Pre-Trip Musings and Tidbits

I'm in a whirlwind of chores to get ready to leave for France. But in the midst of all of this activity, I'm also in my first little stall in weight loss, eight weeks in. It's not really a stall until it's lasted for way way longer than this. At this point, it's only been a week. But I'm concerned, wondering what is up. Is it that the meds aren't working, and I should up my dose? Or is it that I'm not eating and behaving appropriately? How is this going to affect my trip? 

I went on weight loss meds because I want to create an environment where I can be successful at losing weight and maintaining a lower weight without a huge amount of mental or physical effort to always be focused on eating the right things. (By physical effort, I mean the logistics of buying and preparing food. I know I will always need physical effort to be strong. Exercise till the day I die, baby.) The Weight Watchers app is a great tool to guide and track my food choices, but I don't want it to be my most used phone app every single day!

In the last three weeks I've had a birthday and an unusual-for-me number of social engagements involving food. I've relaxed and eaten what I want, in the quantities that feel right to me in the moment. I'm not meticulously pre-planning every day in advance to make sure I'm going to hit my targets. Instead, I'm more going with the flow, mostly going to my go-to foods I know help get me where I want, but swapping things out as the mood takes me. I thought, "I've got this nailed! Easy-peasy!" Based on recent scale evidence, maybe I shouldn't (yet) trust myself this way. 

I've found that in restaurants, my choices and my portions are different than they would have been before the meds. Those things that would have appealed to me in the past, carb and fat laden, (Alfredo pastas, I'm looking at you!) don't appeal quite as much. Fat especially is off-putting to me. But that is when I really stop and reflect before ordering, and when eating. If I charge ahead without much thought, old habits are right there. I go to the old staples on the menu, and then regret it.  Portions are easier. I fill up more quickly, and unless I'm really wolfing something down with no pause, I will stop well before I'm done. 

I read an article recently (I'm not taking the time to go back and search where, but probably in a newspaper, and probably now I think about it, the Wall Street Journal). The article was speculating on how the new weight loss drugs would impact the food industry. There is actually a lot of speculation about how supermarkets might need to change, but this article wasn't buying it. The author notes how use of the GLP-1 drugs is very much NOT evenly spread through the population. So, looking at the supermarket shopping carts of those on the drug, healthier foods will be spotted than in the average American shopping cart. But, the author asserts, that is likely because those currently on the drugs are those who already eat healthier than normal, are more affluent, more likely to shop at farmer's markets and less likely to buy fast food. But as the drugs become cheaper and more wide spread in their use, the demographics of those taking them will change. If the major effect of the drugs is to re-calibrate hunger and fullness (the author speculates), perhaps the type of foods in folks' shopping carts will not change much. After all, his final well-put thought is, "half a Big Mac is still a Big Mac, it's not an apple". It is too soon, he says, to change over our food system to different types of food. I don't know if he's right, but he has a major point on the demographics. And, on still going for a Big Mac, even if you can't finish it.

So I'm going to be in France, well known for taking food seriously. And excellently. And using butter and cream in everything. On the other hand, I'll be on a river boat where three meals a day are provided. Perhaps the boat cuisine will not that great. I'm not wishing for that, oh no, not at all, just speculating. (The internet reviews tell me it'll be great.) I certainly will not be seeking out the best restaurants in every port of call, though if on-board croissants aren't up to snuff, I will absolutely seek those out elsewhere! I intend to deny myself nothing during the trip, because food is definitely part of the experience. But maybe I'll be able to have a few elegant and savored bites, and be done.  I'm also taking along some dried edamame and garbanzo bean snacks for travel days, and if I feel like I'm not getting enough protein or fiber.

Already, weeks ago, I resigned myself to having a bit of a vacation bump-up in weight. My experience in the past is this always has happened, and generally I've gone back to my previous set point within a week of returning. But now, going into the vacation with a mini-stall, I'm worried. And, because I always borrow trouble plan ahead, I'm thinking about when I renew my Zepbound prescription for the next four weeks. That renewal is scheduled for the day I come back from the trip, and I had assumed I'd stay on my same low dose for another month. That was based on continuing to lose at that dose. I think I can delay requesting the renewal for a few days after I come back, but no matter what the scale says, I (currently) think I should just stay at this dosage through May. By then, I'll have significantly more evidence about how the drugs are affecting me and what it will take for consistent, continuing, weight loss. Time enough to bump up later, if needed.

In the meantime...

 

Most of these linen and cotton shirts were "hang to dry" anyway
But they definitely need ironing now!
The weird pink thing is a strawberry tower - 
check out the garden blog

I still haven't bothered to get my dryer repaired or replaced. Luckily, we've had some sunny weather, and the clothesline in the back yard works great. I don't hang my underwear out there, though! It's fairly private, but not completely. Everything takes longer to line dry, though, so I've had to plan way ahead on what I'm taking on the trip, and make sure it's clean, dry, and ready to go.

 

 

 

 

 

And in other news, my girl leaves for Oregon a couple of days after I go to France. I've offloaded a lot of my old camping equipment - and even outer-layer clothes - on her. She'll be living in an minimally furnished house with co-workers, and camping some of the time. I had a tent to give her, and emergency supplies I took from my own bug-out bag for her day pack: a multi-tool knife, a headlamp, a mylar blanket, a solar lantern, a water filter, a Bic lighter, and also rain gear I outgrew (sideways) and a beanie hat. We went together to REI where I had fun fitting her up with a compass, whistle, tiny first-aid kit, and new socks to go with her new hiking boots. I relate to this experience of hers through my memories of my undergraduate years, where I majored in field trips (though the degree says different). I had a summer in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan in an old logging camp, learning the same field skills that she will use. (She learned much of what she needs to know in Australia, and will be trained in specifics. But she will be alone in the woods before dawn most days.) I'm sorry I won't be there to wave good-bye to her as she sets off into the world to seek her fortune. I know she'll do fine, and I also hope she will enjoy it. I'm so grateful she has wanted to share her prep and planning with me! It's been fun!

Intuitive Eating

 

It turns out Intuitive Eating is a Thing. It's even known as IE to its adherents. Forthwith, my exploration of IE with my thoughts.

I found IE (the Thing) from a podcast I follow, Ten Percent Happier. The interview was with Evelyn Tribole, one of the authors of Intuitive Eating, the book which is now in its fourth edition, and several other related books. And founder of a nutrition practice that trains Registered Dieticians and nutritionists to be Anti-Diet Dieticians. The focus of the podcast series is mindfulness, and in this episode Tribole gave her distinction between mindful eating and IE: mindful eating is a specific practice engaged when eating, while IE is a set of principles for living your life with a healthy relationship with food. One could engage in mindful eating while still having an unhealthy relationship with food. 

As is my wont, I plunged into this thing. I got the basic book from Audible where it was included in my membership and I listened to all 13+ hours in three days. I bought in hardcopy paperback the associated workbook, and joined a Facebook group that gave a quiz before they let you in, and an essay exam before allowing you to post. 

So quick warnings before going further:  This is the Anti-Diet, and will go against most of what we think we know about how to eat to accomplish our goals. And, it forbids having certain goals. And it denies what we think we know about how our bodies work. It denies there can be such a thing as a Food Addict. And, it comes across to this skeptical cynic a bit like a religion, because if it does not "work" it is because you, the failed practitioner, don't believe in the principles enough. This is one of the symptoms of a cult. 

So I am an IE skeptic. I am not all in. I think there is a lot of value here, and much of what they say about dealing with food is very healing. And a lot of it is very compatible with what I have come to believe about food and dieting overall. But the way it is written seems to be aimed at an audience that is in a much different place than I am. And some of it rings false with my own experience and evidence, not just beliefs.

So here are the ten principles that compose IE, the Thing:

1. Reject the Diet Mentality
2. Honor Your Hunger
3. Make Peace with Food
4. Challenge the Food Police
5. Feel Your Fullness
6. Discover the Satisfaction Factor
7. Cope with Your Feelings Without Food
8. Respect Your Body
9. Exercise: Feel the Difference
10. Honor Your Health: Gentle Nutrition
    

The first is the big one. Reject the diet mentality, reject everything about diet culture, and here's a big point: do not try to lose weight. As long as you are trying to manage your food with the intention of losing weight, you will never make peace with food. A large part of the thinking is based on the psychological principle that restricting something leads to future rebound - the forbidden fruit tastes sweeter.

I am fully on board with the concepts of body positivity, health at every size (which is also a Thing, HAES), and the evilness of the enormous exploitative economic machine that is the weight loss industry. I fully acknowledge most attempts at long-term weight loss fail, and how much money is to be made in that fact. I've felt the effects of how denying something can lead to obsessing about it.

IE also fully recognizes that our society has a strong anti-fat bias, and that makes it difficult to give up the idea that being thinner is a good thing. And, in some cases, being fat causes economic losses and bad health care from medical professionals that can't see beyond the number on the scale. But, they counter, since almost no-one succeeds at long-term weight loss, and there is strong evidence that weight cycling is very bad for your health, there is no point to trying one diet after another, even if from time to time you are thinner. This condemns you to a life of never being happy with where you are and never being comfortable with food.

IE does not promise that if you fully embrace the process leading through all their principles and then practice them in your life, you will as if by magic end up losing weight after all. Instead, they say that you will simply lead a happier life. And be healthier, if only from stopping weight cycling. I sense a hidden footnote there, maybe it was in the earlier editions of their books, that many people do eventually end up at an equilibrium at a lower weight than where they started out. 

They state that during the earlier stages of their process, many people initially gain weight, as folks move through the first four principles in what they describe as a "re-feeding" process where all food becomes "emotionally equivalent". And they have that word "initially" in there, as if they are suggesting that as people internalize principles five through seven, where you learn how to stop eating, weight starts to come off. But they never say it. Principles eight and nine are to learn how to love your body and exercise only for the joy of it. And only at the end do they bring up the notion that while any and all foods should be emotionally equivalent, not all foods are nutritionally equivalent. 

Much of the practices are geared towards being mindful of and in your body. In my chronic pain practices we call this somatic tracking. In IE, it's called interoceptive awareness. (You've heard of proprioception? The sense of our body in space? This is the sense that goes kerflooey when vertigo strikes, and can cause sea sickness when screwed with. Well, interoception is internal sense of our body. They are real words, but spell checker doesn't acknowledge them.)  Feel and acknowledge and feed hunger, and rely on the wisdom of the body to determine what and how much to eat. As noted before in this blog, as if. This is the holy grail, and I believe it is the right way.

I think these books are geared towards people who are much more immersed in Diet Culture than I am. And I say this as a person who has for twelve years blogged on my diets! Perhaps at earlier times in my life I was much more of a true believer in The Way to lose weight. Perhaps I have demonized foods. But maybe because I have been both analytical and introspective about what I was doing, and because I've always considered myself a skeptical cynic, and because I have become much more tuned to my body through mindfulness and dealing with chronic pain, many of the exercises in their workbook don't work for me. But some do. (I wrote about my movements towards being more at peace with food just before I fell down this IE rabbit hole.)

My main caveat about IE:

I have engaged in weight cycling, but I also have not in 24 years gone back to my top weight. I am happier for not being that roly poly. And I'd like to be less fat in the future, I'm not willing to fully embrace this weight. So with that shred of doubt, I'm not a true believer and thus IE will not "work" for me.

Other bones to pick: 

•  I understand what they say about not demonizing foods, but foods will never be "emotionally equivalent" for me. There are memories and associations, and there are past somatic experiences, and there is knowledge about nutrition, and even often knowledge about the source and environmental footprint of how how food got to my plate. They do not embrace vegetarians and vegans, apparently believing most get there from a health rather than an ethical or environmentalist viewpoint, and any forbidding of food is anathema to them.
• For folks trying to make foods emotionally equivalent, to my eyes they push grain-based carbs rather hard. (Perhaps someone from a different diet history would think they are pushing fats too much.) 
• They discount fresh foods, and think fruit has no staying power (can't disagree) and think vegetables also have little staying power (I disagree) though they list fiber as distinct from vegetables and like fiber. 
• Their workbook has good exercises to do - vary your lunch, for example, while keeping other meals equivalent for a couple of days, and mark down experience with hunger and satisfaction. But the accompanying worksheets are prepopulated with examples that show their biases, which don't always correlate with my own experiences. For example, sandwich lunch versus salad - their "notes" example say salad didn't hold them the way the sandwich did, because the bread helped - but they assume a skinless chicken breast and fat free dressing on the salad, when I load my salads with things like olives and sausages and find the combination of fiber from the greens and fat and protein hold me much better than a bread heavy sandwich. (This is just one example, there are many). 
• We know the food industry works to increase palatability while delaying satiety in an effort to get us to eat more. This is not addressed. I'm not sure I'll ever be able to rely on my body to overcome the forces arrayed against it - except by eating real, whole, foods that haven't been subjected to industrial dark forces.
  

OK, enough for now. I'm continuing to figure things out, based primarily on my own insights leavened by reading. But I want to focus these first couple of months this year on getting strong more than what I weigh. That requires getting up off this couch!
 
 

2021: Nice

Isn't this nice?

For the past two years, I've selected a one-word motto for the year. While I haven't written here about the topic after announcing the selection, I do actually think about the topic during the year. For 2019, the word was "Move". For last year, it was "Engage". 

This year, the word is "Nice". 

Underwhelmed? Stay with me here.

The point of selecting just a single word is it allows for ambiguity and multiple interpretations. So "nice" is an exclamation, a synonym for "cool". It also means how we treat each other, and we could all stand for a little more niceness in our interactions. And, inspired by Alice, I'm wanting to add a little style to my life: flowers on the table, color in my hair, food arranged artfully on the plate. So if I achieve "nice" this year, it will be enough.

Planning, Tracking, and Hunger

"Hunger is NEVER an emergency".

 I first heard that phrase many years ago. At the time, it was the fashion to suggest that many small meals was the "best" way to diet, and that it was important to avoid ever becoming actually hungry, because that would lead to raging hormones that would make a person lose all control. The implication was we are all victims of our biology, and, like the Incredible Hulk, we could not be held accountable for what we did when we were in a berserker mood.  

The context for my first contemplation of hunger as merely a normal expression of impulses (rather than an emergency) was a diet book based on cognitive-behavior therapy approaches, which I read years ago. The idea is to examine thoughts, and change them consciously if they are not serving you well. Clearly, the facts about hunger are that we can live for weeks without food - so for us in America, missing a meal time is not an actual emergency (except for some people with diabetes or other medical conditions). So if we get hungry at an inappropriate or inconvenient time, we can remind ourselves we will survive, and to be patient until it is convenient to eat. It was a liberating thought, and I've used it fairly often to skip snacks or reaching for crap rather than good food.

This approach is very compatible with the coaching group I am currently participating in. The emphasis in my group is to plan and track food, and to be very aware of hunger. We are taught to analyze what we feel in our body, to feel what hunger feels like, what satisfied feels like, and to only eat when we are hungry and to stop when we are full. I'm pretty sure I've got the first notion - what hunger feels like - down pat, but stopping when full is still very difficult for me. One tidbit that caused a lightbulb to go off for me was the notion that how much food it takes to be full does not change based on how hungry I am. A portion is still a portion. 

This came into play for me today. I experimented a while back with "intermittent fasting", a fad that suggests only eating during an eight- or ten-hour window each day has weight loss benefits greater than simply a calorie reduction from less opportunity to eat. I abandoned thinking of this as a useful thing, but overall it has made me more receptive to skipping breakfast. Because I have so much more energy in the morning, and because it often gets oppressively hot in the afternoons, I jump out the door to start my day without having eaten anything first. I have my coffee, and I drink lots of water, but nothing to eat until later.

I was especially conscious of how I was feeling this week, because last week I felt better in every possible way than I have in months. No headaches, no generalized malaise or fatigue, more energy than is my norm. I wish I had taken the time to write about this at the time, because it would be useful to remember better. As my body reverted back this week towards what is sadly my normal baseline, (with a full-blown migraine to mark the transition) I tried to stay tuned in to how my body was behaving.

I got engaged in projects of some sort every morning this week, finally breaking my fast between 11:00 am and 1:30 pm. I found it difficult to stop what I was doing, because my experience has been once I do, I am likely done with productive work for the day. If it's gardening I've been doing, like today, I have to shower as soon as I come inside, to try to ward off the always-present but not always observed poison ivy, which further delays when I finally eat. The day I didn't eat until well after noon was a problem. Hunger had moved from an annoying feeling of stomach growling to a hollow feeling in my chest, and finally a headache. I recognized the headache - not a migraine, but hunger. I eventually ate (very quick salad with just lettuce, meat, and bottled dressing), but for the rest of the day I was feeling the need to "catch up". Let's just say unplanned carbs happened. My coaching group would not allow that - food doesn't just leap into my mouth - at some point, I chose to put it there. My salad, and tylenol, eliminated the headache, but I had strong urges to eat for the rest of the day and I did.

Eating around 11 am, as I did today, seems to work much better for me. I'll be having another meal by 3 or 4 pm, and later I'll have to deal with my evening drive towards sweets- a constant issue, no matter how much I've eaten earlier.

I still think hunger is not an emergency. I don't have to eat. I've got reserves to last me weeks, comes the apocalypse. But my experience this week suggests letting myself get too hungry means I have to exercise a great deal of control to avoid overeating in an over-reaction. It would be more sensible to avoid putting myself into that position in the first place.

(This post was inspired by other's posts about hunger.)

Food

My food intake (and thus my weight) have really gone the wrong way lately. I primarily blame the Whirligig, because it hasn’t entirely settled down and it keeps a constant low level of nausea just below the surface. Fewer trips to the grocery store and other isolation measures mean I’m thrown back on my own resources for putting together meals, which often requires me to cook.

I have white board material on the fridge
and keep a rough inventory as a reminder

I don’t hate cooking, I just don’t want to spend the time every day to do it. And while I have a few dishes I do well, I’m not a fabulous every day chef. I do continue to improve. I took an internet month-long class in it once, and that helped. I love reading cookbooks, but rarely do I actually use one to make a dish. Most likely when I have visitors, ie not now. More often, I use the cookbooks as inspiration, techniques and seasoning approaches. I’m in a kind of routine, and I often make big portions so I can just reheat quickly. I’m good eating the same thing for 2-3 days before I get sick of it, but I’m getting better at freezing extra portions right away, so it doesn’t get bad and I have quick food sitting in the freezer.

Way back in March, when were all preparing to hunker down, we didn’t know exactly what to prepare for. I assumed there was a good chance I’d get sick, and I’d be physically on my own during the illness because I wouldn’t just run to the hospital. So much of my early shopping was for quick and easy convenience foods for the cupboard and the freezer - shelf stable soups, frozen dinners, popcorn, granola, cereals, energy bars, apple sauce. Things I could either eat raw or pop in the microwave. This came in handy at the peak of the vertigo, once I was ready to try to keep food in me. At the outset, I also shopped for WTSHTF (prepper term, google it). Heavy on beans and brown rice and big shelf stable boxes of broth and tomatoes, which went down into the basement. I filled the freezer with bags of frozen veggies and fruit. I bought fresh veggies which were likely to keep a while, squash and cabbage and lemons and limes.

I started out well, keeping an eye on the inventory and usually cooking the next thing that might go bad. I was determined not to waste any food. I ended up using vegetables that in happier times I likely would have pitched right out. Tossed into rice and lentils cooked in the Instant Pot, and frozen into portions to provide quick, microwaveable food. I made two trips to the supermarket in April, and one so far this month, focused on fresh foods, but also replenishing any shelf stable things I used. That turns out to be about every two weeks. My girl (who goes more often to the grocery) has picked up a few extra items for me, and I got a smallish delivery from Costco, focused on big bags of coffee and some bulk organic meat for freezing. I’ve done takeout about every ten days, and I buy enough one time to last 2-3 meals. And at the height of my vertigo I ordered several pound of Gin-gins to be delivered.

But my evenings have been a continuous problem. And they wouldn’t be such a problem if I didn’t bring the treats into the house in the first place. When I buy chocolate or ice cream treats, I try to remember to ask myself, “What is my intention in buying this?” I have two themes playing out in my mind. My conscious mind is saying “No food has power over me.” Good thought. “No food is “bad”. Another good thought. “I can have just a tiny bit and stop”. NOT TRUE, at least this is not how things usually unfold. My conscious mind is an adorable optimist!

The other theme playing is simply a constant but mostly unconscious refrain, “Everything is awful so I’m going to give myself pleasure by eating this.”

When I got vertigo last month, that second theme just rose up and took over.

In my own defense, I had severe nausea, and my digestive system went wonky from top to bottom. I needed to eat what I rarely eat - white carbs in the form of white rice, pasta, toast. Microwaveable chicken soup. And, sadly, sugar also sat well. No fiber - no beans, no cabbage family, no crusty whole grains. I grazed gin-gins freely (they really work well for nausea, I use them on the boat), and squares of chocolate seemed to smooth things over.

While the nausea isn’t completely gone, my overall digestive system is much better. But I’ve got to get a handle back on my eating, aiming at the vegetables and whole grains and controlling my evenings. I have some ideas - stay tuned.

Clearing the Deferred Maintenance Backlog

I'm settling into a very quiet and comfortable routine right now. I have no big plans to travel or take on huge projects or goals, but I have huge list of things I want to do. I call it my "deferred maintenance backlog". It is sadly not an actual physical list, at least not yet, just a mental one. But it's big. It encompasses the house, the garden, the boat, and me, with multiple sub-categories under each big heading. What is not yet getting done is civic engagement, or any kind of study or class. I'm mostly pushing that off until after Labor Day. I'm focusing now on me, physical things, but not social things.

I allowed work to take center stage of my life for the past couple of years, and I used work as my excuse for not doing anything else. As a result, I have neglected a lot of things, and they have piled up. I am taking a lot of satisfaction in doing small things. Some of them are recurrent and will need to be done again sometime, and some of them are one-and-done, over and crossed off. As each gets done, I feel great. I feel productive.

June passed by as a whirlwind, but I did learn a few things. I started strong, going out running the first of June, and keeping it up for a week. The rest of my time was focused on getting the house and yard ready to have a bunch of family come and stay. Cooking, cleaning, shopping, building Ikea furniture. Then, the migraine struck. I was trying to do too much. I went into hibernation for a day, and had a couple of days of slow recovery. I recovered just as seven family members showed up to stay for a week. Lesson learned: slow down a bit. Take breaks.

While the folks were here, I totally loved the experience, but it left me knackered (as the Brits in the book I just finished say). Then another friend showed up, by herself so less tiring, but still preventing me from getting into a rhythm. So it's been only since the last week of June I've been able to build what feels like a solid routine.

After thirty years of having my alarm set for 5:30, I'm still an early riser. The sun is up by 6, and generally so am I. Because it is the brutally hot DC summer, I'm trying to limit myself to only half an hour drinking coffee with the ipad before starting my day. I've joined an on-line running group, and I'm following a training plan that requires running three times a week. I walk on the other mornings, either with or without the dog, depending on how fast I want to go. Then, down to the basement gym, where I do my functional fitness routines for another half hour or so. (I cut my personal training at the sports club to once a week for now, till I see how the money goes.) 

After taking care of me, I try to spend an hour or two in the yard. There is so much to be done there! We had a nice spring, and things are lush and overgrown. Much gardening right now is mostly about taking things out or cutting them back. Some things I've done recently are already starting to pay off. (More at the garden blog, mostly pictures.) 

Then, after a little bit of a sit to catch my breath and cool down, it's time for a shower. It took me a while to figure out when to shower, can you believe that? My weekday routine always included a shower, of course, before off to work. And I pegged a lot of other personal care items to the shower - good tooth care, taking vitamins and medicine, things like that. But I never had a weekend routine and often skipped a shower - I usually sat around in my jammies with coffee and the ipad till I felt like it I was running late, and then I'd pull on clothes and rush out to where ever I needed to be. Now, I want to first get going, and then when I'm done with the dirty and sweaty parts of my day, I'll take the time before lunch to get cleaned up.

The middle, hot, part of the day is for reading, cooking, shopping, indoor chores like laundry or bookkeeping. I confess some naps have snuck in there as well. In the evening, something social (movies or book clubs or hanging with the family) or more reading or TV, and generally after dark an hour or two ambling with my old dog around the neighborhood.

Interspersed with these things is a fair amount of journalling, meditation, and just sitting around. 

I've been up to the boat for sailing and kayaking some, and would like to do more. But my list for home and garden keeps getting longer, and I'm sure my boat maintenance list will likewise grow as I spend more time with her. I'm working on dog-sitting arrangements so I could start staying overnight on her, because a dawn kayaking expedition is one of the great joys of life. To do that, I also need to build my kit, get fresh stove fuel and inspect the coffee stores, among other things. If it doesn't happen this week, it'll be next week.

So it's pretty much vacation now. It feels very selfish (what about smashing the patriarchy and saving the planet?) but I've decided to be selfish for a while.

Because I'm me, I can tell you I've read 14 books since June 1. Some were audio books while walking and gardening, some were YA books that only took a few hours.

More later, as I make lists and plans.

What's the Motto with You?

(Sorry, die-hard Lion King fan here)

Happy New Year, all!

I've become something of a fan of Gretchen Rubin, who is all about making life better, not in grand, huge ways, but in a myriad of small ways that add up over time. She has a podcast, social media presence, and several books. I'm looking forward to her forthcoming book, Outer Order, Inner Calm.

On this week's podcast, she and her co-host, her sister, revealed their mottoes for 2019. They have been doing the one-word motto, or theme, on top of or instead of New Year's resolutions. Playing along as I drove into work yesterday, I settled on mine for 2019:  MOVE. 

A quick search turns up variants: Move on, Move up, Move it, On the move. Images range from arrows to trucks, all dynamic in some way. Having tested this as a thought for a day, I've adopted it for sure.

I fear I could settle into my chair with books and ipads and look up hours later with nothing done. "Move" to me is the anthesis of this. It's both broader and more specific than "Just do it" or "get things done". We'll see how having a motto works, but I anticipate thinking every morning, "what Move am I going to make today?" as a good way to start.

More later, but time to get moving.

Cooking

Cooking at home is the key to controlling what I eat (and also to keeping it reasonably priced).  But I have years and years of a habit of not cooking on week nights.  Am I too old a dog to learn this new trick?

Two days a week I go to the gym, which totally shoots the evening.  I should definitely get a pass those nights.  But other nights - I get home between 6 and 7, depending on work and traffic.  I'm generally in bed before 10 (and sorry if I'm not - a post on sleep and how I crave it will be coming). There is still time in that evening window to cook.  And yet, I rarely do.

What do I eat if I don't cook?  Leftovers, mostly.  I try to have a surplus from when I do cook so I have them. Gym nights, I don't want to eat much if at all before going. Afterwards, I either grab leftovers (as I did last night) or else stop at Whole Foods hot food table.  Often, on gym nights, I end up not eating much at all - sometimes, it's just pistachios. On work nights without the gym, its almost always leftovers. There are also a very few frozen dinners I like and often have on hand.  I don't go out, unless its with one of the kids to a place like Chipotle.

Tuesday, I actually cooked.  I have an internal debate about what constitutes truly cooking. Heating up something from the freezer or fridge that was already cooked does not count.  But tonight, I had all the ingredients at home because I'd intended to cook Sunday night, and instead went out to a restaurant with the family.  So tuesday night I made italian sausages, spaghetti squash, and a fresh tomato sauce from raw ingredients, and by almost anyone's definition that was cooking.  I thought about it on the way home, and one thing I did differently tonight from most nights is that I went right to the kitchen.  I did not first flop down on the couch with the ipad to check up on facebook.  Instead, the dog went out back, I changed my clothes, and then grabbed all the ingredients out of the fridge and got right to work.  I had also walked through the steps in my mind while driving, so I didn't in the moment have to decide if (for example) the sausages were going under the broiler or on the stovetop. Decision-making is not my forte after a long work day, and that kind of indecision can drive me to the couch with the ipad while all my energy and good intentions leak away.  I also had a clean kitchen to work in.  Definitely a messy kitchen is often a barrier.

I know that for most women of my age cooking dinner is not that remarkable.  I did go through a stint where I made dinner for the family every night, but it wasn't for twenty plus years like most of us, only about five years.  Now I'm back on my own, and pistachios in lieu of dinner is actually just fine some nights.  No-one to please but myself.  But I'd like to get the inspiration and energy to cook more often than just on weekends.

So I guess the main points of my cooking success are:  clean kitchen, all ingredients already on hand, a clear plan of how it's going to go, and don't flop down on the couch first. Another key point is home before seven.  I'll see if this is repeatable more often.

The Past and the Future

Since I technically (for about 3 days) made my goal weight last year, I've been contemplating what I want to do now.  How do I want to eat for the rest of my life? How much do I care about my weight? I've got a whole parallel running internal dialogue on fitness and activity, but for this post I'm mostly focused on food, eating, and weight.

Partly why I'm doing the Whole 30 is to try out a different way of eating. Because it is for a short period, it's possible to really think about what I'm eating and how it makes me feel.  It's very similar to the way I have been trying to eat for the past many years, but with some differences.  It's easiest to describe by what not to eat: no grains, no dairy, no legumes, no added sugar or any form of sweeteners, no alcohol. What's left are meat, fish, eggs, vegetables (including root vegetables like sweet and white potatoes), fruit, and nuts.  For the thirty days, no using these ingredients creatively to try to re-create treats - no baking with almond flour - because the diet tries to do two things: detox your body, and break eating habits while creating a new cooking habit.  Pretty close to every packaged food will have something not allowed - even my low-carb bottled salad dressings which have zero carbs per serving have some form of sugar as an added ingredient on the label, and thus are not allowed.  Cooking is the only possible way through.  Luckily, it's summer, and vegetables and fruit are good and plentiful.

So I'm doing this, for a month, and then I'll add stuff back.  I don't believe I have any actual food allergies nor even intolerances - no problems with gluten or lactose.  But this diet will help me know it for sure, when I add things back.  (I do have a health challenge of bizarre migraines, and perhaps there is a relationship to food. This restricted diet should help figure it out.)  My idealized diet I've conceptualized would include dairy, for richness, and legumes, for more plant-based proteins. I like meat, but I think the environmental toll of meat production, and animal welfare issues, mean I should eat less meat, if I can do so healthfully.  And by healthfully,  I mean without gaining weight.  The ideal diet would also include ice cream, alcohol, and chocolate, but in small exquisitely perfect tiny portions.  I haven't shown I'm able to do restrain myself that way, yet.

So far, I feel like I'm eating a lot, including a lot of fruit, and I'm getting the hunger pangs that I think sugar (even fruit sugar) drives.  So I may moderate the fruit a bit.  In addition, I've been eating sweet potatoes, something I haven't done much of ever. I quite like them.  I've been afraid to eat white potatoes.

Let's put some historical perspective on where my weight is now, six months after seeing my goal.  First the long view.

I consider anything below the red line to be a victory. I've shown I can keep from doing the big rebound - but only if I pay attention.  We can zoom in on the story since I started focusing on this, and blogging about it, in 2010.

One single big loss, and relatively stable weight with an intermittent focus for a few years, then a big push to get down to the blue goal.  But last year and this year definitely tell the classic weight loss rebound story.

People who say "diets don't work" would crow at seeing this classic rebound.  I think the longer history and context gives that point the lie - I have spent many years lower than my top weight. And my current weight is far from stable - in the last seven days alone, it has varied by five whole pounds.  I don't think my blue-line goal is actually realistic for me to maintain - I think I'd need to work too hard, more than I am willing to work.  I've set a goal at 140 pounds, ten pounds below the red line and five pounds below today.  I have found there is a difference in how I look and feel at that weight versus how I was at the red line, enough of a difference for my vanity to want that improvement.  My theory is I can actively manage myself down to that weight and stay there for a while, and eventually my body will realize it likes it and homeostasis will kick in and keep me there.

The Whole 30 goals do not include weight loss, though they say most people do lose weight during the thirty days.  They are so adament on the point that it's not about weight loss that the rules include a veto on weighing yourself during the period.  I have a problem with not collecting data, but I concede the point about not focusing on it.  Since I have a wi-fi scale that automatically records my weight, I've decided to step on it every day, but block my view of the number.  The history will be there waiting for me when the thirty days are up.  I don't have huge expectations - the decrease in sugar is likely to result in water loss, but so far I'm eating so much sweet fruit I might not even see that.  But of course I have hopes for a big reduction.

A 3x5 card over the numbers is enough to block my view.

The working week resumes tomorrow, with a bunch of stressors to be added to tending to my three patients.  I've got a fridge full of compliant leftovers, because cooking is not something I generally do during the week.  Blogging is also likely to suffer.  I am taking pictures of my meals, often, so there may be some food porn posted here, just as record keeping.

I long for a bit of routine, which the coming week should bring.

!Bounce!

I got tired of tracking my food all the time, I relaxed about what I weighed and opened up my food choices, the Eating Season opened with Halloween, stress at work escalated rapidly while remaining high at home, and so exercise waned and late night pigouts increased.  The result was inevitable.

This shows the calendar year. The gridlines are 5 pounds apart.

I stopped tracking in mid-September, after logging food faithfully for maybe 80% of the whole year. For a while I coasted on my good habits, and continued to lose some weight, getting on one memorable day within one pound of my (somewhat arbitrary) goal weight. Yay!  I've got this! My life is changed. I'm a genius. I'm no longer a fat person and I don't need to think about it all the time.

But in the very recent past the trend has been bad. I continue to weigh every day (thanks to the wifi connected scale) and so have immediate feedback. I have access to the data via two taps on the internet in the palm of my hand at any time, so I don't ignore the evidence. Yesterday's weight popped up and crossed a five pound line, and all the alarm bells went to red alert.  So vague mental resolutions to "do better" were replaced with a firm commitment.

There is no secret to why I'm gaining weight, even without the actual data since I haven't logged food. I love food truck lunches, and even though I go for salads and other green vegetable-based dishes they have many hidden carbs, such as sugar in the salad dressing for banh mi salad and glorious garlic soaked croutons in the best caesar salads. But I could probably have handled that, at least for maintenance, but those evenings plopped in front of the TV with multiple trips to find chocolate all over the house - and even to stuff on left over main courses, anything to fill the hole that seems to yaw open each night.

Yesterday was Day One. My plan is to track, and to stop eating after 8:30 pm.  These are rigid rules. I constantly bargain with myself, and I need to stop that! Further, for the next couple of weeks, I want to go pure low carb - detox my system from the sugar and occasional starches that have crept in. For the next two weeks, calories don't matter, but carbs do - I'm going to target the lowest recommended level - 20 net carbs a day. ("Net carbs" are total carbohydrate grams minus fiber grams. It encourages filling up leafy greens, high fiber countering the carbs within.)

The joy of low carbing is you shed water stored throughout your body and so today was already two and a half pounds below yesterday's high peak weight. No single day means much on weight, but of course it's better to see the scale go down than up, even though intellectually I know it doesn't matter.

Of course the resolution required me to start with an expensive food shopping to set me up with favorite foods.  Caesar salads (will have to buy a roast chicken tonight), with excellent parmesan cheese and good greens. Easy grab guacamole, feta and olives, fancy flavored (but unsweetened) water, chicken salad for lunch today. A good habit I have to re-energize is bringing my lunch to work. It's so much cheaper, great when I'm pressed for time, and overcomes impulses at the glorious food truck city right outside my building. Instead of waiting on line at the trucks I can take a brief walk for roughly the same time.

This resolution is intended to last until Thanksgiving Day. I'm posting this so I have accountability. I'm thinking chunks of time, at least two weeks at a crack, may get me through this season. There is Thanksgiving, I'll be visiting my brother after that - he and his wife are real foodies, and I'll have more fun if I'm relaxed and have choices. Plus alcohol. But then I could have a three week stretch before Christmas.  There will be parties and food at the office throughout the time, but that will be no problem, if I have a plan to eat the good stuff just over the horizon.

The evening thing has been a persistant problem. Surely less tempting stuff in the house is good. But I think I need to have a mental but absolute cutoff - a virtual lock that appears on the kitchen at 8:30 each night. If the cravings are bad, I know from experience the best response is to leave the house with the dog and put some miles on, up and down the hills of my neighborhood.  It's cold and dark now, but I treated myself to a cool reflective running jacket specifically for this time. I like wearing it, which is part of the silly motivation, and whatever works is great.

So that's my thinking. I'm committed through Thanksgiving, and I'll reassess afterwards. What's your holiday plan?

Getting Things Under Control

I ate too much over the holidays - and didn't stop when the holidays were over. But homeostasis - my body's set point - resisted gaining the weight until mid-January. Finally, my indulgences caught up with me and I hit my highest weight in a couple of years.

Ding Ding Ding!  The alarm bells rang!

So back under control, which means following strict rules for a few weeks. I'm going to what has always worked for me so far - Atkins. I started a week ago last Tuesday (Jan. 21) - the day after my house guests departed. I had planned for this - happily postponing the work and the sometimes unpleasant beginning of the diet.  My guests left mid-day Monday, and since I was not at work I was able to lay in supplies and prepare for my back to work scramble.

As is my wont, I read some books. My two go-two books are the Beck Diet Solution which got me started back in 2010, and of course The New Atkins for a New You.  The Beck book is really a workbook of how to think about eating, and it has definitely helped me shape a new relationship with food. This Atkins isn't terribly different from the original Atkins, except it emphasizes vegetables more. But, like all these books, it has to start out with the science of how your body processes food and therefore why their way of eating is better. And, since it is part of the much-reviled Atkins approach, it has to justify why their approach to eating is not dangerous. The problem with re-reading these books is I've read them so much, they don't hold my attention. I think I know what they say and so I put them aside and just eat.  The problem right now is I need some rules on eating.

So for a change of pace, I got The New Atkins Made Easy.  This book pretty much covers exactly the same thing as far as eating rules as the more official book. It skips all the science, and in different words, tells you what to eat when. (And every rule is the same, just different style.) I needed different words to hold my interest, and the plain talk is great. The big point that is hammered into the first few chapters is:  VEGETABLES.  Not focussed on meat, butter, and eggs, as Atkins is rumored to be. Design every meal around greens. This book stresses the minimum amount of vegetables to eat each day, rather than talking about limiting carbs.  Yes, you have to limit carbs. No grains, no potatoes, no sugar, no beans, limited dairy at this stage. No fruit at this stage, which is the hardest right now. But eat your vegetables and you won't miss the carbs. Proteins are also subject ot portion control. Four or five ounces of meat per meal, max, (no pounds of ribeye), and average no more than an egg a day. No yogurt till later, but small amounts of sour cream are ok.  But eat your vegetables first!

So now here is a typical day:  Breakfast is eaten in the car while driving: no-carb chicken sausages wrapped in lettuce leaves to be finger food.  Usually each wrap is a single romaine leaf torn off the heart-of-romaine head.  There is my first cup of leafy greens. Lunch is a huge salad from the salad bar are work- spinach, lettuce, red onions, cucumber, mushrooms, (at least 3 cups) with my own salad dressing (so I know it has no sugar) and five ounces of meat from home. (I bring my own meat mostly because I care about farming practices used on animals).  An afternoon snack turns out to be crucial in giving me the energy to do dinner right. It's been a couple of celery stalks with hard salami, or just plain guacamole, or olives. (I'll add nuts next week, but want to keep the green vegetable side as well.)  Dinner on a week night is heating up something made in advance - roast chicken or grilled steak, with a couple of cups of cooked vegetables - broccilli or cauliflower or asparagus.  I've kept my evenings busy, so I can't reach for the sweets. This is my weakest time of day, and pretty much celery or a piece of cheese has worked for a bed time snack. It's also worked to not have a snack at all. I cook with olive oil and butter, and last weekend ate a bunch of bacon, but really, doesn't this look relatively healthy by almost anyone's standards?

I'm tracking my food in My Fitness Pal, and so I can say with confidence eleven days into this I've averaged 1300 calories a day, and hit the 20 "net" grams of carbs exactly on average. (Net carbs are total carbohydrate grams minus fiber grams, in my case that works out to 30 total carb grams and 10 fiber grams, so about a third of my carbs are fiber. More fiber would be good, but hard to find a food that isn't sawdust yet has more grams of fiber than other carbs.)  If you don't make your own food from scratch, it's very hard to make these targets. Bottled salad dressings, fruit condiments in salads, bread crumbs on cooked vegetables, all of these things add carbs. Meat and green vegetables, with oil and butter and vinegar is the only way to make sure there isn't corn starch in the gravy.

So I'm having terrific success in terms of what I see on the scale.

So the weight I saw on the scale two weeks ago, that went "ding ding ding" was six pounds more than today's weight!  Atkins says the first 4-6 pounds in the first two weeks are water, and then your body concolidates and starts losing fat.

We'll see. I've seen in the last five years that I can do this well for 2-4 weeks, and then I'm bored and want chocolate.  But it's also sustaining the effort to make food myself that derails me. For lunch, I can't stop at the food trucks for a sandwich (or even a curry since I don't know what's in the sauce). I've decided to buy step-saving foods, like cut up celery or romaine hearts. Eating off the salad bar at work is a huge convenience and almost totally eliminates any excuses there. One day I truly did not have time to go to the second floor and buy my greens, and so I just ate my meat for lunch, my celery and salami for snack, and ate more veggies at dinner. Another morning I was disrupted by teen schedules, but I was able to grab my meat and breakfast and stay on track when I got to work late.  But it is certainly a friggin' lot of planning and work.

Typically, there is a loss of energy a few days in, and a recovery a few days after this. I've had that "Atkins flu" very badly other times. To try to avoid it, I followed their advice and ate a teaspoon of salt (fleur de sel) for each of the first five days. I really didn't have the issues this time I've had other times. Today I started training for a 5K in March, so I can confirm the energy is back.

So I'm aiming to keep up this very restricted eating until President's day, then consider adding some carbs back. We'll see. I think I'm doing better at the planning and management this time around, and I pat myself on the back for not letting work or teens derail me in the first ten days.

Excelsior!

Should I be content or aim for more?

Happy New Year everyone!  Here is my report on the weight front:

My weight stayed constant last year, not so bad.  I reconciled myself to being in maintenance, and except for the detox period, it stayed phenominally consistent - three pounds change the whole year,

From Trendweight.com, terrific free site!

The graph above shows my actual scale reading in the light gray line, and the "trend", or underlying weight calculated by a moving average, in the red line. Here is the familiar chart from the beginning of time:

So the question that is consuming me, as I finish up eating the Christmas sweets, is whether I should make a try for blasting below the floor of my weight I keep bouncing off of. Should I try losing the last 10-15 pounds that takes me to the "goal weight" I've had in mind for 20 years? The weight that I actually saw for about 48 hours at the turn of the millenium?

The things I know I want to do:

• Get back into running (I've taken a vacation from running since the last 5K in November).
• Eat more fish (I realized I cooked fish during the detox diet and it was the first time I had done that in maybe 20 years - except for shrimp and salmon, which somehow don't count).
• Eat more soups (I made turkey soup out of the carcass, using my new slow cooker. I got really full and happy for not so many calories.)
• Keep eating vegetables (I haven't had so many in the house to choose from recently).
• Take my lunch to work more often.
• Cook more.

I'm scheduled in June to stand in front of a bunch of strangers and talk about my weight loss history. Wouldn't it be nice to have a new bit of success to talk about?  I think I'm going to go for it, but at the same time I'm wondering how committed I am. That's why I'm in the "contemplation" phase now.

Seduced at the Farmer's Market Again

I very much want to eat more vegetables and fruit, especially excellent fresh and local ones. But that pretty much requires cooking.  Cooking often. Also shopping often.  I have a very bad track record of buying more vegetables than I cook, and cooking more vegetables than I eat.

"Life should be delicious" says the book I'm reading now.  I agree, but it's an awful lot of work to get there.  I'm just back from the market, and here's what I've got-and what I plan to do with it. I need specific plans, and I have to get this done this weekend because all bets are off during the week.

Cauliflower.  I will roast it, with some shallots I already have. Will keep for most of a week.

Zucchini. I want to make a lasagna, using thin long slices of zuchini instead of noodles. I have ricotta, but no mozzarella- I'm contemplating using feta instead. I can assemble today, and cook tomorrow or the next day.

Cabbage. I want to shred it in the food processor and make a cole slaw in a homemade vinaigrette.  (A couple of years ago I did this with a fresh young farmers market cabbage and realized there is a huge difference even with this humble vegetable between supermarket ones and the real thing.) this will be good with work lunches all week.

Peaches. These early peaches are iffy but I couldn't resist.

Cherries. Good for snacks.

Blueberries. For breakfast or late night snacks.

I also decided to put my money where my mouth is and buy farmers market meat from pastured animals. I got a couple of steaks (I've got a big craving for steak salads), and three pounds of chicken thighs for a family meal. I tried not to flinch at the price. I don't have a specific plan for the chicken, but usually I would cook it with a bottled curry sauce and serve with rice. But I'm wanting to add beans to my diet, as I decrease meat, so I'm thinking about this. I put the meat in the fridge not the freezer because again, I need to cook it soon.

Rather than leap into the kitchen to get started on this I'm thinking about a nap. 

Decomposing Habits

Trigger, response, reward.  That is what a habit is composed of.  You can make a new habit by setting up a new sequence of trigger, response, reward. Breaking a habit is harder. One way to do it is to overlay a new response onto the same trigger-but that new response has to have an equal or better reward.

My bedtime snacking for example.  As I get ready for bed, I plan to sit there and eat something chocolaty, while spending a last few minutes checking in with my book or online. (And the dog gets his own bedtime snack-and his habit is so strong it's now absolutely essential or neither of us gets any sleep!). This sometimes leads to huge sugar binges, sometimes actually doubling my total calorie intake for the day. What is the actual trigger, and what is the actual reward?  Is the reward the physical sugar rush? Is my body craving higher blood sugar levels after a day with fairly low carb levels all day? Or is it the psychological sense of a special treat, taking care of myself, some sort of extra nurturing? Or some third possibility, associated with the physical act of eating, but not the blood sugar? I could ruminate on this for a long time, as is my wont. Or, I could set up an experiment and decompose the habit into separate responses, and see which reward seems to satisfy me. (This is straight from the book I'm reading, and right up my line of self-tracking and experimentation).

If the physical sugar rush is what matters, then almost any form of sweet eaten almost anywhere should do it. A teaspoon of sugar while standing up in the kitchen, for example. If it's the physical act of eating, perhaps a cup of warm herb tea would meet the need. If its nurturing, hmmm, checking in with the family instead?  A little doggy petting session? (He is very affectionate and wiggles and snuggles all over, very positive feedback.)  Not sure.  What I do know is I am usually so exhausted at the end of the night whatever my action is it has to be very very easy and not time consuming, so some sort of lotion on the face, or a bath, doesn't appeal.

The idea is I can do anything by paying attention and using my willpower- for a short period of time. So I should try these different approaches, for a couple of times each, and think about what is most satisfying. Then make it a habit, do it essentially the same way every night, so I no longer think about it and don't need to use any of my precious willpower on it any more.

My hypothesis is that the cup of tea will work, made in the microwave but in my fancy china cup.  In fact, right now, I have a little thrill of anticipation at the thought of trying it tonight.

Foodist

In the previous post I noted a blog, Summer Tomato, that really resonated. I got the associated book, Foodist, and have started reading it. According to the kindle, I'm 15% of the way through, and I'm loving it. But I'm trying to read it slowly, to really think about it.

I'm loving this because it exactly conforms to what I think. Her influences are my influences: Michael Pollan, Mark Bittman, but also Willpower and the Power of Habit. Her experiences are my experiences, to a limited extent: Atkins, South Beach Diet. Her writing style works for me - she is a neuroscientist and is not afraid of the vocabulary needed to explain things, though she also puts them into more colloquial terms.  And I really like that so far at least, she has not sprinkled the text with little personal stories in boxes ("Janet was typical. She had struggled for years with her weight before coming to me...")  Instead, she runs to lists: "The Top Ten Most Overrated "Health" Foods".  I'm ready and ripe for a change from the mindset I've been in, and this book is helping me crystallize my thinking about what to actually do.

Spoiler alert: her prescription, so far, appears to be eat real food, mostly cooked at home, mindfully. I know this is the thing to do already, and so when not reading, I'm already engaged in an interior dialogue. "I can't cook at home, no time to shop and cook and clean."  At least my last two meals were made at home and featured vegetables and fruit, respectively.  But unlikely I would have done this if I had been going to work this week. Dinner took over an hour to prepare, using foods bought earlier that day that wouldn't have kept. She has promised to help with some of these obstacles, with practical suggestions. We'll see.

Here is how I would characterize my mindset: I've cycled through the same 4-8 pounds for three and a half years, essentially maintaining. This is not a bad thing, since it's more than twenty pounds below where I started. I don't hate the way I look in pictures.  But I'm not really ready to resign myself to thinking this is it for the rest of my life. Instead, I am constantly fixed on how I'm get to get those last fifteen pounds off. And I have found that not trying to lose weight seems to result in gaining weight.  The only way I have actually lost weight in the last three years is strict Atkins. I'm not wild for that now, because it generally works for 3-5 weeks, then fatigue from all the work and planning ahead sets in and I go off it.  I bounce off my rubber floor ten pounds from my goal number. The weight doesn't come roaring back but it does creep back, so back through those same 4-8 pounds I've been recycling.

I'm also tired of the rut I've been in, of what I eat and how I live. That's why I tried the extreme detox. After the detox, I tightened up for a couple of weeks on eating and exercise (following my usual very low carb eating, controlling the night time sweets), so that when I got blood work done for my annual physical, my doctor agreed it was ok for me to stay off the statins I quit some months ago. After the physical, I loosened my focus and had a few binge incidents. But I did away with my "no carbs during the day" rule and really liked how much easier it was to find food to eat. Part of the weariness of Atkins is simply trying to find takeout/convenience food that is composed of meat and vegetables, without bread, rice or potatoes.  Most food trucks, for instance, do not serve salads.  For the last month, I had several social engagements, and then traveled, and I just ate what presented itself. On this last vacation over-eating was not an issue. Finding something I wanted to eat at all was more of a problem, though there was always beer.  Partly because of "la petite maladie de voyageurs" I didn't gain or lose any weight overall.

I'm taking a few days of relative calm to read this book, do chores, and make a plan for the rest of the summer. I am looking forward to summer's bounty, but am uncertain how to cope once I get back to the hectic office.  We'll see.

More blogs to read

 A specific article from this was recommended to me, but I'm working my way through as much of the history as I can access with 3G and iPad.  This one is resonating:

Away court habits

Check it out!

Some Virtue, Some Results; Some Transgressions, Some Other Results

I'm filled with self-congratulatory virtue this morning about my activity levels. I don't need to go to work today, and yet I was at the gym for personal training at 6 this morning (surprising cold this morning). I stayed after to run on their treadmill, and then took the dog for a long-ish walk (more than the minimum) right afterwards.

Perhaps all of this activity was at least partly sparked by my incredibly high reading on the scale this morning. I know I've been eating poorly, but didn't think it was that poorly. My food tracking sparked by the last post just a week ago only lasted a couple of days, so I don't have the data to analyze, but I have a distinct memory of a chocolate ice cream sandwich in there somewhere, not to mention the wonderful fajitas last night out with the family.

I've had the vague theory that all I needed to do was keep the activity up, mind most of my eating, and treats would be ok. Maybe they would if treats were small and occasional, but not big, constant, and more than once a day.

So I think I really really need to track. It's a pain, but it really makes a difference. It seems to do a couple of things for my motivation.  Knowing I'm going to write it down causes me to change my behavior in advance. Having the proof in the data afterwards when I'm disappointed in the scale readings also is useful. It is really annoying, but I need to do it - if I care about my weight. And I do care about my weight.  So tracking is an action I need to motivate.  Yes, it's only a means to accomplish a different activity: eating better. But it seems to work, so motivating and rewarding tracking in and of itself - regardless of what I actually eat - is a meta-activity, or the high leverage point to accomplish what I really want: eating better and losing weight.

I sure wish there were even more seamless ways to track my eating. There is at least one app out there where you can take a photo of your food and it tries to estimate calories automatically. I don't know how well it works, but since I'm at least as focused on what I eat as how much, I don't think that would do it for me. I've found the single best food tracker to be My Fitness Pal. It has the normal annoying assumptions about what I'm supposed to eat which I reject.  But it has the most comprehensive database of food, the ability to snap barcodes from the iphone, and versions for iphone, ipad and computer with all the data living in the cloud. It also talks to many other apps, so it exchanges activity data with my magic BMF activity tracker (raising its estimate of how many calories I can eat) and my scale, and the apps for those devices also pull in the food data.  The one thing I don't like about the app (besides having to enter data at all which I can't find a way around) is the inability to export data for my own offline analysis.  In fact, because MFP talks to my BMF activity tracker, I export summary food info from BMF instead.  It's not very satisfactory, since it lacks a lot of detail but it's better than typing in data.

I've found one way to fuel my motivation for diet and exercise is to spend money. I make myself comply with something, and then if I do, I buy stuff. After running for three weeks, I bought three pieces of workout clothing.  I was absurdly pleased last night to lay out my clothes for 5:30 this morning including my new bright blue miracle fabric workout tee, and even more pleased at the gym this morning to realize the shade exactly matches my blue-and-green running shoes. (I always say, attention to detail is the keynote to fashion success.) Now, I have to find stuff I really want for it to be motivating. Sometimes I shop first (online) and save my shopping cart for later.  It also requires me to have discipline about not buying stuff just because I want it when I want it.

I have to do some work to find my quest object. I've also found that I need to not make the finish line too far away - a couple or three weeks.  So we'll see how it goes.

Back to Basics

The results of heading to the store without a clear plan.

Why is it every vow to "get back on track" in my eating leads to a $100 tab at the food store? I'm focused on eating the right things and not eating the wrong things. This means having the right things lying around easily accessible.

I'm not sure what will be happening with family dinners this week, so my shopping focused on breakfast and afternoon snacks.  I eat protein in the morning but am always looking for how to add vegetables or something interesting to the mix. I got lots of cheese, olives, and celery, which will work for breakfast or afternoons.  I got sausages for more breakfasts. I have a couple of lunches already in the fridge from leftovers from this weekend.

I got a box of shrimp, boiled and peeled. Cheaper than their shrimp rings. I'm thinking they didn't sell as much for the Superbowl as they thought they would.  Shrimp pretty much works for any meal.

I have eaten really badly for a while now, and yesterday felt physically bad from all the bad stuff I was eating. Today, I focused on virtuous chores and at noon realized I had neither eaten nor worked out. So a quick protein-and-vegetable lunch from the freezer and out the door to do other family things.  In the late afternoon, I realized I really really wanted to do my treadmill run to keep on track with the C-2-5K plan I'm following. It was all uphill, it seemed, I wasn't able to do the full routine called for, and I didn't feel very good while I was doing it, but I'm so glad I did anyway.

I'm going to lower the speed even more if necessary. At my gym I was reminded of the best test on intensity:  Can you sing a whole verse of "Old MacDonald had a farm" without gasping repeatedly for breath? Ideal is grabbing a deep breath between phrases; too hard is not getting through a phrase without gasping. I think I was too hard today, even though it seemed really slow.

Hopefully, if I keep plugging away, I'll get to a better level.
Excelsior!  Olives and fresh mozarella awaits me for breakfast!

- iPhone uPdate

Irresolute

No great plans or vows or resolutions coming from me. I've been sick since Christmas, and have spent entirely too much time gazing off into space. There is a difference between mindfulness and mindlessness, and I think I've been in more of the latter for the past few days.

But you can only do what you can do. My body betrayed me, but the silver lining is there:  no New Year's Day bounce up in the weight, since nothing stayed with me and even now most things don't sound good to me, and my stomach capacity is very low. I don't imagine that will last long, but it shielded me from my traditionally weak time, after the holiday work is done but before real life resumes.

And that real life comes back tomorrow. Sigh. I like my job, and I enjoy what I do when I am there most days. Still, if I won the lottery I'd be gone without a second glance. (My odds of winning the lottery are worse than most since I have never bought a ticket.)

I did spend some hours today updating and make new graphs. I'm happy with how I did, diet and exercise-wise, last year. It wasn't great, but I also dealt with some world class life challenges, and I maintained my physical condition overall and maintained-slightly bettered-- my weight. I can't post the graphs now because my computer decided to celebrate the new year by backing itself up and no other business can be conducted right now-this is typed out on the iPad and so is likely to have spelling and punctuation errors.

During a long dog walk today I thought of one resolution. It's only partly thought through, but I want to have a monthly "fitness adventure" to chronicle here. What is a fitness adventure? My hero, Sheryl Yvette, participates in lots of bike and running events. That is the sort of thing I'm thinking of, but I'm more likely to have less ambitious and less structured challenges, mostly things I think up for myself. But something, at least once a month, that is planned and trained for, that is off my beaten path and a bit of a challenge for me.

The Takoma Park 5K is an obvious one, in May I think. My dog will be under activity restrictions for a medical problem through February, so I need to start thinking through what to do before then, sans dog. Bike ride? But it's January, what will the weather be? A hike? An urban hike? An urban outdoor jog? Hmm... If I get on the treadmill now, I could do that before the end of the month. Plot my own 5k round the monuments. Got to get excited and have a near-term objective.

So Happy New Year everyone! What's your resolution?


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

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.