Aedificamus: The Value of Continuous Feedback

One thing I owe my readers is a full review of LoseIt. I keep saying I'm going to do one, but each time I try to get into it, I find the review keeps getting longer and more detailed. For those willing to wait for that, I'll plan to post it by the end of the week. The "tl; dr" version is "a great way to track calories and exercise, interact with others on your journey, and make fitness and weight loss somewhat fun and entertaining, or at least as fun and entertaining as it can be".

The piece I want to talk to for this posting is the community aspect, and how that community can be helpful if you let it be. With a couple of exceptions, my "friends" within the LoseIt app are people I do not know in real life. My sole interaction with them, at least so far, is via the LoseIt app. I know some might think that that's a very weak connection, and probably not really helpful beyond superficial cheerleading. I understand that reasoning, but I would have to soundly say to anyone who thinks that way, "you are wrong".

I had an interesting experience after I came back from Philmont in July 2016. Over the course of two and a half weeks, where I'd exercised a tremendous amount, burned a lot of calories, and kept a meticulous measure of my food, I should have come back leaner and lighter than ever. Instead, I came back close to twelve pounds heavier than when I had left. I was weirded out by that, and I felt a little ashamed. Maybe I hadn't kept as good a track as I intended. Maybe my calculations were wrong. Maybe I didn't work as hard as I thought. Regardless, I certainly didn't want to post a twelve-pound weight gain. What would my friends think?! Yes, even at this point, my primary feeling was of shame because I'd drifted so far off my course. My answer? I'd stop posting my weigh-ins for a bit, jut until I got back to my earlier number and then I could pick up like nothing happened. Surely it wouldn't take that long.

Days stretched into weeks, and weeks stretched into months, and then it dawned on me that I'd stopped weighing in entirely. I still posted, still logged my food, still cheered people on, but my weight hadn't moved on the charts for three months. Hmmm. Well, I better take a look. I mean, come on, how bad could it be?

I stepped on the scale and ended up reading a weight that was thirty pounds heavier than when I reached my lowest weight back in March of 2016. Thirty pounds!!! What the...?!! I knew full well what had happened, and why. I felt embarrassed to post a follow-up. It felt good to get that daily high five for being on track, even if the daily high five was coming from people I didn't really know. For certain, my embarrassment of having to post a reversal made me shy away from weighing in each day, and that shying away from weighing every day removed me from that immediate feedback loop. I ate much the same as I had been, and I figured I was moving about the same amount, but over the course of several months, the food intake crept up, the activity level crept down (injuries and minor aches helped that along, to be fair) and thus, I found myself in negative territory, giving up thirty pounds of gains.

I tried quietly setting a new goal, and I even made a post stating that I was trying a new plan of attack. Net result? New update and a definite highlight of reversal.

What also resulted? One of my friends gently calling me out and reminding me that I'd finally faced the elephant in the room and that I could move forward from here. 

How has reality looked since then? Like this:

That old familiar saw-tooth pattern is with me again. I'm down roughly 6 1/2 pounds in the past couple of weeks. I have up days and down days, sometimes in a row, but usually back and forth. It's maddening, but it's also helpful. If I have a particularly big drop in a day, it's an indication that I can put the brakes on a little. If I bounce up a touch, it's an indication that I need to be more active. If I bounce up a lot, I need to seriously think about what I ate the day before, and see how I make sure to not repeat it today. The key point is everyday feedback, both from my app via pictures and data points, and those daily cheers and well wishes from virtual friends contribute to success. The real takeaway is our online friends are our support system, and they want us to succeed. They will cheer us on, but they will not often call us on our BS. They will wait and watch patiently, to see what we ultimately do. In my case, it was obvious that my lack of weigh-ins was a sign that I'd lapsed. When I stepped up and admitted it, no one called me a failure or lazy or any of that. They just said "glad to see you are back on track. Good luck out there."

Fitness goals are often challenging. They take a lot of patience and focus. Quick feedback is helpful but more important is a willingness to accept that feedback and actually act on it. Get over the embarrassment of lapsing. It doesn't mean we lack discipline. It means we're human, like roughly eight billion others out there. Own that humanity, log the discrepancies and move on. Our friends want to celebrate our successes, not remind us of our failings. No, really, it's true. If we have a bad day, acknowledge it, deal with it, and do better the next day, and the next day, and the next. Ultimately, we will reach the goal we have set and probably much faster because we are allowing for regular feedback each day. Don't let temporary embarrassment derail your goals. Use the feedback each day to plan an even better tomorrow.

Aedificamus: Everything Works, Until it Doesn't

I started this little all consuming project on August 14, 2015. At the time, I weighed 263 pounds (yes, posts earlier stated I weighed 260, but the scale I was using at first and the one I use now have a three pound discrepancy. To be consistent, since I'm using the Health-O-Meter LoseIt Scale, I adjusted to keep the numbers consistent). I embarked on an approach that I tinkered with over several months, and for quite some time, felt I had come up with a winning formula. My results certainly seemed to confirm that line of thinking. I did offer a caveat that, what works at one point may stop working or be less effective later on.

That's the reality I'm dealing with today.

First, let's look at the numbers:

My LoseIt graph of bodyweight, current as of May 19, 2016.

Yep, things have been interesting the past few months. In some ways, I feel like I am more active than ever. I'm focused on the food I prepare. I'm getting ready for what will likely be a challenging but fun two week long backpacking trip. I should have had this in the bag a long time ago, and yet...

Not only has progress slowed, at certain points it has stopped completely and reversed. Ups and downs and fluctuations day to day are to be expected, but this is different. Using a moving average, when all is said and done, I have been virtually parked at around 193 for three months. I got down to 190 for a day, and then later I reached 188 for a few days, but then rocketed back to around 194. I blamed it on a weekend at a scouting activity where my prime responsibility was cooking (and yes, cooking the fun stuff :) ). I also bring my culinary skills to a variety of pirate festivals (in addition to being a living history docent, I also act with the Quartermaster crew as galley cook, which, let's face it, is fun). Still, I've been keeping track of my calories, I've been diligent about syncing my Fitbit with my apps, and sure, there are some days I don't make target, but the high majority of the time, I do. 

So what gives?

Data is interesting. If you focus on just one thing, it can tell you something specific, but it may not tell you the whole story. The image above deals with weight by itself. The following image, which is a graph of my Body Mass Index (BMI) adds another dimension:

My LoseIt graph of BMI, current as of May 19, 2016

I'll be the first to tell you that BMI is a flawed measure. No two people are exactly alike, and I have some unique morphology that messes with the very premise of BMI. I have a classic Viking build. I often joke that my scant Danish heritage is really only represented in my name, as I am basically 1/8 Danish, with a full half of my heritage Italian and Spanish/Mexican, and the rest a mixture in various parts of English, Irish and Welsh. For those who are fans of history, you probably already jumped to the point where you would say "yeah, but there's lots of Danish/Scandinavian in that mix of English, Irish and Welsh... that's who the Saxon's were", and you'd be right. Long story short, classic Viking morphology defines my body. I have broad shoulders. I have a long torso. I have a long neck. Most important, I have stubby legs. I'm 6 feet, 2 inches, but I have a 31" inseam. A typical height for that inseam length is about 5 feet 10 inches, so four inches of my cross section are coming out of my torso. There' a lot more mass in the torso than in the legs, all things considered. My point being, just getting to a green zone BMI may or may not be a proper target, but since hospitals and the insurance industry use it, and pretty heavily, for making health related decisions (and assigning risk factors), I abide by it. I hit 24.9 BMI (the highest I can be and still be in the green zone) on February 27, 2016. The green line in the graph represents that 24.9 goal. 

Do you notice anything interesting? Yes, there are dips, even some significant ones, and there are setbacks (yep, a significant pair of them as you can see), but overall, when averaged out, I'm holding altitude at that 24.9 spot. This is, I assure you, not intentional. I really want to hit that 185 target I made for myself, but my body has been fighting me tooth and nail... or has it?

What's different between now and what I was doing in the Autumn of 2015 and the Winter of 2016? 

One interesting variable change is the addition of the FitBit into the equation. It's a really neat tool in that it tells me my caloric burn for each day, and it tracks steps for me. However, I have noticed something interesting. Back when I was using my phone as my pedometer, it seemed to take me an hour and forty minutes of cumulative walking to get to 10,000 steps. I stopped keeping track time wise or distance wise, but I've had the nagging suspicion that my FitBit may be a little too generous with my step count. It certainly seems I hit that value much sooner. It's also possible that my phone registers the distance differently, and since I started wearing the FitBit, I don't carry my phone with me everywhere all the time, so I can't compare the two values in a meaningful way. 

Additionally, I've been training for a two week backpacking trek, with conditioning hikes covering five to seven miles, with elevation climbs of about 1,000 feet up and down, with a 45 pound backpack. Seems I should be losing weight left and right with that kind of regimen, except... now that I'm doing these long hikes, I have had mornings where my typical physical training sessions, be they yoga or strength training stuff, have diminished. Also, I've been producing a podcast that takes up a fair amount of editing time, so a lot of my previous exercise focus has been shifted. In short, while I want to say I'm doing the same thing I was doing before, the truth is, I'm not. I've changed the load, both physically and cognitively. I may not be getting all of the exercise and calorie burn I think I am getting.

Yeah, but my food regimen has been rock solid, right? 

Well... I can go back and see a whole bunch of things that, if I were to be 100% objective, I thumb ruled and used experience to provide numbers. Did I include the pat of butter that went in to lubricate the pan? How about the salt used in the blanching process? Did I really know the make-up of that rice noodle I used? When I eat out at a Mexican place and get ceviche, do I really know the caloric breakdown of what I have eaten? Have I truly been making my own meals, or have I slowly worked in social lunches at the office to help balance things? Sure, I hit my fruits and vegetable quota religiously, and have for months, but there's a lot in the mix I am probably not accounting for, or I am willfully ignoring. In short, I may be eating more than I am giving myself credit for. Mix that with a changed workout regimen, a possibly overgenerous accounting of my thermal output, and a very real underreporting of my caloric intake, and I think it's very possible that my lack of progress is my own darn fault. 

Additionally, it's also entirely possible that I've biased myself by having hit the BMI target. It's not the weight goal, but it's put me in the green zone for healthy weight, and perhaps my sub-conscious is saying "OK, body, that's enough, we need to overrule this darn fool, by whatever means necessary."

There's one final detail I think may be important, and that's time. Time using a caloric budget. Time planning workouts. Time going out of my way to train. Time avoiding certain foods or food combinations. Time researching alternatives to help me lower sodium or excess sugar. All of this adds up, and results in "Weight Loss Fatigue". Yep, I'll admit it, some days, I just want to say "the hell with all of this!" It manifests itself some times in my going days without weighing myself. I'd been an advocate of daily weighing and found the daily fluctuations to be a wonderful source of daily angst, so I cut them back to once a week. Problem is with once a week, I'm not getting that daily feedback or getting the motivation to course correct. Holding ground isn't so bad, but it also makes me a little complacent. Having a spike in weight makes me less want to weigh daily. Therefore, even though the daily weigh-in irritates me, it really does give me daily input that I can act on, so I'm going back to it, or as daily as I can realistically do.

It's easy to lament a lack of progress and think "oh, things have just gotten so much harder, I'm doing the same thing and not getting results any longer". It's possible that could be the case; the body is highly adaptable, and I could be developing muscle from all my exertions, but with a reduced calorie load, I'm highly dubious. No, I think the real facts are that I'm not doing the same thing. I've drifted off my course and routine. I'm not as diligent as I was. I'm using the tools to provide a false sense of accomplishment. I'm getting a dose of dopamine each time I meet a goal and see the bar and icons turn green. That in and of itself is its own reward, and it distracts from my ultimate goal. To that effect, it's back to some of my tried and true methods. An hour and forty minutes daily walking time, measured some other way than just letting my FitBit tell me. It's time to get back into those FitStar workouts that I've let become less frequent. It's time to say "no, thank you" to team lunches, or at least go less frequently, and take my cooking and food preparation back. Mostly, I need to really take the time to think about what I ingest (and more importantly, digest), and realize that there may be lots of hidden stuff I'm not accounting for, but I better figure out how.

So there it is, nine months in, almost seventy pounds down, but those last eight pounds are proving to be frustratingly difficult to say goodbye to. Whatever the reason, what I relied on before isn't working the same way, so it's time to pivot. Check back in a couple of months and we'll see how well I do with that ;).

Aedificamus: Product Review: Paderno Spiral Vegetable Slicer

I can only imagine a few of you are looking at this and saying "Oh, good grief, what is TESTHEAD doing now?!" To those, I can say "look at the title". If you see "Aedificamus" in the title, it's related to food, diet, exercise, and other activities associated with it. Eating is a huge part of the fitness puzzle, and in my opinion, it's probably the most important part. Having some simple tools to help with food preparation can make for a much more positive experience.

One of the discoveries I have made this year is the process of making "vegetable noodles". I enjoy pasta, but a lot of the time, what I am really enjoying is the various sauces. The noodles often don't really have much in the way of flavor by themselves (there are of course exceptions, but generally, plain noodles are bland). It's with this idea that the egg and wheat noodles can be replaced with a variety of vegetables cut into noodle sized strips. Some of the best vegetables to do this with are a variety of squashes, potatoes, carrots, turnips, etc. Of course, getting them into the shapes of noodles can take some doing... or it can be as simple as buying a spiralizer.

Spiralizers come in a variety of shapes and sizes. Some are motorized and can attach to other appliances. KitchenAid makes one that attaches to the front port on their stand mixer products, but that's a pricy commitment for many, especially since a prerequisite is owning a KitchenAid mixer. For those who want to experiment with this approach, and don't mind a little hand cranking, the Paderno Tri-Blade Spiral Vegetable Slicer is a nice, affordable rig to play with.

On one side is a corer spindle (about three quarters the diameter of a dime) and blades that make up a "blade insert". The Paderno unit comes with three of these:
- a straight blade, which will create long, uninterrupted flat ribbons.
- a shredder blade, with small triangular prongs that make slices and result in thin, spaghetti sized noodles.
- a chipper blade, with larger triangular prongs that make for bigger chunks (think french fries or curly fries).

On the opposite side is a hand crank with a prong attachment to adhere to the back end of the vegetable being cut. The crank sits on a platform that can be slid back and forth, with a handle that can fold out to help guide the process of spiral cutting. All of this sits in a housing with suction cups on the legs that, when pressed down, holds onto the counter or another surface so it doesn't slide around.

I tested this out last night with chayote, which is a squash variety from Mexico. It held against the corer and the crank handle securely, and cutting the strips with the chipper attachment worked cleanly. There was no binding or forcing the cut. The blades made short work of the chayote and the result was "noodles" that boiled up fast, blended well with a basil tomato sauce and opened up a nice new way of consuming squash in a quick to cook format. This is the method that is often touted for making "spaghetti squash" and I intend to give that a try later this week.

Clean-up is easy, just pull out the blade insert, run it under hot water, and place in some soap solution and hot water to sterilize, wash and dry the rest of the spiralizer, slip the blades into the base for safekeeping, and then the whole unit packs away in the same space as a stack of dinner plates.

Bottom Line:

Many kitchen tools are either cheaply made and cumbersome to use, or they are elegant & well designed but expensive. The Paderno unit fits in a nice in-between space. It's an affordable unit that works smoothly and feels sturdy (and safe). It packs down nicely, doesn't require a lot of space to store, and is styled in such a way that, if you are one who likes having their kitchen gear on display, would not feel odd just leaving it out on the counter.

Ultimately, any kitchen tool needs to feel comfortable and encourage use, and at that level, the Paderno Spiral Vegetable Slicer is a winner. If you are considering entering the fray of replacing traditional pasta with vegetables (even if just occasionally) this is a nice tool that definitely gets the job done.