As mid-life crises go (come?)
I’m at 70kg. Which is down from 73, but not quite the 64 I was between the ages of 19 and 37. I’m 5’9 and a half, so I know I don’t qualify for straight fat, but I do qualify for gay fat. We have different standards. Anyway, just watching what I eat hasn’t gotten me very far, so this week I started going up and down the steps at the end of the boulevard. Only twice on the Monday, but by yesterday six times. I’m also using the abdominal wheel. I wonder how long it’ll take to look decent again? I miss it.
My Mazamet 
Ah, but exercise is a poor mechanism for weight loss; it can actually contribute to a weight gain if you exercise vigorously enough that it makes you hungry.
Think of exercise as a mechanism to change how you feel and what you are able to do (personal energy, ability to go out and do things like bicycling, stair climbing(!), do projects around the home, etc.). For weight loss, well there is a lot of bushwa in circulation. Certainly the “calorie counting” diets have been debunked. Probably the safest thing to say is that dieting is a metabolic process. If you want to get to a particular weight point, the best advice I have seen is eat mostly whole plants, in moderation. Cook things yourself (avoid restaurant and processed foods). Avoid eating early and late at night. Note that if you were to stop eating at 6 pm and rose from bed at 6 am, you probably would not feel hungry, even though you would have fasted for 12 hours. I have found that my hunger was based upon my schedule rather than it being some sort of primal bodily feature (which it is when when you are deprived of food for a longer time). So, I pay more attention to how hungry I am between meals and especially during meals. I eat slower and stop sooner. I am down 10+ kilos, with another 20 or so to go.
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A Bed Diet!!!! I love it! I do most of the rest already. I cook everything, every day from scratch. I don’t eat early or late…
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Gah…just looking at those steps makes me feel ill. If you are supposed to be ‘fat’ then god help the rest of us.
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My legs hurt the first couple of days, but they’re fine now 😀
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Right…:(
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Are there also standards of American straight fat and American gay fat? 😉
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Yes! Think of it in terms of sport. The average American male sets the standard at a body made for football, while the average European’s ideal body standard is for someone who plays soccer 😉
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And soccer is gay.
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As opposed to a sport where men tackle each other to the ground?
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Hmmm… I may have to re-evaluate some core beliefs now.
But America’s last trusted news source agrees with me: http://www.theonion.com/video/soccer-officially-announces-it-is-gay-17603
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All that means is football is closeted.
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And … studies show that being overweight contributes to a longer life than being underweight. Pass the ice cream please.
Gaining some weight as we age is normal, by the way, and not normal because there are so many fat people, just normal because of metabolic changes.
When Mr. Churchill was accosted by a sweet young thing for being in his cups, his response was the immortal: “I may be drunk, Miss, but in the morning I will be sober and you will still be ugly.” So, you have an advantage as did Mr. Churchill. You may be gay fat today, but tomorrow, you still will be handsome.
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And also drunk! 😀
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Brother, I’m exhausted from just looking at the picture of those stairs. I’ll keep staring at it while I eat this cheeseburger. Hopefully I can lose weight that way. 🙂
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😀
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I’ve had good luck with cutting out carbs but oy, that’s hard, especially when I want to be perfecting a new jersey/new york hard roll recipe . I’m also doing some weight training following a plan I bought from a fellow who has come up with a diet/fitness/life-in-general plan for nerds, aptly named http://www.nerdfitness.com
Steps look so picturesque, and I need to start taking the steps at work. I work on the 8th floor so I’m going to be building up to that. I want to get back to 70 kg some day, at 78 now
what’s an abdominal wheel?
Go for it Pink!
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In Southern Spain the bread was awful, and cheese options minimal, so it was reasonably easy to limit certain things. Here, it’s a nightmare. I told Mike they probably put heroin in the bread to get us addicted!
Going to have a look at nerd fitness now.
An abdominal wheel is this:
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Heroin in the bread, marijuana not basil, the smell of fried onions and chips, and bbq constantly wafting through city streets. And doughnuts. Or “pastries”, as the case may be.
You may need a dog (if you don’t have one) or borrow someones. And the last two bites of whatever you are about to swallow — feed to fido. Let him get fat. You know why? Because he WANTS to exercise.
“Go for walk?” — YOU BETCHA!
“Climb those stairs?” — BEAT YOU TO THE TOP!
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very interesting device! My wrists don’t flex well at all so I can’t do push ups without using some kind of handle but this looks possible.
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Michael Pollan has a video out (“Cooked” is the title of that and his book from which the video was made) which claims that bread, properly made, is a wonderful food. Bread made the way they do in the US, not so much. If whole grains are involved and yeast used to ferment it, when baked it becomes almost a super food. Of course, if you find yourself passed out on the living room rug and the wrappers from five baguettes around you, maybe you have a problem. (I could live happily on good bread and good cheese … yum.)
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Enjoy your midlife. It’s not the crisis. 🙂
I lived like Genghis Khan until I was 50. Then my inner fat man clawed his way out and fed me to the bears.
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We’re are own worst critics. I’m 6’1″ 100kgs. I hate it and am disgusted by it, but my boyfriend keeps giving me shit for saying that.
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Stop flaunting your height at me 😛
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About 8 years ago I decided to lose weight. I lost a lot of weight just walking. I ended up walking around the streets of the mobile home park I live in three or four times a day. Sadly I stopped and over the years I gained back all I lost and more. Hugs
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Probably the hardest thing you will do to shed those kilos is to give up on the liquor. That has got a lot of calories in it and you know that already. Best of luck to you Pink.
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Not a chance in hell!
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Regular exercise is the key.The steps will adefinitely help. believe me.
I used steps ( and hills) for training when I ran marathons. Your stomacj muscles as well as your legs will burn!
But be cautious of overuse syndrome which could result in injury then you’re back to square one. Don’t over do it. And warm u p a bit and stretch gently beforehand
The heart / lungs adapts quicker then the muscles, tendons and bones.
20 minutes three times a week to start. Old fashioned, but tried and trusted.
Weight gain because of increased muscle mass will happen, but your shape will change…. for the better.
The nutritional demands on the body once you begin to get fitter will mean you will find yourself needing to eat more but this won’t happen until you are pushing it.
Be very careful with that ab wheel, you could slip and stuff your back up.
There are other ab exercises that are easier, as effective and require no equipment. And not sit ups either.
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Professor of Neuroscience at Princeton University, Michael Graziano, on how to lose weight: https://aeon.co/essays/hunger-is-psychological-and-dieting-only-makes-it-worse
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Superb article. Thanks for sharing.
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Cheers Jeff. Interesting, innit? Very highly respected bloke, as doubtless you know — fat bastard, like Pink.
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Hey! As a fat bastard myself, I want you to know, I resemble that remark.
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Why is your gravatar of a dog pooh in your hand?
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At least it wasn’t taken twenty years ago . . . 😛
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It’s from summer of 2014 😛 Three years, Agatha Christie!
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I’ll believe you, Pink, thousands wouldn’t. Anyway, that key: It was found during an archaeological dig and is the main door key to a mid-16th. century manor house which formerly stood amidst a deer and water park, on ground which is now the graveyard of a village church in Devon. The key was found at precisely the location where my grandson was buried just a few years after it was discovered.
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Psychology, definitely, must not be ignored when we talk about the consumption of calories.
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Great article. It sounds simple: put less into your body and excrete more out — that’s all there is to it, right? For me, the sense of hunger is related to stress. I use food as a pacifier. Since I was a child, I was always grumpy when I’m hungry. And when there is something else causing stress and anxiety, I compensate it with eating.
Moderate changes to diet definitely help better than drastic ones. My employer serves a free lunch every day and has a kitchen full of snacks. When I started working here, I gained 20 lbs in a couple months. Nut snacks are especially rich in calories and small in size. They fatten you quickly. I managed to shed those extra 20 lbs with two simple rules: put as much as I want on my plate at lunch but don’t go for seconds, and no snacks between meals.
I also tried observing lent a few years ago and did lose 10-15 lbs. But those came quickly back in a couple months. Psychologically, I felt that I did a good job fasting and can relax now. And, yes, I can do it again if I want. But I found it harder and harder to repeat. The initial motivation is not there anymore.
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How about a once a week fast?
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I did that. Ate nothing at all on Fridays. Great habit. It’s good for clearing your system out. I noticed that I can lose ~5-6 lbs in the first few days of fasting just from excreting all the shit from my body. It is also a good “willpower” exercise – a proof that you actually can cut down on eating if you want. Fasting is very hard the first few days, but later the body adjusts and it becomes easier. It’s also a good exercise to control my temper as I get irritable when I’m hungry and I can easily get angry at various things.
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Yes Pink, one day a week without food is excellent, and does you no harm at all. I know a few people who do this regularly and have done so for years.
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When I was little all the fancy ladies in Paris who went to Chapelle Notre-Dame de la Médaille Miraculeuse (140 rue du Bac) fasted on Wednesdays. It was a marker of good breeding, and also kept their weight in check.
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You dudes have it way too easy when it comes to losing weight. I’m 5’2″ and 60 kg so I guess that makes me fat by any definition!
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No it doesn’t! 😀
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🙂 I think it’s fantastic when anyone is at ease with their body type, whatever that may be. I’m exceptionally insecure, which means I’m always monitoring how I look.
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Wow. “Gay fat”? At your current weight I don’t see how you can qualify for any kind of fat! You sound positively svelte. That said, there is nothing wrong with getting more exercise and eating well.
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Sounds like I’m winning now: beat my August goal and I only need to be straight-thin.
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😛
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It sounds like a similar problem to the one I’m having. I’m hoping that moving away from the guy in the Midwest (and thus regaining control over my diet) will help, and then the terrain here is so much more conducive to weight loss. After one week, I already feel more comfortable in my clothes.
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Seriously Pink, 70 Kg at nearly 6 feet?
I’m 122 Kg at 6 feet, so what should I say?
And I am eating less than my kids…
Mwahahahaha 👾😜
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It’s a form of bragging and a way of begging for compliments. 🙂
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Oh, what a profusely perfumed way to put it 🌹 It does make sense, now… 💐
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Bastards, all of you! Shouldn’t you be working on your thesis or something? 😛
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Mwahahahahaha👾👽🖖
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😀 That is entirely true if measured from the point where I’m a perfectionist and I think most people don’t hold themselves to high enough a standard 😀
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I have a small frame, and I DON’T LIKE CHANGE!!!!
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Why do you measure weight in kg and height in feet?
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Mike’s influence, I think. And it’s only if I’m speaking English.
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