#22: V is for Vegetables

One of the biggest problems I have in eating properly is: vegetables. I don't like most of them.

I like peas. And corn. (Both of which are more 'starch' than 'vegetable'.)

And potatoes and sweet potatoes. (Them too.)

And tomatoes. (More 'fruit' than 'vegetable'.)

And onions and carrots and celery. (Yay aromatics.)

And...not a lot else. I'll tolerate asparagus and zucchini and squash. Can't stand broccoli or cauliflower or brussels sprouts.

This...is something I need to work on, I think. No good ideas, unfortunately.

#3: C is for Choices

"Success is made of hundreds of small choices. This is one of them."

This is the new motto. The current plan is akin to Alton Brown's; not to diet, but to change lifestyle in positive and long-lasting ways.

To that end, I have lists of things to do and not to do.

With that, the lists:

Daily:

• Fruit
• Whole grains

At least 3x weekly:

• Exercise
• Salad

No more than 3x weekly:

• Dessert (non-fruit)
• Red meat
• Pizza/Pasta

No more than 1x weekly:

• Dining out
• Artificial sweeteners
• Caffeine
• Alcohol

We'll see how this goes.

#2: B is for BMI

B is for BMI, the Body Mass Index. As with any single formula that attempts to describe a complicated situation, it's seriously lacking in providing useful sharp lines, but still can be handy for some uses.

For example: somebody with a BMI of 27 is listed as 'overweight', but may just be muscular, or large-framed. The categories are themselves suspect, with studies showing that people live longer in the 'overweight' range than the nominal 'normal' range.

And yet, some generalities are useful. Somebody with a BMI in the high 30s (like me) is seriously overweight and should deal with it. Somebody with a BMI in the high 80s (like one of the competitors on Biggest Loser: Australia) is massively overweight and in desperate need to lose some weight.

And so I'm starting a new plan on Monday. More details will come then.

WiiFit routine

We've had the WiiFit for almost two weeks now, and I've developed a bit of a routine now, which boils down to 'start at the top of the list, work down'.

I start off with yoga, doing three poses (6 minutes). Then strength training, usually the three exercises that 'match' the yoga poses I did (4-6 minutes).

Aerobics is where most of my time goes. Basic step, because advanced annoys me (3 minutes), and rhythm boxing - just unlocked expert, which is good for 13 minutes.

At this point, I've got a few minutes left. A balance game or two (finally got through the bubble balance for the first time today), and finish off with Lotus Focus (best time, 91 seconds).

Ooookay...

So, either WiiFit is having a delayed reaction, or threatening it with Weight Watchers scared my body into compliance, because I'm down over 5 pounds from two days ago, hit my WiiFit goal this morning, and dropped below 242 again.

One-week trend is still upward, though. So I guess unless that starts trending down soon, I'll need to look at WW after all.

(...think it'll work?)

Diet: Get Out The Map

So, the diet trend had been slowing for a while, and the assorted festivities (my birthday, July 4, etc.) over the past week pretty much put a nail in its coffin. The weight box to the right shows the gory remains: weekly trend up 1.25 pounds.

So now I'm trying to figure out what to do next. WiiFit will help, but I need to structure my intake better. The various versions of the Don't Be Stupid Diet have, in general, all run aground due to...well, being stupid.

Not sure what to try next. Yes, watch portion size, watch for stupid sugars and stupid fats, but...what else? Because clearly I like those stupid sugars and fats.

Part of me is wondering if it's time to go back to strict calorie counting, but that's just painful and annoying. (On the other hand, it is the one diet I can point to as actually getting me all the way down under 200 pounds.) Maybe Weight Watchers points or similar. Need to think about it some more.

WiiFit

Came home from work today to a WiiFit resting on the kitchen island. My mother decided that the family needed a pick-up after the numerous extraneous expenses that have cropped up over the past year - the water heater, the microwave, the tires, the CV joint...

Thanks, Mom!

So now the whole family is going through and getting initial scores. I got a fitness age of 43...not exactly ideal. But we'll work on it.

Diet Summary, Week 3

Bad week. (Okay, bad weekend. Dinner out on Friday, and then at the in-laws' on Sunday.) Beyond that, I've been getting sloppy, and it's showing.

Net weight change, Wednesday-to-Wednesday: up 0.1 pounds. Trend down 1.1 pounds, mostly on momentum from last week.

Think I need to tighten up a little bit and not be quite so sloppy about it.

Southwardly Beachish, Week 2

Actual recorded weight down 2.8 pounds, trend line down 2.0 pounds.

Seems to be working so far.

Vaguely Southernish Pseudo-Beach Type Diet: Week One

So, 1 week in on adding some South Beach-type sensibilities to the Don't Be Stupid Diet.

So far, amazingly enough, it seems to be working.

Trend line is down 2 pounds since last Wednesday. Today's weigh-in was almost 8 pounds under last Wednesday. (Just taking it as Wednesday-to-Wednesday, it's 1.6 pounds on the trend line and 6.1 pounds of daily weight.)

So far, it's been easier to stick to it on weekends than during the week. (Go fig. There's more junk food at work.) I'm not missing the snacks so much, although not having them on weekends makes dinner a bit more iffy. (We'll pick some good snack food up this weekend to fix that issue.) Snacks at work are more of an issue when I'm bored or thinking - I tend to go walking around the office when I'm trying to work through a design or implementation issue, and the microkitchens are a likely place to end up walking to. I've been looking at the snacks provided, then typically grabbing a diet soda and walking back.

I suspect that, in the medium term at least, I can live with this one. It feels...right, I suppose. It's taking the Don't Be Stupid Diet to a better level - instead of just watching portion size and number of snacks, it's paying more attention to the contents of what I'm eating.

As an example: today's lunch wasn't particularly appealing, so I made a sandwich. Picked the 12-grain bread instead of my more typical sourdough, put just a little mayo on - enough to taste and moisten, but no more, and put on turkey instead of roast beef. And the resulting sandwich was pretty darned tasty, and now I'm full.

So, how's it working?

Been trying the South Beach-influenced diet for a couple days. Still too early to tell if it's going to work, but the initial results are promising. Weight dropped the first day, by about 5 pounds -- I'd say most of that was water loss from bicycling, but I drank enough water to pee clear, so I'm not sure there.

Anyway, second day, weight was up 0.3 pounds, which is realistically within the error margin on the scale. So, it seems to be okay so far. We'll see how it holds up over the weekend.

Diet Update

Okay, so what I've been doing hasn't been working. Or, more to the point, what I was trying to do was not what I was actually doing. So, time to try something else.

Looked at South Beach, which seems to be the best of the 'ooh magic wand eat this super-special diet and get magically thin' diets. Unfortunately, I find I'm morally opposed to them, perhaps because I've used them too often in negative comparisons when describing Dave Ramsey. (Summary: there are two types of diet books, 'magic miracle diet' and 'eat less, exercise more'; likewise, there are two types of personal finance books, 'magic miracle money' and 'spend less, earn more'. Dave Ramsey is solidly in the last category.)

So I'm trying to steal some South Beach ideas, mix it into what I'm doing now, and see if it helps. Basically, avoiding the stupid sugars and mixing in some better carbs and fats. Hey, worth a shot, right?

Trending...down?!

If you look to the right, the diet box has something in it hasn't for a while.

Green text, saying: "Deficit 27 cal/day Loss 0.05lb/week".

For the first time in quite a while, my trend line is actually down long enough to have a negative weekly trend.

(Yes, I know, at 1/20th of a pound per week, that's a whopping loss of just over two and a half pounds a year. It's a start, though.)

Diet Plans

So, there's a box on the right with weight tracking, and the twitter is keeping a food journal. But the things showing up there aren't necessarily diet food...you may wonder "What's up?"

The problems with diets come down to two major kinds of issues: sustaining the diet while on it, and transitioning to maintenance when you're at goal. I'm hoping to ease both by, effectively, transitioning to a reasonable lifestyle now, and then letting the weight trend downward on its own.

Specific things I'm doing: restricting portions at meals. No seconds. Watch snacks, and choose reasonably. Bicycle when feasible to do so. Limit straight sugar.

The goal is that, living reasonably, when I get to a saner weight there's no transition to make. (Granted, it'll take longer to get there, assuming I do.)

Yay blog.

Finally got annoyed enough at myself to deal with the lack of blog.

The diet...mostly isn't right now. It's hard to diet when your employer provides free lunch and snackyfood. Although I'm ramping up the bicycling again, which should help some, and trying to be reasonable about food at work.

Daily food log is at http://twitter.com/kazrak.

Weight tracking is at Hacker's Diet Online under public account Epsilon Sinlaku. (There doesn't appear to be a way to create direct links to it.) The badge in the upper right shows the status over the previous week.

Coming up: a few archived things I've typed up, and assorted things that have been festering but haven't been sent out yet.