March is Maintenance Month!

[Kristine..]

G'Day

Well, two weeks after finishing the program I have managed to swing two kilos.

So .... March is Maintenance Month!

Who will join me in polishing up and practising the Maintenance Guidelines?


I figure that there is a mindset that once we have finished the program we breathe a sigh of relief, file away the Program, and unfortunately quickly, slide back into nasty, bad habits.

Out here in the wild it is easy to forget the basic Maintenance Guidelines.

My Guidelines say:

Stay on low fat products
Eat in Moderation
Snack (on processed cheese with crispbread)
Limit fruit particularly if you were severely obese before
Don't count calories
Limit carbohydrates
Eat sweets & deserts immediately after a carbohydrate meal (methods apply)
No carbohydrates for breakfast
Eat 3 meals a day
Chocolate to be limited, same rules as for sweets & deserts
Cakes (definition and type)
Alcohol and how to drink it
Nuts (as for carbohydrates)
Fast Foods (types)
Oil / Fat / Butter
Weight Gain
Insulin signs and triggers
Water



The past two weeks I have wanted to see what, if anything, triggered weight gain.

From past experience and the past two weeks, this is definitely carbohydrate in just about any form - wheat, bread of any kind, potatoes, carrots, peas, corn etc, alcohol (wine), nuts and chocolate.

So this week I am not going to 'count calories' or weigh anything, but am going to have the Maintenance Guidelines on my desk and read the guidelines every day.

I know the Program 'off by heart' but still had the shopping list and the Meals taped to the wall in the kitchen.


Until I really get into the swing of Maintenance I have to keep reminding myself what maintenance is all about.

It is NOT a perpetual diet.

It is a way of eating and a way of enjoying what I eat without harming myself.


So will you join me?

This thread is for people on Maintenance and who are willing to be 'ON MATINENANCE' for March.

This thread is not about Losing Weight. It is about getting into the swing of Maintenance, what works for you, what doesn't, what you find hard and what you find easy.



My note for today is:

Don't forget to keep up with the water - go and have a glass of water now and another to sip on during the 8.30pm TV show




Hope to see you Maintaining in March

Cheers
Kristine

[lucylou]

Hi Kristine

I would love to join you but because I didn't maintain my weight I'm back on plan for another week and then on refeed again. I'm well within my Cohen's range again and very happy to be so. But by the time I finish refeed march will be almost over! If you plan to maintain in April I'm there.

x

LL

[thenewvee]

Yep, I'll join you Christine, as i need to get the hang of this maintenance too!
Tomorrow is my first day!

I think making a printed copy to keep on your desk a great idea, and will be doing same!

Vee

[Kristine..]

G'Day

OK, so this is interesting (I think).

This is a Grade A Kristine Observation:

This post is not about 'weight' but about reaction to food.

I am finding that as in 2006, once I eat a 'normal' dinner I get the fidgets.

I prowl around looking for things to eat.

It's not as if I'm hungry, it's just a prowling feeling. Not boredom ... perhaps the ghost of habits past?

Anyway, I have tried to keep carbohydrates out of this evening meal, without all that much success. Tonight's dinner (cooked by Mike) was whiting, mashed potato, zucchini, green beans, broccoli and cauliflower.

Can you spot the carbohydrates?

Yep, the potato is obvious, but also the green beans and the broccoli.

And then I watched TV for a while. TV is another carbohydrate for me. This is definitely a childhood habit - if you go to the movies you get something to eat. In the absence of a packet of Jaffas and a ChocTop I started prowling about the pantry, the fridge, the cupboards. In the end I found some leftover Christmas chocolates (never mind the Best Before date) and ate those.

Now, the point is:

When I finished in 2006 and started eating 'family meals' again, the evening fidget drove me mad, and eventually drove me to the Nutella jar. I would sit there eating spoonfulls of the stuff and thinking 'I'm not really enjoying this, why am I eating it?'

And as I ate the chocolates tonight, eyes glued to the small screen, I didn't really taste them, or enjoy them, and yet ate them all.

Meanwhile, the fruit is sitting untouched in the bowl.

Whereas I religiously ate the three pieces of fruit each day, now I am not 'seeing' it, although I still have the kiwi with yoghurt and try and remember to have the orange last thing at night.

But somehow my heart is not 'in' the fruit bowl.

Fidgets. Prowling. Not good. I have no craving and during the day have no desire to eat between Meal 1 and Meal 2 (yikes! What happened to Breakfast and Lunch??) but during the evening I am a lost soul.

So:

Maybe I go the other way, and stoke up on carbohydrates in Meal 2. Maybe I am not actually eating 'enough' good carbohydrate now and so am veering off into low grade carbodhydrate.

Maybe I should deliberately have fruit earlier in the day so that the blood sugar is maintained, perhaps the sugar levels drop and then there is a reaction after Meal 2?

This is what Maintenance Month is about:

Think about what you eat, when you eat it and how you respond.

I'm not fussed about eating the chocolate - big deal, although I now feel overloaded - but I am fussed about this prowling about.



If you have experienced this yourself, how did you deal with it? Did you increase or decrease certain foods, change the time of day, or did you just 'grow out of it' as your body stablised over time?


I repeat, for me, this is not about hunger, or cravings. This is about prowling about feeling fidgetty during the evenings.


Your experiences are welcome!

Cheers
Kristine

[hexi2]

Are you sure the fidgetting feeling isn't an emotional one where your subconcisous is trying to reinforce habit of sweets after dinner, a childhood belief perhaps? and nothing to do with a physical reaction?

The only thing I can understand with the fidgetting is 'anxiety' from my experience and anxiety comes from our thought patterns?

Just an idea...

Also brocolli is deemed as a new veg rather than a 'carb' so that meal looks ok to me as long as the carb serves were low?

[Kristine..]

Hi Hexi

Yes, I stand corrected, broccoli is a 'new vegetable'. I hung the wrong man!


Now come on, Maintenance People, this is not my Diary, this is for pooling general comments about Maintenance


So, OK, Hexi anxiety could be a cause of prowling. We all have anxieties .... and one of the very important mechanisms of the Program is that the vegetables and the proteins are all high in tryptophan, which stimulates the production / release of serotonin, the 'feel good' hormone.

This is why we don't feel hungry on the program and why (most of us) swan about in a happy bubble, sleep well and wear a silly grin while we lose ginormous amounts of weight.

So is the drop in these proteins and vegetables contributing to the fidgets? As I said, I notice a lot more prowling when dinner has had a decent whack of carbohydrates.

This evening I grilled frozen Chicken Kiev, stirred up a whole wok of predominately Cohen's style vegetables, pan fried some rice from the fridge - and splashed over some industrial strength soy & mushroom sauce!

No fidgets today

Dinner would have had a high level of tryptophan.

Is this the secret ingredient to the Program and to Maintenance?

Keep up the tryptophan levels and everything else will fall in to place?

A zucchini a day keeps anxiety at bay?


So my question today (this is getting a bit like Sex and the City!!) is:

Does anxiety – at any level – cause you to start grazing

Can you control anxiety by eating more of the Cohen’s Food Group and thus induce that happy feeling. When you are happy or content, are you more or less likely to go on the Pantry Prowl??

[thenewvee]

Kristine,

In my experience, anxiety causes me to want to make myself feel safe again, and my old habits for doing that, was look for things to eat, preferably high carb things, sweet or creamy things! The soothing types of foods. Unfortunately those things do not really calm or soothe anything other than our minds, albeit very briefly.

It also sounds to me, if we have had foods high in tryptophan, and it releases more seratonin, then we are more able to deal with those anxieties in a calmer manner, and so it is easier to avoid reverting to old habits.

Of course, Hexi is right about the old habits stemming from what we are constantly telling ourselves in our head. By changing that, and optimising our feel good levels, it sounds like we have a much greater chance of successfully maintaining a healthy eating programme for life.

Those are my thoughts on it.

Vee

[hexi2]

Very interesting point Kristine

I guess for everyone it is different but I know for me anxiety is my biggest contributor of the fidgets.

Basically for the last 9 months I have been on a merry go round - of eating Cohens during the week and bingeing on the weekends (or in between when the anxiety got the better of me)

I found my anxiety levels have been high at all times since finishing refeed and I think that has to do not so much with diet (although I think caffeine contributes)...just before I ate my anxiety was through the roof and I know my anxiety comes from fear - fear of weight and subconsiously trying to put the weight back on to 'prove' my point - maddness i know. But it wasn't til I finally figured this out that anxiety stopped HOWEVER I haven't really put it all to the test and this will prove interesting when i embark on maintenance again!

So who knows? lol

[Kohinoor]

Hi Kristine,

I still love your turn of phrase :-

and splashed over some industrial strength soy & mushroom sauce!

Hehe - helluva imagery I must say

Onya K,

Koh

[SuzieQ]

Ahhhh Kristine! I could have put my name on the bottom of your first post except instead of spoonfulls of nutella I've been having peanut butter...sad, very sad.

I have also been getting the 'fidgets and prowl' and yes I think it is all about anxiety and also trying to fill a 'hole' that can't be filled with food. I think most of us got overweight because we eat when we are trying to mask an emotion we don't like, of course we are only distracting ourselves from this emotion for a short time and then we feel worse for what we ate, which adds to the problem.

I have also been feeling a bit lost and have been trying to do some soul searching as to what I need to do to not feel this way. For starters I just need to keep myself busy and start doing more things I enjoy instead of eating, like reading, a hobby whatever...something needs to substitute for eating. And I have made up an eating plan for myself so I have a rough guideline of what to eat on a daily basis, it is flexible but gives me something to go by, I feel comfortable with a written plan rather than flying by the seat of my pants.

That's my 2 cents, hope it helps.

Suzie