Toronto Star
December 18, 2001
By MICHAEL DOJC

Same old: Diet, exercise and perseverance

Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius power and magic in it. --Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

When my doctor told me I should lose 10 pounds during a routine checkup, I pretended I didn't hear him. Like most guys, being a tad heavy really didn't bother me in the least. At 5'11, 176 pounds and with a 34-inch waist, I felt pretty comfortable in my own skin. So what if I was developing a bit of a beer gut and sprouting a pair of love handles. "What are these?!" questioned my slender girlfriend one day as she excitedly grabbed on to them. Just what separates the men from the boys, I shrugged. But everything changed when my svelte black clubbing pants wouldn't zip up. My goal was to shed 10 pounds off my frame in one month, just in time for the Christmas party season.

I already belonged to a health club although I went mostly to lounge around, watch a little Tai Bo, and glean stock tips from Bay Street's finest. Exercise was performed leisurely, if it was at all on the menu.

It was clear I needed professional help if this was going to work. A friend recommended me to Suzi Singer, a nutritional consultant who works out of the Columbus Centre and the co-author of a program called "The last 10lb" along with Dr. Ted Horowitz, a licensed psychotherapist who practises out of New York and Toronto.

WEEK 1 176.5 POUNDS

"You're a carb-oholic," Singer concludes after studying my diet journal, a record of my food intake for the preceding week. I'm really taken aback by her diagnosis. As an off-again, on-again pseudo-vegetarian do buffalo wings really count? I've always been under the impression that I was stuffing my tummy as healthfully as a Tibetan monk. Besides, I even cheated a little on the test, adding super veggies like collard greens, super broccoli, kale and bok choy to the mix just to impress.

Humbled, I began eating according to a five mini-meal plan suggested by Singer. Along with health food and hippie staples like brown rice, whole grains and tofu dishes, my diet consisted of salmon and sea bass, plenty of wholesome vegetables, and eight glasses of the ubiquitous diet beverage H[-2]0.

To help buff me up, Singer also put me on a b-complex, a multivitamin, and an essential fatty acids pill, although she stressed that the food choices were much more important. She also drafted a workout regimen for me as part of her weight management program, with heavy emphasis on cardio and a fair bit of pulling and lifting. Now the ball was in my court until our next meeting.

WEEK 2 172 POUNDS

Dieting is an exercise in selective deprivation, and for someone with regular cravings for hot fudge sundaes, midnight trips to McDonald's, and the occasional heaping plate of cheese-soaked nachos to go with the hockey game, this was going to take hard-nosed discipline.

"Don't confuse hunger with thirst," I remembered Singer saying as I walked by a giant billboard picturing a juicy hamburger. I had just completed my 13th consecutive day of following the regimen and was on my way home from the gym. It was a tough call to make but, instead of giving in to temptation, I bought a bottle of water and chugged it.

Singer was right. My diet wasn't causing the hunger. It was more psychological. My mind was conditioned to years of indulging cravings, a case of eating with my eyes, not my stomach.

"Mark Twain once said that habit can't be thrown out the window, but has to be coaxed down the stairs one step at a time," Horowitz remarked in our first conversation. It was his job to help me follow the routine. In a way, he acted as my mental cheerleader. More than telling me that I could lose the 10 pounds, he assured me that I would lose it.

WEEK 3 169 POUNDS

Results were starting to show: my belt had to be tightened a couple of extra notches, my upper abdominal muscles, previously obscured by a layer of fat, were starting to emerge, and my face was looking more angular than bloated.

Despite the physical changes, trips to the scale weren't the fist-pumping affairs they once were when I started working out. What if I had reached a plateau?

Just when my motivation was beginning to wane, I was scheduled for my first hypnotherapy session. Horowitz put me at ease, promising he wouldn't be making me cluck like a chicken. He began talking me into a mild hypnosis aimed at reaffirming my body-shaping goals. Instead of talking directly about carbohydrates, proteins and direct diet or exercise, he adopted a more goal-oriented approach.

"I don't really talk about weight loss. I talk about motivation and determining and what the roadblocks are ... I enable and mobilize the person to do it," he explained.

Following my hypnosis, I felt extremely alert, empowered, and eager to get back with the program.

WEEK 4 THE 10TH POUND

After working out practically every day for three weeks, my routine itself was becoming monotonous. The weight-training was still uplifting because I could see and feel my strength improving. On the cardio end, however, switching between a recumbent bike, treadmill, or other sweat-inducing machine to fulfil my 45-minute daily requirement was getting tedious.

I had just seen Sunil Kuruvilla's Fighting Words at the Factory Theatre, a play that tells the tragic story of scrawny Welsh boxing legend Johnny Owen, and came away with a case of square ring fever. On my next trip to the gym, I reinvigorated my workout with manic skipping, strutting footwork and jab-jab-cross combos on the punching bag.

The Rocky theme song blaring in my head kept my heart beating much faster than the tepid pace inspired by reading The New Yorker on the Stairmaster and, with two days to spare, I got off the scale with a smile on my face. I had accomplished my month-long mission and, as an added bonus, discovered I had a pretty mean left jab.