Category: Scoop

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The Weight Game: Why do we watch it so closely?

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img_3754I admit it; I weigh myself every morning. My grandmother did the same. It was actually on her advice that I started doing this. Of course, when she was still alive, I didn’t like what I saw on the scale, and it taunted me. I wasn’t willing to do the work to make those numbers get smaller, so I just watched them creep up weekly. It wasn’t until I did my first Whole30 and then went Paleo did I begin to see the numbers drop.

And then I hit my plateau. My lowest weight has been 174.4 lbs, but the true average hovers between 175 and 177 lbs. Conventional wisdom would say that I’ve not made any progress since then, but that’s not looking at the whole picture. I just looked at a photo taken of me back in October 2016 and I had a lot of extra skin at my waist and my stomach still looked pretty soft. Fast forward to this past weekend, and there is a lot less extra skin, and my stomach is showing signs of a six-pack. You read that right: my stomach muscles are starting to emerge. It’s amazing.

I’ve been wearing 32″ trousers for the past half year, and they are comfortable. I can get just about any 32″ waist trousers, and they fit. Some are a little loose while others a little snug, but that’s due to tailors all using slightly different patterns and cuts. Shirt sizes are typically mediums or 15 1/2 with some shirts that run small needing to be large. This is the same as when I was 23 years old. I can’t believe I’ve worked myself down to sizes I wore 27 years ago!

I still see progress, even if I am not losing weight or losing pant sizes. The skin around my stomach is shrinking and my abs are starting to show. My arms have no fat on them at all and the skin has shrunk on them quite nicely. My pecs are looking better from all the push ups I do and the skin shrinking there, too. My face is less round now as well, something Sherry pointed out to me after watching a 2016 in rewind video I made of our adventures together last year.

Don’t get hung up on the scale. Look at the whole picture. I know how easy it is to get discouraged by the scale. Forget about it! Look at EVERYTHING, and I’m sure you’ll find something that is improved by eating better.

Watching my friends get healthier

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file_000-49There’s no better feeling than watching your friends all eat healthy and start to reach their own goals and get healthier. It’s an amazing feeling for these wonderful people to be making such great progress. That means that we will share many more years together on adventures, parties, and get-togethers.

I feel proud to have helped inspire and educate them on Whole30 and/or Paleo. I am elated for them, and I offer any assistance they require or ask for. One thing I don’t do, however, is play the role of Paleo Police.

What is the Paleo Police? It’s the person or people who are quick to point out that what you are eating isn’t Paleo compliant. I did it on accident a few times early on, but I’ve vowed to actively keep from doing so. There’s nothing worse than having someone guilt you at a meal. I don’t like it, and I won’t be the person to do it to someone else. There are many reasons for this.

  1. It’s rude. Who am I to think I should be watching what you eat?
  2. It’s your decision. I had bread pudding at lunch last week. It was a calculated treat, one I haven’t had in over 7 months. I likely won’t have more bread pudding for another 6 months or so. I was okay with this, and if anyone had told me that I shouldn’t be eating it, I likely would have given them an earful about minding their own business.
  3. It does more harm than good. Not everyone has the dedication and discipline I have in regards to sticking to the Paleo lifestyle. It can be discouraging to some people to be harangued all the time when eating with the Paleo Police. I don’t want to find myself being disinvited from lunches or dinners.
  4. I don’t need the extra pressure. I will always help anyone who asks for it, and people often ask me if a menu option is Paleo-friendly. I will gladly help answer that question, but I won’t tell people what the Paleo options on a menu are without being asked. It’s tough enough for me to figure that out on my own let alone be on the hook for someone else without having been asked.

Fortunately, my friends know that I’m not the Paleo Police. I don’t give them any grief over their food choices, although it’s kind of funny that most of my friends apologize to me when they eat something non-Paleo. It’s very kind of them, and I know why they do it; because we all have a certain amount of temptation even when we say that we don’t. It’s part of the strategy we employ to stay away from the carb-heavy foods. These friends don’t want to tempt me into breaking my diet, and for that, I am appreciative.

Watching people you love and care about get healthy is an amazing feeling. I feel like I’ve been able to do something good and positive for my friends to help them live richer, more active, and longer lives. I will do everything I can to continue to help and inspire them. If that’s how I repay all the help, assistance, and love they’ve shown me throughout my life, I’m glad to do so.

Counting Calories and Satiety: Why there’s more to it than just calories in vs calories out

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I tried to count calories to lose weight. It didn’t work for me. Why? Because without understanding the differences between good and bad calories and satiety, I would often still feel hungry after a meal. On its most basic level, nutrition is easy: eat fewer calories than you expend in a day to create a deficit which, in turn, will yield weight loss. Seems simple, right? Well, there’s more to it than that.

Satiety: the quality or state of being fed or gratified. This is a word many people don’t know, understand, or consider. It turns out that it’s one of the most important keys to losing weight effectively. If you eat 500 calories at a meal but don’t feel full, you’ll be miserable at best and unless you have really great willpower, you’ll succumb to the cravings and eat more. On the other hand, if you eat 500 calories that fill you up, you will be less inclined to snack or over-eat and will be able to make it to the next regular meal without any discomfort.

That’s a huge key for many people: comfort. Nobody wants to starve. It’s hard-wired into our brains to avoid starving. It’s uncomfortable at best, and downright horrible. I’ve had to go days without food before, and I can tell you, I never want to experience that again. As an overweight person, going for too long without food was very uncomfortable. Heck, I’d find myself hungry a few hours after a meal and would snack to make that bad feeling go away. Many overweight people who want to lose weight fail because they can’t deal with that hungry feeling. That’s because the food they eat are hyper-nutritious but low in satiety. These are foods like pizza, hamburgers, Taco Bell, etc. You have to eat a lot to feel full, but then you took in 2-3 days worth of calories.

The main factor in our success in being able to stick with Whole30 and Paleo has been satiety. Every meal we eat is very high in satiety which in turn not only fills us up but keeps us from getting hungry again too soon. It makes meals satisfying in a way that doesn’t make you feel bloated or stuffed. It energizes you instead of drags you down.

Some people succeed with counting calories. A good friend of mine lost a lot of weight this way, but it is not sustainable. They gained the weight back (and then some). I am not one of those people either; counting calories always ended in failure for me. Like an idiot, I tried time and time again and found short-term success only to have it return with an addition 10-15 lbs each time. It wasn’t until I addressed the reasons I ate too much coupled with learning to eat good foods high in satiety did I find success.

Follow the money: why are we not teaching people how to naturally lose weight?

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I’ve heard it said many times that when you want to find the reason for something, whether its a crime, a regulation, rule, or law, follow the money. This is a cynical way of looking at things, but in today’s world, unfortunately, following the money can lead you to the motivations behind most anything that happens in our government, business, and society. It seems to me that following the money will also give you the reason that nobody is taught how to lose weight naturally and safely.

There is a huge industry around weight loss. Ironically, the companies that sell the weight loss products are the very same companies that sell the food that makes us fat. It is in their financial best interest to keep fattening us up while then selling us the illusion of a cure, or a way out of obesity. Sadly, the vast majority of these products are snake oil at best, with minimal benefits and questionable efficacy. What they all have in common: high profits and big promises.

I used to be a member of the demographic they marketed to, and I would watch with rapt attention as the promises were spewed from the mouths of shills who extolled the virtues and efficacy of these products. I would do research on them to find out the veracity of the claims only to find that all of these products would say, “Coupled with a healthy diet and exercise.” It seemed that the truth was there all along: healthy diet and exercise. Yet people think that it’s the product that is helping them lose weight and get fit.

Why am I such a cynic when it comes to the diet and fitness industry? Because I have made more progress without using a single product than many people I know, some of them close to me, who have been using these products. They place so much of their faith into the products (because they make the promises) that they allow themselves to let down their guard with their diet which erases any weight loss they could have achieved had they stuck to their eating plan.

I know that it’s hard to be disciplined when it comes to eating. You’re not telling me something I don’t know; I lived it. I still live it. My relationship with food is complicated, at best, and I will likely be recovering from my eating disorder for the rest of my life. If anything, it’s harder for me to not eat something that it is for most people. But then again, I’m honest with myself and I know that I have a problem with eating. Many people try to fix their health through dieting without addressing the real problem in the first place that got them overweight: their relationship with food and their eating habits (or disorders).

What people need to realize is that without addressing the cause of the weight gain, no product, diet, or even exercise will get you permanent weight loss. It’ll be temporary, at best (if at all). Don’t buy a solution. Find it within yourself. That’s where the problem is, anyway.

Finally some movement on the scale! Perseverance pays off!

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Anyone who has been reading this blog for a while knows that I haven’t been reporting any great weight loss in a while. That’s because I’ve been sitting on the longest plateau of this journey of mine so far. I’ve been stuck at around 177 lbs for months with one weigh in at 174.4 lbs. My weight fluctuates within about 3 lbs normally, so the range 174-177 was about right for me. Annoying, but okay. I got used to seeing the numbers get smaller and smaller for so long, seeing them stagnate within +/- 3lbs has been annoying.

135Well, that all changed last night. I finally got to a new low: 173.4 lbs! On top of that, when I weighed myself this morning, it was 174 lbs. It seems that my weight has truly dropped a bit. So, while I’m super excited about it, I have to wonder: what changed?

Well, I think the honest truth is that nothing really changed. I still eat the way I have been for the past six months, and I stay away from bad foods just as well. I’ve been running every other day and have been making good, steady progress in increasing distance and pace. Heck, I even had a record-breaking personal best last night!

The bottom line is that I believe the key to success in getting past the plateau was perseverance. I stuck with eating right, exercising regularly, and I never let myself sabotage my progress. I may have a treat here and there, but they were very rare and very small. I even countered any damage by those treats by eating a smaller portion of good food, or if I ate a larger portion, I would limit my next meal and perhaps do some exercise.

The lesson here is just stick to it. It’s a journey, not a destination. Sure, we have goals, but that isn’t an end-point. Rather, once we reach the goal, that gives us an opportunity to make a new one. Not necessarily to lose more weight, but perhaps to maintain that healthy weight, or to instead focus on fitness. I have 8 more lbs to lose to get to my final goal before I turn my focus to maintenance and increasing my pace and distance more on my runs.

More Embarrassing Memories of Being Overweight

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I thought of something that I had been able to put out of my mind since losing 115 lbs. It’s something I haven’t had to do in a long time, and it hadn’t even crossed my mind until I was making a video talking about my weight loss, health, and fitness journey: the embarrassment of the amount of food I ate.

When I would go to lunch with co-workers or a boss, I would often order far less food than I was hungry for because I was embarrassed by the amount of food I would eat in comparison to other normal people. This would often leave me hungry after a meal, and I would then eat a second smaller lunch away from the other people.

The same would hold true when we went to eat with friends, whether it was at their home or at a restaurant. I would often under-eat because I didn’t want them to know just how much food I could go through.

I now eat far less than anyone else I typically eat lunch or dinner with. It’s kind of funny being the person who eats the smaller portions. Now, people ask me if I’m actually full after eating so little, to which I truthfully reply that I am. It’s nice to not be embarrassed by the amount of food I eat anymore.

I was asked to buy chocolate: “I don’t eat that anymore.”

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I was asked to buy some chocolate for a charity today by someone who I’ve known for about a year. Granted, they didn’t know me when I was overweight, so they probably don’t know that I no longer eat candy anymore. I told them, “Sorry, I don’t eat candy anymore.” Before the conversation got weird and Paleo, I asked how much the chocolates cost. She told me $2, so I just gave her $2 and told her to give one to the next kid she sees.

I know; giving candy to children isn’t great, either. However, as kids are more active and growing, and as these were chocolate, I figured it’s the lesser of the possible evils. I guess I could have bought one and just thrown it away, but that’s a waste of chocolate, and even if I’m not going to eat it, I can’t justify throwing it away. I have a long past with chocolate.

Fortunately, I wasn’t tempted by the chocolate. I no longer get triggered by seeing, smelling, or being around foods that I no longer eat. I enjoy the smell, actually, but that’s about it. The closest I’ve come to being tempted was yesterday at lunch when the waiter brought out some amazing artisan breads with duck grease spread. That was hard to resist, but I did. Chocolate? Easy-peasy.

There’s no point in being difficult when someone is selling snacks I no longer eat. If it’s just a few dollars, I figure donating to the cause is probably the right thing to do, and heck, without taking product, their profits should be larger thereby helping the cause more. They are free to sell what would have been sold to me to someone else or, in the case of the chocolate above, at least give it to someone who otherwise couldn’t afford it themselves. Either way, it’s a win-win in my book.

What keeps me up at night: nutrition ignorance

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I was trying to fall asleep the other night, and quite literally, this kept me awake. I was thinking about how poor a job we have done in the US to educate our people properly about nutrition, and how big money has gotten in the way of that education and is now causing the largest epidemic of all time: obesity. (No, I don’t think about this EVERY night. I have my own problems to think about most of the time. lol)

I’m always surprised when people don’t know that orange juice  has roughly the same amount of sugar as the demon of the nutritional world, soda — about 5 to 8 teaspoons per cup. I watch people who are trying to lose weight switch from sodas like Coke or Dr. Pepper to orange juice or apple juice. They’ve literally traded one flavor for another.

There are many sources online that can point you to the real nutritional value of the foods you imbibe. Be careful and make sure they are neutral; there are many sites available that extol the virtues of orange juice as being healthy and good for you (it’s not bad in small amounts) as compared to sodas. A slice of pizza won’t kill you either, but a diet of pizza daily likely will.

Do the work. Look up your nutritional choices and make decisions based on fact, not on propaganda. I want you to be healthy, and to get there, you need cold, hard facts.

Sometimes I need to trick myself

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file_000-76I need to run tonight after work. It’s now become not only a habit for me to run every other day, but my body feels like it actually needs it. My mind, however, isn’t always into it. Today, for example, my mind wants to go home after work and relax. I’m having to rely on a trick I’ve been employing to make myself enjoy doing things I otherwise don’t want to do or don’t like. I’m having to pretend that I am looking forward to running today.

Do  you know what’s weird about that? It’s actually working. As the day is going on, I’m finding myself looking forward to running. It’s going to be nice and cool outside, and I know that the run will feel good when I’m done as it always does. I haven’t yet experienced a real “Runner’s High,” but I do feel a sense of accomplishment after a run as well as feeling generally good. Maybe that’s the high they refer to. Maybe I’m expecting too much?

I know it’s hard to get moving sometimes. Even though I run a minimum of three times a week, I know many others who run 6-7 times a week. How they do that is a testament to their willpower, dedication, and motivation. It motivates me when I see them hitting the road every day. Whenever I really don’t feel like getting out there, I remind myself that I don’t do this every day and that I will get the next day off from running if I can just get it done today. I also think about how hard it is to get back into it after two days off in a row. If anything, these all help to get me out there.

Back to today’s run: I’m hoping to hit 80 push ups today if I have the energy and to go my usual 3.5 miles. I won’t be setting any speed records, but I will try for sub 9:30’s if at all possible (but I won’t be disappointed if I don’t). I’ll just be happy that I got out there and got it done.

Actually, compared to others, I lost weight slowly

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It’s funny to me when people say I lost weight “So quickly.” Actually, 10 lbs a month is a pretty decent/safe weight loss with an average of 2.5 lbs a week. My weight was lost by eliminating added sugar, soy, carbs, dairy, and legumes. I did no exercise. Those of you who have been reading for a while know all this; I state it again for newcomers.

I peruse the progress pictures subreddit regularly for motivation as I have since before I began the Paleo lifestyle (even before I did my first Whole30) and I am continually impressed by people who have lost 100+ lbs in under a year. One person who posted today lost over 176 lbs in 11 months! Now THAT is impressive!

I never treated my weight loss as a race, and you shouldn’t either. Weight loss will happen if you do the right things: eliminate the foods that cause you to be overweight, control your portion sizes, and get 20 minutes of exercise a day (which could be as simple as walking). Heck, I lost my first 100 lbs without any exercise, so if that’s too much for you now, skip it. That’s right; skip it. It’s not necessary to lose weight.

The rate of weight loss is dependent on many factors including your starting weight. Someone over 300 lbs will lose weight more easily than someone who is only 20 lbs overweight. It comes down to percentage of total body weight, total body fat to be lost, and your ideal weight. I’m very close to my ideal weight now, and my weight loss is very slow (actually, it’s stagnant again right now). I’ m not concerned about hitting any goals in a set period of time. I’m just working toward the goal without stopping.

Yes, quick weight loss is impressive, and we all want to reach a goal with as little effort or time as possible. But the reality is that sometimes, it will take more time. Don’t worry so much about how fast you lose the weight but with the fact that you are losing or at least doing the work to lose weight. If you’re doing the right things, it’ll come. If you’re not losing weight, analyze what you’re doing and make adjustments until the weight loss comes back.