Filler Up, My Tank is Empty

Tomorrow starts month number two at the Y and this is the “make it or break it” for me. Was this just a flash in the pan or a lifetime commitment to being healthy? Last night on the way home from Brian's I stopped and picked up some extra workout clothes. Either these will sit in the corner mocking me for the rest of my life, or I will wear them out. Only time will tell.

So today, the new dietary recommendations came out. After reading through most of them, I have to say, GROW A PAIR USDA.

Brian and I have been doing a lot of reading on nutritional research and data. But the bottom line is this: The human body was not meant to be this sedentary or eat what we typically eat.

So let’s get down to basics. Food = Energy. It’s the fuel we use to drive our bodies, period. Over the course of the last 100 or so years, Americans have started using fewer and fewer calories during the course of the day. Let's not even go back through the millennia for a list of all the activities we are not doing (we are not hunting, gathering or foraging anymore let alone running for our lives periodically during the day). Just over the course of the last century, we’ve stopped walking to town, plowing the earth, churning butter, grinding flour, chopping wood just to name a few activities no longer on my daily chore list.

And since the invention of television and its evil cousin the computer, we mostly sit. Which is basically like leaving the pilot light on the stove, hardly any fuel usage at all. Additionally we are no longer living in cycles of feast and famine, so while I try to explain to my body it no longer needs to store all that energy in the form of fat in the event of a famine, it's not listening to me.

So many of us are going out and running around the streets or down in our basements or gyms pumping iron on ergonomic torture devices, but it’s just not the same. Our bodies are designed to be constantly in motion working and/or sleeping (not at the same time). And so most of us, those who are overweight and beyond and you know who you are, are taking in far more calories than our bodies need and/or want.

And it's not just how much we eat, but what we eat as well. There is plenty of evidence that the rise in Americans' collective weight coincided with the not only the invention of television and the proliferation of the automobile, but the farm friendly government subsidies that led to CORN being in almost everything you put in your mouth. The fact is the USDA is not going to come out and tell you to stop eating products with high fructose corn syrup in them. But you should run to your cabinets right now and purge everything in your house that has it as an ingredient, and then if you have time, watch King Corn. Now, look, I’m not a big believer in conspiracy theories. I do think Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone. But lest you think that a powerful source cannot have information suppressed, drop me a line after you watch the Kennedy miniseries on the History Channel. I have now been high fructose corn syrup free for 3 months (thank you Ryan and Adria), but when Brian found the TruWhip at Whole Foods this weekend (fat free, all natural whipped topping with no high fructose corn syrup) it made my life complete.


Does anyone really have a clue how many calories you either A. need or B. are eating over the course of a day? I didn't. The recommended calorie intake for women my age is 10 - 12 calories per pound of your weight, per day depending on your activity level with 12 calories per pound being the marathon runner and 10 being the slug. I'm some where in between. And when you actually add up the calories of EVERYTHING you are putting in to your mouth, you cannot believe how quickly this calorie quota is filled. My first few days changing my eating habits, I was out of calories by noon. When I mentioned to Brian that it's not fair that he gets over twice the amount of calories in a day that I do, he pointed out that if I too wanted to weigh 240 pounds I was welcome to keep up with him. Touché.

Obviously I can pay someone like Weight Watchers or Jenny Craig, or Nutrisystem to count the calories out for me, balance the calories intake properly, and tell me what to eat when, but why should? I'm a relatively smart person, with 2 computers, an iPad, and a smart phone at my disposal. Surely I can do this on my own. And I need to do it not just until I drop a few pounds but I need to maintain it forever. The reality is this is my calorie limit for life period. And well, it’s just depressing that's all. Because it just doesn't go very far.

Some people have sexual fantasies. I have food fantasies. I fantasized about a great breakfast I was going to make Brian to show him that we can have our fabulous diner breakfast for far fewer calories. The menu called for a western omelet, home fries, bacon and sausage, fresh fruit and toast. I set out to do the necessary modifications to fit into Brian’s 500 calories per meal food plan.

Ok, so the 3-egg omelet went down to two eggs. I used low fat cheddar. I didn’t use any fat to cook with just all natural, Trader Joes, zero calories, olive oil spray. I carefully picked out and weighed a tiny red-potato, which I chopped up and sautéed with a couple of tablespoons of onion and green pepper. I carefully checked the calories on the Morningstar farms breakfast patties and started to add up the calories all together to figure out how much fruit to slice up. And whoa! how many calories in a little tiny 4 oz red potato? Are you kidding me? Well right then and there, I realized that I had not only hit, but had exceed his limit. Bread, even at 45 calories per whole grain slice had to go back in the bag. Fruit remained in the drawer. And all I could think of was: if that very carefully prepared and counted meal was over 500 calories, how many calories must be in that breakfast when we order it from the greasy spoon diner down the street? I was shell shocked for the rest of the day. All day long I kept saying, “Can you imagine how many calories are in that [fill in the blank] meal we had at [fill in the blank] restaurant”

But the sad fact is that right now 1400 calories is my pathetic limit. And that's just to lose 1/2 to one pound per week. Once I get down to the weight I want to maintain, I can soar back up to about 1800 calories per day. I guess I’ll have to wait until then to reintroduce myself to pizza. Until then, I guess I'll just keep having my nightly pizza fantasies.

Let Me Walk On That

Epiphanies are coming fast and furious these days.

Last night I decided to go to the free "Meditation" class at the Y. I don't know what I thought it would be, but what ever I thought it would be, it wasn't. This was meditation to take a "spiritual journey." Unfortunatley the room was small and the town is smaller so escape was futile. Ashem works in mysterious ways....

After we got lavender oil dropped on our head and the lights were dimmed, she talked us through opening up the space above our heads and allowing each of the chakra colors to stream into our body, and she talked and talked and talked. She wanted us to get in touch with our spiritual guide. Well I don't know about that, but I did get in touch with my inner 5 year-old boy, when just as we were supposed to feel the yellow chakra flowing through our pelvic area, someone went into the bathroom that shared a wall with the classroom, tinkled, and flushed the toilet.

So I survived the hour and all the various and sundry chakra colors entering and filling my body and then, thankfully it was over. But not before I heard something that really blew me away. She gave some "tips" for meditating at home. Don't lay down, most people fall asleep (well duh), reclining is better, and best of all, walking. WALKING! Walking she said allows you to get into the perfect meditative state. Eureka!

Now, this explains a lot. Most of all, why I hate treadmills. And for that, kind reader, you'll have to come with me to back to a class I took when I was teaching many many moons ago. The class was called F.A.T. City (FAT = Frustration, Anxiety, and Tension) and nothing that I've done before or since has affected me more. The class is intended to put people in situations that allow you to experience what special needs students experience in the classroom. It was a profound experience. But here in lies the crux for this story.

In that class, we learned that all the tasks in the world are divided into to categories: associative and cognitive. Most things for normal functioning brains are associative, meaning you can do more than one thing at a time (talk on the phone and take notes for example, or in my co-workers cases, play computer solitaire.) But there are other tasks that are cognitive, meaning they take all your brain function at once. The example the instructor gave was driving. Most of the time driving is an associative task, you can drive and talk and listen to the radio all at the same time. But imagine, that suddenly the sky opens up, it starts to pour - it's dark and you don't know where you are. What's the first thing you do? Turn off the radio and say to everyone in the car, Shhh. Suddenly driving has become a cognitive task. (Ok many of you who have driven with me are now saying to yourself, For Robin, driving should always be a cognitive task and I can't argue with that, I'm a terrible driver, but this is about walking).

I realized why I HATE treadmills! For me, walking on a treadmill is a cognitive task! Maybe I'm scarred by my early childhood memories of poor George Jetson being constantly sucked under the treadmill over and over again and no one there to help him. But when I'm on a treadmill I literally concentrate on every step I take. So walking on the treadmill was never a place where I did my best thinking. And certainly watching TV or reading a book made it even worse as a time for my brain to cut loose. This also explains why I hate to walk with another human being (on a regular basis) it's nothing personal, it's just I realize how much I love walking when my brain and I are alone with each other. I also realized, I lost my perfect walking companion - Hazel.

So now I know, why I walk past all those people in the morning in the nice, climate-controlled room on those very state-of-the-art, top-of-the-line treadmills that the Y is proud to boast they just purchased. This is why I prefer the track to the treadmill. And despite my father's claims to the contrary, I CAN in fact walk and chew gum at the same time. And more importantly, I can walk and think at the same time.

Having that time alone with my brain every morning has been great. It's like we get on the track, and I take the leash off and let it run. Of course every once in a while it circles back mostly to belt out the chorus of the song it's just heard on the ipod or struggles to think about whether or not I clicked off the last lap on the clicker, but eventually, I can cajole it into running back out in the wild and seeing what it can fetch.

I composed this blog entry on my walk this morning. Ok so it's not War and Peace but come on, I've only been walking for 10 days, give me time. And if you have a problem that needs to be solved, give me a call and I'll walk on it.

The Writer's Discipline

No one has ever accused me of being disciplined. Ask any of my teachers, grades k through well, ever. I tend to wait until the last minute to get things done, which in this day and age, seems to be gaining favor and even has a new moniker: Just in time (whatever).

I think about the Maslow chart from psych 101 where different people needed different levels of stress to be motivated. Mine was way on the right/stress side. The more stressed I was the better I performed.

The problem is that as a writer, I also know that the more time I have for a piece of work, the better it is. Writing, like wine and cheese, gets better with age. First and foremost, it gives Lisa and I more time to go back and forth on it. And there is no doubt in my mind that the more she looks as something the better it gets. Take the first chapter of my book. She just looked at it again for the first time in probably about a year, and there are new edits! yes! and brilliant ones at that. My friend Kerry introduced me to the old writer's axiom "If I had more time, I would have written less." It's true, the longer I have to work on a piece, the tighter and crisper it becomes. So then my instinct to procrastinate is in direct conflict with my goal to succeed as a writer. So the course is clear: I must develop a better writing habit.

I have read many writers work on writing. They all have a method they are happy to pass on and might work for you. But none work for me. I read one writer who sits at his computer every day for 4 hours. He types gibberish if need be until something intelligent comes out of his brain on to the screen. Others just write, about anything, forcing themselves to put words together every day no matter what. None of that is going to work for me. My brain and my fingers rebel.

Lisa, like a good manager, pushes me and that helps. "Where's the next chapter?" the email will say. "Can you send me back the copy with the edits in?" But sometimes, like last night, I just want to veg: watch 2 hours of on demand TV, play computer solitaire, and go to bed. The problem is that isn't going to get the book finished.

The good news is this, I woke up feeling so guilty about my lack of productivity yesterday, I banged out a new chapter this morning. So therein might be the solution to my problem. Guilt. Lisa is Catholic, I'm Jewish. We should have a lock on this. Once the book is published, the next book will be, The Secret to A Good Writing Habit: Guilt. Oye.

The Painful Truth About Exercise

Today, I hit a wall (hit the wall? ran into a wall?). I'm not sure what the fitness jargon is, but today was day five of my new routine and the day I was willing to chuck the whole thing. I had to force myself out of bed, and once on the track, turned into a whiny baby -- Most of it stemming from the pain radiating from my left shin. I've decided to blame my new sneakers. I bought the Reebok EasyTones because like most people, I'm looking for a quick way to get fit without much effort.

My favorite line from the show Absolutely Fabulous happens when the mother walks through the door with a HUGE stack of diet and exercise books and explains to her daughter that she is going to read every single one of those books to find the secret to losing weight. The daughter looks at her and tells her that she doesn't need to read all those books. The secret to losing weight is to eat less and exercise more to which Mum replies, "Don't be ridiculous darling. If it were that easy, everyone would do it!" Ah, how true.

I too thought that maybe, somewhere I would discover the magical secret to losing weight. Surely there was a plan/food/pill that with very little effort and probably exorbitant sums of money, the pounds would melt away or I would grow a few inches, really either way would be fine with me.

But now I realize that once you resign yourself to the fact that you just need to eat less and exercise more, the you really don't need anything except a brain (or in my case half a brain) to do it.

Yet, even though I resigned myself to that basic fact of fitness and weight loss, it didn't stop me from buying the shoes. Because the shoes would magically transform my butt into, well, what was promised to me in the Reebok ad which was a butt that looked like a tight, little, upside down heart instead of my current jumbo bowl of large curd cottage cheese.

So my legs were in pain and I was willing to consider blaming the shoes. My brain probably went there first because of the article I read this Sunday about this man who continued to run in the latest running-fad shoes despite the extreme pain he was in. I thought, what an idiot. Why didn't he stop? But then here I was, thinking, I'm taxing new muscles, working my body in ways it has not worked in, well, ever. So, I'll just tough it out and I'm sure it will get better. Yeah, that's what the guy in the article thought too. In a few months when the research comes out that these Reebok EasyTone shoes are an easy way to wreck your body, I'll be the idiot who the reporter quotes saying, "yeah, well they hurt real bad but I thought that meant they were working..."

Which brings us to the painful point of this blog entry: No pain no gain right? This morning, I could not get my pace up. No matter how badly I yelled at myself or sweetly encourage, or blatantly bribed, my legs just wouldn't bust a move. And the thing that I have learned by tracking my exercise on my new iPad is that pace is everything. That woman who I watch on the track in her best Talbot’s clothes, hair and make up pristine, getting a quick little bit of exercise in before she sets off to the office... well she might have spared herself the trouble and got an extra 30 minutes sleep since she’d burn about the same amount of calories with a lot less trouble. At her pace, she'll be lucky to burn 25 calories which she'll probably put back in her coffee with her first mini-moo. So, I thought, maybe the pain in my shins was the price I am paying for my 4mph pace which is the slowest you can walk and still break 100 calories burned for 30 minutes.

And then, just when I was getting a little hopeful that the end was near, and I watch my clicker and the clock get ready to do the Flintstone whistle in my head, I remembered I had an appointment this morning with my new personal trainer. What the hell was I thinking?

He was a nice enough man, my new best friend Wally. Retired high school science and gym teacher (yep about cliché as you can get), he started me on my new "resistance training" program. By the time I got home today, I could barely move my left shoulder and my legs were like jelly, and of course the ever present pain in my shin. But hey, no pain no gain right? That means the exercise is working right? Can someone pass the Advil please....

Random Thoughts (after all isn't that what blogging is all about?)

There is nothing like watching the snowfall out the window of the Y as you are walking the temperature-controlled, indoor track to make you feel good about the money you spent on your Y membership.

There is nothing like watching the very fit, skinny woman running on the street in the snow in front of you as you pull out of the Y parking lot to make you feel bad about the money you spent on your Y membership.

Worrying that the heavyset woman on the track approaching behind you is purposefully plotting ways to make you walk faster, move to the shorter lane, or feel bad about your pace since she's heavier than you and is moving faster than you, is proof you suffer from paranoid delusions. She doesn't give a shit about you, she just wants you to get out of her way.

The euphoria you felt over solving your concentration problem by buying a mechanical clicker is short lived as the novelty will wear off in 24 hours and you will yet again find yourself staring at your starting point from across the track and wondering, "did I click off that lap?"

After accidently copying my entire music library onto my iPod Shuffle instead of just the Super Pep playlist, I find that certain songs are really better for keeping up my 4mph pace than others. Good songs for brisk walking:

Here it Goes Again (Ok Go)

Karma Chameleon (Boy George)

Step into my Office Baby (Belle and Sebastian)

You Can't Always Get What You Want (both the Glee version and the Stones)

You Spin me Right Round (Billy Idol)

Mrs. Robinson (Simon and Garfunkel)

Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard (Paul Simon)

Love you Madly (Cake)

Black Horse and the Cherry Tree (KT Turnstall) -- sadly, I cannot keep myself from singing along with this one no matter how hard I try.

Golddigger (the Glee version)

I would walk 500 miles (The Proclaimers) -- favorite line: "If I get drunk yes I know I'm gonna be, I'm gonna be the man who gets drunk next to you. And if I haver yeah I know I'm gonna be, I'm gonna be the man who's havering to you."

Just what I needed (The Cars)

Fluorescent Adolescent (Arctic Monkeys) favorite line: "You took a left off Last Laugh Lane."

Songs that aren't so good and need to be deleted off my shuffle:

The more we get together (Raffi)

Defying Gravity (Wicked Cast Album and Glee)

Tiny Dancer (Elton John) Sorry Elton, love you but you don't get my heart racing anymore....

No matter how cocky you feel because you have a big honking 4-wheel drive car with anti-lock brakes and high end snow tires, if you don't slow down you are going to skid in the snow. And as a corollary to that, putting a "skid indicator light" on the dashboard of a car is really stupid since I don't think anyone really doesn't know when they are skidding. But then I grew up in Florida, what do I know about driving in snow....

Clicking off the laps

Today I started my new routine. Up at 5am. Arrive at the Y at 5:30. Walk/Run 30 minutes on the track. Go home, shower, get dressed, write for 30 minutes and then start work. So far so good.

Although, I must say, I'm not really sure if I fit in at the Y with the 5:30AM crowd.

I used to think that all the people in my town were fat. I felt like Twiggy everywhere I went. Which I admit was kinda nice. Brian once said, that he didn't think we made the weight class to shop at the local Walmart. But now I know. There is a leaner more fit contingent of Warehamites (Warehamians?) and while I've obviously never frequented the same haunts as they do, I know now they hang out at the Wareham Y at 5:30AM. And even though I was there the second the doors were unlocked, the best parking I could find was in the last row.

It looks like most of those people though, hang out in the "wellness center." Which is basically a room full of what looks like ancient torture devices including weights, treadmills, etc. I prefer the track which for a brief moment today, looked like I would have all to myself. That was fine with me, no point in badly embarrassing myself on my very first day.

The first person to join me on the track was a woman with a good 20 years on me. I felt pretty good (and young and fit) as I lapped her the first time around. She was walking on the inside lane I was walking on the outside. (I have chosen to walk on the outside lane because it only takes 17 laps to make a mile instead of the 19 it takes on the inside lane. My brain has not yet figured out that the reason it's fewer laps is because the laps are longer, and please don't tell it. I'm hoping it won't figure it out.) I felt pretty good about myself as I was sure she felt the whoosh of my air current as I passed her several times on my way to a 12 minute mile. Of course, she weighed probably about 50 pounds less than I do so maybe she wasn't so jealous of me after all.

This brings us to two points that are true potential causes of embarrassment that may force me to find a time at the gym when there are more old, fat people like me.

First, I've had to buy a clicker. You know one of those little metal round things that sit on your finger and you press a little button on it and it keeps a count. Like the one the guy at Costco uses. Why Costco needs to pay a guy to stand at the door and click off people is beyond me, but it's another guy off the unemployment line so I guess it's fine. And after this experience at the Y, I will have mastered the clicker, and if I ever need to maybe I can apply for the Clicker job at my local Costco because I will have had clicker experience.

Anyway, I need the clicker because it became clear to me, when I came to the Y for my guest visits, that it was impossible for me to focus enough keep track of how many laps I did in my head. The only reason it's important is because when you calculate how many calories you burn by walking/running, you have to tell the tool what "pace" you are going and the only way I can know that is if I count the laps/miles.

The first time I went, I tried to keep track in my head. Ok, I thought, every time I pass the door, I'll add one. That worked up until about 3. Suddenly I found myself across the track looking at the door thinking, "did I count that lap?" or having my mind wander off to whereever it disappears to when I'm not looking, only to find that 10 minutes had passed yet I still only held the number "4" in my head.

The second visit, I tried keeping track on my fingers, I'm not sure what I was going to do when I got to 11, possibly employ some form of ancient chinese abacus methodology, but again, too many laps went by without my mind being present, and I completely lost track. Amazingly the clicker did the trick. Something about having the cold metal pressed in my hand kept me focused, and while I garnered looks from some of the other people who had joined me, I thought maybe they'd just think it was cute in that pathetic way you think old people are cute.

Speaking of those other people who joined me, that too was a problem for a couple of reasons. A very very very fit young guy, I'd say early to mid 30s entered the track about 15 minutes after I got there. Every once and a while, my internal filter gets tested and this was definitely one of those times. When I first saw him, all hard body and short shorts, I wanted to say, "excuse me, would you have time for a quickie in the locker room when you are done here?" But I didn't. Internal filter on. Check. He lapped me over and over again and then, as fast as he came, he flew out the door. I thought, good, go. But then he was back and I realized, he was going out the door, running up and down the stairs and then taking a few more laps around (I couldn't count his laps since I only had one clicker). That's when I had to employ the filter again and suppress my gut reaction to scream out, "fucking show off...." The problem is, that while I might be able to filter what comes out of my mouth. I'm not always aware that things are leaking out.

There are several noises that really get on my nerves. Not like "nails on a blackboard" get on your nerves but like people smacking their lips when they eat kind of get on your nerves. The kind of sounds that make you want to walk over to the person making the noise and simply strangle them. A bouncing basketball is one of those noises. I have never been able to tolerate listening to a bouncing basketball for more than a few minutes before I want to put an ice pick through said ball. That's kind of a problem for me because the track at the Y is right over the basketball courts and surprisingly enough, at 5:30 in the morning there are people playing basketball. I wish they'd get a life. But until they do, I'm destine to crank up the volume on my ipod to drown out the noise that would otherwise be driving me batty. Ok, more batty than usual.

So the problem with this is that remember, I often suffer from mouth leakage. And with the ipod so loud, I can't always hear what's coming out of my mouth. My intention is to sing along with the peppier songs on my ipod playlist that Sara made for me, ONLY in my head. But often times, I will catch a glance of someone smiling at me, in the kind of way you would smile at young child doing something cute or a senile old woman just out of sheer embarrassment for her, and yeah, then I realize that while I THOUGHT I was belting out "don't stop believing...." in my head, in fact, some of it may have leaked out of my mouth and been ever so slightly audible to everyone else on the track.

Maybe there is a tool I can use, like I solved my lap counting problem, to remind me to not let noise leak out of my mouth. You think duct tape would look bad?