I’m Too Fat

Dear Friend,

I’m too fat.

I came to terms with this fact recently when my wife mentioned a diet plan that she heard about at a local social gathering.  It’s called Medifast.  Maybe you’ve heard of it?

Of course I knew about my rotund tendencies. They’ve plagued me my entire life. So when I heard her utter the words, “Maybe we should try this out,” I agreed immediately. I didn’t really care about the plan. In the beginning of a new direction, any old thing will do. The key is to decide to do it and act immediately. Don’t look back.

So that’s what I did. And about $250 and a week later we had two big cardboard boxes full of dehydrated cardboard food looking us in the face.

For the last month my wife and I muddled through this “diet” process.  Some of the stuff from Medifast is OK.  I like the vanilla and chocolate shakes.  And the dehydrated soup is barely tolerable.  Most of the rest is not fit for human consumption IMHO.

What I get from their materials and what I read online is that the key to success in most of today’s diets involves eliminating carbohydrates from your diet, while eating smaller portions of proteins and healthy fats more often (about every two hours).

I find that eating more often during the day helps me to stem my voracious appetite, and the lack of carbs encourages my body to burn fat.

It does work.  So far I’ve lost about twenty pounds.  I don’t really look it but I need to lose more. I’m lucky in that my body type carries weight well.  I just don’t like how I feel when I’m carrying too much.

Other things I’ve done lately to improve my health include taking supplements and doing a bit of “pseudo-exercise.”

As far as supplements go, I take a lead from author Ray Kurzweil, who says that we can all slow down the aging process if we just protect our body from free oxygen radicals by eating right and taking anti-oxidant supplements.  I take acai, resveritrol, and grape seed extract supplements.  My doctor also highly recommends fish oil supplements, and I like to include salmon in my family’s diet maybe once a week (they like my recipe).  Plus I take a daily multivitamin, and a bit of extra vitamin D to make up for my inside lifestyle and my reduction in milk consumption with this diet.

Then there is the pseudo-exercise I spoke of.  God forbid I just get off my ass and do some crunches, right?  So I bought this thing off the TV called the Contour ABS Belt.  It’s a belt that you wear that has electrode pads that stick to your stomach while you wear it around your waist, and there is an electronic controller attached with which you can set the program intensity.  What this thing does is send electronic pulses to your stomach muscles, rhythmically pulsing them tight, then loose, so that they get exercised without you doing anything.  I use it for 45 minutes a day while watching TV or surfing the Web.

If you use this belt right you definitely feel the buzzing pulses, and the muscle contractions.

I like it.  And I know that the exercises are done right, while I’m not always sure that I’m doing crunches right.  I can also get a pad for my lower back as an add-on to exercise those muscles, too.

A competing brand of belt has an accessory specifically designed to tighten and firm a woman’s butt.  I wouldn’t mind tightening my own butt, honestly, but all the literature specifically says it’s for women.  Do you think the gadget knows the difference?   [Note: you need to buy the electronic controller along with this accessory for it to work.]

Two other exercise gadgets I have collected are the Shake Weight and the Perfect Pushup.

The Shake Weight is kinda cool, actually.  It looks like a regular dumbbell, but it has a spring mechanism inside so that you can shake it while you hold it, which is supposed to provide much more muscle work.  In truth, I haven’t used it seriously.

The Perfect Pushup makes sense in theory.  It consists of two circular rotating handles that you can grasp while you do a push-up.  These allow you to twist your wrists, arms and shoulders in a more natural way, making the push-up a more natural motion.  In my experience, these things just get in the way.  My kids love to use them to give pretend electrical shocks to each other’s chest, as they do look a lot like those paddles used by medics.

When we are on the road, I don’t get much exercise.  All of the gadget’s I have picked up are very portable and don’t weigh much, so they fit in even the smallest living quarters.

Anyway, if you are like me and most North Americans I’ve seen, you might want to do what I did when my wife suggested that we try a little weight loss.  Don’t think.  Just act.

You already know you need to do something.  So do something!  Anything!

No program is perfect. But most of them seem to work.  So just start one.  You’ll feel a lot better that you did.

Good health to you always!

Hugh