Week 6

www.realmealrevolution.com

Part of me would like to entitle this edition as  "Baffling Bits about Banting" because this past month has yet again proved beyond a shadow of a doubt, that Banting is NOT a one-size fits all kinda lifestyle! What may work for one person is no indication or vague guarantee that it would work for another!

Let's start at the bible for Banting: Tim Noakes' REAL MEAL REVOLUTION - a big red book that contains lots of mouth-watering, scrumptious and healthy meals made with real food! Eagerly pounced on by people wanting to have a healthier body and lose weight in the process - and most of them (including me!) charge in where angels fear to tread ..... without reading the fine print!!!

The "fine print" in this case are the vast number of pastel colored pages containing the little bits of nitty, gritty information vital to ensuring your success in making this lifestyle work for you. But .... here some honesty is called for, how many of us actually READ and absorb that information beyond printing a copy of the Green, Orange and Red lists to paste on the fridge door with magnets?? Hmmmmm??? and we wonder why we are so confused about what is acceptable and what is not ......

Before I go any further, I need to stipulate that I am NOT the boffin on Banting and this is only my observations over the past six weeks. Probably more tongue-in-cheek than most people would be comfortable with, but nevertheless looking at the lighter side of Banting - and to remind everyone not to take life so seriously to the exclusion of everything else! Some of this is based on my own actual experience - the rest is learning from other people's journey.

So my version of BANTING FOR DUMMIES would read something like this:

• You have to unlearn everything you thought you knew about "dieting" - yes, cooking with butter and adding dollops of cream to meals is going to freak you out for quite a while
• You cannot choose only selected bits from the lifestyle and expect excellent results - having bacon and eggs for breakfast is yummy, the two slices of white bread and store-bought, banting-unfriendly marmalade will cancel each other out
• Having a BIG Breakfast (with all the right ingredients) should last you through to late afternoon .... mission accomplished
• Stop trying to negotiate with products - no matter how you try and wiggle your way around it -  Coke lite, Coke Zero, Sugar-Free etc etc are not on the Green List. They are so far right of the red list they are positively purple.
• A few days into this new eating habit, you are going to feel like death warmed up - this is fondly referred to as "Carb Flu" - you will survive it if you carry on regardless.... it does get better!
• Drink lots of water! And suck it up darling - too bad if water is boring, yuck or whatever else you want to call it - it is the only liquid you can have in unlimited quantities..... but only when you are thirsty, don't force feed yourself with volumes every hour!
• You will in all likelihood suffer a period of constipation while your body adjusts to the new ingredients. Or, you will in all likelihood suffer a period of diarrhea while your body adjusts to the new ingredients. If you are very lucky, your tummy will not go on a go-slow or toyi-toyi.
• Not every suggestion or advice offered to you will work for YOU - you are often told that you are unique and this lifestyle will prove it to you. Different things work for different people and you need some patience while you go through the trial and error to find your happy medium.
• Join a group that offers support and sympathy when required and a butt-kicking when you are being unreasonable. Make sure that the Admins lead by example and can offer you valid, logical and worthwhile guidance .... Banting for Weightloss is such a group.  The sad part about anything that proves popular and trending is that every Tom, Dick and Harry is now a Banting Boffin after 3 weeks and climbing on this bandwagon - which could lead to wrong information being provided and destroy someone's hopes and dreams of a healthier body.
• There will come a time (reports indicate that it could be anything from 2 - 4 weeks when your highly anticipated and to date effortless weightloss will come to a grinding halt - the dreaded plateau!! Lots of helpful hints will be forthcoming from well-meaning souls on how to break this, anything from cutting out dairy for a while to  my personal favourite - a planned binge day!! Not only do you get to eat all the foods you have been craving for a while, but it seems to effectively kick-start your metabolism again.
• And the trick to all the above is simply this - don't give up. If you fall off the wagon, start again!

Which happily brings me to where I am now. Loss of 15.5cm around my belly-button means I have shrunk to a smaller jean size which is reason for much celebration. I sleep like a baby and have more energy than I thought possible. My ongoing war with a runny tummy has finally been resolved with drastic measures which included Probiotics and Kem-o-Dene, together with toast and black tea. (remember that remedy?) Managed to reduce my fat percentage by one whole % *lol* but seem to be picking up 1.1% of water - which is really odd???

The other side of the coin is that I am about to embark on a two week road trip and to remove added stress and drama, I am going to try and stay within the Banting guidelines, if I fail - ce la vie! 

Will start again when I get back... simple!

Banting stats: Week 6:
Weight: 131.1kg (-0.6kg) Waist : 120.0  (-1.0) Belly Button: 135.0 (-0.0cm)
Fat % : 51.7 (-0.2%)       Water % : 26.0 (+0.2%)  Muscle % : 20.0 (0.0%)
Total to Date: 
Weight: (-10.6kg)   Waist          (-5.0cm)  Belly Button       (-15.5cm)
Fat % :  (-1.0%)     Water % :  (+1.1%)   Muscle % :  (0.0%)

Weeks 4 & 5

Now would be a good time to recap on some of the basics from my world "BB" (Before Banting), so as to put things in perspective. This is kinda important because my hugely celebrating reaching the milestone of 10kg loss is only really significant if you understand where I came from!

I drink coffee out of what Ian calls a "bucket" and the normal recipe was 2tsp Ricoffee, 3tsp Cremora, 3tsp brown sugar and a splash of milk; averaging 5/6 cups per day. Peanut butter sarmies or Chips and Dip for snacks. Pasta with dollops of creamy sauce. Salad was mainly for rabbits. Baked potato, fries, mash, in fact any kind of potato, was only enhanced with more dollops of cream, butter or Spur's salad/fries dressing. Pap with lots of butter and of course Aromat on just about everything! Fresh bread with strawberry jam. You get the picture?

So, wake up call when my scale crosses the 140kg mark, my left knee is threatening to konk on me, have the energy of a gnat and am about as fit as the proverbial doornail. Two weeks of eating "healthy" dropped my weight by 1.7kg which did not give me warm and fuzzy feelings of success until I stumbled upon the "Banting for Weightloss" group on Facebook. A few days of lurking while I read the myriad of questions, replies, discussions and general feedback made me decide to give it a try from mid-August.

The above paragraph is terribly misleading, making it sound simple and a very easy transition to absolutely cutting out bread, pasta, potatoes and SUGAR!!! There were many disasters along the way while I experimented with what would work for me. The first thing I negotiated my way around was going cold-turkey on the sugar thing, so tried xylitol... with disastrous results - 3 weeks of having a runny tummy :( 

In spite of this, my scale had not moved in two weeks which was really, really odd, so followed the suggestion of getting a scale which would measure the fat, water and muscle content of my body. The theory being that even though your weight might not decrease, you could be transforming the fat percentage of your body into muscle .... which is really what I am aiming for.

This was not a happy event in my life. Battled for a few days figuring out how to set it up and then was totally disgusted when I did. Because I am relatively tall, I have always blamed most of my size on "big bones". Imagine my disgust when this new-fangled scale tells me that 52.7% of my body mass is FAT!!! Yuck!

(www.mymoringa.co.za)

One of the other recommendations on doing the Banting lifestyle is that you should be taking a multi-vitamin of some kind to balance out the alphabet soup of daily nutritional requirements. Dr Charles Lubbe, Administrator on the group provides a product called "moringa" which has some pretty impressive nutrients all in one teaspoon (2g) of powder!  I don't like taking tablets so ignored the capsules and ordered the powder instead - I mean, how difficult could it be to consume?

The first thing you have to realise is that the plant is dried and ground to the consistency of talcum powder. The suggestion is that you place it on your tongue and chase it with water.... easy! NOT IF YOU HAVE DENTURES!!! The first thing that happens is that before you can drink the water, the powder flies into every nook and cranny of your mouth (because you are stupid enough to inhale before drinking the water!!), instantly absorbing all the saliva which leaves a gooey paste that sticks to absolutely everything. Spluttering and coughing I try and wash it all down with water, start choking and have to spit everything out of my mouth .. including dentures which are now stuck together! 

So the next thing suggested is mixing it with yogurt. Being inherently lazy, I don't want to use lots of containers so take a Tablespoon with a little yogurt at the bottom, pile on a teaspoon of moringa and then more yogurt on top to contain the flyaway powder, put the whole lot in my mouth and ... mission accomplished!! Phew!

I also bit the bullet and consulted the group's resident dietician who provided me with an eating plan designed specifically to beat the plateau we all reach with stalled weightloss. She suggested I do the 7 day Detox eating plan but I declined, feeling I have baby-pooped enough to last me a lifetime! She also told me that I need to get my fat percentage down by 24% which suddenly does not seem like the end of the world!

There is also a major challenge awaiting me as I head to Cape Town for two weeks on business and will not have as much control over what I eat. My hostess has however allowed me to do breakfast duty while I staying with her so I can treat the household to bacon and eggs for breakfast daily!  

But today is really about positives and looking on the bright side of my Banting Journey ... whoohoo!

Have definitely made friends with my favourite jeans which are now riding very loosely around my hips and bum and threatening to fall off! Already in their place is a size smaller jeans, kindly donated by a friend who is 3 months ahead of me with Banting and an even smaller size waiting for me to shrink into! I drink one cup of coffee with no sweetener of any kind a day and really getting into the taste of cauli-mash and cauli-rice. I happily compete with rabbits as far as salads are concerned but am not going to lie - I do miss my peanut butter sarmies:(

I am having a huge amount of fun trying out new recipes - never having loved cooking, being forced to be creative with new ingredients has proven to be much more enjoyable than I imagined. So my belly is shrinking and the spare tyre wobbles more than ever. My thighs are not rock hard with cellulite anymore, but they must be jam cause jelly don't don't jiggle like that! And.... the other sad reality is that my prize 44DDD boobs are seriously being challenged by gravity:( I can only guess that in the not too far distant future, Ian might just have another amusing pastime .....

Today is a planned "Cheat Day" and to celebrate I have had a bucket of my favourite coffee with sugar. I might even succumb to a peanut butter sarmy too.... and start all over again tomorrow *lol*

Banting stats: Weeks 4 & 5:
Weight: 131.7kg (-1.7kg) Waist : 121.0  (-5.0) Belly Button: 137.0 (-5.5cm)
More Stats: (New Scale; first weigh-in 14/9/14)
Fat % : 51.9 (-0.8%)       Water % : 25.8 (+0.9%)  Muscle % : 20.0 (0.0%)

Week 3

The original culprit!

Discussing "bodily functions" is never considered a polite topic and the thought of discussing it in open forum would probably give me the runs if I did not already have to endure this for the past week!! In sad or heart breaking circumstances someone might sympathetically murmur that the "bottom has fallen out of her world" - in my case, the world fell out of my bottom :(   

Having planned my "cheat day" for Sunday, I happily munched some crisps and dip while watching F1. Did not go overboard but enjoyed my treat nevertheless and thought no more about it till Monday morning. Alright, got the message : there is cheating and then there is being STUPID and obviously my choice was the latter. A small part of me had a chuckle that I had managed to cleverly sidestep the dreaded Banting constipation AND kick-start my metabolism in the process! ...... and my stupidity would lead to me exacerbating the problem on two more occasions before the week was up!

On Tuesday I experienced the most frantic craving for something sweet. Remember, I had not had sugar or anything sweet in any form for 16 days and thought this was bound to happen at some stage or another. The wonderfully supportive group provided Banting-friendly recipes for chocolate cake in a mug and coconut muffin-type thingies and cookies!!! Regretfully there was no cocoa in the house, so my cravings had to wait for Wednesday and a shopping trip.


About the recipes - the Banting for Weightloss Group has grown really fast and discussions are lively, so an item that was visible an hour ago is suddenly gone and buried way, way down. So I have learned to keep an open document on my pc and whenever one of these absolute gems of a recipe is posted I immediately copy and paste it into the document. When the page is full I print it and it lives in a red folder that is kept right next to RMR!

The shopping trip included the purchase of a fancy new scale that measures all kinds of things (my old scale was lying on a regular basis), cocoa, Caring Candies and xylitol, required by some of the recipes required. The minute I got home, the coconut muffin thingy was baked and immensely enjoyed - I even made another one :) 

The sweet craving sorted for the moment, I unpacked and set up the new scale to see how it worked and immediately had a small heart attack! I weighed 3kg more than I did that morning!!! WTF??? I knew there might be a difference but 3kg??? I then realized that I was fully clothed and that I normally weigh myself in my birthday suit directly after morning pee!! Phew!!
Having since weighed myself on both scales, there is a 600g difference between the two - regretfully not in my favour :(

Although the runny tummy had not entirely stopped, I ignored it because it would eventually clear up and soldiered on. Thursday morning I tried a teaspoon of xylitol in my coffee with cream and was so delighted with the taste, I sommer had another mug. The same on Friday morning. And Saturday. And Sunday. And all the while marveling at how effective my metabolism had become.... instead of once a day, I was now going to the loo after every meal... WOW!!

And it being Sunday again we were going out to friends for a braai and I was quite happy that I could "bend" the rules again. While everybody else was drinking Iced Tea, Coke, Beer, etc - good little me just drank water. When my bottled water was up they provided me with icy cold water which I happily drank 3 glasses of. Ate all the good stuff.... boerewors, lamb chops, salad with lots of avo, coleslaw, spinach and feta bake and even a piece of potato bake that dropped on my plate. 

And then my tummy violently objected. A number of times.

I asked where the water came from and was told it was tap water and I just knew that it was the reason for the violent reaction. See, my body has always had a thing about municipal water, and on top of the week of runny tummy ...well, the rest was history.

When we got home I researched "Banting and Diarrhea" and found the other likely culprit to be xilotol. Oh well, back to bitter coffee in the morning :( 

Detox done and dusted!

Weight: 133.4kg (-0.0kg)                      Belly Button: 142.5 (-2.0cm)