240

There is much about this diet experiment that has worked — eating a lot more fruits and vegetables, exercising at least a little bit each day — and one thing that hasn’t worked — me.

So I’m trying something a bit different. Starting today, I’m making a much smaller goal. By setting my sights on 240 lbs., I’m hoping I can make it a little easier on myself. Once I get there, I’ll reevaluate where I’m going next.

I’m sure it seems foolish to some of you, but the psychology of weight loss is really fascinating to me. The mechanics — eat fewer calories than you burn — are quite simple. Why I can’t seem to wrap my head around it well enough to stick with it is another matter altogether.

So, here we go. I’m still down about 10 pounds from when I started, but if I’m going to make a real dent, I need to get serious. And I seriously hope this new plan works.

Shamed into Silence

You know what I hate? Blogs where the author spends every other post apologizing for taking so long to add a new post. You’re busy — so what? We’re all busy, you lazy good-for-nothing, jerk-face, moron…

Oh. Yeah. That was supposed to be about me. Sorry.

So what has kept me from updating this blog? Well, work is pretty time-consuming, but that’s not the whole story. It’s more about what I’ve been consuming that’s aided my silence — and it ain’t time.

A public diet is a very stressful undertaking. What if you don’t lose the weight? What if you work out and diet and it just doesn’t come off? I don’t know the answer to that last one, because I haven’t been working out or sticking to a diet, so let me know if you find the solution.

And when you’re publicly trying to lose weight and failing to do so — because of your own incompetence — it’s not easy to get online and admit it to everyone. But, well, I’m learning that I need to do just that.

Another thing I’m learning — again and again and again — is that losing weight and getting in shape is actually very easy for anyone who eats healthier foods and exercises. I know this because I have lost the same 10 pounds five times now.

But there is something in my brain that keeps screwing up. You know you shouldn’t eat that, but you do anyway. You know you should put down the fork, but you don’t. You know you should get off the couch and go to the gym, or at the very least take a leisurely stroll around the block, but instead you keep both cheeks firmly planted on the couch, waiting for the next show to come on.

I am beginning to worry that the public nature of my failure won’t be enough to get me going. And I don’t know why, exactly, I behave like I do — I just do it.

I know lots of people think of their lives like they’re in a movie and I’m no exception. At this point in the film, I can hear the people in the theater saying, “Why does this guy keep sabotaging himself? Why doesn’t he just eat that apple and drink that water and go spend 30 minutes on a treadmill when he gets off work? It’s so simple!”

That’s what I would be saying, anyway, despite being lodged in a comfy chair eating popcorn. The truth is, I don’t know why I am the way I am or what I can do to overcome it.

I was talking, a year ago at this point, to Dr. James Rand, who studies the way our brains communicate. When I told him I was going to the gym and getting healthy he said, “Good luck. I hope it works out. It probably won’t.”

I thought he was just being negative, but as the parents of two autistic kids, he is intimately aware of how hard it is for people to overcome their nature. Somewhere in my nature is a guy who just eats and eats and eats with little thought to the consequences. I just need to find that guy and figure out how to change him mind.

Or I could kill him. Whatever works.

Shocking New Discovery Not Shocking At All!

So, let’s cover what we already know, OK?

- Carbohydrates are bad.

- Too much fat makes us fat.

- Lean protein is good.

But maybe all of that is bunk, because science has finally produced a study to tell us what we should have known all along:

The key to weight loss is eating fewer calories than you expend. Big surprise, right? And yet the world seemed pretty interested in study published in the New England Journal of Medicine.

So what does that mean? Well, it’s true that some foods are healthier for us than others. That has to do with vitamin content, what kind of fat they contain and how much dietary fiber is in them.

But if you ate only ice cream and steak, but burned off more calories than you took in, you’d still lose weight. You might not be super-healthy – but that’s because weight is only part of the puzzle in a healthy lifestyle. Believe it or not, there are plenty of skinny, sedentary people who eat crappy foods, just as there are lots of healthy, active overweight people.

So when it comes to weight loss, the rules are pretty simple — burn more calories than you take in and the weight will (over time) come off. But if you’re interested in a healthy lifestyle, you’ll have to pay more attention to what you’re getting in those calories and how you burn them off.

Pick up, dust off, do it again.

Well, it’s not been the easiest month for the old diet. In addition to lots of birthday dinners and Valentine’s Day and the Super Bowl, I am also very weak-willed and sometimes find myself sabotaging the whole effort, seemingly on purpose.

Has this every happened to you? You’re holding the bag of potato chips. You know you should put it down, that you had too many when you had the first one, but somewhere deep inside you say, “I don’t care. I’m eating some chips.”

Congratulations — you’re human. And I’m human, too. After a total weight loss of 15 pounds, I backslid and gained back two or three. And it wasn’t just the eating that got me there. I definitely slowed down my workouts, too.

But a funny thing happened on my way back to morbid obesity: I stopped. It’s as much psychological as it is physical. I felt bad about not working out. I felt bad about not watching what I ate. So I reversed field again and started back on the right track.

For a diet to really work, it can’t just be a diet. You have to want it for lots of reasons. I have health concerns and I have vanity and I have this project for work and all of them revolve around making me healthier. But life isn’t just about weight loss or building muscle — there’s lots of eating and hanging out with friends and relaxing, too. Eliminate those things and no matter how healthy you get, you won’t be happy.

So, I’m back on track and I’m willing to bet this train will run through a few slices of pizza and handfuls of potato chips and tall glasses of cold beer, though I hope there are more long expanses of vegetables and water and lean fish in between.

Lose 35 pounds the not-so-easy way!

I have not lost 35 pounds, by the way. I’ve barely tackled 10 pounds in the last 2 months, which I count as a victory for the slow-and-steady crowd.

But if you’re interested in losing weight and taking care of the environment, you might be interested to hear Mark Bittman, author of the great “How to Cook Everything” and “How to Cook Everything Vegetarian” books, talk about his food conciousness on NPR.

Follow this link and you can listen to his thoughts on balancing food groups throughout the day and the radical changes it made in his life.

(Here’s a hint that will shock no one — his morning and afternoons are mostly fruits and vegetables with a more substantial meal for dinner.)

Not only does he feel better about his carbon footprint and how his food is made, but he lost 35 pounds, his cholesterol levels dropped and his sleep apnea disappeared. It’s a great interview and, if you’re looking for a good cookbook (or a nice gift for me), “How to Cook Everything Vegetarian” is an amazing resource.

If it was easy, we’d all be skinny.

Well, I had a pretty good Christmas — with family and friends and fun and plenty of gifts — and a pretty miserable Christmas — with food and food and candy and food and more food and WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU PEOPLE, I’M TRYING TO LOSE WEIGHT!

I did not lose any weight over the Christmas holiday. In fact, I gained some of my hard-fought losses back. But I can’t blame anybody but myself. Nobody held me down and made me eat chocolate candies or biscuits and gravy or drink a Coke while watching football. I did those things. The responsibility is mine.

But now it’s New Year’s Eve and it’s the perfect time to get back on the wagon. Even my brother-in-law is getting in on the action, vowing to eat right, exercise and lose a few pounds by May.

And I’m redoubling my efforts to stick to the plan — plenty of fruits and vegetables, fewer empty calories and moderate exercise.

Plus, I got a late Christmas gift in the form of a New York Times article on the problem with tracking weight vs. fitness. Essentially, it says that weight is only a factor in our overall health. A better indicator is how active we are.

I know what you’re saying, “If I didn’t need to lose weight, why would I exercise?” I’ll tell you — those who are skinny and sedentary are at risk for the same problems that plague the overweight and obese.

A study in The Archives of Internal Medicine showed that, in a sample of 5,400 people, half of overweight people and one-third of obese people were “metabolically healthy,” despite their weight.

But about one out of four skinny people, categorized as “healthy” on the BMI scale, had at least two of the cardiovascular risk factors typically associated with obesity.

So get out of that chair, put on some walking shoes and get a move on. Lift a few weights. Do some toe-touches. You’ll be healthier for being active and, as a bonus, you’ll probably lose a few pounds.

No, I’m not starving myself

My boss asked me this morning if I was “still starving myself,” by which he meant, are you still on the diet. Well, as just two weeks in, with another 5 or 6 months to go, he’d better hope I’m still on track.

But starving is no kind of diet. I mean, let’s forget about the modern definition of “dieting” for a minute and remember that the word “diet” means “what you eat.”

Eating healthy can be a challenge, certainly, but it doesn’t have to be miserable. You don’t have to sip broth and nibble on twigs and deny yourself a piece of toast or a sandwich or a steak. You just have to be smart about what you’re eating.

Case in point — my friends called last weekend and wanted to see the new Bond movie. Since my wife hadn’t eaten, we decided to have lunch first. My friend chose Johnny Carino’s, which serves Italian food.

Bread and oil, big bowls of pasta, thick meat sauce, creamy alfredo — this kind of thing doesn’t bode well for a guy trying to lose weight. Luckily, there are options. There are ALWAYS options. In this case, I had pasta with artichokes, olives, tomatoes and some grilled chicken. Delicious. There was more than I needed to eat in one meal, though, so I had them pack up half of it and I ate the rest for dinner.

It’s all about common sense, which is not to say you can’t be a little stupid sometimes. A piece of chocolate cake? I wouldn’t eat one every day and expect to lose weight, but as a rare treat, why not? I love gyros, but I know that if I get one, I need to take a hard look at what else I’m eating that day.

If you’ve got a tip on how to fill your stomach while shrinking your waistline, leave it in the comments.

Diet: Day 5

The funny thing about going on a diet isn’t that you feel bad. It’s quite the opposite. I’m shoveling vegetables and fruits down my gullet and I feel better than I did when it was all burgers and fries.

That said, there are cravings that I have to work to quell. My love of tacos is strong and I know I will eat them again someday. Honestly, though, I think we should all eat the stuff that’s bad for us once in a while. So, in a few days or weeks, when the craving gets too strong, I will get a couple of tacos and I will enjoy them to no end.

Well, not to no end. I will end with two tacos. Then, if I’m still hungry, I’ll eat some green beans or asparagus or squash. That’s been my problem in the past — someone sets a pizza down in front of me and all I think is “must eat all this pizza.” Pizza or a hamburger or a delicious gyro are all acceptable as part of your diet, so long as they’re not the entirety of your diet.

In addition to healthy eating, I’ve also been working out. I’ve gone to the gym for some time on the elliptical machine and I’ve been giving my Wii Fit a real workout (and it’s returned the favor).

As much as I sometimes dread going to the gym — the monotony of working out — I always leave feeling better. Certainly that has something to do with endorphins, but I like to think it’s also psychological. When I choose a good meal, when I sweat my way through 30 minutes on a machine, I know I’m doing something healthy.

Compare that to the feeling I used to get leaving a fast food drive-thru: I knew I was eating too much and that none of it was very good for me, which can leave you feeling pretty down.

Anyway, I’ll be back, hopefully with a video for you to watch, in the near future.

The Diet Cometh

Thursday we begin shooting on the weight loss video and I am both excited and apprehensive. Excited because I’m looking forward to slimming down and feeling better and apprehensive because I don’t want to fall face-first and fail, all memorialized on the Internet.

Here’s my plan, in case any of you want to critique — I’m going to be eating a lot of green vegetables. And some orange and white and yellow and red ones, too. I’m going to endeavor to stay away from processed anything, though I have a feeling bread will be my downfall. I will be eating more fish, chicken and turkey and less ground beef — though I predict a small sirloin may find a place in there somewhere. And I’m going to be exercising. Every. Single. Day.

The key to that, I think, will be moderation. I’m doing 30 minutes every morning, though it won’t start out too strenuous. More walking around my neighborhood and doing yoga on the Wii Fit and less marathon running or intense weightlifting.

I’m also considering an end to all sodas — diet or no — in favor of water, tea, coffee and the occasional glass of wine (though not at work, of course).

How does that sound to you guys? Let me know if you have any tips or warnings. I’d love to include them in upcoming blog entries.

Oh…and one more thing. I’ll be doing some home videos of my weight loss attempts, which will be posted here, so beware.

The Ultimate Motivation

There are so many reasons not to lose weight, I simply cannot count them all. But, for my own self, here are a few of the leading candidates:

- I’m lazy

- Delicious gyros

- My love of macaroni and cheese

- Did I already mention I’m lazy?

But there are also lots and lots of good reasons to lose weight, like looking better in my clothes, not getting winded climbing stairs and reduced risks of heart disease, cancer, fatty liver disease, etc. etc. etc.

So how am I going to balance the bad (mountains of tacos) with the good (mountain climbing)? Simple. By filming it.

The votes none of you cast are in and the decision has been made — my next video will address the medical benefits of exercise and eating right while chronicling my attempts to shed some pounds. And if the motivations to live longer and feel better weren’t enough, we’ll couple them with the possible shame if I fail to stick to my diet and exercise regimes.

In addition to the finished products, including a story in Findingsand the video, you all will be treated to some video blogs of me sweating on my Wii fit, shopping for healthy foods and grimacing at the numbers displayed on my scale.

Sure, being fat is a drag, but it’s much more horrifying to be fat on-camera.