REVIEWS of the First Edition of Wake Up!:
“Finally! A book that actually says, you're probably
never going to look like those people on TV, and describes in detail
how to be happier, healthier, and IMPERFECTLY fit. It's about time!
I, for one, agreed with this author from the word go.”
~ Amy
Lignor; Bookpleasures.com
“The author is a former large woman that did the ride
on the up-and-down weight elevator several times before she was able
to stabilize her weight at what is most likely her best fit. She
acknowledges how difficult it has been; in many ways the greatest
hurdle has been self-acceptance. Furthermore, you must do
it all slowly, ignoring the people that are yelling, “Be quick, be
quick!”
~ 5 out of 5 stars Charles Ashbacher; Top
Amazon.com Book Reviewer
“I can honestly say that I have never been more
impressed with a weight loss book. Excellent book.”
~Sandra
Heptinstall; Whispering Winds Book Reviews
“Encouraging readers to find their own realistic body
image and shoot for that, "Wake Up!" is a solid and much
needed read for those who are trying to get in shape only to be
discouraged by the media blitz.”
~5 out of 5 stars
Midwest Book Review
“WOW- talk about an anti-be perfect book! This book is
like sitting down and dishing with your girlfriend you haven't seen
in 3 years! Michelle lays out a VERY simple diet and exercise plan
that ANYONE can follow, including healthier choices at fast food
restaurants (cause sometimes you HAVE to eat out!).
~ 5 out of
5 stars Nicole Henke; Bless Their Hearts Mom Book Reviews
“Whether we are dealing with the issue of weight personally or know someone who is, this is a book that we all should take the time to read.” First edition named one of The Top 25 Summer Reads of 2010 by C.A. Webb; Conversations Book Club
You’re Probably Never Going to Look Like That:
How to be Happier, Healthier, and Imperfectly Fit
Second Edition
By Michelle Pearl
Smashwords Edition
"Wake Up" is available in print at most online retailers. This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
Copyright © 2010 by Michelle
Pearl
Gallery Press
Publishing
2885 Sanford Ave SW
Suite
#13974
Grandville, MI 49418
Under the terms of ACE® certification, it is outside the scope of practice of ACE® certified fitness professionals and Lifestyle and Weight Management Consultants to design and recommend specific meal plans for individuals. For this service, please consult a Registered Dietician. This book is intended as a reference volume only, not as a medical manual. The information given here is designed to help you make informed decisions about your health. It is not intended as a substitute for any treatment that may have been prescribed by your doctor. If you suspect that you have a medical problem, we urge you to seek competent medical help.
_______
To my phenomenal mother and father, who always had my back, to my sons who will always have my unconditional love, and to my unbelievably kind, handsome husband, Loren, who will always have my heart.
_______
CONTENTS
Chapter 1-You Are Not Weak-Willed: You Are Starving
Chapter 2-The Journey to This Most, Wonderful Imperfect Place
Chapter 3-Introduction to The Pearl Principle™ - 10 Steps to Transformation
Chapter 4-Step 1: Eat All the Time
Chapter 5-Step 2: Con Your Cravings
Chapter 6-Step 3: Repeat What You Eat
Chapter 7-Step 4: Forego the Fat
Chapter 8-Step 5: Trash the Temptations
Chapter 9-Step 6: Don’t Let Fast Food be Your Failing
Chapter 10-Step 7: The Dreaded “E” Word
Chapter 11-Step 8: Throw Away Your Calendar
Chapter 12-Step 9: Make Changes in Two-Week Baby Steps
Chapter 13-Step 10: Stop Striving for Mass-Media Promoted Body Ideals
Chapter 15-Fractured Diet Fairy Tales
Chapter 16-Time to Get Real - Self Assessment
Chapter 17-Imperfectly Fit Superstars
Chapter 18-My Version of a Happy Ending
_______
Kai Hibbard took second place as a
contestant on the 3rd
season
of the NBC television show The
Biggest Loser.
In this day and age, we are all pressured day in and day out to conform to a stereotypical idea of health and beauty; unfortunately there is a diet industry out there that preys upon this idea. I fell victim to this in such an extreme way that I was willing to damage my health — mental and physical — to accomplish an unrealistic weight goal for the sake of good TV. Since then, I have been lucky enough to connect with industry professionals like Michelle Pearl who have shown me the gift of acceptance; acceptance of being healthy within the constraints of who I was meant to be, not a size 3, but a beautiful me.
Michelle tells her story in a way that all of us who have battled with our weight can relate to, with humor and intelligence. Reading about the path that Michelle has traveled, peppered with all the informed research she has done, touched me on an emotional and intellectual level, allowing me to make the connection within. I urge each of you reading her words to mark up the pages with your own thoughts and connections as you go along, as I am certain this book will inspire you to do, and make that link within yourself, sending you on the path to a lifetime of good health. ~ Kai Hibbard 2010
_______
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I would like to thank Kai Hibbard, not only for the kind, thoughtful foreword that she composed for this book, but also for finding the inner strength and conviction to come forward and speak publicly about the dangerous and unrealistic weight loss tactics and messages disseminated by network TV. Kai Hibbard is a human being of incredible moral character with a heart as big as her home state of Alaska. I am truly honored by her contribution to this effort.
I would also like to acknowledge all the Imperfectly Fit Superstars from across the nation who took the time to share their inspiring stories of success and determination with me for this book:
John Paul Engel of Sioux City, Iowa,
Janine Hightower of Boston,
Muata Kamdibe of Hacienda Heights, California,
Marina Kamen of New York City,
Stacy Nicola of Corona, California,
René Rich of Chicago,
and Kathie Whitehall of Seattle.
Finally, I would like to express my deepest gratitude to all those wonderfully ebullient exercise instructors that have been my mentors and oftentimes my good friends over the last many decades, especially Sheri Shepherd, Carine Garcia, Carole Cross, Kent Ward, Grace Enriquez, and the woman whose energy, dedication, humor, and eternally positive outlook I can only aspire to one day emulate: Kathy Azevedo.
_______
PREFACE
My husband suggested that I title this book Look Better Naked.
Since I personally don’t believe that I actually look all that spectacular naked, that particular suggestion went straight into the circular file.
What you are about to read represents the second incarnation of this book. While out on a promotional tour to promote the first edition of Wake Up!, it became crystal clear that while the original message of self-acceptance that I hoped to promote was important, people were also extremely interested in learning the details of how I lost over 100 pounds (twice!) and how I have managed to keep it off for so many years. They wanted a roadmap, a guide. I was asked again and again what diet I followed to achieve my weight loss success.
Here’s how the dictionary describes the act of dieting: “To select or limit the food one eats in order to lose weight.”
To you, the word “diet” probably conjures up memories of many failed short-term and hard-to-adhere-to changes.
I describe a diet as something that may or may not work while you are following it, and is usually impossible to implement for a lifetime. Most importantly, though, it will probably dig you deeper into the hole of your ongoing weight problem with every restrictive bite you consume.
The only thing that I consumed voraciously when I was trying to figure out the mystery of my ongoing weight problem was knowledge. Once I understood why those of us with ongoing weight problems go through what we go through, all the pieces of the puzzle started to fall into place and form what I now so humbly call The Pearl Principle™.
Hopefully it does not come off quite as egocentrically as it sounds; I just really liked the alliteration.
The Pearl Principle™ is not a diet so much as it is a mind/body guide that carries within it three tools to enable you to create a new body along with a fresh outlook:
1) Powerful advice on how to lose weight and keep it off, and how to deal with the difficult side effects of a lowered metabolism.
2) The ability to recognize the erroneous messages and ill-conceived recommended weight loss methods that we have been bombarded with throughout our lives. (You’ll find that sometimes we’ll use a scalpel to get to the ugly mistruths, and sometimes it won’t take much more than a butter knife to cut to the heart of the lies that we have been fed.)
3) Optimistic encouragement to have realistic body expectations, which will increase your perception of your own successes.
Changing the way you look at food and eating, as well as learning to enjoy moving your body, will absolutely change your life. However, to be success stories, before we are ready to jump in front of a camera and take that coveted “after” picture, we need to understand why we have an ongoing weight problem, and the steps required to change our bodies. And finally, we need to make a giant leap of faith and learn to rethink our expectations.~Michelle Pearl 2010
_______
Chapter 1
You Are Not
Weak-Willed:
You Are Starving
“I offer this challenge to those who have never had an ongoing weight problem; go without eating for a day.
Only then will you understand the feeling of unrelenting hunger that those of us who battle ongoing weight problems have to deal with nearly every second of every day.”
~ Michelle Pearl
_______
Perhaps it all started with the “snitching.” When I was a child, snitching was a code word that my girlfriend Jenny Young and I would use for our clandestine adventures into our parents’ pantries. We would sneak in, close the door, find the nearest forbidden treat within reach, and wolf it down before anyone could find out. The true skill was in the proper rearranging of the boxes and containers on the shelf to attract minimum suspicion.
Jenny never had a weight problem.
My mother had to buy clothes for me with the “chubby” designation on the tag.
It seems like eating constantly—then feeling guilty about it— has been at the center of my life for as long as I can remember.
And now I know why......
Anyone who has experienced an ongoing weight problem will tell you that the minute they try to diet, they find that they are always hungry. They walk into a grocery store and want to eat, they get behind the wheel and want to eat, and they sit at their desk at work and want to eat.
If you have struggled with an ongoing weight problem and it feels like you are always hungry when you try to lose weight, it is because you are always hungry. Indeed, you are more than hungry.
You are starving.
In 1959, Jules Hirsch, a research physician at Rockefeller University, began a set of studies on weight loss which should have forever changed the world’s thinking when it comes to obesity.
Over and over again, Hirsch took groups of people who had spent their lifetime battling weight problems and had them lose weight on a strict, 8-month liquid formula diet. After the subjects left the controlled environment of the study—most around 100 pounds lighter—nearly every one of them gained the weight back.
Through his continued research, Hirsch discovered that chronically overweight individuals that lose weight have a totally different metabolic response than a person who had never been fat. In every recorded metabolic measurement, the formerly fat people had metabolic responses that had slowed down to the point where they were similar to the metabolic responses of people who were starving.
In addition, Hirsch noted that the chronically overweight people who lost weight exhibited the same psychiatric syndrome experienced by starving people, called semi-starvation neurosis. Thoughts of food and worries about breaking their diet filled their dreams and fantasies. Food became an obsession as they secreted it away and binged. For some, the anxiety and depression caused by their neurosis led to thoughts of suicide.
Dr. Ethan Sims of the University of Vermont came to the conclusion that the bodies of people with ongoing weight problems function differently than those who have never had an issue with their weight in a completely opposing manner. Sims took a group of thin prisoners who had never had a weight problem that volunteered to become fat. The goal of the study was for each subject to increase his body weight by 20 to 25 percent. Many of the subjects had to eat as much as 10,000 calories a day for four to six months before they achieved the increase.
Once the volunteers were fat, the study found that they had increased their metabolism on average by 50%. When the study was concluded, every subject had no trouble losing the weight and keeping it off.
The combined implications of the two studies are profound.
The metabolism of people who have experienced an ongoing weight problem slows down when they cut back on their caloric intake leaving them hungry all the time and making it very difficult to lose weight. The metabolism of someone who has never had an ongoing weight problem speeds up when they gain weight, so that the moment they cut back on their caloric intake, they can lose weight quickly and effortlessly. This proves that weight loss for those with an ongoing weight problem is a whole other ball of wax than it is for everyone else.
Dr. Rudolph Leibel, a world renowned obesity researcher from Columbia University came to many of the same conclusions as Dr. Hirsch. Through his studies he found that people who have had an ongoing weight problem that try to lose weight end up wreaking havoc on their metabolic system. His studies also concluded that 95-98 percent of the people who lose weight through dieting gain it back within five years because they fail at “bucking the powerful biological responses” of their slowed metabolism.
The most important message that you can take from this book is this: if you have an ongoing weight problem and you cut back on your caloric intake, you will find that you are always hungry because your body is trying desperately to hold onto the fat that it has become accustomed to; so it sends out endless physiological and psychological signals telling you that you need to consume more calories. As Dr. Rudolph Leibel so aptly put it, “The system is set up to defend body fat.”
This is the primary reason why all your diets have failed in the past. Fitness gurus and doctors who have never had an ongoing weight problem will tell you to cut back on fat and sugar, cut back on calories, exercise more and presto magico! It’s a done deal—you’ll be thin.
I can tell you that unless you learn to deal with the constant feeling of hunger that you will experience when you cut back on your caloric intake (a feeling that people who have never had an ongoing weight problem have probably never experienced), all that advice will work until you succumb to the all-consuming oppressive hunger that you’re experiencing, and you crash and burn—again.
When you add our screwed-up metabolism to a set of biological gifts that none of us has any control over, our race and our gender, the equation gets even more difficult.
Men, on average, gain between 0.4 and 1.8 pounds of fat each year until they reach their sixties, despite a gradual decrease in food consumption. Over the course of a few decades, that can really add up.
However, while obesity is an epidemic that is worldwide and crosses all socioeconomic and gender boundaries, it is a medical fact that regardless of age, women are still significantly more likely to be overweight than men. And statistics have shown that while 30% of Caucasian women are obese compared to 32% of Mexican-American women, the racial group with the largest numbers of obese females is non-Hispanic black women, with 54% considered obese.
The reason for this discrepancy has nothing to do with strength of resolve or perceived less-than-healthy food choices! In a 1990 article in the American Journal of Psychology researcher W.H. Carpenter published the results of his findings that determined that non-Hispanic black women burn approximately 100 fewer calories per day while at rest than Caucasian women. This translates into about one extra pound of body fat that your average black woman will gain per month without doing anything different from what her non-African-American counterpart does.
However, the differences don’t end there. In 1999 another researcher, G.D. Foster, published his studies in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition that concluded that non-Hispanic black women also tend to experience a substantially more significant lowering of their metabolic rate than other races when they do diet. This explains why overweight black women have a much harder time achieving their goal weight. It also means that when African-American women cut back on their caloric intake, their hunger is more pervasive than it is with any other race.
So now we know the medical facts behind what occurs when you have an ongoing weight problem and you cut back on your caloric intake: Your metabolism slows down and you’re hungry all the time.
While I am dishing out the tough news, here’s one more big pill to swallow: It never gets any better.
Dr. Leibel’s studies found that not only were people who had lost a significant amount of weight intolerant of the cold because their biochemical systems were constantly trying to get them to gain the weight back for warmth, he found that even after 3 or more years of maintaining the weight loss their metabolism remained at the slower rate.
Dr. Leibel hit every one of those nails right on their heads with those observations. I have lost almost 150 pounds and kept it off for many years, and I am still hungry all the time. I’m still in a chronic state of starvation. And I am always freezing.
So, I always wear long sleeves to keep warm, and I’ve found some effective methods to handle that constant unrelenting hunger that anyone can implement.
You will discover that you are not weak, losing weight has nothing to do with willpower, and that you really can be happier, healthier and imperfectly fit.
_______
Chapter 2
The Journey to This Most Wonderful, Imperfect Place
“The roller coaster ride of
suffering with ongoing weight problems
does not have to come with
a lifetime ticket.”
~ Michelle Pearl
_______
You’ve got to give my mom credit for doing her darndest to try to mold me into a delicate flower. She signed me up for ballet and piano lessons. She took me to the theater, and she placed pictures of fragile, lithe ballerinas all around my room.
She might have gotten her first indication that things were not quite working out as planned the day a kid on the playground at school made the mistake of calling me “fatty.”
I decked him with one swing.
I remember thinking that I had exhibited some pretty good follow-through for a seven-year-old, but my mother could only shake her head in exasperation as she picked me up from the principal’s office on that day.
While today, as a Web-based dance fitness instructor and trainer, I am tremendously grateful for my eight years in ballet, I found it pretty hard to appreciate at the time. I never looked quite as attractive as the other little girls with my pink tutu stretched to accommodate the rather significant circumference of my rotund little waistline.
As a kid, I loved elementary school, but there was one day every year that I dreaded: the day that they would measure your height and record your weight—in front of the whole class. Presumably, the purpose was to chart your growth from the beginning of the year until the end. Since I was always the tallest and the fattest girl in my class year after year, for me, it was just about pure, unadulterated humiliation.
At my request, my folks took me to an acupressurist that charged them a fortune for a piece of molded plastic that I was to wear in my ear and push on every time I got hungry.
I lost zero pounds.
My parents lost five hundred bucks.
Then there was the hypnotherapist that tried to implant the suggestion that all food tasted awful so I would no longer desire it, and the injections based on the chemical makeup of urine from pregnant women, which only had a “one in one thousand” chance of causing an allergic reaction. I guess the fact that I had hundreds of bumps break out all over my face and body should have made me feel special.
I also joined Weight Watchers several times back in the day when they were all about weighing and measuring. As an impatient teenager, there was no way that particular plan was going to work out.
By the time I had gotten old enough to be a serially dateless teen, my confidence was shaken by so many failed diets that I came to believe that the Peter Frampton song “Baby, I Love Your Way” was actually a tacit approval anthem for skinny girls. I was dead certain that Frampton was singing, “Ooh baby, I love your weight.”
Needless to say, the diet roller coaster continued through my college and young adult years; each time with much more significant gains for every loss. By the time I got married in my mid-twenties, I tipped the scale at 245 pounds.
At that point, I went through a period of uneasy acceptance of my plight. I opened a large-size clothing boutique and modeled for large-size runway shows and magazines.
I quit the modeling game the day they had us do a shoot wearing only bathing suits (with pantyhose, of course!) and real fur coats.
There were too many affronts to my sensibilities on that one to even mention.
Eventually, we moved out to the suburbs to raise our ever growing family, and I went into teaching marketing, fashion merchandising, and entrepreneurship to high school and college classes.
I was so busy with my teaching jobs and raising three active boys that I stopped looking in the mirror from the neck down altogether. One day, I stepped on a scale and the number before me made my eyes pop out of my head.
It read 280 pounds.
At nearly the same time, I saw an ad in the newspaper for a new fitness business that was opening that would cater to large-size women. They were looking for large-size fitness instructors. I figured, what better motivation could there be for working out than being an instructor?
Within a month I was certified with a group of other heavy women to teach dance fitness classes. Although the business never did take off, before it folded we were asked to appear on a local morning talk show.
It is my sincerest hope that no one ever archived the tape of that show. We appeared in leotards with an obnoxious neon print that was so abstract it looked like someone had vomited color directly onto our clothing. And since I was by far the heaviest instructor present, I shudder to think how that played out on the television screen, which already adds those infamous extra ten pounds.
But the instructor gig was the jump-start I needed, and I started taking step classes at a gym regularly. With exercise and cutting way down on the fat in my diet, I found that I was finally able to get a modicum of control over my starvation response. I lost 120 pounds in less than two years.
And then I was foolish. The more weight I lost, the more enthusiastic I would get, and the more risers I would shove under my bench.
Out of pure instinct, my mother used to say things like, “I’d take it easy with those steps. It has to be really hard on your knees.”
I kept the weight at bay for another three years by attending frequent step classes and watching my fat intake. It was all going along swimmingly until the day I simply stepped off the bench and the pain that stabbed through my knee nearly dropped me to the floor.
The orthopedic physician that I saw said that the up and down battering that I had given my knees while carrying so much weight had caused osteoarthritis to form in both of my knees. He could ease the pain with therapy, but he could never reverse it. And I was given strict orders: no more step aerobics, or any exercise for that matter, until things improved.
The combination of lack of exercise, self-pity, and dealing with severe troubles at home immediately took its toll. My husband at the time, who had been a recovering alcoholic, fell off the wagon—hard. With this turmoil happening at the apex of their impressionable teenage years, two of my three sons decided to respond by rebelling in every nightmarish way conceivable to a parent.
At the same time, my strong, brilliant father contracted a staph infection during a minor surgical procedure and passed away. And my brother, who had been battling severe alcoholism for decades, started wasting away before our eyes in one of the most drawn-out and horrible ways to die that a human can experience.
With all the added stress and with no exercise, I no longer concentrated on trying to control my starving metabolism. I gave into my body’s demands, and I ate ….And ate. The weight flew back on at the speed of light.
I gained so much weight back that when I stepped out of my car, I had to stand still for a few minutes just to let the entire bulk of my weight shift so that I could get my balance.
Out of fear, I finally found the courage to step on the scale again. I was just five pounds shy of the three-hundred-pound mark.
What I didn’t know at the time was that I was carrying two huge precursors for potential weight regain within my body. Anyone who is obese as a child when going through the growth spurt from ages 9 to 13, as I was, or anyone who has been an obese adult with a BMI (body mass index) over 40, like I had, has created an exponential increase in the number of fat cells within their body. Once the number of fat cells has been increased, it is increased for life; no amount of dieting or exercise can reverse this. The more fat cells you have, the more fat they can hold and the harder it is to lose weight. And once you do lose a lot of weight, those fat cells are just laying their empty, waiting to be refilled. As we all know, it doesn’t take much to make that happen.
When I went back to an exercise program, it became almost more about its therapeutic value than it was about weight loss. I would find myself sitting in my car absolutely racked with tears over the problems within my family, but somehow I would find the strength to make myself go in.
And every time, no matter how lousy I felt before, I was a little more able to handle my life when I walked out the door after finishing my exercise class.
It was a very slow road the second time around. All the years of up and down, combined with my age, made the pounds drop off far more gradually. It took a very long time to figure out how to deal effectively with the overwhelming hunger that I felt constantly, as my starvation response was even more severe than the first time I had lost the weight. It took me nearly four years to shed the pounds for the final time.
That was many years and nearly 150 pounds ago, and I am still in a holding pattern: able to wear a size eight if my thighs aren’t involved, or a ten if they are.
As an obese teen during my high school years, I never went on a date, never went to a prom, and never had a boyfriend.
Today, my second husband is a sweet, gorgeous man who takes me on a date every Friday night and who, to my shock and amazement, actually picks me up off the floor when he kisses me!
I found that even though I never did end up having a model-perfect body, being fit opened up a world to me where there are a whole lot of unexpected perks.
_______
Chapter 3
Introduction to
The
Pearl Principle™:
10
Steps to Transformation
“Taking control of your ongoing weight problem involves 33% investigation, 33% application, and 34% good old-fashioned perspiration.”
~Michelle Pearl
_______
Like every other person who battles obesity, I have tried nearly every diet that has sprung from the brain of some egomaniacal doctor or hot- for-a-minute fitness guru who likely never spent a day as an obese person in his or her life. You know the gamut: from syrupy, cherry-flavored, medically supervised protein fasts to the carb-free approach that says that you can eat bacon and cheese, but no fruits.
My girlfriend Sheri Shepherd, a longtime fitness instructor, has talked about writing her own book about the people she has helped introduce to a healthier lifestyle. In response to yet another hotly discussed diet fad that some of her students were buzzing about, where a doctor was recommending that you consume nothing for breakfast and then just five bites of food for lunch, and five bites for dinner (aptly nicknamed the “Five-Bite Diet”), Sheri joked that she had decided on a title for her own literary masterpiece. She would call it Five Bites? My Ass!
I assured her that I would be first in line to make that purchase.
Every day, I hear advertisements for similar diets where they expect you to pay a fortune to eat four cookies twice a day or guzzle two small cans of some miracle diet beverage along with one “light, sensible” meal to lose weight. These diets were conceived by people who a.) obviously never had an ongoing weight problem, and/or b.) subscribe blindly to the basic tenet of “if you eat less you will lose weight.” So they have brilliantly figured it all out! If you eat a lot less, you will lose a lot of weight! Duh.
Of course you will lose weight if you restrict your caloric intake drastically. And since you can’t keep eating that way forever, you know darn well what is going to happen when you stop following those “miracle” diets.
Finding the solution to handle the lowered metabolism that you will have to deal with for the rest of your life is possible, but it can turn out to be a complex bit of alchemy.
For me, in the end, it was like finding the solution to an intricate puzzle. With a lot of trial-and-error I eventually discovered 10 changes that helped me to handle my lowered metabolism, made it possible for me to lose the weight and successfully keep it off, and then enabled me to be satisfied with the less than supermodel-perfect final result that I achieved.
The Pearl Principle™
Step
1: Eat all the time
Step 2: Con your cravings
Step 3: Repeat what you eat
Step 4: Forego the fat
Step 5: Trash the temptations
Step 6: Don’t let fast food be your failing
Step 7: The dreaded “E” word
Step 8: Throw away your calendar
Step 9: Make changes in two-week baby steps
Step 10: Stop striving for mass-media promoted body ideals
_______
Chapter 4
Step 1:
Eat All The
Time
“Once you acknowledge the fact that the minute that you cut back on your caloric intake, your body metabolism is going to start sending out the psychological and physiological messages that you are starving, your first order of business is to quell that feeling of starvation whenever possible.”
~Michelle Pearl
_______________
In the past, you may have heard the suggestion that you should eat smaller, more frequent meals throughout the day. You were told to do this because it would give you a more frequent influx of energy to help keep you more active, and because eating frequently helps your body burn calories more efficiently. In fact, both of those assertions are true. As someone struggling to lose weight, though, you probably couldn’t care less.
Here’s the most important reason that you need to eat all the time: Once you acknowledge the fact that the minute you cut back on your caloric intake, your body metabolism is going to start sending out the psychological and physiological messages that you are starving, your first order of business is to quell that feeling of starvation whenever possible.
So, you need to eat all the time. On average, most people will find that they need to eat something every two to three hours, but this is not a fixed number. You will need to listen to your body and eat whenever you start to feel hungry.
I realize that this concept goes against the grain of most people with weight problems. Even now, I sometimes still have to fight back old deep-seated feelings of guilt and shame when other people see me eating. So many of us have always felt that we need to hide the fact that we were hungry, so we snuck food and tried to eat it when others who might judge us were not looking.
It’s time to get over it. If you want to handle your chronic starvation, you are going to have to eat. Explain this to your loved ones and help them understand. Then you will no longer feel the need to hide cookies in your underwear drawer—you will stop and eat a handful of low-salt pretzels or a low-fat granola bar in plain sight of everyone when you get hungry. Forget getting up in the middle of the night to sneak ice cream—you will have already made a point of having a low fat dessert after dinner so you no longer feel the need to lurk around in the dark looking for a midnight sugar fix.
You may end up choosing to have three primary meals and three or four snack breaks throughout the day, or you may find that you eat one or two primary meals and snack more frequently. Or you may come up with your own algorithm that is somewhere in between.
The importance of eating all the time to lose weight was poignantly illustrated to me on a recent trip to the supermarket. I was checking out with my weekly shopping and had filled the conveyor belt with the ingredients for the next week’s healthy meals and snacks.
After I placed the divider stick down, a very heavy young lady came up behind me to check out and placed her basket on the conveyor belt. It was filled to the brim with boxes of Slim-Fast® bars. It was quite a stark contrast next to the four feet of salads, lean meats, nuts, tea, skim milk, fruits, vegetables, and other food items on my side of the divider. I knew that I was going to be eating lots of real food all week, many times a day, and that I would be keeping a reign on my appetite and keeping my weight down.
At the same time, I knew that she would be doing what so many of us have done so many times before. She would try to eat those miniscule bars throughout the day and grit it out until her one “sensible meal.” And for the better part of the day, she would be desperately hungry and completely miserable. Depending on her motivation, she might be able to keep up with the draconian regime for a week or so, but pretty soon she would give into her hunger and return to her old eating habits. Of course, her metabolism will have dropped to accommodate her drastic caloric reduction, and any weight that she lost will fly back on—plus a few extra pounds that her body will pack on to protect itself against her next diet assault.
We have all been there and done that, yet the lure of “fast and easy” promises still too often manages to cloud our better judgment. The key is to train ourselves to make the right choices when we do eat. For me, it took awhile to replace the junk that I used to eat with healthier choices, but I absolutely never allow myself to get too hungry. I always have a healthier choice within arm’s reach.
The reason for this is simple: all my ability to make good choices heads right out the window when I’m ravenous.
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Chapter 5
Step 2:
Con Your
Cravings
“The last time that I had a
a craving for a celery stick?
That would be never.”
~ Michelle Pearl
_______
Have you ever had an all-consuming craving for the Swedish rice porridge Christmas dessert Risgrynsgröt? My guess is that your answer to that would be a big, resounding “No.” This is because you have never tasted it before, so that you have no sensory memory of it.
While some diet peddlers subscribe to the idea that cravings are directly tied to a chemical or mineral deficit in your body, that theory has been widely denounced by most clinical researchers.
What has been proven is that when you eat fat-laden or sugary foods, chemicals called opioids are released into your bloodstream. These opioids shoot right up to tiny receptors in the brain that give you a feeling of mild euphoria. This proves that when it comes to eating fat and sugar, there is most definitely a strong addictive aspect at work.
This explains why it is so difficult for people who have been exposed to the opioid inducing properties in meat to adopt a vegetarian lifestyle. One whiff of a sizzling meat patty and your sensory memory goes into overdrive, demanding that opioid burger high. And the most craved food in America—chocolate—is a jam-packed double whammy of both of the most powerful opioid-inducing foods: sugar and fat. So are cake, cookies, and ice cream. Little wonder that so many people find themselves tormented by the very thoughts of these foods!
This also explains why eating a carrot stick or a piece of celery when you are hungry has absolutely no appeal to most people. Put simply, they just won’t give you that food high your brain is clamoring for.
I have found a solution that helps me handle my cravings successfully 90 percent of the time: I dupe the cravings into believing that I am giving into them by eating a cleverly disguised alternative.
Now, I realize that folks who are trying to go the non-processed food route are not going to approve of all of my choices to fake-out my cravings, but I consider these little imposters my secret weapons in keeping the craving beast at bay.
Imposter Foods to Con the Chocolate Craving:
Fat-free, sugar-free pudding (sugar-free pudding made with fat-free milk) topped with a fat-free, low-carb whipped topping and a sprinkling of nuts for texture, henceforth referred to as Pearl’s Pudding
No sugar added hot cocoa,* sweetened with sugar-free sweetener or sugar-free syrup
Conning the Ice Cream Craving:
Non/fat frozen yogurt
Pearl’s Pudding
Conning the Sugar Craving:
Warm tea with sugar-free sweetener
Bowl of fruit with a fat-free, low-carb whipped topping
(My favorite is a bowl of defrosted frozen blueberries sprinkled with SPLENDA®.)
No sugar added hot cocoa,* sweetened with sugar-free sweetener or sugar-free syrup
Conning the Salt Craving:
Fat-free low salt crackers
Low salt pretzels
Air-popped popcorn
Conning the Fat Craving:
One handful of any kind of low salt nuts
A note about nuts: In step number 4, I will recommend that you “forego the fat.” A limited quantity of low salt nuts is an exception to that rule. Nuts are filled with unsaturated fat, which is essentially “good fat” that has been proven to help fight heart disease, promote growth and healthy skin and hair, aid in blood pressure control, and improve immune responses and blood clotting. Several studies with obese subjects have shown that weight gain was not a problem when the subjects were fed nuts within the context of a balanced diet. So when that craving to consume fat starts to overwhelm you, go nuts! (In moderation, of course.)
* Also note the asterisk next to fat-free hot cocoa in the previous lists. I think Swiss Miss 25 calorie, fat-free, 4 carb hot cocoa made with skim milk should be on the top of the food pyramid as its own special food group called Miracle on the Mid-Section Food.
I used to find that whenever I started cooking, I would unconsciously grab bites of anything that passed within arm’s reach while I was slicing and dicing. This can add up to a surprising number of excess calories without you even realizing it.
Now, if I find that I have the desire to graze while I am cooking, I zap a cup of hot cocoa and sip on it. This keeps me from eating while I am playing super chef. And when I sit down to dinner, it also helps me to feel full once I have eaten a single, reasonably sized helping.
Then, if I find that I get hungry again late at night, I will make myself another cup. In fact, I even get a cup of hot cocoa when we go to the movies! I’m telling you, after I’ve downed a cup of hot cocoa; I never give hot buttered popcorn a second thought.
In 2008, a study was published in the Journal of Physical Activity and Health which reported that scientists from the University of Colorado had discovered that a higher dairy consumption was associated with greater weight loss and a greater decrease in waist circumference.
An appetite killer and a waist whittler? Who could ask for more?
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Chapter 6
Step 3:
Repeat What
You Eat
“The repetition of eating
nearly the same thing for one or two of my three major meals every
day takes away the danger of choice.”
~ Michelle
Pearl
_______
One surprising way that I found to break bad eating habits was to become a creature of habit. Eating predictable, well-planned staples was one of the most unexpected and beneficial lifestyle changes that I have ever made.
Several studies on the eating habits of thin people revealed one particularly shocking similarity: many of the meals that they consumed consisted of staples that they ate repeatedly. These studies have shown that too many tastes and textures often encourage us to overeat.
So instead of wandering out in the kitchen every morning to try to figure out what to eat for breakfast, I have had practically the same thing every day for years: fat-free yogurt with high fiber granola on top.
Mid-morning I will usually grab a low-fat granola bar, or I fix myself a bowl of fruit sprinkled with a little sugar-free sweetener that I top off with a fat-free, low-carb whipped topping.
For lunch, I don’t leave myself a lot of room to stray, either.
I usually have a fruit-based protein smoothie or low-fat, low salt soup with a piece of whole grain toast topped with sugar-free jelly.
In a perfect world, a really healthy food plan for your day would look something like this: 7–8 servings of grain products, 4–5 servings of fruits and vegetables, 2–3 servings of low-fat or nonfat dairy products, 2 or fewer servings of meat, fish or poultry, and very little added fat. Then for snacks you could add nuts, seeds or dry beans 4–5 times per week and low-fat sweets 5 times per week.
What I just described is not my own random suggestion, it is the brainchild of the National Institutes of Health and it is called the DASH eating plan. While DASH is an acronym for the Dietary Approach to Stop Hypertension, everyone can benefit from the healthy guidelines the plan suggests.
That’s why one of my favorite quick-grab foods is that piece of whole grain toast with sugar-free jelly. I try to throw in those grain-based foods whenever I can.
MYTH:
Fiber is just for keeping Granny regular.
BUSTED: Aside from the fact that eating fiber can help reduce your risk of heart disease, cancer, diabetes, stroke and yes, good old-fashioned constipation, fiber has a few other wonderful, unexpected qualities as well.
1) Foods that are high in fiber, like that found in whole grains, vegetables, wheat, bran, oats, legumes (legumes are dry pods like peas, beans, lentils, etc.) and fruits with edible seeds (like strawberries), will make you feel fuller and more satisfied, and therefore, you will be less likely to overeat.
2) All of these food items are composed primarily of
starches and fiber. Since your body cannot digest fiber, the fiber
portion has ZERO calories, so the more fiber, the better!
_______
In the middle of nearly every afternoon, I have a salad that I like to call my Afternoon Protein Pick-Up.
Have you ever wondered why serious health nuts eat protein bars? It is usually for one of two reasons: 1) Since protein is the macronutrient of choice for building and repairing muscles, endurance athletes need to consume more calories than the average person since they burn off so many during exercise. So they pump up the carbs for energy and protein to aid their strength and conditioning training. 2) Others choose to eat extra protein because the body has to work harder just to be able to digest and absorb nutrients from protein, so many researchers have theorized that this increased thermogenic effect might be beneficial in helping to achieve and maintain weight loss.
First and foremost, if you want to pump up the amount of protein you consume, it is always healthier to do so through whole foods within your diet and not through unnecessarily expensive and inconvenient artificial supplementation. Furthermore, to me at least, most protein bars taste way too much like candy bars, not to mention the fact that they are absolutely packed with the empty calories of added sugar. Sitting down to eat one 400 calorie protein bar that tastes like a Snickers might work as a meal replacement for Susie-Marathon-Runner-Chickie-Who-Never-Had-An-Ongoing-Weight-Problem, but is not going to fill-up, satisfy or be necessary for your average everyday exerciser or for those of us who are experiencing chronic starvation.
Of course, red meat is protein packed, but it is also packed with saturated fat and crazy calories, so having a burger meat snack every afternoon isn’t going to work either.
Soy is the only plant-based food that offers a meat-comparable complete protein, but most soy snacks that I found that were edible were packed with sodium. I’m not all that interested in having a stroke brought on by hypertension because of the salt in my soy snack chips. Ditto for beef jerky.
So that pretty much leaves the options at chicken or fish, and I have no intention of cooking before I cook every afternoon. That’s when I came up with my Afternoon Protein Pick-Up Salad.
I allow myself to put anything in the salad that is low or no calorie: lettuce, green onions, tomatoes, cilantro, fat-free croutons, etc. Then I grab a handful of pre-grilled chicken strips out of the freezer and zap them until they are warm in the microwave, after which I chop them up and throw them on top of the salad. I have found that Tyson Grilled Chicken Breast Strips have the lowest sodium of any of the national brands. (You can also substitute water-packed tuna for chicken if you prefer.)
I top off the whole concoction with a very low fat or fat-free salad dressing, and just like that I have a truly filling, extremely low-calorie, high-protein snack that leaves me barely hungry for dinner two or three hours later. And since I am incredibly lazy…er…I mean busy, I take the hassle out of making the salad by chopping up the tomatoes, green onions and anything else that I am planning on using and filling little Tupperware containers with a few days’ worth of ingredients. That way, I can throw together my afternoon delight in less than a minute!
Nearly every night I cook a full-out, albeit low-carb dinner for my family with the same basic components prepared in an endless variety of ways. We have a protein-based main dish, a vegetable, and a salad. My husband’s family has a genetic propensity for diabetes, so I found it surprisingly easy to simply stop making dishes that include potatoes and rice. I do cook with pasta every once in awhile, because although pasta tends to be high in carbohydrates, the nutrient make-up of pasta causes it to release glucose into the bloodstream more slowly than many foods, giving it a low to medium glycemic index value. Surprisingly, regular pasta has a lower glycemic index than whole wheat pasta, and tastes a whole lot better, too, so I stick with the good old-fashioned stick-to-your-ribs Italian kind.
Other than the occasional pasta dish, as long as the ingredients don’t contain any serious carbs, I will cook absolutely any recipe that I want, including my husband’s childhood favorites. I just substitute most of the high-fat ingredients with the low-fat cheaters that you will read about in the next chapter. And I try to cook red meat no more than one night per week.
We keep our beverage choices pretty simple and repetitive too, which means that we never have to worry about inadvertently drinking excess calories. When I remember all the endless glasses of calorie-packed juices and sodas that I used to drink, I wince. Nowadays, if you open the Pearl fridge you will always find plenty of fat-free milk, many a jug of Arizona Diet Green Tea, and ice cold water.
On the weekends, my husband will treat himself to a diet Coke or two while he is building whatever he is building (My husband is always building something). I try to steer clear of carbonated diet drinks, but he has come a long way from the four to six cans-a-day diet soda habit that he had when we first met.
MYTH:
Drinking water makes you lose weight.
BUSTED: If you don’t drink enough water, you make it harder on your body to be able lose weight.
Contrary to what you might have heard, drinking copious quantities of water is not going to cause you to lose a lot of weight if you are already properly hydrated. On the other hand, if you don’t drink enough water, that can be a problem. Dehydration of as little as 1% can cause your metabolism to drop even further.
The old rule that said that you everyone should consume eight, eight-ounce glasses a day of water is now considered defunct. The latest recommendation is that unless you are an athlete who exercises vigorously, an infant, a hospitalized patient, sick, or elderly, you should drink to your thirst.
If you need a more concrete target, aim for half of your weight in ounces per day. In other words, if you weigh 140 pounds, you should try to drink at least 70 ounces of water daily. Luckily, your body is not picky as to where the water comes from, so you can count your consumption of tea, soups, vegetables, fruits, etc. as part of your water intake.
Myth busted by:
Gina Shaw, WebMD; Reviewed by Brunilda Nazario, MD.
_______
The choices that I mentioned represent the food routine that works for me, but here is where your own alchemy experiment begins. You will need to fiddle with your preferences for awhile to discover what works best for you.
Perhaps you’d prefer an egg-white veggie omelet every day for breakfast or a bowl of high fiber cereal. Or maybe it works out better for you to make breakfast your biggest meal of the day, and then you can choose to lighten up and eat some well-planned staples for your other primary meals and snacks.
No matter what, do not make the tried-and-true diet sabotage mistake of skipping breakfast. Aside from being the brain food and energy fuel that you need to kick-start your day, you have to keep your starvation response under control. If you try to hold off eating something until later in the day, by the time you finally sit down to eat you are likely to be hungry enough to eat everything but the kitchen sink.
I found that the repetition of eating nearly the same thing for one or two of my three major meals every day takes away the danger of choice.
_______
Chapter 7
Step 4:
Forego The
Fat
“Curbing your intake of fat is the ultimate challenge. Fitting into the next size smaller jeans is the ultimate reward.”
~ Michelle Pearl
_______
It’s time to address the ultimate diet conundrum: Should you cut fat or carbohydrates to lose weight?
Have you ever tried to go on a diet that drastically reduced or attempted to cut out the “demon” carbohydrates completely? I bet I know what happened when you did.
Your body is designed to use carbohydrates as its primary source of fuel for energy; when you took away the carbs, you had about as much energy as a comatose slug. Your brain uses carbohydrates to help it function properly; when you took away the carbs, simple things like tying your shoes suddenly seemed to take more brain cells than you could muster. Carbohydrates produce serotonin, the “feel good” chemical in your brain. When you took away the carbs, you soon became so cranky that you turned into the evil shrew from hell.
But wait - there’s more! When you cut out the carbs, you cut off your body’s primary fuel source. In order for your body to have the strength to get you out of bed in the morning and get you to the sink to be able to brush your teeth, it had to have some sort of fuel. So your body started raiding your fat reserves. So you lost weight!
While at first blush this would seem like the ideal solution to shed pounds, fueling your body with the wrong fuel is the equivalent of trying to run your car on a cheap, fat-based gasoline substitute.
Running your body on a fuel of saturated fats is called ketosis. All that excess broken-down fat (ketones) in your bloodstream can cause nausea, fatigue, and bad breath, or worse, kidney failure and gout. And when there is not enough fat available at any given moment, your body will eat away at your muscle tissue as a last resort.
It is possible that you will weigh less after eating a low/no carbohydrate diet. You will be a weak, unhealthy, foul-tempered mess of a human being, but for as long as you can hang onto the diet, it is likely that you will weigh less. When you can no longer bear to live that way (or when your family has had enough of your deranged new personality), you will gain the weight back in the blink of an eye.
While it is true that you don’t want to consume an excessive quantity of carbs, since carbs can eventually turn into fat if you consume more than you can use, it is really just a simple balancing act. I find that the easiest way to walk that tightrope is by simply not avoiding carbs in most regular food, e.g. whole grain bread, fruits, pasta, etc. (Because of my husband’s genetic predisposition for type 2 diabetes, the only foods that are an exception to this rule in our household are those with a high glycemic index, like potatoes, rice, watermelon, and most cereals.)
Then, I do avoid unnecessary carbs (usually in the form of added sugar) by choosing sugar-free substitutes whenever possible, e.g. sugar-free jellies, sugar substitutes, sugar-free desserts, sugar-free beverages, etc.
_______
At the time of this writing, there is a newly released weight loss book written by a celebrity fitness trainer that is being hotly promoted that claims that consumption of sugar, not fat, is one of the primary contributors to obesity. This book decries that “FAT IS NOT THE ENEMY: Fat doesn't make you fat; sugar does!”*
*(Warner, Jackie. This Is Why You're Fat (And How to Get Thin Forever): Eat More, Cheat More, Lose More--and Keep the Weight Off. Advertisement. Amazon.com. Web. 09 June 2010. <http://www.amazon.com/This-Youre-Thin-Forever-More/dp/044654860X/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1278716022&sr=8-3#reader_044654860X>.)
I wholeheartedly disagree. Fat is unquestionably one of the biggest enemies that you will ever face when it comes to fighting the obesity battle and it is the opposing malevolent general in the even more monumental fight for your overall health.
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