The Mandelbear's Musings

A friend of mine recently slimmed down on Weight Watchers. She joined two months ago, and in just a couple of weeks, she'd shed 10 pounds. She'd been trying for a year to lose weight, but nothing worked -- until now.

Why did Weight Watchers work so well? For a really fascinating reason: because it isn't a normal diet. It's something more. Something fun.

It's an RPG.

[...]

Think about it. As with an RPG, you roll a virtual character, manage your inventory and resources, and try to achieve a goal. Weight Watchers' points function precisely like hit points; each bite of food does damage until you've used up your daily amount, so you sleep and start all over again. Play well and you level up -- by losing weight! And the more you play it, the more you discover interesting combinations of the rules that aren't apparent at first. Hey, if I eat a fruit-granola breakfast and an egg-and-romaine lunch, I'll have enough points to survive a greasy hamburger dinner for a treat!

Even the Weight Watchers web tool is amazingly gamelike. It has the poke-around-and-see-what-happens elegance you see in really good RPG game screens. Accidentally snack on a candy bar and ruin your meal plan for the day? No worries: Just go into the database and see what spells -- whoops, I mean foods -- you can still use with your remaining points.

bercilakslady

healthy_fen

(Cross-posted to healthy_fen.)

Based largely on the comments on this post by hvideo and others, it looks as though I'll be trying to reduce carbohydrates in my diet. Makes sense -- the one time I actually lost weight (back in college) I did it by cutting back on carbs.

I'm not going to be fanatical about it, but I'm going to cut back on dried fruit, bread, and potatoes, and I'm not going to worry about the fact that I feel better after a breakfast of eggs and bacon (or Ma Po tofu) than I do after milk and cereal. And I'll quit stocking up on dried fruit for at-the-desk lunches and go back to tofu, nuts, and pepperoni (a package of two sticks lasts two days).

Links for low carb: about.com, Wikipedia.

hvideo also suggests looking into alpha-lipoic acid, an OTC antioxidant diet supplement that "significantly and rapidly reduces the frequency and severity of symptoms of the most common kind of diabetic neuropathy" according to this article on MayoClinic.org. There's another article here.

As long as I'm clearing out my tabs, here's exercise.about.com, and the Wikipedia articles on exercise and walking (which aren't as useful as they might be). The article on aerobic exercise is better.

(Cross-posted to healthy_fen)

According to the neurologist I saw at Kaiser this morning, the kind of peripheral neuropathy I'm experiencing is normally associated with diabetes, but it's also not all that unusual with metabolic syndrome, which is basically the condition of being an old fat guy. The relevant symptoms include fasting hyperglycemia (borderline), high blood pressure (being treated), central obesity (check), decreased HDL cholesterol (check), elevated triglycerides (check, in spades).

So I'm about to start what amounts to an approximation of a diabetic diet, along with increasing my exercise. Meaning I can look forward to being sore, tired, and hungry for the rest of my life. Grumble.

My legs and arms haven't quite recovered from my exercise over the weekend, so I dropped back to my old walking pace with no arm motion. I did take in the extra hill on the way out; total distance about 3 miles.

Stats: 55 minutes, average heart rate: 111; max: 135. So not too bad, considering.