Diet & Exercise

... yes, I have finally got around to facing those to things in my life.

I have mentioned lately that I have packed on some pounds recently.  For a while there, I had just suspected it... but sometime late last year when we wanted to weigh Rocky and did the whole... weigh yourself first, weight yourself holding dog, do the subtraction... method, and when I did Step #1, well I was given quite a jolt.  Looking at pictures of myself (which honestly are a rare thing no matter what the physical condition), it was pretty obvious that this occurred over the last 1-2 years... and the result had been about a 30-35 lb weight gain. 

Now this isn't as bad as it sounds, I was underweight for my height most of my adult life (that stretching from late high school to about 5-ish years ago)... and all this weight just puts me at the tippy-top of the range I should be for my height... or slightly "overweight"... depending on where you look.  Regardless of the official guidelines, I can tell you I was not certainly happy with the appearance or used to carrying around the extra weight.  This has certainly contributed to the whole mid-life crisis I have been feeling lately as it seems like it has been a lot of physical and mental (i.e. dealing with work in this economy and having done this self-employed thing now for nearly a decade now).

I will be the first to admit, I didn't want to deal with the body stuff for a while.  Motivation, self-discipline, will-power... one of them check-marks in my "strengths" column.  Sure I whined and wallowed about it, but I didn't feel like dealing with it, let alone doing anything about it.  Call it "denial" or whatever (I say it was more "indifference"), but if you are going to view this in the "stages of grief" model... more recently I have come around to "acceptance" which brought me to the point where I finally decided to do something about it.

A lot of this impetus is thanks to Todd.  A few months back, he went in for a physical... which he was dreading.  He was suspecting that he would be told he should drop some weight ... and given the high stress and long hours of his job, high blood pressure also would not have been a surprise.  He got both those things, but the bigger/biggest surprise was very high cholesterol.  Instead of immediately throwing him on some kind of drug, the doctor decided to try "dietary intervention" and he has been seeing a dietician / nutritionist on a regular basis.  I think this was a really wonderful approach, as I think it seems like these days everyone (doctors, patients, and certainly pharm companies) are too quick to go to a "take a pill" solution without addressing what can be naturally ... and what's really the source of the problem. 

Part of this was keeping a food diary and he has done that by hand, but also via one of the many web sites that make it quite easy to do.  When you start keeping tabs on this nutrtional info... or heck, even just looking at it... it's no wonder obesity and diabetes has been rising at alarming rates in this country. 

So while we have tidied up our eating since Todd has been doing this, I decided to participate more actively within the past couple of weeks.  I think one of my problems is that my metabolism just shut or slowed down as it I entered into my 40s... and I am hearing way to much how things start following apart at this stage in life.  Now I kind of understand all the bemoaning about reaching tha milestone, 40 was actually an amazing year for me... but this 41 year has certainly sent me back to earth.

My problem is that I did each much at all.  I could go through a day without eating much of anything until dinner time... and if I did eat during the day, it as likely not very healthy... stuff like a few cookies and half a bag of popcorn, I take it qualifies as "not healthy."   So while my body dealt with that kind of eating for awhile, it had enough recently... and my carb heavy grazing and lack of eating, packed on those 30+ lbs, though thankfully for me, again I definitely had room to grow...

Well, this has turned into much more of a ramble than I anticipated (though for me, rambling on is no surprise).  But anyhow, I am now eating 3 meals a day + 2 "snacks"... though dinner is still my primary meal.  I am eating healthier... we've had more fresh fruit and nuts in the house than ever before.  And to simplify things very much, watching the carbs... and shooting for a 2-to-1 ratio between carbs and protein... and always trying to have some protein at every eating opportunity.   Though keeping things into perspective... something like an orange with natural sugars and a couple of cookies might have the same number of carbs, but you can guess which is the better alternative.   And not worrying so much about "fat" and "cholesterol" content, which don't necessarily have to be avoided... but get a bad rap with their names... but again, there's good fat and bad fat.... but again, that's just the very basics.

... okay, haven't got to the exercise stuff either!  But having did the gym thing several years back, we also knew that was something that wasn't going to work for us again.  Todd just wants to get home after his typical 12-hour day at the office (and often longer than that!) and while I have the time and opportunity, I again mention my rocky relationship with self-discipline and will power.  We have been looking into home exercise equipment (mostly ellipticals, which seemed like a good combo between a treadmill and bike), but this weekend we broke down and got a Wii...

...along with its two most famous fitness products, Wii Fit and EA Sports Active.  We test drove each of them over the weekend and both seem to give us a lot of opportunity to give us an on-demand exercise program that can fit into our schedules.  While I haven't explored it fully, I am particularly impressed with Active which gave a very structured 15-20 minute program that left me breathless last night and a tad sore this morning.  The technology is really quite a amazing at how well it tracks your movement... and the Wii Fit board which also is an amazing device, but also a scale...

The good news there is that it did calculate a Wii age ... and for me it was 35, which absolutely shocked me.  That's -6 years, but a lot of that was determined seemed to be determined by a pretty silly balance exercise, so I am not putting that much faith/cred into that.  It did however calc a BMI (body mass index) and there I need to take my 24 (again, borderline normal / overweight), down to 22... which translates to a weight loss of over 20 lbs, which I was thinking I needed to do... before all this, I was thinking 10-15 lbs.

So, we'll see what happens.  At some point, I think my body will know what weight it should be... but I certainly am starting to feel better that I am putting better stuff into my body and at least starting to move around a bit more than I have in a few years.

If you got this far, thanks for sticking around!   You know how I roll... and diet and exercise have moved to the forefront for now, which ain't a bad thing.

Comments

[Gail]

Now you're speaking my language--nutrition and exercise. Keep it up and it will become a habit. I liked your observation about turning 40 vs. 41. I noticed something similar. It seems like you can't get away with neglecting/abusing your body after 40.