a keen life

Lately, it seems that gardening is most of my exercise. On the plus side, I have harvested about a gallon and a half of snap peas and peapods, which make amazingly tasty and healthy snacks, not to mention I’ve prepared about eight million tomatoes, onions, eggplants, zucchini, beans, potatoes and cucumbers for equally tasty and healthy meals later this summer. On the less positive side, I’m not being as active as I’d like to be! I go into the garden daily, but the strenuous tasks (transplanting, heavy weeding) really only occur once per week.

These past two weeks there have been some mitigating factors, including a week-long heatwave that led into a week where Yoga class was canceled, and then this whole July Fourth weekend which has generally thrown my routines off. But also, hey, a good deal of laziness. Not bringing a gym bag to work, not making time after dinner to take a walk when I’d rather watch tv or read, you know how it goes.

The only nice thing is that despite only exercising 2-3 times per week, I’ve been losing weight consistently for the past two weeks! After gaining about five pounds on my ill-fated trip to Chicago, I exercised a bunch and then made some small changes to my diet. On PhysicsDiet.com, where I track my weight and bodyfat percentage, these two weeks of weight loss have slowly tipped my average back down towards loss after it had skewed toward a gain for so long! This feels like a tremendous triumph, much moreso than the loss itself.

I shouldn’t minimize the loss, though. From my highest post-Chicago weight, I have lost a total of eight pounds. Woohoo! It feels really good. I’ve talked about this before, but my eating habits feel really good right now. Two small breakfasts, salad/light lunch, afternoon snack, normal dinner, fewer sugary treats. Nothing groundbreaking, duh, but I do notice that my food cravings have changed dramatically. Is it because I’m eating less sugar in general? Fewer carbs? (But I’m not really avoiding them…afternoon snacks are sometimes crackers, for example.) More leafy greens and more fiber? Am I just happier, so I’m more inclined to make healthy choices for my body? Whatever is going on, it’s working!

Now I just need to add back in a little more exercise and keep this wave of positivity moving in the right direction.

Some days I feel I am moving mental mountains just to face reality.

Here’s a good example: for the last couple weeks I have being going up and down a pound without any real loss. Just hanging out around 211 or 212, then 211 again, then maybe 213, no big deal.

However! My bodyfat percentage has definitely gone down, from 44% to 42.5% since I started using the Physics Diet tracker last week. That is a loss of 3.28 pounds of fat!

I am having to FORCE myself to accept this as a victory. My instinct is to write it off as a glitch in the inaccurate scale. But hey, wait a damn minute. That’s a fancy scale! I spent $60 on it at Amazon! Not only that, but I have spent the last six weeks dragging my sleepy ass out of bed every morning and doing absurd little exercises for core strength. I have been building muscle, and feeling stronger! (But, but! A tiny voice protests inside my head. I’m only halfway convinced that this body is capable of change!)

Hey, self, you know what? You are doing good stuff and here is a result: measurable lost fat and gained muscle. Voila! You rock. Let’s rock it harder, and go for that walk after work you’ve got planned.

Pep talks aside, I have to point out here how useful Physics Diet really is. This is not just a chart — there is some seriously nerdtastic math hanging out in the background that creates a moving average that you can focus on. As they say, this cuts out the “noise” of otherwise small up-and-down movements over time. Instead of a simple trend, you have the Bigger Picture laid out nice and easy for you to see, in a simple black line that cuts through the noisy jags of change.

I love it and I can’t recommend it highly enough. Without the moving average of the Physics Diet chart, I might think I’m going nowhere fast. But thanks to paying attention to the trend of the numbers, and the important background numbers of bodyfat percentages, I can see change where before I might have seen just a hazy flat line.

The moral of this story is: Never underestimate the power of a visual aid! In my case, it really is moving mountains.