Stunt for profit or positive change?

I ran across this picture along with an article.

Some people are complaining that girls will emulate the woman in the picture. Or worse, want to be even thinnner.

Excuse me?

How could anyone possibly view that as some kind of goal? I have a feeling that anyone that looks at that and wants to be as sick as she is, is already well on their way to un-health.

The photographer claims the stunt is meant to raise awareness. I hope it works - this just makes me want to feed the poor woman something. Anything!

Check out the article; the news is a little old, but it's still worth some attention.

Back in the saddle... again

So, here we go again! It's taken me weeks, but I've finally gone from half-hearted "every other meal" good diet choices, to actually hitting the gym every day (sundays off) and eating well consistantly.

Before, when I first started this blog, I did what I seem to do alot - I overplan and overthink. Now, by just doing a little bit at a time, I'm doing much more for my health then when I tried to go ahead full force.

Remember those charts I made to track my weight loss? They were really fun to make (geek) and I loved seeing my progress graphically. BUT it didn't help keep me on track, it just served as a reminder about how short lived all that shit was. But, unlike all those charts and weekly progress reports I live on to shrink another day! Perhaps I'll track progress and make charts every few months instead.. yes I'm a lazy geek.

I'm going to take a much more zen approach to the weight loss thing.. I'll remain active and eat what I know is good for me.

Speaking of which, I had a terrific salad today!! The star of my wonderous creation were some of my roommates olives I found in the fridge (sorry Mike, I'll buy some more). Very tasty.

For exercise I've been doing some very careful resistance training (because of my back injury, I can't do anything that exerts pressure on my spine) and also some swimming. I love being in the water again! I don't have to deal with being self concious, since I swim on my lunch break which occurs at around 3am since I work nights. One of these days I'll just not give a shit about what people think of my body and just do what I want!


Theres a good subject for another blog, the whole body image thing.. what would YOU do if self-image was irrelevant?

Oh and as a last minute thought. The back is feeling awesome from the swimming and the sit-ups and such... yay for my back.

And now, your moment of Zen.....
<~~~ I stole this picture from someone I don't know and put my junk on it. I'm so bad...

Diet Derailment

Yes, it's true - I derailed myself from healthy living for a few weeks. I've avoided blogging about it out of shame, but as I've mentioned in the past I'm about letting go of the shame around eating. Shame is a dead-end street - at first glance some may think it leads to change. "Hey, if you feel bad about it then stop eating so much." Wow. It's true, but it's not that simple. For me, crappy carbs and sugar are a drug, pure and simple; you can't just stop without a clear and workable plan.

Thing is, the plan works if I work it. I wasn't working it - I wasn't eating enough, and I wasn't eating a variety of foods as I should have.

Ok, enough of the "shouldas"

I've given it alot of thought, and I think I need to adjust a few things which I touched upon a few weeks ago.

1.) Work out! Exercise is mandatory.

2.) Keep more food in the house. Eating out is dangerous. It's like a drug addict taking a stroll through a neighborhood of dealers.

3.) Eat more, and often! Too many times I've made myself too hungry by the end of the day, and stuffed my face with the first thing I saw. Bread, potted plants, you name it!

So, here I am at a self-induced weight loss plateau. I haven't weighed myself yet, but judging how my pants fit I think I gained a few. It's quite okay! I have Jimmy Moore's Livin (La Vida) Low Carb Show on my ipod as my secret weapon for the upcoming 2 weeks of "re-induction".

I'm going to report my progress this Saturday, good or bad.

Until next time...

Week Two Progress Report - Charting and Predicting Progress

After two weeks of charting my weight, I have enough data to give some idea of how fast I may be approaching my goal.

In the chart to the left, the light blue bars represent actual loss. The dark line represents a trend, calculated using the equation you see at the top right. I chose this equation based simply on gut feeling rather than any special knowledge I have of this sort of thing. The resulting line simply looked like it may represent the diminishing returns of losing weight over a period of time. It's hard to tell by looking at this particular graph why the trend looked appropriate. Here is what helped me make the decision:



Notice in this 6 month forecast there is a bit of a curve to the trendline. It does seem steep - six months is too short of a time period to lose this much weight. I'm thinking this only because LAST time I lost that fast, I packed half of it back on!






So, I'd like to get to goal as close as possible to my 52nd progress report. It divides up to just about 2.4 lbs a week on average. I'm currently averaging 5.6 lbs a week. This average will fall, mostly because I lost water weight in the first few days. Notice the erratic numbers in the first graph?

So, 11.2 lbs lost in the first month. My chart tells me I'll lose another 11 lbs or so. Think I'll prove it right or wrong? Only time will tell. If the equation is good, then with more data I get closer to making a decent prediction!

Stay tuned...

Be nice to your tummy

Yet another funny vid.