On Vacation

I weighed myself on a Saturday this week because this is the last full day before the start of our vacation. As you can see from the weigh in information on the right, at 160.8 pounds, I am very near the bottom of my 160 to 165 goal range.

While on vacation we will be traveling to Indiana and eating mostly in restaurants over the next two weeks. We will be able to visit many familiar restaurants where we have an idea of what we might eat that will fit into our respective food programs. We will also visit some restaurants that we have not dined at in the past and have the opportunity to try things from their menus that sound interesting. I am especially looking forward to The Mark Dine & Tap and Aladdin's Eatery in South Bend.  To those of you surprised by my interest in Aladdin's, I am very interested in the options they offer with plant based protein.

While in central Indiana I will celebrate my upcoming birthday with my twin. She has arranged for us to have possibly the best birthday cake ever. She's good at that, very good. I will eat cake and very likely enjoy it. I plan to have some generous servings of ice cream with it as well. Actually, I plan to enjoy all my meals. I usually do. However, for the next 2 weeks, I am on vacation. I am going to relax, try to get caught up on my reading and try to sleep in some.

At the beginning of this month I shared a frozen dessert recipe from Dr. Andrew Weil's Natural Health, Natural Medicine. As I read further during the month I came across what he calls his 5 word diet advice. "Eat less and exercise more"  While this is great advice for probably 90 percent or more of our population, I found it to be a little over simplified as nutrition advice. First off, I really don't like to use the word "diet" when referring to a food plan. I have heard it said that "diets are like horses, people get on them and get off them" Secondly, I think a lot of people just don't realize how our food supply has changed over the past 40 to 50 years and how damaging added sweeteners and specifically High Fructose Corn Syrup can be to the health of humans.

So my next weigh in will be Monday June 11th. I will try to post to this blog shortly thereafter. Hopefully my weight will not exceed the top of my goal range. 

At the beginning of the year I set a goal of reducing my body weight 10% which I have now done as of my weigh in last Monday morning.  Since I am planning on a maintenance range of 160 to 165 I am going to take a few more pounds off to get to about 162.5 or the middle of my goal range. 

I wish I could report that all my food choices were healthy and well planned in April. Unfortunately I cannot. What I managed to do was make healthy food choices most of the time.  

When I started using Calorie King a couple years ago I found the exercise portion of the diary a welcome addition. When I input my exercise for the day I was told that I could have additional food items. After a while, realizing I was not losing much weight and in fact having a hard time maintaining, I started putting in 50% of my estimated calorie burn.  My weight generally trended lower using this formula but was not satisfactory weight loss.

At the 1^st of this year, knowing my Basic Metabolic Rate (BMR) or the number of calories I burn in a day at rest to be about 1,700, I lowered my calorie target for each day from 1,750 to 1,650 and stopped recording exercise in my food diary.  As you can see from my weigh in information on the right, this change has produced the desired effect. 

On many days I have been able to do just fine within the acceptable calorie range. I think CK has a leeway of around 100 calories before it throws up a red flag. On days with high calorie burn such as bike to work days or long run days, my calorie total would often go into the red. On these days, I just tried to eat when really hungry.  I find with cycling and really any aerobic exercise, it is way too easy to replace more than the calories burned. 

During April I found a recipe in the back of Dr. Weil’s Natural Health, Natural Medicine that sounded interesting so I gave it a try.  I will share it below:

 

Cocoa-Banana Frozen Dessert

4 very ripe bananas

4 tsp unsweetened cocoa powder

1 tsp pure vanilla extract

Rum or maple syrup, optional

Peel bananas and place them in blender or food processor with 4 heaping tsp pure unsweetened cocoa powder. Add vanilla. If you like it, add a few tbsp. rum or maple syrup. Blend till very smooth. Pour into individual cups or small bowls and freeze until just frozen.

And the finished product:

 

Also in the Dr. Weil book is the suggestion to eat a large variety of foods. This serves not only to ensure that one is getting the nutrients provided by many foods but also that one is avoiding any possible negative effects or components of eating the same food repeatedly.  I found this to be a very reasonable suggestion and since I have been having processed turkey lunch meat at my mid-day meal for many years thought I might benefit from this advice. So, in April I set about adding variety to my mid-day meal. In addition to avoiding processed lunch meat I am trying to find meals that are not highly processed foods high in sodium.  I am having some success in this regard and may do a post on my mid-day meal rotation at some point in the future.

Now after sharing a good sweet dessert with you I will tell you about my project for May. I have long believed that eating sweetened food causes one to want or crave more sweetened food. I believe one of the chief culprits is sweetened beverages. Whether sweetened with sugar or corn syrup or artificially sweetened, I believe these beverages cause us to want more sweetened food in our diet. So starting in May, I plan to eliminate the main sweetened beverage in my diet which happens to be caffeine free Diet Coke. In June I will let you know how I did in this regard.

April 2nd - Weigh in

Here we are at the start of April and today my scale reported a number that I have not seen in a while. I haven't checked the records but I believe it has been a long time since I have been below 170 pounds. As I have pushed my weight down this year, I have been weight training regularly to minimize muscle loss in the process.

For the record, there were several times during the month of March that my food choices were maybe not as good as could be. We celebrated Debbie's birthday during the 3rd week of the month and then just last week, the sinister frozen food manager at our local Publix put Bryer's ice cream on a BOGO special.  So while there are times that I don't follow my program perfectly, when I venture off the program for a special event,  I get right back on the program that seems to work for me when the event is over. I have found that it is how I eat most of the time that really matters.  

The upside of being 25 years old and 263 pounds...............

It’s hard to believe that it was 31 years ago when I was 25 years old and even harder to believe that I had allowed my weight to reach 263 pounds. I write this with the perspective of looking back on what has happened since as a young real estate agent I found myself struggling to climb stairs while showing houses and decided that I needed to do something about it.

It took about 11 months on a popular weight loss program and much discipline for me to reach a goal weight of 168 pounds. Although my main strategy was to find foods and meals that I could eat and then stick with them, eating the same thing over and over, I did learn a lot along the way. I learned much about reading food labels and became willing to experiment with foods that I would have never considered eating before. After a couple months at goal weight I was awarded a life time membership.  Then the hard part started. Fully participating in life and maintaining a healthy body weight.

Since I had previously had problems climbing stairs I knew I needed to do something to improve my fitness. As a boy, I had jogged with my father along the bank of the river in the town that we lived. I believe that my father had encouraged my participation because he recognized that I was having weight issues. I set about jogging laps at the local high school track. At first, I couldn’t complete a full lap while jogging.  I worked up to completing a full lap, then a lap and a half and so on.  I saw a 5K running event advertised a few months down the road and thought that I might be able to finish that distance if I worked up to it. I put the check in the mail and can still remember the pride I felt when I crossed the finish line of that 5K. Jogging the entire distance.

This of course kicked off a running period in my life in which I made running friends, ran longer and longer distances, worked on getting faster and maintained a healthy body weight.  Inevitably, as happens to so many, I was plagued with knee injuries which forced me to take time off for the knees to heal from time to time.

At some point a few years later when a career change led to extra emphasis on learning new skills and then a cross country move my workouts became more scarce until they just fell to the wayside.  It was probably a combination of an injury time off and other life changes that led to a sedentary period where I found my weight climbing again. When I reached a point that I became uncomfortable with my weight I found that I could draw on all the things that I had learned in the past to deal with my increasing weight.

My weight has gone up and down a few times over the course of my life. I have used words like struggle, fight and battle to describe my relationship with food and the scale in my bathroom. Perhaps the word I should use is journey, for each time I have struggled or battled or fought with food choices and maintaining a healthy body weight I have engaged myself in learning how to make healthy choices.

The benefit of these struggles is that now in my mid 50’s I am more knowledgeable regarding nutrition than my average peer and in better physical condition than many. The scale in my bathroom said 172.6 this week. My training journal has running, cycling and weight training listed almost every week. I look for ways to fit these activities into my life because I enjoy them and the health benefits they provide.   

The knee pain that plagued me during the 1^st running period of my life is no longer a problem.  I found that increasing leg strength with weight training and cross training with cycling has pretty much resolved that issue.  Sure I have aches and pains from time to time but as a friend recently said “You can exercise and have aches and pains or not exercise and have aches and pains. The choice is yours”

I can now look back and see that struggling to climb stairs one day in 1980 may have been the best thing that ever happened to me.

What happened to February ........

Well here we are at the end of February already.  I knew February would be a challenging month for me because we had guests visiting and we celebrated Valentine’s Day with treats from our favorite gluten free bakery.  I took the stance that I would participate as much as possible but try to be careful about food choices to limit the damage.

I did loosen the reins on my program a bit and backed off on recording everything I ate in my food log, however, my weekday meals during the workday did not change much from the month before.  In the end, I am happy to have made it through the month with no change in my weight.

During February I eased back into my running program with no apparent ill effects and have also been able to resume cycling to work one day per week and weight training. I believe I have pretty good leg workouts that I can do at home a couple times per week figured out and hope to get in 2 to 4 upper body workouts per week over the lunch hour at the little gym my employer provides.  

My goal does remain the same as stated at the beginning of this year and that is to lose 10% of my body weight which was 185 at the time and then maintain that weight.  I hope to make good progress toward that goal during March and started the month on Sunday February 26^th with a return to my food log. I hope to someday be able to link my food diary to this blog have not figured that out yet.

Progress not Perfection.............

Well, January is now over.  I was able to push my body weight down 10 pounds during the month so I consider it a very successful month. My weigh in information is posted in the sidebar to the right. You might notice that my Tanita scale reported a large increase in my percentage of body fat at this week’s weigh in. It seemed the battery died right after I stepped off the scale. I had no part in the death of the battery, I swear.:)

At first I thought I would just re-weigh myself the next morning after changing the battery. Later, I concluded that re-weighing would break my hard and fast rule of 1 and only 1 weigh in per week.  I do make an effort not to obsess about the number each week and I believe that multiple weigh-ins lead to such obsession.

I did manage to get through the book, “The End of Overeating” by David A. Kessler, MD during the month and found it to be very interesting and enlightening.  Early in the book, at the bottom of page 8, Dr. Kessler writes “How much we eat predicts how much we weigh”. The simplicity of this statement has really resonated with me and I have turned it into a mantra “I need to eat less to weigh less” which I have been repeating to myself when making food decisions.

A big part of this book is about eating behavior and food cues.  I had an experience during the month that highlighted how the type of food cues that Dr. Kessler writes about can and have affected my food consumption.  During the month I was driving north on US 41 one day and noticed a new business “Little Joe’s Italian Beef Sandwiches”. In the window was a large cutout of a Chicago Bull’s basketball player.  My mind immediately went to a memory of the few times I have stopped for this type of sandwich while in the Chicago area. Later in the month, on a particularly stressful day, also while driving on US 41, my mind flashed, in an instant, back to the memory of “Little Joe’s” and the Italian Beef Sandwiches in Chicago. I think the stress of the day caused my mind to shift to this comfort food.

Also during the month, while eating my oatmeal in the break room at work, I was just shoveling it in as usual and a funny thing happened. For a very brief instant I thought, “Boy, I am getting full”. When I make my oatmeal I make 5 servings at a time and have always used kind of rounded scoops. When I divide the servings up into 5 containers, I have always known I am getting kind of a large serving.  Since I realized I was full, I put my spoon down, closed the container and put it in the little refrigerator. The next weekend, I opened up the remaining oatmeal servings and measured them to reflect the actual 1 cup serving size.

Last month I mentioned that I had been feeling fatigued and that my blood work revealed low white blood and ferritin counts.  I had begun a slow release Iron FE supplement.  Near the end of January, right before I was scheduled to have a blood work follow up, it occurred to me one evening that I didn’t think I was feeling as fatigued as I had been.  The next week my blood work revealed that my white blood count and ferritin had risen to acceptable levels.

At the top of my reading list this month is Spontaneous Happiness by Andrew Weil, MD. This book came highly recommended and even though I am still in the early chapters, I can see why.  I hope to be able to post to this blog again around the 1^st of next month when we will find out how my percentage of body fat fared with a new scale battery.

Hello 2012

Well, I have finished updating my weekly weight information on the right side and have added a starting point for 2012.  Happily, my starting weight for 2012 is 7.6 pounds less than the starting point for 2011.

My weight has ranged from the high 170's to the low 190's for several years now and today's weight of 185 is right in the middle of that range.  I do think my weight could or maybe should go lower to reduce some of the excess I am carrying around my middle.  What I am going to try to do is push my body weigh down 10% and then hold it in a fairly tight range. That put's my goal weight in the mid 160's.

The only way I know to accomplish this goal is to carefully watch/control what I consume. For me, I record my food consumption in the Calorie King online program. Calorie King also gives me the opportunity to record my exercise in the same log. When the "holiday eating season" started around Thanksgiving I allowed myself to relax a bit and have just been careful to not overdo it.  Now that January 1st has arrived it is time to get serious again.

For exercise, I have found it is a lot easier to do if it is fun. I love cycling and since I have to go to work, one of my goals for 2012 is to ride my bike to work and then home at the end of the day on average 1 day per week. I am not cycling for the next month or so due to an upper right arm/shoulder injury so when I can start cycling again, I will be playing catch up.

I also have found I love running when I set goals and make connections with other runners.  My big running goal for 2012 is to break 9 MPM pace at my hometown half marathon the 1st weekend in June. My running blog, Allan Running, helps me connect with other runners and last night, I posted to RunningWorld.com's online running community "The Loop" for the 1st time under the user name "Allan Running". Pretty catchy, huh?

The last piece of the exercise puzzle is weight training.  Since every pound lost includes some muscle, I try to regularly do weight training to replace muscle.  At this time I have also backed off weight workouts until I can get my upper right arm healthy again.

Currently on my bookshelf is "The end of overeating" by David A. Kessler, MD. I actually started reading this book before our November cruise vacation.  Since my plan was to enjoy our vacation, get through the holidays and not over do it, and I thought the reading of this book might interfere with that plan, I put the book down early in the 1st chapter.  I do think part of maintaining a healthy body weight includes staying informed so this book moves to the top of my reading list as of today.

In an earlier post I indicated I had not been feeling up to par. I find that my White Blood Count has been low much of the past year and that as of December, my Ferritin count was low. My doctor tells me these issues are unrelated.  Hummm.........?  I have started taking an Iron FE supplement which should help the Ferritin level and will have some blood work follow up at the end of this month. 

Another goal for 2012 is to post on this blog at least once per month.  Last year I found that weekly was too often, I couldn't find the content or time to post that often. 

So here we are at the start of a new year. A clean slate. I love the promise of a new year because it gives me the opportunity to think about the type of person I want to be and plan to be that person. So, enough already, its after 9AM. Time to get moving.