Collards and cottage cheese

This was my dinner.  Organic full fat cottage cheese, to which I must add salt.  Steamed collards with a squeeze of lemon.  I may or may not eat a Girl Scout Thin Mint cookie later, if I feel like it.  I’ll likely eat a grapefruit.  Lunch was steamed broccoli with this very yummy spicy tofu omelette looking stuff, from my Farmer’s Market.  Breakfast was buckwheat vanilla pancakes, with wheat germ, walnuts, and maple syrup.  I also ate a few strawberries, a carrot, a kiwi, an orange, and two manderins.   This is my boring attempt at food blogging.  I don’t eat very interestingly.  I’m too unemployed to eat out.  Tomorrow I will eat some fish and asparagus and a sweet potato for dinner.

OK, enough of that.  I’m having to make a big life decision here.  I can stay where I’m currently living, not the best apartment in the world, but it’s in a very fun  happening neighborhood in a great but expensive city.  I can move to a nearby town (may as well be another world) that’s more hippy than hipster, which is okay, but boring and sleepy and too full of folks who don’t realize that their wealth and education is giving them a huge sense of entitlement.   It’s also too New Agey and self-righteous for my tastes.   It saves me about $1000/month, one reason being that I own it, and get the tax break, and another because the whole place fits into my current kitchen.  While many suburbanites and people from wealthier parts of my city are terrified of my current neighborhood, and may only come here to go “slumming”, if at all, the other one  is worse- full of guns, drugs, angry kids with no future in sight.  The current one has some gang and gun problems, but because of cultural reasons that I won’t go into, and demographics is still safer.    They’re both foodie towns.  Should I save money, or stay where I’m comfortable, though maybe not happy?  I think it’s time to update my resume and try to get a job, as unlikely as that is these days.

Missed again

It was the drink with the co-worker, I was surrounded by cigarettes, had to have one.  And unlike food, where I can “screw up” and pick up right where I left off, smoking doesn’t seem to work that way for me.  Bummer.  So now I don’t know whether I should try again, or wait until I visit the parents in May.  I know how bad and wrong it is, but I can’t help thinking that I should wait until I lose this 15 pounds I’m determined to lose, then quit.  I’m quite sure I can maintain my weight, much less confident on my ability to lose.   Very disappointing, indeed.  I may quit again tomorrow, or within a few days, and I’m going to have to be much stricter about alcohol.  Hard to do when I’m trying to start dating someone who wants to go for drinks, but I may have to be determined here.  He likes dogs, too, maybe we can walk the dog instead.  I hate this.

Done smoking myself thin.

Quitting cigarettes really sucks.  I try to keep myself tired enough to not bounce off the walls, but I know better than to drop the coffee, too.  I have none in the house, but cafe opens in 45 minutes, I’ll live until then.  I can keep myself numb and tired enough to do this for a few days, but I’ll have to face regular life soon.  Or do I?

I’ve been reading up about smoking/weight, and on average, it seems people gain 15-20 pounds when quitting.  Some of it is drop in metabolism, some of it is compensating behaviors.   I know for me, my signals get really crossed (raw frayed nerves will do that, I suppose), and I can’t tell if I’m hungry, thirsty, need a ciggarette.   I have definately returned to ciggs many times when it looked like the scale started climbing.

This time, since I am not working, since I rarely have anything I have to do or anywhere I have to be, for at least the next two weeks, I will not smoke, and I will not gain weight.  I’ll probably have to exercise more (not so easy) and eat less (boo).  I’m not really used to doing so much in the food restriction realm, since for the most part I eat quite healthy, and exercise so much, and with the extra boost of nicotine, it wasn’t so important.    Now it’ll matter.

Some of these changes are going to suck, but I’d really like to be done with ciggs, not go running back because of the scale.    For a month or so, I can’t drink either, since that seems to loosen my inhibitions (those rumors are true), and I end up smoking.  I can still smoke weed, that can help me stay numb and calm.  That’s another monkey on my back  I’ll have to face, though it’s not as addictive, dangerous, or toxic as cigarettes.   Actually, tomorrow night my cute ex-coworker is buying me a drink (since he got promoted and I got laid off), which makes it more likely that I’ll smoke.   Maybe I’ll try to have the same attitude as I do with food-if I screw up and have a cigarette, it’s not all ruined, I can just go on as planned the next day?  Physically, I probably could, if I could just wrap my mind around it and convince myself it’s true.  It would still be a large extra dose of suffering, maybe worth it.

Time for doggie and I to wash off my coffee mug and walk to the cafe.  I shouldn’t write blog posts before coffee.  Then I”ll come back and mix some low-fat cream cheese with some wild smoked king salmon, and  a handful of chives from my herb garden, and eat that with two whole wheat mini-bagels and a pile of sprouts.  Then zumba, then lunch, then a long bike ride.  The weather is awesome, and I feel like shit!  Hooray!

Hard lessons learned

This all started with my fretting about quitting smoking. This is generally unpleasant, and I had bad behavior caused by dread previous to quitting-sort of like eating everything in sight because tomorrow starts a diet. And, of course, my erratic emotional state leads to strange eating. I don’t binge anymore, but I will overeat and/or eat badly. Fortunately, except for a few days, I kept exercising, and I seem to account for the calories. If I don’t want to stay at work and eat my healthy food for lunch, instead going to Burmese buffet, I don’t eat much dinner, or just a salad. I guess it all balanced, because this morning when I finally got on the scale, I weighed the same as I did last week. No gain, no loss.

The reality is that smoking ciggies increases metabolism, maybe as much as 10%. This has caused me to unquit before. This time, it was the disappointment of losing my job, but I plan to requit next week.

The truly surprising thing is the effect of quitting coffee on my well being. I went from two mugs a day to 1 mug to a cup of tea, in 3 days. And my mood, followed by my will to live, crashed big-time. I thought it was the ciggs (I think most addictions will make you feel like this-it’s a trick to cause relapse). Anyway, Tuesday night, after I resumed smoking, I made half a cup of coffee so I could function at the gym, and life returned to normal.

So, to sum up, what I have learned:

1. Quitting smoking sucks. The anticipation of quitting can be even worse. Next time I quit spontaneously, not torturing myself for a week beforehand.

2. Quitting coffee smokes. I will taper more slowly, and have more tea.

3. I can eat on a crazy erratic schedule, eat crappy food, and as long as I don’t eat too much, I won’t gain weight.

4. When I do quit, I will have to eat less. Even all the gym I do won’t make up for the drop in metabolism.

F*ck this sh^t!

Laid off. I’ve only been here 2.5 months. I’m going to get some smokes. I can’t afford my rent without a job. I was enjoying my life being stable. Not fair.

Time to pay the piper

This line from this ancient Smiths song says it perfectly: “I smoke because I’m hoping for an early death, and I need to cling to something”. I’m quitting smoking. It feels awful, and I’m not even talking physically. I’m at about 20% of normal caffeine, trying to stay just above headache threshold, otherwise I’m just miserable and unhappy. I’ve had enough problems with addictions to recognize this for what it is, and I’ve quit cigarettes before (for 7 years!), so I’m just going to hold tight and wait it out.

I know it’s worth it, but it is really showing my life right now to be worthless, hopeless, lonely, and pointless. Nobody has even asked how it’s going, except for one guy at work. I’ve told a bunch of people, guess I really have no friends. I’m just Miss Sadness tonight, don’t have the strength to go to the gym, or the ambition for a walk. I went for a huge hike the day I started this, 8.5 miles, 2200 foot elevation change, and I rushed (still almost 6 hours), because I had things to do that evening. I’ve been trying to figure out how many calories that would burn, and I think probably 2000, due to elevation change. It’s crazy to look up what people think, one guy thinks he burns 1000 cals/hour hiking. A guy teaching kickboxing at my gym approximated 1300 for the class. I had to call him on that, and he factored in the afterburn. Last I read, the afterburn for aerobic exercise like that would be about 10-15 calories, altogether, bringing the calories burned to 500? It’s not a hard class. People say all kinds of shit, and who knows who’s right?

Anyway, I’m getting irritated, which possibly means I’m waking up, so I’m going to go take a sample now.

***********OK, update:  20 layoffs tomorrow at my company.  Cute co-worker just gave me the gossip.  This will be 20%.  My dept is only four.  Scary scary.

My first real spam! So honored!

Someone let me know how much they loved my blog, and that I should let everyone know how easily they lost 30 pounds in 30 days, and send them over to the website to learn how! I haven’t had much spam or weirdness, possibly due to the name of my blog, possibly because I’m a lefty stoner non-consumer atheist mathyscience type, unlikely to believe anything without the proof, but now I feel I belong! But 30 pounds in 30 days? I don’t do much faster than 30 pounds in 30 weeks, and it’s erratic at that.

Whatever. Hope nobody minds I didn’t pass that one along

Links to keep you busy forever

Not much to say, but found this site with links to a lot of weight loss abstracts, unfortunately not updated recently, but great stuff.  I’m too lazy to read all the studies, but  you can follow the links if you want to exercise your brain with science and mathy stuff.

http://www.exrx.net/Notes/WeightLossAbstracts.html

**The abstracts are not hard science, they are short, interesting, and to the point!

My loss is another’s gain

I met up with some ex-coworkers last night. Nobody noticed that I lost weight, so I mentioned my 30 pound loss. She said her and her bf had gained it. She said she can’t see my loss, because I’m wearing the same clothes. Which is kinda true. She offered me her old sized 12, but I’m already a 10, which I have none of, so I’ll just wear baggy 12s until I can fit into size 8. She thinks she’s mostly gained because of domestic bliss (shacking up), a 30 minute commute each way,  no exercise other than doggy walks, and crappy eating and drinking. I might also add, even more importantly, that they quit smoking, which is probably the biggest impact. I will have to face this soon, and I’m not looking forward to it. It will likely stop any weight loss in its tracks.

Anyway, I was examining my tummy last night. It used to flop over, now it still sticks out, but it goes down at about 45°, which means there’s no folds there anymore, unless I’m sitting down, and then there’s an overhang.   Another thing I’m wondering about-if I’m size 10, and she’s size 14, can it really be that I’m thinner than her?  She looks less lean, maybe even a bit stocky, but definately not chubby.  I am chubby,  though no longer obese.  I’m getting so confused.   She’s a few inches taller, so maybe that skews sizes?  I’m tired of thinking about this stuff.  Bored, irritated, angry that it takes up so much of my life.  Speaking of life, I’m going to try and develop one-like a real, non-computer type fun life.  Wish me luck!

Skepticism

I read this post a few days back and it got me thinking about weight loss, maintenance, and all that it takes to really do this, and how most of what we hear is total bullshit.  At least most of what is advertised is total bullshit, the “common knowledge” of it seems to be partial bullshit.  Pills, gimmicks, strange diets don’t work, and what does work, permanent changes to lifestyle, both in regards to food and exercise, is barely mentioned.   Anyway, this is the post:

http://refusetoregain.com/my_weblog/2009/02/other-commonalities.html

Basically, she is doing a critique of the National Weight Control Registry, as a person who has lost and maintained that loss.  The part that most caught my eye is about calories consumed:

n terms of calories, members are reporting an average of 1385 calories per day, plus or minus 500. That’s awfully low and Hill assumes it reflects underreporting of the true calories consumed. What makes that interesting is that this inaccuracy then casts doubt on other reported measures, such as fat consumption.

That seems low to me, too.  I’m not a calorie counter, but occasionally I eat a packaged meal.  I like these Amy’s Broccoli Pot Pies, at 430 calories.  That’s a small meal, and if it’s all I eat, I’ll be hungry in 3 hours.  I seem to need about 6o0 calories to really keep going until the next meal, unless I’m going to bed.  I’m quite sure it’s a rare day that I eat under 2000.  And granted, I exercise a lot, but I still lose weight at that level.  I feel really bad when I hear about how I should be eating 1200 calories a day, because I know that will not work, and I’d be starving.  So, either I’m a freak of nature who eats way too much STILL, or the underreporting is so rampant to make the results questionable.

Personally I think the underreporting is rampant, yet most standard diet advice consists of this.  It’s inescapable.  The way to lose weight is not eat 1200 calories a day and go for a 20 minute walk.  It’s not enough food, it’s not enough exercise.  It seems possible to me that weight loss would be possible at that calorie level, but how do you maintain that the rest of your life?  It’s so strict.  And walking doesn’t do it for me.  I currently go to the gym 4-5 days/week, for an hour class or two each time.  I don’t eat low-fat or low-carb.  I eat moderate everything.  I think my diet is so produce heavy that as long as I’m not extreme in whatever else I eat, I won’t regain.  I really get pissed when people think that all it takes to lose weight is “put down the bag of chips and take a walk”.

I think people spend so much money and time and effort on scams and even legitimate but unrealistic diets and “lifestyle changes” that we get burnt out, give up.  We’re so desperate to believe, to really know what works, and there’s no easy answer, and many of the answers out there are dangerous and wrong, ineffective, or just silly.

Anyway, I need to heat up some leftover pizza for breakfast, head to kickboxing.