The Diet that is not "A Diet"
For the first time in my life, I'm taking an active role in maintaining my body.
Doesn't that sound weird? And in opposite ways, too! It's weird to think about 'maintaining' your body like it was a car, and it's weird that I'd wait until I was almost 40 to start worrying about it.
The first part of this is diet - I'm really getting into choosemyplate.gov now. I have the "my coach center" turned on, and it is giving me advice on my specific goals:
1. Get RDA of iron. (I'm very low.)
2. Get RDA of vitamin D. (I'm low.)
3. Lose 15 pounds. (I feel almost ashamed admitting this - more on it below.)
4. Get 300 minutes of exercise a week.
5. Keep empty calories below 225 a day. (RDA)
To this end, I'm typing in everything I eat in the 'food tracker', though sometimes I'm lazy and make big substitutions. A downside is their food tracker fills in the nutrition info for you, and so you have to use one of the 8,000 foods in their inventory. I was very VERY disappointed that my only options for beer were "Beer" and "lite beer" because I am sure Stone IPA has different caloric values than Budweiser.
BUT this isn't rocket science, people. I just need to get vaguely in the area of the right numbers to know how I'm doing. If my calorie totals per day are 100 or even 500 calories off, well, I don't actually care. It averages out, I hope, over the weeks.
Here's what I've found out after doing this for three weeks:
1. I eat an obscene amount of empty calories. My first few days, where I recorded my usual eating habits without trying to alter them, I averaged 700 empty calories a day! Nearly half my intake! I've slowly wittled it down, but I'm still not at or under the limit yet. I have high hopes for today.
What I'm doing about it: A mocha and a pastry for breakfast uses up my whole day's empty calorie allotment. No more of that! Also, I used to eat a yogurt many mornings. Yogurt has loads of empty calories! FAT FREE yogurt! WTF, right? So instead I'm switching to eating a banana or fruit snacks which have about half the calories of yogurt. However, I should keep eating yogurt as it's good for my Crohn's, so I'm looking into plain yogurts, greek yogurt, and all that good stuff, which I can flavor with banana or fruit juice instead of relying on the good folks at Yoplait to meet my needs. Also, I've cut soda pop, which accounted for a lot of empty calories, and I'm no longer eating a bag of chips with lunch. In general, I'm really thinking about whether foods have empty calories before I decide to eat them.
2. While I thought I was above average in my level of activity, I do not get 300 minutes of exercise a week.
What I'm doing about it: The elliptical! I can have nice 40-minute chunks of exercise every day. Also I've started doing the wii fit again.
3. I don't actually eat all that many calories in a day. Shocked? I mean, it's me, right? But while my empty calories are consistently over the value recommended, my total calories are consistently under the recommended 2,000.
What I'm doing about it: I'm not worrying about consumption, and trying to fit in more healthy snacks to prevent the hunger that leads to smashing 8 donuts into my mouth. The other day I actually ate a cup of raw spinach leaves - one cup equals only one gram of dietary fiber so I knew I could get away with it. It felt SO GOOD to eat a vegetable again. Which leads into:
4. I don't get the fruits and vegetable servings recommended. Shocking, I know, with Chron's.
What I'm doing about it: Research! Choosemyplate.gov has a "Foodapedia" that allows you to compare any two foods in their database and look up nutritional information. I plugged in a bunch of vegetables to find out, honestly, what I can get away with. And it's a lot more than I had thought. Not every veggie is a fiber-packed colon-blocking machine. Since spinach has a lot less fiber than lettuce, and I need the iron it provides, I'm going to be eating a lot more of it, in soups, stews, and little bitty low-fiber one-cup salads. Did you read that? I get to have a salad!!! Spinach, mushrooms, and a few little chunks of tomato! All under my 3 grams of fiber per day limit!
Now, about Losing Weight(TM) (R) (C):
It was hard for me to admit I wanted to lose a little weight, because I've worked so hard to remove the societal stress of weight from my brain. And if you're Brian you're laughing right now because I do still moan about 'looking fat', but you have no idea how much less this is than the constant feelings of inadequacy and misery I used to have, back in high school, when I was skinny! I like to say "I love my weight way more now that I weigh 40 pounds more!" Because it's true! In High School I weighed 120 lbs and thought I was hideously fat. Today I'm averaging around 160 and think I'm just right.
However I'm not 160 right now - I'm 180. And it's made some of my favorite clothes too tight to wear. And that makes me sad, because I love dressing up. So I want to get back to 165, where I'm happy and me.
Added to this, and to take the weight of emotional baggage right off - the elliptical I just bought comes with a sizable rebate if I lose 15 pounds in the first three months. (Note: the actual deal is to lose 7% of your body weight, so it's scalable. My 7% just works out to be about the 15 pounds I wanted to lose anyway!)
What I am not going to do: Any kind of 'diet' as we understand the word. I will not change my eating habits any more than I am doing to try and eat healthier, as noted above. I strongly believe that diets DO NOT WORK. They are temporary. Lifestyle change is what you need. And for me that means eating more whole food and less junk. But I know better than to say "NO Junk". I'll even have pop now and then, if I'm in a situation where pop is strongly desired. I'll listen to my cravings, and balance that with moderation in portion size and weighting my choices toward the foods that meet my nutritional needs.
I feel like the word "Diet" has suffered perjoration. It used to mean "the body of foods one eats". Cats have a diet of cat food, water, and houseplants. Birds have a diet of seeds. We forget that meaning because the meaning "reduced calorie or content diet in order to lose weight" has become the norm. I want to do the former, not the latter. I'm modifying my diet, to create a healthy diet that will sustain me, regardless of my weight. (Though it'd be nice to lose 15 pounds).
Doesn't that sound weird? And in opposite ways, too! It's weird to think about 'maintaining' your body like it was a car, and it's weird that I'd wait until I was almost 40 to start worrying about it.
The first part of this is diet - I'm really getting into choosemyplate.gov now. I have the "my coach center" turned on, and it is giving me advice on my specific goals:
1. Get RDA of iron. (I'm very low.)
2. Get RDA of vitamin D. (I'm low.)
3. Lose 15 pounds. (I feel almost ashamed admitting this - more on it below.)
4. Get 300 minutes of exercise a week.
5. Keep empty calories below 225 a day. (RDA)
To this end, I'm typing in everything I eat in the 'food tracker', though sometimes I'm lazy and make big substitutions. A downside is their food tracker fills in the nutrition info for you, and so you have to use one of the 8,000 foods in their inventory. I was very VERY disappointed that my only options for beer were "Beer" and "lite beer" because I am sure Stone IPA has different caloric values than Budweiser.
BUT this isn't rocket science, people. I just need to get vaguely in the area of the right numbers to know how I'm doing. If my calorie totals per day are 100 or even 500 calories off, well, I don't actually care. It averages out, I hope, over the weeks.
Here's what I've found out after doing this for three weeks:
1. I eat an obscene amount of empty calories. My first few days, where I recorded my usual eating habits without trying to alter them, I averaged 700 empty calories a day! Nearly half my intake! I've slowly wittled it down, but I'm still not at or under the limit yet. I have high hopes for today.
What I'm doing about it: A mocha and a pastry for breakfast uses up my whole day's empty calorie allotment. No more of that! Also, I used to eat a yogurt many mornings. Yogurt has loads of empty calories! FAT FREE yogurt! WTF, right? So instead I'm switching to eating a banana or fruit snacks which have about half the calories of yogurt. However, I should keep eating yogurt as it's good for my Crohn's, so I'm looking into plain yogurts, greek yogurt, and all that good stuff, which I can flavor with banana or fruit juice instead of relying on the good folks at Yoplait to meet my needs. Also, I've cut soda pop, which accounted for a lot of empty calories, and I'm no longer eating a bag of chips with lunch. In general, I'm really thinking about whether foods have empty calories before I decide to eat them.
2. While I thought I was above average in my level of activity, I do not get 300 minutes of exercise a week.
What I'm doing about it: The elliptical! I can have nice 40-minute chunks of exercise every day. Also I've started doing the wii fit again.
3. I don't actually eat all that many calories in a day. Shocked? I mean, it's me, right? But while my empty calories are consistently over the value recommended, my total calories are consistently under the recommended 2,000.
What I'm doing about it: I'm not worrying about consumption, and trying to fit in more healthy snacks to prevent the hunger that leads to smashing 8 donuts into my mouth. The other day I actually ate a cup of raw spinach leaves - one cup equals only one gram of dietary fiber so I knew I could get away with it. It felt SO GOOD to eat a vegetable again. Which leads into:
4. I don't get the fruits and vegetable servings recommended. Shocking, I know, with Chron's.
What I'm doing about it: Research! Choosemyplate.gov has a "Foodapedia" that allows you to compare any two foods in their database and look up nutritional information. I plugged in a bunch of vegetables to find out, honestly, what I can get away with. And it's a lot more than I had thought. Not every veggie is a fiber-packed colon-blocking machine. Since spinach has a lot less fiber than lettuce, and I need the iron it provides, I'm going to be eating a lot more of it, in soups, stews, and little bitty low-fiber one-cup salads. Did you read that? I get to have a salad!!! Spinach, mushrooms, and a few little chunks of tomato! All under my 3 grams of fiber per day limit!
Now, about Losing Weight(TM) (R) (C):
It was hard for me to admit I wanted to lose a little weight, because I've worked so hard to remove the societal stress of weight from my brain. And if you're Brian you're laughing right now because I do still moan about 'looking fat', but you have no idea how much less this is than the constant feelings of inadequacy and misery I used to have, back in high school, when I was skinny! I like to say "I love my weight way more now that I weigh 40 pounds more!" Because it's true! In High School I weighed 120 lbs and thought I was hideously fat. Today I'm averaging around 160 and think I'm just right.
However I'm not 160 right now - I'm 180. And it's made some of my favorite clothes too tight to wear. And that makes me sad, because I love dressing up. So I want to get back to 165, where I'm happy and me.
Added to this, and to take the weight of emotional baggage right off - the elliptical I just bought comes with a sizable rebate if I lose 15 pounds in the first three months. (Note: the actual deal is to lose 7% of your body weight, so it's scalable. My 7% just works out to be about the 15 pounds I wanted to lose anyway!)
What I am not going to do: Any kind of 'diet' as we understand the word. I will not change my eating habits any more than I am doing to try and eat healthier, as noted above. I strongly believe that diets DO NOT WORK. They are temporary. Lifestyle change is what you need. And for me that means eating more whole food and less junk. But I know better than to say "NO Junk". I'll even have pop now and then, if I'm in a situation where pop is strongly desired. I'll listen to my cravings, and balance that with moderation in portion size and weighting my choices toward the foods that meet my nutritional needs.
I feel like the word "Diet" has suffered perjoration. It used to mean "the body of foods one eats". Cats have a diet of cat food, water, and houseplants. Birds have a diet of seeds. We forget that meaning because the meaning "reduced calorie or content diet in order to lose weight" has become the norm. I want to do the former, not the latter. I'm modifying my diet, to create a healthy diet that will sustain me, regardless of my weight. (Though it'd be nice to lose 15 pounds).