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What The Doctor Ordered – By Rabbi Pinchas Winston
I never really argue with my doctor, who happens to also be a close personal friend. I have great respect for him as a person and as a medical practitioner. I trust him implicitly. But this was the second time we argued about this one topic.
Actually, I had gone to him because of back problems. But before we got to the real reason for my visit, he checked my record on his computer and casually asked me if I had kept my weight off. After years of trying without much success, I had finally lost about twenty kilos over about six months of serious dieting and exercise.
“Most of it,” I answered a little sheepishly. I was still exercising, but though I was watching what I ate, it was usually on its way into my mouth.
“What do you think the greatest obstacle is to successful dieting?” my doctor asked me.
I thought about it for a moment, and recalling what worked for me finally, I said, “Not controlling what you eat enough, and not exercising enough.”
“Nope,” he said. “It’s what they have been saying for the longest time now, but I just didn’t really appreciate it until now. Patience.”
I immediately agreed because I remembered telling my wife the same thing once I saw how, if you stick with it long enough, you begin to see progress, and that is encouraging. We all want to lose weight quickly, but it doesn’t usually happen short of a stomach operation and a strict diet after it.
People are desperate enough to want a silver bullet when it comes to losing weight that they have made a lot of diet pill pushing billionaires…even after the law suits. They just don’t have the patience to do it the sure-fire over time process of little-by-little.
“Cutting out food is just too difficult for most people, so it can’t last for very long,” the doc said. “You have to be able to eat what you want. You just have to exercise portion control…”
“But that is so very hard to do,” I jumped in. “Torah gives us so many occasions to eat, starting with Shabbos and Yom Tov. There are the kiddishum and smachos, like a wedding or a bris where all kinds of delicious and fattening food are served!”
Once upon a time, we didn’t have much money, everything was home-baked, and almost always in limited supply. Today there is an abundance, b”H, and even people who can’t afford it still tend to put out quite a spread. Even people who did not suffer lack in Europe serve and eat as if that might happen again.
How many times have I heard guests on Shabbos say, “I am SO stuffed!” and then eat more. The Rambam would not approve. Doctors do not approve. Our bodies do not approve, evident by all the health issues now plaguing the Torah world as well.
I am at the age now when I am seeing children whom I knew since they were in Cheder getting married. And I am seeing young men who barely gained a pound for over ten years all of a sudden become overweight with their first two years of marriage!
What’s going on? Did their mothers not serve them much food when they were growing up. Did they starve at yeshivah and never go out for pizza or a burger?
I know what changed for me. We started having guests for Shabbos. Afraid to not have enough food for guests to eat to their hearts’ content, we cooked more than we needed. Once we cooked “just enough” on my insistence, and while I felt great about it, my wife was anxious the whole meal and told me after, “Never again!”
Enter the leftovers. It would be years until we had kids old enough to eat them, so I did. I grew up in a home that always had enough, thank God, emphasized not over-eating, and would not throw out leftovers until they could go on their own.
It did not help that I love my wife’s cooking, or that I was used to eating what I wanted without gaining weight years earlier. Now I ate what I wanted and more, and by age 30, it was becoming embarrassingly evident. By 50, it was overwhelmingly evident, and I began trying to lose it by dieting and exercise. I never lost enough to make me feel successful at it.
In fact, I was scheduled to have an operation to reduce the size of my stomach, as it was becoming the thing to do. A few people had quietly done it, disappeared for a couple of weeks, only to show up significantly thinner and happier.
I had gone through all the preparatory procedures, the last one being dieting to get used to a smaller appetite. I cut back on my intake and increased my exercise and lost some weight. Surprised and encouraged, I canceled the operation and decided to do it the old-fashioned (and safer) way: willpower.
It did not work as well as I had thought at first, and I began regretting not having the operation, especially when a larger stomach created problems for my back. I always felt like a thin person trapped inside an overweight body, and not a day went by that I was not uncomfortable about it.
Finally, about two years after a burst of inspiration, I decided to diet like I never had before. The first and hardest part was admitting that as much as I had thought I was controlling my eating, I was not. That’s why the exercise wasn’t working as well as it should have.
“So that’s why the dietician (and my mother who was always on my case about my weight and health) said keep track of what you are eating,” I realized to myself. It keeps you on top of it and honest about it.
So I bought an app that allowed me to do exactly that on my computer, and sure enough I became more conscious about what I was eating and how much. That’s when I truly realized how much I had been fooling myself about watching what I ate all through the years of watching what I was eating.
So I also started making sure that healthy food I liked, carrots, celery, etc., were ready to be eaten when I wanted them. As simple as it is to peel a carrot, it become impossible when you’re not in the mood. I made healthy soups that lasted days so I could just heat and eat.
In fact, people would probably eat a lot less junk food if it wasn’t so ready to eat. Slicing a cake is no big deal. Ripping open a bag of chips is even fun. No war is ever won with last-minute preparations. They’re won with forethought and extreme readiness for anything.
My doctor, however, insisted that it had nothing to do with how much my wife cooked. He agrees that it certainly increases the temptation, and like me, said that you don’t go to a feast on an empty stomach. It’s amazing how much less tempted you are to fress when your stomach is content.
But he is also adamant that a person can withstand any food test if they have the resolve, the consciousness necessary to know what you should and how much. My father, a”h, who once lost 60 plus pounds and kept it off his whole life, told me the exact same thing for years, and was a great example of this truth.
He would have agreed with my doctor friend. My father never denied himself any food he wanted. He would just make sure he only had enough to experience the pleasure without gaining weight. As my doctor says, complete denial of the foods you love only results in rebound down the dieting road.
By the time we got to the end of our discussion for that day (other patients were waiting and we still hadn’t dealt with my back), we realized that we were really on the same page. Patience is key to successful dieting. Portion control is essential for losing weight and maintaining the loss without too much discomfort.
And both depend upon a consciousness that most people, at least in the Torah world, have never been taught or know is important.
“Someone should warn newlywed husbands about how to eat in the early years of marriage,” I said, and he agreed. Just as the Torah world learned the importance about exercising and more and more people are getting it, they also need to know how to balance out the Torah emphasis on eating and good eating habits.
As I made my way home, it occurred to me that we could collaborate on such a consciousness-raising book. Aside from the excitement of working with such a wonderful person and doctor, I realized what a mitzvah it would be.
The first thing I did when I got home was suggest the idea to the doctor. The book that follows is what happened next.
