P.O. Box 53055    
Los Angeles, CA 90053   

WEIGHT-LOSS WAGERS

I don’t know if gambling is high on the verboten list in the Live-Longer Lifestyle . . . although it ranks as a bad habit in just about every other way. And since second-hand smoke and slot machines do seem to go together, along with all-you-can-eat $4.99 buffets at the Excalibur Roundtable Buffet, a game of chance does carry its own health hazards. But we discovered the other day that a good friend of this radio ministry — one of our regular vendors — was walking around with a one-thousand-dollar wager hanging in the balance. That’s right: she and a friend had bet each other a thousand bucks on who could meet their weight-loss goal within a specified time. She was supposed to lose 15 pounds; he’d agreed to shed 25. The good news is that if both of them lose the weight, then the bet is a push and they keep their money.

Well, we’ll talk about proper and improper methods of motivation on some other radio program. But the reality is that many people have an agonizingly difficult time dropping 15 pounds. They just can’t do it. In our textbook for this series, Jan Kuzma and Cecil Murphey tell us that Americans are spending something like 40 BILLION dollars a year to try and lose weight. That doesn’t count the bets they make, or the money they pay to store unused exercise equipment, as one comedian recently pointed out.

“More than 80 million Americans are overweight,” the authors write — “that means one out of three. They carry a total of 2.3 billion pounds of excess body fat. Estimates say that nearly 65 million people attempt to diet at least once during each year.”

There was a wrenching cover article in Newsweek magazine back in July, 2000, about kids who struggle to lose weight. “Fat For Life” was the title, and some of the stories were hard to read. Authors Geoffrey Cowley and Sharon Begley — some of us have met Sharon and she’s a brilliant writer — tell us that parents and children just plain find the odds stacked against them. A lot of elementary schools these days don’t just have soda and snack machines, but “on-site outlets for fast-food chains.” You can have a Big Mac Xtra! with double cheese, supersize Coke, and supersize fries every single day of the week . . . and end up scarfing down 1,805 calories — plus 84 grams of fat — just for lunch every day. And now for the double whammy: get this — many schools are dropping recess and P.E., either because of funding or to raise scholastic achievement instead. In fact, Virginia’s the only state — as of this July, 2000 story — to still have mandated recess as a daily routine.

Well, we want to start off today with some good news. Jan Kuzma and Cecil Murphey, here in this book, Live 10 Healthy Years Longer, tell us that our diet failures aren’t strictly a lack of willpower.

“You may have put too much effort into the wrong methods,” they write. Then they add this powerful insight: “You can’t maintain any diet that keeps you hungry. . . . The only diet you or anyone else can sustain is one that promotes weight loss and good health and that allows you to eat until you are full.”

That’s why what we know as “low-calorie dieting,” or crash dieting, has very limited success in most cases.

“When you start a restricted diet,” Jan and Cecil point out, “your body thinks it’s starving. Consequently, your metabolism slows down. God created us with this response to avoid starvation.”

You’ve probably noticed how, when you go on the diet with a proverbial grape and a cracker a day, you quickly lose ten pounds . . . and then hit a plateau. The weight comes off in painful ounces after that — if at all.

Well, is there a magic formula, a magic bullet? No, these authors say. And once again, we go to that control group of 27,514 people in the extended study: the “Live-Longer Lifestyle.” How did weight control go for them? Remember, these are men and women whose lifestyles were meticulously tabulated over DECADES. And we find two key elements to their success. Here they are:

“1) SOME self-discipline. And 2) sufficient time to work.” Then Jan and Cecil add this good news: “You won’t find this an instant weight-loss program. But take heart. If you lose weight quickly, you are three times more likely to regain it than if you lose weight slowly.”

Not only does a program of long-term, gradual loss give you better permanent results, but it’s not as hard on your body.

“Quick-loss programs, especially unhealthy ones, can hasten the aging process.”

The bottom line is that you don’t really need a crash plan, you need a LIFESTYLE. You need to find a way to eat, to live, that you’re going to be ABLE to do for the rest of your life, for decades to come. And that lifestyle needs to do the following four things:

“1. Satisfy your hunger and leave you feeling full. 2. Incorporate foods that encourage better health while helping you lose weight. 3. Help you to stop storing fat in your body. 4. Burn the fat.”

Now here’s an interesting way to start succeeding on points three and four right away. Cecil and Jan, in their studies and consultation with the experts, tell us that the body is incredibly efficient at storing fat. Of course, efficiency here is a bad thing — and only about 3% of calories are used up in the process of digesting, transporting, and storing fat. The body is much less effective at storing complex carbohydrates and proteins, which means that even when you overeat a bit with those two, it doesn’t turn into obesity.

“You have no efficient metabolic PATHWAY in your body by which you can turn PROTEIN into fat for storage,” Jan and Cecil write.

In fact, extra carbohydrates — like you get in a baked potato WITHOUT all the butter and sour cream — lose a good 24% of the calories before they’re stored. That’s the kind of inefficiency we can all applaud!

Then down here in my favorite section of each chapter in this book, Live 10 Healthy Years Longer, these two good writers have a whole list of suggestions. Here they are, very quickly:

1. “Write down your goals — for weight loss, better health, and better eating habits — and review them on a regular basis.” But then Number Two: Don’t get discouraged if you mess up. “Forgive yourself when you fail,” they write. Remember, this is a LIFESTYLE you’ve chosen; there will be times when you blow it, but you keep on going. Number three: Get support. Not in terms of thousand-dollar bets, but just have people you can reach out to, people you can confide in, people you know are praying for you and asking God to give you strength for the long journey.

Here’s number four, and you’ll like this one: Reward yourself when you have a good week. Now, not with Häagen-Dazs . . . although once in a great while, that’s all right. But treat yourself to some extra relaxation time, or a new CD, or a new jogging T shirt. Something fun.

Number five — very important — begin the day with a good breakfast. Then lunch and dinner are smaller. Or you might want a LATER good breakfast as part of a two-meal-a-day plan, which especially works if you include fruit and vegetables.

Number six: don’t snack between meals. And after supper, that’s it for the night. Give your stomach that LOOOONG night off . . . and use extra glasses of water to ward off hunger pangs.

Number seven we already mentioned — but BEGIN meals with both protein and fat. If you have both of those up front, it will help to regulate your appetite control system. And here’s an interesting tip: start out with a bowl of soup. Dr. Henry Jordan, University of Pennsylvania, did a study, and if you have a bowl of soup first, you’ll end up eating an average of 55 fewer calories in that meal.

Strategy number eight: don’t put any more food on the table than you expect to eat. Or, you can put the food out there, load up your plate, and then immediately take the leftovers out to the kitchen. Somehow, when we SEE the food, we want to eat it. Number nine is related: eat slowly. Chew slowly . . . and methodically. “Put your fork down between bites,” Jan and Cecil advise. It’s a well-known fact, by the way, that from the moment you sit down and take that first bite, your body won’t respond at all for about 20 minutes. Eating slowly gives you a chance to pick up that “I’m getting full” signal sooner.

Number ten hurts if you feel like a meal simply HAS to end with dessert. Well . . . no, it doesn’t. You can learn that feeling, and you can unlearn it. Try a piece of fruit right at the end . . . and grit your teeth . . . and pray. And if your name is Cheryl, remember the thousand dollars.

Number 11: as soon as you’re done, leave the table. Get away from the food and go for a walk or some other activity. If it’s a social occasion and you want to visit, take your plate to the kitchen, and then come back. And finally, number 12, eat until you’re full — but not stuffed — and say to yourself, “THIS is how I’m supposed to feel. THIS is just right.” Get used to THAT feeling.

David recently saw a T shirt in one of those discount Honolulu shops, which read like this: “Nothing tastes as good as being thin feels.” Amen to that.