I was morbidly obese so my basal metabolic rate was high, now that my BMI has dropped to 29.5 I expect it will get harder as I get closer to normal weight. Google tells me that 67 year old women need around 1700 calories/day (what a swizz I always thought it was 2000 for women) so I'm resigned to getting used to that, but I don't want to go lower than 1500, so it may take a long time to hit a BMI below 25.
After a lifetime losing and gaining massive amounts of weight I have finally realised that when I reduce my daily calorie allowance to the point of living with constant gnawing hunger my metabolic rate slows down, and so does the rate of weight loss. I now I stay within my calorie allowance for a week or two and then have a big blow out where I scoff 600 extra calories or more, which doesn't seem to have any negative effects, on the contrary it convinces my metabolism that there isn't a famine so it doesn't feel the need to slow down.
When I did the Lighter Life diet 15 years ago it provided 800 kcals/day. You were only supposed to stay on it for 3 months, but my consultant allowed me to continue until I hit my goal weight which took just short of 6 months. Towards the end of that time, despite not cheating and drinking 2 litres of water each day I didn't shed any weight at all for several weeks in a row. The consultant assured me that it was normal to hit a plateau and I just needed to keep at it for the weight loss to resume.
She was right, I did finally lose those last few pounds, along with great handfuls of hair that fell out leaving big bald patches. Looking back it was insane to believe that all the nutrients I needed were provided in the synthetic powders inside the expensive sachets. The damage done to my gut microbiome from subsisting on that shite for a half a year must have been catastrophic.
I did lose a bit more than 6 stone by sticking to it without cheating, but within a couple of years I'd regained all the lost weight and a good bit more on top. So forcing myself to swallow artificially flavoured and sweetened shakes and slimy soups had been worse than useless. Even more annoyingly everyone seemed to assume that I was a complete slob, with no interest in improving my health because I hadn't managed to keep the weight off afterwards and had regained it all so quickly.
I had been vegetarian since 1982, eating a very healthy diet. At least that's what the dietitian told me decades ago, when I was first diagnosed with diabetes, and I handed her my homework listing what I had eaten in the past week. She said she wished she ate as healthily, and the only thing she would change would be portion size. I don't blame her because she was following the NHS guidelines, which advise massive amounts of wholegrain carbs (6-8 slices of bread), plenty of vegetables and fruit and smaller quantities of protein.
I happened to catch a Zoe food science podcast back in February 2022, when I was bedridden with agonising rheumatoid arthritis (which ground like someone had poured sand in every single joint, making the slightest movement agony). The guest scientist on that podcast was describing an experiment they'd completed, where the test subjects were required to add 6 small portions of fermented food to their normal diet every day without making any other changes, the control group carried on as usual. At the end of the trial period the group eating the fermented foods had lowered the inflammation markers in their blood by 18-20%, which sounded like magic to me, as I was counting down the hours until I could safely take my next dose of paracetamol.
They talked about the most active fermented foods being Kefir, Kimchi, (sauer)Kraut and Kombucha - the 4 Ks. I went online, added a couple of tubs of plain kefir yogurt to my next grocery delivery, and set up a subscription with lovingfoods.co.uk to send me jars of their different flavours of kimchi, sauerkraut and kombucha every 4 weeks, kept listening to each new podcast, following the advice, and never looked back.
To keep track of what I was eating I reanimated an old myfitnesspal.com food diary, and logged everything I ate religiously, without trying to make any other changes apart from adding the 4 Ks. Each day when I completed the diary the page warned that if I kept eating that same amount each day I would have gained another 3-4 kgs in five weeks. After a few days of seeing the warning I decided I ought to weigh myself and keep track of the inevitable weight gain.
Unbelievably the scales said I was down 10.5 kg since my last diabetic appointment (and that was before the Christmas holidays, when my size 36 waistbands had all grown uncomfortably tight) I naturally assumed the batteries must be on the blink. A month later after installing the new batteries I climbed on the scales prepared to face the terrible truth, only to see that I'd lost further 9.1 kg.
Despite eating well over 3000 kcals each day over the past 60 days, and with the myfitnesspal diary predicting massive weight gain at the close of each completed day, I'd somehow managed to lose 19.6 kgs, and the only change had been adding a few tablespoons of kimchi and sauerkraut every day along with a bowl of kefir (with defrosted berries and a teaspoon of inulin) and half a glass of kombucha.
Ever since I've been an evangelical convert to the power of pandering to the gut microbiome. It has been an absolute game changer for me, as well as other people who've been influenced by noticing the changes and finding out how little effort I'd put in.
My diabetes consultant was fascinated when I saw him that first autumn. He had become inured to gradual deterioration in his patients, and was dead chuffed to see someone my age (65 back then and diabetic for 30 years) turning it around. He spent the appointment questioning me about what changes I had made.
A year later, at my next appointment he actually remembered who I was, and thanked me for inspiring him because he'd downloaded the Zoe food science podcasts and the small changes he'd made following their advice had shifted the little paunch that had been growing steadily despite everything he tried to do to get rid of it. He'd been following the NHS "food pyramid" dietary advice just like me, and despite walking to work in all weathers he'd been gaining weight since hitting middle age. Eating different fermented foods each day, increasing the variety of different plants he ate in a week, a daily spoon of inulin soluble fibre, and fasting for 14 hours overnight worked just as well for him as it did for me. He wasn't morbidly obese, he was probably hovering between normal weight and overweight so his results weren't as dramatic, but the year before he had a little gut like football, and the following year it had vanished, and he was delighted. I just hope he is spreading the word amongst all his other hopeless cases.
I sometimes suspect that the gazillions of tiny bugs inside my gut are controlling me. Perhaps it is them that make me shudder when I read the ingredients list on a packet of Mr Kipling's French Fancies, and has me blithely brewing my own kombucha, fermenting my own kefir and forking out £12.50 a week to have Loving Foods keep me supplied with those jars of fermented vegetables they find so delectable. They've certainly changed my sleeping habits, after suffering from insomnia since my teens I now find myself in bed by 10.30, asleep by 11, and up again at 8 ready to face the day (instead of glaring at the ceiling till dawn, then having to drag myself out of bed in the mid afternoon).
I still have the impressive collection of autoimmune ailments that collected over all the decades when round the clock eating never allowed my guts to rest, repair, and produce all those short chain fatty acids that are so important for regulating the immune system. Still, I haven't had a major flare up of the fiendish rheumatoid arthritis, or a bad asthma attack since starting the dietary changes. Though infuriatingly, when the rheumatism receded, a lupus inflammation targeted certain damaged muscles and tendons, and remains, causing various annoying pains and just waiting to flare up and spread to other areas whenever my resistance is lowered, as happens when I catch a cold that hangs around for too long.
Fecknose what kind of a state I'd be in if I hadn't made the changes. Still bedridden, probably in a care home, or dead.
A couple of days ago I was dragging a 12 kg parcel across the floor before struggling to heave it up onto a table to be cut open, and it struck me that just 34 months ago I was somehow managing to hobble about carrying an extra 80 kg of lard everywhere I went. Carefully packaged, but still 80 kg, that's more than 12 and a half stone in old money!
I feel swindled, I ought to be bounding across the hills like a gazelle, or floating up into the sky, like an air balloon with an 80 kg sand sack thrown overboard. Yet here I am still hobbling around painfully (bastard lupus) with a right leg that delights in collapsing out from under me.
Grumble, mutter, grump... OK so improving the gut microbiome also improves mood, and mental health, but I've never been the kind of saint to deny myself an enjoyable grumble and really it's just not FAIR! I want to bound and soar, not hobble along leaning heavily on a couple of sticks and swearing (hopefully under my breath) about treacherous leg bastards.