I hit a nice milestone this past week. I’ve now lost over 20 pounds. So this is a double-win week.

Also, a surprising improvement at the gym. I ran my sprints today and they were every bit as hard as they usually are. However… my recovery time was kick ass. My heart rate dropped back to normal in no time. So, winning.

In my attempt here to lose weight and be a healthy size (finally), I am using a few different tools for measurement:

1. A Withings scale – to track my weight, BMI, fat mass and muscle mass
2. The Fitbit - to track my food, activity, sleep
3. Runkeeper and Fitocracy - to track my exercise
4. A kitchen scale and all the little measuring cups and such
5. Measuring tape.

These are my measuring cups. Cute, eh?

None of these things are always 100% accurate.

The Withings scale I know is weighing me light. When I went to the doctor’s office, I weighed in heavier. And I don’t completely trust it for the body fat percentage either.

The Fitbit doesn’t know my heart rate, so how can it measure my caloric burn exactly? And some of the time when I enter food, I over-estimate. Or I over-simplify… surely not all “chef salads” are the same, so wouldn’t there be some caloric variances from that salad from the salad I ate if I choose that?

Runkeeper and Fitocracy are as accurate as the information I put into it. But I think the GPS on Runkeeper gets lost sometimes. And I can’t always find the exercise I am doing (like Tabata sprints or reclining rope pull-ups) on Fitocracy, so it doesn’t get recorded.

And the measuring cups and spoons? I may not always fill them properly. I don’t think everyone does. It’s either a smidgen too little or a little too heaping.

And I’m pretty sure I have no idea how to properly measure myself with that tape thing. In fact, I know I don’t.

This is definitely not my body. Yet.

But does this matter? I don’t think so. It isn’t that it is 100% accurate that matters. What matters is that you are getting feedback about what you are doing and how you are doing it. It matters if you are becoming more aware of your actions.

As an example, the  scale that (very kindly) weighs me light by a kilo or so… does that matter? Fuck no. What matters is that the number keeps getting smaller. That’s the part I should focus on.

Same with the Fitbit. It doesn’t matter if it is 100% accurate about my caloric burn versus the intake. What matters is that I am paying attention to what’s going into my body and how active I am being. And I can see that it doesn’t matter that I went to the gym that day if I’m going to eat an entire large Papa John’s pizza that night.

I think that’s what I need to keep in mind. It doesn’t matter if I’m measuring accurately. What matters is that I keep things moving the way they should be.

Virtual scrapbooking. I don’t real-life scrapbook. But I do like to pin the odd thing here and there that interests me, or things that I would like to own one day. Stuff like that.

I think the best thing to come out of Pinterest are the following two websites… they often make me laugh. HOWEVER… a lot of times these images are definitely NSFW, so be careful when/where you check them out.

Pinterest, You Are Drunk

The description for this site is “Y’ALL ARE GOING A BIT OVERBOARD OVER THERE. I’M HERE TO HELP.”

One of my favourite recent pins was this one…

Makes being single seem like a great thing to be.

WTF, Pinterest?

I’m sure you can imagine that this one follows along the same lines. The description for this site is: “I am often inspired by what you pin to Pinterest.com, but sometimes, you make me say, “WTF”?”

A great recent pin?

I don't get it either

So. Whether you are new to Pinterest, a long time Pinterester, or someone who doesn’t give a flying fuck at a rolling doughnut what the sweaty squirrel Pinterest is… these sites are worth having a look.

But I need to confess something: I’m not feeling all that good about this week’s “success”. Yes, I am a lower weight since last week… but not that much lower. Which sucks, because I’ve been well behaved.

I’m trying to focus on the fact that I didn’t put this weight on really quickly (although it was rather effortlessly) and that it is dropping. I just wish it was as easy to take off as it was to put on. Stupid fatness.

On the plus side (no pun intended – ha ha) – Fitbit has informed me that it is no longer 16 October that I should hit my goal… but more like 23 September. Silly Fitbit! Don’t you know that I’m going to be a brat some weeks and drink all the beers? You should stick with that October date. I’m sure going to.

Anyway… I found this picture in amongst my May photos from 2011…

24/12/09 - It's me Robert. I am seven on Christmas. My dad is poo. Merry Christmas.

I was with Eva in a pub near Black Friars Bridge that day. We had been just roaming around London and then stopped for lunch. I seem to remember that the food was okay and the ale was lovely. They had a guestbook lying around, and this entry was just one of many. It made me wonder about this poor 7 year-old kid, in the pub with his old man on Christmas Eve.

like the window full of herbs and lemons?

There it is! It has other marvellous attachments (like a blender… Welcome to Margaritaville : Population – Me).

You can see in the picture I made some mayo (that’s the gloop in the jar, and I’ll write more about that later). But the very first thing I did was cut myself on the fucking thing. Twice.

first boo-boo

second boo-boo (the big cut)

After some emergency first aid (and a hell of a lot of whinging) I used the machine to first make mayonnaise and then the MOST GARLIC-FILLED GUACAMOLE IN THE UNIVERSE.

five cloves of garlics. and a shallot. vampires beware.

Now that I had some deliciousness happening, I decided I should probably pull something together for lunch. I had a butternut squash hanging around, so I thought I would roast that as a start.

I usually buy the squash already cut up (I’m lazy, yo), but this time I had a whole squash to cut up. Fresh-cut butternut squash smells good. It is like pumpkin… but more apple-ly. I was surprised that there were seeds in there. I don’t know why I was surprised. I suppose that’s what happens when you are used to buying all your food already processed.

lookit all those seeds!

Seeing those seeds gave me an idea: Could butternut squash seeds be roasted just like pumpkin seeds? They sure look the same. So I thought I would give it a try. Win! They did roast up exactly the same and were super delicious.

In the end, my lunch ended up being home-made mayonnaise (with chipotle paste – so good) with roasted butternut squash, guacamole (again, home-made – I rock) and tuna wrapped in seaweed with glutton-free soy sauce and with butternut squash seeds to finish. SO YUMMY.

I also had fresh iced tea. I used the blender to crush the ice for it (fancied it up a load, didn’t it?). It is just rooibos tea with ice and a sprig of mint. I’m getting very used to iced tea with no sugar or other sweeteners. Some teas (like rooibos) are fairly sweet naturally, so you don’t need to add anything to it.

nom nom nom

This lunch was WAY too big. It ended up being 1067 calories. I should have had half the amount and saved the seeds for a snack later. But it worked out okay – I ate this late in the day and just didn’t eat again, so I came out ahead of my ‘allotted’ calories that day (thank you Fitbit for tracking all that for me!)

It’s been an interesting month of eating well. It is delicious but a hella lot of work. I would definitely make this again – but would eat less of all of it.  Either just the tuna and avocado wrap or the squash… or half servings of both.

Signing up for the free service was hella easy. The only snag was that if you want me to enter a valid email address as a username – say so before I click submit.

Once I was all signed up I needed a co-conspirator to try out the shiny new internet thing. Fortunately I work with geeks.

So Rich and I tried and tried to set up a meeting. Not as easy and intuitive as it looks on the surface… probably because we were trying to invite each other. Which you cannot do. You send out the meeting link and that’s it. That’s the invite. You can’t search for and invite other MeetingBurner users. Which is a bit odd, no?

The site itself is nice and the service is a great idea. I think it is missing that one piece – that you should be able to find and invite specific people so that the meeting ends up in their Meeting Burner schedule and they can easily click into the meeting if they are already logged in.

Once we had it up and running, it actually was nice. A great feature is that you can choose to share your entire screen, a particular program, or part of a screen. Could help avoid those potentially embarrassing Growl pop-ups during presentations.

I’ll definitely keep an eye on this one. It’ll be interesting to see how it ends up playing with other websites and apps. (By the way, there is an iPhone app, but I didn’t play with it yet. Meetings on the go-go?) If you want to try it, there is a free account available so you can have a play. I think this is a great option for small businesses and start-ups that don’t need something crazy like Web-Ex but do need something a bit more robust than what Skype can provide.

As I said in my previous post – my weight has dropped each week for the first five weeks. Going forward, I hope to do this each Tuesday.

This week: Success. On track for 6/52 weeks so far. Yay!

1. Eat smarter
2. Move more
3. Measure that shit

Pretty simple, no?

Eat Smarter

For me, this has meant following what is probably most commonly known as the “Paleo Diet” (or Paleolithic Diet or Caveman Diet or Hunter Gatherer Diet). To me, it should be just the “Whole, real foods (sans gluten) diet”, because that’s really what it is.  Single ingredient foods for the most part with a few little bits to make life sunnier (red wine, dark chocolate, good coffee).

It goes a lot along the lines of what Michael Pollen says in his book In Defense of Food: ”Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.”

It’s a fairly easy rule to live by.

And I’m trying to live by these “rules” about 80-90% of the time. Except this month, during which I’m subjecting myself to DEADLY DETOX FEBRUARY. Same rules as above, less fruit, the wine, chocolate and *sob* coffee (gave that up as of Thursday last week). And I’m sticking to it 100%. Six days in and no one has been maimed. Yet.

I’m going to enjoy the SHIT out of the next glass of red wine I have, let me tell you.

Move more

Actually, right now I’m failing at this pretty hard. STUPID LUNGS – BE LESS STUPID. I’m so tired all the time because of this damned cough so I’m not doing much exercise. I’m hoping that later this week I’ll be back to the plan, which is to walk in the morning, lift weights at lunch, and run in the evening. BAM.

Measure that shit

I’m actually measuring using a few tools that I’ll go into in separate posts:

1. Fitbit (food, sleep, mood, weight, activity)
2. Fitocracy (exercise)
3. Runkeeper (exercise – cardio)
4. Withings Scale (weight)

Some of these connect to each other. Some don’t. Altogether, they ensure I’m totes on top of this shit. Measurement is important – it helps track progress. I’ll give some in-depth reviews on those tools and how I’m using them in later posts.

That’s the quick and dirty outline of what I’m up to. I will try to talk about each in more detail as time goes on, and let you all know how it is all holding up.

My goal for this year is regarding my weight, to wit: To get rid of some of it.

I tried this last year (and the year before, and the year before, etc.,etc., ad nauseam). And in 2011, until all the holidays at the end of April, it was working. I lost nearly two stone (28 pounds). Unfortunately, because I didn’t keep on keeping on… I gained it all back and then some for the beginning of this year. Not too smart.

I’ve tried a lot of different ways to measure success around this, but nothing in the last 27 years (let’s just say I’m 27, okay?) has worked. So I’m trying something different.

This is the plan/goal: For forty of the fifty-two weeks of this year, I will weigh less than the week before.

How much less is not relevant. As long as it is less. If I actually hit my goal weight (which if – IF – I behave the entire fucking year should be early October), I may change “weigh less” to “weigh within two kilos of” so I don’t go too far.

Why forty out of fifty-two? So when life throws things at me (Vegas in January, Irish wedding in April), I don’t have to feel like I can’t enjoy myself because I don’t want to fail at this goal. I’ve built in some buffers so I can stay successful.

So far it is working. It has been five weeks so far, and I have dropped every week, even post Vegas (even though that was only 0.2kg, or just under 1/2 a pound). In fact, as of this morning I’ve lost just over a stone (a stone = 14 pounds, for y’all not in Britain) since my first weigh-in on January 3rd.

So. Here is me being publicly accountable for what I’m doing with/t0/for my poor body. I am not quite ready yet for other confessions (like how much I currently weigh) but may be once I get closer to my goal. I’ll try to keep updating about how I’m doing it and how it is going.

Wish me luck! Here’s to a healthier Jodi in 2012. (Yikes.)