I’ve committed to writing more blogs this year. But to do that, I’m going to have to keep them shorter! Life is a series of tradeoffs! For my first few blogs of 2020, I want to focus on changing habits, whether it’s to lose weight, manage weight more easily, manage diabetes, eat a more plant-based diet, increase exercise, etc.… But first, I want to correct something I mis-reported in my 2019 recap blog. In my blurb about meatless burgers, I accused Beyond Meat Burgers of containing wheat. As it turns out, I was completely wrong and need to check my sources more carefully. Based on an interesting long piece in the Business section of the 1/12/20 L.A. Times, I now realize the protein in this product is derived entirely from peas. Not that this revelation changes my opinion of these ultra-processed pseudo-meats, but if celiac disease has been keeping you from trying one, go for it: Just skip the bun! Setting SMART Goals When you make resolutions, you can program yourself for success or doom yourself to failure. How? By making sure the goals you set are S.M.A.R.T., you increase your likelihood of success. S=Specific The more specific your goal is, the more likely you will be to make it a doable realistic goal for which you can determine the steps you need to achieve it. Nonspecific: I will eat a more plant-based diet. Specific:I will eat one serving of a green vegetable every day. M=Measurable. Accountability is key for sticking to your plan, and measurability is key to accountability. Not measurable=I’ll drink less soda. Measurable=I will drink one glass of water in place of one of the sodas I would ordinarily drink every day. A=Achievable. Giving up sugar may sound laudable but how likely will you be to stick with it beyond your next meal? Not achievable: I’ll give up sugar. Achievable: I will replace the sugar I add to my cereal with berries at least one day a week. R=Realistic. You may be hoping to wear that killer bikini or Speedo™ by your cruise…in February, but is it realistic to set a goal of losing 25 pounds in a month?!? Not realistic: I will lose 50 pounds by the first day of summer. Realistic: I will lose 2-3 pounds per month by keeping food records for at least 2 weeks, walking 1 mile at the gym 3 days a week, and practicing portion control (see below.) Some also use R to mean Relevant. If you need to lower your blood pressure, a relevant change might be one that reduces your salt intake by identifying the foods you regularly eat that are contributing the most salt. T=Time-based. You’re more likely to make a change if you set a time frame for putting all the pieces in place. Not time-based: I will give up sugar. Time-based: I will reduce added sugars over 6 months by first switching from presweetened cereal to unsweetened cereal with fruit, then switching regular soda to sugar-free flavored water (assuming those were big contributors to your sugar intake). “Veganuary,” and other Lifestyle Resolutions When I succumb to the lure of Twitter, one tweeter I like to follow is a Canadian physician named Yoni Freedhoff. This past week, Medscape (one of the more credible medical websites) posted a piece he wrote on adopting a more plant-based eating approach. He called the piece, “Veganuary: 3 Diet Lessons for Patients.” Veganuary is actually the name of a nonprofit organization that helps people adopt a plant-based lifestyle. Dr. Freedhoff’s piece, written for practitioners with patients who resolved to eat a more plant-based diet, offers 3 pieces of advice:
- “Enjoy life:” for example, if your goal is, in fact, to add more plant foods to your diet, there are many ways to do it, from switching to whole wheat bread to going completely vegan. Experiment until you find what you actually enjoy and make changes you can live with. Eating should not be a prison sentence!
- “Keep a diary:” If you’re trying to make a change, you need to set goals, and to figure out what is working to help you achieve your goals and what isn’t, you need to be willing to experiment. You need to become a scientist of your own body, and scientists collect data. If your goal is to lose a pound a week, and suddenly after some steady losses, you’re not losing, what better way to figure out why than to look over what you ate and drank and how much you exercised to see what’s changed or not changed (because remember: as you lose weight, your calorie needs drop – do you mean, “you need fewer calories”??). The other reason for keeping a diary is accountability. Weighing yourself and writing down what you eat keeps you honest, as opposed to hoping your clothes dryer just shrunk your clothes this week.
- “Start slow[ly] and think simple.” Drastic changes are the most difficult to sustain. If you drink three cans of sugary soda a day, and you can substitute even two of them with water or even diet soda, you’ve saved 280 calories and 78 grams of sugar (almost 3 ounces) a day without making any other changes!
Weight Loss Dieting Trends: Intermittent Fasting Im my last blog, I mentioned intermittent fasting. A recent article published in the New England Journal of Medicine reviews the results of well-designed trials in humans and non-humans of various types of intermittent fasts, the most common being alternate day fasts, 1- or 2-day a week fasts (so called 6:1 or 5:2 fasting, where no more than about 500-1000 calories are consumed on “fasting” days), and fasts that limit eating to approximately 8 hours each day. This article is quite technical and not for the faint of mind. It notes that until recently, the majority of research on intermittent fasting was conducted in rodents and studied the effects on risk for chronic disease (like heart disease) and on lifespan: Back in the 80s, a faculty member in my department at MIT discovered that significantly reducing calorie intake significantly increased the lifespan of rodents, and folks immediately set out to see if this would work in humans…if they could get people to stay on such a restricted diet. Rodents’ eating habits are different enough from ours that these findings may be completely inapplicable to us. But what seems clear is that overweight people who adopt intermittent fasting can lose weight, and some studies show that it has additional beneficial effects on various indicators of health (like reducing blood pressure, decreasing levels of blood lipids, improving control of blood sugar in people with Type 2 diabetes, and reducing inflammation in patients with rheumatoid arthritis) that may go beyond what would be expected from weight loss alone. Consumer Reports Magazine also briefly reviewed the pros and cons of intermittent fasting in 2019. Their article concludes with a wise suggestion I often make to folks who ask me about fasting. If you eat desserts or snacks after dinner while watching TV, gaming, or catching up on work, then rather than jumping on the fasting band wagon, make the kitchen strictly off limits as soon as you finish dinner in the evening. Some studies have shown that the average person consumes hundreds of calories between finishing dinner and bedtime; granted these studies are based on notoriously inaccurate self-reporting, but self-reports nearly always underestimate calorie intake! If you need to lose weight, lower your blood pressure, or get better control of your diabetes, and you want to try adopting a real 16-hour a day or a 1-day-a-week fast, keep a diary, so if you find yourself feeling lightheaded (for example) or if it’s just not showing benefits, you have data you can use to tweak things. And if you do have health risks like high blood pressure or diabetes, I strongly recommend speaking with your doctor and a reputable nutritionist (as opposed to a friend who swears by the latest cleanse or advocates avoiding GMOs and gluten). More Weight Loss Trends: Portion Control Last January, Jane Brody, the venerable NYT health columnist, wrote her first piece of the year on a little talked about weight management strategy: portion control. Spurred by the release of a new book on the subject and…New Years, she confided that portion control was what had enabled her to lose weight many years ago and maintain the weight loss. When you adopt portion control, you can eat anything you want: You just need to have some awareness of the quantity you’re eating and the calories in that amount. Portion control offers its own form of accountability: you can’t mindlessly munch through a 10-ounce bag of chips and tell yourself it was only 150 calories or so; nor can you blithely scoop granola onto your morning yogurt, telling yourself what a healthy breakfast switch you’ve made, when most granola is over 200 calories per half cup! And thanks to new menu and food labeling, getting this information is easier than ever. No longer must you just order the Chinese chicken salad because it sounds healthy and you assume it’s the lowest calorie item on the menu. The only reasons I can think of that portion control hasn’t caught on like wildfire? It recommends no magic elixirs to buy, no giving up of food groups about which to brag, and virtually nothing for food companies or self-proclaimed wellness experts to capitalize on. For folks who fear losing control when faced with the whole jar of peanut butter or the whole pound of chocolate, most calorie-dense foods come in small portions these days, and the book offers lots of tips and tricks for controlling portion sizes. Or feel free to email me for suggestions: I too lost weight using portion control over 30 years ago and have kept it off since. So, if you see me eating the whole 10-ounce bag of potato chips, I’m totally aware I’ve just consumed 1600 calories and 1800mg of sodium! HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!