You Can Have Your Cake And Not Wear It Too!

Aug 3, 2011

One of the things it is easy to get stuck behind in the quest for successful weight management is the delusion that I have to be perfect, deny myself every food pleasure or I may as well not bother.  “I’m just gonna have to give up all food enjoyment or I’m gonna have to stay fat.  Ahhh, well”.  Maybe that is because so many of my dieting experiences were only with the kind of radical dieting that really does deny me everything including, in some cases, food.

I can’t tell you how many times I have heard myself create an out for myself by saying, “Well, if it is going to be this torturous, then I am simply not willing to do it.  I can’t be expected to live this way.”  I stayed a heavy smoker for years behind that one.  Mind you, I never once said this on a day where I was doing fine, eating enough and well and keeping temptation out from under my nose.  On those days, it doesn’t seem that intolerable.  It is only when I have allowed myself to get nose to nose with irresistible temptation that it feels unbearable.

Who said I had to deny myself every indulgence to successfully manage my weight, anyway?  It works pretty much like money.  I can spend what I want.  It is up to me.  I never had to be “good” all of the time, I only ever had to be “good” enough of the time.  What I can’t do and remain debt free (stay thin) is refuse to pay a caloric bill I have incurred when it comes due.  Oh, and I can’t start over.  I can decide to focus again, to get with it again, but the old unpaid debt is awaiting me like an unpaid credit card balance.  And if I waited too long to offset it, it is hanging out on the outside of my body.

So, aside from the obvious (it goes without saying) value of learning to reward myself with something other than food, I can still choose to indulge…and just take responsibility for it.  The rest of the world is not choosing to never indulge, to never enjoy some fun foods.  On the other hand, they appear to have figured out how to do some indulging and not ruin their health over it.  Like so many other things in life, there is a happy medium…that doesn’t come naturally to me at all, but that I can learn.

While clearly not a complete fix, managing the budget is a huge relief.  I think that people who have never had the experience of losing weight and gaining it back over and over just don’t get how demoralizing that is, how undermining to any future efforts.  Overeating doesn’t constitute a failure, just an obligation that won’t go away on its own.  But, calories are forgiving.  Whatever I ate may be stupid or regrettable, but it can be fixed.  I have been relentlessly self-recriminating for my spontaneous gluttony (the kind where I am literally watching my hand escort yet more food into my mouth that I am no longer even tasting much less enjoying, meanwhile mentally berating myself for every bite…stop, stop, STOP).  At least with the use of calorie balancing knowledge, I never have to wear the evidence of that behavior on the outside of my body.  It takes enormous pressure off and buys me precious time to work on the other tools.  And, Lord knows, they take some time.

So often clients will say, “I didn’t record it because it was soooo bad.  I can never possibly pay it back.”  While an understandable emotional response, that makes absolutely no practical or mathematical sense at all.  Again, think of it like money.  That is like saying, “I racked so much up on my credit card that I can never pay it back – so I’m not going to look and I won’t even try.”  You may have noticed that that debt stays there till you pay it back down.  You can’t zero it out and start again.  Your body works basically the same way.  Try re-framing that thought this way – yes, you’ve got to pay it down, but you also get to pay it down.  You are not stuck with wearing it unless you choose not to do what it takes to fix it.

So, exactly how can I have my cake and not wear it too?   Let’s use the example of a Summer BBQ

I will need to know a few things about myself up front:  historic, behavioral and caloric.  The behavioral questions are probably the most important to ask first, because if something is not going to work for me (that is:  I can’t contain it, can’t stop the speeding train), all the mathematical manipulating in the world won’t save me from major derailment.

Clues From My History:  I need to use my history to determine whether or not I am stepping onto a slippery slope for me.

It doesn’t matter if it works for someone else.  For example, I can safely budget for ice cream (at least in individual servings purchased outside my home), but I don’t manage potato chips or donuts nearly as well.  Everybody is different.  Lots of my clients are unable to start on chocolate, but some of them can safely do bagels for breakfast.  Go figure.

Or, I can manage over eating in restaurant setting where the portions are at least finite (if huge), and I only stay there for a limited period of time.  But, for me, an all day eating event is another animal altogether.  It needs different strategies.

So, if I decide to build in anything from an ice cream cone to an entire BBQ,, but find that I have woken the sleeping dragon and can’t get a grip back, just budgeting for it, although helpful, won’t be enough to save me from myself.

How Have I Acted in this Situation Before?  What has specifically worked or not worked for me?

Bearing in mind that I am a bit more of a lunatic than most people, here are some of the things I would need to know about my history for this calorie budgeting plan to work:

Have I been to this person’s BBQ before?  What did they serve?  How did I do with it last time?  How much did it calorically cost me?   What was the hardest part of it for me?  Did I bring anything?  Did what I brought help or hurt me?  Did I stay derailed afterwards?  Does it matter for me whether this is on a Friday (and I potentially stay derailed all weekend, or have other events coming at which I continue to escalate) or on a Sunday which is reliably followed by my “skinny” Monday?  Was there anything in particular that was problematic for me, like social pressure, who I sat next to, or the crap I ate before I even got to the real food?  Where did I spend most of my time?  How early did I get there?  How long did I stay?

No doubt certain things are lynch pins for you too – too many beers, eating once you drank a bunch of wine, grazing foods like potato chips and nuts, eating every time they cooked or each time guests arrived with new stuff (burgers, hot dogs, sausage and peppers, ribs, chicken, kababs), having all 5 different starches ostensibly called “salads”, the dessert table with the predictable brownies, cookies, chocolate chip cookies and rice krispie treats – all in excusably small pieces, cleaning up and eating as you package food up, taking leftovers home to help out all the starving nations of the world, etc.

There are lots of specific strategies you can use if you will break it down like this.  We do this strategizing all the time with other areas of our lives and don’t consider it odd or even difficult.  But when it comes to food, we say, “If I can just keep my head in the right place….”.  As Dr. Phil would say, “And how well has that been working for you?”

How Does the Math Work?

Let’s call her Sara.  For the purpose of this example, Sara’s goal weight is 150 lbs.  She is a 55 year old woman who weighs 190 lbs. now, has lost weight before and gained it back…several times.  She has not been doing strength training along the way to maintain her pre-50 year old metabolic rate.  Sometimes she walks with friends, but when they stop, she stops.  Sound familiar?

Rather than being perfect on her, for instance, 1200 calorie a day plan (or harder still, her 500 calorie Ball or HCT Diet), or deciding instead that she is “off her diet” for this day, she can learn to go through these events maintaining the budget for her goal weight, acting as if she is already at the wight she wants to be.  Then, she will have learned how to go through events when she is at her target weight and not gain back.  That’s the real task after all – learning to live within her new means, not dieting forever.  Her goal weight calories are her permanent new budget.  This is a task she must master if she is to stay there.  Think of it like learning to live on your retirement income before you actually retire so that you will be practiced at it when you get there.  Just logical, right?

She can use her history to figure out what this type of event calorically cost her the last time so she knows what has to be reconciled with her new forever budget for 150 lbs.  BTW, it is always wiser to bank for the worst case scenario the first time you try this so you are covered!  Not safe to assume skills you are not sure you have yet mastered.

And, I guarantee that if she will go through this exercise even once, when she realizes what she is spending on each item, it will invariably change the conversation about what is “worth it” to her to bank for or have to pay back.  Ribs and potato salad are rarely worth it to me now, for example.  But a good burger is.  Knowing this doesn’t make me immune to temptation or give me willpower, but it does make me careful about how much I expose myself to things I will regret having wasted my skimpy calories (and heart disease risk chits) on.

Here’s how the math would work to fit in a 2800 calorie BBQ into her goal weight weekly calories of 10,500 without borrowing from another week.   

If she exercises, of course, she can add these calories on like having part time job income to add into the mix.  So, we’ll throw on 2 miles 3X/week for another 600.  So, Sara has 11,100 calories total for the week.

It doesn’t matter that she is not at her goal weight yet.  Since she weighs 40 lbs. more than that now, she will still lose weight, since she is still eating for less than it takes to maintain her current weight.  She just won’t lose as much as she would have lost if she had stuck to the 1200 diet.  (And not as much as she has gained, no doubt, when she has decided that she was “off her diet” for the day and never reconciled the surplus).

Subtracting out the 2800 calories out for the BBQ,, she then has 8300 calories for the other 6 days – approximately 1370 a day.  If she makes this work, no matter whether she banked in advance or paid afterward she will have programmed her body for her goal weight of 150 lbs. (including this BBQ), and eventually this will reconcile itself on the scale too.

• 150 lbs. x 10 (calories per pound per day) = 1500 daily calories to maintain 150 lbs.
•  x 7  (days) = 10,500 for the week
• + 600 of exercise = 11,100 total available calories for the week
• (-) 2800 BBQ calories = 8,300 for the rest of the week
• divide by 6 days = approximately 1370 daily for the other 6 days to balance this off within the week*

*It is always smart to balance off surpluses within the week.  Carrying it over and telling yourself you will pay it at some future date is how many overweight people stay that way.  They are wearing all the debt they were going to pay off…tomorrow, next week, “after this”, anytime other than now.

It can be really useful to figure out what you averagely spend in whatever eating circumstances recur regularly in your life.  Then you can develop day-after recovery menus that are behaviorally and calorically specific to your life.  I have an example of a “Binge Recovery Menu” on my website now.  You can figure out how many of those recovery days you would need per week to keep your budget balanced.  Executed well, these days can reset your appetite biochemistry as well as get you mentally and emotionally back on track.  Phew!

You can tailor and regularly build into your week in advance however many of these skinny days you will need.  I do a couple of these every Monday and Tuesday.  Starts my week off on the right foot, and I am set for the weekend.  They can be adjusted it for particularly social periods.  This is what Weight Watchers is trying to do for you with their Flex Points.  Only problem is, you may need 70+ of those flex points on a given week, not just the 35 they had you set aside!  And if you spend 70, you need to pay back 70.

Once you figure this out a few times, like with your money, you will likely not have to go through all the math to get the drift for yourself.  You will develop your own routine calorie balancing menus that work in your life.  And if you get really good at it, you can bank in advance, which has the advantage of allowing your indulgences to be guilt free…priceless.

Caveat:  For anyone without major metabolic problems this will work.  If it doesn’t, chances are you are either not correctly accounting for how you spend, or something is broken metabolically.  In my experience in my practice, it is far more common to be inaccurate about intake and/or have unrealistic expectations about how much and exactly when the scale will move.  However, some people do appear to need to follow a specific food plan (typically low carb) to get a good response from their dieting efforts.  Whether this is because insulin resistance and/or lack of activity (especially lack of resistance training) is making them more of a storer than a burner, or simply because they don’t keep their carb intake managed still remains unproven.  If this seems to be you, try doing low starchy carbs, a low glycemic index diet for a period of time.  And, for a more permanent fix, resistance training can help you build a better furnace.

Begin your final weight loss journey now…