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October 20, 2006
Using The CR Toolbox To Achieve Healthy Weight Loss
CRON is not for everyone. The goal of extending your healthy lifespan through a method that while tried and true in many mammals, is not proven in humans, and requires careful planning and some sacrifice, is just not what most people want to do. I never try to "convert" people to CR, because it would be pointless. People should decide what their goals are, and what price they're willing to pay. For most, even the thought of looking and feeling younger for many years to come and even adding some time onto their lifespan is not worth the effort.
But for most people in our rapidly expanding nation, losing weight and feeling better is a goal. Every year people make New Year's resolutions to lose weight, but too often they fail because they lack the tools for healthy weight loss. CR folks have discovered a powerful toolbox of techniques that enable one to lose weight while dramatically improving health and minimizing inconvenient things like hunger. Weight loss is just a side effect of CR, and many CR practitioners were perfectly happy with how they looked before CR. In fact, quite a few of the men preferred to be heavier! But for us, the priority of slowing aging trumps concerns about being perceived as "too skinny." Still, we've learned some things about how weight loss really works. These techniques aren't tricks -- they aren't gimmicky shortcuts like counting fat grams or eating a grapefruit with every meal (though that sounds yummy... I love grapefruit!) They're tools that really work.
I had two occasions to contemplate this concept this week. First, hanging out with MR's mom, who has lost 38 pounds using the tools she learned from MR and the blog, has been a lot of fun. The way she cooks -- not weighing everything but measuring amounts, focusing on fresh veggies and very lean protein (she taught me how to cook tilapia night before last!) without bread or pasta or any of those big empty calorie starches that so many people think they need to feel full, and serving reasonable portions that make everyone feel satisfied without being stuffed -- shows very clearly how she and her husband lost weight slowly, healthfully and without hunger or stress. They aren't interested in hardcore CR, they just want to look and feel good. And it's worked!
Then I got an email from a friend for whom I did a bit of informal weight loss coaching two years ago. She had gained some weight due to tremendous work stress and long hours, and now she's implementing the things we talked about two years ago and losing weight. Yea!
Here are the most effective tools that the normal person can take out the CR toolbox:
1) Know what you're eating.
You don't have to weigh and measure every morsel for the rest of time to familiarize yourself with the calorie content of the foods you normally eat and learn to choose lower calorie choices and sensible portions. Just a few weeks of reading food labels, weighing your meat and fish and looking up their calorie content on any number of free online programs, and consulting the nutrition information on the websites of any fast food restaurant you might patronize will show you where your calories are going. When I figured out how many calories that Dunkin Donuts bagel with cream cheese was costing me, I decided to dump it once and for all. However, I discovered the amazing Subway Club salad, at 150 calories and a ton of lean turkey protein. If you educate yourself as to what you're really consuming, you'll almost automatically make lower calorie choices. That's why it would be so good if restaurants published their calorie counts... but more on that soon!
2) Think nutrition first.
This is no joke. People who are desperate to lose weight will tell you that they don't want to worry about nutrition until they lose the weight. This is a self-defeating belief because one of the keys to hunger management and food satisfaction is getting the nutrients you need! Ask any CR person who discovered nutritional software and improved his or her diet -- when you get the nutrition you need, you don't feel the need to consume excess calories. However, if you're filling up on empty, fake, nutrient-less "diet food," you'll still be hungry because you're malnourished.
Not only does nutrition make a difference in hunger, it makes an incredible difference in how you look. I've lost weight before during times of extreme stress (though never as much weight as I lost doing CR), and at 110 I would look like a pale, sick ghost. Now at 104 I look vibrant and healthy, and I'm five years older! Skin tone, eye brightness, even hair health seem to be effected by nutrition. This is just common sense, but it still came as a surprise to me. Even my hairstylist has noticed that I can grow my hair much longer now, and it looks healthier at lengths where before it would have had split ends and looked like a rat had been nibbling on it. Nutrition even makes a difference in how weight is distributed, or at least so it seems from anecdotal evidence. I'd love to consult an expert to find out what's really going on, but it is certainly my perception and that of other CR'd women who had tried every diet in the book before that with good nutrition, weight comes off where you want it to, with much less sacrifice in the areas where you actually want some fat.
3) Slow and steady wins the race.
In the rodent studies, rats whose calorie level was dropped fast didn't get the longevity benefits of those whose calories were reduced gradually. Losing weight slowly is essential for health, and also seems to help keep the weight off, a big priority for normal folks who want to lose weight and maintain.
4) Focus on health, not weight.
CR folks are all about health. We don't just limit our calories, we eat extremely nutritious diets, plus we take care of our health in other ways. Almost every CR person I know has some kind of exercise routine, and most of us also engage in meditation or yoga or stress reduction practice of some kind. We wear our seatbelts, avoid secondhand smoke (obviously we do not smoke) and hold hands with a responsible adult when crossing the street (maybe that's just me -- I used to be terrible at crossing the street and have more than once been grabbed and jerked back to prevent me from walking out in front of a car while not paying attention. I really miss those New Haven pedestrian only crossing signals. All traffic stops for pedestrians. It's excellent.)
Lots of us report that focusing on health allowed us to get out of that negative self-talk loop that seems to run continually in the heads of many dieters. When the focus is on weight, you say to yourself, "I'm so fat. I have to get thin." Then you are so busy convincing yourself that you're fat that you act in ways that keep you fat, even as you mentally beat yourself up. When you forget for the moment about your weight and focus on your health, you start to think of yourself as a health-conscious person. That makes it a lot more likely that in every choice you make, you'll choose the healthier of the options. Before you know it, the weight is coming off by itself. I practically blinked and missed the first twenty pounds I lost on CR because I was so obsessed with designing the nutritionally perfect diet and reading scientific articles that I stopped obsessing about my weight. It caught up with me when a trusted colleague pointed out that I was coming to work looking like a kid playing dress up in my mother's clothes, that's how big my old clothes were becoming. When I bought a bunch of clothes that fit, I realized how profoundly my body had changed. All while I wasn't really thinking about the weight. I didn't even own a scale back then... I only bought one when some CR sisters pointed out that I might be losing weight too fast, and I knew I had to monitor so as to slow my weight loss! Very different from the diet mentality, and very good for long term health.
As MR once said, CR works because it makes you healthy. But CR isn't an all-or-nothing, zero sum game. Even modest reductions in calories (assuming you maintain or achieve adequate nutrition -- remember, most people who are eating ad lib aren't getting all the nutrients they need on a daily basis, so don't take shortcuts, get nutritional software!) can result in dramatic health benefits. And for those who want or need to lose weight, the CR toolbox can make the difference between success and failure.
And by all means, please stop eating cereal for breakfast. Take a carton of eggwhites, pour it into a measuring cup and measure out 1 cup (1.5 or 2 if you're a man, depending on your size and how big a breakfast you like,) put it in a pan and scramble it. Add some veggies like green peppers or mushrooms if you have the energy. Throw on a slice of nonfat cheese if you feel like it. Top with salsa, hot sauce, or a dash of salt substitute and fresh ground pepper. Now matter what you do, eat it with a little fat, preferably a teaspoon of flax oil but olive oil will do, or about 11 grams of nuts. Now eat. That's your breakfast. I promise, and it sounds like a gimmick but it's not, that if you throw out your high carb breakfast and substitute a big shot of protein in the form of eggwhites (no saturated fat there!) plus some fat, you will lose weight. Just try it. Really. Tell me how it goes.
Posted by april at October 20, 2006 9:07 AM
Comments
Number two on your list is so critical! I am not CRing right now because I'm trying to conceive, but I'm focusing on the Optimal Nutrition part of the equation. I was amazed that when I made a few tweaks to improve the nutritional quality of my usual diet suddenly I started feeling a lot more satiated by my meals and more energetic at the same time. I used to have a weight problem and eat a lot of nutritionally empty low calorie junk food, but now I see that such foods are a big trap!
Posted by: jj at October 20, 2006 11:31 AM
I've been reading your site for a while now and find it very interesting. I'm an endurance athlete who has fought weight issues for many years. It's been a never-ending battle it seems.
A few months ago I decided to take a different approach with food. I decided to focus on food as fuel for my body. My goal became to look at everything I was about to eat and decide if it would make me a better athlete or not; that is, would it be an appropriate or even better, optimal, source of some nutrient that I needed. Being an endurance athlete, I'm not sure that true CR is where I'm headed, but by focusing on the nutrition in everything I eat, and by focusing on avoiding things I don't need, my caloric intake has been a lot lower. My weight has dropped 16 pounds in 10 weeks. My BP went from 135/85 to 110/60. I've eliminated a number of prescription medications that I was taking as well.
I'm also not craving foods that I don't need. I'm eating fat with nuts and olive oil and flax oil and avocadoes. I'm eating a nearly veggie diet, but eating plenty of protein. My body doesn't seem to crave bad foods the way that it did 10 weeks ago.
So, your post today really hit home. I'm focusing on making my diet healthy for right now. Who knows what direction that might ultimately take me?
Posted by: dml at October 20, 2006 12:45 PM
April, I don't know if you read my comments on Mary's blog, but I have been academically interested in CR for a few years now, and have started to consider doing it. I love reading your blog: thank you for putting in the time to make it.
I think #1 is very important. I thought I had good ideas about nutrition (eating whole foods, lots of produce, mindful of protein, no empty carbs, etc) but I feel that I didn't even really start learning anything until I started tracking what I eat. Now I can see if I'm getting the micronutrients I need or not, and how nutrient dense each food really is (or isnt).
Number 2 is so important, too, and I think it is what has been causing me problems. I've been trying to cut down the calories. Generally I've been eating about 1800-2000 kcal for maintenance (depending on how much exercise I get) and I tried cutting it down to 1500 kcal, but my body was saying that it was still needing something, so I ended up eating more, averaging 1750 kcal this past week. I feel like if I increase my nutritional density some more, I could go lower. At this point I don't want to sacrifice the ON part for the sake of the CR part.
Thanks!
-Sara-
Posted by: sara at October 20, 2006 2:24 PM
I guess I'll chime in here as well.
Many months ago, I celebrated my youngest daughter's first birthday. That's when I realized that the "baby fat" on my body just wasn't going to magically disappear. Breast feeding had helped me lose quite a bit of weight, but at 5'2 I still weighed over 150 pounds. I was about to turn 34 but I felt ancient. I felt achy and tired all the time. I could barely drag myself out of bed. That's when I finally decided I had to do something.
I read Walford and Delaney's book, The Longevity Diet, and started applying some of the principles I found there. I started paying attention to what I was eating. It was a bit of a shock to suddenly realize how much junk I had been consuming. Just by following principle #1, I shed a good 15 pounds.
Then I really started paying attention to principle #2 - nutrition. I was amazed that even though I was eating far fewer calories, I almost never felt hungry. I'm still amazed by that. When I was eating bagels for breakfast and handsful of M&M's throughout the day, I *always* felt hungry. But when I focused on nutrition, the hunger just seemed to disappear. Once I understood this, I felt incredible relief. I didn't have to starve myself to lose weight! I never would have dreamed it possible.
I've tried to follow principle #3. I really have. But even the smallest changes in my diet have had enormous effects on my diet. Since early June, I've lost more than 30 pounds, and the weight just keeps melting off. It feels like magic.
Today I'm as thin as I was in high school. I feel young again. Now that I'm down to a reasonable weight, I don't feel a burning desire to lose any more pounds. But instead of losing motivation and going back to old habits, I find myself moving on to principle #4 - focusing on health. Now that the goal is to be healthy (rather than being thin) I feel challenged to constantly improve the way I eat and how I live my life. This is a huge shift in my thinking. I don't want to just *look* healthy, I want to *be* healthy. I want to make sure I'm around to see my kids grow up. I want to be there when they have kids of their own. And I now understand that taking care of me is an essential part of taking care of them. I have no idea where I'll end up with all this but I know it will be a much better place than where I was headed.
April, again, thanks for keeping up a blog like this. It's been a great source of information and inspiration for me.
Posted by: Robin at October 21, 2006 7:06 AM
Thanks to all for your wonderful comments! It makes me really happy to learn that in all your very different lives, you're finding ways to use the info in the blog. It really means a lot to me!
april
Posted by: April at October 22, 2006 7:31 AM
I also found your blog via the New York magazine article and look forward to reading it more thoroughly. But for now, as one endurance athlete (I'm a triathlete focused on Ironman distance) I would actually like to address this to JJ and ask how he is doing on a restricted diet in his training and (presumably) racing.
Ever since reading Lance Armstrong's first autobiography, It's Not About the Bike, I have been fascinated by the way chemotherapy shrunk him down to a little nub of his former self, but how he was able to rebuild his physique as that of a dedicated cyclist (as opposed to his more bulky swimmer/triathete's body before cancer) after resumption of full-time training. So it seems that even though CR will result in muscle loss in the short term, over the longer term one might find that the body rebuilds all the muscle it needs based on the caloric and nutritional intake along with the activity level it expects.
Can anyone comment on the above? Thanks!
Posted by: David at October 23, 2006 9:56 PM
How do you find a doctor who supports the CRON lifestyle? (BTW, if you have any suggestions, I live in the NJ/NYC area)My family want me to get a general physical, but I'm scared that a new doctor will think I'm anorexic because of my low body weight. I want a doctor that supports my lifestyle.
Posted by: HeartofGlass at November 4, 2006 7:36 AM
April,
Your blog is very interesting and insightful. I return to it frequently. I like your idea about replacing breakfast cereal with scrambled egg whites with veggies and flax/olive oil. I've eaten cereal and toast for breakfast for as long as I can remember (mixing it up once and a while of course). I'm in a physically and mentally demanding field and need to have enough energy to make it through my mornings to lunch. Do you find this egg white breakfast carries you through? I enjoy putting egg whites on whole wheat english muffins as well, but there's the carbs again i suppose.
Posted by: Jill at June 21, 2008 9:39 AM