Weight Loss & Me

Achievement Unlocked: Goal Weight Reached!

I used to cook a lot for me and my other half and we ate well and it was delicious (except the time I made tomato soup with soy milk, that was simply awful, I can't recommend it at all.) But, my meals were making us both bigger, a lot bigger than we wanted to be. So, I learned a new way to eat that is healthier for me and has gotten me from 205 lbs (93kg) down to what you see here in the fuzzy picture, 165lbs (75kg).

When I was at my biggest the doctor told me during my annual exam that I was what's it called? Pre-diabetic. Well, that's no good at all. So, taking a page from my Mom's playbook based on the assumption that I've got a 50% chance of having a metabolism similar to hers, I went on the Atkins diet and tried to make sure I walked 10k steps a day. There was a stint in there when I ran pretty regularly, but that's mostly over right now due to a knee injury I did to myself out of stupidity. Nothing permanent. It's better now but I lost the momentum and haven't gotten it back.

So, now when I tell people I don't eat something because it's "not on my diet" what I really mean is it's not good for me and I'm trying to not do things that are bad for me. But what they say is "You're not fat." Nope, I'm not. But I was and I don't want to be again! So, instead of trying to foist the garbage onto me as a kindness it'd make me SUPER happy if you'd smile and say, "Well, congrats. It's working," instead of "You don't need to be. Here eat this." You're not all jewish mothers from 80's sit-coms trying to fatten me up, so stop playing the role. It's rude and irritates me. I'm not telling you to eat like I do so please, PLEASE stop telling me to eat like you do.

I'm a huge fan of MyFitnessPal as a way of tracking what I eat and keeping me on target. I mostly know what I can eat, but sometimes I go on an "enter it all because you need to pay attention dummy!" phase and when I do, MyFitnessPal is there with a great site and a great app for the android phone. I'm a huge fan. Another tool I used was a fitbit flex (affiliate link - buy it and I'll get a nickle or two) I got back in the day when I had money. They're not cheap but they're great activity trackers and the website dashboard is the best I've seen out there. It really is fantastic. Love mine.

In there I had a BIG job change where my income was cut by a LOT and money was tight, like really tight for a while, like seriously... I lived in a shack and was broke as hell. They're better now, but that was the hardest time to lose weight because carbs are cheap and protein isn't. Fresh vegetables aren't. It was a lot harder to eat healthy while broke but it's possible. It involved a LOT of chicken and eggs (when they were on sale) and frozen vegetables instead of fresh like I preferred. If I could get fish on sale I'd add that as often as possible because that's helpful with the good cholesterol.

That bout of near-poverty did help me see something I'd not paid attention to before (the last time I was poor I hadn't cared what I ate and would eat anything.) cheap food is factory food. I could get more bags of frozen dinners and pot pies and frozen pizzas than I could of real food for the same amount of money. But those things are all loaded with carbs, empty calories, salt, and God knows what other chemicals to give them the months long shelf-life that real food just shouldn't have. So, when I look around and see the obesity epidemic I understand it better now. Real food isn't as cheap as factory-food, or as convenient. Those bags of frozen chicken parts aren't something I could just throw in the microwave and eat... they required a time investment to turn them from ingredients to food.

So, now what? I've reached my goal weight. Well, it hasn't been about weight for a while now. I am a healthy weight for my height and age and I look pretty okay I think. I'm happy with my weight and have been for a while. Next though, because there's always a next, is getting in a little better shape. I'm not planning on lifting trucks or things, but I'm at an age where evidently muscle starts to go away. Well, that's no good. I don't need a lot of them, but I need enough to get me to the coffee pot and back for a lot of years yet! So, I've started using some Runtastic Apps on my phone to do some fitness type things. I'm not to a point where I'm lifting weights because seriously, picking things up bores me, but some exercises, bodyweight exercises, can't hurt: crunches, push-ups, planks, and squats so far.

How about you? What're you doing to get healthier? Take it from me, an inveterate pizza, Mountain Dew, and donut junkie, it's possible and without feeling like you're going to die. :)

Review: Fitbit Zip

The Fitbit Zip Wireless Activity Monitor comes in 4 different colors and all four do the same thing. They easily count your steps and wirelessly connect through Bluetooth to your computer or iPhone (Android coming soon I've read.) where your activity levels are uploaded to a website to measure your activity, show your busiest times, and keep track of it for you giving badges/awards for certain levels of activity or milestones reached.

I've had quite a few pedometers in the past and used a lot of them for a while but I do almost everything online. I certainly track things with online tools. MyFitnessPal has been how I've kept track with my weight, food eaten, carbs, etc for months now. My Fitbit will sync up with my MyFitnessPal account and update the information there so I don't have to do it by hand like I do with Runtastic (The app I use on my phone to track my hiking & running.)

One of the surprising things I noticed as soon as I got the Fitbit was how small it was. On the webpage it shows it compared to a cell phone and it looks about half the size of the phone. I was prepared for a large pedometer. Then it arrived and it's TINY. It works in a pocket or clipped to a belt. I've lost them off belts before so I put it in my pocket and it's tiny and remains accurate even in my pocket. I counted today while I was walking and out of the 100 steps I counted it was within 4 steps every time while resting in my jeans' little coin/watch pocket.

The picture I've posted doesn't quite give away how small it is. It's just slightly larger than the quarter and very thin.

I'm very happy with the website and information provided by the fitbit and tonight as I was getting ready to turn in I saw I was near an even multiple of 1,000 and I paced it off in the back yard, walking around until I'd rolled it over so it's helping motivate me to get off my butt and on my feet more. Mission accomplished.

Dailymile vs. Runtastic

I'm an online tool junkie. I needed to get that out of the way right away. I'm also a gadget junkie. I'm working on the second. I run with either a Garmin Forerunner that I got for Christmas or with an application on my Android from Verizon. I love both. The thing is. I need one that works easily with an online running log/journal. In a perfect world it'd update easily from either one as I will run with both or either.

The Garmin Forerunner is accurate, easy to use, and uploads through a usb connection on the laptop to dailymile relatively easily. I have to have the laptop up and have an internet connection to update it though. I'm a fan of dailymile and I've got lots of my runs on there already, over 300 miles! I like how clean the site is. I like how easy it is to use and I like the graphs. Really clean, easy to use site. I don't like that I have to manually enter my run information from my Android though. Why is there no application that syncs with my android or uses my Android GPS to let me sync my runs as soon as I've done them? Then I don't have to hook any cables or cords up to anything. I hit send and BAM! It's out there on the web.

Turns out there's an application called Runtastic that runs on the Android just fine. It's also go graphs, and nice maps. It'll update either my Facebook status with my run information or my twitter feed with the run information. It will grab data from the Android just fine and post it to the internet running log for me. It doesn't yet import data from my Garmin Forerunner though. I like the accuracy on that one better than the Android. I typically run with both going. If I run a race you can bet I'll defer to the Garmin over the Android. The Android's had me running 70 miles in half an hour before when I ran through some trees. The Garmin didn't do that.

So the two sites have their good and bad points. Neither is perfect. One thing the dailymile has going for it is it's got a mobile site that works really well on the Android if I need to manually enter a run in for some reason. I haven't found an easy way to do that on Runtastic. Until dailymile gets an Android app I'll probably use both. As soon as one of the site does everything I want, and right now both only input readily from one source and only one (dailymile) lets me manually input runs, I'll wind up switching to just one of the sites and drop the other. My preference is for dailymile to add an android app. While I love Runtastic I don't want to move all my data.

If you've not started with either yet, but you're considering using one give me a shout. Let me know which you're using and we can "friend" each other on it and shout encouragement in the general direction of each other as we make progress.

Disclaimer: All those amazon.com links are affiliate links. Feel free to click on through and shop until you can't shop no more! I'll make money if you do. Not much. But I thought you should know I had an interest in your following those amazon links. The other links are to my two online running profiles/logs.