Dr. David Lugwig. Saviour or Sadist?

Pretty flashy title right? Got your attention I hope because Dr. David Ludwig is currently my newest crush when it comes to matters of health. He's the author of the new book ALWAYS HUNGRY? and it's my intention to find out if he actually has the power to change my life or not. And I'm excited about it. 

So excited in fact that I have decided to chronicle my journey! 

It's been a long time since I've felt this kind of inspiration. In fact it was September 2010 when Tracy Anderson came out with her first book that I took a stab at writing a blog to document my experience on The 30-DAY METHOD to hold myself accountable and MASTERING THE METHOD was born. 

Don't be alarmed I am not going to create a whole new blog to make sure I do this eating plan properly. I'm gonna do it from here!

What you may or may not be aware of noble reader is that I have officially been off sugar for four whole weeks. Today is my anniversary. I've got some friends who are also sugar free and I'm loving the company. It's a great reminder that I am not insane, I'm just a junkie going through detox. What I've found though is that it takes a lot more than getting off sugar to recover radiant health and this is where Dr. Dave comes in. Yeah, I love him that much he's got a new nickname. Ha, I say I love him today, wait until Saturday rolls around and I actually have to fully pay attention not only to what I'm eating, but how I'm feeling, am I full, what I'm craving and all sorts. More on that in a bit.

So who is this guy anyway? Well he's a Doctor who "began his career in research and he helped to develop his hospital's family-based weight management clinic called Optimal Weight For Life (OWL) program that promoted the "eat less, move more" method for weight loss. Working with many obese patients, they prescribed a low-calorie/ low-fat diet, regular physical activity, and behavioural methods to help people ignore hunger, resist cravings and stick with the program." 

Guess what he found? It wasn't working. People were not losing weight or if they did it all came back and then some. Sound familiar? So he set to work on finding a better way and now we have The ALWAYS HUNGRY SOLUTION.

Fabulous! Great! So what does this mean? Another diet. Sad face, not so great. The first diet I ever went on was the one from The 30-Day Method and within three days I had such a migraine from so few calories I had to pull over on the side of the highway while driving so I could throw up. I was so sick. Did I lose weight, hell yeah I did. All the weight I wanted to lose. But as soon as I stopped the low calorie plan, I gained nearly half of it back.

Here I am six plus years later, happy to say that I am still practicing the Method, (this blogging thing really works) and I have gained 15 out of 20 lost pounds back. In fact, within the first two weeks of quitting sugar I had gained 7 lbs, no kidding so I was in fact heavier than when I first discovered Tracy. Yes I've aged so perhaps my metabolism had slowed down but something else had to account for this gain. (I am delighted to say that I lost those extra sevens pound, but still have a ways to go to fit comfortably back into my skinny jeans)

So why Dr. Dave? Why not do Tracy's old diet again or some other low carb, low fat, low calorie diet? Because that's fucking depressing people, how could you even ask me that. I'm old, I want to enjoy my golden years not starve through them. Dr. Dave says forget calories, we are going to work with the science of our body and train it to operate the way it was meant to. What a novel idea, give the body what it wants and it will function healthily. Shocking, why has no one thought of this sooner? They have, but the Sugar Industry crushed them. It's big tobacco all over again, don't even get me started. Better yet go watch THAT SUGAR FILM or SUGAR COATED.

Okay so rather than a diet, this is more like a lifestyle overhaul. Sounds good. I need that. Where do we start? I'm glad I asked. Oh and just let me digress here a little bit, something that Ms. Anderson and Dr. Dave have in common is that when they came up against the system and found that it was not working for them and for many of their clients, they began to experiment on themselves and they gave us the Method and the Always Hungry Solution. With them as my examples and my #1 Shamandment of Be Shannon, I need to add a disclaimer. While working on "my solution" I intend to follow it as closely as possible, but you know me, I'll be making it my own. So there will be changes I add or create that may not be the best thing for you should you decide to embark upon your own Always Hungry Solution. Remember I am not a role model, I'm just a girl struggling to see herself through this thing we call midlife, okay?

Great, now that we have that out of the way, allow me to tell you about the program already will you? Geez, stop interrupting!

Dr. Dave starts the program with a seven day countdown. Unlike when I followed Dr. Junger's Clean program and he recommended a week or so to prep your body with clean foods before diving in and I ignored that and jumped in head first, with the AHS I am working the prep steps and it's a bit of work I don't mind telling you. I just really wanted to be prepared because I am serious about making a life change here, so bear with me if this rambles on a bit.

Day 7 - become familiar with the goals of the program

We are going to abandon counting calories. I have not gone so far as to ditch the Lose It app from my phone yet, but time will tell. We are going to instead, focus on eating the right foods in the right combos to reprogram our fat cells into releasing their excess calorie stores. We're going to go from being sugar burners (needing that coffee or quick fix carb snack for a quick burst of energy) and instead become fat burners (by using the energy we already have so we never hit that lull in energy)

There are three phases to this. Phase 1 we deal with the cravings, and hopefully I've already won half that battle in getting off sugar already.
Phase 2 we retrain our fat cells. I'm imagining some really fat old circus show horses slowly being brought back to their glossy shiny former glory running free across the open plains, or you know, something like that.
Phase three is losing the weight permanently. Yay!

So how to we do that? By adding in healthy fats, being selective about which kinds or carbs to eat (not cutting carbs because that's just stupid) and choosing good lean protein. You'll want to grab the book to get a better understanding of what these exact combos are.

Day 6 - the tracker! I love the tracker. I still track my daily workouts all these years later and yeah, I still get gold stars on good sweaty workout days, don't judge me I'm honouring my inner child. So you're basically going to take your weight and measurements and mark it all down. I made my own because I wanted to. I'll show you a pic in just a sec. But he has ones you can download or you may simply choose to fill out the ones in the book.

Day 5 - we learn about some lifestyle factors that can support us long term and that we are going to implement - see? It's not just a diet. We are going to incorporate movement (for me that's obviously the Method and my other newest obsession KP Dancebody, but we'll discuss that at another time), Sleep - how much to get, how to get ready for it, do's and don't that can be a deal breaker for the program being successful. Hey don't ask me, this was all Dr. Dave's idea, and finally Stress relief, again that can be anything you want it to be - gratitude journalling or meditation or deep breathing. Make it your own. 

Day 4 - your big WHY? This felt really important to me, in fact when I was creating my Shamandments - 'Know why I'm doing this' was an important one. Don't do shit arbitrarily people and don't do it because someone else is and you think they're cool. Life is way too short for that. My dad has a saying: If you aim for nothing you'll hit it every time. Personally I think it's great to have goals

So this brings me to the pic I promised above. My tracker and big WHY are in the same photo and I am not ashamed to share with you why I have chosen to do this. Read it and weep!

Hopefully you can decipher my handwriting because I am too tired to retype all that. And notice the shiny star? Yep, that star is one and the same that continues to get stuck to my workout tracker. I'm a nerd and don't care who knows it. (Eek and I see typos up there!)

And I keep this tracker inside my designated cool little notebook. Wanna see it? Check this bad boy out.

If you can't read that it says The Hummingbird is never hungry.

Day 3 - gather your cooking tools and clean out your kitchen. Prepare your home and kitchen for a new way of eating. Dr. Dave has you go through it all - your freezer, fridge, cupboards all of it and get rid of all the stuff that will no longer serve you. It's a big purge and it was really therapeutic for me. While most of my bad stuff was already tossed when I gave up sugar (I also quit gluten so there was no pasta, bread or sugar) it was just super gratifying to clean the place up a bit.

You are then asked to be sure you have all the tools you need. He gives you a list. Most normal people aren't going to have to do all that much here because chances are you have pots and pans and measuring cups etc. But what I didn't have was this little beauty!

I didn't have a processor at all. When I did Tracy's plan and we needed to puree I got myself a tiny 1 1/2 cup one but that did not make the move from Van to TO, so I invested my $60.00 at the hardware store. When I got it to the counter, there was an older grey-haired cashier and he said he loved his, best investment he's ever made. I asked him what he used it for. I could have never guessed his answer; raw sugarless vegan brownies. I took it as a sign!!!

Day 2 - Go shopping: restock the fridge and cupboards with ALWAYS HUNGRY SOLUTION - approved foods. This is where I sit today. Once again if you're a normal person who cooks - someone like my mom - this is going to be no big deal for you. If you're me and all you have is canola oil and some salt and pepper this may hurt a little bit! I have to do this in two parts. A) because I don't have a car and walking home with all this stuff would be way too much and B) Friday is pay day so at least I can break up the cost a little. But this was today's rather massive and beautiful haul.

Look at all those goodies. Have you ever heard that if you want to lose weight you absolutely cannot eat nuts? Not according to Dr. Dave. Let's find out if he's right or not, shall we?

I'll do a produce and fresh food shop as mentioned, on payday which will also happens to fall on --

Day 1 - Roast nuts, make sauces and dressings and get mentally ready (because the previous six days didn't already get me ready?? Whaaaat?) Use this final prep phase day as a springboard to Phase I.

I'm so excited to start I can hardly stand it. I have literally photo copied the daily tracker 28 times, trimmed it to size and pasted it in my little green notebook. Don't be believe me? I really am a dork.

I made a special trip out to purchase a glue stick especially for this very task, spent the better part of the afternoon gluing these in place, only to have the glue dry and unstick, no kidding. Had to tape them all in place, I was pissed!

So the final piece to all of this was the menu. I am a fussy eater at the best of times and while I eat fish I won't eat meat, don't really do breakfast and am not big on snacking unless it's junk food so needless to say I had to make some pretty substantial adjustments and rather than be cryptic since I'm pretty much giving it all away anyway - here's my menu for week one.

Chances are you can't make out my chicken scratch but the significant change I made was to breakfast - I'll be doing smoothies. The only difference between these and the ones I did on CLEAN is that I will be adding protein because Dr. Dave says that's important!

I have no idea about protein powder and I don't fancy the idea of adding it because I'm not fond of putting something not whole into my smoothie and because these powders are costly. I have decided to experiment with single serving sample sizes. These are the first two up.

Dr. Dave recommends Whey and the use of dairy. I've been off dairy for the past two weeks, so not sure how I will feel about reintroducing it into my diet, but in case I decide to return to dairy free, I also have a vegan option. We shall see.

So that's it so far. I'll let you know how my big prep day goes on Friday and then let the documentation/experimentation begin. The month May could be a game changer.

If you're curios about the program but not sure if you can be asked to follow it or invest in the book, check out Dr. Dave's page HERE, click on the resources link and that will allow you to look at sample menus and print trackers, shopping lists and all sorts. It really is very cool. I may not be saying I love Dr. Dave midway through week one when all I want is a bowl of chips or some chewy moist brownies, but for tonight I love him. 

Onwards and upwards people, let's be fat burners and have energy to spare.
(I am also really super curious to see if this will in fact reduce my waistline as it promises to do, like serious I may not actually be abcentric. That super triple excites me!)

Love,
Shan