Monday, April 08, 2013

When I weighed in for my last PT test at Fort Richardson, I weighed 205 lbs.  Although I consistently maxed the PT test, it was obvious that my weight was creeping upward.  I left the Army and Ft. Richardson on Feb. 1, 1997 and quit exercising in earnest.  In the Army, I was given time to exercise.  At lunch, I would run 4 miles every other day.  Maintaining my fitness and my weight wasn’t difficult, but in the last 6 or 8 months my travel schedule became more intense, so I exercised less.  By 2000, I weighed in at about 220 and by 2005, about 230.  I was spending 3 days every 3 weeks in Fairbanks eating at buffets, and while I did exercise, it is hard to burn off all-you-can eat.  In fact, one of the recurring themes anyone dieting should hear playing in their head all the time is that you can eat far more calories than you can burn, and unless you dig ditches with a hand shovel for a living, the only successful way to lose weight is to eat less.

  What you eat as well as how much you eat is also very important.  My wife would say that I become a missionary for whatever diet book I happen to have most recently read.  In fact, I do become conversational about the books I read, but the interesting thing is that the books that I have read concerning different diets generally recommend similar concentrations in food.  Dean Ornish has written many books on his dietary recommendations, and years ago I read “Reversing Heart Disease” which I found fascinating.  He advocates completely eliminating fat from the diet and eating almost exclusively vegetables.  “The Carbohydrate Addict’s Diet” recommends reducing or eliminating sugars and simple starches from the diet and gives lots of physiologic information on the subject.  “The Rice Diet Solution” recommends severely limiting simple sugars and starches and concentrating on a diet of vegetables.  “Wheat Belly” describes how wheat has been modified over the years to become an allergen to many people and why it should be eliminated along with sugars and other simple starches from the diet, recommending instead a diet mostly containing vegetables.  He gives an excellent physiologic explanation of what simple starches do to you and how they are worse than plain table sugar.  There are many, many more but these are a few that I have read for motivation over the years.

            The problem with each of these is that it is difficult for most people to be content eating just vegetables.  I evolved a solution that has worked for me.  I wanted a diet that was easy to prepare, easy to eat, tasty, healthy, and that I didn’t tire of.  Easy, right?  How do you do that with salads?   My solution is this:  I prepare a big salad about twice a week that contains carrots, red, orange, and green bell peppers, lettuce of various kinds, seedless grapes cut in halves, red cabbage, green cabbage, bok choi, walnuts or pecans, frozen corn, and whatever else we happen to have in the larder.  I avoid vegetables that would spoil the batch in a day or two like cucumbers, but zucchini seems to work out OK.  We don’t always have the whole list in stock, but whatever we do have seems to work out fine. 

Eating a salad in a restaurant is a pain because they leave the pieces too big, so you either have to cut up your lettuce or wad it into your mouth with a fork.  I want something I can eat quickly and easily, so I chop all the pieces into bite-size that I can eat with a tablespoon instead of a fork.  This alone makes eating a salad so much more enjoyable that I don’t understand why the restaurants haven’t figured it out.  I put the salad into 2 or 3 gallon-size Zip-loc bags and put them in the refrigerator.  With a little practice, the whole process takes 15-20 minutes. Then, I eat a dinner-plate size portion for lunch and for dinner.  I use Costco Balsamic vinegar for dressing (few calories and very tasty).  Watch out!  Most other Balsamics are very disappointing. For dinner, after the salad, I will also have a small portion of whatever Beverly fixes.

            Lately, I wondered what would be wrong with salad for breakfast, so I now put a little olive oil in a wok and stir a generous helping of the salad into the wok to cook for a few minutes.  When it is done, I turn the heat down and add an egg and stir it until the egg is done and I have a vegetable omelet, light on the eggs and heavy on the vegetables. 

            When I am in weight loss mode, this is about all I eat, and I expect to lose several pounds a week.  It takes about 2 weeks for your body to get into the metabolic mood to lose weight, so you have to be patient, but hunger is not a problem.  In maintenance mode, I allow myself some treaty things, but I try not to splurge at every meal, or the meal is no longer the maintenance meal and becomes the weight-gain lifestyle instead of the weight-loss lifestyle. 

            “The Rice Diet Solution” resonated with me at the time I read it and I followed the book closely.  I was astounded to see the weight drop off very quickly and I went from about 230 to about 175 in a couple of months.  I have since hovered between 180 and 185 and have mostly been faithful to my lifestyle.  I’m still not tired of the salad, but being lazy, I am tired of making it.  On the other hand, I would spend far more time preparing almost any other kind of substantial food.  Eat hearty!  I do.