Chapter 10 I am overweight and so are most Americans.
“The only way to keep your health is to eat what you don't want, drink what you don't like, and do what you'd rather not.” Mark Twain
My health took a nose dive in my late thirties. I worked a lot of hours at my job, and I did little physical exercise. This was in contrast to earlier years, where I managed in Canada to live without a car in Windsor, Ontario. Having to walk back and forth to the University did a lot for my basic dose of exercise. Walking everywhere else to get groceries, and other daily routines reinforced the basic exercise. I didn’t eat too much either, and that helped as well.
After moving here to the United States, I fell into a very lazy pattern of just driving to work, working excessive hours, eating junk food and repeating the cycle. Needless to say, my health deteriorated quite a bit. So after several shocking reports about the basic health metrics (triglycerides, cholesterol, blood pressure, blood sugar, low thyroid, etc.), I cleaned up my act and started a fairly rigorous exercise regimen. After that I cleaned up my diet quite a bit as well. I also quit smoking, which was one of the most difficult things I have done in life. Except for 2 lapses in 11 years, when I had been at parties and consumed a lot of alcohol, I have been totally off the smoking. I certainly have no desire left on a day to day basis to take up smoking again. I pursued hiking and other physical activities as hobbies.
Unfortunately, my rigorous regimen started softening up again, and I started to gain weight once more a few pounds at a time. Now as I passed 50, the final blow was that I have diabetes. My A1C is at astronomically high levels and all the other metrics have deteriorated again. Just to add to my troubles, an accident 3 years ago left me with 2 ankles with screws and pins. I crushed both ankles at a hiking site called Chimney Rock in Maryland. Luckily for me, the damage was not too severe and restricted to the ankles. Also, I got married and had a child, so my other responsibilities had increased. All in all, I found myself being totally unable to commit to the level of physical activity that I really should have. Plus the diet deteriorated as well.
I tried what seemed like dozens of different diets. I read several books on how to eat nutritiously without consuming too many calories. None of it seemed to help. Having defeated the nicotine habit quite successfully, I assumed it was not a matter of lack of willpower. After so many failures at diets, I was really discouraged. Except for the fact that so many Americans have successfully lost weight, I could swear that it was almost an impossible task.
The older you get the harder it is to lose weight. Plus now I started to get attracted to all sorts of snacks that are really bad for me, especially in view of the diabetes. Even medication was not helping much in terms of the basic health metrics. I am convinced a lot of my problems would show significant improvement if I reduced quite a bit of weight.
It just made it worse that so many people had succeeded on these famous diets. Each diet would have what sounded like incredibly logical arguments for following their regimen. And there were testimonials from people which were very encouraging. The authors of each diet were for the most part extremely bright people who knew exactly what they were talking about. The unfortunate part for me is that I failed miserably in putting their theories into practice.
All was not hopeless, however. I took the attitude that if I played hundred games of chess with a grandmaster, I would lose all hundred rather handily. But if I took the time to analyze each loss and understand what I could have done better, I think my game would improve. So I was hoping my diet “game” would improve after an honest introspection of what had gone wrong.
In science, you try and break a problem down into its fundamental components. So it occurred to me that the problem here might be that I don’t really understand why I loved bad food so much. I would try various schemes to avoid them, but invariably I would be drawn back to them. Eventually, after thinking about it, and doing some more reading, I realized that the behavior was essentially addictive.
The problem with food addiction is that since food comes in so many varieties, we are duped into thinking it’s a control problem with ourselves. We don’t realize we are getting addicted to common components in the food because they have complex presentations. But basically, our addiction in all its forms is to salt, fat and sugar. If you took all your favorite foods and removed these ingredients you would see this rather quickly. Try baking cookies and cakes without sugar. Try your favorite recipe without salt. Or just eat non-fat foods and see how tasteless they are. No one gets addicted to skim milk, for example. Or finds it irresistible. The same is true for vegetables, which are extremely healthy. I have yet to see anyone suffer from a craving for a carrot.
Viewed in this way, it’s pretty clear that reducing weight really depends on breaking an addiction. I’m not claiming this is true for everyone, but it’s probably true for a good subset of people. I feel like I fall into this subset.
But wait, the battle has just started. Knowing you are addicted is just the first step. I accept now that I am addicted to sugar, salt and fat. I can easily explain all my cravings that torpedo my diets in terms of having one or more of these basic components. If you look at junk food, they have a good volume of these nasty components.
Breaking an addiction is a very complex issue. I don’t pretend to be an expert- different techniques work with different people. You need to check with your doctor before you try anything I suggest. They are the professionals. If they recommend drugs, I suggest taking them after understanding what the drugs do. You have to use every tool at your disposal to improve your health. So my weight reduction suggestions should be viewed as a complement to existing methods. Plus don’t try anything if your doctor advises against it.
What worked for me for smoking was going cold turkey. I avoided all cigarettes. I kept this up from 1999 to 2008. I had 2 lapses since 2008. I want to apply the same principles to my food addiction. Just minimize (or even eliminate) all exposure to fat, salt and sugar. How can you do this? I mean, what is the practical way of doing this, given that we all have busy work schedules?
My answer is that you should rely heavily on soups. Soups have a lot of volume, but if you pick the right ones (usually the vegetarian ones), they range in calories from 100 to 200 per can. The volume gives you a sense of being full. You can venture beyond vegetarian ones, using the criterion I have set out. Be really particular about avoiding the ones that have addictive components (excessive fat, salt and sugar).
Preparing the soup and consuming it should take about 10 minutes or so. One of the basic facts of biology is that the body and mind don’t communicate in sync on the feeling of fullness. The mind is about 20 minutes behind the body. So you have 10 vital minutes to spend now. What you can do is try another can of soup, or you can try black coffee or black tea. By the end of the 20 minutes you should feel pretty full. This 20 minute rule is really important, and you should keep it in mind.
Throughout the day, you get cravings for doughnuts, Doritos, or whatever junk food you like. Whenever you do consume either tea or coffee. Don’t add any cream to the coffee. If you can, you can also grab another can of soup. One of the side benefits of this diet is that you expunge stuff smoothly and gain overall energy. Basically, this is all acting like flushing out a drug addiction out of your system. I liken it to eventually having nicotine flushed out of my system.
You don’t have to do any calorie counting, which is sort of tedious. The only metric you need to keep in mind is how many cans of soup you consume. Make sure each one doesn’t exceed 200 calories and have no more than 5 cans per day. A lot of these soups have legumes and other sources of protein, but if you are concerned about protein, I suggest putting a couple of tablespoons of skim milk per soup serving. That will cover the protein need, especially if you are confining yourself to vegetarian soups.
Eventually, to make this effective, you need to add some exercise. With screws and pins in my ankles, that poses a fair challenge. I can’t really go running or anything vigorous like that. I confine myself to simpler hikes now as well. Luckily, what I have found about exercise is that the best form of it seems to be a vigorous walk or an elliptical workout. Neither really stresses out my joints. I feel like I could keep doing it into my old age. I think it’s a form of exercise that’s suitable for you lifelong. Of course any other exercise, like bicycling, hiking and swimming are great too, but you need a staple exercise every day, and walking or an elliptical machine seems to be the best for that. It’s also important to set a concrete achievable goal for burning calories via exercise. I set this to 1/3 the calories consumed. So if I do 5 cans of soup with 200 calories each, the total consumed calories were 1000. I do 333 calories burned by exercise for this amount of intake. Trying to do more just leave me hungry and eating more. I found that eating as little as possible helps me the most. Somewhat paradoxically, if I can manage with 600 calories in a day, I end up doing 200 calories worth of exercise and I feel absolutely fantastic the next day. I have no explanation for this since all the books seem to indicate 600 calories are an absurdly low value. My own theory, which is based solely on intuition, is that if you have type 2 diabetes, the standard recommended calorie count is just absurdly high. If you can confine yourself to a maximum of 1000 calories per day and a minimum of 600 calories per day, you will see almost immediate benefits in your energy level and sugar levels. The other noteworthy point about exercise is that you can divide it up into as many intervals as you can handle and deem convenient. I found no difference between doing 5 minutes 6 times a day or 10 minutes 3 times a day or just 1 30 minute session. The fact that you can break it up and your total goal is around 330 calories maximum makes it really easy to integrate it into your day. You can go up and down stairs for 5 minutes if you are at work, for example. I did not always meet the 1/3 calories burn rule, but just set it as an ideal goal. For example, on Day 1 I only burned 80 calories or so. I improved on Day 2. I just kept trying to improve, while trying to keep the intake between 600 calories and 1000 calories. I also missed the intake goal by 100 calories or so on several days, especially in the early going.
I’m not claiming any general applicability to this diet, and I repeat you must consult your physician before trying anything like this. However, my personal experience with this diet is that you don’t abandon it for the usual reasons: food boredom, lack of practical methods to combat hunger, and cravings for bad foods. The number and variety of soups, teas and coffees are more than enough to keep the pallet feeling like you have a wide variety of flavors. It’s a very simple and practical diet, and you can use it even when you are eating out. Just order the soup and nothing else. It’s sometimes hard for me to do that due to the vegetarian restriction (a lot of soups have chicken broth), but if you are doing soups with light meats, you won’t have any problem like that. If soups are unavailable, just order a salad. If you run out of soups at home, keep a lot of frozen vegetables that you can heat up quickly. Plus remember the 20 minute rule and use coffee and tea liberally.
Day 1 was only partially successful, as I could not resist some sugar free ice cream that was sitting in the fridge from Christmas celebrations. I did manage to keep my calorie intake around the 1000 calorie range (net consumption after exercise). Even this meager success was rewarded with an 8 point drop in sugar count the next day.
Day 2 was more successful, with no violations to the core principle of the diet (avoid all fat sugar and salt). Plus I confined myself to a net calorie intake of 970 calories. The result was a drop of 33 points in the sugar count the next day.
Day 3 posed a particular challenge because my son wanted to go to Pizza Hut. Pizza is traditionally one of my early breaking points, but encouraged by positive results, I was able to go to Pizza hut and just have the salad bar. That was a first, and I felt like I was overcoming my addiction even at this early stage. It was still only a partial success, because I was not getting as much exercise as I wanted to. Still, confining me to the basic principles felt like a real advance, and avoiding cheese, one of my favorite foods was definitely a psychological victory.
I reached the following conclusions from the first three days:
1) Stay on course, even if you violate the diet. Obviously, you can’t’ let the violations overwhelm the rule.
2) Keep following the cardinal rule of avoiding fat, salt and sugar. Like a heroin addict who avoids heroin, or a smoker who avoids nicotine, just avoid these substances. Your addiction is equally powerful.
3) Carry a variety of flavors of tea bags with you. You can always put them in even cold water and get some satisfaction for your flavor cravings.
4) Stick to drinking water, black tea, black coffee and skim milk. Confine yourself to these drinks.
5) Stock up on spices. Spices like cinnamon, cardamom, coriander, garlic, mustard seeds, marjoram, oregano and others add a lot of flavor to foods without any harmful effects. The fact that you gravitate towards sugar and salt in spite of the abundance of tasty spices is another indication of the depth of the addiction in my view.
6) Remember the twenty minute rule. If you start to get hungry, don’t start stuffing yourself with junk. Grab some tea, coffee or water. Whatever method works, just use up 20 minutes. You are allowed to consume soup or some other substance that is around 200 calories in this interval, but try to confine yourself to the 200 calorie range. I jumped on the elliptical during these 20 minute intervals as well. Light exercise helps pass the 20 minutes and also adds to burned calories to help out the daily total. Once the 20 minutes are up stop eating. If you don’t feel full, try some coffee, tea or water for another 20 minute interval. You can also throw in some light exercise to complement this consumption. By the time the 2nd 20 minute interval is up, my experience was that I had no urgent need to eat. It was more of a controllable impulse.
7) Since I was consistently missing on the intake and the exercise, I modified the rule temporarily so that the net daily total should not exceed 1000 calories. My intention was to get stricter as the diet progressed and my control became better. I already had the impression that the lower the better for intake, down to say 600 calories (this would later be proven correct). The exercise component would have to be gradually strengthened.
8) Keep an elliptical machine near the kitchen area. That way you can jump on it and burn some calories while preparing food in the microwave or stove. Since you have to wait for the food to get ready anyway, this contribution to burning calories helps. Use short periods like 5 minute intervals to exercise – every little bit helps.
Day 4 was a very unfortunate day in terms of discipline. I had 2 glasses of wine and some sugar free ice cream. The total amount of calories was in the 1500 range, one of the worst days in the entire diet. However, the sugar still showed some positive improvement, which really encouraged me. I concluded from this that very small portions of sugar did not damage the sugar control efforts, but judging by the weight result, my efforts for weight management are not successful with 1500 + calories in a day. The official charts and books, in my opinion, recommend way more calories than are really healthy. Especially if you are old and have weight and health problems already. This reinforced my belief that the 1000 calorie target I set was correct.
Day 5 was a much superior effort at the outset... I managed with a salad even though I ate out. This was quite an accomplishment. I also managed a net calorie count of 799, even though the holiday season offered many temptations like cookies, ice cream and other delicious items. This worked until about 5 pm- unfortunately after that I suffered a breakdown. I consumed wine, and sugar and sugar free ice cream. I was certain the impact would be bad as my deviation from the diet was large both in terms of calories and sugar content. It was a major holiday occasion.
Day 6 confirmed my suspicions of the bad effects of Day 5. The sugar ticked up 25 points and I lost ground that I gained. This failure convinced me of the correctness of the theory. So long as I confined myself to a careful diet and exercise, I could expect a consistent drop in my weight and sugar level. If I deviated with one excuse or another, it would make things worse and I would undo all the progress. The puzzling reading was that the weight dropped. Here I should note that even with a very accurate scale, there’s some fluctuation in the weight reading. Even with weighing yourself without any clothes on and doing it at the same time, there are some fluctuations. I chalked this weight reading up to an anomalous data point and focused more on a trend with the weight. I avoided too much focus on daily weight numbers. The sugar reading was another issue. It was quite accurate I believe and really reflected my diet habits. I kept Day 6 strictly according to the book. There was plenty of exercise and absolutely no violations to the rules of the diet.
Day 7 rewarded me with the best sugar reading yet. The weight showed a small increase. The sugar reading was 181. So within a matter of 7 days, I was able to bring down the sugar from 246 to 181, using strictly dietary guidelines. That represented a 26.42% drop, which is quite significant. I took the measurement at roughly the same time every morning. I had a rather larger than planned for single meal on Day 7, but I did quite a bit of exercise as well. The net daily total calories exceeded my target.
Day 8 showed the lowest sugar reading yet- 166. This represented another 15 point drop. The disappointing news was on the weight loss front, where basically I was at the weight where I started. This once again seemed clear proof that the 1000 calorie target was correct, but I was having immense struggles meeting it. Every time I went over into more than 1000 calories consumed, I would stay level in the weight department at best. In my view, this just reinforces the fact that the standard consumption charts for calories really don’t apply to older people with diabetes and other health problems.
From Day 9 to Day 15 I experienced a plateau effect. My sugar readings and weight readings were leveling off. This is a familiar pattern for dieters. At this point, I tended to give up on the diet- you get the mentality that no matter how hard you try, there’s no further progress. So I set stricter guidelines hoping for more progress, and also added a good dose of regular exercise for the next phase. I tried to conform to the 30% rule (burn off 30% of the calories consumed).
None of the books I read mentioned that a person my height would need only 800-1100 calories to maintain weight, but yet here is exactly what I found based on a considerable amount of data. It was something I had suspected for quite a while and writing down the numbers over a 23 day span just proved it. It leads me to believe that for people who are over 50 and diabetic, the normal calorie estimates are just way too high. You should go through a process like I did and figure out the right number for yourself. My situation is also affected by my low thyroid affliction, which does contribute to the need for lower calories. However, I still believe the standard number of calories is just too many for most diabetics, who are overweight or obese.
The jury is still out on the long term sustainability of this diet, but I have to say it’s the only one that has worked for me. I believe the principles here have general applicability and if I keep up the regimen, I am totally confident that I can easily drop about 30 pounds and make a serious dent in my diabetes and other health problems. Especially if I can add regular exercise as part of my life. This has been by far the most successful diet I have ever been on. I no longer feel any need to consume fatty, salty or sweet food and when I do consume them, I’m in total control of the quantity.
I’m going to keep recording results for another 6 months to figure out the long term sustainability of the diet and hope to publish them in another book.
Notes to the 3rd edition for Chapter 10.
I wrote the 1st edition in March , 2011. In June 2011, a very interesting study came from a British neurologist that indicated that you can starve diabetes and cure it in 6 weeks. He used a methodology of restricting individuals to 600 calories a day- which lines up with my observation that I felt great after keeping to 600 calories per day.
There is also some older research that starvation is good for diabetics. There is a discussion of starvation and diabetes at this site:
http://www.livestrong.com/article/348931-starvation-and-diabetes/
The results of the remarkable study in England can be found in this article:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2011/jun/24/low-calorie-diet-hope-cure-diabetes