News & Features
January 2005

The Gumption Weight Loss Plan
Anonymous

Dear Sis,

In your last letter you asked about my weight-loss “secrets.” Here they are. After you saw me last summer I found my weight had crept up to 178 lb. It was time to do something about it. I was resolved. Since then, over the last thirteen weeks, I’ve lost 21 lb. I still look chubby ’round the middle so I’m looking to lose another 12 lb and get down to 145 lb. (More on my target weight later.)

The experts all agree that to attain and maintain a healthy weight one needs to stop smoking, get regular exercise, and eat a moderate and healthy diet. I had no trouble stopping smoking [never started] and I was already walking about 40 minutes most days. I pushed that up to 60 minutes per day when possible. Since Em feeds me a healthy diet, all that remained was to eat more moderately and to maintain my resolve.

Em had been priming me to read Eat, Drink and Be Healthy: the Harvard Medical School guide to healthy eating by Dr. Walter Willett. She bought the book after reading an article about him in Discover Magazine. All three children have now read it and are “with the program,” except your niece who still thinks whole grain flour is yechy. I postponed reading it until recently. I have lots of other things to read, I’m pretty knowledgeable about nutrition and, since I eat what’s put in front of me, why bother? But I just finished it and heartily endorse the book. I’m a skeptic and am scientfically-minded. So is Dr. Willett. He lays out the facts on nutrition very straight, stating things we know for sure, things we aren’t sure about but have a good guess, and things that are still open questions. Without being boring, he talks about various studies and their significance. There’s nothing faddish, hippy, new-age, or holistic about his presentation, just science. I was surprised at the things I didn’t know. For example, trans fats (that is “partially hydrogenated vegetable oil” and most margarines) are evil, worse than saturated fats. Anyway, if you’re like me and have shied away from Dr. Atkins and all the other diet fads, make an exception for Dr. Willett.

One thing Dr. Willett talks about is the notion of healthy weight. He says it’s hard to weigh too little. When determining the ideal Body Mass Index (BMI), they [whoever “they” were] plotted BMI vs death rate—which formed a nice “U” curve—and picked the BMIs with the lowest death rate. What they overlooked was that the thin folks at the low end of the curve tended to be smokers and/or ill. When those folks were excluded, there was a straight line relationship between BMI and death. Thinner people live longer. So I have no hesitation about knocking off another 12 lbs.

So far my description of weight-loss secrets has been the standard triple of no-smoking, exercise, and moderate diet. Now I come to the fourth secret, the clincher: Gumption. One needs to have the resolve, the will-power and the gumption to stick with the program. Here’s what I did.

Before starting, I prepared myself mentally. I went through a period of severe self-abasement. I convinced myself that I was a fat, obese, slovenly slob—which wasn’t hard when I took an honest look at my naked self in the mirror—but I determined that I would change and that I would have the will power to become a different, thinner and healthier person.

I avoided all the modern pap of feeling good about myself. I started by feeling bad about myself. Self-abasement was all important. I resolved not to feel good about myself until I’d peeled off 25 lb. Until then I could only be characterized as a Contemptible Fat Reptilian Porker (CFRP). (“Reptilian” refers to my reptilian hind-brain, which overwhelmed my fore-brain from time-to-time and made me pig out.) As such, I deserved little self-consideration. This took the following forms:

It took a couple of weeks for my stomach to adapt to smaller portions. Until then I left the table hungry. Even now, I’m hungry before meals. But one should be hungry before eating again, right? (Dr. Willett discusses the kinds of food that leave one hungry after a short while and the kind that “stick to your ribs.” I wish I read him before starting to lose weight.)

I have found snacks to be insidious. Unlike a meal, they are unbounded: no start and no end. If I allow myself a little 50 calorie popcorn cake then why not a cookie? And a second cookie can’t hurt, right? Two little cookies leads to three and then four, etc. So I find it’s better to show gumption and avoid snacks altogether.

I remind myself that (a) Hunger is just fat leaving the body, and (b) No one ever died of hunger; malnutrition, yes; hunger no.

On the feeling-good-about-myself side of the scale, I have enjoyed watching my ribs re-appear, my belt needing to be cinched tighter, and my jeans looking baggier and baggier. I’ve enjoyed watching my weight drop week-by-week at my Saturday pre-breakfast weighing. For years now I’ve been weighing myself every Saturday morning upon rising, and plotting my weight on a graph, which is push-pinned into the closet wall above the scale. I get foolishly excited looking forward each week to the next weighing, hoping to see a loss of two pounds, but content when I only see a one pound drop. The week of Halloween, I lost nothing. I’d snacked on candy. Bad, bad reptilian brain, very naughty. Okay, next week no snacks and I’ll do better. I’m almost never surprised by the scale: I don’t count calories but I have a mental journal and know the number of daily walks I’ve missed or the restaurant meals when I’ve eaten too much. When I’ve been bad, I blame my reptilian brain and resolve to do better in the next week.

So those are my secrets. No smoking, exercise, moderate eating and gumption.

Love,
Your Brother