Bleh.

[tigira]

I stepped on the scale this weekend. Bleh.
I am not the HEAVIEST I have ever been, but getting too close.
Bleh.

So, here I go, trying to lose weight to get to where I am comfortable in my skin again. I know, it sounds odd, but I can't eat most of the foods that most folks eat when they are trying to lose weight...

1. Most salads have cabbage in them. I can eat it, but then I'll be sick to my stomach for a few days.

2. If there is no cabbage, all I can add to the "base" is mushrooms. No peppers, no tomatoes...raw onions are a bad idea for work, and carrots are something I can only take in small doses.

3. No salad dressings. Nope. I can't eat any of them. And oil and vinegar makes me cringe.

4. Can't have any fruit yogurts - they all have added citric acid.

5. No diet sodas, so it's just water for me. I can't have juices, either. Again, citric acid.

6. No light sauces - these are pretty much focussed on tomato or pepper bases.

7. So I CAN have plain pasta (since I want to avoid too much cheese), and plain rice, and my breakfast possibilities are even more bleak.

So I'm hungry. Extremely. Had an apple for breakfast. Though, I'm concerned that if I start eating too much pulpy non-berry fruit, I'll find myself unable to eat that anymore, either.

What's for lunch? Who knows. Bleh.

Comments

[tisana.livejournal.com]

Once again, reminded that I don't have it all that bad with my paltry two allergies. But I do sympathize with the problem of trying to change your diet and being unable to eat lots of "diet" foods...all of the shakes and most prepackaged snacks and meals involve milk, so they're out, can't have cheese on bland foods to make them tastier, can't have fish as a healthy protein...nutritionists, when trying to advise me on healthier habits, have a bit of a challenge.

I can, however, eat vegetables, which I'm now feeling lucky about.

Whoo, that's tough all right!

[daurdabla.livejournal.com]

I just recently heard of oil-and-lemon-juice dressings for salad. Can you handle that, perhaps?

I've also put cooked onions on salads. You want to put them on right before you serve it, or the hot onions will wilt the lettuce base.

There are things that can be done to rice with spices that spiff it up, too. For pasta, have you considered adding a little olive oil, or is that outside the acceptable-foods category, too? If you can add olive oil, try steeping some flavorful herbs in it for a while before you use it.

Just flailing around here...

[badseed1980.livejournal.com]

Hmm...

Cold salad of tofu and blanched veggies, marinated in soy sauce, ginger, allspice, and other spices?

And maybe you could experiment with soy sauce-tahnini dressings for salads. Adding a little cider vinegar can jazz it up a bit. For toppings, maybe you could try sprouts, cold sliced beets, or blanched broccoli, green beans, or cauliflower. Canned chick peas are nice on salads, as are marinated mushrooms if you like them. A lot of salad bars will even have most of those things.

[tigira.livejournal.com]

Ah, see, the salad bar I am at most often is at work, which often has premixed stuff. The marinades often have acids in them that I cannot have. And most canned items are canned with citric acid. I can'te even have artichoke hearts in anything anymore, because they are canned in citric acid.

I recently found frozen artichoke hearts at Trader Joe, and they have added ascorbic acid. Yay!!!!

I tend to stay away from vinegars. It's gotten to the point where anything that makes me pucker scares me..

[badseed1980.livejournal.com]

Aw. That's too bad. Seafood is usually a good thing, too. Maybe you could pop some frozen shrimp in with your pasta, and add a little bit of olive oil and garlic.

[goddess-help-me.livejournal.com]

as far as things to drink- can you/do you drink teas? Most teas are very acceptable for diets, since they have zip for calories, but it is a change from water. I'm not sure what if any restrictions you have against caffeine, but if you don't have any limitations on that, coffee is an excellent diet drink for multiple reasons: it acts as an appetite suppressant, it has flavor and very few calories (unless you dose it with stuff like cream and sugar), and recent studies have shown that there may be a possibility that drinking several cups of coffee a day may reduce your chances of getting type 2 diabetes. That article was on the nikkinewsnet a while back.

[spark99.livejournal.com]

hey, if you need diet planning, i did a cleanse about 2 years ago that worked wonders. i ate veggies and fruit and nuts and not much else for a month. it started my process of dropping weight.. once you start, it becomes easier to continue..

anyway, let me know:)

:)

diets

[tigira.livejournal.com]

Thanks...I did that in the fall. The thing is, with my food sensitivites, I can't eat much in the way of veggies and fruits, so I got sick of what I COULD eat very quickly. Fortunately, it was an elimination diet to identify my food sensitivities. What stinks is that, now that I know them, it makes things very difficult.

I can't eat tomatoes (or anything made with tomatoes in any form), peppers (in any form - so no curry or anything like that), eggplant (no problem there, I haven't been able to eat eggplant for years), or potatoe (or anything with added potato starch). Do you realize that most broths add either tomatoes or potatoes somewhere?

Add to that list Citric Acid. Which means most fruits are out of my realm. No tart berries, no citrus. Ah, and no canned items - anything on a salad bar that has been marinated has likely come out of a can with citric acid added.

No diet sodas at all - they all have added citric acid.
Most canned or preserved items at all, really, have added citric acid. I did find frozen artichoke hearts with added ascorbic acid, but that's it. The difficulty is in finding foods that I can eat that fit my schedule...if I have to take more than an hour to prepare a meal, I won't do it.

Re: diets

[spark99.livejournal.com]

ok, that leaves leafy greens, grains (like peas and legumes), bread-type fruit (like bananas, etc), nuts, squashes, root veggies, and avocados and artichokes.

can you do dairy?

this is actually quite a lot of food.

if you can do dairy, you can make up a batch of saag paneer with rice once a week and eat health-ly for several days -> a week. you can also make up a non-tomato ratatouille or a thick stew with squashes and greens mixed in. also, pea soup would be healthy and low-fat.

anyway, we should talk about it sometime.

my sister is allergic to nightshade plants (tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, potatoes, etc.) and it makes sense that you would have a citric acid sensitivity to go along with it.

don't get discouraged. there are many stock broths that do not have citric acid or tomatoes added. water is much better than diet sodas anyway. hummus and falafel might be nice (minus the tomato) and i know at least of one health food store that sells dry soup and mediterranean stock that do not contain citric acid or tomatoes.

[justsonya.livejournal.com]

Hi! I found you via Kyrene... I saw your user pic and loved it, clicked the link, read... yada yada...

Can you do low-carb dieting? It sounds like from reading all the comments you'd do pretty well on it, or a modified low-carb to allow for some carbs that you like to eat (South Beach would be a good example).

I've lost about 70 lbs so far that way since July, and dropped my cholesterol about 50 points, all on the bad side.

[tigira.livejournal.com]

Actually, now, I can do low carb dieting. Yes! For a while, my primary SO was vegetarian, so if I did low carb, we could hardly eat together.

I'm thinking it might be worth a try...

[justsonya.livejournal.com]

I highly recommend it. :)