Vultaire's journal
Posted: Fri Feb 12, 2021 11:18 pm
Hello anyone who happens to see this. And as a first post giving some history, this will be a little long-winded and rambly as I try to summarize my story up until now into a few paragraphs. Skip to the end if you just want to see a chart of my progress and where I am now.
My name's Paul, and I've struggled with weight basically my whole life. I've had times where I've lost a lot of it - in Tops when I was a kid, and through brute force "Dance Dance Revolution" exercise for hours every week when I was single and out of college. I moved to Japan, and was doing pretty well there, running and ultimately getting down to around 182 lbs until stress and Japanese junk food sent me back up to around 220. ...Then I moved back to the States, and saw how easy it is to get fat here compared to over there.
At my absolute largest, I was around 320 or 330, and I thankfully was able to brute force that down to 182 like I mentioned above - bought myself years of time. But, while my eating habits improved, they did not improve enough, and here in the states I can clearly see I'm tending towards a 250 to 260 pound set point, and even higher if I don't work at it.
...In 2017, I got inspired by Penn Jilette's book Presto. That lead to reading Joel Fuhrman's Eat to Live, and then as I read the comments sections of YouTube videos related to plant-based eating, I kept hearing people talking about Dr. McDougall. Anyway, inspired originally by Penn Jilette's book, I decided to do the 2 week of potatoes he did in the book. ...Not 100% potatoes; my wife wasn't bought in and we have young kids that were learning to cook, so I felt had to make some allowances. But mostly potatoes.
2 weeks became 2 months, with major progress I couldn't believe - not really exercising, the weight was melting off.
I went off program for awhile and gained a little back - I forget why - but I got back on program, and another 2 months passed, with more crazy progress. Altogether, I went from 267.4 to 217.1.
I had trouble getting back with the program, because I basically only did potatoes and sweet potatoes, and wasn't doing enough to keep it enjoyable. I was doing lots of hot sauces with my white potatoes, but found that that made me crave sweets, and while sometimes I kept it healthy with fruit, sometimes I would succumb and go for the bad stuff. There was also the problem of me having too much initial success - I got overconfident and let myself revert back to old habits, because of course I could get the weight off again...
Anyway, my weight crept up, eventually erasing all the progress I did, because I didn't really make this a regular way of eating - I thought I would, but really I only treated it as a diet.
I'll avoid rambling too much, but as you can see from my chart at the end of this post, my weight went back to around 250-260, with a lot of oscillating as I tried various plant-based things and perhaps just tried to make things too complicated. (I can barely cook, and was trying out plant-based recipes, but only got a couple under my belt and none were satisfying enough for me to stick with as a regular thing.)
Anyway, fast forward to near the end of last year - my body basically was telling me I had to do something. I may have been overreacting, but some of the chest discomfort I was having, and the elevated blood pressure, and my wife threatening to throw away my skinnier clothes if I don't actually make progress again... Well, I got back on the potatoes.
I've done a lot of reading: Dr. Furhman, Dr. McDougall, Dr. Greger, Ray Cronise, and some others... but I think the philosophy that is closest to what I'm comfortable with, and closest to what I've been succeeding with personally, is Dr. McDougall's method. ...And that is why I've finally joined the forums here, which I've known about for some time.
Hearing Dr. McDougall talk and even suggest people try simply eating potatoes has been encouraging. And I get that it's not just that - other starches are great as well. And barbeque sauces, even some sugar, are actually OK?! Now the guilt goes away a bit...
And the latest bit for me personally has been: dressing things up while staying with the plan - again, at least for the meals I prepare. Almost every day for lunch, I have a potato salsa wrap - air-fried potato quarters (yes, steamed is better and I may make that change), wrapped in a tortilla and covered with healthy salsa, and some barbeque sauce on the side for the spuds I can't fit in the wrap. It's legitimately starch-based, and I legitimately love the flavor, no joke. I do need to find some healthier tortillas though; I do see there is some oil in the ones I'm using, and I'd like to get rid of that...
So... That basically gets me to current day. 243.3 lbs, certainly not my lowest but on a strong downward trend with no inclination to stop.
I've got a number of challenges ahead - my tendency to get bounced off diet in one way or another due to special occasions and the like, and my spouse's cooking, which I love - and which is healthier than the typical American diet (she's Japanese) - but which still uses more oil and animal products than I'd like. I'm hoping I can eventually get her on board, especially if there is a chance of the diet helping her with her migraines... But for now I'm doing what I can, and getting more assertive of my desire to minimize those off-diet foods. It's a work in progress, and I hope those of you who are truly on program will forgive me for not being quite there yet, but - I'm heading that way, and as I get more used to eating this way, I think the situation will improve.
I'll wrap things up here. Again, really rambly, and I'm not going to bother proofreading or revising this initial post - if I keep posting updates, I'll make the updates more coherent.
For those of you who've stuck with the post, and for those of you who skipped to the end Here's an annotated view of my journey thus far. Click if it's too small.
So - Nice to meet you all, and wish me luck. I'm gonna make this happen, whatever it takes. For my health and for my family.
My name's Paul, and I've struggled with weight basically my whole life. I've had times where I've lost a lot of it - in Tops when I was a kid, and through brute force "Dance Dance Revolution" exercise for hours every week when I was single and out of college. I moved to Japan, and was doing pretty well there, running and ultimately getting down to around 182 lbs until stress and Japanese junk food sent me back up to around 220. ...Then I moved back to the States, and saw how easy it is to get fat here compared to over there.
At my absolute largest, I was around 320 or 330, and I thankfully was able to brute force that down to 182 like I mentioned above - bought myself years of time. But, while my eating habits improved, they did not improve enough, and here in the states I can clearly see I'm tending towards a 250 to 260 pound set point, and even higher if I don't work at it.
...In 2017, I got inspired by Penn Jilette's book Presto. That lead to reading Joel Fuhrman's Eat to Live, and then as I read the comments sections of YouTube videos related to plant-based eating, I kept hearing people talking about Dr. McDougall. Anyway, inspired originally by Penn Jilette's book, I decided to do the 2 week of potatoes he did in the book. ...Not 100% potatoes; my wife wasn't bought in and we have young kids that were learning to cook, so I felt had to make some allowances. But mostly potatoes.
2 weeks became 2 months, with major progress I couldn't believe - not really exercising, the weight was melting off.
I went off program for awhile and gained a little back - I forget why - but I got back on program, and another 2 months passed, with more crazy progress. Altogether, I went from 267.4 to 217.1.
I had trouble getting back with the program, because I basically only did potatoes and sweet potatoes, and wasn't doing enough to keep it enjoyable. I was doing lots of hot sauces with my white potatoes, but found that that made me crave sweets, and while sometimes I kept it healthy with fruit, sometimes I would succumb and go for the bad stuff. There was also the problem of me having too much initial success - I got overconfident and let myself revert back to old habits, because of course I could get the weight off again...
Anyway, my weight crept up, eventually erasing all the progress I did, because I didn't really make this a regular way of eating - I thought I would, but really I only treated it as a diet.
I'll avoid rambling too much, but as you can see from my chart at the end of this post, my weight went back to around 250-260, with a lot of oscillating as I tried various plant-based things and perhaps just tried to make things too complicated. (I can barely cook, and was trying out plant-based recipes, but only got a couple under my belt and none were satisfying enough for me to stick with as a regular thing.)
Anyway, fast forward to near the end of last year - my body basically was telling me I had to do something. I may have been overreacting, but some of the chest discomfort I was having, and the elevated blood pressure, and my wife threatening to throw away my skinnier clothes if I don't actually make progress again... Well, I got back on the potatoes.
I've done a lot of reading: Dr. Furhman, Dr. McDougall, Dr. Greger, Ray Cronise, and some others... but I think the philosophy that is closest to what I'm comfortable with, and closest to what I've been succeeding with personally, is Dr. McDougall's method. ...And that is why I've finally joined the forums here, which I've known about for some time.
Hearing Dr. McDougall talk and even suggest people try simply eating potatoes has been encouraging. And I get that it's not just that - other starches are great as well. And barbeque sauces, even some sugar, are actually OK?! Now the guilt goes away a bit...
And the latest bit for me personally has been: dressing things up while staying with the plan - again, at least for the meals I prepare. Almost every day for lunch, I have a potato salsa wrap - air-fried potato quarters (yes, steamed is better and I may make that change), wrapped in a tortilla and covered with healthy salsa, and some barbeque sauce on the side for the spuds I can't fit in the wrap. It's legitimately starch-based, and I legitimately love the flavor, no joke. I do need to find some healthier tortillas though; I do see there is some oil in the ones I'm using, and I'd like to get rid of that...
So... That basically gets me to current day. 243.3 lbs, certainly not my lowest but on a strong downward trend with no inclination to stop.
I've got a number of challenges ahead - my tendency to get bounced off diet in one way or another due to special occasions and the like, and my spouse's cooking, which I love - and which is healthier than the typical American diet (she's Japanese) - but which still uses more oil and animal products than I'd like. I'm hoping I can eventually get her on board, especially if there is a chance of the diet helping her with her migraines... But for now I'm doing what I can, and getting more assertive of my desire to minimize those off-diet foods. It's a work in progress, and I hope those of you who are truly on program will forgive me for not being quite there yet, but - I'm heading that way, and as I get more used to eating this way, I think the situation will improve.
I'll wrap things up here. Again, really rambly, and I'm not going to bother proofreading or revising this initial post - if I keep posting updates, I'll make the updates more coherent.
For those of you who've stuck with the post, and for those of you who skipped to the end Here's an annotated view of my journey thus far. Click if it's too small.
So - Nice to meet you all, and wish me luck. I'm gonna make this happen, whatever it takes. For my health and for my family.