5 Aug

Straight is the Gate and Narrow the Way

Posted by hlward in Uncategorized.

The Way, friends, does not pass through your local Red Lobster.  It does not provide for a side-trip to JT’s Seafood Shack for the combo platter or the Fisherman’s Net for conch fritters.  The Way does not countenance mojitos, bottles of Bogle Phantom, Corona Extra or even Corona Light.

Unfortunately, I stepped off  The Way while on vacation this week and enjoyed everything above and more.

I’ve paid the price:  270.  Yes, that’s SIX (6) POUNDS gained.  In a week.  Ouch.  I’m chalking at least some of that up to MSG from last night’s farewell-to-vacation Chinese food.  General Tso clearly never encountered The Way.

As I promised my Lovely Wife, I will not beat myself up.  I will, however, do better.  I do NOT enjoy the extra tightness in my waistband, and as I may have mentioned before, I really, really, really hate fighting for the same ground over and over.

But the vacation was a blast.  I highly recommend you take one.

29 Jul

My Sins This Week Are Manifold …

Posted by hlward in Uncategorized.

Chief among them is my lack of posting.  I even missed the sacrosanct “Five Things Wednesday.”  I know several of you check this space often, and your loyalty should be rewarded with regularity.  The only excuse I can offer is that it’s been a particularly heavy week.  Next week is a vacation, and I promise to find blogging time in between the beach and the pool.  Mea Culpa.

I haven’t been working out in any kind of organized fashion.  Even the push-ups have been forgotten this week.  My excuse, again, is a busy, busy week.  And a really uncomfortable shoulder/back thing I have goin’ on.  Mea Culpa.

I’ve gone against my own advice repeatedly this week.  Two (2) slices of strawberry cheesecake Wednesday evening.  Restaurants nearly every night (told you it was a busy week.)  Extra helping of really tasty pasta at home earlier in the week (at least it was whole-wheat pasta).  Really no excuse for going off the rails this way.  Mea Maxima Culpa.

And my punishment?  264.  Gained a pound.  Which is actually more like two pounds, since not only did I gain one, I didn’t lose one, so it changes the schedule.  23 pounds in 20 weeks, when it could have been 25 pounds in 20 weeks.  That’s unpleasant.  I don’t like stopping my own momentum, especially after such a great week last week.

So, yes, next week is a vacation, but there’s no reason I can’t be on track just because I’m not in my house and my office.  Just requires a little more intent.

—

The good news is that I have lots to write about in the coming days – two things to look for are a piece on strokes that I’ve been putting off for some time and one recommended by a friend of the blog on a regimen recommended by the really old guy who runs Dole.  Stay tuned for more upbeat posts in the coming days.

22 Jul

Math

Posted by hlward in Uncategorized. Tagged: , .

Another week, another pound.  263.  That’s 24 pounds in19 weeks, by my math.  Speaking of math, that’s 8.3% of my former self.  Which means you could say, I suppose, that I’m only 91.6% of the man I was in early March.

Or you could say I’m exactly 30% of the way toward my goal.   Let’s go with that one.  It’s a nice round number.

I have to say I’m getting really tired of the 260’s.  Yes, I’m happy to be making progress, but I need to get out of the 260’s.

I know.  Sometime in August.

Which is excellent motivation to keep me from backsliding …

—

(Hey, look, there’s a bonus post today!)

22 Jul

One More Reason Not to Count the Calories

Posted by hlward in Uncategorized. Tagged: , , .

Generally speaking, I don’t care what the menu says about how many calories are in my steak.  I’m pretty sure I’m not making a stellar nutritional decision by dining at Outback (or any other chain restaurant) in the first place.  I already know the less sauce and the more vegetables there are on the plate, the “healthier” it is.  I don’t need a little heart printed next to it on the menu.

Plus, I don’t trust their numbers.  They have plenty of motivation to be less-than-honest about the calorie count on any given item, and there’s plenty of room for error in the kitchen.

Vindicating my distrust of menu-math, a friend of the blog (actually my Lovely Wife) sent me this NPR story highlighting a Tufts University study printed in the Journal of the American Medical Association this week.

In all fairness, it turns out restaurants are right more often than they’re wrong (by a long shot) but when they’re wrong, they’re really wrong.  One chain mis-labelled their chips and salsa (yeah, they couldn’t even get chips and salsa right) by more than a thousand calories.  Considering that I know people who refuse to eat more than 600 calories a day, that’s a a substantial error.

What the article doesn’t report, but which is, I think, pretty important, is that there are diet plans out there (I won’t mention them by name, ’cause I don’t make any money off this and don’t want to pay a lawyer when they sue me, but the second word in the title of one of them is “Watchers”) who actively promote checking the printed calorie counts.  You’ll notice many of the chains even include “exchange” information next to the calorie count.

If the data is wrong … and you’re counting it for your “points” … you’re likely to be left wondering what went wrong at your weigh-in.   Which is devastating to the psyche of someone committed to a program like that.

So while part of me is happy to be right about those calorie counts, the consumer advocate in me is more than a little annoyed by this news.  Let the eater beware, I suppose, but I’d like to see the counts ditched altogether.

There are few crutches worth using on the path to losing weight.  In the long run, we all have to do the hard work on our own.  But there’s no reason for restaurants to make the work harder.

Here’s a rule of thumb:  Eating at a chain restaurant is not good for you.  Doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do it occasionally – they make stuff that tastes GOOD to most of us.  It means you have to be careful and you have to do your own research.

—

As a side-note to this, the NPR Health Blog (“Shots“) is a fine health resource.  I recommend it.

20 Jul

An Unlikely Group

Posted by hlward in Uncategorized. Tagged: , , , , , , .

It’s Five-Things-Wednesday …

People have been thinking and writing about eating for as long as people have been thinking and writing.  Cave painters painted the animals they hunted, which they hoped would end up in their bellies.  Scanning my cable channels late at night I realize that’s still mostly what we think about – half the channels have some sort of food programming and half the commercials on all the channels are food-related in one way or another.

Some people have had more interesting thoughts than others.

Here are five food thinkers I find interesting.  They’re an odd group, and they probably wouldn’t like each other all that much.  I don’t know that I like most of them all that much.  But they’re all worth reading up on.

1.)  Pythagoras.  Yeah, the guy with the theorem.  More than a mathematician, Pythagoras led a whole school of religion and philosophy back in the 5th century BC, which included extensive dietary guidelines.  Until the nineteenth century, the phrase “Pythagorean diet” was the describer of what we’ve come to know as “vegetarianism.”  He and his disciples didn’t eat meat or fish … or beans.  Which makes me wonder how they got any protein.  Maybe they were into dairy products.

2.)  Jack LaLanne.  I know, big jump from Greek Philosopher to Freaky Old Guy in a Jumpsuit.  But there was more to Jack than the jumpsuit.  A friend of the blog recommended clips from a TV show LaLanne hosted in the 1950’s.  His advice on nutrition is solid – excellent even.  He grates on my nerves, but if you can get past that (and his body-image issues), he’s a fine fitness coach.

3.)  Zig Ziglar.   I know this is where some of you will jump ship.  Ol’ Zig ain’t for everybody.  But I’m a big fan.  A segment from one of his talks actually inspired me to set the weight-loss goals that started this blog.  He knows what he’s talking about regarding weight, as a former tubby dude who (at a one-pound a week rate) lost the excess poundage and has managed to keep it off for decades.

4.)  Mike Huckabee.  Now, those of you who know me personally know Huckabee and I don’t see eye-to-eye politically.  At all.  To say the least.  But again, here’s a guy who struggled with weight issues most of his life until he decided he wanted to, you know, not die young.  He’s been remarkably frank about his path to healthier living/eating.  He wrote a book called Quit Digging Your Grave With a Knife and Fork.  Which is kinda what I’m trying to do.

5.)  Jared.  The guy from the Subway commercials.  I don’t know if Jared is a big thinker or not.  He may have brilliant thoughts on the topic, or he may just be cashin’ checks as a spokesdude.  I include him because he’s made millions of Americans do their own thinking – if only for the duration of a Subway commercial – about losing weight in a (relatively) healthy fashion.  Plus, I like how he juxtaposes with Pythagoras.

 

18 Jul

Eating Intentionally

Posted by hlward in Uncategorized. Tagged: , .

In several posts I’ve talked about the concept of “eating intentionally.”  And as you’re reading along, you’ve either missed it entirely or thought to yourself, “what the heck is he talking about?”  While I can’t claim authorship of the phrase, I can tell you what I mean by it, and why it’s important to me.

When I use the phrases “eating intentionally” or “intentional eating,” what I mean is thinking about my food.  If I’m eating intentionally, it means I’m considering the choices I make regarding my meals.  It means I’m actively choosing what to put in my shopping cart, in my oven, on my plate, on my fork and in my belly.

Sure, I read that avocado is good for my prostate but, hey, I don’t really like avocado.  Will I actually eat it or will it sit on the counter and rot? (That was a bad example.  It would not rot.  My Lovely Wife loves avocado.  Give me a little license, por favor.)

Boy, that pasta looks great on the menu.  But it’s not whole wheat.  I know white-flour pasta isn’t a good choice for me.  Hmmm … what else is on the menu?

DAMN that was tasty!  Yes, I’d LOVE another helping!  Hang on … my stomach is actually kinda full already. Is it my taste buds or my belly that needs another plateful?

You get the point.

It’s amazing … almost magical … how much better I feel when I approach food intentionally.  When I consider what it is I’m trying to get from that next forkful (Sure, it’s gonna taste fabulous, but do I need the fuel?  How is it going to make me feel?).  Maybe it’s just because it slows me down for a second or two. Or maybe it’s the power that focus brings to just about any human endeavor.

When I make better choices about food – at the grocery or at the table – I feel better in the short term and I see a difference at the scales on Friday.  But I also get the benefit of having made a good decision.  Of taking one more step to taking care of my body, to getting more mileage out of myself.  Don’t discount the psychological benefit of knowing you made a good decision.

If you don’t mind me stepping outside the normal point of this blog for a moment, I want to endorse – as strongly as I can – the idea of living intentionally.  Being where you are.  Thinking about your actions as you act.  Moving through your day, your week, your life, as though you intend to get somewhere, to achieve something.

It’s easier said than done.  I don’t claim to be able to do so all, or even much, of the time.  It’s hard to stay on whatever course (or courses) I’ve chosen.  Life is distracting, necessarily so.  But when I focus, when I act with intention, I see and feel the results.  Often immediately.

I can let the day sweep me along … or I can remember that the time will soon come when my Sprightly Daughter will stop asking me to read her a story – and I can make time to read that story (and file the memory away for safekeeping).  I can make phone calls while I walk to the car … or I can look at the shapes in the clouds and feel the sun on my skin.  I can grab a snack at the Kangaroo store … or I can enjoy actually tasting my food at dinner.

I can move through life and miss days or weeks at a time … or I can live, intentionally and productively.

I’m not telling you to drop all your responsibilities, large and small, and move to Oahu in pursuit of your lifelong dream of becoming a champion surfer.  And I’m not telling you that focus is the only thing standing between you and Trump-esque world domination.  What I’m saying is that when I take control of the minutes – even the seconds – of my life, good things happen.  It takes practice.  Most good things do.  But training myself to think and focus in the moment has been worth the effort.

I’ll wager it would be for you as well.

Thanks, as always, for reading.

 

 

 

 

 

16 Jul

The Best Plan is No Plan

Posted by hlward in Uncategorized. Tagged: , , .

A friend of the blog forwarded me this article from CNN.  It’s the weight-loss story of a young man who, after years of alienation as a 300+ pound teen, found his own way to healthy living.

No fake food, no magic-bullet diet, no gastric-bypass surgery … just hard work, good research and honest commitment to getting better.  I wish I had put in that kind of effort at his age.  He worked at it – slowly, steadily.  And he’s kept it off.

I’m writing this brief post to celebrate people doing things the right way.  I can take a lesson from this kid.  Maybe you can as well.

—

Another friend of the blog offers some advice about multi-tasking exercise.  She says goes for a walk around her neighborhood with each of her kids – individually – as often as possible.  She ends up getting more than an hour of exercise, and each kid gets alone-time with mom … which is invaluable.   The Sprightly Daughters are still a bit young for me to use that one yet, but I’ll sure try to use it in a few years.

Your suggestions are always welcome – thanks for reading!

15 Jul

Never Be Daunted

Posted by hlward in Uncategorized. Tagged: , , .

“Never be daunted.  Secret of my success.  Never been daunted.” – Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises

It’s Friday, so it must be weigh-in day.  Which is good news – 264!

If you’re scoring at home, that’s 23 pounds, 18 weeks.

Every now and then the number still out there (57) is, well, daunting.  I agree that much of the secret of success is not being daunted.  But even after powering through 23 pounds, staring at nearly sixty, well, there’s no other word for it.

That said, I feel pretty good about being where I am.  And I know many of the changes I’ve made are permanent, because, for instance, the idea of Publix buttercream icing no longer makes my mouth water.  So I got that goin’ for me.

There’s no question that writing through the process on this blog is one of the things that helps keep the sense of daunting at bay.  I’m pretty sure Hemingway never gave a second thought to losing weight or any other aspect of living healthy.  I’m not as good a writer as Hemingway.  But I’m mighty determined to outlive him.

13 Jul

The Diet-Rites of Lunchtime

Posted by hlward in Uncategorized. Tagged: , , , , , .

It’s Five Things Wednesday …

I’ve always enjoyed lunch.  It’s my favorite time of day to eat, lunch cuisine (sandwiches and the like) appeals to me more than that associated with other meals, it’s a break from the workday, etc.  There are lots of different kinds of lunches – the small business lunch, the catching up with friends lunch, the service club lunch, the solitary lunch in the car with the radio and/or a book and many others, not the least interesting of which is the compulsory lunch with co-workers.  Yesterday was one of those.

I don’t mean the kind of lunch where you and some co-workers go off-site to chat or to work on a project or do anything constructive, I mean the “we’re all leaving at 11:20 to get the big table so we can celebrate X. You’re coming, aren’t you?” lunch.

At compulsory lunch with co-workers, nobody wants to talk about, you know, work, because we’re off-site and we’re supposed to be having fun.  Let’s face it, you’ve already shared all the outside-work stuff you intend to share with the co-workers you intend to share it with.  So you make an hour of (hopefully) creative small talk about the weather, vacation plans and if one or more in the group are actively losing weight (and they always are) the topic of the day is … dieting!

What’s that you say?  It’s odd to talk about how much you’re not eating while you’re eating?  You are correct.  But compulsory lunch with co-workers is odd.  No way around it.

In honor of yesterday’s compulsory lunch with co-workers, here are five ways people I know are obsessing about weight-loss:

1.  Eat food, not too much, mostly vegetables.  You knew this was on the list, didn’t you?  You can hardly get through any of my posts without me preaching the gospel according to Pollan.  For the record, it fell on deaf ears yesterday.  Eat things that are clearly good for you?  Be careful of Frankenfood?  Not magic-bullet-y enough.

2.  Coconut Water.  No, not coconut milk, like you might use in a nice curry, coconut water.  Maybe you’ve heard of it.  Maybe you drink it regularly.  I’d never heard of it until yesterday.  Apparently it’s really good for you.  For now I’m stickin’ with regular ol’ water.  Maybe with some bubbles and some lemon in it.

3.  Massive Calorie Restriction.  I’m sure I could get by on 600 calories a day.  But I wouldn’t be much fun.  And I’m pretty sure when they let me (somebody would have to stay after me about this – I damn sure wouldn’t do it to myself) get back normal nutritive sustenance I’d be headed for the cake aisle at the Publix.  Regardless, three times this week I’ve had conversations with people doing this to themselves.  Apparently it’s hip and cool.  And really, I suppose if you’re going to starve yourself, you may as well brag about it.  **I note that one other person who is serious about weight loss was in this group and is restricting himself fairly severely, but was by no means “bragging about it.”  He felt as uncomfortable about it being the center of attention as I did, if not more so.

4.  Atkins/South Beach. Anybody who tells you not to eat vegetables is not doing you any favors.  Plus, this is old news.  No fun to talk about it.

5.  Lean Cuisine.  The anti-Pollan.  Dieting always comes back to fake food.   I’ve eaten a lot of these over the years.  I don’t anymore.  The list of ingredients on this (randomly picked) Lean Cuisine meal is 13 lines long.  But you don’t have to think about it.  Just pop it in the microwave et voila, a self-contained meal unit with specified levels of calories, fat, fiber and protein.  One step away from a science-fiction meal-in-a-pill.  It’s the ultimate magic diet bullet.  Without snark, I will say that I understand.  Sometimes you need something simple, fast and not super-greasy.  I’ve just sworn it off.  Maybe it will work for you.

12 Jul

For Those Just Joining Us …

Posted by hlward in Uncategorized. Tagged: .

Readership (or at least clickership) is growing here at Skipping Dessert!  If you’re new to the blog, welcome.  It occurs to me new readers (and some who have been with it for a few weeks) might benefit from a quick refresher on why this blog is.

As chronicled here, on Ash Wednesday (March 9, 2011) I weighed-in at a decidedly unhealthy 287 pounds.  And in my more honest moments, I’d admit there were days when I was probably over 290.  I started making a few healthy changes early in the year, but that day I gave up sweets for Lent.  And then as the results started to pile up – and as reasons to be healthier mounted as well – I decided to be in full-on “weight-loss” mode for as long as it takes.

My goal is to weigh 207 by my 45th birthday (10/14/12), which gave me more than enough time to lose eighty pounds at a rate of a pound a week.

So far so good.  This past weekend an old friend congratulated me on having lost 22 pounds in 17 weeks.  I thanked him, but reminded him I’m not there yet.  Congratulating me now is a little like leaving the stands at the end of the first quarter because your team is winning.  There’s a lot of ball yet to be played.  And my opponents (an innate and strong sense that I’d rather be on the couch with a bag of chips, Big Ag, well-meaning friends and family bearing junk-food, etc.) are tough.

When this game is over, a whole new one begins.  I don’t want to fight for this ground again.  Once I’ve met my goal, the new goal will be maintaining it for another forty or fifty years.  And the penalty for not meeting the initial goal, frankly, is that I won’t get another forty or fifty years.

Along the way toward my goal I document my process, writing about the successes and challenges and sharing  what I learn.

Thank you again for reading.  Please visit again, and if you like it, don’t be shy about telling your friends to stop by!

« Older Entries
Newer Entries »