Diet and Exercise, Exercise and Diet

If there's one thing on which there's pretty much a consensus in the world of weight loss, it's that effective and sustained slimming-down requires both diet and exercise. This isn't exactly news, despite the fact that every couple weeks another magazine or newspaper or website treats it as if no one had ever suggested the idea before:

For Fitness, Cutting Calories May Not Be Enough - US News and World Report

In addition, the authors of autobiographical weight-loss books and blogs can't sing this same chorus enough, constantly proclaiming the joyful synergy of the two sides of the process - how their athletic endeavors make them eat better and how their healthful eating fuels their workouts.

But me? I have to admit that I have a really hard time doing both at the same time. Right now, for instance, I'm exercising regularly, and that is a rare change from my usual winter lethargy. I'm doing an hour on the elliptical 5-6 days/week, and even going out running occasionally when the sun comes out.

But does this uncharacteristic motivation spill over into my eating? Am I able to euphorically control my appetite and thus maximize my weight loss? Nope. Of course, this is partly because the exercise makes me hungry. Very hungry. Worse still, it makes me hungry for sugar, which is a very bad thing.

Similarly, there are periods of time when I have no trouble following my diet plans, resisting the temptation to snack, ignoring the siren songs of the vending machine at work, the bakery counter at Panera, and the ease of obtaining drive-through McDonald's french fries on my way home from work. During those times, I have my appetite under control - but am I usually exercising regularly, too? Nope, almost never. Why? Because I don't have the extra energy!

Even beyond this interplay of appetite versus energy, I often feel like I only have a certain amount of will power in reserve - and it's enough will power to control my eating or my exercise, but not both at the same time. I can will myself to exercise, but if I do that several times a week, there's not enough left in the tank to also will myself not to eat candy at the movies. And I can will myself to count carbs and stop eating when I reach my daily allotted maximum, but most of the time I can't also force myself into my shorts and Nikes.

I do know one solution to the problem: being a different person, an athletic, fit guy with a cooperative metabolism who naturally lives the right way. But I'm me. I like rich foods, and I don't like exercise. Given my druthers, I'd just as soon eat lots of unhealthful foods and sell the elliptical on Ebay - but then I'd get fat to the point of having to buy two seats on the plane, and that's also not acceptable.

There are never any easy answers, are there?!

The Envelope, Please?

Well, it's January 1, 2010, the first New Year's Day of a new decade (at least as popularly measured), and this morning I hopped on the scale to see where I stand. The envelope, please? I'm starting the Tens (or whatever we'll end up calling it) at 241 lbs.

This number is not spectacular, I'll be the first to admit, and I'd actually hoped to kick off the year in the 230's rather than the 240's, just because it would feel like more of an accomplishment. There's also been a bit of backsliding beginning with my birthday in late October and extending through Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year's - I'd gotten down into the mid-220's but hit a plateau and then lost some ground.

But on the other hand, 241 still shows real progress. A year ago, on January 1, 2009, I weighed in at 276, so I'm exactly 35 pounds lighter today. A month after that, on the day I started my latest diet campaign as well as this blog, I weighed 280.5, so I'm nearly 40 lbs. thinner than that now. And my heaviest weight in 2009 was 284, so I've lost 43 pounds from that worst point last year: 15% of that peak weight. All of these numbers are good.

Also, a look at my exercise logs - okay, that's a fancy way of saying my kitchen calendar, which is where I scribble down how far I run or how long I do the elliptical machine - tells me that I've doubled my workout duration in the past year. Last January I was doing around 25 minutes on the elliptical, but now I'm doing 50-60 minutes every time I use it. That suggests I'm significantly more fit in the cardiovascular area than I was a year ago, and that's probably even more important in terms of my overall health, given that I'm at the age when guys start having their first heart attacks. Not only that, this fall I ran two charity 5k races - I wasn't fast, but I finished them both and wasn't either the oldest or the slowest guy running. They provided me with good motivation (and t-shirts!), so I'd like to do a few more of those this year.

So where do I go from here? What are my plans for 2010? Obviously, I need to start moving the number on the scale downward again, so I want to go back to the Atkins Induction Phase for a jump-start. I have to cut the carbs way back again to try for measurable results. I want to keep upping my workout length and/or intensity, and this may require a visit to a sports medicine specialist, to find out why I still sometimes get leg pains and cramps when I run. And by this time next year, I'd like to be able to fit into some clothes hanging in my closet that I'm close, but not close enough, to wearing again!

Happy 2010 to all!

In Praise of Alec Baldwin's Belly: Talkin' 'Bout My Inspiration!

(Alec Baldwin in It's Complicated)

Now, I'm not usually prone to giving movie stars blog space - they already have publicists to make sure their pics are everywhere. I also don't like to overpraise Nancy Meyer's fun but formulaic romantic comedies aimed at "women of a certain age", especially given their complete absence of any characters who aren't white and wealthy.

However, I've got to give a shout-out here to Meyer's newest offering, It's Complicated, for one simple reason: its presentation of the far-from-svelte and no-longer-youthful Alec Baldwin as a 50-something, overweight guy who nevertheless still has that make-her-knees-buckle alpha-male vibe and is still hot as hell, hairy paunch be damned.

I'm old enough to remember Baldwin in his Streetcar Named Desire days, when he could make an audience catch its breath by tearing off his shirt (which he did regularly on Broadway!). Unlike a lot of aspiring heartthrobs then and now, Baldwin didn't shave or wax his chest and abs, but you know what? He was amazingly hot, partly thanks to his muscles but even more thanks to his take-no-prisoners, sex-on-a-stick attitude.

Well, here we are a couple decades later, and Baldwin has definitely put on some extra poundage, as the pics above show and as anyone can see by flipping on their television Thursday nights for 30 Rock. He's somewhere between beefy and stout now, but the old swagger is still there and in this movie he is totally credible confusing the hell out of ex-wife Meryl Streep with his renewed ardor for her.

Better still, Baldwin is comfortable enough with his weight to use it to texture his characterization. Standing in his undershorts after sex with Streep, he can slap his hairy paunch and comment on all the weight he's gained in his second marriage - but with no trace of embarrassment. He can banter about his weight with Streep, asking her, "Why do you keep calling me 'Big Guy'? Is it because I'm fat?" And he can sprawl naked on Streep's bed, then explain afterwards that he thought she'd find that tactic "irresistible" - even though he's doughy and not buff these days.

Any guy with issues about his weight should see this film, just to watch Baldwin be sexy despite being substantially overweight by most standards and downright fat compared to the media's presentation of buff (not to mention hairless) guys with toned abs as the masculine ideal. Baldwin's Jake looks his age and carries the extra pounds that many middle-aged guys (yours truly included) can't manage to shed, either. But he's not a hapless sidekick or a pathetic, deluded loser: he's the movie's leading man, he's bracingly virile, and he exudes self-confidence, either in spite of - or because of - that paunchy body.

Am I saying we should all give up on losing weight? Hell no, it's still a healthful thing to do. But should overweight guys hide indoors until we lose enough weight to consider ourselves publicly "presentable"? Hell no, again. We need to learn to unbutton our shirts and slap those bellies of ours as long as we're still carrying them around.

Feeling Thin When You're Still Fat

(Fernando Botero, Ballerina to the Handrail)

Lake Mileage: 5.8k
MP3 Player: Vangelis, Chariots of Fire
Currently Reading: Born Round (Frank Bruni)

I have to say, even at the risk of jinxing my current progress (I'm a superstitious dieter, no question!), that I'm currently at a point where I'm feeling good about what I've accomplished since February. I'm now in the mid-to-low 230's (233 this morning), about 50 lbs. lighter than what I weighed then. That's close to 20% of my worst-case body weight. I feel lighter, I feel thinner. I move more easily and less awkwardly, especially now that solving the running shoe problem has been a major breakthrough on the exercise front. I've gone down several sizes clothes-wise: in the winter I was wearing 42" jeans and 44" khakis from Lands End, now I've dug into the closet and retrieved the 36" jeans and the 38" khakis from 2006-7. People volunteer approvingly that they notice the difference.

The problem is, of course, that in reality I'm nowhere near as thin as I feel. For a 5'8" guy, even an endomorph like me, 233 is still fat. 36" jeans and 38" khakis are still fat clothes. Someone meeting me for the first time would still consider me seriously overweight. I've read any number of books and blogs where a formerly fat guy describes how disgusting and grotesque he was at my current weight, or worse, when he weighed even less than I weigh now. Runners World columnist John "the Penguin" Bingham, whose cheerful embrace of non-elite athleticism I like a great deal, talks about being frightened into weight loss when he weighed 240 - and we're the same height. "I was well past stout. I was rotund," he writes in one of his books. In another he talks about his "ever-widening waist and sagging arms" and describes himself at that time as "a fat cat", as "old and overweight and out of shape." Charlie Hills, whose blog Back to the Fridge I follow and enjoy, talks about the horror of passing 200 lbs. for the first time and makes jokes about hardly being able to see the scale numbers with his gut in the way - but if, oops, when (be positive, people always say) I hit 200 again, I'll be ecstatic. I may faint right there on the scale, in fact.

If a dieter isn't careful, this reality check can take a lot of the gratification out of actual progress. I want to celebrate losing 50 lbs., because it's a big accomplishment. But at the same time, I know that my weight loss so far is only half - and the easier half - of my 100-lb. goal, and even then I'll still be overweight by most people's standards. According to the BMI tables, so far all I've managed to do is go from "Morbidly Obese" to "Obese"! Maybe I shouldn't start celebrating yet.

On the other hand, losing nearly 20% of my body weight is something that a lot of people don't manage to do. And I do in fact feel better, I do in fact move around less effortfully, and I am in fact seriously thinner. If I didn't lose another ounce from today onward, I'd still be healthier living at 233 lbs. than at 284 lbs. And even if other people are still correct when they classify me as fat, that's not the whole story. It's like the stock market - the current price of your shares by itself doesn't matter; what matters is whether that price is higher or lower than what you paid. Maybe my current weight isn't impressive, but compared to where I was, I'm already showing a profit.

It's All About the Shoes!

Lake Mileage: 5+k

MP3 Player: Torchwood: Golden Age (BBC)

Currently Reading: Strides (Benjamin Cheever)

Maybe the Wicked Witch of the West, Glinda the Good Witch, and Dorothy were right all along: you just can't get anywhere without the right shoes. A few years ago, my running was going well; I was putting in 4-6 miles/day, which made it a lot easier to control my weight and gave me much more energy. Then I let myself get talked into buying a different running shoe: the Brooks Beast, which is marketed to "heavier runners." Since I definitely fit that category, even when I was fitter, I thought using shoes designed for endomorphs might be a good precaution in my early 40's. For the first year or so, they were comfortable enough, but then in June 2007 I had a huge flare-up of my old enemy, Plantar Fasciitis - and somehow I managed to blame this on my own "over-training", without even considering the fact that I'd just started wearing the newest 2007 model of the Beast. Since then I've sporadically tried to get running again, but I could never build up any distance without the PF causing progressively more pain, so I always had to give up and settle for the elliptical or something far less satsifying.

This spring and summer have been no different. As you know if you've looked at previous entries in this blog, I've been trying to get back to running at the nearby lake with its 5k running loop, partly with the help of the Podrunner intervals. At first those were great because they didn't put any strain on me, but as they shifted the proportion of running (okay, jogging, shuffling, pick your word!) to walking, my lower legs and arches were starting to complain. Anything much past 3k of steady running/jogging would leave me sore, sometimes limping, and not sore in the good way of having sore muscles after a real workout, either. This was a bad kind of sore, the kind that's warning you about being headed for serious problems. I was happy that I could at least cover the whole distance, but I still wished I could run/jog all of it, and I could foresee that soon I wasn't going to be able to keep up with the Podrunner's pace. I was doing this, of course, wearing this year's version of the Brooks Beast (I never bought the 2008), which I'd bought - ironically - for maximum protection, in an effort to cure the PF.

Then a couple weeks ago, I happened to be glancing through an old issue of Runner's World. An article about shoe selection said something about how the Beast was one of the good shoes for the runners built like me (they like to call us "Clydesdales"), because heavy runners nearly always over-pronate - that is, we roll the foot inward when we stride, putting lots of weight on the arch of the foot. The Beast compensates for that by being what's called a "motion-control shoe." This kind of running shoe is rigid and engineered to correct that inward roll, shifting the runner's weight outward away from the arches. Readers could confirm that they're over-pronators, the article continued, by looking at the wear pattern on the inner soles of their own broken-in shoes.

Well, guess what happened when I felt curious enough to check out my shoes? On every single pair I looked at, all the wear was on the outer edge of the shoe; on the running shoes, it was absolutely obvious that I push off at every stride with the outside of the foot, digging in with the last couple toes rather than the big toe. My foot doesn't roll inward at all when I stride.

This was when I began to wonder if the Beast was helping me or hurting me. If I already tend to supinate, wearing a shoe that effectively causes extra supination (to correct pronation) is going to exaggerate the imbalance rather than neutralizing it. Maybe this was why I couldn't seem to run even 5k without the various pains starting? Maybe the arch supports were stretching and hurting my arches instead of supporting them? Maybe the 2007 Beast was even the reason for the sudden return of my PF?

So I did more research, and decided to try a different shoe: a "neutral" shoe that's not engineered to correct a runner's motion, and one with enough cushioning to take my weight. I found a sale with a great price on the Nike Air Pegagus, now 25 years old, which was one of the first expensive running shoes I ever bought in college! (I seem to recall a pair of Saucony Jazz in there, too, but the Pegasus was definitely my favorite then.) The Pegasus is a straightforward neutral cushioned running shoe, I remembered liking it back when Reagan was president, and the price was definitely right. More important, I had the gut feeling I was onto something.

Well, guess what?! On my first run at the lake wearing the Pegasus, I intended to run the first 2k, walk the third (and middle) kilometer, and then run the last 2k. When I got to the 2k mark, though, I felt so pain-free for a change that I decided I'd keep on running, wait to walk at the 3k mark instead, and then run the last kilometer. That seemed like a fair plan, but I still felt fine at the 3k mark, so I decided I'd run the first 4 kilometers and just walk the last one for a cool-down. But again there was no trace of pain at the 4k mark - which meant that I ran the entire lake loop for the first time in over 2 years!

A few more runs confirmed this: the pain I was having whenever I ran wearing the Beast just didn't happen when I wore the Nikes instead. Once I knew that, I decided to trade up beyond the Pegasus, to the Nike Vomero, which is their top-of-the-line neutral cushioned shoe. So far they feel great!

Maybe it really is all about the shoes.

My First 100 Days!

Lake Mileage: 5+k

MP3 Player: Thomas Hampson, "American Song"

Currently Reading: Full Dark House (Christopher Fowler)

100 days! 100 is yet another one of those magic numbers for us, no doubt courtesy of having evolved with 10 fingers and using base-10 mathematics. And it's certainly true that 100 is no more special a quantity than 99 or 101, except in some arbitrary sense. But nevertheless, even knowing all that, I'm feeling good about the fact that today marks my 100th straight day of exercise: every day since April 24th, I've either done at least 5 k at the lake or done 30-40 minutes on the elliptical when the weather's foul. This may not seem like a major accomplishment to you athletic types out there, but for me, it might actually be a lifetime record! And, better still, real improvement in terms of endurance is happening at the lake: I'm able to run (jog? shuffle? huff and puff?) nearly the entire 5-k loop now, though I still walk the initial part of the first kilometer to make sure I stretch enough and don't get myself into trouble again. Soon, though, I should be able to do the whole distance and then start working, very gradually, on incrementally adding speed: two years ago, before I got injured, I was able to run the entire loop in a little under 30 minutes - far from spectacular, but not awful for a non-athlete. Today I'm nowhere near that, since my "speed" is very modest indeed, but if I work at gradually adding faster segments to the total run, progress shouldn't be out of the question.

On a Diet Plateau, No One Can Hear You Scream (in Frustration)

Lake Mileage: 5+k

MP3 Player: Podrunner, "First Day to 5k", Week 4

Currently Reading: Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (Jane Austen/Seth Grahame-Smith)

Sorry for the unexpectedly long hiatus! I'm tempted to just say that I've been distracted by the summer course I'm teaching this month - in other words, to lie. But the real reason, to be totally honest, is that I found myself stuck at a plateau when I weighed myself on July 10th - no weight loss in 10 days, despite continuing the exercise streak and sticking more-or-less faithfully to the diet. I was at a plateau, and I just did not want to talk about it.

It's not that I'm new to plateaus. I've been on enough diets to know that they inevitably happen at certain places in the weight loss process, whenever my body gets nervous enough about the ongoing loss of stored fat reserves that it demands a full-scale internal investigation and freezes my progress. But plateaus are always dispiriting nevertheless, especially because I'm always half-afraid that this will be the weight at which the entire diet effort grinds to a final screeching halt before the numbers on the scale start creeping upward again. So I didn't much feel like posting about no progess whatsoever, though I know this makes me a bad weight-loss blogger indeed! On the other hand, though, I did actually post the July 10th weight on this page and on the graph, so at least I didn't conceal it - but I didn't want to discuss it, either.

Furthermore, I wasn't really making no progress. I did keep up the exercise plan, which is why I'm on Day 88 of the streak today - less than two weeks until I hit Day 100, which will certainly be a record for me since I was 20-something. And each week I've advanced to the next level of Podrunner's interval mixes moving me toward running an entire 5k loop again, so my fitness was improving even if my weight wasn't.

And sure enough, as at least half my mind knew (just not the half I was listening to, typically for me), that discouraging plateau was going to lead into a sudden burst of weight loss, almost like free fall when you go sky-diving. Today the scale gave me the very welcome news that I've lost 10.5 pounds since July 10th, bringing myself down to 238 lbs. - as I've said before, not exactly svelte, even still "obese" according to the BMI calculators, but compared to the 280.5 on the day I started the diet back in February or the 284 that was my worst weight for 2009, it's a great improvement. It even feels within striking distance of the 50-pound mark, having started at the low/mid 280's and broken through to the 230's, though admittedly not yet by a lot. And I had to dig into the closet again for smaller pants, which is always one of dieting's biggest satisfactions.

I suppose I could wind up here with a cliche or two about the value of perseverance - and they'd be cliches because they're true, since weight loss really is all about perseverance over the long haul. But I already know that, even when I get discouraged. Next time I hit a plateau, though, I hope I won't avoid posting.