April's CR Diary

« Will MR Leave Me For A Heavier Woman? | Main | The Wax Museum? »

March 12, 2007

And I Know All The Games You Play, Because I Play Them Too

Do you want to know the single fastest, easiest way to lose weight?

Stop eating out.

I've been working with a good friend of mine who is a man in his early sixties. He wants to lose about 20 pounds, and anticipates huge health benefits from doing so. His diet at home is quite good: lean meats, veggies, unsaturated fats like olive oil, nonfat dairy. But he eats out. A lot. And he eats at work events where his clients bring food, so he feels obligated to eat it. It's going to be tough. We just can't lower his quotidian calories enough to make up for uncontrolled high calorie events three or more times a week.

I have another good friend who has lost about thirty pounds on our RDA magic diet. She weighs and measures her food pretty carefully, but not always. She eats plenty, loves her food, and doesn't feel hungry much, except for on the occasions when she's taken her calories too low then had a bit of a correction. She almost never eats out.

If you want to lose weight, I suggest you do two things:

-- Clear your house of all junk food, including bagels, pasta, breads, candy, sugary soda, and anything ready-to-eat besides veggies and fruits. If you need a snack, eat a piece of celery, an apple, or a grape tomato. Or if you're me, you'll eat your weight in grape tomatoes. But that's another story.

-- Severely, drastically cut back on your eating out. When you do eat out, order a salad with grilled chicken and no dressing, just vinegar on the side. Confine your ad lib restaurant eating to once a month until you've lost most of the weight you want to lose. Remember, the restaurants will still be there once you have more flexibility in your calorie goals. But no one, NO ONE can estimate restaurant food. You just can't. You can't see a tablespoon of oil (120 calories) that is floating on top of that piece of fish. You can't know how many calories are in that salad dressing, or the piece of bread that you dipped in olive oil, or the dessert that you split three ways.

And don't even get me started talking about unmeasured wine or mixed drinks.

One of my hardest lessons to learn with CR is that you really do, at some point, have to make some difficult choices. I lost all the weight I wanted to lose, looked and felt great, and captured the man of my dreams* all without giving up restaurant eating. But over time, I've learned that it's those meals out that throw me off, that destroy my CR-equilibrium, and that make it very difficult for me to take my calories lower to any kind of level that I believe might result in actual life-extension.

Sometimes that means going to a restaurant and ordering a salad with grilled chicken when what you'd really like is the chicken in rosemary sauce with roasted red pepper coulis and a side of pommes frites (that's French fries...) and an espresso creme brulee. And half the breadbasket. And half the bottle of wine. But you can't because you want to live long and healthy and not wake up with giant circles under your eyes.

About a year ago, I went through a time when my social and work life involved a lot of eating out. I let my CR slip quite a bit, and while at my highest I weighed 108, which is actually one pound "underweight" by the height and weight tables, I knew I wasn't at my best. I had huge, huge circles under my eyes. I felt sluggish and anxious all at once. At just the time when I needed stress reduction, I was more stressed than ever, and my chemical state was hurting, not helping.

I got my diet back under control, and with various ups and downs, I've been doing well since. In the last month or so I've been doing extremely well, but that just makes me more sensitive to bumps in the road.

For instance, I have a month chock full of eating out. Wednesday: out with VLC (the old friend/co-worker who once, back in 2004, threatened to jump out of a moving car onto the Pennsylvania Turnpike if I mentioned MR's name once more!) and Edward to Blackfish. Guess what I'll be having: the soup, if it's a non-cream based vegetable puree, plus the arugula salad with grilled chicken. No dressing.

I've already had my nutritional disaster with the fries... and I'm not about to shortchange my nutrition or my peace of mind by going too low on calories to "make up for it." CR doesn't work that way. You don't buy indulgences for excesses.

Alas, nor are we saved by faith alone (sorry, little Reformation joke there. At least my parents and my partner will get it.) We don't slow our biological aging process by just feeling good... we slow our aging process by eating fewer calories while maintaining adequate, nay optimal, nutrition.

So I look at my eating out events and think to myself: what is more important: looking, feeling and living as healthy as I can, as long as I can, or the cheese plate?

Hmmmm...

I do love that cheese plate.

But I love my life, and my body, and my feeling of optimal health, a lot more.

So maybe I order the cheese plate... twice a year. But not once a week.

When you start to get below your set point weight, it gets much, much harder. Burning off the tank of extra fat that many of us had when we first started leads to CR-induced euphoria and all sorts of fun times. But going lower requires much more discipline, and the ability to plan in advance to avoid situations where you're either a) tempted to overeat b) not overeating, but wiggy and miserable with hunger.

If you plan right, like MR does, and eat a consistent amount of calories on a regular schedule, hunger can be a non-issue. MR is hungry for meals, but satisfied afterwards. I usually am too, but as I try to take my calories lower and my exercise higher, I find that hunger is a genuine concern. As a person who generally seeks to maximize pleasure and minimize pain, I am not thrilled. I want to order my life in such a way that I rarely feel all that hungry, while still keeping to a strict CR plan. This is difficult, since the easy way (a l'Orange) is to go for ultimate consistency, and train the body to expect a certain number of calories at a certain time every day, without fail.

My social and work life just don't allow for that. MR is a writer who works from home, and he never much liked eating out anyhow. I spend tons of time on the road and meeting with people, and I can't imagine giving up the Philly restaurant scene.

That seems to point to one thing: I need more self-discipline than MR. Because to make allowances for the life I want to lead, I'll have to occasionally deal with hunger.

Without eating my co-worker's fries.

I took the headline from one of my favorite George Michael songs, "Faith." He's talking about the strength to say no to another kind of compulsion, but I think it fits the food context even better.

I know all the games all you newbies and dieters out there play, because I've played them too.

I've played the "I know I'm eating way too much but I'll make up for it by eating 800 calories for a week" game. I caught on pretty quickly to the fact that it doesn't work, and it's almost impossible to get optimal nutrition, and it's a never-ending cycle. It wasn't until I committed to raising my daily total calories to a reasonable level (this was a couple of years ago now) that I was able to curtail the huge meals out, and turn them into more sensible, enjoyable but not huge feasts.

And sometimes I still have a huge feast, but I don't attempt to fast to make up for it. If it's at lunch, I just skip dinner and go back to the quotidian, light side of it, for the next day.

Quick re-cap of my quotidian diet (at the request of a reader):

5 am:
Pre-breakfast: diet Dr. Pepper with 1.5 oz unsweetened pure cranberry juice to wash down my supplements: 1 Strontium Support, 2 Vegetarian Boosters, 2 Cranberry pills.

6:30 am:
1 cup eggwhites scrambled with 1 slice nonfat cheese, 1 teaspoon flax oil, and often 2 tablespoons salsa, coffee, water

between breakfast and lunch: giant thermos green tea

Lunch: (12 noon or thereabouts):
salad of kale, napa cabbage, romaine, grape tomatoes and green pepper topped with 1 cup nonfat plain yogurt, Butterworks Farms brand (75 cals per cup), 60 cals almonds, salad usually topped with either vinegar, salsa, or Walden Farms calorie free dressing

Either with lunch or afternoon snack, or as part of dinner:
Megamuffin, April sized (209 cals), either savory or cherry berry, sometimes with mustard or nonfat cream cheese

Dinner:
300 calories of something. Tonight it was the Megamuffin Cheesesteak, which is a savory muffin with a slice of nonfat cheese melted on top, plus 75 cals of MR's excellent mashed cauliflower with a teaspoon of flax oil. Plus a six ounce glass of wine. Sometimes a second glass when out, on weekends, or special occasions.

Snacks: sometimes grapefruit, sometimes dried blueberries, sometimes dried apricots or mangoes. Hmmmm... dried mango. If you haven't tried it, don't. It's addictive.

I don't eat the same thing every day, and on weekends I indulge my love of cooking with fun fancy dishes for myself and MR. This weekend saw stuffed mushrooms, tomato tofu, "cream" of mushroom soup, and other fun treats. But I have settled on foods that I love that pack a great nutritional punch and satisfy me body and soul... and I eat those most days, as a foundation for everything else I do or eat.

When I eat out, I try to use it as an opportunity to get some nutrients that are lower in my quotidian diet. B vitamins, iron, zinc. Seafood, fish, meat. But I don't even attempt to count calories when I eat out. I enjoy the experience of eating fine food (oh how I love the Philly restaurant scene!) and I know that I can get just as much pleasure from a lighter dish as from a heavier dish. And that skipping the bread, saying no to an extra glass of wine, and splitting a dessert four ways instead of two can turn a calorie disaster into a large, but passable feast.

It's still not easy. I feel thrown off when I eat out too much, and I do find myself wondering... what would that cheese plate taste like?

But I know that the cheese plate will be there if I ever want it. And in the meantime, I prefer the way I look and feel when I'm eating optimally. A little extra zinc here and there... no problem. A slightly lower day after eating out... no problem. But just slightly. I refuse to set myself up for unhealthy binges, or to think of fasting or eating less as punishment for eating more. Food, at the risk of repeating myself, should not be a moral issue.

Still, it's a tad bit stressful to contemplate these upcoming out eating events, in light of my recent struggles with exercise-induced hunger and a general lack of equilibrium. I'll have to exercise more careful planning and self-discipline than usual.

And a greater attention to George Michael songs.

Before this river becomes an ocean...

* Results not typical. Falling in love is not a side-effect of CR. In my case, there is a correlation, but hard to prove causation. Eat less, love more? Hmmmm...

Posted by april at March 12, 2007 8:38 PM

Comments

Posted by: Lindsay at March 13, 2007 3:36 AM

Posted by: Deborah at March 13, 2007 5:56 AM

Posted by: Nenette at March 13, 2007 9:30 AM

Posted by: carolyn at March 13, 2007 2:49 PM

Posted by: monique at March 24, 2007 12:36 AM

Post a comment

Name:

Email Address:

URL:
Remember Me? YesNo

Comments:

Preview

Post