Category: food and fitness

Diet lessons seem to require repetition before I really learn them. It seems I’m not alone. I can’t count the times I’ve heard someone tell me how easy their diet is, and how they no longer crave their forbidden foods, only to see them fall off the wagon a bit further down the road.

What happens between “It’s been two whole weeks and I don’t crave sugar at all” and “Yeah, I haven’t been doing very well lately”? In my own experience, life happens; holidays happen; cravings happen. Just about the time I think I’m free of the temptations of junk food, I get invited to a birthday party or a team lunch at work.

To succeed more than you fail I think it’s important to know how your body is going to react over time, and to accept that temptations will keep coming. I think of it similar to holding my breath. It’s easy to hold my breath for 10 seconds. It’s really not too difficult to hold it for 30 seconds. But, at some point my body starts to focus on what it is missing. In a similar way, my body can go without it’s favorite foods for a while, but it will eventually notice the lack. It will compensate by craving them and finding excuses for me to “need” them.

Two weeks of success is easy. It might take effort, but it’s easy to exert the effort for a few weeks, especially if the numbers on the scale are moving down. But what about when those numbers stop or reverse for no apparent reason? How do I stay motivated? What about when someone at work brings a pile of treats that I happen to love? I lose some of these battles and get a fresh realization of where I would be if I made no effort at all. The negative consequences give me the strength to keep trying.

I have a few things that help me.

1. I bring my lunch to work every day.
2. I don’t eat anything at work that I don’t bring with me, period. Once the food I bring with me is gone, I am done eating until I get home.
3. I am unable to use moderation with certain foods, so eliminate them from my diet. Yes, that is what I said.
4. I find foods that, for me, make suitable substitutes for higher-calorie foods that I like. For example, I blend cauliflower in a food processor to a consistency similar to mashed potatoes. The taste of cauliflower isn’t as good as potatoes, but it is good enough to keep me happy.
5. I have certain foods, like Lindt 70% dark chocolate, that I use to keep me away from other sweet foods. That way I don’t feel like I’m doing completely without foods I love. These foods are incorporated into my daily plan, so eating them is not “cheating” and as long as I keep within my limits, I don’t worry about them.
6. I plan ahead. If I’m going to be out of town, I make a plan for what I’m going to eat. If I have a company lunch that would difficult to miss, I plan to have a good time without throwing my goals out the window.

I have a very long road ahead of me. Accepting that temporary troubles will come has kept me focused enough to stay on that road.

In the past year I have heard variations on this sentence probably 100 times:
“I would love to lose weight, but I can’t make it to the gym.”

In my experience, going to the gym has very little to do with weight loss. It isn’t that regular exercise doesn’t help. It’s that eating less on a regular basis helps a lot more. It is my experience that people who concentrate on “eat less” will lose more weight than those who concentrate on “move more”.

My anecdotal evidence is proof enough for me. A few years ago I decided to ride my bike to get in shape. For two months I faithfully rode hard for an hour each day, five days a week. I would weigh myself every morning. After two months I was much stronger, but I hadn’t lost any weight, period. Back pain forced me to quit riding, and without the regular exercise I eventually gained weight. In my case, the exercise was helping me maintain my weight, but it wasn’t enough to help me lose any. I’m not sure how much exercise it would have taken, but I didn’t have it in my schedule.

Since the beginning of the year I have lost 37 lbs. During that time I haven’t been to the gym and I haven’t been on my bike. I have concentrated on “eat less” and it has worked for me.

Does that mean I discount the benefits of exercise? Not at all. Now that the weather is beautiful I have been anxious to get out on my bike again. It will make me feel stronger and overall, better. But, weight loss is not the benefit I seek from exercise. I can still lose weight even if I never get on the bike.

In case you are wondering, I have been using myfitnesspal.com to track what I eat, and to keep me within my calorie limit.

Quite a few years ago I bought a hammer for an outdoor project. When I was done I cleaned up my tools, but overlooked the hammer. It lay in the grass overnight. When I discovered it in the morning, rust had already marred the shiny surface with patterns from the damp grass. The hammer was fully functional even with the rust, but I was disappointed. I take pride in keeping my tools in great condition. Using the hammer after that was a reminder to be more watchful when cleaning up.

Some of my tools date back to my junior high days (late 70s) and they still serve me well. This is because I don’t misuse my tools, and I always put them away when I am finished. It does take a little more time, but the result is, they are handy when I need them, and they last forever.

On my mind these days is another kind of maintenance. Since the beginning of the year I’ve been keeping track of what I eat and watching as the weight slowly, but steadily, comes off. I’ve been surprised at how unpopular this concept is. Some people don’t want to be denied anything, and others don’t want to have to keep track of their food intake. It does require attention. I would prefer not to have to pay attention. And yet, the amount of time is much less than I would have supposed. I guess it’s a matter of what you value. If you value the benefits of a healthier body, the maintenance is the price to achieve the goal.

It’s easy to keep rust off tools. It’s a matter of paying attention. Lose track of them and it’s not so easy.