bodymedia part deux

So, I have been wearing my BodyMedia fit for a month now. And I have the data to prove it!

Here's a summary:

I am only sleeping on average 6 hours and 53 minutes a night. I thought I slept 8 hours a night. I am lying down for an average of 8 hours and 35 minutes.

I eat on average 1400 calories a day. This seems low to me. I bet I eat closer to 1600, but even still I have burned on average 2785 calories. How can this be? I eat on average 16% protein, 46% carbs, and 36% fat...oh and 3% alcohol.

I have only lost 2 pounds...maybe.

I average 9812 steps a day. Not bad.

Interesting....

This just reenforces my feeling that calories in do not equal calories out.

And I need to sleep more.

running a marathon

Don’t you just hate listening to people talk about their dreams? The ones they have at night. My mom would make us stop telling her about them. Stop, stop, holding up her hands.

I dreamt once that I could run, that I enjoyed running. I jumped over a stump, and sprang along the path, and felt free. Free to go where I wanted when I wanted.

I just watched all of these inspiring videos of people running marathons; even a woman with cystic fibrosis. Click here to watch some of the videos.

Brent thinks that finishing a marathon is less impressive these days because anyone can do it. You don't have to be skinny, or look fit. You can take as long as you want to. Hell, you can even walk.

I have completed a mini-marathon. Maureen and I trained for it years ago, in college. Every morning she would pick me up, calling my dorm room to tell me to come down.

"Why are you calling me so early?"
"Get the hell up, you know why I am calling, we train EVERY DAY."
"Oh right."

Every day I was surprised she would show up. EVERY DAY.

For the last year I have been riding my bike to work most days, and working out with Sam twice a week. Yesterday, we climbed the stairwell, me carrying 15 pound weights in both hands, whining a lot. Sometimes, he makes me race him to the top…but only two flights or so. And he gives me a head start, he is only 23 for goodness sake. If I lose, I have to race him again. I have only lost once. Yesterday, he said I was super fast. Maybe I was, maybe I wasn’t…but maybe I could run a marathon. I definitely felt free as I bounded up the stairs yesterday.

more discussion of weight loss...

Remember I read that book by the woman who went to over-eaters anonymous? Then I looked up the diet...this is it, basically:

LOW-CARBOHYDRATE Sample Menu: (Suggested for losing weight)

BREAKFAST
1 Protein
1 Fruit
Coffee

LUNCH
1 Protein
1 Vegetable
Finger Salad
(no dressing)

DINNER
1 Protein
1 Vegetable
Salad

What do you notice? No carbohydrates or sugar right? Think Adkins Diet, or think Banting. Wait, who was Banting? Well given my recent question about how food becomes weight, I decided to jump back into Good Calories, Bad Calories. This is Gary Taubes’ book about weight loss.

He posits that obesity is not a behavioral problem, but is related to the types of food we are eating. Sugars and processed foods being the jumping off point. One of his favorite quotes: “To attribute obesity to ‘overeating’ is as meaningful as to account for alcoholism by ascribing it to ‘overdrinking.’” (Jean Mayer)

This makes so much sense to me. And because I believe in the European way of dealing with alcoholism, i.e. relearning how to drink responsibly, maybe I just need to relearn how to eat responsibly.

If you don’t have time to read the book, then watch the video (click here).

So back to the Banting diet; the first diet. Banting did the OA diet. He stopped eating sugars and carbohydrates and lost weight. He published a pamphlet about it, and well the first diet was born, in 1863.

What does this mean for me? I am not sure. I am still reading the book. More to come.

book review: passing for thin

Montana, Erin, and Ada came to visit us on Sunday. We had a lovely day of brunch and hanging out at our favorite bookstore. I got a few good books.

I just finished Passing for Thin, by Frances Kuffel. Turns out she is from MISSOULA. Another Montana writer. Who knew? In the late 90's she lost 170 pounds in two years. The book chronicles her journey to half of herself.

In a moment reminiscent to Eat, Pray, Love, Mrs. Kuffel hears God tell her to lose weight. So she goes to Over-eaters Anonymous. She has a sponsor and a special diet, the OA's diet. I looked online for it. (You can check it out by clicking this sentence.) OA is similar to AA. You must completely abstain from your addiction. So if you are in AA, no alcohol, if you are in OA, no food. Oh wait, that won't work. No sugar or carbohydrates. Protein, fruits, and veggies only.

The European view of alcoholism is different than our view. In Europe people re-learn how to interact with alcohol, rather than banning it for life. I think this is a better approach. There are always going to be tempting foods out there, but I need to learn how to not eat all of them like the rest of the world. Ok the skinny rest of the world.

My real problem with the book is really a problem with all so called diets: diets are unsustainable. You cannot live on a diet the rest of your life. I firmly believe you have to re-learn portion control and what is healthy. Our society sends out so many different messages about how to lose weight it is easy to get confused. And I am not so sure there is really a lot of science out there about losing weight. To almost quote Erin, 'Losing weight is not as linear as the eat less food and exercise.'

She apparently has another book coming out in a few months about re-losing the weight.

Life is a journey, not a destination, as someone says.

stairs

Do you take the stairs? I was thinking about the stairs a few weeks ago, and realized that between my senior year in high school and first year of college I stopped using the stairs. Not only did I stop using the stairs, but I started planning ways to not take the stairs.

One of the books I read this year posits the theory that fat people are not lazy, their bodies are just better at naturally conserving calories. So while skinny people have an urge to exercise and move, fat people don’t. I don’t. If I am not meeting Sam in the gym, I am not going.

But I am trying to change that habit. Hence my thinking about stairs. How is it I cut out stairs? I mean, cut out in the way I cut out lima beans from my diet. I don’t care how you try to get me to eat them, it ain’t happening.

My friend and former boss John, who is of an undetermined age, was told to stop running so much by his physician a few years ago. He has to keep it to 3 miles a day. He emailed me to tell me, randomly, that he has reincorporated stairs into his life. “I'm trying to follow that advice and try to take the stairs exclusively, up and down in the office. After about a month, the 10 flights stairs have gotten easier, and I spend less time reading the floor numbers going up. Hopefully after 8 or 9 months I'll notice a difference.”

What am I doing bitching about a few flights up to our apartment, when he is doing 10 flights a day? Granted, I don’t think he goes out to lunch, but that is a lesson for another posting...but you see my point, I hope.

The article about stairs in the New York Magazine sealed the deal: “Stair-climbing is a more efficient form of exercise than walking: Two additional minutes of stair-climbing per day (approximately three floors) can burn more than enough calories to eliminate the average adult’s annual weight gain.” (You can read more about stairs by clicking this sentence.)

Needless to say I will be taking the stairs. (Be careful if you do the same in an office building, as some floors lock the stairwell doors!)

exercise and weight loss

I asked my personal trainer to read the article entitled: "Does Exercise Really Make Us Thinner?" Looking back on this request, I realize asking him what he thought about the article was like asking my tax accountant what they think about the flat tax. What would they think since it would put them out of business?

The premise of the story is that exercise has never been linked to weight loss by researchers. In fact, most research has suggested that you "work up an appetite" by exercising and therefore take in more calories after exercising, thereby off setting any potential weight loss. The idea of "will power" being the reason for a lack of weight loss in some people has also been debunked. So where does this leave us? I am not sure. Sam, however, did not believe the article, even though the citations are there throughout the article. He still is completely on board with the calories in - calories burned = weight loss paradigm. I am not really sure where I stand.

Don't get me wrong, going to Sam has been great. I am in much better shape and can tell every time I do some other kind of exercise. For example, stopping next to the curb on my bike with my right leg resting on the curb without getting off my bike used to be impossible. I know now, intuitively, that I can do it. I don't even have to plan to do it. I still tell Sam every time we do something new, though, that it is impossible. This, too, shall pass. (Jumping between bosu balls almost kills me. (Click here to see a bosu (both sides up) ball.))

Anyway, read the article; tell me what you think. I buy it, hook, line, and sinker. (Click here to go to the article.)

another review: weight watchers magazine

For my flight back from LA I treated myself to six magazines or so. I did not get to read all of them. I am still working through Harpers, which, frankly, I don't get. I just finished my Weight Watchers Magazine. I have already admitted to loving the true stories in these magazines.

The titles on the May/June issue are:
Get A Summer Body
Be CEO of Losing
Join a Walking Club
Make-it, Match-it Meals
Real Women Tested Swimsuits
And 47 Wallet-Friendly Recipes

My response:
It is May/June. If I don't have the summer body now, I am not getting one this year.

Not sure what to say about the CEO of losing.

The walking club sounds great, but you have to designate a leader the article says...and that person gets to decide where to walk. I want to be the leader, but then well, I really don't want to get involved. HA.

The meals and recipes looked ok, but the recipes include things I don't eat. For instance: margarine. We eat butter in this house. I would go so far as to say we have a no fake food rule. Either it has sugar or not. No artificial sweetener here. I have a story about fat free half and half I will someday report. Needless to say if it says fat free and a prime ingredient in the item is fat, you should run the other direction.

The magazine has a TON of ads for food and for weight watchers. One ad has hundreds of chocolate chocolate chip cookies. I am still thinking about them now. I want one. Anyway, I don't think that is a good idea for a weight loss magazine.

Finally, the stories about people losing weight were ok. It included three people. One woman went from being overweight to a marathon runner. I want to run a marathon...I think.

Book Review: Diet Myths That Keep Us Fat

by Nancy L. Snyderman, M.D.

Due to come out this month, I found this book at our favorite book store. (I am so excited about this! Our book store often has books that are sent to book reviewers before they come out. These book reviewers are over run by books and donate them to our book store. This is the first one I am reviewing before the book comes out. It comes out on Monday, so ok, not that early, but anyway...)

The author is the Chief Medical Editor at NBC News. Does anyone have faith in the news with respect to medicine after the swine flu? And a diet book to boot?

Let’s take a look. The book’s chapters are divided into 10 myths that most people believe about dieting. To name a few: your weight is your fault, calories don’t count, carbs are good for you, carbs are bad for you, and dieting is all you need to lose weight, to name a few chapters. I liked the use of these myths to organize the book. Telling me my "weight is not my fault" made me feel a roller coaster of emotions: first I felt better, the I felt let off the hook for being fat, then I felt the chapter made some good points, and finally I felt like she was not being completely honest with me! If the weight is not my fault, then whose is it?

Interspersed throughout the book are “truths.” Some truths are more informative than others. For example: muscle does not weigh more than fat. Who knew? A pound is a pound. (Who's buried in Grant’s tomb?) Apparently muscle does burn more calories daily than fat does.

The informative almost common sense information in the book is good basic knowledge for the reader. I kept thinking while reading, wow, I should have learned this in high school. For example she explains what a calorie measures. (It is the amount of potential energy in food.) And she tells (maybe reminds is a better word here) the reader that the secret to losing weight boils down to one equation: eat fewer calories than you burn.

The book is great for picking up and reading about a few things and then setting it down.

I will be reviewing a diet book I did not like this week. In comparison to that book, Diet Myths is great. Look for it soon in your local book store.

Update: Operation Lose Weight in 09

Loyal readers I figured you might be interested in a progress report…so here it is.

“Why eeew heeeeer?”

“Well a friend of mine came once, to get the toxins out of her system, and that sounded like a good thing…”

“Eeeewr tongue?”

“My tongue? What?”

She sticks out her tongue at me and motions for me to do the same thing. So I do.

“Eeeewr heeer, eeeewr fat.”

Things moved on. I let the woman who had called me fat stick me with needles. Nothing happened.

But in the spirit of operation lose 30 pounds this year, I decided to go back, to a different acupuncturist. My knitting crew goes to a guy in DC who studied in China. We spent about 45 minutes talking about my health generally:

“How often do you urinate?”

“Do you have any cravings?”

“How is your libido?

I felt comfortable talking about these things with him, but was curious about what he thought about my responses. He also listened to my pulse using three fingers on both wrists.

And then he asked to see my tongue.

I am going to go back for the next six weeks. I feel good. The poking me with needles was not painful at all.

Brent and I are also wearing pedometers, and both trying to walk 10,000 steps a day. After wearing the pedometers for three weeks I realized that contrary to my original assumptions, we are a lot less active on the weekends. So this weekend we started operation go for a Sunday morning hike. We went to the National Arboretum. We will be going back. The place was amazing. And they had these hundred year old bonsai trees! (Click this paragraph to see some of my experimental photos of the day.) There are also the original columns form the Capitol Building.

Bottom line: I am down between 3 and 4 lbs, so only 26 to go.

a less weighty topic

So the New York Times had two interesting articles regarding health today.

The first article stated that it takes six months to see the positive health effects of working out. Wow. That is a long time. Kind of un-motivating. (Click this paragraph for this article.)

The other article was about detox programs (click this paragraph to go to the article). You have heard of them...you drink only water, juice, or what have you for x days or weeks and this gets the toxins out of your system. You will have more energy, lose weight, and live happily ever after.

I want to try these things. Brent says they are crazy. My rational brain says, yes, definatly crazy. The other half of my brain says, hey why not try it, can't hurt. The rational side is currently winning.

But the article in the New York Times is a bit annoying. It is unorganized and poorly argued and explained. “There is absolutely no scientific basis for the assertion that the regimens popularly defined as ‘detox’ will augment the body’s own capacity for identifying and eliminating your own metabolic wastes or doing the same for environmental toxins." Can this be? No scientific research into the area of whether detoxing your body is good for it? I don't believe it.

Then the article goes on to state that there is at least one trial ongoing currently.

Any one out there ever tried it?

my personal trainer fired me

At 50 bucks an hour he was not cheap. We started working out together in the fall of 2007. I found him on the internet, where all personal trainers live.

He was a little guy, maybe an inch taller than me and he most likely weighed half as much as me. He was gay and he did not share personal information with me. Perhaps he was jaded by so many past clients; people’s lives in whom he had become emotionally invested, only to have those people stop training with him. I can’t say as I blame him.

I would get to the local gym above a local grocery store at 8 am. Everyone knew everyone there just like Cheers; it was a comfortable place to workout. I would hop on the treadmill, starting out slowly. Immediately he would put the thing on an incline not dissimilar to that of Mt. Everest, and have me trying to run up the hill. I persisted, decreasing the incline anytime he walked away. I was not allowed to hold on either, at that height. After 12 minutes of this we would step over to the weights.

I could tell he was alternately impressed at my strength and disgusted at my sloth.

During one session I actually thought I was going to throw up right there in the gym. I rushed to the bathroom and left. It felt horrible.

Now, I don’t like to work out. I don’t run for the fun of it, I don’t push myself to fatigue. And I find people who do to be a bit strange.

Then the nutrition lessons began. Two veggies, one protein for dinner, maybe throw in a starch. A chicken breast with nothing on it the size of my fist for dinner. He even gave me a hand out.
For goodness sake people, I have gone to school for 20 years of my life, I read like a fiend, I know what to eat. Thanks. No really.

He took me down to the grocery where he interrogated me about what I was eating. He held the ice cream in my face and yelled to me that it was killing me.

That is where he lost me. Really, no more ice cream ever? Really? Who was he kidding? Not me.

I started my new job and then could no longer come at 8 am. I emailed him to reschedule. He told me he was getting Washington into shape one person at a time. Since he never emailed back, I guess he was doing it one person less at a time.

A few months ago I almost literally ran into him on the street. He ignored me. It took me a second to recognize him, and then he was gone.

I made my new trainer promise not to fire me.

a new goal: 30 pounds

One of my friends once told me that it is patently clear that I am capable of doing whatever it is that I set my mind to. As I look around, I think that might be true.

So why is it that I can’t lose weight? Have I never really tried?

When answering survey questions that ask how many diets you have tried, I generally put none. I don’t believe in dieting, so of course I have never done it.

Yes I have. There was the time when Jack was sick when I went to the nutritionist. And then the time I half-heartedly tried weight watchers. (The only thing I can remember from that was listening to the reports of the second space shuttle having been blown up.) I am sure there are others.

I think about losing weight. I like the idea. I really liked the idea the whole year before my wedding, but not enough to actually lose weight.

I am educated about losing weight: eat less food, lose weight. I know eating too much sugar is bad for me and even makes me get eczema. (Weird, I know.)

As another friend said, I am not just sitting around eating chocolate éclairs. I honestly think my body processes food better than other bodies. But that is an excuse. I know this. So what if that is the case, that does not obviate my responsibility to lose weight so I don’t end up with diabetes, heart problems, or even worse with cancer.

When Linda wanted to lose weight, she just started smoking and drinking more coffee instead of eating. She was thin most of her life. (And died from smoking, so…)

When Jack wanted to lose weight, well he always needed to lose weight. I look just like Jack. His mother was in her late 80’s and was still talking about losing weight.

So what is the problem? I don’t think I have ever really tried.

In 2009 I am going to lose 30 lbs. That works out to a little more than 2 pounds a month. Erica, my sister, is doing this with me thanks to the internet.

When we achieve our goal, we are going to Ireland. Neither of us have ever been there.

Here is my plan:
1. Journal with Erica daily about our progress, including an honest exchange about what we have eaten.
2. Continue working out with the personal trainer, and go on my own two more times at least every week.
3. Not eat after 7 pm.
4. Go try acupuncture. (Hey, why not?)
5. Read more books about nutrition, starting with getting through Good Calories/Bad Calories.
6. Wear my pedometer.

Wish me luck and keep me honest.