Isn’t it fun when bad luck turns out to be good luck? Well, to get the most entertainment value out of this; I’ll discribe the last two weeks before my retrospective perspectives first.
Two weeks ago, I had visited my parent’s house as I tend to do every few weeks. My mom is the kind of person who is obsessed with societies standards about weight and is also somehow convinced I will die a horrible, horrible death of losing all my limbs and going blind unless I lose weight. Her suggestion to me, nearly every time we talk is that I get the Gastric Bypass surgery.
Personally, I hate the idea of that surgery. She brags about it as though it was a godsend but I’ve seen her eat; she gets sick if she takes more than 3 bites a meal. She has lost a lot of weight; but in my mind at least I can easily see her starving to death because she can’t get the essential nutrients to fit in her stomach.
While I was over, I lost my car keys, and could not find them anywhere. Fortunately we keep spares around and I used the spare key to get home. Unfortunately my locker key for work is on my keychain so I can’t get to my locker.
There isn’t a tremendous amount of stuff in my locker; but there is food in it. Food that I am told would get stolen in a heartbeat if I didn’t have it locked up. So, I could no longer bring cheap lunches until I got my keys back. This meant I had to go eat at a fast food place most of the week. Considering a can of pasta is 88 cents, and a meal at any fast food restaurant is 7-9 dollars, this is a major waste of money to me.
My car started to have problems as it got closer to the weekend, and I decided not to return to my parent’s house that week to try to get my keys back, for fear the car might give out on the long trip. I informed them about the car’s condition, so we could try setting up an appointment to have it looked at.
During the following week, the car completely broke down, forcing me to walk to work that day, and prevented me from going to the store most of the week. I had run out of sodas a few days before, and so had to make due on powdered Gatorade that I had bought a while ago to try out.
By the time the weekend came around, I finally got the car battery replaced and went to my parents house. I weighed myself, and I had gone from 438 to 418. Quite literally a 20 pound drop. After that I thought back on what I had done differently.
First of all, my lunches had changed. Since i’m a fairly large guy; at 6’6″ with a broad rather than lean build I tend to eat two cans of pasta. it’s about 250 calories a serving, with 2 servings a can (and these are small cans). Comes out to about 1000 calories per lunch, while hitting 3 food groups; meat, vegetables, and grain.
While eating out, I was going to a new place called Carl’s Jr. and getting the teriyaki burger meal. It costs about the same as a meal as McDonalds or Burger King, but it has barbecue sauce, lettuce, onions (which I take off personally), and even a slice of pineapple on it! including the french fries it covers fruits, vegetables, grain, and meat.
The other major difference that I had made was cutting way down on sodas during the second week. Sodas don’t quench thirst very well, so it’s no surprise that I drink a lot of them. Unfortunately the water in my area is mineral-y and doesn’t taste good at all unless you are dehydrating. Gatorade on the other hand is designed specifically to quench your thirst. So, I was taking in far fewer calories from sodas.
The most important part though, is that I wasn’t starving myself. I kept my activity level about he same or possibly higher than normal, but cut down my calorie intake without sacrificing substance. See, when your body thinks that it is starving, it will store fat as much as possible, and continue to store fat rapidly when food becomes available. Your body will even refuse to burn fat to fuel your body, causing you to grow weaker and become less active. Not a coincidence there; your body likely is aiming to reduce your activity level to stretch what it has left for as long a period of time as possible until food becomes plentiful again.
So, before you fall into some random lose weight quick scheme, be sure to do just a couple things. One, leave the page. Literally. Actually close the page advertising the diet. If it causes a popup alert asking if you really want to leave, it is a scam. Then look at the diet for what it cuts out. The Atkins diet cuts out carbs like one carb would kill you. Diets that do this are starvation diets. You’ll lose weight quickly because you are starving to death, and when you start eating normally again, you will gain it all back.
What you should do, is try to eat less calories than you burn; and have these calories spread reasonably evenly through all the foodgroups. Try to eat different meals every day, and keep your activity level high. If you burn more calories than you eat, but avoid hitting your body’s starvation alarm, you will lose weight until you reach your healthy spot.
One last tip; ignore BMI completely; it is weight vs height with no regard towards the fact that muscle mass is far heavier than fat, causing anyone who has muscles read as overweight.