DANSAYS ][+

Last November, I took a reading from my personal trainer's body fat monitor. At the time, I weighed 160 lbs, 27.68 (17.3%) of which were fat. After a year of regular exercise and watching my diet, I was now officially "fit."

10 NEGLECT DIET
20 GAIN WEIGHT
30 IF TOO FAT THEN TRY FAD DIET AND EXERCISE
40 LOSE WEIGHT
50 LOSE INTEREST
60 GOTO 10

When Kathryn and I met, I was in pretty good shape. At 170 pounds, I was a tad overweight, but by no means obese. When visiting New York City, we'd eat at all the hip and trendy restaurants, and slowly I packed on the pounds. A year later, after moving to the East Village, I discovered the magic of delivery: restaurants would bring food to you! And, not just pizza or Chinese food! Thai food! Indian food! Fried Chicken!

You can see where this is going.

On January 1st, 2007, I stepped on the scale and saw the consequences of my indulgence: 201 pounds. At 5'9" tall, I was just shy of being officially "obese."

Over the course of the next year, I transformed my lifestyle. I ate right, I exercised, and I lost 40 pounds. At 17.3% body fat and 160 lbs, I'm at the ideal weight for my age. I went from a size 38" waist to 33". I have a ton of energy, and I'm in the best shape of my life. This January, Kathryn and I took a trip to Mexico, and walked around the beach sans shirt without a trace of self-consciousness.

You can do it, too. It's not easy, but it's also not complicated. Here's how:

Start keeping a food diary. Record everything you put into your body, along with the time. Food, water, vitamins, snacks... everything. Don't bother with details like calories or grams of fat, just rough portion sizes. Include brand names, if appropriate.

See a nutritionist. It's entirely possible that this will be covered by your insurance, but even if it isn't, pony up the cash. Bring your food diary, with a minimum of three days of typical food consumption. A qualified nutritionist will do two things for you:

1. Find your Resting Energy Expenditure (REE). Nutritionists have a machine called a "calorimeter," which measures how many calories you expend just sitting around on your butt. They can then extrapolate your daily calorie needs, based on your level of activity. Armed with this baseline metabolism, they can proceed to...
2. Analyze your food diary. You may think you're eating well, but that yogurt you thought was healthy is loaded with sugar, and you're not getting enough fiber in your diet. Your nutritionist can make very specific recommendations on how to fine-tune your meals and snacks. They can recommend specific brands that are healthy yet tasty. They can also coach you on what to order when you eat out, when nutrition labels aren't so readily available.

Here's how the math works: There are 3,500 calories in a pound. Armed with your baseline metabolism rate, your nutritionist will adjust your diet so that you're in a calorie deficit. If your body burns 2,500 calories a day but you only feed it 2,000, you'll lose a pound a week. Guaranteed.

Your nutritionist will probably advise you to...

Graze. Your body metabolizes food more efficiently when you feed it five or six smaller meals, rather than two or three larger ones.

Drink more water. You know that "eight glasses a day" rule? It's not bullshit. Buy a plastic jug, fill it with 64 ounces of water in the morning, and drink it all before you go to bed at night.

Cook your own meals. If you want to eat right, you simply must prepare your own food. If you don't know how to cook, learn. It's not hard. Buy lots of disposable Tupperware containers, and pack leftovers from dinner to eat for lunch the next day. Cook large quantities of food like chili and soup, and freeze them for when life gets busy. You can't eat out every day and lose weight, no matter what Jared says.

Cheat. One day a week, throw your meal plan out the window. Don't go apeshit, but if you feel like having a Big Mac, rock on. Fried chicken for dinner? Sure. Eating the foods you love once a week will keep you from getting bored, and will throw your metabolism a curveball. Just keep a record of what you're eating in your food diary, and show it to your nutritionist during your follow-up visit. She'll let you know if you're going too far overboard.

If you can afford it, join a gym and hire a personal trainer. While, strictly speaking, you don't need to exercise to lose weight, you'll lose it faster if you do. You'll feel better, have more energy, and once you shed the outer layer of fat, you'll discover a healthy and toned body beneath. A good personal trainer can help keep you motivated, and will mix up your workout to prevent boredom.

Recognize that this is not a diet, but a lifestyle. A "diet," in the sense that most people understand it, is a temporary adjustment to what you eat. You lose the weight, and then you're done. If you want to lose weight long term, you need to eat healthy long term. Don't worry. Once you see how you look and feel, you'll never want to go back.

My new year's resolution for 2007 was to lose weight, and I'm proud to say that this was one year where I stuck to my goal: I lost forty pounds, and I feel great! (Stay tuned for a future post about how I shed the weight.)

Sport Coat, Faux-French Cuff Shirt

For the past few months, I've been going twice a week to a physical therapist to help with the knee pain I've had following the NYC Half Marathon. His initial assessment was optimistic: since I only experienced pain when I ran, there likely wasn't any structural damage. Twice a week for a few months, working on my flexibility and a few core strengthening exercises, and I'd be good as new.

Just before Thanksgiving, I was given the green light to go ahead and start running again. Short distances, starting with two miles, increasing about 10% with each subsequent run.

After two miles, my knee started to hurt.

The following therapy session, my doctor's optimism turned to concern, and he wrote me a prescription for an x-ray, which came back fine. He then sent me for an MRI. This morning, he received the results, and the mystery was revealed: scar tissue on my IT band, most likely a tear incurred during the half.

This is good news. It means that we can focus on breaking up the scar tissue through ultrasound treatment and stretching. It means that I can start running again and, while it may hurt a bit, I won't do any more damage, and in all likelihood it will help the healing process.

And, most importantly: it means I'll almost certainly be able to run the marathon next year!

The newest version of TextExpander dropped this afternoon, and it sports a feature I've been wanting since forever: Applescript snippets.

I just threw together a proof-of-concept that has my head spinning with possibilities. A bit of background: we use Asterisk, an open source VoIP system, primarily because it affords us the ability to record phone conversations. When we interview leads, we ask their permission to share the recording with partners that are matched with their project. It also comes in handy when documenting support calls.

Now, when I'm writing up a support case, I can simply type lastcall, and TextExpander will grab the details of my last phone conversation from the Asterisk database, along with a link to the call recording:

6 minute conversation with JOE SMITH (8005551212)
http://asterisk.local/callprofile/?id=200463

I'm not sure how this slipped through QA, but this can't possibly be the intended behavior. This is how friends' links appear in Google Reader when posted to their Vox blogs:

Link in Google Reader

Link Asset page

Blog Post

We're cleaning out some of the clutter in our apartment, and we have a pile of perfectly good things that would be of use to someone... just not us. All of it goes up on Craigslist later this week. That is, unless any of you want it?

• IKEA Desk Lamp (with replacement bulbs) featured in this photo. Taken.
  
• I have no idea what these things are called, but they mount on the wall above your desk, and let you hang papers from them without using magnets or push pins. They're the things on either side of my monitor in this photo.
• White porcelain and nickel bathroom accessory set from Restoration Hardware. Includes hand towel stand, swiveling vanity mirror, one large and one small canister to store cotton swabs and whatnot, and water cup. Taken.
• Haier 30-bottle Wine Refrigerator. At 38.5" H x 20" W x 21" D, it's just too big for our apartment, but maybe you have room in yours? Taken.
• An XBOX, a Playstation 2, and a Nintendo Gamecube (this is a grey cube, without the digital out, not that it matters since Nintendo never bothered to release any hi-def games for the platform). We no need two of each outdated video gaming platform. Video Games NY will probably give us some cash for the systems, but not much. I'd rather seem them go to a friend who currently lives a videogame-free existence.

Arrangements to take possession of any of these items must be made by the week's end. If you don't live in New York, and you really really really want something on this list that's shippable (i.e., not the wine fridge) let me know, we'll work something out.