Fat Is Not Acceptable: Chapter Four - One Simple Formula

This is going to be the shortest chapter in the book.  It is called ONE SIMPLE FORMULA, so a real long explanation would just be a lie right?  Here it is.

[Calories In (CI)] – [Calories Burned (CB)] 
Pounds Lost or Gained

                               =3500 (Calories per pound)

Your life is a zero sum game according to that formula.  If you are happy with your present condition and want to maintain it, your goal is to make the CI and the CB equal.  You want to use all the calories you put into your body.

If you want to lose weight, you need to make sure that you expend more calories every day than you eat.  CB must always be greater than CI.  This will result in a negative number and, when divided by 3500, indicates the number of pounds you have lost.  3500 calories roughly equals a pound of body weight.

You should make sure that the timing of the formula is a match.  I presume you have figured this out but I will state it anyway.  The Calories In and the Calories Burned must be over the same time period.  It is not the number of calories you ate today and the number of calories you burned in a week.  The easiest way to do this is to record your CI and CB daily and put it on your calendar.  At the end of the week, subtract CB from CI and divide that by 3500.  How many pounds should you have lost this week?  Now look at the pure weight according to your scale?  Is it close?  Your weight does fluctuate daily based on sex, hormones, and water retention.  Over a two week period, these numbers should begin to match.  If they don’t, you need to reexamine what you are eating, how you are exercising and how you are estimating your numbers.  And be honest.

Calculate these numbers daily. 

Fat Is Not Acceptable: Chapter Three - Living By The Numbers

      How do you change the quality of your life?  First, we have to define the term “Quality of Life.”  University of Toronto researchers have chosen a good definition.  They define it as, “the degree to which a person enjoys the important possibilities of his/her life.”  I like that.  It is simple and to the point.  We should also agree that the degree to which you can enjoy these possibilities will be determined by your physical and mental condition.  Nothing will more negatively impact your quality of life than poor physical and mental condition.  Beyond showing you some examples of how to throw the mental switch that helps you better your own physical condition, I am not qualified to write a book on mental health.  I am, however, qualified to show you how you can improve your physical health.

       The improvement of your physical health starts with “the numbers.”  I told you in the previous chapter that the recipe for good physical shape was simple.  It is.  That said, your journey to improved physical health will not be measured by some qualitative descriptions like, “I feel fine” or “I feel so much better than I did two months ago!”  This journey is going to be measured with numbers.  How much do I weigh now?  What is my BMI (I will tell you shortly)?  What is my blood pressure?  What is my cholesterol level?  How far am I walking?  How many calories am I burning?  How many calories did I eat yesterday? 

      Are you getting the picture?  The solution to improving your physical condition starts with these questions and the answers to them, which quite simply are, the “numbers.”  I know…we hate numbers.  Numbers don’t lie.  You can’t hide behind them.  They are objective.  They are unforgiving.  They are accountable.  They will also become your best friends.  You can depend on them.  They are honest.  They are the yardstick by which your journey will be measured.  We now agree on something, the numbers will guide you.

The Journey Begins Here..

      Your new physical condition and the transformation that will accompany it will be the journey to your new life.  So, like any other journey we take these days, we shall begin by using a familiar process.  We will go to a good Map website like Google Maps or Mapquest.  Go to your computer and go to your preferred Map website and click on “Directions.”  What are the first two things you need to know?  Correct!  Your journey requires two things, a starting point and a destination.  You can’t even begin to know HOW you will take a journey without those two things.  Like any decent computer application, your Map website only deals in facts.  Nothing but data.  Tell me where you are.  Is it Boston, MA?  San Francisco, CA?  How about the street name?  Using data, they can pin this down to an accuracy level of feet/meters.  If you answer “in a city” or “a lovely neighborhood,” your map website will not respond.  “Just give me data, just the facts.”  It wants to know latitude and longitude.

      Your physical condition is exactly like this website.  We start with your ‘begin’ point.  You cannot get where you want to go without knowing where you are at all times.  In choosing this starting point, we can estimate, but we should try to refine the information as much as possible.  You must try to define your starting point as well as you can. Let’s look at some potential candidates for your “numbers” together.  The obvious statistic is height and weight.  Your height will not change but, hopefully, your weight will.  Weight is the most common statistic for measuring a person’s physical condition.  It is the base metric for any physical conditioning program.  Your height, when combined with your weight, also gives you a commonly known measurement of your physical state called BMI or Body Mass Index.  You can take some of the more medically related measurements too.  There may be many reasons you have decided to change the direction of your personal health, some of which may be medical. Measurements such as blood pressure and cholesterol are a few of the big ones. 

      There are also performance statistics that you can add in to your “numbers.”  How long does it take you to walk a mile?  How many pushups and situps am I doing?  How much weight am I lifting and how many repetitions does that take?  You can measure in distance, time, strength, etc.  The last two metrics are the big ones because, like weight, they will be thought of every day on this journey.  They are also the two most critical components of the ONE SIMPLE FORMULA you need to keep in your head every day for the rest of your life.  Stick with me on this chapter and at the end, I will reveal those two metrics and the SIMPLE FORMULA.  Our first step in this journey will be capturing and recording your current numbers.  Let’s figure out what your starting point is on this journey.

      The first number will be the most obvious one.  What is your weight?  You don’t need anything more than a good scale to answer this.  If you don’t have one, go get one.  A digital scale would be best.  Most people think a piece of exercise equipment should be the most used item in a journey to better health.  Not so.  The scale should be.  If you heed my words, you will use this daily for the rest of your life.  You will hear many diet professionals tell you that you shouldn’t weigh yourself every day.  I will tell you that that is crap.  Sorry, I don’t have a better or more accurate word than that.  So long as you understand that you are looking for a number that is intended to give your journey direction, you will be fine.  Your body weight does fluctuate daily and during the course of your day.  You can adjust for this by using a few rules.  Weigh yourself at the same time every day.  I weigh myself first thing in the morning.  I get out of bed, go into the bathroom and do my business, and weigh myself.  Weigh yourself in the same condition.  Don’t weigh yourself fully clothed and then, the next day, weigh in while you are naked.  Don’t weigh yourself after breakfast on day one and then, on day two, before breakfast.  Use the same condition every day.  Next, record that weight daily.  Put a cheap calendar on your bathroom door and write the weight down right after you weigh yourself.  Sorry.  I know there is nothing worse than putting it down on paper.  That is called accountability baby…deal with it.  For some of you, weighing yourself may not be as easy as I make it out to be.  I have weighed as much as 285 lbs and most house scales max out at 300.  Some of the new digital ones go as high as 400.  The reality is, for some of you, you may need to see your doctor or find other less regular ways to weigh yourself until you bring yourself to the point where you can use the household items.  This is not an excuse to skip weighing yourself.  This is an invitation to be creative.  Weigh yourself daily, or as frequently as humanly possible, and record it.

      The next number is actually a formula combination of both your height and weight.  It requires a bit of explanation because it is frequently misused and misinterpreted.  It is your BMI.  For this, you need to know your height, which you will combine with your weight and get the calculation for your BMI.  BMI is your Body Mass Index.  You can go online and search for an online calculation using the terms ‘free online BMI calculation’ and simply plug in your height and weight.  It will give you the result.  This metric is supposed to calculate your percentage of body fat based purely on your height and weight.  It is the most common calculation used in most government and institution charts that determine your physical status.  It typically has 5 levels.  The first level is underweight.  This means that based on your height (H) and weight (W), you have very little fat and probably not enough body fat to be considered healthy.  There are broomsticks that outweigh you.  The second level is ‘on weight.’  If you are here, the government says you are fine and meeting their standard.  You are perfectly fine and dandy.  The third level is overweight.  This means that based on H and W, you are between 25% and 30% body fat.  The tables say that you are carrying too much body fat at this point and that maybe you should re-examine your relationship with fast food restaurants and desserts.  The fourth level is called ‘obese.’  This means you are between 30% and 40% body fat.  If you are here, you are approaching the top limit of most standard house scales and home exercise machines.  When living your life requires industrial strength equipment, you need to take a hard look at yourself.  ‘Obese’ used to be the last and worst category and was classified as greater than 30%.  In the past years, due to the ever increasing size of our population in the United States, they added a new category called ‘morbidly obese.’  This is what you classify as if you are greater than 40% body fat.  It’s a pretty sad state of affairs when people become so big that doctors need to coin a term worse than ‘obese.’  When your doctor refers to you in this category, he/she should be wearing a black hooded robe and be carrying a sickle.  I am sorry to say this, and don’t mean this line to be funny, you are killing yourself. 

      BMI is an important number because it is used in many government health assessments and, maybe more importantly to you, tied to things like life insurance tables.  If you are overweight or obese, and you want life insurance, it will cost you dearly.  Moving your BMI to a better place can help your wallet as well as your health.

      I do need to state one thing for the record.  I don’t personally like the BMI calculation.  BMI, as a metric, has one major drawback.  It does not account for people who are well muscled or just have a solid body frame (big bones).  I have both.  I can hear you laughing as I write this.  “The unforgiving diet guy has his own set of rules!”  I actually come from a family that is, stop laughing, big boned.  My ancestors were a combination of French trappers and Native American Indians.  I have had doctors tell me that the bone density of men in my family is higher than the average.  I also have a very muscular frame as I have been very athletic my whole life.  When you calculate my BMI, for a standard 6 foot tall male weighing 205 lbs, it says I am at 27% body fat, which puts me in the category of overweight.  At issue here is the fact that muscle weighs more than fat and if you have a lot of muscle weight, the charts refer to it as all fat.  Every height and weight chart I have ever seen says that I should weigh less than 187 lbs to be considered NOT overweight.  I run about 15-20 miles per week and am in peak condition for a 48 year old male.  I currently weigh between 200 and 205.  At 187, I would be emaciated.  As I said earlier, government charts use this metric.  When I was in the Army, I did not fit any of their charts.  The U.S. Military actually recognizes the deficiency in this metric and then sends the soldiers who are muscular for a body fat composition test.  Based on that measurement, they reset your minimum.  My acceptable weight was reset to 210 lbs.  That was 23 lbs more that the chart’s 187.  I recently had another body fat composition test done and I was at 16% body fat, versus 27% on the chart.  That kind of supports my stance on BMI and will, perhaps, make you stop laughing at me.  Let’s be clear though, if your BMI is 35% and you have a skinny neck and skinny wrists and have never been athletic, your BMI is not ‘muscle.’  So I personally can use the BMI, so long as I discount the government’s interpretation.  You can use it too.  You just have to look at these numbers as directional indicators.  If you are 40% body fat right now, you should try for something lower, like 30% to begin with.  Only a qualified health professional with additional metrics can tell you what your BMI means to you personally.  No one else should interpret that number for you, but you should be aware of the role that number will play in your life.

      The next set of numbers should come directly from your doctor.  They are probably one of the major reasons you have taken a good hard look at your personal health.  You will not see these numbers daily and you should know what they are to begin with.  You should talk to your doctor about getting these numbers at least every month or two as you are changing your personal condition.  These would be your cholesterol and your blood pressure.  Get them and mark them down.  Why are these numbers critical?  Because they are the key ‘warning lights’ for a heart attack.  High cholesterol over time can cause blood channel restrictions and blockages as more and more of that sticky cholesterol clings to the inner lining of your veins and arteries.  Ever driven down a highway and have four lanes become three?  Or two?  What happens?  We see the traffic flow slow to a crawl.  If all lanes stop because of a traffic accident, you stop entirely.  This is where the analogy ends.  Traffic can stop but your blood can’t.  It has to flow to keep you living.  When your heart continues to move the blood around your body through smaller blood vessel spaces at the same rate of speed, the harder your system works and your blood pressure goes up.  When you get a blockage at this point, it spells disaster in the form of a heart attack (the pump breaks) or an artery rupture (the pipe splits).  This isn’t a pretty picture.  You want low cholesterol to keep the blood highway clear and you want to know that blood pressure as a measure of how hard your heart is working within your blood system.  There’s one other thing about blood pressure (BP) that you should know.  As your physical condition improves, your heart, a muscle, will get more efficient with exercise.  So long as you are not a risk due to some kind of heart health condition, as a measurement of your heart’s performance, your blood pressure is great to know.  You would ideally like to be able to move your body around this world with as little physical stress as possible.  Your BP metric will help you considerably here.

      The next set of numbers is what I refer to as ‘performance based.’  They are the indicators that will tell you how well you are doing with exercise in your life.  You should be able to calculate these numbers because all of you will have some form of exercise in your life from now on, right?  Just say ‘yes.’  ‘No’ is not an option.  I need to qualify that last statement with one comment. 

MAKE SURE that you consult your doctor to make sure you are physically safe enough to start an exercise program.  The larger you are, the more important this clearance becomes.  If you have ever had any medical conditions that make exercise dangerous, again, get your doctor’s opinion. 

If your exercise includes distance and time, record it.  How far did I walk/run/bike over what time?  I did 3 miles in 45 minutes walking.  I did 2 miles jogging in 20 minutes.  I swam 30 laps in 40 minutes.  Whatever your exercise was, record it.  Try to maintain a degree of consistency to your program so you can measure your improvements.  The goal you should set is to do better every day.  At first, based on how big and out of condition you are, the numbers may be shocking.  Know this, as you continue to exercise, the improvement in the first month or two will be very noticeable and personally encouraging.  Take that from my own personal experience.  Every time I lost a large amount of weight, the exercise metrics were the ones (along with weight) that I focused on the most.  It may have come from my history of athletics or my competitive edge, but that was very important to me and I believe it played a large role in my weight loss success.  When you are done exercising, write your performance numbers on the calendar in the same blocks as you wrote your weight. 

      The last set of numbers you want to know are the most necessary to achieving your weight loss and personal conditioning goals.  All of these numbers have to do with your calories.  Let me say right from the start that calculating these numbers will be very difficult because they will never be more than estimates.  You need to know how many calories you take in each day and how many calories you burn each day.  Measuring these numbers will take some diligence and will require some personal honesty on your part.  If you are not honest about these numbers, it could disillusion you about how much weight you should be losing with your new lifestyle.  Why are these numbers hard?  It is because they require estimating.  If you constantly underestimate your intake or overestimate the calories you are burning, you just will be disillusioning yourself about your goal.  Most importantly, these numbers are how you will live your life every day going forward from today.  They are the key to maintaining proper health conditioning.  The process will be hard at the beginning but, over time, will become instinctive.  At some point, you will not even calculate the numbers.  You will simply translate the food you are looking at into good/bad choices based on your “gut.”  Believe it or not, people who you look at that are in good physical health/condition have learned to do this at some point in their life.  It is so natural to them that they don’t even notice.  If you followed them around daily and marked what they ate, you would see why they are in the condition they are in.  From quantity to food quality, they make better decisions than the fatties do.  You have to learn this.  You have to internalize it.  You MUST train yourself now to prepare for the rest of your life.  Lastly, these calorie counts are the key to the ONE SIMPLE FORMULA that you need to know to maintain your physical condition for the rest of your life.

      We will cover the counting of the calories in two future chapters.  One chapter is on the food you are eating and counting what you put in the tank.  The other chapter is about the fat burning process and how you count the calories you burn.

      There are many more numbers that you can use as the barometer for your success.  My recommendation is to not overcomplicate, keep it simple.  Pick the one you can measure daily, of course…weight.  Pick a few you can measure monthly that are performance based and perhaps your BMI or blood pressure (which can be done by almost any professional for no fee).  Lastly, pick a few you can measure every 3 to 6 months like your cholesterol.

      This is where your journey begins.

The Journey Ends Here…

      Where are you going?  As we started this chapter we noted that every journey requires a starting point and a destination.  Here is where we pick the destination.  This part is not difficult.  This is the part where you set the goal you want to attain.  You will need goal numbers that compliment the numbers you chose as your standard personal lifestyle metrics.

      I have only one suggestion.  Make the goals modest by making them short term goals.  If you want to lose 100 pounds, make the first goal 20 lbs.  Once you get there, you can make a new goal of 20 lbs.  If you set out on a boat to find an island, it is easier to do five 20 mile journeys to a set of islands you can see than it is to set out on a 100 mile journey to an island nowhere in sight.  Keep the milestones visible.

      How much do I weigh today?  What is reasonable here?  I would like to lose 10 (or 15 or 20) pounds in the next month.  Here is where you pick the number.

      I can walk 3 miles in 45 minutes.  In four weeks, I want that to be 40 minutes.  I also want to begin to jog a little, in spurts, while I walk.  I swam 30 laps in the pool at the gym in 45 minutes.  I want to increase that to 45 laps, it doesn’t matter how much time it takes.  So long as your numbers take a reasonable approach to improvement, and so long as you work on them, whatever you pick is fine.  Again, if you put a time limit on achieving the goal, and if you hit it early, reset and keep getting stronger.

      What is my cholesterol?  My bad cholesterol is 230.  I want it to be 200 by my next screening.  Better yet, for this one, ask your doctor.  What do they recommend?  Whatever they say, that is the goal.

      How many calories (estimated) did I consume today?  How many did I burn?  We will do the math and apply the ONE SIMPLE FORMULA for our daily calculation of progress.

      By this time it should go without saying but, I will remind you again, record these goals.  Put it in a visible place, preferably on that calendar I asked you to keep on your daily weight as well as the other monthly, three month and six month metrics.  At the end of beginning of every day you should look hard at these goals and see yourself attaining them.  You should recommit to them every day.  At the end of every day, you should look at them again and look at yourself in the mirror.  Ask yourself this question.  “Have you worked as hard on these goals today as you could have?”  Be honest.  Now look at your numbers.  What are your numbers telling you?  They will keep you honest.  Tomorrow is a new day and the next step in your plan.  Will it be a strong step?  Only you can answer this.

      That’s it.  Your journey is now mapped out in a new game plan.  You will look at your numbers every morning and every night and make an honest assessment.

      We will get to the formula in a moment but I now have to give you the third lesson of the book.

Calculate and record your numbers daily.  Commit your goals to memory.  Dedicate your daily activity to making the choices that support moving the numbers.  At this point in your journey, it is ALL about the numbers.   

      Are you ready for the ONE SIMPLE FORMULA?

     

Click here for Chapter Four

Fat Is Not Acceptable: Chapter One - I Get It

      In this book, I am going to be pretty harsh on many things.  I am going to be unforgiving on how you think about yourself.  I am going to be tough on convincing you that you actually can achieve good health…because at some time, you are going to want to throw in the towel.  I am going to be very critical of how we, as a society, are adapting to the ‘fat’ condition instead of countering it.  Many of the things I have to say are, initially, not going to be pleasant to hear.  I am not going to coddle or be kind about a condition I have learned to take very seriously.  The first thing people will want to do is destroy the messenger.

      “It’s real easy for a thin person to dictate to the rest of us.”

      “It is too hard when you are this big!”

      “He has no idea how we feel.”

      Wrong.  On all counts.  I know exactly what it feels like.  I have fought a battle with weight my whole life.  I know what it is like to be very big.  I know what it is like to not be able to fit into a seat on a plane or at an old-time baseball park.  I know what it is like to not fit in normal sized clothes.  I know what it is like to be denied employment because of my size, turned down for dates, and made fun of.  I don’t know what it is like to be morbidly obese but if you are 3 times the size that I was at my peak, I do know you probably have 3 times as many health problems and 10 times as many emotional issues tied to your size.  And lastly, I do know what it is like to get so large that you need to choose an alternative, and perhaps drastic, route to losing the weight.  That, you will find out, was the ‘never again’ breaking point for me.  I don’t need to understand the precise nature of your exact pain to understand the pain of being fat.  I get it.

      I also get something else.  I have lost over 50 lbs from my frame about 4 times in my life.  Losing between 50 and 85-90 lbs is hard.  I give myself credit for being able to do it.  I have also had times in my life when I gained it all back and then some.  In those cases, I blame myself for letting my size and health get so badly out of hand.  I have been very thin and I have been massive.  I know the highs of being a person who was in shape and at least attractive enough to get dates with cute girls.  I know the lows of not being able to climb stairs without breathing heavy or sitting on a piece of lawn furniture and having it blow apart under my huge frame.  I didn’t get large because of something natural, like being pregnant.  I did it the fun way.  I did it by eating whatever I felt like, not exercising, not considering my health, and never looking at myself critically enough to make an honest personal assessment of my condition.  Unlike most of you, I know both sides of this coin.  I know the journey very well and I know what it will take for you to get back to healthy.  So if you bought this book because you need help, the first thing you have to understand is that I am coming from a place that is very much, if not exactly, right where you are right now.  I also know where you need to go.  Don’t read what I am saying and fall into the trap of ‘shooting the messenger.’  As hard as I am going to be on these topics, I really do get it.

      I am 48 years old as of this writing.  I was born in 1962 in Rhode Island, to a French/Irish family.  I can remember, as a child of the 60’s and 70’s, when television had only 3 major networks and a handful of local UHF stations.  From 9AM to 11AM there were talk shows and from 11AM to 4PM, nothing but soap operas.  There wasn’t any cable and no computers to sit in front of for hours on end.  It was a time when kids left the house at 8:30AM in the summer and didn’t come back until dinner.  You never knew where they were or how they ate lunch (or if!).  We walked everywhere and, if you had one, also rode our bicycles.  We rode for miles every day, not point to point, just due to continuous activity. 

      In my neighborhood, there was a field at the end of my street (referred to by all of us as, of course, ‘the field’) that was always full of kids.  There was a playground area and one baseball diamond.  Not a formal diamond like they have today with dugouts, fences and a real homeplate…this diamond was created by kids actually playing on it.  The playing surface was grass and the infield was made of dirt, but not because some Little League Committee groomed it.  It was made of dirt from the constant wear of running the bases.  It was a time when the base path and the infield were dirt because it was used from sunup to sundown and the grass was trampled to death by the kids and the game itself.  There were days when the neighborhood teams fought over who would use it, the loser having to play in the other corner of the lot and make a ‘fake’ diamond.  We would use the players’ gloves of the batting team as bases.  The field had holes, bumps, rocks and divots.  Sometimes there was glass from a broken bottle.  There were no umpires, only the rules we made and enforced among ourselves.  We didn’t need organized play.  We lived to play outside by ourselves.

      I also remember being a kid who loved food.  I had a Grandmother and some older Aunts who were awesome cooks.  They came from a farming family in Canada and had moved to New England to start their own families in the early 1900’s and get a different life.  They cooked from ‘scratch’ all the time.  In the 60’s and 70’s, that wasn’t entirely uncommon, but there were a lot of prepared foods and desserts that were starting to be produced.  We would have Sunday dinner at their house and visit them a couple times a week.  These were women who were used to cooking for a family of working farmers in Canada.  The meals were hearty ones with lots of meat, potatoes, butter and milk.  My Aunt Gert used to make these Tollhouse cookies that I would eat 8-9 at a pop.  These meals would have been great for me if I was about to go outside and run the cows back and forth from the far pasture or spend the next 6 hours bailing hay.  But I wasn’t.  I was just a normal kid eating like a farmer.  It was at this point in my life, around 8-10 years of age, when my happy relationship with food was cultivated.

      At this point in my life, the eating was balanced with activity…but slowly, as I got slightly older and became more social and leisure oriented (still as a kid) the eating habits took their toll on me.  As we moved into the mid-70’s, weekend and weeknight television quality was improving (and I do love television), much more emphasis was placed on my studies and reading, and the active lifestyle I once had in my early childhood was slowing down.  I was starting to develop a ‘softer’ look as the food I took in outpaced the energy I expended.  My inherited and undisciplined eating habits had steered me straight to the Husky pants section of the local clothing store.

      Stores in the 70’s were not accommodating to the fat people.  There was no ‘Plus Size’ section or a real “Big and Tall” store.  If you were one of the fat ones, it was embarrassing.  You had to get special pants and wear baggy shirts, and nothing fit right.  Most of the other kids were in good physical shape.  If you were fat, you stood out.  You were the Catcher on the little league team and the ‘blocker’ when playing football.  You sat the bench in basketball because that sport required speed and agility, and fat kids weren’t fast or stealthy.  If you didn’t get involved and play, you were lonely.  There weren’t a lot of sports either.  Not like the plethora of activities kids have today.  If you didn’t play one of the major sports, you didn’t play.  You didn’t have a computer and a social network either.  You didn’t have the ability to create a thin avatar and hide behind it so people couldn’t see you.

      There were no diet foods back then.  Think about that one for a moment.  NO diet food existed.  If you went on a ‘diet’ it meant one thing and one thing only, disciplined eating habits.  There were no foods created specifically to accommodate the fatties.  The other kids had Ring Dings and Yodels for their lunch dessert, you got an apple not some apple tart with Splenda.  They had ice cream for a snack while you had a couple crackers and a little peanut butter.  They didn’t make ‘low fat’ anything back then.  There was actually a dietary form of ice cream called ‘Ice Crystals.’  What the hell was an ice crystal?  You know what it was?  It was what we fat kids ate.  That’s all you needed to know.  The other kids drank regular milk…you got skim.  There were only two types of milk back then, not 8-10 different forms of it.  If you had the skim, it was different.  It was watered down milk and you could actually tell the difference with your eyes!  You didn’t even have to drink the stuff to know what it was.  Foods for the fatties weren’t disguised so that you could be like everyone else.  If you were on a ‘diet’ everyone knew.  It wasn’t a badge of honor to be ‘dieting.’  It was something you had to do when you were not the same as everyone else, not healthy and not fitting in.  If you didn’t fit in, society did not pander to your fat and unhealthy lifestyle, you just had to fix it.

      How do I know so well how “living fat” was back then?  How can I describe it in such vivid detail?  It is because that was my first diet experience.  I was eleven years old and in the fifth grade.  1973.  You never forget the first one.  My doctor prescribed the diet and made my mother the enforcer.  She was about 30 lbs overweight at the time too, so I was in great hands.  You also never forget how it felt to be different in a bad way.  You can always feel the first sting of being slighted in sports or socially because someone looked at you like you were less than everyone else.  You will always remember the little girl you had the crush on who would never consider you as someone she would want as a ‘boyfriend.’  No matter how old you get, some things never change.

      That first diet taught me a lot of things.  Mainly, it taught me that I didn’t like diets.  It taught me some great covert tactics on how to sneak food.  It also taught me that, as much as being fat made me stick out, being on that diet made me stick out and feel miserable at the same time.  I also was not very successful on the diet, so it taught me that diets are painful and don’t work.  That isn’t true, but it’s what I took away from the experience.

      As I progressed through High School in the late 70’s, I continued to get bigger.  In High School, through the teen years, a kid’s biggest desire is social acceptance.  If you were a fat kid back then (when the percentage of fat kids was a lot lower than today) you stood out.  This was when I first realized that you could be the greatest person in the world on the inside, but how you looked on the outside was the first thing people judged you on.  Unlike the attractive kids, who were readily accepted socially, you had to work a lot harder for that acceptance.  It took a lot longer because everyone had to learn the ‘you’ on the inside.  You might have to be the real smart kid who helped the others or the very funny kid who always cracked the right joke.  You might lift weights so that the excess bulge was complimented with enough muscle to make you intimidating.  But whatever route you attempted, acceptance would take longer.  Another painful reality is that, often, that acceptance did not happen at all.  Your friends became the rest of the ‘outcasts.’  Don’t misunderstand me, I know it sounds like I am being cruel and mean to the kids who fell into the group of ‘outcasts.’  I am not.  I was one of them.  I made some fantastic friends and found out that inner value far outweighed the persona on the outside.  Those valuable lessons, however, did not offset the negative feelings of not being accepted.  Those feelings were as real as any of my other meaningful discoveries.

      It was in my junior year in High School that I developed a big crush on a sophomore girl.  I was completely infatuated.  As was typical, she found me funny to be around, but not in that boyfriend/girlfriend way.  I got the opportunity to take her to a formal dance when she was unexpectedly dateless.  We went ‘as friends.’  I hoped she would learn more about the real me and give me a chance.  There was no way that fairy tale was going to come true.  I was a big, fat, curly haired freak with glasses…who could blame her.  One May night in 1979, as I lay sulking in my room and watching television, the movie ‘Rocky’ came on.  I hadn’t seen it in the theater and this was its TV debut.  I watched this guy who didn’t have a shot make his dreams come true.  He worked his butt off to some awesome music and sweat bullets, but he pulled it off.  Something changed me that night watching that movie.  I looked in the mirror and swore that I was going to make my senior year different from all the past years I had experienced.  I was going to change myself into something different.  The next day I went out and got the vinyl record soundtrack of the movie.  The day after, I began trying to jog in the mornings and watching what I was eating.  I would do some warm-ups before I went and play the soundtrack over and over until it rang in my head.  I couldn’t jog to save my life.  I was dead after 100 yards…and my knees hurt.  I was 5 foot 10 inches and weighed 225 lbs.  I had a 40 inch waist.  I knew nothing about dieting and continued my poor eating habits while exercising.  I was miserably trying to eat right…I lost about 5 lbs that month.

      As June began, I had a conversation with a good friend of mine who had lost a lot of weight in his sophomore year.  I needed to know what he did. My diet was barely working and I was dying due to lack of progress.  Rocky needed some help.  He told me he had worn a plastic suit and that he would wear thermals under it and sweat the fat out.  He said he ate a lot of fruit and drank a lot of water.  Great.  This was my first dietary plan.  Straight from a 17 year old kid.  Hey, it worked for him, right?  And so my summer began.  I got a little help from the girl across the street.  She was a year younger than me and we had grown up together.  She was also gorgeous and a swimmer/gymnast…in awesome shape.  She told me, if it would help, she would run with me when she could.  Even though she was like a sister to me, having her running in front of me in shorts and a tank top was like, at that point, dragging a carrot in front of a field horse.  No matter how I felt, I plowed on behind her.  Pretty soon, we had a good schedule going and we were running 2-3 miles every other day.  I was wearing heavy sweatshirts in June, drinking tons of water and eating more fruit than an island boy.  One small meal at dinner time was all I allowed myself, and I always ran after I ate it.  I didn’t alter that diet for 3 months.

      You know what?  The weight finally started to drop materially.  I started at 220 and went to 210, and then one day at the end of June, 200 pounds.  That was a number I hadn’t seen in a long time.  It became easier to run.  My 3 miles became 5 miles per outing and the weight dropped even more.  My neighbor stopped running with me, my pace was pretty fast and I didn’t really need a supporting incentive at that point.  By the end of July, I was at about 180 and my Grandfather made a comment to my mother that he had never seen me look so thin and he thought I was dying.  On and on I went.  I would run in the sun, in the rain, or at 2AM if the feeling hit me.  By late August, I was running 10 miles at a pop.  I felt awesome.  It was almost time to go back to school for my Senior year.  My mother suggested contact lenses instead of the glasses.  So we went out and got some.  It was wild to be able to run in the rain and feel the mist on my eyes for the first time since 4^th grade when I first had to wear glasses.  Throughout the summer, I had looked at myself in the mirror every day looking for changes.  When you look that closely and that frequently, you can very easily lose track of how much progress you are actually making.  I knew from the scale what the numbers were, but that wasn’t translating to what I was seeing in the mirror.  The visual difference was not as real to me as the numbers were.  There I was, at the end of August…160 lbs.

      Then the day occurred when I knew with certainty that my senior year was going to be different.  I knew I had reached my goal. 

      I hadn’t seen any friends all summer.  I had dedicated myself 100% to the weight loss.  My good friend Mickey called me and asked me if I wanted to go to a movie.  That sounded good to me.  I went to my room that afternoon and couldn’t find any clothes that fit.  I had gone the whole summer in sweatpants and wore my younger and thinner brother’s gym stuff when mine were uncomfortably baggy.  I had no real pants or shirts that I could wear.  My clothes from the past spring were like wearing huge potato sacks.  This was real strange to me.  My mother took me to get a pair of jeans and a couple shirts so I would ‘look decent.’  I tried on the jeans, size 38, then 36, 34 and then 32.  32 were the ones that fit.  I had dropped 4 sizes from 40 to 32…in three months.  I was looking at myself in the mirror, but I still didn’t get it. 

      Mickey and I got to the movies that night and we waited in line.  It was a long corridor and the wall opposite us was mirrored from end to end.  As we stood there in the crowd of people, I turned to look in the mirror.  I could not see myself.  I saw a crowd of people, but where was the fat kid formerly known as ‘me?’  With my new shirt, new jeans and contact lenses, I finally found myself amongst the other people.  I stood there shocked.  I looked normal.  I looked like the rest of them.  I looked, dare I say, in better shape than the rest and I was the same size as my thin friend.  I also, very immodestly, noticed I was kind of handsome.  This is going to sound sad, but I thought I was going to cry.

      I will continue my story as the book goes on but suffice to say, here is where the first lesson of this book gets imparted.

The only person that you should be trying to make happy through your improved health and weight loss is YOU.

      You are the only one whose opinion counts here.  If you are doing this to improve some of the things going on in your life like social acceptance, a better look, etc., that is fine, so long as the driving motivating factor for this effort is your desire for a better personal condition.  If you do it for you, then anybody else’s ancillary benefit from your improved health (wife, kids, etc.) will be taken care of.  What I did in the summer of 1979, I did for me.  I wanted something better for myself and at that point in my life, it was a better social life and acceptance from my peers.  It was dates and girlfriends and the fun of being invited to the cool parties that had always gone on without me.  As an adult, my motivating factors have changed but one thing has not changed whether it was my first big diet or my last one.  I did it for my own happiness and for my own benefit.  I did it for me.  I selfishly put everything else in my life aside.  Nothing trumped the effort.  Nothing.

Click here for Chapter Two

Fat Is Not Acceptable: Intro

Introduction

This is the last diet book you should ever buy. Why? There are many reasons, but mainly, because this is not a diet book. It is a book on how to become a healthy and fit person. This is not about a diet, it is about a lifestyle choice. There came a moment in my life when I experienced a breaking point and I literally threw a switch in my brain to make a change and chose to live my life in a different way. You have to make that choice too and you have to make it alone. Society and our popular culture will not help you. It is a choice that, unfortunately, is getting harder and harder for everyone to make and maintain. I made the choice because of how I honestly felt about myself. How I felt when I looked into the mirror, or put on my big clothes, or ate until I thought I was going to be sick. I also continue to make that choice every day. I moved my health and my physical condition to the priority position it now occupies in my life and I have never felt this good. I feel better, I look better, my self-esteem is much higher, and I will be able to enjoy this life I have been given for a lot longer than my condition was going to allow. It came down to a choice I made for myself. If this book helps you make that choice for yourself, you will never again need a book on dieting.

Before I write another word, I want to address something…the title. This is not an apology, it is an explanation. I chose this title consciously. It is not meant to be amusing. Every day I see a culture that is increasingly focused on simply sitting in one place and eating. We use food as conversation, food as an accessory, and food as recreation. All references to gluttony aside, it wouldn’t be so bad if it were balanced with exercise. It is not. We are literally drowning in our own fat. We need to stop viewing ‘fat’ as a state of being and start viewing it as a medical condition. I will not sugar coat the word “fat.” We have used that word to describe this condition since we were kids. As our society evolves in its “political correctness” we love to soften these harsh toned words. We find nicer ways to say them. Let me ask you something, “how is that working for you?” This book will focus more on this topic but suffice to say that if you are overweight, obese or morbidly obese, you need to be able to look at yourself honestly in the mirror and say the title of this book to yourself. You need to say these words because, in this politically correct society, people won’t say it to you or anyone else openly (but they will think it). You need to say these words because it may just save your life. Fat is NOT acceptable. Say it to yourself. Say it with conviction. I did. I still say it every day. I can show you how to change your life because I changed my own. This is my story.

Two years ago, after a lifetime of yo-yo dieting and ultimately getting myself to the grand unhealthy weight of 285 pounds, I made a choice to change my lifestyle. It’s easy to read what I am writing and feel my attitude and dismissively say, “He has no idea, he has never been fat.” Oh yes I have. I have been fat my whole life. At certain points along the way, I have also been thin. I know what it is like because I have lived it too…until it was killing me. I did not make a choice to lose weight this time. I chose to put myself in a position where I would look good, feel good, be able to exercise, and, possibly, to extend the duration of my time on this planet. It just so happens that the change I was making also needed weight loss as a part of the formula. My goal couldn’t succeed without it. So I am serious when I say this story is not a diet story and that it is about making a healthy change in your life and lifestyle. There is a difference…and that is primarily why I am writing this book.

Currently, we are in the fattest state that humans have been in at any point on the evolutionary scale. I want to be clear here, I use the word FAT for a reason. I don’t call it “large” or “hefty.” I don’t refer to it as “big boned” or “overweight.” There is a scientific and clinical term for it. It is called fat. I am not into coddling things that are as seriously impairing to your life as are those globules of food storage cells exploding under your skin. Let’s deal with it honestly, fat is killing us. For all the gyms, sports programs, athletic equipment stores and sneaker companies, we are growing fat and unhealthy at a frightening pace. As a nation, since 1970, the United States has doubled the percentage of obese people from 15% to 30% with 8 states at rates of 35% or greater. All this has occurred in a period of only 40 years.

Stop for a moment and simply look around you. Think of yourself as a referee and go to a shopping mall and look at the people. Play judge. It doesn’t feel nice. In fact, it feels kind of nasty. But just do it. Look at everyone and ask yourself this question, “are they fat or thin?” You don’t need a special measuring tool. Your eyes and your judgment will suffice. Keep count. It may shock you because we are all so accepting today of something that has become the norm. In all honesty, our condition is easy to miss. Here is why. I once read, “If you put a frog in a pot of boiling water, it will leap out instantly. But if you put a frog in water at room temperature, and slowly bring it to a boil, the frog will cook without realizing it.” That is where we are right now. Fat is built into the fabric of our culture in such a way that we are unconsciously “cooking” and not even recognizing it until something drastic happens and it slaps us in the face. Take a good long look at the people around you and count the overweight ones. The percentage that you count is scary. You will note that what you call overweight is greater than 65% of the people. That is 6-7 out of every 10. As noted in a November 2009 American Health report on obesity, the percentage of people who are obese, classified by a Body Fat Percentage greater than 30%, is 27% of the people. More than 2 out of every 10 people you will meet are clinically obese. Take a real hard look around you. Then look at yourself and make an honest assessment.

Our cultural love affair of food and leisure is not going to change any time soon. Our society’s need to be “politically correct” is not going to change either. We are killing ourselves with our eating habits and it is not even socially acceptable anymore to be critical of that fact because it is “inappropriate” to judge the evidence. That evidence, of course, is the fat people all over our society. If you want a healthy life, YOU are going to have to change. This is something you have to do for yourself and that you may have to do with very little support from those around you. To do this, you need to be angry and fed up. You need to look at those around you, do the assessment, and then take a good long honest look at yourself in the mirror. You need to be angry with yourself. Once you have decided that you are not going to be one of the literal masses, you will have to change forever how you look at three things. You need to address how you eat, the physical machine you own that processes that food, and the level of physical activity in your life. That’s it. If you can understand and control those three things, you can change the quality of your life.

This book will cover how to think about what you eat. The word ‘diet’ has been severely misused in our culture. ‘Diet’ is not a verb. At least, it didn’t start that way. ‘Dieting’ is not something you do, like ‘talking’ or ‘working.’ ‘Diet’ is/was a noun. Your ‘diet’ is the food you eat daily to maintain your physical state of being. It is not a special word that, if employed in your life, results in the effect of weight-loss. ‘Diet’ is also not a special list of foods that you eat so that you can lose weight. There is no list. Companies who are desperate to make money and sell you their food products and weight loss programs made that up. Your diet is what you eat. What YOU eat. Period.

“Ooh, you lost so much weight! You look fabulous! What diet were you on?” If you answer this question properly, you should say, “I was eating X, Y and Z.” The answer to this question is not ‘South Beach’ or ‘Weight Watchers’ or ‘Atkins.’ Here is why. If someone came up to you and said, “Holy cow, you have really ballooned up, you’re huge! What diet were you on?” The answer wouldn’t be named after a place, a process, or anyone special. The answer should honestly be something like, “I was on the sleeve of Oreo’s, Ben and Jerry’s, sit on my ass all day diet.” Doesn’t have quite the same sexy ring as calling it the ‘Behemoth Diet’ or the ‘Big Alaskan Diet’ does it? The diets are all named for only one reason, so you can tell them apart and know which one to link back to the ad or infomercial you saw it on. Once you know the name, then you can buy their product. That is the only reason to put a name on a list of products that people will put in their bodies. Incidentally, when you are done reading this book and I have given you some pointers on what to eat, don’t refer to it as ‘Dick’s Diet’ or something equally lame. I would consider it embarrassing in the same way as one would consider naming something like ‘breathing’ with a special label. We all breath and we all should be eating like reasonable human beings. I just want to share with you what I have learned about doing it right. This book will attempt to change the way you look at the food you eat.

This book will cover exercise. We will go over the steps you need to take to view your life as one that requires activity to maintain your health and quality of life. Especially in your older years, this is critical. In your younger years, you should be building a lifestyle of activity so you can have those good habits all formed when ‘old age’ comes knocking on your door. It comes fast and, if you are in your young teens, twenty’s or thirty’s, is looming just around the corner. Make it a habit now.

Exercise is the toughest part of being a healthy person. Everyone can cut down on their food intake with very little effort. It does take will power to sit there while others are engorging themselves, but not a lot of work. It actually takes less time to NOT eat than it takes to eat. Exercise is a very different animal. It takes commitment. It takes time. You have to…gasp…sweat! Is it really necessary? Is it…really? Yes. No weight loss process has ever been successful without exercise. People who successfully lose weight exercise and exercise with frequency. Ever watch “The Biggest Loser” on TV? What do you see most on that show? It’s about losing weight, so why don’t they focus just on eating right and dieting? They don’t do that because eliminating food does not work without exercise. You also can’t do 40 minutes of television programming on NOT eating! When I watch that show it looks like they have those people exercising 24/7. It takes up almost 75% of the show! You need to exercise. Here is another factoid you will love. Once you lose the weight, if you stop living an active lifestyle, the weight comes back most of the time and much faster than it came off. That is why we will talk about making it a part of your life. Everyone should have a lifestyle of activity that matches their eating habits.

Many companies and corporations have spent a lot of money trying to convince you that being a healthy size is very complicated. They want you to know that their solution is THE one. They alone have solved this complicated riddle, especially for you. Of course they have. That is how they differentiate themselves from each other and make money. The fact of the matter is that achieving good health (in both your size and physical condition) is incredibly simple. It is hard and requires discipline, no doubt, but it is also very simple. I had to change how I look at my life. I had to change my priorities. This all happened over a four month period and has been hardened over the last two years. You can do this, you really can. I can be a sarcastic and brutally honest S.O.B. but I can also say with conviction that I believe all of you, if you can find the drive, can do this.

Lastly, who do I think I am? Who am I to be writing such a book and proselytizing on weight-loss? I am Dick St.Jacques, WD. What is the “WD?” It stands for Doctorate of Weight-Loss. Honorary. Actors, politicians, business people all get them from colleges and universities for a lifetime of experience in a particular field. I have 45 years of experience gaining weight, losing weight and ultimately culminating in a change in my lifestyle that will support long term health. I am ready to impart my wisdom upon you. For these reasons, I am bequeathing the degree upon myself…and Dr. Dick says, “Fat is NOT acceptable.”

Click here for Chapter One

You Can't Go Home Again

When you go on the Optifast diet, if you follow it and do not cheat, it is like being in a nice secure bubble. You are insulated from all the bad things that you were doing that turned you into a Thanksgiving Day float. But eventually, you have to leave the bubble. The rest of the world doesn't live in there. That's when your time comes and it's "fly little bird, fly!!" It's time to do the hard work. It's time to look at the real world and address all the things that contributed to the XXL or XXXL person who walked through that door on day one.

At week 12, I hit 219 lbs. I had now shed about 60 plus lbs of ugly fat. 12 weeks is an incredibly fast time to lose that amount of weight. It is weird in that you just seem to be hitting stride and now it is time to think about managing your life OFF the diet. My original goal as set by the doctor was 215. My personal goal was 205. I was basically where the doctor thought I should be. Next week, we would talk about adding another meal to the daily plan. As I have said, I was on three shakes per day plus one carefully measured dinner meal. I now had to consider a diet that was 100% real food. The Miriam Hospital program, in my opinion, excelled at showing you how to manage your eating like a normal person. Strike that. Our country is now comprised of a population where over 50% are considered overweight, obese and morbidly obese. This condition is becoming the 'norm.' So this program was teaching us how to eat within the boundaries of a normal human body, not at the levels we have become accustomed to as a society.

To do this, the education program in broken into behavior and dietary management. I have said this over and over, but the diet management was the most valuable to me. I am going to cover some of the topics in the next few blog entries.

A man of 210 lbs burns about 2000 calories per day. If you want to lose weight over a long term, you should restrict your intake to about 1600-1800 calories per day. Exercise plays an important role. First, you need to have enough energy to exercise. Second, you can burn a large amount of calories depending on how much exercise you are doing. On my diet I was taking in 900 calories per day. I was burning about 2000 normal calories and about 400 exercise calories. The exercise calories came about from my speed walking which I did daily. On weekends, in addition to the walking, I would mow the lawn etc. I was running a daily 1500 calorie deficit. The weight, at this tempo, comes off at a speed that has been reflected in my progress.

Start to think about your sex, height and weight. Look at a chart that will show you your normal calorie burn. That is what you work with daily. The most important thing you need to know now, coming off of Optifast, is how many calories you are burning on average daily and how much you are taking in. We could go into the detail about the type of calories but let's keep this real simple. My 'off-diet' calorie intake should be about 1800 calories daily. I could manage this because I had decided that I would exercise 3-4 days per week and figured I was burning around 2400 calories per day. That number gave me some leeway for any small indiscretions. We aren't perfect and we aren't robots either. So that's my number 1,800.

One of the most astonishing things I learned in the education classes was how many calories I had been ingesting. I had absolutely convinced myself that, before this diet, I didn't consume that many calories. The day it really came home to roost was the day our class covered the "Dining Out Guide." This is a compiled list of meals and their calorie content from some of the most known restaurants in the United States. If you are serious about losing weight, you should go out and buy "The CalorieKing Calorie, Fat & Carbohydrate Counter 2009" by Allan Borushek. If you eat out even one night a week, you should just take this little baby with you. It lists the calories in most foods but it also has a section like our class "Dining Out Guide," only even more extensive. It tells you just how much you are stuffing into that chubby little frame when you eat out in restaurants. You won't believe it. I didn't .

Here are a few examples. As an appetizer (the meal hasn't even arrived yet!!), an order of fried Calamari (3 cups)....1,037 calories. That was more than my diet allowed ALL DAY! Here are some more appetizers. Ruby Tuesday's low carb Spicy Buffalo Chicken Wings with dressing...1,090 cals. That's right football aficionado's, don't even try to tell me that you limit it to one serving either. Especially during the playoffs and on Super Bowl Sunday. Don't rationalize this one...the restaurant doesn't matter! Check out TGI Friday's Buffalo Wings...1,010 cals. Whew!! But you may actually be making a relatively HEALTHY choice! Check out these! Stuffed Potato Skins with sour cream...1,260 cals. The Bloomin' Onion with dipping sauce (because it tastes awful when it's plain)...2,130 cals. Here is the all time show stopper appetizer, Cheese Fries with ranch dressing...3,010 cals. Make sure you have the diet-cola!!

Here is something you figure out pretty fast using these guides, and take it as a tip. The appetizers listed above had more calories than the entrees. They also have more calories than dessert! The golden rule, SKIP THE APPETIZERS and SKIP THE DESSERT. If you are going to eat the meal, an appetizer could multiply your calorie intake by (depending on choice) a factor of 4!! Add a dessert and multiply that intake by 6!

I could cover this forever. Go and buy the book. It will be the best education and investment you can make. Go and find a chart of calories you burn daily, print the number in BIG BOLD CHARACTERS on a sticky label, and put that label on the cover of the guide. If you are serious about weight loss, you may never have another appetizer OR dessert.

Other major thing to consider in restaurants:

(1) Watch the alcohol. It is a source of empty calories and makes resisting the dessert and appetizers hard. You will thank me when you get the bill and see the difference between the cost of two Brown Ale's and two Ice Water's with Lime.
(2) Watch how the meal is cooked. If it says "fried" or "baked", ignore it. Go for grilled or steamed. Watch the sauces. Go light. Pick "marinated in juice" over "marinated in butter."
(3) No pasta and no starch. Go double veggies always with your protein.
(4) If all else fails, go with the Grilled Chicken or Fish Salad.

My pre-Optifast life was one of excess. Absolutely. No exercise. Much food. Much drink. I was King of my castle. My castle of fat.

The walls are down and it's time to live like a person who hopes to see the finish line. It IS possible. But...you can't go home again. You don't want to anyway.

Next: Stay with the new life plan, don't listen to them!!

Motivation (Part 3): What Motivates Kirstie Alley?

So what motivates Kirstie Alley (or any of us for that matter)? Will we ever be able to answer this?

Let's try to apply the theory that we have exposed in Parts 1 and 2. I have to make some assumptions based on what I know about her life. Most people of even a moderate degree of success fulfill their Level One needs. Let's presuppose that she has done this. The Level Two need of Safety and Soundness is probably being filled as well. I do not know of other medical issues she may have but I am assuming, since she is still large, that her weight issues are not tied to them. With this in mind, Diet and Physical Fitness (DPF) are probably not on Level Two for her. So let's also presuppose Level Two is fulfilled at this point in her life. The question becomes, 'where does Kirstie put DPF in her hierarchy?' Some people put their DPF in the Social Needs bucket...particularly those in the Media. Their social circles place a high value on how they look. Additionally, affinity needs get fulfilled with intimate relationships and, unfortunately, many intimate relationships start and are maintained based on appearance. So, in that case, DPF becomes critical. Friends and Family also typically play a role in Level Three.

So, it is quite apparent that Ms. Alley is not taking care of DPF. It is either a Level Three need that she is not fulfilling OR she has put it on Level Four and only thinks of it when it becomes an Esteem Need issue. If she has a lot of support and affinity in spite of being very large, she may have put the DPF priority at the top of her pyramid and is simply not addressing it. She then would be in the position of only addressing her DPF when it becomes something that she feels is inhibiting her career. If it is sitting at Level Four, it is in a place where many things can derail it as a priority, in particular, Level Three things.

There is one other possible answer to this though. She went through a divorce in 1997 to her ex-husband Parker Stevenson. That may have triggered her weight loss issues culminating in the 2005 appearance on Oprah. For many who simply let their weight and personal appearance get out of hand, when they lose affinity/love and feel like they need to find love again, they move DPF from a Level Four to a Level Three, but only TEMPORARILY. When they get their DPF under control and regain some affinity ties, they move DPF back to Level Four. I believe, based on Kirstie's pattern, that this is what she did. In all fairness to Kirstie, I am using her (somewhat unfairly since I do not even know her) as an example and my evaluation is based on much supposition.

I think that the majority of yo-yo dieting happens this way. Instead of putting DPF somewhere in our personal needs hierarchy and making its placement permanent, we move it around to suit our temporary wishes and then it gets bumped by other things.

What is my recommendation to Kirstie about her weight? It is the same advice I would give, and will give, to any of you that want to go on the Optifast (or any other) diet.

Start with a personal assessment of what the diet actually means to you. Where does this diet fit on your personal hierarchy needs chart? The lower (lower meaning a most basic need and a high priority) it is on your chart, the higher probability of success you will have with it. What in your life will trump your dieting efforts? Will it be trumped by work?...by family?...by social life? Is it going to take a permanent place on your needs chart or is it temporary because it is serving a temporary purpose?

If you need to lose a serious amount of weight, you need to assess its value to you. Losing the weight is difficult. There will be a lot of obstacles to derail that goal. There is something even more difficult after you complete the diet and that is KEEPING THE WEIGHT OFF. That is the real battle. That is where the Personal Needs Hierarchy Pyramid for you becomes critical. You need to put your DPF in a permanent place. You need to assess this in your life because extreme dieting and yo-yo rebounding can actually be more unhealthy than never losing the weight in the first place.

Is there a value you can tie to your weight loss that makes you permanently move it to a lower and more important base level of your needs? If physical safety is not one of those things, how about the monetary cost of being fat?

I recently took a look at our family's financial situation and decided I needed to upgrade my life insurance. Without getting into my personal finances in a public forum, let me say one thing. A life insurance policy with the same payback and term provisions for me as a fat, high cholesterol person would have been $150 more PER MONTH than the same policy for me under my current 205 lb frame with low cholesterol. Additionally, because I have not had the weight off for at least a year, they ADDED HALF THE WEIGHT BACK when calculating my new policy. If I had lost the weight 2 years ago, my policy right now would be $50 per month less. So in real terms, being fat, per just my life insurance policy alone, would cost me an additional $200 per month. That is $2400 more per year and $48,000 over a twenty year policy. That is a tangible cost that you can use to put the value of DPF into the low level, high priority area's of your Personal Needs Hierarchy Pyramid.

Doing these things will separate for you whether or not the diet is a goal for your life, or whether it is a "wish to be thin."

This kind of look takes a lot of hard work and commitment.

My thanks to Kirstie Alley for involuntarily providing the inspiration for these past 3 blog posts! Not everyone needs to show perfect success in order to be inspiring. I have poked fun at her (honestly, I make fun of myself a lot too) but truly wish the best for her.

Next: Sticking With IT!!