Fat Week, Day 3: Improved Goal Setting for Weight Loss

Mandy (not her real name) was overweight and divorced. After determining that she needed to be reinvented, she began daily workouts with a friend and started eating a special diet to lose weight. Her lifestyle became all about maintaining a grueling regiment of early morning and after work gym visits. She was tired all the time but she kept exercising. Weight loss was her goal.

She’d say, “I’m going to be able to fit into a little sun dress.”

After three months she managed to drop a size or two. Those who knew her watched and sometimes talked about her progress. People doubted she’d ever fit into the dress she had in mind, mostly because that little sun dress belonged to a very petite woman.

Mandy just wasn’t petite.

After six months, Mandy was obviously tired. Her restrictive lifestyle had become a prison and she was starting to see that she wasn’t capable of being waif-like. She began to speak hopelessly, then gave up and went back to just being herself. She expressed relief, said that she didn’t have to pay for gyms or special foods anymore, and felt ironically as if a weight had been lifted off her shoulders.

There wasn’t anything wrong with who Mandy was before exercising or who she was after. What was most fascinating to me was seeing who she was in between. She had a goal in mind and she went after it with vigor, that is until she realized her goal was unattainable.

What would have happened if her goal was different? What if she simply aimed at becoming the most healthy version of Mandy that she could have possibly been? Maybe she’d still be exercising today.

Sugar Addicts Tend to Set Unrealistic Goals

Sugar addicts often set themselves up for failure. Here’s why:

1. We don’t know any better.
2. We want it all and we want it now!
3. We want to fail.

1. We Don’t Know Any Better

When it comes to getting healthy or losing weight, we think like consumers. That’s why alternative sweeteners sell so well. We want to buy our way to health so we look for a pill or a magic brownie that will help us shed pounds while we watch television.

2. We Want It All Right Now

We expect instant results. We’re used to wanting something, seeking it out, and purchasing it. When it doesn’t happen instantly, we give up and try some other method that promises a quick return.

3. We Want to Fail

We like eating sweets! They come wrapped in pretty packaging and have zany names. Sweets make us feel like a happy, naive child. Who wants to give that up in favor of a grueling workout program topped with extreme self deprivation, all in the name of vanity?

Set Smart Goals

Weight loss as a goal can be a dangerous game—especially when there’s a short time frame involved. What happens after you drop 20 pounds from starving yourself for a month? You go back up then work back down and get really good at playing the yo-yo game.

Rather than setting a number on the scale, try setting your goal at being the healthiest you can be. That’s a sustainable and much more rewarding practice. It’s slow, gradual, and, in a sense, endless.

Ongoing is what makes up a practice.

When you set your goal at being healthy, every little step you take in the right direction is a win. Avoided the cookies = your practice in action. Took a walk = your practice in action. Both are successes that add up to a healthy lifestyle.

If you must set numbers for your goal, target the numbers of reps, the distance you walk, or the amount of time you work out. Keep track of the amount of calories and grams of sugar that you turned down and didn’t eat. Increase those numbers and you may find that weight loss becomes less and less of an issue. When you feel good inside, you’ll develop a healthy glow on the outside.

Fat Week, Day 2: Weight Loss and the Crime of Being Heavy

Quitting Sugar for Weight Loss

I cringe whenever someone tells me that they’re quitting sugar to lose weight. Yes, it’s possible and probable that you’ll drop a few pounds if you lay off the sweets but that shouldn’t be the only reason you do it. Get off sugar because you want to be a healthier you.

If you want to lose weight, the best way to do so is to change your lifestyle a little at a time and create a sustainable activity plan. That means you must find things to do that you enjoy and can do—from walking to biking to gardening or whatever.

If you enjoy what you’re doing you are ten times more likely to keep at it. What’s more, you’re that much more likely to alter other behaviors (emotional food related activites for example) to attain or maintain your ability to continue your preferred activity.

Having a profession or hobby takes development. Developing skill takes time and practice. Being skilled is empowering. Being empowered means taking control of yourself and your life.

What If You Can’t Shrink?

It’s hard to change your size. You can’t grow any taller. You can’t change your genetics. Television, media—basically OTHER PEOPLE—make us feel inadequate. Heavy people receive a kind of invisible discrimination. For instance, check out this article on Forbes.com where Tim Worstall (the author) freely uses the term “lardbucket” to refer to someone who is overweight. He also compares “late night drunks,” and “passive smoking” with “the visual pollution of someone 300 lbs overweight.”

Tim and folks like him get away with such nastiness because many overweight people carry as much self-imposed guilt as they have excess weight. Being obese is considered a “personal responsibility” issue and, for some reason, it’s okay in our society to be mean to people who are perceived as being lazy, stupid, or unhealthy.

Society points the finger at obese people for being fat. Then those same people are targeted again by food companies. It’s sort of like how the credit card companies target people who can’t manage their money, how religious cults target people who are going through life altering transformations, or how drug dealers target people who are down and out and looking for a pick me up. 

Fear and Manipulation

Many ad campaigns use obesity as a fear tactic. Fat is considered a punishment that we have brought upon ourselves by being gluttonous. Alternatively sweetened products get labeled as healthy and promise you’ll lose weight by consuming them instead of sugar sweetened products. Are there any food companies out there that talk about consuming less? Of course not! It’s not profitable.

So we target “fat kids” and teach them that they’re lesser than their thin counterparts. We praise thin kids and give them a false sense of health security—they can eat whatever junk food they want. I was a thin kid, yet I was on a blood-sugar-induced roller coaster ride all day, every day. I think I failed high school as a result. Because I was small, nobody looked twice at my diet. My lack of attention and my falling asleep in third period was chalked up to apathy.

The Goal of Being Average

We were required to run a mile in my high school gym class. There was a big kid who couldn’t run—or walk—a mile in the time it took the rest of us to complete the test. Our teacher made this student walk a full mile and it took the entire 40 minute period. I felt bad.

What if we weren’t tested in a one-size-fits-all manner? What if we were tested against ourselves? Then we’d have learned how to set realistic and achievable goals instead of competing with each other to be the best at being average.

Healthy and Heavy

It is possible to be healthy and heavy! Folks are shaped differently. Some people are big-boned. Some are small. People can exercise their asses off (literally) every single morning and still they won’t look like the muscle bound person in the ad for your local gym.

Eating like crap and not taking care of yourself is not a crime. It is, however, a shame in that it allows others to determine your self worth for you. When we can clearly derive our purpose and value from our own measure, we’ll stop counting with numbers.

Fat Week Begins Tomorrow!

Every (business) day this week Stop Being Sweet will feature a new blog post about being, getting, losing, and thinking about fat.

Television: Dr. Oz is High on Coconut Palm Sugar

A while ago I totally lambasted Dr. Oz for his episode where he oversimplified getting off sweets by telling a sugar addict that it only takes 4 weeks to overcome sugar addiction.

In a new episode of Dr. Oz, he suggests that a sugar addict replace her regular sugar with coconut palm sugar.

In the opening segment of the episode, Dr. Oz says the following:

His website says:

Could is the key word.

Coconut Palm Sugar Info (from the Internet)

I have not tried coconut palm sugar but here’s what I could find or figure out about it from searching the World Wide Web:

1. Coconut palm sugar is not considered a sustainable industry because when you take the sap from the tree, you remove its ability to produce coconuts. (source)
2. People report that coconut palm sugar has a rich, caramel taste. (source)
3. Some argue that there’s not enough infrastructure in place to supply the demand for coconut sugar, which translates into prices quickly going through the roof. (source)
4. Coconut palm sugar has been around for years and is currently enjoying the media’s focus on alternative sugars.
5. Coconut palm sugar is not refined or bleached so it retains its nutrients. (source)
6. Coconut palm sugar is not a raw food, which means it has been cooked and/or processed. (source)
7. Coconut palm sugar supposedly has lower glycemic index, meaning it could be safer for diabetics. (source)
8. Coconut palm sugar can be used in baking with a one-to-one ratio, making it an easy alternative for baking. (source)

Addiction Thinking

I’m trying to be positive: Dr. Oz is addressing alternatives to sugar. However, what I didn’t like about the episode is that the coconut palm sugar is a product that was presented as if it’s a possible solution to the problem rather than a tool in an ongoing battle.

Imagine if Dr. Oz had a self-professed alcohol addict (alcoholic) on the show who confessed that she loved all kinds of drinks—anything with alcohol in it. Then Dr. Oz responds by giving her “low alcohol” beer or whiskey. He tells her that this could help her stop getting so drunk because it will take longer to feel the effects of the alcohol. She sips a sample drink and says, “Hmmm, it’s not bad.”

Sound far fetched? That’s what Dr. Oz did—he brought on a sugar addict and fed her cupcakes. She’s not going to end up dancing around with a lamp shade on her head if she eats the whole tray, but she just might end up eating the whole tray.

Typical addict thinking will go something like, “This is good and it’s only half the hit of regular sugar so I can eat twice as much.”

Dr. Oz is a doctor with a television show. Why doesn’t he tell the audience that they’re going to take a year or more to sustainably get off sugar? Either he is trying to figure out how to help sugar addicts, but has no idea about what it’s like to be one himself, or he’s happy to peddle the latest miracle products on his show. Hopefully it’s the former rather than the latter.

To Eat or Not to Eat?

Artificial sweeteners and alternative sweeteners are gaining traction as more and more news reports spread the word about the dangers of chronic sugar consumption.

Coconut palm sugar might be a good way to wean yourself off sweets. It could be an alternative to using sugar in your baking and it’s potentially something to eat on your way to losing weight, provided you don’t have too much of it and you exercise. The possibility is there.

What I’d love to hear more about on television is the long term process of cutting back on eating sweets. “Light” sugar is like light beer, which I suppose works for some people…

So please, Dr. Oz, the next time you pitch something like coconut palm sugar, sell it as ‘step one’ in a long-term sustainable sugar abstinence plan instead of professing simply to exchange one form of sugar for another.

Further Reading

How coconut palm sugar is made.

The Truth About Xylitol

This video is from DurianRider: Health Activist on YouTube.com.

I cut out artificial sweeteners pretty early on in my Stop Being Sweet journey. How about you? What are your thoughts on Xylitol?

What I Do: Sugar Free

Click the image for the full size version. Feel free to post and share.

Is Sugar Toxic? Yes? No? Who Do You Believe?

Who do you believe when it comes to food recommendations? The FDA? The government? A nutritionist? Your doctor? It’s hard to get a straight answer.

Sugar comes wrapped in politics. I’ve had discussions with people who have argued that removing the sale of sugary drinks from schools is the gateway to a Godless society. They fear that if we regulate what our children can or can’t do (like with tobacco, alcohol, and texting in class) then we’re just one step away from adults being forced—by law—to have to eat broccoli at every meal.

After having watched sugar related news stories for several years, I’ve noticed a definite pattern. Whenever someone is brave enough to stand up and speak out about the dangers of chronic sugar consumption, a panicky fear breaks out amongst the people who hear the message. Then a political advocate or direct PR campaign will discredit the news report, saying that sugar is okay and the whistle-blower is a card holding member of the food police who has nothing better to do than take the fun out of living.

The discrediting ends with a call to action, which advises people to use sugar responsibly and in moderation (like we do with cigarettes, tobacco, and texting). The people who hear this message feel better and go back to eating their ice cream.

This entire cycle happened recently.

After the April 1, 2012 60 Minutes ‘Is Sugar Toxic’ news report claimed that sugar is indeed an addictive substance, a wave of blog posts and news stories appeared across the web discussing the dangers of sugar. Articles containing everything from a 40-year-old mom who looks 20 as a result of her sugar abstinence, to articles comparing Heroine to Häagen-Dazs were published and discussed.

A bunch of reactions attempting to discredit the vilification of sweets has begun. However, they have very weak arguments.

Here are some examples:

James A. Bacon’s article in the Washington Post ends with his saying:

Bacon argues that the reduction of fats in our diet didn’t cure heart disease (as if EVERYBODY in America cut back on their fat intake) and so therefore the science was wrong. He implies that anti-sugar people are just folks who constantly look for something to demonize and since fats didn’t work we’re on to sugars. But his argument is weak. He ignores the brain’s reaction to sugar as reported in the 60 Minutes episode and focuses instead on poking at classic 7th-grade Republican vs. Democrat political stereotypes. 

The Center for Consumer Freedom, published a blog post claiming that the 60 Minutes report was “unfair.” They write:

Notice that the Center doesn’t defend sugar as being healthy. Instead they recommend that we consume sugar in moderation and make sure we are burning more calories than we are taking in.

I agree that there are many factors that make up a person’s overall health. The calories in and calories out theory makes sense—we don’t need to eat like a horse if we’re sitting at a desk all day. I also agree that no matter if it’s fats, sugars, or pink slime in meat, there’s always some food being demonized—usually for a reason.

Which brings me back to broccoli. Why is it that our biggest fear is that Americans would have to eat broccoli at every meal?

Apparently eating broccoli as an adult is a fate worse than death! We’d rather have the freedom to choose to eat industrially produced fatty, sugary, chemically, faux meat products at every meal. That’s American? It certainly seems to be what the Center for Consumer Freedom and James A. Bacon are fighting to preserve.

The concept of consumer freedom and the “personal responsibility” argument have merit; it’s up to us to choose what we put in our bodies. However, the decision can be difficult when your choice is between an artificially sweetened product or a “naturally” sweetened version. Which do you trust?

Ultimately there’s only one person who knows what’s right for you. That person is you.

You know how you feel after eating sweets. You know how you feel after eating red meat. And you know how you feel after having not eaten those things for a month. We’ve all tested our foods by elimination to see how we feel. That’s what responsible people do.

If you haven’t gone a month without sugar or meat, give it a try. Nobody says you can’t ever have it again. Going a month without sugar or meat will open your eyes to all kinds of insights, I promise.

Does Art Imitate Life?

Can you relate to this pig? I sure could. Perhaps art does imitate life!

What would you think of this video if it was a six pack of beer on the fridge? How about a pack of cigarettes? Am I promoting sweets by showing this cartoon and contributing the sugar’s fun factor?