SD Blogger

OK, so I didn’t make my pre-vacation goal, I only got down to 253. But the good news is that despite not exercising much for two weeks and going off SLD for about a week and then spending 5 days in New Mexico, I didn’t gain anything either. It was surprising to me because I love the food there and often felt extremely full, like I was overeating After a few days I realized I wasn’t actually eating that much. I’d skip breakfast, order a lunch that I couldn’t finish and then feel stuffed until about 7. Same story with dinner; I’d order something and not come close to finishing it. Much like Seth Roberts’ Paris vacation I found myself wanting to eat more but just not able to.

Now that I’m back home I’m switching back to ELOO. The walnut oil went down easier but didn’t have the pronounced appetite suppresion I had with ELOO. I thought it didn’t have much effect at all until I realized I wasn’t able to finish any meals. So for me I give walnut oil a D for appetite suppresion and a B for satiety. ELOO was previously a B in both categories for me so I’ll try it again. I’m taking 3 Tbsp every night before bed.

One thing I’ve learned from my continued struggles is that the Shangri La Diet is no panacea for weight loss. Despite the claims of some people that they simply lost the desire to eat I’ve had a hard time staying on the plan. I think my difficulties are entirely psychological and I have a pretty good idea of why.

I’m going to continue with SLD and continue blogging here. Somehow knowing that I have to report my results makes me feel obligated to stick with the plan.

Thanks to commenter Cliff for getting me hip to Edit Grid, a fantastic online spreadsheet. It has some very cool features that Google is lacking, namely the ability to create graphs and embed them in your blog! The above graph tracks my weight against my target and should reflect any changes I make at the Edit Grid spreadsheet.

I’ve found Google Spreadsheets to be a nice tool for weight tracking.  It’s free and you can access your data from any computer.  When I weigh myself in the morning I can wait until I get to work before entering the data.  Then on my days off I can access the same spreadsheet at home.  I keep track of the day, weight and BMI.  I’ll also add a 5 day trend line once I get a little more movement.  The only thing it seems to be missing is graphing capability but I can easily copy the data into Excel when I need that.

I have a vacation planned for October 17: 5 days in New Mexico.  That gives me a nice short term goal:  I want to get my BMI under 30 by the 17th, which means I need to get down to 245 pounds.  This morning I was at 253.8.  9 pounds in 13 days seems a little drastic but I’m not going to kill myself getting there.  If I’m vigilant about food and exercise I should at least make some progress towards that goal.

It’s been a week since my last post so here are my observations:

It took about 4 days for the SLD effect to start kicking in. I first noticed it after eating a fairly light dinner and feeling satisfied, if not full.  For the rest of the night I kept thinking of the two molasses cookies I had in the fridge and how I’d like to eat them but I just couldn’t muster up enough desire to actually get up and eat them.  It actually would have required more effort eat them than it did to avoid them.

Since then I’ve noticed a gradual lessening of hunger between meals and feeling more full after relatively less food.  I went to a ballgame today (damn Padres lost!) and ate a slice of pizza with lemonade and felt pretty full for several hours.  Dinner at 6 was pasta, which I couldn’t finish, and now at 10 I’m still feeling stuffed.  More importantly I think I’m getting over the psychological need to eat snacks, like a cookie or ice cream.

Tomorrow is my first day back to work since the SLD effect came back.  It’ll be interesting to see how it holds up to all the fast food temptations I get at lunch time.

I haven’t stuck to my exercise plan but at least I had a few days of activity.  I need to step it up in that department.

I’ve also upped the walnut oil to 3 Tbsp, trying to jumpstart the SLD effect.  The walnut oil is still less greasy than the olive oil and goes down easier.

I’ve also noticed I sleep better lately.  I tend to sleep soundly right up until my alarm goes off, rather than waking a few hours early and drifting in and out.  I think it’s getting me more REM sleep because I’m feeling refreshed when I wake up.  I think that’s due to the Omega 3s in the walnut oil and the flax seed oil in my morning shakes.

Oh yeah, my weight.  I finally started losing weight 3 days ago.  I’m down to 254.4.  It’s a start anyway.