More than one way to lose and keep off weight

I lost weight and have kept it off for 3 years by eating anything I want, including cookies, in moderation. The story below is from a Dallas paper in which a man lost 300 pounds and says that there should be no cheat days.

Well, what I do say is that you have to know yourself. If you have a cheat day, does it stop at that, or does it extend to a week. If that is the case, then of course you can't have a cheat day.

Dallas man loses 300 pounds and keeps it off

05:01 PM CST on Monday, November 29, 2010
By DARLA ATLAS / Special Contributor to The Dallas Morning News

Rick Salewske hasn't tasted ice cream in 10 years.



RON HEFLIN/Special Contributor
Rick Salewske has found daily exercise and an almost fervent stance are the keys to maintaining his size. Until October 2000, the treat had been his favorite source of comfort, and he often overindulged.

"I'd always have ice cream at night," says Salewske, 48. "Those Nutty Buddy bars – I'd have four of those. Or I'd go to Braum's, where they have the hot-fudge triple sundae. Sometimes I'd go to the store at midnight just to get my ice cream."

Back then, Salewske was a different person in mind and body. He weighed 538 pounds and was almost defiant about it: "I'd think, 'I'm a good person. I love my parents, I don't do drugs. I support myself. Why do I have to change?' "It took an intervention of sorts, followed by unwavering dedication, to lose 300 pounds, which he's kept off for eight years. While his weight has fluctuated by 30 or 40 pounds now and then, Salewske sees himself not only as a weight-loss success story, but a weight-maintenance winner as well.

For Salewske, a production scheduler at ClarkWestern Building Systems in Dallas, going back to his unhealthy self isn't an option.

"I can't believe there are people out there who lose 300 pounds and gain it right back," he says.

He'd be surprised. Maintaining a weight loss – be it 50 or 200 pounds – is a challenge many aren't up for, says Dr. Edward Livingston, director of the bariatric surgery program at UT-Southwestern Medical Center.

After all the work it takes to lose the pounds, why do people regain?

"One way it happens is that we sort of slide off the wagon slowly," Livingston says. "One cookie becomes two and then three, and then it's the whole bag. The other thing I've seen happen is that there's a life event, and the person just gives up and gets depressed."


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Salewske, who weighed 538 pounds 10 years ago, was almost defiant about it. They begin eating – which, unfortunately, helps for a moment.

"Food activates the same pleasure centers in your brain as some drugs do," he says.


'The Biggest Loser'

Even losing weight in the limelight doesn't guarantee keeping it off. At the end of every season of The Biggest Loser, victorious contestants are seen pumping their newly toned arms as confetti falls around them. Check back a year later, and several have ballooned back to their former sizes.

"It's strictly a willpower issue," Livingston says. "If you've got the willpower, you can do it."

Salewske has enough of that and then some, but he didn't in 1981, when he moved from Michigan to Dallas and ate out of loneliness. By the time he drove home for Christmas in 1999, his family was distraught by what he was doing to himself.

"My parents sat me down and told me, 'Your sisters were crying last night. They think you're going to die,' " he recalls.

By 2000, Salewske had a 66-inch waist and wore 6X shirts. He turned down a job back in Michigan, which he'd landed sight unseen, because of his weight.

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The CEO at his job in Texas was grateful he'd turned down the other position, but he was also worried about Salewske's health.

He said, 'Rick, I want you to work for me for the next 20 years. But if you don't lose the weight, you're not going to be around for 20 years. Go find a program, and we'll support you,' " he recalls.

That led Salewske to the Cooper Aerobics Center, which helped transform his eating and exercise habits. By 2003, he'd lost 300 pounds, was named Cooper's Man of the Year, appeared on The Oprah Winfrey Show and in People magazine, and married his wife, Kelley, with whom he now has two sons. Success was his.

That success could easily have been fleeting.

"I haven't been perfect, believe me," he says of the fluctuations. Earlier this year, for example, he'd started making late-night trips for fast food again, and he'd find himself snacking on the kids' potato chips.

"I got on the scale in March of this year and weighed 284 pounds, which was probably the heaviest I've been since I lost the 300 pounds," he says. "I go, 'Man, this has got to stop.' "

After quitting the junk food again, he dropped back to 245 pounds. As for exercise, Salewske works it in every day by going to the gym or jogging around his neighborhood.

Salewske takes an almost fervent stance on maintaining his size.

"In our lives, so many things can be taken away from us," he says. "We could lose our house, our jobs, money in the stock market. If you lose the weight and stay committed and feel good about yourself, nobody can ever take that away from you. Nobody's going to put that 300 pounds back on you."

Except, of course, the person who lost it in the first place. To formerly overweight folks like himself, Salewske has some not-so-fun maintenance advice.

"If we're the type of people that gain 50, 60, 100, 200, 300 pounds, that's who we are," he says. "It's kind of like being an alcoholic. You always have to watch it."


Ditch the falsehoods

Which means giving up the excuses or little mind games that lead to backsliding. Among them:

•It's OK to have a cookie here and there.

"I don't think so," Salewske says, "because before you know it, it's been a week, two weeks, and you've had a cookie every night. Now you have to break that habit again."

•Life is too short to deny yourself all of its pleasures.

"I've never known anyone who hasn't lost a lot of weight who isn't much happier," Livingston says.

"They feel better and they're more energetic. So it's a tradeoff."

•After the weight-loss goal is reached, it's fine to have a "cheat meal." Or a whole cheat day, even.

"If you believe you should have a cheat day, then you believe you need those bad foods to get through," Salewske says. "That's just like an alcoholic saying, 'Hey, I can go three months without drinking, but I deserve one day when I can drink!' "

Livingston agrees that "if you cheat once, it's hard to stop cheating. Your brain just seeks that holiday day."

•Once the weight is lost through a plan such as the Atkins Diet, it's fine to gradually go back to normal eating.

Livingston calls such diets – along with contests such as The Biggest Loser – unnatural programs for weight loss. "After a while, you get tired of it and regain the weight. You need to make a lifestyle change you can live with, and live with forever."

•Weight-loss surgery prevents people from putting the weight back on.

Wrong, Livingston says. "With bariatric surgery, lots of people are completely unmotivated and think surgery will fix the problem. They gain it back."

At the other end of the spectrum are weight-loss winners such as Salewske, who work at it every day.

"You get used to saying, 'You know what? Maybe I can go the rest of my life without ever eating a doughnut,' " he says. Or ice cream, even. Salewske is confident that Nutty Buddys and Dove bars are forever part of his past.

"Ice cream was really, really bad for me," he says, recalling the hold it had on him and his life. "I haven't had it, and I won't. And it's OK. I don't need it."