Walking lightly on this earth ...

For several years my doctor has been nudging me to lose weight, and I have tried as best I could, but despite regular exercise, the weight has been inching upwards. At my annual physical exam this summer she repeated the usual lecture, and repeated the suggestion that I should look into the weight management program offered by a branch of the same multi-location medical service group that she works for. This time she actually put a brochure in my hand, which may have been what made me eventually sign up for an orientation session a couple of months later. Now I wish she had done that a couple of years ago, so I could have gotten started earlier.

They have several different program; I signed up for the most intensive, which they call the Decision-Free CORE Program. This is an excellent program, designed in multiple layers.

First, it is a medically supervised diet program. You eat nothing but the specially designed food they sell you, which include 5 different formulated protein shakes (Vanilla flavored whey protein, chocolate-flavored ditto, chicken soup flavored ditto, and soy based varieties of the first two) to be mixed with water. The soy based shakes turn into a pudding when prepared with half the normal amount of water. There is also a multigrain cereal package blended with dried cranberries, dried milk and whey protein that can be cooked in the microwave to create an oatmeal-like porridge for breakfast, and some miniature microwaveable dinner rations that allow for some semblance of eating a meal for lunch and dinner. The "standard" daily intake of 1 cereal, 3 shakes and 2 dinners adds up to around 1000 kcal per day, which means that if you weigh 100 kg (220 lbs) to begin with, you are 1500 kcal in deficit before you start exercising, so you are GUARANTEED to lose at least 3 pounds per week.

Second, it is packaged with the same kind of health education support group that you might find in programs such as Weight Watchers or Jenny Craig, but since this is operated by a medical clinic, the groups are led by certified health educators. The leader of my CORE class is a German behavioural psychologist who also free-lances as a life coach.

And finally, significantly overweight people like myself see a doctor in conjunction with the weekly class several times per month, and they draw blood samples for lab tests to make sure nobody's electrolyte balance gets too far out of alignment. (There is some concern about heart damage from potassium deficiency on an extreme diet like this.)

In the beginning I was worried that I would get really sick of the endless protein shakes, but one can add significant variety with non-caloric flavor additives. Tabasco pepper sauce on the oatmeal, for example. Or using aspartame-sweetened diet sodas instead of water in the shakes. There are 14 varieties of the packaged dinners, and ways to "doctor them up" with the chicken soup or by combining two in a single meal. One could also worry about being hungry all the time, but the program instructions are really simple on that point: If you are hungry, drink another shake or eat another packaged dinner. Yes, you will get more calories with more rations, but far less than if you "go out of the box" by giving in to a temptation to eat something that is outside the program. The one thing that we all crave - but can't find an approved solution for - is something crunchy. Regardless of former eating habits, we all wish we could eat vegetables, but that is NOT allowed in this program, until after we reach the goal weight and change to the maintenance program which will indeed  require us to eat a lot of vegetables every day.

After 7 weeks, I have lost close to 25 pounds (11.5 kg) and I hope to be able to ride the program all the way down to 70 lbs (32 kg) below my starting point. If all goes as planned, I should get there in 4 more months, in time for my daughter's wedding.