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!