On dieting, food and weight loss

I just did some serious thought-spamming in Sherry’s blog line concerning weight loss and it turned out to the size of an adult post. So I took the liberty of taking that what was for her to my blog too because I think / hope that it contains a valuable entry into dieting and weight loss. I started tweaking the post and then I really got into it. Hope you like it.

My preparation for quitting drinking started with studying weight loss. I was still in denial on my drinking so I thought I had a weight problem only. But that worked out fine because I learned a lot. 🙂 Or so I think, because I am not a nutritionist so what I say depends on what I learned from others.

ERIC BERG

Eric Berg has a lot of really good, informative video’s on weight loss. In essence he says: When people are ill they become overweight. Read ‘ill’ als ill or ‘out of balance’ – so you will. Berg is pretty convinced that cravings, overeating, gaining weight and what have you, only exist because the body is not functioning well. NOT THE OTHER WAY AROUND. Well, yes, it will start to work the other way around if one is seriously overweight but the basis is in the unhealthy situation. Guessing we can name a few unhealthy habits amongst us… :-S

Trying to lose weight will not happen very easily when one does not fix the underlying problem. Based on that he has defined 4 different body types – by their looks. Because depending on what part / organ / gland in our body is not functioning well, the body will store fat in different places. E.g. if the liver is not functioning well we tend to get a big (hard) belly and larger breasts or, for men it might look like they are pregnant or swallowed a basketball (beer belly, beer ‘tits’). If a person is stocking up on estrogens she will get a large chest but build firm hips and thighs as well. Yes, that would be the luxury side of weight gain 😉. In order to loose weight he has a diet plan for different body types that comes down to:

– loads of veggies, cruciferous foods for some types, less for others

– animal protein for some types and not for others,

– no sugar, low on carbs for all

– a kale, apple, parsley, ginger, celery shake is important

– cranberry – apple vinegar – fresh lemon – water drink before every meal

DO LIKE – AND IMPORTANT

His info where he says that taking synthetic nutrients is not good because it can actually make your body take up LESS of the nutrients in the long run because synthetic nutrients are not complete. Some nutrients need help stuff to be able to be processed in your body. If the nutrient pill does not contain the extra stuff too that will be taken from the stock in your body. So that’s a way of depleting the body from nutrients. He sells natural vitamins in his store. Food / veggies etc. normally contain all you need in one bite. If I would live in the USA I would order his vitamins but Fedex costs 60 to 80 dollars oversees 😦

He mentions that using dairy will TAKE Calcium from the bones. The use of dairy in The Netherlands is the highest in the world – and we have one of the highest figures in osteoporosis….. So much for the cheese. 😦 Chew sesame seeds if you want calcium.

Check out the a food nutrition table if you want to know what food contains what nutrients. I found that eating ecological pork meat is 10 times better against trembling hands (lack of vitamin B’s / damage of the nerve cells and brain) than eating vitamin B pills. Or combine them.

He is against Genetically Modified Organisms . And so am I. I am not religious but God created the earth and SHE SAW IT WAS GOOD ;-). That’s all we need to know. Arrogance to think we can outdo million years of organic process or the creation of (a) god(s) if you like. Very wrong in my, again, not so humble opinion.

Berg nicely explains the function of the liver in the fat storing / sugar making of stored fat. Very important.

DON’T LIKE

1 He is not a cook, he knows that and apologizes for it but e.g. he promotes using salad dressing from a jar and tells you to watch out for MSG’s. First, MSG’s have 10.001 different names by now, one of them being ‘yeast extract’. I find that very illogical all in all. What is wrong with mixing 2/3 olive oil, 1/3 lemon juice or vinegar, 1 tea-spoon of mustard, 1 teaspoon of honey, salt and pepper as a basic dressing? Takes 2 minutes max.

2 Berg is from the low carb – high veg and high fat school but does not explain the difference between white, finely milled flower and products made from that and all the products at the other end of the scale as: ecological full grains, brown rice, beans etc. It is not only the content but also the shape they are in. Finely milled is worse than full grain because of the work the body has to do to take it up and the time it consumes.

BARBARA O’NEILL

Barbara O’Neill, also on YouTube tells in her 10 different video’s about nutrition, how the body works and detox. She says: people jojo because they do not do a detox before loosing weight. In our body we have poisons that come from what we ate, drank, pollution, medicine, what have you. The really serious poisons like heavy metals are stored in the fat, out of the way. What happens when we lose weight is that the fat soluble poisons we carry are freed and the liver needs to break them down and make them water soluble so we can sweat and pee them out. If we do not take enough of specific nutrients (carrots, protein, vitamin B, C and another few things) the poisons will not become water soluble and the liver will say: ‘Ooooh, DANGER!! Let’s store these poisons in fat again so they are out of the system….’ So the liver will work against the weightloss by storing fat. Or which is why a lot of people experience headaches when dieting. Her story made me understand why I CRAVE meat after 2-5 days of dieting, that is where I go of the path totally. Those cravings are worse than my alcohol cravings. At a moment like that I can eat half a pound of meat, it feels like I am going berserk otherwise. This sounds silly but to me it is a sign from the body that it needs protein in order to convert the poisons.

Barbara sort of follows the Atkinson diet but makes it partially or fully vegetarian I believe. The detox is vegetarian – which I guess is a smart thing to do specifically when you live in the USA where farmers are allowed to put hormones in meat. One way or the other, I will use her advice to build my own detox schedule. In all her video lessons she drops sentences here and there, I have written them down in draft, by the time I get to it I will put it in my blog as well. Don’t wait for me though 🙂

DO LIKE

Somewhere she has a comparison on what to eat when eating healthy and she takes it from the bible. Again, I am not religious but I found that fascinating because it is such ancient knowledge and it is so to the point. Not wanting to be arrogant here on thinking we now better than people did thousands of years ago. It is just fascinating. Cool. 🙂

DON’T LIKE

Her view on the acid-alkaline issue of the body seems one-sided. Liking Eric Berg’s more. And the start of her story on Salt and Water is a bit funny. She goes of my grid of ‘acceptable there’ with a few of her opinions. But don’t let that stop you because the rest is FASCINATING!

MY PLAN

This is quite a story but I am thinking there is truth in what they both say. I, for myself, have decided that I will (try to) follow this route:
1 Quit drinking (check!)
2 Become healthy using whatever natural medicine I can find – good food, Bach remedies, homeopathy, phythotherapy (herb teas), nutrients and Schuessler cell salts currently (doing so!) and get rid of the synthetic medicine I am taking. And I should introduce more fresh air, more exercise and yoga but as a good addict I (start with) take (ing) it in from the outside.
3 Quit sugar (not eating a lot now) and anything with additives.
4 Do a detox according to a mix from Barbara, Eric and my nutritionist
5 Continue a diet on a path that I have not set yet but is probably based on loads of veggies, fish, carbs only in the full grain version like brown rice, eco meat with moderation.

With step 2, getting healthy I mean that I e.g. need to get rid of the continuous diarrhea I had (check!), get rid of my high blood pressure with natural solutions (check! 130 over 80 measured today YEAH!!!! for the Schuessler cell salts 🙂  ), work out how I get my tongue back to a healthy colour and shape because the indents I have indicate mall nutrition (possibly due to alcohol or diarrhea?) or dehydration. I am still retaining water in my legs and I want to work on the too. Not wanting to bore you with my specific details but just give an impression of what level of detail I am thinking of – so getting rid of the tiny things that are indications of an error in the take up and let go.

GRAPHIC TEXT ON POOING

List of let go errors: diarrhea, not being able to go, slimy stuff coming with, itchy anus, floating deposits, smelling results are ok, foul-smelling results that offend the nose are not. Baby poo is normally non-offensive when they are only being breastfed because that is what is good for them. Adult poo should not smell offensive either, that is a sign of things not working well or the diet containing stuff that is not processing well like a combination of (under) cooked beans and meat, that takes too long to digest so it starts to rot. The ideal ‘turd’ should be firm but not hard, let go easily, not float, not smell offensive, be darkish brown in colour, should NOT make you have to wipe a lot – almost nothing, and should not leave marks in the toilet.

Marks in the toilet means that there is unprocessed fat in your stool. As far as I know that is a bile issue (too little bile or not getting out of the bile bladder because of stones). I am drinking tea that supports the bile making in the liver – ha, yes, that would be an organ that could do with a little support… The tea seems to be working. I don’t think that I will lose weight easier when I am low on bile and not processing it because not processing fat only makes my body crave for it. And that is worse. Also, when the fat is not processed or not correctly, I would assume that the fat soluble vitamins are not processed either. And that is not good.

ON CRAVINGS

Cravings mainly indicate that your body lacks nutrients. Google on ‘cravings + meaning’ to find out what you are missing. Chocolate means that you miss Magnesium. I have taken Magnesium in the Schuessler cell salt versions and I think it works. I am not there yet but when I eat chocolate now it is sufficient to eat a few small pieces. I don’t need half of the bar. Check out this site if you want to go deeper in the salts and the medical side.

Also: I am guessing that after years of drinking and/or eating junk food (including cookies, sweets, chocolate, drinking soda’s with or without sugar) our bodies are a little out of sync so they might yearn for bad food anyhow. I find that the further I get, the less I yearn and crave for bad things. Having said that: I come from a background where we cook when at home, nothing intelligent, meat and 3 vegs or so, but still. Home cooked. See what Jamie has to say on that on Ted about home cooking and the lack there off. Did you know that since 2011 something more people die of obesity and bad choice in nutrients than die of hunger?

Craving sugar: that’s nasty. But I will again, try to get rid of the added sugars and most of the fruit sugars in my food because they are bad, cause diabetes, make me feel bad, and stimulate cravings for alcohol.

ON EXCERCISE

Check out what Barbara and Eric say on this, they promote the interval training thing with 3 minutes of extreme exercise like jumping 1 or 2 steps of a stair. And 10 minutes rest or so. That’s how the body works best. Proven. 😉

Also: exercise helps kidneys and liver and lymphen thingies to work bad stuff out of the body through the movement of the muscles – more a mechanical process than a chemical one. And it brings blood and oxygen into the corners of the body. Specifically those funny twist in yoga are meant to clean.

ON SALT FOR THE KITCHEN

There is a big discussion on salts momentarily. Barbara explains it well and she swears by Celtic Salt or Himalayan salt. However, there are other people, like my brother, that say: those unrefined salts can contain e.g. Bromide. And that is poisonous. I don’t know the truth.

ON LEARNING ABOUT FOOD

When you are looking for info on the internet try googling different versions. ‘Celtic Salt good for health’ gives different results than ‘Celtic Salt’ or ‘Celtic Salt bad for health’. On anything you learn you might want to check things out.

FINALLY

I hope you found this interesting reading. Please note that I am not a doctor or nutritionist and all I know comes from the internet. I hope it gives you some info or insight in things. Well, I found all of this hard to come by because there is so much nonsense too – so I am sharing it here. That is because I assume it is not nonsense. Disclaimer, disclaimer. Maybe it will proof to be in the future. Please drop me a comment here if you think I’ve been misinformed. Please also add links, movies, books that you would like to share.

Do remember: the path is the destination. I freaked out when all this info got to me but I just do what I can do easily. Not more. NO BERATING. I have this addicty ‘I want it all and I want it now’ behaviour, that does not suffice here. I decided to do: First no drink, stabelize, contine with health, stabelize… etc. I feel I have only one chance at getting sober and becoming healthy, getting myself on a good path. This is it. Thoroughly building a new life.

Hope this post brings you something. Again, comments, additions, book references, please drop them below. Only Potassium seems to have 1500 different functions in the body so getting to know stuff about food and the body is a path – never a destination.

If all of this turns you crazy: eat what the chimpanzees do. Stick to ecological food only, loads of veggies, home cooking only, 2-3 days without meat per week, no additives, no sugar, low on dairy. Loads of playing in the bush. And you’ll be fine 😉 That is a joke, but it is kind of true as well. 😀

Hope you liked it, Feeling.