Chapter 1 - The Early Days

It Begins

The first post. The moment I get to describe what in the world this is all about. The reason for this blog. The invitation (supplication?) for you to read, and to comment, and all that jazz. Basically, why?

Avoiding Shiny Objects

I am twentysomething professional from New York, working as a programmer in the finance industry. I enjoy my life - I have a good job, I live in a nice place, I live in a great city, and I'm almost married to the love of my life. The only catch is that I hate myself.

Well, that's too strong a phrase. Because when it comes to every single aspect of my life other than how I look, I have scads of self-confidence. But I avoid mirrors, windows, dark television screens, the shiny sides of subway trains, and any other reflective surface that would reveal the horror of my obese shame.

When it comes to the way I look, to facing the 100-125+ extra pounds I slug around every day, I just don't want to face it. I hate shopping for new clothes - I try desperately stretching my shirt out with my knee to avoid the embarrassing form-fittingness of its washer-dryer-shrunken state. I hate that my partner, who loves me, is not generally attracted to me. I hate the side glances I get, the assumptions I face every day from people I both know and don't. I hate being called "big guy" and I hate narrow seats on the bus.

And so, for something like the billionth time in my life, I'm resolving to lose the weight once and for all.

How did I get this way?

This is something I've been asking myself for a while now. I moved to New York two years ago. Just before I came here I bought two new suits for my job. Today, they barely fit and I throw my shoulders out trying to button the pants. I pray that I won't bust them on the way to or when I sit in a meeting. And I have no idea when it happened.

Sure, the last two years have been stressful. A lot has gone on. When I moved my relationship turned in a long distance one for a while. I changed jobs a year ago (into a *really* stressful albeit rewarding one). The ads on TV say stress raises cortisol and cortisol causes weight retention. No idea if that's actually true but I know that stress affects me.

For most of my life I've dealt with stress by eating. A compulsive eater. And that's true. I find myself craving the stranges consumables late at night. When I'm stressed I'll eat. And eat. And eat. And I guess for the most of this time I've fooled myself that I was okay, that I wasn't really gaining a lot of weight or that I was staying the same.

That is, until I put on my suit.

How fat am I? I know that when professionals - doctors, trainers - guess my weight they guess way low (I just let them believe whatever they want). I'm reasonably strong, and I think a lot of my weight is in muscle ... it's just that the muscle is buried under a few hundred layers of fat. So I'm not grotesque. I don't have to resort to elastic-laden sweat pants and I only have one chin. I can actually sit on the subway rather than the fat-man-lean against the chair. My clothes do fit, they're just not flattering ... because there are no flattering clothes for me besides a burka.

I am obese though. Officially. I estimate that I am 100-125 pounds overweight. I stopped counting a while ago. To be honest, I'm not sure when I'm going to start counting again. I carry around a sizable spare tire. I've developed furroughs of stretch marks. I sweat far too easily. I'm not a pretty sight.

The billionth time?

Feels like. I've tried a lot of different diets and what not. They only have limited results because my will power sucks. I've only lost significant weight twice in my life - once when I was in the third grade, though I don't remember what diet my mom had me on, and once in high school, though that was the binge-and-purge diet. That latter one works okay, though it tends to leave a bitter taste in the back of your throat as the stomach acid eats through your inner tubes.

No this time will be different. I'm definitely committed to it. For one, I'm fatter than I've ever been. Two, I'm going to keep a real log - well, blog - to write down what's up. Three, I'm committed to doing what's necessary - from the proper work out routines to severely restricting my caloric intake (especially when you compare it to what I was doing). Lastly, if I don't want to die, I've got to.

So this is it. My weight loss blog. It will remain anonymous for now because I hide my shame, and because I want to be as honest about everything as I can and I feel like if I was public I wouldn't be. Hopefully someday soon I can feel okay enough to start measuring my progress. Maybe post pictures. Ultimately, my name. We'll see.

Feel free to comment along the journey. And feel free to join me.

posted 6/3/07 @ 05:14pm | 1 comment

tagged: weight loss

My Mantra

Last year my boss had us read Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill. It has absolutely nothing to do with weight loss but it does talk about, basically, the power of what he dubbed "auto-suggestion." The concept, basically, is that if we put it in our minds & subconscious that we are going to be or do something - like make $X by age 30 - then it will happen because our subconscious moves us towards decisions that make it so. Or something like that. A slightly less 1930s-esque mystical way of thinking about it is "affirmation statements," which is something we used to teach as part of personal growth development in leadership training.

Used a motivation technique and a constant reminder of what you're trying to do with your life, the affirmation statement could be very powerful. It can't hurt, so I've decided to use one as part of this journey:

I am becoming an attractive and fit man. I must do this for my physical and emotional health, and for [my partner]'s happiness. I'll do whatever it takes to lose weight.

My statement gives me a goal (attractive and fit man) rather than what I'm doing ("losing weight.") It gives me both internal and external reasons (my health and my partner's happiness). And it drives home the point with a reminder that I have choices to make to meet my goal.

You may be thinking there are some odd phrases. For example, some may say, "You should love yourself no matter what you look like!" Well, sure, okay, but that's not the point. The point is I'm fat, and fat is not attractive to all but the chubby-chasers. Secondly, my partner is not a chubby-chaser, and despite the fact he loves me he's not thrilled with my obesity. So I include his happiness because, for one, it's important to me on a day-to-day basis anyway, and two, because for years I've tried internal motivators only (health) and I'm still fat. Lastly, doing "whatever it takes" is a reminder to make the right choices - like a salad for dinner rather than a burrito, etc. We're not talking desperation maneuvers like bulemia (again) or other silliness.

posted 6/4/07 @ 10:45am | 0 comments

tagged: affirmation statement autosuggestion motivation

My Food Strategy

Every weight loss plan, as we all know, is about what you eat as much as it what you do. So for my new journey, my plan is simple mathematics.

I've done Atkins, and South Beach, Purge-a-rama, Starvation, Body for Life, and various combinations of them all. Atkins worked, but it gets boring real fast. South Beach was fun to cook for, but the moment my life got too busy again it was hard to keep up with it all. Body for Life, too.

But really, what it comes down to, is burning more calories than what you take in. Plus and Minus. Basic Math. They say that the average person's diet should be around 2,000 calories a day. Theoretically, since the body is always burning calories just to keep functioning, 2,000 calories a day is the fuel needed for day to day operation. Less than that, and the body goes to the reserves. More, and it gets stored. So, in theory, eating less than 2,000 calories can lead to weight loss by the simple fact your body burns more than that just to operate at a basic level.

I, on the other hand, am very much guilty of eating way more than 2,000 calories a day. In New York, our businessplace restaurants have these bars of hot and cold food that you pay for by the pound. It's convenient. It's also way too easy to load up way too much food - which I do. That, or the grocery store across from my office (which has one of these bars as well) packages food for grab 'n go. If I'm not loading up the spinach pie and chicken with rice, its grabbing a hero sandwich with a side of pasta salad or sushi. In, Out, Eat. And probably the full 2,000 calorie diet in one meal. No wonder I find myself getting tired by 3:00.

I stopped this little routine a few weeks ago as part of my plan for a new eating regimen. My new plan is simple - I must change my entire approach to eating. In the old days, I skip breakfast, survive my commute, and go to Starbucks for some unhealthy drink and/or snack. Then later on my huge lunch. Coffee all day long. Go home, make dinner - or, if we're feeling lazy - ordering from Papa John's or China One Kitchen or the deli in our building. In the new days, I plan on:

• Eating a little something for breakfast. This will get my metabolism going for the day.
• Eating small and frequently. Grazing is more healthy than fewer bigger meals. Letting your body know there's food available lets it know there's food available and it doesn't go into famine-mode - using the stored energy rather than storing it more.
• Eating only when I'm hungry. Smaller meals lead to hunger more often - sometimes - and that's when I choose to eat. Eating just to eat is an unhealthy pattern.
• Stay balanced in the foods I eat. For example, a chick salad is better than chicken parmesian. A burger with salad is better than fries. Pizza is just evil. I intend to make good, low caloric and high-nutrition choices.
• Not eating late at night. It's super easy to feed the munchies at night when I get bored before bed (or when I have insomnia, which is often enough).

Those are basics. And they're far from easy. Basically, my biggest goal is a drastic reduction in the number of calories I take in. It's going to take me a while to get there because its so easy to just eat, eat, eat. But here goes!

posted 6/5/07 @ 08:54pm | 0 comments

tagged: eating health strategy

My Workout Strategy

A food strategy is one thing. Just reducing calories will theoretically cause one to lose weight. It will just happen verrrry slowly. Drastically increasing calories burned by physical activity will help lose weight faster. It's simple math.

There are a couple of different strategies here. The most popular one that's been around for a while is us fatties need to go cardio! cardio! cardio! Cardio gets the heart rate going and that helps get the matabolism higher which leads to fat loss. It's common wisdom.

The other theory out there - and I'll find the guy who's been in the news wit this lately - is that our focus should be almost exclusively on weight training and building muscle. Remember that our bodies burn calories just to fuction, and muscle - just by its existence - needs more energy to exist, and so it burns more calories at rest than does fat. So if we build muscle, then we'll burn more calories overall than in the 30 minutes or so on the elliptical machine.

Personally, I'm hesitant to focus too highly on heart rate. My heart rate is already high as it is, and when I work out, it gets really high (170-180). This is okay, my doctor says, but I also want to be losing weight when I'm at desk for 8-10 hours a day, so increasing my base metabolism through increasing muscle is also very attractive idea.

My plan right now is to do both. Thankfully, we moved into a building that has a gym in it, so I really have limited excuse for not going whenever I can. Basically - and I know this is an intense goal - I want to go in the evenings and the mornings. I want to combine the two strategies of cardio and weight training. In the evenings I want to weight trainings, and the mornings are cardio to get my metabolism moving for the day. Some days I'll switch it around.

I know its an ambitious idea - but I'm a big guy who's not a cemented-still metabolism and a lot of stored calories to burn!

posted 6/6/07 @ 09:47pm | 0 comments

tagged: strategy exercise gym working out

My Journey My Stress

I'm not sure if I picked the worst week to officially start down my journey or the best. See, this week at work, and next week, and probably the week after are all extraordinarily stressful weeks for me without the added ramp-up of a weight loss journey. In order to get some major work done by the end of this week, to finalize it all for next week, for a conference the week after, I have to work 10-12 hour days all week this week and probably next week as well. It's not fun. It's rather terrible. The payoff will be great but the pain is questionable.

In the past I would stress eat. My new eating habits combined with the massive amounts of stress are creating digestive track issues that thankfully can't be heard over the wind of the air conditioning unit next to my desk. It's a lot of changes all at the same basic time of life and it may be a bit much to handle.

Stress is no good for weight loss. It's important to keep the stress levels low because high stress adversely affects the body's response to the world around it. Working out is a good physiological stress reducer for the body, as is sleep. Of course, with 12 hour days at the office and 2 commuting, I'm not getting as much sleep or exercise as I would like, so generally I think this week is going to be a weight loss bust for me. But it's still early. I have many weeks to go.

posted 6/7/07 @ 12:23pm | 0 comments

tagged: challenge stress struggle

Buying a New Suit

I need a new suit.

As I mentioned in my first post, I'm too fat for the ones I own - and the very important meeting I need a suit for next week has no room for accidents like every button, zipper, seam and belt loop exploding when I reach for my laptop. So it was off to Mens Wearhouse to get a suit.

I have a severe distaste for clothes shopping, I should say. This is normal. I can never find anything I like that fits or flatters, and generally I get frustrated quickly and either spend 30 minutes in the dressing room wishing I were thinner or just get out of the store as fast as possible. But I need this suit.

Mens Wearhouse has a decent selection of big-and-tall suits, so I figured it would be okay. I did find a suit that fit, even if the pants were huge and the crotch down to my knees (before tailoring). My partner wasn't the biggest fan of it but the super slim hot guy who looks in shirt and tie does not get to weigh in very heavily in my clothes buying decisions. In any case I got a suit that fits, which is better than having a suit that doesn't, and it will last me at least until I'm able to fit into my other ones again and ultimately buy a nice new one.

Once again, what I look like gets in the way of who I am and want to be like. I want to dress up. I was one of those annoying professional types in university who wore suits to programming class. I enjoy looking nice and having people think I look nice. But comfort and self-consciousness has been winning over such desires lately as I can't wear a lot of the old stuff in my closet and I don't want to spend a fortune on a new wardrobe right now.

I generally guilty of saying to myself, "I don't want to buy a lot of new clothes right now because I'll have to do it all over again in 3/6/9 months as I lose weight." But as they say frequently to my fellow fatties on What Not To Wear, we should be buying clothes that fit us now or else we'll just be miserable and ultimately demotivated for the weight loss journey. That's what they say, anyway. Of course, I'm still a miser with limited closet space (a problem exacerbated by carrying around 10 years of shirts "I'll fit into someday" - some of which I never fit into in the first place).

Saville Row is a small side street in London where you can get meticulously hand-tailored custom English suits. All along the street, which is rather difficult to find and I generally have to wander around until I stumble onto it, are little ancient shops advertising "So-and-So, Esq, Tailor." In the windows are some of the nicest suits money can buy. And I want one. Some day, I told my partner on the way out of Men's Wearhouse, I will reward myself with a very nice suit. And someday, I'll get one from Saville Row.

posted 6/8/07 @ 07:30pm | 0 comments

tagged: clothes fashion goals Saville Row

"We Need To Talk About Your Image ..."

A little back story ...

I changed jobs a little over a year ago. I went from a high stress no reward job to a higher stress promise-of-reward job (at 150% of what I was being paid before). I like my new job and its been a good year of making a name for myself and getting some good things accomplished. Most recently, my boss has decided I'm enough of an asset to raise my profile in the company and have me go out to present to clients and other business units what it is we do. This is all very very good for my career and I'm happy about it.

Today, my boss brings me into her office and we talk about a couple of business things and then she turns the conversation to my image. Not my weight -- directly -- but my "image." Her premise being that if I'm out there representing the company I can't really be looking a back-room developer. Basically, she wants me to raise the level of my general image.

I didn't think I was a total slob. I don't have a lot of clothes that I wear regularly because, well, I don't fit in them anymore. That leaves my image to be rather repetitive. And they're all polo shirts because my button-downs aren't comfortable (and you can't do the knee-stretch thing with button-downs). So while I don't have to be wearing a suit every day, I need to raise the caliber of my clothing.

This ... kinda sucks. It's difficult to be told you don't dress well enough (especially when I used to wear a suit every day and for the last year we've been in a very relaxed environment). And its more difficult to be thinking in the back of your mind the reason you don't dress better is because all the nice stuff doesn't come in your size. While she wasn't directly talking about my weight, the direct effect of the conversation - the clear subtext (whether she intended it or not) is lose weight, fatty!

More motivation. Humiliating a bit, but motivation nonetheless.

posted 6/11/07 @ 06:45pm | 0 comments

tagged: motivation clothes fat humiliation

Visually Controlling What You Eat

This article from MSNBC (archived from last month, but I just found it) talks about how our visual perception of what we eat directly affects how much we eat.

In a study published this month in the journal Perceptual and Motor Skills, my colleague Dr. Collin Payne and I promised a free chicken wing buffet to 52 graduate students (17 men and 35 women) while they watched the Super Bowl at a sports bar in Urbana, Ill. As part of the study, the waitresses were instructed to clear the dishes at only half of the tables.

If people had their tables continually cleared, they continually ate. Clean plate, clean table, get more, eat more. ... Each of these people ate an average of seven chicken wings apiece. The students who did not have their table bused ... had eaten an average of two fewer chicken wings per person — that's 28 percent less than those whose tables had been bused.

When I was younger, my mom taught me a similar trick to what this article discusses. It was always far too easy to take the ice cream carton and a spoon and camp out in front of the TV until it's gone. Instead, spoon it out into a bowl, and then its easier to stop when its done. I still have problems with this, but I've been trying to make a concerted effort to use our small dinner plates, which are about half the size of our regular dinner plates, when I cook and plate meals at home. Eating the right foods is fine and all, but eating the right proportions is just as important.

Despite the cliché, our eyes are typically not bigger than our stomachs. In fact, our eyes are often better at telling us how much to eat than our bellies. That's because it takes about 20 minutes after we eat before our stomach starts registering that we're full.

I actually found that an interesting little statistic. So after I'm done eating from my little plate, wait 20-30 minutes and see how I feel. If I'm still hungry and not just bored, then I'll consider a snack or small amount of seconds. Or just water. Filling one's stomach with water makes it think its full, too - something worth knowing in the early stages of a weight loss plan, when you're stomach is still big and stretched from its normal huge volume of food.

posted 6/12/07 @ 01:55pm | 0 comments

tagged: weight loss strategy food healthy eating science

Hydration! - or - Behold the Color of Pee!

Water. Is. Life.

That was drilled into us when I went mountain climbing a couple years ago.

Side note - need a good motivation tool for losing weight? Hang from the side of a mountain with nothing but one of your students as your belay. When you're faith is put in some seventeen year old kid holding up your giant self, you'll find a reason to start losing.

Way up in the mountains at super high altitudes we were taught that if we didn't drink a whole lot of water, we'd be in a whole lot of trouble. And the way to tell if you're drinking enough? The color (not volume) of your liquid waste. If it was white, you were all right. If it were yellow, you could mellow (but drink something). If its brown, you best drown (yourself by drinking a lot ... or something like that). If its read, you're dead.

Most people don't drink nearly enough water. Most of us know that, but do nothing about it. The optimum amount of water to drink is 2 liters a day. That's a lot of water! But its essential not only to good health - and not dying if you're on a mountaintop - but also to weight loss.

Your body retains water. It holds it in because it needs it to function. The water we hold in, however, tends to get a bit icky with a variety of the junk being processed in our bodies. Oh, and it adds weight too. Gooey, Icky, watery weight. Regularly drinking lots of water and staying very hydrated allows your body to release the water it retains because it is trained to know there is more water coming. Just like with food and eating small regular meals, if the body's not freaking out about whether its gonna get more food or water, it will release the food (energy) and water its storing up.

Water also leads to good weight loss as it washes out impurities and is essential to the body's normal operation of burning excess calories. It makes life more efficient inside us, and the end result is more effective weight loss! Oh - and another important item for those of us losing weight - you're skin! Think about all that skin that's stretched around our fat selves - if we lose the fat, where's it going to go? I, for one, do not want to look like a skinny, droopy grandmother when I'm 30. Drinking lots and lots of water helps the skins elasticity and will keep your skin tightened up as you lose the weight. So avoid droopyness and drink water!

I keep a half-liter cup at my desk at work, and I know that my water bottle at home I use for the gym is a half liter. As long as I fill them up regularly (and I try to take it with me when I leave my desk for the bathroom (because the kitchen is on the way, lest you think I have strange recycling program)) I'm good to go!

posted 6/13/07 @ 03:15pm | 0 comments

tagged: strategy healthy eating hydration

Eating While Flying

Today I had to take a quick business trip to Chicago. I had to wake up at 4 am, take a flight at 6 am, do a 15 minute presentation and fly home at 2, getting home at 6. It's a long day. And it's all on top of not getting the best sleep combined with high stress for the last two weeks. Hardly conducive to good weight loss, but I digress.

Side note: If you ever need good motivation for losing weight, fly somewhere. If you REALLY need motivation, fly somewhere on Delta. When you're done trying to squeeze your giant rear into the extra narrow seats Delta has, followed by life-strapping a seatbelt made for a 12 year old around you, you'll find your new weight loss muse.

The bane of all professional people trying to lose weight is the business trip. On the business trip we are ripped from our regular, well-controlled environments where we've purchased the right foods and prepped our healthy snacks with a water bottle every 10 feet. Instead we have the Starbucks, the food cart, the airport restaurant, the fast food, the bars (seriously - my meeting today was in a bar), room service, restaurants and a risk of no nearby gym. It's impossible!

I've been known to just suspend my diet while travelling, but that's not the greatest plan either. The problem is when you're in a new place, you don't know what's around. I've had one and two-week long trips where I buy nothing but Pizza, Sonic Burger, and Ruby Tuesday's (travelling to the South is extra murder). Going international is just as tough. The nutrional information is counted differently, the menus and ingredients aren't necessarily in a language I speak, and it's not easy to just go grocery shopping and prep all my own meals especially on business trips. (Another fun aspect to going international is that if your hotel has a gym (which mine does in Germany), the weight equipment is all in kilograms.)

Today wasn't so bad. I slept on the plane to avoid the food and drink cart. I got my Starbucks but it was decaf & skim milk. I didn't drink at the bar and I bought a salad for lunch. Falling asleep on the ride home prevented another food cart catastrophe and for dinner I had a simple sandwich wrap. I'm a little concerned about an upcoming trip to Germany, but we'll worry about that when it comes.

posted 6/14/07 @ 07:05pm | 5 comments

tagged: challenge healthy eating travelling

The Dangers of Eating Out

Yikes! Consider this article I found today. It's all about how restaurant chefs have little to no concern about portion size or calorie counting the food they prepare.

While three-quarters of chefs believed they prepared regular-size servings, the portions they offered were two to four times larger than a typical person should eat.... For example, a popular restaurant chain’s smallest steak is 9 ounces and has 740 calories. An appropriate portion would be 4 ounces with only 300 calories. In fact, only 16 percent of the chefs, mostly from casual or fine dining restaurants, were strongly influenced by how many calories were packed into a serving. [The rest said its up to the customer to determine how much they eat.]

When we went into a campus restaurant and upped the size of a popular pasta dish, customers ate almost 200 extra calories. Yet they believed that each serving was the right size. ... In another study, we provided 10 women and 13 men with all of their foods and beverages for 11 days in a row on two occasions. On one occasion we served standard sizes. The other time, the same foods were offered, but the servings were 50 percent bigger. With the larger portions, the men and women ate more than 400 extra calories each of the 11 days, adding up to an average of 4,636 extra calories. Remember, it takes 3,500 extra calories to gain a pound.

Here's a tip - a great way to reduce your portion size at lunchtime? Read articles like this while on your lunch break. Half my food is sitting in the bin, now.

Seriously - yikes. But I face this problem constantly. My partner and I live in New York City - land of the restaurant on every corner - and a lot of darn good ones too. The restaurant is a center of social life - where we go to meet friends and hang out, or if we're just out and about and enjoying the city.

Yet when I'm in a restaurant, all my carefully crafted mantras and exercises fly right out the window. Faced with a "half" plate or regular, I choose regular. A salad or an Alfredo dish - creamy sauce for me all the way! Sushi? Yes I'll have another. I don't know what happens to me in restaurants. When I think about it while I'm doing it, I think I have this perception that I don't want to go hungry, and so I order big, and inevitably overeat (and if we don't know we're full until 20 minutes after - I seriously overeat.) In a real way, I'm scared to go to restaurants because I coat-check all my self control!

Tonight is going to be one of those nights. My partner and I are going to a play and we're almost definately going to find someplace to eat on the way. Somewhere in there I need to find some self control, else I'm just going to hate myself in the morning when I drag my rear to the gym to burn off dinner. I did okay yesterday (while traveling) when I outsmarted myself and got a salad instead of a personal pizza for lunch. Yay me! One day at a time.

posted 6/15/07 @ 03:38pm | 0 comments

tagged: challenge healthy eating eating out restaurants self control

Timing the Gym

I like the gym. For different reasons at different times, I do enjoy going to a gym. For the first year and a half or so of living in New York, I joined Equinox - an upscale and very nice gym chain in New York and LA. But of course, it meant waking up early and trucking into the city bleary eyed and stiff to work out every day. Then when changed jobs, I moved to Wall Street, which meant getting out even before the express trains started running. Now we're fortunate enough to live in a building with its own private gym, so I really have to excuse not to get down there on a regular basis.

You may wonder, why was I getting up so damn early - why not go after work? And when do I go to the gym now? For me, it's all about gym timing.

The gym isn't so much fun when its crowded - not for me. I'm a pretty private person especially about my weight and fitness plan. Beating my body into submission is hardly a pretty sight - and exposing that process leaves me feeling very vulnerable. Doing it in front of people I either look up to physically (i.e. their bodies are what I want to look like) or that I otherwise find attractive leaves my self-conscious psyche in tatters and I usually end my work out far too early. So I generally attempt to time my trips to the gym at the times of day where I'll feel the greatest freedom to move around the machines without much interference, and when I'll feel the least intimidation.

In my building / gym now, timing the gym actually isn't that hard. As a hip new somewhat pricey-ish building, there are two types of tenants: family types - who I don't find intimidating - and the young and the beautiful hardbody athlete successful types - who, well, I run and hide from. While the latter is more prone to use the gym, like seasonal herds their behavior is easy to predict. They're most likely to be in the gym in the hours after work until around 9 or 10 - especially as the weekend gets closer and they like to go out and frolic in their clubs and whatnot. That leaves the gym timer to the mornings and late evenings - which is when I like to be most active anyway.

Weekends are even better, and summer weekends best of all. When it's warm, sunny, pool weather, the pretty bodied people aren't in the gym prepping their pretty bodies, they're outside mostly-naked and showing off their pretty bodies. Eye candy opportunities aside, this leaves midday on the weekends with the greatest statistical chance of an empty gym. Around 2-4pm is best, I've found, and often find myself alone in a well-equipped gym, free to move about and work hard without feeling self-conscious.

Someday I look forward to not having to time the gym just to assuage my self-conscious craziness. But for now, at least I know its just a few floors away whenever I feel I want it.

posted 6/16/07 @ 06:08pm | 0 comments

tagged: gym working out

Day By Day, Weekly Review

This is Saturday, the end of week two of officially and consciously taking my journey of weight loss. It was two of the hardest weeks of my life - and that had nothing to do with my actually weight loss plan!

The biggest conference of my industry is next week, and along with one of our new partners we decided to develop a new product and launch it for big press at the beginning of the event. As my office's sole product manager and developer, this mean a whole helluvalotta work for me. Last week was mostly 10-12 hour days, coupled with the extreme stress of working on a project by the seat of my pants. The stress triggered my insomnia, which reduced what little quality sleep I was getting anyway. Stress, long days, and no sleep are hardly conducive to good weight loss.

This past week wasn't much better. While I used last weekend to recover a bit, I did just end up sunburned while floating in my dad's pool. This past week was all stress again, with more long days and all in addition to a day trip to Chicago to give a big presentation. But deadlines were met and products were readied, and while I have a little bit more work to do and no dearth of important meetings and functions next week, the bulk of the evil is over.

As far as success measurements for my weight loss journey, I can't really give myself any sort of wildly passing grade. A careful "meh," peraps. Not quite a "bluhh" or a "boo" but certainly not a "yay me!" Mitigating circumstances, I would think, prevent me from being too hard on myself, especially for the beginning. I did have some wins:

• I didn't binge eat - lunch or otherwise. During high periods of stress, historically I've turned to emotional eating - getting big lunches and meals and feeling like crap later on.
• Successfully began eliminating caffeine, soda / artificial sweeteners, and switching almost exclusively to water. Didn't do perfectly, but pretty darn well.
• Today I did 65 minutes of cardio on the elliptical
• My partner and I walked a lot in the evenings this week. There was a big streetfair event on Fifth Ave on Tuesday, and yesterday we trucked out to Chealsea to see a show, then trucked back.
• While traveling to Chicago, I didn't fall into my old travel habits of eating junk food, getting lots of bad coffee drinks from Starbucks, drinking sodas from the cart on the plane, etc.

A few things didn't go as well as planned:

• While I may not have binged eat, I certainly didn't graze on all the right foods. There were meetings in my office all week and for meetings like this, they order too much food and leave the extras out for anyone. I found myself grazing on things like mini-scones and half sandwiches. I didn't pig out, but I didn't make healthy choices about what to eat.
• I didn't make it to the gym until today. I wanted to a couple of times, but all that's gone on has left my tired at the end of the day - even falling asleep on the couch. Still, I should have at least gotten in 20 minutes.
• When we went out to eat yesterday - as I feared in my post, I failed in my choice making. While I did order a salad at Burritoville, I also ordered the cheese nachos plate and a soda, without hardly thinking about it, but the same story as always - I feared I'd be hungry afterwards.

I'm not beating myself up over the failures of the week. This is, after all, a day-by-day journey. And if I fail one day or one week, it's no reason to give up on the next.

posted 6/16/07 @ 06:47pm | 0 comments

tagged: fitness progress

How Far Would You Go?

Alli is the first over-the-counter (OTC) weight loss medication approved by the FDA. It's similar to Xenecal, and essentially works by stopping the body from absorbing some of the fat in our meals. It's different from all the other OTC weight-loss scams because rather than suppressing appetite or jacking your heart rate artificially high, it actually works to prevent weight gain by limiting what your body can take in.

The idea is to combine it with a healthy eating plan because, of course, it's no magic pill. And as it turns out, you are really going to want to combine with with a low-fat food plan; guess what happens when your body can't absorb the fat in food - where's it supposed to go? Take into account the slippery, lubricant nature of fat ... that's right - right into your pants!

The Word Is 'Leakage' — Accidents may happen with a new OTC diet drug. (Newsweek/MSNBC)

If you eat more than the recommended 15 grams of fat at a meal, you may experience cramps and the uncontrollable escape of those extra fat grams. For New Jersey native Paula Miguel, 35, however, that's just the incentive she needed to stay on track and lose 20 pounds. "I see Alli as a disciplinarian," says Miguel. "It keeps me accountable for everything I eat."

"Uncontrollable escape of extra fat grams" ... yikes! The makers of Alli say that users of the drug cannot expect a miracle overnight thinning - only people who are committed to a steady and healthy weight management lifestyle will see results. But for those who do follow the included guide and 200 recipes, use of Alli can improve results by 50%, says GlaxoSmithKline.

So in the end, this is only meant to be supplemental to a healthy weight-loss plan. And only use it if you don't mind the occasional accidental splurt. Personally, I won't be trying Alli right away. I'm committed to healthy eating and exercise and Alli would only add a variable to the equation that would cause me discomfort and be something difficult to measure results from. Maybe down the road I'll try it out to add a boost - particularly when I reach a weight loss plateau, it may be useful to help push over the edge back into loss-mode. But until then, I'll be waiting. If you don't want to wait, though, you can get it $10 cheaper than GNC at Amazon (GNC won't honor Gold Card for this product.)

posted 6/18/07 @ 10:20am | 0 comments

tagged: weight loss aids alli diet supplement

My Macy's Nightmare

I need a new shirt this week. Not just any shirt - a button down shirt. And I really need one. So I decided it was off to Macy*s to see about getting one or two.

Important Tip - Just because you're feeling healthier after a couple weeks, doesn't mean its the right time to go by nice fashions. And if you do, you'll quickly be humbled.

Oy - what a nightmare. First off, I go around and fine a number of nice shirts all XXL or XL or so and seem like they'd fit. I even do the hold-it-half-way-round-you-to-see-if-it-might-fit test and they all seem good. I pick up nine or so shirts, all nice, all ones I feel like I could probably fit into. It would be more a matter of what fit best rather than what fit at all. I make it up to the third floor, I step into the Tommy Hilfiger section's dressing room to try on the wares.

Worst. Dressing. Room. Ever. First off, there's not even a hook on which to hang the clothes you're trying on. There's no bench to sit on or set your things on. There's just a small room, a giant mirror, and four ultra-bright ultra hot spotlights creating a sauna out of this little wooden room. And its in that oh-so-pleasant environment I'm supposed to see if I can even fit into any of my candidate shirts.

The heat beating down forces the sweat out my pores. I can't wipe it away fast enough before it again looks like I just stepped out of the shower. And not a single one of my shirts fit. A couple came close - but the buttons nearly popped ... and the fact that they didn't merely exposed flesh from the pulled sections between the buttons. And these were XXL shirts! Or at least that's what was on the label.

So I learned some things tonight. First off, just two weeks in with relatively little work out time does not weight loss make, especially with all the stress I've been under. Secondly, something interesting was that most of the shirts fit around my chest just fine - and in fact would look pretty good. It was the fact that my stomach juts out and around my chest much too far. It's pretty clear that my most recent period of weight gain was concentrated around my stomach, primarily, and hopefully that will be where it falls off first - because boy howdy do I need to fit it some shirts!

Normally - and even tonight - my first reaction is to wallow in my own self-pity. To go down to the Cellar restaurant in Macy*s and order unhealthy comfort food. Thankfully I controlled that urge today and we made it home, where I cooked my partner a hamburger and I had some pan-fried vegetables (in olive oil) and couscous. Now, as much as I'd like to just sit on the couch and look at pretty pictures of hot men, I must drag myself down to the gym. I have a stomach to lose!

posted 6/18/07 @ 09:52pm | 0 comments

tagged: clothes fashion fat Macys shopping

My Macy's Nightmare, Redux

Since I still needed a shirt, I knew I had to shop for one today for a meeting tomorrow. As I passed by a Big & Tall store today, I figured my problems were solved. My embarrassment had only just begun.

For starters, I had no idea what any of the sizes were. They were all in this "2XB" and "3...4...5XB," but nowhere was there a clue of how that corresponded to normal-people sizing. Was that like an XXXXXL ? Who knew? Finally I found a rack of shirts that I liked, the color was good, and rather than these oddball sizes, each shirt was tagged with the actual measurements. Like XX inches around the waste, YY inches for the arm, etc. I found one that actually worked well and went to pay for it. The cashier couldn't find a payment tag, and the sales reps went off a scurrying to figure it out.

Turns out my perfect shirt was one of almost two dozen "fitting" shirts that are used to find the best fit for custom made shirts. It wasn't for sale. Well that was just great. The manager, taking pity on my idiocy, offered to help me find one that was similar and actually for sale. Hence begins chapter two of my embarrassing tale...

He started by taking a couple measurements. Well, that's just great - considering I'd been walking around New York City in the summer in a suit - my shirt was basically ... soaked. So he took a measure of my neck and then had to reach around my sweaty nasty self to measure my stomach.

The prognosis wasn't good. "I have one shirt [brand] that may work, but otherwise we'd have to go with a custom shirt. Most shirts of your neck size aren't big enough around." Greeeaaat. So we went to try to find a shirt. The first one was a nice blue shirt. It fit pretty well, just a little big snug. Normally, I'd probably try to just go with it, but the manager suggested trying one size bigger with the caveat that if I wanted to do that (the alternative was a custom shirt) the neck would be a bit loose. I opted to try - since loose-ish necks don't bother me.

The next size bigger was quite a step bigger. But it fit around me, would work with my suit, and wasn't obnoxious in the neck. But overall, it was just a humiliating experience - and an expensive one, since I managed to walk into (as I read in an article on the wall) the first and only upscale Big & Tall stores in the market. Oops! The shirt is the most expensive one I've ever bought - more than two times the next priciest buy ever. But I needed it, and I just wanted out of there. I was hot, wet, humiliated, fat, and just wishing for a miracle cure.

It confirmed, disturbingly, that I put on most of my weight right into my stomach - and its there that I have to lose it. Too bad there's no such thing as spot-fat reduction. But since that's where most of the fat is, hopefully it will start to burn from there first. Because if not, I can't buy clothes! But I must admit, it was depressing walking out there, stuffing the embarrassing Big and Tall bag into my briefcase, and contemplating all that had happened. Feelings of self-hatred flood back in times like that, and I just want to give up. But then I remember that I'm doing this day by day. That I'm in a process of making healthy choices and changing my lifestyle. That I can't give up. That I only really started intense exercise a few days ago and the first couple weeks were kind of a bust anyway.

I remember my affirmation statement. I'll make it - I just need to make it through this day. Then tomorrow. And then the next day. But for now, just today. And then someday, I can go spend far too much money on a shirt that doesn't make me look like Homer Simpson in a muumuu.

posted 6/19/07 @ 07:44pm | 0 comments

tagged: challenge clothes humiliation healthy lifestyle lifestyle choices

You Are What You Eat: Jittery, Stained, and Chemical

A long time ago in a diet far, far away, I switched to diet soda. I don't really even remember ever drinking regular sodas - I may have even grown up on the diet stuff. In fact, so accustomed to the diet stuff am I that I can't hardly stand drinking regular soda - all the sugar just makes it taste terrible to me. Besides, its unhealthy! And the Diet stuff is nothing more than flavored water!

I've always heard tell of the dangers of nutrasweet, saccherine, and splenda. Aspartame - branded as NutraSweet or Equal - is very common in sodas, and has been implicated in causing jitters as it frays your nerves. There's even some anecdotal evidence lately regarding aspartame poisoning. Now, I don't know all that much about the science of that claim, but when you think about how these things are made, it's not so much fun. Splenda alone, while made from real sugar, requires a multi-step conversion process heavily involving chlorine ... not exactly something that sounds nutritious and safe. But okay, even if you ignore the disputed aspartame-fries-your-nerves argument, consider everything else bad about soda:

...what's wrong with diet soft drinks? The answer: phosphoric acid.

"Soft drinks have long been suspected of leading to lower calcium levels and higher phosphate levels in the blood. When phosphate levels are high and calcium levels are low, calcium is pulled out of the bones. The phosphate content of soft drinks like Coca -Cola and Pepsi is very high, and they contain virtually no calcium. ... Phosphoric acid is also known to neutralize the hydrochloric acid in our stomachs. This is unfortunate, for we need hydrochloric acid to help us digest our food and utilize its nutrients."

And that's not even to mention the caffeine, my next culprit. I drink so much coffee, its scary. I used to drink a pot a day, if not more. And at work I easily drink as many as 6 or 7 cups day in my daily routine as a programmer who needs to stay focused and efficient, but ultimately it just shatters my concentration and I become immune- requiring more and more coffee. And office coffee sucks!

These days, caffeine has a love-hate relationship with the fitness community. Some jocks love it because it gets their heart rate up for their workouts. Some studies have shown that a cup of coffee after a work out can improve the body's continued burn. But the good comes with the bad - caffeine seriously grates on the nervous system and too much of it, like what I've been drinking, can cause fatigue and other nasty effects. For example,

Caffeine is a diuretic, so the more you drink it, the more you're draining your body of those important nutrients you've been so proud to ingest in the first place. That drainage occurs in the form of urine, so unless it's water sports you're engaging in, make you're your workout booster isn't driving you to the men's room every couple of minutes.

Oh that's why it always feels like the coffee goes right through me! But you know, even if you don't buy the opinions that caffeine or sweeteners or phosphoric acid are unhealthy, there's always the simple fact it stains your teeth! And the effort to combat the staining - involving harsh toothpastes and whitening treatments - doesn't compare to the ease of simply dropping the offending junk.

So as part of my fitness plan, I decided last week to drop caffeine, soda, and as much as possible, artificial sweeteners. I'm switching back to water almost exclusively. So far I've done pretty well. I only got a soda once - accidentally, actually, without even thinking - and the only coffee I've had was one cup on my business trip - and that was decaf. Artificial sweeteners are a little tougher to totally cut out, because they do take the place of sugar pretty well, but at least I've drastically reduced my intake of them by killing soda and coffee. I've gone from 10-20 packets-worth a day to maybe 2 packets a week. Plus with all the water I'm drinking, I'm hydrated. Still going to the bathroom a lot, but hydrated!

posted 6/21/07 @ 09:34pm | 0 comments

tagged: health strategy healthy eating lifestyle choices aspartame caffeine coffee equal posining soda splenda sucralose water

Losing Weight Day By Day, Week 3

A week ago, I was coming off two of the most stressful weeks ever, and my weight loss efforts were less than stellar. And even though I managed to avoid emotional eating, I certainly didn't make progress. This week was, by comparison, amazingly better.

The real win for me this week was exercise - I spent at least an hour a day in the gym each day (except for Thursday - which was 45 minutes) plus a morning session on Tuesday in addition to the hour that evening. Today was two hours. All told I spent probably 8.5+ gym hours this week. All but one session was nearly all cardio. It was amazingly refreshing. Sure it hardly feels great by the end - between the aching feet and stinking to high heaven - but as I was hobbling home, I felt a sense of pride and accomplishment.

Food-wise, it was a good week, though a couple of days turned out not as well. Every day at work I managed to avoid going out and buying a calorie-expensive lunch. Sunday I cooked a calorie-conscious meal for Fathers Day, Monday I had pan-fried veggies, Tuesday (and Wednesday, I think) were portion-controlled steaks. Thursday was my failure day. It started down a bad streak when our receptionist put out extra sandwiches from a meeting that day. I was planning on getting a salad for lunch but opted for the reasonably healthy-looking sandwiches. Throughout the day I had three halves. Eating too much too early set me up for being too hungry at the end of the day, and combined with my partner's late work night, I ended up just ordering a pizza "for him" ... though I hate half of it. Though, to my credit, I only ordered the pizza (I used to order breadsticks and eat all of them as well) and it was thin-crust so it didn't have all the weight of a regular pizza.

Friday I worked from home - which is always dangerous. The kitchen is right there and its easy to convince myself to eat for no reason. That morning I went to the gym for 90 minutes or so, where I did my week's intensive weight training (and really worked myself, too) combined with a wee bit of cardio. Because of the muscle-focused workout day, I knew it was better to allow myself more than average calories, so long as they were heavily weighted toward providing protein for my muscles to rebuild themselves with. This mostly worked, since I made a nice chicken slices lettuce wrap lunch with extra chicken for later, and that night made chicken for dinner. But in between, I decided I'd finally bake the bread I wanted to.

I had decided last week that I would start baking our bread instead of buying it. For starters, whole-wheat bread still uses a lot of white (unhealthy) flour and high-fructose corn syrup. Even if it seems healthy, it's really just "less unhealthy" than its all-white counterpart. So cooking our own bread would let us control what goes into it - and know exactly what we're eating. So I baked a bunch of bread (and flatbread) but ended up eating way too much of it because it turned out to be pretty tasty. So while I ate a lot of protein calories, I also ate a lot of carbohydrate carbs. My only saving grace was that the bread was at least half whole-wheat, which takes more calories to burn than white.

But despite a couple iffy days food wise, this was a good week. I still haven't brought myself to weigh myself yet, and I haven't noticed a significant difference in my clothes yet, but its only been a week. I did, by way of an attempt to objective measure, take my official "before" pictures in hopes I can say "this is how I used to be" in a year or so. I also opted to use a different measurement - my waste size. Seeing as I discovered this week (see my Macy*s nightmare double-day special) that in my last weight-gain period it all went to my stomach, that would be a place I really want to measure progress by. So I found a tie in our closet that just happens to be my exact stomach circumference (yes, a whole tie). So as I lose fat from my stomach, that tie will begin to fit around me more. And while we lose fat from many places at once, it will serve as my objective measure until I bring myself to step on a scale.

This coming week will really be a lot more of the same. I'm going to try to get in two weight-training sessions instead of the one. I'm also going to try to get to the gym in the mornings more often this week to supplement my evening routines and get my metabolism running in the morning. I'll also be better about controlling what I eat. And while ultra-low calorie diets are not advisable (certainly not over a long time), I'll continue keeping the calories low as I get this whole thing underway and retrain my psyche about how best to treat food.

posted 6/23/07 @ 07:17pm | 0 comments

tagged: weight loss exercise healthy eating progress

Why Exactly Am I Doing This?

Most people, I imagine, would love to have just 2% body fat and the rock hard bodies that come from it. I believe our bodies were made to be fit, trim, and appear muscular; when our bodies are like that they function most efficiently, have the most energy, are least prone to injury, and we naturally consider such looks "beautiful." Between processed foods and our relatively sedentary lifestyles (compared to the old farming days), today its a lot harder for most of us to come close to the ideal. Just because its a lot of work, though, doesn't mean we shouldn't work hard for it.

But we need to know why we're doing it. Do we want to be fit and trim because its a healthy way of life? Or do we want to be seen? In our culture, we are severely prone to taking something beautiful and cheapening it through objectification and over-sexualization.

Yesterday, my partner and I went with some friends to Pride. I usually try to avoid such things but our friends wanted to see the fireworks over the Hudson. It ... was... rather terrible, actually. The people who go to pride are only a small subset of the overall gay population, but it's the stereotype through and through - hard bodies, constant cruising, continuously judging elevator eyes. The pretty people with 2% body fat don't want anything to do with you if you're not 2.5% or less; everyone is objectified and the human element of the gay community is sucked out of the experience, giving way to sex-driven debauchery. And being one of the few fat guys out there, I had plenty to think about.

I spent a lot of time thinking about why I wanted to be thin, fit, and trim. Part of me thought I just wanted to be seen, but do I really want to be a part of this objectification culture that Pop America has created? For me, no. I don't want to become one of those people who's life is nothing but being beautiful (and my partner doesn't want that either). I will always struggle with my weight. When I am fit and trim, I will have to work to stay that way. I will never be able to forget where I came from. And from that, I'll want to find some way to use my success positively.

In any case, its important to always keep an eye on why we do what we want to do. If its something so carnal and surface-level as wanting to be a toy or eyecandy, we're doomed from the start. If we're working hard to make ourselves better, be healthier, be fit and extend our lives and quality of lives, we're in better luck. For me, ultimately, its about my affirmation statement -- my mantra -- that gives me a direction.

I am becoming an attractive and fit man. I must do this for my emotional and physical health and for my partner's happiness. I will do whatever it takes to lose weight.

posted 6/25/07 @ 09:24pm | 0 comments

tagged: weight loss affirmation statement motivation health

The Child Obesity Crisis

I am a victim of the child obesity crisis. I've been obese or severely overweight most of life. A couple of times as a kid I was able to drop a good amount of weight, but somehow I couldn't stick with it and my growth spurts were as much horizontal as they were vertical. But considering I suffered from all that plagues so many of our kids today, when I walk around and see so many children so severely overweight, I both sympathize with them and fear for them.

Children who are overweight face a lifetime of obesity and all the related problems. It over-stresses the bodies from the earliest days. It destroys their personal self-worth, limits their ability to make friends and develop socially among their cruel peer structures, and leads to severe health problems, diseases like early-onset diabetes (which will lead to blindness or loss of limb) and could very well result in an early, early death. I personally believe that the lack of social development and healthy habits can also cause or contribute to developmental problems. Obese kids can get depressed easily, may feel hopeless and could turn to other, less desirable or even destructive ways to try to ease the emotional pain they suffer daily. They know their fat, but neither they nor their parents really know what to do about it; for many kids, its easier to pretend it doesn't exist, to make jokes, to withdraw from the world around them.

We can hem and haw about why we're in the crisis we're in, whether its the food content, TV, bad parenting, video games or whatever. But when you in the middle of a crisis it does no good to anyone to fight about the past. The only thing that matters is how we fix it.

Really, when it comes down to it, the only proper way, in my opinion, for kids to lose weight is Basic Math - more calories out than in. The problem is that kids don't have that kind of internal motivation, especially in this day and age. Things taste good! TV is entertaining! Video Games are challenging! Our friends are online! But as our culture moves away from the fields and into the high rises, our kids are given very little to compare against from a health standpoint - in short, they don't know any better, and there's no one to guide them.

In a rather frightening and desperate attempt, some parents and kids are opting for bariatric surgery, saying that kids respond to it even better than adults do. But any parent who would permanently alter their child's physiology even before their bodies have finished growing should be slapped and their doctors lose their license. Even temporary solutions like the LapBand are risky, as far as I'm concerned. Worse still, along with diet drugs kids use, they are excuses and attempts to fix things quickly with little regard to long term health and happiness.

To help kids, I think, they need to have a strong network of support - from their friends, parents, mentors, whatever. This is the philosophy behind this new TV show, Shaq's Big Challenge, where -- apparently without much of a plan -- Shaq decided he would help 6 overweight kids (one who weighs not much less than me) build the healthy lifestyles and lose weight. In the first episode that aired a couple days ago, the kids were awful. They didn't have cohesion or commitment, and Shaq didn't really do such a good job of keeping them on track or honest.

"It's not about losing weight, its about saving these kids lives" - Shaq

Yet this is the type of thing that overweight kids need. What I did see that was great was lots of encouragement, a team effort, general support from their peers who understand exactly what it is to grow up overweight. Their parents, a couple who were shocked by the results of the MRI tests, also supported their kids efforts for the most part.

Ultimately, our child obesity crisis is a family crisis. We get fast food, we let our kids live unhealthy lives, we set bad examples. Some parents take an active interest in their kids health, going so far as to hire personal trainers for their kids to fill in where their knowledge lacks - extraordinarily commendable. But somewhere along the line, we as a people need to confront this crisis, or else we're doomed.

posted 6/28/07 @ 06:09pm | 0 comments

tagged: health bariatric surgery child obesity children crisis families Shaq Shaqs Big Challenge TV shows video games

Keeping It Slow

A couple years ago, New York City was blanketed in public service advertisements about losing weight. They consisted of a profile picture of a person's overweight torso; at approximately one to two inch-intervals (they were big posters) were dashed lines, outlining what the person's torso would look like thinner and thinner. Along each dashed line were various lifestyle choice activities such as "walked to the subway instead of taking a bus" or "started taking the stairs" or "switched to salad lunches." The idea was that all these little lifestyle choices over time added up to a thinner and thinner profile.

Oh to be thin overnight! I have such a long way to go that it can quickly get demoralizing to think of the journey ahead, and I wish that I could simply wish away the pounds overnight. In pursuit of this impossible goal, I've tried a lot of crazy ways to lose weight quickly. In high school I went the bulemic route - which worked, for a while. In college I tried to no-calorie diet, which was a lot harder, and usually led to eating a lot more on the rebound. And of course I tried to mix them, which just sounds like the ultimate weight-associated mental disorder ever.

Basically, we cannot lose weight fast. Rapid weight loss is actually dangerous and leads to a variety of health problems or unappealing side effects. For starters, realize the reason our bodies store fat is to preserve enough energy to keep functioning when we don't have any food. When we don't eat what we need to function, our bodies freak out and start storing whatever they can in order to have enough energy later on when food is even more scarce. But after a period of starving ourselves, we're highly prone to start eating a lot again after a while - but our bodies don't react the opposite way immediately. Instead, they assume we're in a period of feast in advance of the famine - and instead of passing off all the sudden new food, it stores more for the next famine!

Worse still, the body stores energy - raw energy, like fuel - only in the form of fat. So if it thinks it might not have enough fuel in near future, it will do anything it takes to preserve its fuel source - even to the extent of burning up alternate sources of energy in the meantime. In this case - it burns muscle. Which sucks! Muscle requires more energy to maintain stasis than does fat - so just having muscle leads to greater caloric burn during any given day if the body believes it doesn't need to freak out. But if our body is eating muscle in an effort to preserve fat, our doubly damaging our efforts! And all this is after our metabolism slows way way down to stop any eating of itself that it can. Triple damage!

New rapid weight loss drugs try to combat some of these negative effects, but at the price of high heart rate - which is hardly healthy! But wait, there's more!

Rapid weight loss - especially in the beginning - is mostly water weight. But our body needs water to process the energy it does process, not to mention the basic regular cleansing efforts to washout impurities (like excess fat). No water means inefficient or reduced weight loss, which is exactly why we're supposed to be drinking 2 litres a day minimum.

Moreover, and a whole lot more unappealing, is the spectre of loose skin and gall stones. Loose skin results when we lose weight faster than our bodies can adapt. We end up losing a lot of weight, sure, but we don't build the lean muscle mass we need and we retain a layer of fat on the inside of our skin. Skin is a living organ and very elastic. It will survive if given the time to adapt. Gallstones, well, they're just unpleasant and have a high frequency in rapid weigh losers.

Healthy weight loss occurs at a rate of 1-2 pounds per week. That's ... awfully slow but its what our bodies can properly adapt to. I didn't wake up one morning suddenly 100 pounds heavier - it took me most of my life. Over many years, my body adapted to this burden. It needs time to adapt to the thin life too.

posted 7/2/07 @ 09:47pm | 0 comments

tagged: strategy fat hydration healthy lifestyle calories gallstones health problems healthy weight loss loose skin problems rapid weight loss

My Fatness Affects My Relationships

We obese people are masters of self-delusion. We manage to convince ourselves that we're not as bad off as we actually are, that we're happy with the way we are, that we're genetically destined to be fat, and worst of all - that it's no one's problem but ours, and it affects no one else. But that last one is the biggest lie of them all. By convincing ourselves that our fatness affects nobody but ourselves, we eliminate any responsibility to the people we love. Worse still, it shows a careless and thoughtless attitude towards them.

Yes, my fatness does affect me significantly in personal and singular ways. At some point soon I'll be making a list of as many things that I can think of that my fatness affects in my life. But on top of squeezing into airplane seats and inability to find good-looking work clothes and a host of other annoyances is the reality that I'm not the only one who has to deal with my being fat.

But in what ways and to what degree does it affect our relationships?

For those of us with life long partners of some kind, there is the element of physical attraction. Our bodies were not meant to be carrying around excess weight, and as such, generally we are not conditioned to find fatness attractive. Of course that doesn't mean we can't find love. My partner and I are deeply in love and crazy about each other. We're affectionate towards each other and, frankly, have a great love life. He says over and over again that he loves me no matter what I look like; but at the same time, he admits that he's not always attracted to me physically.

It's something I understand. After all, I'm not physically attracted to fat guys either, why should I place any special burden on him to be? It doesn't mean he loves me any less, he just doesn't have the eye candy he wishes he could have at home. Worse still, he feels bad for even feeling this way, even though I insist he be honest about it with me and with himself and that I don't resent him for it. He wishes he didn't find himself checking out other people, but the fact is, I can't currently fulfill this need that any twentysomething guy has. My fatness affects my partner's happiness, which is something I can't abide.

Our fatness also scares the pants off the ones we love. When I was in my preteen years, my family went on vacation to Florida. I'd packed by throwing whatever clothes I found into a suitcase. I was overweight at this stage, like most of my life, and it was particularly a time that I was struggling with it. Meanwhile, my father had been working for the previous six months to lose weight himself and had been doing a pretty decent job at it (I think we were all trying Atkins or something like that at the time). One morning we were getting ready to go out for a day and I couldn't fit into a pair of size 36 shorts - the same size my dad had recently slimmed down to. Exasperated, my mother declared "it's bad when your father can fit in your clothes but you can't!"

I've had that memory for well over ten years now and in a real way, it always haunted me. My mother was not prone to outbursts like this and certainly not saying something insulting, and yet there we were in a hotel room; I felt both surprise and shame, and she just didn't know what to do. I realize now that she really didn't mean to humiliate me, but rather my deteriorating health condition at such a young age frightened her - even as she and my father were getting healthier. Obesity places us at great risk of serious health conditions and even death, and no parent or loved one wants to think about such things let alone be faced with the evidence of impending doom every time they look at us or give us a hug.

Yet that's what our fatness does. Today, even as a grown adult, my father continues to worry for me. He gives me these mini doses of health tips, some good some bad but occasionally very direct about my need to lose weight. I really hate it. I resent them. And yet, I know, its because he doesn't want to lose me or see me grow even more unhealthy. I've been in the hospital once already this year and had troubles with my back muscles seizing (neither directly related to my weight, though my health was hardly pristine in either case).

I know my health concerns him because he loves me. I know that my partner hurts because he can't feel physically attracted to me when I'm obese, despite the fact he's deeply in love with me. Loving my family in return means losing weight - because my obesity scares, hurts, frustrates, or otherwise impacts my relationships. So in a way, as much as I'm doing this journey for me, I am also doing it for them - and that keeps me going.

posted 7/3/07 @ 05:30pm | 0 comments

tagged: motivation child obesity families health problems family inspiration physical attraction relationships spouse

Going For Some Community

This week I started checking out online communities for people losing weight and otherwise committing to fitness. There are few interesting sites out there, and over the last couple of years I've signed up for and tried out a number of online fitness journals. As a person who does this sort of thing professionally, I'm pretty picky. I find the sites with the greatest value to me are the ones with the most of amount of information I need but don't readily have available - especially calorie counts for food and exercise.

In a previous and utterly failed attempt at weight loss, I used an older version of FitDay. It was pretty ugly then, and while they've given it a fresh look, there are some drawbacks such as usability and a limited number of foods or exercises that I performed. But on the other hand, it does a great job of breaking out figures like metabolic rates and showing where you are on standardized measurement charts. Overall, though, I didn't enjoy using the site and dropped it.

Recently I started trying out PeerTrainer. The idea for PeerTrainer is to build a support group of others who are also trying to meet your fitness goals and/or are in a similar demographic (like single moms or gay new yorkers). Alas, while they have a good idea going, when you scratch the surface the site is really rather disorganized, difficult to navigate, and content-poor. (in addition to 40-50% of the screen being Google ads). The idea is there, the execution is lacking. And there's no place to track your fitness progress. It's really a glorified diary with a couple of community features thrown in.

But between these two, I found a nice site called SparkPeople. This site is much more robust in almost every capacity. From a few key metrics you plug in (weight, goals, timeline) it can calculate for you how many calories you should be burning per week, gives you suggested work out routines and meal plans, plus a wealth of content & articles. But that's not the half of it. Two major features are keeping me at the site - their excellent fitness tracking system, and the community features.

SparkPeople gives me a set of great tracking tools that lest me enter the foods I eat, track my work outs (both cardio and weight lifting), and track my goals in terms of weight, measurements, or other goals that I can define. Best of all, I'm not stuck into their defined universe of foods or work outs. If there's a food I eat they don't have on their list, I can enter it manually from the nutrition label and its saved for all time. The entire community's foods are available to pick from so the database of food counts is all in there ready to go. Same with exercise - if I do a work out that's not in their standard lists, I can enter it manually - either sets, reps, and weight for weight lifting, or time & calories for cardio. The flexibility and very easy-to-use interface has made a believer out of me. My only complaint about the tools is that their weight lifting exercises leave out almost the entire class of exercise using solo machines and overhead cables (like Nautilus) which is what I do almost exclusively. So it may not be tracking calories burned from those exercises, but other than that I find it to be pretty accurate.

There's also a fairly decent community aspect to the site. Every user can make their own Sparkpage (think MySpace for fitness) -- here's mine -- and on it include journal entries, pictures, lists of friends, goals, and other personal information. You can join any number of SparkTeams - which are groups of people based on anything from weight loss goals to demographic information. In each SparkTeam there's a basic discussion board as well as other group info. The community aspect of the site is not very robust and the discussion board stuff rather rudimentary, but it gets the job done.

So overall I like SparkPeople most and have dived into it. I still am using a journal in addition to the site - since the journal I can take with me to the gym and use as my main reference, where as the site keeps it all tracking from a higher point of view.

In any case, I find that doing this as part of a community is a pretty good way to go. I'm not sure how effective it will be for me, but its nice to know I'm not the only one out there doing this stuff right now.

posted 7/5/07 @ 05:41pm | 0 comments

tagged: weight loss motivation community discussion board encouragement fitday health community online community peertrainer sparkpeople

Losing Weight Day By Day, Week 3

Every time I've tried to lose weight, on any diet, the absolute hardest time is the third week. The first couple of weeks are easier - I have the motivation, the small wins, the excitement and anticipation of finally losing weight and meeting my goals. The third week, though, is where it gets tough. Boredom with the routine, boredom with the food, distractions from daily life, glimpses of the incredibly long road ahead, all come together to make for a difficult week where I take small liberties, cheat a little bit, give myself a little extra rest, whatever.

This was third week and true to form. It was definitely harder to stick to everything this week. It wasn't a total failure, but there things that didn't go as well as I would have liked:

• I took Wednesday (the 4th of July) off. For starters I was tired in general. Also, I was still sore from my very-strong weight lifting push over the previous weekend, so that ruled out doing weight lifting (should do it when you're sore from it - it means you haven't healed yet and doing more could do you worse). Also - I've had some problems with chafing and was sore so that prevented me from wanting to potentially make it worse with an hour of cardio.
• We ordered pizza and buffalo wings this week. While I did exercise a lot that day to (sort of) compensate, and we ordered just a medium pizza and I only had a slice or two, focusing on having the less sugary / bad cals in the buffalo wings, it was still pizza and buffalo wings. Incidentally, I discovered Papa John's buffalo wings actually have quite a lot of calories - much more than I expected.
• On Friday I didn't exercise, had a bigger than I should have lunch, and went out to dinner with wine to celebrate my partner's new job with some friends. I didn't eat poorly, thankfully, but I didn't eat well.
• This weekend we came out to my family's place away from the city - so I didn't really exercise though we did work in the yard and play golf - which is good activity if not strenuous exercise. We also didn't eat well, but I have been resisting old urges to overeat and eat a lot of junk food.

Not all was lost. I did join SparkPeople to help keep me motivated and encouraged. I also did some weight lifting on Thursday in addition to two great days last weekend. And though I started eating a regular lunch more often this week, I did okay eating just a small salad. Out here at my dad's place I've avoided the 12 cases of soda he has and successfully stuck to water. I may go down and use my old weight set later today as well.

So this week I don't feel so great about my progress. Though my partner did tell me today he's started to notice me losing weight, even though my measurement test yesterday morning showed no change in my stomach size (though I'm likely losing fat in other places first - like around my heart, arteries, etc). I also bought a scale this week - it arrives on Tuesday - so I will finally be taking an objective measure of where I actually am weight-wise. Now that's scary.

Even though this wasn't the best week for me, I can't let it derail me like it has almost every other time I've done this. I'm doing this day by day - one day's failures doesn't mean tomorrow is sunk too. Our bodies react to healthy and unhealthy stimulus rather quickly, so I can fail today and make up for it rather quickly as I get back on my road towards healthy weight and fitness. Tomorrow starts week 4. We may go play some golf tomorrow, and I'll be home by tomorrow night to get down into the gym and work off my recent badness and get myself going strong for the rest of the week.

posted 7/7/07 @ 07:29pm | 0 comments

tagged: exercise challenge struggle progress weight lifting

Making it Easier to Eat 6 Meals A Day

So I know that one of the keys to healthy weight loss is retraining the body not to fear famine by eating several small meals a day, rather than three larger ones where I'm prone to overeating. But I lead a pretty busy day to day life, where my 8-10 hour work days still aren't enough to get everything done. I barely have time to get lunch let alone eat 2 or 3 additional meals each day! And I don't have time in the morning to prep three meals nor the energy in the evening to stand in the kitchen for an extra hour.

Thankfully, these inbetween meals are not intended to be huge - a couple hundred calories at most (likewise, the main meals should also have fewer calories). That's pretty easy to accomplish if you're smart about it. Vegetables and Fruit can meet the requirement pretty easily - though I haven't gotten around to acquiring those foods and storing them at my office's kitchen. But this is also where meal replacement bars and shakes come in for me.

Because its important that eating my inbetween meals is easy and fast, I keep my lower drawer of my desk filled with Myoplex Lite shakes and a variety of GNC bars.

For a while I had GNC ProCrunch bars, but after a month of these things I got bored - they all have the same somewhat consistency and their 250+ calorie weight wasn't justified in the higher amount of sugar and high fructose corn syrup and relatively low protein. I finished them up and today bought some new ones, such as the ProCrunch Light and MaxPlex Bars- both around 180 calories or so and in the case of MaxPlex - really tasty.

I'm also a fan of the Myoplex Lite shakes - they have a lot of nutrients and are actually pretty tasty. The only downside of them is that they can be hard to mix. For Christmas I got GNC's Pro Performance Power Mixer - but it just couldn't handle the mix. It gets bogged down in the relatively thick mixture of Myoplex and when you're done there are still chunks of the stuff. Today I opted to get the much lower tech shaker - which does a fantastic job of mixing Myoplex. The shaker has a piece just at the top that looks like an apple core-er/slicer that breaks up the chunky mix and makes for a really great mix. Today my Myoplex shake had nary a lump.

The key to my eating properly is very much making it as easy as possible to quickly grab the food that is good for me and easy to eat, else I would never do what I should to eat properly.

posted 7/9/07 @ 08:55pm | 0 comments

tagged: strategy healthy eating calories GNC MaxPlex myoplex ProCrunch

Trying to Avoid the Five Year Failure

Diets can be dangerous. If done poorly, and in my opinion the vast majority are, they are demotivating, boring or monotonous, frustrating, restrictive, hard to follow, and many are all around stupid (seriously - all-grapefruit will cure your ails? sounds like snake oil). Worst of all, the vast majority of people fail - and fail miserably. The vast majority of "successful" weight losers regain most if not all or even more of their original weight within five years (Source 1 - Oft-Cited Study|Source 2).

The key factor in these failures are the fact that the dieters were restricting their caloric intake - meaning eat less, lose weight. Most modern diets on bookstore shelves follow the same theory - restrict something, lose weight. Eat Grapefruit! No Carbs! Don't mix XYZ foods! But restriction doesn't correct the primary problems - unhealthy eating and those oh-so-tasty yet terrible, processed foods. Most of us fatties simply don't know how to eat! We know how to shovel food into our mouths, but we don't know how to eat food for fuel - which is its primary purpose. Our instant gratification culture, grab-and-go fast food, workaholic and related home-laziness or lack of basic home skills like cooking all lead to a food culture that makes us fat, because we're dumb.

I'm trying not to be dumb. I really like this article from SparkPeople that talks about dieting should not be about restriction, but rather about building healthy lifestyles.

Building healthy habits can – and should – be fun! This is a positive thing you’re doing, making yourself healthy and happy at the same time.

Food was created for a reason. Each food has specific benefits and potential drawbacks. Even chocolate, in certain forms, is said to protect against high blood pressure and heart disease. On the other hand, if you eat nothing but grapefruits, you'll be loading up on certain vitamins, but missing out on a lot of other very important nutrients. The key is balance. Too much of anything can hurt. But not enough of everything can hurt even more.

It goes on to discuss portion sizes, proper choices, and addressing emotional eating - all things that a lot of healthy eaters don't even realize they do naturally.

There is a small place for restriction dieting, in my opinion. I am sort of going through a restriction phase right now in that I am monitoring my caloric intake and deliberately working to keep it at a certain level. My reasoning for this is that in order to correct a problem, one has to stop doing the bad activity and fill the resulting void with good habits. It hardly means I'm successful all the time - last night I had about a cup of ice cream after a bowl of cereal (my cardio made me hungry, apparently) when I should have just gone to bed. But I'm going through the process of restricting bad foods and habits - like overeating for the sake of overeating - in order to set myself up for building healthier habits.

But I don't want to be one of those who fail after five years. I can't ever be at this weight again - so I'm focusing on dramatic increases to my exercise rather than purely caloric restriction, while building healthy eating habits.

posted 7/10/07 @ 09:10am | 0 comments

tagged: healthy eating diet sparkpeople carbs emotional eating failures fast food grapefruit diet restriction dieting very low calorie diet

A Loooong Way To Go

Well, here we are in the middle of week four and I finally bit the bullet. I bought a scale. It arrived yesterday and has been looming in my bathroom ever since, waiting for this morning when it would be time to face the music. The good thing is that at 6 o'clock in the morning, my consciousness is stifled just enough to not come up with a dozen reasons not to step on that slab of cold, evil metal.

I have somewhat of an avoidant streak in my personality. I was thinking about this on my extraordinarily hot and muggy commute (heat index over 100 again today) and trying to figure out what might be the cause. I have no trouble dealing with stress & problems, and generally am quickly able to assess & redress crisis situations, and yet in a lot of ways, I avoid things I don't want to think about or don't want to face, and I do it consciously and deliberately. I haven't had a mirror outside my bathroom since I was 13 or so - at least not one that wasn't turned around facing the wall or stowed in a cranny somewhere. I close my eyes or otherwise look away whenever I approach and go through a glass (reflective!) door ... that's made for some classic moron moments. When I moved to New York over two years ago, I deliberately "forgot" my scale under the bathroom sink; it's probably still there and we've since sold the house!

When I started this whole journey of blogging I said I didn't know how much I weighed and I wasn't sure when I would find out. The fact is, I don't really like to know these things that slam it in my face so plainly. Mirrors remind me how I really look, how near to death I probably am, as if my ever tightening clothes and inability to buy new ones weren't enough. The number on the scale would be a clear indication of my terror, an objective measure by which I can be judged.

I grew up in a rather judgmental life. While my own family rarely (though not never) judged me for my weight and pitiful appearance, as a rule both sides of my family are certified in ritual verbal execution. And going to a small private school for most of my childhood education meant a small class with few targets - leaving the fat kid. I eventually took on aspects into my personality that would help me avoid the trouble of these types of people, avoid them, avoid their cruelty and avoid the reality they exist. My hobbies and skills became solitary ones; my steely resolve against the reality steadily developed until eventually I could tune the consequences of that hurt. In other words, I knew I was fat but I resisted the impetus to do anything about it. I became resigned to my fate, and the less I thought about it, the less it would hurt.

Which brings me to this current journey. I started down this path six weeks or so ago, and really picked up stead 3 and a half. In all that time I avoided my weight. I know I'm fat. I know I'm the fattest I've ever been. Why, I asked myself, would I need to know a specific number until I start feeling better about myself? Part of it was fear - fear of facing the simple three digit fact that carries so much with it. Part of it was not wanting to give up hope that I wasn't really as bad off as I estimated. But overall, I was fine not knowing, for a while.

But ultimately, after just a few weeks of doing this, I realize that I need to know that number. I need to have some objective measure of not how bad off I am, but how much good progress I'll be making. I need to be able to say "I've lost X pounds." I need to be able to set goals. I need to have something in my head constantly that says You Are This Fat, Put Down the Pie! Doing any of that requires facing the music, sucking it up, and standing on that damn scale. Well, first it required buying the scale, but then it required stepping on it.

So the result?

Well, not so great. The good news is that I wasn't heavier than the scale could read (this was actually a concern) - that's 330 lbs. I estimate, though, that when I started this whole thing I was about 315 lbs. Today I weighed in at 310.6 lbs. I happened to get a scale with a Body Fat detector thingy and that gave me a reading of 40.6% or about 124 pounds of body fat (oy!). The accuracy of the Body Fat detector thingy is unknown, but still, that's the neighborhood.

I have a long way to go. It's weird to think that at 280 pounds -- a weight that I felt stuck at for a long time and was at when I moved to New York -- will actually be pretty good progress at 10% weight loss. I aim to get there by Thanksgiving. But even so, that's a long way off, and thinking about such a long journey was pretty depressing this morning. Which is why I have to focus on this one day at a time or else I'll collapse under the weight of the journey to avoid collapsing under the weight of my body (that convoluted sentence formed in my head and I just had to use it).

310 lbs. And counting.

posted 7/11/07 @ 09:07am | 0 comments

tagged: progress avoiding memories mirrors omron scale weigh-in weight

My Childhood on CNN

Wait, I'm not crazy? Fat kids have a harder time in life emotionally as well as physically? The cruelty of other children taunting the obese can really screw them up? Seems like we have ourselves some actually researched evidence that yes, overweight and obese kids are both targeted (by peers and adults alike) and suffer for it more than average. The AP reported today the results of research from Yale and University of Hawaii. Key quotes and points are below, the article at CNN is here.

Overweight children are stigmatized by their peers as early as age 3 and even face bias from their parents and teachers, giving them a quality of life comparable to people with cancer, a new analysis concludes.

Youngsters who report teasing, rejection, bullying and other types of abuse because of their weight are two to three times more likely to report suicidal thoughts as well as to suffer from other health issues such as high blood pressure and eating disorders, researchers said.

"The stigmatization