Category Archives: Weight Loss

I ordered a FitBit

fitbit

It gives you a severe electric shock whenever you eat sugar. JUST KIDDING! Hahahaha, oh that look on your face was priceless.

This purchase actually happened yesterday before The Moderately Great Weight Loss Plan. I just want to say that now, in case someone is tempted to jump on me for Doing Something New. Someday I’ll get lambasted for Doing That Annoying Capitalization Thing, and I’ll blame it all on Winnie The Pooh. Who had a problem with sugar, I’ll have you know.

(I’ve been like this all day, sort of rambly and tired and battling a major headache. I might be getting sick. I apologize ahead of time.)

I bought the FitBit after doing some research on the BodyBugg, which my friend Saska owns. The weird thing is that there exists a gadget that gives you data about your body, and I didn’t get one the second it came out. Where was I? Reading Milne?

She loves her BodyBugg, and has talked about it before at her own blog, and I’m always THIS CLOSE to ordering one, but then I decide that it’s too expensive. It’s $200 to purchase, and then you need to spend money every month on a subscription (one blog said it was $15/month), which I find frustrating. Any sort of device that collects my personal data seems like it should be mine after I buy it. I shouldn’t have to keep paying to get the information it’s collecting on me. Not to mention, while it’s supposed to work with the Mac, a read a dozen reviews of people complaining it didn’t. So I kept looking, and in the Amazon forums for the BodyBugg, someone mentioned the FitBit.

So what the heck does it do? From the website’s FAQ:

The Fitbit Tracker contains a motion sensor like the ones found in the Nintendo Wii. The Tracker senses your motion in three dimensions and converts this into useful information about your daily activities. The Tracker measures the intensity and duration of your physical activities, calories burned, steps taken, distance traveled, how long it took you to fall asleep, the number of times you woke up throughout the night and how long you were actually asleep vs just lying in bed. You can wear the Tracker loosely in your pocket or clipped to your clothing, even bras.

Calorie data from the Tracker is very similar to those from energy expenditure measurement devices used in clinical research. The Tracker will give you a good sense of how your activity levels change from day to day.

The Tracker is also one of the most accurate pedometers. We’ve tuned the accuracy of the Fitbit step counting functionality over hundreds of tests with multiple different body types. For most wearers, the Fitbit should be roughly 95-97% accurate for step counting. We spent a lot of time ensuring that this accuracy is achieved even when you wear the Fitbit loosely in your pocket.

Sleep data from the Tracker correlates very strongly with results from polysomnograms found in sleep labs.

It’s an amazing little device, and it costs just $99. The website that it delivers your data to is free to access, and you can even set up your account and begin tracking food before you have your FitBit, which is what I’m doing right now (this is my calorie-counting). It gives you daily feedback on your activity level, your food consumption, and your quality of sleep. The battery for the device lasts about ten days, and it uploads all the data wirelessly through a base station, both Windoze and Mac compatible.

Over and over I’ve read from people using these devices that how much they thought they were moving and how much they were actually moving was completely different. Using this helped them see where they were off balance, as well as show them how many calories they burn in a day, and how their food intake stacks up against their activity.

It’s actually the sleep monitoring that I’m most excited about! One reviewer, Elaine, posted this detailed and incredibly useful blog post over on Spark People (check out her update as well), which showed screen shots of the readings she got while sleeping one night. She was able to see how certain activities at night disturbed her sleep (her boyfriend coming home), and she even noted how the device apparently caught her moving around during the time her alarm used to wake her up. She noted on her screen shot, “Old habits die hard!”

I have very frustrating sleep problems, which include waking up from what appears to be a good night’s sleep only to be exhausted and worn out. While my FitBit won’t ship until the end of October (I saw on their Facebook page that they’re saying JANUARY now), I’m hugely looking forward to seeing what my nights look like when graphed out for quality of sleep. Am I moving the whole night and not realizing it? The FitBit will tell me.

Beyond that, it will be, hopefully, an incredibly useful motivational tool to find that balance between what I take in and what I expend energetically over the course of the day. And balance is what I’m looking for right now.

The Moderately Great Weight Loss Plan (heh)

moderationAfter my Kale Realization of 2009, it was time to face reality: I want to lose weight, and I’ve wanted to lose weight for the last year, and I haven’t gotten very far. In fact, I’m getting larger (ironically all thanks to my love of a vegetable). So what’s a girl to do? I sent email to a fried who has lost a lot of weight, and asked for her advice.

Ivana had some advice, which I share here with her permission:

My biggest question for you is: what specifically *has* helped? Although we have similar struggles, we are quite different, so I’m not sure I’m the right one to give advice that may help you.

That said, I am a woman of strong opinions, and you asked, so I’ll remark on the one thing that I’ve seen is most apparent with your particular struggle: enthusiasm subsequent and lack of moderation. The two go hand in hand, sadly. One of the best aspects of your personality, infectious enthusiasm, tends to lead toward momentary extremism and rapid burnout. We all need enthusiasm and a willingness to try new things in order to get started on making a difference, but ultimately it is the long term that really matters. Mike said to me a while ago: “you overestimate what you can do in a day, and underestimate what you can do in a year.” Maybe you can start by looking for and focusing on moderation? Can you eat halfway good food?

Ultimately, you need to find the right equilibrium between eating and moving. This may take years, and in the end will look far more moderate than anything you can imagine now. While the craving is there right now to buckle down and do something different, you might be better served by quieting your mind and reflecting on your urges to go extreme.

If you’ve been reading this blog for the last year, or if, like Greg, you’ve been living with me for the last fifteen years, you’ll be smiling right now. Because Ivana, while admitting right at the start that she’s not sure she is the right person to give me advice, just happened to say exactly what was true, and exactly what I needed to hear.

People who lose weight and keep it off find something that works, and they keep doing that. Ivana asked, “What specifically has helped?” The answer to that is counting calories, and exercising almost every day. I lost 25 pounds that way – and then gained them back when I stopped paying attention to food and got “too busy” to exercise. I do know what works. I just need to keep doing it, moderately, over the long term.

This is the hardest part to write! RIGHT HERE! This is HURTING MY HANDS! Okay, ready? Here we go. I promise my readers that:

1.)  For the next six months I will try to be moderate in all things food and exercise related.

2.) I will not start any extreme diet or exercise programs. I will not convert to raw foodism overnight (again). I will not convert to veganism overnight (for the tenth time). I will not cut out any major food groups (for the millionth time) or start exercising and then swear that I will keep exercising every day (again).

3.) I will write about what happens.

One could point out that my trying to go moderate OVERNIGHT is, itself, an extreme sort of plan. And then one might get slugged moderately between the eyes.

“Okay!” I hear you saying. “GREAT MODERATOR! What are your first moderate goals?”

I’m so glad you asked!  They are:

1.) Exercise three times this week, for at least 15 minutes.

2.) Eat three veggies this week. You know, the kind NOT covered in tahini.

3.) Write three posts about how this is all going (not including this one).

That’s it for this week. Three exercise sessions, three vegetables, and three posts. The posts are there to keep me accountable. I’m actually making a calendar for this, in case you’re curious. It’s the best way for me to keep track of my progress. I’ll update it every week, as well as update the blog.

ALREADY THIS IS HARD. I am just itching to go all-raw again, or make my goal to exercise every day for 45 minutes, or something else that will just be a LINE drawn in the SAND. With CAPITAL LETTERS. Know what I mean? It’s so hard to just take it easy!

This will be interesting.

Kale chips are making me fat

In the last 7 weeks I’ve gained 7 pounds. Yes, we can do the math, but let’s just say it out loud, shall we? That’s A POUND A WEEK. Every time I step on the scale I wonder what the heck is going on. Since we moved to Seattle I’ve definitely been eating more junk food, but not that much more. I’ve also been exercising a lot more than usual, which I’d have expected would cancel the extra M&Ms right out. So what’s going on? I finally solved the puzzle. It’s the kale chips.

Basically, you take an entire head of kale and chop it up, bathe it in marinade, and dehydrate it until it’s crisp and delicious. The taste is savory, which I don’t get a lot of since I don’t like meat much, and it’s also a “raw food”, and “raw foods are healthy”, and you can see where I’m going here, right? Right. If you look at the marinade recipe, you’ll see that magic word: TAHINI.

This is the brand I usually buy. Tahini is sesame seeds, made into a paste. The recipe calls for 3/4 of a cup of tahini, roughly 1100 calories. I’m pretty sure God made sesame seeds so tiny precisely so that we wouldn’t eat 1100 calories worth of them at one sitting. I’m betting kale chips are going against the divine plan, because do you know what happens when you dehydrate something? It gets smaller, and cuter, and easier to eat. A batch of kale chips is an entire head of kale coated in sesame fat, and then shrunk down to fit neatly in a cereal bowl, which you can finish off in just a few crunchy, yummy bites. Mmmmm, I’m getting hungry……

I can easily eat an entire batch at one sitting, and in fact I frequently do. I’m estimating I eat one or two batches of kale chips a week, which is 2200 extra calories a week! It takes 3500 calories to make a pound, which means all my body has to come up with to sock away that extra pound a week is another 1300 calories, and I’m sure I’ve been eating that much extra in junk food.

So there you go. If you’re too thin, I’d definitely recommend becoming a kale chips addict. If you’re carrying too much extra weight, I’d suggest you save the kale chips for a treat, not breakfast. In my next post, I’ll outline what I’m going to do to lose weight. Again.

Cholesterol and celiac tests are in

I got a call from my doctor’s office. The bloodwork came back, and the celiac test was negative. “So you can eat wheat with abandon!”, the nurse said. Hmmmmmm. Okay. I’m sure we’ll come back to this at some point, won’t we?

My cholesterol is what really concerned me.

Here’s the current test:

Total: 188
HDL: 42
LDL: 105
TRI: 206 (!!!)

My results almost exactly one year ago:

Total: 168
HDL: 44
LDL: 104
TRI: 101

Basically every single number is worse, and the triglycerides have doubled. Triglycerides are linked with a hardening of the arteries, leading to stroke and heart attack, that last one being my usual nightmare.

Triglyceride values, from the Mayo Clinic:

  • Normal — Less than 150 milligrams per deciliter (mg/dL) (less than 1.7 mmol/L)
  • Borderline high — 150 to 199 mg/dL (1.8 to 2.2 mmol/L)
  • High — 200 to 499 mg/dL (2.3 mmol/L to 5.6 mmol/L)
  • Very high — 500 mg/dL or above (5.7 mmol/L or above)

What I thought was strange was that the nurse said “You’re completely normal!”, and then rattled off the numbers. I wrote them down without thinking about them, and didn’t notice anything strange until I compared them with last years numbers and started looking things up.

Also from that same section:

Although it’s unclear how, high triglycerides may contribute to hardening of the arteries or thickening of the artery walls (atherosclerosis) — which increases the risk of stroke, heart attack and heart disease.

High triglycerides are often a sign of other conditions that increase the risk of heart disease and stroke as well, including obesity and the metabolic syndrome — a cluster of conditions that includes too much fat around the waist, high blood pressure, high triglycerides, high blood sugar and abnormal cholesterol levels.

Bold parts are mine. While I don’t have problems with blood sugar, blood pressure, or total cholesterol, I do carry nearly all my excess weight around my middle. I’m seeing that as something important to change – the amount of weight lost seems much less important than just getting as much fat off my abdomen as I can.

Causes of high triglycerides, according to Web MD:

The most common causes of high triglycerides are obesity and poorly controlled diabetes. If you are overweight and are not active, you may have high triglycerides, especially if you eat a lot of carbohydrate or sugary foods or drink a lot of alcohol. Binge drinking (of alcohol) can cause dangerous spikes in triglyceride levels that can trigger inflammation of the pancreas (pancreatitis).

Bolded parts are mine again. LE SIGH PART DEUX.

The good news? The ways to lower your triglycerides are very reasonable.

From the Mayo Clinic again:

  • Lose excess pounds. If you’re overweight, losing the excess pounds can help lower your triglycerides. Motivate yourself by focusing on the benefits of losing weight, such as more energy and improved health.
  • Cut back on calories. Remember that excess calories are converted to triglycerides and stored as fat. Reducing your calories will reduce triglycerides.
  • Avoid sugary and refined foods. Simple carbohydrates, such as sugar and foods made with white flour, can cause a sudden increase in insulin production. This can increase triglycerides.
  • Limit the cholesterol in your diet. Aim for no more than 300 milligrams (mg) of cholesterol a day — or less than 200 mg if you have heart disease. Avoid the most concentrated sources of cholesterol, including meats high in saturated fat, egg yolks and whole milk products.
  • Choose healthier fats. Trade saturated fat for healthier monounsaturated fat, found in olive, peanut and canola oils. Substitute fish high in omega-3 fatty acids — such as mackerel and salmon — for red meat.
  • Eliminate trans fat. Trans fat can be found in fried foods and many commercial baked products, such as cookies, crackers and snack cakes. But don’t rely on packages that are labeled “trans fat-free.” In the United States, if a food contains less than 0.5 grams of trans fat per serving, it can be labeled trans fat-free. Even though those amounts seem small, they can add up quickly if you eat a lot of foods containing small amounts of trans fat. Instead, read the ingredients list. You can tell that a food has trans fat in it if it contains partially hydrogenated oil.
  • Avoid alcoholic beverages. Alcohol is high in calories and sugar and has a particularly potent effect on triglycerides. Even small amounts of alcohol can raise triglyceride levels.
  • Exercise regularly. Aim for at least 30 minutes of physical activity on most or all days of the week. Regular exercise can boost “good” cholesterol while lowering “bad” cholesterol and triglycerides. Take a brisk daily walk, swim laps or join an exercise group. If you don’t have time to exercise for 30 minutes, try squeezing it in 10 minutes at a time. Take a short walk, climb the stairs at work, or try some sit-ups or push-ups as you watch television.

All of this sounds incredibly doable, so I will do it, once I’m over this stupid flu. In a few months I’ll get the numbers checked again, and see if I’ve made any progress.

Charlotte’s post about the Diet Wars, and the elephant in the room

I just discovered a blog that I’m enjoying a lot, and added to my sidebar under “Fitness”. It’s called The Great Fitness Experiment, and it’s written by one Charlotte Hilton Andersen. She writes about fitness and nutrition, with a side dish of hilarity, and I’ve found myself going through her archives and reading back through all her many experiments.

This morning I found a great post she wrote on March 15th entitled, The Diet Wars: Learning to Listen. It starts out:

Welcome to Dueling Diets! I’m your host, Crazy Charlotte. Today I’ll be pitting the Primal Blueprint a la Mark Sisson against the Engine 2 Diet a la Rip Esselstyn, all as part of my “Striving for Perfection” Experiment this month.

Sound familiar? I was posting about Paleo versus Rip recently myself (part 1 and part 2), although I haven’t done the personal experimentation that Charlotte has (I’m still working on the elimination diet – more on that later).

You should definitely go read her post, because her writing is entertaining and friendly, but I wanted to talk about her conclusions a little bit, because they’re very similar to what several of you guys have been telling me:

A recent study in The New England Journal of Medicine looked at dieters on several different popular diets. Their conclusion – and this will surprise no one – is that despite all the hype, it doesn’t really matter much which diet you pick as long as you cut your calories. I know, the whole “eat less” thing again. The key is to find the diet that helps your body live with the calorie restriction the best. And that apparently can differ from person to person.

Now I know that will sound familiar to some of you, eh? It’s a paraphrase of what you put in comments (and send me in email!), which brings me to….

THE ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM.

Yeah, it’s me. I’m not saying I’m an elephant, I’m saying I’m like that thing that no one talks about. I’m THE THING. Except less swampy. I have been writing about different diets for the last, what, six months? And you guys have patiently listened and commented and encouraged me, and yet the fact of the matter is, six months later, I still:

  • …don’t have a regular exercise routine.
  • …don’t have a regular diet, meaning a general healthy routine. I still eat willy nilly, even when I’m eliminating things.
  • …don’t know how to cook very well.
  • …don’t have hardly any recipes on this blog.
  • …don’t have any significant weight loss, despite knowing that I need to lose weight to get these hormones in check and my cycle back on track.

I felt such a kinship reading Charlotte’s blog because she struggles with a lot of the same thought patterns I do, even while she’s doing a whole lot more work than I am! She’s brave enough to talk about them, and she’s brave enough to keep going. I talk AROUND my issues, and then I avoid doing a lot of things that might help, because I’m sincerely afraid of it all just failing. I’m afraid I’ll work out every day and nothing will happen. I’m afraid I’ll try to eat right and it will be too hard, or I’ll suck at it, and then I’ll be too afraid to write about it. It’s a lot easier to write about my potential for things than it is to write about struggling through those things.

But I’m going to give it a shot anyway, because this is getting a little ridiculous. I’ve got a perfectly LOVELY little blog here, and it isn’t going anywhere. I’m still sitting on my ass. My ridiculously flat behind, which could use a few squats. As could the rest of me.

I’m still going to write about what I’m eating, but I’m going to try and write less about the theoretics of it all, and instead write more about how I feel, and how my body does, and how I’m learning to cook it all up. I still want to write about diet trends and staying heart healthy, and all the nutrition news I read every day, because I find all that fun. But it has to stop being an excuse to not do any of my own work. On that note: I’m off for a ride on the stationary bike. Wish me luck!