Running the numbers: Round 3

I just got back from having Bonesetter Stew set my bones and take my stats.  Here's the first time I had this done and the second, for interested parties.  Also, if I can find someone tall, dark, handsome and named Tony to hold the camera for me, I'll get more pictures and do a side-by-side comparison with the old ones.  Below, I've listed first/second/latest numbers, in that format.

Weight: 161/155/149.  I'm pretty happy with this, but there are more interesting numbers to focus on...

BMI: 25.06/24.28/23.34.  I know this one is totally inaccurate and you're not supposed to put a lot of stock into it, but this is the first time in recent memory that I've checked it and it was solidly in the "normal" range.  Moving on...

Body Fat Percentage: 26.3/24.9/23.3.  This, along with waist-to-hip ratio (which I'll post as soon as I can dig up a tape measure), are the numbers I'm most interested in.

Total Body Water: 59.7%/64.0%/68.5%.  Stew says around 70% is a good aim, so I'm doing awesomely here.

Basal Metabolic Rate: 1540/1518/1492.  It's dropped as I've lost weight, as is to be expected.  I wish it were a little higher, but that should come with more lean mass.

Daily Energy Expenditure: 2002/2278/1940.  And I still have no clue how to translate this into real-world terms - I mean, I get that it's supposed to be how much you burn in a day, but how the hell is that actually measured in an instant?

As I said before, WTH ratio and pictures are forthcoming.

Now for the coolest part of this: the time span between the first and second stats was a little less than a month when I was doing a strict calorie-restricting diet/cleanse and working out very heavily probably 6 times a week or so, with most of the rest of my life being relatively easy and unstressful.  I saw definite improvements in my numbers, but as I noted in my follow-up post, my overall results weren't totally desirable.  I was cranky and  bloated; my trichotillomania was seriously acting up and I felt extremely constrained and regimented by the specific way I was supposed to eat and train, as well as discouraged by the way my performance in the gym had dropped.  I was moving towards some goals, but at the expense of others.

Now, fast-forward to today.  I haven't done more than an hour or two of formal exercise in a year.  (I'm not counting the forest walk/running I do with my zombie running app, because that's almost entirely walking, I've only done a few episodes and it's also a game.)  I've gone through some incredibly stressful times in the past year and am now working three jobs  for a total of 60-70 hours/week.  When I'm at home, I spend most of my time lying on my bed reading or web-surfing via my phone.  My diet is insanely high in animal fats: schmalz, lard, fatback, butter and heavy cream make up the bulk of my calories, with coconut oil being added soon.  Other than that, I eat raw or rare eggs, beef, offal (liver, heart, etc) and milk (which I drink almost entirely cultured into kefir at this point).  Sometimes I roast a chicken.  The only carbs I normally have come from my homemade lactofermented sauerkraut and the kefir, or other veggies if The Man buys them for me.  He also surprised me with Walker shortbread cookies yesterday, and I gave him a kiss and promptly demolished half the (large) package.  That's another thing: while what's listed above is my default way of eating, I definitely "cheat" more than I think I should.  I also take 20-minute ice baths a couple times a week, a la Tim Ferriss.  And I try not to stay up past 11 most nights.  That's it.

Whatever I'm doing seems to be mostly working.  I'm not entirely happy with everything - I want to regain my flexibility and strength, for starters, and eventually I want to start moving back towards competition-level lifting and parkour, as well as dripping a couple more percentage points of body fat and working on having an ass like whoa.  But as far as I can tell without actually having been to the gym, a surprising amount of my strength is still there - things like air squats and burpees come easily to me, and (most amazingly) I can still do a few unassisted pull-ups in a row (remember, I had shoulder surgery last year). 

I like where I am.  I love where I'm going.  Here's to documenting the whole process.

-n

3Jul12 - food and thoughts

BREAKFAST
Two egg whites cooked in butter, with a handful of sauerkraut warmed in the pan (mostly to soak up the rest of the butter.  Two egg yolks floating in kefir.  Two cups of coffee with heavy cream and milk.

THOUGHTS
(in no particular order)

I mostly like my diet right now.  I know I'm not eating a lot of vegetables, and the reason for that is they often take more prep time and attention than the other things I eat.  Kefir: pour milk in jar, add grains, wait.  Meat: heat fat in pan, add meat, wait a couple minutes, eat.  (Or just eat.  Yes, really.  More on that later.)  Eggs: well, half of them is ready to eat already, and I've been known to whisk a whole raw egg or two into my kefir, antinutrients be damned - it's just so easy!  Sauerkraut is awesome because I do about half an hour of prep one night, another 10ish minutes a few days later to pack the fermented product into smaller jars and then I'm set for a week or two.  I probably need to start pickling everything.  Hence the nukadoko...why is it so hard to find rice bran?

The best I ever felt on a "diet" was when I did Whole 30 back at the beginning of last year, and a not-too-modified version of it for a month or two following.  That's also when I was doing very heavy Crossfitting, though - between 4 and 6 times a week, sometimes every day.  These days I'm nervous about committing that much money - time too, but mostly money.  I'm still waiting on my stipend check from May, and have been trying to not spend on anything but essentials until it comes through.  Of course I say that, but then I go out with The Man and end up buying two new dresses I didn't totally need because I like how he looks at me in them, on top of the things I actually needed.  Which would make it completely worth it if I weren't so nervous about money these days.

The best I ever looked on a diet was when I did "Stage One" of this one here.  It's like one-meal intermittent fasting with snacking on fruit and nuts allowed, essentially.  Yes, I know that totally defeats the purpose.  But it helped me drop fat very quickly: I was noticing a significant difference in how my clothes fit after a week, and judging by the fact that there didn't seem to be a change in the way my lifts were increasing, I'm going to assume that lean mass wasn't affected very much.  It also helped me eat with enjoyment and mindfulness, instead of just "because it's dinner time" or out of boredom.  I like getting hungry enough for that to kick in.  When I did "official" IF, by contrast, it just made me really antsy, counting down the minutes until my eating window started in the morning and skipping other things to make sure I got dinner in before it ended at night.  Maybe I'm just justifying the caveman dealio because that's the last time I remember having that small a waist, but if it gives me that goal without getting me further from others, I figure it's not too bad.

There's so much conflicting information on what is the best way to be "fit," which loosely translates as some version of "beautiful and good at moving."  Even in my own varied experiences.  The only thing about the methods I've tried that seems to particularly stick out now is the fact that I'm not moving enough, and I need to do that more.  I can feel a knot tighten in my stomach as I type that - I already work so much, between 60 and 70 hours in any given week, and when I finish, I just don't want to do more than go back home and sip a cold drink while I'm curled on my bed.  But I'm beginning to realize that I need to suck it up and just start moving again.  The healing process after surgery and the period of "nourishing fitness" after this very mentally stressful past year need to start morphing back to a regime that actually, actively builds me back up.

2Jul12

Oh my god(s).  I'm actually on vacation.  So this is what weekends feel like. I'd forgotten...

BREAKFAST

For starters, some coffee, poured into the cream jar to melt out the last little bits that the spoon couldn't get to.  In the picture, it's sitting on my kitchen windowsill beside some dried apple peels for a nukadoko via this recipe, forthcoming whenever I can either find some rice bran in a local store or just buy it online.

Next, the main course: a spatula-load of ground beef, cooked in fatback.  The rest gets saved for dinner, when it will be too freaking hot to even look at the stove.  A delicious eggwhite omelette gets snuggled up to that.  Don't worry, I'm not crazy - the yolks are hiding in my morning kefir. To that, add the rest of the fatback and a cup of ruby-red sauerkraut and you have a pretty awesome first-day-of-vaycay breakfast.

Exercise: read The Tao of Pooh in child's pose while drinking my coffee.  I think that counts.

LUNCH
A little bit of leftover chicken, one baked egg and some nuts, with a little butter added after the picture was taken. To drink, a big glass of kvass - no, that's not juice!  The taste is something like chilled salty-sour broth.  I absolutely adore it, as the four more full quart jars in my fridge will tell you.

SNACK
Another handful of almonds and Brazil nuts, along with a glass of half kvass and half kefir.  It's such a bright magenta you'd never guess there's not a single artificial ingredient in it - not even a cooked one, come to think of it: the kefir is just raw milk with kefir grains added, left for about a day.  I strain a batch every now and then, just often enough to keep myself in whey, which is then added to a big half-gallon jar of chopped beets, salt and water and let sit for a few days to make the kvass.  The other outcome of straining the kefir is farmer's cheese, which, dried as much as possible, salted and packed in olive oil, tastes like softer feta and is great with tomatoes.

1Jul12

BREAKFAST
One glass of kefir
A few pieces of chicken
About 10 almonds
2 cups of coffee with heavy cream at work

LUNCH
One burger patty (no bun) with gruyere, lettuce, tomato, onion, pickles and aioli, plus fries with ketchup.  This was amazing and I wish I'd thought to take a picture of it.  Also, I spent what I thought was a nice decently-long time eating and chilling, and when I clocked back in I discovered it only took 18 minutes.  Time to either eat more slowly and mindfully or else realize that I actually can find the time to eat a meal on Saturdays.

After work, I cleaned up, returned Tulip to Amy's (sadface) and then went out with my dad and The Man to see "Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter."  All I have to say is, the reviewer who gave it zero stars (that's right, not a single one) must not have read the damn title.  If you want to see a movie about Abraham Lincoln killing evil Southern vampires with a silver-tipped axe, you will enjoy this movie.  If your standards for things like continuity and action scenes where you can pretty much tell what's going on are fairly low and you cried when Wash died in Serenity, you will immensely enjoy this movie   If you want something to make you think, go see Schindler's List or something.  Coincidentally, the actor playing Abe looks scarily like Liam Neeson.

DINNER
A big heap of Southern Cackalacky BBQ, two kinds of greens and some grapes at the Whole Foods buffet with the aforementioned gentlemen.  We talked about how apparently Lincoln's entire cabinet consisted of his childhood friend and his former shopkeeper boss.

BEDTIME SNACK
Big glass of kefir, milk and cream.  Time to pass out.

-N

30Jun12

Saturdays are always the worst.  Work normally lasts about 12 hours, give or take, and this time it was "give," with a total of 13 hours 4 minutes on my time card, and one break at about 7pm do I could run home and feed the dog.  Other than that, I sat down for about a minute one time and was upright constantly for the rest of the time.  Here's what I ate all day:

2 cups of coffee with heavy cream in the morning
One slice of toasted sweet bread that the chef made me unprompted
Probably about 10 2-3 inch pieces of bacon
A whole lot of unsweetened tea with kvass (no lemonade!)

When I finally got home:
A big glass of kefir, milk and cream all stirred together
About 2/3 c of leftover chicken pieces
A small handful of almonds and Brazil nuts

Looking back at this, it's way less than I thought.  Problem is, it's really hard to schedule the day so I have a solid 20 minutes free to sit and eat - I'll have 4 or 5 minutes here and there, but most of the time something is just minutes away from needing my attention, if it doesn't need it immediately.  Such are the joys of being a baker.

Exercise: nothing formal, just a whole lot of lifting that barge and toting that bale.  Also took a 15-minute ice bath right before bed because of the ridonkulous record heat we're having, if that counts for anything.

Starting fresh

This is not for you.*

This is the way this blog came into being: as a simple food-mood-exercise log.  It expanded way past that eventually, and there was a point when I was really proud of how things were moving along.  But things change, and now it seems like this incredibly basic function is the one thing that might actually get me writing something on a regular basis again.  I keep wanting to write these big interesting posts, but especially as my prose skills have waned with disuse, that often proves to be too much pressure and I end up drafting tons of stuff but very rarely finishing and publishing any of it.

Here's what I had to eat today.  If this bores you, I'm sorry, but I'm not changing it.  Hopefully things will get more interesting in time (especially if I forget to correct my autocorrect, which wanted me to say "hopefully things Erroll hey!" at the beginning of this sentence).  But here's where it's at right now, and indefinitely.

BREAKFAST
Approximately a cup each of leftover roasted chicken with a little schmalz and butter and lactofermented sauerkraut.  A cup of coffee with milk and cream - both raw (unpasteurized), with the cream so thick you have to scoop it out with a spoon.  A cup of homemade raw whole milk kefir.  The incessant whining of the dog telling me that her stomach is literally about to implode (despite the bowl of food she had 10 minutes ago) and if I give her just one piece of chicken it will save her life!!!

LUNCH
One zucchini's worth of zucchini hash, one piece of beef heart and a chicken liver for good measure, all cooked in butter. A small handful of almonds that I soaked and dried, plus a couple Brazil nuts.  Two glasses of uncultured milk.

Exercise: just got back from a lovely hour spent at the Eno with the dog, mostly walking with some running bouts and a nice 5-minute soak in some surprisingly cold water.  I got that crazy zombie running app that all the kids are talking about these days and I absolutely love it.  I'm usually a proponent of listening to nothing but your breath and footsteps while running through the woods, but this thing actually has me excited about exercise again, and it's a little embarrassing how big a deal that is.

DINNER
More sauerkraut and chicken (1.5 c and about 2/3 c, respectively).  One baked-in-the-shell egg (SO much less time-intensive than boiling them!). A little cold butter, chopped up and sprinkled on after this picture was taken.  One glass of kefir.  Not shown: a half glass of kvass, which is this salty lactofermented beet juice that's supposed to be a nice probiotic tonic.  My fridge is brimming with it right now.  Everything is very cold because it's ridiculously hot and my apartment only has window AC units.  Ice bath tonight...

I "cheated" on paleo today with about a half of a freshly-baked pretzel and several glasses of lemonade.  My excuse was that I had to taste-test them (I'm a baker, and this is a fairly new recipe that's still in the perfecting stage), and it's freaking hot and I needed to stay hydrated.  Problems with that?  I don't need more than a finger-joint's worth of pretzel to assess taste, and any more than that makes my stomach go kaPOOF! which it totally did.  Which always happens.  And it's never fun.  And in this case I don't even like pretzels, so the taste didn't even make up for the unhappy belly.  As for the lemonade, I just need to suck it up and drink some damn water already.

Bonus points to anyone who 1. reads this, 2. *can name the reference in the first line and 3. can tell me how to use the Android Blogger app so that the pictures appear where I want them to.

-N

Metal bras are probably really uncomfortable

...and what's with all the freaking loincloths!  Knee-high boots can be pretty appropriate, though, depending on the context.

What the heck am I talking about?  Go do a Google image search for "female warrior," "warrior woman" and you'll understand.

Why was I doing a search like that to start with?  Because lately I've been pondering the importance of costume, and how it affects...well, pretty much everything.  Depending on what I'm wearing, I might choose to eat different foods or a different amount (gluten and tight waistbands? do. not. mix.); I might choose to run instead of walk; I might get a mood boost from the bright color or nice fit; I might be inspired to act up to my image if I dress in heavy-duty workout clothes for a planned walk at the Eno, or wear something that screams "smart and nerdy (but cute!)!" to work at the lab or go to classes.

I've been saying to myself lately how when my life is idiomatically "out of balance," I literally feel unbalanced and clumsier than I should be.  My walking stride gets more awkward, my joints hurt when I walk, run or even stand for too long.  I was sure that I just had to focus on clearing up EVERYTHING CRAZY IN MY LIFE and then it would just go back to normal!  Easy, right?  Yeah.  I'll get back to you on that one.

This past weekend, I dressed up as stated above for a riverwalk.  Black yoga pants, rolled up to the knee; 4srs sports bra; nonbinding tank top; my beloved Inov-8 parkour shoes that are slowly disintegrating after being used as kitchen kicks for half a year.  And...I moved.  I didn't just change location, I practiced movement as an art; I performed movement.  I walked without growing weary, I ran without fainting (or, in my case, puking), and I swam from the dam all the way upstream to the riverbend and back.  I reclaimed a little bit of the freaking awesome warrior woman that I was becoming last summer.  And I'm not ready to stop.

So I want to create a costume for myself that goes with that woman - not so I can limit my time being her to only when I'm wearing the getup, but because the mental boost it would give me is exactly what I need to start playing the role of who I used to be, as practice for actually becoming that again.  Problem is, I want to add a little inspiration in the form of a picture of another badass chica.  And, as stated above, the available options are seriously lacking in sanity.  But after some serious search work, I figured out that I want to dress a little less like this

Xena, don't be mad.  I still love you.  I just think you look a little silly.

and a little more like this, for the gamers

Faith from Mirror's Edge

or this, for the history buffs out there (she's supposed to be Bouadicea, the warrior queen who led an invasion against the Romans, burnt the future London, then a Roman settlement, to the ground and killed a lot of people.  Brutal, but so were the times, and no one can say she wasn't the very epitome of a warrior woman).

So here's the ideas, starting from the ground up.

SHOES
Must fit well.  I know this sounds ridiculously intuitive, but I've been flopping around in my ragged, too-big Toms for months now and only just realised that maybe it was the shoes that were clumsy and not me.  For now my Inov-8s still work, but I'd really like to get or make something even more minimalist - some huaraches come to mind, or moccasins, perhaps custom-made with a separate big toe and elastic around the arch...oooh, ideas :)

PANTS/SHORTS
Different garb for different use - long pants for trekking around in unmown fields and close-growing copses, shorts for scampering around in clearer areas and for river swims.  Or perhaps the best of both worlds: low-profile shorts or knickers underneath, non-rustling easy-off long pants on the outside.  Take that, ticks!

TOP
Bra: probably as heavy-duty as I can find and still breathe in.  And also not made of metal.  Shirt: only until I like my abs again.  Before that, as loose as possible and sleeveless.

ACCOUTERMENTS
Usually I just have my keys clipped to my waistband, but I've often thought it would be nice to have a small, light, very very low profile daypack, with a bottle of water, snack, mini towel, etc, as well as being a place to put my keys so they stop lacerating my hip when I run.  I used to have one, but it finally came apart this past year, and also had a lot of straps to get hooked on branches and stuff.  That's always fun.

I don't have an iPod, but I heard about this amazing running app that makes it sound like you're being chased by zombies.  I really really want it, but if I got it I'd have to get something to strap my phone to myself.  Anybody else do that?  What works?  What doesn't?

Also pretty awesome to have would be a charm to wear on my neck or ankle, just as kind of a talisman to remind me who I'm becoming again.  That's a little harder to find, though.  I'll keep an eye out.

Apologies for the awkward prose, guys.  I really just wanted to write something so I start getting back into the habit.

-Nelly