Three weeks ago I noticed that I was overweight again, but I’m doing something about it again.
I’m not quite sure what did it. Maybe it was the almost-nightly bowl of ice cream or maybe those french fries weren’t really counteracted by those side dishes of broccoli. Whatever it was, three weeks ago I noticed that bad eating habits had kicked my weight more than 15 pounds over my usual weight. Those 15 extra pounds I was carrying around weighed as much as a bowling ball.
I’ve had to lose weight before. Five years ago, I decided that I was tired of carrying around lots of extra weight. Back then, I noticed how bad things had gotten after a friend showed me a photo of that 194 pound version of myself at the beach. Back then, I decided to see if I could lose 10 or 15 pounds. After doing a bit of research, I implemented a series of the eating and exercise strategies that worked well for me. They worked extremely well. I’m going to share them in this post. I dropped more than 4 pounds per week, week after week, until my 194 pound carcass melted into 159 pounds, a swing of 35 pounds. After I got going with my program, it was almost painless. I found myself feeling better and I looked better. Based upon well-established statistics, I knew that I had substantially decreased my chance of being afflicted with heart disease, stroke and various kinds of cancer. I was comfortable wearing my clothes again and I was no longer obsessed with food. What was not to like?
I’m 5’ 11”. For most of the past five years, I have carried about 163 pounds. When I recently noticed my scale rise to 178 three weeks ago, then, I declared war. I’m fighting that war right now. I calculated that my approach will take me back at my normal weight in about 5 more weeks, a steady weight loss of about 2 pounds per week. It’s working like clockwork. In three weeks, I’ve lost 6 pounds. To give myself even more incentive, I’m making my weight loss ambitions public here!
This weight loss story is the sort of thing that has been told many times, of course. But I’ll continue.
Over the past year, I fell into some bad habits about eating well and working out. And to accelerate my weight gain, I haven’t exercised much. I normally commute 10 miles/day by bicycle, but extremely cold winter has hindered that. Also, I haven’t been getting enough sleep, a factor that is associated with weight gain. During the day, I work at desk job and I’ve been hovering over my computer several hours each night (much of it writing this blog). Further, I take care of my two young children quite often; it is hard to work out vigorously when one is with them. They just can’t keep up (although that is changing rapidly).
Now that we’ve had our winter thaw, I’m back on the bicycle almost every day. I don’t belong to any health club. My exercise program is virtually free. In addition to riding a bike to work (which saves 1/3 gallon of gas every day), I do floor exercises several times a week. I do these floor exercises for only 10 minutes, in accordance with many of the suggestions of a pretty decent book, Eight Minutes in the Morning, by Jorge Cruise.
Here’s a short version of my “secrets” for losing weight: eat reasonable amounts of good food and exercise. There’s no substitute. Don’t tolerate excuses out of your own mouth. Excuses are a dime a dozen and all of us have thought of all of them ready. Here are a few of my favorites. We live in a toxic society, nutritionally speaking. It’s really tempting to eat all those sugary fatty salty foods. It does take more effort to chop up some zucchini and stir fry at then to eat a big bowl of potato chips. I could go on and on. Tell your excuses to get lost.
When I try to determine a workable series of rules five years ago, I focused on several things. My number one rule was that my approach to eating could not require any daily menus. I wasn’t going to buy expensive concoctions or prepared foods. My approach had to be an approach that I could use anywhere, whether at someone’s house or a restaurant.
Substituting nutritious food for bad food at home was a terrific jump start for dropping pounds. In my case, I became sold that eating lots of whole grains (carbohydrates loaded with fiber) was a critically important basis for eating well. I work whole grains into my breakfast, lunch and dinner (here’s why). It’s really easy to swap out crappy cereal for cereal loaded with fiber. There are many delicious whole grain breads available for purchase (look for bread that has at least 3 grams of fiber per slice). I learned much about whole grains by reading Eat, Drink, and Be Healthy: The Harvard Medical School Guide to Healthy Eating, by Walter Willett, of the Harvard School of Public Health.
When I decided that I needed to lose weight three weeks ago, I didn’t realize how many bad habits I had gotten into over the past year. It’s really easy to overlook all of one’s own bad habits. I started noticing that I was grabbing food for numerous reasons having nothing to do with hunger: anxiety, nervousness, stress and boredom. Many times, I was eating food when I was really thirsty and I should have been drinking water instead of eating.
What’s amazing though, especially this time, is how hard it is to turn around one’s habits. When we get into old eating habits, they are really hard to break. It’s like trying to turn around an ocean liner. One’s habits, especially one’s food habits, are quite personal. To change one’s food habits is to change one’s self; it is to reject one’s (own) self. The problem is that we tend to get used to ourselves and make lots of excuses for ourselves. We humans are capable of liking ourselves the way we are, no matter who we have become.
I’m three weeks into my better eating campaign, and I notice that I’m starting to rediscover the good habits that I initially learned five years ago. I’m eating more nutritious foods and staying away from processed foods. I’m staying more conscious of my food while I am eating it and I’m enjoying it more. Because I am again focusing on eating nutritious food (again, avoiding refined and over-processed foods lacking fiber) my metabolism has settled down. Before I decided to get with it again three weeks ago, I was finding myself looking forward to my lunch break even when I wasn’t really hungry. Now, because I’m eating well, I often find myself working straight through lunch, forgetting to eat. Sometimes I feel “fatigue” at one or two in the afternoon, and then I remind myself that I haven’t yet eaten. It’s not really fatigue that I’m feeling, but real hunger, something that I haven’t often felt during my year of bad habits.
I’m not suggesting that eating can’t be fun while eating well. I’m really enjoying those extra doses of vegetables (I usually stir fry them) and whole grains. I’ll still have a small cup of ice cream several times a week. Sometimes, when I crave sweets, I grab a small piece of good quality chocolate—I’ve found that a small piece of good chocolate (I use Dove chocolate bars these days) is much more satisfying that large amounts of waxy cheaper chocolate. The point is not that people need chocolate to lose weight–everyone will have their own favorite foods. The point is that a bite or two of highly craved foods often extinguishes the craving and, if one deprives oneself of those favorite foods entirely, one might “compensate” for the un-extinguished craving by eating huge amounts of food one doesn’t really want or need.
During my past 3 weeks improved exercise and better eating, I find that I’m sleeping better–when I’m working out, I feel refreshed after getting only 7 1/2 hours sleep each night, rather than eight. I’m happier. I think faster and remember more, it seems. And I’m losing weight.
Imagine if someone came up to you and said that they had an amazing drug that would make you feel much better, sleep better, enjoy life better and provide immunity from many horrible diseases. Imagine that the price of this proven life-lengthening drug was $10 per day, more than $3000 per year. Imagine all the people nonetheless clamoring to get their hands on such a drug! Well, there is no such drug, but there is a free way to get all of these same benefits.
As I’m writing this, I keep thinking that I’m saying nothing new at all. People know all these things. But maybe it’s worthwhile to share a story like this so that others who want to drop 15 or 30 or 50 pounds can be reminded that it can be done. A long journey begins with the first step, but that first step is the hardest of all the steps one will take.
So, without further ado, here the tips that I’ve used and I am again using. This is the list that hung on my refrigerator. After about a week, though, I knew these tips well. These are the same tips I’m now offering to anyone else who wants to drop some weight. I’m offering this program free of charge. If you are overweight, just follow this advice and you will lose weight. I guarantee it. It happened for me five years ago and it’s happening again.
So here is the information that worked for me. It starts with a declaration that reminded me that my quest was not so much about weight loss as much as attaining a state of health. Being at a healthy weight is not about not eating. Rather, it’s about eating well.
DECLARATION OF HEALTH
When Health is absent, wisdom cannot reveal itself, art cannot become manifest, strength cannot be exerted, wealth is useless, and reason is powerless.
Herophilies, 300 B.C.
How Much to Eat
- A well-tuned body is potent mental medicine. Your mind will follow the body’s lead.
- Articulate your specific reasons for committing yourself to an energized existence, now and for decades to come. For instance, become a savvy eater to show that you really care for loved ones. Do you really want to be around for your children/grandchildren?
- 65% of Americans are overweight. A healthy BMI is less than 25 and closer to 21 (at 23 we are still 3 times at risk for adult onset Diabetes). Think like a thin person. Become a believer that your body is well-tuned only when your BMI is in the low 20’s.
- Eat only until you are “70% full” (the European approach, as to the American approach (eat until you’re full).
- Consciously identify seductive marketing and incessant social pressures to eat poorly and to eat when you’re not hungry. Clocks and other people are incapable of telling you when you are hungry.
- Eat only when you’re hungry, not when you’re thirsty, bored, frustrated or trying to be polite.
- Put the fork down when you’re no longer hungry. Food is much better off in the Tupperware (or even the trash) than in your full stomach. Praise yourself for leaving unneeded food on the plate.
- You would never tolerate it if someone else forced you to eat food you didn’t need. Don’t do it to yourself.
- Choose small portions & beware huge desserts.
- When dining out, think seriously about splitting a single meal. My wife and I do this sometimes, and I’m always surprised that I am perfectly satisfied eating only “half” a meal.
- Spoil your appetite, so not to eat ravenously later. If you’re really hungry an hour before a planned meal, have a snack.
- Starving yourself slows metabolism and burns muscle tissue. Starving, then, is not a sustainable approach to losing weight.
- Slow down and eat consciously. Enjoy each bite. Eating should be pleasurable. Overeaters are always thinking of food, except while eating.
- Focus on eating well, not on avoiding bad eating.
- Don’t beat yourself up for eating lapses. You’ll use bad judgment here and there. Don’t make an enemy out of yourself. That makes it much harder maintain your enthusiasm.
- Get enough sleep, or else you’ll reduce your metabolism and affect your levels of leptin, the hormone that makes you feel full. When levels are low you crave sweets and starches. Sleep deprivation also reduces growth hormone, which affects your body’s proportion of fat to muscle and repairs muscles.
- Beware eating too much on while traveling away from home. Exposure to too many large restaurant portions, and the fatigue of traveling, encourage weight gain. Also, I have an often-recurring thought that taunts me on the road:
- Don’t eat a little extra just because you are not at home, where food is easily available.
- Be good to your carcass. You are your body. Treating it poorly is self-mutilation.
Exercise
- Strength training increases your metabolism by 7-12% for 15 or more hours. Do it each morning for 10 minutes to add a bit more muscle. It is really effective, though it doesn’t sound possible. A pound of muscle burns 50 cal/day more than a pound of fat. Here’s a book I recommend on short daily sessions of exercise: 8 Minutes in the Morning: A Simple Way to Shed up to 2 Pounds a Week Guaranteed, by Jorge Cruise
- Cardiovascular exercise increases metabolism for an hour after activity. This burns extra calories and is essential for your heart and lungs. Briskly walk or bike whenever possible.
- Track your progress once per week by getting on a good scale. Don’t weigh yourself every day. You’re body is telling you how much food it really needs, if you’re eating good food and staying away from starches and refined foods.
What to Eat & Drink
- Here is my “Bible” on how to eat: Eat, Drink, and Be Healthy: The Harvard Medical School Guide to Healthy Eating, by Walter Willett, of the Harvard School of Public Health. Willett is an innovator, having argued way ahead of the crowd of the dangers of trans fats and of the need to drastically renovate the “food pyramid.” The pyramid has been changed drastically, adopting many of Willett’s suggestions, though many of Willett’s recommendations were ignored.
- Substitute whole-grain carbohydrates for refined-grains (e.g., amaranth, barley, brown rice, bulgur, corn, millet, oats, rye, spelt, tritclale, wheat berries, and wild “rice”).
- Beware the starches: white rice, potatoes, pasta and highly processed bread. These cause insulin to spike. Eating these is like eating pure processed sugar.
- Replace saturated fats (e.g., meat & dairy) and trans fats (i.e., “hydrogenated” processed foods) with unsaturated fats (e.g., flax, canola, and olive oils).
“Cholesterol free” does not mean lack of trans fats. - Do eat good oils, including omega-3 oil, and smaller amounts of omega 6 and 9. These oils suppress the appetite by activating brown fat (as opposed to white fat), responsible for 25% of the fat calories burned). For an easy source of omega 3 oil, grind up flax seeds and throw a tablespoon or two on your cereal.
- Use liquid oils (flax, canola, olive) in lieu of butter or margarine.
- Eat plenty of a wide variety of fruits and vegetables (lean toward the dark leafy lettuce).
- Eat flax, fish, nuts, canola, and soy. Soy, however, acts as a phytoestrogen. Limit it to 4-6 servings/week.
- For protein, eat a healthy mix of nuts, beans, chicken and fish.
- Nuts contain fat, but it’s mostly good fat. Eating fat doesn’t make you fat. In fact, taking fat out of one’s diet can do much more damage.
- There’s no privileged place for dairy products in a diet, many of which are linked to prostate cancer. Calcium can be found in many foods other than dairy. Consider soy milk.
- Use alcohol in moderation.
- I take half of a daily multivitamin.
- Drink lots of WATER. Reduce caffeinated drinks;
- For snacks consider nutritious food. Don’t overlook the great taste of real fruit & fruit smoothies (but avoid fruit juice), whole grain cereal in soy milk, brown rice, beans, seasoned whole grains, stir-fried veggies (e.g., spinach or bok choy), whole wheat breads, popcorn.
- Have healthy food & water easily accessible (e.g., in kitchen & backpack) and avoid bringing home processed or refined food products, to maintain positive momentum.
Sorry. I've been out of town on business. No scales anywhere to be seen, except for truck scales. I won't be home until Friday. I promise another update next Wednesday.
what town are you in that does not have any scales? i want to live there.
I wonder if Erich is really so fat that he needs to lose weight. That's going to sound mean, but seeing so many fat people has a deterring effect and causes other people with a bit of overweight or who are even within the normal range to obsess about their weight. I read an article yesterday that just annoyed me. British researcher found out that even thin people can be fat. Now you don't have to worry about the external fat under your skin, but also about the internal fat that surrounds your organs.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/05/10/health/…
Can't they just leave people alone?
I weighed in again today: 162.9 What's amazing to me is how little food I'm eating, compared to what I was eating before. I should have been gaining a pound a week at my pre-program eating pace. I suppose that the body somehow fights off absorbing the extra nutrients in an attempt to maintain homeostasis.
I've also noticed how important good habits are. I've gotten out of the habit of eating until I'm "full," for example. I used to do that for probably half of my meals. Like any habit, though, it is not hard to eat (as the European saying goes) until I'm 70% full, because I've been doing it repeatedly.
I decided to lose this weight for purposes of better health, though (like TMOL) says it's great to have the old clothes fit comfortably.
I won't bore everyone with weekly weigh-in's anymore, though I'll check in monthly, with a weight and with observations about trying to maintain this weight.
Projekt: That finding, while terribly scary, reinforces what essentially everyone here has indicated before: you cannot use thinness as a proxy for health. Before this finding, we already knew that the thin could have health problems: people with very low BMIs due to anorexia or bulimia often have heart trouble, because their extreme starvation stresses the body just as overconsumpution does. Skinny women also often smoke to keep their weight down- they smoke! Does a 100-lb starving chimney of a woman have better health than a slightly overweight woman? Definitely not!
Our society still labels the apparently overweight or flabby people as lazy and unhealthy, when a slightly overweight person could easily have better health habits (and as a result, better health), than a sedentary skinny person. This finding reminds us that none of us can escape the necessity of healthful habits, regardless of whether we have the guise of a good body to seemingly protect us.
Erika, I think what I found a bit bothersome for a while, although I'm not overweight, is this raging crusade against fat people. It no longer seems to be only an aesthical or health problem, rather it is now also a moral problem. It has become unethical to be overweight. Being fat is a crime to society. You're totally and absolutely wrong for having lovehandles and hopefully you understand that you will get sent straight to hell after your short disease-ridden fat life. And now I see the new antifat crusade starting soon for normalweight people – if you don't exercise you will also go to hell because the fat layer around your inner organs will grow bigger and bigger and make you die soon, too.
Erich says:
"What’s amazing to me is how little food I’m eating, compared to what I was eating before. I should have been gaining a pound a week at my pre-program eating pace."
I found the same thing, even more so because besides eating right I have been working out way more than ever before. Thus just considering calories in vs. calories expended, it amazes me that I didn't weigh 1,000 pounds before starting to eat right and exercise. or that i am not stil losing 5 pounds a week. it doesn't make sense.
well, anyway, for me it all boils down to this: don't eat unless you're hungry and it tastes good.
also, there is nothing like an endorphin high from a good workout.
and erich, way to go, my friend.
Very impressive Erich, and you've now motivated me to lose weight. I used to be 104.5 lbs at 5'3" back in late September 2005, but after I quite competitive piano (which required around 2 1/2 hrs – 3 hrs daily practice) I gained around 11 lbs in 5 months. I was 116 lbs last April 2006.
Went I went to the doctor's office yesterday for a check-up, he told me that I was still 5'3" and 121.5 lbs. My BMI is now 21.5, which is getting closer to 23 (which you mentioned: "at 23 we are still 3 times at risk for adult onset Diabetes"). I don't EVER want to get diabetes. EVER.
I'm going to print out your list of advice you compiled and hang them up all around my house. Reading this has really inspired me.
umm hi!!! =) my name is brooke and i'm 14, 5'0 and i weigh about 108 pounds…im not so serious about my weight – i mean, im just a little chunky. it's just that my whole family seems to have all these eating disorders and they're either 400 pounds or 60, and most of them have gotten EXTREMELY sick and since my dad had his near death heart attack, i'm wanting to lose just a little bit of weight so i dont get all that started. when i was in fourth grade i was like 25 pounds overweight, and i lost it all pretty much in a roller coaster since 5th grade, but i'm just wanting to get to about 100 pounds, maybe by a healthy 1.5 pounds per week loss
??
I wrote that I would check in periodically. I'm at 161.2 these days. Having worked hard to get into some better habits is making it easy to maintain this weight. Your stomach really tells you when you've had too much to eat, if you listen.
i'm in a foreign country right now, and while there is no scale at the home i'm staying at, i'm honestly not sure if i've gained or lost weight. i think i'm maintaining the same 121.5 lbs though.
being in the city, i've found it hard to do intense workouts (run a few miles, and such) but i've walked for at least 10 minutes outside and done some stretching exercises indoors. the food in this country is by far much more healthier than anything i've been exposed to in the U.S. i hate fast food so i don't go to pizza hut, kfc, mcdonalds and the lot here and i think being around skinny people have motivated me to eat healthier.
although my grandmother keeps pressing me to eat .. she's a bit overweight but surprisingly not as big as i expected her to be, had to lived in the US.
Apparently, there's evidence for a new rule for those who want to avoid weight gain: don't hang around with obese pals:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19961197/site/newswee…
I'm surprised that your article doesn't mention the 3-hour diet concept, you even suggest that forgetting your lunch is preferable to looking forward to it, at least that was my interpretation.
3-hour diet, eat 50% protein, and 50% carb or veg every three hourse, at your weight 3/4 cup each, this will keep you in a fat burning metabolism as opposed to a muscle burning metabolism. It will guarantee your 2lb a week weightloss without exercise.
This diet is better in my opinion because it enables a higher muscle to fat ratio, which is ideal for long term fitness.
Just checking in with my weight, in case anyone's interested. I'm 163. I really don't think about eating the "right" amount of food anymore. I am conscious of not pigging out, however. I figure that as long as I'm not eating till I'm uncomfortably full, I'm reasonably OK. No food is "off limits." As TMOL mentioned above, this pays dividends every day, in that my clothes are comfortable, though I got serious about eating right to improve my health.
"Eating Made Simple: How Do You Cope with a Mountain of Conflicting Diet Advice?" is a good review of the current state of diet and health information and it can be found in the September 2007 Special Issue of Scientific American.
The author, Marion Nestle, starts by pointing to all of the apparently conflicting information we hear regarding nutrition and diet. He reminds us, however, that basic principles of diet and nutrition are not in dispute: "eat less; move more; eat fruits, vegetables and whole grains; and avoid too much junk food." The prototypical junkfood is soft drinks, which contain lots of sugar, but few or no nutrients.
The article points out that deregulation and government encouragement for farmers to grow more food caused the "calories available per capita" to rise dramatically, from 3200 calories per day per American in 1980 to 3900 calories per day in the year 2000. The eating culture also changed in that interval. People started accepting between-meal snacking, eating almost anywhere, including eating in bookstores and clothing stores. We also saw the serving of much larger portions in restaurants. During that time, the obesity rate (as reverse to people with EMI ratings greater than 30) rose from 15% in 1980 to 33% in 2004. During this time of the regulation, the food industry also jumped in to barrage the American public with a torrent of misinformation about what is healthy. It turns out that what is allegedly healthy tends to be processed, expensive empty calories encased in fancy and environmentally unfriendly packaging.
This same article discusses the only proven strategies for dropping weight and keeping it off. These conclusions are those of James Hill, a psychologist who is an authority on weight loss. He established a national weight control registry to collect data on people who have lost at least 30 pounds and kept that weight off for at least a year. Those people tend to have several things in common:
Their activity becomes the driver; food restriction doesn't do it. The idea that for the rest of your life you are going to be hungry all the time–that's just silly." People in the registry get an average of an hour of physical activity every day, with some exercising for as much as 90 minutes a day. They also keep the fat in their diet relatively low, at nearly 25% of their calorie intake. Nearly all of them eat breakfast every day, and they weigh themselves regularly. "They tell us two things," Hill says. "The quality of life is higher–life is better than it was before." And "they get to the point with physical activity were they don't say they love it, but they say "it's part of my life."
If you are a (non-diet) soda drinker who wants to lose weight, there is no better way to get a jump start that getting rid of all of that high fructose corn syrup. http://dangerousintersection.org/?p=1614
If you eat alone, you eat less. If you eat with one other person, you consume 35% more food on average. If you eat with four others, you consome 75% more food. If you eat with 7 others, you consume 96% more food. All of this, according to Harpers Index, October 2007.
I would like my money back… 😛
I have been trying to lose a few pounds, but whenever I seem to make some progress, my body (mind) seems to revert into an "eating" phase. I can tell (just by the portion size) that I am eating too much when this happens, but my body (mind) tells me that I am hungry and to go ahead and keep eating. Am I not trying hard enough? Maybe I am trying too hard? Is it that I am confusing my metabolism by exercising/dieting past the point of exhaustion, then my body wants to store the energy? Maybe I just need Tmol to yell at me?
Ben: Hang in there. I had lost significant amounts of weight before, without much problem (I lost 35 pounds 5 years ago). This, time, though, it was a lot harder. It was as though my body would burn fuel more efficiently every time I cut back. There were days on which I was eating half the calories I was eating previously, yet there was no weight loss for an entire week. Time is on your side. Cut it back another 10 or 20% and give it another week or two. It will happen.
I hope TMOL heeds your cry for help. It would be fun to see someone else getting it from him for a change.
Another idea. Go ahead and plug in your current weight and your goal as a comment. Then check in with your weigh-in every week or two. It's great incentive for honest reporters.
try harder.
Hey! It's DECEMBER. What happened?
168. Thanks for the shot across the bow, MolT.
187. Tmol is clearly not doing his job very well…
Ben: TMOL (you cleverly saw through one of his psuedonyms) is just kicking it into gear. It's his job and his destiny to keep people like you and me in line. And the main weapon in his arsenal is guilt.
Thank goodness he showed up now to remind me to stay focused.
I love this song. It's called Perfect 10 by The Beautiful South.
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