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.