Walking for Health
From James Donahue’s Journal
Much of my life has been spent behind a desk. It should be no surprise that over the years I gained more weight than I should have been carrying. By the time I retired I was almost tipping the scales at 300 pounds and it was obvious that I needed to do something about it.
This was a period when we were holding midnight telephone conversations with Aaron that went on for hours at a time. It was during one of those conversations that Aaron told of getting jaw surgery to correct what he believed was an imperfection in his bite. It resulted in having his jaw wired closed for several weeks before he could open his mouth. During this time he said he lived on Ensure which he sipped through a straw. He said he discovered that if he sipped just a little of this drink every time he felt hunger he was satisfied and after the first day or two, never suffered from hunger. He also said he dropped a lot of weight.
Aaron suggested that I do a similar diet, only without my jaw wired shut. He said I also should drink at least eight full glasses of water every day. I decided to do this and loaded up on the many flavors of Ensure that could be found. Aaron’s theory was that by sipping Ensure constantly all day I fooled my body into thinking I was getting lots of food. In this way the starvation defense did not kick in and slow down my metabolism. This has been one of the problems dieters have had. After starving themselves for months and losing the weight they wanted to lose, once they began eating again, their slow metabolism was unable to handle the food and it got stored away as fat again. This is what happened to me after every diet I tried over the years. But Aaron’s Ensure diet plan worked. I dropped weight so fast it was within a week or two that I was buying smaller and smaller pant sizes. I dropped something like 60 pounds within a few months and kept this weight off.
As I drove around the area delivering books and giving talks, I carried a small ice chest containing my cans of Ensure so I could continue to sip my food as I needed it. I got quite creative during this period.
Every Sunday I rewarded myself. Doris and I would go to some nice restaurant and order a full course meal. We usually got perch or some kind of fish from the Great Lakes, with salad and vegetables. I never ordered anything with sugar. Then on Monday I was back on the Ensure diet again.
While this was going on, I started walking for exercise. It was Doris who suggested the walking. She went with me the first day or two, to encourage me. We went about a half mile and then returned. I saw the walking as a waste of my time since I considered myself pressed for time during every minute of my day. But after a few days of taking those walks I began looking forward to getting away from the grind. I started walking farther and farther, usually down one of the gravel roads reaching out from the four corners where we lived.
It was not long before I discovered trails leading through the state game areas surrounding our home. I never knew who else walked those trails, and some went on so far I never found the end of them. But I began exploring each one I found, sometimes walking three to four miles a day.
I was collecting a lot of great music and putting it all on cassette tape in those days. I bought a walkman cassette player and headset and listened to a vast assortment of my tapes as I walked. It became the highlight of my day.
There was one house not far down the road from where we lived that had a large and aggressive dog that looked so much like a wolf I wondered sometimes if it wasn’t this guy’s pet wolf. The owner often let the dog out to run loose, and when that happened, it sometimes challenged me. I remember one day having to stand still and stare it down, aggressively thinking of ways of killing it with my bare hands if it attacked. I discovered that mentally talking to animals really is an effective way of communication with wildlife. The day I did this, the dog backed down and let me pass.
When winter came the walks became more challenging. The snow packed roads were all right at first, especially after the snowplow passed. But there were ice storms that left everything so slippery the walks got dangerous. That was when Jennifer suggested I walk at the high school. She said there were other adults in Caro that were doing this during the winter. The school had been constructed with various add-ons over the years so that the hallway circled around and through various buildings. Getting from one end of the school to the other and across the gymnasium amounted to about a half mile. Thus four times through the building and back totaled two miles of walking. I began walking there every afternoon after school dismissed.
From James Donahue’s Journal
Much of my life has been spent behind a desk. It should be no surprise that over the years I gained more weight than I should have been carrying. By the time I retired I was almost tipping the scales at 300 pounds and it was obvious that I needed to do something about it.
This was a period when we were holding midnight telephone conversations with Aaron that went on for hours at a time. It was during one of those conversations that Aaron told of getting jaw surgery to correct what he believed was an imperfection in his bite. It resulted in having his jaw wired closed for several weeks before he could open his mouth. During this time he said he lived on Ensure which he sipped through a straw. He said he discovered that if he sipped just a little of this drink every time he felt hunger he was satisfied and after the first day or two, never suffered from hunger. He also said he dropped a lot of weight.
Aaron suggested that I do a similar diet, only without my jaw wired shut. He said I also should drink at least eight full glasses of water every day. I decided to do this and loaded up on the many flavors of Ensure that could be found. Aaron’s theory was that by sipping Ensure constantly all day I fooled my body into thinking I was getting lots of food. In this way the starvation defense did not kick in and slow down my metabolism. This has been one of the problems dieters have had. After starving themselves for months and losing the weight they wanted to lose, once they began eating again, their slow metabolism was unable to handle the food and it got stored away as fat again. This is what happened to me after every diet I tried over the years. But Aaron’s Ensure diet plan worked. I dropped weight so fast it was within a week or two that I was buying smaller and smaller pant sizes. I dropped something like 60 pounds within a few months and kept this weight off.
As I drove around the area delivering books and giving talks, I carried a small ice chest containing my cans of Ensure so I could continue to sip my food as I needed it. I got quite creative during this period.
Every Sunday I rewarded myself. Doris and I would go to some nice restaurant and order a full course meal. We usually got perch or some kind of fish from the Great Lakes, with salad and vegetables. I never ordered anything with sugar. Then on Monday I was back on the Ensure diet again.
While this was going on, I started walking for exercise. It was Doris who suggested the walking. She went with me the first day or two, to encourage me. We went about a half mile and then returned. I saw the walking as a waste of my time since I considered myself pressed for time during every minute of my day. But after a few days of taking those walks I began looking forward to getting away from the grind. I started walking farther and farther, usually down one of the gravel roads reaching out from the four corners where we lived.
It was not long before I discovered trails leading through the state game areas surrounding our home. I never knew who else walked those trails, and some went on so far I never found the end of them. But I began exploring each one I found, sometimes walking three to four miles a day.
I was collecting a lot of great music and putting it all on cassette tape in those days. I bought a walkman cassette player and headset and listened to a vast assortment of my tapes as I walked. It became the highlight of my day.
There was one house not far down the road from where we lived that had a large and aggressive dog that looked so much like a wolf I wondered sometimes if it wasn’t this guy’s pet wolf. The owner often let the dog out to run loose, and when that happened, it sometimes challenged me. I remember one day having to stand still and stare it down, aggressively thinking of ways of killing it with my bare hands if it attacked. I discovered that mentally talking to animals really is an effective way of communication with wildlife. The day I did this, the dog backed down and let me pass.
When winter came the walks became more challenging. The snow packed roads were all right at first, especially after the snowplow passed. But there were ice storms that left everything so slippery the walks got dangerous. That was when Jennifer suggested I walk at the high school. She said there were other adults in Caro that were doing this during the winter. The school had been constructed with various add-ons over the years so that the hallway circled around and through various buildings. Getting from one end of the school to the other and across the gymnasium amounted to about a half mile. Thus four times through the building and back totaled two miles of walking. I began walking there every afternoon after school dismissed.