Quote

Don't know where I read this , but I took it to heart: it's almost always better to trade 30 minutes of sleep for 30 minutes of exercise.

Good night.


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Commitment

Two miles every day for a week! The weather has been optimal and I'm very happy with what I've done. So I'll keep it up for a while. How long? As long as I feel like it.

I just caught up with a post from Jacksh*t that says it all: "two years down and forever to go". (I'll edit in a link when I get to my computer.)



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Easter Bunny Strategies

Some foods I just can't be trusted around. Jourdan Almonds, traditional food of Easter, is one of them.  Chocolate bunnies - when made of good chocolate - also a problem. Peeps, which I don't remember from my childhood, have no attraction whatsoever. Luckily, I like egg salad, so there is a place for colored eggs that survive the hunt.

I bought ahead of time, and then carefully hid the supplies in my brother-in-law's bedroom. Tonight, preparing the baskets for my sometimes infantile children to find upon awakening, I did nibble a bit, but all the leftovers stayed behind for tomorrow's festivities.

Had I left anything in my house, it would be preying on me right now. Sometimes its better to just set things up so you don't have to exercise any willpower.

Happy Easter!

Commitments

I'm so very sensitive to the weather, and the volatility this time of year is driving me nuts. Wednesday it was in the 80's, but today never got to the upper half of the 40's!  Plus, it just rained. Dark and dreary. Sucks the energy right out of me. Oddly, once the sun went down and it was truly night time, it seemed less oppressive to me.

Here's what I've been thinking about:  Can I make a commitment to specific exercise goals, without signing up for a class or specific appointments? Can I "insource" some willpower and start moving more, regularly, sustained, motivated and reminded only by myself?  The idea of committing publicly to follow through on something specific is very scary, but its also part of why I do this blog, so I'm partly motivated by wanting to have a successful report.

I like the gym and personal training which has really helped my strength and my shape. I think I'm going to like yoga, which should give me flexibility and balance (and perhaps serenity?). But I need to be in better aerobic shape - I want to build up my endurance. I haven't been running on the treadmill or walking much, at least until the last couple of weeks. Finally, I'm getting out of the office at lunch, and even my 20 minute mile garden circuit is good.

I'm thinking two miles a day minimum is what I want to do. I've been thinking about trying to get in at least a mile before going in to work (on non-gym days). So far, I've thought about it while lying under the covers not making a move. Then I've been thinking about committing here is what I'm going to do. First I thought I should do two miles for a month. Then I thought, maybe a week. Then I thought, let's give it a couple of days and see if I can do it at all.

So I've done it since Tuesday - four days in a row. The first two were at the beach - so easy. Yesterday was a bit slower at work, so I got in time at lunch. But I looked out my office window at lunchtime today, and it was dark and dank, but probably not raining because pedestrians were not holding up umbrellas. Still, I didn't go out. Tonight, it is 43 degrees and drizzling, and I went out at 9 pm anyway and got in 2.25 miles, up and down the serpentine steep streets of my 'hood. I was dressed for it - foul weather gear, fleece, and an ipod - and the dog really enjoyed it too and I like letting the dog get some exercise. So just the weekend and Monday, and I will have done a week of walks. Then I'll see about making it to the end of the month... But long term commitments have not been my strong suit in the past. We'll see.

Two miles is really nothing. Forty minute or less. My quick lunchtime mile through the sculpture gardens for twenty minutes and then walking between my house and the kids, and I'm there. I've decided this has to be "walks" meaning adding up all the times I walk between my office and my bosses' during the day won't count - has to be outside, and has to be at least a half mile at a pop. I have in mind to sometimes jog a bit, and always at least hustle. I have to have rules. But they are my rules, and I can change them whenever I like.

Off to bed with the sense that at least I did something today while the day lasted.

The Scale

So I tell myself I'm just maintaining. Two days of vacation eating, hardly wild, and the scale is up three pounds from when I left.

I know it bounces around based on water more than anything else. But seriously, three pounds? I'm sure it will bounce back down, if I get right back to it. But I'll pay attention to how fast it does. I want to understand how sensitive my body is to off course. Does it take a week to settle down from two days?


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In the O.C.

I took a couple of days off from work to go to the beach with my girl and her dog. This was her idea:  "Let's take Tops to the beach!" and so the dog was kind of the whole point. I get it, but there are incredibly cheap deals at the luxury ocean front hotels right now, but only one spot - not so luxury, near but not on, the beach takes dogs. Three hours drive and poof! away from worldly things, to a honky tonk built up beach town. I've never been, and this is the only season I'd really like to come.

Up early, and Tops and I had the beach to ourselves. Not ready to let her swim yet, we jogged along the surf for a few blocks, then a nice walk back through the city blocks. Our room (with tiny terrace) on the fourth floor looks out over the bay side (this is a barrier beach island) and there is plenty of traffic on the main spine of the island.

The room has a fridge and microwave, so I brought some rudimentary provisions. I ate cold baked lemon chicken in the car last night, along with some clementines and a couple of the chocolate chip cookies my girl had baked.  Now, seagull noises over the traffic, me and my laptop are on the terrace with my motel-room coffee - but out of my own china mug from the car, not their styrofoam thing. Breakfast of my fancy cheese for me, pomegranate yogurt with granola (from Trader Joe's) for my girl, and we'll go exploring.

Crab cakes, cream of crab soup, ice cream, and a beer are likely in my future today. My plan is to to go with it, but try to walk and walk and walk. The boardwalk starts a couple blocks south of us, and stretches for three miles. It's what you are supposed to do in the O.C. - make the scene on the board walk. Hooray for road trips and hooray for out of my routine!

First Yoga Class EVER

Yesterday was a monsoon, starting in the mid morning and not letting up till very early this morning. The heavy rain and darkness sucked the energy out of me, and much of the day was spent on one couch or another, where I read one murder mystery and an YA fantasy novel.  But right now, early Sunday morning, the sunshine is almost painfully brilliant and it will stay that way all day. The energy is up and I'm ready to DO some things. But first, I need to check in here. It's been too long. I have to be reflective and accountable if I'm going to make any progress.

My philosophy is changing on how I want to handle my diet and exercise for a while. I want to go down in weight - duh - any woman with a butt like mine would!  But strong, flexible, balanced, and connected to my family are things I need to put my energy into right now. That means compromises on how I will eat, and how I will spend my time, from the things I would do and eat if I were on my own.

The gym is paid for the next several months, so I'll be doing that. But I've added an activity I'm incredibly excited about:  Yoga.  Many of my friends do it regularly. I've read books - mostly memoirs -  where it figures largely in people's lives. It's seemed mysterious and magic to me. But except for not very effective Wii or a DVD, I've never done it at all.  I signed up for a class, but I'll miss the first scheduled one next Tuesday. Knowing that, when I saw the studio has a free open-house style weekend of classes before starting their new semester next week, I showed up yesterday to a beginner's session.

I'm not sure what I was expecting - maybe a single session would lead to enlightenment, peace, and a whole new outlook on the world? It didn't do that. I'm not disappointed, certainly, but I'm re-calibrating my expectations, now that I've got something from real life to build on.  If it does completely change my life, it will come from the repeated practice, not like a bolt of lightening.

The class teacher was not what I expected. She is short, fat, and 62 years old (she isn't the regular teacher for my class. My teacher, per web bio, is currently a major number cruncher with the government. It is a company town.)  She was.... more like me than not. A senior financial analyst with the government until she retired and became full time yoga instructor. Shaped like an apple, but extremely strong and flexible. Used words I hear at the gym, "quadriceps"and "sacroiliac", along with Sanskrit words and more spiritual phrases.

We began with conversation, then sitting and briefly chanting. Then she demonstrated and talked us through several moves. All but one were well within my competence for reach and strength (the one I couldn't do required balance), but they were subtly different from the gym. The moving from one place to another, the words used to describe what we were doing ("melt your heart") gave it a context that was nice. We ended with "corpse pose" and chanting again. It wasn't too eastern-mysterious, and I do believe physical actions will affect you mentally, so I did the chants out loud while reserving in my mind my rational skepticism. The yoga class followed immediately my regular Saturday gym class and that is not something I'll do regularly. I have some minor soreness now, and I can't tell if its the yoga or the gym. The schedule I'm going to try is Tuesday nights, from 8 pm to 9:30 pm, a time I would normally be vegging out with the kids or at home.  "Found time".

Coming up today? Yard work, added to the inside chores I could have done but didn't do yesterday. The kids are on spring break, and I've got a vacation mentality too. The boys are going to visit the college boy tonight (its a surprise so I hope they find him!!) and Monday night the girls are taking the dog to the beach on the Eastern shore. Got to organize some road food for us, but no family dinners or work lunches before Thursday. Good to get out of the routine and do something different.

PS: for the third week in a row, my average weight has been exactly (within 0.1 pound) the same.  The good news is, the bouncing around is less than it had been, the body has really settled here. I'll be ok with staying here for a while as long as it doesn't go up. As the weather gets nicer, I'll be more active. I can always blitz to break the set point later, when I can spend a couple of weeks or so really focusing on it.

I borrowed and adapted a technique from a couple of other friends and bloggers (Kim and Alice) , and started (on the fly, its so easy) a personal daily log of things to give myself credit for. I'm only giving myself positive reinforcement there. It's not comprehensive, only the plusses. I've linked it on the right, and it is here.
Very boring, but feel free to look and comment.  Because I'm that way, I sum up each day with an arbitrary point total (again, only pluses no minuses). So far, it's just for the additional positive reinforcement of looking at a number that will grow over time.

Activity Up!

Because of the good weather, I can get out and about more. I have an incredible backlog of gardening chores (to confess, its really two years worth of projects on top of the chores). Saturday was rainy, but Sunday was out in the yard. Saturday was active with housework and then a big walk. So it was the most active weekend so far this year - more than 2500 calories burned each day.

I'm trying to keep the motion going.

Irony

You can't always get what you want, but if you try sometimes, you'll get what you need. (Rolling Stones)

I took a walk tonight after dinner. I had been thinking about ice cream as the weather has gotten better, and I decided I could have an ice cream cone as long as I walked to go get it. I contemplated part of a beer instead, but the idea of ice cream won out. So after dinner I grabbed the iPod and headed out.

I'm listening to "Packing for Mars", a book about space exploration. It's a chatty gossipy book, not heavily scientific. This is the kind of book I like listening to lately, non fiction, slow paced, but amusing enough to keep me interested. I've been through sections on psychological profiles, intercultural relations, space suit construction and plumbing and weightlessness.

This last section ironically led to a very graphic analysis of space and motion sickness. As I walked about a mile and a half towards the ice cream shop, I heard how weightlessness translates into motion sickness, what it is like to ride on Nasa's "vomit comet" airplane that allows 22 seconds of weightlessness in 60 repetitions, which Apollo astronauts puked when, what happens to vomit in a weightless cabin and how hard it is to dodge, what happens to vomit inside a sealed space suit, how researchers induce motion sickness to study it, and how the author nearly barfed all over Tom Cruise when he took her flying in his acrobatic biplane. By the time I was approaching the ice cream shop I was turning a bit green around the gills myself. I pressed fast forward on the iPod and went on to the next chapter about sleeping in space.

And the ice cream shop was closed. Still on winter hours. As it turns out, I was actually relieved.

- iPhone uPdate

P.S. hint: keep your eyes closed, keep your head as still as possible relative to your body, no turning or movement, and do mental arithmetic problems.

The First Taste

Almost always, the first taste of anything is the most satisfying. This is especially true of ice cream and beer, but also works for most sweets and many other dishes. Never-the-less, I can't be trusted around certain kinds of sweets and I will simply keep on until whatever-it-was is gone.

I've learned that I have to plan treats into my eating. I'm not going to completely change my diet and eliminate all forms of treats. So instead, I need to work on planning them in, and then portion controlling them so they don't throw me completely off.

This may have been some of what worked for me in the Big Loss several years ago. The eating plan I was following was basically no carb during the day, but an evening meal that could contain any food, in balanced portions and consumed within an hour.  That one-hour limit also really worked to keep out the late night snacking.

Portion control. Allow a taste. Allow a few bites. But what are the strategies to make it only a few?

If buying something, buy things that only come in small sizes. A single tiny candy bar. A single mini-cupcake.  This works for treats I keep at my house, but doesn't work for family treats. Buy only enough for everyone to have that evening's portion, with no left-overs for picking at later.

If serving something, use the smallest bowl or plate I can find, and eat it with the smallest spoon or fork.

Share a beer, or pour the other half down the drain.

No eating ice cream from the container while standing in front of the freezer!

Buy incredibly expensive treats that only come in small portions. There is a pie shop down H Street from the pharmacy that sells individual pies for - I kid you not - $28 each.  (My boy the pie fan gets one when he turns 16 next month, and probably never another till he can vote!)  Cupcake shops are also ridiculously priced.

Today was an ooky day overall. Feeling dissed and taking the whole government shut down thing very personally. Little work done as everyone cleaned the fridge and watered the plants and worried about when they would be able to get back to doing what needs to be done. I stopped at Whole Foods to pick up supper for just me because the kids were off doing things with their friends.  I cruised the bakery shop and eyed many many good things, but rejected everything that required buying more than a single thing. They didn't have any blueberries - must finally be out of season in the southern hemisphere - and none of the other off-season fruit looked good. I ended up with a single "jumble" cookie - raisins and chocolate chips and different nuts all together in one. Sadly, it was a medium (but not enormous) cookie. I could have been satisfied with half, but I ate it all.  So kudos for me for all the things I didn't buy (carrot cake donut holes! cinnamon swirls! my absolute favorites - apple turnovers!)  but its a shame there wasn't a single smaller option.  Look for the small, good treat.

Got out

I managed to get out of the building at lunchtime, first time in a while. I hustled through a mile walk, that went through two Smithsonian display gardens (Ripley and National History) and two different sculpture gardens (Hirchshorn and National Gallery). Just exactly a mile, enough to clear my head. How can I not do this? That quick turn was less than 20 minutes and totally worth it.

My Walk

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Credit Where Credit is Due

A lot of the advice in Beck's Diet Solution I had forgotten. And some of it is hitting home. She writes something along these lines: Many unsuccessful dieters focus too soon on what they are eating, and beating themselves up for eating too much. Instead, focus on the skills and techniques for how to think about this. Only when they are mastered should you move into actual dieting. (Sounds like the Karate Kid.)

So one of the techniques is giving yourself credit. I did somethings right today:
- I took a long and quite brisk walk at lunch today.
- I had appropriate snacks and drinks already in my desk and ready to go when I got the 4 pm munchies.
- I involved my girl in making dinner.
- I got up and started moving after dinner.
- I'm writing here.


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Pearls of Wisdom

Things re-learned from re-reading Beck:

It's important to find a diet or eating plan that allows your favorite foods, at least occasionally and in small quantities. It's vital to know you can plan to have them. This is a problem with Atkins.

Sit down to eat. No spontaneous eating, and no unconscious eating. Be conscious of every bite. See your food, and satisfy your eyes.

Give yourself credit. You need positive reinforcement for doing things right, not more negative reinforcement against slip-ups. This is the only way to train a dog. It works on kids. So why not focus on positive reinforcement?

Today, I creatively found a good lunch instead of an easy sandwich. I treated myself to fancy water at the right time instead of dessert. I took a 3 mile fast walk. I blogged. I stayed on my feet along the soccer sidelines while cheering. I read Beck. I signed up for Yoga.

Yes, it feels juvenile and awkward to praise myself for small normal things but again, it works on dogs, why not me?


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Looking for Motivation

I am very happy with how much better I look and feel this year versus last. The twenty-five pounds I've lost is really the difference between obesity and merely plump. My BMI says I'm still overweight, but with the growth of our people, I'm now in a much more average range. The re-shaping my body has been through, to grow muscles in my shoulders and arms (fifteen full pushups!) while tightening the abs and butt (bridges are my friends) means I also have a much better shape. I can go clothes shopping now without grossing myself out with how I look. (I once said to my mother in a changing room, "Of course it's not flattering! I'm fat and none of these clothes are going to totally disguise that fact!")  I am stronger, and move with better balance and confidence. I still have knee issues and back issues, but all the muscles are so much stronger that I'm in a better place to deal with them as they come up.

I am now fifteen pounds from my goal weight. When I started out, I didn't have a goal, I just needed to go down. But now I have a conscious goal in mind. But I'm totally stalled, and not making any progress. I'm bouncing back and forth over the same four pounds - since February. There is no real mystery why. I am eating too much of the wrong stuff and not moving enough. Every night I vow to get moving in the morning. Every morning I start out eating right but not doing any optional exercise (sticking with my gym appointments only). Every evening, after it's too late to exercise, I vow to get moving in the morning, while I have just a bit of a snack treat before bed.  Or more than just a bit. My self control in the evenings is terrible.  I been over and over this same ground for two months now. I've got to get off this cycle, and I don't think just trying harder in the same way to make myself disciplined is the answer.

I could just settle for being where I am. It's so much nicer than where I was a year or more ago. But, I really don't want to do that. I'm also not really sure I could do that.  Trying to coast over the holiday season meant losing a great deal of progress (or, stated more directly, gaining a great deal of weight). I don't know how to do maintenance. I would still need to track, and plan, and exercise. If I have to do these things, I ought to figure out how to do them well enough to get down to where I want to be in size and weight. Eventually, I'll need to learn maintenance, but that's a different issue for a different day.

So what can I do differently?  I'm going back to basics mentally. I'm looking at the books I used when I first started this blog, in January of 2010 especially this one:  The Beck Diet Solution.  (See my sidebar for a link). This is all about self talk, cognitive behavior therapy. I need a mental refresh on what I am doing and why.

I'm also going to try a completely new "fitness adventure". I thought about signing up for a zumba class at the local rec center, but instead I'm going for yoga. My town is a very brown rice and granola kind of place, so I had no trouble finding a class, just some work sorting through the many options. I've signed up for a twelve week class starting in a couple of weeks - once a week for twelve weeks. We'll see how it goes, and if it is truly beginners or not. That's my big worry. Also, I am both a skeptic and a believer when it comes to eastern philosophy and mental and physical training. I believe that yoga and meditation have real physical and mental benefits. I don't need to get metaphysical and mystic about it because the science is there to show me it is so. At the first sign of mysticism or hocus pocus, I'll be too busy scoffing inside to keep my balance on the mat. The place I signed up with is a whole business built around yoga, not the Y or local rec center, but hopefully not too weird.

Also, I hate being a total newbie at things. What do I wear? Do I have go buy a mat before the first class? Do you go barefoot? So I should wear slip-on shoes, not tied sneakers? One class, not the one I signed up for, said to wear shorts or tights "so the instructor can see your knees". Not sure what that's about. The class starts at 8 pm. Can I stay awake till the end?  How many people will there be? And, mostly, will any of the others be truly beginners? Or will everybody know everybody and what the routine is so I'll be feeling stupid and far behind? Stay tuned, updates to come in a few weeks.

Time now to read a bit of Beck's Diet Solution, and to plan the first part of the week's meals.