A blogspace I might actually use.
09 Aug 2016 - Food
Remember George Carlin’s “Seven Dirty Words” (SDWs)? The ones you can’t say on TV? Ever?
Five of them were four letters. That makes them Four Letter Words.
If you’re a sysadmin, “user” is a Four Letter Word (FLW. I abbreviate a lot because I’m a lazy FLW; more about that later.).
Well, I would like to add “diet” to that list. I am thoroughly convinced that the LAST thing you should do if you want to lose weight is go on a diet. Why? Because I haven’t been on a diet for the last 21 days and I’ve lost 21 pounds. (Update: As of August 19, 2016, make that 39 days, 32.6 pounds.)
I was 277 pounds (19.7857 stone for my Brexitted friends, 125.645 kilos for the rest of the civilized world), when I started a program at work (Bloomberg, LLP; a great place to spend 8 hours a day) called Incubator 14. It’s defined as a wellness program. Its mission is to make you think about all aspects of your life and change those that make you unhappy. So far we’ve been through the nutrition, diet, and exercise portions.
Now, for those of you who know me, you know I have no head for all the kumbaya, psychobabble mumbo jumbo. Just give me the diet, please. So, of course, did they give me a diet? No. They started off with, “Just keep track of what you eat so you can present it to the dietician when you have your one on one meeting in week 3.”
Week 3? What the hell (FLW, but not Dirty Word) am I supposed to do until then? Count calories? Actually put down on record what kind of crap (FLW, also not a Dirty Word) I eat? Well, I guess if I’m going to go to meet the dietician, I can’t go empty handed.
And so, with the help of a FitBit app that was foisted upon me in March by Bloomberg, and which I used for exactly two days before I gave up on it as being too tedious (laziness rears it’s ugly head again), I started to count calories. And that’s when the magic happened.
First of all, giving a geek a new app is like giving a three-year-old a drum at Christmas - it’s the only thing they’ll play with. I found that the lookup-by-name facility was really good. I found that the phone was tracking my steps and feeding it to the app; wow, I walk that far? And then I found the bar code scanner. OOOOOOOOH! I could type less.
Second, a funny thing happens when you start counting calories; you start paying attention to exactly what it is you’re eating. You learn that a two-pack of Devil Dogs is 375 calories, whereas two cups of cut, frozen strawberries (about two handfuls) are only 114. 114? That’s all? Hmm. The jumbo eggs are only 90 each so a plain omelet is 270. That’s all? And that 1000+ calorie BigMac meal starts to look positively deadly. Unless it’s all you eat the whole day.
What you find is that classic dieting advice such as shop around the edge of the supermarket, eat things as close to their state of living as possible, and portion control really work. I wasn’t on a diet. I was just counting calories. I wasn’t doing Atkins or South Beach or Grapefruit where I had to read a reference a book. I wasn’t paying Weight Watchers, Jenny Craig or anyone else to be my mother and cook (actually to process it into a preservative laden mess) for me.
Nope. All I did was take a little technology and do what we learned in grade school - count. To be fair, when my watch fortuitously broke a week into the program, I figured it would be worth my while to replace it with a FitBit ChargeHR, which counted steps more accurately, factored in my actual heart rate to my calorie burn AND gave me extra credit for climbings stairs, so I am taking a bit MORE than “a little technology.’ But the first week of just using the phone was so encouraging, that it made me want to do better; hence the ChargeHR.
Now, it helps if you’re OCD/fanatical about counting EVERY SINGLE THING YOU EAT. But, if you have the FitBit app, remember, it scans UPC codes. Bingo! Just adjust the portion size and off you go. Stuff like fruits, veggies, salads, and meats are all searchable. Just remember that a cup is about a handful and the weight of a deck of cards is 3.3 oz when cooking utensils and scales are not available.
And you must be honest with yourself, Not counting that cake because it’s Saturday is a nice joke, but it’s not going to get you back into your favorite jeans any sooner.
So, if you are looking in the mirror and you are not happy with the shape that you see, don’t diet. Start counting.