Moving On

The last ten days have been a wasteland of inactivity, on the one hand, and excessive eating, on the other. No need to dwell on it. No need to make excuses (though a head cold lingers and could sap my energy if I let it). Just time to move on.

Plans are what I need. Plans, and a new raft of diet books, and healthy food in the house, and the motivational nudge to get out there and start doing things. Clean out the freezer, and fill it with grab and go lunches and breakfasts. I see a big pot of cabbage soup in my near future!  Exercise, adequate sleep, being outdoors... all things I've been ignoring for the past little bit.

Time to get moving. Retrospective hard cold look at the facts to come, but right now, I've got to look forward.

Seasonal Foods

I'm not making my weight goal this month. Such a modest goal it was, too.  In fact, with nine days to go in the month, I probably could still make it. I'd have to start by jumping off this couch, strap on the running shoes, and hit the street... But even then, I can't control what the scale says each day. I can only control my actions to manage calories out versus calories in, which over the long term will result in weight loss.

But I'm not going to hunker down and try to get to goal this month. It's Christmas, for crying out loud.  And some of the joy of Christmas comes from making, getting, exchanging, and eating the special foods of Christmas.  I am going to allow the joy into my life.  I'm going to do it in such a way as to not go crazy, so as to not have huge regrets on January third when normal life resumes, but I'm going to consciously embrace the foods of the season.

For starters, (I mean "for example" because I actually started a few days ago) I've just made a half cup of Trader Joe's Sipping Chocolate.  Yummy, though mellower than the Dominican Republic dark drinking chocolate I had the other day. My mother is a christmas cooking making dynamo.  To us, there are two special kinds:  one is a butter cookie made with almond paste, piped into circles and dusted with powdered sugar, and the other is a brown sugar cookie with a pecan half stuck on top. There were others in the past, some made faithfully for years even after the family made it clear we didn't really like them. I remember green christmas tree-shaped butter cookies, from a special cookie press. Ordinary rolled cookies cut into shapes and decorated with icing and stuff. But now these two types are what she is up to making.

My big contribution will be Julekage, a sweet yeast bread flavored with cardamon and with embedded fruit pieces.  My mother used to make it with currents and the horrible gummy fruit-derived things that go in fruit cakes, but then my sister a few years ago made an innovation (!) and substituted excellent dried cherries and cranberries for the fruit cake stuff.  (There was some controversy in the family about whether it was permissible to introduce change into our traditions, even with universal agreement that it tasted better.)  This year, I found candied whole lemons and oranges at Whole Foods, and we tried the lemon - tasty though chewy. I'm going to make one or two loaves with cut up small pieces of those for the fruit. I'm probably going to do this tonight, and I imagine one loaf will need to be eaten fresh from the oven. At least two loaves will need to hidden at my house until Christmas morning, since we actually need to eat some of it on Christmas day.

I've got the big college kid to feed for a while, and kids hanging around the house for a week, so a quick trip to Trader Joe's filled the freezer with their easy-to-prepare staples.  The big family dinners will be designed around meat, but I've got lots of vegetables for me to focus on besides.  We've recently gotten into soups - I'm mostly not making them, but the bought ones from Whole Foods and Trader Joes are quite tasty and filling. (Interestingly, I bought lobster bisque at CostCo and my little girl told me it tasted like it was full of sugar and she didn't like it. She's getting more refined and healthy preferences. Yay!)

I'm not cancelling any gym sessions, and I expect to be fairly active (though my "fitness tip" of the day in email from my gym says it takes eleven hours of wrapping presents to equal one cup of eggnog!)  I'll be going to work most days after christmas so it reduces the snacking opportunites.  So I'm aiming for holding my own on the scale and the way my clothes fit.  We'll see, but I'm hopeful.  But not obsessing.

I'll be joining the legions of people in January with renewed vows of healthy living and high hopes for achieving challenging goals in the year to come. But this year, I'll have some success to build on, and the confidence that comes with that.

No Hot Water

No hot water at my house means... take your shower at the gym at work! And as long as you are there wearing your jammies and carrying your work clothes to change into, you might just as well spend some time on the treadmill.

Sadly, I was half-way in, really grooving on the "there's no traffic this early in a holiday week", when I realized I had no towel. So it was turn around and drive all the way home, back again downtown.  My workout time was cut in half, but still it was more work than if I hadn't done it. In fact, I had my longest stretch of non-stop jogging, figuring I had better up the intensity to compensate for the lack of time.

The good feeling lasted about three quarters of the way through the day. Not bad.  I may get more gym workouts in over the next two weeks, if I continue to make it a priority.

Me, in the seventies, eighties, and nineties:  "running?  not for me. on a treadmill? is there anything more pathetically boring in the world?"  (time seems to have tempered some of my judgmental side, luckily).

What has changed is the iPod. I couldn't imagine doing it without the music, which pretty much means the iPod.  During the Big Loss, when I was on the NerdicTrak in the basement every morning, it was hugely blasting very loud music. Now, I'm in my ear-bud bliss in the midst of others.  Whatever it takes is fine with me. Just as long as I keep moving.

Satiate Your Imagination

Today's NYT had a piece on how imagining eating something wonderful makes you eat less. It separates liking a food from wanting to eat the food. Imagining eating it doesn't make you like it less; instead, you want to eat less. That is, if you truly in detail visualize eating it first. Not just contemplate the food, but each bite of a healthy portion is thought through, imagined bite by bite.

I'm a real believer in the power of visualization. Certainly, years ago when I was training for my pilot's license, I found sitting alone and thinking through each manuever and procedure repeatedly made me more able to execute them.

So I definitely have a problem with eating sweets in the evening. I'm adding maybe up to 300 calories almost every night in chocolate, (ok, some nights it's even more!) after dinner as I wind down. I've been struggling with what to do about it. We're talking Dove Darks, the absolute best chocolate ever sold in a supermarket.

An obvious choice would be to just don't have it around. This is my chocolate, its not like I have to have it around for the family. But I'm not ready for that. The thought of no chocolate in the house sends me into a panic. That might be reason enough to make myself go without for a while. But not right now.

I'm thinking about putting my stash somewhere inconvenient. I've been keeping it in the kitchen, and only allowing myself one piece at a time- each one is off the couch and a new trip to the kitchen. But my house is small enough that is no real barrier.

So now I'm thinking about keeping it in the basement, a sufficiently unpleasant place that it will be a more significant obstacle, besides just more steps and further away.

But I'm also thinking about this visualization technique. I heard more about it on a Science Friday podcast. The key is to not just be stimulated by seeing or thinking of the food, but actually to "habituate" to the food the way phobia sufferers habituate to their stimulus. And artificial stimulus can be as effective as the real thing.

Can't hurt, right? All I invest is some time and thought. I'll let you know.


- iPhone uPdate

Made it!

Just a half hour walk - about a mile and three quarters between my two office buildings - was enough to put me over on all three measures today!

Now its time for bed because I just read in the New York Times that getting enough sleep may ward off Alzheimer's. Good night!

So Very Close...

I really am motivated to make my goals - make my numbers - cross the finish line on the parameters I've set for myself.  And all it takes is some very small changes to get there. I actually have several tiers of targets. The set I'm talking about here are minimums. They are not very ambitious, but they are a starting place. If I make them, I am "moderately active" instead of "entirely sedentary" which is another way of saying "slug".

Yesterday I went over my "calories burned" by ONE!  I was seven minutes short on activity, and 900 steps short of my walking goals. So close! Sunday, I had a nice calorie total, I was short one minute of activity, but my steps were 40% below target. Today, I was pretty sure I was going to meet all three targets since I started at the gym. But, when I plugged in just now, I've got a little way to go. I'll make the calorie target (it takes around 40 calories an hour for me to be alive and there are two hours to go till midnight) and I'm over on the activity target, but I've got about 400 steps to go. I think I'll go start up the Wii and do something mildly interesting like run the obstacle course. I bet ten minutes of activity will get my 300 steps in.

Like I said, its a floor. But if it's a target, I should work towards it, and check in while I can do something about meeting it.

Holiday: Brakes Off?

The day started out badly- my girl was having Julekage for breakfast (Norwegian sweet Christmas bread) and it didn't take a second for me to join her. Then it was the holiday potluck at work. I was saved by more meetings keeping me away, but I did manage to snag a piece of the award winning desert from the contest- Chocolate Eclair Cake. One forkful was heaven and I could have happily stopped there, but no-- the full second was only six bites, but still too much. I was on a roll, so cookies made by my mother just fit in nicely, thankyouverymuch.

But tomorrow is another day, and it starts at the gym at six.


- iPhone uPdate

My Least Favorite Weather

Cold and rainy all day as forecast. Though actually, warmer than it has been; hence the rain rather than snow. A perfect day for hibernating, but also not bad for carrying out projects in the basement. Which is what I did, after finishing up my Christmas shopping. Truly, I'm just about done, as long as Santas helpers (UPS) do their part to get everything here.

Actually, I spent about four hours actively doing laundry this afternoon. Not just running loads, but folding and putting away many many loads of clean stuff that was strewn all over the basement. Who knew three people could have so much stuff? Some of it is out of season, some of it doesn't fit anyone, some has become wraps, but some of it just doesn't have a place to live.

At any rate, it kept me on my feet and running up and down stairs, and I made the calorie goal at least. And with an easy salmon supper, it'll do.

- iPhone uPdate

Up and Down

Friday was another low-calorie day. I can't call it slug-like, because I was high energy and quite productive at work, but it was all in my immediate office area. I brought my lunch and paused on the interactions enough to catch up on some reading, but did not move around at all. That is what it is. It's not likely to change any time soon- the volume of work, that is. I've got some new additional responsibilities which I welcome but will be hard to manage. Eating overall was on the fly but reasonable.

Today was a better story. After my training session I pounded out a full 30 minutes on the treadmill, which guarantees making goals for the day. We also spent some time on the Wii this afternoon. Way less vigorous but at least moving.

Tomorrow will be chores. If I keep moving all day the calories do get burned up. Since there is a 90% chance it'll be cold and rainy, basement chores seem like a fine agenda I might want to dive into some laundry tonight, since my rewarding cup of hot chocolate seems to have perked me up some.

- iPhone uPdate

Small Improvements

Just a quick note to say it really doesn't take much more to at least hit my daily goals. Today I made all three - calories burned, steps, and total active time. I started at the gym, which is a jump start but no guarantee of meeting the goals. I managed stairs at work - I did at least fifteen flights today. I need to work on getting even more into the mix. And I topped it off by walking between my houses - wearing the fabulous new down jacket with the incredibly soft fleece collars and pocket linings.

What is Realistic?

I'm not meeting my own goals and I'm very disappointed in myself. The slugdom continues, exacerbated by a furious pace at work between meetings confined in narrow areas.  As witness, I have my little armband limpet friend who keeps me honest on the activity side. Except for running on the treadmill Saturday, I have not made all three goals for steps, activity time, or total calories burned in over a week. I'm close on my sleep, however, though there is often a period of tossing and turning.

I'm not tracking my food, but that is partly because it is such a sad picture. I'm not wigging out on sweets, it's just too much of everything, and bread more often than I should. For example, yesterday I got a lovely chicken caesar salad for lunch during the break in my all day (window-less) meeting.  Not my usual spot, so while I wasn't surprised by croutons in the salad, I was surprised by the big hunk of tasty french bread served on the side.  And I ate it all.  It wasn't just that it was good, but also it made me crave more carbs for the rest of the day. This is a real effect based on blood sugar responses to carbs, but even if it was just in my head, it comes to the same thing, doesn't it?  I spent the afternoon nibbling until dinner, then restless and mouthy all evening. I had herb tea, and a flavored water, and more herb tea, and remained discontented until morning.

In the past, I have increased my satisfaction by lowering my expectations. Maybe I should just change my goals? What is reasonable to expect of myself?

I'm going to the gym three times a week for strength and fitness and balance training. I was thinking of cutting it back to twice, and substituting running on the treadmill at work. But that is contingent on actually running on the treadmill at work, which I haven't done, so I've kept the third appointment. I have run for short periods on Saturdays. I have not been walking between my two houses in the evenings because I have hated the cold weather. However, I'm trying to get into a winter wonderland mood, and I did just buy myself a fabulous new down jacket that arrived last night. I walked tonight, because I had my peachy new tiffany-blue jacket to wear.  Warm and toasty for those parts of me it covers, at least.

I would like to maintain walking between the houses. I would like to get to the gym at work at least once for a run. I would like to take advantage of breaks in my schedule to climb stairs at the office on days I don't want to venture outside. But I haven't had a good track record this past week (or somewhat longer, truthfully) on meeting those expectations. But I don't want to lower my expectations. I don't think I'm shooting too high, with just those modest additional steps, activities, calories burned.  It is what will make a difference in my losing versus gaining weight.

So I'll start with credit for my little walk this evening, and omit beating myself up for staying close to my desk and focused at work all day.  I'll give myself credit for having brought my lunch to work and eating just that.  We'll just pull a curtain over everything else, and move on to 6 am in the gym tomorrow.

Slow Day

A real slug of a day where I just slithered from home to work to home again, staying under rocks as much as possible. The wind was fierce and biting and the sun did not make up for it.

I give myself credit for moderate eating (at least till this evening's chocolate) but I'm sure to have a remarkably low calorie burn.

Tomorrow is another all day meeting away from the office. But I will start out with my training session, venturing out in the cold and dark to wake up in the middle of a round of pushups, wondering how I got there.

Good night.


- iPhone uPdate

Homeostasis, or Set Points

I learned in high school biology that our bodies want to stay the way they are. They are very conservative, and it takes a lot of energy to knock us off our equilibrium. When pushed, the set point will move, but it will fight to get back to where it was.  This is true of respiration and heart rates, of blood sugar levels, of body temperature, and of course, body weight.

Here is a graph of my weight from June through the present. The little dots are my daily actual weights, and the darker line running through them is my weekly average. You can see the points line up, and how they often stay roughly the same for a while.

The horizontal grid lines are two pounds apart, and my digital scale reads in half pound increments, so the daily dots are going to be in similar spots. I've lost just about eight pounds since June. See how the downward trend resumes after the bump up at the beginning of September (my college trip, to Oberlin and Ann Arbor). The October stall would have been completely disheartening if it weren't for taking my averages, which showed very slight declines. My weight was varying in the same range, but over that time gradually the lower range was predominating. Finally the plateau gave way in November, and I lost another two pounds. I bounced up at Thanksgiving, but in this case my homeostasis is working in my favor - I didn't permanently gain that weight.

Now, I've got a little ski jump up, and it's time to have a serious week or two of exercise and mindful eating, to get that line back in control and wrestle down to a new set point.  It feels like I lose in spurts, the body rests in the new set point as if getting used to it for a couple or more weeks, then I can move that set point down again with another new effort.

I am still struggling with the winter doldrums. While I am doing specific exercise efforts, my overall calorie burn for each day is lower than I was seeing most days in the summer. It's as if I'm unconsciously staying as still as possible. I can emerge from my semi-hibernation with an act of will to perform a specific task - walk or gym visit or household chore - but afterwards, the body shuts down onto the couch again.  Just got to try to keep moving as much as possible.

Drinking Chocolate

I've never been a big fan of hot chocolate or hot cocoa. However, while visiting a friend in Brooklyn this fall, I had a life changing cup of hot chocolate from Pierre Torres in Dumbo.

It was scorching hot, rich dark chocolate, not too sweet. Each sip was a delight. I want to have that experience again, but it will be a bit of a quest. One where the journey will be at least as interesting as the prize.

Of course I've visited the Pierre Torres website and I could simply order their mix. But that would be way too easy- and truly devastating if it is not the same. So first I'm trying some closer to home approaches.

I think I've never had anything but Nestles or Swiss Miss before, so there is actually a whole world for me to explore. And part of it has to be the experience and circumstances around the actual consumption.

I acquired some "Drinking Chocolate" from Whole Foods right when I came back from Brooklyn. It's from the Dominican Republic, 73%. According to the box, "rich, earthy, and bittersweet". I put it aside, because we had a warming trend, and other things such as pumpkin pies to eat.

Today, I finally hit the point where it is sufficiently cold outside, and I've been sufficiently active in the cold to be able to handle the 250 or so calories from a cup of this.

Two percent milk is what we have, warmed in the microwave. Two heaping tablespoons of chocolate powder. A cup of deliciousness.

The verdict? It's not that easy to satisfy the quest. This was very good. Very dark chocolaty, and, yes, earthy. But it's too sweet. I could do with much less sugar.

Now I have a reference point. I've studied the label: 14 grams of carbohydrate (9 grams of sugar). Too much. Keep looking. (But the rest of this box is worth using up, certainly).


- iPhone uPdate

My Day so Far

I had an all-day meeting today. Typically I hate these, not least because They usually mean stuck in one room all day with just trips down the hall every two hours. This was just like that- lunch brought in so we could stay focused. But, it was in a location and with timing that made it convenient to my metro line. I even had time to walk to and from the metro--nearly two miles each way. Crisp and cold, light in the morning, dark in the evening.

I brought my cottage cheese for breakfast, and I had ordered a salad for lunch. I passed on the chips and cookie when filling out the order. Good for me. But, the salad came with the signature flatbread in the bag. Oooops. Of course I ate it.

Walking home from the metro this evening, about a mile into it, I was suddenly overcome with the shakes. And discovered my stomach was growling and I was famished. This was a blood sugar thing, brought on by eating the bread. And maybe exacerbated by afternoon coffee. I'm so much better off being carb free all day, and more moderate in the caffeine.

A quick clementine to assuage the demanding insulin, and then dive into the freezer for instant dinner. Chicken taquitos have the right mix, since they are the relatively healthy Trader Joes chicken taquitos, not the cheese and fat laden kid's favorites from CostCo.

Another clementine and lots of water and I'm done for the day.


- iPhone uPdate

I Am Not A Reptile

There is no doubt my deep reptile brain is pushing me to stuff myself full of blubber and then hibernate. But I am not a reptile. I always hate those studies that grab headlines in the newspapers that say "these kind of people are hardwired to behave a certain way".  Besides the fact they are usually based on about twenty college students studied for a couple of weeks, the fact is we may have innate dispositions towards behaving a certain way, but we are thinking beings. We don't have to act on our instincts. We can choose.

Gary Taubes wrote a book about the science of weight,  Good Calories, Bad Calories, where a major point he made is that we gain and lose weight due to things we cannot control.  One of the ways I remember what he said was a chicken-and-egg analogy - do we gain weight because we eat, or do we eat because we need to gain weight?  He pointed out that teenagers in growth spurts eat absurd amounts of food, but no-one believes that they grow because they eat - we all assume they eat because they need the energy to grow.  So, he says, there are times and forces that will make your body put on fat, and responding to those forces will drive you to eat.

I just went to double check the spelling of his name, and see that he has a new book coming out!  And the title is perfect for this topic: Why We Get Fat.  It comes out the end of December, but I know I'll be reading it over New Year's.

But, barring any enormous new insights, back to my current thinking....

I believe there are forces that propel your body to add or subtract weight. The change of seasons is definitely one of them. But, I am a human being. I cannot control chemical reactions inside my body.  I can, however, control my behavior.  Yes, it gets harder when the forces are pushing me in a different direction. Yes, it's not fair that my Norwegian ancestors survived those cold dark winters by evolving a thrifty gene that conserves energy to increase the odds of surviving till spring. Life isn't fair, and as a rational being, I can examine my behavior and act how I choose.

The facts are stark:  I am sleeping more than any time since snowmeggedon in February last year, yet I am stumbling with fatigue. I am burning less calories than any time since then and every footstep is an effort. My eating is up slightly from where it has been for the past several months, but I am hungry and mouthy both all the time.  But I have it in my power to affect this behavior.

First, go ahead and sleep. I will try to get as much as the body tells me it needs.

Next, move, dammit!  Keep adding in activities as much as possible. I am doing my two or three trips to personal training each week, but I need much more than that. Based partly on a suggestion from my friend Kim, and partly on the stairclimbing tips from Ms. Bitch Cakes, I took some reading I needed to do and wandered the stairwells while reading. No prizes for speed or gracefulness, but I spent about a half hour with my report and probably got nearly a hundred extra calories burned.  I work on the ninth floor of a ten-story building, so I will continue to have opportunities (today, I walked down all 9 flights and back up four of them when I was fetching my lunch.)  Tonight, I braved the cold to walk to my kids house and back - I know from experience that's another hundred calories.

The food:  this is the biggest problem. I need to log it all, even when the truth is so ugly.  I need to work out how to get portion control taken away from me. I do yogurt-like containers of cottage cheese for breakfast, in spite of the horrible waste of resources in the individual serving packaging. I need to buy pre-packaged salads at Trader Joe's for lunches again, if I'm not going to take the time or effort to go walking for a fancy salad from Cosi.  Dinners - that's where I need to be rational and on my guard, conscious as I plan and serve.  Tonight, I get credit for deciding not to add garlic bread to the spaghetti supper - I can keep small portions of pasta, but the bread would have been additive not to mention addictive.

Despite all this angst, I'm actually doing OK on both fitness and weight-loss fronts. I am so proud of my upper body strength, I'm going to go do push-ups in the gym at work in front of the guys. I avoided the scale during the Thanksgiving break (just accidentally of course, my morning routine was off) and Monday's weight was a full three-and-a-half pounds above the average of the week before, (which had been consistent with my tiny but clearly downward trend).  But Monday's number was fleeting water weight; Tuesday's weight was one pound down, and by this morning the remaining two and a half pounds had all been peed back out.  So I'm back in the ball game.  I need to keep reminding myself:  I cannot control the number on the scale, but I can control my behavior.  I can choose how I want to be.

I AM NOT A REPTILE.

The Less I Do, the Less I Do

It's so true that just as activity breeds activity, so unabridged becomes a state of being. I had a particularly slug-like week. I cleared the decks so I would have time to cook, and then ended up not having to do much at all. It was wonderful, and I was filled with ambitious plans for all the extra time.

But basically I laid around and vegetated. I read three books and saw three movies. I kept my gym appointments and even added a run one morning. But I did no chores, took no walks, did a little on-line shopping for the kids, and slept.

I've been sleeping more than eight hours most nights, with restless periods in the middle eating into it's value to me. It's got to be the lack of light. Even before it turned cold this week, I just wanted to huddle under the covers and doze and read and doze. Yesterday was a predictably slow day at work, but I did not bring my gym bag and couldn't convince myself to venture out for a walk. I stayed in my office and was quite productive and creative, in a very sedentary and calorie-conserving way.

But I was up and out early this morning, first to the gym then up to the boat to take her apart for the winter. A little more outdoor time is what I need, to get some sunshine deep into my reptile brain.

It's the coldest it's been so far this year, but I'm wearing my fleece-lined jeans that haven't fit for at least a couple of years, so things are not all bad. I'm warm and pleased with myself, a good combination

Got to keep accountability here and food tracking consciousness going, or it will be so easy to just slide back into bread and pasta with a book each night.

- iPhone uPdate

Sleep versus Exercise

It's really come down to this - I can sleep or I can exercise.  Right now, sleep is winning.  I am just so very very busy at work I don't have a second to step out. And I don't get home early, and so dinner is late, then I want to spend a bit of time with the kids, then I'm going to bed late, and the very last thing I want to do is get up early and go exercise.  I've had some very low totals on "calories burned" this week. I am so very inactive during the office day, and then not doing much afterwards beyond dinner with the family.  My step totals for the days are also pretty pathetic.

Obviously the self pity is washing over me in waves. Along with enormous fatigue - though its only 9:30 and I got nearly eight hours of sleep last night.  I'm actually getting a decent amount of sleep most nights, but my body is craving more. This is partly due to the seasons and the time change - the loss of light drives that reptile brain to want to hibernate. Once I fill up with blubber first, that is.  I tried going down in my basement to NordicTrak, since I wasn't up and out of the house to the gym. I got some exercise in, though my magic counting device was not overly impressed. It seems to really like running best, followed by fast walking.

Oh well, its the weekend, followed by a holiday week.  I've been tracking my food diligently, and I've mostly kept my intake low commensurate with my low activity levels. I should be able to get some exercise each day on the weekend, bumping up the total for the week.  Fast walking is likely the ticket. Should be decent weather.

What is my strategy for the coming week? Can I give myself free rein on Thanksgiving, as long as I monitor and control the rest of the time? I should be able to do that.  Sigh. Not inspired. Just go to bed.

Ten Push Ups!

This is a woman who can do ten push-ups - regular boy push-ups, that is!  I am absurdly pleased with myself for being able to do that.  But, too tired to write any more.

Work is very very busy.  I like what I'm doing, but the days are jammed up so intensely that I am not even getting in my minimum number of steps. I'm just in one meeting after another, and my armband device shows that I'm doing nothing, except about every hour walking to a different conference room for another meeting...

Alarm Malfunction

I screwed up on the alarm last night, and it ended up going off at 5:45 this morning. That's when it goes off for my personal training appointments. I had planned an extra half hour of sleep before heading to the work gym.

Probably because of the time change this week, I was relatively awake and against all odds, got up and got going right away. I got in a great interval run in the gym, and even was at my desk early. This is very good, as I am totally snowed under. (I ran for five minute intervals, up from four. Grand total was 2.9 miles in 35 minutes, I believe. That can't be right- but I didn't write it down. Drat!

Never the less, I snuck out for a leisurely stroll around the block just now. The sun is at an angle these days, and I followed a different route from normal, seeking sunny pathways through the relatively low canyons of DC. I bet NYC is much darker from shadows right now, though glass buildings do reflect and disperse the light.

What glorious light it is right now! We are having a mild autumn and today not a cloud is in view. I'm sitting on a bench in a sheltered location in just my work clothes-blazer, no topcoat. Following the sun along a street I have never walked before, I found tropical cannas at their full height against a south wall, and robust blooming red roses blooming from a rooftop terrace just above them. While my only skin showing is my face and hands, I think I'm getting a full dose of vitamin D today.

Back to work.


- iPhone uPdate

Restless and Wanting to Move

I was out and about briefly at lunch time today, and wanted to do more, and more intensely. I had a really good workout in the gym early this morning - really heaving very big weights around and knocking off push-ups like nobody's business. But I'm not getting in the aerobic exercise. It just takes time, and no matter how hard I try, I can't make myself go down in the basement to use the NT. Somehow, it's easier to leave the house, even in the cold and dark. And, I really want to run.

So tomorrow its up and at 'em in the gym at work. Running.  Probably starting the playlist with black eyed peas. Why not.  I just have to remember to bring my lunch with me and not leave it in the fridge like I did again today. Got my gym bag all packed and ready to grab. Hopefully, I'll sleep enough tonight to make this viable.  Wish me luck! Or fortitude. Or something.

What's in My Closet?

I own too many clothes, and too many clothes I don't like, and too many clothes that don't fit me. I own too few items that make me feel really good about myself.  A lot of the problem is the way my weight has yo-yo'd around plus or minus twenty pounds from where I am now. I read that fifteen pounds is generally a size, so I'm spanning three to four different sizes in the last ten years. I'm sitting right in the middle of the range now, which should give me maximum flexibility, but it seems like nothing fits.

I have a single bar for hanging clothes in my closet, about six feet long. It is crammed full of blazers, trousers, shirts, and even a few dresses and skirts.  I have a shelf above the bar and there are plastic boxes with clothes I stashed up there several years ago for reasons that escape me. A few years ago I rearranged the furniture in my room and created space to add two three-drawer Ikea dressers to the one tall five-drawer antique dresser my mother gave me. One Ikea dresser is underwear, one is t-shirts, sweats, and fleece, my workout clothes.  My antique dresser holds knit tops, jewelry, socks, and jeans and shorts. I just think I have too much of everything.  I've been through some marathon laundry the past week, and now that everything is clean, I'm not sure I can put it all away.

I pulled all the shorts out of my dresser to fit in all my jeans and chinos, and was surprised to realize I have three pairs of blue jeans. Why do I have three, when I also have two pairs of khaki colored jeans, two pairs of chinos for Casual Friday at work, two pairs of jean-cut linen casual pants, and two pairs of nylon hiking / sailing tough pants?  On closer examination, two pair of blue jeans are size fourteen and the third are the size sixteens I bought at CostCo a year ago when the others were just a bit too tight. (Maybe even a lot too tight.) I tried on the 16s, thinking perhaps they would be too big now, but since they are stretch Gloria Vanderbilts, they actually fit me quite well through the hips and thighs, though I need to cinch in the gaping waist with a belt. I wore them today, and they are quite comfy, so they stay with me for now.

I read this fall about the "Six Pieces or Less" experiment in the New York Times, and have been thinking about trying it. In essence, you pick six pieces of clothes (not counting underwear or outerwear or accessories) and wear only them for 31 days in a row. Normally, for my life, there is zero overlap between my work wardrobe and my home clothes. Every day I stop home to change clothes before making dinner. And almost all of my work clothes need to be drycleaned, and I don't want to risk food stains on them. Nowhere in reading about the experimenters have I heard about their laundry. If you only have three tops, presumably you have to wash everything every three days, yes? Especially since they did this in the summer. If drycleaning is involved, you would be going almost every day. If I am going to change clothes every evening, I'll be doing laundry every night - but only four pieces. This would be way too much work, forget it.

Part of why I own so many clothes is because I don't like a lot of them, and because I postpone doing laundry as long as possible. The more clothes I own the less often I have to do laundry or make the drycleaner's run. But I generally wear the stuff I like best first, and towards the end I'm wearing stuff I don't really care for. Maybe I should try a different experiment: do laundry more often, letting me wear the stuff I most want to wear more often. Always put away the clean clothes on top of everything else, but feel free to dig into the piles to find the stuff I want to wear. Anything that stays put for a couple of months without being worn simply because it was the only choice becomes a candidate for the give-away pile.

A rainy day project I keep postponing is to do a real excavation of my closet. There are things pushed to the back I've totally forgotten about, and I don't know what size things are. It will take time to go through, and it will involve trying things on and deciding whether to keep things just a little too small for me, when I'm planning to get back down there soon...

I have gotten a lot more ruthless about jettisoning things I truly don't care for. Even if I just bought it, if there is something that looks bad on me, or is uncomfortable, or feels wrong somehow, I've got to get rid of it.  I've got a fairly big give-away pile, and will need to actually move some of this stuff out of the house. But for now, I am on a shopping moratorium. I need less, not more.

Logging Food

I've been faithfully logging food now for about a week, using the new iphone app that connects with my magic armband. I can enter all my foods and let the computer do the math, and it now connects with the data collected in the armband about how many calories I've expended. So I can see how much of a deficit there is.

Counting every single thing that passes my mouth is good. Seeing the total numbers is even better.  Knowing how much I've eaten definitely helps me manage how much more to eat.

But not completely. My two big weak points of the day - 4 pm and after dinner - are still my big weak spots and I need to keep up thinking of strategies to get me through them.

Dealing With Stress

Tough day. Woke up sad, but with a schedule to keep. In the midst of more profound thoughts, I regretted the Halloween candy from the night before. I dressed for the cold weather, brought coffee in my sealable metal cup, and sallied forth.

After taking care of some business, I set out on a walk. In a bit of serendipity, I ran into with a friend with her terrific big black dog and we had a very nice couple of miles chatting about our kids. We parted, and I continued a stroll around the picturesque and slightly goofy town, gawking at people's yards and remaining Halloween decorations. There was enough to look at to keep me on the surface and able to avoid introspection. I wasn't going to consciously escape to the ipod, but breathing hard and noticing old tree stumps carved into eight-foot bears was absorbing enough.

I treated myself to a full breakfast out.

I totally love breakfast - bacon and eggs and potatoes and toast and coffee.  This was a great breakfast. A vegie and cheese omelet, with lot of vegies.  In recent years, I haven't had a chance to eat that way very often. I ate both pieces of toast - so unnecessary - and most but not all of the potatoes. My normal low-carb leanings would have me skipping the bread and potatoes and not feeling bad about the eggs and cheese and bacon. Today, I rationalized I was walking it off, plus I wouldn't need to eat again until dinner.

I had a total brainfart so that I left my phone on the table when I left, went back to get it (right where I left it), and several blocks further on realized I had paid, but had not left a tip. This would be the effect of total self-absorption into my own little stressful world. I thought I was calm, but instead I was just autofunctioning on the surface, doing my best not to think, and thus missing some important things.

Sadly - I got hungry in the early afternoon. I'm not totally sure I was hungry, but I was not up to fighting it back and trying hot tea instead, so I had a jar of a terrific lentil soup I got at Whole Foods a while ago. I need to stock up on more shelf-stable long-storing soups - many of them are calorie bargains, and they are very satisfying.

A nice family dinner cooked by my mother was fairly guilt free. Afterwards, I shared Halloween candy with the kids, and then hit my evening chocolate gorge when I got back home. According to the accounting from my device, I did walk off more than I ate for the day, and tomorrow I'll try for an even bigger gap. Except - tomorrow is a birthday cake! And no doubt, ice cream as well.  Just because its there doesn't mean I have to eat it (yeah, right).

Let's be real - this weekend is mostly a matter of getting through it. Any excess calories burned at all is a bonus. Hooray.

Kit-Kats Calling

The stress level is very high around here, as this time is fraught with overtones and echoes of other events. I postponed buying any candy until just two hours ago. Sadly, the only candy left at the supermarket was ... Good chocolate candy. Not good chocolate, but the traditional Halloween favorites of peanut butter cups, butterfingers, and my main nemesis, the kit-kat.

Three little girls are working on their costumes in the back of the house. This year, they get to canvas our street by themselves (before dark). I'm trying very hard to set a good example and hold off till later on the candy. I'm also going to make it a point to feed them some real food. They voted for taquitos. But from across the room, by the door in a bowl, the kit-kats are calling. "Just one, to test!".

So is the beer calling. The first one of either will lead to more. I'll send more dispatches from the front later.


- iPhone uPdate

Later:  8 pieces of Halloween candy. Not such a good showing. The bright side? It wasn't twenty pieces.

The Eating Season

The Eating Season begins now, with Halloween candy, and continues through birthdays, Thanksgiving, holiday parties, Christmas, and ends on New Year's Day.  Last year, I didn't handle the Eating Season very well.  I just ate. I started with Halloween candy - I kept it around the house instead of taking it all to work as soon as the holiday was over. And I only buy candy I like.

The only way to deal with this is to have a plan. During The Big Loss, I actually started seriously dieting in October and was down ten pounds by New Years. That year, I simply had a rule. I was following the strictures of the Carbohydrate Addict's diet and the rule was: I could eat anything I wanted, but only within an hour of starting my balanced evening meal.  Very odd rule, but it really worked for me. I saved sweets from holiday parties and would eat - but not all evening. Just the one sweet, and be done.  The rest of the day I was strictly no-carb.

I can start with a rule like that, and see where it takes me. I haven't been no-carb at all this year, though generally low-carb every day. Today, for example, I had cottage cheese for breakfast, a fancy salad of greens, mushrooms, nuts and turkey for lunch (from the terrific new fleet of food trucks that come round - more on that another time), and taco salad for dinner, with lettuce, meat, a few beans, cheese, and salsa. Oh, I need to admit the oreos from the vending machine in the afternoon were not a very low-carb choice.

I have two weak points in my days. At work, I hit a slump in the little Window of Circadian Low around 3:30 every afternoon. I get mouthy, and I want something to eat. I am trying to divert to fancy water or hot tea, but today I found the quarters and went down to the vending machines. Often, I have nuts and rarely, an apple instead. The second weak point is after supper, where I have a little sweet in the tradition of my after dinner treat during the Big Loss, but recently I don't stop. Thirty-five calorie chocolate squares can add up after a while to really significant calories.

So for Halloween, I will buy the candy on Saturday. I won't be going to work the day after Halloween, so I need a different plan to get rid of it without eating it all. I suppose I could consider buying candy I don't like, but that just isn't my style. I can't imagine the kids liking something I don't like, so I can't offer it up.

The two days after Halloween will require some thought, some planning to have easy grabs of healthy food. Not going to work and having less structure in the midst of stress is not a successful formula. I'll have to plan things to do that will keep me moving as much as possible.

I can't think beyond that. Let's get through the next week and then worry about the birthday party the following Saturday.

Got my Vitamin D

A ninety minute paddle with at least my face and forearms soaking up the sun. About four miles. My arms are really feeling it- as I got more tired, I found how to rely more on the core muscles.

It is truly gorgeous out. Probably in the seventies and sunny. My polarized sunglasses make the color of the trees more dramatic. I went up to the headwaters of my creek where the water really just disappeared. We are having a dramatically low tide, and the water continued to drop during my trip. Since the moon is full, I imagine there may be an equally dramatic high tide later, nut sadly I won't be here to see it.

I have to plan for my eating today and this week- I'll be serving fatted calf most days (due to the delightful though unexpected appearance of my college boy) and I have to work on overall family portions and plan mine in as well.


- iPhone uPdate

Games and Sports

I have never been into playing sports or games. Maybe I'm just that little bit too old. Title nine didn't really come into effect until I was out of high school. I played field hockey and rounders in school in England, and field hockey again in high school. That is, I played in required gym class only. My afterschool Time was focused on reading. My family of proud indoorsmen watched sports on tv, and I remember a halfhearted attempt for the family to take up tennis (I was so bad I never had a rally and so never liked it). My dad and my brother played with the basketball hoop on the driveway, but I never once made a basket perhaps because I was so short.

As a twenty something in a new state for a new job, I played softball after work. It was clearly just a social event for me- I was terrible. Luckily, the whole coed league was pretty relaxed so they never threw me off the team. I also was never into being competitive. Not into team spirit or caring about winning. I liked playing catch, though. I had someone coach me on the mechanics of throwing and I liked the unhurried windup, release, and thwack! of the catch.

I am actually quite competitive about many things, but usually if it's clear I'm not going to win I'll just abandon the field rather than redouble my efforts.

As I tap this out, I am watching the middle child play ultimate frisbee, a sport his brother is quite fond of. It's sort of soccer/basketball with a frisbee. It appears to be a geek sport, for which I cite as evidence my geeky kids are into it, the fact start times, league standings, and line calls are really casual, (never a ref allowed). Just in case more evidence is needed, one of the team's numbers on their jerseys are five digits long including at least one decimal.

My little girl loves her soccer club, but in seventh grade this is her last year. I'm thrilled she likes it, and I'd like to find another alternative for her next year. One of her friends went to a more competitive league this year, which has the added draw of the Obama girls (and their parents) being involved.

Me, I love ranging up and down the sidelines during the games, and taking a walk around the field during practices. I think I'll be staying with a solo or non-competitive sport. Kayaking tomorrow!

- iPhone uPdate

Gym Rat

I did make to the work gym this morning, and had a nice new increase in my jog versus walk times.  I made the first mile at about 14:20 minutes, and the second at about 30 minutes. I jogged for three 4 minute periods and one 2 minute (for a total of only 14 minutes - doesn't sound that impressive, after all, but its more than I've done in years and years). My heartbeat didn't reach 150 until the third jogging period, which is good. It got right up there on the fourth period, and hit 155 after two minutes, which is why I cut back at that point.

So I feel good right now. I have a very tight schedule today, so I treated myself to egg and sausage breakfast, and now I'm off and running mentally.

Upping both walking and sleeping

Based on a sample of one, I can boost my calorie burn and my step total. I took a look at my little portable device several times today. I had a very brief sortie at lunch - literally around the building and back in again - but then added in an evening walk to get the total for the day up a bit.

I've had a good week for sleeping. Having dug into the data, I'm pretty sure the best way to sleep more is to turn out the light earlier and try to sleep more. There seems to be a fairly consistent gap between the amount of time the device says I'm asleep and the amount of time my device says I'm lying down.  Note the cautious wording there - it's not perfectly accurate in telling the difference. Sometimes, when I'm watching tv or reading a book, apparently I'm so still it truly thinks I'm asleep. For example, yesterday early evening I was reading horizontally on the couch, and it counted 29 minutes of actual sleep. Then there is a gap when I actually got ready for bed, and then just three minutes of lying down in bed before falling asleep.

It felt like disturbed sleep last night; I remember getting up to pee at least twice during the night. I have many restless nights and last night was on the restless side, but not completely out of the ordinary for me:
3 minutes lying down
1 hour 10 minutes sleeping
2 minutes awake
44 minutes sleeping
2 minutes awake
1 hour 47 minutes sleeping
8 minutes awake
32 minutes sleeping
2 minutes awake
2 hours 43 minutes sleeping
4 minutes awake
20 minutes sleeping
2 mintues awake
20 minutes sleeping
4 minutes awake

then up and out of bed.

It's quite typical to have just one stretch of solid sleep, and it is always at the end there. I know from fatigue science that typically from three to five am local time is everyone's Window of Circadian Low (yes, we say "wockle" around the office) and I usually am soundest asleep during that time.

Even though it was restless, it adds up to 7:45 total sleep, which is really terrific by any standards.

So I think its time to get ready for bed now, not an hour from now!

Time to Get Out There and Do Things!

I've really been sloughing off in my activity level. I blame it on reading, as well as the turn of the seasons and the overwhelming urge to den up until spring. But it's a fact: I was busy all summer, but I've really turned into a slug recently. Here is the data.

See how I've declined from my active summer.  Now, I've got to more consciously move. I don't think its about having a few peak, busy weekend days. I think it's more about moving every day, getting the low days up higher.

I've got a tool I haven't used much. I wear my magic armband, but I only upload and analyze the data every two or three days. I can actually get a running total of calories burned, or steps taken, during the day with my little remote monitor. I haven't looked at it much, but now maybe I can work it into my motivation - check calories before lunch, after work, after dinner, and perhaps amend my behavior accordingly. Since I've got the thing, it's certainly worth a try.

A couple of hundred calories a day difference should add up to a real difference in my weight. When I think about the relative difficulty of cutting out a couple of hundred calories, or adding the same number in exercise, I'm not sure which is more difficult. But it's clear which should be more fun!  I don't do exercise I don't enjoy, so adding back the activity is way better than cutting out the beer and ice cream. Now just have to find the time, while leaving in time to get to bed early enough to keep the sleep up too.

Plus and Minus

I got my flu shot today. A very big plus- about the only preventative maintenance item I'll do for myself.

On the negative side, I hurt my knee simply by standing up wrong last night. I felt something move out of whack on the kneecap and thought "uh oh"! It is slightly swollen and hurts like the billy blue blazes. I did go to the gym this morning, and the elliptical machine was painful but walking on the treadmill was fine. And there are plenty of exercises involving the arms shoulders and core so that my time was not wasted.


- iPhone uPdate

Sleep: Diet in the News

A Science Friday piece  I listened to on podcast today talked about a study that showed sleep deprivation did NOT prevent weight loss - just slowed it down and prevented healthy weight loss.  The sleep-deprived cadre in this study lost weight, but they lost muscle mass, while the folks who got lots of sleep lost fat.  OK - we know lack of sleep is really bad for us, and this is just more bad news, because who ever gets 8 1/2 hours sleep like the folks in this study? So its just more stacking the deck - if you are heavy, you are more likely to sleep badly, and that makes it harder to reduce your fat... The only saving grace here is that this is very typical of all weight loss research - it was a really tiny study (10 people, only five in each group!) and they only followed them for two weeks (what weight loss regime has any meaning at all for only two weeks?)

The call-in radio show digressed into a lot of discussion of sleep research and health interactions, and got me thinking about my own pathetic sleep. I wear this magic device that measures my actual sleep, but what good does it do me? I've now got ten months of tracking my sleep almost every single night, but I'm not using that information to help myself. But I'm a data hound, and now I'm on the trail. How can I make this heap of data points tell me a story about what is going on, a story that will help me change something and feel better and lose weight more easily?

OK, first just look at the bare facts. How much sleep do I get? Between six and seven hours, regularly. This is not enough. Is this because I do not have sleep opportunities (I don't go to bed)? Or is it because I'm tossing and turning and not sleeping in the middle?What can I do to make my average be closer to eight hours a night? What can I do to prevent the really short nights, when it is less than six hours? I don't have all the answers to these questions, but I will dig into it more deeply in the near future.  I've got the data, and I'm really good at diving into this kind of an analysis.

Reading: The Alternative to Life?

I've been a big reader all of my life. I learned to read early, learned to read fast, and was forbidden to watch tv as a child. Instead, I always had my nose in a book. I would walk to elementary school with the book open and my head down. My teachers would try to get me to put it down at recess but nothing was going on around the playground that was nearly as interesting as Swallows and Amazons. We moved a lot during an unfortunate time in my life- grades six, seven, eight and nine were each in different schools in different states and even different countries. But who needed friends when there were books?

As I moved on to adult life, my reading has ebbed and flowed in direct counterpoint to how busy and absorbing the rest of my life is. Without recounting all the ins and outs, I have sometimes wondered which was the cause and effect. Over the past several years, my life has been rich and full. I am completely incapable of putting a good book down and walking away from it. Thus, reading was relegated to a few deliberately lone weekends or solo business trips. I would save up my books, eying them on the shelf and walking around them until it was safe to pick one up, plunge in, and be gone to an alternate universe until the last page is done.

I discovered audiobooks on long drives, and adopted them also for chores and walks. But with audiobooks, you have to start and stop in arbitrary places when the activity is done. Plus, listening is three or four times slower than my reading speed. So my audiobooks are mostly nonfiction, or harder literary fiction, not mysteries or thrillers or fantasy novels. They are books where I am intellectually, rather than emotionally, engaged.

Now I've got my kindle. Suddenly, thousands of books are in the palm of my hand. I like to find mystery or science fiction authors, and then read a complete series. Neither the library nor Borders is likely to have older books in a series, but those are pure profit to Amazon to make available as only electrons.

I got the kindle barely a month ago. In that time, I've read eleven novels- probably more than all of last year put together. They vary in price from free (out of copyright nineteenth century books) to twelve dollars for a best seller only available in hardback. I've just come back from fourteenth century England, in Ken Follett's World Without End. The problem is, I was there almost all weekend. A gorgeous three day weekend, and I spent it on the couch. No walks, (but a sail- I had made a date, and a family dinner date). A fair amount of unconscious eating took place. I had a reasonable sized list of things that needed doing around the house, and crossed out just one small chore as complete. Right now, I'm blinking out, because I finished this absorbing book at 1:00 am this morning.

I think years of my life sped by while my nose was in a book. Now, with the whole literary universe in my fingers, can I manage to retain a grasp on the physical world and not upset my focus on my active life?

- iPhone uPdate

Statistics

Good news on the numbers front this week. But the pattern shows why its so important to weigh every day, and consider my weight to be the average for the week, not the daily point.

I saw a new number this week - one pound lower than seen for quite some time. In fact, I looked at the graph, and the last time I saw this daily weight was exactly SIX years ago - October 2004!  How about that for real progress!

My average for the week was 0.9 pounds lower than last week's average. But on the last day I weighed, I was actually up a half a pound over the weight from the same day last week!  Just a factor of the salty meal the night before, but if that was the only data I had for the week, it would be really discouraging.

Progress breeds progress, as activity breeds activity. Hooray for progress.

Sunshine!

I get so much energy and optimism from the light. Today has been lovely, and we're expecting a terrific long weekend. I rode the Vespa in, first time in about three weeks, and every time I do I urge myself to ride it more often.

I got out for a walk at lunch, and stretched my normal mile and a half to two full miles. No ipod, no destination, just striding along (though I did have some really peachy sturdy green shoes).

Here is the route:  Friday Walk

And here are the stats:

Start 11:27 AM

Finish 12:11 PM - Average 19:40 /mile walk time 40:55, 2.08 miles, 171 calories, climb 79 feet, stopped time 3:06

My walking seems to routinely be just under twenty minute miles. It's a really comfortable pace, and I think I could keep it up for a very long time.  Today on the way in to work, I saw a bunch of pink ladies walking for October breast cancer awareness month. The Avon walk I did back four (?) years ago was the longest walk I ever did.  At 20 minute miles, the first day (a marathon in length) would be nine hours. I walked that many hours, but didn't get the whole 27 miles in before I was done. 

This has been an ok week - at least I broke 2000 calories every day, and saw a new number on the scale for the first time.  More wrap up later.

Jogging

Up and out this morning to get to the gym at work. I spent a half hour on the treadmill and covered by it's measurement exactly two miles. For me, that's a jog, not a walk. On average, that is- I'm doing intervals.

Today I strove for longer intervals at a jog. Most were three minutes long. I'm watching my heartbeat, and I get a bit nervous if it gets too fast. I'm not sure what too fast is, however.

The facts: according to the standard formula, my maximum heartbeat is 165. I saw 92% of that regularly during the jogs. For the first time, today it did not seem like it was continuing to climb. Instead, with deep breaths and focusing on the music, it seemed I could stay at that rate. Previously, I hit that rate and dropped back to a walk because I was nervous, not simply because I was out of gas. Today, I maintained for three minutes at the run and then two minutes at a jog, for the first twenty minutes anyway. Then I stayed at a walk and raised the incline way up, keeping my heartrate at about 80%.

I want to push to longer and longer runs/jogs. I'm definitely making some progress.


- iPhone uPdate

Transportation

I often do business at a building in DC's SouthEast neighborhood, near to the new ballpark. It's just under two miles from my office, two metro stops away.  The DC metro has a lot fewer stations than the NY subway, but there is a stop at the corner of my building, and it's the right line to come out right on the corner of the giant new government office complex built to anchor the neighborhood - it had to come before the ballpark could come. Transportation is celebrated there with public displays of ancient artifacts such as old train switches, and the Navy Yard is right across the street.

The metro is convenient, but in the middle of the day you can wait up to fourteen minutes for a train to make the eight minute trip. The new "bike sharing" system has a rack right at the other building, and one is planned for my corner, but its not there yet. Often my meetings over there are right before or after lunch, and I can treat myself to walking one way or the other. It takes about forty minutes, so I can't afford the time every day. I'm always looking for a chance to squeeze in a bit more activity when I can, and this is one I can often justify. Here is the route I took today:  SouthEast to SouthWest

Shortly after leaving the office complex and walking past the construction zones outside the ballpark, I enter DC's SouthWest neighborhood.  One of my colleagues in the other building, an extremely avid walker, won't walk there, such is the bad reputation of the area. Clearly an outdated and unwarranted feeling, in my opinion, but the area has an interesting history. Over the course of several walks I've read many of the local history signs posted around: River Farms to Urban Towers, and often muse about the effect of transportation on neighborhoods, and on the ability to get fitness.

In a nutshell, this peninsula within DC was cut off from the rest of the city by the building of huge expressways through the city right after World War II. It had been a lower class mixed neighborhood of African Americans and Jewish immigrants, and many of the tenements still had no electricity or running water after the war- this within the shadow of the U.S. Capitol. The solution, according to Congress which micromanaged DC those days and felt no qualms about running experiments with peoples' lives, was to bulldoze the entire place and build the first "urban renewal" neighborhood. The expressway was the excuse for the first bulldozers, and today it still roars through the neighborhood, so loud I can't listen to my ipod during the walk, and only a couple of streets have over- or under-passes to allow making my way north to the government office neighborhood where I work.  (The expressway goes underground and heads north past the US Capitol, and then surfaces and just peters out into regular streets. The plan was to continue it north through several more vibrant neighborhoods, including my current home, and connect it to the Beltway on the north. It was the first interstate highway ever blocked by activists, but that is a story for another day.)

Today, there are still some very un-lovely buildings dating from the fifties and sixties, and slowly the urban solid concrete jungle is being busted up to allow for some more green elements throughout. There has also been extensive re-development throughout the neighborhood, but there is still a gritty element in the less lovely sections. I can understand my colleague's lack of comfort in walking there, and I understand how tough it was in the past if you lived there. Not a place you would let your children go out and run around in. Many of the people there would not have their own cars, but you would want to cluster at the bus stops, not wander through ugly streets with no trees, no art, ugly buildings, and questionable people. At the bottom of the peninsula is Fort McNair, today home to the National Defense University, and which was where the Lincoln assassination conspirators where imprisoned and hung. The Fort is a very lovely urban oasis for those with the right id badge to get in - now - but it used to be much more industrial in feel, with big trucks running in and out, adding to ambiance of the neighborhood.

It makes for a very interesting walk, which keeps me moving.

Tea Season is Back

I am not a habitual tea drinker. I have to have my coffee in the morning, good and tasty and caffeinated. I'll drink ice tea in a restaurant at lunch, if I can get good brewed tea with no sweetener. But I won't touch bottled ice teas, which are almost universally sweet. I'm generally too lazy to make my own herbal ice tea in the summer, because it requires planning ahead enough to make hot tea then cool it down.

But when feeling tired and cold, or like I may be getting sick, or just housebound and bored, there is nothing like a cup of hot herb tea. I forget how much I like it. I simply forget to make it. I fall out of the habit in the summer.

This week, with fall weather and fall dark evenings on me, I found myself "mouthy" in the afternoons. Not hungry, but wanting to eat. My seltzer didn't appeal. Had to be hot and filling.

Suddenly I remembered tea. I got out one of my teapots and surveyed my stash of teas from last year. Such names, such marketing. Tension Tamer, Soothing Moments, Camomile Bliss, Lemon Smoother, and simply Peppermint. Except for the last, I'm pretty sure I couldn't tell one from another in a blind taste test. But when I'm in that restless "gimme hot food" mode, four minutes to heat water followed by pouring from the pot, holding the heated mug and surrounding my nose and swallowing the hot liquid and feeling it filling me up wherever I was empty can be just what I need. All that I need for just that moment. Another brief triumph over the siren call of fat sugar and salt.


- iPhone uPdate

It's a Downward Trend, If Ever So Slightly...

This was not a particularly good week for me. Everything feels really hard. I want to turn into a hibernating slug. I'm so tired, with aches and headaches and a nagging soreness in my throat. I'm seriously wondering if I'm over-training, because my body doesn't seem to recover between the strength workouts. I did keep all three appointments this week, and that is good, because I didn't dedicate any time to serious aerobic working out. When my overall calorie burn is as low as it it, "over-training" sounds absurd, but it is a possibility on the strength side. I think about cutting the appointments back to two times per week, but on weeks like this it is what reminds me how committed I really am to being strong and fit.  Here is my pathetic calorie burn for the week, per the magic device:

Some days it didn't even reach 2000!

How did I do on eating? Not so good. I logged the first two meals of every day, but tended to blow off the evening meal, which is always harder to calculate anyway. Then, there was the incident with the apple turnovers.... Rather than share the details, let's just say I knew when I bought them I have a history of finishing them off, and I bought them anyway. My calorie total for the week, if summed up, would still be quite a bit over goal.

But, the joys of weighing consistently almost everyday, and considering your weight to be the weekly average, not any single day!  I am on an almost undetectable downward trend. Each week for the last three weeks the weight has been lower than the week before, and all three weeks were the lowest for this weightloss effort.

Here's the picture:

I don't know if I would be as motivated to keep on going if I didn't have this picture to tell me I'm on the right track. No one bad day - or even bad week - can derail my progress.  It is consistency and persistence that will make the difference over time.

A very small victory, but it's big to me.  This month, I'm going to see a couple of new numbers for the first time, and I should need to adjust the axes on this graph to show the new, lower, results!

My Reptile Brain

I've been pretty quiet here. I'm engaged with my real life and it's very hard to be introspective or self reflective when I'm go go going all the time. It also makes it harder to plan to eat well and make time for exercise- real exercise, not just errands and housework.

But there is something else going on here and I think it's rooted deep inside my reptile brain, down so far below my consciousness that it takes real time and effort to dig it out and shed some light on it to see what's going on.

It's Fall, and Winter is not far away, and we're all gonna die if we don't build a nest to crawl into, if we don't fatten up and slow down to conserve energy, and get about four months of sleep.

This happens to me every Fall, and this year it slammed into my energy and motivation like [insert truck-based metaphor here].

I had a really busy weekend, but what was I doing? Nesting, mostly. Decorating my girl's room, and sitting in a brief period of sunshine soaking it in, blinking lazily like a basilisk, instead of charging up and down the soccer sideline shouting encouragement as I usually do.

Accountability? That's for long days of sunshine, not for chill grey days when it's still dark when the alarm goes off and we're making dinner after sunset.

Exercise? The need to move? Fighting my pineal gland's imperative, I just had a stroll around the block. It's grey but not actively drizzling, and I think at least I got today's vitamin D. It was light enough for my glasses to darken, so I took them off to fight against the SAD. I'm better for stretching my legs, but have to do better still to get that downward trajectory on the scale.

- iPhone uPdate

Yes I Did

Though I almost didn't. It was very good.


- iPhone uPdate

What are the Odds?

The coffee is on the timer. The alarm is set. Clothes are both packed and laid out. All I need to do is roll out the door with shoes on and coffee in hand, to arrive at work in time to use the gym there before the office.

For years I said I hated the idea of going to the gym in the morning because I'd have to get dressed and go out twice, including getting ready for work in a locker room. Now I am going regularly to a gym a mile away very early, for an appointment with a trainer. I manage to leave the house 25 minutes after the alarm goes off, and I return home (three minutes drive) to get ready for work in my comfortable and familiar surroundings.

But I want more aerobic activity, and the same logic that drove me to schedule appointments at six in the morning is compelling me to think about using the gym at work, before work in the morning. I've proven I can roll out of bed and into the car fairly quickly. Because the drive is longer, I don't have to drink any coffee before leaving (there is no point trying to exercise without some caffeine in me). I'm actually sleeping in a half hour later than a gym day, because I'm trying for only a half hour of exercise.

The plan is to go right from the garage to the gym, work out, and then shower and change and drop the bag back in the car before heading up to the office. With work clothes and shower kit packed, this should work, right?  It didn't work last week, but I'll try again tomorrow.  Last Monday, the alarm went off, I rolled over, and then it was forty-five minutes later, as if I had dropped through a time warp.

So what are the odds this week? At least, they are much better for having declared my intentions publicly here.

No, Really, Things Will Be Different This Time!

I've thought this often. I've heard it and read it and thought it. This time will be different. This time it's for real. This time, I've changed and things will never go back to the way they were.

Probably half the times I hear this, it turns out not to be true. Think about Oprah. She did the work, she got to goal. No matter how many personal trainers and chefs she had, she did it herself. But look where she is now.  Then think about Kim Bensen. I suppose if your living depends on selling your weight loss story, you may have even more motivation than normal to keep it off. But she still has to actually do it herself. Every day.

What does it take to make a permanent change? What does it take to get all the way to where you want to be? What does it take to keep the weight off when you are there?

During my Big Loss, I managed to lose forty pounds in a year, another ten in the next year, and kept that off for another year. Then it started to creep back up. I had a single day this winter where I got within five pounds of my top weight, and that's what sent me off on this round of losing weight.  Technically, I am a successful loser, because I kept 25 pound off for more than five years. I wouldn't call my history yo-yo dieting, but it's also not a pattern I want to relive constantly. What are the keys to success here? What are the things that truly make a difference, and can I do them permanently?

I really don't need to think about this right now, because I still have so far to go. But I've been thinking about permanent change a lot lately. I thought I had changed permanently ten years ago, after the Big Loss. But now, I think I've made some actual permanent changes. I think the real changes for me come from activity, not from eating habits.

I love to move!  I was on a real exercise kick for a year before tragedy changed my life, and as soon as I could, I got back into it. I'm really really enjoying the activity. I don't do it for the weight loss or even the appearance benefits. I do it because I enjoy doing it while I'm doing it, and because energy breeds energy. I want to get out there and do stuff. This lets me do it.

Eating every day is a struggle. If I didn't think about it constantly, I would be falling back to what is easy and enjoyable at least in the moment. I love bread, and french fries, and chocolate, and beer. I'm able to manage it, for most of the day at least, but only by keeping it present in my mind. Only because of the activity am I really losing weight. I keep bumping up the calories burned, and keep scheming about how to burn some more.

Right now, I think I'll sign off and take the dog around the block. Because, ultimately, there is no permanent change. Only today, and tomorrow, and each day one at a time, with a million little decisions to make that add up to loss or gain over time.

Possibly TMI

Who knew your butt could hurt? How was I supposed to know that buried under all that padding are actual muscles that could get sore?

I've been talking about muscle soreness with my girl who is pushing herself to run in gym class. I really like it, in moderation. It reminds me I'm making progress forward to being stronger.

I don't know what moves specifically we've done in my last two training sessions (bridges?), but that old saw about muscles you didn't even know you had is really manifesting itself!


- iPhone uPdate

Good Sleeping

Maybe its the weather (pleasantly cool at night) but I finally got a decent amount of sleep this weekend. I've been dragging around with consistently less than six hours sleep most nights - which is a combination of staying up too late and then tossing and turning in the middle of the night.

Well, yesterday, according to my magic device, I got more than nine hours of sleep, despite twenty minutes of wakefulness in the middle of the night!  It's not actually true, it turns out. I didn't get that much sleep. It appears that when I lie down to read, my position and my stillness fool the device into thinking I'm actually asleep.

I've been reading more for the past two weeks, with my new Kindle in hand. It's comfortable, convenient, and when I finished my book last night, without leaving my bed I bought two more books from the same author. Oops.

Never-the-less, I think I am getting some decent sleep and I feel better for it. But now time to take my little 4-footed friend for a walk.

More Walking- In Company

The weather has turned from oppressive to mild and we're back to the seasons of walking. I would like to work more walking into my life and currently I'm trying the evenings. But it is getting dark earlier and earlier, so there are several considerations to balance.

Last night I walked for about 45 minutes around our neighborhood. We have widely spaced street lights and narrow twisty hilly streets with no sidewalks. There were lots of cars I had to dodge, but almost no people. I listened to my book and walked very very fast.

I missed having my fierce overprotective dog with me. I have a dog partly just for walking at night. When I got her, part of my criteria was a dog big enough to give bad people second thoughts about approaching us. I am very mindful that I live on the edge of a big city and I am a small woman who could be seen as an easy target.

When we are the only ones on the surface if the planet, my dog is a total joy to walk with. She stays by my left side, sniffing as she goes but keeping that holy grail for dog walkers, a loose leash with plenty of slack - in the eight feet that is all I allow her to range.

This is a very dog friendly neighborhood and it is rare for us to be the only ones out. My own sweet snugglepuss becomes a raging, slavering, mindless ball of lunging snarling fury when other dogs are around. I have worked with trainers and on our own for years, and only reached an uneasy balance that is a lot of work to maintain. I understand her psychology and physiology, and I know how to act. But it is a lot of work to do things right.

I have to be hyperalert to my surroundings. I have to load up my pockets with plenty of high quality treats. I have to react before my dog does, leading her into a positive behavior (eating a treat) before she begins the negative behavior (aggressiveness). And so when it's light out and I feel safe and I'm likely to see many other dog walkers, I often just leave her behind (with a combined sense of guilt and relief).

But if I'm embarked on a new campaign of night walking, it's time to try again. I just didn't feel comfortable on my own last night without her. So tonight, I gave her a try. Nice and easy, no iPod, just around the block. At the second corner, there were some people coming, so we wheeled around and headed back the other way. No anxiety on her part. We ended up doing three circuits, a good 20 minutes, with another reversal to avoid folks.

Dogs are total creatures of habit. If I take her out again tomorrow, by Tuesday she will be expecting it. In a previous decade in a different big city, with a different large dog, I was building up strength for a backpacking trip with night dog walks. Often, what got me off the couch and out in the subzero weather was my dog's unwavering conviction it was the right thing to do. Living up to a dog's expectations makes us better people, and I hope in my case, a more fit one.


- iPhone uPdate

Accountability: Just the Facts

I've not been posting much, and not writing much, because I've not wanted to face the facts. I've weighed myself every day, more or less, and thus maintained an awareness of how well I'm doing. But I needed to sit down and confront the reality, looking at not each individual data point, but what it tells me about trends and today.

Here's the big picture of my weight. The vertical bars are June of each year, and the horizontal ones are ten-pound marks:

It tells me I have lost weight this summer. My feeling was I was holding in place, but my memory of where I was at the beginning of the summer was hazy. It has been painfully slow, and not always in one direction, but overall, I'm better off now than I was.

Here is a better look at where I have been this year - in this one, the horizontal bars are five pounds apart:

I

I am measurably and clearly lower than I was in June!  Not totally stalled, as I felt. However, August was a total bust - I'm where I was at the beginning of the month. The one saving grace is a new number showed up - my first glimpse of a whole pound lower.

Going back to the big picture and historical perspective, I have been here before. I was here in 2008, my last attempt to lose weight. I was here for a long time in 2004 and 2005, a holding action on my way back up after The Big Loss of 1998. It was 2003 - seven years ago - and before menopause for me. My life and my body have been through many changes since then.  Don't know if it was the hormones or what, but I feel like many things I knew about my body then are no longer true. Here's a thought, though - at that time, I was NOT doing a lot of conscious exercise. I bet I am stronger and fitter now than I was then.

Anyway, I'm going to be re-focusing myself on making this line go down. This week, I'm fixed on meal planning and logging all food.

Getting Back to a Routine

The summer was wonderful. I treated myself to several days off, and generally kept to a slower pace. I went absolutely nuts over fruit and it was very very good.  I was a regular at farmer's markets and got a few good vegetables that at least one or two others ate appreciatively.

But now school is in session, my big boy (the best eater) is gone, and the pace at work is insanely fast. The weather is as good as it gets - not too hot, sunny and low humidity - and I like to move. I'll be up before dawn for my exercise session. But I'm eating. And eating. And eating.

Time to get more into a routine.  I do have afternoon help, and she would start supper if I were organized enough to tell her what to do.  That's the rub. It's easy enough to get home and throw something together to eat, but it is at least 45 minutes from when I walk in till when we sit down, and that is late to be eating. So I need to figure out how to set things up to have her prepare something we can eat, or at least go through the first stages of getting it ready.  That means figuring it out in advance, and making sure we've actually got the ingredients. And making sure the kids have left the kitchen in a state where she can work.

Shopping for my house:  Small cups of cottage cheese (I don't eat yogurt, too sweet); frozen dinners (Chicken Tandoori with Spinach; Chicken Tikka Masala), Aidell's Chicken Apple Sausage, Dove Dark Chocolates.  And a 20-pound bag of dog food.  No real food for my house; cooking and most social meals are over with the kids. Think about buying salads to take to work.

I'm not minding the change of seasons and the beginnings of the new school year. I just want things to calm down and feel more normal and routine. I think that will give me the space to manage my consumption better.

The New Normal: I Like to Move

So yeah, I'm eating a lot. But I also am moving a lot, and hardly noticing it.  I just plugged in my armband device and got the stats from this week - college campuses (both Oberlin and Ann Arbor) involve a lot of walking, and my friends here in Ann Arbor love to walk (and they have an adolescent golden retriever that really really likes to walk).

I've averaged over 10,000 steps every day for the past week, my calorie burn has been a respectable 2200 per day, and yesterday I did over 16,000 steps and 2400 calories!  I'm probably still out of balance in my eating (yes, both beer and ice cream are figuring in the mix) but at least the moving feels just perfectly normal, and I'm ready for more. It was specifically to get my energy level up that I started on this exercise journey - I'm getting out there and doing things.

We've already done over 7,000 steps this morning with the morning walk in the woods they do every single morning. (What a lucky dog!)  It was a very slow pace, though over hilly glacial terrain, but its social and pleasant and a terrific way to start the day. Here is what the iphone said we did this morning:

Shortened Google Maps URL: http://j.mp/9LeRQ2
Started: Sep 3, 2010 6:37:39 AM
Walk Time: 1:20:06
Stopped Time: 0:00
Distance: 2.68 miles
Average: 29:52 /mile
Fastest Pace: 20:51 /mile
Climb: 643 feet
Calories: 258


And all by 8 am - with no thought of slowing down for the rest of the day.