The Casual Blog

Category: diet

November 7, 2010

A proposal that we stop spending tax dollars on promoting cheese eating and think more about our food

Food is not only good to eat. It’s good to think about, and also sometimes bad to eat. Here’s some food news from today’s NY Times — a piece headlined While Warning About Fat, U.S. Pushes Cheese Sales. http://tiny.cc/fsi57. It turns out that millions of our tax dollars go towards encouraging cheese eating. Some of the taxes we’ve paid have gone to develop fast food with more cheese in it, such as a new super-cheesy type of Domino’s Pizza.

According to the Times, cheese is now the largest source of saturated fat in the American diet. Saturated fat is linked to heart disease and obesity, which are associated with premature death. Of course, cheese tastes good, and eating a little isn’t a huge risk factor. But why would we even think about involving government in promoting it?

Apparently the reason has to do with a special interest: the dairy industry. People are getting the message that the fat in milk is unhealthy, and buying less high-fat milk. This means dairy producers have excess capacity. Too bad for them. Subsidizing cheese is like subsidizing tobacco. It’s not only dumb — it’s wrong. Here’s an idea for Republicans interested in eliminating wasteful government programs: let’s cut this out.

When we had dinner at home Thursday night, Sally and I talked about our own eating decisions and customs. This is a subject we try to avoid when eating in company, because it detracts from the enjoyment of food and friendship. When the issue of vegetarianism comes up, some non-vegetarians are curious, but others react defensively. For most people, it involves thinking about animals and nutrition in a different way that is at first uncomfortable. For us, it has involved many years of both thinking and practical experience that are difficult to reduce to a short explanation. And there are many topics for dinner conversation that are easier and more fun.

Yet not discussing it bothers me almost as much as discussing it. As with other enormous moral issues such as slavery and genocide, the decision not to speak out has moral implications. I try to be as honest as I can about my thoughts and feelings, and dislike leaving the false impression that the basic cruelty of industrialized animal production and consumption is a minor matter, or that I think it’s fine to kill sentient creatures when there are better choices easily available.

But giving value to the welfare of animals or changing eating habits goes strongly against the grain of our culture. Our habits of eating have deep roots and a multitude of personal associations and meanings, and it’s hard for most people to think about changing them. So we have a kind of gridlock involving morality and culture: it’s morally unacceptable not to confront the situation, and also culturally unacceptable to do so.

So I’m very happy as a plant-based eater that my values and eating habits are better aligned than ever before. (I should note that I don’t think they’re by any means perfectly aligned, and should confess that I still eat some cheese.) I’m very happy that I have interesting, varied, tasty meals a high percentage of the time. I’m also very happy that my diet is doing a lot of good for my health. But I’m not so happy that this puts me at odds with some people.

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October 9, 2010

Starting the weekend with some exercise and music

Late Friday afternoon I returned some phone calls, cleaned out my e-mail queue, checked my to-do list one last time, jammed some weekend work in my book bag, and did the short drive home. Sally had left for a tennis tournament, but had first fed the animals, so they were sleepy. I played the piano for a few minutes and moved to a different mind zone — a Chopin nocturne (D flat major), a Debussy prelude (La cathedrale engloutie), Liszt’s Sonneto del Petrarca 47. I also played J. Strauss’s Blue Danube waltzes in honor of the poor Danube, currently under assault by toxic sludge. I filled a small plate with some leftover pepper casserole and brown rice, warmed it in the microwave, poured a glass of pinot gris, and had a quiet, delicious dinner.

Then I walked over to hear the N.C. Symphony do the first fall concert of our series. It was a lovely fall evening, mild and clear, and I savored the walk. This is one of the pleasant things about living in downtown Raleigh. There were two new buildings going up along the way, and people on Fayetteville Street eating dinner at sidewalk tables or walking about.

I had an unusually strong sense of physical well being. It was a good week for exercising — no travel or serious time crunches at work — so I’d gotten up at 5:30 a.m. every day to either swim a freestyle mile (2x), do a yoga class, or take a spinning class (2x). Spinning is still new to me, and I’m still enthusiastic — it’s an amazing aerobic workout. The basic idea of stationary bike plus music, rhythmic movement, group activity, and a cheerleading coach previously struck me as not at all my style, but it is remarkably effective in (a) raising my heartrate, (b) making me sweat, and (c) leaving me feeling pleasantly endorphinized.

With fall in the air, I’m looking forward to winter, and skiing in Colorado, and I’m using ski thoughts for extra workout motivation. Last year the hour-long climb in the snow at over 12,000 feet up the narrow ridge to Highlands Bowl at Aspen Highlands taught my body a brutal lesson it won’t soon forget. I was, in truth, too whipped to attack the long double black diamond run from the top, but there was no alternative way down. I survived, but next year I hope to do more than merely survive such situations — to exult! That may be too much to hope for. It will always be difficult to go from a few hundred feet above sea level one day to vigorous activity at several thousand feet the next, but I’m looking to be in better shape next season and bettering my odds.

At a leisurely pace, it took 23 minutes to walk to the concert hall. (Afterwards I picked up the pace and got home in under 20.) I was interested to hear Rachmaninoff’s first piano concerto. The composer was still a student when he made it, but it has the seeds of the more familiar and almost too gorgeous second concerto. It is certainly a virtuoso showpiece, and Jean-Philippe Collard played it with power and authority. I was mainly interested in the second half of the concert, a performance of Sibelius’s Fifth Symphony, a piece I was not familiar with. It was strange and beautiful, with novel and varied textures, and diverging moods. It approached the richness of Mahler. There were good loud places, where the brass expressed themselves fully, and a fine solo for the bassoon. I plan to get a recording and listen to it some more.

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August 7, 2010

First Friday

Last night was First Friday, Raleigh’s monthly celebration of its downtown food, music, and art scene.  Despite the heat wave, thousands of people were out.  At Moore Square, there was a two-girl circus act in which one lay on her back, legs raised,  and the other got on top and balanced in various ways with a big smile.  In City Market, there was an oldies rock band, and the listeners were mostly middle-aged.  But at Art Space, there was a thick crowd of twenty-somethings, many with unsettling tattoos.

Sally and I had dinner at Gravy, which features reliable Italian comfort food in a hip brick-walled and oak package.  Among other things, we talked about the problem that large food portions served in most restaurants pose for American eaters.  Partly because of too many business meals recently, I’d again picked up three pounds I didn’t want to carry about. This inspired my latest eating experiment:  cutting off about a third of my food before beginning to eat, and leaving that third on the plate at the end.  The eggplant pie (thin breaded eggplant with marinara and ricotta) was really tasty, but more than I needed, and I’m sure I’d have eaten it all if I hadn’t established a visible stopping place.

I was taught as a child not to leave food on my plate, which was supported with the moral note that children were starving in Africa.  It did not occur to me until much later that the tragedy of starving children was not going to be mitigated by over-eating, which would itself cause obesity, illness, and premature death.  But changing those early ingrained eating habits requires more than recognizing their lack of justification; you have to replace them with other, better, habits.  We’ll see if this cut-a-third system works.

After dinner we looked in some galleries and then strolled back to our neighborhood.  We stopped at Second Empire and had cocktails in their classic bar.  It turns out that stop lights that are mistimed and clog traffic are one of Sally’s pet peeves, and we discussed them for a while.  We got back to our building around eleven.  Just a few steps from our door, in front of the Still Life club, there was a lively scene, with girls with high heels, long legs, and very short black dresses coming or going.  Sally noted as she took Stuart out for his last pee of the day that she wanted to have another look at those dresses.

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July 25, 2010

Water skiing and fun, healthy, ethical food

My shoulders are aching from the fun we had yesterday skiing on Falls Lake.   Ken and Carol took us out, along with their friends Ken and Kristen, on their plush and powerful ski boat.  Moving over the water at relatively high speed may be the ideal way to enjoy the outdoors in the middle of a massive heat wave.  I hadn’t water skied since I was twelve or so, but had vivid memories — the smell of gasoline, the anxiety as the boat worked into position, the sudden roar of the engine, the jerk of the rope, and the thrill of a transformation — water going soft to hard, something on which you can travel upright.

Ken encouraged us to try his wake board, which he said was easier than skis.  I decided to give it a shot, based on my rule of thumb to always accept an offer to try something new if it looks like it could be fun and isn’t illegal, immoral, or seriously dangerous.  Of five tries, I crashed and burned in the first three, came close to getting up on four, and bombed again on number five.  At that point, I decided to revert to skis.  I hated to admit defeat with the wake board, but it was unclear whether I was on the verge of success or still far from it, and I did not feel good claiming any bigger share of boat time.

Happily, I could still manage to ski.  The attempt was a learning experience:  I learned that for me it isn’t easier than skis, and that to get securely out of the water I need to do something different from what I was doing.  Later, while Carol drove, Ken demonstrated a hydrofoil device, a board with a seat above and a metal extension below so that the board came two or three feet above the water.  It looked both bizarre and fun, but Carol said it took many tries to get the hang of it.

Sally and I got back to the apartment shortly before eight and discovered we had a yen for Thai food within walking distance, so we had dinner at Thai Phoon on Glenwood.  We ordered two different spicy garlic tofu dishes from a good array of vegetarian options.  Just as we were starting to wonder why the food hadn’t arrived, our server showed up to apologize for the delay.  To make up for it, she said the soup was on her.  A nice gesture.

We continued our discussion of the mystery of unhealthy eating and resistance to vegetarianism.  Why do so many people put so much of so many things in their bodies that make them fat and shorten their lives?  Could it be lack of knowledge, when good information is so readily available?   Most of us would never consider fueling our cars with anything other than standard quality gasoline, so how can we stand to put any old thing in our irreplaceable bodies?  It can’t be explained based simply on calculated pleasure-seeking, since there are so many wonderful and interesting plant-based foods.

And how can so many thoughtful, decent, well-meaning people tolerate the massive cruelty of industrialized slaughter houses that turn living animals into dead meat?  Surely most of us respect the integrity of individual members of other animal species and would never consider intentionally torturing them.  So how can we stand the cruelty?   I do not know.  But I know each individual is capable of change for the better, because of my own journey.  There’s still hope for a healthier, more ethical society.  If it comes, it will be through many small, thoughtful, individual choices.  Like spicy garlic tofu.

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July 17, 2010

A bunion, a birthday, and an edible work of art

While we were at the class at the Carolina Ballet studio last week, at one point Peggy Severin-Hansen sat on the floor beside me and did some work on her feet.  We’ve been watching her for many years as she rose through the company ranks to become a soloist, and we just love her dancing.  Having the chance to see her working on the bandages on her toes was  intimate, like being in the family.  I thought of sharing with her that I too have foot problems (a bunion) but thought better of it.  She probably wouldn’t have appreciated the comparison.

One of the problems of a bunion, in addition to discomfort, is that it isn’t a good conversational topic. Other people’s health problems are usually uninteresting, but not all are equally off-putting.  There’s no particular stigma to talking about knee problems, wrist problems, or back problems.  But bunions are generally an older person’s issue.  Who likes to think about getting old?  Not me.  I do, however, now understand why there is a section for Dr. Scholl’s foot care products in the pharmacy.  It’s become one of my favorite sections.

As of yesterday, I know how it feels to be 55 years old.  I hate to make a big deal of birthdays, but I’m struck by how big a number this is.  It is clearly no longer the early fifties.  It is old enough to be a parent to two full-grown adults, and in theory old enough to be a grandparent.

But I feel young!  Both in good ways (plenty of energy and enthusiasm) and not-so-good ways (areas of uncertainty and insecurity).  In many ways, I’m healthier and happier than I was in my twenties.  I never completely lose sight of the possibility that there could be a piano hanging over my head and about to drop, in the form of a serious illness or random accident.  But with enough time and some good luck, perhaps I’ll someday look back over many years and think how young I was in 2010, but how I still feel remarkably young, all things considered.  Of course, this may turn out to be my apogee.

To celebrate the day, Sally got us a table at Second Empire, one of our favorite restaurants, and we walked there from our apartment.  It’s a restored grand old residence with elaborate ornamentation, and very traditional in a way.  But it avoids being stuffy with eclectic art, jazz, a great staff and highly imaginative food.  Our server was Katrina.  She was lively, smart, and friendly, and completely undaunted when I told her that we were vegetarians and wanted them to create something special for us.  She assured us they liked vegetarians and would enjoy the challenge to their creativity.  Music to my ears!

In fact, everything on the menu looked great except the animals, and our only suggestions were that there be pasta and perhaps a Spanish theme.  The dish that arrived had rigatoni and spices, with a unique combination of textures and tastes.  It was excellent!  For dessert, I planned to sample Sally’s cake, but they brought me delicious ice cream with a candle in it and a happy birthday message written on the plate in chocolate.  When we got the check, I thought they’d accidentally undercharged us, since there was just one main dish listed.  When I asked Katrina, she assured me that they’d considered the dish that we shared to be one.  Truly, this a great and wonderful restaurant.

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July 10, 2010

Dropping some weight and hitting some golf balls

I came back from the long weekend in St. Croix five pounds heavier than when I left.  It’s difficult to account for the sudden gain, since I was reasonably careful about not over eating and held the veggie line against temptation.  Perhaps our very pleasant seaside daiquiris, pina coladas, and pain killers had something to do with it.  In any case, I managed to shed all the extra weight this week with some vigorous early morning workouts, and as of this morning was at my fighting weight of 160.

Earlier this week the NY Times published a piece by Gretchen Reynolds on the positive effects of exercise on the brain.  http://tiny.cc/deokh  Studies with rats show the exercising rats with much superior brain functioning (“little rat geniuses”), and the apparent interaction of BMP and Noggin leading to increased production of neurons.  I can believe it.   When I first began regular exercise in my college years, I viewed it as primarily benefitting the cardiovascular system, but especially in recent times, I find that I feel duller if I can’t find time for a workout.

We’ve had a record-setting heat wave this week.  This Saturday morning, I was hoping to get an outdoor swim at Lifetime Fitness, but unfortunately the outdoor lanes were all taken when I got there at 6:40.  I made do with the indoor pool for 60 laps, then 15 minutes of yoga in the sauna, then 5 minutes in the steam room (whew!).  Then I headed over to Lake Jordan to drive my sports car on some backwoods roads.

I ended up at the end of a gravel road off US 64 at a down-on-its-luck golf range with a old barn on one side.  There was no one there when I showed up, but a guy emerged from a small adjacent house and got me a bucket of golf balls.  He couldn’t take a credit card, and couldn’t break a $20, but he agreed to let me have a $9 bucket for all the smaller bills I had ($7).  Then he drove off, and left me alone to practice.   The grass was very long, and so I was effectively working on shots from the rough.  A good thing to practice, though not so fun.  I got sweaty and tired, and was happy to get to the bottom of the bucket and see the last ball fly away.

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May 30, 2010

A beach trip, with a note on failure

For Memorial Day, we took Clara on her first road trip out to Jane and Keith’s beach place.  I enjoyed the drive.  We came over the bridge towards Nags Head just as the sun was setting.  The Outer Banks are not Monte Carlo.  It’s not about glamor.  But the area can induce serenity and happiness.  Traffic on the island moved slowly, and we sampled the local radio stations — a fundamentalist preacher, 80s rock, country, and my favorite, hip hop.  It was good at last to see Corolla again.

Keith is a grill chef extraordinaire, and for our benefit volunteered to go all vegetarian for the weekend.  Having recently mastered gluten-free cooking, he seemed to appreciate the challenge, like a high jumper who wants to go higher.  He made waffles with fruit and honey whip cream for breakfast.  Delicious!  A tomato cucumber soup with hot cheese pie for lunch.  Scrumptious!  Stuffed peppers and corn flan. Extraordinary!  He tried a rich chocolate torte, which he judged too dry and threw out.  The second effort was a great success.

We went to the beach in the afternoon,  Sally donned a wet suit and swam with my niece Kylie and nephew David.  I piloted a kite for a bit before it crashed, and I reread a bit of Endurance, by Alfred Lansing, the incredible story of Ernest Shackleton’s 1914 expedition to cross Antarctica, which was a failure in terms of its original mission, but a success in terms of its plan B — survival.  It’s nice to a frigid, desperate story and a sunny beach.

David, 10, is mad for lacrosse, and insisted while we were on the beach I learn something about it.  He let me use the shorter stick.  Under his intense coaching, I managed to make some catches and throws, and was pleased.  I also missed some catches and made some bad throws, which was less fun.  But I persisted for a while, even with little expectation of ever being any good, partly to humor David, and partly to continue road testing my theory of failure.

It’s this:  greater acceptance of failure increases the possibilities for happiness.  Part of the reason is that we learn from failure.  In any new endeavor, we start out incompetent, so we make mistakes, and if we persist we gradually work out how to make fewer mistakes.  Every significant accomplishment (apart from the occasional stroke of pure luck) is the result of many failures.

But there’s a broader reason for greater tolerance for failure.  Clearly, failure does not always lead to success.  Most of the things we could try will not turn out well, because no one can be good at everything. But if we decline to accept our own failure, we narrow our range of experience.  I might have missed lacrosse, or skiing, or Liszt.  If we give ourselves permission to fail, we can try new things, and be happier.

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April 17, 2010

Up in the air: Dallas travel routines and adventures

I’m wearing a groove in the stratosphere at 30,000 feet between Raleigh and Dallas.  As we near a federal trial on patent infringement in the Eastern District of Texas, I’m learning well the routines of our airlines and regulators.  My former resentment at being required at the security gate to remove my shoes and computers and be scanned and sometimes frisked has mostly been replaced with resignation (“let’s just get this done”).  The required speech by the flight attendants on seat belt, emergency oxygen, no smoking, and exit rows has become like the Mass, almost impossible to listen to and understand because it’s so familiar.

There are, of course, better and worse routines.  I achieved Priority One status with American a few months back, and it made me happier than I expected.  Before I got Priority Oneitized, I had not realized that the reason I was generally among the last to be called for seating and generally seated in the back of the plane was that others had higher status in one of its several flavors.   Thus, pre-Priority-Oneitization, I was always, with reason, worried about finding a spot in the overhead bin for my rollaboard case; on full planes the bins were always close to full.  Post PO, I get seated early, hoist my case and wedge it in to a convenient overhead spot without danger to nearby boarders, settle into my seat, and watch the later boarders struggle with the problem of crowded bin space.  Do I feel badly?  A little.  Not too much.

I’ve also learned to work around some of the little difficulties and indignities that have become routine parts of air travel.  I make it a little game to see if I can nourish myself with only relatively healthy, relatively tasty vegetarian food.  Yes, it’s very challenging in airports, where the main food groups are “fast” and “junk.”  But it’s not impossible.  I typically pause in Terminal Two in Raleigh at Camden Foods to buy a hummus wrap, grab some paper towels from the men’s room to use as napkins, and look forward to a relatively calm dinner once on board.

One of the joys of travel, though, is unpredictability.  Last week my temporary assistant booked my Dallas trip, and being new she did not know to use my frequent flyer number.  I was again one of the unwashed, in the boarding group “not yet,” in the seat “way back,” between two other passengers.  Surrounding me were people who seemed unused to flying.  It was unusually hot and unusually noisy.  I had an eight-inch thick stack of memos, reports, and articles to get through.

The woman to my right (by the window), seemed to be turned toward me when I sat down, and I thought at first she was saying something to me.  She didn’t respond to my greeting and seemed to be talking to empty space.  I then assumed she had a cellphone somewhere.  It turned out that she was speaking with a fellow in the row behind us, and she continued talking between her seat and mine in the space next to my right ear.  At first I thought she was wrapping up a conversation started prior to boarding, but this turned out to be wrong.  I then thought of offering to switch seats, but the fellow seemed to be also chatting with another fellow next to him, and I couldn’t figure out the relationships.  Eventually I deduced that my seat mate and her aft friend were co-workers headed to a conference who had discovered a mutual attraction.  There was not a lot of personal content, but the tones were highly animated.  Flirting, in short.  It flared up, settled down, flared again, and so on.  At the earliest permitted moment (after “the captain has turned off the fasten seatbealts sign”), I got my noise-cancelling headphones in place and tuned out as much of the chat as I could.

In due course I unwrapped by hummus wrap, trying not to spread hummus on the memo I was reading and marking up, trying to avoid getting food on my pants (there were no back up pants) or shirt, hoping I wouldn’t run out of paper towels (my napkins).  And hoping that the one remaining routine meaningful service of the flight attendants, the drink cart, would come quickly.  It is difficult to eat a hummus wrap without something to drink.  I just learned this fact on that flight.  The mouth gets very dry.

At just this point a passenger on the flight passed out.  People craned their necks trying to see what happened.  I couldn’t see anything, but my aisle-side seatmate briefed me.  An attendant made an announcement in a serious voice asking if there were a doctor on the plane.  There was.  The passenger soon revived, and the doctor gave his opinion that an emergency stop was not necessary.  I was glad that the passenger was apparently all right.  I was sorry, though, that the flight attendants determined they could not distribute any beverages.  They announced that this was due to the medical emergency.  Given that the patient seemed normal and a doctor was watching the situation, I wondered at this explanation.  My mouth got dryer.

An hour later, I smelled a strange smell, similar to rubbing alcohol, which at first I thought might have to do with the “medical emergency.”  Then I recognized it as nail polish.  Then I realized that my seat mate had paused in her conversation to do her nails.  In the confined space, the odor was powerful and made my eyes water.  I examined the distance between the bottle of red liquid, the edge of the seat tray, and my knee, and wondered how likely it was that a sudden bump could cause the bottle to turn and spill its contents onto my pants.  I tried to remember if I’d ever seen anyone do her nails on a plane before, and couldn’t remember a case.  I wondered if this was because it was illegal or just impolite.

I worried a little that I might be getting to be a grouchy curmudgeon.  She dried them with by waving, fingers spread, the traditional method.  Then I noticed they were beautiful.

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January 30, 2010

Green smoothies

For the past few weeks, most mornings I’ve created a green smoothie for breakfast.  A green smoothie consists of a couple of cups of a fresh raw green leafy vegetable, a couple of cups of fresh fruit, and a cup or so of fruit juice mixed for a minute or so in the blender.  This morning I combined spinach, pineapple, blueberries, orange juice, cranberry juice, and soy milk.  It was shockingly green, but delicious.

Making the smoothies has been an adventure.  I’ve focused new attention on the leafy vegetables available at Whole Foods, and tried ones like kale,  collards and dandelion greens that I previously knew almost nothing about.  At the market I’ve sniffed and smelled various exotic fruits and learned how to deal with some of them, like pineapples, mangoes, and papayas.  I intentionally make each one with different proportions of juices and other ingredients, so each one is a little surprising.  My success ratio keeps improving.  Even the ones that turn out less well (sometimes they taste a bit too much like grass) involve some amount of satisfaction in the exercise of creativity and the knowledge that they are incredibly nutritious.

My relationship to food continues to evolve.  It has come a long way since my days as a beginner vegetarian about 15 years ago.  Recently I cut milk and seafood out of my normal rotation.   This is more consistent both with my personal ethics and with what I know of nutrition science.  And so I’ve reached a state that I would have thought of in years gone by as a true health nut.

Is it worth it?  Definitely, but not just for the obvious reason.  I feel very healthy, but after having seen various loved ones, friends, and colleagues battling cancer, I realize that some disease could strike me as well with sudden and brutal force no matter what I’m eating.   It is satisfying to be more consistent with my ethical principles of respect for animals, but I doubt I’ll ever achieve perfection beyond all question.

The most unexpected dividend of my plant based diet has been how much more sensually satisfying eating is.  The tastes and textures of plant food are unendingly varied and complex.  This approach to food leads to trying new foods and new restaurants.  It inspires experimentation and discovery.

Last night, for instance, we ate at Zely and Ritz, one of the most interesting restaurants in Raleigh, which is about two blocks from our place.  I ordered sweet potato gnocchi with rutabaga sauce.  I’ve never cared for sweet potatoes or rutabagas, but it was the dish they offered that was most consistent with my rules.  And it turned out to be very tasty.  I had no room left for dessert.

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May 31, 2009

My weight loss secrets revealed

Over a two-year period, I lost 50 pounds to reach my personal goal and have now maintained my target for another year.  I learned some things in the process, and it may be that this information would help others.  We Americans have a tendency to thicken, which is both unsightly and unhealthy.   It isn’t a great mystery what needs to be done.  To sum it up in five words:  better eating habits and more exercise.  But even knowing that, it took me a long time to figure out how to get rid of excess pounds, and it’s clear that I’m not the only person to have had such a struggle.

Still, with all good intentions, I’ve found it difficult to write about this subject.  Part of the reason is, it sounds a bit like bragging, which I try not to do, or at least get caught doing.  Also, the subject suggests a certain narcissism, an excessive interest in one’s own looks or well-being, and I don’t like to think of myself as more-than-normally interested in my own physical aspects.  Also, it’s hopelessly hackneyed.  You can get more diet advice in the  grocery store checkout line than a normal person can digest in a year.

Still, the obesity epidemic persists, and in my own circle many continue to fight their individual battles of the bulge.  I’ll therefore dispense with further introductions, excuses, or formalities, and just say what worked for me.

1.  The most important thing is commitment.  I had a better than average diet and exercise system when I was at my largest (205 pounds), but it was not adequate.  The change began for me with a decision at age 50 to make real changes and a personal commitment to stay with them for the duration.  I developed a personal animating vision, which was this:   if no piano fell on my head first, I’d  ski deep powder at Alta on my 85th birthday.  Well, maybe not the exact day, since my  birthday is in July.  The point is, I would take care of my body so as to maximize health and happiness for quite a few years out.   I determined that I was willing to accept the sacrifice of certain customary pleasures, like Snickers and Lay’s, in return for my geezer powder day.  Developing a sustaining vision and planning to sustain it were essential for me.

2.  The second most important mental element is an experimental attitude.  It’s necessary to experiment with diet and exercise.  There really is no single formula for what to eat and what activities to do, even for an individual, because our metabolism is not constant.  The system that worked for the first 20 pounds may not work for the next 20.  I approached the effort somewhat in the spirit of a science experiment.  I tested a routine for a while, and if it didn’t produce results, I modified it.  I did not look for one comprehensive, enduring solution.  I accepted the likelihood that the process would always be one of trial and error.

3.  Eating is important, and should be done with loving care.  Keeping health in focus, I avoided fad diets, which are almost by definition unsustainable.  I triangulated from the conventional wisdom (e.g. the U.S.D.A. food pyramid) and respectable weight loss programs like Weight Watchers for eating advice.  My guiding rules, developed with the benefit of numerous inputs and through trial and error, involved healthier inputs and smaller portions.  Being vegetarian helps (though I should admit that I was a fishetarian-type vegetarian even when I was at my maximum).   At various points I focussed on (a) a larger percentage of fruits and vegetables in my daily diet, (b) a lower percentage of processed foods, (c) less fat of every sort (eventually I worked my way down to skim milk), and (d) fewer pointless carbohydrates.  I quit my habit of decades of having seconds at dinner, and got accustomed to a smaller plate of food.  I quit having desserts except on special occasions.  I quit having wine on weeknights.  None of this happened suddenly, and some of it I’ve modified up as well as down.   The point is, eating well involves eating more nutritious food and less unhealthy food and generally eating more sensibly.

4.  Snacking is important.  I made it my goal never to be hungry.  My reasoning was that I needed to continue functioning effectively as a professional and a human, and hunger makes it hard to do that.  Also, hunger tends to lead to overeating, and makes it hard to have small portions at meal time.  Also, hunger is no fun.  So, I tried to have a healthy low calorie snack every two or three of hours.  This required experimentation to find qualifying foods, and continually requires planning to make it work.  My current favorites include:  unsalted nuts (10 per serving), apples, bananas, raw carrots, small low fat yoghurts, and small bags of popcorn (100 calories).   Regular snacking on pleasant, healthy foods works.

5.  Exercise is necessary, and one probably needs to do more of it than one thinks.  Through trial and error, I discovered that my half hour of aerobic activity three or four times a week needed to  become 40 minutes of more intense activity five or six times a week to get rid of weight.  I’ve done just about every type of aerobic machine, including  ellipticals, bikes, treadmills, various types of stairs, and rowing.  I like to vary the activity both to avoid boredom and to work different muscles.  Lately I’ve taken up swimming, which I find challenging.  I vary the duration and intensity depending on how my body feels and other factors.  For example, I exercise harder and longer when the scale indicates a meaningful upward trend.  Weight loss is only one good reason to exercise, of course.  I’ve gradually come to enjoy my gym routine, with more of a view to strength, flexibility, and mental health.  But there’s no way to work around the need for exercising to lose weight.

6.  A good bathroom scale is helpful.  I got one that measures tenths of a pound and keeps a record of prior weights.  It’s part of the science project to take measurements.  I do it every day before I shower.  Some days there’s a little moment of happiness, other days a moment of less happiness.  But the feedback is important.

Could it really be that simple?  No.  My over eating had to do with my upbringing, culture, social milieu, and long standing habits.  Like most people, I ate (and eat) for many reasons in addition to the need for nourishment — happiness, sadness, anxiety, you name it.  A lot of bad eating has to do with bad habits, and habits are hard to break.  Breaking the worst bad ones  and building better ones did not happen all at once, and the process for me is still ongoing.  But I have proven to my own satisfaction that it is possible to change dramatically for the better.

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