Weight maintenance and the Art of War. Using competition to keep my discipline on.

I was in Chicago this past Friday to do an interview.  As I usually do, I made my way to the hotel gym in the morning to get my day started.  Normally, exercise on Friday mornings means my fav spin class, but not when I'm on the road.  I walked into the hotel gym, and lo and behold, there stood a bonafide spinning bike.  I was happy that I would be able to do my normal spin class with me as instructor and student.  It was a decent workout, but at the end, I did not find myself heaving and gasping as I usually do in the actual class.  I just couldn't replicate the intensity.  What's up with that?

I have no doubt that there are people out there who are fully self-motivated and have the in-born engine to push themselves without external pressure.  These people irritate me.  Why?  Because I'm frigging envious, that's why.

So on Sunday morning, I was able to fight against Daylight Savings Time and make my 8:30 spin class.  I worked my tail off, and did everything I could to throw myself into cardiac arrest.  So what was the difference?  Throughout the class, I kept looking around to see who was working harder.  Who was sweating more.  Who seemed to be actually using their resistance knob on the bike and not faux turning.  When my awesome neo-fascist spin teacher asked people to bump up their resistance, who was actually doing it.  Who was better than me.

The great thing about a good spin class is that it has more than its fair share of obsessive exercise freaks, mutant cyborgs who seem to have no regard for their own pain and suffering.  People who grimly plow through each hideous workout.  Why is this a great thing?  Because it gives me human benchmarks.   When they push themselves, I push myself.  When they have the resistance so high that they can barely turn their cranks, I try to go to the same place.

In another example, I was flying back from Chicago Friday night.  I was upgraded to the front of the bus (there has to be some perk for travelling incessantly).  The flight attendent started the beverage and meal service.  I immediately found myself looking for the trim, hyper-disciplined looking serious lawyer types who would never deign to accept a glass of wine or a tray of junky airline food.  When the flight attendent got to me, I proudly said "Diet Coke, nothing else thank you!"  Well, I did eat the nuts she gave me (sadly without consideration for their unruly PointsPlus content), but I did say no to the calorie bomb meal service.  Just like that, I was able to be one of those hyper-competitive puritan freaks.  I felt good, responsible, and in control.  

So here is the deal with me.  I work at Weight Watchers, and I fully embrace the concept of group support. There is nothing I wouldn't do to help a fellow member in a meeting.  However, if I'm just being honest, I need a little blood sport with my weight loss/maintenance.  I need a little competition.  I need to surround myself with people who seem to have their act together much more than myself.  When I have it, I work harder, I push myself more, I stay engaged, and I stay focused.

The critical darling of its time...

I remember reading that Michael Jordan used to read the New York press before the Bulls played the Knicks so he could get irritated with the trash talking and then get fired up to play.  I get this implicitly.  I love competition.  It gets my juices going.  I love competition in just about everything I do (I can even beat you at being lazy -- don't test me!).  I love it mostly because I like to be challenged.  I need it to stay focused.

My love of competition does not mean I want to lose more weight than everyone else.  It's just that I can't stand the idea of people being better at it than me.  And believe me, lots of people are better at it, and their mere presence keeps me in the game.

Maintenance can seem like a long time.  I need those stimuli to keep me interested and to keep me engaged.  Sometimes it's the truly superficial (e.g., swim suit season is coming!), and sometimes it's for the right reasons -- I want to live a long time.  Competition is just another little tool in my motivational arsenal that I find pretty consistently helpful.  Applying it to my weight loss process seems a little weird, but it works for me.  I guess it's my inner Ares.

I'm told that the use of competition in weight loss is particularly popular amongst the men folk.  Our inner tribal warrior frequently gets the best of us, so the least we can do is to try to use our beastly tendencies for the good of our health.  Beyond the women are from Venus and men are war mongering freaks stereotypes, I suspect that many of us use competition on some level to keep our motivation going.  

As an interesting side point, I'm having a minor cat fight with @JackSht over college basketball while I write this blog.  Duke just won.  And Carolina just lost.  This pleases me greatly.  Now it's Final Four time.  Competition is in the air like a fresh Spring breeze.   Just in time for swimsuit season.

Superficially yours,

Dk

Keeping the wolves at bay. Deterrence and the art of grazing control.

Sometimes, I really have to take a moment to laugh at myself and my own little bizarre methods to maintain a grip on eating reality.

For those that have been following my little chronicle of maintaining my weight loss on Weight Watchers, you have heard me talk about the fact that I have "mastered" the healthy lifestyle in many places, but that I still have my perilous zones.  One of my biggest is a special little cabinet in our kitchen that principally houses various ingredients for baking plus a few snack items.  This is the place where I go when I'm either getting home from work (before dinner) or when I'm aimlessly wandering in the kitchen on the weekends.

So what specifically is in this magical cabinet?  It's full of nuts, chocolate chips for baking, and most recently a very large bag of M&M's, also intended for baking.  My DSW is an active and proficient chef, presiding over Chez Kirchhoff.  Recently, my two girls have joined her staff, and my 11 year-old has  developed a love for baking cookies.  It seems that I have a love for pilfering her ingredients.

Which brings me to my story.  For quite some time, there has been a very large bag of M&M's sitting in the magic cabinet which was intended to be used for cookies for a school bake sale.  For some reason, there was a change of plans, and the M&M's went untouched.  Fortunately for me, they were sealed.  You see, there is a code among thieves, and I do not steal from un-open bags of ingredients.  Rather, my preferred method is to gradually take imperceptible quantities of chocolate chips and nuts in delta force-worthy sneak attacks.  However, if the bag stays closed or VERY tightly sealed, I leave it be.  This all works very well until the bag gets opened, which it did.  Sure enough I started making a routine of grabbing a small handful of M&M's ever three to four days. Not terrible, but this is exactly the kind of grazing habit I'm trying to quit.

Help us!  We're trapped and can't get out!

What could I do given that the bag of M&M's was fairly giant in size?  In a moment of utter brilliance, I put a bag of flour on top of it as a deterrent.  Seriously, I did this about a week ago, and I haven't had an M&M since.  It was as though the bag of flour would be heavy enough to ward off any mid-afternoon weekend raids.  Kind of like a safe.  Seriously.  How old am I?  What's more embarrassing is that this actually seemed to work.  Apparently, seeing the bag has been a useful reminder to me that I should not sneak.  Maybe I need to put little Post-it notes on each piece of snackware that says:  "Not for David to eat!!!!"

I guess it takes all kinds of efforts to control one's little private obesogenic environment.  This got me thinking.  Maybe I should also be more actively calculating PointsPlus values for my little evening indulgences.  I will be the first to admit that I can track with the best of them in the morning and afternoon, but that after three years on maintenance I have a hard time keeping the thread in the evening.  Particularly, those post-6 PM bites, licks and tastes.  Definitely a challenge on weekends.  At minimum, forcing myself to at least acknowledge the PointsPlus impact of these excursions could be helpful.

So, off I went this Sunday morning to fully accept the consequences of my actions by reminding myself of the number of PointsPlus values for some of my favorite not-so-friendly indulgences.  What are those these days?  In no particular order:  almonds, bourbon, wine and, in a special guest appearance, M&M's.

I keep forgetting how much of a giant bad deal liquor is on the program these days.  Quite some time ago, I developed a fondness for an evening glass of bourbon on the rocks.  I can nurse my one for the night for well over an hour, and it just seems so civilized and restrained.  Should be no problem from a PointsPlus perspective, right?  Apparently not.  It seems that one of those  short glasses, stuffed with ice, is still enough to hold 1/4 cup of bourbon.  What's the price?  10 bloody PointsPlus values.  Crud.  It makes the five ounce pour of wine at a 5 PointsPlus value seem like a bargain.  [Note:  thanks for the comment from Anonymous showing me my glaring math fail.  2 oz bourbon is only 5 POINTS.  I had inadvertently plugged in 4 oz.  All is good in the world again!]

But it seemed such a small bag?!

What about almonds?  They're healthy right?  Well, they are most definitely healthy, but that are also disturbingly dense with energy.  I started getting the pre-packaged Trader Joes almonds thinking that this could help me avoid my eat-em by the handful habit.  While this is true, a small pre-made bag is still enough to hold 38 of the little buggers which knocks up a 6 PointsPlus hit.  Not terrible if this is the ONLY thing I'm eating beyond dinner, but not really the stuff intended for a mindless bite before dinner.

The whole exercise was all a little sad, but I suppose that knowledge is power.  This gives me an extra reason to look into alternative strategies for both snacks and drinks.  I've been meaning to re-allocate my liquid allowances to light beer, and I now have a good incentive to do so.  I think it's also time to think about moving away from almond grazing forever and find some less energy dense evening snack alternative.  It's just not worth the hit.

Thanking you for joining another episode of Dave's Navel Gazing Adventures!

Cheers,

dk

Life lessons from skiing. Loosening the coils of my inner spring.

It's Sunday morning, and I just got in from my family ski vacation late last night.  The vacation was fantastic, and the quality time with family and friends was superb.  That said, I have to admit that I always look forward to getting back into my regular, if not somewhat OCD, routines.

From a health perspective, I would say that the vacation was a solid performance on the personal responsibility front.  As planned, I ate a pretty healthy breakfast every day, even on the flights to and from Utah.  I was fairly responsible for lunch, and as planned, I lightened up for dinner.  I didn't really eat much, if any, junk during non-meal time.  I also kept it pretty reasonable in terms of being non-obsessive and even allowing myself indulgences such as dessert and (horrors!) non-light beer.  I know, what a wild and crazy guy!  I had fun, and I'm not returning feeling like a horribly nasty person.

Wait.  This was a ski trip, right?  Yes it was.  Utah got absolutely dumped with snow last week, putting on roughly four feet over an eight day period.  For the powder freaks (not me), it was manna.  For my part, I got on the slopes five of the six available days.  I spent one day off nursing a head cold and cranking out some accumulated procrastination work.  It was good exercise, and it was great to be outdoors, head cold or not.

As I noted on my earlier post, I am still a pretty inexperienced skier with this being my sixth year out on a mountain for any appreciable time.  It's not easy to pick up this sport at my older age (my rationalization, anyway), and I only get in one week per year.  As a result, I am not what anyone would call an effortless and proficient slope god.

In an effort to try to elevate to a higher level of competency, I did what I always do.  I looked for professional help, and I secured the services of a ski instructor.  I told him my goal and wish was to simply be able to cruise down the blues and double blus without a care in the world.  It was through the process of trying to improve my skiing game that I learned a little more about myself.

I was pretty envious as I watched men and women of all ages effortlessly swooping down the mountain, barely moving their bodies.  It was as if they were born with skis attached to their limbs.  They were able to ski the way I was able to ride a bike -- without even thinking about it.  Me?  I approached skiing with the intensity of an astronaut attempting to land on the moon for the very frist time.  Every muscle was tensed and on high alert.  I was always fully aware of the exact instructions being sent to my left and my right ankles.  Each new turn was a completely new thought process.  I would wrench my skis each time thinking that there was no possible way that they would respond and I would be sent barreling off a cliff into an endless abyss.  As far as my stance goes, I was tightly hunched over my skis, convinced that if I pulled myself up, I would fall over backwards.

My instructor watched me and said, "you must get really tired when you ski."  It's true, my quads would have a nice burn on every steep(ish) run.  He tried to convince me that I was relying too much on my muscles rather than my skeletal structure resulting in a massively inefficient and energy intensive process.  Sadly, my first reaction was:  awesome, more Activity Points!  Regardless of my obsessive want for calorie burn, I was there to learn.  I reluctantly started to stand up more and started using more of my ankles and knees to keep my torso pointed down the hill.  It was easier and it worked.  Go figure.

Next came the skis.  My default approach to turning was to treat each turn like a hockey stop, literally pulling my skis up so I could swing the tails out.  My instructor's next course of business was to get me to start using the tips of my skis to turn rather than the tails (it seems so obviously to write it, less so to do it).  He encouraged me to relax and to take more patient turns, letting the skis do the the work.  What do you know?  That worked too!  I'm not going to say that I was graceful by the end, but I looked less like a broken erector set snow plowing down the mountain.

I have to admit that I was pretty hard on myself for not being a better skier.  My instructor then reminded me that he had been skiing since he was 18 months old.  It was natural to him.  Me?  I was firmly stuck in my head and was completely over-thinking the entire process.  My natural instinct was to dig in harder, edge more aggressively, and use every possible muscle I could find to overpower the process.  Therein lies the story of me.

I don't even want to think about
what my K is ...

Most people who know me would fairly describe me as a pretty tightly wound and intense person (please stop snickering!), particularly when I'm immersed in what I consider to be an intense activity.  I naturally obsess and stress.  It's part of what has allowed me to achieve the things I have achieved.  However, I have increasingly recognized that it's also a bit excessive and unnecessary.

I will admit to the fact that I have taken the same kind of intensity and anxiety into my effort to become a healthier person on the Weight Watchers program.  I will admit to treating each meal selection process to the same kind of hyper-intense thinking that I put into each turn of my skis.  This approach was helpful to helping me avoid from wiping out on the mountain as well as from wiping out on the dinner table.  However, it's frankly exhausting and not really necessary anymore.  Eating healthily and exercising regularly need not be an olympic sporting event.  For me, I always run the risk of getting too much into my own head in staying on program.

I am now entering my third year of maintenance.  My goal for myself is for this process to become increasingly effortless and natural, not a high wire act.  With this in mind, I will seek to enter this new week with a calm resolve to simply track my PointsPlus values and to hit the gym.  I will simply make common sense and healthy food choices, and I will try to be mindful of mindless eating.  Simple.  Easy.  Common sense.  Exhale.

Of course, I second guess myself in healthy life for the same reason I second guess myself in skiing.  I have only been living this way for the past five to ten years just as I have only been skiing for the past six.  I didn't put on my first pair of skis at 18 months, nor have I lived healthily since leaving the nest.  Therefore, my tendency has been to assume a spectacular wipeout in both eating and in skiing, even though deep down I knew that I could calmly avoid it in either.

My ski instructors last words to me were this:  "You know how to ski and you know what to do.  Get out of your head, and start enjoying yourself."  Good advice for skiing.  Good advice for living.

Cheers,

David

I need a vacation! I also need to not gain weight...

After all of the ensuing debate following last week's post, I'm kind of bushed.  I think I have now figured out why most CEO's don't write blogs where people can post and comment at will(!).  That said, it is more than worth the occasional bloody nose so I can have a whole new way (in addition to going to meetings) to stay grounded on what's going on out there.  In any case, I really do appreciate the feedback, both the better and the less better.

I've got one more busy week in front of me with a quarterly earnings release, a trip to visit some meetings in Baltimore, and a bunch of other stuff.  As of Friday night, I rush home to finish packing so I can take off with my sweet, understanding family for some quality non-work time.

I'm rolling up to my second year anniversary as a Lifetime member in good standing.  I'm in a very good place, and maintenance has never felt better.  The 3 PM apple-snack trick has been just one example of my happy food place.  It's not as though I haven't had my lifestyle challenges.  The Superbowl last Sunday was a particularly brutal example of how to be a thousand miles away from on-plan utopia.  Who knew that I would love pimento cheese dip quite so much?

If I have one particular habit that I really owe my maintenance success to, it is clearly exercise.  Food lapses come and go, but exercise has been my constant OP buddy.  I've been getting at least an hour in for six, and sometimes seven, days per week now for as long as I can remember.  At this point, it really is just habit.  I would characterize my workout frequency more as an example of my captivity to ingrained routine than to any lofty notion of discipline.  When I don't get my workout in, I just feel kind of off.  It's kind of like walking out of the house with a shoe missing (not that this doesn't happen).

I have been able to form my religious Rube Goldberg workout routine because I am largely in control of my environment.  I can almost always find a way to navigate to a weight room for my four day lifting split.  Finding a piece of cardio equipment is usually a pretty manageable task.  I am pretty good at picking hotels that either have a decent gym or are located close to one that allows me to buy a day pass.

All this comes to a crashing halt next week, and I will have to rely on all different exercise options.  We're going skiing.

Really hoping I don't end up like this...

I didn't even start skiing until about five years ago as I was entering my fortieth year.    Now we go once per year for a week, enough for me to get a little better each year.  Learning to ski at an older age is not for the feint of heart, particularly for those of us who do not cherish the idea of embracing a tree at high speed. You would be hard pressed to identify anyone else on the mountain who looks quite as tense and un-fluid as yours truly.  The best visual I can give you is that of a person with terrible constipation wearing restrictive knee and back braces.

So do I find skiing fun?  I think so, but I cannot be totally sure.  I am more than a little envious of those people who can effortlessly glide and swoop down the slopes without a care in the world.  For example, my kids.  It is an exercise is complete humility for a so-called industry leader executive-guy to be routinely humbled by a 10 year old little girl.  She doesn't actively dress me down with insults and taunts, but it's almost more sad that she periodically has to wait patiently for me to catch-up with nothing but a sweet smile on her face.

Do I enjoy skiing?  Yes.  I like trying to get better at it each year, and it's definitely a worthy challenge.  I also appreciate the fact that it's a great workout.  Terrible and risk adverse skiers like myself get an exercise advantage over all of you pros.  Why?  Because we have to take three to four times as many turns to get down a slope.  That's work.

This gets me to the point of my post.  I have ever increasingly become a big fan of active vacations.  Sitting on a lounge chair with a frozen drink keeps me happy for about two, maybe three days, and then I start climbing the walls.  I love a vacation where I can hardly stay up past 8 PM because I am so physically wrecked.  So no, there will be no weight room for me for the next week, and there will be no two wheeled vehicles.  Yet, I have no doubt that I will have more than enough AP's to keep me going in good health.

From an eating perspective, I will follow my usual vacation plan:  keep breakfast healthy and OP, stay sane for lunch, and let it hang loose a bit more for dinner.

I'm not sure if I will get back to post another one of these before I get back, but I will be thinking of all of you!!!

Cheers,

dk

2010 Dietary Guidelines for Americans now out in the wild. The recommendations look curiously familiar...

Last week the US government through a joint effort between HHS and USDA published the 2010 Dietary Guidelines for Americans (DGA).  They are required by law to update these guidelines every five years.  This is a huge effort that has a lot of very smart and knowledgable people combing over mountains of scientific studies using a method called systematic evidence-based review methodology to answer roughly 180 scientific questions related to the way we should eat.  They have now published the results of this, which can be found on their website (http://www.cnpp.usda.gov/dietaryguidelines.htm).  For those curious about such things, it is actually a pretty easy and interesting read, and it is a nice place to find a lot of fun and interesting facts and analysis, all nicely collected and collated.

The primary audience for the DGA is professionals that use the recommendations to help shape policy, nutrition programs and educational materials.  The Center for Nutritional Policy and Promotion (CNPP), the group that publishes the DGA, will at some point also put out some materials intended for the consumer audience (i.e., all of us).  This is where the famous food pyramid first came on the scene in 1992, though the USDA published its first food guide in 1917.  The first Dietary Guidelines were published in 1980.

I have a vague recollection of being a teenager and hearing about such recommendations.  I recall something about eating so-many cereals and grains and that many fishes and meats and X fruits and vegetables and maybe not quite so many sugars and fats.  I suppose that many of these guidelines were somehow incorporated into the nutritional education I vaguely recall seeing in school from time-to-time.  Nonetheless, I did grow up with a notion that somewhere out there was an official guide on the correct way to eat.  In truth, I think it would be hard for me to say that any of this had a huge influence on what I should eat other than the very clear message that fat was bad.

Over the years, there have been a number of iterations on the pyramid.  In truth, I personally found the visual somewhat confusing.  The stuff at the top of the pyramid was foods to restrict, but isn't the top of the pyramid supposed to be awesome stuff (i.e., the pinnacle of food)?  Further, I could not for the life of me ever remember what was in those pyramid bands.  Nor could I remember how much of what kinds of food I was supposed to eat.  Frankly, the whole thing was kind of confusing for me, so I never paid it much personal attention.

According to some, it's a good thing I didn't pay too close attention as the food pyramid has come under fire from various places over the years.  It was perceived as being too heavily focused against fat while ignoring the impact of excessive carbohydrates.  Nutritional science is a very political and controversial topic area capable of spurring brawls among academics, journalists, politicians and food companies.

So lo and behold, we now have new Dietary Guidelines.  So what's in them?  Mostly, common sense, and that is a good and welcome addition.  The 2010 DGA can be summarized as having two primary recommendations:

1. Maintain calorie balance over time to achieve and sustain a healthy weight.  Translation:  don't eat too much and exercise more to lose weight and sustain the losses.  
2. Focus on consuming nutrient-dense foods and beverages.  Translation:  eat more food that is high in nutrients and low in calorie density.  Translation of translation:  eat mostly food that's good for you.  

The DGA then goes on to give a summary of foods to limit, mostly recommending that we limit sodium and only use a small portion of our calories on foods with added sugars and fats (i.e., junk food).  More interesting to me was their summary of foods to focus on.  For the latter, here are their guidelines (their words, not mine):

• Increase vegetable and fruit intake. 
• Eat a variety of vegetables, especially dark-green and red and orange vegetables and beans and peas. 
• Consume at least half of all grains as whole grains. Increase whole-grain intake by replacing refined grains with whole grains. 
• Increase intake of fat-free or low-fat milk and milk products, such as milk, yogurt, cheese, or fortified soy beverages. 
• Choose a variety of protein foods, which include seafood, lean meat and poultry, eggs, beans and peas, soy products, and unsalted nuts and seeds. 
• Increase the amount and variety of seafood consumed by choosing seafood in place of some meat and poultry. 
• Replace protein foods that are higher in solid fats with choices that are lower in solid fats and calories and/or are sources of oils. 
• Use oils to replace solid fats where possible. 
• Choose foods that provide more potassium, dietary fiber, calcium, and vitamin D, which are nutrients of concern in American diets. These foods include vegetables, fruits, whole grains, and milk and milk products. 

One simple mnemonic they have already introduced is to fill half your plate with fruits and vegetables.  Frankly, I am hoping they stay with the visual of the plate rather than the pyramid as it seems much more intuitive and easy to remember.  

Even in it's simplified form, along with any good visuals that they might introduce, it's one thing to know what we should eat.  It's quite another to put it into action.  Therefore, the 2010 DGA finally goes on to encourage people to put into place eating patterns that reinforce all of the above guidelines.  

What if there was a system that used the principle of budgeting and keeping count in a way that supported the kinds of healthy choices by promoted by the 2010 DGA?  Such a system might use some form of simple measure that allowed us to know how much we were eating and stick to a budget each day.  It would further use a currency that rewarded healthy choices.  It would also allow for indulgences, but it would help us to make more informed choices by making them a little more expensive.  It might even get behind the half-your-plate of veggies & fruits by assigning a value of Zero to fruits and non-starchy vegetables.  In summary, said system that would promote vegetables, fruits, lean proteins, whole grains and low fat dairy, but do so in a fairly simple and straight forward way.  

Sound like a system we know?  It's PointsPlus.  As I read through the 2010 DGA, I realized that I've basically been eating this way even more since I started following the new program.  

I know this post sounds horribly self-congratulatory, but I can't help it.  I'm flat out proud of the program that my co-workers developed and that our Leaders and delivering.  If the 2010 DGA is the goal, then PointsPlus can be the path.  It's nice to be on the right path.  

Cheers,

dk

Learning to master the mysterious Chinese food wheel. Field report from Shanghai...

One of the most interesting parts of my job is having the opportunity to attend lots of Weight Watchers where I don't even understand the language.  Given my lack of language skills (typical American, I'm afraid), one might find it strange that I am often asked by my local co-workers, "What did you think of the leader?"  Interestingly, you can tell a lot about a Weight Watchers meeting by just watching people's faces, listening to their laughter and observing a free wheeling discussion.  I am always amazed by how much Weight Watchers meetings are alike from country-to-country around the world.  Members are members and Leaders are Leaders.

There are huge cultural differences across countries, yet I would observe that people fundamentally are more alike than different in their needs, wants, hope and dreams as they relate to weight management.  They may eat different foods in a different way, but their fundamental approach to adopting a healthy lifestyle is remarkably similar.  We all eat for emotional reasons, we all graze, and we all struggle to make healthy choices in an increasingly unforgiving food and activity environment.

This was all on display during my trip last week to visit our new office in Shanghai.  It was the second time I had been in the past few months.  As always, jet lag in China can be brutal (I averaged about 4 hours of fitful sleep each night), but it is always an energizing experience to be there.

Jacki's meeting in SuperBrand Center in Pudong

I had a chance to get to a meeting my first night at one of our local centers.  Sitting in that meeting, I was observing what was unmistakably a bonafide Weight Watchers meeting.  The rhythms and emotions of the meeting were identical to what I have seen in so many meetings around the world.  The Leader (Jacki) was an absolute star, and her members were clearly energized by her.  It was also a thrill to see a member achieve Lifetime membership in the very meeting I attended.  Just like they do it in NY!

Yet, following the Weight Watchers program in China is a very different and somewhat more challenging (at least initially) experience.  First off, China's nutritional labeling requirements are pretty sparse, so it is not easy to find out what is in the food on grocery store shelves.  Second, Chinese in the big urban cities tend to eat out very frequently, often one of the most challenging places to make well-informed choices.  Just to keep things interesting, the Chinese often partake of family-style eating with a spinning wheel in which new dishes are periodically dropped into the mix.

In this context, try to imagine keeping track of your Points!  A spoonful of this and a spoonful of that.  These aren't foods that show up on the website of a fast food chain, perfectly portioned and precisely measured for calories, fat and fiber (let alone protein, carbs, fat and fiber).  Yet, despite all of this, we have scores of members who are in fact learning how to use Points to manage their lifestyle and as their tool of choice in learning healthier habits.

How could this be?  For starters, the local Weight Watchers team undertook the painstaking process to build a 20,000 food database, the majority of which are a wide variety of restaurant dishes.  They worked with local chefs to make many of them and then measure it's nutritional content.  China has eight distinct regional cuisines with multiple sub-cuisines including the big eight:  Shandong, Sichuan, Yue, Fujian, Hunan, Anhui, and Zhejiang.  Our team has developed dishes covering all of them.

The wheel of mystery!  Chinese family style

So, if you are a member in China, the data is there.  What about portion sizes?  The Chinese tend to be quite a bit less precise in how they serve and portion their food.  It tends to be a spoon here and a spoon there.  This is particularly true in family style.  Therefore, our Chinese members learn to estimate by keeping track of spoonfuls and by grouping (e.g., four vegetable dishes, three meats, etc.) to make the process more intuitive and manageable.  This is much of what they learn in their Weight Watchers meetings, and these are the tips they share with each other.

I had my own family style experience last Wednesday night when I had dinner with the local team.  Sure enough, there was a parade of dishes, few of which I recognized, making their way through the table.  My Chinese colleagues talked me through how to keep score, and even my easily distracted brain was able to roughly keep track.  What could have been a very intimidating experience for someone on program was actually very manageable.

I came away from the trip with a couple of themes floating through my head:

1. The greatest value of tracking PointsPlus values is in the mindfulness, not necessarily the precision.  For me, 75% of the battle in tracking is simply doing it.  The process alone is enough to make me aware of how much I'm eating and what I'm eating.  Whether the final tally is 11 vs. 13 PointsPlus values is frankly going to have less impact on my long term success on the plan.  The Chinese use estimation all the time, and our members there are having weight loss success very similar to what we see in other countries.  
2. If you are in an environment where you are eating new and different foods all the time, you learn to loosen up.  It's been periodically very easy for me to fall into a rut of eating the same meals over and over because it is a safe and easy practice.  Yet, the work that is actually required to introduce new dishes onto my menu is not nearly as onerous as it seems at first blush.  I really should mix it up more.  If I can stay OP in family style meals 8,000 miles away, I can certainly try a new lunch order.  Variety keeps it all interesting.  

Should you find yourself wandering in Shanghai in need of a meetings fix, check out the website (www.weightwatchers.com.cn) and stop by.  You're always welcome no matter what country you're in.

Cheers,

dk

How I got heavy. My eyes deceived me.

Picking up where I left off last week (i.e., placing the blame for all my food issues on my dear sweet mom), I was thinking about how I went from being terribly skinny to quite stout.  As I have mentioned on my prior posts, by senior year in high school I was 6'3" but only about 170 pounds.  Skinny.  Very skinny.  By the end of freshman year in college, I was clocking in at around 210 pounds.  Not a bad weight for me, but it was indeed a 40 pound gain.

To what do I attribute this impressive weight achievement?  Change of metabolism?  I sincerely doubt that anyone's body chemistry can change that quickly in 12 months (of course, did not stop me from proclaiming it was a change of metabolism).  So what did it?  Beer?  I'm sure this didn't help.  However, I suspect most of it came from a very simple change:  unbridled food consumption.  Not a very complicated explanation.

In college, I finally found full access to the food outlet that I cherished the most:  the cafeteria.  Here's the deal with the younger version of me and cafeterias.  I LOVED THEM!  Some people might find the thought of warmed-over food left too long under heating lamps served with giant ladles icky.  Not me.

I can still remember the first time I ever went to a Smorgasbord-themed restaurant when I was about 14.  For the kid who felt deprived of bad food, this was a revelation.  You could eat as much rubbish as you could possibly jam into your gullet.  Seeing an infinite selection of deserts was beyond my comprehension.  The visual impact of the whole thing was dizzying for poor little deprived me.

As a side note, how is it that the country that exported the Smogasbord, Sweden, has much less of an obesity issue?  Maybe it's because they only eat there on special occasions.  Interesting!

Smorgasbord/cafeteria style all-you-can-eat (AYCE) was not an issue from a weight/nutrition point of view when I was still at home because my interaction with these kinds of places was pretty infrequent.  Then college happend.  I spent my freshman year eating in AYCE cafeterias every single day of the year.  I think back now to the amount of food I ate at a single sitting, and it's frankly disturbing.  I clearly remember eating gigantic salads heaped with egg fragments (the awesome reconstituted kind), bacon-like substances, blue cheese and at least a cup of blue cheese dressing on top.  And then I had a burger and fries.  And then I had desert.  I must have been plowing through at least 80 to 100 PointsPlus values a day.  The fact that I didn't end freshman year at 300 pounds was a miracle that I can only attribute to still having a rabbit-like metabolism.

I kept my love of the megadeath buffet for many years.  I was always a fan of the huge Sunday brunch spreads at hotels.  I cannot remember ever going to one where I didn't have seconds or thirds.

So what was it about these roman food orgies that I found so appealing?  I have a theory.  Over the past five or six years, I still have had occasion to indulge a Sunday brunch binge.  Every time I would look at the huge desert spreads, my heart would begin to pound.  Yet, every time I eat what looks like the best looking piece of pie ever, it never failed to let me down.

There you have it.  Buffets look awesome, but the food itself rarely delivers.  My theory is that my love of buffets comes down solely to visual impact.  There seems to be some sort of link between my optic nerve and the part of my brain that makes me act like wild animal shoving its snout directly into the food platters.  Yes, I'm one of those horrible people that will eat food directly from the platter because my table is entirely too far away for me to wait.

In contrast, reading a menu has a totally different effect on me.  I cannot actually see the food, so I tend to make much saner choices.

For the most part, I have now trained my brain to recognize that huge displays of shiny food will rarely deliver the joy I think they will.  Therefore, I am much better at navigating buffets and making good choices.  That's good as I'm going to be in a hotel for most of next week.  Maybe I should wear a blindfold.

Cheers,

dk

A man and his messed up relationship with food. Oliver Twist gets a paycheck and look what happens!

So from where did my sometimes uncontrollable food lust originate?  Call me strange (you wouldn't be the first), but I find self-examination fascinating.  I consider myself kind of a freak at heart, so I find the process of understanding the origins of my freakishness to be an incredibly interesting exercise.  This is the case for numerous aspects of my life, but it is very much true for my relationship with food.

Time to break out my armchair Dr. Freud and get into some deep exploration.  Why do I have strong impulses to overeat when I'm around food?

Well, it couldn't possibly be me.  There must be someone I can blame.  There must be some despotic figure who waged a campaign early in my life to create my unnatural tendencies to binge on food.  I know!  It's my mom!

Just like Coke!!!!

Lest you think I'm an awful person, I think the world of my mother.  She didn't have much to work with when it came to me, and I think I turned out pretty OK.  She did a great job raising me, and she has been an excellent role model for parenting.  Yet, it is impossible to parent without inflicting at least two or three unforeseen consequences on your offspring.  As a parent myself, I often wonder about the myriad of ways I am unknowingly messing up my kids.  So I feel a little bad for publicly teasing my loving mom, but I really can't help it.  Some stories just need to be told.

The most important bit of context about my mom is that she is incredibly frugal.  She had to be.  My dad spent his entire career as a basic research chemist working for the US government (NBS/NIST and DOE for those curious), so we lived on a middle class government salary (contrary to anything you might have heard on Fox News, this is not the way to become a millionaire).  She was taking care of two kids while my dad was getting his PhD, with literally less than two cents to scrape together.  Ultimately, she was taking care of four kids.  My parents put all four kids through college, including their ungrateful third child (me) into an over-priced institution in Durham, NC.  She worked full time as a typist, earning practically no money so they could cover tuition.  It is also worth noting that my mother's mother was a product of the Great Depression.  She was even tighter.  Given all of the above, my mother's frugality would give the most hardened Scot a run for his precious money.

When it came to frugality, there was no better evidence than the food in my house.  A few notable examples come to mind:

1. Lunch bags.  Other kids got those cool, pre-cut lunch bags made explicitly for carrying their lunch to school.  I got whatever large brown shopping bag happened to be around.  I kind of looked like a homeless person carrying his belongings in a tattered brown bag.  
2. Bread.  We never got fresh bread from the store.  Instead, we stocked up on day-old bread that was on sale, and then stored it in the downstairs industrial strength freezer.  I didn't complain  as much as my siblings (my recollection, anyway), so I tended to get the heals, not the normal slices from the middle.  That's right.  My sandwiches were made out of day-old, frozen-then-thawed heal slices.  Wonder Bread you ask?  Heck no!  Always generic.  
3. Cheese.  Did I get those awesome tasting processed cheese slices that the cool kids got?  Please.  Bologna?  Never!  I got Safeway brand longhorn cheddar cheese.  Therefore, my prehistoric crust sandwiches were served with basic cheddar cheese.  And mustard.  That's it.  Some days I did get PB&J.  
4. What else came in my cavernous lunch sack?  Usually a brown banana.  
5. What about a treat with my lunch?  No.  I was the kid that literally had nothing good to trade at lunch in the cafeteria.  Oh, the shame of it all!!!!
6. What about buying my meal from the cafeteria?  Maybe 3-4 times per year.  
7. OK, lunch was sad, what about breakfast?  Anything tasty and sweet on the menu?  No.  My family was early adopters into the cult of private label.  In those days, Safeway sold a private label which was literally a white box with black letters with catchy derivative names like "Oats of Cheery".  No Lucky Charms for this young man.  
8. A personal favorite example was milk.  We got the huge box of powdered skim milk.  Just like the astronauts!!!  I don't think I tasted full-test whole milk until I was 16 years old.  
9. Dinner was usually a reasonable portioned, healthy dinner.  Fortunately, my mom was a good cook, so this was the eating highlight.  
10. What about fast food?  I probably ate out 5 to 10 times per year.  McDonalds was reserved to the trips to and from vacation. 
11. What about the drawer in the kitchen full of tasty treats and cookies?  Didn't exist.
12. Did I have desert ever?  Yes.  One night each week, I got the "Treat of the Week".  It was usually a Black Cow, constituted of private label (Cragmont) root beer and private label ice milk (not to be confused with ice cream).  

So how did this affect me as a young guy growing up?  First off, I was REALLY skinny.  By senior year in high school, I was 6'3" and about 170 lbs.  You could count ribs on me up to the age of 17.  [In my next post, I will tell you how I miraculously gained 40 lbs in about eight months in college.]  

How did this affect my attitudes toward food?  Frankly, I used to always think about those kids that had full and unfettered access to branded, processed foods, not to mention frequent access to fast food.  I looked at their kitchens, and all I could think was that they had the good life.  They had luxury.  They had dining extravagance.  I felt like the poor kid wearing my Sears Toughskin jeans (which I did until my old brother pleaded for fashion clemency on my behalf), carrying my big brown shopping bag with a crusty cheese sandwich and a brown banana.  

To this day, my palms get sweaty when I see branded food.  I still cannot stand the idea of buying generic food.  Why?  The most expensive food must certainly be of higher quality.  Right?  

I think some people grow up with frugality, and they carry it with them.  Others rebel with all their might.  I clearly fell into the latter camp.  For me, there is something comforting about being able to have and buy any food I want, whenever I want it.  This was particularly the case for many years when it came to eating out.  I used to rock a mean Big Mac back in the days after I left home.  

Just like the Armani kind!!!!

In retrospect, my mother created a pretty healthy environment for her kids.  It's not like I was hungry growing up, and I was clearly not obese, nor malnourished.  Most of the indulgences I dreamed of are exactly the types of foods that are now being vilified in the war on obesity, particularly childhood obesity.  Maybe my mom was just ahead of her time.  However, I think that I somehow formed a link between the Oliver Twist food I had and the social status and wealth indicators that I so badly wanted.  Acceptance came from wanting to fit in with the mainstream of my school, no matter how unhealthy that mainstream might have been.  

What about the Toughskins jeans effect?  Same bloody thing.  I love pretty clothes now, and I spend too much money on them.  Frankly, I went through a period of time when I didn't even like buying clothes on sale.  Somehow, it made me feel less worthy.  I'm over that, though I still like a nice set of threads (channeling my Greg Brady here).  

So that's the story of how one man developed an unhealthy relationship with food.  It had nothing to do with food itself, but rather my own perception of social acceptance and worth.  Strange, isn't it?!

Cheers,

dk

What do airplane nuts have in common with tissues? Bring on the emotional eating!

Every once in a while I catch a reflection of myself in the mirror, and I realize that I'm a guy who works for Weight Watchers.   Even more, I'm a mannish Lifetime Member who works for Weight Watchers.  Granted, I fancy myself a pretty modern and sensitive dude, I am still a guy.  One of my primary reasons for writing this blog in the first place was to use it as an opportunity to explore the endlessly rich topic of weight management from a man's perspective. 

The operating assumption is that when it comes to weight loss, men are from Mars (like the candy?) and women are from Venus.  In particular, there is a frequently cited belief that men are not emotional eaters.  We eat because we are hungry, not because we are sad.  Or do we?...

The past six weeks have been pretty crazy, and they have certainly not be devoid of stress.  New program launch, new marketing campaigns, annual budgets, etc. etc.  Rewarding and exciting, but more than a little intense.  Last week was particularly so.  Take the nuttiness of the first week of January when we get crazy busy and add on top a few unforeseen personal dramas, and I was a slightly over-wrought little puppy.  As I sit here on Saturday, I've already forgotten and/or put into perspective most of the things that were causing me stress.  What I do remember very clearly is how I channeled my emotions. 

For example, I was flying down to Dallas, and the nice flight attendant offered me a cup of warm nuts (and I love nuts).  I didn't need them, but dammit, I had a tough day.  I deserved this food that I didn't need.  I came home late from work another night, and I was a little wrecked and exhausted.  There was a nice piece of fudge in the fridge.  I wasn't really hungry, but dammit, I deserve a nice piece of fudge (don't we all). 

In the broad context, I had a pretty good week in most of my eating choices, but I found myself being fascinated by these little food salves that I was applying to my wounded soul.  Holy cow.  I was self-medicating with food!  Put on some Barry Manilow, throw in a box of tissues, and I could have let loose a pretty respectable cry.  This was no good!  I was at risk of being kicked out of the Little Rascals He-Man-Woman-Haters-Club (please don't shred me if you've never heard of this 1930 cultural reference). I am already bracing myself for the abuse I will likely get from some of my friends who read this blog.  [Then again, they are reading a weight loss blog, so who are they to judge?]

Yet, I have a sneaking suspicion that more men are emotional eaters than would like to admit.  "I had an awesome day working the stock market.  I deserve a steak!"  "I lost all my money on the stock market.  I deserve a steak."  "It's Friday, the work week is over and I deserve to eat an entire still-living bovine.  With a nice Bearnaise sauce."  "I'm bored.  I want to chew off my finger tips."  "I just got dumped.  I want some ice cream."  What?  You don't think men say the last one?  They may not say it, but it doesn't mean they don't do it. 

So!  Professor Plum in the Library with a Wrench! 
The Limbic System made me eat the cake!

As a guy, if I can't admit that I use food to deal with a mood, then I will be doomed to a harrowing and tragic life of unneeded airplane nuts.  Hyperbole, but you know what I mean.  With the application of a nice dose of rational hindsight, it seems kind of ridiculous to use food as a form of cheap anti-depressants.  Why?  For me, it's basically using food self-indulgence to justify emotional self-indulgence and self-pity.  It's bad enough when I'm bummed out or stressed.  Why make the feeling worse by compounding it the regret from a minor food binge? 

So what to do?  Cognitive behavioral therapy would seem to suggest that I find a way to recognize in the moment when I'm reaching for the food "medicine".  For the short term, I need to remind myself that what ever is polluting the Limbic system of my brain (the part of the gray matter that houses the weepies) is not best cured by the self-pitying food grab.   Proactively and thoughtfully analyzing the underlying problem and source of the emotion seems at least slightly more useful.  And it's certainly less caloric. 

Here endeth my self-applied therapy session.  Thanks for sitting in! 

For any of you other guys who want to come clean about emotional eating, this blog is a safe place devoid of harsh judgment.  Also, as I've now made the case that emotional eating is not a gender-specific issue,  all women inclined to share should freely do so too!   

Cheers,

dk

My super-optimistic and massively upbeat plan for 2011

"I feel completely gross" were the last words I uttered as I fell asleep on New Years Day.

The holiday break started great.  I had a weigh-in on a Tuesday night meeting in Manhattan on December 21st.  I clocked in exactly at goal weight, which I thought was a pretty fabulous way of entering the holiday week.  I was sticking to my plan, and I did not act like a complete food crazed freak during the week leading into Christmas.  I was feeling strong and cocky.

Per the plan, I started to loosen up on Christmas Eve, and I went completely off the healthy food grid on Christmas Day.  On Boxing Day, I hit the gym in the morning for an hour of weights  followed by a one hour spin class.  I was so proud that I wrenched my shoulder patting myself on the back.  I was rocking this Christmas plan.

Then I got hideously sick with the stomach flu for about 24 hours.  The nasty part of the bug was pretty fast, but I was definitely a little weakened for the next couple of days.  Nonetheless, I was a good soldier, and I hit the gym anyway during the recovery days.  I really didn't have much of an appetite, so I stayed true during these couple of days.  Throw in the Activity Points from digging out of a nasty little blizzard, and I was still in good form.

Then I got better.  I got all the way better.  I felt GREAT.  What to do with all this euphoria?  Run for the sugar plum hills!  I spent Thursday, Friday and Saturday whooping it up as if I couldn't even spell W-e-i-g-h-t W-a-t-c-h-e-r-s.  What the heck, I was a saint for the past seven days.  I'm invincible!!!  All that stocking candy that I was planning to eat one piece per day for the next three months?  Let's work that inventory down by 50%!   Wine?  Yes please!  Seconds?  You bet!

In truth, you really can't do that much damage in three days, and I knew that I was going to be fully back on plan starting Jan 3.  Still, I was beating myself up about being such a nasty dude.  Nothing like a little self-flagellation to put the icing on top of 72 hours of food indiscretion.

Today, I was reading an article in the Sunday NY Times titled:  "Why a Budget is Like a Diet -- Ineffective."  There was one quote in particular that struck a chord with me.

"As a species, humans are notoriously poor at following through with their plans.  Sticking to a budget -- a dirty word even among many financial planners, who prefer the more euphemistic 'spending plan' -- feels too much like dieting.  And we often fail at both for the same reasons:  too much focus on the restrictions, not enough on fun.  So it's not surprising when people end up on bingeing later, more than making up for the dollars not spent or calories not consumed."  

The column then went on to lay out a bunch of strategies that sounded very much like the same strategies I hear in our Weight Watchers meetings all the time.  They mostly focused on a common theme:  set up broad goals with a positive outcome in mind.

With this in mind, I am laying out my 2011 long term goals (not to be confused with short-lived resolutions, he writes hopefully).

1. Recognize that the over-the-top events I think will make me happy actually make me feel like doo-doo.  Every binge I have had this year literally made me feel sick.  Not just mentally sick, but physically ill.  A huge food splurge inevitably gives me a nasty case of indigestion, and I sleep terribly that night.  Further, these binges never seem to have the hedonistic dividend I think they will.  How exactly am I depriving myself by avoiding the binge if the binge itself is all downside?  
2. I want to fully embrace those habits that make me feel food, physically and mentally.  When I eat good, real, healthy food, I feel physically great.  It really is true.  I have more energy and my gastrointestinal tract is much happier with me.  I sleep better too.  In other words, I want to eat better for purely selfish reasons:  it will make me feel better and result in better days and nights.  I am done with the concept of eating healthily because my deep-rooted Calvinistic origins say that I should suffer like the miserable puritan that I think I should be.  
3. I want to fully embrace the awesome fact that the healthy food tastes just as good as the gross food I used to eat. I like a nice piece of fish just as much or more than a 24 oz Fred Flintstone brontosaurus burger.  I like fruit mixed in with Greek yogurt as much as ice cream.   This isn't a blind hope, it's actually true.  There is a degenerate, Rasputan character that lives in my brain who tries to convince me otherwise, but frankly, he's an untrustworthy creep.  And he's wrong.  
4. I want to eat when I'm really hungry, and not eat when I'm just bored and fidgety.  Even better, I want to find ways of not being bored and fidgety.  I can't remember the last time I had a period of boredom and said at the end of it, "That was such as awesome experience!  I can't wait to be bored again!"  
5. Mostly, I am done thinking of healthy life as a slog.  It's a gift and a better way for me to live.  

My next step is to put some firmer plans in place to realize all of the above.  For me, it's mostly about getting my head straight and putting it into an even more positive and hopeful place.  

The past couple of years have been challenging for many of us.  The recession was about as much fun as having our finger nails pulled.  Thinking that the banking system was melting followed by a nasty economic hangover was no day in the park.  

However, it's time to move forward.  There is great work to be done, and there is a life full of possibility to be enjoyed.  This is why I love the line of our new 2011 campaign:  It's a New Day.  I cannot think of a time better suited for this simple idea.  

Let's rock 2011 and have fun in the process.

Cheers,

dk