Porkerville

I got put on the VA fat farm. The VA doesn’t call it a fat farm; they call it their “MOVE” program which stands for I don’t know what but I get the message. At my last check-up at the Veteran’s Clinic the doctor asked me my height and used that with what the nurse had just weighed me at to figure my body mass index or BMI. He looked at me kind of strange, asked my height a second time and then refigured my BMI a second time. “You don’t look that heavy” he said. Of course all of this convinced me that I had just worn too many winter clothes for my weigh-in and more importantly had developed really heavy bones from all that skim milk I had drunk over the years. Still I look at this free VA program as a real opportunity for me since I am sure I’ll feel much better at 180 than at 220.

I am sharing this boring personal aspect of my life because I am certain there are others who may have the same problem and may want to see how I progress and what the program is about. Besides, it is still a while until gardening and fishing season and if I post anymore of my personal philosophies it will be even more boring.

I am aware that a sort of perfect storm has formed, a downward spiral. First came the high-calorie holidays, then being more sedentary in winter on top of being less active in retirement. Even in summer when there is a lot of yard and garden work, I only put in half a day compared to the 12-hour days of physical labor before I retired. I have also been blessed with the curse (or is it cursed with the blessing?) of a great cook for a wife. If after nearly 40 years of marriage that is the worst I can say about her I guess I’m a lucky man. (I put that in there just in case you-know-who reads this.) Still, if I had been forced to live off my own unpalatable cooking all these years I am certain I would be leaner. Taken together, all these elements of this brewing perfect storm along with my age, I do need to be careful.

I was impressed with our first MOVE meeting with a registered dietician. The goal is simple: lose 10% of your weight in 6 months at the rate of about one pound per week. The method is simple: rid yourself of 500 calories per day, 250 calories burned from increased physical activity (we were each issued pedometers to wear) and 250 calories reduced in food consumption calories. A 250 calorie reduction in a 2000+ daily caloric consumption does not seem that tough. The plan attacks the calorie reduction at the margin, i.e. you give up the easiest 250 calories not the hardest. Butter and tub spreads are extremely calorie-dense, about 50 calories per tablespoon; there are spray-on butter substitutes in the dairy section which taste just like butter but are zero calories per serving;losing a single slice of bread can mean a reduction of 100 calories. So cutting calories at the margin by replacing spreads with the spray-on, replacing sugar in my coffee and tea with zero-calorie Splenda and cutting back one slice of bread and one cup of milk, I should be able to lose that 250 calories per day and not even feel any sacrifice. (Sacrifice is the part we all hate.) Replacing one of my daily cups of skim milk with a diet soft drink might even feel like a treat and would save me 80 calories. So cutting 250 calories a day seems very doable. It is much more a matter of awareness than of sacrifice. I think the real question is whether the 250 calorie per day reduction and 250 calorie extra activity burn will actually translate into a pound loss per week. That remains to be seen.

The day of our Move meeting I had planned to take my wife out for a pizza supper. It dawned on me that I would not have to forego this date night. If I just ordered a diet drink instead of my usual sweet tea and free refill then I would save a couple hundred calories. Ditto if we ordered thin crust instead of thick crust. Ditto if we ordered veggie lover instead of sausage or pepperoni. The only part of the MOVE deal I agreed to was cutting what I normally ate by 250 calories and we did that and still had our date night too.

As for the burning an extra 250 calories per day by becoming less sedentary and engaging in more walking, let me say we went shopping the day after the MOVE meeting. Let me also say that unlike my wife, I hate shopping and usually sit in the car working a crossword puzzle to “improve my memory” while she pokes around shopping. I decided to mentally change my viewpoint of chain stores to see them as free-heated walking venues. Instead of plodding along shoving the grocery cart and acting as the "guardian of the purse" while my wife read all the labels on all the cans in the store, I took off at a good pace looking for the emptiest store aisles to serve as my walking track and put some steps on my VA-issued pedometer. Again this may be more a matter of awareness and changed attitude than sacrifice. Time and pounds-lost will tell.
Stay tuned for Porkerville updates.