clarifications and going forward

Well, thanks to Stephan Guyenet describing my experiences and linking to my posts on my experiment with a low-food-reward diet, my blog was read by a relatively vast number of people over the last week (about a quarter of the total views ever happened in that span) and while most left comments on his blog, not mine, there seems to be enough misunderstanding about a few things that I figured a summing-up post was in order.

Some commenters seemed to be concerned that I was sliding into some sort of orthorexia by doing this - that was definitely not the case! I'm not temperamentally suited to that sort of thing.  Because this was my first time doing something of this nature, I wanted to do it RIGHT.  My rigid adherence to the diet plan I'd devised was no more orthorexia than it would be obsessive-compulsive for, say, a novice knitter to adhere exactly to a pattern.  You just don't know enough about the process and how it works to diddle with it.  Now, I know what to expect, and my next foray into low-reward eating will be less extreme (and likely less documented).

Other posters missed the point and argued that I just lost weight due to calorie restriction.  Um, YES, I lost weight because of calorie-restriction.  But it was largely spontaneous calorie restriction.  I didn't WANT to eat any more. I could have maybe eaten more on some days, and I did feel hungry sometimes - but it was because I was choosing to and because I had better things to do than eat, and because I wanted to lose as much weight as possible in the span I spent doing it.  The point was, this wasn't hard like it was on prior low-cal stints consisting of lettuce and egg whites.  I was pretty comfortable doing it and overall it was a really non-stressful experience.

And no, calorie-restriction will not work long-term if prior eating habits are resumed.  Part of the low-reward eating is to retrain myself to eat fewer (ideally no) industrial and/or high-reward foods that trigger overeating.  The end goal of this is for me to get down to a healthy weight, to understand where my limits are in terms of foods I can eat without overeating, and to develop a readily-available toolkit of "fixits" for when things start spiraling out of control.  Because I've lost a substantial amount of weight and regained it several times since hitting adulthood - I know it happens.  It's foolish to think it's not going to happen again.  But I know the root cause - I get too relaxed and complacent, I think "oh, yeah, I don't have an eating problem anymore, I can just go out for burgers/make some ice cream/have some chips and I'll be fine tomorrow" and, well, three weeks later, I'm having waffles for breakfast, my jeans are too tight and I feel gross, and I put it down to that-time-of-the-month bloating and having the clothes dryer too hot.  Six weeks later, I'm not even wearing that pair jeans anymore and I'm soothing my wounded pride with a DQ Blizzard - while still firmly believing that it's not even food.  I acknowledge that I'm fallible, and that food and near-food especially is powerful.  But knowing that all I have to do is throw some stuff in the crock pot and just eat it - and nothing else for a while - to reset my susceptible little brain... well, that's useful,  I think.  One thing worth noting is that even after six weeks of it, I wouldn't consider the bland food a punishment.  It's not like I would look at a chocolate eclair and think "Don't do it, or it's the crockpot of bleh for you for a week".  I'm not the sort of person who is good at self-flagellation like that.  If it became a punishment, I probably wouldn't do it.  It's more of a respite - and it's one that I will probably eagerly welcome come January. 

And while this may land me firmly in the "dysfunctional" camp (and so be it) - I think I DO find the modern food environment stressful.  Enjoyable, yes - I mean, you only have to look back on the - what, 7 years? of posts on this blog to know that I'm passionate about food.  Food itself, food politics, food policy, nutrition - the whole bit.  It excites me.  I love cooking.  I love creating deliciousness.  I love planning food, I love eating it, I love talking about it - but I think it's ok to admit that it exhausts me sometimes, and it's even more ok to do something about that.  A break now and then is entirely healthy.  And anyone who suggests moderation - pbbbbbtttthhhhhhh - a big fat raspberry to you.  You just don't get it, do you? 

This experiment is not over.  It's not all about the weight loss - that's certainly a part of it, but it's more than that.  It's about acknowledging that my brain and body, without intervention, in a modern food environment, is not going to thrive - it's going to keep going back to a state of about 50 lbs over a healthy weight.  It's going to take a lot of effort for me to stay at a healthy weight, and I think the best way for me to do that is to figure out exactly how much food reward I can handle without tipping into consistent (and fairly rapid) weight gain.  So I'm going to alternate between low-reward months and "normal eating" months.  Seeing how my body reacts to the "normal" months will help me refine what "normal" should be, for me, and I will always have the "safety" of a low-reward period to recover from potential dietary messes.  Maybe I can handle bits of chocolate here and there.  Maybe some seaweed-rice crackers are ok.  Maybe ice cream once in a while is ok, or those really awesome Liberty flavoured greek yogurts.  And then again, maybe not.  If I mess up one month, I'll know better for the next phase.  And every time I finish a low-reward month (or two weeks, or whatever) I'll have another opportunity to PRACTICE eating right - for me.

I don't think it's possible to lose weight quickly, painlessly, or effortlessly for most people.  It's bloody hard work, and I'm not trying to sugar-coat anything here. I apologize to Dr. Guyenet if people found the first part of this experiment distasteful and are using that to try to argue against the whole food-reward theory of obesity.  I think my experience shows pretty clearly that dropping the reward factors from food down-regulates appetite and makes it easy to eat less.

Personally - and no bashing Dr.Guyenet for this! - I think that people who are dismissive of the idea that the brain's response to high-reward food is causative in obesity either have not ever had a problem with overeating and thus cannot understand it in those who have, or they are currently overweight, addicted to high-reward foods, and terrified of giving them up.  (There may also be a few folks on various paleo/low-carb bandwagons who for some reason don't want to have to change the rationale for why their ways of eating have worked to reduce their body fat and change their relationships with food.  Especially paleo, which has so much going for it in terms of overall nutrition...why wouldn't acknowledging that it's relatively low in food reward compared to most modern diets just add to the already numerous reasons to adopt it???  Is it because people try to sell it as "so tasty, you won't miss the industrial crap"?  That's crazy.  It's only a small tweak to say "After a short time you'll like it just as much, but it won't screw with your brain like the industrial crap.")

Week Six - wrapping it up for now

I'm ending this phase of the "food vacation" experiment now.  I know I said I would take it through to the solstice, but that looks logistically difficult and frankly unpleasant.  The past week has been really hard, psychologically and physically, and due to social commitments December generally was going to be a bit impossible in terms of avoiding yum.  I've also started missing the creative outlet in the past week or so and I want to get back into the cooking, and I'd like to be able to look forward to another food vacation fairly soon, so I'm going to stop now while it's still interesting.

The hard week started when I made my daughter's birthday cake - no, I don't force paleo/traditional eating on her, although she eats about 85% that way regardless. (Kiddo loves her fish heads...)  Anyway, she wanted a white cake with chocolate icing, and frankly the thought of buying one never even crossed my mind.  I went straight for the Cook's Illustrated website (a subscription I highly recommend on the one hand because it's full of recipes of awesomeness, but on the other hand helps people cook in such a way that their food is as chock-full of food reward as possible...).  Doing the cake wasn't bad but the icing just about did me in, what with the melted Callebaut chocolate and butter and all.  And the fact it kept getting on my fingers.  Nevertheless, I made it through without a single lick or taste.  The next day, with hot dogs, ramen and cake on the beach, I watched everyone else enjoy their crap while I ate lukewarm tasteless stew.  That wasn't so fun - not that I really wanted the crap, but I felt left out of the celebrations somehow.  

I think following a low food reward diet would be a lot easier if everyone else in your tribe did it too, and birthdays and other celebrations didn't happen while you were doing it.

But, regardless, I had six successful weeks of absolutely no tasty foods, I feel culinarily refreshed and rejuvenated, I've lost a little over 15 lbs and my palate has certainly adjusted.  Tonight, after my last meal of tasteless stew, I had a treat - some frozen cherries. After a few I realized they were too sweet.  I ate some more anyway and now I feel vaguely ill.  I am, however, very much looking forward to breakfast tomorrow morning, which will consist of an omelette with caramelized onions, goat cheese, and bacon, and COFFEE.  Oh, coffee, how I missed you.  (The truly pathetic thing is, I only drink decaf...)

So the next phase of this will be trying to eat normally, and see what happens to my weight.  I will be following my usual diet of paleo plus dairy, and I will be working especially hard at avoiding industrial foods - anything from a package, sugar, and refined stuff, including cornstarch etc.  (Grains are totally out, of course.)  Some of my social obligations include eating restaurant food, and there I won't be able to completely avoid industrial stuff like vegetable oils and sauces, but I'll do my best.

I mentioned that this week has been hard physically, and that's because I've started seeing a noticeable decline in my strength.  A few weeks ago I could back squat over 100 lbs for at least 10 reps, and a few days ago, I couldn't.  I felt energetic enough, the strength just wasn't there.  Interestingly, though, the day before that, I did the Mackenzie Bight trail and the usual slog up beside the waterfall was much easier than it's ever been in the past.  (And yeah, the thought occurs that my skippy-fast burn up a steep hill the day before might have something to do with a less-than-stellar lifting workout - but if so, it's still a recovery-time problem.) I'll be trying to put some muscle back on over the next month, so I'll be consciously eating more protein. While I dropped 15 lbs, probably 3-4 of those consisted of muscle, and I want that bit back.

In January, I'll do another 4 weeks of food vacation, and see how that goes.  In reality, I should have probably only done 4 weeks this time - in terms of  permanent weight-loss viability, cycling through low-food-reward phases and figuring-out-what-normal-eating-should-be phases makes more sense.  But I needed a longer break from the food, I think, so I'm pretty happy with how it's turned out, and I've learned quite a lot. 

Week 5 - realizations

This week has been mostly good - I had lots of energy when needed, but I was able to spend a day being totally mellow and not doing much when my kiddo was home sick from school.  She needed some mummy-on-the-couch-reading time and I had no problem doing that, so that was good.

I've had two big realizations this week.  The first is that hunger really isn't an emergency.  Years ago, I remember reading some mostly-silly article about the habits and attitudes of thin people.  The only one that stuck in my head was that "hunger is not an emergency".  And it's undeniably true - when I'm out running errands and I get hungry, nothing bad is going to happen if I wait another hour or so until I get home to eat rather than popping into Starbucks for a snack.  (I say Starbucks because they actually have decent snacks - fruit and cheese plates, veggies sticks and hummous, that sort of thing.  I don't even mean doughnuts, there's just no justification for those.)  Even if it's a good snack, at the end of the day, I just don't need it.  The problem is, under "normal" conditions, it's really, really hard to make a good case for this to a large part of my brain.  "Oh, but there's a Starbucks right there," says my brain.  "It would only take a second. Then you could get MORE done, right? And you wouldn't need as much lunch." (It's lying about the last bit, by the way.)

Now, though, it's really, really easy to not do it. Even though technically, I could eat the raw veggies from Starbucks, I don't even slightly want to actually do that.  Hunger really isn't an emergency any more.  My brain is happy to let me putter on, hungry-ish, until I get my stuff done.  And then I eat.  And I don't eat any more than if I'm only a tiny bit hungry (or not hungry.  But I don't eat when I'm not hungry any more.)  Yesterday morning I got up, had tea, took the kid to school and the husband to work, went to the gym and did a sprint workout on the rowing erg, then on my way home realized that while it was nice and sunny NOW there were some ominous clouds on the horizon.  Remembering the previous day's sunny morning and craptastic rest of the day, I figured the dog and I might be better off going for our walk kind of immediately.  So rather than have breakfast, I went for an hour-long walk.  And then I had a shower, because I didn't want my hair still wet when I went to work and if I waited any longer, it would be.  Oh, and then I had to get laundry in as well.  In the end, I had breakfast at 11:30 and thus didn't even need lunch.  And I was FINE.  Moreover, frequently when stuff gets in the way of eating (which it does surprisingly often), the hunger disappears entirely by the time I get back around to having time to eat.  And bear in mind, this is me operating at a consistent caloric deficit.  It's not like I've already had "enough" to eat by conventional standards.  If hunger were truly a response to insufficient food intake to maintain weight, I'd be a lot hungrier, a lot more often.  But that's NOT what hunger is.  Hunger is a brain-based expectation of food reward.  And if you consistently send your brain signals that there ain't none of that happening, hunger becomes transient and unobtrusive. 

Realistically, this makes sense - much more sense that the frankly stupid assertion that "You have to eat every two hours for your metabolism/blood sugar/whatever" - really?  If humans really NEEDED to eat that often, would we ever have survived as a species?  If we were truly such delicate flowers we'd have been toasted by nature a long, long time ago.  If you honestly think you need to eat that frequently - like, you feel dizzy or faint if you don't - there is something very wrong with you.  You might want to fix it.  And, if you are carrying around a few extra pounds, your body's inability to use those pounds when you've got grumblies in your tumblies instead of steering you into the closest cafe or fast food joint should give you pause.  Because that's not how a human body ought to operate.

The other thing I learned this week is possibly less generally applicable.  And really, it's something I've learned a few times, I just keep hoping it's not really true.  Me and grains? We're not friends.  And we're not going to be.  The potage de semaine now is "variety meat" - meaning I was bored and did some freezer excavations to see what could go in that wasn't chuck roast or stew meat.  I found a heart that had actually been re-frozen due to poor planning on my part, a tongue (yum!) and the ubiquitous liver.  So it all went in, but heart is very dense and high in iron, and as my iron levels are fine, I figured heart for two meals a day might be a bit much.  What can reduce the amount of minerals you absorb from food?  Why, whole grains and their high phytic acid content, of course!  I hemmed and hawed about this for a while and eventually added a handful or two of hulled barley.  It fits the bland requirement nicely, and there's plenty of evidence to suggest that humans have been using grains like this - as a minor addition to food - for longer than we've had agriculture.  And hulled barley, while slightly processed, isn't what I'd call an industrial food (kind of. There's still the monocrop issue, but...)  So I went for it.  And now I am all kinds of bloated and I feel like I have a brick in my guts and bleah.  Fortunately, I only put the barley in a small amount of the stew, so I'm going to ditch that or season it up and feed it to the family, and haul the rest of it out of the freezer for me to eat, barley-free.  Pity - I really like barley, and I'm philosophically ok with using grains in that kind of context - but I guess it is not to be.

week four - a little late due to an actual vacation

This post was delayed because I took the opportunity of a family-less weekend to head up to Quadra Island for a few days of enforced relaxation.  Enforced, because it was pouring with rain on Saturday.  I had planned to do a nice long hike, but instead I struggled out in all my rain gear for a short-ish walk with the dog, and then spent the rest of the day knitting.  Sunday was nice enough so we got a hike in, but not as long a one as I would have liked.  Oh well.  It was quiet and peaceful and that was nice.  And as I was in a self-catering cottage, food wasn't an issue.  I just hauled the other half of my bear stew out of the freezer and took that.

My lovely hosts, though, gave me an apple from their orchard, and as I'd neglected to bring any scurvy-avoidance stuff (ie, frozen blueberries) I did eat it.  But I was unable to eat more than a few slices at a time, because it was so intense.  Part of that was, I think, that it was a really good apple - but part of it also was that my palate has become so used to blandness that I didn't actually WANT the intense flavour.  I think when I finally end my food vacation, it's going to take a few days to come back to normal eating, and it might be wise to end it a day or two ahead of the solstice so I can actually enjoy the traditional solstice feast.

Anyway, folks have been curious about energy levels and sufficient salt intake, so I'll talk about that now.  My energy levels, I'm happy to say, are about as good as ever.  On my hike yesterday I powered up a hill (they call it a "mountain" on the gulf islands, but... no) that did actually have a bit of snow on top, and it took me only 40 minutes.  The information I had was that it was a 2-hour hike, so I feel like my "athletic performance" is still pretty good (but honestly - if you had to take 2 hours to do that, you probably shouldn't be hiking).  And I had three really good workouts last week.  All of them were in the morning, which is when I normally work out.  Previously I'd been trying to work out in the afternoon, usually just after I'd eaten lunch, and I think that was the problem - it's just a low-energy part of my day, naturally.  I've been waking up between 6:30 and 7 am without an alarm, after going to bed at 10:30 or so, and that, to me, says I've got plenty of energy.

Salt intake may have been a slight problem.  I figured I was getting enough, because of the mineral density of the bone broth that I cooked my meat in, but possibly not.  I was experiencing slight foggy-headedness, but it went away when I added a teeny amount of salt to my food before I ate it, so I think that tweak is probably necessary and I'll keep doing it.  It'll probably take me another few days to get accustomed to it - even that small amount of salt is vaguely unpleasant at the moment, but it'll make ending the food vacation easier.

And - because this is the question I get asked the most - no, this isn't difficult to stick to in the least.  Now that I know my reactions to a tiny bit of salt and the flavour of just an apple, it is not tempting in the least to have even a little nibble of something sweet or highly seasoned.  I know it won't be immediately enjoyable, and it may make my later bland food taste even less satisfying, so it's totally not worth it.  And while I know this may sound like a miserable state of affairs, it isn't.  I'm still very much enjoying the freedom from worrying about what I eat now, what I'm going to eat, when I'm going to get a chance to go grocery shopping, etc.  You know how you can look at people lying on the beach, and think "they must be bored out of their skulls"? Well, I'm like one of those people - totally content in my boredom, for the moment.  And, as a bonus, I'm losing weight steadily, and nearly all my clothes fit now. 

Week 3, a lesson learned and a minor rant

The food vacation is still going well, appetite still remarkably diminished, down another 2.5 lbs.  However, while my energy levels for everyday stuff like getting out of bed, chores, walking the dog, and so on are fine, at the gym, I am having a harder time improving my lifts.  This might be me pushing too hard - I could be just at the point where I can't up my squats by 5 lbs at a time.  And, too, the workout at the moment consists of 2 sets of 15 reps, which I find very difficult psychologically - I'd rather do 3 sets of 10.  So, I'm going to withhold judgement on that, but frankly it's not terribly surprising that on a steady diet of about 800 calories a day, I have a hard time lifting over 100 lbs 30 times.  The more important thing is that I keep trying to do it so I don't suffer any muscle atrophy, so when the food vacation ends, I'm in good shape to resume a more aggressive lifting program.

The main lesson I learned this week, though, was that I need to trust my body more. TMI ALERT!  TMI ALERT!!!

Ok, you've been warned - there's poop talk ahead.

With a reduced food intake, there's a corresponding reduction in output.  Throughout the second week I was only spending quality time in the bathroom every couple of days, which I expected, but this week I went three or four days with no action.  Now, I didn't feel constipated or bad in any way, but I was alarmed by this so I availed myself of the large bag of homemade prunes in the freezer. (And yes, they are tasty and technically a violation of the rules of the food vacation, but on the upside, they are very filling and I completely forgot to eat dinner afterwards.)  I ate quite a lot of them - about 2 cups' worth.  And then I realized a few things.  First, I hadn't gone previously because I didn't really need to, and there wasn't a whole lot in there.  Second, prunes are incredibly effective and move stuff out that probably isn't quite ready.  Blerg.  They also dehydrate you in a big way - I went through about double my usual water intake and still felt thirsty.  So, I won't be doing that anymore.  Things will move when they're good and ready.  I'm eating plenty of fat and fibre and getting my probiotics so there's no reason to think that there's anything amiss down there.

Now on to the rant.  This story was posted by a Facebook friend this week.  The only problem I have with it is that the headline is extremely misleading.  "Fatty Foods Addictive Like Cocaine" - but the text of the article (and the research behind it) make it clear that it's not just any fatty food that's the problem - in fact, the fat itself is only harmful when combined with refined starches, intensified flavours, sugars (often several kinds) and other industrial additives.  The headline should read "Industrial Foods Addictive" - because none of the foods they list as part of various studies are things that the average person can make on their own - and no home kitchen could possibly duplicate the taste or texture of any of them.  The article hints that food processing companies are employing the same tactics that tobacco companies once did - the assertion that their product is produced in response to customer demand, that it's not intrinsically habit-forming and causes no problems when used in moderation - while knowing damn well that their product IS addictive and, in susceptible individuals, impossible to use in moderation. That's what makes it so nice and profitable.

So many people pull out the "Moderation is the key!" blah in response to others - I would argue the majority of humans - who have varying degrees of susceptibility to enhanced food reward and thus problems moderating food intake.  But that's exactly like saying "smoke in moderation" - sure, some people can.  I know of several people who are casual smokers, who can easily have a cigarette once in a while as a social thing, but who don't smoke otherwise and who never become addicted, or do so only for brief periods and quit easily.  But these people are in the minority, and statistics show that most people who start smoking keep going, and usually increase intake over time.  Industrial foods - foods that are designed to elicit a maximum of reward response in the brain - work exactly the same way.  One reason that obesity is on the rise is because the science of food engineering is progressing and getting better.  Companies are able to make food tastier, more satisfying, and better textured all the the time.  This leads to increased consumption, increased demand, and perfect feedback to tell companies what works for the masses and what doesn't.  And as the article points out, while companies may offer more "healthy" alternatives, it's still the Tostitos and Pepsi bringing in the big bucks to keep the shareholders happy.

As it becomes clearer that industrial foods manufacturers are employing exactly the same brain-hijacking tactics to increase profits that tobacco companies did, my fervent hope is that these companies are dealt with in exactly the same way - taxed to high heaven, with warning labels slapped on all their products ("Warning: this product is habit-forming and use may lead to obesity, type 2 diabetes, heart disease and all kinds of yuck.").  The best thing would be to adopt very broad definitions of "industrial food product" - basically, if it's in a package and has more than one ingredient, it's an industrial food and should be labeled as such.  Yeah, that totally includes bread, crackers, soup - lots of stuff that people count as staples.  IT DOESN'T MATTER.  If it comes in a package, it's part of the problem.  What better way to encourage people to make their own bread and soup?  Also good would be government-sponsored quitting programs for industrial-food addicts using some variation of a sugar-free, traditional-foods kind of diet and cooking classes.  Further awesomeness could include suing the bastards to recoup health care costs. 

Anyway, it was a good article if you ignore the headline.  Fat - or any other macronutrient, for that matter - is not even remotely a problem in its natural state.  Carbs?  All good when they come from veggies, tubers, properly prepared nuts and whole grains if you swing that way.  Protein? Fine.  A KFC Double-Down that's high in all macronutrients? Now that's a heart attack waiting to happen.  Let's stop looking at fat, protein and carbs and start looking at how it's made and what it does to your brain.  Because you could take some good soaked whole buckwheat crepes, a nice fatty chicken thigh, some artisanal cheese, and a couple slices of traditionally cured bacon and make a dish that has the exact same macronutrient composition as a Double-Down and it would not do anything close to the same things in your brain and your body.  In fact, you likely wouldn't even be able to eat a whole serving.  This seems like common sense to me, but you can bet your probably over-large ass that companies like Kraft, Nabisco, Nestle and other purveyors of crap will spend billions over the next few years convincing governments otherwise.

Week Two of the Food Vacation

Well, my calorie deficit calculations were obviously bang-on as I'm down 2.5 lbs this week.  Yay me.

This week was a bit harder.  Most of the week I was eating a stew made with pork shoulder, and it was far too mushy and fatty, but there was lots of it so I had to keep eating it.  I will not be using pork again, that's for sure.  I also found my energy levels were a lot lower this week and I only made it to the gym for one weights workout and the daily walks were shorter on some days - but that was more due to a busy week, work-wise, than anything else (and also, pouring rain).  Last night I couldn't face the stew so I had only a small bowl of rice for dinner, and this morning I mixed a little rice in with my hardboiled eggs (which I don't recommend as a taste sensation) and I felt much perkier today, so I think I need more carbs in my diet than I'd been getting.  Contrary to what I'd expected, replacing some protein and fat with bland carbs didn't make me any hungrier, so I'm going to try to have some extra carbs - like 1/2 cup cooked rice, or a small potato - with every meal.

I'm still drooling over pears, but not as much.  I have supplemented my soups-and-eggs diet with a few other bland things: raw hazelnuts, blueberries, blackberries, raw milk kefir, a vitamin D supplement, and raw kohlrabi & turnip sticks.  I eat these in the afternoon if I'm feeling peckish, I don't try to add them onto a meal as it's usually a bit of a struggle to finish a bowl - and sometimes I just don't. It's amazingly easy to leave a snack now... I've found plates of turnip sticks that I've forgotten about, and it took me three days to go through a tiny package of hazelnuts that I previously would have mowed through in one. My insides are working well, with zero gas and bloating, so I think I'm doing ok with the balance of fibre and whatnot.

This week's soup/stew thing, though, is WAY better, thanks to my lovely friend David who gave me some bear meat.  I hope he's not horrified at what I'm doing to it - but game meat works SO MUCH BETTER for this than domestic meat.  It keeps a good texture, it's nice and chewy, and while the flavour is - as it's supposed to be - mild, there's still enough of it that instead of being actively yucky to eat (as was the pork stew), it's mildly pleasant.  Not enough to make me want to eat more than I need, but enough that I'm not pushing the plate away before I'm actually done.  I've always wondered why the hell First Nations peoples bothered with stone-boiling (why not just cook stuff on a spit???) and now I know.  It's a good way to get a nice, filling dinner. (And yes, I do thank many deities for the existence of my crock pot on an almost daily basis.  Stone-boiling is a bit of a PITA.) My next project is to arrange a hunting trip for David and Stirling, because what's just as good as bear stew?  Goose stew.  Also, I've got a new load of beef arriving next week, and grass-fed beef is nearly as good as game.

So that's week 2 done.  I'm going to try to go all the way to the Solstice - that seems a good, meaningful place to end a semi-fast of this nature.  And when and if I manage it, I will never, ever be able to tell myself again that I lack willpower - although I must admit that adhering to the food vacation has not been stressful or difficult, not after the first few days.  And despite the occasional lapse in energy, I feel pretty damn good.  It's also nice to have too-snug clothing fit well once again.

Oh - and for what it's worth - cooking for the family isn't a major problem.  The smells do make me a bit hungry, but then I just eat my slop with the rest of the family instead of an hour later when I'd probably be hungry anyway.  Keeps me socially appropriate.

one week of food vacation

I seem to have settled on the term "food vacation" to describe what I'm doing. It works, for now. For those of you just tuning in who can't be bother to skip to this time last week in the blog, I'm taking a much-needed (mentally and physically) break from yumminess, and testing out Stephan Guyenet's theories of food reward and body fat regulation. I'm eating nothing but bland, boring, unseasoned food and in the interests of making it really a vacation, I'm just cooking up a basic meat-potato-veg stew once a week or so and eating nothing but that, hardboiled eggs for breakfast, a bit of raw milk kefir here and there and the occasional few blueberries or blackberries to ward off the scurvy. Unsurprisingly, my appetite has decreased enormously.

So a week has gone by, and what have I learned? Well, for starters, I'm a hell of a lot more productive - I've gotten a few projects done and the house is pretty tidy for the *start* of a weekend - my energy levels are good, I'm going a LOT longer between meals than I used to, kohlrabi is awesome, this is a very effective way to lose weight, and if I do a heavy weights workout and then an hour-long brisk walk/hike, and don't take in any extra veg or anything, I get a headache (which goes away happily with a few blueberries and an advil... the internet thinks it's a low blood sugar thing).

I'm down more than 5 lbs and 1% body fat from this time last week. I don't know if this rate of weight loss will continue - because my salt intake has been cut a lot, I'm probably carrying less fluid in my body, and cutting out all the grains that had crept into my diet (they're so sneaky) made my tummy shrink instantly. That's probably a couple of pounds right there. This next week should provide a good idea of what the long-term weight loss rate will be. Mathematical calculations predict an average weight loss of around 2 lbs per week. (I figure I'm taking in around 800-900 calories a day and with an internet-calculated basal metabolic rate of 1380 cal per day, and an internet-calculated total daily caloric need of 2100 calories, I have a daily caloric deficit of 1200 cal. So every 3 days, I would lose one lb (3500 cal).)

Now, I've done diets before where I've restricted calories to this point, and I've done intermittent fasting, and on both regimes, I've been obsessed with food and often cranky (calorie restriction alone is much worse for all of those than IF). Functional, yes, but also prone to feeling chilly and disinclined to exert myself either mentally or physically. Housework suffered, I wasn't the best mommy in the world, and I found a lot of excuses to not do a workout on fasting days. This is much, much different. Not only am I not really hungry, even 5 hours after eating, I'm not cold in the least (in fact I get warm flushes after meals and I'm the only one not wearing my coat out dog-walking) and I don't feel even the slight hunger at bedtime that I used to. (As an aside, I've never eaten after dinner. I sleep much better on an empty stomach. So I'm used to feeling a bit hungry when I go to bed. Not feeling that is odd. Not bad - just odd.) My moods have been good, I've been pretty chill generally and the family has definitely not suffered. Cooking their food is just another household task, although I still get odd pangs when I'm preparing pears for Rowan. Just pears. Not cheese, carrots, apples, salami, peanut butter, salmon, chicken or sweet-and-sour pork - and in times past, I probably would have chosen to eat most of those before pears.

I've kept my workout schedule the same as prior to the food vacation. I do two weights workouts a week at the gym (and I lift fairly heavy for a woman my size), I walk the dog for about an hour every day, and I do 1-2 sprint workouts a week. Plus, as a stay-at-home parent and a part-time postpartum doula, my "work" day involves a lot of activity, carrying stuff, bouncing babies, cleaning, etc. so it's not like I'm relaxing at a desk all day, and my work day goes from 7 am til about 8 pm - at which point I get to veg out and read or play computer or watch tv or knit or something. This level of activity has not been at all difficult to maintain.

So what does this all mean? Well, it looks like the theory that in the absence of nice palatable food, the body will turn quite readily to fat stores and start munching them up, is holding up. At the moment, the majority of the energy I use is coming from my insides, and my body is using it without such quibbles as the increased hunger, low energy, crappy thermo-regulation or bitchiness normally associated with severe calorie restriction. So, yay so far!

So about those fat numbers...

Okay, USDA nutrient database, I believe you now. A chunk of moose leg really doesn't have enough fat. Bummer I don't have the whole moose. All the fat is around the organs.

Last night I couldn't finish my soup even though I was still kind of hungry. This morning, I did a weights workout and it wasn't all that fantastic. Not bad, just not great. And it took a lot of convincing myself that I actually wanted to eat some soup for lunch, after a meager breakfast of 2 boiled eggs and a post-workout snack of a diluted 1/2 cup of kefir with a dollop of omega-3+D oil. So I tried adding in about a tbsp of lard (from pastured pigs, of course) to the soup. Wow. What a difference. First, it tasted better (because as we all know, pig fat makes everything better, even when it's just dumped on and heated in the microwave) and second, I was able to eat a lot more, and I actually feel satisfied now. I'm not trying to starve myself here, and I would like enough energy in the tank to enjoy my workouts. Adding that bit of extra fat to my meals will give me an extra couple hundred calories a day (still not going to put me close to what I burn) and will take my mind off my tummy, which was feeling weird with almost all protein and no fat. The extra potato last night didn't help much.

So, while the moose soup lasts, it's going to have pig fat added to each serving. It's still not gourmet fare, and I don't want to snack on it or anything, but I can at least sort of look forward to eating the rest of the batch.

Pretty sure I've got this more of less figured out, so I'll give the posting and navel-gazing about it a rest for a bit and update at the end of the week.

Reduced appetite? Check.

Well, it really doesn't take long to kill one's appetite with bland food. Two days of my "bare essentials" soup, some hardboiled eggs, a little raw-milk kefir and tea, and I barely want to eat anything. I feel kind of hungry, but not like I want to eat. It's very weird. I also have a bit of a headache, probably because I haven't eaten enough today, and at this rate, it's going to take me a week or so to go through all the current batch of soup.

However, my mood is good, and I didn't crave Stirling & Rowan's delicious-looking dinner - although it was really hard not to take a bite of the pear I cut up for them for lunch. It just smelled so, so sweet and was perfectly ripe. Oh well, there will always be pears. If I'm craving anything, it's crunchy veg and fruit.

So today I've eaten: 3 hardboiled eggs, 2 bowls of soup (although I didn't finish the bowl I had for dinner) one of which had a small added potato and a chunk of steamed cauliflower, the other of which had an added few sorrel leaves, and 1/3 cup roasted chestnuts, which I made for Rowan and of course she didn't like them so I decided they were sufficiently bland and enough of a pain to shell that I was in no danger of making more and over-snacking. They were nice though. And while I was hungry just before dinner and held out so I could eat with the family, I haven't been really hungry all day. Oh, and I had lots of tea, all of it with milk, but we're out of milk now so there'll be no more of that until Tuesday, when more milk will magically arrive. Based on what was in the milk bottle this morning and subtracting what I put in other people's coffee and tea, I think I had about half a cup of milk, total.

My energy levels are fine. I went for a 5 km jog with dog today (which includes a good deal of walking because dog objects to just running, and I also didn't feel like running all the way) and spent the afternoon outside, supervising kids and chatting with neighbours. Come to think of it, maybe my headache is actually from the bright sunlight...it was a gorgeous day!

The Bare Essentials Soup

For my yum-fast (I really need to think of a better term) I'm using a very basic soup to fill nearly all my nutritional needs. There's no technique involved here, no browning, no deglazing - it's just throwing stuff in the crockpot, with water. Here's what went in:

3 lbs 2 oz moose leg (later removed 6 oz bone, so 2 lb 12 oz moose meat, including marrow)
1 lb potatoes (mostly yellow-fleshed)
8 oz sunchokes
8 oz beef liver
8 oz chopped kale
1/2 cup chopped dried kelp

Before eating, I'm also going to throw in some fresh greens so I don't get scurvy or anything.

I am also eating eggs for breakfast (2 this morning), hard boiled, and I am drinking water and roiboos tea, which may occasionally have a splash of whole raw milk in it.

I played around with the USDA nutrient database (which does, surprisingly, have data for moose meat) and after some guesstimating and wiggling based on the fact that my moose had a bone with lots of marrow and the lack of any significant fat in the USDA numbers suggests that theirs didn't... I came up with a macronutrient ratio for my soup of 30% carbs, 15% fat, and 55% protein. The total amount of calories in the batch is somewhere between 2000 and 2200, depending on whether you believe me or the USDA about fat levels in moose.

Regardless, that's.... a little lean. And it explains why the bowl I had for lunch, while entirely edible and, as planned, fairly bland, filling and inoffensive, didn't satisfy me for very long. I had another bowl at about 4 o'clock in the afternoon (and I ate lunch at 1:30 - my two eggs for breakfast at 9 lasting nicely until then.)

Also, the volume suggests it's at least 3 days' worth of food for me (my 5-quart slow-cooker is basically full). That's not even 800 cal/day, which is a bit less than I was planning to eat - but before you call the medics, remember that I'm really not very big and my basal metabolic rate isn't a whole lot more than that. And, too, I have a fair bit of body fat to run on, and once my body adapts to doing that, it should be able to squeeze a couple hundred calories a day out of there without too much difficulty.

So, I'll see how I fare on this batch. I think I'll sacrifice a (leg of) lamb for the next one, for the extra fat - or a cross-rib roast and cook it in a bone broth. I'll probably add more starchy tubers too, as the carbs could be raised a bit.

Right now I feel a bit low-energy, but that's just as easily attributable to the complete absence of caffeine in my body today and the pile of housework tasks in front of me. After the soup I had for lunch, I DID feel a really strong desire for something sweet - the fruit bowl was beckoning for sure - but it passed quickly with a cup of plain tea.

Mimicking the Ebb and Flow of Nature

The more I read and think about the paleo food movement, the more it seems less of a strictly dietary thing and more about living consciously, in a biologically appropriate manner. After all, there's more to health than food. There's exercise, sleep, stress management, light exposure, posture, relationships (both human and non-human), outside time, quiet time, pleasure and recreation - all these things have an effect on how we feel and how our brains and bodies work.

I can't shut the lights off in our house when the sun goes down, much as I might like to sometimes. After all, I live with two other people and while I have influence over matters pertaining to their health, I'm not a dictator - nor do I think that forcing someone to do things that are healthy WILL actually result in better health. (More so with adults than children, who look to adults for guidance anyway.) I can't carve out an extra few hours of every day for leisure, but I can take pleasure in some of my daily work (paid or otherwise) - I can appreciate it when I have time to do my more-favouritest chores like cooking and ironing, or when I'm not restricted to a 5-minute shower and can take time to use my orange-aniseed scented tub scrub after my shower. I try not to stress little things, I try not to want too much (although there's this pair of boot I think I really neeeeeed...) and I have a dog to whom I am very grateful because she takes me for long walks every day and we live in a beautiful area with lots of trees and ocean and beach and meadows... so unlike a lot of people, I feel like I'm pretty good with the non-diet stuff - at least as good as I can be without going all hippy and living in a shack in the woods with no electricity.

But this is a food blog, so you had to know it was coming back to diet. I think that even though I eat pretty healthily, I still have issues with the diet.

I think one of my big problems with food is there's no "down time". There's seasonality, because of how I shop, but it's all a variation on feast, with no famine. Even eating well, there's always an abundance of food - quantity, quality and variation. And I'm becoming more and more convinced that's not, overall, a good thing. For kids - perhaps. Always having enough is probably ideal for growing bodies. But for full-grown humans? I dunno.

The problem is that actual starvation and deprivation tend to trigger relapses once the immediate need for restriction is gone, and I definitely found this when I eased up on the full-bore paleo (which I did for about a month last spring). My sensible self thinks it's not a great idea to be constantly restrictive. Even though I think the food climate of modern Canada is unsustainable and unhealthy, I also think it's not healthy for individuals to set themselves too far apart from the rest of society in terms of their food choices except in cases of acute allergy or hypersensitivity - neither of which I suffer from. It's hard, and I think most people have problems with this - the way you feel you OUGHT to eat is hampered by a desire to fit in with the way everyone DOES eat.

But there's nothing wrong with just taking a step back from things for a while. I've been thinking recently of traditions like Lent and Ramadan - an observed period of partial fasting, of meeting needs but not desires. And I've been thinking about how that fits in with Stephan Guyenet's food reward theories of body fat regulation (where appetite and food intake is regulated by the food reward factors in the diet), and how our Stone Age ancestors must have had a period every year where it was time to live on stored food or scrawnier game, when there were no juicy berries, no mushrooms, no eggs - just dried meat, stored nuts and tubers. And I'm thinking, I could probably do with a bit of that. I've put on a few pounds of those I worked so hard to lose a year ago, I've had an overwhelming few months of paralyzing indecision at farm stands (OMG TOO MUCH GOOD STUFF!!!) and I feel like a break from FOOD would be a good idea. Thank the gods berry season is over. (Sometimes I wish I was a bear - come October, bloated on salmon and berries, I could stumble into a cave and sleep it off for a few months.)

So I'm going to do an experiment in - well, I don't really know what to call it. Yum-avoidance? I'm going to take two months (basically, Thanksgiving to Christmas) and eat only completely nutritious and totally bland food. Because I also want a bit of a break from thinking about food (I don't think it would shock anyone if I said I was a wee bit obsessive about it) I'm going to just make big batches of boring soup and reheat a bowl at a time when I'm hungry. It'll be nutritionally balanced soup - just a hunk of meat with bones, simmered for a day or so in the crock pot, with potatoes/turnip/sunchoke/other tuber or root veg, some blenderized liver, and chopped kale or other mild green veg. For breakfast I can eat a couple plain hardboiled eggs if I want, or not. (I'm not usually hungry before 10 or 11 anyway.) That should provide me with all the nutrition I need, but I'm not putting ANY seasoning in whatsoever (nope, not even salt - but I'll run the numbers through the USDA database and just make sure I'm getting enough sodium - might toss some kelp in too.)

If Dr. Guyenet's food reward theories hold true, this bland diet should cause my appetite to decrease as my body gets the signal that the food environment's not all that great right now and it's a good time to use up the internal stores. (The more the evolutionary psychologist in me mulls this theory, the more it makes sense. When food variety and palatability are low, it probably coincides with an extended period of stored-food use. It makes sense, in a small-group situation, if those with a bit of excess fat are able to reduce their food intake without becoming grumpypants so that those who don't have any excess can eat enough. Chubbies who kept eating their normal amount and burned through the nuts at the back of the cave were probably at higher risk of encountering violence from other, less subcutaneously-endowed folk when the nuts ran out. As a parent, I can totally see me whacking some strapping burly guy who was scarfing the nuts and dried auroch that my growing kid needed more. Non-conscious appetite regulation during food scarcity would have been an excellent survival trait, I think.)

In fact, Guyenet goes over several experiments that have shown exactly this - with a very bland diet, appetite decreases as a function of obesity. Very obese people tend to eat next to nothing, whereas already-thin people eat a normal amount. When you remove the reward component of a diet, humans (and other animals) take in only what they need - and when they have a substantial amount of body fat, they need very little on a daily basis to keep going, and the rest of the energy can come from fat stores. You don't have to restrict food, just yum - your brain will do the rest. In theory.

BUT that's all under experimental conditions. My "experiment" is a little more real-world. I don't have just myself to feed - I have two other people who are not going to be happy with meat-and-veg soup for the next few months and they will still get damned fine food, prepared by me. The big question is, as far as appetite and body fat regulation goes, is the food environment defined ONLY by what I eat, or is it defined by the food I see and smell, as well? My will power is pretty good, I think avoiding munching on the husband and kid's food won't be a problem, but I don't know if my appetite will actually reduce all that much. I will keep track of how much I actually eat by calculating the total number of calories in each batch of soup I make, and how long it takes me to go through it. I am NOT going to TRY to eat less.

I'm also going to keep track of how this makes me feel. Never having been religious, I've never had a reason to observe a period of fasting or intentional deprivation (and let's face it, even when I was losing weight eating starch-and-sugar-free, I'm still a pretty good cook and it's not like it was real deprivation, even though the "food reward" factors were lessened.) I freely admit to using food as comfort, motivation, treats, and entertainment. How will my psychological health be affected by removing those? (Or will I just attempt to get as much pleasure out of sitting down with a good book and a bowl of unseasoned meat-and-veg as I did with a good book and fabulous salami, brie, crunchy carrots and a bowl of babaganoush to dip them in?)

So, it all starts tomorrow. I have a chunk of moose I found in the bottom of my freezer (labeled "boiling meat leg" - thanks Chuck!) because I figure it's appropriate to kick off a stone-age-style seasonal yum-avoidance with some wild game (I won't be able to keep that up unless certain friends - hello, David? Are you reading this? - give me some wild geese or something). I've got potatoes and sunchokes, gobs of kale, lots of liver (thanks to my beef lady, who now just gives it to me because I'm the only one of her customers who wants it), and eggs for breakfast. I may have a half cup of raw milk kefir, plain, every couple of days to keep the intestinal flora happy, too. I'm all set, and I'll keep everyone posted.