Digital Alterity

I need to get serious about weight loss again. I’ve been steadily gaining weight for the past several months. It’s time to make that last serious push down to where I need to be. To that aim, I’m going to reinstate my weekly weight loss update feature here on the site. Every Friday, I’m going to post my weight chart — no matter how ugly it may be. I tend to produce much better results when I have some kind of public accountability.

That’s a net change of -0.18 kg/week (net daily calories: -228 kcal). It’s a decent start when you consider that I’ve been too sick with my seasonal allergies to go exercising at the gym more than once over the course of the week. A net loss is always better than a net gain.

Goals

It doesn’t stop until I weigh 70 kg or less. I’m 167 cm tall, so that would put me at an estimated BMI of 25 kg/m2 — just on the edge of overweight/normal. I consider that acceptable because I’m going to be doing weight training that should build some muscle mass. If I still look chubby, I’ll definitely push down to 65 kg. My main goal is to be healthy.

How I’m Going To Lose The Weight

As with every other successful weight loss program, my goal is to burn more calories than I take in. The first front in that war is going to be watching my calorie intake. I’m shooting for right around 2000 kcal/day. In order to do this, I’ll need to track and estimate the nutrition information for everything I put in my mouth. If I seem to be having a problem being responsible in this regard, I’ll start a publicly accountable page on the wiki detailing everything I eat in a day.

I’ll be getting some form of exercise 5 days each week. My primary form of exercise will be working out at Living Well. I’ll be doing cardio of some sort each of those five days with weight training on at least two of the days. I’d like to do weight training three times per week, but I may not compress my schedule enough to do that.

Only a little over 30 kg to go…

Technorati Tags: Weight Loss, Diet, Exercise, Health

I get asked a lot about whether running will help a person lose weight. Let me throw data out to confirm it.

Since the date I started running with no walking interspersed (2006-09-25), I have run a distance of 217.507 km (over 135 miles). My average weight over that period is 100.6 (about 222 pounds). Using my handy running calorie estimator, this means that I have burned roughly 21 881.204 kcal. Since we know that there are 9 000 kcal to a kilogram of fat, we can safely say that I have lost 2.43 kg (about 5.35 pounds) just due to the running around I’ve done in a little over two months.

Over that same period of time, I have lost 6.6 kg (about 14.5 pounds). This means that running constitutes 36.8% of my overall weight loss. You bet it helps.

A person with a weight of 70 kg (about 154 pounds) running a modest 30 km/week (18.6 miles/week) can expect to burn 2100 kcal every week. That’s 109 200 kcal/year! With no dietary changes, this person can expect to lose a little over 12 kg/year (26.5 pounds). If, like most Americans (including your humble correspondent), you weigh significantly more than average, then you can expect to lose even more.

So, yes, running will help you lose weight. Running paired with a good diet will do even more for you.

Technorati Tags: Weight Loss, Running, Calories

How many times have you heard someone talk about how they need to do a bit of exercise to work off a cookie or soda that they ate? If you’re trying to lose weight, be very wary of this mentality. If you find yourself in a position where you’re bartering with yourself, you’ve already lost the war. Your bargaining has turned healthy exercise into a form of punishment by which you can somehow absolve yourself of dietary sins. This notion of temporary suffering leads to thinking of dietary change as a temporary change. In order to maintain weight loss and—even more importantly—be healthy, you’ll need to make consistent healthy choices for the rest of your life.

With the notion of “extra exercise”, you’ve developed a convenient loophole for making consistent unhealthy choices. Making a series of individual unhealthy choices over time is what caused you to become overweight in the first place. If you have a loophole in place, you will likely take it at the first sign of stress or difficulty because that’s what you’ve always done. Habit energy can easily turn your unhealthy loophole right back into an unhealthy and fattening lifestyle.

You also run the risk of falling prey to the deprivation mentality. Good choices don’t somehow earn the ability to make corresponding bad choices. In this regard, the very notion of a “diet” is a broken concept from the start. By setting up a mental state of scarcity and forced deprivation, you create a corresponding expectation of a glorious time when you’ll be able to indulge your neglected desires. It’s okay to eat a cookie or a soda every now and again. For that matter, you could even build a daily cookie into the amount of calories that you allow yourself. Just make sure that you account for it.

Heroic effort is not a sustainable plan. Both weight loss and weight gain are products born out of consistency. Statistically speaking, one data point doesn’t matter. One cheese-laden hamburger doesn’t make you fat, so there’s no direct way to counteract it. One extra burst of exercise won’t tame your waistline. In fact, you’re likely to make yourself so sore and so miserable that you’re that much more likely to skip your regular exercise session in favor of a chocolate shake with whipped cream. Slow and steady does in fact win the race.

Technorati Tags: Weight Loss, Diet

I haven’t exactly been a good boy with respect to my diet, level of exercise, and plan to reach 80 kg. I have terrible memories of sixteen-ounce servings of medium-rare prime rib, Mexican lunches, and more wisdom-tooth-soothing milkshakes than I care to admit. Nonetheless, it has all begun again, and I’m back in the dietary saddle.

Before embarking on my diet and exercise regimen again, I decided to plan out a bit exactly where I’m trying to go. With that idea in mind, I sketched out the following dietary plan which I will term The Five Year Plan in a tip of my hat to the Russian government:

Phase One: Weight Loss

• Week 1. 1500-calorie “hard ceiling”. I’m not allowed to go over this amount at all. Hacker’s Diet exercise plan every morning. At least thirty minutes of cardiovascular work (walking or biking) every day.
• Week 2 until I weight 80 kg. 1200-calorie “hard ceiling”. Again, I’m not allowed to go over this amount for any reason. Hacker’s Diet exercise plan every morning. At least thirty minutes of cardiovascular work (walking or biking) every day.

Phase Two: Weight Maintenance

I must maintain 80 kg with a hard ceiling of 85 kg for at least six months. This is done to build the habit of healthy eating. I’m not sure how much exercise will take, but I must continue the Hacker’s Diet exercise plan at whatever rung feels best no matter what. Weighing 80 kg means nothing if I still wheeze after walking up a flight of stairs.

Phase Three: Vegetarianism

For a long time now I’ve realized that if I had to kill my own meat, I wouldn’t eat meat, and it’s time that I stop letting the capitalist division of labor do my dirty work for me. I have no desire to become vegan because I have no ethical problems with dairy, and I’m still undecided about eggs.

Please don’t think that I have a problem with anyone else eating meat. I could care less really. This is purely an exercise in reflecting my personal worldview by my own choices.

Phase Four: Natural Foods

Once I have succeeded in committing vegetarianism to my dietary landscape. I will adopt a policy in which I try to eat only foods that I understand. If there’s a chemical on my food box that I can’t pronounce, then I’ll politely put the box in question back on the shelf. I understand fully that this will mean giving up soda of all types. I’ll also try to favor whole foods over processed ones. This will of course mean doing almost all of my cooking at home since nearly everything I could eat outside my home will be processed. This phase is far less rigid than the others.

Technorati Tags: Food, Weight Loss, Diet, Five Year Plan

I was pondering a conversation with Allyson this morning and realized a fundamental truth about how different the conversation patterns in our marriage are when compared to that of either of our parents. More often than not, our parents talk about things they saw on TV. This is where their culture lies, and it’s why my mom tends to talk about the same current events that Allyson’s mom talks about. They rely on a relatively small set of sources for their talking points. Allyson and I tend to draw talking points from the Internet, and while we have a subset of common sources (the BBC’s Premiership football RSS feed, Fark, etc.), we also have a diverse set of sites and sources that we either find via web searches or that we follow individually. This leads to an incredibly diverse set of conversation topics in our home. In the past several days, I can easily recall talking about:

1. Michael Owen’s move to Newcastle United.
2. Men who don’t find their wives desirable after being in the delivery room for childbirth.
3. Recipes we found that might be tasty.
4. Folks upset about the “gay quote” on Starbucks cups.
5. Why our cat suffers from “petting aggression”.

This could possibly chalked up to us being interesting people with a diverse set of interests, but I’m positive that the Internet as culture factors into it strongly as well.

The Boring Weight Chart

Not much activity this week. I think that the trend line has finally balanced itself out, and I’m probably going to start exercising again this week. I might try exercising at night when I get off of work just so that I can have my mornings to myself. Now that I don’t live in an apartment building that used to (?) have bedbugs, I’m not nearly as worried about picking up a few mosquito bites. I might also just start riding the exercise bike inside. Something must be done, however, because exercising makes me feel and sleep better.

-0.39 kg/week with an average daily calorie shortfall of 507 kcal. I’m losing weight even without exercise. Mission accomplished.

My weight chart looks horrid this week. I knew this was coming of course for the reasons I outlined last week, but it has been further amplified by my complete lack of exercising. You see, after my run of atonement, I had a funny feeling in my left foot just in front of the ankle. It didn’t hurt really. I just felt a weird shifting or pulling when I took a step without my running shoes on. I’m sure it didn’t help matters that I walked around all day on Monday with my boots on. In any event, I made an amateur medical decision to avoid aggravating any injury I may have incurred.

And then the food. When my best mates come to visit, we tend to eat a lot more frequently than I otherwise am wont to do. On a typical weight loss day, I only eat one actual meal in a day with little micro-snacks thrown in as necessary. When Jason and Richard are in town, there’s a two-meal minimum in place with strong encouragement to eat steak, ribs, and chicken wings. In terms of my food selections, I did pretty well, opting for chicken and veggies where possible, but the whole extra meal had no choice but to take its revenge on my trend line the next morning at weigh-in. I take a lot of consolation in the fact that I’m still losing weight for the week overall.

-0.16 kg/week with an average daily calorie shortfall of -202 kcal.

Probably the biggest news to come out of the weekend was that Jason(1) and his wife will soon have a new little Consolo in the world to rear and play video games with. I knew that they were…ummm…working on it, but before I didn’t have a deadline for my baby blanket knitting project. Now I know that it must be done before the spring.

Remember those socks I originally started making whilst Florida was being savagely attacked by a herd of hurricanes last year? Remember that sock I almost finished while up in Massachusetts? Well, I finally got around to seaming the toe and weaving in the loose ends this morning before work.

Next step: Figure out whether to knock out Jen’s socks next or launch right into the Consolo baby blanket.

Footnotes

1. Who incidentally was the best man at my wedding.

See that last result? Yeah, that’s above the trend line. I’m not staunchly in the throes of self-flagellation though. I’ve changed my baseline because I discovered a snag in my previous methodology. I’ve been exercising in the morning pretty much since I started this gig, and I’ve been weighing in every day after I’ve walked or walked/ran over six kilometers. A few weeks ago, I started weighing in before and after exercising to determine how much water I’m losing in the Florida heat. The fluid loss tends to knock between 1 and 2 kg off of my weight value for a day. Now this hasn’t affected my overall measure of weight loss since I’m measuring from the same baseline every day, but it makes for a real problem when I don’t exercise in the morning. My solution, then, is to make sure I weigh in before any exercising. This led to a sudden shift in where my trend line should be. The next couple of weeks will be an adjustment as the smoothing trend adjusts for the new baseline, but rest assured that I intend to be gung ho hardcore while it adjusts.

In more positive news, my Katamari Damacy soundtrack came in the mail today from Hong Kong. Paired with the copy of Erotic Tales of the Victorian Age that I picked up from UPS today (late anniversary present from Allyson), this CD has helped create an excellent mail day for Rusty.

Today, I haven’t been feeling well. Actually, yesterday I wasn’t feeling well either, but I didn’t want to miss work because it was a special processing night (end-of-term grades and degree audits). This means that flow is delayed by some number of hours, and I just didn’t have the heart to make another person cover that. I went in to work sick even though I kept threatening to Allyson that if I felt as bad as I did five minutes before there was no way I was going to work. Today, I got up, felt no better, emailed work to tell them that I wasn’t coming in, and then—in much the same way that a puppy will pee in the same spot on the floor no matter how many times his nose is rubbed in urine—I went walking. 6.4 kilometers later, I felt crappy and tired. Furthermore, every time I ate something, I either got vicious heartburn or irritating nausea.

I did manage to salvage the day. I decided to get up and do something rather than sit around being sick. I put together a bookcase while I was watching the Internet gamecast of the Wolves/Crystal Palace game (which Wolves won 2-1). After that, I unloaded either four or five boxes of books onto said bookshelf and put away a few games. Allyson called me about then to go home early since she has to be at an all-day conference tomorrow. We went to the mall for her to buy some clothes and such for her trip, and then I took Allyson anniversary shopping. Our fourth wedding anniversary is on Friday, and I gave her the choice of either a pair of Doc Marten’s or Birkenstocks. She choose the Docs, and I let her pick out just the ones she wanted (with an admonition that she wasn’t allowed to be concerned about the price tag). You must understand that Allyson loves shoes in a way that is almost unholy. I think I win the anniversary game. Checkmate.

Reviewing the projected game release dates I have no idea why I want a PSP as badly as I do. It doesn’t make logical sense, so I’m just going to chalk it up as some form of nerd lust. Crisis Core: Final Fantasy 7 looks like an eventual must own, and the portable version of Winning Eleven/Pro Evolution Soccer might actually make me check out the series. Nonetheless, logic never has anything to do with gadget lust. Logic is an enabler that helps create justification for buying what you’ve already decided you want.

My weight chart is less than stellar this week. Let’s review it in silence.

-0.70 kg/week over the past week with an average daily calorie shortfall of 898 kcal.

I took the morning off from walking, and it felt fabulous. Sometimes I feel like I’m making excuses when I tell Allyson things like “I would cook more if I didn’t have to take over an hour out of every morning to exercise,” and “I would rather be at home unpacking things than walking,” but apparently there’s more than a little truth to my statements. Today, upon getting up and refusing to walk, I promptly made butter garlic mashed potatoes with artichoke hearts, put away all of my laundry, emptied out almost all of the kitchen gear boxes, and took out an armload of trash. I need to remember exactly how much of a toll 1000-1500 kcal paired with 70+ minutes of exercise every day actually takes on me the next time I lament that I’m not getting things done as fast as I’d like.

Unfortunately, not exercising today paired with actually eating a total of three meals on Sunday (which hasn’t happened in over three months now), has led to somewhat lackluster weight progress this week. I’m still losing at an appreciable rate though, and my overall rate of weight loss over the course of my diet plan has been 1.05 kg/week. I also managed to keep my streak of being below the trend line alive, which is no small victory.

-0.68 kg/week with an average daily calorie shortfall of 873 kcal.

I ran the calculations of approximately how many calories I’m burning based on how quickly I’m walking, how much I weigh, and how long I’m walking, and it turns out that I’m burning over 400 kcal everyday just with exercise. That’s 2400-2800 calories per week, a figure that completely negates the calories from two whole days of eating. It’s no wonder I’m losing weight.

Unfortunately, it looks like my Wolves shirt is still too small for me. I had been hoping to fit into it by the time the season kicked off, but I doubt I’m going to lose many inches by Saturday. I don’t really consider this a failure so much as a completely unreasonable target.

I’m considering buzzing my hair again. I know that Allyson likes me with hair, but I look so much neater and put together when I have a nice even 1-2 mm of hair all over my head.

In my estimation, the weight loss plan is going extremely well. Even with taking a couple of days off from exercising due to cleaning out the old apartment over the weekend, I’m still at above a kilo per week. I mainly thank the insane weight result of Saturday paired with consistently good eating decisions. Thus far, though I have very much wanted a delicious hamburger. It would probably be wise to give into that temptation in a controlled fashion before I go completely bonkers and end up eating a plate of fries, a cheeseburger, a fried appetizer, and with a nice pint of the black stuff.

But enough yammering. The chart for this week looks sort of like this:

-1.06 kg/week with a daily calorie shortfall of 1361 kcal

The Poodle

My mother-in-law got a tiny poodle recently. He can only muster less than half of the mass of my housecat. Their old (female) dog was named Belle, so this (male) dog has been christened Beau. If you speak French, you’ll probably find this about as humorous as I do. I tried (in vain unfortunately) to convince them to name it Praline, but my suggestion was nothing more than a tinkling cymbal or a sounding brass. “Praline”, for those of you keeping score at home, is actually a beautiful double entendre with a dash of sexual innuendo. Not content with just being the moniker for a sugary treat, “praline” can also be used a slang term for the clitoris. Think about that the next time you’re eating delicious premium ice cream.

Little Beau is extraordinarily unlucky, I hear. He has apparently been coerced into a terrible form of torture known as the “sporting cut” which Allyson appropriately described as a “gay poodle cut except no balls on it’s legs”—oddly appropriate when you figure exactly how emasculated this dog is. If I were this dog, I would pray for death hourly. And when God finally answered my prayer—whether through genuine concern or callous indifference—I would bite him squarely in the metaphysical nuts.