Weight control, food and exercise
The following is a post that I made over on the Powerbasic programmer forums, hospital in response to Paul Pank’s posting asking dietary advice. Why he thought to ask about diet on a programming forum is beyond me. I have edited out the references to other posts but the entire thread can be seen at the PowerBasic Forum.
Sadly, the PowerBasic forum is now defunct so the post is no longer available
First, let me get some credibility here, then make a disclaimer, then express my opinion.
I am 47 and have been overweight pretty much all my life. My dad’s side of the family is very prone to diabetes. In 1994, I was diagnosed with diabetes. At the time, I weighed about 130 kg (about 295 lb and I am 177 cm / 5'10" tall). I led a very sedentary lifestyle — my thinking was that exercise doesn’t really make you live longer, it just feels that way.
When diagnosed with diabetes, I went through the brainwashing — err, pardon me — nutrition education. I was on 4 insulin injections a day, and had the whole food pyramid thing drummed into me. You know the one — lots of complex carbs with fibre (like vegetables and grains), far less proteins and even less fats.
I followed the advice. Strictly. Under supervision. Really.
And I ended up in 2003 weighing nearly 160 kg (360 lb)!
So I took matters into my own hands, educated myself and did what I needed to do.
Today, I weigh in at around 105 kg (240 lb: yes, that is over 50 kg/110 lb lost). I take no insulin or any other diabetic medication. My blood pressure is 110/70 and my bloodwork is terrific.
Disclaimer: do your own research and make your own decisions. This may NOT be right for you!
I read everything I could find. I went through Atkins and thought he had part of the picture. Then I found out about Glycemic Index (GI) and that completed the picture for me.
Here’s how I understand it. Insulin is the hormone that allows sugars to cross over the cell membrane and be used for energy. If you don’t have enough, or it is somehow flawed, you are diabetic – the sugars accumulate in your blood while your cells slowly starve.
But insulin does something else, too: it causes excess sugars in your blood to be stored as fat.
This is important: it is the excess SUGARS (ie carbs) that are stored as fat, and this is done in the presence of insulin.
To avoid this, you need to ensure that the food you eat does not cause a spike in insulin production. Foods that cause a rapid rise in insulin levels have a high GI. Glucose has the maximum of 100, and pure water has 0, with everything else inside that range. If you eat low to medium GI foods at each meal (so that the combined GI is low to medium) then your body’s ability to store fat is severely curtailed, so that even if you do eat a bit more than you absolutely need, most of the excess is not stored. That’s not to say you can pig out, but it does mean you don’t need to live your life counting calories or fat-grams or whatever.
As for eating fats, the actual evidence of their effect on things like cholesterol is flimsy. Recently, here in Australia, the National Heart Foundation said words to the effect of “we were wrong: go ahead and eat the egg yolk too — it’s good for you and does not raise cholesterol”. My personal experience is that the level of cholesterol is largely genetic, and the environmental factors that influence it are far more likely to be related to simple starches (high GI foods) than fats. Consider this: what foods are high in fats and not also high in simple carbs? Pretty much nothing. If you eat a fast-food burger, the bun is not only white bread, it has added sugar. Fries? They’re potato! Chocolate? Sugar. Think about it.
Calorie intake is important, but don’t get too hung up on it. If you restrict your calorie intake too much, your metabolism slows down, and stores fat more aggressively. It is better to eat regularly throughout the day, and DON’T SKIP BREAKFAST whatever you do! I try to eat six small meals every day. It is also good to give yourself a regular “free” day, where you don’t do any workouts and you eat freely. For me, that is Sunday. Nothing is off-limits on that day. The first few weeks, you go a bit nuts, but the novelty soon wears off, and knowing that you can have that chocolate “on Sunday” seems to make it easier to not have it the rest of the week. Note that it is important to have more calories on these days, because you want to use it to kick-start your metabolism again.
Hydrogenated oils are really bad karma. The evidence against them may not be concrete, but the anecdotal evidence is pretty overwhelming. I’ll eat butter, but not margerine.
Finally, BMI is the biggest load of codswallop ever. It is a formulaic representation of the old height/weight charts which have been discredited for decades. You see, a given volume of muscle weighs about four times what the equivalent volume of fat weighs. So if you have a low percentage of body fat, you will weigh MORE than a person with exactly the same dimensions with a higher percentage of body fat. Elite athletes have TERRIBLE BMI scores — they are HEAVY for their height because they are very lean.
And you want to be lean (and therefore heavy for your size) because that means that you need to burn more food just to live. As well as being stronger, both in terms of muscles but also in terms of calcium retention in bones, you will be able to eat more without putting on weight. So while aerobic exercise is good for you, losing fat really requires you to add muscle mass, and that needs strength training. Someone mentioned martial arts in a previous post — I would strongly recommend that, even if you are not particularly young. I started at 45, and am now a 1st Kye Brown Belt in the Kempo style. Find a good, family-friendly school. You will find that martial arts training is a really good mix of strength (resistance) and stamina (aerobic) work. Aikido is great — that is next on my list after I achieve Black in Kempo.
To summarise (with all the disclaimers assumed):
- eat low and medium GI foods. If you eat anything with a high GI, include something low GI with it at the same meal
- don’t stress about fat intake (be sensible here)
- avoid hydrogenated oils
- get into a regular, weight-bearing exercise regime
- do NOT starve yourself
- try to eat more, smaller meals
- forget your weight – instead, focus on your belt size, the only figure you really need to care about
- enjoy life – the point of looking after yourself is to enjoy yourself
Again, do your own research.
