Week 2

245.2/249.5
"Don't it always seem to go, that you dont know what you've got 'til its gone?" -Joni Mitchell

I've been losing weight at an oddly consistent rate of .4 pounds a day. This either means that I'm starving myself of 1400 Calories per day, my scales are on the blink, or that I will soon hit a frustrating plateau because I've mainly been flushing water and glycogen out of my body. Whatever the reason, the initial numbers are pleasing and motivating.

Here's another blurb from The Hacker's Diet I found sobering the first time I read it:

Do you want to eat, or to stop the hunger? There is an important distinction between these desires. Most of the times we eat, we’re not actually hungry. We eat because it’s our regular meal time or because we associate eating with a given activity...

...True hunger, although part of the daily life of billions of people on this planet, is rare in Western industrialised countries except among the very poor and those engaged in dieting. One thing you learn from the worst moments in a diet is what hunger really is...

...After you’ve truly experienced hunger once or twice in the course of a diet, you realise that most of the times people say, “I’m really hungry” they’re nothing of the sort. In all likelihood they’re motivated to eat by something entirely distinct from hunger. Getting to know hunger first hand teaches you how unrelated the motivation to eat is from your need for calories and how important it is, therefore, to control what you eat by some means other than instinct.

I have never been hungry before now. Growing up in a minimum-wage home, and at times living on my own struggling paycheck to paycheck, I nevertheless managed to eat like a king. Those years that I couldn't on a whim opt for the $9 a pound nitrite-free deli meat or the $5 a pound organic apples, I still quelled the first rumblings of hunger quickly with a stop into the local fast food joint, or by whipping up some pasta. Even now, restricing myself to a mere 2000 Calories per day, I only have a vague idea of real hunger, confident my fat stores, multivitamins, and health insurance are keeping me safe.

What must life be like for those who suffer my late-night hunger pangs constantly, without the security blankets of a stocked pantry, money in the bank, or competent, affordable doctors? This must be what mom was getting at with the whole "kids starving in China" bit. I feel guilty for all the times in life I declared loudly how hungry I was, feigning weakness and sloth, as a smart-ass teenager. How insulting that would have been to anyone who experienced real poverty and hunger.

While I'm on a down note, I found out last week that I've been doing pushups wrong since I was a kid, compensating for my long arms. I had been spreading my arms too wide, creating a shorter range of motion and more reliance on pecs than triceps. I've also been touching my nose to the ground instead of my chest, again creating a shorter range of motion. For my exercise plan, I've been trying to use correct form, and trying to adapt to the extra strain.

My muscles have been handling correct form pushups just fine, but over the last few days I've been getting a popping sound out of my left elbow, and a little soreness out of it in the mornings. In addition to that, my nightly jogs have started to leave my ankles sore the next day. I suspect that if I don't overdo it now and injure myself, the soreness will take care of itself as my tendons get stronger and my weight goes down. It's frustrating to remember what your body was capable of, (hence the Big Yellow Taxi quote above) and know that trying to get there too fast will put you in traction.

On the plus side, eating right isn't much of a problem, thankfully. I've had a couple days where I wanted more food than I was giving myself, and some nights my stomach is noticeably grumbling when I go to bed, but I've been fortunately able to dissociate my (mild) hunger from desperation to eat.

My eating strategy has been to load up at breakfast, country style. Bacon, eggs, milk, and cheese, and a morning snack that constitutes most of the refined sugar I'll have that day: 4 Thin Mints. That's it, just 4. 150 Calories, bringing my Calorie load up to about 850 - 900 by the time I get to work. The rest of the day is a modest lunch and dinner, all pre-planned, and no snacking.

I'm finding meal planning to be a great asset, much the same way I found managing my money with a budget spreadsheet. Knowing with certainty what you can afford lets you plan well. In money matters, seeing the numbers in a spreadsheet shows me how aggressively I need to save for special occasions, and whether or not I'll have $50 to blow over the weekend. For meal planning, having a sense of Calories in various foods lets me plan to do things like eat at McDonald's and Chipotles without going over budget on Calories for the day. The equation is something like "Fast food for lunch = soup and water for dinner", but at least I know what I need to do if I get a craving for excessive carbs.