66,000 Calories

I think I found them.  No, really.  Now, before I get started, I'll say this:  I've been reading/hearing about the whole paleo thing for a while.  I'm not convinced this is all calories-in/calories-out.  It makes sense to me to pay attention to insulin levels (especially in my family).  But right now, I'm going to suss out the calories that have messed me up lately.

Working out--I was pretty good at getting in good workouts two to three times a week before the babies came home.  If you figure 500 calories per session (not a stretch, given my size and what I do), that's 1000 calories a week x 36 weeks.  That's 36,000 calories, or about ten pounds.

Now, here's the second part of the equation.  30,000 calories over 36 weeks is about 833 calories a week.  That's about 119 calories a day more than I need.  Can I say I didn't go over by 119 calories a day for that period?  No way.   I mean, what's 100 calories?  NOTHING.  A margin of error for me.  But if you eat it consistently, it will show.

I have a friend whose mother gained a lot of weigh over 30 years.  She really got big.  But if you did the math, it came down to 200 extra calories a day.  A candy bar a day, almost.

It doesn't take much.  So here I am.  The combination of lack of movement and lack of mindfulness got me back up.

I went to the gym today at 5:45 am.

(Thanks for your support, Ginger.)

Here I am again

I feel kind of bad for anyone who may actually be trying to follow this blog. I'm not here much. It's true that my life has gotten fuller and busier in the last year or so. But still.

In any event, please don't read this blog if you want advice on how to lose weight and keep it off. Apparently I don't know how to do it. I was perking along there for a while, but I've put on 17 pounds in the last nine or ten months. I can't believe that I've ingested 66,000 extra calories, but apparently I have. That or the lack of working out matters more than I thought. In any event, I'm pretty dejected. I'm not going off on a binge or anything, but it definitely makes eating right and exercising (i.e. giving a shit about yourself) seem extraneous and futile.

Yeah, bad day/week. But I walked to the train today. It's a (re-) start.

Well, shit.

So, over the last several months, I haven't been to the gym much.  New babies, etc., you know the deal.

My clothes have been feeling kind of snug lately, but I was able to convince myself that it was lack of muscle tone, not weight gain, that was making everything hang differently.  For a while, the scale backed me up.  I hadn't gained.

But today, the scale betrayed me.  Which is to say, it paid me back for ignoring it and for the mindless eating I have engaged in lately.  I'm a big guy, and I can eat a lot.  My BMR is high.  Apparently, however, I've exceeded it quite a bit lately.

You can slack in certain areas and never be found out.  If you take a longish lunch, no one may notice.  Hell, if you cheat on your taxes, you might be just fine.

But you can't fool the scale.  Or your waistband. 

The biggest difference for me lately is that I have been eating when not hungry.  To the normal folk out there in the world--the ones who don't do that--eating when not hungry makes no sense.  But I don't smoke, drink to excess, or do drugs.  So I eat, because I haven't yet figured out how to manage my anxiety. 

I know this is it.  I'm working on the learning part.  And now, I'm recommitted to listening to my body.  To remembering that food is fuel (and that that's all it is).

Whew.

Hi.  I've been out of the box for a while.  Babies, you know.  And my wife had surgery unrelated to the babies, which makes it impossible for her to pick them up (or do diapers, hmmmm).  So there you are.  I've been kind of busy.

How's the weight loss, Skip?  Well, there hasn't been any.  Happily, I haven't gained, either.  What's annoying, though, is that I have not been to the gym in a long time.  Thus, my body feels fatter and more gelatinous than it did.  I mean, it probably is.  The good news is that my body responds pretty well to exercise.  I'll go back and I'll trim down pretty easily.  What I want to do is go back.  When things settle down at home (and they will), I will.  (I've gone a few times.  It's nice to go, and I'll be back.  I actually miss it.  That's a relatively new thing in my life.)  Given the past year, it's a miracle I'm not back up.  Seriously.  I tend to gain weight in times of stress (eating my feelings!).

Lately, though, I've been feeling the effects of food creep, and I've been all too happy to eat when I'm agitated.  I would like to stop both.  Today, I started tracking again at livestrong.com.  Tracking is good for me.  It's pretty easy for me to forget what I've eaten and go overboard.  Of course, I remember everything about 2:00 a.m.  That's pretty much when I reflect on all my failings.  If I can make it to 4:00, I can sleep through the night.  Call it a renewed commitment.

When I lost 40 pounds in 2010, I was amazed at how much of a difference it made in my life.  Forty is a lot.  It doesn't alway feel like a lot, because I could lose another 100 and still be thick.  But forty took me down almost three sizes in pants.  That's pretty cool.  Another forty or fifty would be even better.  That's the goal.

Slow and steady will work, I think.  I'm going to get back to the gym (three times a week should be effective and doable), and I'm going to stop eating crappy food (delish though it might be--and some of it is).  Nothing fancy.  But I'm ready for the next fifty.  Wish me luck.

Primarian

So after several days, nearly a week, here's what I have to say about eating Primarian.  I am rarely ravenous.  Mostly I get hungry enough to realize it's dinner time.  This is good.  I don't know if I feel better physically by getting rid of most flour-based carbs.  Stay tuned for that.  What I do know is that it's really, really hard to get enough calories if you're a large person, as I am.

I believe that you should eat at least your BMR.  Mine is around 2600.  If I were in a coma, the hospital would give me 2600 calories of something, just to keep me alive.  This week, I have eaten a lot of protein, fruits, and vegetables.  At least 1.5 ounces of walnuts and/or almonds a day, too.  And frozen yogurt with frozen fruit (so glad to have rediscovered frozen fruit.  I have had a very hard time hitting 2600.  Other than that, I'm good.

I don't want to lose more muscle than necessary on the way down.  That only compromises one's metabolism.  But I do want to lose.  I've seen some movement on the scale.  It's up and down within a week, but it seems to be on the low side.  This is good.  I've sort of revised my goal to losing another 20-25 pounds before the babies come.  I can do that, right?  August?  That would get me solidly in the xxl range.  I would like this.  It opens up a whole new set of options for buying clothes.  Most mainstream places have xxl clothes for men.

The thing I've decided to do is eat more dairy than would constitute a strictly primarian diet.  Milk is part of farm culture, and there's pretty good evidence that adults shouldn't be drinking or eating dairy anyway.  But it's a decent source of decent calories, so I'm going to stick with it.  Low fat versions, of course, to stay away from saturated fats.  But yeah, I'm keeping that. 

This week I've been around 2300 calories a day.   We'll see how that goes.  My fantasy is that all this protein combined with some weight lifting will keep my muscle where it is.  Cross your fingers.

Paying attention

This will sound like a complaint and it--well, it kind of is.  Mea culpa.  I have hit the wall.  A sick wife and sick dog finally took their toll, and I am sick.  I have a wicked sinus infection, and I am wiped out.  I didn't even go to work for two days.  That's how you know I'm sick.  I have a very strong guilt complex.

Anyway, here's something I've learned.  When I don't feel good, I tend not to take great care of myself.  You can't even imagine the bad stuff I ate yesterday.  It wasn't even very good.  And such small portions!  (Right.)

I figure yesterday was worth something like 3400 calories.  That's about 700 more than I'm supposed to have.  (I'm a big guy.).  I say "I figure" because I tracked nothing yesterday.  I just have not had the energy to do anything, and I couldn't bear the hassle of tracking.  Funny, because it's not particularly hard.

Still, I am, for the moment, the one who has to keep the house running.  (I don't resent it.  I mean, I have my moments, but they are truly only moments).  So I went to the grocery after I saw my doc (Z Pack!).  DiGiorno has a new thing--frozen pizza that comes with breadsticks.  Did I get it?  You betcha.  Did I know my wife wouldn't want it--of course.  She doesn't eat red meat.  The good news is, while I ate the whole pizza (1800 calories!), I didn't eat the breadsticks.  I'm ok eating the occasional giant meal, but for 1800 cals, I wish I'd ordered from my local place.  This one wasn't that good.

It's a new morning.  I am feeling marginally better.  Oatmeal for breakfast, and I am going to make sure I don't eat a bunch of crap out of boredom or self-pity.  I'm going to track this stuff, too.  We'll see how it goes.

Food Porn

Is it eating more or the little rotating staircase that kicks my ass?  Either way, I'm down a bit.  Yesterday was a BIG day.  HUGE.  In terms of eating, anyway.  I would not call it a binge, because it was not driven by emotion.  Rather, I just gave myself a day away from the obsession.  Pizza with my stepson figured into it.

Speaking of emotion, however, because I often do.  This has been a pretty challenging week.  The biggest deal to me is that one of my dogs--the first dog I ever had as an adult, in fact--has bladder cancer.  He's a goner.  He's on chemo pills which are supposed to stop the progress of the disease.  The vet says that will buy him four to six months of good quality of life.  (Reading between the lines, I assume this means the pills will not actually arrest the disease process.)

This is the kind of situation that would historically throw me off the rails.  What I've found, though, is that I have mostly not been interested in eating when I've been upset about this dog.  In fact, there have been instances in which I could barely bring myself to eat because I was sad about him.  I consider this the zen miracle. 

I guess that my  eating habits have really become habits.  Friday, someone brought doughnuts into the office.  I like to go look.  I consider looking at the goodies food porn.  But Friday I was in a state--overtired, overwrought--and I thought, fuck it.  So I went to look, with every intention of taking at least one doughnut back to my desk.  But I was unmoved.  Nothing there looked that good.  Don't get me wrong--they were fine-looking doughnuts.  I just didn't care.  Apparently, the porn quality to them was plenty satisfying for me.

So there it is--movement of a sort.  I can be sad without eating.  Who knew?  I hope that it will apply in all areas of my life at some point--stress, boredom, whatever.  Maybe it already does.

What to do

Ok, I'm in maintenance.  Sort of.  I'm doing everything I'm supposed to do.  I'm eating plenty (like the fat2fit guys say to do), and I've been working out pretty regularly.  But this week, as of today, I'm up.  On October 23 I was at 323. On November 27, I was at 319.2.  Last week, 322.4. Today, 326.8.

As I write this, I realize that it's not a huge swing.  At the margins, when you're this fat, six or seven pounds doesn't mean much, size-wise.  It would be a much bigger deal if I'd gone from 219 to 226.  (A man can dream.)  Even then, not horrible.  But there is no way I have had 14,000 extra calories in a week.

I've changed up my workouts this week, too.  I've been working out more, and I finally got away from the elliptical and the bike.  Now, I can do the elliptical for an hour at a good pace.  I'll get bored before I get tired.  So I got on the miniature staircase that is the new Stairmaster.  Ten minutes the first two times.  Fifteen yesterday.  That thing kicks my ass.  I will keep doing it along with the elliptical.

I think my legs are bigger after a few times of this.  I'm either retaining some water or I've built some muscle.  The former is probably more likely.  Everything I've heard and read says you can't build muscle when you're also losing fat.  I don't care so much about building muscle.  I want to retain what I have, though.

Anyway, this is very frustrating.  When I step back, I realize that my clothes fit, and I am moving well.  I don't want to do this in an unhealthy way.  But damn.  Tony (theantijared, at right) lost 200 pounds in a year.  He looks great (though he works out more than I would).  And Sean (Daily Diary at right) is down almost 300 pounds in two years.  Maybe I shouldn't compare myself, but I'm big enough that the weight should come off.

I've been trying to find articles about a body's adjustment after a 10% loss, which is what I've done (twice!), but I haven't seen anything.  I think it would be helpful if I found something that said after you drop 35 pounds, the body needs six months to regroup.  If that happens, I'll let you know.

Time for coffee.

7 Pounds?

I lost 7 pounds Friday night.  Yes, in one night.  Thank goodness, too, because I was up a whopping 9 pounds from last Saturday morning.  It was apparently all retained water.  At least 7 pounds of it, maybe 8.  I was just a bit freaked out by it.  I really was.  I'm still not happy about the other two, but given my size, two pounds at the margin is probably not much to worry about.

I have noticed a slight increase in my total calories.  Nothing crazy, but nowhere near the 14,000 calories that four pounds (for example) would require.  Not even the 7000 calories that two pounds would require.  Not if the 2700 calories that Livestrong says I should be eating to lose weight is the right number.  So, why the plateau?  And what the hell is up with the water retention?

I recall having read somewhere that if you drastically cut calories to lose weight, you cut your metabolism by 10%, even if you regain the weight.  I don't know if I have that right, but I have done that twice in my life, and I was eating very little.  Up to 1500 calories each time, but no more.  The first time, my doctor gave me that number.  The second time I was really eating 1000 calories until I turned 21 and could drink beer legally.  So it's possible I damaged my metabolism.  I don't know if it comes back.

It's also possible that I didn't damage anything, but that my body just doesn't need 2700 calories.  So I cut back to 2600.  We'll see how that goes.  The danger in eating too little is that you will waste muscle instead of losing fat.  With less muscle, you compromise your metabolism, since muscle is the best furnace you have.

A little less might help.  We'll see.  I've been within three pounds of my current weight since August.  Great, I'm in maintenance.  (It's not a bad thing.)  But I want to drop 100 pounds.  For real.  It's about more than the clothes, suddenly, too.  Twenty to start with would be great.  And then 80 more.  And then, maybe another 20.  We'll see.  But I'm tired of the plateau.  It's hard to keep in mind the fact that I have dropped just about 40 pounds this year.  That's a lot.  I've said it before--it doesn't feel like a lot, because I have so far to go.  But it's plenty.

Today was in the 80s here in SoCal.  Hard to believe.  I took the opportunity to take a long bike ride down the Santa Ana River (which is all concrete).  I went about 13 miles in an hour.  The first 40 minutes were pretty easy.  But I have to say, it wiped me out for the rest of the day.  I liked doing it.  I want to do more.  I want to be able to do physical things.

When I was making the transition from junior high school to high school, I decided not to try out for the marching band.  Make any jokes you wish, but I imagined the band would be fun.  I didn't do it because I honestly didn't think there would be a uniform in my size.  I couldn't deal with that.  So I bagged the instrument.  That history came into my head today.  Don't know why.  I guess I don't want to live my life that way--being unable to do things because I ate too much.  I don't need to be fat now.  I need to have options.

Learning

Here's what I have figured out.  I can say no to just about any food.  But there are some foods that I find it nearly impossible not to gorge on.

We saw Harry Potter over the weekend.  My wife and I split a large popcorn (sometimes we have popcorn for lunch at a movie).  I felt as though I inhaled most of the bag (so did she, but she didn't have more than I did).  I understand that such a bag of popcorn is 600 calories.  All things considered, that's not that bad for as much as there is.  But I'm glad that I didn't know about the free refill.  I would have gotten it.  It was great stuff.

Same with chips.  The Terra Exotics.  Forget it.  I can't have them in the house.  I will eat them all.

Spinach and artichoke dip.  Forget it.  I can eat vats of it.  Better to have an actual artichoke.

I'm up two pounds now from Saturday.  Arguably, it's because of the salt intake.  I have not eaten an extra 7000 calories in the last week or so.  But it's still disconcerting.  I feel as though I've been a little lax lately, going over my caloric max a few times, just a little.  But still.

Tonight, dinner was a couple of garden burgers on bagel thins.  So far so good.  I'm trying to keep in mind how nice it is to take care of myself.

Maintenance

Ok, I'm not really in maintenance.  I'm losing very slowly.  I'm ok with this (mostly).  It hit me that I dropped between 35 and 40 pounds in, say four months, from April to July.  This was at least 10% of my body weight.  That's a lot.  Right?  It doesn't feel like enough because I have a ways to go.  But it's a lot.

I also haven't been exercising regularly in the last few weeks.  Part of this is because of my work and sleep schedule.  Part of this is the whole back injury thing (much better, thanks).  Sleep is key to everything for me.  If I don't sleep well, it's easy for me to feel a drive to eat poorly.  It also tends to fuel depression in me.  I know that lack of sleep promotes weight gain.  If I have to make a choice between sleep and working out, sleep will win, and I don't feel bad about it.

But I like working out.  I don't like planning it, but I like it once I'm there, and I like having done it.  Everything hangs better.  I'm going today.  Didn't sleep well, so I'll need a nap, too.

So, I have a confession to Weight Watchers.  I haven't tracked points in almost a month.  I've been tracking calories on Livestrong.  It's got a good food database, and the price is right.  I made the transition because I've been reading about BMR and caloric need, and I decided that WW, which allows a max of 44 points (plus an additional 35 a week) might have been giving me too little.  (Want to eat a lot more without putting on weight?  Gain 100 pounds.  No wait--don't.)  WW's point values vary, but 50 calories per point is a good average.  That makes 44 points about 2200 calories.  Every BMR calculator I looked at puts me 400-500 calories higher than that.  So I decided to track both for a while and see where I was.

As a practical matter, there wasn't much difference.  WW puts more emphasis on fat and fiber than simple calorie counting does.  Livestrong is interesting, because it calculates the percentage of fat, protein, and carbs you're eating.  I tend to eat pretty low fat, but arguably not enough fat or protein.  (I bought some nuts this at the grocery yesterday.  This should help.)

I might stop WW altogether.  Meetings on Sunday morning at 8am are tough (though I'm awake right now.  I could go).  But I've been doing pretty well on my own.  Even yesterday, when I felt a great desire to eat all manner of crappy food, I mostly didn't, and I stayed on target calorically.  So far, I guess, I just want to be healthier than I have been.  Who knew?

Today, I will measure--arms, waist, thigh, calf, neck.  I wish I'd tracked these from the beginning.