Motivation (Part 1): What Motivates Kirstie Alley?

Kirstie Alley is fat again. I know, I was really upset too. Distraught is actually a better word. She was real thin in the early 80's when she was in Star Trek 'Wrath of Khan.' She had her first televised weight issues when she was on 'Cheers.' She started out thin and then became bigger in front of our eyes while hanging out with Sam Malone and Norm and Cliff. Then, for some reason, she lost the extra weight and went back to her svelt self. Now, why did she do that? Did she worry about losing her job? Did the public criticism get to her? Was she afraid Sam would love Diane Chambers instead? Was it just the cameras? We all know they add ten lbs. Why did she lose it? These stars we watch regularly are always so concerned with appearance that when they lose weight, no one questions it...unless of course it becomes extreme like Nicole Richie or Tori Spelling. We have come to expect our stars to be thin and in shape. So in 2005, Kirstie lost 75 lbs and became a part of the Jenny Craig diet movement. Sans her weight, she went on Oprah in a bikini. Personally, I thought the 75 lbs was admirable. I also thought she should have dropped another 50 before she jammed herself into the XXL Victoria's Secret. It really seemed a bit premature to be sporting those thighs on stage.

Of course, to show herself off, she picked The Oprah Winfrey Show. Oprah is the biggest 'enabler' on television. She will applaud any cause...especially if it has to do with weight. Kirstie (and I refer to her by first name because, through the tabloids, I feel as though we are personal friends) went on Oprah in 2005 when she lost the weight and, last week, she went back on Oprah to say the weight had come back. This poor woman. By all evidence known to man, it was a sneak attack.

There she was, going into her refrigerator for the apple and celery sticks. She innocently opened the freezer looking for some ice cubes. As she reached for the tray, the Haagen Daaz Cherry Vanilla morphed into a big hand and pulled her into the Half Gallon container...where she built a home...for the next 18 months.

The diet that I used to lose my 80 lbs was the Optifast diet. Oprah made that diet famous by using it to lose a remarkable amount of weight...just like many of the serious dieters who go on that diet. But Oprah, as we all know, put that weight back on. Again, this rebound is similar to those on Optifast or ANY diet for that matter. The rebound syndrome is something that we all have to face. Point of fact, "the rebound syndrome" is the REAL battle not "losing the weight." For those of us who have lost weight and put it back on, this is crystal clear. We have been successful losing weight, but not in keeping it off. Doesn't it make sense then that our goal should be to "stay thin", not "lose weight?"

So there Kirstie was last week with Oprah. She wants to lose the weight again. My last blog entry (before the Celtics) addressed the things that drive us to lose weight. I read and re-read my own writings again and again. I was missing something. So I did some research on the subject of motivation. There are surprisingly few books and research studies on the subject. There are many books on how to motivate yourself to do something. There are many on why we don't do things the things we should. There are many on the things we do to sabotage ourselves. But there are very few that explain what motivates us to do the things we do.

I was not looking for motives for dieting...I was looking for that THING in all of us that drives us to do anything at all. What drives us to get out of bed in the morning? What drives us to eat X for breakfast instead of Y? What makes you work longer hours at work to be successful? What got Michael Jordan to go outside and shoot a basketball for so long that he became the best player the game has ever seen? There has to be an answer...and I was looking for it. The real trick to dieting successfully and having your physical condition be a driving force in your life centers around the answer to this question. Why are some people successfully staying vibrant and thin and others successful at being obese? Why are others losing and gaining so much?

What motivates the Kirstie Alley's of the world?

What Motivates Kirstie Alley - Part Two

Dear Santa, Please Bring Me a Unicorn

There I was, week 10. I weighed 230 lbs, down from 283. Total weight lost, 53 lbs. I was slowly getting to a place where I hadn't been in a long time. I had invested in some better fitting pants and some shirts that would not look like the baggy skin I probably would have in about a month or two. Unlike my time in Weight Watchers, I enjoyed going to the classes. My favorite classes were the dietician classes where we learned about calories (and the various types and forms of them), portion control, and the information sources that we would use in the future to maintain our new lifeforms. My least favorite were the behavior classes.

Ok, so why were they my least favorite? Let me start by saying that in 10 weeks I had lost 53 lbs. That is a pretty mean feat. I had done it by sticking to the diet and speed walking (by now jogging a little) 2.6 miles each day. When I say 'sticking to the diet', I mean it. I didn't cheat. I drank those shakes three times a day and had my vegetable/salad servings, my lean protein (6-7 oz) and my fruit at dinner. This diet was working. I saw that every week on the scale and I was not about to screw it up. The damn Aspartame had messed with the momentum, but now it was back. This was MY experience. WHY were the behavior classes so irritating? Because it exposed the side of this diet I didn't want to see...the ones who confused 'wishing' with 'goal setting.'

When I walked in on day one, there was a whole team of folks purportedly there for the same reason. Looking at them, you didn't need to guess that. 95% of them were very large and in need of a life-change. By week 10, many had lost weight, but about half had not. They seemed the same to me. Week in and week out, I heard the same thing.

"I had an OK week" or "I need to recommit to the diet." Blah blah blah.

They NEVER said how much they lost and NEVER commented on what 'OK' was. Seriously, this is a 900 calorie, strictly measured, medically supervised diet. If you do this diet and exercise, you will lose weight. That's a fact. If you are not losing weight you are (a) cheating or (b) not exercising enough. End of story. But something else was amiss in this diet program...an observed behavior was peeking out from under the taudry covers.

You begin to notice a trend. There are those that make losing the weight a goal and there are those who wish they were thin.

I am the former. I look at weight loss something I can control and need to accomplish. It is and was real to me. There are those, however, who want to be thin, or look better, or be healthier...and are NOT willing to take control and drive their life to that end. They wish it. They dream it. But they are not willing to do what it takes to make it happen.

Here is a real interaction in class.

"Hi, my name is StarchLover (made up name) and I didn't have a very good week. I had a problem with...um...Animal Crackers. It started when I was making my daughter's lunch. I thought I could eat just a few. I really started to like them, so I had a couple of boxes. I have been eating a couple of boxes a day for the last 4 days. But on the positive side, I have been drinking the shakes."

Seriously, what do you say to that? "You are drinking the shakes?" As what? Dessert? That is like saying you drank them with a side of fries. THIS IS A MEDICALLY SUPERVISED DIET!!!!! Cheating and eating unmeasured unsanctioned food is NOT ALLOWED!

Even the normally reserved behavior specialist couldn't restrain herself. "Do you know what is in those things? Sugar! Starch! Flour!...nothing but bad calories!"

"Oh...sorry...how do you feel about Peanut Butter Crackers?"

This diet costs money. For some, more money than others. You would think that that would be a factor. It is not. There are those who go with the intent on making losing weight their goal. They will succeed. There are those that wish they were thinner. They are still there. Wishing.

I had seen this at Weight Watchers. When I went there, I skipped the meetings and simply weighed in and left. I then went home and jogged 5 miles. I did this 4-5 nights per week. I would go to weigh-in and the 'un-losers' would give me the nasty death stare as I got off the scale with the WW rep saying, "congratulations, you lost ANOTHER 5 lbs!" The wishers just stand there. They gained a pound this week. Or they lost .75lbs. They are convinced they are killing themselves on this diet and that YOU, Mr. Miracle, are doing something magical like using a Harry Potter anti-fat potion. They cannot even be honest with themselves. They hate you and they hate your success.

That brings me to the thing that separates the 'Wishers' from the 'Goal Setters." That thing is the MOTIVATOR. What is motivating you? If the thing that motivates you is not strong enough, you are not going to achieve your goal. If you have NO motivator and have just a pipe-dream...you are a 'Wisher' and will NEVER lose the weight. I had a motivator. I wanted better health. I wanted to look better. But more than all of that, I wanted the 205 lb number. Achievement of the number is rarely ever going to be enough for people. That is what makes me a unique person in some regards. I can take a number and turn that into my sole goal. For most it is the 'looking good', or 'feeling great' thing. The health driver is a big one. I will tell you that the motivator has to be something that will trump all the de-railers in your life. The de-railers will be the excuses that you use to get you off the hook and off track.

So you need to ask yourself before any endeavor, especially a diet, "what is my motivation for this?" If you don't have an answer, a diet is probably not for you, especially an expensive one like Optifast.

No matter what challenge you face in your life...no matter what addiction or life-situation...you need to know what it is that is motivating you. It has to be serious. It has to be meaningful. It HAS to be something you REALLY want. If the motivator is weak, so will be your resolve.

Find the motivator and focus on it.

Commit to the change and keep your eye on the motivator.

My best to you.

Next: What motivates Kirstie Alley, REBOUND!

Aspartame: Someone should really be going to jail

I can remember when this stuff first came out as Nutrasweet. It was 1983 and I was in the Army stationed at Ft. Carson in Colorado. They put it in Diet Coke and Diet Pepsi as the 'new saccharin.' It tasted awesome and I drank a lot of it because it could help me keep the weight off. You had to wonder how something that made stuff taste so sweet and had zero calories had been kept under wraps for so long! It was the miracle that we fatties and former fatties had been waiting for.

It wasn't long before I started feeling unusual. Not sick. Nothing I could put my finger on...just not good. I tried to isolate the cause and I thought the Diet Coke was doing it. When I drank it, I got headaches. So I stopped drinking it. It didn't really click on the Nutrasweet, I thought it might be the caffeine.

Then I noticed something else interesting. When we had barracks parties, I was drinking the new Crystal Light Lemonade and mixing it with Gin. Hey, what could be better than this? Zero calories, no caffeine and something in it literally masked the taste of the alcohol. But with relatively little Gin, I was feeling a little more woozy a lot more quickly. I went back to beer. More calories, but it felt like I was in control. That's when it hit me. Something about the Nutrasweet wasn't right. Headaches, stuff getting to my brain faster...it was almost, chemical.

Now at that time, there was very little research on Aspartame. There was no internet to speak of yet and if you read something on Nutrasweet/Aspartame, then someone must have given it to you or you were lucky to fall on it. Since then, there has been a lot written about the dangers of Aspartame. If you look around the web, you can find volumes on the dangers and also much to counter those findings, but typically, with no test results to back up the rebuttals. They point to the same tests that were run in the early 1980's when this drug, and I use that term purposely, was approved by the FDA for use in foods.

Aspartame is a very weak chemical compound that is made up primarily of Aspartic Acid, Methanol and Phenylalanine. At least, that is the three chemicals that it breaks down to in your body. Methanol converts, in your body, into formaldehyde. Yes, you read that correctly. It converts to the same stuff we embalm bodies with. It also converts very easily when the temperature is above 87 degrees Fahrenheit. Now, many other foods contain Methanol, orange juice is just one of them. Those foods, however, have naturally occurring chemical compounds around the Methanol that keep it from becoming formaldehyde. The same is not true for Nutrasweet aka Aspartame. Exposure to formaldehyde in the body is "known to cause gradual damage to the nervous system, the immune system and has recently been shown to cause irreversible genetic damage at long-term, low-level exposure." Sounds great doesn't it?

So how did this product get on the market? There is an excellent history of it online at this URL:

How Aspartame Became Legal - Synopsis

If you don't read the excerpt, know this much. It was political and Donald Rumsfeld was involved. G.E. Searle hired him around 1979 to help them get the substance approved by the FDA. The FDA would not approve the chemical due to safety concerns. Rumsfeld was a part of the 1980 Ronald Reagan Election Team. When Reagan was elected President, the day after his inauguration on January 21st, 1981, Searle reapplied to the FDA for approval. On that day, Reagan and his transition team, which includes G.E. Searle CEO Donald Rumsfeld, replaces the head of the FDA with a handpicked buddy, Dr. Arthur Hayes, Jr. In July of 1981, in one of his first moves as head of FDA, Hayes overrules the FDA approving body and approves Aspartame for use in dry products. In October of 1982, it is approved for carbonated beverages. Sounds legit doesn't it? Especially when the FDA originally classified it as toxic.

Here is what I know from personal experience, and this was my own little experiment. On my diet, I ate the same foods for 7 weeks. I lost 5 pounds each week like clockwork. In week 8, I changed one thing in my diet. I started drinking a couple cans of diet soda each day. Aspartame loaded and no calories. In week 8, my weight loss slowed to 4.5 lbs. In week 9, 3 lbs. In week 10, 1.5 lbs. The ONLY change in my diet was the diet soda. That was when I found an article that explained how Aspartame was processed in the body.

Now, we all know (for those who have been reading this blog site or are on the Optifast system) that you cannot have alcohol on this diet. The reason is that your liver is processing the fat 24/7 and if you ask the liver to start processing alcohol, you could damage it. Also, if your liver is processing alcohol, it will not be processing your fat and you will not lose weight. So given that information, I read the Aspartame article. The chemical compound Aspartame is ALSO processed in the liver. Your liver, when drinking it, spends less time breaking down your fat and more breaking down the Aspartame. It also takes more time to get your fat burning process revved up again. Mine deteriorated over a period of 3 weeks. One other thing that Aspartame does is that it causes fluctuations in your Insulin levels. These unstable blood sugar levels mess with the pre-measured levels that you experience on the Optifast diet and cause both cravings and fluid retention. Now, I experienced this myself. I discussed it with the Doctor and he seemed to think, while not documented, that it made sense.

Here is Dr. Sandra Cabot's article:

Aspartame Makes You Fatter

Once I was armed with this knowledge, I stopped drinking the Aspartame filled products. The result? 5 lbs were lost the NEXT WEEK. This continued until I reached my goal.

Aspartame. It is a chemical killer. It should be outlawed. It makes you fatter. It messes with your diet.

Drink water!

Next: Do it...don't wish it.