Occam's Razor

The Ten Percent Solution?

One of the reasons to read The Huffington Post is to get your celebrity kicks. I have to confess I don’t care too much about what celebrities are doing, Jewel Staite being the possible exception. Yet, it was on Huffpost that I read about the latest celebrity yo-yo dieter, in this case the actress Kirstie Alley. For a while Alley was a spokesman for Jenny Craig, which was not only financially remunerating for her but also allowed her to lose seventy-five pounds. She eventually parted ways with Jenny Craig to come up with her own diet and sell her own dieting book. She would be wise not to write any for a while. Alley put the seventy-five pounds she lost back on, and an additional eight more pounds to boot, for a total of eighty-three pounds. Now she plans to take it off again and get back to the svelte 140 pounds or so she was when she did Cheers. Good luck Kirstie.

Alley is an egregious example of a yo-yo dieter. She has plenty of company but the rest of us struggle with our weight without the glare of publicity. I too have struggled, though thankfully I never got more than twenty-five pounds above a healthy weight. I have tried a number of diets over the years too, including the Carbohydrate Addicts Diet and the South Beach Diet. For a time, both diets looked like solutions for me too. Both were ultimately a waste of my time and money.

It is too early for me to claim victory. I have claimed it before only to find myself slacking off and find the pounds had returned. However, I have reached a milestone, losing ten percent of my weight in about five months. No, I was not on Jenny Craig, which would make little sense in my case as they market primarily to women. Nor was it Nutrisystem. I am on Weight Watchers. I have this simple advice for Kirstie: if you really want to lose weight and actually keep it off, try Weight Watchers this time. There is no guarantee you will succeed with Weight Watchers either. However, I can say that after following their program these last few months I can see the results on my scale and in the extra number of free belt notches. Moreover, I have a realistic expectation that this time I will keep it off for good.

Here is the problem with virtually all the diets out there: they may succeed in helping you lose weight, but they will do little to help you keep it off permanently. That is actually fine with the diet industry. They do not want you to keep it off permanently. If you do, they have lost another customer. No, they would much prefer you take it off, get sloppy, put it back on, then give their diet another go around. If you cannot, well, there are plenty of other diets to choose from, and they need your money too.

Any diet will let you lose weight if you follow it. Only a few though have a decent track record helping you keep it off once you have lost it. Weight Watchers is a big commercial company too, and I am sure they get their legions of yo-yo dieters too. Nonetheless, if you want to lose weight and keep it off, you should stop the Jenny Craigs, the Nutrisystems and the Slim-Fasts and do Weight Watchers instead. After you lose the weight, you will at least have a decent chance of keeping it off permanently. This is because Weight Watchers is one of the few diet companies out there whose business model involves not only helping you lose weight but helping you keep it off once you have lost it.

How hard was it for me to lose ten percent of my body mass? You might expect I spent much of the last five months eating celery and carrot sticks, but that is not the case. Mostly I ate things I already liked. In many cases I ate less of what I already liked, and changed portion sizes and ingredients so that what I ate was less caloric, higher in fiber and lower in fat. Did I suffer? If I had to rate my suffering level with Weight Watchers compared with any other diet plan, with 1 being no suffering to 10 being massive suffering, Weight Watchers was about a 3. Most of the other diet plans were in the 7-9 range.

How was this possible? Mainly, I watched what I ate, exercised portion control and kept track of what I was eating. With Weight Watchers, you learn to practice a few simple rules like “eat the filling foods first”, manage hunger through small snacks, assess the impact of what you are eating through their Points system, and eat your daily point allocation. If you want to eat more, exercise more. They have a way to calculate your bonus points via your exercise level. There are also extra points you can use over the course of a week on those days when you feel you are suffering too much. Truly, it is not that hard. Are you listening Kirstie?

Since you can eat at least some what you want, you may find yourself like me getting creative. I eat the filling foods first, but I also find creative substitutes for other foods I enjoy. Whole wheat bread is healthy, but still has more calories per slice than I would prefer. A high fiber English muffin though is only 100 calories. Cut in half, with a teaspoon of butter on each half and you have something quite tasty and dense in your stomach for less than 200 calories. It comes down to choices. The big greasy slice of pizza may be out but an occasional Lean Cuisine pizza may be okay. After a while you may find, like me, that you don’t need to count points anymore because you eat many of the same sorts of foods you used to and you know what and how much you need to stay on track. In any event, the weekly weigh in helps enforce discipline that may be lacking. I think it is essential in keeping you honest.

I am not entirely there yet, but I am close to the point where my new eating habits are becoming automatic. I now find that although I could have fancier things to eat for lunch, I want a salad. I can dress it up in a way where it is filling and satisfying. My weight loss coach was very pleased when she recently announced that I lost ten percent of my weight. She said this is a key indicator of people who can develop the habits to keep the weight off permanently. By the way, unlike many yo-yo dieters you should lose weight slowly. About a pound a week is ideal. Have patience. If you lose a pound a week, in a year you weight fifty pounds less and you are much more likely to keep it off too.

I am planning to keep losing weight even though I passed the ten percent threshold, with the goal of getting my weight down to the day I was married, which was probably the last time I was at that weight. Then I will do my best to stay there. I will use my blog, in part, as a reminder to keep at it.

I hope you can learn from my experience. I think celebrity diets are a waste of time. Find a diet program that works with your eating habits and has some track record for helping you keep the weight off once you have lost it. There is no painless approach to weight loss but plans like Weight Watchers are the only ones that have any realistic chance of succeeding in the long term.

If your freezer is full of food from Jenny Craig or Nutrisystem, you might as well chuck it because these diets at best will only succeed in taking off weight for a while. Keeping weight off permanently and developing new habits, like eating better and exercising more, is what you really need. A diet is only one component for reaching this goal. You need long-term health. This is a completely different game, but it is the only plan worth having.

June 17th, 2009 at 07:32pm Posted by Mark | Sociology | no comments

More adventures in weight loss

Since I officially started my latest diet on January 22nd, I have lost thirteen pounds. Seven weeks and thirteen pounds is close to a weight loss of two pounds a week. How hard was it? So far, not that hard.

There are lots of diet plans out there of course, but overall I think the current one I am on, Weight Watchers, is probably the best of those I have tried over the years. Any weight loss plan of course will work if you adhere to it. Unfortunately, most people will put the weight back on shortly after they take it off. I am not the exception either. I certainly did not intend to be a yo-yo dieter, but simple inattention and giving into the cravings of my body made the weight creep back up over time.

Truly, despite all the sweats that diets tend to give us Americans, taking off the pounds is the easy part. Keeping them off is the hard part. Can I successfully incorporate new eating strategies into my life for the rest of my life? It remains to be seen. Still, I can feel the weight coming off. Thirteen pounds amounts to two notches on my belt. I feel healthier and have more stamina. My blood pressure is already down into the normal range. I do not know about my cholesterol count yet. I had blood drawn on Tuesday and should get lab results soon. Since it typically takes six months for cholesterol levels to get back to normal, I probably have a way to go. I would prefer to avoid cholesterol-lowering drugs. Time will tell whether I will succeed there.

Why is a stodgy old diet plan like Weight Watchers working so well? I think it is mainly because I can choose what I want to eat. As I pointed out in my first post, it does not mean you can eat as much of what you want, unless you prefer low calorie, high fiber food. Clearly most of us losing weight do not prefer these foods; otherwise, we would not have gained the weight in the first place. Maybe once a week I will have a Lean Cuisine Spaghetti for dinner (5 points). I grew up on spaghetti dinners. So eating food I enjoy, even if in smaller quantities than I was used to, really does help. As Linda, our coach put it: “If it doesn’t taste good, don’t put it in your mouth.”

In hindsight, it is easy to see how I fell off the wagon. Throughout my weight gain, I never lacked for regular aerobic and anaerobic exercise. Granted I get little of it in the office, but I hit the gym regularly and really worked out. I deluded myself to some degree that if I exercised enough the weight gain did not matter. Of course, even if you exercise regularly, if you eat more calories than you burn, you gain weight. It is that simple. I simply chose to not pay much attention to the problem until my doctor gave me a wakeup call.

Weight Watchers has convinced me (it’s amazing how quickly we forget) that a few simple things take the pounds off: burn more calories than you take in, exercise regularly and systematically, track what you eat and use the discipline of a support group. If you can do these four things, you will lose weight. It does become much less burdensome though if you can mix in some of the foods you love (hopefully lower fat, lower calorie and higher fiber equivalents) with the healthier foods. If you chose not to do these four things most likely you will not succeed in losing all the weight you want to lose, and are likely to falter on your path.

The discipline of being weighed once a week in front of an impartial coach has an amazing effect. Simply put, it provides essential accountability. Since most of us have a hard time being accountable to ourselves, why not to a coach? Since you will not be the only one at the Weight Watchers class, you will also watch others lose weight too, and they are likely to encourage you in your journey. The social aspect of weight loss is critically important, and perhaps the most important part of succeeding.

I have also found that you can eat really tasty and nutritious food that doesn’t pack on the calories. One of my favorites is a Chicken Stir Fry. Our local warehouse club BJs makes a great chicken stir fry, loaded with tasty vegetables, spaghetti, chicken of course and garnished with soy sauce. It has 190 calories per serving. There are four servings in a bag, so if you have two servings you are getting only 380 calories and you have a huge plate full of healthy and good tasting food. Moreover, it is loaded with dietary fiber and is low in fat. Perhaps if you are salt sensitive the soy sauce is not good for you. Two servings are just six points.

There are many low calorie products out there, some of them are exceptionally good. Weight Watchers of course sells dozens of them, many of them mediocre but some seem too good to be true. Take their fudge bar. Amazingly, it is only one point but it is still quite chocolaty and actually tastes rich. If you have a sweet tooth like I do, it is manna from heaven. You have to be careful though that you do not subsist on a diet of Weight Watchers fudge bars. Your body really does need the dietary fiber from fruits and vegetables too, so you want to include healthy portions of them in your diet. They will fill up your stomach much better than a couple Weight Watchers fudge bars.

I will give you more progress reports in the weeks ahead. It drives my wife nuts at times because she has this thing against Weight Watchers. However, if the first thirteen pounds came off with such little pain, I do not see why I cannot keep going until I reach a healthy weight. I am about half way there already.

March 12th, 2009 at 09:06pm Posted by Mark | Sociology | no comments

Watching Points

Men, if you want to meet women, join Weight Watchers. At least, that appears to be true based on the class I attended the other week. There were fifteen women in the room (including the leader) and I was the only man. So I asked the women in the room: do men, like, ever do Weight Watchers? Someone remembered a man who joined briefly some months back, but in general, at least with this group, men just don’t do Weight Watchers. Maybe Nutrisystem or something is a more manly way to lose weight. After all, prominent well-remunerated ex-football coaches endorse it.

Granted, if you are looking for super skinny women you won’t find any at a Weight Watchers meeting, except for possibly the leader, who is probably already spoken for. I also happen to be spoken for and as best I could tell the other women in the room were too. However, by being the only man in the room you may find women competing for your attention. Also, you are probably far more interesting than the weekly weigh in.

My cardiologist suggested Weight Watchers. “It’s easy. You eat what you want,” she said, which is okay for her to say, as she is from India, vegetarian and as skinny as a rail. My experience in dieting over the years probably parallels yours: it is never easy. Mainly it is a matter of consistency and force of will. If you regularly slip on either of them, you tend to put on the weight again.

While I would normally no more go out of my way to attend a Weight Watchers meeting than I would an AA meeting, I had to confess to myself I do not have that excuse. A group meets weekly on my floor, in a conference room about a hundred feet down the hall. Moreover, Thursdays from 11 to Noon, their meeting time, was also a convenient time for me to attend. Having no viable excuse and knowing my cardiologist would keep giving me a hard time, I opened my wallet and signed up.

I am on Day Nine of Weight Watchers. The one thing I have not actually done since my first meeting is weigh myself. That was because yesterday I was facilitating a large meeting of more than a dozen people, most of whom were from out of town. Nevertheless, I certainly have been scrupulously tracking points. Points are what you track if you do the Weight Watchers thing. You can look up the number of points for some dish in a convenient book they give you or on their web site, or you can use their calculator to convert calories, dietary fiber and fat content into points.

The women in the meeting looked at me enviously. I hope it was because I didn’t look like I should even be at Weight Watchers. I have no beer belly and what excess fat I have tends to be in the form of modest love handles. Their envy likely had more to do with me being a male, which means I am larger, thus burn more calories, which means I get six extra points a day. I am not supposed to exceed 33 points in food per day, whereas all the women in the room were somewhere in the mid to upper 20 points per day.

It is true you can eat anything you want on Weight Watchers and theoretically lose weight, but of course, you probably cannot eat as much of you want of the foods you like. You quickly learn that if you eat what you like, such as calorie-dense food full of sugars and fat, you can earn your daily points with just a few candy bars. Moreover, these sorts of food simply make you want to eat more of them. Naturally, if you are intent on minimizing your misery you quickly discover the virtues of filling foods, i.e. foods that have few points, and are relatively low on calories and fat and high in dietary fiber. One I like is grapes. One cup of grapes is just one point. They have some dietary fiber, taste nice and sweet, contain zero fat and are available year round. However, a cup of most fresh fruits will do the same thing. As I tend to like berries, a cup of fresh raspberries or blackberries as a snack or with a meal goes down rather pleasantly.

Still, you have to keep meticulous track of what you eat, at least for the first six weeks. You also need to track activity points. That’s not a problem with me, as I already get adequate exercise, so many days I earn extra points. This of course means you can eat more and still lose weight. However, exercise does tend to make you hungrier. The benefits of exercise though go far beyond weight loss, so it makes sense to exercise and diet simultaneously.

After a couple months, my feelings may be different, but overall the first week was not as hard as I anticipated. The trick seems to be to be doggedly consistent. In the morning, before I rush off to work I usually have a bowl of cereal. Since starting, I now measure one cup of Cheerios and three quarters of a cup of soy milk. That’s four points. Mid morning snack is that cup of whole grapes: 1 point. Lunch: soup and salad from the cafeteria. We have plenty of variety in the salads we can create. The trick is to add heaps of healthy vegetables, go sparingly or skip the salad dressing and avoid the urge to load it with proteins like chicken or tuna. If you do this, the salad can be just a couple points. If your idea of a salad is a Caesar salad loaded with dressing, three cups of Caesar salad is seven points! I love soups and most are only a few points. Many though are loaded with salt, which may be a reason to avoid them. An apple is just two points and very filling so it works for dessert. Enormous dinners are out, of course, and creating even modest dinners and staying within your point range can be challenging. I make sure I reserve two points for a Skinny Cow, a sort of ice cream sandwich-lite.

The goal of Weight Watchers is not just to help you lose weight. Virtually any diet will succeed in letting you lose weight. The hard part is keeping it off permanently. It means a new way of eating. It means listening to your body so you reach for a snack while your body is just starting to get hungry and stopping when you are satisfied but not full. The goal is to stay in the “comfort zone” so hunger does not drive you to excess eating. Small binges are okay. Weight Watchers realizes some days you will crave more calories, so it adds in 35 weekly points. If you don’t use them you lose weight faster. Last week I used up about half of my weekly points.

Time will tell whether a modest decrease in my weight will reduce my cholesterol and blood pressure. I am skeptical that I can wholly relearn eating habits because if I had been successful in various strategies I have tried in the past, I would not be losing weight yet again. Americans’ relationship with food is very complex. It is incredibly easy to overeat in America without really trying. Mindfulness through the tracking of points is a bit challenging but so far has not proven overly onerous. Perhaps with persistence my blood pressure, weight and cholesterol will soon all return to the normal range again.

Stay tuned.

January 30th, 2009 at 08:31pm Posted by Mark | Sociology | no comments

Our stressed out nation

Didn’t you suspect this all along?

Scientists reported yesterday that they have uncovered a biological switch by which stress can promote obesity, a discovery that could help explain the world’s growing weight problem and lead to new ways to melt flab and manipulate fat for cosmetic purposes.

….

Moreover, the stressed-out junk-food eaters put on the worst kind of fat — deposited around the abdomen and laced with hormones and other chemical signals that promote illness. After three months, the animals became obese and developed the constellation of health problems that obese humans often get — high blood pressure, early diabetes, high cholesterol — an increasingly common condition known as metabolic syndrome.

I find a direct correlation between my weight and the amount of stress in my life. I bet the same is true with you. So the conclusion in this article was no surprise. When you are under stress, your body is in an abnormal state. Yet for many of us Americans, modern life is little but stress. Our employment often feels tenuous. Our marriages feel rocky. Our kids are difficult to manage. We work two or three jobs to pay the bills.

Therefore, we look for balms to relieve our stress. These are typically smoking, drinking, drugs and food. Of the four of these, the one that society frowns on the least is food. Unlike drugs, cigarettes and booze, food is both extremely convenient and inexpensive. You will not be carded for being underage and buying a box of Ding Dongs. Solutions to our stresses often involve more stress. If our marriage is under stress, to solve it we either have to endure months of painful and expensive marital therapy with high likelihood of failure or go through the trauma of divorce. If our children are grossly misbehaving, timeouts and a spanking are unlikely to solve the problem. Instead, they likely need to talk to social workers and psychiatrists. Often they will end up on antidepressants. Since their behavior affects Mom and Dad, they often end up on antidepressants too. However, since most stress is situational, treating stress by pill is no cure. At best, it offers only modest and temporary relief.

For many of us the best and cheapest therapy is a pet. Like Prozac, even the most devoted dog can only do so much. Therefore, it is easy to succumb to the temptation to buy that box of Krispy Kremes. A sugar high is easy to achieve and it feels so satisfying. Except of course, it is as successful at solving our stress as a bottle of booze. At best, it helps the stressful feelings recede for a few hours.

Maybe it is coincidence but as I travel America, I feel like I can accurately measure the stress level of a community by the average girth of its citizenry. Throughout much of the South and Midwest, Americans are noticeably more obese than elsewhere. Perhaps poverty in the South contributes toward its problem. Its culture probably contributes as well, which seems to emphasize a diet rich in empty carbohydrates. The filmmaker Michael Moore is quite obese and was raised in Flint, Michigan. Since my wife is also from Flint and we have relatives in the state, we visit Flint periodically. I note no lack of an obesity crisis in Northern Virginia where I live. Even so, when I go to Flint I feel appalled. With the auto industry in permanent decline, the city slipping more and more into stagnation with the passage of each year, it seems Flint’s biggest surplus is in obese people. The residents of Flint seem to have an unhealthy attraction to greasy spoons and donut shops.

As I noted in 2005, there are no lack of greasy spoons and donut shops in Canada either. You can hardly drive a mile without passing a Tim Horton’s donut shop, for which residents of Ontario seem to have an almost unnatural affection. (There is sound reason for their affection; we dined there twice.) I have seen Tim Hortons crowded even during off hours. Yet, at least around the Toronto area, I saw markedly fewer obese people than just a hundred miles away in Buffalo.

Last summer when we visited Paris I was struck by the absence of obese and overweight people. In America the typical person is more likely to be overweight than not. In Paris, you have to look for them. My belief is that because the French in general live less stress-filled lives than Americans do, they have less need to use food to cope with stress. With their nationalized health care system, they never have to worry about whether they can afford to see a doctor. Their law requires a minimum of five weeks of vacation per year. Their national holidays are also more plentiful than ours are. Downtime and safety from many of life’s worst shocks are built into their culture. As a result, the French seem to have institutionalized a form of living that minimizes stress. So, like the mice who were not subjected to stress in the study, I am not surprised that the French look so good. (As I noted then, I think this is partly because Parisians get more exercise than we do. They burn off plenty of calories just walking to and from mass transit. They are less likely to commute by car than we are.)

Our American values emphasize self-reliance. It is practically a religion. We see living by our wits as a competitive advantage. While it may have its benefits, I think it is clear that this form of living also has a dark side. We can see it manifested in our exploding girths. Just the comfort of knowing that we have universal health insurance may do more to combat our obesity crisis than a stack of surgeon general reports.

While I think self-reliance is a terrific virtue, I also note that Europeans with their nationalized health care systems and more socialized governments live longer and have less stress-filled lives than Americans have. You have to look hard for a Western European country with life expectancy rates comparable to the United States (Denmark and Portugal). In France, you are likely to live two years longer than in the United States, despite the fact that most of the French smoke. In Germany, one year longer. In Spain, two years longer. In Switzerland, two and a half years longer. In Canada, with its socialized medicine and rampant numbers of frequently patronized Tim Horton’s donut shops, Canadians live nearly two years and a half years longer than we do.

The common denominator in these countries is that they have institutionalized methods that reduce unnecessary stress on its population. Living by your wits, which is what humans did for most of their existence, reduces lifespan.

For a country that claims to value life, perhaps we can demonstrate it by inculcating a culture that supports it. Perhaps it is time to change our values.

July 4th, 2007 at 11:45am Posted by Mark | Politics 2007 | no comments

Glycemic Junk Science

Let us add this report to the list of studies that really do not tell us anything, but do sell newspapers.

When it comes to losing weight, the number of calories you eat, rather than the type of carbohydrates, may be what matters most, according to a new study.

The findings, published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, suggest that diets low in “glycemic load” are no better at taking the pounds off than more traditional — and more carbohydrate-friendly — approaches to calorie-cutting.

The concept of glycemic load is based on the fact that different carbohydrates have different effects on blood sugar. White bread and potatoes, for example, have a high glycemic index, which means they tend to cause a rapid surge in blood sugar. Other carbs, such as high-fiber cereals or beans, create a more gradual change and are considered to have a low glycemic index.

If you put 8 gallons of gas in your car and it gets 20 miles to the gallon, you can expect the car to go 160 miles, plus or minus a bit. It is the energy in the gasoline, the terrain and traffic your car will traverse, and the efficiency of your car in transferring that energy into work that determines how far your car will go.

Your body is an engine too. It is unimaginably more complex than an automobile, but it is still an engine. When you ingest food, its calorie content is translated into amount of energy that your body will receive. If you take in more calories than you expend, you will gain weight. If you take in fewer calories than you burn, you will lose weight. At its most pragmatic level, it’s just math:

Future weight = current weight + ( some constant x ( calories in – calories expended ) )

If you choose 400 calories to come from donuts made with refined sugar and bleached flour as opposed to 400 calories from a high fiber, low glycemic cereal, you are still consuming the same amount of energy.

You can get fat by eating all healthy foods; you just have to eat enough of it. If you gorge yourself on enough salads, you will gain weight. Given the low density of calories per serving with salad, it is much harder to gain weight this way, but it is still possible. That is in part why dieticians recommend consuming whole foods.

Why does a study like this make the news? I think it is because so many of us who are overweight or obese are still hoping, in vain, for a painless method to weight loss. Right now diets emphasizing low glycemic foods, like the South Beach Diet, are in.

Now there are some upsides to eating foods with a lower glycemic index. Most likely these food are healthier for your body. A donut does not have much in the way of nutritional value because most of the good parts, like the fiber, have been removed. Whole foods in general are likelier to have more fiber as well as more vitamins and minerals than junk food. (Many junk foods though are needlessly fortified.) Eating many of these foods may technically be better for your body. It may provide more of what the body needs to carry out vital things like replacing blood cells. Nevertheless, by itself they cannot be a solution to weight loss.

If you want to lose weight, you already know what to do: take in fewer calories than you will burn and exercise more. Exercise burns more calories, but if you eat more calories to make up for the increased exercise you are not going to lose weight.

The real root of our obesity epidemic is that American capitalism has succeeded in creating foods that we crave, and making them readily available at inexpensive prices. Our behavior is not that different from my cat’s behavior. He has his high fiber, nutritionally optimized cat food, which does not taste good. (This is probably just as well, or he would eat more of it and get fat.) On the other hand, he can grub for handouts at mealtime, which is one of his favorite hobbies. He eats the cat food if he has to, but he does not prefer it. Unlike my housecat though, you do not have these restrictions. You can satisfy your cravings with out much difficulty.

As part of my own healthy eating strategy, I do my best not to bring the foods that I crave into my house in the first place. Having them readily available simply adds to my temptation to succumb and consume them. This strategy is not easy. When I hit the grocery store, the shelves are replete with things I want to eat. It takes discipline to avoid purchasing the sorts of foods I want but should not eat. (It helps to go after a meal.)

If you truly want to lose weight then you had better count those calories and understand portion sizes. You need to join Weight Watchers or some group like it; peer pressure can be a terrific motivator. You have to incorporate healthy practices into your life and be consistent about it. Nonetheless, your human nature and society will conspire to trip you up. Life may seem a lot less joyful by disciplining yourself this way, but it is the only way to be healthy. Nothing comes free. If you want a thin and healthy body, you have to consume a lot less and exercise a whole lot more. If you cannot make this choice then be prepared for host of preventable maladies as you age.

Now, I am off to the gym.

April 20th, 2007 at 01:38pm Posted by Mark | Advice | no comments

A Pit Stop in the Adventure of Weight Loss and Healthy Living

The good news is that since the start of the year I have lost about twenty pounds. The bad news is that I need to lose at least another ten pounds. Ideally, I should lose an additional ten pounds. If so perhaps I could again wear the same suit that I wore at my wedding.

My likelihood of my success? I hate to handicap my own odds but I will feel very fortunate if I can get down to a body mass index (BMI) where technically I no longer fall under the stigma of being overweight.

These days I feel good and think I look good too. I can slip into size 36 jeans again without effort. I get regular and sustained exercise. I eat better. In addition, with some effort, I am maintaining my weight. Depending on whose BMI scale you use, I may be on the high end of having a healthy BMI.

My daughter tells me of a saying at her high school about those brainiacs who managed to go to Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology. This is a state chartered school in Alexandria, Virginia for the region’s most promising high school students. “School, friends or sleep. Pick two of the three.” This is similar to being a middle age adult with low metabolism working at a sedentary job. “Job, exercise or personal/family time. Pick two out of three.” So far, I have been picking three out of three. Maybe this explains why my weight loss has plateaued.

I continue to bike to work. This time of year, I drive the three miles to work more often than bike them. Part of it is explained that I take the car to get to the gym after work. Afternoon thunderstorms in the summer are more likely than not, which makes even getting home in the evening chancy. Over the last few weeks, aided by rampant global warming, the temperatures have predictably been on the extreme side. The stagnant hot air usually means bad air quality. Biking to work may actually make me less healthy. Now that we are in August, the weather slowly becoming more bearable. I still go to the gym three to four days a week after work. The routine consists of 30-60 minutes of aerobics, usually on an elliptical machine, followed by a half hour or so of weight training.

Thursday at the gym one of many personal trainers wandering around accosted me. He talked me into coming in for an assessment yesterday. I had a good idea of where he was going: he would want to sell me personal training sessions. Steve made a logical case. He told me that I had to continually break down different muscle sets. This way my muscles would be continuously rebuilding and I would continually build muscle mass too. As a side effect, even at rest I would have a higher metabolism and burn more calories. Moreover, I would feel better, have higher self-esteem, be attractive to babes and maybe get a pony. We went through a sample workout together. I have to admit he definitely stretched muscles I did not even know existed. Nevertheless, I was not sure I wanted to cough up $400 a month for meeting with a personal trainer four times a week.

Steve asked how serious I was about fitness. Well Steve, it was you who solicited me out, not the other way around. I said I was six on a scale of ten. My goal is not to look like Arnold Schwarzenegger, at least when he was still lifting weights. (Poor Arnold has let most of it turn to flab. See what getting married does to a man?) My goal was to maintain a healthy weight level and good muscle tone. Steve could not promise me I would end up weighing less, just that I would add muscle weight and lose body fat. There was nothing wrong with the goal, but essentially, it meant I would have to turn into a body-obsessed exercise machine. I would need to commit to spending more time at the gym and endlessly worrying about toning various kinds of muscle groups.

Then there was the usual advice to eat less, or at least differently. I have already tried all sorts of variants. What I have discovered is that these helpful suggestions just do not work for me. I cannot remember to eat when I am not hungry nor do I particularly want to remember. I actually prefer to feel hunger pangs before eating. Nor can I remember to keep guzzling from a water bottle all day long. I am sure I do need more water, but I have weak enough kidneys as it is. Must I be shuffling off to the restroom every hour on the hour?

I would rather have two larger meals a day than four or five small meals. I would like a strategy where I can eat smaller portions of things I enjoy at times that seem natural to me. Instead, to lose weight and maintain optimal health I must constantly think about food, water and exercise until it becomes all-consuming. What kind of life is that? For me this exacerbates the problem by making it a larger problem in my life than I feel it deserves.

I have gotten lots of advice on weight loss and exercise over the years. I have talked to doctors, dieticians, personal trainers, psychologists, relatives, friends, and coworkers. Maybe soon I will turn to mystics and gurus. Each has snippets of insight, but there is no one size fits all solution to weight loss and health. It amounts to what you are willing to do with the limited time you have available. It certainly does help if you have more willpower than the average person does. In addition, it does not hurt to have a support group. For most of us who have not grown up being physically active, all this sensible advice amounts to cajoling yourself to work at variance to your body’s natural patterns every day for the rest of your life.

It means smaller meals when your body wants larger meals. It means exercise on days even when you simply want a day for rest and peace and quiet. It means telling yourself that yes it really is more important to spend a couple hours in the gym rather than sort through the family finances, which also has to get done. It amounts to willpower: your ability to force yourself to do things you do not want to do.

I will measure success in the short term my maintaining my twenty-pound weight loss. I keep measuring my weight every Sunday morning and try to fine-tune my eating and exercise based on what the scale reveals. Then I hope I can summon the energy to go further. I know what it will take and it is guaranteed not be easy. I will need to coax my body into eating less than what I need to maintain my weight. Moreover, I will have to push myself to do even more exercise on a more regular basis.

For now, I take some pride and sense of accomplishment from dropping twenty pounds in eight months and keeping it there. This was, in fact, one of the strategies recommended by Heather. She is the dietician I saw during the spring. Time will tell whether her advice was better than all the others out there selling me health solutions.

August 13th, 2006 at 10:49am Posted by Mark | Life 2006 | one comment

Adventures in Weight Loss and Healthy Living

Yesterday found me back in the office of my dietician Heather. As readers may recall, Heather is helping me change my diet so I can keep losing weight and lead a healthy second half of my life. Changing eating habits is not an easy task. Yesterday’s appointment was a chance to tell her how her suggestions were working. The truth was that I was having mixed success. I had managed to take off three or four pounds, but that was over two months. Habits are hard to change, and eating habits are some of the toughest ones.

I used to have three eggs for breakfast. They would easily carry me over to noon, but likely contributed to my cholesterol problem. Now I eat a cup of Kashi cereal with a cup of 1% milk for breakfast. Along with the breakfast, I consume the protein Heather wants me to eat at every meal, so I added two ounces of pressed ham. This carried me through lunch and is only 360 calories.

Drink more water, Heather told me. The only thing is I do not feel particularly thirsty. It is hard to remember to do things like this routinely while the email is streaming in and out and while I am editing web pages. So once again, I made it to noon forgetting to hydrate myself.

Today I was only mildly hungry for lunch, until I actually started eating. I skipped the salad topped with nuts that she recommended, since I knew there was plenty of salad at home that I could have with dinner. Therefore, I bought just a cup of chicken vegetable soup from the cafeteria. It was about 100 calories. I added a zero fat but very tasty Granny Smith apple. 80 calories. 180 calories for lunch so far, but I was still hungry. I reached above my desk for my handy supply of crackers. The six Cheddar Cheese crackers were 200 calories. 740 calories so far.

During the afternoon, I felt snackish. Heather had recommended a box of raisins. They are very sweet and very tasty, and have only 130 calories. Raisins are now my favorite snack, so down the hatch they went. Later, as I waded my way through another conference call the snack monster hit again. I reached for the low fat granola bar. 180 calories. Total calories so far today: 1040.

With work over, I headed to the Gold’s Gym. I exercised for thirty minutes on the elliptical machine which listening to NPR on my headset. Then it was off to use the weight machines. I pressed 90 pounds on the vertical press, 3 sets, and 15 repetitions with each set. On the Leg Extension, I pressed 115 pounds, same counts and repetition. 165 pounds on the Dip Machine. 130 pounds on the Ab Machine. 200 pounds on the Adductor. 80 pounds and 12 repetitions on the rowing machine. I can only guess how many calories I burned. Supposedly, I burned close to 500 calories on the elliptical machine, but I suspect the real amount is a lot lower than that. There is no way to measure calories on all those weight machines, but I can definitely say they were all challenging. I am guessing I burned about 500 calories at the health club today.

I went home and after a shower, I contemplated dinner. I was in a Boston Market mood tonight so I fetched one of their turkey dinners from our freezer. This is the tastiest 360 calories I can find in a prepared dinner, which is probably a sign they have too much fat per serving. I added a small salad, which cannot be more than 75 calories. Afterwards, a banana looks inviting: 105 calories. Time for dessert: three Special K bars (90 calories each) and a cup of 1% milk to wash them down. I am up to 1960 calories.

It was time to head upstairs and blog. At least I knew what to blog about today. I bring three sugar free (but alas, not calorie free) candies for a total of 50 calories. Total calorie intake for one day: 2010 calories.

Heather tells me a big man like me (six foot, two inches) needs about 2400 calories a day to maintain my weight. In addition I need 30 minutes a day of exercise to maintain my weight and more to actually lose weight. Between the exercise and the calories consumed. I think I lost weight today. The hardest part of weight loss is simply keeping it up, day after relentless day. Food ranks right up there with sex in life’s greatest pleasures. To diminish this pleasure is surprisingly hard.

Counting calories with every serving, (her latest suggestion) definitely helps. Trying to figure out if I am eating sensible portions is tougher. I started out well back in February. I wondered if I could have spaghetti with dinner and still not exceed the portions of protein and carbohydrates she wanted me to have with dinner. I had to weigh the whole grain pasta on a scale, and four servings was not a lot of pasta. Three ounces of protein (but no more) at every meal is very easy to get. It amounts to four frozen turkey balls that I threw into the spaghetti sauce. The result was tasty but underwhelming in quantity and I had already hit my carbohydrate quota for the meal.

The body, or at least my body, wants more. It likes my weight just fine. It does not understand my obsession with Body Mass Index. “Don’t you know I’m trying to store extra fat, just in case there is a famine?” it is yelling at me. I know all the strategies, but integrating them altogether is, frankly, just another damned chore in a day full of damnable chores. Knowing how many calories are in my “standard” breakfast and lunch help. I can then plan dinner accordingly. However, with dinner I also need to balance calories with standard portions. It all amounts to the same classic dieting advice: eat less and exercise more.

Ah, exercise. That has been a challenge of late. A couple weeks ago, I broke a toe in my left foot, which put the kibosh on exercise. It was not that I did not try to exercise. At the time, I did not know my toe was broken. I figured it was just “sprained”. In fact, I did the stupid male thing and exercised anyhow. It resulted in bruising which spread to my other toes. I tried carefully biking to work: same effect. Next, I spent a week in Denver on business. There I was up before 7 a.m. and rarely retired to my hotel room before 8 p.m. There was little opportunity to exercise but at this point, I had figured it out: do not even bother until the bruises disappeared.

I was certainly mindful of the food temptations while in Denver. The Club Lite sandwich at the local deli near the Denver Federal Center tasted great. I am sure it was low fat, but it was hard to guess how many calories I was consuming. In the morning, the hotel put out a huge complementary breakfast bar billed with eggs, greasy sausages, hash browns, juices, waffles, donuts and muffins. If you looked for it, you could also find bran cereal, skim milk and fruits. I started out well but by the end of the week, I had succumbed to a muffin or two with breakfast. My dinners did not appear to be highly caloric, but their calorie content was impossible to ascertain. Because I was getting virtually no exercise because of my injury, I felt I would be lucky if I did not gain any weight during the trip.

I am home and back on my normal schedule. It is easier to follow a diet. In our modern world though it is not easy to constantly monitor a sensible diet, get the exercise your body requires, work a productive day in a sedentary job and pay attention to your significant others. Those four activities along with sleep can consume a whole day. No wonder losing weight is so hard in our culture. However, further weight loss will simply require both rigorous vigilance to my diet and upping my exercise. Now that spring is finally here and I can bike to work most days I can easily add additional exercise. After seeing the podiatrist about my toe today, I also know that I can exercise with my feet again. Exercises that hurt like running though are still out.

I wish I could be like Wendy. Wendy is a woman I traveled with last year. She is forty something, blonde, trim, in shape and consequently quite attractive. She is also a vegetarian. She has the sensible eating thing down to a science. At the hotel breakfast, she happily consumed just cup of oatmeal. She grabbed an apple and consumed it later in the morning. She staggers her eating during the day with snacks. She makes it all looks so effortless, which I suspect it actually is to her. In addition, she makes time for exercise every day no matter what. On that trip, it meant getting up at 6 a.m. and hitting the hotel’s exercise room. I figure if she can do it, so could I. The real question is can I do this relentlessly and for pretty much every day for the rest of my life? Why do I have to do it but the French do not? How do they stay so fit and trim, eat fatty foods, have so little heart disease, smoke, philander and yet live into their nineties?

I do not know these answers but I can see the appeal of living in France now. I have been getting regular exercise for a quarter of a century, but apparently it is not enough. My body is going to require a lot of persuasion. 49 years of eating habits are excruciatingly hard to change permanently.

The brownies my daughter unwisely baked were still on the kitchen counter this evening. I looked at that last brownie in the pan lustfully, then calculated that if I ate it, it would add close to 500 calories to my diet.

Reluctantly, I put it back in back the pan and reached for the Special K bars instead.

April 13th, 2006 at 09:41pm Posted by Mark | Life 2006 | one comment

Advice from Heather

Yesterday I saw a dietician. I mentioned to my doctor at my physical last month that I was having a difficult time maintaining a healthy weight. He suggested seeing a dietician. With obesity rampant in this country, you would think it would be easy to find a dietician. It is not. I have looked in the Yellow Pages before to no avail. He said you find them at hospitals. The only one around where I live with dieticians that saw people on an outpatient basis was Reston Hospital. To see a dietician, I had to schedule my appointment about a month in advance.

Fortunately, I am not obese. However, I am overweight. Like most people, I have tried a couple fad diets, as well as tried upping the exercise and cutting the calories. Each approach worked for a while. Eventually, and sometimes it took a few years, something would happen. It would be easy to say I was getting lazy, or lacked the willpower, but it truly was more than that. This latest weight gain was doubtless exacerbated by my wife’s annual holiday baking cycle. Generally, I have more willpower when junk food is not in the house. When it is constantly in my face, I can easily lose willpower.

I have written about diet and exercise before. Gone are the days where most of us can burn away excess calories through on the job physical activity. If you are like me, you spend your days doing anything but that. Hey, I am a white-collar dude. If I did not walk up the stairs, the most calorie intensive thing I would do at work would be lifting my phone’s receiver. Therefore, I must make time for exercise. I bike to work when weather permits, which is about six months a year. I also hit the gym about three times a week. When I have the time and the weather is nice, I take long bike rides. Yet apparently, I was still eating too much. On the other hand, much of the time I was eating too much of the wrong stuff. These little extra calorie habits, even with regular and vigorous exercise, have a cumulative effect.

So there I was at Reston Hospital registration, getting a band around my wrist as if I were going in for major surgery. Instead, I walked a couple hundred feet down the hall to see Heather. Of course, the dietician is named Heather. I bet there are no dieticians named Gertrude. Naturally, Heather was about five feet three, and weighed about ninety-eight pounds soaking wet. Moreover, she was half my age and stunningly attractive. Considering I had to meet a deductible because the appointment was at the hospital, instead of a co-pay, perhaps I shouldn’t complain about this fringe benefit.

It is all about portion control, Heather told me. Yeah, I knew that I told her. However, I am not the type to sit there and measure 15 grams of carbohydrates at a meal. I am a busy guy. I need to have a plan that will work with me. I need to stick to the same foods during the week, and the foods need to be foods that I will mostly enjoy. Otherwise, after too much deprivation I am going to slip.

She said she would work with me. We also made an appointment for early April so that we could meet again to assess progress and perhaps change the diet. She complemented me on the eight pounds I took off during the last month (not without the usual grumbling) and warned me the weight loss would probably slow.

Yes, success at dieting and maintaining a weight in the end takes hard work and perseverance. Most diets fail, she told me, because we set our expectations too high. Step one is to take off 10% of body weight and maintain it for four to six months. Then, if you want, work at taking off another increment. This is a formula for success. You can get to the summit of the mountain, but you will want to take a couple rest breaks on the way there to make it.

I thought I had read a lot about nutrition. Yet I am still glad that I took the time and considerable expense to consult with a dietician. For I still learned a lot from Heather. I knew about good carbs and bad carbs. However, I did not know about the importance of having protein with every meal. I never gave it a second thought. I usually saved my protein for the evening meal. Protein with any meal will help stave off hunger, Heather told me.

I also thought I was being good by skipping lunch on the weekends. After all, I was not eating until 9 AM or so. Wrong, she said. Eat three meals a day every day. Include proteins and carbohydrates at every meal. You can even enjoy snacks. Just make sure you balance the carbohydrates, protein and fats. Do the usual good things. Avoid high fat foods. Try 1% instead of 2% milk. Make sure your breads have whole grains. And of course limit portions. Needless to say, what you get at most American restaurants do not qualify as normal portions, unless you are a sumo wrestler.

Looking at what was working for me the last month she made some changes. Add food to my breakfast, she told me. A bran cereal is fine; its energy will be absorbed slowly. Using 1% milk is better than 2%. Add those sugar substitutes if you want sweetness. Also, add fruit to the meal if you want. However, make sure you add a serving of low fat meat. This is not a problem; we have plenty of pre-sliced low fat turkey and ham.

If I feel the need for a mid morning snack (I rarely do) try a granola bar (without the fruit filling), or a piece of fruit, or a small box of raisins, or even crackers with peanut butter. Of course, limit yourself to one portion, which might be the size of what you can put your fist.

For lunch, if soup and a salad are working for me now, she recommended keeping at it. Nevertheless, dress the salads up with proteins from sources like beans and nuts. She said to keep eating an apple with lunch as I am doing. It has lots of fiber and no fat. She said I could even add some starchy choices with lunch. A six-pack of crackers works for me but pretzels are even better. If I feel the need for an afternoon snack, the same morning snacks will work for afternoon snacks. Or I could try different types for variety.

During dinner she said I needed to limit myself to four starchy choices, each about 15 grams of carbohydrates each. She said to make sure I got three servings of protein, and lean meat is better. Add as many vegetables as you want, and you can have one fat choice. Of course, a fat choice is not very large. One teaspoon of olive oil is one good fat choice.

This is my diet based on my age and height, so these may not necessarily work for you. Meanwhile, she said not to slack off on the exercise. Do more exercise if I can find the time. It will not hurt, but I should still take off weight regardless. If I can do this I will naturally get the calories I need, and the exercise will help me lose weight.

As for fad diets, Heather said to ignore them. They are all a waste of time because they can only work for a while. That was my experience with the South Beach Diet and the Carbohydrate Addicts Diet. I have seen the same result with others I knew who were on the Atkins diet. Vary your diet, Heather told me. Eat foods that you naturally enjoy, but eat less of them and prefer those lower in calories and fat. Just stay within the portion limits for any given meal.

Perhaps I have finally found a diet that will work for me for life. Time will tell. I know that Heather will be there to help me succeed. She said to make sure to call her if I have questions or am having trouble sticking to the diet. She will help me rework the diet into something I can live with.

My wife scoffed when I told her I was going to see a dietician. “It won’t work for me,” she told me. “There is nothing they can tell me that I do not know.” I knew most of this too going in, but I still was not able to put it altogether. Thanks to Heather, I believe I now have now I have a plan I can live with. And I plan on living well to a very ripe age.

February 9th, 2006 at 09:25pm Posted by Mark | Life 2006 | no comments

No Escape from Exercise

There is a disquieting and endemic aspect to the American character. It is our inherent belief (right even) that tells us we can have it both ways. We believe that the normal laws of the universe do not apply to us. The piper does not have to be paid. At worst, we can defer the piper indefinitely. If we need more evidence of this, we simply have to look at the so-called fiscal conservatives in our Republican controlled Congress. The solution to all our problems seems to have it both ways: charge up the national credit card and let our grandchildren worry about it. No more of this guns or butter crap. It’s guns and butter all the time! Woo hoo!

Sadly, we Americans seem to be as addicted to the promise of getting something from nothing as a junkie is to his next fix. We believe in the laughably ridiculous. After all, are we not God’s chosen nation? Therefore, we line up like lemmings to buy lottery tickets. In addition, when we read that we can lose two to three pounds per week by eating pork rinds (just skip the carbohydrates) how can we resist? Eat filet mignon for dinner every night and we will still grow skinnier.

We learn today that this latest diet craze went bust. Atkins Nutritionals, a company formed by the late Dr. Robert Atkins, entered bankruptcy court on Sunday. Whether the company, which promotes the Atkins diet, will emerge from Chapter 11 remains to be seen. One thing is for sure: the American people have tried Atkins and we do not like it anymore. It was okay for a while. Steak for dinner every night sounded great. However, it was not the same without that baked potato slathered in sour cream. Yes, million have lost weight on the Atkins Diet. Nevertheless, most of them eventually put the weight back, often adding more. It seems we do not have the willpower to say no to carbohydrates forever. Eventually the body says enough and we are buying boxes of Krispy Kremes. Reputedly, even the good Dr. Atkins succumbed. The rumor is that Dr. Atkins died obese.

It is true that buried in the Atkins diet book was that little and rarely read caveat to the diet: eat normal portions and (like any diet book I have ever read) exercise regularly. In other words, eat less and exercise more. Our American brains though translate this into “Don’t exercise at all and eat the same, or more, of something you don’t normally eat.”

I have only tried a couple diets. The Carbohydrate Addict’s Diet did not do a darn thing for me. A variant of it, the South Beach Diet took off five pounds quickly. However, I found after a couple months on it I could not keep to it. So eventually, I went back to the most difficult but most reliable method of weight control ever invented: eat less and exercise more.

Exercise more. Exercise a lot more. The truth about weight loss is that it is not so much about food as it is about exercise. It should be obvious: if you eat like a pig on any diet, you are not going to lose weight. Nevertheless, there is rarely a downside to exercising. As long as you are sensible about it and work your way up gradually longer toward exercises, you are likely to reap the rewards, including weight loss.

The Washington Post recently reported some tips from dieters who managed to lose lots of weight and keep it off:

Nutrition fads come and go. Successful losers report reaching a healthier weight the old-fashioned way: They count calories, reduce calorie-dense food and move a lot more.

Nearly half of those in the national registry reported losing weight entirely on their own. The rest got assistance from commercial weight-loss programs, a physician or a nutritionist. “Over the years, I tried a lot of different things — Jenny Craig, Weight Watchers a couple of times, different combinations of diets in magazines,” said Melissa Glassman, a lawyer who practices in Tysons Corner. “I could always lose 10 to 20 pounds, but would always gain back more than that.”

It was only by changing her habits that Glassman shed 125 pounds — half her body weight — in the past couple of years. “It’s the little things that you incorporate into your daily life that help keep you on track,” she said. “It doesn’t have to be entirely about deprivation or exercising two hours a day.”

The Post reports what you probably know in your heart too but also have a hard time admitting. Dieters who manage to keep the weight off have learned there are no quick fixes. To succeed you have to develop a viable long-term strategy that works for you and stick with it. Another successful step according to these dieters: be active. That means you will not succeed in long-term weight loss by spending your leisure hours watching television. The Post reports that those who were successful with long-term weight loss had a number of other successful strategies. They include tracking your weight, enlisting support, and setting small goals.

I do not know of anyone who has succeeded in long-term weight loss that has done so by being a couch potato. You have to exercise. In addition, you have to exercise regularly (i.e. most days). It needs to be real exercise. Much of it needs to be aerobic in nature. It can be as simple as walking. Walking is a terrific form of exercise with virtually no downsides. It does not matter too much what form of aerobic exercise you choose, so pick one (or a few) that you really enjoy.

Until recently, my favorite form of exercising was biking. It eventually messed up my feet, but that was only because I did not think about the consequences before I started. I went overboard, biking 30 miles or more in tennis shoes. Now I have proper biking shoes and my feet are finally feeling better. I am hitting the biking trail again. Since I am fortunate to live three miles from my place of employment, biking to work is an easy way for me to get exercise. Nevertheless, by itself biking is not enough. Six miles of biking a day is just 30-40 minutes of exercise. The human body really needs more exercise than that. My sedentary job means that I need to do more. Therefore, I supplement it with 2-4 escapes to the Gold’s Gym a week. In addition, I look for other ways to incorporate exercise in my life. I climb four flights of stairs to get to my office instead of taking the elevator. If there is a hiking trail off the biking trail, I will stop and go for a hike too.

As I mentioned recently, we have bodies that are meant to move. Use every excuse to move your body. If you do not have any then invent them. Make the time. Yes, I know your life is busy. You may have rug rats at home, and junior has to go to soccer practice. Do it at 4:30 a.m. if you have to. Do it after the kids go down. Help them with their homework while you work out on an elliptical machine. Do not make excuses, just do it.

Here is what I think: the goal of weight loss is not to look better. The goal of weight loss is to be healthy. Therefore, you probably need to eat better. Equally important you need to exercise more. You can stay in denial if you wish. You can hope for that new miracle drug. However, even if you never lose a pound you will feel so much better simply by getting regular exercise. You can start by literally walking the walk.

August 1st, 2005 at 09:45pm Posted by Mark | Sociology | no comments

Pass the soma

Childhood obesity is now a major American problem. When they reach their twenties, many of today’s overweight youth will discover adult diabetes, something virtually unheard of before.

If only the new problems facing today’s youth were limited to obesity. In addition to the normal traumas of adolescence, there are a whole potpourri of new problems and issues for them to confront. Attention deficit disorder is rampant. Many of our youth do not have the organizational skills to manage their homework. Many cannot even study. (They know how to do it, but cannot seem to successfully follow the steps, or even summon the motivation.) It is no wonder that we parents are spending so much money getting them counseling, therapy and life coaches. Only it does not seem to be doing much to solve their problems.

The Future Shock predicted by Alvin Toffler is here and now and it is not pretty. The complexity of our world has increased exponentially in my lifetime, and it only continues to accelerate. We adults have a hard enough time getting through the minefield of living. It is far more confusing to our children. Not surprisingly, they are having a hard time adapting. Why? We need people that who behave like machines. Instead, we humans stubbornly insist on being human beings. In addition, the more complex life gets the bigger the disconnect. Like it or not we cannot retrofit bodies that for millennium were optimized for chores like farming and hunting mastodons into a species of cubicle dwellers.

Imagine what would happen to a thoroughbred that spent most of his life in the stall. Imagine if the supply of oats and water were plentiful and always readily available. Imagine if he only rarely got outside the barn, and once outside did not have the opportunity or inclination to run around. Most likely the thoroughbred would be obese and unhealthy.

Therefore, we really should not be surprised that our youth seem to be having a hard time coping with modern life. Our children are not living a natural life. They are living an unnatural life. For a human child a natural life would involve a lot of time spent outdoors, running around and exploring. I knew that sort of youth. The woods were less than a mile away and we were frequently in them. After school, we were outside playing ball, running around or having harmless “wars” with the other kids on the block. There was no Nintendo to distract us. We had no personal computers and could not even imagine the Internet. With so much time to fill, we created our own realities. We engaged the world because there was no other choice.

Today we are thrown together in increasingly dense communities. The streams are now underground in drainage pipes. Most of us modern parents cannot allow our children to play unsupervised. There are too many wackos and perverts out there. We imagine them lurking around every corner targeting our children. Our youth live highly managed and busy lives. As parents, our mission seems to be to never given them a moment’s rest. How could we? This modern world is so complex. There is so much they must learn and not enough time to learn it. We know the anxiety first hand because we live in it. Therefore, we push our children hard.

Just the idea of our children growing up technologically impaired gives us the heebie jeebies. Therefore, in addition to the compulsory game machines they have their own computers, PDAs, cell phones and fat pipes to the Internet. So naturally, when they have something resembling downtime, they are sending text messages and IMing friends instead of playing ball in the street. When my daughter is on the Internet she often has a half dozen chat windows open at the same time. She has the message: in this modern world, you must be able to multitask.

If we were a more enlightened society then perhaps we would demand no more complexity to our lives. We might even insist on regression. Perhaps we would be petitioning Congress to unplug us from the Internet and take away our computers. Perhaps we would go back to slide rules, logarithm tables, black and white televisions, typewriters and carbon paper. Perhaps we would be limiting our children to one per family so future generations could enjoy something resembling nature again.

In truth, Future Shock has been around since the early 19th century. It began with the start of the Industrial Revolution. The problem is that it is only getting worse. With each generation, it gets harder to push us square peg humans into the round holes of modern living. We must all live by our wits now. If we do not then we will not survive.

Our children will be emulating us: spending their work life in cubicles in leased office buildings. They will be constantly on call. They will have little time for hobbies. Leisure time will need to be productive. If they made it through college, they will be going to graduate school. Lifelong education will be a necessity so they will be constantly earning new degrees. However, it is questionable whether so many of our ADD-addled youth of today will be able to master modern life at all.

It is a good bet they will not be hitting the health club after work. The forty-hour workweek will look increasing nostalgic. They will be lucky if they are working only fifty-hour workweeks. Most likely, they and their spouse will be juggling multiple jobs each to maintain some semblance of a decent standard of living. In addition, on top of their frantic lives they will be expected to raise another generation who will likely turn out even more dysfunctional. The road kill rates are likely to climb.

My wife is now teaching in a community college. I have been teaching in a community college for about five years. She runs across the same type of students that I do. She is surprised but what she sees but I am not. It is amazing and incredible, but most of her students arrive in college with no study skills at all. They whine for extra tutoring and study sessions. They do not know how to take effective notes. (Most do not even bother to take notes.) They pretty much refuse to read the textbook. They think homework is optional. If the lectures are not made available as printed Powerpoint slides they probably cannot absorb it. They need short bullets. These college pretenders cannot cope with college, just like they cannot cope with many other aspects of modern life. That is why so many of them are still living at home. That is why Mom and Dad are still paying for their room and board.

They seem comfortable in their cocoons. Modern life is too scary. They would rather stay in the nest. They would rather live with Mom and Dad forever. Despite all the preparation they allegedly received for real life, they arrive baffled and largely clueless. Life seems surreal. Money is abstract. It is hard to associate effort with value. It is hard to think. It is hard to understand cause and effect. They live in what they perceive to be a virtual and abstract world, not a real world.

I expect that our drug companies will try to come to the rescue. There will be a plethora of new drugs to help us cope. They will not solve their problems, but hopefully as a result they will feel better. Rest assured that they will enrich drug company profits. For if they survive then they will be needed in their stalls/cubicles. Lots of email will be constantly streaming in and out of their inbox that will need their attention. Perhaps their ability to multitask so successfully will make them a better cubicle dweller. For eight or ten hours a day, they will sit at their workstations hardly moving. However, the vending machine will be around the corner if they feel the need to graze. Because not only has Future Shock arrived, but Brave New World is also here. Pass the soma.

July 15th, 2005 at 10:11pm Posted by Mark | Sociology | no comments