Conscious Choice: Weight Loss

September 1998

Weight Loss

by Victoria Lord

For many Americans, the traditional time to begin a diet is New Year’s Day. For others, the crunch comes just before summer and the realization that they’ll have to squeeze into a bathing suit somehow. Still others start the holiday season resolving, if not to lose weight, at least not to gain any more. But most of these people end up in the same place: the cause is lost within a few days or weeks and they revert to the lifestyle that got them into trouble in the first place. So, are these all bad times to start a diet?

"Not necessarily," says Daniel Kirschenbaum. The Director of Chicago’s Center for Behavioral Medicine and a Northwestern University professor of psychiatry, Kirschenbaum has studied successful dieters, people who lose significant amounts (30 pounds or more) and then keep it off for years. According to Kirschenbaum, the best time to start a new regimen is the moment you think of it. Even if you fall off the wagon, just starting the diet gets you closer to focusing on your goal of a healthier body.

The American public spends over $140 million a year on diet and weight-loss books alone. Thousands of readers start exercise and diet regimens and then abandon them. Yet a few people do manage both to lose significant amounts of weight and to keep the weight off. Why do they succeed where so many cannot?

Kirschenbaum believes that the answer lies in one word: persistence. Some of his overweight patients have made as many as 20 attempts to lose weight before coming to the Center.

"I like to see a certain amount of desperation in a client. That desperation translates into a willingness to focus on this issue. They know they need to eat less and exercise more but they don’t yet grasp the fact that they must do that every day. Success at weight loss does not come from a magic formula, but from a willingness to commit time and energy to the endeavor."

So how do you know if you’re ready to take the plunge and succeed this time? Start by assessing your desire to take control of your life and begin building a balance into your daily activities. Is this something you need to do to improve your health? Or are you really dieting because your spouse or parent wishes you were thinner? Unless the impetus comes from within, success is unlikely. Once you give yourself permission to spend on yourself the time and energy you will need, you are ready to begin.

The actual strategies for weight loss are simple: exercise more and eat less (or less-fattening) food. According to Diane Quagliani, a spokesperson for the American Dietetic Association, these two go hand-in-hand.

"It’s very difficult to achieve and maintain weight loss without paying attention to both these areas. Some people would probably find controlling their eating easier than increasing physical activity but they will not be successful over the long term unless they do both."

Quagliani, a registered dietician, avoids the word "exercise." "Call it physical activity because that is what it is. We’re not necessarily talking about jogging here. The idea is just to get moving and be more active around the house."

Increasing Physical Activity
Technology has virtually engineered physical activity out of modern life. Cars take us from door to door, eliminating the need to walk more than a few hundred yards; elevators carry us up to the highest floors with the push of a button or at most, two; our clothes and dishes are washed and dried by machines; and few people in our culture chop wood to heat their homes or cook their food. By contrast, the lives of our ancestors were full of physical activity pursued for survival. But over the last 30 years, physical activity has almost disappeared from the life of the average desk-bound American.

So how can we reverse that trend?

By incorporating more physical activity into our daily lives. Moving around for as little as 30 minutes a day can have a positive impact on weight. And moving around is all that is needed — no hard-core aerobics or jogging necessary. A few strategies can make that 30 minutes a day possible for everyone.

Pick Realistic Goals. A short ten-minute walk might be a reasonable place to begin if you have been very inactive. Once you can walk ten minutes a day comfortably, increase your time to 15 or 20 minutes. While the ultimate goal is to become active for 30 minutes a day, you can and probably should work up to this slowly. Mini-goals, as Quagliani terms them, are most effective for the majority of people.

"While we may want to make a wholesale change, we often get tired and can’t stick with the big changes. A small change can become part of your lifestyle."

Integrate activity into your life. You don’t need to spend an hour at a gym for exercise to be effective. All movement is helpful, even in small doses. And the activity can be as mundane as vacuuming. Chances are, unless you are bed-ridden, you already engage in some physcial activities; the key to beginning is simply to increase the amount of time spent on these. What about parking a bit farther from the office and walking the extra block every day? Can you spend more time tending your garden? Ask yourself when you move, and whether you can do more of it. Kirschenbaum occasionally counsels patients to sell their cars and move into the city so they will be forced to walk more.

Give yourself permission to spend time on yourself. When you take an extra ten minutes to walk home from work, or add three minutes to lunch by taking the stairs instead of the elevator, you are taking care of your health. Often we see ourselves as too frazzled to take time out for exercise, but the truth is we can’t afford not to spend that time maintaining our physical health.

Get help. If you can’t maintain a regular habit of walking or exercising, enlist a friend to walk with you. If your friends are as irregular in their exercise habits as you, consider hiring a personal trainer or joining a regularly scheduled class. (Remember, this is for your own benefit, so pick a class you will look forward to and enjoy — yoga, fencing, or jazz dance — not an intensive aerobics session you’ll wind up hating.)

Reflect on your successes and analyze your failures. If you miss a day of walking, don’t beat up on yourself. Find out why you missed out on a chance to spend time on yourself. Maybe the walks are becoming boring and you need to change your routine. Perhaps you had a stressful day and felt too drained to do anything. Whatever the reason, reassure yourself that you will remember to take time out for exercise tomorrow. Recognize the many days you have succeeded and congratulate yourself. You have already begun the process of change and are reaping the benefits of exercise.

Remember, the more you do, the easier it gets. As your body regains its flexibility and strength, physical activity becomes much easier and less intimidating. You are already successful!

Reforming Eating Habits
The key to eating less food is reforming your eating habits: not restricting but re-forming, that is, shaping new styles of eating. This is actually simpler than it sounds.

Be aware of portion sizes. Traditionally, overweight people were counseled to count their calories and restrict themselves severely. Calorie-counters must constantly be aware, not only of what they cannot eat, but also of how much they cannot eat. Even when a reduction in calories doesn’t trigger actual hunger, it can create a sense of deprivation and resentment. This sets the stage for failure. At the same time, there must be some sense of how much food really is appropriate at a meal. Remember that three to four ounces is a proper size for a serving of meat or fish. The huge portions favored by many restaurants are often twice that amount, which may be why so many people are confused about serving sizes.

Eat less fat. Nutritionists joke about the clients who think that a no-fat label means that the food has no calories whatsoever. If it’s food, it has calories and eating unlimited quantities of fat-free cake will not help you lose weight. But eating less fat is an important part of weight loss and one that the newer fat-free foods have made a bit easier. Foods like low-fat sour cream or yogurt, and skim or two-percent milk make it possible to lower fat intake without triggering a sense of deprivation. Using these new low-fat foods instead of the full-fat products can radically reduce the fat in your diet without forcing a major change in cooking habits. This makes it a good first step in the gradual process of adopting a new lifestyle. Ideally, you’ll get 30 percent or fewer of your calories from fat.

Make substitutions. The average American gets less than half the fiber required for a healthy diet. Yet foods that are high in fiber are not only more nutritious, they are more filling, helping to alleviate hunger and its attendant sense of deprivation. And it’s easy to substitute a high-fiber food for a low one. Make sandwiches on whole wheat bread, use one slice of cheese rather than two, and add more lettuce or tomato and you have raised your fiber intake considerably while cutting fat and calories. Cook brown rice or another whole grain like bulghur instead of white rice. Substitute one glass of water per day for the soda, coffee, or juice you would otherwise drink. Chances are you won’t even notice the substitutions after a week.

Include some vegetarian meals in your menu planning. Even one meatless meal a week (pasta with pesto, bean and rice burritos, etc.) helps cut fat from the diet. If you already eat a vegetarian diet, consider cutting out cheese and other high-fat ingredients from several meals a week. Shifting the focus to grains, vegetables, and fruits can be done gradually, allowing for a slow adjustment to a new style of eating.

This is the ultimate goal — reaching a point where healthy eating and regular exercise are preferable to your old habits. And it is a realistic long-term goal.

"After about a year or possibly two of eating less fat, you will find higher-fat foods less appealing. Dishes like lasagna begin to seem heavy or greasy. The body may have some difficulty digesting these foods, so it begins to move away from wanting problematic foods. You develop a preference for the healthier foods," says Kirschenbaum.

Implementing just a few of these strategies at a time can transform your life. The process is a long one but it will result in a complete lifestyle change. You’re not on a diet — you’re on a quest to attain balance in your life. This means that you will continue to make changes, gradually increasing the amount and type of activity you engage in, slowly adopting healthier and healthier eating patterns. And the best part is, it doesn’t take luck or wisdom or money. All it takes is persistence.

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