The More Bearable Lightness of Being

A year ago, I made a decision to start tracking my food calories in an effort to lose the extra 30 pounds I’d gained in the past decade. This decision not only resulted in better health, but also a fundamental change in my awareness of food — and an improvement in my happiness, my personal relationships, and my overall quality of life.

Asleep at the Meal

For most of my life, I ate anything I wanted. I paid only a little attention to what I thought was healthy, but I was playing a lot of sports and no matter how much I ate, I never gained weight. For years I hovered effortlessly between 175 and 180 pounds.

Then at age 34 I suffered a serious injury: I tore my ACL and needed reconstructive surgery. My exercise regimen went from eight to ten hours per week of basketball and/or soccer to … nothing.

Even after surgery and physical therapy, I had enough swelling and pain from my knee that I didn’t exercise regularly for years. Every once in a while, I’d try to get re-involved in sports, but I kept reinjuring myself. After my first ultimate frisbee match, my knee swelled up like a cantaloupe … which made it also my last ultimate frisbee match.

I started to entertain the depressing possibility that I might never play sports again.

Meanwhile, I slowly gained both weight and girth. I have a sweet tooth and love to eat cookies and cakes and donuts. I have a huge weakness for cheesecake and crème brulée. By the time I turned 46, I was squeezing 215 pounds into size 38 jeans.

Heavy Jak
215-pound Jak with Mom (2010)

Carrying extra weight made many normal things harder. Extended sitting in office chairs caused me more back pain; it was additional effort to climb stairs or go hiking with the kids. Even standing became uncomfortable after a short period of time. I was more depressed, grumpier, and had a lot less energy. Plus I was self-conscious about my increasingly pear-shaped silhouette.

I had already tried dieting once. Atkins worked at first: I lost 20 pounds in three weeks or so, but it all returned when I shifted into the “maintenance” part of the diet. And as the pounds came back so did the depression. I gave up dieting and resigned myself to being overweight.

First Alarm: Hitting Snooze

Then in 2010, during a routine annual physical, my doctor informed me that my blood sugar levels indicated that I was “pre-diabetic”: I had not yet developed full-blown adult onset diabetes, but I was well above the normal healthy range. He told me I needed to lose some weight, exercise, and avoid foods with a high glycemic index.

Type II Diabetes is a serious condition, one that needs constant attention. I learned that complications can include heart disease, nerve damage, eye degeneration, kidney damage, osteoporosis, and more. I began to get a little … concerned.

I’ve always found solo exercise excruciatingly boring. Still, I knew I needed to do something, so I bought a used stationary bicycle off Craigslist. That way, I could bike indoors even when it’s raining, which in Seattle is most of the year, and at least I could watch movies or television to relieve the tedium somewhat.

I worked my way up to a regimen of about 40 minutes of biking four to five days a week. Even with the video to distract me, this was far less fun than playing team sports, but if I could lose weight I thought it would be worth it.

In addition, I tried to eat healthier. Karawynn makes this easy — not only is she a great cook, but the meals she makes are generally heavy on vegetables and whole grains. But I remained stuck at 215 pounds, and my blood sugar, while not worsening, remained in a dangerous range.

Why wasn’t I losing weight? I had no idea.

Second Alarm: Getting Up

Then, in February 2011, my Mom died. And even though her deterioration was reasonably long, her death brought me face to face with mortality. It’s one thing to abstract death into a theoretical and distant future and it’s another to be right next to it. To really understand that people die, that I WILL DIE.

But I’d rather live a while longer — as long as possible, really. So I was forced to ask myself: why am I not dealing with my health issues? Losing weight and getting my blood sugar scores down became much more urgent.

Mom’s death had another, much less emotional, but equally important consequence to this particular course: I inherited her iPhone.

Karawynn had been urging me to track my food calories for years, but I had resisted. It seemed like far too much hassle. What if I was at a restaurant or at work? Would I carry around a notebook? Then enter that into a computer? I had better things to do.

With a smartphone those excuses evaporated — there are apps for tracking your food on the go. Suddenly counting calories sounded both easy and fun.

I started using Lose It! to track my calories in March of 2011. The software estimates how many calories you can eat per day so that you drop weight (up to two pounds a week). As you enter foods your bar of available calories fills up. If you exercise, it subtracts calories based on type and duration.

It’s very easy math: If you consume fewer calories than you burn, then you will lose weight.

In practice, calorie-counting was neither easy nor fun, and the Lose It! mobile app was a lot less user-friendly than the web site, which meant that ironically, I almost never used the very thing that had put me on this path in the first place. But once I had made the decision to track my caloric intake, I resolved to stick with it for at least a month.

Karawynn was super supportive. She doesn’t need to lose weight, but for the first two months she counted calories in solidarity with me. She also made a special effort to track all the ingredients in the food she prepared. Without her support, the initial months would have been a lot harder.

Awake, not ‘a Wake’

During the first three or four weeks, I was hungry fairly often. But I taught myself to respond to hunger differently.

Formerly my reaction had been to simply eat until the hunger subsided. Now, instead, I learned to mentally connect hunger with the knowledge that I was losing weight. I came to see hunger, in small doses, as a positive thing. And I also learned that I could abate the hunger — prevent it from growing into a large and controlling beast — by eating a few bites of something and waiting fifteen minutes.

My relationship with food had always been about sensory satisfaction. I ate when I was hungry. Or if I really wanted something sweet. Or sometimes even if I was just bored. Now, I became hyper-conscious of everything I put in my mouth.

The more I tracked my food, the more data I learned about the foods I liked to eat. For example, nuts are good for you, but they have a lot of calories. So don’t eat handfuls. Fats, of course, are very dense in calories, and so are baked sweets like muffins and cookies and donuts. Some store-bought muffins have more calories than three eggs and buttered toast! A typical bacon double cheeseburger contains more than half of my entire daily allotment. And who knew that two beers have as many calories as a quarter of a large pizza?

Half a Donut
Half a donut: most of the sweetness, half the calories

I started considering each and every morsel of food I ate. If there were donuts in the kitchen at work, instead of just grabbing one, I had to think about whether it was worth the 250-300 calories. My new-found knowledge led to more conscious food decisions not only after the fact, but also when I was choosing what to eat. Often I cut a donut in half to get the sweet-tooth satisfaction without the calorie cost of the whole pastry.

I had started to lose weight after about a week and a half. By four weeks or so, my stomach had shrunk, and I wasn’t hungry nearly as often. Encouraged, I kept going. For three months straight, I lost weight every week. My first target was 190 pounds, which I reached after ten weeks. I set a new target and went sailing past 185 pounds in another four weeks.

I hit a plateau around 183 pounds, but I didn’t let that stop me. I just kept logging my food.

I also started playing soccer again, twice a week. I think losing weight eased the stress on my knee enough to make running possible. Being able to play sports helped my mood enormously.

Staying Conscious

One year later, I’m down to 175 pounds — the same as in my twenties, and probably near the natural set point for my six-foot, two-inch frame. The size 38 jeans are long gone, and even the size 34s are feeling a little loose. I feel more energetic than I have in years. My recent blood sugar tests indicate that I’m no longer pre-diabetic.

Thin Jak (soccer clothes)
175-pound Jak with Tessa (2012)

Karawynn also reports that I snore a lot less, which means that we both get better sleep. I have a lot more self-confidence too. I feel attractive again.

Yes, it was difficult and uncomfortable for the first few weeks. Yes, there are still times when I’d rather not bother to log my food, but I force myself to do so anyway — at least to ballpark it. I’ve got it down to a habit that takes about as much time each day as brushing my teeth.

I still have trouble in certain environments, like parties where there are tables of brownies and chips and chicken wings. When we go out to my favorite restaurants I want to eat more than I should; I have to remind myself to stop and take a doggie bag home. I still love to eat rich and high-calorie food. And sometimes I exceed my allowance. But I log it anyway so I can compensate over the following days.

And even though I am no longer overweight, even though I am healthier now, I will continue to track calories. Being aware, being conscious and healthy and alive, is better than being unconscious, unhealthy, and un… alive. I not only owe that to myself, but to those who love me.

I have close friends and family who are overweight. I’m sure you do too. It’s not polite to tell people they’re fat, but sometimes I want to take them by the shoulders and shake them. I want to tell them:

Please wake up and do something about your weight. If not for your own sake, then do it for me and your loved ones.

Consider this an alarm. Please don’t hit snooze, because losing you would hurt like hell.

 
 

Postscript

I wrote this post several years ago. I’ve since made a number of life changes, including moving to Mexico. As I’ve gotten busy, I stopped logging my calories and my weight has drifted higher again. I haven’t slipped all the way back to my high of 215, but still higher than I’d prefer. My current weight is around 190.

So I started looking around to see what I can do to lose a few pounds and stay healthy. I’m going to start counting calories again, but I’ve also found an article with 11 Best Ways to Lose Weight According to Science, and I intend to try them out.

Wish me luck.

 

13 Replies to “The More Bearable Lightness of Being”

  1. Jak, thanks for this. I tracked my calories for a while and found it to be pretty useful, but I stopped doing it at some point. I’m waiting for a bum ankle to heal so I can get back on the stair-stepper, and tracking my intake will help me a lot.

    PS: You look awesome. :)

    1. Marti, injuries totally suck. I hope you heal quickly!

      I do think tracking will help. There were a couple of times I nearly dropped it. It’s especially hard when I miss a day due to traveling or whatnot… but I just picked up where I left off.

      I am spoiled now because nearly all of my foods are entered into the database… so entering the data is pretty fast. So it gets easier with more use.

      Good luck!

      PS. Sometimes I cheat, too, by entering a similar (not exact) food if I can’t find the exact one and I’m pressed for time. But I figure that is better than nothing…

  2. Thanks, Jak. I appreciate you putting this out there. This is something that is preying on my mind. I have a goal to get back to Tae Kwon Do, so I’m going to look into this software.

    I’ll see how it goes.

    1. John, good luck with it. I like Lose It! but I know there are other software options too.

      I look forward to hearing if you like it.

  3. Great writeup, Jak. I had a similar epiphany (I hit 223 in 2010) and realized that if I didn’t reverse course, I was going to have health problems and die sooner. That wasn’t something I wanted and wasn’t fair to my family.

    The key for me was developing exercise as a daily habit. I forced myself to devote 1 hour every day to some form of exercise (I used P90X at first, but then started jogging, cycling, soccer, weight training). After 3-4 months, I had formed a habit to the point that if I missed a day, I felt out of sorts.

    I also tracked my calories. used an app/website called FatSecret. I found that after a few months, I didn’t need to enter everything in. I just started to get a sense for how much I was eating and could tell if I was going overboard.

    Anyway, your story and mine illustrate how hard it is even for people who used to be naturally skinny to lose weight in their 40s. It takes a lot of dedication. You look great.

    1. Jeff, thanks for sharing your (very similar) story! And congrats on your success; it is quite hard to change habits that have been engrained and developed for years.

  4. Thanks for sharing your success. I know your mom was always bummed by her weight and was usually trying to lose. You do look great. Kathleen

    1. I appreciate you reading and commenting, Kathleen. It means a lot.

      Mom had had weight issues for a long time, but until my own weight troubles I never really understood how hard it can be to break out of old habits. I do hope people don’t get the impression that I think this is easy. I know it’s not.

  5. A few years back, I tracked calories, and lost 25 pounds in 2 1/2 months. I was probably on too strict a count (1300 a day), so when my schedule changed (the end of the school year), my routine changed, and I fell back to bad habits.

    1. I remember that, Patrick, although I didn’t realize how you were doing it at the time. 1300 a day is really tiny and if you’re willing to keep tracking over the long haul, I’d recommend a higher limit. It would less shocking to your system and easier to maintain, I think. I’m on 1950 right now, and am maintaing 175 pounds (as an example).

  6. Dropping 150 lbs from my 6’1″ frame was the best thing I ever did for myself. allowing 100 back on ranks among the worst, but I am very aware of what I eat and when. what Jak says here is absolute truth, you need to take charge of your own lifestyle, and CHOOSE not to be fat.

    Getting to that any day now…

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