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essay
Did you think I was talking about people? My. Oh, my.
Okay, I was. But not all people. Just one.
Me.
Am I huge? No. Definitely not. But I am a cyclical gainer... which by definition also means a cyclical dieter as well.
I have a range: A low of 140 -- pounds, not kilos. And certainly not stone! -- and a high of 200. I've never gone over 200. Unless you count 202, but for that I'm blaming the scale. When I reach that upper limit, I'm suddenly wearing entirely different clothes; my thighs rub together when I walk and certain parts of my body become invisible to me without a hand mirror and a stepladder. I'm tired a lot and will walk further to find an escalator rather than use the stairs. I can trap a number two pencil under my man-boob. And I become invisible to the opposite sex.
Strike that: I become even more invisible to the opposite sex.
Which is why I take the effort every decade or so to drop down to my high school weight. I'm a determined and unflappable guy when I have to be, and I read vociferously... enough to know the word vociferously. I know which diets work and why, and I know which ones are designed only to sell books, heart attacks be damned.
I know that only one diet works. It's called 'calories in, PLUS calories out, EQUALS results'. Translated it means: All the food you swallow in a day (calories in) minus all the effort you expend in a day (calories out) equals a net result.
The 60 pounds melt off me when I follow my own particular regimen-- X calories a day for 3 days; then one day of 2X calories; then back to three days of X. Of course the big question is: What does the 'X' stand for?
That's different for each of us. Each of us is a different height and width and depth; each of us carries different excess and are different ages; and each of us has a different goal in mind. For me, the X was 1200. I'd consume no more than 1200 calories a day (or try not to), for three days. Right about then my body gets the idea that food might be scarce, so throws itself into starvation or 'brownout mode' (or so I've been told. It really seems to work this way for me, anyway), which is why I then eat a day of double rations. My body then says 'Oh-- not starving!" and cancels the call for every organ to work in brownout mode, and you go back to utilizing lipids as normal.
Part of the diet is to burn more calories. I walk more. I take the stairs. I engage in light sports and build things in my off time, lugging tools and materials and sweating merrily as I do.
Once a week only, I measure. For me it's in the morning, before eating and after, err, excreting. That's when I'm at my lowest weight of the day. I also measure my waist, hips and thighs, which is where all my excess avoirdupois lands.
I take the time to put it on a chart. You may not have to... it's just that the visual changes become more apparent when they're listed, and watching the change is inspiring. It was for me, anyway.
I don't worry when the numbers stall. That's natural. Weight rises and falls in fits and starts. Just keep it up and ignore the short term results, just continue to be true to your numbers and soon enough the losses will pick back up again.
From where did I obtain that very specific 1200 calorie count? A website designed for weight loss. I plugged all my personal data in and it spat out a calorie suggestion. They asked my age, height and weight. They wanted to know my goal weight and when I wanted to reach it. I had to adjust the figures a few times... I said I wanted to lose all 60 pounds in a week and it suggested removing my legs. Okay it didn't, but the amount of calories I needed to take in (negative 35,000 a day) would leave me a little famished -- and a little dead -- so I chose a more realistic goal. Two pounds a week, over 30 weeks. 1200 calories just like that. The website didn't mention the brownout mode. Oh, well.
There's no better way to count calories than by eating prepackaged foods, so that I did. Every calorie was counted. Packaged breakfasts, lunches and dinners guaranteed I could only eat a maximum of the calories printed on the carton. Packaged snacks filled out the diet.
When I was halfway through the diet I switched things up because I was bored of the same old thing. I looked up the calorie counts for natural foods like fruits, and added up all the weighed ingredients in sandwiches. I got the calorie data from fast food restaurants (holey moley! 'Nuff said) and sushi bars. I started eating salads loaded with proteins and exotic veggies.
And for me, the cool part was that it didn't matter what kind of food you ate. Calories are calories. I could have used an all ice-cream diet and would have lost the same amount. But because ice cream has a lot of fat (at 9 calories a gram) it doesn't deliver the fullness factor of carbs and proteins (at just 4 calories per gram). You decide. I ate a lot of pasta and sandwiches.
I kept a logbook of all the food I'd eaten. Everything. I didn't cheat, even when I went way over. Looking at that page in the future gave me glorious guilt and the resolve to not slip so easily.
I don't mean to be a smug son of a building contractor, but I was at my goal weight in the 30th week.
And now I'm 200 pounds again. Well, 194 if you believe the scale. And I do.
Why did I gain it all back? Well first let me assure you I kept the weight largely off for 5 years, and took another 5 to creep back up. So I felt the time spent in dieting was worth it -- 8 months for 8 years of relative leanness -- but there's one effect I haven't mentioned yet.
The allure of food.
I am not impressed with people who give up drinking. Good for you. Or smoking. Hey, hey you'll live longer. Or even hard drugs. Now you can restart your life.
Why am I not impressed?
Because you never need to see any of it again! That's right. When you quit, you stop. Done. No more trips to the liquor chateau, no more visits to Stogie T-Pop on 4th Avenue. As long as you don't seek out your dark master, you're free of it. Not so with food. I wish.
When you lose weight... you must still eat! When you're skinny... you have to keep eating! You must buy your food at the same market where you got your ice cream. When you go out to restaurants, they serve mahunga portions. At work there's junk food. At Costco there's free finger food. It's freakin' everywhere!
Moderation is so-o-o-o much harder than elimination. At the start of my gain cycle, I decide I can have one extra restaurant meal a month. Soon it becomes two, then three a week, and then suddenly it's every meal of every day. The restaurants I frequent are often all-you-can-eat places like salad bars, oriental buffets and homestyle smorgasbords; more bang for the buck, and more calories per visit.
Then I fall asleep with my head in a tureen of pudding, and just like that... I'm fat again.
I bring all this up because I am once again at the top of my cycle, looking at a long road down, and I'm steeling myself for the despair, the sorrow of waving adios to my closest companions. Goodbye, chocolate. See ya, donuts. Aloha, ice cream.
Hello, portion control!
I'm not asking you to feel sorry for me. It's my process, painful as it seems, and I'm prepared to go the hard route. I only bring up my own foibles as a comparison, to stack them up against one of the persons living in the World Family of my imagination, specifically one living in the mythical city of Aden.
You've read about Perfect World in previous posts. It's a good place. People tend to be healthy, the food tends not to be overly processed. Activities are encouraged and there's a lot of time for them. There isn't a lot of television programming because people enjoy each other's company more than vegging out.
So will there be overweight people in Aden?
Before I answer, ask yourself some incisive questions. Why are there overweight people here now? Is it all due to compulsive behavior? Is it because of ever-mounting stress? Lethargy? Interactions with medications? Illnesses? And what contribution does genetic predisposition represent?
Aden is a city of promise, the first place ever designed around the complexities of people. Utopias have been designed using political, religious, economic, scientific and even ecological models, but Aden is humanity-based, intentionally placing the individual's needs and emotional well-being as paramount. By that reason alone, stress and compulsion are all but gone as factors for overeating. Illnesses will still exist in Aden, but ailments which come about due to inactivity or overwork tend to disappear in societies without those issues. Medications like steroids and antidepressants can cause weight gain... but most of the reasons for taking those drugs don't exist in the World Family.
To answer the question... yes, excess fat will still exist. However, thanks to a lifestyle which is more conducive to physical and emotional health, the rate of 'fat to fit' will be much much lower. Genetics may still play a part in overall weight distribution, but if it is determined that double-helical 'upholstering' is a biological bungle, researchers will attend to it with the full backing of Aden's population.
But there is a natural curve to the distribution of features across a species. Some will be taller, others shorter. Some will have lighter hair, wider-set eyes or freckles. And of course fat ratios will run the full course as well, even though all other external stimuli remains the same. Look at today's sports figures. These people are the best athletes in the world -- and some of them could certainly be described as stout, even though the same weight-control methods are available to them as the other teammates. Or how about the advent of luscious new 'full-sized' fashion models? Carrying double the weight of their scrawny counterparts, these women are unmistakably beautiful and make the clothing they represent look attractive. To me this hollers 'size is relative!' and exemplifies how differences are part of the genetic makeup of a species.
In closed societies over history we see genetic problems arising due to the deleterious effects of inbreeding, demonstrating clearly that wide differences between individuals is healthy for the species. This basic knowledge guarantees that Aden will never become a colony of clonelike people, all having the same general size and shape and look. For that reason as well, people of girth will be welcome in Aden because a larger size does not necessarily indicate an unhealthy lifestyle.
So take a deep breath of relief, America. Remember the Perfect World credo: It's a world perfectly designed for imperfect people! The World Family is looking for people with intelligent and reasonable minds, first and foremost. Aden will never reject you out of hand for that jelly belly you try to hide behind blousy Hawaiian shirts and partially unzipped track suits.
Although those outfits will have to go.
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