My quest for a healthier body: ten lessons learned

The question of body weight, and more generally of getting a healthier body, becomes especially important when you enter your older years: you obviously want to keep yourself in a good physical condition for as long as possible. I opened my eyes on my ongoing weight problem in late 2011, and since then embarked into improving my living style towards a sustainable and healthy one. But it hadn’t always been like this… Let me relate here what my quest for a healthier body has been, what I did, and the lessons I took home.

The necessary Disclaimer

I am a Doctor, yes, but of the Ph.D. kind, and not an MD of any sort. The below solely constitutes my personal opinion. It is not a medical advice of any sort. If you need medical advice, consult a professional practitioner of medicine.

He will probably advise you just the opposite of what I’m about to say.

So thank you, Dear Reader, for keeping an open mind and give a read at the below!

Chronicles of the Fat

Body Weight Timeline

1. In 1996 my first sensible weight increase occurred within the 8 months of writing and finalizing my Ph. D. thesis. By June 1996, the time I defended my thesis, I was feeling bloated and tired.
2. In 1997 I had moved to Japan for a two year post-doctoral research contract. It was a massive change in dietary habits. A few months after arriving in Japan, it became apparent in the mirror that I had literally melted. When I did the corporate health check in Feb 1997, I was at 72 kg. That didn’t last long though, because soon I adapted to Japan, started to love Japanese food, and gained back the weight.
3. In late 1998, I had returned to France, was re-adapting to life there, and returned to my former dietary habits. I jumped to nearly 80 kg in no time.
4. In summer 2001, I had finally settled into a good position in France after juggling between jobs for the last couple of years. I had gotten married in the meantime, and my diet was now in the caring hands of my then wife, who would cook many rich meals…
5. In late 2004, I started an MBA program, in addition to my full time job and family life. It was by far the most busy and stressful time of my life. At the term of the MBA program in July 2006, I had reached the 90 kg mark.
6. In 2008 I moved to the Gulf, and started working out (cardio) 2 times a week, plus salsa class. By late 2009 I reached 86 kg briefly… but quickly bounced back to 90 kg (march 2010) after reducing the exercise.
7. By November 2011 I just had completed another busy and stressful year, in which I changed jobs and countries again. That’s about when I reached my highest ever: 92 kg. And that is when I got a moment of realization! I was on the path to obesity. And I didn’t want to go there!
8. And then, in February 2012, after just 3 months of Dukan diet, I was now weighting 78 kg! It’s worth noticing also that I didn’t do any form of physical exercise during these three months – it was pure diet.

The featured post picture above gives you a sense of the body changes I went through between 2007 and 2018.

Towards a healthier body:  Ten lessons learned

1. You gain weight on the particularly stressful periods of your life

I gained 20 kilograms continuously between 1997 and 2011, but I can identify some rounds of weight gains:

• between 1998 and 2001 when I was re-adapting to the living style in France while also juggling between jobs
• between 2004 and 2006, when I was studying for the MBA degree while simultaneously working 40 hours a week, constantly commuting between Paris and London, and trying to have a family life
• in the one year to Nov 2011 when I had a particularly stressful moment at work which prompted me to find a new job (the one I still hold today) and change countries

These were all periods of high stress.

You therefore need to watch out for these periods of stress in your life when you are most vulnerable to weight gains.

2. The slow weight gain is insidious

You get used to your own image. Each year, you’re only one kilogram bigger than the year before – you don’t really see yourself getting bigger. And same for the people around you – they get used to seeing you big. The environment around you, as well as yourself, becomes very complacent with you and your weight gain.

So your bigger self slowly becomes the new normal!

And there will be nobody to tell you about your state.

3. You can do hours and hours of gym with no results…

“You have to do some physical exercise!”

Yes! And so I did, the whole time, but it didn’t help one tiny bit:

• In the 1990’s I was doing dance classes. We are talking rock’n’roll dance, advanced classes. Try dancing over “jailhouse rock” tempo for twenty minutes if you want to get a feel. I even did acrobatic rock’n’roll for a short period of time.
• Between 2001 to 2005, I was going every week to the swimming pool.
• From 2005 to 2008, I was going regularly to a gym.
• From 2008 to 2010, I was going to the gym two times a week, plus taking salsa classes, reaching the advanced classes.

What were the results? In 2009, I briefly reached 86 kg, down from 90, but bounced back to 90 kg four months later. There can only be one conclusion:

These cardio exercises alone did NOT help.

There was a temporary 4 kg drop at the end of an intense year of exercise, which was canceled in a matter of 4 months. But overall they didn’t prevent me to go from 72 kg in Feb 1997, to 92 kg in Nov 2011.

4. … but it’s all about what you eat and how much

The game changer, however, was when I did a serious diet, forcing myself to drop my former bad dietary habits, and adopt better one. When I did that, I lost 14 kilograms in three months, followed by 3 more kilos the following months. And all this WITHOUT doing ANY physical exercise. The diet did it, not the exercise. Much better than decades of useless cardio!

There is something really wrong in the common wisdom “do more exercise to lose weight”. It simply doesn’t match my own experience. I found that changing my dietary habits for better ones did infinitely more for me than decades of cardio.

If you’re overweight, don’t waste your time on the treadmills, and focus on your nutrition instead.

It’s not about exercising. It’s about what you eat and how much.

5. The good, the bad and the ugly

Fortunately for me I was never too addicted to sugar and sweets. However, I ate LOTS of bread, way too much cheese, and too much rice and grains. Along with the sweets, these are the exact culprits that my diet took out – and replaced with more meat and more fish.

Overall, I was eating a hyper caloric diet with too much refined carbohydrates. If you love sweets and cookies and cakes, you can add them to the list, too. You can also add here the industrial juices, sodas, and sauces.

Cheese is not bad per se – but it is a calorie-dense food, and that was adding excess energy in my daily food intake.

Have less:

• Sugar and sweets
• Bread, bakery, cakes, cookies, muffins
• Pasta
• Rice and other grains
• Cereals
• Vegetable oils (with the exception of olive oil), margarine, etc…
• “Industrial” drinks (fruit juices, sodas, etc…) all loaded with the wrong sort of sugar
• “Industrial” sauces (mayonnaise, mustards, etc…) all loaded with the wrong sort of vegetable oil
• Beer (beer is in fact like liquid bread)
• Hamburgers and other fast food are essentially bread and sauces and drinks, and obviously belong here

The above are guaranteed to make you big.

Have more:

• Red meat. Yes, it’s not politically correct, but this is our natural, preferred source of proteins and fats
• Fish
• Eggs – another one not politically correct
• Avocados (excellent source of vegetable fat)
• Cabbage, brussel sprouts, cauliflower, broccoli (they are all anti-estrogen)
• Red wine – within reason

White meat such as chicken breast would be good too, problem being that nowadays they are overloaded with inflammatory Omega 6 fatty acids, which is already overly present in our diets. So best is not to abuse it.

6. Eating fats is OK

It is in fact essential to the production of testosterone and therefore healthy. The caveat is that fats are energy dense, so you still need to make sure you’re not having excess calories intake in total. As long as you do not exceed your calories requirements, eating fats will not make you fat per se. Eating sweets and refined grains will.

And this is another area where my experience disagrees with the conventional wisdom. As per the common rationale, you should eat less red meat, more chicken, avoid eggs, and eat low fat. Conventional wisdom says nothing about consumption of refined carbohydrates.

It is very hard to go against the deeply ingrained popular beliefs. If you are still convinced the conventional advice is the right one, you should consider the fact that it has been around since the 1970s. And as a result, yes, the western world has been indeed eating less red meat and eggs, more low fat, and more chicken, exactly as advised. At the same time, consumption of refined carbs and industrial drinks has increased. Yet the obesity rate has increased to an all time high, as well as cardio vascular diseases.

This is just some evidence you can’t ignore.

Drop the carbs and have more red meat and eggs.

There is a growing number of new scientific work pointing in this direction. For a review, see for instance this Scientific American article.

7. You have to reduce the social stuff

When you are in a social environment you simply have no control on your dietary intake.

You can consider that a good dinner in a good restaurant will be 1000 calories, with too much carbohydrates and fats, just on the food alone. Add to that the alcohol, the juices, the smoothies, the nuts. Just half a bottle of wine (2 to 3 glasses) bears 300 calories. In a fast food, a 300g hamburger plus fries will be around 1000 calories – let alone the drink.

Whichever way you put it, consider that on a night out you will consume close to 70% of your daily energy requirement just in the evening alone, at the very least. Unless you starved yourself the whole day before going out, you will end up in a large calorie excess for the day.

It is fine if you do it once a week. But it is NOT fine if you are used to go out three times a week on a regular basis. Your body WILL take a toll.

So if you are health conscious, you should consider reducing this party lifestyle.

“But it’s OK, I will lose it on the treadmills”

No you won’t. One hour of treadmill will burn about 500 calories. You will need 6 hours of treadmill in the week, to compensate for 3 nights out. Can you do that? And the benefit of 6 hrs cardio is lost if you reward yourself with extra food after the workout…

Read again point 3. above. As per my experience, treadmills don’t help. Discipline and diet does.

8. You can’t just “be on a diet” then forget about it. It’s about permanent changes

So in a matter of no time, I was back nearly at my 25 years old body weight, around 75 kg. Great. Then I simply stopped thinking about dieting… And soon resumed my former bad dietary habits!

What was the result? I got 10 kilograms back in one year.

I realized that: the moment I stopped worrying about diet, the bad habits kicked in and I was returning back right there to my former self.

It is the bad dietary habits that kill you. It is not enough to lose weight. You need to make permanent changes in the way you eat!

Don’t just “be on a diet”. Permanently change your dietary habits instead.

Fortunately for me, I knew the trick by now, and within 6 months I was back to my new “thin” self.

9. You have to take your nutrition in your own hands

In our times, the “bad dietary habits” are pervasive all around us. No surprise that the western world is on an obesity pandemic.

You simply cannot trust other people with your nutrition:

• Your wife, as a woman, have these “nurturing” feminine instincts, and will be busy cooking rich meals for you. “I like you, I feed you!”
• The sandwiches and other takeaway food will be overloaded with bread and fatty sauces
• That delicious 300g hamburger will be 750 calories, add to that the fries and the drink
• The nice restaurants will serve you rich, highly caloric meals full of carbohydrates and sauces
• You can’t trust the processed “ready to eat” food of the supermarket
• Etc…

There is only one way of being sure of what you eat. It is by cooking it yourself out of fresh ingredients.

I started doing as much during my initial diet in 2011 – it was quite strict in what sort of food I was allowed to eat. And I was determined to follow it to the letter. So I started bringing my own cooked food at work, and I kept the habit since then.

10. “Slim fat” is not the solution either

So here I was in April 2017, weighting 75 kg, a Body Mass Index of 24.5 within the so called “normal” range. And indeed I looked thin… But then I learned about the “navy method” and other methods to estimate your body fat. It turns out that I must have been 58 kg of lean mass plus 17 kg of body fat. That’s actually 22.7% body fat! And in the standard body fat percentage charts, it is not very far below “obesity”.

So yes I looked thin, but it was the wrong kind of thin. The Fat was back with a revenge!

That’s when I started doing weightlifting. Initially dumbbells and machines, once, twice a week. Then more frequently. Then switched to heavy barbell exercises 5 hours a week.

Today I weight 79 kg, out of which I’m probably 65 kg of lean body mass. Although I’m heavier, I actually carry 3kg less fat than last year, and 7 kg more muscle. That is below 18% body fat percentage. Much better, although not quite there yet.

What matters ultimately is your body composition in terms of percentage body fat. Losing weight is not enough, to you have to keep a healthy amount of muscular mass. Weightlifting, rather than treadmills, is the way to go.

If you think you are slim, then try estimating your body fat percentage. I recommend the WeighTrainer calculator here. Consider getting below 18% body fat, and if possible even below 15%.

Parting thoughts

To conclude, dear reader, it is never too late to do meaningful changes to your dietary habits and living style.

If you are overweight, it is possible to drop a massive amount of excess weight with minimal pain, within a few months.

But it is much better not becoming overweight, in the first place: the body keeps a memory of its former “glory”, and wants to return there! So the earliest you start critically evaluating your dietary habits, and overall living style, the better.

And the right moment to do that is now!

Yours,

What to read next?

• How I lost 14kg in three months. My post on the great Dukan diet!
• Why the Dukan diet works so well. The second part of the post.

Please follow and like us: