Your Health and Your Career

Weight, Health, and Your Career

Understanding the relationship of weight, health, and career success is important to your career. There are many articles on the subject. This article from Forbes on weight-based discrimination is a good one. “Is Your Weight Affecting Your Career?”

Weight is image related and it is performance related. I once had a fitness trainer say to me, “If you want to know the importance of food to how you feel, try not eating.”

You’re Not Alone.

If you have weight issues, you are not alone. For Americans, obesity is an epidemic.

Early on, my weight issues were self-esteem issues. I have had to wrestle with weight issues since I was old enough to become aware that I had them. My first recollection of having a weight problem came when I was in the third grade. I was in a local pool and one of the kids in the pool said, “You have gotten fat.”

My first attempt at trying to lose weight came when I was in the fourth grade. I managed to skip eating breakfast despite my mother having prepared breakfast for me. During the day, I felt faint, and I ended up in the nurse’s office.

My activity as a kid helped me with my weight. I played in multiple sports and worked at part-time jobs where I was on my feet. I was careful to get what my dad called table muscles. He said, “You get table muscles when you push yourself away from the table.”

Diet Books

Over time, I read more about weight loss. I tried different ways of eating that other people found successful. I read diet books and tried different diets. Some of these diet programs focus on eliminating reducing or eliminating either fat or carbohydrates as food choices. Other diets focused on the proper balance of carbohydrates, fats, and proteins. I read books that emphasized eating different foods at different times of the day. I read other books that recommended not mixing food groups and eating them at the same time.

During my lifetime of fighting my weight issues, I have found that I have a lot of company. Age and inactivity have played a role for my generation. However, the weight issues I had as a kid have become more common among kids in America. Fat people were unusual when I was growing up. Now nearly everyone has gotten fatter.

Diet books have been far more successful financially than they have been in making America healthy. 

Metabolic Syndrome

There are many aspects to weight and health. Here are some sobering thoughts on weight from The National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute of the United States Government:

“Metabolic syndrome is the name for a group of risk factors that raises your risk for heart disease and other health problems, such as diabetes and stroke.

The term “metabolic” refers to the biochemical processes involved in the body’s normal functioning. Risk factors are traits, conditions, or habits that increase your chance of developing a disease.

In this article, “heart disease” refers to coronary heart disease (CHD). CHD is a condition in which a waxy substance called plaque builds up inside the coronary (heart) arteries.

Plaque hardens and narrows the arteries, reducing blood flow to your heart muscle. This can lead to chest pain, a heart attack, heart damage, or even death.”

A Guide to Obesity and the Metabolic Syndrome: Origins and Treatment by George Bray is a comprehensive book on the subject metabolic syndrome.

Challenges of Weight Control

For me, there have always been three issues.

• Quantity: I find that some foods I eat make me hungrier. I see other people have a serving of spaghetti for dinner and not have another bite for the rest of the evening. When I eat a serving of spaghetti, I find that I am ready for another serving in less than an hour. I am not a nutritionist, but I believe that some people release insulin more easily than others do. The insulin imbalance lowers our blood sugar. The lower blood sugar makes us hungry. For people with big insulin pumps (not scientific term), starchy foods become a turbo booster for insulin.
• Strict diets are hard to live on for the long term. There are a wide variety of support groups for people trying to stay with a specific eating plan. I remember Weight Watchers® meetings in a conference room where I worked. I have friends who have attended Overeaters Anonymous® meetings. Jenny Craig® offers support for its members. There are support groups online. One of the more popular Subreddits is “everything about keto.”
• Rigorous exercise programs are easier to abandon than to maintain. I knew a man who ran ten miles a day for years. It was amazing to me that he could keep up this regimen. He was 6’3″ and just a large guy. For some people, this type of regimen is highly rewarding. However, based on articles I have read and on my doctor’s advice, I have concluded that there are questionable benefits and even risks for people who get more than five hours of cardiovascular exercise a week. To me, it was a kind of exercise bulimia. This man would overeat and then run sixty or more miles a week to purge the calories that he consumed.

Individualize Your Efforts

Some people have specific allergies. People with Celiac disease experience health issues when they eat grains that contain gluten. People who avoid these grains say they have more energy. Other people have specific immediate adverse responses to peanuts or shellfish. I can’t eat crab meat. The last time I ate crab meat I got a rash on my face and my mouth and throat begin to itch. Just being too close to the crab gives me a rash on my face. Strangely, I can eat shrimp.

Different doctors say different things. The diet plan that the United States Government’s Dietary Guidelines emphasizes a diet that is high in whole grains, fruits and vegetables, or lower in fats. The USDA Food Pyramid still recommends that a healthy diet as one in which a people get the largest percent of their calories from carbohydrates. The Food Pyramid follows the conventional wisdom that eating fat contributes to higher caloric consumption and, in turn, to diseases related to obesity.

However, the University of California Davis Health System has a plan of high fat low carbohydrate eating to achieve the same results.

My Personal Plan

I am continually learning and struggling. My wife cooks for our family. For her to plan her menus around my latest efforts to lose weight is unnecessary and unfair to her. I have tried so many diet plans that she would have had to make continual adjustments for whatever diet I was using.

What I have found is that I can eat within the healthy meal plans that my wife has developed and adjust the portion sizes that work for my own ideas of what is healthy for me. For example, spaghetti is a binge food for me. When my wife cooks spaghetti, I find that having an extra meatball and extra cheese reduces the binge eating that spaghetti stimulates in me.

Spaghetti is not my only binge food. When I eat mostly carbohydrates, I eat far more food. Keto and paleo (“protein”) diets are effective. They are also strict and a challenge to maintain in some conditions, especially for people on a budget and living with other people. However, realizing the benefits of protein diets helps me select foods, as we said down in Texas, “That will stick to my ribs.”

On the point of food selection, I can use common sense about eating. I can still hear my parents telling me, “You can have something sweet after you eat your dinner.” I have learned that I will less likely crave dessert when I eat dinner first.

Sign Me Up

Joining sports teams helps me. Playing softball and soccer are both sports that I have played and coached. Health clubs work great for me when I know people at the club and feel like I am part of a group.

I have an exercise bike in my home. The bike eliminates any excuse from exercising. Also, I have a neighborhood where I enjoy taking walks.

I have a health club membership. Resistance training is good for maintaining strength and toning muscles.

Self-acceptance is important as well. Few people see themselves the way the world sees them. Anorexia is a disease that kills people though their inability to have a healthy perspective on their weight and self-image.

I wish you good luck with your Weight, Health, and Career. If you have something that is working for you, be sure to pass it along when someone is asking for help. There is wisdom in the adage, “You can’t keep it unless you give it away.” I suppose that I am in some ways selfishly trying to stay healthy by passing along my experience with my own health.

Sometimes the Best Way to Start Exercising is Simply to Lace Up Your Shoes and Walk Out the Door.

This morning I was having trouble getting started on an exercise program.  So, I just put on my shoes, my sweatshirt, and walked out the door. I walked to the end of the street and turned left. I walked along the paved path beside the canal system.

I walked up twenty feet from a small hawk sitting on the fence along the way. As I drew closer the hawk flew across the canal thirty feet away and landed on the fence on the other side.

It was exciting to see the hawk. I know that they are ruthless raptors that prey on other birds. I have seen this ruthlessness first hand when I saw a sparrow hawk eating another bird in my backyard a couple of years ago. Although I do not encourage ruthlessness, I respect the bird for its powerful and simple success in doing one thing and doing that one thing to perfection. I often wish that I could see my life with similar straightforward simplicity.

I have read that sparrow hawks also eat small rodents. I guess that if prey is scarce, a sparrow hawk might eat anything.

There is an owl’s nest along the walk I took today.  I wonder how many city dwellers live among birds of prey and are not aware that these birds exist.  I have heard this owl screech from its nest at night. I know that this owl eats rodents, because I have seen the bony remains of rodents under the owl’s nest.

As I walked further, I passed a neighbor who was cutting up small branches from a tree in his yard. It has recently turned into fall.  We had a strong wind a few days ago.  I am guessing that the neighbor was cleaning up his yard.

The leaves on some of the trees have turned yellow and gold.  The temperature was around sixty. There was not a cloud or even a trace of a cloud anywhere.

A plane passed overhead. I could not see it, but I could tell from the sound of the engine that the plane was at low and inbound for a landing. 

While walking the other night with a friend, I learned something that probably everyone on earth knows, but was news to me.

Getting started exercising can seem difficult.  Yet just walking though is so rewarding. The best way to exercise is to just start exercising.  I am truly blessed that I can just walk out my front door so easily, get the exercise of a run or a walk, and learn so much as I walk along.

 

Eat Your Leafy Greens

For me, green vegetables are the best weight-loss food and the best way to bypass the cookie jar.

Greens are interesting too! Greens are fun and nutritious. Check it out!

Celery burns more calories than it contains.  Check it out! Just slap that sentence in your favorite search engine, and check it out!

Broccoli is a cabbage.

Bok Choy is a cabbage.

Cauliflower is a cabbage. In other words, cauliflower is a green vegetable. Check it out!

Lettuces and sunflowers are cousins.  Thank you to the farmers for growing some of their sunflowers for their leaves! Check it out!

If there is a leafy green you have not tried, please try a small sample to start. Not everyone’s body responds the same way to different foods, even leafy greens!

I want to be extraordinary. Bring on the greens!

On the Job: Stand Up and Live Longer.

I know a recruiter who years ago bought a drafting table for his work desk. He believed that standing at his desk was healthier than sitting all day.

Today he is the same weight as when he bought his drafting table. Of course, he also tries to maintain a healthy diet and exercise program. The connection with standing at this desk does seem to have a connection with his weight maintenance.

The Home Gym: Why Doing Things Yourself is Good for Your Self-Esteem, Your Confidence, and Your Health.

Going through a career change or any life change can bring feelings of uncertainty, inadequacy, and uselessness. You may also feel that you have less energy and less interest in life in general.

Home projects during these periods can be hard to start. All the feelings and loss of energy during challenging life changes can reduce your motivation and make you feel physically restrained from taking physical action on anything.

Yet finishing a home project provides immediate, visual results. You can see what you have accomplished. These visual results can create energy and rebuild your self-esteem,

However, for an understanding of how exercising for fitness compares to yard- and house-work, I did a comparison of calories burned for an hour of various activities. Here are the estimates based on calculations from Self.com:

Washing a car – 300 Calories
Painting/carpentry – 350 Calories
Yardwork – 500 Calories
Mopping floors – 330 Calories
Pool cleaning – 400 Calories
Playing with kids – 330
Walking – 330 Calories
Weight lifting – 400 Calories
Stationary Bike – 330 Calories
Spinning – 400 Calories

I enjoy being a do-it-yourself kind of guy. I had installed my own sprinkler systems in the front and backyard. I had built a wooden deck in my backyard. When my wife and I had a pool built in the backyard, I reinstalled the sprinklers in the backyard.

I personally put in hand-mixed concrete curbs.

As my business grew and my kids got older, I felt challenged but not overwhelmed to continue the do-it-yourself projects.

Not because of affluence, but because of the type of development in the area where I live, there are gardeners in this area every week. The monthly costs are negligible, especially because employing a gardener eliminates the cost of gas to drive to a gas station to buy gas for my own equipment.

So, for years, I had a gardener for my yard and eventually added a pool attendant to service my pool. I took my car to the drive-thru car wash. I often ate meals purchased at the drive-thru restaurant and ate them in my car: Eyes on the road, left hand on the wheel, and hamburger in the right hand. Cup holders were designed for people who eat while driving, right?

The following figures are disappointing to realize. During this time, I drove to a health club, where I burned 300-400 calories per session for a total of 1500 to 2000 calories per week.

A few years ago, I reduced the number of services I used. My kids are grown. I was no longer involved in coaching their sports teams, participating in parent organizations, and hanging out with them in public or around the house.

I realized that in using the gardener I had lost sight of the condition of my yard. The shrubs had become trees and the once beautiful blue grass was full of crabgrass. The deck I built had begun to weaken with aging.

One afternoon, I decided to wash the family SUV that my wife and I had used for years to haul kids to college and family trips through the Sierra snow.

I had to find the sponges and solutions I had used years before. As I washed the car, I became aware that I was not as fit as I thought I was. In reeling out the hose, I discovered that the 100-foot rubber hose was not that easy to handle in the tight spaces along the walkway to the car. During the squatting and the standing, the bending and the reaching, and the physical aspects of washing the car with the sponge, I began to realize that washing a car can take a bit of exertion.

I brought out a ladder and washed the top of the car. Once I had washed the car and toweled it dry, I realized that I had been through every bit of a good workout at the gym.

I looked at the car and I felt good.  I had rediscovered what I had lost through the years of drive-thru service. There is a sense of pride, a sense of accomplishment, in doing things yourself.

Somewhat sadly I released the gardener. He usually arrived early and had become a person I greeted for years. Less personally I released the pool service that simply dumped chemicals in my pool and left the cleaning to the pool sweep.

I rebuilt my deck. My fantastic wife and I garden again. I wash my own car, which in California is not necessary often.

So, if you are going through a career transition or any other stressful change in your life and have perhaps become a drive-thru addict, you might find that DIY can be terrific therapy and excellent source of physical conditioning.

 

Diets: 7 Reasons Why Dieting Works Against You

Diets: There are new books and articles on dieting appearing all the time. Is there a plan that works for everyone?

If you have weight issues, you are not alone. Even how we perceive our weight affects our health, self-esteem, and our career. Furthermore, research shows a connection between obesity and coronary heart disease, high blood pressure, heart failure, type 2 diabetes, and other health issues. Science Daily, ScienceDirect, and other sources.

1. The Confusing Science of Diets

Sorting out the science in popular diet books is problematic. The advocates of popular diets present research to support their diet. The best-known diets all have some basis in medical research. However, the science in popular diets has contradictory points of view. What they have in common is that they recommend reducing or eliminating one or two of the following sources of nutrition: fats, carbohydrates, or protein.

Furthermore, the research of each of these popular programs leads people to believe that there is only one best-way to lose weight. I have tried many of these popular ways of eating and lost weight despite their contradictory conclusions about the science of nutrition.

2. Rapid Weight Loss

Using popular diets, most people can lose five to fifteen pounds rapidly. These diets require that you restrict your calories and, in some cases, change the way our body burns calories using different methods. However, rapid short-term weight-loss programs don’t prevent rapid weight gain after the dieter ends the diet.

4. Chronic, Progressive Obesity

Dieters have two ways of eating: a popular weight-loss diet and the way of eating that made it necessary to go on a popular weight-loss diet.

Overtime, dieters end up heavier than the last time they dieted, because they return to the weight-gain way of eating that made them gain weight in the first place.

Their normal way of eating satisfies cravings that make dieting difficult. If a person goes on a diet for three weeks and then returns to their normal eating the rest of the year, they will progressively gain weight. Using their normal way of eating, they will continue to consume more calories than they burn.

Misunderstanding metabolism: Some people attribute this increased weight gain to a decrease in metabolism from the diet. However, I have found conflicting conclusions from different research on how metabolism works. The apparent reason for the conflicting conclusions is that the body has complex systems for managing metabolism. I found this article in this link helpful: WebMD.

5. The Absence of a Personal Goal

For the long-term, I don’t believe that there is one way of eating that works for everyone. For that matter, the issue is not whether any way of eating works better than another. Instead, the issue is what way of eating can you use to create a healthy long-term lifestyle and reach your physical goals.

If you are a professional cyclist who bikes a hundred miles a day, burning too many calories can become a problem. On the other hand, if you work at a desk 8 – 10 hours a day, burning calories can become a greater challenge. Bodybuilders use high calorie diets of carbohydrates and protein to build muscle mass. Then they change their diet to rip their body of water and fat. Professional athletes use a wide variety of diets. Each diet has the purpose of achieving special needs of athletic performance.

6. Different Bodies, Different Needs

Some of the most fit people I know start their day with a bowl of cereal or a sweet roll. For dinner, they eat pasta, rice, or potatoes. Their intake of carbohydrates is 80% or a higher percentage of their total calories eaten.

However, carbohydrates stimulate my appetite. So, I can’t eat the way these people eat.

7. Focusing on What You Can’t Eat.

For me, eating a daily diet that is 65-70% fat, 20-25% protein, and 10% or less in carbohydrates is something I can do for the long-term. I focus on what I can eat. Sure, I know the ice cream is in the refrigerator and the chocolate is in the pantry. However, I have greater success when I don’t focus on not eating those foods. I try to concentrate on the solution and not the source of the problem.

Perhaps bordering on a state of ketosis and consuming fewer calories, I lose about a pound or two in a week. I say bordering, because I do not use urine strips to test for ketosis.

Following this combination of foods, I lost 34 pounds over the course of a year. Furthermore, I have kept this weight off.

Other people, especially people who are much heavier and, therefore, who burn more calories in carrying their body around, have lost much more weight in the same amount of time.

When I gain a couple of pounds, I don’t beat myself up. I track what I eat with myfitnesspal. Tracking helps me see when I am being honest about my food choices.