Category Archives: tracking

Day 83 of 101: Health stats and eating myself sick

Not enoughs and too muches.

Somewhere in these numbers, I suspect, is the key to my sudden Sunday grossness.

Click for more detail.

For the second time in a month, I woke up feeling mysteriously nauseated, followed by my head over a toilet, followed by not being able to stomach much of anything for 24 hours.

Now, I suppose this could be a 24-hour bug, but mostly I was just nauseated (and had a headache from all the reclining I did trying to avoid feeling nauseated).

Or stress. But I don’t generally react to stress, and if I do it’s a familiar headache accompanied by nothing else.

And no, I’m not pregnant.

So it comes down to my diet. I suspect it’s too little water, too few vegetables, not enough exercise — and maybe all that makes for a poor foundation for a celebratory beer here and little treats of cheese and sweets there.

I find it remarkable (and sure, I’m still guessing at this point) that my diet could so swiftly affect my well-being. And that just a few months of healthy eating and exercise would be enough to reset all my defaults to You Must Eat Healthy Or Else.

So could it be? Was my body rebelling against my poorer choices? Hey, Body … I can totally get behind you on that. Thank you. No really. I’m glad you care so much.

So I’ll treat you right.

This morning I woke up and ate my trusty egg-and-toast breakfast. I headed to a morning weight-lifting class (that kicked my butt! I loved it!). And I’ve been sipping on water all day.

More of this, please.

Day 55 of 101: Health stats and my workouts

It’s been a solid week since I switched from Weight Watchers to Calorie Count.

Guess what happened? I lost three pounds. I suppose all those points-free fruit and vegetable portions were adding up, because other than eating a little bit less of everything, I haven’t changed my general eating habits.

I started the week around 127 and ended it a little above 123. I like that trend line -- it keeps things real on days I gain a little or lose more than usual, and it's probably what I'll pay closer attention to until it falls more in line with my daily weight figures.

Beyond the scale, I’m physically feeling good, if “suffering” the side effects of eating (appropriately) fewer calories than I burn each day — I’ve spent most of my days feeling faintly hungry.

It’s a bit like an unscratchable itch … annoying. It annoyed me when I first lost weight several years ago, and it was often what made me feel (mentally) miserable — “Why can’t I eat more? It’s so unfair!”

But I found myself questioning that feeling this week. I wondered if this isn’t hunger so much as a different kind of equilibrium. I mean, my stomach doesn’t hurt. I don’t have a headache. I have plenty of energy. The foods I’m eating are nutritious. Maybe this new feeling is simply what it is to be less full.

Because you know what funny thing happened this weekend? Twice I stopped short of cleaning the plate in front of me because I was getting too full.

Notable, folks. Notable.

For one thing, neither meal was terribly large (a sweet potato with greek yogurt for the one; the other, a crab cake sandwich with small sides of coleslaw and broccoli). For another thing — I rarely stop eating when there’s food left on the plate, even when I’m past being satisfied.

But I was feeling full, and I used that as my cue. “I’ll feel miserable if I finish this (delicious, wonderful, I-wanna-eat-it) sandwich. I better stop!” Of any change I could hope for, this is the most encouraging: me, listening to my body instead of to what I “want” to eat.

What about you? Do you find it hard to listen to your body when you’re eating? Have you started listening? How does it feel different? I want to know!

Now for some numbers

Decidedly different numbers, but good ones. These are the charts/graphs I get through analysis on Calorie Count …

Calories in, calories out
I spent most days eating fewer calories (blue) than I burned (purple).

Eating fewer calories than I burn. It works!

What is it about those line graphs that motivates me? I love seeing that I’ve worked hard and eaten well. Maybe this is the measure that stands in until I can fully appreciate how good those things feel in my life.

Nutrition breakdown

Calorie Count recommends food values based on the National Academy of Science’s Dietary Reference Intakes, and this is the information that will send me to the books more than any other. I’m curious how to best meet my daily nutritional needs; how to keep my meals diverse; how to satisfy my sweet tooth and fat tooth without (consistently) pushing the bad numbers over the edge.

Damn you, calcium and potassium! Damn you!

Same info, straight numbers:

I want to see more green. (Click the image to make it better)

So far the calcium, fiber, and potassium are the hardest numbers for me to hit. I need to create an action plan to tackle them; I hope to write about that tomorrow.

My workouts

I feel like I did less working out this week, though my calories burned come to more than 2,400 (yay!). Maybe it felt like less work because I didn’t do any weight classes …

Hey look! I did exercises!

Highlights
» My three-mile runs were hard, but I felt good finishing each one. My times ranged wide. My Tuesday run came in at about an 11:45-minute pace. Thursday was an indoor run, and I pushed it hard to get a 9:30-minute pace. Sunday was another outdoor run and I brought it down to a 10:30-minute pace. The goal is a ten-minute mile in the out-of-doors by Thanksgiving Day, and I feel like I can do it!

» My hike Wednesday was swift — I think I cut about five minutes off the initial climb (from 37 minutes to about 32 minutes). I’m headed out with Miss Dawgface again today and I’m wondering if we can shave even more time.

» Saturday’s Body Flow class did two things: It kicked my ass (I’m still sore); and it made me feel like a rock star. It was the first class I was able to do every track in full (even abs!), and my form was excellent (the instructor even called me out for it during one of our poses!). I felt so strong during that class. So of course I’m looking forward to more this week. Maybe I can finally drag that husband o’ mine to class with me …

I officially love starting out my weeks this way — celebrating what good things I did in the week past. Happy Monday, all!

Day 48 of 101: Switching from Weight Watchers to Calorie Count?

Boots: you know what they are made for.

You know what I did? I took my mom up on an invitation to spend an extra day in my hometown while Patrick returned to our home and to work. Enter a modicum of Guilt of the Unemployed — a life that allows me the choice in the first place, and which allows me to say “yes” without worrying about what awaits my return.

OK. Guilt aside, the day has been great so far. What it is to wake up in the home you spent so many years! In the very same room, in fact! My dad cooked me breakfast, my mom and I had a nice chat over coffee.

This opportunity will not go to waste, as I plan to take its rejuvenating powers back home with me and whip up amazing cooked and sewn things this week. And also to kick ass, running three miles (three!) on each of my training days. (Hey. That’s three miles.)

In any case, I sit here now in a coffee shop in my hometown. I walked to this shop (about an hour’s walk, after some meandering), and I’ll walk back home. In muh boots.

But for now I’m sitting, and thinking about making a big-little change for my day-to-day. …

A move away from Weight Watchers

Inspired by a friend who’s switched from Weight Watchers to straight-up calorie-counting, I got the bug to explore my options for keeping track of the calories I’m taking in and putting out.

Weight Watchers has been a great tool to help me think about how and what I eat, but lately I’ve been pretty stuck. I’m happy with how my body feels (and that’s my biggest gauge of healthfulness), but I know the work I’m doing and my attention to healthtful eating should reflect on the scale. They’re just not.

Enter calorie count, a free tool produced by the about.com folks.

I’m going to use this the next couple of weeks to see what happens.

Some things I already like about it:

» I get to see the actual numbers: calories, fat, protein, and other important nutritional information. Weight Watchers helped in part because I needed the simplified version of those numbers. Egg: 2 points. Flat. For a long time the idea of keeping track of all the vitals of a given food was overwhelming. The small, single number allowed me to keep track of food without getting lost in digits. But I’m ready for that information now, and in fact am eager to see how my diet breaks down. Do I get enough fat? Protein? Too much salt? Sugar?

» I get to use meal/recipe building tools (as I did with Weight Watchers). “Favorites,” too. The food database is a little cumbersome (perhaps because it’s so thorough), but these shortcut tools are a great way to keep track of foods I eat often (and to build custom items — which is especially helpful since the Beeson home makes so much from scratch).

» Tracking exercise. Calorie Count allows you to pick from its database of exercises to calculate how many calories you burned. Or you can input numbers from your heart-rate monitor (or an exercise machine at the gym). Weight Watchers calculates activity using its points system, and (unless I overlooked it) doesn’t allow you to input your own numbers. I like the additional control.

» Calorie Count provides guidance for your daily calorie targets. Based on the age, weight, etc. information I provided Calorie Count, it estimates the number of calories I burn each day (and adds in exercise when I record it). I selected the “Weight Loss” preference and indicated that I do “Moderate Activity”, and the computation gave me a calorie-intake target: 1,400 a day.

» It also provides guidance for nutritional targets based on your dietary inclinations/needs. The program lets you know if you’re meeting your targets for, say, vitamin C or protein or saturated fat. It can change those targets based on your preference. I chose “Calorie Count Recommended Values,” but I could have chosen “Generic USDA” or “Vegetarian” or “Mediterranean” diet, among many others.

» Visualization. And all of these numbers are crunched through visual graphics. You know I love it. Here are some things I can see (and by seeing, understand more clearly):

Here are a few days' worth of food and exercise calories, visualized.

I get to see how my eating (blue line) compares with my calorie output (purple line), and each day’s calorie difference (in bar graph form).

A nutritional report for a single day. Including a grade!

Here is my nutritional breakdown for a single day. Green means either a low intake of “bad” nutrients or a high intake of good ones. Red means too much of a bad thing, or not enough of a good thing. That whole report card thing is kinda cute, too. I’m curious how often I’ll agree.

Nutrient numbers: what I'm getting compared with what I should get.

Similar to the graph above, but here it’s straight numbers. And if you notice, numbers are crunched for each food item (as for my “Dinner” items above). So are the day’s total numbers. And, and, I can generate a similar report for all meals over the course of a week, month, etc. Why is that valuable to me? Well, I notice that for the day above, my vitamin C, calcium, iron, and potassium numbers are way too low. Is that true in general, or was that an off day? I can answer that question by observing the averages over time.

Obviously, I’m intrigued and excited by what this tool might offer as I try to get healthier and healthier.

What about you? Have you had to change paths as you try to get or stay healthy? Find new tools or methods? Give up something that was working but suddenly stopped working? I wanna know!

Day 41 of 101: Health stats & my workouts

Good Monday, muh friends! I had great week, and a great weekend. Husbandman got third place in a pretty grueling cyclocross race in Tennessee — go husbandman! When we got back in town it was time to get groceries, including tons of items to restock the pantry. That’s my favorite: a cabinet full of dried fruit, nuts, flour, huge bags of yeast. I feel ready for it all.

I also shared some links with you, and wrote about how awesome I was at meeting most of my three-week goals. And then there was my plan for this week (I think that’s gonna be a new thing; it’s just so nice for this list-making freak).

So annway, what made this week so good? It was the running. Two-and-a-half miles each training day! I averaged a 10-minute mile on day 2!

I’ve gone into each week of this training with the attitude that if the training says I should be running X amount, then obviously it’s what I can do — I’m not mentally preparing to give up. Not one inch.

And I’m already letting my brain wander to … a 10K challenge. As if the 5K is inevitable.

The rest of my food and do week was good — more good workouts (I had to take it easy a couple of day after a nice big hike that winded me); more good-tasting, good-for-me food (tons of quinoa! roasted root vegetables!).

I’m coming to expect that my weeks will just be good, and that some weeks will prove to be great. In other words, no bad weeks. Or if there’s any bad in them, it’ll be very manageable.

This is possibly the best side-effect of eating well and exercising regularly.

Water intake

Light blue area: daily goal of sixty-four ounces
Darker blue area: daily water consumed

Slow and steady wins the race. Saturday was Patrick’s race, when I spent a lot of time in the cold and far away from a bathroom. Drinking lots of water was the last thing on my mind.

Weekly points

Light blue area: extra+activity points
Darker blue area: points consumed each day
Maroon area: daily allotment of twenty-nine points

I repeat, slow and steady wins the race. I didn’t really have an oops-I-ate-too-much day this week. I also didn’t, though, keep to the 32 points a day I’d set out to eat. Maybe this week I’ll do it.

Calories burned

Light blue area: goal of 2,000 calories
Darker blue area: total calories actually burned (increasing with each workout)
Green area: daily calories burned

Yay yay yay! More than 2,000 calories burned! I burned an average of more than 300 calories for each run this week, which is nearly twice what I was burning during my training just a few weeks ago. The runs are longer, obviously, but I think I’m also able to push harder for longer. Go fitness go!

Weight

Opposite land: When the line goes up, I lost weight; when it goes down, I gained.

Starting Monday: 126.2
Ending Sunday: 127.4

If I’d had a bad food/workout week, I’d probably be annoyed that I didn’t lose this week. But as it is, I feel so good about my week that this number is inconsequential. For now.