May 2012 – TheClapp.org

Weight / fitness status, 5/29/12

End of week 9 on LoseIt. (Didn’t log week 8, so don’t go looking for it. I was in MD on business last week, and yesterday was a US holiday and I just forgot.) Up 2 lbs since last entry 5/14; 6.4 lbs net loss since 3/26.

My starting weight 3/26 was 189.6

My current weight is 183.2

My goal weight is 175

My plan is to lose 1 lb per week

My calorie budget is 1,712

My goal date is July 27, 2012

My original date was July 8, 2012

My first Sunday onsite at work I ate a whole medium pizza for dinner. It was yummy, but oh my, just a little overboard. The rest of the week wasn’t as bad, but it wasn’t good. The past few days haven’t been fabulous, either; the food has been mostly clean (i.e. fresh, fairly low carb, and mostly wheat free), I’ve just eaten too much of it. And some ice cream. :9 And I never did get around to exercising last weekend. 🙁

Over the weekend R and I bought some new clothes. Before I lost 46 lbs in 2010 I wore a 40″ waist; I’m at 34″ now. Life is good. 🙂 (Of course I’ve been a 34 since Dec 2010, but it’s still nice to (still) be at that size. 🙂

On the minus side, I have several nice pairs of pants with little wear, that I just can’t wear any more, ’cause they’re too big. Oh well. Not a terrible problem to have. 🙂

Good advice (he said modestly)

A friend of mine is on Facebook working on losing 200 lbs (starting from 420, I think he said). He asked if anyone had any nutritional tips. Well. I posted a few, and figured I’d post them here, too.

On a side note, I’m kind of surprised that pasting from FB into WordPress worked so well. Modern technology is pretty amazing.

Larry Clapp A site I like, and that helped me lose 46 lbs in 2010, is http://www.MarksDailyApple.com/ (“MDA”). I’ve read a lot about diet, nutrition, and exercise in the past three years, and I’ve found that “conventional wisdom” is often wrong. For example:
– wheat and other grains are actually not that good for you, and wheat in particular is actively bad for most people.
– The whole “gluten free” thing? Not a fad, and a good idea to at least try.
– The whole “low carb” thing? Also not a fad. (Well, okay, it was, for a while.) But it turns out that consuming too many carbs does tend to promote obesity, heart disease, diabetes, cancer, and just general poor health. “Too many” varies by individual, but < 100g/day is a good place to aim for when trying to lose weight. Contrast this to the “recommended daily intake” of *over 300g/day*!
– Eating fat doesn’t “make you fat”, turns out that’s sugar (and probably things that taste like it, like supposedly non-caloric sweeteners).
– Skipping meals is okay, and may in fact be actively good for you. Search MDA for “fasting” and “intermittent fasting”
– The “six meals a day” thing to “keep your metabolism going” is not actually supported by the evidence.

Mark’s Daily Apple

www.marksdailyapple.com

Mark Sisson’s daily musings on health, nutrition, fitness, the health industry and the low-carb, paleo, Primal lifestyle.

44 minutes ago ·
Larry Clapp Here are two places I recommend that give a broad outline of what to eat, or actually what *not* to eat:http://www.archevore.com/get-started/ . The first time I read that, I thought, “that guy is whacked”, but the more I read, the more it was in line with current, evidence-supported theories about diet, nutrition, and health.

Archevore – Archevore Diet

www.archevore.com

An Archevore is someone who eats based on essential principles, and also someone who hungers for essential principles. Take your pick.

41 minutes ago ·
Larry Clapp And there’s http://www.gnolls.org/1141/eat-like-a-predator-not-like-prey-paleo-in-six-easy-steps-a-motivational-guide/ . “Predators eat meals, prey grazes on snacks.”

“Eat Like A Predator, Not Like Prey”: The Paleo Diet In Six Easy Steps, A Motivational Guide – GNOLL

www.gnolls.org

?”How does the paleo diet work?” Here’s the simple, solid, and strongly motivational step-by-step guide. You can do this!

39 minutes ago ·
Larry Clapp Okay, three places: http://www.marksdailyapple.com/definitive-guide-to-the-primal-eating-plan.

It’s not an accident that all three of these guys (and their websites) are heavily into reading the actual studies (not just news stories about them); heavily into what’s *practical* as opposed to some fleeting *optimal*; and (grrr) heavily, though pretty much accidentally, *opposed* to “conventional wisdom” about diet, exercise, and health.

And all three of their eating plans are similar. Imagine.

How to Eat According to the Primal Blueprint | Mark’s Daily Apple

www.marksdailyapple.com

Do the Math In my recent Context of Calories post, I explained how the different…See More

31 minutes ago ·
Larry Clapp My biggest piece of advice is, only make changes that you can live with for the rest of your life.

180.0, baby!

180.0. That’s what the scale said this morning. Lowest since 10/6/11, when for one day I hit 179.6. The three day window was 180.4, 179.6, then 180.4 again, so I’m not sure that really counts. The last time I was consistently hovering around 180.0 was last June.

This could certainly be another outlier, but I’m happy, nevertheless. 🙂

[Current “goal date” on LoseIt: June 21.]

[ Update 5/17/12, the next day: 180.0 again this morning, so not a total fluke! 🙂 ]

Steve Pavlina articles I’ve enjoyed so far

I discovered Steve Pavlina over the weekend. He’s a fascinating guy. He’s clearly a nutjob in some respects, but a lot of the rest of his advice is quite practical and useful. Here are some of his articles that I enjoyed and recommend.

Overcoming Procrastination, and various articles linked from it, including: Triple Your Personal Productivity and Do It Now. This was my “doorway” into his site, and is the top hit if you Google “overcoming procrastination“.
Passive Income Series (ongoing, as of this writing)
How To Make Money From Your Blog
How to Build a High-Traffic Web Site (or Blog)

Weight / fitness status, 5/14/12

Week 7. Net loss so far, 8.4 lbs, down 2.8 from last Monday.

My starting weight 3/26 was 189.6

My current weight is 181.2

My goal weight is 175

My plan is to lose 1 lb per week

My calorie budget is 1,697

My goal date is June 28, 2012

My original date was July 8, 2012

I’ve had a cold since about last Thursday. Long story short, Friday sucked, Saturday was bad, Sunday was less bad, today is fairly okay so far. The Primal/Paleo lifestyle may provide higher resistance to disease, but it’s not immunity by any means. Alas. 🙂

A cool page on overcoming procrastination

If you Google “overcoming procrastination“, this page is the first one, so this link is probably extraneous, but I liked it.

And then I read some of the rest of the site for the next three hours. Or maybe more, I forget. Very interesting stuff, if you like his style.

And if you don’t, well, he doesn’t care. For some reason, that amuses me. 🙂

But he makes the point with pretty simple math: “I get 1M hits a month. Out of that, some people are bound to hate what I’ve written, and frankly there’s nothing I can do about that. So I write what I write, and if you like it, come back, and if you don’t, don’t. What could be fairer than that?” (Paraphrased.)

New low, relatively speaking

Weighed in this morning at 181.2. I have a cold and am probably dehydrated, but, that said, I haven’t weighed this little since late October of last year. Yay. 🙂

Calories in, calories out

I just wanted to put on paper (so to speak 🙂 some thoughts on CI/CO. If you’ve read GCBC none of this will be new.

Some people in the dietary sphere like to insist that “it’s all about the calories”, or words to that effect. Gary Taubes argues that it has to do with how you metabolize different kinds of foods, and that it’s not only about the calories. His critics tend to argue back about the 2nd law of thermodynamics and how if you expend more than you consume, you’ll lose weight, QED.

So I’d like to present some edge cases that prove that whether and how your body metabolizes what you consume is important.

Can you eat U238? No. Lots of energy there, though.

Can you eat crude oil? No. Lots of energy there, though.

Can you drink gasoline? No. Lots of energy there.

So it’s apparent that your body can digest certain things and can’t digest other things. So why is it so hard for some people to grasp that your body digests different things differently? While it may not be all about the insulin, it’s a lot about the insulin.

Weight / fitness status, 5/8/12

Today is Tuesday; I’m a day late, alas.

Week 6. Net loss so far, 5.8 lbs, up 0.5 lbs from last week.

My starting weight 3/26 was 189.6

My current weight is 183.8. (Yesterday, Monday, was 184.)

My goal weight is 175

My plan is to lose 1 lb per week

My calorie budget is 1,716

My goal date is July 10, 2012

My original date was July 8, 2012

Sort-of IF’d last Tuesday: coffee for breakfast, 3 oz cheese for lunch, 2.5 oz nuts as a snack, then dinner. Pigged out last Wednesday; ~2k calories over budget just for that day. IF’d last Thursday: coffee for breakfast, no lunch, then dinner.

IF’ing today: coffee for breakfast, no lunch, then dinner. Well, that’s the plan, anyway. 🙂

Good lines …

Maurice Sendak, Author of ‘Where the Wild Things Are,’ Dies at 83. 🙁

The NY Times had this to say about him, among other things:

“Roundly praised, intermittently censored and occasionally eaten, Mr. Sendak’s books were essential ingredients of childhood for the generation born after 1960 or thereabouts … .”

I love that line. 🙂