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. 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 20-25 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, starting in my thirties with a slowed-down metabolism,
the displeasure and humiliation 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. 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, who looked like the stereotype of an overfed American. I walked closer
toward the bloated image and I felt the shock and chagrin 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 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 that 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 restraint, I
would balk at the offer since more than health I like to look good in a pair of
jeans. So let’s get this on the table right now: Getting my weight down to 210
is largely a vanity thing. It’s about self-image and self-confidence. Those are
components of being healthy that the study Edell reported on 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 that 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
Svengali who holds the secrets of weight reduction. Alas, this adulation would
prove short-lived.
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