Weight Loss is About Perspective

What happened to her?
She wants me to walk 14 miles a day to lose weight.
I’m worried about her!
I better tell her she’s taking this weight gain thing far too seriously!

Such is the feedback to my last two weight loss issues. Now I know how the playwright felt when a review read “There was only one thing that weakened the play. They opened the curtain.” But, there was an objective to the direness I wanted one to feel in reading the past two issues.

The objective was to point out that it is easy to gain weight, but hard to lose weight, and because of this, we would be wise to utilize preventative weight gain measures such as weekly weighing and logging of caloric intake. The illustrations were intended to expand awareness of what occurs when one gains weight quickly yet expects to lose the added weight just as swiftly. It appears I accomplished this! I even have death threat e-mails to prove my astuteness in bringing full awareness to my Fit Through the Ages readers.

In part, our problem with weight loss has to do with our expectations. It is easy for all of us to consume additional calories. Eating a delicious pie ala mode may take only 5 minutes, and is pure enjoyment, but burning the calories will take two hours of what some term exercise misery! If we gain a pound of body fat in a short period of time by consuming too many calories, should we expect to lose the pound in the same amount of time it takes us to gain it?

The explanation in the last two blogs on weight loss frankly illuminates how much one needs to exercise, or reduce calories by, to lose a pound in 3 short days was certainly preposterous. However, consider the irony of this with our own weight loss goals. That is, that many of us expect to lose weight as rapidly as we gain weight. Who is going to walk 14 miles daily for three days in addition to working out in the gym for an hour daily, and all the while consuming only 1,100 calories on each of three days? Unfortunately, this is the reality when the goal is quick fat weight loss.

Viewing typical information in different ways helps to put things into proper perspective. Weight loss is about putting things into this proper perspective.
Think about this:
It is easier to gain weight than it is to lose weight.
It is easier to maintain weight than it is to lose weight.

And, it is easier on the body, mind, and spirit to maintain weight loss when done slowly, deliberately, and smartly than it is to lose weight quickly only to gain it back. The days of quick weight loss with no sense of sustaining lifestyle changes will soon be a perspective of the past. Our challenge is to act smartly, and with a sense of continual progressive lifestyle changes that deepen our convictions to do more for ourselves than just lose weight.

Aging Well-Living Long-Living Well

There are groups of people throughout the United States and the world that organize and meet with the sole intent of supporting each other to live to be 100 years and older.

Humans, according to Robert N. Butler, M.D. founding director of the National Institute on Aging, and winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Why Survive? Being Old In America, have about 110-120 years at the outside of their genetic life span. This information is encouraging.

The question that appears for most of us, however, is not so much how do we live longer, but how do we live healthier?

“The two it seems”, writes Lenny Guarente, PH.D. and Novartis Professor of biology at M.I.T and author of Ageless Quest: One Scientist’s Search for Genes That Prolong Youth, “should go hand in hand. And they often do because we can tip the odds in our favor by our lifestyles and by avoiding things that we know are bad, like smoking, like transfat, like excess body fat, like high blood pressure.”

Most people would agree that if we can extend health span the extending lifespan is just an extra bonus.

Many of us do not have a vision of the life we could live happily, productively, and disease free, as we get older. Part of the reason for this is that we are not exposed to seeing those people that live happily, productively, and relatively disease free well into their 90’s and 100’s.

There are other reasons why we do not have a vision for living well into our later years. Three of the most significant reasons are:

1. We believe that healthier lifestyles and specific lifestyle habits are too difficult to change so we abandon the idea of living as a centurian.

2. We are unsure if it is too late to make lifestyle changes due to age and health circumstances.

3. We are unsure whether the payoff of healthy living will increase our life’s quality and longevity to the degree that we would like.

These are legitimate concerns. Lifestyle changes take time. Lifestyle changes take effort. And lifestyle changes are difficult to implement on our own.

If you have simply thought about changing your lifestyle for a better life quality, then you have a vision. It may not be a fully developed vision, but it is a vision. And a vision is a start. Keep it! Develop it! Don’t let it fade away. I can assure you that if you’ve implemented the lifestyle habits that you know are necessary for a more healthy, vigorous and vital you, then you will not be disappointed.