Reply #183: Kudos

[Mark D.]

Very honest and heartfelt post and I respect you and wish you the best in life. I've never had such a food addiction or weight issue so I can't say I 'understand'. It must be difficult. I was chastised for being tall most of my life and still hear comments about it. Of course I had no control and still don't, over that. Folks just like to criticise others to make themselves feel better. Years of enduring that taught me not to do that, and I think it's probably made a kinder person of you too. I have one bad habit from it. I slouch a lot and have some self-esteem issues. But I can't shrink. Folks who criticise others need to understand that. It is showing THEIR own weaknesses.

You probably know about this already but I want to suggest it. Since you do binge eat as comfort, have you considered changing some of those foods? High fiber foods are more filling. Also, have you considered going ultra-low glycemic. You are probably aware of it, but if not you can Google to find dozens of educational sites on this. A surprising example is Potatoes. They are very satiary (satisfying) but when hot, mashed, etc., they are ultra-high glycemic. But not when they are chilled. In fact the harmful starches turn resistant and that allows them to actually regulate blood sugar positively. So it's no hot potatoes for me, just chilled ones, like in potato salad. Insulin response, and the glycemic load/index from/of certain foods is a huge factor.

I have a lot of diabetes in my family so for that reason alone, I'm low-glycemic as much as I can be. Sugar, Corn Syrup and stripped white flour from wheat and rice (and white rice and non-chilled white potatoes) are the biggest factors, as well as certain fruit juices. It took me years to develop a way to change it in my lifestyle. But every person I've met who had huge weight loss and kept it off, non-surgically, employed an ultra-low glycemic diet. EVERYONE should follow it for just the anti-diabetes benefit of it, in my opinion. I just wanted to share that. Forgive me if you alredy know of that. But there is nothing 'defective' about you. We had decades of media conditioning that 'low fat, low cholesterol, high refined carbohydrate' diets were key to health. They had it totally backwards. It's a struggle for many because of this also.