The Life Ledger

Fitness is a way of life.

I’ve been hearing a lot of hype about Joost lately, so I was anxious to give it a whirl. I received my invite (did you get yours?) and fired it up for the first time yesterday, fully expecting an underwhelming experience. Boy was I wrong - this is the future of TV.

First I tried running it on the laptop over the wireless network. I never properly negotiated a connection, but that makes since - Joost is P2P-based, and must be pushing a large amount of information both up and down. After installing it on my main machine, I selected a user name and password, and began experiencing the brave new world of video.

This is, after all, a fitness-related blog, so I began looking for fitness-related video content and found three of note - HealthiNation, The Fit Show and The Recipe Channel. You can see the entire lineup at Joost’s channel page.

HealthiNation is a collection of videos hosted by medical professionals (or, at least, claiming to be medical professionals) providing basic information on a wide range of topics, including asthma, blood pressure, cancer, diabetes, healthy eating and more. The videos are short enough to keep my attention, yet long enough to cover the basic information about a topic fairly thoroughly. I also appreciate the powerpoint-like timeline at the bottom showing upcoming topics within a video segment. I could see this becoming an excellent resource to accompany searches on Wikipedia or health-dedicated sites like MedlinePlus.

I didn’t spend much time watching The Fit Show, but I was intrigued with what I saw. The channel hosts a wide array of videos, spanning from training videos, event coverage, fitness news and topical instructional videos. Chapman Media Group, who runs this channel and the channel’s website at http://thefitshow.tv/ (where you can watch some episodes through a flash player), states “The Fitness Network’s mission is to provide fitness content in an entertaining, educational, and inspirational style who’s voice resonates with the diverse fitness enthusiast demographic.” Buzz-word-speak aside, I was impressed with the videos on offer - training videos were shot using live trainers demonstrating the use of equipment and exercises, individual episodes contained news and training segments, and the professional quality of all videos matched or exceeded what I would expect from a cable TV fitness show. I will definitely be exploring this channel more. Right after watching another episode of GI Joe.

I have to admit, I had high expectations after watching the first two channels. Unfortunately, The Recipe Channel was a little disappointing - I expected a cooking show like something I’d see on the Food network, with a host cooking and talking during the show. Instead, this channel hosts several videos (not yet the hundreds claimed in the description) that appear to be hand-held cameras swooping over ingredients, hovering over cooking bowls and accompanied by new-agey hokie music. While I don’t personally care for the videos, I do appreciate the thoroughness of the video example and the short video lengths. I see this channel being a great accompanying resource for a searchable recipe directory website, but not a channel I would regularly browse.

All in all, I’m pretty impressed with what Joost has to offer so far. It can only get better from here - as Joost adds channels and interactive widgets (which add features like chatting with others viewing the same channel, channel ratings and more), TV will move from a static armchair channel-surfing affair to a serious web2.0-esque overhaul. I can’t wait to see what Joost has up its sleeves.

Now, for more Transformers.

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I graduated from my Optifast program and I thought I was hard-core. I didn’t crave sweets, chocolate, chips, any of that crap I used to unconsciously stuff my face with. I identified my trigger foods (like Chex Mix) and removed them from the house. I practiced being aware of my food choices including what, when and how much. I thought I was hard-core.

And then came yesterday.

I see now, there are going to be times in my life when - no matter what I do, no matter how much awareness I practice, no matter how much I talk to myself, no matter how strongly I have shifted my old behaviors - I am going to stumble. I am going to eat “bad” foods. I am going to mis-gauge portion sizes. I will have channel-surfing days, potato-chip days and second-helping days. And apparently, I will still occasionally seek comfort in food.

Fortunately, just being aware of my emotional eating, even if I don’t stop it, is enough to minimize the impact. When you stumble, the trick is to do it consciously, minimize the impact during the fact, then prevent it from becoming a habit afterward. Here’s 5 tips I used to turn a crisis into a learning experience.

1. Recognize you are responding to an emotional need or impulse.
   Choice is power. You exercise power over a situation by choosing your response instead of allowing something to happen to you. “I can’t believe I just ate that chocolate bar” sets you up for disappointment, shame and embarassment - you are so out-of-control that you couldn’t even make yourself not eat one chocolate bar! “I chose to eat that chocolate bar” removes the emotional hook - it allows you to feel ownership and responsibility without the overwhelming disappointment, and allows you to observe your choice and make changes should you want to choose differently next time. Shed your emotional baggage and empower yourself - recognize the emotional need, make a choice. True success isn’t absolute abstinence - true success is choice.
2. Identify and address the underlying emotional need.
   Of course, we all know - eating comfort food doesn’t help the actual situation. No matter how much fettuccini alfredo you eat, your co-workers will not treat you better and your job won’t be any more satisfying. No matter how many chocolate bars you consume, your teens won’t show you more respect and you won’t win the lottery. Just like alcohol and drugs, any comfort derived from emotional eating is false and temporary. If you choose to indulge in some emotional eating, do some thinking while on your emotional high - identify what is driving you to crave comfort in food, then make a game plan to change or otherwise address that situation.
3. Split your meal into portions.
   Cut your hamburger in half, split your quesedilla into quarters, box half your salad into a to-go box, put half your sushi roll on a separate plate. If you’re still hungry after eating one portion, split the remaining portion in half and eat that. After eating each portion, put your fork down, push the plate away, and pause for a moment. Physically splitting your meal into portions also splits it into choices - each time you eat another portion, you are making a new choice to eat, and with each choice comes the opportunity to access your actual physical hunger.

4. Practice “healthy eating” tips - water, small bites, eat slow, choose healthy foods.
   Use as many “healthy eating” tips as possible to help minimize your caloric intake:

   Cut empty calories - cutting the sour cream, butter, dressing, mayonnaise, free bread/chips/etc and other calorie-filled extras can reduce the overall caloric value of your meal. The sour cream I cut from the burrito I ate yesterday cut 150-ish calories from my meal, and I didn’t miss it. Had I cut the guacamole and chips, I could have cut a further 620 calories without diminishing the emotionally comforting burrito.

   Read the label - reading the exact caloric value and ingredients in the food you’re about to eat can help you find healthier alternatives to the comfort food you’re craving. Today in the grocery store, I figured some Doritos would perfectly complement my mixed-greens salad - makes perfect sense, right? Regular Doritos have 140 calories per 11 chip - and let’s not lie, I’m not going to eat 11 chips, I’ll be lucky to stop at half the bag. I thought the baked ones would be a healthier alternative, but read the ingredients anyway - and put them back when reading MSG figures prominently on the ingredients list. You never know, reading the label may even quash your craving - I walked out with no Doritos.

   Drink water during the meal - this is probably the easiest and best thing you can do to minimize your emotional eating. Ordering water with your meal cuts out beverages with empty calories and helps you reach your daily water intake level. If you take sips during your meal, water will also help you feel full faster and force you to eat slower.

   Eat slowly, take small bites - there’s some lag time after swallowing before your body recognizes fullness, and there’s lag time between your stomach reaching “full” and your mind reaching satiety. Eating slowly and taking small bites helps reduce that lag time, so you feel full and satisfied at the same time you actually are full, so you don’t end up “feeling” full at the end of the meal, but feeling stuffed 20 minutes afterward.

5. Don’t beat yourself up!
   No matter what choices you make or don’t make, no matter what food you eat or how much you consume - don’t beat yourself up over it. Chastising yourself simply invites more emotional baggage, which in turn continues the vicious cycle of emotional eating. Instead, put your energy into identifying and addressing the underlying emotional problem and coming up with a game plan for dealing with the next time you feel the impulse to emotionally eat. Alternatives might be taking a walk, reading a magazine or doing logic problems for 20 minutes, sitting in the grass in a park - something that gives you peace without eating. Each time you decide in favor of your food alternative, you reclaim power over your emotional eating.

Emotional eating doesn’t have to be a falling-off-the-bandwagon event. Rather, view it as an alarm - something in your life is causing enough stress that you crave something physical as satisfaction. Identify and address the underlying stress, and you’ll be one step closer to winning the battle against emotional eating.

Have some tips yourself? I’d love to hear them below.

I stumbled across Tim Ferriss’ interesting article on How to Lose 20 lbs. of Fat in 30 Days… Without Doing Any Exercise at his blog, http://fourhourworkweek.com/blog/. Usually I quickly review then ignore articles like this that approach eating from a “reach your goal” diet as opposed to “lifestyle change”. Personally, I feel most people are destined for failure when following “reach your goal” diets - unless you’re a body builder, actor or some other person that has a specific need to drop some weight but you otherwise already live a healthy life, a “reach your goal” diet encourages a roller-coaster approach to eating and fitness - you diet and exercise until you reach your goal, then return to your normal eating habits. When you gain weight, you re-dedicate yourself to a diet and exercise routine until you reach your goal weight, then once again return to eating “normally.” Each time you gain weight, you make a new choice to re-dedicate yourself to fitness, usually only temporarily.

How many of us follow this pattern when making New Year’s resolutions? Who wants to live a life dedicated to a string of failed fitness resolutions? Much better, in my opinion, to make one decision to dedicate your life to fitness, become aware of daily choices you make that prevent fitness and modify those choices, then maintain the new choices until they become habit. The weight still comes off, and as opposed to dieting - it stays off. Instead of bouncing between normal life and “diet life”, you live your diet.

Tim’s article, however, is different - even though it appears to approach eating from a dieting approach, there’s some good information that, with some tweaking, can apply to healthy lifestyle eating as well. Below, I’ll list his rules, a synopsis of how he describes each rule, and my suggested modifications for making each rule a part of your healthy lifestyle.

Rule #1: Avoid “white” carbohydrates
Tim suggests avoiding “any carbohydrate that is — or can be — white”, including “bread, rice, cereal, potatoes, pasta, and fried food with breading.” I completely agree - no tweaking here.

Rule #2: Eat the same few meals over and over again
Tim makes several suggestions in this rule, starting with his assertion that “the most successful dieters, regardless of whether their goal is muscle gain or fat loss, eat the same few meals over and over again. Mix and match, constructing each meal with one from each of the three following groups: proteins, legumes and vegetables.” He further recommends that you “eat as much as you like of the above food items. Just remember: keep it simple. Pick three or four meals and repeat them”. I both agree and disagree.

When I finally decided to lose weight, I recognized it would take something drastic and shocking to detox my body out of my food addiction. I think stimulus narrowing is a fantastic method of detox - by narrowing down the foods you allow yourself to eat, you make less food-related choices, which in turn helps stop food-related thoughts and impulse cravings. Food becomes less a comfort and more a fuel for your body.

My own personal stimulus-narrowing came in the form of a 3-month liquid diet through Optifast. Before Optifast, my entire eating schedule revolved around satisfying emotional needs, impulses and cravings - celebrating with chocolate, drowning stress or depression in carb-rich comfort foods and tackling boredom with greasy snack foods. Following Optifast, I now plan meals around what nutrients my body needs and satisfy emotional needs in other, more honest ways. I recognize Optifast isn’t for everyone, and neither is any form or duration of fasting. If fasting isn’t for you, Tim provides a great alternative - limit your food to pre-planned meals.

Pre-planning meals not only prevents food choices based on response to emotional cravings and impulses, it also promotes awareness of what you eat - primarily, learning what nutrients your body needs and where to find them. Pre-planned meals also have the fantastic side-effect of cutting out all restaurant and fast-food choices, which prey on emotional and impulse-based eating. However, I disagree with Tim’s recommendation to eat as much as you want - portion control is every bit as important as impulse control. Part of proper stimulus narrowing is learning when your body has consumed sufficient fuel versus when you feel “satisfied” or “full.” Learning suggested portion sizes, the general caloric value of foods and developing an awareness of your body’s physical versus emotional satisfaction - all are important to healthy eating in the real world.

Tim also makes a fantastic observation - “most people who go on “low” carbohydrate diets complain of low energy and quit, not because such diets can’t work, but because they consume insufficient calories.” While I disagree with his recommendation of eating only 4x a day (by eating 5-6 times a day, you prevent hunger and binging), I think his observation is spot-on - calculating and regulating your daily caloric intake is an important part of healthy living. Eating too few calories is just as unhealthy as eating too many, and blindly limiting instead of properly regulating daily caloric intake sets you up for failure.

Rule #3: Don’t drink calories
Tim suggests the following:

“Drink massive quantities of water and as much unsweetened iced tea, tea, diet sodas, coffee (without white cream), or other no-calorie/low-calorie beverages as you like. Do not drink milk, normal soft drinks, or fruit juice.”

I strongly agree with the need to be aware of what you drink. As Dave mentioned before, weight-loss and weight-gain are simple mathematical equations:

calories consumed < calories expended = weight loss

calories consumed > calories expended = weight gain

This is true no matter where the calories come from - the calories in hamburgers and french fries don’t make us any fatter than the calories in Gatorade and Vitamin Water. Unfortunately, we tend to forget or discount the calories in our drinks - the sodas and teas, the cream and sugar in our coffee - and when you can walk out of Starbucks with 720 calories swimming in your coffee cup (the equivelant of 1 and 1/3 Big Macs!), discounting your beverages is a dangerous proposition. Studies are even starting to show that we regularly discount calories consumed through beverages and the weight-gain that results. As an example, here’s some commonly consumed beverages and their caloric values:

• Gatorade: 310 calories per 12 fl oz
• Propel: 30 calories per 8 fl oz
• Coke: 97 calories per 8 fl oz
• Vitamin Water: 50 calories per 8 fl oz

Take into account a “serving” is normally 20oz-ish bottle, and that several bottles are consumed a day - those calories quickly add up. In my own opinion, diet drinks aren’t any better - there may not be a scientific study that shows artificial sweeteners are harmful, but it doesn’t take a chemist to know that loading up on chemicals can’t be healthy. Furthermore, diuretic drinks like tea and caffeinated sodas increase the rate of urination, requiring more water consumption. Best case scenario - stick to water. Don’t like the “taste” of water? Here’s some tips: filtering, flavoring, agave and more.

Rule #4: Take one day off per week
Tim suggests the following:

“I recommend Saturdays as your “Dieters Gone Wild” day. I am allowed to eat whatever I want on Saturdays, and I go out of my way to eat ice cream, Snickers, Take 5, and all of my other vices in excess. I make myself a little sick and don’t want to look at any of it for the rest of the week. Paradoxically, dramatically spiking caloric intake in this way once per week increases fat loss by ensuring that your metabolic rate (thyroid function, etc.) doesn’t downregulate from extended caloric restriction. That’s right: eating pure crap can help you lose fat. Welcome to Utopia.”

I hear this a lot, and from personal experience I strongly disagree with this point. Nothing screams fad diet or unhealthy eating louder than the phrases “eat what you want” and “take a day off.” Healthy eating is a lifestyle, not a job - you don’t get days off. You’re certainly not likely to eat salads for the rest of your life - I know I make the choice to eat at restaurants or occasionally indulge in dessert. However, by setting aside a “time off” day, you give yourself a reason to eat unhealthily and unconsciously - much better to consciously budget for a dessert in your daily caloric intake by changing your snack foods or exercising more that day. Binging, no matter what the reason, is not healthy eating.

I want to thank Tim for his excellent and informative article - great food for thought.

My weight did some odd things, bouncing up and down after my vacation. Seems to have balanced out though, and now that I’m running again I expect I might start shedding again.

Ah yes, running. It’s an odd feeling, running again - I am simultaneously filled with the exhileration of challenge and an overwhelming disappointment. To understand why, you’ve gotta know something about me - I used to run cross country and play soccer and baseball. In those days I enjoyed running, and would run between 6 - 10 miles a day. I wasn’t competitive at long-distance running - I’m built for sprinting, but we didn’t have a track team in high school - but I sure did enjoy it. Running for me was like taking a Sunday afternoon drive through the countryside.

Today, I set my sights on 3.9 miles. I knew I wouldn’t huff my out-of-shape body through the entire distance, but I figured I could make at least a mile before I slowed to a walk. I made it 3/4 of a mile. My high-school self whizzed right by me as my body down-shifted and applied the air-brakes.

I feel exhileration - I’m signed up for a 5k race in the first of June, so I began mapping out in my mind as I walked how to meet the challenge of finishing a 5k race in 5 weeks. I also feel overwhelmingly disappointed - I can’t help but think about how my performance might be today had I never let myself go. Trick is, focus on the challenge. I know once I make it past this beginning hump, I will once again enjoy running.

Just like losing weight, I need to focus on the successes - like the fact I was able to almost make a mile at all - and not set myself up for failures by setting unrealistic goals. So going forward, my goal is to run at least 4 times a week, whatever the distance, and to push myself a little bit further each time - even if it’s only a couple of feet.

I’ll make that 5k yet.

Traineo launched in August 2006 with the mission “to create the most effective weight loss and fitness community on the web by combining the latest software technology with sound information and services from the world’s leading health and fitness experts.” It’s been getting a lot of press lately, even earning an article on Arrington’s TechCrunch. Traineo is gaining the reputation as the poster-child for Web 2.0 weight-loss, and serves as a good starting point for reviewing online fitness journals.

First, let’s get that Web 2.0 moniker out of the way - what does it mean, and what can it bring to fitness? Web 2.0 was first coined by O’Reilly, and is a vague, near-meaningless descriptor meant to define the “new web,” an advancement beyond the idea of static, text-based pages. While the Web 2.0 descriptor is difficult to nail down, it’s easier to identify features following Web 2.0 principles - social networking (enabling interaction among users), tagging / folksonomy (enabling interaction between users and the data) and websites as applications are all examples of Web 2.0 features. Traineo is spiced with Web 2.0 principles including a call-in show packaged as a podcast, user-created groups, “motivators,” forums and more. With all these new-age features, how does Traineo do with providing the basic fitness journal features?

Traineo’s developers clearly intended to create a simple, easy-to-use weight-loss service that focuses primarily on community support, secondarily on daily caloric intake and eschews more complicated notions of nutrition. Traineo members share information through forums and support through “motivators” and private messages. Traineo offers several search features for finding like-minded members, and allows members to form groups complete with their own private forums and message areas. Recording data is as simple as choosing a caloric intake and exercise for the day.

The nutshell - If you are looking for a simple, user-friendly service to log only daily caloric intake and exercise, do not care to record or analyze daily nutrition, and are seeking an active support group with several communication features, Traineo is the place for you. If, however, you are interested in learning more about your daily nutrition and the caloric and nutritional value of the particular foods you eat, you will quickly outgrow what Traineo has to offer.

Read the full review after the jump.

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