In 2006, at the age of sixty-nine, following arthroscopic surgery to clean out a bum knee, I faced a choice. Lose weight or plan on knee replacements. My weight had drifted north since retiring as an airline captain nine years before, and at five-foot nine I grossed two-hundred seventy-pounds, my highest weight ever. And it wasn't only my knee that was bothering me: I suffered frequent sciatica (sharp pain through the lower back and buttocks), foot arch pain, high blood pressure, sleep-apnea (the sleep clinic found I was waking up once a minute for lack of air), a herniated belly button (caused by the stress of a fifty-four inch belly), erectile dysfunction (for the first time in my life), and was diagnosed with low testosterone (a male hormone deficiency). Clearly, if I wanted to continue doing the things I enjoy and live into a healthy old age, I had to lose weight.
I did, and I now weigh 168 pounds, down from 270-over one hundred pounds in twenty-four months, an average of a pound a week. And I feel and look great! I went from a size fifty-four waist and jacket size-a square sort of shape-to a size forty-two jacket and a thirty-seven waist. Yes, once again I have a waist, and my pants stay up. Nothing hurts, I don't get winded going up stairs (or enjoying sex), my sleep apnea is gone, along with the controlled positive air pressure (CPAP) mask I'd been forced to sleep with for years, and my blood pressure and cholesterol levels are well within the normal to excellent range.
When I run into people I haven't seen for some time, the response is funny. First the concerned look and then the question, "Are you feeling all right?" Basically they are asking what dread disease I'm dying of. When told the story, their next question is how in the world did you do it? Not surprising, two-thirds of the adults in America are either overweight or obese, and like as not they're fighting to lose weight themselves. This book is an effort to answer that question. "How did I do it?" The answer is both amazingly simple and extremely complex.
Simply, one gets overweight by eating more food calories (energy) than the body can use, which is then stored as fat. If energy in is equal to energy out, you maintain weight. Eat more than you burn and you gain weight.
Reverse the process and you lose. I did the things I knew from experience had worked before in my periodic efforts to diet. I avoided the empty calories-processed breads, white potatoes, pasta, sweets and sugars-and made the portions of the food I ate about two-thirds smaller. I also increased the intensity of my exercise routine, although I had always exercised. As an airline pilot, I had to stay fit in order to pass my twice-a-year FAA flight physicals.
This is not a "diet" book written by a doctor or a nutritional scientist trying to sell books, diet foods, and/or membership in a weight-loss club. There are plenty of those, some better than others. Any "diet" that reduces what you eat will allow you to lose weight, but that doesn't make the diet healthy or the weight loss sustainable if you feel deprived of the pleasures of good food and drink. I used the word diet in the title of the book in the sense of its Greek origin, the word diaeta, which means "manner of living," not in the sense that most Americans think of the word diet as "of eating sparingly," which implies deprivation. I do not feel deprived of anything, including the two martinis I enjoy before dinner. What is meaningful is that I-along with my wife, incidentally-have changed my manner of living.
What follows is about the extremely complex chemistry set that makes up our bodies and the nutrition that we need to be healthy and fueled. This is from my perspective as a layperson. I'm not a nutritional scientist, but I am a quick student and a darn good researcher, and I'd like to share my success with you. There's an advantage to that because, when the scientists dismantle food into its chemical components, it's easy to forget that it is food we're talking about, and if there's something we all really need to know it's how to feed ourselves.
To agribusiness, the factory food industry, and the government agencies, such as the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), whose main role is to support them, we are merely a stomach. The more their nutritional scientists can entice us to overfill that stomach with tasty, highly profitable processed foods, usually loaded with cheaply bought empty calories such as high fructose corn syrup (HFCS), (corn is highly subsidized by the federal government), the more money the industry makes. Add to this the financial priority of the medical and drug industries, which is to profit from the treatment of sick people (the majority suffering from chronic illnesses caused by tobacco-also subsidized-obesity, and lack of exercise), and it's no wonder obesity has become an epidemic in the past thirty years.
Nothing in this book should be construed as medical advice-everyone's needs and medical history are different-what's good for me may not be good for you, especially if you're a pregnant woman, child, diabetic, alcoholic, have food allergies, etc. Anyone considering a serious weight loss regimen should do so under the supervision of a doctor, and be checked regularly as I am. Your doctor has to be part of the team. But you're the other half, and you're going to have to really want to live longer and healthier, be willing to change how you live, and learn how to effectively do so in the face of all that's arrayed against you.