Ed. Note: Welcome to AlmostFit. This is a personal entry on my plans to lose 25 pounds this summer. The diet choices I’m describing are my own, and are not recommended for everyone – in other words, consult a doctor before you make any significant dietary changes.

Summer has finally arrived in the Pacific Northwest, and it certainly was a long time in coming this year. Between a worn out pair of shoes with holes in the soles letting my socks get soaked daily from record rainfall, some pretty big bouts with seasonal depression, and some employment ambiguity, it has been a rough spring. But with 75-degree temperatures and mostly sunny skies, a new pair of hole-free shoes, and the kids out of school for the summer, things are looking up.

An Opportunity in the Making

One of the summer activities we have planned is to go camping with my wife’s extended family in mid-August. Her family has an annual family camping reunion each summer, and it generally involves lots of activities during the day, a fair bit of lounging and visiting, and not just a little food and drink. We always have an absolute blast, but I remember last year how it really would have been so much nicer to be a little thinner when we’re hiking around the mountains or swimming in the rivers.

With all of that on the roadmap, it occurred to me that this is one of those golden opportunities to use an imminent event to my weight loss advantage. Some folks will recall that I lost about 20 lbs at the beginning of the year using a combination of intermittent fasting (IF), whole foods, and reasonable indulgences. But the biggest motivator? An event – a weekend getaway trip with my wife to central California. I used that event as a focal point to lose weight, and it worked. Couple the food plan with exercise, and I was able to lose that weight pretty quickly.

Once the event was over, I wondered how well I would do with keeping the weight off. And to my surprise, I have kept most of it off since then. I say surprise because a) I wasn’t sure whether the quick loss of 20 lbs with IF would be a permanent thing, and b) I’ve taken my eye off the ball exercise and moderation-wise for the last few months. I think what is saving me here is that I’ve developed better food habits over the last couple of years, so my default foods are now whole foods rather than the junk I ate when I was younger. I have crept back up on the scale between 3 or 4 pounds from my low this year, but I can guarantee that its a direct result of a few too many craft beers combined with a lack of an exercise plan, and a whole lot of stress (stress and boredom eaters of the world, unite!).

But that ended earlier this week, with a conscious decision to make some changes to meet my family camping trip goal.

The Plan

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In case you are wondering, Almost Fit is NOT turning into a product review site – But I had the opportunity to take a look at one of the new cord-free MP3 players from Sony, and thought readers who listen to music while exercising might find my impressions helpful. But before I go further, here’s the legal bit:

Disclosure: This post is not a paid review or endorsement, but Sony did send me the product to get my thoughts. I am in no way affiliated with Sony and have received no compensation for my impressions. And also, the legal bit makes me feel weird, like going to the principal’s office for something I actually DID do this time, but it turns out it wasn’t as bad as I thought. OK I feel slightly better.

Several weeks ago I received a note from Melissa, a Community Ambassador for Sony letting me know about a product line that they are promoting: the Sony W series cord-free mp3 players. I receive a fair number of these notes and offers to review products, but to be honest I rarely give them a second thought. In general I don’t do product reviews, mostly because 9 times out of 10 the offer is for packaged/processed foods that I already know how I feel on principle, so I don’t think it would really be fair. (The other exception has been cookbooks which I do review on occasion.)

This product on the other hand, since I’m not eating it , seemed like something I could check out – and the words “cord-free” piqued my interest. Plus I’m kind of a gadget junkie, though I usually take forever to buy them. (Note to Apple: I will gladly write up a review of the iPad or one of the new Macbook Pros if you want to send one to me. No, seriously.)

To provide a little context, lately when I run I use my iPhone with some 3rd party ear buds to listen to music or my ever growing list of podcasts. As many readers know, I am also an active iPhoneography enthusiast, so I generally have my phone (a.k.a. camera/ipod/everything-I-need-in-one-gadget) with me wherever I go. So, my iPhone with headphones is my primary source of comparison, though I am a product of the 80′s Walkman generation, so I have a long history with portable music. In addition, I am also an amateur musician with a home recording studio, so I do use studio-grade headphones for music production – which means I’d like to think I have a reasonable ear for audio quality.

Overall, for readers of Almost Fit I think this product has value as a good workout tool, and as you will see in the review I LOVE not having to deal with headphone wires. The ear buds that I usually use with my iPhone are great both sound and comfort-wise, but I am continually fighting with them pulling during exercise routines. I also find it tough to do things like take photos with my phone along the way, or use exercise tracking applications (of which I’m a fan) while listening to music on my phone. So a separate device makes sense to me in some cases. That said, this device is not without it’s flaws.

With that, here’s the review. Read the rest of this entry »

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Welcome to Almost Fit. If this is your first time here, Almost Fit focuses on losing weight and improving your health through eating real food in moderation. If you enjoy this post, please consider subscribing – it’s free, as always. Thanks.

To begin this post, I have two choices for an opening sentence – I’ll leave it to you to choose which you like better:

“It was a dark, stormy, sawdusty and bloated night…”

- Or -

“Once upon a time, in a far away land, I was an overweight cabinetmaker.”

(I’m leaning toward the latter.)

During college, I worked as a cabinetmaker in a small shop in the San Juan islands. One of my shining moments as an apprentice (and by shining, I mean horribly painful and incompetent) was during one of my first installations.

As the apprentice my job was primarily to fetch tools, carry heavy things, and clean up, leaving the real installation work to the more experienced installer I was helping. On this fateful day however, things went slightly different.

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Ed. Note: Welcome to Almost Fit. Almost Fit focuses on enjoying real food in moderation as a core weight management principle, rather than common diet methodologies (a.k.a. “fads”) for weight loss. This post is a check-in on my goals for the year, which include losing 75 lbs through moderation, intermittent fasting, and a varied combination of eating methods. Thanks for reading – I’d love to hear your thoughts.

It occurred to me this morning that we are now in the “teens” of February, and I have yet to post anything on Almost Fit this month – not exactly in alignment with one of my year’s goals of regular posting, but so it goes. Time to get back on track.

Illness finally finished – I hope

As I mentioned in my last post, I fell ill to the flu at the end of January – illness of the swine variety apparently. It knocked me down much more  than I expected, considering nobody else in our family had symptoms as severe (we each got sick to some degree, but it really hit me the hardest especially in the lungs). I felt like I was recovering a week later, but even walking up a flight of stairs made me have to stop and sit down, sweating and out of breath. As it has turned out, it has only been this week that I feel that I’ve completely returned to normal. And hopefully that means a short run – my first in February – is on my itinerary today.

I decided to go easy on the diet and exercise while I recovered, which as you might imagine was pretty darn easy, right? Actually that is not strictly true – while doing “nothing” is certainly easier than working out regularly, for me it was frustrating to be making such progress in the “feeling good about exercise” department only to be held back by my own health. It’s a good lesson though – I can’t afford to take my health for granted. I plan to use that as a key motivator.

Ahem – did I just say “go easy on the diet”?

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At the beginning of this year I described 3 major goals for 2010 with regard to my overall health and fitness (“2010: Setting them up and knocking them down“). So how are things progressing? I will do a summary post after the month is over, but with about a week to go I want to check in to give myself enough time to push a little if I’m coming up short. Here’s a quick summary of my goals, sub-goals, and the milestones I’m shooting for.

• Year goal: Complete at least one major running event this year.

Sub-goal: Beat my aversion to running in the Oregon rain.

Milestone for January: Return to running 3 miles 3 times per week, with one 5 mile run by the end of January.

• Year goal: Lose 75 lbs this year – and if I lose it early, keep it off.

Milestone for January: Lose 10 lbs this month.

• Year goal: Start writing at least one meaningful post per week for Almost Fit.

Milestone for January: you guessed it – 5 Almost Fit posts.

So how am I doing so far?

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Ed. note: This is part 2 of a series that was written after a day of trying intermittent fasting, or IF. As I explained in part 1, fasting is not starvation, and is a discipline that has been practiced for thousands of years by cultures around the globe. Here’s how it went.

On Saturday I decided that it was the right time to try intermittent fasting (IF). As I explained in part 1 (“20 hours without eating: the intermittent fasting experiment“), IF is essentially giving your body a break from food for a set period of time, and then eating the calories and nutrients you need during a specific window. If you are trying to lose weight, the key is during your eating times you take in the appropriate nutrients while maintaining a reasonable and healthy caloric deficit.

In my case I chose to fast for 20 hours, starting at 9PM the previous evening and having only water (and a cup of coffee) until 5PM the next day. I also asked my wife to make dinner for the family to be ready at 5 or so, just so that when the fast was over I could actually eat something substantial and more importantly, planned (in my mind, no plan might equal disaster food-wise). I also asked her to make something extra tasty .

Of course, I wasn’t sure if I could even make it that long mentally. Could I actually last 20 hours without giving in to cravings of, well, anything? How would I do physically and more importantly, emotionally? I decided to go for it, knowing that if things got too out of hand I could always stop. The results were pretty surprising.

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With the flipping of the 10-year digit from zero to one, the thought of a new decade brings a lot of positive momentum for me. I’m in the midst of completing my first personal annual review (the idea courtesy of Chris Guillebeau at The Art of Nonconformity), and it is definitely filled with positives and negatives. I feel like I’ve spent an awful lot of time on the negatives lately here on Almost Fit, so I’m going to keep that part of the summary short.

Equally as important, with the new decade upon us it’s time to set a few goals, and start knocking those pins down, one at a time if I have to.

The Good

On the positive side, I’ve done one thing really well: I’ve maintained steady income for a year – though the impact on my diet hasn’t been so great. For some this idea of having a consistent income is an assumed fact of life, but for many of us it is far from assured. Along the lines of work I’ve also greatly downsized the number of side projects that I was pursuing at the beginning of the year (in January of last year I had 9 personal, full-time projects/business beginnings – and was coming up short on all of them). Taking a quick mental inventory I’m down to 3 enjoyable part-time projects, including Almost Fit.

This is progress.

Another positive includes dramatically improving my cooking and prep skills (in my opinion at least); my wife and best friend is an excellent cook, and I’ve been under her culinary wing for a few years now. I feel that in the last 6 months I’ve really started to develop stronger culinary instincts – meaning I pair food together better, I cook more efficiently, I burn or overcook food much less often, and have good ideas on how to improve a dish I’m cooking by taste. I’m getting to know the flavor profiles of foods and seasonings much better, and I have a clearer understanding of herbs and spices that balance flavors.

These advances in cooking have made cooking at home that much more enjoyable. Of course, it also makes overindulgence a bit too easy at times, but I’ll get to that in a minute.

Other positives (that are no less important) include keeping up with my ever-changing children – solving problems and setting them up for success (no small feat); remodeling my wife’s painting studio from bare bones to finished product (finishing this weekend); several small family vacations; and I’ve greatly improving my photography skills and knowledge – as well as starting a new project on the subject.

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Welcome to Almost Fit. Almost Fit focuses on improving your health by eating real food in moderation. This post is about motivation, which is central to accomplishing health, fitness, and life improvement goals. If you enjoy this post, please consider subscribing. It’s free, as always. Thanks.

Last night we had a great evening out. The idea was to get a babysitter for the kids, have dinner with friends, then go to a parenting class, and finally head to a pub for a well-earned drink or two.

Mission accomplished.

However, in the midst of all of that fun, I learned something tremendously useful that I thought Almost Fit readers either a) already do (and I’m clearly in the dark again), or b) might find really useful, as I have.

Get with the program

Our friend K. runs a very successful business, and he has done quite well despite the current economy. That in itself is a feat given that I’ve heard of several of his peers that have gone out of business recently in Oregon, but add to that a full docket of family responsibilities, and I have wondered how he does it all.

As we ate dinner, in passing I described what feels like a slightly new philosophical direction for Leo at ZenHabits.net – one of the few blogs I read every day. Leo has made a few fairly “radical” moves lately, including attempting to eliminate email from his life altogether and bucking the popular productivity trends of heavy long and short-term planning in favor of going with the flow, with a focus on being present. Not exactly common ideas in productivity and motivational circles from my admittedly limited (but interested) experience, but the concept of being present really resonates with me.

In that context, K. described how a seminar he attended has really changed his life toward being present, organized, and effective without a lot of expensive planning tools ruling his every move. His wife also noted that this has made a huge difference for K., so much so that friends have asked what has happened to him lately. [Ed. Note: At this point I'm going to leave out the name of the system until I can get a few more details, but sufficed to say I think the readers that are interested in motivation and productivity may have heard of this. I'll update the post when I can verify the facts.]

I was intensely interested in this, not only because I’m working on a variety of personal projects that have stalled in some ways (including reviving Almost Fit to a level I’m happy with), but I really believe that the concepts of motivation and organization contribute to success in achieving health goals.

The ideas behind the system are not revolutionary; basically it involves using a log to capture thoughts, and then organizing those ideas at an established time each day. The system relies on using a calendar as a repository for thoughts and actions. As I said, these things are not new; however as part of this system they suggest a series of simple techniques that are all designed to free your mind from the clutter of a fast-paced life.

I need that. Read the rest of this entry »

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We’ve returned from our brief vacation at the ocean, and although I am glad to be home, I really wish we could have stayed longer. We are definitely going to visit the beach again very soon – it really was good for my head, good for our family, and we kept the sunburn to a minimum.

Last week I had what I consider a significant fitness accomplishment – I visited a personal trainer to get information on whether one-on-one training is right for me, and whether it’s something I can afford. As I mentioned in the previous article, I feel as though right now I need a little help with the diet and exercise routines, including a primer on whole foods in moderation, ideas on good substitutes for the simple carbs that I crave, and a workout regimen that will really stick.

Unfortunately, this trainer is not going to “work out” for me (sorry for the bad pun – wait – no I’m not. G’head. Savor it.). Long story short? He charges approximately $68 per session, and would like to see me in the gym 4 times a week.

Folks, as much as I loved the facility and jived with the trainer, I cannot swing $272 a week/$1000+ a month on a trainer, especially since I’m looking at 4-5 months of training easily to lose the weight I want to lose. So I’m looking for alternatives.

However, I am giving myself credit for the effort. Going to a gym is not something I’m very inclined to do – sad to say; particularly in a one-on-one situation. But I did it – I made myself go admit to a chiseled, smooth-skinned, tanned and toned stranger that I’m really overweight, totally out of shape right now (can you say easily winded?), have needed to strengthen my upper body since oh, I don’t know, high school (please God kill me now), and generally need some help from the ranks of the toned-to-the-bone. These are not things I like to talk about with anybody, particularly someone who is my height and in Greek Mythological shape.

Oh, and yes, he had all of his hair. The bastard.

But I got over myself and did it, and I count that as a win.

I am sure that some of us can’t help but think that this would have been more of a win if I’d actually signed up – and I can see the point. But for me, it is that first step that was the hardest. I’ve been fighting it for a long time, and I feel confident that I can walk into another gym or two and be much more open to the possibilities.

I’m still going to check out other training alternatives, but I don’t want to wait for the perfect situation to hit me. So in the meantime, I’m going to check out a fitness workout DVD or two and see how that goes while I continue to investigate. I am also looking into local 5k and 10k races, which are great motivators as well.
At any rate, I am on the move again, and it feels good.

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Ed. note: This entry is about working toward lifelong dietary goals by eating real food in moderation. The list of techniques will change over time, but this is where I’m starting from. This is actually an update from an article I wrote a little over a year ago, including my observations, corrections, and a handful of new ideas. Your constructive feedback is always appreciated. If this is your first time here and you enjoy this article, please consider subscribing via RSS. Thanks.

“Action Feeds Motivation.”

This thought occurred to me as I finished my first run of the year today, in the rain and wind. Yes, you read correctly: my FIRST, as best I can recall. As many readers have noticed, I’ve been a little scarce lately. I’ll write another post soon with my theories (and a few personal facts) on why that has been so, but for now I thought it was more important to simply do something about it. And as it turns out, that phrase, “Action Feeds Motivation” is going to be one of my recurrent themes for Almost Fit in 2009.

A year ago I was fully motivated to pursue these techniques. I didn’t need a whole lot of inspiration; I was ready to go. Over the last few months however, I haven’t been “feeling it” like I was. That tide however, is changing. So in an effort to really rekindle that fire I decided to review some of what I wrote a year ago to try to learn from my successes and mistakes, which is one of the great side-effects of writing your thoughts down in a public format like this one. For this analysis, I came back to one of my all-time favorite posts: 33 tips on how to lose weight without dieting, and one that I now think, after a year of trying out this approach to eating, needs a little revision.

As regular readers know, my focus here on Almost Fit is to do one simple thing: Eat Real Food in Moderation. No low fat this or low carb that; just real, whole foods in moderate amounts. As simple as the statement is, the principle is much harder to apply, particularly if you live in what I think of as a culture of excess. Most of us have come to accept as normal the gigantic, oversized meals that are available at every restaurant you go to, and on every food commercial or ad you encounter. We’ve confused quantity with value, and we’ve also convinced ourselves that the cost of food should be minimal – meaning it’s common to think that we simply can’t afford to eat better. I disagree; however, applying it on a daily basis is a lot like trying to light a candle in a hurricane.

In the 2008 article, I stated:

“I don’t believe that moderation in itself is the answer; eating moderate amounts of garbage still means you’re eating garbage. If I eat real food, in moderation, I am convinced that the weight will come off naturally. Changing my diet to focus on vegetables first, and then moderate amounts of high quality meat, grains, and dairy, makes sense to me. And so far, its working with little or no negative side effects including the emotional struggle that I associate with every diet I’ve ever tried, and I haven’t had to buy a single pre-packaged plan or frozen low fat dinner to do it.”

I still very much stand by these statements, and my diet and current condition is living proof. And that’s because I’m now thin, right?

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