Herculodge

Trying to Lose Weight Is Being Caught Between a Rock and a Hard Place

Your doctor tells you to lose weight. Or your own pride tells you to. So you go on some sort of program. What you find is that you need determination to fight the fat. And the more determined you get, the more your determination takes over so that your regular check on the scale becomes the biggest thrill of your day. Once life becomes reduced to losing weight, or not, you’re no longer living. 

The dilemma is that as soon as you relax, live life without focusing on the weight loss, you find your laxity results in weight gain. 

The most enviable way to lose weight would be to not try, to not be “determined,” to not think about it: To lose weight while living your life fully would be the ideal way to approach it. 

The Overfed American Doesn't Know He's Overfed And There Lies the Problem

Several months ago, I heard Dr. Dean Edell say on the radio that the average American consumes 3,700 calories a day, which he said is a huge amount and explains why so many Americans are fat. I’m a bit alarmed to consider that 3,700 calories is about the amount I ingest on a daily basis, give or take a few. And this number explains why at 46 years of age my 230-pound bodyweight is 20-30 pounds heavier than I want it to be for appearance and health reasons.

I’ve been working out most of my life. At 13, I was a Junior Olympic Weightlifting champion. At 19, I was second place in Mr. Teenage San Francisco. I know the confidence and satisfaction associated with looking muscular and lean and I know, ever since my metabolism slowed down in my early thirties, the chagrin and displeasure of having a Pillsbury Dough Boy coat of flab over my frame.

No time did I experience this humiliation more than in the summer of 2003 at the age of 42. My wife Carrie and I were walking back from the brunch buffet at the Sheraton Inn in Kauai where I had just ingested a 3,000-calorie breakfast of macadamia nut pancakes, French toast made with Hawaiian sweet bread, turkey sausage patties, and scrambled eggs with melted cheddar all washed down with several tall glasses of freshly-squeezed orange juice. As I strutted my 259-pounds outside the buffet room and past a hotel window, I saw the reflection of a portly gentleman, dressed in safari shorts and a turquoise tank top, which sported the striking image of the iconic sea turtle. This unsightly man I gazed upon looked like the stereotype of an overfed American.

I walked closer toward the bloated image and I was overcome by the shock and anxiety that the reflection was not some other guy for whom I could judge with gleeful ridicule but me. I was that dude, the type of person that I had mocked and scorned most of my life.

This was a huge moment for me, what literary people might call an “epiphany,” and I was fortunate to have experienced it. Most people are denied, or deny themselves, such moments of clarity. It is my belief that something like 95% of the human race walk around Planet Earth with their heads up their butts and this is how they die—never knowing what the hell is really going on. But on that summer day in Kauai when I saw that the corpulent man in the window was in fact me, my head uncorked from my butt and I was able to see reality for what it really was. And this reality—me being a chubster—was totally unacceptable. Something had to be done.

Some might argue that I was perfectly fine. After all, my cholesterol was under 200, my blood pressure was normal, and I could run seven miles on the treadmill in under an hour. In fact, on another radio broadcast Dr. Edell reported a major study from obesity researcher MaryFran Sowers that concludes many overweight people are fit and don’t need to lose a pound in order to live long, healthy, functional lives. But this did not console me. Even if a doctor told me I could live a long, robust life at a bodyweight of 275 and indulge my eating passions with little or no restraint, I would balk at the offer since more than health I like to look good in a pair of jeans. I like my silk shirts to drape over broad shoulders and taper gracefully over a small waist. So let’s get this on the table right now: Getting my weight down to 210 or so is largely a vanity thing. It’s about self-image and self-confidence. Those are components of being healthy that the MaryFran Sowers study don’t account for. Looks matter. And so does the sense of having control of what one puts in one’s mouth, rather than the other way round in which the individual is a slave to the appetites.

Not wanting to look like the fat American I saw in the hotel window, I returned to Los Angeles from my Kauai vacation and curbed my dietary excesses by filling my belly with large amounts of  vegetables, mostly spinach and broccoli,  stopped drinking fruit juice (which has the sugar equivalent of soda pop) quit eating desserts, and kept my calories under 3,000 for a good year. During that time I lost 40 pounds as my weight steadily went down to about 210, which I consider my ideal weight. At the time, I was running 6 to 7 miles a day on the treadmill.

At 210, I had to buy new clothes. I was 42 years of age, but I looked far younger. People at the gym approached me, congratulated me on my weight-loss and asked me for advice on training and nutrition, as if my newly-acquired lean look credentialed me as some sort of benevolent dietary guru who holds the secrets of weight reduction. Alas, this adulation would prove short-lived.

Several months ago, I heard Dr. Dean Edell say on the radio that the average American consumes 3,700 calories a day, which he said is a huge amount and explains why so many Americans are fat. I’m a bit alarmed to consider that 3,700 calories is about the amount I ingest on a daily basis, give or take a few. And this number explains why at 46 years of age my 230-pound bodyweight is 20-30 pounds heavier than I want it to be for appearance and health reasons.

I’ve been working out most of my life. At 13, I was a Junior Olympic Weightlifting champion. At 19, I was second place in Mr. Teenage San Francisco. I know the confidence and satisfaction associated with looking muscular and lean and I know, ever since my metabolism slowed down in my early thirties, the chagrin and displeasure of having a Pillsbury Dough Boy coat of flab over my frame.

No time did I experience this humiliation more than in the summer of 2003 at the age of 42. My wife Carrie and I were walking back from the brunch buffet at the Sheraton Inn in Kauai where I had just ingested a 3,000-calorie breakfast of macadamia nut pancakes, French toast made with Hawaiian sweet bread, turkey sausage patties, and scrambled eggs with melted cheddar all washed down with several tall glasses of freshly-squeezed orange juice. As I strutted my 259-pounds outside the buffet room and past a hotel window, I saw the reflection of a portly gentleman, dressed in safari shorts and a turquoise tank top, which sported the striking image of the iconic sea turtle. This unsightly man I gazed upon looked like the stereotype of an overfed American.

I walked closer toward the bloated image and I was overcome by the shock and anxiety that the reflection was not some other guy for whom I could judge with gleeful ridicule but me. I was that dude, the type of person that I had mocked and scorned most of my life.

This was a huge moment for me, what literary people might call an “epiphany,” and I was fortunate to have experienced it. Most people are denied, or deny themselves, such moments of clarity. It is my belief that something like 95% of the human race walk around Planet Earth with their heads up their butts and this is how they die—never knowing what the hell is really going on. But on that summer day in Kauai when I saw that the corpulent man in the window was in fact me, my head uncorked from my butt and I was able to see reality for what it really was. And this reality—me being a chubster—was totally unacceptable. Something had to be done.

Some might argue that I was perfectly fine. After all, my cholesterol was under 200, my blood pressure was normal, and I could run seven miles on the treadmill in under an hour. In fact, on another radio broadcast Dr. Edell reported a major study from obesity researcher MaryFran Sowers that concludes many overweight people are fit and don’t need to lose a pound in order to live long, healthy, functional lives. But this did not console me. Even if a doctor told me I could live a long, robust life at a bodyweight of 275 and indulge my eating passions with little or no restraint, I would balk at the offer since more than health I like to look good in a pair of jeans. I like my silk shirts to drape over broad shoulders and taper gracefully over a small waist. So let’s get this on the table right now: Getting my weight down to 210 or so is largely a vanity thing. It’s about self-image and self-confidence. Those are components of being healthy that the MaryFran Sowers study don’t account for. Looks matter. And so does the sense of having control of what one puts in one’s mouth, rather than the other way round in which the individual is a slave to the appetites.

Not wanting to look like the fat American I saw in the hotel window, I returned to Los Angeles from my Kauai vacation and curbed my dietary excesses by filling my belly with large amounts of  vegetables, mostly spinach and broccoli,  stopped drinking fruit juice (which has the sugar equivalent of soda pop) quit eating desserts, and kept my calories under 3,000 for a good year. During that time I lost 40 pounds as my weight steadily went down to about 210, which I consider my ideal weight. At the time, I was running 6 to 7 miles a day on the treadmill.

At 210, I had to buy new clothes. I was 42 years of age, but I looked far younger. People at the gym approached me, congratulated me on my weight-loss and asked me for advice on training and nutrition, as if my newly-acquired lean look credentialed me as some sort of benevolent dietary guru who holds the secrets of weight reduction. Alas, this adulation would prove short-lived.

Reversing the Slow Sojourn to Fat City

 

All my life I have heard about the frog in a pot of water who dies not by suddenly being scalded but in the comfort of sitting in room-temperature water that slowly warms until the frog is boiled to death. I suppose that analogy explains a lot of human folly, including the manner in which we wake up one morning to find ourselves fat. Complacency, laxity, and bad habits slowly take their toll until we find, to our horror, that we look horrible and sometimes feel helpless to do anything about it.

I was heading in that direction after my dramatic weight loss, slowly inching my way back to Fat City. Fueled by the humiliation of being too heavy, especially by that image of the Overfed American in the hotel window, I was able to succumb to the rigors of the diet, but after I got my weight down, I grew more and more lax. That was the beginning of seeing my weight creep up to unacceptable levels.

Then there was another factor that contributed to my slow weight-gain: I replaced the 6 miles of running per day in the summer of 2005 with power yoga, and my weight increased to 230 over the next four years. In spite of my added weight, I refused to go back to the running for several reasons. One, the running gave me shin splints, plantar fasciitis, lower back pain, chafing, and sometimes headaches. I was sick of applying gobs of Vaseline between my thighs and across my nipples before every run and putting my reeking ammonia-soaked gym clothes in the wash. I was sick of having to buy a new pair of $100 running shoes every three months. I was sick of catching colds and other viruses, including pink eye, from the gym’s filthy cardio machines. I was sick of having to take a two-hour nap after my 6-mile runs and still not feeling refreshed. And I was simply sick of the gym. I had been going to health clubs since 1974 at the age of 13 and by 2005 I had lost my tolerance for all the peacock strutters and self-ascribed training experts and other annoying gasbags who frequented the gym.  

But most compellingly of all, I quit the gym because I had fallen in love with power yoga, the way it made me feel, the way it afforded me flexibility that I never had before, and the freedom it gave me to exercise at home.  Before I did yoga, I could not turn my head when moving my car in reverse without feeling a sharp pain in my neck. After doing yoga for a few months, the sharp neck pain had vanished.

However, yoga has one disadvantage. It does not not burn calories like running. My one-hour treadmill runs resulted in a expenditure of 1,200 calories. In contrast, my yoga workouts burned about half that. To increase the calorie-burn of my workouts, I have made it more rigorous by incorporating high-rep dumbbell and medicine ball exercises into my power yoga routine, which I perform for an hour five or six days a week.

But in spite of my combination of power yoga, medicine balls, and dumbbells, which burn between 700-800 calories per hour workout, my weight has crept up to 230.

Another thing I miss about the running is the safety net it affords me. If I indulge in some dessert or other, I can simply run it off. Without the running, I have the heightened anxiety that no matter how hard I work-out, one or two slices of boysenberry pie with vanilla ice cream could set me back for weeks.

This is the condition I find myself in August of 2008. Four years after reaching my target weight of 210, I’ve allowed myself to eat about 3,700 calories a day, resulting in a weight-gain of 20 pounds, the mid-way point of the 259-pound Overfed American traipsing around the Kauai Sheraton Inn.

Knowing this makes me very anxious. Something must be done. I do not want to be like the average American troglodyte who indulges his appetites without thought. I want to be in control of my life. I need a boundary in a country that embraces reckless excess. One boundary that I think I might be able to live with is 3,000 calories a day. It’s a good number for me. I’ve been stuck at 230 for about a year now so apparently 3,700 calories maintains my current weight provided I continue my intense home-exercise routine.

Getting my weight down should be a very simple math problem: There are 3,600 calories in a pound of fat. If I keep my calories at 3,000, that will be 4,900 fewer calories a week than I am currently consuming. Over six months, or 24 weeks, that would be 117,600 fewer calories consumed, which divided by 3,600 is 32.7 pounds of fat.

This number amazes me. I have to tell it to myself again and again. If I simply stick to 3,000 calories a day for six months and continue my current training, my weight will go from 230 to 198 pounds. That’s more than 10 pounds beyond my target weight. More importantly, I will no longer be marching toward Fat City. I’ll be marching to a much better place, a land of boundaries, discipline, self-control, and the self-confidence that comes from having a lean, muscular physique. Suddenly, my “vision” of 3,000 Calories a Day seems like a miracle and bringing it to fruition seems like the difference between heaven and hell. 

 

All my life I have heard about the frog in a pot of water who dies not by suddenly being scalded but in the comfort of sitting in room-temperature water that slowly warms until the frog is boiled to death. I suppose that analogy explains a lot of human folly, including the manner in which we wake up one morning to find ourselves fat. Complacency, laxity, and bad habits slowly take their toll until we find, to our horror, that we look horrible and sometimes feel helpless to do anything about it.

I was heading in that direction after my dramatic weight loss, slowly inching my way back to Fat City. Fueled by the humiliation of being too heavy, especially by that image of the Overfed American in the hotel window, I was able to succumb to the rigors of the diet, but after I got my weight down, I grew more and more lax. That was the beginning of seeing my weight creep up to unacceptable levels.

Then there was another factor that contributed to my slow weight-gain: I replaced the 6 miles of running per day in the summer of 2005 with power yoga, and my weight increased to 230 over the next four years. In spite of my added weight, I refused to go back to the running for several reasons. One, the running gave me shin splints, plantar fasciitis, lower back pain, chafing, and sometimes headaches. I was sick of applying gobs of Vaseline between my thighs and across my nipples before every run and putting my reeking ammonia-soaked gym clothes in the wash. I was sick of having to buy a new pair of $100 running shoes every three months. I was sick of catching colds and other viruses, including pink eye, from the gym’s filthy cardio machines. I was sick of having to take a two-hour nap after my 6-mile runs and still not feeling refreshed. And I was simply sick of the gym. I had been going to health clubs since 1974 at the age of 13 and by 2005 I had lost my tolerance for all the peacock strutters and self-ascribed training experts and other annoying gasbags who frequented the gym.  

But most compellingly of all, I quit the gym because I had fallen in love with power yoga, the way it made me feel, the way it afforded me flexibility that I never had before, and the freedom it gave me to exercise at home.  Before I did yoga, I could not turn my head when moving my car in reverse without feeling a sharp pain in my neck. After doing yoga for a few months, the sharp neck pain had vanished.

However, yoga has one disadvantage. It does not not burn calories like running. My one-hour treadmill runs resulted in a expenditure of 1,200 calories. In contrast, my yoga workouts burned about half that. To increase the calorie-burn of my workouts, I have made it more rigorous by incorporating high-rep dumbbell and medicine ball exercises into my power yoga routine, which I perform for an hour five or six days a week.

But in spite of my combination of power yoga, medicine balls, and dumbbells, which burn between 700-800 calories per hour workout, my weight has crept up to 230.

Another thing I miss about the running is the safety net it affords me. If I indulge in some dessert or other, I can simply run it off. Without the running, I have the heightened anxiety that no matter how hard I work-out, one or two slices of boysenberry pie with vanilla ice cream could set me back for weeks.

This is the condition I find myself in August of 2008. Four years after reaching my target weight of 210, I’ve allowed myself to eat about 3,700 calories a day, resulting in a weight-gain of 20 pounds, the mid-way point of the 259-pound Overfed American traipsing around the Kauai Sheraton Inn.

Knowing this makes me very anxious. Something must be done. I do not want to be like the average American troglodyte who indulges his appetites without thought. I want to be in control of my life. I need a boundary in a country that embraces reckless excess. One boundary that I think I might be able to live with is 3,000 calories a day. It’s a good number for me. I’ve been stuck at 230 for about a year now so apparently 3,700 calories maintains my current weight provided I continue my intense home-exercise routine.

Getting my weight down should be a very simple math problem: There are 3,600 calories in a pound of fat. If I keep my calories at 3,000, that will be 4,900 fewer calories a week than I am currently consuming. Over six months, or 24 weeks, that would be 117,600 fewer calories consumed, which divided by 3,600 is 32.7 pounds of fat.

This number amazes me. I have to tell it to myself again and again. If I simply stick to 3,000 calories a day for six months and continue my current training, my weight will go from 230 to 198 pounds. That’s more than 10 pounds beyond my target weight. More importantly, I will no longer be marching toward Fat City. I’ll be marching to a much better place, a land of boundaries, discipline, self-control, and the self-confidence that comes from having a lean, muscular physique. Suddenly, my “vision” of 3,000 Calories a Day seems like a miracle and bringing it to fruition seems like the difference between heaven and hell. 

Herculodge Fat-Man “Diet”: This Is the Best I Can Do—2,900 Calories a Day

 

I’m up to 230 and have to replace small dessert portions of ice cream, cookies, etc., with berries. I have no willpower and am in fact a Mega Eater, so this is the best I can do:

 

One. Breakfast; oatmeal, protein, berries, coffee; 500

Two. Nuts, coffee; citrus; 200; more coffee before workout with milk; 50

Three. Lunch Spinach salad in a big pasta bowl, low-fat dressing, beans, low-fat cheese; milk; berries 650

Four. Yogurt; dates; 200

Five. Dinner. Bean and low-fat cheese burrito on pita; broccoli or spinach salad (smaller) or nut and jelly sandwich; milk; berries; 650

Six. Fruit and/or yogurt: 150

Seven. Cold high-fiber cereal; 300

Eight. 3 A.M. Return-to-Bed Snack (I can’t get back to sleep unless I do this) ; Banana and milk; 200

Calorie Total: 2,900

 

Conversations with My Food Coach: The Purging

 

My food coach Manderlin of Manderline Enterprises came to my house today and did the prerequisite “purging,” which means he went through all the food in my kitchen and tossed all the “undesirables” in several garbage bags. 

Manderlin wears the military garb of a mercenary, fatigues, army boots, a camouflage vest over a tight black T-shirt, a black beret. I want to laugh at him, but it’s clear he can kick my ass. Of course, he speaks in the voice of Foghorn Leghorn and has one of those jutting chins that defiantly tells the world he’s eager to fight anyone upon the slightest provocation. He boxed during his stint in the Marines. 

He looks at the animal crackers from Trader Joes that are resting on the top of the refrigerator. “What the hell are those for? Are you a baby or something?” I don’t answer him and watch as the animal crackers are dumped into the trash bag. Then it’s pickles, high in sodium; vermicelli from Costco, because no one eats pasta in small portions; Whole Foods brand rocky road ice cream (“Are you kidding me?”), French-onion pita chips (because you’re dipping them in vats of hummus, you pig shit.”) 

After the kitchen purge, he scours my food journal, which shows that I consistently eat 3,000 calories a day, give or take 100, and he laughs. “I’ll bet you’re underestimating by a good twenty percent. This journal’s bullshit anyway. The fact of the matter, my friend, this journal is your undoing because you’re jotting down calories after the fact. Plan your menu before and you won’t need a journal.” 

“Okay, a menu. How many calories?” 

“It won’t be three thousand, that’s for sure. Let’s start at twenty-four hundred and see what happens.” 

“Twenty-four hundred doesn’t work for me. Believe me, I’ve tried it and I’m so hungry at night I can’t get to sleep. I need that extra six hundred.” 

“Did you hire me to kiss your butt and give in to your baby bullshit or did you hire me for results? Are you content with looking like the Pillsbury Dough Boy for the rest of your life or do you want to get ripped? Now we can do things my way or I can leave.” 

“But what about my appetite?” 

“You’ll acclimate. Everyone does.” He laughed. I wasn’t so sure, but I had gone this far. I couldn’t stop now. 

The Overfed American

 

The other day, I heard Dr. Dean Edell say on the radio that the average American consumes 3,700 calories a day, which he said is a huge amount and explains why so many Americans are fat. After listening to Dr. Edell’s radio show, I did some research and came across the UN Food and Agricultural Organization periodical studies of American calorie consumption and discovered that between 1979 and 1981, Americans averaged 3,180 calories a day. Then between 1989 and 1991 the calories increased to 3,460. The most recent study covers 2000 and 2002 and the numbers a little higher than Edell’s—3,790. I’m a bit alarmed to consider that 3,700-3,800 calories is about the amount I ingest on a daily basis, give or take a few. And this number explains why at 46 years of age my 230-pound bodyweight is 20-30 pounds heavier than I want it to be for appearance and health reasons.

I’ve been working out most of my life. As a kid I remember family and friends looking at photographs of Arnold Schwarzenegger and other bodybuilders and exclaiming how “gross” and “freakish” these “musclemen” were. In contrast, I thought these bodybuilders looked normal. From my point of view, it was the average guy, a tomato with four toothpicks sticking out it, who looked woeful.

At 13, I was a Junior Olympic Weightlifting champion. At 19, I took second place in Mr. Teenage San Francisco. I know the confidence and satisfaction that results from looking muscular and lean and I know, ever since my metabolism slowed down in my early thirties, the chagrin and displeasure of having a Pillsbury Dough Boy coat of flab over my frame.

No time did I experience this humiliation more than in the summer of 2003 at the age of 42. My wife Carrie and I were walking back from the brunch buffet at the Sheraton Inn in Kauai where I had just ingested a 3,000-calorie breakfast of macadamia nut pancakes, French toast made with Hawaiian sweet bread, turkey sausage patties, and scrambled eggs with melted cheddar all washed down with several tall glasses of freshly-squeezed orange juice. As I strutted my 259-pounds outside the buffet room and past a hotel window, I saw the reflection of a portly gentleman, dressed in safari shorts and a turquoise tank top, which sported the striking image of the iconic sea turtle. This unsightly man I gazed upon looked like the stereotype of an overfed American.

I walked closer toward the bloated image and I was overcome by the shock and anxiety that the reflection was not some other guy for whom I could judge with gleeful ridicule but me. I was that dude, the type of person that I had mocked and scorned most of my life.

This was a huge moment for me, what literary people might call an “epiphany,” and I was fortunate to have experienced it. Most people are denied, or deny themselves, such moments of clarity. It is my belief that something like 95% of the human race walk around Planet Earth with their heads up their butts and this is how they die—never knowing what the hell is really going on. But on that summer day in Kauai when I saw that the corpulent man in the window was in fact me, my head uncorked from my butt and I was able to see reality for what it really was. And this reality—me being a chubster—was totally unacceptable. Something had to be done.

Some might argue that I was perfectly fine. After all, my cholesterol was under 200, my blood pressure was normal, and I could run seven miles on the treadmill in under an hour. In fact, on another radio broadcast Dr. Edell reported a major study from obesity researcher MaryFran Sowers that concludes many overweight people are fit and don’t need to lose a pound in order to live long, healthy, functional lives. But this did not console me. Even if a doctor told me I could live a long, robust life at a bodyweight of 275 and indulge my eating passions with little or no restraint, I would balk at the offer since more than health I like to look good in a pair of jeans. I like my silk shirts to drape over broad shoulders and taper gracefully over a small waist. So let’s get this on the table right now: Getting my weight down to 210 or so is largely a vanity thing. It’s about self-image and self-confidence. Those are components of being healthy that the MaryFran Sowers study don’t account for. Looks matter. And so does the sense of having control of what one puts in one’s mouth, rather than the other way round in which the individual is a slave to the appetites.

Not wanting to look like the fat American I saw in the hotel window, I returned to Los Angeles from my Kauai vacation and curbed my dietary excesses by filling my belly with large amounts of  vegetables, mostly spinach and broccoli,  stopped drinking fruit juice (which has the sugar equivalent of soda pop) quit eating desserts, and kept my calories under 3,000 for a good year. During that time I lost 40 pounds as my weight steadily went down to about 210, which I consider my ideal weight. At the time, I was running 6 to 7 miles a day on the treadmill.

At 210, I had to buy new clothes. I was 42 years of age, but I looked far younger. People at the gym approached me, congratulated me on my weight-loss and asked me for advice on training and nutrition, as if my newly-acquired lean look credentialed me as some sort of benevolent dietary guru who holds the secrets of weight reduction. Alas, this adulation would prove short-lived. Success either breeds more success or it breeds complacency and for me the latter proved to be the case. 

3,000 Calories a Day: Two Months Later

 

Two months ago I tried to make my eating habits more moderate by going on a program that I call 3,000 Calories a Day. Before this Moderation Quest, I estimate I was daily eating about 3,700 calories. My weight was 231. To get my number closer to 3,000, I have been keeping meticulous records of everything I eat in a food journal. This is a major pain in the butt; however, it seems the best alternative for me as I have no toleration for “diets” of any kind. The recent studies show that keeping a food journal is one of the few ways to implement permanent weight loss.

Two months into my journal keeping, I am down to 220. Eleven pounds in two months is excellent. I don’t want to lose weight too quickly. That would be a sign of a typical dieter who fluctuates back and forth and inevitably more gains weight than his original point. Gradual is better.

As far as sticking to 3,000 calories a day, I had to look closely at the numbers to see how successful I was. At a glance, I was an abysmal failure, keeping my calories at or a little under 3,000 only 29 times out of 62 days. But a closer look shows that I’ve been very successful. My “failed days” I average going over by about 150 calories. My “successful days,” which are 24, I average going under by about 150. Overall, I have been averaging about 3,100 calories a day.

I could get my calories down to 2,600-2,800 if I planned out my daily menu in advance and I suspect my weight would settle down at around 205. At my current consumption of 3,100 calories a day, I guess my weight will settle around 215.

I haven’t decided yet if I’m motivated enough to plan all my calories in advance. It seems a bit rigid to me, and unrealistic. Also while a weight of 205 would feed my vanity more than a weight of 215, the eating pleasure of an extra 400 calories or so would exceed having a leaner physique and the public admiration that such a physique renders.

As I consider my fitness goals, I desire to maintain a level of fitness that makes me feel good about myself, my pride, my sense of control. Having people gawk at me with washboard “cut” abs doesn’t mean as much to me as it did when I was a teenager.

So for now, I’m still shooting for 3,000 calories and I’m not berating myself for exceeding my limit by a hundred.

As I get older, perhaps my metabolism will slow to a point that my calories will have to be closer to 2,600. At that point, I may or may not consider having my daily menu planned out in advance.

 

Normal Is What You’re Used To

 

If we eat burgers, fries, onion rings, and soda every day at a fast food place, then that’s our “normal.” If we eat second and third helpings at dinner, not feeling satisfied until we are uncomfortably full, that is our normal. If we eat a large bowl of ice cream with three cookies to get us in the mood for bedtime, that’s our normal.  If we spend $10 at an all-you-can-eat buffet and make ourselves miserably stuffed in order to fulfill our mission of “getting our money’s worth,” that is our normal.

These foods, and the quantities thereof, appeal to us on a certain level because we have incorporated them into our routine. Routine gives us comfort, security, and a sense of stability. These are desired attributes even when the consequences of our habits are detrimental. For example, many of us, if we implemented the habits listed above, would probably be overweight in the sense that we would have to wear pants with elastic bands, we would be out of breath when walking a short distance, we would sweat profusely, a result from high blood pressure, our facial features would be obscured by fleshly jowls. But however undesirable these characteristics, we would perhaps over time accept them as “normal” because they would constitute the only reality we know.

That’s one of the dangers of “normal”: It blinds you to alternative possibilities.

While I see my 3,000 Calories a Day program as no panacea, it has opened up new possibilities to me: I can look leaner without being on a miserable diet. I am not dependent on some of the unrestrained eating habits I described above. I can actually enjoy healthy eating habits.

Just as importantly, the healthy habits, like eating large amounts of vegetables and “Super Foods” each day, have become part of a desirable dependence. And eating fast food and consuming food until I am bloated and bathed in sweat from overtaxing my digestion are habits that I find positively repulsive.

One lesson I’ve learned on my 3,000 Calories a Day Quest is that I can choose the habits that will eventually program my behavior. Therefore, I am not helpless. I can assert my will and intelligence to forge a life path that I’ve deemed more suitable for my wellbeing than another.

Having failed at diets in the past and having seen others fail at so many diets, I was susceptible to feelings of helplessness. Because it is moderate and therefore “doable,” 3,000 Calories a Day makes me feel confident that I don’t have to be that bloated Ugly American Tourist, which proved to be a reflection of myself so many years ago. 

The American All-Or-Nothing Approach to Fitness and Dieting

 

Though I’m an English Instructor, I share an office in the PE Building with the wrestling coach, a friend of mine, at my workplace, a community college in Los Angeles. A lot of students come in during office hours looking for the wrestling coach and when they see me they assume I am a coach of some sort. As a result, I get a lot of questions about fitness and dieting. I don’t mind this because I have been a fitness buff since I was thirteen years old.

I’ve noticed a pattern from the students’ questions about getting into shape regardless if it’s about gaining or losing weight: They all want to be put on an extreme program consisting of a long list of supplements, 3-hour training regiments, and crash courses in bulking up or slimming down. One girl wanted to lose 30 pounds by entering a marathon and a triathlon. Another student wanted to gain 40 pounds of muscle on his slender 145-pound frame.

They’re shocked when I give them advice, which consists of the following:

 

One. Find an exercise program that you like that causes you to break and sustain a sweat for one hour, five or six times a week. I don’t care if you walk your dog an hour day, play tennis, run up mountains and stairs, use a stair-stepper in front of your television, do mixed martial arts fighting. The only two things I care about is that you like what you're doing and that you’re consistent.

 

Two. If you’re doing cardio, don’t elevate your heart rate so high that you’re uncomfortable. You should push yourself about 75%, at the point where you could comfortably hold a conversation with a person working out next to you. This “hold a conversation” principle has an important function: If you don’t over-exert yourself, you’re more likely to be consistent on your program. Too many would-be exercisers make the mistake of doing too much for two weeks or so and then quitting.

Some trainers claim that there is an “anaerobic threshold” of between 70% and 80% and that you burn more fat when your heart rate is in this zone, more so than if you elevate your heart rate to 90% or so. I’ve read studies that both support and contradict this claim, so I don’t know this definitively. My take on this is that elevating your heart rate to 90% or over is going to burn you out and exhaust you so that you're wearing out your body and making yourself susceptible to injuries. The extra calories you may burn off is too marginal to be concerned with considering the downside of over-exerting yourself.

 

Three. Eat 3 meals a day of real food, not processed food as explained in Michael Pollan’s In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto.

 

Four. You owe it to yourself to study some cook books and learn to make meals that you like, that are good for you, and that are practical to cook without making you feel daunted by the task. Supplement your meals with 3 small snacks so you don’t get too hungry between meals. If you’re trying to lose weight, the snacks will be about 100-200 calories. If you’re trying to gain weight, the snacks will be closer to 300-500 calories.

 

Five. Bring your own food to school or work so that you don’t get “punk-fed” by the vending machines, fast food restaurants, cafeteria food, etc.

 

My advice is not what most of them want to hear. I offer no miraculous transformations, no quick-fixes, no life coaches to do all the work while they relax and enjoy the “customer experience” of passively letting someone do the work for them. My conclusion is that most people don't really want to work on their health and fitness. They are looking for cheap drama to fill the void of boredom and to overcome the sense of learned helplessness in their lives.

For cheap drama that comes from the false promise of cataclysmic self-transformation, there are thousands upon thousands of phony miracle potions and crash training programs and millions of dollars are to be made by pandering to the infantile fantasies of those who embrace the All-Or-Nothing philosophy of the typical American consumer: Either make me look like a billboard model, or, screw it, I’ll be the fat slob I was always meant to be.

In a world of excess, I am striving for some middle ground, some sanity that veers away from gluttony on one hand and joyless self-denial on the other.

 

Confronting the Spoiled Baby

 

As I thought more and more about my new rule of eating no more than 3,000 calories a day and the mathematical formulation that would presumably give me success, I was struck by the fact that my biggest impediment to achieving any of my goals, including my weight loss, was the spoiled baby that raged inside me. This new self-imposed boundary resulted in an internal hissy fit. I found myself reacting to the 3,000-calorie limit as if it were some insurmountable task, some trauma, some injury from which I could never recover. I was acting as if the very word “limit” was a strain to my psyche and I resented this boundary, this 3,000 calorie threshold, which was rather generous when I considered many less fortunate souls with slower metabolisms and less active lifestyles than mine must limit their calories to 1,200 a day. In fact, 3,000 calories a day, often considered 500-1,000 more than an adult needs, is quite lavish.

I will even go so far as to say the 3,000 calorie limit does not even constitute dieting. I was whining like a big baby for nothing. The struggle I was having was not, objectively speaking, with limiting my calories to 3,000 a day, which is a number too high to worry about. The problem was the spoiled baby I had to contend with. My obsession with the idea of being limited on a diet freaked me out because I am both anxious and spoiled. Therefore, overcoming my eating problem pointed to overcoming something far more significant than my undesired body weight. Succeeding at keeping my calories under 3,000 was about building my character, making me less self-indulgent, less helpless, less spoiled, less babyish.

My quest to keep my calories at 3,000, then, is more than a physical quest; it is a moral one and to be successful on my quest I must do the following: 

1. Get a calorie counter and know how many calories I am eating per meal. To be sure my calorie count is accurate, I must assiduously record everything I eat in a journal.  I ended up getting The Calorie King Calorie Fat & Carbohydrate Counter based on a recommendation by Jillian Michaels, a personal trainer who has a radio show in Los Angeles.
2. Every day I must eat 200 calories a day of “indulgent” food such as chocolate or ice cream in order to fool my brain into thinking I am not on a diet per se.
3. Eat 3 meals that are 700 calories and 3 snacks that are about 250.
4. If I become anxious and this anxiety compels me to eat, I must purge my oral fixation by chomping on celery, carrots, and maybe apples, bearing in mind that this “chomping session” must be added to my calorie intake and is therefore not a “free for all.” Thus if I eat 300 calories of carrots, one of my meals will have to be reduced from 700 to 400.

 

My anxiety about keeping my calories at the astronomically high 3,000 mark points to some serious psychological weaknesses I needed to address: 

1. My good fortune has allowed me to become dependent on the rich array of food choices that are available to me.
2. I did not wake up spoiled. Rather, I gradually became spoiled and only now do I know I am shackled to my self-indulgences when the condition has become so bad as to make 3,000 calories a day feel like a trauma when in fact it is not.
3. My fear that I can not limit my calories points to learned helplessness, a condition that, like being spoiled, has grown gradually. 

To conclude, my 3,000 calories limit is, when looked at objectively, hardly a program that can be characterized as arduous, austere, or punishing. The problem lies in my head and I need to conquer my eating excesses so that I not only achieve my desired weight but to build my character in such a way that I can feel proud, mature, confident—a man in control, a man who knows how to enjoy life within the proper boundaries. If I can not live within boundaries, then I am going to suffer the fate of those bratty children who could not control theirs in the classic 1972 film Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. I have to look at the film’s moral lesson to not act like an incontinent spoiled brat. I have to act like—no, actually be—a man.