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[Outrayjust]

Ivy, cocoa also does the trick. And you can make that with skim milk and the sweetener of your choice. Very yummy, especially in winter. I get on kicks where I sweeten it with various SF Torani syrup flavors for variety. http://www.torani.com/
You can get a good selection at Smart and Final or Cost Plus. For a milk chocolate lover, it seems like a wonderful solution.

~Outy

[nougat]

so how much cocoa would give the best effects?

i love milk choc tho i'm not eating it at the mo.  dark choc is not my fave and after last time i'm afraid to eat it !!! :?

and ivy you do have a lovely face!!

[Outrayjust]

so how much cocoa would give the best effects?

I've heard varying wisdom on this. The nice thing about cocoa is that it has most of the flavanoids, antioxidants and micronutrients but virtually no fat. The reason experts caution against too much chocolate is that it's very high in fat and usually laced with sugar. Personally, I still eat it, almost every day. But to increase the healthy benefits without increasing my waist size, I also use good cocoa. BTW, the darker the cocoa, the better and richer the nutrients. A good cup of cocoa every day or so is a decent amount. I generally use a heaping tbsp per cup.

~Outy

[Ivy]

I didn't know you could use plain cocoa! However, the study I heard about mentioned that milk interfered with the absorption of the polyphenols in the chocolate. I wonder if it's the calcium, or something else in the milk that interferes? I'm not married to cow's milk, none of us drink much of it at all. But most of the milk substitutes we sometimes buy (hemp, almond, sometimes rice) are calcium fortified.

I heard it from Dr. Ronald Hoffman, who has a weekday radio show on WOR in NY that we pick up on our AM talk station here in NC. He seems to be pretty on the ball most of the time (at least to my layperson's ear). I just poked around to see what I could find and here's an article about it:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/09/080923104408.htm

But it doesn't say anything about whether it's the calcium in the milk or something more inherent to the milk itself that messes with the absorption.  :?

Dang. Science is hard!  :lol:

[Ivy]

and ivy you do have a lovely face!!

Aw, shucks. You guys are all too sweet. Thank you!

[Ivy]

So I guess I'm coming up on six weeks this Thursday. As of Thanksgiving morning I was about 13 lbs down. Not too shabby for five weeks. I haven't weighed in since I've been at my parents' house, but I won't be surprised if I've picked up a pound or two by the time I get back home tomorrow, since it has been a non-stop food orgy that I have only mostly avoided. Really, though, I'm satisfied with how I've done this holiday. I didn't take a "diet vacation" as I would have in times past- I went ahead and took the oil each morning as I have been. So I didn't eat as much as I would normally have, but I still ate enough to get stuffed SLD style.

However, I think the honeymoon may be over. I kind of understand why people tend to fall off the wagon after a couple of months. For one thing, I am feeling somewhat sluggish, digestion-wise. Actually, that's an understatement- I'm feeling REALLY sluggish, digestion-wise. I would have assumed that since I'm eating many, many more veggies and much less junk than I used to, that my digestion would be better, not worse. I also have to admit that I still have a moment when I take the oil, wherein I think "OMG, what in the hell am I doing drinking a quarter cup of oil?! This is crazy!" I may have been a junk food junkie before, but that was just Mr. Hyde to my granola mom Dr. Jekyll. And my granola mom side frequently avoided adding a quarter cup of oil to an entire batch of muffins by using applesauce instead. Now, I'm drinking that, all by myself, every single day. Nearly five hundred calories of pure fat. It's breathtaking sometimes. I'd love to cut down on the amount, but going by the weight in pounds x2 thing, I need to be taking this much oil.

Even so, I'm determined to work it out with SLD. Digestion and crazy oil drinking panic aside, this is the only time I have felt like I had even partial control over my appetite. And I won't be taking 4T of oil forever, right? I'll cut it down as I lose, I assume.

[Outrayjust]

Ivy, I think there's a max recommendation of 400 SLD calories per day. And even that's an awful lot of oil. You may want to experiment with less oil. If you're worried about loosing AS, you can compensate by using other SLD methods like CFF, NCing, crazy spicing, etc.

~Outy

[karky]

Even so, I'm determined to work it out with SLD. Digestion and crazy oil drinking panic aside, this is the only time I have felt like I had even partial control over my appetite. And I won't be taking 4T of oil forever, right? I'll cut it down as I lose, I assume.

I would, as you lose, just recalculate the amount of calories you need and adjust  :lol:
I don't think it is the fat in our diets that has made us fat, I think it is the processed carbs like white flour, the high fructose corn syrup in everything, and also-
think about the chicken that has been given drugs to make the breast bigger.  The cows that have been given drugs to make them grow bigger and fatter fast, and give more milk, ect.  All of those drugs must be excreted somewhere.  Like in the eggs we buy, the milk we give our kids, the manure that gets spread on vegetable fields as fertilizer. 
-end rant

Ivy, you are doing great.  Don't forget, that the reason you may be feeling a bit sluggish is this: less input=less output.

[Ivy]

Outy, I'm going by the 4T upper limit, which I guess makes about 480 calories of oil, right? I was thinking of scaling back to 3T which is still 360 calories, but I have such good AS at this level. It just goes against that low-fat mantra that has been drilled into me forever, that even I don't really believe. I agree with you, karky, which is why I have been trying to make sure the small amount I do eat now is high-quality organic food. I've always fed that to my kids, really- it has been what I eat in the car on the way somewhere that has been making me fat. Candy, fast food, and the occasional Slim-Fast (LOL) shake.

CFF is calorie-free flavors, right? I don't remember reading about that in the book but I've seen it around here. How does that work? I have been crazy spicing when I can (I made Spanish rice with a bunch of spices including cinnamon in it the other day, and it was downright yummy) but I haven't tried doing crazy spiced smoothies. I may have to start doing that for brunch/lunch/first meal I can tolerate. And dang, I meant to pick up a pair of noseclips at the store yesterday but I forgot.

Regarding input/output... I don't so much mind the decreased output as the... difficulty... of outputting. Trying to stay out of the TMI-zone. :lol:

[karky]

Ivy, here is the post where they first started talking about Calorie Free Flavors.  I think... :lol:

New Application of Theory -- Extinguishing Conditioned Reinforcer (flavor)
http://boards.sethroberts.net/index.php?topic=4361.0

[Ivy]

Okay.. so the idea is to pair a CFF with meals, and also drink that same CFF between meals to break the calorie-flavor association. I'm going to try this. I do find that if I drink unsweetened tea with a meal that I am not hungry nearly as fast afterwards (I often drink unsweetened tea between meals but sometimes splurge on the sweet tea with a meal).

[Outrayjust]

Ivy, cocoa redux. I use coconut milk when making mochas. I don't know if you like coffee. To use the amount of coconut milk you'd need to make a decent cup of cocoa may be counterproductive in the calorie area. But here's my mocha recipe in case you're interested:

* 1 12 cup pot of coffee (I use decaf....and the GOOD stuff. Either one of the specialty coffees I mail order like Gevalia or Boca Java or I get the freshly roasted stuff from whole foods, ground fine. If you plan to drink it straight, you can make the coffee weak. If you're going serve over ice, you may want to brew it a bit stronger.)
*6-12 heaping spoonfuls of cocoa (this is a matter of preference)
*1 tsp vanilla
*1-2 cans coconut milk (I use the reduced fat kind sold at Trader Joe's. And again, this is a preference thing. I'm fine with 1 can, but if you like it creamy, you'd add 2.)
*Sweeten to taste with sweetener of choice (I tend to use stevia and my preferred ratio is about 1.5 standard packets per cup.)

I mix this all in a recycled water bottle. It's awesome hot or cold. I usually chill it and serve over ice, but I almost always have a hot cup in the meantime. This is NOT a totally calorie free drink, obviously. But it works out to be around 50 calories a cup, give or take. Quite reasonable. Plus you're getting the health benefits of the chocolate, the coffee and the coconut. A total win/win!

~Outy

[VeganKitten]

OMG Outy, I am SO going to try that!

I made a great vegan pumpkin pie for T-Day, the secret ingredient was full-fat coconut milk 

[Outrayjust]

Coconuts in general are miraculous little concoctions. I use the milk, the oil and the butter for many things. Another hint: substitute coconut oil in recipes that call for shortening (like Crisco).  It's one of the secrets to my oatmeal cookies....which no one has ever tasted without exclaiming, "OHMIGOD, these are the best oat meal cookies I've ever tasted!" Oh, and the meat is most yummy as well.

I'm sure your pumpkin pie rocked.

~Outy

[Ivy]

I am making that mocha tomorrow!! I don't need it to be calorie-free (dark chocolate obviously isn't, lol) but I did want to avoid using dairy since the recent studies indicated that it interrupted absorption of the good stuff in the chocolate.

And this is the first I've heard of coconut oil/milk being beneficial, though I'm not surprised.

I couldn't wait for the morning to step on the scale, though I almost always weigh at least 2-3lb more in the evening than I do in the morning. Who knows why, I guess water retention and having eaten and such. I am about 1.5 up from my last weigh-in, but that was naked in the morning, so I'm actually pretty thrilled with that. I know it's really not the big picture, but I do really want to see that number keep going down.