Day 18

Avoid the Car.

People often comment on how thin Europeans are compared to Americans. There are many potential explanations of why this is and nobody really knows for sure, but one big difference is that Europeans seem to walk a lot more to get where they’re going. They use public transportation a lot, and this involves a lot of walking. Americans, particularly suburban Americans, use the car for everything. This doesn’t have to be so. I live in a great urban neighborhood, and although I use the car to commute to work, once I’m home, everything is within walking distance. I may go the whole weekend without using the car.

We walk to the pharmacy, to the grocery store, to the nearby BlockBuster to rent a movie. We walk to restaurants and coffee shops. Walking is good aerobic exercise, strengthening your heart and lungs, and burning calories. Driving does nothing but make you crazy (can you say “Road Rage”).

Everybody’s living situation is different, but most of us can figure out ways to decrease our use of the car and increase our walking. Often all you need to do is change your mindset. If the store is a mile away, it may take you a while to get there and back walking, but what a great use of your time.

The path to your ideal weight involves a lot of walking.

Day 17

Booze.

Alcoholic drinks have a lot of calories in them. No way around it. A 12-ounce bottle of beer has about 150 calories. A five-ounce glass of wine has 125 calories. A jigger of gin or vodka has about 80 to 90 calories. Do the math. Drink 3 beers at night and you’ve added 450 calories to your daily total. Two martinis add 180 calories. On a per gram basis, alcohol has just about as many calories as fat (7 cal/gm for alcohol, 9 cal/gm for fat).

If you want to lose weight, the fewer calories you take in the easier it is to be in a negative calorie balance. Cutting out the booze seems like a no brainer, but lots of people like to unwind with a drink or glass of wine at night. My advice is to limit the drinking to special occasions. When you are out at a nice restaurant have a glass of wine or two. If you are at a cocktail reception, have a drink. I suggest sticking to red wine because, as noted above, wine has a few less calories than beer. Red wine may also have some additional health benefits in terms of cardiovascular disease. If you have two glasses of wine one evening you may want to balance out the calories with an extra-long walk that night.

On a day-to-day basis, avoid drinking. You’ll get to your ideal weight quicker. You’ll also feel better when you wake up in the morning, and be less likely to end up doing balancing acts on the side of the road for the benefit of the nice state trooper.

Day 16

Traveling.

A walk through the airport reveals two things:

1) About 2/3 of travelers are obese.
2) The airport is awash with bad food options for travelers.


The choices for eating at the airport are high calorie fast food, with a few exceptions. Pizza, hot dogs, cinnamon buns, ice cream, McDonald’s. All are there for the eating. If you search hard you might be able to find a concession serving Japanese food or sushi, but that’s it for healthy choices.

I look on travel days as an opportunity to fast. Fasting for a day has all kinds of benefits, both psychological and physical. A fast can mean no food at all, or more typically, sticking to vegetable or fruit juices and water. I usually drink orange and tomato juice, with some bottles of water in between, and that’s it. At the end of a day of fasting you feel light and fit, and you’ve avoided the fast food traps.

Humans are very good at going for extended periods of time without eating. The airlines no longer serve food on the flights, which I think is great, as they mostly served high calorie garbage anyway.

Walk through the airport and ignore the bad food choices. On the flight ask for a can of tomato juice. When you get to your destination, you’ll feel good and maybe you’ll be down a pound or two as well.