Weight Maven

[As mentioned yesterday in part 1, Debra has been working through some regain and reloss and offered to share some of her thoughts in a two-part series. -- Beth]

By Debra Sapp-Yarwood

I am a person of checklists. I make out a weekly checklist, and the first box on it that I generally get to check off is “create weekly checklist.” During my weight-loss maintenance, I generally would put down six or seven check boxes, and they each stood for a 50-minute (average) exercise bloc. During my weight reloss I upped the boxes to eight and modified the rules.

Many research sources have shown that weight loss is dependent on calorie restriction and weight-loss maintenance correlates with exercise. The National Weight Control Registry reports that 98% of their participants lost weight by modifying food intake and that during maintenance 90% exercise, on average, one hour per day. Of course, there are other variables, but these correlations signal to me that managing a reloss while maintaining an established loss requires that I do both. My eight check boxes, therefore, could be checked off either after a bout of exercise or in the morning after I’d accomplished a “VLC,” or very low calorie day, prior.

For me, very low calorie only means less than 1,500 calories. That doesn’t sound like an onerous restriction, at 300 calories below my “normal” day, but I know that consecutive days at that level, for me, will result in “eat impulses” and sleep disturbance. My eight check boxes afforded me flexibility. Some weeks I did seven days of exercise with one of those a VLC. Other weeks, I could do five days of exercise and three VLCs. Every week required one overlap day of both exercise and very low calories. I generally made that Monday: the first day of the checklist. I didn’t allow for eight exercise sessions. I required at least one check mark to be a VLC. The eight check boxes meant that no two VLC days needed to be consecutive. Because of this, I didn’t have as much sleep disturbance as in past reloss attempts.

It seemed to me (unscientifically speaking) that there was correlation between those weeks that I had three VLC days (and only five exercise days) and the reloss of a pound. People who have oversimplified weight management to mere thermodynamics will protest: “That’s only a reduction of 900 calories and, moreover, you reduced the calories you expended through exercise. A pound is 3,500. What you experienced can’t be a real loss. You are imagining or there is another explanation.” The explanation is that this whole process is often illogical and unfair. Weight management has never been simple, understandable thermodynamics, as much as we’d like it to be. We are biological creatures and there are things we just don’t understand. It frustrates me that people are more forgiving of mechanical systems than they are biological ones. If I were to say that a particular 2001 Buick gets 21.5 miles to the gallon and another gets only 19, people would be open minded about what might be causing that difference. Yes, it could be behavior, acceleration habits that we can blame on the driver, or it could be a clogged hoozit in the less efficient vehicle, or maybe the cars were just made a little different to begin with, since “miles per gallon” is an estimated average. We do not accept that fat people were made genetically different or that they have a clogged or defective hoozit. Society chalks their fuel efficiency up to behavior alone – overeating and undermoving at a rate of 3,500 calories per pound. It’s wrong and unfair.

There is little logic to human weight, weight loss and weight-loss management. Those of us who are successful at maintaining significant losses are paying attention to minute clues that our bodies send us and we learn when to react and not to react, when to listen to “experts” and when to ignore them. We go through periods when we wonder whether we’re disordered and other times when we’re 100% sure we are. We bear up to what we see as annoying injustices: a two-pound gain despite a day before of measured eating and rigorous exercise. It’s discouraging, but we keep with our program. We also allow days to pass quietly when we exceed expectations illogically. For example, when a church potluck day is followed by a two-pound loss, we know not to get too excited. God hasn’t given us any long-lasting gift for cheerfully choking down a blob of Esther’s hot dish while she smiled at us from the other side of the table. We just got a weird reading on the scale – and often multiple times, as we reweigh ourselves in disbelief. Another day passes and one or two pot-luck pounds set in, and those pounds didn’t require over-eating to the tune of 3,500-7,000 calories. A spare 500 may have done the trick, and it isn’t simple water weight that will disappear magically and quickly if we return to our routine. We treat it as real weight regain and deal with it, knowing it may take more than a week to go away. Or that it may not go away at all.

While it is all very frustrating and illogical, I can tell you that my eight check box system, over the course of a summer break – three months in which I didn’t need to be consistently competent or pleasant – rewarded me with a seven-pound reloss. It also took up the least amount of mental real estate of any weight loss plan I’ve ever executed. I used to call my maintenance a part-time job, and it is. It’s certainly NOT a zippy “lifestyle.” But I have to minimize the time I spend on the job, especially when I’m in school and need to devote my brain to my assignments and not analyzing obesity research. (Many maintainers go into nutrition or fitness related professions or avocations in order to resolve this dilemma.) During the school year, I hope to maintain my loss from the summer by having seven check boxes per week, one necessarily a VLC and the others either/or at my discretion. We’ll have to see what happens: n=1. Perhaps next summer I’ll try to relose some more, but I hold no false hopes that I’ll ever return to 137, my lowest plateau and the weight that I was when I was a runner. That’s simply unsustainable for me.

All of this said, and all my secrets revealed. If anyone were to ask me what the most sane health regimen is, it wouldn’t be the one I live by. I still maintain that if you can stand up to society’s censure and live at the weight you are, the most healthy and sustainable plan is to live joyfully most of the time, eat healthfully most of the time, exercise most days and treasure whatever body happens. (Someday I should trademark that.) Do it sans check boxes, if you can. I cannot.