2013-02-22 Fri

Diet

The most basic dietary advice you'll ever read.

• We are animals. Unlike the other living things (plants), we can move around. It's the way we are, or more correctly, it's the way we have evolved. We are evolved to move around, as in "exercise" and we need fuel for energy to move around, as in "diet".

That's it.

So if your weight, blood pressure, cholesterol, body-mass-index etc. is high, and since your life consists of movement and fuel, there's only two things you can do: Move more and fuel less.

Your choice of more-movement and your choice of fuel-less is up to you and your doctor, but find a doctor who listens and prescribes exercise and diet within your means, and work as a team.

Or die trying.

Diet

Bathroom scales will NOT cause any weight-loss. The exercise in stepping onto the scales and stepping off does NOT count as a step-up exercise. Only changes in diet and exercise can cause a weight loss.

That said, we have a mental thing called MOTIVATION, and bathroom scales are great for this.

I purchased a battery-powered (why can't we have scales powered by the fact we step on them? Why do we need battery power in a bathroom scale?) digital set for $20. The read-out appears to be in tenths of a pound, which is more than accurate enough for anyone outside a medical laboratory; but I am a scientist and my laboratory is about 13.7 billion light-years radius.

So I weight myself every day, at the start of my weight-loss program. (I started a week or so ago at 175 lbs; my goal is 155 lbs. Note that I have not set a time limit for my goal; I just want to get there).

I rise and head straight for the scales; naked, I step on; the illuminated dial I can read without my glasses; I mutter the readout, then go pee. Then, being curious, I weight myself again.

Interesting. Same curious exercise for the other stuff)

Then I re-don my sleep clothes. Then, being curious, I weight myself again.

Interesting; my sleep clothes account for 0.6 lbs. I need not strip to shivering nakedness tomorrow morning. Same curious exercise for street clothes, winter version.

I write the value (176.2) on the little memo whiteboard on the fridge door and set about my morning routine. (Blood sugar, Blood pressure readings, but more on that later). I record my weight in the spreadsheet (see "scientists" above!) and if I've forgotten it, I obtain it from my earlier written record. I don't trust my scale's memory any more than I do my own.

Throughout the day, in the early days, I check my weight obsessively, and If I detect a lower reading than the first reading of the day, I use that as my record. It's cheating, sort of, but until my trend in weight begins its steady downward path, I'm using every ounce (hah!) of support I can get to keep me on track with diet and exercise.

I'll weigh myself before and after exercise out of curiosity; if I get a lower weight, it replaces the higher weight. I'll weigh myself out of boredom; if I get a lower weight, it replaces the higher weight. I'll weigh myself before my last snack before going to bed; if I get a lower weight, it replaces the higher weight. So that by the end of the day I've recorded the lowest weight I can, and my downward trend begins as soon as possible.

I see this as a strong motivation factor; if my night-time weight is about as low as my day-long minimum, I'm motivated to have just a small snack before retiring for the night.

And each time I drop to a new, lower pound reading, I celebrate with a meal or snack I wouldn't normally eat. I've learned that such an activity barely causes a blip on my weight trend, and gives me an excited reason to attack the next pound.

Yay! For bathroom scales.