I Crave Routine

The last ten days or so have been a series of unusual events - and I've got another several days of special things coming up. Between being housebound from snow, holidays and memorials, I am completely out of any routine.

I crave routine. It would make life so much easier. It would make planning my eating and exercise so much easier.

It was only the month of January, but I seemed to be settling into a manageable routine. I planned my breakfasts and lunches ahead of time. I made sure I had a plan before sitting down to dinner. I had my little sweet for after dinner.  I had my NordicTrak for the weekends, and a trip to the gym during the week. I had my weights and my big ball for strength and flexibility.

I think if I look back at January posts, there may be less routine than I fondly remember. But every single day so far in February has been out of the ordinary.  Because of the weather, I can't plan more than a day in advance. I've done pretty well at being opportunistic with shopping and cooking. I've done less well at organized exercise, but have had to keep active with the shovel. Every single day has unfolded differently than I thought it would. Now, I'm weary of always being "on" - of having to be thinking ahead with alternatives, and being nimble to grasp opportunities. Everything takes longer than it seems it should, and it all has to be based on contingencies.  I want to settle back into a groove, where other people have schedules and so do I.  Or crawl back into my igloo, fill up with blubber, and hibernate until March.

What Was I Thinking?

Oooops. I had a major slip-up last night. Totally inappropriate and off-track. At least 900 calories worth.

Why? What was I thinking?  This is not a rhetorical question. The heart of cognitive therapy is to figure this out. Judith Beck has a list of seven questions to ask oneself, and recommends making a laminated index card to carry around for instant DIY therapy. Or to ask your diet buddy to keep the card and be the benign inquisitor.So here goes, benign inquisitor of mine.

See page 104: Beck's Cheat Sheet

• What was the situation, and what were my sabotaging thoughts?

I was watching TV with Clara. We had had a good, healthy dinner, where Clara learned to cook salmon for herself. I brought out dessert - some dark chocolate toffees from Trader Joe's. I knew when I bought them they were trouble - I've had problems restraining myself in the past. I was thinking the classic "But I've been so good!  These taste so good!".  I studied the label and did the math. A portion was 170 calories, and I could technically "afford" two whole portions within the calorie budget. But as far as food distribution groups go, I should really stop at one. So I did. For about five minutes. Then I ate the second portion.  Then another five minutes went by, with the box sitting in front of me while I watched TV. Then I picked up the box and with a guilty thrill, began to eat. I didn't stop until it was done.

The guilty thrill was my teenage self with a "What the Hell!". It was what I felt (more than thought) when I smoked or drank in my youth, or did other things I won't go into here. A thrill knowing it was forbidden and it was bad for me but I Just Didn't Care.  Not then. It was like closing my eyes and jumping off a bridge. And I liked the feeling.  I liked it when I was young, and I liked it last night.  How scary is it for me to figure this out when I now am responsible for teenagers?

• Did I eat this food slowly, while sitting down and enjoying every bite?

I ate it slowly at first, the first two portions. When I picked up the box, I was fairly committed to finishing it, and did not set the box down but kept going. I enjoyed each piece, the way it tasted, but I definitely did not enjoy the taste of the last pieces as much as the first.

• How do I feel now that I've given in?

Disappointed in myself. I was mildly uncomfortable in the stomach later, from all the sweets. I thought about it all night. I really wish I had done it differently. But I also remember the little thrill from the "what the hell" moment.

• Had I read my reasons for weight loss?

I had spent time on the overall commitment  and process but I had not specifically looked at the reasons lately. I'll re-read them now, as soon as this is posted.

• Did I try any other resistance techniques?

No.

• How can I avoid this situation in the future?

Clearly I won't be buying the high-temptation items from Trader Joe's for a while!  I seem to be doing reasonably well on portion control for other things - this is the worst slip-up since I started this process.  Some of this was probably bounce-back from having been so good. I was getting over-confident in my willpower alone to control things. I need to make sure I've got the physical structure around myself as well to help my willpower stay in touch.

Other things I should have done include not bringing the whole box with me and sitting down in front of the TV while I ate. If I had just brought my single portion out, and Clara's, there would have been another barrier, however small, to letting go.

• What can I say to myself next time?

I will need to remind myself why I am doing this. What do I care about more - this food or my better life? I will have to remind myself that the kids will take deeper lessons from what they see than what I say.  And I will have to look at my ways of distracting myself and rewarding myself. Perhaps I need some risk taking and thrills coming at me from elsewhere in my life. Maybe I need to close my eyes and (bungy) jump off a bridge from time to time. And think - how much more fun that will be if I am fit, flexible, and look good for the photos!

How Many Calories Do I Burn?

Since I now firmly believe that calories out must exceed calories in to lose weight over the long term, how does one estimate calories out?  Nan's Miracle Diet currently recommends a gadget to help. (Nan almost always will recommend some electronic toy in almost any situation.) This particular item is known not-so-catchily as "Bodymedia Fit". It is the same device known as the BodyBugg, which is apparently used on some tv weight loss show. The BodyBugg comes packaged with support and counselling services, while I just got the gadget.

BodyMedia Home

I wear this 2" square device on my upper arm for 23+ hours a day, and it magically tracks my steps, my amount and level of exercise, and my sleep. And, specifically, my calories burned.  Not just a total number, but a graph showing all day when and how many calories are burned.

More on the wonders of the device later, but for now I'm focused on calorie burning. The device is sensitive enough to track the difference if I get up from the computer and walk to the kitchen to get a drink of water and come back. I'll see a spike on the graph. That's how sensitive it is.

So how many calories a day do I burn? Based on the device readings, for the last four weeks I've averaged 2185 kcalories a day.  The highest single day was this Sunday, when I shoveled and shoveled, and walked back and forth to the kids house four times. I hit 2542 - which is quite a percentage over the average. (I also had my best night sleep in weeks after all that exertion in the fresh cold air. My phone rang off the hook and I never roused.) Oddly, "bacon day", Saturday, was a low day at 1973.  I shoveled a lot, but pretty much lay on the couch and watched the snow for the rest of the day.

Here's what I've learned about how I burn calories - or at least how the device estimates them. I'm a bit of a skeptic whether the device always records accurately, because a couple of these points seem odd to me. It really values walking very highly. A day spent walking a lot - not necessarily briskly - will have a higher total than one with just one or two bouts of vigorous exercise. It really docks you for lying around. You've got to get up and move around.  But it doesn't seem to give the NordicTrack or the elliptical machine a lot more credit than walking. When I wear a heart rate monitor there is a tremendous difference.  It also seems to undervalue snow shoveling, based on my experience from the last few days. I think snow shoveling is harder work than walking (no heart rate monitor evidence, though I surely breathe hard) but the device doesn't calculate it that way. Perhaps it's right - I'm working hard, but probably working fewer muscle groups overall. It rated my $200 worth of speedy grocery shopping (about an hour) as high as 35 minutes on the NordicTrack.

Low days are in the 1900's. So far, I've never been so much a slug that it goes below that.  And now I know what makes it go up, I'm aiming at raising my average. I need to get up and walk around more. That is clearly the point. While I love the data, the point is to use the data to modify my behavior in ways that will make me more fit and lose weight. I will be changing things. I sure hope the device is accurate, because I'll be working to make its numbers go up.  As the saying goes, "You get what you measure".

10 Steps to Guiltless Bacon

1. Shovel 16" of snow from the front walk and steps - about 45 minutes without a pause. (It was only 16" because I shoveled 6" last night before bed.) Smell neighbor cooking bacon.
2. Come in, stretch shoulders and get the bacon from the fridge. I buy very expensive bacon from previously happy organically raised pigs, hence no guilt on the eating meat thing. Read the label. "70 calories per serving".  "Serving size: 1 piece".  Put bacon back in fridge.
3. Drink hot coffee while mulling things over. Plan the rest of the day. Plan will involve:
   -More shoveling, perhaps some cross country skiing, and more shoveling. So calorie budget can be slightly higher than normal.
   -Eating prepared salad from Trader Joe's for second meal. 550 calories!  Detailed reading of the label indicates 200 calories from packaged honey mustard dressing - can save 100 calories, and 15 carb grams, by using my vinagrette.
4. Realize that there is no need to follow previous patterns for eating bacon.
   I usually cook the entire package in order to make my own precooked microwavable bacon, but then don't hold back eating it thus don't have that much in the way of convenience food.  When I am eating low carb, there is no need to hold back, because calories don't matter, only carb grams.  Now, Nan's Miracle Diet requires detailed logging of every calorie. But I have a revelation:  I can plan to eat a certain amount of bacon, then stop. I can build it into the budget!
5. Cook bacon and egg. Not a nibble while cooking. Sit and eat the budgeted portion on a small plate at the table.
6. Bask in the self-conscious and well-fed glow of a lovely meal.  Walk back into the kitchen, see the rest of the bacon sitting there, and still wearing a smile but not thinking reach for a piece.  Stop just in time with a sudden rush of awareness.  Oooops!
7. Package up the rest of the cooked bacon into measured portions and put it in the freezer for convenience breakfasts.
8. Go out and shovel 8" of new snow from same place shoveled before. Contemplate buried car and walk away.
9. Drink hot lemon tea when back in the house.
10. Take a nap instead of going skiing.

Feel free to revise some steps, but this worked for me.

Crawl into my Igloo to Eat Blubber

This is what I want to do. There is a huge snowstorm underway, and all I want to do is hibernate and eat blubber. At least I've been out walking around (not likely to be driving for the next couple of days) and shovelling. Somehow the sort-of-holiday atmosphere makes me want to stop thinking about food and just experience it. And alcohol has a strong appeal as well. Tomorrow morning probably holds true blubber - I mean bacon - after another bout of shovelling. Oh well. Just try to keep burning those calories, and spend a couple of minutes planning what to eat and Make Sure You Write it Down!

Counting Calories

I've never before been on a diet where I so assiduously count calories. This is unique to Nan's Miracle Diet, 2010 edition.  Most diets I know about focus on food lists.  "Eat this, not that."  For example, the Carbohydrate Addict's diet doesn't discuss calories at all. It focuses on eliminating most carbs except once a day. It does talk about grams of carbohydrates, but only in the most general way - any food that lists more than five grams of carbs in a serving is too carb loaded except for the one meal a day where they can be consumed.  Portion sizes for the one carb meal are based on a plate: equal portions (to the eye) of protein, vegetable, and carb. Including dessert. If you want more carbs, ok, but add in equal portions of the other two as well.

Atkins ignores calories. He flaunts his ignoring of calories, as he glories in having fats. But, he does specifically count carb grams. They are maximums, starting at practically none in the first phase (all meat and fat) and gradually adding them back in five gram increments.

Weight Watchers famously doesn't count calories, they do exchanges or points. You still need to log and count every bite, but in their own system.  When I last did WW, I did the logging on-line which helped a lot. It also helps to stick to their packaged foods which provide a label for counting. There are also third party calculators of WW points which try to guess their secret system.

The technique of logging all meals is commonly urged in many diets. I was never good about writing it down, but technology has helped me enormously.  Starting with my first palm pilot, I have had runs at logging using various food databases in different applications.  I've rarely stuck with it for longer than a couple of weeks.  Nan's Miracle Diet has me doing it every day, sometimes in advance, for at least the next several weeks.  I can't be trusted to estimate and do it mentally. Every morsel counts and is logged.

In order for any calorie planning / logging discipline to work, it has to be done as real time as possible (or in advance and then followed religiously).  Portions should be measured, not estimated.  Every study ever done says dieters underestimate their portion sizes substantially.  I've been doing this, since before Thanksgiving intermittently, and since Christmas faithfully. I have three different apps on the iPhone to facilitate this. I have a scale sitting on the kitchen counter, and I've bought new, nice, measuring cups and spoons.  I am a fanatic at reading labels of prepared foods.  I am often surprised at what I find.

Because I have a calorie budget each day, I've started to look for the lower calorie fill me ups. I've always known vegetables are the way to go, but I'm now a major convert. I've never been a big fruit fan, but Nan's Miracle Diet often gives me a nice piece of fresh fruit at the end of the day for less than 100 calories.  And every day I've saved around a 100 calories for a purely sweet treat, most often Dove's Darks.

Right now I'm in a sweet spot of not having a huge appetite. The last two days have been very low calorie counts, without my wanting more. This may be related to feeling under the weather, but it really works out. Ultimately, the real goal is not so much to reduce my calorie intake, but to create a calorie deficit - take in less than I use up. Since feeling poorly has also led to a drop off in exercise, the deficit has stayed relatively constant.

Goal for the next few days - get the calorie burning going again!

My Mother as Role Model

At first blush, my mother may not appear suited to be a diet role model. At 82, she has shrunk to a couple of inches shorter than me, while weighing 20 pounds more than me. She is all belly, and she sure does love her sweets.

But recall my priorities- if I have to choose between strong and skinny, I choose strong. And she certainly is strong.

Five years ago, she had her left knee replaced. Three weeks after the operation, she declared the pain to be less than that of the old arthritic joint just removed. Five weeks after the operation, she drove herself home alone to New York and commenced physical therapy and exercise.

She kept up the exercise even after the insurance stopped paying for therapy. When she moved down here, she joined the gym right away and is a regular. At the urging of a friend, she added tai chi for strength and balance.

What a difference this has made in her life. She got another new knee for Christmas this year, and moved out of rehab back to her own apartment three weeks after the operation. Now, five weeks out, her surgeon says she is fine. Ready to do whatever she wants.

What she wants to do is keep on going to physical therapy and the gym. She wants to travel the world and not slow down. She sees being physically strong as the key.

And so do I. This is why this little old round lady is my inspiration.

- iPhone uPdate