Clothing goal attained

I quote me on July 8:

I have this absolutely gorgeous black and dark-green satin chongsam, embroidered all over, that dates back from the 80s... I can't even remember how my ex and I acquired it, but I think I only wore it a few times before I got too big to.  I just tried it on now.  Three months ago I couldn't even have got my shoulders into it; now I can, but it's still too small around the middle.

But I will wear it. I am certain of that.

Ta da!

Oct. 16, 2012 - down 83 lbs.

I am standing in my kitchen where I do all my cooking.  For instance:

IP Masala Tomato Basil Soup

I’ve been on a serious Clubhouse Indian Masala kick lately.  That’s another one of these packaged seasonings made by Clubhouse that I’ve been experimenting with.  They are high-quality in my opinion, even if you can get them at your average supermarket.  The first one I tried was the Greek mix much used by Melissa and Marv—a good sign of things to come.

Anyway, this soup came about when I wondered how the  Indian Masala spice mix would go with IP Tomato Basil soup.  It involves three pans, a lot of garlic, daikon for texture and the trick of adding uncooked onion at the last minute.

1 package IP Tomato Basil Soup, mixed as usual

1 bulb garlic

1 tsp olive oil

Zucchini        \

Daikon             --- chopped, 2 cups

Red pepper

Sweet onion   /

Black pepper to taste

½ tsp curry powder

2 tsp Clubhouse Indian Masala

1 tsp minced garlic

1 tbsp low-carb chicken stock

Steam/boil cauliflower to tenderness.  Divide the bulb of garlic into cloves without removing skins from cloves, scorch in dry frying pan at medium high until they have black patches on all sides.  Saute the other veggies except the onion in the  oil at medium low, adding black pepper, curry powder and masala. When they’re tenderish, add chicken stock and minced garlic.  Take garlic cloves off heat.  Drain cauliflower, add to other veggies.  Turn down to low, add soup.  Peel garlic cloves while soup is heating, add to mix.  Serve into soup bowl, add onions, mix and serve.

If the whole bulb of garlic is too much for you, omit and replace with more daikon, mushrooms, etc.  You can also cut back on the sweet onion so it’s just a soupçon.  This was a total bowl-licker for me and you’re talking to a woman who has always hated tomato soup.

Non IP version: use canned tomato soup and add some basil.  I think.  Can’t try it yet.

How cool is this?  Not only am I going to come away from this diet 100 lbs. lighter, but with a bunch of new recipes. 

Hitting difficulty (Day 159)

Sept. 11, 2012.  Triumphal picture after the Muskoka Novel Marathon raised a record-smashing $15K.  One or two people who saw this shot said they couldn't spot me at first.  Of course, they were trying to spot me by my former girth.  But it no longer stands out.  The three left-most folks are all YMCA staff, including the amazing Nancy West, third from left.  Beside me is my awesome co-convenor, Paula Boon.

This post is the difficult one I promised I'd write ages ago.  But it was mostly written early September.

As of now I am down 70 lbs. (Sorry it's seeming to go backwards.)

I am more inclined to enhance my appearance in other ways, too. I've been very blessed with hand-me-down clothes from a couple of dieting friends, and have made the most of that.  (It helps that Melissa's sense of style is similar to mine.)  I've started using a curl-enhancing product on my hair, and decided to let it keep growing longer to make up for the thinning on top.  I am more likely to pose attractively now.  I wear more jewellery.  Trying to look good no longer seems utterly futile.

I'm in the endgame now, the reward after paying the dues... where five pounds more loss is much more noticeable because it's a bigger portion of what extra fat is left, where muscles and bones that were hidden under fat are emerging, both to sight and to touch.  I rub my hands together because they feel bonier and more tendony.  I palpate my own arms because the biceps are so much easier to feel.  I lay my hand inadvertently on a thigh, feel the muscle and am amazed.

The reactions are going from merely encouraging to astounded.  Before, people would say, "That's great, good for you, keep going!"  Now they say "That's incredible, you look fantastic, you're a transformed person!"  I'm getting more used to the slender version of me in the mirror; I changed my build description on OKCupid from "curvy" to "average."  (I figure average is carrying a bit of extra weight.)

Another common response is "You're disappearing" or "You're wasting away!"  I think there's even a little fear around this one.  I purposely came up with a line to answer it: "It's okay, the parts that count will stick around... the mind... the heart... the bones..."  It works.  They usually do a big laugh and are reassured.

I've even had a person or two tell me I should stop now because I've lost enough.  I generally say "to heck with that!  I want to look like"--pointing at very svelte person--"her."

That sometimes gets a bit of a shocked, even almost offended, reaction.  As if I'm not entitled to be that slender, for some reason.

"Oh yes," Jane (whose other job didn't work out, so she came back to MediSpa) says knowingly, when I tell her about it.  "People will get jealous."

"Don't get jealous!" I want to tell such people.  "Just do it yourself!  Holy crap, why envy when there's an opportunity like this--just grab it!"

But the worst fight is always with ourselves.

First thing I noticed was increased hunger, and stronger urges to cheat.  A kind of rebellion against the regimen, it seemed like... telling myself, I can afford more microcheats!  I stopped using the book for a while... you recall in the last post I mentioned I'd stopped updating it daily.  I left off using it all for a couple of weeks.  Then started again... then stopped, and think it's okay not to use it now.

I was hit with a depression, at least by my current standards (by my previous standards I'd have called it "normal life."  I've figured out ways to make myself happier since then.  The diet is only part of what I have done to transform my life.)  Insomnia again (I have the wake-up-too-early kind, 3 or 4 a.m.), a lot of anxiety and guilt and anger and desire not to work.

Then there was a party, and everyone else was drinking wine... I was having more fatty meats during the week... probably I cheated every day.  The scale hit me with a big fat zero that week... I actually thought I'd sort of got away with it all, in that I hadn't gained.  But none of this was where I wanted to go.  At the beginning I'd planned to lose 5 lbs. a week... but I never quite got that, in truth.  And now I felt I was slowing down.

To find out for sure, I averaged the first 10 weeks, not counting the amazing first water-shedding week (Apr 13-June 22), then the last 10 but one (June 20-Aug 30).  First 10 I lost 3.1 lbs. per week... low but still within the "3-5 lbs. on average" the IP folks promise.  But the second 10, it was only 2.3 per week.

I hit a kind of crisis point emotionally yesterday... almost blowing up at an editor for trying to assign me too many stories, feeling like my life was going off the rails.  I had to take care of myself... needed a good talk with my spirit guides.  If you want to know more about them see here.  I didn't know what was wrong.  If you know how to listen, you can get that which is eternal--your wiser or higher self, some might say--to tell you.

I just call them spirit guides, and they told me:

"Physical attractiveness is an emotional minefield for you. What you’ve done is put your physical attractiveness through the roof.  Part of what is bothering you is resistance to that.  This is why you were cheating last week… you felt like you were hurtling and wanted to stop it for a bit."  (I wouldn't call 2.3 lbs. per week hurtling... well, okay, maybe I would.  I'm used to the standards of other diets.)

Changing this much is confronting.  To other people, yes; but the worst fight is with ourselves.  Just as some others feel at some level that it is not appropriate to me, I feel that myself. I meant to write a "my psychology of fat" blogpost... you'll see it's still there, under construction.  I am glad now that I didn't write it, because I didn't fully understand my own psychology of fat as I do now.

More on this later.

And of course, a recipe.  I thought... broccoli-cheese soup... what goes with broccoli and cheese?  Tomatoes, of course. What spice tastes like tomatoes?  Paprika.  It worked...

Asparagus Paprika Broccoli & Cheese Soup

1 packet IP Broccoli & Cheese Soup, mixed as usual
1 tsp paprika
Asparagus, chopped coarsely                   \  ____ 2 cups
Assorted mushrooms, chopped coarsely  /
¼ cup low-carb chicken stock
1 tsp chopped garlic
½ tbsp facon bits  (fake bacon, that is)
2 slices onion, chopped finely
Sea salt & pepper to taste

Include the paprika when you’re mixing the soup.  (I actually include the salt & pepper too, but that’s because I know how much I’ll like.)  Heat a fry pan up to medium high, sear the asparagus and mushrooms until asparagus is bright green and a little scorched.  Turn down heat to about medium, add chicken stock (step back when you do this).  Idea here is mostly to cool down the pan.  Add garlic, cook for a bit, add facon bits (don’t forget to add their carb content to your count), turn down heat to medium low and add soup, stirring thoroughly.  Add chopped onion (remember, it’s a cheat to cook it; you’re just heating it up a bit.)  Season with salt & pepper and serve.

--

IP Compliant Souvlaki Chicken Soup (Day... um... 150 or so?)

Okay, before you ask what I’ve been smoking (which I could, because weed is zero-zero-zero and therefore the IP diet doesn’t prohibit it), a little education on what creates that delicious souvlaki flavour.  The secret is to combine the flavour of meat—which by Greek tradition can be chicken, lamb, beef or pork, they all work—with four seasonings: olive oil, garlic, oregano and lemon, and create the grilled flavour also.

Before I get to that... I am down 74 lbs. as of last Monday, meaning it's probably more like 76 or 77 now.  I've started a longish blogpost about hitting an emotional wall with it, which I kind of did, which I will post, I guess, when I'm ready to.  There are more things I've learned:

1) If you microcheat too much, more like mesocheat, not even megacheat, the scale will smack you.

2) Smoked turkey thigh fried with no oil but a little piri piri seasoning is really good.

3) As long as their shells are unbroken, eggs last way way longer than I thought they would.  (I don't eat them because I always want meat for dinner, but my sons do, so I have to have some in the fridge, but they rarely do.)

3) enough that I can now do a quite delicious veggie soup for lunch every time, so I've started to look forward to what previously was my least favourite meal in Phase I.

So I'll get to hitting the wall and so forth in a subsequent post.  This one is about a complete Phase 1 lunch entitled:

IP Compliant Souvlaki Chicken Soup

1 package IP chicken-flavoured soup, mixed in your shaker as usual

Enough diced green peppers, red peppers, mushrooms, zucchini and green onions to make 2 cups (though I want to try it with all mushrooms and eggplant one of these days…tomato would be nice too.)

2 tsp olive oil (maxed for the day!)

2 tbsp low-carb chicken stock

3 tbsp chopped garlic

1 tbsp good Greek oregano (I have Krinos)

1 tbsp lemon juice (if this seems like too much, add it gradually.  First attempt at this, I added way too much lemon juice…. ecccchhhh.)

Sea salt and pepper to taste

Scorch the vegetables in the olive oil until browned (hence the grilled flavour).  Lower the heat, cool the pan with chicken stock, add pepper, garlic and oregano, cook stirring until garlic is cooked.  Add soup and lemon juice then salt to taste (I use none because there’s enough for me in the soup), heat up to eating-hot and serve.  Another bowl-licker.

Oh and here's a pic.  Me at the Muskoka Novel Marathon Wrap-up Party, Sept. 22:

Sept. 22, 2012 - down 74 lbs.

 

--

Swimming (Day 123)

(The fact that it's Day 123 was calculated after catching up on my journal.  I am very bad... I have gotten out of the habit of journalling meal by meal or even day by day.  The journal I originally needed as a checklist to make sure I was doing everything necessary--it has check boxes for all the supplements, 10 8-oz amounts of water, etc., plus blanks to fill in your meals and add up your carb count.  But now I am so much in the routine of the diet I could do it in my sleep, no checklist needed, so I get a little... negligent.)

In fact I've been bad other ways this week, and have a feeling I'll pay for it on weigh-in day.  I've crept a little into Phase Two by having meat with lunch a couple of times this week, basically because my fridge was on the fritz and it was going to go bad otherwise.  Then there was the veggie curry Thai dish I had for lunch yesterday, coconut-milk based.  I don't need my coaches to tell me that was a no-no... my tastebuds know full well, the guilty little demons.

I'm being very good for the rest of this week.

But what I really came here to write about was swimming, something I have always loved to do.  I like to do it in freshwater lakes and rivers, not chlorine-infested pools, so it is pretty much a summer activity, though I start earlier than most people.  This year it was during the March Break heat wave; the ice was melted back from the shore enough that I could get most of myself immersed if I sat down.  Then over April, May and June, Lake of Bays warmed up nicely and is now at its very pleasant summer temperature.  And I've been wondering, with all this fat loss (62 lbs. as of Aug. 5) ...would I notice a difference?

In case you don't know, the higher your body fat content, the more buoyant you are, because fat is lighter than water.  (See here for Lynn Johnston's take on it.)  Over the years as I've gained weight, I've noticed it getting easier to stay afloat.  When I was a kid, I had to do the eggbeater kick or scull constantly, usually alternating, to tread water, whereas in recent summers I've just had to scull, and not very hard.  So this summer I've expected a sudden reversal, akin to the one time I went swimming when I was about eight months pregnant, and freaked myself out in the deep end by how much my body wanted to sink (I hadn't been swimming since very early in the pregnancy).

Tell the truth, it's been nothing like that, probably because it's been more gradual.  I hardly noticed anything at first.  I think what happened was... well, two things.  First, I don't tread water all that much; I'm usually moving, most often doing breast-stroke.  Second, I think my body has just automatically kicked into swimming more like I used to when I weighed less, and it's still familiar, so it doesn't feel that different.

However, yesterday, I decided purposely to try treading water.  Sure enough, I have to alternate between kicking eggbeater style and fast sculling to stay up, again.

The other clear difference I notice is that when I swim underwater, which I dearly love to do, it is much easier to stay down.  If I were a scuba-diver, I'd need fewer belt-weights.  So I'm more likely to go longer distances, as I'm expending less energy pointing and pulling myself downwards.  I think I'm also more aquadynamic, displacing less water as I move through it so that it takes less energy to go further, faster.

I feel more sleek, more like a dolphin than a whale.  Like everything else with this diet, it's a good feeling.

And this would hardly be a proper Ideal Protein Days blogpost without a recipe, so...

Thai Tomato Basil Soup

Meh, this is so simple it doesn't even need a formal recipe.  Just cook your veggies--I did it with asparagus but I think it would work with any except zucchini or brussels sprouts--in low-C chicken stock, pepper and chopped garlic, combine with the soup and add Clubhouse Thai seasoning to taste (in my case it must have been a tablespoon).  This was another bowl-licker for me.  You'd never guess a protein packet was involved.

--

And I thought *my* weight-loss was impressive (Day 114)

At this point, I am down 58 lbs. total and can no longer wear any of my existing pairs of pants without either a belt or a clip in the case of elastic waists.  Else they're down around my ankles.  Which is a fashion statement of a kind, of course, but one I prefer not to state.  One of these days, I'm going to get some pictures onto this blog, as I am less ashamed of what I look like, now.  I was hesitant to post a "before" picture out of shame but now the sting is out of the shame. Done!

I do look back, unfortunately, with a certain amount of disgust.  As I said, it's in our culture.

I feel lighter on my feet--I'm always feeling lighter, and still lighter, and then lighter again, on my feet--plus more physically capable and inclined.  I handle better, especially on corners.  Walking feels different in a way that's hard to describe... almost not quite right, like I'm not sure where my balance is, though I'm not staggering.  Or maybe it's disorientingly easy.  It's really nice not having my inner thighs rubbing together.

I also handle heat better. Just now I remembered that the forecast high today is 29 (Celsius), so I checked the temperature out of curiousity (it's about 1 p.m., close to when we usually hit the high) and found it was 28.  I was like, "No way!  There is no way it is that hot!"  I would have guessed maybe 23 or 24, and was wondering whether the forecast was wrong.

In previous recent summers, I would have been very uncomfortable, brain-fried and unable to work without a big-ass fan trained on me (or fleeing inside into the A/C) with my feet swollen up so much they almost hurt.  Whatever the physiological reason is for heavy people finding heat hard to handle, it no longer applies to me, or at least not to the same degree.  The real test will be when I go to Cuba in November.  Rico rico!

Another difference: on hot days, I still go for fairly frequent swims.  I no longer wear sandals for the walk from the gravelled parking lot to the beach, however; I go barefoot.  This is because with 58 fewer pounds pressing my soles into the stones, it doesn't really hurt any more.  There's a sense of freedom to it, like when I was a kid and went everywhere barefoot in summer.

These changes are all amazing and wonderful, but they pale in comparison to what another person I know of must be experiencing.

Last weigh-in, my coach told me that Medispa's Ideal Protein customers, over the year and a half they've been offering the program, have collectively lost more than 8,000 lbs.  I had vague notions of being the champion, once I've lost the whole 100 lbs, but she let me know I'm not even close.  They have a female client who has lost 180.

Can you imagine that?  How different must she look and feel!  How must her life have changed!  I try to imagine losing three times what I have, and I can't even do it.  I asked the coach how she feels emotionally: "Giddy."  I bet!

As you probably know, I am a freelance journalist, and hearing this of course pinged my newsy's antennae.  180 lbs. is definitely newspaper-worthy, imo, so long as the client is willing to be so open publicly about it.  I have emailed my editor with the idea, and if she likes it, I'll ask the coach to contact the client.  I really hope she says yes, and yes also to before-and-after pics.  They must be gob-smacking.  Stay tuned.

Meanwhile, in my kitchen adventures, I have begun to experiment with cooking vegetables in a very hot skillet, searing them to burned on the outside while only slightly done on the inside so as to get that carbonized, barbecue-ish flavour.  I once had a short-lived romance with a person who always used pans that were quite hot, and so learned this approach by observation.

This next soup may or may not work with your skillet at low medium; I don't know, I've only tried it this way.  It was also my first experiment with cooking daikon, which I think worked.


Mushroom Chicken Soup

1 packet IP Chicken Flavoured Soup, mixed in your shaker as usual
2 portabella mushrooms, diced
6-8 snow peas, cut into quarters
1 tablespoon diced daikon
2 tablespoons chopped red onions
1 tsp olive oil
sea salt, pepper and Greek-style spice mix to taste

Heat up the pan with the oil spread over the bottom at high medium until it starts smoking.  Throw in the onions, cook just long enough, stirring frequently, to turn their surfaces golden brown while they remain raw inside--remember, you're not supposed to have cooked onions, this is a micro-cheat--then remove them from the heat.  Throw in the rest of the veggies plus the pepper and Greek-style spice and cook, stirring frequently, until the veggies are partly burned on the surfaces.

Turn off the heat, wait until the pan cools way down and add the soup (you can't add it to a hot pan or it instantly curdles; I found this out the hard way).  Or, while you fry the veggies you can be gently heating up the soup in a different pot, then add the finished veggies to it.  Stir in the salt, if necessary (I personally rarely add salt to any IP soup-based dish), and serve.

The slightly-burned flavour is what makes it.  Next time I do this I think I might put in something like cayenne or nyonya or chili peppers to heat it up that way too, a nice burning foil to the crispy inner romaine lettuce leaves I'm nibbling with it.

Soupapalooza

IP Chicken Noodle Soup, mixed the usual way
zucchini slices         \
diced red pepper      --- 2 cups
diced mushrooms   /
1 tbsp chopped garlic
sea salt and pepper to taste

Saute the veggies to doneness of your preference, garlic just long enough to change taste, add soup, serve when heated.  Dead simple but it somehow really works... something about how the pepper's sweetness is a foil for the zucchini's tang and the mushrooms are just warm and meaty.  I liked this so much I scraped the bowl with my spoon.

(Note: I don't do things like scrape the bowl with my spoon because I'm on a diet.  I did that before I got on the diet.)

Cilantro Veggie Soup (Day (102)

According to shiatsu teachings, if you do something for 100 days, it becomes indelible habit.  I guess I am there with this diet, then, and consequently will hit my goal, shrink past it and ultimately starve to death.

No!  No I won't.  I will just always know how to do the diet.  I am in Phase One.  As you approach the goal you transition gradually to maintenance helpings of carbs and fats by going through Phases Two and Three.  Phase Four is maintenance.

Anyway, this past weekend was the Muskoka Novel Marathon, the organization of which I co-lead.  A whirlwind of busy-ness, between organizational co-leader duties and trying to write something worth submitting for judging... and a bit of a challenge, similar to travelling, in the IP sense.  I was very much helped by the fact that the Den Mother--whose purview is the care and feeding of the writers--happens also to be on the IP diet.  In fact when I was having moments of weakness--our sponsors were providing us things like creme brule and trifle--she scolded me into adherence, in her loving way.  "Don't even look, Karen!  Don't even look!"

In fact, between the two of us talking it up to the writers, and how we both look compared to last year's novel marathon (she has lost 25 lbs. in 5 weeks), I predict that 2-4 writers who were there will undertake the diet.  Stay tuned.

What, you want to know how I looked?  Well, all right.  To set this up: back when I was in my late 20s or early 30s and still reasonably svelte, my dear friend Louise Hypher tailored a shirt for me based on that which the main character of my published novels wears officially.  Of course it has not fit me for about two decades.  But before the Novel Marathon I decided to try it on, and--ha!--I can get into it.  So I wore it on the third and final day of the marathon, and fellow marathoner Lori Twining got a pic.  I was so much in la-la land I forgot to take off the phones.

July 16, 2012 - down 53 lbs.

Now, enjoy this Cilantro Veggie Soup:

1 packet IP Chicken Flavour Soup, shaken as usual

Bok choi ------
Red pepper        \ ___ 2 cups
Green onions      /
Mushrooms----

1 tsp olive oil
2 tbsp low-carb chicken stock
1 tsp chopped garlic
1 tbsp chopped cilantro
2 tsp lime juice
Fresh ground black pepper to taste

Heat up the oil, chicken stock and black pepper in a frying pan.  Chop veggies, cilantro and garlic and add.  Fry until veggies are done.  Add soup, stir in lime juice, serve.  Some cilantro leaves artistically arranged would be a nice garnish for this.  Non-IP version, substitute regular cream of chicken soup from a can, or home-made chicken stock with heavy cream.  Yes, this is one of mine.