Refuse To Regain

Pivot, Corkscrew, Ascent: When to Panic

by Barbara Berkeley, MD

So maintainer, you are trying to stabilize at that new, lower number on the scale.  You're trying, but sometimes that number seems as slippery as an eel.  It's here!  It's gone!  What the heck did you do?  Is there any logic? 

Number panic comes in many forms, but no matter how much you dread waiting for that digital display to decide your fate, you will be helped by some basic knowledge.

The primary thing to understand is that the body is a balancer, not a static instrument.  By that I mean that your bodily programs are always working to correct excursions from a desired midline.  Your body may want your blood pressure to be 120 over 80, but if I check your blood pressure ten times over an hour, each reading will be somewhat different.   Each cholesterol test will be a bit different.  Each measurement of potassium, magnesium, sodium will vary a bit.  When you test something, you are taking a snapshot of the body's balancing act.  Maybe you're on the high end of the balance one day, and the low end the next.  Getting a bunch of measurements gives us a sense of the midline. 

If your weight is stable, your morning readings will be higher on some days and lower on others.  (Don't fall prey to the temptation to weigh yourself later in the day when food, elimination and water retention can add up to quite a few extra, scary pounds).   This gentle rise and fall is the "pivot".  Your body is holding onto water, then eliminating it; building up glycogen in the muscles, then burning it.  Nothing to worrry about.  In fact,  this is just what you should aim for.  Your response:  If your diet and exercise are stable, you should do nothing.  If you have let up a bit and you notice that you are getting more higher-end readings and fewer lower-end ones, you should tighten up on the reins.  But all in all, you get a gold star.

Pivoting is great, but many would-be maintainers find themselves in one of two other situations: the "corkscrew" or the "ascent".

You are corkscrewing if your weight pivots around one point and then starts creeping up by a few pounds.  You then pivot there for a bit until there is another turn of the screw.  Like a corkscrew slowly being rotated, this pattern takes a slow and steady bite out of your weight loss.  It tends to be insidious because there is time to get used to each new weight. From a psychological point of view, small regains at the beginning don't seem very threatening, so you tend to let them go.  Your response:  First, determine if post-diet weight was too low to maintain.  There is often a 5 to 10 pound weight regain after a big loss.  I believe this is because dieters have depleted the glycogen in their muscles which tends to weigh about this much.  As the body rebuilds and uses these stores, there may be regain.  It's relatively unimportant, although you will see it on the scale.  If you have gained a bit, but are now able to keep a stable pivot at your new weight, I'd say this is a fine result.  If, on the other hand, you are continuing to corkscrew upward, I would suggest immediate action.  One thing that helps me personally to avoid corkscrewing is vigorous exercise.  If you are able to work out hard and enjoyably, consider increasing your exercise frequency.  I believe you will find that your weight responds by staying much more stable.  I also suggest that you keep a food journal for a week.  Keep a notebook with you and don't be afraid to write down everything you eat.  Then take an honest look at how many starches and sugars have crept back into your diet.  Vow to cut them back or cut them out.

The "ascent" is the most feared consequence of dieting.  Weight goes up rapidly and smoothly, like an escalator carrying you to a floor you'd hoped never to visit again.   I have seen ascension frequently, but I have only observed one cause:  lack of dietary conversion.  In other words, weight is regained rapidly because the maintainer has returned to some form of old habits.  In the past, we've talked about the bargaining phase.  Each one of us has experienced this.  It's the period after weight loss when we convince ourselves that we can strike a bargain with food.  We can eat as we once did, but in a controlled way.  In the most literal sense, we can have our cake and eat it too.  While this may work for a small few, the fact is that POWs (those who gain weight easily, "previously overweight") are uniquely sensitive to many of the characteristics of the modern diet.  We don't rechallenge someone who is allergic to peanuts with a Snickers bar.  It could kill them.  For POWs, rechallenge is dangerous and defeating.  Those of you who have had your own food conversion know how differently you now eat.  If you are successfully maintaining weight, you have found a way around the foods that once controlled you.  Your response to the "ascent":  Pick a quit date sometime in the next couple of weeks when you can start over.  As that date approaches, throw out everything in the house that you shouldn't be eating.  Restart your original weight loss plan.  Attack the problem seriously and with intensity.  Food conversions, or deep, permanent changes in your personal menu, don't come easily, but they are worth seeking.  Rather than simply working on losing pounds, work on making the decision to opt out of the American way of eating.   Once you are hooked on an alternative, you will have beaten the ascent.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Two Fit Chicks and a Microphone Interview with Lynn

Lynn was recently interviewed by Carla (MizFit) and Shauna (The Amazing Adventures of Diet Girl!) on the Two Fit Chicks and a Microphone podcast.  The topic? Maintenance! Click here to listen.

Let The Spring Cleaning Begin: Part 2

By Lynn Haraldson

A few weeks ago, I started a series of blogs in response to Barbara’s Refuse to Regain Season of Transformation, principals she has identified as imperative to permanent weight loss and maintenance. As I wrote earlier, when I read Barbara’s principles, I realized I’ve become complacent in some areas of maintenance and that it’s time to dust off my map of this maintenance journey. Today I address “Transformative Principle #3: Find others who are transforming.” One of my favorite topics in maintenance.

I’ve written several times here about my Maintaining Divas, the support group a few of us Weight Watchers online folks formed once we made goal. (“A Gathering of Divas,” “The Maintaining Divas Meet At Last,” and “Photographs and Memories.”)

Some excerpts from those blogs: “If you’re a maintainer and you hang out with people in maintenance, you find out just how normal you are, even though to the SAD (Standard American Diet) world you’re considered strange.

“In less than 48 hours [of meeting the Divas], I formed a lasting bond with women I’d not have otherwise known…without a similar commitment to weight loss and maintenance as mine. It’s not every day you meet folks like that.

“We agree we are better maintainers and better friends for having met. We feel safe in each other’s presence. This doesn’t mean we’re not safe or comfortable with people who are living the SAD life. Far from it. It’s just really nice to gather with a group of folks who ‘get it.’ No apologies, no explanations, no excuses. Just an understanding among friends.

“It is almost an aside that together we’ve lost 651 pounds. Yes, we’ve lost a lot of weight. We discuss food and exercise. But as maintainers know, food and exercise are hardly the bulk and heft of maintenance. It is in understanding ourselves and what motivates us to eat and exercise. It is how we relate to the people we live with and see every day. It is, ultimately, how we feel deep down about ourselves. That is what the Maintaining Divas talk about. And it is what I wish for everyone who is losing weight and maintaining: to find a few people with whom you feel comfortable to start chatting with and slowly develop a sustaining, intimate bond that goes deep into what weight-loss and maintenance is all about.

“Surely if losing weight and maintaining weight was merely a matter of eating right and exercising, anyone could do it. But you know and I know that eating right and exercising is imbedded in a psychological need to feel better about ourselves, and to connect with other people who get it is a true key to success.”

Having a support system in which people are atune to your maintenance is really important. Also crucial to this maintenance life is who we live with day in and day out. Barbara wrote, “…obesity is ‘catching.’ A person is increasingly likely to be obese if their friends are obese. Same goes for family members.”

As you may know, I’m recently divorced and have moved an hour away from my previous home. My ex-husband, Larry, was my biggest supporter as I lost weight. He lost 25 pounds, too, and has maintained it. He bought me a bike when I got to goal and we became, as he said, the active couple he’d always hoped we’d become.

Not living with Larry has influenced me in a way I was not expecting. I no longer cook for two. And working out…well…let’s just say I could use some improvement in that area, too. I know motivation comes only from within and not at the encouragement of another, but when you live with someone, their habits influence your habits and (hopefully, in terms of positive health) vice versa. Larry was a health-conscious influence.

Seven months post-divorce, I confess my eating habits aren’t what they used to be. They’re not horrible, just irregular and could use some tweaking. I also find a myriad excuses to not push myself physically like I used to. Not that I was in competition with Larry, but living with him – he who worked out regularly – reminded me to do the same.

Dating is its own maintenance maze. Like one of the Divas said to me the other day, nothing will make you gain weight quite like dating, because it’s so easy to take on someone else’s habits. I am mindful of my eating, but a few pounds have crept onto my body, and they have everything to do with restaurant food and swapping workout time for dating time. Dating is definitely another piece to this maintenance puzzle.

Our lives are not stagnant. Something or someone will always stand in the way of maintenance if we let them. Surrounding ourselves with like-minded people…that’s not always easy. But having a few is crucial. We need to know we’re not alone. We need people around us who “get it” to remind us that SAD is a choice, just as is maintenance. I’m feeling a little lost right now, but I will rebound because I have myself and my will to maintain, and – perhaps more importantly – I’ve got the Divas and Barbara and this blog. As any maintainer will tell you, if you don’t believe you’re worth it, you will not succeed, but it’s important to have a few people have your back.

The Mystical Power of Exercise

by Barbara Berkeley, MD

These Transformative Principles are part of a series on achieving permanent health change that began on March 21.  The "principles" are not meant to be gospel.  They are simply thoughts of mine that are based on the observation of successful maintainers, personal experience and--to some degree-- my own conjecture.  I hope they provide some food for thought as you continue your own quest for health transformation.   These and many similar insights into maintenance can be found in my book:  Refuse to Regain: 12 Tough Rules to Maintain the Body You've Earned.  Hope you enjoy them.

Transformative Principle #9:  Figure Out How to Find Joy in Exertion

Here is my favorite vacation:  Fly to Tampa with my husband and drive 45 minutes to tennis camp.  Wake up the next morning at 6 am, have a lovely breakfast, and be on the court by 8 am.  Run around like a nut hitting groudstrokes, overheads, volleys and playing points for three hours in the warm Florida sun.  Eat a tuna salad and change clothes.  Play another two hours in the afternoon.  Have a drink.  Find a couple to play doubles.  Play more tennis.  Eat at the salad bar: big plate full of greens, veggies, fruits and maybe some grilled chicken.  Fall asleep at 9 pm.  Wake up and do it all again. 

I was not born an exercise addict and I surely don't come by it naturally.  My parents and sister were not physically active, nor were my aunts, uncles, cousins or friends.  I played no school sports, could not throw a ball or swing a bat and avoided breaking a sweat like the plague.  How, then, did this odd transformation occur?

The answer is that I don't know.  Falling in love with exertion is something that just happens and no one can say exactly why.  It's very similar to the blank looks I get when I ask successful maintainers why they managed to change all their habits now when they never could before.  No one is sure why they were able to do it, they just did.

We know that data from the National Weight Control Registry is specific regarding the benefits of exercise. In the greater than 5,000 maintainers under study, successful weight stabilization is highly correlated with hefty amounts of movement: the equivalent of walking four miles daily.  We also know that exercise allows you to have more muscle mass and that muscle helps maintenance.  There is also data suggesting that the metabolic slowdown that occurs with long diets heals up faster in those who exercise and may be prolonged in those who don't.

But none of this data gets to the point that is most interesting.  What is the mystical power that exercise holds and why do some of us fall under its spell, while others remain stubbornly resistant?  How can those of us who love the feeling of our chosen workout convey the pleasure it has brought to our lives?  Prosyletizing is particularly difficult since people who don’t like to exercise have a negative feeling about it that often approaches loathing.  On the other hand, the experiences of many of us say that a complete attitude flip is possible.

Having been on the loathing side and now on the loving side, I remain complete unsure of what flipped the switch.  The best I can do is make this observation: the key lies in your continual search for exertional enjoyment.  In one of the earlier Transformative pieces, I talked about the need to validate your body and connect with it.  Using the body in a physically challenging way is the most direct expression of this principle.  It is almost as if your brain and your body become a team with one relying on the other.  During a tennis match, when my brain tells me to hit a rocket shot down-the-line and my body carries out the planned attack, I feel so proud of my physical self!

Finding a way to love exercise is a search in the dark for something that is not clear.  How to love a work out?  I think the best advice is simply to keep giving yourself opportunities.  It is completely possible to become hooked on something you never liked if the right situation presents itself.   I had taken multiple tennis lessons over a 20 year period at the behest of my tennis-playing husband.  I was utterly resistant and hated every minute of those lessons.  But about seven years ago, I took a single lesson from a teacher who was patient, funny and fun.  I kept going back.  He convinced me to join a team and the rest is history. For some strange reason, this particular set of circumstances led to a love for the sport that has yet to cool down.  It was just the right moment. Look for your moment by continuing to try different work outs, sports, classes and physical activities. 

Exercise works in mystical, healing ways.  It mops up dietary indiscretions.  It validates the healthful work you’ve done on yourself by giving direct proof of what your new body can do.  It soothes and calms by aligning your thoughts with your physical self.  It empowers by demonstrating that your abilities can continue to improve throughout your lifespan. So, if you have not made peace with your athletic identity as of yet, keep trying.  Your journey to transformation cannot be wholly complete if it relies simply on your brain.  Meld the body and the mind for ultimate power,

Let the Spring Cleaning Begin: Part 1

 By Lynn Haraldson

I recently entered my fifth year of maintenance, a time at which experts say the odds of regain are significantly lower. Telling someone like me something like that is like telling the guys protecting a nuclear missile it’s OK to take a nap. Yup. Something’s going to blow up.

“You’ve kept your weight off for a long time!” sing the anti-maintenance Sirens. “What’s one cookie or a week or three off from exercise going to matter? You’re safe!”

Riiiight.

It’s not enough in maintenance to rest on the laurels of time. Maintenance is constant, not a hail Mary pass. Last month, Barbara launched Refuse to Regain Season of Transformation, principals she has identified as imperative to permanent weight loss and maintenance based on her observations and experiences in the weight-management field and in her own personal maintenance life.

When I read Barbara’s transformation principals, I realized I’ve been visiting that Siren’s home of complacency far too often since September. Visits that were spurred on, no doubt, by significant life changes and a really rotten winter. But it’s time to throw open the windows on my Green House and dust off my perspective of this weight maintenance life I’ve chosen. Over the next few weeks, I will respond to Barbara’s transforming principals (and some of your comments) with a few of my awakened thoughts with the hope of keeping my head in the game and silencing the anti-maintenance Sirens.

Transformative Principle #1: Transformation is about belief. But belief can develop through habit.

“…[Y]ou must deeply believe that eating and living in a particular way are central to who you are.”

While conducting research for a chapter of my book, I found a couple of interesting, but not surprising, studies. The first was that at any given time, 45 percent of American women are on a diet, according to the Society for Women’s Health Research, and those who aren’t on a diet are often thinking about it. The other was a survey of 4,000 women found that, on average, women go on two diets a year with each diet lasting about five weeks. By the time a woman reaches age 70, she’s been on 104 diets and spent a total of 10 years counting calories. A quarter of the women admitted that despite their attempts to lose weight, they didn't lose anything at all, and 41 percent said they felt they were constantly on a diet.

I am those women. I’ve trekked up and down the scale between 128 and 300 pounds for the last 29 years, spending a total of five years dieting, 20 years gaining, and four years hanging around some goal weight that seemed like the right scale number at the time.

It’s that word – “diet” – that needs to be quashed in maintenance. At least “diet” as it pertains to losing weight, not the style of eating itself (paleo diet, vegetarian diet, etc.). “Diet” doesn’t imply permanence. “Diet” is what you do to get to where you want to be so you can go back to “normal.”

Since my surgery last June, I’ve gained 8 pounds, and that “diet” mentality has been bugging me like a gnat near hairspray. Instead of taking a deep breath and realizing that I just need to tweak a few things, at first I panicked and thought, ‘I need to go on a diet! I have to lose this weight NOW!’

Yeah, that works.

Not.

Moments of panic are common in maintenance. But the key to successful maintenance is bringing ourselves back to earth – away from that diet mentality – when there’s a change on the scale. Thoughtful introspection and a careful examination of food in and energy expended is much more productive than panic. Eight pounds? I don’t like it, but the gain has been stopped in its tracks because, as a maintainer, eating clean and exercising are as much a part of my life as breathing. Maintaining IS what I want.

Transformative Principle #2: Transformation requires re-engaging with your body.

“It’s surprisingly easy to live entirely in your head, blocking out not only visuals but the messages that your body is sending.”

When I was on Oprah in November 2007, she asked me a question that was not on the script.

“Can you even now look in the mirror and recognize yourself?” she asked.

“I feel like the person I am on the inside is the person I am on the outside. I feel like I match now,” I replied.

Boy did THAT sentiment take a long time to reach, that place of balance. And in the years since the show, with diagnosis after diagnosis of osteoarthritis in joint after joint, I’ve learned that listening to my body is the only way to maintain, both in terms of food and exercise. However, I’m not always a good listener.

In the last few months, I’ve allowed my body to acquiesce to my mind which said, “You’re busy, things are changing, life is chaotic. It’s OK to skip a workout. Or 20.” Justification is the anti-maintenance Siren’s mantra.

But you know and I know that…ummm…no it’s NOT OK to skip a workout if you can help it. Working out works out more than the body. That incredible endorphin rush can last a long time, often changing our moods, decisions, work.

So it is within the remembering of that mind-body connectivity that I challenged my body last month to get back into its pre-surgery condition, at least in terms of upper body strength. I’ve had to modify the lower body/cardio workout only because my knees demand it. But where there’s a will, there’s a way, right? And in maintenance, aren’t we all about the will?

Regarding our body image and how we see ourselves, both as emotional and physical creatures, I found these recent RTR comments particularly poignant.

Jan wrote: “I have had massages to try and feel my body in a different way. Not easy at first, delightful now.”

Allowing someone to place their hands on our bodies, at whatever weight we are, requires a level of trust that is difficult for many of us, including yours truly. The rolls, the squishy parts, the sagging, the not-so-attractive parts of me become all I think about when those hands are on me, be it a doctor, a chiropractor, a massage therapist or a lover. To learn to breathe through it and accept that who I am underneath my clothes is really who I am, is a lesson I think I’ll be working on for a long time.

Teresa wrote: “I used to dodge a camera but now have learned to love it and my husband takes lots of pictures of me now. I study the photos as if I'm trying to commit the image to memory. It's been a powerful tool in my transformation.”

Bravo! I used photographs to chronicle my weight loss. Whenever I’m in a funk about where I am now as opposed to where I’ve been, I go back and look at those photos. I wasn’t a fan of photographs when I was 300 pounds. Hated them. But I now wish I had more of them. After all, I was still me. Alas, weight did, but it shouldn’t have, defined me.

Vicky wrote: “I know full well I have subscribed wholly to the tyranny of our society's requirements for the female form, and I don't know how to unsubscribe. I really want out of this self-loathing.”

I like the song by Jon McLauglin called “Beautiful Disaster.”

I downloaded it to my iPod because it describes in many ways the feelings of insecurity I still have, even at age 47.

One of the lines that gets me most is:

“And every magazine tells her she's not good enough, The pictures that she's seen make her cry.”

I often get that feel – that pull – to look like what the magazines and society in general think I should look like. Even at my age. There are some really beautiful, put-together 40- and 50- and 60-somethings out there, and I feel…well…not so much in competition…but a need to fulfill the look. Vicky, as you know, this isn’t just a teenage thing.

 

Avoiding Re-Addiction

by Barbara Berkeley, MD

These Transformative Principles are part of a series on achieving permanent health change that began on March 21.  The "principles" are not meant to be gospel.  They are simply thoughts of mine that are based on the observation of successful maintainers, personal experience and--to some degree-- my own conjecture.  I hope they provide some food for thought as you continue your own quest for health transformation.   These and many similar insights into maintenance can be found in my book:  Refuse to Regain: 12 Tough Rules to Maintain the Body You've Earned.

Transformative Principle #8: Avoid, Desensitize, Feel the Zen

The kind of food we eat in the United States is incredibly drug-like. 

In my book, I wrote about research done at Princeton in the lab of Dr. Bartley Hoebel.  Hoebel's studies with rats have shown that sugars and drugs cause many identical brain responses.  Recently, Dr. Nora Volkow, Director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse discussed her belief that chocolate is just another addictive substance. 

Most of us know that sweets have addictive properties.  Where I part company with the mainstream is in my belief that starches too can trigger pleasure eating.  In fact, virtually anything that the body ultimately makes into sugar has this ability.  Perhaps for some people, the slower release of sugars that occurs with fiber-filled whole grains blunts this response.  For others though, starch and sugar are both dangerous substances. 

In order to transform, we have to find a way to cut down the stimulatory messages that are being broadcast throughout our environment.  As Volkow explains, we have been conditioned to know that delicious foods create pleasure.  When we see these foods or are otherwise exposed, a chain of primal response is released.  The only action we can take is to inhibit ourselves and say no.  A life of continual inhibition is hardly bearable and doesn't seem to work.  In essence, the reason for weight regain is that eventually it's impossible to keep turning these foods down.

So what do transformed maintainers do?   Here is what I observe:

1.  Through disciplined practice, transformed people have spent enough time avoiding addictive foods that their response to them is blunted.  This makes it much easier to ignore previously addictive foods or say no to them.  However, there is still danger.  Re-contact with these foods is often enough to restore the original craving cycle.  Hence the difficulty with advice that suggests consuming addictive foods "in moderation".

2. Those with transformed eating have discovered workable subsitutions for addictive foods.  Over time, these much less harmful foods fill the void and even become preferable.

3. There does seem to be a kind of desensitization that some transformed eaters achieve.  This is a somewhat advanced skill, but it can be practiced once you feel reasonably in control of addictive foods.  I believe that for some people, putting themselves directly in confrontation with foods and "staring them down" helps to dull their effect.  After awhile, you may find that you can create a sort of zen state in which you are protected from the signals sent by these foods.  Your brain learns to damp down their siren call.  This helps enormously as it requires you to spend much less time on defense.