Breakfast

I've noticed a lot lately that when I don't eat enough breakfast, I overeat throughout the day, or if I manage to not overeat I feel hungry all day.

Now, I can't eat just anything... it has to have protein, and it has to have bulk.  And, as I've said before, I have enough food allergies that I can't just nip up to McD's and grab a McMuffin or a Steak Bagel, I'd spend my day in the bathroom.  Plus, have you ever looked at how much fat and sodium one of those has?

I also can't trust donuts, bagels, muffins, or even toast at a restaurant, as most of them would have either corn or dairy, or both.

At home, on days where I have to get moving like mornings I work, I usually make toast from bread that I *know* I can trust and spread it with peanut butter.  The peanut butter I like is Smucker's Natural.  I can't buy the reduced fat, since it has maltodextrin or some corn ingredient in it, so I buy the regular and then pour off a little less than half the separated oil for use in cooking before mixing up the rest.  It isn't a hardship to me to have discovered that the safest bread for me is the stuff baked in a wood fired oven at my local grocery store (Holiday Market in Canton, MI.  If you live around here, check out their sourdough or beer bread).  Since I usually use the bread for a week, I buy the day-old to save money when they have it in the kind of bread I want.  But even when I have to pay full price, the sourdough is cheaper than a loaf of Pepperidge Farm or other "Premium" bread, it tastes better, and it has simple and short ingredient lists.

Speaking of ingredient lists.  I discovered this week that one of the problems I was having was because there was corn sugar (dextrose) in our SALT!  Oops!  And that was a pretty high-end brand - Hain "Pure Foods".  What a joke.  So I had to buy a different brand.  There were two other reasonable cost Sea Salt brands that didn't include sugar.  One had an anti-caking agent that was chemical in nature, and one had my favorite kind of ingredient list:  One Ingredient:  Sea Salt.

My other two favorite breakfasts are cold cereal and oatmeal.  For cold cereal, I like Barbara's Natural Shredded Oat.  Sometimes for a little variety I use less than a normal amount of that and break up a few Frosted Mini-Wheat biscuits over the top.  I then pour Rice Milk over it.  Rice milk is too sweet to substitute for regular milk in some foods, but for me that makes it better for cereal, where I don't have to add as much (or sometimes any) sugar because the rice milk itself is sweet.  For Oatmeal, a few years back I discovered Silver Palate brand "Rough" oatmeal, and while I liked it, it is really quite expensive for a product that they carefully do LESS to it than the Quaker brand.  Basically, oatmeal is generally made from oats that have either been modified by rolling thinner, or my cutting in pieces.  You can make oatmeal from whole unmodified "groats", but it takes much longer.  Irish oats are steel cut or "porridge" oats, where they cut the groats into smaller pieces.  Porridge oats are classified by size, ranging from fine through medium, coarse, and the largest, "pin-head" oats.  Different companies offer different cuts and of course everyone says theirs is best.  Fans of Irish oats say that the climate in Ireland creates better oats... Who really knows?  In Scotland, they often use steel-cut porridge oats as well, but apparently much of what is sold in America as Scottish oats is more of a stone-ground meal.  Quaker oats are traditional rolled oats, the kind most English speaking and Scandinavian countries usually eat.  The groats are steamed, then rolled flat, then apparently toasted to dry them.  Instant oatmeal is basically very thinly rolled and often cut into smaller pieces, but I don't like the gluey texture that they make.  The Silver Palate oats are just not rolled as thin as Quaker oats so they keep more of the nutty flavors.  However, one of my favorite flour, grain, and cereal companies, Bob's Red Mill, sells 2 pound bags of "thick rolled" oats, which are basically the same thing without tripling the price.  The Bob's Red Mill are what I like best.  I usually drizzle just a little raw unfiltered honey or perhaps sorghum molasses or pure Michigan maple syrup on mine.  I prefer Grade B or Grade A Dark syrup, because it has more flavor.  Grade A fancy syrup is "fancy" because it has a lighter flavor.  If I get more flavor per calorie, it helps.

So, I suppose in summary my three favorite breakfasts are all simple, hearty breakfasts.  Peanut Butter Toast is the quickest to make that I can carry, Cold Cereal is the absolute quickest to make but I need time to sit still and eat it, and Thick-Rolled Oatmeal takes around 20 minutes to cook and I need time to sit still and eat it, but all three give me some fiber, some protein, and enough calories that I'm not looking for a snack before lunch.

Oscar

FOOD! Don't talk to me about FOOD!

If you think Corn and Dairy are Gods gift to humans, you might want to skip reading this post.

Food is difficult for me.  Not just because I love rich foods (I do), but because I often feel deprived.

I have been reading food labels since before they got very useful, since my mother has been on a very low sodium diet for over 35 years, and my sister and I used to go grocery shopping for us.  The reading of labels got more critical when I discovered that I am allergic to dairy, and things stepped up a notch when my wife figured out that she is allergic to Citric Acid.  We already were avoiding Sunflower for her, and now I have to avoid Corn.  And try to keep my sodium down.

Currently I'm thinking Potatoes may be the other culprit I am looking for that is causing me digestive grief.  But I wanted to say that many people do not understand how much of our food supply contains corn, dairy or citric acid.  Or, in my view, is "contaminated by" corn, dairy, sunflower, and/or citric acid.

Taken one at a time, each of the above actually brings a relatively long list of ingredients we need to avoid.  Some because we know they are what we are allergic to, others because they are too vague to take the risk.  Oh, Diana is also allergic to sunflower.  I'll cover that, too.  Note that these lists are not complete or authoritative, just what I know.

I'll start with Dairy.  Specifically, I am allergic to more than one protein in dairy.  For sure I am allergic to casein, and there is also something in whey protein that I am allergic to.  This means I have to avoid:

DAIRY:

Milk
Cheese (all varieties, including vegetable cheeses that add casein)
Cottage Cheese/Farmers Cheese
Butter
Cream
Yogurt
Buttermilk
Milk Solids
Butter Solids
Buttermilk Solids
Nonfat Dry Milk
Sweetened Condensed Milk
Evaporated Milk
Casein (the protein that makes cheese melt, I am told)Sodium Caseinate
Whey
Whey Protein
Whey Protein Isolate
Milk Protein

I seem to be fine with Milkfat, Butterfat, and Ghee/Clarified Butter, but I usually avoid them in case they aren't pure enough.

CORN:

Corn (including Popcorn)
Corn Meal (and Polenta)
Grits (Hominy and otherwise)
Corn Syrup
High Fructose Corn Syrup
Corn Oil
Vegetable Oil
Vegetable Shortening (unless it specifies a different source)
Corn Starch
Food Starch
Modified Food Starch
Dextrose (Corn Sugar)
Fructose (may be from corn unless another source is stated)
Dextrin
Maltodextrin
Caramel Coloring (usually made from Corn Syrup)
Brown Sugar (because some brands add Caramel Coloring made from Corn Syrup)

If you didn't know, that eliminates 98% of the candy made in America.  My local store even sells "honey" straws that are corn syrup flavored with a little honey.  I buy a different brand elsewhere that is 100% honey.  It also eliminates almost all breakfast cereals, cookies, muffins, donuts, many breads, and other snacks.  I can have unsalted nuts and expensive chocolate and a couple brands of cookies.

SUNFLOWER:

Sunflower Seeds
Sunflower Oil
Jerusalem Artichoke (sunflower roots)
7-grain, 9-grain, and 12-grain breads (even if they don't claim sunflower)

That seems pretty tame, until you realize that most products that use vegetable oil have this "and/or" issue, like "canola, sunflower, and/or safflower oil".  Also, the healthier a product is trying to seem, the more likely they will have substituted sunflower oil for whatever they used to use.  The comment about the high grain breads is from experience.  Once a bakery starts adding large amounts of grains and seeds into the bread, it seems that intentional or not, enough sunflower seeds get into the dough that Diana reacts to it.

CITRIC ACID:

Sometimes I feel like I am researching a doctoral thesis for this one:

Tomatoes
Lemon
Lemon Juice
Lemon Peel
Lemon Zest
Lime (including Juice, Peel, and Zest)
Orange (including Juice, Peel, and Zest)
Citron
Tamarind
Ponzu
Pineapple
Berries (except Blueberries)
Most other fruits (except Apples, Pears, and Bananas)
Citric Acid
Sourdough Bread
Sourdough "Culture" or "Mother"
Canned and Dry Beans (Navy, Pinto, Kidney, Black-Eyed Peas, etc.) (Green Beans are OK)

And a Surprising item:

Triple-Washed ANYTHING (Spinach, Lettuce, Mesclin, etc.) - One of the three washes is Citric Acid, and since they are living plants, they will pull the citric acid in from the root end and possibly absorb it in through the leaves.

POTATOS:

I haven't researched Potatoes yet, but Potato Starch, Food Starch, and Modified Food Starch would be issues as well as potatoes themselves.


So, what can we eat together?  Meat, Rice, Pasta, most green veggies.  Apples, pears, and bananas.  Carrots, cauliflower, some breads.  In the supermarket, we look for ingredient lists that are 5 or fewer items when we can, as simpler foods are probably healthier and a heck of a lot easier to read the list.  When I see one of those ingredient lists that is 2 inches long or more, I assume that it probably has something in it that we can't have.  If I am bored enough or motivated enough to read it, I usually find out that I am right.  About the only exception to that rule is Clif Bars, which I can have.  Which is good, as I obviously don't do well at potlucks or pizza lunches!

Diana can have dairy, I can have tomato sauces and citrus fruits, but we can't share.  Heck, if I drink Orange Juice I have to drink some water or rinse my lips off before I can kiss her!

Of course, there are worse things in life than having to eat right. 

I'm really feeling for the folks in the Northeast who are still dealing with Sandy, the NorEaster, and related damage, outages, shortages, and displacement.  I haven't donated much , but we have given what we can afford at this time.

The Beginning...

My first few posts will be about what got me where I am. After that I will likely kvetch about where I am, how hard it is to get to the next step, and all the other crap you hate to read ;)

So, what do I mean about the beginning? Well, trying to detail everything that made me overweight would be boring, and most likely I would miss important factors. Let's just say that I work a desk job in the telecommunications industry, I have arthritis, and I don't love exercise in its own right.

What I DO want to talk about is why I started this mission to lose weight.
And why 100 pounds.

In October of 2007 I hit 300 pounds for the first time in my life. Later that month, I had an "annual" physical, and my doctor threatened to put me in the hospital to stabilize my blood pressure - I was only at something like 165/129. Heck, the low number was higher than the high number should be at. Luckily the doctor said that my EKG had not changed, so no heart damage yet. Yet!!! Scary.

So I started trying to improve my health. First off, low sodium diet. Doctor wants me on no more than 3,000 mg of sodium a day. Which is what someone WITHOUT hypertension should limit themselves to. On the internet I found that various organizations recommend at least 1,500 or 1,600 mg, and that most low-sodum diets are reduced to somewhere between 2,000 and 2,500 mg. So my sodium goal is 1,600-2,000 mg/day, with maybe one day a week where I let myself get close to 3,000.

But let me tell you this: Restaurants are not generally set up to help the low-sodium diet. For example, Bob Evans, one of the few restaurants that even provide sodium levels, has some items on the menu that would put me over 3,000 mg in one meal. On the other hand, their Salmon with either herb butter or barbecue sauce, a baked potato with olive oil, and applesauce gets you out the door for less than 800. I am sensitive to dairy, so I avoid it. Tip: the staff don't always know that they have olive oil, but you can ask them to bring the oil and vinegar salad dressing cruets - it is olive oil! But back to restaurants in general... most of them don't have the information on sodium, and some restauratns are even snotty about it. I suppose they think they are too good for me or something. The best fast food choice I found is Wendy's Single. No fries, but if you are hungry, a potato with chives is a pretty decent side. I can't eat dairy without consequences, so I use olive oil (yes, I keep some at work as well as home).

Part of how I got to 300 pounds was sweet and salty snacks. Chocolate covered cranberries, and all sorts of cookies, crackers, Rice Krispie treats, etc. but all of a sudden I couldn't afford the sodium without skipping meals. My salvation? Fruit! Whole, raw, fruit, or canned fruit in some cases when I run low on fresh. For example, I found that for 10 mg of sodium or less I can eat a whole banana, orange, apple, pear, plum, nectarine, two clementines, or a single serving cup of applesauce or pineapple. So I made a commitment to eat at least 5 fruits for snacking per day to substitute for the sweet snacks. I won't let myself eat other snacks like salt-free nuts, low sodium cookies, or crackers until I have eaten the five fruits.

And my other main change is that I have gone back to eating 3 meals a day instead of 2. The meals are a little smaller, but I now make sure I eat breakfast, lunch, and dinner, with lunch usually being the largest meal of the day. I do still eat crackers or cookies later in the day when I get hungry, but rather than taking as many as I want, I eat one portion

If you believe the last doctor I bothered talking to about goal weight 15 years ago), I should weigh 145. Personally, I want to know what drugs that doctor is on... The only time I weighed 145 after 8th grade was when I was bicycling 40 miles a day back before I got a car. The weight I felt good at for years was around 170. But weight is not really the point. just like it is not healthy to be too fat, it is not healthy to be too lean. I don't have a final goal weight, because I think the only realistic measure of fat/lean is percentage body fat. Weight, BMI, and all of the other ways of describing height to weight ratios are just shortcuts, because they do not take bone density, frame size, and other factors into consideration. So my goal is to make it down to the "optimum percent body fat" or "optimum lean to fat ratio". For simplicity, since nearly everything I read says I have over 100 pounds to lose, I decided that my first long range goal will be 100 pounds.