Low calorie is out? you ask. Yes. My experience with low calorie is that I feel horrible, my blood sugar drops, and I stop sleeping. Oh, well, at first, yes, my doctor said. You just need to keep going. For how long? A month of never sleeping didn't do it. Then what happens? I feel so horrible I can't take any more. I've lost probably five pounds by then, which no one is patting me on the back about. Then when I give up, I put on 10 to 15 pounds overnight. So the end result of this diet is that I gain weight!
This putting on 10 to 15 pounds immediately after a diet adventure extends to other eating regimens for me. I went on a supervised fast for 26 days. Btw, on those 26 days I slept three hours a night. I would have continued but for coming down with scurvy. Yes, I lost a lot of weight. As soon as I went off the fast, within two days, I had gained 15 pounds. The doctor saw that and said, "Oh, that has got to be water weight." Really? It didn't ever disappear. Once I had the experience that soon after fasting I drank a glass of milk, and began swelling so fast, that I could see myself puffing up by the second. In two days I was forty pounds heavier! Well, OK, most of that did go away. It's called anaphylactic shock.
After some of these misadventures, and the fact that, far from losing weight, the end result was gaining weight, I decided that I would never again diet to lose weight.
A doctor once asked me, "When did you gain weight?" I said, "When I quit smoking." That was true. I had been normal weight, but I heard absolutely no end of how I needed to quit smoking. Why why why did I smoke? It's unhealthy, expensive, disgusting. Why I was disgusting! I was stinky! many said. I was giving off second hand smoke. Think of the children! Why did I smoke? It helped control weight. I am guessing a lot of people do that. When I quit smoking, even though I didn't eat more, my weight began to go up by at least two pounds a week.
If you think you've been treated with contempt for smoking, wait till you gain weight! People started trying to run me down in parking lots.
And so I was perplexed. I decided that the focus of my diet would have to be something that improved my health, and not weight loss. The first thing a lot of people do at this point is to eat whole grains, juices, etc. I had done the "health food" thing with the same results as the low calorie diet. Once I went on "the Pritikin diet." It was mostly rice, with no salt, or oil or seasoning of any kind. Once again I lay awake for days with no sleep due to a never ending adrenal rush. I was on the Pritikin diet for four horrible days. Was it healthy? I don't think it was healthy because Mr. Pritikin died at age 69. Not a short life, but not remarkably long. I think he passed away of cancer. As did Adele Davis, at about the same age, a health food guru of times past. Another diet person expert that died at 69 of cancer was Elaine Gottschall who wrote Breaking the Vicious Cycle - The Specific Carbohydrate Diet. Not to criticize any of these diets, especially the Specific Carb diet. It's just that watching some people eat anything, weigh 80 pounds too much, not exercise, drink, smoke, and live to be 100 makes one wonder.
Oh, and before I move to more current diets, may I say that one of the problems one will face with diets, even if it's life or death, like diabetes, is diet saboteurs. Why do they do this? Look, cookies! I don't even much like cookies. If you were to tell a person of this variety that eating a mango would kill you, they will bring you a mango within a week, and sit around to try to make sure you eat it. They seem to be convinced that diet schmiet. They can eat anything, so this diet thing is all imaginary. You're just being fussy.
The same person will gobble up any special diet provisions you make for yourself. If they find out you've just given up and gone on a fast, they'll call 911, saying you're a danger to yourself and others. Yes, their name is Mother.
Finally one day I saw the book Protein Power. What could I possibly learn about low carb dieting that I don't know? I thought. But I did buy it, and he had some new ideas. So I went on a low carb diet. My results were marvelous. I felt so much better. My rashes went away and I slept well. Yay! And I was surprised to see that even though I didn't go hungry, I was losing weight. I didn't feel deprived, especially compared to some of the other diets like low calorie, mono meals, or Pritikin.
What happened with that? Well, eventually I just wasn't doing as well. The biggest problem was rheumatoid arthritis. I didn't gain weight, but I didn't lose weight either. But really, the pain seemed to be related to diet and that was something that just had to go. So again I needed to rethink my diet.
And this is not to say I'm against low carb. I'm all for low carb. I'm even all for low carb high fat. It is an excellent diet for people with epilepsy, in many cases completely controlling seizures and in the case of children, two years on this diet can even cure them many times. It used to be the treatment of choice before epilepsy drugs came along.
What had I not done? I have not gone vegan. So much of the time, when vegans tout their diets, it comes down to some sort of moral or ethical argument. And sometimes people are angry about it too. Global warming. The poor animals that are butchered. Yes, that's a shame, but it doesn't address my primary question, which is, is this a good diet for people, especially me? If it were evil, why did Jesus eat fish? He even went fishing frequently. He seemed to love to go fishing. Much is said about the SAD diet (standard American diet). But no comparison is made between that and another diet, only SAD and vegan. Well, if you stop eating Twinkies and Frosted Flakes I think it's a good start.
Today I awoke, having determined that I will reexamine vegetarian and see if there is any improvement there. I first thought, "Well, does that mean black coffee?" Many of the vegans are opposed to coffee. No, I see no point in giving up coffee.
So, I decided to have one cup of coffee with cream while I tried to figure out what to do. One vegan chiropractor had recommended a grain free vegan diet. But really, the vegan diet is a high starch diet. If you don't eat grain, what's left? That's the mainstay of the diet!
What foods should I eat? What foods should I avoid? I thought of the list of foods I had been told to never eat:
1. Sugar
2. High fructose corn syrup.
3. Red meat
4. Chicken, duck, turkey
5. Fish (mercury and radiation)
6. Too much fruit (more than one strawberry)
7. Potatoes
8. Tomatoes (might be a fruit also)
9. Any nightshade family food
10. Cabbage or any cruciferous vegetable
11. Too many beans (more than three)
12. Fruit juice (too much sugar)
13. Any other type of sugar like agave or molasses
14. Artificial sweeteners
15. Soy
16. Grains - wheat, corn, rice, oats, barley
17. Eggs
18. Nuts (molds)
19. Celery
20. Dairy (all including goat milk and butter)
21. Vegetable, coconut or palm oil
That left spinach, avocados and olives. OK, I had an avocado for breakfast.
Well, I plan to try some form of vegetarian diet. Some people are lacto ovo vegetarians. They are vegetarians that also eat eggs and dairy, I suppose because they feel that no animals were harmed in their diet. Well, maybe lacto ovo steako vegetarian would be good.
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