The Antidepressant Diet

I have completely changed my lifestyle, and I have lost about 30 pounds in the last 4 months.

Here's the thing - I never plan on going back to my old lifestyle. I cycle to work and on the weekends, and I absolutely love it. I lift weights to maintain a decent amount of strength, not to bulk up. I eat fresh vegetables, roasted vegetables, vegetable soup, and absurd amounts of fresh fruit - and it's awesome.

Humans were meant to be extremely active and to forage for vegetables and fruit. We live such sedentary lifestyles, and we are so inherently lazy, it's not at all surprising that weight gain is so rampant.

I've lost 30 pounds in 4 months, and I have no expectation of gaining any of it back. In fact, I expect to lose another 20 pounds in the next 2-3 months. The more I lose, the easier it gets to maintain this lifestyle. I've slowly and consistently reduced my caloric intake, with small things like ordering a regular burrito instead of a large. Asking for less rice. Eating one less piece of pizza. Chewing more slowly, so my stomach has time to realize it's full. Filling up on delicious fruit and vegetables.

It's so possible for people to be healthy and fit - they just have to realize it. Find a sport or exercise you love, in and of itself - not just because it's a way to lose weight. Find a "diet" that you can live on for the *rest of your life*; anything else is a recipe for disaster.

I exercise very little willpower to maintain this lifestyle. Just enough to get out of bed and get on my bike. Grab the salad from the fridge instead of paying extra for fast food (... of which I still indulge maybe once a week).

It's all about realizing that our bodies *want* us to be healthy, and finding ways to trick our brains into being healthy, effortlessly.

What about the people who are successful at keeping their weight down? Here are a few of their secrets:

“A study of the habits of members of the National Weight Control Registry — a group of about 5,000 people who have lost an average of 73 pounds and kept off at least 30 of them for more than six years — found that most watch fewer than 10 hours of TV a week.

That's much less than the national average of 28 hours a week, says lead researcher Suzanne Phelan, an assistant professor of psychiatry and behavioral medicine at Brown University in Providence.

Registry members who increased their TV viewing were more likely to gain weight, she says.

Previous studies on these people found that they limit their calories to 1,800 a day, eat a low-fat diet, keep track of what they weigh and exercise regularly. They walk an average of 4 miles a day or burn the equivalent number of calories in another activity.”

http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2005-10-31-tv-weight_x.htm

Thank you for this information. Too bad it was not included in the NY times article by Ms Pope. But I wonder how close most of these people came to their weight loss goal or whether they simply stopped losing 30 or 40 pounds above their desired weight ( especially if their average weight loss was 73 pounds and their long term weight loss was only 30. Why did they gain back those additional 40 pounds? )