Let's Do Lunch: You'll Never Have to Diet Again

First Chapter

Let's Do Lunch

Nelson Books

Chapter One

It Might Be Your Story, Too!

As a little kid, my favorite thing to do was to go to Smitty's restaurant in La Porte, Indiana, and order a mouth-watering hamburger, deliciously greasy French fries, and an extra-thick chocolate "frosty malt." At every opportunity I ended up in a booth at Smitty's with one of my friends. I always felt a little mesmerized in anticipation of the food to come.

My parents knew about my fixation for this food, of course, and almost every Saturday night after Dad's gig (he had a band) they would wake me up by waving one of Smitty's burgers under my nose. I will remember as long as I live how terrific it was to wake up to this scent. This act of love endeared me to my mother and father forever.

Then came my downfall. To reward me for having brought home a good report card, my parents asked if there was anything special I would like. I thought about this for a while and decided I would like them to take me to Smitty's for "all I could eat." They agreed, and I proceeded to take in so many burgers, fries, and frosty malts that upon walking outside I upchucked all over the sidewalk. This was not what Mom and Dad had expected-nor had I-and looking back, it should have been a clue, but it wasn't.

A tradition started that night. Every time I did something good-such as make the basketball team, not miss any school, get up in the morning without being called a second time-I would ask my parents to take me to Smitty's to "pig out." It was what I wanted, and they consented. Food became a reward for me. This was the beginning of my addiction to food. Food brought pleasure. And if a little food brought a little pleasure, then more food brought more pleasure.

I ate like a horse and would assuredly have become as big as one if I hadn't been involved in athletics. Because of sports involvement, I kept my weight fairly stable and within bounds until I left college. After I married my wife, Anita, I stopped working out every day and became the proverbial couch potato. Unfortunately, my eating habits did not slow down. I gained weight by the week.

The fact that I was depressed because we were very poor didn't help matters. At my lowest moment, I remember Anita trying to cheer me up with the only thing that seemed to give me pleasure-besides her. She surprised me with two family-size pizzas she had purchased with the last money we had to our names-six valuable silver dollars that had been handed down to her, generation after generation. I cried, and she hugged me and stroked my hair and told me how much she loved me.

I rationalized my food addiction. I only ate when I was happy, sad, satisfied, frustrated, focused, confused, anxious, contented, encouraged, depressed, confident, afraid, or loving. The truth is I never ran out of reasons for eating. Within two years I had gained one hundred pounds.

I ate almost nonstop, from the time I got home from work until I went to bed. I ate everything you can imagine: hamburgers, hot dogs, tacos, nachos with cheese, French fries, milk shakes, sub sandwiches, fried chicken, fried fish, cheesecake, ice cream, chocolate bars, cashews-name any food that sounds good to the average person and I was a consumer of it!

I also ate throughout my workdays. I remember innumerable business luncheons when I actually told the waitress to serve me two full meals, one right after the other. I don't have to tell you how often my expense account was questioned.

Even Embarrassing Moments Didn't Keep Me from Stuffing My Face

Over the years, I paid a painful price for my compulsive overeating. Eating was fun, but being fat was not. I remember going to the "big and tall" clothing store and praying they had something in my size. I had a five-foot waist and a twenty-two-inch neck, and many times the shop simply didn't have anything in its inventory to fit me. I felt like a freak. When I flew first class and the stewardess had to bring me a seat belt extension, I was so embarrassed that I put my face in a magazine for the whole trip.

Then there were the times we went out to eat and everyone wanted to sit in a booth, but I just wouldn't fit. I could see the looks on the faces of the people around us as they snickered and whispered about my weight. I can't begin to tell you how bad I hurt when this happened. But I just couldn't help myself, I still sat down at a table and stuffed my big fat face.

It seems like yesterday that after I drove a golf cart, everyone in the clubhouse stared at the long black mark on my shirt caused by the steering wheel rubbing against my enormous belly. After I noticed the stares, I sat with my arms crossed over the mark and then sneaked out the back door. I went home feeling totally lost as to what to do about my problem.

I also remember my embarrassment at an amusement park, when everyone watched as I could not lock myself into the roller coaster and had to get up and leave. I went off by myself, unable to hold back the tears.

There was a day when I had to sit on one side of our friends' boat while everyone else sat on the other side. I didn't say a word as I anxiously awaited the end of the ride, and I never accepted an invitation like that again.

At a University of Minnesota wine-tasting party for the benefit of the Williams Scholarship Fund, I won the drawing for "your weight in wine." The master of ceremonies was stunned when he saw how much I weighed, but I was the one who was stunned when he announced to everyone, "The winner weighs 360 pounds!" I wanted to crawl under a table. I know my face turned beet red as I walked to the podium. That was the first time I had heard my weight broadcast to a roomful of people. The obvious now had a number attached to it, but that didn't keep the number from climbing higher.

Even when I least expected it, my weight caused me humiliation. My doctor-Neil Hoffman of Minneapolis, Minnesota-put me in the hospital for three days to give me a thorough physical. The very first evening as I was lying on my bed, I heard a loud, squeaky noise coming down the hall. Closer and closer it came to my room. Finally the door swung open as two nurses, both soaked in perspiration, wheeled in the hospital freight scale and asked me to please get on. I felt like a steer going to market. At that moment, I actually hated myself.

I lost all the weight I needed to lose, and I am still eating the way you taught me. I usually stay around 135 pounds, wear all the clothes I have wanted to wear, and I think I look pretty darn good. My eating has become such a habit that I forget sometimes that I'm actually doing Let's Do Lunch. It doesn't seem right if I have to eat dinner at dinner. I like it better at lunch, and am now teaching the young girl I work with how to eat. You made my life completely turn around, and I can't thank you enough.-S.S., Florida

It Wasn't That I Didn't Try to Get a Handle on Things ...

Although my eating was out of control, I desperately tried again and again to get a handle on it. I attempted so many diets that it almost became funny to me, so much so that I went around telling my friends I was going to write a book called How to Gain and Maintain, by R. T. Wilson, President of the Tons of Fun Weight Club. I told people I would write pearls of wisdom, such as, "You must have chocolate during sex, in order to make up for the calories being burned," and "Hamburgers are a must at the end of a gourmet evening, because you'll still be starving."

Humor was a mask for my heavy-heartedness.

I was a professional dieting failure. I just didn't have the discipline and willpower necessary to succeed. In recent years I've discovered that many people have tried some of the same things I tried:

I Measured and Weighed

For about two weeks, I followed a diet that involved measuring and weighing food, food exchanges, and a weekly weigh-in and meeting. The problem was that I just didn't feel like I got enough to eat. Even though this program undoubtedly works for a lot of people, it didn't work for me.

I Tried High Protein and Fat

I ate cheese, bacon, eggs, meat, butter, and so forth, and lost some weight over a few weeks. But even though it worked in the short run, I got sick of eating all the greasy food that was prescribed and not being able to eat other foods. So, I gradually started eating in my old way and ended up heavier than I was before.

I Tried a Liquid Diet

I drank powders mixed in water and learned about nutrition. Once again, even though this program undoubtedly works for a lot of people, it just didn't work for me. I lasted about three weeks, until at a University of Minnesota basketball game I told my wife I felt very weird, like I was in a twilight zone. She said, "Forget it. This diet might be causing more harm than it's worth." I was off and eating again.

I'm a 60-year-old woman who has struggled with weight for the last 25 years. I have been on every diet plan known to mankind, counted calories, journaled points, exercised until I was ready to drop, was always hungry, prayed, cried, and had lost hope. Your plan has been a Godsend to me. I have been eating as you suggest for 3 weeks and have lost 10 pounds. My blood pressure has dropped around 15 points. I'm not hungry. The plan has fit into my busy schedule very well. I don't even think about food until mealtime. -S. M., South Dakota

I Tried Acupuncture

I got to a point where I was desperate and willing to try just about anything. I went with our daughter's mother-in-law to an acupuncture specialist who stuck needles in our heads. This was supposed to cure her smoking problem and, of course, my weight problem. On our way home from the treatment, we looked at each other and burst out laughing. She lit up a cigarette and drove me to the doughnut shop.

I Tried the "Taste Only" Method

I decided it was only necessary to taste the foods I liked. So, without anyone knowing about it, I went to McDonald's and bought three Quarter Pounder burgers with cheese, two large orders of fries, two chocolate shakes, a cherry pie, and an apple pie. I then went into my bedroom and proceeded to chew the food but not swallow anything. That's right, I used an airline bag to deposit the food into after I had tasted it. The method didn't work, by the way. It lasted just that one meal.

Then Along Came a Very Good Reason to Lose Weight ...

After a string of failures, along came a very good reason to lose some weight. Our daughter, Tyra, set a wedding date, and nothing had ever motivated me more to lose weight. And nothing I had done before or have done since was more painful than losing the weight I lost in order to proudly walk her down the aisle. I agonizingly pushed myself away from the table for nine months and got down to 278 pounds. I was so proud of myself! But the day of the wedding, even as I was walking her down the aisle, all I could think about was pigging out at the reception.

Can you imagine not being able to fully enjoy your own daughter's wedding because your mind is preoccupied with a vision of foods you have felt deprived of? That night I ate and drank everything in sight. I was off and eating again, and I gained back all the weight I had lost-plus more.

A Pattern of Monday Morning "Fresh Starts" Kicked In

Then-play it again, Sam-I got sick of the way I looked, and almost every Monday I'd start dieting again. I tried desperately to duplicate what I had done in losing weight for Tyra's wedding. By Monday night, my mind was tormented with thoughts of food.

The Monday-morning resolve lasted sometimes a day, sometimes two or three days, and then I would offer Anita or our son, Ty, money to go get a family-size pizza, lots of tacos and nachos with cheese, cashews, chocolate covered peanuts, chips and dip, cake, ice cream, chocolate bars-you name it and I bribed a member of my family to get it for me.

After gorging myself until I couldn't eat anymore, I would say to my wife, "Throw all the rest of this stuff away because I'm starting my diet tomorrow." Starting a diet the next day, of course, never happened. Anita got smart and refused to throw away the food. Instead, she would hide it from me so that when I asked for it again she would already have it and wouldn't have to spend additional money.

Anita tells me today that the reason she always went to the store to get what I wanted was simply that even though it hurt her terribly, she couldn't stand for me to be unhappy.

In my later fat years, because of all my embarrassments and humiliations, I became a "closet eater." When eating out, I would eat just like everyone else, and when I got home I would satiate myself with everything fattening I could get my hands on.

I started a little over a year ago. I've almost lost 85 lbs. and 5 sizes so far. I look so good that nobody believes I still have 50 more pounds to lose. My dad has lost 35 and he still uses it as his maintenance diet. -G. S., Ohio

Why Am I Willing to Tell You All This?

Why am I willing to admit all of this to you? Because no matter where you are on the dieting treadmill-trying again and again to lose weight, but instead of losing, you are gaining and gaining weight-there's a good chance I've "been there, done that." I know the pain, the humiliation, the temptations, and all the tricks of the dieting life.

But-and this is a huge, huge, huge turnaround statement for me-I'm not fat today. I haven't been fat for years! What happened?

I came to a very simple decision. I cried out to my Father in heaven and asked for help, and He answered my prayer. He gave me a plan that worked for me. I have spent several pages telling you what did not work for me, all to lead up to this point where I can tell you that I found something that does work for me. And since I'm something of an expert on what does not work, I hope you will see the wisdom in my sharing with you what does.

I developed a dieting plan that allows me to eat until I'm full. allows me to eat foods we all love. allows me to eat whenever I'm hungry. does not require that I do anything I hate to do.

Which means there's no exercising. There are no pills to take, no shakes to down, no counting of carbs, calories, fat grams, or points. There are no math exercises-no converting grams to calories. There's no measuring or weighing food, and no portioning. There are no prescribed foods to buy, no chemicals to take, and no specific liquids to drink. There are no meetings to attend.

I lost 230 pounds by eating foods we all love until I was completely full and could not eat any more. And-to the best of my knowledge-I became the only formerly obese person in the world to have written a diet book and kept the weight off.

As I started losing weight, my wife couldn't believe I was losing while I was eating a great deal of food and not exercising. She actually thought there was something wrong with me. She thought I was physically sick. She eventually voiced her concern to me, but initially, she was so happy to see me happy that she said nothing.

For the First Time, I Loved the Side Effects of Weight Loss

Always in the past, I had hated the side effects of weight loss: I had no energy. I felt consumed with temptation to eat the wrong things. I was frustrated and depressed. This time, things were different. Almost immediately, I noticed major changes in my health-all of them positive.

My lower blood pressure number went from 90 and higher down to between 60 and 80. I got rid of my sleep apnea and snoring. My hips and feet stopped hurting. My acid indigestion left me. My face became thinner without any major sagging of the skin. My potassium level rose naturally. My skin stayed soft and smooth.

And most amazing to me, my stomach shrank, even though I was eating until I was completely full and couldn't eat any more. Because my stomach had shrunk, I couldn't eat as much as I did before. I developed what I believe is the only way to speed up the body's metabolism naturally-without exercising, pills, and chemicals. I also found that it didn't matter where I ate my food. I ate lots of meals while lying on my bed, on my side.

As I mentioned before, Anita continued to fear that I was physically sick.

After I had lost approximately 190 pounds without exercising, she finally concluded that I must have cancer-that a major illness was the reason for my weight loss. She insisted that I have a thorough physical exam. I went to our dear friend, Dr. Eli Farri of Fort Myers, Florida, and he pronounced that I was fine and sent me home to tell Anita that whatever I was doing, I should continue doing it.

(Continues...)

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Excerpted from Let's Do Lunch by ROGER TROY WILSON Copyright © 2007 by Roger Troy Wilson. Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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