Switch to “ 1/2 and 1/2 “ on weekdays for a year and lose 33 pounds!!!
Aha! Gotcha, right? You really believe you can lose weight by drinking Half and Half? Well, you’re right on if the skeptic in you says: See, I was right, no way Half and Half can contribute to a thinner you.
Not so quick. There may actually be some merit to the notion that dairy Half and Half-that wonderful amalgam of cream and milk in equal proportions-may help you lose a size, but it has to do with fats, early satiety and total caloric intake. That, however, is for another post or podcast up the road. Stay tuned.
Weight loss is about calories, ultimately. And there is a half and half technique that works.
What pray tell am I getting at? It’s about a simple, achievable, Tobler-tested technique to reduce calories and lose some ballast. It works, no kidding. First, some thoughts about weight loss:
Weight loss is a subject Heliene and I prefer to address as a side effect of Vital Living. If you are health wise, incorporating the principals of solid nutrition, stress management, ever-moving and sound sleep, good things will follow. But I digress.
Weight gain or loss is for the most part a simple formula: calories in minus calories out equals weight gain if the result is positive, and loss if negative. Like most of life, there are things we can control and those we can’t. On the intake side of the calorie conundrum, of course, we control it all, but on the calorie debit ledger, it’s a Facebook kind of relationship….it’s complicated!
We have a basic metabolism, our basal metabolic rate; some fires burn warmer, others cooler by virtue of genetic programming. These are the roughly 60-70% of daily calories burned to fuel the production of new cells, the elimination or repair of others, sending nerve impulses, making and transmitting hormones, eliminating waste, circulating blood, and the myriad other functions we take for granted. Add in the very process of digesting, absorbing and getting the fuel (aka calories) into the cells consumes another 10% or so. So collectively, these silent but mostly autonomous processes burn 4 out of 5 calories we eat or drink. While metabolism is in general faster in men than women (muscles burn more and women are genetically at a disadvantage here), in younger than older folks (now I am wincing : ) and at times of fasting….are you meal skippers reading this loud and clear?…..the truth is we can’t change much about most of our calorie burning. But, if we get off our butts, we can boost calorie consumption significantly. THIS we CAN do something about. We’ll be talking a lot about movement, metabolism and common sense health transformation up the road on the site.
Here though, my point is about the intake side of weight loss algebra. So…. about that half and half.
I saw yet another patient today who heeded my advice and fulfilled her part of the half and half proposal I had made a month earlier. She was depressed over winter weight gain, roughly 25 pounds. There was no medical problem to blame it on, so we talked about her food intake and I discovered she was drinking 3 20 oz. bottles of a popular caffeinated soft drink each work day, and 3 or 4 on the weekend.
Yep…. THREE a day. That’s a choice. That’s a bad choice. That’s 870 calories! That’s just shy of 1 cup of sugar! OMG (short for Oh My Glucose)!
Whoa. An epiphany. An aha! moment. If that stuff can put on weight so easily, eliminating it would work in the other direction, right? For the most part, that’s true, though our bodies do adjust to abrupt decreases in energy intake…. by slowing metabolism slightly. That’s beside the point and no excuse to reject a new path with soft drinks. NO SWEETENED ONES. Or at least RARE treats, ok?
But what to drink, if not the addicting and cleverly marketed sodas? I asked her about water. “Uh uh,” she said quickly. Diet soda? “Doesn’t do it for me.” Then came the ‘pearl’ that has worked over and over for so many of our clients. Let’s retrain the taste buds, gradually. How about half and half? “Are you a quack? That’s cream and milk and full of fat.”
The punch line is obvious: Just aim for half regular and half diet soda by next month. “It’s a great start, easy to do and with great payoff,” I advised. With soda fountains containing the regular and diet versions, you can work your way up to ½ and ½ easily, maybe eventually wean off the weight pounding elixir altogether. Try mixing ever-increasing amounts of diet beverage into the regular one, keeping the total volume the same as before. You adapt to the taste and soon it’s all good with ½ and ½, you see? What’s a month of ‘half and half’ mean for your midsection, or thighs, hips, neck and other fat repositories? Get out your slide rule. Rounding off, we figure:
450 (rather than 900) calories a day X 5 days/week X 4 weeks a month. Drum roll please: 9000 calories per month less than the old you, drinking full strength pop. If you change nothing else but switch to soda pop ‘half and half’ on weekdays, were talking a potential 2 ½ pounds a month in fat loss. Extrapolate to a full year and you’ll see why the grabber at top of this post is theoretically possible. It really should read, “Soda pop ½ and ½” to be accurate, admittedly. But then you wouldn’t have read further, right?
Oh, about that patient……she reached ½ and ½ Nirvana at about 3 weeks, and never looked back. At 6 weeks she’s down 4 and one-half pounds. Yesssssss!