Living Large by Michael S. Berman

Author:Michael S. Berman
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Potter/Ten Speed/Harmony/Rodale
Published: 2006-05-14T04:00:00+00:00

My strongest first impression of Pritikin was of the tidy cluster of resuscitation equipment—defibrillators, oxygen tanks, and such—in the center of the exercise room. Treadmills, stationary bicycles, and other aerobics machines lined the walls. If you had a heart attack, stopped breathing, or turned blue, help was just a couple of steps away.

Pritikin was not a fat farm—in fact, most of my coresidents were of average weight or only slightly heavier. The program had been designed for people with various forms of heart disease or hypertension. Insofar as those problems tended to correlate with fatness, weight loss was a consideration, but a secondary one.

And this, I think, was good for me; it played against my tendency to become obsessed with numbers on a scale. It moved me toward a transition that I believe was an important one, to which I will be making reference throughout the balance of this book: toward thinking less about pounds and more about health; less about weight and more about well-being. I was beginning to understand that if I lived more wisely and more healthily, then weight loss would naturally follow. To put it a slightly different way: I was starting to think less about dieting and more about managing my fatness.

At the time of my entry physical, I weighed 332 pounds. My blood pressure was 155/110 and my cholesterol was 248. I was given a cardiac stress test at a quite low level of activity; the test needed to be cut short after six minutes because I was out of breath and my heart rate was getting dangerously high. The doctor, in a masterpiece of understatement, noted on my chart that “marked physical deconditioning is present.” The primary diagnosis was “morbid obesity,” with a secondary diagnosis of hypertension.

I began an eating regimen that was about as low fat as one could have—lots of vegetables and grains, very small amounts of fish and chicken, virtually no dairy, and no red meat whatsoever. I eased into an exercise program that consisted mainly of walking and lifting light weights. My waking hours were filled with classes—classes on low-fat cooking, stress reduction, and lifestyle changes.

At the end of two weeks, I had dropped 15 pounds. In the grand scheme of things, this was a tiny loss—less than 5 percent of my weight. Yet I already felt 100 percent better—and this was part of my realization that, at the end of the day, it was health, not pounds, that mattered. My stamina had improved substantially. My coloring was better. My cholesterol had already dropped below 200; my blood pressure was down to 128/88. This was real progress.

I went home with a serious commitment to both the diet and the exercise program. I began walking at least 30 minutes on most days, eventually building up to a point where I was walking three or four miles six days a week. One day I walked seven and a half miles to a friend’s house—which might have been fine if I hadn’t had to walk back home again.

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