Is there Good and bad Cohens friendly food ideal for weight loss

[Melissa]

It has been on my mind a lot lately as my first month of the program comes to an end and have not seen the results I was hoping for.

Just wondering if there are choices I'm making within my program that I maybe should be only having now and then rather than all the time. IE I really enjoy yoghurt and fruit for breakfast as this is similar to what I ate before only I'd have some nuts and seeds in it as well. But maybe I'm having this too often and my body is use to this. I would have thought with the quantities of food I'm eating my weight loss would be more significant. My diet was reasonably good before as we don't have any take away food in Maleny that I'd eat. The only difference with Cohens as against my ususal diet is a few less carbs and minimal quantity and that is where I thought my problem was. BIG MEALS.

Has anybody found that particular foods have had an impact either way.

Melissa

[baloo]

I found cheese slowed down my weight loss yet others seem to be fine with it.

[beanz]

I have been having this issue as well. I will have been on the program without (known) deviation for 4 weeks this upcoming Monday and to date, I have lost maybe 7 lbs/3kg. So you've done better than I have at this juncture. It's a little depressing when you consider how quickly others have lost and how restrictive this regimen is. I e-mailed the consultants (North America has only online support) and was told to cut out the cheese for awhile because I may be retaining water. They had no other explanation for my slow loss. I did this for a couple of days until I realized that I really didn't care about water weight per se. It's not actual fat loss and can be easily regained with something as seemingly innocuous as a pickle so I put cheese back into my diet. Cheese is my favorite food! I also asked about buffalo meat which I eat several times a week and was told that that was no problem. Everybody's metabolism is different it seems!

I was having a problem with my scale - the measurements always seem off by a gram or two. Very frustrating. I broke down and bought another (expensive) scale the other day and measuring seems much more precise. Hope that helps move the scale downward.

Anyhoo, I was a fairly good eater prior to Cohen's as well and like you the changes I have made are a bit less carbs and food quantity. I have about 25 lbs to lose altogether and several have commented that my weight loss is slow because I have less to lose. Perhaps, but I know there are others with similar weight loss goals who have lost 12 lbs in a week! I'm not sure what to tell you other than there are others like you out there and do what you can to resist cheating and move forward. I'd like to think that one day I will step on the scale and be amazed at the sudden drop in weight. That will make all this hard work worth it. Good luck.

[Kohinoor]

Hi Melissa,

There have been posts in the past re "the order in which you eat" (e.g. protein first up,etc.) I'm certainly no "full bottle" on this, but the posts are on this forum (Kristine went into this in some detail).

And, as I recall, there is far more to it than just what you eat. Sorry I can't recall just who made the post (probably Kristine or Asy) but the timing is all-important too. It seems that eating every 2.5 hours is quite important. I recall there is a post that goes into this in depth. Hopefully, someone else can find it.

It must be disappointing for you in not achieving the loss you thought you'd make. But bear in mind that many on other weight-loss programs might lose 5Kg in 3 months and be "over the moon". And, if I recall correctly, Kristine consistently lost around 5 - 6Kg per month during her program. Others might lose more (often the blokes drop weight more quickly). Asy seemed to lose 8Kg per month (but had a lot more to lose). If you have done 5.5Kg, I'd think you are doing pretty good.

My apologies if it seems I'm taking the topic off-track - but it seems to me there may be other factors at work that need to be considered,

K

[Kristine..]

G'Day

In my humble opinion, weight loss also has a lot to do with what type of fat you have accumulated, and how long you have been obese.

My obesity was a long, slow process. I had always been around 63 kilos (inbetween pregnancies and breast feeding for eleven years) and weighed more on Mondays than I did on Frdiays. This was a steady pattern and the weight only started to gain after I opened a retail store.

I did not eat more in the store than when I had a child care centre, but at the centre I was involved in a lot of physical activity - picking children up, carrying them around, and walking about the centre almost constantly throughout the day. As an indication of how far I walked each day, I wore nurse's duty shoes and used to wear the soles through to my socks about each six months.

The shop meant very limited movement, mainly standing, and no regular food or drink during trading hours.

The type of fat I put on, at the rate of about 2 kilos per annum, was hard packed fat. Not blubber, more like lard even though 'live' fat is, of course, liquid, I imagine that my fat was in dense deposits. I did not have a 'spare tyre', I looked pregnant with a fully distended abdomen.

By the time I started on Cohen's I was 55 & half, and I thought that my program was designed to be slow to allow for minimal body shock and also for shrinkage, but perhaps the type of fat I had was also slower to breakdown than if there was a higher liquid content to it.

Regarding foods, I put faith in the program and although I did develop certain food patterns due to what was available in my local supermarket - muchrooms and zucchini rather than just endless lettuce, I also figured that having yoghurt and fruit for breakfast accounted for one of the fruits each day (I was on 3 fruit and 6 crispbread) as when I had the egg option with vegetables, this left the fruit to be eaten separately that day, in effect meaning that I had 3 fruit and 3 vegetable servings (the yoghurt days were 3 fruit and 2 vegetable servings because of the pattern of the meals).

Protein must be eaten first in the morning. Fruit can be eaten with the yoghurt, but not before the yoghurt. I also did not use any artifical sweetener, had no fizzy drinks except for plain soda water occasionally, and was very careful with the dried herbs and flavourings. No splashes of sauces etc I used the balsamic vinegar most days to flavour the evening meat meal (if that is what I ate) but otherwise avoided relying on additives to spice the food up. Ground salt, pepper corns and chili flakes were my main flavourings. I did use the 5 gms of mayonaisse if eating a salad.

I also made up one percolator of coffee each morning and decanted that to a glass jug, then during the day had a 'shot' of black coffee zapped in the microwave as required. I did not drink instant coffee during the program mainly as black instant coffee tasted like burnt water. I drank all the water every day.

My hours of eating were usually spread across 16 hours as I work long hours, and as a general rule, except when doing the grilled cheese & veg (pizza) meal, ate the crispbread and fruit between meals. I kept a written meal plan log of what I ate, rather than try and plan a menu of what I wanted to eat. I bought the meat fresh and froze it in portions in zip bags.

I weighed everying (don't forget to drain the tuna first) and got very used to one spring onion per day, one thick slice of tomato per meal, that sort of maintenance.

Over the twenty weeks on the actual program, my steady loss was reliable and I was very pleased with the result. The first week I dropped 3.5 kilos but the most at any other time was 1.5 kilos in a week, and this mainly occured if I had not lost anything, or less than 1 kilos, in the previous week.

Shrinkage was at a steady rate, but not uniform. For example, my upper arms shrank quite quickly, but some weeks the abdomen would lose a lot or a little or my legs would lead the loss, it was rather interesting to see which bit of me had shrunk that week.

If you are new to the program you will have to wait a bit to see what is your pattern. Four weeks is just the intro period. The second four week period will start to demonstrate your individual style, and this would probably be a reliable pattern for you for the rest of the program.

I was more than pleased with my progress. Once I got into the rhythm of it, I barely noticed, although the seasonal food changed quite a lot eg I started in February, when peaches were available and I really enjoyed these. By the end of the program it was mainly kiwi, apples and oranges, and sometimes the Granny Smith (hard, green cooking apples) were not available and only the sweeter apples were in the shops.

I preferred vita weet crispbread (an unleavened wheat biscuit, unsalted but with cracked pepper), rice cakes or the salty cracker type crispbread in that order.

During the program the balanced mood was very noticeable, the lack of plaque on teeth, the bright eyes, shiny hair, strong nails etc, all signs of a body ticking over nicely.

Just follow the program and you will achieve the results. The universe is unfolding as it should and your own program is unique to you. Try and not weigh too often if it concerns you, although throughout the program I recorded dry weight every day and the spreadsheet makes for very interesting reading.

Best wishes. One foot in front of the other. Start, continue and finish.

There is not much more to it than that!

Regards

Kristine