Thoughts on Weight: What Really Matters?

I’ve struggled with weight all my life. As a kid my mother used to take me to the “husky” section of the boys clothing department, which was very embarrassing. The extra weight I carried as a kid also kept me from being athletic as I was growing up, partly out of ability and partly out of embarrassment. I started my first diet when I was only 18 when I tipped the scales at 200 pounds. At 6 feet tall I could carry it but felt very uncomfortable.  It was one of the first “low carb” diets and seemed to work.  I took a few pounds off and felt less full.

After college I built houses for a few years as a carpenter. That activity led to losing weight and building muscle. I finally had the body I had wanted all my life, long and lean. I realized that physical activity and burning more calories than I consumed meant I didn’t always have to struggle with my weight, although this was an issue (or challenge) that never left me.

As I settled down in my 20s and moved to work in New York City, I made sure to walk everywhere as much as possible. Even so, not gaining weight continued to be a struggle. Finding enough time for activities or exercise to stay thinner, whether that was walking, biking, cross-country skiing (on a machine), or swimming was difficult given my intense work schedule. This went on for years and years, which eventually added up to several decades.

I didn’t learn my greatest lessons about weight until I was in my late 50s when I did my first detox. Here are the 3 greatest lessons I learned:

1.    My weight is mostly related to diet, not activity.

2.    My body has a “natural weight” when it is healthier (165 lbs. or 75 Kilograms) that it prefers to be, as long as I maintain my health.

3.    My weight is a symptom, rather than a cause, of my metabolic health. It isn’t just about “calories in and calories out.”

Here are a few thoughts about carrying those extra pounds around that might strike a chord with you:

·      Your body is less efficient at maintaining its health when you’re carrying extra weight. Immunity, recovery, sleep, and energy are all affected to at least some degree.

·      Your ability to burn fat is compromised. If you are consuming more calories than you burn, your body is storing fat instead of burning it. Not burning fat causes your body to rely on more immediate and less efficient burning of glycogen (sugars), which affects the strength of mitochondria and your overall energy and endurance.

·      Eating too much food means you’re not getting the benefits of regularly being hungry and empty. Our human metabolism was built and evolved on this principle, and it is still one of the best ways to maintain a healthy weight. Giving your digestive system a regular rest is the key to maintain an adequate appetite as well as a built-in, natural feeling of “having had enough” without being “full.” (This is a highly preferred way to achieve a healthy weight without doing it artificially with the latest weight-loss drugs out there.)

·      Walking out of yearly medical exam with good results does not suffice for the kind of peak feeling of health I have gotten used to.  Staying lean and strong is one of the factors that contribute to that feeling.

· Muscle weighs more than fat. Exchanging one for the other is a good thing.

There is lots more to say about this topic, but those are my basic, hard-won realizations after decades of “fighting” my weight. My advice? Don’t think about weight as a matter of “controlling it.” Instead, find a regime that addresses your overall health and how you feel healthiest, which includes sensible dietary habits of what and when to eat that suit you, as well as different kinds of movement. Your weight, fat percentage, and BMI (Body Mass Index) will all follow suit, and your body will find a weight that it prefers to be in maximum health. And “maximum health” comes with all kinds of benefits, including generally feeling better, sleeping better, and gaining more energy to do the things you love to do!