May Be On To Something

Well, for the first day, things didn't go badly.

When I signed off the blog yesterday, I started making those checks on the calendar every time I had an untimely urge to eat - there weren't as many as I anticipated - by the end of the day, maybe a dozen.

I had one real breakdown right before bed when I ate about 175 calories of canned potatoes - the timing, of course, was all wrong.

It's interesting that just writing this blog, and making a couple of marks on a calendar, can make me much more aware of what and when I eat. It's also obvious that I do have some problem gauging how much I eat - I thought I was very low yesterday, but when I added up everything this morning, I ate about 3200 calories, instead of the 2800 which would have been appropriate for the level of exercise.

I would have hit the 2800 if I hadn't had those potatoes before bed and skipped the half of my wife's candy bar [200 calories].

Which brings me to the question; should there be rules against certain foods: eg no candy bars, donuts, etc, ever. I'd include desserts at home (but not splitting one with my wife at a restaurant). What I am really asking is: should certain foods be treated like cigarettes - you just aren't going to have another, ever again. period.

I used to think that I would be impinged upon by never having another donut - but would I really? I mean, the benefits of never having another donut certainly outweigh the fleeting benefit (taste).

I n any event, I woke up hungry today, and that is the goal - actually be a bit hungry before eating. Those are signals I can read, and apparently, I can generate them, if I give myself the chance.

THOUGHT CONTROL

Well, I just read Katiebird's comment from a well over a year ago, and it's right there with Mike Huckabee, depression-wise. I mean, she's saying that not eating has to be a focus of your life, or the weight will come back (or the eating will take over - whatever).

I just can't totally accept that - when I lost my weight, when I started and wrote this blog - losing weight was my life's focus. I read about, developed a program, thought about it everyday, watched my success, etc.

But I have other consuming projects I want to do. For example, tax season: I am a local leader for the AARP Tax Aide service, and we had a hell of a year - over 625 returns prepared, over 750 clients. There's no question that "taxes" is the focus of my life for this 3 month period - not to mention the 3 months before that which is consumed with training and planning.

My next project is my derelict boat. I have lots of projects besides not eating.

If I have to, I am getting closer and closer to counting calories, because I know that works. But I am still searching for some other form of control - one that is more adaptable and can be sustained without being the focus of my life.

The main premise of Hacker's Diet is that my body does not create or receive signals indicating that I have eaten enough. I really subscribed to this idea, and it was partially the basis for my weight loss program. Yet I don't entirely believe that anymore. I mean, yesterday when I ate that donut, I was FULL. There was no missed signal there. My body body was screaming for mercy, but my mouth wanted food.

Now I don't want to get into psychotherapy here, but I am a big (tall) guy, and as a teenager I was not allowed to free feed - I was allowed to eat whatever I could get at certain intervals. And I was in competition with everyone else for the limited amount of food that was available. (I am NOT trying to say we were poor and didn't have enough food - just that a meal was a meal, and whatever was around was all I was going to get until the next meal.) And that is how I eat now - if the food is here, I eat it, and I eat it now, even if there's no one else who might remotely want to eat it. So I suppose I still feel, deep down inside, that I may not be able to eat again for a good long while.

So the more I think of it, the more I am beginning to think that I just have a nasty habit here.

I have read, and I think that I quoted an article here, saying that stopping smoking and losing weight are not the same thing. And that's probably true to a degree. However, the physical addiction to nicotine is just 3 days - the rest is just a pervasive habit.

I just scanned a couple of web pages on "how to beak a habit", and although they don't specifically use the term, the articles are all about intercepting impulses and urges. The exact same thing in cigarette smoking.

So in theory, something like my stop smoking slogan ("Having a [donut] now won't change a thing") should work. My friends slogan of "If I still want [a donut] five minutes from now, I'll have it" might also be a good one. Also, one of these articles suggested putting a mark on a calendar or something every time an urge/impulse occurs. For some reason it sounds like a good idea to me.

I also think, for myself, I would like to have a good long list of all the things I don't like about being fat again. Yes, being relatively skinny (of course I was never actually skinny) allowed me to experience many new, and better, things, that I hadn't been able to enjoy for quite some time.

I think I will try to have some sort of program by tomorrow morning.

If It's There - I Eat It

Well, at first I did OK with the house guest and his donuts -

I avoided the donuts altogether and settled for two bagels (one would have been preferable of course), and by lunch I was even hungry, which was a goal - to be hungry at meal times.

Lunch was OK - within bounds, though I did finish off my wife's french fries. But when we got home, things reverted to normal.

I was full, let's even call it stuffed, after lunch. Yet when I walked into our house, in short order I ate not only the last donut, but also half a muffin. Just to remind you, I was stuffed - I was actually uncomfortable after the donut, much less the muffin.

And this morning, I huffed down 4 slices of American cheese @ 70 calories per, as I'm frying eggs for breakfast - and I'd already had my oatmeal - I wasn't remotely hungry.

What the hell goes on in my head? It's not like I don't think about these things as I'm doing them. It's more like: "Well, this is a bad idea eating this _____. What the hell! {eat}"

What the hell indeed.

Back Again

Well, here I am - back again. I have gained back probably a bit more than 1/2 of what I lost. At the moment I seem to be totally out of control. I know that I have to lose weight - there's no question. I am, for example, out of breath every time I walk to the top of a hill, or every time I try to walk into a store from the parking lot. Now I know enough to know I don't have PHT or some other terrible disease, just a lot of visceral fat around my lungs. Yet I seem to eat more everyday day rather than less.

There is a money factor too. I eat a lot of bread, bread adds $10 to my weekly grocery bill. Also, my medical insurance has offered 10% rebate if I join some sort of healthy plan at my doctors office, and "maintain a healthy weight" or join to plan to reach a healthy weight. 10% is about $900, I simply can't afford to turn it down.

When I started this blog, and started losing weight, I was motivated by a 3 day stay in ICU. That experience has passed and the experience hasn't stuck with me. This is bad. When I finally quit smoking, it was because the last 3 cigarettes I had made me feel faint and dizzy. Each one was worse than the one before. I knew I was going to die if I had another. So I quit, and it's stuck.

But I had a lot of preparation before that last cigarette, and I knew one thing. That I couldn't have even just one more cigarette because I would ne hooked again. With just one. So I never had another.

I am becoming to believe that food is the same way. If I am going to lose weight and keep it off, I just can't have another doughnut, period. Or dessert at a restaurant. Etc. Somehow it doesn't work to say you are going to limit your intake of these things. Of course when I say "you", I mean "me".

When I orginally did mthis blog, it was easy to do the main component, that is, log my daily calories. It was natural, it gave me feed back, and I couldn't understand why everyone didn't do it. Yet now it is a burden. I know that when I started going off the "diet" - "program" is probably a better term - I was depressed by three things. First of all, I hit a plateau and just wasn't losing any weight over the last few months. Secondly, there were a great number of picnics etc, and it just seemed impossible to keep on the program. But most of all I was depressed by Mike Huckabee.

Quite apart from his presidential run, Mike made news by losing 100 pounds as governor of Arkansas, and keeping it off. He also made news by actually doing real things to reduce the obesity levels among Arkansas kids. But when I read that years after his weight loss, he still had to carry around a cooler of his own food, and avoid official banquets and otherwise more or less oriented his life around not eating too much. Well, that was just too much for me. I mean, it all seemed so pointless because his experience seemed to mean that I could never be "normal" when to it came to food. That I could never teach myself not to eat too much, or adjust to not eating too much, or whatever.

But now I guess I am coming to understand that's the way it is. That I am not "normal" when it comes to food, any more than an alcoholic is "normal" when it comes to alcohol.

One thing I noticed about quitting smoking, in myself and in others when they quit, was that everyone had a slogan, or a crutch if you will, that they could use when tempted by a cigarette. My own was "Having a cigarette now won't change a thing". And that worked for me. And I am wondering if it won't work again for food. Food as an addiction is something I have touched on before, but now I think I need to investigate more fully.

Perhaps, if I can become convinced that I am addicted to food, or somehow "abuse" food like other people "abuse" drugs, then maybe I will be more capable of resisting each individual impulse to eat There were, after all, hundreds of impulses to smoke every day when I was quitting, and I resisted those. Somehow, gaining control over "eating impulses" is now much more tenable than thinking that I will record everything I eat for the rest my life.

Well, my houseguest is back from church, so I have to close. I have a great deal of reading to do to catch back up, including my own blog, which I haven't read yet! There is also The Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity, Food Addicts in Recovery, and the Wikipedia entry on Obesity.

And the jokes on me: the houseguest has returned with donuts, muffins and bagels from Tim Horton's. Just what I need - donuts sitting around the house. Let's see how that slogan works...

What's the Future Hold for Obese People?

Back in August I wrote a comment to my post of August 3rd, which said in part:

" One problem with obesity is that I do not directly harm the person standing next to me. But one day, the cost 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."

Since that time I have posted a number of articles that address the question of what the future will be for the obese. Some are positive, some less so.

Now we have an article from the New York Times (Oct 29) entitled "For a World Of Woes, We Blame Cookie Monsters" [also available here].

The article begins with a humorous undertone, but ends on a rather discouraging note:

"Fat people are more reviled than ever, researchers find, even as more people become fat. When smokers and heavy drinkers turned pariah, rates of smoking and drinking went down. Won’t fat people, in time, follow suit?

Research suggests that the stigma of being fat leads to more eating, not less. And if reducing the stigma suggests a solution, that’s not working either.

“One hypothesis about getting rid of stigma is having more contact with the stigmatized group,” Dr. Brownell says. But with obesity, the stigma seems to be growing along with the national girth.

He cites a famous study in the 1960’s in which children were shown drawings of children with and without disabilities, as well as a drawing of a fat child. Who, they were asked, would you want for your friend? The fat child was picked last.

Now, three researchers have repeated the study, this time with college students. Once again, almost no one, not even fat people, liked the fat person."

The article continues:

"One problem with blaming people for being fat, obesity researchers say, is that getting thin is not like quitting smoking. People struggle to stop smoking, but many, in the end, succeed. Obesity is different. It’s not that the obese don’t care. Instead, as science has shown over and over, they have limited personal control over their weight. Genes play a significant role, the science says.

... [T]he notion that anyone can be thin with a little effort has consequences. “Once weight is due to a personal failing, a lot of things follow,” he said. There’s the attitude that if you are fat, you deserve to be stigmatized. Maybe it will motivate you to lose weight. The opposite happens." As it turns out, the studies show that fat people respond to stigmatization and discriminatin by, what else, eating more.

So basically, what you can conclude from this article is that people [including fat people] are getting increasingly annoyed with fat people. Where exactly will this lead? Who knows? - but today, the future is not that rosy.

And Now - A Brief Political Interruption

I urge everyone to read the following article by Kevin Tillman, brother of Pat Tillman - killed by friendly fire in Afghanistan.

Red or blue, I believe that Kevin's powerful words will resonate with everyone as he makes us think about issues we would rather not think about...

After Pat's Birthday, by Kevin Tillman

KatieBird - I'm Alive and Kickin and Living in New England

KatieBird, author of Eat4Today and leader of the support group there, posted a nice comment to me. While browsing the many blogs related to obesity I can't help but notice the many that just ended in mid life - so to speak. To have someone miss mine was truly a surprise. And much appreciated. Thank you.

Can't say why I quit writing exactly - blogging does take a lot of time, and I became somewhat depressed when my weight plateaued, and there were numerous aches and pains that kept me from my full exercise schedule (not to mention the summer's heat), yada, yada ,yada...

But I think the real reason I quit blogging and became content with losing 50 pounds was that my medical event lost its punch. That is, I feel better - no shortness of breath on my walks, easier time getting up and down from chairs, cars, etc

I have new doctors' appointments in ealry December, and I will see what's what then. But to tell to truth, my wife and I couldn't quite remember what is wrong with me when we discussed it this afternoon.

So, thanks to KatieBird, I am trying to get back in the grove. My weight has stayed between 299 and 304 since I stopped writing, so I could just pick up where I left off. For the last couple of days I have been trying to log my calories again. Hasn't happened yet, but maybe just the feel of blogging will get me over the hump.

However it turns out - I will never forget KatieBird's little note. Thanks.