Eating Habits

I'm still trying to eat when hungry, where hunger has physical manifestation (nausea, headache, etc). I'm usually able to skip breakfast and get though most of the work day with out eating anything substantial other than chewing gum and coffee. If I do that, then by the time I get home I'm ready to eat dinner (or anything I can get my hands on). And I will eat. I don't know that I eat any less, but if feels better knowing that I haven't consumed the calories for breakfast and lunch.

Dinner is a social thing. Family time to some extent, where as breakfast and lunch are more solitary pursuits. Also dinner is a creative outlet - I like to cook, bake, etc. If I'm extremely hungry after skipping breakfast and lunch I may snack on peanuts while I'm preparing dinner - not all the time, but in the first 15-30 minutes.

If I've eaten a lot the night before, I may be able to go all of the work day without feeling physically hungry. If not, I've noticed that a light lunch, cup of soup, or a small serving of left-overs, helps get me to dinner. This is instead of a large lunch.

All in all my eating largely revolves around what I eat at home as opposed to being at work or out and about. I've noticed that my late evening snacking has crept back into my routine despite my "desire" to eliminate it. I've started eating breakfast on the weekend, but usually only on 1 of the 2 days.

I still can't see myself on the scale but I have noticed that my pants no longer feel as tight as they did, I have a bit more energy and my belly area isn't protruding so much. I feel better about this route since it matches more of how my life actually is and not how it should be. Trying to stop eating when physically full (basically learning what "full" is) and snacking when not physically hungry (why am I eating then?) are the items I feel I need to work on next.

What's Hunger?

I've been fasting for good chunks of the last several days to better understand hunger, both mentally and physiologically. I found the following to be true for me:

• I can go more than 24 hours between eating solid foods without hunger becoming physically painful (a "stage 2" full)
• Being busy, physically and/or mentally, keeps me from thinking about being hungry/eating
• I'm amazed by how conditioned I am to eat at certain times (8, noon, 6)
• Feeling the need to eat is driven more by a state of being, e.g. boredom, anticipation, than actual physical hunger.
• I get to a point of being physically uncomfortable from being hungry after about 13 hours.
• Taking in fluids produces a full feeling that can last several hours
• Chewing gum has a hunger abating effect
• Extreme hunger involves feelings of nausea, a tightness in the throat area and a slight headache.

I'm trying to continue this experiment for a couple more days to see what happens.

Getting Hungry

I've learned a few things lately that I'd like to put down so I don't forget:

• At best, I can sustain about 4 months of the same weight loss activity/diet/program. After that, I give up and I can't get motivated to continue with the same activity
• Eating when hungry assumes that one knows what hunger actually feels like
• Exercising and eating more doesn't help with weight loss
• Weight gain may be the hardest habit I've tried to break - I've always though it was smoking

I'm sure there are more pearls I've learned over the summer but those are the ones that come to mind. I've managed to get away from my 10,000 steps a day, my food log, calorie counting and all the other activities I've been trying to do in order to keep the pounds at bay. As a result I'm sure I've gained back whatever progress I made (if I made any at all - I'm still on "E").

In reviewing my initial posts from when I started this last round of weigh loss I see I had an initial focus - understand hunger. Somewhere along the way I seem to have gotten off track amid the technique/activity distractions. All that activity (walking, counting, logging, etc) didn't help me understand why I eat what and when I do. If weigh fluctuation is a factor of calorie intake and exercise, then it stands to reason that understanding why I eat and in response to what makes the most sense. After all, limiting what I eat in the extreme (i.e. fasting) with no activity will result in weight loss - although that's not the most attractive way to go about it.

With that in mind I returned to a book I purchased on emotional eating. Since I never actually finished reading it, I decided to start over. In my (re)reading, it's obvious that I didn't take the critical step of understanding my (*gasp*) hunger. Right there in the first chapter is an entire discussion on why we eat when we do and what drives it.

Turns out that I eat because I'm board, restless, wanting a break from what I'm doing, socializing, and many other reasons that I've not discovered yet. At some point I guess I eat because I'm physically hungry, but I don't know that I have a good idea of what that feels like mentally and physiologically.

So, in the nature of experimenting, I'll find out what hunger feels like by not eating until I reach a point of physical uncomfortableness. Let my mind scream at me, but I'll eat only when I get, well hungry.

Measurable Progress

Yesterday I had a meeting to attend so rather than wear my normal jeans attire I grabbed a pair of khakis. After pressing I put them on. They felt different; snug, but comfortable. I have a pair of 46's that I usually wear but they are more loose fitting. Checking the size of what I had on I saw that they were my old 44's! That made my day.

This AM when I threw on my jeans I noticed that I'm almost to the point of using the third hole on my belt. When I started this, the first hole was about all that felt good. I've been in the 2nd one for a month or so. While the 3rd one feels a little tight, I can tell that I'm getting close!

Even if I'm not off "E" yet on the scale, my existing clothes are fitting better and that's measurable progress!

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.

Side Tracks

I'm experimenting with some tracking widgets so I don't have to enter walking distances or food logs in a blog post.

Since the walking program at work is over, I'm trying out Walker Tracker. Looks nice and easy. The widget shows graphs, posts, and stats.

For food tracking, Tweet What You Eat (TWYE) looks interesting. It leverages twitter posts on food items to crowd-sourced calorie counts. Don't know how accurate the calorie counts are but it's better than having to calculate them all by hand.

Summer Update

I've not posted in some time since I got discouraged over my lack of weight progress and that posting food intake was getting, well boring.

However, that doesn't mean the project is done. Instead I've been focusing on other aspects of loosing weight, mainly exercise. The place where I work started a walking program via the American Heart Association. The goal is to hit 10K steps per day. Everyone that participated received a pedometer and promised to record their total steps every day for a twelve week period.

Well, I'm closing in on the end of the 12 week period and except for a few rainy days, I've been pretty good at hitting 10K per day. I turned my evening walks into a routine and cover about 3-3.5 miles in an hour time frame. That usually puts me over the top of whatever I've manged to walk around the office and home.

In addition, I've started taking the stairs at work every time I need to exit our office area. We're on the 3rd floor so that's good exercise up and down the stairs 6 or so times per day. I allow myself 1 elevator ride per day. I usually take that when I first arrive.

I've also kept busy doing home improvement on the weekends. Home repair and wood working can produce a lot of steps. So much so that on most weekends I'm at 10K steps by the end of the day without going on my walkabout.

So what has all this done do my weight? Hard to tell. The scale still says "E" so I guess I'm still above 340. However, my spouse told me my stomach looked smaller and that I looked like I've lost weight. I've also noticed the following:

• I'm one size smaller on my belt
• My pants are looser
• Bending over at the waist is a litter easier (hey, at 6'5" bending over is a chore no matter how heavy I am)
• My face and neck area seem less "full", i.e. my double chin isn't so pronounced.

All this has me feeling better about myself despite not being able to crack "E" on the scale. I'm inclined re-start the eating side of the program now that I feel the exercise is something sustainable.