Wednesday, June 10, 2009

Spiritual Insight From Loosing 80 Pounds

I have not written for this blog in some time. I stopped when I began a diet program that involved - well extreme caloric reductions to be honest – and it took every ounce of focus I had to maintain the diet. Since the end of October I have lost 81 pounds.

Let me first say that cutting back calories at 1200 per day was done through the Center For Medical Weight Loss in Lakewood, Colorado. That sort of restriction should only be done under medical supervision. Do not try it unaided at home. They are a huge help and very supportive, should you try it. As you roll off this diet a great source of motivation and very solid information is the Fat2Fit podcast (www.fat2fit.com) . It is a good source for ongoing information.
I wanted to write about a few lessons I learned as part of this process, some of which concern spirituality and some of which are interesting lessons or discussion points.

Delusion

Buddhist teachers talk of delusions and delusional thinking routinely. I had lessons in my own ability to self-delude during this diet process.

Before starting this journey I did not think of myself as obese, though by every objective measure I was obese. I was 306 pounds, making me a candidate for gastric bypass surgery. I was 40% body fat. Still, I was hitting the gym and lifting weights. I knew I was pretty strong for my age, measured against the other men I saw lifting while I was in the gym. I was deluding myself, however, about my overall shape and condition. I was eating a good deal of junk. I had lost all sense of portion size and proportion. Nevertheless I told myself that I was in shape. I was active; I could take long hikes or bike rides. I could lift heavy things. I deluded myself into thinking I was just beefy.

It was a long slow journey to realize the extent of my delusions, and I am still working on it. As the diet eases I hope to get back to practicing and writing, so I do not need to focus so much of my attention on breaking the cycle that put me in such an unhealthy place.

It is also worth noting how delusions feed dukkha. I got some very short term pleasure out of eating all that junk, however, over the long term, it led to suffering. My knees hurt all the time.
I had sleep disorders, and I missed out on many activities that I can now do so much better – like skiing bumps.

The Importance of Sangha

If we consider Sangha a support group, then my family and my colleagues in Houston are that Sangha during this journey. They were extremely supportive of my efforts in losing weight.

Breaking the Cycle

There are two approaches to dieting that I have read or discussed with others. The first is advocated by Fat2Fit radio and makes a good deal of sense. To risk oversimplification, one determines a goal weight, then starts to live the life of the person at that goal weight with the amount of exercise and caloric intake a person already at that goal weight would consume. This is a very sensible, conservative and healthful approach.

The second method is the one used by many diets. There you start with some form of extreme food restrictions. You will lose lots of pounds in the first few weeks, then the loss will taper off as you start to use “real food.” This is the approach that often leads to unhealthy yo-yo dieting. There are two reasons for this. First, most of these diets do not push dieters to exercise or partake of a more active lifestyle. Second, the transition off the diet and back to real food has minimal support or education associated with it. So many folks lose some weight, go off their diet and go back to a sedentary life and eating fast food.

I am finding a mixed approach is working for me. First, as I noted I was obese, and I needed some rapid and big success to keep me motivated. Second, I began to look at my diet as food boot camp. In the same way the military breaks a recruit down and builds them back up again, I was breaking myself down and building a new, thinner healthier person. While I was not conscious of this when I started, I used the initial 1200 calorie/day diet to break my very unhealthy response to food.

What is missing from the crash and fad diets is the training a recruit gets in boot camp. I got some from the Center For Medical Weight Loss, but 15 minutes of counseling once per week is, I think, insufficient to combat the barrage of media messages we get every day from the food industry telling us that it is acceptable to eat junk every day. I took it upon myself to provide the training I would need to face those sales pitches and resist them. I strongly recommend the film Supersize Me and the books Fast Food Nation, In Defense of Food and The Omnivore’s Dilemma. Listen to podcasts like Fat2Fit, and get a buddy group or family support group to help you and keep you honest.

I also found that measuring and recording everything helps but that may be because I am a geek, therefore very data driven and into gadgets. Nevertheless, the BodyBugg is very useful for measuring calories burned. Write down everything you put in your mouth. You will be surprised how much this helps avoid temptations.

I am now in the process of graduating from diet boot camp and moving on. I have, hopefully, broken the cycle of lose some weight, gain it back from diet boot camp.

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