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January 12, 2008
Not A Ball and Chain
"So come Monday, you guys are going to have to teach me how to count calories."
Susie and I nearly fell off our chairs.
Chain smoking, whiskey drinking anarchist who manages to eat some form of fried potato with every meal is quitting smoking this weekend. He does it by fasting for two days, quitting cold turkey (I never got that term... cold turkey is rather delicious with spicy mustard and hotdog relish) and drinking lots of detox tea. While staring and the walls and doing nothing. Sounds like fun, but he says it keeps him from having cigarette cravings afterwards. Short term intense pain instead of long term low-grade agony. I respect that.
But he doesn't want to gain weight. And he says that he's gained weight in the past when he's quit smoking. So he started quizzing me and Susie on calorie counting.
Susie pounced. Susie is one of my success stores: she's lost 15 pounds, looks like a super-model, monitors her calories and nutrition most days but also eats out with her husband or her bad kid friends and has a great time without guilt of any sort. She absolutely glows with health these days.
She immediately started talking about how easy it is to make changes, how even seemingly small changes can make a huge difference, how April can teach you how to do it, she's taught a lot of people and it works, how much fun it is to play the nutrition game with the computer and the software and it's all free and the high you get when you're losing weight is amazing and...
I was somewhat more hesitant. After all, I am very sensitive to the idea of making anyone feel like they *have to* lose weight, or that they're anything other than fine the way they are. That being said, I don't blame anyone for not wanting to gain weight upon quitting smoking, and while I fear that DC will become even more of a menace to society than he already is if he were to have more energy post quitting smoking and eating healthier, I'm excited to help. I wonder how he would feel if I said I wanted to learn how to play the guitar... after he stopped laughing.
So I started with the simple stuff that he should minimize if not cut out all together:
1. Bread.
2. Fries.
That was easy.
The fact is, when your diet is really high in calories and low in nutrition, some really simple changes can lead not just to not gaining weight, but to losing some and dramatically improving how you feel. As all are aware, my easy first changes upon beginning CR (Calorie Restriction, that is) were:
1. No alcoholic beverages other than red wine (bu-bye margaritas!)
2. No bread at all (Dunkin Donuts bagels with cream cheese every morning)
3. No sugar -- no more six sugar packets in my coffee.
It wasn't long before Susie and I were waxing eloquent about the joys of lower calories, better nutrition, and the euphoria that follows getting all that toxic crap out of your body. No doubt we sounded like drug addicts discussing our latest hit. It feels good because it is good: we've changed our lives for the better, forever. We feel great. We have no doubt that we will never gain back the weight we lost, or return to our old habits. And if someone we like a lot wants a little puff of what we're smoking, we're happy to give it to him.
"So how many calories do you think I should be eating?" he asked me.
Well y'all know how difficult a question I think that is.
"At least 2700 to start," said I. I've occasionally kept a little mental tally of how much he's probably eating, and it's closer to 3500. I won't let him pull a Julian Dibbell and go so low on calories that he goes crazy and loses weight too fast.
But I emphasize that if he's not going to weigh and measure everything, it's probably better to just start with small, easy changes, like getting rid of fries and eating more veggies, and MORE PROTEIN, and not worry about calories.
More protein. He's a vegetarian, and no fish. How are we going to get more protein into him?
"100 grams a day for you, littlest one," I say. It is a bit of a running joke on our staff that I call him "Littlest One," as Lisa, our formerly newest organizer, is still called "Little One" even though she's taller than the rest of the girls on staff. Danny is the tallest of all, but he is now the newest so he becomes "Littlest."
I think I've convinced him to let me make him dinner on Monday. We're all working late and packing our dinners, and if I make him something and he eats it, we'll at least be at a starting point.
So now I'm nervous: before he got the job with us, Danny was actually working in food service, doing some waiting tables and some cooking. He'd been offered a job cooking in a really amazing restaurant downtown... he occasionally regrets that he never got to work there, or more to the point, eat there for free every night. And he's a great at-home cook. Basically, he's a lot better than I am. So now I'm going to attempt to make something he'll like, low calorie, high volume, high nutrition, so he gets sold on this concept that great food can be healthy and low cal?
At least he likes vegetables. "If I could, I'd eat nothing but mushrooms," he says. Okay, can do. Also loves brussels sprouts. This is a starting point.
Mushrooms. Eggwhites. Vegetables. He has good taste in food. I have to get over my fear of cooking for somemone who really knows more than I do.
I've become quite dedicated to *not* evangelizing about CR. And I'd never try to convince my friends to go hardcore cause it just doesn't fit with their priorities in life. But Susie points out, I have the keys that have gotten a lot of people who've wanted to lose weight for a long time out of the prison of yo-yo dieting, restricting and malnourishing, etc. We went to get coffee after lunch (at which Danny and Susie split a salad and a personal pizza, and Danny said, 'I can't believe I'm eating a salad the day before my detox!') and Susie went through a short list of my success stories.
"When you can help someone who's been overweight her entire adult life get control over her weight and health, you've made a huge difference in that person's life."
I felt a little better. As you know, I've been a bit despondent for awhile, sick of all the media and blog attacks, sick of being a punching bag for people who have nothing better to do than pick on other people's eating habits. Meanwhile, my own CR has suffered as I've had trouble prioritizing the many things I do in life while maintaining strict CR. But I'm doing well now, losing weight (again) and doing it the super-right way, with exercise and great nutrition.
"At least you know that your co-workers will be supportive," I said to Danny. The thought of him being on board with the project, as opposed to the man who tempts me with fries, is almost more ecstasy than I can handle. And I can handle a lot.
I went to the art museum with my mom last night, and while I was wandering around visiting my favorite works and waiting for her to come in, I was listening to Paula Abdul on my Ipod. Bizarre that I would have an ephipany while listening to Paula Abdul's "Will You Marry Me?" because
a) I don't believe in marriage. I mean, I believe it exists, but I'm not sure it's a good thing, and I'm certain it's not a good thing for me.
b) I'm agnostic on the question of Paula Abdul. Does she exist? Your guess is as good as mine.
Think of love as wings
Not a ball and chain
So says Paula as I'm looking out of the art museum window over Center City's skyline as the sun's setting on a gorgeous January night. Philly has been called "the city that loves you back," but I like to think of it as "the city that won't let you leave anyway, so quit wasting our time by trying."
Two months ago I was at the CR Conference consulting my old friend the Divine Robert K on my ongoing struggle to go hardcore in my CR, the pressure I felt from MR to do so, the conflicts in my social life, etc. CR was feeling a little bit more like a ball and chain than like wings. Of course, as soon as I felt the benefits, a few days back into being strict, the wings came back. But when I was out at a smokey bar really wanting to eat fries... well, it was hard to remember the wings part. And try as he did not to nag, MR couldn't help but observe that I felt a lot better when I was actually doing CR. How irksome of him.
"Think of him as trying to help you," said the Divine RK.
Sure, take his side, thought I. But he had a point.
Susie and I weren't freaking out over the benefits of low calorie, high nutrition living because we think there's anything wrong with DC right now... we just know what kind of happiness we've gotten from improving our health, and we are crazy about him and want to give him something we love, something we value, something that's hard to describe unless you've been there but that is not entirely unlike presenting an athiest with incontrovertiable proof of the existence of God.
"You used to get so excited about CR," said Susie to me a few months ago when I was striving for more hardcoreness but falling short over and over again. She remembered how much I loved working with her on her diet, how much I enjoyed playing with the software and feeling great in my body and laughing in the face of whatever little bug was going around the office.
"You've been sick for two weeks now, dude, and that's not cool," said Susie to Danny, who is still feeling crappy from that cold we all had.
Susie is like me: she'll never give up the fancy meal out in Center City, but she's willing to do the work to keep her calories low and nutrition high to balance it off. She's street smart, gorgeous, clever, a goddess of an organizer... she's one of the most amazing girlfriends I've ever had, but when I start to think about girlfriends, I think about all the outstanding girls I've met through the blog and I'm overwhelmed... I could tour from New Mexico to the UK to Istanbul to Virginia and still not be done. I've got somewhere to crash in Boston next time I go nuts and hop a train to that city that houses MIT and Harvard all in one. After all, I did name my Ipod Robin.
CR for me is a funny compilation of contradictions: I am a hedonist who hates getting sick; I am a feminist who loves looking like a supermodel; I know there is no more powerful drug or more addictive substance than health itself, than the way we're supposed to feel, than feeding the body what it needs but nothing else.
Feeling better really does feel better. Fancy that.
Now back to playing with mushrooms.
Posted by april at January 12, 2008 2:38 PM
Comments
For those just starting out you might recommend the light bread that is 40 calories per slice. It more than halves the calorie intake from bread.
For instance. toast for breakfast, sandwich for lunch, and say toast with whole grain pasta, a person could have upwards to 6 slices of bread a day with regular bread containing 90-130 calories per slice, that is approximately 660 calories compared to 240 on the light bread. A person can easily remove 100-300 calories per day just by making the switch.
Posted by: Andrew at January 13, 2008 9:36 AM
Andrew, what brand makes bread that is only 40 calories/slice? IAE, there really isn't enough nutrition in bread to waste 240 calories packing away 6 slices of the stuff every day. And what kind of goof would eat bread with pasta? Certainly not someone interested in either weight loss OR getting good nutrition at every meal, never mind Optimal Nutrition (which is what CRON is all about)!! JD
Posted by: Judith at January 14, 2008 5:52 AM
Depending on where you live the brand my be different. I would recommend next time you have a need for bread to look for the bread with the "light" label. Judith, I realize you have good intentions at heart, but the last line is a bit harsh especially for anyone just starting out. Changing a daily habit such as eating can be easier for some people if they slowly cut out the low nutrition dense foods and incorporate more nutrition rich foods. While at the same time, making substitutions of foods they enjoy that have lower calories (ie light bread) or more nutrition whole grain pasta. Every reduction in calories should be seen as a victory until they can if they decide to go hard-core CR.
Albeit, having a male metabolism allows me a little more freedom in my calorie expenditure and I do like a piece of toast to wipe the sauce off my plate of whole grain pasta. Mmmmmm.
Posted by: Andrew at January 17, 2008 2:39 PM