3.

Eat, Drink, and Keep Score

Copyright 2002, Terry Duschinski.  

It happened all the time in my “figure and physique reshaping” business years ago in DeLand. The person sits across from me during our initial visit, and the inevitable declaration comes forth:

“I really don’t eat that much.” Following this contention they will proceed to recite what they believe is a typical day’s caloric consumption, inferring that it amount to little more than the required daily nourishment of butterfly.

It doesn’t take much. Ten calories a day too many results in an extra pound per year. An extra pound 20 years in a row is 20 pounds too many. And 10 calories are easy to slip in. In fact, 100 calories per day overload is almost impossible to notice – and that equates to 10 pounds in a year.  

I would encourage the person to keep an accurate daily food diary. Consider this a calorie-intake audit. This laborious task – recording every morsel that enters the mouth and specifying its exact quantity – was seldom accomplished by my clients.

I came to realize that accountability in calorie consumption rivals the lack of diligence in credit card spending. When the bill comes at the end of the month, you are surprised to realize all you purchased. And a food diary may shock you with what you’ve eaten.

Formal research bears out the obvious – record keepers surpass those who wing it. A 1998 report in the journal Obesity Research indicates not that those who “self monitor,” as they phrase it, are better weight managers. The research also points out the obvious fact that – despite its proven effectiveness -- it remains difficult to convince people to consistently keep records.  

Caloric consumption cannot be assessed without accurate records, any more than your finances will flourish without a check registry that includes credit card charges.

Getting from point A to point B requires zeroing in on point A. Step number 1 in re-shaping your figure or physique, therefore, is an accurate food diary. Don’t try to restrict food intake, just record whatever enters your mouth. At the end of one week -- preferably two -- we will analyze what you’ve eaten, noticing trends and patterns. There should be software elsewhere on this site to assist in this endeavor.  

An analysis of typical intake is tremendously helpful in designing an effective eating plan. It reveals your preferences, enabling better representation of them in the final strategy, thus enhancing compliance.

Computers, particularly notebook or handheld models, can ease the burden of recording and analyzing your calorie consumption. I’m hoping our escalating levels of automation facilitate a greater percentage of people faithful in the execution of a daily food diary.

At this point, record food and quantity only. When we get into troubleshooting strategies later we’ll introduce diaries that also note your emotional state and surrounding activities at each eating episode.

For maximum effectiveness, eat normally for at least one but hopefully two weeks recording every food and its quantity, then use your eating tendencies in formulating a reasonable and realistic calorie-controlled eating plan. We will discuss more specifics about the plan in a following segment.

If recording your food intake is either too strenuous, we will grudgingly grant permission to formulate the actual eating plan right away. But before rushing through this step, take some time to consider the impact of just a small change, let’s say a 10% change, in your calorie intake habits. A sustainable 10% change could make all the difference in achieving long-term success.

A 10 percent change compounds itself like interest on money. Think of this as your body’s IRA.

What constitutes a 10 percent change in your eating habits? Maybe it’s a reduction in saturated fat intake from whole milk to skim (or what I guess today is termed fat free milk), from ice cream to frozen yogurt, from beef to fowl. Okay, so we really don’t have a way of quantifying that it’s exactly 10 percent, but consider that a tablespoon a mayonnaise is 100 calories.

That’s probably not even 5 percent of your daily calorie intake, and yet if you eliminated it, you’d reduce 700 calories in a week, 36,400 in a year, and be 10 pounds thinner.

Parenthetically, I want to point out that it’s commonly accepted that 3500 calories translates into a pound. Like other data such as maximum heart rate, the number is a rough average.

You may really not eat that much. You may really not have to change that much. But what enables us to tell is your daily food diary, so please keep one for at least the next 7 days, two weeks would be even better.

This will help us set a calorie allotment each day, and then proceed to spend it very wisely.

To underscore the importance of good calorie-intake management, consider some sources of 100 calories:

• 2 Oreo cookies (photo at right)
• 1 large apple, or a medium banana
• 5 cups of microwave lite popcorn
• 8 ounces of lite yogurt
• 2 cups of diced cantaloupe
• 1 ounce of roast beef
• ½ cup pasta
• 12-ounce can of light beer

I recently saw Modern Maturity article that listed activities estimated to burn 100 calories. Cleaning the garage for 15 minutes was one. Others were:

• Putting groceries away (43 minutes)
• Washing and waxing the car (24 minutes)
• Mowing the lawn (18 minutes with a hand mower; 24 minutes with a power mower).
• Walking the dog (54 minutes)
• Hiking through hills (15 minutes)
• Fishing from the riverbank (31 minutes)
• Yoga (27 minutes)
• Disco dancing (19 minutes) or waltzing or slow dancing (35 minutes)

  That intimate activity you and your spouse enjoy in the privacy of your bedroom, you might like to hope, is a good fitness strategy. What duration do you believe is necessary to burn 100 calories? How about one hour and 11 minutes.

Next time you eat a couple of Oreos remember what you have to do to work it off.