When I turned 39 years old, I started looking down the road to the big 4-0, and I realized one thing, I was fat. I weighed 225 lbs. and had a BMI of over 28, a mere 2 points below being "obese". While I could take some small consolation from the fact that I was "merely overweight" and not obese, it was a cold comfort. At the time, I was watching my father slowly die from congestive heart failure. I decided that I wanted to try to avoid that fate, and one good step would be to do something about my weight.
So, I did all the things that I was supposed to do. I went to the gym 3 times a week. I walked, or even ran, a mile or so each time in addition to lifting weights. I cut back on all those fatty, sugary snacks that I was eating. I really made a big effort. On my 40th birthday, I stepped on the scales, and I was surprised to find that I had lost a total of zero (0) pounds.
What had I done wrong? Why wasn't I the lean, fit guy that I was supposed to be? Well, I thought long and hard about it, and I realized that I had failed to lose weight because I listened to all the hype in the media and the ads from the weight loss programs and did what "everyone knows" is the way to lose weight. Instead, I should have just used some logic and common sense.
So here's what I did. First, I applied a little physics and biology knowledge. To maintain my current weight of 225 lbs with my current level of activity, I have to eat a certain number of calories each day. I have to move that 225 lbs of mass around to do all the things I do. This requires a certain amount of energy. If I weighed less, I would have less mass to move around with me all day and would thus require less energy to do it. That means I wouldn't have to eat as many calories.
Next, I looked at how I got fat in the first place. I didn't go from being, say, 175 lbs to being 225 lbs by all of a sudden gorging myself every day on the amount of food that I would eat to maintain my weight at 225 lbs. If I had tried to do that, I would feel stuffed all the time, I would be uncomfortable, and I would give up on the goal. Instead, I got fat little by little by eating more than I needed each day. My body slowly stored that extra energy as fat, and I ended up at 225 lbs.
Similarly, I couldn't expect to go from 225 lbs down to 175 lbs by starving myself and only eating what would be required to maintain my weight at 175 lbs. I would feel hungry all the time, I would be uncomfortable, and I would give up on my goal. Instead, I needed to lose weight little by little.
So I put these two facts together and came up with a plan. First, I would set small, incremental goals. Instead of saying, "I want to lose 50 lbs", I said, "I want to lose 5 lbs". This is a much more attainable goal. It also helped me figure out how to reach it. Instead of eating like a 225 lb person, I would eat like a 220 lb person. What's the difference? Just a little bit less food on the plate at each meal. I never counted calories or weighed my food. I also never made any food strictly off-limits. I didn't deprive myself of the foods I wanted to eat, I just ate less of them. Occasionally during the process I did change one little thing in my diet. For example, at one point I switched from drinking a can of pop at each dinner to drinking water. It was a small change, but I'm sure it made a difference.
Once I started eating like a 220 lb person is when the physics part would kick in. If I'm moving my 225 lb mass around but only providing enough energy to move 220 lbs, my body needs to find the energy for those extra 5 lbs somewhere. It does that by burning off some fat. Each time it does that, I get a little lighter, and I have less energy demand to make up for. Eventually, I get to 220 lbs.
The second, and most important, part of the plan was psychological. I had to start thinking of myself as a 220 lb person instead of a 225 lb person. This is a very powerful thing. If I think of myself as a 225 lb person who happens to weigh 220 lbs at some time, it's not really a big deal if I gain back 5 lbs. On the other hand, if I consider myself a 220 lb person who happens to be 225 lbs, then it's a problem, but it's not so difficult to get back down to my "normal" weight of 220 lbs.
Once I reached my goal of 220 lbs, I would live that way for a while to get used to it. Eating like a 220 lb person became my normal way of eating. Then, I would start the cycle over again. I would start thinking of myself as a 215 lb person who happens to be 5 lbs overweight and needs to get back to my normal weight. I would eat like a 215 lb person, and the pounds would start to go away.
During all this process, I did add some extra activity to my day. When the weather was nice, I would go out and take a little walk at lunchtime. It was a nice break from my work day. I got some sunshine and fresh air. I got to stretch my legs a bit after sitting at a desk for hours. It was a nice addition to my day. I'm sure it also contributed to my weight loss, but it never seemed like a chore.
My eventual, long-term goal was to get my BMI down to the "normal" range. I calculated that I would need to be about 185 lbs to give me a few pounds leeway to keep from pushing up into the "overweight" territory. I was very pleased that by the time of my 41st birthday, I had reached that goal. And I never felt like I was "on a diet". I just ate like the weight I wanted to be. I think this is what weight-loss experts mean when they say you have to make lifestyle changes. The problem is that they never tell you what those changes are or how to make them. And I think this is why most diets fail. Instead of making small, slow changes to how they eat, people try to make drastic changes to their diet that don't represent how they will eat day-to-day for the rest of their lives to maintain a healthy weight.
Since the time that I achieved that goal, I've actually lost an additional 10 lbs. It wasn't as deliberate of a process. It was mostly a by-product of eating a better, healthier diet and not actually wanting to eat the way I had before. I don't feel deprived of any foods, but I maintain my weight. I'm not a 225 lb person anymore. I'm a 178 lb person, and I will never think of myself as a 225 lb person again.
3 comments:
Okay, that was a little verbose, but I am never-the-less proud of your accomplishment and there are really a couple of lessons in there that everyone could and should benefit from. This is another area where everyone's an individual, and requires an individual approach, but the guiding physics and biology are universal - you need to consume fewer calories than you use in order to lose weight, and they need to balance out to maintain, and the effort requires to balances changes with age and other factors. I just realized earlier today, at the gym, that I've been working out in some regular capacity for 30 years. Clark would be proud. I've never dieted, but I do pay attention to what I eat and how much, and although I do weigh 200lbs, that's been pretty constant. I left DU at 190. It's an important habit to anyone who wants to improve their odds of having good quality of life.
Excellent post, Dan. Now here's another problem to solve: what's the solution to compulsive eating -- that is, people who can't stop themselves from eating when they're unhappy, stressed, angry, lonely, etc.? Like smoking and drinking, it's a nasty vicious circle -- feel down, eat to feel better, feel even worse because of the overeating, eat even more to feel better, and so on. But unlike drinking and smoking, you can't go cold turkey. For some people, at times, the drive to shield oneself from discomfort is far more powerful than wanting to be thin the future. I propose that 99% of overweight is caused by three things: dieting (that is, over-dieting), lack of knowledge about the, as you say, physics and biology, and compulsive eating.
I certainly understand the temptation for comfort foods. The year that I lost the weight that I wrote about was also one of the years of Sushi's illness. There were definitely times when comfort was needed. I found that what works for me is to not have tempting foods in the house. If I don't have them available, I'm unlikely to drive to the store in a moment of weakness to buy them. So when I shopped for groceries, I went with my list for the week and simply avoided the aisles that had all the bad comfort foods.
I still got some occasionally. I strongly believe that we shouldn't forbid any foods from our diet. However, we should limit how often and how much we eat of the ones that are bad for us.
I think this last point is important. The forbidden fruit is the most tempting. If nothing is forbidden, then the temptation is less. If we don't buy it and have it sitting around the house, we just make it really inconvenient to satisfy those temptations.
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