Refuse To Regain

Muscle: It’s the Real Deal

By Barbara Berkeley

The common wisdom tells you to build it. Most people think they don’t have enough of it. Fitness experts tout it as something almost magical. But what’s the real deal with muscle?

I have the strange habit of reading certain research papers repeatedly. The tendency to read things over and over may be inherited. My father loves to read certain books dozen of times. We have a copy of “Shogun” at my house that is literally falling apart; ditto “Prizzi’s Honor,” “Lonesome Dove,” and “The Godfather.” But research papers? I can only say that there are just some articles that I enjoy as much as a novel! When I found myself re-reading (for the umpteenth time) my favorite paper on muscle, it occurred to me that perhaps I should share the love.

My dog-eared, underlined, thinning favorite paper is called “The Underappreciated Role of Muscle in Health and Disease.” It was published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition in 2006 and is one of the only reviews I’ve ever read that focuses on exactly what muscle does. We talk an awful lot about muscle, but its real importance – the vital role that muscle plays – is virtually never discussed. For those of you who would like to slog through the scientific jargon, I’ve provided a link to the paper. If you’d prefer the CliffsNotes version, read on.

The story of muscle starts and ends with protein. Proteins, made up of various amino acids, are the materials that build our organs and repair the damage we incur every day just from living. We cannot survive without a steady supply of proteins because this daily wear and tear causes unavoidable organ breakdown. Proteins repair this damage. Think of yourself as a building that is exposed to the environment 24/7. As your paint starts to wear away and your façade starts to weather, there are workmen who are constantly repairing the damage. They are fixing you up with buckets of protein.

Eating foods with proteins provides a flood of amino acids to your body. These are reassembled into new combinations to form the exact proteins needed for that day’s repair. The need for amino acids is a 24 hour-a-day situation. So here’s a question: Where do amino acids come from if you’re not eating or if you are asleep? The answer is: from muscle. Muscle is a bank. Your body withdraws protein from muscle to accomplish repairs. When you eat, most of the protein you ingest actually goes to replace what’s been “borrowed” from your muscle in the hours before.

People who are obese actually have larger stores of muscle than lean people. Studies have shown that these big banks of muscle can keep protein levels normal after as many as 60 days of fasting! On the flip side, when muscle shrinks to about half of its normal amount, life can no longer be supported. Observation of people who have undergone starvation conditions has shown that it is the critical loss of muscle mass that leads to death. Once there is no longer enough protein in the bank, repair ceases and so does life.

Muscles are even more important protein “lenders” when we suffer from conditions that greatly accelerate the body’s need for protein. Injuries, illnesses, operations, burns, cancer, chemo, and other physical stresses greatly increase demands for repair proteins. Sometimes, a seriously ill person can have protein needs that can be as much as four times those of a healthy person. These can’t be met through diet alone, so the muscle bank is accessed for massive withdrawals. Those who start out with a large amount of muscle mass will have a greater likelihood of getting through such an event.

Since our muscular bank account is so vital, we need to worry about that fact that we can lose muscle as a consequence of aging. Loss of muscle is called “sarcopenia” (sarco=muscle, penia=impoverished) and it is a common problem for older people. Sarcopenia is estimated to occur in about 30% of those over 60. Sarcopenic people are frail, tend to have more falls, and have more difficulty with daily activities. As we saw above, decreased muscle mass not only means weakness, but an inability to fight off serious illness.

What about the much touted ability of muscle tissue to burn calories? Muscle burns calories when it remodels itself by either adding to or breaking down its mass. These processes take energy and, as we’ve discussed, are constantly occurring because of the withdrawal and redeposit of protein which is normal operating procedure. However, larger muscle masses have higher rates of turnover and calorie burn than smaller masses. A young man, for example, might have about 80 pounds of muscle which burns 485 calories per day. An elderly woman is likely to have just 30 pounds of muscle, providing only 120 calories of burn. This calorie burn is independent of exercise, by the way. It is part of the “resting metabolism”; calories which are burned when we simply sit still. You can see that the metabolic difference between the young man and the older woman is quite large. Now you know why your 17-year-old son can eat seemingly endless amounts of food without weight gain. You can also understand why building extra muscle might help you to maintain weight loss. Even at rest, the extra muscles and their turn over will burn extra calories for you. The problem is that building extra muscle is not all that easy, especially if you are a woman or are older.

When people become obese, they do not gain fat alone. They also gain muscle which supports the heavy fat tissue. This can potentially be used to the overweight person’s advantage. Theoretically, if this extra muscle can be preserved during weight loss, the calories it burns will make weight maintenance more likely. We also know that we can increase the rate of muscle turnover by providing a stream of amino acids in the diet. These amino acids start the muscles to work, but the fuel the muscle uses to build and rebuild itself actually comes from FAT. In fact, fat is “the preferred energy substrate of resting muscle.” 

 Thus, we have the rationale for recommending higher protein diets for weight loss. Theoretically, the hefty amount of amino acids gets that big muscle mass turning over. Turn-over then contributes to fat burning. In addition, dietary protein keeps muscle mass from disintegrating as weight is lost. The idea is to get fat to burn preferentially while leaving the dieter with a hefty amount of calorie-burning muscle. In our clinic, we use high-protein liquid drinks and one dinner meal to get weight loss. We find that the combination works very well, perhaps for this reason. We might also extrapolate that continuing to eat diets that focus on goodly amounts of protein will stimulate muscle to maintain itself, turn over actively, and burn fat calories in the process.

Muscle also plays a pivotal role in insulin resistance, which can lead to diabetes. Normally, insulin tells the muscles to accept sugar from the blood. This is one of the ways that insulin keeps blood sugar controlled. As weight gain progresses, many people develop insulin resistance; an inability of the muscle to take up sugar when insulin calls. The body compensates by making too much insulin which in turn leads to high blood pressure, cholesterol and triglyceride problems and eventually, high sugar in the blood.

The question is, why should muscles become resistant to insulin?

While we’re still not sure, this paper notes that people with insulin resistance have muscles which have become filled with fatty globules, visible on MRI. This inappropriate fat storage seems to be linked to insulin resistance and may reflect a problem with the muscle mitochondria, small cellular engines which normally burn fat. Instead of fat being burned, it is being deposited within the muscle. Physical activity seems to tell the mitochondria to work properly. “…As little as a single bout of exercise…can transiently reverse insulin resistance,” the paper reports. This is crucial information for those of you who either have or have experienced insulin resistance. Keep exercising to keep your mitochondria burning fat rather than storing it. This will lessen resistance problems.

What about ways to preserve or build the muscle mass you have? Once you become sarcopenic , it is very hard to reverse the loss. Efforts should focus on preserving the mass you have as a young- or middle-aged person. Remember that the goal of exercise should not be simply to grow big muscles. The effect that exercise has on getting the muscles to work efficiently at a cellular level is just as important even though it can’t be seen with the naked eye.

The bottom line? No one seems to have exact recommendations for protein intakes. Don’t be afraid to add some low-calorie protein shakes or bars to your regimen if you are trying to build and maintain muscle. Make sure that you are getting adequate protein, particularly if you are vegetarian and most specifically if you are vegan. Keep up your exercise, not only to preserve the muscle you have, but to assure that it works properly. Keep exercising throughout your life in order to minimize your chances of sarcopenia as you age. Maintain muscle at good levels in order to give yourself the best chance of weathering unintended storms like illness or injury.
Like most of our body parts, muscle is not as simple as it seems. We will benefit greatly by feeding it, building it and taking care of it. If I fall in love with any other research papers anytime soon, I’ll be sure to share them.

Photographs and Memories

By Lynn Haraldson-Bering

I apologize for my blogging absence. I was preparing for and am now back from a whirlwind business trip/vacation to New York City (the business part) and Connecticut (the vacation part). I’ve hit the ground running, and with two days of exercise under my belt, it feels good after five days off. My muscles are trying to mutiny, but I’m captain of this ship, doggone it, and am back in full control.

I saw my Maintaining Divas once again at our second annual get-together. I wrote about about them last year (see A Gathering of Divas and The Maintaining Divas Meet At Last) and while we were missing one Diva this year (MA couldn’t make it, but we talked to her on the phone), our face-to-face reacquainted us with each other’s facial expressions and voices, and also with the way we eat – the foods we choose and how conscious we are of what we put in our mouths. You haven’t grocery shopped until you’ve shopped with the Divas. It took an hour just to get through the produce, and after the great Cornbread Debate, there was much flirting with a cutie bald guy in the spice aisle.

 

The Divas have a thing about their cameras. I doubt any of us back in our pre-weight-loss days would have allowed the number of photographs we take of each other when we get together. Many of them are silly or spur of the moment, like we were teenagers on spring break. Our (clothed) bottoms are in many of the photos. I dare you to find a photo of my back side when I weighed over 170 pounds. I used to be hyper conscious of anyone within 50 feet of me carrying a camera. Now I figure, “Hit me with your best shot.” And so they did.

 

I’m glad to have these photographs that capture both laughter and intensity. I wish I had more photos from other times in my life. As sad as it sounds (or perhaps grotesque to some), I wish I had a photo of me at my husband’s funeral or when my grandmother cried in my arms because she could no longer see and felt useless. I wish I could see again the expression on my face when my daughter Carlene stood at the top of the stairs when she was 3 years old and exclaimed, “Mommy? You piss me off!” (I cleaned up my language after that.) I wish I had more photos from family picnics and graduations and reunions. Photos invoke memories and make us remember what those moments felt like. Those feelings transcend weight. We WERE more than our weight. But in the moment – when the camera is staring at us – it’s hard to remember that. 

Now it doesn’t matter as much. How sad, though, that I placed so much emphasis on angle, lighting, and expression that I missed opportunities to relive and remember so many good (and painful – they are valid and necessary, too) times just because I was overweight or obese.

So here’s to my Divas and their cameras and goofy looking photos. I know what they mean. I see them and know what I was thinking and feeling. The Divas support me in maintenance, but they also help me dig out of that pile of emotional garbage from my past.

I wish all of you maintainers a support system like the Divas. I found them while I was losing (a few of them had reached goal) and have known them for 4 years, all through a message board.

Barbara and I would love to hear your maintenance support stories. How do the people around you support you the most? Who do you turn to when maintenance seems overwhelming? How do you feel about photographs now that you’re at goal? Email them to refusetoregain@gmail.comor leave a comment. We want to keep this dialogue going.

True Confessions of a Once Thin Person

By Barbara Berkeley

Like someone who has committed a crime and never reported it, I feel compelled to confess. I simply must wade back into the debate about who the thin really are.

Many of you have written with generous spirit about your realization that thin people are not genetically blessed, but simply work at it. Recently, Cari posted this on our site:

"And the thin people? Now that I AM one, I realize that, when I was obese, I also bought a pack of lies about how the "thin half" lives. I was angry because I believed they didn't have to work at it and were just genetically blessed. I also thought that "thin" equalled "fit" -- nothing could be further from the truth!"

Unfortunately, my confession is going to burst that bubble.

Until I was 40 years old, I was indeed endowed with an incredible IBM (intake balance mechanism). At 5’6” tall, I had weighed between 110 and 118 pounds my entire adult life. In my family, I was known for my enormous appetite and my capacity to eat endless amounts of just about everything. My favorite foods were Mallomar cookies which come in double-box packs. Once, a guy who wanted to date me bought me two cases to get my attention. I generally would eat both boxes of Mallomars at one sitting and would have multiple back-up packs in the pantry. At another point, I lived in Brooklyn about a half-mile from Junior’s restaurant which makes a world-famous cheesecake. I used to buy pineapple cheesecakes whole and eat them in a day.

I tend to eat the same favorite foods repeatedly – I mean daily for months. At various points in my 20s and 30s I had the following food “addictions” and ate huge quantities of: Egg Mc Muffins, Chicken McNuggets, Wendy’s taco salad, Nathan’s hot dogs (2 at a time) and French fries, Pinwheels cookies, Devil Dogs, Yodels, garlic and parmesan crackle bread, BREAD (a loaf at a time), spaghetti, Hostess cupcakes, York Peppermint Patties, Nestle Chocolate Bars, Cadbury Chocolate Bars, Chipwich ice cream sandwiches, chocolate dipped cones from Dairy Queen, and a whole bunch of other stuff I can’t remember. In addition, I ate large meals. Looking back on this list, I realize that I’m lucky to be alive or not to have developed heart disease.

What’s particularly amazing is that I grew up very frightened of heart problems. When I was 15, my very skinny 50-year-old father had a heart attack while eating a hamburger at lunch. The whole family was around the table when he developed sweating and chest pain. I’ll never forget it. In fact, my father’s heart attack was probably what motivated me to become a doctor and later to learn more about diet and exercise. Although my Dad was sedentary, smoked, and ate a diet that was pretty much confined to red meat and French fries, the fact that he had a heart attack at 50 indicated a family risk. Despite growing up under that cloud, I did absolutely nothing to change the way I lived. (My father survived, by the way, and just celebrated his 96th birthday, thanks to stents, bypass and a complete overhaul of his eating and exercise habits.)

But I haven’t confessed everything yet. I now must tell you that I was also completely – and I do mean completely – sedentary. As a teenager and young adult I played no sport, belonged to no gym (they weren’t around yet) and avoided anything that involved activity. I did like to dance a lot and didn’t mind sweating up a storm at clubs in New York or later as a folk dancer in the Israeli and Balkan folk dance scene in the city. But that was it. No running, no biking, no raquets, no nothing.

When I turned 40, I found that I was in for a rude shock. Sometime after that fateful day—the day I walked around with a pin that said “40 isn’t old—for a tree,” I discovered that time had robbed me of my gold-plated IBM. One day, my thighs started to look like lumpy sacks filled with bagels. What was this? Dear readers, I was too naïve to know. I stopped eating cookies and the bagel bags slimmed down a bit, but once thinner I started chowing down again. Eating without a thought was all I knew, after all. Soon I started to look like a puffy pyramid. I bought big baggy jeans and wore skinny tops because I was still thin from the waist up. I began a 15-year battle with an enemy I didn’t understand, losing weight once a year and gaining it all back within a month or two. I gained 30 pounds over the weight I’d been most of my life. By this time, I was already treating obese patients. I still didn’t get myself.

My own weight battle ended about six years ago when I suddenly had an insight that put together everything I’d learned about nutrition over the years. The Primarian Diet popped into my mind like the proverbial lightbulb going off. I tried it. It worked. It continues to keep me thin.

So now for the analysis of my story. There’s quite a bit to say.

First: My confession does confirm that there are some thin people you can legitimately hate. Super IBMs are real. They do exist. HOWEVER, they rarely persist into middle age. I think it’s safe to say that thin people in their late 40s and beyond are unlikely to be metabolic supermen. They are probably working at it and working hard, just as I am. Data compiled by Harvard’s famed Framingham study recently predicted that mostly everyone in the town of Framingham, Massachusetts, would be overweight by the end of their life. I believe that is because even the hardiest IBM will be beaten and broken by the SAD (standard American diet). When I think of what I threw away by eating all that crap! It’s truly heartbreaking.

Second: Doesn’t my confessional sound familiar? You’d think you were reading the first chapter in a book written by someone who’d been 400 pounds and had found redemption in weight loss. In other words, I was just like any other American food addict. But I never was blamed for my eating, called lazy, slovenly, or told that I had no willpower. It wasn’t until I started to look like a sack of bagels that my food consumption became a moral failing. Therefore, I conclude that no one’s food habits are moral failings. They are simply the addictions that result from exposure to a horrible food environment. It takes all of our energy to break free. If you’ve done it, you’re a hero.

Three: The lightbulb that pointed me to the Primarian Diet represented a singular moment. I saw. Your lightbulb may have led you to another kind of diet or some other formula that works for you. Whatever the specifics, it resulted in your finding the metabolic solution that fits your physiology. The veil was lifted from your eyes. You were enlightened!

So, the next time you see a thin person who appears to eat at will, you might consider pitying him. You are the wise one, not he. And once his IBM betrays him, he will have a long and difficult path to finding his truth. If he is like most Americans, he will fail. Rejoice that you have traveled so far down the road, that you see your way clearly and that you are happily anticipating what lies ahead.

The Age That Counts

By Barbara Berkeley

Lots has been made of calculating your “real age”…an interesting device for assessing how old you may be on a cellular level. In reality, no one can tell you exactly how much older or younger you are when you change the way you live and eat. Nevertheless, these kinds of quizzes remind us of the fact that our lifestyle choices cause real life consequences and can reap honest-to-goodness rewards.

I am more interested in another kind of age; one you might not have heard of. AGE is an acronym for “advanced glycation endproducts,” a mouthful of a term with the world’s most appropriate initials. In fact, when our bodies accumulate advanced glycation endproducts, they age. AGE’s are result of a process that begins when sugars in the heated environment of our body attach to proteins. Once hooked together, these altered body elements begin to warp the structures that contain them, disrupting their function. This kind of damage can occur in places like cells and the walls of blood vessels. When body elements are damaged, inflammatory reactions often occur in response. Indeed, harmful body Inflammation is an important consequence of AGE formation.

Diabetics have chronically high blood sugars and form lots of AGEs. Most doctors and scientists believe that the complications of diabetes – things like atherosclerosis, kidney failure, retinal damage and nerve problems – are the result of too much sugar in the blood. A knowledge of AGEs takes that understanding one step further. It is likely that the AGEs formed by the availability of sugar are the actual cause of the damage.

If you are diabetic or know someone who is, you probably already know about one type of AGE. The blood test that doctors use to monitor long-term blood sugar control is called a Hemoglobin A1C. Hemoglobin is a protein that lives in our red cells, each of which has a lifespan of about 120 days. As a protein, hemoglobin is one of the body elements which is susceptible to glycation. In other words, when a lot of sugar is around in the blood, it will attach itself to the hemoglobin and get permanently hooked on it. Since any particular red cell will be around for a few months, doctors can get a general idea of how high the sugar has been by looking at how much glycation has occurred. In people with normal blood sugar, there is hardly any sugar hooked onto the hemoglobin protein. In poorly controlled diabetics, there is a large amount. Since Hemoglobin A1C is just one of zillions of potentially glycated elements, we can assume that the rest of the body has suffered similar glycation damage.

AGEs are found in the retinal blood vessels of diabetics and they are known to accumulate in their peripheral nerves as well. AGEs can be seen in the parts of the kidney that become damaged in diabetes. AGEs can also affect the type of “bad” cholesterol you carry, making it more likely to enter vessel walls and start clogs forming. It is also important to note that even healthy people have AGEs. They begin to accumulate in our bodies during our embryonic life and continue to form as we grow older. The process is usually slow, but it is vastly accelerated by having a lot of blood sugar around; thus the greatly increased risk for diabetics.

Recently, researchers have begun to look more intensively at the accumulation of AGEs in healthy people. It is very possible that people who have more AGEs are aging more quickly. In this regard, an interesting theme has emerged. In addition to making AGES, we may be racking up an excess by ingesting them.

AGEs are made when sugars and proteins are heated. The body is warm and essentially contributes to the “cooking” of these two elements. Similarly, the sugars and proteins in foods can form AGEs when cooked at high temperatures. Although it seems hard to believe that eating AGEs could harm us, there is evidence accumulating that this may indeed be the case. A 2007 research article in The Journal of Gerontology (http://biomed.gerontologyjournals.org/cgi/content/full/62/4/427) reported that:

1. Even healthy people had evidence of AGEs in their blood
2. The older you are, the more AGEs
3. The number of AGEs you have is directly correlated to how much harmful inflammation is going on in your body
4. Eating food with a large number of AGEs elevates the AGE level in your blood. This effect is more pronounced in older people, but occurs in everyone.

Cooking foods at high temperatures by broiling, baking, frying and grilling elevates the AGE content. Cooking with liquid lowers the content. At the moment, recommendations for low-AGE eating suggest that foods be cooked by slower, lower heat techniques. Poaching, boiling, steaming and using slow-cookers are suggested methods.

Once again, AGE related research points to the wisdom of eating more ancient diets. Keeping blood sugar low by avoiding large amounts of starch and sugars makes bodily AGE formation more difficult. Eating a diet that is high in uncooked elements like fruits, vegetables and low fat dairy and lower in cooked foods that require high heat is in keeping with the way most maintainers eat. There is also some research that suggests that calorie restriction is effective in lowering the production of AGEs. Because maintainers have learned to eat judiciously, they are already keeping total calories low.

In other words, we’re on the right track! Enjoy your lower body weight with the knowledge that your lifestyle and eating choices may also be protecting you from the premature ravages of AGE and aging.

Rethinking & Reseeing The “Naturally” Thin

By Lynn Haraldson-Bering

Barbara wrote in her July 22 blog entry “The Thin Doc’s Dilemma”: “I am maintaining a 20-pound weight loss myself and would be vastly heavier if I had not reversed the process and put a permanent end to it. I live exactly the life and follow exactly the recommendations I make to my patients. In fact, you could even say I am the living lab for the program I preach.

“Nevertheless, overweight people don’t trust thin people to ‘get’ it. You may even find this to be true as a maintainer of larger amounts of weight, someone who was quite heavy for most of your life. Once you become thin, you seem to cross an invisible line. Like the rich, the thin are different.”

In our country, thin is the minority, particularly people who have been thin all their lives. Having been thin for five minutes during my adult life before losing weight this last time, I admit that I’d harbored a certain level of jealousy of thin people and, I realize now, a certain amount of suspicion that they could never understand how it felt to be overweight or what it was like to struggle with food issues. After all, if you’re thin, you have no problems, right? At least that’s the story I told myself for years: “If only I was thin, I’d be happy.”

Now that I’ve been a member of the “thin club” for a few years, it’s time I rethought my views of thin people and tried to understand where my remaining mistrust lies. A few reader responses to Barbara’s blog started this process.

Emily wrote: “Working in an office of mostly women, the topic of discussion often turns to weight. And today the thinnest of the group says 'I know you think I'm crazy, but I really do have weight issues. I've been heavier, I've been smaller, and I love food. It's a constant struggle for me...' and the conversation continued from there. And it was really interesting to get to know her on another level, and think of her in a different way.”

I’ve heard the same thing from thin coworkers throughout the years and merely dismissed their concern (although I didn’t see it as a bona fide “concern”) with, “Honey, you have NO idea what it’s like…” Talk about assuming a lot. Out of my own insecurities, I missed countless opportunities to explore what living life as a thin person really entailed. No wonder I lost and gained so many times and am just now figuring it out exactly how to stay thin.

Now the shoe’s on the other foot. If I were to start a job somewhere, no one would know I’d been overweight unless I told them. And I wonder how many people would just dismiss me if I said I had to be careful how I ate without explaining that I once weighed 300 pounds? How many Emilys are really out there, open to listening to a person who on the outside appears to be a non-struggling thin person discussing her weight issues?

The other comment that got me thinking about this subject was Maura: “To be honest, as a formerly overweight person who struggles on an almost daily basis to keep my weight in check, I see thin people differently now. I see that most thin people do things to take care of themselves – they go to the gym or practice yoga or go hiking. They're active. You don't hear them talking about what's on TV every night.

“I also see they tend to make healthier choices when it comes to food. They don't eat the entire portion of the questionable ‘food’ restaurants serve. And if you talk to them, you find out they don't do this because they like it (the food part, not necessarily the activity part). You learn that they too practice weight management. They may not have to be strict with it the way I do because they've never really been overweight, but they still practice it.

“I think overweight people tend to fall into a trap of thinking that being thin is natural for ALL thin people. I have thin friends – who have been thin for as long as I've known them (20+ years) and they work hard at staying thin. Most of the time they eat healthfully and they exercise consistently. They also hear the call of Thin Mints and sometimes will indulge with a ‘binge’ session and devour a package in one or two sittings.

“The difference? They don't eat Thin Mints every day. And they don't whine about not being able to. They just go out there and do what they need to do most days and enjoy a few indulgences along the way.

“I think I'm far more inclined to learn from always thin people and formerly overweight people (especially them) now that I've lost weight. I realize it was MY thinking that was my biggest hurdle. When I whined ‘How can you understand?’ what I was actually doing was asking for validation for my rationalizing away behaviors that were keeping me fat.”

Learning from thin people. It never crossed my mind until now. How can I learn from people I am jealous and suspect of? It’s impossible until I address my own biases and insecurities.

Since Barbara’s blog, I’ve made an effort to examine my first impressions of people in the grocery store, coffee shop, and other public places. I’ve noticed that when I see overweight and obese people, my first subconscious impression tends to be, “There’s an overweight/obese person. I feel comfortable around (and sometime sorry for) him/her.” When I see a thin person, my first impression is often, “There’s a person who could never understand me.”

This made me wonder how I view my own self as a thin person, and I have to admit an uncomfortable truth. When I look in the mirror, I don’t think, “There’s a person I can trust.” Ouch. What I usually think is, “You’re gonna gain weight someday, you know that, right? You’re not REALLY thin.” Like that commercial, “I’m not a doctor, but I play one on TV…” I’m not really thin, but I fake it well in real life, at least for the time being.

Rethinking thin. It truly is a completely different mindset and way of life. And I am going to make an effort to look for opportunities such as Emily had to talk with other thin people, if they’ll indulge me, about how they stay thin.

Just when you think you have it all figured out…Again, you all continue to educate me on my maintenance journey

Refusing Under Stress

By Barbara Berkeley

Refusing to regain the weight you’ve lost is a big enough challenge on ordinary days, but what about on life-crisis days? Years of habit dictate that stressful times deserve food relief. Let’s call it “Food Soothing.” Drowning sorrows in a hot fudge sundae is such a cheap, accessible (and delicious) solution. Hey! You’re stressed out…no one will blame you!

There would be nothing wrong with Food Soothing if we were only in a Food-Worthy crisis once in a great while. The problem is that crisis moments are much more frequent than we realize. When my patients have a bad week and have been unable to follow a diet plan, the most common problem they point to is stress. Stress is invoked so frequently that it would seem to be an incredibly common occurrence in most lives. Here are some of the many daily stressors that patients cite as reasons they’ve soothed themselves with food:

• Worrying about a home or work project
• Having a sick relative
• Having trouble with a child
• Arguing with a friend, spouse, or colleague
• Having a marriage issue
• Going through a divorce
• Money problems
• Going through packing or moving
• Throwing a party or attending a large family event
• Traveling for work
• Fighting off a minor illness
• Dating
• Retiring
• Going through a home remodel
• Having a car breakdown
• Having a sick pet
• Worrying about a doctor or dentist appointment
• Being overscheduled

The list could go on for pages. As it turns out, there are basically very few days that don’t contain stressors strong enough to motivate Food Soothing. For this reason, I generally advise maintainers not to use the “just this once” approach when dealing with Food-Soothing urges. But what to do?

When I started running, I bought some books about how to train. I particularly like “Galloway’s Book on Running” (Shelter Press, 1984). Jeff Galloway is an Olympic runner who ran with greats like Frank Shorter and Bill Rodgers in the 70s and has currently run over 120 marathons. He is considered an expert in his field. Distance runners like Galloway know a lot about something that maintainers face every day, the struggle to continue on despite discomfort. I did not buy “Galloway’s Book on Running” to learn something about maintaining, but that’s what happened.

About halfway through my first mile of running, I had started to notice a little voice in my head telling me that I would feel a lot better if I stopped. This message would go away for a while, then come back more and more insistently. Sometimes the cue would be so strong that I would pull up and stop running altogether. After all, that is what my body was telling me to do. I was just listening to my body. While reading Galloway’s book, I was startled to come across a description of this “messaging” phenomenon. Here is what Galloway said:

The Mind is Divided: “The power of the mind to push the body to its potential is limited by an internal conflict. The logical side (left brain) does not communicate with the creative side (right brain). A primary mission of the analytical side is to steer you into comfort and away from stress. The more stress you generate from running and other areas, the more negative messages: “slow down,” “stop,” or what is even worse, “why am I doing this?” If you don’t have a mental strategy for dealing with this barrage of negativity, you’ll start losing confidence in your ability to achieve your potential…”

Galloway then goes on to describe strategies for defusing the left brain which include distracting yourself, making yourself laugh, and repeating mantras. I have found, however, that simply knowing my pesky messages are to be expected helps me ignore them. I am learning to notice the message and simply take note of it.

“Oh, that’s my silly left brain talking,” I’ll say.

I now realize that I don’t have to listen to this message. In fact, it doesn’t really mean anything. I’ve learned to take an assessment of myself when the message comes in. Am I really suffering? Am I hurting? Can I still breathe? Do I feel a whole lot different than I did five minutes before? The answer is almost always no. If that’s the case, I keep on going and take a curious attitude. When will I get the next message? Will that one be any more linked to reality? It’s kind of interesting.

This type of thought-noting shares something with meditative practice. Meditators are taught to be aware of thoughts that come into their mind but not to get involved with them. They are told to look at them, almost like balloons that float across the consciousness and then to let them float away. In other words, our thoughts and impulses don’t have to control us if we practice minimizing them. Distance athletes have learned how to do this well; how to get to goal. So why can’t we do the same? We maintainers are the distance athletes of the weight loss world.

After reading Galloway, I realized that I had been employing a similar technique for some years in maintaining my weight. When messages came into my mind that told me I’d feel really good if I bought that Snickers or ate that pie, I had learned to identify them, look at them curiously and let them go. Over time, I had learned to detach these thoughts from any urgency. They became sort of lifeless, or perhaps neutral. Without really knowing it, I had figured out that they were just news flashes from my left brain and were not much related to reality. Once I learned to get a little more zen with these incoming thoughts, I found that a sip of some drink or a handful of blueberries satisfied my soothing needs just as well as the high-calorie stuff and with a lot less consequence.

I’m wondering if any of you have discovered a similar phenomenon? If not, try examining those left brain messages and letting them fly away. You may just find that you’re a marathoner after all.

I’m Back!

By Lynn Haraldson-Bering

Happy August, everyone! But where, oh where, did July go?

I’ve been MIA from Refuse to Regain for almost a month – I’ve missed you! Also neglected were the gym, my gardens and almost every other ordinary day-to-day thing, like my own bed and my own food. (Ever notice that not even the finest restaurants can make a salad as good as the one you throw together at home?)

July was a month of family chaos – some sad, mostly good – but it’s time to get back into the old routine. “Old” with a new twist, that is. It’s time to shake up the iPod.

To kick things off, I downloaded Rare Earth’s “I Just Want to Celebrate.”

 

I chose this song for three reasons: 1) I can’t sit still when I hear it; 2) It makes me want to go out and buy a sweater vest and bell bottoms; and 3) I want to celebrate the fact that after four weeks of sporadic exercise, bouts of enormous stress, and a few off-my-food-list goodies (for my husband’s birthday, I learned to make a really smashing blackberry cobbler), I weigh the same today as I did before it all began. I’m celebrating that I didn’t slip into my old behavior – you know the one, “Well, one more week won’t matter” and then one week turns into two years and I’m back where I started. So thanks to Rare Earth, my new mantra is: “Well, I can't be bothered with sorrow; and I can't be bothered with hate, no, no; I'm using up my time by feeling fine, every day…”

Next I bought a little KC & The Sunshine Band (“Get Down Tonight), Cheap Trick’s “The Flame,” and the Ting Tings’ “That’s Not My Name.” Then I dug into the vault of downloaded CDs and added “Love Is Like A Rock” by Donnie Iris, “The Rockefeller Skank” by Fatboy Slim, “American Baby” by Dave Matthews Band, “Smells Like Teen Spirit” by Nirvana, “It’s Not Over” by Daughtry, “Let The Day Begin” by The Call, and “Body Movin’” by the Beastie Boys. I can’t wait to workout tomorrow!

I was a little…oh…how do I say this…perplexed? by the “recommended music” category that came up after downloading KC. It was called Power Music Workout. How did iTunes know I was downloading workout music? Anyway, I clicked on it and the CDs included a selection of Biggest Loser and Shape Magazine workout mixes. I sampled a few of the songs and decided a backbeat track added to originally slow songs was not my kind of workout music. (I’m quite sure they’d make 30 minutes feel like an hour) Then I spied a CD called Classical Cardio. What? Working out to classical music (unless it’s “The William Tell Overture”) would be like doing yoga to AC/DC. It just wouldn’t be right for me.

But oh no, dear readers. This isn’t just any classical CD. It’s remixed classical music, as in synthesizers and a backbeat added to Pachebel’s “Canon in D,” Bach’s “Air,” Chopin’s “Etude,” and Beethoven’s 9th.

As one reviewer said, “It’s not the London Philharmonic,” but it works for her and keeps her moving during her workout, so I suppose I shouldn’t knock it until I try it. However, I’m pretty sure my ears would bleed if I had to listen to this CD for any length of time. Different strokes for different folks, though. Whatever it takes to get us moving, right?

I’m back in the saddle again! (Which reminds me, I need to download that song, too. Nothing like Steve Tyler screaming in my ear to keep me motivated.) I’m back and ready to hit the routine again and it feels great.

So what’s on your MP3 player that makes you excited to work out? I’m always looking for the perfect workout playlist and open to (almost) all suggestions. Don’t be shy! Share! I promise I won’t laugh. After all, I listen to “Making Love Out Of Nothing At All” by Air Supply sometimes when I lift weights. True story.