Fighting Off the Covid-19

 

I'm 30 years past being a teenager, but up to about 47 or so I was blessed with a red-hot metabolism and got away with some pretty horrendous eating habits, such as:

• Age 12: Spend my paper route tip money on Popeye's biscuits ($0.35) or Chuckles ($0.31) at the candy store on my route. My sister and I did all sorts of hustling and cajoling for those tips and arranged the order of the route to hit Popeye's, the candy store, or the bakery on our way home.
• Age 15: We'd pick blueberries and freeze tens of pounds of them. While watching TV, I'd pull out out a quart bag of blueberries and a crap-load of sugar and hoover it all up on the couch.
• Age 16: Got a real job now! Candy, Coca-Cola (full sugar, mind you), Burger King and White Castle all the time.
• Age 18: The Navy- I can't believe how clueless I was. Clueless! The Navy didn't teach me to eat, but several fit friends starting bringing about awareness that a pack of Marlboros, a sleeve of Nutter Butters, yellow Zingers, and a Coke were not the greatest meal choices.
• Age 26: At Southern Illinois University I pretty much lived on cereal for breakfast; pb&j, Lipton noodles 'n sauce, or blue box mac 'n cheese for lunch; and for dinner it was more pasta or the chicken kiev pucks in the freezer aisle followed by a pint of Ben & Jerry's almost Every. Single. Night.

Carbs, carbs, carbs.

You wonder why married dudes live longer on the actuary tables? It's because someone else gets us off the crap-food and literally saves our lives. Would I have figured this out without my spouse? Of course! I already had the knowledge, but I cherry picked when I applied it. I still ate ice cream like it was my job, Chobani flips (yogurt- good! all the other stuff- tons of sugar!), candy when I was in the car, and snacking constantly. I grew up with touch-and-go poverty and my depression-era grandparents instilled in us the Clean Plate Club. Resources are scarce- you have food in front of you, you eat every damned bit of it. 

As an adult, I think I read in some stupid magazine article about three sensible meals and snack all day. Keep constantly fed! Eat smaller meals! Eat healthy- have a gigantic foot-long Subway sandwich- that's healthy, right? Holy crap, does that scale say 184 pounds?

As I get older, I'm learning that trusting your gut and basically ignoring the media will make you a much more successful person. When my fat-faced, spare-tired, pot-bellied ass stood on that scale and saw myself one pound away from what I considered maximum density, it caused me to do some soul searching. I realized a) my metabolism is slowing down and it's for real now, b) I can't exercise my way out of this, and c) I was hydrostatically testing my pants because I'd worn nothing but comfy jeans and track pants for a year and a half (thanks, Covid!).

I fully understand there are people with thyroid problems, a family history of obesity, depression, or any number of challenges, but what I'm about to share is simply what worked for me, a guy that's a walking series of contradictions: The smoker-athlete (quit while training for a half-marathon). The hungover distance runner (used to leave a party at 4:30 am and do a 20 mile long-run at 6 am). The guy that would PIG OUT at dinner like it was my death-row meal, then get on my bike and ride immediately afterward because it was in my training schedule. Oh, and did I say ice cream every night?

Long story short, I shared my disgust with my wife and we did a little research, as well as pondering. Our cave ancestors didn't eat 3 squares a day and snack sensibly in between?! They went through periods of feast and tons of scarcity! They didn't just lay on the ground and watch the vultures circle overhead because they hadn't eaten in two days. They burned what fat they had, kept alert, and kept hunting. The survival instinct is strong and the human body is incredibly adaptable. Meal times are a societal construct, built around custom, religion, and factory shift times!

Liberate yourself from what the media and your grandparents told you, set some goals, and get back to where you want to be. After doing some research and just thinking practically about what got me from 163 pounds to 184 pounds over 5 years, I decided it was time to grab the bull by the horns. I made two major changes:

• Get my eating under control
• Exercise with purpose

I didn't just wake up twenty pounds heavier overnight. I got angry, made bargains/excuses with myself, got angry again, stopped eating ice cream and sour patch kids for a week, then binged like a pot-head once I accidentally relapsed and chose not to think about it for months. This cycle felt unbreakable until we tried the following:

• Sunday night dinner to Tuesday morning breakfast. FAST! 36 hour fast, baby. I ate plenty of crap over the weekend and have plenty of fat to burn. Once you get in the mindset and know how amazing that breakfast is going to taste on Tuesday, it becomes routine.
• Exercise while depleted. Unless you're hard-core training for an event and seeking to PR, exercising while depleted (particularly during the fast) quickly burns off that glucose and forces you to burn fat, and that, my friends, is what we're trying to get rid of.
• Keep exercising- go for a walk, do a workout video, go running or biking. Without being loaded up with carbs and sugar, I am definitely sluggish during the week. My mile pace goes up by a minute and my biking sprints aren't very 'sprinty'. However, my goal is not to be god's gift to fitness; I'm trying to burn off all this accumulated flab.
  
• Low-sugar and carbs (focus!) Tuesday breakfast through Friday lunch. No processed food. Plain yogurt/cottage cheese and fresh fruit, bacon and eggs, big-ass salads, tuna fish, grilled chicken, steak, etc. Once you start to cut the cord on processed food, there's no suffering during the week because...
• Don't think about this stuff over the weekend! Eat that queso. Enjoy pancakes with the kids. Damn, those Manhattans are tasty- we've earned it!
  
• When exercising on the weekends (long run/bicycle/single-track dirt biking), I definitely bring the Clif Bars and Shot Blocks, along with fresh fruit or a turkey sandwich. I'm always faster on the weekends because I'm fueling in-line with the work I'm doing.

And that's it! I lost a few pounds a week, a little at a time, and by tracking my food and weight closely, I could see what made me retain water, feel good (or lousy), or accelerated the gain or loss. I have an understanding of how my body works that I selectively ignored for the first 49 years. Other than not being able to eat whatever, whenever, I don't feel like I'm suffering at all. We still take the kids out for ice cream, etc, but try to lead by example and show them healthy habits without being overly preachy about it.

Your results may vary, but I think personal accountability, a sense of purpose, and the satisfaction of stopping (or at least slowing) the runaway train of middle-age weight gain are deliciously satisfying.

I acknowledge that this is going to be a long-term commitment, but I'd rather preserve my quality of life as long as possible, and maybe even spend all that money I'd need to burn on the medical-industrial complex on something fun, like travel or a new motorcycle. Carpe diem, but don't forget to take care of your future self.