lose 25 pounds

My April plan lost some steam around Easter, but I picked up again to some degree and then had a realization at the end of the month. If setting goals monthly worked pretty well for me, perhaps setting goals weekly will work even better. I had been using the month as my time scale because the BioDiary is a monthly tool.

To go to weekly, I made up my own form: two sides of one sheet of paper. I have my grid of behavior goals on one side and a food diary and servings tally on the other side. So far, so good. I lost weight during my first week of using this system—something I haven’t been doing most weeks this year in spite of a fair amount of attention to eating and exercising. I’m hoping that weekly accounting will give the process just the boost of energy I need.

The March Plan fell apart at the end of the month. But in the falling apart, I recognized how well this had been working for me. Make a list here, keep track of my daily progress with a grid in my BioDiary, and try to earn a movie with 93% compliance. I’d like to say that it’s the movie that motivates me, but really it’s the checkmarks on the grid! I started to be embarrassed by that and then decided, hey! if I can be motivated by something that simple then I should consider myself fortunate that I discovered it.

• compare what I’m eating to the DASH diet (pdf)
• rainbow eating
• eat a salad every day
• no eating outside the house (w/ a complex set of exceptions including eating with others)
• record exercise and eating in the BioDiary
• weigh myself each Sunday
• drink 2 large bottles of water each day
• 4 trips to the gym
• exercise twice a day
• exercise at least 30 minutes a day

I met my February Goals at a rate of 97%. So I earned my movie. I think I’ll see Two Lovers either this week or next.

In spite of my success in changing some behaviours, I have yet to start losing weight. So time to add a couple of more things to my list. I’m tempted to add a lot more, but I keep reminding myself that baby steps are what work for me. There’s always next month for adding more things.

• continue recording exercise and food in my Bio-Diary
• continue weighing myself each Sunday
• no eating outside the house (w/ a complex set of exceptions including eating with others)
• rainbow eating
• drink 1 large bottle of water each day
• any forms of exercise for at least 30 minutes each day (added 10 minutes for March)
• 4 trips to the gym
• eat a salad every day (new for March)
• drink 1 cup of hot tea every day (new for March)

Again, rather than expect 100% compliance, I’ll aim for 93%—that will be more of a challenge during a month where will be out of town a few days, but I think I can still manage it.

Although I’m not challenging myself on these things this month, I want to play around with more vegetarian and vegan meals, more healthful and interesting breakfasts, and using my journal to help me be more aware of what is going on in my day that might lead to or prevent overeating.

My January goals were to record my exercise and eating in my Bio-Diary every day and to weigh myself on Sundays. I did both. Obviously, they weren’t really goals designed to lose weight and I didn’t, but I did stop gaining, so we’ll count that as a win. I’ll take further baby steps in February that might actually cause a dip on the scales.

I promised myself a movie in the theater for meeting my January goals. I think I’ll go see Last Chance Harvey on Monday.

• continue recording exercise and food in my Bio-Diary
• continue weighing myself each Sunday
• no eating outside the house (w/ a complex set of exceptions including eating with others)
• rainbow eating
• drink 1 large bottle of water each day
• any forms of exercise for at least 20 minutes each day
• 4 trips to the gym

It would not be taking good care of myself to be perfectionistic about this, expecting 100% compliance. Instead, I’ll challenge myself to 93% (an A in graduate school). If I make it, I’ll take myself to another movie at the beginning of March.

I was counting on the iVillage Never Say Diet Challenge to structure my efforts on this. I signed up a month ago and again yesterday when I received no email. No email today either. So, apparently, that’s not going to work for me. The website by itself isn’t that motivating—it manages to be simultaneously overwhelming and a bit lame.

So, I’m going to take this as a sign that the Internet gods believe I should take a different approach.

• using my Bio-Diary every day. I’ve been using it off and on since August, but I have yet to use it every day for an entire month. So, that’s the goal. If I do record my food and exercise every day in January, I intend to reward myself with a movie in a theater during the first week of February
• weighing myself on Sundays

That’s it for the moment. I’m eating a bit better and exercising a bit more, but I think I’ll let that happen gradually without big public commitments this month and see how I do.

I haven’t weighed myself recently, but I know that I didn’t meet my goal to lose 25 pounds in 2008. Although, I suspect I lost some. I was on track as recently as July, so I’m sure that I can lose 25 pounds in one calendar year. Let’s hear it for 2009!

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!