Later On

For one thing, it’s weight loss, not weight gain. And slow brings benefits: the focus is less on losing the weight, more on adopting a new way of eating and a different way of living that incorporates more exercise. In other words, it’s making a real, permanent change, and that takes time and experimentation. For example, over the past 3 months I lost only 5 lbs/month—still, that’s more than 1 lb/week, and in addition I was learning through experimenting with foods and meals, finding combinations that I liked and that still resulted in weight loss.

I spent at least a month convincing myself that if I ate a mid-morning and mid-afternoon snack of a piece of fruit, I would lose weight, but if I stopped the snacks, I stopped losing weight. So that’s a whole new thing for me and a permanent addition to my lifestyle: eating a piece of fruit mid-morning, and eating another mid-afternoon. When I go on maintenance, I’ll add a string cheese to the snack.

Also, I had to find the right mix of exercises that I can maintain the rest of my life. I think what I have now—Nordic Track for cardio, Pilates for strength—is about right, and they also become permanent residents in my daily and weekly routine. I’ll have to transition from thrice-weekly Pilates instruction to thrice-weekly Pilates at-home mat exercises, but I can do that. I think I will maintain a weekly instructional session to make sure my form doesn’t suffer.

I seem to have the right meal balance, too:

breakfast: cereal and protein for breakfast (egg and steel-cut oats)

lunch: a large green salad with protein (boiled egg, tuna, chicken, sardines, or shrimp) and carbs (cooked whole-grain wheat or barley in the salad, or 2 Ry-Vita crackers with the salad) and an excellent low-fat dressing.

dinner: meat, veg (usually greens, sometimes green beans), and a carb, typically a cooked whole grain (rice, wheat, spelt, kamut, barley) or quinoa or, especially now, roasted winter squash. Meat is generally chicken or fish, but lately I’ve also been eating beef liver.

So I know what my meals look like—I have a clear template in mind and simply pick things to fill the template. And, given the slow rate at which I’m losing, my meals on maintenance will be pretty much the same: add string cheese to the snacks, and increase the portion size a small amount. But basically I won’t be changing what I eat or how I eat—which is the whole point of the program and why it’s food-based instead of formula-based.

At this point, I feel confident that I can continue to goal and then maintain—because by the time I reach goal, my new habits and lifestyle will be thoroughly ingrained and a part of me: it will be just how I live.