I am A+, so I fit right into your category. However, for almost all of my adult life, I have a avoided these foods because I thought they were fattening. Turns out that it is all the stuff we put on the potatoes that makes them unhealthy for us . Strictly speaking, you are right that the only truly unprocessed foods would be fresh and raw, @Don Alaska . However, the way Dr. McDougall explained it, it is foods that go through any kind of a processing plant before we acquire them in an unnatural form. This would include most canned foods, too. I am eating the foods raw that are easy to eat that way, and cooking ones that are easier to eat when cooked, but they are all fresh and unprocessed when I get them from the store.
You raise an interesting point regarding processed vs fresh foods, @Yvonne Smith I have always bought fresh produce when available, but the more I read about the rapid farm-to cannery cycles and farm-to-freezer cycles versus fresh produce's long-term-storage times and farm-to-store transport times, the more I wonder about lost nutrients when I cook "fresh." I shall always prefer "fresh" asparagus and "fresh" broccoli to "processed" (mainly because of texture), but I don't know what I may be sacrificing in terms of nutrition...if anything.
We raise as much of our own food as possible here, but have been buying meat for the past several years, as we no longer have livestock except a few chickens. Of necessity, we have to process our own food for storage as our growing season is quite short.
I have been on a low carb way of eating for as long as I can remember, at least the last 50 years, and things like starches and even fruit have been forbidden foods that i felt guilty about eating. And I still went through the yo-yo pattern of losing and gaining, and needing to starve myself for the scale to even move. Now, I am enjoying foods that I love, not going hungry, and still losing weight. Since I started back swimming, I have been rebuilding muscle, which has offset some of the weight loss, but my clothes are starting to feel looser, so I know that the fat is coming off, regardless of the scale being slow. Slow is fine, and better than not at all. I love fresh homemade bread, so I am going to find the bread machine and make a loaf of whole grain bread that Bobby and I can enjoy, and I am looking forward to having hot bread again. It has been a very long time for that. I found the Mcdougall cookbook second hand on amazon and ordered that, so now I am finding new recipe ideas to try out.
Just an update on how the Starch Solution Diet is going for me. Since starting in February. I have lost 35 lbs, and enjoying everything that i eat, and not ever feeling hungry and can’t eat, because there are no food limits or calorie/carb counting. I keep thinking that there is no possible way that I can have baked potatoes, corn on the cob, and fresh peaches (as much of them as I want ! ) and still lose weight; but it continues to happen. It is a slow weight loss, but that is probably the best way for it to be. I am not 100% compliant with the SS diet. Maybe once a week, we go out for a meal, and if we go out to eat, I order whatever I want, and go on the assumption that one meal in a whole week is not going to make a lot of difference, as long as I am staying on the program the rest of the time. I do get really upset with my scale though ! Because of my heart failure, I tend to retain water, and when it gets hard for me to breathe, then I take a Lasix to help clear it back out. Because of this, I can have a good day with my food, exercise for an hour at the fitness center, go to bed on an empty stomach so that my body can stop being in digestive mode and go into repair mode overnight. The next morning, I step on the scale, and it just looks at me and says “You didn’t do anything !” Next day, same thing. Next day, I am hoping to see some kind of results, but nope….scale does not move. By now, my body and lungs are congested, I am huffing and puffing , trying to move and breathe, so it is time to take the Lasix. Six hours later, and my scale has dropped 5 lbs, and says, “well, I guess you WERE doing good, after all”. In any case, I am feeling better, I am eating food that I enjoy, and my body is gradually shedding the unwanted and unnecessary fat.
Good job, Yvonne! Maybe you should just weigh yourself once a week to avoid those "ups and downs" that are so maddening.
I was doing that, but just could not stand the suspense. I know it is a better idea, if I could just make myself do that.
When I went in to see my doctor this month, and have the lab tests for the thyroid , everything was really good, and the cholesterol has come down even more than before (188), and is at 179 now, when it has been right at 200 (+ or -) for years. My thyroid is doing great, so they left the Armour thyroid medication right where it was at for now, and my triglycerides are down from 105 to 81. My blood pressure was under the 120 mark, right around 105 if I remember right (not on the paperwork I brought home). So, over all, I am doing good, I had lost another 15 lbs (3 months time), making it about 40 lbs I have lost since I started in February, I am wearing smaller clothes, and feel much better. I am really glad that I found this Starch Solution book, and decided to try it out !
These posts of your always put a smile on my face, Yvonne. That weight loss number over 6-8 month's time is exactly the way to do it so that it stays off...nice, gradual progress. I hope you are 1,000% please with your efforts!!!!!
I AM pleased, and seriously happy that this is even possible, @John Brunner ! I remember being too fat as far back as 3rd grade, and all of my life has been a see-saw of dieting, losing and gaining back the weight and more gain each time, for over 60 years now. Once my heart also went into the CHF and A-Fib, exercise was not even very possible for me. I had pretty much given up the idea that I could ever lose weight again, especially at my age, and every year older just made it worse. I had absolute NO faith that this diet/lifestyle would make a difference, but nothing else was helping anyway; so I tried it. W. Clement Stone always said, “When there is nothing to lose, and everything to gain by trying; by all means try”. I am actually starting to think that there might BE an end to the tunnel, and I am starting to see the light, just a glimmer.
So , here I am , a year later, and starting this process all over again ……. At least this time, I know that it worked before and am going into it with confidence. I was doing good until last fall, when my Goofy Heart decided that it was going to go back into a-fib, and then everything just went to (you-know-where), and I stopped even trying to eat healthy or exercise. By January, my heart doctor was saying that it was time to do another procedure with the pacemaker, and he put it into total control mode, and did an AV node ablation, so now my heart can’t go into a-fib, it just follows what the pacemaker tells it to do. It was almost summer before I was ready to start going to the fitness center and exercising again, and by then , too many cheesecakes and pizzas had done their job to my weight loss. Even though I have been exercising and working in the yard and garden this summer, I was slowly still gaining weight back again; so last week, I “bit the bullet”, and decided that I needed to get back on the potato-based diet again, and do more walking as well as the swimming. I am starting out with just the potatoes and non-starchy veggies again, for at least the next month, and then will decide if I want to add any other foods (like legumes and other starchy foods) back into my diet, a little at a time. I know that I feel so much better when I take care of my self and eat this way, and i really want to be healthy enough to go with Robin to the Netherlands and visit, and travel in Germany with her; so I have a good motivation to keep working in this. One thing that I really like, is the health app on my iPhone not only keeps track of my activity information, but it also tells me how much of my macros (proteins/carbs/fats) and things like sodium and cholesterol I have had each meal. I can check this and see how I am doing with good nutrition, and it also helps me to keep motivated to walk more with the little reminders from the Apple Watch each hour.
Last winter, we pretty much hibernated through the cold weather, and I have slowly gained weight, and each year, it seems harder and harder to lose it again. I was reading more books and they were saying low carb was best, and I tried that and gained weight. So , I got out my good old Dr. McDougall and Dr, Greger, and am back to the starch solution way of eating again. I found a book called “the Potato Hack”, which is somewhat similar to that guy from Australia that had the Spud Fit diet, and lived on potatoes for a year. This one says do the potatoes for 3-5 days and it will reset your body. So , I am going to do 3 days on and then 2 off; but follow starch solution on the off days, but that way I get more veggies.