I love food. Always have and always will. From an early age my brother and I were always fed a diet of meat, poultry, fish, a lot of vegetables, and small amounts of starch and carbohydrates, which was mostly at dinner and usually brown rice. We took sack lunches to school, which were always the same: a sandwich on Roman Meal whole wheat bread, an apple, some carrots or celery, and an Archway whole wheat cookie. After-school snacks were, as you might expect, carrots, celery, apples. We never had potato chips, packaged pastries, or candy in the house. On the infrequent ocassions we went out to eat it was nearly always to one of two places: Sizzler steak house, or an all-you-can-eat buffet called Sir George's Smorgasboard. At the latter my father would always say when we entered and got in line, "Don't fill up on bread!"
The rule in our house was this: you have to try everything twice before you don't have to eat it anymore. To this day there is very little I don't like. A few exceptions I can think of are some organ meats like liver, tongue, and heart--I've eaten and enjoyed tripe, but only in homemade menudo--and durian, which is actually banned in some countries. I have even acquired a taste as an adult for some foods I never liked as a child. Notably, asparagus and brussel sprouts which I discovered I had never had properly prepared. They had always been boiled until soft, which completely changes the flavor. I have also never come across a cuisine I didn't like: Italian, Mexican, Moroccan, French, German, Irish, Spanish, Greek, Vietnamese, Philippine, Ethiopian. It's all good!
You might think that being raised on such a healthy diet with a lot of variety would be a big help in maintaining body weight. For me, it helped only after the fact in that I knew what a good diet was. But it was my love of food generally that was my downfall. And since my weight didn't seem to fluctuate much, I didn't pay any attention to it. I knew I had weighed around 155 for nearly 30 years and wasn't in the habit of weighing myself. That all changed when I hit 50. Having to renew my driver's license I decided to check my weight. I stepped on the scale--just shy of 200 pounds. I felt sick to my stomach.
I made a conscious decision to get my weight under control and came up with a common- sense plan that I figured I could manage without being so difficult that I would cheat. I wanted a plan with some variety and also one that I could continue using after I reached my goal weight. 18 months after I started I was back to weighing 155. Now, at the age of 66 I weigh 148. Although the plan is simple to state you need to put in some effort to make it work for you. Here are the two steps:
- Monitor your calorie intake
- Find an external motivation
Step 1
From my experience most people have only a vague idea of their daily calorie intake. If you don't already know you need to find out. The best way is to keep a calorie diary for 1 week and count every single item you eat. If you leave anything out, you are only cheating yourself. Once you have that information, you need to figure out a plan for limiting your calorie consumption. A general rule of thumb for gradual weight loss is 1200 calories a day for a woman and 1500 for a man for. Now you have some choices to make.
First, your primary goal is to lose weight, which is predominantly about the quantity of calories in your food. At some point you may decide to improve the quality of your diet as well, such as eating organic foods, cutting back on sugar, carbohydrates, and harmful fats. Save that for later and focus for now on weight loss. But--you may find you are able to do both at once, depending on your choices.
Second, you need to make an outline of what you are going to eat such that it adds up to no more than the recommended calories per day. You can eat whatever you want so long as you don't exceed that calorie count. But there are some key points to consider. For example, if you eat only ice-cream and potato chips, you will never feel full and will be fighting hunger pains every single day. There isn't enough quantity there to fill your stomach and satiate your appetite. If you eat a lot of bread and pizza you may feel full, but you won't be satisfied and you will be fighting food cravings. That is one of the problems with simple carbohydrates--they might fill your stomach, but they won't satiate your appetite.
So what is the solution? Proteins, vegetables and whole fruits. You can eat until you are full and your appetite is satiated. For proteins my preferences are seafood, chicken and lean pork (lean pork actually has fewer calories than chicken--if you are old enough you may remember the other white meat ad campaign.) For vegetables, you can eat just about all you want so long as you exclude legumes: peas and beans, and starchy vegetables: primarily corn and potatoes--basically anything that can be turned into oil or flour. Fruits I prefer are apples--peels on--and berries. These are my suggestions, but you are free to pick whatever you like, so long as you don't exceed the calorie count.
Once you have a list of foods, you can think about preparation. A general rule is to avoid preparations that add too many additional calories. For example, don't fry fish, chicken and pork; bake them, preferably without breading. Don't make tuna salad with regular mayonnaise; use a low calorie version or fat-free Greek style yogurt. Use low calorie salad dressings, or buy something like an Italian vinaigrette and pour off the oil floating on top. One of my favorite lunches is a big bowl of different frozen vegetables with tuna. I microwave the vegetables, pour off the water, and flavor them with low sodium soy sauce. For the tuna I mix it with some Trader Joe's Gyoza sauce--20 calories for 2 tablespoons. Another basic vegetable preparation is roasting with some seasoning and a little olive. Eat them warm, or chilled and added to a salad. For more suggestions some time spent googling will yield all the results you need.
Step 2
Losing weight is like having a project. Think of it like building a birdhouse. You start with some blueprints. Next you need to gather the right tools and materials. You follow the directions for making the individual parts. Finally you assemble them in the correct order and, voila--a birdhouse. For losing weight the usual approach is similar. You pick a target weight. You settle on a food plan (step 1). You allocate portions and mealtimes. You devise recipes for each meal. You stay on the plan, and after awhile you reach your goal. It should work, right? But if you have tried this approach, you know how hard it is. It often fails--that is why the weight loss industry is projected for 2023 to have revenues of $3.8 billion.
There is a crucial difference between building a birdhouse and losing weight. For the birdhouse project, the goal is the actual birdhouse. But what motivates you to achieve the goal is something else entirely. It may be to see a family of birds take up residence in your backyard. It may just be the pleasure of using tools and woodworking--sort of like a trip where the journey is at least as enjoyable as the destination. The key is that the motivational factor is external to the goal. What motivates you to build a birdhouse is not just to build a birdhouse.
Now think about the project of losing weight. The problem with the usual way of thinking about losing weight is that we don't separate the goal from the motivation. The goal for being on a diet is to lose weight. And the way to lose weight is to be on a diet. You end up stuck in a vicious circle. By not separating the motivation from the goal you are solely focused on food. It doesn't matter how well you have planned your food choices; you still need to eat less than you were eating before you started on the diet. But there is nothing to distract you from constantly thinking about food. And nothing makes you hungrier than thinking about the next meal. Constantly fighting hunger only decreases your chances of success. There is not point in toughing it out if there is a simpler method for reaching the goal. As the old saying goes: work smarter not harder.
As with the birdhouse example what you need is an external motivation. You need to find something not directly related to food and diet that can serve as a motivation to stay on the diet. The motivation will serve to keep you from being constantly focussed on food and help you break out of the vicious circle. For me the motivation was to run the Chicago marathon--something I had thought about on and off for many years, but never actually attempted. Now was the perfect time. A significant benefit of marathon training is how involved it can be. There are scores of books and magazines to read and study, online forums, clubs and training groups. It can consume a lot of time that you might otherwise spend just thinking about food. And because it is physically demanding, it helps with weight loss; even though that isn't the direct goal of running a marathon.
If you are just starting out like I was, having a fitness related goal is ideal. The exercise together with the diet is the quickest way to get to your desired weight. There are plenty of options like walking, hiking, swimming, bicycling, weight lifting, tennis, racquet ball--the list is endless. All of these have a lot of the same extra benefits as marathon training. But even something like writing a book can serve as a motivation. The trick is to combine it with something like walking. You can carry your phone with you and record notes for your writing project while you walk. Even listening to audiobooks can be a motivation. Pick a project like biographies of the Presidents, or everything by a particular author. If you are only listening while you walk you will find yourself walking farther the more involved you get in the book.
Another interesting motivation is one a friend uses. He has taken up being a healthy food expert and has spent hours learning about topics such as vitamins: how much you need, the difference between requirements for men versus women, how they are related to age. He has studied the effects of sugar, fat and carbohydrates, the causes of diabetes, and the effects of drinking alcohol. Although some of hid study relates to food, it is external in the way he approaches it. For him it is like being a scientist rather than a cook. Both are studying food, but the scientist isn't spending time thinking about how it tastes and how to prepare it. For the scientist, food is an object of study, just like the planets are for an astronomer, The scientist doesn't care what food tastes like since that doesn't matter for health or nutritional value. For the cook, it is all about the flavor, the preparation, and the pleasure of eating--not something you want to spend a lot of time thinking about if you are trying to lose weight.
Once you have your motivation, you are ready to start in earnest. It won't be easy, but if you have the right motivation, it will be much easier than the alternative of the vicious circle. Here are a few suggestions from my experience that you may find helpful, or not.
Check your weight daily at the same time. I prefer when I wake up. This helps me since it is something I never used to do and now find it useful as a data point. But there are some caveats. When you first start it may be discouraging when you don't quickly see any weight loss. It usually takes several days before the body adapts to a change in diet and measurable weight loss occurs. Fluctuations are also common, for a number of reasons, the chief of which is water retention. When you see a sudden gain of a pound or even two, even though you are maintaining your calorie intake, don't get discouraged. The average number of calories in a pound of body weight is about 3,500. Although recent studies have shown this is a little oversimplified, for our purposes it is a good rule of thumb. A pound of water is only 16 ounces, and at any given time your body is storing about 5 pounds of water. So unless you have gone way off your diet, you haven't gained anything except water weight.
A more accurate measure of weight loss is how your clothing fits. If you have gone down a size in pants and maintain it for several days, you have lost weight regardless of what it reads on the scale. And the most satisfying measurement is when someone asks: "Have you lost weight?"
Try to avoid rewarding yourself with food that isn't on your plan. This isn't going to help you reach your goal. Remember, nothing succeeds like success. Reward food only serves to put your focus back on the foods you were eating and will be discouraging as soon as you finish eating. "Wow that was really good, but I sure miss eating it whenever I want!" Another term for this is "buyer's remorse." If you are going to treat yourself, do it with something other than food. Reward yourself instead with something that coincides with your motivation. If you are doing something fitness related, get a new pair of shoes or some other item of gear. Think about your motivation and reward that instead of rewarding the behavior you are trying to change.
Try intermittent fasting. This has become quite trendy, and it isn't for everyone, but it has helped me. Basically, it just means skipping breakfast. Based on my own experience, combined with that of others I have read about, breakfast is NOT the most important meal of the day. Keep in mind, your experience may differ. But it can be especially useful if your meals are not filling enough and you are having a hard time with being frequently hungry. It allows you to have two larger meals instead of three medium sized meals.
Please leave comments if you have questions and if you find this useful. Good luck!
**About my marathon goal: I sustained an injury 2 weeks before the race and was unable to participate. Since then, life has gotten in the way and I haven't been able to pursue that goal. But it is looking like it may yet happen, although age is rapidly catching up.