The Road to Reduction

The trick to making a significant and sustainable change in one's diet is breaking the process down such that your diet and weigh loss plan is an evolution and not a revolution. In this post I want to show I how accomplished that for myself. Unfortunately, I took things a bit out of sequence, and you should keep in mind that I completed step three before beginning step one - other than that - this is my personal "road to reduction".

Basic Assumptions

I) My body's ability to determine when I am full is defective, and therefore a central feature of my diet plan has to include a method to artifically signal me that I am full. [This idea is from John Walker's "Hacker"s Diet" - highly recommended.]

II) The math of weight loss is very simple: one pound represents 3500 calories. To lose weight I must eat fewer calories then I expend - when I have expended 3500 calories more than I have eaten, I will lose one pound [no matter how long takes]. That's ALL there is to it.

STEP 1 - Where Am I?

The first small step is to find out where you are, specifically, how many calories you are eating to maintain your current weight. This is pretty easy, just go to nutrition.com.sg/nutrition calculators/calorie calculator/ and fill in the blanks, for me it looked like this:

height: 77 inches
weight: 346 pounds
age: 60
Daily Calories Needed to Sustain this Weight
Activity Level:
....Sedentary: 3628 calories
Lite Activity: 4186
....Moderate: 4883
Very Active: 5581

I like this site because it is very clear about activity levels - aerobic workouts can easily be substituted for walking. One thing about walking is that DISTANCE, not speed, determines the activity level. So compute the distance you walk each day and derive your activity level from that. For accurate measurements and motivational purposes I highly recommend a pedometer.

For me, at the start my activity level was clearly "lite" - I walked about 20 minutes a day, 6 days a week.

So this ends step one - very easy - at which point I now know that [on average] I eat 4186 calories a day and that maintains my weight at 346 pounds. I am also ready to start losing weight! All I have to do is eat less than 4186 calories a day and I will lose weight! How hard can that be?! But wait! How do I know how many calories I eat? Good question!

STEP 2 - Artificial Fullness Signal

I am/was fat because I don't know when to stop eating [I used to say because I "can't" stop eating]. Although I didn't know it until I read John Walker's book, what I needed was an artifical feedback system to say: "STOP! you're FULL."

Well, my method is the calorie log (John has another). Yes, I write down every calorie I eat, and I keep a running total. Yes, I take a notebook when I go to a friend's house, and yes I come home and take the time to calculate the calories of everything I ate there to the best of my ability. Yes, I measure everything, even the butter I put on my toast. Yes, when I cook I write down every single ingredient and calculate the total calories and measure how much of the finished meal I eat, and how much my wife eats.

No, I don't have a life, but only twice in 125 days have I ever gone over my upper limit (sedentary calories at my actual weight), and I am convinced that my body is already beginning to listen to some fullness signals on its own.

Some diet writers say it's too burdensome to keep a food log, others say keep it for four weeks or 12 weeks or whatever. I say, I need to know when I am full, without my food log I have no idea what I need to eat by the time dinner comes around, without it I am certain to overeat. I have no idea how long I'll keep my food log, but it sure hasn't occurred to me to stop it yet.

STEP 3 - Start Losing Weight

No, I didn't miss a step, what more do you need? You know how much you are eating to maintain your current weight, you have an artifical feedback system to tell you when to stop eating, what more do you need? Just stop eating something! Log it (well, log what you eat, not what you don't eat!). At the end of the day, did you eat less than 4186 calories? If so, you just took your first step toward losing weight.

There's no one to tell you what to stop eating. For me, I took to heart something I read: "everyone eats too much of something". I looked around, and no kidding, I ate too many potato chips. I would buy a bag of potato chips so I could drive an hour in my car, as matter of fact I would buy 2 bags, one for the return trip. So the first thing I stopped eating was those chips, and I have not bought a bag of chips since - I don't want too.

So I suggest that you pick some junk food you eat too much of, and just don't eat that one thing anymore. Or if that's too harsh, pick 3 things. Don't eat thing one on day 1, thing 2 on day 2 and thing 3 on day three.

How many calories in those "things"? If you chose well, say 300. So at the end of 7 days you have not eaten 2100 calories, at the end of 12 days you have not eaten 3600; you have lost 1 pound in less than two weeks - that's a VERY successful rate in many diet plans.

So let's recap. You give up one thing a day (maybe the same thing everyday, or maybe a selection over different days), you keep EVERYTHING ELSE exactly the same. You log everything you eat because you want to see those missing calories, you want to see that by giving up one thing you are eating only 3886 calories a day, and losing one pound every two weeks. And you also want to make sure that you don't make up the one thing, by eating two other things - but I really don't think that will be a problem.

I wish I'd had my food log, and diet plan, when I started giving up my junk foods, because it would have given me focus, it would have let me see the results, it would have been an incentive to keep on giving up junk and NOT replacing with other junk.

I stayed in "Step 3" for 12 years. I lost about 30-35 pounds and then stabilized. I was ready to move on in 2000 (after "just" 4 years in "Step 3") but I didn't have a plan, and I didn't make a plan until, well you know, I had that medical event.

You too can stay in "Step 3" for as long as you want. There's no pressure. You have all the time you need to work out specific problems. Suppose you have a binge thingy, suppose you eat 2000 calories extra of ice cream. You write it down. Holy COW! You just ate a week's worth of "things". Your artificial feedback log is screaming "FULL ! FULL! FULL!" Now, it's not abstract. Now it's not just "oh what a bad person I am" - it's like, what the heck have I done now! I gotta get rid of this ice cream. And you can just keep on like that in step three - just gaining control over one food at a time. "Sacrifices" so small and so gradual that you never really notice. But all the time your food log is telling you that you are eating less and enjoying it more.

I mention ice cream because it's the one food that caused a riff between my wife (Ms Skinny) and I. She liked Friendly's Chocolate Ice Cream (excellent by the way). It only came in half gallons, so it worked like this: she would buy it and eat one [small] serving. In the next 24 hours I would eat the remaining half gallon. Oops, no ice cream next weekend, my wife would buy another. I said: this ice cream has got to go, no more! She said: you don't have any self control! I said: Ya Think! that's why it's got to go! Winter came and the ice cream finally went. We did better with the big can of salted nuts: she "hides" it in her office. That works. Next thing you know, she'll want a mini freezer, and you know, that might just work too.


STEP 4 - Moving On

At some point in time, Step 3 is no longer going to be adequate. Maybe you run out of junk foods to eliminate, but you still have weight to lose. Maybe you get exicted enough to move on in just a couple of weeks when you find out that you really can eat less and not be deprived. Maybe you'll be like I was: your diet is finally nutritionally balanced, your blood work's great, but you're not losing weight. Whatever, you'll know you're at Step 4 when you are as interested in your health and fitness as you are in losing weight. Step 4 is when you commit to a life long healthy weight plan. Myself, I entered, and completed, Step 4 in the ICU.


Step 5 - How Much Should I Weigh?

It seemed to me that the first step in a weight loss plan should be to figure out how much I should weigh! But figuring out how much I should weigh has been a process in itself, and it will surely be refined as I move forward. But right now I calculate my target weight using a BMI (body mass indicator) calculator. For no particular reason I use the one at Nutrition.com.sg. By experimenting, I found the highest weight that produced a "healthy" BMI reading (24) for my height (77") is 206 pounds. So that's my target: 206 pounds.

Step 6 - How Do I get There (206) from Here (346)?

Once I decided where I was going (206), it was not immediately obvious to me how I was going to get there. I googled things like "weight loss strategy" until I was blue in the face, and I never could find a comprehensive plan on how to lose weight. I found a lot of fragmented ideas [some of which have been very useful], but not a plan.

So I fell back on something I'd read long ago [and have not been able to find again on google] that said, in essence, if you want to weigh 206, eat like you're 206.

So I went back to Step 1, filled in the calorie calculator for 77", 60 years old, but now I said I weighed 206 pounds, and in a second I had the answer: I had to eat 2878 calories if I engaged in light exercise, and 3358 calories if I engaged in moderate exercise to maintain a weight of 206 pounds. As a practical matter my exercise was increasing, so I picked an intermediate calorie target of 3030 calories a day.

And now, you can see that calorie log becomes all important. How the heck do I know when I've eaten 3030 calories? If I knew, I wouldn't be here. So the log tells me where I am as the day goes on. Should I have a salad for lunch, a pizza for dinner, skip the before bedtime snack? My body doesn't have a clue. It just eats anything and everything that comes along - like a PacMan. Oh sure, it feels stuffed sometimes, but it never says "FULL!" - only my log does that.

But wait, there's more! One of the greatest features of this strategy is what happens when I reach my target of 206 pounds: Nothing. That's right, nothing happens. I'm not going off a diet, I'm not transitioning from diet to maintenance mode - I'm already doing what I going to do when the weight loss part of my program is over. I'm controling my calories at the right level, I'm eating nutritional foods I like, I'm exercising the way I should - everything's in place to sustain my weight loss as long as I live. I will have fully implemented a life style change!

Step 7 - Exercise

Unfortunately, the mechanics of weigh loss don't allow for an exercise free strategy for the simple reason that your body, in its infinite wisdom, doesn't just munch on your fat cells to make up for those calories you're not eating, it also munches on your muscles and, heaven forbid, your BONES too!

So if for no other reason than to keep from becoming a muscleless whimp, you have to come up with an exercise program to remind your body you need those muscles. And what's worse, once you start moving around and exercising, your body only burns fat in the presence of oxygen, which means you have to exercise with sufficient energy to breath hard! Of all the nerve!

Walking is one of the best exercises for losing weight [and it helps with the bones too], and I have always liked to walk, so it's not much of a problem for me. I have expanded my walking from about 6 miles a week to about 20 miles. That's about 40 minutes twice a day most days of the week. I also lift a few weights and do some old fashion calisthenics to try and build some upper body strength.

There's lots of info on the web on exercising, and your own prgram will be one of those elements that evolves as your program moves along.

Step 8 - Nutrition

In all probability, you became interested in nutrition in during step 3, least ways I did. You have to replace that junk food with something, and most likely you made at least some effort to replace it with something a bit lower in calories. This is were I did a great disservice to myself not having that calorie log, and in the end, spent way to long in Step 3.

In any event, by the time you reach step 6 and are trying to keep your calories to a specific limit you will find you are a lot more interested in nutritional foods than you ever used to be. I mean, you just can't keep scarfing down those burgers and meet your calorie targets. On the other hand, it is important to realize that you don't have to give up anything in particular. You can eat anything. The only thing is, you have to write it in your log - why, because you know without that log you won't "remember" it, and you might have trouble feeling full without the reminder.

There are other aspects to nutrition that are important. For example, the fat content in your diet is important. On the one hand, the NWCR says most successful dieters eat about 24% of their calories from fat, which is a bit below the 30% usually recommended. On the other hand, you do need fat, you even need some saturated fat, so you have to keep a balance. What I do is use my calorie log to figure out my fat grams for one day a month. It's a pain and takes a while, but I think it's worth it - excess fat is one thing your body doesn't handle well. It turns out that somehow I "naturally" keep my fat intake to about 28% calories.

One way to get a start on being aware of nutritional issues is to read the health columns in your local paper, or news.google.com or whatever. Actually the Wall Street journal has an excellent library of health articles online. Anyway, these columns usually give you a good start on googling the various issues and soon you will find you have a pretty good library yourself on health issues and nutrition. Remember, this diesn't all happen at once, this is a growth process, and evolution.


THE END

Yep, that's it, that's my diet plan. It's not finished by any stretch. Things happen. Like right now I trust myself to put 1/2 teaspoon of butter on my bread, and no more. A VERY small thing, but for an obese person who never controlled his food before, it is a giant step. I now use measured amounts for everything - used to be I used a whole can of this, a whole package of that, but I am learning that I can be satisified with the same serving size "normal" people eat. And, surprise, I am finding that as I control portion size, I now have room for new foods in my daily diet. In other words, diversity.

For a quick review of the Road to Reduction go here.