My BodyBlog

My posts about dieting failures, eating and food have mostly been focused on the way my attitudes and perceptions have evolved during my lifetime.  I have been examining the mental aspect of the subject, and painting a picture for how I have overcome the mental and emotional barriers that were preventing me from eating in a positive and healthy way.  In this post I get to the specifics about how my attitude and therefore my behavior transformed in a major way in 2007.  In the end, its all comes down to the the food, so its time talk about it all, the good, the bad, and the ugly.

In January, 2007 I had been working out for 34 months.  I had succeeded in toning up, building some good muscle mass, and losing a lot of body fat on my legs, arms, shoulders, and chest.  I had lost some fat on my stomach and hips, but still had a long way to go there.

I was very happy with my progress.  I was doing more than sticking to my workouts, I was thriving at them.  Going to the gym had become one of the best parts of my life, and I was feeling great.  Except when it came to one thing.  My eating.  Up to that point, I was content to continue eating just about everything I wanted, as long as I was still seeing positive changes in my body.  I was justifying my bad eating habits, saying to myself "my workouts are offsetting that and more besides!"

Here’s how I was eating:  I was making some healthy food choices, thanks mostly to some habits formed during my Weight Watchers days.  For example, I never deep-fried food at home, and had it rarely in restaurants.  I shied away from chicken skin and gravies.  I tried to eat some vegetables and fruit everyday, and I always drank skim milk and sugar-free sodas.  On the other hand, I made a lot of unhealthy choices everyday too.  Potatoe chips, cheese sticks, chocolate bars, ice cream, baked goods, takeout burgers and fries, pastries from coffee shops, pizza, white bread and processed meats were regular foods for me.  Along with many unhealthy foods, I was eating a lot for pleasure, especially in the evenings after 9 o’clock.  Not good.  In spite of this, I was losing body fat, thanks to daily walks and my 3 to 4 times per week gym workouts.  This is a great tribute to the power of physical activity.

Now, the start of a new year was always my time to start a new diet.  Of course, I always failed.  In January, 2007, it was different.  I looked at myself in the mirror, and thought "I’ve come a long way.  But just look at my gut.  Why am I still fat there?  I know I can lose body fat, why shouldn’t I be able to do it faster?"  Of course, I had my answer.  The junk food and fast food.  I was pissed off with myself.  Just think of the progress I could have made if I hadn’t been eating all that garbage for the last 34 months!  I knew how to eat right, I even enjoyed many healthy foods, I just enjoyed all the other stuff too and didn’t know how to break my long-held habits!  It was as if I briefly became another person when I made unhealthy choices.  A part of my mind took over my actions and all good intentions and thoughts were wiped out for those short periods of time.  Immediately after eating junk, I’d come to my senses and remember how it was stopping me from having the body I wanted.  I’d feel guilt and regret.  The next day, it would happen again.  I knew that to go on a strict diet or try to cut out everything unhealthy at once wouldn’t work for me.  I’d been down that road before.  It never worked and I wasn’t willing to do that to myself again.  I decided to try to change my poor eating habits gradually. 

I identifed the biggest problem as my eating outside of regular meal times, especially before going to bed.  I tried to stop eating at this time.  Some nights I could, some I couldn’t.  It was especially hard when I’d do an evening workout.  If I finished working out at 10, I was starving by 10:30.  My body was telling me it needed nourishment to help it recover from the workout.  On those nights, I started eating two slices of white bread with thickly spread peanut butter.  That satisfied me, and although not great nutrition wise, it was a lot better than most of the things I used to be eating before bed.  I was able to stick with this first ‘food management strategy.’  I tied this change in behavior directly to my workouts.  I knew that over time, my new behavior for evening eating would help reduce my bodyfat.  This success motivated me to start making small changes with every other aspect of my eating that I knew was unhealthy.  From about March to a point in September, I was successful in cutting back significantly on junk food and the number of times I had fast food, plus I made better fast food choices (i.e. getting a small fries instead of large, or having chili or a baked potatoe).  During that period I was able to stop almost all impulse eating.  I started thinking about what I was about to eat, and to consciously evaluate if that food was going to help me improve my body.  Most times I made the healthy decision.  As my nutrition improved, I felt better, and was more motivated to eat right. 

In spite of all the improvement, I still had one major weakness: chocolate.  I had eaten chocolate every day for years, and my body and brain was not about to let it go without a fight.  If I went without chocolate for a couple of days I would get a craving that drove me to distraction and wouldn’t rest until I did something about it.  At first I’d have a cookie or a small piece of chocolate bar, but I soon found something better!  I started keeping a bag of semi-sweet chocolate chips on hand.  They are intended for baking, not for eating straight from the bag!  They have a chocolate taste while at the same time being bitter.  When I got the craving I’d take a handful of these and pop them in my mouth!  At first I enjoyed the taste, but after a couple of months of doing this I got sick of it and to my amazement, the craving started to be less powerful.  I still craved chocolate just about every day, but now I could satisfy the craving with only 3 or 4 small chips!

By the middle of September I was in a very good place.  My consumption of junk food and the most unhealthy of fast foods was reduced to a fraction of what it once was.  I was proud of myself, and content with my new food habits.  I wasn’t perfect, but I was a lot better than I was and a lot better than everyone I knew.  Then, I did something very stupid, but that ultimately would a very valuable experience.  My wife and I had a five day trip planned to another province.  For the first half I would be attending a conference, then we were going to do some sightseeing for the rest.  It was supposed to be a time of relaxaton.  Somewhere in the run-up to that trip my brain somehow got the idea that if I were to have a truly enjoyable vacation I had to forget about all of the eating rules I was living by and treat myself by indulging in whatever food I wanted.  After all, I had been so good, didn’t I deserve it?  So off we went and the eating binge started.  During the conference there were many functions where food was available and I took full advantage of it!  Buffet breakfasts with sausages, bacon and pastries!  Muffins, cookies, and pastries at every coffee break!  Sweet desserts with lunch!  And to top it all of, a buffet dinner where I stuffed myself like a pig.  I am ashamed to say that I ate so much at that buffet, I got up from the table, went to the washroom and puked.  I was uncomfortable for the rest of the evening, but did the eating stop?  Of course not, my vacation wasn’t over yet!

For the next three days I’m glad to say that the binging stopped, but I made regular unhealthy food choices.  Burgers and fries, nachos, belgian waffles with whipped cream, chinese food, potatoe chips, ice cream and chocolate bars were all on the menu.  The only saving grace on that trip was that for the last three days I kept on the move, going for several long walks.  When I got back home and settled into my regular routine, I had time to think about what I had done on vacation.  I was shocked that my eating could have gotten out of hand so quickly.  And all because of my attitude that vacation time equals eating whatever I want.  I realized how stupid that was.  Healthy choices were available to me at every meal, and there is no reason why I couldn’t have made them.  I’m sure I would have had just as enjoyable a time, probably more so since I would never have felt bloated and I sure as hell wouldn’t have ended up gourging and puking!

Home again, I took up my good eating habits and workout schedule as if nothing had happened.  Reflecting on it, I realized that the ‘mindless eating machine’ that briefly surfaced was a result of old habits that reasserted themselves because of my stupid attitude about what you needed to do on vacation to have a great time.  That eating machine was who I used to be.  It’s not who I’d become.  I’d found a level of personal satisfaction with living a healthy lifestyle that no food could ever again come close to providing me with.  My motivation to continue my body transformation was far stronger than any desire for the short-term pleasure that food could give me.  I knew at that point I would never again eat that way, no matter what was happening in my life or where I was in this world.  I had made a mistake and learned perhaps one of the most valuable lessons of my life:  The emotionally driven eater was gone, I was now a ‘food for fuel and nutrition’ eater, and nothing else.

So, at the end of September I found myself more stongly dedicated than ever to my healthy lifestyle.  I didn’t know it then, but a series of simple but important things were about to happen to raise my level of commitment, motivaton and progress to heights that I never thought I would experience!

Friday night is sacred to me.  It’s the one night of the week that is set aside for me to do whatever I want.  The rest of the week I fit my workouts around my work and home life, but on Friday night my workout is the priority.  It’s great to know that whatever happens during the week, I can count on Friday night for an intense, stress relieving workout.  The gym is usually pretty empty, so I don’t have to worry about my routine being interrupted and I can totally focus on what I’m doing.  This is Friday.  I planned to go to the gym at about 4 since I’m not working this week.  I was going to have an intense abs, biceps, and forarms workout.  I didn’t get there.  Mother Nature had other plans.  As it turns out, I had a different kind of workout!

When we woke up this morning, it was snowing.  A winter storm was forecasted, and it turned out to be more severe than expected.  It snowed and the wind howled until about 8 pm.  The gym is too far to walk in the snow, and the vehicles are parked in the driveway, not able to go anywhere until our snow-plow guy comes to clear our driveway, which won’t be until Saturday morning.  I got on my coat and high boots and went outdoors to do a little shoveling.  There was a big snowdrift blocking our main entrance, which happens often.  I retrieved the shovel and started in.  After a few scoops, I realized something:  what I was doing could be a great workout if I did it right!  I planted my feet, reached out and took a big scoop of snow.  The snow was heavy, but not so heavy that I couldn’t lift it in a controlled and slow way.  Lifting the shovel with both hands, I then rotated my body at the waist and using the resulting momentum and an extra push with my shoulders, I tossed the snow out of the way.  I repeated this motion dozens of times, always remembering to let my legs bear the weight, not my back, which is why so many people hurt themselves shoveling snow.

I did this for 45 minutes and felt like I had a good total body workout, especially my abs!  It was like doing standing twists, but it was better thanks to the extra weight.  I didn’t get out of breath or build up much of a sweat because I took my time and concentrated on my form.  I’ve been shovelling snow most of my life and it was always a chore that left me out of breath and exhausted.  In the past couple of years I haven’t found it that way, thanks to being fitter, and today I’ve gotten to the point where it was a pleasure!

I still regret having to miss my Friday night gym workout, but even the best laid plans don’t always pan out.  The important thing is that I did something positive for my body when I could very easily have just sat on the couch all night.  Back to the gym tomorrow night!

I woke up sore this morning.  Calves, quads, hamstrings, chest and triceps were all sore, to be exact.  And I love it!  It’s the type of soreness you know means that you have been working your muscles beyond their comfort zone, to the point where you know the workout you’re giving them is having a real impact.  It’s not pain from an injury or over-extending yourself.  It’s not the type of soreness or stiffness you get when you first start working out after being inactive for awhile.  This feeling is something unique, its your body telling you that it likes what you are doing to it and if you continue to treat it right you will be rewarded not only physically but mentally as well!

I’ve been sore like this before, but never so much at one time.  What did it?  I’ve made an extra effort to be active during my time away from work over Christmas.  Let me summarize.  Today is Friday.  I started five nights ago, with a great workout that included a personal best for deadlift, and also worked abs, back, and traps hard.  On Monday morning, Xmas eve, I went ice skating.  If you’ve read any of my blogs on this, you’ll know I’m a beginner.  Every time I go I’m getting better, and the result is that I’m working harder so it’s a great workout for my legs and for cardio too.  Later Monday, my wife and I went for a long, brisk walk.

Tuesday, Christmas day, we took a very long walk in the afternoon, about an hour and a half.  My legs were already sore before taking the walk from the deadlifts and skating.

The next day, Boxing day, I planned a late afternoon workout.  Before that though, yet another long, brisk walk!  At the gym I started by jogging 15 minutes on the treadmill.  This was a great milestone for me, since I always hated jogging and went for years without trying it again until about a month ago.  The most I had done before Boxing day was 10 minutes!  My workout consisted of bench press, triceps, chest and even calves!  Why I thought I needed to work calves after the skating, jogging, and all the walking, I’ll never know!

Thursday morning I got up and went skating at 9:30.  I felt the best ever on the ice.  Someone gave me a small tip - that I should focus on keeping my knees bent a little, so my body would be slightly forward.  They said this would lower my center of gravity and improve my balance and stride.  They were right!  I skated the best ever!  Doing this also meant that my hamstrings played a lot greater role in carrying my weight, instead of just my quads.  Later that day, I felt my hamstrings in a big way - but that didn’t stop my wife and I from taking another long, brisk walk!

So here we are today, Friday, and I am sore from a week of physical activity more intense than I’ve probably ever had in my entire lifetime.  I feel healthier, stronger, and feel better mentally than I have at any point in my life!  I had a gym workout planned for tonight, I was going to do abs, biceps and forarms, but Mother Nature had other plans (see my next blog).  If this is what soreness means for me, then bring it on!  

What is this food management process that I’ve been going on and on about?  For me, is it counting calories?  Measuring food portions?  Eating a certain number of meals at specific times during the day?  Eating a certain number of grams of protein or carbohydrates?  A loud NO to all of the above!  This approach may work well for others, and it may be necessary for a bodybuilder training for a competition, but I know it would never work for me.

Food has always caused me stress, whether I was dieting or not.  When eating poorly the stress came from feelings of guilt and disappointment.  When dieting the stress came from worrying about counting calories, weighing portions, unexpected cravings, cheating, checking my weight, and then eventually binging and giving up.

Life has enough stresses without food adding to it.  My strategy is to make food neutral in my life.  I am making eating something I do the same as sleep, shower, use the bathroom, or any other routine things we do on a daily basis.  Food has become stress free for me!

Dieters love to count calories, and counting grams of protein, carbs, fat, etc; is a lot more common now than it ever was.  Doing this takes time and effort, adding to the stress associated with the actual food reductions and changes being made.  Have you ever found yourself going 100 or 200 calories over your target amount?  Remember the feelings of guilt and failure this caused?  Negative emotions are a source of major stress not only on the mind but also on the body.  In my blogs I am promoting a lifestyle change.  Can I honestly say to myself that I will count calories and/or grams associated with the food I am eating each and every day for the rest of my life?  Could you?  Of course not.  That’s not a realistic proposition for the vast majority of us.  My food management strategy eliminates unnecessary stress and work, and I can follow it where ever I am, day and night. 

A critical part of my strategy is to categorize food ingredients and prepared food items into three categories: ‘Anytime’, ’Rarely’, and ‘Never’.  I categorize based on the nutrition knowledge I have gained from experience and reading.  I always make sure I have plenty of ‘anytime’ foods available to me.  I plan meals in advance made up of mostly ‘anytime’ foods.  When I have a meal planned, 99.9% of the time I will follow through and eat it.  When I didn’t regularly plan meals, I would find myself hungry and pressed for time and I would grab the easist thing, which was usually ‘rarely’ and ‘never’ foods.  I’ll talk more about the items that are in my 3 categories and why they are there in another blog.

Another thing dieters love to do, and are encouraged to do by weight loss programs, is to jump on the scales at regular intervals as a way to measure success.  The pounds you weigh mean everything, right?  To succeed you have to reduce your weight to a certain amount and if your weight is not steadily decreasing that means you have hit a plateau and must be doing something wrong or not trying hard enough, correct? WRONG! WRONG! WRONG!  Body weight fluctuates regularly, depending on your fluid intake and retention, what you are eating and when, and when you go to the bathroom!  If you are trying to track your success by weighing daily, or even weekly, you’re guaranteed to be disappointed eventually!  You can lose a pound of fat and gain a pound and a half of lean muscle mass and according to the scales you’re up half a pound!  That is clearly success, not failure!  My advice is to forget about the scales!  What matters is losing body fat and having a strong, healthy body!  The best way to lose body fat is by proper nutrition and exercise!  When you exercise you’re going to tone up, build muscle tissue and gain muscle mass! 

Worrying about how much I weighed has probably been the single biggest cause of stress, discouragement, and failure for all of the diets I ever put myself on.  When I was on the Weight Watchers program, the weekly weigh-in was the most important thing in my life.  Stepping on those scales was the time when you were judged as having been either a success or failure by all the others in the group.  I would make sure I went to the bathroom and was wearing the lightest clothes I had before I weighed in!  Talk about unnecessary pressure and stress!  TV shows like ’The Biggest Loser’ reinforce this ‘losing pounds is all that matters’ mentality.  My new lifestyle does not include scales.  I don’t own scales.  I weigh myself at the gym only on a very infrequent basis as a matter of curiousity.  What the scales say don’t matter.  I measure my success based on how I look in the mirror, how my clothes fit, and how I feel.

When I started working out, I weighed 220 and wore a size 42" dress pant.  Today I weigh 225 and wear a size 36" dress pant.  I think I look great compared to when I started.  Now, if I was concerned about my weight, do you think I would have been motivated to keep working when it was staying at 220+?  I knew I was building muscle while losing body fat, and my progress with that was how I measured success!  In my Body Profile I say one of my goals is to lose 20 pounds.  I only put that there since I figured it was a likely outcome of my long-term lifestyle change, as I continue to lose that last bit of fat on my stomach and over my abs.

My messages in this post are these: stop counting calories and using the scales to track your progress!  I know these two pieces of advice are totally contrary to what many people are doing on a daily basis in their quest to lose weight, lose bodyfat, or just be healthier.  For me, I have a lifetime of evidence to support my position that these two traditional and well-accepted practices not only have never helped me achieve any real long-term success, they were the primary sources of stress and discouragement that led to my inevitable failures.  Now, I know I’m not unique, so if NOT doing these two things has helped put me on AND keep me on the road to success, I’m sure it would be the same for many others out there.

In my next post I’ll describe the transformation of my attitude during 2007 and how specifically I began using my food management techniques to accelerate my body transformation.    

When I started at the gym I’d see well-built guys flexing their biceps in front of the mirror and I’d think ‘what an ego they have’ or ‘they must think they’re some hot piece of stuff to be doing that in public’.  Almost four years later I now find myself occasionally flexing my own biceps at the gym, and wanting to do more!

For most of my life, the mirror has not been my friend.  I’d avoid looking at my body, since all I could see was the flab.  I felt ashamed and guilty, since I knew in my heart that I could do better.  I’d also see bodybuilders on television and in magazines, and I’d wonder what was motivating them to make their body look so different from most other people.  I just didn’t see what the big attraction was about muscles, and it went against my way of thinking about life to want to stand out from other people.  I’d see them them flexing and posing and think they it was mainly just showing off.  It wasn’t a sport in my mind like baseball or hockey.

I started working out almost 4 years ago and since then my attitude about my body and bodybuilding in general has totally changed.  As my body began to transform I started to feel better about how I looked and those positive feelings have increased over time to the great feelings of pride and accomplishment I have today.  Three months ago I discovered bodybuilding.com.  I have spent a lot of time reading and learning about weight lifting and nutrition.  I have been able to improve my results significantly, and the progress I’ve made motivates me to keep working hard.

I’ve looked at a lot of the photo galleries and have been inspired by the transformations and muscular bodies I’ve seen.  I have felt a sense of community by reading about other members’ struggles and accomplishments.  It’s great knowing there are thousands of people out there just like me and that they are succeeding in reaching their goals.  I know I can too.

I’ve learned about posing too.  Many of the photos show people in various stages of fitness posing their different muscles.  I watched videos on the site showing the basic poses used in competition and giving tips on how to pose.  I found in very interesting, but since I’m not interested in competing I didn’t really give it much thought.

Then, one day not too long ago, something amazing happened.  I was standing in front of a full length mirror about to get dressed when I stopped and took a really good look at my body.  Stopping to gaze at myself is not something I ever would have done in days gone by, but at that moment I felt extreme pride in myself.  I’ve made significant progress over the last three months thanks to better workouts and nutrition, and that progress really caught my eye that day.  I could see my muscles starting to get some definition, and the body fat left on my stomach was the least I could remember it in 20 years.  Feeling proud, I flexed my biceps.  It felt good!  I then proceeded to try several of the basic poses and I really liked what I saw!  The flexing and stretching required by posing made my muscles feel like they were coming alive!  Those movements are a type of workout in themselves, and the way my body felt that day was something I had never experienced before.  Posing improves circulation, flexibility, muscle tissue health, and gives more physical benefits that others more qualified can explain better than I can.  I just know that something that feels so good and me makes me feel good about myself can’t be ignored! 

Now, I pose a little every day since it feels so great and for the first time in my life I always get positive feelings when I look at my body.  I still have a long way to go in my body transformation, but posing has added a new dimension to the bodybuilding lifestyle that I am trying to lead.  It’s something I can do to make me feel good even on the days I don’t go to the gym.  Through posing I can see the continued changes in my body like never before.  Posing acts as a great motivator for hitting the gym again and for sticking to my food management strategies.

If you’ve never tried posing, you’re missing out an a beneficial activity that will increase your motivation.  Start flexing those biceps and celebrate your progress!     

In this post I’ll talk about my new attitude towards food and its purpose in my life.

What is food anyway?  Whether it comes from a plant or an animal, food is just different combinations of chemical compounds, chemicals which are made up of all of the elements that make up the planet (remember your introductory chemistry?)  We need food because the body needs the chemical compounds to produce the things it requires to sustain its functions and improve itself.  Now, I haven’t studied biology so I’m probably doing a poor job in describing why the body needs food and what it does with food, but I’m hoping you get the message I’m trying to convey.  The body needs food just like it needs water and oxygen.  If it’s as basic as this, why do we form such an emotional attachment to food?  Now, I’m not a behavioral psychologist, so I can’t explain it from a scientific perspecive.  I can only draw on my own experiences and observations with food, so here goes!

I used to love food, especially the food that gave me instant pleasure and comfort.  What else in our daily lives gives us such instant positive feelings as that?  It’s also easy to get, treats us the same every time, and never asks for anything from us in return.  On a physical level it’s all about chemical reactions in the brain of course, but on an emotional level its all about experiencing positive emotions with no perceived short-term risk or price to pay.  We enjoy food so much that we make it a central part of many of our social gatherings, and cultural and religious traditions.  If you are gathered with people who are all enjoying the same food, doesn’t it make it easier to interact with everyone since you instantly have something in common and have a shared experience that you can instantly relate to each other with, which of course is eating the food that is enjoyable.  Think about sitting at a table with a stranger at a social function.  What is often the prime topic that gets conversation going?  The food.  From a societal perspective, in our cultures and daily interactions the role food plays to sustain it all is deeply ingrained and unchangeable.  Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that food is bad because we use it this way.  In my view the problem is with the type of food we are eating, how much of it we are eating, and what we are doing (or not doing) during all the other times of the day when we are not eating. 

When we have a positive emotional attachment to something, either a societal, cultural or personal attachment, how difficult is it to give up that attachment?  Extremely difficult.  We need a damn good reason to justify giving up something that has been a part of our identify all our lives, something that helped define us as a person.  I’m not saying that we should change our cultural traditions or diminish the social role of food!  Nor am I saying that one should stop eating any particular food, that’s a personal choice.  Rather, I believe we have to change the emotional attachment that we have towards all food.  Food can still be a central part of our society and we can participate in partaking of food with others.  What I am saying is that we have to become knowledgable about the impact that a particular food is having on our body.  If you don’t care about what your body looks like or aren’t concerned about possible long-term negative health impacts, then I guess it doesn’t matter.  If you do care, and most of us do care as evidenced by the multi-billion dollar diet and exercise products industry, and if you want to be able to really influence your appearance and health, then you have no choice but to gain at least a minimal knowledge about the impact the food you are eating is having on your body.

Food is sneaky.  It gives us instant pleasure and comfort, and we come to see it as a dependable friend.  What do we turn to when life gets stressful?  Our favorite comfort foods.  Oh yes, food will give you what you are looking for every time, but what else is it doing to you that you don’t realize?  Food is just chemical compounds.  Your body has no choice but to accept the food you put into it and then has to deal with the chemicals you’ve given it.  The body is glad to get the food since it probably needs some of the chemicals right away, others it can partially use, others it stores for later use.  Some of the chemicals have short-term positive or negative impacts, others have long-term positive or negative impacts.  As an example, if you eat a large bag of potato chips, do you really think that your body needs all of the chemicals you have just put into it right away?  No.  The chemicals that are in those chips will have some negative impact on your body.  In many cases, unless other things happen to intervene, one impact will be the creation of body fat.

In extreme cases, the emotional attachment to food can become so strong that it becomes addiction to food that can take over a person’s life.  I believe that being emotionally attached to any food is dangerous for both the body and mind.  It clouds our judgement and distracts us from our goals.  That’s the type of relationship I used to have with food.  I’ve eaten for distraction, comfort, pleasure, reward, peer pressure, and I’m sure other emotional reasons.  And where did it get me?  I was an unfit 38 year old with rolls of fat who was headed down the road towards high blood presssure, diabetes, heart disease, and Lord knows what other health problems.  I thank God that weight lifting came into my life and changed the path I was on.  I’ve taken control of my body through exercise and finally, in the past year, through eating right.  Taking control of food was the hardest challenge for me.

So here’s how I view food now.  Food items contain nutrients that my body needs for proper function and muscle growth.  In other words, food is merely fuel for my body.  Food is a tool I am using to help achieve my goals.  Nothing more, nothing less.  I have taken all other purposes for food out of my life.  Any emotional need that it once satisfied has been replaced by other things, mostly being my physical activities. I would not put water into my car’s gas tank.  By the same token, I will not put any fuel into my body that is not going to contribute positively to my body’s functions and my bodybuilding goals.

Food equals fuel.  We all know this.  I believe that keeping this the one and only purpose of food in your life allows you to assume control over your relationship with food.  I’m not saying this is an easy thing to do.  It sure wasn’t for me.  I’m also not saying that I will never again in my life eat something that has some kind of negative impact on my body.  What I am sure about is that the good things I am eating on a daily basis will far and away outnumber the things that have a negative impact.  Understanding how different foods impact on the body is crucial to practicing food management.  You can’t manage what you don’t understand.  I have gained a basic understanding of nutrition over years of reading and from my Weight Watchers experience.  My knowledge is minimal compared to a nutritionist, but I know enough to be successful at food management in my own life.  I know it’s working because I can see the results when I look in the mirror and put on my clothes!.

To sum up the key points from my first 2 blog posts on ‘Turning Dieting Failures into Food Management Success’:

• I do not follow a diet.  I practice FOOD MANAGEMENT.
• Food is nothing but fuel for my body and a tool which I control to help me achieve my bodybuilding and health goals.

By thinking about eating and food in this way I have been able to arrive at the state of mind necessary for me to achieve success.  In my next blog post on this topic I’ll get specific over how I’ve learned to manage food and talk about the management strategies that work for me on a day to day basis.

I’ve done what a year ago I thought was impossible!  I am successfully managing the food that I eat so that it contributes to my bodybuilding goals.

Before writing about how I am doing this, I thought it was important to review where I have come from, since our life experiences contribute to how we act in the present.  Thinking about my experiences so I could write about them in a coherent manner has helped sharpen my focus and motivation even further.  Putting my thoughts into cyberspace is sort of like talking to a therapist! 

I’ve written 4 blog posts talking about my dieting failures and struggles with weight during my whole life up to 2007.  I’ve taken important lessons away from all of these failures, and they have helped form the foundation for the success I am enjoying now.

Please understand that the attitudes, motivations, strategies and practices I have developed are all very personal things.  What I do is what works for me, and I’m in no way suggesting that it is suitable for anyone else.  Some aspects of what I’m doing may be helpful to others, and if that’s the case I’d be very happy to have helped contribute to someone else’s progress.

Where to begin?  I’ll talk about the specifics of what I’ve been doing over the past 12 months, but there’s something more important to write about first.  Over the past 45 months my body has undergone a transformation thanks to lifting weights.  Over the past 12 months, my eating habits have undergone a transformation thanks to a radical change in my attitude towards and relationship with food and eating.  Put simply, a change in my thinking has allowed me to effect a change in my actions.  I have arrived at the place I needed to be mentally to make a permanent change.  Here’s how I got there:

I hate the work ‘diet’ and refuse to use it anymore!  For me, the concept of ‘dieting’ has become permanently linked with many negative emotions caused by my past failures.  In my mind, there’s a negativity associated with this word so strong that I believe that the moment I consider myself to be on a ‘diet’, I’m setting myself up for failure.  I look at it this way: You diet primarily to lose weight.  You try to stop eating many of the foods you are used to.  You have to eat less.  You feel hungry and crave foods you’re not supposed to have.  It’s all about trying to take things out of your life so you can lose pounds on the scale, and when you inevitably do something wrong you feel like a failure, you feel like it’s your fault you can’t follow the diet.  Your self-esteem suffers and it’s only a matter of time before you give it up, only to probably try again later, perhaps going on a different kind of ‘diet’.  It’s happened to me, and I’ve seen it happen to many people.  Wake up folks!  The problem is not with us, it’s with the whole concept of dieting!  Human beings just aren’t built to do it!  When we cut back on food, our bodies think we don’t have access to food so it begins to slow our metabolism and try to hoard our fat stores so we can survive longer if food remains scarce!  Dieting by cutting back on food changes our bodies in a way that makes it more difficult to lose fat!

I am not eating to lose something.  I am eating to get something!  I want long-term good health and a lean and muscular body.  Now, I know what you’re thinking.  I’m just using different words to describe the same dieting activities.  But I’m not.  Eating to achieve my goals, both those general long-term ones and many specific short-term ones I make as I progress, has been a powerful motivator for me.  How I eat now is not how I would be eating if I went on a traditional ‘diet’.  When you think about it, most of the things we do in life are designed to achieve the goals we have set for ourselves.  Life is all about doing positive things for positive reasons.  It is against our nature to do things to ourselves that make us feel bad, and put us at risk of experiencing other negative emotions, in order to lose something.  That’s what dieting is and I don’t do it anymore.  INSTEAD, I PRACTICE FOOD MANAGEMENT!

So, now you either think I’m a total crackpot, or you think I may be on to something!

Another critical thing I’ve changed my attitude towards is food itself.  This is a big part of my new way of thinking that warrants its own blog post, so I’ll pause for now and gather my thoughts for my next instalment!

In 1992 I was a newly qualified Chartered Accountant.  After having worked three years with a large firm, I decided I wanted to try a job in industry.  I took a job as controller with a grocery wholesale and retail business and had to move to a small town about an hour from the city.  It was a big life change for me, one that was probably a mistake at the time, although everything worked out for the best in the long run.

I moved at the end of October, 1992.  I left behind my roommates, co-workers, friends, social activities and support network.  I moved to a small town where I knew nobody and rented a house.   From a fitness perspective, I left behind my swimming, racquetball and gym workouts.  The nearest gym was an hour away, so not workable for me to attend there regularly.  In my mind, I was left with nothing.  The new job did not start off well, and I soon became very lonely in this new town with nothing to do and no friends.  As the weeks turned into months I can see now that I fell into a mild depressed state.  I didn’t want to do anything except sleep and ….wait for it….eat!  I threw all food sense to the wind and started eating recklessly again.  If I wanted it, I ate it.  I ate for comfort and distraction.  Sound familar?  I had fallen into the same self-destructive pattern I found myself in when I was a teenager!  As the pounds piled on I avoided looking in the mirror, and when I did I felt disgust and self-loathing over what I was doing to myself.  By the end of the winter of 1993, my progress from weight watchers and my previous active period had all but disappeared.  In reality, it probably wasn’t as bad as I perceived it to be.  Mentally, I was in a very bad place and I didn’t know how to get out of it.  I went through my days with a black cloud over my head, functioning enough to get by but not having any sense of purpose, or feeling I had anything to look forward to except more days filled with loneliness.  Looking back on this time, I know I could have taken some steps to adapt better to the new town and job, but for some reason I just didn’t have it in me.  I was waiting for something to happen to break me out of the depression I was stuck in.  Luckily for me, something did!

A co-worker introduced me to my future wife.  This was in November, 1993, and my life was changed forever.  We hit it off right away.  I had found my soul mate and life partner.  The loneliness was replaced by a feeling of excitement and adventure.  I had found a new sense of purpose.  My new positive attitude even helped me cope with work (for awhile, anyway).  We soon moved in together, and have been enjoying our life together ever since.  In 1995 I decided to open my own business and I have been growing it for the past 12 years to the point where today it is providing us with a comfortable living.  Things worked out well for me in terms of relationship and career, but how did it impact on my eating and fitness?

At first, not much.  My wife and I were too busy building our life together, and then I was too busy trying to establish my business, to give much serious attention to diet or exercise.  I talked about wanting to lose weight and be active, but didn’t do anything about it.  My exercise was limited to occasionaly walking the dog, and going bowling once a week.  My diet consisted of fast food, processed meats, canned and frozen meals, with a little cooking thrown in once in a while.  And of course, I ate junk food for pleasure, especially in the evening.  As the years went on, I knew I was overweight and unfit.  I knew I was at risk for health problems as I aged.  I knew I could do better for myself and my wife.  I started many a diet during these years, including just about every January 1st, but I didn’t stick to anything very long.  The dieting failures added up and so did the guilt and a feeling that maybe I was just meant to be overweight and I should accept it and be happy with my life as it was.  I had no real motivation to make any change in my lifestyle, so my bad eating patterns and inactivity were not about to change. 

My blog on Motivation tells about how I started working out on March 1, 2004 at the age of 38, and how working out has grown to become a part of my identity.  The commitment to working out came a lot faster and easier than a change in my attitude towards food did.  I saw my body fat slowing reducing, thanks to working out.  I knew that if I ate better I could lose fat faster, but I didn’t make any changes.  As long as I continued to feel and look better I didn’t worry at all about what I was eating.  I figured I would get the results I wanted in time, no matter how I ate.  I continued to lift weights, got better at it, and had decent results in terms of muscle growth.  I also lost a little more body fat, especially in my arms, legs and upper body, but as of January, 2007 I had made little progress in getting rid of the rolls of fat covering my stomach and those dreaded love handles.  I enjoyed eating so much that I couldn’t bear the thought of giving up the pleasures associated with my favourite foods.

It is now almost one year later, and I’m proud to say that my love affair with food is over.  My love handles are just about gone, and my last roll of fat is shrinking.  I am working out with more intensity and with better results than ever before.  I am progressing towards my goal of bringing out my abs and I am confident I will succeed.

What happened over the last 12 months to change my relationship with food?  I’ll tell you all about it in another blog!

Where I left off…at the age of 24 I had just graduated from University and was starting my first job and professional career.  After 4 months following the Weight Watchers program I had my weight down to 175 and had achieved my goal of being thin for a vacation in Mexico.

Weight Watchers had taught me a lot about nutrition and how I should be eating to maintain my weight.  I developed some good habits which I maintained and still follow, 18 years later.  At that point in my life I believed that I knew all I needed to know about eating right and I believed that I would never gain back the weight I had worked so hard to lose.  Boy, was I wrong!  So what went wrong?

The next significant period in my life is from June, 1989 to October, 2002.  During that time I worked for a large accounting firm and studied to become a Chartered Accountant.  I travelled quite a lot around Newfoundland, and spent several week in summer school in Nova Scotia.  I socialized frequently with my co-workers and friends.  There were a lot of stressful times, but a lot of good times too.  How did this impact on my eating?  I started off with every intention of eating right using my Weight Watchers knowledge.  I remember taking a green salad to work for lunch on many occasions in the beginning.  Gradually, I started to slip.  Was it peer pressure?  Lack of willpower?  No motivation?  No goal to work for?  Yes to all of the above, to varying degrees.  Eating right fell to the bottom of my priority list.  

Over the months and years, I returned to old habits of eating what was most available and convenient, eating for pleasure, and something new: social eating.  I attended lunches, dinners, cocktail parties, receptions, after work outings, dinner parties, etc; where I ate whatever was offered and whatever other people were having.  I also drank my fair share of beer, although thankfully I was only a social drinker and could take it or leave it.  Why would I eat like this, when I knew the consequences would be weight gain over time?  It’s something I don’t fully understand.  I know that my goal over that time was to successfully complete the Chartered Accountant program, and most of focus mentally was on that.  In terms of weight, I had no real goal only a vague ‘don’t gain’.  That evidently was not enough, and most of my good eating habits began to disappear.

On the very bright side, during this time in my life I began to take an interest in physical activities.  Although I liked watching some sports growing up, I was never encouraged to participate much and when I tried I was not very good at it, so I stopped trying.  The only thing I really did was play catch with my brother, go bowling, go bike riding and go swimming.  I was actually quite good at catching and had good hand-eye coordination, helped greatly by my love of playing pinball in high school which I did just about every day.  So although not athletic by nature, I had some skills that I took with me to adulthood.  I took up swimming again, and eventually was able to do up to 40 laps non-stop.  I took up raquetball, playing with a couple of partners, and although I was only average at it, what a great workout it was!  I also started to enjoy long walks on nature trails listening to my walkman.  I could walk for an entire afternoon!  Finally, and maybe most importantly, I joined a gym.  I had pulled a muscle in my back lifting a heavy box one day and someone suggested some strength training would help prevent a recurrance.  I went a couple of times a week and just did random things.  I didn’t really know what I was doing, but I enjoyed the experience.  To my amazement after a few months I could see my body starting to change and I started to lose some size on my stomach!  For a few months in 1991 I was very active, either going swimming, playing raquetball, working out or walking every day.  I remember it as one of the best times of my life.  Unfortunatly, the demands of my studying and travel with work made it very difficult to stay active with the activities I enjoyed on a regular basis and I found this to be very frustrating.

To summarize, from June 1989 to October, 2002, poor nutrition habits came back into my life.  In 1991 I started becoming active and even began to lose some of the body fat I had put on in the previous two years.   During that time I learned that exercising could be a pleasure if I did activities I enjoyed.  I learned that I could still improve my body even while not following great nutrition habits.

Sadly,  at the age of 27, in October, 1992 my efforts to have an active lifestyle came to an abrupt end and unknown to me I was about to enter a difficult period in my life.  My reflections on dieting failures concludes in Part 4!    

At the age of 17 I left home to attend university in the ‘big city’. I was overweight, inactive, and ate whatever food I wanted to for comfort and pleasure.  Not a recipe for a healthy future.

I went to University for seven years, earning two undergraduate degrees.  I studied hard, partied a lot, and ate whatever was convenient or available to me on any given day.  Over that time I mostly rented apartments, and looked after my own food.  I lived on hotdogs, Kraft dinner, french fries, canned stuff, processed meats, and my daily dose of junk food.  Rarely did I cook a steak or chicken.  I was not involved in sports, other than playing recreational softball a couple of summers, but thankfully I walked quite a bit out of necessity, which I now realize helped keep my weight from getting too much out of control.  Over that seven years there were two occasions when I lost a lot of body fat over a short period of time.  The first time was purely by accident, the second was planned.

The first time was when I studied French for four months on the French island colony of St. Pierre et Miquelon, just off the south coast of Newfoundland, Canada.  I boarded with a family, and my meals were prepared by the landlady.  She cooked two traditional French meals a day, for lunch and supper.  I was served chicken, red meat, pork, and fish regularly, along with potatoes and a soup appetizer.  Red wine and French bread was also a part of every meal.  Now, I know this was not the ideal diet, but it was a lot better than what I had been eating while living on my own.  The food was one factor, but the biggest change I believe was the exercise.  I had to walk between school and home twice a day, and I usually went to a club or bar in the evening.  I walked at least one and a half hours per day, and more on many days.  Also, the thing to do on that island was go dancing.  Most of the students would go to a disco on weekends and we’d drink and dance until 2 or 3 in the morning.  Eating better and being active led to a large body fat loss over the 4 months.  I don’t know the pounds, because I wasn’t in the habit of weighing myself, but based on other people’s comments and pictures taken of me, I know the weight loss was significant.  So, after four months I left that fun island and went back to my aparment living at University, and right back to my former eating habits.  Within six months or so I had gained back all of the body fat.  What lesson did I learn from my time in St. Pierre?  Very simply, that eating decent food and being more active for a sustained period of time will lead to body fat loss.  Not a revolutionary discovery, but it was an important experience that I could draw on for motivation latter in life.

Now, my second weight loss experience came during my last 4 months of University.  I decided that I would go on a vacation with about 20 other students after graduation.  We chose the sun, sand and party atmosphere of Acapulco, Mexico.  I looked at myself in the mirror and decided that if I wanted to enjoy myself on the beach I needed to lose a bunch of body fat, and fast.  Encouraged and accompanied by a good friend, I started the Weight Watchers program in January, 1989.  I weighed in at 215, not the heaviest I’d ever been.  The WW program at that time consisted of being allowed to eat so many servings of each food type each day, for example, 3 fats, 4 carbohydrates, 4 protein, etc;  You didn’t have to count calories.  I followed that program to the letter, and at my first weigh in a week later I was down 7 pounds!  It’s mostly water, I was told, but I was still excited!  Those first few weeks on that diet were torture.  I was eating what I considered to be plain, tasteless food, and I was craving my old food.  I always felt hungry, especially in the evening.  I got through it, thanks to my good friend, and the pounds continued to melt away steadily.  As the weeks progressed, the amount of food allowed increased, but that didn’t really excite me since it was just more of the same food that I was eating because I had to, not because I really wanted to.  At the end of 4 months I achieved my goal weight of 175, I was happy with the results and I went on that vacation and had a blast.  I came back to the same city where I had gone to University and started my first job in June, 1989.  Looking at pictures of myself in Acapulco, I hardly recognized that thin, pale looking guy.  I had achieved significant body fat loss, but did I look healthy?  Was I fit and strong?  The anwer to both is ‘No’.  What did I learn from this weight loss experience?  Well, I learned that I had the willpower to change my eating patterns and lose fat if I really wanted to.  I learned that dieting successfully by reducing food intake is very hard.  I learned that being thin does not automatically make you look good or make you fit.

So, after being successful losing a lot of body fat for my vacation, I had no further motivation to attend Weight Watchers meetings, and I stopped going.  I moved into a house with two roommates, and I started my professional career.  I proudly hung the WW ‘Key to Success’ keychain that I had earned on my wall.  What do you think happened to my eating habits and weight?  Find out in the next instalment of my ‘Dieting Failures’ Bodyblog!