"Hey Steve, where've you been?"

Indeed. Where have I been? Just a little side trip to distraction-land, that's where. It's a confusing place full of shiny and pointy things, squirrels, projects, family, chores, and bric-a-brac. It can be a consuming slice of life where the rides alternately thrill or suck and always, always, lead from where you should be to places you sometimes cannot completely return from. Always a good time though.

Onward and upward...

Cool thing is that I've been consistently exercising. Eating's been a little inconsistent but it's taken the scale down a few pounds. I feel good about it- though a little mystified. It's not like I've regained my youthful metabolism or become unconsciously competent at weight loss. I think I'll chalk it up to "fluke" and get my trolley back on the tracks and heading for the station.

I've got a camping trip coming up this weekend. It's the last one of the year so I'm pretty jazzed. It's also a guys-only trip so I'll be letting my inner heathen out to play a little. I'm looking forward to a little R&R and a chance to implement all the menu ideas so many of you have offered.

I'm also in the midst of switching this site over to a little more manageable format. The last year or so had me playing with whatever crossed my path blog-wize. I've been having a lot of fun with it so far but want to focus a little more on the weight loss journey than all the widgets and what-nots I've scattered throughout the site. Hopefully it will all make sense as the little changes come through.

diet weight loss obesity exercise muscle fat

Image via WikipediaI'm sure I've burdened this blog with my peculiarities in regard to doing things in multiples of three. Reps, sets, laps, servings, anything that's measured is done in threes. It's a little quirky, I know, but hey- quirky is my best feature and a major component in what I refer to as my pseudo-charm.

Not everything can be done in threes- but I don't want to talk about them right now. That would be nuts.

Anyway, back on the 26th of August I set a goal to lose 10 pounds by September 30th. Since then I've lost a total of three (3) pounds. That was three (3) weeks and three (3) days to lose three (3) pounds. Triple threes! Yikes! If I were a superstitious guy I might have read something into that, some kind of triple-threat thing. And while I am a little superstitious, the only significance I see in this situation is that I have only eleven (11) days left and seven (7) pounds to lose in order to reach my goal. Seven pounds, in my mind, is a significant quantity of weight that isn't divisible by three.

Wait a tick. If I take the number eleven and break it down by it's number of tens and ones I get 1 and 1. Add those together and I get 2 (1 + 1 = 2). Add that to the seven pounds I have left to lose and I get 9 (2 + 7 = 9). Nine is three cubed (3^3 or 3 x 3 x 3). Triple triples again! Add those three triples to the three triples that have already occurred and I have six triples to lose ten pounds. Ho-lee Crap! What does it mean?

It means absolutely nothing. Here's the thing- I could go on all day every day for the rest of my life attaching nonsensical and mystical non-information to my efforts to return to a healthy weight, and it's all fun and good until I've become so distracted that I've forgotten the truly important tenets of healthy weight loss.

People, all to often, get caught up in tricks, fads, and gimmicks that promise quick weight loss. We all see them in spam and on television; we have friends that use them. We live in a world of gimmicks and fads few of which guarantee lasting results. So what do I do?

Stay focused. Eat the right quantity of good, healthy foods. Exercise in some way every day. Live life and enjoy the experience. I believe it's as simple as that.

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Today was my first "full" day of exercise. When I say "full" I don't mean I was at the gym all day. What I mean is that I started at the gym and then moved on over to the stadium for a few laps on the bleachers. All in all it took about an hour and was pretty rigorous (for me). When I was done I rode home feeling invigorated and sweaty. That was my routine Monday, Wednesday, and Friday mainly because the Pose & Gossip Class is back in the weight room on Mondays and Wednesdays. I have to clear out by 6AM so they can do their thing and because I can't get into the gym until 5:30, I feel a little lazy unless I do something more.

Rock on.

As I reflect over the past couple of weeks it occurs to me that if I could credit any one thing to effective weight loss- what was primarily responsible for the two-pound loss I experienced, was paying closer attention to what I ate.

Exercise is a great thing, it's a necessary thing for good health and increased metabolism. It definitely increases my nutritional economy of scale. The thing is- and I'm talking only about my personal experience here, no amount of exercise could ever overcome the damage done by overeating all by itself. Eating right is the cornerstone, the lynchpin, the key- hell, THE MOST IMPORTANT THING in returning my body to a healthy weight. For me, exercise greases the gears, primes the pump, fans the flame- hell, it makes the whole process more enjoyable and, shall I say, "Noticeable?"

My stamina has increased and I'm feeling stronger- I think most of that comes from exercise. The lighter I get the easier it is to do, which makes me want to continue... for the rest of my life.

Good stuff:

The gym was open earlier than expected- which is a great thing because I was ready for a a little change after a stint of stadium running and I was anxious about my weight. Not "what's in that big box under the Christmas tree" anxious, more like "do I want to stomp out this flaming paper bag on my porch" anxious. So, with a little dread, I stepped up on the scale and discovered I had lost two pounds since my last weigh-in. Not a terrible thing- not like unwrapping a dirt bike on Christmas morning but definitely not like stomping on a flaming bag o' poo either.

So, in the last dozen or so days since I was at the gym I faired fairly OK. Losing a few more pounds would have been awesome but I'll take this two pound loss as motivation to work harder and stay more focused. What I learned from the experience is that it really doesn't matter if the gym closes. As long as I'm motivated, active, and vigilant it really doesn't matter. It is and always was entirely up to me to adapt and overcome.
Good stuff:

diet weight loss obesity exercise muscle fat

Once upon a time there was a fairly big guy sitting in a chair at his desk in a cubicle in a rather smallish room at the end of a hall in an office building he shared with the rest of the minions who worked for a medium-sized company in a smallish town in what is called the Pacific Northwest.

His job wasn't overly complicated and it certainly wasn't strenuous. It was a satisfactory arrangement in which the fairly big guy would clackety-clack on the keyboard to validate the quality of a fairly important product that could not leave the factory until the very last clack had been clickety'd. The fairly big guy was a link in a fairly short chain that went around and around supplying fairly important product.

And all was right and good as the wheels went around and around.

The hours were long and more often than not the fairly big guy remained in his chair from six in the morning until ten at night- and often enough it was seven days each week. Times were good for the medium-sized company.

It grew.

The fairly big guy loved production. He loved industry. Moving product meant success and success required the clickety-clack of the keys. He would leave his chair only when biology required it and because the facilities were close he moved very little. He ate at his desk and because his office was windowless and his hours were long, he would not see the sun for several days at a time. No breaks meant more production and production was good. The fairly big guy would eat things that didn't require stopping or looking away from his work. He worked through breakfast, he worked through lunch, he worked through dinner. Clickety-clack.

His lunchbox grew.

It had to- he was carrying a full day's worth of meals. He tried to load as many nutritious things as he could into his lunchbox (which had grown from a little brown bag into a cooler). The fairly big guy had developed an appetite for the "good" stuff; processed meats and cheese, packaged foods, snack cakes, and grapes by the bunch. He didn't go thirsty either, not with ll the room he had for soda in his nice big cooler.

He grew.

Screech! Hit the brakes and back the truck up! I don't like where this fairy tale is heading. Sounds to me like the protagonist here is going on to build a house of straw and live in hog heaven until the big, bad, hypertension and diabetes monster huffs and puffs and blows is house down. Then that proud porker will find out what hog heaven is really all about; dead hogs.

OK, so that fat little piggy protagonist and fairly big guy is/was me. My story changed a little when I decided that it was time to start building my house out of bricks and wee, wee, wee, run all the way to the gym. Something I'm still doing. It's adding a longer and happier ending to my story.

The moral here? If I get off my ass and get moving I may not have to wee, wee, wee, down to the funeral home any time soon.

I was just watching a presentation on TechCrunch.com by a company called FitBit- a company that combines a wearable sensor that uploads activity data to a website that clues you in to how active you are throughout the day.

Check out this New York Times article for more info.

I, for one, get kind of excited about THIS type of potential weight loss technology. First, I'm more of a gadget-guy than swallow-a-new-pill-guy and second, anything that offers real feedback on my efforts is something I can really take a shine to.

I love using a scale- it tells me right away whether or not the last couple of days' activity and diet have been beneficial. I love using a small digital scale for measuring out food in various recipes- it's a real time-saver. Pedometers and the Nike+ thing- also very cool. I love having my gps with me on hikes to let me know how far I've travelled. All this hardware is good stuff.

The idea behind FitBit makes sense to me. I look forward to hearing more about it.

This may prove to be something that belongs in my weight loss tool kit.



Other good stuff:

My wife and I have been running a tournament, of sorts. My wife really likes dark chocolate. So, for last several months I've been buying her a bar every time I happen across some at a store. I've bought her Dagoba, Lindt, some endangered species emblazoned bars, some from the local confectioner, and a host of others. For my wife's last birthday we went around to a number of shops and bought as many different dark chocolate candy bars as we could find. She was amassing quite a collection. Well, we got it in our heads that we would work through them, comparing two bars at a time, to determine which we liked the best. We've narrowed the field down to the last four after sampling a lot of bars- what torture!

So I'm thinking, why not take a look at nutrition bars? They aren't a daily thing but from time to time I use them to fill the gap in my six-meal-a-day self-inflicted weight loss program. Every once in a while, the little sweet treat during the morning is a welcome departure from my regular meals.

I had a few in the pantry; some samples from PureFit and a Clif Bar I hadn't noticed before on my sporadic trips to the market. They'll be the first in my ongoing quest to find my favorite nutrition bar.

The Clif bar was a heavy and sophisticated blend of crunch and sweet that looked better, was more filling and satisfying than the Purefit. Nutritionally, the Purefit less fat, fewer carbs, and less sodium. If I had to pick one that I could say was "better for me" I probably go with the PureFit.

Flavor-wise it was no slouch either. But, and I always have to throw my big but into it, I wasn't completely in love with the dry pastiness of the bar and the code-blue necessity to wash it down with something/anything just to get it out of my mouth. It (PureFit) reminded me of those SpaceFood Sticks that were popular for a time in the 1960's, or the bottom-most strata of you-mix style peanut butter that you didn't quite get mixed so well and had to chip out of the jar.

The Clif bar was visually massive in comparison and flavor combined with the chewy crunchiness of the whole affair left me a lot more satisfied and eliminated any feelings of hunger. The PureFit, had I taken a number of bars and chopped them into bite-sized morsels, would make a snack that I would unconsciously munch on until I had consumed an entire case. Like I used to do with Nilla Wafers and other things that tasted good, but didn't provide quite enough feedback to trip the mental switch that tells you you've had enough.

Between the two, the Clif bar beat out the PureFit by the narrowest of margins- and primarily in categories that should not really matter to me. This being a completely subjective competition means that my choices are more personal preference than anything else. So even though the Clif won out, I'll probably maintain a small supply of PureFit bars for times when I'm craving their particular qualities.

I can't be the only one seeing my junk mail folder filling with this kind of spam. I'm sure we've all endured a never ending inbox full of promises to shrink this, re-grow that, lengthen this, or meet lots of that. It's clogging my filters with unfulfilled promises of personal improvement and easy-fixes for whatever I can imagine ails me. I never bite, never even nibble, but I am curious.

I started doing a little research on açaí- which means I Googled it. The resulting 5.24-Million hits were sure to occupy more of my attention span than I could possibly...ooh, look at that squirrel outside my window...set aside...dog's gonna eat you!...so I went with the first...get'm Karma!...on the list; the end-all, infallible authority on everything you need to know on the interwebs, Wikipedia. One click later I had a link I could post right here in my blog. Whew! Good job, Steve. I'm spent. Call it a day.

Here's the thing. I can get açaí berry pulp in the freezer section of my local grocery store. I'm not going to argue the beneficial food properties of the stuff, what I will say is that I look at this stuff like so many other "Super-duper-fill-in-the-blank-with-some-exotically-spelled-and-relatively-unknown-berry-shrub-critter" as 99% hype. My reality is that there is no wonder cure that's going to make me fit and trim overnight. There is no magical fix. Besides, magic didn't put on the weight, so magic sure as hell isn't going to take it off.

Nothing I read about açaí makes me think it will do anything special. It is colorful stuff though- and comes in frozen single-serving packages. The only thing it can do for me is add a little variety to the frozen berries I use in my morning smoothies. Hmm. I can see myself flushing 50 pounds already-- right out of my junk mail folder.

It's Saturday so my daily routine gets a little bump into the regress zone. The kids' activities ensure that there are tons of things to do and places to go- we just start a little later than normal. The slightly cool thing is that I wasn't running in the dark. Slightly.

People know me as a fairly tolerant and accepting, kindly old cantankerous fart of a guy who rarely complains about anything-- unless it poses a minor inconvenience, bruises my sensibilities, tweaks my schedule, musses-up my OCD-ish feng-shui of spatial order, throws off my hand washing count, or touches my hair. Yeah, I'm a picnic basket of relaxed merriment alright, so long as the ants stay off the blanket. That said, and at the risk of earning the title "Mr. Malcontent", I thought I'd make a little request of those who choose to eat at the stadium (where I'm typically running in the dark).

Please, oh please, pick up after yourself. I totally understand the desire to enjoy the sunshine and "hang with yer bitches" at lunch time but c'mon, must you leave so much evidence? There are no fewer than seven trash cans arranged around the stadium stairways- and each were mostly empty this morning. The stairs themselves were adorned with loads of candy wrappers, drink cups, chunks of food-like substances, sunflower seed hulls, and spilled soda. It was a hell of a lot prettier in the dark.

I picked up and threw away the less-juicy litter that blocked my path. It was gross but I discovered that it was amazingly convenient considering how close the trash cans were to the trash. I hope that those who created the mess will soon make the same discovery.

Moving on...

I miss the weight training but am making good use of the time increasing my stamina on the track. It's amazing how much better I feel after a few laps- what a contrast to how I would have described my feelings a year ago. This month is going to be good for me.

Rock on...

This morning was an adventure in the dark and I learned one very humanizing thing; you know you are truly alive when you bang your shins on a metal riser while running the stadium at 5:30 AM. (I think I even Twittered about it.) That absolutely rocked! Can't wait 'til tomorrow! Mmm, fresh hell! Yummy!

Moving on...

We had some leftover butternut squash in the refrigerator and my wife thought it would be good to have a little squash soup for lunch. Here's what went in it:

1C Cooked Squash
1C Milk
2t Butter
Add to taste:
Ground Ginger
Garlic Salt
Pepper

I just threw it all in the blender, hit the "soup" button twice and two minutes later, hot soup. It was tasty and here's why:

So the lesson learned today is: soup, good but I shouldn't eat it all the time; wet metal stairs in the dark, bad but must be done daily until October 5th.


Good stuff:

I came back from Labor Day to discover that the gym I faithfully go to six mornings each week is going to be closed for the entire month of September. Guess what blows. THAT does, that's what!

Instead, I'll be running the stadium bleachers at 5:30 AM -- in the freakin' dark! I couldn't be more jazzed. Truth is, I'd rather stick to going to a gym. The thing is though, going to another gym just doesn't work for me logistically. This month is going to be interesting.

I'll also be in the dark about how much I weigh. I'm a creature of consistent behavior and I've consistently weighed myself on the scale in the very same gym that's going to be closed all month. Darkness abounds. I won't be able to tell how close I am to reaching my 10-pound weight loss goal. Hmm.

These are minor challenges. No big deal. I'm going to focus on the important stuff; eating right, continuing to exercise, and trying not to trip and break my neck on the stairs at the stadium. Good times.

Speaking of eating, here's another tool in my dieter's tool kit;

4. Protein Powder

It's great after a strenuous workout. There are two primary fuel sources I want my body tapping right after an hour of pushing weights; adipose tissue and a frosty protein smoothie. The adipose comes from this layer of insulation covering the guy I plan to be and the protein smoothie is made from a full serving of EAS Chocolate Protein.

Why EAS (chocolate) protein powder and not some other brand? Because I'm cheap and lazy. I go to Costco about once a month and that's the brand they sell. They sell it in 5-lb. bags and it's pretty inexpensive there compared to other places and other brands at other places. It really isn't ALL about being cheap and lazy. EAS produces some good products and the protein mix I use is good stuff. Mixed with flax and fruit in the Blendtec and it's downright palatable.

This next tool in my weight loss kit is something I've enjoyed from the beginning of quest to drop the pounds and maintain physical fitness. When I was doing my initial research and designing my meal plan, I looked for something that was flavorful, easy, and satisfying. It also had to be quick and portable because I would most likely have to consume it while I was on my way somewhere or working at my desk.

3. Protein Smoothie

It was the first thing that came to mind when I was trying to come up with a simple meal that would meet my needs. I figured I could pack a bunch of nutrition into a blender, hit the switch, and a few seconds later be chugging down everything I needed to replenish carbs used during my workout, get my metabolism working, and satisfy my hunger until my next meal. So far it's worked quite well.

I typically use a simple set of ingredients; always using a serving of protein powder and ground flax seed. I'll vary the other ingredients depending on what sounds good and what I happen to have on hand. I like them nice and cold and initially I used ice to keep them frosty but I later started using frozen berries. Why berries? There aren't a lot of carbs in them, they're chockfull of anti-oxidants, and depending on the variety of berry, make the flavors of the other components "pop".

Once I had a good blender and a decent reusable travel container, it became my morning ritual- the minute I got back from the gym I'd throw the ingredients in the blender and a few seconds later I would have my breakfast in hand and ready to go. I've tried a lot of different combinations, but here's my typical concoction:

1S EAS Protein (Chocolate)
1S Ground Flax
1/2 Banana
1/2C Frozen Blueberries
1T Fresh Ground Peanut Butter (no salt)
Filtered Water

Good stuff: