It was April 27, 2004, and I needed to lose some weight. For vanity's sake. Self-esteem. It's sortof a twisted bit of irony that this story begins in the land of completely unrealistic ideals, Hollywood, CA. My wife and I had just flown in, to spend a week at the home of our friends Kevin & Colin, in Laurel Canyon.
Kevin, singer in a rock band and a friend of ten years, carted us off to band practice with him. Midway through rehearsal, as I slouched on a couch beside him, he thought it amusing to start poking my flabby stomach with a drumstick, rather than sing the song the band were playing around us. Its funny that you can impart some change once you appeal to someone's vanity.
At this point, I was 6'3," 218 pounds, which by most standards, is quite alright. But the pounds were adding up in the wrong places. The kinds of places where they add up when you spend your days sitting in front of a computer, eating whatever you feel like eating, and not exercising nearly enough, if at all. I was on a steady diet of all things refined: cream & sugar in my coffee, and refined white flour foods including everything from pasta to snack foods. We'd eat out if we felt like it, with pizza and Chinese being favorites.
I have to admit that my interest in my overall health and losing weight was at first, passive at best. I just wanted to lose some weight. So, how to do it? I'll cut out bagels! Everyone says carbs are bad, right? It made a bit of a difference, but truthfully, not much.
Unfortunately for me, I hadn't yet made any other changes to my diet. I did manage to lose some weight, but I didn't feel any better. Still immersed in a perpetual fog; stressed out, overtired, up and down, scatterbrained...the truly unfortunate part is that when this is all you know, you don't realize that in reality, you just don't feel well. It all just seems normal.
In the fall of 2005, I made the decision to stop drinking. I've always loved a good beer. And for a long time, I loved coming home from work and having a few to 'take the edge off' and relax. As I've gotten older, I've also noticed that I really dislike the way that it makes me feel.
The decision to cut alcohol out of my life proved to be a good one; I guess you don't notice the "booze bloat" until you stop drinking and see the almost immediate change in your appearance. I lost a few more pounds. The fog lifted a bit more.
It was December 14, 2005, and I needed to educate myself about my health. I had just received the news that my friend Adam had died suddenly, from degenerative heart disease. He was barely a year older than me, and about 3 weeks shy of his 29th birthday.
There's nothing like being forced to face your own mortality at the ripe old age of 27. This one hit home for me in a big way. My wife and I had spent many a night partying with Adam, undoubtedly eating poorly, drinking copiously, and staying out far later than was healthy.
I set out to educate myself, and to this day feel as though it's the single most important thing you can do for your health. As the saying goes, knowledge is power. I began reading whatever I could get my hands on regarding food and a balanced diet. I explored the psychology of food - the way chemicals interact with our brains, and how the foods we eat affect every aspect of our daily lives. By virtue of learning about a healthy diet & lifestyle, I also learned exactly why the foods I was accustomed to eating were so bad. I made the decision to explore food, and become a better cook.
I was able to learn the following, rather quickly:
- Sleep. A healthy lifestyle begins and ends with a set schedule and adequate amounts of sleep. This includes getting up early on the weekends (roughly the same time you would during the week).
- A balanced diet. Eat the right foods and cut out the bad stuff. Make everything that goes in your body count!
- Portion control. Pay attention to serving size suggestions - that's a good start. Don't heap your plate full of food. Eat slower. If you eat quickly, you're finished before your brain has had time to process what has just happened and tell you that you are full.
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The nutritional value in vegetables and grains truly amazed me, from their ability to improve your metabolism, to their abundance of vitamins, minerals, antioxidants, and fiber.
Key points:
- Water is critically important to your health. Good rule of thumb: you should be drinking half your body weight in ounces of water every day.
Example: 160 lbs = 80 oz of water per day.
Drinking pure water has countless health benefits, most notably it's ability to facilitate the body's natural cleansing process.
- Vegetables are critically important - the more colorful, the better.
Example: green peppers are good for you, but red, yellow and orange are even better and well worth their added expense.
Example: iceberg lettuce is useless. Reach instead for more colorful varieties, like red leaf or romaine.
- Grains are critically important - Whole grain foods are rich in vitamins, minerals, fiber, and any number of other things important for overall health.
- Lean meats and fish - chicken, pork, and fish, such as salmon, haddock, and halibut. They provide protein, antioxidants, and much more.
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The information I was able to find about carbohydrates was truly enlightening. It taught me that not all carbs are created equal. You still need them in your diet; you just need the right ones. Your body converts refined white flour foods into energy rapidly, causing a "crash" shortly thereafter, leaving you lethargic and hungry again. Whole grain foods slow the release of insulin to your bloodstream, leaving you more satisfied, for longer.
**The term "whole grain" can be deceptive. ...just because a package says "whole grain" does not make it so. Read the label. Our local Stop & Shop, for example, has dozens of varieties of bread that all carry the claim of being "whole grain." In all but ONE, however, there's one ingredient you're sure to find: high fructose corn syrup. When looking for whole grain foods, if you find anything with high fructose corn syrup, or see the word "enriched" or "bleached" anywhere in the ingredient list, put it back on the shelf and keep looking. It's not really whole grain. The first ingedient should be something like "whole wheat flour."
Armed with this valuable knowledge, the next step for us was to seriously make a change. My wife and I literally emptied our cupboards, discarding everything with any of the following ingredients:
- refined flours
- refined sugars (other common names for sugar on food labels: dextrose, fructose, sucrose, corn syrup, maltodextrin)
- sugar substitutes (splenda, sucralose, aspartame)
- high fructose corn syrup
- partially hydrogenated oils
- saturated fats
- trans fats, etc.
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Once you start reading labels, you'll find you're astonished by what's actually IN the food you're buying. It was actually quite liberating to empty and start anew.
We restocked the cupboards with the following:
- Olive oil - it's filled with mono and polyunsaturated fats, which help fight heart disease.
- Whole grains - pasta, brown rice, quiona, soba noodles, whole grain bread.
- Nuts and seeds. Almonds make a great snack. (RAW almonds! Not salted, roasted, etc.)
- Spices. You can use most spices as liberally as you wish, without having to worry about any of the health issues presented by just using butter on everything, as many, many folks do.
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The fridge was the exciting part. Vegetables, vegetables, vegetables. We experimented a lot, found some we loved and some we hated, and have stuck with a comfortable mix. In our house, we eat generous amounts of:
- Peppers (red, yellow, orange)
- Tomatoes (we prefer grape or roma, they have more taste)
- Broccoli (amazingly good for you)
- carrots
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- zucchini
- squash
- spinach (also amazingly good for you)
- red leaf lettuce/romaine
- cucumbers
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The beauty of vegetables is that many are great raw. When cooking vegetables, the closer to raw you're eating them, the better. If you're one of those people that cooks vegetables down to mush, you're wasting your time. You've just cooked out all of the vitamins & other nutrients that are so abundant.
The beginning of 2006 was when I really began to notice a change - in my physical appearance, but mentally as well. The "fog" lifted; I was sleeping better. I was less stressed. I had infinitely more energy and ability to concentrate.
As you can see by the before/after photos here, the change I've experienced was profound. To date, I've lost 58 pounds. I'm 6'3" 160 pounds, and feel better than I ever have. I have been at or near this weight for the past 7 months, and have absolutely no worries about maintaining it. At this point, I am completely enamored with health and eating properly, so much so that I don't miss any of that "other" stuff in the least.
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The clarity gained by shedding the lifelong habit of some of the foods I was accustomed to was amazing. I've found now that I am so in-tune with my body that I can pinpoint the way certain foods or chemicals change the way I feel. I have also discovered an absolute love of food; I've lost weight by educating myself about food and learning how to cook it properly and truly enjoy balanced, healthy meals. The only thing we cut out of our diets were foods we don't need anyway.
One last note: being self-employed, my days are invariably long; the last thing I want to do at the end of an 11 hour workday is cook. I recognized the need to simplify. I take an hour (or whatever is necessary) on a Sunday and slice and dice whatever vegetables I may need for the week. Having everything readily available makes it very hard to find excuses to not cook and just order takeout. On any given night, dinner rarely takes more than a half hour to prepare and cook.
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