The Curmudgeonly Professor's Weight Loss and Well-Being Blog

Welcome to My Weight Loss and Well-Being blog

Welcome to the Curmudgeonly Professor's Weight Loss and Well-Being Blog. I originally included material for this blog in my Curmudgeonly Professor Blog, but the specialized information became too unwieldy to handle there. I will copy several posts from the other blog and post them here to begin the content in this blog, so you may have already read some of the material. Reading it again won't hurt anything. In addition to posting new information about food, nutrition, weight loss, and well-being, I will post, in segments, the manuscript I wrote a couple of years ago titled "One Hundred and One Common Sense Ways to Lose Weight and Keep it Off!". I considered self publishing this manuscript, but decided more people would see it if I just posted it on this blog. The objective of writing the manuscript was to provide information that would be of help to people struggling with their weight, and this blog is a more effective way of achieving that goal than would be selling a couple of dozen copies of a self-published book. I invite feedback, comments, and stories about your own experiences. We can all help each other. Please keep your comments short and to the point and please use clean language.

Dear (Food) Diary - Fit Nation - TIME

Two nights ago, I had a handful of M&M's. In fact, I can tell you I ate seven of the peanut kind, which is my favorite. Under normal circumstances, I would've simply grabbed a bunch, mindlessly eaten them while talking to a colleague and forgotten them entirely.

via www.time.com

Reasons why you should keep a food diary if you are trying to lose weight

The Curmudgeonly Professor's Weight Loss Saga, Again

The Curmudgeonly Professor has finally decided to crank up his weight-loss blog again, quietly, no fanfare.  Having struggled for so long with excess weight, and all of the penalties attached thereto, I have finally made a commitment to get serious once more and do something about my obsesity.  My peak weight, clothed, was 314.  I have lost several pounds and am now down to 300, unclothed.  That number is enough of a beginning victory to encourage me to tell my weight loss story.  As my doctor told me last time, "You are in good health, but your weight is taking months off your life."

Along the way, I'll fill in with chapters from my weight-loss book I wrote several years ago, newspaper clips and articles, and general observations about my weight problem.  I'll be totally honest about my weight and my problems.  I hope that my story will prompt others to begin a weight-loss journal and to share experiences as comments on this blog.

Here we go.

The Curmudgeonly Professor's Weight-Loss Post Number 7: February 7 2009

Lose the first pound.  Now.  The second, third, and fourth will then be easier.

Weight Loss Post Number 6: How to Lose 52 pounds in one year

To lose 52 pounds in one year, lose one pound per week.  Or, if you want to lose 26 pounds in one year, lose one pound every other week.  If you have been fat for years, losing anything will be a victory.  Think about it.  

Common-Sense Weight Loss: Foreword Part 2

One Hundred and One Common-Sense Ways to Lose Weight and Keep it Off
Continuation of Foreword from earlier post

One option was to give up on the project and congratulate myself on making a nice try and be content with sending my weeks of arduous work off into cyberspace. The other option was to write it all over again, all 150 pages, more or less. After thinking about it for a bit, I knew that I had to accept the second option and rewrite the entire manuscript from scratch. I did have my rough notes from Texas and my basic list, so at least that was a start. I was ready to back up the manuscript to my external hard drive and print a hard copy just after I inserted the cover page. Having used computers since they first came on the scene, I, of course, had violated the cardinal rule of computer use and had committed the classic stupid blunder. I hadn't backed up a copy of my work.

When I considered what I should do, I thought that if I gave up on the weight-loss manuscript, I might as well give up on my weight-loss program. I knew that I could do neither, and that any success in either project would contribute toward succeeding in the other. I have no idea whether this rewrite will be better or worse than the first attempt. However, at the conclusion of my ill-fated written work, I realized that I had learned a great deal and had gained what I thought were some important insights about food and weight loss that might make the rewritten version better. I thought if I could persevere and rewrite the manuscript again, perhaps I could continue making progress toward my weight-loss goal.

So, I am launching forth again, armed with a double backup, working on my wonderful new MacBook Pro, the easiest computer keyboard I have ever used. At an average of about 3 pages per day, I think I can finish the rewrite in about a month and a half or two months. (Note: I actually finished in three grueling weeks).

The longer I have worked on this manuscript and the more I have studied and thought about weight loss, the food industries, and the diet industries, the more concerned I have become about the general lack of knowledge and understanding of food, nutrition, and dieting and their links to our health and longevity. This lack is not due to the nonexistence of important information, but rather to our disinterest in accessing and studying it. I have also become more concerned about the deceptive marketing and advertising tactics of some elements of the food industries. While some components of the food industries could be labeled as irresponsible for loading grocery shelves with foods containing excessive amounts of fat, sugar, and salt, consumers are not required to buy and eat unhealthy foods.

Whatever our level of collective and individual knowledge of food and obesity, we seem to be in a massive state of denial over what we have done to our bodies and our health and we seem either unwilling or unable to do anything about it. (Greg Critser uses the term "denial" many times in his book Fat Land, a reference which I recommend later, but I had written my draft and had used the term here many times before I read Critser's book).

to be continued . . .

Check USA Today DietChallenge Website

You may want to bookmark USA Today's website dietchallenge.usatoday.com This site is a continuing source of new information about health, well being, and weight loss.

USA Today Reviews Dr. George L. Blackburn's Book "Break Through Your Set Point"

USA Today has reviewed the new book written by Dr. George L. Blackburn, associate director of the division of nutrition at Harvard Medical School, titled Break Through Your Set Point: How to Finally Lose the Weight You Want and Keep it Off", written with Julie Corliss (Collins Publisher) on p. 8D April 3 2008. In the USA Today article, titled "Set yourself up for diet success," Nanci Hellmich tells us that Dr. Blackburn suggests that if we want to lose weight, we should follow the "10% rule." According to this rule, we should lose 10% of our body weight and then just stop for awhile and keep our weight at our new level. This process, Dr. Blackburn tells us, allows our body to adjust to its new "set point", which

"is the weight that the body has established as normal, and the body has mechanisms that fight to return to that weight."

Even a weight drop of 10% helps blood pressure, cholesterol, and diabetes risk, improves sleep, helps breathing, adds energy, reduces fatigue, reduces need for medications--all benefits of a modest weight loss I have read about before in other sources but which Dr. Blackborn reinforces here. An obesity expert at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, Thomas Wadden, endorses Dr. Blackburn's advice indicating that such advice "is as good as it gets," and "the first 10% is the most important weight you can lose."

Business Week Magazine Discusses the Search for a Drug to Fix Obesity

In the March 17 2008 issue of Business Week, Arlene Weintraub writes about the search by drug companies for a "magic pill that helps people shed pounds without getting sick," noting that "an astronomical windfall" awaits the first company to achieve this goal. Read the article here.
The article notes that:
The weight-loss market comes to about $33 billion per year.
Only a small fraction of that--$200 million--comes from prescription products.

Hey Messy People: Your Clutter May Make Your Butt Look Fat According to Author Peter Walsh

Earlier the Curmudgeonly Professor explored the issue as to whether messy people were less successful than neat people. Now, as it turns, out Peter Walsh, an organizational expert, has written a book titled "Does This Clutter Make My Butt Look Fat", published by Free Press. In a book review of Walsh's book by Tania Fuentez published in the Salt Lake Trib titled "Spring Cleaning: Dig yourself out of your clutter" (March 24 2008 p. C2), the reviewer notes that Walsh contends that "a cluttered home can lead to, essentially, cluttered thighs."

Walsh states that "[clutter] robs us literally and metaphorically of life." When he helped people declutter their lives, people were contacting him saying ". . . a side effect is that I suddenly find I'm losing weight." Apparently decluttering not only makes one feel lighter and more free of burdens, but also blesses one with a smaller butt. Maybe an idea worth trying.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture Offers Personalized Menu Planning System

Writing in USA Today, Heather Terwilliger explains how the Center for Nutrition Policy and Promotion of the U.S. Department of Agriculture has released a free interactive program to help them make food choices. In Terwilliger's article titled "Personal pyramid planner builds menus to your design: Design nutrition, calorie specifics as you like it," appearing in USA Today March 27 2008 p. 4D, she describes how the planner helps to regulate consumption of different food groups to reach nutritional goals.

Follow this link to go to the Department of Agriculture MyPyramid Menu Planner site. The USA Today article quotes Brian Wansink, director of the nutrition center, as follows:

"You can take all the host of calorie counters in the world . . . they'll tell you how many calories you ate; they're not going to tell you whether you're eating a balanced diet or not."

On an encouraging note, the article suggests that the planner:
"assesses how balanced a person's eating habits are and offers tips for small changes that could tip the scales in a healthier direction."