Small Victories

April 23, 2010 @ 01:45 pm

It's been over two weeks since I last binged at night. Before kicking myself in the butt on April 7th about nutrition, I was frequently snacking like a madman. I'd have a "few" chips or crackers, "some" cheese, just "a little" ice cream, "a glass" of wine. It all added up - and in reality I was gorging myself. That all stopped ... and I feel just fine. In fact I feel better. I have one glass of wine a night to wind down with, and that's it. Occasionally some popcorn. But no more binge eating, no more emotional eating.

Last night I was having another rough evening. This whole week I've been off-and-on feeling a little down or frustrated about my looks, my weight, whatever. It's all silly and baseless, of course, it's just a resurgence of depression. But I recognize it and do my best to dismiss it. But last night was a particularly good victory.

Normally, when I'm having a depressy evening and I'm by myself (as I was last night with The Beau out on the town with a friend), I'm prone to eating. And eating. And eating. And drinking. And eating some more. And watching television mindlessly while mindlessly eating.

Well last night ... I didn't. I had one thought of it - I thought to go eat the extra food I had from dinner, or pig out on cookies and ice cream. In actuality I only had that thought after I realized I wasn't emotionally eating on an otherwise emotional evening. Then my brain said, oh - I should want to gorge myself! But really, no. And I moved on. I had had my dinner, I had watched some television, and then I turned it off and read my book the rest of the evening while sipping my singular glass of wine.

Yay for small victories.

1 comment | Topics: depression, food and eating, progress

No Such Thing As a Day Off

April 23, 2010 @ 10:09 am

I don't really get to take days off.  I run my own business and aside from always needing to be working on something, I could be essentially on call on any given day in case of a server meltdown ... or a client meltdown (though I don't really tolerate those). Sure I take it easier on the weekends and I love to travel and get away, but I'm never truly far from the office as long as my phone is in range of a cell-tower.

Similarly, I don't really believe in "cheat days" when it comes to my weight loss journey. I hear tell of diets and dieters who work hard to eat nutritiously five or six days out of the week and then go hog-wild on the weekend. I have a few problems with that notion (for me):

• Eating nutritiously is not a temporary hobby to lose weight. For me, I have no intention of going back to processed foods and weeks-worth of pasta and bread. I may loosen the reins a little bit - some day - but when I reach my goal weight I'm not going to go back to the way I used to eat. I love real food, I intend to keep eating and cooking real food.
• It's too easy to overdo it on the cheat day; you can have 800 net calories a day (net! including exercise) for five days, but then skip the gym and go out on the town and easily eat 3500 or 4500 calories a day on the weekend. The risk is to completely negate the whole notion of eating well the rest of the week ... it's merely treading water.
• Looking forward to cheat days subconsciously associates eating right with negative connotations. You have to cheat because "the diet" is so awful. That will just lead to more cheating during the week, and before you know it, the "diet" is blown and we're starting over again.
• Cheat days do make "the diet" awful. If you reserve every notion of sweetness and tastiness for one day a week, then you may be forcing yourself to live on bread crust and water during the week. Another recipe for failure.

I don't have cheat days, but I do vary my calorie intake. "Cheat days" are colloquialized versions of the science that we should vary our caloric intake over the course of a week. It's not good to subsist at very-low calorie intakes every day of every week, our bodies will flip into starvation mode. So instead, on some days we should eat more, but not a lot more, than the average to tell our bodies there isn't really a famine out there.

So that's what I try to do. Rather than "cheat" and gorge myself silly on ice cream and Starbucks (or ice cream WITH Starbucks) one day a week, I enjoy my little treats every so often on any given day. One or two days a week I eat more than the average, and I keep switching it up to keep my intake varied, but my overall weekly caloric deficit constant.

Anyway, a bit of my philosophy. And by the way, this applies to the gym, too. I will take days that are much lighter or even skip the gym, but it's because the body needs a rest day, and I tend to work really hard the rest of the week.

0 comments | Topics: exercise, food and eating, strategy-philosophy

Weight Loss Is A Numbers Game

April 13, 2010 @ 10:26 am

A number of the bloggers I follow don't weight themselves with any regularity ... or at all. The idea is that one shouldn't let their lives and weight loss efforts be ruled by a number on a scale; it emphasizes that this journey is about overall health and well being, about how clothes fit, etc. It's totally valid, and I agree with not weighing oneself daily, but I can't avoid the scale entirely.

When I avoid the scale, bad things happen. Humans tend to have a skewed perspective on themselves; we're really good at fooling ourselves that we've not eaten that much, or that we're losing weight when nothing is further from the truth. I'm the king of this - and so I need a frequent reality check to ensure my perceptions are still grounded.

The Game

Whether you use a scale or not, weight loss is a numbers game. Number of calories in, number of calories spent. Spend more than you've eaten and you start tapping your reserves, a.k.a. fat. If you tap 3,500 reserve calories you lose a pound of fat. Then repeat the process 100 times.

The key is knowing your basal metabolic rate (BMR) - this is the number of calories your body needs to fuel its daily operations. For me, it's around 2,200 - 2,300 (all equations are only estimates). That means to maintain my weight, I need to eat that many calories. If I eat less than that, I'll start burning reserve calories, which eventually whittles away at my fat stores.

You would think staying under 2,000+ calories is an easy task, that feels like a lot of food, until you start eating a lot of breads, pastas, and pints of Ben & Jerry's in a single evening. When I think about what I've been eating this week compared to what I must have been eating before, it astounds me. Especially when you consider how much exercise I was getting.

Exercise affects the numbers game by essentially giving you wiggle room. If I eat 1,500 calories a day, that's a deficit of 3,500 a week, or 1 pound. If I also exercise and burn 500 calories a day, that's a deficit of 7,000 for the week - or 2 pounds. The key is net calories - calories eaten less calories burned. Measure that against BMR and you have your deficit (or God forbid, a surplus).

The Awesomest Weight Loss Spreadsheet Ever

All this is basic weight loss that anyone on this journey comes to understand. But it's been refreshed in my head because it's become painfully clear that unless I focus on the numbers side of weight loss - and track what I'm actually doing - I will fail. So being a business & tech nerd, the obvious tool to turn to is a spreadsheet. I may have gone overboard. Click to see a full version.

5 comments | Topics: BMR, calories, food and eating, science, weight loss tools

The Fourth Great Attempt: Week 13

April 10, 2010 @ 12:09 pm

Well this was a bipolar kind of week. I knew I had to finally weigh-in after going a long time avoiding the scale. I was feeling kind of good about it; I'd been working out hard, even extra hard on Tuesday before my weigh-in, and I felt surely that had been making up for nutritional indiscretions over the previous weeks. But clearly I'd wandered way off the ranch. Perhaps if I'd weighed in sooner, even if it was bad news, I would have readjusted my course. Instead what I thought would be an "okay" result was utterly demoralizing.

It's like stepping into a really bright room. At first I was blinded by the reality that my weight had ballooned again in spite of my gym efforts, and in spite of feeling good. Then as my eyes and brain adjusted I saw more clearly just how felonious I've been in the last few weeks.

• Eating whole pints of ice cream
• Cooking a lot more pasta than two of us need and going back for seconds.
• Cheese, glorious cheese. And lots of it
• Routinely 1/2 to 3/4 bottle of wine a day
• Snacking, snacking, snacking ... heavily between dinner and bedtime. Snack packs, cheese, cookies, peanut butter, anything especially refined breads and processed foods.
• Not drinking nearly enough water. Eating too little during the day so I binge at night. 
• Not taking my vitamins and supplements, not eating enough real foods like veggies, flax, or nuts.

I've been moving the line. I've been getting 12-inch Subway sandwiches when a 6 inch is fine if I eat it slowly. I've been having just a little more and a little more.

Well that stopped on Wednesday. I've started analyzing more closely what I'm eating to understand better what's going into my body. I'm reeducating my brain on what proper nutrition feels like. I'm hungry at times, but I have fruit, nuts or veggies. I drink a lot of water ... I pee every 10 minutes (well it feels like that). I've calculated my basal metabolic rate, the number of calories I need to eat and burn each week. Over the last three days I've not eaten a lot of calories, actually, about 1300 - 1600 total not including exercise (which reduces net calories), and it's been fine. I've been satiated.

And most importantly I stopped eating after dinner. There were times after dinner where I would think "I'm peckish" but then I realized, no, I wasn't, and I didn't need to eat. I drank water, I had a glass of wine, and maybe a bite of ice cream if I was getting some for The Beau but otherwise, I've cut out eating so late at night. And by the by, my dreams haven't been as crazy either as a result.

So progress this week? I've done well over the last month of kicking my ass into the gym but eating has again been my Achilles' heal. That's changing again and I'm now focusing on training my mind as much as I have been training my body.

0 comments | Topics: food and eating, mistakes, progress

Well, F*ck.

April 7, 2010 @ 09:32 am

It's been six and a half weeks since my last weigh in. Today's weight:

306.2 lbs.

That ... is not what I was expecting.  Not even close.  I thought maybe I'd maintained around 297. I thought maybe I'd even lost a little bit more. I've been hitting the gym really hard - so hard I've frequently had to take quick naps afterwords just to see straight again. I feel better, even if my clothes aren't as loose as I'd like ... I guess that should've been a bigger clue.

Sigh. I'm not happy this morning; not at all. I'm shamed. I'm confused.

And clearly I've been eating way too much and all-wrong. I've known this. I've known I've been drinking too much, eating the wrong things, and most egregiously I've been eating a lot late at night, whether I'm hungry or not. I can go all day and not feel a bit of hunger and forget to drink water and then I just binge come nighttime. I eat, and eat, and eat.  I eat a bowlful of ice cream or a whole pint of Ben & Jerry's.  I raid the fridge for leftover meat, cheese, and bread. I scarf down 100 calorie packs in a single gulp (well, almost) and then go back for more. I have a glass of wine, and then another, and then probably another.

I'm doing great at the gym, it's my routine, I feel good. But good exercise cannot make up for poor nutrition, and this morning I was hit upside the head with the fact my nutrition has been for shit.

Dingaling, time to wake up. Time to be tracking my food with the @LWDFoodLog twitter account again. Time to stop eating after dinner just because I'm bored or have a craving. Time to cut back on the alcohol for the forseeable future. Time to guzzle 3-4 litres of water a day. Time to be taking my vitamins and supplements like I'm supposed to. Time to get back on track with meditation and stress-relieving visualization.

Basically, it's time to do the things I know I'm supposed to - beyond just going to the gym.

(Interestingly, the scale says my body fat percentage was unchanged ... maybe some of the weight is muscle, but then, body fat percentage is a difficult thing to track accurately so I always take it with a grain of salt.)

2 comments | Topics: exercise, food and eating, mistakes, progress, shame

The Fourth Great Attempt: Weeks 6, 7, 8, 9 and 10

March 23, 2010 @ 04:03 pm

I had a lot going on. I was busy. Traveling. On vacation. Nothing interesting to say. In a creative slump. Lots of client work. Bla bla bla.  All true reasons for my month+ long absence from my little home away from home, but alas, I hang my head in shame and beg forgiveness from the blogging gods. Whatever. I'm writing an update.

Now over the last few years when I disappear from my blog it's because I've fallen off the wagon. All the excuses above are really just me trying to cover up the fact that I wussed out and gave up.  Add on top of that my history with the Six Week Threshold - basically at about week 6 or 7 I always fall off the wagon. Always. I get tired, I don't see the progress I want, I get distracted by shiny objects and ice cream sandwiches, who knows. It just happens that way. Well, this time around, the fact that I wasn't blogging really was because I was busy - I didn't fall off the wagon, and I didn't give up. Oh sure I had my gaps and lapses, but let's review.

The Fourth Great Attempt: Week 6

Actually I was still blogging in Week 6. Week 6 is when I announced my new MyJeansFit.Me project. By the end of Week 6 I weighed in at 297 pounds - which is still on a plateau but since I royally bombed Week 5's fitness efforts while traveling, I saw it as reclaiming any ground lost while on the road. I may be at a plateau but at least I'm not creeping upwards - it's like a new set point for me. 10 Pounds down, 100 to go. But I'm 10 pounds down. This was the last time I weighed in for the following 5 weeks or so.

The Fourth Great Attempt: Week 7

So in Week 5 I traveled. I promised myself I would eat right and exercise while I the road; that I wouldn't fall into the traps of ordering too much room service and raiding the mini bar and drinking at the real bar until I couldn't see straight. I broke that promise big time, but Week 7 was my chance at vindication. Whereas I was only gone for a few days in Week 5, I was stuck in Dallas for all of Week 7.

I wasn't perfect. I drank a lot of red wine on some days. I didn't eat as well as I could have. But I consider the week a success. I went to the gym at the hotel ... and oh what a gym it was. I worked out really hard, actually, and it felt great! I ate breakfast every day like I ought. Traveling is always hard on the fitness routine because the food is rich and the time is limited, but I'm proud of myself ... it was the first time I've traveled and felt like my behavior patterns were really altered.

The Fourth Great Attempt: Week 8 & 9

So following my vacation I didn't give up. I kept going to the gym - I was working it into my daily routine. I was doing well. I was happy. Some of my food habits are faltering at this point but the fact that I'm pressing forward and pressing hard at the gym gives me the confidence to break through the Six Week Threshold, and I do. I travel again at the end of Week 8 - two very intensive days running a workshop in Washington DC. I don't eat as well as I should, and I don't make it to the fitness room, but it really was a super busy couple of days and some stuff was going on back in NY that I had to deal with emotionally. So I forgive myself and straightened out and got back on course the next day.

Week 9 was supposed to be a marathon. Vacation was coming and I thought I was going to have a bunch of projects to have to wrap before I left. It turned out to be pretty laid back, actually. I stuck with the gym. I ate well enough. I did good. I did not weigh myself.  Between two big travels and not feeling like I was doing well, I decided not to spoil what little momentum I was having with a bad weigh in. It's not about the number anyway. I want the behavioral change. So I don't weigh in. Vacation started Friday of Week 9.

The Fourth Great Attempt: Week 10 - Vacation week!

It has been ages since we took time off let alone a vacation. We cashed in some miles and points and stuff and headed off to Sunny Hot Florida. So it was cloudy and windy a lot, it was still supremely perfect. I wasn't totally confident, but I did feel okay sunning shirtless for small bits of time. I got a ton of reading done. We walked around parks for whole days and my feet didn't tire. It was wonderful.

I had planned to keep working out while on vacation, but that was kind of a bust. Frankly, the fitness room at the resort was uninspiring. And far away. I forgive myself the trespass :) Since it was a condo resort we did go grocery shopping and I still cooked most of our meals, which maintained some measure of healthy habits.

The Return I've come back and ready to get moving and grooving. I feel good, I feel refreshed. While we were getting ready to depart Florida I made an offhanded comment that either "this shirt is getting stretched out or it's getting bigger." The Beau laughed at me and said "or you're getting smaller, dummy." Well that's what I meant, but the point was I don't feel fat and bloated.

I may not have been blogging. I may not have been sticking super close to my goals and behaviors, but I pressed through the 6 Week Barrier and am still on the journey, now in its third month!

1 comment | Topics: The Beau, encouragement, evalutation, food and eating, shirtlessness, travel

Food Logging - Honestly and Integrally

January 26, 2010 @ 01:35 pm

Since starting this journey a few years ago I've heard tell of food-logging. Many swear by the importance of writing down what they eat. I ignored them. First off, there was no easy way to do that. I don't carry a notebook with me everywhere, which means I have to remember later what I ate. That turned out to be kind of hard (a problem in and of itself). What's worse, after writing down what I ate, I had to figure out what that meant in numerical terms.  Calories. Weight Watchers Points. Whatever.

I was on Weight Watchers for a while and found good success with it. I think it's a great program. I eventually unsubscribed because I just wasn't using it or being healthy at all. The fact is, I don't want to run to the computer every time I eat, log into a website, look up the points, record it, and stare at it.  They didn't really have an iPhone application at the time I was actively using their program (now they do, and it's probably great). So part of the problem is that I have to find a convenient way to record what I'm eating, and the other part of the problem is finding the actual health quantities for what I'm eating (i.e. calories).

Right now, I'm focusing on eating healthy. I'm focusing on eating a good balance of nutrients - protein, carbohydrate, omega-3 and other healthy fats. I actually don't care about calories right now. I just want to eat right. I want to eat whole, natural foods. I'm cutting out as much processed stuff as I can. And that solves the second part of the problem - if I don't care about calories, I don't need to track them.

Enter Twitter, Stage Right.

The easiest way for me to track what I'm eating is Twitter.  I have it handy on my computer, I have it handy on my iPhone, and my iPhone is always in my pocket. I created a new Twitter account - @LWDFoodLog - which I can easily post what I eat right when I eat it. I just whip out my phone, jot it down real quick, put phone away. Voila! Food logging!

For an extra-special level of accountability, I make my food log public. You can follow the Twitter account (though why you would want to, I don't know). I also have a little computer doodad that goes out and grabs that Twitter feed and publishes it right here on my site for all to see. And it's working.

I've been sticking with it for a couple of weeks, and I'm pretty happy with it. I'm happy with my progress. I'm happy to look back over the days and see that I've largely eaten well. Almost no High Fructose Corn Syrup, very little sugar - just healthy, natural, live foods rich in good stuffs. But there are mistakes too, there are times I binge, times I go a little crazy eating anything I can find. And that's the key to food logging - being 100% forthright with everything you eat.

I log everything that goes into my mouth that isn't water (well ...). Occasionally I screw up. I log those too. If I didn't log everything, there would be no integrity to the food log and I might as well log nothing. Because if I can't actually see what I'm eating, I'll never learn. If I don't honestly record what I eat, any doctor or nutritionist I enlist to help me down the road won't have all the facts. And practicing these levels of honesty and integrity with something so simple as food logging teach me to be honest with myself in every area of my health.

0 comments | Topics: food and eating, tips, weight loss tools