Dieting Tips

Dieting Motivation, Part 1

How do you keep up the fight day after day? The canon of literature on dieting motivation is huge. I hesitate to add to it, but a reader brought up how she was struggling with it so I thought I'd do my best to help.

Reason 1: Surgical complications

My most powerful recent motivators are complex. Most vivid has been the fact that I have to administer weekly injections into the abdomen of someone very close to me. It's a very difficult experience to begin with. No one likes getting shots, and giving them is actually worse for me. 

Luckly the injection device is an almost foolproof springloaded thingie that you basically press deeply into the person's stomach, use your thumb to press a button on to, and wait for the plunger to rise on its own. It clicks upon completion and the needle is withdrawn automatically. After a year I still find the whole process somewhat terrifying, because what if the needle doesn't retract the way it's supposed to? How long should I wait if it does fail? Will I cause damage on the way out if my wrist isn't completely straight? There's even a tiny irrational fear that the needle will get stuck somehow. So I mentally time the wait for the injection to complete.

That person has gained quite a bit of weight since the injections began. The time required has almost doubled, which means that each week I get a little more nervous that something will go wrong.

Being a part of this process has brought vividly home how additional weight could complicate a medical procedure. I will probably need some abdominal surgery (not bariatric) in the foreseeable future. Seeing up close how much worse weight gain has made the injections was very, very cautionary.

Reason 2: Age!

I have always been honest with myself about my weight. Obesity did not sneak up on me. I very often made conscious choices, such as choosing work over health. This is obviously risky. I made a private deal with myself that I had until about 50 to take drastic action. It's an arbitrary number, but the fact is you hear about a lot more people dropping dead of heart attacks in their late 40s than in their late 30s.

Starting around 45 I started working out with a physical trainer but did not address diet. This was on purpose. I correctly decided it would be hard enough to handle the training, so I'd not yet worry about eating less. The results are, surprise surprise, mixed. I can now drop and do 40 pushups with excellent form. I can do crunches forever. I'm also at least 100 pounds overweight and have high cholesterol and dangerous high blood sugar. (Or did. I would be very surprised if I had either at the moment. My diet is very well balanced, so both problems should disappear soon. I will get them tested when I find a new doctor (mine moved) and report back.)

Reason 3: Vanity

My wife is lovely, though quite accepting of my weight. I don't like her to be seen with a fat schlub. I'm sure my kids don't like having the fattest dad in their school. They too are very, very kind about it.

Once I was going into a restaurant that faces a busy street. And by "restaurant" I mean a calorific '50s-style diner that specializes in milk shakes. A guy in a truck screamed as he drove by "Get out of there, fatty!".

I was going in for a milk shake. He was rude... but he was right. (Of course I had the milk shake anyway.)

Reason 4: Practicality

I travel way more than I'd like. I could barely get the airplane seatbelt snapped shut. That's bad.

It means I'm the fat guy no one wants to sit next to. That's worse. Because on an airplane they don't have any choice. Truth is I can afford first class and usually pay for it, but it bothers me that I could buy a nice guitar for the extra airfare. 

The Really Good News

After about two and a half grueling, withdrawal-wracked, insomniacal weeks of dieting at 1,000 calories a day, something astounding happened. Motivation has started to increase, and my obsession with food has decreased somewhat. I am changing.

More on that later.

The Siesta Crash Effect

Living on sharply reduced calories means living life closer, literally, to the bone. It has taken me decades to start teasing out the rhythms of my life. Dieting has accelerated that process. It has exposed daily cycles that I missed earlier because I suppressed them by overeating.

In case this is starting to sound woo-woo and mystical, let me hasten to add that I would much rather be eating a cheese quesadilla right now than contemplating biorhythms, or circadian rhythms, or whatever they are. Pretty sure they're probably not biorhythms, but no time or inclination at the moment to research. As it happens, I finished a 300 calorie dinner half an hour ago and all I want to think about is getting more food. Anyway...

In recent times, a good day goes something like this.

Early meal, around 8am. Not too hungry for a couple of hours. So far Toasted Oatmeal has been a champ at satisfying me and our kids love it as much as I do. 

Snack time, around 10am: I start to feel listless and crash if it's been more than about 2 1/2 hours since I ate last. I yawn. I maybe get a little depressed. A few baby carrots can almost always pull me out of this. By a few I mean the equivalent of about half a carrot you'd buy in the grocery store.

Lunchtime, usually right at noon because I can't wait any longer: The hunger starts to come back. Lunch helps, until....

Siesta crash around 2pm! Whoa, Nelly, this one is major! What's the dealio, anyway? I can sure see why many countries, not just Latin ones, employ the concept of a siesta, or midday nap. At this time my energy is at its low point during the day and all indicators lead to Napville. Problem is, I have a history of insomnia. Sleeping during the day is perhaps the best way to ruin your sleep at night, so the educated bad sleeper knows to skip this outrageously seductive impulse. One awesome side effect of removing caffeine from my day has been to reduce insomnia dramatically, so I may revisit the siesta.

Dinner: Sometimes dinner satisfies me for up to a couple hours, but more often than not lately the pattern has been abject hunger right up until...

Bedtime snack, usually an apple sliced and topped with cinnamon. Almost always takes off the edge. Unfortunately this isn't bedtime for me. Normally that's more like 2am. Before quitting caffeine it would be 5 or 6 in the morning. I guess the real question is, why can't siesta crash happen at 10pm instead? I'd be loaded for bear if that happened.

Meanwhile... Wow, I want to sleep!

Caffeine: Gateway drug

This post is a stream of consciousness more than a considered thesis. But I think if you're consuming caffeine regularly, there's a decent chance you're either now suffering directly related problems or are putting off some difficult choices. Because caffeine is, in my view, a gateway drug to obesity.

I have not been able to diet successfully without removing caffeine from my diet. I know I'm not typical, but certainly many caffeine users have suffered some of these problems. I also believe many people have these problems but won't admit it. Here are its effects on me.

I feel good! Caffeine makes me feel happy, maybe 40% of the time. I feel like I can work more effectively. About the half the time it actually does help me work better.

Headaches. About a third of the time I get caffeine-induced headaches that follow a sneaky path. They come at unpredictable times, so it took me a while to track them down. Anyway for the first 6 hours or so they respond to painkillers like Ibuprofen. Then the painkillers begin to induce their own headaches, while fostering a light psychological dependence at the same time.

Butterflies. Caffeine gives me the not-unpleasant sensation of butterflies in my stomach.

Increased body temperature at night. Perceived, anway. And as a fat guy I need as much cool as possible when sleeping.

Vastly later bedtime. Individual reactions vary in the extreme. As I've got older I've noticed that it gets worse for me. If I have a Coke in the morning, and I mean a 20 oz. can, not a 44 oz. depth charge size, I won't sleep until five or 6 hours after my normal bedtime.

The siesta crash effect gets intensified. The "siesta crash" is what I call whatever normal process urges my body to shut down and take a nap at around 1:30 to 2:00pm. I have other sleep problems and am not sure how to deal with the siesta crash effect. As I normalize my body processes I may risk a short nap during the day.

Caffeine-induced sleep disruption was the kicker for me

I reluctantly came to the following conclusions before I could begin this successful phase of the diet.

• I tend to eat badly when I sleep badly, and I sleep badly all the time.
• Family and work are demanding. If I don't husband my resources carefully I simply will not be able to manage food preparation and planning.
• When I don't sleep well I find every minute of a workout to be excruciating, vs. merely unpleasant when I've had some sleep
• Let's face it, even though I own the company, work declines with lessened sleep.
• The last frontier of my health, then is not diet or exercise, but sleep. And the only way left to improve that was to drop caffeine.

Giving up caffeine really sucks

So I did. And I "so I did", I mean I went through severe withdrawal symptoms for days. I had headaches. I was irritable. The smallest things made me angry. More headaches. Obviously, to top it all off, my insomnia grew worse for a time.

Now everything in my life is perfect*

Read the rest of this post »

300 Calorie meals: Electric protein smoothie #1

One of my favorite tricks to making smoothies is the addition of soda water. It adds a little zest (hence "electric") and somehow enhances the flavor.

If you aren't accustomed to protein powders... plan to downgrade your expectations. This just isn't going to taste as rich as a banana-peanut butter shake or a sugar-filled concoction from commercial juice joints. So the trick is to make protein powder, which tends to taste a bit, well, off, and give it some zip. Calorie count: 260

Ingredients

• 1 scoop protein powder. I'm trying proteins+ Smoothie -Orange Cream (390g) protein+ Brand: Genuine Health and liking it. (150 c.)
• 2/3 c. frozen blueberries (60 c.)
• 1/2 c. 1% milk (50 c.)
• 1/2 c. club soda (0 c.)

Directions

• Couldn't be easier. Just pour it all in your blender and mix for a few seconds!

300 calorie meals: Toasted Oatmeal

The Only 0 Calorie Drinks That Don't Taste Like They Have Zero Calories

Most diet drinks taste like, well, diet drinks. I have encountered many people who have consumed Diet Coke on a daily basis and who claimed it tasted exactly like the real thing. I can only assume they're either a) imbeciles, or b) suffered severe burns to the tongue and concomitant nerve damage. No version of Diet Coke comes even close to the sugary goodness of the original. But I digress. Here are the only diet drinks I've found that don't taste like they're diet drinks, and that have 0 calories.

• Good Earth Original Tea. There used to be a hippy restaurant in the Southern California area named Good Earth that served an incredible iced tea, a tea so good that diet-conscious customers invariably asked if it had been sweetened by mistake. That same tea tastes just as good hot, and while the restaurant is gone their specialty tea is now available in grocery stores everywhere. I have never since experienced a tea that tasted so powerfully as if it were loaded with sugar but wasn't. Be careful, though. The decaf and organic versions are very good teas in their own right, as are the rest of the Good Earth tea line, but they don't even come close. Wish I knew why.
• Fuze Tropical Punch. Actually better than any other tropical punch drink I've tried, because it doesn't taste like it was meant for defective gradeschoolers. It uses some flavoring agents which will probably turn out to cause brain cancer or scabies, but for now I assume the laboratory rats who drink it live long, happy, fulfilled lives and die peacefully in their sleep at an advanced age.
• Diet Dr. Pepper. To my untutored taste buds this is the only diet soda pop that tastes as good as its sugary counterpart. Problem is, of course, its calorific version still tastes like yak sweat. I still have it once a month or so, maybe because I miss the taste of yak sweat.

0 calorie drinks: Good Earth Original Tea Review

If you come away from this blog with only one diet hack, it's this: Good Earth Original Tea is the Holy Grail of diet beverages. This is the only tea I have ever responded to as if it were junk food, because unsweetened it tastes like candy. It could be a distant, exotic cousin of Red Hots. I'm sure the caffeine kick is a good part of the appeal, but this flavor is unlike any other tea I have encountered anywhere in the world. It's an incomparable blend of many teas and also tastes fantastic, again unsweetened, as ice tea.

• It is the only tea I've ever had that tastes like it was flavored with sugar, yet it has the customary 0 calories one expects from tea
• It's not technically a diet food and therefore doesn't taste like a diet food

Keep these things in mind

• If you want to splurge, use two bags in a mugful of hot water and add whole milk for a 60 calorie treat of near decadent proportion.
• Though it's mostly made of herb tea, it has caffeine. Not a lot as teas go, but enough to keep me awake if I drink it at night. (I'm a caffeine lighweight, though.)
• Good Earth makes many other blends. They're all fine teas. But. The only one even remotely this good is the Good Earth Original Tea. There are organic and no-caffeine variations on the theme that for whatever reason simply do not compare to the original. No offense to the Good Earth people. Their Cocoa Chai tea is good, as are many of their other teas. But neither Good Earth nor any other teamaker on the planet has produced a magnum opus like  Good Earth Original Tea.

300 calorie meals: 6" Subway Veggie Delight With Oil and Vinegar

Tasty, filling meals under 300 calories are hard to find, period, but in fast food joints? Rare as dinosaur eggs. One huge exception is the 6" Veggie Delight from Subway. It's 230 calories, but you absolutely must order it with oil and vinegar (45 calories), and salt and pepper. These modest additions transform the sandwich from something resembling raw cardboard into a flavor symphony. Calorie count: 275

How to get the most out of your Veggie Delight

• Some like the low-fat Italian dressing. For me, though, nothing beats plain oil and vinegar with salt and pepper.
• By the way, the Subway people often rush "salt and pepper" together by collapsing it into "saltpepper". This reminds me of politicians, who never say "Social Security". They run it together as "soshsecurity".
• You can order a beverage, and a great complement to the Veggie Delight is the 5 calorie per serving Minute Maid lemonade.

What you have to avoid

• Sorry, no cheese. Way too many calories. And let's be real: Subway's cheese isn't top quality. Save your calories for their best ingredients, i.e. the veggies and habit-forming bread
• Those lovely dressings like Sweet Onion are also much too high in calories. If you insist on a dressing, use their low-cal Italian.

Snack: Sliced Fuji apple with cinnamon

The title says it all, but the trick is using Fuji apples. If you haven't tried Fujis, run, do not walk, to your friendly neighborhood organic grocery store. Fujis are firm and powerfully sweet. Once you try them you won't ever want to eat the mealy red kind again. Calorie count: 130

Ingredients

• Fuji apple (130 for a big one)
• Cinnamon
• Optional and most certainly not recommended: stevia or other artificial sweetener

Directions

• Slice the apple
• Sprinkle cinnamon on it.
• Optionally sprinkle a sweetener such as Stevia. If you're just starting to diet this may help, but really, Fujis are so packed with flavor that you should graduate to plain cinnamon as soon as possible.

300 calorie meals: Boiled egg on corn thins and a banana

This humble meal makes a good breakfast and can be assembled quickly. I boil eggs the night before. I make them right after I've eaten so I'm not tempted to snack on one. Calorie count: 250

• Boiled egg (60 calories)
• 2 corn thins (44 calories)
• Banana (105 calories)

Slice the egg, salt it, top the corn thins with it.