Not Another Article Offering Weight Loss Advice

It never fails. As the winter turns into spring and summer begins to creep up on the horizon, the inevitable "Look your Best for Summer!" or "Lose those Winter Pounds" articles start to appear everywhere. These are in addition to the regularly run "How to Lose and Keep off the Weight" articles that fill up screen space on many media sites. Now I know why they exist and I really don't mind them overall but my problem with them is that they are usually posted by people who have never had a legitimate weight problem in their lives.


These articles offer the most basic of advice: get some exercise, eat more fruits and vegetables, drink more water, cut down on your meat intake, add more fibre, blah blah blah. Great advice for those who don't have food issues but they don't address those of us who do and can't follow such simplistic advice. And it's not just these bloggers and such who spew such prattle, I hear it from my doctor, my pharmacist, co-workers, family and just about any other person who thinks they are offering pearls of wisdom because obviously I must not have gotten the memo. It's not that they are being disingenuous with their council, it's just that it's not very practical.


I don't think I know of anyone who has been battling weight issues all their lives who doesn't already know these things. In fact, I would dare say most of them probably know more about food, diets and exercise than the majority. And that is because we've been hearing about it all our lives. We've been on diets, many times popular fad diets, we've taken pills, joined gyms and hired trainers, read articles and other literature explaining how calories work and how to make lifestyle changes to ensure life long success, you name it we've done it. Sometimes I hear people around the office talk about trying to lose weight and what they're doing. Oftentimes, they'll repeat debunked myths like cleanses, spot training and different other types of diets that offer only short term solutions. Some of them aren't even fat! They're just consumed with bringing their body fat or weight down to some unrealistic level. Others you can tell are suffering from middle aged weight gain; they were slim during their younger years but are now finding that paunch catching up to them. I've seen some people I knew back in high school who were quite slim and attractive now ballooned up. I try not to be vindictive but sometimes it's really hard when you remember how rotten some of these people were back in the day. These people do not really understand the battle like we lifelong fatties do and therefore, maybe some of this simplistic advice is appropriate and helpful.


But for the rest of us, it just isn't. These health bloggers, I can't refer to them as weight loss experts, are generally fit and look like fitness models. None of them look like they've ever had an issue with food and weight gain so what's it to them to regurgitate a 1000 word article offering basic health advice? They work in the industry and it's easy. But what would happen if you pressed them on the issue? Could they offer something a little more helpful? I've read a few articles dealing with how to cope with cravings, eating out, vacation and so forth and it seems reasonable, for many. But when you have been fighting your weight all your life, it isn't that simple. There's a lot of guilt, resentment and anger to deal with. Those feelings of failure and inadequacy. You want to live like a regular person but you don't know how. It's not that you can't, you don't know how. And all those articles aren't going to change your thinking.


For people who don't understand the battle, they will never get it. It isn't as easy as just "eat less" or "get some exercise" or "eat smaller portions". We understand that. It's something else; something normal people will never get. I've said before that most people have coping mechanisms be it nail biting, drinking, smoking or overeating. Something drives that behaviour, something deep inside of you. Until that is dealt with, you may never see success.

Bariatric Surgery On The Rise

I watched a news report this evening on the CBC about the huge leap in bariatric surgeries over the past few years and was rather alarmed at the attitudes of the doctors they spoke to. Now I have documented my experiences with this invasive procedure here, here, here and here. If you haven't read it and you are considering this operation or just want to know what it's really all about, you need to do so now.

The good folks over at the CBC added the story to their website which gave me an opportunity to look it over again and I have to say I'm disappointed in the medical establishments attitude towards this particular "fix". The prevailing attitude seems to be that since we have the technology to perform this surgery, then why not? People are fat and getting fatter and surgery has become the go to fix for just about everything that is wrong with people so why not this? I do understand that some people are in seriously bad condition due to their weight and surgery may be necessary to save their lives, but you can be sure there are others who are viewing it as an easy fix to their weight problems, much like liposuction. The medical community is supposed to have qualifiers before they okay this procedure and I hope they are followed diligently but somehow I doubt this is happening.

Bariatric surgery should be a last resort, one made after all other avenues have been exhausted. There are simply too many risks and complications and often, the underlying problems are not resolved so the patient will continue their eating patterns despite the fact that this will be met with severe consequences by the body itself. Intense vomiting, which among other complications, wears the enamel off your teeth, excessive scarring, which causes blockages in your abdomen and could result in life threatening situations (like I suffered), and painful gallstones requiring the removal of your gall bladder are some of the very real ramifications many will face. Some don't make it beyond a month or so before being readmitted to hospital with a variety of other complications and the need to perform a reversal. Some die although that number is very low.

Surgery should always be a last resort for anything. Once you open up the body you risk infection and the beginnings of other problems you probably never would have suffered from had you not gone under the knife. The fact that this surgery continues to increase in popularity as an obesity fix is frightening. Back in 1990 when I had mine done, I knew of nobody else who had experienced it. I was given no support or therapy to help me adjust to the new reality I was about to be exposed to and certainly no information or insight into what to expect. They just gutted me like a fish, stapled off most of my stomach and sent me on my way. I know the technology is supposed to be better now but is the support there? Are they treating the underlying issues? Twenty four years after my surgery and reversal, my issues remain and I'm no further ahead in getting them under control than I was when I eagerly agreed to the operation. My fear is that this is becoming just another routine procedure like lipo or botox injections. And that is sad.

Complete and Utter Failure

I can't believe it's been over 4 years since I last wrote in this blog. At the time, I had gotten bored with it and felt like I was just starting to piss and moan all the time, plus I was busier at work and and was planning a wedding and didn't really make time to write. I often thought about starting up again in the years since but could never quite pull the trigger. But a lot has happened in the past few years, most of it bad, and it seems like as good a time as any to put it into perspective and maybe find my way forward.

First off, I'm fat again. Anyone who has read my other posts knows of my endless battles of the bulge and how much I've struggled with it. While I was able to basically keep the weight off, sometimes more successfully than not, it was always like walking a tightrope. My bad habits had not changed all that much, but I was able to temporarily find the discipline most weeks, and hit gym regularly, to offset my sins. However, by the end of September 09, all that went out the window. All it took was the loss of my job.

I had set a weight goal for myself in the months leading up to my wedding but due to the stresses of planning that wedding, plus some additional stresses from work, I actually came into the wedding a full 20 lbs heavier than I wanted. After a beautiful honeymoon in Italy (I highly recommend it) I returned to work and was promptly laid off due to restructuring thanks to the economic meltdown of 2008-09. Now, I knew that at some point I could lose my job; after all, it wasn't an important job nor could it be considered a full time job. It was only a matter of time before the bean counters decided they could save the $38600 a year in salary they were paying me. At least they waited for me to get married; they could have just as easily ruined our wedding. As it was, they just ruined the honeymoon phase.

I was trained in high tech, programming to be specific, but I hadn't used those skills in over 5 years. The job I had, while at a software company, was non-technical and the skill set required to work there in a technical setting was beyond mine. So when I lost my job, I had little to sell a new employer, especially one who was most likely feeling the pinch of tough economic times themselves. I had discussed this inevitability with my wife a few times prior and we considered sending me back to school in the event that the worst happened. I did attend an IT workshop to get a lay of the land and discovered that I would have to basically retrain if I wanted to re-enter the IT industry. But sitting there with quite a number of experienced laid off IT folks who couldn't find work either didn't exactly offer a lot of promise. So I went in another direction: business administration with a major in Human Resources.

Now I didn't want to go back to school so soon after having graduated with my programming diploma, but I didn't feel like I had a choice. So the combination of being laid off with no real job prospects, a looming return to higher education yet again and a very real concern for my future put me into a funk. And when I go into a funk, I eat. My entire gym schedule went out the window; I did go once in a while but my eating was offsetting any good it was doing. Stress, depression, anxiety, my life became a mess. I became quite sedentary, I was sitting all day in a classroom, sitting all evening doing homework, going to bed and then doing it all over again the next day. As a result, the weight starting piling on.

You know what the worst part was? I could see it happening and I couldn't stop it. I felt powerless. It was like my inner fat guy had been lying in wait for just the right moment to strike and completely take over my life. And once he emerged, that was it. The guy who spent countless hours in a gym, struggling with not snacking and trying to eat properly, who took pride in the way he looked in clothes, was gone.  Everything I had worked for had disappeared. Now, not only was I fat again, I was also unemployed with no job prospects. A loser.

I look back on some of my previous posts and I see myself fretting over 5 lbs, or over some bad weekend. I would trade that for where I am now in a New York minute. It was very real back then, those few pounds either way really bothered me, consumed me. But they're nothing to where I'm at now. If I want to be normal sized again, I have a long road ahead of me. A long, hard road. When I did it before, I was focused, driven. It didn't really seem like work. I ate well and lightly and went to the gym daily for 2-3 hours. I can't find that drive anymore. I still go to the gym, but its not the same effort. 35 minutes at a mid range tension on the elliptical and another 30 minutes on a treadmill. I used to do close to an hour on the elliptical and another 30 on a bike. Then I'd hit the weights for strength training. My diet is horrible. I eat salad but not daily, I eat way too much bread and cheese. And I do buy some snacking foods here and there which are promptly devoured. Yes, I am one sad puppy. Oh, and I'm still unemployed and there are no half decent jobs out there so I'm stressed out beyond belief. And you know what I said about me and stress: munch munch munch.

So there you have it; a brief update on what's been going on. But wait! It gets better! There's a little issue of a mild ischemia that has developed. If you want to know what ischemia is about, see this. I'll talk more about this later and how it's impacted me.

RIP triple triple

I had a rude awakening the other day when Red and I were discussing calories and the problems with losing weight. I have a habit of not counting my coffee or tea in my daily calories because I thought coffee and tea were basically free with the exception of the sugar and cream or milk used in them. Since I don't use sugar in my hot beverage and the amount of cream I would use is what I considered negligible, I figured it wasn't hurting me. Boy was i wrong!

Half and half cream is a killer in the calories department, approximately 20 calories per tablespoon. And I know I use more than that in a cup of coffee or tea, probably the equivalent of 3 or 4 anyway raising the calorie count to 60 or 80 in addition to the few calories already existing in the beverage itself. So imagine my shock, and Reds, when we googled the calorie count of an extra large triple triple from Tim Hortons, God of all that is coffee in Canada, and realized it comes in at about 420! That's way more than 3 tablespoons of sugar and cream each in one cup. Go figure that a fast food place would find a way to increase the calorie count of something as simple as a cup of coffee. I guess if McDonalds and the like can make a salad upwards of a thousand calories then anything is possible.

Thinking about it, it makes sense. Replace the cream with milk and the coffee takes on a whole different taste, same when you cut or replace the sugar. Tim Hortons coffee is highly addictive and people who drink it love it. No wonder when it basically tastes like dessert, so sweet and rich. People are always saying they put something in the coffee to make it addictive, to me its just all the cream and sugar that makes it so good. I've had Timmys with Splenda and milk and its quite a different experience.

While i was sick a couple of years ago, I lost my taste for coffee and switched to tea with sweetener and milk. At work, I'd use cream in my tea because I do love the richness of it, but when I'd order a tea, I'd get milk. It has only been recently that i rediscovered my love of the triple triple and thankfully after only a couple of weeks, I've realized the truth about its calorie content. This would help explain some of Red's problems losing weight and mine for that matter. I was enjoying about 2 of these drinks a day so that's an additional 800 calories I wasn't accounting for! That's more than a pound a week! Now at work, I've switched to 1% milk in my tea, I'd prefer 2% at least, but the cafeteria doesn't seem to offer any middle ground here, its either half and half, 1% or skim.

So this change should yield results in the coming days. I stepped on the scale this morning just for a look and it read 215, the same as last Friday. I'm not concerned really, as I did drop 5lb last week and until Tuesday was still enjoying those 400 calorie coffees. I'm still in the gym first thing in the mornings and taking a cardio class roughly 4x a week in the evenings so things have to keep going down I'd think. I did screw up a bit last night at dinner, we had a couple pieces of steak leftover from the weekend that needed to be eaten so I enjoyed those which wasn't a problem except that Red cooked up some Kraft dinner for her dinner as she's sick and wanted something soft and easy, so I shared in that too. Add in some roasted veggies and it was a bit more than I required. Of course I did drink one of my banana smoothies later on which I certainly didn't need, so while the day wasn't a write off by any means, it probably didn't help my weight loss goals.

Tonight I am taking a cardio attack class at the gym and I'll be enjoying some roasted veggies for dinner in addition to some leftover roast chicken so today will be good. This weekend we are heading home for a Bar Mitzvah and they're serving both lunch and dinner in addition to a dance so we'll have to remain vigilant and not blow the good work we've accomplished. I, for one, plan on being good.