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.
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