Following Just Tell Me What to Eat!

Dr. Tim Says: Elaine is a colleague of mine at Tulane and she has been using the new book to lose weight and help with her hypertension and high cholesterol. Her story is really interesting and we'll have a new post every Monday. Follow Elaine as she uses the new book!

Recent Blog Posts

Before Day One
It's the Sunday night before DAY ONE. I've read up to page 17 in Dr. Gourmet's new book, Just Tell Me What to Eat!, where it says: "A personalized [grocery] shopping list for Week 1 can be found at DrGourmet.com/shoppinglist." I had to stop there and find the grocery list given to me to by health science librarian Ruth Holst, president of the Medical Librarian Association and a cheesehead from rural Wisconsin.

This is not a diet!
I'm a cook, OK? The Joy of Cooking is my favorite book. All month long on my commute to work, I study the recipes in Southern Living and the Penzy's Spice catalog. I have fun testing whatever recipes strike my fancy.

Be Prepared
What I think is ingenious about the recipes in this book is that they are written so well that my husband (who is not such a cook) follows them with ease! This is a good thing because we rely on him to prepare at least half of the dinners during a normal week and now I get both service and well-prepared food!

Staying on Track
Four pounds in three weeks: I'm on track to lose 25 pounds in 26 weeks: six months or October, 2011. But I face this challenge: I live in the food capital of the world: New Orleans, Louisiana.

Managing: Bring the Wine AND Dessert
I'm having my girlfriends over for dinner tonight. They've been reading my blog and know that I'm likely to serve a calorie- and sodium-restricted meal, but want to know what to bring, suggesting wine or dessert. So I told them to bring BOTH: wine AND dessert!

Dr. Gourmet and Road Food
In the last week, I attended the annual meeting of the Medical Library Association in Minneapolis and visited the Mayo Clinic library in Rochester. A note about Rochester: the town embraces a healthy lifestyle. Then Don (my husband) and I began our vacation. ... Sound like fun? Here's how I'm managing my meals while on the road.

Simple changes: food and activity FEEL good
In Chapter 5, Dr. Gourmet talks about making simple changes like planning and cooking your own food. To that I would add: exercise three times per week. By coincidence, during the time I've been following Dr. Tim's book, Just Tell Me What To Eat!, I've also been in physical therapy twice a week due to pain in my knees caused by paetellar tendonitis.

Slowing down
Dr. Tim said something the other day which gave me some perspective about changing how and what Don and I eat. He explained that his book has helped me RETURN TO the kitchen (true). Other readers may never have been comfortable cooking in the first place, so adding an additional step to a recipe, like an instruction to make your own chicken stock, is daunting and may create an un-necessary barrier to food preparation.

Rediscovering Cooking
I used to sell and teach people how to cook fresh fish at Burhop's in Chicago. In those days, I ate fish most days of the week (and smelled like a fish... no wonder I didn't have very many dates even though I was living near the Rush Street neighborhood). Something happened along the way. Even though I still have a ton of fish recipes, I forgot to use them! Until I got hold of this book and those FABULOUS Dr. Gourmet recipes!

Action or Maintenance Stage: 3 months (12 weeks) and 11 pounds
I'm almost half way to losing 25 pounds and every pound counts. With each pound lost, I feel more like myself and more in control of my life. I'm moving at a faster pace along the stages of change (transtheoretical or TTM) model proposed by Prochaska originally to describe the stages which people experience as they quit smoking and more recently applied to dietary change.

5 Weeks and 5 Pounds to Go!
Last week I wrote about my experiences moving through the stages of change, having quite forgot that Dr. Gourmet wrote about it way back in Week 1. As I review all of Dr. Tim's good instruction, I realize that I'm always going back and forth between the action, maintainence and relapse stage either with regard to exercising or eating—daily!

Making Lighter Choices
Last night we had fresh spring rolls with fish sauce, an Asian chicken salad which was mostly red cabbage, shredded carrot and some shredded chicken and for dessert: chilled green bean soup with lotus beans which we ate with ice cubes. These foods are light yet amazingly filling. Could my taste buds be changing?

An A-HA! Moment
We had Grouper with White Beans and Tomato Vinaigrette last night. The market did not have grouper, so I substituted a lovely piece of Chilean Sea Bass which was only available in a 16 ounce piece. Another accommodation I made was to purchase diced pancetta instead of asking the butcher to slice me a 1 oz. piece.

Week Fifteen
I don't like eating breakfast. Do you? I definitely love my coffee with about 1/4 cup hot 1% milk which fills me up enough so that I'm not thinking to myself "I'm hungry for a bowl of Cheerios with 1/2 a banana." But Don monitors what I eat for breakfast and guilts me into eating my cereal (with the other half of his banana).

It Works!
By the numbers: I began at 148 and four months later am now 134 (give or take a pound). Dr. Tim (Dr. Gourmet) says that I should aim for 130 by December, which would be 18 pounds lost in eight months.

Tips for the Maintenance Stage
It's been six months since I began the Dr. Gourmet Just Tell Me What To Eat! plan. I'm maintaining my weight at 134, a 14-pound reduction from my starting weight of 148. Perhaps more significantly, I'm not using medication to control high blood pressure and cholesterol. Here's what I'm learning that I want to share with others.

Weight Loss and the Holidays
It's been seven months and 14 pounds since I began the Dr. Gourmet eating plan and now it's the holiday season. Folks in New Orleans celebrate by having numerous parties, each with excellent food and beverage. Yesterday I attended three parties, each with equally delicious and mostly home-made food!

Are you a maintainer, or a regainer?
How do you solve problems? Avoiding and denying, or adapting and adjusting? The way we solve problems, our cognitive processes, may predict how well we will maintain our weight loss.