Hello, all!

I thought I'd stop lurking as a part of my commitment to my new lifestyle.

Like a lot of you, I've been struggling with my weight forever. Diets were my obsession and the worst thing for me. I'd commit super strongly and eat strictly for a couple of months, lose 20 lbs, eventually binge when we had pizza/ice cream/whatever the excuse of the month was at work and regain 30. At my lowest moment, I even tried that controversial low calorie, high protein diet for two weeks until I realized how stupid that was and that even being thin wasn't worth losing my hair and permanently damaging all of my organs (to make it worse, I have a severely anorexic sister and have seen for myself what that kind of diet does to a person). I went through this cycle again and again until I went from an overweight but manageable 165 lbs to 215 (at least). At that point I just gave up and decided I was consigned to being the "fat girl" for the rest of my life and just decided to deal with it.

Somehow this winter that thinking started to change. I decided to no longer be in a super-huge hurry. I just made small gradual changes - I still ate junk food, but less. I got on the treadmill a few days a week. Just doing that I lost a few pounds by the end of the semester. This summer I took advantage of the cooler weather and started walking more until I now do 3.5-5 miles/day. I slowly cut more and more junk food out of my diet until I removed it entirely. I don't even want it anymore, though on the rare occasion I want ice cream I'm perfectly happy to let myself have some. I realized I should have been listening to my mother all along--who told me years ago that small changes over time was the key to success.

Recently, I decided to eat mainly vegetarian. Part of the reason I always failed on diets before is because I hate cooking chicken. Somehow it never occurred to me that living on chicken breasts is not actually required and there wasn't some diet police that would show up if I didn't eat plain chicken + spinach every day for dinner. This is what my diet generally looks like:

Breakfast
1 cup Protein Special K + 1/4 cup 1% milk

Snack
1/2 Thomas Whole Wheat Pita + 2T hummus, 3/4 cup spinach, sprouts and 2 cucumber slices
15 peanuts

Lunch
1/2 Pita with same fillings as snack
Penne Pasta (my recipe is essentially the same as the one in our recipe section except I use entirely grapeseed oil instead of margarine and I use Barilla Plus pasta, plus I divide it into 6 servings).
10 carrot sticks

Snack
Banana

Dinner
Kale with Cannelenni Beans (I cook 1 small onion + rosemary and 2 garlic cloves in 2 T olive oil until really soft and then add 1/2 cup white wine, boil down until thick, then add 1 can beans + 1 1/2 lbs Kale or Swiss Chard that I ribbed and boiled for 7-10 minutes). Each serving is 1/4 of that.
2 T Parmesan cheese
1 slice Wegman's Organic Multigrain bread (about 130 calories)

Recently I realized the importance of really reading labels. I thought my hummus was twice the calories it was and couldn't figure out why I was dizzy all the time. Well, when I re-calculated everything I was coming in at barely 1200 instead of the 14-1500 I'd planned on. So I added the peanuts and multigrain bread and surprise, the dizziness went away.

I'm pretty happy with this diet except I want to add more nutrient dense fruit. So tomorrow I'll go to the farmer's market and see what berries they have. I'm considering switching out the peanuts for edamame if I can find some in my tiny town. At school I'll make my own bread and pitas but I'm presently staying at a research station and our kitchen has few pans and only a 1 cup measuring cup + a 1 Tablespoon measure.

Hi Michelle. Welcome to 3FC.

Seems like you got a pretty good plan and I wish you all the success in the world.

Hugs
Michelle

Sounds like you have a good plan and are figuring out what works for you!

I just tried a bag of frozen edamame (in the pods) and it was surprisingly good. It doesn't have quite the *snap* that the fresh stuff at the Japanese place does, but once you get over that, the actual taste of the edamame is just fine. So I'd give that a shot if you haven't already!

Oh, and WELCOME!

Welcome!

Looks like you have a great plan. I <3 calorie counting because I CAN eat ice cream or chips or something if I want to. I just record the calories and stay within my limit - yay!

Welcome!!

Well, I'm back to being a bit confused. After lunch I started to get dizzy again despite upping my calories. It got worse after I ate my banana and had some water. Drinking water in general makes it a lot worse. It was bad enough that I had to concentrate just on keeping my head vertical.

I decided to get a turkey sub to see if that helped things. It did, dramatically. I felt fine within 1/2 hour of dinner. I also had a medium diet coke with dinner. I've been trying to ween myself off of the diet coke, but I wondered if some kind of withdrawal from that was the cause. So now I don't know if I just need to up my calories again (the sub was a good 200 calories more than I generally eat for dinner), eat at least one portion of meat a day, add more fat or protein or what. I know from experience I can't up my calories much above 1500 and still lose.

I bought some whole wheat English muffins. I'll try eating one with peanut butter for my morning snack and see how that goes. I might switch to crackers and cheese for the afternoon and cut the bread with dinner. Since the banana by itself made me the sickest I think any pure-carb snack is a bad idea.

Hi Michelle2,

I know you're trying to stick to Vegetarian but maybe your body needs a bit more protein.. Can you add some tofu, eggs, maybe some turkey? I wouldn't up your calories I would just up your protein intake. As far as your banana situation....what about putting some almond butter the whole wheat muffins with banana on top. Food combining makes a difference. Always having a protein source, a little fat and a carb together. See if that helps!

I totally agree on the dizzy/protein factor. Looking at your sample menu you have VERY little protein in your diet. If you are dead set on being a vegetarian, that is great, but you need some good protein sub. Nuts, soy or some other protein replacement. Good luck, and congrats on your success so far!

I'm not actually that low on protein. I'm certainly getting more than my pre-diet self who pretty much lived on bread and fat. Today, for example, my meat-free menu will have 75g. That's with peanut-butter + whole wheat muffin, but even without that I was getting 70g on the days before that. That really ought to be plenty considering I'm neither pregnant nor weight-training. I'm not foreclosing the possibility and I do, sincerely, thank you for the advice. It's just, most of the research I read of late suggests that protein recommendations are probably high and that unsaturated fat has more of a role in insulin metabolism than previously thought.

I think food combining might be the issue, though I'm not exactly certain. It might still be too low calories as well - or at least too few early in the day. This morning when I got up I felt great. Then I ate my bowl of Protein Special K (with 13 g of protein in the amount I ate) and felt abysmal 15 minutes later. I dragged myself to work, ate my English muffin and peanut butter and felt fine within 10 minutes. I'm still fine. Tentatively, I think I just need to make sure I get protein, carbs and fat in every meal. Plus I think I might be reacting badly to the Special K. Thinking back to when I first switched to pure Vegetarian, I was eating Total for breakfast and bean quesadillas for dinner. The quesadillas had significantly more fat than recipes like the beans and kale. My blood sugar got a little low late in the afternoon because of my improperly calculated calorie intake I think, but I didn't have this dizziness. At that point my protein intake was probably too low--60g or so--and while I saw an impact on energy it didn't give me vertigo.

I'll try to pick a few more protein sources, since people think that's the key. I could try adding more protein heavier veggies like broccoli. I'm trying to cut out processed meats like deli items in particular, but if that's what's necessary, I suppose that's what I'll eat.

Well, I think it was just that my calories were too low, combined with the fact that I'm almost certain I have some kind of bad reaction to the Special K. I decided to eat the last of my black beans, a little cheese and some salsa for breakfast instead. Roughly the same amount of protein with just a little more calories than my usual breakfast and I didn't have the instant dizziness.

Yesterday I decided to up my calories to 1600 because even though the dizziness went away I was still feeling somewhat energy-free. Plus, I'd been feeling really panicked about upping my calories, which wasn't a good emotion to indulge, so I wanted to cut that type of thinking in the bud. I had tons more energy and was able to go for my walk, something I hadn't felt up to in days. I kept it to 2 miles instead of the usual 3.5+, but I got through that in 30 minutes, which is a fast speed for me. I figure if raising my calories allows me the energy to get my exercise in, that's a better choice than lower calories without exercise, even if my calorie deficit is less.

Though, weight-wise it seems to have worked out. I was down to 197.6 this morning after being back up to 202 yesterday. My bottom line goal for the summer (i.e. before I go back to school on August 15) was to get below 195 as that would represent a 20 lb loss, so it seems even with a slightly slower loss rate I should be able to get there in 4 weeks.

im a vegetarian too and if you like fage 0% greek yogurt it is a life saver, it has more protein than a can of tuna!! and its delicious, especially with raw grapes thrown in. hope that helps