Monday, April 30, 2012

Team Servo

Today was the initial weigh in and the official start of our Biggest Loser "competition" at work. When I read the first email about it a couple of weeks ago I started snickering and rolling my eyes. But, in the back of my head I was thinking, "I've been somewhat preoccupied recently with thoughts of eating more vegetables, limiting sugar, trying to get some exercise, and all that. Maybe...? Nah! But maybe..." And then they mentioned money. It wasn't so much the opportunity to win one of the prizes for individual or team weight loss. It was the announcement that 12 weeks after the end of the 12-week main program participants will be weighed to see how much weight loss they have maintained, and the company will pay $5 for each pound we have kept off AND $5 per pound for any additional weight lost. That was the critical factor. One of my friends was already interested in forming a team, so we convinced another friend to join us (since the minimum team size was three people) and then spent about 3 days trying to decide on a name. And thus "Team Servo" was born.

I have no idea what strategies other people will be using, and quite frankly, I don't care. I've spent almost my entire life --at least 30 years, if not more-- dealing with my fat body. That's a lot of self-reflection, a lot of tested willpower, a lot of calorie counting, a lot of food measuring, and most importantly, a lot of learning from experience. So there are certain things I already know about what I can and can't handle that no one can change by blowing sunshine up my ass.

*I know that weighing and measuring food diligently, counting calories, and recording everything that goes into my mouth creates obsessive thoughts about food. It becomes something that stays on my mind all day, every day. This preoccupation with food also encourages a focus on deprivation, and I tend to end up craving things I normally wouldn't even think about simply because I "can't have them." This happens every. single. time.

*There will be absolutely NO invoking of the phrase "I can't eat that." There will be NO mention or discussion of "being on a diet." Everyone is "on" a diet. Your diet is whatever you consume. Where your diet falls on the spectrum of Unnaturally Healthy to Suicidally Unhealthy varies widely, so the challenge is to move it to a more reasonable point on the Healthy end.

*I have learned enough to know what is and isn't a reasonable portion, and would rather focus thoughts of food on finding delicious new ways to prepare vegetables, drinking more water and getting my caffeine from unsweetened tea, basing meals on lower-fat proteins, etc. while reducing the portion sizes of less-healthy foods and limiting the number and serving sizes of indulgences. This is the key challenge for many reasons:
  1. I really don't like vegetables that much without cheese sauce, Ranch dressing, or a crunchy fried breading, and my mouth often has the gustatory equivalent of an orgasm when given fats and carbs.
  2. I am one of those people whose body doesn't know when to stop eating until it is too late. I've made some progress on this in the past and this is another chance to increase my level of "mindfulness" regarding the relationship between my brain, my mouth, and my stomach. I tend to eat with my mouth, meaning I let my taste buds make the decisions. My mouth believes that if one bite tastes that good, 30 bites will taste 30 times as good, and more of a good thing is always better. I need to stop listening to my mouth and let my brain and my stomach get a word in before it's too late. I also need to find mouth-wateringly delicious ways to prepare healthy foods.
  3. Preparing these healthy menu items that taste awesome, especially vegetables, generally requires time and effort, neither of which I have enough of when I get home from work (or before work, or during work). By the time I get home, Tim is generally about ready to gnaw his own hands off. Add that to the fact that we have about 3 hours until bedtime (if I don't have to work late or run errands after work) and the race is on to get ourselves fed in enough time to digest dinner. This is also a factor in trying to find time for exercise, which is the other part of my "strategy."
Quite probably an even greater challenge than eating better is finding the time and energy to exercise. My favorite activity throughout childhood was reading. I did some active playing, bike riding, walking around the neighborhood, etc. But I tended to prefer more sedentary activities. Even with my pretend play I preferred laying on the floor making Fisher Price Little People talk to one another or continuously changing my Barbies' outfits to actually pretending to be something myself and bouncing around actually "doing" something. As much as I loved sitting around, though, I always managed to get in a certain level of activity even if it was just out of necessity: walking to and from school, riding my bike to campus, keeping up with kids I was taking care of, even just standing around at the front desk of the Law Library was more activity than sitting all day.

And all that incidental activity makes a huge difference when compared to doing nothing but sitting all day. Every job I ever had until this one required some degree of lifting, carrying, crouching, walking, pushing, and standing. This job, however, requires sitting for 8 hours every day, and also requires sitting in a car for 2 hours a day. That's 10 full hours of sitting. Sure I get two 15 minute breaks, and I take 30 minutes for lunch. But lunch is for eating and is not negotiable. Breaks--well, that depends upon the weather and how much I need the mental health break of hanging out with my friends. Sacrificing what little social time I have in my daily life has it's own negative repercussions.

So, where do and how do I fit in the exercise? Because, I actually want to do this. I just can't figure out how. I already get up between 4 and 4:30 to get ready for work. Getting up earlier is out of the question. I usually get home between 4:30 and 5. From about April until about October, the first order of business after getting home is to check "the garden" (meaning the entire area of front, back, and both side yards). I usually don't even get into the house until after 5. There's the whole dinner issue, and we have our nightly ritual Doctor Who episode, and then the race against the clock is on since my goal is to start getting ready for bed by 8. What can I do in that remaining hour or two that I would even want to do?

And how long do I have to wait after eating? The Mayo Clinic website recommends allowing 2-3 hours between a small meal and exercise, so even assuming that my dinners are small I don't have enough time according to their guidelines.

Okay, so I ignore the possibility of diverting too much blood flow from digestion and I exercise anyway. What can I do that I would enjoy enough to keep doing it? And that I would enjoy enough to not feel like I was sacrificing a large chunk of what precious little free time I have during the average day?

I love bike riding, but I'm not sure where I could ride that traffic wouldn't be a problem. And of course, I would have to buy a bicycle. And figure out where to store it during the 6 months of the year it's too snowy and/or cold to ride.

I really want to do yoga, but I'm not sure I can find a class that fits into my schedule. Or my budget, since any form of exercise pretty much has to cost me, um, absolutely nothing. Which is another reason the bike is more or less out.

There's the high quality treadmill I spent $1500 on as soon as we moved into the house that I haven't used for a couple of years. And there's the reason why I haven't used it, namely that the only place we can make it fit is a corner of the dining room where I am looking at a wall. If we could fit it in the library where the tv is, or in the sunroom where I could watch the sun set or where we could put the tv, or if we could put it in the part of the dining room that would allow me to look into the sunroom.... We've discussed all of these options multiple times and decided we didn't like everything that would have to change to make it work. But, it is at least one option to reconsider, I guess.

There's always walking around the neighborhood. Which always sounds like a good idea, and is probably one of the best options. Again, for the 6 months or less out of the year when it's both light enough and weather-friendly to do so. This is pretty much the only viable option I can come up with besides figuring out how to make the treadmill more appealing.

My other idea is to rig up a way to make it possible for me to work standing up in my cubicle. It's not "exercise," but it's absolutely better than sitting all day in lots of ways. I took some measurements today, and it shouldn't be too difficult. What I have in mind should even allow me to switch back and forth between sitting and standing within just a minute or two. I was hoping to scour the house tonight in the hopes of finding the right materials and to be able to try it tomorrow. But instead I'm up past my bedtime writing, and haven't accomplished jack in terms of either exercising or adapting my cubicle. So now I'm crabby, and this was supposed to be a positive, inspiring entry. I better go while there's still some chance of salvaging my mood. Sorry if there are any typos--I'm not even previewing this one.