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Most weight loss plans work; even the goofy and scary plans. At some point, however, reality comes back and our lifestyles defeat us. All our hard work slowly slips away because we lack the ability to control our weight management plans over the long haul. The diet and exercise industry thrives because of these failures.
Exercise. Some plans encourage exercise above all else. Some plans expect you to quit your job and leave your family so that you can devote all your waking hours to exercising. My adult children are currently regular attendees at gyms in their respective towns. They go to the gym after work and get home quite late. They can do this because they are not married with children. They can go home and do the few things needed to survive the workweek and fall into bed. I’ve tried this method when I had a family and later when I had a partial family and it is not workable long term for most of us. I actually wanted to see my kids at the end of the day.
The other exercise issue is what plan to follow. There are as many exercise plans for weight loss as there are food plans. Many suggest 15 to 20 minutes a day, three days a week. What bull. That’s barely enough to keep your heart beating. (I’ve tried that.) Many suggest gym memberships. (See aforementioned desire to see children.) Some suggest home equipment (I have had many and currently I have a treadmill). There are step-by-step DVDs, countless books, and thousands of magazine articles. I’ve tried many combinations of exercises and I’m also an extremely active person. Currently, I walk my dog for an hour every day and my daughter’s dog for 30 to 45 minutes or so every day (different neighborhoods and the dogs have different walking styles so I don’t often walk them together without injuring myself with entwined leashes) and I maintain a small business, which requires an amazing amount of physical activity, and I garden several times a week. Not the fun planting flowers gardening. I do the crawling under the bushes and pulling weeds gardening. This is where I’m at today and I honestly can’t manage another activity during my already busy day.
Besides the cost of gym membership, I have always had an “ew” factor when it comes to public cleanliness. I do not relish touching equipment previously sweated upon by unknown humans with varying degrees of hygiene management. I also do not like to either be hit on (in my younger days) or even worse, sneered at because I don’t look like Jennifer Aniston. I’d rather grunt and groan in the privacy of my own home. Or jog with my dog(s).
But the most important part of a healthy life is to be active. Gardening, walking, jogging, errands on foot when possible instead of the car, moving with vigor instead of barely moving, all contribute to a healthier life. Throwing in a specific exercise plan if possible is a bonus but rather than be defeated by such a plan, just being as active as possible consistently throughout the day in the long run is the best possible and do-able choice.
Because I’m a professional dieter it has been my experience that food is more important in my weight loss than exercise. I can hear thunderous denouncements throughout the Internet but it’s been MY experience. I have engaged in some intense exercise programs and followed a diet prescribed by the exercise plan only to lose nothing over several months. However, I have dieted without exercise and have lost weight as long as I am active and slightly hungry. If I feel a little hungry for the bulk of a week I lose weight. Whether or not I exercise has absolutely no impact on that part of my weight loss plan. It’s the pangs of hunger that allow me to lose weight. It’s deprivation and suffering over a period of time that gets the weight off for me. And for most overweight people I know. Again, if there are nonbelievers, check out weight loss on the Internet. There are millions of sad dieters trying everything under the sun. All they really have to do is eat less, eat better, be a little hungry, and be active. It’s truly that simple.
I now exercise for general physical agility and health and have given up hoping it will help me lose weight. It is necessary to keep the body going and to keep fit and it’s important for the heart and lungs. All of that goes together so that if you are dieting along with it you do derive a benefit from it in your overall health. But I have given up thinking I’m going to lose weight with exercise as my primary tool. For me and countless others I have known, it’s what we eat and how much we eat. The exercise is a must for the rest of it but the food quantity and quality is key. And if you come from a gene pool designed to resist a famine, like myself, then you have to work a little harder.
I have watched various movie star interviews over the years and over the past few years, in particular, some of the young women have been very honest about how they maintain their figures. They spend HOURS every day with a personal trainer and they have chefs that prepare perfect meals. Some of these women admit to not eating at social events but rather picking at their meals and pretending to eat. Many have said they eat first at home rather than indulge. For them it’s crucial to stay competitive in their field. For the rest of us, it’s crucial to be healthy to live a long life.
I remember a period, a short period, when I attended a gym and when I got home I quickly prepared a meal for myself and the kids and then did whatever routine things I needed to do and I absolutely had no time for much else. Food preparation and exercise became my entire life. If I wasn’t exercising or preparing food I was shopping for food or cleaning up the mess from the preparation and consumption of the food. Saturdays and Sundays were spent organizing foods for the week. Yeah, there’s no suffering there. (Let us not forget laundry and all the other stuff we do during the week.)
Fad diets make you feel awful so it’s better to choose healthy foods and eat small amounts of them several times a day. Information about healthy food choices is everywhere. But for me here’s the problem with such a simple plan. I do just fine on my own in my little house preparing simple healthy foods. But I’m not a hermit and I do socialize. So I prepare my lovely simple foods all week and lose a few pounds then go out to one or two lunches or dinners and completely blow that small weight loss sometimes ending the week with zero weight loss or sometimes a gain.
Another facet of weight loss is your physical body type and situation. When you are “matronly” it is difficult to keep going down on the scale if you eat out. In my case, at my age, (Social Security plus) and with Type II diabetes, there is very little room for food management errors. I have discovered that if I don’t spend the bulk of my week hungry I will not lose weight and if I go out to eat more than three or four times a month I will not lose weight. And I’m talking about perfect attention to healthy eating the remainder of my week/month. In other words, I maintain my matronly body. If I were at goal weight this would be fantastic. I am not at my goal weight.
Goal weight. I’ve been at my goal weight countless times. I’ve even been able to manage my goal weight for several months. But somehow over time the pounds come back and it’s usually because I’ve entered into a more social part of life. Maybe too many weddings, birthdays, or the holidays or a vacation. At some point I lose the will to eat lettuce at someone’s baby shower and find a piece of cake sitting on my lap. Almost without thinking I eat it. Don’t get me wrong though. I’ve spent many baby showers with only a cup of tepid tea. In the end, it doesn’t matter. I will gain those pounds back.
When we see very large people on TV being tortured by trainers and weight loss professionals we know in our hearts that most of these people will not be able to maintain these new weights without tremendous attention to lifestyle changes (or having the trainers move in with them). Slowly slowly slowly they start eating out and making poor choices. Often poor choices come when we are busy. It’s much easier to eat something you can swing by and pick up and not cook than to prepare a meal.
This evening for example I made a very healthy meal and I made enough to refrigerate leftovers for a few days. It took a little over an hour to prepare the meal and place the leftovers in individual containers. That doesn’t include eating the meal and cleaning up after. Let’s say it took about two hours total. So I always prepare enough when I cook to have leftovers for a few more meals. Often we don’t have that hour in our lives and that’s when we get into trouble. Note: I did that when my kids were home but one of them, who shall remain nameless, ate the leftovers. And this same child often ate all of the planned leftovers prior to them becoming leftovers. You know who you are.
And not all bodies are created equal. Some of us simply have a tough time losing weight no matter what we do. Or have an even more difficult time keeping it off. And that’s me. Depending on the origins of your gene pool you could be in for a lifelong struggle. Yes, the American diet and fast food frenzy is certainly partially responsible but it is not making everyone fat. Just those of us who have a propensity to be fat based on our ancestral beginnings and mergings. Sadly, some formerly thin gene pools come to this country and change the pool by embracing our eating styles. And it isn’t just fast food. Restaurant portions are huge, ingredients are not always healthy, and preparation methods are not always weight management friendly. It’s hard to lose weight, it’s hard to keep it off, and it’s hard to live in a vacuum where you are never exposed to destructive foods.
In my case, it’s a major health concern to eat the healthiest foods I can. I do that 80% of the time. But I am not fooled by the fact that the 20% I don’t watch is the problem. Next Sunday will be the last blog on this topic because I am going to discuss insomnia after that which also contributes to weight problems. Yeah, I have raging insomnia too.
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