@MushySeas
I have always been slim, but I am French and it is socially expected you maintain your figure and I have fluctuated between 50 and 55 kgs for the last 30 years.
Two years ago I drastically switched to a plant based diet to try to control tumours eruption as I have NF1. Up until a few years ago, I was a very mild case until hundreds of skin tumours literally appeared overnight. I adopted an anticancer diet and the new tumours regressed. I also lost weight quite quickly. But then, as my personal trainer once said, once you reach 50 years of age, you have to make a choice, the face or the bum, and being too skinny didn't give me the face I liked.
I use Cronometer to control my vitamins and minerals intake as it is extremely easy to become malnourished on a plant based diet.
At first I used to spend too much time reading labels in supermarket, now I just take whole food, as close to the state they come out of the soil as possible, so yes to rice, but I excluded the flours as most of the time, even the wholemeal flour is actually white flour + bran, which would still give me peaks in insulin, and too many additives even good ones. For my condition folates (from green veggies) are good, folic acid is bad and they put folic acid in everything. I eat processed food of course, such as tofu and coffee, I have excluded as much sugar as I can. The hunger and dizziness (feeling faint) you described in your OP made me think of blood sugar.
Where you feel alright and able to maintain a weight and feeling pleasure in eating is a very personal number. Once I read of a MNetter who was in a state of panic at the thought of going out for a pizza with her family and thinking she would destroy months of sacrifice in one night. this is unsustainable. To maintain weight, if you stop eating crap, even healthy crap, it is actually quite easy .
Love yourself your body and know that you are giving it the best food for a long and healthy life. And if you have a pizza or a food you love once a month, nothing will happen.
I have the best motivation ever, as not only do we get disfiguring skin tumours with NF1, but our lifetime risk of cancer is 60% with the added bonus of a shitty prognosis. So I have ditched the steak for kale and the cheese for blueberries.
Can I suggest a couple of drinks:
- do a cold brew of hibiscus tea and leave in the fridge brewing overnight, you have a delicious tangly drink the next day which is over the chart high in antioxidants.
- A golden milk, with a mug of almond milk in the blender, a 3 cm piece of fresh turmeric, a bit of pepper and half a teaspoon of extra virgin olive oil to activate the turmeric, a bit of vanilla extract and stevia , ice cubes and blend.
- homemade cold green tea, with freshly made green tea, and pour in a jug in which you add frozen berries of all sort, lemon, peach, and ice cubes. Drink in the next hour to benefit from antioxidant from green tea. Do not drink at meal time as it inhibits iron absorption.
I have a couple of those on a daily basis with also the green smoothie I linked further up. I can guarantee you won't feel hunger or cravings by adding a couple of these to your daily diet. The green smoothie especially will give you a very healthy glow, as kale is extremely high in betacarotene and the second you walk in the sunshine, your skin has a lovely colour. Too bad it is freezing winter in Sydney where I live.
Well done for the weight you have lost, both the 50kgs you lost previously and the one you are losing now. You are a strong runner and enjoy exercise. Try to increase now the variety of vegetables you eat (mushrooms, cabbage, okra, bean sprouts, bok choy, green beans, beetroot, pumpkin , leeks....) and you will notice the change in the way you feel (thank you good gut bacterias!) . Cooking turns fun because you are experimenting new food and discovering cuisine from the Middle east and Asia.
Keep going and update! Au revoir!!