To Diet or Not to Diet

Okay, I have recently had to face the fact that I am a fat ass. It only took about two years of everyone from my doctor to the annoying little aches in my knees when I get up or sit down telling me I needed to drop some weight for me to finally really accept it. I am heavier than I have ever been in my life. I have almost tipped the 300 pound mark. I always told myself I would die before I weighed that much, but I only missed it by 4 pounds. To quote the wife, "Holy fucking shit, Batman!!!"

First, I was a tiny kid. I was a short scrawny little thing until I was about 10 or so when I gained a little height and became chunky. I stayed heavy, but not obese until high school, when around the 11th grade I started excercising regularly and lost a bunch of weight. I spent about an hour every night running, using a rowing machine, lifting free weights, and shadow boxing. It worked. Then I started college. I kept the routine for the first year, then the work load hit me and I got lazy. If I hadn't started into the martial arts and had a job that kept me somewhat active, I probably would have been a whale. As it was I was carried about 40 to 50 pounds extra. This was a liablility in the Kenpo classes, but actually helped in Judo and Juijitsu as it made my center lower and I was much harder to throw.

When college was over, I stayed pretty consistant in my weight for several years. I switched jobs and went through a downward spiral for a couple of years. The only thing that saved me then was that I had a scare with my blood sugar one summer when I was packing in the softdrinks and had switched to Diet drinks and sugar free deserts. During this period, I tried a diet drug combo called phen-phen. I lost about 30 pounds while on it, but it messed with my body chemistry I think, because I react differently now to certain food situations. It could just be another sign of getting older though. My dojo closed also, so there went the only regular exercise I had. I also discovered the internet and became a net potatoe.

My mother is fat, and she is convinced that one day, she will discover the perfect diet or pill that will magically slim her down. She tries every diet that comes along. She never seems to stick to one more than three days, and if she does and you question her, you will find she has modified it to suit her tastes, which usually means eating the exact things she is not supposed to have. Anyway, I have tried most of the diets out there and I don't have faith an any of them, or in any of the magic products. Diet pills rate right up there with penis enlargement pills in my book.

You see, diets don't work. You might loose weight, but you'll put it right back on when you stop dieting. To loose weight and keep the weight off, you need to change your life style. You either need to eat less, change what you eat, or increase your physical activity. For best results, you need to do all three, and it needs to be a permanent change.

I have lost weight 4 times in my life. The first time was as a teen and I did it with regular exercise and nothing else. The second time was on a diet drug that later proved to be medically dangerous. The third and fourth times I did the Atkins diet. The third time I dropped off the Atkins during the holidays intending the enjoy the good food and start back after the first of the year. I didn't and gained back the 60 pounds I had lost. I started back for the fourth time two weeks and 1 day ago. I weighed yesterday and I had lost about 18 pounds. I know that sounds like alot, but on the low carb diet, your first two weeks are called induction. You don't loose any for the first 10 or so days, then you drop a lot suddenly, then the loss is gradual after that, usually 1 to 2 pounds per week.

I am doing some different things this time while I low carb. First, I am walking on a treadmill at least 3 times weekly. I also am doing some other exercises. I think that will make a difference. But let's look at dieting a little.

I divide diets into 4 classes.

The first is the calorie diet. This is stuff like Weight Watchers, NutraSystems, Jenny Craig, ect. They make you set a daily calorie intake level and you eat only that number of calories per day. This works sort of, but I have 3 problems with it. First is the cave man effect. You see in the moldy olden days, if your chief hunter dude tripped over a tree root and missed hitting the buffalo with the spear, you might not eat, so the body interprets any sudden drop in calorie intake over a period of time as a famine and it drops the body metabolism. Now you are temporarily burning less calories. Also, your body burns muscle more effeciently than fat, so unless you consumed calories are protein, and most dieters are eating veggies, you are losing lean muscle mass more than body fat. Second issue, this diet doesn't really distinguish between calories. If you have work with a dietician they will teach you how to make appropriate food choices for your limited choices, but this is a hard diet to do own your own. I watch the women at work manuevering their calories so they can eat that chocolate bar. They kill a major portion of their calories for the day on a piece of food that is going to trigger an insolin release which will make them feel hungry for hours. Third, this diet makes me feel weak and puny. I don't want to do anything. I spend most of the day hungry. Also, I am not going to spend my life counting calories, so when I tire of it, I go back to eating what I want and gaining weight.

The second type is the low fat type. Sometimes this is combined with a calorie counter diet also. The best diet of this type is the American Heart Association Diet, which is what most diabetics are put on. I don't like this diet personally. There are parts I do like, such as eating more whole grains and less processed foods, but the meat restrictions are a pain. One of the issues with this diet are that people start thinking anything labelled low fat is good for you. There are low fat twinkies for Heaven's sake. There are good things about low-fat diets. Trim fat off of meat and buy leaner cuts, that's good. Cook with olive oil instead of lard, corn oil, or margarine. Use olive oil on salads and breads instead of fatty dressings. That is all good, but buying a bunch of stuff labeled low-fat in the store is just going to make you fatter. Why you say. Well, when they take the fat out, something has to go back in and it is usually carborohydrate filler, which turns to sugar in the body, which triggers insulin release in the blood stream, which makes the body think it's hungry which makes you eat more, which makes you fat.

Type 3 diet is the fad diet. These diets don't work, but always seem to come with testimonials and warranties. The grapefruit diet, where you drink a glass of grapefruit juice, eat half a grapefuit, or take grapefuit pills with every meal to increase your metabolism. The latest seems to be green tea. You take green tea extract pills twice a day or something to boost your metabolism and burn fat more effeciently. Now I like green tea, I started drinking it back in the Martial Arts days. It is just chocked full of antioxidents which do good things for you body on getting rid of free radicals and using vitamins more effectively, but I don't remember ever seeing anything about it burning fat cells. Most of these diets are just effective ways to seperate you from your money. There are pills that will surpress the appetite and increase your metabolism, but they tend to have nasty side effects and aren't very healthy.

The fourth class, and I held it for last is the low carb diets. There are a lot of these, but the big three are the Atkins, the South Beach, and the Sugar Busters. I don't know much about the Sugar Busters, but I've done the other two and I think the South Beach is an improved version of the Atkins that might be a little healthier. Low carb works this way: The first two weeks are induction phase designed to put you body into ketosis. This is a fancy word for peeing sugar. Normally ketosis is not something that is desired, but if you are wanting to burn fat, you have to stoke the engines to run hotter. This is done by eating mainly protein with a very limited carbohydrate intake and the carbs you do take in should not be sugar. They need to be complex carbohydrates you body has to work to break down, like green vegetables. So basically, you eat meat, some cheese for calcium, and a cup of green vegetables, per meal. The Atkins made no recommendations on meat, the South Beach suggested fish, poultry and lean pork and beef periodically. After two weeks, you start adding a few carbs back into the diet, roughly 5 grams per day each week. When you stop peeing purple on the keto sticks, if you want to keep loosing weight, you take 5 grams of carbs back out of the diet, because you hit your personal limit. That number of carbs would be your maximum to consume daily without gaining weight. The South Beach breaks the weekly increase down and suggests a piece of whole grain bread twice a week, a cup of berries once, ect. Incidently, my doctor recommends the South Beach. There are only two diets that have ever been tested using scientific principle and those are the South Beach and the American Heart Association diet. I usually run into people who tell me the low carb diets aren't healthy. First, the books tell you to take multi vitamin supplements. Second, I've done the diet and had blood work done. I have excellent blood work when I am low-carbing. I never have bad sugar or cholesteral while doing the diet. I don't get hungry bad on the low carb and after the first 3 days, I feel really good on it. I have lots of energy. I do tend to crave bread, rice and pasta on the diet, but that's because I know I can't have it. I do miss my fruit, but fruit, especially citrus is out on the diet.

Theory. The theory behind low carb, is that man was initially designed to eat protein and complex carbohydrates. Main learned to process grains and by doing so made them easier to digest. Unfortunately this makes the body turn them straight to sugar. If you are someone who's body doesn't process sugar well, it gets stored as fat.

My theory is that different diets work for different people because we are all different. My body does not deal well with carbs, but can handle fat. Others may be the opposite. I do know that Low carb works for me, I just have to learn to eat that way all the time, so I don't gain back what I lose. I have to do it one day at a time, and so does everyone else. Wish me luck.