Over the past month I have lost weight at a ridiculous pace. Over 30 pounds of fat have vacated the premises and I am feeling better than I have felt in years. In order to achieve this I have changed my diet, but I have not gone on a diet. I have not started exercising or joined a fitness club, but I get more exercise. Despite the fact that EMS professionals work in health care, most of us are far from healthy. Since the vast majority of my readers are EMS people that probably fit into this sub-optimal health category, I wanted to write this post for you.
But the reader should be advised that even though I am medically trained, I am not a dietician or a nutritionist. What I am about to tell you contains no dietary secrets. What I have done to lose this weight is not convenient, but it is well rooted in common sense. So what’s the secret? The most simple explanation is that I have tried to pretend that I live in Europe. Yes, you heard that right. Now I have not started wearing a beret, nor have I painted a scene of the Champs-Élysées in my living room wall. Nonetheless I have tried to shun the ‘Western Diet/Lifestyle’ for a more classically European one, and I have instantly become healthy.
If you are medically trained or follow diet trends, you may have heard of something called the French Paradox. This is the observation that confused researchers as to why the average French person weighs less and is healthier despite the fact that they eat foods that are higher in fat and seem to engage in a lot of activities that are bad for you. As is the norm, scientists tried to over simplify this by looking for a single reason that could explain it. At first they thought red wine consumption had something to do with it. And to be honest, that’s just bad science. The French are another culture, on another continent, living in a different ecosystem, and they have a very different way of life. Ignoring the thousands of differences between our cultures in an attempt to answer this extremely complicated question with one simple answer is quite frankly childish.
In walks Michael Pollan. He has been mentioned in this blog before in regards to food. And I have recently had the pleasure of hearing him speak in person at Bellarmine University as part of their Vision 20/20 lecture series. He spoke at length about the French Paradox and the perils of what he and other academics call the ‘Western Diet.’ Much of this information can be found in his book ‘In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto.’ Our diet is high in sugar, fat, salt, and heavily processed food which many times will contain all three of these ingredients. In addition to this terrible diet, our lives are increasingly sedentary. But despite this obvious train wreck of health, processed food manufacturers have been able to wield marketing campaigns that are cunningly successful in convincing uninformed consumers into thinking that giant servings of foods high in salt, fat, and sugar is actually healthy for a sedentary individual. To the uninformed person, the labels on a cereal box would have one thinking that Fruit Loops are some sort of health food. As evil companies like ConAgra have done their best to imbed the Western Diet into the fabric of our culture, diseases such as type II diabetes and obesity are increasing at alarming rates.
So what am I doing when I am pretending to be in Europe? I try and avoid processed food as much as possible and avoid using my car. I ride my bike everywhere.
It is important to note that the French Paradox is not quite limited to France. And the French Paradox is only a paradox because marketing campaigns have warped our sense of what is healthy. Almost every culture found on our planet will develop a diet of locally obtained foods that can maintain a healthy body. One of the examples raised in Pollan’s book is a study in which Aborigines who resided in cities and had become ill. As part of an experiment some of these Aborigines were returned to their native habitat and lost weight and all signs of illness in just a few weeks. All over the globe there are numerous examples of cultures eating food vastly different to the Western Diet and leading long and productive lives as thin people who do not contract any of the usual Western Diseases.
My own experience with this came when I had the pleasure of spending a semester in London in 1994. I had been out of high school for a few years, and had gained a few pounds. I was a ‘suburban sprawl’ kid who never walked anywhere. Public transportation was a mystery to me, and I found myself commuting everywhere. At one point I was living in Dallas, going to school in Arlington, and working in Ft. Worth. My entire life was spent driving from location to location so that I could sit and eat processed food. When I got to London though, everything changed. Suddenly I had no car. If I wanted to get to school I walked and used the subway or The Tube as they like to call it. If I wanted groceries I walked to the grocery store. If I wanted to do the laundry I walked to the laundry mat. If I wanted to have any social life whatsoever I walked to go meet someone. Meanwhile I was drinking like a fish, eating vast amounts of red meat, and discovered Cadbury chocolate of which I had a strict policy to consume everyday.
Like many Americans in their early 20’s, my body frame had ‘filled out’ and I had gained a few pounds. To combat this I had periods where I would engage in extreme diets or exercise in order to shed a few pounds. Having so tamed my weight, I would go right back to my previous lifestyle, confused about why the weight would come right back. But living in London for four months was different. I had all these plans to maintain some sort of exercise level by running laps in Hyde Park, and utilizing the student health club at the university. But I think I only went out jogging once or twice. I quickly realized that being late to class will build up a sweat faster than the most rigorous of cardiovascular exercise. Getting two sacks of groceries back from the store and up three flights of stairs would leave me breathless. And going to a laundry mat that was about a mile away and nowhere near a tube stop positively sucked. I quickly discovered that I walked an average of five to seven miles a day often with loads of 10 pounds or more.
I visited Paris while I was in Europe, and the setup is basically the same. Most people hoof it everywhere. And in this light, the French Paradox, is not really a paradox at all. Someone who walks at least five miles everyday carrying books, groceries and laundry is getting plenty of exercise. What did I do in between this exercise? I drank beer and cider. I smoked. I ate chocolate and red meat. And I lost about 15 pounds.
Like an idiot, when I got back to the states I resumed my old lifestyle again. Why walk when you can drive? Buses are for poor people. (For some reason, I never considered myself to be poor despite the fact that I lived from check to check as a college student in tiny apartments with multiple roommates. But hey, I was too good to ride the bus.) The next few years were comprised of slow but steady weight gain that was occasionally interrupted by bouts of diet and exercise. I was also an on-again / off-again vegetarian. Not eating meat helped tremendously. But at no time other than the time I spent in London did I eat whatever I wanted and managed to stay thin.
Fast forward to the present and the reader will find a middle aged Buckman who long ago gave up the sporadic bouts of diets and exercise. For the past few years I, like so many other Americans, have simply been too busy to bother with my health. Every once in a while I will join a health club and make a half hearted attempt at exercising. But I don’t think any of those New Year’s resolutions ever survived to see Spring.
To her credit, my wife has been bothering me about this for quite some time. She is a constant reminder that what I eat is crap. She is the one who kept recommending books by Pollan and others. She is the one who made me eat that damned soup instead of french fries. How dare she! But until recently I saw all these pleas as cute annoyances. I would often explain to friends and acquaintances that I loved my wife, but that she was in fact a crazed hippie.
But something snapped in me recently. I’m not sure which influence or source of disgust was the strongest. Perhaps it was the expense of constantly shopping for clothes for a bigger me. Maybe it was the fact that our car was about to be paid off and we were toying with the idea of becoming a one car family. Perhaps it was the price of gas. The fact that both of my jobs are now within 2.5 miles of my house may have had something to do with it. Maybe it was a combination of several things. But one day I was looking for something in the garage when an old bicycle caught my eye. I had purchased it a few years ago when I was going to U or L. My classes were only a couple of miles from my house, and parking was notoriously expensive and impossible to find. Even though I had this bike I still managed to buy space in a campus parking garage to avoid riding it. And there it sat, dusty with flat tires. My Schwinn Jaguar purchased at Target for less than $150 was calling out to me for some reason.
One day I took it to the gas station to inflate the tires. Then I took it home and proudly announced to my wife that I was going to ride it to work. She looked at me with that tolerant, but patronizingly enthusiastic expression that she often uses and said, “Great honey.” I’m not sure what she said under her breath immediately after that, but I didn’t care. I was now a bicyclist. I studied Google Maps and Street View for a few moments to figure out a route that would get me across the highway without getting me killed. And the next day I arrived at work, exhausted, with my satchel in a milk crate strapped to the back with zip ties.
The first few days were difficult. Running to the store to get milk was a chore. By car it would take ten minutes. Using a bicycle would take 30 and by the end of it I would be short of breath. But I made myself do it anyway. Little by little it got easier. A few weeks ago my wife actually talked me out of going to the store on my bike because she “needed that ingredient for dinner now, not 30 minutes from now.” A couple of days ago I took my bike to the store and afterwards my wife was surprised to learn that I hadn’t taken the car.
The secret to this is that in my mind, I am not exercising. Exercise is completely boring. Who wants to change clothes and drive to a gym? When you get there you have to find a place to put your bag. Then you get on some machine that has someone else’s sweat on it so that you can run in place and stare at the wall. Some of those machines are actually called treadmills. You know, like the things hamsters aimlessly run in. Afterwards you stink up your car on the drive home and rush to take a shower so you can stop all this work and actually do something you want to do.
Using a bike as transportation is not like that. When I’m riding my bike, I actually try to avoid exerting myself. Remember? I’m not really exercising. And I don’t want to be all sweaty when I get to my destination. I just want to get there quickly, with a minimum of fuss, by means other than a car. Much like walking to the grocery store in London, I wasn’t exercising. I was just getting groceries. When I got to my apartment on the third floor, I was tired, pissed off, out of breath, and I had a cigarette afterwards. I wasn’t exercising, but I was getting exercise. That’s the French Paradox.
So the other day I opened my garage and got my bike out. My neighbor was out in the yard and asked, “Going to get some exercise?”
“Nope,” I answered, “I’m on a beer run.”
“What?” asked my neighbor with his face all crinkled up.
Minutes later I returned with a twelve pack of Becks in my milk crate and lofted it proudly after dismounting. My neighbor laughed while I walked inside to have one. Exercise without really exercising. The Buckman Paradox.
Am I on a diet? No. I eat deserts. I drink beer and wine. But to be honest, I don’t eat many second helpings any more. Moderation seems to be key. I may put butter on my roll. But I’ll only have one roll. Well…two if they are really good. I’ll have meat. I’ll even eat fried chicken with the skin. But I will have a piece or two and quit. And every day I keep riding that bike, and the pounds are literally falling off of me.
Am I sweaty when I go to work? No. Why? Because I don’t pedal fast. I coast as much as I can. I’m not exercising. I’m just trying to get to work. When I lived in London, the first week I tried to drag my wash to the laundry mat was sheer hell. I remember stopping a couple of times to sit on the curb and have a smoke. By the end of my stay carrying a week’s worth of laundry was a mild annoyance and I would double time it back so I could change clothes and make it to the pub quicker.
I’m pretending that I’m in Europe. And I’m losing wait. And I feel great. And I’m not on a diet, and I’m not exercising.
There have been other consequences to my new European lifestyle. I actually know my neighborhood now. Truly know it. I say ‘hi’ to people. I wave to people who sit on their porches. I know that the sidewalk on the east side of Burnett is bumpier than on the west side. I have discovered little shops and convenience stores that I never knew existed. I even got a new computer. Yes. That’s right. I was pedaling along one day and found some large boxes outside at the Louisville Nature Center. The sign said that there was a drive to let people properly dispose of unwanted electronic items for free. I have a basement full of unused items from three decades of geekiness that my wife begs me to dispose of daily. So with no excuse not to I recycled seven monitors, four computers, a printer, and a scanner. (Yes…it’s that bad down in the basement, and yes I did this with the car instead of the bike.) But while I was dropping that off I noticed that there was a very recent looking Dell computer in the bin. I looked around to see if anyone was watching. (I don’t know why. If someone else was throwing it away, why can’t it be mine?) I snatched it up and put it in the trunk. I got it home and found that it had a bad hard drive. I went to my box o’ hard drives (yes it really is that bad in the basement) and quickly found one that would fit. A few clicks later I was on Dell’s website typing in the serial number and downloading drivers, and now I have a perfectly good computer. I have been driving by that place for years and never knew they had a drive to recycle electronics every two or three months. Now I do. My knowledge of my neighborhood is now encyclopedic. Right down to which houses have dogs that bark and which have thorny plants and low hanging limbs.
The strange thing is how many of my co-workers have tried to dissuade me from riding my bike. I am constantly hearing things like “you are going to get run over” or “you’ll get mugged” or “I heard about this guy who died while he was exercising…” Well I know of millions of Americans who die from obesity, heart disease, and type II diabetes. I know of millions of Americans who purchase health club memberships and stop going after a month. I know quite a few people who have bought an expensive light weight racing bike and all the spandex shorts and helmets to go with it. The bike stays in their garage and the spandex shorts are at the bottom of the drawer. Not long ago I rode my ugly bike to the store to get butter so that my wife could make cookies. I have been eating those cookies all week and have lost about a pound a day. The paradox has been explained. I now live in Europe. Shhhhh. I know its crap, but don’t tell me.
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