My Half-Assed Review

I just read Jennette Fulda’s Half-Assed: A Weight-Loss Memoir.  Fulda, who goes by the nickname of “PastaQueen”, started as a successful weight loss blogger.  Her blog, accessible at pastaqueen.com or from my blogroll, has enjoyed a seven year run as a one of the most successful weight loss blogs on the web.

Having read dozens of weight loss blogs, I’ve decided my top criteria for identifying the ones I’ll follow is that the author tells a good story, and has a good story to tell.  Fulda is great writer whose humor and use of analogies makes her story much more than a slog through her loss of 200 pounds.  With expressions like joining the “fat person witness protection program” and “Nancy Grace wouldn’t have come looking for my fat ass,” Fulda makes the time pass while she’s sharing her transformation. 

Fulda’s book concentrates on the journey, the metaphorical  of weight loss, rather than the tips and tricks of the process.  I would have liked her to share what she did to lose weight – she refuses to disclose her actual eating plan – but she feels strongly that diets are personal and that hers works because she likes the particular vegetables and so forth she has learned to eat.  At first, it seemed evasive, but avoiding the quick fix advice allowed the story to evolve.

What makes Half-Assed work is Fulda’s complete lack of preaching.  She tells her story and is self-deprecating without being insecure.  This would never work if PastaQueen didn’t have an amazing story to tell.  Her life is, frankly, uneventful, but in the way that most of our lives are.  The beige backdrop keeps from distracting the reader from Jennette.  What comes through instead is a normal person – though clearly talented – accomplishing an extraordinary thing, and allowing the reader to feel what it is like to lose, to use one of Fulda’s analogies, the equivalent of seven bags of cat food. 

Congrats to PastaQueen, for telling a good story, and having a good story to tell.

LenDale White: Patron-free Since 2009

When I started the blog, the first feature I thought of was the Pounds Off Profile.  I figured it’d be easy to find stories of athletes losing weight to regain their form, or of ex-athletes slimming down to civilian status.  During a quick search, the first athlete weight loss story I found was of running back LenDale White.  But I wanted the right opportunity to use it.  Enter Pete Carroll, who is on a mission to rebuild the USC Trojans in Seahawks blue and green.  This weekend, the Hawks acquired White from the Tennessee Titans. 

Last summer, LenDale lost 30 pounds before training camp.  But he got in shape in a most unusual way.  He attributes his entire weight loss to cutting back on alcohol.  Now, the standard calculation is that you have to eliminate 3500 calories to lose one pound.  How much tequila must White have been consuming to make up for 105,000 calories?  Whoa!

The Seahawks players are usually good about doing community service, showing up at schools, hospitals, and the like.  LenDale White has a powerful story to tell.  I’m just waiting for that commute when I turn on the radio and hear a public service announcement... “Hi, I’m LenDale White from the Seattle Seahawks reminding you...Kids, lay off the Patron.”

The Big Easy is the Huge Challenge

WEEK 14 RECAP

This Week:          -1.2 Pounds

Total Loss:           14.5 Pounds

Hey, thanks to those of you who have left encouraging comments.  They really do help.

This week was another minefield, beginning with my diagnosis of tearing in my hamstring (thankfully, minor and not especially painful) and ending with a four day, three night trip to New Orleans for a grant conference.  I was happy to lose a pound, in the way a casino visitor is happy just to leave with the fortune they arrived with. The Big Easy might more accurately be titled “The Place Where it’s Easy to Get Big”.  The food is great.  Everywhere.  The beignets at Café du Monde are a tradition.  The drinks a part of the culture.   If I needed to gain weight, I can’t think of a better place to go. 

But to lose weight?  Not so much.  Thankfully, I’ve been developing some habits that helped.  On Wednesday, I skipped dinner (substituting an apple and small package of mixed nuts) when my flight schedule necessitated a late lunch.  Thursday, I had a nice dinner, but skipped dessert, which I used to order as if I suspected desserts were about to be banned by the FDA.  Friday, I submitted fully to the New Orleans culinary experience in the evening, but hedged with a modest breakfast and lunch.

Saturday, I joined three colleagues for a beignet run.  No, not that kind of run.  But it did involve a 15 minute walk both ways.  And I stopped at one, even though beignets are sold in groups of three – the dim sum of fried breakfast foods.  Fresh beignets contain enough hot oil to burn your tongue and are topped with snow drifts of powdered sugar piled high enough to close schools in Buffalo.  It’s no wonder people flock to Café du Monde, but once you’ve had a taste, quit while you’re ahead...and before you rack up a bunch more calories.

I must say I’m OK with having plate in quarters (PIQ) in the rearview mirror.  I keep observing that eating plans need to be comprehensive and limiting to lose weight.  PIQ isn’t, as you can eat foods that aren’t good for you and theoretically, you can eat to infinity as long as you do it in balance.  The bigger problem is that its permissiveness makes it seem like it’s open to interpretation.  It didn’t take long to think I could substitute juice for fruits and substitute eating some variety for eating precisely in quarters, and to balance some balanced meals with some not so balanced meals.  Yeah, that’s stretching it.  It’s just that stricter plans, plans that require more of a “clean break” kind of a commitment, seem to work better for me.

Coaching point:  PIQ opened the door to foods that seemed to generate momentum in the wrong direction.  Momentum is an under referenced factor in healthy eating.  Some foods seem to reinforce healthy eating, while others make you want to double down on junk food.  A phrase that is sometimes used is “trigger foods”.  Know yours.  Even if you can handle the first serving, if it changes your momentum for the worse, you’re better off not starting.

Ed Rendell's Weight Loss

Pennsylvania governor Ed Rendell is well known in Philly as a big-time sports fan.  My brother and I have heard him on WIP, one of the original sports talk format radio stations.  I’ve heard many politicians on sports radio, but Rendell calls in.  And not because he’s running for office.  He’ll say something like, “I was watching a Pac-10 game late last night while I was finishing some work – Oregon State and Arizona – and what a game!”  Rendell has also served on a panel for an Eagles show on cable. 

Rendell’s legend as a sports fan was forged as a young attorney, attending Eagles games in the 700 level of the Vet, where rival legends make claims on his Philly bonafides.  I’ve heard two versions of this story.  One has Rendell throwing snowballs at members of the Dallas Cowboys during a game.  Another has him offering $20 to anyone who successfully hit a Cowboys player.   You might think the threat of prosecution would have deterred him, but (1) he was the district attorney at the time and (2) a jury of peers would surely find the actions to be justified.  It was the hated Cowboys, after all.

For years he was also know as flat out big, too.  But last year, Rendell lost over 40 pounds through commitment, laying off Starbucks ice cream, and reducing food intake in half.  A story in Philadelphia Magazine captures Rendell’s dieting tips.

Finally, if you think this is some kind of partisan thing, we’re non-partisan when it comes to weight loss.  I don’t know if Mike Huckabee likes sports, but he loves preaching a thin lifestyle.  Huckabee lost 110 pounds while serving as governor of Arkansas, pretty much busting all my excuses for not exercising and eating right.  What I most appreciate about Huckabee is that he’s one of the only voices that treated the health care issue as a health issue first.  Few pols have the guts to say that you’d be better off eating the bag than the fast food that comes in it.

I’m not here to endorse Rendell or Huckabee, but I will endorse looking for good role models in weight loss anywhere we can find them.  If sitting governors can do it, anybody can.  

Sodium, Restaurants, Processed Foods, and the FDA

The Institute of Medicine has released a report calling for lower sodium levels in processed foods and restaurants.  (Hat tip: Art)

In response, the FDA will start by asking for voluntary cutbacks. 

Seriously???

Message to the FDA: many restaurants don’t even publish nutritional information, except where required by law, such as in New York City and King County, Washington.  Will they really volunteer in any meaningful kind of way?  How many people’s blood pressure needs to continue to rise waiting for the FDA to act while the vast majority of restaurant entrees contain well more than one meal’s worth of sodium?

Read more about sodium and restaurant foods in the Pounds Off Playoff’s restaurant study: “Out of Control: Restaurant Entrees and Daily Values”.

DL

I’ve been placed on the 15-day disabled list, retroactive to April 15^th.  That hamstring issue was a tear.  It doesn’t really hurt and I am mostly able to do normal things.  I’m supposed to take two weeks off.  Drat.  What really stinks is I can’t ride my bike, either, which I had done for hundreds of miles without incident. 

Bengie Molina can catch 20 innings and I get hurt in one lousy night of softball?  Really? 

(Check out JoePo’s excellent profile of LaRussa’s overmanaging in that epic Mets vs. Cardinals game.)

There was good news.  The last time I went to the doctor, I recorded my all-time highest weight.  Not today.  I emptied my pocket change into my car’s change holder and I must have been a sight as I entered the medical building.  It was like a pitcher tossing sandpaper and a nail file from his back pockets as the umpire approached the mound for an inspection, except I was placing my BlackBerry, wallet, and car keys in my suit jacket pockets.  When I approached the scale, the nurse reached for my jacket as I removed it and the tails scraped the ground before she adjusted the tension in her arms, giving me the “what on earth are you carrying?” look.  But it paid off, as I was 23 pounds lighter than that last visit.  It wasn’t the progress I would have hoped for, and I have so much farther to go, but it was good to see some momentum in the right direction.

As I left, no doubt the receptionist wondered if I was smuggling stethoscopes in my jacket pockets.

Eating Plan Profile: Plate in Quarters

A number of healthy eating approaches rely on balance, and that makes sense.  Balance is logically healthy.  Your body needs each of the macronutrients and a variety of all nutrition.  Being out of balance is intuitively unhealthy and in fact, can lead to malnourishment and illness, even in people who get enough calories overall.  Furthermore, balance is sustainable.   Most people can’t expect to eliminate some foods for the rest of their life.  Finally, you can’t spell “balanced” without “alan”.  Rimshot! (and note the irony)

Another concern is that diets are perceived to be difficult if you have to go to any effort to follow them. Take calorie counting (please!).   Counting calories is detail work most people would rather live without, and researching nutritional information can be more of a difficulty than the counting itself.  But anyone can eyeball  a plate in four parts.

How to build a healthy approach then?  One proxy for balance and way to track intake is to divide your plate in a way that loads up on the less problematic foods, vegetables and fruits, and restricts foods that are energy dense and contribute to weight gain – mostly those pesky carbohydrates. 

I’ve chosen an approach that dedicates half the plate to vegetables and fruit, a quarter to protein, and a quarter to carbohydrates.  A very sensible explanation can be found in this short piece in Bicycling Magazine.  The version in Bicycling also restricts certain kinds of carbohydrates (e.g. junk food), although many versions of the plate division approach stop at the macronutrient level. 

For the purposes of the Pounds Off Playoff, I’m going to try to go with the approach of balance even when food doesn’t fit so neatly into sections on my plate.  A half chicken sandwich next to a side salad might be an example.  In a pinch, you can also keep a virtual plate in your head, mentally balancing between an imbalanced meal and a subsequent snack, for example.  But in its purest form, each meal would contain a plate in quarters.

Ultimately, the theory is that you will lose weight by eliminating carbohydrate binges and keeping enough good food in your system that it short circuits premature hunger signals.  I think this approach could really have some merit if combined with another approach to controlling your intake, but we’ll have to see how it does alone.

Balanced Eating: A Good Theory, but Does it Work?

Week 13 Recap

This Week:          +3.0 pounds

Total Loss:           13.3 pounds

In my field, a recurring philosophical divide is between progressive and traditional approaches.  The progressive approaches are almost always more elegant, more inspiring, and more principled.  But they don’t always work, in large part because they are also more difficult, and therefore require more skill, effort, and commitment to implement.  Frequently, progressives can point to one or two examples of phenomenal results, while the overall results are mixed, or sometimes worse.  Traditionalists say, “See, I told you so.”  Progressives say, “Well it would have worked, we just didn’t implement it fully.”  Ultimately the question becomes, can an approach be held accountable if it isn’t implemented fully?  And should the approach itself be blamed for not being implemented?

That parallel is running through my mind right now.  “Plate in Quarters” (PIQ) is a progressive strategy (as opposed to counting calories, a more traditional approach).  It’s a balanced approach.  There are no “bad” foods, and nothing is off-limits.  Theoretically, you can use it any time, with any combination of foods.

But it’s been a rough week for dieting.  I sucked in following the eating plan, but I also experienced a week of constant challenges to healthy eating, and PIQ was not robust enough to handle them. 

·         Sunday.   The infamous San Diego Zoo day, where I would have chosen a salad if available, but quickly bowed to a crappy menu and ate a southwest chicken sandwich and fries.  At the hotel, I had the “free” potato chips, corn chips, pretzels, and a beer.  Dinner was at a baja place where I did consume a lot of greens, but a lot of everything else, too.  (Keep in mind, the day before, I had basically no whites in 8 hours at Legoland.)

·         Monday.  Went to the ballgame.  Had a reasonable breakfast, though not quite PIQ.  Lunchtime was a pizza by the slice place, where I had the lunch special (two slices) and no fr/veg.  I could have been worse at the ballpark, but that’s the best I can say about it.  Back to the hotel for a repeat of the “free” snack buffet.  Late dinner that was again balanced, but large. 

·         Tuesday.  Pretty good day, actually.  Had a snack of celery sticks with natural peanut butter.

·         Wednesday.  Back at that conference center where I overate in February.  Did better this time.  Also skipped eating out for my late meeting, but ate a late dinner at home.

·         Thursday.  The softball fiasco.  Supplemented ice packs and Advil with food.  Took a bag of tortilla chips to the couch while icing my hammy late at night.  Bad idea.

·         Friday.   Went to the Mariners game.  My plan was to get the salmon Caesar after batting practice, but the line was long, so deferred to the one closer to our seats.  But the Ivar’s closer to our seats doesn’t have salads (???), so I had clam chowder, garlic fries, and lots of peanuts.  Repeated the late night tortilla chips fiasco and added ice cream.  Ugh.

·         Saturday.  Actually, pretty good.   I kinda knew I was in trouble for weigh in.  Too little, too late, though. (Note: Shannon and I went to Date Night.  VERY funny.)

This week had the profile of a college freshman taking his newfound freedom to extreme.  For the previous four weeks (No Processed Food & No Whites), I had clear boundaries, made healthy choices, and lost weight.  This week, nothing was off-limits and it was oh so easy to rationalize that I was “mostly balanced”, whatever that means.  But I also had large amounts of chips four times this week, which I hadn’t had any the previous four weeks.  True, I shouldn’t have done that, but PIQ didn’t seem to help me through the challenge.  Sometimes, the elegant progressive approach just isn’t as effective.  I just may need a lot more structure.

Play Ball!

One of the great things about slimming down is you feel you can participate in life more fully.  This week I had my first game of organized sports in 21 years.  I’ve joined the Wingdogs, which is either a slow pitch softball team or a cloning experiment gone really wrong.  It felt good to be out on the field again, although Johnny Bench never sold enough Krylon to cover my rust*.  My one highlight came when my coach did a lame, but appreciated attempt at Harry Kalas’ “Michael Jack Schmidt” as I came to the plate, and I obliged with a 2-RBI hit.  But the perfect storm rolled in during the second game of the double header.  The air was cold enough to see my breath, my legs are out of shape (biking doesn’t help you run, apparently), and I sure didn’t want to hit into a double play.  The result: a mildly strained hamstring, and quads that are sore two days later.

This morning, I got called on to umpire Andrew and Sam’s game.  As I was putting on the chest protector and mask, I had a thought.  If catcher’s gear is called the “tools of ignorance”, what was the umpire’s gear called, especially with pitchers who were wild and catchers who didn’t actually, you, know, catch?  “Tools of martyrdom?”  As luck would have it, the two balls that nailed me missed the equipment, one catching my arm and another my side, helping to balance my pain from two nights before.   I played it pretty straight, trying to remember tips from a great book I just read about umpiring.   With the condition of my legs, a Leslie Nielsen style strike call was out of question, although eight year old pitchers really tempted me with a “juuuuust a bit outside” call during one of those “ball four...ball eight...ball twelve” sequences.

Regarding weight loss, I couldn’t help but notice the amazing concentration I had tracking pitches.  If you’re not familiar, the umpire works with a handheld ball/strike indicator, or “clicker”.  At any time over a two hour period I could tell you exactly the number of balls, strikes, or outs.  What if I could do that while eating?  I don’t know what you’d track, exactly - calories?...fork fulls?...bites? - but maybe the next great weight loss invention is a clicker.

* I couldn’t find the Johnny Bench “No runs, no drips, no errors” commercial, but thought you might enjoy his teammate Pete Rose’s vintage Aqua Velva commercial.

Week 12 Recap: Food is Never Free

This week:          1.0 pounds

Total loss:            16.3 pounds

Game 3 Final: No Processed Food -3.9, No Whites -1.0

No Processed Food advances to the quarter finals.

No Whites is eliminated.

Here’s the reason for the rain delay: family vacation.  We took sort-of spring break trip to the San Diego area.  Lots of fun was had by all.

The triumph of the trip had to be Legoland, a theme park in Carlsbad, California that caters to exactly the variety of children we have: boys.  My seven year old declared it “a lifelong dream come true”.  It was a pretty good day for me, too.  We opened the park at 10:00 and closed it at 6:00, and in between walked many miles.  If you go, the sports café has a great chicken salad with diced tomatoes and avocado.  Believe it or not, I got out of there consuming zero whites, except one waffle fry at the 4 hour mark and two spoonfuls of Dippin’ Dots after seven hours.

Next was the San Diego Zoo.  It is amazing, I’ll say that.  We loved the pandas and many other things.  The monkeys stole the show, chasing each other across tree branches with all the thrills of a Hollywood car chase.   And the peacocks seemed to have the most personality, roaming about as if they had stolen the zookeeper’s keys. 

My issue with the zoo, though, was the inconsistency between the preservation of wildlife and plantlife and the food options at the restaurant we attended.  Our tour guide proudly touted the endangered species the zoo was protecting and that the zoo was one of the five largest botanical gardens in the United States, partly to grow indigenous foods for the animals.  She impressed upon us many times not to touch the plants, as they might be endangered, and to recycle our plastics to protect native habitats around the world from resource harvesting.  All of which is good.  But intermittently, she plugged the restaurants about the park with, “They have great nachos!” and “You can get a cinnamon roll the size of a dinner plate!”  (Ironically, she later admitted she was on Weight Watchers and could no longer partake.  Do as I say and not as I do!)  At lunch, we hit a restaurant with eight “entrées”, all eight served with a side of fries, and not an indigenous food in site!  They should at least provide one healthy option at each restaurant, and at a minimum, offer a side or apples, carrots, or celery sticks instead of fries.  Unless the San Diego Zoo foresees elephants and hyenas being able to pay $128 (!) to take their family of four to the zoo, their business model should include some food options that won’t make the human race go extinct.

The following day we saw the Padres at Petco Field.  It was a great lesson in the randomness of statistics, as the home team scored 10 runs in the 4^th en route to a 17-2 victory!  Does this mean the Padres are good?  (no)  Does this mean Petco is a good park for offense?  (no)  It was one data point, and reminds us we shouldn’t make too much of any data point, even the scale...especially the scale.  Petco did offer “Friar Fit” stands with a variety of fruits, vegetables, and other offerings, although most of the ballpark was unhealthy, similarl to all ballparks.  I had the fish tacos, which are well known.  They were OK.  I had the shrimp burrito, too, which was excellent.

Now, back to the task at hand.  To deal with the odd schedule, I decided to change to the new eating plan on Sunday, as planned, but I had two weigh ins: three days before Sunday and three days after, the midpoint being the “official” weigh in.  Thought about going a few extra days on “no whites” and prorating the result, but sacrifice a little weigh in accuracy for a full experience with “plate in quarters”.  An important part of the Pounds Off Playoff is experiencing each eating plan for at least 14 days, to learn how easy or difficult they are to follow and to glean aspects of each plan I might want to use after the P.O.P. is over.

What I learned about “no whites” is that it’s very doable and it’s generally effective.  I’ll definitely continue to think about the benefits of cutting down on whites as I move on to other plans.

Coaching point:  Food is never free.  One of our hotels offered a reception every night with “free” drinks, potato chips, pretzels, popcorn, and corn chips.  Fortunately, we only stayed there two nights, but the calories I consumed were equal to most of the small weight gain I experienced during the trip. (Approximately 3500 calories = 1 pound)

Rain Delay

Hi everybody.  Everything’s fine, but the Weekly Recap will be posted on Wednesday.  Starting “plate in quarters” today, which is basically a plan to balance ¼ protein, ¼ starchy carbs, and ½ fruits and vegetables at every meal.  I’ll describe it in more detail later in the week.

In the meantime, enjoy the inspiring story of Scott Cutshall, a (former) Large Fella on a Bike...

Scott Cutshall

Pounds Off Profiles are for sports figures, not just known athletes, and I’ve left that kind of wiggle room to be able to bring you stories like Scott Cutshall’s.  A New York City jazz musician who had grown to a whopping 501 pounds, Cutshall recognize that biking could be his road back to health.  Kind hearted custom bike maker Bob Brown made Cutshall a steel framed bike that could hold his quarter-ton girth.  Cutshall did the rest.  In addition to cutting calories by eating soups and so forth, he rode.  First a little, then a little more, then as his main form of transportation.  A few years after, he biked an unbelievable near-20,000 miles.  And lost about 300 pounds.

Cutshall’s story is well documented, both by the mainstream media and by his own blog.  I first learned of Cutshall from Bicycling Magazine, which ran a photo documentary and feature story on Cutshall’s journey.  Cutshall and his family moved to biking friendly Minneapolis, where he was profiled by the Star Tribune, before settling in bike friendly Portland, OR.  Throughout, Cutshall provided a first person account on his irreverent, honest, occasionally combative blog.  Large Fella on a Bike, the blog’s well chosen name, had a great run, ending in May 2009.

It's the Sodium, Stupid!

I hope my kids don’t see that I just used the “S” word.  But when it comes to offensive restaurant food, the real “S” word is “sodium”.  As I documented in my restaurant study, if you want to know if a restaurant entrée is healthy, check the sodium count.

Case in point: CNN.com ran a drive-by article on outlandish restaurant foods this week.  And this is a pretty good thing, as we need the media fighting the fight with us.  But here’s where they missed: not once did they mention sodium.  They stayed with the old standbys, calories and fat, which are to food as wins and ERA are to pitchers – an OK blunt indicator, just not the best available tools to evaluate quality.

The featured item was a great illustration of how calories can be misleading.  The KFC “Double Down”, a “bun-free” concoction where two chicken filets act as bread to a bacon and cheese sandwich, is listed at 540 calories.  CNN put that number out there for shock value, but frankly, I wasn’t shocked (or SHOCKED!)  540 calories is 27% of the FDA recommendation of 2000 calories.  The way I figure it, you have to get those 2000 calories somewhere, and a  540 calorie lunch would be very reasonable.  But the sodium amount is a whopping 1380mg, which translates to 58% of your daily allotment of 2400mg.  In one sitting!  The sooner the mainstream media leads with the sodium figures, the better.

Pounds Off Profile: Dave Grosby

Dave Grosby, affectionately known as “The Groz”, is among the longest running sports broadcasters in Seattle.  Eighteen years into his run, he’s in the news this week, as he’s leaving KJR for KIRO.  Grosby is the play-by-play man for Seattle University’s new Division I men’s basketball team and will co-host afternoon drive. 

Grosby’s news reminds me of the last time he made headlines.  Five years ago, Grosby had sextuple bypass surgery at age 43.  Not a healthy lifestyle he was living – by any measure!  But the Groz got it together, switching to a walking commute, cutting alcohol, eating better, and quitting smoking.  Ultimately, he lost 25 pounds and gained a new lease on life.  If the Groz can turn it around, you can too!

Update

Apparently when I switched templates my comments became disabled.  Thanks for the tip, Mike.  Seem to have it fixed.

In other news, what a game tonight!  If that'd gone in at the end Butler would have been the Cinderella team for all time.  Too bad the game started at 9:21 PM Eastern (and ended at 11:40!).  I watched it with my boys, who were mesmerized.  Wouldn't have happened if we were back in PA.  NCAA, what are you thinking???

Anyway, great run for Butler.  And really, a great tournament all around.

Pounds Off Profile: Nick Yphantides (fan)

Happy Opening Day!  Here’s a baseball story that’s worthy of an opening day start.

The Pounds Off Profile is going to cover a variety of sports figures.  Most will be athletes, but fans, coaches, and retired athletes are all fair game.   So on this Opening Day, do yourself a favor and learn a little about Dr. Nicholas Yphantides.  Nick is a medical doctor, and he weighed well over 400 pounds when in the spring of 2001.  Tired of advising “do as I say, not as I do,” he set out on an amazing weight loss adventure. 

On April 2, 2001, Nick attended a Dodgers game.  Over the next year, he attended 109 baseball games, visiting every major park, the all-star game (in Seattle; I guess we crossed paths), and the World Series in both New York and Arizona.  He also lost 257 pounds!  His plan was three protein shakes a day, under medical supervision.  I can’t recommend that approach, but I can recommend the baseball adventure!

Check out Nick’s old blog, which documents the games he attended and the weight he lost along the way.

Week 11 Recap: We Might Have a Photo Finish!

Week 11 Loss:   2.2 Pounds

Total Loss:           17.5 Pounds

Let’s try a few analogies to frame what the first six days of this week were like for me.  Taking an alcoholic to a bar for his birthday.  Dropping a shopaholic off at the mall.  Giving a workaholic VPN*.  Taking Tiger Woods to the driving range.  (I said the driving range.  What were you thinking?)

* VPN stands for Virtual Private Network and it allows you to access your work computer from anywhere in the world you have Internet access.  It allows you to work as if you’re at your desk, whether you’re on vacation or in your living room.  Talk about a mixed blessing!

I’m most proud of this week of all the weeks so far.  There were at least eight times in the first six days where I was in a situation where lots of yummy sweets were available and socially encouraged, and I passed on most of them.   The week started with a birthday dinner at our friends’ house, where I had some tasty homemade foods – fried fish, macaroni and cheese, and chocolate cake ala mode.  Then came my actual birthday, where quite honestly, I ate non-stop for a couple of hours.  The only thing I really remember is eating a half-bag of peanut butter filled pretzels, but there was a lot. 

The rest of the week could have been an unmitigated disaster.  Two people in my office retired, including one close friend.  There was lots of food at both parties.  I gave a drive-by hug to the person I didn’t know as well, and kept to a plate of fruit at my friend’s party.  There was also a birthday party held for a co-worker literally ten feet from the door to my office, but I somehow refused all food (which is really hard when the people who made it are telling you to eat it).  On another day, my department hosted a training and brought fresh scones, which I declined, and then I had to stare at them on a counter outside my office all of the next day.  The kicker was a person in the office walking around with one of those flat boxes of donuts held horizontally against her waist, joking that she was like the old cigarette girls.  The irony was not lost on me.  I declined.

Ah, but there was a payoff.  Today, I put on my gray suit, my newest, and thus biggest suit.  Immediately after securing the hook and button, the pants slipped.  I put on a belt.  They still didn’t stay in place until I tightened it, twice.  This is a new experience!  Usually, it’s the other way around, of course – pants that are too tight and I’ve had to struggle mightily just to get them on.  I have even pulled a muscle doing this!  (I am totally serious...it’s just to the collarbone side of the left shoulder...ouch!)  Thankfully, those days might be behind me.

Finally, regarding the brackets and all that, we have a real barnburner going – a potential race to the finish!  No Processed Foods got out to a strong 3.9 pound lead, but No Whites is in hot pursuit!  This one might come down to the last day. 

Coaching point: If you “can’t eat just one”, don’t even get started.  That’s going to mean saying no.  It would be great to live in a world where there wouldn’t be peer pressure to eat, but that’s just not our reality.  So sometimes we need rules to stay on track.  And our bodies are different, so our rules might have to be different, too.  It feels awkward the first time you politely decline while most others are eating someone’s homemade cake, but by the third time, people will notice if you are consistent in saying no.  Once it becomes obvious that you’re just not going to go there for anybody’s home baked item, nobody takes it personally.  

Eating Plan Profile: No Whites

No Whites is a lot like No Processed Foods, so I’ll keep this short.  If you missed the profile for No Processed Food, you may want to check that out, as most of the references apply to No Whites as well.

No Whites means abstaining from products made from white flour and white sugar, foods partially refined to be white (e.g. white rice), and natural starches (e.g. potatoes).  It’s mostly about not eating refined, highly processed carbohydrates, with a few very carby natural foods included as well. 

You may wonder how No Whites and No Processed Foods are different.  With the latter, I avoided diet soda and processed meats and cheeses.  No Whites would not prohibit those items, but would take away potatoes.   There may be other subtle distinctions I am not thinking of, but you get the idea.  These two plans are very similar.

I think the reason that avoiding whites seems to work is two-fold.  First, you get most of the benefit you’d get from avoiding processed foods.  Processed carbohydrates seem to be absorbed much more quickly than other processed foods.  Some people are especially sensitive to this.  I’m guessing most obese people are.  Second, many “whites” are packed with calories.  For years, dieters were cutting fat, but they gained weight anyway because of the low-fat, highly refined products they were replacing them with.  For me, taking away breads, even many “wheat” and “whole grain” breads, chips, and sweets means I don’t eat much of anything when I’m not hungry.  So in summary, fewer calories, absorbed less easily by the body, equals weight loss on No Whites. 

Introducing the Pounds Off Playoff Restaurant Study

I want this blog to be down to earth and occasionally humorous.  When I take people down, it will usually be a self-deprecating comment on my own Achilles heel.  But the outrageously unhealthy food offered by restaurants deserves to be laid out.  I think most people know restaurants can be part of the problem, but I’ve composed a study to make it clear just how few healthy options restaurants really give us. 

Introducing “Out of Control: Restaurant Entrées and Daily Values,” a 15 page academic style study and white paper that I have written based on what I have learned researching food for the Pounds Off Playoff.  You can access it through the “Restaurant Study” tab at the top of the blog.  Please take a look after you finish this post.  WARNING: It geeks out, big-time. 

Basically what I do is take the nutritional information from 25 of the biggest restaurant chains in America and analyze the calorie, saturated fat, and sodium content.  It’s not pretty, let me tell you.  You know the recommended “daily values” from the FDA?  I looked at more than 1300 entrees and only 70% fall within one-third of the recommended calories, only 42% fall within one-third of the recommended saturated fat, and only 23% fall within one-third of the recommended sodium level.  Let me repeat that for emphasis: the majority of restaurant entrees at major chains – not just fast food joints, not just pizza, not just fettuccini alfredo – the majority of entrees have excessive amounts of saturated fat and sodium.  Eleven percent of items actually supply or exceed a whole day’s worth of sodium in one entrée!!! And that’s not even counting side orders, value meals, drinks, or anything else!  It’s a disaster.

I don’t scapegoat individual chains or entrees, as some sites do.  While it might feel good to nail individual restaurants, if everyone has a problem, you’ve got to fix the system, not affix blame (hat tip: W. Edwards Deming).  But we must fix the system!  American restaurant menus are badly broken.  Would you have guessed that half of the 1381 restaurant entrees in my data set contain at least a half-day’s worth of sodium?  When you look at the prevalence of high blood pressure and heart disease in modern America, and the devastating effects those things have on quality of life, family finances, and the national economy, it’s absolutely amazing that we continue to allow this to happen. 

So, please read the study from the link atop the page, and the accompanying “Rule of 7”, which will help you eliminate the unhealthy food choices you’ll find on restaurant menus.  If you love data, download the entire study via PDF.  In any case, do yourself a favor and decide how much of your daily diet you want coming from one entrée.   After you’ve read either the summary or the entire study, go to the websites of your favorite restaurants and see how their items stack up to the recommended daily values of 2000 calories, 20 grams of saturated fat, and 2400mg of sodium.  And then do something about it.  Restaurants won’t change to healthier fare until people stop buying the crap they have been selling.

A Tradition Like ONE Other

WooHoo...don’t have to work on the first day of the Masters.  I announced this to the family after dinner tonight, using my best Jim Nantz voice (which sucks, by way; I’m a little better at Harry Kalas).  “Hey, Thursday is ‘...a tradition unlike any other...’ and I actually get to watch this year.”  Shannon asked the boys if they knew what I was talking about.  One of them came up with “golf tournament” and the other came up with “green jacket”.  Not bad for 7 and 9 in Seattle. 

But my older boy took it a step further.  “No, it’s not,” he said.  “Not what?,” I asked, puzzled by the apparent non sequiter.  “It’s not unlike any other.  It’s like the hot dog eating contest (Coney Island on July 4^th on ESPN).  They win that big belt for that.  It’s like the Masters.”  Funny what the kids come up with!

I’m guessing I’m pretty much permanently banned from Augusta for this post.  

New Features

Announcing five new features on the Pounds Off Playoff...

Pounds Off Profiles.  To add some interest and inspiration, I’ll be linking to stories about sports figures who have lost weight.  I expect this to run the gamut from ex-athletes who lost a lot of weight to improve their health, like the Charlie Manuel feature, to current athletes looking to gain an edge.

P.O.P. Art (Articles).  As I come across stories or studies that are applicable to the blog, I’ll throw up the link with a short summary or comment.

Restaurant Study.  Have you picked up a nutritional menu lately? I started giving restaurant menus a closer look as I was selecting my eating plans and three months later I have a study up on the site that illustrates the unbelievable statistics on restaurant entrees at 25 of the biggest chains.  You can download it from the link at the top of the page.  I’ll have more to say about this in a forthcoming post.

Rule of 7.  It can be so confusing looking at those restaurant menus.  I present the "Rule of 7" in the page links above that will help you make a quick assessment of the entrée choices.

Blogs, Hold the Roll.  A play on the “blogroll” feature seen on many websites, Blogs, Hold the Roll contains links to blogs that I think you might like or that are like mine in some way.  I’m on the lookout for weight loss bloggers who have a healthy approach, an interesting plan, and strong voice.  Fellow “quants” have a leg up.