Can You Maintain Weight Loss?

As I started telling the story of my health journey in January, I shared some before and after pictures, comparing my appearance then to what it had been in 2016.

The difference was stark, as I had dropped from about 260 pounds to 223, with my most significant weight loss coming from a low-carbohydrate, relatively high-fat diet, which also supported an intermittent fasting/time-restricted eating lifestyle.

According to conventional wisdom, it was unlikely I would be able to maintain that 37-pound loss. The so-called experts tell us “all diets eventually fail.” It’s mainly because we try to stick with the diets they recommend. So much of what they’ve told us for five decades is simply wrong.

They say that for those who lose more than 10% of their body weight, only 20% are able to maintain that loss for a year or more. So having lost 14% of my initial 260 pounds as of January, the odds were against me being below 230 today.

Especially given the lockdown uniqueness of 2020.

So how have I done?

I had originally set my goal weight at 210, which was five pounds more than what I weighed in high school, when I was playing competitive basketball. I thought it was pretty ambitious target.

I reached that mark in early May and, as you see below, I kept going.

I averaged 198.6 during September, and my lowest weight was 196.4, at which point Lisa said I needed to stop because I was getting “too skinny.” Since then I’ve dialed back a little, and am averaging 201.1 for the first half of November.

I’m not sharing my story to boast of willpower or determination or self-discipline. I can honestly say I have hardly ever felt deprived through this whole time. I’m rarely hungry, and I feel stronger, healthier and more fit than I did 25 years ago.

Lisa feels the same. She never imagined it was possible, being post-menopausal and with thyroid issues.

So while I haven’t felt hungry or deprived, I have had lots of other negative feelings about the standard dietary “wisdom” we have been fed for a half century, which has left a trail of metabolic misery in its wake.

So if you’ve been discouraged by or struggling with a weight problem, I hope you’ll catch up on the posts in this series, and follow along as I continue to tell the story.

If we can do it, so can you. And you’ll be glad you did.

I kind of want to shout it from the rooftop, but I also don’t want to be obnoxious, so I’ll settle for writing about it here, and sharing on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.

Next time I’ll share some updated progress photos.

Meanwhile, what’s your story?

Reducing your risk of COVID-19 complications

As we’ve all heard, COVID-19 is most dangerous for the elderly, and also for those with multiple underlying health conditions.

This made me glad that Lisa and I had started our health journey in earnest in October 2016, and that we had each lost at least 40 lbs. by the time the coronavirus arrived on our shores.

While we have been taking all of the necessary precautions to avoid COVID-19, we felt good that we also had been building a good foundation of health to reduce our risk of complications in the event we were exposed.

The latest news now is that COVID-19 hospitalizations are surging here in Minnesota, and the Mayo Clinic Q&A podcast from earlier this week (embedded below) featuring Dr. Stephen Kopecky with host Dr. Halena Gazelka digs into how cardiometabolic disease (heart disease plus obesity, diabetes and the like) leads to poorer outcomes for COVID-19 patients.

From my perspective, here’s the money quote:

Cardiometabolic disease is primarily a lifestyle disease….90 percent of cardiometabolic disease is things that we can change, like our stress levels, or our weight, or our exercise, or what we put in our mouth to eat. And maybe these cardiometabolic patients are saying “I’m going to do what I want to do. I’m not going to really pay attention to (what’s best for my health) or I don’t know how to improve my health.” I mean that’s the real problem, people don’t really know. And sometimes it’s very difficult.

Stephen Kopecky, M.D., Mayo Clinic cardiologist

I think for most people the problem isn’t that they don’t care, but rather as Dr. Kopecky says, “I don’t know how to improve my health.”

That’s what it was for me. Four years ago right now I had been following the main dietary recommendations of the USDA, eating healthy whole grains and avoiding fat, and I was doing 30 minutes of cardiovascular exercise most days.

And I was 60 lbs. heavier than I am today.

My cardiometabolic health is much better now. Triglycerides are down 25 points and HDL (the so-called “good” cholesterol) is up by roughly the same amount.

And here’s my blood pressure from tonight, taken using my Qardio home monitoring device:

While I have never been diagnosed with hypertension, I do recall having systolic readings in the 140s. Now that I can measure my blood pressure regularly, I’m consistently in the Normal (and sometimes even Optimal) range.

The reason I’m blogging about my health journey is for all of those who have perhaps given up in frustration, as I almost did.

If you’ve tried to lose weight and haven’t succeeded, or if you’ve lost some through strenuous effort only to have it all come back, I think my story and Lisa’s can help with your “I don’t know how” problem.

So wash your hands and practice other COVID-safe behaviors. And by finding out how to improve your metabolic health, you’ll not only reduce your risks but also improve the way you feel on a daily basis.

See the whole series about my health journey. Follow along on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.

John Bishop’s Journey

My goal in telling the story of my health journey through this blog has been to simply share what I have learned over roughly the last four years, in hopes that others would find it helpful and encouraging.

Together, Lisa and I have lost over 100 lbs. and we’re feeling better than we have in 25 years. As I have shared this series on my social networking accounts, several friends have asked to talk about what we’ve learned, and we have enjoyed the opportunities to discuss with them.

Other friends have already been putting this into practice for themselves, and are seeing great results.

One of those is John Bishop. I got to know John because he is one of our volunteer community mentors in the Mayo Clinic Connect online patient community. Over the last few months I had seen him sharing some of my posts as part of his community moderation work, and encouraging others struggling with weight issues to check them out.

But when I saw this tweet in reply to one of mine about a month ago, I set up a call to talk with him about his experience.

After our phone conversation, I asked John if he would be willing to tell his story in a guest post, and he graciously agreed. Here it is, in his own words:

I’ve struggled with my weight since my mid 30s.  I weighed 215 lbs when I left the Navy and gradually it crept up to 330 lbs in my mid 50s which was when I started being concerned that I had to do something.  I was able to get my weight down to 300 on my own and then found Weight Watchers through a friend and started their program.  Through Weight Watchers I was able to get down to 250 lbs and decided I could do it on my own since I felt I was the one that needed to make changes.

I did fine on my own for about a month, from that point until this year I was constantly trying one diet plan after another and going between 245 and 260+ lbs every few months.  As much as I tried to eat healthy and do some moderate exercise, I just could not seem to stay on track.  It wasn’t until I read @LeeAase’s health journey article on alternate fasting that I got interested in seeing if I could get my weight down to 215 lbs to help with my overall health and my current health conditions (small fiber PN and PMR).

My wife Lavon was already doing a 16/8 daily fasting so it made it easier for me to try alternate fasting.  I started with a 24 hour fast on March 24, 2020.  I planned to do a 24 hour fast every other day. When I read some encouraging results on Lee’s health journey on using the Zero app and a 20 hour fast with 4 hour eating window, I tried it and found it easy to do after a few days.  I’m now doing the 20 hour fast for 3 to 4 days at a time and while sprinkling in 18/6 or 16/8 days when needed to accommodate other plans.

One thing that the fasting and eating window has done to help me is to make it easier to stop my bad nighttime snacking habits which in retrospect are probably why my weight has always been difficult to control even when I thought I was choosing healthy snacks.

When I started my journey back in January, I purchased an inexpensive Bluetooth scale that shows weight, body fat, muscle mass, water weight and BMI.  My first weigh in Jan 18th was 244.7 and my most recent weigh in Aug 2nd was 222.4. I still go up and down during the week but I’m happy that I’m able to keep a downward trend.  When I reach my goal of 215 lbs my plan is to make a new goal of 200 which is one of those “in your dreams” goals but this time I really think it is a realistic goal and one that would be a major health improvement for me.

As you can see in the graph at right from his Bluetooth scale, John’s weight has been on a steady downward trajectory since January.

He’s down 22 lbs. in just over six months.

Most importantly, he’s no longer finding weight loss difficult, and he’s daring to dream of new goals he would not have previously thought possible.

And while the COVID-19 pandemic has caused many to gain 20 lbs. or more, John is going in the opposite direction.

John at 280 lbs. (left) and now at 222 lbs. (right).

John mentioned that the Zero fasting app has helped him and that he learned about it from me on Twitter, but I just realized I haven’t featured it yet in this series.

It’s a great fasting tool, and I’ll tell more about it in my next post.

See previous posts on My Health Journey, and to get future posts follow on Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn.

Fasting for Longevity

One of the well-established findings in longevity research is that caloric restriction (CR) leads to increased longevity in every animal model, and there is significant evidence CR also improves human longevity.

In other words, in rough terms, consuming 30% fewer calories leads to something like a 30% increase in lifespan.

An interesting finding, but few of us would sign up for that kind of regimen, going a lifetime with reduced calories.

The good news, however, is that you don’t have to do CR for your whole life in order to get most of the benefits: periodic fasting does almost as well as chronic CR.

USC Professor Valter Longo, Ph.D. has gone one step further, developing what he calls a Fasting-Mimicking Diet (FMD) that he says gets the benefit of fasting while still having some food each day. He describes the connection between fasting and longevity in this TEDxTalk from 2016:

Dr. Longo is the author of The Longevity Diet, which describes a program of a basic daily diet along with an occasional 5-day FMD. I’ve listened to him be interviewed on various podcasts and have watched several videos, and I think he does a great job of explaining the science of how fasting reboots the immune system.

If the thought of fasting seems overwhelming to you, maybe you should consider FMD. At the very least, I hope you’ll watch the video above for a primer on why fasting or FMD can improve both lifespan and healthspan.

I personally haven’t tried FMD because I have found that fasting isn’t that difficult for me, and so I don’t feel a need to mimic fasting when I can do the real thing.

In future posts I’ll describe some fasting and time-restricted eating strategies that have worked well for me.

See the whole series about my health journey. Follow along on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.

We’re an n of 2

The scientific method involves proposing a hypothesis — e.g. “Drug A improves symptoms of Disease B” — and then designing an experiment, or study, to test it.

The “gold standard” studies are double blinded and placebo-controlled. Half of the subjects get the drug, and half get a placebo (or “sugar pill”) that has no expected effect. Neither the investigators nor the subjects know who is getting the real treatment. Then when the data are analyzed, it can be clear that any observed effect is the result of the drug, not wishful thinking.

And to reduce the likelihood that any observed difference is due to chance, scientists design their studies with a sufficiently large n, or number of subjects.

In an earlier post in this series, I conceded that I’m an n of 1. I’m an anecdote. Scientists tend to look down on anecdotal claims. Just because a low-carb diet and time-restricted feeding program has led to me losing 60 pounds doesn’t mean it will get the same results for you.

There could be something peculiar about me that led to this result. Perhaps it’s just a random coincidence. Or maybe just the fact that I had decided to pay attention and try to lose weight was the main factor, and the particulars of what I changed didn’t matter so much.

But together Lisa and I are an n of 2, and we’ve lost a total of 100 pounds on a low-carb diet with intermittent fasting or time-restricted feeding. And the weight loss for her didn’t really kick in until she went low-carb with intermittent fasting.

We’re also not alone. The n of those getting good results from a similar approach is much, much bigger.

And the reality is you can’t do a blinded study of a lifestyle intervention. If you’re switching from pizza and pasta to steak and eggs, you’re going to know it. And if you are going 12 hours a day or more without eating, you’ll know that too. There’s no placebo effect here.

I’m not sharing our stories to boast about our accomplishments. We did have to change what and when we ate, but it truly hasn’t felt like much of a sacrifice.

I’m sharing them because I’m frankly kind of mad that following official government policy (avoid fats, eat lots of “healthy whole grains”) made us fat.

The “eat less, move more” or “calories in, calories out” dogma is trite and simplistic, and doesn’t correspond with the reality of why we get fat.

In the 1950s and 60s nobody worked out. It was only in the early 70s that running and aerobics became “a thing.”

Obesity hasn’t tripled in the last few decades because people don’t move enough. If anything, people in recent decades have exercised much more than our parents and grandparents did.

Exercise is good and important, but its lack has not caused the obesity epidemic.

I’m sharing our stories because I’m pretty confident that among our social connections, and those we can reach through them, there are scores, or hundreds, or even thousands of people who feel as trapped and defeated as we did four years ago.

There is a better way, and there is hope for a reversal of metabolic syndrome. I want to point you to those from whom Lisa and I have learned this.

I’ve previously highlighted pioneers like Nina Teicholz, Tim Ferris, Dr. Jason Fung, Dr. William Davis and Dr. Robert Lustig who have revolutionized our thinking.

As I continue this series I plan to feature several others who also have given us important and life-changing information. Some of those include

I look forward to sharing what we’ve learned from these people and others, and the benefits we’ve seen from applying those lessons. I linked mostly to their Twitter accounts in the list above, in case you want to start following them before I get to writing about them.

Some of them are physicians, while others are Ph.D. researchers, and still others are scientific writers actively poring through the relevant research. They have applied the skepticism of the scientific method to the disastrous dietary dogma that has had such a negative record for the last five decades.

So while Lisa and I together are only an n of 2 and our experience is not definitive, we have seen good results in the last four years through applying what we’ve learned from these people and others.

What other scientific researchers, physicians or writers have you found helpful in understanding diet, lifestyle, weight loss and health? I’d appreciate your recommendations as I continue my journey of exploration.

See the whole series about my health journey. Follow along on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.