The Magnet 051: Flies, Moths, and Weight Loss
Advice from friends and readers
One of the best things about doing Boing Boing and my various newsletters (including The Magnet, Book Freak, and Recomendo) is getting email from friends and readers who generously share advice on better ways to get things done than the ways I have been doing them.
In recent weeks, I’ve written about how I use a Bug-A-Salt to kill flies, sticky traps to get rid of pantry moths, and intermittent fasting/keto to lose the weight I gained during the pandemic. It turns out my ways are not the best. My friend Charles Platt (who is writing an incredible autobiography called An Accidental Life in installments: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4, so far) shared his weight loss plan, Craig Landrum explained how he gets rid of annoying houseflies, and Lisa Wolf told me how she got rid of pantry moths, which are more annoying than houseflies. They gave me permission to publish their advice here.
Charles Platt’s Weight Loss Plan
I gained weight this year for the first time in my life. I discovered that I was 10 lbs up, and most of it was around my stomach.
The idea of buying new clothes was appalling to a cheap person like me. So, I consulted the "experts": people who have been on diets. They gave me complicated advice that just went on and on. I said, "Why don't I just eat two meals a day instead of three?" They didn't like the sound of that at all. "Starving yourself is a very bad idea," one said.
However, all the dieters were still struggling to lose weight. Whatever their systems were, they weren't working very well.
So, I started eating two meals a day. Was I losing weight after a week? Hard to tell. So, I started eating one meal a day. Ah, that did the trick! After another three weeks I had lost the 10 lbs and was back to normal.
So, I think it's as simple as that. Reduce caloric intake, lose weight, job done.
Of course there was a snag. I felt hungry all the time. A very strange sensation for me. I had to ignore it, like ignoring a headache. Going to sleep at night feeling hungry is a particularly strange feeling. But after a few days, I got used to it.
I think most people give in to the hunger, one way or another. Of course, you can't do that. No snacks of any kind. Absolutely none. And the one meal a day has to be a normal meal, no extras. Hunger has to be your friend.
That's it! That's the system!
Although I'm a dilettante in this area, I have thought about it a lot and compared notes with people who have a more serious and prolonged need to lose weight. The subject caught my interest during covid isolation.
I think attitude is important. Those I know who struggle endlessly with weight seem to feel like victims — of their metabolism, or of their desire for food. A victim mentality is never good. I'm a competitive person, so I decided that I would have the opposite orientation: I would enjoy the challenge of being hungry because it would make my victory more satisfying. The hungrier I got, the more I liked it. Like, "Go ahead! Make my day!" It was like ignoring muscle pain while lifting weights.
Of course, I only had to do it for a short time. And, I live alone, so there was no one in the same building cooking tempting food and saying, "Come on, just have just a taste!"
I fully understand that if someone needs to lose 150 lbs instead of 10 lbs, it may take most of a year, which is a long time in which to feel hungry. This encourages the thought: Maybe there's a way to go through this with less hunger. And so we have the various dieting strategies. Maybe some of them work; I don't know. I think as soon as you start to compromise, you're admitting defeat instead of remaining in control of the process.
There is also the ominous prospect of having to eat less for the rest of your life, to avoid regaining weight. But at this point feeling slightly hungry doesn't bother me anymore. I got used to it, in the same way I got used to aches and pains after exercising. For me, at 76, it's all part of the aging process. (My metabolism slowed noticeably after 70.) I'm feeling a bit hungry right now. But it doesn't matter.
Lastly, I think a very accurate scale is important, and you need to weigh yourself at exactly the same time each day. I bought an old-school doctor's-office Detecto scale, purely mechanical, using sliding weights. You can find them online for about $150 with some assembly required. After setting the zero adjustment, I think the scale is accurate to half an ounce, or even less.
Precise feedback is important as a motivator. So, I weighed myself each day wearing only underwear, before breakfast, immediately after a bowel movement and voiding my bladder. It was really helpful to see the weight on the scale edging toward the left, over a period of time. And I think a mechanical scale is more satisfying than a digital display. I don't believe that the linkage that pushes on a load cell in a bathroom scale is totally reliable. When my old-school scale told me I had lost eight ounces, I knew I could believe it.
My friends who struggle to lose weight get quite annoyed when I talk about this. "You don't know what it's like to be really overweight!" they complain. Well, that's true, because as soon as I noticed myself gaining, I decided that I wouldn't put up with it, because the idea of buying new clothes was unacceptable. Zero tolerance! That's the only option for an obsessive-compulsive person such as myself. — Charles Platt