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Arjun's Diet Story
I've had a bit of a pot belly for years. Not a big one, but it's been noticeable to me. I feel a little self-conscious anywhere I'm not wearing a shirt-- swimming pools, sunbathing, and the like. By no means am I overweight-- I'm six feet tall and I weigh somewhere under 175 lbs-- I just have more fat around my belly than I'd like. I'll blame my parents for my being self-conscious about it-- "getting a little fat there, are you?" is a familiar expression from my not-so-thin parents.
Most of the time, if I've got a shirt on, I can hide my gut pretty well. It doesn't show itself unless the wind's at my face, forcing my shirt against the contours of my body. My belly's usually pretty stable-- I haven't normally experienced wide variations in its size-- up until the last couple of years. Or so I assume-- I've never checked my weight at any regular intervals since it's usually been in the same range (160-165 lbs).
May 2000:
I returned from four months of winter in Thunder Bay, ON. I didn't have a scale in my rental house there, so I'd never weighed myself during those four months. I figured that I would've lost weight-- during those 4 months, I'd hardly ever eaten dessert, I rarely ate potato/nacho chips, I was drinking less Coke than I did in Vancouver, I usually ate fairly low-fat foods, rarely consumed meat products, and I even ate some vegetables, and I drank lots and lots of fruit juice. I even got a decent amount of exercise in Thunder Bay-- every morning and afternoon I had to walk 23 minutes (each way, at a good clip) to get to/from the pulp mill where I was working, and I made a point of climbing the 240-foot digester building at least once a week. Not bad-- that's probably at least as much exercise as I get in Vancouver, since I'm pretty lazy here. I certainly don't walk anywhere near 45 minutes per day over here!
So you can imagine my surprise when I get home and my parents commented that I was a little larger. I'd noticed that a few of my clothes were feeling a little tighter, but I'd assumed that it was my mind playing tricks on me. Curious as to how heavy I now was, I weighed myself. 175 lbs. Wow. I had weighed myself shortly before leaving Vancouver, and I was 160 lbs then. 15 lbs gained over a four month period. During the summer I biked more often, had a physically-demanding job, and minimized my intake of "junk" foods. Over the course of the next four months I lost a little under 10 lbs, bringing me down to roughly 165-168 lbs.
Over the next year or two I weighed myself ever few months, and my weight held steady in the 165-168 pound range.
May 2002:
After returning from my Moab mountain biking vacation, I weighed in at about 165 lbs-- perfectly normal.
July 16, 2002:
Oh shit. I'd noticed that my belly-bulge had been getting more difficult to keep hidden, so I'd weighed myself. 175 lbs. Ten pounds gained in two months. To put it simply, that scared me a bit. It's a lot of weight to gain in a very short period of time. A few days earlier I'd glanced at a New York Times article, "What if it's all been a big fat lie?". I decided to have a closer look at that article. Note: if that NYTimes link ever becomes invalid, send me an email and I'll send you the text of the article, as I have it saved on my computer.
To summarize the NYTimes article, it suggests that the "food pyramid" eating guides, while well-intentioned, may very well be an important factor in North America's current obesity epidemic. Our bodies can burn carbohydrates or fat, but the food pyramid suggests that we primarily eat carbohydrate-based foods. What's wrong with this approach? When you eat carbs, your blood glucose levels rise, triggering your pancreas to secrete insulin (in my case, a *lot* of insulin, since I'm hypoglycemic). As long as this insulin's in your system, your body will try to store excess calories (be they fat or carbs) as fat so that you can use them later. The problem here is that as the insulin does its job and your blood glucose levels drop, you get hungry again, even though your body's storing plenty of energy for use now as fat. But you eat, because you're hungry. You eat carbs (since that's what's in most foods), your blood glucose levels rise and you don't feel hungry anymore. Your insulin levels also rise again, and the fat and carbs that you'd stored earlier stays stored, and gets some more carbs/fat stored from your recent snack as well. The result? You've just gained some weight. Now what about those special low-fat diet foods? Well, they're usually almost all carbs, since they're super-low in fat. So you eat, your insulin levels rise, your blood glucose levels slowly drop, and you get hungry again. Maybe you resist your hunger to stay true to your diet, but it's not going to get you anywhere-- your insulin levels are still relatively high, and as long as your insulin's high, your body's not going to be able to pull your fat out of storage. Instead of burning fat, you'll be burning your own muscles, which will leave you in a bad position to keep the weight off once you achieve your desired weight target. So how do you actually burn your own fat? You have to keep your insulin levels reasonably low-- that means eating more protein and more fat to balance out your carbohydrate intake. You could do it "The Zone" style (30/40/30), or the Atkins style (<20g of carbs for the first several days, then slowly increasing carb consumption to a more balanced level).
Since reading that New York Times article in full, I've tried to take on a bit of a reduced-carb diet. I've had some difficulties maintaining that diet-- I live at home with my parents, and I'm at their mercy in terms of what sorts of foods we stock in the house. When I eat with my family, I'm limited to higher-carb diets. I also have other obstacles-- my friends and I often go out for Slurpees late at night, and I frequently have "anime nites" with my friend Mike where we consume giant Slurpees and bags of chips. Well, I shouldn't refer to those as obstacles-- it's great fun going out for Slurpees or having chips and Slurpees while watching anime for hours. At any rate, I no longer have cereal for breakfast every morning, I no longer try to avoid fat, and I no longer assume that low-fat foods such as pasta are good for somebody trying to lose weight.
August 19, 2002:
I've lost ten pounds in the last month, despite despite my lack of consistently following any dietary approach. I'm going to proclaim that this diet is successful-- I'm only five pounds away from my target weight (160 lbs), and it's been dead-easy so far, so I may modify my target weight a little lower.
October 7, 2002:
Since starting my new Co-op job at BC Ferries, I haven't had the time to continue making low-carb foods. Initially, my weight jumped up by about 4 lbs as soon as I went back to eating a high-carb diet, however while at work I've primarily snacked on salted sunflower seeds (half-fat, half-carb, kinda crunchy, nice-n-tasty) as my old "low-carb" food. The results since then have been promising-- I've continued to lose weight. As of yesterday I was down to 161 lbs, from my high weight of 175 lbs, a loss of 14 lbs. I believe this is a stable loss, since I've been off the meat-and-fat diet for over a month now. I've also been exercising quite a bit less, which confuses me a little with respect to my weight loss, but I'm not complaining... Maybe I got my body stuck in a weight-loss mode while I was on the diet during the summer-- Atkins does, after all, suggest that most people will continue to lose weight for a while after leaving the diet...
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