Looking at the Week - Day 7 - the Crave/Crash Cycle

I weighed myself. I couldn't help it; I needed the motivation. And -- I've lost 3 lbs. this week. Today is the 3 of October and I am seven days in. What made this week different? Talking about what makes a successful week means raising - gasp - the issueof eating everything or not eating everything. I've written about this quite a bit on my blog, but as someone who once ran an addiction center, I have to say that sometimeswe need to face up to some facts. We get very defensive about what we are doing and justify it in many ways. I can only speak for myself but I have learned,and learned again that what we who are wanting to reach a healthy weight and stay there can't eat everything -- or maybe we can but we have to have a plan for eating the things that set off the crave crash cycle. Is this really too complex to understand or to figure out without the bio chemical information? Well in my case, it must be because I keep repeating the pattern. This lifestyle change has to be permanent and that means figuring out how to be happy with food and how to avoid deprivation or any of the emotional things which make it possible to justify crazy eating. I have 97 lbs to go! I am on a 100 day challenge but my clear intention is to have a complete lifestyle change.

Do I want to wear a size 4 or be glamorous? Oh heck no. I used to want that and then I became known as "well dressed." What I want is to live a really happy, joyful and fulfilling life for every day that I remain on the planet. I am outrageously happy with my work and where I live -- the people I work with -- and the children I am raising and I want to be present for all of it. When I am craving and crashing I am driven only by my desire for the next snack.

In order to lose weight we have to create a deficit between the calories needed for maintenance and the calories we consume. As we lose weight the maintenance level drops and the deficit gap shrinks -- so the thinner we get the longer it takes to lose a pound -- assuming that we don't change our exercise or our calories. That's the math. Maintenance can be calculated by multiplying current weight by 10 if we are female and 11 if we are male. What derails a weightloss/maintenance/lifestyle program is the crave/crash cycle. Our diet in the United States requires vigilance and label reading --the acquisition of lots of information about what all those ingredients are and what they mean. Anything that features high fructose corn syrup or other sugar and cane syrups is engineered to blow sugar into the blood stream as soon as it hits our tummies -- simple as that. When our sugar level rises, our pancreas puts out insulin to reduce the level to normal. When our insulin level rises and blood sugar drops we feel more than hungry we crash and become desperate for more sugar.

If I eat a high sugar food, within an hour I feel desperate in need of something sweet to eat. And the cycle begins: crave/crash; crave/crash. And I am hungry all the time.

There is another scenario with the crave/crash cycle. If I skip a meal or meals, I will suddenly become desperately hungry and have no control. Within 6 hours I will eat anything that is available -- the more immediately available the sugar the better.

On the other hand -- this is the wonderful news -- if I eat meals which are low glycemic and don't trigger the sugar/insulin/sugar cycle, I am not hungry, feel clear and well, and have steady, comfortable (almost not noticeable) weight loss. I remember waking up one day last year to an 85 lb. weight loss and thinking, "How did I do this? It was too easy." So why did I gain 30 lbs. back? I gained it back because I got back into the crave/crash cycle and began to eat that way -- I regressed to an old lifestyle and food approach and whoooom! the stable, happy, comfortable relationship with food was gone. I believe, that for me, the "addiction" is a reaction -- a biochemical reaction -- to eating "trigger" foods and that means high glycemic foods -- sugary stuff. When I am into meal skipping I feel fine in the a.m. -- my blood sugar has leveled off -- when I go without eating it drops and another version of crash/crave starts.

So what does this mean? It means, for me, that I need to eat only low glycemic foods. I eat sprouted breads which have no sugars of any type added. I eat whole grains. (I have had to cut down on fruit this time in order to get started). I never, ever drink soda (for years). I eat high protein, high whole grain foods and vegetables and keep all of that to 1350 calories a day. I started at 1500 calories for the first 85 and my weight loss slowed down as I approached 200 lbs. I increased my exercise and closed the gap (somewhat). The other cycle to write about is the gain/sit cycle. The bigger I get the less I move. Not exactly rocket science but I have a lifetime of bad habits.

Why did I lose 3 lbs this week? I lost because I 1) ate breakfast; 2) kept snacks onhand that didn't trigger anything but stable well-being; 3) ate lunch; 4) ate mid-afternoon;5) ate a light dinner. I renewed my acquaintance with healthy foods -- my old friends. Think of it this way -- sugar is a seductive enemy -- it changes the way the brain perceives what is going on -- and in a crash/crave life there is only the addictive substance -- healthy foods fade from consciousness. It only took me a few days in a stressful time to start the crash/crave cycle and alot of junk-food and 30 lbs later, I had to start again. No one said anything to me; one of the interesting things about food addiction is that we all have people who will help us -- the friendly "justifiers" who love us because we eat together and justify our behavior together. But really this is only about me and my well-being. And it about my integrity. I am so impressed with those few who face this whole food-dilemna and who actually change a lifestyle and remain on track. I WILL be one of them.

I remember when I quit smoking. It was 25+ years ago and it was cold turkey. I quit because I could not justify being a single parent with young children and smoking which could and would ruin my health and long term prospects. I never looked back. Why did it take me this long to reach the same conclusion about food? Because food and food cues are omnipresent in our society and because food is engineered to create the response that drives the weight. All of the current studies on childhood obesity are congruent with this cycle -- low exercise, high fructose eating and drinking -- our bodies aresimply not able to manage this stuff. The food manages us.

I watched my 18 year old in fascination a couple of years ago. She reengineered her eating to match my program and was not overly intense about it. But she suddenly became aware that certain foods "made her tired." It was that simple -- she noticed that when she ate bacon she got tired. She noticed that processes mac and cheese made her tired. She started eating breakfast. She wasn't obese or even on the borderline, but she lost a few lbs and her body found its level. She exercised regularly and she found that she could focus better. Now away at college, she has a care package of foods from Alvarado Street Bakery and Annie Chun sprouted brown rice and her no-sugar granola (also from Alvarado Street Bakery)and she is actively walking every day. She comes from a birth family of many obese women and she is aware.

I have a son who is in a wheelchair and he is struggling currently. He watches me and when I "cheat", he cheats. That is an overwhelming responsibility for me. And I have to "be the change" in order for the children to change. I have adopted children and all of them have different genetics. Guess what? They all function better and work better and sleep better when they are eating properly. They pack lunches -- my 5 year old takes almonds, fruit, whole grain bread sandwiches, and natural applesauce to school. It's harder for my son who is a lover of starches than it is for my 17 year old who is tiny and has a small appetite. But Ms. 17 year old has a sweet tooth and craves candy. It's pretty much the same drill for all of us and it starts with me. And it is an adventure -- a wonderful adventure -- we experiment again -- after the time of carelessless -- with types of apples and pears -- and we are -- I absolutely do not believe it -- eating vegetables. My 5 year old likes vegetables for breakfast -- she likes them alot!

I had an interesting experience with the family cat by the way. Our cat, a neutered male who is by genetics -- a lean and lanky breed -- began to get fatter and fatter.I switched him to 1/2 to 1 cup a day of a high protein, no grain cat food. He returned to the active lean cat -- he is young -- that he was before and his coat is like satin. The high carbohydrate processed cat food was fattening him up. I had to laugh, the vet gave us a video to watch about cat-care and every cat in the video was obese. We think that our animals should be fat and lazy. The video came from a major pet food company and all of their food is processed. Go figure?

Of course, the real question here is long term commitment. With a 2 year success story behind me and a real return to the "bad stuff," I am reminded of the first tenet ofstep programs which I respect completely. It is a one day at a time process -- one day and sometimes one hour.

The trick about getting started is the "white knuckle" period when the body is converting back to manufacturing its own sugar and stabilizing itself. The first week is usually hard. After the adjustment it is heaven. I woke up this morning craving -- youwon't believe this -- oatmeal! My 5 year old and I made oatmeal and ate it togegther before anyone else woke up. I'm going out today for some steel cut oats so that I can make oatmeal in a little crock pot for the morning. There is so much room for individual preference in a low glycemic food life-style. I have discovered so many new things to eat. I can't tolerate -- this didn't change during my relapse -- any breads except those that are sprouted and have real food value. I end this post by reflecting that we have made changes as a family and that many of them were permanent even though I went into stress eating for a few months. My son was impacted. My older daughter didn't miss a beat; she is in touch with the way the junk makes her feel. She is a lean size 2-4. Lately, because I am writing about this, I'm remembering how this all began in mychildhood and how innocent everyone was -- no one knew. The education that it all requires is fairly complex and requires some discernment, but all the information is available.

There are lots of blogs about intuitive eating. When I am in tune with my body, my intuition tells me when I have just swallowed something that is going to throw me off. My response to life -- my emotions -- are -- and this horrifies me -- the result in-part of what I eat day to day. My friend whose father was morbidly obese and who ate the family's food obsessively was almost dead from starvation as a child in Auschwitz. He couldn't stop. My child who was hungry in her orphanage in Eastern Europe until she was 6can't stop hoarding food and putting it under her bed. There are certainly extreme responses to starvation and life situations. But in my case there is only one answer to the over 50 year problem of being obese -- and that answer lies in my body's response to processed and engineered foods. A 16 calorie teaspoon of granulated sugar is not the problem (though I don't do that either) -- it is the long list of sugar concentrates which make up our foods. Go and pick up the bottle of ketchup in the refrigerator and look at the 2nd ingredient -- it's high fructose corn syrup and that is why we slather our food in it. We are not only an obese society but we are absolutely at the mercy of the food industry. Or are we?

Let us never think that we can't change that industry -- go and look at the number of products in your grocery store that now bear the label -- "No high fructose corn syrup." Consumer demand is changing this ingredient. But beware! All of consumers have to assure that it isn't substituted by another re-labeled but equally as dangerous ingredient. We should care about this for the next generation. We need to assure that our children have a chance of achieving optimum health. So I have another obligation staring me in the face and that is exercise -- not compulsive exercise -- just exercise!

I've just eaten a bowl of oatmeal with my 5 year old and have celebrated a week of healthy eating and lovely weather!

Eating everything means eating everything that is really good for me. When I was really "on the track" with this whole thing, I had a occasional dessert in the evening and it was planned so that it didn't trigger anything. For now I am not eating everything; I am not eating processed foods and sugary stuff. I am eating everything that makes sense for my self-healing and amazingly resilient human body and that's quite an adventure for someone who spent most of her life only eating a few really awful things that I thought were delicious and satisfying. My adult life has been crash/crave. Today I will eat a lovely healthy array of good things that are good for me and will walk a mile. Happy Sunday!