Mental Distortion

I’ve often had long dry spells of contributing any content to this blog, as I have tried to avoid having this blog contribute to the massive dead pool of other blogs out there in the blogosphere. Perhaps one reason for this is the diet I have been on since the beginning of this year. In just under six months I was able to shave off 50 pounds from my body frame, something I am pretty proud of and hope to now maintain for the rest of my life, if possible. Many people have asked me how I did it, and I have given a variety of answers to the question. I would like to simply dump an email I sent to a friend with various bits of info on what my diet consisted of. I’m sure I digress from various points I was attempting to make, but I believe the list contains most of what I did in order to lose the weight. I will eventually draw up a more official write up of my diet and how it works. But this will certainly do for now:

1. Reduce your daily calorie intake to 1,200 calories total. Don’t do this overnight, but gradually phase it in over a period of a couple of weeks. READ THE NUTRITIONAL LABEL ON EVERY ITEM YOU BUY to see how many calories each food has. Be careful to see the serving size, because a lot of food companies trick people into thinking that the calorie intake is low when in fact the serving size to go with that low number is small as well, since people eat multiple serving sizes of those items. That adds up a lot of calories.
2. Download software that allows you to keep a daily diary of EVERYTHING you eat. iPhone has this (I use LoseIt!) although I’m sure the Blackberry has something similar if not the exact same program. Or download a program for your computer. All these programs tie into a database where you can find the nutritional content for each food, and they should allow you to add your own items with its nutritional content when you can’t find it in the database. A good site to find nutritional info is www.thedailyplate.com, especially it’s data on restaurants.
3. Exercise: Do something for at least 30 minutes a day, whether it’s taking a walk, running, working out at the gym. Daily exercise is critical in this. Many people make the mistake in thinking that if they exercise, but don’t regulate what they eat, that they will lose weight. This is absolutely wrong. So for example, if you work out at the gym, do not go to a cafe and eat a muffin, because if you have worked off 300 calories at the gym, you’ll be eating 400 calories in a muffin alone, thereby canceling out the effects of your diet. So exercise AND calorie control have to go hand in hand.
4. Basically, the diet is a numbers game. If in a day I have eaten, say, 1,100 calories for the day and exercised/burned 600 calories, my daily net total of calorie intake is 500 calories. This allows me then to eat something in addition, perhaps an apple or a banana (each about 100 calories) for the remaining part of the day. This will bring my calorie intake now up to about 700 calories while feeling more full, considering I just ate the banana and the apple. As long as you are honest with your food diary, you can track this sort of thing, it just being a numbers game.
5. Eat breakfast, lunch & dinner. For me, lunch is the biggest meal of the day, with dinner being a smaller affair (ie. salad, soup). Simply not eating at all is not going to work. Your body needs to keep digesting regularly throughout the day, which is ultimately another activity at burning calories (I don’t track that). But in order to stay under that 1,200 calorie ceiling AND eating regularly throughout the day, it forces you to change what you eat each day. For breakfast, I have a bowl of cereal with fruit on top, for lunch I will be more daring in what I eat, allowing myself to have a sandwich or even a slice of pizza but also with a salad to go with it. And for dinner, as I mention, something smaller. It’s also extremely important that you don’t eat 4 hours before you go to sleep at night. The worst time to digest food is while you are sleeping, and if you eat something before you sleep, you don’t want the main digestion to be happening while you are sleeping. In fact, good sleep time and sleeping at better hours actually does help lose weight. There are articles on that that explain that process.
6. Drink lots of water and other drinks that contain low calories. I still allow myself Diet Coke, which I know has its other evils, but I need something to comfort myself, don’t I? But be careful what you drink, but that really ads up. Coffee with added stuff can amount to a lot. Regular coffee is probably fine, but also tea is great.
7. Read. It’s really important that you learn about food processing and the industry in general. Learning the evils of what shit companies put in food really help one to become more motivated in being conscience about what they eat. I really do my best to axe out as much processed food as possible, because there is a lot of hidden ingredients that are very bad for you. And don’t believe what restaurants disguise as healthy options for diet eaters. For example, a restaurant like Chile’s will offer some sort of ‘diet dish’ with it containing chicken breast (great food to eat, low on calories) and salad with some sort of sauce. Well, a recent study showed that Chile’s packs the chicken with all sorts of chemicles that is stuffed with salt, sugar and other additives before even adding the sauce, which has the most calories. So a dish billed as a diet food actually ends up having over 1,000 calories, which is more than half of the normal daily recommended intake of calories (2,000). And that doesn’t even take into account drinks and other stuff. Remember that drinks alone, for the average American, take in over 500 calories a day. I’m digressing here, but read up on the subject. There’s a lot to learn and be shocked by. Good books that I recommend: ‘Omnivore’s Dilemma by Michael Pollen’, ‘The World Is Fat’ by Barry Popkin’, and countless articles on the subject. Reading this stuff has really changed my diet in general for good. As little processed food as possible, lots of natural foods (from scratch cooking), slow eating … etc. Here’s some recommended reading to illustrate more my point on all of this: http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1917458,00.html
8. Now that I have reached my goal, I have increased my calorie limit to 1,500 calories per day. I still want to lose another 7 pounds or so, and once I reach that goal, I will probably increase the ceiling to 1,750.

So, that’s my Calorie Nazi diet. I’m sure I’m leaving things out, but I can send you those tips as I remember them. There comes a point where you become almost obsessed by it, but in a good way. You have to get into the grove, and once you’re in it (both food and exercise), you can make a lot of progress. You also have to be strong when eating with friends, because they’ll tend to be eating heavier stuff and you have to force yourself to eat the lighter stuff.

I lost my 50 pounds in just under 6 months. So it is possible. It’s hard at first, but it’s guaranteed to work. My brother did the same diet and he lost over 40 pounds, although he didn’t do any of the exercise part. He took longer to lose it as a result, but he lost it. If you focus on the calorie aspect of meals, you’ll improve other parts of your nutrition (ie. cholesterol, proteins…etc.). Not that I pay attention to celebrity diets, but I have often seen the number of 1,200 being the ceiling they set for themselves in their diets (ie. Tom Cruise, Britney Spears, Mariah Carey). Not sure why it’s that number, but it worked for them when they went on diets. 1,200 calories sounds low and your friends will think you’re crazy for going that low, probably even saying that it’s unhealthy. But if you pick your foods right and eat at regular intervals, it’s definitely easy enough to stay under that ceiling.