Fried on fried (and sugar)

Moving Christmas off the treadmill has not happened yet. Actually, I just need to beat a path through Christmas and find a different place for an eight-foot artificial tree, but even that seems to be a challenge at the moment.

So I'm going to put the treadmill on a back-burner for the moment.

Now before you start ranting that I'm falling off the proverbial wagon by failing at my last two attempts to modify my lifestyle, let me first say that I'm not just pushing it aside, I'm moving something else in to take its place: Fried food.

Or rather, the removal of such from my diet. This has actually been a goal of mine since the start of this whole "Live Healthier" effort, but I wanted to tackle the soda first and then try portion control. Soda's still completely out of my diet after almost 3 months. I miss it, but I'm happy it's not there anymore. Portion control failed miserably. Fried food I can do. Or not do. You know what I mean...

Of course, it's not completely a coincidence that I'm bringing up fried food now. I happened to have a pretty unpleasant day last Thursday after eating too many fried items at lunch. I ended up tasting that lunch for the rest of the day as it sat like a rock in my gut. Determined that this was no way to enjoy a meal, I decided that it would be the perfect time to modify "fried" out of my gastronomic vocabulary.

No more french fries, onion rings, fried chicken, battered cod, corn dogs or anything else that requires submersion in boiling oil to achieve a "cooked" state. Fries are my big one... the rest not so much, but they do creep in from time to time so I thought I'd mention them.

To go along with fried, I'm also excising all items that are overtly sugary like the hot cocoa I sometimes drink at work or the half-and-half tea (half sweet, half unsweet to those living outside the South) I've been ordering at times at restaurants. Seems obvious that I shouldn't be drinking them anyway given the whole "no soda" effort, but I guess they've been a crutch. (Artificial sweeteners don't work for me, don't ask me to explain.) Well, no more.

I've been sticking to these new rules since Saturday morning and so far I've lost 3 pounds. I was actually lighter this evening after dinner than I was when I woke up this morning. And that's eating normal meals, just skipping anything fried, breaded or battered and ordering water in place of tea at restaurants.

Hey, this could work!

So how's that portion control thing working out for you...

Yeah, we won't discuss what I had for lunch. Suffice it to say I'm going to have to take a much sterner look at how I approach ordering food and how much I actually eat and how much I take home.

As for weigh-in this morning I lost 1.7 pounds but gained 1/4 inch. The increase in my waist might be due to the sit-ups, who knows. I'd feel better about the weight if it wasn't coming off pounds I'd put on during the Superbowl and while my parents were visiting. I guess the positive spin is that I'm at least moving in the right direction again without much effort beyond my 3 modifications (no soda, simple exercises, portion control for those keeping track).

More through less

Anyone who knows me well knows that I've struggled with my weight for most of my life. I'm not morbidly obese, but I'm by no means skinny.

With the exception of the first 9 years of my life - when my parents feared that I was malnourished because I wouldn't finish my Happy Meals - I've always been either overweight or dieting. Those Happy Meals I didn't finish turned into Double Western Bacon Cheeseburger Meals that I'd chow down without a second thought just 4 years later, which put me in a weight class in PE Wrestling with all the really tall, really buff guys in my grade. Needless to say, I didn't like PE.

Throughout it all - the weight gain, diets, weight gain, etc - I've remained largely unchanged (no pun intended). Short of restricting myself to veggie sandwiches at Subway, I've tried most of the diets out there, some more seriously than others, but all with the same results... I fall off the wagon and gain it all back within 6 months.

So this year, I've decided to take a different route. No fad diets, not even going to concentrate on weight. I'm just going to make small tweaks to my eating habits and lifestyle to improve my general health. And if I lose weight in the process, great, but it's about getting healthy first and foremost.

To this end, I gave up soda on January 4th and have not had a drop since. My close friends may now pick their jaws up off the floor. My 6-pack a day habit was the stuff of legend. I'm not off caffeine - still drinking green tea at work - but at least I'm off the sugar.

The green tea was an earlier tweak (lifehack?) from last year when I switched from Earl Grey. As yummy as Earl Grey was, I tended to like it with a lot of cream and sugar which I'm sure negated any health benefit. When I also found out that Bergamot inhibited the body's uptake of Potassium, I promptly switched. I'd been suffering from some pretty bad calf-cramps at night and ever since switching to green tea they're gone. I'd always connected the cramps to a potassium deficiency, but I couldn't figure out why I was so deficient.

I'm going to continue to either remove an unhealthy habit or add a healthy habit to my life once about every 3 weeks this year (since they say... somewhere... that it takes 3 weeks for you to turn something into a regular habit). Later in January I started doing sit-ups and push-ups and now I'm into Portion Control...

To see how these changes affect me, I'm tracking my weight and waist measurement (around my belly & love handles, not where I wear my belt). Both dropped significantly after giving up soda, but have since plateaued and actually rebounded a bit. But hey, that's OK, this isn't about weight, it's about living healthier. And I do feel healthier.

Future tweaks will include giving up fried foods (yes, no more french fries, though I may have to make an annual exception for latkes), starting to walk on the treadmill again, eating less red meat, adding more fruits and veggies to my diet, etc. So far it's been easier to remove than to add, but that's to be expected.

So wish me luck and I'll try to post more frequently to keep you up to date on my progress and as an added incentive for me to commit to some of the harder tweaks (since I'd rather not report failure).

Weekly Wednesday Weigh-In

Ok, so I want to preface this with the fact that I had a huge company dinner last night at a fancy place that served steaks much larger than I'm used to. Not much of an excuse, but...

Week 3

Weight: 245.1 lbs

Weight last week: 241.1 lbs
Week's weight loss: -4.0 lbs
Total weight loss: -2.3 lbs

Target weight: 212.8 lbs
Weight remaining to lose: 32.3 lbs

Oh well.

Another odd thing worth mentioning is that I've been working to build a playset for my son and despite sweating up a storm and not eating any differently than usual, I was steadily gaining weight every day after working on the playset. It would be nice to believe this is muscle weight, but I think that's giving me too much credit.

Well, time to redouble the efforts, not dwell on this miserable failure, and let's see where next week ends up.

Diet - Week 1 Weigh In

242.8 pounds. Not the heaviest I've ever been but within 10 pounds of that mark, so a good time to start moving back down the scale.

I'm not going to measure my waist or anything, that's just too depressing.

And no pictures tonight. Working on a huge deadline for work so that's been consuming me. Maybe I'll snap a pic this weekend. Something really unflattering like you always see as the before photo on those commercials. Y'know, the ones you look at and say, "really, you couldn't find a better picture?"

So, are we having fun yet?

ok, so it's the 21st...

I realize that in my last post I promised something by the 20th and in my usual blogging fashion I have missed that deadline. I realize I also may have built it up a bit too much. Because what I'm basically announcing is...

a diet

Yes, you read that correctly. In about 3 months I'm going to turn 35 and I'm tired of being as large as I am, I'm tired of getting winded walking up stairs, I'm tired of not fitting into T-shirts that I used to be able to wear... but mostly I'm just tired.

Thing is, diets work for me, been on quite a few in my time. It's when the diet "ends" and I gain it all back that's the bad part. And the reason I gain it all back is that whatever I was doing to lose the weight has ended and I'm right back in my old tricks.

So the strategy now is not a diet so much as a complete change in the way I eat. I've been working on a "10 Commandments" type document that I plan to make my eating credo from here forward. I'll post it in my next post once I polish off the rough bits. It's nothing trendy like South Beach or extreme like Atkins, just a list of rules to govern what goes in my mouth based on basic nutrition and the fact that while I know better, I've been ignoring the part of me saying "don't eat that second Twinkie". Heck, apparently I've also been ignoring the part of me saying "don't eat that Twinkie" the first time around.

My goal is to lose 30 pounds in the next 3 months. That's 10 pounds per month or roughly 2.5 pounds per week. I'm going to post my weight here to keep me motivated and honest, maybe even post some pictures. I was thinking about also posting my daily meals, but that might be overkill and I'd probably get sick of doing it and fall back into my old ways if that happened. Any advice or motivation from the 4 people reading is greatly appreciated.

1st weigh in and photo tomorrow. See you then.

Renaissance Babies

Today, we took Connor to the Charlotte Renaissance Festival. It's 20 acres of shops, food and characters with 6 stages offering constant entertainment. It's only the second Ren Fest I've ever been to. The first was in Laguna many years ago and we didn't stay there long, so I really can't say how they compare against one another.

Along for the ride were our friends Mary and Eric and their daughter Lila who was born 3 months ago. My sister's family was also there. The original idea was for us to all meet up and hang out together, but Francine got there before us (we were late) and between juggling babies, lunch and too much noise to hear your cellphone most of the time, we only bumped into Francine, Rob and Sam a few times.

Everyone had a lot of fun. We started the day by feasting on turkey legs and "Steak on a stake" for lunch. Eric and I shot crossbows and tried our hand at the thing where you use a huge mallet to try to knock a slider up a rail to ring the bell... whatever that's called... the only sign on the thing was "Play at your own risk". Misha and Mary took Connor though a maze and found a "gold" coin which was really plastic and a gimmick to get kids to run through the maze since you got to keep all the coins you could find. Connor wasn't too thrilled with the slide you had to go down to reach the exit though. Then, there was the Fudge vendor (yum) and the mead from ye olde pub (yum) and we wrapped the day with the Petting Zoo (stinky and oddly overrun with spiders). We all returned to the car tired and ready to go home.

I think I still smell a bit like dirt and Turkey Leg.

Some pics from the day:

Connor and Lila arriving at the Festival


Eric and Lila. She got lots of compliments about the cute hat.


Misha and Connor. I was taking this sideways and couldn't see the LCD so the composition's off, but I still like the shot.


Connor and Sam ... um... hanging out... (sorry, had to)


The petting zoo was a hit until we got swarmed through the fence by sheep.


"Oyez! Oyez! King Connor and Queen Lila decree that the day is over!"

Second Anniversary

Misha and I celebrated our second anniversary today. We've actually been together for almost 6 years now. Sometimes it's hard to believe.

We celebrated by feeding Connor dinner, playing some Addams Family pinball and eating the dinner I made (New York Strip steaks, mashed potatoes and veggies) while watching an episode of Law & Order: Criminal Intent on the TiVo.

We're going to wait for the weekend to get out and really celebrate. Labor day weekend was spent doing things around the house and besides... EVERYONE's out and about Labor Day weekend, so we'd rather wait until attractions and restaurants have calmed down.

It's been an amazing and wonderful 2 years... here's to many, many more.

Cheers!

Baby's First Passover

My sister and her husband and 14 month-old son came over for Passover dinner last night. I'd wanted to do something because we've been trying to get together for weeks but the boys' sleep schedules haven't really permitted an easy meetup. Also, Passover's a bit of a Thanksgiving event at my parent's house and since they're now 3,000 miles away I figured it would be good to assume the east coast mantle of Passover Host.

I cooked up a surprisingly good (in my humble opinion) chicken matzoball soup. Most surprising because I've never made chicken soup before and my cooking skills are limited to only a step or two above Kraft Dinner. Of course, some of the ingredients (read: the matzoballs) were from a jar, but the rest was all me. And Food Network. They deserve some of the credit for the recipe, though I did take my own liberties and changed it up where I needed to to get by.

I also got a great Haroset recipe from Food Network, which included walnuts, pecans and almonds. I used a Baron Herzog Merlot instead of Manachewitz so it wasn't as sweet, but some honey sweetened it up nicely without making it overly so. My brother-in-law gave it high marks, and he's not even Jewish!

My sister prepared the main course and brought dessert. She made some thinly sliced checken breast in olive oil with thyme which was simple yet surprisingly good. And then there was also a gouda cheese gravy that went over it which was delish, though quite rich and a little went a loooooong way.

I had a great time and I hope everyone else did too. But before you congratulate me on pulling off a traditional seder, I must confess that the extent of the religious aspect of dinner was a quick "The Pharaoh enslaved the Jews, but God brought the plagues and had Moses lead us to freedom. The end". That, and my lamb shank was a bone from a chicken drumstick. I'm hoping it was the thought that counts.

Really though, it was just good to get together with family and have a nice dinner and nice conversation. The end.

You what?!?!?!

Recap of a conversation between my wife and the girl building her sandwich at Subway the other day:

Misha: "Can you also add some avocado to my sandwich?"
SubwayChick : "I don't know what that is..."
Misha: "... Avocado? ..."
SubwayChick: " "I don't know what that is..."

Excuse me while I cry...

Relative Descent

It’s been a week in the new house and so far so good. We’re not even remotely moved in yet and there are still a bunch of boxes in our garage not to mention a ton of stuff still back at the old place, but at least we’ve made the big move.

And not a moment too soon, because we’re about to have several visitors.

Misha’s mom (Larrian) arrives on Monday afternoon to help us out with Connor after Misha goes in for surgery to remove her gallbladder on Wednesday. It will be the first time she’s back in our neck of the country since just after Connor was born so it will be a treat for the two of them to be reunited, especially after how much Connor has grown. Larrian’s also a crack chef, having written several diet and recipe books, so I know we’ll be well fed. (She whipped up a sumptuous Thanksgiving feast for us and our friends the last time she visited; a feat and favor much appreciated by all in attendance.)

Then on Tuesday my sister (Francine), brother-in-law (Rob) and their 11-month old son (Sam) arrive. They are moving to Charlotte after coming to the same conclusion about Southern California that Misha and I did. (namely: too expensive for the perks) Rob’s only here for a week while they search for a house to buy, but Francine and Sam will be living with us until that house purchase is final. Moving to our new house means that we’ll be able to store all of their furniture and belongings in our basement (or at least in a room that we’re not using yet like the living room).

So with 5 adults, 2 babies and 2 dogs under the same roof, I’m much happier that we’ll all be in our new house. It promises that we’ll be able to live in relative (no pun intended) harmony with enough private space in which to retreat if it starts to feel too crowded.

When in Rome...

Well, not exactly Rome, Italy... more like Rome, Georgia.

I walked into a Starbucks today for the first time since moving to North Carolina and saw slices of red velvet cake in the dessert case.

My mom (visiting from SoCal) didn't even know what red velvet cake was when I asked her if she'd ever seen it in a Starbucks display in Los Angeles (she's much more of a Starbucks goer than I am, in fact we were only there to buy coffee for my dad who flew into town today, so I figured she'd know more about what's in the dessert cases out west than I would.)

She asked me what's in it and all I could tell her was "a lot of red food coloring."

Add to this the fact that you can buy sweet tea by the gallon from McDonald's (branded as "Mickey D's Sweet Tea") and you can share in my amusement over how much local influence there is over cuisine in national chains (McDonald's also has a "Southern-style Chicken sandwich here that's basically copied straight from Chik-fil-a.)

And yet, despite all the strange foodstuffs, I'm still unable to lose weight. Go figure. :)