Re: [fast5] I'm back (again)

Friday, June 28, 2013

Re: [fast5] I'm back (again)

Welcome back!

You might want to look at what foods you ARE eating.

After much experimenting on ME, I have discovered that

how I feel has a lot to do with the food choices I make.

Fast-5 makes it easy to experiment, because you have less

food to balance.

Here are the results I've found, about food choices.

First, a lot of what happens with appetite has to do with uric

acid. Uric acid is a kind of trigger for hibernation in animals,

and it makes the animal eat more and to change food into fat,

rather than raising the metabolism.

Some foods and behaviors raise uric acid levels, while others

lower it. This has been studies a lot, in terms of gout! So it's

pretty easy to find information. The things that raise uric

acid levels are:

-- Not eating on a schedule

-- Not getting enough water

-- Certain meats (high-purine meats)

-- Fructose (any sugar, not just HFCS, but also honey etc)

-- Beer

-- Food intolerances (wheat and dairy being the usual suspects)

-- Saturated fat (might block clearing uric acid)

-- Foods high in iron (enriched foods)

Things that lower uric acid levels:

-- Vinegar or lemon juice

-- Eggs

-- Low-purine fish

-- Vitamin C

Anyway, for me that translates basically into eating more fish and eggs,

less beef, adding lemon slices to my tea, and avoiding beer. It's

working so far (30+ lbs down).

Fructose is an interesting issue, since some 30% of Northern Europeans

don't handle it well. You mention being worse on the Warrior Diet ... if

you were snacking on fruit, that might be part of it. Plain starches, like

steamed rice, are usually safer choices in that case. But you can

experiment ... keep a log, and eating drastically different meal choices,

see how you feel the next day.

On Fri, Jun 28, 2013 at 1:44 PM, tfoley926 <travis.foley@gmail.com> wrote:

I will keep this fairly short, but I'm new to the group (sorta). I first joined back about 4 or 5 years ago. This is not my first time with F5, I've been on and off of it during this time. I have keep very good notes on my progress through all of that and I sat down last night and reviewed it all to figure out why this just never worked for me long term?

I keep coming back to it because:

I know it works because I lose weight EVERY time
It really helps me discipline myself when it comes to eating and keeps me from allowing food to control my life
I experience other health benefits from this as well such as lower cholesterol, lower blood pressure, and lower triglycerides.
It's very convenient when I don't have to mess with making breakfast and packing a full lunch for work.
I save money on groceries and snacks during the day
I FEEL better and I'm more confident when I feel light and my clothes fit me better
I never battle fatigue in the afternoons or on the drive home, I'm always alert

I know I could think of more, but 7 is enough. :)

So you may be asking yourself, why have I not stuck with this then? Why all of the starting and stopping?

What I experience consistently as I read back through all everything I have written can be summed up in one of my entries from back in 2009.

Here's what I wrote:

"I'm stopping Fast5 because I'm tired of feeling tired, weak, spacey and irritable. Even after I eat I find myself being more irritable than I normally am. The weightloss was great, but it's not worth the side-effects. Also, it's affecting my performance at work. My short term memory really seems to suffer even though it is supposed to be sharper some how? It's not and I cannot seem to subside the spacey feeling using everyone's advice either. I thought I could do this, but cannot sustain this for the long haul."

I would go on over the next 3 or 4 years starting back up and ultimately having to quit for pretty much the same reasons.

At one point I started doing the Warrior Diet and that was horrible and made everything worse. I started doing Weight Watchers and that worked for a while, but I felt that was harder to maintain because of all of the tracking and counting and everything.

F5 fits my lifestyle better than anything else I've tried, I just have to get through this issue of the dizziness.

I have been doing a lot of reading again and I'm back (again) to give this a shot and go at it from one angle that I haven't tried yet. I am on week 3 this time around and I am doing very well actually. What I am changing this time around is my window. In the past I have consistently kept a window of 2:00 - 7:00. Looking back over everything I saw a pattern of extending my window because of one thing or another. I'm doing a window of 5:00 - 10:00 PM like the book suggests this time and today is actually going to be the first day that I hit it. So far this time around, my window has been in the 2:30/3:00 PM time frame when I opened it. Today will be 5:00 PM.

This new window will:

completely eliminate the need to bring any food to work
eliminate the issue of eating too early and messing up my window if the family ends up eating later after dinner... I don't have to miss out
help me keep from over eating... in other words, I won't be eating lunch AND dinner. I end up eating lunch and dinner both, and then some... this will just be one meal (dinner) and a snack or something later.

I'm keeping a close eye on any advice that I see posted. What helps me is to read about what others are experiencing. When I know others have experienced the same things, but stuck it out and the symptoms subside, that gives me hope to keep at it.

One of my downfalls before has been fudging a little when the weight came off. Once I started doing that, it became more routine and before I knew it I had drifted very far from the routine and it was hard to get going again.

Anyway, that was a very long post, I apologize.

I look forward to reading about everyone's progress and challenges and I'm very encouraged that long term success for me is just ahead!

travis