Weekly summary

156.8 and 35.5% body fat. Weight-wise, we are back to freshman and sophomore year of high school.

Sometimes I'm surprised at how easy this is. My ticker is visibly more than halfway to goal, and my goal is to lose 50 pounds! All I did was start keeping track of the numbers, and then do my datamonkey thing, and in 4 months I've lost almost twice as much as I ever did in high school (which, each time, took 3-4 months). Sometimes I do struggle with what I know to be counterproductive impulses, or find it hard to eat as few calories as I want to for the day, but even when I indulge I still usually push a deficit. It just might not be -500. It's also so strange how it wasn't hard for me to overeat in the range of 2200-2500 for years, and just a nice dinner with drinks can go over 1000 without seeming like a lot - yet in my everyday life, now, 2000 calories seems like a ton of food. I feel now like it would be hard to maintain a weight that required more than 1800 cals a day.

Quick stats: average kcals/day 1747, 1 cardio, 2 yoga, 1 CSF, average est. balance -372, -1.6 lbs.

To put this in better perspective, I've lost net 0.8 pounds in the last 2 weeks, or 4.8 pounds since the beginning of phase 2 (a little less than 4 weeks ago).

This week I did a mixed workout, where I transitioned quickly according to what I felt like between treadmill, elliptical, resistance machines, and yoga. I'm calling that a "CSF workout" for cardio-strength-flexibility. If I only did two of those things in a mixed workout, I could abbreviate it accordingly.Also, "cc" indicates "calories computed", meaning the calories the machines told me I burned, and then I estimate the rest.


I also have new notation for the food part, in connection with my "healthy diet" evaluation. V = servings of fruits and vegetables, d = servings of dairy (that are NOT empty food), M = ate meat that day, E = percent of empty calories. I will have to come up with a scale that standardizes these variables to each other if I want to do a weekly evaluation though.

Friday 10/8

Toast with peanut butter, vanilla yogurt, and 1 grapefruit with sugar (110+95+105+60+30=400)
Cheese, tomato, and avocado sandwich  and coffee with coca (220+110+20+100+45=495)
Apple and cheese (100+110=210)
Black-eyed peas & cabbage over rice, brussels sprouts, and wine (250+40+125=415)
Ice cream (450)

400+450+45+210+415+450=1970 + Mixed CSF workout (40 min, 218cc)
V=5, d=3, E=27%

Thursday 10/7

Oatmeal with cream and sugar, 1/2 grapefruit with sugar(150+40+30+30+15=265)
Peanut butter sandwich, apple, and coffee with cocoa/powdered milk (220+190+100+70+60=640)
Baby avocado (100)
Gum (5)
Chicken, potatoes, a few oil-baked asparagus and snap peas (300+150+75=525)

265+640+100+5+525=1535 + 1 hr yoga
V=4, d=1, M, E=8%

Wednesday 10/6

1 egg, 1 slice buttered toast, and 2 kiwis (70+110+100+100=380)
2 cups coffee with cocoa and/or powdered milk (90+15+60+35=200)
Tuna and cheese sandwich (110+110+75=295)
Chocolate chip cookie and apple chunks (115+25=140)
Rice and beans with corn, tomato, and avocado (230+50+20+100=400)
2 spoonfuls peanut butter (190)

380+200+295+140+400+190=1605 + Outdoor run (1.0 mi) and walk (1.0 mi) and trunc. pull-ups
V=4, d=2, M, E=18%

Tuesday 10/5

Granola and yogurt (250+105=355)
2 cups coffee with cocoa and nonfat dry milk (220)
Avocado and egg sandwich and a pluot (70+100+100+70=340)
Skim milk (110)
Matzo ball soup/5 balls, and tuna with olive oil and mustard (250+75+10=335)

355+220+340+110+335=1360 + 1 hr yoga

Monday 10/4

Egg, toast, vanilla yogurt, and 1/2 grapefruit with sugar (70+110+105+30+15=330)
TC sandwich and kiwi (430+50=480)
Tortilla chips, American cheese slices, and hot cocoa (100+100+90=290)
Caprese crackers (65+75+40=180)
Pluot, baby avocado, and a slice of bread (70+80+100=250)
Spoonful of peanut butter and chai with cream and sugar (95+50+30=175)
2 spoonfuls cream cheese (90)

330+480+290+180+250+175+90=1795 + no exercise

Sunday 10/3

Breakfast out (795)
    Potatoes and ketchup (400+45=445)
    Veggie sausage (240)
    Coffee and cream (45+30=75)
    Small almond cookie (25)
Apple and peanut butter (100+190=290)
Bean soup and cheese (300+220=520)

795+290+520=1605 + no exercise

Saturday 10/2

Bread with cream cheese (200+135=335)
Odwalla bar (210)
Piece of starfruit (10)
Quart of chocolate soymilk (600)
Mac and cheese with tuna and peas (300+50+50+75=475)
ThinkThin bar (230)
Bread and butter (100+100=200)
Ice cream (300)

335+210+10+600+475+230+200+300=2360 + no exercise

Caloric variation

Caloric variation is supposed to be a way to lose weight faster and more consistently, but it doesn't seem to work for me. I've had two weeks so far where I noticed my calorie count bounced around a lot - 1400, 1700, maybe a day or two breaking 2000 and one down at 1200-1300. And on both those weeks my weight dawdled around, going a little this way, a little that way, averaging out to very little loss for the week. On the other hand, when for several days in a row all my calorie counts are within 100-200 calories, I usually see a good loss that week, and if I gain for a couple of days, a dramatic loss is almost sure to follow.

Testing

As a test of my "healthy diet" standards, I'm evaluating what I ate today and what I'm planning to eat tomorrow. Let's see how it works out.

Today:
4 fruits and veggies (not quite 5 but not bad)
Egg/toast, tuna/bread, rice/beans meal pairs (good)

2 dairy (good)
290/1605 "empty" calories = 18% (a bit high...)

Tomorrow:
4-5 fruits and veggies depending (getting there)
Oatmeal/yogurt, peanut butter/bread, chicken/potatoes meal pairs (good)
2 dairy (good)
145/1670 "empty" calories = 9% (wow nice)

Hopefully by monitoring, especially the produce and empty calories, I can get this really good and still feel alright when eating fairly low calorie. I hope I can get it so that my calorie counts are routinely in the 1500s (as they've been routinely in the 1600s for a while).

What is a healthy diet?

As my BMR declines and I have to compensate for reduced exercise with stricter diet, I find myself more often feeling exhausted on lower-calorie days. I'm never going below 1200, but sometimes when I'm below 1600 I get through the day with few calories, and I've eaten in a such a way that I don't really feel hungry, but something feels physically unsatisfied. Which got me wondering if sometimes I'm not getting enough real nutrients. It's easy to get enough essential nutrients on 2000/day. It's no doubt possible for 1600, and possibly down to 1200, but you have to be more careful and make sure most of the calories come with good nutrition. So what is a healthy diet? I do not have the time and energy to invest in looking up RDIs for all the vitamins and minerals, let alone make up a meal plan that isn't repetitive and fulfills everything, but the simpler models of a healthy diet aren't so helpful. One model I heard a lot growing up essentially says, minimize dairy, minimize carbs, minimize salt, moderate fruit... okay so I'm eating nothing but beans and veggies. That's realistic. The food pyramid model is easier to work with, but it simply doesn't work because the minimum number of servings of everything adds up to way more calories that I'm eating. So, what tests could I apply to my diet to determine if I'm eating healthy?

I'm going to provisionally define a healthy diet as:

- 5 servings of fruits and vegetables a day
- A complex carb and a protein at every meal
- No more than 10-20% of calories from "empty" sources like oils, added sugar, alcohol, and refined or artificial carbs and fats
- At least 1 and no more than 3 servings of dairy per day
- Fish 1-2x a week
- Total meat (fish and fowl only for me) no more than 2-3x a week

I'm of course aware that vegan diets and meat-heavier diets can be healthy, even at low calorie values (and in fact most vegan diets are low calorie by default) but given my actual dietary preferences this seems like a good way to spread out nutritional needs. Now I need to look at my food journal and see how well it adheres to these standards. I think I will need to start insisting on vegetables in dinner no matter what, and also try to have a vegetable and a fruit at lunch because I simply don't eat those things for afternoon snacks - sometimes I don't eat an afternoon snack at all, but if I do it has to be denser than that. Another thing to look at is "empty" calories. If my target calories are 1500, then I should be limited to about 200 "empty" calories.

Different indices tell me different things

My 3 days of snacking and inactivity are still lingering, I'm up again today to 159.8 (geez). On the other hand, my body fat percentage was 34.6, which was surprising enough on its own after 35.7 yesterday, and then after my shower it read 33.0. I'm not sure what to believe there, we'll see if it sticks to its story tomorrow, but I went to measure myself and see what was up. I've lost another half inch off my waist to make a round 30, and my thigh is down to 24 even. So maybe I have lost significant fat.

Still, some downward progress tomorrow please? I ate 1360 calories yesterday and went for my run this morning, I think I deserve it.

Shifting my focus

So I gave in to after-dinner snacking even though I wasn't really hungry the past few days. I don't know what's up with that - the night eating thing has never really been my style. I basically broke even for about three days (including the party day) and then pushed, oh, -250 or so the past couple of days. It's something, but it's not much.

The other reason I pushed so little of a deficit yesterday was that my iPod finally died. It's an old Shuffle that I've had since I was fifteen, and the on-switch was getting sticky so you had to push real hard, push oppositely on the other side at the same time, and try it more than once. Yesterday was the day it just wouldn't turn on. I was very disappointed because I'd just put together a new playlist I was excited to listen to. So yesterday I didn't do any exercise because I didn't want to ellipticize without music and just sort of didn't feel like doing pull-ups. Yeah, I know.

So today I'm getting back on the wagon. I've had yoga and 915 calories so far, I'm going to get some milk to drink when I'm done writing this, then go home for dinner. But I need to shift my focus from lots of exercise and moderate diet, to some exercise and stricter diet. If I do yoga the mornings I have class, and run 2+ miles on other weekday mornings, I have 200 calories of exercise 5 days a week. Then, if I eat no more than 1700 calories a day, I should still lose a pound a week. That sequesters the exercise in the morning and doesn't require music, which makes it more manageable. I feel like, when I don't do any exercise at all, my diet is hard to manage. But even if I don't burn a ton of calories, just a little exercise makes it easy to restrict pretty hard. As far as my pull-ups, I occasionally skip a day out of boredom or discouragement, but I don't think I'll really lapse because I know I'll lose all my progress since I do nothing else of magnitude with my arms.

I also need to chill out and continue working even though it's getting hard to put my all into it, both schedule wise and in terms of motivation. I'm in the low end of what I've weighed before which simultaneously makes me impatient to lose-these-10-pounds-already and break 150, but also makes me feel not really fat, basically the same shape as everybody else, and therefore, not a big deal if I only maintain for some reason. So, I'm re-setting my attention on the next microgoal. 154.6 is the short range target. Just 5 pounds, so I can claim 30 pounds lost. Just 5 pounds, so these pants will fit a little looser and I can ride my bike comfortably with yoga shorts underneath them. Just 5 pounds.

What is wrong with me???

I had eaten a normal breakfast, then a snack after shopping, kinda skipped lunch by drinking a carton of chocolate soymilk instead. Then I had normal dinner and I was at a perfectly reasonable 1650 calories.

Then I really wanted my protein bar - my ThinkThin bar, haha - and so I ate it. Nom nom nom. And then I calculated everything and entered my calories and saw I was still at a deficit of 162. And then I ran downstairs and made bread and butter, meaning to stick together 150, but ending up with 200. I added it up again and found myself at a surplus of 38.

And now I'm sitting here, feeling a little uncomfortably stuffed, and food-dazed. And STILL I am thinking of actually walking over to the store and getting an ice cream cup, which I KNOW is 300 extra calories and will not make me feel any better.

But it sounds so good.

What the hell is wrong with me? Is this my body's cruel way of saying "nyah, nyah, won't let you maintain me below 160!"? Fuuuck that shit.