Livin La Vida Low Carb Podcast

One of the weight loss successes I profile in How We Did It is Jimmy Moore, a man who lost 180 pounds on the Atkins diet. Jimmy was so inspired by his achievement that he has become a full-time advocate and enthusiastic blogger for weight loss success.

What I really appreciate about Jimmy's approach to weight loss is that while he succeeded on Atkins, he realizes that it's not the only plan with which you can find success. He fully supports people who choose another plan. He's all about success! He provided me with the quote that ends my book: "Dance with the one that brung ya!" In other words, if it words for you--whatever it is--stick with it.

Jimmy has endless amounts of information on his website Livin La Vida Low Carb. As part of his blog, he posts podcasts with people involved in weight loss--including me! Click on this link to listen to our interview, which Jimmy ran earlier this week. It's the longest interview I've done for my book--36 minutes!--so I really had the chance to go into depth about the book and the inspiring people in it. I hope you enjoy listening in!

Bye bye to back pain!

At one time, I suffered lower back pain that was bad enough to land me in physical therapy... not once but twice. I finally got the message and did two things: started swimming laps and in doing so, lost weight.

Losing 30 pounds and continuing my regular lap swimming (2-3x/week) has kept the ache away. I'd recommend swimming to anyone who suffers from lower back pain. It doesn't take much to whack that pain. I swim for just a half an hour and, if I have the time, I sit in the hot tub for a minute or two afterward.

In the new Chicken Soup book, Say Goodbye to Back Pain, I write about my hassle with back pain and my solution. It's a funny story about how I got to the point of not being able to pick up my child because of the pain, and what I had to do one day when I had to get him, kicking and squalling, to the car when he didn't want to leave the park. There are some great stories, and great solutions, in this book. Maybe one will help you, too.

Mindless eating... it's how we eat!

One of the books I relied on for good -- and fascinating -- information for How We Did It was Dr. Brian Wansink's Mindless Eating: Why We Eat More than We Think.

Dr. Wansink is called a "food psychologist." From his lab at Cornell University, he conducts experiments into the factors that lead us to eat what we eat. And you'd think that we eat what we eat because it tastes good, right? Wrong!

In some of his crazy experiments, Dr. Wansink has uncovered the many misguided reasons we eat. Among them are these:

• The size and shape of a bowl can almost double the amount of food you eat.
• Restaurants can get you to eat more by describing their menu items with adjectives.
• You will eat more candy if you throw away the wrappers as you go along than if you let the wrappers pile up.
• If you have bread served with dipping oil rather than with butter, you'll consume less bread but more calories.
  
• Grocery store signs that read 3-for-$3 rather than $1/each can more than double our purchases.

These are just a few of the fascinating facts Dr. Wansink has confirmed with his research. How can you apply this information to your food consumption? "By encouraging healthy, mindful eating, we can decrease obesity," Wansink says. "A keen awareness of all these hidden persuaders is an important step in controlling the amount and quality of food you eat."

For me, "mindful eating" means this:
I will not eat straight from a package. If I want some crackers, I'll put some on a plate.
I will not eat something just because it's there. Most chocolate made in the U.S. tastes like wax. I've stopped eating my son's leftover Halloween candy. If I want chocolate, I'll eat just a little bit of really good chocolate.
I absolutely do not shop when I'm hungry. The temptations are just too overwhelming. I'll have a small, healthy snack before I go, even if I'm in a hurry.
If I eat while watching TV, I choose the snack beforehand and set it out on the coffee table. No trips to the kitchen during a show!

How about you? What does "mindful eating" mean for you?

Fast food = slow progress

It's a beautiful day here in the Northeast, more like May than March. I'm going to strap on my sneakers and go walk around town in a minute.

Walking is a great activity for weight maintenance. But its benefit also can be deceiving. It's all too easy to fall into the trap of thinking, "Oh, I just walked for a half hour. Now I can go get that hamburger I've been craving."

Most people overestimate the benefit of exercise and underestimate the damage that fat and sugar-laden food can do. For example, say you eat a Big Mac meal with medium fries. (Let’s assume a diet drink, just to be virtuous.)

According to McDonald’s nutritional information, a Big Mac has 540 calories, while the medium order of fries has 380 calories, so your meal totals 1,480 calories.

How long to you think you’d have to exercise to burn off those calories? An hour? Two hours? Guess again.

According to the most recent government data, a 154-pound person would need to walk briskly for more than three hours to account for this meal! A more sedate pace would require more than five hours of hoofing.

And consider this: Most people who have a plan for losing weight do it by trying to limit their daily calorie intake. That same 154-pound person might have set a limit of 1,500 calories a day. Wow! They'll have a whole 20 calories to play with that day!

And when we're talking fast food, we can't neglect to talk about fat content. Again, consider the medium Big Mac meal. Of the Big Mac's 540 calories, 260 of them come from fat. It contains 29 grams of fat -- fully 45 percent of the recommended daily value. And the fries? Of the 380 calories, 170 come from fat. Their 19 grams of fat are 29 percent of the recommended daily value. So together, the two items account for 74 percent of your daily allotment.

Is that meal really worth it?

Most people who talked with me about their weight loss for How We Did It pinned their weight dilemma on overindulgence in fast food. McDonalds, Wendy's, Taco Bell, Five Guys, Cinnabon, Pizza Hut--the list of fast food outlets is almost literally endless.

So, the next time you want to reward yourself after a workout, banish the thought of junk food. I'm usually starving after I swim my laps and need something with a little protein, so I put together some cheese and crackers and apple slices. What do you do?

We've hit the airwaves!

I was interviewed recently about How We Did It by Andy Farmer of KNEO radio. KNEO is a Missouri radio station that also reaches parts of Oklahoma, Kansas and Arkansas.

Andy asked some great questions about the book: How DID people do it? Is weight loss a one-size-fits-all proposition? What are some of your favorite success stories in the book? (To which I replied: All of them!) What can we do about the childhood obesity rate in this country?

To listen to the interview, click on this link to go to KNEO's website. Enjoy!

Goodreads Author Q&A

For the next month, I'm hosting an Author Q&A on goodreads for How We Did It. To join the discussion, click on over to this goodreads link. I've started four discussion threads, but feel free to start another if you have something else on your mind. Thanks for stopping by!

Physician, step on the scale!

Time magazine recently offered up an interesting fact: Doctors who are a healthy weight are more likely to talk to you about your weight than doctors who are overweight.

In a Mayo Clinic study about how doctors cared for their overweight patients, 30 percent of doctors who were a healthy weight brought up the subject, but only 18 percent of overweight or obese doctors addressed the topic. And who can blame them? If I were the patient, I know what I'd be thinking: Hypocrite!

That's exactly what the players of a major league baseball team were thinking when their team doctor started opining about matters of health and fitness. In How We Did It, I talked with Dr. Ken Romeo, a sports doc, who recalls how a player stopped one of his lectures with a few well-chosen words.

"Why should we listen to you, doc? You're fat!" the player accused.

At 315 pounds and wearing a 4X shirt, the doctor clearly had a weight problem. But, like most of us, he had never really seen his weight for what it was. We focus on features or character traits we think compensate for -- even hide -- our extra pounds... a pretty face, say, or a flamboyant personality.

Dr. Romeo suspected he might be fooling himself in this way. So he decided on a dramatic test. He took a brown paper grocery bag, cut out two holes for his eyes and put the bag over his head. Then, he looked in the mirror. This time, the mirror didn't lie. "I am fat!" he concluded.

Fortunately, Dr. Romeo took charge of the situation. He went on to lose 115 pounds using first the Atkins diet and then the Pritikin diet. He stopped smoking, too!

I wonder what he and his patients are talking about these days.

But what gives with the 30 percent figure anyway? That means more than two-thirds of healthy weight doctors aren't talking about weight issues, which--forgive me if I'm wrong here--also happen to be health issues.

When I was 30 pounds overweight and climbing, my doctor (a healthy weight woman) gave me my annual physicals and never said a word about my weight. Until one year, as she was literally going out the door of the exam room, and had her back to me, she said, "Watch the fats!" It wasn't a very helpful "conversation," to say the least. Would I have appreciated a more frank confrontation? I don't know. Would you?