So, here's the problem with using software to design ingredient lists: no one really agrees on any of the data.
For example, I designed a nice ingredient list using the United States nutritional information at http://www.nal.usda.gov/fnic/foodcomp/search/
2.5 cups Peas, green, frozen, unprepared
2.5 cups Corn, sweet, yellow, frozen, kernels cut off cob, unprepared
2.5 cups Collards, frozen, chopped, unprepared
1 cup Mushrooms, shiitake, raw
1 cup Nuts, almonds
1 cup Beans, snap, green, frozen, all styles, unprepared
1.5 cups Mollusks, clam, mixed species, canned, drained solids
That's supposed to be just under 1900 calories, and give really good quantities of everything except Vitamin D. But since D and B12 are hard to get, my plan has been to just take D and B12 pills, and not worry about it.
BUT. Everything else, according to the United States Government, looks good. Oil soluble vitamins like Vitamin A are not too high, and basically the whole batch of nutrients are almost perfectly balanced in just the right way.
So what do I do? I input the ingredient list into nutritiondata.com, at http://nutritiondata.self.com/facts/recipe/1905617/2
It gives a really nice nutritional breakdown. But it also lists the calories at over 2200. Also, vitamin A is listed at 300% of the RDI, which is a lot closer to the upper tolerance level than the Government thought it would be.
Basically, both sources agree the ingredient list is pretty damn good. But the discrepancies are still so large!
On top of that, you've got to figure that store-bought foods don't match their official nutritional numbers very well.
So all of that can get pretty depressing. But then what typically happens is that I'll suddenly think to myself, "well actually, given the diet of the average American, it's probably good that there's a big grey area in there. If it all had to be balanced to such a nicety as I'm aiming for, there'd probably be a lot more people dropping like flies."
So that cheers me up. It reminds me that common sense just has to play a part, and I can't only rely on crunching numbers to figure out what to eat.
On the other hand, I just got back from the 2nd big yearly eatathon - Christmas - with another extra 5 lbs. Thanksgiving took me from 175 lbs to 180, and Christmas took me from 180 to 185. I'm just banking on getting back to my regimen, as the only thing that'll keep me from gaining back all the weight I took off. And doing a lot of spreadsheeting and ingredient list construction is one way I have of bringing myself back to the right head.
Thursday, December 30, 2010
Saturday, December 18, 2010
Spreadsheeting To Victory
So, one thing I've wanted to do for years is construct nutritionally optimized meals. It's a tough problem, because each food has different ratios of each nutrient; so stacking up a set of ingredients and quantities, that all add up to an optimized ingredient list, is hard.
And I cracked it! Turns out I was looking at it all wrong. I'd been thinking I wanted software that would do all the calculations for me. But actually it's much better to just automate a few little things that help narrow down which foods are available to add into my ingredient list.
So, here's what I did. I made a spreadsheet that had a bunch of foods, and a column for each nutrient; and I filled in the nutrients with an equation that would change the quantities of each nutrient to reflect the quantity of that particular food.
So if I put the quantity of green peas at 1 cup, all the nutrients adjust their values accordingly.
At the top of the spreadsheet is a special area, and if I move a food into that area, then it's part of my ingredient list, and I can see a summation of the nutritional values of all the foods on that list. So as I add each food, it shows me the total percent of the RDA I'd get from eating all the foods combined on that list.
That was what I was doing for awhile, and it worked a little, but not great. Through a lot of diligence and trial and error, I was able to cobble together a list of about 14 foods, mainly in 1/4 cup portions, that would add up to a complete nutritional balance, with a reasonable caloric intake.
But the real coolness was when I added a new column to the spreadsheet, that would give each food a score. At first I just averaged the values of each nutrient that the food contained; so the score essentially represented how nutritionally 'dense' that food was. And that was useful, in the sense that nutritionally dense foods are great to include in ingredient lists; but it wasn't as helpful as it could be, in terms of helping me pick exactly which food to add to a given ingredient list.
So then what I did was, I told the scoring function to take account of the ingredient list that was already up in the special part of the spreadsheet. For any given nutrient, if I still needed some of that nutrient, I'd include that value in the average. If the ingredient list already had enough of that nutrient, I wouldn't include it in the average. And, if any nutrient would put the ingredient list over the medically recommended maximum for that nutrient, that would send the food's score down to 0. In other words, I wouldn't consider it at all.
All of a sudden, the whole problem became easy!
The way it is now, using this mechanism, if a food has a high score, that means it will be directly beneficial to add to the ingredient list. So I just sort the spreadsheet on the 'score' column, and then select the next food for the ingredient list from the top items in the sheet.
In practice, this enables me to focus a lot more on which foods I think would taste good together.
So, here's an example of an ingredient list I've constructed with this technique:
2 cups Corn
2 cups Peas
2 cups Shiitake
2 tins Sardines
1 cup Almonds
That ingredient list gives me a relatively low caloric intake - but still 90% of the RDA, so it's good for weight loss. At the same time, it gives a virtually complete set of nutrients, with no nutrients going too high or too low. I'm no expert and you shouldn't rely on this information, but as far as I can tell, the above recipe gives me everything I need for a full day's eating.
Also, there are only 5 ingredients, with reasonable portions, instead of the 14 ingredients divvied up in 1/4 cup increments that I had to deal with before.
So, unlike the old days, where it was really hard to come up with even a single ingredient list that would meet my needs, now I can do it over and over. My master list of ingredients so far is still relatively small - only about 25 items - so there still tends to be some overlap. But now that I have the spreadsheet working, I'll be adding a lot more items to it as I discover more good foods.
Here's another ingredient list I figured out:
2 cups Lima Beans
2 cups Broccoli
2 cups Butternut Squash
1 cup Clams (canned)
1 cup Shiitake
1 cup Edamame
1/8 cup Almonds
1/8 cup Sesame Seeds
This one is a little less pretty because of the 1/8 cup measurements on a couple of those ingredients, but it's still pretty simple. This one is also even lower calorie than the previous recipe, so there's plenty of room for a few apples or other small snacks, if I want.
What this all really means, is that instead of having to eat the same meal every single day, I can now make a different meal for each day.
Every couple weeks I go buy my ingredients, divvy them up into freezer bags, and dump them in the freezer. Then each day I eat the contents of one of the bags. It's been OK, but it'd be nice to add some variety.
And now I can! When I divvy up the foods next time, I'll be able to put different ingredients into each bag, and still be confident that they'll contain everything I need for the day. Of course, not everything will be mixed in at once. Only the veggies will be frozen; the rest will be opened for each meal.
I'm very excited. I can't wait to add more foods to my growing database of available items, and to construct more meals for myself.
If anyone has any healthy foods to suggest, let me know so I can add them in, and start eating them! In theory, this spreadsheet could balance even unhealthy foods into a nutritionally complete meal, but I'm not really interested in trying to shoe-horn unhealthy foods into my diet.
And I cracked it! Turns out I was looking at it all wrong. I'd been thinking I wanted software that would do all the calculations for me. But actually it's much better to just automate a few little things that help narrow down which foods are available to add into my ingredient list.
So, here's what I did. I made a spreadsheet that had a bunch of foods, and a column for each nutrient; and I filled in the nutrients with an equation that would change the quantities of each nutrient to reflect the quantity of that particular food.
So if I put the quantity of green peas at 1 cup, all the nutrients adjust their values accordingly.
At the top of the spreadsheet is a special area, and if I move a food into that area, then it's part of my ingredient list, and I can see a summation of the nutritional values of all the foods on that list. So as I add each food, it shows me the total percent of the RDA I'd get from eating all the foods combined on that list.
That was what I was doing for awhile, and it worked a little, but not great. Through a lot of diligence and trial and error, I was able to cobble together a list of about 14 foods, mainly in 1/4 cup portions, that would add up to a complete nutritional balance, with a reasonable caloric intake.
But the real coolness was when I added a new column to the spreadsheet, that would give each food a score. At first I just averaged the values of each nutrient that the food contained; so the score essentially represented how nutritionally 'dense' that food was. And that was useful, in the sense that nutritionally dense foods are great to include in ingredient lists; but it wasn't as helpful as it could be, in terms of helping me pick exactly which food to add to a given ingredient list.
So then what I did was, I told the scoring function to take account of the ingredient list that was already up in the special part of the spreadsheet. For any given nutrient, if I still needed some of that nutrient, I'd include that value in the average. If the ingredient list already had enough of that nutrient, I wouldn't include it in the average. And, if any nutrient would put the ingredient list over the medically recommended maximum for that nutrient, that would send the food's score down to 0. In other words, I wouldn't consider it at all.
All of a sudden, the whole problem became easy!
The way it is now, using this mechanism, if a food has a high score, that means it will be directly beneficial to add to the ingredient list. So I just sort the spreadsheet on the 'score' column, and then select the next food for the ingredient list from the top items in the sheet.
In practice, this enables me to focus a lot more on which foods I think would taste good together.
So, here's an example of an ingredient list I've constructed with this technique:
2 cups Corn
2 cups Peas
2 cups Shiitake
2 tins Sardines
1 cup Almonds
That ingredient list gives me a relatively low caloric intake - but still 90% of the RDA, so it's good for weight loss. At the same time, it gives a virtually complete set of nutrients, with no nutrients going too high or too low. I'm no expert and you shouldn't rely on this information, but as far as I can tell, the above recipe gives me everything I need for a full day's eating.
Also, there are only 5 ingredients, with reasonable portions, instead of the 14 ingredients divvied up in 1/4 cup increments that I had to deal with before.
So, unlike the old days, where it was really hard to come up with even a single ingredient list that would meet my needs, now I can do it over and over. My master list of ingredients so far is still relatively small - only about 25 items - so there still tends to be some overlap. But now that I have the spreadsheet working, I'll be adding a lot more items to it as I discover more good foods.
Here's another ingredient list I figured out:
2 cups Lima Beans
2 cups Broccoli
2 cups Butternut Squash
1 cup Clams (canned)
1 cup Shiitake
1 cup Edamame
1/8 cup Almonds
1/8 cup Sesame Seeds
This one is a little less pretty because of the 1/8 cup measurements on a couple of those ingredients, but it's still pretty simple. This one is also even lower calorie than the previous recipe, so there's plenty of room for a few apples or other small snacks, if I want.
What this all really means, is that instead of having to eat the same meal every single day, I can now make a different meal for each day.
Every couple weeks I go buy my ingredients, divvy them up into freezer bags, and dump them in the freezer. Then each day I eat the contents of one of the bags. It's been OK, but it'd be nice to add some variety.
And now I can! When I divvy up the foods next time, I'll be able to put different ingredients into each bag, and still be confident that they'll contain everything I need for the day. Of course, not everything will be mixed in at once. Only the veggies will be frozen; the rest will be opened for each meal.
I'm very excited. I can't wait to add more foods to my growing database of available items, and to construct more meals for myself.
If anyone has any healthy foods to suggest, let me know so I can add them in, and start eating them! In theory, this spreadsheet could balance even unhealthy foods into a nutritionally complete meal, but I'm not really interested in trying to shoe-horn unhealthy foods into my diet.
Monday, November 15, 2010
Shaked? Baked.
Something went wrong with the new diet. It was really interesting. I started feeling as though something was just wrong. And I had that old sense that I used to get when I'd overeat all the time, that somehow eating would make me feel better. Even if I was already really full, I'd have this strong urge to eat as a curative measure.
So, that came back over the course of a few days, and peaked yesterday. At least I hope it was the peak. Sort of.
I think transitioning over to the grains and beans so suddenly from a primarily vegetable diet, was maybe a bit jarring to my lower brain. My suspicion is that the extra sugars are what did it.
It's kind of cool actually. Sort of hallucinatory. When I was little, growing up on a diet heavy in whole grains, I experienced mild hallucinations the whole time. Nothing major, but if I sat quietly and stared off into space, I'd perceive a kind of movement in whatever I was looking at, sort of a gentle fluctuation.
And that's started to come back over the past few days. When I was a kid, I really enjoyed the sensation, especially since I just figured it was normal, and that I should sit and watch the world move.
So, I'm not sure exactly what to do now. Part of me is like, "weeee!" And the other part is like, "my preference is to not gain back all that weight." So, my inner parent and child are arguing about whether we should leave the park to go do homework, or wait for the ice cream truck jingle to sound closer and closer.
It's a little nerve-wracking, because yesterday I kind of pigged out on apples, nuts, a couple bites of cheese, and some entrées from the macrobiotic restaurant. I gave myself a .5 for the day.
I think my plan is going to be: go back to my old way of eating, and just add my new style gradually, and try to include more veggies alongside the grains and beans.
Not sure what else I can do. Plus I'm essentially tripping, so my judgment is a lot more easygoing. I'm like, "mmmmm, I bet it'd be fun to just see what happens....."
So, that came back over the course of a few days, and peaked yesterday. At least I hope it was the peak. Sort of.
I think transitioning over to the grains and beans so suddenly from a primarily vegetable diet, was maybe a bit jarring to my lower brain. My suspicion is that the extra sugars are what did it.
It's kind of cool actually. Sort of hallucinatory. When I was little, growing up on a diet heavy in whole grains, I experienced mild hallucinations the whole time. Nothing major, but if I sat quietly and stared off into space, I'd perceive a kind of movement in whatever I was looking at, sort of a gentle fluctuation.
And that's started to come back over the past few days. When I was a kid, I really enjoyed the sensation, especially since I just figured it was normal, and that I should sit and watch the world move.
So, I'm not sure exactly what to do now. Part of me is like, "weeee!" And the other part is like, "my preference is to not gain back all that weight." So, my inner parent and child are arguing about whether we should leave the park to go do homework, or wait for the ice cream truck jingle to sound closer and closer.
It's a little nerve-wracking, because yesterday I kind of pigged out on apples, nuts, a couple bites of cheese, and some entrées from the macrobiotic restaurant. I gave myself a .5 for the day.
I think my plan is going to be: go back to my old way of eating, and just add my new style gradually, and try to include more veggies alongside the grains and beans.
Not sure what else I can do. Plus I'm essentially tripping, so my judgment is a lot more easygoing. I'm like, "mmmmm, I bet it'd be fun to just see what happens....."
Thursday, November 11, 2010
Shaking Things Up
So, I managed to get back on my diet. But now I've quit my job; which means I'm trying to get away from the restaurant-centric diet, and do more cooking at home, to save money.
So, instead of focusing on salads and macrobiotic/vegetarian meals, I'm shifting to foods that are relatively easy to prepare at home. I can cook pretty well when I have to, but honestly I just don't want to spend all that time doing it. My preference is to cook up a big batch of something-or-other, and then eat that for a few days, before cooking up another batch of something else.
Vegetables are still super healthy, and super low calorie; so I'm incorporating them into my new diet. Mainly I'll buy many bags of frozen veggies, and steam them. Whole Foods has organic frozen veggies, that are actually priced competitively to the lower-quality Western Beef options, that my roommate had kept recommending to me. (When he first came with me to Whole Foods, he couldn't wrap his head around it for awhile, then finally said he might start going to Whole Foods for his frozen veggies.)
Aside from that, the really healthy foods are whole grains, and beans. Both of which Whole Foods has in bulk, and organic.
So, for example, consider this collard green, mung bean, quinoa, sardine arrangement (not all mixed together, but just in terms of quantities):
http://nutritiondata.self.com/facts/recipe/1847443/2
It's 1600 calories, and it's basically everything I need for the day. The 1 cup of beans and the 1 cup of quinoa probably cook up to about 4 cups of actual chomp material. So that and the vegetables and sardines add up to a really huge feast. Plenty to last through lunch and dinner.
The 1600 calories is actually a bit lower than what I want; so that leaves room for some nuts and fruit, if I want to give in to the snack urge.
But the above recipe isn't actually something I spent a lot of time designing; it just so happens that when you mix up a vegetable, a grain, a bean, and a tin of sardines, you're very likely to get a fairly complete meal. Though those particular choices are healthier than most.
The problem is that this is a pretty big change for me. For the past long while, grains and beans have been a very small part of my diet. I'm not sure what kind of effect it'll have on me, to change it up like this, all of a sudden. Hopefully it won't induce those awful cravings, or bring back the exhaustion.
And hopefully I won't get too bored of the dull flavor of my own home-cooked meals.
I still need to figure out some cooking protocols, so I don't have to make too much of a mess, or spend too much thought on storing the foods once they're cooked, or worry about how to measure out the proper amount for any given day.
All that stuff needs to be attended to.
So basically I'm going to keep my eyes open, and watch for signs that I may be losing balance. The last time I tried cooking for myself, it precipitated falling off the wagon. This time, somehow, I think I'll be able to make it work. Yesterday I actually cooked and ate the recipe above, and it was excellent. It's a lot blander than I'm used to; but I don't really mind. And I'm looking into herbs and spices that'll hopefully add variety to a set of staples that wouldn't otherwise have much variety to them.
So, instead of focusing on salads and macrobiotic/vegetarian meals, I'm shifting to foods that are relatively easy to prepare at home. I can cook pretty well when I have to, but honestly I just don't want to spend all that time doing it. My preference is to cook up a big batch of something-or-other, and then eat that for a few days, before cooking up another batch of something else.
Vegetables are still super healthy, and super low calorie; so I'm incorporating them into my new diet. Mainly I'll buy many bags of frozen veggies, and steam them. Whole Foods has organic frozen veggies, that are actually priced competitively to the lower-quality Western Beef options, that my roommate had kept recommending to me. (When he first came with me to Whole Foods, he couldn't wrap his head around it for awhile, then finally said he might start going to Whole Foods for his frozen veggies.)
Aside from that, the really healthy foods are whole grains, and beans. Both of which Whole Foods has in bulk, and organic.
So, for example, consider this collard green, mung bean, quinoa, sardine arrangement (not all mixed together, but just in terms of quantities):
http://nutritiondata.self.com/facts/recipe/1847443/2
It's 1600 calories, and it's basically everything I need for the day. The 1 cup of beans and the 1 cup of quinoa probably cook up to about 4 cups of actual chomp material. So that and the vegetables and sardines add up to a really huge feast. Plenty to last through lunch and dinner.
The 1600 calories is actually a bit lower than what I want; so that leaves room for some nuts and fruit, if I want to give in to the snack urge.
But the above recipe isn't actually something I spent a lot of time designing; it just so happens that when you mix up a vegetable, a grain, a bean, and a tin of sardines, you're very likely to get a fairly complete meal. Though those particular choices are healthier than most.
The problem is that this is a pretty big change for me. For the past long while, grains and beans have been a very small part of my diet. I'm not sure what kind of effect it'll have on me, to change it up like this, all of a sudden. Hopefully it won't induce those awful cravings, or bring back the exhaustion.
And hopefully I won't get too bored of the dull flavor of my own home-cooked meals.
I still need to figure out some cooking protocols, so I don't have to make too much of a mess, or spend too much thought on storing the foods once they're cooked, or worry about how to measure out the proper amount for any given day.
All that stuff needs to be attended to.
So basically I'm going to keep my eyes open, and watch for signs that I may be losing balance. The last time I tried cooking for myself, it precipitated falling off the wagon. This time, somehow, I think I'll be able to make it work. Yesterday I actually cooked and ate the recipe above, and it was excellent. It's a lot blander than I'm used to; but I don't really mind. And I'm looking into herbs and spices that'll hopefully add variety to a set of staples that wouldn't otherwise have much variety to them.
Monday, November 8, 2010
On Falling On
So, after I fell off the wagon and started eating bad, I actually managed to get back on the diet using the method I'd decided on: that 'day at a time' spreadsheet. I let go of the fact that I'd done the bad eating, and tried not to think about future bad eatings, but only paid attention to the present day's upcoming meals. And I gave myself a daily score indicating how well I'd eaten that day.
The point of the daily score is not to create a set of stats I can use later. Or to figure out whether to punish myself or not, or anything like that. The point of the daily score is to allow myself to let go of whatever I did that day. I ate that extra appetizer or whatever, I recognized it by including it in my score, and now I can move on. That particular little failing can be left behind, in the score for that one day, and now I have a chance to earn a top score for the new day.
That's how I think about it. And so, taking that approach, I was able to get back on the good diet right away. The big "falling off the wagon" moment lasted only a single day, the day that I did it.
But I did make some changes. For one thing, I stopped snacking. Or at least, I tightened up on the snacks a lot. I still might have some nuts once in awhile, but mainly I just don't snack between meals. The things that are still allowable are the two hardboiled eggs, and the tin of sardines; but those aren't snacks so much as they're things that I'd include with my meal if they didn't tend to dominate the flavor of the meal too much.
And I stopped going to regular restaurants. Or at least, I tightened up on that too. But the fact is, sometimes there's going to be a social occasion, and it'll be hard to get out of ordering off a regular menu; and I should be able to tolerate that. So there was one time last week, that my cousins were in town, and they took me to this great Jewish deli uptown, and I had some kind of scrambled egg with fish meal, and a bagel. So, lots of grease, salt, and refined flour. It was so good.
So, that day I got a score of .5 out of a possible 1.0; so, a very low score.
But in terms of going out to eat with friends, I basically stopped taking them to regular restaurants. In fact, I'm implementing a new experiment, where I keep a lot of herbs and spices and whatnot at my apartment, and I have my friends over to cook. The way it works is, they bring some meat or whatever, and cook it up using the stuff I keep around, so they're happy; and I cook my own food. So if they want a lot of salt and grease, that's cool, and I'll have my veggies and whole grains. That way we still get to hang out at mealtimes, which is really one of the best and most convenient ways to hang out, I think.
So basically I got back on the diet, and even tightened it up a bit, and ended up losing another 4 or 5 lbs right away, so I went down to 177 lbs. A friend of mine hung out with me yesterday after not seeing me for awhile, and said I looked "bony". That was the first time anyone had called me that in decades. In fact, I can't remember anyone ever saying that about me.
I plateaued at 177 though, and I've been there for a week, which is really fine. I don't want to force the weight issue. I imagine if I keep eating the way I'm eating, I'll gradually lose the rest of the weight.
Because I'm still overweight, according to the BMI. I have to lose another 6 or 7 lbs in order to be considered to have a 'normal' weight. And even then, that would only put me at the high end of the 'normal' scale.
But basically, hallelujah! My big 'falling off the wagon' experience became just a momentary thing instead of the total failure I was terrified it would become. I feel like it was a close shave; and I credit the whole 'day at a time' concept, that I borrowed from AA, for pulling me through.
The point of the daily score is not to create a set of stats I can use later. Or to figure out whether to punish myself or not, or anything like that. The point of the daily score is to allow myself to let go of whatever I did that day. I ate that extra appetizer or whatever, I recognized it by including it in my score, and now I can move on. That particular little failing can be left behind, in the score for that one day, and now I have a chance to earn a top score for the new day.
That's how I think about it. And so, taking that approach, I was able to get back on the good diet right away. The big "falling off the wagon" moment lasted only a single day, the day that I did it.
But I did make some changes. For one thing, I stopped snacking. Or at least, I tightened up on the snacks a lot. I still might have some nuts once in awhile, but mainly I just don't snack between meals. The things that are still allowable are the two hardboiled eggs, and the tin of sardines; but those aren't snacks so much as they're things that I'd include with my meal if they didn't tend to dominate the flavor of the meal too much.
And I stopped going to regular restaurants. Or at least, I tightened up on that too. But the fact is, sometimes there's going to be a social occasion, and it'll be hard to get out of ordering off a regular menu; and I should be able to tolerate that. So there was one time last week, that my cousins were in town, and they took me to this great Jewish deli uptown, and I had some kind of scrambled egg with fish meal, and a bagel. So, lots of grease, salt, and refined flour. It was so good.
So, that day I got a score of .5 out of a possible 1.0; so, a very low score.
But in terms of going out to eat with friends, I basically stopped taking them to regular restaurants. In fact, I'm implementing a new experiment, where I keep a lot of herbs and spices and whatnot at my apartment, and I have my friends over to cook. The way it works is, they bring some meat or whatever, and cook it up using the stuff I keep around, so they're happy; and I cook my own food. So if they want a lot of salt and grease, that's cool, and I'll have my veggies and whole grains. That way we still get to hang out at mealtimes, which is really one of the best and most convenient ways to hang out, I think.
So basically I got back on the diet, and even tightened it up a bit, and ended up losing another 4 or 5 lbs right away, so I went down to 177 lbs. A friend of mine hung out with me yesterday after not seeing me for awhile, and said I looked "bony". That was the first time anyone had called me that in decades. In fact, I can't remember anyone ever saying that about me.
I plateaued at 177 though, and I've been there for a week, which is really fine. I don't want to force the weight issue. I imagine if I keep eating the way I'm eating, I'll gradually lose the rest of the weight.
Because I'm still overweight, according to the BMI. I have to lose another 6 or 7 lbs in order to be considered to have a 'normal' weight. And even then, that would only put me at the high end of the 'normal' scale.
But basically, hallelujah! My big 'falling off the wagon' experience became just a momentary thing instead of the total failure I was terrified it would become. I feel like it was a close shave; and I credit the whole 'day at a time' concept, that I borrowed from AA, for pulling me through.
Friday, October 22, 2010
On Falling Off
For the first time, I feel like I've really just let go of my diet, and pigged out. There's been a lot of stuff going on that's been bothering me, and it sort of boiled over.
I injured my back a few weeks ago, to the point of being unable to breathe easily or move; then just as that was starting to get better I got a bad cold that completely laid me up. Then just as the cold was starting to get better I was supposed to go on a trip for work, but managed to re-injure my back lifting my suitcase. So I canceled the trip at the very last minute. And that's still stressing me out.
So, while I was sick, it was especially difficult to get decent food, because I didn't feel like I could even go outside; and my whole diet is restaurant-based. I have some dry grain and frozen veggies at home, but I never cook them.
So when I got hungry at the height of being sick, I got a bag of frozen veggies and half a loaf of frozen raisin bread someone had left in the freezer, and ate them. Then some friends brought me canned chicken soup, and I had some of that. They also (at my request) brought me more loaves of raisin bread, and a tin of nuts.
So at that point, I was essentially completely off the diet. True, I wasn't eating pizza or chips or drinking coke, but the food I was eating bore very little resemblance to anything that might have a balanced nutritional content.
Today I'm still recovering from the back re-injury and the cold, but I still went into work to take care of some stuff. And I ate various bad stuff, including pure snack food. I had a fig bar that we keep in the mini-kitchens, and a piece of cheese.
So, I think that partly this was the result of me just being sick, and weakened, and not really caring to think too hard about what I ate, and not really having much resolve about diet stuff.
Also, partly, I think it was related to my whole effort to relax the diet somewhat. My weight had plateaued, and I was just (in theory) attempting to let my body adjust to the new smaller size. But in fact, there was probably various nutritional deficiencies hidden away in what I was eating, that I should've expected those to start giving me cravings. Maybe somewhere in my consciousness I did expect that.
And also, I was putting all my eggs in the anti-snack, pro-portion-control basket. Which, when I think about it now, I wonder, why was I so interested in relaxing the diet in the first place? What benefit did that bring, aside from giving me more options when I ate? Too many options were part of the problem.
Another thing I did was, I slacked off on the day-at-a-time principle. Originally I was keeping a spreadsheet where I would give myself a grade for each day. A '1' meant I had eaten perfectly; a 0 meant I had eaten the worst possible foods. Oftentimes I'd give myself a .8 or thereabouts, for a regular day.
As I had started trying to relax my diet, the mechanisms for calculating what score to give myself started becoming more slippery; and eventually I just started giving myself a '1' for each day; figuring that I was eating as perfectly as I wanted to. And after a few weeks of that, I stopped grading myself at all, and just let the spreadsheet lie fallow.
So now I've got several tins of nuts in my house, part of a loaf of raisin bread, and that may be it. Traditionally, for me, falling off the wagon like this tends to just continue, and I gain back all the weight I had previously lost.
I'm not sure what will happen now, because all my previous experience seems to point towards total failure.
One thing I'd like to avoid, is an effort to talk myself into eating any particular way, as I sit here thinking. I don't want to be like, "tomorrow I'm gonna...!"
But what I have done is, I've started a fresh spreadsheet tracking each day, and I've given myself a .3 for today. The spreadsheet seems like the thing to focus on right now. I originally started it as a way to mimic Alcoholics Anonymous's "day at a time" approach; and that seems to be where I've found myself now. I don't need to think about the days ahead; instead I want to just be aware of the single day I'm in right now, the single choice confronting me at this moment.
For example, do I want to eat more of that bread and nuts that are sitting on my bed? The answer is a pretty clear "no". I won't throw away the nuts, because they're actually OK in my diet, in small quantities. The rest of the bread is garbage though.
Damn - there's another can of tomato soup sitting in my bed... I don't want to throw it out because it's a perfectly good can of food. But I happen to remember there are some other cans sitting on a shelf somewhere... I can keep it with them.
And the rest of the nuts can sit on a bookcase.
That's the way I've handled the choices confronting me this evening. And that's all I need to trouble myself about right now.
Tuesday, October 19, 2010
On No Longer Feeling Thin
An interesting thing happened recently - I realized I don't feel thin anymore. While I was actively dropping a lot of weight, I started to feel very thin; when I got down to 179 I felt positively svelte, in spite of still being officially 'overweight' according to the BMI.
I've been hovering around 179/180 for a few weeks now, and I'm starting to feel like my body is fat. For instance, I'll think to myself, "the last time I weight 180 I was upset at myself for having gained so much weight."
I also recently hauled out my old jeans from the closet - the ones I kept around in case I lost all that weight - and they fit again, but they're a little tight. So they make me aware of all this extra body fat spilling over the waist, and filling up the pant-legs. When I was just wearing my big pants, they were like a tent, and I had to use a belt to hold them up; and I'd think, "these huge pants look so ridiculous on me because I'm way to thin for them now." Now that I wear the thinner pants, it's just the reverse.
So I think I've come to an understanding of what's going on. When I was losing weight, I felt thin because I was losing weight. Now that I've plateaued, my apparently "real" self-image as a fat person has caught up with me.
This is really interesting, because I've been curious lately about whether I identify as a fat person or a thin person. Most of my adult life has been a steady process of weight-gain, slow and inexorable. I guess the result has been that my normal mental state is to conceive of myself as fat. I wonder if this could translate into anorexia, where I might continue trying to lose weight, but always consider myself fat, no matter how much I lost.
Most of my friends tell me I'm not fat anymore, and express surprise when I tell them I'm still technically overweight. And my plan has been to just allow myself to plateau at my current weight, eating normal portions and not snacking, until my body adjusts, and the new eating patterns don't feel like such a new thing anymore.
But it's just interesting that now, once again, I feel fat. Part of me wants to go back to wearing the big pants. Part of me wants to go back to pure salads until the BMI thinks I'm normal. And part of me wants to just stick it out with what I'm doing, and not make any precipitous changes based on these odd new feelings. That's the part of me I trust.
I've been hovering around 179/180 for a few weeks now, and I'm starting to feel like my body is fat. For instance, I'll think to myself, "the last time I weight 180 I was upset at myself for having gained so much weight."
I also recently hauled out my old jeans from the closet - the ones I kept around in case I lost all that weight - and they fit again, but they're a little tight. So they make me aware of all this extra body fat spilling over the waist, and filling up the pant-legs. When I was just wearing my big pants, they were like a tent, and I had to use a belt to hold them up; and I'd think, "these huge pants look so ridiculous on me because I'm way to thin for them now." Now that I wear the thinner pants, it's just the reverse.
So I think I've come to an understanding of what's going on. When I was losing weight, I felt thin because I was losing weight. Now that I've plateaued, my apparently "real" self-image as a fat person has caught up with me.
This is really interesting, because I've been curious lately about whether I identify as a fat person or a thin person. Most of my adult life has been a steady process of weight-gain, slow and inexorable. I guess the result has been that my normal mental state is to conceive of myself as fat. I wonder if this could translate into anorexia, where I might continue trying to lose weight, but always consider myself fat, no matter how much I lost.
Most of my friends tell me I'm not fat anymore, and express surprise when I tell them I'm still technically overweight. And my plan has been to just allow myself to plateau at my current weight, eating normal portions and not snacking, until my body adjusts, and the new eating patterns don't feel like such a new thing anymore.
But it's just interesting that now, once again, I feel fat. Part of me wants to go back to wearing the big pants. Part of me wants to go back to pure salads until the BMI thinks I'm normal. And part of me wants to just stick it out with what I'm doing, and not make any precipitous changes based on these odd new feelings. That's the part of me I trust.
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