I’ve never been a fan of diets. In fact, the fundamental role of exercise in my life is primarily to allow me to continue to eat excessive amounts of food that I find delicious. Were I ever to break a leg, it’s possible I’d inflate like an emergency life raft. It’s also true that I have very little self-control, and so the few diets I’ve tried have never lasted for more than a week. There are myriad reasons for this, but let’s just blame my parents.
On the other hand, I have a fair amount of self-confidence when it comes to my body. I’ve heard that people with eating disorders, say anorexia, can look in the mirror and, while wasting away, actually perceive themselves as fat. The image they see, were you to have them draw themselves, is not the one an objective observer might see. Whereas when I look in the mirror, the opposite may be happening: I think I look pretty damn good (like, really good). So when my doctor told me a couple months ago that I was pre-diabetic, I met her observation with a wall of skepticism no mere medical degree was going to bypass.
In any case, research has repeatedly shown that diets just don’t work in the long-term. After a certain age, most of us have a set weight that we’re going to be within a few percent of for the rest of our lives, despite exercise and changes to our eating habits. Which isn’t to say that those things aren’t good for your wellbeing; it’s just that you won’t be getting much lighter. But if you’re making even a minimum effort (defined here as going on a brisk 30 min walk at least four days a week) to be active, and you’re trying to eat healthy (defined here as not cheesecake for breakfast), you’re doing your part.
Yesterday I had cheesecake for breakfast, but only because I didn’t technically eat breakfast, and it was after noon, and I was at Aldi’s and they had a slice for two bucks which required no preparation other than removing the cheesecake and smashing it into my mouth like it was launched out of a slingshot by a vengeful representative of Weight Watchers. Despite that, I have been doing better.
For example, I added 30 seconds to each of the feels-like-death-tables (aka planks) (one of the best overall exercises for your health) that I do as part of my workout, and I added one more set of sit ups, as well as one more set of air squats and about 30 mins more of biking a week.
I also started drinking Atkins protein shakes, not following the product’s intended use as a meal replacement per se, since I don’t enjoy being hungry, but just as a hope that more stuff in my stomach that is presumably healthy will keep it from wanting other, less healthy stuff. The Atkins bottle says that it “helps burn fat*… *as part of the Atkins approach,” but I haven’t bothered to look up the Atkins approach, which I assume would make my life miserable and be unsustainable for the infinite amount of time you’d need to stay on it for it to continue to work. And honestly, I’m already getting sick of the shakes.
I believe that these are all small, sustainable steps in the right direction that I should be able to maintain over the next 9 months or so before I see the doc again, at which point I’m sure to receive a diagnosis of post-pre-diabetic. In the meantime, I hope I don’t break a leg.
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