plement a frozen meal with a fresh salad,
and you’ll do fine, in a pinch. Order out for
barbecued chicken and some cole slaw
once in a while, or some Chinese food, to
keep things interesting and healthy; it
might take a bigger bite out of your budget
than you’d like, but if you're going to cut
corners in the kitchen, you’re going to have
to pay for it someplace else.
Unlike Dr. Waylen, Harvard's Dr Stare
isn’t much of a calorie counter, but he does
admit that knowing the caloric values of
foods does have its value. “I think one
should understand that those foods which
provide the most calories are those which
contain generous amounts of fats," he
says. "Also, most people don’t realize it but
alcohol, next to fat, is the most potent
source of calories. Now, I like to have a
cocktail in the evening before dinner, but
you have to ask yourself, do you want a
cocktail or two, or do you want dessert?
Take your choice." If you ask Dr. Stare, the
worst eating habit you can have is to rush
yourself, particularly through breakfast.
Neither Dr. Waylen nor Dr. Stare puts
much weight on the countless "fad” diets
now on the scene, particularly those which
claim that when you eat is as important as
what you’re actually eating. "I think that's
mostly a lot of bunk,” Dr. Stare argues.
"Our eating patterns are designed pri
marily by the way we were brought up, and
by our jobs. It really doesn't make much dif
ference when you eat, because you figure
the food intake, the caloric intake, over a
period of time, let’s say 24 hours." If possi
ble, though, you should try to put yourself
on something at least resembling an eating
schedule; it doesn't matter when you eat
lunch, but it's a good idea to try and eat it at
the same time every day, allowing your
digestive system to adjust to a routine.
CASE IN POINT
William, 28, was until recently a mid
western attorney with a lot of bad habits to
break. Now he's just a midwestern attorney
who's decided to restore order and balance
to his life and lifestyle
The bad habits, most of them anyway,
started in law school. He lived on campus
then, in a single dormitory room with a small
kitchenette; he thought he'd save board
money and take his meals in. First mistake
An avid soccer and tennis player as an
undergraduate, William also decided to
leave his athletic gear back home, thinking
he'd have no time to mix work with play
Second mistake.
“I had no idea what I was getting into,"
William recalls now. “I'd kept hearing about
how people lived their lives during first year
of law school, about how it was so hard and
everything, and I didn't know what to ex
pect. I got there not expecting anything,
really, which is why I didn't want to tie myself
down to a meal plan, or to an intramural
league. I wanted to leave myself open, you
know, but then I /ust sort of got swept up in
things. The time just flew by so fast, and I
didn't pay any attention to myself, any atten
tion beyond how I was doing in my classes."
What William got swept up in was three
years of not eating regularly, of relative
physical inactivity, of sleepless nights. He
did well in law school, well enough to land a
$45,000 job with an Illinois firm, but he was
running himself ragged. In retrospect, he
feels he was a physical and emotional
wreck "I didn't know what was happening
to me at the time," he confesses. "I mean, I'd
look around and I was no different than
almost everyone else in my program I felt
lousy, sure, and I was tired all of the time, but
so was everybody else. Come on, this was
law school, it wasn't supposed to be easy."
It wasn't until he graduated and started
working that William realized something
was wrong "In school it was like I was
treading water," he says, "you know, /ust
struggling to keep up, and in the back of my
mind I told myself I’d get out there, I'd start
working, and things would be different,
things would be better But then I started
working, and things didn't get any better If
anything, they got worse "
William moved into his own apartment,
but it took him nearly a year to set up his kit
chen with plates and utensils and
cookware. "I figured I'd be eating out most
of the time," he explains, "but the way it
worked out was I wound up skipping meals.
I’d get home late from work, I don't know,
nine, ten, eleven o'clock, and I'd just go to
sleep without eating. And when I wasn't
working late, I'd go out with friends for
drinks or something All these appoint
ments for drinks, and I'd never get a chance
to eat Even if I just went out for a drink after
work with some of the other associates, it'd
be nine o'clock when I got home, and I'd be
too tired to think about making any dinner
On weekends I'd sleep In, and it became an
effort just to move myself out of the
apartment"
Things might have deteriorated even fur
ther for William if he hadn't met a certain
special someone, a health-conscious
girlfriend who helped motivate him to take
better care of himself. “She worked out all
the time," he says, "I don't know, four, five
times a week, and at first I went to the gym
lust to spend some time with her But then I
got there and what I found was that I was
out of shape, hideously out of shape, and
this is someone who used to be something
of an athlete I was really awful." But he kept
at it. and slowly he worked himself back into
form. He consulted the nutritionist at the
health club and put himself on a diet that
was strict only in the sense that he made
himself eat three square meals a day
The girlfriend who motivated him to
shape up is history, but William's kept up
with his new routine. "You have to," he says.
"I mean, you work so long and hard to get to
a certain place, it just doesn't make sense to
run yourself into the ground. It gets to a point
where it affects your work, and eventually, if
you let it go long enough, it gets to a point
where it can cause real problems, real
physical problems. I used to be sluggish all
the time, tired and pale. I used to have to
drag myself out of bed, but now I try to work
out as often as I can, get home early as often
as I can. get to sleep early as often as I can,
and I get up in the morning and for the first
time I feel ready to start a new day.
"I think about what things were like in law
school, about how things were the first year
or so on this job, and it's a world of dif
ference. It sounds corny, but it's true, you
really have to take care of yourself because
you reach a certain point where no one's
gonna take care of you anymore. You reach
a point where it's up to you."