"Documentation is like sex: when it is good, it is very, very good; and when it is bad, it is better than nothing."

A few weeks ago I had the opportunity to attend a leadership class at work. One of my classmates had seen me on the news and wanted to have lunch with me and pick my brain about weight loss. She was stuck. She'd lost a little, but she'd plateaued and didn't know how to move forward. I asked her if she was journaling and she looked at me like I'd grown a second head. I found it amusing, as earlier in the day she had been complaining about how people need to document processes in order to make sure the company is compliant with regulatory requirements. It's the same thing, only on a personal level. How can you tell if you are on track with exercise and calorie intake if you fail to document? It's well known in the dieting biz that people tend to over report how much they've exercised and under report how much they've eaten. Keeping an honest and accurate (as possible) food and exercise journal is, in my experience, the only way to go. Most for-profit diet programs make this a bit mysterious, but there are free tools out there that can help you keep a journal. The one I use is Calorie Count at about.com. SparkPeople is also free and very good. I've joined both, but I prefer the Calorie Count interface, and they send me less SPAM (the e-kind... not the processed "meat" product... another good idea to avoid, whether weight loss is your goal or not :-\ ) If you are web-savvy enough to be reading this, you are more than web-savvy enough to use these tools.
Do you need to do this forever? Results may vary, but I don't use it all the time. I kept a faithful food/exercise journal for four months. Every day I logged every bite of food and drink (and don't forget the "just a taste"s... sorry, they have calories too!) I logged every minute of exercise... purposefully under-estimating the perceived exertion scale by one or two intensity levels. Sure you could cheat and say you ate less than you did, or worked out more... but what's the point in that?
After about four months I felt like I "got" it, so I stopped logging everything, and just ate mindfully and kept up with/jacked up my exercise regimen. It has worked for me. If I start to plateau, I spend a few weeks journaling to get back on track.
The most valuable part of Calorie Count has been the food look up and new recipe nutritional information generator. It has really helped us to figure out which of our recipes are fine "anytime" meals for this lifestyle, which recipes could be fine with a few tweaks, and which recipes should be saved for special occasions (and which recipes, like "Heart attack mashed potatoes" should be avoided.)
It's harder in restaurants, which is why if you are really serious about weight loss, you need to learn to love cooking. That said, it's still possible to make smart choices when eating out with a little prep work. Most restaurants have websites that list nutritional information(especially chains, local places sometimes do, but it's rare). It has all taken some effort of will power, but I can't honestly say I miss heavy cream sauces or excessive applications of cheese. I can still have those things, it's just not usually my first choice. Just think about what's important, meeting your goals... or a very temporary food high, that probably isn't as tasty as you're imagining. I've gone off on a tangent... I want to talk about goals, but that may be another post.

*Title quote from Dick Brandon

Parlay

Apparently I have something to say...

I've had quite a few questions about my weight loss. This has been especially true in the past few weeks since being featured on the local news. So I thought I'd parlay that experience into something hopefully helpful for those interested in reading it. Certainly it promises to be something helpful for me to collect these little tidbits of information that are floating around my head.

Where I come from

I used to think, “I’ve always been fat”. It’s not true. I was fat as an adolescent, lost weight before and during college, and then started gaining after college. I think I fell victim to the self fulfilling prophesy. My own poor body image made me fat (ok, not completely accurate, but it was a contributing factor). I didn’t bother. I was already fat (right?) so why should I try to be anything but that. While I wasn’t always fat, I wasn’t ever fit… and didn’t have any idea how to get there, That’s what this is about. Being fit. I’ll never be skinny. I don’t want to be super skinny. But I do want to be fit. I started to get there a few years ago. Four years ago, I dropped 50 pounds and stayed there for a few months before it started creeping back on. I gained about 40 of it back. Then last year (2009) I had a rude awaking. I tried help out a friend by buying life insurance, and was declined for my build. Blood sugar and blood pressure were fine. I had none of the obesity related diseases... but I was still uninsurable. At first, it depressed me a little. Then I got pissed. The fastest way to get me to do something is tell me I can't. I guess I'm just stubborn.

Step One: Decluttering

I restarted my journey in an odd place. My closets. In retrospect, it makes sense, but at the time I found it odd that my depression drove me to literally clean house. I cleared out all the closets in the house and got rid of a lot of clutter. Bags and bags of stuff that was meaningful to me at one time or another needed to go if I wasn't likely to ever use it again. Now I feel like this was a necessary mental step in my journey. There is little difference between the stuff I don't need that takes up space in my house, and the stuff I don't need that takes up space in my body.

Step Two: Insert Nike Marketing Slogan

As I cleaned, I realized that I had all the tools that I needed to make this work. After several failed attempts to lose weight- on a sustainable level- in the past, I finally got what it takes. Diets that restrict any particular food or groups of foods don't work in the long run. If you feel like you can never eat a favorite (or even a marginally liked) food again, you are setting yourself up for failure. I think about my junior year in high school. My parents and I were living in Germany, and we could not get Doritos. I don't really care all that much about Doritos, but when you can't have something, for whatever reason... it takes on a magical quality. A few months into our year, I went to England with my class. The other Americans and I were walking through the Underground when we all stopped, "Do you smell that?" one of them said, "DORITOS!" we shouted... and ran off on a mission to find the source of the ambrosia scent. Point is, if you cut something out, you will think of nothing else until you consume it. When you consume it, you will likely do it greedily. Carbohydrates, protein, and fats are all essential parts of any diet, but moderation is key in anything, and calories matter.

The other part of this is exercise. When I went through this process 4 years ago, I focused on the exercise and other than eating (to much of) healthy foods, didn’t focus on my diet at all. Back then I mostly focused on walking until it stopped working, then I started with resistance training (weight lifting) and yoga. I love yoga. It makes me feel good. But I discovered it can’t be my only exercise. I fell into a “yoga trap”. I thought, “I’m doing tough moves twice a week…this is good enough.”

In the past year, I've become an exerfiend. I do a minimum of 30 minutes of hard cardio (running, elliptical, amt, rowing, bike... drenching sweat inducing) most days. Walking is great, but no longer gets counted as my exercise. I do resistance training twice a week, but am starting to ramp that up to three times a week. The main thing I'm trying to accomplish is keeping my body guessing. If I get too used to any one exercise, it stops being effective. And I get bored. A bored Zanna is a dangerous thing.

But really it comes down to do whatever works for you, but just do it. What works for me may not work for you. The general principle of eat less than you burn should work for anyone.

So who cares

Maybe nobody. That's fine. I have a few more posts in mind over the next few weeks, things that people ask me about diet or running or motivation or whatever. I'm not a personal trainer or a nutrition expert, just someone who has dropped about a hundred pounds in a little over a year. The only thing I'm an expert on is what has worked for me.