A cruise and a book........

As I stated in this blog last month, I was on a cruise ship during November for the week of Thanksgiving. If you look at my weight information in the right sidebar, the weight on the 17^th was the morning we left for the cruise. The weight on the 26^th is the Monday morning after we returned.  Considering that it seems we spend half our time eating while on board a ship I don’t think a 3 pound gain is that bad. Furthermore, the 164 pound weight when we returned home is within my goal range.

On previous cruises, Deb has gotten a lot of special attention due to her gluten free diet. I thought OK; now that we have seen what they can do with a gluten free diet, let’s find out how well they handle a vegan diet.  When Deb made her trip to the maître d on day one to inform him of her dietary needs, I tagged along and after he assured her that they could handle her needs, I added that I was a vegan. They are used to preparing vegetarian meals; however, he knew a vegan consumes no animal products which is a bit tougher. He informed us to see him each day at our evening meal and he would provide the menus for the next day. We would then order our meals for the next day prepared in accordance with our needs.

I looked at the vegetarian offerings and then tried to figure out how to modify them to remove any animal products. I have to say they did an excellent job. There were a couple times when there was just no way to modify an appetizer or entree. I usually ended up with a fruit plate for the appetizer.  For the entree, the first time I was faced with this dilemma, I said to the maître d, could the chef maybe stir fry some veggies and throw in a little tofu? The result was fantastic and this became my default entree in the evening if no other options were available.

While cruising I was able to read a book that has been on my “too read” list for a while now. The book was written by John Robbins whose family is the Robbins part of the Baskin-Robbins ice cream business. The title is Diet …. For a New America. The title is a little misleading. This is not the type of diet book that offers a food plan to help the reader lose weight.

This book consists of 3 parts. Prior to part #1 is a quote attributed to Abraham Lincoln. It is “I care not much for a man’s religion whose dog and cat are not the better for it” A later quote by Gandhi is “The greatness of a nation can be judged by the way its animals are treated”. Part #1 of this book discusses in extensive detail the supply of food in the United States necessary to satisfy the standard American diet.  As you might imagine, part #1 of this book is difficult to read. There is information presented that I am sure the meat and dairy industries would prefer the typical American not be aware of.

Part #2 of the book is preceded by a quote attributed to Thomas Moffett in Helth’s Improvement, 1600 AD. Mr. Moffett reportedly wrote “Men dig their graves with their own teeth and die more by those fated instruments than the weapons of their enemies”.  This section of the book is also very detailed and discusses the effect on humans of the standard American diet. Part #2 also has a lot of information about how special interest groups influence food policy in the United States and conspire to control the information that reaches the public.

The 3^rd part of the book is about the effect on our planet that results from supplying food for the standard American diet. In this section of the book a Pennsylvania Dutch saying is quoted “We don’t inherit the land from our ancestors, we borrow it from our children”. I have to say that the information presented in this section of the book is so grave that I noticed a depressive mood fall over me.

Would I recommend this book? Yes, those that have an interest in learning more about the food supply in this country and how it affects our bodies and the planet would likely find this a fascinating read. The copy of this book from my library that I read was published in 1987. I see on Amazon.com that a new edition is to be released this month.

  

  

Perception

November 8, 2012

Last month when I posted to this blog, my weight was 160.0 pounds.  As you can see in the sidebar to the right, my weight as of Monday was 163.2 pounds.

When I weighed myself this past Monday and found my weight to be up a pound from last week and 3 pounds higher than a month ago, I thought I could feel the extra 3 pounds.  I started thinking about how I perceive my body weight which I believe falls into the category of body image.  It seems odd to me that now at 163 pounds I feel that I need to lose weight and a year ago at a little over 180 pounds I thought my weight was pretty good.

I believe that part of the reason is that since my job ended in September I have not been getting my weight workouts. I think the regular weight lifting helps me feel strong and not focus on the extra "stuff" for lack of a better word, around my middle. I plan to get back to lifting weights as soon as possible.

In my post last month I indicated that I was taking Rip Esselstyn’s 28 day challenge and would be making an attempt to eat a gluten free, vegan with no oil diet over the next month.  I had blood drawn at the end of September to check levels of blood cholesterol and sugar which would be compared to similar tests done at the beginning of November. I also stated that I would be recording my food consumption in my Calorie King diary so I would know how many times I strayed from my food plan.

First off, since my weight was in my goal range I quickly abandoned recording my food consumption in Calorie King. My feel for my diet during this time period is that I stayed pretty close. I know there were a couple poor food decisions during the month and several other times that I either intentionally or unintentionally had a small amount of a food item I was trying to avoid. 

	5/24/2012	9/29/2012	11/5/2012
Total Cholesterol	161	161	149
LDL	90	77	73
Triglyceride	53	34	39
HDL	61	77	68
Glucose		88	87

So in the end, total cholesterol and LDL both went down and are in the range that Rip states makes one heart attack proof. However, Triglyceride went up and HDL went down which is the wrong direction for both of these markers to be moving.  I will say that I felt better eating primarily plant foods and that on the 2 occasions during the month that knowingly had a meal of animal foods, I felt worse and my digestion was much more sluggish.  While I don’t think I will become a zealot anytime soon and have no intention of giving up my wool socks like some vegans, I do intend to continue with primarily a plant based diet. 

I do want to share that I found a product during the past month that I think is wonderful and I have been using in place of salad dressing. I had been using regular balsamic vinegar on my salads and alone, it has a fairly strong flavor. This past month I switched to white balsamic vinegar. The flavor is milder and it is just fine alone with no oil.

So here we are through with Halloween but looking that big fat turkey straight in the eye.  My weight is now the highest it has been since August 27^th and the holiday eating season looms large. Plus, to kick off the holiday eating season, I will be on a cruise ship for 7 days the week of Thanksgiving. Clearly my challenge now is to get to 2013 within my goal range.  Stay tuned, I will post an update about a month from now.

 

OK, Rip, I'll take your challenge............

Tuesday, October 2^nd, 2012

I kind of hit a milestone number this month when my weight dipped below 160 pounds. Until this summer, the lowest I ever remember my weight to be was the 163 pound low that I reached while following the Weight Watchers program in my late 20’s. I am going to leave my goal range at 160 to 165 pounds for now and hope that I can replace body fat with muscle.

In my post last month I referenced The Engine 2 Diet book by Rip Esselstyn.  I finished the book and found it to be really well written with just enough technical information to be credible. Rip spells out his food plan as well as providing weekly planners and recipes before laying down his 28 day challenge.  In the 28 day challenge Rip encourages readers to follow his food plan for 28 days. His food plan is all plant based food and no oils. He encourages blood testing for cholesterol and blood sugar both before the 28 days and after to see the impact of a plant strong diet.

Rip states in his book a total cholesterol reading below 150 and an LDL reading below 80 tends to be the point at which one is heart attack proof.  Since my numbers were a little higher than that in May, I decided to take his challenge even though I do not want to lose any additional weight at this time. Rip’s suggestion is to eat more of the calorie dense foods on his plan such as nuts and avocados if ones weight drops below the desired range. I was able to obtain blood work orders from my doctor and had blood drawn for labs this past Saturday, September 29^th.

Below is a table showing the results of my most recent blood work in May compared to the results for the blood that was drawn this past Saturday.  Interestingly, total cholesterol remained the same, LDL and Triglyceride went down and HDL went up.  I think the change from May could reflect some of the dietary changes that I have made in the last few months.

	5/24/2012	9/29/2012
Total Cholesterol	161	161
LDL	90	77
Triglyceride	53	34
HDL	61	77
Glucose		88

My target food plan for this time frame will be gluten free vegan with no oil. Since I know there will be some deviations from the target plan, I have gone back to recording everything I eat in my Calorie King diary so I have a record of how many times I am consuming something not on my target plan. 

Hopefully I will be able to stay real close to my desired food plan for the month and will have some exciting news for next month’s post. Time will tell.

Regarding the tofu that I mentioned in last month’s post, the product we had in stock was actually Twin Oaks brand Italian Herb tofu. We ended up finding a recipe on the Twin Oaks website for Quick and Easy Italian Herb Tofu Ziti. Deb prepared this with gluten free pasta and we both thought it was excellent.

I also read this month about a practice called “de-aging” developed by Zen Master Kazuaki Tanahashi. My impression of what I read on this topic is that each moment we age or de-age based on our choices.  So I guess a simple explanation would be that healthy choices lead to de-aging and un-healthy choices lead to……. ah, let’s just not go there.:)

 

Laborless Day 2012

Here we are in September already. It seems like such a short time since I stood on the scales on January 1^st, 2012 and saw the 185 pound reading. My recent weight information is in the sidebar to the right and you can see it has been quite erratic. I will say that looking back on the weeks that showed increases I could easily figure out the reason for the increase.

I have written before of my interest in a plant based diet. I recently finished reading Forks over Knives: The Plant Based Way to Health. The knives referred to in the title of this book are ones belonging to surgeons. No doubt we all want to stay away from those.

Currently I am reading Vegan Bite By Bite by Marilyn Peterson.  The focus of this book is how to make the transition to a plant based diet. As the title implies, it is done bite by bite.  Marilyn comments early in the book that the transition will be easier if the entire kitchen or house hold is vegan. This caused a light bulb to go off for me because I realized that since Deb was diagnosed with Celiac disease in June 2008 our kitchen/household has been part gluten free and part not so much gluten free.  Based on this I have decided to make the switch to a gluten free diet.  I do think that, when dining out, if presented with the choice of an animal based gluten free meal and a plant based meal containing some gluten, I would opt for the latter.

Marilyn suggests that in the 1^st part of the transition to plant based foods one should merely start looking for plant based substitutes for the animal based products one already enjoys.  To this end, we tried SO Delicious Cultured Coconut Milk as a replacement for our daily yogurt this weekend. We started out with a flavored yogurt and added more fruit to it. While the consistency was a little soupier than the dairy based yogurt that we are used to, the flavor was fine. Next I will try the SO Delicious brand in an unflavored plain yogurt with added fruit and see if it will work for me long term.  We also have some vegan cheese and tofu to try. Not sure yet what to do with the tofu. Any suggestions?

Up next on my reading list is The Engine 2 Diet by Rip Esselstyn. Rip uses the term “plant strong” to describe his eating program.  I’ve had a sneak peak at Rip’s website so I am very anxious to get to this book. Hopefully I will be able to make some additional comments about the Engine 2 food plan when I weigh in at Fear No Scale around the 1^st of October.