Being on a diet doesn't mean you can't party a little. The guy with the beard is Edward James Olmos from Miami Vice, American Me fame- one of the more respected actors in the Latino community. (No wonder he looks a little nervous in the midst of all these lawyers!) This was at the La Raza Lawyers annual scholarship dinner. There was great food and drink to be had...and Optifast for me. You'd think by now that I would have gotten over all temptation, but the steak on my plate looked so good that I almost threw it at my friend Andy to get it away from me! Yes, temptation will always remain, I think. But is food something that has been an addiction to me? We're looking at this issue in my new Optifast class. (For the record, I tend to look at it as more of a bad habit with serious health effect. Doritos are good, but I don't know if my urge for them was of the "crack addict" variety.)
Last Tuesday was a new chapter in my weight loss journey with Optifast. I transferred from my original moderator (the wonderful Ann Tenover) to begin a class called Solutions-Food Addictions. It was a pretty different experience and definitely took me out of my comfort zone. With Ann, I was used to a more "touchy, feely" approach- kind of conversation among friends with plenty of support and laughter. So, why change? Well, after 18 weeks, she started a new group to go over the same syllabus with only a couple of us remaining from the original group, so I thought it was time to learn something new and different.
My new teacher is definitely different- much more sarcastic and confrontational than Anne- though he also shows a deft touch with the group in knowing when to ease off. He came from a work history that included working in the prison with addicts, having been a engineer and many academic degrees. The class, which he created for Optifast, examines over eating as an addiction- i.e. an unhealthy behavior in excess which attempts to fill one of our basic needs. He cites our basic need as feeling safe and loved. I think I'm probably going to like him, but he's definitely much more directly challenging than Ann was. He's an aggressive presence. I felt almost as if I were back at U.C. Berkeley, as he talked about different research studies, hormones in the body and constantly quizzed us.
My lawyer mind kept jumping to counterarguments for much of what he said, but I mostly held my tongue, thinking that there was a lot that I could learn from this PhD in nutrition. But when he went on attack against the destructive property of artificial sweeteners, I almost burst out and said "Heavens, man. Don't take away my diet Coke!" Yes, apparently there is some research backing up the idea that artificial sweeteners actually cause us to eat more. They definitely cause white mice to eat more... I'm skeptical, but will read the research with an open mind.
The moderator's most interesting idea was the rejection of categorizing ourselves as addicts for life. His position is that once you deal with the underlying causes of your addiction, you really aren't an addict anymore. He wants us to leave the class with a beginning understanding of what we need and an idea of how to meet these needs in a healthy way. I'm looking forward to learning a great deal from him.
Week 1- 5/8/14 334.5 16.5 318
Week 2- 5/15/14 318.0 6.9 311.1
Week 3- 5/22/14 311.0 5.1 306
Week 4- 5/29/14 306 6.0 300
Week 5- 6/5/14 300 4.5 295.5
Week 6- 6/12/14 295.5 3.0 292.5
Week 7- 6/19/14 292.5 8.5 283
Week 8- 6/26/14 283 4.5 278.5
Week 9- 7/3/14 278.5 5.0 273.5
Week 10- 7/10/14 273.5 1.5 272
Week 11- 7/17/14 272 8.0 264
Week 12- 7/24/14 264 3.5 260.5
Week 13- 7/31/14 260.5 6.0 254.5
Week 14- 8/7/14 254.5 3.5 251.0
Week 15- 8/14/14 251 5.0 246
Week 16- 8/21/14 246 3.5 241.5
Week 17- 8/27/14 241.5 4.5 237
Week 18- 9/4/14 237.0 3.0 234
Week 19- 9/11/14 234 2.0 232
Week 20- 9/17/14 232 7.0 225
Week 21- 9/24/14 225 2.0 223
Week 22- 9/30/14 223 3.5 219.5
Three and half pounds lost!
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