Eating Out, Well
I'm a typical, lazy basta... bachelor. I've got a messy kitchen with a fridge full of beer and breakfast food but little else. I eat out for lunch every day and for dinner about 4-5 times a week. This has definitely made the task of re-engineering my diet interesting, but far from impossible.
Tips to While Eating Out
You're always hearing people complain about how hard it is to eat healthy at work or while on the road. I don't buy it. Here are some of my tips:
- Learn to Love the Salad. At some restaurants this is your only option. Be wary of the not-so-healthy salads (ala the 10,000 calorie taco salad). Order a light dressing, and make sure you get it on the side. I use way less than half of what they give me.
- Soups and Salad Combos. Salads can bet boring, so there's no better way to add a little variety than to order a soup and salad combo. Many restaurants are offering these options now, with a small side salad, a coup of soup, and sometimes a side. Try to find a light, non-creamy soup, and please don't ruin it by getting chips as a side.
- Hold The Sides. Resist the urge to get unhealthy sides: fries, chips, tortilla chips, potato salads, coleslaw, hush puppies. Once you start reducing your portions, you'll find that just about every restaurant in America has portions that are way too large. Just try skipping the sides altogether.
- Look for Wheat Bread. The enriched white breads that you get are often loaded with sugar. I was floored when I had a "healthy" grilled chicken sandwich from McDonald's the other day. Their bread was way to sweet! Sneaky guys. So opt for whole wheat. If you can't, then try to eat only half of the bun.
- Lose the Ends of that Burrito. It's hard to find a burrito with a whole grain tortilla. Some places let you get a burrito without the tortilla. Yuck, is all I can say. Instead I just get the flour tortilla and I rip the wadded up top off. Then I eat the burrito, and leave the bottom of it.
- Order Brown Rice. Not too many places have brown rice, but if they've got it or long grain wild rice, you'll be much better off ordering it.
- Stay Away from Red Meat. I still eat red meat, but I rarely eat the heavily processed stuff. I instead opt for whole cuts. This pretty much rules out burgers, but I'm a much bigger fan of chicken anyhow.
- Pack an Apple. Finding a chance to eat 4-5 times a day on the road is tough. I travel with apples, oranges, and bananas a lot. A lot of the engineered energy/snack bars are way high in sugar, or artificial sweeteners. Apples and Oranges pack just as well, and are a better alternative to most bars.
Favorite Restaurants
Another mildly challenging part of eating out, is finding places with a variety healthy choices. You can find something health just about anywhere, but you'll soon tire of the place if they've only got one option. Here's my list of favorites:
- Jason's Deli
- Panera Bread
- Moe's, Salsarita's, Chipotle
- Mediterranean Places ala Greek Fiesta
- Subway
- Pei Wei
- Wendy's
The Glucose Cycle
A few years back, I started looking for ways to up my energy level throughout the day. Judging by the popularity of energy drinks and products like that Five Hour Energy, America is looking for the same. I've always been a coffee drinker, drinking about 24 oz. in the morning with 8 oz. of milk and 4 Tbsp. of sugar. I also drank Diet Cokes throughout the day and evenings too; usually as pick-me-ups. Like any drug though, they lost their effect. I could chug a diet coke before going to bed. I would even brag about my tolerance...I feel a little stupid about that now. I quit Diet Coke eventually, and turned to my old friend coffee for a super-powered pick-me-up.
Although caffeine and sugar are great stimulants, they always led to crashes. Those crashes made the peaks just seem worthless. I was looking for something more steady. The secret to my success in the workplace has always been sustained focus. I rarely face a problem that I can fully resolve in an hour or two. If I was crashing every 2 hours and getting up for a Diet Coke or coffee, then that just opened me up to a chain of interruptions that ruined the rest of the day.
I quit caffeine cold-turkey. I just fought through the withdrawal headaches for a week, and I was as good as new. However, I was no more or less efficient. I still crashed like crazy in the afternoon. Disappointed, I started back on caffeine a little with sweet tea in the afternoons.
Then last year, I started to talk to a friend in the office about diet topics. We talked about concepts like Caloric Restriction, portion control, and simple vs. complex sugars and carbohydrates. I started switching out my carbs, cutting out as much refined sugar as I could, and reducing my portions. Much to my surprise, my daily energy level stabilized and increased. It was amazing. I would get home from a long day at work, and look for things to do around the house. I was a robot!
Fascinated, I started reading about simple things like Blood Sugar Regulation, Insulin, and Type II Diabetes.
A few wikipedia articles and other things found on the Internet, don't qualify me to form any medical opinions at all, but that's never stopped me from trying. I conjecture that my crashes had little to do with me coming down from a caffeine rush, and much more to do with my bodies attempt to regulate my sugar intake. I had so much refined sugar with my morning coffee and my typically sweet breakfasts, that my body would overreact with a strong insulin response. Right about lunch I would crash as my body worked too well and dropped my blood sugar level. Luckily lunch would save me, and I'd feast with a lot of simple carbs, fats, and heavy starches. That led to the same spike and insulin response, forcing me to pick myself back up with coffee and snacks. The last crash would lead me straight into dinner.
Credit: link
Not only was I eating garbage to snap myself out of these crashes, but I was eating way too much of it due to the increased appetite. When I started changing my diet, I cut back on my refined sugar, simple carbocydrates, and sweet drinks. This dramatically reduced my sweet tooth, but more importantly, it turned me on to more naturally sweet foods like fruits and vegetables. The sugars in fruits are not refined and are more slowly processed by the body. This is the same of the complex carbohyrdates found in things like whole grain bread. This effectively makes them a slow-release source of energy that prevents the body from responding too strongly with insulin.
This is nothing new for a Type II Diabetic. Their bodies still produce very limited and irregular amounts of insulin. However, they often need to take additional insulin or medications once they learn how to control their blood sugar levels with their diet. I'm finding that this diet has great benefits for non-diabetics too, and I bet it will go a long way to preventing Type II Diabetes.
Dieting, Fuggetaboutit
Like most guys, I despise dieting. I think a lot of guys feel that they can eat whatever they want as long as we maintain our physical activity. When we put on weight, we feel like wimps for not being more active. Any talk of dieting is a further admission of such failure and a heavy blow to the ego.
To combat this, the diet companies cater to our fragile egos by showing macho guys and guys just like us successfully dieting.
Disclaimer: I'm actually nothing like Dan or Larry, and I don't support Nutrisystem...or dieting in general.
Yo Yo Yo
I've seen way to many people yo-yo diet their life away. When they're dieting, all the do is complain about how bad they feel or how hungry they are. They torture themselves.
The problem is, modern diet plans are too extreme and different from your regular eating habits. It's those shocks to your system that often lead to the amazing initial results. Just as the effectiveness of a particular dieting is starting to fade, you're at your goal and you decided to switch back to your regular habits. Which of course leads to you gaining the weight back. This is known as Yo Yo Dieting.
Don't Diet, Change Your Diet
The idea of changing your diet vs. dieting is certainly not new. I'm sure you've had plenty of friends tell you the same thing. And we all have plenty of good common sense about what's good and bad to eat.
Here's the secret though: make your changes very slowly and give yourself time to adapt.
I was amazed at how I changed and adapted to my dietary changes over the past several months. If I had not made these changes so slowly, I'm sure that my body would have revolted until I eagerly went back to my old habits.
Here are some changes that I made slowly and how I adjusted.
- Eat Less: Sounds obvious, but starving yourself is painful. Reduce your intake slowly and give your stomach a chance to shrink.
- Eat Slower: I'm a fast eater; which is bad, because it leads to overeating. When I started to slow down, I actually started to taste the food much more, and it led me to appreciate eating more for the taste rather than the full feeling.
- Cut Back on Sugar: I cut way down on sweets, real and artificial. I did this slowly of course, and was shocked as my sweet tooth diminished. Formerly bland fruits were becoming sweeter and tastier. And they're obviously better for you.
- Stay Away from Fats: This is much easier said than done, especially when you're addicted to Southern barbecue and all the fatty sides. But again, do it slowly and pretty soon you won't be able to tolerate those nasty fast food burgers any longer.
- Lose the Salt: Again, nothing new here. However, the benefit that I got from slowly cutting back on my salt intake (fries, chips, table salt, canned soups, etc.) was the flavor explosion. My palate just naturally adjusted to healthier foods with a variety of spices. Don't get me wrong, I still hate Indian Curry.
Making Permanent Changes
Making these changes slowly is, in this layman's opinion, the best way to make permanent changes and prevent the vicious dieting cycle. Plus, you don't have to feel like a wuss for going on a diet. It's not like you can't eat a big, nasty steak, you just won't want to. Try the ladies portion. 
Re-Engineering My Health: Whoa, I’m fat!
Disclaimer: I'm not a nutritionist, doctor, physical therapist, or even qualified to give advice on anything. I am a former fast-food junky and fat software engineer. Do not treat any of the following or related posts as advice. It's simply a telling of my story with some of the things that I've learned. Like anything on the Internet, you should be critical of anything here and consult your doctor before implementing any of the same changes in your life.
Last year was tough on my health. I suffered a severe laceration on my lower right leg that required a wound vac and close to two months on crutches. Then that Summer, I broke my back (no spinal damage) and was laid up for a while. Fall rolled around, and I tipped the scales at 200 lbs. At 5'7" and 33 years old, I started to really consider what the rest of my life was going to be like.
Growing Younger
I contemplated this for nearly an entire week, sparked by a viewing of the Curious Case of Benjamin Button. I think it's everyone's dream to have their youth and their wisdom at the same time in their life. It's obviously impossible to get younger, but it's much more plausible to preserve your youth.
I've never been vain enough to consider beauty as an indicator of my youth, so I've never considered moisturizing, plastic surgery, liposuction, or Botox to be legitimate roads to preserving my youth. General health, on the other hand, is a key measure of youth. I don't want to end up being plagued by obesity-related health problems that will prevent me from doing all of the reckless things that I plan to do well into my 40's and 50's. These are the Golden Years of Affluence when I hope have the time and money to really enjoy life. The last piece of that equation is my health.
Skipping Forward to Today
We're nearing the traditional start to Summer, and I'm weighing in at 159 lbs. as of this morning. I've lost over 40 lbs. in nearly five months. I'm not a supporter of dieting or quick weight loss schemes. I almost didn't want to share these details, because I've lost weight a little too fast. Ideally, I should have lost only a pound a week, however, I didn't feel any ill effects. I felt great, and I wasn't starving myself. If I was more responsible, I would have visited a general practitioner first and then every couple of months thereafter. I'm an idiot, please refer to the disclaimer.
More to Come
This is just the opening post in a new category on my blog. There's more to come.
- Dieting, Fuggetaboutit
- The Glucose Cycle
- Eating Out, Well
- AM Smoothies
- Circuit Training
- Visiting to the Doctor