Category Archives: health & fitness

A narrative of my journeys with diet, exercise, and various healthcare professionals

weight loss 1 Comment

Spring Challenge Begins Now

Happy Spring Equinox!

Today is the day when James and I reset our Weight Loss Challenge. Since both of us did relatively well in January, then started to slack in February and March, James came up with the idea of having a do-over starting the first day of Spring. And here we are:

(I know my feet look grotesquely veined and aikido-scarred in this light. So be it.)

James has informed me that he’s going to win before I leave to go on vacation on May 7th, so I guess I’d better step it up. I’ll have to lose just under two pounds a week to hit my goal of 194.5 in time to maintain it for a week before leaving for Hawaii. For those of you keeping score, 194.5 will be a recent record low for me; I think my record is 195, actually, and I only saw that for a day or two several years ago.

So, how am I going to do it? Well, I figure that doing what I was doing back in January would be a good start, since I lost an average of just under two pounds per week through January and into February. My plans would therefore include a.) attending Aikido regularly; b.) planning my meals in advance (sometimes making a week’s worth of lunches on Sunday night); and c.) practicing restraint and portion-control on weekends. My general guide will be the Reasonable Diet’s “I-Week Diet,” at least in the beginning: fruits, veggies, lean meats, whole grains, and no sweets (although that’s a terrible oversimplification). As for calorie breakdowns, I’m planning to keep it reminiscent of the Zone Diet: 40% carbohydrate, 30% protein, and 30% calories from fat. That seems to work well for me.

As usual, I’ll be tracking my food with my DietOrganizer Palm OS app, which totally rules. It’s actually a big part of my strategy, as I can see my calorie percentages as they readjust during the day. The only thing it doesn’t do that I wish it did is sync to my computer so I can see the graphs and manipulate the data on a larger scale. I also bought myself a fancy pedometer that I’m going to calibrate tonight and start wearing tomorrow. It came with tracking software, too, so I can sync it up to my PC and track how far I’ve walked over time.

Something else that’s going to be important is sleep. Yes, sleep. I’ve read about enough studies that link changes in sleep with changes in weight, so I’m going to make a concerted effort to get a minimum of 8 hours a night. I usually only get around seven hours during the week, if that; I tend to sleep in on the weekends, though, usually getting about ten hours, and sometimes twelve if I’m feeling especially lazy/snuggly. My plan is not to expect too much of myself during the evenings, as far as productivity goes, and to turn off my computer by 9:30pm. (So, if you see me on Google Talk or AIM after 10pm on a weeknight, tell me to wrap things up and go to bed already!) 🙂

I’ve lost 7½ pounds so far this year. (More than that, actually, but I gained back a few and re-lost them.) I’m back to where I felt stable and quasi-comfortable last year. Now it’s time to step it up and get down to where I’ll start to actually feel good again.

weight loss 1 Comment

The Challenge Reboots Next Week

It’s been a week of ups and downs for me, weight-wise. The weekend was bad. Very bad. Worse than it should have been, mainly because of my inability to STOP EATING.

(One piece of Enchilada Casserole for Sunday dinner would have been OK. Two was pushing it. Three was definitely being bad. But four? Four was redonkulous. And I knew it. And I paid for it in physical discomfort for some time afterward. Aaron and I polished off an entire 9″x13″ pan of Enchilada Casserole in one sitting, and it was a Poor Idea™. But not really Aaron’s fault, as I could easily have begged off after having seconds.)

All last week, I chose not to log my food, just to see what would happen. What happened was that I steadily lost weight: half a pound a day, give or take. Then the weekend happened. But on Monday, I turned it around, and by today’s weigh-in, I was back down to having lost 3% of my body weight since January 1st.

James and I have really been having a time of it. I did really well for the first five weeks, then my weekly average weight chart started heading the wrong direction for the next four. This week, I’m finally on the decline again, so far:

Today, when James and I were checking in with each other via e-mail, he made a suggestion: Why don’t we make this challenge a Spring Fling and call a redo starting March 20th — the first day of Spring? I’ll go with that, sure! (Especially since a Thursday weigh-in will keep me going to Aikido on Wednesday nights.)

So, next week begins a new challenge, a new starting point, and a new attitude. Rather, a continuation of the new attitude I’ve cultivated so far this week. Plus, I could use a new starting point to determine a new ending point; I want to have this competition in the bag by… *calculates a reasonable date by which to lose ten pounds* …by the time I go to the World Crokinole Championship in Ontario, early this June. (No joke. I’ll tell you all about it later.)

Really, though: there’s no shame in calling a do-over when both parties would benefit from a fresh perspective.

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Mindful Eating

I thought of this earlier today, and wanted to at least touch on it here. I’ll probably flesh it out a little more thoroughly later on, but I at least wanted to get it out there.

Some diet coaches and programs impress upon dieters the importance of “mindful eating” — that is, eating with a purpose, rather than just standing in front of an open fridge with no recollection of how you got there. For me, it’s not so much the idea that I just happened to start eating, and how did I get here? It’s more of an attitude of, “Oh, fuck it. I want to eat something, so here I go, so I’ll stop arguing with myself.”

So, to help cut down on this occurrence (that word never looks like it’s spelled right to me, even though it is), I thought of three questions to ask myself. Not the “How do I want to feel?” that I’ve mentioned before, although that can be helpful. That’s more of an invitation to yourself to be introspective about your potential food choice. No, I want to get straight to the point:

  1. Why am I eating?
  2. Why am I eating THIS?
  3. Why am I eating this NOW?

These questions are pretty straightforward, and the answers are pretty clear-cut as to being either acceptable or unacceptable. Question #1 will determine if I’m really hungry, or if I’m just eating to eat. Question #2 will determine if I’m eating the wrong things for the wrong reasons. And question #3 will help me in planning future meals, or avoiding poor timing.

For example, good answers to “Why am I eating?” would be things like, “I’m hungry,” or, “It’s been four hours since I last ate,” or, “I won’t be able to eat again for another three hours.” Poor answers would be the standard grazer answers: boredom, thirst, because I’m reading, because I’m tired, watching TV, et cetera, et cetera.

Good answers to “Why am I eating THIS?” might revolve around its nutritional content. Or, they might be more superficial and be simply that it’s what was in my lunch, which would then hark back to the planning stage. Poor answers might be that the food is convenient and quick to prepare, or that I’m craving sweets, or that it just sounded really good.

“Why am I eating this NOW?” could be a repeat of the first question, in a way. It could also hone in on meal timing. If I’m eating crap, and I’m eating it NOW because I’m freaking starving, then maybe I need some better preparation in the future. If I’m already planning my meals and eating on a schedule, then the answer here should reflect the answer to question #1.

Like I said, it’s not exactly a dissertation or some grand self-help article. (That’s what separates us hobbyist bloggers from The Professionals, I suppose.) It’s just a general idea of what might help me eat a little better. Honestly, it’s kind of a psychology tactic: maybe I can either guilt myself or logic myself into not eating the wrong things for the wrong reasons.

I’m afraid that the only thing that’ll get me into the shape I want is to morph myself into some sort of OCD scheduler, where I eat at certain times, and exercise every day at a certain time, and do certain workouts on certain days, all the time, and somehow manage to get my ass up out of bed earlier than I do now. It worked well enough in drum corps, when it was planned out for me and pretty much forced upon me; I’m not sure how I can do it for myself, though. I always come up with an out, an alternative plan, another choice to make. When I was half-awake on a gym floor and the drum major would say, “Good morning, Bluecoats! It’s 7:30! You have fifteen minutes to be outside for morning stretches,” the options were: a.) get up, pee, put my contacts in, pull my hair back, get a bra on, put my socks and shoes on and get outside; or b.) stay in my sleeping bag and… what? Get sent home? Get made fun of? Get yelled at? I wasn’t really into any of those options, and so they never occurred to me as actual options.

(It so happened that one mellophone player, Scott, actually did fall asleep during a lunch break once. This was during a stay at a school that didn’t have a practice field adjoining, so we had to be bussed to a field for rehearsal. It was maybe half an hour or so before someone realized that Scott was missing from the drill, and a full hour before one of the volunteers discovered him asleep in the gym and drove him to the field. He was dubbed “Sleepy Scott” from that day forth. He didn’t get in trouble.)

Wow. That went on a tangent. (Again, separating myself from the Big Time Bloggers, I suppose.) Point being, I should at least be mindful of why and what I eat. Then, maybe I can start forming some positive habits so I don’t have to be on a weight-loss plan for the rest of my life.

weight loss

The Challenge: Weeks #8 & #9

graph of weight lost

These weights are snapshots of each Tuesday, not weekly averages, but dang. We’re both slipping off course in a big way.

Aikido will be a big help in upcoming weeks, as I start going back to class. I’ll be ramping up my participation in Aikido over the next few weeks in preparation for the weekend-long workshop with Bill-Sensei, my Sensei’s teacher. It’s a big deal, and not to be missed, but I’m concerned about me being able to last through a Friday evening, all day Saturday, and Sunday morning. Hence, the ramping-up of activity to prepare.

I choose to give myself one week of not journaling my eating habits, during which I’m going to take a long, hard look at what my goals are and what I’m willing to do to achieve them. I’m just coming off of a weird time at work, with lots of training out-of-town (well, two out of the last three weeks, anyway), and I feel like I need time to settle my brains.

I’ve also been kind of slightly depressed/jealous after seeing a friend’s vacation photos from Barbados. (I know you didn’t mean it, but girlfriend, you look super-curvy-hot.) My friend — we’ll just call her BG, but she can speak up here if she wants — is probably my same BMI, but shorter, and… well… there’s no sensitive way to put it: she has HUGE hooters. Huge. And she looks mighty fine in a bikini, let me tell you. Curves in all the right places, and all smooth textured skin. If I were into girls… well, since I’m not, we won’t go there.

I looked at last year’s “before” pictures of me in my first-ever-as-an-adult two-piece swimsuit (that will probably never be seen by anyone in public), and was highly disappointed. My stomach has this weird indent around the waistline from wearing too-tight jeans all through junior high and high school (why didn’t anyone ever tell me about the Muffin Top?). My thighs are all dimply, and I’m a little knock-kneed (although I’m probably the only one who notices).

I know I shouldn’t compare myself to my friend BG, but it’s hard. I can compare me now to me back in 2003, fifty pounds ago… but that seems like an old victory. I’ve stayed within a ten-pound range for the past four years or so, but I’m not done with myself. I have a good thirty or thirty-five pounds before I’m where I’d love to be, although I’d be satisfied with losing another fifteen for now.

It’s all a matter of what I’m willing to do. I need to sit down and give that some thought this week.

aikido

Aikido: My Triumphant Return

Earned the rank of rokyu (6th kyu) on January 26th.

Got bronchitis and missed two weeks of class. Almost went back on February 6th, but was exhausted and not into dealing with the inclement weather. Last week, I was in Columbus. So, yesterday, I attended aikido keiko for the first time as a rokyu, after having missed lots and lots of class.

As an aikidoka with rank, I am now not only permitted but required to wear hakama during practice. Luckily, there was a loaner hakama available, as I hadn’t ordered mine yet. Phil was kind enough to show me how to tie the hakama (which is quite the production, let me tell you). I was being frank with Phil-san when I informed him that the whole process would be a lot easier if I didn’t have boobs getting in the way. I don’t think he quite knew how to react to that.

I actually felt a lot more… at ease? Normal? Accepted? Clothed? …while wearing the hakama. I hadn’t realized that part of my unease in class had been the fact that I was dressed differently than most of the others. I consider it a giant stroke of luck that I didn’t trip over my hakama once during class — which, incidentally, was taught by one of the yudansha (black belts), as Sensei was out of town.

My loaner hakama did give me some neat bruises, though. There’s actually a rigid plate in the back, called a koshiita, which Phil told me is supposed to protect your lower back. All it did for me was give me bruises on my back, on either side, just above my ass. Fantastic.

As for class itself, we did a lot of rolling. While I am getting better at taking rolls, especially from my left side, it does still make me dizzy and nauseous. We also did a little work with the jo (staff), which was totally new to me. During our warmup, Phil led us in a jo exercise with which I wasn’t familiar; it looked like everyone else knew it perfectly well, though. I had a hard time following along and reminding myself that Phil was NOT a mirror.

After class, I finally got to participate in the folding of the hakama. The whole class gathers by the edge of the mat and removes their hakama (hakamas?), and folds their hakama on the mat while chatting and having a grand social time. Petra was kind enough to help me out with the removal and folding and tying of my hakama; I would have been totally lost without her help.

Aftermath? Sore everything. Shoulders, arms, sides, back, abs, ass, calves. My abs and arms/chest were already sore from Monday’s and Tuesday’s homegrown workouts, so it’s hard to tell how much is aikido and how much is my other workouts finally catching up to me. What I can ascribe to aikido, though, are the bruises. The nifty matching ones in the back from the koshi plate, and the ones on my wrists from grabs (ryote-tori: two-handed grab, one on each wrist; katate-tori: one hand grabbing one wrist; and morote-tori: two hands grabbing one wrist).

So, yeah. Successful, if exhausting. Thanks to another business trip, this time to Chicago, I won’t be attending keiko again until after the Weapons Seminar on March 1st. So, I’ll have to really start training hard after that to be ready for Gleason-sensei’s visit at the end of March. He’s teaching a gasshuku, an intense weekend of aikido training, and I’m worried that I might not last the entire weekend. I’m going to give it my damnedest, though.

I’ll have to bring my camera to the dojo and take a picture of my name up on the wall, with the other students’. I’m officially a rokyu. That was fun to see.