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.

Do I Have to Exercise?

On day one of this diet, I exercised. That was the key right there. If you are on this diet, or any diet for that matter, and are not exercising, do not expect any long term results. That's a fact.

Exercise is essential to any diet. You cannot reduce your calories, not exercise, and expect to lose weight over a period of time. Your body has a very efficient way of dealing with the calories you took away...it takes away your energy. That's right, it goes on strike. You take away the calories, your body's metabolic rate lowers. It learns to work with less calories. It burns your carbohydrates. Then it looks for proteins. A real nice source of protein is any muscle you have. This is something I bet you wanted to have a little more of when you started your diet. It will work on your fat last. One reason the fat burns last is that your body senses the deprivation and the caveman instinct built into our genetics over hundred of thousands of years feels that a long period of starvation may be afoot. So it holds onto the fat for future energy needs. You have officially scared your body into hanging onto the one thing you were hoping to get rid of. Fat.

As your metabolism decreases, you begin to feel exhausted. So you look for things that can give you energy. Most folks will turn to sugary products for that quick boost. You are then putting yourself in a nice glucose/insulin cycle that will have you craving sugar until you fall asleep or induce a glycemic coma, whichever comes first. That isn't a diet, that's self abuse. That is why most people hate diets.

Exercise is essential because if you restrict calories and work out, you keep your metabolic rate at a normal to normal/high level. Your body not only continues to burn calories at its normal rate, but it will burn more during exercise and continue burning more throughout the day. The deficit between the calories you are taking in and the calories you are burning will be much, much greater. You will definitely lose more weight. You will actually feel like you have MORE energy after exercising. When you get done exercising, have a good dose of water and, if you are hungry, have an apple.

This is really not complicated. Eat less, exercise more.

The Optifast Liquid Diet is unique in that it restricts calories severely to about 800-900 calories per day. When you walk at the rate that I was walking (about 2.6 miles per day in 45 minutes) you will burn approximately 350 calories in that 45 minutes. Add that plus a little more to your daily expenditure. I was using about 2000-2200 calories a day just walking around at my height and weight. That plus the 400 I got exercising and from post-exercise burn was about 2500 calories per day. I was taking in 900. I was running a 1600 calorie per day deficit. That is a deficit that will guarantee weight loss.

Take the same person on a 900 calorie per day diet and take away the exercise. Their metabolism slows down so they are burning about 1500 calories per day (about 1300 per day for women due to their smaller stature). Then to get energy they take in sugar. One pack of M&M's...six Oreo cookies...pick your poison here...250-400 calories easy. 1400 burned and 1300 taken in...100 calorie deficit per day. This is why just dieting doesn't work. I have exercised on every diet I have ever done and have lost weight without fail every single time.

Ok. So you need to exercise. What is exercise? This is not a trick question. It cracks me up what some people actually believe exercise is. Someone said to me, "I walk my dog." That was their exercise. Understand something here. Dragging a small furry animal with six inch legs fast enough to make it crap is not exercise. It might be for the dog. It is NOT exercise for you. If you go inside and YOU have to visit the bathroom, we can have a different conversation but for now, let's agree you have to do a little more. Walking is not exercise. It is the way we move about our day. It is natural, but (and I am not talking about the super-overweight and obese) it is not exercise. It is exercise if you are walking at a pace quick enough to make you sweat and if it is done over a long enough period, say 30 minutes at the sweaty pace. For the obese, walking at a natural pace may in fact classify as exercise.

Exercise is a word which can be broken into two parts. "Exer", the derivative of the word exertion, and "cise", uh...the latin form of "size" meaning your size is too damn big. Ok, I made the second part up, but exertion is the essential ingredient here. There is nothing wrong with sweating. You are going to take a shower when you are done exercising anyway, so tear it up! Sweat until it's rolling off you. Think of it as your body surrendering in the form of liquid fat.

So that is my opinion (somewhat educated) on exercise. I sat back during the course of this diet and went to my classes. I saw people struggle on the Optifast diet. I am convinced that one of two things kept them from success, either they cheated outright and never DID the diet, or they did not exercise and coped with the diet. In both cases, they did not achieve results that helped them reach their ultimate goal OR they reached the goal and were miserable doing it.

If you follow the Optifast diet and exercise daily the way that I did, you will lose weight. They have to, for legal reasons, say that my weight loss is not typical. I will say that if you do what I did, and it wasn't miraculous, you WILL lose weight. No one and I mean NO ONE runs a 1500 calorie per day deficit and does not lose weight. It is impossible. Bill, a friend of mine, started on the diet 6 weeks ago. He follows the diet. He walks every day. He emailed me yesterday that he is at 38 lbs lost. That is better than 6 lbs per week.

"Exertisize". You will feel better and your dieting will be a rewarding experience.

Next: What should I be drinking?

"Pfsllllllppppppppp!"

800 to 900 calories a day. I won’t lie to you, it isn’t easy that first day. You can do pre-mixed liquid or “make your own” shakes. I chose pre-mixed. They come in containers that look like juice boxes you would send to school with a kindergartner. 8 ounces of balanced nutrition. I kid you not, I could drink them in one suck. The diet, for me, worked like this…one in the morning, one at lunch, a measured meal at dinner, and one more shake at 9PM. That’s it.

My first class was a Thursday night, so the diet really started on that Friday morning. July 18th, 2008. New diet, new day. Sounds great. I woke up that morning and hit the scale first thing. 282 lbs. Hey, I already lost 4 lbs and I was not even officially dieting yet! Not true. You will weigh the least the first thing in the morning. Except for very rare occasions when you are exercising in the evenings, this will hold true all the time. If you get up and weigh more than you did when you went to bed, check the bed for chicken bones and cake crumbs. You are sleep walking. I hopped on the scale on day one and it is a ritual I continue to do every day. People will tell you not to weigh daily because your weight will fluctuate and it can be depressing. I will tell you that you need it every day. It is a barometer. Will it fluctuate? Yes. If you are expecting fluctuation and it (gasp!) fluctuates, will you be forever psychologically marred? No. You want depressing? How about dieting for a week and finding out that after seven days you have lost half a pound? How about finding out you gained? You weigh yourself every day…that is MY rule of success.

Here is what weighing in every day did for me. I should really say DOES for me and use present tense. Except for vacations when a scale is not available, I have weighed myself every morning since that day. But starting day one, I would get up, look at the number and one of two things happened.

1) I had dropped a little: I was psyched…my day was better because I had positive reinforcement. -OR-

2) I hadn’t dropped any or went up a little: My day was spent doing all the things I had to do to lose the next day.

Not only did I weigh in every day, I marked it on a calendar on the door. Having that weight check every morning, at the very least, curbs any ideas you might have about cheating. It also, after time has passed, reminds you of how much you have lost. This diet weigh-in isn’t like Christmas morning. You don’t get up the day of class after seven days of diet and get on the scale for the first time in a week and hope a nice present is under the tree. When you skip days on the scale, you delude yourself into thinking "I'm doing OK." If you were really doing OK and were interested in not avoiding reality, you would jump on the scale. So, by Dick's Rules, you get on that scale every single day and take responsibility for making sure you reach your goals.

So it's DAY ONE. Downstairs I ran and took the shake from the refrigerator and ‘pfsllllllppppppppp’ it was done. I had cut coffee out of the diet. I had the option to have it, but I didn’t want to complicate things. So my breakfast was over. How anti-climactic.

Around lunch I was really hungry. I have a job where I have a lot of meetings and they occur most days of the week. That Friday was one of those days. I kind of forgot that I was hungry but by lunch I felt like Fred Flintstone looking for a Bronto Burger. "Oh yeah...I am on the diet...and lunch is in the refrigerator. Pfsllllllppppppppp. Wow. Now I have 59 minutes to kill." You notice real fast on this diet that, around the times when you used to eat, you have a LOT of extra time you never used to have.

By about 2PM I started to get a headache. This isn't uncommon when you go from the lifestyle of Willy Wonka to the low carb lifestyle of Jack LaLanne. It happens. The good news is, unless you are having a stroke, the headache won't kill you. Just tough it out. It's called a diet. It wasn't easy getting as big as the Hindenburg. You spent a lot of time accumulating a significant amount of mass. So, it's not going to be easy going in the other direction, in fact, expect it to be harder. What hurts the turkey more, eating all the feed to become huge or getting trimmed on Thanksgiving?

So I left work thinking about dinner. Now, you have to realize something about this dinner. It is not the dinner you are used to. It is heavy on the vegetables and salad, 3 servings equalling about 1/2 cup each serving. You get 6-7 oz. of very lean meat or fish. You get one piece of fruit. It is not that much. But after 16 heaping ounces of diet shake since 7AM, it looks and tastes mighty satisfying. Take small bites, chew it a lot, get as much satisfaction as you can out of it...you won't get another one until tomorrow night.

I should say this about myself. I am a creature of habit. This worked greatly to my advantage on this diet. One of the things that really bothers people on this diet is the lack of variety. I could, in all seriousness, eat the same 3 meals every day for weeks on end. In fact, I do right now. My breakfast, lunch and evening snack today (Monday thru Friday) are almost the same exact thing every day. So I took the same approach to the diet dinner meal. I wanted easy. I didn't want to even think about it. My evening meal was one can of spinach (I actually had this tonight!), one can of tuna mixed in the spinach, and an apple. To spice things up, I put tobasco sauce in the spinach/tuna mix. I love hot stuff and tobasco has zero calories. One item of note here...I was NOT measuring my meat at that time. When I looked at the can of tuna, I misread the amount of tuna because of the servings. Three weeks later I would find out that I undercut myself by 1.5 ounces of meat every night. Measure your food to make sure you are getting the right amount.

I went out for my first bit of exercise that night. I walked 2.6 miles. It took 45 minutes. I wasn't setting any records here, but I did sweat on that hot July night. Exercise is critical. It is so critical that I am giving it it's own blog entry.

When I was done I took my shower and went to watch a little TV. At 9PM, I had my snack. A snack! Wow. What diet includes snacks? This is luxury.

"Pfsllllllppppppppp."

Day one was over.

Next: YES you have to exercise.

Selfishly Selfless

I go through life with a different perspective (I think) than most. I take a lot of things in this life seriously. I view those things, however, with a sense of humor that reflects society’s response to those same things. I do this because I have grown to realize that I live in this grand fishbowl with about 6 billion people and my view has about as much a shot at carrying weight as I do of winning the Powerball lottery. So in my small mind, levity is very important. I always write this blog with that in consideration. That said, today is not one of those days.

While the act of going on a diet is funny, and being on the diet is a laugh, and watching others on THEIR diets can be hysterical, my reasons for going on the diet are not funny at all. I took this diet with the utmost seriousness. The conditions that I experienced, leading up to my decision to go on this diet, were conditions that way too many people experience every day. They are conditions that, if ignored, can end your life.

Consider the fatal diseases that obesity (and while I was two tiny classification points from that term, I still put myself in that class) can cause. Congestive Heart Failure. Ever heard a real big person wheezing as they type on a keyboard? It’s not really an activity one would call exercise…so that person is dying. Enlarged Heart, from pushing the massive body around. Pulmonary Embolism, a blockage that can be caused by clot, or fat, or clumped cells and fluid. The circulatory instability can cause death. GERD, more commonly known as Acid Reflux, when untreated, can cause esophageal cancer. You get GERD (many people) from a gut that hangs so heavy in front of you that it actually bends your esophagus enough to break the natural seal between it and your stomach. When that happens, stomach acid backs into your esophagus and over time, can cause cancer. Fatty Liver Disease. Chronic Renal Failure. Skin Infections such as Carbuncles and Cellulitus. Stroke. Many types of Sleep Apnea. Get the picture? These are just the ones that can kill you. There are many others that just make you feel like crap. All the time.

So what did I have? Let’s see. GERD. Back issues with two cervical areas. Sinus issues (which happen when your immune system is overloaded). Edema (swelling that could lead to Lymph edema). Varicose veins. Yes, I know. It’s a real pretty picture. Not to even mention the way I could sweat through clothes just from a stroll around the neighborhood.

Let’s talk about some other items. Ever broken furniture? I have. Lots of it. Everything from wooden dining room chairs to outdoor lounges. Ever had a resin chair just shatter from under you? I mean so many pieces you need a broom to pick it all up? Ever been to a theme park where you couldn't fit on the ride? I have a funny story about that, but not today. Ever been to an old stadium like Fenway Park in Boston? It was made in the early 1900’s when people were not as big on eating for ‘entertainment’ as they are today. Try squeezing your ass in between the metal handles of a circa 1900 ballpark seat. Good luck. Is the picture a little more clear now?

Some have a good sense of humor about this. I did. I can laugh at myself and my shortcomings. I especially could when it was about my weight. I think it was because I always had in the back of my mind that I could lose it if I wanted to. I have been big most of my life but have lost a large amount of weight enough times to feel like it was a matter I could control. 95% of all overweight and super-overweight, do not have that feeling of confidence and control. That said, it is my opinion that when you make the decision to do something about your weight and for whatever reason drove it, that you should go at it with the seriousness that it merits. Something pushed you to that point. Don’t forget what it was.

I have a 13 year old daughter and an 11 year old son. I hope someday to be there to walk her down the aisle. I want to be able to go sailing and hiking alone with my son and maybe even share a beer (when he is old enough) and laughs with him. I want to be able to play with my grandchildren someday with the same enjoyment that I played with my own two kids because even though they are still young, I miss that time more than I can say. The diseases that go with obesity are fatal. They are in my way. They are in yours.

My very first class for the Miriam Hospital Weight Management Program was shocking. The subject of the meeting was how to live your life around people who just “have to feed you and won’t take no for an answer.” Seriously. How to exist around people who make foods “just for you” and think you should “just try some.” I listened to this being discussed by several women until I chimed in. I felt funny because this was my first class. I had lost zero pounds at this point and was the new person. But I jumped right in.

“I just need to clarify what I am hearing. Are you saying that you tell people you don’t want the food? You tell them that you are on a diet. And they still stick it in your face?” I said confusedly.

“Yes”, she said.

The behavior specialist said, “There are nice proper ways to handle this situation.”

I jumped in, “why?”

“Why what?” she said.

“Why be nice?” I responded. “Look, take a good look around this room. This isn't a game. I have listened to many of you today. You are here to remedy a situation that is jeopardizing your health and taking away quality years of your life. This is a hard thing for all of you. I haven’t lost weight yet on this diet but I have dieted successfully before. When someone asks me if I want food, the first time, I am polite in declining. When those offers continue and become taunts, being nice goes right out the window. I have no obligation to be nice anymore. The second time, they will get an appropriate glare from me. The third time, my response will be unforgettable for them and I guarantee it won’t happen again. You are doing something that will be positive for you and everyone else around you…and you better start being selfish about it. If you don’t, this diet is going to be long, it will hurt, and it may not be successful.”

The meeting ended shortly thereafter. I don’t know if any of them got my message. I know this though…I went into that diet to win. I went into it to be healthy and more importantly, to stay that way for the first time in my life. I hoped everyone understood. The months to come would tell me that some did understand but, unfortunately, many didn’t. I hope, if you are reading this, that you do.

More to come.

Blogger's Note: The photo above was taken by a very talented photographer friend of ours, Judith Laliberte.

Next: I am supposed to drink this stuff?