Thursday, March 29, 2018

Karen's Top 20 Tips for Weight Maintenance

Upon Request:



Karen Parrott’s 20 Weight Maintenance Tips-
Keeping 70 pounds off 6 years. Previously obese or yo-yoing for 40 years. I’m almost 52 years old.
I’ve been in menopause 4 years. Hashimoto’s controlled with synthroid 20 years.
*edited for better formatting** My maintenance
My 2 cents:
A. It is not easy, my weight wants to come back most days
B. It becomes easier when you test out different variables and keep what works
C. Everyone has different combos of obesity root causes
D. If you have multiple root causes, weight maintenance is going to be harder
E Age, body comp, autoimmune diseases, male/female will be variables
F. Genetics play a HUGE role in strategy. FTO Obesity Genes, Type 2 Diabetes genes that have already expressed extra ghrelin gene will bite you if you don’t mind them. I hurt just thinking about this…
G. Auto-Immune diseases will play a part. Particularly thyroid auto-immune (Hashimotos, Graves, parathyroid, Cushings)
H. Other disease states, colds, flu, shingles, gout, arthritis

Here are my best tools & Tips for Weight Maintenance

  1. Daily weighing and taking action every 4-5 days based on trends and shifts.
  2. Fasting and eating my carbs early 6 am until noon or 1pm
  3. Eating low carb so that I keep my glucose managed (by proxy insulin)
  4. Eating high enough that I don’t lose my intestinal mucous (gut microbiome
    will eat my intestinal mucous if I don’t feed it some dietary fiber, gross, I know)
  5. Tracking my food intake on my fitness pal (extra ghrelin makes sure I have zero full signals most days)
  6. Getting support from groups or individuals if I have a lot of binge urges
  7. Abstaining from my binge trigger foods (all grains, all nuts, most emulsifiers like xantham and guar gum)
  8. Checking food labels and spending time identifying trigger foods
  9. Making 98% of all food at home and bringing it

10 Meditation as needed (Calm, Insight Timer, Head Space)

  1. Exercising 60 minutes a day, moderate- say walking (track on MFP)
  2. Lift in the gym, 2X per week- or body weight exercises more at home
  3. Get lab work done periodically
  4. Use your glucose meter, ketone meter, and things like the bristol stool chart (gross I know) , binge urges, and acne and joint pain to customize your food template.
  5. Attend conferences. Meet people who had/have a history like yours. Or even talk 23nMe results. If they have the outcome you desire adopt it, if they regain, see if you are doing something that causes regain also. Do the opposite.That’s a tough message to hear, but do you want to keep regaining or return to a normal weight weight or a best weight? ( that’s how I learned eating to satiation did not work for me- a tough lesson, but not an unsolvable problem to track food. ) If I adopted the Wheeeeeee eat all the fat all the time, well, I wouldn’t be in maintenance. Eating all the fat works for some, it doesn’t work for me and I own it.

     16 .Tell yourself that other people lose weight and are weight maintainers. Tell yourself you will be one of them and that you will take as much time as needed to get the results that you need for your best health.

  1. Know if you need to be at a “normal BMI” or a higher than normal BMI with equally good health outcomes. Work, work, work to be normal if you need to for joint pain or other health outcomes like insurance discounts. I’d be disingenuous to my health and finances if I didn’t keep my weight normal.
  2. Adjust your plan as you age, develop new diseases, go through menopause (female) , add any medications or adapt to any combo of the above. What I do in my late 40’s and early 50’s =/= what I’ll do in my 60’s or 70’s. I was obese from the ages of 6-46.
  3. Read books or material about weight maintenance and use your own food template. Refuse to Regain- Barbara Berkeley, MD, Eric Westman, MD have loads of experience with clients and patients who don’t regain the weight.
  4. Never ever stop trying or adjusting.
Onward and never stop trying.

Sunday, March 25, 2018

Food Trigger video discussion with Jessica Dudley at Everyday Success- March 2018, behind the scenes






LINK to the video is here: Facebook, publish date was 3/23/2018

Video interview via Facebook Binge Triggers- Jessica Dudley


BONUS: behind the scenes of the video interview.

-1 minute : Recording in my car (as to not awake sleeping teen) does not work, head to desk

20 seconds in, cat approaches

1:22, cat tries to eat the side of the iPad

1:47, trying not to bust out laughing because that cat is still trying to knock the whole iPad off the desk.

2:52, Wondering if I can reposition iPad while describing Instagram accounts and why I'm a food addict in recovery and still take photos of my food ( I still have to eat, YO!, just not my trigger foods) What people think I eat is often wildly off the mark.

13:45  FROZEN. LOL.

14:00 "Legal" Paleo, LCHF, Keto foods- YEAH!!! Just because it's labeled that way doesn't mean it's going to be good for weight maintenance. I keep getting told about the baloney products out there... all the nopes for me.

15:00 That drive from Monterrey to Morro Bay in California is a long, long drive. I recommend 2 drivers on that one. No dried fruit.

16:30 Talking about different ways to "get high" after resolving food highs. Transfer addiction is totally real.

23:30 I could stand up but I'm going to dump my coffee and my iPad. LOL. That will wake up the cat who will want to destroy the iPad.

33:00 My new car has an accurate gas gauge.

All right. That's it for today. Cat is still trying to take out the iPad....
Teen slept through the interview and has not run out of gas.
Pray my old car makes it until the fall of 2018.



iPad destruction is imminent 



Sunday, March 18, 2018

6 years, 1 month update March 2018 Weight Maintenance

May 2011 to March 2018 Long Term Weight Maintenance

May 2011 to March 2018 Long Term Weight Maintenan





















I'm still about 2-3 pounds over my best weight, but that's the way the LCHF avocado slices.  LOL.

Really, finally feeling better from a super, super mild cold. I'm always a few pounds heavier. Nothing that more consecutive fasting days, monitoring my total intake, and keeping good stress relief going.


Few binge urges this month. It happens. It's going to happen. Maybe one lapse on... pork rinds. Whatever. Food addiction is a disease of liars. So yeah, I had 2 servings of pork rinds. Not doing that again for a long time. For reals. Pork is no, 2 servings of pork. Yeah, that's a lapse in the house of Karen.

Facing it head on and using my tools. Got right back on track.

No off switch. Using My Fitness Pal and Fitbit for the win!

What's working now
1. Daily weighing
2. Recording on My Fitness Pal
3. Monitoring my activity on Fitbit
4. Recovering in 1 meal from a lapse
5. LCHF, Keto, 18:6 fasting most days

What didn't work in the past
1. Not weighing in often
2. Not recording my food
3. Not monitoring my activity
4. Attempting to recover after 2-3 months from my primary binge
5. Using even a mild cold to binge eat comfort foods.


Started May 2011
Time in weight maintenance 6 years, 1 month

Starting weight 187.4 lbs

Goal Range 113-125  lbs 
2017 best Goal Weight Range 113 to 116

Current Weight  118.6  lbs
Keeping off    68.8  lbs



Age 51
Menopause 4+years
Hashimotos 20+ years
Height 5'1"

2018 Stats
BMI  today mid-march    22.4
BMI  ave  half of march  22.4   
BMI ave Feb           22.2
BMI ave January     22,2

2017 Stats    
BMI ave December 22.0
BMI ave November 21.9

Graphs, there will be graphs.









Saturday, March 10, 2018

I'm at one of my higher maintenance weights and okay with it! March 2018- short check in

Super short check-in post. I'll be back with my monthly full length  photos and a full set of graphs as soon as I can get my photographer to drive over and the rain stops.LOL Because half of what you see on IG  from dishonest bloggers is photoshopped. I like monthly photos to show my progress.

I weighed in at 118.2, best range is 113-116.

What's working:
1.Daily weighing, no matter what, keeping my weight in okay weight maintenance. I'm 2.2 + pounds away from my BEST range. I'll take it, really. I feel pretty good.

The upside of daily scale weighing is that I don't BS myself and regain huge amounts of weight in weight maintenance, relapse with food sobriety.

The down side of daily weighing is seeing the scale go up.
I'm food sober, but totally okay with the higher weights. Just coming off a second, very mild cold.

I'm always 1-2 pounds higher during cold virus'. Aint' no big deal. I record my weight and go about my day, week, half month. I'll go back to my cruising weight in a week or two.

I'll always accept good enough weight maintenance over Best weight maintenance any day. I get what I get, I do not throw a fit.



2. Keeping steady with glucose, ketones, and hemoglobin and hematocrit (H&H) in my best ranges. 

My glucose goes this low some days when I fast. I think I'm at a 19+ hour fast for these values.


I've been donating a lot as a paid donor so I'm happy to see normal for me H&H.  I'll get deferred as a donor for 6-8 weeks soon. It's nice to get paid, and yes, I pay taxes right out of my pay check. Ugh, whatever.....

Ketones mine run 0.5 to 1.5 typically.





3. Added blueberries and more protein back into my rotation, with great results. I'm still Keto because I fast, but LCHF for weight maintenance. Best of both worlds, if you ask me. 

I measure out 0.5 to 1.0 ounces of blueberries


Nom-Nom Paleo's -'Ollie's Crackling Chicken', oh so goooooood!!!



Beef brisket, salad bar, coffee at Lazy Acres in Encintias, CA (like Whole Foods)


4. Managing stress

My stress levels going to get worse, not better, this year. Sigh....

I was driving around thinking about the following: 

I read about somebody "listening to their body and feeding it what it wanted" and I laughed. Ooooooh this is so not right for me. Neither is "Having a relationship with food" BS 100% for me. 

Robb Wolf is right, there is something way deeper going on when talking about a "relationship" with an object- in this case food. Some past issue.  Although my coffee might push me over into relationship status  I can see changing your food template, changing your boundaries around food, switching from points counting to Paleo to LCHF, to Keto, and back again,  but food was not and is not something for me to "have a relationship with". 

Food to me is just to optimize energy and my own genetics and environment. I don't get to choose, my body will give me feedback, then I optimize with the food template of the 6 months to 1 year. I must use my body weight, biomarkers, sleep length, pain levels, mood to plan and choose. 

 6 years food sober and during high stress, I want to sit down with a bag of jelly beans, progress to skinny cow ice cream, then get out the points counter for exactly 1 point of M&M's embedded in the side of the icecream. Repeat. 

Sigh... good thing I have a set food template. Fasting 18:6 these days, from 6am to 12 noon-ish. Not eating at night is a win-win for me.

Fizzy water at night, with Natural Calm powder, for stress relief. Fits into my 18:6 fasts just fine


What didn't work in the past

1. Not weighing in frequently enough. Not plotting my weight on a graph
2. Not measuring my glucose to notice that I was pre-diabetic right before I lost weight
3. Not customizing my food template for my okay and best weights
4. Eating tons of sugar, grains, and other foods, trying to get food high to deal with stress.

Off to walk before it rains. Safe travels my So. Cal Friends.