MISTAKE 7

By mustang6560 on 2/15/12

Larry "thinforlife" Jacobs is a top food and weight loss coach and he has worked with several prominent golfers including Fred Funk and Allen Doyle. A few weeks back, he contacted ClubSG because he wanted to share his tips with us on how to get the most of the 2012 golf season. So I thought, what the heck, let's hear him out. Over the next seven weeks, he'll share his seven tips to help you lose weight and get in shape. You can find more from Larry on his website thingolfer.com. Enjoy!

You can reach your Weight, Health and Fitness goals in the New Year, whether you want to lose weight, get fit, eat healthy or simply just feel better by avoiding the 7 biggest mistakes most golfers make when trying to lose weight and get into shape (read the first five mistakes here, here, here, here, here and here).

Mistake #7: "Ignoring or Being Unaware of the Power of Individual Food Sensitivities"

OK full disclosure here...I definitely have a built-in bias regarding Mistake #7.

Why?

1. Because discovering and correcting THIS mistake in the late 1970s created a miraculous turn-around in my own poor health and catapulted me into the field of Food, Bad Bellies and eventually Big Bellies.


2. Because this component for some folks threads the needle in more ways than I can cover in one brief article. For me it was like a string of hole-in-ones with a double eagle or two thrown in.

Here's my story:

I was living in Santa Monica, California in my mid 20s loving life. What's not to love? Great weather, the beach, year-round golf. Life was good. Then all of a sudden one night I had incapacitating belly pain that took me to the emergency room. (I won't go into all the gory details) but suffice to say they immediately ruled out appendicitis and shot me down with heavy pain meds.

I went to my Beverly Hills Internist who was a kind man and gave me a couple of prescriptions for gastrointestinal pain. They initially seemed to help a little and then BOOM, another incapacitating attack and back to the emergency room for more injections. I was referred to a Beverly Hills Gastroenterology specialist who ruled out a lot of diseases you would not want. However he could not figure out a cause and referred me to the UCLA Pain Clinic. The plan there was to try to mitigate and learn to live with the pain. Unfortunately this did not work well for me and there were many more emergency room visits.

It became clear to me that I had fallen through the cracks of what the medical community had to offer and (aside from the medicines and the emergency room) I was pretty much on my own. Fortunately someone told me of an M.D. in the San Fernando Valley that was somewhat of a food specialist and who may be able to help me.

After reading all the reports from the previous doctors he said, “This may be easier than you think. The doctors you have seen have ruled out most everything. But what did they ask you about what you are eating?” My answer was brief, “Nothing really,” I said. He just shook his head and muttered, “We have a 30-foot tube that starts at our tongue and runs out the other end and we fill it with food and drink every day and no one asked you much about your food intake? Don't you find that a little odd?” I agreed.

“Long story short,” he said, “you may be eating something that just doesn't agree with YOU. If that's true, we can try to identify it and get it out of your diet and that may be all there is to do.” He then sent me home with a list of common foods to TEMPORARILY eliminate for 2 weeks. Foods like nuts, seafood, dairy, wheat, pork, eggs, beef and a few others. To my amazement I had no issues during that period.

I returned to his office quite encouraged and surprised. He said, “OK now I want you to reintroduce and ‘test’ each and every one of these foods in a special way and keep good notes and come back in 3 or 4 weeks. Call me if anything comes up.” I reintroduce dairy, beef, seafood, bread and cereal with no problems. Then one day I was stricken with incapacitating belly pain and back at the emergency room getting shot down again.

Why? Because I had just tested eggs a couple of hours before and BOOM, that was it. Not surprising, I often had my breakfast at the Santa Monica Omelette Parlor on Main Street. Most food reactions are not like mine was. But this information turned my bleak health picture around and it inspired me to set out to learn all I could about food and food reactions and how to help others with “bad bellies” like me—and that's exactly what I did.

After doing that for several years it morphed into me helping people with Big Bellies. In 1983 I founded the Thin for Life Program and as they say, “the rest is history.”

Bottom Line:

Discovering foods that we may be sensitive to can be a major key to the puzzle. It sure was for me. As you know some people are violently allergic to shellfish, nuts, and other foods that can be life threatening and require an injection to save their lives. I'm not talking about this kind of reaction. I'm referring to finding a food that may cause you to continuously be hungry, over eat, feel tired, irritable, joint pain, headaches, a racing heartbeat, fuzzy thinking, or experience minor or major GI Distress like I used to suffer from. The list is too long to for this article, but I'm sure you get the idea. It's not just hives, a rash or sneezing that many typically experience.

It's a long story but an easy fix and on my program, because through a simple elimination and reintroduction process that I teach, you can learn with a high degree of accuracy what foods if any actually bother you or not, and that's great information for you to be able to rule in or out of the equation.

Combine that with the anti-inflammatory, lipid reducing, blood pressure and blood sugar stabilization approach to food, mixed with some simple, regular physical activity and it's amazing what you can accomplish with your weight and your health when you really buckle down and get serious.

Keep in mind, the real deal is...THIS is a LIFESTYLE CHANGE that you engineer for yourself, that works for you for the long term! It is NOT a sprint.

The simple answer is this. To succeed for the long term with your weight and your size and your health, you’ve got learn to be able to learn to coexist with real food and regular physical activity AND you have to carefully “think your way around the course” continuously.

Otherwise you could end up in a hazard, OB, and stuck in the FAT TRAP or worse.

As I often say, with just a few “high tech” tools like a knife, a fork, a pair of sneakers, and the right road map, and mindset—you’ll be amazed at what you can accomplish.

This was written by Larry Jacobs, a reader/follower/fellow ClubSGer and the opinions are 100% his and do not reflect those of ClubSG in anyway. You can find more from Larry on his website thingolfer.com. Enjoy! I'm sure he's ready for your feedback.


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