Food..

Reading through lots of other blogs by people trying to lose weight and I notice that pretty much everybody mentions something about food. That's something I'm still trying to figure out.

My basic approach has been to follow the The Hacker Diet methodology of daily weigh ins on a spreadsheet that averages several days of weights to create a trend line. The philosophy is that any single time you weigh yourself, it is prone to error. Even if you weigh yourself at the exact same time of day, buck naked ever time, your water consumption, hormonal shifts and many too many other things can change you weight. Therefore, single weigh in's, especially daily ones can be a pretty disheartening way to track your progress.

Yet, if you average them, you get a pretty clear trend to indication if your weight is going up down, or staying about the same. (I finally spent a little time playing with Open Office's graphing so I'll see if I can post my January actual weight vs trend line)

When I started, I made minimal changes and checked what my trend line was doing for a week or so. Then I started taking things out of my diet that didn't need to be there. 2 to 3 can's of Mountain Dew once I got to work (Hello vending machine) (approximately 170 calories * 3) replaced with a cup of coffee instead (black, no cream, no sugar) (Approximately 1 calorie per oz, so for my coffee mug, 12 calories) I cut out my work, afternoon break, milky way bar (more than 117 calories) , and my before work stop at Caribou (Large Mint condition, 559 calories).

That actually didn't cause as much of a downward trend as you might think. And that's because prior to cutting those out my trend line was going upward.

That was my starting change, and I've slowly changed that. I'm living in a one bedroom apartment with my two cats, so my fridge is umm... bachelor like. With a slight odd variation because there is a natural foods type co-op less than a block away. So I've been adding more friuts and vegetables as well as whole grains.

A couple weeks ago I finally started adding in more lean meats. I have concluded that Pollack is not something I enjoy eating.. I'm sure there are wonder methods of preparing it, but the last time my oven had something other than a pizza in it.. umm.. I'm not sure I can remember. Microwave, and my George Foreman grill are my current methods of food prep. So lime juice and salt are not sufficient seasoning to make pollack palatable.

I think chicken breasts, salmon, and possibly lean cuts of beef (I don't know of anyplace i can get goat at a reasonable price) will be my main proteins.


As of last night, I've added pears, oranges, dried cranberries and dried blueberries to my diet, along with replacing my "normal" snack of pretzels with walnuts and soybeans (Can you tell I found one of the myriad links to the list of SuperFoods?)

I doubt I will ever actually count the calories I do eat (instead of just making note of the calories I am no longer eating) because that's just not in my nature. Yes, I have a PDA, yes, I could download the food list application from the Hacker's diet website, but it's just a level of organization and forethought that goes against the grain for me. Techweenie or no, I am good at viewing problems from two possible view points.. I see neither forest or trees. I see multi-forests (odd connections between groups and business areas is a job specialty) and I see bark. (I get lost in the details sometimes to the detriment of my overall task schedule). I see calorie counting as more of a tree thing.

Oh... and I am not sure if it's a guy thing or a me thing.

Yes, I can and do eat the same thing for several days in a row. Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner.

No this does not make me feel deprived. It makes me feel like I know what will leave me satisfied at the end of the day and have what overall effect on my weight.

Diets that try to switch things up to keep it interesting? Ummm.. thanks but that just leaves me staring at the choices in my fridge/freezer, unable to decide which I'm going for.