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A Tale Of A New Year’s Resolution
The Wall Street Journal reports of another misguided decision by the Trump administration.
New U.S. Dietary Guidelines Reject Recommendation to Cut Sugar, Alcohol Intake Limit
The federal government on Tuesday issued new dietary guidelines that keep current allowances for sugar and alcohol consumption unchanged, rejecting recommendations by its scientific advisory committee to make significant cuts.
The scientific committee, which was composed of 20 academics and doctors, had recommended cutting the limit for added sugars in the diet to 6% of daily calories from 10% in the current guidelines, citing rising rates of obesity and the link between obesity and health problems like Type 2 diabetes, heart disease and cancer.
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The dietary guidelines, which are updated every five years, have a wide impact: They shape school lunch programs, mold state and local health-promotion efforts, and influence what food companies produce.
The U.S. Departments of Agriculture and Health and Human Services reviewed the committee’s recommendations, which were released in July, and decided not to include the lower limits because “the new evidence is not substantial enough to support changes to quantitative recommendations for either added sugars or alcohol,” said Brandon Lipps, deputy undersecretary for food, nutrition and consumer services at the USDA. Mr. Lipps said that the new limits recommended by the scientific committee didn’t meet a “preponderance of the evidence” standard required by law.
One would think that the obvious evidence of preponderance within the U.S. population would be sufficient to meet the "preponderance of the evidence" required by law.
Anyway, I'll use the above as a hook to tell a personal story. One which is a bit off from the other content you usually find here.
Two years ago I made a private New Year's resolution to lose weight. Over the decades I had slowly, slowly gained one pound after the other. Having an office job and often being too lazy to do sports both had contributed to that. I was no longer comfortable with the look and feel of my body. So I set myself a target weight but not a time limit to reach it. Fearing failure I did not tell anyone about it.
This month I finally got there.
At the end of 2018 my bathroom scales had shown 83.6 kilogram (184lb 5oz, 13st 2lb). My calculated Body Mass Index (BMI) at a height of 1.70 meter (5'7") was 29 (BMI = weight [kg] / (height [m])^2 ). That was definitely overweight and only one point below the definition of obese.
bigger
The target I had set for myself was 63 kg, a weight I last had when I was 18 years old. At the time I had chosen that target I did not expect myself to ever reach it. But since two weeks ago I am a pound or so below it. My BMI is now 21.6 and on the way more healthy side of life.
So how does one lose a quarter of one's weight?
There was little I could do with changing the content of my diet. I have long avoided processed food and mostly cook for myself from fresh produce. The meat, fish, eggs and vegetables I buy are mostly from 'green' sources. My preferred breads were and are of wholemeal sourdough from a trusted local bakery. I have a daily portion of fresh fruits and avoid soft-drinks or other sugary products (exceptions: vanilla ice cream, licorice and dark chocolate). My limit for added sugars in the diet was already less than 3% of daily calories. There was little I could change with that to be more healthy.
To do more sports was not feasible either. I tried. But doing enough sports to lose weight while being overweight is actually pretty hard. To move around those extra pounds requires a lot of extra efforts.
The only plausibly way I could lose weight was to eat less. So I decided to eat half of everything.
I held back on second helpings at lunch and halved the size of my diner sandwich. During the first months I -of course- cheated on that. But over time, as my weight started to slowly, slowly go down, I came nearer to the ideal intake. During the whole time I was (and still am) eating the very same stuff I had eaten before. My (now smaller) lunch has continued to be finished with a piece of dark chocolate. I still have a (now smaller) daily scoop of vanilla ice cream with lemon juice. I still baked and ate Christmas cookies like I have done every year. But because I ate less of everything my weight continued to slowly, slowly, go down.
Several times there were frustrating weeks and even months during which the scales would not budge at all. My weight had plateaued even as I continued to eat less. Afraid of losing my motivation I stopped using the scales for some time. Several weeks later they again showed progress.
So here I am. My target has been -unexpectedly- reached. That ugly wobbling belly is (mostly) gone. I am pretty sure my weight will now stay in its current range. And yes, it feels great to no longer move those extra pounds around. I have also won more confidence in myself.
There is a negative side to it. My wardrobe is now full of stuff that is hopelessly oversized. I look sloppy when I wear it. I will need to buy all new pants, belts and sweatshirts. I'll be happy to do that.
So what now? What will my next New Year's resolution be?
There are, unfortunately, several choices. I still do too little sports and will need to start a program to rectify that. I have already cut back on alcohol. Still, less or none would be better. And I am still smoking way too much. I am not sure which of these bad habits I will tackle first. But a year or two from now I may let you know of it.
Why tell and publish this story?
I thought it might motivate some of you to do something similar – be it loss of weight or some other personal aim.
Even with small steps (on average I lost less than half a pound per week) one can actually reach a far away target.
One only has to stay steady and not give up.
Congrats b for getting to a comfortable place. Perseverance.
Here in the dark heartland of empire people are admonished by nutritionists to eat smaller portions but looking at americans I don’t think most are following the advice. If they are even following the old dietary recommendations I would be surprised.
People here are huge! on average. I passed a young couple walking down a store aisle recently. They took up the entire aisle. It’s almost as though since everybody here is so huge, its seen as normal.
I adjusted the contents of my diet as I aged, keeping the volume about the same, so i’ve kept a fairly steady BMI of ~20 since teenage years, for nearly 50 years, with minor fluctuations. (I am not normal in the above sense.) I was always very active and am still very active. I still jog, lift weights and do work which requires exertion. (I lift light weights so that exertion is easier.)
The main change I made to my diet as I grew older was drastically reducing the % of carbohydrates, replacing starch (bread, pasta, etc.) with more vegetables. As I’ve been a dairy vegetarian since age 16, I eat lots of ‘organic’ eggs, milk and yogurt (plain with honey), and use cheese sparingly. I usually eat a small handful of nuts every day as a snack— almonds, walnuts and pecans. No refined products. Olive oil as cooking oil. No butter except what’s in the whole organic milk. For a treat I cook Tsuru Mai brown rice — a big carb out — and dress it with olive oil, stone ground mustard, herbs and balsamic vinegar. I’ve never liked sweets much except for chocolate which I indulge sparingly.
I eat one main meal daily, toward the end of the day, relying on hot milk/strong coffee mix and sometimes eggs in the A.M, usually before or after a quick jog. Evening meals consist of complex salads (been doing this for over twenty years) which take up an entire dinner plate. Spears of carrot, pickles, cucumber, sweet peppers (whatever is in season from the garden) radiate out around the perimeter of the plate for crisp munchies while the center of the plate is filled with chopped mixed greens (summer) or chopped cabbage (winter), topped with chopped herbs, cooked veggies, a few chopped nuts, sometimes bits of blue cheese, sometimes tangerine slices, sometime a small amount of rice, the kitchen sink, dressed with olive oil and balsamic vinegar. It’s filling and satisfying. At first I missed the hearty homemade wheat bread hot out of the oven slathered with butter and jam, but the transition was relatively painless since slow. I never acquired a taste for soda, sugar drinks, or sugar snacks or sugared foods, so it was more starch than sugar I had to replace with other foods as I grew older.
When I was an exchange student in Northern Europe I learned to smoke filterless cigarettes, eventually switching to a long-stemmed pipe. That lasted a few years or more. It was very acceptable and sociable to smoke with others, especially after a big meal. Of course, I smoked all the time after a while, not just after meals. After I quit, I wondered how I had had the time to smoke at all. Also, the tobacco made my fingers smell, my clothes smell, my hair smell. Since smell and taste are not very active senses when a smoker, I didn’t mind while I smoked, or at least that was my experience. Since then I much prefer fragrances and tastes to tobacco but then I didn’t really have a bad nicotine addiction. My dad said when he quit his mind was never the same. He was a chain smoker for decades. Don’t know what he meant. Okay, rattling on here.
Congrats and thanks so much for this blog.
Posted by: suzan | Dec 31 2020 4:54 utc | 55
This is the real reason the scientific advisory committee wants to review the American dietary guidelines:
Yes, Americans are Fat. The US Military is Fatter.
“Military leaders are worried about the shrinking pool of young people who qualify for military service,” Gina Harkins reports at Military.com. “More than 70% of young Americans remain unable to join the military due to obesity, education problems, or crime and drug records.”
Mission: Readiness, a group of retired military officers, wants the US Department of Defense to create an “advisory committee on military recruitment,” with a view toward getting the next generation in shape so that they’re qualified, as the old saying goes, to “travel to exotic, distant lands; meet exciting, unusual people; and kill them.”
Here’s the link to Gina Harkins’ quoted article (the link in Knapp’s article is the wrong one): Obesity and Other Problems Barring Teens from Military Service Need National Attention, Leaders Say
In Harkins’ article, there’s one more important information Knapp left out of his rant piece:
The leaders are calling on the Defense Department to work with the departments of Agriculture, Education, Health and Human Services and Justice to help address the issues. It matches a recommendation in the 2021 defense policy bill in which lawmakers called for the defense secretary to work with other federal departments to address problems affecting the military’s ability to recruit new service members.
The goal, then, is for Americans to get healthier so they can serve as cannon fodder in the next World War, which will be fought on a global scale in China, Russia, Venezuela and Iran.
Health is a 20th Century invention. Before the end of the 19th Century, nobody cared about the health of anybody (even the rich). It was just common sense that, the fatter the person, the healthier he/she was (and richer, hence the “moneybags” stereotype). It was only with the rise of industrial warfare, in the decade that preceded WWI, that the concept of health in the sense of physical aptitude and readiness arose. Not by coincidence, it was also in this period that the rise of sports (the Olympic Games are from the end of the 19th Century) and Eugenics (founded by Darwin’s cousin more or less at the same epoch). The IQ test is also from the same era (first decade of the 20th Century, by an American military officer to test his recruits).
It is ironic that Nietzsche’s “Übermensch” dream was only made possible with the development of the productive forces (industrialization) that he abhorred. Can’t blame him, as he didn’t think dialectically and, by his time (1844-1900), already was a living fossil, a complete outlier in the German philosophical tradition, a madman who claimed to be Schopenhauer’s lost disciple.
Posted by: vk | Dec 31 2020 18:32 utc | 84
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