TORONTO – Toronto Mayor Rob Ford has quit his Cut the Waist Challenge a mere three weeks before the six month plan was slated to end. Ford and his brother, Councillor Doug Ford, both pledged to lose 50 pounds over a six month period. Mayor Ford had a strong start, shedding a hefty 23 pounds about a month into his diet. But in subsequent weeks, he began to gain weight and cancel public weigh ins.
“This is getting hard, trust me. This is getting very, very hard,” he told reporters in February.
Losing weight, and keeping it off, isn’t an easy feat, according to Dr. Yoni Freedhoff, a University of Ottawa professor, former family medicine chair of the Canadian Obesity Network, and Weighty Matters blogger.
Global News spoke with Dr. Freedhoff about Mayor Ford’s weight loss ride.
Global News: Mayor Ford had said his Cut the Waist Challenge included “running a lot, lifting weights and eating like a rabbit.” Where did he go wrong?
Dr. Freedhoff: His tactic was extremes, or at least at the beginning it was. I think he went wrong by taking on a nonsensical approach to weight loss, which is the “suffer, and work really hard to lose weight and somehow expect that I will want to keep on suffering and working really hard forever.” So the under eat and over exercise approach to weight management has failed people likely for millennia. It’s not a lifestyle, it’s a diet and diets of course fail, so this is not a surprise. I certainly don’t fault Rob Ford for stopping the life he didn’t enjoy. My bet was that if he’d lost it through suffering, he’d be heavier than the day he began two years after.
Global News: How difficult is losing weight in the public eye? Does it hold you accountable? Mayor Ford’s brother had said on NewsTalk 1010, “When you tell three million people that you’re gonna lose weight, you sure better lose weight.”
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Dr. Freedhoff: It’s difficult to lose weight with the lifestyle that Rob Ford likely has to endure. There was a study that suggested that public service executives have triple the rate of obesity than the general population and that might have to do with stress and working hours with required business lunches and dinners. It is a tough job with a very real lifestyle implication to weight.
As far as the public eye goes, I always discourage people coming to see me who are celebrities from telling anybody that this is what they’re doing, not because I wouldn’t welcome the publicity but more because I realize that life happens. It’s like people quitting smoking. Sometimes, it takes a lot of tries to quit, if you tell someone you’ll do something and then struggle, you put yourself up as potential for public scorn, which is definitely what’s happened with Ford.
Global News: You mentioned stress and a busy work schedule as factors that affected Mayor Ford’s diet. Can you touch on other aspects of his job that may have cut down on his exercise time or options for healthy meals?
Dr. Freedhoff: He has a very busy life that likely does require a lot of sacrifices in terms of things like being at home for a cooked meal, needing to go to lots and lots of different events, meeting with a lot of different people. Many of those events and meetings happen over meals or in bars or in various other locations.
Global News: How many calories would he need to eat to maintain his 330 pound weight?
Dr. Freedhoff: Assuming that he had a normal and expected metabolism, and I’m not sure how tall of a man he is, my ballpark would be in the neighbourhood of about 3,500 calories a day.
Global News: How many calories would he need to cut back on to see weight loss?
Dr. Freedhoff: The goal is the smallest amount a person needs to be satisfied. People need to live lives they can sustain. Having numbers that say you should eat this many less and this is the number that will cause weight loss – life’s not about numbers. Pure mathematics on paper, if you eat 500 fewer calories a day you’ll lose a pound a week for awhile but as we get smaller, we slow down and it doesn’t last. But there is no set formula that is going to be sustainable that works for each and every individual. There is no right number.
Global News: Mayor Ford’s goal was to shed 50 pounds in six months. Was that realistic?
Dr. Freedhoff: It wasn’t particularly drastic. Certainly that’s not a completely unbelievable amount for a man who’s starting out at 330 pounds. The smaller you are the fewer calories you burn. Given that he’s starting at 330, his 50 pounds in six months goal theoretically would have been achievable at a healthy two pounds a week through a thoughtful reduction in calories but that’s not the approach he reported choosing.
Global News: Some people weighing in on Ford’s weight loss say at 330 pounds, losing weight would be easy for him. Can you comment on this suggestion?
Dr. Freedhoff: He burns more calories than someone who weighs 180 pounds but it doesn’t change the fact that in order to lose weight, he would have to make permanent changes to his life. And as everybody knows, change is not a straightforward thing so I don’t think the fact that he’s 330 pounds makes it any easier or more difficult.
Global News: Do you have any message to Canadians reading up on Rob Ford’s weight loss challenge?
Dr. Freedhoff: Look in the mirror before you cast stones. If we’re going to start vilifying people who struggle with lifestyle change we have to be prepared to heap scorn on everyone. We all struggle with lifestyle change. We’re all as a species very challenged by change and to look down on somebody who is struggling with change, you’d better be prepared to look down on yourselves too.
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