Weigh In

Lost .2 pounds last week. Better than I expected given that I spent most of the week in my recliner with extreme fatigue. And today I feel worse than ever. I'm supposed to start feeling better when?

Hold the toast?

I went out to breakfast this morning, something I enjoy -- well, used to enjoy before food became fuel.

I nearly ordered a vegetable omelette with cheese. Horrors! I'm not allowed to eat processed cheese or most sliced cheeses. Whew! Caught that just in time.

Veggie omelettes need cheese. Otherwise, they're just eggs folded over barely cooked vegetables. Cheese holds it all together and makes it an omelette. I looked wistfully at the ketchup, but I'm not allowed to eat that either (it's the sugar).

To make up for the lack of cheese, I ordered a side of link sausage. Now I'm uncertain about whether I'm allowed to eat it. As long as there were no nitrates or nitrates in it, it should have been okay.

Then there was the challenge of the toast. As a good Weight Watchers member I thought about the toast ahead of time and decided I was going to allow myself to have some. So I ordered my omelette with whole-wheat toast. When my meal arrived I realized that I wouldn't be able to put any orange marmalade on it. Sigh. I ate half a slice, so I didn't fall too far off the wagon.

Fortunately, the conversation was way better than my dietary restrictions and I had a fine time.

Yowza!

I lost 2 pounds! I'm down a total of 19.8 pounds. I'm delighted, of course, but surprised because I expected to stay the same or maybe lose just a little bit.

In the past week I've had almost no exercise, except for bringing in wood for the woodstove and s l o w l y climbing the stairs at work as infrequently as possible.

The Atkins effect may be at work here (ketosis -- it's not a good thing) and if it is, I'm not happy about it.

Or maybe it's that I'm eating just for fuel. In the long run that may be a good thing. In the short run, though, I'm grieving for the time when I enjoyed meals.

Today in the bakery department I looked around and thought, "What if this diet works? What if it's what my body needs now? Will I never again be able to enjoy some crusty bread or take delight in baking?" I picked up the package of Kaiser rolls I had come to retrieve for Zaphod's sandwiches and turned toward the deli. No point in dwelling on the possibility of living with this diet forever because I'm not feeling better . . . yet.

Aw, Gee-eee

So I saw Dr. Sean today. No wait, I dragged my sorry butt in to see Dr. Sean today. Afterwards, I dragged my sorry butt home because I was too weak to work at the office.

Dr. Sean thinks my extreme fatigue is a "detox reaction." I'm intimately familiar with detox reactions because I have Lyme disease (I may always have Lyme disease, but that's a whole blog in itself and I'll let someone else tackle that one). The full name for a detox reaction is Jarisch-Herxheimer reaction, first noted by two dermatologists named Jarisch & Herxheimer (natch) when they saw how sick syphilis patients got when the antibiotics took hold. Dermatologists?

I presented my hypothesis that no, I wasn't "herxing" (as it's called by us Lymies) but instead I need grains. We sparred for a while -- no, that's not really fair to Dr. Sean; he's an agreeable young man (aarrggghhh! my doctor is a young man). We discussed the possibility for a while then turned to the results of the extensive blood tests I had in January.

OK, OK, so I caved. Well no, that's not exactly right, either. I've invested a lot in this protocol -- and I am talking dollars. I'm not the least bit invested in the diet or all the pills and oils I have to consume. The supplements, blood tests, doctor's visits, and groceries are significant costs. Oh, OK, the groceries aren't that bad.

I told the good doctor that I would commit to the protocol (which includes the Detoxx Diet) for another month. I'd melt my credit card and buy all the supplements I need to embrace the protocol completely. If I don't feel better after all of this, we'll move on to something else.

In the meantime, my weight loss may go on hold. Recall that the Detoxx Diet is a high-fat diet. I doubt that I can down all the fats I need to ingest and lose weight. If I start to feel better, though, I'll be able to get some exercise. My goal, then, is to maintain for the next month.

I'll continue to attend Weight Watchers meetings because I know that regardless of how the Detoxx Diet works for me, I'll never again have a metabolism that regulates my eating (ah, someday I'll wax nostalgic about my metabolic golden age, when my thyroid functioned to give me energy). I believe I'm always going to need the support those weekly meetings provide.

Is it an addiction if I need it?

I'm still thinking about carb cravings, so I've done some online research.

I love that the American Heart Association handles this so delicately:

Some experts think that people who crave carbohydrates have low serotonin levels. Others caution that these cravings may just be a learned response.

There's even a diet for us "addicts."

Since I've been on the Detoxx Diet I haven't craved sweets . . . well, except when I walked by the candy aisle and inhaled chocolate fumes. And I've been eating lots of veggies (no fruits -- not allowed) so I've been getting the benefits of all those lovely complex carbs.

Why am I still craving grains? And why am I so fatigued that I can't work a full day at work? I have to come home and finish up my day from my recliner (I make my living as a computer geek, so I can compute from my recliner).

And then there's the notion that craving something means it's bad for you. Umm, couldn't mean that you need it?

Maybe the Carb Queen Knows Best

Zaphod commented on my fatigue yesterday. Poor guy; I misunderstood his comment and bit his head off before realizing he was expressing genuine concern. (This gives you -- and me, too -- some idea of how sensitive I am about my bouts of fatigue.) Once I'd apologized we continued our discussion of my fatigue.

And it hit me that maybe the Detoxx Diet really is at fault for my fatigue. I have depression that I treat with sertraline (generic Zoloft) and it's mostly under control. The fatigue I've had in the past week to ten days feels like depression fatigue, not chronic fatigue. (Oh yes, I've been fatigued long enough and in enough varieties that I can tell the difference.)

Could it be that when I eat the way I want I'm feeding my brain what it needs? Well, yeah! And could it also be that by following the Detoxx Diet I've been depleting my brain of the raw materials it needs to turn on the energy makers? You think?

There's this conventional wisdom that people, especially women, who prefer starchy carbs like bread and pasta and potatoes are trying to lift their moods with food -- and that if they'd just get more exercise and eat more fruits and vegetables they wouldn't need or crave those "bad" carbs.

I'm starting to think the conventional wisdom is nonsense. At least for me.

This is the second time I've cut back on starchy carbs in my diet. Last summer I went on a gluten-free diet to see if my fatigue improved. I ate that way for six weeks. My fatigue did not improve and I never once stopped craving the carbs I gave up. I hated the gluten-free diet, but if it had worked I was prepared to make it a way of life.

I feel the same way about the Detoxx Diet. I hate it but if I started to feel better, I'd figure out how to live with it. I briefly flirted with the idea that the fatigue and general feeling of malaise told me the Detoxx Diet was working and I was just suffering the side effects of ridding my body of toxins. Now I think the reverse is true: the diet is causing the fatigue and malaise.

Oh, Dr. Sean and I are going to have an interesting conversation on Tuesday!

Not Bad for a Limp Washrag

I gained .2 pounds last week. That's the bad news.

The good news is that I haven't gained back the 3 pounds I lost two weeks ago and that I gained only .2 pounds after another week of fatigue along with dinner out on two nights.

I told my group leader, Karen, that I was going to "live my life eating the foods I love in the amounts I need without guilt." She corrected me and said, "No, it's without apology because you can still have guilt over overeating."

Hmmmm. I know that her saying is "without apology." Since "without guilt" popped out of my mouth unbidden, it may be that "without guilt" is more pertinent to me. I've never had to apologize for eating but I've certainly felt plenty guilty about it often enough.

Karen's family gave her grief about not eating the way they did when she started Weight Watchers. Mine never gave me grief about my eating. Instead, I beat myself up with guilt over not being thin. As Karen says, "We're not puh-fect" (I love her accent).

I see Dr. Sean on Tuesday. I have been faithful to the Detoxx Diet since I last saw him. I still hate it. And I can't help but suspect that these recent bouts of fatigue are caused by it. I have no idea how he'll respond to that assertion.

Dietgirl Says It Better

After my whining yesterday about the Detoxx Diet, I've found solace in this rant from Dietgirl's archive.

It Could Have Been Worse

I gained .6 pounds this week. It was a tough week and I could have easily gained more. Zaphod, bless his heart, said, "That's not bad because you lost 3 pounds last week."

It was a tough week for two reasons: I had fatigue that kept me home from work for two days and the Detoxx Diet.

When I work at work (instead of at home, as I do when I have a bout of fatigue), I get more exercise because my office is on the second floor. The coffee maker, the bathroom, and most of the staff are on the first floor, so I'm up and down the stairs multiple times a day. When I work at home I spend all day in my recliner and get up only to get something to eat or to go to the bathroom, activities that I can accomplish by expending almost no energy.

I have continued to adhere to the Detoxx Diet (except for the french fries at dinner last Saturday after a movie). And I was hungry all week. So I didn't limit my portions of beef or pork or chicken and I'm sure I ate over my Points allowance every day. The solution, of course, is to track my Points and measure every blessed bite of food. Grrrr.

Today's Weight Watchers meeting was about how to handle Super Bowl parties, although not many of the people at the meeting were going to a Super Bowl party, so the leader broadened the discussion to functions in general. As part of the discussion we talked about how this is a "lifestyle change" and not a diet. Not eating foods one enjoys is bound to lead to failure.

I accept that but how do I square that with the Detoxx Diet? I can't. I hate the Detoxx Diet. I'd be a vegetarian if I could but for two things: 1) Zaphod isn't a vegetarian and 2) the Detoxx Diet.

Zaphod is a meat-and-potatoes type of eater, which makes preparing vegetarian meals a challenge. I know this from experience because I tried hard to eat vegetarian for a long time before the Detoxx Diet came along.

The Detoxx Diet put an end to my vegetarianism. There is a vegetarian version of the diet, but it's even harder to follow than the carnivore version.

I see my Detoxx doctor in two weeks. At that point I'll have followed the diet closely for a month. And then he and I will discuss it.