A Heavy Present, A Light Future
By David Shamah, The
Sometimes the truth isn't very pretty. But it happens
to taste pretty good.
Everyone looks forward to the Seder. Kids can't wait
for it to begin, and moms often can't wait for it to be over. And everyone
agrees that it tastes great.
Except... it often turns out to be a little too much!
Let's take a count, shall we? Standard matzo square, 140 calories (double the
equivalent calorie count in bread); figure you eat two or three. Grape juice or
"the wine so sweet you can cut it with a knife," 170 calories per
glass, times 4. Hard boiled egg, 155. We'll throw in
the celery and romaine lettuce for free. But then there's Haroset,
which is about 80 calories per serving, but a "serving" in this case
is a tablespoon; surely you need at least two!
That's more than 1400 calories, and we're not even at
the gefilte fish yet! Why is this night different than other nights? On all
other nights you try not to overdo it – but on this night you're looking at an
easy 4,000 to 5,000 calories!
You could try and cut down, but we all know that
never works. Not when you're faced with a steaming bowl of rich, thick chicken
soup with matzo balls and a classic roast! And then there's lunch tomorrow, and
during the rest of the week, the inevitable matzo brei,
matzo meal pancakes, matzo-based "cakes,"
and potatoes, potatoes, potatoes.
Got your mouth watering just by reading this, eh? Well,
as the old saying goes, eat now and pay later! It's no wonder that the average
Israeli gains 1 to 3 kilos over Pesach. Sometimes we get a little break – the
holiday coincides with Shabbat, so you integrate your holiday eating with the
traditional Shabbat feast. Not this year, though; over the next week or so,
you're going to be doing a lot of festive feasting.
Oh, oh, here it comes, you're thinking; the
"you've got to do something about Pesach overeating" lecture! Don't
worry, friend; believe me, I'm the last one to lecture anyone about being
overweight; Su problema is me problema,
as they say. Short of fasting or something close to it, there's little you can
do about Pesach overeating. This column is about the day after; maybe together
we can figure out some way to get rid of all those extra kilos that have
attached themselves to us.
Everyone knows, of course, that "diets don't
work" – in the end, you get tired of restricting yourself to turnips or
watermelon or whatever it is they make you eat for the duration. Short term,
you do lose weight on many diets, and faithful observance of any diet's tenets
will probably help you keep the weight off – as long as you stick with the
diet. But if you're on an Atkins-type no carb diet
and happen to work or live near a bakery that has fragrant cakes and breads,
how long do you realistically think you'll be able to resist? Sooner or later,
you get tired of restricting yourself, even if your permitted food list has
lots of items on it. There's a good list of the popular fad diets at http://www.dietbites.com/article0152.html,
which will tell you all about the requirements and effects of some of the more
popular ones, like the
If everyone knows that diets don't work, then
everyone knows that, for long term weight loss, you need an eating/exercise program.
Lots of people swear by programs like Weight Watchers, but again, many eating
programs require a commitment, attending meetings, and complicated calorie or
point calculations. And they usually cost money – sometimes lots of it. It's
like a "fat tax" – you had your fun putting the weight on, now you're
going to have to "pay" to get it off!
Well, I'm no fan of taxes and try to avoid them
wherever possible (legally of course!). The good news is that you don't have to
join expensive programs or bare your soul to strangers in support meetings if
you don’t want to; there are lots of Internet resources with articles, advice,
motivation, and plans – everything you need to lose weight at your own pace,
and for free.
Most doctors will tell you that losing weight is a
pretty simple procedure; simply use up more calories than you take in, and you will lose weight. At there most basic level,
calories are calories; a chocolate calorie is the same as a carrot calorie. Other
factors within food – such as nutrients, vitamins, and protein – are what make
a balanced diet essential, but a calorie is a calorie. The reason that dieters
do better with carrots than chocolate is because 100 calories of carrot goes a
lot further than 100 calories of chocolate (in fact, for the 225 calories in a
150 gram or so candy bar, you could eat 4 carrots!). If you want to know the
calorie count of the foods you eat, there's a nice search engine at
http://www.bored.com/dietwatch/caloriecalculator.htm.
Apex Diet (http://www.apexdiet.com) is a cool little
program I dug up that looks like it can be a useful weapon in the battle of the
bulge. Let's say you want to lose 20 pounds, or 9 kilos. That's a reasonable
goal for many people, and eminently doable. How do you go about it? Well,
according to our theory, you have to figure out a way to get your body to use 9
kilos worth of calories (9,000 calories) that will not be replaced. Most people
consume between 2,000 and 3,500 calories per day, and of course you have to
factor in metabolism, snacks you sneak on the side, etc. So this is going to
take time, patience – and guidance.
Which is exactly what Apex
Diet can provide. You
tell the program your current weight in pounds (to get kilos, just divide by
2.2) and what you would like your weight to be. Then, you tell the program
within how many weeks you want the weight off. Apex Diet will then tell you how
many calories you need to remove from your diet daily in order to reach your
goal – and what diet and exercise steps you need to achieve your goal.
Let's take a typical fellow whom I happen to know
(intimately, in fact) as an example. We'll call him, oh I don't know, how about
DS? Yeah, that's a good pseudonym for this guy. Anyway, DS now weighs 200 pounds,
and he'd like to get it down to 180 pounds by July, about 18 weeks. Inputting
this data into Apex Diet's setup tab, the program tells DS that he will have to
cut 640 calories out of his diet daily between now and July in order to reach
his goal.
DS currently eats about 2,700 calories per day, he's
tried dieting, and it doesn’t work for him. He could theoretically cut out one
of his mid-afternoon snacks if he really tried, worth about 300 calories
according to the aforementioned Bored.com calorie calculator. So that's half
the battle. The other half is going to have to come from exercise. So, on the Apex
Diet setup tab, DS enters the number 50 into the box relating to the percentage
of calories that he wants to get rid of by exercising. On the same setup tab,
the program prompts DS to enter the number of times per week he wants to
exercise (5) and the amount of time he can dedicate to the effort daily (30
minutes).
Now DS clicks on the Exercise tab, where he sees a long
list of exercises Apex Diet tracks – over 20. DS likes to jog and bike ride, so
he clicks on the Running and Bicycling tabs. If DS knows the pace, calories per
minutes of biking and running, etc., he can enter those figures on each
exercise tab – otherwise he can use the standard information supplied. Once the
exercises are selected, it's on to the Workout tab, where he inputs the number
of calories he needs to lose (about 350) and the number of workouts (in this
case, two, because he selected 2 exercises).
Then DS clicks the Generate Workout Now button – and
the program, like magic, tells him how much time to bike ride and how much to
run and at what speed in order to shed the 350 calories he intends to lose per
day via exercise! Instead of endlessly running and biking, and fretting over
how he will never reach his goal, he now knows that he needs to put 15 minutes
a day into biking (at 17 km an hour, a speed he knows he can handle) and run
for 15 minutes at about 7 km per hour (also doable). And if does that between
now and July, he will dump 20 pounds that he has been trying to get rid of for
years! Now how's that for motivation?
Will it work? Well, I intend to keep in close contact
with DS (very close, in fact). All the weight experts that he has spoken with
tell him that it's nearly a foolproof plan. But something tells him he may
reach 180 only in August – obviously, the 18 weeks are going to have to start
the day after Pesach, and by that time there will probably be another two kilos
to lose! But now that he knows he can do it, he can enjoy his matzo goodies,
knowing that he can look forward to a lighter, brighter future. Will it work
for you? Only one way to find out!
Apex Diet works on all Windows systems. The
installation process takes a few minutes, so be patient.
Send questions to ds@newzgeek.com (no relation to the
aforementioned DS, I think!) or check out http://www.newzgeek.com