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This post is from GRS staff writer April Dykman.
Last week, Robert Brokamp lamented about his not-ready-for-prime-time bikini body, asking GRS readers “whether it might make sense occasionally to engage in some extreme fiscal or physical fitness in order to see bigger results sooner, which could serve as encouragement to keep going.”
Brokamp’s post was highly entertaining to be sure, but I immediately fired off an e-mail to J.D. asking if I could answer his question in a follow-up post. At GRS, we recognize the importance of getting rich slowly, doing the boring stuff day-in and day-out to achieve financial success. I believe weight loss is no different.
Crash diets don’t work
Research published by UCLA in 2007 concluded that diets don’t work. Traci Mann, UCLA associate professor of psychology and lead author of the study, writes:
You can initially lose 5 to 10% of your weight on any number of diets, but then the weight comes back. We found that the majority of people regained all the weight, plus more. Sustained weight loss was found only in a small minority of participants, while complete weight regain was found in the majority. Diets do not lead to sustained weight loss or health benefits for the majority of people.
We really want to believe there’s a magic bullet, but sadly, weight loss is as unsexy as loading up on veggies and getting some exercise everyday.
When I hear people talking about the latest fad diet, it reminds me of the people that talk about what they’d do if they won the lottery — it’s easier to daydream than to hunker down and do the work. That’s why people are quick to defend their 500-calorie-per-day diets and hCG injections or to pass around studies about how get-slim-quick strategies can yield lasting results. But you lose weight on the nutty hCG diet because you are consuming too few calories, and a little digging into the linked study that seems to champion rapid weight loss shows that the term “rapid” is used to describe participants who lost an average of 1.5 pounds per week, which isn’t fast at all. It’s a realistic and healthy goal for the average person to lose 1-2 pounds per week.
With weight loss, as with personal finance, don’t believe the hype. If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.
Where personal finance and dieting differ
Brokamp wrote, “I tried this once before with my diet, cutting out everything except vegetables and lean proteins. That included no more caffeine or any kind of sugar. After a few days, I didn’t feel so great — kinda like I had the flu.”
Where diet and personal finance differ is that depriving your body directly affects your health. The Weight-control Information Network reports that “many patients on a [very low calorie diet] for 4 to 16 weeks report minor side effects such as fatigue, constipation, nausea, or diarrhea.” While those conditions usually improve, CNN reports some more serious side effects that make some nutritionists dread bikini season. According to the article, studies show that crash diets (under 1,200 calories per day) can lead to the following:
- Slower metabolism (meaning future weight gain)
- Nutrient deprivation
- Weakened immune system
- Dehydration
- Heart palpitations
- Cardiac stress
Maybe doing it just once won’t harm you, but since studies show that crash diets won’t work, chances are that next summer you’ll be looking for another quick fix to lose 20 pounds (or more) again.
Psychological Boost: Fact or Fiction?
Do quick results give you the motivation to stay on course? Or as Brokamp asks, “Wouldn’t I see more results by severely limiting the calories and increasing the exercise, which would inspire me to keep going and stick with it?”
It does make sense. If you look great, you’d be crazy not to maintain that, right? But it’s statistically proven that you’ll regain the weight, and maybe even some extra, so that seems unlikely to be sufficient motivation. And some experts believe that losing and regaining is bad for your psychological health, making you feel like, well, a hopeless failure. Studies on the psychological effects are inconclusive, however, with some linking weight cycling to increased psychological distress and dissatisfaction, and others showing no relationship.
A Life Plan that Works
I’m pretty passionate about weight loss and personal finance. I gained weight during college (on a barely 5′2″ frame) that I finally lost for good five years ago. I was in credit card debt from my freshman year until two years ago. Before that, both the scale and the credit card balance yo-yoed for years. I finally stopped looking for quick fixes, and that’s when I found success. So, my advice to Brokamp is to consider J.D.’s original twelve core beliefs about money (he just keeps making that list bigger, doesn’t he?), with a weight loss twist:
- Maintaining a healthy weight is more about mind than it is about math. The math is simple — calories in, calories burned. But that’s obviously not enough. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, a common trait among people who lose weight and keep it off is that they seek support from family members and friends. When your negative thoughts get in the way of your goal, turn to your support group for encouragement.
- Goals are important. Be realistic, and think about process goals. For instance, instead of focusing on losing 20 pounds, make it your goal to eat five servings of vegetables and workout for 45 minutes a day.
- Eat less than you burn. In other words, track what you eat, even if only for a few weeks. You’ll learn about your habits and triggers, which is instrumental for long-term weight maintenance.
- Eat your proteins and veggies first. Before you reach for the bread basket or down 16 ounces of soda, fill up on something nutritious.
- Small amounts matter. If you can’t fit in a two-hour run, don’t get frustrated and give up. Do you have 30 minutes? Consistency is what is important. Likewise, swapping a frappucino for a latte might seem insignificant, until you calculate the calorie difference.
- Large amounts matter, too. It’s just not reasonable to eat a pint of ice cream and expect to make it up at the gym the next day. Learn about portion control.
- Do what works for you. As with personal finance, there is no one answer. I can tell you my secret was eating kale, but maybe you hate kale. You can tell me that running was the key to your success, and just hearing about it will make my knee hurt. There are a lot of healthy foods and calorie-torching activities out there — experiment until you figure out what you like.
- Slow and steady wins the race. To quote J.D. when he wrote about this in a personal finance context, “Recognize that you’re in this for the long haul. You’re making a lifestyle change, not looking for a quick fix.”
- The perfect is the enemy of the good. Don’t bother looking for the “best” weight loss plan — there’s not one. Get started and tweak your plan as you go.
- Failure is okay. Maintaining your weight is something you’ll do for the rest of your life. There will be vacations, birthdays, and holiday seasons that throw you off track. That’s okay. Get back into your good habits, and make a plan to have healthy foods on hand and fit in some exercise the next time your routine changes.
- It’s more important to be happy than it is to be skinny. Don’t become obsessed with celebrities diets and models who walk the Victoria’s Secret runway a week after giving birth. As with money, if you’re happy, your weight can be easier to manage, especially if you eat ice cream when you’re sad or reach for potato chips when you’re bored.
- Do it now. It’s easy to put off weight loss until bikini season hits and you can’t hide under a sweater, but the sooner your start moving toward your goals, the easier they are to reach.
Finally, when it comes to paying off debt, it might make sense to cut back for some big wins. But you probably didn’t get to where you are now right out of the gate.
When my husband and I got serious about debt, he sold his motorcycle, I quit buying clothes for sport, and we started to pack our lunch everyday. That seemed drastic to us, but since then we’ve found many more ways to save, implemented over time. Crash dieting isn’t akin to selling some Stuff and building your online savings account or starting an emergency fund; it’s more like trying to go from compulsive spender to Frugal Babe overnight. Not even Frugal Babe did that!
Sadly, successful weight loss, like good personal finance habits, is quite boring. But the payoffs are huge.
This article is about Basics, Health & Fitness Wednesday, 30th June 2010 (by April Dykman)
Thanks for quoting the UCLA study. I have a coworker who just went to have gastric bypass. When he went to the bypass clinic they actually told him if his BMI was over 30 that “diets won’t work”. No kidding-because ITS NOT A DIET-its a lifestyle change. Spending until your credit card is maxed out doesn’t work either…slow and steady wins the race every time.
“The math is simple…” Actually it’s not. As you change your eating and exercise habits, even on a long-term lifestyle scale, your individual metabolism (aka biochemistry) will change. Different proportions of carbohydrates, fats, and proteins utilize different or modified metabolic pathways. For example, if for a long time you were gaining weight (fat), your body is metabolizing differently than if you are losing weight (fat). Fat storage and fat burning pathways are very different. Age, genetics, body type, overall health, etc. all contribute as well).
In a purely mathematical sense you are correct, but our bodies are not like the spreadsheets we use to keep track of our finances; they are infinitely more complex.
Here is one more way that personal finance and dieting differ: if you follow your personal finance plan, it will work for certain!
You may follow your diet and exercise program without fail, but to know how you did, you need to get on the scale, and sometimes the results can be disappointing.
That is never the case in personal finance. If you make a plan to cut spending and pay off your debt, you can project your results on a spreadsheet, and if you follow your plan precisely that spreadsheet will exactly match the results in your bank accounts and outstanding debts!
Weight loss is 90% a mentality thing and 10% a technique. I lost 186 pounds in 2 years and I’m at a stable weight for over a year now, so I can agree with the article.
I really empathise with this. I struggled to lose weight for a long time because I was wary of “get slim quick” diets and, while I thought I was doing the right thing, the scales stayed stubbornly pointing at the same number.
I eventually succeeded using a points-based system (slimming world in my case, but I’m not particularly advocating it over the many other similar schemes). Being a frugal kind of gal, I didn’t pay for the support groups, but obtained a second-hand copy of the book that explained the system. The idea of this was that you were encouraged to eat a lot of fruit and veg, but limit either protein or carbs (you could choose which on a day-to-day basis). Anything that wasn’t on the “free” list had a points value, and you had a weekly points “allowance” to spend on less healthy / calorie-rich / processed food. So you could choose to be really good all week and splurge on a meal out at the weekend, or have small amounts of “treats” through the week - whichever worked for you. The idea was to retrain you to naturally choose healthier options, so that you would continue to do so even after stopping counting the points, and so maintain the weight loss.
It worked incredibly well for me, until new medication caused me to stop wanting to eat. Of course, when I did eat, I was choosing low-calorie stuff, so I had to mentally try to reverse the process and retrain myself to gain weight (a lot harder in fact, as there’s nothing out there to help you!)
I’m now back to a safe weight, and working hard to stay here without straying to the extremes.
I lost 35 lbs by counting calories and tracking food intake. What I found most amazing along the way was how exercise played a secondary role to dietary choices. To put it in perspective, a decent run that burns something like 500-800 calories is pretty much offset by one donut. It might take 45 minutes to burn the calories off, but you can get them right back very quickly!
Doug, I don’t know about you, but my fitness plan certainly has faced challenges in the same manner my personal finance plan has. For the fitness plan, there have been days when I couldn’t exercise, over-ate, forgot to track and got sidelined otherwise. I’ve also gotten sick and had personal emergencies arise that got me “off plan”. For personal finance, we had a layoff, expensive car repairs, spent something not in the budget, temptations to “cheat” and so on. Same bunch of challenges, but in a different guise.
The difference is how you get through the challenges. In fitness or finance you can spin elaborate excuses (to yourself and others) about how you are somehow different, or you can realize at some point that you are just kidding yourself and making excuses, and the only person you aren’t helping is yourself. Or you can plan for the donuts and vacations, and still “win”.
The largest contributor to success at either personal finance or weight loss is … you. You need to make the decision to change and you need to make the effort and persevere. It’s well worth the effort.
FWIW I like the livestrong.com calorie counting tools. I used WeightWatchers Online for a while, but I can’t justify the monthly cost when the livestrong tools are free (with ads and some reduced functionality), or $45/yr if you want everything. Also, many health programs offer a rebate if you pay for a gym or join a weight loss program. I can get up to $150/yr from this benefit, so it’s not just chump change!
I’ve recently gotten into running and I really think it’s changing my life. I’ve never been overweight, always skinny, but as I’ve aged I’ve developed a little bit of a gut… I know it’s from alcohol. The way alcohol metabolizes and the amount you can drink in one sitting is a recipe for a gut, especially in men. That’s why you see so many older men who look otherwise skinny, but still rock that protruding gut.
My goal with running is to not only achieve a mental enlightenment, which it most surely is helping with, but to lose the gut forever. I want to turn my six-pack habit into a six-pack. It’s hard, though, because I really enjoy beer and actually brew it myself.
So to everyone trying to lose weight, seriously, put down the alcohol. Do it for two months and see the difference. I’m not talking about giving up alcohol for good but you need to give your body a healthy kickstart.
What I can say about dieting is to cut off the unnecessary junk food first. That is perhaps the first and most important step towards maintaining a healthy weight and lifestyle. All the sugary drinks such as soda as well as all the chips, cookies, brownies, etc. is what is most harmful because you don’t keep track of how much you eat and they add up quickly.
Financial planning is similar in this sense. You must first cut off all the unnecessary items that you buy. This of course would go back to dieting, cutting off on sugary drinks, junk food, fast food (as opposed to packed lunch) and the like. And this can also go with buying so many drinks on a night out.
There is no such thing as a fad diet just as they is no such thing as a get rich quick scheme. If there is a secret, it is to alter your life style, which you have presented quite well.
Cheers,
Wahid
@Dink — I agree, but not just for beer (and other alcohols). Full calorie sodas, juices, milk, certain flavored waters and many coffee beverages can pack astounding numbers of calories into your diet. If you are trying to lose weight, it’s one of the first places to look for some easy reductions in caloric intake.
Portion control is another key. If you take a week and learn what a “correct” portion of something is, you may be surprised … or horrified. I had my “portion enlightenment” when I realized I was eating at least two servings of cereal … sometimes three.
I also agree about the running. If you haven’t read it already, I really recommend reading “Born To Run”
@Jason — Yep, I loved “Born to Run” and that book has definitely been a motivator for me. If you haven’t read Haruki Murakami’s memoir “What I Talk About When I Talk About Running,” I suggest you do! If you’re unfamiliar with Murakami, he’s a successful author who also runs marathons. The book is part “here’s how I became a writer!” and part “here’s how I became a runner!” It definitely focuses on the writing side of his life a lot, so if you’re not into that you may not enjoy every part of the book. But it’s short and worth reading.
And you’re right about other drinks; I just forgot to include them because I’ve never really drank them. I pretty much only drink water, real coffee, and alcohol.
When I started to drastic new exercise program that also had a ‘healthy eating plan’, I turned into a crab. Not to mention my body was sore as heck. It is important to find a plan you can live with, and others around you can live with.
A weight loss plan is so personal, but I do agree that gradual is the best way to go long-term. You do have to consider your age. For instance, more and more studies show that middle aged people must add resistance training to their program to boost their metabolism. When you hit 50, it isn’t good enough to just walk 20 minutes like it might have been at 25.
Very informative post. Thank you.
Smart post. I’m the type that takes on too many projects at once and ends up with a giant mess. This reminds me to go one step at a time, one task at a time, one goal at a time. Thanks for the inspiration.
Sustained and simple weight loss and improved health - I found it reading and following The Primal Blueprint. Common sense and it works long term. Highly recommended!
As an obses woman who has lost a great deal of wieght after losing nothing for years…While there is no “perfect” diet, the truth of the matter is this: You need to count calories, and eat less than you burn. Whether you use points, jenny craig, or anything esle, if this doesnt happen you wont lose weight. Also, as far as the math, depending on your weight, those calorie amounts may in fact change. What I needed to eat to lose weight at three hundred and what I need to eat at two hundred are not the same thing. I agree that to expect more than three to five pounds a week is unreal. Its also true that while exercise alone doesnt help weight loss, exercise develops muscles and have helped my measurements go down
With diet, also don’t be afraid to see a doctor and/or nutritionist.
Some folks actually have undiagnosed physical problems that hinder their ability to lose weight (thyroid problems, insulin resistence etc.). A special diet or specific medication can do wonders when the usual measures don’t work in those circumstances. It isn’t always just about calorie counting. As a previous poster said, bodies are much more complicated than budgets.
I often see citations to the studies followed by the “diets don’t work” conclusion. There’s one problem, the studies don’t support that conclusion. If you look into the studies, the diets are usually quite successful at taking the pounds off. Its what people do after the diet that fails. Post diet success requires continuous monitoring of weight, eating habits and exercise, and fine tuning of habits based on the data collected. People fail to maintain weight loss because they feel their job is done after reaching the desired weight. You can hardly blame the diet for their lack of post diet vigilance.
Calories in/calories out is a myth. Your body is not a calculator. Reduce calories and your metabolism slows down. Reduce them too much and you will gain weight, as I did, on as little as 800 calories a day.
“Good Calories, Bad Calories” by Gary Taubes is a very important read for anyone wanting to gain, lose or maintain weight.
Peggy - if a body was a calculator - then would there be calculators with huge and small figures :-).
Asking others for help — first your doctor, then a nutritionist, and then also those you eat with! is important. Every month I have dinner with a group of friends — everyone knows that I can’t have a drink because of various drugs I have to take, and so no one says “come on have some wine…” Similarly, one friend is trying to lose weight, and we need to remember not to encourage her to have some of whatever desserts we order. Which is harder than I thought, it just seems so instinctive to pass the bread and say “you’ve got to try some of this” about whatever calorie-laden treat one is eating…
thank you thank you THANK YOU, April, for this piece! I think what irked and worried me about Robert’s post was the implication that a dramatic change could “jump start” a fitness/diet plan. One pound a week sounds perfect to me! Considering how long it took to put that weight on, to expect the fat to just melt off by cutting calories for two weeks is unrealistic and kind of unhealthy. I, too, am trying to live a healthier life, but more for my cardiovascular health than for a bikini body. I’m still working at it, but step one was realizing that this would be a lifetime change and that my body would never, ever look like a model’s–I’m just not built that way! likewise, I’ll probably never be a millionaire, but if I can be financially healthy I’ll count that as a win. It’s important not to let society’s expectations of what out lives should be affect us too much, because for most people they’re unattainable.
I remember losing weight in my first year of law school without trying. I just noticed one day that I had lost about 20 pounds.
One reason is that I was too busy to sit around and eat. Another was that I had no refrigerator at my dorm and so I didn’t eat outside of meals.
Habits are the thing. You need to find the weak spot and then change that habit. For example, if you eat while watching television, the secret to losing weight for you is giving up television.
Rob
One thing that frustrates me is it seems women lose weight differently from men. I’m about 15 lbs overweight. I’d like to lose 5lbs, 10 lbs, 15 if I’m lucky. I play tennis 3X’s a week (I’m an advanced player, this isn’t old lady tennis here). I walk 30-40 minutes 2Xs a week. I’m not the most disciplined eater, but I know the difference between carbs and protein and how your body reacts to each. I avoid sugar since diabetes runs in the family Yet I’m still 15 lbs overweight.
In late April I got a stomach bug - I must have picked up some bad bacteria in some water I drank. It stayed with me for about a month. Without going into gross details nothing stayed in me very long - meal in, meal out within an hour. This lasted a month. I ate, but not much and it was very mild foods. So how much weight did I lose? 2 lbs. That’s right….diarrhea for a month and lost 2 lbs.
Then a few months ago someone came out with a study that said middle aged women (which I am not yet) need an hour of exercise a day just to maintain their weight. When I read this I thought ” An hour a day? every day? just to maintain? …why bother?”
“Brokamp wrote, “I tried this once before with my diet, cutting out everything except vegetables and lean proteins. That included no more caffeine or any kind of sugar. After a few days, I didn’t feel so great — kinda like I had the flu.”
Where diet and personal finance differ is that depriving your body directly affects your health.”
Okay, this bugged me the first time it was written, and now, with the added statement, it bugs me even more.
When you switch diets, especially if you’re trying to stop caffeine at the same time, you’re absolutely going to feel like shit for a few days. That’s your body *detoxing*–getting rid of all the crap you’ve been eating for years. You may get skin breakouts, feel sick/exhausted, or even more.
But there’s no way a diet consisting of lean proteins and vegetables would long-term be considered “depriving your body”. That’s the Paleo diet, which has a ton of converts and plenty of diet plans/meals. It’s not an easy diet, especially if you’re used to the Standard American Sugared Meat and Fried Veggies Diet, but it’s quite effective. Those with O blood type will do best with Paleo.
I eat a lighter version of Paleo (I’m gluten free/low carb) and also highly recommend that diet to those who are O, especially if you’re O and crave sugars/carbs a lot.
-Erica
I think fitness is often overlooked especially to people who don’t workout consistently
I’m bored with this analogy. Sure, there are some parallels, especially if you’re already fat and you’re already in debt — then you get to compare the two things and emphasize the “self-restraint is hard” aspect of both, which is essentially the whole analogy. it doesn’t hold up to “health” and “personal finance” in general very well, it’s just weight loss and debt reduction.
Regardless of the applicability being narrow, it just doesn’t offer any interesting understanding of either subject. Normally you use an analogy to explain something you don’t already know. For example, “a diesel engine is essentially the same as a gasoline engine except it doesn’t use spark plugs.” This is great if you don’t know how a diesel engine works, it gives you an immediate understanding of the fundamentals of a new concept.
This doesn’t apply to weight loss/debt at all. We know they’re both hard already. They take discipline and hard work. Making the explicit comparison doesn’t offer any new understanding of either. Imagine a sports website, and every once in a while it ran an article on the topic “how basketball and football are alike” and came to the conclusion that “if you want to be good at each sport, you have to work hard and practice often.” It’s not profound, and it’s the same as the weight loss/debt comparison.
At 5′3″, I’m there with you April. I’ll never be skinny, and I hover at the high end of the healthy range, but I’m solid, and can jump into any activity I want. I’ve been at roughly the same weight (except during pregnancies) for the past 10 years. (About the same amount of time that DH and I have really focused on our finances in a disciplined way.)
As a side note, I do better with my weight focusing on adding new stuff to my life, rather than taking stuff away. I spend most of my mental energy figuring out new options for healthy eating and movement, instead of trying to resist things. (Hmm, kinda like working out a more frugal lifestyle.)
I’ll add that over the past year or so, I’ve discovered that lifting heavy (for me) weights makes a huge difference in my metabolism. Muscles are hungry. I’ve done a lot of stress eating the past year or so, and my weight has remained fairly stable, as long as I keep lifting weights 2x/week. Another cool thing is that I am so much stronger, which I don’t really notice until I need to move a piece of furniture or maneuver a boat. (Um, kind of like investing in things that help us earn more money or become better at our jobs, like training, instead of struggling to stay in place — OK, totally stretching the analogy.)
The routines I follow are from “The New Rules of Weight Lifting for Women”. The book focuses on functional fitness with challenging weights and multi-muscle moves. I have no affiliation with the authors. (Once you find an effective way to manage your money, why mess with it?)
KC– Go to your doctor. Ask to be checked for thyroid problems and for insulin problems including PCOS. You may be one of those folks who needs hormones or an insulin sensitizing medication. It’s not just women are different then men, but also women are more likely to have specific problems that hinder weight-loss. You may also have an undiagnosed food allergy such as gluten intolerance, but that kind of thing is much harder to diagnose.
Personally I think that becoming more healthy (stronger, thinner, more active, etc.) when a person is not already living that way is all about what motivates you. It’s also about what keeps you strong. These things change over time, so it’s important to keep evaluating them. But I think that the hardest part for me has been figuring out how to keep motivated when nothing is happening. Losing weight is awesome…but maintaining weight is boring.
I really think the lack of motivation and boredom is what causes people to gain all the weight back. So the key is figuring out, BEFORE you’ve lost the weight, what will keep you motivated after you have reached your goal (or your “good enough” goal).
I think a lot of the most successful weight loss stories I’ve seen are from people who then turned their continued health into support for others who are in the process. Weight watchers hires from their members and I think that’s a perfect example. But that is just one way to motivate to stay up on yours weight loss.
KC, I feel your pain! I began a modified life-style diet and exercise plan this year for my husband and me, because I’m 20 lbs overweight and he has high cholesterol. After a few weeks people started commenting to my husband about how he looked good, like he had lost weight, and he had! Me, nada. In fact I gained 2 lbs (probably muscle from the exercise). Agh!
So I guess everyone is different in that respect, but I still like the adaptation of the 12 core beliefs, April!
After having success in the past with popular diets, I’m not back to the weight I was 5 years ago before I started dieting.
While I don’t regret doing any of those popular diets of the past, I’m finding that I’m going to have to figure out a plan on my own. One that I would like, the goal being to create one that would maximize my enjoyment of it. Make it a win-win so to speak
Tom G. - right on. Clearly the diets DO work. People lose weight. Then they stop following the diet, and the weight comes back on, and they conclude the diet didn’t work. It’s defeatism, and a refusal to face the reality that you have to permanently reduce your calorie consumption or you will go straight back up to a higher weight.
KC: Nicole’s advice is good. There are a lot of metabolic disorders that affect your hormones, and hormones affect your body’s calorie use. There are also a lot of medications that affect hormones and “cause” weight gain (or failure to lose).
Doctors should be counseling patients who have these disorders or take these medications that they need to see a nutritionist and change their eating habits, but they (the doctors) generally don’t.
If someone has a clean bill of health at 15 lbs overweight, it’s probably not “worth” obsessing over - unless that 15 lbs materially affects the person’s happiness. Then, cut calories and lose it.
Some good points being made here. I would add:
The parallel between finances and weight management is behavior modification. For behavior mods to stick you have to change both the behavior and how you think about the behavior. If someone gets a windfall of money and pays off their debts but doesn’t go through the process of building and sticking to a budget then the credit cards will be maxed again and the behavior was only temporarily changed. If someone goes on a crash diet but doesn’t address underlying physical and emotional issues, then the weight will come back.
Some parallel keys to success:
directed intention/reasonable goals
patience
delayed gratification
support networks
information acquisition
routinely practicing the new behavior
systematic removal of stressors
Favorite introductory weightloss book: Geneen Roth- Breaking Free from Emotional Eating
During my senior year of college, I became vegetarian for 3-4 months, and tried to get daily exercise. I lost 20 pounds.
In 1997, I restricted my calorie intake (but didn’t place any requirements on my food sources, so junk food was okay) while exercising a ton. I lost 40 pounds in six months.
A couple of years ago, I lost 20 pounds in six months through a combination of exercise and calorie restriction.
And this year? This year — especially since April — I’ve been exercising and restricting my calories. I’ve lost 25 pounds since January 1st, and feel confident I’ll lost 25 more by the end of the year.
(Sidenote: During May I went “paleo” — I hated it, thought the “science” behind it was lousy, and was generally hungry all the time, but I did it. Anyone see the latest NatGeo? There’s an actual bit of science about what paleolithic people ate, and it’s not the paleo diet. Shocking! The paleo diet is just another fad diet; it’s not some miracle cure. If it works for you, great. If not, it’s not a big deal. Try something else.)
All of this is to say: Diets do work. But as Tom G. and chacha1 say, what’s tough is life after the diet. In every case, I’ve always regained my weight. I seem to gravitate toward 200 pounds. I don’t want that to happen this time, so I’m thinking long and hard about what sorts of lifestyle changes I can make to prevent post-diet weight gain.
My reasoning is this: I fought debt for a long time and failed, right? But eventually I succeeded. And since succeeding, I’ve managed to avoid debt by adopting sound financial habits. Surely I can do the same thing with fitness. Once I pay down my calorie debt, surely I can keep from making poor choices again. (Or, actually, I can keep from making repeated poor choices. I think we’ll always make poor choices now and then; it’s the habit of poor decisions that I’m trying to avoid.)
I don’t know what the answer is for me, but I’m looking for it. I know that I can’t live a life eating just lean proteins and vegetables — that sounds like hell to me. But I could probably live a life where I ate a lot of lean protein and vegetables. I just want to be able to eat a Hostess Sno-Ball now and then, you know?
I think you knocked it out of the park with this one April. Clean and focused writing, linked references for your statements, and nice analogies. Congrats!
I think if you are working out at a pretty high level of intensity about 5x a week (weights and cardio) and also walking and standing as much as you can, that can really make a difference. I eat pretty much whatever I want (i realize not everyone has the same metabolism), but I have to work out hard core to maintain a healthy body. My advice would be throw out the scale and get moving. You’ll know you are succeeding when your clothes fit better. No need to obsess about the number.
I think it is perfectly fine to indulge once in awhile. I recently went to Mexico and gained 6 pounds. I came home and ate lean protien, veggies and laid off the carbs and lost all that weight plus a pound more that week.
I’ve noticed that if I gain weight quickly I can lose it just as quickly. It’s the weight you slowly gain that you will slowly lose.
It depends on what you are defining “work” by. A lot of the nutritionist articles I’ve read on the subject don’t think a diet that a person can not stick to after leaving the laboratory “works.” Does Atkins work? Yes, in the lab it works great. But compared to weight watchers, it does terribly once subjects leave the lab.
In metrics, we would say that the diet studies on Atkins are internally valid but not externally valid. Atkins works great in the lab but is much harder to stick to than other diets in the field. The question is whether you care about weight while the diet is on, or do you care about long-term health outcomes. Diets are by definition only short-term.
The ideal way to lose weight is not through diets but through slow life-style changes (whole non-processed food, mostly plants, getting into an exercise habit) because that has a better chance of actually sticking long-term. Given that there are some studies that show that yo-yoing may be worse for your health than sticking to one higher weight (though no really clean studies to my knowledge, just correlational stuff), diets may just not be worth trying and the slow life-style change approach is more sustainable. That’s doubly true if the diets you’re talking about are unhealthy in the long-term like the grapefruit diet. It works while you’re on it, but it shouldn’t be sustainable because if you kept to it you would get sick.
I think this is all just repeating the points April was making though. If you define “work” as working in the short term rather than sustained long-term, then sure, any number of diets work. But that’s not what’s important or healthy.
p.s. Once you’ve been eating really healthy for several years, that hostess snowball will sound disgusting. Your body adjusts and gets pleasure out of things it didn’t used to, like dark chocolate, and rejects unhealthy things it used to love. But it takes time. (I still have a thing for Cheetos though. Moderation in all things.)
Diets do work. It just depends upon what you call a diet, and whether you’re willing to stick to it long term, maybe forever. I am a 42 year old male. I’ve been working out my entire life. Always ate whatever I wanted since I worked out hard. Always had an extra 20-30 pounds (I’m 6′6″, very athletic and 235. I do triathlons, swim a lot, MMA, etc.) Recently had full blood work done. Triglycerides were 450. Crazy high for those that don’t know. I gave up alcohol, fried foods, dairy, eggs, sugar, all oil except olive oil, white starches, and red meat. I lost 30 pounds in 6 weeks and dropped triglycerides to 50. No medicines (other than omega 3s.) I have added lean steak and red wine in once a week. This has been a life style change for me. I feel better and am healthier. It wasn’t really that hard. For me I’m all or nothing. If I just decide not to have sugar, it’s easier than having some, sometimes. I know people are different. This worked for me.
I was exercising app. 5 times a week for two years ago and I didn’t loose weight. I was eating fairly healthy so I realised something was wrong. I started counting calories. Wow! I realised that I was eating twice as much as I should. My food portions were way to big. After weighting my food and counting calories for a couple of weeks I figured out how big my normal food portions were. I started loosing weight and in ten weeks I lost 12 kilos (26 pounds) and three sizes. Today I am eating healthier and much less. I love desserts but with correct portions sizes and by exercising a couple of times per week I can eat desserts without problems.
I needed a goal with my exercising so I signed up for some of the most demanding competitions in my country. I new that if I skipped training it would be hell. Imagine skiing 90 km, bicycling 300 km or running 30 km without training. Not nice. That was my motivation. Today I love exercising.
What really made the biggest difference for me is really knowing what I can and absolutely cannot eat. There are certain foods for that that “moderation” just wont work. Sugars (even certain high GI fruits) any kind of grains and starches are my downfall. Lots of veggies, proteins, fats, some low GI fruit, nuts, seeds, etc is what has kept me lean for a number of years now.
Regular exercise is also key for me. Unfortunately a nice “brisk walk” doesn’t cut it. Heavy cardio (HIIT), Yoga and weight training is key. I wasn’t blessed with a high metabolism or the ability to eat a standard modern American diet full of carbs and sugars, even so-called healthy ones. I was young and overweight. I never had the glory years where I could indulge.
Diets DO work, but my diet is my lifestyle, not a temporary fix.
To loose weight (debt), you gotta want it.
Something has to tell you, “man, I really shouldn’t drink (purchase) this soda, eat (spend) more than I should and, take control of my weight (finances).
I need to change my physical (fiscal) lifestyle or face the consequences of being and staying fat (broke)!
Losing weight and debt reduction, do have similarities. Even though, both have mathematical formulas - they can vary greatly.
Dieting and the number of calories required to lose even one pound/week will be different for men and women, depending upon your age, depending upon how much and how intense you exercise, etc. These are all variables.
Managing money also has many variables. It’s not only how much you earn but where you live in the country, if you rent or own a home, if you have a car, if you have children, etc…
What it really boils down to is paying attention. Stop mindlessly eating a bag of chips. Stop buying two of the same shirt without thinking about the three shirts like it at home. Make conscience choices - in all aspects of your life.
Bodies are not one-size-fits-all. What works really well for me might not work for you because of differences in our age, history, body composition, blood chemistry, hormone levels (not just sex hormones), how much sleep you get, etc. So some people need more or less of certain nutrients, some do well without meat and others don’t, etc., etc.
But what *does* work for everyone is taking out the stuff that is processed. If it has an ingredients list, pass it by.
(What doesn’t work for everyone is actually *doing* it.)
I’d be interested to know people’s thoughts on the Fat Acceptance Movement- Marianne Kirby and Kate Harding wrote a book on the “fatosphere”, the web presence of a group of fat acceptance websites.
Basically, they follow the Health at Every Size ideas. They state that a person can be perfectly healthy at 400+ pounds, just as someone at 130 pounds can be unhealthy. They maintain that for some people, they can diet, exercise, eat well, and still be considered “morbidly obese”. Many of them view studies linking obesity to ill-health as flawed or manipulated by the diet industry- they call it “junk food science” and state obesity isn’t as dangerous or unhealthy as we have been told.
Thoughts on this perspective on diet and weight loss? Has anyone else ever heard of the fat acceptance movement?
“Where diet and personal finance differ is that depriving your body directly affects your health.”
It might not be as direct, but depriving yourself financially affects your health too
About diets and finances, I think what’s important is not to think about it in terms of “I do this, then I go back to before”. Any plan that involves going back to the same mistakes is going to put you back in your old situation again. It’s pretty straightforward, really.
@#43 - Courtney - I have rarely (maybe never) seen a obese elderly person. I think the FA movement is great for those who feel the need, but I think they should also make the necessary changes to live a long, healthy life. Burying your head in the sand is not going to make the probably go away.
Excellent post. Just like the name of this site is get rich slowly, getting in shape takes time. Staying in shape takes will power. Like others have said, being in shape isn’t a one time decision, like whether to have cake or an apple, it’s a lifestyle choice. It’s living an active, healthy lifestyle.
What’s the definition of diet - IIRC it just means “way of eating.” Some people like Erica or Ted above need to eat a certain way for health reasons so they have to make it into a lifestyle. I think most of us do to some extent.
What’s worked for me in maintaining weight loss is simply mindfulness. Am I hungry? If the answer is no, then why am I eating? If it’s boredom, then DO something. If it’s anxiety, then address what’s bugging you. Am I full? If the answer is yes, then why am I continuing to eat? And I eat what I want, not off some prescribed list of “approved” foods like veggies and lean proteins unless that’s what I want to eat. That’s too much like a restrictive diet and it all seems to even out. It helps that when you clean your diet up and don’t just mindlessly gorge yourself, you start to notice the taste of chemicals in most processed foods and that’s pretty unpleasant.
It’s no different than going shopping for clothes when your closet is already jam packed or buying books when you’ve got a bunch you haven’t read. It’s mindless consumption in another realm. I just prefer having one or two very simple guidelines when faced with temptation or emotion because I need that level of simplicity to stay focused.
Good post all around. I may have disagreements with the specifics of your approach to fitness and diet (can’t help it, I make fun of vegetarians when I can :-P), but on the big stuff, you’re spot on. To get anything meaningful accomplished requires a solid vision of your goals and a steady pace to achieve them.
I’ve been competing for 2.5 years and now coach in Olympic-style weightlifting, after a year of CrossFit before that and generally zero activity the rest of my life before that. My highest level goal has been a 300kg total (snatch plus clean and jerk) before I’m done with the sport. This is an AGGRESSIVE goal and will take me several more years of training and discipline to reach. I currently have a total just shy of 220 and I’m already at the point where making gains of just a few kilos on one of these lifts is a big deal for me. But by inching towards these numbers and keeping smart enough to avoid injury, I’m optimistic that I’ll reach that goal with time.
Anything worth achieving is worth working for, be that fitness, health, financial security, romance, or pretty much anything else.
My apologies, I just realized J.D. himself didn’t write this article - still getting used to the staff writer thing.
April, I hope the commentary on diet isn’t taken to heart - it was meant in good fun. The broad brush point of my comment was that the amount of heart and effort you put into something often matters as much as your day to day methods.
Let’s face it. People in the developed world eat way too much. When I go to restaurants, I am constantly amazed at the portions. When I go to people’s homes, I am amazed at how much food they keep in their refrigerators, cabinets etc. People in this part of the world eat too much yet expect to lose weight. Ask yourself: do you need so many snacks in a day plus the standard three meals? People eat a lot due to the abundance of food, something that they were born into. Some people should not eat more than two meals a day because of the level of their natural metabolism. However, they are stuck into eating a fixed number of meals plus snacks, everyday.
I am amazed when nutritionists, governments, experts etc recommend five portions of fruits/vegetables a day. Not all human beings should consume that much. Some people need far less. The problem is most people never listen to their bodies and the weight never goes off.
If what you’re doing is not working regardless of what the ‘nutritionists’ recommend, you need to change and look for alternatives. However, when you go to Hollywood where people know they need to control their weight, the picture is different. It’s not always about access to personal trainers but a decision to ’say no’ to a lot of food, for most people. It’s painful but it works. You will never achieve your goals if you eat too much. Listen to yoru bosy. No one has to eat all three meals plus snacks and calorie-loaded sweet drinks everyday!!
J.D. - Sno-Balls: me too!
Cortney - we probably don’t want to open the Box of Hellish Discord that is the Fat Acceptance movement.
Ted (above) is a great example of someone who was basically very fit, but found that metabolically his body was not processing fats and sugars well. He cut fats and sugars and presto, the metabolic disorder is sorted and his extra weight came off. Now he just has to live with the new lifestyle … and probably he will be able to find an equilibrium where he can still have *some* fats and sugars if he chooses to, while maintaining his health.
And since this *is* a PF blog, it’s worth noting (again) that a fit healthy body is muuuuuch less expensive to maintain. The habits required to be healthy physically and financially are the same: gradual changes, dedication, mindfulness, and the occasional big effort.
KC#22, have you tried weight lifting on a regular basis? As a 55+ woman, I do find that I need to do more cardio and weight lift to be able to maintain and/or lose some weight. I’ve maintained a 100 lb. weight loss since 2006, but watched my weight creep up about 5 lbs. when I quit weight lifting so much (I’d moved and changed gyms–don’t like the new one as much). Diet is 80% of weight loss, but as another poster mentioned, the makeup of those calories needs to change with age and other factors so that it’s not really calories in/calories out.
Cortney — is there a Debt Acceptance movement? Or is that just “everybody”.
I get that not everyone should look like a stick, which indeed can be just as unhealthy as being overweight — but most(*) people should be able to maintain a reasonable body weight. Just as people should be able to keep track of their finances. It’s really quite a simple process.
* - yes, I know there are medical reasons people are overweight. But they are relatively uncommon. The bottom line is that people overeat (and overspend, too)
@51 Victoria
… except if you’re hypoglycemic or have problems processing insulin, or any number of other issues that make 5 small meals a day a lot more conducive to weightloss than 2 big meals.
Heck, the studies I’ve read show that having 5 small meals is better for weight loss than 3 large meals in the general population (including Eat, Drink, and Be Healthy’s review of the literature). There are probably other studies saying the opposite but I haven’t come across them.
Yes, listen to your body. My body says snacking is good. And my eyes tell me that a lot of people in Hollywood are skinny but unhealthy.
I am very committed to both financial well-being and working out/eating right. I see parallels all over the place.
Two things that stand out to me:
1. In both finance and weight loss/fitness, the small choices are the key to making these changes into a lifestyle. A daily frappucino is not only sucking up cash, it’s adding empty calories. Saying “no” to that, or to the bread basket at a restaurant, or that extra helping at dinner…once those small choices become second nature, you’ve crossed over.
2. We all know people in debt who claim that they’re “doing everything they can,” but don’t understand why they can’t dig out. But a closer look would reveal that they are still spending on all kinds of little things, aren’t tracking every penny, etc. Same with diet and exercise. “But I’m going to the gym an hour a day!” Sure, but you’re spending 20 minutes wandering around, 20 minutes pedaling listlessly on a bike while reading a magazine, and 20 minutes in the steam room. People fool themselves and then give up because “nothing works.” It’s not until you become honest with yourself and your actual habits that you can make changes and see results.
Chiming in late. J.D. said “I just want to be able to eat a Hostess Sno-Ball now and then, you know?” You can. You just have to strictly define “now and then.” In the last 14 months, I’ve lost 72 pounds following the “No-S diet,” invented by a computer programmer/librarian named Reinhard Engel. You can Google it- his site is very helpful, low-tech, and no-sell. The complete plan can be summed up in 14 words. “No snacks, no sweets, no seconds, except (sometimes) on days that start with S.” S-days are Saturdays, Sundays and “special, or social” days like major holidays, close family birthdays, etc.
It’s not really a diet, but a plan for “systematic moderation.” It’s shockingly simple, almost suspiciously so, but it’s the way most cultures have eaten for most of history. I.e. Enjoy real food at socially agreed-upon times and occasions, but don’t overdo it. One in a great while, though, overdo it. It’s OK to stuff yourself on Thankgiving, if you’re eating sensibly 99% of the time.
@Marc: The only thing in your comment that made me wince was “Enjoy real food at socially agreed-upon times and occasions”
Real food? What are you eating the rest of the time? I would argue that that’s backwards. Enjoy junk at socially agreed-upon times, and eat real food the rest of the time.
@H Lee D
Sorry, that was confusing. I meant eat real food (things your grandma would recognize as food- not low-fat, reduced-carb whatever) most of the time, at the socially traditional times of breakfast, lunch and dinner. Have one good plateful of satisfying food. Don’t have seconds. Don’t snack in between meals. Don’t have dessert. If you have a medical condition, confirmed by your doctor, follow their advice. Otherwise, just don’t. You won’t starve, and it’s OK to be a little hungry- it’s called having an appetite. I had almost forgotten what that really was. On Saturday evening, have a slice of cheesecake, or a Hostess Sno-Ball, if you want. On Sunday morning, go out for brunch. Reserve gut-busting excess to a handful of times per year- three helpings of turkey and stuffing at Thankgiving, or half-a-dozen mini-Snickers on Halloween.
I’m going to chime in on the “gotta count your calories” side. While there are always exceptions, in general, the only real way to lose weight is to eat fewer calories than you burn - full stop.
The reason many people say that doesn’t work, is because they don’t actually *do it*. Most people grossly underestimate their caloric intake.
Take breakfast cereal, for example. The average cereal bowl is far larger than the recommended serving size listed on the side of the box (typically 160-200 calories with skim milk). I would routinely fill my bowl not-quite to the top with cereal and milk, and assume it was roughly a serving. Nope - once I actually measured it, turns out it was closer to 3 servings!
Just an example, your mileage may vary, etc.
Please note: I am not discounting possible hormonal issues either - I suffer from low testosterone which makes me more susceptible to weight gain if I don’t supplement with a testosterone replacement. Many women have thyroid issues, etc. If you think this may be an issue for you, go see an endocrinologist. But that is rarely the *primary* reason for lack of weight loss.
Bottom line - if you’re not losing weight, and *not* counting calories, start there before looking at more radical reasons for lack of weightloss success. I recommend http://www.thedailyplate.com/ for calorie tracking.
@51 Victoria
Doesn’t portion mean a controlled amount of food? Like a portion of pasta is about 1 fistful. Thus, it’s not really overeating.
Many of you bring up a valid point–as the study showed, diets DO cause initial weight loss. So if your goal is to crash diet and lose some weight–yes, you’ll probably be successful, and later you’ll gain it back.
I should have clarified that fad diets don’t work for *sustained* weight loss, which I likely confused because that was always my personal goal–to lose the weight and keep it off permanently.
I’ve found the hackers diet to lay it out in a very straight forward way.
http://www.fourmilab.ch/hackdiet/
This is a great, well-researched article. I love this web site because of how it links healthy financial philosophies with a healthy lifestyle in general.
However:
“Sadly, successful weight loss, like good personal finance habits, is quite boring. But the payoffs are huge.”
I beg to differ! Eating the same unnatural food every day and the resulting misery was boring for me.
As someone who has yo-yo’d 20 pounds over the past 6 years (which, on my 5′1″ frame, is quite substantial), I’ve learned to enjoy the effort it takes to be healthy, just as I’ve learned that I get more enjoyment out of the benefits of saving and investing than I do when I spend more than I earn.
Trying new, healthy recipes as a result of the “strange” vegetables that come in my CSA share, taking an assortment of exercise classes, and discovering new running paths has become my primary source of entertainment.
The secret is perspective.
I find skipping meals works for me. My theory is that the human body was designed to miss meals or not to eat for long periods. I personally feel better, even though I might feel hungry or even slightly light headed at the skipped meal time. I discovered this approach when working long hours when I didn’t want to stop and eat. I found I made better progress and was mentally more alert by skipping a meal then by stopping and eating and then trying to work. It is also strangely more satisfying to eat when I am *really* hungry.
Not sure it has a financial parallel. I agree that the discipline of saving, investing, budgeting, dieting, exercising are all similar. They are small incremental things we need to do every day, and if we do them right, will make a huge difference in the near future. Once they become a habit - which means paradoxically that using goals can be self defeating - then we have a lifestyle change that pays benefits … for life.
reading the comments reminded me of another way in which diet/food and money are related.
Most people have a conscious or unconscious number that represents “when I’ll be rich” or “what I need to retire” and also have a number that represents “what I want to weigh.”
But just as some people choose money numbers that I might think are unnecessarily high or, conversely, that would be too low for me to be happy with, some people choose weights that seem impossibly low (”I have to weigh what that starlet weighs to feel good about myself”) or unhealthily high to me (”As long as I can find something to wear, I don’t care how much I weigh”).
But, either way, it is a personal choice.
Cortney- I loooove Kate Harding and Shapely Prose, and I feel like one idea that the FA movement embraces that I absolutely agree with is that the BMI ratings are just a load of crap. Like, there’s this thought, especially in discussions like this that involve personal finance (which is much, much simpler) that everyone SHOULD be able to maintain a healthy weight and it’s all just a numbers game. But what’s a healthy weight? Does it matter what goes into your body as long as calories in are less than calories out? And is dropping pounds necessarily the best way to be healthy?
I think there’s much more of a stigma to being fat than there is to being in debt. And one can be fat and healthy, and be fat and make “good” choices. With each though is this notion that there’s always more you could be doing. If you’re poor but good with money, why can’t you boost your income? Why can’t you live without that car, that pet, that can of soda? It never ends, and it’s up to each of us to decide where to draw the line. With weight, especially for women, there’s so much pressure from absolutely everyone to be thin, to do more to get thin. If you’re fat, it’s a personal failing. If you’re fat and eat well, there must be something wrong with you. If you’re fat and eat poorly, you’re reckless and deserve what you get. We can all say “do what works for you” and pretend like we’re not all judging each other, but people who really see life that way are sadly, in my experience, in the minority.
Personally I love kale! Sadly for me, I also love a lot of food that’s high in fat
@J.D.- Sorry! Wasn’t trying to open Hellish Discord
Just wondering if anyone had heard of the movement. I’m on the fence with how I feel about it. I like some things, totally disagree with others. As it should be I suppose 
I don’t think the purpose of any diet is to lose weight then gain it all back. So in that sense, diets don’t work unless you adopt them as a lifestyle. Most diets are impossible to adopt as a lifestyle because they are too restrictive to be healthy long term.
Things that work and are relatively sustainable? Stop drinking soda, stop eating white carbs (white sugar, white flour, white rice), and get daily excersize. Obviously once in while you’ll have to have that coke or eat a muffin, but just keep it from being a regular occurance. This is a lifestyle change that has worked wonderfully for me.
Most diets do not work because they are so extreme. People that are worried about weight should concern themselves more with eating healthy, not depriving themselves.
The same goes for personal finance. You need to develop “healthy” habits in relation to your finances that will put you in a better position for the future. Those habits could be any number of things but it only takes one habit to get started. Getting out of debt would be the first on my list.
Kale is my answer, too. We all know that eating “healthy” + moving more = weight loss. I think most folks are still very confused about what “healthy” eating looks like. I thought I knew what healthy was, then I read Joel Fuhrman’s *Eat to Live* and *Eat for Health* books. If you want to lose weight, sleep better, feel better, look better, or if you suffer from a chronic illness, these books are a must read.