You Are What You Eat – Musings of A Dieter

There’s a good article from CNN Health today for those that tend to binge on fatty foods, don’t get enough sleep and suffer from high amounts of stress. As I have written about before, as much as I stick to my routine of whatever calorie limit I have set for myself, it can be all too easy to cave into the temptation of a wonderful aroma or delicious looking food. In my experience, if my journal shows that I am well under my limit for the week, I allow myself to splurge a little bit and go over that daily limit, since at the end of the week I’ll still be under the overall limit. But it’s how I splurge is what is important. While I sometimes allow myself a hamburger and some fries, it’s important to constantly be aware of how I decide what to eat.

For example, if my co-workers decide to go to a burger joint for lunch, I obviously want to go along. My mind then begins to race on what I should order while I am there. A quick review of the actual ingredients is my first order of business, which usually includes a patty, hamburger bun, cheese, pickles, tomatoes, onions, lettuce and maybe some bacon. Taking out bacon and cheese from the order will reduce the calorie intake of that hamburger by up 130 calories, since bacon (50-60 calories) and cheese (60-70 calories) are very fatty foods, especially based on their actual physical size. The other large number of calories in that hamburger is the hamburger bun itself (around 120 calories). But what is a hamburger without the bun, and you certainly don’t want to make a scene eating a hamburger with a fork and knife and no bun. As long as you keep the raw vegetables for the rest of your hamburger, it’s not such a bad lunch. Hold off ordering the basket of fries and make do stealing a few from your co-workers and you’ll do just fine. Perhaps go for a walk after you get back to the office to burn off a few more calories to even out a little bit more. If you do all of that, you’ll feel that you dodged a bullet a little while still being able to hang out with your co-workers, if you like them, that is.

Some good tips for those who are looking for redemption after a calorie orgy:

Forgive yourself. “Having one overindulgent meal should not derail you from your healthful eating habits, while being too negative will make you more likely to throw up your hands in despair and overindulge at the next meal or several meals for days to come,” Elisa Zied, R.D., says.

Give yourself a do-over. Immediately start with lean protein, veggies, whole grains, and fruit, and drink plenty of water, Zied suggests.

Learn from it. Think about what triggered your overindulgence–not to punish yourself, but to choose smarter next time. “If you keep a food journal, you might see you ended up pigging out because you waited too long to eat,” Keri Gans, R.D., says.

Add on exercise. To feel in control again, simply tack on a few extra minutes to your regular walk, gym routine, etc. At the same time, “try not to think of exercise as a punishment for overindulging,” Zied says. If you do, you’ll grow to dread the gym

You can read the entire article here.

If only the aromas of a delicious barbecue were enough to quench the carnivorous desires of a hungry man. I just went to the Los Altos Farmers’ Market in downtown Los Altos, and the temptation to order a nice hunk of meat was all too strong. Had I not eaten that piece of pizza at lunch time perhaps I would have caved. But numbers are numbers, and I must obey the law of the Calorie Nazi. If only we could simply eat what our hearts told us to, there would be no need for a diet. But my brain says otherwise, as I know I’ll regret it later on, since a barbecue is a calorie’s delight.

I’ve been reading an interesting article in the New York Times Magazine this week titled “Are Your Friends Making You Fat?” It’s about a study on social relationships possibly serving as a contagion for various social behaviors such as smoking, drinking, happiness, depression and gaining or losing weight, just to name a few of the behaviors. One would think and assume that immediate friends and family have a direct impact on your behavior as well as you affecting theirs. But according to this study even friends of friends that you may not even know can be affected by your behavior as well.

In my situation, I wonder how my weight loss has affected those around me within the one to three degrees of separation that the study researches. I know that my older brother’s weight loss has had an impact on me as well as my younger brother’s weight problems weighing on me as I’ve seen him suffer some of its consequences over time. But I wonder if my weight loss has caused others to reevaluate their own situation. I can say that in my own work experience, the weight loss has been noticed and greatly admired by all those in my office. But I can’t say that it has exactly spurred those same people into action to want to do the same for themselves, even though they professed to want to do so. That would suggest to me that human will is the sole factor in embarking on such endeavors than simply watching the results of a co-worker’s weight loss in real time as I came into the office every day. I have no idea how their friends have reacted, because they may not have even said anything to them about it, or if they have, I’m sure it was in quick passing.

… co-workers did not seem to transmit happiness to one another, while personal friends did. But co-workers did transmit smoking habits; if a person at a small firm stopped smoking, his or her colleagues had a 34 percent better chance of quitting themselves. The difference is based in the nature of workplace relationships, Fowler contends. Smokers at work tend to cluster together outside the building; if one of them stops smoking, it reduces the conviviality of the experience. (If you’re the last smoker outside on a freezing afternoon, your behavior can seem completely ridiculous even to yourself.) But when it comes to happiness, Fowler said, “people are both cooperative and competitive at work. So when one person gets a raise, it might make him happy, but it’ll make other people jealous.”

I suppose then that if I were to ever fall off the wagon, I should expect larger and larger co-workers since negativity has a far greater effect than those that are positive.

Read the entire article at the New York Times.

Interesting bit of news out today on a study on the relationship between aerobic exercise and our ability to become smarter or at least think faster. Of course the results are not conclusive, but other studies have been done apart from the one mentioned in this article to at least suggest a connection between the two.

Other recent studies provide some preliminary answers. In an experiment published in the journal of the American College of Sports Medicine, 21 students at the University of Illinois were asked to memorize a string of letters and then pick them out from a list flashed at them. Then they were asked to do one of three things for 30 minutes — sit quietly, run on a treadmill or lift weights — before performing the letter test again. After an additional 30-minute cool down, they were tested once more. On subsequent days, the students returned to try the other two options. The students were noticeably quicker and more accurate on the retest after they ran compared with the other two options, and they continued to perform better when tested after the cool down. “There seems to be something different about aerobic exercise,” Charles Hillman, an associate professor in the department of kinesiology at the University of Illinois and an author of the study, says.

Similarly, in other work by scientists at the University of Illinois, elderly people were assigned a six-month program of either stretching exercises or brisk walking. The stretchers increased their flexibility but did not improve on tests of cognition. The brisk walkers did.

Read more here.

One major factor in a person failing miserably at a diet is the inability to sustain a regular regimen of daily exercise. The common excuse is that one is too busy to be able to focus on staying fit. While it may be preferable and more macho to go to the gym, lift weights, run on the treadmill and speed on the exercise cycle, there is a more simple and pleasant way to exercise: walk. There is a misperception that walking is not a good enough exercise and won’t do much for one’s body in staying fit. That is a completely false assumption to make and it would do you some good to get in 30 minutes a day of walking outside.

CNN says the following:

Walking is not just a weenie activity for the nonathletic, says Michelle Look, M.D., national medical consultant to the Breast Cancer 3-Day Walk and a physician who specializes in sports medicine in San Diego, California: “It’s good for just about anybody, and the health benefits are particularly significant for women.”

The article goes on to list 8 healthy reasons why walking is important.  I try to get in at least 30 minutes a day of walking and several times a week I  do power walks of nearly 4 miles in one and a half hours. Bringing the iPhone and catching up on my podcasts and listening to music makes it for a more pleasant experience. And it does wonders in relaxing the mind and thinking about things you often don’t have time to think about. A good excuse to day dream.

I have found that walking for 30 minutes burns up an amount of roughly 90 calories. When eating just 1,200 calories a day, that goes a long way.

In case you aren’t convinced yet:

• http://www.coolwalking.com/benefits.html
• http://www.new-fitness.com/walking.html
• http://www.trivia-library.com/a/president-harry-s-truman-physical-description-and-behavior.htm

I just started playing around with the ‘Nike + iPod’ pedometer that I bought a couple of months ago. After a few fits and starts, it finally seems to be agreeing with my iPhone and recording data.  Now that I have it up and running and appearing to work properly, I figured I’d give it a bit of a review with regular updates as I get familiar with it.

Pros:

1. Based on a long walk I took today, my first major test of the gadget, the distance recorded seems to be quite accurate.  I have driven the route I take from the office to home, and I measured it at just about 3.8 miles. The pedometer measured the distance I walked at 3.8 miles exactly.  So there doesn’t seem to be much calibrating needed in this case, although a few calibrations might prove helpful.
2. The ‘Nike + iPod’ user interface on the iPhone is very elegant and simple to use. Shouldn’t be very difficult for anyone to figure out. Apple is so good at creating simple and elegant user interfaces that even 1 year old kids can figure it out.
3. The ‘Calorie’ feature is pretty cool, described as ‘A workout with a calorie burning goal’. I need to do a little research to find out how accurate the calorie burn information is when considering both the time of the workout and the rigorousness of it. I usually take the most conservative estimate of calorie burning in a period of time. Exercise machines are always to liberal in their calorie burn estimates, sometimes doubling what it probably is in reality.
4. The history feature is useful, especially for when I need to transfer exercise information into my ‘Lose It!‘ iPhone app. I suppose it’s too much to ask for an export feature to ‘Lose It!’…

Cons:

1. If you are in the middle of a walk while using the pedometer and someone calls you, the workout stops while the phone call is in progress.  Not sure why they can’t keep the workout going since one would probably want to walk and talk at the same time.  One can look up contact information or browse web pages when talking with the iPhone.  Why not workout too?  Looks like something overlooked that feature.
2. I suppose one has to buy special shoes from Nike in order to have a convenient place to put the pedometer. I am placing mine under the shoe laces and ‘tongue’ of my shoe, which can be a little uncomfortable.  But I may stick with this for a while or else fasten the device somehow into my shoe.

More updates as I become more familiar with the device.

Update (9/17/09):

Thanks to a friend of mine, I found out about the ‘Gmaps Pedometer‘, a tool that will help give you the exact distance of your walk/run for when you are calibrating your pedometer. You can even draw your route, which is good for those that have preferences for moving in not-so-straight lines and prefer to cross fields, wade across rivers or jump over high buildings. Check it out at http://www.gmap-pedometer.com.

Swedish researchers recently conducted a study that suggests eating more chocolate increases the survival rate of those who suffer heart attacks. The study wasn’t the most scientific, and it seems that most of the subjects were living in Sweden, which is hardly a reliable result for people everywhere. But since I’m Swedish and I like chocolate, this news certainly stuck out for me. The national chocolate of Sweden is Marabou which produces milk chocolate much more than it does dark chocolate, at least based on my visits there and the chocolate that I see on sale here in this country. And since dark chocolate is much healthier than milk chocolate, I would think that some other force is at work here than making the blanket suggestion that eating chocolate will reduce your chances of dying from a heart attack.

“…scientists followed 1,169 nondiabetic men and women who had been hospitalized for a first heart attack. Each filled out a standardized health questionnaire that included a question about chocolate consumption over the past 12 months. Chocolate contains flavonoid antioxidants that are widely believed to have beneficial cardiovascular effects.

The patients had a health examination three months after their discharge from the hospital, and researchers followed them for the next eight years using Swedish national registries of hospitalizations and deaths. After controlling for age, sex, obesity, physical inactivity, smoking, education and other factors, they found that the more chocolate people consumed, the more likely they were to survive.”

In my ideal world, this would be true all the time.

Read more about the study.

When it comes down to it, whatever diet you choose, whether it’s a low fat, low sodium, low carbs or low whatever diet, there’s no avoiding the fact that you must always consider the number of calories you are putting into your system. If you eat foods that contain a high number of calories, you will gain weight. If you eat fewer calories than the daily recommended intake of 2,000 calories, you will more than likely lose weight. This is my diet in a nutshell.

Starting on January 1 of this year, I decided to start a diet. It’s a resolution I made in the past, but as a majority of Americans do, I failed. This time I can say I was a little more focused than in previous attempts, since in just 6 months I managed to lose 50 pounds. At the beginning of my diet, I weighed 208 pounds. When July 1st rolled around, I weighed in at 158 pounds, a weight I had not seen since the beginning of college over 20 years ago.

There were a few reasons I wanted to lose weight. My 20th anniversary high school reunion was coming up, and I wanted to go back in time as best I could (ironically, my old high school friends said I hardly changed a bit … if they only knew). The second reason was a more serious matter: my doctor said my bad cholesterol level was too high and I was at risk of heart disease, diabetes and other ailments.

For most people, the number of diets to choose from is long and complicated. There is Atkins, South Beach, Sugar Busters, Protein Power, the Zone Diet, Jenny Craig, Nutrisystem, the Sonoma Diet, the Paleo Diet, the Caveman Diet, Body Fat Solution, the Glycemic Impact Diet, Weight Watchers, The Master Cleanser, Detox, Metabolic Balance, Bridal Bootcamp, the Spectrum Diet, the Cabbage Soup Diet, the Cardio Free Diet, the Idiot Proof Diet, the Low Sodium Diet, the Oprah Diet, Slim Fast and so on and so on. I don’t deny that these diets work for some people, but the majority of those embarking on a diet eventually fail for a variety of reasons, chief among them simply being laziness. But for me the idea of paying a corporation to send me food and printed materials on a regular basis telling me how to lose weight just didn’t sound right for me. I wanted as natural an experience as possible, one where I could be more proactive and learn about the foods I was buying and eating. I wanted no processed foods, lots and lots of fruits and vegetables and smaller portions of meat.

As I will write about in future posts, I keep a daily diary of what I eat each and every day. Breakfast, lunch, dinner and snacks are all recorded in my iPhone app Lose It! I remain completely honest with what I eat, even on days when I splurge and go over my limit (failure to do so would make the exercise a complete waste of time). I set a daily limit of calories per day (1,200 calories per day when wanting to lose 2 pounds a week, 1,500-1,750 when looking to maintain my weight with minimal loss of weight) mixed in with a weekly regimen of physical exercise. If on a particular day I eat more than 1,200 calories, I increase my exercise regimen to bring me under my daily calorie limit.  If I am under my daily limit, I reduce my exercise load.  The diet essentially becomes a numbers game, something that can be much easier to follow in real time than murky weight loss philosophies that are difficult to follow.

I end this post by showing you a picture of myself before and after the first 6 months of my diet: