lose 25 pounds

I haven’t weighed myself in over a month and assumed my weight wouuld be well above the line that gets me to a 25 pound weight loss by the end of 2008. But, it turns out, it’s right on the line!

Part of that is due to getting well ahead earlier in the year. But part of it is because a bad day of eating just isn’t what it used to be. The new healthier habits I’ve developed over the last couple of years have an effect even on bad days. I might have one or two junky things on a bad day, but I don’t spend the whole day grazing junk food anymore. And I don’t have more than one or two bad eating days in a row—I just start feeling drawn back to my kitchen and to healthier foods.

I’m reading In Defense of Food by Michael Pollan. He covers the work of Bruce Ames, Berkeley biochemist, who has idenitified a number of micronutrients missing from the Western diet, the lack of which may contribute to the formation of cancer. And, this theory:

Ames also believes, though he hasn’t proven it, that micronutrient deficiencies may contribute to obesity. His hypothesis is that a body starved of critical nutrients will keep eating in the hope of obtaining them.

This matches my experience. Three years ago, if you’d asked me how often I would fight the urge to binge if I were eating few enough calories to lose a half pound or more a week, I would have said 4 or more times a week. Three years later, I have very gradually replaced the processed foods in my diet with whole foods, I am losing a half pound or more a week, and I’d say I fight the urge to binge less than once a week.

I don’t feel like my reduction in binging urges is due to getting my head in a better place—I was never very successful at figuring out my emotional reasons for eating. I really like this theory that maybe my body knew I wasn’t getting what I needed and that now my body is happy with what I eat. Another motivation to continue eating vegetables, fruits, and whole grains and staying away from food products that contain ingredients I can’t pronounce and couldn’t use in my own kitchen.

I successfully cut my fat intake by being more careful what I put on my bread,if anything. And, I met all my exercise goals for January. As I result, I lost 3.5 pounds in January, more than enough to be on track to lose 25 pounds in 2008.

I’m reading Thin for Life by Anne M. Fletcher. It’s from 1994, so hardly the latest word in weight loss. But her method makes a whole bunch of sense and I’m finding it very helpful. She went out and interviewed some 160 people who had lost weight and kept it off to see how they did it.

One of the things that I’m finding most interesting is that everyone did it differently. There are some things that are similar among a lot of people, but the precise things that each person does is completely unique.

One reason for the uniqueness is that most people make more than one change to get the weight loss. “Indeed, the more I talked with the masters [that’s what she calls her interview subjects, masters of weight loss] and the more I studied other researchers’ findings, it became clear that many masters made multiple changes in their lives either before or while they were losing weight.” (p. 46) And she’s not just talking about behavior modifications in eating and exercise, she’s also talking about more structural things in life—quitting a job in a donut shop, for example, or finally figuring out a way to make time for oneself in a hectic schedule.

I’m finding this uniqueness of weight loss very helpful at the moment. For one thing, it means I’m not doing it wrong just because I’m not doing it the way one book or one program says to do it. Also, it means that I can call on my creativity for this project just as I might for any other project. And I can take a certain pride in doing it my way (cue Frank Sinatra). Weight loss as self expression!

I’ve got my daily yoga and 5x / week aerobic routine going, but I want to increase the intensity a bit, so I have some once a week targets to hit.

Dec 30 – Jan 5
Gym workout: Jan 3
Yoga strength and balance routine: Jan 1
Yoga standing poses routine: Jan 5

Jan 6 – Jan 12
Gym workout: Jan 11
Yoga strength and balance routine: Jan 12
Yoga standing poses routine: Jan 8

Jan 13 – Jan 19
Gym workout: Jan 16
Yoga strength and balance routine: Jan 18
Yoga standing poses routine: Jan 13

Jan 20 – Jan 26
Gym workout: Jan 23
Yoga strength and balance routine: Jan 26
Yoga standing poses routine: Jan 20

Jan 27 – Feb 2
Gym workout: Jan 30
Yoga strength and balance routine: Jan 31
Yoga standing poses routine: Jan 28

Although I lost weight in 2007, I haven’t lost any in the last three months. I put a typical day’s food intake into FitDay to see what I could learn.

I’m eating about 2000 calories a day which is what I thought. Apparently, I can no longer lose weight with that many calories. Oh well, I knew that was too good to last.

The surprising thing I learned is that over 40% of my calories are fat. Yikes! And that was for a meatless day. Double yikes! So, it’s pretty obvious where I want to focus reducing my intake. I suspect if I just start focusing on reducing my fat, the number on the scale will start dropping that half pound a week that I want to see. I’ll try that for January and see what that does for me.

The hunger scale (rate your hunger on a scale from 1 to 10 and eat accordingly) is something I’ve read about in multiple books. But I totally suck at it. I thought I was going to use Bob Greene’s Best Life Diet to lose weight until I realized that following the hunger scale was the core of the program.

So, I’m thrilled today to read that others struggle with that as well. I’m reading Eating Thin for Life by Anne M. Fletcher. She interviewed hundreds of people who lost significant amounts of weight and kept it off to see how they did it. Only 1 in 5 of the people she interviewed regularly used something like the hunger scale to control their eating.

More of the “masters” of weight loss control their eating by planning ahead, including portion sizes. I don’t know if I’ll ever be adept enough at being aware of my own hunger/satiation level for that to be a good tool for me, but I can plan!

• get back in my aerobic exercise groove—60 minutes, 5 times a week. Make one of those a gym workout.

• get back in my daily yoga groove—at least 20 minutes every day, one routine a week of standing poses, one routine a week of strengthening poses

• get back in my healthy eating groove - -start with the Phase 1 guidelines from The Best Life Diet by Bob Greene, then move on to Phase 2 (maybe on January 1) modified to simply reducing my fat in January