Lee Aase | Social Media University, Global (SMUG)

Seeds of Dietary Doubt

In June 2015, I read a review of a book with an intentionally provocative title: The Big Fat Surprise: Why Butter, Meat, and Cheese Belong in a Healthy Diet. (#CommissionEarned)

I downloaded and listened to the audio version, and while it didn’t cause me to immediately change my eating habits, it was my first step toward a different way of thinking about diet.

I was still a year away from “Peak Lee,” when I reached 265 lbs. in Summer 2016.

I was going to focus on exercise as the way to get healthy, and I thought a reasonable amount of weight loss would be the natural result.

But it was jarring to learn how deficient the scientific basis was for the dietary recommendations we had been given by government for nearly 40 years, as author Nina Teicholz detailed how the diet-heart hypothesis became dominant, and our entire food system shifted to reduce fat consumption, which necessarily led to an increase in carbohydrates.

She made a strong case that the rise in prevalence of obesity and overweight status was not because people were failing to follow dietary guidelines. The guidelines were contributing to the problem.

You should get the book to read or hear for yourself, but this video of a TEDx speech by Ms. Teicholz is a good primer.

For a more extended version, check out this speech she gave last year to the Cato Institute.

My “Before” Pictures

At 6’6″ I’m blessed with a relatively large frame over which I could distribute some extra weight.

But when that extra amount became 40 pounds, it definitely showed.

Even under a sport coat:

Two weeks after my youngest daughter’s wedding, in August 2016.

Here are a few of pictures from June of that year, when I had the opportunity to visit China, along with one with my dad at a baseball game in Chicago:

And finally, one from Australia in 2015. You can definitely see where water had an opportunity to collect after a shower.

Readiness to change is an extremely important factor in improving health, but another is knowing what kinds of changes would be beneficial.

In my next post I’ll describe how I started to get some inklings that the path that would lead to sustained weight loss was different than what I had expected.

Getting to “Peak Lee”

Before recent asides to indicate the future name of this blog – Stuff I Find Interesting (SIFI) – and to provide a necessary disclaimer, I had told the story of getting a celiac disease diagnosis at an anemic 225 pounds and becoming at least borderline obese at 260 pounds four years later.

Here’s how it happened.

In one sense, the explanation is that my gluten-free diet allowed the damage to the villi in my small intestine to be repaired, which meant I was now absorbing my nutrients.

That’s how I explained it to myself at the time anyway. While I had previously been able to eat anything and in any amount without appreciable weight gain, with newly repaired villi that was no longer the case.

I simply needed to adjust my portion sizes to this new reality. And I also tried to follow the advice in the USDA Food Guide Pyramid (which I had used as the basis for my SMUG Social Media Pyramid.

At its base was the recommendation of 6-11 servings per day from the Bread, Cereal, Rice & Pasta Group.

While I couldn’t have wheat, barley or rye because of celiac disease, I soon had plenty of other options, especially as food manufacturers became more accommodating of the gluten-free diet.

The next level up featured the Vegetable Group and the Fruit Group, with 3-4 servings per day each.

I’m not claiming to have been a model adherent to these guidelines. I’m sure my idea of a serving size didn’t correspond exactly to the USDA’s definition.

But I’m pretty confident the proportion of my diet coming from each of the food groups was reasonably close to the recommendations. I had done media relations work in the cardiology field, so I minimized eggs and drank low-fat (but not skim) milk to reduce my fat and cholesterol intake.

A typical day’s menu looked something like:

A bowl of cereal (typically Corn Chex) for breakfast
A grab-and-go chicken salad from a restaurant near my office, with a few favorite choices
Dinner (various entrees and side dishes)
At least a few nights a week, air-popped popcorn as a late-evening snack, with no butter.

Sometimes instead of popcorn I would have tortilla chips and salsa, taking one item from the grains and another from the vegetable group.

While I now know some of those choices weren’t the best, none were wildly out of line with USDA recommendations.

And yet, within less than four years, I found myself carrying around this much extra weight:

As I sometimes joked, I was “working on my ‘before’ pictures.”

In my next post I’ll show some of them.

Keeping the Lawyers Happy

Who am I kidding?

I don’t have any lawyers. I’m just a guy with a blog.

But still, I guess I should clarify what I’m doing here for legal purposes.

I’m not offering medical advice. No doctor-patient relationship is being created.

I’m not a doctor or a medical professional of any kind.

This blog’s purpose is for education. Mainly mine.

Just as I started it in 2006 to learn about blogging, and later shifted to learning in public how to use social media, I’m following the same model for the future.

I’m sharing some things I’ve found interesting, and a lot of them will relate to health, diet, fitness, longevity and disease prevention.

I’ll talk about the things I’ve decided to do based on what I’ve learned, and I’ll share the results I’ve gotten.

I’m not saying what you should do. You need to decide that, in consultation with your trusted health care professionals.

And if you read my posts and have questions, or have a different opinion, or can provide links to studies that cast doubt upon or support something I’m saying, I hope you’ll post them in the comments of the relevant posts.

We all have to make our own health decisions.

Hopefully together we can become more informed in them.