Part of my journey has been about the food I put into my body. This has changed and is still changing. I think I want to try and go further in the direction I’ve started – but time will tell. I think you need to be careful about weight loss and “going on diets” – there is no doubt that the weight-loss industry depends to a large degree on the media presenting people with unrealistic ideas of what kind of body they should have. But balanced with that is the fact that many of us lead more sedentary lifestyles than ever before, and that obesity in countries like Australia and the US is at epidemic proportions. For people with the kind of job I have (office work) its not a bad idea to take stock of the difference between how much body fat you have, and how much body fat it would be healthyfor you to have. There are definite health and lifestyle advantages to being closer to your ideal body weight, and changing your diet to one that includes less sugar, less saturated fat, less processed food, and more fresh, natural food, has numerous positive health impacts, apart from weight loss. This isn’t going to be a detailed account of what you should do (there’s heaps of free guidance to that on the net) – rather I just want to outline some of the main changes I made – and why.
Around the time I quit smoking, along with looking at taking up more exercise, I had a desire to massively improve my eating habits. I work right next door to a Macdonalds, and it’s pretty much the only place nearby that sells food (with the exception of a BP garage). So I had developed the habit of getting my lunch from Maccas, more days than I didn’t. I tried doing the “Healthy Choices” thing for a couple of months – wrap instead of burger … salad instead of fries … but it didn’t last. When I quit smoking I was pretty regularly getting a McFat burger and fries for lunch, plus a weekend treat pretty regularly involved getting breakfast from there, and increasingly we had been taking the easy option when we were too tired to cook at night, and getting dinner there too (maybe once a fortnight). That’s the first thing I changed. I figured I don’t have to wait to get expert advice – I know Maccas aint gonna be doing my body any good. And if I can quit smokes, I can quit Maccas. So I did. One of those harsh disciplinary decisions similar to quitting smoking – NO MORE MACCAS. Period!
Ray Kurtzweil is an American writer that has dipped his hand into a lot of areas. I’ve read a couple of his books. One of his interests is health and he has a website that contains advice about what you need to do to become extremely healthy, http://www.rayandterry.com/blog/step-1-talk-to-your-doctor/ I read this stuff, and then tried to apply as much of it that:
A) I could reasonably apply given my lifestyle, and
B) I wanted to.
At first this meant trying to completely cut processed sugars out of my diet. Also things like deep-fried salty snack foods, and all the really bad processed foods – all that stuff that lines the shelves of every service station and 7-11 store. It’s all just garbage designed to get you addicted, take money out of your pocket that you’d be much better off spending on something else, and eventually give you diabetes and heart disease. The industry that manufactures this stuff is a close cousin of the tobacco industry – sorry to preach but sometimes it takes a new perspective to jolt you out of your ingrained habits. I have a huge problem with these industries that depend on getting people addicted to products that are going to kill them. I also want to point out that we are, in 2012, at a pretty extreme point in the marketing and availability of this stuff. I was a child in the 1970s and we didn’t have 7-11s in those days (in Australia) and when you went into a service station there was a rack of chocolate bars at the front counter and 1 rack of chips nearby. The shelves and shelves full of this stuff that you see in every service station nowadays simply didn’t exist – anywhere – that concept of ubiquitous, massive junkfood marketing outlets simply hadn’t been invented. There is a connection between this fact and the epidemic of obesity that has taken hold of the modern western world. We are being killed people – for the sake of the almighty dollar, you are being killed – And you are paying for the privilege – OK, back down off my pedestal.
To date I have not completely removed these kinds of foods from my life – but I pretty much don’t eat lollies (candy – sweets) or icecreams any more, and my intake of salty snackfoods has radically reduced. I also started drinking 2 litres of water per day. I have one of those stainless steel water bottles on my desk. 1 litre capacity, and I fill it and drink it twice a day. Not hard, and according to the experts – like Kurtzweil – it is a very healthy thing to do.
After Christmas I made the usual assortment of new year resolutions, with the difference that this year, following some successful life changes over the past year, I felt that some of these resolutions actually had a chance of happening. I knew I had put on some weight over the silly season and I decided to lose it. I decided to get down to my ideal body weight. There is such a thing as your ideal body weight – there are web sites that can help you determine what yours is. Mine is approximately 75 kilos. I pulled out our unused set of bathroom scales – put them in the bedroom, and weighed in – 93.5. There are probably hundreds or thousands of theories about the best way to lose weight. I researched the subject and read a bunch of them. After a bit of reading I came to the conclusion that the best focus for me was basically to ensure that I burned more calories each day through activity and exercise, than I consumed. Fortunately, these days it is easier than ever to track how many calories different foods contain, and how many calories are burned by different forms of exercise. I found a really good website that is absolutely free to register on, and that enables you to work out how much exercise you need to be doing to burn off the calories you are ingesting – and keep a daily log of it. I used this website. I started in late January and now, early April, I have lost 13 kilos. I’m down to 80. Five to go. The website helped a lot. I used it pretty fanatically – entering every meal I consumed and every bit of exercise I did. By becoming aware of my exact calorie intake and exercise balance I was able to fine-tune my intake and exercise to ensure that I made steady progress on a week-by-week basis. The site, by the way, is: http://www.myfitnesspal.com/ They also have a smartphone App, which I downloaded – I think it cost maybe a dollar or two – it synchs with the account you created on the website, and enables you to track your daily progress wherever you are. Anyway, there are plenty of ways to lose weight – this way has worked well for me. A couple of weeks ago I had the fantastic experience of trying on a pair of old jeans that haven’t fit for the past 8 years – and being able to get into them again!
While I’m talking about websites, I’m going to mention Leo Babauta’s blog; Zen Habits. I found it while initially researching diet change – and found an almost limitless supply of great information covering that topic, as well as exercise, motivation and life-change. Leo has been on a journey that has some similar elements to mine, for a few years now, and he blogs on a very regular basis. His blog is immensely popular. You can subscribe to it, which means you receive each new blog as an email. http://zenhabits.net/.
My next installment has to be about cycling to work – that’s the next place the journey led me to. An awesome personal discovery, but it’s going to have to wait a few days as Easter has arrived and we are heading up to Hervey Bay for a few days of camping, swimming and hopefully some good, relaxing fun. Happy Easter to you!
goethe's dream 