The drive to Denver

I've driven across the Great Plains three times in my life.  It's a long and sometimes boring drive.  Depending on how often you stop, it takes a few days of driving to get to the Rocky Mountains.  Ann Arbor, Michigan, where I live, is at about 1,000 ft. of elevation above sea level.  Denver, Colorado, the "Mile High City", is at about 5,000 ft. elevation.  So in the drive from Ann Arbor to Denver, you will increase your elevation about 4,000 ft.  Because the 1,200 mile drive to Denver is across the plains, you don't really notice the increase in elevation.  It's about 3 feet per mile.  Because the drive takes time, your body gets used to the change in elevation as you go along.  If you've ever flown to Denver from Detroit, you know that you have a risk of having altitude sickness when you arrive.  You definitely notice the difference in altitude.  When driving, you don't really notice at all.

Now suppose Denver was the next town over from Ann Arbor, but it was still at 5,000 feet.  That would mean that there would be a 4,000 foot cliff at the edge of Ann Arbor looking up to Denver, somewhere in the sky.  If you've ever seen photos of El Capitan in Yosemite National Park, it's about 3,000 feet high.  The cliff to Denver would be another 1,000 feet higher.  If you lived in Ann Arbor, Denver might as well be on another planet.  You would never go there, and you would never even try.

Keep that image in mind.

Imagine you are someone who weighs 300 lbs.  You've been that weight for as long as you can remember.  It's part of who you are.  Supposed you decide you want to get to a healthy weight, and your optimum weight, based on your BMI, is 170 lbs.   The idea of losing 130 lbs is like a person in Ann Arbor wanting to move to Denver and all they can see is that 4,000 ft. cliff in front of them.  It's impossible.  They'll never do it.  "Diets" that they read about are like a jet pack you can strap on your back to give you a lift.  The problem is that it will get you 50 ft. up the cliff before it runs out of fuel.  Then, you're most likely going to crash back down to the ground. 

The only way to lose that 130 lbs. is to realize that Denver isn't at the top of a cliff next to Ann Arbor.  It's across a wide plain that can be crossed.  The way to do it is to do it gradually.  You don't try to drive all the way in one day.  You take your time.  You go one mile at a time, and you adjust to the elevation as you go along.  Losing weight in a way that will be permanent is like this.  You have to set small, attainable goals and work toward them.  Little by little you change the way you eat, you change how you exercise, and you change how you live your life so that eventually, but definitely, you'll get to the point where you are living like a 170 lb. person.  That 170 lb. person is who you are.  It is now part of you.  Like someone who moves to Denver, because you took the time to get there at a healthy pace, you have become a Denver person.  You almost don't even remember what it was like to live in Ann Arbor.  It seems foreign to you. 

This is the approach that I took when I lost weight more than a decade ago, and wrote about here.  I was never "on a diet".  A "diet" has the connotation of something that is temporary.  "I'm going to go on a diet and lose 50 lbs!".  And then what?  Go back to the way you ate before?  If so, you'll just gain that weight back again, like the jet pack crashing back to earth.  The only way to stay at a healthy weight is to change how you eat.  Permanently.  And the only way to do that without driving yourself crazy is to do it gradually.  Change small things, little by little.  Drive one more mile down the road toward your destination.  Be persistent.  It's worth the trip.

I was fat

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.