I Believe in Dog: Exercise Edition

I acquired the Totes-McGoats of exercise equipment about a month ago. There is no doubt I'm walking much more often and regularly since Rocky moved in. It gets me outside and moving, even when I don't want to. And I always feel better.

Rocky, the Totes-McGoats of exercise equipment.

I've discovered these walks can also act as an appetite suppressant. Aside from the obvious cleaning up after his elimination, there is also the gross stuff he finds by the road and enthusiastically tries to swallow in one gulp. For a fuller account, you can check out the dog tumblr.

Walking is nearly a religion for me, and it is such a delight to have the dog to go with. I've just read that speed matters, and by any measure I just amble along. I do aspire to running again, however, starting in the new year. Sadly, Rocky has some medical issues that will take until at least mid-February to clear up. He will be confined to quarters for at least a month after undergoing some grueling heartworm treatment. I'll have to figure out how I can keep moving. At least it will be the dead of winter, and staying indoors isn't the worst possible thing in February.

Snow! Yet there we are, outside on a walk.

Feeding my habit

It appears I have a Brussels sprout habit. Two or three times a week I have to roast them in olive oil, dose them with coarse salt, and eat them like popcorn. I will find myself running out to the kitchen 2-3 time tonight for "just a few more". There may be a problem with this. But I haven't quite figured it out yet. Except I have to do it furtively, when I'm alone, because my girl refuses to co-habitate with the smell.



- iPhone uPdate

Thanksgiving Bounce

Yikes! I've bounced WAY up from just a few days of unmindful eating. Thanksgiving dinner was magnificent, with many vegetables enhancing the glorious main courses, enhanced by the amusing and loving company. But look at this:


So what caused this? I think I gave myself permission to eat any foods, even those I normally would pass up. All weekend. And I was eating them at any time of the day-normally all starches and sweets are confined to just the end of the day. It's so much easier to follow an absolute rule than to try to be moderately indulgent. And once those sugars get into my system, they want company. The blood sugar rages in my veins and won't let me rest.

So the only way to bounce back down is to strictly adhere to the food plan. I know I can do it, but will I?

I made a run to Trader Joes yesterday, and stocked up on the seasonal goodies, including eight boxes of the worlds best store bought cookie, chocolate covered peppermint joe-joes. (They are what Girl Scout Thin Mints want to be when they grow up.) Following the plan means not opening any of these packages until Christmas week. Do I really want to do that? And then give most of them away. I am ambivalent. And the only way to lose weight is to commit to it. Shall I?


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(From Trader Joes web site)
Dark Chocolate Covered Peppermint Joe Joe's
When we first introduced Joe Joe's Sandwich Creme Cookies, cookie lovers quickly came to the same conclusion we'd reached on first tasting -- Joe Joe's were so much better than other, similar cookies, that there was very little basis for real comparison. And so when we've introduced "special" versions of our Joe Joe's (Halloween, Candy Cane), maintaining this standard of quality has always been our top priority. Trader Joe's Dark Chocolate Covered Peppermint Joe Joe's live up to this standard, and, if you're a fan of the chocolate-peppermint combo, will easily surpass your expectations.

The best way to describe these cookies is to deconstruct them. We start with a creamy, peppermint center, studded with candy cane pieces, sandwiched between two chocolate peppermint wafer cookies. The cookies are bathed in deep, rich dark chocolate. The icing on the cake, so to speak, is the generous sprinkling of even more candy cane pieces atop the dark chocolate. These Joe Joe's masterpieces are only available during the holiday season, bringing tidings of comfort and joy to peppermint and chocolate lovers across the land. But don't delay -- when we run out, it will be 2014 until they're once again available at your neighborhood Trader Joe's. Missing these would definitely add a bit of humbug to your holidays.

Anticipation and Trepidation

I've been taking a class, Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction.  Pretty much, it's a class in meditation, specifically mindfulness-based meditation, which is one thread of many. I've been meaning to write about it but one side effect of doing the meditation is going quiet. Also taking time to do the meditation, which eats at other time.

The past year has been very stressful for me. I'm in a much happier place at work and with the kids, so now I'm more down to "normal" stress, I guess. But I signed up for the class in the midst of desperation, and decided it was important to develop and practice specific skills that will help as life continues to appear in its full catastrophe.

At first, I loved the formal practice, because it allowed me to go quiet. It gives me techniques to chase the constant rumination, the constant planning, the constant busy-ness of my mind. In fact, I had problems with falling asleep during it!  But as I practiced more, now the underlying emotions come through. I had one experience while meditating where a whole set of feelings I didn't know were there came crashing through like a freight train. The aftermath left me shaken and frankly scared off from the practice. At the very least, I realized I'm playing with powerful forces and shouldn't allow myself to go deep at, for example, lunchtime in my office. So I'm back to it, but cautiously.  We also use movement-based mindfulness, which is easier to sneak in at the office - more of just a stillness that fills me, less of allowing other things to come through as the focus on the movement itself fills every corner.

Today, however, is a big day for the class. I'm off in a few minutes for a seven-hour silent retreat with the class. Yikes! What might happen? I want to totally be there, but there is a lot of trepidation about what might come up.

I am the skeptic, the analyst, the person with always one eye open, checking for the man behind the curtain, how the trick is done. This stuff doesn't seem to have tricks, but it seems to be really effective. We'll see if this is seven hours of boring calm (with perhaps an inadvertent nap) or a life-changing experience.

Can I Rein It In?

Such a confident post a week ago. "I know what to do, now I just have to do it!"  But now we are in the eating season. This time of year is fraught with issues, all conspiring to whisper, "Go ahead, eat it".

The forces are aligned on this. First, the holidays for the next two months are about eating. From Halloween candy, three family birthdays, Thanksgiving and Christmas, how can we not cook and eat together? Of course we will, this is part of what brings us together. Then there are all the other social occasions that ride alongside the major holidays. All get-togethers include food. Then there is the change of the seasons. The days are getting shorter, and with that comes a biological imperative to hunker down, build a layer of fat, and stop burning unnecessary calories because the body expects to be starving by spring. It's not so nice to go outside even in the scarce daylight, as it gets colder and grayer. Lastly, this time of year is fraught with emotional significance. If I'm sad, how about comforting me with apples? That is, apples baked with butter and brown sugar, served over cake with ice cream.

In this century, not once have I lost weight between Halloween and Christmas. Au contraire, my friends, I've usually decided the thing to do is maintain, and ended up in a gain. Faced with all these stark facts, what will I do?

This past week was not according to plan, though I don't regret everything. I had a small amount of Halloween candy (a waste), birthday cake (also unnecessary), and beer and fajitas (simply marvellous). The results are that today is 2 1/2 pounds higher than a week ago. But I spent way less time in the last week than previous ones planning for my eating and preparing food that I think I should eat. I also spent a lot more time sitting on my ass versus moving. Now, I have nothing prepared for the coming week, and I have a limited window to go get focused exercise before the press of the day overtakes me.

I think I have very flawed sense -  if I go off-plan, I shrug and go more off-plan.  Based on my reaction to the food I ate last week (some was worth it, some not) I think I should focus on specific events I will eat differently without going crazy, and try very hard to maintain the 100% on-plan when not at one of those events. I don't want to erode the discipline all over, but I do have to plan for some easy social encounters, where I should just go with what is available.

Tied to this planning and thinking is the clear understanding that it really is what I eat even more than how much that drives both the rest of my eating and whether my body will lose weight.  Four pieces of Halloween candy screw me up. No, it's not so very many calories, but it drives my blood sugar crazy. And it erodes the clear boundaries, and puts me in the territory of making decisions in moment - so very much harder than simply following rules. "I don't eat that" is easier than "how much can I eat".  So stay off the nibbling around the edges. Period.  Plan and prepare. Make rules and follow them.

How about the energy / moving side of the equation? What can I do about that? I don't know, except maybe right now I'll sign off and go move. No vows, no big declarations. Just move now, and see if I can keep moving over the next couple of months.

**Bounce**

There I go, off the rubber floor. Halloween candy, birthday cake, surely those special things don't count?




- iPhone uPdate

Rubber Floor

I've got the opposite of a glass ceiling - I've got the rubber floor to my weight I keep bouncing off of.  I'm wrestling with real life issues, but determined to keep on track with this. I'm tracking my food almost every day - but the days I don't are the ones that derail my eating. I'm really closing in on what I can eat - and how much I have to move - to keep going down. Right now, I think it would be worth it to continue.

I counsel others that being fit is so much more important than what you weigh or how you look.  But me, I'm focused on the weight as well. And clearly looks.

My pattern of the past four years continues, but I'm struggling very hard to not repeat it again. Already, I'm at least prolonging the cycle for how long it takes me to regain those same 5-10 pounds.  Now, we head into the eating season, which starts with Halloween and goes all the way to New Year's. There are sad anniversaries in here, but being sad doesn't mean I have to eat. There are other things I can do to indulge myself.

My goal is to reverse the trend of the last two weeks, beat my pattern of the last four years, and lower my average weight by two pounds by New Year's.  Stay tuned.

Yes, I'm Making Progress

Here are updated graphs. Weight down - lowest in almost exactly two years! Activity up - even before this gift of time. But I'd better get moving now - we're burning daylight.

Lack of Structure

I've always been an employee, and I've liked it that way. I have a schedule, and someone to assign me work. OK, I'm a boss, there aren't people telling me every minute of every day what to do, but there is a clear external structure, deadlines, drivers, to my day.  Also, incidental social engagement every day with dozens of people.

Now, I've got less structure and less social interaction. Since I constantly joke that my ideal job is as a lighthouse keeper (socially useful but I get to be alone) it's interesting to see how I'm dealing with this. The fact we can't plan for the long-term makes it different than it would be if I were a free-lancer, stay-at-home mother, or retired. Still, I've not had this lack of structure since ... time off from college? Most summers I both attended summer sessions and worked, but I had "between" intervals, Christmas vacation, etc..  A couple of weeks at a time, maybe, which is longer than this four-week-day interval has been.  So far.

So far, I'm dedicated to enjoying this time and not dwelling on the reasons for it or the consequences that will inevitably follow, personal and political. But it's easy to just piddle away a day, it seems.  I still have to juggle the balance between self and family and friends.  How did I ever find time to go to work?

Since the clear answer to "why don't you exercise more?" is lack of time and energy, getting out and being active has to be a current priority for me. Add to that the pressure that we're having what the radio called "August in October" and the urgency around getting outdoors and active is high. But spending more time with my girl is also a high priority. And now I'm stacking up the expectations about home improvement and gardening projects as well, which has the added bonus of being around my ailing dog, who almost certainly won't be around much longer.  And I miss being with people, and I'm learning to schedule dates (with a caveat about maybe pulling the plug if things turn around in the larger world).

All of which is an excuse for why I had no structured exercise yesterday. I started my home improvement project (deep cleaning and making over a room with a new big screen tv, acquired before the present unpleasantness) while still in my pajamas. I drove my girl to school, something I enjoy because she talks then. I blew off the bike ride, kind of thinking I would work it in, but knowing full well it was rapidly getting too hot.  I planned to walk to my lunch date, but as I got engrossed in my ever-expanding project, I decided instead to load the car with cable boxes to be returned, drive to lunch, and chain that more distant errand afterwards. Lunch was terrific, and two hours long. A retired friend gave me pointers on how to be retired.  I got my errand done, got the dog to a downhearted vet appointment, ferried my girl (and my younger boy, home for the weekend) around town, and kept up work on the project. I got to a successful stopping point around 11 pm, and realized I forgot to eat dinner, so I heated up some leftovers and finally went to bed.

So this morning, up and onto the bike -- after futzing with the tv. How easy to be sucked into the vortex for half an hour at a time. I didn't get on the bike until 9 am, when I was up at 6 to take care of my dog.

Now, things to do. Errands to run. People to see. Excelsior.

More Time, Less Money

I decided to do a little tumblr blog of this time.

Time and Money

These two valuable commodities have just flipped in their relative abundance in my life. I have been a wage slave since I graduated from college in 1975. Even when I went back to grad school, I worked a full schedule and supported myself. Since I finished my MBA and got my professional track job, I have had more money than I needed. Now, I face uncertainty, though I am very far away from any crisis, it is much on my mind. The prudent thing to do is hunker down financially, batten the hatches, and be prepared for a long siege. Even though it might end by tomorrow.

But TIME!!!! How very sweet this is. I have never not worked. Not even maternity leave for me. Weekends, of course, precious by their very limited nature, generally jam packed with chores, activities, and just needing to decompress and recharge for the week. Of course I've had vacations, generally leaving town for them. The casual day off to stay at home for specific chores or appointments. But now, unplanned and un scheduled time. Plenty of backed up chores to do, but I am determined to enjoy this time. Which doesn't mean no chores, because it drives me nuts to leave them undone. But what luxury, to wake up and decide how I'm going to spend my day, instead of having it all predetermined for me.

I think I'm going to think of this as a sort of rehearsal for retirement. Cut back on spending, but increase the exercise and social activities. The lack of control and anger about the circumstances could just overwhelm me if I let it. But I won't. You cannot control what happens to you,but you can control your response to it. I remember an extreme example from more than 30 years ago: the American embassy hostages in Iran were being interviewed by a news organization, and one of them said, "My mother will be upset because she will see I've lost weight. I've always been heavy, but this is one thing I can actually control so I've decided to do it." I am not comparing myself to them, god forbid, but I was so impressed with that it has stuck with me all these years. Find what you can do, and do it.

I bought a bike yesterday. I had already planned to buy one, it was "in the budget" so to speak, and this was the right time. More on that later. Things to do, places to go,people to see, exercises to be done.


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Cautiously Optimistic

This is why I do daily weighing. This looks like back on trend. It may pop back up tomorrow, but for now I'll take it.




- iPhone uPdate

Discouraged

Not a high energy week, in contrast to last weekend. And the weight per scale is steadily climbing UP despite low calories and low carbs in. I imagine its water. I think my total calories were too low this weekend, and I bumped them up this week. This week I also allowed carbs to drift up to 25 versus 20 grams as the target. Maybe I need to push that back down. I'll persist for another week before thinking about a change.

I bought Halloween candy yesterday. I want to be on a restrictive diet that enforces the "none at all" before we get into The Eating Season. But if I have no results, it will be hard to stick to rules.

Weight:


Proportions:


Exercise:


Sunday's exercise:


- iPhone uPdate

Playing with my heart rate

I am newly energized to look at my heart rate when exercising, thanks to my friend's recommendation to read Younger Next Year. I remember I got my first heart rate monitor in 1998, during the time of my Big Loss, in Texas on a business trip. I was fanatical about daily workouts on my Nerdic Trak in those days, but not ready to go to a hotel gym where I might see someone I knew. So I was out for a walk in the not-pedestrian friendly suburbs, and found a sporting goods store. I was extremely ignorant, looked at the watches, and didn't even realize it came with a chest strap till I got to my room and unpacked it.

It did open my eyes about how hard I was or was not working. I was extremely surprised how little correlation there was between my subjective feeling of how hard I was working and what showed on the heart rate monitor. Likewise, the NT has a speedometer but on different days the same speed took different levels of effort on the heart. A couple of times, I couldn't push the heart rate up high at all, and later that day I realized I was sick with a cold. I would have figured differently, that the heart would race when ill, but at least in these cases, not so.

Today I was down on the treadmill for a serious workout. I still have illusions about doing a 5K in less than a month but I haven't even been walking that far, so I need to buckle down. Intervals are the way to go, but I'm not able to progress as fast as my Couch-to-5K schedule I used last time. Still, I dream of running easily along a trail, smiling, working, but not killing myself.

Heart rate zones have gotten more complicated than back in 1998 when I applied the classic formula to understand my workout zones. The classic max heart rate is 220 minus your age (which yields 162 for me). Then simple percentages give zones: 65% is 107, 75% is 121, 85% is 138, and 150 is 93%.

I think these are too low for me now. Fifteen years ago, I comfortably worked out on the NT with the heart around 135 beats per minute, which should have been around 75%. I can still do that rate, but now that is around 85%, by the classic formula. There are many other formulas, and I have no doubt I'll read up and figure it out, but not today.

Today's fabulous workout was focused on working my heart rate, but I pushed it up higher than the formula would have recommended, but it felt right. First, I ran four intervals, aiming for 3 minutes running and 90 seconds walking, but adjusted to what my heart was saying about how hard I was working. I slowed down the speed on the treadmill, because at 6 miles per hour I just work too hard too fast. So I only went to 5.5 mph. The first three minutes got me up to 138 only. After a minute of walking, I was down to 120. After that, for the next three intervals, the heart realized I was serious and climbed higher. Each time, I let it get to 150 and then kept on pounding along for 30 seconds and then slowed down.

After the intervals, I walked. I do not like to walk fast. 3.2 miles per hour, or 3.3, is a very comfortable cadence for me. I just don't get comfortable at faster speeds, and the classic 4 mph has me breaking into an uncomfortable jog. Must be short legs. But I've learned I can get the heart rate up by increasing the incline of the treadmill. So I finished out the 3.11 miles by holding my heart rate around 135 by varying the tilt at a constant speed. I started out at a steep incline, and the heart rate drifted up so I backed off. As it went down, I could bump it back up by making a bigger hill. I got into it, and I found the pace quite comfortable, like I could keep it up all day. Except, not really. I was thrilled to come to the end.

A shower and stretching and I feel great. Blew the dust out of the pipes. The trick is to keep moving for the rest of the day.

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Active Exercise (with new graphs!)

As often happens to me, I got inspired by a new book. I won't write about the book just yet, but my inspiration came from this blog post.  I'm not all the way through, but I'm taking the point about needing to exercise, not just move around a bit.The book focuses on heart rate as a gauge of exercise, which is a good way to do it. However, I've got much more complete data from my nifty BMF device I've been wearing for four years.

The BMF measures movement with accelerometers, and adds measurement of skin temperature and skin impedance/conductivity (ie, how much you are sweating!).  This is why its such an intrusive device compared to the Fitbit, Nike bands, etc. The company claims its well calibrated, and those few comparisons I can find on the web agree it measures overall activity better than any other device.  The BMF measures "mets" which I have never bothered to research - I first heard of them using the Wii Fit, which also uses them. It allows some customization of how many mets equals "moderate activity" and how many equals "vigorous activity".  I made an adjustment to lower the threshold for "vigorous" because after wearing the device initially for a few weeks I never got to vigorous!  So my definition of moderate is 3 mets to 5.5 mets, and vigorous is anything over 5.5 mets.

I made some brand-new graphs to look at my exercise history, using this data which has been collected all along.  Here is the total exercise history:

You can faintly make out along the bottom some darker red bars - those are "vigorous" exercise - hardly any!  I broke out just the vigorous, and got this:

I have no idea what happened on November 14, 2010, my all-time high for vigorous exercise.  I went back and looked at old blog posts, the closest thing I have to a diary, and there is nothing the explains it. More interestingly, the concentrated vigorous exercise is in early 2012, when I decided to start running and train for some 5Ks. It really did get me moving.

The book recommends 45 minutes of exercise a day, six days a week. It further recommends breaking that out to two days of vigorous aerobic exercise, two days of more moderate, and two days of weight training.It is easy for me to accumulate 45 minutes of moderate exercise, and I do give myself credit for active housework here. But I have had less than 10 days in four years where I did 40 or more minutes of vigorous exercise!

I am focusing on moving more, and its having its results. Here is just this year's exercise log:

Again, the discerning eye may see some darker coloring at the bottom - that is vigorous exercise, as I try running again.

Based on book recommendations, I need to focus on that 45 minutes daily piece, and keep up trying to up the ante with running.  Just as an aside, I've almost never found myself moving into "vigorous" territory with anything but running. Jumping jacks at the gym workout, sure, but that's in tiny bursts. Because the extra stress running puts on my body, I'll have to figure out other options eventually.

Excelsior!

Buckling down with Atkins

I've written before about my recurrent trend hovering around the same weight- for more than two years! I'm pretty sure that maintaining my weight within a five pound band, even with a pattern of rapid loss followed by slow gain, is more good for me than bad.

I drifted upward in weight over the summer, and its time to wrestle it back down. I started by simply cutting back and upping the exercise. (This sounds very simple but its not. Especially the activity levels. I just couldn't have done it sooner for other reasons.)

But I got re-energized with Atkins as the way to eat. I surfed into a video of Gary Taubes again explaining what really is going on in our bodies with nutrition. Here is my understanding of the explanation which makes total sense to me.

We don't get fat because we eat too much while exercising too little. When we eat too many calories and burn too few calories, the result is we get fat, but there is no "because" there. Why do we eat more? Why do we burn less? Its not because of sloth and gluttony, moral failings on our part. There are many physiological reasons, but the big one for Americans today is insulin regulation. Sugar and simple carbs are the reason we eat more. Carbs make us hungry and screws up out insulin and other hormones. And on the calorie burn side, exercise has less impact than your internal hormonally driven metabolism regulation, which is also affected by the carbs. For many people, simply cutting the carbs sharply with no other changes will result in a weight loss. But for many people that have eaten otherwise for years, it is more complicated than that. And even for those for whom the magic formula works, it is very hard to persist in our society that doesn't build menus that way.

Nuances I have picked up: many people who try Atkins get the "fat is not bad for you" message and so end up after a time eating the worst of all possible worlds- high fat AND high carb. This is a recipe for all the bad things that come from bad nutrition, not just fat but unhealthy hearts and diabetes. So after being on Atkins for a while, moving away from strict adherence is a time for caution.

Here's a tidbit I got from a new book I just started: Mild depression is a positive evolutionary adaptation! I love this, understanding why our bodies have evolved to do certain things. We evolved as hunter gatherers, moving all the time. The only reason NOT to move was because food was scarce. So hunkering down, slowing your metabolism to make it through the dry season, or the winter, was an adaptive semi-hibernation type strategy. The obvious problem we have is we have no food shortage during the time our metabolism is dialed down. The trick is learning how to break the depression-which is the catalyst and which the result? Does moving break it, or does it break for other reasons, and then we start moving? I'm only a little way in the book, maybe the answer will appear.

In the mean time, I'm experiencing the basic Atkins induction rapid loss of 4-5 pounds of water. Very rewarding to step on the scale each day and see huge progress. I know my normal pattern would be two more weeks of faithful adherence which cements the gains into true loss, followed by several months of allowing it to creep back up. Stay tuned to see how I handle this.




What's different this time so far: I started up running before going into Atkins. I've kept it up, and I have a 5K coming up. The Atkins book does not recommend starting exercise the same time as the diet, but I'm currently more focused on strong versus slim.

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Making Changes

It's been two weeks since my last post, and I've made some changes. I love my graphs, and they provide both information for me to use, and motivation to make the line on the graph head in another direction. As it turns out, I've managed to up my average calories burned each day by just under 200 calories!  I don't think I'm being a total fanatic, either. It's a walk at lunch, and more active in the evenings. Oh, and the running. Did I mention I signed up for the Dead Man's Run 5K six weeks from now?

The faint green line is the daily total calories burned, the dark green line is a running weekly average, and the flat lines are the monthly averages. Last date is 9/7/2013.

Here's the graph of calories expended this year - can you pick out the moment I decided to get more active? (Note to nerds: the 200 calorie improvement is the last two weeks' average compared to the previous two weeks' average. Can't really pick that out on the graph.)

Right now it feels like I'm entering a new, good routine, but it also involves a large number of ongoing obligations. I'm not so good at the sustaining things for the longer term, I'm better at blitz approaches. But my girl and I are volunteering at an animal shelter, with a minimum number of hours for each month required. My girl has some other ongoing activities that require support and transportation - and oh yes, school has started, so time spent on the pesky homework has to happen.

In addition, I've signed up for a class that will start in October - actually, two classes, one on-line and one in person. I've finally got my boat working, and the last three weekends have included magnificent, if brief, voyages. My mother is driving less, and so I'm making the trek out to her place more often.  I have to really do some training if I'm going to run the 5K (I confess now what I don't think I admitted here before: Last year, I just picked up the Tshirt and bagged the race).

So why does this all seem so manageable now?

It must be because work has been manageable. No one has threatened to fire me for at least four months. Many wonks have been on vacation. I've got some excellent folks on my immediate team. Your federal government will swing into its dysfunctional gears starting tomorrow, and some of that nonsense will trickle down to yours truly. Hopefully, I can continue doing a decent job without having all my emotional and physical energy sucked out of me while doing it.

And more than coincidentally, I've made three magnificent voyages in the past three weeks!

Back to School

It's been a tough few months. When things aren't going well, it's so easy to just crawl into my burrow and snuggle up. I've had two vacations in the past month, and they've done quite a bit to smooth me out. Plus, most of my crises are not resolved, but simmered down to sub-crisis level. So before going back to work tomorrow - and school starts for my youngest on Tuesday - I thought I'd take a hard look at what's up with me on the diet and exercise front.

I weigh myself every day, on a scale that transmits the number over wifi to a database. So every day I see that number, and when I want I can call up a graph on an app on the iphone. So I have been aware of my weight, and generally satisfied that it's staying within bounds. But now, with two vacations just behind me, its time to buckle down.

The orange line is the weekly average weight, the green dots are the actual daily weight.

Here we are with the standard pattern - buckle down, hit the hard floor, and creep back up again.

But I took the time for the first time in a much longer while to look at my activity levels. I wear my calorie and step counting arm band every day, and look at the numbers, but there is no app that easily shows me the trends. That is up to me to organize - export the data, and then manipulate it into a form that gives meaning. This is an exercise I love doing, but its fairly inefficient.  I finally did this for the first time since February.

Here is the sad story of my progressively more slug-like experience:

The faint green line is the daily calorie burn, then there is a running 7-day average in dark green, and the flatter medium green lines are monthly average calories burned.

I am burning fewer calories than ever!  My good friend has a slow metabolism, and struggles mightily to keep the activity up and the weight down. As she pointed out with anguish, the reward for losing weight is that you naturally burn fewer calories just living, and so have to cut food or up the activity even more because you have been successful.  So the first year I collected activity data - when I started this blog and focused on losing weight - I was burning on average 150-200 calories more each day than I am now. But I've been at this weight, roughly, for two and a half years. And so far this year, I've really almost hibernated.  I haven't averaged burning 2000 calories in a day since last December, and you can see the "high activity" days in 2013 are much lower than the high activity days in previous years.

I kind of knew this, I kind of felt it, but it is useful to confront the stats.

I think I'm done sitting at the computer for now, I'm off to take a walk. With a Mary Richards bounce and smile.

Choose Mary, not Rhoda

That would be Mary Tyler Moore, or really "Mary Richards" from the eponymous show, of course. A book was published about the show this spring, and the author made the rounds of the NPR shows I listen to. So I haven't read the book, but the interviews made me think about it.  During my post college years, my room-mate and I often watched the show together, enjoying seeing women pictured on a sitcom who were more like we were than any other show on TV. But we were both Rhoda, not Mary, wanting to be darkly funny and knowing, laughing at Mary's sunny and bright naivete.

I've gone through life identifying as Rhoda, the sarcastic, wise cracking, sidekick. I have always mentally used adjectives like sardonic and cynical to describe myself, and thought of myself as the outsider. I was the family photographer, standing at the sidelines with the camera, not an actual participant. I liked that.

But as I struggled through some very stressful and unhappy times this spring and summer, I wondered if its possible to consciously change. I am forced by circumstance to participate more actively in life. Can I move myself so that I can turn the world on with a smile, suddenly take a nothing day and make it seem worthwhile? Make people happy to see me, by bringing happiness into the room?

Is the way we relate to the world inherent or under our conscious control?

All the reading I've done on resilience and happiness and depression and cognitive behavior therapy - and physical survival and adventure - says yes, we control this. The big lesson from the adventure / survival literature (of which I've read a bunch - lost at sea features heavily) notes that you cannot control what happens to you, but you can control how you respond to it.  I've taken some profound thoughts and turned them into pop culture images in my mind of how to meet the world, with some small amount of success.

My first clue came from the clear realization that while humor may work with teenagers better than confrontation, sarcasm directed at them will simply outrage them. So I cut out the wise cracks, and tried to substitute more sympathy and empathy, directing my humor at the situation and the world in general, not them. Well, duh. Who wouldn't rather have that response?

Now I'm trying to act on these pop culture images in a physical way. When I walk, I think of Mary Richards, striding along with a bounce in her step and a smile on her face, joyfully anticipating whatever the world will bring her next. ("... with each glance and every little movement you show it...")  It helps me, it really does. Even thought it's embarrassing to admit it.  (This is far from all I am doing to cope with multiple issues, but it's one I can write about now.)

So I'm back, sort of. Today, with the humidity low, the sun out, and all the windows open, seems like a day anything is possible. What happened to my weight during the last couple of months since I've been gone from this space?  Amazingly enough, nothing. I weigh now more or less what I have weighed for the past couple of years, which I have to keep reminding myself is quite a bit lower than I weighed for many years, while not as low as I would like to be.  I seem to have changed some habits enough to sustain me through periods of less paying attention.

Excelsior.

Stress

Bad news arriving on Friday at lunchtime literally made the food taste like ashes in my mouth. But I remember thinking, "nothing will be better for my failing to eat at all". Today, when the final bad news was delivered and I knew I had done all I could, I made a nice healthy dinner for everyone, but I had three bowls of homemade ice cream with fresh strawberries, bittersweet chocolate sauce and a beer while watching ten episodes of The Mindy Project on my iPad.

Tomorrow is back to actual paying attention while eating. Plus moving from the couch occasionally.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Coasting

I've had a week or more of simply not tracking my food. Life catches up with me, and food logging feels both like work, and too self-indulgent, to spend the time to pay attention. It really isn't a lot of work or time, of course, to note down every bite, what with the phone and the ipad and the computer all as options.  I can log it while waiting the 90 seconds for the microwave. It just requires being mindful enough to do it, and that is what has felt like the effort I don't want to make. I can spend those same 90 seconds thinking of what I have to do next at home or on the job, poke at my iphone to check email, or simply zone out and let my mind go blank while I watch the numbers go down.

But my automatic tools track my weight and activity. All I have to do is remember to stand on the scale and it sends the number wirelessly to the internet. I actually forgot to stand on the scale one morning - I am clearly very distracted! I also have to remember to take off my armband, plug it into the computer, and then put it back on - that was too complicated one day this week.  I want a wireless activity tracking device!

As a result of the almost passive data collection, I know how the last couple of weeks have gone in the weight and activity realms - as far as actual results. Before I reveal the numbers, my data-less recollection is that I mostly made decent food choices except for an over indulgence of sweets in the evening (a couple times sparked by sweets in the afternoon at work).  My focus this week was to get the vegetables up. Easy food that meets my criteria for low-carb tends to be prepared meat: sausages, meatballs, things in the freezer. Vegetables take planning and work - or else buying a pre-made salad.  On the other front, my overall activity level was up most days, because spectacular weather means I am leaving the building at lunch time and working in the yard as I can.

Here's my weight graph:

It sure looks to me like there is the opposite of glass ceiling - a rubber floor? something like the sound barrier? - that I keep bouncing off at the point I'm at now.  There is a lot of discussion of "set points" and what it takes to change it. What is clear to me, is that if I would like to stabilize my weight at about ten pounds less than I am right now, I need to focus and blitz it again.  And then maintain it, with focused determination, for several months. Even then, it might not be possible.  But do I have the desire to crank it up and do that now? I'm not sure.  I want it, I want it bad, but enough to actually do it?  I want it because those ten pounds would put me in a place where I could wear trousers and dresses that are the same size bottom and top, reduce my pear-shape to more of a background impression instead of the first impression of how I am shaped. Frankly, I don't think those ten (or fifteen) pounds would make an iota of difference in my health.

Activity levels?  I like the activity for its own sake. I'm keeping up with the gym, I'm getting outside more, but I am not doing seriously aerobic stuff and I ought to do that. But I'm inching up my average calories burned by day, at least having fewer days falling below my target in the last couple of weeks.

Raw output from the BodyMedia report function

So no resolutions, no vows. I am about to make my Spinach Breakfast Pie, because the thing that sets me on a happy course for the day is this most satisfying start to the day.  It is slightly adapted from Fran McCullough's Low-Carb Cookbook, which is the source for a lot of my inspiration, but sadly not available anymore. She was first a food writer and cookbook author, and then realized that low carb was the way she wanted to eat. So the recipes here are adapted for my way of eating. They are full of fat, and low in grains and sugars, but do not use fake foods to achieve the low carb end. This recipe is basically the inside of spanikopita, baked in a pan with no phyllo.

Spinach Breakfast Pie

Serves 8 (or in my case, cut up into eight pieces and nuked by me and the family for breakfast all week)

1 pound fresh spinach, washed and somewhat chopped
2 Tablespoons butter
1 medium onion chopped small
6 eggs
15 oz container whole milk ricotta
1/2 pound feta cheese, crumbled
2 Tablespoons dilled, chopped
1/4 cup parsley, chopped
salt & pepper to taste
olive oil for pan

Sautee the onion in the butter till translucent, stir in the spinach, turn off the heat (I have an electric stove so it stays warm - its not necessary to cook the spinach, just wilt it).
Beat the eggs, whisk in the ricotta, then the feta and dill and parsley. Add the spinach and onions, stir well, and pour into the greased 13 x 9 pan. Bake at 350 degrees for 35-45 minutes, until the top has dappled golden spots. Let sit for a few minutes before serving. Reheats very well in microwave.

Sandwiches

As the Onion says (and noted by my friend KCF) This Week!

We can't help but be emotionally affected by the news, even though for me it was thankfully abstract. No-one I know was in danger or hurt.

Personally, I spent the week being sandwiched between parent and teen issues, running back and forth between my mother in rehab (doing very well, thanks) and the school and home (don't ask). Plus I did my taxes from beginning to end in about four hours (80% paper and on-line record sorting and collecting, 20% clicking buttons on tax software).  My old sciatica is acting out, and the allergies are making their annual appearance, so the body is no more than a C-.  Work - oddly, kept going - no crises, even slight progress in positive directions. Hope.

So I stopped tracking my food, and even simply forgot to get on the scale one morning, nearly unheard-of for my obsessive record keeping. Results are pretty good, but there is no question in my mind I started to drift off the straight and narrow.  Though I don't have the data staring me in the face to confirm. Typically, I would expect there to be a couple of weeks lag before drifting in food starts to show up on the scale, and I need to get back to my tools of tracking, planning, and prepping in advance.  I have NO food on hand that is what I want to eat.

I didn't cook dinner once this week. This means my green leafy vegetable intake suffered mightily. I added some carb-y vegetables to my diet when eating off the rack - black and garbanzo beans, eggplant, peas. Oddly, when faced with choices to make at times I was dog tired, standing at the food bar in Whole Foods, or out on restaurant row in downtown, I craved comfort food but knew I won't find the comfort in cinnamon rolls, french fries, or ice cream. Sandwiches are so very convenient when you are on the run, but I know they will lead to cravings later. I looked over at the baked goods conveniently next to the check out lines in Whole Foods and felt an emotional tug, but it wasn't actually hard to step away. I went for comfort, soft and hot and creamy, moussaka, beef stew, cabbage, green beans, peas. At Chipotle, both guacamole and cheese on the salad. This is food that won't help me lose weight, but it keeps my insulin and blood sugar in check and thus keeps me from spiralling out of control. So this is a small victory, and it gives me the conviction to do some planning and move ahead in better form planning for this week. I do need to admit to the small pieces of chocolate at the end of the day, a very slippery slope I know.

Thank goodness I continue to follow the advice of my friends and I keep those appointments at the gym.  If it weren't for that, my calorie expenditure would have been even lower, and my body hates this level of inactivity. No chances to get outside and walk at lunch or after work, with the sandwiched double duty.

I've got the lazy gene

I've known for some time that I had the "thrifty" gene- when deprived of food, my body gets super efficient and doesn't need many calories. It's adaptive for those cold and dark and hungry northern winters, you know.

But now it's clear the Shellabargers have a lazy gene as well! I wonder how often they run together?

http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/04/17/why-were-motivated-to-exercise-or-not/

Of course, as the last paragraph says, biology is not destiny. That's what makes us human, the ability to rise above genetic coding.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Reversing the Course

So yeah, one week of eating the right stuff and bumping up the activity can change things. But really? What does this mean?

First, the facts:

I did in fact reverse the upward trend, and return towards the level I was at when I stalled. This week's average is two pounds lower than last week's average. This is good. There are enough low points in there to indicate an actual downward trend.  The main things that helped that, I think, are:  good weather, always alternatives on hand that met my criteria for acceptable; and bumping up the movement (which in turn was based on the weather).

The stress level at work this week was much less than last week, but on average hard to say about stress since my mother had her long-postponed shoulder operation yesterday.  She is doing really great   - I'm pretty sure all the life-threatening phases are behind us - but she's still in the hospital and I'll be spending a lot of time with her for the next few weeks.

Contributing to the stress level is my fancy new (and big) coffee pot broke this week. I am very dependent on that first cup of coffee, and am not in the best position to trouble shoot coffee problems before that first cup of coffee. So dealing with that at 5 a.m. was tragicomic, and resulted in both scald burns for me and coffee mess all over the kitchen.

And taxes not yet finished... in contrast to my self employed friends, its comically simple, just have to find everything then it will be 45 minutes tops. But I actually have to find everything first. It's the issue of getting started at all, squeezed in between teen dramas and hospital visits this weekend. So I think I'll do it now.

On the good news front, I'll be helping pick out a tux to rent for my boy this weekend for the prom in May!  Not quite like dress shopping, but a big pleasure never-the-less!

Does Knowing the Pattern Change It?

I've been stuck in a weight pattern for more than two years now.  Here we go again:

After a few weeks of what my friend so aptly calls suckitude, interrupted with a little actual fun, do I want to take the time and make the effort to lose weight?  Look at this pattern - I knew it going into it that the odds were this would be how I'd end up. I can lose for a bit on a blitz, then my body stubbornly wants to drift back up in weight. As soon as I lose focus it happens - the weight creeps up (or, shoots up). And I do lose focus.

I have all this data: my weight, my exercise levels, my food logs, this blog. Can I mine it, get my mind around it, turn it into useful information, some magic code that will explain why I can lose weight for about a month about once a year?  Is it just motivation, or is there something physical that happens to derail me? I collected a bunch of data, and spent some time paging back through my food logs. What do I actually eat? How does it make me feel?

It is a freakin' lot of work to lose weight. It is clear to me that the secret to keeping my calorie count low, without feeling deprived all the time, requires many cooked vegetables. I can make myself eat salads, and I even enjoy salads, but nothing satisfies me so much as a nice warm full stomach. And the only way to fill my stomach without shooting the blood sugar into a frenzy craving more is to eat rich cooked vegetables, with lots of flavor. Meat too, for sure, but to lose weight I need the vegetables. This weekend, I made spinach ricotta pie (no crust), my secret to a satisfying breakfast. I cooked some asparagus, served with balsamic vinegar, and I mushed well-steamed broccoli with creme fraiche and asiago cheese.I roasted a cauliflower in pieces.  I made enough of everything to have leftovers for during the week.

I want treats. My go-to treat is blueberries and creme fraiche, which I fancy up with mini chocolate chips and  slivered almonds. A small serving is just fine. If I pig out on this, it's not the end of the world. So far, I haven't tired of it. My backup is mascarpone or ricotta with something pleasant mixed in, cinamon or cocoa. I have to be really careful to not overdo it with the sugar.

(Aside: I've wanted to post more extensively about my recent reading on food and nutrition, but I'll share one insight. How is it that eating low carb, and eating vegan, BOTH can lead to weight loss and good health? The secret is to do one-or-the-other. Eating low-carb, one learns not to be afraid of fat. Because the blood sugar is tamed, when I eat very low carb I eat fewer calories, and I will lose weight. My body is burning fat as fuel because it doesn't have new sugar coming in.  However, when I start to add back carbs, I have to cut back on the fat, because my body will burn the carbs and store the fat. It's really easy to let the total calorie count shoot through the roof as soon as the carbs come back in, as my blood sugar demands to be fed more often, and I casually add butter to everything just as I did when I was low-carb. So for me, finding treats that don't bring a lot of sugar or simple starches to the table is the trick.)

My activity levels are really down. I've really fallen into a cave at work and home, and I sit in a chair and burn no calories. Except for my quick vacation my activity level has plunged.  I broke my streak on my daily mile. I woke up one morning and realized I had simply forgotten to walk. I kept going back over the day, and my silly rules about the streak, and I realized there was no wiggle room. I had failed. So did I start over to build a new streak? No I did not. I gratefully sat down, and stayed sitting down.

At work, the pace is incredibly intense. One of my keys to success is to bring my lunch, but that also means I do not have to leave the building, or sometimes even my area. My work evenings, I make dinner - or dial it in - and then sit to read a book. Or surf on the interwebs, which sometimes leads to serendipity and more often leaves me feeling unsatisfied but wanting more, as if I had been eating cotton candy.

The past two weekends have been more active. The weather is getting nicer,and I hope my cooking this weekend will help - I know I've got spinach breakfasts for the whole week.  I want to bump my activity levels while focusing on eating more plants. This is my plan, and I think there is a good chance I can stick to it for -- a week? Maybe a month?  We'll see.

One possible bump in the road - a spectacular gelato place opened up in town. It's half an hour's walk away - which I know since I walked it last night. A small serving of gelato just about equals an hour's worth of walking, so if I keep myself from driving there I might be ok.  But it's a sugary treat, and it can't be a daily habit, even if I walk it off, because sugar leads to needing more sugar...

My goal is to create a new, lower, set point to maintain. But first I have to get there.

What my weight is doing

While I think the "sugar pass" was a good idea while on vacation, it doesn't work now that I'm home. I've trended upward, as the moving average shows, and its time to take serious measures if I want to actually lose weight (versus maintain).




- iPhone uPdate

Back From the Brink

It's been a tough month. Both personally, and collectively, work has sucked in a major way.  Teen drama has reached new heights. Family health issues on all sides. The dog is old and has big and expensive issues which can only lead to one conclusion.  My head cold morphed into spring allergies.

So I went to Disney World!  If ever there was a time for the happiest place on earth, this was it.

First, my girl and I went to a celebration of internet culture, PlayList Live.  I sat at the pool with a virtual stack of trash books while my girl, the total fan girl, stood in lines over and over to have her picture taken by some of her heroes.

Then two days at Disney. I think Disney was way ahead of the airlines in segmenting their costs and creating add-ons for extra value for extra cost.  Luckily for me, I went ahead and bought their "sugar pass" add on, which guarantees no calories from any sweets eaten in their parks. Also luckily for me, the parks involve lots of walking.

So the head cold is gone, I'm back, work still sucks, but everything is better for a few days of sun. Someday we'll get sunshine and warmth here too.

I just can't wait to be king!

Freakin' Lot of Work

Success continues, but my, it's a lot of work to eat this way. It takes constant focus and attention. It takes more than psychic energy, though. It takes actual time and effort, to shop and cook and plan out the day.

The Good News

So yay, I'm losing weight!!! Finally, after two years, what I am doing is actually helping me lose weight. The past two weeks its been less than a pound a week, more than half a pound, a trend that without daily weighing and weekly averaging would be harder to discern. I think this is the rate of loss I sustained for a year during the Big Loss, without any real plateaus.  I'm older and more sedentary now and so I feel like its harder to do this than before.

But much of my life right now is focused on food, in the midst of many other work and personal crises. I'm finding some things to fall back on when the tight planning and control slip, but it is far from natural or an easy rhythm for me. The focus is on meat and vegetables. It would be easy to do just meat and most of my energy is focused on getting tasty vegetables into every meal. What I'm doing:

Making breakfast food on Sunday for the whole week. I've done that for four weeks in a row, and it has been key to my success so far. I have been making an egg-veggie bake, like a crustless quiche, and it really starts the day right with protein and fiber. I have some in the fridge right now for the first three days of the coming week, so I'm going to skip doing that this weekend.  Fallback for when I run out: I have chicken breakfast sausages in the freezer - not quite as filling but with fruit (sugary) carbs, so maybe wrap them in lettuce to eat with my fingers, to up the veggie side?

Bringing lunch from leftover dinners at home.  I continue to be crazy busy and stressed at work, and having a really good and entirely fitting-my-diet needs lunch to pop in the microwave has also been key to success.  I do have an easy fallback at work - the salad bar at work has somewhat tired spinach and lettuce, other fresh cut-up veggies in various states of decomposition, and cut up chicken breast and hard boiled eggs. I keep a small bottle of salad dressing in the fridge in the office since I don't know what is in theirs. It's clear by my description I consider this substandard, and so I have only done it once a week at most. It is entirely fitting on the diet (with my salad dressing) but not something I look forward to. Part of it is compromising my principles: the chicken and eggs are certainly not meeting my ethical meat standards. So an intermediate position I've done is my meat (usually re-heated) and their vegetables, with my dressing of course.

With more work, I can go to Cosi, where their Tandoori chicken salad is something that gets me excited, and from the office it also gets my mile walk in to go fetch it. But that takes time and decent weather, so I can't count on it in advance as a lunch.  There is an excellent food-bar in another near-by government building, but I'm a little skittish of doing the food-bar thing in a place where I actually like the food. No automatic portion control.

Dinners get sketchily planned in advance, but every evening is different at home, and so the menus diverge a lot in practice from what I've planned. We're eating out some - "upscale" fast food only, as in Chipotle and Panera.  Fancy salads can carry a lot of carbs - tortilla strips, sugary dressings - so I have to be careful. At home, stir-frys and other meat plus veggie dishes. Usually I do rice as a side for the family, and it doesn't temp me at all as I fill my plate with something green.  But cooking from scratch if it takes more than half an hour just doesn't cut it on a week night. I do have some backup prepared meats in the freezer - Aidell's sausages, Ikea meatballs - that could be turned into a meal with a salad or cooked vegetable side, but so far I haven't used that. It helps keep me on course to know there is something to grab if I'm just too pooped to cope. I'm going to cook a main dish this afternoon and serve it tomorrow or Tuesday for the family, to jump start the week.

I have embarked in the last couple of weeks on a slippery slope: evening snacks. I'm using ricotta, mascarpone, or creme fraiche as the base. Flavorings such as cinnamon and lemon peel work. Cocoa is dangerous. Blueberries are terrific, but no more than a quarter cup in a day. I'm less thrilled with other berries. Whole Foods is also selling fresh pomegranate seeds - pulled out of the fruit - for an insane amount of money. That is my indulgence - almost pure sugar, but I'm keeping the portions very very small. So far so good. I 'm also having nuts - again, no more than a quarter cup a day. It seems to help me with the late afternoon, before dinner blahs - not so much that I'm hungry but more that I'm psychically low by then. We know that willpower is an actual, physical, draw on your body, and actual, physical food can help replenish it.

I am striving for fewer than 35 net carbs a day - that is total carbs minus fiber grams. That generally translates into fewer than 50 total carb grams a day, a number that is easier for me to pull in summary from my meticulous food logs. I'm over that target some days, generally when I've gone for some packaged meal rather than cooking from scratch. But sauteed onions are also adding a lot of sweetness to my meals - I love them, but probably can get a lot of the same taste benefit with slightly lower amounts added.  I'm having to be hyper conscious - it is so very easy to start creeping up in what I'm actually doing while keeping a mental list of what I think I'm mostly doing. I need the discipline of looking back over what I've actually done, to help keep me moving forward on plans for the week that will come within targets.

I'm still on my walking streak!  This week, it has been almost entirely at night, which is not a good place for it, but better than not doing it.  Absolutely, if I was not going for the 100%, 365 days this year, I would have blown it off last week. Not because I couldn't, just because I didn't feel like it.  Last night I was getting ready for bed when I remembered I hadn't done the walk at all, despite a low key day. The treadmill seemed not so interesting to me, so I put the leash on my feeble old dog and took her around the neighborhood for the first time since her affliction. We ambled, but we ambled for over a mile. And I know she really liked it a lot despite some stumbles, and it made me feel good both to get some fresh air and to let her have a good time.

Excelsior!

Going the Distance

I have successfully lost a modest amount of weight in the past few weeks. I notice it in how I feel, and in how my clothes fit. This weight loss has been because of focus and dedication - it didn't just happen. Never-the-less, the first few pounds are easy, relatively speaking.

I am basically following an Atkins diet - lots of (non-starchy) vegetables, a fair amount of meat and eggs, and some cheese. No grains or starches in any form. When switching to that diet from a high carbohydrate diet (which I did NOT do), it's not unusual for the scale to drop by eight pounds in a week! I eased into this Atkins induction phase from New Year's till the last week of January, but I've still seen quite a bit of success. I've successfully beat down cravings, and now am not inappropriately hungry. Only if it's been hours and it's time to eat, do I feel my stomach rumble.

So this is the moment. This is where the difference will emerge. I've shown this is something I can do. Is this something I will do? How much do I want to do this?

It's a lot of work. I am cooking a lot, because hidden sugars are everywhere. I am reading labels like a fiend, and many of my convenience foods, bottled sauces and such, have sugars or starches in them, and so have to be put aside. Weeknights are of course the worst, because I get home tired and want to offer something healthy to the kids. But I need to make sure beforehand I have all the necessary ingredients because there isn't time to make a trip to the store and then cook from scratch. But I need to make something that has meat and at least one, preferably two, vegetables in it. No take and bake pizza for me.  Eating out is difficult. Even fancy salads at restaurants are likely to have sweet dressings.  But I really have to work to try to eat what are the minimum vegetables - the Atkins book urges at least six cups of raw, or 2 cups cooked, vegetables a day. That is a lot of vegetables, which have to be bought and prepared from scratch.  Once I get the meat and vegetables sorted out, it's easy enough to make rice or pasta for the rest of the family (who are less likely to eat much of the vegetables). The plain starch side does not tempt me at all.

Since the blood sugar seems tamed, I don't have uncontrollable physical urges and cravings. Apple strudel made an appearance in the office, and I could feel the emotional tug, but it wasn't physical and it was easily suppressed. My girl made heart cookies for Valentine's Day, and I put them out of sight, mostly. Last night, the leftovers were there on the dining room table, and out of pure intellectual curiosity I tasted one. (Yeah, right.) But it was one small heart, and I walked away.

I've started doing some evening treats, because I seem to have a psychological urge to feel indulged. I'm re-discovering the joys of ricotta or mascarpone, and blueberries. This is a slippery slope, as low carb as I'm trying to go. A quarter cup of blueberries is considered about the limit. Other fruits - apples, oranges, etc., are still off the table for now.

On the other hand, there are non-sweet indulgences that really work. Olives. Guacamole. Bacon. Macadamia nuts. Today, I am going to try a recipe for creamed spinach that features mascarpone and butter. This would be a great side dish for broiled steak tonight, with asparagus on the side. Yum!

I'm doing a bunch of stuff to keep myself motivated. I'm tracking all my food. I'm sharing socially in a number of different places, including here. I'm printing out my graphs, and hanging them up. Of course, I've got another book I'm reading on the subject, of which more anon. But all of this is time. And emotional effort. Am I willing to keep putting in the time and effort?

It seems I should be able to answer this question of my own free will, but history and experience says the way to sustain a weight loss and maintain it is to find something that is not a daily struggle. I'm still questing around to see if what I am doing is sustainable, but it feels for now like I'm on the right track.

I find I am enjoying the cooking, once I get over the fact it's required. I enjoy the food. I enjoy the lack of evening struggle against the chocolate calling from the kitchen. Hopefully, life won't come roaring at me in a way that makes the time or emotional energy more difficult.

Resolutions check-in. I am 100% on my daily mile. I made my January challenge of writing every day, I signed up to do it again in February. But I had a business trip where I was off the internet for a day. I wrote my words on the plane, but I failed to upload them to the website before midnight, so was scored for a miss. Having lost my streak, I fell off the wagon and stopped writing. I miss it, but I've got a half hour back in my day now.

Resolutions Checkin

My two very specific and measurable resolutions are absolutely on track.  They were to walk at least an extra mile every day, and to write at least 750 words every day, using the 750 words website.

The walking is very nearly reaching the level of a religious practice for me. As stress comes at me, unexpectedly and out of the blue often, I am aware that the small amount of time to think while moving is helping the same way meditation or yoga might help.  And, my activity level over all is down quite a bit. I don't know entirely why. One of the insights from my arm band that calculates each day's calories is just that - I am burning fewer calories most days than I did when I started this process. Of course, I'm twenty pounds lighter, and just that has an impact on daily calories. But also my over all energy is down. I fidget less, and I sleep more. Perhaps that is because of my restricted calorie diet, seasonal affects from the dark and cold or something else.  But, if I were not walking, I would be burning about 100 calories less each and every day. (One hundred calories per mile is a standard rule of thumb for women, whether walking or running.) So that doesn't really matter much in the scheme of the physics school of weight loss but it does make a difference in my overall health.

Clearly, making it a commitment makes a difference. There have been some days - and yesterday is one - where without the commitment: 365 days of the extra mile - I simply wouldn't have done it. I was tired and doing other things, but I took my book down to the treadmill and strolled my mile at 3 mph while reading, and 20 minutes later I had my check in the box.

I am addicted to the writing as well, though again the commitment is vital to actually carrying it out. The website is very simple and straightforward, to just go in and write. But in the background, it is timing you, and keeping track of how often and when you are writing, and it is game-ified to give badges as rewards for various things, like how many days in a row you write. And this information, just the badges, is shared on the website for all to see, using whatever user name you pick (after I figured this out, I deleted my original registration using my real name and generated a nom de plume). They store your words, tightly secured they say, and have some basic text analysis tools to generate info about your content if you care. Who knew such computer tools exist? Today, for example, they say my main topics are eating and drinking, family, and relationships (well duh). A single day doesn't give insight, but looking at the tools applied to a longer period of time is interesting, because really, what is more interesting than me?

You can also export your words for other uses.  One of the fun things I did was export all of January, then load it into the wordle website to make a graphic of my most used words.  I had to do a couple of manipulations to save it so that I could show it here, but this is fun.

One of the things I wondered about, would writing privately make me blog less? There is only so much time in a day, and walking takes about half an hour, and writing 750 words stream of consciousness takes about half an hour. So during the week, when time is very very precious, the private writing simply pushes aside the time I might possibly spend blogging.  Except, I have very few blog posts on weekdays anyway.  And, it certainly stimulates my thinking, gets the wordy juices flowing, so perhaps it is actually helping. I had six posts this January, compared to 20 last January, but that was all about the running last year, they were not all  that interesting, just stats. I moved the stats this year over to my Quick Log, where I had seven posts, so maybe it is comparable. Anyway, I like writing here.

What Works?

Something works. This is good news. I'm honing in on what works, for weight loss specifically. I may not always be willing to do what it takes, but I'm more and more facing the facts of what it takes. Here's a hint: It's not hoping. It's not wanting.

Here's the results from this week:

I am down significantly.

You will note, looking at last year, I had another period where I went down significantly, last May.

So what works?

Tracking works.

Atkins works.

I went back and looked at my posts from last May. What was going on that allowed me to lose? I started tracking in earnest, using Weight Watchers online. Every mouthful. I actually burned many fewer calories in May than in April last year, and yet I lost weight. Sadly, I don't have access to my actual food diaries, because I am no longer using Weight Watchers to track, I'm using My Fitness Pal.  But I know that along with the tracking, especially at the beginning, goes the planning.  The mindfulness. The being prepared. The knowing how you stand for the day and for the week, and therefore what you need to do now to get to where you want to be.

I started tracking in earnest in My Fitness Pal in October, and it automatically shares some the data both ways from my movement tracking armband device (BodyMedia), and with BodyMedia, you can export to your own datafiles to explore to your (my) numbers-geek heart's delight.  So I know I was on a relatively calorie restricted diet except for specific holiday days, and during the Christmas-New Year's week.  Letting off the brakes for a week made me shoot up in weight, but I was drifting up anyway, in spite of fairly diligent tracking.

I cut calories starting New Years, and I cut carbs way down. I managed at less than 100 grams of carbs a day - that is 2-3 times less than the typical American diet, I'm told. While I got the sudden peak off, I was not actually going back down to the maintenance weight level I've been at for a couple of years. So a week ago, I decided to go full Atkins. Their induction period is 20 grams of net carbs a day (subtract grams of fiber from total carbs) and as a general rule, I have a really hard time staying in that cap - I am more often in the 20-30 grams of carbs a day.

But here's the thing on very low carbs: I am less hungry during the day. If I start out at the very low carb level, I eat less all day. I do get hungry - like stomach rumbling actually hungry - but I am not fighting off cravings and urges all day. So perhaps the weight loss is driven by lower total calories, but who cares? If it's easier to stay at lower calories by eating this way, then its the way I should do it.

Also, there is little doubt that there is a big water impact. On Monday, I dropped 1.1 pound. Tuesday, another 1.4 pounds. Wednesday, I stayed the same as Tuesday. But Thursday, I popped back up 1.8 pounds! Then Friday, 2.6 pounds back down, to lower than Tuesday-Wednesday. And today, another massive drop, 1.8 pounds, to the lowest weight the scale has shown since last September! This is 5.1 pounds lower than Sunday! Clearly there are water effects going on here, but this is very typical of what happens on Atkins. If it stays off, it may have been water but it was long-term water, weighing me down and slowing me down.

With my daily weighing and weekly averaging, I manage to stay not too impressed with a daily value, but the weekly value is also down 1.5 pounds. Hooray!  And, I feel good, and can manage for a while at least the planning and cooking required to do this. And it is not a matter of fighting off cravings all day, though I certainly am thinking about food a lot, to keep the planning piece going.

I know, if I decide food is taking too big a piece of my attention, I'll back off, and there will be consequences.I believe it is much harder for me to lose the weight now than it was during the Big Loss. I am older, and also we know that your body remembers being fat and it wants to retain that. This magic number of 150 pounds has been crossed in a downward direction at least seven times before in the last 25 years. Studies say it will get harder each time.

Fat Chance

If you want to skip to the specific recommendations out of the book, scroll down to the section in purple below.

Part of what I do to motivate myself is read books about diet and exercise and health. The topic interests me, and it affects what I actually do and eat.  So the latest one, picked from hearing interviews with the author on the radio book tour circuit, is Fat Chance, by Robert Lustig. This is much more about health than about diet, and has added to my understanding of what is going on inside me and everybody else.  I've read a lot about how we metabolize fat and sugar and this book didn't contradict what I thought I knew, but adds depth to this in a very relevant way for me.

Dr. Lustig is a pediatric endocrinologist, where for decades he has worked with children that have extraordinary weight problems, sometimes as incidental to much more serious problems.  Here, in the order I happen to remember them, are some of the observations in this book.

He starts from the premise that Gary Taubes introduced me to:  we don't grow fat through sloth and gluttony, ie not through eating too much and moving too little. Turn that upside down: we eat too much and move too little because of genetically and environmentally driven imperatives.  When a teen age boy eats his way through the whole refrigerator in a few hours during his growth spurt, we don't say he grows tall because he eats. We say he eats because he is growing tall. So it is with our body shape and our weight: how much we are driven to eat and how much or little we move is a result, not a cause, of our body chemistry.  Why our body chemistry is driving these imperatives is not necessarily (yet) well understood and agreed to, but never-the-less this point is critical:  it is not just a matter of will power.  Not only is it not our fault for being a slothful glutton, but even if we exercise more and eat less we might not lose weight. Taubes cites research on squirrels that are genetically driven to add weight in the fall - they can literally starve to death from organ failure while their body chemistry is diverting food energy to fat deposits.  Lustig has plenty of examples as well of abnormal children whose bodies are driven to add fat. He has to change something in their interior chemistry for them to be able to lose weight.

Lustig also distinguishes between health and fat.  Part of it is by distinguishing between types of fat: subcutaneous fat (big butt fat) and visceral fat (beer belly fat). It is the second that is unhealthy, and it is the fat that coats your internal organs. You can be skinny to the outside eye but be coated with visceral fat inside. He notes that a significant portion of "normal weight" people have unhealthy diets and internal fat. A significant portion of overweight people are quite fit, though they may have big butts. You might be better off being slightly overweight than underweight, at least in terms of how long you live.  But being morbidly obese certainly drives many major health issues. It is the collection of symptoms known as metabolic syndrome that comes from being obese that he is targeting his effects at.

Sad news: Lustig says pretty much no one will lose weight from exercise. Your body will compensate, and you will burn less calories when you sit and and sleep, and your appetite will increase. However, exercise is still the magic bullet for health.  You are probably swapping bad visceral fat for muscle or better (if unsightly) big butt fat, and there a gazillion other benefits.

Lustig also distinguishes between carbs, going much deeper than Taubes. He goes down to the molecular level of different sugars to discuss how they impact our health. His conclusion as I understand it: fructose is the worst for us, whether it comes from cane sugar or high fructose corn syrup. Anything that tastes sweet is bad.  But fiber offsets the bad impacts of fructose. This is why fiber-rich starchy foods can be fine for us (including whole fruit, but not fruit juice or even smoothies). He goes deep into the hormonal system (makes sense, he's an endocrinologist), and frankly I decided not to try to follow it all.

This was the first explanation about how both meat-centric low carb diets and bean and whole grain vegan diets can be equally healthy that made any sense to me.  Being a bread-itarian won't work - white rice and white bread, even without sugar, are calories that will drive fat storage. He also notes that processed food almost always has eliminated fiber and added sugar, and explains why that makes perfect sense from the producer's point of view: it actually makes it last longer. Our industrial food system requires us to make, package, and ship food over long distances and times. Grocery store bread will last on the counter for up to a couple of weeks, in contrast to home made bread which goes bad in a day or two.

Lustig is careful not to paint anything with too broad a brush. He distinguishes between ethnic populations, nations, and specific genetic conditions. He has a sweeping survey of environmental things that might be bad for us. We can't change our genetics, but we can change our environment and what we eat, and thus change our biochemistry.

So what does he recommend we actually do as individuals?  First, he says he really doesn't care much about weight, only health.  But we can do three things:  eliminate the poison, and take the two antidotes.

The poison is sugar, and it is insidiously everywhere.  Almost everything that has a bar code on it has sugar added to it. He sees no reason to ever drink any sugar.  Soda, frappuccinos, and fruit smoothies are almost equally bad for you, according to Lustig. He also condemns artificial sweeteners, for driving certain chemistries or responses. He actually recommends a national level public health intervention to counteract sugar's pervasiveness in our food, and in the meantime, he notes that only Americans above a certain income level or in a certain environment can afford the time and money to find, cook and eat foods without sugar.

The two antidotes:  fiber and exercise.  He makes a persuasive case that fiber causes our bodies to process sugar differently and better. He notes that the new Atkins prescription aims at many grams of fiber from vegetables, but few people achieve those levels (me included). Meat is so much easier to prepare, and it lasts longer and can be frozen and defrosted more easily.

I won't go into the benefits of exercise, which we all believe. It adds muscle, and it lowers insulin resistance, and it counteracts depression. We should all do more of it. Yes of course.

So what does this mean for me? I have not lost any weight this week, according to my weekly averaging. My body seems to be stabilizing a few pounds above where it was before the holidays. No. I can't allow this. I have tracked my food faithfully for the past few weeks, and my carbs have been around 100 grams a day, (this is about a half to a third of a normal American's diet, according to Atkins) with 10-20 grams of fiber (about average for Americans, but less than recommended). Yesterday's food was crazy, with grazing all evening while home alone. I'm going to go purely Atkins for a couple of weeks, and see if I can blast through this plateau.  I am also going to up the exercise, only to try to keep the body from shutting down. I'm going to hunt for fiber, and fill up on hunks of meat (not sausages or meatballs). I'll try to erradicate sugar, including no nightly treat - only a weekly one. We'll see how it goes, because I don't control my life completely but I've been at this long enough to know some of the things I need to do.