Turning Wine into Water

Water. As comedian Lewis Black would say, “it’s the elixir of life.” 70% of our planet is made up of water. In a normal lean human being, water makes up approximately 60% of our body composition. In a normal obese human (and obesity is sadly becoming ‘normal’), water composes about 47% of that same makeup. The rest? By now you should know the answer. Fat.

Water should be a staple of your daily diet. 50-60 ounces per day. It makes your bodily processes work better. It aids digestion. When (not if…WHEN!) you exercise, it acts as a lubricant for all of your muscles and joints and the exercise feels better. If you have ever experienced cramping due to lack of hydration, you know what I am talking about. It helps your liver and kidney’s flush fat and uric acid from your body when you are on a diet like Optifast. Water is a must.

What do you drink during the day? Coffee? Good for a pick-me-up. It is a vice of mine, I happen to drink about 3-4 cups per day. For the first 3 months of the diet, I drank it black with ice cubes. I now use about a teaspoon of skim milk in each cup. NO SUGAR or ARTIFICIAL sweeteners. Ever. The upside, it is a known thermogenic and aids in the fat burning process. The downside, it is a diuretic and will deplete your body of its water supply if you don’t drink water during the day. So if you drink coffee, drink water too.

Tea? I am not a big fan but Green Tea is also a known thermogenic. Use the same rules with tea as you would with coffee.

Do you drink milk? What kind? It should be ‘No Fat’ or ‘Skim.’ On Optifast, you can only have it when the diet says you can have it. If you are on any other kind of diet, skim or ‘no fat’ is the only milk you should be drinking. Before you begin to complain about the taste, and that is everyone’s first complaint, try skim for a week. Then go back to whole milk. As the whole milk slowly plods its way down your throat in chunks and leaves that fatty film…ask yourself how it tastes then.

Soda? Do you drink the poison? The best thing I have heard in years is that schools are pulling it from vending machines in place of water or 100% juice. Having it in vending machines in our schools is like having a special boot camp to build little fat kids. 12 ounces, 150 calories of corn syrup. Really, is it necessary? Diet Soda? STOP THERE. Do not drink diet soda. I have a whole blog entry for tomorrow on Aspartame (also known as Nutra-Sweet) and how it affected my Optifast diet. So here is my policy…no soda. In any form.

Alcohol is a no-no on any diet. This part kills most people on a diet who enjoy a nip here and there or everywhere. On Optifast though, it is not an option. Oh, some people think it’s an option. Some don’t listen to the counselors and don’t listen to the dietician on why you can’t (not shouldn’t, CAN’T) drink on the Optifast diet.

The reason you don’t want to have alcohol when you are dieting is two-fold. Number one, it is a frivolous source of empty calories. You are on your diet. You are depressed because the weight won’t come off fast enough. You are working out like a fiend. Then, you drink the alcohol. One can of beer is between 90 and 150 calories per 12 ounces depending on what you choose. One 4 ounce glass of wine is about 100 calories.

So you have a couple drinks. 200 calories. 300. Mmmm. Just one more. 400. You know, I can exercise tomorrow. 500. Wow, this has been fun, just one more before we close the place. 600. God, I am starving. Let’s stop at the McDonald’s drive through! 1700.

That’s how it happens. It’s not the alcohol, it’s the escalation. As they say, “been there, done that.” Lots of that.

The whole escalation experience takes us to reason number two for why you shouldn’t drink on a diet. The diet is hard. It requires self-discipline. It requires control. It requires you to care about the goal. Drink by drink, all of these things slowly disappear. We’ve all done it…the booze just gets in your brain and starts singing show tunes, “tomorrow, tomorrow, there’s always, tomorrow…” Next thing you know, it’s 11:00 at night and you are waist deep in the freezer looking for that last half pint of Ben and Jerry’s Chunky Monkey.

Do you know what it takes to burn off 1700 calories? Most of us don’t. Consider this. If you are a woman of normal to above-normal weight and about 5’5” tall…

- You burn this amount of calories, maybe a little less, in a whole day just doing normal things
- If this is excess calories (and it is), you would need to walk the dog for 6 hours to burn this off.
- You could work out at the gym for 5 hours
- You could do aerobics for a little more than 4 hours
- You could swim for 3 hours
- You could jog for 2.5 hours

As a man of 205 lbs, I have to spend 50 minutes on a treadmill at 6.5 miles per hour to burn 900 calories. That is 5.5 miles. I would have to run almost 10 miles at that pace to burn the 1700 calories. I am exhausted just considering it.

If you had a ticker on your arm that lit up and gave you this information as you were knocking down the alcohol calories…you probably would have left after the first drink. That is a lot of work to pay for those frivolous calories.

Ok. Warning time. For those of you doing Optifast, this is serious. You are on a starvation diet. 800-900 calories per day. Your liver performs a process when you are in this mode where it spends all of its time taking fat from your fat cells and breaking it down into fuel for your body. The byproduct of this process is uric acid (which by the way needs to be flushed from your body, hence the need for 60 ounces of water per day). The reason you CANNOT drink alcohol is because your liver is busy. When you drink alcohol, your liver has to process it out of your body. If you are in starvation mode AND drinking alcohol, your liver will not properly function and you could damage it. Fatty liver disease, jaundiced like conditions…you get the picture. If the damage is not enough to convince you, remember this…your liver will be processing alcohol and not your fat…so you won’t lose weight!

Water. The elixir of life. Drink plenty of it. Turn your wine into water for a better, healthier you!

Next: Family gatherings, a starving man's look at gluttony.