Okay, it has happened to me again. Thirteen days ago, I started the program with which I had lost more than 70 lbs in 2006.

In the first six days, I lost 6 lbs, and then weight loss stopped. I expected rapid weight loss in the first week, for what we all talk about as ‘water loss.’ But, I had also expected to drop into a steady weight loss process of about 2-3 lbs a week for a few weeks.

But, I did not enter the steady weight loss process. Weight loss stopped. In fact yesterday, after my morning omelet, I was nauseous. Okay, that is a signal I understood. I know what has happened. I know what to do about it.

Let me give you some background on what I think is happening.

I personally think that weight loss can be achieved by a variety of methods. Right now there are a wide range of weight loss programs in the marketplace, and I think that they all work. But there are a bunch of folks who enter one (or another) of these programs and no matter how faithful they are to the program, they do not lose weight. I am one of those.

Why can some of us not lose weight? What did I do in 2006 to lose weight successfully? For those who are unable to lose weight, I think there is an interplay between the person’s immune system and the environment.

From my experience, the ‘environment’ for a person who wants to lose weight has multiple components. One component is the normal ‘foodscape,’ the other is the tens of thousands of non-natural chemical compounds with which we have flooded our environment.

Over the course of our evolution, our immune systems have developed mechanisms to manage many naturally occurring toxic substances. But, when faced by environmental factors to which we have not developed a response, our immune systems are in a quandary.

So, when it is confused in this way, it can manage the offending environmental factor or it can ignore the offending environmental factor.

But, because there are so many of these factors to which our immune systems do not know how to respond, a secondary process starts to come into play.

Saturation is the key concept for this method to work.

I use the barrel metaphor (from Dr Doris Rapp). Our ‘barrel’ is our ability to manage these unknown factors. When our ‘barrel’ is empty, we have all of our immune system resources available to manage contact with these unknown factors. As we start to deal with more and more of these factors, our barrel starts to fill up. When our barrel is filled to overflowing, we no longer have defenses available to manage our contact with these factors. We become saturated and we become ill.

When our barrel starts overflowing, our body decides to take us to DEFCON 2. A very high state of defensive alert. It shuts down all non-essential activities and shuts down the borders. This means that the body is truly under siege and our immune system has decided it must defend the core.

One of the core elements it decides to maintain is body weight and stored fat. These are needed for body survival, so our immune system knows it must protect them. Anything we do to try to lose weight is seen as an attack on the core. In response, the immune system starts manipulating things it can control to counterbalance any weight loss attempt. As long as we are saturated by our exposure to environmental factors which our immune system cannot recognize, we cannot lose weight.

If this is our situation, we need to stop the saturation to be able to lose weight successfully.

Okay, stopping the saturation means that we need to cease all contact with those things which our body has recognized as a toxic substance. This means some testing. The testing service I use is operated by a woman who works with me by phone. Isabel Aguilar has a technology which permits her to recognize a person’s immune system’s responses. She helps you develop a list of everything with which you come in contact. She lets you know which things your immune system thinks is toxic and you figure out how to eliminate that from your environment. She calls this immune reaction our sensitivity and intolerance.

After you have eliminated all of these things from your environment, your body can respond to dieting appropriately, instead of defensively. Then, you start to lose weight.

So, when I stopped losing weight and I got nauseous with a food to which I have not been sensitive before, I realized that after a year of not testing these things, I needed to test my sensitivities and intolerances again. Sure enough, I was now sensitive to eggs. So, to be successful in weight loss now, I need to eliminate eggs.

Why did my immune system decide that eggs were a threat? I don’t know for sure, but for me, this is part of that confusion I talked about earlier. When your barrel is full; when you are saturated, your immune system goes to a siege state and shuts down the borders. It simply decided that eggs should not cross the border now. Later, when I’m no longer saturated, I’ll test again to see if eggs can pass again.

After you have prepared your list of everything in your environment (foods and chemicals), it only takes about an hour for you to finish the testing. After that you have to eliminate those things to which you are sensitive. Then, you body stops the reactions, and goes back to a more appropriate response to foods and exercise.

So, now I expect my body to return to my normal weight loss process. You can expect the same. Check out my weight loss progress to see how this is working for me.

Radcliffe

I learned something when I successfully dieted before. I learned that it really doesn’t matter what diet you follow. As long as it is a diet that has been shown to help people lose weight (through research or history), it should work for you.

Now, I’m not one for exercise. So, I did not choose a program that involved a lot of exercise. I understand that I need to be active, but weights and aerobics do not have any attraction for me.

I like to eat. I like to cook. I like eating in good restaurants. So, I didn’t chose a program that restricted the amount of food I ate.

I believe that to be successful in a weight loss program, you have to commit to that program. You have to be happy and satisfied with your lifestyle and your food choices for you to maintain your commitment. So, I chose a program that fits for me and my belief system.

I like the low-carbohydrate, high-fiber diet. It makes sense to me. I understand it. I can remain committed to it. I have remained committed to it. And, I will continue my commitment. There is no food that I crave or that I desire that is forbidden on this diet.

But there is something else that I do that is the reason this diet actually works for me. For many years, I would start this same diet and I would not lose weight. I would stay committed and precisely follow the diet for months and I would not lose weight.

I knew that the diet worked, I thought it must be something about how I was approaching the diet that was the reason it did not work. I remained committed, and I remained on the diet even though I did not lose weight.

In 2006, when I lost the 70+ pounds, I discovered an additional step that makes a weight loss program successful for me. With this extra step, I still had to be on a weight loss diet in which I would stay committed.

I my next posts, I’ll tell you more about it.

Okay, yesterday I started on my personal weight loss program. I have done this before, so I’m confident that I can do it again.

If you read my earlier post, you read about me losing a lot of weight in 2006. You also read that I intentionally stopped for 2007. Let me tell you a little more about that.

When I started losing weight in 2006, I was 62 years old and I was 145 kilos. That’s well over 300 pounds (almost 320 lbs).

I have been overweight all that I remember of my life. I was chubby as a kid, and I was chubby as a young adult. When I joined the US Navy at 18 years old, I was 6′ 2″ and almost 200 pounds. When I left the Navy, 4 years later, I was 6′4″ and 235 pounds.

For the next 3 decades, my weight slowly increased. By the time I was 50 years old, I was 275 pounds. And then in 2006, when I was 62 years old and well over 300 pounds, a friend came over to give me an intervention.

Larry has been my friend for 25 years, and we talk about things which affect our lives. He has been diabetic for over 45 years, so he knows all about it. He brought over a glucose meter and asked me to take the test of my blood sugar. He was concerned that I might be diabetic. He is my friend, so I took the test.

The ‘normal’ range for blood sugar is 80-120. My result was over 180. He explained what this meant in my body, my biology. I was shocked about this. Larry told me he was confident that if I lost weight, my body would probably start operating correctly and my blood sugar would get back in control. He left the glucose meter with me as a gift.

Well, this was pretty heavy. I was quite concerned, not only for the consequences of what Larry had told me. Larry was in a wheel-chair because of a wound on his foot that has not healed in years as a result of his diabetes. Larry was clearly serious when he told me that with my blood sugar levels, I would be in similar condition in very few more years.

So I started a weight loss program that very day.

Here I am with my first post for my new weight loss journal. I started my diet today.

In 2006, I was successful in losing over 70 pounds. I’m in my 60s and it took me many years to learn how to lose weight. I stopped my weight loss program for the year of 2007, because I wanted my skin to catch up with my body.

Now, I’m ready to start again.

In the Weight Loss Journal entries, I will talk about what I am doing and how it is working.

In the Review entries, I will talk about products and services aimed at the weight loss marketplace.