I have worked in a corporate environment for approximately 20 years.  When I look back on that time it conjures a range of feelings: youthful enthusiasm, the thrill of a young man on the rise, bitter disappointment when a hoped for angle did not play out.  It has not been a one way up elevator ride.  There have been many bumps along the way, a few sideways steps and frankly a couple of backwards moves.  There have been more than a few times over the years when I felt like an impostor in a suit and tie or an actor trying to play a role.  

The last couple of days I have been traveling for work.  Last night I found myself at a bar having the last drink of the evening with several co-workers.  At this particular bar there was a mechanical bull that various people were trying to ride.   Some were better than others and stayed on longer,  but the thing I noticed was, sooner or later, the bull will always buck you  off.

Consumption:

Cheerios and raisin bran cereal with milk
24 almonds
Cup of chicken stew
Granny smith apple salad with cranberries and blue cheese
4 tbls of hummus and 6 crackers
apple
beef and shrimp hunan
Glass of milk

Exercise:

10 minutes of rowing machine
30 minutes of running
10 minutes of weight lifting

You will hear me discuss many heart health issues here.  On this special day though, I want to recognize that the heart is more than just a machine, that if healthy  and lucky pumps our blood non-stop for some eighty years or more.  In addition to that important function, we consider the heart to be the center of our emotions, including the most important, love.  I work in a large city and ride public transit.  Today I enjoyed observing men, young and old, carrying flowers like you would tenderly carry a baby.  In addition there were bags and packages bulging with candy, jewelry and other tokens of our esteem.  It was harder to see the many poems and love songs being written.   We all snickered at the congressman recently  who got caught sending a picture of himself making muscles in the mirror over the internet.  But I ask you, in the end, doesn't love make fools of us all?  And I say, thank God for that!

I am traveling for the next few days, so it will be difficult to post.  I will be writing it all down, however,  for when I return.

It is appropriate that I put a picture of my gut to put on the website.  I definitely have a ring of fat there that encircles my middle, whether it is called love handles, inner-tube, whatever.  If I grab it and squeeze it is about 3-4 inches of pure T fat.  Fat must not be very imaginative.  I overeat, my body processes and makes use of what it can and the extra says, "I will be fat and hang out right here."

I am not above magical thinking.  I am probably a little susceptible to a good shaman con-artist.  Its lucky I did not end up a Scientologist.  I all goes back to my boyhood love for the show Kung Fu, where the boy had masters who led him along a spiritual path of rice paper  until he learned to snatch a pebble from a blind man's hand  and kick a little butt.  But I digress, all that to say that when I first heard about the book,  Eat, Pray, Love, part of me hoped it was  a spiritual guide to weight loss.  Imagine my disappointment to find out it is about a woman who travels to India, eats good Indian food and falls in love, even if it was Julia Roberts doing it.   I was seeking spiritual guidance and all I got was more Hollywood schlock.  

There is, after all, something spiritual about eating.  Stop eating for long enough and body and soul will separate.  In fact, many of the world's major religions practice some form of ritualistic fasting, I think in part to emphasize those distinct components: body and soul and the delicate relationship that exists between the two.  If fasting emphasizes spirituality, then it would follow that over-eating emphasizes the opposite, the gluttony of the body to the exclusion of the soul.  There is a reason at Over Eaters Anonymous that they ask for help from a higher power.  

One small takeaway I want from my disappointment about the subject of that book, is the connection between eating and praying.  I have friends who I notice pray before each meal, not a loud showy prayer, but a quiet prayer for themselves.  I highly respect that simple act and would like to emulate it.  I would always like to remember to stop before I eat to be thankful that I have enough good food and never take that for granted.  Oh, and I still want to snatch a pebble from a blind man's hand.

Consumption:

Cheerios and Raisin Bran cereal with skim milk
Half  a grapefruit
Steak salad with tomatoes and carrots
Cheese plate with toasted bread
Ham and pickles
3 glasses of red wine

Exercise:

30 minutes of vigorous swing dancing

My Fitness Pal said I was 80  calories inside of my daily goal after factoring in the dancing.

Maybe it is my imagination, but as I have lost weight and exercised more, I have this tingly feeling inside my body.  Is it just excitement that something positive is happening?  I do not know.  Maybe because there is less of me, my blood is running through my body faster.  Before anyone starts to worry, my Doctor called tonight with the results of my recent physical.  Everything checked out fine and I am healthy.  Maybe by exercising more intensely, I have increased my metabolism and my body is not used to what that feels like.  Or maybe it is like my old gym teacher used to say in high school, " the saps a rising."

Consumption:

2 rice cakes with peanut butter
half a grapefruit
20 almond
Chicken and dumplings
Granny smith apple with blue cheese and cranberries
strawberries
apple
carrots
steak with salad
Havarti cheese and crackers

Exercise:

10 minutes of rowing 
30 minutes of running on treadmill - 10 minute miles

My Fitness Pal calculated the exercise burned 550 extra calories.  Factoring in the exercise, I was 300 calories under my daily goal.

A couple of people have asked me about my water consumption, I think because I have not made a note of it.  Yes, I drink lots of water.  During the day at work, I keep a glass going all the time.  During the weekends it is a little harder because I am out of my routine, so I find I have to make more of  a point of it.

As you know, I chose the metaphor of finding the right path over the mountain to symbolize me reaching my healthy goal weight.  If getting to a healthy weight is like crossing a mountain, then for me getting below 200 lbs will be like crossing the Continental Divide.  In college, after gaining the freshman ten, as my body started to take on adult proportions, I recall getting near 185 lbs.  For me, then, 200 lbs seemed far, far away.  I recall thinking then, that as I grew older, I might gradually gain a little weight, but that I would never, ever weigh 200 lbs.  In that way it was like the Maginot Line I discussed earlier, it was a threshold I would never allow myself to cross.  

Today I weighed in at 208 lbs and I was thrilled!!! It meant I had lost 16 lbs since the beginning of the year and am now below 210.  I think about how heavy a 15 lb dumbbell feels when I pick it up and now that much weight and a little more is gone from my body hopefully forever. 

In the same way I used to think I would never let myself weigh above 200 lbs, I have now weighed over 200 lbs for so long, at least ten years, that I began to think it was impossible for me to ever weigh under that amount  again.  Now I am inside of 210 with good momentum.  I am starting to think it is possible again.  The air is thin up here, the vegetation is sparse, but Spring is coming and I want to cross the Continental Divide.

Consumption:

Cheerios and Bran Chex cereal with milk
half a grapefruit
Chicken pesto sandwich
Cup of chicken, corn bisque soup
Granny smith apple with dried cranberries and blue cheese
Grilled chicken breast
brocoli
cheese tortilini in red sauce
vanilla yogurt
apple
red grapes

Exercise:

5 minutes of weights
10 minutes rowing 
30 minutes rowing on the treadmill

My Fitness Pal said I was 600 calories under my goal after factoring in the exercise.

Now that I have been at this experiment for more than 30 days,  I am going to dare to allow myself a bit of reflection.  I have learned that starting a blog is not as scary as it first seemed, especially if you have children or a  college aged niece who are willing to help you.  I have learned that 1900 calories is a reasonable amount for me to eat each day and that I will not starve or even be particularly hungry eating that amount.  I have learned that it is easy to go way off track when I eat out at a restaurant and that most alcoholic drinks contain at least 150 calories, each.    I am beginning to believe that it is true that when I eat sweets, I crave more of them, and when I avoid sweets, as I have been doing, that craving diminishes. I have learned that most fruits and vegetables have between 50 to 100 calories each, and being good for me, I should eat more of both.  Although not the basis of my weight loss program, exercise is an important part and I feel better when I am working out.  I have learned that by publicly declaring my goal and admitting some of my shortcomings, I have a vast network of people who want me to be healthy and will support my efforts.  Finally, it feels really good to have have lost 13 lbs, a good start, and I want to keep going!

Consumption:

Cheerios and Bran Chex cereal with milk
1 piece of bacon
An orange
Red grapes
A chicken pesto sandwich
carrots
mixed fruit
Oatmeal bagel with creme cheese
3 slices of Harvarti cheese with crackers
Glass of white wine

Exercise:

None.

My Fitness Pal calculated I was 50 calories over my goal.

For the last few weeks I have been using  a free online service called My Fitness Pal to 1) to establish my daily caloric goal to cause weight loss 2) track what I am eating and convert it to a caloric total and 3) track my exercise to calculate its impact on my caloric intake.  My sister had tried it and recommended it.  On the whole, I am pleased with how it has turned out.  

I googled the site and was able to set up an account in a few minutes.  The biggest negative happened almost immediately.  It put me into some video of people with good bodies (now) selling a weight loss program.  While it may have been a good method, I did not like the hard sell right away.  For those of you who are more technologically savvy than me, there may have been a way to cut it off or avoid it altogether.  After watching for a couple of minutes and seeing what it was, I wondered out of the room and waited for it to be over.  Nothing like that has happened since, although I think I am getting a little more spam for dating services, etc.

On a much more positive note, after answering a few background questions, it assigned me a daily caloric goal.  According to the program, if I eat 1900 calories or less per day, on average, I should lose a healthy 1 lb per week until I reach my goal weight of 178 lbs.  At the end of each day, I enter the type and amount of food I have consumed.  For example, if I ate a hamburger, I would enter that and it would give me approximately 15 different choices of kinds of hamburgers from different restaurants or home made, bun or no bun, same for cheese.  I pick the closest one and it assigns a caloric value.  Sometimes the choices are a better fit than others, and for it to work, you have to remember everything you ate and accurately estimate the quantity.  Each item could be more or less accurate, so there is a certain lack of precision/margin for error that you have to live with, same way with the calories burned associated with various forms of exercise.

However, on the whole, what you end up with is a reasonable estimate of the number of calories consumed and expended in a day.  For someone like me, before I did this program, I really had no idea how many calories I should be consuming.  Because it is fast and easy, it does not take much time at the end of the day - maybe 5 minutes.  The best part is, it gives you lots of encouragement.  I know it is just a computer program, but when I sign in there are messages like:  "CC has logged in for 5 days in a row" or " Yesterday, CC burned 248 calories doing 1 hour of yoga!"  Hey, I will take praise wherever I can get it.  There is also a social component that lets you know what your friends are doing to lose weight.

Finally, after it has done its calculations, it says "if you ate like this everyday, after 5 weeks you would weigh XX".  While I do not always like the answer, it is good to get the feedback and see the impact of the trajectory I am on.  And did I mention that it is free?

There is an idea in meditation and buddhism called mindfulness.  At great risk of oversimplification, my understanding is that it means to pay attention, to notice.  During meditation, if an errant thought passes through your mind you are supposed to notice it like a cloud passing through the sky, observe and then let it go.  As applied to my recent project, I am trying to be mindful of my eating, to pay close attention  to what and how much I eat, and how I feel about it.  As in meditation, you are not supposed to beat yourself up  if you become distracted.  The same idea applies here, in that if I overeat or eat something unhealthy, I notice that too and move on.  If it works as it is supposed to, by focusing my attention on it, I will naturally begin to moderate my consumption and move to a more balanced state.