Bumps in the Road

I wrote this blog yesterday but I am having computer issues. The pictures got saved but not the prose.  I am thinking of buying a laptop for both my writing and my photographs.  My desktop seems to have problems more and more frequently. I could write on my phone, as large as it is, but that seems problematic. Although I do write lengthy e-mails from time to time. And I have available time on my daily commute. Didn't the woman who wrote Shades of Gray do it on her cell phone?

So where is my life right now and my weight loss progress?  Well I only lost 2 pounds last week. And this week has not been good. I had  oral surgery this week on Wednesday which was a little more intense than anticipated. Having to eat soft foods and cutting back on my exercising was not a good combination. Besides I was feeling sorry for myself so I ate all the wrong things. I really did not enjoy them.

The above writing is from a few days ago.  Mouth is better.  I am picking up the walking again.  But I am on the last day of a 6 day stretch at work so it is difficult to get everything in I want to do.  I gained the two pounds back that I lost last week. I seem to have trouble with numbers.  Getting below them that is.  First it was 150.  Then it was 200.  Now 220 seems to be an obstacle.  But I will get back on track and I will do this 100 pound journey.  49 weeks to go.   The weather has been beautiful.

Photos are.from.a.shoot i

I did with a new friend..

My Fitbit

Have I mentioned my Fitbit yet?  A Fitbit is like a pedometer but goes on your wrist.  It tracks my steps and converts them into miles.  It also keeps track of my sleep, how long I am asleep, when I wake up at night and my restless periods.  It tells me how many very active minutes I have done and how many calories I have burned.  All of this information is synced to my smart phone with a Fitbit app.  I would have to manually put in the calories I have consumed and my water intake.  I just had a brilliant idea.  The next billion dollar money maker.  Figure out a device that will count your calories going in.  Now wouldn't that be something? But I digress.

I bought my sister, Judy, a Fitbit because she is trying to lose weight as well.  The best part is that on the app, I can follow and compete with my friends who also have Fitbits.  The reason I bought one in the first place is because Charlie, my daughter's boyfriend,  had one.  He is now one of my Fitbit friends.  I had a fantasy of out pacing him in the beginning but I know now that will never happen.  Yesterday I put in a total of 20,000 steps, twice my goal or 8 miles total for the day.  Best day yet and my Fitbit told me so.  As I was doing one of my laps around Horner park where I often walk, I ran across Charlie.  Now Kate and Charlie live about a mile west of me and I am 3.5 miles from the lake.  Charlie had already walk to the lake, run for a while along the lake front, walked back and was circling Horner park.  I will never catch up to him.  He loves to walk.  Apparently so does David Sedaris.  Very funny New York Times piece about his Fitbit and his walking.  http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/06/30/stepping-out-3  Thanks you Judy, for sending me this article.

As David Sedaris suggest in the article, the Fitbit can make one become a bit obsessive if one is prone to that condition.  I find it highly motivating..  As Mr. Sedaris suggests, what good are the steps if they aren't being counted?  I now find myself walking to the El train, instead of catching a closer bus.  I look for excuses to get out and walk.  Last night when I came home I was about 100 steps short of the 20,000 so I paced around the house until I made it.  Maybe I am a little obsessive.  Maybe it is a good thing, if I want to reach my goal.

Cooking

I like to complain that I don't like to cook for just me.  I prefer to have someone to cook for and I suppose that has to do with validation.  I want someone to tell me my cooking is good.  My roommate once told me that I don't like to cook, but that I want to like to cook.  She is more of a baker.  But then my friend Wesley said something that make it all clear to me.  He said "I like to cook, because I like to eat."

Hmm, what a concept.  My friend Ro cooks for herself (and others like me) all the time.  She likes to cook. But she also likes to eat and I think she likes to eat what she cooks.  I know I do.  All of this reminds me of when I was a child.  It seemed I was cooking as soon as I could reach the stove top.  But what I was cooking was what I wanted to eat.  I was born with a sweet tooth and Mother was not really into making deserts so much.  So my sister and I would bake cakes and cookies and make puddings.  I don't know how many times I scotched the pan and ruined the pudding because I was in too much of a hurry to eat the pudding.  It didn't hurt that my father had a sweet tooth as well and enjoyed and encouraged our undertakings.

Later in life, however, when I became more mobile, I discovered I could get my fixes with out cooking. Plenty of candy and store bought treats.  Hostess Snow Balls were always a favorite.  And then there is fast food.  Is it coincidental that McDonald's, starting out in California in the 40's began franchising in 1952 the year after I was born?  By the time I was in high school we probably had several in Kansas City and one not too far from my house.

I also grew up on convenience  foods.  I wasn't baking cakes or making pudding from scratch.  Box mixes were just fine with me. We ate frozen dinners from time to time when my parents went out and we begged for them.  There was something about having a whole meal come out of the oven on one little tray.  Although my mother make most of her meals from scratch, I used many more packaged foods.  Mother made goulash, I made Hamburger Helper.  Mother made oven friend chicken, I made Shake and Bake.  I never saw instant potatoes growing up, but used a lot of them in my early marriage days.  I fed my children Spaghetti Os's, and tater tots and canned chili and soups.  I was a busy mother after all.  Real cooking was something I did when company was coming.

Now that I am eating mostly unprocessed foods, cooking has become a necessity.  I like to eat.  As much as I love fruit, sometimes I want something more.  I had an amazing experience just the other day but I need to back up just a bit. Even before starting this 100 pound journey, I have been experimenting with different diets: Paleo, Vegan, Slow Carb, Eat to Live.  All have influenced me in one way or the other.  And even before all of this experimentation, I have been trying to be gluten free.  The Paleo diet suggest grain free and I think I feel better not eating grains.  Grains also tend to be highly processed.  So because of this I have accumulated various grain free flours, potato starch, tapioca starch, almond flour and coconut flour.  I also use coconut oil and butter exclusively for my fats.  So the other day I had a craving for of all things, a muffin. I don't eat muffins much.  I have a few recipes I really like but they all include wheat flour.  I did an Internet search for paleo muffins and found a recipe for blueberry muffins.  And here is the amazing part.  I actually had all the ingredients I needed to bake the things.  Almond flour, coconut flour, coconut oil, eggs, maple syrup (real maple syrup), and blueberries.   I made them and they turned out really good.  A little butter...perfect.  All the ingredients very minimally processed.  I ate two.  And although they made me a little sleepy for some reason, I wasn't hungry again until dinner time.  I figured out the calorie count (just for curiosity sake) and they came in around 350 calories a piece.  Very satisfying and very yummy.

My favorite thing to cook at the moment is breakfast.  Perhaps it is because I have more time in the morning and more energy.  And my favorite breakfast is a skillet of boiled potatoes, onions, garlic, red bell peppers, mushrooms and Cheddar cheese.  Some times I put eggs on the top.  Sometimes I cook a little ham or uncured Bacon.  Sometimes I throw in some tomatoes. I do like eating and now I like to cook.

One Week Down and 51 To Go

One week down.  The first week, when I am motivated, is always the easiest. I love new things, new challenges. But I get bored quickly. And especially when things become difficult, I tend to give up rather than rise to the challenge. I am hoping this time will be different. Generally it will be after week 3 that things will become more difficult. The weight loss slows down. I get bored with what I am eating.

 But I feel a little different this time. I feel less anxious about what I am going to eat. When I diet I find my self spending a lot of time thinking and worrying about the food choices. Because I am limiting myself to whole, unprocessed foods it seems easier. I eat fruits and vegetables. I eat a little meat. Some nuts. If I don't know what is in it I don't eat it. Even dining out isn't difficult. I am sticking with "what you see is what you get". Veggie omelets. Salads. Roasted meats without mystery sauces. Baked potatoes. Vegetables without sauce. I do keep Kind bars handy. Perhaps a bit processed but least so of any protein bar. Just nuts, dried fruits, and seeds held together with a bit of honey. It does have non GMO glucose. Very delicious and satisfying if I don't have time to do anything else. Made in a factory, but I recognize all the ingredients.

My exercise has been going well. I had bought a Fitbit at the beginning of the week and I love it. It tells me how many steps I take, how many miles I walk. How much of that is real exercise. I now have a few friends that I can compete with. I can see their steps and they can see mine.  It even tracks my sleep. BTW I am sleeping much better this week. Probably because of the exercise. I walk between 3 and 5 miles a day. 3 miles seems to be just the normal walking that I do. So to reach 5 I have to put in two miles of intended exercise.  Shooting for 10,000 steps everyday.  That is generally consided 5 miles, but for me, because I have such short legs and take small steps it is only 4 miles. I was worried about my knees which have bothered me for some time.  But they are actually feeling better instead of worse.  And my feet are doing o.k. too.  (Have had a lot of feet issues over the years.)

The most difficulty I am having is finding times to accomplish things.  I am not as focused on food as I said, but it does take some preparations.  And the clean up, my least favorite part.  And trying to get the extra exercise in.  And trying to blog.  No time to waste.  Maybe that is a good thing.  But my laundry also needs to get done at some point.

Oh and I lost 7 pounds this week.  Good start.

Whole Foods

I am refining the diet that I am going to use to lose my 100 pounds this year. I have decided that I am going to stick to whole foods and allow myself only 200 calories of processed foods a day. (I may tweak this as I go along.)  Processes foods that have no calories (such as diet Coke) will be used very sparingly. Oh and I will probably give myself one cheat day a week in moderation.

Over eating on whole foods is difficult. I can't think of a single whole food that is loaded with calories except maybe butter and nuts.  The thing about nuts is that if I eat them in their raw form without being roasted or salted, I can keep myself to a handful.  They still taste really good but are not addicting.

I like to think that I grew up eating whole foods. By whole foods, I am not talking about the grocery chain. I am talking about unprocessed foods. Foods in their natural state. Had I simply eaten what my mother was serving, I would indeed have had mostly whole foods. Except on Thursdays when my parents went out and we had Swanson's chicken pot pies. And of coarse pasta and bread. But otherwise mostly home made cooking from whole foods. My sister, Judy, and I were the ones making the cakes and cookies and puddings from packages. Eating candy bars and then McDonald's and Pizza after they were invented.

One of my favorite books on eating is Michael Pollan's Food Rules. Mr Pollan is an advocate of real, unprocessed  foods and in the book he says that eating right is really not complicated. It comes down to 7 words. "Eat foods. Not too much.  Mostly plants." By foods he means real foods, not foods produced in factories. My favorite rule is "You can eat all the junk food you want as long as you cook it yourself."  The idea is that we won't bake cookies every day or cakes. When you want something you have to think about it and go to the trouble of making it rather than buying it off the grocery shelf. This rule lead me to an Internet search on how to make Coca Cola. Yes it is a secret formula but there are open source recipes.  From Wikepedia:

Flavoring
3.50 ml Orange oil
1.00 ml lemon oil
1.00 ml nutmeg oil
1.25 ml cassia (cinnamon) oil
0.25 ml coriander oil
0.25 ml neroli oil (similar to petitgrain, bergamot, or bitter orange oil)
2.75 ml lime oil
0.25 ml lavender oil
10.0 g food-grade, NOT ART-GRADE gum arabic (thickener)
3.00 ml water

Concentrate
10 ml flavoring (approximately 2 tsp packed)
17.5 ml 75% citric acid or phosphoric acid (3.5 tsp)
2.28 l water
2.36 kg granulated white sugar (or equivalent sweetener)
2.5 ml caffeine (optional but does affect taste)
30.0 ml caramel color (optional, should not affect taste)

Then there is a complicated 4 step process for putting it all together. I don't think I will be making this anytime soon so I guess I give up the Coke. (Actually I already have switched to diet coke but drink it only when I have to stay awake or an occasion treat at the movies.)

Other rules I like: "don't eating anything your great-grandmother wouldn't recognize as food and avoid food products that contain more than five ingredients.

The down side to eating whole, unprocessed foods is that you have to do a lot more cooking.  Tonight I spent 2 hours chopping veggies to make vegetable beef soup.  I used grass fed beef again. But I will have enough soup for several days so tomorrow my soup will be fast food.

 For breakfast I had scrambled eggs with mushrooms, red bell peppers, onions and cheddar cheese.  I only use pastured eggs and I am cutting way back on meat and trying to get organic meats that are humanly raised.  Can be tricky.

In the next few weeks I am going to try to track my calories to make sure I am not eating over the allotted amount.  So far I am feeling good.

Repetition

My middle daughter, Judy, is getting married in June and wants to lose weight for her wedding.  She wants to lose weight anyway and wants to be healthy.  She is also my runner despite knees that hurt her most days. On her visit last week she was constantly icing them after her runs.  But she is the one who got me started on my current exercise program.  On the next to her last day, I finally got out and walked with her and I have walked every day since.

 I prefer to walk with someone, but since I work evenings it is problematic.  I belong to a meetup group called The Curvy Girls. It is an exercise group. I have not done anything with them for a couple of years because of my schedule. So I emailed Deanna, the group leader, and she allowed me to put up a group to walk in the mornings at Horner Park just two blocks from my house.  So far no takers, but yesterday my friend Wesley wanted to have breakfast so he joined me for my walk before hand and then we walked to the breakfast place.  All in all I clocked almost 3 miles yesterday.   And I enjoyed the company.  

Part of the problem with exercise is the repetition.  I get bored easily.  Walking around the same park in the same circle, day after day can get really boring if I am by myself.  I change directions and even that little bit is helpful.  I am also trying to incorporate walking with where I am going instead of just walking for exercise.  For example this morning, I went for a foot massage. Rather than going to the park this morning to walk, I walked from the brownline stop to the massage place and then back to the brown line after the massage. Almost 2 miles round trip.

Routine, however, is how we get things done.  I know exactly what time I have to leave my house to get to work on time.  Occasionally,  they mess with the public transportation schedule and I am late to work a day or two until I establish a new routine.   We brush our teeth every day because it is a routine. And once we establish a routine or habit it is easier to accomplish the task.

Food is the same. Judy told me via text that she was having the same food she had yesterday. Boring she said. But I read somewhere that people are more successful with diets if they basically eat the same things day after day. When you think about it we do a lot of that anyway. How often do we eat the same thing for breakfast, or lunch. I remember as a child my mother had a rotation of dinners and we mostly ate the same thing week after week. But people are always complaining that they want something different to eat and are looking for new recipies. That's because we tend to eat the same thing over and over. We fall into a routine or pattern. But when I diet it seems I think I should mix it up so I don't get bored. What I think I really need to do is some of both. When I get into a routine I don't have to think about what I am going to eat so much. It will becomes a habit. And then when I want something different there are plenty of ideas and recipes on the internet.

A garden on one of my walks.

The Beginning

O.K.  It is a lie.  I haven't lost 100 pounds.  But all the books and articles that talk about visualization and goal setting, say that you put what you want in the present, as if it has already occurred.  And so that is what I have done.

Starting today, my intent is to record my journey.  At 64 this is not the first attempt I have made at losing weight.  It probably isn't even the 100th attempt.  But I am an optimist.  And I am at a different place than I was last year or even yesterday.  I have read more books, done more experimenting,  I have more support from family and friends.  I have more ideas,and more successes in other parts of my life.  So there is no reason to think that I cannot accomplish this.

And it really isn't even about losing weight but about getting healthier.  And by healthier I include both the physical and the mental.  I am a positive person by nature.  And a happy person.  My oldest daughter, Kate, and I disagree about happiness.  She thinks Americans are too self absorbed, too focused on their own happiness.  But happiness isn't about what you are doing or what is going on in your life or even what you have accomplished.  It is purely a state of mind.  It is something that you can choose.  Not always.  Not if you are in the throws of a deep depression and don't know what happiness even looks or feels like.  But otherwise, I think you can.

I had what I call a low level of depression going on through most of the winter and up until a few weeks ago. Fortunately I have been in the business long enough (I am a psychiatric nurse) to know how not to let it get worse.  I knew I had to keep doing the things I normally do even if I didn't feel like it.  Even if I wasn't enjoying it.  I believe that depression,  (and again I am not talking about clinical depression on a major scale)  like all things in life serves a purpose.  I tend to get depressed when I am trying to make changes.  Even good changes.  It's as if my brain does not like to move from the status quo and when I force it there it has to engage in a period of mourning.   I have found  it is best just to let it run it's course.   And even though I was depressed, I don't think, I was unhappy.  I believe there is a difference.

The change I was trying to make was to get healthier.  I have been experimenting with different diets, eating more fruits and vegetables, cutting back on sugar and grains.  And as part of my overall health improvement plan, I started getting weekly massages.  When you are not in a relationship, as I have not been for awhile now, touch is hard to come by.  I was getting a few hugs from friends and coworkers on a sporadic basis but not enough of what I needed.  Massage of course is all about touch and my brain finally decided to let go of the mourning and embrace the change.

So what is it that I am going to do to make this change happen?  How am I going to lose 100 pounds in a year?  One thing I am doing is blogging to keep myself accountable.  I have restarted my walking program. While most of the diet advise I have read of late says that exercise really isn't going to accomplish weight loss, that is at least 80% diet, exercise is important.   It just makes you feel better.  And as you start to feel better you naturally want to do other things to feel better as well, like eating the right foods. My plan with my diet is to eat whole foods as much as possible.  Joel Fuhrman, M.D. in his book Eat to Live assures me that if I follow his diet I will lose all my aches and pains, cure my diabetes (which I don't have)  lower my blood pressure (which is not diagnosed but is probably borderline at best.) and get to my ideal weight.  His diet consists of eating a pound of raw vegetable and a pound of cooked vegetables every day along with fruits and a cup of beans.  Basically no grains, no meat, no sugar and no dairy.  A little extreme, though it seems less extreme to me than it use to.  I have cut back (way back) on my sugars and grains most days.  My problem mostly is with consistency.  And when I go off the diet, portion control.  I do kind of like the diets that let you have a cheat day.  Dr. Fuhrman does not.

I will take it a day at a time.  I will try to eat healthy most days.  I will exercise most days.

I close my eyes.  I am 130 pounds.  I am visualizing.  You can add 100 pounds to that, but I won't.

Just to let you know what I ate for dinner.  My mother's goulash.  With some variations.  Grass fed beef, a little less than a pound.  A large onion, a green pepper, a box (not a can) of tomatoes with nothing added. and instead of elbow macaroni, I used spaghetti squash.  While it did not look exactly like hers, the taste was pretty close and very enjoyable.  The best part is I know exactly what I ate.  Whole foods.