Alarm Malfunction

I screwed up on the alarm last night, and it ended up going off at 5:45 this morning. That's when it goes off for my personal training appointments. I had planned an extra half hour of sleep before heading to the work gym.

Probably because of the time change this week, I was relatively awake and against all odds, got up and got going right away. I got in a great interval run in the gym, and even was at my desk early. This is very good, as I am totally snowed under. (I ran for five minute intervals, up from four. Grand total was 2.9 miles in 35 minutes, I believe. That can't be right- but I didn't write it down. Drat!

Never the less, I snuck out for a leisurely stroll around the block just now. The sun is at an angle these days, and I followed a different route from normal, seeking sunny pathways through the relatively low canyons of DC. I bet NYC is much darker from shadows right now, though glass buildings do reflect and disperse the light.

What glorious light it is right now! We are having a mild autumn and today not a cloud is in view. I'm sitting on a bench in a sheltered location in just my work clothes-blazer, no topcoat. Following the sun along a street I have never walked before, I found tropical cannas at their full height against a south wall, and robust blooming red roses blooming from a rooftop terrace just above them. While my only skin showing is my face and hands, I think I'm getting a full dose of vitamin D today.

Back to work.


- iPhone uPdate

Restless and Wanting to Move

I was out and about briefly at lunch time today, and wanted to do more, and more intensely. I had a really good workout in the gym early this morning - really heaving very big weights around and knocking off push-ups like nobody's business. But I'm not getting in the aerobic exercise. It just takes time, and no matter how hard I try, I can't make myself go down in the basement to use the NT. Somehow, it's easier to leave the house, even in the cold and dark. And, I really want to run.

So tomorrow its up and at 'em in the gym at work. Running.  Probably starting the playlist with black eyed peas. Why not.  I just have to remember to bring my lunch with me and not leave it in the fridge like I did again today. Got my gym bag all packed and ready to grab. Hopefully, I'll sleep enough tonight to make this viable.  Wish me luck! Or fortitude. Or something.

What's in My Closet?

I own too many clothes, and too many clothes I don't like, and too many clothes that don't fit me. I own too few items that make me feel really good about myself.  A lot of the problem is the way my weight has yo-yo'd around plus or minus twenty pounds from where I am now. I read that fifteen pounds is generally a size, so I'm spanning three to four different sizes in the last ten years. I'm sitting right in the middle of the range now, which should give me maximum flexibility, but it seems like nothing fits.

I have a single bar for hanging clothes in my closet, about six feet long. It is crammed full of blazers, trousers, shirts, and even a few dresses and skirts.  I have a shelf above the bar and there are plastic boxes with clothes I stashed up there several years ago for reasons that escape me. A few years ago I rearranged the furniture in my room and created space to add two three-drawer Ikea dressers to the one tall five-drawer antique dresser my mother gave me. One Ikea dresser is underwear, one is t-shirts, sweats, and fleece, my workout clothes.  My antique dresser holds knit tops, jewelry, socks, and jeans and shorts. I just think I have too much of everything.  I've been through some marathon laundry the past week, and now that everything is clean, I'm not sure I can put it all away.

I pulled all the shorts out of my dresser to fit in all my jeans and chinos, and was surprised to realize I have three pairs of blue jeans. Why do I have three, when I also have two pairs of khaki colored jeans, two pairs of chinos for Casual Friday at work, two pairs of jean-cut linen casual pants, and two pairs of nylon hiking / sailing tough pants?  On closer examination, two pair of blue jeans are size fourteen and the third are the size sixteens I bought at CostCo a year ago when the others were just a bit too tight. (Maybe even a lot too tight.) I tried on the 16s, thinking perhaps they would be too big now, but since they are stretch Gloria Vanderbilts, they actually fit me quite well through the hips and thighs, though I need to cinch in the gaping waist with a belt. I wore them today, and they are quite comfy, so they stay with me for now.

I read this fall about the "Six Pieces or Less" experiment in the New York Times, and have been thinking about trying it. In essence, you pick six pieces of clothes (not counting underwear or outerwear or accessories) and wear only them for 31 days in a row. Normally, for my life, there is zero overlap between my work wardrobe and my home clothes. Every day I stop home to change clothes before making dinner. And almost all of my work clothes need to be drycleaned, and I don't want to risk food stains on them. Nowhere in reading about the experimenters have I heard about their laundry. If you only have three tops, presumably you have to wash everything every three days, yes? Especially since they did this in the summer. If drycleaning is involved, you would be going almost every day. If I am going to change clothes every evening, I'll be doing laundry every night - but only four pieces. This would be way too much work, forget it.

Part of why I own so many clothes is because I don't like a lot of them, and because I postpone doing laundry as long as possible. The more clothes I own the less often I have to do laundry or make the drycleaner's run. But I generally wear the stuff I like best first, and towards the end I'm wearing stuff I don't really care for. Maybe I should try a different experiment: do laundry more often, letting me wear the stuff I most want to wear more often. Always put away the clean clothes on top of everything else, but feel free to dig into the piles to find the stuff I want to wear. Anything that stays put for a couple of months without being worn simply because it was the only choice becomes a candidate for the give-away pile.

A rainy day project I keep postponing is to do a real excavation of my closet. There are things pushed to the back I've totally forgotten about, and I don't know what size things are. It will take time to go through, and it will involve trying things on and deciding whether to keep things just a little too small for me, when I'm planning to get back down there soon...

I have gotten a lot more ruthless about jettisoning things I truly don't care for. Even if I just bought it, if there is something that looks bad on me, or is uncomfortable, or feels wrong somehow, I've got to get rid of it.  I've got a fairly big give-away pile, and will need to actually move some of this stuff out of the house. But for now, I am on a shopping moratorium. I need less, not more.

Logging Food

I've been faithfully logging food now for about a week, using the new iphone app that connects with my magic armband. I can enter all my foods and let the computer do the math, and it now connects with the data collected in the armband about how many calories I've expended. So I can see how much of a deficit there is.

Counting every single thing that passes my mouth is good. Seeing the total numbers is even better.  Knowing how much I've eaten definitely helps me manage how much more to eat.

But not completely. My two big weak points of the day - 4 pm and after dinner - are still my big weak spots and I need to keep up thinking of strategies to get me through them.

Dealing With Stress

Tough day. Woke up sad, but with a schedule to keep. In the midst of more profound thoughts, I regretted the Halloween candy from the night before. I dressed for the cold weather, brought coffee in my sealable metal cup, and sallied forth.

After taking care of some business, I set out on a walk. In a bit of serendipity, I ran into with a friend with her terrific big black dog and we had a very nice couple of miles chatting about our kids. We parted, and I continued a stroll around the picturesque and slightly goofy town, gawking at people's yards and remaining Halloween decorations. There was enough to look at to keep me on the surface and able to avoid introspection. I wasn't going to consciously escape to the ipod, but breathing hard and noticing old tree stumps carved into eight-foot bears was absorbing enough.

I treated myself to a full breakfast out.

I totally love breakfast - bacon and eggs and potatoes and toast and coffee.  This was a great breakfast. A vegie and cheese omelet, with lot of vegies.  In recent years, I haven't had a chance to eat that way very often. I ate both pieces of toast - so unnecessary - and most but not all of the potatoes. My normal low-carb leanings would have me skipping the bread and potatoes and not feeling bad about the eggs and cheese and bacon. Today, I rationalized I was walking it off, plus I wouldn't need to eat again until dinner.

I had a total brainfart so that I left my phone on the table when I left, went back to get it (right where I left it), and several blocks further on realized I had paid, but had not left a tip. This would be the effect of total self-absorption into my own little stressful world. I thought I was calm, but instead I was just autofunctioning on the surface, doing my best not to think, and thus missing some important things.

Sadly - I got hungry in the early afternoon. I'm not totally sure I was hungry, but I was not up to fighting it back and trying hot tea instead, so I had a jar of a terrific lentil soup I got at Whole Foods a while ago. I need to stock up on more shelf-stable long-storing soups - many of them are calorie bargains, and they are very satisfying.

A nice family dinner cooked by my mother was fairly guilt free. Afterwards, I shared Halloween candy with the kids, and then hit my evening chocolate gorge when I got back home. According to the accounting from my device, I did walk off more than I ate for the day, and tomorrow I'll try for an even bigger gap. Except - tomorrow is a birthday cake! And no doubt, ice cream as well.  Just because its there doesn't mean I have to eat it (yeah, right).

Let's be real - this weekend is mostly a matter of getting through it. Any excess calories burned at all is a bonus. Hooray.

Kit-Kats Calling

The stress level is very high around here, as this time is fraught with overtones and echoes of other events. I postponed buying any candy until just two hours ago. Sadly, the only candy left at the supermarket was ... Good chocolate candy. Not good chocolate, but the traditional Halloween favorites of peanut butter cups, butterfingers, and my main nemesis, the kit-kat.

Three little girls are working on their costumes in the back of the house. This year, they get to canvas our street by themselves (before dark). I'm trying very hard to set a good example and hold off till later on the candy. I'm also going to make it a point to feed them some real food. They voted for taquitos. But from across the room, by the door in a bowl, the kit-kats are calling. "Just one, to test!".

So is the beer calling. The first one of either will lead to more. I'll send more dispatches from the front later.


- iPhone uPdate

Later:  8 pieces of Halloween candy. Not such a good showing. The bright side? It wasn't twenty pieces.

The Eating Season

The Eating Season begins now, with Halloween candy, and continues through birthdays, Thanksgiving, holiday parties, Christmas, and ends on New Year's Day.  Last year, I didn't handle the Eating Season very well.  I just ate. I started with Halloween candy - I kept it around the house instead of taking it all to work as soon as the holiday was over. And I only buy candy I like.

The only way to deal with this is to have a plan. During The Big Loss, I actually started seriously dieting in October and was down ten pounds by New Years. That year, I simply had a rule. I was following the strictures of the Carbohydrate Addict's diet and the rule was: I could eat anything I wanted, but only within an hour of starting my balanced evening meal.  Very odd rule, but it really worked for me. I saved sweets from holiday parties and would eat - but not all evening. Just the one sweet, and be done.  The rest of the day I was strictly no-carb.

I can start with a rule like that, and see where it takes me. I haven't been no-carb at all this year, though generally low-carb every day. Today, for example, I had cottage cheese for breakfast, a fancy salad of greens, mushrooms, nuts and turkey for lunch (from the terrific new fleet of food trucks that come round - more on that another time), and taco salad for dinner, with lettuce, meat, a few beans, cheese, and salsa. Oh, I need to admit the oreos from the vending machine in the afternoon were not a very low-carb choice.

I have two weak points in my days. At work, I hit a slump in the little Window of Circadian Low around 3:30 every afternoon. I get mouthy, and I want something to eat. I am trying to divert to fancy water or hot tea, but today I found the quarters and went down to the vending machines. Often, I have nuts and rarely, an apple instead. The second weak point is after supper, where I have a little sweet in the tradition of my after dinner treat during the Big Loss, but recently I don't stop. Thirty-five calorie chocolate squares can add up after a while to really significant calories.

So for Halloween, I will buy the candy on Saturday. I won't be going to work the day after Halloween, so I need a different plan to get rid of it without eating it all. I suppose I could consider buying candy I don't like, but that just isn't my style. I can't imagine the kids liking something I don't like, so I can't offer it up.

The two days after Halloween will require some thought, some planning to have easy grabs of healthy food. Not going to work and having less structure in the midst of stress is not a successful formula. I'll have to plan things to do that will keep me moving as much as possible.

I can't think beyond that. Let's get through the next week and then worry about the birthday party the following Saturday.