Tip: Stay Strong!

Everything we do, all day long, every day, relates to our health, well-being, and weight gain or weight loss. Weight loss, especially, requires a mind-body connection that cannot be broken for a moment. In a fleeting moment, I am able to convince myself that I deserve those four squares of dark chocolate embedded with almonds, and they won’t have an impact on my health or weight. One little slip, and I’m on a downhill trail. Why is that?

Nutritionist Mary Strugar had the answer when she said, "Foods with a high fat and sugar content cause certain chemical changes in the brain similar to those experienced when someone has used an opiate, so it is easy to see why some people find it hard to control food cravings.”

The problem with opiate-like substances is that when they enter your body, your body soon craves another infusion and then another and another. While I fooled myself into thinking dark chocolate and almonds are both good things to eat, because they both have health benefits, I forgot that a dark chocolate square also is laden with fat and sugar, and fat and sugar are as bad as any authentic opiate. Once I eat something even slightly sweet, I soon crave more. Once I cave and eat more, something in my brain says it’s okay—and even mandatory—to do it again and again.

While dark chocolate does have health benefits, moderation is key, and I’ve heard that it should be eaten perhaps twice a week in small quantities, and that’s it. Once I bought that gigantic dark chocolate and almond bar (Trader Joe’s is at fault, right?) and tasted one square of its deliciousness, I still had another dozen or more big, fat squares available, so I ate another square, and then another. Thankfully I managed to spread out my consumption of that gargantuan candy bar over a two-week period, but all the while, my body was screaming, “Sugar and fat! Give me more sugar and fat!”

Such inner voices can destroy a food plan quickly. Thankfully I had a wake-up call when I went to the doctor for a routine blood test. During intake I’m always told to get up on the scale, and to my horror, I learned I had gained (not lost, folks, but gained!) two pounds since my weigh-in at his office two months prior. Because I’m not naked at the doctor’s office, the way I am when I weigh at home, and because the doctor’s scale is no doubt more accurate than my home scale, and because I’m not weighing first thing in the morning at the doctor’s office, I’ve always weighed a few more pounds there than I do at home, but what did his scale read? The dreaded 200, the mark I swore I’d never see again.

Of course the truth depressed me. What did I do in the past when I was depressed? Eat chocolate, of course! Did I eat chocolate this time? No. Instead I analyzed the last few months of my life, and I know this: I reached a plateau of weight loss and was having trouble breaking through. My inability to report a weight loss on my blog led to my not writing in my blog as much. My not writing in my blog meant I was a little less accountable for my actions. Being a little less accountable meant I could eat that chocolate or take a second helping or eat more pasta than I should.

It may be the middle of the summer as I write this entry, but I’ve been snowballing, gathering excuses, rolling downhill, and getting larger in the process. I had one word for what I needed to do: Stop!

After the weigh-in at Dr. Lee’s office, I stepped off the scale and stepped back into the weight-loss mindset. The chocolate bar was history, although it probably lives on, clinging somewhere around my middle. Back to blogging, eating consciously, working out, and walking farther and more often with my dog.

On the good side, my blood test results were the best they’ve been in years. Although my cholesterol and blood sugar both had been mildly elevated for years, they are now in the normal range. I credit the cholesterol reduction to the addition of ground flax seed and fish oil to my daily routine, both recommended by my doctor. He believes as I do that it’s always better to take natural substances than to take drugs. I have desperately wanted to avoid taking statins, believing that any drug that requires I have my liver tested regularly for damage can’t be good for me.

Anyway, I’m back on track. I weighed in today at home, it being Monday, and my weight is back closer to what it was at my lowest on this food plan. I am back on track. I will not join the majority of people who gain their weight back after losing it. Even if I never go below 190 again, I’ll never go above 195 again, either.

How frustrating it is, though, to realize I cannot let anything slip. I can’t let my food plan slip. I can’t let my blog slip. I can’t let my exercise program slip. I envy the folks born with small frames and whatever genes there be that fight off obesity, but I’m all the more triumphant for being in charge of myself, my mind, and my weight. I'm convinced it makes me a stronger person.

Weighing In On the Weight-Loss Issue

Where have I been lately, you may ask. I took an unintentional break from blogging. I’ve had a heavy workload, many obligations, and I’m making some big decisions about the direction I want to take my life and my business, so blogging took a backseat for a while. Even though my mind has been everywhere else, the one thing that stays on my mind is my intention to stay conscious of my eating.


Some days I’m conscious that I’m overeating at meals, but at least if I overeat, I’m consuming healthier foods than I used to stuff down my gullet. My thinking is that at least I’m not sitting in front of the television mindlessly eating copious amounts of popcorn and ice cream. The meals filling my stomach these days tend to consist of things such as collards, green beans, broccoli, chicken, fish, peaches, pineapple, or apples.

Still, overeating is overeating, and every piece of solid information I read points to the pure fact that the only way to lose weight sensibly is to eat less and exercise more, as in this website my nurse friend Deb sent me: www.medicinenet.com/weight_loss/page2.htm. 

The Obama administration weighed in (pun intended) with this opinion recently: “Americans need to make big changes in their eating habits to fight the obesity epidemic and a host of ailments caused by poor diets, including consuming less sugar, fat, and salt and more fish, fruits, and vegetables.”

I never stop reading about food plans, diets, weight-loss, and related subjects, so I’ve gathered a great deal of information I’ll be relating in future blogs. Today I want to say “boo, hiss” to the folks who burst the myth that muscle uses more calories than fat. The information says exercise isn’t all you need, if you want to lose weight; you still have to eat right. Here’s some information from the L.A. Times:

                                         The myth of ripped muscles and calorie burns

Sorry to say, but gaining muscle doesn't make your metabolism skyrocket. Put down that Haagen-Dazs.

"The bottom line is that weight loss is 90% about diet," obesity researcher Dr. Sue Pedersen, a specialist in endocrinology and metabolism in Calgary, told me. "The studies show that exercise alone is not going to result in weight loss."

To see the whole article, go to http://www.latimes.com/health/la-he-fitness-muscle-myth-20110516,0,7417131.story. 

Oh, how am I doing? Well, I’m swimming as hard as I can to stay in the same place. I reached a level where I’m gaining two pounds during the week and losing it by the end of the week, gaining it back the next week, and losing it again. At least I’m not seeing my weight creeping up too far, and it’s not getting too close to that ugly 200 mark, the mark I swore I’d never exceed again. I much prefer life down here in One-derland.

Yesterday my sister-in-law and brother gave a dinner party for the family. I’m proud of her; she’s lost almost twenty pounds. She had been using a cane, because of severe knee pain. She’s pain free now, walking without a cane, and walking farther and farther, each day. The meal she served was filled with lots of veggies, and she served fruit for dessert, and everything was delicious. I’m pleased to see that almost everyone in my family is eating more consciously. It sure makes life easier for me, too. My sister-in-law even went into her closet and gave me some of her old clothes that are too big for her. Talk about a bonus!

Yes, I’m blessed with a big, loving, happy family, and each of us is getting smaller and smaller.

Tip: Understand Your BMI

Obesity; ugh, what an ugly word. The only thing uglier is the term “morbidly obese.” People are considered morbidly obese when their weight significantly increases their risk of health issues such as high blood pressure, diabetes, and heart attack. I had heard that morbidly obese people weigh at least one hundred or more pounds over their ideal weight for their height. When I began my food plan, I thought I was tottering close to the label of morbidly obese, at about ninety or more pounds above my ideal weight.

Is obesity a personal opinion, however, or is there a way to determine what’s constitutes obesity? I’ve become a walking encyclopedia on the subject of weight loss, lately, and from all that I’ve read, doctors apparently determine whether a person is obese by calculating the person’s body mass index (BMI), which compares the person’s height to his or her weight.

According to the sources I found, obese folks have a BMI of 30.0 and above, and one source says the morbidly obese have a BMI of 40 to 49.9 According to these figures, I used to have a BMI of 43.4, so I didn’t totter close to the line of being morbidly obese, I stumbled right over it. I am now, at 190, at a BMI of 33.7. According to my BMI, then, I’m still obese, but not morbidly obese, which is a true life-or-death improvement.

Friends who see me now say I look great, but there’s a big difference between being within medical guidelines and simply looking better than I did when I was morbidly obese. I will have to weigh 140 to reach a BMI that says I am “normal” weight. Although I’ve been at a plateau for a while, I am still shooting for 150, which would give me a BMI of 26.6. According to the BMI scale, I will still be overweight, but much closer to the normal range.

The fact remains that my body has never been small. I have wide shoulders and hips, so my frame begs for more weight. At least I’ve always thought so, and I’ve never been a tiny person, even when I was young.

According one BMI scale I found, you’re considered underweight if your BMI is below 18.5. You’re within the normal range if your BMI is between 18.5 and 24.9. The overweight are between 25.0 and 29.9, and the morbidly obese have a BMI of 30.0 and above.

Another BMI scale said normal people have a BMI of 18.5 to 25 and the overweight have a BMI of 25.0 to 30.0. The two scales agree that a BMI of 30.0 is obese, but this scale goes on and says that a BMI of above 40 is considered severely obese, and a BMI of over 50 is super obese. Oh, super obese sounds so much better than being morbidly obese, right?

I know, death is a morbid subject, and I know that being overweight can lead to health problems and early death. I’m having way too much fun to succumb to early death just because I love popcorn. I’ve learned to love salads more than popcorn, and my story continues, as does my life.

To calculate your BMI, you can use the quick calculator at the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, part of the US Department of Health and Human Services, at http://www.nhlbisupport.com/bmi/. Send me an e-mail to report your BMI after you’ve used the calculator. Let’s lower our BMIs together.

Tip: Surgery Isn’t Even a Good Last Resort

I used to wish I could simply go to the doctor, get full-body liposuction, and have him dump all my extra weight in a biohazard waste bucket. Now I know that those who have liposuction, despite all the money spent and pain (perhaps) involved, gain their weight back, in places even less appealing than where it was sucked out.

I’ve always known that bariatric surgery wasn’t for me, though, even before I learned of its drawbacks. First, as an editor, I must remark on the word bariatric, a pleasant euphemism for “the treatment of obesity.” It sounds so much better to say “bariatric surgery” rather than “obesity-treatment surgery.”

A morbidly obese friend of mine once revealed a shocking fact that she told few people: She had undergone gastric bypass surgery years before. She, like most recipients of the surgery, lost drastic amounts of weight, but as the years passed, she managed to pile the weight back on and surpass her original obese weight. Because of her obesity, she did not want anyone to know she had undergone such wasted surgery. Her story reminded me of Al Hirt, a famous trumpeter in my time. He underwent gastric bypass surgery, as well. He also dropped a great deal of weight, but eventually he regained most of it before he died thirty years later of liver failure.

Maybe people think bariatric surgery is a quick fix, but as I understand it, most bariatric surgery, including gastric bypass, stomach stapling, and lap band placement, results in the patient having to eat extremely small portions of food at a time, because the stomach area is drastically reduced. I’m not a doctor, but as I see it, if we could learn to eat extremely small portions in the first place, we wouldn’t need to go under the surgeon’s knife.

A recent report said that people who underwent bariatric surgery lost an average of fifty-one pounds in a year. I lost more than that in less time, without invasive, drastic, expensive, and unnecessary surgery. I did it by doing what surgical patients are forced to do: I ate less.

The report also says that bariatric surgery may not be enough to mitigate the knee pain that obese people develop because of osteoarthritis, but I am more fortunate. My knee pain is gone.

I am thankful that I found the motivation from within instead of paying a small fortune and subjecting myself to a scalpel. I also proved that weight loss can reduce or eliminate knee pain. I thought I was becoming a candidate for knee surgery (according to the Canadian Institute for Health Information, about 38,400 knee replacements were performed in 2006-07). Last July, when I went to the doctor about my knee pain, my doctor’s assistant told me her husband sold supplies to orthopedic surgeons, and he said weight was almost always a factor when it came to who needed knee surgery.

I did it; I lost weight; I improved my health; I avoided surgery. Even though I still need to lose even more, I know I will. I know how. It wasn’t easy, but it wasn’t expensive, and I didn’t have to be sliced open.

In a few weeks, I’m going to D.C. to visit my son, Sandy, and daughter-in-law, Nancy. I spoke Sandy last night, and he said, “Now that you can walk, we have lots of great things planned to do together.”

Now that I can walk. It’s true. The last time I saw him, I was limping and swearing I was okay. I woke up every morning and swallowed ibuprofen, so I could move around enough to perform my daily chores. I avoided walking, whenever possible, because of the pain. Even grocery shopping was difficult, because I had to walk up and down the aisles at the store. I no longer have any such restrictions. Boy, so I look forward to seeing my kids!

I am beating my chest and patting myself on the back, all at the same time.

Here’s my source for information on bariatric surgery and its drawbacks. http://www.cbc.ca/health/story/2011/02/14/obesity-knee-osteoarthritis.html

Tip: Suck It Up: There's No Fast Way to Lose Weight!

Ugh. I look at my still-fat belly, and I wish I could go to a doctor and have him or her simply suck out the rest of the fat, so I could get on with life. Liposuction, done in moderation, is allegedly safe, right? Okay, even with all the hoopla surrounding a few deaths as the result of liposuction, wouldn't it be nice to go to sleep and wake up with this fat sucked out of me forever?

Is it forever, though? New studies show that fat sucked out during liposuction comes back in other places in the body, after a year or so, redistributed "upstairs,” mostly in the upper abdomen, but also around the shoulders and triceps. See "With Liposuction, the Belly Finds What the Thighs Lose" at
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/01/weekinreview/01kolata.html.

Oh, heck, this news means I have to keep up my regimen of conscious and careful eating? It means I can't suck down a bowl of chocolates or eat more than one of the lovely tiny French meringues someone brought to my writers seminar Saturday? By the way, I made the woman take the rest of the meringues home with her. They weren't as fattening as many of the other things I could consume, but if I eat sweets, my urge to eat more sweets returns with a vengeance. I do much better to avoid desserts entirely. Fruit, yes. Godiva chocolate and French pastry, no.

I'll say this, though. Even though I have eaten hundreds of salads since starting my food plan nine months ago, I still love them. I vary my salads at home, and I find new and interesting salads when I eat out. If I eat at least one salad for a meal each day, I can at the very least maintain my weight loss. If I eat two or three solid meals, though, I see my weight creep back up.

I don't want my weight to increase; not after all the effort it took to decrease it. By now I've sorted through almost all my clothes, and as a result, I've donated many bags of oversized clothing to charity. It feels good to try something on and see it hang on me like sackcloth. It feels equally good to try on something new and see that it flatters me and doesn't have to be tent-sized, to fit over my body. I also like seeing the clothes go to charity, where they might do someone else some good, until that person, too gets on a food plan and loses weight.

Some of the things I've given away made me a bit sad; a silk suit jacket, for example, that I bought years ago. I found only a few occasions to wear it, so I'm not sure I got my money's worth out of it, but it looks hideous on me now. It deserves a better home than the one I can give it.

Although I have found no easy way to suck out the fat and make it disappear, the day-to-day watching of my food intake has certainly rewarded me a thousandfold, not only in better looks but also in better health. Sunday I attended church for the first time in a long time. A well-known speaker had drawn a huge crowd, though, and the only parking I could find was at the far end of the huge parking lot. I parked, shrugged, and effortlessly strode up the hill to the building. Once inside, I had to walk around the hall to the front of the building, climb up the stairs to the sanctuary, and walk around the large sanctuary to a seat toward the front. When I sat down, I said a little "thank you" to God, because had I made that trek last July, but I would have been winded and in severe pain by the time I arrived in my seat. Instead, I felt absolutely fine, and I was in the right place to remember where I get my strength. Funny thing, though. When I said, "Thank you, God," I heard a still small voice whisper, "Thank you, Bobbie."

Tip: Watch Out for the Dieter’s Dilemma!

I’m at the stage in my weight-loss program when my loss has not only slowed to a crawl but sometimes backs up, and I have to spend a few days taking off a pound or two that I put on. At this stage, it’s harder than ever to stick to a food plan, because I’m not getting the reward and excitement of seeing the needle on the scale dropping. The urge is strong to say, “That’s it; that’s all I’m gonna lose. I may as well eat that ___.” Fill in the blank with a high-calorie food—I’m faced with plenty of them.

I keep running up against what I call “The Dieter’s Dilemma.” In the past, when each week I saw progress in my weight loss, I could easily refuse something calorie-laden. Now that I have little to no new losses to cheer about, I’m tempted to splurge on calories. Here’s a perfect example. About two weeks ago, my sister and I went to a restaurant after bowling. We smartly ordered one meal to share. When the server made a mistake on our order, though, she fixed it and added that the owner wanted to apologize by giving us a free flan for dessert. Dessert? I haven’t had a dessert, other than fruit, in months. Flan? Egg custard? Are you kidding me? Flan is one of my all-time favorite desserts on earth. No, the whole universe. A few months ago, I would have been able to refuse it, but not when I’m no longer losing pounds every month. The fresh, jiggly, mouth-watering flan came out on a dish with a large dollop of whipped cream, my other most favorite treat in the whole world. Fortunately my sister and I shared the dessert, so neither of us consumed all the calories, but we both had plenty, and I practically licked the plate clean.

Last week we went to another of our favorite restaurants, and during our conversation with the server, we mentioned how many times we go to that restaurant. At the end of our meal, as a thank-you from the owner, the server offered us another free dessert. What gives? When I was fat as a slaughter-ready hog, no one gave me free desserts, and that’s when I would have snorted them down without hesitation, happy as a pig in sugar.

What the heck, we said, bring on the key lime pie. Perhaps as some sort of offering to the calorie gods, however, this time my sister and I tacitly left the last couple of bites on the plate. Maybe we’re getting better.

Oh, and if free dessert isn’t a dieter’s dilemma, how about Passover, when one plate after another came out, this past Monday night. We’re also supposed to drink several glasses of wine, too. I did manage to sip only one tiny glass of wine and turn down some of the dishes of food and all the desserts, but I left my brother and sister-in-law’s house with a full belly, anyway. Yes, we Jews love any holiday that involves eating. On the bright side, my sister-in-law cooked fewer dishes this year and made sure they were low-calorie, because she’s on a food plan now, too.

My current mission involves fighting the dieter’s dilemma. I must remember to say “no” to free food, free dessert, second helpings, and other tempting treats that undo all the hard work I’ve performed so that I can fit into normal-sized clothes. I keep looking in the mirror to remind myself how much better I look, and it would be a shame to ruin what I’ve accomplished. Every time I leap up from the sofa without having to rock, balance, and groan, I remember how much healthier I am, too. Each time I run up the stairs, I recall how I used to climb up them painfully, one step at a time, and could barely drag the groceries up the stairs into the kitchen. No flan or key lime pie or plate of anything ever tasted as good as being healthy feels, and if I don’t lose another ounce, at least I’m determined not to go back to my unhealthy weight.

Truth be told, I’m still at a less-than-desirable weight, so I’m not abandoning my quest to lose more weight. I do, however, accept that fact that it will take longer than I hoped. Even if I don’t lose any more weight, knowing that I’m still trying to do so will keep me from turning loose of my self-control and forgetting all I’ve learned on my journey toward obtaining a healthier body.

With the support of my readers and my own mental discipline, the next time someone says, “Free dessert,” I’ll say, “That’s the dieter’s dilemma, but no, thank you.”

Tip: Get Off the Sofa!

I went to the gym today. No big deal, you say? Not so. I’ve had to meet deadlines with my editing projects and had appointments and been tempted by other diversions and have come up with any other excuse possible not to go to the gym for at least two weeks. This morning, though, I couldn’t come up with a single excuse. I’ve met all my pressing deadlines. I have no trips planned for the week. I have no appointments scheduled with my doctor, my dog’s doctor, or the optometrist, unlike most of my days, lately. The weather also offered no hindrance, being sunny, dry, and warm out. I had run out of excuses.

Off I went to the gym. A sign on the door says, “Know that getting here is half the battle.” I had won the first half of the battle; I was there.

I climbed onto the recumbent bike, told it to give me a good workout, and began pedaling. Whoa! Within a couple of minutes the muscles in my legs screamed at me, “You can’t put us through such torture!” What? Two weeks ago I pedaled for twenty minutes with no problem, and now I’m tired after three minutes? That’s what happens when you slack off from working out. I pushed myself to fifteen minutes, anyway. It helped that I could watch the Comedy Channel and some really funny comic, whose name I never managed to get. When he quit, so did I. On wobbly legs, I moved on to the machines, but not without a little bitterness. The darned bike not only tells me my heart rate, how long I’ve been pedaling, and how “far” I’ve gone, it also tells me how many calories I’ve used. Fifteen minutes of pressing those pedals burned a meager fifty calories. To put those calories in perspective, a cup of raw carrots is fifty-two calories. I had not even burned off a cup of carrots!

Resentful that I’d expended only fifty calories while pedaling my heart out, I moved from machine to machine, working out every possible muscle in the human body for more than an hour. Next I slipped into a bathing suit, slid into the pool, and performed fifteen minutes of water aerobics and swimming.

Next came my reward: the spa, the hot tub, or whatever you want to call it. Hot water sprayed through jets that massage my weary muscles. What could be better? I had time to think about calories while I soaked. I keep saying I don’t count calories, but I keep them in mind on my food plan. I know that any time I reduce the calorie count of a meal, I’m doing a good thing, but really, until I watched how few calories my body burns, despite what I consider hard exercise, I realize why losing weight is so darned difficult. It also explains why I absolutely have to get exercise that burns off calories; otherwise, my body stores every calorie I take in and don’t use, and what do we call that storage system? Fat. Yup, big globs of fat. Every roll of flab on my body constitutes hundreds of calories I consumed and didn’t expend.

I came home feeling stronger, happier, and upbeat. I promised myself I’ll get to the gym more often. No excuses!

Yeah, right. Next time I get to the gym, it will be because I fought my own demons and excuses and forced myself to go again. Maybe I should dangle a cup of carrots in front of myself.

Starting weight: 245
Weight last week: 189
Weight this week: 189
Total pounds lost: 56
Goal weight: 150