A Question From a Friend

Late last week I received the following statement and question from an ex-pat friend of mine in Kyiv, the capital of Ukraine.

"I came to the realization the other day that I need to lose some serious weight. Except for cutting out bread and beer, I'm not sure what to do. You know what resources / foods we have here. Is there any approach you'd recommend?"

The first steps

The first thing I want to address is what my friend calls resources/foods in his question to me. While he may not realize it, much of the food in Ukraine that is available is probably available to him is closer to real food than many of us have in the West have had as we have been subjugated to a great deal of processed foods over the last forty years. In fact the idea of processed foods and what was provided to the average population, in my speculation, is that many of the companies providing rations for the troops in Europe provided a great deal of food stuffs and food like products during the war effort against the Nazis. The money they were making must have been a pretty penny and when the war was concluded they needed a new market for these food stuffs. Yes, I am using the world food stuffs here on purpose because they were no longer real food.

While I never did military duty in Canada, I can't recall one of my friends in either Canada or the United States of America who did, who ever actually peeled potatoes during that part of their stint in the army. On the other hand, I had plenty of friends who served in the Soviet Army before Ukraine's Independence who understood what it was to clean potatoes for their fellow servicemen. I am not saying that serving in the Soviet Army was better, but the fact that their society was not solely motivated by profit of big conglomerates, did clearly have an effect on the quality of their food supply; and at this point in my life I would say that it was for the better.

While, I spent nearly ten years living in Ukraine and understand what is available in the stores, at its markets and in general, the decisions of selecting real food will truly depend on my friend. He will have to learn to make healthy eating choices. We have all heard that more is not necessarily better, it's the quality that counts.

If he realizes that he really does have to lose some weight as I did a year ago, I think he will have to make some sacrifices. Some of those sacrifices, unfortunately for him will be those that I also made! Bread and beer! For the most part the bread that my friend has been eating is closer to real food than most of all the foods combined that North Americans eat. It is bread which is is produced from whole wheat that has had minimal processing, and this is much better than eating “Wonder bread”! Nonetheless, while I am not a nutritionist or dietician, research does seem to suggest that bread and something that some are calling “Wheat Belly” is caused by an intake of bread and wheat based products.

Last year, I had to travel to Germany for business. It was during that period that I basically took a close to a three month vacation from a North American lifestyle, I knew that I couldn't simply diet, but needed a complete lifestyle change. When you have a hard time bending down to tie your shoe laces sitting on the edge of your bed, you realize that you really do need to change. That trip was an ideal opportunity to make a change in my life. We all have to realize that change doesn't come without some sacrifice!

Ukraine's cornucopia of options

Wherever you live has a cornucopia of options when it comes to making healthy food choices. How you make those choices does of course depend on your budget, though nonetheless, if my friend wants to loose weight then he will have to make some sacrifices for about six weeks or so. I understand his love of beer; however, in order for him to pull his system into one that recognizes what he is feeding it he will have to give up beer, and bread for some time. I did it, it didn't kill me and I know for a fact that if he is fifty pounds lighter he will be much better off if the lift/elevator decides it is on strike for a few days due to the lack of service in the country. 

I would like to tell my friend that it is worth taking a break form beer and any alcohol, I did this while living in Ukraine and I lost about 10 kg during that period. I did so for about three weeks, and in the end it made it easier for me to walk everywhere in the city, and get to my fifth-floor flat when the lift was not working. There were a few other things I abstained from, added new things to my diet that I had not been eating before. The first of these was Oatmeal in the morning, on occasion with with some dried raisins, chopped up figs, or other fruits that I had available – and never adding any type of processed sugar to it. Last year when I was in Germany I would often prepare some polenta and supplement it with some bio-yogurt and fruits.

While in Ukraine some of the other things that I ate or didn't eat were very carefully selected. These were selected by a friend of mine who practices non-traditional medicine, though I full trusted him and still do. He is a gifted individual, and if you take the time to listen to him you can gain a great deal of knowledge. 

One of the most important things I learnt from my friend was to understand the health of my stomach. What what microbes were living in there and how it effected my health. There were things I could and should not eat. One of the should not's were wheat products, though buckwheat or hrechka as we all know it in Ukraine is not related and is fine.

When it comes down to the number of different factors, the most important one that few talk about in diet or lifestyle change regimes is the most normal and one that can make sense to everyone. In order to loose weight, not only do you have to have a healthy diet that doesn't screw up your natural body functions; you must also find a way to be more active – burn more calories than you consume and the only real way doing this is to become aware of both your caloric expenditure as well as your caloric intake. It is only when the later is lesser than your expenditure of calories will you see a loss in weight. In the long run, the only way to loose weight and keep it off is a lifestyle change. That change for me came in the form of making better food choices and becoming more active.

A different mode of commitment

Clearly my friend is willing to cut out beer and bread, though it is more than that. It comes down to making selection of different foods. I am far from an expert in this realm but I do know from experience that when I am more active physically, I don't crave, what we can call -”bad foods”. Those are the ones that we prepare in bad ways, and not so much in the way they are in their raw form. My friend is on the right track, but unless you don't get out and move, things aren't going to go well for you in the long run.

He asked me for an approach that I would recommend, and this will vary from every individual though I believe that he is more or less in control of what we call our working day – very much like I am – so I will recommend the following and what I have found works for me. He will have to do a little bit of research to determine his BMR or Basal Metabolic Rate though I have sent him in the right direction with that link for understanding, but you won't have to do the calculations that is what you have a BMR calculator for. In addition to his BMR he should also know what his ideal BMI or Body Mass Index number is currently and what he should be aiming for. I still have a long way to go to reach my ideal BMI, and my goal is for that to happen sometime next spring to early summer.

Based on a great deal of reading, and self examination, I became to understand that the most important fact was caloric expenditure versus caloric in take. There is no other way for this to work in a metabolic process. After all our bodies are nothing but big chemical plants that try to process what we put into them! If we consume a great deal of empty calories that do not contribute to your body's operation, then we are clearly not heading in the right direction. In short you have to maintain the proper balance between what you are consuming, making sure that you are getting the protein, vitamins and nutrients your body needs as well as the carbohydrates needed.

Since I have practically eliminated all processed foods from my diet, there is seldom a time that I have a craving for something. I treat myself to things I like on occasion, but I make sure I don't over do it. There are plenty of tools online that can help you understand your caloric intake, when my friend or anyone else starts to understand that and really how much you really need to eat, and how much exercise you need to do in order to slowly but steadily loose weight that is when the real changes start to happen. It was my understanding of these two elements that lead me to experimenting more in the kitchen, because I realized that eating healthy food didn't mean that it couldn’t or shouldn't taste good.