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.

Day 15

Walk the Dog.

About a year and a half ago we got a yellow lab. She’s an intelligent, gentle creature who now weighs 85 pounds and, as a large breed hunting dog, needs lots of exercise. I’m an early riser anyway, but if I dare to sleep past 6 am she comes into my room and wakes me with an expression of “What the hell?” We go for a long morning walk, and then a mid-day walk, and a home after work walk, an evening walk, and finally, a last walk of the day at around 10 pm. All told I probably spend an hour and twenty minutes each day walking the dog.

While this might seem annoying especially when it’s February in Minnesota and minus 14 degrees out, this is over an hour of modest exercise that I do every day, regardless of what else is on the schedule. The more calories you burn with exercise, the more weight you lose.

To lose a pound of fat you have to be in a deficit of about 3500 calories. So to lose a pound of fat in a week you have to be down by 500 calories a day (7 X 500 = 3500). Walking the dog adds to the calorie deficit.

You could do the walking without the dog, but then you’d have no one to talk to on the way.

Day 14

No Soda Pop.

Not even diet.

Soda is a processed chemical solution with sugar and caffeine (or aspartame and caffeine). It tastes good but is not good for you. Drinking pop, even diet, has been linked to an increased incidence of the Metabolic Syndrome (doctor speak for being too fat).

What really is in soda? Well, we know it has a lot of calories, that much is on the can. The kind without calories has aspartame in it, which fools the body into thinking it’s sweet. Who knows what else it does? Why bother risking toxic side effects? Furthermore, drinking diet pop does not help you lose weight.

Water is great and free. You can drink it right from the tap. Bottled water is fine too if you're not concerned about wasting money.

Fruit juices are ok in small amounts, but beware of the calorie load. Vegetable juices (tomato, V8, carrot) are all low calorie and good bets. In all these cases read the label to be sure.

The path to your ideal weight does not include soda.

Day 13

Perfection

You are not perfect. None of us are. You will have setbacks on the path to your ideal weight. You will wake up in the morning and realize with horror that last night at the party you ate an entire basket of chips and then had a huge platter of appetizers and finshed the evening off with two pieces of cake.

OK. Today is a new day. Yesterday is history. Get out of bed, brush your teeth and rededicate yourself to your goal of achieving your ideal weight. A slip up does not mean you’re hopeless, it means you’re human. We are biologic creatures who were designed (intelligently or not) to hunt and gather. We evolved in an environment where you had better eat everything in front of you because who knows when the next wildebeest will come along? Yet in modern society we are surrounded by food, in the real world, and in the media. Supermarkets are open 24 hours a day. The refrigerator is full of stuff to eat. Pizza can be delivered whenever you want it.

To stay thin you need to constantly be on guard, constantly make the right choices in terms of what you eat. Sometimes you’ll screw up. Move on. Nobody’s perfect.

Day 12

Times of Danger

At 2 or 3 in the afternoon I am usually tired and hungry, not to mention irritated at life in general. My cortisol (the body’s stress hormone) level is dropping, I’ve been working all day. I am hungry and out of sorts. I may walk down to the Doctor’s Lounge and look longingly at the trays of cookies and pastries. But I keep walking, because I have planned for this time in advance.

This is a time of danger, a time you must plan ahead for. It is tempting to grab a chocolate chip cookie or a candy bar, or you may want to get a sugar and caffeine boost from a can of pop. Don’t do it.

What you should do at these times of danger is have a banana or a cut up apple. If you need the caffeine boost, have a cup of tea with a little honey in it. In fact, the best thing is to plan a mid-afternoon snack: some fruit, tea or coffee, half a homemade turkey sandwich. This will perk you up and help you avoid the eat whatever is in the break room syndrome.

The other time of danger is after dinner, if you are the kind of person who likes to kick back with a little TV. There’s something about TV that makes you want to snack. You can put away a huge amount of calories in short order just watching American Idol. Again plan ahead. A cut up apple, a small turkey sandwich and a glass of water are a heck of a lot better than a bag of chips and a cola, followed by a dish of ice cream and some cookies.

Plan for times of danger. Make sure you are prepared with a low calorie snack.