365 days
293.5 pounds
Can a guy who is old, overweight and out of shape save himself without resorting to fad diets, special foods and gym memberships?
The Physical Me
When I was a kid, I was skinny and athletic. I played lots of sports. I stopped growing vertically at 6 feet when I was about 16.
Weight was never an issue for me until I graduated college. I attribute that to having spent my last year of college living with a woman who was taught to cook by her German mother. Sauerbraten. Schwarzwalder Kirschtorte. Quickest way to a man's heart and all that jazz. At 18, I weighed in at 175 pounds. But after a year with Yona (and we had a wonderful time together), I tipped the scales at 220.
After college, I headed off to France, ostensibly to become a physician. I spent the summer in Paris. Every afternoon I played basketball for a few hours and I ate like a French person. After that, I moved to Angers, in the northwest part of the country, and stayed active and ate well. When I went home the following summer, and met the woman who would become my wife two years later, I was a wire. I weighed 165 pounds and I was strong as an ox.
That was 1975. Thirty-four years ago. A lot happens to a man in that time. Especially a man who believes, as so many do—against all rationality—that they will always be a boy. And like many people who developed weight problems, I've gained and lost and gained and lost tons of weight. Robin and I have done every diet from Scarsdale to South Beach to Atkins. When my father needed a kidney transplant, I lost 30 pounds in a few months to be a suitable donor. It's easy to lose weight. Even easier to gain it back.
Bad Habits
Before I started college, I dabbled in cigarette smoking, which advanced to more than a pack a day by the time my kids were just barely old enough to realize I was smoking. For a while, I did my best to hide it, but I did eventually kick it, many years ago. Yet to this day, If I'm out drinking and people are smoking, I will still join in and have a smoke or two. But it ends there. I never get back on that train the next morning.
Because of the smoking, I avoided having an annual physical for 20 years or so. I was afraid to find out it was too late, that cancer was chewing up my lungs. But I eventually bit the bullet and went and I've been going religiously every year ever since. Still, the weight kept piling up, and the physical activity continued to decline and I became just another American obesity statistic. Miraculously, I still have a good strong heart. My doctor ends every annual checkup with the same admonition: "I don't understand why you don't have high blood pressure or diabetes. Promise me you'll lose weight." And every year I shake my head and hit McDonald's on the way home to celebrate my incredible run of luck.
No more.Thirty four years later, one thing is undeniably clear from the physical evidence: as much as I'd like to be that boy, I like eating and avoiding exercise even more. I ran that number up close to 300 pounds a few times. A few weeks ago, I put on the brakes and dropped down to 284. But it's back up again, and I've finally run out of reasons not to do this. I'm ready.
My father taught me, as many fathers try to teach their children, that you can accomplish anything you put your mind to doing. Creative visualization alone is not enough, though. You have to take action.
There is no special significance to the date, the weight or the amount of time I'm investing, other than that I like to start things on Mondays. Years go by so quickly that one seems worthy of sacrificing for the greater good. My children—my three beautiful daughters—would all like to see me become healthy and happy and they still believe in me. A hundred pounds? I'd love to lose even more, but if I can get down under 200 again, I'll take it.
First Rule of Threes
Three is an important number for me and I tend to feel that things are less than optimal if there aren't three facets to a situation. With that in mind, the first rule of three in this blog is that I will:
(1) Weigh myself at the same time every day
(2) Attempt to do this thing at a pace of two pounds per week
(3) Eat right and exercise
Let me expand a little on this rule set. Weighing myself at the same time every day just seems to be one of the few consistent things you find in the weight loss canon. It doesn't matter all that much what time it is, as long as it's the same time. In my case, it will be in the morning, preferably after my dog does his business and I do mine.
Two pounds per week? Slow and steady. In the beginning of most attempts to lose weight, weight comes off pretty fast. It gives you a quick sense of accomplishment that often undermines your overall effort because it makes you want to reward yourself with—what else?—food! If I do lose more than two pounds in a week, I won't complain. Nor will I bitch and moan and beat myself up if I don't. There's no benefit to it.
Eating right and exercising? The last time I gave up on exercise, I was doing a pretty good military routine. Fingertip pushups, squat thrusts, treadmill, stationary bike, stretching, breathing, adding revs every week. But after four months, I was actually gaining weight. My doctor explained to me that building muscle without restricting my food intake was the culprit. You can't do one without the other. It just won't work. But eating right? I was brought up in the 1950's, when you had to clean your plate because children were starving in Europe. I learned early to eat too much too fast. These are very hard habits to break.
Ultimately, what constitutes eating right, for me anyway, is eating slowly, chewing my food—enjoying every bite—and drinking lots of water. The body craves water and I just happen to love water. I'm not going to count calories, although it's a pretty simple scientific fact that if you take in less than a certain number of calories a day, you WILL lose weight.
The other day, I asked Robin (who, by the way, is a nurse)..."If I actually do this thing, you know, lose 100 pounds in a year, will I have sagging skin all over my body?" Her reply was automatic: Exercise. That's why you do it.
So, the gauntlet is thrown down...I will not give up the foods I love. I will just eat them in moderation, training myself to eat portions instead of just stuffing myself to fill some emotional void (pardon the psychobabble). I will not join a gym. I have a house, and it just happens to have a treadmill, a stationary bike and some other equipment in it, which will once again be put to use.
And when the year is up, and I accomplish my goal...I will face what will likely be an even harder problem: how to put on the brakes and maintain my weight. I'm really looking forward to dealing with that problem
Finally, why blog it?
After all, who really cares? Well...for a number of reasons. I love to write; I always have. I'm the writer in my family and among all my friends. When something needs to be put into words, my phone rings. It should be a good discipline, even if no one ever reads it. Also, unlike a lot of people my age, I am quite computer-literate. I am a programmer (no, I didn't become a physician); but I don't Twitter (I should say I won't Twitter) and until now, I have resisted blogging. My youngest daughter Alex chastises me to no end about my apparent lack of desire to expand my digital skill set. So this will be an exercise for my mind and my body.
[Okay...wait. Before I go any further, I have to admit that I was motivated to do the blog part of this exercise, at least in part, after seeing "Julie & Julia" last Sunday night. Great. Now that's out of the way.]
Today
Here's how the first day went: I got up, a bit later than I'd planned, but I shifted my schedule back and did all the stretches and exercises and did the treadmill and took a shower.
Then, I ate a half of an Ezekiel muffin with a little almond butter. For those of you unfamiliar with Ezekiel muffins or bread or rolls, they're based on a recipe for bread given to mankind by God in the Old Testament (Ezekiel 4:9). If you like crunchy, earthy bread, you'll love this. White bread eaters should try something else.
For lunch, I had a peach yogurt. I had a plum and some melon and drank a whole bunch of water.
For dinner, we had salad, veal chops and sautéed onions. I love salad. I love putting lots of stuff on salad, like artichokes, olives, shredded cheese and the like. But tonight, it was only one bowl. No seconds.
I could certainly run upstairs now and eat a lot of ice cream or something, but I think I'm going to pass. This is largely about willpower and blowing it on day one just won't do.
Anyway...that's it for today. Oh...one last thing: I'll be doing a lot of writing in this blog, but the posts are all (hopefully) going to be shorter than this one. Enough for now. If you're actually reading this, I hope I didn't bore you to tears.
