Joe Average Gets Fit

My friends, all of you, thank you for your kind support and interest. I’ve reached another milestone. Since I started my conscious efforts to reëngineer how I viewed myself and my health last March, I’ve passed the fifty pound (23 kg) mark.

In celebration, I just finished off a modest cup of chocolate milk (natural whole milk). Yum! It still tastes good after these months. (Has anybody noticed that some old favourite foods don’t taste good anymore?)

Natural whole milk is something that I’ve otherwise forsworn because it’s a prime suspect in my sky-high cholesterol levels. I used to gulp down, without thought, about a half gallon (two litres) of that a day; frequently more. I jest not. That gross quantity is probably the greater contributor to the problem, not the actual food itself. My previous XXXL size was due strictly to the unfettered quantity of food. The proportion of low-quality (ahem, “junk”) food was, I think, a secondary contributor. Eat large, be large.

One of the things that I’ve focused on is not so much cutting out foods per se (other than a select group of prime suspects), but putting the brakes on how much I eat. The natural result is that I’m more choosy about what I eat because I fill my bowl once, then take a few moments to actually enjoy it.

Here’s a concrete example in colour. Here is a photograph of my “before” and “after” serving sizes. (Sorry for the bad picture quality. I was lazy and used my cell phone camera.)

Yes, the bowl on the left is one of those huge 8″ ramen-bachi. It’s monstrous. I would wolf down one and frequently two full bowls of rice-and-something without batting an eye. This was a regular event. I was a pig, and weighed it. Oink. Oink.

The bowl on the right is what I use now, a small 4″ chawan (Japanese soup/tea bowl). It holds about as much as my cats’ food dishes. I’ll use it even if I have pasta. I just go crazy on the vegetarian sauce since I don’t allow myself second helpings, and it’s veggies.

It took me three or four weeks to work my food portions down. Initially I switched to eating six small meals plus a couple of snacks. My body was not used to lesser quantities, but eating six times helped my adjustment. Over the next couple of months I slowly cut down the number of micro meals to my old habits of two to four meals a day.

Today, it’s no big deal for me. A chawan of food, fruit or veggies, a small cup of juice… I’m usually full.

One last anecdote, if I may. I took my daughter out to Subway for lunch today. I got my usual 4″ mini sub with water, and my daughter had a 6″ sub. As we were sitting there, I caught myself looking at her sandwich and thinking, “Gosh, that’s a lot of food.” It was pleasing to see that reaction from my subconscious because I think I’ve completely adjusted to the “sub-gluttonous feeding habit.”

Status: 51 pounds (23 kg) lighter since earnest efforts started. That’s about 80 pounds (36 kg) lighter than my peak last spring. I’ve lost six inches off the waist. Yeah, feeling a little sassy about this benchmark. Thank you for allowing the moment to celebrate.