Flexible Intermittent Fasting: Part II

I will always be grateful to Brad Pilon and his EAT, STOP, EAT program for introducing me to Intermittent Fasting (IF).  He was instrumental in helping me overcome my fear that skipping meals during a short-term fast would somehow compromise my metabolism, halt the fat loss process and cannibalize my lean muscle.  He provided a scientific basis for IF demonstrating how IF could easily be incorporated into one’s life as a tool for both fat loss and weight maintenance.  He made IF simple to understand and easy to implement.

But as influential as was his work in my life, I soon discovered Brad’s approach to Intermittent Fasting was not the be-all to end-all.  There were many other IF models waiting to be explored and some of them were much more suited to my needs and personality.  Let me tell you about one such model.

A Retired Dieter

David Ward is an interesting character.  He’s in his mid-forties, English, an internet marketer, a husband and father, and like many of us, a serial dieter.  He freely confesses that for the last 20 years he has tried one diet after another with varying degrees of success but no lasting results.  In fact, his experience with diets has been so off-putting that he officially labels himself  “A Retired Dieter.”  As such, he vows never to go on another diet.

That doesn’t mean he doesn’t want to lose weight.  In fact, in January 2009 he decided he was going to lose 4 stone (English measurement for 56 lbs) by the end of the year – but this time without going on a diet.  Here’s how he put it:

After all these years I have come to the obvious conclusion that diets don’t work.  In fact, diets make you fat.  So, as of Jan 2009, I have decided I will not go on a diet again. No, this does not mean I am going to eat fast food and chocolate for the rest of my life. What it does mean is, I will no longer attempt to follow something that is simply not possible.  I intend to lose the obsession with what I eat.  I do not want to feel deprived.  I am not going to eat pizza every day, but I don’t want to think I can’t eat pizza again without feeling guilty.  I am making a lifestyle change that I feel I can stick to, not just this week, this month, but on a year on year basis.

And with those words, David Ward launched into his new fat loss program which resulted in the loss of 4 stones (56 lbs) of fat in ten months instead of twelve without once denying himself the foods he loves.  How did he do it?  Well, not surprisingly (given the name of this blog entry),  he fasted his way to health and fitness.

Now before you turn away and say, “Fasting isn’t for me,” let me show you a few before and after photos of David.  You decide for yourself if these impressive results don’t at least deserve a hearing of how he lost all his weight without ever once depriving himself of his favorite foods.  Check out David’s photos by clicking here.

Pretty impressive, wouldn’t you say.  I know when I first saw them I was very impressed.  I decided I had to learn more.

Here’s the Skinny on How He Did It

David began by fasting two days a week much as Brad Pilon teaches (See Part I of this series).  Each fast lasted a full 24 hours (6:30 PM to 6:30 PM) and was completed on non-sequential days.  During this time he ate pretty much like he had always eaten (never denying himself anything he wanted) but was more conscious of how much he ate. He didn’t gorge himself but stopped when he was full or satisfied.

When he saw how easy fasting was and how the fat seemed to melt off him effortlessly, he added a third day to his fasting routine and began exercising one hour a day.  This netted him even greater fat loss results.  More importantly, he discovered food no longer had a hold on him.  He felt energized and alert (often a welcomed side effect of short-term fasts).

In time, David Ward added a fourth and fifth day of fasting.  He discovered that on weekdays all he really needed was one good meal a day to fulfill all his caloric needs.  He chose to eat that meal with his wife and children in the evening so as to maintain a sense of family and he never once skimped on the gravy or dessert.  Again, he ate what he loved and he never went hungry.

On weekends, he would eat normally (three meals a day – all his favorite beers and foods) but with an eye for calorie intake.  Whereas he might limit himself to 1200-1300 calories during his weekday meals (that’s a lot for one meal mind you), he would allow himself more like 2000-3000 calories a day Saturday and Sunday.  This allowed him to eat and drink freely with family and friends and never once feel deprived.  Here’s what David says about his weekend eating:

So what about the weekends?  I eat what I want, when I want on the weekend. The weekend starts Friday evening when I break my fast.  So, if later on Friday night I wanted a snack, I would have one.  If I am honest, I think the calories on Friday evening are more likely to come from a glass or 2 of red wine, or a beer or 2.

Last weekend, I did eat breakfast on Saturday morning around 10.30 AM.  Sunday morning I was not hungry and just had a coffee, but this was a cafe latte with sugar, so I was not fasting.  I just didn’t feel like anything other than a coffee.  I did eat lunch on Sunday which was a Spanish omelet with salad. Sunday evening I had roast chicken, and yes, with the skin on.  I had the chicken with roast potatoes, Yorkshire pudding, vegetables and a 175ml glass of red wine.

I hope this helps show why I don’t feel deprived using Intermittent Fasting to lose weight.  When I say nothing is off limits, I mean it.  I still lost 2 lbs this week and I continue to eat the foods I want. When I did the Atkins diet, one of the biggest problems for me was the Sunday roast dinner.  Atkins would say no problem with the roast chicken with the skin, but I would be passing up the Yorkshire pudding and roast potatoes. Sorry, but long term when the rest of the family are eating those things, there is only so many weeks I am going be able to say ” No thank you.”

If I look back at the last 7 days, I have restricted, or saved calories at times when I have not been truly hungry, and this has enabled me to enjoy the times I do eat.  I will point out that I have eaten normally.  I didn’t eat a whole chicken.  You still have to be realistic.  I eat until I am satisfied.

Now, I know exactly what you’re thinking because I’ve been where you are.  You’re thinking, “There is no way on God’s green earth that I could fast 5 days a week.  I mean, I love the thought of eating anything I want on weekends, but to fast that many days in a row is virtually impossible.”

It might seem so from your vantage point (never having tried it), but let me tell you something.  I believe virtually anyone can do it.  I am equally convinced that fasting is far easier than dieting.  At least that’s been my experience.  Like David Ward, I started out fasting twice a week.  I found it so easy and enjoyable and the results (fat loss) so rewarding that I began upping the number of days I fast.  Before long, I was fasting 5 days a week with little or no effort.  I probably don’t eat as much “junk” food as David does, but I don’t hesitate to eat what I want, when I want.  I’ve just found that I enjoy eating healthy most of the time and on those rare occasions I “indulge,” I do so without a hint of guilt.

One more thing about David Ward.  Although his weight loss over the first 10 months of his new lifestyle (he’s been at it now for over 18 months as of the posting of this entry), it was not a straight line.  There were weeks (especially in the later stages) when he lost nothing and on occasion even gained a pound or two.  But overall, he lost a steady 1-2 lbs a week.  That may not sound like much at first.  But remember, if you lost just 2 lbs a week every week for a year, you would be down over 100 lbs.  That’s good progress.  Also remember, it is physically impossible to lose more than 1-2 lbs of BODY FAT a week.  If you are losing more than that you are also losing lean body mass (usually muscle) which as every healthy person knows, is a NO-NO.

Here is the take away from this post.

• Diets don’t work – not for the long term at least
• Fasting is not as hard as you might think
• Try fasting for one day – eat your last meal at 6 PM – make it a good healthy one – and then skip breakfast and lunch the next day.  Tough if out if you’re struggling.  You won’t starve to death.  Then enjoy your next meal at 6 PM the next day.  Don’t pig out.  Just eat normally.  You’ll be surprised how good it tastes and how good you feel.
• Give yourself a couple of days of normal eating and then fast again.
• You will soon discover you can live with fewer meals than you ever thought possible and you can do it without giving up your favorite foods.
• Once you see and feel the positive results of Intermittent Fasting, I think you will agree, IF is far easier than dieting and much more effective.

If you want to read more about David Ward’s model of Intermittent Fasting, check out his blog here.

P.S.  As much as I like David Ward’s approach to IF, I have found yet another model that better fits my needs and might work for you as well.  See Part III of Flexible Intermittent Fasting for all the details.

Flexible Intermittent Fasting: Part I

I want to tell you about a new Fat Loss approach with which I have been experimenting the past month.  I find it extraordinarily easy to do and extremely effective.  It may not be for everyone, but I’m convinced it can work as a long term solution for fat loss.

Intermittent Fasting

Intermittent Fasting (IF) is simply the “abstinence from all food” for short durations (12 to 24 hours) two to three days a week.  When one resumes eating, he/she returns to eating normal portions.  IF has been credited by the medical and scientific communities with significant health benefits, longevity, and fat loss.

The Brad Pilon Approach

I was first introduced to Intermittent Fasting six months ago when I purchased a program called EAT, STOP, EAT written by Brad Pilon.  It was a life changer.

Prior to that I had been influenced greatly by such Fat Loss Experts as:

• Tom Venuto (who I still admire greatly and credit with getting me started in my quest to get fit).  Tom wrote the phenomenally successful e-book entitled Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle which teaches the fat loss secrets of body builders and fitness models who are able to maintain significant muscle mass while achieving single digit body fat percentages.

• I was equally influenced by Craig Ballantyne, author of Turbulence Training, who teaches a more balanced, real world approach to nutrition and fitness.  Since few people (myself included) aspire to be body builders or fitness models, Craig demonstrates a relaxed approach to fat loss:  eat right and train hard – take care of the big stuff and don’t sweat the small stuff, like counting calories and worrying about the ratios of macro-nutrients (protein, carbohydrates, fat).  He is an innovator and experimenter (like the time he went on a Vegan diet to test whether he would lose strength or muscle mass) and teaches there is no single path to the ultimate destination of Fat Loss.

It was Craig, then, who first introduced me to Brad Pilon and to Intermittent Fasting with which Craig has also experimented and recommends.  Prior to that I had never heard of such a thing.  In fact, I was pretty well convinced that in order to lose fat and maintain muscle mass, one had to eat 5 to 6 meals a day (8 was even better) to keep the metabolism stoked.  If one missed just one feeding (every three to four hours), one could do irreparable harm to one’s metabolism and negate everything he/she had achieved in the previous few days.  It was an awesome burden.  And I took it seriously.

The truth is, this is the fat loss approach most body builders and fitness models use to get shredded, so obviously it works.  It even worked for me.  But it was not a sustainable lifestyle.  It involved too much food preparation, too many Tupperware containers, too many small unsatisfying meals (you could only eat 250-300 calories per meal if you are eating 6 meals a day), and too much deprivation (you could never sit down and have a big meal with family and friends, or eat your favorite binge foods – actually, once a week you were allowed to eat whatever you wanted within reason during a so-called “cheat meal,” but that’s just the point, you felt like you were cheating on your diet and that made you feel guilty).  It wasn’t for me.  And in reality, it’s not a sustainable lifestyle for most body builders or fitness models either.  Most of them only use this method to diet down for competition, but once the competition is over they generally go back to eating whatever they want and quickly put back on their weight.  They call it “bulking up,” but it is really binging.  Six small meals a day is great for losing fat in the short term but few can maintain it for a lifetime.

I learned from Brad Pilon that one’s metabolism is not so delicate as to be “irreparably” damaged by missing a meal or two.  In fact, the latest scientific studies show just the opposite.  Short-term fasting is a great way to improve one’s overall health and fat loss ability.  It may even increase one’s life span.  It certainly is an easy and sustainable way to lose fat and keep it off forever.

Brad advocates a 24 hour fast once or twice a week.  According to his research, 24 hours is sufficient time for the body to take advantage of most of the health and fat loss benefits of fasting without enduring a prolonged fast.  In reality, a person could easily fast for 72 hours with no ill effects to his/her health, but after 24 hours the Law of Diminishing Returns kicks in and the positive benefits one derives from the fast begin to taper off.  Twenty-four hours then, seems to be the optimal time frame for a short-term fast.

I practiced Brad’s EAT, STOP, EAT for many weeks and found it to be very easy and most effective.  I generally fasted from after my evening meal at 6 PM on Tuesday till the evening meal on Wednesday at 6 PM.  I then ate normally on Thursday (breakfast, lunch, dinner) after which I began my fast from 6 PM Thursday evening till 6 PM Friday.  I never felt deprived or hungry and I can honestly say that I derived greater satisfaction from those evening meals (Wednesday and Friday) when I would break my fast.  There is something about abstaining from food that makes it taste better and more satisfying.

By fasting just two days a week (and eating normally the rest of the time), I was able to cut my caloric intake by 20% over the course of the week.  That is equal to the calorie deficit of any diet one might undertake but without the accompanying hunger that usually results from caloric restriction. In my mind, this is a huge benefit.  If one could eat less and not feel hungry, one could painlessly lose all the fat one needed to lose.

You might ask why this is.  I don’t have a scientific reason (although I am quite certain with a little research I could find one), but speaking from personal experience, I believe the lack of hunger one experiences when fasting is the result of the following:

• Out of Sight, Out of Mind – I’m always hungriest when I am around food.  If I smell the lunch of someone at work, or if my wife starts cooking at night, the sights and smells of food make me hungry.  My stomach grumbles, my mouth waters, my mind starts thinking about how it would taste to have a bite or two.  But if I am buried in work, or stay out of the kitchen, or don’t allow myself to be in the vicinity of prepared foods, I seldom feel hungry.  I will not say, I never feel hungry.  Occasionally around lunch time or toward the end of the afternoon, I sometimes feel a rumble in my stomach.  But I’ve learned that if ignored it quickly goes away.  In the past, I would have fed the hunger.  I would have rationalized, “It’s better to eat a little now and stave off the hunger than to binge later on.”  Or I would have said to myself, “You know, it’s been three whole hours since you stoked your metabolism.  Your hunger is a sign that you need to throw a little fuel on it to keep the fires burning.”  But that’s just how you start down the slippery slope of eating a little here and eating a little there.  Before you know it, you’ve exceeded your calories for the day and are in surplus rather then deficit.  I have come to believe that steering clear of food for 24 hours (actually 16 hours because you sleep for 8 of the 24 hours) is far easier to master than to make countless choices of what and how much you will eat during the same time.  Couple the ease of this decision with the obvious health benefits and fat loss potential and it’s a no-brainer.

• The More I Eat, The More I Want – After a life-time of almost constant dieting (well, at least 20 years or more), I am equally convinced that eating begets eating.  Once you start, it’s hard to stop.  I’ve since learned that eating carbs tend to make me more hungry than eating protein or fats.  There is truth in the old potato chip commercial, “Bet you can’t eat just one.”  There’s equal truth in the old adage, “Thirty minutes after you eat Chinese, you’re hungry.”  Both meals are full of carbohydrates – which cause an insulin spike – which in turn cause us to be hungry again.  But it’s not just carbs.  Eating is not all about satisfying physical hunger.  There is a psychological component to eating as well.  I can eat a very fulfilling meal at 6 PM and by 9 PM I am starting to think about what I’m going to snack on.  I’m not really hungry, I’m just used to snacking at night in front of the TV.  It’s a habit.  I derive great joy from watching my favorite shows and from eating my favorite snacks.  Combining the two makes that enjoyment even greater.  The fact that I know I can eat, if I want to, makes me want to eat.  Interestingly, on fast nights (when I make a commitment to stop eating from 6 PM to 6 PM), I am not nearly as hungry as when I know I can eat.  Eating has as much to do with the mind as with the body.  Anyone who has ever fasted for any length of time will readily tell you: The Less You Eat, The Less You Want, just the opposite of what most of us experience.

I appreciate all Brad Pilon has done to make Intermittent Fasting more mainstream.  I find his name and program referenced on many posts and blogs.  EAT, STOP, EAT is a wonderful introductory program filled with numerous references to scientific studies about the health benefits of fasting.  It makes one feel good about fasting.  It takes away the fear that one is doing damage to his/her metabolism.  It assures one that he/she can maintain muscle while losing fat.  And it makes it simple.  If you don’t need all these reassurances or you have no real interest in scientific studies, go ahead and give it a try.  Pick any 24 hour period and skip two meals.  Make sure you always have at least one meal per day and eat normally when you come off your fast (don’t pig out to make up for your calorie deficit).  I assure you that after two or three times, you will feel differently about food and dieting as well as your resolve to master both.

P.S.  Just a heads up about Part II in this series on Flexible Intermittent Fasting. As much as I like Brad Pilon’s approach to Intermittent Fasting, I have found an even better way to do it.  Stay tuned.

I’m Back!!!!!!

It’s been almost six months since I last wrote on this blog.  A great deal has happened in that time – some good, some not so good.

The Good

Barb and I have successfully transitioned from full-time retirees to full-time employees.

It all started with a phone call from our son, David, saying, “Dad, I need you.  Can you help?”   With the economy in the tank, the business was struggling and David needed us to give him a hand. There was never a doubt we would help.

So, we put a FOR SALE sign in front of our retirement homes in Franklin, TN and Clearwater, FL,  moved to Lake Mary, FL just north of Orlando, and went to work.  It was a difficult transition.  We missed our homes, our freedom, our routines, our church, our friends, and our lifestyle.

But we enjoyed spending time with our son and daughter-in-law and feeling like we were making a contribution.  We also enjoyed renewing old friendships with people who have been at the company for years and rebuilding the old camaraderie within the workplace.   Then too, it was fun learning a new skill set and creating a viable product that people liked and used.  Perhaps the best part was the fact that both our homes sold within a week of one another.  What are the odds – especially in this economy?  It looks like our move was meant to be.

The Not So Good

I gained back all the weight I had lost and then some.  Yikes!  It pains me to even write about it.

When last I wrote in my blog, I was down to 260 lbs.  I had just lost 20 lbs from the first of the year and was feeling good about  my successful weight loss and all I was learning.  At that time, being retired, I had the luxury of focusing almost exclusively on my weight loss – as though it were a project or hobby.  I would spend hours researching, reading and writing as well as exercising in and out of the gym.  I was active and engaged and nothing was more important than getting my weight off in a healthy manner.

But all that came to a screeching halt the day we loaded the moving van and headed to Florida.  Now, suddenly, I had no leisure and no time for self-improvement projects.  I was struggling to  master my new role at work and was exhausted by the sheer time commitment my job took.  There was no thought of eating right nor energy to exercise.  Gone were the days of sleeping a full 8 hours, waking naturally to the gentle sunlight streaming into the bedroom window, going for a relaxed walk in the park or on the beach, working out in the gym, playing a round of golf, reading and writing all day long.  My life was suddenly full of unimaginable stress (my first job back was to lay-off 8 people).  I was lucky if I slept 4 or 5 hours a night, worked less than 12 hours a day, or managed to grab a salad once or twice a week.  Forget about exercise or reading and writing to stay motivated.  I was way too exhausted.  At the end of the day, I just wanted to “veg out” (flop in front of the TV and turn off my brain) and “pig out” (eat any and everything that gave me a sugar high).  And that’s exactly what I did.

The sad and very predictable result to my new life of stress, exhaustion, and over-eating was to gain 40 lbs.  Forty Pounds!  I shudder to think of it.  I went from 260 lbs to 300 lbs in five months.  The only thing that stopped me from gaining even more weight was the fact that my clothes were now cutting into me so deeply that I was in pain whenever I sat down and I absolutely refused to go out and buy new clothes seeing how I already had a beautiful wardrobe in my closet.  Then too, I was so weak from not exercising and eating right that I could barely get up out of my easy chair or bend over to pick up something I dropped.  My legs were wobbly and unsteady.  I hated it.  I hated myself for failing so miserably.  I wanted and desperately needed to get back to where I was prior to our move.

The Good

And so, I dusted off my old notes.  I re-read my blog.  And I started implementing all the things that had worked so successfully once before: eating nutritious meals, Intermittent Fasting, regular exercise, reduce stress and reading books and blogs to stay informed and motivated.

I began my new diet (lifestyle) on June 19, 2010.  At the time, I weighed a disgusting 300 lbs.  As of today, I am down 20 lbs.  I’m not where I was six months ago.  But I’m a long way from where I was just 30 days ago.  I feel stronger, more energetic, and have a better self-image than I have in a long time.  My goal now is to continue with what I am doing.  Work hard to lose my weight.  And get down to my ideal weight of 200 lbs by the time I turn 60 on June 4, 2011.  That would be a milestone and life accomplishment worthy of documenting in this blog.

Wish me well!

Musings About Overeating

I traveled all day from Nashville to Orlando.  It’s a long trip made longer by the horrific rain storms that plagued me the first 5-6 hours of the trip.  I saw at least 10-12 accidents along the way.  I had to pull over and stop on several occasions because I just couldn’t see.  The fact that I was pulling a U haul trailer made the trip even more treacherous and stressful.

I don’t know about you, but when I get stressed out, I want to eat.  And when I get bored from driving all day, I want to eat.  And when I travel alone and there is no one there to hold me accountable, I want to eat.  And when I check into a motel at night and turn on the TV and think about all those delicious candy bars just down the hallway in a conveniently located vending machine, I want to eat.  Eating is fun.  It relieves stress and boredom and is a surrogate companion when you’re all alone.

The truth is, I wasn’t hungry.  I had a nice breakfast (omelette and fruit) around 8 am this morning and a snack (apple and nuts) around 3 pm.  For supper, I ate a couple small pieces of chicken breast Barb had packed for me.  I never once experienced hunger pangs.  Even when I ate my snack and supper, I wasn’t really hungry.  I only ate out of boredom and to keep me from stopping and eating something I shouldn’t have.

Believe me I was tempted.  I was especially tempted when I exited to get a room around 8:30 pm.  There was (is – I’m writing this in my motel room) a Cracker Barrel (one of my favorite restaurants) not 50 yards from my motel.  I rationalized I had better stop for supper (a couple of small chicken breasts doesn’t constitute a real supper) so I wouldn’t get hungry and eat something I shouldn’t at the motel.  Besides, Cracker Barrel has lots of nice Low Carb menu selections so I could eat something on my diet.  No harm, no foul.

But I didn’t.  I wanted to.  Believe me, I really wanted to.  But then I remembered my eating rule:  Only eat when hungry. And the truth is, I’m really not hungry.  I’ve not been hungry all day long.  So why, fill up on calories I really don’t need?  Why indeed?

I’ll be honest with you.  I’ve never put much stock in all that psychological mumbo jumbo that the reason we overeat has more to do with our emotional and psychological makeup than it does our physical appetite.   I was firmly convinced that the reason I overate was because I was truly hungry.  It was all physical.  I ate (even overate) to satisfy my very physical cravings.

And I still believe that, for the most part.  Gary Taube is fond of saying:  we’re not fat because we overeat, we overeat because we’re fat.  (Re-read that sentence again.  It is a paradigm shift of enormous importance.)  He shows in copious detail that science has discovered that fat produces hormones that make us hungry.  We can’t help ourselves.  Overeating is a biological and physical response to the body’s erroneous signal that it is starving.

His solution.  Feed it a Low Carb, High Fat diet and your body will stop sending false signals.  It will no longer feel starved and your hunger sensations will be regulated.   Since I’ve been on such a diet, I can attest to the truth of this.  While on other diets that encouraged me to eat lots of carbs (and even when I’ve been on Low Carb diets where I’ve eaten too many carbs) I was hungry all the time.  I am not now.

Not being hungry, however, does not mean that I am not tempted.  I am tempted all the time.  I want to eat all the things I shouldn’t.  But when I closely examine my motives for wanting to eat, it generally has nothing to do with true hunger, but stems from psychological and emotional reasons:  like stress, or boredom, or being alone, or other much more complex reasons.  And these reasons can be just as powerful as the hunger pangs I used to experience.

I guess what I am learning (and what I really didn’t want to admit before) is that my overeating has a psychological basis just as much as a physical one and it requires eternal vigilance.  I can easily fix the one by eating the proper foods in the proper amounts, but it will take some serious retraining of my thought process and emotional responses to overcome the constant temptations I face day in and day out.  That I am determined to do.

Eating Less with Less Hunger

I’ve had the most intriguing experience this week.  Although eating far less than ever before, I am seldom hungry.  I certainly have not had the cravings and hunger pains of previous diets.  It is amazing.  Let me explain.

This week has been hectic beyond belief.  Besides putting our Franklin, TN home on the market, we received a telephone call on Sunday that necessitated speeding up the process and getting back to Florida just a quickly as possible.  As a result, we have been working 12-14 hour days painting, and cleaning, and packing, and meeting with handy men and realtors just to get the work done.

In keeping with my eating plan, I decided to eat only when hungry.  So, instead of eating a big breakfast each morning, I gauged how I felt and if I wasn’t hungry I would simply skip breakfast and wait till I felt hungry at which time I would eat a little something.  My plan was to always eat a good meal around 5 or 6 pm.

Much to my surprise and without even consciously fasting, I found myself going the whole day without ever feeling hungry.  On one or two days, I wasn’t even hungry at supper time and simply waited till later at which time I ate a medium salad with some meat in it for protein.  Occasionally, on long busy days, I felt myself getting a bit hungry in the mid afternoon and I would get an apple and some walnuts and snack until my hunger abated.  Usually it did before I had eaten the entire apple.  It’s the most amazing thing I’ve ever experienced.  Although I have been working harder than I have in weeks, I am less hungry and less tired than I have ever been even though I’ve actually eaten less – far less – than normal.  Why?  What is the cause of this?

This is what I think:

(1)  Intermittent Fasting has taught me to recognize true hunger. Since the first of the year, I have probably done IF 5 or 6 times.  That is, I have gone 18-24 hours without food half a dozen times.  During those first few IF sessions, when I felt hunger I pushed through it because I had made a commitment to myself that I would fast 24 hours.  Each time the hunger quickly went away and I succeeded in reaching my goal.  After doing this 3 or 4 times, the hunger pangs got weaker and less frequent.  IF taught me that I needed far less food than I had been accustom to eating and that what I perceived as hunger signals were just withdrawal symptoms as my body readjusted to less food, less frequently.

(2)  Cutting out the carbs makes you less hungry. My carb intake these past 23 days has been remarkably low.  It’s probably been in the 50 – 100 g a day range, although I’ve not kept a strict count of them.  As my body has weaned itself off carbs, I find myself less and less hungry.  The protein and good fats I am eating satiate my hungry and I even find myself requiring less of them than I previously did.  I think the combination of eating fewer carbs, coupled with eating only when hungry has retrained my body to tap into my fat stores for energy and quell the hunger signals to my brain that say, “You are hungry.  You must eat something now.”  It’s a remarkable thing.

(3)  Matching my food intake with my energy expenditure evens out my blood sugar. Due to my hectic schedule, I have been unable to get to the gym this week.  Normally, I will go to the gym 5 or 6 days a week.  My workout routine consists of heavy lifting and some light cardio.  In other words, I expend a great deal of energy in a very short period of time, around 70-80 minutes.   I usually exercise in the fasted state – meaning I don’t eat before I workout – and am generally very hungry when I get home.  But this week, I haven’t had those intense burst of energy expenditures since I’ve been busy cleaning and painting.  It’s been more of a slow and steady energy release over the course of 8-10 hours.   Although I feel as though I’ve expended just as much energy throughout the day as I normally would in one of my gym sessions, it was gradual and I didn’t experience the energy drain quite so severely.  In fact, I never once felt weak or light headed (or any of the other symptoms associated with low blood sugar and lack of energy).  If I felt anything at all, it was simply a mild hunger pang which I alleviated by eating a little bit of protein and good fat until I was satisfied (not full).  This matching of food intake to energy expenditure – or better yet, eating when hungry throughout the day rather than at set times – has resulted in feeling less hungry while eating less food.  Again, remarkable.

The take away: I am convinced that you can train your body to do with less food.  We eat way too much out of habit.  Also, kicking the carb addiction and eating the right kind of food (protein and good fats – with a moderate intake of non-processed carbs) satisfy the body and alleviate the sugar cravings that we often interpret as hunger.

666 Ways I Sabotage My Weight Loss – Part 1

I don’t really have 666 ways I sabotage my weight loss, but it was a cool title since “666” is the most evil of all numbers and because the different ways I sabotage my diet are quickly adding up.  So I thought I would start a list and see how many there really are.  Here are the first three:

1.  Going to the grocery store late at night: I generally avoid going to the store.  Thankfully, Barb does all the shopping, bless her heart.  I am much too weak of will to venture into such a modern “den of iniquity” as the neighborhood grocery store.  But alas, Barb was out-of-town and I was out of Resolve Carpet Cleaner – I spilled my drink and made a mess – so I had no choice but to head to the store.  I knew the minute I left the house, I was going to buy something “sugary” to eat.  I didn’t know what it would be but I knew it would involve chocolate.

Now, let’s put this in perspective.  I had been on my low carb weight loss program for 17 days without one slip – not one.  Except for one moment of wavering (which quickly passed) around day 10, I was not even tempted.  But a trip to the grocery store, alone, late at night was more than I could bear.  It’s amazing how often evil deeds are committed under cover of darkness – when we’re alone – and when we go to places we know we shouldn’t be.  I fell into the trap and bought brownies – big thick luscious chocolate nut brownies – and I couldn’t eat just one.  I did stop short of eating the whole pack – hey, it was cheaper to buy the 8 pack instead of the 4 pack, those evil marketers know how to get you – so, I felt I salvaged a bit of dignity and self-control out of this debacle, but I couldn’t help feel myself a failure.

The only good thing that came out of this dietary catastrophe was that the following day, I did an Intermittent Fast (IF) and quickly got back on my program with little or no damage.  In fact, I never experienced an easier day of fasting.  While I feel like I dodged a bullet, I have learned – once again for the hundredth time – stay away from grocery stores late at night and if you must go – use the buddy system.

2.  A failure to plan ahead: We love to take the grandchildren hiking.  It’s one of our favorite things to do.  We invariably take a cooler and fill it with healthy goodies like apples, nuts, carrots, sliced melons, water, diet soft drinks (for papa) and the occasional treat – Fruit Roll-ups and cheddar cheese Goldfish.

Now, I have no interest in the Fruit Roll-ups, but sad to say I can’t help dip into the Tupperware bowl full of those golden little crackers.  I don’t know what it is about them.  They really don’t have much of a cheese taste – not like Cheetos or a Cheez-It cracker – but I think it’s because their crunchy.  I don’t get a lot of crunchy stuff in my diet.  The problem is, I don’t know when to stop eating.  I just keep dipping into the bowl until they’re gone.  Lately though, I’ve found a solution.  It involves “segmentation.”  I learned it from my grandson Kaleb.

Kaleb is 6 years old and highly disciplined.  Like every six year old, he likes an occasional treat, but unlike most he has the discipline to limit himself.  Whenever we go to the movie and he gets his favorite treat – usually a box of gummy bears – he will hold the unopened box in his lap until the actual movie starts.  He will not even take a bite through the previews (or “pre-news” as he calls them) and, as you well know, some of the previews can last 20 minutes or more.  This created a problem once when I foolishly bought him an ice cream cone.  The cone melted and dripped all over him but he refused to take a single bite till the movie started.

Well, a few months ago, when we were out, I started to reach into the Goldfish bowl and Kaleb – bless his little heart – put his hand over the bowl and said, “Papa, you’re eating too much.”  He then proceeded to measure out a handful of Goldfish into a smaller bowl and inform me that those were mine and that’s all I could eat.  I was, of course, grateful to the little brat – I mean, sweetheart – and slowly ate my Goldfish one at a time, savoring each and every bite.

I know now, Kaleb was right, and have resolved that from now on whenever we go hiking, knowing I will probably be tempted, I plan to “segment,” or “divide out” a little stash of questionable snacks like Goldfish just for me.  Not having the iron will of a Kaleb, it’s just too easy to overeat from a community bowl.  Thanks to my sweet little grandson, I now have a plan.  (And God help him if he reaches for my bowl.)

3.  Traveling more than 2 hours in the car: Driving makes me hungry.  Not the physical act of driving, of course,  but the billboards that advertise all the fast food restaurants like Cracker Barrel, McDonalds, Wendy’s, Burger King, Taco Bell, Kentucky Fried Chicken and on and on.  The worse signs are the ones with photos of food on them.

Recently, we traveled through the tourist mecca of Valdosta, GA on I-75 and were bombarded with six or seven gigantic photos of hamburgers, french fries, ice cream sundaes, tacos, chicken sandwiches, and chocolates.  It was a dieters worse nightmares.  How does one find the strength to resist a six foot tall double burger with lettuce, tomato, pickle, onion and a touch of ketchup, surrounded by mounds of fries?   It’s nearly impossible.  It’s bad enough being cooped up in the car for hours on end, but then to be visually assaulted is almost unbearable.

Now, I know the conventional wisdom is to pack a little snack for your trip.  Take a cooler and put in healthy food.  And, yeah, we do all that.  But I’ve got to be honest with you, those sliced apples and walnuts, or even that Chocolate Atkins Shake, but especially the grapes, mini carrots, and cold chicken don’t compare to the mouth-watering treats I know await me just up the road at the next exit.  Even when I’m not really hungry – when I’m just bored from driving 500 miles – I want to stop, I want to eat, I want to cheat on my diet.

Nothings foolproof and I’m still working out some of the kinks, but I have found a couple of things that help. 

• First: always stop at Rest Areas to use the rest rooms – never at a fast food joint.  The snack and soda machines at Rest Areas aren’t nearly as tempting as the greasy, yet delicious smells emanating from restaurants. 
• Second: when you get gas, always chose the dirtiest looking food mart.  The gas is generally cheaper and you won’t be tempted to go inside, use their rest room, and stock up on treats.
• Third: get a good audiobook to listen to as your travel.  We’ve been known to get so engrossed that we’ve stayed in the car listening to our book long after we reached our destination.   Sometimes we’ll travel a hundred miles before we realize how far we’ve gone.  It’s a wonderful – and safe – distraction.
• Fourth: let your spouse or traveling companion drive while you take a nap.  It’s a marvelous way to arrive refreshed – and with diet intact – at your final destination.  Thanks Barb, for all the times you’ve taken over at the wheel.  (Now, if I could only get her to actually drive the speed limit instead of her pokey 45 mph, we might make some time traveling.  But like I said, I’m still working out the kinks.)

Running Barefoot

I’m not a runner.  I would love to be a runner.  Sometimes in my dreams I imagine myself swiftly running through flower-strewn fields with child-like abandonment, but in the real world I hate to run.  I’m too tall, too fat, and too slow.  Runners are sleek and compact.  As much as I would love to be a runner, I’m not.

That’s why I surprised myself the other week when at the bookstore I saw a stack of books entitled, Born to Run. I glanced at the cover which displayed a primitive of some sort standing with his back to the camera atop a mountain surveying the distant skyline.  I paused long enough to read the subtitle:  A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen and was intrigued.  But as I said, I am not a runner so I passed by the book.

Even so, I found myself circling around the book several times, which in itself is ridiculous.  I buy and read a lot of books.  I couldn’t quite understand why, if this book held any interest to me, I didn’t just buy it.  The price was right.  At one point, I picked it up and read the book jacket, inside and out.  Then I put it down and walked away, only to circle back around and pick it up again.  I felt ridiculous.  Why was I having such a hard time pulling the trigger?  Why couldn’t I just buy the daggone book?

It’s probably because I’m not a runner.  I can’t say it any plainer than that.  I don’t run.  I use to run – a little bit – before I got all kinds of injuries and quit, but even then I didn’t run very much.  Once when I was in my early thirties and only 20 lbs overweight, I entered a 5k figuring I could do that without any training.  I ended up having to walk half way through it.  Somewhere I have a picture of me sprinting across the finish line with my head held high, shoulders back, and a smile on my face, but it was all for show.  I knew the cameras would be clicking so I gave it everything I had a hundred yards from the finish line.  That was my first and last race.  I hated it.

So, I surprised myself when I arrived home with Born to Run in my possession.  I was even more surprised when, out of all the books I purchased that day, I found myself picking it up to read.  There was something fascinating to me about the thought that we were born to run.

Perhaps it had to do with a YouTube video I ran across a few days before my visit to the bookstore.  It was one of those videos that appear on the first page of YouTube under the heading Recommended for You.  I had been doing a lot of research into fitness and resistance training and had as a result watched a number of videos.  YouTube thought I might enjoy a video on Persistence Hunting.  I had never heard of such a thing, but I recognized the name of its creator, Sir David Attenborough, the legendary broadcaster and naturalist, and thought it might be worth watching.  So I did.

It was incredible.  It tells the story of a San tribesman on the Kalahari Desert who literally runs a male kudu (African antelope) to death in a chase that last 8 hours.  Imagine that.  A human being is actually capable of running an animal to death.  It is speculated by some that long before man created primitive weapons, he used his ability to run great  distances – unique to human beings – to hunt game.  In essence, so the thinking goes, running is what makes us distinctly human.

I’m sure that’s why I was so taken by the title Born to Run.  I wanted to know more.  I wanted to understand why I dream of running when I can’t run a lick.

Now, I told you all of that so I could tell you this.  I’ve had an epiphany.  After reading this book, I discovered I actually like running.  I may go so far as to say I love running, but that’s premature.

The book tells the fascinating story of the reclusive Tarahumara tribe who live in the remote Copper Canyons of Northern Mexico.  For hundred of years, these hardy tribesmen have routinely run races of 50, 100, 150 miles a day without injury – and even more incredibly, without shoes.  Think of that, they run the equivalent of 6 Boston Marathons back to back in the course of a day and without shoes.  How do they do that?

Well, as it turns out, running barefoot is much healthier for you and your feet than wearing shoes – even if that shoe is the most advanced and technologically sophisticated shoe in the world – and scientist are starting to take notice.  Look at this excerpt from a recent article entitled Why Expensive Trainers Could be Worse Than Useless:

Adidas sells a trainer with a microprocessor in the sole to customise cushioning, and Asics spent $3 million, and eight years – three more than it took the Manhattan Project to create the first atomic bomb – to invent the awe-inspiring “Kinsei”, a shoe that boasts “multi-angled forefoot gel pods” and an “infinitely adaptable heel component”.

Astonishingly, there’s no evidence that any of this technology does anything, which may explain why Nike ads never explain what, exactly, those $190 shoes are supposed to do. In a 2008 research paper for the British Journal of Sports Medicine, Dr Craig Richards, a physician at the University of Newcastle in Australia, revealed that after scouring 30 years’ worth of studies, he couldn’t find a single one that demonstrated that running shoes made you less prone to injury.

So if shoes aren’t the solution, could they be the problem? That’s what Dr Daniel Lieberman, the head of the evolutionary anthropology department at Harvard, began to wonder. Humans, after all, are the only creatures that voluntarily cover their feet, and we’re also the only creatures known to suffer from corns, bunions, hammer-toes and heel pain.

Last spring, Lieberman recruited Harvard students for an experiment: he had them kick off their sneakers and run every day in either bare feet or wearing a thin, rubber foot-glove called the Vibram Fivefingers. The results were remarkable. Once their shoes were taken away, the students instinctively stopped clumping down on their heels. Instead, they began landing lightly on the balls of their feet, keeping their feet beneath their hips and bending at the knees and ankles. Without knowing it, they were mirroring the Tarahumara.

Lieberman was so taken by his discovery that before long, he was startling undergraduates by loping past them in bare feet for miles at a time through the streets of suburban Boston.

In Germany, meanwhile, the world’s leading researcher in human connective tissue, Dr Robert Schleip at the University of Ulm, began a similar experiment to see whether he could end his own battle with plantar fasciitis, a vexing heel pain that is almost impossible to cure fully.

“If you encase the foot in thick shoes,” Schleip says, “you not only lose ground awareness, you limit your natural elasticity.” Schleip began slipping out of his shoes to run barefoot through the parks of Berlin. Soon, his heel pain vanished, never to return.

So harmful are running shoes that you’re better off walking in high heels. That’s the conclusion of a study published this month in PM&R, the journal for the American Academy of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation. A team of researchers put 68 young adult runners on a treadmill, and found that they suffered 38 per cent more twisting in their knees and ankles when wearing shoes than they did in bare feet.

“Remarkably, the effect of running shoes on knee joint torques,” the lead researcher said, “is even greater than the effect that was reported earlier of high-heeled shoes during walking.”

Similarly, a study in The Journal of Sports Medicine and Physical Fitness in March 2009 found that even when running on hard surfaces, barefoot runners experience less impact than runners with shoes because – as the Harvard students discovered – they naturally take shorter strides and bend their knees and ankles. No one needed to feed those numbers to Abebe Bikila, the two-time Olympic champion, or Zola Budd, who held the
5,000 metre world record and competed for Britain in the 1984 Los Angeles Games: both preferred running in bare feet.

The upstart of all this is that I tried it.  For the first couple of days, I just walked barefoot on the golf course outside our home in Florida.  I felt liberated and a little naughty – I’d never seen anyone walk barefoot on the golf course.  Are you allowed?  I didn’t know, but I didn’t care.  It felt good.  After the third day, I decided to do something even more daring.  I decided to run.  I had been reading about Tabata Sprints where one runs flat out as fast as he can for 20 seconds and then walks slowly for 10 seconds (repeated 8-10 times) and how great a cardio workout it is, so I decided to try it.

But instead of running for 20 seconds I decided to run from green to tee box on the 550 yard par 5 third hole and to time myself.  I was scared to run all out, so I just jogged to the other end.  It took me a little over 2 minutes.  I walked back to where I had started to give my system a rest and then decided to do it again, only this time, to better my time.

I opened it up a bit and covered the same ground in 1:30.  But I knew I had held something back.  So the third time, I let it rip and flew down the course, legs churning, arms pumping.  I felt like I was in one of my dreams.  It was surreal.  It felt fabulous.  I covered the distance in 1:17.  It was amazing.  I didn’t want to stop.  It was the most fabulous running experience of my life and I know I will do it again.

I haven’t had a chance to repeat that experience as we started traveling and the weather turned bitter cold, but I know I will.  In fact, I can’t wait.  Maybe one of these days you will see a blog entry from me entitled, I Was Born to Run. You never know.

(Check out these cool videos and websites.  The first is the Attenborough film on Persistence Hunting and the second demonstrates how without instruction of any kind we instinctively change our running style from a “heel strike” to a “ball of feet” strike when we run barefoot.  Both are fascinating.)

Websites to Visit for more information:

Barefoot Ted’s Adventure

Barefoot Running

Vibram Five Fingers – An Alternative to Running “totally” Barefoot

Popular Mechanic’s Look at High Tech Shoes and the Benefits of Barefoot Running

Barefoot Running

Forget Positive Thinking – Go Negative

Not long ago, I read an article that said Madeleine Albright could leg press 400 lbs.   Just to jog your memory, Madeleine Albright  is a former US Ambassador to the United Nations and the first woman Secretary of State under Bill Clinton.  She was born in 1937 (which makes her 73 freaking years old) and she stands a colossal 4’10” tall.

Now if you have a lick of sense about you, your first reaction to that statement was probably, “You sey what?” followed immediately by, “Hell, I can do that.”  And that was my reaction as well.  In fact, I said, “I can do more than 400 lbs.”  The only problem is 400 lbs is a lot of weight – think the new improved, slimmer Ralphie May (he used to weigh 800 lbs) and imagine lying on your back and hoisting him in the air with your legs like a circus acrobat.  That’s a lot of dead weight to be tossing around.  But I figured if Madeleine can do it,  so can I.

So I went to the gym today, I strapped myself in the leg press machine and put on 200 lbs.  No problem.  I did 20 reps.  I bumped it up to 250.  No sweat, 20 more.   300 lbs.  It was a little hard to get it going, but once I got it in the air, I managed to knock out 15 reps.  By this time, I was getting a bit concerned.  I could start to feel the weight.  It was getting a bit heavy and I still had 100 lbs to add.  Not to worry.  If Madeleine can do it, so can I.

I put on another 50 lbs – I don’t mess around with the 10s or 25s, I like to go for the big boys and load it up.  It’s more manly.  I folded my legs up against my chest and pushed with all my might.  It barely budged.  I re-racked the weight just for a second and then pushed again for all I was worth.  This time I raised the weight and fully extended my legs to lock out position.  I then proceeded very slowly to do 12 reps.

At this point, I decided I needed to get up, stretch, take an extended rest and let my body resupply the depleted glycogen to my muscles.  So I walked around the gym for 5 minutes shaking off the fatigue in my legs all the while giving myself a little pep talk.

“This is ridiculous!  I just barely lifted 350 lbs for reps.  Madeleine Albright does 400 lbs.  Madeleine freaking Albright!  4’10” Madeleine Albright!  73 year old Madeleine Albright!  If Madeleine Albright can do 400 lbs, then I sure as hell can do 400 lbs.”  And on and on it went.

By the time I added the extra 50 lbs to the machine and strapped myself in, I was psyched.  Taking a few minutes to compose myself and employing all the positive imagery I could to “Unleash the Power Within,” (thank you Tony Robbins) I closed my eyes, focused my energy, concentrated on moving the platform and visualized myself smoothly and effortlessly extending my legs upward and outward lifting all 400 lbs to lockout position just like Arnold on steroids.

Finally, I took a deep breath, held it, and on the count of three, I bore down and pressed upward as hard as I could.  I pressed so hard, the rubber on the soles of my shoes fused to the metal plate.  I felt the padded post that served as a back rest buckle under my strain (it could have been my spine collapsing, I’m not sure.)  I pushed and pressed till I was afraid I was going to grind the veneers off my teeth.  And nothing.  Nada.  The weight barely moved.

I sat there in my defeat and humiliation.  “I can’t believe it.  How is it possible that Madeleine Albright can lift 400 lbs and I can’t even budge it?  Are the laws of physics somehow suspended in Washington DC (I know the economic laws don’t apply there)? I know I am at least as strong as that 73 year old midget (excuse me, little person).  There is no way she is going to out lift me, NO FREAKING WAY.

So I psyched myself up to give it one more try.  But this time, instead of thinking positive, I went negative.  Keeping her face before me, I said over and over to myself, “I’m going to kick Madeleine Albright’s butt.  Madeleine Albright is a wuss.  She’s nothing.  She’s a Clinton appointed stooge without the backbone to stand up to her boss and say, ‘You’re a liar,” when he looked into the camera and said, “I did not have sex with that woman.’  She’s a pansy.  And I’ll be ‘daggone’ if I’m goin’ let her make me look like a fool……”

And then I pushed.  I pushed harder than I had ever pushed anything in my life – except for the time I tried to push an excuse on Barb that it’s not a lie as long as you tell some version of the truth, but that’s another story.  I pushed and pushed and pushed and finally, the foot plate moved.  And then it moved some more.  Upward and forward it went.  I was doing it.  I was pressing 400 lbs.  After what seemed like eternity, I locked out.  I did it!  “Take that Madeleine!  You got nothin’ on me!”

And so I did another one.  And another one.  And then, just for good measure, I did one more.  Four reps!  “There is no way, Madeleine Albright did four reps.  She was probably lucky to get one.  That means I’m four times better than she is.  HA!”

I jumped up – well, it was more like pulling myself to my wobbly legs – and ran around the gym – to be honest, I was hobbling a bit.  But in my heart I was jumping and running.  I had just done the impossible.  I leg pressed 400 lbs.  Not once but four times.  And I owe it all to Madeleine Albright.  “Thank you very much.”

So, if you’re still with me, here’s the take away: Don’t be duped by all that teaching about positive self talk.  That’s not what motivates people.  There’s a reason political campaigns go negative the last few days of a campaign.  Negative attack ads work.  We don’t like it.  We wish we didn’t have to use it, but they are effective – far more effective than the positive namby-pamby ads they run in the beginning of the campaign.

So if you want results, I’m talking real results, think negative.  Get yourself a “human punching bag” and whale on it.  And if you can’t find one that’s suitable for you, I’ll be glad to lend you mine.  Just picture Madeleine Albright and you too can accomplish more than you think.  Good Luck!

Hey, it works for me!

The 20/20/20 Rule

Everyone knows what it feels like to be hungry.  We also know the feeling of being stuffed.  But did you know there is a middle ground called “I’m full but I could eat a little more,” that is so difficult to gauge that we can miscalculate where that point is by as much as 20% too little or too much and never feel the difference.  Let me explain.

When we eat, the goal should be to satisfy our hunger without eating more than we really need.  The problem for virtually everyone is knowing when to stop.  When am I full?  At what point is my hunger really satisfied?  Should I eat this one or two or three more bites?  Will that abate my hunger?  Or can I stop now and feel satisfied?

Studies have shown that wherever we peg the feeling of fullness or satisfaction or satiety, we can eat 20% less or 20% more and never feel any difference whatsoever.  The feeling is the same.

Now compound this with the well documented fact that on average it takes 20 minutes for the signal from the body to reach the brain that it’s had enough food.  (The reason for this long lapse is that the signal actually originates in the intestines not the stomach and it takes a while for the food to move through the digestive system.)  Once the signal reaches the brain, the brain activates the satiety response (which originates in the hypothalamus) that makes us stop eating.

So, if a person is a fast eater, for example, he could by virtue of the fact that he is shoveling his food in his mouth so fast that the signals of his body never have time to catch up to his brain overshoot his goal of “eating till full,” by 20% or more and never even know it.  When his brain finally tells him he’s full, he would feel exactly – exactly – the same as if he had stopped with 40% less food.  (Remember:  a person feels the same whether he eats 20% more or 20% less.  Thus there is a 40% margin of error.)  Think about that.  This is a huge difference.

How much weight could a person lose if he ate 40% less every day?  Let’s just say it would be a lot.  And the beauty is there would be absolutely no difference in the way he felt.  He would feel exactly the same.  He would not feel more hungry or less hungry.  He would feel satisfied – perhaps even more satisfied because he would not be approaching that feeling of being “stuffed” having eaten 40% less food.

This one rule can change your life.  Without ever consciously dieting, you could lose weight effortlessly and never once feel deprived.  That is huge.  What can you do to implement the 20/20/20 Rule in your life?

(1)  Slow down when you eat: Studies have shown that a person eating alone in a fast-food restaurant will, on average, take about 11 minutes to eat.  If he’s at a workplace cafeteria, it will take approximately 13 minutes.  At a moderately priced restaurant, 28 minutes.  As you can see, we tend to be very fast eaters.  That means, our body never has a chance to signal the brain that we have eaten enough food.  So the takeaway is:  slow down and you will eat less.  Better yet, don’t eat alone.   Adding two or three people to your table will double your eating time.

(2) Stop the mindless eating: Scientists believe that feeling full is the result of a combination of things.  How much we chew.  How much we taste.  How much we swallow.  How much we think about the food we are eating.  How long it takes to eat.  If we focused on the food we eat, rather than on TV, or a sporting event we are attending, or the movie at the theater, or the roadway while we’re driving – all things we tend to do while eating – we would be much more conscious of when we’ve reached the “I’m full but I COULD eat a little more,” checkpoint and quite possibly stop ourselves from overeating.

(3)  Take 20% less to begin with:  It has been proven in countless studies that our eyes really are bigger than our stomaches.  Because the signal to the brain telling us we are full takes so long to get there, we judge whether or not we are full (or whether we’ve had enough to eat) by visual cues such as:  Is my plate clean?  Is my bowl empty?  Is the pile of chicken bones beside my plate large enough?  We all have in our minds a preconceived notice of how much is enough.  If we are use to having a large bowl of cereal every morning, we generally pour ourselves that same large bowl regardless of how hungry we really are.  Once poured, we don’t stop eating until the bowl is empty.  At the movie theater, we buy the jumbo 32 oz soft drink because its the best buy and we drink all 310 calories of it because we are programmed to think we have yet to reach satiety until the cup is empty.  But nothing could be further from the truth.  If we took less to begin with, slowed down, and thought about what we are eating/drinking, we could reach satiety (fullness, satisfaction) long before we consumed all those senseless extra calories.  The takeaway:  use smaller plates, cups, glasses and put at least 20% less food on your plate than you think you need to be full.  You will never miss it except around your waistline.

So, Here’s my 20/20/20 Rule in a nutshell:

• Take 20% less food.
• Take 20 minutes to eat it.
• Lose 20 lbs.

Sounds like a no-brainer to me.  Good Luck!

If I Had to Choose Just One Exercise

In my first year of college, I became friends with a guy who was in several of my classes.  We would hang out at the student union after class and occasionally hit the library together to do research.  Since he lived in another city, he returned home at the end of the spring term and I didn’t see him again till the fall.

When I did see him, I didn’t recognize him.  I didn’t know him at all.  He was a total stranger.  In those three short months over the summer, he lost a whopping 60 lbs.  I was flabbergasted.  I couldn’t believe it.  I had never met anyone who had lost so much weight in so short a time and whose results were so dramatic.

When I asked him how he did it he simply replied, “I walked it off.”  Every day for at least an hour, sometimes longer, he went for a brisk walk.  He made a point to eat right but the only exercise he did was walking.  Amazing.

Whenever I want to lose weight I always add walking to my regimen.  And whenever I walk, I am reminded of and encouraged by my friend.  Walking is a wonderful way to get quality exercise of the body, mind and spirit`.

Now, I want to reiterate that I firmly believe that 80% of any weight loss is tied to nutrition (what we do and do not eat).  But the other 20% is directly linked to the three ways we expend energy:

• basal metabolic functions – breathing, thinking, digesting, circulating blood, etc.
• structured exercise – resistance training, jogging, swimming, cycling, walking, etc.
• non-exercise activity – twitching, scratching, raising your arm to take a drink, changing channels on the remote control, getting up to answer the telephone, etc.

Clearly your basal metabolic functions count for the majority of your daily energy expenditure (and therefore the calories you burn), but adding structured exercise and just plain moving around more can dramatically impact your weight loss as my friend proved.

Let me tell you what I’ve learned from walking and why I walk 30-60 minutes every day and have for the past twenty plus years.

(1) It’s easy on the joints – it is low-impact and user-friendly.  You can’t say that about too many exercise.  Walking is the most basic of all human activities.  We were made to walk.  Our body thrives on movement and when we walk we engage the skeleton, muscles, joints, and ligaments as they were meant to be used.  Walking is an all round exercise that keeps your body fit and young without all the wear and tear of other high impact exercises.

(2) You can burn a lot of calories – with little or no stress to the body, you can create a calorie deficit that will significantly aid in your fat loss efforts.  A 150 lb man walking 4.0 mph for 60 minutes can burn 351 calories and a 200 lb man will burn 468 calories.  These aren’t huge numbers but they add up.  Over the course of a week, if you did nothing else, you would expend enough energy to burn a pound of fat given that you were eating properly (Low Carb – High Fat Diet).  In a year, that’s 50 lbs.  I’ll take that weight loss any day.  (Check out this cool calculator to discover how many calories you burn walking – given your weight – as well as other exercises.)  Note:  you don’t have to do the full 30 or 45 or 60 minute walk all at once.  It has been shown that it is just as effective to break up your walking in 10, 15, 20, 30 minute chucks of time that you can easily fit into your schedule.)

3. It’s both a solitary and social pursuit – sometimes I like to walk by myself.  I like to listen to my music or books on tape.  You wouldn’t believe how many books I get through in a month’s time.  When I was in the ministry, I conceived of and outlined my weekly sermons.  I used my walks as a time to commune with God.  Walking is a time for inward reflection, focused thought, and creative thinking.  I love walking by myself.  But I also love walking with my wife.  We have the best conversations when we walk.  Usually we are busy doing our own thing throughout the day  (I watch TV, read, write, and take naps, while Barb cooks, cleans, does errands, and gets me drinks), so it’s nice when we come together at night to take a walk on the golf course or the beach or in the mountains and just talk.  On our walks, we generally talk about the most important things in our life.  We make major decisions while walking and draw strength and comfort from our relationship.  Sometimes we even make-out – nah, just kidding – but only because Barb is a neat freak and doesn’t want to get her clothes dirty.  But, hey, there’s always hope.  I love walking with my wife.

(4)  Walking nourishes my soul – I know, I know, it sounds corny – like “Chicken Soup for the Soul,” but I’m a better person when I walk.  It clears my head, helps me stay centered, and keeps me in touch with God’s creation.  Today I went for a walk along the Natchez Trace Parkway outside of Nashville TN.  It is a beautiful and pristine roadway that stretches some 444 miles through stunning scenery without all the modern clutter of subdivisions, billboards, businesses, and traffic.  Traveling down the Parkway is like stepping back in time 100 years ago but without the ruts and road-apples.  As I drove along, I saw miles and miles of split-rail fence, deer and thick woods with patches of snow still lingering in low places.  When I parked and got out to walk, my senses came alive as I felt the cool (60 degrees today) breeze on my face, and heard tiny animals scampering ahead of my footsteps, and smelled the pungent odor of a dead skunk – OK, it ruins the imagery, I know, but believe me I came alive when I smelled it.  And that’s the point.  Walking outdoors fills the senses.  It satisfies the soul.  It connects you with nature.  It makes you a whole and healthy person.  And that’s not something you can say about too many other exercises.  Try it.  And give me a call if you want someone to walk with you.

Natchez Trace Parkway

The Bridge Over Which I Walked Today