The Diet

When I came back from Minneapolis at the end of April and jumped on my Wii, I realized something had to change. My general philosophy for maintaining a healthy weight of “be careful” wasn’t working. Since busy season had started, I had gained 8%, and 13% since I had started my new job a year and a half before. While not overweight, I hovered dangerously close to the top of the healthy BMI category. My other general philosophy of, “I’ll walk it off in the summer when I have more time,” was also obviously not going to work. I had jumped out of the frying pan and into the fire – they made it clear that I would be in busy season throughout the summer (until mid-October, to be exact).

Knowing that I no longer had the luxury of exercising to stay in shape, I decided to resort to something I had never done before – dieting. Ugh.

My sister is a dietician, so I immediately enlisted her help. I already knew that her belief system centered around calorie counting (in addition to a healthy lifestyle). She told me to “exercise” however I could – like parking far away from the building, and to not go below 1200 calories a day. I also went onto MSN health, which told me that to maintain the weight I want I should eat 1500 calories. Essentially, if I continued my current lack of exercise but ate only 1500 calories per day, then over time I would naturally fall back down to my college weight level.

This was much harder than it appeared. My first day I mistakenly believed I could have 1800 calories, so I counted and counted, and by the time I went to bed, I had used them all up. It was painful. I wanted to cry. And then I found out the real number I had to reach – somewhere between 1200 and 1600 calories. Yuck. However, after the first week, I had changed my tune. Part of calorie counting was combating portion distortion. We were ordering all our meals, which made healthy choices hard to come by. So when they ordered Chipotle, I gasped at my 700 calorie burrito. But when I considered that I could fill myself on half of it, I now had two meals. Likewise, I had always dreaded and feared vegetables. But when we ordered sandwiches from Subway, I realized that I could add bulk without changing the calorie count of my sandwich. I drank much more water. The pounds melted off, and I felt better.

Unfortunately, the summer ended relatively flat for total weight loss for me. One reason was that I didn’t count calories on weekends. Self-denial can lead down a slippery road to binging, and my theory was to neither binge nor deny myself on the weekends. Another problem was balancing my diet. I would play with the food pyramid online to find a way to get my full servings of nutrients in my allotted calories. But once I squeezed in my daily pop (reduced to only 12 ounces), I had tipped over the line. Some nutrient was going to have to go, because I could never give up pop. Asking friends to challenge me to stay healthy didn’t work either – they didn’t want to work at it. The last problem was dipping down into the 1200 calorie range. I knew better than to do this. However, during each day I was so cautious about my calories. I dreaded getting up to 1600 by lunchtime – then what? So I overcompensated to some extent. I ate incredibly light throughout the day, and if, at the end of the day, I still had calories, I would indulge in a yummy treat. However, I began to wonder if 1200 was more of an arbitrary number. What if it was actually 1300 calories for me? I had always had a better metabolism than my family. Was I busting mine? Would I permanently damage it so that weight loss in the future would be that much harder?

By August, stress, long hours at work, and anger at not being able to eat yummy goodies set in. I gave up the whole idea, thinking, “I have maintained a healthy weight all my life without paying attention, so who cares?” In addition, I was working long hours and didn’t want to check my weight on my Wii daily. Bad idea.The next time I stepped on, I was over the “healthy weight” BMI and rising. It was only a 4% increase from May, but a 17% increase from college and a 13% increase from a year ago. Add to that my dietician sister telling me that “overweight is overweight” and “healthy is healthy.” Could a few pounds really have thrown me from the healthy to heart disease and cholesterol problems category? Unlikely. However, I renewed my weight-loss goals. This time, due to increased free time, I combined diet with exercise. I made it a goal to meet my 1600 calories a day, at least for the time being, and to adjust down only if I felt like I was leveling off. Things started to look better.

I write this today because I have been told that keeping a food journal and writing about your diet experience helps. It keeps you accountable, for one. It keeps you motivated also – it reminds me how when I just make small lifestyle changes my overall wellness can be improved.