How to get fit and stay fit, twenty years later (part 1, diet)

AboutAnything  | Greg McComb

About twenty years ago, I tried on a shirt in a Walmart dressing room. That was a long time ago, but I still have a sharp memory of my reflection in the mirror; and it wasn't pretty.  On top of my belt was a large-bowl of jelly; it wiggled when I moved about. My gut had become enormous. 

  Today, at the age of sixty-five, I can look back at that

moment as the 'shock' I needed to jump start a journey to get fit; (that's me left at 60). This blog will describe that journey and provide guidance to others who want to get into shape. 

One important point: I hate the word diet. It suggests the way to a healthy lifestyle is simply eating less and getting thinner. My view is that any approach to fitness should take into account all aspects of health: diet,

exercise, sleep, doctor checkups and mental wellness. I created a pie chart (see left) to illustrate these aspects of your health, and named it the fitness pie, with arrows to show how some are interrelated. Kinda' corny but there you go...

              

                

                    The first missteps

   The first few years were a struggle, when I was in my early 40's. 

  My first attempt was a stationary bike; I peddled as hard as I could during lunch hours in the dark basement of my office complex. This did nothing.

  I made few changes to my diet. My wife was a great

cook and I ate full portions of her dinners. On top of that, I was a grazer. I ate whatever I saw, much of it processed like chips and pretzels, which are really bad for you. In reality, I was stressed-out and addicted to food. I had two young children with mouths to feed and I just started a new job in a new city. On top of that, we had an aging-parent whose health was rapidly declining, so she needed a lot of care. 

    I eventually got on track, and I will explain how I did this.

              Intermittent (mini) fasting

  The first step was to do a series of intermittent fasts with meal replacement milkshakes. Using these shakes, I peeled off about twenty pounds in four months.

When I say meal replacement, I did not replace all my meals with soy or vegan shakes. I still ate small healthy suppers with lean meat, vegetables, fruit and a carb like pasta or rice. Or, fruit and porridge in the morning. I never went hungry. 

   

  One important point of these mini-fasts is that I had to detach myself from family meals for a few months. This is the hardest part.  While everyone was gorging out on meat, gravy and potatoes, I skipped out for a shake or only ate a small portion.  Nevertheless I always attended meals to partake in family discussions; I like to wise crack at the kitchen table and this didn't stop...

  One more thing. I know some people are hardcore fasters, not eating or eating sparsely for several days or even a week as part of a cleanse. I'm not into this...but if you want to give this a try, go for it. There's plenty of good research that extolls the health benefits of fasting including our goal of weight loss, along with blood sugar control, reduced inflammation and improvements to heart and brain health. As this research shows, weight loss isn't only about looking good; it's about getting your body in tip-top shape. 

  

            Tracking weight loss

    As an economist and data geek, I  tracked my weight-loss, and I think this regular-positive feedback helped me to lose weight.  At first, I used an excel spreadsheet but I recently switched to a high-tech Renpho weight scale. It works by uploading how much I weigh to an phone app, and then it creates a graph.

        Let me illustrate. Over the past twenty or so years, I've packed on pounds during holidays like Christmas and Easter: I love my turkey and fixings. And, like everyone else, I added some girth during the pandemic.

    To lose weight, I repeated the practice of mini-fasts, using the Renpho scale and app.

In this case, I lost about 14 pounds, (see graph), from 172 to 158 pounds over several months.  Notice the trophy on the left. I set a goal of reaching 160 pounds and met that goal. So, I was awarded a virtual trophy. Cool...            

                A few words about BMI

    My current weight hovers around 150 pounds, a  Body Mass Index (BMI) of 22, mid-normal. I use online calculators to obtain BMI, like the one at this link. Simply plug in your height and weight.

BMI  also has ranges for underweight, overweight and obese - so it's a handy index to let you know where you stand. 

  If you have a BMI well-over 30, you are probably obese and I would consult a doctor before making a serious attempt at diet and exercise. Healthcare professionals now refer to an obesity epidemic  with 42% of Americans classified as obese, and 9% severely obese. The reasons for this trend are complex but a good documentary on the subject is Super Size Me. Well worth the watch.

       

   Back to the BMI. A lot of people say it's an inaccurate measure of a healthy weight because muscular people can have a really high BMI but are still fit. That's true, but BMI is all-we-have and a pretty good measure of healthy (and unhealthy) weight ranges for people with an average build like myself. So, I would definitely recommend using BMI. Don't rely on what people say about you; men are very good at hiding their guts with baggy shirts.  You need to take off that shirt, and take a close look in the mirror.

         Long-term healthy eating 

   So, this blog is all-about the long-term; how I sustained a healthy diet and weight for twenty-plus years. Quite frankly, it's fairly easy to lose a decent amount of weight quickly; it's much harder to keep this weight off for a long time. Especially if you want to avoid yo-yo dieting, rapid weight loss followed by equally rapid weight gains, something that doctors frown upon. 

    Where do I begin? First off, you need to stop grazing...permanently. Grazing is an addiction, and unless you stop that you can't even get started. For me, it was potato chips, pretzels, crackers or whatever else was in the cupboard.  Health experts have even created a new name for these junk foods: ultra-processed. Freakonomics recorded a podcast on the subject and it's well worth a listen.  

  To beat this addiction, my suggestion is to get creative, whatever works for you. Use meditation to calm your mind (I currently use Headspace) or get counselling, or by old-fashioned force-of-will like I did years ago. Keep in mind this is a brain problem not a stomach problem.

Other people are addicted to diet sodas, and despite the label, they are really bad for you, and actually lead to weight gain, diabetes and heart problems (See link). Sadly, I have friends who constantly cradle a giant-cup of diet soda, and have become morbidly obese as a result.

  A second feature of my long-term diet is that I don't get fanatical. I don't weigh portions or try to consume an exact amount of calories-per-day. I simply try to eat healthy, consuming reasonable portions of fresh-lean meats and fish, fruits, vegetables and carbs.  I never gorge myself. 

I am retired and live in a Caribbean community, so this part of my diet is made all-the-more easy. Most of the food is grown locally, and trucked to tiendas (stores) or fruit stands in my neighborhood, like this truck-load of bananas pictured above. Most fish are caught in the nearby ocean and sold to restaurants,  

(see photo of Mahi Mahi left); while I often joke that the chicken I ate for supper might have been wandering around my neighborhood the night before. 

  

A few more points to make:

First, just because you are eating a healthy diet, doesn't mean you have to eat foods that taste bad. On the contrary, some of the healthiest foods are actually very tasty, especially if they are prepared with a good

recipe at home, or by a decent chef at a restaurant. 

Take the dish left, sweet-and-sour pineapple chicken prepared at the Ultra Infinity restaurant in Cabarete. It's a delicious mix of seasoned chicken, almonds, vegetables and fruit, served in a visually-pleasing half-cut pineapple. Delicious and nutritious, especially when eaten watching a spectacular sunset at this ocean-front restaurant.

  Another tip is to avoid fried foods, anything that is dipped in hot-oil for any length of time. Like french fries or fried chicken.

Research shows frying turns any food into a high-fat product, loaded with calories and other nasties that build plaque in your arteries, leading to heart attacks and stroke. You also gain weight. There are much better ways to cook potatoes that are healthy, even a baked potato with sour cream is better for you, a lot tastier. Chicken is a great source of low-fat protein. All you have to do is prepare it with a great recipe, like this one for slow-cook apricot chicken. Yummy. 

 

  I'll close off part 1 of this fitness blog with one more don't....sorry! Except for a treat, I rarely ate fast food over the past twenty years. I won't name names but there are plenty of these restaurants where you rush-in-and-rush-out for a burger and fries, fried chicken or pizza. Yes, we live in a fast-paced world where the easy-out is to stop by one of these restaurants on the way home from work. Or order in a late-night pizza. 

   Once again, research shows fast foods are full of nasties that most people don't even know about. To quote a journal article ''The Hidden Dangers of Fast and Processed Food', fast foods contain 'multiple chemicals and synthetic ingredients that are calorie dense, highly flavored and nutritionally barren.' Now, that's a mouthful. 

   And with that, I will end part 1 of this blog; part 2 will talk about another important aspect of fitness, exercise. 

 

 

  

  

  

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