Dr. Tea Diet... (Week #2)

The truth is that no matter how healthy something might be for me, I like results without a great deal of effort.:) Hence my interest in the Ultimate Tea Diet, based on Dr. Tea's book, was certainly genuine. I had the promise of losing weight and instead of feeling more anxious and less happy, I expected to receive the benefits of the increased brain chemicals, dopamine and serotonin. Well, I felt great all week, although hungry as usual when I cut back on portions of food, until yesterday.

Yesterday I got lazy. Okay, so I am what is called a 'straw mat fire' in Mexico. I burst forth with enthusiasm and then I ... limp along after that... often fizzling out in a puff of smoke before I can achieve full success. (But hey, I inspire a lot of other people in the interim.)

My mood yesterday could have been lowered from a combination of things, so I'll put that out there first. Rather than walk a full hour, I stopped after 25 or 30 minutes, as it started to pour. Then I was talking to one of my friends who suffers from depression and happened to be physically sick as well. When I called to see how she was, she answered in a monotone which is usually the main clue that she is having a bad day. I wanted to hang up, honestly, as I felt fragile myself and didn't want to have her bring me down too, but I didn't. She obviously needed a human voice and I arrogantly thought I could handle it.

After I hung up with her I found myself worrying about world hunger, global warming, people without health insurance, children in orphanages and refugee camps, people aging with AIDS and H.I.V. suffering horrible health problems, my future unborn grandchildren... and she had also criticized me several times with her claws out when I tried to inspire her to be a little more positive about things. Ouch!

Anyway, you get the drift. I was thinking every dark thought I could and self-indulgently sinking very, very low. I was alone, I had nothing I had to do and there was no one around to distract me or tell me to shape up. So I took the dogs for another walk, got soaked again, and while I was shivering and feeling stupid for not wearing a raincoat I decided to just laze around. This is not my normal style, so I thought I might be getting sick too.

I wrote for a while, which usually helps, but my writing was so dark and dreary I got even more depressed. Later that evening when my husband got back, I was still trying to find some junk food in my pantry as I didn't have the energy to go buy some. Okay, so Sundays for me are dark days as I hate winter Mondays when our business is slow and I would rather do something else but can't because I am an adult and can and do work.

Then I read for a while but nothing retained my interest and the ink on our cheap local paper gave me an allergy attack. I sculpted for a few hours, but my neck started to hurt and the snowy egret I was trying to sculpt looked more like a rooster when I finished. We watched some television - Coupling, a BBC production is hilarious by the way - and after laughing for a half hour, I watched the depressing news.

All night I was tossing and turning, my back was aching, my dog kept sleeping so close to me that I was almost getting night sweats and I started remunerating about all the bad and weak things I had ever done in my life, including dating stupid boyfriends.

This morning when I got up I decided to review why I had been in such a foul mood yesterday, and it occurred to me that I had only had one pot of tea and had stopped drinking it when I started writing instead of drinking the re-steeped tea bags all day and into the early evening like I had been doing. Other than limiting my caffeine and cutting my coffee consumption to a little more than nothing, that was the only change I made. Obviously it wasn't a great choice.

Today I feel fine, I've had my two pots of tea already and after I do some more work I am going to stop for a new tea I can make before dinner. Then after dinner I am going to have another pot, but throw out the first brew and get rid of the caffeine, and then drink that tea all evening.

Truthfully? I hate dieting, even the thought of dieting, which is why I would rather call my food and tea effort a lifestyle change. After all, my refrigerator is so stocked with healthy foods like mushrooms, brussel sprouts, feta cheese, 1% milk, apples, carrots, lettuce, persimmons, watercress, squash, avocados, tofu, skinless chicken and free range hen eggs, that I know I can make something delicious and packed with nutrition. And with all these luscious ingredients available year-round in this country? How can even I complain?

One interesting note about vitamin supplements, by the way. McGovern (presidential candidate at one time and pacifist) in the late 1970's stated that 'Americans should eat less meat' because of the bad health affects on our cardio-vascular systems. There was such a corporate and business uproar over this, that he had to change it to 'Americans should eat more meats with less saturated fat'. The cattle ranchers and other meat producers had gone beserk, contacted their congressmen and the language was changed. It was considered an attack on the Nation to tell Americans to eat less!

No one had talked about nutrients in that way until then, but the battles were just beginning. Scientists have known for decades that beta-carotine, for instance, does not do the same thing in supplement form that it does when consumed in the carrot or other vegetable. There are things at work in the natural form that cannot be duplicated, just as in baby formula and mother's milk. (There are still on-going battles in developing countries in which young women have been indoctrinated by Nestle to believe formula is better for their babies than their own milk, but that is illegal to claim in this country thankfully.)

But back to the food program/lifestyle change/diet. I have lost 1/2 pound in a week with almost no suffering. Truthfully.  I would rather the scale said five pounds less, but it didn't.  Doctors like us to lose slowly each week - somewhere around a 2 to 4 pound loss a month - so that it is more likely to be permanent and something that can be maintained. So in facts and figures, I managed to eat 250 less calories a day, which over a year's time will add 'down' to a 26.07 pound wait loss if I keep it up consistently.  That is hardly a sacrifice, as it is less than two tablespoons of some salad dressings or half a candy bar. 

There are 3500 calories required to gain or lose a pound, so if I can up that uneaten calorie number to 500 a day, I will lose 52.14 pounds in a year.

Of course, some of you will say, "Oh, that can just be water..." or "A half a pound? That's nothing!". Except it is progress. Throughout the holidays I was trying much harder to lose and gained two pounds anyway. Hence, I am happy. And there are so many wonderful teas out there.  Except for a slippery day yesterday, I feel fine today and haven't felt deprived.

I'm going to find a Jasmine green tea by Numi so I can make some jasmine wild rice for my husband. He looked at what's in the refrigerator and offered to get take-out food on the way home, which means I've talked about my program a little too much at home. He'll generally eat anything I make with gusto, so I need to be a little more discreet when I'm food planning. (Like dealing with some kids who don't like anything green.:)  If it is delicious he'll become a fan too, or he'll end up heating up a frozen pizza he bakes himself.:) Hey. My motto is if I can't eat it, I don't make it.

Oh, and when I meet friends for coffee or drinks, I have switched to Chai. Two of the best ones I have had are Dragon Chai and a house chai served at the theme chain of restaurants in the Northwest owned by McMennamin's. Both had the steamed milk and were as delicious as cappucino, but didn't give me the caffeine jitters.

In keeping with my desire to eat vegetarian at least two or three days a week, I'm going to roast some winter vegetables with garlic, sea salt and extra virgin olive oil for dinner along with some curried veggie-stuffed mushrooms (adding tea to the recipes). I'll let you know how they turn out. I usually try to keep my salt consumption down, too, but when I eat vegetables I do sprinkle a little too generously. Perhaps I'll try lemon juice instead and see if that adds the zing I like.