The Right Time

I want to lead a full, vital life. I want to be in the best condition I can. This is especially important since I have retired, and now have more time to follow my own course.

I never used to have a problem with weight, until I grew up, married and started having children. As they grew, I grew. They grew vertically, and I grew in circumference.

However, there comes a time when a decision has to be made. For years, my doctors told me the horror stories of how I was in danger if I didn’t lighten up. I decided to find out for myself.

It is very easy to preach to a plump person. Scare tactics, like early disease and death may motivate them for a time to diet. But why do so many people go on eating too much when overweight is uncomfortable, unattractive and considered danger to health?

It is also easy to preach the psychology of willpower. Just eat less and exercise more to get to a healthy weight. Sounds simple, doesn’t it? But science is now realizing that there are more reasons for overweight than being weak-willed. There are many people who eat as a comfort to ease feelings of rejection or stress. There are many reasons for that, and I don’t mean to enter the psychological realm. But these emotions force these otherwise rational people to overeat against the advice and counsel of doctors, relatives and friends, both against their own common sense and their most compelling conscious desires.

There is evidence that a person’s body weight has something to do with inheritance. Studies have shown that around 10 percent of children with normal weight parents grow up overweight, but when one parent is fat, the rate grows to 50 percent, and when both parents are fat, the rate grows to 80 percent. Although this tends to point to parental example, identical twins brought up separately and exposed to different eating habits exhibit the same tendencies.

We all know that food intake is regulated by appetite. We eat when we are hungry and (hopefully) stop when we are no longer hungry. For almost everyone, there is an ideal weight for each person where the body will automatically adjust within a small percentage. Even the grossly overweight person will have to lift and move those extra pounds with every step, and will settle at the weight where intake balances out with the exercise of simply moving.

In my case, my appetite was controlled by waste. As I was growing up, my mother used to tell me to “clean my plate, there are people starving in China,” and I received a rare crack, when I once replied, “Name two.”

The mold was being cast. Although I never used the “starving people” line with my children, I secretly attempted to avoid waste myself. I not only cleaned my plate, but the cooking pots as well. Active as I was, the waste in my house went to my waist.

I am a tall person. I grew to 6 foot 4 inches until gravity started winning, and has taken back a half inch. But at that height, I also grew wider and heavier, until the scales seemed to say, “One person at a time, please.”

When I reached 280 pounds with the prospect of 300 in the near future, I said “Stop.” Photos showed me seemingly about to give birth. Relatives have always said I have my mother’s nose, but I seemed to have inherited her tendency to be plump as well. I forced my weight down from 280 to 255 pounds by sheer willpower, but in my estimation I still have 30 pounds to go. To break the plateau I am now at, I decided I have to learn for myself how my body processes energy, and what weight management is all about.

There is a lot of information out there, but sometimes it is too much to grasp. I am a hands-on person, and I learn by learning. I learned that I am only eight pounds away from not being ‘obese’ according to my BMI (Basal Metabolism Index). Yaay! Small steps.

I learned that if we refer to appetite control like a thermostat and call it an ‘appestat’ we can see the similarity in operation. When heat is needed, a thermostat sends a message to the furnace to burn more fuel, and if there is not enough fuel readily available, to get more.

The appestat works the same. Heat is energy, and fuel is calories. When energy is needed, more calories are required, and hunger alerts the person of the need through hunger.

Appestats are set on automatic to maintain a given weight (sometimes called a setpoint). For a person whose appestat is set too high, forcing it down can be torture, like living in a cold house. The appestat is very clever, and if calories are not forthcoming, energy is automatically conserved. A diet that restricts calories restricts energy.

A person on a diet is manually controlling the appestat. But if control is relaxed, the appestat works to restore the original weight which it considers normal. That is why people who lose a lot of weight in a relatively short period of time, generally regain it.

Manually controlling the appestat can be achieved through force of willpower, pills, or trick diets that fool the body, but as soon as the ‘trick’ is stopped, the appestat attempts to return its host to their normal weight.

And where is the appestat? It seems to be located in the hypothalamus, located at the base of the brain. It is the body’s command center of comfort, a regulator, functioning as a thermostat, regulating body heat through gentle, almost unnoticeable vibration of the muscles, as a ‘hydrostat’ regulating water content and as a ‘glucostat’ regulating sugar content – all through sampling the bloodstream.

The liver stores a starchlike substance called glycogen, which is dribbled into the bloodstream as needed, and converted into glucose. The body’s cells absorb this glucose and produce energy.

If too much glucose is sensed in the bloodstream, the pancreas produces insulin which shifts the metabolism into storage mode, converting excess glucose into glycogen which is removed from the bloodstream and stored in the liver and muscles. When the liver and muscles are at glycogen capacity, the excess is converted into new fat and stored in ‘adipose’ tissue deep under the skin.

As a side note, an adult man tends to carry body fat in his chest, abdomen and buttocks, producing an “apple” shape. An adult woman tends to create a “pear” shape as fat gathers in her breasts, waist, hips, and buttocks. I used to have a barrel chest, but now I’m just shaped like a barrel.

If too little glucose is sensed in the bloodstream, the first activity of the body is to feed, even though there may be plenty of stored energy in fat cells. The hypothalamus activates the behavior that each individual has for finding and consuming food. When their stomach starts making contraction noises, people become aware of their hunger.

The first line of defense against hunger is the liver. Once the body has finished digesting all of the carbohydrates that were last eaten, the pancreas produces glucaGON that stimulates the breakdown of stored glycoGEN back into glucose and releases it to maintain glucose in the blood. The liver holds about a 12-hour supply of glucose in its glycogen.

Once the liver runs out of glycogen, it converts amino acids, normally used as building blocks for body proteins, into glucose, and tissues like muscle cells start burning fatty acids, reducing the glucose requirements. This accounts for loss of energy when fasting.

Fat cells may be emptied, but they are never eliminated. The number of fat cells grows through puberty and then remains the same, except in cases of great weight gain. When fat cells have expanded to their capacity, they can divide and grow more cells. But even if fat cells are emptied they are always waiting to be fed.

Knowing the rules of weight and working with them instead of fighting them will lead to success. The rules may not be fair, but they are the rules of nature. They can be bent but not broken. Success in weight control means eating differently, modifying behavior.

The biggest obstacle to losing weight is HUNGER. It makes us miserable; it is the wolf at the door. It always wins and destroys our diet plans in the process. When hunger becomes unbearable, we reach out for foods that will give us instant relief. Those few cookies can add 300 calories in a matter of minutes and subject our blood sugar to wildly swinging glucose levels with associated cravings, appetite and mood swings.

How can we overcome the hunger monster? By stealth, like a spy in the night. With patience by reducing calorie intake without alarming the body guardian. I have given up trying to lose weight by pounds. I seek to lose ounces, knowing that, for example, when I lose an ounce a day (average), I will lose a pound in 16 days. That’s only about 200 calories a day out of my fat cells instead of through my mouth. Even if I stretch it to 20 days and lose three pounds in two months, those three pounds are gone!

I keep pretty close tabs on my weight. It has become important to me to guard my weight loss. When I see a weight gain, I immediately go into ‘bare bones’ mode, eating as little as possible for a few days until I erase the gain. Then I return to my plan. I have found that weight quickly gained can be quickly lost. It’s only a few days after all.

I am keeping a gentle finger on my appestat. The appestat has a setting that it considers normal. I’m looking to create a new normal. I was told that after six months to a year the weight you are at is considered normal. I can personally say that is true. I have been at my current weight (plus five pounds) for about a year, and if I gain by eating out a lot, my appetite diminishes, and I soon return to my new normal. My real goal is to feel normal at 30 pounds lower. I’ll keep in touch.

What I’ve learned about weight control is:
· Eat often. Keeping food in my stomach reassures my brain that food is plentiful.
· Eat little. I eat only as much as I need to stop hunger, and then I stop!
   It’s okay to leave food on my plate, Mom. I take smaller portions, so I waste less.
· Eat anything! I eat healthy, but allow myself breaks (in moderation). I never feel deprived.
   I have snacks in my house, but only one type. When I eat it often, it becomes boring.
· Chew well. Mastication is the first stage of digestion, notifying the brain when to stop. I enjoy my bites, sampling the flavor and texture of the food in my mouth as I chew each bite at least 30 times.
·  Take a breath. Putting my utensils down as well as taking a breath between bites slows me down.

Change is really exchange. I am exchanging my food-seeking behavior. The old habits erode with every passing day. An urge will pass in 20 minutes. When I get a sensory craving for food and I am not hungry, I do something else for 20 minutes. A short physical activity is perfect. A mantra that helps me is “Sweet treat, cross the street.” It is my taking of an immediate and purposeful action that suppresses the urge.

A small intake of food goes a long way in our bodies. Evolution designed us that way to go all day on a single meal if necessary. Walk or run a mile and burn only 100 calories.

Good luck to us all! Have courage and keep moving! Hang in there, we can do it!

-We learn nothing from success. Everything we learn, we learn from failure.
Here’s to living a vital life.
BobG