GMO LABEL PROMISES

Wonder what happened between 2007 and now?

FOOD BRAND SOURCING

A friend of mine sent me this the other day. Click on the image to get a better view.

TASTE TEST

So tonight I was at a group dinner meeting with about 12 colleagues. I was concerned about a random dinner meeting, but the host said not to worry...the menu was organic.

Well I wish I had a better photo to show you my tongue! Even 4 hrs after dinner my tongue feels like I've been licking a brick for hours. I have circled the raised taste buds that are really painful. They look like mini cysts.
The sad thing is I just started back on organic last sunday after a month long stint on industrial so I had to go through a major detox once again. I'm worn out from it.

It usually takes minutes up to a few hours to see what histamine response I will have to the food. Too bad I didn't try to come with a histamine blocker, but I REALLY wanted everything to be organic.

Perhaps the chef was confusing organic with locally sourced?
I'll worry about it in the morning. Right now I need to go nurse this migraine!

INDUSTRIAL FOOD REVISITED

I'm tired, cranky, bitchy, and I want to throw everyone out the window. Not too long after the first blizzard here in jan in NYC I decided to see what would happen if I fully went back to conventional food. I decided to give myself 30 days to the experiment. 40lbs later!!!!!!!!!!
I have to take an antihistamine if I eat fruits or veggies. My stomach is swollen and hardened.

What's the difference in my diet?
Let's start with breakfast. Organic breakfast is 1lb of eggs with cheese. Industrial breakfast is three eggs with cheese.
Lunch is a fresh rosemary wrap with either chicken, carrots, 2 triangles of cheese, onions, olives, cabbage, and some pesto. Organic lunch is Chipotle's enormous burrito with chicken, extra cheese, guacamole, lettuce, peppers......a 350 calorie difference.
Dinner is still usually fish or chicken, but now I've added various vegetables to it.

Basically I'm eating smaller quantities and 100's of calories less and gaining massive amounts of weight. My hands are so swollen right now I'm surprised I can even type.
I got so depressed the other day I finally went for the sweet potato fries with the wrap. How is a person who was so together so out of control?

So now in the last week I'm craving junk, I haven't worked out, and I want to curl up into a ball and disappear. Who is this person???
I feel like Susan Powter screaming STOP THE INSANITY! As I saw the weight packing on I decided to order SENSA advertised all over the internet. It's a shaker you shake all over your food. I couldn't last even 4 days with it. I felt like the girl who turned into a blueberry from chewing gum that Willy Wonka told her not to chew. I even emailed them to tell them I had a reaction, but no one got back to me. What is in that stuff?!!!

The reason I took industrial food detour boys and girls is because I hated how obsessed I had to be about the source of my food. I hated that I was excluded on so many social occasions or felt that I had to exclude myself so that I could avoid talking about it. Who knew food was such a central part of our lives? I hated that I felt like an outcast and the work that I had to put into it. But you know what? I'm trading it all back in for organic because nothing felt as good as organic did. I think my body's not going to give me a choice anyway. ooooh forgot to mention the ghastly breakouts I had. Really not good for business!

So the final chapter of this story is if I go back to that big burrito pictured there on the left will I lose the weight? Will it fall off as fast if at all? I'm just working organic back into the diet again. I've been so depressed that it is taking every ounce of effort to get back there again.

Thanks to all of you who have been following me on this journey by the way. Your messages are encouraging and I know we can change our food around to make everything better!


xo

ONE YEAR ANNIVERSARY

I am just hours away from my one year anniversary of committing to organic. It has been quite the experience! Without trying I kept off a total of more than 50 lbs last year. Initially I had lost 70 and decided that I could play around and experiment with foods. I have no doubt I will lose 50 more!

I now officially know that organic is not hype. (There is marketing hype that makes people think they're eating healthy or organic.) My body will not tolerate conventional foods. It reacts in so many ways that are really unpleasant. For instance I just found out that conventional chocolate now gives me migraines. I have to figure out what is in it that causes that, but that has been my immediate response on two occasions (within about an hour). The pus-filled boils I get from ingesting pesticides are the worst because I never know how long it will take for them to heal and they leave a nasty scar on my very white skin. :(

One bit of wisdom I would like to pass on is beware of marketing. Really read your labels and know what it is that you are putting into your body. The perfect example of misleading labels was from a chocolate bar I picked out from Ghirardelli a few days ago. The labeling says 100% natural. The back of the label says in the ingredients HIGH FRUCTOSE CORN SYRUP. According to the FDA "products containing high fructose corn syrup cannot be considered 'natural' and should not be labeled as such'.

HELLO this is my point. A company puts on their packaging 100% natural and yet it still gets to market and past the FDA. NO ONE is going to monitor what goes into your mouth or on your skin except for you. Don't rely on others for trust. You run a risk putting your life in other people's hands. This is the most valuable lesson I have learned!

For me organic itself is not hype. My weight loss has shown me that my body can't process these chemicals even if they are coming from whole foods. The hormones really slow down my system. The pesticides are a whole other issue.

The journey does not stop here. I plan on checking in about once a month because now I am motivated to go to the next step: creating a network of friends, restaurants, and farmers. We need to get back to food basics. We need to learn to ask questions. The most difficult thing that everyone from the outside looking in has told me is: organic is too expensive and it's hard for me to find it. It's not true if you know what to look for. You need to eat in season as we discussed in Alicia Silverstone's book "The Kind Diet". Trader Joe's is fairly priced as well. A friend of mine has friends that are going to start setting up gardens for people as a service in New Jersey. There is so much out there we can do to make things better if we just put one ounce of effort in.

I'm also going to start a database of farmers and restaurants. The temporary site is at http://organic-farmers.blogspot.com/

I'm going to ask each of my friends and their friends to find one good place that serves actual organic or biodynamic products.

Welcome to 2011!

ONE WEEK LEFT

Disappointed does not begin to express how I feel about the last few weeks.

For starters I allowed myself to eat conventional food where organic was unavailable. Many "organic" restaurants who have the same problem sourcing will do the same thing as well without telling the consumer. The thing is I was fully aware I was not eating organic. I have no one to blame but myself.

Without surprise I'm paying for it now. My stomach feels beat up! I have open sores all over my body. My mouth has been so raw that I feel like it's been burned with hot pizza and it's never recovered. My hands, ankles, and face are really swollen.

Since I also went home to Kentucky (exhausted after working 22+ hour days for the last month) I decided to not burden myself with finding or eating organic. I ate mostly home cooked meals. I feel like I've gained 20 lbs.

New Year's eve I shared an order of non-organic chicken nachos with black beans, mango, and lots of other toppings. It had no taste. It was like I was eating cardboard with hot sauce.

So I decided I would go back to home base: Gusto Organics. I had a burger with sweet potato fries and a salad and all I can say is ahhhhhh. I already feel the difference. Don't get me wrong. I still feel beat up, but at least now I feel a bit more nourished and not as lethargic. In fact my goal for this final week is to try to eat at Gusto as much as possible and see what that will do for me.

As a side note I thought I would share this photo with you. My stepmother is holding a very large apple to the right. On the left she has a washington apple. What in the world are they doing with the apples in Washington??????? That apple was the size of a melon or half the size of her head!!!

BLOWING UP

It's been a rough several weeks. I had the opportunity (thanks to my friend Ameena) to rent a space in Tribeca to open up M.S. APOTHECARY (which has been a virtual store up until now). It has been kicking my ass trying to carry the two businesses right now (Beauty By Mary Schook).

That would explain why once again I have neglected this blog, BUT I have been staying true to the organic as usual. The only time I caved was when we hosted Gordon Ramsay's baker for our Holiday Grand Opening. I had to taste test the product for our upcoming events. I'm such a snob when it comes to cupcakes and up until now I never liked a cupcake in the entire city of New York!

So anyway back to my strategy that I was going to tell you about. I had joined Organic Liason, Kirstie Alley's new weight loss/lifestyle company. I was looking forward to my product kit which includes 100% USDA certified organic supplements. One product is a beverage you drink which contains chromium. It just made me pee like crazy all day. Then it has a beverage that you drink in the evening that reminds me of a product called CALM. To top it off they have a product called Nightingale which I'm not a huge fan of. I researched the L-Tryptophan in there which seemed to give me some problems and decided I couldn't do it anymore.

All-in-all the supplement portion of the program is not something that suits my lifestyle right now. I'm dealing with 2-4 hour interrupted sleep nights because there is too much work that has to get done and when I rely on other people to help me they have been dropping the ball which only doubles my workload!!!

Despite the fact that I can't really use the program with my current lifestyle I felt it was important to still be a part of the Organic Liason system. They have a geolocator where you type in the zipcode on their site and they will tell you where you can find restaurants and stores that are organic. Brilliant right? I'm currently at 10013. I punched it in and found out the bar, Walker's within 100 yards of the store was listed. I just came from Walker's and NOTHING was organic. I think the wait staff had to try their best to contain themselves when I asked! They double checked with the chef and the chef said they will carry organic chicken at night. Sorry, but this is unacceptable. I had a limited amount of time to try to grab something to eat and this just made me very unhappy! I don't have time to now go and research other restaurants that they have listed. When I get a moment after the holiday season I will definitely be looking into this. Again what a bummer.

Part two of this entry is about the fact that now that the weather has changed I have noticed many menus have not. While many restaurants say that their food is organic I have a hard time believing it. I keep getting reactions after I eat certain foods.
Many would argue that the lack of sleep that I am getting is the source of the problem, but my response is I never got much sleep before. The stress has definitely increased, but it's good stress and lots of exciting changes that I live for!!!

I go back to the interview that I did earlier in the year with the Alberto, the owner of Gusto Organics. He told me that many restaurants will buy a certain number of organic chickens and then they will buy the rest of the chickens from the industrial companies while still claiming that they are organic. I trust his opinion only because I have seen Gusto Organics run out of their skirt steak for weeks which is probably their top selling dinner!!! Now that is loyalty to the customer and hopefully it pays off for him eventually!

So for now I will have to pray that I don't gain too much weight from trusting people when they say something is organic. It makes me sad and reminds me that there is such a long way to go.

Back to work! Got a store to run!!!

SKIN ALERT

Another experiment took place yesterday. I went to a wedding out of town. Given special circumstances I decided I was not going to think about what I would or wouldn't eat at the wedding. I had heaping amounts of stuffed grape leaves, only water to drink, meatballs, rice paella, potato chips, greek salad, cheese, a few bites of pasta, and lots of cake. I stayed away from most of the raw vegetables because I knew if they weren't organic I'd get an insane migraine. So didn't matter. Talk about the worst food hangover on the planet!!! This is the first conventional cake that I've had all year. I already have a gluten intolerance. I feel like I've been vomiting from food poisoning for the past 24 hours. My tummy is really upset!!!! (p.s. I did not vomit). My waist is enormous. My hands, face, legs.....all of it is swollen. What's worst of all is the angry acne (as pictured here) that's just appeared on my face and chest. There are some pretty sizable blisters on my legs as well. I will NEVER do this again. I have learned my lesson.

The next thing to also talk about this week is the seasons have changed. NY is very cold. Somehow menus at some of the "organic" places don't seem to have changed with the seasons. That being said I have started to pick up some weight. I eat less now. I'm eating a bit more fried fish. Still having my ice cream. Still working out every day. The routine hasn't changed, but looks like the food source has?

Is Gustorganics the only place I can trust? I really wish I could eat there all week, but I JUST don't have the time or a consistent schedule. I'm really friendly with many other places, but even the guacamole at Chipotle is looking a little fluorescent right now....hmmmm.

Next week I will talk about some new plans I will have in place. In the meantime I have to get back to my day job....or rather my 24 hour a day job!

Thanks again for visiting!!!

OBESOGENS

Check out the blog http://whatsupwithred.blogspot.com/

Marnie puts in a lot more explanation of obesogens and what you should know about plastics, chemicals, etc.

Great job Marnie!

ORGANIC CENTRAL

This Sunday I'm going to be away on business so I am actually writing an entry in advance.
For anyone that is wanting to go organic and is looking for awesome resources this is your link!
It's the consumer's guide to buying organic. I wish I had seen this closer to the beginning of my journey. I can't believe it's coming to an end!
I can see I'm starting to relax on my experiments a bit which only ends up giving breakouts, stomach aches, or food comas. I imagine at this point if I wanted to stop doing organic I really couldn't. The natural thing right now is not really working either. It's been putting a little back on to my midsection. Getting fat off of vegetables? Wait that's why I started this in the first place. I was getting fat off of one salad a day with no dressing, chicken, egg, and avocado were my fats in there.
Now I really eat like a pig and lose weight.
Go figure. Wonder if it has anything to do with eating organic? ;)

MISERY LOVES COMPANY

I'm so excited to see that Glamour Magazine (November issue) did a big junk food test. It begins on page 147. They did a day by day account of what was consumed and how the writer felt after those days. It's like an editorial version of Supersize Me.

I found it fascinating only because I don't really eat crap. Fried foods make me throw up because of the grease and sugar makes me moody. Chocolate around my period is a whole different story. Pastas and breads make me crash and burn and I haven't touched a soda in years unless it's in an alcoholic beverage and that was more than a year ago.

On day one Beth Shapouri, the writer/tester(from Kentucky) had a sugar crash.
Day 2 was "headache central".
Day 3 she had a cheese hangover (food coma).
Day 4 she had roller coaster hunger.
Day 5 she had the jitters.
Day 6 she had a breakdown.
Day 7 she had a problem finding her full button.
Boy can I relate to that feeling. I would know that I was eating a lot of food, but I couldn't seem to satisfy my hunger. Most other times I would just not eat. It was always one extreme or another and the only thing that seems to help it is going to the gym on a daily basis or staying active.

Sometimes I wish our bodies were a little more intelligently designed, but actually we are. We have become so busy and out of touch with ourselves that we don't really know what we want and soon enough ads and media are there to pick up the slack and tell you what you want and need. It's pretty insane really.

I really suggest reading this article. It's like a mini version of what my journey has been like. I actually still have not been trying to lose weight right now like I said I finally would. My life has been truly insane. I did run across some very interesting HCG however, but I would prefer waiting until after my organic journey is done. My life and plans change minute to minute so we'll see.

Oh my organic ice cream moved in next to my office!!!! I've literally been eating ice cream every day and still looking good!

See you guys next week!

Mary Schook

BIODYNAMIC

EVERYONE is carrying around a glass of wine at EATALY here in New York City. It's quite beautiful and romantic. It also reminds me of the days of gluttony in old Roman Times I used to read about.

I am constantly roaming through Eataly to find organic products. It gives me a little sense of the days of when I used to live in Italy. Eataly is definitely fresh and natural.[But I have now discovered eating that way makes me gain weight in hyper speed and also gives me a lot of headaches.]

One of the places I paid a visit to was the wine shoppe attached to Eataly. The clerk was quite helpful and went on to suggest biodynamic wines they carry in the restaurants. He also introduced me to the Italian wine guide that would list wines as either conventional, natural, or organic.

Biodynamic is a big buzz word that kept coming up so I decided to investigate what biodynamic was. It actually sounds like the way farming used to really be, but it's only been around since 1924. There's a site http://www.biodynamics.com/ that explains a lot more about Biodynamic and what farms are doing it.

On the Biodynamic list for New York is a place called Roxybury Farm. You should check out the site. It really seems like a place I would like to venture to in my "spare" time. They are basically a food share, but I haven't had time to immerse myself into all of the site.
The fruit is not organic.

As I'm writing this I'm already getting another splitting headache from a store that says their produce is organic.....being on organic patrol can be exhausting and disappointing.

See you next Sunday!

MS

EAT PRAY LOVE

For the last two weeks I have been immersed with Fashion week and clients returning without a minute to spare here. During that time I have had the great fortune of dining at Mario Batali's new place next to my office called Eataly.

Italian men love their women. They love to watch them eat good food, because "life's too short". Actually in all honesty they prefer seeing women make their food, but at Eataly sitting at the Pesce counter makes me feel like the movie Eat, Pray, Love. For me it's a wonderful dining experience (especially the salmon roe and bronzini).

Eataly made me decide and wonder if I was taking this ORGANIC thing too seriously. I mean the whole point of this experiment was to figure out how my body reacts to food. So for the past two weeks I have been eating "natural" and "locally sourced".

Aside from the mini egg rolls at the wedding I went to last night at the New Leaf Cafe along with a couple of bites of cupcake I have gained sooo much weight. I get major headaches, bloating, and worst of all I am NOT satisfied when I eat.

I totally forgot the feeling of not being satisfied. It's like you just can't stop eating. There's no off button. It's horrible!!!
My stomach is a bowling ball. My hands are swollen. I keep getting bags and swelling under my eyes which indicates the liver is going into overtime. My face and neck are swollen. I just can't do "natural" anymore.

Many people have laughed about the organic idea. They tell me that organic is a joke. I can understand their frustration. I can't tell you how many times someone told me something was organic and then I would have a reaction. After I would have a reaction I would go back to the owner of the restaurant or to the source only to find that the food was NOT organic!!! They really didn't think it was a big deal.

So many people are throwing in the towel saying what's the point? Even this week I posted on my facebook that I needed to start handing out violations for all of the false marketing and deception going on.

The body doesn't lie. The only place in all of New York I actually feel safe is Gustorganics. I don't get headaches, breakouts, or indigestion from their food. If the world could only be a Gustorganics.

The owner agrees that USDA is not perfect, but it is a start. It takes time to make a change and perfect things.

So for all of the doubters out there I am now taking this journey to a whole new level. For over 8 months I have not been trying to lose weight and I have lost over 70 lbs. Now I'm actually going to start to try to lose weight and see what happens.

Another thing I need to talk about is my schedule. I have too many irons in the fire at the moment. It takes a lot of time and energy to blog so I am now going to only do posts every sunday. I appreciate you guys following my journey and all of the feedback you continue to give me. It has really helped me to continue blogging on about this.

Please continue to send me your stories. I will keep you posted on my journey.
xoxo mary

PETITION FOR BETTER FOOD KY!

After my eye-opening grocery shopping trip in Kentucky I decided that something has to be done. Louisville desperately needs a place to find better quality foods at decent prices!!!

I just finished shopping at Trader Joe's here in NYC and I think I paid 1/10th of what I did in Kentucky for all kinds of food! Isn't New York legend for being more expensive???!!!!

After speaking to many of my KY peeps on facebook I figured there has to be some way to make their requests heard. I found a petition site online. Yeah!
I hope getting 10,000 signatures from people in Kentucky might be enough to get Trader Joe's to seriously listen. If we can get even more all the better. This might even get Kroger, Whole Foods and the other stores to lower their outrageous prices or seek out more organic solutions!!!

You can sign the petition at http://www.change.org/petitions/view/we_need_trader_joes_in_louisville_kentucky

CONSUMER POWER

I'm so glad to see consumers raising their voices and beginning to be heard. Here is a link to an article about sugar versus high fructose corn syrup. http://tinyurl.com/23m3uec The big brands are starting to play around with their formulas and ingredients because they're recognizing there is a demand for better quality in regards to food.
Consumers still need to be more educated and specific. White sugar is still processed! Is it still better than HFCS? I'm sure the body can at least recognize it better.

I am also pleased to report that the stoppage I was experiencing from eating Denny's and Famous Dave's last Sunday is finally beginning to exit the building and my body's swelling is going down. I couldn't even work out this week I was so uncomfortable which is a first for me in a year!!!!!

Glad to be almost back!

THE GREAT EXPERIMENT

As I have mentioned in the past if I ate something that was not organic I would have severe reactions to the food. They include toxin spots oozing with blood and pus and major headaches behind my eyes.

For months I have been bracing myself to eat at my grandmother's favorite place, Denny's. I don't have the heart to make an aging woman go through my organic experiment. So this past week as planned I went ahead and ordered the Moons over My Hammy (eggs with ham and cheese) and the cheese fries. Hey if I'm going to break organic I might as well go all the way. Much to my surprise the only thing I experienced was severe bloat (probably from all of the salt). No ketchup on the fries. No extra salt. Just the sandwich and the fries. In total I consumed 1400 calories in that meal. The sandwich tasted good, but the fries tasted fake and tasteless to me. What was sad is less than two hours later I was starving again as if I had never eaten anything. My stomach looked like I was in the early stages of pregnancy.

Then my grandmother wanted me to go to dinner with her as well. I wasn't so worried about dinner since I seemed to survive breakfast okay. We went to Famous Dave's and I ate the rib tip dinner as pictured here on the left. The entire platter was actually only 1073 calories. The sides all tasted fake to me, and the meat was just okay. Nothing amazing...until I drowned it in devil sauce (those calories are calculated as well). After I ate I felt drunk and off balance. I also felt like a slug. At least I felt full. In fact I woke up the next day to a major food hangover. Thankfully no headache though. The sad part is it's three days later and it still hasn't left my body. My body is swollen and I look like my stomach is in the final trimester of pregnancy. This is horrible. Two meals could physically do this to me? What was interesting is I had 2,473 calories in total for the day. That's a lot, but not when you compare it to the 4000+ calories I have been consuming each day over the last month (and still losing weight).

So I would like to discuss a few facts or shall I say observations on this journey so far:

-When I eat produce that is not organic I get SEVERE migraines and nausea.

-When I eat meat that is not organic I can not use the toilet for a few days. I feel sluggish and my stomach swells. I am usually still feeling hungry or dissatisfied.

-When I eat organic processed foods in quantities of 5000+ calories I FINALLY start to put on some weight and break out around my jaw area.

-When I eat unprocessed organic meats, dairy, fruits, and vegetables I can eat unlimited amounts of food and not gain weight and also be satisfied for hours. The side effects are great energy and satisfying sleep.

The photos featured here show the industrial food I had on the left at Famous Dave's. The food on the right is the organic food that I normally eat at Gusto Organics. It's more meat than the Famous Dave's. I guarantee Gusto's potatoes which are rich in dairy and other binders is heavier in calories than what I had at Dave's as well. The only thing I normally don't eat is the corn bread and the corn (unless they are organic chips). I am probably eating twice the calories on the right as I am on the left. Yet the meal on the right didn't bloat me or give me discomfort or indigestion. I had no problems using the toilet. I can say this for all of my meals at Gusto Organics.

I added these photos to show the people who think I am "dieting" the actual volumes and content of my foods. Please tell me what kind of diet allows you to eat steak and potatoes like this and lose weight?

I hopefully have put some minds to rest and can't wait to see what happens in September when I actually begin to try to lose weight......that is if I can get the Famous Dave's to pass out of me first. Yech!

LUCKY IN KENTUCKY

Sorry I've been absent for a few days. I've just returned back from both a work and play trip in Kentucky. Sometimes it's nice for people to not know where you are or where you're going at all times.

I was really looking forward to this trip so that I could get a chance to experiment and research organic versus industrial a bit more away from New York and be closer to the source of food I was raised on.

As I arrived to my dad's house he asked me what I wanted to eat. He told me there was a lot available in the garden so he gave me a tour of what was growing out back. He wasn't kidding. Endless amounts of tomatoes, squashes of all kinds, zucchini, grapes, varieties of herbs, melons....in fact this photo is of my dad after just plucking a watermelon right from the garden. He's a bit shy here. It ended up being the sweetest, juiciest melon I've had in a looooong time.

It was so nice to have access to the freshest produce 24/7. Nothing beats waking up in the morning and gathering raspberries to go with my yogurt! I was in heaven.

Then I realized I still needed my dairy and eggs so we went off to the grocery store. There was VERY little that was organic at the markets and what was there was TWICE and THREE times the price! No wonder people complain about the cost of organic! In addition a lot of the organic was vegan or bland stuff that has no real appeal or taste. No wonder people associate vegetarianism with organic!!! That's just wrong!

So one thing was for sure. Price and availability is an enormous problem in Kentucky (the last place I ever thought it would be). It made me feel really fortunate to live in New York City. The only financial relief consumers can take some comfort in is from the food salvage stores. My best friend Chris shops a lot of her organic from there. So instead of her pasta costing $4.00 at whole foods, it's .60 cents for the same brand at the salvage store. They carry a huge variety of organic products like Annie's organic pasta or Late July's cheese crackers. Who knew!

As I reflect I think about the fact that we grew our food a long time ago to supplement the food we really couldn't afford to buy. Now growing our own food seems to be a luxury. If my parents weren't retired there would be no way they could maintain a garden. Time is now the new luxury that most of us do not have.

If a lot of people put their time together in a community garden maybe we all could afford this luxury. Just thinking out loud. I know it's being done in coops around the country. This just has to somehow go viral. This would bring back community and also give parents and their kids something to share.

This sunday is World Kitchen Garden Day. New Yorkers will come prepared to garden and bring their own bowls, utensils, and a few bucks. The people sponsoring it are trying to get a garden in front of City Hall in New York. Interesting. I would prefer Central Park.

Anyway. I felt lucky to be in Kentucky and was thankful my family shared their garden with me. I probably ate 20 lbs of tomatoes while I was there!!! Wish you were there!

HOME GROWN

At the beginning of my experiment an old mate from grade school told me she had a friend she grew up with in Pittsburgh that had gone organic and lost 40 lbs in a matter of two months. I later found out it was a small exaggeration. I am so glad I waited to speak to her until this last week because we both have the same story to tell. Her journey didn't influence the outcome of what happened to me and I would probably have doubted her anyway. I NEVER would have thought I would lose weight by eating more food!!!

Her name is Heather Henderson Price. Heather is originally from Pittsburgh, but now lives with her husband and kids in Georgia. Heather was generous enough to allow me to listen to her life's story about her relationship with food and how it related to her.

She just as I had been raised mostly off of food grown in her garden. If "they needed carrots for dinner she walked in the back yard and picked them". As Heather got older she married and had three children. Each pregnancy she packed on the weight and found it impossible to get off. During one of her pregnancies she had an urge of to consume oreos and other processed foods which is what made the weight creep on so easily.

Eventually Heather went to extremes to lose the weight, but she couldn't shake it. It wasn't until she had tried every weight loss gimmick on the market (the shakes, etc) that Heather decided to visit a weight loss center for assistance. The center showed her how to eat again and emphasized whole, fresh foods. Processed foods were eliminated from her diet. Heather intuitively took it a step further by eating a lot of her foods organically because that's what she did when she was younger. She quickly sloughed off 30+ lbs within a couple of months from the diet change and still continues to maintain it over a year and a half later.

Weight wasn't the only major change that Heather noticed by going with whole, fresh foods. Heather was on migraine medication. She would get persistent migraines throughout the month. When she changed her diet her migraines disappeared. Occasionally she will get a migraine about once a month.

Heather's family began to also see other benefits from the diet change. At 8months of age one of Heather's kids was diagnosed Tuberous Sclerosis Complex which causes epileptic-like seizures. After years of dealing with different issues with the drugs, etc they took her daughter off of the medication. For the last six months Heather's daughter has not experienced an epileptic episode. Heather credits watching her daughter's diet and making sure she doesn't get any refined sugars or processed foods.

The part that blows me away is how Heather and I both react to industrial food now that we've made these changes. Four times through my journey I have had SIGNIFICANT reactions to my food where I get nausea, severe headaches, and a feeling similar to a hangover for two days if I eat something that is not organic. I have been able to go back to the sources of each incident and pick out which food was the problem and confirm that with the people that served me those foods! The funny thing Heather said when she goes to visit her family in Pittsburgh she has the same problem!!! She also feels "sluggish and fatigued".

After speaking to Heather I now wonder if people are more prone to chemical sensitivity in their foods if they had little to no exposure to chemicals in their food as a child? Changing our diets allowed us to increase the volume of food that we ate and resulted in weight loss we were both unable to achieve in prior attempts. Would someone raised off of pop tarts and McDonald's have the same benefits or weight changes that Heather and I had? I have to find someone willing to take the challenge!

It's also interesting to reflect on seeing the swelling and weight gain in my aunt who is vegetarian. She seems to eat a lot of tofu which is mostly genetically modified. If she went entirely GMO free would she lose the weight?

If anything it was certainly consoling to speak to someone on a similar journey and see that organic has had a positive outcome in our lives. We both feel more of a sense of control about how we look and feel.

Heather and I also agree that sourcing our food is going to be the next biggest challenge for both of us. She wishes she could have a garden like the one she grew up with, but her back yard in Georgia is all clay. We'll get there Heather. I promise!

DAYCATION

Over the weekend I got a chance to go to Boston to see my Aunt whom I've only seen maybe a total of 5 times in my life. What was special about this trip was she was the first person to introduce me to the idea of vegetarianism. She's been vegetarian for over 30+ years and a darn good one at that!

One thing about her is despite her healthy consumption of vegetables she is still overweight and struggles with her health at times. She has also been in accidents that have caused major trauma to the head where her weight was affected just as I have. I will have to speak with my old classmate at the University of Kentucky to see if weight and brain damage tie in. I know that I have been told that my pituitary gland has been compromised.

Back to my daycation. When I arrived she took me to a vegetarian Indian restaurant south of Boston that she thought would be safe for my organic needs. We really enjoyed our tasty Palak Paneer and rice Dosa filled with potatoes. Not even an hour after eating I had the worst headache behind my eyes and fatigue. I tried to ignore it.

After spending many hours together it was time for dinner. She prepared THE BEST Quinoa salad I have ever had. It was soooo fluffy!!! I could have eaten the whole thing. I overate dinner hoping that it would help dilute what was in my system for lunch, but the headache only worsened! It was turning into a migraine followed by nausea. Eventually a couple of hours later I ended up vomiting. I sprayed some silver just to make sure I didn't get some weird food poisoning, but I don't think I would get a headache from food poisoning.

In the end I woke up with a sore stomach and didn't want to eat. I forced myself to eat just before boarding the bus back to NY. Part of the take home had some of the Indian as leftovers. I took it back with me and had it for dinner. The headache symptoms returned along with the nausea!!! It was definitely a reaction to something in the food.

Two days later all of the swelling in my hands and arms and especially my stomach shrank back down. My stomach calmed down. Everything is back to normal.

What's the moral of the story here? Even eating a healthy vegetarian lifestyle has its hazards. I reacted to what would be considered healthy food! This is insane!

In my next post I will talking about an interview that I did with a young lady who started organic almost a year before me. She was introduced to me by an old grade school buddy who found out about my organic journey and thought I should speak with her.

In the meantime I have to get my aunt's recipe to that quinoa!

All THAT AND A BAG OF CHIPS

After listening to a lot of discussions and theories over my weight loss I decided to try a little experiment. Do calories really count?

For almost the last two weeks I have been eating like a complete pig!!!!
I'll have a huge 1100 calorie burrito bowl at Chipotle followed by a 250 calorie ice cream. Then even the last two nights I have forced myself into eating an entire BAG of UTZ blue corn tortilla chips with a whole container of hummus. That's at least another 2000 calories. People I'm eating over 4000 calories a day and not even exercising and still not climbing the scale.

No, I do not have a tapeworm, nor am I using stimulants. Mind you I'm also not able to get to the gym and exercise like I usually do either. My schedule is murder right now.

I don't know how much longer my stomach can take this stretching so I'm going to back off now, but I just thought you may find this interesting.

I'm also going to announce that as of September 1st I will be officially trying to lose weight. That's right. I have not tried to lose those 70 lbs. They just came off.
What's going to happen now that I'm going to put some effort into it?

I will be making small changes like not eating after 7pm, paying closer attention to my portions so that I'm eating 1 serving of mashed potatoes instead of 4. I'll either lose, gain, or stay the same.

Watch me put the effort in and stay the same!!!!

Anyway thanks as usual for reading!

MS