Refuse To Regain

Introducing Our New "Recipes" Page

By Lynn Haraldson-Bering

As a fairly new vegetarian and so I don’t get bored in maintenance, I’ve made it my goal to try one new recipe a week. Some weeks are better than others, but at least I’m expanding my food repertoire.

In that vein, Barbara and I have added a Recipes page to the site for us to share some of our favorite recipes and for you to share yours. Simply leave your recipe in the comment section and we’ll add it to the page. Eventually when we have a “real” website, we’ll break down recipes into categories. For now, it’ll be a bit of a free for all, but hopefully fun and information nonetheless.

I grow a lot of basil in my garden every year, so I’m always looking for good pesto and basil-centered recipes. I add fresh basil to my spinach omelets in the morning and to sautéed vegetables along with a little balsamic, but that’s just a leaf or two. I harvest cups and cups every week! Thanks to the magazine and online site Taste of Home, I’ve found my favorite pesto recipe so far this year. Here it is:

Tomato-Walnut Pesto

½ cup sun-dried tomatoes (not packed in oil)
½ cup boiling water
2 cups loosely packed basil leaves
¼ cup Parmesan cheese
1 garlic clove, peeled
1/3 cup reduced-sodium vegetable broth (for you non-vegetarians, you can use chicken broth)
¼ cup chopped walnuts, toasted
¼ tsp salt (optional)
1/8 tsp pepper
3 T olive oil

Place the tomatoes in a small bowl; add boiling water. Cover and let stand for five minutes. Place the basil, cheese and garlic in a food processor; cover and pulse until chopped. Add the tomatoes with liquid, broth, walnuts, salt and pepper; cover and process until blended. While processing, add oil in a steady stream. Serve immediately over whole wheat pasta, spaghetti squash, or my favorite, shredded butternut squash.

I like spaghetti squash as an alternative to pasta, but lately I’ve liked its sister, the butternut squash, better. To make the squash, peel, deseed, and shred squash. Spray a frying pan with non-stick spray. Add the squash and some minced or diced onions if you like. Sprinkle with some garlic powder. Cook on medium heat until the squash is slightly brown.

I’m also growing rosemary this year. Here’s my favorite pasta sauce recipe. It’s the rosemary and balsamic vinegar that makes it so unique.

Roasted Tomato and Garlic Pasta (and Pizza) Sauce

2 pounds Roma or plum tomatoes, halved lengthwise
1 medium onion, peeled and quartered
6 peeled garlic cloves
1 T fresh rosemary leaves (or 1 tsp dried)
1 T fresh thyme leaves (or 1 tsp dried)
1 T balsamic vinegar
1 small can tomato paste
½ tsp salt
1 tsp dried basil

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Place the tomatoes, onion, garlic, rosemary and thyme on a baking sheet sprayed with non-stick spray. Spray veggies lightly with non-stick spray. Roast for 20 minutes. Flip the vegetables and roast for another 20-25 minutes or until they start to brown. Scrape everything into a food processor fitted with the chopping blade and process until pureed.

Pour contents into a large saucepan. Add vinegar, tomato paste, salt and basil. Simmer for at least 30 minutes. I sometimes go an hour for richer flavor.

This sauce keeps well for a three to four days. In fact, I think it tastes even better the next day. It’s great on pasta, squash and homemade pizza.

Now it’s your turn! Bon appétit!

V for Vendetta

By Barbara Berkeley

About four years ago, some time after I lost 20 pounds and started maintaining, I began working on a new goal. I decided to become a tennis player. This was a particularly interesting goal because for years prior to this decision, I had steadfastly refused to become interested in tennis. My husband Don had been playing since high school and was ranked a 4.0 player. That means that he plays really well. For years, I sat on the sidelines as Don played. I even tolerated occasional afternoons watching tennis matches on TV. Whenever the opportunity arose, Don would give me a few tennis lessons as a gift. I would take the lessons half-heartedly and return my racket to the basement.

But five years ago, something took. Don tried once again to give me a few lessons and I was patiently trying to get through them. This time, though, I discovered an instructor who started right off teaching me how to win a game. Sure, I had to learn to hit the ball, and sure, I had to learn the strokes and techniques, but from the very outset there was a strategy.

“Listen”, he told me, “tennis is like chess. It has moves, fakes, trickery and game plans. You don’t have to overpower people. You just have to be smarter.”

This was an interesting proposition and one that appealed to my competitive side. I had never played a competitive sport in my life…not once. What would that feel like? I decided to find out.

There was another challenge that I liked as well. When I first picked up that racket I was 56 years old. The women starting out with me as beginners were mostly youngish mothers in their mid 30s to early 40s. I had 15 to 20 years on most of them and that lit a fire under me. I decided to work harder, move up faster, and play better than they could. For some reason, I started to call this resolution “V for Vendetta.” Understand, my vendetta was not against any of my tennis friends (all of whom I quickly grew to love). It was actually against the aging process. Damned if I would let it slow me down.

For those of us who are maintaining weight, these kinds of challenges and goals are really important. As Lynn mentioned in her last piece, it’s vital to continue to move toward something. People who have lost weight successfully have completed a really daunting project. That feels good. How about continuing that feeling by setting up the next goal post? I particularly encourage you to make that project a physical one. For a great many overweight and obese people, sports have been back-burnered. But why should that continue? Developing an “athletic identity” is one of the keys to successful maintenance. For me, this means that you find a way to become an athlete, however minor. In short order, others start to identify you as someone who is physical and you start to think of yourself the same way.

During the first couple of years of my tennis career I was hopelessly weak and uncoordinated. Despite years of doing step aerobics, I found that coordination of the feet had absolutely nothing to do with making a racket contact a ball. An hour on the court with me was a festival of flying objects as my hapless attempts to strike the ball resulted in shots that sailed over the fence, went straight into the heavens or popped off at improbable angles. Of course, those were the shots I actually hit. Many times, I swung mightily only to take a cut at what turned out to be thin air.

After a year or two, I started to play in games. It was like being back on the sandlot. I was the player that nobody wanted and no one chose. Wind up with me as your doubles partner and you were sure to lose. People figured that out pretty quickly and avoided me. Fortunately, an older woman took me under her wing and invited me to play in a retirees game. The ladies would chat about their homes in Florida and their sore backs, necks and knees. If a ball went astray, it wasn’t the end of the world. They encouraged me and, as a result of their kindness, I kept on playing.

Eventually, I started getting good enough to play competitively and joined a USTA (US Tennis Association) team at the lowest level. Having never played a sport, I didn’t realize how scared you could get in a match or how badly your opponents wanted to win. Getting control of nerves and learning how to apply psychological pressure were entirely new challenges. I was rather stunned to find out that women who play tennis are often more cut-throat than men. They also don’t take defeat well. I quickly noticed a habit. Whenever I won a match, my opponent would approach the net, shake hands and then promptly explain that I hadn’t really deserved to win. One person claimed that she was playing with a career-ending sprain, another that she had played two earlier matches and was completely exhausted. No one ever said, “Hey! You just played better than I did!”

Now, four years into this project, I’ve moved up a rank to become a 3.0 player. I play doubles mostly because I’m not quite strong enough to win at 3.0 singles yet. But last week, my team captain called to ask me to fill in for a singles player who was ill. As I took the court, I felt the familiar burst of nerves and the fear of being completely humiliated by a better player. This woman was an Amazon: tall, sturdy and about 20 years younger than I. But what the heck? This was V for Vendetta and I had to go for it!

The match started and my opponent won four games to my one. But something funny happened along the way. I realized that I actually had a shot at pulling this match out. I calmed down and started winning games. After tying her at 4-4, we went on to tie again at six games apiece. After that, it was all me. I won the tie break and took the second set six games to three.

It was a hot, humid evening and after the match was all over, we approached the net dripping with sweat. We shook hands. Then, my opponent looked at me and said, “I have a confession to make. This is the first time I’ve played singles.” For a moment, the air sailed out of my puffed up chest. But only for a moment. I found myself laughing. Looking right back at her I said, “I have a confession too. You’ve just been beaten by a 60-year-old woman!”

New Goals, New Challenges

By Lynn Haraldson-Bering

We all need something to look forward to, some goal that, to achieve it, challenges our bodies and/or minds.

I spent a little more than two years working toward my weight-loss goal and the last 16 months trying to figure out how to keep it off. I’m pretty sure I’ve figured out the nuts and bolts of that, and while I will continue to be a student of maintenance and be diligent in my “studies,” I need something else to look forward to, something else to strive for as it pertains to my body.

I’ve decided I want to improve my “guns” and upper back. I want more definition, more strength. I want MizFit kind of arms. I am in awe of her muscles, how defined they are, and not in a brutish he-man kind of way. She’s lovely and strong and, well, amazingly fit. While I know I can’t look just like her (trust me Carla, I’m not a stalker! LOL), I’ve decided I’m going to go for more definition. 

It’s a little tricky for me given my “conditions.” Let’s see, I have a large tear in my right rotator cuff, a small tear in my left one, arthritis in both shoulders, biceps tendon bursitis in my right arm, both wrists have degenerative arthritis and my doctor wants to “fuse” them, and, what else? Oh yeah. Tendonitis in both elbows. I always forget that part.

I don’t tell you this to feel sorry for me. That’s NOT what I want from anyone. We all have our “conditions.” My body is what it is and I work with it, happily (so far) without surgery or medication. Strength training (and a fabulous chiropractor and massage therapist) has significantly reduced my wrist, elbow and shoulder pain because the muscles surrounding the injured areas work much more efficiently than before. But now I want to go for the gusto. I want arms and shoulders that make people think, “She’d kick my ass in arm wrestling!”

Yup. That’s my new ongoing goal. Guns of steal. I have a barbell, dumb bells, and a gym membership. I’ll do my research, lift what is feasible, manipulate moves to adhere to my issues…I can do this. I want to do this. Arthritis is a serious thing, but I don’t want to sit back and take it. I want to fight back, press its buttons, protect my wrists and shoulders by being proactive. I did that for my heart and arteries and other internal organs when I lost weight. This challenge is no different.

Having said that, I’m always up for additional challenges, so I’d love to hear from you about your challenges. What goals do you set for your body? Who and what motivates you? Send me an email or post a comment. Share your goals. Maintenance needn’t be all there is, right?

July Thanksgiving

By Barbara Berkeley

I realize that the pilgrims feasted with the Indians sometime in November, but at least here in Ohio, early July is the time for Thanksgiving.

Last night, Don and I sat on the hood of our car surrounded by at least 500 people we’d never seen before in the parking lot of a strip mall. As the sky darkened, kids ran circles around the parked SUVs and couples hauled out folding chairs and blankets. A few random cherry bombs exploded in a field behind the Burger King and here and there a small rocket climbed shakily into the sky. The neon lights shimmered. They sky grew black and the clouds disappeared. There was a hum of noise, the shouts of children, the buzz of expectation. Then, suddenly an enormous lavender rocket burst in the sky above the Giant Eagle supermarket and the gorgeous show was on. Huge white bouquets that opened out like exploding blossoms, turning blue at the last moment. Fountains of white bombs and glitter. Booms that rocked the walls of the cars and caused kids to clap their hands over their ears. And a full half-hour later, the finale. Hundreds of cannons throwing multicolored shells into the air all at once, ending with a deafening, glittering gold shell that seemed to take up half the sky.

The fireworks on the fourth were really just an echo of a perfect July day. Their colors recalled our brilliant early summer garden: midnight blue delphiniums, deep red monarda and mounds of white hydrangea. The soaring shells were an abstract painting of the swallows wheeling over our barn.

How perfectly nature arranges things and how much there is to enjoy. Nature is bountiful, but (hurricanes and floods aside) rarely excessive. Once, when I was a lot younger, I sat on the side of a road hitching a ride with a friend. The day was hot and lazy and no one was stopping to pick us up. To keep myself busy, I played a game. I took a handful of small rocks and dropped them thoughtlessly onto the grass. Each time I dropped them, they made a beautiful pattern. Then, I tried to arrange the rocks in an interesting pattern on purpose. No matter how many times I tried, I could never make the rocks look as if they were natural or artistic. The simple interaction of nature’s gravity on those little pebbles produced something more beautiful than anything I could create.

Summer lets us live in nature again. We welcome the opportunity every year. Even our pets feel the difference. Charles P. Muffin, our large orange tabby-cat, has two lives. In the winter, he sits in a single chair sleeping and yawning. He eats large helpings of cat food. He grows to be the size of a bowling ball. When the first long days of summer begin, he jumps from his chair, goes to the back door and meows urgently. Thus begins his warm weather season. In the summer, he incessantly patrols the boundaries of our property. He diligently rids our gardens of chipmunks and moles. He chases rabbits. He paces under the bird feeder and annoys the nesting birds. He jumps for flies. He loses all of his fat and returns to the ancient promise of his genes. He is a hunter.

Watching Charles P., I can’t help but think that our own layers of fat represent nothing more than the measures of distance we put between ourselves and nature. As summer truly begins, I hope that you dig in the dirt, walk with the sun on your skin, listen to birdsong, eat what comes from the earth and enjoy all the blessings of a July Thanksgiving. 

Summertime…And the Livin’ is Easier

By Lynn Haraldson-Bering

I dreaded summer during those years – about 14 of the last 20 – when I weighed more than 200 pounds. I’d sweat and be physically miserable even on 75-degree days. On the most beautiful days, I’d stay inside in the air conditioning. When I was obese, I even planned my vacations around the temperature, preferring to go away in the late fall and winter so I didn’t have to deal with the heat.

Thankfully I’ve spent the last three summers worshipping the outdoors and remembering (and doing) what I loved about summer when I wasn’t obese, namely biking, bird-watching and gardening.

My husband bought me a bike after I hit my goal weight in February 2007. I hadn’t ridden a bike in years and I spent most of last year getting comfortable with the gears and navigating traffic. But this year, I’ve got the process down pat, like I did when I was a kid. Only now I hang on to the handlebars when going down a hill.

I love biking. It is singly the most Zen thing I do next to meditating. Sure it’s good exercise, but as you know, when you’re maintaining a reduced body, you need more than exercise to keep you motivated and focused. You have to have fun things you didn’t do before to look forward to, and biking is one of those things I crave to do every weekend. Here’s the blog I wrote last year about my new bike: Bicycle, Bicycle, Bicycle.

I’m writing to you now while sitting outside on my deck behind our green house. It’s a small deck – about 12 by 14 feet – and surrounded on two sides by raised-bed perennial gardens. I’ve always kept some type of garden, regardless of my weight, but the process of planting, weeding, adding mulch, and pruning is much easier with a reduced body.

I’m not a fancy gardener by any means, and I usually plant things in the wrong order of height, but my gardens are good friends to me. The Shasta daisies are in full bloom, as are the Asiatic lilies, chives, coreopsis, summer clematis, and a few other plants that are pretty and the bees like but I have no idea what they are. Soon the mums, coneflowers, phlox and sunflowers will bloom. The basil, cilantro and oregano are growing like crazy, the rosemary is doing what rosemary does (this is the first time I’ve planted it so I’m not sure what it’s “supposed” to do), and the sage and lavender seem to be getting along growing side by side.

I can get pretty uptight and nervous in maintenance, always wondering if I’m eating the right thing and exercising the right way. So gardening – everything from planning to creating to sitting back and enjoying the plants be plants – is one way I stay centered. Here’s a link to the blog I wrote last year when my gardens and deck were being built: The Garden Of Lynn.

Watching birds is another way I focus. I have four general bird feeders, a finch feeder and a sunflower seed feeder. When Barbara and I were talking on the phone last week, I was sitting on the deck and a bird I didn't recognize stopped at the sunflower feeder. I mentioned it to Barbara in passing, saying simply, “Hmmmm…I wonder what that bird is…” and she immediately asked me to describe it. She wrote to me later and confirmed that it was a juvenile Downey woodpecker.

I was so happy to learn we shared an interest in birds! Sometimes when you get to know someone based on one common interest, it’s easy to forget that you might have other things in common, too. As people maintaining weight loss, it’s easy for us to get lost in talking about the nuts and bolts of maintenance – food and exercise – but it’s important to remember we share more than that in common. We’re under the umbrella of being human, so my hope is that through this website and in meeting others in your life who are maintaining their weight, you find true friendship based on lots of commonalities and not just “diet secrets.”

I have watermelon, strawberries, cantaloupe and blueberries in the refrigerator – summer at its finest. I brewed some iced tea and put some cucumber salad to soaking in brine. I love that I can take a walk outside most days and ride my bike and garden even on the warmest western PA days. While I don’t beat myself up for missing so many hot, beautiful summers in the past, I will remember these current summer days to help keep me focused on what’s best about maintaining my weight loss.

What’s In Your Life Charter?

By Barbara Berkeley

I enjoyed Lynn’s last post especially. Not only did it resonate with the essence of maintenance, but it was completely familiar. I suspect we’ve all come to pretty much the same way of feeling about the process of keeping weight off for a lifetime. In my soon-to-be-released book on maintenance, I discuss the usefulness of establishing a “life charter” to help clarify this permanent commitment. After reading Lynn’s blog, and following my challenge to readers to describe their maintenance plans, I realized that I was actually asking you to define your own Life Charter. Essentially, a Life Charter is what Lynn described in her post.

Going a bit further with this idea, I decided to reproduce the section of the book that describes this idea. If you have not already put a clear form to your maintenance pledge, please consider doing so. I think that you will find that, like other pledges, a formal pledge to yourself creates a special commitment.

Establishing A Life Charter (exerpted from Refuse to Regain, Quilldriver Books, 2008)

Let’s call your permanent eating plan your Life Charter. A Life Charter must be based on your beliefs about food and health. Your greatest job as a new maintainer is to create this plan and refine it so that it fits your tastes. This plan is like a government’s constitution. It is based on principles and rules, but should be basic enough that its framework can be easily committed to memory. Portability and ease of use are key. Once you establish your Life Charter, you should be able to consult it mentally to locate the guidelines for any eating situation.

As an example, let me share my own Charter with you. Mine is based on my belief in eating scarcely and in consuming a Primarian diet. It is constructed to keep me at a low, healthy weight based on my belief that lower weights convey the best lifelong health outcomes. My Charter also reflects my belief that healthy nutrition can only work in the setting of a body that runs well, and therefore includes a commitment to exercise.

The primary goal of my Charter is to achieve the longest possible life in the best possible health, hopefully avoiding periods of illness or disability as I age. A secondary goal, important to me personally, is to properly honor the gift of life I have been given and to appreciate the miraculous nature of my body by treating it with utmost respect.

Here is my Life Charter:

1. I eat one major meal per day, and 90% of my diet is Primarian.
2. I eat starches and sugars extremely rarely.
3. I eat one allowable treat daily (more if the scale cooperates).
4. I eat processed foods extremely rarely.
5. I eat no trans fats and very few saturated fats.
6. I honor my body by not allowing junk foods to enter.
7. When I gain weight, I immediately reduce to below Scream Weight (the highest weight I allow myself to get to).
8. I work out vigorously six days per week.

My plan is utterly portable and has become second nature. When I am invited to a wedding, I know that I will be skipping any fatty cuts of meat (saturated fat) and the wedding cake (modern starch and sugar plus saturated fat). I will have eaten lightly for the rest of the day because I will have planned the wedding dinner as my one major meal. If I’m hungry after the party, I know I can have my one allowable treat, usually a good sized dish of low fat ice cream.

What about bread, grains, pasta, corn, rice and potatoes? I am 90% Primarian, which gives me the option to indulge in these very occasionally. The longer I spend as a Primarian, though, the less I want to deviate. I usually am aware that I can have a piece of that bread if I really want it, but I almost always opt out. I think that you will be surprised at how much easier food choice becomes when you have absolute guidelines.

Resolve not to be swayed by what others are eating or by their comments. Just as a vegetarian does not eat roast beef simply because others at the table are chowing down, so you must learn to rely on the wisdom of your Life Charter. Be proud of your plan and make every attempt to follow it staunchly. Many vegetarians avoid meat to protect the rights of animals and to spare them unnecessary suffering. Their motives in following an alternative diet are not questioned, nor should yours be. Remember that you have an equally noble goal: to preserve a human body’s optimal health and function (yours!)

Despite all the ideas about eating I’ve suggested, your Charter may turn out looking very different from mine. I don’t ask you to accept every idea I put forth, but rather to see what works for you and to follow your Charter faithfully, daily, and NOT moderately.

Lynn's "Balance Plan"

By Lynn Haraldson-Bering

Have you seen or perhaps even used a balance board? It’s basically a 2-foot by 1-foot wooden board with a rollerball underneath. The idea is to stand on it while performing other exercises such as lifting free weights. The goal is to teach the body how to balance itself, to be more stable.

The first time I got on one of those suckers, I felt like I was on an amusement park ride. I was all over the place! Wobbling here, wobbling there. I could barely stay on the thing, let alone lift weights at the same time.

Over time, however, my body adjusted to the subtle movement of the rollerball and I learned to trust my instincts – to feel the rocking back and forth and to stay stable – as I concentrated on lifting weights. I found the balance.

And so it is with weight loss/weight maintenance. As reader/fellow maintainer Susan said in a comment posted to Barbara’s recent blog, “Perfection is not the key to maintenance. It is finding balance you can live with.”

In response to Barbara’s challenge that we, those of us maintaining our reduced bodies, name and explain our “lifestyle change” plan that works for us, I offer “The Balance Plan” (or as I’ve nicknamed it: “How Lynn Walks and Chews Gum at the Same Time”)

The Balance Plan incorporates everything in my life. I blog, I answer email, work out, feed the birds, water the plants, babysit my granddaughter, eat, sleep, shower, go to parties, and go on vacation and all the while, maintenance buzzes in the background. It’s always with me, around me, and in me. It is me.

I’m adopting as my credo something my friend Sondra wrote in a comment: “I choose to stand my ground that I will put what is best for me first.”

Amen.

To maintain my weight loss, I’m learning to rely on my instinct and what “feels” right, in the same way I trust my body will keep me balanced on a wobble board. I also eat, as Vickie posted in her comment, whole foods as close to their natural state, most of the time. I allow for chocolate and pudding and vices such as that, but always, always in moderation. I still use, as a tool, the Points system to help me gauge my overall food intake, but even that is becoming more “natural” for me to determine. My goal is to one day eat in total accordance to my body’s needs.

I’ve always said there’s a reason why pregnancy is supposed to take 9 months. We need time to prepare. There’s a reason why weight loss isn’t overnight. We need time to prepare for maintenance. Whether you lost weight through diet and exercise alone or with some kind of surgery, how you lost the weight is only a preparatory class for maintenance and forever, and as Sondra said, you have to change your lifestyle to get to goal.

It's frustrating to read posts on my favorite Weight Watchers discussion board from people returning from vacation bragging about how much food they ate and how “off plan” they were. They were on a “food vacation,” happy and content to stuff themselves with all their old favorites.

In real life – in real weight loss and in real maintenance – there are no such “food vacations.” Yes, there are times when we might indulge in some particular food, but we know it can’t be all the time and we know that to continue our maintenance balance, we must plan for such splurges. And as Susan reminds us, “…the most important thing is getting right back to good/clean eating after a couple of not so great meals.”

When these people return from their food vacations, the often post that they are are sad to get “back on plan.” They miss their old lifestyle. They see the new lifestyle they must embrace and resist it, like it’s their enemy.

On the Balance Plan, I understand that I have to be a friend to my body, to my food choices, and my exercise regimen, and to stand on the same side as my “lifestyle change,” to be fully immersed in it and not leave it at home when I go on vacation or out with friends or to a party or on a picnic. I take it with me at all times because it’s who I am, just as sure as I am a 44-year-old female.

The Balance Plan is open to new ideas and research. I educate myself and question “authority.” I ask lots of questions, try new foods and various approaches to obtaining the right nutrients. As I said earlier, I trust my instinct. I trust there’s a balance.

If I fall of the balance board, I get right back on. Not getting back on is not an option just as I can’t choose to not be 5’5” tall. The Balance Plan is innate so its “rules” change from person to person. But in the end, it’s about being your own best friend – walking and chewing gum at the same time, so to speak. 

Let’s Get Specific

By Barbara Berkeley

Mrs. Irving, our ninth-grade English teacher, was the terror of Snyder High School. Standing just under five feet, clad in voluminous orthopedic “space shoes” and a shapeless shift, Mrs. Irving still managed to strike fear into our 15-year-old hearts. With her shock of white hair, her smear of blood red lipstick and her piercing glare, she commanded the classroom. Woe to the student whose homework was left undone or who conveniently forgot to read the assignment. Mrs. Heller’s tiny frame would shake with indignation as the poor offender was singled out and subsequently reduced to a trembling mass of teen-aged jelly.

As an aspiring writer (medical school came much later…a story for another day), I found Mrs. Irving’s opinion of my stories and essays to be immensely important. If she smiled and showed nicotine-stained teeth as she handed back my paper, my day was made. Just as frequently, though, my poor works came back slahed with bold red marks. Her favorite comment was: “Vague! Vague! Vague!” scrawled across the top in oversized crayon.

Mrs. Irving liked specific writing. For her, the greatest sin was language that didn’t go anywhere.

Some teachers change your life and I believe Mrs. Irving changed mine. She helped me to believe that I could write. Along the way, her fierce devotion to good, clear language infected me as well. So, it is in honor of Mrs. Irving that I now prepare to do battle with the vaguest phrase in the language of maintenance: “LIFESTYLE CHANGE”. Mrs. Irving, I hope you would be proud of me.

Lifestyle change. As in, “I don’t rely consider it a diet, it’s more of a LIFESTYLE CHANGE”. Or, “I know I really have to make a LIFESTYLE CHANGE” if I’m going to keep this weight off permanently.

These two words drive me utterly batty because they are vague, vague, vague. What the heck is a lifestyle change? It is a phrase with the cloudiest possible shape; a generalization, a feeling. Worse, it means different things to different people. For most, it suggests some sort of permanent shift in their attitude toward food and exercise; less of one, more of another. But let’s apply such a vague notion to the process of weight loss and see where we get. Suppose someone who wants to lose weight says, “I really have to diet.” That’s all well and good. But simply stating that fact tells us nothing about the specific behaviors needed to get the scale to move. When people diet, they generally reference a plan: Atkins, South Beach, Weight Watchers, Jenny Craig. If we know someone is an Atkins dieter, we automatically know the rules they follow (lots of meat and no carbs). If someone else wants to reproduce this person’s success, they know exactly what to do. They buy the book, they look at the website, they follow the rules.

On the other hand, maintainers have no specific plans to describe their “lifestyle changes”. We’ve never been able to move from the general to the specific. It’s no wonder that newcomers to maintenance have to invent the process for themselves. They have to figure out what “lifestyle change” means because we haven’t developed a number of maintenance plans that are named and have rules. Maintenance remains vague, vague, vague.

I’ve attempted to introduce the Primarian approach as a lifestyle changing plan. But just as there are many ways to diet, there are probably many ways to maintain. These techniques need names and specifics. Who would know more about these plans than the people who’ve invented them? For this reason I’m asking you, our readers, if you have any names and plans to contribute. Can you put the plan that’s working for you into a form that has clear rules and a title? To do this, be creative. Make up a compelling plan name (or name it after yourself!) and then flesh out the details. Specify the plan rules for foods consumed, monitoring techniques, exercise frequency and any other elements that make it work.

If we can start promoting weight maintenance plans that work, the process of transitioning to maintenance will be so much easier for those that come after us. Dare to be great! Here is your shot at maintenance immortality!

Can’t wait to hear from you!

Adding Up The Numbers

By Lynn Haraldson-Bering

If I measure once, I have to measure ten more times: my waistline. Some experts say to measure your waist at the belly button and some at the “natural” waistline. For me, that’s at least a 2-inch difference in numbers! If I go by the belly button measurement, my waist-hip ratio is “high” and I’m allegedly at risk for heart disease and diabetes. If I use the waist measurement from my natural waist, where it curves in, I’m fine. 

Very frustrating.

So I posed the question in an email to Barbara: Where exactly am I supposed to measure? She wrote back: “The answer is that we really should call it a ‘belly circumference’ as calling is waist circumference is a little euphemistic. You're supposed to measure just above the top of the hip bones on your sides, which usually corresponds to the belly button in most people.  In your case, as I've said, some extra external fat that's left over from your weight loss probably doesn't count.  I'm sure you have no visceral fat at all, and that's what we're worried about.”

That was good news. Visceral fat can only be measured by a CAT scan so a simple measuring tape can’t project the entire health-risk picture. Larger waistlines mean more visceral fat, the stuff that plays a major role in heart disease, diabetes, high blood pressure and Metabolic Syndrome. What I have around my belly now (and causing me this measurement distress) is excess skin. Not much, but enough where it impacts that waist (or belly) measurement a bit.

I started keeping a close eye on my waist/belly measurement when I got closer  to my weight-loss goal, sometime around September 2006. I’m more an apple than a pear, prone to carrying more fat around my stomach than my hips (thanks, Dad). So once I got close to goal-weight range, I took a look at other numbers than simply my weight. What was my body fat percentage? My waist-hip ratio? How did those numbers, including the scale, fit in with my Body Mass Index?

As a guideline, a BMI under  25 is considered “acceptable.” Yet when my BMI hit 25 and I was no longer considered “overweight,” my waist size was still 34 inches, my hips were 43.5 and I weighed 153 pounds. These numbers didn’t add up to “goal” for me. I wasn’t comfortable at the edge of “normal,” so I did some research.

While I didn’t know Barbara back when I was trying to figure out exactly where “goal” was, I did find that many experts, including Dr. Oz, recommended the same thing she does – using waist size as a better indicator of “ideal weight” than the scale. As a general guideline, the “ideal” waist size for a woman is 32.5 inches and 35 inches for a man. (Please note that Dr. Oz also says that , as a guideline, a woman’s waist size should be half her height, which puts me (at 5’5.5” tall) at a “healthy” 32.5 inches maximum, but what about my daughter who is 5’8” tall? Does this mean she’d still be healthy with a 34-inch waist? You can see how confusing this can all get.)

I decided, in the end, to declare goal when my waist measured 31.5 inches. I reached that goal in February 2007. The scale read 138 pounds and my BMI was 22.6. My body wasn’t done, though, and I lost another 10 pounds and, depending on what time of day I measure, and  another 1 to 1.5 inches off my waist. My BMI is 21.1. These numbers feel much more comfortable than the standard recommended maximum.

FYI: I recommend reading an article at the Harvard School of Public Health regarding healthy waist size if you want more information. (Click here.) I wish I’d seen this a few years ago.

So…the question of the day is: Do your numbers add up for you? Or are you still wedded to the scale?

As Barbara told me recently, “The bottom line is, the less fat around the middle, the less fat inside the middle part of the body.”

That’s advice we can live with. 

I’d love to hear your numbers/waistline stories. Please send us your comments and email.

Does Your Body Want to Regain?

By Barbara Berkeley

Bravo to Lynn and her last entry on maintenance! Indeed, maintenance is the journey. Weight loss is simply the first step on the path. Time and again I watch people make a rookie error: assuming that their journey is finished once they lose weight. We all know where that ends up….back in the large- sized clothes in short order.

But what of those who decide to pay serious attention to maintenance? They are left with the task of inventing maintenance all on their own. There is very little support for maintainers compared to what’s out there for dieters. For this reason, I know that most of you are anxiously looking for guidance about your “maintaining body”. How does it store fat now? What has happened to your metabolism? Is regain inevitable?

In looking for the information, you will come across many magazine articles and newspaper headlines that seem to offer answers. You will hear about studies, experts and theories. As obesity becomes a more pressing problem for our nation, these articles will be coming thick and fast. They already are.

My advice to you is: be careful about what you accept as truth. Always filter the information through your own experience. If it doesn’t ring true to you, there’s probably a reason. As someone who is inventing his or her own maintenance from scratch, you are the one who is in real possession of the truth.

Here’s what I mean. In the article Lynn referenced in her last post (LA Times), there a number of statements from experts. I take many of these with a grain of salt and I encourage you to do the same. Here are some examples:

Expert: “The recent estimates are that 5 percent to 10 percent of people are successful at keeping weight off on a long-term basis."

My response: Well this is discouraging! But, in fact, that number is most likely wrong. In reality, the number of maintainers who keep their weight off long term is unknown. The 6,000 people in the National Weight Control Registry (NWCR) are highly successful at long term maintenance, for example. The majority are maintaining successfully, not 5 percent! The 5-10 percent success figure is based on an old quote that gets recycled again and again and is not borne out by any kind of research.

Expert: “Metabolism has changed: the body now needs about eight fewer calories per day for each pound of weight that was lost. That means someone who loses 40 pounds will require about 320 calories fewer each day than they did before the weight loss.”

My Response: The article makes you think that something bad happens to your metabolism after you lose weight, but much of the data doesn’t support this. Information published by the NWCR shows that the metabolism of POWs (previously overweights) who exercise is the same as that of NOWs (never overweights) of the same size. For example: if you weighed 200 pounds and you now weight 140, you burn fewer calories now. But you burn the same number of calories as any other 140 pound person. Smaller bodies burn fewer calories because they take less energy to move around. So yes, it’s true that you burn fewer calories when you are reduced, but not because of a problem…which is what this quote seems to say. The new calorie burn is appropriate for your new size.

Expert: "The hormone leptin, for example, is a major appetite regulator -- it tells the body to stop eating and store fat after meals. Some people may be genetically prone to having lower leptin levels, making them more prone to obesity. But studies also show that, after a weight loss, leptin levels are lower than what they used to be. That means appetite is less easily quelled. It's like a car that has suddenly lost its brakes."

My Response: This information seems important, but there are some major distortions. First, how about the people who can’t avoid obesity because of genetically low leptin levels? It turns out that this condition is vanishingly rare…hardly ever described in fact…. but the article does not tell you this. You are left to wonder whether you have leptin deficiency. You don’t. Second: most obese people make too much leptin. You would think that this would tell the body to stop eating, but it doesn’t because obese people have leptin that isn’t working normally. When they lose weight leptin works better and levels can return to normal. So, in fact, just because leptin levels go down it doesn’t follow that your appetite is like a car without brakes. Perhaps the brakes are working more efficiently, not less.

Expert: "Moreover, animal studies show that most of the regained weight is distributed as visceral fat, the abdominal paunch that is linked to heart disease and diabetes."

My response: This is an animal study. Has this been shown convincingly in humans? Not that I know of. The second part of the article observes that maintenance appears to get easier once its techniques are learned…after the first year or two. This doesn’t seem to make sense if we believe what the “experts” have said; that we are doomed to be perpetually tortured by hunger once we lose weight and that every neurological and endocrine process is working to regain pounds. If that’s true, how can behavioral changes overcome this permanent barrage? Here’s where your own experience comes in. Most successful maintainers will tell you that a commitment to deep, permanent behavior change works. Their biology is not their destiny!

The moral of this story? Be very careful about making too much of the scientific information you read. Remember that the science of obesity is very young and still very contradictory. Print articles and TV stories like to grab headlines and often publicize study results that are later proven wrong. A good source for scientific information on weight and nutrition is the Harvard School of Public Health (a link appears on the right). Harvard looks at all the studies and writes conservatively about what is truly known of the evidence.

More importantly, remember that the largest impediment to keeping your weight off is not your biology. It is the force of the overeating culture around you. While I do believe that POWs are forever more prone to weight gain than NOWs, the outcome is not pre-determined. Maintenance is learnable. As Lynn has said, “…as each month passes, I get better at it.” Lynn’s story, as well as those of countless other maintainers, suggests that our bodies are not trying as hard to regain their weight as the LA Times article might suggest.