I started a personal dietary rest on Nov. 1. I am now just over halfway through, and as of this morning’s weigh-in, I am 10.8 pounds down from my starting weight of 194.4 and 11.6 pounds down from my heaviest recent weight of 195.2 in 34 days. I am already ahead of the previous dietary reset I started on Sept. 12 and ended on Oct. 9 when I lost a total of 6 pounds. You can read about that in the Oct. 9 Healthy Eating Tip entitled “Strike preemptively if you have to.” Just yesterday, I was able to drop my pants size down to 38 from 40 and switch from my “fat boy” belt to my middleweight belt! I have turned the momentum of my body from weight gain to weight loss, and after thinking about it for a good week, I have begun to hit the “calories out” side of the weight-loss equation by starting to stretch and exercise; and by “exercise;” I mean walk! Lord willing and the river don’t rise; I should be looking at a weight loss of about 20 pounds on Jan. 1.
When I was about halfway through my initial lifestyle modification effort in 2003, I decided to go back to school at age 43 to become a registered dietitian. I did that for three reasons. The first reason was altruistic. Even though I had been a chef for 20+ years, I still had a hard time making the plant-based whole foods diet taste good, and if it didn’t taste good, I knew that the chances of me eating it for any serious length of time were zero. I figured that non-chefs didn’t have a prayer and could use some professional chefly assistance. The registered dietitian healthcare credential allows me to do that legally in a mainstream healthcare facility like Smith County Memorial Hospital. The other two reasons were purely selfish. Early on in a hospitality industry career, people who are serious learn that to survive the 24/7/365 nature of the high-end hospitality industry, it is best to give in and marry the lifestyle. The hotel is your house. The people coming to stay in your facility are your quests. The weekly manager’s cocktail party is your party, not part of your job. The best and most successful hoteliers and restauranteurs always have that attitude. As an RD, I am a bonified lifestyle modification advocate and have to marry that lifestyle. The benefit for me is that my job becomes my lifestyle, and it keeps me alive, and that’s not really a job! The third reason is more blatantly selfish. In the rooms of 12-step programs, I learned that in order “to keep it, you have to give it away.”
In that vein, let me share some things about lifestyle modification efforts that I was recently reminded of while doing this latest dietary reset.
Starting is the biggest obstacle you will face.
Lifestyle modification is hard; there is no doubt about that. For some of us, it will be the hardest thing we ever do! But every long-distance hiker will tell you, “the hardest step you take on a 2,000-mile hike is the first one.” I know that sounds more than a little like a pollyannaish cliché, and it may be so. It’s also freakin true! Take a deep breath, sigh, cuss if you have to and start. It is 100 percent all downhill from there. Life is entirely different when you get 3-4 days under your fat boy belt!
Keeping records helps.
There are few things I hate worse than keeping records! But the fact is, they really help. Because I cringed every time I looked at the cold hard facts, I have very poor records of the first few months of my initial weight loss in 2003. If you ask me exactly how much weight I lost, the number may change because, frankly, I don’t know what I weighed at the start. I know I weighed somewhere between 250 and 230 pounds, and I bounced off of 150 pounds. The first weight I have recorded is 223 pounds, which was about 40 days into the process.
Now I keep two types of records. The first is a simple record showing the date and my weight. I weigh every day at the exact same time and on the exact same accurate scale wearing the exact same thing; my birthday suit. I keep that on one sheet of paper on my refrigerator. I leave a spot for a note on the exercise I did. More on that later. The other record I sometimes keep is something that comes out of a foodservice reservation book. The information in a reservation book is invaluable, but only if you give it context. Numbers are important, but they become more significant if you place them in a context where the weather, local events, emergencies and other factors that affect raw numbers are mentioned. Forty people for dinner might seem very low, but if it was snowing heavily and roads were closed, that is outstanding. Knowing what to expect during a similar situation or accurately predicting what to expect on this date the following year is all based on good record keeping. In the same way, you need to explain to yourself why there might have been a weight gain so you can avoid the problem issue in the future. You also need to document why there was an increase in weight loss so you can recreate that event again and again.
Remember that I change what I eat, and therefore there is no need for me to ever track what I eat. Those of you who do portion control and calorie counting will need to keep extremely accurate records of what you eat and extend out the calories to know why you gained or lost weight that day. I know I will never do that, so I just don’t eat any calorically dense processed food at all; nothing, zero, nada. My stomach keeps track of what I eat and tells me when I have had enough.
Another excellent reason for keeping records is that you may want to tweak or even entirely change your approach to lifestyle modification based on the observations you make about your records. Remember that your commitment to lifestyle modification is steadfast and unchanging, but your plan is dynamic and has to be based on your willingness and ability to change, given what is going on in your life at a particular moment in time.
A specific weight loss goal is not always the best way to start.
If you look at 100 lists of how to start a weight loss effort, I bet 99 of them will tell you to start with a goal. I wrote the one weight loss plan in 100 that doesn’t say that. Here’s why.
Especially if you are just starting, missing a goal is devastating. Why not try and stay away from that negative outcome by avoiding it altogether? Most people have no idea how to set a realistic weight loss goal at all, so they are pretty much doomed to fail. Furthermore, setting a goal limits you on the upside. If you select a goal of losing 5 pounds in two months and reach that goal, how likely are you to keep going? I’ll be honest with you. If I set a goal of 5 pounds and I reach it in a week, I am having a pizza and a six-pack to celebrate! Rather than setting a goal, set a time limit, and forget about the amount of weight you lose. The most important thing you are doing at the start is becoming familiar with yourself and your body so that you can choose an appropriate plan for you based on your willingness and ability to change, given what is going on in your life at a particular moment in time. I can’t help you with that; nobody can. I can only tell you what is right for me considering my willingness and ability to change, given what is going on in your life at a particular moment in time. It’s all about your plan, not a specific weight loss number. If you get in touch with your body and realistically assess your willingness, ability, and life circumstances, then you will always exceed any arbitrary goal. Failure with lifestyle modification is almost always due to a poor plan that is not based on your willingness and ability to change, given what is going on in your life at a particular moment in time.
It is good to have a full stomach when dieting!
I will not try and talk you into what is right for me, but there are some great things about the plan I use, and one of them is that my stomach is never, ever empty. I eat until I am 100 percent full 100 percent of the time!
The lifestyle modification plan I use is the plant-based whole foods diet. The plant-based whole foods diet was an excellent choice for me for many reasons. One of them is that with the plant-based whole foods diet, you don’t have to count calories at all. Instead of eating calorically dense and nutritionally deficient processed food that you have to limit, you simply change what you eat to nutritionally dense whole foods that are naturally low in calories. These foods are full of fiber, which expands in your stomach, naturally limiting the amount you can eat based on the limited capacity of your stomach. That is one of the reasons that fiber is so important. Fiber expands in your stomach and fills it up quickly.
Remember that eating isn’t something that we are supposed to think about; it isn’t rocket science! The problem is that the environmental context in which our bodies developed is not the context we live in now. Before refined sugar became widely available in the 17th century and the advent of processed foods in the early 20th century, calorically dense foods were far, and few between, and hardly any foods were nutritionally deficient. Today, many things we call “food” are full of calories with little or no nutritional value. If your chosen dieting method includes these foods, you will have to count calories and severely limit the quantity you eat. The plant-based whole foods diet allows you to eat as much as you want to, given that the food is meat-free, oil-free, dairy-free and unprocessed.
In future Healthy Eating Tips, I will have to write about the difference between fat and oil. In short, fat is what you get from whole foods like nuts, seeds and avocados. Oil is the original processed calorically dense food. Processing removes many nutrients and 100 percent of the all-important fiber, which is what limits your caloric intake when you eat whole foods that contain fat. If you were to eat olives to obtain one tablespoon of olive oil, how many do you think you would need to consume? How about we ask olive growers that question?
According to oliveoilsource.com, it takes 20 jumbo black olives to make one tablespoon of olive oil. That’s about one full #303 can with just under six ounces of olives; drained weight. That’s the small can you buy in the grocery store. They add a deceiving statement about caloric density. “There are fewer calories in a tablespoon of oil than any of the above scenarios (oil yield for different olives) because olives also have carbohydrates which add calories.” The nutrition facts label says that there are 15 calories in a serving of black olives. The fat contribution to those 15 calories is 1.5 grams or 13.5 calories. That is hardly something worthy of a caloric density disclaimer! The point is that after eating a full can of black olives, your stomach may be registering “enough” based on the bulk and fiber. One tablespoon of oil in your stomach won’t even be measurable, allowing you to have a full meal on top of 120 calories you will get from the tablespoon of olive oil, which goes right on your belly!
There are two sides to the weight loss equation.
The weight-loss equation is a matter of limiting calories-in and maximizing calories-out. Any good exercise physiologist will tell you that the only place to start with a weight loss plan is your diet, and any good dietitian will tell you that you will never maximize weight loss unless you exercise. So, any comprehensive lifestyle modification plan needs to include both diet and exercise.
Initiating an exercise regime is easier said than done. We are fighting both instinct and physiology. Our bodies developed in an environmental context of food scarcity. Our bodies did not develop to indiscriminately use the calories we fought so hard to find and consume. Our bodies were also kept well-toned by the simple fight for survival. There was no need for exercise for exercise’s sake. People used to go about their lives expending as few calories as they could. We still do that now, but there is no fight for survival, keeping our bodies in shape. In 2021, if you don’t graft an exercise regime onto your life, you will probably be out of shape and overweight. The CDC states (https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/obesity-overweight.htm) that for the years 2015-16, the percentage of Americans over 20 that were overweight was 71.6 percent. That was four years ago!
So, what exercise do we select? I pay attention to the weight loss and longevity pros for advice on exercise.
The National Weight Control Registry is a 26-year-old study of more than 10,000 people that have lost 30 pounds or more and kept it off for at least one year. Ninety-four percent of study participants reporting walking as the most frequent form of exercise!
In his book “The Blue Zones: Lessons for Living Longer from the People Who’ve Lived the Longest,” Dan Buettner identified 5 “Blue Zones” which are geographic locations where people reach age 100 at ten times greater rates than all but one place in the United States. He found that all Blue Zone residents’ lifestyles shared nine specific characteristics, and they have to do with general lifestyle habits. One of those characteristics is that they move naturally. That is, exercise is not specifically sought out as an activity; it is incorporated into their natural life over the course of a day. None of them pump iron, run marathons or even join gyms. They just live an active lifestyle.
I looked at the same type of information in 2003 when I was first trying to decide where to start with exercise. I decided to start with walking. I remember that I started out saying that I’d “walk around the block.” I couldn’t make it around the block. I couldn’t make it 20 feet without stopping to rest, and that is 100 percent the right thing to do when you are starting. Late in 2003, I was in tremendous shape. I actually ran two marathons on an elliptical trainer on one 3-day weekend. I am not even close to being in that shape now, so when I started walking two days ago, I did so slowly and with great care paying particular attention to my heart rate. The general rule of thumb is that if you are out of breath and feel your heart beating, it is time to stop and allow your heart rate to reduce before starting again. The slower you go at the start, the quicker you will increase your exercise to a meaningful level. Even though I have exercised more than most people do in a lifetime, that is not my specific area of expertise and training. In the future, maybe I can talk one of our physical therapists here at SCMH into giving us some expert exercise advice.
On the sheet with the date and daily weights I keep on my refrigerator, there is an empty space on the same line every day for a note on exercise. I keep it there to remind myself that even though I am working the calories-in side of the weight-loss equation, I am completely ignoring the calories-out side. I had enough of that self-shaming last week, so I made a decision to start walking again, but it took me a full week to push myself to actually do something about the decision to walk. After I finish this post, I will be suiting up to walk today!
Starting any aspect of this lifestyle modification stuff is hard, but it all begins with suiting up and taking one step. Now that I am committed and have started, it will be easier than the first day, and tomorrow will be even easier. We’ll have some interesting data to look at on Jan. 1 when we can see what happens when we start to hit both sides of the weight-loss equation!
Rewarding yourself works!
I know that I’m going to take it on the chin from some people on this. I use both negative and positive reinforcement on myself. It is most evident in the clothing that I buy for myself. I have three wardrobes in three different sizes; fat boy, middleweight and in shape. As I mentioned at the start, I just went down to a 38-inch waist from a 40-inch waist. In size 38 pants, I have a wide selection of pants, including seven black work pants that I wear every day. That’s enough to make it more than a week between washes. In size 40, I have two pairs of work pants, which means that I have to wash three times a week sometimes. I do the same thing with the white dress shirts I wear every day. There is a price to pay in my house for being bigger than I should be and a very noticeable reward for being very close to 180 pounds, which will put me at a normal body mass index number!
Make sure you check back here for a full report on my dietary rest on Jan. 1. We’ll have some interesting data to look at! Until next week Eat Well – Be Well!