Yeah, yeah, what about the diet? I weighed in at 131 this morning. I still don't want to do much number crunching. I have 3 full weeks invested in this diet and haven't lost as much as I wished. Actually I'm just being impatient. The facts are: 1) my clothes fit looser, 2)I am not fatiguing (is that a word?) out at the gym, and 3) I am losing.

The gym part makes me happy. I quit trying to kill myself on the cardio. I now am running at a pace that gets me going pretty good, but I don't stumble around the weights like I did the first week. During this last week it seems my lifting is at the level where I left off before vacation.

Friday. I have been on this diet since Sunday, the 2nd of November, so I've been on it for 13 days. How do I feel? Tired. I've been waking up a lot at 1-2 in the morning and not really been able to fall asleep. I tend to doze off at work. I'm not sure what to do about this; it is not doing anything really but just sapping any desire to work.

Notebooks are useful for tracking trends. I'm looking back at the beginning of this year. Looks like from January 27th through February 22 I lost 9 pounds ( 137.5 - 128.0). I'm pretty sure that was straightforwards Atkins diet - no calorie counting whatsoever. I pretty much went up and down until the beginning of March, the 7th, I weighed 127. March the 19th I weighed 125. I stopped dieting around then. So I dieted more or less for 52 days and I lost 12.5 pounds. I blame stress and beer for not sticking to my guns. I'd like to match the time (don't know about the weight loss).

Yep! Says I was back to 132.5 on June 6th.

I tried to start over on the 14th of July at 137 and stopped on the 15th of august at 128. How depressing. I went wild until Novemver 1st and popped to over 140. Bleah.

What I'm watching: Actually I'm watching three things right now, The Sopranos, The Forsyte Saga, and Band of Brothers. I've seen BoB before, first time for the other 2 which I'm renting from Netflix. I bought BoB on DVD because it is a damn great piece of HBO programming.

I won't comment on BoB; go to Television Without Pity and read Heathen's recap/critique. She's more critical of the first few eps, but I can't argue with the criticism (hard to tell everyone apart, mainly). She slowly but surely warms up to the show, and she falls madly in love with Major Richard Winters. I sympathize. Yow, what a man!

And like Heathen, I became totally smitten by the actor who plays him (Damian Lewis). Never had a thing for a redhead before. Anyway, I mentioned on a message board what I thought of Richard Winters the character, and one person responded that that was fairly gross because Lewis had played a really creepy bastard in some BBC production called the Forsyte Saga. That's why I'm watching that show. Yep, he is a major creepy bastard. Soames Forsyte is 180 degrees different from Winters. Kudos to any actor who can play such diverse people so convincingly.

The Forsyte Saga is about an English family. For such a reputedly repressed bunch, they sure do like to boink around a lot. That's not a criticism, just an observation. Soames Forsyte is the apotheosis of repressed. He also has no social skills, and he judges everything in terms of posession. Deep in his creepy, shallow, heart, however, he just wants to be loved. Ick.

Naturally, he falls in love with the exact wrong woman, Irene, who is an icy bitch. She marries Soames and then doesn't even pretend to try to love him. Soames needs someone who is as hardheaded and practical as he is. That way they could treat their marriage w/ negotiation -"Ok, honeybunches. I want a ruby necklace and a couple of new dresses and I'll have sex with you every three days for the next two weeks". "Sweetiepie, if I give you a ruby necklace, I want sex every day for at least a month". "Three weeks, every other night". "Okay, deal!"

Oh, yeah, there's a bunch about the rest of the family, but this is the story line that's holding my attention, repulsive as Soames is. Besides, Welsh hottie Ioan Gruffudd shows up to play Bosinney the architect, whom Irene is making googly eyes at. Bitch. Wanker. Yeah, yeah, Soames is a git so they all suck. Still, two hotties are worth the price of rental.

Speaking of families and boinking around, that brings me to the Sopranos. I would like this series better if there was someone whom I could genuinely like (or maybe a good-looking Brit or two). I do enjoy it; I love mob movies, but I have a lot of time invested with these characters and none of them show any morality. Well, there was one scene where Tony's wife goes to a therapist and the therapist bluntly tells her to get out of a marriage with a gangster. The therapist's clear-cut stand on what is right and what is wrong was a refreshing and shocking change of pace. She doesn't listen (or hasn't, so far). We're in the middle of the third year.

One ep depressed the hell out of me - one about strippers at the club Tony Soprano and his crew run/hang out at. One girl is brutally killed by her mobster boyfriend and out of all of them only Tony shows any remorse at the poor girl's death. The rest are just pissed at the boyfriend for making a mess and causing a potential situation. I'm glad the writers allow Tony the occasional glimpse of humanity because the rest of the time he's a pig and the show would be unwatchable if he was one full-time.

History is kind of finished, overexcessive pontificating and obsessive number crunching ahoy:

I started this diet on Sunday, November the 2nd. Today I weighed in at 133.5 and 29% body fat. I averaged about 1332 calories a day.

What does it mean? Not a doggone thing, yet, because it's just one week. I will need another week to do more comparisons. Note the rapid weight loss in the beginning of the week(I weighed 137): most of this is water loss. Remember rule 5.e about glycogen: my stores are depleted. My body has switched over to fat burning (ketosis) which I know because of those little strips of paper I pee on.

This phenomena also tends to increase your body fat percentage. Remember, that which is not fat is everything else which includes the water your body retains. Less water, bigger ratio of fat. No big deal! More weeks, more data, and the more I can make better and better estimates on how much I need to eat a week to lose one pound a week. The aggravating thing will be that the more I lose, the less I will need to eat to maintain the one pound a week weight loss.

Oh: more boring fun. remember 2.e Fat/Carbohydrate/Protein ratios:65/5/30. When I do the math on the averages (I won't bore you further with the calculations) it came out to be 1332 cal (avg) 709 cal fat, 128 cal (Carbohydrates) 495 cal protein (each gram of fat=9 cal, carb=4 cal, protein=4 cal).
So my ratio was 53/10/37. I'm fine with that. I'm in ketosis with the amount of carbs I'm eating and I really do want to eat 1 gram of protein per gram of body weight. No, my kidneys are fine!

Since my gym partner is a man (sexism ahoy), my gym workouts tended to have concentrated on the upper body. I have tried to increase the amount of leg work I do. I cut out leg presses and do honest to goodness butt-to-hamstring squats. I'm thinking of adding a deadlift, but I'm not quite ready for it.

I also want to replace Lat Pulldowns with chin-ups. Like most girly-girls, I have a tough time with them. But I can do 2 in a row. I think I'll switch to a gravitron eventually (another machine). I'd also like to put a tricep exercise in that requires a barbell or dumbells. FYI, when I do situps or back hyperextensions, I increase weight, not reps. Why on earth would I want to do 100 of them? Bleah! Easier to do 15-20 and increase weight when it gets easy.

When I start to try to gain weight, I will periodize (see Krista). For right now, I simply want to get back into the groove (after a massive 3 week layoff) and focus on form. Especially squats, which is the greatest exercise on the earth. I have only been doing real squats for the last 3 months, and it made a phenomenal change in my legs. They still look chunky but thats the body fat.

Okay - boring diet history: I once dropped to 117 unintentionally when I started skydiving. Considering that I was a couch potato and falling out of an airplane isn't that physically exhausting I'm still not sure why this happened. It must have been the adrenaline.

Anyway, I got used to it and regained back to high 130's. I got married; when we moved in together, my husband complained of being overweight and wanting to do something about it. I did a little research and we started a low-fat diet. It worked. He got to 165 (From over 200) and I went down to 124. Both of us were still couch-potatoes.

Our biggest problem was slowly regressing back to our poor eating habits. Jon, to his credit, stays mainly at 180-190 pounds, but I went right back to the high 130's.We have been married since 1999 so we have been yo-yo dieting for 4 years. So, you might wonder: why should this time be different?

My biggest reason for being optimistic is that in 2000 Jon got me to go to the gym with him. The place where I work has one for its employees. Free and convenient! At first he tried to get me to do aerobics - bleah! It's too close to dancing and I have 2 right feet. Then I discovered something - weight training. Holy crap, I have come to love weight training. Despite the flab I could see and feel muscles and I made good progress (at first). It took a while of going to the gym on again and off again, but we finally do it out of habit (in other words, it just feels wrong not to go, like it feels wrong to me to climb into bed and not brush my teeth). That was a big step for us, and a big clue to me as to how to treat a diet.

After initial great gains both of us stalled out on weight gains and did the on again off again diet thing. Up, down, up, down but at least the weight training was a constant.

I'm not going to post weight training information here, not when Mistress Krista has this most excellent site chock full of good information on weight training for women and much of this info applies to men, as well. She also has good sections on diet.

Where was I? Oh, yeah, why this one will be different. See rule 1.e about weight training; I have finally accepted the fact that I can't gain muscle and lose weight at the same time, so I have picked weight loss to do first. I want to develop the habit of eating right - and the first rule is to eat less than I need to maintain. One of the reasons for this blog is to help me keep on track, to not lose focus of my goal.

Background information: I'm not that overweight. I'm 5'2" and weigh 136. I weight train, so for better accuracy, my body fat percentage is 29.4% which roughly means I'm carrying 40 pounds of blubber on my bod. Most in the typical female areas - hips, thighs, waist.

Below are my diet rules; bits of wisdom I have picked up over the diet rollercoaster I have ridden these past 4 years. I have one huge caveat - this is what seems to work for me. When I follow it. Your mileage may vary.

Rule 1: Weight loss is a matter of physics. You have to eat less calories than your body expends in a day. That part hasn't changed, no matter who claims what.

Here are the tricks I use regarding rule 1:

a) To lose weight, multiply your current body weight by 10 and by 13. So if you weigh 240 pounds, you should eat between 2400 and 3120 calories a day. Obviously if you want to lose faster, eat more towards the 2400. Don't think that if you go even lower you will lose faster. All you will do is be hungry and kill your metabolism.

Say you want it to be (relatively) fast. Take 2400 and divide it by how many meals a day you eat. I eat 5, and I highly recommend it and eat each one at least 3 hours apart. This will keep you for the most part from being hungry and prevent huge insulin spikes. Any way, that means you can eat 480 calories per meal. That's a lot.

You can adjust these numbers a little for convenience sake. Say you want a larger sit-down dinner of 600 calories. simply don't eat as big a 1st Breakfast. It does not matter when you eat! As long as you eat less than you burn, you will lose.

Less is not neccessarily better, because if you don't eat enough, your body slows its metabolism and starts breaking down muscle. It also causes bodily stress. Crash dieting is useless. If you lose only 1 - 2 pounds a week, you will lose more fat than muscle.

b)The best exercise for weight loss is weight training. Why? Because it helps prevent muscle loss, and muscle is more compact and burns more fuel. Try to train at least 3 times a week. More is not neccessarily better because of overtraining, which can lead to fatigue.

A couple of comments on weight training: You cannot 'convert' fat into muscle. You either are losing fat or gaining muscle. With the exception of absolute beginners, it is almost impossible to do both at the same time. When you diet you weight train to prevent muscle loss.

Cardio training is also good for weight loss and of course helps your cardiovascular system. 20 minutes a day 3 times a week is plenty. If you start going overboard it will eat through more muscle. It doesn't matter if you weight train first then do cardio or vice -versa or do them on separate days. Do what feels best to you. And if you have to choose between weights or cardio, weight training is better. Really!

Rule 2: A reduced carbohydrate diet is better than a reduced fat diet. Read the low-carb books for the physiological reasons. My reasons for low-carb are so:

a) Fat in your diet causes your brain to register the idea you are full. You will eat less if you eat fat. I don't worry about sources of oil; I love mayo, butter, etc. It does add up, so I tend to eat most oils in the form of salad dressing and grill my meat as opposed to pan-fry it.

b) Carbohydrates cause cravings. It's tough, but once you cut out bread, potatoes, rice, pasta, and sugar, after 3-5 days you quit craving it. As long as you are on it you will desire it.

c) Staying away from such carbs means insulin levels will be level. You will feel better overall. I never realized how moody I got until I stopped (well, almost stopped) eating all that crap. I have more energy and get more accomplished.

d) Good carbs are vegetables; your body takes a while to digest them. Some fruit is okay, like melons and berries, but eat them sparingly. I eat at least one salad a day plus one cooked veggie, like broccoli, snow peas, greens, or stir-fry. Sometimes I eat 2 salads.

e) Your ratio of protein to carbs to fat should (roughly) be: 30%\5%\65%. Or, eat at least 1 gram of protein per pound of lean body mass(if you weight train). Do not skimp out on fat! Again, this will help you maintain the muscle you have.

f) If you weight train, invest in whey protein. Find a brand that tastes good. Take a certain amount (I take enough to give me 20g of protein, more than enough) after a workout so your body won't chew on its own muscle.

Rule 3: Diets can be boring. Deal with it.

a)Always be on the lookout for new foods. I just tried spaghetti squash, and it is quite tasty.

b)Spices help. There are more out there other than chili powder. Vary them; find good cook books (at LEAST the Joy of Cooking).

Rule 4: Tupperware (in the generic sense; that stuff's expensive)!

a) I eat 3 of my meals at work. I buy the cheap stuff so that if I lose one or have to throw it away because it was left in the hot car for 3 days I don't stress.

b) Try to prepare things ahead of time. If you make 3 batches of tuna fish salad or egg salad, you are set for one of your lunches for 3 days. I also cut everything up for salads ahead of time, like green onions. Cut them all up at once, so all you have to do when preparing a salad is grab a handful out of tupperware and go.

c)Convenience foods exist, but they are not those gross protein/low carb bars (but hey if you like them knock yourself out!). Convenince is pre-cut/pre-shredded cheeses, deli meats, rotisserie chickens (mmmmmm). Always look at carb amounts on containers and stay away from store bought tuna/egg salad. (sugar).

Rule 5: Don't get obsessed by the scale.

a) The best time to weigh yourself is when you first wake up, butt nekkid, after your morning pee. The numbers won't vary as much as other times.

b) During the day, the scale can vary by more than 11 pounds (it's the food/water/waste you eat/drink/eliminate)

c) Try only weighing yourself once a week on the same day at the same time (when you wake up). Daily will discourage you. Not that I don't do this.

d) How you look and how your clothes fit is far more important than how much you weigh.

e) On a low carb diet, you will deplete your stores of glycogen in your muscles and liver. Glycogen is a stored 'quick' fuel. One molecule of glycogen bonds with four molecules of water. You will experience maybe 5-10 pounds of water loss right at the beginning, especially if you are religious about low carbohydrates (20-30 grams of carbs a day). The reverse is true. If you eat an entire pizza, you will think you gained 10 pounds of water overnight. Don't let it get to you; just stick to the plan and that will go away in 2 -3 days.

f) Because you are no longer storing glycogen, your body will feel tired more quickly as you exercise. Work through it; your body will convert to burning fat.

g) Nonetheless, if you exhaust yourself, up your carbs a little before your workout. This is why I started eating oat bran. It helps.

Rule 6: There is no rule 6.

Rule 7: keep a log of what you eat.

a)Yes, it's a pain in the ass. But you must keep track of what you eat, at least until you make a habit of your meals. Many dieters, I won't name names, blithely lie to themselves about how much they eat and then blame it on their metabolism. I don't doubt there are people who have messed-up metabolisms, but I wonder how many of them are clinging to it as an excuse to eat poorly and do no excersize? Write down what you eat and the amount.<

b)The most accurate way to measure food is by weight. Buy a good scale and use it. Eventually you will know what an ounce of cheese or 6 ounces of hamburger 'looks' like and you can approximate it. Keep a spreadsheet of your most common foods and amounts and this helps immensly. No, I won't show you mine because it's not on a spread sheet. It's on paper. Okay, so I bend some of my rules. Fitday has an exellent (and free) method of logging your eating habits. Be religious about it!

Rule 8: Keep temptations away from you.

a) Throw all the crap food in the house away or give it away. Don't have it around. If you have 'trigger' foods (mine is beer), try to find a reasonable substitue. If you can't, try giving it up altogether. Despite Michelob Ultra, I'm coming to the conclusion that I need to stop altogether or have it once in a very blue moon.

b) If some asshole at work buys everyone a pizza, it is easier to resist if you have only eaten an hour or so before.

c)If you JUST NEED SOMETHING TO EAT that's why God invented Slim Jims. Really! Slim Jims are a legit snack food. Gardetto's are not. Cheat with protein and fat, NOT carbs. Mmmmmm jerky!


d)The key to any successful diet is to get educated on food, learn how to fix your own food (though there are many shortcuts), learn how to determine what you can and cannot eat, and how much. Keep index cards of your favorite recipes and try to add one at least once a week.


-We will see if this works.