Rethinking calorie counting

“Lose five pounds or more in a week. Never count calories again. Eat these foods and drop pounds without dieting. Eliminate these foods from your diet and drop pounds. Get rid of inches with these exercises and don’t worry about the pounds.”

We have all heard the spills from ads for diet program memberships, supplements and exercise programs, all promising great results, while sparing us from the dreaded and detested  calorie-counting.

I bought the memberships for weight-loss programs, fitness center membership and for a while worked out with a personal trainer in a group setting. For all the money and effort, the most I ever lost was 12 pounds, and the longest I ever kept those pounds off was about six months. Within a few weeks, I would reach a plateau, get discouraged and quit.

Counting calories was the last thing I wanted to do, but it was also my last hope in reaching any kind of substantial weight loss and maintaining it. I wanted something slow and sure. I didn't want to do this for a few months and return to old habits. I wanted to establish new habits.

Determined Decision

When I awoke on the morning of Oct. 17, 2012, the first thing I was aware of was the pain in both my legs. It wasn’t a pain that kept me from sleeping, but for the past three weeks, it was the first thing I had noticed upon waking and walking.  On this morning, the pain was much more intense. Not only did the pain have my attention, but now I was concerned.

 What was causing this pain?

After hobbling into the kitchen and taking a blood pressure pill, I remembered that the night before I had taken my last cholesterol capsule. I reached for the empty bottle and started toward the kitchen phone to call in the refill. It was then that a “light” came on. It was three weeks ago that I had gone back on my three weeks on and two weeks off schedule of taking the cholesterol medicine.

 I knew that this was a modified dosage schedule used sometimes for patients who had side effects from the medication, but I used it because of the cost of the medication which wasn’t covered by my insurance. It had worked fine in keeping my cholesterol down, while saving money. I also knew that leg pain was a side effect of the medication, but for some reason, I had just now made the connection.

What was I going to do? Obviously, the modified dosing schedule wasn’t an option. Before going on the medication, I had tried a low-fat diet. All that accomplished was lowering the good cholesterol: the bad cholesterol never budged. I had tried exercise. I had gone to fitness classes for years and had even spent a few months working out under a trainer. Under the trainer’s guidance, I could do 100 jumping jacks, 50 push-ups, 200 crunches, and many other fitness feats, but the lab numbers for cholesterol never improved. In addition to the low-fat diet and exercise, I had tried other weight-loss programs with modest and temporal results. The most weight I had lost was 12 pounds and the longest length of time of keeping it off was about six months. Losing eight pounds wasn’t that hard, but losing more than that was hard and keeping it off even harder.

I had to do something. I thought back to the days when my cholesterol levels were normal. If I could just get back to or even close to what I weighed then, surely the numbers would change. I remembered that in those days, most of my exercise came from walking. Walking four miles a day several days a week. Over the past 15 years or so, I had put on about 40 pounds. I wondered how much I needed to lose to affect the cholesterol numbers. Obviously, I needed to lose at least half of that.

An app make it easy

Seven weeks into my weight-loss journey, I discovered the free Lose It app on the new phone I had just received for my birthday.

Not only did this app make logging food daily much easier, but it also enabled me to track essential nutrients and projected realistic dates for achieving my goals. It took a few weeks to set up all the foods and recipes for my meals, but once this info was in the data base, my daily logging was a breeze.

Daily food entries can also be logged online at Lose It instead of/or in addition to using the phone app.

I briefly downloaded another weight-loss app that supposedly tracked some additional nutrients and had a larger data base of restaurants.  This app required more personal information just to sign up, and it was personal information that did not pertain to any fitness goals. After I completed the sign-up and set the app up for use, I saw that it had allotted me over 200 less daily calories than Lose It. At the time, I had already lost 38 pounds, so I promptly deleted the other app. I had planned to use this app along with Lose It, but decided it wasn’t worth the memory use on my phone. Apparently, the default was set to accommodate all metabolism levels.

Lose It has a default set to age 35, but it is changed when you entered your own age. It can be changed again if you find your own age does not accurately respond to your true metabolism.  Lose It has a help section, where it explains how activity levels are computed to arrive at daily calorie allocations and how these can be changed to accommodate more or less activity.

 I use the free version of the app, but a premium version is available that allows users to sync the app with other devices to track fitness and health programs.  The free version has an extensive data base of brand foods and restaurant foods that is very helpful and is constantly expanding during updates.

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No applause needed

 Anticlimax: something that is much less exciting or dramatic than it was expected to be: a dull or disappointing ending or result.

When I was in college, a professor cautioned those of us in his writing class about the possibility of“anticlimax” in talking about our personal writing projects. 

“Many people plan to write a book, but few ever do,” he said. “One of the reasons their books are never written is due to anticlimax. In talking about the book they are planning to write, they experience the climax before it’s ever written. After they have experienced this climax, the actual writing of the book becomes a dull endeavor.”

I never forgot this relevance to writing, and as a consequence, and for that reason, I rarely talk about any personal writing projects that are still in the works.

I believe this analogy can be applied to many goals, and it exhorts me to begin working on goals without fanfare, and then talk about the results. Unfortunately, I don't always do that. Sometimes, I do make announcements at the beginning of my projects and undertakings, and so often have short-term results. Those warm and fuzzy feelings can quickly leave after stepping into the commitment.

 How many times have we noted someone announcing on social media their intentions to follow a certain diet or exercise program and then receiving heaping amounts of praise, just for the declaration? Rarely are any results announced, and most of these are immediate results. Some might say that encouragement is needed at this point. Real encouragement is not praise for an accomplishment that is yet to be realized. Receiving praise for “intentions” can lead to climax before any progress has been reached, much less the goal.

What do I eat?

For the most part, I still eat the same foods I ate before I started this journey.

For cooking, I still buy and use white flour, as well as whole grain flour; organic white and brown sugar; and organic dairy products, made from whole milk if possible. I still cook only with butter, coconut oil and olive oil.

I don't follow any diet or eating fad or drink any concoctions. I concentrate on whole foods, including mostly fruits and vegetables,whole grains, yogurt and cheese, along with meat a few times a week. I rarely eat meat more than once a day.