The dreaded DIET

First off, no, I have not weighed myself.  To be quite honest, I have not been on a scale, besides at a doctor's office, in possibly more than a year.  I just didn't care to know how much I weighed.  I remembered that about a year ago,  I did weigh around 160 pounds.  I'm a lightweight, I am 6 foot tall exactly and I eat a lot of food without really gaining weight.  My family is an incredible metabolism which is important because through that, I am able to take in as much as 5,000 calories in 24 hours and not feel sick, bloated, or even full, much less gain an ounce of weight.  While all of this is said and good, within the past year, my 1 inch of noticeable gut/belly fat, has increase in size. 

Now, I do all of the cooking at home and while my wife was on weight watchers and lost a huge amount of weight enabling her to look hotter than Salma Hayek and Marilyn Monroe combined, I possible only ate more junk food than I normally did, adding useless weight onto my body.  It was mid-Summer of 2013, which I had asked my brother-in-law's body building trainer to start on me.  It was no secret that I was a 160 pound weakling.  I know that I probably weighed about 130 pounds when I first met my wife and she tells me stories that her family first thought I was sick and anemic.  I know her mom used to wonder if I could even help her with carrying groceries because I looked so weak. 

I never did any weight training or body building as I viewed it in a negative light thanks to my younger brothers.  When I turned 16, on a whim, and partially because I was a huge Mortal Kombat fan, I signed up to take Kempo Karate.  It wasn't required for me to live so it wasn't paid for by my parents and instead I had to pay for each and every lesson and everything that went with it.  So, as a teenager, still sharing a room with my younger brother, he began to feel threatened.  I mean, he was a younger brother who was always more aggressive than myself and my other two brothers.  I'm sure he saw his older brother as even more of a threat now that I was learning how to defend myself.  So, my younger brother started to weight lift at age 14.  He worked as hard as he could and as long as I did karate, he worked out.  When I got to college and was finishing up, he had gotten a job in a gym and was taking karate lessons from someone who claimed to have the ability.  (Much like taking karate lessons from someone who had watched a Chuck Norris movie.)  I had learned in karate classes that the damage that could be done to people was done through speed and concentration, rather than brute force.  Also, with my younger brother routinely trying to beat me up and me able to defend myself using my new found skills, probably irritated him even further and pushed him to work out more.  He talked my youngest brother to work out with him and within that time frame, he and my youngest brother had done some sort of exercise incorrectly enough where they both had hurt their backs.  It was bad enough that they were both told that they couldn't work out anymore.

Mind you, that my younger brother was the very epitome of body builder stereotypes.  During the summer, I remembered him waking up around 7am, leaving for the gym and then coming back around 4pm, eating 3 cans of tuna, drinking a large cup of milk mixed with whey protein and then changing his clothes to go to a nightclub and drink and come back home around 2 or 3.  Even when I was married and came back to visit my parents, he would still be there, downing can after can of tuna against my warnings of how it might not be real tuna and packed with great things like aluminum lake or mercury.  But it didn't phase him.

Now, enough about him. 

So, about last year in summer, I started working out, during my extra free time at my office.  I was instructed by a former Mr. Missouri.  I started off having to struggle to lift the 45 pound bar as a bench press and I remembered how tired I was after that.  Since then, even as recent as this past Tuesday when I worked out last, I was able to do many lifts of 40 additional pounds onto that 45 pound bar.  May not seem like much, but for me, it is great.  Not only that, but for the first time ever, I have been able to lift and carry my wife for long distances: like around the house. So, while the body building has helped me get stronger, I have not burned as many fat calories as I would liked to have done so.  I still weigh 160 pounds, today, but some of that is muscle and some of that is fat and I really need to get rid of that fat.  I don't believe that I am at a risk of a heart attack or any diseases for that matter.  I am so far from obese that it isn't an issue.  But, I love food and I always go for the unhealthy stuff.

Bacon and donuts are my two favorite things.  I love bacon and always loved bacon from the time that my dad would cook it in a pan, every Saturday morning for our breakfast.  It has a comfort level for home, warmth and taste.  I have made bacon, bacon brownies and even bacon ice cream.  I have used bacon in every dish just to try.  I even had my own jar of bacon lard, kept in the refrigerator.  Donuts are perfect and again, stem from a comfort level as when we were kids and my dad would take us over to a spot near our house called the Donut Drive-In.  At the time, it had a big wooden sign with red letters and lights on the side of it which lit up like a marquee.  They had a window in the back of the tiny building, where it had once been a drive through and had moved to just a view of the old gentleman making donuts from scratch.  We would get donuts from there and then go out back and watch him make more.  The world was different then and so was my body. 

Thanks to this internal drive and want for sweet things, I see myself gain weight in areas that I didn't know existed until now.  While doing the body building has added muscle to areas of my shoulders, back and arms, which never existed until now, a 45 minute session does not burn enough calories to clear away the fat.  Maybe 300 calories gets burned, because it brings me to sweating about every time.  Also for the first time this week, I have been counting calories.  I used to do it as a joke: eating a whole box of Little Debbie brownies at 340 calories a brownie and eating 12 would let me have 4,080 calories, as a snack, not a meal.  after that snack, I would still eat other meals like breakfast, lunch and even dinner.  I wouldn't gain that extra pound or anything else and it would just slowly seep onto my body over the course of many, many days or a week.  But what gets me now, is that the decisions in the past, like that, can be compared.  Tuesday I had about 3,000 calories by end of day.  That included donuts for breakfast, potato chips as a snack, a burger on a pretzel bun with mustard and mayo, a glass of protein shake and a dinner later that day.  Snacks included anything from granola bars to some chocolate chips I snuck in because I love chocolate.  Yesterday was the first day of my diet and while still doing the same things as I normally do, I was able to stay below 2,000 calories and still be full.  It was also one of the first times I have had a salad as a primary food source and also a bowl of fruit as a dessert. 

Well, then today I weighed in at about 162 pounds.  While I am still working out, at least 2-3 times a week, I find myself interested in losing about 5 pounds, maybe.  I mean, I am working out enough to help strengthen my arms and core, but find myself unable to see past my belly fat when I look in the mirror.  Do I want to look like a male model? No.  But I would like to see this gut go away.

So, what does that mean for me?  Well, as one with a degree in holistic nutrition, that means I really need to stay away from sugar and fat.  Yeah I know, healthy fats are okay, but those sugars and other fats need to be kept low.  I want to try to exercise a little bit each day and figure that even if I only walk 30 minutes a day, for the whole week, that burns an additional 1,260 calories from what I am normally doing.  And I don't live an inactive life.  I am always walking around the house cleaning up, doing laundry, doing dishes, taking the dog out and walking around the office and so forth. I haven't counted my steps but it would be interesting to see how many steps I do take in any regular given day.

Still now, the hardest part is not going over to get sweets.

What are you doing for your diet?

At some point, we all recognize that our current lifestyle and body image may not be what we wanted or like at all.  In that moment, people want to change and most often, it can be done by doing a completely new and different holistic lifestyle.  By holistic, I mean using whole foods and items instead of diet pills or magic drinks and concoctions.

Anyway, I got this idea of the diet by reading my Christmas present which was the third book from Alton Brown: http://www.dashrecipes.com/slideshows/dr/4-alton-brown-good-eats-3-preview.html

So, in the book there was a chapter where Alton Brown, himself, was watching a past episode of his show that had him walking around in craw fish farm in 2009.  "The day after I viewed this hideous image I stepped on a scale for the first time in several years and was shocked to find the number 213.5 staring back at me." 

He wanted to shed 50 pounds and over the course of 9 months, he did so. While not being a dietitian or a physician, he doesn't recommend this diet for everyone.  It is just what he did and decided on for himself.  This diet, or at least an off-shoot of this diet, is what my wife and I are following:

1.  Foods I must consume daily:
      Fruits                                           Nuts
      Whole Grains                               Carrots
      Dark Leafy Greens                       Green Tea

2. Foods I must consume at least 3 times a week:
     Oily Fish                                        Sweet Potato
     Yogurt                                           Avocado
     Broccoli

3. Foods I can consume only one time a week:
     Red Meat                                      Dessert
     White Starch                                  Alcohol

(This list can be found on page 285,Good Eats 3, from Alton Brown)
 
Now, he also has suggested that he will stay away from any Fast Foods, Canned Soups, Soda, Processed Meats and anything that is "Diet" like diet drinks.  Of course also keep in mind that no diet plan will work without exercise. 

Now, while I was doing this I thought of a friend of mine who has been on a diet and healthy lifestyle kick. My friend Mary has lost 55 pounds over the course of about a year.  Losing it slowly is the healthy way. She was 210 lbs and now is 155lbs.  How did she do it?  She says that first she started running 6 miles a day, for the first few months but then just moved it to an hour of cardio exercise. She limited her red meat, ate dairy still and worked out with weights.  She also stayed away from fast foods and stopped eating starches.  She was really smart as she created her own low GL diet which meant that her body could deal with any sugars entering her body before making fat.  She would then burn any fat she had, thus losing weight. This means that both my friend and Alton Brown, think alike and have had some similar ideas.  Red Meat is higher in fat content, the white starches are full of sugars and carbohydrates which your body doesn't need if you are not running a marathon every day and then turns into fat, and fast food was stopped as well.

I know that now, sometimes the term "Fast Food" has become synonymous with all food at non-sit down restaurants and the term has been stretched too far.  Subway, is not a fast food joint. Neither is Quiznos.  The fact that you can get the food fast or quickly is only a true sight that you can see that it is made from fresh ingredients and nothing really changes.  For instance, I can stand in line and watch them make my sandwich at Subway.  I know exactly what goes on it and they have fully disclosed everything online on their website.  So, it just so happens that they can finish my sandwich before a fast food join can pull a soy/hamburger out of a microwave and slap it onto a high fructose corn syrup bun with a slathering of 1,000 calories of mayonnaise.

Anyway...

Mary also said that she didn't change that much of her lifestyle, she still went out to bars and drank and even skipped a day every once in a  while.  What made the difference was the exercise and the diet change.  You could exercise all day, but if you are taking in more calories than you burn, you will gain weight.  Awesome job Mary.

The savior, so far...

My wife did this trick the last time she was dieting and we are pulling out all the stops this time.  One of her favorite snacks which is low calorie is popcorn.  Unbuttered has about 31 calories per cup.  So, what we do is get a heavy pot on high heat, pour about 2 table spoons of extra virgin olive oil in and let it get warm.  I then add about 1/4th of a cup of corn kernels.  I cover immediately and leave a tiny crack in the lid.  In a few minutes, when the popping stops, I turn off the fire and remove the pot from the heat and a few minutes later I open the lid.

Now what I do is take some quart sized ziploc bags and fill them with pop corn.  These bags will last about 2 weeks being and tasting fresh still.  I figure that each bag has about 2 and 1/2 cups which is less than 80 calories and is a good sized snack.  So, if you are dieting also, get some popcorn!

I will not cheat

I told my wife of my strange dream.  Even though I'm actually underweight, I shouldn't be on a diet, but yet I want to stay on it.  I originally was going to go on the diet with my wife to prove to her that she could do it and now I find myself wanting to stay on for the health benefits.

I'm 33 years old and the proud recipient of some incredible metabolism abilities.  Much like my father's side of the family, I am able to eat, whatever I want and not gain a pound.  In fact, several months would go by of me eating over 4,000 calories a day and only gaining 1-2 pounds over the course of that month!  Everyone thinks it is a blessing but I think of it as a curse.  Do you have any idea how hard it is to gain weight, in a healthy manner?

Still, I'm not trying to lose weight for weight sake, but I am just trying to be healthy.  It is just difficult and I need to go through this to know and learn and better advise people, just how difficult it is to say "no" to certain things. I can eat a $1 package of 8 mini 3 Musketeers bars from Dollar Tree, without any weight gain or consequence.  But, I don't want to.  That is hard to do for a chocoholic such as myself.

  

High protein, high fiber, low fat

One of the shows which I loved to watch growing up was called Scientific American Frontiers and it played on the local PBS station.  It ran for quite a long time with Alan Alda as the host and covered a wide array of scientific and technological discoveries and topics.  It was the poor man's version of Nova, which also ran on PBS. The thing that was so great about Scientific American, was that with Alan Alda's interest played out with no acting, it helped people like me, who was just 23 at the time of the broadcast of this show.

So, the episode that made me think of writing about it was first shown in May of 2001 and was about diet and lifestyle.  This was something so slightly interesting but still not really important to me at the time but now, this seems like a great thought.  So, while watching the episode, a Doctor was telling our beloved host about a new theory he has in which he believes that people will live longer if they reduce their fat and calories.  I've heard this idea or one similar to what Dr. Roy Walford was suggesting, in which it is as if our bodies are like automotive engines. Like engines, there is an expected number of miles or years that it can work from until it gives up and dies.  For our bodies, the theory is that there is a calorie cap on how much our bodies can deal with before we quit.  Dr. Walord was suggesting that a diet where everything we need is consumed and the fats and extra calories are left out, would help us further achieve this goal.

Dr. Walford, gave a recipe to the show and even made a whole meal for Alan to try and they ate it while discussing metabolism facts.  So, I was thinking of this and then tried to track the salad recipe down.......which I did.

http://www.pbs.org/saf/1110/features/cookbook2.htm

Dr. Walford's Supreme Vegetable Salad

Serves 4
1/3 cup dry chickpeas (garbanzo beans)
1/3 cup dry lentils
1/3 cup brown rice
1/3 cup wild rice
1/3 cup oat bran
1 medium sweet potato
3 spears broccoli or
5 cups florets
1 carrot
3/4 cup raw mushrooms
6 cups (1 large head) romaine lettuce
1/2 cup parsley
1 large red pepper
2 medium zucchini or other summer squash
1 medium tomato
1/4 small head red cabbage
1 medium onion
16 ounces commercially prepared salsa, mild or spicy
4 tblsp balsamic vinegar
2 tblsp olive oil
1 hard boiled egg
3 ounces tomato paste 

INSTRUCTIONS :
Soak garbanzo beans for several hours or overnight.
Discard soak water.
Combine garbanzos with lentils and add enough water to a 2-quart saucepan to generously cover beans.
Bring to boil, reduce heat and simmer for 30 minutes.
When cooked, drain any remaining water and cool.
The rices can be added to the beans, or cooked separately.
To cook with beans, add an additional 1 cup or boiling water, the brown and wild rice to the simmering beans.
Simmer an additional 45 minutes. Add bran during the last 10 minutes.
Hardboil one egg.
Meanwhile, steam the sweet potato for approximately 15 minutes, or until soft.
Cool and slice into bite size pieces.
Steam the broccoli and carrot for 10 minutes, cool and slice into bite size pieces.
Slice mushrooms, tomato, red pepper, squash, and onion into bite size pieces.
Shred the cabbage and finely slice the parsley.
Break or cut lettuce into bite sizes.
In a large salad bowl, combine all vegetables.
Chop the egg and add to the vegetables.
Drain excess liquid from the salsa in a strainer and blend together salsa, tomato paste, balsamic vinegar, and olive oil.

Add to the bean-rice-vegetable mix and stir thoroughly.
Excellent served with a whole grain bread or pumpernickel roll.  
 Now, what I plan on doing, is trying this out and seeing how it turns out for me and my family.  I'm sure it is delicious with that much vegetables and other good stuff in it.