The Best French Fries Ever!

My friend has been visiting and the summer vibe that leads to beer and ice cream (not together, but often in the same meal) has really intensified.  I've had more beer in the last week than in the previous six months, cruise included. And it's all been a choice, though not necessarily a wise one. I've stopped logging all my food. I'm exercising, and trying to drive up the activity level, though not necessarily being successful at that.

Here's what's ironic:  I've hit some major milestones of success. My weight on the scale dropped into a new decade of numbers, and the cumulative weight loss hit twenty pounds from my peak around Christmas.  Even more exciting - today not one but two people commented on how I was losing weight and looked great.

All this success, or else just lack of mindfulness, has led me to a state of complacency.  Tonight, we went out to dinner at a hip restaurant ("we have to go somewhere I don't go with the kids!").  Jackies  Everything there is lovely, fresh, often organic and usually local. Don't know how this stuff racks up on the locavore scale, but it was off the charts for my personal gastronomy.  Cheese fries with truffles? Thin fries, so crisp, with fontina cheese and tiny slices of truffles in the cheese. A giant basket full. It could have been dinner alone. Sadly for my diet, we went on to eat dinner, but I'm getting a couple of lunches out of the doggie bags. I figured (always thinking) that used (I mean leftover) fries would be no good tomorrow but the entrees could stand the test of time.

I guess I'm standing at a cross-roads. Do I declare victory and stop focusing? Or do I go back to first principles and stay the course? My weight is roughly where I was when my life fell apart nineteen months ago.  But with the Big Loss, I went down another twenty-five pounds from where I am now. I know I could do it. I've got the tools and the skills and I can exercise the discipline. Do I want to? Do I want to badly enough to re-commit? To go through all the hassle of tracking and counting and saying "no thanks"? To not drink beer? To skip the ice cream cones?  Can I manage the calorie count to permit the taste of beer and the coolness of ice cream a couple of times a week, or is that just too far down the slippery slope I'm sliding down now?

I truly don't know the answer to these questions. I need to focus, alone, and decide where I want to be, how I want to budget my time and energy. Time to look at all the reasons I wrote down when I started this journey. Are the reasons still compelling enough to drive me? Have I achieved enough that the reasons are satisfied?

This sounds like a meditation best undertaken with the assistance of exercise. A very long walk would be in order. The weather has just broken from its hot spell, and the next couple of days are going to be conducive to outdoor exercise. No matter what I eat, I know I'm committed on the activity side. Strong and fit and flexible is what I want, badly enough to do what I need to do to get there.

Progress is Being Made

Though I'm not writing about it, mostly writing offline, the scale continues its excruciatingly slow journey downward, as I continue to try to rev up the activity. I'm half a pound away from a major milestone. But sleep continues to be my biggest obstacle to feeling good and making wise food choices.

A Hundred Calories Here, a Hundred Calories There...

According to most places (ok both places) I looked, a five hundred calorie deficit a day adds up to a pound a week. I'm losing weight, but way more slowly than a pound a week. When I go look at the numbers, I've been pretty good at exceeding that 500 calorie gap.  So either, the math doesn't work on me? Or the numbers are wrong? It has to be one or the other.

There is a good chance I underestimate my calories consumed.  I try very hard to be rigorous about every bite, and generous in my estimate of portion sizes. But every study ever done says people underestimate calories consumed. Period.

There is also the possibility my magic device overestimates my calorie burn, but I've got no way to judge that. It does seem to do a good relative job, counting my activity differently every day, so I'll assume it is ok.

What are the odds my body is different from everybody else's and I need a different formula? Clearly, we are not machines made with careful quality control for identical results. And in a weight loss mode, your body hunkers down and tries to conserve weight, convinced it is threatened by imminent starvation. So maybe the formula is not exactly right for me right now.

The thing is, none of that matters.  The thing to focus on is not the absolute numbers, but the gap. Whether or not I'm counting right, making a series of small changes should make the gap bigger. For example, walking to and from the kids house adds a hundred calories burned. Making the lunch round trip to buy my favorite salad adds 150 calories burned. Time on the NerdicTrak or elliptical trainer would burn even more even faster. Maybe I can add 20 minutes of NT time into the mix - at 200 calories for that short time - maybe even in the evenings?

On the eating end, I need to be vigilant at and after dinner. Portion control at dinner, and only a very small dessert. Aim at keeping the evening sweet under 100 calories, below the 200 calories it has crept up to. I can do this. Try to keep that gap getting wider!

I'm going to be taking some time off this summer - days here and there, afternoons here and there. I'm going to kick it into a lower gear at work. I have some active days in mind for me and my girl. That should help keep my control and focus on my body up, if I have some extra time to manage things on the home front.

Food While Travelling

The food here is amazing. It's rather like being on the cruise ship, except with the advantage that it's all buffet and so the portions are up to me.

It's much harder to manage my calories while travelling and having so little control over choices or times. Monday, I brought along carrots but ended up not eating them. Instead, I actually bought and ate some chips with my sandwich, after carefully reading the package.  But they weren't that good, and I finally woke from my munching trance to trash the few remaining in the bag.

Thursday, when I travelled out here, I remembered most places in Falmouth and Woods Hole aren't open for the season yet, so I bought a yummy Wolfgang Puck sandwich in the airport and ate it in the car on the way east. I saw the salads after I bought the sandwich (clearly not looking too hard) but then consoled myself with the thought I couldn't have eaten the salad while driving. Having saved all that time, I was able to take my walk when I arrived.

Today was a day with too much sitting around in one place. It is very hard to sit still for a nine hour meeting, even in the world's most gorgeous place with a lavish meal every few hours, and a constant supply of pastries and cookies. I had to take a walk, and a nice brisk one, swinging my arms and striding right out.  I got one in before and after dinner, a grand total of three and a half miles, more than 300 calories burned. Good for me.

I miss my alcohol. I've never been much of a drinker, but I really love a beer when I'm tired. It also helps enormously when having to mix in an unfamiliar social situation. I arrived at the cocktail hour determined to have club soda, and by the time I got to the bar I had decided on a lite beer. I blamed it on social anxiety, and it was very good.

Dinner Tonight

 
I actually only ate the lobster and the chowder. The other stuff went to waste, while I gorged on a lovely spinach and strawberry salad. I allowed myself a small bit of strawberry shortcake for dessert.  After dinner I nearly ran out of there because the "serve yourself" shortcake was calling me back.
- iPhone uPdate

Woods Hole Walk

I feel like I've been running all week. But today I got to get out of the office and go to Woods Hole on Cape Cod.  This is a work trip, one I do every year at this time (except the year I got schnookered out of it). I also spent a summer at the Marine Biological Laboratory here when I was in college, so I'm familiar with the area.

The familiarity is kind of creepy, though, because this place is so very much like Bellport.  Geologically Cape Cod and Long Island are identical - both terminal moraines of the same glacier. The biology and cultural histories are also very similar, at least up to the twentieth century. Woods Hole itself has hills and rocks, so its more of a North Shore ambiance. Falmouth, where my hotel is, is so very very Bellport that walks in previous years constantly gave me a feeling that I would turn a corner and be on Brown's Lane, or see Wallen's on Main Street.

Today, after a sprint to the office, drive to airport, tedious flight, another couple of hours drive from Providence to here, the most important thing to me was to get outside and take a walk. It was raining desultorily, not drizzling but rather big drops sparsely falling, and I had no raincoat but I HAD to get out there. I drove down to Woods Hole itself, by the ferry, and took a stroll.

I love this place. I love the architecture, which is the shape of houses from "home". I love the landscape, and I love the seascape, again partly because it speaks to me of "home".  It's great to come from a place I can think of as paradise, so when I go visit those beautiful places on earth that knock people off their feet I can say casually, "oh yeah, it's almost as nice as Bellport".

My time here at Woods Hole during college was not all happy. Attending high school graduation has me thinking about the process of becoming Nan - how did it come about? I've unearthed some old journals, including from my summer here. I totally loved the work and the place, but socially did not thrive here. Instead I began a process of turning inward, one that lasted for several years. I also passed up an opportunity here, an important fork in the road for me, and still wonder what my life would be like had I seized the moment rather than funked it.

Sadly, my inward process did not result in a lot of physical activity, unlike now. I didn't walk then, except when necessary. Walking for pleasure wasn't on my horizon. Exercise for its own sake hadn't been invented yet, as far as I was concerned. I did bike - starting the summer I was eleven, I took long solo bike rides and used that to get my exploration kicks and also to think through tough issues. But I don't think I had access to a bike while I was here, so I stuck very close to the dorms. Daily, though, I was out on the research ship and that was the best part of being here. 

The map of today's walk - only a mile and a half, because it got dark - can be seen here.  Tomorrow, there will be ten hours of meetings, and a lobster dinner, bookended by walks and maybe a little bit of a hotel room workout in the morning.

Calorie Burning

Wearing my magic calorie counting device definitely makes me want to be more active. A total slug of a sick day is 1700 calories, a moderately active work day (with walks, either deliberately or between meetings) is 2000 calories, and a very active day is 2400 calories.

I joined the facebook group for BodyMedia Fit (or BMF as the fans say), and some folks are posting their stats there. FOUR THOUSAND calories!!! Seriously? How can that be?

I did some mental math on my drive on to work. On a very active day, I average 100 calories an hour. The absolutely most active I know how to be is the NerdicTrak at 600 calories an hour, or plus 500 over baseline. So to get to 4,000 calories in 24 hours, I would need to NT for-- 5-6 hours non-stop?

I guess it's possible. I've taken ski vacations where I've done near that. For a couple of days. I guess if you are training for a marathon you put in those kinds of hours. But how do you do that and have a life?

This made me riff on what I would do if I had more time:

Definitely go to the gym for longer.
Kayak more.
Walk more.
Play the piano.
Read.
Garden.
Set up fun and creative active projects for the kids
Lots more boat projects.
Lots more sailing.

So the gym and exercise are up there, but as I had more time to think, the list started to fill up with competing priorities. Don't know if I would ever get to six hours a day at the gym.

Still, a fun summer project would be to keep trying for new high total days. I bet I can get over 3000 if I try.

- iPhone uPdate

Body Sense

I went kayaking today.  About an hour, nearly three miles.  In fact, according to the GPS, I averaged two and a half miles per hour, and topped out at 5.8 miles per hour. Not sure I really believe that last!  If true, I'm rivaling the speed of my big sailboat, who currently sports a major garden on her bottom.

I feel very good during the paddle. I'm trying to develop a body sense, to feel the detailed mechanics of what I am doing, and imagine to myself exactly how to do it right.  This body sense is something I don't have naturally, and part of what distinguishes an athlete from a shlub like me.  I am naturally clumsy. I have given myself concussions by tripping over my own two feet. My latest injury, falling on my hand, was just such an instance of lack of coordination.

One of the first times I can remember feeling the mechanics of what I was doing was being coached in how to throw by a softball player when I was in college. He talked me through the motions of windup and release and I was amazed at what a difference it made. I loved playing catch then, feeling the rhythm and the motion and the flight of the ball and the thwack when he caught my well-thrown ball.  I never understood before then why people would spend time doing that.

Working with my personal trainers, I have learned a lot of basic mechanics of motion that make life easier. The big one is to drive up through the heel, not the toe, when standing from sitting or making a big step up. When I forget, the pain is an instant reminder to change the motion.

Today, I tried to pay attention the mechanics of the stroke. I could feel the forearm, the long muscles in my sides. When putting power into the stroke, I would step on the foot supports and lean way forward, before pulling the paddle back.  I don't think I had good form, and I think there is much still to learn about how to do this.  But I'm feeling it, and I'm going to read my book (of course I have a kayaking book!) on paddling technique.  I took classes last year, and I may go back for a reprise if I can wangle an evening off. Coaching on the form would be good.

I really enjoyed the paddle. I went way up to the end of a branch of Bodkin Creek, inside Downs county park.  I saw a turtle, a GBH, and the big one was a beaver swimming across the creek.  It was not too hot and it was not too tiring. Sadly, my magic calorie device doesn't think I worked too hard. Certainly I would paddle and rest, paddle and rest. I think I may need to do more straight paddling, to build up my strength.  The maneuver to get out of the kayak at the end is awkward, but I spent a little time thinking about how to do it, and I was more successful at avoiding a splash at the end today than ever before.  I would like to be able to paddle more often.

The one bad part is my right hand still cannot grip without pain.  It was extremely annoying, and it hurts now typing. I am told to expect this, and so I'll just work on through it.

Progress Continues

I am continuing to try to get motivated here. I looked at my progress so far - and it is slow but steady.  The big difference between people who yo-yo their weight and those who lose lots and keep it off, is they keep going with the techniques. I can do this.  I am doing this.  I have statistics to prove it!

A Day Off

Yesterday, I took the day off from thinking about diet and exercise.  I removed my magic activity monitor device, and deliberately left it behind on the dresser.  I put on a summer dress, and wasn't unhappy with how I looked in it.  I just ate without a lot of thought and no intention of recording it. I don't want to reconstruct entirely, but I did have a couple of beers and some cake.

As my energy has flagged, my commitment has also flagged. My rate of weight loss is slow (but still a downward trend). I'm really digging the personal training though it cuts into my precious sleep, but I need a lot more aerobic exercise, and our DC sub-tropical clime is past the time where its fun to do stuff outdoors (except in the very early morning or on the water).  My knees hurt a lot, and my hand still hurts from the fall a month ago.  I don't have a lot of energy to plan ahead on meals, and so we're eating a lot of processed stuff, just when we should be getting fresh local vegetables and fruits.

In one of those serendipitous events that make the world endlessly thrilling, I was pawing through some old iphone notes this morning early, and came on a litany of encouraging self-talk I had copied down back when I started this journey five months ago. This is from The Complete Beck Diet For Life, which I wrote about before.

1. The only way to lose weight permanently is to learn dieting skills and practice them every day. Then dieting will get easier and easier.
2. I'm choosing to say NO CHOICE. If I want to lose weight, I have to do what I need to do, not what I feel like doing.
3. I can accept this is what I have to do if I want all of the benefits of permanent weight loss.
4. My weight isn't who I am. It isn't a measure of my worth. It's just a number that tells me important information.
5. I have to eat every bite slowly, while sitting down, so I can fully enjoy it. It's worth developing this lifetime habit so I can have a lifetime of being thinner.
6. I really do deserve credit for breaking old habits, and it is essential for building my confidence. Once my confidence grows, everything will become so much easier.

Let's take a look at how I am doing, and see if I want to renew the commitment.  

What skills have I developed? How well do I practice them?  

1. For eating, I am very conscious of portion size. Even yesterday, when I decided "diet, schmiet" I was aware that hunger is not an emergency, and ate things I wanted to eat, not just because they were there. For activity, I am much more aware of the need to get up and move around a lot. Don't hesitate to run downstairs to get what you need - don't wait and do it tomorrow.
2. No Choice:  I am not following a rigid set of rules. Everything is a choice. Maybe that is part of my problem right now - I am giving myself too many food choices, and often compromising on my ideals of what I want to be eating as a result.  Maybe I need to re-read that section of the book, and as I recall, it will likely result in my making a more structured framework for food for a while.  For exercise - the personal training removes a whole set of choices, and it really is working for me.
3. Acceptance:  I know there is no magic in weight loss. It will just take time and effort. I really really want to be stronger and slimmer, and I need to do certain things to make that happen. Some of them I am doing well, others not so well.
4. Weight:  I weigh myself every day. A single high number does not devastate me, but a new low number elates me.
5. Eating slowly while sitting down and not doing anything else.  I pretty much have ignored this precept. Perhaps I need to reread and rethink this part of the Beck plan, and decide if it will yield benefits.  Actually, I do not much all day on the go, just have specific meals, so maybe I'm not totally ignoring it.
6. Credit and Confidence:  I do give myself credit for having made progress, and for how I have handled my overall committment.  I have some degree of confidence about my ability to handle different situations in the future. And the working out thing is really building physical confidence, though the knees and the hand are setbacks.

More later - I want to go move around now, and then re-read some earlier postings and go back to my instructional books.

Food, Sleep, and Activity

I've been working on some stuff related to fatigue at work, and understand more viscerally the concept of cumulative sleep debt.  This is when you get insufficient sleep for several nights in a row.  It adds up, so that several days of two or more hours less than you need can have the same effect as a single night of only a couple of hours of sleep. You can't catch it all up, but generally one night of 9+ hours will put you back on top of the world.

If only.

At work, we talk about providing sleep opportunities as a matter of safety regulation. "Opportunity" doesn't translate into "sleep", and it's not just because someone is being irresponsible. Some of us just simply cannot sleep, we toss and turn for hours.  Nine hours?  Not likely.  Only if an unrelated nap (generally in the little Window of Circadian Low, or WOCL, in the late afternoon) gets added to the six hours at night.

I'm really busy, and I've got lots going on at work and at home to think about as I toss and turn. I'm convinced, however, that physical reasons are the chicken, or reason I'm not sleeping, and the mulling over and over various issues is simply the egg, because I'm awake anyway and my mind has to go somewhere.

How little sleep do I have?  My magic device adds it up, probably overcounts a bit, and so here's the sad truth:

The average has never been much above seven hours, but now its closer to six. I've been stupid with fatigue in the afternoon, not able to think clearly. I've had micro-sleeps while driving home, and vowed never to stick it out so tired again. So today, home while still awake before lunch and straight to the bed to get a serious nap.

Being this fatigued makes me want to eat comfort food, served to me rather than having to fix it. I'm convinced being more active will help me sleep, but the afternoon slump is very real and keeps me chairbound.

Not much can be done about this except the obvious clean living stuff. I don't drink much coffee and it's done by 10 am. I'm getting exercise and spending time outdoors in the sunlight. I use my bedroom for sleeping and changing clothes, not as an active living room. I strive to be in bed by 10 pm, and rarely do lights out later than 10:30.

But it doesn't work. I fall asleep as soon as my head hits the pillow (a sign of fatigue) and wake a couple of hours later. The rest of the night is spent tossing and turning. My magic device shows a typical pattern is 2 minutes awake, doze for 9 minutes, awake for 3, doze for six, etc., for several hours. Solidly and soundly back asleep around 4 am, and the alarm goes off at 5:30 or I wake up naturally at 6:30.  Got to get up, no matter how little sleep there was in the middle.

The reason this is a problem is it makes my afternoons and evenings so much less productive than they could be. Don't have a fix for it.  Helps explain the lack of posting here - less ambitious and out of time in the evenings.  Can I move my bedtime up an hour? Not without getting even less done.