Weight Watchers on Vacation

I'm really enjoying this placid slow time on vacation. But, if I don't want to undo the blitz, I'm going to have to be more actively paying attention to my eating and activity.  I like WW because it lets me reset each day, and gives me flex for the week.  My WW week starts on Monday, so I went back and tracked yesterday, and intend to keep it up for the rest of the week. I drove down on Saturday and I'm ignoring my eating for those two days.

But--- I get 29 points a day, plus 49 extra points to use over the course of the week, plus any activity points I can earn.  Yesterday, I made carb-heavy choices, which means point-heavy choices.  A grand total of 47 points for the whole day!!!  I better get out there walking the beach to earn lots more activity points - maybe even a jog - to get back to a stage where I can still have my daily beer and daily single piece of chocolate.  I'm going to have to get to the supermarket for more fruit as well.  I have some convenient snacks lying around, but they are not point-friendly selections.

TO my day! Excelsior!

Decision Fatigue

There is a particularly interesting article in the New York Times about making decisions. Basically, it's really tiring, you have a budget of how many you can effectively make during the day. Exersizing willpower is effectively making a choice, like going to the buffet and restricting yourself to salad instead of the yummy orange chicken. Carrying your lunch in a bag eliminates the need to make a decision and thus conserves your willpower. A shot of sugar helps you make more effective decisions. Eating an apple on the way home from work should help me make better dinner decisions. My interest in cognitive behavior therapy and needing to have some structure in the diet and exercise world makes sense with this perspective: making a rule not to eat doughnuts means "no choice" and making an appointment to exercise means "no choice". It also explains what I know so intuitively about days with lots of meetings. If I am running them, they are very very tiring.

I'll link to the article when I get the regular computer up and running later.
UPDATE: Here is the link

Sherbert update

Location:Topsail Beach

The Scale Is Broken, Long Live the Scale!

I remained suspicious of the remarkable numbers showing on my scale. Wednesday, it had been down 5.5 pounds from Tuesday. Thursday, my scale read the same, but when I weighed myself at the gym, I got a higher reading. However, I hadn't used the gym scale before (an old-style doctor's office with sliding bars for the the weights) and the readings varied by clothes, shoes, and time taken. But Friday, my home scale was down another four pounds and that just wasn't credible. So Saturday, just before I left the house for the gym I weighed myself in clothes and shoes, and then immediately got on the scale in the gym ten minutes later. EIGHT POUNDS DIFFERENT!!!  Clearly the home scale is broken.  I don't get how a scale "breaks" but it is twelve years old, dirty, big, and I decided it was time to go shopping.

I have a lovely sleek new electronic glass and metal scale with a WW logo on it. (Bed, Bath and Beyond, $29).  Besides weight, it purports to tell me fat percent, water percent, BMI, and bone density.  Except when I read the pamphlet, it basically said all those other readings are very unreliable.  The main thing is, it works for my weight, I can read the number without wearing my glasses, I like how it looks, and it fits in my room.

Living for a couple of days thinking I might be near my ultimate weight loss goal stimulated some new thoughts, which I may write about at another time. Now, I simply want to note that the blitz actually did more or less what I hoped it would, really. Moved me through the plateau and onto a new downward trajectory. The trend is real but fragile. My most recent accurate readings are the lowest in six months.

This graph shows the plateau since February. The light line are my daily weights and the dark line shows the weekly average, taken on Saturdays. The total vertical range of this graph is ten pounds (I had to change the scale to get my latest weight on it!).  It's so clear how I've been bouncing around in this same space. This last week, I filled in my bogus data points with estimates from the gym, and yesterday and this morning are real on my new scale. I think I'm breaking through the barrier. This is what I need to keep myself motivated and moving forward.

The main change I've incorporated since my first four day all cabbage all the time phase is I'm trying to organize every meal around the vegetables. Start with that, rather than start with the meat.  I'm using meat more as a flavoring than a mainstay of the meal. My snacks are fruit, not nuts or cheese or something more starchy.  Thank goodness for peach season!  And apples are just starting to appear locally. I'm keeping with the WW on-line - I like the point totals, and that certainly keeps me vegetable and fruit focused.  Maybe because of the points, I've limited myself to a single dove dark square for a single point, every night.

And yet, it hasn't been all green.  I had dinner out with friends Friday night - the dinner was 31 weight watcher's points when my daily allowance is 29. (Shouldn't have had the piece of garlic bread - six points! And I didn't need to consume the whole piece of salmon - it was big enough to cut in half and set some aside to take home.)  Yesterday, I had an ice cream cone. Could have saved some points by having it in a cup, but the ice cream itself was worth it.

So I'm feeling quite optimistic and in control. This week, I'll be able to manage my eating mostly on my own with kids doing their own thing. Next week:  the family at the beach. Our tradition is not to eat out, so it'll just be controlling the beer and ice cream, and making sure we have fruit and easy vegetables in the house.

Still Down

This morning, the scale read the same as yesterday. A comparison to the scale St the gym was ambiguous, so who knows exactly what I weigh? It's clear at any rate the blitz worked-- I'm off the plateau.

Sadly, the level of planning and control and focus- and availability of precooked blitz food--is not sustainable. But I've got another week or so before vacation, and I think I can keep the focus at least to capitalize on this progress.




- iPhone uPdate

Is This Even Possible?

I got on the scale first thing today, as I do every day, and I stared and stared at the number. I got off and back on sevral times, then went off and had my coffee and stared at the wall and weighed myself again before my shower.

I was down FIVE AND A HALF POUNDS from the day before!!! How can that be? Is the scale malfunctioning?

To recap, I've been plus or minus the same four pounds since February, on the mother of all plateaus. I very slightly exceeded that after my vacation, but quickly got back to the range. I started Weight Watchers on-line and felt comfortable with the points and the emphasis on fruits and vegetables. I lost a tiny amount of weight the first three weeks, from the top of the range to the middle, a whopping two and a half pounds. But I was using lots of the weekly points, especially having too much chocolate in the evenings, and even allowing more than a single serving of ice cream in the house, with predictable results. I decided it was time for drastic measures. Time to blitz my way off the plateau. There was one answer that towers over any other when desperate times are here: Cabbage Soup.

I've done a number of things right the past few days. Starting Saturday morning, I loaded up at the farmers market and at Whole Foods. I spent Sunday cooking cabbage and cauliflower. I made Cole slaw with ginger miso dressing, cabbage soup with lamb, and braised cauliflower. Hugely tasty. I included olive oil in the recipes. I've decided the savor I get, the richness, from sautéing the vegetables in good olive oil makes the difference between cabbage soup as medicine and having it as a satisfying dish. The same thing holds for the other dishes I made Sunday. If I'm going to live on it, it can't be just fuel. (On the other hand, I have gone too far the other way on previous blitz attempts and made lamb stew with cabbage- completely different proportions and way less effective.)

So I've been living on my cabbages, and peaches and cherries and watermelon. My points total plunged from averaging 33 last week to averaging 17 for the last five days. Another smart thing I've done is put the Cole slaw in tiny containers and have it for my afternoon snack. And, from the start, I decided on a single Dove dark after dinner. Just the one, no returns. For these five days, I've been able to stick to this.

My Monday weigh-in for WW was exactly the same as the week before, though I started with the cabbage on Saturday. If that was my only clue, I would be crushed, but I weigh myself daily and had seen lower weights. Tuesday was down a pound and a half from Monday, just below the lower edge of the range. Progress! I was up several times last night to pee, but that is not unusual. But when I looked at the scale, I truly didn't believe it.

My scale is an electronic scale, which I've owned for more than a decade. I got it because it has big numbers I can read without my glasses. Also because the number is the same whether you lean right or left, unlike my old dial scale. But it has a peculiarity which I believe is deliberate because other people have told me theirs work the the same way- it is biassed to show the same weight as the last time it weighed something. This really bummed me out once when I thought I was on a plateau but instead my weight was inching down. I have developed a technique to break the "stickiness" of it's number-- I have a brick in my bathroom (pulled from the tank where it had been used to reduce water usage). Every morning, I step on the scale with my brick that weighs about five pounds, then back on the scale without it.

So when I saw the weight the first time this morning, I thought the scale must be broken. It doesn't have any adjustment / calibration mechanism-- I checked it again this morning to be sure. I moved it around, making sure it was on a hard flat surface. I stepped on and off several times, with and without the brick. I did get one reading half a pound different, but that was it. I went away and came back half an hour later and it was exactly the same.

I'm still a little suspicious the scale is off. If the scale is accurate, then most of this weight is water. But so what? That probably means I've burned some fat up and replaced it with water, and finally peed it off last night. I've been both thirsty and peeing all day, just a side effect of the cabbage.

What will I see tomorrow? (I won't be home till bedtime so won't check tonight. Besides, I never weigh myself at night.) If it's still down, I'll check on the scale at the gym to see if it's in sync, just to make sure it's not the scale.

So what does this matter? Did my clothes fit me differently today? Not really, certainly not from yesterday. But this number was seven pounds above my goal weight. My goal weight has been the goal for thirty years. I don't know when last I actually saw it, except for a few days at the end of The Big Loss, in 1999. This goal could become reality some day. Even if what I saw today was ephemeral, it's still far below the range I've been in, and represents a real change from the plateau.


Sherbert update

Cabbage Soup

Since Saturday, I've only eaten cabbage and it's close relative with a college education, cauliflower. Oh yeah, and fruit. Lots of fruit. Cherries and watermelon and peaches.

Sadly, it's not yet time for the winter vegetables, so my brassicas are from Whole Foods, probably the west coast. I've had cole slaw with ginger-miso dressing, braised cauliflower with beef broth and curry flavor, and cabbage soup with lamb necks. all really delicious, and I'm stuffed. But according to weight watchers, I've barely scratched my points. Plus, I think I spent less than ten dollars on four days worth of food.

When I was in Norway a few years ago, I attended a lecture on the civilian experience during the Second World War. The Nazis sent most of the food away to Germany, and so everyone was hungry. They grew cabbages on every square foot of land they could find. But it turns out you can stuff yourself on cabbages and still lose weight. Let's see how true that is.

I'm focussing on these "hero vegetables". Next up: broccoli.


Sherbert update

Good Enough?

So is WW working?

I have stabilized my weight back where I was before vacation, and the weekly averages are trending every so slowly down.  But I'm right at this same plateau I was on since February.  Clearly my body likes being this weight. That probably worked to my advantage during vacation, and just as homeostasis keeps me from losing weight, it worked to keep me from gaining much.

Is this weight "good enough"? I've written about how its less than I weighed for sixteen of the years since I turned 35.  But I really don't think it's "good enough". And let's not be too righteous about my goals:  this is now much more about how I look than about being healthy and strong. I am healthy and strong now, though I was not when I started this a year and a half ago.

So if I actually want to lose weight, I can't settle in to a comfortable, treat-allowing, long-term way of eating. I've got to do something radical to de-stabilize the homeostasis that has kept me hear since February. I'll up the activity, clearly. But I've got to dramatically restrict my eating. I think I have two choices:  Atkins, or cabbage and fruit.  Either will work. Either will be "real weight loss". Both are hard to stick to for any length of time. But I've got the next two weeks to focus, with a limited social life, lots of work to do at work, and plenty of chores at night.  After a two-week blitz, I'll revert to more normal weight watchers.

Given the time of year, I pick cabbage and fruit. On this way of eating, no breads or grains, but the emphasis is on vegetables and fruit, low fat, not much lean meat, any fresh fruit I want (except bananas which I don't really like anyway). If I were doing Atkins, the emphasis would be on meat with few vegetables and no fruit. I actually made cole slaw last week from a cabbage I got that day at farmer's market, and it astounded me how good it was - that fresh cabbage was better than long-distance stored cabbage. I had not really thought about the freshness of cabbage making a difference, not like tomatoes, for example.

So I'll be off to farmer's market after the gym in a few minutes, and I intend to stock way up. And then cook. Cole slaws with vinaigrettes, cabbage soup, fruits and fresh tomatoes, a zucchini or cucumber for variety, and we'll see where we go from there.

Let's see how my resolve works in the face of ice cream and beer season. But I'm off to the beach after my two week blitz, so I'm going to try to hold out till then.