This article originally appeared in Mpls/St. Paul Magazine, July 2009
The new year is always when I resolve to lose weight, run five miles a day, and floss morning, noon, and night. But when January 1 rolled around, a familiar face at the newsstand made me wonder, Why bother? It was Oprah Winfrey, on the cover of her own magazine admitting that it wasn’t just a trick of the light or an unflattering hemline or a fluke of high-definition television—she really had gained back the weight.
While Winfrey’s admission made the news, it wasn’t actually newsworthy. Estimates suggest that 9 out of 10 dieters regain any weight they’ve lost within two years, giving way to often endless cycles of fresh resolve followed by fierce self-recrimination.I happen to be familiar with this routine. I have a full wardrobe in four different sizes (S, M, L, and elastic) to prove it. Some of these rollercoaster weight gains and losses can be blamed on the heroic and hormonally fueled ups and downs of pregnancy. But as my friends and I have edged into our 40s, we’ve all noticed, to varying degrees of alarm, that the rollercoaster now seems stuck on a rather slow incline.
Indulgences seem to cost more than they did a decade ago, while the usual austerity programs don’t move the needle as they once did. We tell ourselves that if we had personal chefs, personal trainers, and permanent punch cards for pilates class we would look as good as we now (finally!) realize we did 20 years ago. Yet Winfrey had all those things at her disposal, and it still didn’t stick.
That’s why this year, rather than resolving to lose 20 pounds and failing by February, I decided it was time to think about the issue in a new way. My interest was piqued by a University of Minnesota study led by Dr. Susan Raatz, an assistant professor in the department of medicine, and published last year in the Journal of the American Dietetic Association. The study compared the effectiveness of frequent weigh-ins—a tried and true weight loss strategy favored by Weight Watchers and other groups—against nutrition counseling with a registered dietitian. Raatz’s team found that weight loss was “significantly correlated” with attending classes conducted by a registered dietitian. Thus inspired, I did some research, got a few recommendations, and connected with Michele Gorman, a private-practice nutritionist in Edina who agreed to take me on for two months of nutrition counseling. As it turns out, I’m not the first client who’s called on account of Oprah. But really, enough about Oprah—let’s talk about me. . . .
Illustration by Trinia Dalziel
That’s one thing you find out when you’re working with a dietitian: Nutrition counseling can feel a lot like therapy. Gorman is equipped with a leather couch, a small clock, and a fresh box of Kleenex that she offers along with strangely penetrating questions about how I sleep, eat, and manage stress. She goes over my medical and family history, how and when I eat during an average day, and how I generally feel from hour to hour. Alert or headache-y? Energized or exhausted? Our first session is already into its second hour when she poses a question designed to move past my rational understanding of my relationship with food and get at my limbic brain’s response: “When did your relationship with food change?”
It’s a big question, but one Gorman says helps her get at the reasons her clients may be “out of balance” with food, and how eating, weight, or body image could have become the cause of stress. For some of her clients, that change may have started as early as elementary school, while being teased by other kids, or late into adulthood, perhaps at the start of menopause. Gorman says many clients will mention a parent whose poor body image or concern about gaining weight was passed on to the next generation. For others, the turning point is becoming a parent “and realizing that you are now responsible for feeding children, before you’ve really figured how to take care of yourself,’’ she says.
While this may sound a little touchy-feely, her questions mirror the current trends in obesity research, a field that’s still trying to learn what makes some of us lean and others less so. One piece of good news is the recent study in The New England Journal of Medicine that found that it makes no difference which plan dieters follow (high-protein, low-fat, Atkins, or Ornish)—the old advice about expending more calories than you consume remains the key to losing weight. The bad news, as the study’s lead author, Dr. Frank M. Sacks from the Harvard School of Public Health, told The New York Times about the study’s 800 overweight participants: “We had some people losing 50 pounds and some people gaining 5 pounds. That’s what we don’t have a clue about.” That’s why researchers are looking at other factors beyond calories—examining how everything from the pace of our lives, plastics, and poor sleep patterns can have an impact on weight. They’re also looking at how stress (have you noticed a little of it in the last year?) can trigger a cascade of hormones that can do everything from amp up our appetites to slow down our metabolism.
Since we aren’t going to get all the answers in our time together, Gorman wants me to focus on two things research shows our bodies need and our brains crave—consistency and balance. Instead of hoovering up my kids’ leftover macaroni over the kitchen sink, Gorman wants me to join them at the table at regular intervals for real meals that include a careful and colorful balance of good food—lean protein, plenty of fruits and vegetables, whole grains, and healthy oils. (Exactly what we all learned in eighth-grade health class and ignored the second we hit the lunchroom.) For instance, Gorman recommends starting my day with one or two eggs, a couple slices of whole-grain toast, an orange, a glass of milk, and a little peanut butter.
“That seems like a lot of food,” I say, worried that if I eat more than my usual half pot of coffee and English muffin, I’ll put on weight.
“Let’s just start with breakfast and see how you feel,” says Gorman, who adds that giving my body what it really needs—rather than figuring out how to deprive it of more calories—is the first step to bringing my eating back into balance. “Just trust the process,” she says.
That’s the other thing you should know about registered dietitians—they’re not in this business to help you look hot in a bikini. While that might be the long-term result for some clients, Gorman’s first focus is addressing any symptoms that signal my eating could be out of whack and showing me how to make changes that will last a lifetime. Her passion for this approach is personal as well as professional—her own father died of heart disease in his 40s, and while genetics played a part in his condition, says Gorman, “I think that if he’d had some of these skills and he knew how to eat in a healthy way, he would have been with us for another 20 years.”
While she’s training me to take the long view, there are a couple of lessons I learn right away. After a week of eating that big breakfast, I notice that the 11 o’clock headache that used to inspire the morning’s second round of coffee disappears. Same with the incessant yawning that would start daily around 3 pm. After a month of eating more balanced meals, I’m astonished at how little I’d acknowledged how low-grade and run-down I’d been feeling before.
“Ding, ding, ding,” says Gorman, happy that I’ve made an essential connection between what I’ve eaten and how I feel.
There are other discoveries, too. When I have enough protein in the morning, I’m able to stay focused until dinnertime. When I have milk at every meal, I don’t feel the same frantic need to find a cookie to dunk in it. In a short time, meals at my house have become more colorful and experimental (kale! kiwi! quinoa!), and asking my sons to try the new foods on our table has come with some pleasant surprises. Who knew a 3-year-old would actually eat coconut-encrusted shrimp? And while I haven’t lost enough for that bikini, I’ve gained much more. Fortunately, all this fresh insight about how to eat right isn’t weighing me down.