Lean

Part II of "How to be well during the last ten years of our life" (Read Part I)

By Jack Krayenhoff, M.D.

To be healthy at any age, but especially old age, you need to be Fit, Lean and Peaceful. Today let's talk about Lean. How do you become lean and stay lean?

Don't look here for a DIET. It is not that diets don't work - they do, but only for a short time, say three months, and then you go back up. Some work because they restrict us so much that what we are allowed to eat is so monotonous that we lose our appetite for it. But after a while our body does adapt to the monotony and our appetite comes back, and then we soon make up for what we lost.

Low-calorie diets work, but the fuss of having to measure and weigh everything is such a drag that hardly anybody can keep it up for very long. One day we reward ourselves for being so good that we treat ourselves to an ice cream cone, and after that...well, you know what happens after that.

Sometimes even if we weigh and measure everything we eat (honestly!), our weight just won't come down. There are two possibilities here. One, it could be a miracle, and many dieters are convinced there is no other explanation - they are sooo careful. But if they had a plain-clothes diet cop following them around for 24 hours, he would discover that the food-supplement they take (just to make sure they won't run low on vitamins on their strict diet) packs a lot of calories, too. Or the grapes and the apples - that's just fruit, isn't it? That doesn't count. Or the pop and the beer - that's no more than coloured water, right? Or what they get out of the fridge at night - that's just to go back to sleep, that has nothing to do with the diet they're on.

One more reason diets rarely work. We can trespass every once in a while when we're dining out (after all, we're paying for it!) and stuff ourselves, but then we'll burn it off with an extra-long walk. Alas! Our bodies are incredibly efficient, and they can walk miles and miles on one mouthful of that delicious Vietnamese food. No, the vast majority of those calories go toward keeping out bodies warm, and beyond that ... storage in the form of fat, I'm afraid.

So what does work? First, decide once for all what weight you want to be, and engrave that on your brain. That particular weight - that's the future you. Once you have reached it, it becomes much easier, because you like the new you much better than the old one. That's a powerful motivation.

And before you begin, adopt a cast-iron rule: step on the scales every day, same time of the day, preferably nude. That is your appointed conscience, absolutely true and absolutely faithful.

Here are a few tricks that help you lose those pounds that separate you from your new identity:

• Ask the cook (or if you are the cook yourself, just do it) to give you just ¼ potato less with every dinner - that's pretty painless, right? That means 91 whole potatoes less over a year. How many potatoes in a pound? My wife says six. That's 15 pounds of potatoes in a year. Let's say eight pounds of body weight gone, no sweat.

• In the same way, stop all cookies and between-meal snacks. Simply and ruthlessly, don't even think about it: no cookies at all, at all, ever! That's 365 cookies in a year. Make that 15 pounds off your body weight!

• Trade your dinner plate for a breakfast plate. Now you can pile up all the food you like, and eat it to your heart's content. A full plate - how satisfying! (But it's still less than what you used to put on your dinner plate.)

• When you have eaten ¾ of your dinner, you ask your stomach, "Are you still hungry?"

And your stomach will answer, "Well, I could easily finish off the rest of this plate." Then you say, "That's not what I asked. I asked if you were still hungry." And if your stomach is honest, it will say, "Not actually hungry." Then you say, "In that case dinner is finished and I'm getting up from the table."

And here's what you can do when your stomach is really growling:

• Suck on a hard sugar-free candy. Absolutely sugar-free, for otherwise you'll grow a big crop of dental cavities in short order.

• Use your hunger time to jog or do other hard exercise. Exercise your hunger away - it truly works.

Next time: To get old healthy: be peaceful. Not strictly a medical subject, but every family doctor knows how important it is.