Diet Tip

About two years ago, I got sent some family photos of my parent’s recent wedding anniversary.  The sight of me in those photos set something off in my head, and I decided I had to lose weight.  After doing a lot of research, I came to the conclusion the best way to lose weight was…eat less stuff.  The rest is playing around.  I ditched all snack food (I keep none in the house), ate only when my body was absolutely screaming for it (if that means once a day, great) and chose small portions of very satisfying food to large portions of “filling” crap.  Eg, I’d rather eat 2oz of a fine Tuxford & Tebbetts Stilton cheese than a sack of baby carrots.  I could go on with various little tricks, but one thing I’ve learned as people have watched me drop back down to my high-school weight over the last two years and asked for advice is that a lot of dieting is really personal–what works for you like a charm may be impossible for someone else.  You simply have to try different things and see what works.  For example, some people seem to have to never break the rules or they instantly spiral out of control.  For me, if I want to go out and have a giant pizza feed, that’s not an issue.  I just go back to business as usual the next day.
And willpower is overrated.  Not highly overrated–without it you are doomed from the outset–but it’s like any other muscle…the more you use it, the stronger it gets.  It really does become easier as time goes by, and you lose bad habits.
Overall my diet path became very similar to Jim’s as described here, and it worked…and keeps on working.  I especially agree with not obsessing.  Pull out the scale once a week, no more.  It’s taken me almost two years to get to within 5 pounds of what I want, and if it takes another to make that last bit, fine by me.
Most of what is written about dieting is utter rubbish.  I found Taubes’s books interesting, though–very un-PC and he doesn’t shy from asking some hard questions about common assumptions.  And, surprisingly, Toshio Okada’s “Sayonara Mr Fatty,” which I read about a year into my diet, really squared with a lot of my personal experiences.
“Anti-fat crusaders” denegrate the idea that many people have metabolic issues.  This is rubbish.  I’m 6′ 2.5″ and eat (roughly–I don’t obsessively count calories) about 1600 calories a day to sustain my weight at 205.  “The books” say I should need about 2600. 
And while exercise is good for you, it’s going to do little to help you lose any significant weight–the amount of calories you can burn versus the amount in food means that, literally, a 5-mile run won’t burn off that Krispy Creme.  The tired old “muscle burns calories” argument has a grain of truth, but again, the difference is so slight a handful of pretzels negates it.  If you can’t make the “regular exercise” part of dieting work for you, don’t feel guilty or that you are doomed to fail. 
Finally…yeah, dieting is hard.  The hunger impulse comes from deep within our brain, like the desire to breathe.  It’s not like, say, quitting smoking–a learned behavour.  To resist as your brain stem screams at you to EAT! can be brutal.  People who have spent their life eating what they want and scoffing at “weak willed fatsos” deserve a savage beating with a crowbar.  They have no idea what it’s like to battle survival messages from your own body.*  I feel very fortunate these messages faded in intensity over the months and years, but not a day goes by that they don’t pop up.  I just have the experience and tools to handle them, now.
Oh, and the BMI?  Biggest load of crap on earth.

*: Tomoko has always been very supportive but her eye-opening moment came when she had to fast for 24 hours before a medical test last year.  As she told me later “I’d never before felt really hungry in my life.  It was almost impossible to think of anything else.  Is this what it’s like for you all the time?”
Yes, for many decades, it was.