Weight Loss Trouble

[SeizureAdvocate]

Good afternoon,

Last year I set a goal to get to 140. I am currently 5'0 and weigh between 160-165 it fluctuates often. What brought me to want to lose weight is that I am having many stomach/digestive issues. Last year the PCP told me it could be partially from the extra weight, and also from the many food intolerance they found I have.

I began to eat extremely healthy and got down to 148, give or take a few pounds any given day. I felt better and was happy about the results. However to do this I was having to fix two separate meals each night. One for me and one for my husband. In addition I noticed a huge increase in my Food budget. So, when times got rough and money got tight, and I became worn from everything we were dealing with. My diet went backward.

Now, I can see that coming up I may have what I need to eat that way again, but dont know if it is worth it. I want to lose the weight but I wish it was easier and didnt take changing my whole diet and paying the extreme prices for the grass fed beef, and the cage free chicken and the organic veggies.

Does anyone have any tips that might help me on this quest?

On a side note I am active nothing extreme but I walk for an hour every work day during my lunch. When I am home I am barely ever sitting down I am up and down the stairs taking care of chores, the pups, and my husband. I dont eat much and the little I do eat is not extremely unhealthy.

The doctor stated the food intolerance can be hindering me from losing weight. The biggest intolerance is Yeast, which has to do with more foods then you realize.

[Barb135]

SeizureAdvocate... have your had your thyroid tested to make sure it's functioning properly?  One of the biggest problems with gaining weight/inability to lose it is hypothyroidism.  I was diagnosed with hypothyroidism 12 yrs ago and gained about 30 lbs in a matter of weeks.  I'm still struggling to lose it.  Like yours, my husband is very picky and getting him to give up his bacon and burgers would take an act of Congress and he'd probably still defy them... :-)  Of course, I'm free to cook whatever meal I want for myself and I often do, but it seems such a waste to cook an entire meal just for myself.

Anyway, if you haven't been tested for thyroid malfunction, ask your doctor to test Free T4 and Free T3, which are the actual thyroid hormones, along with TSH, which is a pituitary hormone that stimulates the thyroid.  Many doctors only want to test TSH, but that's really only an indicator and should not be relied as the only indicator of thyroid function.  While you're at it, it would be a good idea to check for thyroid antibodies as well.  Hashimoto's is the most common cause of hypothyroidism and food allergies/intolerances are very common with Hashimoto's and hypothyroidism, as are digestive issues.

[SeizureAdvocate]

Thanks and yes from what the doctors have told me they have checked for Thyroid issues. However, I know many people state the sxs seem like that is what I have.

For sure I dont think an act of congress could get my husband to give up bacon. He even had me ask a Chinese restaurant if they had bacon LOL.

[Paxiled]

Well, you brought this up elsewhere, and I encouraged you to make sure it really is yeast, but really, most foods don't contain yeast.  Eating organic isn't that much more expensive if you avoid the really expensive items such as that beef.  Beef is likely to be a bigger problem for you than yeast, but in your case, maybe not.  But it's not good for anyone either.  Eating organic legumes for protein several meals a week is still a lot cheaper than eating meat.  Fish is expensive, but we tend to eat much smaller portions of it than we do when we eat meat, so that cuts down on price as well.  Nuts and seeds are also good sources of protein and taste good.  I would suggest getting some good vegetarian cookbooks of different traditions and getting to know grains other than wheat.  Brown rice is pretty well tolerated by almost everyone, is easy to prepare, and tastes great.  Basically, there's a whole lot of foods available in our international economy we can get now, and they taste really good once you learn how to prepare them.  Your husband will probably learn to like them and this can help at least some in fixing your problem.  All the best.

[SeizureAdvocate]

https://badgut.org/information-centre/health-nutrition/yeast-and-mould-allergy/

This website gives more information on what I feel is my concern. Beef doesnt seem to cause any issues as long as it is grass fed. I still eat beef in moderation. I eat alot of sunflower seeds and I love pumpkin seeds these are both sprouted when possible. I stay away from the nuts because I know for a fact peanuts cause issues for me, and recently found that other nuts have the same effects just not as severe. I already use alot of vegetables and brown rice in my diet. My husband is very picky and while I know he would like things if he gave them a chance taking away his bacon and burgers will be a fight LOL. I understand why you are trying to say Yeast is not the issue, and for most it isnt. HOWEVER, based on everything I have done for the past 14yrs I do believe YEAST is mine.

Another fact I found out is I am completely allergic to beans. This is funny to me considering that I never could eat them anyways. My family always thought it was that I didnt like them. I always said I like the taste I just dont like how they make me feel (this was since I was 4). Sure enough the testing proves I am allergic to beans. Makes sense I always have been in tune with my body, I just warning myself not to eat them, they could make me sick.

[Paxiled]

Wow, you have a lot of food allergies!  Something happened to you somewhere down the line, I'm sorry it did.  By the way, peanuts aren't nuts, they are legumes.  A peanut allergy isn't the same as a tree nut allergy, but you seem to have both, so phooey.  By the way, if you're eating sunflower sprouts, which I love, that's not the same as eating sunflower seeds, which is where the protein is.  And I'm not saying yeast isn't the issue for you, just that it isn't for most people but a lot of alternative practitioners have for years been telling folks with a candida problem not to eat food yeast, and they aren't at all related.  In your case, I take your word for it, I was only saying to make sure it's the yeast and not just the wheat so you can be sure you're tackling the right thing.  I know soy is a common allergen, but I never heard of any other bean being much of a problem.  Now, some people can't digest them very well without, well, you know!  Sorry about your husband, it takes a lot of the fun out of discovering new ways of eating.  You keep doing what works for you.  Peace.

[SeizureAdvocate]

Don't have allergies. I can eat all these things moderatly for small length of times. Just over a long period of time or alot at once causes concern. It called a sensitivity or intolerance. You should look it up. It is different. Reactions to allergies  are usually quicker then intolerance. Intolerance is also harder to pinpoint.

[Paxiled]

I do know well the difference.  Intolerance is actually worse than an allergy, because it's an immune system reaction that is even more severe.  When you're allergic, your immune system is overactive, attacking things that actually aren't bad for you or toxic in any way.  Intolerance indicates something lacking in the body that makes it unable to digest the item, such as lactose intolerance due to the fact that almost all humans just lack the enzyme that digests dairy.  I'm curious about one thing, just for my own education.  How on Earth do they test for allergies to beans?  Legumes are one of the largest varieties of vegetable, so how do they test for all the different ones?  Just off the top of my head, these are the ones I can name without doing any research:  string, pole, sugar snap peas, cow peas, snow peas, yellow peas, chickpeas or garbanzo beans, white and red kidney, anasazi, aduki,  great northern, pinto, black, yellow and black soy, red clover, red, green, black, and French lentils, canellini, navy, and a host of others I don't have time to list.  Just wondering how they test for all of them.

[specialmom]

paxiled, it's my understanding that most allergists begin testing on a wide food category like 'beans' by starting with popular beans and peas.  There are some that get grouped together as similar and if allergic to one, likely allergic to others. A category would be kidney beans, string beans, black beans, pinto beans and chickpeas are all closely related to the soy bean in terms of allergies.  Allergists are quite savvy these days at uncovering allergy specifics but the bottom line, is we also know our bodies and frankly, some things just don't agree with us.  

SeizureAdvocate, have you ever looked into diverticulitis?  Just wondering with your comments on nuts if something like that is going on with you.  Glad you found what works for you.  

We have debate in our house with the recent onslaught of gluten intolerance.  It's just so poorly defined to actually know but listening to what a person says and if eliminating gluten (or in your case yeast) makes you feel better, then worth it.  My kids now say if we go to a bakery or pizza place that they'd like theirs WITH gluten because they have a gluten free cousin and we've had more than our share of his snacks.  Ha.  I think it has gotten so much better though in terms of what gluten free has to offer in the taste and selection department though.  I tried my son on a gluten free diet which is sometimes recommended for kids with neurological issues and was happy and sad both I saw no change with its elimination.  Would have been nice to have control over symptoms through diet but glad we could have a regular selection of things to eat.  Anyway, is it difficult being yeast free?  I love beans but have one child that would rather eat dirt than anything bean related.  He doesn't get sick but he just hates them.  He is likely not missing out on life with no beans, right?  :>))  

[Paxiled]

Thanks, Mom.  I've never had allergy testing and just didn't know how they'd test for such a large and diverse category of food.  As for the gluten thing, I'm an outlier on this.  When I managed health food stores, and I stopped a long time ago now, this was already a fad.  And I do mean fad, but that's just my opinion.  I have always believed that wheat is the main problem when it comes to grains, and eating too much of it for years can add up and cause all kinds of problems.  But I had a lot of customers who were told they had a gluten problem but did fine on gluten containing grains other than wheat.  In fact, most of them did fine on spelt, and that's probably one of the grains wheat was hybridized from originally.  Spelt is a high gluten grain.  I can't say anyone knows for sure, but these fads get going usually because someone writes a book and it gets popular, and then someone else writes a book and it gets popular and most people forget the first book.  It goes in waves.  The only people who definitely can be proven to have a gluten problem are those with ciliac disease, but that's a very small number of people.  We sometimes can benefit by looking, l think, at real people and how they fared over the centuries.  Soy has gotten a terrible reputation, for example, but few know that the original anti-soy campaign was funded by the beef industry because so many were switching meals over to soy.  Soy is a common allergen, but the claims about soy go way beyond that, and especially include the high isoflavone content that supposedly makes men impotent because if you isolate them they are estrogenic.  But then you look at eastern Asia and they built tremendous civilizations and they eat a ton of soy -- some form of it is in virtually every meal.  Given the large populations there and a reputation for health, why don't we see those terrible effects of soy?  It's a real-life lab, and it doesn't show the harm.  Same with gluten.  All the greatest civilizations were built on gluten containing grains except those in the Americas (but two of those were built on corn, so there also goes the carb theory).  Most likely, what actually happened is that the wheat that was developed very recently was, like so much of what you find in a modern grocery store, hybridized for marketing purposes and in so doing foods became more troublesome.  We also were exposed to the pollution created by the industrial revolution, and finally we had our immune systems played with by overdoses of antibiotics and possibly by the proliferation of vaccinations for the very young (this has nothing to do with autism, it is an older argument that each time we get one, and I'm not arguing we shouldn't, they cause the immune system to react.  Too much of this with all these intrusions is probably more of the problem.  Lastly, allergy testing isn't particularly accurate or well done.  It can be, but to truly do it right takes a lot of time and an elimination diet to prove out the tests to make sure they weren't false positives.  You're right, if it bothers you don't eat it, but that isn't the same thing as an allergy or an intolerance, it's an idiosyncratic thing we all have.  Peace, all.

[specialmom]

   Sure, you can get a false positive or false negative just like you can on any test.  I know a lot of people that rely on the information from their allergist though and it can be lifesaving for them.  They've gotten pretty good at it.  The blood testing has come a long way too.  I found this article interesting https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/263965#symptoms  It's on  allergy verses intolerance. There is the intolerance that you speak of but more than just that.  People can have a 'chemical intolerance' as well as other types that can happen.  Yeast is something that there is plenty of literature to support that some people have an actual allergy  but the majority of people  have more of a sensitivity also often termed intolerance to it.  Bit of a controversial subject a little like gluten tends to be.  Cabbage is something else that I can eat a little of but if I eat more than a little or if say I have a soup with it in it and I eat it cumulatively over a few days, the reaction builds (my poor family when that happens).  I eat it in moderation.  My sister won't eat it at all.  I love cabbage though.  Fry it up in a pan with some bacon?  Hog heaven even if painful (for everyone around me) later.

I agree on gluten completely.  Wow, holy mother of changing grocery store aisles. Huge fad. I know so many people that try to ditch gluten for what I can tell is no reason.  The cure all for all.  I do have one friend that  was hospitalized for malnutrition and found to have celiac disease and is strictly no gluten now.  I'm glad she has so many options in mainstream grocery stores and restaurants.  But there are a lot of people like my cousin who swears that if her son has any gluten at all, he has major abdominal pain and digestive issues.  I have thought about secretly testing this by sneaking in some gluten to like the pot luck dish I bring and making sure he eats it but that doesn't seem ethical somehow. I have another family member who is in her 80's.  You bring up anything related to this food or that food not being good for you and she says her mantra "all things in moderation".  

It is really amazing what man has done to food, isn't it?   The modifications and antibiotics.  The chemicals and substances I've exposed my kids to just serving dinner?  I try not to think about it.

[Paxiled]

Mom, live in peace.  I grew up in the 1950's and what we were fed is a crime.  I'm guessing you don't come anywhere near that kind of crap with your kids.  And to think of my poor parents and their entire generation, given free cigarettes when everyone was in the military or the USO and the like.  Then came the 60's and suddenly no family was cancer free.  Or Nestles telling everyone formula was better than breast milk and doctors believing that, leaving my generation with so many immune system problems.  You're way better off now, I'm sure of it.

[Paxiled]

Oh, and as to that cabbage.  I love it too, and don't have the problems you do, but you might avoid that by eating fermented cabbage such as kim chi.  I love it.  But that's the thing I was saying, we all have our problems.  I love tofu but my wife can't deal with it.  It's not an allergy, it's, well, you know what it is.  She loves it, but she just can't do it.  I used to be lucky, I could eat anything, but due to pain I was told to take ibuprofen and to enable that to take prilosec for a month.  Didn't work for pain, but now my digestive system is in distress a lot.  Sometimes it's really hard to win!

[SeizureAdvocate]

Good morning,

To answer your question specialmom, I haven't asked my doctor's about diverticulitis directly. Recently they said I had IBS.

Paxiled, so SpecialMom is right they did alot of blood test on me. The results came on 5 pages and they made it easy to read.

Well, still trying to figure a game plan to do what I need to and lose weight.

[specialmom]

Paxiled, I'm sadly not that young.  Younger than you, yes.  But not that young as I had my kids after being a career gal and all that good stuff.  This will convince you of that . . . pretty sure my mom had a glass of wine and a cigarette right before leaving for the hospital to calm her down about giving birth to me.  Of course, this might explain some of my mental deficits too . . . ha (sort of kidding . . . sort of . . .).  I've heard of kim chi but never tried it!  I will!!  Good to keep in perspective that I haven't poisoned my children yet . . .  

SeizureAdvocate, I want to lose weight badly as well.  So, if you couldn't buy exactly the same quality or organic, but the less expensive counterparts that are non organic, regular lean beef and chicken, I would think that would be the same net net in terms of weight management?  If you eat a whole lot of vegetables (organic or not organic), that is still a lean way to go.  Or not?  I know for me, the problem I run into when my diet goes to poop is either when I'm super busy or super stressed. Those two times, I can't hardly be bothered to make a nice, healthy dinner.  We grab some fast food, or some prepared food I heat up or whatever we can find (and it is usually not healthy).  The time it takes to make a proper salad is something that even just that feels like too much on some days!  Sad but true.  And if I feel the LEAST bit sorry for myself?  Whoa, lock the frig. That is entirely psychological.  And really, when super busy, I'm often super stressed so it is a double issue.

To eat healthy for me often takes planning and coordination.  How about you?  And when you do eat the way you want, do you lose weight?  

[Paxiled]

Just to know, there is no such thing as lean beef.  Truly lean meat is, shall we say, very dry.  Think buffalo or venison.  Harder to prepare so they have that tremendously fatty pork or beef taste Americans are so used to.  Beef was invented by humans, and it was invented in part because it is so high in fat.  That's not to say never eat beef, just to say it's never going to be lean.  It isn't supposed to be.  I'm lucky in that I just don't really like most beef cuts that much and much prefer lamb, which isn't that lean either but has a built-in limitation of being pretty expensive.  What I have done as an adult came about by accident, because I accidentally became a health food store manager in order to try and save a local food coop.  When you work long hours at a food store, you naturally bring home food from that store, and so I learned to like things I had not grown up eating.  

[SeizureAdvocate]

Specilmom, So for me definitely busy, stressed or not feeling well makes it hard to eat a great healthy meal. We dont reach for fast food but I do like to throw a pizza or pot pie in the oven now and then. Recently I have been making me wraps. Ham or Chicken and lots of veggies wrapped up and heated a bit. My husband has decided to eat more sandwiches. as for the organic or non orgranic, and the cheaper types of meat I am trying that now.  

I dont really plan and coordinate my meals. I usually make sure I have healthier choices in the house and tend to make sure when I make him dinner I think twice before eating the same thing. My go to is a cucumber salad, wrap or soup when I dont want what he does. Although I have gotten lazy on the soup and started buying a can rather then using my bone broth and veggies to make one. My husband tells me all the time though he thinks it is more my metabolism and digestive system holding me back. I think he is partially right and then I am not active enough as well. Anyhow, with all the food intolerance I have I am thinking about talking to a nutritionist.

Last year when I was nearing 140 I felt so much better, then I do at 165. I always tell my husband and my kids I want to eat healthy to feel healthy not for weight loss, but weight loss is the added bonus.