When I was younger I always thought that I would be able to exercise my way out of weight gain without changing my diet. Nope. Impossible. It took me a long time to realize this. Far longer than I’d like to admit. Yes, a more muscular physique can burn a lot more calories. But no, even an hour of exercise a day won’t do much in terms of helping you reduce your waist or your butt if you are shoveling processed crap into your mouth on a regular basis. I’ve been there. It wasn’t pretty. In my mid-30s I was working out regularly. I was working a high-stress long-hours job with a lot of travel in a startup company. I was eating a lot of convenience foods and I was self-medicating with glasses of wine. I’ve always been slim, but my mom was obese. It was scary, I started to think that my genes were catching up with me. I kept gaining weight.
It wasn’t my genes, it was my lifestyle that was catching up with me. When I was tired I’d grab a coffee or a sugary snack as a pick me up. When the sugar crash happened, I’d find some salty snacks to fill me up. I could eat an entire bag of Doritos (the BIG bag) in one sitting. Hey, at least I was drinking diet sodas. Urp.
So, I started counting calories. Well, that was a wakeup call. I recommend it for anyone who has never done it before. Weigh and measure your food – it is amazing what can quickly add up to 1,000 calories. I definitely was overeating. I started cutting calories. Somehow, inexplicably I wasn’t getting leaner and the needle on the scale wasn’t really budging either. The problem is that I wasn’t addressing WHAT I was eating.
Over time I became a much better eater. I stopped drinking sodas. I limited salty snacks and sweets. I ate more fruits and vegetables. I got leaner. I didn’t lose much weight, but I definitely became a much smaller person. Since I’ve been in my mid-20s, my max weight swing has been about 25 lbs. In the grand scheme of things, this really isn’t a lot compared to the average American. However, whenever I slid back into my old habits, my weight would start to creep up. I started to become a slave to calorie counting. That wasn’t working either – it really isn’t a fun way to live.
The key here is that staying lean is a lifestyle. It isn’t a part time or some-time thing. It has taken me a long time to figure out what really works long term. Counting calories isn’t it. Starving myself (not that I ever was good at that) isn’t it. Some people may be able to survive on a cup of broth, an apple, some celery and cigarettes to keep a fat percentage around 15%. I can’t. I also don’t like that scrawny, sickly, runway model look. It just isn’t healthy.
It took a lot of trial and error for me to wind up where I am today. Over my next few posts I’ll continue to describe my journey.
Good post. The lifestyle change is something I’m going through at the moment. It’s tough, but I can see and feel the benefits. As you say, it’s all about finding the lifestyle that works, for both health and happiness. I’ve never been one to starve myself either, and you can’t keep a Frenchman away from the wine for too long!
Thanks Val. It is such a balancing act between seeing and feeling those benefits and not feeling deprived or like a freak when you go out with friends. Wine has always been trouble for me as well, but I am drinking a lot less of it these days for a number of reasons. Frankly, it doesn’t help much when it comes to decision making ability and food!