*** Update – 1/3/12, or day 1878 by the ‘weight loss calendar’ — This is my mini-rant on nutrition as I wrote it in May of 2007. Since then I’ve been able to polish off another 60 lbs of weight loss, putting me just above 190. Before the holidays I was down to 184 and liking that very much. I credit my recent success to this book by Gary Taubes (click here to follow a link to his site where you can find out more). Nearly 30 pounds of my weight has come off in the last 5 months since I read his book and started getting serious about cutting foods with a high glycemic index from my diet. I still journal, but only have to keep track of carbs, which is much less labor intensive than fat/calories/fiber which I had to do following the old Weight Watchers program. Life is good and I’m looking forward to reaching my final maintenance weight this year. ***
For years I’ve been working to lose weight and get in better shape. I’ve never been in great shape to begin with, but in the early 90′s when I went to college, I hit what I look back on as my low point. In early 1997, after fueling myself for about 6 months straight with leftover bagels from the conference room in the office of my first job out of school, I was up to about 315 pounds and feeling just about as lousy as anyone would ever want to feel in their 80′s or 90′s, let alone their 20′s. That was when I started to get really serious about being more active, eating better, and holding on to as much of the good health that I could salvage from my youth as possible. Since then I’ve lost 65 pounds, gained 20 pounds, lost 15 pounds, gained 30 pounds, lost 80 pounds, gained 60 pounds, lost 14, gained 16, and lost 17. That puts me right around 250, with 70 to lose to put me in the guidelines for what is considered to be the normal weight range for someone my height and age. All of the downturns in my weight can be directly linked to periods when I was actually paying attention to what I was eating and how active I was being. The 80 pound weight loss was over a period of about 10 months in 2003 where I took information I got from a nutritionist in mid-1997 and some research from the internets, and started journaling everything I ate while at the same time exercising at least 5-7 times a week. I was young, single, and had absolutely no social calendar to speak of. It was a perfect storm for weight loss, and I knew it.
As with all things in life, changes come, and some times important things get pushed to the wayside for something else. When I started dating my now wife, the idea of keeping track of what I was eating went right out of the window. I also became more tied up at work at the same time, so a few hours that would have gone to exercise were lost there too. With the engagement and planning for the wedding, little of my energy in the last 2 years went to keeping quality track of what I ate. It was on my mind, and I stayed as active as I could, but even with trying to lose weight for the wedding, I was lucky to break even.
As soon as we returned from the honeymoon, I started back full time journaling. Part of it was a new beginning in both marriage and health, and part was that it just felt right.
The picture above is of my written logs which I use to keep track of stuff during the day, since I’m not always sitting in front of a computer (especially at times when I’m bad). I don’t do any calculations in this book which is what the one below is for. That is my digital spreadsheet which I manufactured from Excel, and some mathematical formulas which I found on another guy’s website years back which are the calculations that Weight Watchers uses to formulate it’s points system. Aside from calculating my daily fat, fiber, calorie, and point intake, it does some other neat stuff too. There’s a weekly total bar at the top which calculates daily averages and weekly totals for calories and points, plus there’s another column underneath which I can input activities with times in minutes and intensities, and it figures out the number of points burned, and automatically subtracts that from my weekly total. There’s another workbook where I have a list of all the foods I’ve eaten on a regular basis, and another which has a graph containing weight loss progress and goal projections. Down at the bottom I have a small section for recording weightlifting sessions which I made about a year ago or so. I really need to carve out some time each day to do that. Filling that in with something on a regular basis will be my next step.
It is both daunting and depressing to think that I’m going to have to do this for the rest of my life. For all the effort that is expended, it’s actually very useful. If you are honest with yourself, you get a very good picture of what you are eating, and what you are doing wrong. I’ve known for at least 2 years now that my biggest problem isn’t what I eat on an average weekday, it’s what happens when I get out with friends and go to dinner, or go to visit family for a cookout. There is little that can save me from the kind of carnage that ensues once I have a few beers and decide it’s an ok idea to eat a cheeseburger and some Gino’s Pizza rolls “Just this once”. If I need or want to eat out in a mainstream restaurant, I’m basically wrecked there too. Go HERE and look up anything on Chili’s regular menu. Might I suggest the ‘Awesome Blossom’ for an eye-opener? Yes, there are light options, and ways you can work around portion sizes like boxing up half your food before you start eating, but I’m a little confused with what I’m supposed to do with the leftovers. Taking them home to eat later so I can spread my bad meal over 3 days seems like just as poor an idea when I know I would eat well on Monday and Tuesday otherwise. Bad thing is that I eat so well regularly, that once I’m finished with ‘bad’ dinners, I usually feel pretty rotten for the rest of the night too. Doesn’t help morale much when I’m sitting in front of the computer the next day making a historical record of how much I ate. Good news is that over the years I’ve learned to cook pretty well, so even though meals out usually almost always end in SOME form of disappointment, regular everyday food is pretty damn good by comparison.
All in all, it’s a really good system. The copying and pasting has made me a little lazy in remembering exactly how good or bad something is for me, but the gain in efficiency in being able to keep up with life and also record all of this is well worth it. In the long run, I know EXACTLY what I should be eating and should not be eating long before I do it, but accountability and guilt can be strong motivators. Journaling food also acts as a diary of sorts on a personal level, because, at least for me, the foods I’m eating on certain days can act as mnemonic devices which cue me in to where I was going and what I was doing on certain days. I’ve looked at journals I’ve done 4 years ago, and have been able to remember even very ordinary days with perfect clarity. That’s about all for right now…
