By: 2LT Jacob Keith*
I grew up in a big, poor family with 5 young
kids and a single mom. Our dinners were made in big batches with bulk-bought
foods. We ate rice, beans, and whatever produce was on sale, and we had a
freezer full of bargain cuts of meat from the farm outside of town. Per Mom's
mantra on raising kids—“wear ’em out, feed ’em, put ’em to bed”—we had to participate in sports. In high school, I swam
with the varsity team 12 hours a week, 9 months out of the year. Every day I
had cereal for breakfast, and a sandwich, an apple, carrots, and fruit snacks
for lunch. Then I swam hard for a few hours after school. I came home
exhausted, sat at the kitchen table, and ate as much as I could. During our
hardest training periods, I barely maintained my weight and performance.
Then I went to college at West Point. 12
hours of hard training every week during high school became 3 or 4 one-hour
sessions a week. I was stressed, overtired, and constantly surrounded by food.
As a poor kid with a big appetite, I demolished the food at West Point's dining
hall. I ate salads, raw fruit, and lean meats. But I also had mac and cheese,
pasta with alfredo sauce, bowls of white rice with butter, and entrees served
in calorically dense sauce. I gained 40 pounds during my 4 years of undergrad.
I did not wear it well.
After I tossed my hat at graduation, I took
the drive down I-95 until it dumped me into Bethesda, Maryland, for medical
school. I was a newly liberated second lieutenant. For the first time, I could
control my food environment. I had struggled to control my weight in college. I
reflected on why I struggled. I knew my goals and I knew how I wanted to
feel.
I wanted to lose weight, I wanted a plan to
do it, and I wanted a way to track it. I knew calories mattered, but I didn't
want to weigh everything that went in my mouth every day. I had a big appetite
and poor emotional regulation over when I was done eating. I also enjoyed
eating. It was almost a self-soothing ritual. I needed to work on that, but I
couldn't ignore it either.
With those things in mind, I constructed an
eating environment that changed how I think about my weight, how I think about
food, and what I eat. It involves both a “big picture” of my overall goals and
daily strategies to help me reach those goals.
My “big picture” thinking
How I think about food. I have a calorie budget. I don’t know what exactly that number is,
but I know it exists. I know that if I exceed it, I won’t meet my goals. I
created food habits that enabled me to stay inside my calorie budget while
still feeling full, stifling cravings, and enjoying myself. I learned to trust
my body and understand its signals. I learned the difference between “I'm not
full, so I could eat” and “I'm hungry.” And I learned not to open the cupboard
every time I was bored.
What I eat.
I got into the “don't-buy-it diet.” If I eat the whole tub of ice cream when
it's in my fridge, then I guess I'm not buying ice cream. If eggs and bacon in
the morning turns into mostly bacon with an egg, then I have something else for
breakfast. 95% of my foods fall into: raw fruit, vegetables, whole grains, lean
meats, or healthy fats. When I give myself only low-calorie options, I can
still eat a huge amount of food without breaking my calorie budget, and I’m not
tempted by junk food at every meal.
How I view my weight. My weight is a reflection of my dietary habits. I build my
physique and performance in the gym, but the number on my scale is determined
by what I've eaten in the past day, week, month, and year. So I need to care
enough about my weight goals—lose, maintain, or gain—to change my daily habits
in support of those goals. This is also liberating. If I have pizza once a
month, or if I enjoy Mom's Thanksgiving gravy, it isn't going to destroy my
goals when those meals are surrounded by good food habits.
My day-to-day strategies
How I think about food. I don't count calories, but I'm very calorie-aware. I avoid having
to count each calorie by eating the same breakfast, lunch, and snack every day.
I also check food labels for the serving sizes and for hidden fats or sugar. At
dinner, I make good food choices and keep my portions in check. I can easily
adjust the size of my standardized meals to support my weight goals. Once I get
tired of the same food, I switch it out for something else with a similar
nutrition content.
What I eat. My
meals need to be planned. I don't write it out days in advance, but before I
open the fridge and start piling on the plate, I think, “For breakfast, I'm
having my nonfat Greek yogurt with a little sweetener, an apple, and some oats
in it.” I plan a meal in a specific order: protein, then at least one fruit or
vegetable,
I go to town on apples, clementines,
carrots, or bell peppers when I get the mid-afternoon munchies. They aren't
super salty or savory, but they fill me up without busting my calorie budget.
This strategy makes up most of my diet. The rest is going out to dinner with
friends or having a cookie at a party a few times per month. As long as I plan
good meals at home, those one-off events disappear into the background of
healthy eating.
How I view my weight. I weighed myself every morning from July ’20 to September ’21. Hundreds of
days doing the same thing: wake up, use the bathroom, brush my teeth, shave,
and hop on the scale. No matter what the scale said, I put that number into a
spreadsheet on my phone with 3 columns: the date, my weight that morning, and my
average weight for the past 7 days. The middle column didn’t matter—it moved
all over the place. The running-average column was my weight-tracking gold. If
it stopped moving down for a week, I decreased the portion sizes of my
standardized meals and paid extra attention at dinner. I aimed to lose 0.75–1%
of my weight per week. I had good energy, my training was going well, and I
didn't feel deprived.
This is how I achieved 30 pounds of weight loss over the course
of 9 months. At first, I lost weight with better food choices. Then I limited added
fats and starchy carbohydrates. Only then did I need to make strong, deliberate
efforts to lose weight. To establish these habits, I spent a month trying
different foods and meal-prep schedules to see what I liked.
You can do the same. I don’t mean you should copy these habits, but you can copy this process. Discover how food fits into your life. Discover what you gain and value from it. Then experiment with new meals, schedules, and attitudes until your habits and values align.
