A new low

Well, for this year, anyway.

It's official: I've ZOOMED past the 10-pounds-lost mark, all the way to 11 since 1/1/12.

As both of you know, my body doesn't much care for giving up lard. So what's the secret to my fabulous success? (Please imagine me smirking. Eleven pounds in 14 weeks is, um, WAY less-than-fabulous for most folks, but I must be happy about it or the scale gods will MAKE ME PAY.)

I was able to maintain a seven-pound loss on South Beach, but moving to Phase II stopped the losses. And, frankly, I like whole-grain bread and rice and pasta, so moving back to Phase One felt like being put in a corner for eating normal food. "Nobody puts Baby in a corner."

Is that the kind of food relationship I want to nurture? I. Don't. Think. So.

While driving lately, I've been catching up on some of Jillian's recent podcasts. I heard something a couple weeks ago that we've all heard before. You may have dismissed it as I did, since there isn't anything magical or amazing or even terribly interesting about it. What she said was:

COUNT CALORIES 

So I have been, with a little help from the Lose It app. I've been using FatSecret for a couple years to intermittently record food and log exercise, but just as it helps to switch workout routines or have an occasional high-calorie day, I find it somewhat motivating to try a new way of tracking calories in/calories out. (LoseIt wasn't available for the BlackBerry, so I really should be giving all the credit to the new phone. Heh.)

What I like about LoseIt is that it works like a checkbook. You're subtracting food calories and adding exercise calories throughout the day, with the goal being a zero balance at bedtime. The difference between counting calories now and counting calories any other time I've done it is that I'm actually eating the calories I "earn" by exercising. Usually I think I'm doing myself a favor by sticking to the goal and creating a huge deficit. But, as Jeff and Russ frequently remind us, "Undereating always leads to overeating."

I've been burning a lot of calories lately, but as you can see from last week's summary it hasn't all been in the gym or on the road. I've had more energy to do things that need to be done outside. Yesterday I cleaned the garage, something I've had on my to-do list since we traded the old car for a new-to-us truck. I filled four large garbage bags with stuff; lifted, toted, carried and moved a boatload of boxes, and swept the entire floor with a broom and dustpan. It took three hours. Granted, I needed a bit of a rest afterward, but only a short one, after which I fixed dinner and went to two meetings.

Speaking strictly for me, I didn't have this kind of energy on South Beach. Some people find they do; that's not how it worked for me, at least after about a month.

To sum up, I'm not sure what the real difference is. I've created calorie deficits before and not lost a pound for weeks on end. Something's clicking, though. Let's just hope it keeps on doing it.

Sugar-free, but …

not completely South Beach compliant.

It was hard to stay on plan while I was gone over the weekend. Rather than go into all the gory details, let's just say I need to hit the reset button today.

Sigh.

I listened to a lot of podcasts while traveling to and from, and got all caught up Russ and Jeff, Jillian and The Moth. I actually had to listen to music the last 20 miles or so coming home. Considering I was on the road for a total of probably 10 hours, I was, um, pretty far behind.

I wish listening to podcasts was all there was to it. Unfortunately, I need to put into practice the ideas these folks are preaching and teaching. And I am, really, but as you can probably tell I'm discouraged after a weekend where I wasn't able to eat the way I need to.

I might give myself a pass on the official weigh-in tomorrow.

One bright spot of the weekend (I was visiting one of my grandchildren, so that was the true bright spot) was getting out for a run/walk Saturday morning. Six other women, all young enough to be my daughters, meet up semi-regularly and invited me to tag along.

They've been doing a 1/1 run/walk, but we mixed it up a bit and did some 3/2s, 2/2s and 2/1s. I'm so out of running shape. But it felt good to be running (the flat terrain and paved trail helped a lot) and the fact that I didn't die gave me a little hope that I might actually be able to get back to it again.

Today I will hit the gym and the produce aisle. I have some freelance work to do this afternoon, but tomorrow will be another day out of town. Including  another lunch out of my control. This is what real life looks like, and it's making me wonder whether SB is really what I need to be doing. It's pretty inflexible and I end up feeling bad when I can't follow it to the letter. The testimonials in the book were carefully chosen, I'm sure, to point out how easy it is to stick with the program come hell or high water. Or business trips or restaurant meals.

In a situation where someone else is doing the cooking, though – well, not so easy at all. When one feels bad about oneself to start with, it's probably not useful or productive to intentionally add yet another guilt-inducing layer to the scenario.

A good hard workout will do me good and give me lots of time to think. My e-mail was read and discussed on episode #111 of the Fat2Fit podcast, and I listened to it again yesterday. I haven't lost any additional weight since then (12/8/10, and isn't that discouraging!), but I also haven't been starving myself for a year, either. Russ and Jeff encourage their listeners to eat whole, healthy foods, just as Dr. Agatston does, but I haven't been doing much at all to keep my metabolism revved up by eating more frequently. And I'm back into the calorie-restriction mentality, which isn't the best place to be.

Yes, it's definitely time to reset, reboot, renew my resolve.

Friday Quote Day

I've learned only that you never say never.

~ Marina von Neumann Whitman

I'll tell you right here and right now that Marina von Neumann Whitman was not the first person to never say never.

Case in point: I'm tempted to say I can never lose weight again. My metabolism is so screwed up, my age is working against me, I'm post-menopausal, blah, blah, blah. But … I lost a pound in August.

So there. Never say never.

The Fat2Fit guys would be so proud of me. Slow and steady wins the race and all that.

A pound doesn't sound like much, and it isn't really. My weight can vary by a pound or more from morning to night. Not that I weigh myself morning and night. (I used to. I'm so over that.) During the month of August I weighed myself twice: the 1st and the 20th. I'm not sure why the 20th happened, but I recorded my weight in the FatSecret app on my phone, so there you go.

(Aside: One of the diet tips on FatSecret is: STAY AWAY FROM CAKE. Heh.)

I weighed myself yesterday and am going to try not to weigh myself again until October 1.

I bet you'd love to know how I lost all that weight in just one month, right? Well I think the secret was switching to soy milk. (All kidding aside, I'm a new soy milk convert, the light vanilla is delicious!) Pretty soon I'm going out on a limb and try almond milk, as well.

Don't get me wrong. I'm still using fresh cow's milk for mozzarella, cottage cheese and yogurt. But the occasional glass of vanilla soy milk has totally revved up that lagging metabolism and blasted away four ounces per week.

One serious thing I've been consciously doing is eating a yogurt/oat/fruit concoction for breakfast nearly every day. I was a little worried at one point that I was setting my day up for a fall, because the fruit is either homemade-with-sugar strawberry jam or peach preserves. However, after my spectacular weigh-in yesterday I can throw that worry out the window.

Some people call the concoction overnight oats, but I usually forget to mix it up and let it mellow overnight. So basically I'm eating half a cup of plain yogurt with a quarter cup of old-fashioned uncooked oats and a tablespoon of preserves, all mixed up and eaten quickly, so as not to dwell on the fact that I'm eating minimally processed oats. (Sometimes I add chia or sunflower seeds and sometimes I sprinkle the whole mess with cinnamon. But basically I'm eating glop.)

Really, it's not so bad. The oats meld into the yogurt, and fruit preserves can mask a lot of gloppiness with some juicy, delicious gloppiness of its own.

Are you doing something fun for Labor Day? I'm visiting family in North Carolina and planning to hit the farmer's market on the way home. Last time I did that I bought peaches; this time I'm looking for okra and apples. My okra harvest, as I reported earlier, was not a total crop failure, but was too skimpy to make pickles. I love okra pickles and they are worth the trouble to make. My neighbor's apple tree produces fruit only every other year, so no free pommes this year, but with only one eight-ounce jar of apple jelly left to get me through the winter, I think I need to snag a bushel.

I also might get some raw peanuts with the idea of planting some, just to see what happens. I'm thinking our soil/climate is a little too wet for peanuts, but I'm willing to throw some in the ground and see what happens.

I appreciate all of you who take the time to share your thoughts with me in the comments, and all of you who lurk, too. It's time for you lurkers to come out of the virtual woodwork. Don't be shy! I know you talk to real people, you can talk to me, too.

Here's to college football, cooler temperatures, maybe even a little rain to end the summer season. Have a great weekend.

Friday Quote Day

It's always too early to quit.
~ Norman Vincent Peale

Quit? Who, me? It's only January 21!

Nah, I'm not quitting, but just in case you're done, done, done working toward your New Year's goals, well, today's quote's for you!

Yesterday looked like the day before yesterday – a four-mile walk, calorie goal met and I logged everything. Today's intentional exercise will definitely be done on the elliptical. We have a tiny bit of snow covering a sheet of ice. And it's c-c-c-cold!

I've not done a strength-training workout this week, unless I can count moving a fairly heavy bookcase from my house to the second floor of the garage. My back and shoulders and upper arms would love to count that as a weight workout! If I do one today, it will be a lower body routine.

Let's see, what else … I got some knitting done while I was gone, but haven't touched the project since I got home. The older I get, the more time it takes to regain my energy after a long drive. I've been turning in pretty early. (Despite the fact that I don't have a nine-to-five job outside my home, I find myself only knitting in the evening, after dinner, in front of the television. What's up with that?)

I tried something new on the drive this time: I started listening to an audiobook and I'm so hooked on it I just downloaded another one. The one I'm working on now is Jonathan Franzen's Freedom. I was surprised to find that part of it is set in West Virginia, near where I live, actually. His description of West Virginia's drivers was spot on! It's a very long book – 24 hours total reading time. I'm torn between wanting to know what happens next and not wanting it to end.

The next book is Born to Run, which I've read about and which was reviewed by the Fat2Fit guys. Maybe it will get me psyched for running again.

Of course, with snow-covered ice, I won't be starting today.

Ya wanna take it outside?

Sometimes, even when it's cold and even when I have a cool new piece of gym equipment, I need to walk outdoors. Yesterday was one of those days.

I waited until mid-afternoon, when – theoretically – the temperature had climbed to its peak for the day, and did four miles, rather effortlessly. It helps me a lot to take the Fat2Fit guys with me. No matter how many times I listen, I hear something new, or I hear something and realize I can apply it to my situation.

If you're new here, the Fat2Fit philosophy is to eat the number of calories daily you would need to maintain your goal weight, according to your BMR. There are tools on their website to help you calculate this number.

(I want to stop and give a shout out to Shauna, who directed me to the F2F podcast in the first place. Brilliant! Thank you!)

New Years (and, to a lesser extent, Mondays) offer such hope and promise for changing behaviors which have held one back. Speaking for myself, of course! Heh. I began implementing the F2F philosophy in late November, but allowed myself to indulge a bit more over the Christmas holidays. Before 1/1/11, though, I was back in the saddle.

The most difficult and challenging aspect of this philosophy (they don't prescribe a "diet") is eating enough. After a lifetime of reading (in magazines and books) and being told (by doctors and husband[s] that I should eat 1200 calories per day to shed lard, it's hard to make myself eat more. And, frankly, I'm not shedding lard, but from what I've learned that's to be expected when you go from starving yourself to feeding yourself. (1200 calories is what a hospital would feed a 7-year-old girl in a coma daily in order to keep her alive.)

I have every confidence that lard will be shed. If not, you'll be the first to know.

At any rate, I'm not adding lard and I'm eating much more than 1200 calories per day – 1700 to 1800 as a rule.

It's wonderful to eat a filling breakfast, a decent lunch, a satisfying dinner, a couple of snacks and not gain weight. When I was trying to limit my calories to 1200/day, I would eat part of my breakfast before my walk, finish it afterward and not eat again until dinner. I would be hungry all day, tempted by "bad" foods and take out my frustrations on those around me. I was rarely satisfied and I thought about food all the time.

Not any more. When I'm lusting for a high-calorie treat, I either fit it into the day's calories or decide the calories aren't worth the cost. Or I decide I'll have it later – later in the day, later in the week or later in my life.

It would be much more difficult to change my lifestyle were it not for the little food diary I loaded onto my BlackBerry. Keeping a food journal has been shown to be a major predictor of weight-loss success, and it's also one of the hardest good habits to establish. I use the FatSecret app, but there are many others available for all the smartphones out there.

Why am I rambling about all of this today? I'm not sure. I don't feel like my enthusiasm is lagging, but maybe yours is. If so, I hope I've helped. It always helps me to realize that what I'm doing has benefits, that I'm working toward goals and that I'm more likely to reach them by taking it slow. I've done quick-and-dirty weight loss before. Just look where it got me.

The fruits of my labor

Planted in the spring, harvested in the fall, eaten January 1st! Yum!

Black-eyed peas. From what I gather – in a completely unscientific poll – you either like them or you don't. Or, if you're my husband, you think you don't like them, but you do!

I made Hoppin' John for New Year's Day, using the recipe from my tried-and-true Betty Crocker cookbook. (Surprisingly, the Southern Living cookbook didn't have one!) I added celery and Tabasco to the called-for ingredients, and used a diced leftover-from-New-Year's-Eve barbecued pork rib instead of bacon or smoked ham.

Why is Hoppin' John one of the traditional New Year's Day foods? Here's the answer. Sort of. It's one of those things that's kind of hard to pin down.

The only thing I forgot to do was keep a few of the dried peas to plant this coming spring. Or maybe I did and I'll find them when I start figuring out what I need to order this year. Seriously, though, these came from a bag I bought at Kroger. Much better value!

To round out the meal and add to our luck, we had carrot "coins" steamed in a little orange juice and seasoned with ginger, and beet greens, which I'd blanched and frozen last fall. We love beet greens, and I think it's so cool that the liquid in the bottom of the bowl is as rosy as a beet, even though the greens are, well, green.

So far, so good on the goals. I couldn't wait for the New Year, so December 31 looks just as good as January 1 and 2 do. I've walked each day, eaten around 1800 calories/day (slightly less, but who's counting?) and feel good about being able to keep it up.

Marilyn commented that I need to eat the proper number of calories, and I'm wondering if she thinks I need fewer or more? I used the BMR calculator at Fat2FitRadio.com (my new gurus), and 1800 calories also is in line with the US Government's Food Pyramid. I use the FatSecret BlackBerry app to track food and exercise; their website suggests 1700 for light activity and 1900 for moderate.

Compulsive? Who, me?

Lessee, what else. Oh. Yeah. Knitting. My husband's grey boot socks are finally done. That second sock (mitten, glove, slipper, sleeve) always takes longer than the first! I should stick to hats and vests. Heh. I need to shop the stash for wool for the next couple of projects. It feels so good to be knitting again! And while I am mostly a process knitter, the projects in my queue are all going to people I love, so it feels darned good to be productive, as well.

My other big project, which I started yesterday, is to move my computer to a different part of the room to make room for the elliptical, which should be here Thursday. I worked for an hour on this yesterday afternoon; another couple hours should get 'er done. What I've learned from this exercise is that I have too much stuff!

At one time I got interested in polymer clay, for instance, and made beads for precisely two necklaces. Now in the first place I wear very little jewelry, very infrequently. And in the second place I bought many colors of clay, a machine that rolls out the clay into very thin sheets and various other tools to make different shapes and sizes of beads. I'm headed to Tennessee later this month and it's all going with me. I'll put it in my granddaughter's craft closet, where I know it will be used joyfully.

There's more, but it'll wait for another post at another time. You probably quit reading when you clicked on the New York Times link anyway. Heh. If you're still here, thanks for reading such a long, boring post all about me-me-me, and hopefully I'll come up with something more interesting tomorrow.

I'll leave you with this: Wanna see my limes?

Welcome to the 21st century, Debbi

This past June our wireless phone contract with AT&T expired and we got to switch carriers. AT&T is fine for some folks, but we couldn't get a signal at the end of our driveway. Not that we made many calls from the end of the driveway, but still.

I asked local friends for recommendations and most people around here use U.S. Cellular. So I went to their store, listened to their pitch and when they dangled a BlackBerry in front of my nose, and said I could tether it to my computer for faster-than-dial-up internet service, I signed up.

The salesperson also casually mentioned this little USB plug-in thingy that would offer true 3G service. As long as my phone works here, he said, the USB thing would, as well.

Fast-forward to yesterday: Merry Christmas, Debbi.

I knew this was coming from the moment I left that store in June. Now I'm wondering what took me so long! Baby steps, I suppose.

For the past week or two I've been downloading the Fat2FitRadio podcasts from iTunes, each of which takes about an hour. I also have been using SpeedDownload to snag the first year, which the F2F guys are selling for $15 (well worth it). SpeedDownload lets me know the speed at which things are moving. Before the USB thingy? About 15K. After? 101K! Woo hoo!

The next step into the 21st century will be giving up our landline. I've really had to take baby steps on this one. Were I a single lady, it (and satellite television) would be gone, gone, gone. But my husband is not one for modern technology, and I have to respect that. (And he loves his MSNBC.)

(Case in point: While we were at the mall yesterday he decided he wanted a new music player. He's been using a portable boombox-type stereo when he works out, and now wants something with headphones. He decided the best thing for him would be a portable CD player and a set of bulky headphones. I tried to steer him to an iPod Shuffle – approximately the same price – but he wouldn't hear of it. Merry Christmas to my husband. Heh.)

So here I am, zipping along the internets, pulling up websites which were previously unbearably slow to load, downloading an audiobook (Jonathan Franzen's Freedom) from audible.com for the first time evah, and wondering what I'm going to do with all this extra time I'm going to have since I won't be sitting on my ass in front of a monitor for hours every day.

Aha! More time for sitting on my ass knitting every day… at least until it's time to start sowing and growing the garden again.