On calories, alcohol and health and exercise efforts...
I tried beer a couple of times in high school and was unimpressed. In college I grew to love it and have maintained that sentiment ever since. I drink beer almost every day, sometimes in large quantities. In college I grew to love imports, now it's craft beer, mostly IPA.
Over the years my nightly totals have gradually increased, from 1-3 in the early days to 4-7 and even more now. I don't drink much else except for the occasional Irish whiskey. Whatever health or fitness program I've embarked upon over the years, I've always kept beer drinking more or less separate and tried to adjust other things in order to preserve this habit.
I was about 31 when I first noticed myself getting out of shape and middle aged looking. I've always been slim and never had a "weight problem". That is to say, I've always cut a narrow profile and don't seem to put on fat easily. But when I do it's all belly and seems to be almost all visceral as opposed to cutaneous. So I guess I put IN fat rather than put ON fat. I buy 33" waist pants and have for years and years, which is enviably small for a 51 year old man. And I have to wear a belt. However, if I wore my pants like my grandpa did (several inches above the belly button) I'd have to pick a much larger size.
At any rate, it's not a good look (although quite common) and not a good health attribute.
Selective Attention
When I was 31 and noticed the paunch for the first time, I decided to do two things about it:
1) I would adjust my diet so that I would eat all the same things I was currently eating, but less of it. Knowing I didn't want to count calories, I would "always leave the table a little bit hungry", as I always recalled my dad quoting that phrase with regard to his grandfather, who apparently said this a lot and was always thin and athletic and lived to be in his mid 90s. The main purpose of this approach is that you reduce your calories but don't have to change what you eat. Seems simple.
2) I would become "a runner". That is to say "a jogger". And I would do it every day. When I was young I was a runner, but only in the sense of trying to get to the finish line as fast as possible in a full sprint. I was pretty fast. I won a few 100 yard dashes in junior high and was also on the record-setting 400 m relay team. I never tried distance "running" then or any other time. For good reason.
The implied but not stated (but certainly thought) #3 in this strategy is "beer drinking gets to stay as it is".
At any rate, I suspect every person who ever decided they needed to lose weight and without much experience and without doing much soul searching or research on the subject and who is not obviously "fat" or obese and never has been, has tried some version of both of those two things. It's natural to think "oh, if I just eat less and run every day I'll be skinny." Runners are skinny, right?
Generally yes, runners are skinny, but it's largely NOT because running makes you skinny, but rather that skinny people run.
Even though it was 20 years ago, I recall quite clearly how both of these efforts went and how it felt to try them. If I went to Taco Bell for lunch (which I used to do) and would have ordered 3 hard tacos and 3 soft tacos (which I would have done), I would instead order 3/5 to half this, so maybe 2 of one and 1 of the other. I also cut out between meal snacking (except beer). Breakfast was usually two pieces of fruit and maybe a packet of Toastchee cheese crackers. I never ate until full. I was also vegetarian (which is not necessarily either here or there.)
I started jogging, limping really, in the neighborhood. I did it every day (that was my rule then as it is now) and in not too much time was up to somewhere around 4 or 5 slow miles a day. It was horrible.
On Calories
The days of thinking "all calories are created equal" are gone, thankfully. There may be some holdouts but most people now understand that "metabolically deranging" calories from sugar and fructose are worse than the same number of calories from protein or a good fat. So while the adage that you should take in fewer calories than you spend in order to lose weight is technically true, it's really not that simple. It works in theory but is difficult in practice. Nonetheless, my efforts 20 years ago I suppose were the most straightforward way I could think of to follow this dubious advice.
It worked. I lost at least fifteen pounds and looked better and started to notice abdominal muscles. I also met the woman who would become my wife. However, I was hungry all the time, and in short order (as luck would have it), I developed a nasty sciatica problem from all the running and no resting. I had to quit running and frankly I don't recall what happened after that aside from drifting back. But the sciatica went away and never came back. The gut, however, came back. And the beer drinking never went away so it didn't have to come back.
Nowadays I know that a simple focus on calories in and calories out is not sufficient. HOWEVER, I also understand that some knowledge of daily caloric requirements and intake is necessary in order to successfully lose fat. And it's extremely easy to under-estimate your daily calorie intake.
A good example of this problem is seen in my experience tracking calories using My Fitness Pal. I am told I need to stay in the low 2000s to achieve my goals given my exercise habits. This seems correct. And My Fitness Pal does a very good job of helping me estimate how many calories I've consumed every day. This, I believe, is its real value. Helping me estimate calories in. And for this reason it's worth using. I would like to get to the point, with enough practice, to be able to look at a meal and understand that it's 700 calories give or take, for example.
However, as far as exercise is concerned I believe that My Fitness Pal leads one astray. First, it doesn't seem to care about my body-weight calisthenics. It seems to want me to put in a "weight" before it does any calorie calculation at all. That's fine. It seems to be far more interested in "aerobic" or "cardio" type of exercise, leading me to believe that it's still in the old school in terms of burning calories and the benefit to weight loss. So, on days when I ride to work, which is 14.7 rather hilly miles each way (done a few days a week, up to four), for a total of almost 30 miles a day (and a total of 2.5 to 2.75 hours), it gives me roughly double the number of calories to maintain goal. And I'm not a be-spandexed carbon hero either. I'm as slow as they come out there, and proud of it. So I call it "slow biking" in My Fitness Pal. It seems to think that this gives me another 1800 or so calories per day. I just don't think that's accurate, yet it's tempting to look at and think "WOW, that means I can drink my body-weight in beer tonight and it's not going to make me fat(ter)!"
I've been recording my calories and exercise fairly consistently in My Fitness Pal over the last couple of weeks (and not lying about the beer), and I have consistently met the goals it tells me I need to meet in order to lose one pound a week. And although my exercise performance remains strong and consistent and my arm veins are visible and my push-up totals are increasing, my pants are uncomfortable, my gut is bloated and embarrassing when viewed from the side, and my body weight has not budged one iota. For a year, really.
Why? A number of reasons I suppose. Beer is more like sugar than whole wheat pasta? Beer drinking and weight loss goals do not get along and never will? I'm in a beer-fueled haze of self-deceit? Yes, yes, yes and yes. And I know this is one of those things that you could have guessed or said "I could have told you that 30 years ago and saved you all the trouble!" (but that just means that you're not a beer drinker!) and everyone's grandma always knew. I know, I know.
But this post, this BLOG, is about figuring things out for yourself and deconstructing the dogma.
So I've known for a long time without saying as much, and now I know for sure, WHILE saying as much, that consistent beer drinking and weight loss cannot coexist despite exercise volume and consistent calorie goals met. Just another example of the cruel world in which we live.
Next post: what to do about it.
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