April 2012 Archives

Weight / fitness status, 4/30/12

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Week 5.  Net loss so far, 6.1 lbs, down 1.7 from last week.

My starting weight 3/26 was 189.6
My current weight is 181.5 (except this scale reads 2lbs low compared to my regular one, so really 183.5 or so).  Hit 182 (adjusted) yesterday morning; up 1.5 lbs since then.
My goal weight is 175
My plan is to lose 1 lb per week
My calorie budget is 1,700  (except LoseIt thinks I weigh 2 lbs less than I do)
My goal date is June 16, 2012 (ditto)
My original date was July 8, 2012

Sort-of IF'd last Friday: coffee for breakfast, and 3 oz cheese for lunch, then regular dinner.

Weight / fitness status, 4/23/12

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Week 4.  Net loss so far, 4.4 lbs, down 2.2 from last week.

My starting weight 3/26 was 189.6
My current weight is 185.2
My goal weight is 175
My plan is to lose 1 lb per week
My calorie budget is 1,725
My goal date is July 5, 2012
My original date was July 8, 2012

It seems to take a long time, but, you know, at this rate, at the end of May I'll be at 180, then at the end of June I'll be almost to my goal.  "Slow and steady wins the race."  :)

Tangent: Googling the above quote finds that it's from Aesop's The Tortoise and the Hare.  Another interesting Aesop quote that gets less air time: "We hang the petty thieves and appoint the great ones to public office."  :)
"[B]ishops are lobbying in many states to block legal reform that would protect children from sex abuse"

http://verdict.justia.com/2012/04/19/the-catholic-bishops-lobby-against-legislation-to-protect-children

What.  The.  Fuck?

First fast update: the morning after

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Woke up ~3am with, of all things, ankle pain.  Cramp?  Dunno.  May've been fast-related, maybe not.  (Definitely wasn't hydration related; I'm positive I was sufficiently hydrated!  :)  Probably was fast-related, though, as I don't recall ever having this happen before.  If I do this again, and wake up with leg pain again, I'll think about vitamins while fasting.

Aside from that, no worries so far.  I'm not, like, ravenously hungry or anything.  I'm enjoying my coffee with cream on a (very) empty stomach.  :)

Confessions of a neophyte faster

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Pardon me while I pat myself on the back.  ;)

Mark Sisson inspired me to try fasting today.  I had dinner last night ~9pm (it's now ~24 hours later), and all I've had since then was 3 cups of coffee with cream.

It's gone fairly well.  I've been "low carb" (more or less) for over two years, and my wife and I frequently skip breakfast (semi-consciously following something similar to Sisson's "Eat WHEN" protocol: Eat When Hunger Ensues Naturally), so my body is, I believe, fairly accustomed to living on its own energy store (i.e. fat :).  We don't have a name for our "protocol", we just say "when you're hungry, eat; when you're not ... don't."

My biggest problem is the "don't think of an elephant" problem: I'm fasting, and I know I'm fasting, so it's hard to not think about food.  But, as near as I can tell, that's the primary reason food is on my brain, not, as one might otherwise expect, actual hunger.  :)  And if I am hungry, well, who'd've guessed.

I did something that might not normally be advised for a first-time faster, and went to the grocery store on the way home from work.  I did so deliberately, however, with a specific target in mind: I'm almost out of tea at work.  So I got some more, and also some heavy cream for my coffee tomorrow, since work only stocks "Coffee Mate".

My last meal was at Hamburger Hamlet; among other things, I had a cheeseburger with bacon, which I ate open faced, i.e. sans bun.  That cheeseburger, from Hamburger Hamlet, mind you, was noticeably less good than the cheeseburger I had last weekend at Laishley's Crab House, a seafood joint.  ಠ_ಠ

My wife and I came up with the idea of logging water in LoseIt as a flag that I'm fasting, as opposed to just not logging.  She's very smart.  <3  Having actually done it, it occurred to me to just create a custom food, so I did that too / instead.  :)

Fasting

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Mark Sisson wrote a nice series on fasting.  Part 5 is here with links to parts 1-4.

I'm planning to try it this week, skipping food (except coffee! :) Tuesday or Thursday or both.

Weight / fitness status, 4/16/12

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My third week back on LoseIt.  Could not weigh in this morning.  Net loss so far is 2.2 pounds.

My starting weight 3/26 was 189.6
My current weight (yesterday) 4/15 was 187.4
My goal weight is 175
My plan is to lose 1 lb per week
My calorie budget is 1,739
My goal date is July 13, 2012
My original date was July 8, 2012

"The worst moment for an atheist ..."

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I got the following quote in the tag-line of a forwarded email:

"The worst moment for the atheist is when he is really thankful, and has nobody to thank." ~Dante Gabriel Rossetti

I would just like to say: that doesn't really bother most of us.

I can't speak for other atheists (except apparently I just did :), but I, for one, acknowledge that most of the world is beyond my control, and unpredictable enough for me to call it random, or at least chaotic, with a straight face.  So when I'm "thankful", I reflect on my fortune, and I typically thank my wife, who plays an enormous part in my life, and to whom I am always extremely thankful that she loves me and is generally awesome.

Chances are, Greta Christina has covered this topic with much more eloquence and depth than I have.  [... Google ...]  Yes.  What Atheists Are Thankful For and Intransitive Gratitude: Feeling Thankful in a Godless World.  In fact I'm pretty sure these posts influenced my thoughts and feelings on the subject.

And, just to come full circle, she quotes a friend of hers: "My friend Rebecca Hensler (founder of the Grief Beyond Belief support network) once said that one of the hardest things for her about becoming an atheist was figuring out what to do with feelings of gratitude."  So clearly some atheists do have a problem with feelings of thankfulness, at least initially.

When your internal model of the universe diverges from the actual universe, you have problems.  Athropomorphizing a non-conscious universe is one of those divergences.

Interesting grammatical(?) side note: I can't say "unaware" or "uncaring" because that implies that there's something there to be aware, or to care, and it just doesn't, as opposed to my stance where just I don't believe there's anything there to be aware or to care.  So all I can think of at the moment is "non-conscious".

Interesting discussion of Perl order of evaluation

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Here.

Weight graph, from Feb 2010 to now

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Screen Shot 2012-04-10 at 10.51.15 AM.png

My point being: Weight loss: It's not instant.

... And, alas, it's not necessarily permanent, either!  :)

LoseIt! weight loss plan

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When I started LoseIt in late February 2010, I set my plan at 1 lb/wk.  After a while, I don't remember how long, I noticed I wasn't losing 1 lb/wk.  So I added in (or maybe subtracted out) an extra caloric deficit of 200 calories.  As I recall, after a while, that still didn't do it, so I added another 150 calorie deficit (for a total of 350/day off LoseIt's recommendation).  And then my weight loss was fairly steady.  (Again: recalling 1-2 years later.  And of course there are many other factors in weight loss, like activity level and carb consumption.)

My point being, all other stuff aside, when your budget is 850 cal/day below the assumed maintenance level for your age, sex, and height, that gives you a lot of wiggle room to go "over budget" and still be on a negative track overall.

I admit, in some ways this is kind of like setting your clock ahead so you won't be late, a practice I consider silly.  But on the other hand, that's not really what I'm describing.  I wasn't losing as fast as predicted, so I removed more calories from my budget, and then I was.  But I'm also conscious of that fact, and it allows me to stress less when I go 5,477 over budget for the week, like last week, because that's still 473 under my theoretical maintenance level.

Weight loss, fluctuations, and trends

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Here's a nice thread on weight loss, fluctuations, and trends:  http://forums.loseit.com/posts/list/20133.page

Weight / fitness status, 4/9/12

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My second week back on LoseIt.  Net loss so far, 3.4 lbs, 1.8 since last week.  (Which is pretty amazing, given that LoseIt says I'm 5,477 over budget for the week.)  Current goal date is 10 days closer than original, 5 days closer than last week.

My starting weight 3/26 was 189.6
My current weight 4/9 is 186.2
My goal weight is 175
My plan is to lose 1 lb per week
My calorie budget is 1,731
My goal date is June 28, 2012
My original date was July 8, 2012

"Am I still hungry?"

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I think a key part of eating the right amount (especially if you're coming off a long stretch of eating more than you ought) is asking yourself the above question with some regularity (i.e. several times during a meal).

YMMV, but for me, the "I'm not hungry any more" signal is what we geeks call "edge detect".  It comes once, and it's soft and easy to miss.  If I miss it, or ignore it, the next signal is "man, I'm full", and the one after that is "man, I am stuffed."  (That one tends to stick around!)

But if I ask myself "am I still hungry?", and stop eating if I'm not (this is actually the important part! :), then I can recover that lost or missed signal.

Weight / fitness status, 4/2/12

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My first week back on LoseIt.  Net loss so far, 1.6 lbs.  Goal date is 5 days closer.

My starting weight 3/26 was 189.6
My current weight 4/2 is 188
My goal weight is 175
My plan is to lose 1 lb per week
My calorie budget is 1,743
My goal date is July 3, 2012
My original date was July 8, 2012

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