bearing blog

From the "other people's weight loss" department.

Sci-fi author and blogger John Scalzi has a post up (with info-graphics!) describing "The Incredible Scalzi Weight Loss Plan."  It might interest.  

Thought this point was very relevant:

3. I didn’t freak out when I slipped because I knew it was a long term project. Which meant that on the occasional days I ate more calories than I was supposed to, I didn’t get OCD about it. I just kept to the schedule after that. Alternately, while I did make a general effort to eat better, I didn’t feel guilty about ice cream or other empty calories when I had them. I just tried to keep the portions from being stupidly gargantuan, and compensated later with better, healthier foods. Over time everything balanced and I lost weight on a fairly steady basis, as the chart suggests.

I expect there will be some interesting stuff in the comments.

Simcha on gluttony.

Reader Kate pointed me to this post by Simcha which is relevant to much of what we've explored here.  Enjoy your stewing.

The Twinkie diet.

Tabitha was the first person to point out the "snack cake dieting" professor to me and since then I have gotten a couple of messages.  Well!  Let's take a look.  

First of all, here is a link to the CNN article, "Twinkie diet helps nutrition professor lose 27 pounds."  

Second, he has a Facebook page: Sample diet day with grams and calories here. Here is the discussion board topic "Diet for Fall 2010."  It follows his weight and lipid profile as time passes.  I'm much more interested in reading his own words than in reading the CNN report, so let's take a closer look at that.

This semester I decided to do it as an example for my HN 535 course (Energy Balance). The purpose is to illustrate metabolic, mental, and sociological issues surrounding "weight". The principle is simple...eat fewer kilocalories than I expend. I have set 1,800 kcals as my goal. The basis of the energy comes from Little Debbie snacks -- I eat about 4-5 a day. The other 'limits' of the diet include milk (for protein), 1 protein enhanced serviing, veggies ad lib (as long as they are low starch/calorie), sweetened cereal on occassion, 1-2 multivitamins, and 0 calorie caffeinate products (coffee and diet cola).

The choice of "Little Debbie" products was simply to use a recognizable snack that is processed and deemed by most as "junk" food. I have allowed other foods (that is, I have 'cheated') so long as they are considered "junk" or deemed by many to be "bad" for one's health (e.g., I had a Pepsi yesterday morning, loaded with obesity-causing sugar -- except I am losing weight). I recently switched from 1% milk to whole milk, as whole milk is deemed to be worse for one's health.

I think you might be getting the picture of why I am pursuing this exercise. I am not recommending or promoting this approach. I am simply in the process of illustrating that foods deemed to wreck diets, cause obesity, lead to diabetes, etc., do not - in and of themselves - do that.

Sounds like a great idea for teaching.  And I commend him, as a scientist, for refusing to stake any firm conclusions on the outcome of his anecdote.  

So, let's see here.  What's wrong with this diet?  Well... what can be "wrong with" a diet?

• It can include too many or too few calories
• It can be deficient in any of many different essential vitamins and minerals
• It can be deficient in protein
• It can be deficent in fiber
• It can contain a suboptimal balance of types of fat (but note, nobody actually knows what the optimal balance is)
• It can contain toxic substances

We know how many calories he ingested:  his goal was to eat less than he expended, and apparently he managed that.  He says he ate vegetables, so presumably got at least some fiber.  He drank milk and had a protein supplement, so there's the protein.  He took a multivitamin, which should keep him from getting scurvy (remember, he only wanted to do this for a couple of months).  And despite the horrified gasps from mothers, co-op shoppers, and low-carb dieters everywhere, snack cakes do not contain any actual poison.

A key piece of information that you would not notice from the press coverage and buzz, which emphasizes all the sugar:  This is NOT so much a high-carbohydrate diet.  It is a low-calorie, high-fat diet.  

From the Facebook page (emphasis mine), written on day 4:

So, to recap...I am eating about 50% or more of my calories from fat/day (with most of that fat being saturated), I eat mostly junk food (except for veggies & even if they're fried), I drink whole milk, and take a multivitamin.

I noticed the number "50%."  (Although in his sample diet day it's only 33%)  During my own weight loss period, I also ate about 50% of my calories per day from fat.  I've seen this number a couple of other times as an amount that led to successful weight loss -- I think it turned up in at least one of the anecdotes in Gary Taubes's book Good Calories, Bad Calories.  

So, let me wrap this up so I can start my school day.  I am interested in the larger implications for nutrition science, of course, but what are the implications for ordinary people trying to develop a manageable healthful lifestyle, avoid gluttony, and maybe get to a healthy weight and healthy blood chemistry?

(1)  Junk food can be a delicious part of this nutritious breakfast.

You may have psychological reasons why it's a bad idea for you to have certain foods.  I don't keep saltine crackers around because I can't stop eating them.  Other people feel that way about ice cream, or cheeseburgers, or potato chips.  But if this guy can practically live on Little Debbie Snack Cakes and still lose weight, that rather supports the idea that a weight loser can incorporate favorite junk food into her daily routine.   

If you are not sure whether it is possible, the thing to do is try an experiment on yourself.  Plan two days with equal calories.  One day let some of those calories be from a Twix bar.  Which day are you happier?  Which day do you feel better?

 

(2)  This man carefully counted and controlled total calories.   

So did I, when I was losing weight.  It's kind of a pain, and few people will want to keep up the habit after they have lost the weight, but it is a powerful tool for weight loss and weight maintenance if you are willing to take the time and to be honest with yourself.

(2a.)  Meanwhile, he ate stuff he found appealing that had plenty of fat in it.

Again:  so did I during my weight loss period.  I ate what I wanted.  I controlled calories. 

 

(3)  A snack or meal of junk does not "ruin your diet."  

There is just no excuse at all to say after a slice or two of chocolate cake, "Wow, I really messed up.  I'll start again tomorrow."   Or (this is what I used to do) "Gosh, I just ate a whole lunch of junk.  There wasn't any nutrition there.  I better eat a SECOND lunch with some nutrition in it."  

This man ate junk for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.   What he did, that most of us don't, is that every day he quit eating food -- he quit eating junk AND he quit eating healthy food -- before the calorie count passed the limit.  

If you want to lose weight, you cannot give yourself a "do-over" every time you eat something that is unhealthy or unsatisfying.  You have to get used to saying "Oh well, I will have something better at another meal."

(4) He went through a period of feeling crappy when he first changed his diet, but the crappy feeling went away.  

From the discussion page:

A reporter has already distorted my diet by omitting the phrase "for one day" after stating "his head felt like it was in a vice" -- thus, making it seem like I've felt bad for the entirety. 

I think this is pretty common -- the first few days of a new dietary composition cause some kind of biochemical rebellion.  Fortunately we are often highly motivated in the first few days of anything, so that can help us get through it.  On the other hand, it is all too easy to misinterpret "I feel crappy" as "I feel hungry."

(5) It's indisputable that eating fewer calories than you burn causes weight loss.  The tricky part for an individual is managing behavior so that you really do eat fewer calories than you really do burn.

And here is where individual psychology comes in.  Because what "works" for one person to motivate her, to help control cravings, to keep a sensation of having enough energy, all while she consumes fewer calories than her body needs (face it, dieting IS starvation) -- that may not work for another person.  This guy was highly motivated to stick to his diet because he wanted to use it to prove an academic point.   Oh, and he also measured everything to a degree that some would call "obsessive" and others would call "like a nutrition professor with an entire lab at his disposal."

----

So what's happened here that confirms my own pre-conceptions?

One good way to lose weight is to:

• carefully control total calories 
• while eating stuff you like to eat 
• that has plenty of fat in it 
• and enough protein to avoid muscle loss
• adding a multivitamin and to avoid deficiencies
• while you are essentially underfeeding yourself.

The only piece of the puzzle that I really believe in that isn't present here?  I believe in pounding the veggies.  Professor Haub ate some vegetables every day, but that's a far cry from the 6-8 servings I try to get daily.

Oh, and one more thing:  I suspect this guy of gunning for an Ig Nobel prize, but hey, I respect that!

 

Just maintaining.

I'm almost done going through and finding all my weight loss posts and categorizing them into broad categories so that I can maybe, eventually, produce a printable version.    

Along the way I'm re-reading some of them, remembering where I was at each stage, and occasionally thinking of interesting updates.  (Remember those cookies on my dresser?  Guess what?  They are STILL THERE.)

One thing I've been trying to figure out is whether there is really anything original or unique about my own approach and philosophy.  I know that I have an original and unique personal experience and an original and unique voice, because everyone does, sheesh.  But what is there in the meat of what I did and what I write about that is different from all the other gazillion books out there?  If not, why bother?  (Of course, the other way of looking at it is -- if so many other people can publish and self-publish the same old advice over and over again, why not me?  But I digress.)

The part that seems to me like it might not have been done (much) before is the notion that what we really can control is the habit-changing, not the numbers changing.   To let go of the numbers and embrace the desirable habits whether they "pay" in numbers or not.  Add that to the idea of measuring and celebrating success in habits, not in numbers -- and the idea of adding habits slowly, systematically, and deliberately ---and I'm not sure I've seen that anywhere else.  

The closest thing I've seen is in The Beck Diet, which is a cognitive-behavioral therapist's take on it.  I am not a cognitive-behavioral therapist, but it seems like a good approach (or at least, it seems similar to mine).

Is there something I'm missing, or does that sound about right?

This occurred to me a couple of weeks ago when a friend who has been changing her habits and who has dropped 20-odd pounds in the last several months posted that she was changing her goals during an upcoming stressful time.  She was going to work on maintaining her weight rather than on losing weight during that period of predictable high stress.  

It is the sort of thing that years ago I would have said "Great goal!"  about, but these days I just don't believe that anymore.  I commented that I didn't think maintaining the scale was a "goal."  The reason I gave is that it's not directly under your control the way habit is.  (Post and comment are here.)

It bugged me and bugged me for a few days because there was something else about the notion of easing up on yourself, and just maintaining weight rather than continuing to lose it, during a stressful time that bugged me. Even though on the surface it sounded perfectly reasonable.

And then this morning I think I figured it out.  Here on the other side of weight loss, it's perfectly obvious that "how I lost the weight" and "how I maintain the weight" are THE SAME.  There is not a  significant difference between my behaviors as a weight-losing person and my behaviors as a weight-maintaining person.  

Oh, sure, I must be consuming more calories.  (Especially since I am breastfeeding an eight-month-old.)  But the habits are not very different.  At least, if you compare these three versions of me:

•  (A) stable-but-heavy, pre-2008 me; 
• (B) 2008, weight-losing me; 
• (C) stable-but-normal weight, current me

... well, (A) and (C) behave very, very differently.  (B) and (C) behave much the same.  

(Whereas conventional energy-balance wisdom might seem to imply that (A) and (C) would behave similarly, and (B) is the one who would be behaving differently.)

I guess I now believe that maintaining is just as hard, or just as easy, as losing weight.  I guess I now believe that you can't really save much effort and stress by changing from "trying to lose" to "trying to maintain."  Going back to old habits is not "maintaining" behavior, it's "gaining" behavior.

What you can do to ease up on yourself, to make things less stressful, is to temporarily stop adding new good habits and "maintain" the ones you have.  

Like much that I've learned, it's kind of bad news.   But it's good news in a way too, I think.

Brain scans.

Yesterday Hannah brought me over a newspaper clipping that she had removed from the copy of the Wall Street Journal that was delivered to her house.  Here's the link to the article, "Eating to Live or Living to Eat?"

Scholars have understood the different motives for eating as far back as Socrates, who counseled, "Thou shouldst eat to live, not live to eat." But nowadays, scientists are using sophisticated brain-imaging technology to understand how the lure of delicious food can overwhelm the body's built-in mechanism to regulate hunger and fullness, what's called "hedonic" versus "homeostatic" eating.

One thing is clear: Obese people react much more hedonistically to sweet, fat-laden food in the pleasure and reward circuits of the brain than healthy-weight people do. Simply seeing pictures of tempting food can light up the pleasure-seeking areas of obese peoples' brains.

In a study presented this week at the International Conference on Obesity in Stockholm, researchers from Columbia University in New York showed pictures of cake, pies, french fries and other high-calorie foods to 10 obese women and 10 non-obese women and monitored their brain reactions on fMRI scans. In the obese women, the images triggered a strong response in the ventral tegmental area (VTA), a tiny spot in the midbrain where dopamine, the "desire chemical," is released. The images also activated the ventral pallidum, a part of the brain involved in planning to do something rewarding.

Definitely interesting and worth reading the entire article.  

This is the point I'd like to highlight:  

Some of the most intriguing imaging studies have peered into the brains of people who have lost significant weight and kept it off through diet and exercise alone—although researchers say they're hard to find.

"They are very controlled individuals, and they are very rare. We had to fly some in from Alaska," says Angelo Del Parigi, a neuroimaging scientists who finally located 11 "post-obese" subjects who had dieted down to the lean range. In his studies for the National Institutes of Health's diabetes research center in Phoenix, Dr. Del Parigi found that food still elicited strong responses in the middle insula and the hippocampus, brain areas involving addiction, reward, learning and memory, just like the 23 obese subjects did.

This suggests that the temptation to see food as pleasure doesn't go away. "Post-obese people are extremely prone to regain weight," says Dr. Del Parigi. "The only way they have to counteract these strong predispositions is by having a very controlled lifestyle, with restrained food intake and exercise."

It doesn't surprise me at all, as a post-obese person.  I have written about how the impulse to eat too much hasn't gone away.  But I want to point this out because it supports two things I strongly believe about the chronically obese:

(1) It is really, really, really hard to overcome obesity because of factors that are beyond your immediate control (even if they are the result of free choices made long ago).  Be kind, for everyone is fighting a terrible battle.

(2)  It's not hopeless.  It's not impossible.  It requires a lot of hard work.  It can be overcome.

When we talk about individuals who are battling obesity, we have to acknowledge the difficulty, and honor the success, at the same time.

Monk's meal.

This morning I rolled out of bed at 5:45 to get my last chance for a swim this week.  I had to get back in time for Mark to leave for work.  I can't really exercise on an empty stomach, but I was rushed, so I sawed off a slice of homemade bread, buttered it, found a cheese stick in the fridge, and ate them up.  Not my favorite breakfast -- I like having an egg -- but it would have to do.

As I chewed my bread, I thought about a post I read yesterday by Willa at Quotidian:  "Bread and Pittances," about the daily diet of Cistercian monks.  The monks (except the sick) get bread and vegetables on ordinary days, and small amounts of eggs and fish on feast days.  Willa did a nutritional calculation on the monks' meals; the results may surprise you.

If nothing else, it should be a corrective for that twice-annual fast day panic:  "OMG it's Ash Wednesday, I only get to have one normal-size meal, I better make sure it's BALANCED AND HEALTHY."

Reality check number one with this:  Fasting is not about eating healthy.  It is supposed to be a mortification.  Check out the root of that word.

Reality check number two, a corollary to the first:  Clearly if we think our TWO fast days per year should be balanced and healthy, we must secretly be thinking that "eating balanced and healthy" is a penance, rather than everyday life.  Balanced and healthy is Ordinary Time, folks.

Reality check number three:  Check out that monk's meal.  Bread and vegetables.  And?  Balanced and healthy.  In particular, it's got plenty of protein.  These guys are living simply, but they are not starving.  They live every day on something that we would be worried we wouldn't make it through ONE day on.  Clearly we are messed up.

For people who are inclined to be concerned about "balanced" meals, it is really easy to fall into the trap of thinking that you need animal protein at every meal to be "balanced."  I am no vegan, believe me.  I am pretty sure humans need at least a little bit of animal fat and animal protein for optimal health.  (And the Cistercians that Willa mentions do get this, just not every day).   But the longer I have spent living and eating my new life, the more I am shedding my Fear of Bread and the more often I find myself making meatless meals.

Another blogger's book review: The End of Overeating.

Willa at Quotidian reviews Dr. David Kessler's book The End of Overeating.  (I am in line to get it through the library and haven't read it yet.)  Paragraph splits are mine here for emphasis.

Kessler (the author of the book) mentions that over-eating is not JUST a problem with the overweight or obese population. Sure, it is the rapid climb in average weight of the American population since the 80's that has captured the attention of the medical community. But the phenomenon of over-eating does affect non-overweight people too.

 He describes a person of normal weight who suffers from obsession and cravings similar to some other people who are overweight, and says that in one study, about 17% of the "lean" population (his word, not the one I'd use to describe myself even when my BMI is below 22) has food obsessions (compared to something like 45% of the overweight or obese people in the study). 

Even if these "lean" people do not have the medical and other problems that come with overweight per se, they have some of the other issues -- a fear of lack of control, spending excessive mental energy thinking about eating or planning eating, low self-esteem, the health problems that come from eating too much of the poorer quality of food that usually comes with obsessive or craving-oriented eating. 

People like me who have been eating rather poorly since adolescence are probably more subject to other health problems even if this doesn't show up in the statistics as a food-related issue. And of course, there are the spiritual and emotional components. One doesn't really want food to be in control. Dr Kessler quotes several people, successful in their careers and lives, who feel heartbroken to be so out of control when faced with a bowl of M&Ms or a tray of fries.

I'm looking forward to reading Kessler's book in part because it is dawning on me that even though I am now of "normal" weight and this is evidence that I have learned many new skills in dealing with overeating, I likely will never be able to relax and eat intuitively, or in response to hunger, without recourse to additional control strategies.  Even thin people overeat.  I am now a "normal" person, but I still struggle with overeating, and I have to assume that I always will -- not because I've given up hope, but rather because it isn't safe to assume I am safe.

Willa has a number of other observations up that are worth reading in  subsequent posts.  Check them out.

Thoughts on chocolate cake and cravings.

I respond in the comments.  Thoughts?

Innovation.

My friend Marybeth blogging at Confessions of a Fat Loser is the first person ever to find a new use for a bridesmaid dress she hates.

So I got the bridesmaid dress for my sister's wedding (that she decided to go small on and not have bridesmaids...).  I HATED the dress on the David's Bridal website, and had to decide to 'suck it up' and wear it joyfully (and without comment, which is big for me) because I love my sister.    It's even worse in person, I think.  My husband pointed out what physical aspects the dress really emphasizes, and the kids said I look beautiful in it.  (Kids are such a wonderful esteem booster!)  Still, I really do hate the thing....

  Anyway, I figured as much as I hate the dress and hate the photos, I'd post them as my 'before' photos.  I think every few months, I'll repost photos of me in that icky dress and eventually, over time, I'll look better in it.  And this way, I'll get some use out of the thing :)

Marybeth is several good habits and a little more than twelve pounds along in her blog/food journal/weight loss journal.  I'm commenting there daily.  Come on over and follow along if you like.  I believe she said later today she'd post requesting healthy recipes -- maybe you'll have some ideas for her?

Quick poll: grease and salt edition.

Answer in the comments, since I don't have enough readers to bother with a poll widget.

Which is more difficult to do if there is a plate of French fries within your reach?

A.  eat zero -- don't even touch them

or

B.  eat one or two, and then stop

(If you don't love French fries, please substitute any other item that you love that comes in small bite-sized quanta, e.g., jelly beans, chips with salsa, etc.)