William E. Jones, MD

     If you've been my patient for a while, you already know I'm a strong advocate of living a healthy lifestyle.    I've almost surely spent considerable time counseling you about the importance of sensible eating behavior coupled with regular aerobic and resistance exercise in order to stay fit, trim, and full of energy.    No doubt there are some of you (when I launch into one of my lifestyle/fitness coaching sessions) who pretend to listen politely but inwardly roll your eyes and sigh to yourself, "Ho-hum, here he goes again..."    Tough!   I'm between you and the exam room door; and I've got you cornered.   For now you're mine; and you have to at least pretend to listen, even if you have no intention of applying anything I say.   (SMILE)
     Someone once asked 80-year-old Colonel Harlen Sanders (KFC) why he kept right on working.    His answer was, "I'd rather wear out than rust out!"
     Wouldn't you?    Then get up from that computer and start sweating a little every day.    You can get started by ordering and applying some of the (mostly free) educational material I recommend at the bottom of this page.

ABOUT DIETS ( You won't hear me use that word )

You will never hear me talk to you about any kind of "diet" because I have an aversion to that word. The word "diet" connotes nothing but negatives to all of us. It implies that we are forcing ourselves to adhere to some sort of unpleasant, restrictive, and dull eating regimen that's going to mean major sacrifices and doing without the foods we love. Worst of all, it implies something temporary. "OK, I'm going on this diet for a month and lose 10 pounds." But there's also a second part of that thought, the part that's understood but left unspoken: "... and once I've lost the 10 pounds, I get to go back to doing what I was doing before I started the diet." WRONG!

I don't want my patients going on and off one "diet" after another, yo-yoing their weight around. Instead, I encourage you to begin thinking in terms of "Permanent Lifestyle Modification," small changes you can make in your eating and exercise behavior that you are able to visualize yourself doing for the rest of your life.


	When God created man, is this what He had in mind?

Here's an example. If I tell a patient with high cholesterol that he can never eat Blue Bell Ice Cream again, I lose credibility; because neither of us seriously believes that he will be able to abstain from Blue Bell forever. If I encourage him to set that sort of impossible goal for himself, we both know that he's going to fail. On the other hand, it's also possible to set him up for long-term success instead. If he understands that it's important for his health, the patient probably can visualize himself changing to non-fat frozen yogurt permanently as long as he is allowed to give himself permission to buy one pint of his favorite Blue Bell flavor every two weeks. See, that's something that really is do-able for the patient; and, more important, sustainable for the long run.

Good health does not result from a self-punishing lifestyle, it results from a pattern of making intelligent eating (and exercise) decisions most of the time while giving oneself permission to "cheat" or "goof off" once in a while.

Don't misunderstand, I will often give one of my patients a printed "diet" sheet (for cholesterol, diabetes, etc.) and speak to them at length about appropriate eating behavior; but I emphasize that they are to use the printed diet only as a broad guideline about which things to include and which to avoid. It's up to each person to decide what's going work for them in the long run, i.e., what they are willing to commit to themselves to do from now on. I'm always glad to offer as much guidance as the patient wants, but I'm also a realist who understands that each patient is going to end up living his own life exactly the way he wants to; and there's no way I'm ever going to be able to force him to do anything else. My job is to teach my patients what they should do and why, not to give orders (that they're not going to follow any way unless I teach them to want to).

EXERCISE IS VITAL!

Diets alone simply won't keep your weight down in the long run. If you don't exercise regularly there is NO WAY IN THE WORLD you're going to be able to keep the weight off! Period. If you want to become (and remain) fit, trim, and healthy, you must exercise regularly and intensely.

Let me explain. The only tissue in your body capable of burning fat molecules for fuel is muscle. You can't burn fat in your brain no matter how hard you think. You can't burn fat in your lungs or your spleen or your skin. The only place in your body where you can burn up fat for fuel is in muscle.

As we grow older, all of us have a tendency to lose muscle mass just because we're aging. On top of that, most of us have sedentary lifestyles involving little or no real muscle work. If I were to put your arm in a cast for six weeks, you wouldn't be a bit surprised that the muscles had shrunk from disuse when the cast came off. The muscles all over your body react to lack of exercise the same way, they shrink... more and more every year.

As our muscles shrink, we have less and less high-energy, calorie-burning, fat-burning mass; so if we're still eating the same number of calories, there's an increasing tendency to store those excess calories as fat. As we grow heavier and more out of shape, it gets harder and harder to get motivated to exercise; and this becomes a vicious downward spiral into obesity and lethargy.

Going on a strict diet to lose weight fast only makes the problem worse. Why? Because when we severely restrict our caloric intake, our body interprets that lack of food as a famine! The body says to itself, "Whoa! The food supply is pretty shakey right now. If I waste any calories I don't have to burn I may be in danger of starving to death." As the body switches into "survival mode" and turns down its metabolic fires to conserve power, we feel lethargic and lose whatever little interest we may have had in exercising.

But if we continue the strict diet, the body does more to "survive." It says to itself, "Hey, this really is a famine. I'd better get rid of some of my non-essential high-energy-burning tissue to conserve more calories." And what does the body break down to save calories... MUSCLE! So if we crash diet down 10 pounds over a few weeks, perhaps 8 of those pounds are fat; but the other two pounds are muscle mass, our precious fat-burning tissue!

Now that we've lost this much more or of our fat-burning mass, when we try to return to "normal" eating, there will be even more tendency to put on fat!

If the goal is to lose weight (fat) and keep it off, then obviously we must begin exercising and making "intelligent eating decisions" every single day, every meal. "Crash" dieting, as you can now understand, is counterproductive in the long run because every time we go through a "crash" cycle, we are simply setting ourselves up for yet more weight gain on the next up-cycle; since after each cycle we have less and less fat-burning muscle tissue. Lose 10 pounds, gain 12, lose 10 pounds, gain yet another 12, etc. as we slowly ratchet our weight upwards over the years with each loss-gain cycle.

To help you get a good start on a healthy lifestyle, establish some reasonable, achievable fitness goals, and also put structure into your fitness program I strongly recommend that you read the book "Body for Life" by Bill Phillips, an excellent fitness book that was #1 on the New York Times bestseller list for 12 weeks in 2001.

I also encourage you to purchase a video called "Body of Work" . It follows ten people through a 12-week period during which they adhere strictly to a regimen of proper eating and regular exercise. The video is highly motivating because as you see these peoples' bodies change you can't help thinking to yourself, "If all of them can do that in 12 weeks, I ought to be able to do something similar myself."

You can conveniently order both items from Amazon.com.

No one is going to give you a better-looking, healthier body; so if that's what you want, then stop procrastinating. Get to work and build your own. It's the most rewarding do-it-yourself project you'll ever undertake.