In my previous post, I talked about my shockingly simple weight loss plan: Eat Less, Exercise More. In part II, I’m going to focus on my strategies for the first half of that plan, namely eating less. This is going to be a very long post, but I felt it was important that I keep all of these tips grouped together in one place.
Disclaimer: I am not a dietician. Nor am I a doctor. I am not a weight-loss or physical fitness expert. I am under no illusion that my dietary regimen is somehow ideal from a health perspective; in fact my doctor regularly chides me on certain aspects of my diet and fitness regimen. I only know what works for me. I do know that I would never be able to live in strict adherence to my doctor’s advice, so I take his advice as just that: advice. Likewise, my advice below is just a set of recommendations that happened to work for me. Please consult healthcare professionals first if you have any questions or concerns.
History
First, let’s talk about how I managed to get up to 245 pounds in my mid 20s. Put simply, when I was in my 20s, I ate like crap. There really is no other way to put it.
Let me give you an example. One day, during my early 30’s life crisis, I was out to lunch with my other overweight co-workers eating our usual Tuesday/Thursday lunch fare (Wendy’s). For some reason, that week Wendy’s decided they would publish the nutritional information for their food on those paper placemats they put on the “plastic carry food to your table" trays. Out of idle curiosity, I decided to see the caloric total for my typical Wendy’s lunch:
Classic Double w/ Extra Cheese and Bacon – 870
5 Chicken Nuggets – 230
Biggie Size Fries* – 590
Biggie Size Regular Dr. Pepper* – 294
Large Frosty* – 750
Total: 2734 Calories
2, 800 calories in one sitting!! Considering the USDA recommended caloric intake for someone of my age, height, and activity level was approximately 2,600 calories, it was no wonder my weight was steadily increasing. You can get away with this stuff (from a weight-gain perspective) if you work in a warehouse or on a construction site. You can’t however eat like this and sit at a desk all day.
Dietary Changes
Clearly some modifications to my dietary habits were in order. Below, I’ve broken out the changes I made to my diet that helped me to loose weight. Some of these changes were permanent, some of them I only rigorously observe when I’m trying to loose weight. Note the fact that I stopeed observing several of them, coupled with my gradual tapering off of exercise, is probably why I gained 1/2 the weight back.
“…and a small Diet Coke”. When I worked in food service as a teenager, I always thought it was amusing when an morbidly overweight person would order 2500 calories worth of food and decide to wash it down with a small Diet Coke. As if by skimping on the size of their zero-calorie drink would offset their over-indulgence in high calorie food. All kidding aside, deciding to forgo a full-calorie regular soda in favor of a Diet soda really is a simple way to eliminate a large chunk of calories from your diet.
Some people drink coffee for their caffeine; I drink soda. I drink LOTS of soda. I was consuming well over 1,000 calories worth of sugar a day, just to support my caffeine habit. A switch to Diet Coke instead of regular soda was my first order of business. Diet soda has zero calories per serving, no matter how much you consume. So while my doctor would most certainly say I consume too much caffeine in a day, with Diet instead of Regular soft drinks, I can at least do it without negatively affecting my waistline.
“You want fries with that?” Another relatively easy diet change was to Ditch the Fries. While I still enjoy fries from time to time, I generally avoid them now. My thought process is really pretty simple: Would I really prefer to consume 600 calories in fried potatoes, when I can have a 300 calorie small frosty instead? No matter how I ask the calorie-to-satisfaction ratio question, the fries wind up losing almost every time.
Breakfast is just that – Breaking your Fast. While it may seem counter-intuitive at first, it is very important for me to eat breakfast every day. If I don’t eat breakfast, I find I am starving by the time lunch rolls around. Consequently, I will invariably over-eat at lunch “because I’m so hungry”. Now I eat a simple, but filling, breakfast every day. A typical breakfast for me is 2.5oz of lean ham-steak, two slices of whole-wheat bread/toast, a large banana, and some Diet Coke. If I’m feeling particularly adventurous, I will fry an egg, toast the bread and have a ham and egg sandwich. It only takes 5 minutes to make this breakfast and it is actually faster than driving through any of the fast food places on the way to work.
Fill ‘er up!! – This is one of the easiest ‘secrets’ to adopt. I try to find foods that are relatively low in calories and are high in bulk. The reasoning is simple: it is hard to feel hungry when your stomach is full. Likewise, it is hard to overeat if you are eating filling foods. Just about any vegetable and quite a few fruits fall in this category. I have a particular fondness for bananas, pickles, and just about any meal where the main component is rice. I always keep a bunch of bananas and a big jar of pickles at both home and at work. If I am getting hungry between meals, I will eat one of these instead of other snacks. As a side note – I consider any fruit or vegetable to be “free” from a dietary perspective. I eat them as often as I care to and don’t worry about their caloric value.
Tastes Great! More filling! My key to being able to maintain dietary discipline over the long haul is to not feel like I am depriving myself. If all I eat every day is celery and carrots, pretty soon I’m gonna loath the thought of ever eating them again. For me, finding tasty and relatively healthy alternative foods have made it possible for me to stick to a diet. I love spicy foods, so I began to experiment with various sauces for otherwise bland foods. A bowl of rice with ¼ of a grilled chicken breast is boring. The same bowl is a delicious meal when cooked with salsa, curry, soy sauce, Thai or Cajun seasonings.
Everybody’s working for the weekend. Sticking to a diet requires that you don’t continuously deprive yourself of the foods you love, in perpetuity. My strategy is to ‘take weekends off’ from my diet (within reason). The rigid structure of the workweek makes it easy for me to stick with a more rigid diet regimen. Conversely, on the weekend, I am spending much more time with my family and their dietary tastes. The kids are going to want McDonalds and there is no reason that I should deprive them just because I am dieting. So I will usually have 1 meal a day on Saturday and Sunday where I would eat foods that I would not otherwise allow myself: Pizza, cheeseburgers, fried chicken, whatever. I could loose weight quicker if I ‘stuck’ to the diet, but I wouldn’t be able to stick to it for long without these weekend furloughs.
Marriage and AA. Dieting isn’t a Marriage that demands eternal fidelity. Nor is it a 12-step program where you can “fall of the wagon”. The concept of ‘cheating’ on a diet is foreign to me. If circumstances dictate that I can’t stick to my diet for a meal or two, it is no big deal. I have never understood people who give up on a diet because they had one big meal at a restaurant, saying in effect “I’m off my diet because I fell off the wagon”. If you beat yourself up and get depressed every time you eat something you “shouldn’t have”, you will exhaust yourself emotionally and will never stick to the diet. I Recognize that I can’t be 100% perfect and move on. If you want to lose weight, being on a diet 90% of the time is better than being on a diet 0% of the time.
Pre-Portioned foods. I never quite understood the commercial diet plans (“$10 a week, plus the cost of food”) until I figured out that their secret is simply limiting the serving size of their food. Its not as if their food is magic or that there is some sort of chemical reaction between the various foods that makes their meals optimal. When I came to this realization, I applied it to my diet. When you buy foods in pre-portioned, single serving packages, there is significantly less chance you will over-eat. Doing so would require that you eat two of the pre-portioned items, something you can’t do by accident.
A personal example. For breakfast and lunch, I eat pre-portioned, individually packaged, 120 calorie portions of meat. The sandwiches I make with the meat are on a 180 calorie sub bun. The medium sized banana has 105 calories. The pre-packaged dry-roasted peanuts have 150 calories. Total: 555 calories. Total for breakfast and lunch: 1110 calories or just over 40% of my USDA recommended daily caloric intake. You can do the same with breakfast cereal, buying it in pre-portioned plastic cups. Or single-serving yogurt. Or even single serving ice-cream! The key is to prevent yourself from pouring an extra-large serving from a big container onto your plate.
Avoid the salad bar. How many times have you seen someone who is “only having a salad” at the salad bar loading up their plate with boiled eggs, bacon bits, cheese, and smothering the whole thing in salad dressing? I submit to you that these people would have been better off from a calorie-intake standpoint by ordering the double-cheeseburger and fries. The main reason for this is directly related to my previous point – there is nobody controlling the serving sizes at the salad bar.
Take a dip. This last tip is related to the salad bar, and was given to me by a co-worker. When eating at a sit-down restaurant, I always have a garden salad with my meal: It helps to fill me up so that I am not tempted to order a huge entre. Anyway, instead of smothering your salad in salad dressing, order your dressing on the side. Before each bite, first dip your bare fork into the salad dressing, then use the dipped fork to pick up pieces of the salad for that bite. This way you get the taste of dressing in each bite, but you wind up eating only about ½ as much dressing as you would otherwise.
Compromise is good. When eating out, even on the weekends, try to find good substitute or compromise foods. A personal example is Wendy’s chili. It tastes good, is high in fiber (see fill ‘er up), and most importantly it allows me to eat at a fast food restaurant with my kids. I haven’t found a similar compromise food at either McDonalds or BK, so I avoid those places when possible.
Let’s take a look at how a compromise meal at Wendy’s with my family compares with that monster 2800 calorie meal I used to have. Note that I will often have their chicken breast instead of the burger, but I am using the burger numbers to illustrate that you don’t have to deprive yourself when you eat out.
Classic Single with Cheese, no Mayo – 455
Large Chili – 330
Baked Potato – 270
Biggie Diet Coke – 0
Total – 1055, or about 42% of my RDA.
Conclusion
So there you have it: The lifestyle changes that helped me to Eat Less. But remember, eating less is only ½ of the battle. Reducing your calorie intake without increasing your activity level is a long, long, slow, and grinding way to lose weight. But when you combine reduced calorie intake with increased activity levels, you are able to shed the pounds much more quickly. So be sure to check back later for Part III in this series – Exercise more.
* Note – Wendy’s no longer lists the actual serving sizes of their Biggie Size Fries and Drinks, nor their Large Frosty in their online nutritional information. I don’t know if that is because they no longer serve these sizes, or if it is an intentional omission. I have extrapolated serving sizes from those items that remain on the menu, so these numbers are not exact. They are, however, consistent with the 2,800 calorie number I remember.
