Tuesday, November 30, 2004

Losing Weight by Food Substitution

I had someone ask me about the math involved in losing weight. I realized that I didn't know the formulas for calorie consumption.

I started dieting by cutting back on food, but found I was hungry most of the time, and that made me cranky. After reducing my level of dieting, I found I could lose weight by substituting foods. It's a fairly simple process:

Substitute high volume foods for low volume foods. This means vegetables (and to a lesser degree fruits) should represent the bulk of your diet.

Reduce your intake of meats, especially fatty meats.

Reduce your intake of sweets, especially fatty sweets. (I like chocolate, and will often have a very small piece of good chocolate, and it will satisfy me - Droste makes a little chocolate pastille; a 1-inch circle, packed in a 6-inch long tube. It comes in several varieties, I like the light purple one, though will sometimes get the 70% cocoa version. I get them at Trader Joe's. I tell you this because there should be NO absolutes in your eating plan.)

I've already described how to choose grains, but try to eat 100% whole wheat bread if you eat bread. Better to eat the whole grain itself. There are a lot of good salads that you can make with them. Tabouli is my favorite.

The one piece of math that you should know is that 3500 calories is a pound. You can lose a pound per week if you change by 500 calories per day. That can be running or walking 5 miles each day, or cutting down 300 calories (a can of soda, a pat of butter, and half the dressing on your salad) combined with running or walking 2 miles.

If you change your eating plan to one your enjoy, you'll never want to go off your diet.

Monday, November 29, 2004

A Successful Weekend!

I haven't weighed, and though I know I overate, it wasn't by too much. More importantly, I managed to run all 4 days - and having not run much over the last 4 months, that's a huge victory. I'm excited because my friend who's pushing me to run a late spring marathon (I've only run them in fall) will now get on my case to train right.

I don't want to intimidate you with this marathon talk. Do your half-hour a day, it's enough. I'm a bit out there. How did your weekends go?

I'm putting a string of bizarre and unrelated words here for my own bizarre purposes (to find out if Google sees this page), so here goes: sphygmomanometer, logarithm, pecuniary, funambulism (That's a fun word!).

Friday, November 26, 2004

Thanksgiving Day!

I got up early this morning and ran in an area race. I performed poorly, as I am in process of coming back from an injury. I was disappointed in my time, it was about 30 sec/mile slower than my goal time (and about 1:15 slower than my recent race times). It shows how much you can lose conditioning when you don't exercise.

I ate too much! I have a lot of other family things this weekend and will try to stay under better control.

Wednesday, November 24, 2004

Thanksgiving Looms!

We're just a day out from Thanksgiving. It's one of the big tests of the year. I heard something on the news that the bigger the group you're with, the more you eat. I don't know if it's a function of wanting to have more food available, or if the assumption is made that with more people, less notice is taken of what I eat, or if some other factor is at work, but it was interesting to hear (and I think it applies to me).

To Do:
Eat the apple before arriving - it'll make me feel full.
Take SMALL portions of everything
No gravy, use cranberry sauce instead
Try to avoid seconds
One dessert only, and small
Limit intake of alcohol

Good luck to you readers in controlling your eating. Happy Thanksgiving!

Tuesday, November 23, 2004

Portion Control Helps You Lose Weight

I've lost weight over the last 6 years mostly by controlling portion sizes. I do exercise, and think you should too, but eating too much can overwhelm any amount of exercise you do. There is no food that I don't eat (well, I'm not a fan of brussel sprouts), but I do have ice cream, though less than I have chocolate. I enjoy dessert occasionally. (And am a fan of pudding - I like the cooked stuff, not the instant, but it's easy to make and is reasonably healthy - I'm lactose intolerant, so I just keep the portions reasonable - about 4 oz. - and I have no trouble.)

When I was getting heavier, I used to eat all of what I was served in a restaurant. Now, I'll still do that occasionally, but will often take half my meal home. If it tastes good today, it'll still be good tomorrow. It's not always an easy thing to do, but I was out to dinner this past weekend and ate almost my whole serving. The indigestion that I associate with my old eating habits was back. (I think it's better to control problems with lifestyle when possible, rather than take drugs - this was driven home by the recent Vioxx recall.)

Most of weight loss is taking in less calories than you expend. You can lose the weight without going hungry.


Monday, November 22, 2004

10,000 Steps a Day

The suggestion for activity, as measured by a pedometer, in order to maintain health is 10,000 steps daily. When I watched a recent marathon, it was necessary to move between a number of different vantage points. In doing so, I racked up 21,000 steps, so I got to put some in "the bank", though it actually goes to pay old debts. I've had days recently when I only racked up about 1500 steps. It's really important to get that activity in. It helps your heart, reduces your chances of diabetes, helps reduce your chances of some cancers, cuts your chance of hypertension and the kidney damage that often results. I remember years ago thinking the lfe extension people were wackos for preaching the health benefits of extreme thinness, but more and more, science seems to be showing that thinness driven by exercise is really healthy.

The best exercise for weight loss is the "two-handed pushaway". You do it by paying attention to whether you are full. If you are, you take two hands and push your plate away. Of course, if you're not in a restaurant, you likely have to get up and get rid of that plate. This tip will likely help you to avoid major overeating during the holidays.

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Sunday, November 21, 2004

Thanksgiving Calories

I recently saw that a typical Thankgiving meal is about 3000 calories. I recently had the chance to attend a marathon. What do those two have in common? If we use the 100-120 calories burned per mile, then the two equate pretty well. So, to negate your meal, all you need to do is a marathon. OK, it's not that bad most of the time. Most of us burn about 1500-2000 calories daily without any activity, so if the rest of Thanksgiving eating is modest, taking a vigorous walk of about an hour will more or less negate it. One of the nice things about doing that is that walking with others can be both exercise and social. Try to limit what you eat, especially the bad stuff, if you can eat an apple or other high fiber, low calorie snack before the meal, you can probably exercise more self control. I'll be talking more about strategies to control holiday eating this week. Feel free to offer any tips you've found helpful.

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Saturday, November 20, 2004

The Best Exercise

Simply put, there's no best exercise for weight loss, at least not one that I can tell you. The best exercise is the one you'll do! However, a pretty good case can be made for walking. It's available just by going out your front door (and those of you who follow Walk Away The Pounds might say the living room), all you need are comfortable shoes, and you're ready to go. It is a low impact activity, putting just 1 1/2 times your body weight on your feet vs. the 3 times that running inflicts. You can walk throughout your life. I know a man who's over 90, has been living with diabetes for over 50 years, and still walks more than 3 miles a day. He still has his sight, his mind is sharp and I think he's a pretty good case for walking. Of course, if you're younger, I have another old friend who's only about 73?; he's finished the big area fall marathon each of the last several years walking in a bit under 6 hours. Keep working towards your goal, you'll get there!

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Friday, November 19, 2004

Can I Exercise My Way to Weight Loss?

Running (or walking) a mile burns about 120 calories. That may double if you count the increased metabolic rate that can happen after fairly intense exercise. If you run 5 miles per day, that would mean a burn of an additional 600 (or 1200) calories. Most of us burn 1500-2000 calories per day as a base, so even looking at the high end of the range, someone running 5 miles a day will burn a little over 3000 calories. If you're a big eater and make bad choices at the table, you can consume that many calories at a single meal. The lesson here is that you can not exercise yourself to weight loss, you must control what you eat.

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Thursday, November 18, 2004

The Mouth Whack!

Sometimes, I find that my mouth is bored. It needs some kind of stimulation. I found that one of the best ways I could do this without taking in a lot of calories is by using an Altoids mint (there are a few other mints like them, but I'm NOT talking Lifesavers here - they're too mild. I think they have about 10 calories, but they are so strong that one (or occasionally two) is enough to keep my desire for food at bay for at least a half-hour.

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Wednesday, November 17, 2004

My Favorite Website

There are a lot of good websites out there, the one I like best for its wealth of information and different modes of delivery is www.drmirkin.com. It has more than 200 "hours" (about 35 minutes each with commercials removed) of old shows archived in mp3 format. You can download these shows, put them on a CD and listen in your car. It's a great way to learn about health. Dr. Gabe Mirkin has been a big advocate of health through activity through the years, today, at around age 70, he's an active cyclist, but earlier in his career, he was a runner who competed in the US Olympic Marathon Trials of 1964. Also on his site are a long list of diseases and conditions that you can look up as learning tools. These are good, but may not be totally up to date, I think they stopped updating in late 2003 as the radio show ended.

Tuesday, November 16, 2004

Low-Fat Better? And selecting form of a grain

A new study shows that low-fat diets are better in the long-term than low-carb diets.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2004-11-16-fat-carb_x.htm

I believe that carbohydrates are necessary for energy, and if you are going to exercise, they are a necessity. Limit your intake of refined carbohydrates. Here's a list of how to best get your grain based carbohydrates:
Best - whole grain (NOT whole grain flour)
cracked grain
whole grain flour
Worst - white flour
Why? Often whole grains pass through the digestive tract in whole form - we don't always chew thoroughly, this reduces the availability of the starches to our body. In the case of cracked grain, the hulls have been broken, so they are more available, but must be dissolved. Whole wheat flour has fiber which does slow absorbtion of the starch. White flour is essentially pure starch, so is the most available. (If you look at the glycemic index of these, they'd run lowest at the whole grain form and highest at the white flour form.)

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Good Weight Loss Site!

www.smallstep.gov

This site has tips and programs for weight loss. As a government site, it does not try to sell you anything, just give information. I've looked at it, the info is good. Use it!

Monday, November 15, 2004

No Magic Bullets!

I am a believer that as far as weight loss goes, there are no magic bullets. Only one way works for the long term, and that is limiting calorie intake combined with exercise. Done right, you don't need to feel like either of these things are punishment. When I started my weight loss, I was hungry all the time. That meant that I was cranky all the time. I've since found that you can make smarter choices and NOT be hungry and still lose weight. You can do it! I know because I did, and I'm not any better than you, just more educated about how to do it.

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Day One!

I am setting this up to learn a little about blogging and I wanted to try to judge the level of interest in this type of a site. Scooter is a name I like, but I don't use it as my nickname. I am a middle aged man who decided six years ago to get myself into shape. I worked hard at it, and have been constantly studying health and wellness since then. I think I have some knowledge that will be useful to others. I hope to be able to share it. I'd like to hear from you if anything I suggest is particularly useful. I'll try to update this blog several times each week.