I haven’t publicized this on the blog yet, but Kim and I started South Beach a few weeks ago and we’ve been doing really well. We extended the first phase by a week just to get a head start on the weight we need to lose. I know I was close to 270lbs. when I started (maybe 268lbs. ?) and now I am at around 255lbs. (which seems to depend greatly on whose scale I use). When we start the second phase I am planning to exercise more– just simple stuff: biking, push-ups, sit-ups, stuff like that. My ultimate goal is 215lbs. I’d like to get closer to 200 but I figure that if I can make it to 215lbs I can obsess about those last 15 when I get there.
It started a few weeks ago when I was in NYC. I met up with my old roommate, Chris. When Chris and I lived together we were about the same size (I was always a little bigger, but I am also taller). We had the same awful eating habits and a similar history with food. The difference being that he was (and is) a way more picky eater and tended to only like a few things and I was just a foodie who’d love to hit up diners for pancakes and eggs. Needless to say he dropped from 245lbs. to 205lbs.
Bastard.
So when I came home I heard that my friend Scott was killed in a biking accident. Days later a friend of Kim’s committed suicide. I started thinking about a lot of things in my life that I’d like to change that I never seem to do anything about. Losing weight was close to the top of the list and it seemed that if Chris could do it, I certainly could. That was something I needed, a proof of concept. My only other friend who’s made any kind of drastic nutritional change has Cystic Fibrosis and needed to gain weight, which is very different. Two days into South Beach and I ran into my friend, Will, from high school who was in town to work on his parents’ old house and he was even thinner. This guy was consistently larger than I was and now I was the fat kid. All of my fat friends were losing weight. (Though Will’s method was Atkins, which I refuse to do.)
I have made proclamations to lose weight on lowquality.net before. In the last 3 years I have made stop/start efforts to exercise but eating right never really factored into the plan. Eating right seems like its the most important part, though. Forcing myself to live a different lifestyle (one that has me saying “no thank you” and leaving baskets filled with bread on restaurant tables) has also forced me to view the way foods are presented in this country. What we accept as healthy and what is actually healthy are totally different things. On the other hand I can’t believe how much more expensive it is to eat healthy as opposed to just grabbing a burger at a fast food restaurant. We know it’s not right, but it’s just so damned easy! You need one of two things to live a healthier lifestyle: time or money. The working class usually has neither of these things. Kim and I (mostly Kim) have been making a huge sacrifice to prepare our own foods to meet the needs of our diet, and it’s very difficult to do so and still have time to do the things we want. If we didn’t cook our own food we’d be paying a fortune on healthy prepared foods. It’s give or take.
It’s a shame that we live in a country where school lunches are subsidized by Pizza Hut and Taco Bell. I remember when that was just starting and even though I knew that eating that stuff wasn’t good for me, I ate it anyway. As a result I have a skewed sense of nutrition. You just can’t eat pepperoni pizza every day, or even once a week. You have to find the balance. If you have to drench everything in ketchup then there is a problem with what you are eating– maybe it isn’t as delicious as you think it is! I think we’re so used to fat and sugar in all of out foods that our taste buds are just burned out. We don’t know how to enjoy good foods. It doesn’t help when all of the vegetables we eat as kids come in a can and are served as a slimy gray afterthought to the painstakingly cooked slab of meat on the dinner table. Kim and I have been sauteing fresh veggies with garlic and salt and pepper and they’ve been delicious and just as much a part of the meal as anything else we’ve been eating.
Actually, I have eaten more vegetables in the last three weeks than I did in the previous three months. Those of you who know me personally know I like to exaggerate, but I am seriously not exaggerating! Its amazing how your tastes can change. You can actually force your tastes to change, or, at least, observe that they can change. I wouldn’t say I love veggies now, but I definitely feel like I am creating a stronger connection with those kinds of foods. I don’t really crave lots of sweets now– I do, but it has more to do with not being allowed to eat them, than with me actually wanting them. Something about this first phase of South Beach has kind of toned down my (as Richard Simmons would say) “strong relationship with food.” I feel kind of like one of those rehab patients who thinks he’s got it beat and leaves early to score some coke. I’m not out of the woods yet, but I can see the path.
Dude, good job already. I understand your frustration and your commitment to losing weight. There are health reasons, self esteem issues, obsessions, etc that feed into our horrible diets in this country. I am not skinny by any means. I have lost and gained three times since 2005. It is always an uphill battle in 2006 I had reached 295 pounds. I was miserable and it was evident in my body and my personality. I couldn’t sleep well, my feet always hurt…I was just a mess. But it was only when I decided for myself that change had to happen that it did. I now weight 207 lbs. and I am proud of that. I may never skinny but it is an awesome feeling knowing I am in control. I did South Beach and it worked well. But ultimately the south got me back and I started gaining slowly. I refocused and changed my diet permanently and started exercising regularly. Nothing crazy…just committed. I have faith in you and I know you will be happier with each passing pound. If I can ever lend moral support or offer food tips, just let me know. Congrats again!
Hi, Justin (an Kim too). How great to read that you two are making these changes too. Congratulations on the weight you’ve lost so far!
That’s wonderful. It’s really such an accomplishment, especially since it’s so much a lifestyle change, as you’ve said.
Opposite of you, I guess, when I do slack off with this, I slack off on the exercise but still eat right. I’ve always loved vegetables and fruits, and after years of cake/cookie decorating and baking, I’ve lost most of my sweet tooth anyway, so I tend to eat well, but lately, as you’ve read, I have to really drag myself out the door to go for walks. And I came to really love them last year–I was walking 8 miles a day, sometimes more, most of last year. So I don’t know what’s up with that. Anyway, although what I eat hasn’t changed, my portions have. And yeah, it’s striking how much more expensive it is to eat healthy things. I stock up on fruits, vegetables, dip mix/fat-free sour cream, light microwave popcorn, and Fiber One bars every time I get groceries, and I never fail to notice that it’d be way cheaper just to fill a basket with chips and all the higher fat/calorie-content foods. It’s really ridiculous.
Keeping a food diary every day is one of the things that I’m sure has helped me lose the first 51 pounds. I just email myself everyday with answers to these categories: (What I Ate for) Breakfast (and # of calories), Snack (“), Lunch (“), Snack (“), Supper (“), Total Calories for the Day (“), Did I Remember to Take My (“One a Day ‘Weight Smart’” brand) Vitamin? Any Other Health-Related Issues That Day, and Exercise. Although there are days missing since last January, I have an email/entry for most days, which is cool (and helpful, as it can help me track my progress and figure out “Okay, June 2007 was a great month for me. What was I doing/eating then exactly? Let me repeat that now.”) I keep reading that people who keep food diaries tend to lose more weight than those who don’t. I know I eat better and just have a healthier day the days I keep up with the diary. If you and Kim aren’t doing that yet, it might help.
Anyway, I admire you both for doing this and making these changes. Please update on this from time to time. I’m always interested in this process and it helps to hear how others are doing with it. Thank you for sharing all of this.
Thanks for the tips, folks. Part of the reason I didn’t publicize my activity until I was already started was that I had previously blogged about “trying to lose weight” and nothing really came of it. This time I got the ball rolling before I became the boy who cried thin.
The reason I think I will ultimately succeed this time is that I feel like I am doing the right thing and its working. After years and years of being a husky kid or an healthily thin kid who still viewed himself as a fat kid, I just see the path before me and it’s 215lbs here I come. After I get there I hope I can maintain it, I am a little worried about that but, as Drew said, as long as I feel as though I am in control I think it will be less about numbers and more about how much better I feel.
Something that as worked for me is reframing the way I think about dieting. If you think “I can never, ever have [insert name of high calorie food drenched with sugar and enriched flour] again.” If you feel like you are depriving yourself of something you’ll feel like you won’t make it, it feels so final and restrictive to say “never, ever” and if you DO get derailed and eat something you really shouldn’t then because once you violate that “never, ever” you totally give up dieting. Then you feel guilty for eating it and the cycle begins. I’m just thinking of it like I am taking an indefinite break from those foods. Someday I will be able to eat them once in a blue moon and that’s something I can live with.
I started this latest (2007-present/ongoing) attempt at weight loss/better health the same way: I didn’t tell anyone last January (2007) that I was even thinking about trying to lose weight and only announced it when I’d lost the first five pounds. I think all the times I’d tried to lose weight before, I just hadn’t really researched it and didn’t really know what I was doing, and I lost interest each time when my efforts didn’t amount to anything. “Knowing is half the battle,” indeed.
I just came by here to let you know that I’m following you and Kim’s example and following some of the South Beach stuff now. I’d found the book at Goodwill earlier this week and bought it just for the general tips, nutritional info and for the recipes, but after reading through it and learning that you and Kim have been doing it, I figured I’d try it. I don’t eat too much sugar anyway and don’t really care about bread, but the popcorn, Fiber One bars, and instant oatmeal I just bought will now have to wait a couple weeks, I guess. That’s okay. Today’s “Day One,” and October 1st will be the end of the first two weeks. We’ll see how it goes. Thanks again for posting about all of this.
A good quick reference is as close as your trusty Wiki:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Beach_diet
We extended Phase 1 by a week, thinking something like “if we lost this much this quickly lets get a head start..” Let’s just say that as we enter Week Three that two weeks is just the right amount of time to go without eating any bread and / or rice (did I mention my girlfriend is Asian?!?)
You know you’re doing as you’re told when you find yourself counting down the days when you can eat a piece of wholegrain toast for breakfast.
I’m on the “Donuts-a-Plenty” diet. I eat a donut for breakfast, a donut for lunch, and then a sensible dinner (usually a cruller). Of course the fillings have to rotate — custard or raspberry one day, frosting or cinnamon apple another. It has something to do with the way the body processes it, and the combinations that you eat. The induction phase involves only eating plain, old-fashioned donuts for the first two weeks. Boy, was that hard! I got through it only by “dunkin” (that’s the lingo) my “plainers” in heavy whipping cream. After the first two weeks it’s okay to start adding in toppings on the outside of the donut — chocolate, shredded cocout, powdered sugar — no fillings. I’ve been on the diet for about a month now, so I’m into the Creme and Fruit Filling phase. We’ll see how I do from here! It’s working so good that I’m thinking of also starting the “Soda-Soda-Soda” plan recommended by the same author. Wish me luck!
god damn that diet sounds fabulous.
the “sensible dinner” line made me laugh out loud, by the way
I’m sure soda-soda-soda diet works wonders. The sugar will rot the teeth right out of your head and you really won’t be able to eat much of anything. There’s no way you can fail.