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.
