divisionx
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My real problem is not losing weight. My real problem is being, and feeling healthy. I have developed a health strategy, and losing weight has been a by-product of that and was not my main goal. I am a space scientist and I run a software business so I know about as much about nutrition as a nutritionist knows about space science. I want to take my health strategy further but I am not sure how to do that. The punchline is I managed to lose weight using my simple ideas where I had tried for years dieting and taking nutrition advice and failed. If you read my story and connect with it then I need your help. And, no I am not asking for any money!
First some background. I was putting on weight, albeit a small amount each month, so becoming over-weight came at me so slowly I didn't pay enough attention to it. The main issue I had was feeling tired and unhealthy all the time. I rushed in head first because I thought OK, this is not rocket science and even if it is, heck I really am a space scientist so I can ace this. I just need to eat better and do more exercise. Easy peasy right. All great in theory but there are some very important problems and how these geniuses from top universities are overlooking these issues is just as interesting as the issues themselves.
Firstly, if someone else is watching and caring about your weight, that pushes you to make it a priority. Isn't that obvious? So, these weight loss studies do not take into account the effect of just doing the study itself. Also, lets see how many of the participants keep the weight off and how does that compare with people who did something else. Therefore I want to test my strategy with a large number of volunteers who do not know me and I will have no contact with.
The next thing is determining what should be the goal. Is it to be healthy or to lose weight? There are tons of diet books and websites and videos and magazines and TV shows and argggh! out there. I know, probably like you, I tried to read them all. If you have ever dieted you know the vast array I am talking about. Some of them purportedly help you lose weight fast but don't clearly mention that it could severely damage your health. I really wonder if you would not be better off just going to a surgeon and asking them to cut your leg off. 30 pounds lost instantly! Boom shackalakalaka! Just losing weight is and was not my goal. Also between you and me I think we all find healthy people attractive no matter what they weigh. So the main goal is to look and feel good and not just lose weight per se.
I think you can not expect people to be robots. I am sorry but I am going to fall off the wagon regularly because of things that happen in my life. I can only promise I will do what I can do and when I can do it. temet nosce. I am sure there are people out there with cast iron wills that can just set their mind to it and lose weight. I don't think those people have a weight problem in the first place! So, my strategy is not sensitive to falling off the wagon.
I do not think you can separate health from time and cooking. I do not have a lot of time to waste. Who does? I want to eat good food but I do not want to spend ages on it. Eating out every day is not a solution. Cooking looks so fast on TV. Just a few ounces of this washed and chopped stuff, and two table spoons of this other thing I never had to measure or shop for, and blah blah blah. For the rest of us mortals lets see them go find and buy the ingredients then wash and clean and chop and weigh and cook them and then wash and clean up afterwards and then say how long it really takes. So the real key for me is being able to eat things that don't take a lot of time end-to-end and keep for a long time in the fridge or freezer so I don't have to throw out food or go shopping every day. Also, shocker, I hate washing and cleaning! So my strategy includes a way of reducing this time and making shopping and cooking easier.
So now you understand why what I want really is tougher than rocket science. However, I am trying to solve the actual problems. I am not just applying some solution that works on something else and assuming it should work here too. That is because fools rush in and solve the problem where angels feared to thread
In summary I have set out my requirements for my health strategy such that it is realistic and workable:
1. It has to be an over-riding principle that I can easily understand and apply. Something like what the law of conservation of energy is to physics.
2. I should be able to do this on my own.
3. I want to eat tasty food that I actually want to eat enough of it so I feel totally satisfied. In other words I do not want to feel hungry.
4. It has to be healthy for my brain and heart and other organs. It's no good looking healthy if my kidneys are turning to mush.
5. It must not be overly sensitive to my actions. I mean, if I fall off the wagon for a few days in a month it should not mean I am back to square one.
6. It must not take a lot of time to implement. Cooking, shopping etc.
7. I want to stop putting on weight and ideally lose weight slowly until my weight stabilizes.
After much research I finally developed the strategy last year but my problem now was I needed to conduct an experiment to see if it really worked. The only person I could experiment on was myself. OK, so I could have gone out to find some volunteers at that point but I felt stupid asking someone else to try something I had not tried myself. I weighed myself at my doctor's office last year. I had all my clothes on so it was not accurate to the gram. I also knew that if I weighed myself regularly and I found I was losing weight I would start "thanking" myself for doing well by treating myself to chocolate ice cream etc. That temet nosce thing again. Hence I have not weighed myself since but plan to at the end of this month after my birthday so given Christmas and the new year were also in this period I think it will be a good worst-case scenario.
I have not done any exercise in this period bar dancing to pop music every now and then for a few minutes at home with my daughter. I did buy a treadmill and pointed it at the TV and promised to only watch TV while I was walking on it. Then I decided this would taint the experiment since I just wanted to know the effect of my strategy without doing any exercise. Thank you. I already know. I am full of it. The real reason is I just haven't really wanted to. Honestly, I will do this when I really want to temet nosce again at the risk of being even more pretentious by quoting Latin phrases I picked up watching The Matrix.
The result of executing my health strategy thus far is:
1. I look and feel healthier
2. I sleep better
3. I am nicer to other people in general
4. My muscles feel harder. That is totally not something I expected.
5. I look thinner and my trousers are falling off all the time now so I've had to tighten my belt but as I said I have not weighed myself yet
That is pretty much everything I wanted really and then some.
Now I would like some volunteers to try it out in a real scientific trial. Back in the real world however that is very expensive. The next best thing is to find at least a hundred random people in the same boat as me who do not know me at all and are willing to volunteer to try it out for a month or two and not going to sue me for anything and not going to contact me until the end of the trial period.
Meanwhile, any tips, ideas, encouragement and help to take things to the next step would be greatly appreciated.
Thank you for your time.
Kind regards,
Dr. Ataollah Etemadi
First some background. I was putting on weight, albeit a small amount each month, so becoming over-weight came at me so slowly I didn't pay enough attention to it. The main issue I had was feeling tired and unhealthy all the time. I rushed in head first because I thought OK, this is not rocket science and even if it is, heck I really am a space scientist so I can ace this. I just need to eat better and do more exercise. Easy peasy right. All great in theory but there are some very important problems and how these geniuses from top universities are overlooking these issues is just as interesting as the issues themselves.
Firstly, if someone else is watching and caring about your weight, that pushes you to make it a priority. Isn't that obvious? So, these weight loss studies do not take into account the effect of just doing the study itself. Also, lets see how many of the participants keep the weight off and how does that compare with people who did something else. Therefore I want to test my strategy with a large number of volunteers who do not know me and I will have no contact with.
The next thing is determining what should be the goal. Is it to be healthy or to lose weight? There are tons of diet books and websites and videos and magazines and TV shows and argggh! out there. I know, probably like you, I tried to read them all. If you have ever dieted you know the vast array I am talking about. Some of them purportedly help you lose weight fast but don't clearly mention that it could severely damage your health. I really wonder if you would not be better off just going to a surgeon and asking them to cut your leg off. 30 pounds lost instantly! Boom shackalakalaka! Just losing weight is and was not my goal. Also between you and me I think we all find healthy people attractive no matter what they weigh. So the main goal is to look and feel good and not just lose weight per se.
I think you can not expect people to be robots. I am sorry but I am going to fall off the wagon regularly because of things that happen in my life. I can only promise I will do what I can do and when I can do it. temet nosce. I am sure there are people out there with cast iron wills that can just set their mind to it and lose weight. I don't think those people have a weight problem in the first place! So, my strategy is not sensitive to falling off the wagon.
I do not think you can separate health from time and cooking. I do not have a lot of time to waste. Who does? I want to eat good food but I do not want to spend ages on it. Eating out every day is not a solution. Cooking looks so fast on TV. Just a few ounces of this washed and chopped stuff, and two table spoons of this other thing I never had to measure or shop for, and blah blah blah. For the rest of us mortals lets see them go find and buy the ingredients then wash and clean and chop and weigh and cook them and then wash and clean up afterwards and then say how long it really takes. So the real key for me is being able to eat things that don't take a lot of time end-to-end and keep for a long time in the fridge or freezer so I don't have to throw out food or go shopping every day. Also, shocker, I hate washing and cleaning! So my strategy includes a way of reducing this time and making shopping and cooking easier.
So now you understand why what I want really is tougher than rocket science. However, I am trying to solve the actual problems. I am not just applying some solution that works on something else and assuming it should work here too. That is because fools rush in and solve the problem where angels feared to thread
In summary I have set out my requirements for my health strategy such that it is realistic and workable:
1. It has to be an over-riding principle that I can easily understand and apply. Something like what the law of conservation of energy is to physics.
2. I should be able to do this on my own.
3. I want to eat tasty food that I actually want to eat enough of it so I feel totally satisfied. In other words I do not want to feel hungry.
4. It has to be healthy for my brain and heart and other organs. It's no good looking healthy if my kidneys are turning to mush.
5. It must not be overly sensitive to my actions. I mean, if I fall off the wagon for a few days in a month it should not mean I am back to square one.
6. It must not take a lot of time to implement. Cooking, shopping etc.
7. I want to stop putting on weight and ideally lose weight slowly until my weight stabilizes.
After much research I finally developed the strategy last year but my problem now was I needed to conduct an experiment to see if it really worked. The only person I could experiment on was myself. OK, so I could have gone out to find some volunteers at that point but I felt stupid asking someone else to try something I had not tried myself. I weighed myself at my doctor's office last year. I had all my clothes on so it was not accurate to the gram. I also knew that if I weighed myself regularly and I found I was losing weight I would start "thanking" myself for doing well by treating myself to chocolate ice cream etc. That temet nosce thing again. Hence I have not weighed myself since but plan to at the end of this month after my birthday so given Christmas and the new year were also in this period I think it will be a good worst-case scenario.
I have not done any exercise in this period bar dancing to pop music every now and then for a few minutes at home with my daughter. I did buy a treadmill and pointed it at the TV and promised to only watch TV while I was walking on it. Then I decided this would taint the experiment since I just wanted to know the effect of my strategy without doing any exercise. Thank you. I already know. I am full of it. The real reason is I just haven't really wanted to. Honestly, I will do this when I really want to
temet nosce again at the risk of being even more pretentious by quoting Latin phrases I picked up watching The Matrix.The result of executing my health strategy thus far is:
1. I look and feel healthier
2. I sleep better
3. I am nicer to other people in general
4. My muscles feel harder. That is totally not something I expected.
5. I look thinner and my trousers are falling off all the time now so I've had to tighten my belt but as I said I have not weighed myself yet
That is pretty much everything I wanted really and then some.
Now I would like some volunteers to try it out in a real scientific trial. Back in the real world however that is very expensive. The next best thing is to find at least a hundred random people in the same boat as me who do not know me at all and are willing to volunteer to try it out for a month or two and not going to sue me for anything and not going to contact me until the end of the trial period.
Meanwhile, any tips, ideas, encouragement and help to take things to the next step would be greatly appreciated.
Thank you for your time.
Kind regards,
Dr. Ataollah Etemadi