by Ryan C Christiansen
Columnist

If your ancestors settled in North Dakota as immigrants, chances are you come from Norwegian or German stock. And if you’re a good Norwegian or German, you continue to make and to enjoy what you consider to be traditional foods. And if you work in an office, you’re probably being asked to join in on a springtime weight-loss challenge, “Biggest Loser”-style.

I’m Norwegian-Danish-English-Swedish, in that order, and I grew up eating lots of goodies, including lefse, krumkake, rosettes, and many other delights. Potatoes, breads, and doughy sweet confections were abundant during my childhood, and I can still recall the perfect sweetness of my Great Aunt Ellen’s homemade cake donuts, which we ate straight from her deep freeze. And although my grandparents and their families have long since passed away, I can continue to purchase lefse at the local grocery store.

Three weeks ago, I entered into a weight-loss competition. Fed up with my lack of motivation, I put the call out on Facebook for someone to challenge me in a contest to see who could lose the most weight. Our finish line is May 25.

I needed to do something. Unfortunately, I still enjoy eating traditional foods, and foods like them, many of which are starch- or sugar-based. And while they taste great, they’re not so great for the waistline.

I’m proud to say that during the last three weeks, I’ve dropped eight pounds, and I’m hoping this time will be the time when I keep it off for good.

I’ve been at this weight loss gig for a long time. There have been times when I’ve dropped 20 lbs. or so at a stretch, and I once lost 100 lbs., and so you’d think I’d be a pro by now, a veritable know-it-all when it comes to losing weight.

Well, the fact of the matter is, until recently, I was a “know-too-much,” and by that I mean I’d bought into all of the messages that the food industry gives us about what’s healthy and what’s not. I was reading food labels and thinking that “Less Fat” and “Fat Free” would lead me to success on the scale. I believed the way to lose weight was to avoid eating fat, which also meant avoiding a lot of meat. I lived on pasta and other carbohydrates, and I grew to love tortilla chips. And despite the fact I was exercising regularly, I still gained weight.

But now I know better.

Why now? Well, the most important piece of knowledge came to me just over two years ago when I heard how a professor of nutrition at Kansas State University had lost 27 pounds by eating only junk food. This was an eye-opener for me, because it reminded me that at the most basic level, it’s not what you eat, but how much you eat calorie-wise that makes a difference in losing weight. You can eat whatever you want—Little Debbie snack cakes, French fries, Whoppers—and as long as you count your calories, you can reach not only a healthy weight, but you will exhibit healthy indicators all around (cholesterol, blood sugar, etc.) In fact, it’s how much you weigh that affects those numbers the most. Of course, I’m not taking this to mean that I should eat junk food to lose weight, but it liberated me from having to look at food labels for more than servings and calories.

Another important piece of knowledge came to me a few months ago when I read the beautifully illustrated book Food Rules: An Eater’s Manual by Michael Pollan. In this book, Pollan takes a practical approach to choosing what to eat. Instead of preaching about the benefits of veganism and how we shouldn’t eat things with faces, Pollan simply asks you to think about food in the same terms your grandparents or great-grandparents thought about food. Would they have bought all this crap we can buy in the middle aisles of the grocery store today? Sure, they made sweet confections, but they made them with real ingredients. Pollan’s book has led me to eat more natural and whole foods, which are generally more satisfying than processed foods, so now instead of just servings and calories, I look at ingredients, too.

The final important piece of knowledge has come to me over time, but a recent news story confirmed things for me: We now have scientists willing to say that sugar may be toxic for us. Of course, we slap our heads and say, “Duh!” when we think about our relatives who ate cakes, donuts, and cookies all of their lives and ended up fat and with diabetes. My Great Aunt Ellen, for example, the one who made those fabulous donuts, died from diabetes. And so did my grandfather. And my parents have diabetes. If you think about it, sugar literally makes us rust from the inside out, while antioxidants, which can be found in lots of fruits and vegetables, will help prevent you from rusting.

And so that’s where I’m at. I’m fat, but I’m losing weight, and I’m doing it by reading food labels for servings, calories, and ingredients. I try to eat natural and whole foods now, and I avoid eating too many carbohydrates. I continue to exercise, too, of course, because at 43, simply counting calories doesn’t do the trick. It’s harder, and trickier, to lose weight when you’re older.

But more than anything, I’m motivated, and I owe that to my friend Chris who agreed to the challenge. We berate one another on Facebook and we tease each other by text message, but it’s working, and I think that maybe guys, more than gals, can handle calling each other “fat” without making enemies.

It’s better than attending the other guy’s funeral.