Sustainable Development
So this morning, much to my relief, I checked in just below 181, down from a shade over 182 at the start of the week. Call it a pound. So far I’ve managed to keep to my goal of 50 minutes of cardiovascular exercise a night. Sure, it’s only been two days, but it feels sustainable, now that I’ve gotten a bit of a rhythm down. The next business trip will be the first real challenge, and right now it looks like I have a few weeks before that happens.
While I wouldn’t call my food consumption for the last two days low-carb, it’s certainly been lower carb than usual. Dinner last night was the Tuesday Night Special at Cafe Sushi in Harvard Square, essentially a large pile of raw fish on top of rice. Not too many carbohydrates, and very low in fat. Lunch today was a chicken-pesto sandwich, albeit with some cheese, and a large salad in place of the French fries the restaurant usually tries to pawn off on you. Dinner tonight poses a certain amount of risk, as I’m meeting some friends for Indian food, one of my natural weaknesses.
The reason I bring all this up: sustainability. As this article from WebMD points out, it’s not just enough to lose a bunch of pounds. You have to be able to keep it off, and highly restrictive diets just aren’t conducive to that, particularly if you like food in the first place. And in my case, that’s what got me into this mess. Any diet or exercise plan that involves perpetually cursing said plan is more or less guaranteed to fail in the end. As Matthew pointed out in his post a few days ago, social events and carb control don’t really mix.
As long as I keep the exercise in the mix, I should be fine: rather than a highly restrictive diet, it lets me get by on a merely sensible diet. So no big sugary desserts, fewer refined ingredients, etc., but no wholesale bread prohibition either. And I enjoy exercise - I just don’t like all the getting to and from the gym (or running around in the heat) that it entails. But will I always have time for fifty minutes a day on the trainer?
Will raises an excellent point here, as my experience with the lunch meeting attests.
There is only one problem (for me anyway): I loathe exercise. Coming from an ex-athlete and a marathon-running cardiologist’s son, I know that’s heresy, but there I’ve said it. Part of the problem may be my exercise-induced asthma, which causes me considerable discomfort, but, whatever the cause, the fact remains.
And not that it would especially matter (given Will’s stated diet plan), but rice really isn’t a great component of a low-carb or smart-carb approach. According to the page I linked to the other day, the Glycemic Index rating of white rice is 58, about the same as cheese pizza (60).
Comment on August 11, 2004 @ 6:31 pm