This is the end of my first month of moderation! I updated the progress page to reflect this week’s achievement of staying pretty nearly in the exact same place. And it’s okay! It doesn’t look like anything is happening, and yet I just know it is. I’m not worried at all about the lack of anything visible on the outside, because I know a lot is changing on the inside. Blogging is such a huge help, it really keeps me focused on this project, when I’d otherwise get bored and discouraged and wander off. I had some really hard days this week, and at one point I felt pretty sick and thought I was getting the Hamthrax, but through it all I kept thinking about how I could keep working toward my goals, even while I was miserable and curled up whining.

Food tracking success – by which I mean success at tracking, and success at inhaling anything chocolate that came near me

I tracked 4 days worth of food this week, which is a new habit, and an incredibly useful one. I don’t know if it was being sick, or what, but my nutrient percentages are awful. This is the daily average of four days worth of tracking food:

• 10% protein
• 51% carbohydrates
• 38% fat (which is hilarious when you consider that I myself am about 38% fat – suddenly that phrase “You are what you eat” takes on a whole new meaning).

This isn’t normal, for what it’s worth. I’ve eaten a heapload (that’s the technical term) of candy over the last four days, easily many times more than I usually would (normally I don’t really eat candy, to be honest – I’m more inclined toward cookies). What have I learned from this? First: Halloween is evil. Second: a bowl of candy in my house is sort of like a bowl of beer in a frat house – it just isn’t going to last long. Next year, there MUST BE PLANS put in place for the leftover crack cocaine candy.

I’m going to try and kick it up a notch in Month 2, starting with daily tracking using Lose It!, and a more structured exercise program that will include working with weights 2-3 times a week.

Panic attacks and lactic acid?

I’m currently doing research (uh, that is I have a good friend of mine doing research, she’s a librarian) on the connection between lactic acid and panic attacks. I’ll write more about this in the coming weeks, but basically I’ve noticed a very specific kind of “attack” that happens to me after weight lifting. It very rarely happens after aerobic exercise. For years I’ve tried to tell people that I have trouble with panic attacks after working out, and for years the response from shrinks and doctors has been, “Oh yah, people who are anxious get nervous about their heart rate getting high, and they panic.” I get that this is probably true for a great many panic sufferers, and I admit I’m not a big fan of my heart racing, but what I’m feeling is very different. I can do an aerobic workout with my heart thumping and be just fine, but it’s after I do anything with weights that I have this very particular kind of attack.

I finally made the connection to lactic acid, and the small amount of Googling I’ve done on the issue seems to suggest that there is a connection between lactic acid and panic attacks. For that reason, I’ll be starting my strength workouts very, very slowly, and build up. It will take a great deal of consistency to make the slow and steady progress I hope to make, and it’s really important to me that I stick to it. If you notice me over-focused on strength work for the next few weeks, this is why!

I downloaded Lose It! a couple weeks ago, and I’m happy to give it a glowing review. It’s an app for your iPhone that lets you track calories, weight loss and exercise, and it’s incredibly easy to use. I’d been using another app, but Lose It! is easier and seems much better supported. The icons are also better, the colors brighter, and it cleans my kitchen sink. WIN WIN.

It’s the little orange scale icon in the lower right corner.

Meg will notice that my Words game has 5 turns waiting for me. FIVE. Every time I look at that home screen I start to feel tense that I’m holding people up because I don’t know enough words with the letter Q in them. Did you know that stress causes us to retain viscera-choking belly fat? I’M FAT BECAUSE OF SCRABBLE! So glad we could clear that up. Hand me that Kit Kat.

My friend Ivana asked in a comment that I haven’t answered yet:

Hollie, I have a question for you: What vegetables do you like? If this list doesn’t seem long enough, another question: What vegetables will you eat?

I’ve been putting this off, because it’s so embarrassing to answer! Here’s my very short list:

1. Green beans
2. Sweet potatoes
3. Peas
4. Romaine lettuce
5. Kale (only in smoothies or as chips – too bitter any other way)
6. Celery (in soups, can’t handle it raw yet)
7. Carrots (see #6)
8. Pea pods (Greg makes these in stir-fry)

There it is. There you go. Where did that rock go again? I need to go hide under it.

The old hand weights were too small (1lb and 3lb, that I’d use while doing aerobics), so Greg and Beth and I picked up some new ones today. I have a set of 5lb, a set of 8lb, and a medicine ball that weighs 8lbs, that I’m already having too much fun with. Everything was surprisingly inexpensive.

I also got 101 Ways to Work Out With Weights today, and it looks great. The author looks like someone sculpted her muscles onto her with babe clay. I found it pretty inspiring after looking at raw food waifs for the last few months, who all seem to think thin is beautiful. I haven’t seen a single woman raw foodist with visible muscles yet.

I worked out for awhile tonight with the weights, taking it very, very easy. I made a list of the exercises I did so that I can build up from them over time, and I also took my measurements. Oddly enough, I enjoyed the yellow tape time. While I didn’t care for some of the numbers, I like data, and I like the idea of getting super crazy strong and having muscles I can actually measure. With the exception of my waist which made me nervous because visceral fat is so volatile; I didn’t feel afraid of being big. Rather, I felt like I was delineating my space, and now it’s time not to shrink necessarily, but just transform the soft stuff into hard stuff. Doesn’t that sound like more fun than just “losing weight”? I think so.

It’s Tuesday morning, and the start of a new week. Last week was just messy. I did accomplish my goals last week (see the Progress chart for latest notes), but barely. I was exhausted, I hardly exercised at all, my anxiety problems were acting up, and there was a lot of stress. As if to punctuate all this, I awoke to jackhammering right outside our window – the neighbor is apparently destroying her driveway. It’s three hours later and still going strong. Where did I put that tranquilizer dart gun again? I’m humming the theme song to Wild Kingdom…..

All that aside, my life is amazing in a hundred small and large ways, and I’m incredibly grateful, and not intending to complain. I do notice though, that eating better, exercising more, and trying to change one’s lifetime habits are hard to do if life is in any way extra stressful. It’s a matter of maintaining concentration in the face of distraction, as well as letting go of comforting (and fat-producing) habits right when you crave them the most.

My weight didn’t change this week, and that gets me down a little bit. It’s hard to picture yourself still on the path when you aren’t actually going anywhere. But I am still moving, even if I’m taking turtle steps. I got a new book that should arrive today or tomorrow: 101 Ways to Work Out with Weights. I love doing strength training at home, with dumbbells or kettle bells, but I don’t have any books about making your own workouts. This got great reviews, and I’m excited to see where it takes me. I also started writing out some lists of meals we all like (feeding three adults and two kids consistently and nutritiously is a lot harder than I realized).

But outside of exercise and food, the real work of this week was changing other habits. To eat better and get in shape and lose weight, you just pick healthier food and go to the gym, right? Wrong. Changing your habits around food and exercise requires planning, and exploring. That takes time and motivation, both of which are in short supply when life is otherwise completely overwhelming. How do you find more time? How do you get less overwhelmed? These are questions that I have to answer before I accomplish things.

This past week:

- I cleaned off my desk at home, and got my files organized, so that answering mail and paying bills will hopefully be a breeze.

- I put a give-away box in the closet, and have started chucking clothes I don’t wear that often. This is freeing up space in my drawers, making laundry time easier, and making my mornings easier because I can reach for things quickly.

- I started spending an hour a night just puttering around, cleaning up anything that needs cleaning. I count this in part toward my exercise, since I’m usually worn out afterward (but feeling great).

- I’m putting aside time every day to READ. How on earth does sitting on your ass help you lose weight and get in shape? No, I’m not reading diet books. I’m actually reading The Player of Games. But reading every day, or every evening, means that when I go to bed I don’t sit up until 2am with my headlamp and my book. And getting more sleep means I’m more awake during the day and have a much more cheerful attitude, which makes it a lot easier to eat better and stay on track. Win win!

Week 3 may look like everything is stalled, but I think that’s an illusion. Things are actually ticking along even better than before. They’re just ticking quieter, and deeper down. Am I right? Will all this pan out to my eating better and getting in shape? I guess we’ll see! If it does, I’m totally writing a book entitled, “How To Sit On Your Ass and Read Your Way To Better Health”, which will soar to the NYT bestseller list, as everyone sits on their ass to read it.

It’s called The Giant Halloween Candy Apple, and you can buy it at Williams-Sonoma online. I promise if someone buys this for me, I will eat it, and then if I’m still alive, I’ll write about it. Did you guys know that caramel apples are my favorite treat? And knowing is half the shopping angst.

The other half is sticker shock. They cost $22.95 (yes, that’s for one), and the box weighs 2-2.75 pounds, apparently, so while they don’t look that big in the picture, this is enough sugar to make most average adults go into a minor coma.

Mmmmmm, coma. Delicious, delicious coma.

Week #3 starts tomorrow, and it’s time for a new week of goals. I’m going to keep my exercise and veggie goals until I’ve been able to meet them for at least four weeks. After that, it will hopefully have become habit, and I can move on to something more challenging with a solid foundation underneath me.

So, the first two goals are:

1.) Exercise on 3 days this week, for at least 15 minutes.

2.) Eat 3 servings of veggies this week.

But what about the third goal? I’m already writing regularly, I don’t need a goal for that. What I do need is to eventually be shaping my caloric intake more carefully, so that I’m not wasting all my great exercise on vegan chocolate chip cookies from the bakery at the Edmonds PCC. I don’t want to diet for the rest of my life, but if I plan on eating in a way that maintains my health and weight loss, I need to develop some kind of mostly-accurate mental sense of how much I’m eating, and when to stop. Every person I know who has lost weight and kept it off, has developed this sense. The FitBit will help with that a lot, but until then, it would be good to start tracking what I eat, so I have some idea of what’s going in. Soo……

3.) Track what I eat on at least 3 days this week.

Beth walking like an Egyptian while we make pancakes last Saturday. Who says we don't get exercise in the kitchen?

I’m really enjoying this. I love that I’ve gotten started, I love that I have a path I’ve stayed on for an entire 14 days (miracle!), and I love that you’re all along for the ride with me! The benefit to a blog, besides accountability, is the community. It takes a village to raise a child, and I’m pretty sure it takes a village to get in shape and lose weight, too.

Goals Progress

I posted the simple summary of the week on the Progress page.

1.) Eat three veggies this week.
Done! This was pretty easy. I had 3-4 large salads*. I eat a ton of fruit, so it isn’t like I get no produce, but getting those veggies in is really hard for me. Considering my Plan involves eventually eating three servings of veggies a day, I really need to keep working on this. Green smoothies, here I come!

2.) Exercise at least three days this week.
Done! I exercised 5 days this week. It wasn’t intentional, Beth just kept wanting to swim and swim and swim with her new pink goggles, so we just kept going to the pool. In Week 3, I’m going to try taking an exercise class.

3.) Write about my progress.
Done! I’ve written several posts this week.

Weight Loss…..er….gain

I actually gained .65 pounds this week. And you know what? I don’t care. I’m guessing the weight gain came from either one or a combination of three things:

• I went to the Melting Pot on Friday and ate my weight in cheese and chocolate.
• I exercised almost every day, and may have built some muscle (which weighs more than fat).
• I’m not tracking calories. My agenda for the first couple weeks was to build some good habits, not break any bad ones, and it’s very likely I’m eating too many calories a day to lose weight.

If it’s the Melting Pot, well that was just worth it. I’ll gain a half pound to get to eat there a couple times a year. If it’s the exercise, well that’s great! I might have a skosh more muscle, which is fantastic. If it’s eating too many calories, well that’s okay too, because it’s more important to me that I build up my good habits of exercise and eating veggies first, before I tackle eating significantly less.

* I was writing all this down on a Google calendar, and I had it embedded on a WordPress page, but the code kept disappearing (honest!), and so it keeps loading as an empty page. I’m working on it over at the forums.

Beth got NEW PINK GOGGLES! And she has to wear the NEW PINK GOGGLES all the time! This right here is why I went to the pool every day this week.

I wasn’t trying to overdue it (honest!), but I think I did. My second week of The Plan started out great, with salads and swimming happening right off the bat. And then, as you look at the calendar, you can see it just didn’t let up. Beth got new goggles, and she had to use them ALL THE TIME. I am not kidding. Have you every seen a kid try to eat Cheerios with basically no peripheral vision? Awesome.

I swam with her every day, and I was busy busy busy with errands, trips, out-of-town visitors, and housework. I haven’t been sleeping great, as I often respond to overwhelm by stealing solo time late at night, when the house is asleep. This usually means a movie, and that usually means I don’t go to bed until 2am.

I’m so zombified I can’t even socialize without wearying. Right now, as I type this, the guys and a bunch of our friends are sitting out in the living room, watching a movie after playing games. The kids are crashed out in their beds – Beth and I swam for an hour today with Auntie Sonja, and Miles did a 3-mile bike ride with his school, and then all three of us went to a park for an hour with friends. I’m in my room, wiped out, alternating between reading and dozing off. After I write this, I’m going to make some tea and whine about being old.

I can feel my body getting tighter, as if it’s trying to rally itself for the next week of grueling activity. Batten down the hatches! She’s going to drive us into the ground again! What’s funny is that this week’s tally, while impressive for me, isn’t actually that much activity. I mean geez, maybe a half hour a day, average, of my heart rate being up? Yet it’s a lot more physical exercise than I usually get, which is pretty sad. And here I wonder why I’m fat. It isn’t fair, man! Why can’t you burn more calories through typing?

I’ve managed to screw up both tags and categories, which is why you don’t see either on the site right now. I’m going to go through and fix that, but this week is super busy (two friends coming into town, yay!), and it might not get done until the end of next week.

What I’d like is for every single post to fit into a category, yet many of them (like this one) aren’t easily defined into a nice and tidy category. I mean, what would you put this one in? Notices You Need Never See Again? Things Totally Unimportant To Intention Of Blog? Mentions Of Fondue?

Speaking of work on the blog, there are THREE NEW PAGES!

1. I wrote down the plan to get in shape and lose weight here.
2. I made a page with a table of my progress here.
3. I put Ye Olde Hande BMI Charte here, along with my colorful commentary.

All of these pages are accessible from the navigation tabs at the top of the site.

"GET YER FORK AWAY FROM MY STRAWBERRY!" When fondue friends become fondue frenemies.

Oh, and speaking of those two friends – we’re going with one, along with her family, to The Melting Pot tomorrow night. It’s  a fondue restaurant, and it’s not just cheese and leisure suits. There’s three courses – cheese of course – but then meats and oil, where you dip meats in batter and dip that into hot oil. The third course is, GET READY FOR IT: chocolate.

Oh sorry, was I saying something? Right.

CHOCOLATE FONDUE.

I’m guessing that three pound weight loss from last week was totally temporary. Ha! Seriously though, I’m doing great with my goals for this week, so I’m not worried, even if I do end up gaining a couple pounds. The Melting Pot isn’t a regular thing, which is good, because if it were, all you guys would hear about were fondue recipes, and I know how much you’d hate that.

We went to the mall tonight, that bastion of healthy food, that very model of consumer moderation, and of course Beth wanted to visit the food court. Miles, our son, is taking a class on making models at a gaming store (need to get those geek kids started early), and Beth, his four-year-old sister, has very little to do during these two hours except romp in the play area (it’s like a giant playpen for kids, with benches along the side for the weary parents), and watch her mother hyperventilate from nostalgia (or plastic fumes, hard to tell which) in the Hello Kitty store.

We were doing okay until we passed the Cinnabon counter, and then I was puuulllllled in, by alien forces I can’t begin to understand. I could almost see the tracking beam find me, and then, Homer Simpson-like, almost lose me due to my overly large belly. But then it got me again, and then I was standing there, in front of the smiling Cinnabon man, thinking things like:

• My last Cinnabon was three weeks ago. One Cinnabon every three weeks counts as moderation, right?
• This guy has a lot of tattoos for someone working in retail. As a tattooed person myself, should I be happy about that?
• How much dairy is in one of these anyway?
• Just one won’t hurt.
• If I don’t write about it on my blog, it’s like it didn’t happen.

Approximately $4 later, I was going home with a large, doughy, milk-filled pastry that went against my Buddhist vow to not harm any sentient beings, in several interpretations of the phrase.

I’m a little over half-way through it, and I just stopped. I gave the rest to Jason and Greg, who devoured it. It felt really good to stop. I wasn’t inhaling it or anything, but I was having that strange experience where it feels simultaneously good and bad to be eating something. Do only people who struggle with their weight have this sensation?

It’s very hard to catch yourself in the moment that you’re doing something you really, deep down, don’t want to be doing, especially when it offers this kind of delicious food escapism. The Cinnabon helps me forget that my back is hurting, my hair smells like the pool, the regular problems with anxiety, the annoyance at my sports watch breaking, and the grief I felt last night watching Spirit of the Marathon while knowing how unlikely it is that I could ever complete an event like that.

Obviously, eating the Cinnabon contributes to anxiety, and probably back pain, and definitely to my inability to run a marathon (let’s all be glad that it doesn’t make your hair smell like a pool). So why do we do it? It isn’t mysterious. It’s the inability to put aside short term happiness for long term happiness. It’s the tendency that we all have to one degree or another, and it’s a pain in the ass for many of us. Malls are there to exploit it, as are Cinnabons. I was suckered in, and I went down with a smile.

I’m not going to beat myself up about this, in case you’re wondering. I promised moderation, and that’s what I’m doing, and it feels good so far, and beating myself up about a cinnamon roll would have zero positive effect except to make me feel guilty and encourage me to quit, which isn’t something I want. I’m turning over a new leaf.

Last Monday, in my post beginning The Moderately Great Weight Loss Plan, I made some goals. Now it’s Monday again, (Anyone hearing the Bangles in their head? No? I’m just that old….), and it’s time to see how I did.

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

Accomplished: 2/3? (Note: 3/3 – See end of paragraph…)
I’m looking at the calendar, and I’m just sure I did this, yet I can’t find the evidence for it. I’ve got 1 swimming session with Bethie, and then yesterday, which was a super active day with lots of cleaning, easily over 15 minutes of exercise. I could count that as “three 15-minute periods” I suppose, but the spirit of the goal was to get active on three of the seven days, and I want to keep to that. I really feel like I was exercising a lot more than that, but it’s just not there, and I can’t really remember any other exercise periods, so I’m going to have to go with 2/3. (Note – I remembered that I went on a longish dog walk with Oliver The Wonder Corgi, so that’s 3/3!)

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

Accomplished: 1/3
OH THE HUMANITY. This is so embarrassing. It’s true, I ate a big salad on Sunday, and that was basically my only vegetable. I didn’t have a single green smoothie. So what did I eat that was healthy this week? Tons of fruit. Lots of apples and bananas, especially in protein shakes – and more orange juice than was probably healthy (lots of calories for little nutrition). Fruit is great, but I want to get the veggies in there too.

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

Accomplished: 3/3
Woot! Finally, success! I could say that writing is a lot easier than the other two, but you know what? I’m going to just be happy I got three out of three and leave it at that.

Weight Lost: 3lbs.
Total lost: 3lbs.
I’m not really sure how I lost weight this week, but there you go.

Summary:

So how do I feel after my first moderate week? Well, I can safely say that being moderate about food and exercise is really hard for me. If I’m not all-focused on something, then I’m hardly focused on it at all, a mental problem of mine that causes issues in other areas of life as well.

I feel good about how I did, even though I didn’t complete everything. I thought about the goals at least once a day, and just having them in mind is a start. I could get discouraged and beat myself up and tell myself this was stupid and I should just quit, especially if I can’t even eat three vegetables in a week. But we all have to start somewhere, right? I’m really beginning to believe that getting in shape is basically a mental game. It’s how we talk to ourselves that matters.

What I did like about this week was having a plan that was reasonable and didn’t cause me to panic (you should see the panic in my kitchen the morning after I’ve decided to become a raw foodist). I could get up and think about doing 15 minutes of exercise, or writing a short post, or eating a veggie, and not feel overwhelmed.

Next up: goals for week 2!

They might want to wear something more comfortable in the weight room.

…..I said, YOUNG MAN, come and get your free personal training…..ummm…..

I joined our local YMCA back in August when we moved in, and I’ve been going pretty regularly, at least once a week (such great moderation!). I usually go swimming with Sonja. She said yesterday that going to the pool is our version of going to coffee. Then she said, “That makes us a billion times cooler, you know.”

“That and like a billion other things, dude,” I said. “We’re  just cool. We can’t help it.” It’s helpful to say “dude” whenever you talk about how cool you are, especially when you’re in your mid-thirties.

“I tried to be ‘not cool’ one day, and failed,” Sonja said.

“It’s the risk you take being us,” I proclaimed. Uh huh.

Anyway, when you join, you can get a free consultation with one of the trainers, who will give you a basic training program that you can design to suit your own needs. After that, they’ll keep track of you for 12 weeks and answer any questions you might have as you go along. This is perfect, since I’ve been wanting to do more than swim, but I don’t feel like I know my way around the weight room yet. It will give me a chance to get acquainted.

My appointment is on Friday. I’ll let ya’ll know how it goes.

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.

"Stop! Don't go on another diet! MODERATION, BABY!"

Within an hour of posting The Moderately Great Weight Loss Plan (after this known as TMGWLP, because that just rolls off the tongue), I was looking online at a diet plan. JUST LOOKING, mind you. And then Greg mentioned an application for the iPhone he’d heard was great, so I downloaded that, because hey, it’s free! What’s the harm in free?

And then I stopped myself.

Moderation is hard. It isn’t even moderately hard, it’s really really really hard. I want to DO something. And what can I do? I can do one of my goals. I can exercise for 15 minutes or I can write this post (Hey! I just met 1/3rd of my weekly goal), or I can go eat a vegetable. These things seem so small when compared to the 56 pounds I’m trying to lose. I want to push them aside and go do something that feels bigger, like run around the block until I drop, or make a few quarts of green smoothie and eat nothing but that for days. But I know that if I do either of those things, I’ll wear myself out, go down in a lovely fiery ball of flame, decide on a new plan once I’m feeling better, and then spend my time recovering on the couch with a few too many green onion pancakes.

I’m uncomfortable with how predictable this cycle is.

I started reading Refuse to Regain. It’s a blog written by two women, one of whom lost a significant amount of weight, and is keeping it off. Maybe if I read this now, instead of later, I’ll be ahead of the game when I actually do start losing again.

After 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.

This was a new one for me. According to this article in The Daily Green:

In addition to being found in many plastic bottles, Bisphenol A is also found in the epoxy resin liner of most canned fruits and vegetables. The BPA from this lining has been shown to leach into the vegetables in the can. Studies have shown that amount leached is enough to cause breast cancer cells to grow and proliferate in the lab.

I’ll look around and see if I can find more support for this, but for now let’s just take it as one more encouragement to eat whole foods, and to support our local agriculture, and while you’re at it, support the EARTH. That plastic you throw away might literally be going into someone else’s body.

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.

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.

I got a message on my cell that they took care of the charges. I haven’t seen it go through yet, but will keep an eye on it.

I’ve sent two email messages in two days, asking what happened and to please refund my money. They aren’t responding. Finally this afternoon I called their support line, which only went to recordings. I left a message detailing what had happened. The support line claims that it will get back to me within 24 hours. We’ll see.

In the mean time, I suggest you DO NOT subscribe to the “Inner Circle“, unless you’re absolutely sure that you want to give them your money. Their cancellation policy on their website is this:

But to cancel, all you have to do is Just send an email to support@renegadehealth.com with the subject “Inner Circle Cancel” and please include the email address you used to sign up, your nickname here in the inner circle and your full name. This will allow us to easily process your cancellation. We’ll process it right away.

That’s exactly what I did on 9/18/2009, and they charged me anyway on 9/30 (I became a member on 8/31/2009, so my cancellation request was well within the deadline). I’m really disappointed with the site, and the way it’s run. It really feels like a racket instead of a sincere attempt at providing people with good information (I know, many of you are going, DUH, right?).