UPFRONT WITH DALE DUDLEY: GETTING THINNER

AFTER YEARS OF STRUGGLING, THE SCALE IS FINALLY HEADING IN THE RIGHT DIRECTION

ILLUSTRATION BY BENDIK KALTENBORN

My first column for Austin Monthly in January 2005 was titled “My Year in the Gym.” It was a poke at my lifelong resistance to exercise at the expense of gym rats. In it, I mourned my weight increase from 150 pounds in high school to 220 as an adult. In 2008, I followed it up with a column called “Piling on the Pounds,” where I mused in bewilderment that I had added 100 pounds to the skinniest kid to ever walk the halls of Robert E. Lee High in Tyler, Texas. Anyone see where this is headed?

Last summer, I literally washed up on the beach. My wife took a night photo of me near the ocean in Kauai, Hawaii, and the ball of my chin was sticking out of some fat guy’s face. The next day, we decided to take a tour of the island in a plane. Having some flight school under my belt, I asked to sit up front. We weighed in, and I breathed a sigh of relief that I was not over their poundage limit. We were somewhere over Waimea Canyon when I spotted a yellow note the pilot had stuck to the control panel. I saw my wife’s name: “Amanda: 120,” and then my eyes landed on “Dale: 272.”

I don’t get motion sickness, but for the rest of that flight I wanted to throw up all of the nachos I had ever consumed. I couldn’t believe it. The number kept running over and over in my head: TWO SEVENTY-TWO. My inner voice tried its best to soothe my shamed inner child: “Hey, that’s with clothes on!” and “Remember, you’re 6-foot-4!” I made yet another vow that I was going to work out and diet when I returned home.

When we got back to Austin, I watched a documentary about early man and his natural diet. After that, I decided to stick to meat, vegetables and nuts. This was a good excuse for me to stand in front of the fridge and eat as much pepperoni or lunch meat as I wanted—right out of the package. And a “handful” of almonds in the afternoon would be enough to fill all the hands of every man, woman and child who lived in my cave. Plus, exercise made me hungrier. Within a few weeks, I was a big, greasy mess.

My wife and I still made excuses to eat out at restaurants for lunches and dinners on the weekend. I told her that oftentimes I felt like I was having a panic attack after the meal. It was the same feeling I got one afternoon when I lay down with my 2-year-old daughter in an attempt to get her to take a nap. I got an odd sensation in my chest, like I was missing heartbeats—it’s probably because I was actually missing heartbeats. Using a portable blood pressure cuff, I learned that my heart rate was measuring a disco-fast rhythm of 188 beats per minute. I was 272 pounds and 188 bpm! After that, I was diagnosed with atrial fibrillation, A-fib for short. My heart was backfiring and beating faster just to power my fat ass. Further tests revealed a thickening of the artery walls and, of course, high blood pressure. Blood tests introduced the ominous word “pre-diabetes.”

Starting with Dr. McDougall’s cup-of-soup diet in 2001, I had tried at least 10 or more diets. I had burned through three gym memberships and just as many personal trainers. At the most, I would lose 10 or 15 pounds, only to put on more after I quit. I was depressed and disgusted with myself. I went to the Web and started seriously investigating bariatric surgery. I casually mentioned this on the air only to hear from a listener who wrote to tell me he had the surgery and even then gained the weight back. He recommended I research a diet that involved protein supplement meals that was working for him. I did, and with much skepticism headed to the Lewis Family Clinic in Dripping Springs, where he said he went.

That was almost five months ago, and as of this writing I weigh 231 pounds—and I haven’t exercised once. I will soon, but that’s when I hit my ideal weight of 214. I waited until I had lost at least 40 pounds before I dared write about it. A few weeks ago, for the first time in my life, I went into a store to buy a smaller pair of jeans and a belt that would fit. When friends comment on the loss, it’s like dreams I used to have where I was thin again.

The blood pressure medicine is gone, and my cholesterol scores recently were better than my much-younger wife. But the best thing that has happened for me is the knowledge of why I got fat, and what I can do about it. There is more and more data coming out that many of the things we have been sold about fat, bread, pasta, good foods and bad foods is more than likely just bad science that went “viral” decades ago.

The food pyramid should go the way of the ones in Egypt­—as a relic. I’m still eating carbs, just the ones that don’t come in a bag or a box. I still eat meat and other lean proteins. I’ve cut my sugar consumption by 99 percent. That 1 percent is when I cheat. But, hey, I’m only human. I’m not counting calories or taking a pill. I’m rarely hungry because I’m not eating the foods that make me hungry and keep all of us in that vicious cycle of overeating.

                                

I don’t have all the answers, but neither do the trainers, doctors or hucksters on TV. I’m not here to sell you anything other than encouragement—I’m just here bidding a fond farewell to my belly. Oh, and I’m also here to force the art department of Austin Monthly to draw me much thinner than they have in the past.

Source:- http://www.austinmonthly.com/AM/April-2014/Upfront-with-Dale-Dudley-Getting-Thinner/

Northamptonshire's Schoolchildren Are Getting Thinner

Number of obese children are falling

Children in the county are getting thinner

Schoolchildren in Northamptonshire are getting thinner, new data has revealed.

Welcoming new figures released this week show how more reception class and Year 6 children are getting thinner year-on-year.

According to the latest figures from the Health and Social Care Information Centre (HSCIC), 16.7 per cent of Year 6 pupils,

aged 10 to 11, in Northamptonshire are now classed clinically obese - down from 17.3 per cent the previous year.

Among reception class pupils, aged four to five, the obesity

figure drops to 8.7 per cent - a small drop on 8.8 per cent the

year before.

These figures for the academic year 2013-14 were from the National Child Measurement Programme (NCMP), in which

more than 15,000 youngsters across the county were measured for their Body Mass Index (BMI).

Nationally, the report also looked at the number of children

which are obese in deprived areas and the least deprived areas

of the country.

The figures show that on average, twice as many children (24.7 per cent) are obese in deprived areas, compared to those living

in affluent parts of the country (13.1 per cent).

Eustace de Sousa, National Lead for Children, Young People

and Families at Public Health England, said: “It is deeply concerning that there is an actual doubling of child obesity

rates from reception to the end of primary school, and that

children from low income households are significantly more

likely to be overweight or obese.

“We know that over a third of children leaving primary school

are overweight or obese which makes them much more likely

to be overweight or obese as adults and considerably increases their risk of developing type 2 diabetes and other serious

health problems.”

Source:- http://www.northampton-news-hp.co.uk/8203-Northamptonshire-s-schoolchildren-getting/story-25114949-detail/story.html

                

You Are Getting Thinner

This article on hypnosis and weight loss was published in Oprah Magazine August 2004 issue. Read it now and benefit from some of the same slimming suggestions I give my hypnotherapy clients.

Close your eyes. Imagine your food cravings floating away. Imagine a day of eating only what's good for you. Imagine hypnosis actually helping you lose weight -- because the news is: It does. Harvard Medical School psychotherapist JEAN FAIN gives you ten hypnotic suggestions to try right now.

When I tell people how I make much of my living – as a psychotherapist hypnotizing people slim – they inevitably ask: Does it work? My answer usually brightens their eyes with something between excitement and incredulity.

Most people, including my colleagues at Harvard Medical School, where I teach hypnosis, don’t realize that adding trance to your weight loss efforts can help you lose more weight and keep it off longer.

Hypnosis predates carb and calorie counting by a few centuries, but this age-old attention-focusing technique has yet to be embraced wholeheartedly as an effective weight loss strategy.

Until recently, there has been scant scientific evidence to support the legitimate claims of respected hypnotherapists, and a glut of pie-in-the-sky promises from their problem cousins, stage hypnotists, hasn’t helped.

Even after a persuasive mid-nineties reanalysis of 18 hypnotic studies showed that psychotherapy clients who learned self-hypnosis lost twice as much weight as those who didn’t (and, in one study, kept it off two years after treatment ended), hypnotherapy has remained a well-kept weight loss secret.

Unless hypnosis has happily compelled you or someone you know to buy a new, smaller wardrobe, it may be hard to believe that this mind-over-body approach could help you get a handle on eating.

Seeing is definitely believing.

So see for yourself. You don’t have to be entranced to learn some of the invaluable lessons that hypnosis has to teach about weight loss. The ten mini-concepts that follow contain some of the diet-altering suggestions my weight management clients receive in group and individual hypnotherapy.

1. The answer lies within. Hypnotherapists believe you have everything you need to succeed. You don’t really need another crash diet or the latest appetite suppressant. Slimming is about trusting your innate abilities, as you do when you ride a bicycle. You may not remember how scary it was the first time you tried to bike, but you kept practicing until you could ride automatically, without thought or effort. Losing weight may seem similarly beyond you, but it’s just a matter of finding your balance.

2. Believing is seeing. People tend to achieve what they think they can achieve. That even applies to hypnosis. Subjects tricked into believing they could be hypnotized (for example, as the hypnotist suggested they’d see red, he flipped the switch on a hidden red bulb) demonstrated increased hypnotic responsiveness. The expectation of being helped is essential. Let me suggest that you expect your weight loss plan to work.

3. Accentuate the positive. Negative, or aversive, suggestions, like “Doughnuts will sicken you,” work for a while, but if you want lasting change, you’ll want to think positive. The most popular positive hypnotic suggestion was devised by doctors Herbert Spiegel and David Spiegel, a father-son hypnotherapy team: “For my body, too much food is damaging. I need my body to live. I owe my body respect and protection.” I encourage clients to write their own upbeat mantras. One 50-year-old mother who lost 50-plus pounds repeats daily: “Unnecessary food is a burden on my body. I’m going to shed what I don’t need.”

4. If you imagine it, it will come. Like athletes preparing for competition, visualizing victory readies you for a victorious reality. Imagining a day of healthy eating helps you envision the necessary steps to becoming that healthy eater. Too tough to picture? Find an old photograph of yourself at a comfortable weight and remember what you were doing differently then; imagine resurrecting those routines. Or visualize getting advice form a future older, wiser self after she’s reached her desired weight.

5. Send food cravings flying. Hypnotherapists routinely harness the power of symbolic imagery, inviting subjects to put food cravings on fluffy white clouds or in hot air balloons and send them up, up and away. If McDonald’s golden arches have the power to steer you off your diet, hypnotists understand that a counter-symbol can steer you back. Invite your mind to flip through its Rolodex of images until one emerges as a symbol for casting out cravings. Heave-ho.

6. Two strategies are better than one. When it comes to losing weight and keeping it off, a winning combination is hypnosis and cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT), which helps revamp counterproductive thoughts and behaviors. Clients who learn both lose twice as much weight without falling into the dieter’s lose-some, regain-more trap. You’ve already tried CBT if you’ve ever kept a food diary. Before my clients learn hypnosis, they keep track of everything that passes their lips for a week or two. Raising awareness, every good hypnotherapist knows, is a key baby step toward lasting change.

7. Modify, modify, modify. The late hypnosis innovator Milton Erickson, MD, emphasized the importance of using existing patterns. To alter one client’s lose-regain, lose-regain pattern, Erickson suggested she first gain weight before losing it – a hard sell nowadays unless you’re Charlize Theron. Easier to swallow: Modify your highest-calorie craving. Instead of a pint of ice cream, how about a cup of frozen yogurt?

8. Like it or not, it’s survival of the fattest. No suggestion is powerful enough to override the survival instinct. Much as we like to think it’s survival of the fittest, we’re still programmed, in case of famine, for survival of the fattest. Case in point: a personal trainer on a starvation diet who wanted me to suggest away her gummy bear addiction. I tried to explain that her body believed her life depended on the chewy candies and wouldn’t give them up until she got enough calories from more nutritious foods. No, she insisted, a suggestion was all she needed. I wasn’t surprised when she dropped out.

9. Practice makes perfect. One Pilates class does not produce washboard abs, and one hypnosis session cannot shape up your diet. But silently repeating a positive suggestion 15 to 20 minutes daily can transform your eating, especially when combined with slow, natural breaths, the cornerstone of any behavioral-change program.

10. Congrats – it’s a relapse. When clients find themselves, against their healthiest intentions, overindulging, I congratulate them. Hypnosis views a relapse as an opportunity, not a travesty. If you can learn from a real or imagined relapse – why it happened, how to handle it differently – you’ll be better prepared for life’s inevitable temptations.

Source:- http://www.jeanfain.com/youaregettingthinner.html