Doing My American Civil Duty and Giving Thanks

2010 was a good year for which to give thanks.

I am thankful that both my parents are doing all right. They both had some strife this year, but have come out of it on the other end ok. Thank you both for everything you do, you are the world to me. You have always been there for me, and I will always be there for you.

Thanks to Carl, Ruth and Connor for putting up with me and putting me up so much this year. I am thankful to have a new car, and with it, I tried to get up to see my brother, sister-in-law and nephew more than in years past.

Thanks for showing me the ropes of wine tasting, Carl, Michelle, Lynda, Mike and all your North Bay friends. I got a new activity this year, and it's actually a mature one. I think the adult may finally be trying to get out in me, thankfully.

Thanks to all my social media and real life friends that helped support and motivate me with the weight loss this year. Sabrina, thanks for competing with me and helping give me the kick in the butt I needed to get going. Shevonne, thanks for introducing me to MFP and Daily Mile. Tony, Robert, and Jason thanks for all your words of encouragement.

The economy started to rebound a little this year, and I'm definitely thankful for that as well as gainful employment. Thanks to the crew at work for being the greatest - Teresa, Carrie and Elaine you make every day a joy!

My Holy Grail is a Healthy Lifestyle (Currently Paused)

For those of you that have found interest in my weight-loss quest, you may have noticed it's been quiet lately. For those of you that can't wait for me to stfu on how many calories I've burned or how many laps I walked around the block, you may have found a reprieve from my onslaught. I'm sorry and you're welcome, in that order.

I am nothing if not consistent, and for the past year this has been the story of me on a diet. For two or three months, I go at it. I'm gung ho. It could be that I found a book to inspire me, and that's enough to keep me going for a few months. Or, maybe there's some cool app for the iPhone where I can track my calories or GPS my walks around the hood. Whatever, there's usually something to prod me along for about 90 days, tops. Then, I stall/plateau/getbored.

In everything there's supposed to be both good and bad, that whole yin-yang philosophy, right? In my case, I have every intention of being absolutely perfect on my diet, but realize perfection kind of isn't my thing. So, I'll go solid for a bit, then be bad for a short while, more good, a little more bad, etc. It's been strangely consistent, too. For those first two-three months I'll be incredibly motivated, blab about it all the time, and chalk up dozens of lbs lost. Then, I lose it. I don't know how or why, but it's gone. During the downtime, which has been in intervals of three to six week periods over the past year, you won't hear a peep from me about the quest, I put back on some of the pounds I lost, and I get depressed.

Eventually, I can't take anymore of the reversal of fortune, so I hop back to it. The best part is, the cycle is totally working in my favor. I don't have the whole past year meticulously coded anywhere, mostly because there's only a few months of data on any of the services I've used before I got bored with them. But it's kind of gone something like lose 20, gain 5, lose 30, gain 10, lose 25, etc.

So, what am I getting at with all this? I'm near the end of one of the bad cycles, have put back on 15-20 pounds from my recent losses, and hopefully something inspiring is right around the corner.

Bags of XXX

I've hoarded all my clothes no matter how big or small they were. All the clothes that fit stayed on the right side of the closet, while all these clothes I used to wear a decade or more ago were housed on the left. Why keep all those old non-fitting clothes? Well, I had a plan that someday I would actually get motivated, get smaller, and fit into those old clothes again. In fact some of these clothes have moved multiple times from apartment to apartment throughout the years.

Well, I finally got my shit together and lost some weight, and wouldn't you know it, there needed to be a rearranging of closet space. All the clothes on the right side of the closet were all XXX- or XX-large sized. At one point, not too long ago, those giant threads fit over my frame, but now unless I want to look like a sagging, hiphop wannabe, I needed to get rid of them.

Now I have two big garbage bags full of right-side-of-the-closet too-big-for-me shirts, jeans, and slacks ready to be donated to Goodwill. Tomorrow. And slowly, my attire from the other side of the closet is starting to enjoy life out of retirement.

Luckily, at this stage of my weight loss, I'm back at a place I've been before, so there's clothes I've stored that fit. Was I a forward-thinking frugal master, or just a pack rat? Who knows, but almost certainly a year or so from now, absolutely nothing I own will fit right. I guess it's time to start saving my pennies now for new duds.

What I have been doing to drop the weight

The original pic was taken August 2009, but I was the same weight in October 2009 too. From 10/09 to 01/10 I lost 20 pounds, maintained until 03/09, then I really kicked it up a notch, and in the last 6 months I lost another 55. So, I'm halfway to my goal weight, and so far so good!

What I have been doing to drop the weight:

The first 20 pounds
I made very slight changes to diet and absolutely no changes to exercise. I continued to eat fast food because of my laziness, but I just got the grilled chicken options with a side salad instead of a burger and fries. My exercise went from sedentary to sedentary, so like I said, no change there.

The next 55 pounds
I started exercising regularly and eating right. Pretty simple stuff, really. I had to start SUPER slow with exercising though, because I had really let myself go. My first couple walks were at a snail's pace, and now I'm booking it at over 4.5mph. My minimum was to walk 30 minutes a day in the beginning, but I've started using a pedometer. Now I strive for 10,000 steps a day. I also bike commute to work on Fridays, 20 miles round-trip (until the weather starts to turn garbage). My buddy and I usually go for another bike ride on Sundays too (about 10 miles there). Beyond that, three times a week I get in some calisthenics, and then of course I track the calories on myfitnesspal, so that keeps me on my toes for what I eat.

The next 75 pounds
Who knows. Hopefully more of the same I've been doing for the last 6 months, but I'm sure I'll have to mix it up at some point. Eventually, I'll start running/jogging. Maybe another 20-25 pounds when I feel like my knees can take it.

Oh, and no gym. Screw gyms. I hate those places. And they cost money. I need to save that money for new clothes when I get skinnier! I'm already into my college wardrobe, and soon I'll be through my high school threads. :)

Diet and Alcohol Consumption: Not Forbidden

Here's my summary and take on alcohol consumption while on my diet: drink, don't binge, have just one, and have it towards the end of dinner.


Go ahead and drink
People have been boozing it up for eons, and they seem to have done just fine. Our ancestors were not all teetotalers, so why should I? Seriously, some alcohol tastes really, really good, like fine wine. Which, by the way, I will definitely consume tomorrow, up at Cahill Wineries in Sebastopol, CA. So, it tastes good, people have been doing it forever, and unless I have some 12-step reason not to, I'm going right ahead.

DO NOT BINGE
So, the thing is, while alcohol is extremely delicious, drinking a lot of it is bad for a couple of reasons. If you're dieting like me, lots of drinks equals lots of calories, so naturally it's best to take it easy on the stuff. The other reason is that alcohol has that naturally inhibition-reducing effect. That's not good for us dieters. Less inhibition means we'll try to scarf down palettes of french fries covered in luscious mayonnaise and two or three burgers. Almost everything tastes better when you're drunk, and even if it doesn't, your inhibition to say "NO" has been dulled, so food just seems to find it's way down your gullet no matter what. I'm laying off the binge-fests because I need to keep my satiety center working in proper order.


Have just one, and have it towards the end of dinner
I can't say that I abide by this at all. I've gone wine tasting in the middle of the day, I've had two-three beers after dinner, along with a shot of vodka, and I drank a whole bottle of wine to my head a few weeks back. After the wine tasting day, I was hungry on the drive home, and I totally scarfed down a Double-Double, a cheeseburger, fries, and a Coke from In-N-Out. That was after having shish kabobs at my brothers, too. Not a good day. After a couple of beers at night, I tend to find my hand hovering around the peanuts or pistachio dishes, and while I don't pig out on them, at that time of night I shouldn't even be thinking about food. I only remember having an orange or some other piece of fruit like that with the bottle of wine the other night. That might be the way to go, but I have a feeling it's more like I drank so much wine and got full on the grapes I didn't need anything else. So with that said, I need to start working better on the one-drink-only-rule. Talk about a "lifestyle change." I think if I could do it, some of the above scenarios would stop, plus there is a minuscule possibility that my HDL cholesterol levels (the good kind) could go up with one drink a day. The other thing about having towards the end of dinner is that I want my appetite to be satiated while I eat dinner -- having that drink too early could slow that down, meaning I'll want to eat more and I won't recognize I'm full until too late.

Mysteries of My Diet Revealed

Let there be no mistake about it, I have no intention of hiding how I'm going about my program. Over the past few weeks there are a couple of websites that have really been helping to track everything, and there is no reason to keep that bottled up.

Of course, this leaves me open to scrutiny, but I'll have to take the bad with the good. So, the two sites that I use most regularly to track everything are:


MyFitnessPal.com -- this is your standard calorie-counting site. I used DailyPlate.com last year, got bored, and now I'm on to this one. There are plenty of features, including of course an iPhone app to ease the whole process. The tracking is useful to me, and have lots of fun scouring through my daily diet and letting me know all about what I should or shouldn't be eating. I will take everything with a grain of salt though, because in my heart I know that what I'm doing is working. So there. Here is my profile for MyFitnessPal.


DailyMile.com -- this one is a social networking site encompassing every kind of workout you can imagine. You track your distance, time spent, how you felt about the exercise, and can leave a little message about that particular workout went. It tabulates and summarizes week to week for you, and there are places to accept various challenges. For me, I'm trying the walk 100 miles in the month of August, and barring any unforeseen circumstances, it should be perfectly doable. Here is my profile for DailyMile.

Now, for the scrutiny. Have at thee!

10 Rules of the Pete Diet

Yes, I will call it a diet. If you want to get in my face about it being a life change or whatever, go right ahead. It's a diet, I'm old school, and that's what I'm calling it. With that said, I thought it would be nice to explain some of the rules I have about how I'm going about my whole weight loss experience.

Some of these rules come from the books I've been reading, as mentioned in the previous post. Some rules come from common sense, friends' suggestions, or just about anything else that's popped into my head.

1. Exercise every day
Bare minimum, I have to walk 30 minutes a day. It's preferable to do it all in one shot, but it's totally cool to do 3 walks of 10 minutes each. That's simple enough -- take 10 minutes out of the lunch break to walk 5 minutes up the road, and 5 back. Two more just like that, and bada bing. In March 2010, I started from sedentary and have been building up. My first couple of walks were slow, like 2-2.5 miles an hour. I've built up to a little over 4.0 miles an hour on the walks now, and that's brisk. I took the 30 minutes to the next level and now try to get in 10,000 steps a day. That comes out to about an hour a day of walking, and while time consuming, it gets the trick done without destroying my knees. I've also added a workout routine of 20 minutes strength and muscle training three times a week. On top of all that, I do try to get at least one decent bike ride in a week too. Beyond that, I purposely do things like park farther away from work, print to the printer that's on the other side of the office, and generally find any excuse I can to be active and less sedentary. I still watch a ton of movies though, so nothing to be done there.

2. No eating after 8:30PM
That's my cut-off, and I've been fairly good about it. A couple times I've been to friend's houses and food wasn't ready until after 9PM, so I just waived my hands "no." I will consume beverages after 8:30, but that's it. There's some metabolic reasoning behind this, like my motor has basically slowed so far down that late at night that processing any food just takes longer and stores it in all the wrong places. Plus, I hardly ever get any exercise that late at night, so what's the point of putting energy in my body if I have no chance of expending any of it?

3. Keep the metabolic motor going all day
Instead of the strict 3-meals-a-day, breakfast, lunch, and dinner, I try as much as possible to have 5-7 smaller meals a day. It doesn't always work out, but the bottom line is, I am listening more to the demands of my stomach and trying not to overdue it any meal. I eat when I'm hungry and only to the point of satiation. If that means I need a snack at 10:30AM or 3 o'clock on the afternoon, so be it. My understanding is that keeping that metabolic motor running all day long is the best for it. There is something about not eating for too many hours that puts your metabolism into starvation mode. When that happens, I'm less hungry, food gets processed slower, and you use the wrong kind of energy to keep the body moving. Dr. Oz explains it well in his book, but here's some of the science on it.


4. Fruits and vegetables as much as possible
Sugar and glucose are good for you, but granulated sugar, fructose corn syrup and stuff like that I try to avoid. Besides, fruits and veggies have lots of fiber that's good for me, and they digest slowly in my body which is better for regulated energy dispersal. Eat your veggies, how many times have I been told that growing up? Well, now I'm finally listening.

5. As little white foods as possible
No white rice, no white bread, and no white potatoes. It takes longer to cook brown rice, but I'll have that instead. It's not that carbs are the forbidden food it's made out to be, it has to do with the speed by which this food digests and turns into sugar. With all the white stuff it happens too fast, which means I constantly want to eat more of it. With some 100% whole what bread, it just moves slower through the body, and like the fruits and veggies above, that's just better to keep my full longer throughout the day. I do eat rice & bread, I'm just making different choices about what kinds I eat. Anything that says "bleached" or "enriched" on the label, I also try to avoid. Unfortunately, those foods are cheap, so that means a few more visits to places like Whole Foods and Trader Joe's to get the higher-quality food. It also means a little steeper hit to the pocketbook.


6. Never skip breakfast
Starvation mode is not good for me. If I starve myself in the morning, I will pig out for lunch and probably eat way too much around dinner time. I want to have a good steady satiation most of the day, otherwise I feel the inconsistency of my metabolism.

7. Water instead of soda or juice
I try to drink water all day long and at almost every meal. It's just good for you. It lubes your insides so all the digestion works right, but it also helps with just about everything else. I was a fiend for energy drinks over the past few years, and last summer when I took a hike with my brother near Happy Camp, CA I practically fainted from all those crazy cooked-up chemicals swimming around in my body. I vowed to never have any more of that stuff, and now I'm even trying to stay off all the rest of the wacky beverages. Those drinks are pretty much all sugar anyway, so if I was worried in any way about diabetes, nixing those from the diet was definitely a good choice.


8. Hardly ever eat red meat
The cholesterol clogs my arteries, the protein I get from it I could get from other sources, and on the modified food pyramid chart from the Eat, Drink book, it describes red meat as "eat sparingly." So, I do. Instead, I try to eat more turkey and chicken, and occasionally things like tofu.

9. Stay motivated and connected
Inspiration and motivation to keep going has to come from somewhere, and keeping the emotional wagon on the right track is needed as well as all the body dynamics. So, I talk to my family and friends about my diet and exercise. I post info on a couple of different websites, and I use services like Friendfeed, Twitter, and Facebook to keep it social.


10. Limit the diversity of tastes in a single meal
Diversity is good, but there is something to be said about trying to keep the amount of different kinds of food you eat limited, especially in a single meal. When I eat too many different flavors, I don't feel satiated enough. I notice this especially with Chinese food. There's so much going in a single dish that I just never really feel full enough, even though I know that I am. So, if I go out for Chinese, I try to get the simplest dishes, otherwise I'll just want to eat and eat and eat.

Of course there are other rules I have, but this is a good start if you wanted an idea of what kinds of things I'm doing to keep myself on the right track.