The Mysteries of Weight Loss and Gain

I know that 3500 calories equals a pound. So they say. But how is it that I can eat 1600 to 1800 calories a day, and burn off at least a thousand calories in exercise most days, and yet not lose weight? How can my weight still be up 4-5 pounds since Thanksgiving, if that means that I would have consumed 17,500 calories more than I needed over that weekend, despite eating fairly sensibly and running nine miles on Friday and ten miles on Sunday, plus moderate workouts on Thursday and Saturday? WHY WHY WHY?

(Even if I am consuming more calories than I estimate, there should still be a significant deficit.)

Clearly my body needs far fewer calories to survive than most people, and can exercise for hours without really burning off any calories at all. That is the only explanation, dammit!

And the 480 calorie Starbucks eggnog scone I ate yesterday? (This is the first Starbucks scone I have eaten in three years, so sue me!) Is that why I weighed two pounds more this morning than yesterday morning (after I finished a 7.8 mile run, yet—of course I did not sweat at all during this run, since it was so cold and wet outside)?

Life sucks!

(Luckily I am not depressed enough to go eat a box of cookies. I am, however, waiting for my sister to arrive with my second nonfat latte of the day. Suck down the caffeine to pump up my metabolism, I say!)

Marathon Challenge

Today was the New York City Marathon. While thousands of brave runners were slogging away at their 26.2 miles, I ran my own mini-marathon, about one third the length of a full marathon. An eight or nine mile long run, or a half-marathon race, is pretty much long enough for me. I'm quite sure I don't want to run a full marathon. There's a tiny bit of me that wonders if I should--but mostly I know that I don't need to or really want to.

But I admire those who do. Like the runners in today's New York Marathon, or the participants in NOVA's Marathon Challenge, the subject of a show aired this last week on PBS. Don't fret about missing it, you can still watch it online, or eventually order the DVD.

The Marathon Challenge follows thirteen novice runners train for and eventually run in the Boston Marathon. In addition to following the progress of the runners, the program includes information on health and fitness that is relevant to anyone, not just runners. I enjoyed it thoroughly, and was quite choked up at the end! Sadly, the TV program is only an hour long (I would have liked to see more), but there is additional material on the website.

Read a good book

A few months ago I started compiling a list of books I've enjoyed on my weight loss journey. Look at it here.

Back in time

August 2004
I am about to turn 39 and I am aware of my desire to lose weight and get myself in shape by the time I turn 40. Still, I do nothing.

October 2004
Over the last few months I have gradually gained back the weight I lost (about 50 pounds, I think) back in 2001. Gradually all the great clothes I bought as a result of that weight loss have been shoved to the back of the closet. I'm down to a few things that I can still reasonably squeeze myself into... and they're a little snug. And/or wearing out. I resign myself - I will need to go shopping and buy a few new things "until I lose weight."

And that stops me in my tracks. How ridiculous is this? I have a closet full of nice clothes I can't wear and I'm thinking of spending money on still more clothes.

If that isn't bad enough, when I do go shopping for a few emergency pieces (just to hold me over), it is very hard to find anything that fits well, let alone looks good. I refuse to go outside of Macy's Women's World department. Bigger than their biggest sizes is not an option.

And somehow, that is the kick in the size 24 pants that I needed. I am not going to spend money on more, bigger clothes when I have lots of not quite so big clothes that I could wear with a little work.

That was my motivation, now I just needed a plan. It's not like I don't know how to eat to lose weight. (I just don't do it.) What works for me is a modified low carb, low glycemic plan based on Dr. Perricone's anti-aging food diets. Salmon, salad, blueberries, and younger skin too. (A year later, he would publish a diet book, The Perricone Weight-Loss Diet.)

And my inspiration? As an attorney for juveniles, I worked with kids in drug court and frequently saw them heading off to in-patient treatment when the out-patient wasn't working. About this time, one of my favorite clients had agreed to go to in-patient for the first time. This was a 16 or 17 year old kid who had never really been away from home, and he agreed to leave his family and everything familiar for 35 days in this program. The idea was that in the 35 days he would learn the skills and tools to be successful in recovery in the community.

I took that 35-day plan and adapted it for myself. I committed to 35 days of strictly following my food plan (which included eschewing sugar, flour, potatoes, rice, pasta, etc.--anything white and starchy), with the idea that after 35 days I would have kicked my addictions and internalized my new eating plan.

November 8, 2004
Day 1. The beginning!

I am not a nice person.

Actually I am a nice person, most of the time. I try to be polite and friendly to people (I am generally a wimp), and I never really judge people on their appearances (not aloud, anyway). I certainly don't judge people based on their weight or size! For heavens sake, I would be a huge hypocrite if I did, when you think of where I came from. (Although I suspect a lot of formerly fat people are all too ready to criticize other heavy people.)

However. When I am running a race - 5K, 10K, half marathon - all bets are off. My judgmental character takes off faster than the starting gun. And all my wild criticisms are aimed at the runners in front of me.

Mostly I am talking about women. I've already figured that I can't really compete with most men - simply by being taller than me they are going to have an advantage of speed. (It is quite irritating to be running hard and still barely able to keep pace with a long-legged guy who barely seems to be loping along.)

So, unless the men are very old or actually crippled, they don't factor into my mental bitchiness. (But if they are very old or crippled, let the judgments fly. Take that, 90-year-old man with a walker! I'm passing you! Haha, man with a wooden leg - you can't beat me!) (Or alternatively, very young - just you wait, 10-year-old boy sprinting ahead! I'll be passing you up when your little body wears out! And I'll laugh when I do it!)

But I'm a little more subtle with women. Particularly those who run about the same pace as me. After all, they're the only ones around for me to mock. My mental comments go something like this....

Look at that girl ahead of me... she is definitely a lot fatter than me. How come she's ahead of me? Now that one, she has big boobs and a roll around the belly, but her legs are thin. That other one has chubby arms (shouldn't be wearing a sleeveless top), but not the same kind of batwings that I do (which is why I will only be wearing sleeveless at the beach). Now the one in pink, she's just younger than me. But that other one, talk about bad running form - her feet are flapping all over the place. How'd she get ahead of me? And why is she staying there?

And finally... why did it take me half the race to catch up with someone who is walking and pushing a baby buggy?

Running for Fun

I am not, by any interpretation of the word, a fast runner. In a race, I am not quite the tortoise, but I am definitely no gazelle (or any other kind of fast moving animal). My "best" pace has been about an eight and a half minute mile in a 5 mile or 10K race, and my typical racing pace is close to nine minutes per mile.

Yet I continue to enter road races, and I have no intention of stopping. My only real competition is myself, although that person just ahead of me is a target too. Somehow, in a race I am able to increase my rather slow and plodding weekday running pace by a minute or more (perhaps a lot more) per mile, and I really don't know how this is possible. The adrenaline of the race? The runners surrounding me that I try to keep pace with or pass? I just don't know.

However, as a workout or training exercise, that is exactly why I do it. I run about four days a week at a comfortable pace, and I know I still get a good workout doing so. But the races are the jolt to the metabolism, the extra kick in the pants that I can't seem to give myself when running the streets alone.

Maybe I'm burning the same 100 calories per mile that I would at a slower pace... but at least I'm getting it done a lot quicker!

And I sure have a lot of race shirts to wear to the Y.

Here I am as a ghost (in orange) in a Halloween 10K last weekend.

In Defense of Faux Foods

I’m all about natural, wholesome foods. Fresh fruits and vegetables, eggs, fish and poultry, lean beef, small amounts of nuts and whole grains. That’s what I build my meals on. No Lean Cuisine frozen dinners, “diet food,” or sugar free Jello for me (although if you like Jello, the sugar free kind is really a free food). My goal was to lose my taste for sweets and unhealthy foods, so that I would crave good, fresh, whole foods. And it has worked very well. I honestly do crave turkey and vegetables and plain yoghurt and cottage cheese. (The only “fake food” that I have persistently hung onto is diet coke. I need to keep at least one vice!)

However. Sometimes you do want something different than salads and plain meat. Sometimes you want to eat “normal” food—but still don’t want to sabotage yourself with hundreds of excess calories. Nor do you want to eat such a tiny portion of the “normal” food that you can’t get no satisfaction!

So I have allowed myself to occasionally delve into the world of food substitutions. Other than the diet coke, of course, which I’ve continued to indulge in over the years. My first surrender was to sugar-free Fudgsicles, 40 calories of creamy chocolatey goodness apiece, which means that I can eat two as a bedtime snack for the same calories as a simple apple! (“Two” is a big thing with me.)

I have also created for myself a hot dog with the works for a fraction of the calories in a regular hot dog. A standard wiener has at least 150 calories, and up to 300 or more calories for Polish sausage or similar franks. A hot dog bun has about 200 calories! Instead, I choose a Ballpark fat-free beef frankfurter at 50 calories, and instead of a bun I use a piece of low calorie whole grain bread such as Franz bread, which has only 40 calories per slice. My favorite condiments, mustard, relish, sauerkraut, chopped onions, jalapenos, have virtually no calories, so each hot dog all put together has about 100 calories. (Yes, I can have two.)

With my hot dog(s) I like to have cole slaw. This really isn’t a substitution, it’s just a healthier version of regular slaw. The dressing is a spoonful of light mayonnaise mixed with plenty of apple cider vinegar and a little Splenda to take the edge off. Mix up plenty of chopped cabbage, broccoli slaw, and other chopped vegetables such as onion, bell pepper, cucumber and celery, and toss with the dressing. Eat as much as you want!

Then for the baked beans. Actually, regular baked beans aren’t too bad at 140 calories per half cup. However, you can improve them a little bit (and increase the size of your portion) by mixing ¼ cup of the baked beans (70 calories) with ½ cup canned kidney beans (100 calories). The plain beans will take on the flavor of the baked beans, and you’ll hardly know the difference. You might want to jazz them up at bit by adding a few shakes of chipotle Tabasco sauce. I like to divide the ¾ cup serving in half…so I can have seconds.

A couple of times this summer I indulged in a delicious fruit and chocolate crepe at the Sunday Farmer’s Market. When the market ended at the end of September, so did the crepes. But I have come up with a way to sort of recreate the crepe experience, in a lower calorie, somewhat healthier way. I started with a box of whole grain lowfat freezer waffles from the grocery store (140 calories for two waffles). To top the waffles I thawed a bowl of unsweetened frozen blueberries and raspberries, which I sweetened with a little Splenda. My garnishes are somewhat fake—fat free Cool Whip and sugar-free Hershey’s syrup, both 15 calories per two-tablespoon serving. I fix the waffles one at a time—yes, so I can go back for seconds. On the side I have two pieces of turkey bacon, which is both a fake food and a real food in its own right!

Thanksgiving is a wonderful time for real, healthy foods. (Yes, really!) My Thanksgiving staples are the wonderful turkey, roasted sweet potatoes, and my ubiquitous green salad. But I have also come up with some light versions of other Thanksgiving foods. Many years ago I modified a traditional Jello salad recipe with sugar-free Jello for my grandmother. This is a recipe that is well known in the annals of Jello dishes… I prepare sugar-free raspberry Jello with unsweetened apple sauce and mix in thawed frozen raspberries, then chill in the fridge. The topping, which traditionally involved min-marshmallows, is now fat-free sour cream sweetened with Splenda. It’s yummy, and the applesauce and raspberries immensely improve the texture of the jello! Actually, most Jello recipes can be made with sugar-free Jello, saving considerably in calories and, of course, sugar.

I also made a reduced sugar version of cranberry sauce. I cooked some fresh cranberries with water so that they soften, then sweeten with Splenda and then stir in some Polaner all-fruit spread for sweetness and thickening. It is just as delicious as “real” cranberry sauce, maybe more so!

I rarely eat pasta, and when I do I try to choose whole grain pasta. My only real trick with pasta is to mix it with a lot of vegetables, to create bulk and quantity without too much actual pasta. I dress it with a half cup of healthy marinara sauce, and garnish with a half (or whole) ounce of parmesan grated on my microplane grater. You can do the same thing with spaghetti squash, and don’t need to be as frugal with the squash as with real pasta!

Most of the time it’s better, and easier, to stick with plain, healthy natural foods. But on occasion, I say go ahead and go crazy with a low calorie substitute food. It’s fun!