Exercise

I've mostly written about food in this blog . . . but exercise is part of the process as well.

My employer has a neat website: http://www.standingupforillinois.org/walk/default.php

The Governor of Illinois (I work in the Executive branch, so he's the top of the food chain in my organization) has challenged citizens of Illinois to walk 167 miles this year.  That's the distance from the Mississippi River to Lake Michigan. 

I'd been walking around the office last fall, but in January, we got logs to officially track our walks.   With measured distances.  (6 laps around the first floor hallway is a mile, 4 laps around the sidewalk on the outside of the building is a mile, once around the parking lot is mile.)   In January, I walked 77 miles.  In February only 62 (work kept me from walking as much).   With the nicer weather in March, most days, I get in 3 miles.  I have a mandated 15 minute break in the morning and afternoon, and an hour for lunch.  And a 15 minute mile works pretty well . . . I could go faster, but I don't want to be sitting at my desk looking like I need a shower.

I got a surprise earlier in the week.  Since I am over 100 miles already for the year, the Secretary of Transportation's office wanted to put my picture on their "Walkers Wall of Fame."  Nice to be recognized for something I would have done anyway.

By the way, since 167 miles turned out to be so easy . . . I'm now trying for 367 miles for the year.  According to Google Maps, that is the distance from Fort Defiance State Park at the very southern tip of Illinois to Navy Pier in Chicago.   Sounds like a good goal to me.

Although . . . I should point out that three miles a day on pavement has taken a bit of getting used to.  And I am writing this while sitting with an ice pack on my right Achilles tendon. . .  ow.

300 days

As of Sunday, my wife and I have been losing weight for 300 days.    It's a mind-boggling number, but we're keeping our sense of humor about it.

Essentially, this weekend was a "lost weekend" for the diet.  My in-laws came to visit us on Saturday, and we had a Sunday lunch meeting.  So Saturday lunch was turkey brats (on whole wheat buns), baked beans and regular potato chips.   Dinner, we let the boys make homemade pizza for us. . . again a "little" healthy -- whole wheat crust and turkey sausage, but regular pepperoni and cheese.

Yesterday we ate out for lunch, as I said, during a meeting.  We tried to be healthy, but . . . sometimes if you live in Springfield IL, you have to have a horseshoe sandwich.  (Or in this case, the smaller portion "Pony Shoe"

During our meeting, someone commented on the weight loss, and Karen hit on a great description:  we've now lost nearly 90 pounds between us -- so she says we've "lost a fifth grader!"

Upon the subject of legality.

Milestones are where you find them.  Last Wednesday, my wife passed a real one -- she's now lost 30 pounds.

Since I don't have any real progress to report, I had to find some.

And here it is -- for the first time in YEARS, my driver's license is telling the truth about my weight. 
I got a new driver's license in the February of 1999, and had just shaved off the mustache I'd had for most of my 20's, plus I had a new address.    So . . . I went down to the Driver's License Facility and got a license with my new picture, new address, and current weight -- 225.

I'm pretty sure I held that weight for at least a few years -- the purchase of my house both caused and allowed me to cut down on restaurant meals, and the first few years in the house I was doing a lot of finishing work and landscaping.  So I got a lot of exercise.  But somewhere along the line the exercise quit, and overeating started.

Anyway, I'm glad to be back down to what my license says.   Which marks 52 pounds of total weight loss.

Round and round

Sometimes, a change in lifestyle feels like a merry-go-round.  It's wise at those times to take a step back.  As of January 1, 2012, I had lost 37 pounds from my starting point.  (Up some from what was then my peak weight loss).  January was a pretty good month . . . we had a long weekend mid-month; and that included some culinary misbehavior.  But February 1, saw me 7.5 pounds lighter than January 1.

Febraury 1, I stepped onto the merry-go-round.  I managed to get down to my intermediate target of 50 pounds lost on Febraury 8, but then a series of full schedules and family celebrations sent me back five pounds up the scale.

I know these things, because I read through my "weight spreadsheet" where we record daily readings from the scale. . . right before I created a new version of it.

The new version is a reminder that as of this morning, we're back to Phase 1 of the South Beach Diet.  For the next 13 days, the grown-ups in our house will be free of any complex carbohydrates.   (We're expecting company on March 10, so carbs will be back on our table for lunch and dinner.)

Hoping for good results again, the last time we were on Phase 1, I shed 12 pounds in 14 days.

I'll keep you posted.

Of Scales and Swaps

It's been almost two weeks since my last blog post, but it's been a busy two weeks.

I wanted to reflect on a couple of really important tools on this weight loss journey.

First, the "other" scale.  I didn't own a kitchen scale until last May, when we added this.  At first, we kept it safe and sound in its box, but eventually realized we were using it so often that it now sits full time on the counter next to the microwave.  The South Beach diet is pretty serious about eliminating certain foods and limiting others -- but what I've found to be the most important part of losing weight has been strict portion control.

This little guy cost all of 19.99 at a local discount store.  It reads both grams and ounces, and the button on the right allows a "Tare" setting.  That is to say, I can put a plate on top of the scale, hit that button and the scale resets to zero, so I measure only the food, and not the container.  The scale is used a couple of times a day, almost every day.

The other tool is the swap.  We're regularly swapping ingredients for healthier alternatives. 

The perfect example of both of these was dinner last Wednesday night.  A local "Signature Dish" is called the "Horseshoe Sandwich."  In its original form it's a slice from a bone-in ham (shaped like a horseshoe, hence the name) served over a slice of bread with cheese sauce drizzled over it, and a scattering of french fries around it to represent the horseshoe nails.   In its modern form at most of the restaurants in town it's half a pound of meat of some sort, on Texas toast, with a giant pile of fries drenched in cheese.

My "swap" version on Wednesday was 4 ounces of ground turkey formed into a patty and fried, served on a slice of whole wheat bread, with 3 ounces of fries, and 1/8 cup of cheddar sauce with low fat cheddar cheese.  Still not the healthiest of foods, but the boy who requested horseshoes for dinner didn't notice the difference, and the dieters still managed to maintain weights that day.

Paying the Piper

Longtime readers of this blog may remember that what started this successful effort to lose weight was the unsuccessful previous attempt to lose weight.  In the summer of 2010 I had tried to exercise more and ended up with a lot of pain in my knees and ankles, which was later diagnosed as bursitis.

When I started the South Beach Diet in May, my doctor cautioned me not to try to exercise beyond walking briskly, until after I had lost 20 pounds or so, and I managed to do very well at that.

Saturday, we had a small family gathering, in which I spent a lot of time pushing children in swings or following them around.   So far, so good.   But . . . on Saturday afternoon, we broke out a football.   We didn't really play football; rather four of us in the "over 40" set tossed the ball around, throwing occasionally to my cousin's 4th grader or my Kindergartner.  But once . . . I caught a pass at the edge of the yard, and 9 year old Seth was coming for me -- so I broke and ran, dodging left and right and stretching out to really run for the first time in a long long time.  It felt great.   The comment was even made (and not by me) that I could really run without that extra 50 pounds.

Of course, by 10:00 that night both Achilles tendons were so swollen and tender that I could hardly walk.  By morning my left knee had joined the chorus of complaints.

However, I'm happy to report that repeated applications of ice, heat and Tylenol have allowed me to walk well enough to exercise at least this morning at work.  (I'll see how my morning walk goes before I commit to walking at lunch).

How many angels can dance on the head of a scale?

OK, I know the question is really "How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?"  But I don't have much use for pins at the moment. . .

Anyway, one of the countless people who have "Lose weight" as a New Year's Resolution was talking to me about our various progress at work this week and she was complaining about her scale.  I thought our conversation was important enough to write down . . .

Basically, we tend to think of a scale as showing a super-accurate, unvarying weight.  But I know better . . . and in fact, I know that my scale actually rounds off the weights.  So, you might ask yourself, where do the suspiciously accurate weight loss claims in this blog originate?  I figure that the trend is the thing, rather than the actual number -- that is to say, if the scale's a little off now, it probably was then.  So here's a bit on the care and feeding of MY scale.  Your results may differ.

First, confession time . . . I was a wrestler in Junior High and High School.  Wrestlers are segregated out by weight class, and weight makes a difference.  So wrestlers set a goal to get to the lowest weight they possibly can . . . and learn how to lean and shift their center of gravity to make the scale read as light as possible.  (Tip: for the old fashioned Doctor's office Scale, standing with your feet wide and pushing down hard with one foot or the other tends to make it read anywhere from 1/2 pound to 2 pounds light.)  I try to restrain these habits on my home scale. 

Second, I live in a house that was relatively cheaply built in the mid 1970's . . . so there's all sorts of soft spots in the floor.  I discovered by accident once that sliding the scale about 18 inches to the right of where we normally keep it in our bathroom will cause you to lose about 7 pounds. . . so we put the scale on the same place in the patterned tile every time.  Even with that, both my wife and I tend to weigh ourselves multiple times and try to pick the most reasonable and/or the one that the scale "settles on."  This morning, for example, I weighed four times, with a four pound swing between them.  The first was clearly unreasonable, a loss of 5 pounds since yesterday, the second showing a half pound loss, the third and fourth were equal at a pound and a half down, so that's what I recorded.

Third, as I mentioned, our scale rounds things off.  On our spreadsheet, my wife's weight frequently ends with .2 or .4 or any other even number, but never any odd numbers.  My weight, invariably, comes to either an even pound or half pound.

Finally, my home scale reads at least a little bit heavier than my doctor's scale.  Even though I'm wearing substantially less clothes on my home scale, and I weigh myself before I eat anything in the morning . . . and I'm fully clothed at the doctor's, and usually have had two meals and two snacks before I see him, plus most of a liter of water. . . I'm lighter at the doctor's office than I was that morning at home.

So you see, the weight that we record each day is a bit of an educated guess.