Obesity - a Social Norm?

A few weeks ago I suggested that one reason obesity was taking off in the US is because it is OK to be fat. Well, there is currently a fascinating article in the Wall Street Jurnal [free to the public] which is actually a debate between two economists regarding the increase in obesity, and whether it is because of exitsing social norms - especially for lower income and non-professional people - or because of historically cheaper food prices and less strenuous physical work requirements.

It was a bit disconcerting to me to be the subject of a debate between two people who could care less about my personal situation. Nevertheless, I think there are a couple of interesting points.

One argument is that both rich and poor people are gaining weight, and that statistically rich people are actually becoming obese at a faster rate than poor people (though from a far lower base). So the argument here is that it is the availbility of food at ever decreasing prices, and the more sedentary nature of the modern work force that is responsible for the gain in weight of the US population.

The other side of the argument is that the poor are mired in rut in which obesity is the social norm and therefore there is little incentive to prevent weight gain or to go through the rigors to lose weight. Furthermore, according to this argument, people in this situation have little aspiration to professional employment where there is established discrimination against obesiy, and thus lack the incentive for weight control that may be more evident in the upwardly mobile individual.

There was also this interesting tidbit: "Changes in social norms about smoking, for example, seem to have made a difference in reducing [the] incidence [of] smoking. Thus, if it's the norm in your social group to be obese, then that is one less reason to do something to either prevent or reverse a very difficult problem."

My own thoughts are that 1) in my personal observations it does seem as of the wealthy are thinner than my more natural milieu; which might be called the lower middle class; 2) and why not - the wealthy can and do shop at Whole Foods etc - eating healthily is expensive; and 3) I still maintain that just speaking up - schools, doctors, friends, whatever - is the single most important thing anyone or any organization can do. [In other words, this is a backhanded way of saying I think there must be a change in social norms regarding overweight.]

In the end I firmly believe that at this point in the campaign against obesity, social norms have (or can have) the biggest effect. Look no further than the complete reversal in smoking norms between 1968 and 2006 and the resulting effect on the number of individuals smoking. But I really recommend that you read the article for yourself and see what the issue of social norms is all about.

Perhaps the Future is Unfolding

It must be that once you write about something, you become more sensitive to seeing that subject in print. Or at least it seems that way ever since I wrote a post on the Thompson MedStat study on "Lifestyle & Obesity", and concluded in a followup comment to that article that "one day, the cost [of obesity] to society as a whole will be recognized, and then I think there will be a different environment - but I have no idea what that will look like."

Well, first it was the state of Arkansas [and 15 others according to the article], and now it's the public health care system in Great Britian which is in the early stages of reintroducing the "school medical" - eliminated in the early '70's - to combat rising obesity in school aged children. As part of the program, 100's of students will be weighed to gather statistics on the current state of the problem, and "it is likely that parents of children seen to have weight problems will be alerted."

And it's not just children that have been targeted in Great Britian. "Thousands of GPs [doctors] will carry out 'intensive lifestyle interventions' after a nationwide study shows they lead to long-term weight loss. ... Impressive results from the nationwide Counterweight Project involving 2,000 obese patients found it led to sustained reductions in weight, blood pressure and cholesterol."

And in the small Australian town of Colac, the entire town - parents, schools, fast food outlets, nutritionists, and local media - got together to get the expanding waistlines of their children under control. Over a three year period, the program was a resounding success, reducing both the weight and waistlines of the children. A program such as this reenforces my personal opnion that Australia is one of the countries with the most effective programs to fight the global obesity crisis. [Singapore is the other.]

So perhaps it's becoming clear that active intervention on the part of doctors, schools and communities is going to be part and parcel of the solution to obesity. It may becoming clear that just speaking up can achieve measurable results.

PostScript

Unfortunately, I still don't think the US government has a clue. For example, the new MyPyramid.gov site is supposed to guide individuals to a healthier diet. Yet, what does it do? If I plug in my age (60), gender, and moderate activity, first thing it tells me is that I am supposed to eat 8oz of grains, 3 cups vegteables, 2 cups fruit, 3 cups milk, and 6.5 oz of meat and beans. Holy cow! I am going to starve to death! I have no idea how many ounces of grains I eat a day, but 8 oz does not sound like much! I am tempted to blow this off before I even get started - shades of Dr 3oz Chicken. There has to be a better way to motivate healthy eating styles than to immediately focus on what you can't eat any more. The Road to Reduction uses a path of self discovery, first emphasizing what is happening now and requiring only small, incremental commitments to change as the process continues. Naturally I think this is a better approach - I wrote it! In any event, it is fortunate that there are many other sites, such as the Harvard School of Public Health, that present health, fitness, and weight control in much more positive manner than the US government.

Addiction Revisited

In reponse to my last post "An Addictive Aspect to Obesity?" two regular readers and fellow bloggers Sir Squishy and Kim Ayres left comments to the effect that overeating was unquestionably a food addiction.

After mulling over this hypothesis for most of the day, I find I must disagree, at least as it pertains to me.

When I think of addiction, I think of smoking - cigarettes were a requirement all the time. If I did not have a cigarette, all work, all anything, came to a halt until I got some. Whether I bummed them one at a time, or bummed a pack, or went out to where ever to buy some - work did not continue until I had a cigarette going AND knowledge that I had access to an ample supply. Working under a conditon of a limited supply was nearly as distracting as trying to work without any. I distinctly remember when airlines first started restricting all smoking on flights, the outright bans were limtied to flights of two hours or less because it was "common knowledge" that a smoker could go about two hours without a cigarette.

Contrast this to my recent visit to my brother's. He and his sons took me offshore fishing for the afternoon. Altogether, the trip was about 6 or 7 hours during which time I had one beer and bottled water. I experienced no ill effects or discomfort at all from not having any food during that time, even though I am a confirmed grazer in my natural habitat. As a three pack a day smoker I assure you I would have been a highly unpleasant fellow to be around if I had had no cigarettes for seven hours!

Or consider the following: it is an accepted fact that the average life span of a half gallon of ice cream in our house is 1.75 days. However, at no time do I ever feel that I have to go out and get ice cream to be able to work or feel relaxed, etc. In fact, I have only had ice cream twice this summer, once at the aforementioned picnic which is the only reason the ice cream was in the house in the first place.

And finally there is the Harvard School of Public Health which describes a vicious cycle in which highly refined sugars could cause some people to feel hungry even immediately after a meal, but in no way did they suggest refined carbohydrates are addictive.

I will freely admit that the only foods I feel comfortabe having in my house in unlimited quantities are fruits, vegetables, and things that need at least minimal processing (eg opening a can, microwaving, or mixing with water). Why I consume things like crackers, ice cream, cheese, etc over a couple of days when they are in the house is still a mystery to me. Nevertheless I do not feel addicted to any of these foods because without them I can continue to function just fine, thank you.

This is not to say that others don't treat some foods the way I used to treat cigarettes, and I would like to hear comments from anyone that does.

An Addictive Aspect to Obesity?

Following is a news brief which I am quoting in its entirety, longer [and better written] articles can be found here and here.

Obesity Expert: 'Processed Food' Causing Obesity
August 20, 2006 9:00 a.m. EST

San Francisco, CA (AHN) - Dr. Robert H. Lustig, renowned obesity expert at the University of California, San Francisco says that 'processed foods' like potato chips and cookies, are causing obesity amongst consumers.

In his proposed hypothesis, he said the pattern of sugar consumption is similar to nicotine addiction and it takes more than just will-power to change it.[emphasis mine]

According to Lustig's hypothesis, large amounts of sugars increase insulin secretion, which in turn floods the hypothalamus, which regulates energy use in the body. In this way, insulin blocks the path of another hormone, leptin, which tells the brain about the energy requirement. This ends up with the body going into starvation mode -- the brain thinks it isn't getting enough energy, so it needs more calories and it needs to save energy.

However, some obesity experts showed disagreement over Lustig's hypothesis.

Just to be clear, a) this article presents a hypothesis, and b) some experts disagree [like that's news]. And, we have heard this rap on refined carbohydrates before from the Harvard School of Public Health, although they did not call it an addiction.

But just considering for a moment that over eating is an addiction, several thoughts come to mind as I review what was important to me when I was finally able to give up smoking.

It took many tries (7 as I recall) over several years to actually stop smoking - brings to mind the many diets that just faded away....

The physical addiction to nicotine lasts only 3 days - this was important to me at the time because it allowed me to really focus on not smoking for those three days, and gave me a sense of accomplishment when those 3 days were up. I wonder what the physical addicition to high glycemic foods is?

Then of course, there is the really bad part of the addiction to smoking: habit. I am reminded that those of us who tried to quit smoking frequently talked of our nicotine cravings. WoW! How many blogs could we turn up where dieters are talking about binge eating and food cravings? Are all cravings created equal? Hmm, I remember from "stop smoking class", sponsored by the AHA , a discussion that smoking was in large degree an oral craving. And the instructor warned us not to satisfy that craving with food. (I must have missed the class that offered an alternative.) (By the way, is there a "stop eating class" from the AHA?)

So how did former smokers handle the cravings? Well, every single person I knew who successfully quit smoking - including me - had a mental slogan used to diffuse each craving. My own was: "Having this cigarette won't change anything." Doesn't sound like much, but to me it was the one meaningful thing they said in the entire two weeks of the "stop smoking class" . The other thing we all did was get rid of any and all cigarettes - the temptation was just too great if they were left laying around, slogan or no slogan.

So anway, if over eating is at least partially a question of addiction and habit then maybe some of the strategies used to quit smoking will work:

1. A mental slogan to combat the cravings: "Eating this ____ won't change anything" might work for me.
2. A bottle of water (or something) to combat the oral addiction.
   
3. Getting rid of, and keeping away from, all foods that I find I can't control.

None of these ideas are original thinking, but together they are proven methods to fight addiction, and thinking of overeating as an addiction might just add fresh insight and new focus to an otherwise stale and unrelenting battle.

And just recently I had a lesson in #3. We hosted a picnic for some volunteers, and in spite of he fact they all knew I was trying to lose weight, they refused to cooperate and eat all the food. After spending a day thinking I could eat "just some" of the leftovers on some sort of reasonable basis, I found I had to take it all to the compost: butter, ice cream, rolls, cheese, etc. There was no way I could not eat all that food. The dog was happy though - he got the hot dogs and sliced ham.

I guess I have not yet successfully quit overeating!

The Times - They Are A Changin' ?

Back on August 3rd, I suggested that obesity would remain an issue until it was no longer considered OK to be fat, until people spoke up, until it became everyone's responsibilty to ensure that "healthy eating" prevailed.

Well, would you believe that it was the state of Arkansas, that hot bed of radical reform, the home of the biggest purveyer of junk food in the world, that stepped up to the plate?

By the simple expedient of weighing all the kids in school and mailing a confidential letter to parents of obese and overweight kids, the state of Arkansas brought the steady increase in the number of obese kids to a screeching halt. All they did, all they did, was say - Hey, it's not OK for your kid to be fat.

The program was promoted by the state's governor who himself lost 100 pounds after being diagnosed with diabetes [yet another "medical event"].

Numerous news stories are out there with slightly different angles: Time, Washington Post, and Reuters are just some examples - many more can be found on news.google.com.

The Value of Exercise

I've just returned from two days at the Cape courtesy of my brother the gourmet cook. Any pretense at keeping to my diet was a shambles from the moment I walked in. The food, as ever, was delicious, but I swear I have never seen anyone cook with so much butter (and I do mean butter, no substitutes). Butter disappears by the stick in every pot - frequently blended with generous quantities of extra virgin olive oil - it's like a revival of James Beard or something.

So you would be forgiven thinking that my brother and his family suffer from the same weight fate as I do - but it's not so. How so? Well his wife jogs and swims before breakfast (in winter I think it's cross country skiing before breakfast), his two teenage boys lift weights (frequently with my brother) and are active in sports from baseball to skiing, and his daughter is an avid dancer with her own group. And they all ride bikes everywhere (except of course when my wife and I come and cars are used in respect of our advanced age, or something). Anyway, there's not a chubby one in the bunch, quite to the contrary (well, maybe my brother could jog an extra lap or so.)

So there you have it folks - the value of exercise!

[In addition to cooking, my brother runs his own small gourmet food company, and in a shameless plug, I recommend you go here and see for yourself. His sauces are award winning and his zesty garlic mix - well, as they say, it can't be beat!]

Vacation, Picnics etc

I apologize for the paucity of posts but 'tis the season of house guests, picnics, mini vacations and birthdays (mine included). Not to mention the occasional heat wave to slow things down (but not the grass I notice).

Anway, sometime after next weekend, things should return to normal. In the meantime, I seem to be holding my own dietwise IF I take a bit broader view and consider it a week at a time. Day to day is more of a struggle, with some days way up and others down - guess that is what it will be like for the foreseeable future - how much to eat may never come naturally.

hope everyone is enjoying this summer

What Ever Happened to my Diet?

Wife said to me lst night - "Whatever happened to your diet - you used to talk about it all the time, and now I never hear about it? Are you still on it?"

Well, what happened to my diet is...nothing. It's stil there, just plugging along. The heat wave adversely effected the exercise routine, and while walking is fullly recovered, weightlifting and other execises still languish. Back on July 25th I said I would try to replace my diet bread (35 calories/slice) with whole wheat bread (100 calories/slice) because of the glycemic index load.

I was about to say that my calories had gone up a bit since starting the wheat bread, but looking back at my calorie log I see that the increase in calories was not as bad as I thought, and that the days I had trouble keeping calories down to the 3100 level seemed to be associated more with the intense heat wave during that time. Nevertheless, I have gone back to the diet bread, and I feel much more relaxed about eating than when I was using the whole wheat. I guess you might say peace of mind trumps the glycemic index load.

But back to the diet itself - it is no longer the main topic. As I have said before, how I eat now is pretty much how I think I am going to eat for the rest of my life. Sure there are small changes... I have added a small orange to my diet every day because citrus fruits were on the top 12 phytonutrient foods list, and I wasn't eating any. And I have decided that I am not going to buy any more canned soups because I am tired of getting nearly 1800 mgs of salt along with my soup. But the diet per se - the lower calorie intake - that pretty much takes care of itself now, day after day after day... Boring.

LifeStyle & Obesity: the Thompson Medstat Research Brief

Well, the newspaper reports of the obesity survey discussed last time had been weighing on my mind over the weekend so much so that I finally went out and googled the actual report. What I found had nothing much to do with the focus of most news stories, and surprisingly the conclusions fit more or less into what I have been writing about in this blog.

The objective of the Thompson Medstat Research Brief into "Lifestyle and Obesity" was to make sense of the "disparity between the perception of good health and the reality of ... expanding waist lines"; namely, the fact that "despite the cold facts —64.5 percent of American adults are overweight, 30.5 percent are obese, and 4.7 percent are morbidly obese — ... more than four out of five Americans characterized their eating habits as either 'very healthy' or 'somewhat healthy.'”

As far as I can see, the news reporters read the key findings of the report to wit: 75% of "obese respondents characterized their eating habits as 'very healthy' or 'somewhat healthy', and that 50% of all respondents (obese or otherise) exercised vigorously three times a week; had a good laugh and wrote that the respondents were in denial and/or didn't have a clue about what constitutes healthy eating and vigorous exercise.

In so doing, these reporters overlooked some key statistics within the survey:

• only 25% of obese respondents claimed "very healthy" eating habits, 50% said that they had "somewhat" healthy eating habits: no denial here in my opinion. These catogories were lumped together in the news stories as "healthy eating habits", significantly distorting the actual results of the survey.
• there was no evidence that obese respondents significantly abused fast food, "super sizing", or snacks as compared to the rest of the population
• with regard to exercise, twice as many overweight respondents reported vigorous exercise as compared to morbidly obese respondents, with obese respondents falling in between. Overweight respondents exercised at the same level as healthy weight respondents. All in all, there is nothing to suggest that obese respondents don't understand what constitutes vigorous exercise and whether or not they engage in such activity.

Indeed, the conclusions of the survey itself bear no resemblance whatever to the news reports:

"CONCLUSION
‘Sometimes’ is a very dangerous word
While very few respondents in any of the BMI categories consistently ate super-sized fast foods for the majority of their meals, snacked recklessly, or even characterized their eating habits as poor, several high risk behaviors have combined to become part of the average American’s weekly routine. Through a combination of occasional fast food meals, moderate snacking, not quite enough exercise and the belief that these habits are “somewhat healthy,” Americans are rationalizing themselves into ever-expanding waistlines."

It may well be that "Americans are rationalizing themselves into ever-expanding waistlines," but there is another possibility. As I have been hammering home again and again, as an overweight person myself I don't have a clue all right, but what I don't have clue about is when to stop eating. So those "high risk behaviors" could be as simple as an obese person's inability to keep a "running total" of calories eaten throughout the day.

Or it could be more like my own experience, wherein I did eat healthily, but I made no effort to control my calorie intake, for many reasons that didn't turn out to be true.

Survey Says: Most Obese Claim to Eat Healthy

Well, I'm sure you've seen one of the 200 or so versions of this story (here's the original AP version), and the emphasis is -no brainer - on the word claim. The angle of virtually everyone is - another no brainer - denial. To quote the article: "There is, perhaps, some denial going on. Or there is a lack of understanding of what does it mean to be eating healthy..." said Dr. David Schutt.

Fact is, I feel compelled to take the take the last 6 years of lab results with me whenever I go to a new doctor because the assumption seems to be that I eat at Mickey D's 24/7. My cholesterol is 155. My triglyceride is 73. My glucose is 90. And that's how they've been since 2000. I eat healthy. (This article at commonvoice.com concludes that the survey respondents are answering truthfully; however, I do not necessarily agree with the article's conclusions.)

"The [survey] questions leave out quantity," said Dr. Jeffrey Koplan of Atlanta's Emory University. Brings to mind my favorite quote from the NY Times 2/7/06: Nothing fascinates the American public so much as the notion that what you eat rather than how much you eat affects your health.

So here's the truth of the matter: I am obese because I eat too much, healthy eating is a whole separate matter.

The article has many references to "normal weight people" - surely they are referring to overweight and obese people because right in the article it says: roughly two-thirds of Americans are overweight or heavier, and nearly one-third qualify as obese, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. But no, according to the article, "normal weight people" are the thin people.

STOP RIGHT THERE. Let's get this straight right now: normal weight in the US is overweight.

This is important. When I go to the doctors I see fat nurses, fat doctors, fat patients. Must be OK to be fat. I see fat people in restaurants, in stores, on the beaches - it must be ok, they do it. And let's not forget this story, in which the new robust American man is seriously overweight.

After I checked out of ICU, I called my friend who is fat, and said: man, you had better do something about your weight, your sleep apnea, I been there, I know. He said he'd check into it [and hasn't]. And what am I going to say - the pot calling the kettle black isn't it?

Or how about this nugget: It seems that pediatricians just don't want to call fat kids fat, for fear of hurting the children's feelings or angering their parents. Some of the doctors say they're not really sure how to get growing kids to lose weight. They say insurance companies don't recognize obesity as a disease and won't pay for its treatment. So they call it something else.

Or what about your family and friends? My wife (a thin person) says she tried to talk to me about my weight but I wouldn't listen. I don't remember, but I can count on one hand the number of friends, business associates, relatives who ever, even once, said to me, "Bob, you had better lose some weight." (My sister said she thought I would get mad at her.)

So the problem as I see it is not the food manufacturers selling junk food, or the fact I don't have to work physically as hard as my ancestors, or high fructose corn syrup. The problem is that basically it is OK to be fat. Plenty of people used to tell me I was killing myself smoking, but not too many ever said I was killing myself eating.

Well, that's fine - I had my wakeup call, and I survived it. But I think overweight and obesity is going to be a problem in this country until it is no longer OK to eat too much - healthy or not.

That means individuals, not just food manufacturers, have to prepare healthy meals for famlies and friends. That means individuals, not just restaurants, have to serve appropriate sized portions. That means individuals, not just schools, have to keep junk food away from kids (well OK, adults too). That means friends can't let friends be fat.

In the News: Unintended Consequences

I was prompted to write this post by an article this morning in the New York Times: "Newly Petite in a Skin That's XL". I did a double take on the title - did it really say what I thought it did? And I did another double take because the article was included in the "Fashion & Style" section - I guess it's true that a lot of loose skin is not fashionable...

Anyway, I did some quick googling and came up with this poignant note from Syracuse.com, and this from Seattle, and, finally, some hope at commonvoice.com , which is not alone in suggesting that to fight excesssive loose skin you need to keep on losing - this article is also quite hopeful about the outcome (it's a long article, make sure you get by the ads and read to the end).

The article in the NY Times served as a reminder to me that the subject of loose skin is something I need to think about, learn about, and prepare for - in the same manner than I prepared for my diet itself - because at age 60, with 16 years of obesity behind me, I am going to have a problem.

In the News: the Obesity Vaccine

Well, I suppose that everyone saw the teaser headlines on last night's TV news about the new "Obesity Vaccine", only to find out it's fine if you have a fat rat for a pet; otherwise it's probably not going to help you much in your lifetime.

However, buried in the newspaper report I read, there's an important snippet:

The vaccine targets the hormone ghrelin, a gastric endocrine hormone produced primarily in the stomach, which ... helps control appetite in animals and people... The vaccine appears to help control whether the body stores fat or burns it off. It seems ghrelin has to move from the bloodstream into the brain in order to have an impact on appetite and weight gain. [emphasis mine]

What this observation signifies to me is that John Walker's contention in the Hacker's Diet that I am fat because either I don't receive or I don't process corrrectly "fullness signals" is right on the money.

The idea that I cannot responsibly control the amount of food I eat without artificial assistance is not something I cannot hear just once and fully ascribe to [see for example, what happens when I try to wing it at a picnic or luncheon]. But each report like this one, and each experience like the picnic, leads me to more fully integrate the calorie log into my dialy life. And the more integrated it becomes, the more automatic it becomes, to the point that I can now see a time in the future when I can drop the calorie log because I have fully replaced my missing chemical "fullness" signals with a mental alternative. But not yet.

"I hardly ate anything"

Well, as usual, as soon as I publish an article, along comes more information and better ideas about the same subject - this time I'm talking about the note I wrote on "will power".

The message I was after in the "will power" post was that I was just going to have to suck it up, get control of myself, and eat that salad instead of those tasty, high glyceimc index, cheeseburgers and hardroll sandwiches. But of course, that is not really the issue, and I am forever thankful to Charles Platkin for pointing it out to me. [Mr Platkin has a great site called the dietdetective.com which has more great nutrition articles and ideas than you can posssibly read in an afternoon, probably a week of afternoons.]

Anway, Mr Platkin published a column in my local newspaper - "The Westerly Sun" [July 31, 2006] which I can find neither at the Westerly Sun [which has its own great health section] nor on dietdetective.com. So I will have to paraphrase the article:

"... The New England Journal of Medicine [reported] that people attempting to lose weight tend to underestimate the amount they eat by 47%... " In particular 86% of women underestimated how much they ate in a 24 hour study period by an average of 621 calories, and 60% of men underestimated their food intake by an average 581 calories. The American cancer society found only 1% of participants could correctly estimate a portion size when asked to do so.

So there's the problem: I don't keep an accurate, timely, accounting of what I eat outside my home.

When I left that picnic recently, I told my wife "I hardly ate anything, I'm sure I'll be fine when I add it up." Whoops! When I added up those "asprin" burgers, remembered what I really had for seconds, imagined what I had on my plate compared to a tennis ball (a tennis ball = a 1 cup serving, right?), well, I was way over.

And when I left that business meeting lunch, I knew I had eaten "too many" of those hard roll sandwiches, but it wasn't until I got home that I figured I had eaten six of them!

So where am I at? Right back at the Hacker's Diet with my defective "fullness" signals, only this time on a very short term, immediate basis. But it is important to know (or more accurately be reminded) that it's NOT a question of "will power", it's a question of having an accurate idea of how much I have eaten at any given time.

When I'm at home, I fill in my calorie log as I go, and I adjust what I eat as the day progresses - and I really don't have any problem staying within my calorie goals. So it's clear that when I go out I am going to have to keep a running total of what I eat and an estimate of the calories. If I do that I think I may be able to keep control of my calorie intake. Thank goodness it's not a question of "will power" - I don't have any.

Oh yeah, and what does Mr Platkin, the diet detective, recommend: "keep track of everything you eat... even one grape". In other words, a calorie log, what else!?

"Will Power"

"Will Power", "Self Control", "Discipline" - these are all words that I associate with "diet", and all imply a certain strength with regard to food that I find considerably lacking in myself.

In fact, I had hoped that I had elimianted the need for "will power" by the way I structured my diet - that is, allocacting an entirely reasonable calorie target for the day, and not being too upset if it was exceeded by 100 or 200 calories or so because, well, even thin people like my wife eat a little extra now and then.

And it seemed to work well, even pizzas and dinner out seemed to fit in the plan.

But then came the picnics and business luncheons.

I had already learned to never ever eat the desert, and to keep any alcohol consumption to 2 drinks max. But I was unprepared for the fact that even the most asprin sized cheeseburger is still 450 calories, that catered business luncheons could have delicious sandwiches on the best small hardrolls I ever tasted, etc.

In every case, there has always been a nice salad and or fruit cup available, and I ate some of that, but nevertheless when I got home and tried to tally up total calories for everything I ate- well 2000-2500 seemed to be the rule.

The results weren't devasting - even though I was as much as 1300 calories over my daily target, I was still under the calories needed to maintain my weight at it's current level, so I wasn't gaining weight or anything. But it was still disheartening.

I guess that I am finally realizing that the big three -"Will Power", "Self Control", "Discipline" - are going to be required under circumstance outside of home - a realization that's on par with the discovery that I actually had to count calories. Thank goodness it didn't take me 10 years to figure it out this time.