Now that I have been doing this for awhile, I get a lot of questions from friends, and friends of friends, about what is the best diet plan, program, product, process, etc.  I guess they figure that anyone who has lost 70 pounds is qualified to tell them how they should do the same.  I’m here to tell you that isn’t so.  I can’t help you decide what is best for you.  Only you can do that.  My program works for me.

 That’s what’s wrong with the diet industry.  They want us to believe that one plan fits all.  That said, I can share some of what I have learned.  Keep in mind I am not a doctor, nutritionist, or diet specialist.  I am a person who got tired of weighing 316 pounds and decided enough was enough.  So what’s the best advice I can share?

• Don’t diet.
• Talk to your doctor FIRST
• Eat less and exercise more.

Diet plans and programs are fraught with rules and restrictions and pitfalls.  Be honest with yourself… how many diets have you started in the past?  And how many of them were successful?   If you are contemplating another diet, then none of the ones you tried in the past was successful because the weight didn’t stay off!

The only way to lose weight, in a healthy manner, is to burn more calories than you eat on a very regular basis.  Daily would be the best standard, but things do come up and a slice of chocolate cake isn’t the problem.  2, or 3, or more is the problem. 

Choose healthier foods.  Yep you are going to miss cheese sauce and I hate to break it to you, but gravy is not a beverage. A small square of chocolate tastes just the same as the whole bar and anything that comes in multiple serving sizes is probably a mistake.  Grains, fibers, fruits, vegetables, healthy meats, nuts.   This isn’t rocket science.

Balance is the key.  An “All carb diet” or an “All protein diet” is depriving your body of vital nutrients.   Of course you lose weight on it.  Your body is desperately searching for what it needs and is consuming itself to find it.  But did the weight stay off?  If it did, you wouldn’t be reading this now.

Drink lots of water.  Up to 60 percent of the human body is water, the brain is composed of 70 percent water, and the lungs are nearly 90 percent water.  Your body knows what it needs.  And here is another shocker… Soda is not water!  It’s either carbonated high fructose corn syrup or carbonated artificial sweeteners.  Studies show that both of those substances can cause your brain to miss the signal your body sends to indicate it is satisfied and to stop shoveling stuff in.

Be Prepared.  The Boy Scouts have it right.  You need to be food and food label educated.  You need to plan your food intake each day with a back up plan tucked away in case of a change.  Failure to plan your nutritional habits is your brains way of tricking you into eating all the wrong stuff.

It was good to see the family, and it is good to be home.

Working a food and exercise plan takes a lot of vigilance, and I did much better on this vacation than I did on the last.  But the focus was kind of tiring.  You constantly have to plan your food plan around others and it’s hard to sit down to something healthy when there are fresh baked cookies just sitting there all the time.  But I did it, and I got my exercise in.   Thanks to my Mom for that!  She is 70 and goes to water aerobics all the time where she lives.  We went twice and she and her girl friends just kicked my butt!  They really do a great workout.  We also got to the gym one day to lift weights together.  I did marginally better there.

But I am home now, and doing the things I need to do to setting back into my routine.  Tomorrow I will weigh in and see how the vacation went weight wise…

I just spent the weekend with some wonderful guys who support me and accept me just the way I am.  They represent a wide range of heights, weights, and body types and spending the weekend with them in the middle of nowhere West Virginia eating healthy food, breathing fresh air and connecting with them taught me a couple of important lessons.

1. I am created in the image of God.  This creation isn’t static, it constantly changes.  Sometimes the changes are big and occur over time.  Other times the changes are so minute I never notice them and they occur in an instant.  But this is always God’s creation and therefore perfect at all times.  Now…If I create a situation where the health of this creation is at risk, then I have an obligation to God and myself to improve that to the best of my ability.  But sitting around worrying that my body is not good enough and hating how I look is passing judgment on God’s work and assuming the role of God.  How I was yesterday was perfect; just as it is perfect in this moment and will be again tomorrow.  As it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be applies to many things.
2. Being attractive, truly attractive, is something that starts on the inside.  I have physically beautiful people who weren’t attractive many times.  Who I am is what makes me attractive, sexy and confident.  Accepting who I am in this instant helps prepare for who I will be in the next instant.  This is a progression.  You can’t move forward until you master the first part.

I have to make a change that is going to be really difficult.  Which means I am dreading it.  Which makes me want to eat.  Sometimes I am convinced I am on the food merry-go-round from hell.  It nevers stops, the music is to loud and yet somehow it still includes pizza delivery!

The change I have to make is to WHERE I eat.  Pretty much the answer to that question is desk.  Desk at work, desk at home.  Sometimes in front of TV and occassionally while reclining and reading a book.  None of those are healthy eating habits.  But I have been doing it for a REALLY long time.  I know that I should eat at a table and focus on my food.  I should savor it, and be more mindful, but the thought of sitting at a table at home or at work, by myself with no company but my food makes me a little….no a lot nervous.

My mind is already coming up with excuses as to why this won’t work.  The fact that I don’t have a dining room table among them.

I will be bored

I will eat too fast to get it over with

I won’t stick with it, why start

And a million more excuses that we have all heard before.   So… like it or not I need to get a table this weekend.  And a nice table cloth, place mat and candle holder.  If I am going to do this I might as well have fun with it!

If you read my food log on a regular basis you will notice something unusual tonight.  I entered Night Off in my food log tonight.  When I got home tonight I was seriously craving a big bowl of pasta.  At first I thought it might be a physical reaction.  I was at a business meeting today, and had less control over what my food options were.  I also had less control over myself.  Instead of choosing Diet Coke, I had 2 – 12 oz Cokes during the course of the meeting, and I had two cookies for dessert.

Not that those food selections are certainly not the end of the world, and they are a lot less serious than they could have been in the past.  I passed the cookies a number of times without having one, which is improvement.  But between the soda and the cookies I took in a lot more carbs than I would normally and a lot more sugar.

So I was concerned that my desire for pasta was biochemical.  Then I started thinking through my day and trying to determine if the there was some emotional drive that was making me want to eat.  After tackling that for awhile I realized I was making myself kind of crazy.  Maybe a desire for some pasta is just a desire for some pasta and a wish not to eat chicken tonight.

That’s when I realized that what I am experiencing is closer to the way that “normal” eat.  Sometimes you just get a craving and sometimes you just want to eat something different.  So I ate a bunch of pasta.  A great big bowl… and I am going to have dessert.  And tomorrow I will be back on my food plan and move forward.

I think that an occasional night off is going to be good.  I can’t make a regular process of it, but that is a decision for me.  One fitness and Diet Program, Body for Life (www.bodyforlife.com) recommends that participants follow their program six days a week and then have a free day in which the person can eat anything he or she wishes.  The philosophy is that in one day a person cannot eat enough to throw off the good done in the other six days.  A large number of people have experienced a lot of success on the program and it seems to be very healthy, in my layman opinion.

For me, a free day doesn’t work but that’s because I compulsively overeat.  But I think occasionally incorporating a free meal; say once or twice a month may be motivational.  I am going to give it a try and be willing to give it up if it appears to interfere with my overall goals.

90 Nice Things

 Sometimes when someone in a 12-Step program is struggling in some way they will commit to doing a “90 in 90” or attending a meeting every day for 90 days.    I thought about doing that, but somehow it just didn’t seem like the right idea.  I’m not really struggling right now; I just need to feel better.

Staying on food plan, balancing work and school, and exercising certainly help but it just feels like something is missing. 

Today I got the suggestion that I should do 90 nice things for myself.   The plan is over the next 90 days to do something nice for myself each day.  It has to be a conscious plan each day.  I can’t wait till the end of the day and pick something that I think was nice.  I have to make an effort to achieve it.

That doesn’t mean it needs to be complicated, just a conscious decision.  It can be spontaneous or planned.

The benefit will not only be that I get a little jump start on feeling happy, but I also take some of the focus off food.  Some days it feels like that is all I think about.  Preparing a meal, eating it, doing the dishes, planning out the next meal, preparing it, etc.  90 nice things will be a moment each day where I just celebrate me.

This is another one of those articles that I am writing for me and posting for you.  My exercise log has been emptier than Lindsey Lohan’s list of successful films, so I need to do something about that starting today.  Yes today; even though writing that to post makes me break out in hives.

Since I have been really harping on doing things differently (read correctly) this time I have been reading a number of different websites and blogs about the best things to do to start a program, and maintain it.

1. Making the decision to exercise is an important first step, but if you are like me you make the commitment to exercise about once a week, always a bit more enthusiastically at the beginning of each month and you SWEAR you will exercise very New Year’s Eve.  All we have to show for it is a huge collection of leg warmers, more exercise video’s and dvd’s then we know what to do with and an exercise log that has an amazingly motivating cover and not a single entry inside.  The trick is, how do we make this commitment stick?  One recommendation is to start exercising for a cause.  There are so many great charities out there that sponsor walks, runs, long distance walks and bike rides that you are bound to find something that is important to you.  I’m thinking about doing AIDS Ride, so I need to start improving cardio-vascular fitness.
2. Do things a little at a time.  Instead of going out and buying a $1000 bike this afternoon I am going to start working out on the cardio equipment in the gym in my apartment building.  It’s great equipment and it’s free.  If I build up a regular exercise habit THEN I can go buy the bike.  My closest is full of exercise accessories that I would thought would motivate me and didn’t.
3. Talk to my doctor.   I know…every program says this and we never do it and how many programs have stuck with and experienced success?  You can count mine on one severely maimed hand.  Maybe doing things right will make a difference.
4. Ultimately I need to change both my internal beliefs and my external environment to be set up for success.  It takes time to develop new habits, so a positive, forgiving attitude is going to be essential. If you have been following my blog, you know this isn’t my strong point…  I will not become an athlete overnight, but by slowly changing my internal dialog and external situation, I might be able to start a new lifestyle that encourages fitness.
5. Usually exercise, and my physical health is the last item on the daily agenda in trying to balance, school, work, the zoo, meetings, and everything else that make up the demands of my daily life. However, if I make physical fitness and healthy lifestyle a priority, I will not only feel better, I will probably perform better in the other areas of my life.
6. As with anything I do, I need to take it a day at time.  I can’t focus on this being the “big change” in my life.  I can focus on needing to exercise today and celebrating my success when I do meet the expectation.  (Not with ice cream!)

Even a mistake may turn out to be the one thing necessary to a worthwhile achievement.

~ Henry Ford

A good friend reminded me this weekend that I am human and that humans make mistakes.  I made a couple of huge ones this past weekend that had nothing to do with my food plan but are very important none the less.  So now it’s Monday and I want to sit at my desk at work and wallow in regret.  It’s an excellent way to punish myself, keep myself stuck and keep away from the real topic at hand which is “What do I need to do to correct the mistakes?”

Why I made the mistakes is subject to a lot of internal debate right now. Each time I think I have the answer some other issue starts jumping up and down screaming for attention.  Perhaps I was motivated by a number of things, perhaps it was much less complicated than that.  And perhaps why I made the mistakes is a lot less important than what I am going to do now that they have been made.

I really like the Henry Ford quote I pasted in above.   Maybe I needed these mistakes in order to grow.  It isn’t my job to question the universe.  That’s not to say that making them was a good idea, but I can choose to focus on the problem or I can choose to focus on the solution.  I can’t do both.

Part of growing up is choosing to pick myself up and dust myself off when life throws me out of the saddle.  Hopefully as the day goes by I will stop looking back and start looking forward.  Now that the mistakes have been made what is the next right thing I have to do?

I have a couple of issues to work through under this topic, so I guess I will hit them both tonight.  Actually I have hundreds of issues under this topic, but tonight I have a limited amount of energy and the pleasant disposition of a rabid weasel.  So… rather than drag us all through the psychodrama that is Jeff I will just play the top two in the countdown tonight.

I have a cold.  It’s not a particularly bad cold, I was able to go to work today, but it got a bit worse as the day progressed.  Not the end of the world, its cold & flu season and going back and forth between hot buildings and freezing weather is a great way to catch a cold.  So is taking public transportation, and I am guilty of all three right now. 

The reason the cold is bothering me is that it really started yesterday and I skipped working out with the intention to work out today when I felt better.  So today I feel like something on the bottom of someone’s shoe… and not even someone very interesting and I am not working out again.

I Googled the question, “Should I work out when I have a cold?”  97.000,000 hits later I have the answer.  Maybe.  Thank god we have search engines to help us tackle these complicated issues.  After much internal debate I decided to go with the answer from David Shaw at Quantum Health.com.

“According to some physicians, there is a fairly simple way to decide if you should take it easy or not and it’s called the neck up or neck down rule.

If your symptoms are from the neck up, meaning you have sniffles, a runny nose, headache and perhaps a very mild cough, it’s probably OK to perform a mild workout. The key is to make sure you have no difficulty breathing during or after a workout. Definitely cut back, though, especially if you’re a type A at the gym. Experts agree that going at one third your normal pace might be the best way to proceed and if you feel worse a few hours later – give yourself a few days rest.

If you’re symptoms are primarily neck down, that is you’ve got a deep chest cough or a fever, you should skip working out altogether until you feel much better. Chest pain means you most likely have inflamed tissue in the lungs and working out will cause an even worse inflammation. Sleep and rest are the better choice.”

http://www.quantumhealth.com/news/exercise_with_cold_or_flu.html

Of course now I have to get over the guilt that I am heaping on myself for having a “neck down” cold.  Come to think of it I also have a runny nose and the sniffles so perhaps I am back to maybe.

It’s mildly tragic that I have to depend on Google to tell me how to make decisions to take care of myself.

Issue number 2 – “There is nothing so agonizing to the fine skin of vanity as the application of a rough truth” ~ British Politician, Edward G. Bulwer-Lytton (1803-1873)

Since starting my journey to health I have been suffering from a mild case of vanity.  My clothes were fitting better; I was feeling more energetic; I had started a blog for god’s sake.  I was somebody!

Then today a friend posted a picture of me on Facebook that he took on Christmas Day.  Just two weeks ago.  Like most people I hate pictures of myself. To me the picture looks like Jabba the Hut meets Brooks Brother’s shirt.  Yes, I am very hard on my appearance and everyone tells me that the picture looks fine and all I can think is that I would be much happier if they would just scream “harpoon that sucker” and get it over with.  I posted a status update saying I wanted to delete the tag and got the standard responses, and one from a family member of choice telling me to “remove that shit!”

This is all I have been thinking about for the last 2 hours.

But then I remembered that I said I would be honest in my blog.  If I am posting one thing here and hiding pictures in Facebook, how honest am I being?  The picture is just a picture.  It’s what I looked on that day.  It may not be what I look like now, and it’s probable I won’t look that way next Christmas.  So I am posting the picture here. I am going to care for myself enough to admit I don’t like it, but I am not going to be ashamed of it.