Do I commit fruit abuse? I claim complete innocence!

How much fruit can a man eat?

I had a chance to be on FoxBusiness on Friday to talk about obesity and healthcare.  While I was getting miked-up, one of the guys on the Fox crew pulled me aside to share that he was a Weight Watchers member.  As you know from previous posts, I always enjoy the chance to meet fellow-man travelers in the world of Weight Watchers.  We are a brave group of pioneers, and our numbers are rapidly increasing.  This particular guy shared with me that his one concern about the program was that fruit had zero PointsPlus values, and he was nervous about binging and perhaps had done a little of that.

I shared with him the advice I always give when asked about this.  I talked to him about the fact that it is pretty hard to go crazy on fruit.  If you look at it, while fruit does have natural sugars, it is also filled with fiber and water.  As a result, it's naturally filling.  It is also helpful our bodies have a way of reacting to fruit binges through vigorous feedback from our digestive system (enough said).  Finally, I told him that while fruit had a zero PointsPlus value, as do most vegetables, we encourage people not to go crazy on it and treat it as a mindless eating/binge food. The golden rule in weight management is to not suspend reality.  It is, in fact, hard to lose weight while eating 73 apples a day.

It takes a ton of oranges to make much less than a ton of OJ

Just as a fun math check, consider the commercial for Tropicana orange juice.  "16 oranges to make a bottle".  That's 16 oranges for a 59 ounce bottle.  That works about to 2.2 oranges for an 8 ounce glass.  Sit down and feast on 2.2 oranges along with the rest of your breakfast, and tell me if you still feel hungry.

I always come back to the reason why Weight Watchers made the decision to give fruit a zero PointsPlus value.  We are trying to encourage people to make the healthy food choice rather than the processed cookie choice.  The example I often give is this:  the 3 PM snack.

• Old Points program:  it's 3 PM, I can choose an apple (2 POINTS) or a 100 calorie snack pack of Oreos (also 2 POINTS).  It would not surprise you to discover that many people would say "There is no way on Earth that I'm wasting 2 POINTS on a piece of fruit, give me the cookies or I will bite your arm off."  
• PointsPlus program:  it's 3 PM, I can choose an apple (0 PointsPlus value) or a 100 calorie snack pack of Oreos (now 3 PointsPlus value).  All of the sudden that apple is looking pretty good.  It's also healthy and filling.  Good bargain, good satisfaction and good health.  That's a nice hat trick.  

Feeling very self-proud of myself for espousing the righteousness of our approach to fruit, I stepped back to ask myself the question:  am I a fruit binger?  

I've been on Weight Watchers since I joined the company 11 years ago (I have gray hair now).  Fruit has always been a big part of how I follow the program.  It was always a pretty good deal, and now it's a great deal.  As a result, I have grown to LOVE fruit.  It's almost an unnatural love.  I thrive on apples, and I can even tell the difference between varietals (I'm a particularly big fan of Fuji).  I love all manner of berries.  I like a good banana, as long as it's not brownish.  I have more recently discovered the mango, which pairs nicely with my old friend the pineapple.  If binging starts with love, I am an ideal candidate.  But am I a binger?

So here is my daily fruit round-up:

• Breakfast:  This is my primary fruit eating meal.  I mix in a banana and a half a cup of blueberries or rasberries into plain oatmeal.  I also mix in about 1 1/2 cups of grapes in with zero fat Greek yogurt.  
• Lunch:  I might or might not have an apple with my salad.
• Snack:  I grab an apple, particularly if I didn't have one for lunch.  
• Dessert:  my most healthy desert is mixing in frozen berries with zero fat Greek yogurt.  I haven't done this in a while, and writing this post is reminding me to consider getting back into that habit (i.e., instead of low fat ice cream).  

Therefore, a typical day for me is about 5 servings of fruit.  Just for fun, I was curious how many calories I was picking up.  Here is the tally:

• Grapes:  1.5 cups = 90 calories (22 g carbs, 2 g fiber, 1 g protein, and 0 g fat).  Like most fruit, the grape is mostly water and pulp.  
• Banana:  1 large = 121 calories (32 g carbs, 3.5 g fiber, 1.5 g protein, and 0 g fat).  Bananas are a bit of a watch out food for me because I know I can eat one in about three to four bites.  They go down a little too fast, so I usually only eat them sliced up in my oatmeal.  
• Blueberries:  1/2 cup = 41 calories (10 g carbs, 2 g fiber, 1 g protein, and 0 g fat).  These guys are a pretty great deal.  Rasberries are an even better deal (32 calories for the same 1/2 cup).  
• Apple:  1 medium = 95 calories (25 g carbs, 4.4 g fiber, 0.5 g protein, and 0 g fat).  One of the aspects of apples that I find most helpful is the fact that they take a while to eat.  I also find them pretty filling. 
• My total for the day:  347 calories (89 g carbs, 12 g fiber, 4 g protein, and 0 g fat).  

If I were attempting to lose 1.5 pounds per week, my target calories per day would be slightly north of 1,600 assuming that I was doing zero exercise given my height, age and weight.  This would suggest that my 347 calories in fruit would be about 22% of my total caloric intake, which doesn't feel crazy to me.  In fact, the latest US Dietary Guidelines suggest filling half your plate with fruits and vegetables.  My 22% is right on target.  

Looking at all of the above math makes me feel even better about how well the program works for me.  All of that fruit is an awful lot of food, and it's a big reason why I don't spend my days starving to death.  For the volume of food it represents, the above fruit is a pretty great deal for me  (i.e., calories per bowl of food).  This is true even though I am a pretty big fruit eater.  I'm probably two standard deviations about the population average, but that's a stat I should probably check.  

Moral of the story for me?  It's nice to know that my not particularly planned fruit regimen is very much on target.  It is also a good lesson that zero PointsPlus value fruit does not mean throwing mindfulness out the window.  Tracking can be good even when adding up a bunch of zeros.  

Cheers,

dk

Mirror, mirror on the wall...

True confession time.  I have a love/hate relationship with my body.

I know that I work pretty hard to stay in shape and eat healthily, but the interesting question is "Why?".  Officially, I lift weights because it is a good healthy practice, and muscle burns more calories at rest.  In truth, weight lifting promotes muscle growth, which can look pretty excellent.  Officially, I perform vigorous cardiovascular exercise because strengthens the heart.  Unofficially, I do it because it helps balance out every (or most every) mindless eating indulgence and thereby keep me thin(ish).  So there you have it.  One of the reasons I try to live on the healthy path is so I can, as they say, look good naked.  If I can simultaneously be super healthy with improved prospects for a long life, it's a definite win-win.  Right?

Sometimes when I see my birthday-suit self in the mirror, I'm pretty OK with what I see. Mostly, that's the case when the light is dim, and I haven't eaten in hours.  I also think I look OK when I'm lying on my back -- gravity is amazing at creating a flat stomach.  However, I would say that most of the time when I look at my body, my reaction is either 1) "My body is weird" or 2) "Criminey, I suck".  I see all of my imperfections on display, and I can tell you where every single pocket of fat is not-so-effectively hiding.  In fact, most of the time when I look at a mirror, I'm pretty much only seeing the imperfections.  Throw some grey hair on top of my head, and the guy who's looking back at me from the mirror is some middle-aged guy.  And I don't think I like looking at him very much.

Fortunately, most of these mirror reactions are fairly split second, and they dissipate pretty rapidly.  Also fortunate is the fact that I intellectually recognize that I'm an idiot.  In a rational and self-reflective moment, I realize that I look comparatively just fine, and the degree of scrutiny that I put on myself is unmatched by any other human being in the known universe put on me.  All of the little imperfections that I see go unnoticed either because a) most people could really care less what I look like and b) I wear clothes.  Yet, like so many others, I choose to subject myself to the bright fluorescent naked torture light of doom.

What to do?  The best place to start is a useful scapegoat -- I blame part of my body image problems on people who illustrate comic books and cartoons.  Most human bodies do not look like the ones found on Aquaman, Batman, Superman or any of those other goons from the Hall of Justice.  Perfectly etched abdominals and excellent muscle separation combined with unnatural chest-to-waist ratios don't really exist without the benefit of an airbrush pen.  They certainly are not found on many mid-40's guys, no matter how well-intentioned they are.  Yet, I am convinced that they have somehow become the subconscious norm that have ultimately found their ways to the covers of upstanding periodicals such as Men's Health.  Just like our female friends, we guys are now subject to ridiculous body image comparisons.

The real one may have a gut, but I wouldn't want to try outrunning him...

In truth, most bodies are kind of funny looking.  We humans are a widely varied bunch, and we come in lots of shapes, sizes and body-types.  To put a finer point on it, I was recently thinking about the most manly of all primates, the gorilla.  I did a Google image search of gorilla photos vs. gorilla cartoons.  the results were pretty telling.  One is a so-called idealized image, fully equipped with finely tuned musculature, and the other is a real, living and breathing animal.  The real one, by the way, is in pretty good shape.  Of course gorillas don't sit around cross-legged and look sadly at their protruding bellies.  They are too much alpha members of the jungle for that kind of nonsense.  This is a human failing -- or at least one of mine.

So what to make of this?

1. It seems that women no longer have the monopoly on applying a harsh self-critique in front of the mirror.  I suspect that many more men than just me indulge in exactly the same nasty exercise.  
2. I would guess that my tendency to do this can be traced all the way back to my childhood underneath some nasty rock that should never have been kicked over.  Simply telling myself "just don't beat yourself up every time you look in the mirror" is probably not totally practical advice in that I will inevitably still keep doing it.  
3. I should periodically remind myself that I am, in fact, an idiot, and that I look just fine.  There are terrible things happening all over our planet.  There must be something more constructive for me to worry about.  
4. Probably none of the guys who wrote all of those old comic books even vaguely resembled the pictures that they drew -- that's why they drew them that way.  
5. I should give myself a little bit of a break for being prone to superficial impulses.  
6. While I should work to aspire to letting go of my body image mishigas, I should also recognize that being less obsessed with it is not a great reason to run out and eat a refrigerator full of Chubby Hubby ice cream.  

The part I struggle with more is this:  my desire to look good "bare" is one of the reasons I stay on plan.  Is indulging my vanity and self-image wants an evil that is useful for keeping me healthy?  When I write it out, the answer is clearly (or should be) "no".  The problem is that it's easy to be self-reflective and thoughtful in a blog.  It's hard to do in real life.    

Then again, maybe I'm over-thinking it all.  I do that.  

Cheers,

dk

Another summer of depravity survived

I just got back from vacation to a hurricane (actually, not metaphorically).

Vacation was great and totally helpful.  Life is crazy, and sometimes I need to force myself to sit still for a period of time and get needed rest and thinking time.  I find it much easier to think about the long view when I'm not running through the rapid-fire paces of regular life.  

From a health and wellness perspective, here is how the vacation went...

• Breakfast:  good.  On plan.
• Exercise:  hit the local gym and got in some good miles on my bike.  I also managed to get in about an hour of walking just about every day.  
• Lunch:  surprisingly good.  I ate at the house or packed a lunch most days.  I had lots of fruit around, so I never felt the need to pack a bag of chips.  
• Snacking:  well...  too much dip makes Dave a weak-willed boy.  There was some minor binging here.
• Dinner:  not terrible.  
• Dessert:  I was definitely a little weak-willed here as well.  

Interestingly, I kept feeling like I was being terribly gross and slothful.  Yet everything I went back over the day, I realized that I was actually making pretty decent choices.  I find it interesting that when it comes to my own self-appraisal, I'm guilty until proven innocent.  

We got in Friday night to the threat of impending doom in the form of some ill-tempered woman named Irene.  She was a very unpleasant sort, spewing rain, wind and calamity everywhere she went.  She came and went.  My little town in CT was hit fairly hard as was the case with much of my state.  Lots of flooding (I'm on the coast) and seemingly infinite power outages.  More than half of CT was without power by Sunday night, a sad, new record.  Over the weekend's ravages, I found myself performing day-in-and-out of manual labor, slugging around bags of sand, hauling big, dead branches and shifting around lots of outdoor furniture.  [Sadly, I couldn't help but think about all the Activity Points I was picking up.]  We made it through in one piece, un-flooded and still with power (we were among the lucky 30% in our town).  

Now the weather is strangely beautiful and I'm back in the office.  It's fall!  Well, technically, it's still Summer, but it's Fall to me.  I always see this as a great time of year to really get back into a good routine and focus on Program adherence.  Summer always deals a minor weight gain, and this one is no exception.  Getting back on routine is a great way to nip it in the bud.  I'm off to a good start, and I hit the gym Monday and Tuesday morning with a furious vengeance.  I'm also throttling back mindless snacking, which is a feat made easier by being a lot more busy.

Adding more to this post for the first entry yesterday (Tuesday):  I'm now on day three, post vacation and post-hurricane (it's Wednesday).  As noted, I always feel like my vacation/summer time feels a little out-of-control and overly mindless.  I have to say that it really does feel better to be back in the flow of things.  Indulgences are down significantly, exercise is up, and frankly I'm feeling great.  I sometimes forget how good it feels, physically and emotionally, to be fully back on plan.  I'm liking it!  

All-in-all, it's good to be back!

How was your summer?

Cheers,

dk

Ye olde healthy vacation check list

This has not been a pretty summer.  I have been working like a crazy person from the first thaw of Winter's snow.  Tons of travel and lots of work has clearly made Dave a dull boy.  At minimum, it has made staying on program something of a challenge, particularly the travel bit.  This course of events has not been desirable.  I normally count on building up a big reservoir of healthy living chits before I head off toward vacation.  Right now, my healthy bank account is pretty much empty -- though at least I'm not in a debtor position.

I'm REALLY hoping my beach isn't this crowded.
Not a good frolicking scene..

As of Friday morning, I'm on vacation for two weeks.  To be completely clear, this fact is beyond awesome.  I need the rest, and I need to get in a giant heap of quality time with my dear, understanding wife and kids.  Yet, I feel the inevitable ominous feeling of going into wild nutritional waters, replete with fried seafood, ice cream and beer.  I'm also slightly stressed about the fact that I have to get the family car packed and ready to roll early Friday morning.

How should I handle all of the stress, fear, uncertainty and doubt?  Get a plan!

I already started my packing plan by building up an impressive spreadsheet with every item I could possibly need, including lint.  It's a little anally retentive, but I hate that feeling of driving off toward the destination with the nagging feeling that I've forgotten something.  A nice plan and a nicer list is a very nice way of proactively dealing with this.

My approach to my healthy living survival stress for the next two weeks follows the same basic theme:  have a plan.  So here it goes:

Exercise (this one is pretty easy):

• Find a local gym that will sell me a two week pass.  Done!
• Bring my bike.  Will be done!  
• Take advantage of the fact that I naturally wake up at silly hours of the morning and get workout in before family arises.  No problem.  I live my life this way.
• Put in serious walking time on the beach.  No hardship here.
• Frolic in the waves with my kids.  Sold.  

Food (more challenging):  

• Grocery shop as soon as I get to the rental house.  Arm the house with healthy snacks, fruits, etc.
• Stick to my oatmeal/fruit/Greek yogurt breakfast routine.  
• Pack lunch from the kitchen (not the sandwich shop) when possible.  Avoid buying big bags of chips.  Getting individual packs instead so I can avoid mindless beach grazing.  
• For dinners, we are planning on cooking and grilling many of the nights we are there.  That's always a good environment for good choices.  We will also definitely be hitting some dinners out, and that's OK.  My standard guideline for vacations is to loosen up a bit for dinner and not be too obsessive (not easy for me).  

My brain (the most challenging):

• Challenge my vacation paradigms.  Why shouldn't I imagine vacation as a time in which I don't gain a single pound?  Why does it have to be a binging splurge?  Why should I feel the need to get nervous about the notion that I will somehow turn into a garbage eating beach freak?  
• My strategy is therefore to take a deep breath and imagine myself sitting on the beach, feeling healthy and balanced not gross and bloated.  Mental rehearsing they call this.  

Of course, there is always the stop-gap measure of taunting a shark and then letting it chase me to squeeze in a few extra Activity Points.  

I may blog from the beach, but not promises!  

Cheers,

David

Fitness over food. Doing stuff vs. not doing stuff.

New trip, same story (but perhaps a new insight)...

I returned home on Thursday night after a week long trip to China.  2011 has proven to be a tough travel year with (so far) three Asia trips, multiple Europe trips and I don't know-how-many domestic trips under my belt.  I feel like every time I get back from a trip, I say the same thing:  "I was good about exercise, but not always so good about food choices."  How did this trip compare?  Remarkably similar!  It's almost as though there is a pattern at play here!  I'm feeling like quite the detective.

So how did it go?

On the exercise front...

Bless me, I'm disciplined!  I almost wrenched my arm cleanly out of its socket patting myself on the back after all my exercise this past week.  I arrived in China on Monday night after a 15 hour flight.  I somehow managed to get some (maybe four hours) sleep, and I was ready to roll the second the gym opened at 6 AM.  I lifted weights for an hour and then headed over the exercise bike for 30 minutes of additional cardio.  I did the same thing on Wednesday morning.  By Thursday morning, I had already finished my four day weight split for the week, so I was in cardio-only mode.  I cranked in another 45 minutes of reasonably intense action on the bike.  I arrived back home Thursday night, and I was back in the gym again for more cardio on Friday morning.  I even made myself workout again on Sunday even though I was feeling kind of sick.  It was truly a display of sheer willpower.

Or was it?  In truth, I was waking up on my own in China around 3 to 4 AM each day due to heinous internal clock issues.  What else was I going to do at 6 AM?  I had already done a ton of work, email, calls from my room, and I didn't feel like watching yet more CNN.  It was easy to make the decision to jam in a workout because simply stated, that's just what I do these days.  It's pretty automatic.

On the food front...   

Typically spotty food behavior reigned once again.  I tried to be good at the breakfast buffet and choose healthy stuff (on balance, I may have had a bit too much healthy stuff).  I was pretty solid on my choices during the day because I was too busy to be bad.  Dinners degraded a little bit, but I guess they could have been worse.  However, what's up with the Budweiser & Snickers mini-bar routine right before bed time?  Very NASCAR of me.

Some other lucky person's airplane meal.
Is this worthy of Clean Plate club status?

Airplanes are, as always, a completely different and altogether worse story.  The only way to get to Shanghai from JFK non-stop is via China Eastern.  It's a relatively newer airline that was spun off of the Chinese national airline.  I give them credit for flying a fairly new aircraft on their NY route, so the seats aren't bad.  I cannot, however, give them much credit yet for the quality of their cuisine.  The food wasn't still moving when I ate it, but it was several thousand miles away from being haute cuisine.  Yet I ate it all.  Everything.  Every crumb.  Pieces of the serving tray.

Therein lies the story of my life.  Mindless grazing after meals and gorging on aircraft.  How many times have I decried my own inadequacies in these situations with bold promises to fix them?  Right now, my best solution is to never fly again and to eliminate all snack food from existence.  This would obviously be a great plan except for its divergence from reality -- unless I flee society and open up a small shack somewhere in the mountains of Montana.

All of this got me thinking?  Why so good about exercise and yet still so stumped about food?

My latest theory!  I'm wired to do stuff.  I have a hard time not doing stuff.  Huh?  It's easy for me to get a spark of motivation or a whiff of impulse to jump off the couch and go do some exercise.  I've got lots of nervous energy, so this feels like the most natural action in the world.  Exercise and I were made for each other.  True love!

I have a much more complicated relationship with food.  If it is on a well-worn habit tread, like breakfast or lunch, I can nicely make the proactive decision to order up something healthy.  A good breakfast is no longer a decision, it's merely something I do by habit.  However, not snacking requires not doing something.  Not eating wholly unappealing food on an airplane requires saying "no thank you!" and then watching someone else eat it.  It requires not doing something.  As I said, I have a lot of nervous energy, so not doing something does not come naturally.

I guess I am the human embodiment of entropy.  This works well for exercise but not so well for food restraint.

This got me thinking even more.  What if not doing something, like mindless eating, could be reframed into doing something?  How can I make the act of not acting on a food impulse an actual action?  I'm starting to wonder if I should identify these not-so-healthy habits and create some kind of tracking mechanism that allows me to get credit for not falling prey to them.  I'm not sure how this is going to work, but I'm going to give it a try.

Does anyone else relate to this, and if so, what's worked for you?

Cheers,

David

Can't fight the burger and fries lust. Better to avoid the fight in the first place.

I continue to be fascinated by my recent readings from behavioral economists (Thaler, Wansink, and Lowenstein) around the topic of the unbeatable force of the environment.  Every time I see myself failing, it is in the context of a lustful bought of food love.  The concept of a "Hot State" (Lowenstein) is something I wrote about a couple of months ago.  In such a state, one finds oneself overtaken by a gripping frenzy in which no food can be saved.  I sometimes mock my dog, Gabby, who goes through a similar process every time she eats.  See my post from April 2009 to watch a music video of her in action:

http://manmeetsscale.blogspot.com/2009/04/food-rush.html

As I noted then, I'm no better than she is when I find myself in the grip of the food frenzy.  There is no doubt that there are particular trigger foods that bring out the frenzy in a way that makes me feel like I can relate to meth addicts (this simile inspired by one of my fav shows, Breaking Bad, which is back on the air).

Last week, my youngest daughter was in town for a week between sleep-away camp sessions.  We were doting on her with reckless abandon, and we had her in town to see some live music (Gomez).  Her only request pre-entertainment was to go for a proper burger, so we headed off to a place called 5 Napkin Burger, just off of Time Square.  5 Napkin is not a place for PointsPlus lovers.  All burgers clock in at 10 ounces, and something tells me that they are not shy about marbling their meat with fat.  What's a man-on-maintenance to do?  Lighten up, be a good sport, and make my perfect little girl happy on her night out in the town.

The original 5 Napking burger:  not for the faint of heart,
but definitely able to cause the heart to become faint

I put my program-related reservations about restaurant choice to the side, fired up a beer and placed my order.  I tried to tell myself that I wasn't being completely debauched by ordering the "Burger Salad" and the sweet-potato fies.  I knew perfectly well that the dressing on the salad was worth at least as many PointsPlus values as the bun that they replaced.  I also knew that the fried sweet potatoes were not really that much better, if at all, than their yellow Idaho counterparts.  I was happy to bask in my delusions of health and pretend that I was being kind of responsible.

After the meal, I made it a point to think about how my brain felt while I was eating.  The answer was that it was locked in a temporarily state that prevented me from recognizing any external stimuli not emanating from the food in front of me.  Conversation and external noise disappeared from my consciousness.    I felt like a Major League pitcher blocking out distractions while standing on the mound.  My fork, knife and fork did not finish their furious dance until there was not even a tiny scrap of food remaining.  I blew through it just as fast as my dog would blow through a bowl of her food.

I finished my meal with the slightly remorseful feeling of having gone through another food bender.  I was irritated with myself for losing control and not pacing myself.  I was again slightly frustrated that I could not remember to not finish everything in front of me and save a little for the restaurant trash can.  I was bluntly forced to reckon with the fact that I didn't have the will power to master my situation.  I put it all in the back of my mind and went about the rest of the night and had a good time.  However, I wanted to make a note for myself to try to find the object lesson.

So what is the lesson?  The lesson is that yet again, my belief in my willpower is my undoing.  It's hard to fight the hot state.  At least in my case it wasn't a hot state causing me to send an inappropriate text message (is sending a picture of a naked burger -- no bun -- inappropriate?).  Nonetheless, I don't particularly like falling prey to the feeling of being slightly out of control.  

In contrast, I was at a business dinner last week in Minnesota.  I found myself talking quite a bit, as one does at these dinners.  I ordered on-plan food, and I clearly had more on my mind than just eating.  Lo and behold  at the end of dinner I hadn't finished my entre.  My mind never got into food vapor lock.  Same basic environment, but a totally different outcome.

What are the lessons for me?

1. Be focused on something other than eating.  Examples might include socially-oriented activities such as taking an interest in the people around me.  Engaging in conversation while eating seems to work well rather than pretending the food on my dish is slop in a trough.  
2. Know that certain foods will always bring out the worst in me.  Saying I'm only going to eat half my fries just doesn't work for me.  Better to not order them in the first place.  

The biggest lesson for me is that the kind of willpower necessary to be healthy is in being willing to plan and create an environment that reduces temptation for falling to food lust.  Better to focus my energies on avoiding hot states than to try to fight them once they set in.  It's kind of like avoiding the riptide instead of trying to swim against it.  

Cheers,

David

Courage defined: one man's 300 pound journey

I’m proud of the weight I’ve lost and prouder still that I’ve been able to maintain the loss, particularly over the past three years.  At my heaviest, I weighed about 40 pounds more than I do today, and my official weight loss with Weight Watchers was 32 pounds.  As proud as I am, I have always been in awe of those who have lost multiples of this. 

I remember very clearly in one of my first Weight Watchers meetings in the year 2000 when I first saw a member who had lost over 100 pounds.  Her leader was celebrating her effort, and the support and cheers from her fellow members was an inspiring sight.  I always tell people that this day was the first day in which I truly began to understand the power and mission of the company I had joined.  It was the day I learned that Weight Watchers was unlike any organization I had ever known.  It was the day I heartily drank the Kool-Aid (sugar-free) and become a Weight Watchers zealot. 

I’ve thought a lot about that member for many years.  I have often wondered how I would do if I had that much weight to lose.  I have wondered if I could have summoned the courage to walk into the door of a Weight Watchers meeting and ask for help.  I have wondered whether I would have just given up and accepted life as a morbidly obese person.  How would I have handled things if the goal had seemed so far away? 

The answer, of course, is that I don’t know.  I do know that the strategy for most of the folks who lose a tremendous amount of weight (e.g., 50 pounds or more) is not to focus on a distant goal, but rather to set manageable near-term goals such as 5% or 10 pounds.  The second strategy is to re-frame the weight loss process into one of gradual and small changes, not crash, siege-like dieting. 

The other day, I received an email forwarded by our regional field staff in Indianapolis.  It was a letter from Derrick, a young guy in his 20’s, who had just reached the milestone of losing over 300 pounds.  I was completely blown away by his accomplishment and his courage, and I was also moved about the very real effect that this process had on his life.  Rather than re-telling the story, I will let his words speak for themselves: 

The day I walked into a Weight Watchers meeting, I was trembling with fear. I hadn't been weighed in years. No scale would weigh me. I had absolutely no idea how much I weighed. I stepped up on the scale, only to weigh in at an unfathomable 529 pounds. The meeting leader, Cyndi Portteus, could not have been any more positive. I said to her, "Can I really do this? This seems impossible." She smiled at me, took my arm and said "Derrick! You can do this! I know you can!" And I haven't looked back since.  

 Life was very different back then. At 26 years old, I was on two blood pressure medicines. My doctors were practically begging me to have Bariatric surgery and I slept with a CPAP for severe Sleep Apnea. My seat belt didn't fit me in my car. I couldn't sit in booths in restaurants. Every chair was my enemy. Would I fit? Would it hold me? I couldn't go to concerts or any public event that had stadium seating. It was out of the question. Flying was a dramatic, terrible ordeal.  Everywhere I went, all eyes were on me at all times. I was the biggest person everywhere I went. My back constantly hurt. I was wearing a 6X shirt and size 64 inch pants. And special ordering clothes from a catalog was the norm. Going to the grocery store was a grueling ordeal.

 But that was two years ago. I went down 20 pants sizes. I have lost over 26 inches from my waist alone. I can buy clothes anywhere I go. I have been taken off all my blood pressure medicines and no longer have high blood pressure. My blood work is stellar. After a sleep study last year, I have absolutely no symptoms of Sleep Apnea and no longer sleep with a CPAP. I can fit in any booth, seat or chair. I have participated in eight 5K's with 3 more scheduled this year. I have even dropped a shoe size! 

 My entire life has changed, and changed dramatically. Weight Watchers saved my life. Presently, I am only 1 pound away from losing 300 pounds and am inching closer and closer to Goal. I can see Goal and Lifetime, and it's only a short distance away. I finally see it can be done! At the time that my doctors were telling me what a perfect candidate I would be for Weight Loss Surgery, I knew that would never be for me. I knew if I was going to do this, I was going to do it. I knew Weight Watchers worked.

[Note:  as of this blog posting, Derrick informed me that he had reached a total loss of 302 pounds.]

I can never know the kind of courage that Derrick had to summon to walk into that door.  I can never know the kind of perseverance and determination that it took for him to see through a 300 pound loss.  I can, however, acknowledge and celebrate his success and enthusiastically tip my hat to him.  I can also acknowledge and thank our local staff, particularly Derrick’s Leader, Cyndi, who supported him through his journey.  Most of all, I can thank Derrick for reminding me, once again, why I love working for Weight Watchers. 

Derrick’s success is entirely his own.  I’m just glad we were able to help. 

As I write this blog entry, I’m sitting in a Frankfurt hotel room early in the morning.  I’ve been blitzing through Europe for the past three days, and it’s been a great trip.  My eating habits have been a C+ effort, but I’m trying to compensate by keeping my exercise pace up.  After I make this post, I will dutifully put on a pot of coffee and head over to the gym next door.  I will do my best to keep it sane today and the flight home.  I will also take comfort in the fact that I’m back on my home routine for a couple of weeks.  This process always has its great weeks and not so great weeks.  If one many can lose 300 pounds, then another can keep focused while on maintenance.  Derrick’s story reminds me that healthy life is a process, not a sprint.  His story also reminds me that the benefits are worth the effort. 

Thanks Derrick!

Cheers,

David

How much I weigh and other scary secrets...

The other day, I got a follow-up email request from a reporter writing an article about Weight Watchers.  He casually requested if I could provide him with my height, weight and BMI.  Apparently, he had read on my blog that I had gained six pounds about a month ago, and this got him curious about how much I actually weighed.  How did I react to his email?  Frankly, it kind of freaked me out.

Perhaps a little more context is in order.  The reporter is a guy who is working on a long lead piece, and I had already spent a bunch of time with him.  He's a very nice, interesting and curious guy, and I certainly didn't think he intended to do me any horrific harm when I got his request.  I think he was understandably perplexed when I told him that I didn't want to send the information via email, but preferred to share it via the phone.  As he said, it wasn't as though he was asking for my social security number.

Upon reflection, I was, in fact, being a little bit weird.  The fact of the matter is that although I'm at my goal weight, I'm still self-conscious about writing my weight down.  This got me to wondering why I am so uncomfortable with this?  Prevailing wisdom suggests that men are very comfortable talking about how many pounds they weigh.  Or are they?...

So for those curious about how much I weigh, here it goes (deep breath...):

• I'm 6'3"
• When I got weighed last week, I was 204 lbs, one pound over my goal weight of 203 lbs (this is with clothing -- in fact, I was wearing chain mail armor)
• This puts me at a BMI of 25.5

[BTW, I made reference to a six pound gain in a blog post about a month ago.  I am happy to report that five of those pounds have been vanquished.  Yeah me!  It's also worth noting that at my heaviest, I was 244 pounds.  Double-yeah me!]

Though I'm down 5 lbs, I would guess that I still weigh more than the witch and the duck.  That doesn't make me a warlock, so put your pitchforks away.

One reason I'm self-conscious about my weight is that I am 0.5 above the clinical definition of the lower end of the overweight BMI range of 25 to 29.9 (obese is 30+ -- I was in that range at one point).  For me to be at a BMI of 24.9, I need to get down to about 199.  So how is it that my officially sanctioned Weight Watchers goal weight ended up four pounds above this?

When it came time to setting my goal weight, I first had a conversation with my leader, Liz, and I expressed that 199 felt way too skinny for me to sustainably maintain.  In fact, I've been at 199, and that's the weight where people start telling me that I look a little gaunt -- I finally learned to stop taking that as a compliment.  Liz suggested that I talk to a qualified healthcare professional to determine a truly healthy weight for me.  So I made an appointment with the Chief Scientific Officer of Weight Watchers (What can I say?  It's a perk of the job.)  She checked a couple of extra facts about me when helping me find my goal weight, including:

• My waist size, which is 34", well under the target of 38"
• My body-fat percentage as measured by a commercial grade impedance device.  I came in at 16% body fat.  I tested it again last week and I was at 17%.  According to the American Council on Exercise, 14% to 17% qualifies as "fitness" and 18% to 25% qualifies as "acceptable".  I usually bounce around from 15% to 17%.  

Based on all of this, she felt comfortable that my goal of 203 was definitely at a healthy weight, so I was able to get a waiver on the BMI 25 so that I could qualify for Lifetime Membership.  

Not to sound like too much of a cliche-ridden man, but I do lift weights pretty frequently (4X per week), so I have built up some muscle mass (which is totally apparent when I squint into the mirror).  Further, I'm convinced that I come from farming stock -- I'm pretty large framed.  OK, maybe I am a cliche-ridden man.    

In truth, there is no perfect measure of healthy weight, and this subject is not without controversy.  Weight Watchers regularly scours the research, and despite any imperfections, BMI is still the most easily used and maintained measure that is highly predictive of health risk factors.  However, because BMI is not perfect, Weight Watchers allows its members to get written permission from their doctors to qualify for Lifetime Membership as long as their BMI is below 27.  I'm one of them.  

There.  I have now broadcasted my weight, and it's out there in the world.  Even writing this in my blog entry gives me a vague feeling of uneasiness.  Why?

1. I have never had any problem talking about my weight loss (30 pounds), but I have never been as comfortable talking about my absolute weight.  Most people guess that I weigh less than I actually do (I think that's a good thing), a fact that makes me feel all the more self-conscious about the actual number.  I do understand that I am overly obsessing about a number, and too often ignoring observations such as my skinnier, post-weight loss clothing still fitting and that I am looking vaguely the way I should look.  More importantly, I am still living very much of a healthy lifestyle, so that is clearly the most important consideration.  Yet, I still worry about that little number.  What can I say?  I have an in-grained need to keep score on myself.  
2. I feel accountable to the people I work with, particularly given my role in the organization, to be the walking, breathing example of Weight Watchers.  I am happy to be at my weight for myself, but I feel obligated to make sure I stay there for others.  I'm not sure this is an entirely bad thing.  Feeling a sense of accountability for our health for others can be a useful and effective motivator (at least for me).  It is certainly a good will gesture for my family, who would like to see me around for a long time.  I also believe that the success of each of us can help motivate others to do the same.  It has often been written that obesity is contagious:  if all of your friends are over-weight, you are statistically more likely to be overweight yourself.  I'd like to think that the opposite is also true.   

This is one of those blog posts that I write knowing that it can be kind of a touchy subject for a lot of people.  It certain has been for me writing it.  Then again, maybe I'm over-thinking it all.  I do that.  

Cheers,

David

Little plates make full tummies. Better not throw away my daughters' old tea set.

Very recently, the Center for Nutrition Policy & Promotion (CNPP), a joint department shared between the Department of Agriculture and HHS, revealed their new icon for the 2010 Dietary Guidelines for Americans.  They took the bold step of throwing out the head-scratching food pyramid for something we can all relate to:  a plate.  On this plate, they have half of it dedicated to fruits and vegetables and the remainder dedicated to lean proteins and whole grains.  On a personal level, I like the new icon a lot and see it as a huge improvement over the old food pyramid.  Why?  Two reasons:

1. I like what it says.  I really like the way that the more cutting edge advice in food choices is becoming pretty simple and common sensical:  focus on eating real foods that have real nutrition.  I am obviously biased as this is what PointsPlus is all about, and it reflects the way I eat (or at least aspire to) these days.  
2. I like how it says it.  Call me odd, but I have never had occasion to serve my food on a serving dish laid out like a pyramid.  I've known about the food pyramid since its introduction almost 20 years ago, and it never once has caused me to re-think how I eat.  The plate on the other hand is something I definitely relate to.  Visualizing what I'm putting on my plate makes a lot of sense to me.  I also really like the basic message of filling half my plate with fruits and vegetables.  Nothing like a simple message to penetrate the severe bone density of my skull.  

However, there is another message of the dietary guidelines (and PointsPlus) that doesn't really find its way onto the new plate icon:  portion control.  How big a plate are we talking about?  Hopefully not a platter.  

I'm assuming that the Lego disciples were able to
make do with little Lego plates

There was a very amusing study published last year that looked at artistic renderings of the Last Supper over the past 1,000 years.  Using some sophisticated computer analysis comparing the size of plates and loaves of bread to the size of heads (I'm glad I wasn't in the paintings -- my gravity inducing noggin would have distorted the results), they were able to measure how artistic views of serving sizes had changed.  Lo and behold (pardon my religiosity), over the past millennium, plate sizes have increased an average of 66% with the biggest gains being scored around the year 1500.  I guess no one can blame Coke and Pepsi for that one.  

More recently (i.e., the 90's), plate sizes have increased from 10 inches to 12 inches, an increase of 20%.  Does this matter?  According to our new friend Professor Wansink (I'm starting to feel like his PR coordinator), it matters quite a bit.  Time for another game of human experimentation.  

• Experiment #1:  At an ice cream social (the opposite of a Weight Watchers meeting), the researchers gave their test subjects either 17 oz bowls or 34 oz bowls.  Those who were given the larger bowls served themselves up 31% more ice cream.  When given a larger scoop to go with their great big bowl, they served up 57% more ice cream.  
• Experiment #2:  Test subjects served a medium-sized hamburger on a smaller plate (a saucer) estimated their burger to have 18% more calories than when it was served on a regulation-sized plate.  

Basically, the point is that our eyes can get us in trouble as we use other objects to ballpark the size of our food.  Maybe this is why overly fancy restaurants are often accused of skimping on food:  they put normal portions on huge plates.  

For myself, I have two observations...

1. Appetizers can be pleasant surprises.  I was recently at a lunch where I was on stage (in fact, being grilled -- pardon the pun) with a bunch of Wall St types.  They were at the lunch to hear about what we were up to, so that meant it was time for me to talk.  As a result, I didn't bother ordering a main dish, but instead I asked for an appetizer serving of tuna tartar.  It was a nice serving size, but was clearly an appetizer.  That said, it did look more impressive on its smaller dish.  Combine this with my having to talk non-stop, and I ended up feeling pretty satisfied after lunch and wasn't hungry again until dinner.  Moral of the story?  Talk more and order smaller sizes.
2. I am not wired for empty plates.  It's the soon-to-be-starving, fight-or-flee caveman that lives inside my stomach that disallows me from doing anything other than cramming food on my plate.  My choice is either to fight this urge or simply to use a smaller plate.  The latter seems much easier than relying on will power.  Moral of the story?  Use salad plates.  

How many of you have reverted to using your grandmother's old china to solve this problem?  What else is working for you?

Cheers,

David

The origin of the Clean Plate Club. or, It's not my fault, I blame the vikings

I'm continuing my man-crush on Cornell economist, Brian Wansink, whose book "Mindless Eating" is continuing to provide excellent insight and amusement.

"Give us your small, snack-sized livestock or I will smite thee!"

Given the topic of my blog, ManMeetsScale, I want to use at least some of the time to talk about various pressures and incentives men have to make not-so-good eating decisions.  On a personal level, I am very much inclined to ascribe all of my own behavioral failings to hidden societal pressures dating back to ancient Mesopotamia.  Really, if the Assyrians were a little more thoughtful, they would have established a culture and ethos of healthier and more mindful eating which then would have spread over Greece, then Rome and ultimately the parts of Europe that were worshiping trees at the time.  Instead, men in the times of yore were perfectly happy to eat until they had to vomit.  The Romans were quite good at this.  Heaven knows the Vikings were big feasters.  Give them a leg of mutton, and they were happy to sack another English village.  No doubt their own military adventures brought some of that Viking meal assault culture which then led Henry VIII to gorge on food on endless banquet tables.  From there, the next stop was the Superbowl.

The thing about Romans, Vikings and British kings is that they ultimately became role models for would-be gladiators and monarchs everywhere.  In other words, me.  I would have been an excellent Viking, and I'm sure I could have a rocking beard if I gave it half a chance.  For a long time, I definitely ate like a Viking, the approving nods of my buddies.

Then I discovered Weight Watchers.  Now I turn up my nose when faced with the meat buffet.  I rarely eat a sandwich, and I like salad an awful lot.  Clearly a sissy of epic proportions!  Real men eat sides of beef all at once, and they surely don't eat quiche.  Actually, I don't eat quiche either because it has way too much butter in the crust and is full of hidden calories.  Gracious me.  Am I so far on the unmanly eating scale that I'm to the left of the quiche eater?  That is troubling indeed.

Think I'm making this manly eating stuff up?  Witness yet another fascinating experiment by that clever Wansink over at the Cornell school of test subject deception.  He and his colleagues have done a number of experiments in which they observe people eating popcorn in movie theaters.  In one experiment they found that when women paid attention to how much popcorn they were eating, they ate less.  Makes sense, right?  Apparently, not for us super-smart men.  When guys indicated that they were paying attention to how much popcorn they were eating, they ate more.  Seriously.

However, his second experiment was even more telling.  They did an ingenious experiment in which they wrote a script/story of a guy on a date.  They randomly assigned people to read one of two versions that were different from each other in only one seemingly minor way.  In one version, the guy in the story ate a couple of handfuls of popcorn.  In the other, he ate almost all of his popcorn.  They conducted the survey with 140 college men and 140 college women.  Here were the results:

• College men:  the guy in the version of the story that ate almost all of his popcorn was consistently rated as stronger, more aggressive and more masculine than the two handfuls guy.  In fact, when asked how much they thought he could bench press, the full popcorn guy could bench an average of 21 pounds more.  Holy Toledo.  The popcorn was not even a central point of the story, which was a fairly detailed account about a guy on a date.  The seemingly subtle difference on how much popcorn he ate was enough to give him a 20lb bench advantage.  I am doing a chest workout tomorrow morning, and I'm seeing a movie with my kids today.  I just might have to check this out.  
• College women:  They didn't rate either version of the guy as either stronger or more masculine.  In other words, the notion that women care about how much we guys eat seems over-rated, at least in this experiment.  

So what does this little experiment tell us?  I have often heard that women work out and dress nicely to impress each other, not the men in their life.  Is it possible that we men are inclined to clean our plates (and sometimes eat them too) in an effort to impress each other?  Is this the fast food version of moose rutting?  

While this is mostly pretty amusing, I cannot help think that it represents at least one significant barrier preventing men from taking hold of theirs weight issue:  we worry about how we think our brothers will react to our doing something about it.  Statistically, men are 50% less likely to do something about their weight (and therefore their health) than women.  While women feel pressured by body image and the media to lose weight, it seems that men have the exact opposite incentive. To be clear, I'm not suggesting that it would be a good thing for men to become slaves to body image, though I sadly see this happening in pockets.  However, it is also not a good thing for men to feel pressure to eat like a starving lion in an effort to impress others.  

I've been doing Weight Watchers and dealing with my weight for so long that I'm mostly past caring what my guy friends think about my dainty food choices.  However, I do, from time to time, feel a little self conscious when everyone else orders a steak served with a blue cheese blanket, and I'm asking for the simply grilled salmon with fresh spring vegetables.  According to Mr. Wansink, my concern over college frat guy approval is warranted.  Apparently, I can take some solace that at least the girls, or at least my wife, don't care.  

Cheers,

David