Mr. Z. Buy a bicycle and ride it 10 or so miles to your favorite pizza joint and have a slice with a cold local microbrew and then bike home.

Once you get back home, go for a 15 minute walk praying the rosary. Once you have finished the rosary, retrace your 15 minute route back home silently cursing politicians.

Don’t EVER let a Dr talk you into taking statins to “control” cholesterol. There is NO connection twixt cholesterol and CHD.

As far as Riesling and cake. That sounds delicious.

John, form a 40 year old guy who has dropped 30 pounds in 3 months.
1) Six small meals a day
2) Throw away the food pyramid. Unless you are slaving in a field under the burning sun 6+ servings of grains is going to turn you into a corn-fed heifer (yuk!). The bottom of the food pyramid is vegetables and fruits, followed by meats, followed by grains, with oils and fats at the top.
3) If you are not exercizing, no more then two servings of grains a day, three if you are exersizing.
4) get plenty of sleep.
5) The only supplements you should be taking are cheap:
A multivitamin (no Iron!)
DHEA (anyone over 30 should be taking this to supplement decreased hormone output)
CLA (Helps burn fat)
Omega-3 Oils
6) Exercize: You need to build muscle, increase your metabolism, and burn fat, and do so in a planned consistent and organized fashion. I could introduce you privately to the online program (again cheap) that has taken me from 203 to 171.
Good Luck

I’m in the same boat. For some ancient Chinese wisdom, I suggest replacing the wine and beer with tea, especially pu-erh tea, which is said to reduce lipids.

John,
I’ve spent almost my entire adult life eating those foods recommended to you by this
cheerless Yankee. I honestly don’t mind these victuals and given the horrible health my
parents inherited, I may owe my relative longevity to my prudent regimen. Running
every day should also help. Instead of writing more books on delicious food, you should
plan to do a volume on the benefits of exercise and crunchy grains.

“You keep this up, and your liver’s going to end up sliding out of your ass one day in the shower...”

THE BEST LINE I have ever read/heard from a doctor.

“I am not Spartacus” is on to something.

First, switch to red wine; reduce the beer intake completely: That stuff goes right to the gut!

NO on the Meridia—you may want to do a two week low carb diet: meats, fish, and vegetables - no alcohol - get the glycemic level back in balance and stop the cravings...then re-introduce TimH’s very valuable prescription…

...the success of all these suggestions rest on will and self-discipline...good luck…

Dr. Z: Your too jocular about this. Listen to your physician.  We in Dixie have suffered from mean New Englanders.  This one’s offering tough love.  And he’s quite correct.  Diabetes is now an pandemic in Gringoland equal to the extent of the Black Death.  Ditto circulation problems.  I had a similar shock warning May 2007.  And the solution was diet and exercise. Ask your physician if what worked for me (the following) might work for you.

1. No Carb Diet, or low carb with only one carb a week.  That means no bread, no rice, no pasta, no sweets, no bananas, no beer, and above all no potatoes, no soft drinks (pop or soda to you Yankees) –even the “light” versions –, no fast food, and no sweet tea.  Period.  And avoid any foods with corn syrup in them 7 years ago the medical establishment called Atkins a fad.  Now they endorse the no carb diet.  (Probably they had to wait until the lawyers told them it was ok.) You’ve just returned from Italy.  One notices immediately at the “port of entry” that Gringos (1)have more children, and (2) are overweight – even more overweight than the beer-drinking Middle Europeans. Ask yourself, What are Gringos eating?  Remember the jogging fad of the 1980s?  Did it decrease waistlines?  No. Why? As St. Don Bosco said, “If there’s a problem in the house, look in the pot.” So just what are Gringos eating?  Carbs. “Kill the carbs!”, my dr. says. Otherwise, he says, no exercise program will work.

2. Lower the quantity of meals. Eating even a ton of broccoli will make you fat.  Carbs have the addition disadvantage of making you hungry.  And Gringos become addicted – exactly the right word – to carbs and large portions.  Many diets crash because in the first two weeks of a diet with smaller portions, your body screams for food it doesn’t need.  Yet after a while, fortunately the opposite will happen and your body will start rejecting high quantity.  Most restaurants serve portions entirely too large, and offer a bread as a side, from start to dessert.  (restaurants are better about lunch, with smaller portions).  So don’t eat out.  After a month of this diet and exercise, allow yourself a “carb of the week” and a “sweet of the week”.  I go to a restaurant with small portions for my carb (a pasta); were I to make it myself, I’d be tempted to make too much. I go to Starbucks after Mass and get a slice of cheese cake and a double espresso.

3. Ignore Vegetarians and the Animal rights frenzy.  Their agenda is political, not physical.  They sing the praises of a Mediterranean diet.  Remember that it was the fad 15 years ago.  Did it work? No.  And lean meat and fish in low quantity is good for you (unless your dr. says otherwise).  (I can’t speak to the virtue of the “Caveman Diet” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caveman_diet , which looks like Atkins without milk products).  Forget about any political food.  We in Dixie love our sweet tea.  No longer for me!

4.  Despite the power of the “internalization of authority” from our parents, forget what they told you when a child about the “Clean Plate Club”.  Don’t eat a whole plate of large portions.  When you’re full from a plate of small portions, stop eating.  Those who have lost a lot of weight have a secret:  They just got food out of their life!  It becomes for them something the just have to do, such as going to the bathroom.  Make your social life revolve around something other than the table.

5. Forget about being polite when eating with a host at his house.  I was doing fine until a visited my beloved carb eating cousins: I put on 6 lbs in one week on the road.  I dread what will happen when I’m back in Italy – however much it is a shoe-leather culture. I guess I’ll just skip the pasta course.  Let your host know that you’re under dr’s orders: NO CARBS!

6. The three meals tradition, my dr. told me, is good.  His orders to me: breakfast with slices of lean meat (turkey), berry fruit, low sodium tomato juice.  Lunch: a prepared salad of greens and yellows and reds with olive oil based dressings.  Go to the grocery store and buy such a salad; if you make it yourself, you’ll be tempted to make too much.  Sup with the same plus maybe a meat, the portion of which should be the size of a deck of cards.  Drink one glass of wine (NO BEER!)

7.  10 years ago the PE teacher at my high school told me that he had seen within a decade a dramatic decline in adolescent health.  He attributed it to no exercise.  When I was a child, we went outside and played (romped).  Now kids sit in front of a screen. So now to other requirement: exercise.  Without exercise, the diet won’t work.  Get a machine.  And the best piece of advice I had was this:  “The machine that works is the machine that you use!” I had tried first the exercise bike and used DVDs to distract me from the pain of exercise.  Alas, I found myself becoming absorbed into, say, “Inspector Morse”, and I would slow down.  So with my dr’s blessing, I got a year ago a treadmill, one that measure pulse, speed, distance, time, incline, calorie burn.  Particularly important:  Have your doctor tell you how high you pulse can go, upon which you slow down.  Mine started me out at just twelve min., and everyday increasing one min. until 45 min.  The first time I did this, my pulse shot up at only 2.5 mph.  Within a few weeks my pulse was down and my speed was up.  After reaching 45 min and 3.5 mph, I started increasing the grade; now a year later, I’m at 2%.  Your dr. will set goals for you. Do the treadmill daily.

8. See a trainer.  Mine endorsed completely what my Dr. said, and set me on a dumbbell and calisthenics routine three times a week.

9.  One friend assured me that I would actually love exercise because of adrenalin highs.  After a year, I still hate it.  So I need the mental distraction.  The treadmill keeps moving, so there’s less temptation to slow down when becoming absorbed in what one is viewing.  After 12 years TV-free (I had stopped cable after the O.J. Simpson trial), I went back to cable.  I watch only one show a day, and I watch it while exercising 45 min.daily: CNBC’s “Closing Bell”, 3pm (DVDs on the weekend).  The screen is full of flashing information, good-looking and articulate babes, and dumpy-looking males.  Actually it’s amusing: the info is all numbers, and numbers don’t work for photography, cinema, and TV – though “Closing Bell” proves it’s not for want of trying. If this show isn’t to your taste, try “Mad Money”.

10.  Weigh yourself on good scales once a week only.  You’ll be pleased at the difference. In a year, I’ve lost 35 lbs, with 15 still to go.  I plan to keep my diet and exercise for the rest of my life.

11.  There is a spiritual side to losing weight, or to kicking any addiction (“chemical dependency”), as AA told us long ago, AA taking its 12 steps in part from St. Ignatius Loyola.  Pray for the Grace to fight the love of carbs, the love of large portions, the pain of hunger, and the pain of exercise.  You can’t do it by yourself.  Set up a daily prayer schedule.  Parts of the Divine Office is what I use http://www.universalis.com , and adding personal prayers. Sparticus Negative’s rosary idea isn’t bad.

WARNING:  What works for me might not be what your dr. thinks will work for you. DON’T DO ABOVE UNTIL HE OKS IT. (So the lawyers tell me to tell you.)

Dear John,

I am raising a glass of champers as a toast to your newfound discipline. 

Best, Nicholas

Sid,
Will you drop the asinine “gringo” nonsense?  It is offensive, as if I were to call you
a “slack-jawed inbred Southern hick,” got me?

Remember, Mr. Zmirak, that for all the great feasting traditions we Catholics have, we have another tradition that might help you out:

Fasting.

Spiritually and physically beneficial.

That means no bread,

Mr. Cundiff. Fr.Peter Williams, in a Homily at Mass at St. Mary’s in Springfield, Vt had this to say:

“If anyone tries to tell you your diet should not include bread, do not listen to them. They are agents of the devil.”

He was sorta kidding - I think.

Also, it blows my mind that a member of The LOTS would walk inside on a treadmill.

Walking outside (Your Bride can answer the Rosary) leads to joy and it makes it easier to lift one’s mind to God.

You are in the South, right?

Go out early. Smell the night jasmine, the orange blossoms, the oleanders; in the silence hear your feet strike the foot path; hold hands with The Bride; make her laugh: look-up at the morning sky; watch as the last few remaining blushing stars try to hide from being stared at;watch that great artist,the sun,wake and paint the morning clouds in remarkable pastels; grab The Brides ass and make her giggle.

“Honey, somebody could be watching...”

Eat bread. Go outdoors, but never to exercise. Do it for the sheer joy of being alive outdoors and alone with the one you love.

There will be plenty of time for you two to go your separate ways and do your work for the day but your morning walk may be the very last walk you ever have.

Do you really want your last walk to be on a machine? Alone? Indoors? Watching TV?

I’d rather eat a rice cake and then die.

Spartacus Negativus: I tried walking.  The number for the pounds I lost by so doing resembles the shape of an egg.  To walk outside is inferior to walking the treadmill.  When walking, it’s too easy to give into the temptation to slow down, stop, and proverbally “smell the roses” and, so to speak, “chew the fat”.

The reason we have so much carbs in our diet in the U.S. is that it is the most readily available raw material, like Sid Said causes actual addiction, and is dirt cheap.  Therefore the scoundrels trying to make a quick buck try to add carbs, in either the form of sugars or grains, to everything.  Notice how much breaded and fried food there is in fast food.  They take a small portion of chicken then cover it in flour, salt and fat and give you sugar sauces to dip it in.  It is the evil of cost cutting in the food service industry.  Then of course you try to eat healthy and by the prices of that stuff its not like they don’t know you are eating this because of doctors orders.

My local ale drinking regiment rivals/exceeds your own (by 3 or 4 I assume you mean Imperial Pints), and we both know can attest to the siren’s call of New England Ales.

My suggestion: Quit breakfast and lunch.

As to this “doctor”; a concentration camp reference and a no booze regime?

I’d consult the <a href=http://www.moderndrunkardmagazine.com/issues/03_03/03-03_intervention.htm>Modern Drunkard Magazine</a> guide to fending off an intervention and remind the doctor, Hitler was a Dry.

Thank you for a well written and delightful reality based exposition of why people get much more interesting as they age.

The closer I get to sixty the younger it looks.

Immigrants are like weight we don’t need too.  Cut back to under 25,000 per year unless we want our genes to go extinct, that includes illegals and students.

All for the spiritual exercises, Dr. Zmirak, but surely better to die young (ish), then to live sans the barley.  And when you consider all the sacrifices junkies make for such lesser pleasures, why shouldn’t a little morning insulin help prepare the evening? I suppose you realize that if you really do lay off the weekday Riesling, you’ll be run over by a truck on your way home from Mass on Sunday. Serve you right too, though I’d miss you.

I forgot to say air-popped popcorn.  Invest in an air popper and in some
Old Bay Spice.

Get a steamer.

Replace potatoes by turnips. Same texture, but sharper taste.

Get an unbalanced dinner of artichokes, and chew each leaf one by one, after
dipping in some olive oil and lemon dressing. It is slow, it is tasty, it is
satisfying.  Do the same with a lot of asparagus.  Eat nothing but for that meal. It
feels luxurious.

Substitue desserts by fresh fruit.  You can try microwaving apples, or pears, or peaches
and add a sprinkle of sugar and cinnamon.

He sounds like a wonderful doctor, the type that will actually keep his patients alive by telling them
that they’re eating (or, in this case, drinking) themselves into bad health and an early grave.  If
more people had doctors like this and listened to them, this country wouldn’t have such problems with
obesity, diabetes, heart disease, etc.

Just yesterday my GP told me that the latest is that alcohol protects the heart, and suggested red wine.  The hard stuff is good taken straight.  Beer is bad except when you want to pass a kidney stone.  Alcoholics and diabetics prefer sweet mixed drinks.  If you are getting blood work done regularly any liver problem will show up there in plenty of time to deal with it.  Find a Boston or New York for your annual physical.  There was a group practice called Executive Health examiners that specialized in just that.  Ask your insurer.  They would rather pay for that than for a hospital.  If you must eat carbs, eat enough fat to adjust their glycemic index.  Mars bars are healthier than rice cakes.  When I sold life insurance my manager said never hesitate to insure a fat guy, but if a skinny guy wants to buy a policy get a medical on him.

John:

About exercize, I think that this is a good time to contemplate “good works”.  Join Habitat
for Humanity, help load and unload cargo to be sent to disaster areas, help plant a community
garden.  Help carry old people’s groceries up the stairs.  You can burn a lot of calories,
and not get bored, as you would on a stationary bike.

Sound like we’ve been in similar straights, John. 

I only echo Tim H, up there - everything he says is good.  It worked for me, 35 lbs. gone.

Your Yankee doctor’s advice to eat only twice a day is very bad advice.  Eating less often will only kill your metabolism.  You need to eat smaller meals, more often, focusing on whole foods. 

I refer you to Men’s Health & Fitness “The Abs Diet” - you eat your a## off, and will lose fat and gain muscle.  And you get a cheat meal or day once a week, so the Reisling & all that is still on the menu.  Just not as often.

Check it out.  In 9 weeks you can transform yourself.  Next time you see that doctor, the laugh will be on him.

Seems dear Mr Zirmak has fallen prey to that deadly consumerism emanating from electronic devices and media machines around the country. Can you hear the subliminals ‘buy more food’ ‘buy more gas’ support the empire, sick people are more profitable than healthy people, buy things on credit you dont really need, consume my friends consume all you want, eat and drink to you barf like the Romans did, useless eaters are in!

Heh. Anyway, I went from 240 pounds to 170 lbs Zirmy, you can do it without weight loss drugs. Stop eating BEFORE you feel full. Your a tiger in the jungle and hunger pains are normal!!!!

Hurrah for hunger!

Seriously, once you start going through life hungry, you will wonder why you never did before!

The big ribeye steak tastes so much better when you’re hungry!

By the way, unless you are starving to death, never eat or drink these things:

sugar
pasta
bread
beer
milk
potatoes

And make sure you are ALWAYS hungry.

DO eat:

animal flesh
LOTS of green vegetables

That doctor of yours is telling you the truth. Keep him.

As to all the advice here… Guys, have you tried your advice on yourself?

Here’s what has worked for me. I’m 47 and 6’3” of “strong” build. Two hours of walking in hilly and woody terrain every day of the week, except Sundays. This is partitioned into two one hour passes each day. In the morning, before work, then in the afternoon, after work. What motivates me is my dog. No excuses for bad weather there.

The daily walking has made my immune defense stronger. I seldom have the flue. It occurs once every second year and then lasts for merely 1-3 days. Also my legs are muscular and I never have problems with my back, which I had a lot of before, since I’m tall.

Also, daily exposure to Mother Nature makes me feel happier and more relaxed.

None of the above has reduced my weight though. It has redistributed it though. I have gained muscle mass and instead lost fat.

Physical activities make you hungry and you sleep well. If you would wish to gain weight, beer would be the ultimate dish. Everything in beer is fattening. The japanese Sumo wrestlers drink a lot of beer. I seldom drink, but when I do I prefer red wine.

In my experience, when your instincts don’t lead you right, you should override them with planning and discipline. The problem with that approach is that someone who has overdriven into one direction tend to go too far into the opposite direction, to compensate, like Newton’s third law of action and reaction.

There’s one rule in all of this that is more important than everything else. I used to preach that to my students all the time. Enjoy what you’re doing!

Your doctor mentioned something about a concentration camp and many people who try to change something in their life feel like they have entered through the gates of Auschwitz when they force themselves to stop smoking, losing weight etc. There’s no need for that. If you enjoy food and need to lose weight, look at it, not like having to give up all those goodies, but like an opportunity to get to taste new dishes, experience novel pleasures of food and perhaps even finding new themes to write about. Like “The Good Catholic’s Guide To A Life Of Happines, Health And Sanity”?

Now, if we somehow could straighten out your leanings to the Left, things would be perfect.

Mens sana en corpore sano.