Tag Archive for: Ruth Jones

What Not to Do When You Want to Lose Weight

/in /by

How did my mother-in-law lose 30 pounds when she was completely sedentary? I’ll tell you, but let me tell you first what not to do. Why begin there? Permanently changing your weight (or any other significant health goal) takes a lifetime commitment. You don’t know what life will bring, so the best way to attack the problem is by doing the best you can every day until you really have changed your habits permanently.

What You Don’t Have to Do

When you’re ready to make a change in your lifestyle, especially to lose weight, you don’t have to announce it on social media. If you want to keep track of your progress and do something with that information later, fine. But not everyone responds the same way to social scrutiny and it can be brutal. The only person you ever have to be accountable to is yourself.

You don’t have to throw out everything that’s in your refrigerator or freezer or clean out your pantry. It’s a good idea to get rid of the food that’s two years or more past its “best by” date, but that’s it.

You don’t have to follow any specific diet or exercise program when you start. Eat a little bit less and move a little bit more.

Understanding How to Start

Whether you want to lose weight, lower your cholesterol, reduce your risk of type 2 diabetes, you start slow and you add a little bit to it each day.

Think about this related to weight loss. You can’t fast (by the most common definition of fasting—abstaining from food) long enough to lose all the weight that you want to lose. It wouldn’t be healthy not to eat. Your body’s going to continue to produce waste products and you need nutrients, fresh nutrients, to help it do that.

What you can do is improve the quality of your diet a servings of grapes per day or a small salad before your meal to help suppress your appetite. Every small step is an important one. The catch is that you have to maintain it. So whether it’s a serving of grapes one day and strawberries the next and blueberries after that, add that serving of fruit every day. Or vegetables. Or nuts and seeds. You have to change your eating style permanently.

Turns out, losing weight that way takes some time. But let me ask you this question: did you sit down at a table one day and decide that you were going to overeat and overeat and overeat every second of every day so that you could put on 25, 50, or 100 pounds? Of course you didn’t. What makes you think you can take it off all at once? You have to do it one bite at a time, one meal at a time, one day at a time, just like you put it on.

The Bottom Line

I’m sure you’ve figured out why my mother-in-law was able to lose weight even though conventional exercise wasn’t an option: she consistently ate less than her body needed to maintain her weight. She stopped eating desserts and snacks and didn’t go back for seconds. Even though her body wasn’t as strong as it had been, she still had the mental toughness to stick to her plan, and it worked.

Consistency—what a concept! No fad diet, no keto or paleo, just consistently eating more of the healthier food and avoiding empty calories. I’ll say it again: it was, it is, and it will always be about the calories. It all comes down to a single question:

What are you prepared to do today?

        Dr. Chet

P.S. There’s a new Straight Talk on Health for Members and Insiders, and I’ve done something a little different. I took the Memos from the week and expanded on what I wrote. More about how my mother-in-law was able to lose weight while being sedentary and tips for other goals such as decreasing pre-diabetes and high blood pressure. If you don’t have a membership, this would be a good time to start.

Weight Loss Is Always Possible

/in /by

After last week’s Memos, you may think that you have to do something radical to address your body weight or some other health situation, but that’s not the case. You can lose weight under the most extreme conditions, even if you’re completely sedentary. Let me tell you about my mother-in-law, Ruth Jones.

My mother-in-law struggled with her weight for decades. I don’t know what her peak weight was, but I would estimate around 240 pounds. She maintained around 200 pounds for most of the time I knew her. She had severe arthritis in her knees and because she wouldn’t have been able to do the rehab, the decision was made to replace them both at once. She did great at lifestyle and occupational therapy, but she never quite got the complete mobility she thought she would get because the physical therapy was more of a challenge than she could handle. She was able to get around the house but used a wheelchair or scooter in public.

A few years later, she had a very bad reaction to a new statin that damaged a great deal of muscle mass, and she remained in long-term care until she died several years later. But here’s the thing. Even though wheelchair bound, she was able to lose 30 or so pounds; that’s discounting the last few months before she died when she lost interest in eating.

How? How was she able to do it?

How about you—are you ready to make a change in your weight? Blood pressure? Prediabetes? Then you really don’t want to miss Saturday’s Memo.

What are you prepared to do today?

        Dr. Chet

How to Live to Your 90s

/in /by

Today’s message is based on my father-in-law, Don Jones, or Joner as most of us knew him. As I said Wednesday, he passed away last Sunday. He lived to 94 years and six months; Peggy, the sister he was closest to, died at the exact same age. How was he able to live that long? I’ll give you my observations based on his life.

  • Genetics: it pays to have the right genes and Dad certainly did. Several of his siblings lived into their 90s.
  • Quit smoking: he quit smoking before he turned 21 years old. That’s probably the single most important thing he did. His father and siblings who smoked all died much younger. He never drank alcohol after that either.
  • Love: he loved his wife of over 70 years deeply, and as I said Wednesday, he longed to be with Ruth again. That’s a love that transcends life itself.
  • Humor: he had a great sense of humor. He gave it and was able to take it as well. My big ears were a frequent target. Once after we came in from a run together on a cold day, he said, “I know why you wear that headband: reduce wind resistance.”
  • Demeanor: he was almost always calm and pleasant and rarely showed any anger. Paula said when she was a kid and acted up, he’d just hang his head and sigh, and that hurt worse than any spanking. Once when he was mad at me, he showed it by leaving the newspaper at the top of the steps instead of putting it on the counter. He never stayed mad long.
  • Faith: he believed in God and lived his faith.
  • Exercise: he worked physical jobs most of his life. Then he began running when he was 70 and continued until he was in his mid-80s, hitting 700 miles for 2002. No doubt that helped him live longer than he might have with a genetic tendency toward stroke. He was never very fast but once you’re over 70, there’s not a lot of competition and he enjoyed picking up trophies at many of his 5Ks. I’m sure that competitive spirit added zest to his life.
  • Body weight: he was never fat for his height. That reduced any additional stress on his joints.

Those are my observations on how Joner lived into his 90s. While you can’t change your genes, you can certainly make the most of what you’ve got; his lifestyle and approach to life certainly helped my father-in-law.

What are you prepared to do today?

Dr. Chet

 

I’m Alive V2.48

/in /by

When I opened my eyes this morning, I said the same thing I’ve said for the past 24 years: I’m alive! I’ve come to believe that if I wake up this morning, it means I have at least one more year. It makes no sense, but I can’t change the way I think about this one thing.

The question is why. My dad died 48 years ago today at the age of 41. Ever since I opened my eyes on May 10th when I was 41, I believed I would live another year. Again, it makes no sense but it’s what I believe. For the many new subscribers, now you have a little insight into how I think.

This year also has a similar message to the one from three years ago. My father-in-law, Don Jones (Joner to most of us), passed away on May 7 at the age of 94. It was three years to the day and almost the same time of day as my mother-in-law, Ruth Jones. While we most definitely will miss him and all his stories, we’re not sad. His body had let him down the past couple of years; I think he decided it was time to go be with his Ruthie again and he just quietly slipped away. How can you be sad about that? They were together on this earth for over 70 years and now they have eternity. That deserves a celebration.

Whether it’s a day, a month, a year, or until I’m 94, I’ve got a lot to do to help you get healthy and fit to be able to live life the way you want to live it. Stay tuned because we’re just getting warmed up.

What are you prepared to do today?

Dr. Chet