You Can Stop “Normal” Aging | PARADE Magazine is an interesting article on what defines aging versus “decaying”. Chances are if you look around on any given day at people at the mall or the gym or wherever, there is a good chance many of them are “decaying”. Simply put, they are overweight, they don’t eat right, their on anti-depressants and they don’t know how to stop the downward cycle. If you look in the mirror, do you fit this profile? I know I did. I had always struggled with my weight despite being a three sport athlete in high school and playing DIII hockey. My freshman year, I put on the proverbial freshman “15″ from drinking beer, except, due to inflation it was the freshman “21″. The hockey coach put me on the fat program and I spent the next 4 weeks losing it, lest I not be able to play. Even so, all through college and for most of my twenties, I weighed 205 lbs, always telling myself most of it was muscle, but in truth knowing a good 15 of it was not. Even as a senior in college when I worked my butt off and was in, at the time, the best shape of my life, or so I thought, I still had a good chunk of fat around my midsection. Granted, more of it was muscle at that point due the large quantities of squats and leg presses I was doing, yet it still was their in the midsection, which is the worst place to have it.

Even after marriage to a nutritionist, I hovered around 205. I did have one momentary breakthrough in ‘97 when I dropped to 195 thanks to the fact that I was training for the NYC Marathon (3:46 time, btw) and playing pickup hockey for 2 hours twice a week. Never mind that I was running 40+ miles a week, I still didn’t drop much weight.

Now, my wife has, from day 1 told me why I couldn’t lose the extra 15 lbs, but it never really sank in. At least not until I had my son, and I decided that I wanted to be a vibrant dad who is around for a long time and who can be an example. With this in mind, we started making changes. Out with the processed junk food, the extra serving of dinner, in with organic, whole, real food. I simply cut out the chips and other crappy food and substituted in healthy snacks like almonds and fruit and vegetables. We stopped eating things with trans fats and high fructose corn syrup and monosodium glutamate (watch this site for future info on these ingredients.) No lying, I was down to 190 within 6 weeks AND I didn’t change my exercise routine one bit. In fact, I wasn’t even running all that much at the time. Double in fact, I did it while helping take care of a 6 mos. old who kept us up at night. It does not take an extraordinary amount of will power. What it takes is that you read labels and find food that tastes good w/o all the junk in it. And let me tell you it exists. You come over to my house for any given dinner and you will see we eat “normal” food, meat and potatoes, fresh fish, etc. None of that tofu crap or lean cuisine or weight watchers that keeps you on the perpetual cycle of dieting. Real, whole food cooked in an intelligent way and seasoned with fresh herbs and spices that makes you wonder how you ever liked McDonalds before. You want more info, drop me a comment, and I will share w/ you a sample week of eating at the Ingersoll house and you will be amazed at how “normal” it sounds. It will take you back to your childhood when you actually sat down for dinner and good food with family was important. And don’t tell me you are too busy, b/c that is a load of hogwash. My wife and I both work full time, we have a 5 year old in sports and school and we both have a ton of hobbies. It can be done and you don’t have to stress about it. Besides, just go to Whole Foods once a week and pick up dinner. You can rest assured they don’t put any of the fake ingredients in their meals.

Bottom line: people always say weight control is easy for me b/c I exercise so much. Truth is, I never lost the weight until I was 28 and I decided to eat better. Proof is, I recently was not able to exercise for several weeks due to triple hernia surgery. I’m happy to say, I didn’t gain a single pound.  And just so you know, I still have desserts and I still eat some chips, I just eat the “better” kind.  It helps satisfy the cravings from time to time without hurting the waistline.   I can honestly say I am in better shape at 33 than I have ever been in my life.  That fat around the midsection is nearly gone (having no fat, by the way, is not a good thing either, but that is a post for another day!)

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 22nd, 2007 at 7:52 am and is filed under Nutrition, Organic, Sports, Training, health, public health, weight loss. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.