This Diary is about how I lost over 120 pounds in 3 ½ years and the discoveries I’ve made along the way. I’ve broken this diary into three sections so readers can focus on what interests them. This section is specially dedicated to my fellow victims of obesity. The introductory section is “I Am a Former Fatty: The Epiphany” with a companion piece “I Am a Former Fatty: How Medicine Kept Me Fat.”
On the eve of the Holiday season that drives all obese people to despair (All that food! All that weight gain!), I want you to know that there really is hope. If you learn the approach to eating I did, you don’t have to pay anyone for the privilege of losing weight and the Holidays can again become an annual festival of love and plenty that poses no threat at all to your well-being.
First things first. This is not a depravation diet.
The point is to learn to eat differently for the rest of your life, in spite of the fact that Food Inc turns out deceptively labeled “food products” daily. This was not your fault; you’ve been exposed to faulty information from the day of your birth, and the malefactors of Food Inc work very hard to hook you and keep you there. Your job now is to ruthlessly remove their toxins from your diet. Your body will soon start to function more normally and talk to you again, and you will learn trust both hunger and fullness as accurate signals.
If you are suddenly gaining weight for no apparent reason, see your doctor and get tested for organic problems. If you have a metabolic disease other than obesity (thyroid, diabetes, etc.) you need to address that first. If you are like me, the weight gain occurred over decades and you’ve spent way more time in doctors’ offices than anyone should. You know exactly where you are.
Like most important life decisions, going down this road requires commitment to the goal of normalizing your body. This process will take several years to make you normal again and will guide your food choices for the rest of your life. You have to want this and be ready for change. If you aren’t ready yet, that’s understandable. I’ve been there. But know that when you are ready to try a new approach to food, you can do this, too.
The Knowledge
Food is not your enemy.
Certain substances, however, have toxic properties if you eat more of them than your body can immediately fully metabolize. Anyone can replicate this knowledge by manipulating their diet and watching the results. It does take time and repetition to fully get the picture.
The problem substances are, in descending order of toxic severity:
1. Alcohol;
2. Refined Sugar;
3. Wheat Flour, Potato Flour and Rice Flour;
4. Any refined carbohydrate from corn in any form;
5. Staple starchy vegetables in their natural form like corn, potatoes and rice.
The order basically reflects the severity of my response to these substances. Your severity scale may be different to some degree.
The last item on the list is more of a gray area; I tend to have trouble with potatoes and do better with rice—right up to the point I don’t. A protein, corn on the cob, and a nice salad makes an OK meal (even though, strictly speaking, the corn is a nutritional dud). The bigger problem with corn in the American diet is processing and chemical manipulation. Thank you Food Inc for coming up with that monstrosity.
Everything else is fair game. Some of you may have been led to believe that fruits are bad, especially bananas. Nothing could be further from the truth. Those fiber-loaded carbohydrates are exactly what you should eat. Others of you may have been led to believe that dieting successfully necessarily means “high protein.” Nonsense. You have total control; and when you can hear your body speak again, you’ll know what it wants and when it wants it. I was once led to believe nuts were unsafe food. Tell that to the dozens of pounds of nuts I’ve consumed since changing my diet.
One of the things that will happen is you will start to classify food in you own mind as “safe” or “unsafe.” Safe foods are the ones you can have at will 7 x 24; the unsafe foods are the ones you have to control. You will never be hungry. And when presented with food choices, you’ll know exactly how to handle it.
I mentioned in “I Am a Former Fatty: The Epiphany” that I’ve substituted oats for some of the wheat in my diet. I do this several ways. I buy whole grain oat bread for sandwich making; I’m not giving up sandwiches except to avoid overly large portions of bread. I have an oatmeal muffin every day; and we frequently have cooked oatmeal. Our rice cooker turns out to be a great device for cooking steel cut oats. If oats aren’t your bag, explore the other alternative grains. None of these have been hybridized to produce sugars and starches the way wheat, potatoes and rice have. There was an excellent op-ed in The New York Times in 2013 about hybridization of common staples and its nutritional effects. Be clear: Human manipulation of the food supply is the problem you are trying to fix.
One more thing: If you don’t already know, learn the basic principles of good cooking. One of the things you will learn is that flavor molecules are dissolved and made available to the palate and sinuses via three media: water, fat and alcohol. The role of fat in good cooking is irreplaceable; the thoughtless removal of fat from your diet results in less palatable and less satisfying food.
Food should be about real satisfaction. You were created to feel that.
The Method.
1. Step on the scale every day, preferably at the same time. I weight myself first thing in the morning, after I pee, before dressing and eating breakfast. To engage in this process means you must always know where you are. At first that number will seem daunting. But stay with it because soon that number will give you back your life.
2. Using my guide, or the severity guide you develop on your own (I heartily encourage self-discovery through experimentation), eliminate as many foods that contain those substances as you can. Start by being brutal about eliminating the bad stuff; if you stabilize but don’t lose, you haven’t purged your diet sufficiently yet. Especially in the first year you will need to make adjustments to your diet on a regular basis to get and keep the right mix.
This is very, very hard if you rely on manufactured food, even the “healthy” stuff. Food Inc’s version of healthy food—marked “healthy” or “lite” (there’s a reason it’s misspelled)—is a cruel joke if it contains the bad carbs. It always does.
You will have to become an expert label reader to the extent you continue to try to do so. Today’s labels are so wrong for what we need, it’s laughable—and Food Inc fights laws to make them more useful. Your problem is neither the overall calories, nor calories of fat (I could do a 5000 word diatribe on how stupid and useless the calorie is as a unit of measure). You are worrying about carbohydrates overall, and especially refined sugars and all carbohydrates that lack dietary fiber. Today’s labels give you Total Carbohydrates, with subcategories for Dietary Fiber and Sugars. The problem is, these labels are worthless unless you undertake to add up all the grams of various carbohydrates you are feeding yourself every day. But how many grams? To beat the obesity, your carbohydrate consumption number has to drop well below what’s considered ‘normal,’ and what you do eat should be 100% dietary fiber. The “recommended daily allowance” should be ignored. Exactly who those recommendations apply to is a mystery, because they sure as hell wouldn’t work for me.
As things stand, you cannot look at the label and instantly know if an industrial food product is acceptable for you or not—unless you take an “all or nothing” approach. With my method, I would have to reject all manufactured food of any kind that contains any carbohydrates.
Here is where I have had to make a compromise because I can’t get today’s catch where I live and two-day-old seafood does not work for me. I do buy industrial food to the extent of minimally processed frozen whole fish products (not industrial mashups like fish sticks). That tasty breading is all bad carbs, but fortunately not too much overall. But think for a minute, what if you have that, plus some rice, a salad and maybe a slice of bread? Carbohydrate overload you never intended.
Over time you’ll make compromises as noted above and below; that is an essential part of the process of changing your life. Otherwise, make up for missing food bulk with anything else. This is an important point: you should feel satisfied at the end of every meal. Fullness is good.
3. Cook everything else any way you want. You want a little hollandaise on your asparagus tonight? Get out the eggs, lemon and butter. You like gravy with your meats? Make the best gravy you know how. I avoid deep fat cooking because, frankly, I’m not at all sure its safe. The chemistry of what goes on in deep fat cooking is suspect. My advice: put deep fat cooking in the category of special treats to be enjoyed rarely.
4. Beware Hidden and Incidental Sugar! You need to be aware of where you use sugar incidentally, such as in coffee and tea; make whatever adjustments are necessary to reduce or eliminate the sugar (but note, you can find your happy mid point on this issue like I did -- see notes near the end of this section). If you drink sodas, they must be Sugar Free—please see notes about Juices and added sugar near the end of this section.
I got caught briefly by cough drops during a period a few years ago when I had a bad cold. I was coughing like crazy, and consuming cough drops to calm it. I stopped losing weight, and even reversed a little until I realized that the sugar load in a dozen cough drops consumed over a day was more than enough to reverse weight loss. I keep LOTS of sugar free drops on hand now! Moral of the story: always look for hidden sugar in something you didn’t think about when you can’t figure out why you are not losing weight.
5. All artificial and industrially modified fats and oils are banned from my household. If it isn’t they way nature made it, we don’t want it. Put a tiny bit of Crisco solid shortening on your tongue and see what happens—nothing. It’s solid at body temperature; nasty.
In this respect I advise paying attention to fat content in manufactured food. You are looking out for artificial and industrial fats; these are not safe.
I use olive oil and canola oil in most cooking. Eliminating these kinds of fats from your kitchen does nothing but pull you down the frustration path. I use butter (liquid at body temperature, by the way) as required by recipes, never in large quantities relative to the number of servings the recipe is intended to provide. I consider it an important flavoring fat in my arsenal just as my Grandparents did (though, overall, I use far less than they did; I really like olive oil). This is my choice; you should feel free to chose differently. I trim fatty meats well; but always leave some fat behind for the cooking process. I don’t otherwise worry about fats, nor do I consume much of them. These are all the hallmarks of good traditional cooking. Julia Child (my personal priestess of good food, who lived to a fine old age) would approve.
That’s it. No pills. No supplements. No Miracles. Just mostly real nutrition of the sort our bodies evolved to consume and use.
Here are some specific examples of how I put the rules to work:
• I haven’t quit eating hamburgers (home-cooked), but I omit the bun. This was one of the hardest things I had to give up. Now I find a whole cheeseburger with a bun is just too much. DO NOT eat the “burgers” at fast-food places. That isn’t meat you’re eating. It’s weaponized toxins with an additional bad carb payload. Special.
• I am an unapologetic meat eater (I deeply respect that others choose differently for moral or religious reasons. I’m sticking to Organic meats in hopes that these animals had some kind of decent life; but I have no illusions that the system works anything like the way I think it should, yet): beef, pork, lamb, chicken, turkey, fish are all welcome at the table, and in their many forms. I make a mean rack of BBQ ribs! We probably eat slightly more chicken and fish by choice than we do red meats.
• In the summer, I have 2 big salads a week (a chef salad with all the trimmings, and a chicken Caesar salad, usually made with leftovers from the last rotisseried whole chicken we made). In the winter, I have 1 dinner salad and a “soup night.” I usually make the soup from scratch.
• If it looks like I eat a lot of salad, I do—both for entrees and as a side. It’s satisfying and filling (and yes, I use Ranch dressing as often as I reach for the vinaigrette). It’s a convenient form for a low carbohydrate meal. Croutons are allowed if they are the only bad carb on the menu.
• I eat a lot of fruits and vegetables. I take my fruit fresh. For vegetables, I do both fresh and the store-generic frozen kind (minimally processed). I never buy prepared vegetable products. A jar of strawberry preserves is the only fruit ‘product’ we use.
• I severely limit bread (2 slices of whole grain bread per day, max), pasta (rarely), rice (occasionally), and potatoes (rarely).
• Chips, cookies, pretzels, crackers and similar industrial snack foods are not brought into the house. Just don’t let them in the door. You cannot lose weight with these things in your vicinity.
• We keep pizza- or taco- or pasta-night to once a month (or movies out night, with it’s must-have bag of buttered popcorn). A Chicago style deep-dish pizza has more filling than crust, making it a better choice nutritionally than a regular pizza; but since this is more of a treat, have what you want. No one is asking you to be a saint here. If you are like me, you’ll find that your ability to tolerate these occasional digressions improves as you lose weight. The key here is “occasional.” Your scale will be very honest with you when you over do it.
I always have plenty of fruit, vegetables and nuts around and graze freely. Snacking on the right things positively contributes to your well-being.
The hypoglycemic dietary pattern—breaking your meals down into smaller amounts consumed more frequently—may help some people through the early stages of the process when your body is getting used to the change in inputs. If your diet is very carb heavy now, you will likely perceive the change at first.
Holidays are easy. Stop worrying and enjoy the flavors of the season. Armed with the knowledge, you’ll know exactly which items should be sampled delicately and which should be consumed with vigor. When its over, be content and continue on.
Alcohol is problematic on many grounds. From the obesity perspective, the ease of metabolically converting the alcohol molecule to sugar makes it a weight control nightmare. But it is also true that modest alcohol consumption can be part of a stable, non-obese diet. My perspective is that the potency of the alcohol carbohydrate molecule is so great that it will easily blow up a weight loss program. To lose weight, give it up. If you have trouble with that, please seek help. To maintain, balance carefully along with everything else. At the Holiday dinner? If you like wine, drink it and be happy!
Fruit juices are often considered bad across the board. The issue here is added sugars and concentration. Read labels carefully and reject all juice products with added sugar in any form (watch out for “cane juice”). Reject products that are concentrated or made from concentrate—these are industrial products. Go for fruit purees and unaltered fruit juices. The Odwalla line works well for me, though it is expensive. Costco sometimes has some at great prices.
I often tell people that the secret to my success is that I can eat anything I want, I just choose to limit certain things. I suspect that each of us has a unique threshold for our tolerance of these problem substances, and when you know your limits you have gained power.
I also know that total elimination of problem carbs is impossible. I’ve mentioned one compromise already. I have two passions I cannot ignore: coffee and chocolate. Both require sugar (for me) to fully bring out the flavors and the whole experience. And, my now beloved morning oatmeal muffin contains sugar and other carbohydrates.
For me this works. Two teaspoons of sugar in each of two cups of coffee (no syrups or any other deviation from fine coffee) in the morning. My muffin actually contains quite a bit less sugar than a standard commercial product, and 50% of the mass of flours is oatmeal made from regular oats in my food processor. I started with organic whole grain cereals and only came to the muffin later (thank you Cook’s Illustrated!).
Most evenings we have some chocolate after dinner (I usually split a “2.5 serving” bar with my wife). For this I’ve switched to Organic chocolates and somewhat favor darker varieties because of their lower carbohydrate content. Organic milk chocolate is a wonderful thing, though, and it has quite a bit more chocolate and less sugar than “industrial” brands. Some of the flavor combinations the organics play with are exceptional: if you can get it, Green & Black’s Ginger is an extraordinary product.
I am free now to eat chocolate more regularly than I could before. So, you see you can not only learn to live with a change in your diet, you can thrive with it. Its not about deprivation; its about being fully informed, responding to that information and exploiting it to your advantage. Oh, and giving Food Inc a well-deserved kick in the pants by declining to send them any more money. Get your family and friends to join you in that too! And, if they work for Food Inc? Tell them to get another job.
The Catch
I’ll make no bones about it, eating this way is expensive. When it comes to fresh food, quality matters. Although the term is much abused, Organic produce has been an important part of the equation. Fresh fruits and vegetables, especially the Organic varieties, are expensive relative to other food choices. Quality fresh proteins are expensive, period.
We have chosen to give up other things to meet our higher food budget. I will never go back on that choice. I’m not wealthy, and making ends meet isn’t always easy. I so understand the dilemma poverty adds to the picture.
The Process
This is not a crash weight loss method, though for some it may seem that way at first, especially if you haven’t dieted recently. My first 20 pounds came off in a couple of months.
After the “low hanging fruit” is gone—the easy to lose and regain pounds we all have—the real process begins. If you do this correctly, at no time should you be eating less food than your body demands. Those demands are measured by hunger and subsequent satisfaction from eating. Your body will naturally demand less as you shed the obesity. The difference between what I needed to eat in the early months of this process, and what I eat today, is substantial.
Traditional dieting deprives the body of a broad range of nutritional inputs, forcing it to consume itself to survive. You might just as well cut tissue off with a knife because the effect is the same. For people prone to gout (that’s me!), this is a serious problem because body proteins are metabolized along with the fat, raising uric acid levels in the bloodstream and elevating the risk of gout attacks. [A note to doctors: this is not the same process as eating and digesting proteins as nutrition. Stop spreading old wive’s tales about gout and dietary protein.] As soon as your diet lapses back toward “normal,” the body responds to the “injury” and you regain the weight, fast. Nobody can stick to draconian depravation diets long enough to get and maintain the desired results; reversals are sudden and brutal.
From my point of view, the root problem with the traditional approach is that it doesn’t directly address and resolve the thing that caused obesity in the first place, and it leaves you in a broadly antagonistic relationship with your food. It therefore leaves you underinformed and vulnerable.
This process is different, unlike any form of dieting I’ve tried before, something I characterize as a subtle “mode shift” in the metabolism.
Don’t look for straight-line weight loss because you won’t get it. After the initial period, the loss rate slows down and your weight will gyrate within a range for periods of time before shifting down to a new range. You’ll even experience unexplained weight gains that vanish as suddenly as they appeared. My largest such gain was 6 pounds overnight; I didn’t revert to where I was before for several days. That sort of thing happened several times in the first 18 months, and has not happened since.
As I progressed, the weight ranges narrowed and become more like plateaus. I could go for weeks or even months in a narrow 3 pound range then, suddenly one day I’d drop below and keep going for 5, 6 or 7 pounds in just a few days. Then another range or plateau.
Sometimes you’ll get set back a bit. I had “minor” surgery a couple of years ago. During the recovery process I lost control over my diet; but even after regaining control, it took several months before weight loss resumed. I suspect that is actually what had to happen: that rebuilding from the injury of surgery took precedence for so long as necessary. This is one of the reasons that I don’t think you lose fat this way because the body needs it for energy; I think the body, under these conditions, exercises a more complex and not-at-all-understood resource management process. I’ve come to trust and accept the autonomic decisions my body makes now.
Drop 20% of your body mass and the fun part begins. I say fun, because through the long plateaus and pauses, you and your loved ones will observe your body reshape itself in ways you can detect from week to week. You will see that even when your weight isn’t changing, your body is up to something good. At one point, I went a couple of months without any significant loss in actual pounds, but my wife remarked my face had suddenly become markedly thinner. A mere 20% reduction in body mass has some pretty amazing effects. Pretty soon, you start to hear genuinely spontaneous comments like “You look wonderful!” from people. When you get to the point people start earnestly asking you how you did it, you will know you’ve made it to the other side.
One more thing. Much later in the process—I think it was after I hit the 25% loss mark—my blood pressure started showing marked declines, and a whole lot of pesky physical annoyances started to abate. The really important payoffs do come, but they take time and patience.
You didn’t become obese overnight, and you can’t shed it overnight either.
Throughout the whole process, sticking to the method day in and day out has reliably overcome all challenges. If you get thrown off one day, the next day you get right back on and continue. If you fall off too often, you’ll know it and you’ll know what you have to do. Your scale will never lie. It’s OK. Just by starting this and mostly sticking to it, you’ll bend the proverbial curve in your favor. Remember, I’m three and a half years into this now; the point where I knew with certainty I would never be that obese person again has flown by and is now just a marker receding into the past.
Exercise
I have other issues, unrelated to obesity, that ensure I will neither be a marathon runner nor a gym rat. So it goes. My beagle’s job—which he has always performed faithfully, bless his furry little heart—is to haul me out of the house and office for a brisk one-mile walk every day. That’s the only formal exercise I do.
Exercise, or lack thereof, is neither the cause of, nor the solution to, obesity. It is, however, essential for good cardiovascular health and does good things for your metabolic state. Do what you can, because even a little helps. Make it fun and worthwhile—time with friends, family and pets can be all you really need to get some exercise into your life.
As you can probably imagine by now, there is a certain ‘reality’ TV show that I will not name, that makes me cringe. I think the correct term for that show is “fatsploytation.”
Why does this work?
It’s in the independent academic research, but you should know by now there is very little of that. Food Inc does a great job of obfuscating and deluding. The problem is that nobody can make money off this and, in our world, that matters more than anything else. Conversely, eating my way thoroughly trashes the business model of Food Inc, so they will do anything to distract you.
The Atkins diet (a particularly extreme high protein, low carb diet) is known to work well at losing weight, but you just can’t live with it for both nutritional and subjective reasons. Its biggest problem is the lack of dietary fiber. Some find the protein levels too high, too. My method is targeted at the actual problem substances–all of which are human creations that our genetics never anticipated–and therefore can be nutritionally balanced and sustainable for a lifetime. I cannot imagine ever changing how I eat again.
Nutritional science is abysmal overall, but some recent research shows signs of breaking free of the stupid biases that hold it back. This study published in 2012 goes some distance to scientifically explaining actual physical effects I can demonstrate at will just by changing my diet. They reached a conclusion that’s pretty obvious to me:
“The results of our study challenge the notion that a calorie is a calorie from a metabolic perspective.”
Translation: It’s the chemistry, not the calories.
You may have heard chatter about “high glycemic” carbs. Well, that’s going in the right direction, except that its basis in the “glycemic” response to nutrients has been questioned.
There is other published research that more specifically outlines the toxicity of refined carbohydrates. A roundup of pertinent research, circa 2010, can be found in Carbs against Cardio: More Evidence that Refined Carbohydrates, Not Fats, Threaten the Heart. One particular study found :
“Although the subjects on the low-carb diet ate the most saturated fat, they ended up with the healthiest ratio of HDL to LDL cholesterol and lost twice as much weight as their low-fat-eating counterparts.”
There is reason to believe that refined carbohydrates not only convert to lipids of all kinds with alarming ease, they also interfere with your body’s basic nutritional management mechanisms. They may blunt or disable your sensation of fullness, causing unintentional over consumption;
worsening obesity seems to magnify that effect, contributing to obesity's apparent hopelessness. Food Inc knows about these properties and exploits them without mercy or qualm. Low Fat is now a Food Inc business line too.
I experience food fullness and satisfaction now to an extent I never did before. I serve myself less food naturally and, sometimes, I don’t finish a plate because I’m really full. I enjoy and celebrate food now more than ever. In the last six months I’ve gained additional sensitivity to dietary fat; I find myself responding to higher fat levels in particular meals (nothing extreme here, in any case) with the sense of fullness sooner than before. More evidence that obesity obstructs one’s ability to hear signals from the body.
It turns out that the body knows perfectly well its out of balance. Remove the chemical pressure causing the imbalance and your genes will do the rest. Your body will find its voice. Your life will be yours again.
Really. Give it a try.
Mon Nov 24, 2014 at 3:54 PM PT: A reader on the Epiphany diary raised a very important point: what if I don’t have time to cook, or I have to eat our frequently, or I just can’t deal with it for some reason?
It is absolutely true that I cook, and have done so all my life. But I too have time issues, so most meals are prepared within 30 min. My "cook's strategy" is to prepare things in larger quantities and manage microwavable leftovers. We have a separate small freezer chest just for this; storing leftovers pre-portioned so all we have to do is grab a couple of portions. For some kinds of entrée–stews come to mind here–you can seal it in a plastic pouch, and reheat in a hot water bath. Simple and quick. This works where you can find time, sometimes, to prepare a more complex entrée in quantity.
I understand that not everyone wants to do even that much (or, for practical reasons, cannot), so that means you have to adopt a specific prepared food/eating out strategy. All you have to do is get the carbs out, but otherwise eat as you like, but in this context that is harder.
Because you have less control over your “dietary environment,” if you will, to loose weight it will be necessary to be a lot stricter with the targeted items, so that means a few absolute NO’S are necessary for success:
The obvious: Crackers, Cookies, Cakes, Doughnuts, Pastries, SUGAR IN ANY FORM
Bread (you will always be served too much, and you can never eat just enough – a Subway roll is NOT acceptable, unless you are walking many miles every day like Jared did).
Pasta (ditto)
Potatoes (ditto)
Prepared Rice Dishes (ditto)
Organic whole grain cereal for breakfast with organic whole milk. Or a bagel or other no-sugar carbohydrate-based food. Butter, cream cheese, lox and fruit preserves (watch the sugar here) are all good. A piece or two of whole grain toast is fine. This is the meal where you allow the right carbohydrates in. Bacon and eggs is fine.
Steamed white rice is acceptable in an Asian meal; but eat an ASIAN portion, not an American portion.
Eat the proteins, dodging the embedded carbs (usually potatoes and pasta), and feast on the vegetables. Do salad bars with vigor: a few croutons are fine, and fatty dressings are fine. Have as much fruit for desert as you want; but if you were really strict all day, you can reward yourself with a little chocolate (35% cocoa minimum, solid only, NO FILLINGS!), a little ice cream or sorbet (go high end - less sugar).
Lunch where you prepare it quickly and take it with you can be some rolled up cold cuts (or a handy leftover, like cooked chicken), some cheese, pre-cut veggie sticks (most supermarkets have something like carrot sticks, etc.), a couple of pieces of fruit. Anything to drink EXCEPT something that has been concentrated or has added sugar. There are a lot more choices here than there used to be.
Lunch out is hell for dieting. The salad bar is usually the savior. The choice of restaurant is usually the key to success. Avoid restaurants whose primary product is carb based – pasta, noodles, and potatoes. That knocks out most chains unfortunately, but that was part of the whole problem to begin with, right? With the right restaurant, you should always find items that give you a protein and vegetables; specifically ask them to omit the obligatory carb add-on if they are prone to that. Today’s great restaurants (not necessarily expensive) will give you a choice. You can have that massive 1 lb Angus burger so long as you don’t touch the bun.
Carry healthy snack foods with you wherever you go. Nuts, dried fruits (natural only, please), apples, oranges, pears, etc. Avoid the well-meaning foods in the break room.