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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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.

The Bad Read the rest of this entry »

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Writing this entry, I hear myself promising that this won’t be one of those “where have I been?” posts; that said, I realize that some explanation might be in order, so apparently I am ignoring the voices again (it’s a joke Mom, a joke! ).

For writers, and particularly blog writers, there are a million theories on the rights and wrongs of keeping readers engaged. Some insist that you should post very short pieces several times a day; others insist that it’s maybe 3 times a week is plenty, and possibly better, if the quality reflects the time that’s been taken.

Regardless, there is one thing that is nearly universally agreed upon among successful blog writers: Posting regularly is the key to keeping readers engaged. In particular, if you post several times a week on average, you should never, ever, just disappear from your site for a couple of months with little or no explanation.

Guess which cardinal sin I’ve committed.

However, the flip side is the break that I’ve taken from Almost Fit will hopefully stimulate a flurry of new articles, and has led to a few moments of fitness clarity (I hope). Time will tell.

State of the Almost Fit Nation

First and foremost, my weight for the most part has remained stable for the last few months, which is relatively positive, though hardly what I would consider great news. And to the point, my general level of fitness has definitely declined. This is especially true in the cardio department, where I find myself these days having to catch my breath at the top of a long flight of stairs. Not bent over gasping, but winded to be sure.

Since starting my current employment contract back in the fall, overall I gained an average of 2 lbs each month over the first 4 months, but I’ve not really gained much more in the last 3 months. Honestly this doesn’t come as much of a surprise for the following reasons: Read the rest of this entry »

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Welcome to Almost Fit. Almost Fit is about losing weight and improving your health by eating real food in moderation. If you enjoy this entry, please consider sharing it with StumbleUpon. Thanks. [Photo courtesy of blog.modernmechanix.com.]

I’m about to break a deal. And I hate breaking deals.

In preparation for the coming months of gloom in the Pacific Northwest, I have been seriously considering whether or not to start looking for some kind of home exercise equipment. My problem is I have made a deal with myself that basically goes like this:

I won’t buy exercise equipment until I can demonstrate that I can exercise regularly without it. If I can’t get myself to work out without equipment, buying equipment is just throwing money at a problem.

But, I’ve recently considered this deal from another angle: What if it is easier to exercise because the equipment makes it more enjoyable? I think it is a valid possibility, particularly in a place like the Pacific Northwest, where inclement weather can be a convenient excuse to skip a workout.

Believe me, it is convenient. Easy, even. Read the rest of this entry »

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Welcome to Almost Fit. Almost Fit is my personal record of losing weight by doing one thing: Eating real food in moderation. If you enjoy this entry, please consider sharing it with StumbleUpon. Thanks.

Last night was the first night in a couple of months that I actually got a good night’s sleep, and WOW, what a difference it makes in my perspective.

The last couple of months of transition have been tough for me in many respects. Although I’ve made a lot of really positive changes this year, I’ve struggled lately with unusually pronounced mood swings throughout the day, going from feelings of contentment and happiness to strong feelings of self-doubt and worry. On one day I am ready to conquer the world, and the next I’m feeling as though I’ve been run over by it.

I know for me that this has a lot to do with my sleep patterns. As I’ve been losing weight, one benefit is my snoring is much less pronounced, which usually improves the quality of my sleep. However, lately my mind has been overly full, which means that even when I’m somewhat asleep the wheels are still turning. My sleep is generally of the restless kind, where I’ll spend much of the night tossing and turning until I find an hour here and there where I fall off into a dream state. That is generally just about the time when the kids wake up. Read the rest of this entry »

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Ed. Note: This post is a personal checkin on my weight loss progress using the simple technique of eating real food in moderation. If you’re interested in how I’ve lost 26 lbs. so far without dieting, surgery, or supplements, read Food, Drink, and Decadence: How the French stay thin, which sums it up nicely. Thanks for reading.

“I am always doing that which I cannot do, in order that I may learn how to do it.”
- Picasso

Since the beginning of the year I’ve made some big changes in my life. At the top of the list are the following:

1. I have fundamentally adjusted my dietary habits away from packaged and fast food to eating real food in moderation. Goodbye, old Twinkie friend. Au revoir, Coca Cola and Mountain Dew – we made a great team for a while, but our relationship was clearly becoming destructive. Sayonara, my happy-go-lucky Cheetoh buddy – how I will miss your humor and salty witticisms, but your services are no longer required.
2. I left my corporate job behind a few weeks ago in pursuit of my own projects, including Almost Fit of course, as well as several others that are in the works. I’ve also started picking up freelance writing work already, though I really haven’t started pursuing it much yet. I am trying to launch at least one more site by the end of next week and then yet another in August. More details to come, but I can tell you that the second site is related to Almost Fit, and the third is focused on my technology background. And those are just the projects I’m talking about here…Fascinating, ain’t it? Read the rest of this entry »

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“Look, Dave, I can see you’re really upset about this. I honestly think you ought to sit down calmly, take a stress pill, and think things over.” [2001: A Space Odyssey] – Sir Arthur C. Clarke [photo courtesy of FilmReference.com]

When it comes to losing weight, managing stress over the last several months has been my biggest challenge. While I’m still ahead of the game at 26 lbs for the year, my recent progress has really slowed. (You can read more about my progress in my most recent status report, “Forget Lassie – Simple Carbs are Man’s Best Friend“.)

While it is certainly true that daily stress might be more manageable if I were exercising regularly (without question), here’s the problem: So far I haven’t been able to find the motivation that gets me out in the cold and rain of a wet Oregon spring. I am eating well, and I think those habits that I’ve been working on have really paid off in the sense that I’m still losing weight slowly. However, until I get a better handle on the pressures of my current situation and make room for regular exercise, I don’t expect that my weight loss will be accelerated further than it’s current rate. I am certainly not giving up on finding a way out of my front door to go for a run; however, some bigger changes might be in order.

In doing some reading about the effects of stress, it’s clear that beyond inhibiting weight loss, prolonged stress can have real physical consequences. In Dr. Will Clower’s recent book, The French Don’t Diet Plan: 10 Simple Steps to Stay Thin for Life, he addresses some of the characteristics of a body under stress, particularly as they relate to the overproduction of cortisol.

Here’s a summary of some of the common effects:

• Muscles: Blood sugar levels stay at higher than normal levels, which ultimately leads the body to break down muscle tissue in a search for more energy.
• Immune system: Antibody levels decrease, T-cell response to infection is reduced, and white blood cell count is negatively impacted. Common sense says that if you are stressed for longer periods of time, you are more susceptible to illness. Science agrees.
• Bones: Calcium levels in bones drop over prolonged periods, and the ability for the body to absorb additional calcium is reduced.
• Heart: Basic heart performance appears to be reduced by the overproduction of cortisol as a result of prolonged stress; arteries are also negatively impacted in their ability to perform properly. The ratio of sodium to potassium begins to weigh in favor of sodium, which is thought to lead to high blood pressure.
• Central nervous system: Neurological hampering begins, with side effects that often include insomnia and depression. Migraine sufferers can move from an occasional migraine to chronic. Prolonged stress also increases muscle tension (this again is common sense), which increases fatigue, which in turn requires your body to seek out more resources for energy. Of great interest is recent research that links excessive stress to creating eating disorders.
• Weight: Hormones responsible for cravings to eat more are produced (presumably in its search for more energy), but the focus of the expenditure of that energy is typically in your extremities. Your digestive tract is the victim in this case, which may partially explain why ulcers were thought to be stress related. Essentially, you eat more but get less nourishment. What’s more, in recent studies it has been shown that stress hormones contribute to storing fat in your midsection, which is linked to higher risks for certain cancers and heart disease.
• Habits: Eating faster, eating more, making poor food choices, and eating out of necessity rather than pleasure become commonplace. We wind up treating food like gasoline – cheap and convenient, with the stopover to acquire it reduced to a mild inconvenience. Eating should be more than just a mild inconvenience.

Need I say more?

In our culture, we have been trained to look for solutions in the form of a product or a packaged plan. We are told that if we just wait long enough, we’ll soon have a miracle pill that will cure all that ails us. It could happen; certainly we are farther along that road than we were when Sir Arthur C. Clark wrote the words in the opening quote for this article. Sometimes, however, the answer is right in front of us, without a shipping and handling surcharge, or a computer trying to lock us out of the vehicle.

I am taking this week off work, hoping to recharge, catch up on rest, spend time with my wife and children, and reconnect with friends and compadres in the blogosphere. By the end of the week I expect to know what the next week will look like, but beyond that, it’s anyone’s guess, and I’m OK with that.

Stay tuned.

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Life, these last couple of months, has been a gel-filled stress-ball’s squeeze-frenzied nightmare.

Here’s a little something about me: As I’ve said before, when the pressure is on, simple carbohydrates are my lifelong addiction buddies – the ones I hung out with when I was younger and more metabolically advantaged, and in whose company I dove head first into the shallow end of the dietary trouble pool. Simple carbs are the overly accepting old friends that I have to avoid if I want to “stay on the wagon” with real food.

Some people take a walk with Lassie to regain their center of gravity; I on the other hand, tend to take a drive to Taco Bell, hoping that they’ve finally figured out the Holy Grail of fast food: the lascivious matrimonial union of sugar, preservatives, hormones, antibiotics, and dirt-cheap meat.

Pulling around the finely crafted drive-thru arc of asphalt and concrete curb that says, enter dear friend, but know that there is but one way out, I think to myself: “What sweet and savory surprise awaits me on the shimmering ordering board this time, my old corn syrupy compadre? Is it a newly-conceived melding of steaming hot “cheese-ish” sauce, oddly and excessively chopped ground beef-like meat, and powdered jelly donuts? All wrapped in a freezer-burnt artificially-colored tortilla? Maybe I’ll be greeted by the hearty handshake of yet another Blast flavor of soda-lovin’-in-a-bucket, calling my name when I roll up to the crusty drive-thru microphone?”

I’ll go out on a limb here: If there is one place in the world that can stick just about anything into a tortilla and turn disgusting into sellable, it’s Taco Bell. Believe me.

So have I given up this whole real food thing? Am I now indulging in mystery beef bathed in succulent cheesy goo? Say it isn’t so! Read the rest of this entry »

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If you’ve been reading Almost Fit, you know that my approach to weight loss has been to abandon a lot of conventional “dieting” advice. In addition to fruits and vegetables, I’m eating a fair percentage of fat, carbs (in addition to the fruit), and chocolates – all in moderation. These choices coupled with a complete avoidance of all industrially produced low fat/nonfat/low carb products, soda (diet or otherwise), and eliminating the regular consumption of beer, and it has worked – I am at 23 lbs lost for the year, and counting.

That said, I’ve been stuck on a weight-loss plateau here for a couple of weeks – a sensation that I’m uncomfortably familiar with from years of trying every weight-loss program that would accept a pile of nickels. (South Beach Diet? Check. Diet Center? Check. I could go annoyingly on.) Of course, I am continually reminding myself that I am not dieting, so “plateau” isn’t really a concept that should fit into my mental picture, but if you’re a reformed career dieter like me, its going to enter your headspace from time to time. And it has.

My scale talks to me. I may need help.

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