I'm Gaining Weight

After years of success, after losing weight, managing it within an acceptable band, pushing it to my "goal weight", I've done the classic rebound. There is no mystery here - I'm eating way too many sweets. I start out every day with good intentions and usually good food. But from about 3 pm on, I can't be trusted. I'm eating chocolate, and sometime not even good chocolate.

Here's what happened to my eating in the last year:  I decided I'm not on a diet. I've decided I'm a master weightcontrol ninja, never to be worried about what the scale says on a given day. I've beaten the odds, I'm in the 10% who are successful at this. So relax and enjoy life.

This hasn't worked for me, as the graphs will show. It appears I can't (yet, maybe never) trust to the mindful wisdom of the body to make sure I don't over eat.

I'm writing in other posts some analysis, and what I'm doing about it, so I'm going to keep this post just to the stats.

This is the long view, which is helpful to remind me I've been worse.

This is the last couple of years, after reaching goal, to remind me how things have changed recently.
It's not too late to turn this back around!

There's an App for That

I'm gaining weight, and I've decided to try to stick to a 28-day video-based course from the app Eat Right Now. Part of the app is a community discussion, and an invitation to do a journal there. So here is my post from there:

Nan's 2nd Try Journal

I’m back for another run at this. I have completed ERN phase one, some time ago, and dipped back into it and have retained some of the practises. But right now, I weigh several pounds more than when first I started. I think it’s back to basics for me.

I feel this mindful way is the right way to manage my eating and my weight for the rest of my life, despite some evidence to the contrary on the scale. I continue to nuture a small but important-to-me mindfulness practice, using the 10% Happier app most days. When I finished the ERN phase one, I felt fairly well equipped to handle eating anything. I had maintained a large weightloss for more than five years, making me one of those rare success stories. I’ve seen most of the videos for ERN phase 2, and the science was not new to me and the advice on what to eat is pretty much where I am. One of my other big influences for eating is Darya Rose, author of the Foodist, with the Summer Tomato blog. http://www.summertomato.com/. Her philosophy is Life should be Awesome, and no food should be demonized. She encourages mindfulness, as well as cooking and eating almost entirely real food, as a way of life.

During my time away, eating was not a priority as I struggled with some new challenges in different parts of my life, including my hardest physical challenge - learning how to live with migraines. I’m not young, and arthritis is one of my aging body’s other challenges. But I’m fairly active, and love being active, so I’m happy with there that is. Mindfulness helps me deal with these physical challenges and chronic pain. I have recently increased stress at work, but find the challenges there invigorating, and energy is breeding energy - and again, my small daily meditation habit seems to be key to handling this.
So if my life is so awesome, how come I’m gaining weight?

This is not a mystery. I eat fresh real food for breakfast and lunch, (though perhaps in too big portions) but in mid-afternoon I have both hunger and cravings. If I make it through the first danger zone ok, and eat a nice supper, the late-evening cravings kick in, and are very tough, and often I crumble. In both danger zones, it’s sweets that get me.

I have some suspicions, and some experiments to run, about what is happening physically with these triggers. But I also want to focus on applying mindfulness to my eating, so I’ll actually receive the signals from my body as a result of my experiments.

I pushed the magic Reset button and today is Day 1 for me.

Hacking my Habits

I've read a lot about habit formation, and how useful it is to focus on that rather than willpower to do the right thing. I've developed a bunch of habits, including intentionally adding specific ones. We learn, a habit is a loop composed of three things: Stimulus, (re)Action, Reward. Most of our habits are developed unconsciously, and I've learned to observe my behavior, analyze what's going on, and then try to change that loop by breaking the reaction to the stimulus, or avoiding the stimulus altogether. But I've also thought of what habits I want to cultivate, and worked to find the stimulus and reward that change me from thinking about it to just doing it.

I'm convinced you can teach an old dog new tricks, and for me, flossing is Exhibit A. Flossing is a habit probably most of us hear about from our dentists. For me, pretty much before three years ago, I simply didn't floss. I lied to the dentist, "oh yes, I floss once a week" when really I didn't even do that. Every time I went to the dentist, I was ashamed of lying to them, and they warned me about great teeth and bad gums, and begged me to floss. So one day, about a month before my regularly scheduled 3-4 times a year trip to the dentist, I suddenly decided on an experiment. I would floss every day before the visit and see if they could tell, if it really made a difference. I had seen in the store new things for flossing - little furry picks, and sticks with the string strung already. They seemed silly and wasteful, compared to just wrapping string around your fingers, but hey, they were new, and I like new, so I got some. And every day, I flossed. But I didn't just try to remember. I plugged the actions into my morning nearly zombie-like ritual. After the shower, open the medicine cabinet, grab a q tip, then grab a flossing device, then grab the tooth brush. Stimulus: grab the q tip. Action: grab the new silly flossing sticks, floss. Reward: it kind of felt good in the moment, but would it make a difference?

It is really amazing to me what a stir I caused in the dentist's office! The hygienist was all, "Wow, you are really doing something different here! This is amazing! This cleaning is so much easier! I can't wait to show the dentist!" and he was all "Well done!".  I preened myself under their praise, feeling silly at how pleased I was. The habit stuck, and now, a couple of years later, the big reward: we've reduced the number of visits I need to make, a real financial boon.

I've chained a few other early morning habits together - I reach for the deodorant, and then the lotion right next to it. Again, an existing habit is the stimulus, and there is a small reward that intrinsicly comes from the action itself. Things I consistently forget in the morning I'm trying to make into ritual habits, done in the same order, so I don't have to think.

I am stupidly bad at taking my medicine. I'm pretty healthy, but I started taking a twice daily drug for arthritis a year ago, and I've tracked how I feel when I do and don't take it, and I'm convinced it makes a difference, and yet I often miss it. I also have been told by my doctor to take some supplements - Vitamins B and D - but I'm extremely bad at taking those. I have no aversion to the medicines and supplements - just not into the habit yet, despite years of trying. I take tylenol for pain with no hesitation - but the reward of feeling better is closely tied to the act of taking it. These medicines and vitamins are more removed from how I feel, the effect, if any, is removed in time from when I swallow them.

I've had a ritual for a couple of years of recording my medicine intake and then checking in with my body and recording how I feel. This is what has allowed me to decide they do make a positive difference - going back and looking at the results. And yet, my performance in taking them is less than stellar. I'm better at tracking than doing, so it's time to hack this issue.

I got a nice, colorful pill box so I can tell if I took the pills or not. I set one up for my mother every week, and I decided this would help me, because I often simply couldn't remember if I took it or not. But often I would reach for it again and find I hadn't. So good but insufficient.

I have a couple of apps (of course) on my phone I use for tracking meds and physical pain. I grab my phone as I walk from my car to my office at work in the morning. I grab my phone to track if I took my meds, and it's too late if I didn't. The meds are home. So useful to track, but maybe I need to chain the tracking to the taking. Rocket science! Possible breakthrough!

I've been through a couple of iterations of how to do this - when to track to make this work. My morning ritual starts slow, then ends in a rush to get out the door. I have a nominal but not enforced time to get to work, but with my new, busier, job I have found it's useful to get out the door earlier, and the traffic is significantly better with an even 15 minute push. So I keep pushing the attempt to hang this habit on something earlier and earlier, before the mental rush happens.  Not there yet, but this is going to work.

This is a lot of words for a very tiny habit, and set of habits. But I think habits are what are going to carry me through times of stress and busy-ness, clearing away stress to allow more important things to get done.

Clarity

I'm a big fan of self-help books. Each book has given me a nugget of wisdom (rather than the secret to life, the universe and everything), and the best have stayed with me. Some things I picked up from the books are everyday parts of my life. Some others come back at me in bursts.  One point that has stayed with me for years and years I think can be traced back to one of my very first books of this type, lost in the midst of time. But here it is: Ask yourself, "What is the one thing I can do right now, today, that will make my life better?"

The point is, lost in the clutter of productivity tips and to-do lists, you probably know what is most most important. Cut the crap, and just do it. One thing, maybe one small thing, just do it. You know what it is. For many people, it might be a relationship thing (tell your kid you love her), something hard at work, a financial move. For many years, as I lay on the couch reading diet books and eating bon-bons, I knew it was exercise. That's not my thing right now- I have a base level of fitness, could be improved, but I'm much more fit now than 25 years ago. Right now, for me, it's meditation.

I'm not religious. I'm not spiritual. For me, meditation is a secular, phyisical practice I see leading to some improvements in my life. I'm looking for calmness, and seeing the real world clearly. I think it's giving me pieces of it. Self-delusion and living in my head is what I'm trying to avoid. But my meditation practice has led to more understanding of some aspects of religion, especially prayer.

Here's the record of what I did last week.

My meditation goals are modest and incremental, as I test and see if I can achieve them. I've been doing five minutes of unguided meditation at work most days. I have a private office, I can carve out enough time to close the door, set the timer, and sit for five minutes. I focus on the breath, and keep going back to the breath as my mind races ahead to what comes next, what I should have done in the morning, and my family responsibilities. I just note those thoughts - most often plans, rehearsing in my mind the moves to make next, and return to the breath, right now, the way it is. The calming at that moment is really helpful, and I think it spills over to other parts of the day. Because of the meditation, I sometimes can also see what is the other "one thing" I need to do, right then. This is enough to keep me coming back to the meditation.

As usually happens, I am evangelizing a bit. I worry, constantly, about my girl. I gave her my meditation app, which she has downloaded. I'm after her about starting. I'm hoping it will help.

Good Sleep, Bad Sleep

I'm a pretty good sleeper. A flip side to that is that I apparently need a lot of sleep, compared to some people. Actually, need is probably the wrong word, both for me and what I'm assuming about other people. I get a lot of sleep compared to many other other people, and that generally works for me.

I'm also clearly and totally a morning person. I run out of energy in the afternoon and evening, and I have to make sure I use my mornings well, because the later it gets, the less likely it is I'll do something hard or worthwhile or challenging.

I've been tracking my sleep in an automated way for about 10 years now. In that time, I'm learned two actually practical things that I might have realized without the gadgets, but the report from the gadgets made it very clear. The first lesson, right after I started wearing the tracker, was that I'm never going to get eight hours of sleep, or even seven hours, if I only spend six hours in bed. I had in my mind that I go to bed at 10 pm, and I found out I was starting to get ready for bed at 10, but actually getting in bed sometime after 11.  Since then, I've prioritized going to bed early, and so my sleep has gotten longer.  The second big insight is that I often wake up and have to pee in the middle of the night, and I would toss and turn for up to an hour before struggling out of bed briefly, only to fall into a deep, sound sleep right after getting back to bed. So now, when I wake up with the urge, I try to remember to act on it quickly (but waking up in the middle of the night doesn't lend itself to rational thinking so there is limited success on that front).

As trackers have gotten more sophisticated, the detail they give on the sleep has gotten more sophisticated. My current Fitbit Blaze tracks my heartrate round the clock as well as motion, so now it purports to show deep, light, and REM sleep, as well as awake and sleep times. It also shows how my sleep stacks up against other folks in my general demographic, women of roughly my age. So when I say I'm usually a good sleeper, I am speaking from an informed position.

This week was interesting from seeing how stress (see previous post on new job) has affected my sleep.  Here are graphics from each night this week:

Monday night (labelled for Tues morning) - this is good sleep. Quickly into deep sleep, and a solid long uninterrupted period at that. Plenty of REM sleep, and scattered as is typical, with more later towards dawn. I was juiced and energized by the work challenges to come.

Tuesday night - grasping the reality of the challenges led to rumination and concern. Deep sleep happened, but only towards morning, a very unusual pattern.

Wednesday night started out showing how very exhausted I was from the poor sleep the night before. Deep deep sleep. But then awake around 3 am and not really back to worthwhile sleep. I did turn on the phone to do a guided meditation when I couldn't otherwise calm my mind, but it's not clear it paid off in more actual sleep.

Thursday night. Really really tired after two not so restful nights. There is some deep sleep and some REM, but in an unusual pattern and some long wakefulness in the reaches of the night.

This may be about as good as it gets, consolidated deep and REM sleep, in appropriate times of the night, few periods of wakefulness. Spoiler - I medicated myself - a benedryl because I was going nuts with itchy skin from the cold weather. I woke at about my normal wake time (a good sign) and rolled over and dreamed for about an hour. 

I'm going to let today be a low energy day, but with plenty of sunlight exposure, and I hope for another good night of sleep.

Kicked Upstairs

I am sucked into the whirlwind at work, asked to serve in a higher level position temporarily. To my surprise, yesterday I found out that was two notches higher than my normal job, a much bigger and more responsible job with no safety net. The high level post will be for a few weeks, waiting for the new permanent appointee, after which I'll move to a second seat, supporting the new guy, coaching and drawing on my "vast experience and wise counsel", for what is likely to be a much longer stint. I'll be the safety net.

When did I move from being the new kid to having vast experience?

I love my (normal) job. It is interesting, at times stressful, it feels useful. I figure I'll be in it until I retire, which I've been saying for the last three years is three to five years away. But sometimes folks at my work have a way of actually, literally, saying "your country needs you" to force one to step up. (I should mention rewards for doing so are only intrinsic or symbolic; no more money comes my way.) So away from the familiar and comfortable, and into the unfamiliar and uncomfortable.

It is energizing to be faced with this challenge, and more than a little bit daunting. But it's not a good time to be making resolutions for improved diet and more exercise!

Last year was not a good year for my weight. It was only an ok year for exercise. I stuck with the personal training at the gym, and that's a great thing. But running, not so much. I collect statistics automatically, fitbit and scale, so I've got the facts. Not a lot of time spent reviewing and analyzing them, however. Hardly any food tracking, though some photos.

My holidays were practically perfect in every way, the perfect break for the new year and the new challenges (which I had wind of but no certainty).  I think the timing of Christmas and New Year's holidays falling on Mondays is great. I had the three-day weekend to be ready for Christmas, making cooking and celebrating relatively stress-free. The whole family departed before dawn on the 26th, with hassle-free flights to Miami, transfer to a casual cruise ship, perfect weather to relax in the warm sun, and return on the Friday before New Years. Again the three day weekend at home before venturing into the whirlwind.

So I had time to reflect and resolve and work out. But I didn't, not so much. I read books and blogs, watched movies and binged on TV, hung with the family, ate too much, cooked when home, and generally lived only in the present. I did do quite a bit of walking, even with our very cold weather.

So the one thing I am trying to add to my life is more meditation. I believe it will spill over to everything else, work and personal, and even my eating and weight. So I'm focusing on mindfulness.  My specific approach is using an app, "10% Happier", done by Dan Harris who wrote the book of the same title. There are many guided meditations, which I find useful, and a timer for unguided, which I'm working on - it's harder to maintain focus all on my own, but that is where the benefits ultimately lie. Partly why I use the app even for the unguided time is because it records my minutes of meditation and so I can track and be realistic if I'm accomplishing my goals.

Work Candy Jar Spoils

I need to take my eating in hand. I know the single biggest thing is to plan and cook.  The second biggest is to track and face the reality of my consumption. Yesterday I was faced with a whirlwind all day. I had brought my food in to the office (yay, me, the first step) and ate it on the fly, while meeting with people or studying for the next meeting. No pictures, no mindful pause. At 4 pm I was exhausted. I did pause, briefly and think, checking in with my body. Craving or hungry?  I was legitimately hungry, as well as tired and in need of a boost. No caffeine source closer than Starbucks across the street, a 15 minute round trip, so instead it was the office candy jar. That kept me going until I got home a few hours later, where my evening was not so good. Frozen dinner (not unhealthy palak paneer, just 450 calories) and more, much more, chocolate. I wouldn't feel bad about the office candy, except I believe it contributed to the later poor choices by the post-sugar crash. I meditated late in the evening while lying in bed, managed to stay awake through the guided process. But sleep was disturbed and fragmented. At 3 am, ruminating fruitlessly on work challenges, I did another guided meditation focused on tuning in to the body and relaxing.

Snow delay today has given me time to write. Food plan today is heat up healthy vegetable fritatta, my meat and salad dressing with greens bought from the salad bar at work, and this time take an apple and nuts for the 4 pm crash. Gym appointment after work, across the street from Whole Foods, so food bar for dinner and to purchase tomorrow's lunch.

And MAKE THE TIME TO MEDITATE!  One minute counts, five is better, ten is better and my minimum goal.