Photo by adactio via flickr

A few weeks ago, I started a fitness boot camp at my gym. As has sometimes happened in the past, over the first couple of weeks, my eating habits actually got worse and this Monday, I peaked at 198.8, at least 25 pounds over where I’d like to be. So I decided to put myself back on the UFD and continue working out. I knew it would help turn things around, but I’m pretty impressed with the results so far:

• Mon: 198.8
• Tue: 196.2
• Wed: 193.8
• Thu: 193.2
• Fir: 191.6

Yep, over 7 pounds in 4 days.

This time around I’m keeping it really simple. Here is a list of things I’m eating:

• Steamed chicken
• Grilled fish
• Green vegies (frozen)
• Brown rice
• Black beans
• Hard boiled eggs
• Coffee (with cream)
• Greek yogurt (plain, full fat)

As you can see, I’m not really restricting any particular macro-nutrient. I’m not eating any sugar, but there are plenty of carbs in the rice and beans and plenty of fat in the greek yogurt and eggs. Mostly, I’m just keeping things really simple. I don’t add salt, use the minimum of butter or oil that I need to cook with, no spices or sauces or salsa or anything else designed to make things taste good. It’s a bit boring and repetitive, but boring is the idea. After a while, I think I’ve regained an appreciation of simple flavors like a plain brussel sprout or a nice piece of fish.

I do get hungry. Most of my meals are combinations of veggies, meat, rice and beans. And I often find myself still hungry after eating. If I am still hungry, then I eat again. I don’t count calories. I believe in eating when you feel hungry. Sometimes I eat an egg or some yogurt when I feel hungry after a meal. The yogurt is often good for putting a stop to my hunger. So is a good cup of coffee.

I’ll post again about my progress soon.

Oh, and always, I recommend reading the Whole Health Source blog if you want to delve more into the theory about why eating like this is good for you, and good for people who struggle with their weight.

I did lose weight, about 20 pounds over two and half months. However, I didn’t stick with the diet. My old habits returned, at least in part, and I gained the weight back slowly over many months. In January, I had once again hit 190 pounds, what I weighed when I had started UFD.

So I tried something new. I was on the 4 Hour Body diet. I lost about 10 pounds and then plateaued again around 179. In recent weeks, I’ve been drifting more and more back to UFD and I’m finally starting to push past that plateau.

I’ve also realized that my idea is hardly unique. UFD is quite similar in philosophy to the Paleo diet. I’ve also found a great blog called Whole Health Source by Stephan Guyenet. Dr. Guyenet has a PhD in neurobiology and studies the neurobiology of fat regulation. His recommendations for a diet to lose weight struck me as very similar to UFD. One thing that jumped out at me was this:

Eat only single ingredients with no flavorings added. No spices, herbs, salt, added sweeteners, added fats, etc. If you eat a potato, eat it plain. If you eat a piece of chicken, eat it plain. It can be in the same meal as other foods, but don’t mix anything together.

Basically, when some people eat diets that are rich in foods which are flavorful and highly palatable, the pleasure reward they get from the food causes their set point to rise and they gain fat. If you lower the food reward of your diet, your set point goes down and you lose weight. His explanation of why this might work is quite thorough and worth a read. If you like the idea of the Unprocessed Food Diet, I recommend following his blog.

You might ask, why am I here? I’m here to get better. I feel out of shape as a performer. As an actor, I never really nailed down any particular process. I’d get a script, memorize it, go to rehearsal, try to absorb the blocking and direction, and try to figure out the best way to say my lines. It’s not a great process and it doesn’t seem to take advantage of all that early training which encouraged me to work off my partner. So the first priority was to find a studio, go back to class and figure out a process–a real process that starts with a script and ends with a full, dynamic, grounded and improvisational performance.

I’m in my third class at Black Box Acting Studio and I feel like I’m on my way to that goal. In the first two classes, they use exercises that are drawn from Meisner training, mostly repetition and independent activity exercises. In the next level, they bring in viewpoints and punctuation walks. Their process is a hybrid of things. It’s good practice and I feel a lot closer to that goal of a repeatable process.

Over the last couple of years, I’ve gradually fallen out of shape. I’m still well below my New York average weight, but I had lost enough ground, that I decided I had to do something about it. I’m back on a diet that is similar to the one I used a long time ago, when I first exercised seriously in my 20s. And I’m back in the gym. I’m reading the Four Hour Body by Tim Ferris and taking ideas from there. For instance, yesterday was my first day doing kettlebell swings, an exercise he recommends.

I’m doing other things too. I completed a few classes at the Annoyance, and now I’m in writing classes at Second City. I’m also taking guitar classes at the Old Town School of Folk Music. This upcoming year, I’m thinking as my DIY MFA project. My longer term plan is to start focusing on getting cast in some plays by the summer or fall. I want to get through one more class at Black Box and find a good scene study class that I can use to practice my process.

As usual I’m having trouble fitting everything in. I want to work on everything at once. I realize this is not the optimal way to do it. Eventually, I might narrow things down to writing or acting or improv again and focus my full force on that for a few years. But for the next 3-6 months, I’m going to continue down this path. It gets overwhelming if I try to think too many moves ahead. I want to keep focusing on what is the very next step and put my energy there. I’m going to trust that it will take me somewhere interesting.

First off, I’m mostly over my cravings. I no longer feel like I did when I was quitting smoking. In the first week, I was a bit obsessed with food, and I never felt satiated. Now, I’m feeling much more in balance and less obsessed. If there is a sugary treat in front of me, I do find it hard to resist, but if none is around, I’m not thinking about it. Secondly, I’m feeling much fuller when I eat then I did before I started this. I can eat a serving of spinach and a poached egg and feel very satisfied for several hours. When I eat an average sized meal, I will often feel stuffed. I’m having no trouble feeling satiated by simple vegetables, meat, whole grain bread and brown rice. I’m still having butter on my toast and drinking whole milk, but I don’t need it to feel full.

I have continued to lose weight, almost 10 pounds since I started. I think I would have lost more by now, except that every weekend, I’ve ended up going off the diet for a meal or two and gaining some back. I lose weight all week only to bounce on the weekend from some restaurant meals or a house party. Still, by mid week I seem to be on track again. I anticipate having less trouble with this over the coming weeks, since my Saturday plans will not be including many parties or meals at restaurants.

I would definitely recommend this approach, however, you most likely will have to stay on the plan indefinitely to keep the weight off. I think you would be able to indulge in the occasional treat, but the bulk of your eating would have to remain, whole, unprocessed foods, simply cooked.

This is not a short cut. That’s fine with me. And I think it allows for occasionally eating more indulgent meals. I’m not sure how much I want them though. Yesterday, I had a lovely piece of chicken, some asparagus and some brown rice for dinner. It tasted great.

Unprocessed Food Diet

1. Eat unprocessed, whole foods like meat, eggs, nuts, vegetables, fruit. Buy it fresh when possible, but frozen is fine too.
2. Cook foods simply without adding oil, spices, sugar, salt or anything else.
3. Do not mix foods together.
4. Eat smaller portions than you are used to.
5. Eat as often as you like, and as much as you like overall–no need to count calories.
6. Eat as many of your meals like this as you can, and especially avoid chain restaurant meals and processed foods from the supermarket.

Here are some sample recipes:

• Fill a 1 quart microwavable dish with fresh spinach to the brim. Cover and cook on high 2 1/2 – 3 minutes.
• Grill a piece of chicken or fish until done using only a little unflavored Pam if necessary
• Wash and slice a tomato.
• Clean some mushrooms and boil them for 20 minutes

I think you get the idea.

I have been on the diet for about two weeks now. For the previous two months, my weight bounced around from between 191 to 196 pounds. I didn’t weigh myself on the day I started, but lets assume I was 192 pounds around February 2nd. On February 9, after doing this for about a week off and on, I was 190 pounds. This morning, after the 2nd week, I am 187 pounds (my lowest weight for the week was 186 pounds). This is the first time I’ve cracked 190 pounds since August of last year and I have been exercising and trying to eat well this whole time. So it seems to be working.

It is not necessarily the easiest way to lose weight. While I can fill myself up on these foods, I often do not feel satisfied. I also found myself gorging on a seven layer dip at a party when I was given the chance. I also feel a bit like I’m trying to break an addiction, to what in particular, I don’t know. But I often have the feeling of my belly being full, but my tongue craving some taste or sensation that it’s not getting. This is beginning to diminish, but it’s still there.

While I’m trying to do this as much as possible, I’m also still eating a few of my meals out at restaurants or at functions where my friends might bring some food. I also anticipate that as time goes by and I get closer to my goal, I’ll be able to loosen this up a bit, still eating many of my meals like this, but perhaps adding some seasoning and homemade sauces back into the mix.

UPDATE 2/17: I think I found another way to give me that satiated, satisfied feeling when I’m full but still seem to want more food. Yesterday I drank a glass of organic whole milk. It seemed to do the trick. I am going to try drink a small glass (6 oz) to cap off my hunger after meals and at the end of the day.

UPDATE 2/18: Adding this chart to see progress.
My Weight Chart:

For anyone old enough to remember when a Quarter Pounder was the biggest hamburger available at a fast food restaurant, this won’t really feel like news. We’ve watched the food industry evolve over the last 30 years first hand. Portions have grown, foods have become more indulgent, more flavorful, with more textures. Comfort food is everywhere, and eating it feels great, at least it does for the two minutes it takes to shovel it down our throats. What might seem like news is the extent to which the food industry knows and understands what they are doing. Just as cigarette companies want more people to smoke and people to smoke more, restaurant chains want us to eat more meals out and buy more food when we do go out. And they go to great lengths to reverse engineer precisely the kind of foods that we will crave and overeat. Many more of us are getting fatter than we used to, and it’s because this hyperpalatable food is available nearly everywhere we go.

Is it a good book? I think it has something important to say, but I have a few qualms. Kessler makes his case a little too well in the beginning of the book. I found myself salivating over his descriptions of food items. I craved the appetizers he was describing and felt my tummy rumble. I skipped over about 10 chapters because of it (they are quite short), and still he was describing the techniques the food industry used to make food delectable. I think I may have gained 10 pounds just by reading that part of the book. I would say read just enough of this part of the book to be convinced that he is right and then skip ahead to the chapters on what you can do.

Eventually he starts talking about his solution. He takes a lot of ideas from the world of addiction counseling and has some good strategies to avoiding the worst kinds of foods and dealing with it when you are faced with it. He believes we should embrace the concept of Food Rehab. He does implicitly encourage us to prepare our own food. But here is where I think he kind of ignores an obvious point.

I think we should all be unprocessing our food, or rather we should do as little processing as possible when we cook for ourselves. I’ve heard it said before that it’s healthier to make your own food at home from fresh whole ingredients than it is to buy prepackaged, processed foods. This point has been made many times by many people. But it seems like we can take this much farther. If the food industry makes food into the equivalent of addictive drugs by adding layers of fat, sugar, salt and flavorings to foods, perhaps we should do the opposite.

My new plan

We should start with simple whole foods that are as close to unprocessed as possible: Meat, eggs, fish, vegetables, fruit, legumes and nuts. We should buy them in their completely unprocessed forms. Fresh if possible, frozen in some cases, but certainly without any added flavor, fat, sugar or salt. Then we should prepare these foods as simply as possible without adding any of these things ourselves. Don’t add any oil when you grill that meat. Don’t mix in butter with your brown rice. Put away your salt shaker, all your sauces and spices. And lastly, don’t even combine foods together. Make discrete portions of spinach, grilled chicken and fish, poached eggs and steamed veggies. Eat them separately. Don’t mix them together or add a little sauce of any kind. Don’t do anything to make the food more palatable except cook it. If you have an urge to make something taste better by adding or combining, don’t do it! My theory is that if you confine yourself, as much as you can, to food like this, you will not overeat and you will lose weight.

Now of course, there are some drawbacks here. The ubiquitous nature of these hyperpalatable foods is hard to avoid. They are everywhere, so unless you work at home and are a hermit, you will be exposed to these foods and they will be hard to resist. I know… put a free pizza in front of me and you can kiss it good bye. Kessler has a lot of good ideas of how to deal with some of these issues. And it’s worth reading the book to look over his suggestions.

But some of you might also be screaming, “But Kevin, I can’t eat plain steamed vegetables and poached eggs with no cheese or sauce. That will taste bad!” Well, I hear you. I think that is true to a degree. But I don’t think food tastes bad when it’s prepared like this, it just doesn’t taste awesome! But that is the point, you won’t have cravings for this simple unprocessed food, like you might for chicken nachos dripping with cheese or the latest crazy ice cream combination from Ben and Jerry’s. I have been trying this for the last week and it feels like it’s working. I am feeling a bit of withdrawal at the moment, and I’m still indulging some of my cravings. I had a nice hot cocoa last night, for instance. But I do think I might be finally losing a little weight after months of running four times a week.

For instance, here is what I ate and drank yesterday (except where noted, I added no salt, butter, oil or anything else to the food):

• A few glasses of water
• Coffee (milk and sweetener)
• Steamed asparagus
• Steamed spinach
• Brown rice
• Grilled chicken (twice)
• Two poached eggs
• Cup of flavored yogurt – not in the plan
• Four pieces of whole wheat bread with butter

Now, I did feel hungry through most of the day, or rather I felt a little like an addict who wanted something I wasn’t getting. It reminded me of those first few days of quitting smoking. As I drove home, I thought it would be good to eat some toast with butter. And I think I might keep that as a way to really shut off my hunger. By the way, I’m talking about actual real whole wheat bread, not the brown wonderbread that companies try to pass off as whole wheat. If the bread squishes when you squeeze it and feels soft, it ain’t whole wheat bread in my book. The stuff I’m eating is that sprouted grain Ezekial Bread from Food For Life. Four pieces was definitely too much. It extinguished any feeling of still wanting to eat, and made me feel a little sick actually. My new rule will be this, if I feel unsatisfied after eating, I’ll toast one piece of bread add some butter and wait 20 or 30 minutes, and repeat until I don’t want another piece. This morning I had one piece with some coffee and I still feel full three hours later.

I don’t expect anyone to only eat like this forever. I’ll still be going out to eat with friends, but as much as I can, I want to prepare my own food in this way.

Today I weighed in at 190. My goal weight is somewhere between 165 and 155 (I’ll know when I get there). I’ll try to update this to let you know how it goes.

This spring, things started to go downhill, I gained about 10 pounds in a couple of months, due largely to an increasing amount of fast food and beer. I decided that I can’t give back all the gains that I had made. I started running in July, and slowly I made progress. Over the weeks, I’ve been able to run longer distances and my walks are now pretty brisk and long. I was getting a little fitter, but I wasn’t losing any weight.

It was time to give SLD another shot, to see if I could take off the 10-15 pounds I’d recently gained and to see if it could get me any closer to my goal weight of 155. So last week I decided to do the following:

• Get back on SLD, consuming about 4 tablespoons a day of extra light olive oil between meals.
• Cut out all soft drinks, diet or not, substituting water, sparkling water and unsweetened tea.
• Cut down on the amount of beer I was drinking (and the amount of alcohol altogether). Instead I’d go back to red wine when I wanted a drink and perhaps the occasional vodka cocktail.
• Cut out fast food altogether. (I’ve broken this a bit, but my consumption is still way down from a few weeks ago.)
• Cut out most processed foods. Instead concentrate on eating meats, fresh (and frozen) vegetables, and fruits and berries, and eggs. This is very close to my low carb diet I was on, but I’m loosening up on the fruits this time and concentrating on leaner, less salty meats like chicken, turkey and fish.

So far so good. I’ve been on it a week and I’ve lost 3-4 pounds already.

Harris said researchers looked at 13 trials of six months to three years duration in which pre- and post-BMI measurements were taken.

In studies involving nearly 10,000 children, primarily in elementary schools, none demonstrated a reduction in BMI with those who were assigned to the most phys-ed time, compared to those who didn’t have as much.

“School-based physical activity interventions do not improve BMI although they may have other beneficial health effects,” he said. “There are improvements to bone mineral density, aerobic capacity, reduced blood pressure and increased flexibility,” he added.

Perhaps we should be following the lead of France and giving our kids healthy foods to eat.

At the school, he prepares meals for about 800 students, using all fresh, local ingredients. The introduction of healthy school lunch programs, like this one, is one major reason France has been able to curb childhood obesity rates after two decades on the rise, according to two recent studies.

These ideas that obesity is the result of eating too much or exercising too little or both is treated as a self-evident truth. People invoke the First Law of Thermodynamics and people who argue otherwise are marginalized as not understanding the First Law.

But what if it’s wrong? What if the causality is all mixed up? What if you eat more because your body is getting fat? What if you don’t feel like exercising because you are already obese? What if simple calorie restriction is not particularly effective in losing weight? It isn’t and yet it’s repeated over and over again, “You are overweight because you overeat,” and “If you just eat less, you will lose weight.”

In this lecture by Gary Taubes, he does a great job of showing the fallacy of the conventional wisdom:

It’s a longish video, about 70 minutes, but it’s a nice introduction to his ideas. If you find it all compelling I highly recommend his book, Good Calories, Bad Calories. It’s not a diet book, it’s a science book, and it sets out to demolish some of the conventional paradigms we have about diet, obesity and disease.

UPDATE: Changed the title because we don’t need a new paradigm really, we need an old one. If you watch the video, you will understand what I mean.