Once upon a time......
I remember driving on Highway 8 and feeling my belly jiggle and thinking to myself disparagingly "Oh, why can't I just go on a diet and get rid of this fat?" Little did I know then that it didn't take a diet to normalize my fat, it was only a matter of eating food in a balanced way.
Being a good Californian I was heeding all the best nutritional advice: eating mostly vegetarian, brown rice, lots of pasta and I enjoyed making home made bread to avoid the evils of overly processed foods and pesticides. I avoided meats because of the excess fat but ate a little too much cheese but after all, it is a good protein source.
To complicate matters I am a Chiropractor. Now, Chiropractors are supposed to be these health icons; role models for their patients. I had studied Goodhart and Stills, the definitive bible of nutrition since 1920. Not much had changed in the field of nutrition over the years and I knew the correct ratios of protein to carbohydrates to fats as recommend by the American Heart Association. I knew also that my fat levels were way higher than recommended but hey, the rest of my diet was so pure I figured I made up for it.
Meanwhile my waistline continued to expand. It had been doing so for years. I remember the year that it started. I was 36 in 1984, my last year at Chiropractic College. It was the most stressful year yet. We were gearing up for graduation, clinic entrance exams and the State Board exams after that. I was studying hard, sitting at my desk a lot, taking study breaks that involved a trip to the refrigerator each time. At the end of the year my pants were so tight I bought new, bigger ones. I couldn't wait for the semester break because I know what my pattern had been all my life; gain weight during the semester and lose it all at break because I was more active. This time turned out differently . . the fat didn't go away.
It was a gradual climb up the bathroom scale since then until I found myself jiggling along highway 8 heading to the beach where I would prefer to keep my tee-shirt on, thanks.
Then last November I visited my mother. She handed me a book to read called Entering the Zone. She couldn't make heads nor tails of the book so she asked "Here, read this and let me know if it makes any sense." I read the title and laughed, "The Zone. What guy is trying to get rich with this stuff?". But secretly I know I needed to change the way I ate.
After reading the first chapter I knew that this made sense. I had gone on what I thought were "high protein" diets before and trimmed down. I didn't know why but they did. This book, however, gave me a tool to use. 9-7-3. And it gave me the knowledge of why it worked.
Actually I felt a little like a pioneer. Very few people knew about this tool and I found that the fat began to leave my body right away. I was thrilled but I was alone. No one I spoke to knew about the Zone. I felt weird talking about it because of this. I logged on the Internet in alt.support.diet and left a few messages about the Zone. No one had anything to say about it for several weeks. Then I got a message from someone who was a member of the Zone Listserver who told me how to join the Zone discussion group.
I read and participated for many weeks gaining more information on diets and low-carb diets. It was a very exciting time for me because I had found something that I was fascinated with and at the same time I found a group of dedicated Zoners with a wealth of information to share. In the meantime I had put up a personal web page for my friends and family and was designing a page for Chiropractic since there was very little about Chiropractic on the web at that time. The Zone diet occupied my attention however, so I posted a page or two about the diet. A few months went by and my ISP sent me a bill for my internet access that had a few extra charges on it. Upon investigating I was stunned to find that the extra charges represented 10K "hits" on my Zone web page! It has averaged about 15K per month since then! Quite amazing how the interest has grown and has maintained.
I kept track of my weight over the course of the next few months and watched in amazement as the fat left my body in a linear rate. Here are my stats: Male, 48, 6"2". Here are my weights and dates:
11/01/95 215lbs
02/20/96 195
03/01/96 191.5
04/12/96 185
05/16/96 184
06/21/96 181
08/01/96 175 (goal)
01/26/97 177
My experience was that as I approached my goal of 175 my fat loss began to flatten out. It was a struggle to get it down to that level and took a few months for the last 2 or 3 lbs. Perhaps that was psychological as well as physiological as I know that I was eating less rigidly and beginning to practice eating at maintenance levels.
My weight has fluctuated some since reaching goal. Over the holidays I saw 181 lbs but this dropped off a few weeks after I flushed the last Christmas cookie down the drain. I went back to 175 and hover around this goal. My plan is to eat as close to zonefully as I can and weight in once per week. If I ever see 180, I will tighten up on zone quantities and get back into control. This seems to work good for me.
Good luck in your endeavor for maximizing your personal health.
Zonefully yours,
David
