Wanting to quit

Eight weeks in, and we are now halfway through the Colorado Diet. Although we’ve collectively lost 194.4 pounds, we’re tired, and I bet most people in the group – if not all – have either thought about quitting or thought fondly of their pre-diet lives.

Today is hard – ice cream would make me feel better.

I don’t want to get up and workout this morning – can’t I just skip today?

At the beginning, the promise of weight loss charmed us into naiveté about the huge commitment before us. Who considers what 16 weeks really feels like when your body is quickly changing in a way that makes you happy? Even if we couldn’t picture the future, it was shiny and we smiled at it with wide eyes.

But then we got used to the weekly success (or occasional backslide) and the power of it began to fade, especially as time got scarcer and workouts got harder. The time in between weigh-ins became longer and in moments of weakness, we saw others living the non-diet life, and all we wanted was what they were having. Maybe we began to lose sight of why we made this commitment to begin with.

Long-term commitments are exhausting by nature, and they can make you vulnerable to the temptations of your old life: indulging in things that satisfied you in the short term but made you unhappy in the long term. Sugar, fat, and laziness call out to you and if you are not strong enough, chances are you will indulge.

What is strength, anyway? Is it having a larger reserve of willpower? Is it superior genes? Is it never showing weakness?

I always thought that I just wasn’t “good at willpower,” as if it were a talent or that I didn’t have enough of it. In fact, as Drs. Wyatt and Hill explain, willpower is a finite resource; those who seem to have an unending supply are just better at knowing when to use it. They roadblock temptation with routines and no-brainer choices, conserving their willpower for when they really need it.

Strength is also allowing others to help you (i.e. getting vulnerable); it’s being okay with showing weakness and leaning on others for support. The catch is, in order to gain strength from others you have to let them know you need it.

This scares a lot of people and can inhibit any kind of change.

To get through this period of wanting to quit, we all have to learn to dig deep, identify our weaknesses, and accept strength from others.

I guarantee that none of us State of Slimmers would have lost as much weight as we have if not for our friends, families, co-workers, and each other. Everyone likes to think they can do it alone – and that’s fine if you want to tell yourself that – but you’re probably happier and less likely to quit if you open yourself up to the human experience.

Cooking for life

Julia Child didn’t start cooking until she was 36 years old.

In 1948 the would-be world-renowned American chef moved to Paris for her husband’s job. To make the most of her time in France, she enlisted in the prestigious Le Cordon Bleu cooking school and embarked on a new career (she had previously worked for the U.S. government).

Child is hardly the role model for healthy cooking, but she can inspire those who believe they can never change.

In just six weeks, most of us have made extraordinary lifestyle changes to accommodate the Colorado Diet. Because we have to eat six times a day, preparing food that complies with the diet consumes a great deal of time. We are cooking more than we ever have; before this diet, some participants never cooked.

“I enjoy all the other parts of being a mom, but cooking is the one thing I hate,” Natalie said the other day, explaining that she didn’t even like sautéing meat. Before, she routinely bought frozen and pre-made food, which looked healthy but in fact contained high sodium and oil (among other things).

“What I ate before didn’t contribute to weight loss,” she said. “They weren’t fat burners. I wasn’t eating the right food. It was all pre-made and I didn’t know what was in them.”

So, to eat the right food – the fat burners – in the right combinations, cooking is survival, unless you want to eat cottage cheese six times a day, every day. 

On Natalie’s first big cooking day – the first Sunday of the diet – it took her six hours to prepare stir fry, pumpkin chili, pancakes, muffins and other foods for the week. “I hate to cook,” I heard from her more than once as she tried to see the lifestyle change in a positive light.

But slowly, Sunday by Sunday, Natalie has reduced that food prep time to three hours and has come to enjoy cooking for the first time in her life.

And, family and friends have started asking for her recipes.

“No one’s ever asked me about what I cooked,” Natalie laughs. “My kids are taking pictures of me in the kitchen.”

I think a lot of what has prevented people from changing – most visibly as weight loss – is the belief that they can’t change. Hope for change is fleeting and many may give up before they start.

But as Julia Child and Natalie Goldstein show us, change is never impossible, no matter how old you are or how many life milestones you have passed.  

“This diet has changed my life,” Natalie said. “And now I know I can cook.”

Who knows? Because of this life change, we may have the next, great American chef in our midst.

The candy baby

The candy covered the conference table like a decorative runner, the orange, blue, red and silver wrappers calling us with their promises of milk chocolate, peanut butter and caramel.

It sat there the entire class until, at the very end, Dr. Wyatt said, “Go ahead. Make a pile of your favorites.”

We grabbed at the Halloween candy, hoping this was a special treat, maybe because we’d been so good. Then Dr. Wyatt passed around plastic sandwich bags. “Now put all your candy in the bag.”

Once we snapped our bags shut, Dr. Wyatt delivered the news: for the next seven days we would have to keep these “candy babies” in sight at all times (so named for the likeness to baby dolls high schoolers have to “parent” for homework). And we had to return every piece of candy the following week.

My candy baby went with me everywhere. She sat at my desk all day, stowed away in my purse at an awards banquet, and withstood stares from people at the gym.

Co-workers stopped at my desk with furrowed brows, wondering why I would torture myself like this and why I didn’t offer any to them.

"The idea [behind the candy baby exercise] is that sometimes you will be in a situation where something -- candy, a piece of cheesecake, chips -- are going to be put in front of you and you may not be able to control that," Dr. Wyatt said. "What will you do?  What can you control or do it make it less likely you will eat the candy in a moment of weakness?"

I love candy – the taste, the texture, the sugar high, the instant gratification. But fewer than 24 hours after receiving my candy baby, it (mostly) ceased to exist as a temptation. The wrappers’ sheen faded and I could picture the melted and remolded chocolate inside the wrappers, becoming less appetizing with every new location to which it traveled.

Slowly, we’re gaining perspective on some of our worst vices, trying to see them away from the grip they usually have on us, but I think it will take a lot more than one week with a candy baby to make us immune to its attraction, to automate the skills necessary to say no. 

At least Halloween only comes once a year.

Today’s my favorite day

“What day is it?’ asked Pooh.

“It’s today,” squeaked Piglet.

“My favorite day,” said Pooh.

Natalie’s teenage daughter – beautiful, smart, friendly – “broke down” the other day, this time because she didn’t have a boyfriend. It was one of many times during the week her daughter would take the tragic outlook on a life circumstance.

Ever the patient mother, Natalie usually comforts her daughter with sympathy. This time, while her daughter was getting ready for school, Natalie stood outside the bathroom and read her the Pooh quote, which Dr. Wyatt had shared with us the week before.

Her daughter predictably rolled her eyes but, “at least she listened to me,” Natalie laughed. She has since printed it off and posted it around her house as a reminder to think positively.

“I believe so strongly in positive thinking…with it, you really can do everything you want,” Natalie said.

Maybe some of you are rolling your eyes right now, just like Natalie’s daughter. Maybe it sounds overly simplistic.

In the past, I always got frustrated when I was in a bad place and people said, “Just think positive!” It felt patronizing, like they weren’t listening, like any problem, no matter how complex, would go away if I just turned that frown upside down.

But that is not what Drs. Wyatt and Hill are talking about. Many people fail to change because of their state of mind. Almost anyone free from disability can exercise right now and make a choice to eat this over that right now; the issue is almost never the basic ability to do the task at hand. Instead, it’s the myriad of mental roadblocks.

“I’m too tired.”
“I don’t have the right shoes.”

“I can’t tolerate the way people look at me at the gym.”

“It will suck so bad if I can’t have that cookie right now.”

“I can’t find time to exercise.”

“I’m not a morning person.”

Anyone who has failed to change has said a variation of one of those negative phrases, probably hundreds of times – myself included. Just as Natalie said, if you embrace the challenge with a positive attitude, you can almost always make things go your way.

So instead of “I’m too tired” you say “I will be less tired after I work out.” Or instead of “It will suck so bad if I can’t have that cookie right now” you say “I will feel so proud of myself for not eating that cookie right now.”

The docs’ goal is to train us to realistically see the challenges in front of us but turn them in a way that makes them work for us instead of against us (what they call the Colorado Mindset).

As I mentioned earlier, this diet isn’t really about trimming our waistlines or building a six-pack. The fat itself is probably not what makes most people unhappy – it is what the fat symbolizes: lack of self-esteem, lack of strength, unhappiness, perpetual pessimism, self hatred, etc.

For those of you looking to see if we will succeed after these 16 weeks and beyond, spend less time looking at the scale and more time noticing our sunnier dispositions.

(You can already bet your money on Natalie’s success).  

The Indulgence

In Phase II, at one meal a week, we may now eat whatever we want. The only rule is that we must plan ahead for it.

Drs. Wyatt and Hill justify this luxury in three ways. First, because we continue to increase our weekly exercise time, one fatty meal probably won’t go straight to our hips (though some still worry it will). Second, because this is the anti-long-term-deprivation diet, the docs never want our favorite food to be more than seven days away, as they like to say. And because it’s only once a week, it teaches us to savor our food and refrain from mindless eating.

Sounds pretty good to me – it sure makes this diet more bearable (though, really, the diet is kind of enjoyable). So I was pretty stoked about this indulgence meal. I could go to any restaurant and not have to find the one, usually tasteless item compliant with the diet.

At an upscale greasy spoon, I ordered pizza and wine, and shared a dessert. Pizza is one of my favorite foods, and I love sweets, so I fully expected to feel comfort from consuming these foods that in the past have made me feel happy, warm, and satisfied.

The thing is, though, it wasn’t like that at all. It was anticlimactic. The food didn’t taste as good as I remembered, and afterwards, my energy spiked from the simple sugars, then crashed into lethargy. It felt uncomfortable.

Sometimes sensory memory is nostalgic. That is, it remembers things better than maybe they were, so when we go back to them, we are disappointed. Maybe I did misremember the experience of eating comfort food. Or maybe my taste buds are changing.

It made me wonder if the indulgence had been worth it and the following week, I looked forward to it a little less than I had the week before.

I suspect this was Drs. Hill and Wyatt’s plan all along. 

What we’re eating: Phase II

A couple weeks ago, we began the six-week-long Phase II. Back in the highly restrictive Phase I, many of us couldn’t wait to let certain food back into our lives. Now we can have fruit again, string cheese, avocados, pistachios, tortillas, brown rice, pork and several others.

How exciting for us!

My initial reaction was to celebrate by eating all the food I’d missed. But no sooner had I cracked a full egg (yolk included!) did I realize I couldn’t go back to the way I ate before the diet. Yes, we could let food back in, but not without the caveats and limitations meant to train away our impulsive eating behaviors.

For example, there’s a new category of foods called “rebuild carbs” that includes string cheese, ricotta cheese, berries, apples, Ezekial bread, whole wheat pita bread and a few others.

But we may not eat these all at one time and rarely in combination with each other (unless you do half servings of two). We also must eat them in small, measured portions, and we can only have a total of no more than three reignite and rebuild carbs per day. So while we have more food choices, in many ways it seems like we have fewer, because we have to practice frugality more than ever before.

For example, if I want one string cheese stick, that means I can only have two more non-veggie carbs the rest of the day. So if I want my small, non-fat latte with skim milk, and a Phase I muffin, then I’m out of non-veggie carb options the rest of the day, meaning no berries, bread or rice. It doesn’t seem that hard until you realize you’ve gone through all your carbs on breakfast food and coffee.

No matter how hard this is, the justification for the rules is obvious.  Beyond the science of fat burning, eating this way keeps impulsive behavior at bay; it teaches us to acknowledge what our mind wants to do but overriding it with what our body wants to do. 

Usually, on highly restricted diets, impulses go crazy when we have freedom again to eat whatever we choose. (Some scientists believe your body releases a hormone when you lose fat that falsely signals that you are starving, thereby slowing your metabolism and encouraging eating.) Before long, we’ve gained the weight back and learned almost nothing.

Many people who have dieted experience this – they learn to live in a world of extremes. Either you eat nothing or you inhale everything and your body reacts in a primal, I’m-just-trying-to-survive way. In this world of extremes, you are unchanged on a deep level.

What I love about this diet is how changed I already feel – physically, yes, but more importantly, mentally and behaviorally.

For those who are curious, here is the complete list of new food allowed in Phase II:

• Shellfish
• Buffalo, ostrich and venison
• Pork (tenderloin and Canadian bacon)
• Whole eggs
• Ezekial bread, whole grain pita or tortilla
• Barley
• Brown rice, wild rice and rice cakes
• Quinoa
• Beans
• Sweet potato or winter squash
• Fat-free and low-fat cheese (reduced fat string cheese and part-skim ricotta)
• Select fruits (apple, grapefruit, blueberries, strawberries or raspberries)
• Avocado
• Olives
• Pistachios

The Why

I’ve never really been on a diet before this, so I don’t know for sure, but I suspect one of the biggest differentiators between the Colorado Diet and others is not the quick weight loss, the combination of foods, the phases, and maybe not even the exercise – it is the therapy.

More than anything, the Colorado Diet implores us to deeply question our habits, thought processes, perspectives and motivations in a way many have never done before. I often leave class feeling like I’ve just attended group therapy and when I read the book it feels like an exercise in behavior change.

For example, a couple weeks ago, Dr. Wyatt had us figure out our “why.”

“Why do you want to lose weight?” she posed rhetorically to the class. She brought up the example of the person who wants to lose weight for their high school reunion. “That’s not the real the reason.” Then she turned to us. “And the reason you think you’re here might not be your ‘why.’”

She explained that most people in their interviews said they wanted to lose weight for their health, but at the heart of it, each person has a deeper, more unique motivation. Although there’s nothing wrong with a surface-level motivation (fit into that wedding dress, win a weight loss contest), Dr. Wyatt explains, lasting weight loss comes when we connect our motivation to our life’s purpose.

The following week, some Colorado Dieters shared with the class their “why’s” they had spent the week discovering:

“Show my grandchildren that our culture does not have to be about fried food.”

“So I can get back to being the person I was when my wedding rings still fit.”

“To be a role model for my girls.”

And here is what Courtney had to say:

“Happiness is a choice. The decisions that I make can affect my health, emotions and state of being. For many years, I have been comfortable with the victim mentality of believing that I was just born to be short and chubby. It is time for me to believe that I am not the victim, that I can be self-confidence and that I am able to influence others in their health decisions. My ultimate reason for wanting to lose weight is to increase my self-esteem. When you peel the onion of my life, you will find a person who appears very confident on the outside; however, deep down is not. The ability to change my appearance into something that I actually like, or love, would be a first for me…Not only do I plan to be an influence, but, I believe I have an obligation to promote a healthy lifestyle for my boys and my patients as I practice as a nurse.”

Here’s to Courtney finding her self-esteem and becoming an influence, and to the others on this diet brave enough to dig into who they really are and why they are here. As the docs say in the book, “They’re what will motivate you after people have stopped complimenting you on your success.”