The Next Hundred Pounds

FOOD AND DRUGS - WHO CAN YOU TRUST?

I'm not sure what I think about the Paleo diet. It does make a certain amount of sense, but the emphasis on fat and protein is a little much for me. And maybe it's just that it's getting kind of tiring reading about yet another set of "what you should eat, what you must not eat" rules, another diet where you have to go to extremes to find your food. (Which is not an exclusive feature of paleo, by any means).

As I understand it, you're supposed to eat a lot of unsaturated fat, animal proteins, and fresh or raw veggies. Butter and oils of olive, coconut, avocado, and macademia nuts are okay.  You can eat a little bit of fruit and nuts, but you're supposed to stick to low-sugar fruits. You're not supposed to eat dairy (at least not much), legumes, grains, cereals, veggie oils, or sugar. These are basics; if you're interested in finding out more, here's a link to a good site.

What I do like about Paleo is the de-emphasis on carbs. We eat way too many of them. And here is an excellent article, written by a Paleo enthusiast, which explains thoroughly and simply why they are so bad for you. I also like what he has to say about the evils of Big Agra --- they don't care about your health. Not news, not news at all, but it needs to be said over and over because there is so much advertising, so many temptations, so much misinformation thrown in our faces day after day. Meanwhile,  agro behemoth Monsanto continues to contaminate organic fields with pesticides, create Frankenseeds (genetically modified organisms), and gain ground in world food domination. It's impossible to avoid them --- they have their fingers in every pie. Even my beloved Whole Foods is involved, forcing me to rethink my grocery shopping practices. I guess it really is best to buy local, from farmer's markets, or a CSA, whenever possible.

Speaking of people (corporations are people, don't you know)  who don't care about your health, recently Gwen Olsen, a former pharmaceutical company representative, published a tell-all book about the industry and their appalling practices. Food Renegade has a great writeup on it that everyone should read. Confessions of an RX Drug Pusher is Olsen's account of her fifteen years as pharmaceutical rep, her own struggles with mental health issues, and the suicide by burning of her niece, Megan, who was attempting to withdraw from a cocktail of prescription psychiatric drugs.

We can't afford to be complacent about our health on any front. We have to educate ourselves and take charge. Don't get your information from the people who are trying to sell you something! That's difficult, because in a sense, everyone is trying to sell something --- but some have a lot more to gain in others.

As for Paleo ... well, let's just say I'm intrigued, and I'm going to do some more reading. I don't see myself adopting the strict diet, but the no carbs thing ... that is sounding right.

YOU NEED TO READ THIS BOOK

I finished reading The End of Overeating while in New York last week, and want to again recommend that anyone who struggles with food issues --- whether or not you are at a healthy weight --- read this book. I plan to re-read it myself, because I devoured parts of it so greedily. You see, not only did I recognize my own story in Dr. Kessler's research, but I recognized the very things I have done to break my own cycle of overeating and the very same struggles I have today.

You need to read this book so that you will understand the science behind why some of us eat too much and why we obsess about food. You need to have the answers for yourself, and also so you can stave off the attacks of the people I like to refer to as the "Nyah, Nyah Fatties" types --- those outspoken folks who think that just because they don't have a problem putting down the fork that anybody who does is weak-willed and lazy. There is so much guilt associated with food issues, and it stands directly in the way of getting better. 

You need to read this book so you will understand how the processed food and restaurant industry takes advantage of human nature to literally addict you to fat, salt, and sugar; not to mention the absolute disgusting crap they are feeding you.

You also need to read this book so you will understand how to start defeating the cues and the conditioning that lead you into the same destructive cycle over and over.

Dr. Kessler offers a general framework for treatment, but for more specifics for how to break the cycle, read Beck. Cognitive therapy directed at eating behaviors is the way to go, Kessler even acknowledges this. Many of the "food rehab" techniques he suggests are very similar, if not identical, to Beck.

Here are my personal recommendations for breaking the cycle, based on  what I have done myself and now seen reinforced in Kessler's findings.

1. Become aware of the specific situations in which you tend to overeat. First you have to identify the cues or triggers that start the ball rolling.

2. Create competing behaviors or distractions when faced with a cue. In my case, I read my list of reasons for losing weight and my response cards before putting a bite of food in my mouth. I have been known to change my route through the grocery store so that I didn't have to pass by certain foods.

3. Rewrite the inner dialogue when presented with challenging foods. "Oh, I want a chocolate cookie SO BAD" becomes "but if I eat one now, tomorrow when I get on the scale I will be really sorry. I've already had plenty of fat and sugar today. If I really want one, I can plan to eat it another time."

4. Create rules (by definition, conscious) that stand in place of habit (by definition, unconscious). I don't have many rules about my eating, but the strongest rule has always been, if it's not on the food plan, I don't eat it. Thinking about the food plan stops me from engaging in unconscious eating and forces me to make a decision about what I will or won't eat. It disengages me from the overeating process long enough to defuse the cue.

In the short term, while we are working on changing our behaviors,we have to work very hard to keep trigger foods out of our environment. For me, that means not bringing home ice cream or baking cookies. We also have to change our tastes. I strongly, strongly advocate getting all processed food, fast food, and restaurant chain food out of your diet. Eat a steak if you want, but make sure it's from grass-fed free-range cattle. Eat butter and eggs from cows and chickens that are allowed to live as nature meant them to live. Eat a cookie, but eat a cookie made with real butter and sugar. Don't put anything in your mouth that has artificial anything in it. Eat real food.

And if you do this, I promise you, your tastes will change. You will come to like and crave the taste of food that is close to the state in which it comes out of the ground,  or off the bone. And it is much, much better than anything injected with low quality fats and chemicals.

I very much agree with Dr. Kessler that we need to wage war on processed food in much the same way we have waged war on cigarettes. Smoking is no longer seen as cool; it is largely seen as destructive, unhealthy, and nasty. The smell of cigarette smoke is offensive and people speak up about it, rather than simply accepting it.

I wrote the other day about how ads like the ones for the KFC "Doubledown", IHOP's fat-stuffed French toast, and Denny's calorie blowout breakfasts disgust me. The food doesn't even look appealing; it looks gross. The smells from these restaurants are unappealing much of the time --- it just all smells like old grease to me. I don't know when this happened, but I know that I will go hungry for a long time rather than eat in one of these places. If you find yourself addicted to fast food and junk food, one way to being breaking the habit is to do some research about what really goes into them. Look up chicken processing; you'll never want another McNugget. Like the TV ad says, "The More You Know."

10X10-25 Challenge

I'm sitting here right now trying to resist munching. It's late, I had a good dinner, and I don't need any more food today. I haven't been able to get on a scale, but I know I am losing weight --- I can feel it, and my clothes fit more comfortably. I'd forgotten how good it feels.

 Today, I did my weight-lifting and 100 crunches in the morning, and in the afternoon, I went on a beautiful but somewhat ill-advised two mile walk along Lake Onondaga. It was an easy, paved trail, and I took my time and sat down a couple of times, but my foot let me know it wasn't happy. Oh, well. I came home and iced it and it's fine now, but I won't try that again for another couple of weeks. 

I did very well with food, overall. I have to watch the cereal munching; it's the only snacky thing I have and I am drawn to it. But other than succumbing to a bit too much of that, I've done well.

We have another challenger joining us! Danu's goal is to lose 6 pounds, and she is committed to logging her foods, eating healthy, trying to eliminate sweets, and doing 10K steps a day plus 3 -4 days a week of weight training.

In other Challenge news, Mamie made some delectable and healthy soup, and Suzanne is sticking with it despite a tough week and the call of the goldfish. What are your big challenges this week? How do you plan to overcome them?

DR. KESSLER AND THE SATANIC TRIUMVIRATE

The adventure has begun! First stop is New York City for just a few days, to have voice lessons, coachings, and a sing-through of my scene from Un Ballo in Maschera. Whenever possible, my preparation of a new role culminates with an informal sing-through.  I assemble a group of friends to go through the opera with me, with a conductor hired for the purpose. It's fun and a great way to try it out before you have to do it "for real" at the first musical rehearsal with your colleagues.

My health goals for my short time in NYC are to do my weight training regularly, walk as much as my foot will allow, and eat as simply as possible. The last goal is heavily influenced by my current reading. Dr. David A. Kessler's The End of Overeating finally is available in paperback; so instead of stalking it in bookstores, furtively gulping down a chapter here and there, I finally bought my own copy. Even the introduction is a must-read for anyone with food issues. Dr. Kessler investigates, without moral judgment but rather with scientific curiosity, what makes us overeat and obsess about food. He observes that the overweight phenomenon is relatively recent, that food obsession is not the province of those who are overweight (citing several cases of slender people who have the exact same thought processes about food that fat people do --- the difference being that they have developed techniques for staying slim), and that the food industry has zeroed in on specific, almost irresistible  ways to tempt us.

I have read only the first six chapters, nodding in recognition or agreement almost nonstop. None of the descriptions of a subject's relationship with food would sound new to any of us; nor does it come as any kind of surprise that the restaurant, supermarket, and fast food,industries KNOW that their food is unhealthy, but they specifically design it to be palatable and tempting through various techniques, mostly involving the Satanic Triumvirate -- aka Sugar, Fat, and Salt. The combination of these three, Dr. Kessler shows, creates what amounts to an addiction and an almost unstoppable desire to consume more.

The science makes for very interesting reading, and I strongly recommend it to anyone who is interested in reprogramming themselves. If nothing else, you will gaze with suspicion on every bite of restaurant food or label in the grocery store, wondering how the Satanic Triumvirate and its food industry minions are trying to hook your pocketbook, waistline, and soul. It's a great diet tool!

I look forward to delving deeper, but I don't need to read ahead to know what it necessary to do to break this biological trap or de-sensitize myself to certain kinds of food cues. The obvious (not easy, but obvious) solution is none other than what I've been advocating in this blog all along: eat whole foods. Eat real, unprocessed foods. The simpler, the better.

And also, going back to Dr. Beck's techniques, which have helped me so immensely: remembering, and reminding myself constantly, that every time I give in to a craving, I am strengthening my "giving-in muscle", whereas if I refuse to give in, I am strengthening my "resistance muscle". Dr. Kessler's book explains the science which supports the truth of this statement. It's not just a cute saying or trick to help you lose weight. There is biology behind it.

Although I did my best to pack light for this long trip, I still find myself with two big suitcases, a carryon, and my computer bag. Nevertheless, at the last minute, I found myself digging out my old book of response cards and packing them along with my food plan notebook. It's time for them again. I needed some time off from them; once essential and compelling, they had lost their power. But now I find I need them more than ever, to help me restore fitness to that resistance muscle and attain my immediate goal of losing ten pounds before I head to Chicago. To help me in New York, I've further decided to stick to a very regimented diet: oatmeal or nonfat yogurt with fruit for breakfast, soup and salad for lunch, a lovely Honeycrisp apple and a handful of walnuts for a snack, and a big plate of plainly prepared veggies with a small amount of protein for dinner. Eventually, I may go back to allowing a small piece of dark chocolate after meals, but for now I think I'll try to hold off on that sugar-fat-salt combo.

When I got off the plane, feeling a little shaky and ready for some food, I did very well. My friend Nicholas met me to carry my ridiculous amount of luggage up three flights of stairs, and then I thanked him with lunch at Niko's. Nicholas has been inspirational lately because he's lost over 20 pounds off his lanky frame and looks fantastic; and all summer long, he ate salads while everybody around him was having burgers and nachos. We shared a Greek salad, talked about the book, and I stuck to my Niko's fave, the bouillabaise filled with lots of fresh veggies and seafood (though I suspect the broth, though clear, may have a lot of fat in it). Later, I read my response cards and snacked on a banana. Sure, I bought some dark chocolate at Trader Joe's, but that's for later on, when I'm in Syracuse. (Bonus: while in Trader Joe's looking at cereal, Nicholas treated me to an impromptu reenactment of the HFCS commercial spoof  which he said was inspired by my blog... there are many reasons Nicholas is a friend).

So here I am, icing my foot which is a little unhappy after its adventures today, but happy and determined to pursue my goals. Ten before Chicago is my battle cry! 

SORRY, NOT YOUR TYPICAL FATTY

For my birthday, my friend Janice (she who always gives the most thoughtful, fitting gifts) presented me with a copy of Geneen Roth's Women, Food, and God. I had previously known her only as the author of Feeding the Hungry Heart, which I read in my teens as part of my never-ended efforts to lose weight and conquer my food troubles forever. To be quite honest, I don't remember now what it was about, but the writing in this latest book strikes a familiar chord, which is --- to quote some other food self-help book --- "It's not what you're eating, it's what's eating you."

And --- I can't help it --- it just pisses me off. I've really been trying to read this book, but it makes me angry, because it seems to intimate that all food issues spring from a deep well of pain and suffering. The author, and her clients (she now offers spiritual retreats in which she helps women confront their issues with food and eating) all seem to possess these problems because of their low-self-esteem as children, not being loved enough by their parents, tragedies of lost loved ones and divorce, abuse, and so on. I am not at all discounting their experiences, but the idea that we all misuse food because we're running away from something or filling a void in our lives just doesn't ring true with me.

You see, I am one of the lucky ones. I know this full well, and I don't say it to brag or to belittle anyone else's experience, but merely to point out that you can be happy, well-adjusted, relatively unscarred by life AND STILL BE FAT. Hell, you can be fat and happy and not particularly deficient in the self-esteem department. I was for most of my adult life.

And I can't agree that letting go of a desire for thinness and fitness is the best path to wholeness, or that it is nearly impossible to attain or maintain. Being thin and fit is not going to fix your life, like so many people seem to believe it will. And I am living proof that maintenance is a constant struggle, and yes, it's tiring and sometimes you just want to give up and stick your head in a bag of Cheetos. But ultimately, being healthy is worth it, at least for me.

I think that if you are obsessive about food and weight loss and your lousy self-esteem and what have you, the problem is your obsessiveness, not what you choose to obsess about. Food is just your drug of choice. And maybe you do have to let go of the destructive dieting cycle in order to find enough inner peace to learn to manage your problems in a healthier way. Maybe some people are really unable to lose weight and keep it off, at least without doing serious damage to the rest of their psyche.

Here's the thing: there is no one-size-fits-all solution. I think that's what's annoying me so much about this book; I feel Roth touts her solution as the solution. There isn't one solution; there are many, and we each have to find the one that resonates with us.

Self-hatred and self-destructive behaviors, however, are never the solution. We have to be ruthlessly, but kindly, honest with ourselves. That means telling ourselves the truth without making excuses or sugar-coating it (you should excuse the expression). And this is difficult and sometimes painful to do, but it is the only way to longterm success. Also, there is no such thing as doing it once, and then it's done. Changing your life is high-maintenance, and you have to pay attention to it every day.

There is a lot of good in this book. Roth insists gently on the kind of self-awareness I'm writing about above. She points out the dangers of obsession. She really cares about helping people. 

Her way is just not for me. I'm not a victim, thank goodness, and while I understand that life can be full of horrible things that happen for no reason, I also believe that we have choices about how we handle those things. We can't take them personally. We have to rage, grieve, and move on.

Besides, working out is one of the best ways to release strong emotion and channel it into something positive. It's my belief that if we all did more of that --- in fact, if we all took more action and talked less --- we'd all be happier. That means it's time for me to get off the couch and do cardio. Hit it!

INDOCTRINATION

It's most excellent that an Illinois elementary school teacher, who calls herself Mrs. Q, has launched The School Lunch Project.  Frustrated by the low quality and questionable nutrition being offered to her students, she has dedicated herself to eating what the kids eat for lunch every school day in 2010. She photographs each meal and reviews it for taste and preparation which are nearly always very poor. She sometimes comments very basically on nutritional value (I'd like to see more concern for the lack of actual nutritional value).

The results are, not surprisingly, appalling. One look at this blog, and if I were a parent, I would never let my kid buy a school lunch again. And many of these parents aren't buying the lunches --- their kids are enrolled in the free lunch program, because their families are too poor to pay. They are trusting the school and the government to feed their children healthy, nutritious food. Well, Mrs. Q would like you to read this article from USA Today, which reports that the standards for meat quality in fast food restaurants --- which we already know aren't very high --- is actually higher than it is for that used in school lunches.

For example, the article reports, "For chicken, the USDA has supplied schools with thousands of tons of meat from old birds that might otherwise go to compost or pet food." It goes on to say that this is meat that does not meet the quality or safety standards of businesses like Kentucky Fried Chicken or Campbell's Soups. Mystery Meat, indeed. 

Mrs. Q says that she is not worried about her own health, as she feels she eats fairly healthfully the rest of the time. I would be interested to know whether, over time, she revises that opinion, and specifically, whether she gains weight.

But I'm less concerned about Mrs. Q's health than I am about the school kids'. They are, for all intents and purposes, being indoctrinated into a lifetime eating style of incredibly low quality food, heavily processed, and seriously lacking in nutrition and taste. They are being fed fast food and junk food, and heavily processed foods filled with artificial ingredients and too much fat and sugar even at home. So many parents are well-meaning, but simply don't know any better. And of course, we as a society are surrounded at all times by promises of a better life through this manufactured food. We'll have more fun if we eat at fast food restaurants. This hamburger mix stretches a meal. These frozen dinners pumped full of sodium are so convenient.

And "healthy" food? Why, it's time-consuming. It's expensive. It doesn't taste good. It's for hippies.

It's no wonder so many people don't like "healthy" food. They've been indoctrinated from elementary school on and often don't even know what real food tastes like. Really, is it any wonder that we have an obesity epidemic in this country? Or that so many of us who weren't fat as kids grow up to be fat adults, and then have such a hard time beating it? Seriously, could the decks be any more stacked against us?

Food should be grown, not manufactured. And I firmly believe that one of the first, and most critical, steps to major longterm weight loss is to learn to eat real food. When we cut out the artificial stuff, the poor quality stuff, the fillers, the extra fat and sugar and sodium, we can begin to taste food the way it's meant to taste.

You don't have to change your habits cold turkey --- it almost never works that way. Start by cutting down on one thing that you know is really bad for you. Switch out white bread, potatoes, and rice for whole grains every other time.  Drink one soda a day instead of two or three. And add in good things, too --- learn how to cook vegetables simply and well, without a lot of butter or salt. Buy the freshest you can find. Experiment

When you start to eat clean, your tastes do change. Sometimes they change really slowly, and you may always crave your greasy cheeseburger or that sugary cereal that makes you feel like a kid again. It's okay to have them! But when you replace a steady diet of them with real, fresh, well-prepared food, you'll be healthier, you'll lose weight, and you'll feel better. As a nice bonus, you'll be checking out of the bad food indoctrination cycle. 

Even nicer, you'll be passing on healthier habits to your kids. How do I, a childless person, know? Well, I don't have kids but I have nieces and nephews. My oldest nephew and his girlfriend went from munching Hot Pockets to asking us for cooking and nutrition advice. And we only see them once a year. :)

HAIL'S BELLS AND RIPPING ON RIP

A couple of nights ago, we had a hellacious storm: thunder, lightning, heavy rains, high winds, and golf-ball sized hail. About 9 p.m., it was coming down hard and the wind was blowing the rain and the hail sideways. One of our upstairs windows got bashed in, and the cars, air conditioning unit, and gutter downspouts all look like a gang of angry elves went at them with tiny baseball bats.

The angry elves apparently aren't fans of veggies, either, because they also went after my garden. Povero giardino!

The green beans and okra were undaunted; everything else was pretty much daunted. However, I spent the morning cleaning up and staking things, and now not only does it look a little better, but I have room for doing some mid-summer planting.

Meanwhile, I still have piles of zucchini, okra, and green beans to deal with. Last night I cooked them up with some Bhindi Masala, a delicious combination of Indian spices. They were so good that we ate the whole bowl! I'll definitely be doing that again.

I'm still under Scale Amnesty and frankly am a little scared to see what the damage may be, but I am faithfully exercising. The hailstorm and consequential dealings with the insurance company and contractors (which are far from over) put a temporary kink in my plans to try out my community center's fitness classes, but I'm not giving up. In the meantime,
I am eyeing a routine from a book I got as a birthday present.

My friend Janice, always a thoughtful gift-giver, sent me a copy of The Engine 2 Diet. This is a book by pro athlete-turned-firefighter-turned-voracious-vegan Rip Esselstyn. Seriously, the dude's name is Rip; and he is ripped, and he is on a mission to see that you become ripped, too. He is an Austin firefighter, the son and grandson of doctors, he pals around with the likes of Lance Armstrong, and he converted his entire station to a "plant-based" diet. Rip cleverly does not use the loaded word "vegan" to describe his diet; he always refers to it as "plant-based". I'm about 3/4 of the way through the book right now and it can be summed up thusly:

ANIMALS BAD.
PLANTS GOOD.

The diet is, essentially this: no animal products of any kind (no milk, cheese, honey, butter,yogurt, meat). No processed or refined foods (anything packaged or canned must have less than 25% of its calories from fat, no more mg of sodium per serving than calories, and no refined sugars). No oils except maybe a little bit of cooking spray. You get your fat from food in its natural form --- olives, nuts, avocado, etc. Whole grains. Veggies and fruits as close to their natural form as possible, and preferably fresh.

Quite honestly, if I were still fat and were thumbing through books down at the Barnes and Noble, looking for a way to lose weight and keep it off ... this would be a huge turnoff. Not because Rip doesn't have good ideas, even if he is maybe a little too rah-rah in your face about the whole plant- based thing (he really really really really does not want you to eat any product that comes from animals, like, ever again). My own journey has convinced me that eating mostly plants is the way to go. The problem with this book, from my personal standpoint, is that most people would have to have the dedication of a professional athlete (or have one cheerleading you on a daily basis) to embrace the concept as it is presented. I don't think the actual diet is laid out as clearly as it could have been (it's discussed throroughly in various chapters, but there's never just a page that outlines the basic principals).

Which is too bad, because I think the diet, while not for everyone, is sound, and I'm totally gonna try it. The recipes look good, I like the dietary principles which concentrate on fresh foods and very little oil, and the exercise program is very similar to what I was doing with Doris (who I miss terribly!).

Seriously, I don't mean to rip on Rip. This is good stuff. But like anything else, I will take the ideas that work for me and modify the rest. That, I have found, is the only way to make a diet sustainable for life.

A PS FOR RACHEL AND OTHER DORM DWELLING DENIZENS

Eric and I give nicknames to the places that suck all our money retail stores. We needed to stock up on veggies, so we headed over to the Hole (Whole Foods, also affectionately known to millions, not inaccurately, as Whole Paycheck). Then, at my request, we did some browsing at The Barn. (That would be Barnes and Noble). As usual, I found stacks and stacks of  books of interest --- y'all will be hearing more about my findings in the future --- and one in particular which jumped out at me, for the benefit of Rachel, who is stuck eating most of her meals in an old-school cafeteria where nutrition is not a particular consideration.

What I found for you, my dear, is a book written by an undergraduate like yourself, whose credentials are nothing more than common sense, a witty style, the fact that she not only avoiding piling on the traditional Freshman Fifteen, but actually lost ten pounds using a system she devised; and also the fact that both her dad and granddad are cardiologists and therefore know a little something about nutrition. It's called The Dorm Room Diet, by Daphne Oz, and while I freely admit that I only skimmed it, I feel confident that it's worthy of checking out. The website is also cute and has excerpts from the book, stories from other dieters, a dorm room workout DVD, and more. Take a look!