2009.36 Standing next to a slim 18 year-old blonde in a bikini can hurt!
It can be fatal even, for your morale.
A little over a year ago in California, we took our niece with us for a week. After coming back home and looking at the usual collection of family photos, I saw the one with her next to me and suddenly realized "I am way over my optimal BMI". I looked like a double-wide trailer next to a sleek, streamlined sports model. It's bad enough getting older, but no one can turn time around. At best you can alleviate its effects by keeping healthy and active. You can control your weight with motivation.
Well, something had to be done, so I took action. First, I joined an online program for men - they don't pay me to promote them so why should I. The main gain was the calculator that evaluated fiber, calories and fat intake. This is when I learned that, in the proper proportion, fiber will help you lose weight without actually depriving yourself of tasty foods.
After I put together a diet based on the results of fat, calories and fiber, I followed it for about three weeks and then lightened it up and kept on a reduced intake for another three. At the end of that time, I was well within the recommended BMI for my height and in fact I weighed less than I had for years.
Weight is fairly easy to lose, but harder to keep off, especially if you have occasion to go to wine tastings and press lunches and wine dinners. That's why I waited a whole year before posting this.
Don't ever slather anything!
Breakfast: I perfected the method of spreading the thinnest layer of jam on my wheat muffins. They had even more flavor, since the sweetness stopped dominating the taste. Snacks: I love fat: peanut butter, cheese and rich sauces. The comté and cheedar cheeses I like contain around 40% fat. My best trick is to eat stronger flavored cheeses like Roquefort (blue) cheese. Another approach is to use much thinner slicing.
"Breakfast like a prince, dinner like a pauper"
Good advice always worth repeating, don't eat late. Surprisingly, it's sometimes good to eat more often or even as many times as you can during the day, naturally making an effort to eat healthy things like veg and fruit. One way I lost weight very quickly years ago was packing half sandwiches of a little peanut butter and paper thin banana slices on wheat bread, thinking of it like eating a candy bar. Drinking a lot of water, coffee or tea with little or no sugar will help. Avoid artificial sweeteners, they give you a false sense of "security". Eat less fat, less sweet, don't just pretend you are doing so with so called low fat stuff and artificial sweeteners. They actually are worse the sugar in some ways.
Finding good snacks will help you lose weight, and they needn't be limited to the well-known items like celery and carrot sticks. In my most motivated times, I used to eat radishes before lunch or dinner. They have strong flavor and almost no calories, pretty much the advantage of celery. The other great snack tip is unflavored rice cakes. Spread a thin layer of strong-flavored cheese or peanut butter on them and if you learn how to make the amount of fat very low, you can eat two or three of these as a snack with water or coffee or tea. Finding the snack you like challenge. If what I mentioned doesn't appeal to you, there must be something out there that does.
After six weeks, I ended up losing 14% of my body weight. That was 17 months ago and I am still at the same weight I was at the end of my efforts. From time to time, I splurge on Champagne, beer or wine, sweets and fat (even for more than one day in a row), but I always manage to make it back down within a few days. I found I just needed to adjust my intake and stay with that idea of behavior modification.
Now I feel like going to get my picture taken next to as many cute slim young women as possible, but that brings other dangers to my health into play.
