Carole Carson

Are You Telling Yourself a Big Fat Lie?

A considerable amount of research has been conducted to determine when a person is lying. Cues generally fall into three categories:

• Verbal Language: The pace or timing of the words seems slightly off. The words don’t match the expression, or the timing will be delayed. For example, the person may say, “I like you a lot” and then smile afterward instead of simultaneously with the expression. Another cue is a mismatch between the words and the physical expression.

• Body Language: Hand and leg movements will be limited and will involve movement back toward the body, as if to make the liar smaller and less visible. Eye contact may be avoided. The liar’s hands may touch his or her face, throat or mouth but won’t touch the chest or heart.

• Style of Interaction: Liars tend to be defensive—they may turn away, turn their eyes away or push an object, such as a book or pen, between the interviewer and them. Because liars are uncomfortable with silence, they may fill in the space with unnecessary details. Liars may also use humor or sarcasm to avoid an outright lie.

This research is directed at others lying to us. However, equally important (or maybe even more so) is learning how to detect the lies that are the most damaging to our health and fitness—the ones we tell ourselves. Self-deception is dangerous because it enables us to ignore symptoms that can develop into chronic or nonreversible life-threatening medical conditions.

If we are to make changes that will improve our chances for a healthier life, we must be able to detect and confront self-lies. Here are three diagnostic cues to help you decide if you are lying to yourself:

• Verbal Language: Your words don’t match your actions. That is, each morning you say, “I really want to lose weight,” yet by suppertime, you give yourself a second helping of meat and potatoes, and later you raid the freezer for a bowl of ice cream. You tell yourself that you are going to exercise an hour each day, yet you postpone beginning.

• Body Language: Despite your assurances to yourself that you really are making changes, the numbers on the bathroom scale continue to climb. Other measures, such as blood pressure, cholesterol readings and blood sugar levels, are not improving. You underestimate the impact of poor lifestyle choices, whether they involve excessive drinking, smoking, overeating or lack of regular exercise.

• Style of Interaction: You dread the visit to your doctor, especially the moment when the nurse asks you to step on the scale. You are defensive with family members when they express worries about your health. You provide all sorts of plausible explanations for not losing weight or becoming more fit. You may joke about your weight as a preemptive effort to keep others from doing so.

I became an expert on the topic of self-deception because for years I was living in a body of lies. I wasn’t obese; I was simply short for my weight. But my reality changed in an instant. When I weighed myself one fateful morning, the numbers climbed to 183, and the scale broke. Standing naked on the broken scale in the harsh morning light, I was forced to admit the truth. I was obese and woefully out of shape. By telling the truth, I freed myself to make changes.

I was lucky. I made the changes before I suffered any permanent damage to my health.

What about you? If you want to have a relationship with yourself based on respect and trust, you need to be willing to have a candid and frank discussion with yourself about the state of your health and fitness—no more big fat lies. You need to swear to tell yourself the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. In addition, you have to commit to a lifetime of Stephen Colbert’s enlightened state of truthiness. You’ll find the effort fun, rewarding, exhilarating and enlightening. Trust me. Would I lie to you?

"The cruelest lies are often told in silence."           Robert Louis Stevenson

One-Step Holiday Eating Plan: Let Your Fork Do the Heavy Lifting

If you’re committed to hosting or attending parties during the holidays, you will face a never-ending array of tempting food choices. If you’re not careful, the pounds you add are likely to become lifelong companions.

 

Some of us are very strict about our diets. We bring our own food in a plastic container and eat it while others enjoy the holiday fare. Others of us are perhaps a little too self-indulgent, denying ourselves nothing.

 

Here’s one simple step you can take at parties that will help you minimize your caloric intake:

 

Eat nothing except what you can put on a fork.

 

In other words, eat foods only where you can sit down and use utensils, including your fork.

 

The calories in those bite-size nibbles and finger foods you eat unconsciously while standing and talking with friends and acquaintances quickly add up. You can easily consume 600–800 calories solely from appetizers. The same holds true when you are preparing food for your own party. The little nibbles you take to “test” your appetizers count, as far as your body is concerned.

 

By limiting yourself to food eaten with a fork, you can minimize the accumulation of unwanted pounds during the holidays. Wouldn’t that be a wonderful weigh to start the New Year?

"Thanksgiving dinners take eighteen hours to prepare. They are consumed in twelve minutes. Half-times take twelve minutes. This is not coincidence."                             Erma Bombeck

Counting Calories Is Sooo ’80s. Right?

Who introduced the first calorie-counting diet in the United States and when?

1. Weight Watchers, over 40 years ago

2. The United States government, with the first food guide, published in 1916

3. Edward J. Coates, in his book Measured Success! A Diet and Exercise Strategy Based on Counting Calories (2006)

4. Dr. Lulu Hunt Peters, in her book Diet and Health, with Key to the Calories (1918)

The answer is number 4. Dr. Lulu Hunt Peters recommended consuming no more than 1,200 calories a day in 100-calorie portions to lose weight. Her popular book sold between 800,000 and 2 million copies. After writing the book, Dr. Peters went to Bosnia to work for the Red Cross and was surprised upon her return to learn that she had written a bestseller.

Today, calorie consciousness is being raised through labeling on food products. In addition, over three dozen city, county and state laws have been passed that mandate the posting of calories on menus. Instead of complicated formulas of good and bad foods, the new approach is simple: to lose weight, make sure the total calories consumed are fewer than the total calories expended.

Looking for Ways to Save Money? Drink Tap Water

Test results of leading brands of bottled water reported in numerous newspaper articles on October 15, 2008, support the claim that bottled water is no purer than tap water.

Tests on 10 leading brands detected the presence of 38 contaminants ranging from bacteria, caffeine, fertilizer and solvents to the radioactive element strontium.

Overall, the level of contaminants wasn’t high enough to pose any threat to safety. All the brands met the federal requirements for safe drinking water, although a few brands contained levels of chlorine by-products nearly three times above California’s limit.

This information begs the question, why pay a premium (1,900 times more) for bottled water if it is essentially the same as tap water? Thomas Burke, one of the developers of the Safe Drinking Water Act and associate dean of the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health in Baltimore, says that there is little difference between the two kinds of water except the price.

Replacing bottled water with tap water might save a family of four as much as $20 per week. This choice seems to be an easy way to help make ends meet. What do you think?

"Water is the most neglected nutrient in your diet but one of the most vital."                                         Kelly

Got Soup? It’s a Souper Way to Weigh Less

Gaining Perspective on Losing Weight—Should I Drink to That?

One of the most frequently read articles in the online version of Time magazine, January 24, 2008 was one that delighted many.

Dr. Sanjay Gupta reported that a “a new study of cardiac health has yielded a happy formula: start with moderate exercise, at least thirty minutes to one hour a day and add moderate alcohol consumption.”

Now that’s health news we can all live with, right? Eating healthfully, exercising regularly, flossing daily and getting a good night’s sleep were unexciting rules our mothers taught us. But who would have dreamed that alcohol would be a recommended addition to our fitness program?

The study, first reported in the European Heart Journal, involved 12,000 people over a 20-year period and was conducted by Denmark's National Institute of Public Health. Dr. Morten Gronbaek, epidemiologist, summarizes the results: alcohol and exercise affect the body in similar ways, and they reinforce each other when both are practiced. Evidently, consumption of moderate amounts of alcohol increases good cholesterol and clears out the circulatory system.

The population under study was divided into four groups: nonexercisers who did not drink, nonexercisers who drank, exercisers who did not drink and exercisers who drank moderately. The group that exercised regularly and drank moderately had the greatest benefit in terms of reduced risk of heart disease (50 percent). The nonexercisers who drank moderately had about the same reduction in risk (30 percent) as the teetotaling exercisers. Besides suggesting that consuming a drink a day was equivalent to exercising, the study also suggested that combining the two—exercise and moderate drinking—provided the greatest benefit.

A couple of caveats, though, are included in the study. First, moderate drinking is one to two drinks a day for men and one drink a day for women. Second, the study is relevant for only an older population since there is no proof that alcohol will reduce the risk of heart disease before age 45. And third, women who are at risk for breast cancer need to avoid alcohol because of increasing evidence of the link between the two.

In my case, I am careful about consumption of alcohol because I seldom have the calories to spare. One drink can steal a couple of hundred calories from my daily budget of 1,500. Still, the study is intriguing. What’s your take on it?

"As I see it, every day you do one of two things; build health or produce disease within yourself."                     Adelle Davis

Nothing Comes between Me and My Slogan

Most days I find a way to sail through the temptations that would steer me away from my commitment to a healthy lifestyle. Other days—and I can never predict when they will occur—I am challenged to stay on course.

When the sweet siren song of seductive indulgence calls my name and my fitness plans are in danger of being shipwrecked, I need a reminder to help me navigate through the shoals. But what kind of reminder?

I needed an internal marketing plan. My first step was to order a personalized “Fat2Fit” license plate for my car. I knew that I could not drive a car with this message on the plate if I didn’t look fit. (Incidentally, I ordered the license plate a year before my book From Fat to Fit: Turn Yourself into a Weapon of Mass Reduction was written and three years before it was published.)

My next idea was to find a meaningful mantra or slogan. Why did I need one? For the same reason advertisers spend millions to develop slogans—because they stick in our heads. If you’re old enough, you may remember Brylcreem’s slogan “A Little Dab’ll Do Ya,” the U.S. Forest Service’s slogan “Only You Can Prevent Forest Fires” or Wendy’s slogan “Where’s the Beef?” Why not, I asked myself, harness the power of a slogan to create awareness of my commitment to a healthy lifestyle? And if the slogan lost its impact over time, I could adopt a new one.

Searching the Internet, I found a Web site that allows visitors to insert key words into well-known commercial slogans. I inserted the words body, fit, fitness and health. Here are a few of the generated slogans:

Make room in your life for your body.

All you need is a body and a dream.

Body is Job #1.

I’d walk a mile for a body.

A body is forever.

A body is a terrible thing to waste.

No size fits all.

Better living through fitness.

Because so much is riding on your health.

My body. My way.

I had so much fun playing with the slogan generator that I had to stop myself when the list approached 50. After all, how many slogans could I use?

I hope you’ll adopt one of these slogans or, better yet, create one of your own. Be sure to display the slogan where you will see it throughout the day—on the bathroom mirror, on the refrigerator door, in your wallet and on the dashboard of your car.

You can also have your slogan imprinted on a coffee cup or t-shirt—buy one for your friends and one for yourself. If you create your own slogan, be sure to send it to me so I can add it to the list. And please let me know if your internal marketing campaign steers you toward healthier choices.

I found it hard to pick my favorite slogan. Given my role as fitness advocate, I finally chose “Make Every Body Count."

"Obstacles cannot crush me. Every obstacle yields to stearn resolve. He who is fixed to a star does not change his mind."                Leonardo DaVinci