Weight Loss 2.0

It's close to 10 years since I changed up my eating & lifestyle habits. Over the course of the intervening years I managed to loose a fair amount of weight - sub 290 at times - as well as gain some back.

At this 10 year mark there are a number of positive changes that are still with me:

• I eat a fair amount of healthy, prepared from scratch meals/food
• A good portion of my food is from a CSA - organic & locally grown
• Refined sugar from drinks and food is absent from most of my daily diet
• Exercise is part of my weekly - if not daily - routine:
• bicycle 17 miles 3x/week during the spring-summer-fall
• swim a mile or more 2-3 times/week during the winter - all at once or in stages
• perform HIIT intervals 2-3 times/week using hand weights, medicine balls, kettle bells, and sometimes just body weight
• Overall my health numbers are good - blood pressure, cholesterol, A1C, etc - all in normal range

Some new things that I'm doing:

• I track my activity, exercise, etc w/an Apple watch
• I hit my activity goal most days, except for the weekend
• I work with a health coach - doing that over the last 2 years

Some not so good things:

• I find myself close to where I was in April of 2010 - 318'ish lbs
• Processed food has made its way back into my diet at least once per week
• I go through periods of snacking on refined sugar treats, peanut M & Ms mainly
• I've gotten away from AB's "list", i.e. every day foods, 3x/week, 1x/week
• Alcohol consumption has increased a fair amount
• Nutrient dense food makes up less of my diet - no avocados, fiber supplements (flax seed, psyllium husks)
• Gotten away from green tea & soy milk and back to coffee, milk
• Processed grains - flour from home made bread, etc are in my diet
• I don't write about what I'm doing/seeing/trying

Those are the major ones - there may be a few others but those popped into my head as I re-read entries from 2009 - 2011.

My health coach encourages me to set weekly goals and then about every 3 months set some more longer term goals. Mainly I've focused on staying on my exercise routine or goals related to it - how far to bike, swim, etc and some food related goals. What I've noticed is that exercise alone won't get me to loose weight - I need to recapture the food practices that helped me go from 351 to sub 290. I need to set weight goals to accompany the exercise and food changes.

For 2019 I'm challenging myself to the following:

1. Incorporate nutrient dense foods & supplements into my daily diet
2. Incorporate daily servings of fruits and veggies into my daily diet
3. Minimize daily intake of refined sugar snacks and drinks, e.g fruit juice
4. Keep eating out and/or processed foods to no more than once per week
5. Keep hitting my activity goal of 1k calories/day
6. Decrease alcohol consumption
7. Drink green tea daily
8. By this time next year, be at or below 290
9. Write about what I'm feeling, seeing, experiencing, learning

I'll probably ask myself at some future date, why now, why again, what motivated you to do this - admittedly - again. Photographs. Over the holidays I was in front of the camera instead of behind it and the images I saw of myself were not what I wanted to see. Although I'm not as large as I was at 351, it's no longer moving in the correct direction. Maybe I should do that more often, hummm...

Dog Days of Summer

Here it is August and I see that then entire month of July evaporated with out a post. Between enjoying the outdoors during our brief New England summer and vacations, posting has not been on my mind.

On the exercise front I started jogging during part of my walking route. About 1/3 of the way is a slow to moderate jog while the rest is "recovery" walking. Although I had great hopes for this in early June, July's heat wave forced me from this new routine. I hope to get back into walking/jogging more regularly when the weather starts to cool again.

On the weight side I'm down to about 290 (give or take a pound or 2 - darn scale). That's 7 lbs in about 6 weeks or so. Not bad for summer time, traveling and out door gatherings. I feel pretty good about a pound a week.

That mark also (finally) puts me past the 50 lb loss mark! So I guess I need a new goal - I'm thinking 280 would be a good target. I've got a 5 lb head start on the goal and hitting it would be 65 lbs gone! My target date is Oct 31. That gives me some padding in case I plateau out.

As far as eating patterns go, I'm getting a little tired of my current lunch rotation - salad with either fruit/avocado or sardines. I'm going to try using tuna instead of sardines and work the avocado in some other way. 6 months of salads is about to drive me nuts!

Super Foods

I was intrigued by the contents of those lists and wanted to know more about why those and what traits they shared. Some internet spelunking revealed that a number of them are classified as "Super Foods" 

• Avocado - fiber, folate, potassium, vitamin E, and magnesium
• Broccoli - fiber, folate, calcium, ascorbic Acid
• Low Fat Yogurt - protein, calcium, potassium, magnesium, zinc
• Soy - folate, iron, potassium, vitamin E
• Sweet Potato - fiber, potassium, magnesium, 
• Tea - no calories, helps with blood sugar level
• Fish - omega 3 fatty acids, calcium, selenium, potassium, cartenoids

I also went back and watched again the "Live and Let Diet" episode and realized that AB says why they are on (or not on as the case may be). They are nutrient dense as opposed to energy dense. Most sugary foods (well those contained refined sugar and derivatives) have lots of energy but little in the way of substance. The body quickly digests that stuff and stores it as fat - assuming it doesn't need it right away as energy.


Hence while the eating methodology (I'm not going to call it a diet) is naturally low in sugar, not all sugar is outlawed. Sugar from fruits, veggies, and even soy milk are OK. A natural consequence is that the blood sugar levels naturally come down and as a consequence the vicious refined sugar cycle binge is easier to manage.

Smoothie Facts

I've been intrigued by Alton Brown's "4 lists" and how it applies to diet and daily nutrition, in particular his smoothie recipe. I'm sure the entire list works together but I don't think I can digest the entirety of it all at once (if you'll excuse the pun). BTW the liquid measurements in the recipe are by volume not weight.

Right now I'm using a variation on AB's recipe:

• 4 oz (by volume) Soy Milk - the "fat included variety"
• 4 oz (by volume) V8 Fusion Pomegranate and Blueberry Juice
• 3 oz (by weight) mixed berries (blue, raz and strawberry)
• 1 oz (by weight) banana

The FDA food pyramid indicates that as a male I need 2 cups of fruit per day or 4 servings since the FDA considers 0.5 cups to be a single "serving". I measured out 3 oz by weight of the berries and that was nearly 1 cup. Adding in 1 oz by weight of banana and the cup measure looked full. Adding in 4 oz of the juice and that's an additional 0.5 servings of fruit (figuring that a full 8 oz by volume is 1 serving of fruit and veggies each). Doing the math my smoothie contains 1.5 servings of fruit and 0.5 servings of veggies.

The soy milk is new to me (and kinda tasty I might add) and according to the FDA and AHA may have benefits in the cardiovascular and cholesterol areas (soy milk has zero cholesterol). Right now I'm using the "full fat" version but will try the "low fat" kind for comparison.

Adding my variation together for calories I'm at 50 each for the soy and juice, 22 for the 1/4 of a banana, and about 53 for the fruit. Total 175 calories for 12 oz of food. I may try adding another 1/4 of banana to the recipe and perhaps another oz of berries. At that point I think I'm consuming all of my fruit requirements and 0.5 of a veggie at breakfast.

Thanks AB!

I Ate How Many Calories?

For the last couple of years I've taken over the task of weekly menu planning and grocery shopping. In theory this should allow me to better control the food that enters the house and what/how meals are prepared. In theory I should be able to control the family calorie intake to some degree.

Theory works better than practice. Last night I planned baby-back ribs and ate 4 - 2 rib sections; 8 ribs in all. After eating I added up what I ate and posted it to TWYE. Since I'm just starting there, I wanted to see how good their crowd-sourced calorie counts were. So I did a little estimating on 8 ribs - gack over 1000 calories when the BBQ sauce was included!. That put me over the 2500 mark for the day.

It also got me thinking about how I've been going about this meal planning process. I make out a menu, shop, make, eat and only then calculate the calories. Seems backwards now that I think about it.

So starting today I'll "pre-plan" my calorie intake as much as possible. If I don't know how many calories something has in it, I'll find out before I plan/make/eat it. I don't want to be a slave to calorie counting but I do need to have some idea of how much something has in it before I eat it. Especially if I'm going to eat something with a lot of calories in it. That way I can do some creative planning on how to eat for the day.