On October 1st 2008 I stood on the scale and weighed in at 236.8 lbs. I was taking pills for blood pressure, heartburn, Gout,and the doctor was close to putting me on something for cholesterol. I remember, when I was in my twenties, eating lunch with my grandmother at the senior living center and seeing them all take out their pill cases and plop them on the table and thinking that was so far from my reality. I was now only 39 and I was probably taking more pills then most of them. I was going the way of the early grave. I had to do something.
On that day I made a goal, 40 before 40, as in lost pounds before my 40th birthday. Many people say you shouldn't focus on weight. I get what they are saying. There are unhealthy ways to drop that number but the simple fact remains, when you live healthy, you have a healthy weight. Happy to say at age 40, on October 1st, 2009 at 9:03 AM, I stepped on the scale and weighed in at 198.1 pounds. I hadn't seen a 1 in front of my weight since there was a 1 in front of my age. True, for all you critical thinkers, not actually 40 pounds but close enough.
To get here I didn't just want to diet. I wanted a new healthy way to live and so I started making small and big changes. Here are some tips for anyone wanting to get started.
Food: I changed my diet to limit refined grains and sugar and eat healthy and whole foods. I stopped snacking and I controlled portions. Try halving your portions.
A great way to encourage healthy eating is to subscribe to a CSA. Every week a box of local, seasonal, sustainable, and organic produce was delivered a mile away and presented new culinary adventures. Christine has been great finding delicious and healthy ways to prepare winter greens like Kale and Chard. With the veggies coming every week we were eating good things and getting healthy.
Four weeks before my birthday I was 12 pounds from my goal. It seemed plausible to lose 12 pounds in 4 weeks. We had just returned from vacation, which was a lazy vacation with lots of delicious carbs from amazing bakeries, so I had to get out of vacation mode.
I was interested in finding out how different foods made me feel. I decided to remove all but the most basic and whole foods from my diet. For four weeks I did not drink any liquid but water, except for a couple of boxes of coconut water, and ate mostly veggies, various legumes, nuts and whole grains. The list of nos was long: no refined sugar, no refined flours, no coffee or caffeine, no meat, no dairy, no alcohol, no no no.
Addictions:I noticed my addiction to sugar immediately. I craved it. Avoiding it meant avoiding many things you just don't think have sugar, like Ketchup. Do you know how hard it is to find a loaf of bread without some sort of sugar in it? Evaporated cane juice is fancy way to say sugar. My addiction had me using fruit as my methadone. I ate a lot of fruit at first and weaned myself down to a healthy amount. I think sugar in fruit is better than refined sugar as the body as to work a little more for it and you get other vitimeis and healthy bits with the fruit. You can eat too much fruit though, and for a while I felt like a fruit junkie. Christine's parents had given us a huge amount of blueberries picked from their own bushes and I found myself jonesing for the few remaining berries as the supply dwindled, picking them off of my 2 year old son's plate when he wasn't looking. "Look behind you Alex! A car!" "heey, Wherd my booberry go?"
I like coffee, and think it worth the petroleum to import and sustain fair trade coffee economies of the coffee belt. Oh yeah, I can rationalize when coffee is involved. My intake was only a cup in the morning, and occasionally some at lunch. However, even taking away that daily cup had it's toll. I suffered a day when it felt like my brain was being rewired by a couple of drunk monkeys weilding salad tongs.
Water: I heard many times that the majority of Americans are dehydrated and that our health problems often start there. One talking head said if we just drank water when we felt urges to eat then we'd all be thinner and healthier. Well, maybe she's right and it certainly seemed to curb my appetite, but she failed to mention some other benefits if we all drank more water:
- Meetings would all be much shorter. I can attest to this. It's quite embarrassing when you have to leave a meeting, not just once, but twice.
- They'd bring back intermissions in movies. Again, I had to leave the film District 9 twice.Yes. it's a long film but I always used ot laugh ta my wife for having to leave a movie to pee.
- Car companies would start including UCT(Urination Containment Technology)into new models.I have a few ideas I'll share once I get the patents.
- Dashing for bathrooms and constant trips from couch or desk to the can burns calories.
There are a host of other things I thought about but clearly my transition from going through the day drinking nothing but my morning coffee and maybe 10 ounces of water at lunch to constantly drinking from my water bottle was a bit irritating at first. I wasn't doing anything extreme. However, it felt like my bladder had shrunk and the sugar and caffeine addicted cells were punishing me and laughing with every trip to the can. Consider this from the Mayo Clinic website, "if you drink enough fluid so that you rarely feel thirsty and produce 1.5 liters (6.3 cups) or more of colorless or slightly yellow urine a day, your fluid intake is probably adequate."
My bladder must be about 5 ounces. I've worn a trail in the carpet between my office and the can. I started having to be sneaky about it, pretending to work on the server and then jumping into the can (yes, our server is across from the toilet) I'm pretty sure I've been given some new nicknames at the office that no one will say in front of my face.
Eventually it got better. My body was adjusting and flushing toxins.
After a week I really began to feel great. I woke up clear headed, I never felt hungry, I actually felt like exercising. Clearly, my body and mind loved what I was eating.
I realized that I was learning to listen to my body when eating when often I listened to my emotions. Just learning and experiencing this distinction has been invaluable. I'm much more aware of what, why and when I am eating. It's OK to eat something because of the emotional affects and even the endorphins they may release, but careful, food can't love you back. I'm pretty sure I heard that on Oprah.
I recommend the purge to any one. Once you purge for 4 weeks or more you can then add just one component back in and you will notice how it makes you feel and then decide how you want to proceed with that item. The two things I'd change is doing it in the beginning instead of the end and including gluten in the purge. If you are allergic to gluten then you may notice a huge change. It can really mess up the whole pro-biotic balance of the stomach. But that's another post.
There are other things, I also made improvement in my inner life and letting go of stress. It's all connected, body, mind and soul.
My next goal is to run the first Oakland Marathon. I am starting a training program and got fitted for a pair of shoes on my birthday. I'm ready for my 40's. It will will be the best decade yet.
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