How I Lost 10 Pounds in 10 Days on the Climate Neutral Diet

Part I

While looking through old photos this past April, I found a shot of myself posing for the camera at 17 years old. I was in a fitness-crazed phase and shirtless - no doubt having just finished a set of pushups for the photo. I look a bit too eager to show off my defined six-pack, my chiseled arms, and my bronzed summer skin. I weighed about 160 pounds and felt young, omnipotent, and immortal. The model of human power!

Just after Earth Day this past year, nearly 15 years after the photo was taken, I stepped on the scale. Two months of traveling, airport meals, laptop work, and inactivity really showed - 182 pounds, my highest weight ever!

At 5' 10" this put me nearly 20 pounds over what HealthStatus.com recommends as my "ideal healthy weight" of 163 pounds and a full 10 pounds out of my ideal "range" between 139 and 173 pounds.

Now I was disappointed, but this was not life threatening news (yet), or a problem unique to me. As reported in a recent article, Waistlines continue to grow in U.S., in my adopted home state of Michigan, 61% of adults are overweight or obese, 24% of high-school students are overweight or at risk of becoming overweight, and 29% of low-income children between 2 and 5 years of age are overweight or at risk of becoming overweight.

Nationally, things aren't much better. 30% of U.S. adults 20 years of age and older--over 60 million people--are obese. The percentage of young people who are overweight has more than tripled since 1980, and 16% of 6-19 years (over 9 million young people) are considered overweight.

So, for probably the 100th time in my life, and in the face of a national and state crisis, I made up my mind to do something about it.

But, as usual, my timing was terrible! After a busy month of work, my wife and I were headed to Paris for ten days. Paris is known best for its romance, but I remember it more as the land of butter, cheese, fatty meat dishes, chocolate, crepes, and tempting "grande bieres" (big beers) on every corner. Factoring in the flight out and back (two solid days of inactivity and airline meals) I knew I was in trouble.

In an effort to promote physical activity, I made sure to pack our roller-blades, sneakers, and gym shorts. That's right, we were headed to the romantic City of Lights, and I was thinking about squeezing in an hour of cardio a day. In the words of France's famous cartoon character Obelix, "Ils sont fous, ces Americans!" (Americans are crazy!)

Unfortunately (or so I thought) the roller blades hardly left the bag and my high tops sat in our rented apartment collecting dust. There was just too much fun stuff to do. And after 10 days with no time at the gym, no jogging, and no swimming, I returned from the trip very worried.

Back in the comfort and privacy of my own bathroom, I dropped all excess weight, stripped down, mounted the scale, and blinked through squinting eyes, preparing for the worst......and couldn't believe what I saw.

173 pounds! 10 pounds lost in 10 days. In my ideal range for the first time in years!

So how did I do it? What was different about my logic defying, pound-a-day, 10 days overseas? I didn't know it at the time, but I was on the new, not-sold-in-stores, carb- loaded, Atkins-defying, human-powered, Climate Neutral Diet, and it worked wonders.

Becoming a True Stairmaster

To begin with, the Paris Metro is a wonder of modern transportation. 134 miles of multi-layered track crossing no less than 87 times with 380 stations form the veins of Paris' underground body. My wife and I traveled almost exclusively on the Metro, from one end of the city to the other.

Getting across town can often mean switching metro lines - and going up or down 3-4 floors, 2-3 times - for a total of 6-12 floors each way per Metro trip. As we sauntered (when we were on time) and sprinted (when we were late) from connection to connection, we were unwittingly climbing up to 100 floors a day. This translated into 300-500 calories a day and a full 3,000 - 5,000 calories by the end of the ten day trip.

Touriste de Grande Vitesse (TGV): Figuring out The Final Mile

Despite the efficiency of local, suburban, and national train travel in France, once my wife and I reached our final metro, RER, or high-speed TGV stop, we were presented with the "final mile" problem, which is the Achilles heel of all mass transit systems.

Simply put, a railway can't profitably stop every mile, and even if it did, it would not be a local any of us would want to ride. So, when you get to the end of the line, you need to figure out how to tackle that "final mile" to complete your trip.

In the US, "the last mile" often becomes the "last dozen miles" and tips the balance in favor of driving. On a recent East Coast work trip, for example, based near Boston, I passed on Amtrak's Acela down the Northeastern Corridor in favor of my mom's Civic hybrid. Over the course of 6 days, I drove to Meriden, NH, Providence/Bristol, RI, and New Haven (twice). I felt a bit guilty, but Yale is not at the New Haven train stop, Roger Williams University is 20 miles from Providence, and Meriden, NH is 66 miles from Concord. Smaller local rails could fix the problem, but even the nation's best passenger rail service doesn't offer a nearly broad enough range of services for a work trip.

So 6 large ice-coffees (with a little sugar and cream), 800 road miles, and 24 hours of inactivity later, I had finished my car-bound Odyssey. On a fitness level, I had hardly burnt a single calorie and was 3 pounds heavier despite eating little, if any, food. Even worse, I was hypocritically telling folks at my stops to make their Campuses Climate Neutral, while pumping an estimated quarter ton of CO2 into the atmosphere.

If all Americans just followed my lead...they would collectively add a baffling 75 million tons of CO2 to the atmosphere each week, or 3.2 billion tons per year! Not so hot, Mr. Tree Hugger.

But in Paris and France, with a much better local and suburban rail network, my wife and I could actually speed-walk the short mile or two from station to site. In the city, we stopped for coffees, beers, and snacks - and just kept walking. We took the comfortable, efficient, and quaint RER out to Versailles and Chantilly - and walked through beautiful gardens and vast palaces. We people watched, took photos, and saw the sights. And after a while, it didn't seem so inconvenient. I got used to walking and was actually happy to be free of the cost, time-commitment, and frustration of my car.

And at an unnoticed, dare I say enjoyable, 5 miles a day, we logged some 50 miles - nearly two Marathons - burning another estimated 5000 calories in 10 days.

All You Can Eat

Best of all, with our "human engines" burning a solid kilocalorie a day, our dietary choices were limitless. On the average day my wife and I: Split a cheese crepe (think of submarine-size, buttered, semi-sweet pancakes wrapped around gruyere cheese); Ate a full lunch; Snacked on cheese, bread, and vegetables; Went out to a nice dinner; and Finished off the day with a chocolate crepe and a beer or two. These hundreds of calories were now our friends, not our enemies, providing fuel for our daily treks.

So, treating food as a friend, and relying on our human power, we followed the "Climate Neutral Diet" through Paris, ate like pigs, dropped 10 pounds in 10 days, and came back more fit than ever. Just imagine what the Climate Neutral Diet could do for you?!?!

Coming Soon: Part II: Back to Counting Kilocalories in the Motor City