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For several weeks at the end of 2007, I had difficulty making the transition to a “fitness mindset”. Mac and I had started this blog, and I knew that it was important for me to begin losing weight (and getting fit), but I was still making poor choices. At the beginning of November I weighed 207. At the beginning of December I weighed 207. At the beginning of January I weighed 207.
I’m pleased to report that I’ve finally begun making progress.
For one thing, I’ve made the mental commitment to this project. That’s key. I know why I’m doing this, I have goals, and when a choice arises, I’m usually able to keep these goals in mind.
As a result, I’m down six pounds during the month of January. The past couple mornings, I’ve weighed in at 201. (My body fat is still at 33%.)
I realize that fitness is not all about weight loss. I also realize that at some point, I’ll need to add an exercise component to my program. (Sooner rather than later, I hope.) But for now, I’m pleased with my progress, and pleased to have made the mental leap.
What is keeping me focused? There seems to be swelling coverage and support of my personal finance site. It’s beginning to find its way into mainstream media. I’ve come to realize that I will eventually be called upon to act as a personal ambassador to the site, and I want to feel confident when doing so. In order to do that, I need to be comfortable with my weight. This is a powerful motivator.
How am I losing the weight? Making lots of small smart choices. I am not perfect. I still have a bad snack now and then, but these instances are rarer than before. (I’m not stopping at 7-11 for Sno-Balls!) I’m eating more stuff that’s good for me. (Yesterday I described my diet to Kris as “fruit, nuts, and cheese”.)
During the day, especially, I try to make healthy choices. The most important of these is reduced portion sizes. My portion sizes have decreased significantly during the past month, and I think it’s made a huge difference. By making smart choices during the day, I’m able to have a little more freedom at dinner. I still try to keep the portions small, but I don’t sweat so much over whether my meal is perfectly healthy. (But, at the same time, I’m not intentionally eating “bad” food.)
In short, I’ve found motivation to improve my fitness, and this has allowed me to stay focused on better choices. I’m eating well throughout the day, which allows me to have a normal (though small) dinner. All of this produced a calorie deficit, which is leading to weight loss.
Mac
16 responses so far ↓
1 A // Jan 25, 2008 at 1:48 pm
I find it a little bit funny that you mention you’re eating food that’s ‘good for you’ and then go on to mention cheese and nuts as two staples of your diet - both of which are positively loaded with saturated fats. Cheese is incredibly calorie dense (without almost all the calories coming from fat) and while many nuts naturally contain ‘good’ poly and mono unsaturated fats they are most often coated in oils.
I saw results in my diet program only after making the commitment to cut cheeses and nuts (peanut butter was my worst offender) from my diet almost completely, along with going from 2% to non fat milk.
I wouldn’t deprive yourself of them completely, but if you’re listing them as staples of your diet it could be a bit of a problem as time goes by.
2 macdaddy // Jan 25, 2008 at 2:13 pm
I always say, the path to success is the one that works for you! If you’re able to eat small amounts of calorie dense foods and still create a calorie deficit…then go for it!
3 A // Jan 25, 2008 at 2:34 pm
Oh, absolutely - and they both give tons of flavor to food. My problem was that I made them both a large part of my diet and was not able to lose weight while keeping them - for me a sandwich was often a half-inch thick slice of cheese on bread with some pickles, for example. It was easier for me to give it up completely at first, and slowly start reintroducing it in small ammounts later.
4 J.D. // Jan 25, 2008 at 2:37 pm
I have about an ounce of cheese a day. Sometimes I have none, sometimes I have a couple ounces. Same with nuts. Mostly I’m eating plain almonds, though sometimes my nuts come in the form of naked peanut butter.
And the fruit varies widely.
My real point is that my diet has managed to switch from processed junk to actual real foods. That makes me happy.
5 TosaJen // Jan 25, 2008 at 3:36 pm
I loved the “fruit, nuts, and cheese” comment, given where you said you started. You almost sound like a vegetarian!
I find it much harder to overeat on those foods than on snoballs or cereal (they make me feel full sooner), and all 3 are very effective for me as pre-dining hunger killers without adding tons of useless calories — fiber, fat, protein. (Yes, cheese and nuts are calorie dense, but if a 100-cal snack can head off an extra 300 calories from the restaurant bread basket, or DH’s french fries — that’s a deal.)
6 Claude // Jan 25, 2008 at 3:46 pm
@A– while those foods are calorie dense, they are also quite filling. A serving of almonds, and a glass of water make a damn good snack. Also, if you are working out something rich in protein helps boost metabolism and build muscle.
@JD — Good on you man! I’ve been lurking at both your sights for a while now (since you decided to go fulltime). I’m going down a similar path too. I feel like I need to lose weight to boost my confidence.
Start working out though, and watch the pounds melt away– I guarantee it. If you do 30 minutes on the eliptical, and eat some hot tomales, you’ll still be knocking off an extra 300 or so calories a day, that’s almost a pound a week! If you get more exercise, even better.
Best,
Claude
7 greenman2001 // Jan 25, 2008 at 7:27 pm
How tall are you, J.D.?
8 Eden // Jan 26, 2008 at 6:16 am
I hear ya, J.D. If I’m honest with myself, I know I haven’t fully committed to getting healthy yet, but I am making better choices overall and my general health trend is moving the right way. I’m still looking for something that will inspire me to make ‘all-out get healthy now’ changes, but I think I’m getting closer to that happening.
9 elisabeth // Jan 26, 2008 at 10:39 am
Hi. I agree that it’s always “whatever works,” but having said that, I suggest, especially as you move to working at home, that you think about inverting your calories a bit. At my house, we start out with a great breakfast (lots of fruit and some carb/protein combination) and both eat a real lunch at work (I’m trying to bring my lunch more and more and am up to at least half the time, my sweetie always packs his lunch). I also have “tea” at four or four-thirty, real tea and a tiny snack, and then later for dinner we are eating smaller portions of “lighter” food including always a salad with lots of “volume dense/calorie light” foods. Usually, by eating well all day, I’m not ravenous at dinner, and I know that after dinner, I’m not going to be getting any real exercise, as I do during the day, so it just seems to make sense to eat less then. (Plus, I love breakfast foods, so it’s great to indulge in toast and eggs or pancakes, knowing I’m going to be working it off all day…)
10 Cammy // Jan 26, 2008 at 8:00 pm
For the past six months, I’ve been living the “program” you describe–small, incremental changes. It’s the only thing that’s ever worked for me, and I’m sure it will work for you, too. The key, I think, is in your first point: you have the right mindset for it. You know your work isn’t finished, but you’re on a healthier track now. I’m almost 70 lbs. lighter now than when I started, and while I still don’t eat the “healthy diet” I want for the long-term, I’m oh-so-far from where I was. Good luck! I’ll be watching your progress!
11 Sally Parrott Ashbrook // Jan 27, 2008 at 11:33 am
Go, JD!
I found it much easier, last January when I was starting on the path to taking better care of myself, to focus on my eating before I added a specific exercise routine. I did get myself moving more–took a walk each day after work, parked further from the grocery store, held items in a basket in stores instead of using a cart, etc.–but I didn’t add specific exercise with goals until March. I think it gave me the space to work into eating well without overloading myself. Also, my daily walks put me in a place that when I did start doing a more specific exercise routine (running through Couch to 5k), I was in a better place physically than if I had tried to jump straight into it from couch potato mode.
The funny thing is that now, I can’t imagine my life without physical activity. So (surprise! at least to me) it really can become second nature to want to exercise.
12 James // Jan 27, 2008 at 3:06 pm
It may help to think of this picture when you want to eat fries
http://mithuro.com/presscuefiles/heart_oil.jpg
13 greenman2001 // Jan 27, 2008 at 6:43 pm
I think it’s very important to listen to comment’s like A’s because they represent the current voice of the culture, and present a real difficulty for people who are contemplating exactly what it means to live a “healthy” lifestyle.
There’s a lot of medical research that points to the fact that saturated fats elevate LDL cholesterol levels, which in turn damage the lining of arteries and lead to thrombosis — a direct cause of heart attacks. There is by no means 100% agreement on the exact mechanism by which dietary fat and cholesterol translates to elevated levels in the blood, however. We all know people who tried to lower their blood cholesterol level by restricting their fat and cholesterol intake and failed completely. Your body produces cholesterol all by itself: it is a building block of your cells. If you restrict the cholesterol you eat, your body will produce more of it to make up the deficit.
Many doctors and the entire agriculture industry translated the results of these studies to an across-the-board pronouncement that saturated fat is bad for you, that less is better for you, and none is best of all. Many researchers believe that this kind of thinking has led to the enormous increase in carbohydrate consumption which has led to the rise in obesity in the United States: people switched away from protein, which often has fat, and toward carbohydrates.
Lately there’s been another shift in thinking about saturated fats, leading researchers to argue that it’s absurd to pick out particular components of food as being “bad,” and ignore other components that are “good.” Nuts have many components that are not just “good” for you, but necessary for the body.
It’s difficult to think of nuts, which we consider benign at the moment, as having both “good” and “bad” components, so let’s use another food: fish. Fish contains an absolutely essential nutrient: Omega 3 fatty acid — you’ll die without it. It also contains mercury, a deadly heavy metal. At the moment, the consensus is that you’re better off eating fish than not, because the Omega 3 will do you more good on balance than the mercury will do you harm. There’s also not clear evidence that taking an Omega 3 dietary supplement actually increases blood Omega 3 levels (the same problem in reverse that dietary cholesterol suffers from), so we may have no choice but to get our Omega 3 from fish. I’m oversimplifying a complex set of contingencies, but you see the problem: isolating a “bad” component is extremely problematic.
Your body had evolved to absorb what it needs from all kinds of foods. It’s important to eat your way through as wide an array of whole foods as possible. There’s general agreement (at the moment) that processed foods don’t provide the universe of nutrients that our bodies need to function in a healthy way over the course of our lives.
I don’t believe the idea of never eating dairy or nuts for the rest of your life because they contain saturated fat is one that any doctor would agree with. Of course, “A” is not suggesting that. A is simply saying, “There are a group of foods that are “good for you,” and nuts and dairy are not among them.” See the problem?
14 Watchmytransformation // Jan 28, 2008 at 1:41 am
The confidence in public issue is a huge motivator for me. I feel so much more confident when I am about 20 pounds lighter. Keep it up. Adding that exercise component will do a great deal for you. Make small incremental changes in that area as well.
15 Making Progress: An Update on My Goals for 2008 ∞ Get Rich Slowly // Jan 28, 2008 at 6:00 am
[…] 40 pounds I’ve made slow, steady progress toward this goal. So far, I’ve lost six pounds. I’m not hitting the gym or starving myself — I’m simply eating smaller portions […]
16 Greg C. // Jan 29, 2008 at 2:33 am
I am not going to try to tell you how to eat or act as the food police pointing out that every food known to man is “bad for you.” I will just wish you luck on your goal, which is similar to mine.
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