by Duane N. Burghard
©2015
I had no idea what to write about this week, and then a friend of mine suggested that I tell this story. For those who don't know me personally, while I have never been obese, I struggled with my weight for many years and was rarely happy with my appearance. Fortunately for me, like many young people, I could simply work out more and work out harder to keep my weight under control (and merely be classified as "slightly overweight" for my height etc.). That plan worked well for me until my late 20s (which is when my metabolism slowed down and I learned the painful lesson that we all learn about having to start giving a crap about what we put in our bodies). To give you exact numbers, I maxed out my height just barely short of 6' 2" (I'm now, thanks to age and compressing discs, back to 6' 1") and, at my heaviest, I weighed in at about 232 pounds. So, to be clear, I was not in anywhere near the condition that too many Americans find themselves in today, but I was far from healthy too.
I was further "lucky" in that I needed life saving surgery at 32 (early 1998). The "lucky" part of this was that the illness which preceded my surgery caused me to fall to just 187 pounds. Following that surgery I managed to mostly keep my weight under 200 for the next 13 years.
In 2011, I traveled to Europe to have multiple, Artificial Disc Replacement (ADR) surgery (this surgery followed a long and very painful few years as Degenerative Disc Disease first destroyed my L5/S1 disc (2008) and then my L4/L5 disc (2010) ... but that, is a different story all on its own).
As I laid on the cart waiting to be wheeled into the Operating Room for surgery that morning, I came to grips with the small (about 1 in 200 apparently) chance that I might die during the procedure (ADR surgery is pretty amazing stuff and requires slicing you open, removing all of your internal organs that are in the way (so they can access the spine), then putting everything back in ... hopefully in the right places and in the right order ... I assume they make a list or something). Anyway, one of the thoughts that crossed my mind that morning was wondering what I would regret if today was "it" and I didn't survive the surgery. Now, I don't know about anyone else, but my mind can be a little goofy, and it's big on using humor as a means of alleviating stress. As a result, one of the first thoughts that came to me when I asked myself that question was, "man, I wish I'd had more milkshakes." The thought amused me and lightened my mood in those last minutes of consciousness, and I resolved that, if I survived, I would take the time to have more milkshakes.
Obviously, I survived the surgery, and my "time of milkshakes" began (the hospital nurses in the UK were really wonderful and even made a makeshift one as best they could for me before I left).
Flash forward to a conference I was at in Minneapolis the following spring (May 2012). I woke up early and headed to the conference center's fitness room and got on the treadmill. I had noticed that it had been getting more difficult to do some things (like put my pants on) in the last few months and frankly I was starting to feel some pain in my artificial discs and associated areas (I would later learn that this was directly related to my weight gain). When I finished my workout, I went over to the scale and found that I was tipping the needle at about 215 pounds. I wondered for about half a second how that was possible and then, in the back of my mind, a voice said, "you're kidding right? Time of milkshakes. Remember?" Well, it was suddenly obvious where that was getting me, and I knew I needed to knock that shit off right now.
Now, all of us have moments in our lives where we say, "no more." Many of us mean it too. I'm different (in many ways obviously), and what I mean by different is that I'm one of those driven, focused, disciplined "A type" personalities who can and has made 100% shifts in lifestyle or habits in a single moment (there are, of course, other adjectives to describe this ability of mine ... these include stubborn, anal, maniacal ... but these are merely semantical differences).
So my first steps towards weight loss were the easiest. No more milkshakes, reduced frequency of desserts, portion control, obvious things to lower my caloric intake (my back limits the amount of caloric burn work I can do, but I found ways to increase my burn later as well). I also started doing research into losing weight. One of the "tricks" I employed early on (that really seemed to work for me) was to eat an apple about 20-30 minutes before lunch and dinner meals. The article I read noted that the bulk of the apple in your stomach essentially tricks your brain and body into believing that you're already more full than you are when mealtime comes around. Basically, the apple performs like an artificial portion control assistant. A month later, with virtually no other effort, I had lost just over 5 pounds.
Like many parents, I am blessed in that I have wonderful kids. My kids have been very supportive and helpful with everything I do, and losing weight was no exception. They saw me make the effort, and for Father's Day they went out and bought me a special, "Biggest Loser" scale that measures height and weight, tracks what your caloric equilibrium should be for that weight, etc. etc. Well this was the "Game On" moment for me. I am German by descent. In fact, my wife calls many of the characteristics I refer to above as "the German in me." And if you give that part of me something to measure and track? Oh boy, get out of the way, because here come the spreadsheets and I am into it now!
Suddenly, my effort to lose a little weight became a series of hyper-specific, quantifiable goals with timeframes and schedules (these things make me happy in a very strange way). My diet got addressed first. In March of 2009 my "cooking gene" turned on, quite literally overnight (with NO prior cooking experience or real interest in the field, I very suddenly began waking up in the middle of the night, every night, after dreaming of preparing elaborate meals ... I quickly took to sleeping with a pad of paper and pen at my bedside so I could turn the light on, write the meal idea out, and then go back to sleep ... it was the only way I could go back to sleep). I had always enjoyed baking (cookies, my brownie recipe), but suddenly I went from kind of being afraid of regular cooking (and, when I had to, militantly following recipes and instructions in great fear of doing anything wrong) to frankly needing to cook (and in fact getting grumpy when I didn't) every day. I would read through and then mercilessly change recipes I'd never made before because I just suddenly knew how to amend them in ways that would be different and fun and better. I also just plain made stuff up based on groups of completely different recipes I would find online.
Understandably, my wife was thrilled. To this day, her joke is that she got to do the cooking for the first 20 years of our marriage, and now I have the next 20, which makes both of us very happy.
It was in this time that I started to realize that there were things in my diet that I thought were healthy that might not be (e.g. soy milk), so I eliminated them. I was also cognizant that breakfast was the most important meal of the day, but I was frequently in too much of a rush at that time of day to eat adequately. I stumbled on a brilliant solution that I use every morning to this day. My breakfast is
1 Banana (sliced)
4-6 Strawberries (sliced)
1 handful of frozen blueberries (fresh when cheap enough and in season)
1 small Apple or half of a large one (in slices)
(in season I add raspberries or peach or other fruit here)
1 glass of orange juice
A splash (several tablespoons) of Bolthouse Farms "Blue Goodness" (which, incidentally, is an AWESOME post workout drink for me, I can literally FEEL the nutrients plowing through my body)
2 *large* spoonfuls of lowfat vanilla yogurt
3/4 cup (roughly) of Kellogg's SmartStart cereal
1 Sprig of Kale
1 small handful of walnuts
NOW, put all of that in a bender and blend the beejeebies out of it. This is your complete breakfast, now in an "easy to take with you" liquid form.
For lunch, I would have an all veggie salad (lettuce, tomato, mushroom, cucumber, carrot) with an either low fat or no fat dressing. And for dinner, a light and small serving of protein (never beef or pork, always bird or fish) and a non-starch veggie medley (frozen green beans, peas, spinach, cauliflower, etc., all cooked in about a tablespoon of butter with onion salt, black pepper, and McCormick's Veggie Delight spice mix sprinkled in while cooking). For snacks, I had extra carrots or a small bowl of dry SmartStart (which I would munch on like nuts or chips).
I militantly avoided processed foods (I cooked my own food using fresh or frozen ingredients (NOTHING pre-prepared), steered away from breads (though wraps were OK), and anything that was high in artificial fats (candy, ice cream, etc.). NO FAST FOOD EVER (in fact, I rarely eat out ever anymore). I drank ONLY water, at least 80 oz per day (which was about right for my height and weight). And for exercise, I walked every day (usually twice/day), and I swam at least 3 miles/week (which I also still do).
Now, let's be clear about this next fact; the first six weeks of this routine were really hell. I was very grumpy and hungry basically 24 hours/day. I frequently felt like actually gnawing on my own desk at work sometimes ... but I stayed with it and I did so for one incredibly obvious reason; I began consistently losing weight. My original goal had been to lose 20 pounds and get safely under 200, with a stretch goal of losing about 25 and getting back to the weight I had when I had surgery in 1998. But by the end of the summer (Labor Day), I was blowing through even my stretch goal and suddenly I had visions of losing 30, maybe even 40 pounds (to get back to a weight near where I was in the Navy ... that, I thought, would be cool).
I need to note one other thing about the late summer. My body reached a point where I had been treating it well enough for long enough that a lot of the bad stuff that it had been holding on to for a long time needed to go ... including a significant amount of bile that my liver had apparently been storing for God knows how long. I include this detail only to prevent others from being afraid of a large, one time expulsion from the body that is decidedly, well, green in nature. If that happens regularly, see a Doctor right away because it can be an indicator of a very serious problem, but if you're dieting and losing a significant amount of weight and it happens once, and after that your whole body seems to be telling you, "damn! I feel better now!" then it's a good thing.
As summer became fall, my weight fell into the low 180s and then, in November, into the high 170s, a weight I hadn't seen since shortly after graduating from college. I maintained a fairly militant adherence to my diet (I did have a nice meal at each holiday, and a piece of pie etc.) and by New Years, I was in the low 170s.
For many years, one of my companies had a store on the Big Island of Hawaii. One of my wife's sisters and her husband also lived there, so we had business and personal reasons to visit every year. As was normally the case, my wife and kids would stay for a shorter time than I would (and I would stick around to do additional work for the company and to enjoy a couple of extra weeks on the island after the kids had to return for school. While in Hawaii, not surprisingly, my caloric burn rate took off (there's good news and bad news about working on a mainland business while in Hawaii ... the bad news is that you have to be up and working by 6am, because that's already 11am on the east coast and 10am in the midwest (where our HQ was) ... but the good news is that, by 2pm every day, the business basically shuts down and you have half the day to go swimming, diving, etc.). With my diet in tact and my caloric burn going off the charts, my weight continued to drop until I reached a low point of 162 pounds, literally lighter than my high school graduation weight ... and this was the moment when my body said, "umm hey, this is too far." I began to feel pain again because I was now at the lower limit of what my weight should be to be healthy. Fortunately, that was pretty obvious, and it led very quickly to the pattern I've been living with for the last two and a half years; maintaining.
The first thing I did when I reached the lowpoint and my body clearly reacted badly, was to significantly increase my caloric intake (eat more). Fortunately, that's a pretty easy thing to do, and I gained 6 pounds (to168) very rapidly.
Once you've hit your weight target, maintaining your weight is easy, and you can "cheat" (have a donut, have some ice cream, have some fries) whenever your weight is on the low end of your range, and then simply dial back to your diet routine when you hit the high end of your range. I have a four pound range (two pounds on either side of a center line) that I have been sitting in since I lost the weight that I did. And I have found recipes that allow me to enjoy things (tastes) that I used to love without the caloric or fat overhead (e.g. a cauliflower crust pizza ... where you cook a cauliflower head in a microwave for 4-5 minutes, then put the florets in a cuisinart with a couple of eggs and some spices and whip it into a dough like mixture (that's your crust ... a carb free and healthy crust BTW) cook it, then add sauce and fresh toppings (mushrooms, zucchini, spinach, tomato, onion, etc. etc. ... and yes, cheese), and cook it).
I understand that weight loss is far more difficult for some people than it was for me, and I have great compassion and understanding for those who have pituitary gland issues or other genetic issues that make weight loss extremely difficult ... but for the significant majority of us, at the end of the day, losing weight comes down to a pretty simple formula; you have to burn more calories than you take in. Most of us have a limit to the amount of exercise we can do (we're constrained by time or age or, in my case, the limits of my artificial parts), but we should do what we can do, and for the rest, we simply need to adopt a diet that's less than the amount of calories burned, and if we do that then we WILL lose weight.
There's no feeling in the world like the feeling you get when you step on a scale and see the number you've been working for, or look in the mirror and see the person you want to see. If you're reading this essay and you want to get there, I have good news; for the vast majority of people, you can do it! Please feel free to comment or write me. I'm happy to be your cheerleader and happier still to see your success. All you need to do is start.
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