How to lose weight in three easy steps

A co-worker I know asked me a month or so ago how much weight I'd lost.

She was suitably impressed by the amount and then asked me about my exercise regimen. She knew I was climbing the stairs at work, but was I doing anything else? I told her that I walked and was trying to get back into running.

That, fortunately, derailed the conversation. She knows my knees are bad, so she went off about how strange it seemed that I would want to return to running. I was glad, though, because it meant I wouldn't have to tell her stuff I knew she didn't want to hear.

I've been asked the question a lot, and I usually just say I'm doing Weight Watchers with my wife. The questioners know just enough about the program to tell me they don't want to put that much effort into counting points and wander off, thinking there has to be a simpler way.

Actually, Weight Watchers and most of the other successful programs work off three simple concepts.

First, you must become aware of how much you are actually stuffing in your mouth. Make no mistake, our capacity for self deception is enormous. My co-worker, eats enough for breakfast and lunch to take care of my caloric needs for the day. I've no idea what she does for supper, but given that she's a foot shorter than me and female, she's already eating too much. But she tells people she really doesn't eat that much.

Ah, self deception.

Second, you have to become aware of what you're eating. I could down a large cheeseburger with bacon and a pile of French fries with ease, then polish my evening off with a couple of Pop Tarts. During the day, my intake wasn't much healthier. That's changed, and I don't feel all that deprived. I'm not even going to discuss what my co-worker eats beyond saying that she regularly patronizes the grill in our building, and they don't carry much in the way of health food -- though you can make healthy enough choices if -- and this is a big if -- you pay attention to what and how much you are eating.

The third step is exercise. Lots of exercise. Intensity seems less important than duration. Start small and work your way up, but you have to work your way up and up and up. None of this stroll around a block after dinner and, whew, I think that'll do. The only activity other than cleaning house I've heard my co-worker talk about is yard work, and she gave most of that to a lawn-care service this year.

Now, I'm not trying to pound my co-worker. She's not really any different from anyone else who asks what I'm doing and then blows the whole idea off because they don't want to put out the effort.

Yes, in the beginning, you have to keep track of what you eat, how much you eat, and how much you exercise. Yes, you have to form new habits. Yes, it takes some efforts and will require permanent changes. But hey, do you want to lose weight or not? And the answer to that determines whether your attempt will be as simple as one, two, three.

Out, damn'd fat

A funny thing happened on my to losing weight. I began to understand something I'd failed to understand before.

Facebook friends, fellow church members and family know that I've lost a significant amount of weight recently. My wife decided to start Weight Watchers, and because I needed to lose some weight to be able to fit into my clothes, as well as try to have an effect on my blood pressure, I decided I would follow the program as well.

I've gone well beyond my original goal, having lost about 20 percent of my starting weight. New clothes have been purchased, which was not part of the original plan, and blood pressure medication has been cut drastically, even more than I'd hoped.

You would think that nothing remains but to celebrate. But I've noticed that while I'm dressing, I cannot fail to see it. The fat.

Oh, sure, I can see how skinny I am -- I've not weighed this little since the '80s. But when I see myself in the mirror my eyes are not drawn to the now prominent clavicles in my shoulders but to those resistent little pockets of underlying fat somewhat lower down on the anatomy.

Now, I'm not obsessing about the remaining fat. I have no desire to try to eradicate it from my body. In fact, I'm trying to adjust my intake to maintain my weight or even to put on a couple of pounds so my newly purchased pants will fit better.

But I better understand why some folks become obsessive about those remaining pounds.

During my time as a pastor, I was privileged to minister to college students for a time, and I encountered a couple of young women who believed they were "fat" and unable to attract boys because they were "fat."

Later, while attending a country church located not too far from an eating disorders clinic, I had the joy of knowing a couple of young women who found our church and attended while being treated at the clinic.

None of these women were by any sane measure obese or even what I would consider overweight. All were attractive and drew stares from young men as they passed by. The two women from the clinic were as thin as models, most probably, from what I knew about the clients of that facility, because when they looked at themselves in a mirror, they saw the fat, not the beauty the rest of the world saw.

I had profiled that clinic in a story I wrote while doing my journalism studies, along with some other eating disorder clinics, in an effort to understand the "why" behind the problem and as a way of doing something useful with journalism. The story would be published in a college newspaper and would have the chance to reach young women just like those I'd dealt with as a pastor.

The clinic director was blunt and attacked me almost as much as she helped me during my interview with her. She pointed out that I was a male, which meant I didn't suffer the societal stigma of having to be thin. She pointed out that I was thin and had probably never had a weight problem in my life.

I had slipped in to my 40s and was, in fact, actually beginning to have to struggle with my weight, though I exercised enough for it to not be a huge problem, and when I told her that, she scoffed at me. I didn't and couldn't understand, she declared, and I was just another do-gooder journalist without a clue.

I did have the opportunity to interview one of her clients, who did try to help me understand. Again, this was an attractive young woman who simply did not see what I saw. And so I really didn't get it.

Now, a couple of decades later, I have an inkling of what they were trying to tell me. And I can see how easy it would be to slip over that line. The pressures on men have increased, though not to the level they are on women. Six-pack abs are all the rage. Dweebs were featured in a reality show, but that only lasted a short while, and the hunks continue to dominate the bachelor shows, one of which has been on way longer than I ever thought it would be.

Weight carries seriously medical consequences, and those need to be dealt with. But we need to grow beyond the concept that only the slender are worthy or "hot." That beauty has more to do with the number of pounds we carry than the people we are.

I appreciate it when people tell me how good I'm looking, but really I'm growing a bit weary with the comments. Did I look that bad before?

And a part of my mind thinks, "Yeah, but if you saw me without a shirt, you'd see the fat, too. And then you wouldn't think I looked so good." And that's a place I don't want to go.

I constantly remind myself that I lost weight to feel better, and I do. My blood pressure's down; my back doesn't hurt as much. I'm able to go for a jog without feeling beaten at the end of the route. And if I gain a few pounds and notice they've decided to take up residence on my waist, I'll learn to live with them.

On Fox and patriotism

Vote now! Don't let the American flag be banned in America!

That was the tenor, though not the exact wording of an e-mail I received from a friend last week. (I don't have the e-mail anymore to refer to it.)

I was directed to a Fox News website with a simple poll that asked whether the American flag should be banned. Yes, no.

The e-mail warned me that an untoward number of people had voted "yes," and encouraged me to vote, apparently so we could shoot down the unpatriotic twerps who had the audacity to want to ban the American flag.

Usually, when a news site runs a poll like this, they give some explanation or a link to the story that prompted the question. No such luck here, though I did notice the poll was about a year old. Ah, the Internet. Nothing ever dies on the Internet.

Use the keywords "banned" and "flag" on the site, and the only page you'll get is for the poll because the story that lies behind it has nothing to do with banning the flag.

Seems that last year a small group of high school students turned up at a school whose name I've forgotten and don't care to look up again wearing flag bandanas and shirts emblazoned with the flag. On Cinco de Mayo.

The school determined that the boys intended to tick off Hispanic students and made them remove the bandannas and turn the shirts inside out. The student opted to leave for the day.

Reminds me of the time a small group of students at my high school wearing Confederate uniforms. You might not think too much of that because I attended Robert E. Lee High School, but they did this early in the first six weeks of the year we integrated.

Both groups of boys were hoping a commotion. And although you might want to argue their free speech rights, schools are really not obliged to encourage students to pick fights with other students.

Regardless, my first thought was, "So much for Fox News being an unbiased source of information." Honestly, if anyone believes that Fox doesn't have an agenda, it's solely because they have the same agenda. Someone sharing your bias doesn't mean it's not a bias.

More troubling to me is the continual fuss on the part of people who worry that we're not being patriotic enough. These are the folks who react angrily to the flag being "banned," when no plot to ban the flag exists, and who believe we should have an amendment making it a criminal offense to desecrate the flag, specifically to burn a flag as a political protest.

My guess is that most of these so-called patriots have no idea that Congress adopted the Uniform Flag Code back in the '40s, which makes it part of federal law.

Too many people believe that the Uniform Flag Code is like the pirate code in "Pirates of the Caribbean," more sorta guidelines than actual rules. In practicality that's true because the law contains no enforcement measures and Supreme Court rulings based on the First Amendment would nullify some of its provisions.

But the law was developed to explain how to show proper reverence for the national ensign, surely the concern of every patriot.

Only patriots may be the worst violators of the law.

For instance, the code says the flag "should never be used for advertising purpose in any manner whatsoever." Hmm.

It states, "the flag should never be used as wearing apparel ..." which depending on how you interpret that, means that wearing bandannas that look like flags or T shirts with flags on them may well violate the code, be a sign of disrespect. Hmm and hmm.

That reminds me of the man I knew in Lockney, Texas, who was livid after seeing a teen with long hair wearing jeans with a flag on them. He didn't think the boy was patriotic; he thought the boy needed a thrashing for disrespecting the flag.

And my favorite part of the code says that the flag should never be printed or impressed on anything designed for temporary use and discard. You know, like napkins, paper plates, packaging. Hmm, hmm and hmm.

Could it be that the patriot who serves barbecue and sides during a patriotic holiday on a paper plate festooned with a flag and then wipes her mouth with a napkin that looks like a flag before tossing the whole kit and kaboodle in the trash is as disrespectful at the flag burner she despises?

Hmm.