calories a day for cupcakes, unless you are in a controlled environment (the likes of which do not exist), you are not getting the nutrients you need -- which is going to drive you to overconsume on top of your cupcakes.

Let's talk about zoning for a second.  On a zone diet, you lock in specific ratios of macronutrients.  Yeah, some people zone things like beer, but chances are if you are even thinking about your macronutrient intake you are better off than the person plowing through pasta and cupcakes.  You are more likely to be satiated, to be able to control your hunger, to feel good, and yes, even to lose weight.  It may be calorie-restrictive by nature, but that's not where the focus is -- the focus is on specific amounts of macronutrients on your plate in a balanced fashion.

What I got from Taubes is, the discussion isn't as simple as "calories in vs. calories out".  I mean, maybe it could be if you took a metabollically perfect person (who has not, unlike millions of Americans, jacked up her diet with years of yo-yo dieting and weird exercise patterns and prescriptions and other drugs and bottles of wine and...) who also doesn't care about overall health.  And also doesn't care about their health for the rest of their life.  Maybe you could get that person to lose weight on a simple in vs. out diet.

But is that a healthy way to live, or a healthy and realistic way to treat a country where one out of every 3 adults (and 17% of children) are obese?  Are we expecting people, who probably have jacked with their bodies and digestive systems knowingly or unknowingly, to simply eat less and exercise more?  Do these people even have access to the "right" kind of food?  I'm a downright spoiled brat compared to some Americans, even on a non-profit employee's budget, eating my locally-delivered vegetables and swinging by Trader Joe's or Whole Foods several days during my lunch.

 

This is what I got out of this assignment: it's not calories in vs. calories out.  Like Whole9 would say, "context matters".  It's about health, about getting the energy you need today, but also ensuring your health 30 years down the road.  

I don't know.  It's a complex issue with even more complex public opinion - and it's a small pocket of people fighting experts and the entire general population.  It's me eating chicken and an avocado with a spoon while mentally plotting my 200# back squat, and my friend who thinks cardio and calorie restriction are the answer.  There will never be a large-scale experiment run on the American population that says, "hey eat this way not that way!", just like there will never be (as I've seen people suggest) government-distributed food - like, you get what you get and that's what everybody gets because the government has decided it is best for everybody (shudder) (go read "Matched" by Allie Condie if you want a vision of this) - but at least then we'd have a baseline.

This is more of a thought experiment than Taubes article, which wasn't the point.  Maybe I am missing the point after all.

2/25

Next Monday I will be in PA at the dentist, and it will be the last day of the 56-day CFSA nutrition program.  Holy crap.

Two notes for this morning (it's cold but lovely out).

1) I have a carbohydrate hangover.  I didn't know this could happen on paleo -- I eat a pretty low-carb version of this program because I've found it makes me feel best.  I ate an entire plate of squash last night at a dinner-party-type-event that I hosted for nutrition program friends, and then I had some more as a snack.  Slight headache today (could also be the weather... but realistically it's probably the carbs).  It's slowly going away but weird, huh?

2) I'm having a delicious iced coffee because I've reached that point in my life again where I need caffeine or I get a headache.  It's weird because it's not related to energy for me -- I will pop out of bed feeling good -- but if I don't have something by like 1 pm, I get a horrible headache.  I'll need to do another caffeine taper soon.

But my point with the coffee is marveling at how much my tastes have changed.  Yes, I was drinking black coffee with coconut cream before this and yes I still loved it.  But I put a little (compliant) pumpkin spice mix in this morning with a healthy dose of coconut milk and OMG this is delicious.  I never really liked the pumpkin spice compared to cinnamon (but I keep the cinnamon at home and the pumpkin spices in my desk), but now I can appreciate it.  It's more complex than cinnamon -- I can taste the different flavors.  It's got layers.  It's not sweet at all, but I can see how it's reminiscent of the flavoring used for holiday pies.  I feel like if I were to eat a pumpkin pie now, the sweetness of it would overwhelm these flavors.  It's great.

2/24

2/23

2/22

Butternut squash chorizo soup

Butternut squash chorizo soup
(Inspired by Kelli's butternut squash-sausage soup)

Ingredients (~6 large servings)
2 medium-large butternut squash
1 pound chorizo (I bought mine as sausages at Whole Foods and deconstructed)
A few slices of bacon
1 quart chicken stock
1 can coconut milk
A few tablespoons of minced onions -- I used the pre-chopped onions/shallots/garlic from TJ's
Dried chives
Parsley
Salt
Pepper

Roast the butternut squash.  I coat mine with olive oil and roast whole at 400 degrees for about half an hour, then cut off the ends and roast the part with no seeds until it's mushy.  Personal preference: to overcook the squash a bit, it's easier to puree and a bit sweeter that way.

While your squash is roasting, cook your sausage and bacon.  I prefer to cook the bacon and sausage separately then combine, removing the bacon fat in the process.  Remove to low heat (just enough to keep warm).

Saute the onion in a little bit of olive oil, then cover with half the stock and continue cooking at a medium-low heat.

After cutting away the section of the squash with the seeds, return the majority of the squash to the oven, and let the rest cool for a bit.  Then scoop out and toss the seeds, peel away the skin, and throw that squash in the pot with the simmering stock.

Add half of the chorizo-bacon to the pot, as well as half the can of coconut milk, and food process until smooth.  Return to low heat.

Finally, when the rest of the squash is done, peel and add immediately to the food processor with the rest of the coconut milk and the broth as needed to help it blend.  Add this pureed squash back to your main soup pot.  Add the rest of the chorizo bacon (this is a texture thing -- I like some finer bits and some chunkier bits, but you could either blend it all or not blend the meat at all).  If you think it needs to thin out a bit, add more broth.

Season to taste.  If you like things spicier, a little cayenne or tabasco would be great in this.  If you like it more savory, add more coconut milk and top with a little nutmeg and cinnamon.

If your life isn't strict paleo, serve with some sour cream or soft goat cheese on top.  If it is, served with fresh cracked pepper and sea salt.