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What a Sedentary, Desk Jockey, Office-Based Lifestyle Looks Like

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My Mother recently bought me a FitBit Ultra tracker. The FitBit is part-pedometer, part-sleep meter, part-calorie counter, and part-everything else. You wear it similarly as you would wear a pedometer, except the rules for attaching it to your person aren’t as rigid as a pedometer. For example, a pedometer must be placed in a specific location on or near your waist in order for it to track your steps. The FitBit, on the other hand, can be thrown into your pants pocket or even a shirt pocket among other places.

I wanted a FitBit Ultra for two reasons: to track my sleep and to track my activity levels. For a while now I’ve not been sleeping well. I’d say that I began noticing this back towards the end of April 2012; I figured that the FitBit could at least provide some level of tracking to see what was going on with my sleep.

In addition, I’ve gone from being an athletically active guy in high school to an academically and socially active guy in college (i.e. not working out in the gym, but still up and about) to a graduate student with so much free time that he lost 125 pounds (most of which has been gained back) to a guy with a good job which, unfortunately, requires about two hours of driving every day and the majority of my time being spent sitting at a desk staring at a computer. That’s some roller coaster for a body to go through over a 7 – 10 year period!

However, just like I began feeling that something was wrong with my sleep back in April, for some time now I’ve felt extra-sedentary. It’s a weird type of feeling to describe, but the feeling of being extra-sedentary is somewhat unnatural. It’s an interesting feeling in that you have the desire to go out and workout and you understand all of the motivational bullshit that folks like coaches and personal trainers try to sell you. But at the same time, you’re swamped with commitments and requirements that force you to sit behind a desk, in a car, at a meeting, on the phone, etc. for extended periods of time.

And that’s the key to understanding this extra-sedentary mode that some people fall in. There is a tremendous mental weariness and physical drain that comes with being an office worker, a long-term commuter, an active volunteer who does great things for causes at the result of lost free time, etc. If you can understand that drain and creeping innate exhaustion, then you can understand the feeling that I’ve been feeling for some time now.

Combine that feeling with a lack of sleep and, well, you don’t feel right. So I wanted the FitBit to track some of these items and this is what I found out:

My averages from July 1, 2012 – July 7, 2012

Take a look at those statistics. They’re horrible! Those are my average outcomes for the week of July 1, 2012 – July 7, 2012. If you’re looking at that graphic and wondering what the 33,828 steps taken means, it means that I walk an average of 4,833 steps per day. That’s less than half of what you’re supposed to walk each day! That pie graph shows that 68.7% of my waking hours are spent in a sedentary mode with a scant 3.3% of my time spent in a “very active” mode. That’s terrible!

And then you have the sleep bar graphs. The first bar graph shows how long I slept each day that week. It may be hard to tell from the graph, but the average amount of sleep that I get each night is between 6 hours and 6 hours and 20 minutes. Wondering where that innate feeling of exhaustion comes from? There you go! The last bar graph shows that I wake up a lot when I sleep. I’d estimate that the average amount of times that I wake up is between 25 and 35 times each night. That’s terrible! FitBit provides a more exact tracking of your sleep on a daily basis showing exactly when you woke up and how long you were awake, but I don’t want to bog this post down with a ton of graphics. The point is that I don’t sleep well and these figures prove it.

There are other statistics that I can provide, but they aren’t the focus of this entry. For example, I always knew that I didn’t really eat that much (regardless of how much I weigh). By tracking my calorie intake through FitBit, I was able to confirm that I typically eat between 2,000 and 2,500 calories each day, which is right in line for what a guy of my size should be eating to maintain a decent level of health. I don’t need to track this through FitBit because I get quarterly blood tests and checkups at the doctor and I get it confirmed there, but I’ll track it anyway since it doesn’t take up much of my time.

This all begs the question – now what? Now that I have this information what is it that I plan to do with it? Well, I’m not entirely sure to be honest. I wanted to find some validation for what I thought to be true and I found that validation through the FitBit Ultra. What I need to do now is find a way to begin breaking the sedentary lifestyle. However, that’s a very tough task. For example, I look at my schedule for the coming week and I’m booked solid – in a forced sedentary mode – all day Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday. On Saturday, I’m booked at two social events which will take up the bulk of my day. That leaves three days where I can potentially do something to get my activity levels up.

I suppose I could work out on those three days and I’m sure that I’ll do something active even if it’s just walking through the local mall or walking up and down the boardwalk by the beach. Yet, it all feels very disparate to me. In other words, it doesn’t seem like a long-term solution and, frankly, it doesn’t even seem like a short-term stop-gap measure.

In the end, I’m a data wonk (thanks, graduate school) and now I have a source of reasonably reliable data that confirms my prior suspicions. What this provides me is a better understanding of what I need to focus in on in order to improve my health. And those improvements center on two areas: higher activity levels and more restive sleep periods. If I can manage those two improvements, then they should combine with my already low caloric intake should put me in a much better physical condition.

Crazy Fat People Thoughts – Seeing The Bigger Picture in The Smaller Picture

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Some of you folks might remember a few weeks ago when I wrote the first “Crazy Fat People Thoughts” entry on JerseySmarts.com. The point of that entry was twofold. First, I was commenting about how I have a variety of never-been-worn-before jeans that I can now wear since I’ve been losing weight. Second, I was making a statement that most fat people do weird things or have habits/issues that range from minor quirks to extreme issues. While I’m lucky because I don’t think I have any major issues, I definitely have weird little quirks – like buying jeans that don’t fit me. This entry is about another one of the weird quirks that I’ve become more aware of lately and why I’m becoming aware of it. I think you’ll find it interesting.

What happens when this scene does occur, but you still can't see it?

Whereas the last entry of this type focused on all of these unworn jeans in my closet, this entry is going to focus on what I see when I look at myself in the mirror. First, some history…

I’ve mentioned many, many times on this blog that I once lost 125 pounds before gaining some 105 pounds back. While I’m not going to rehash that story, I do want to comment on my perception of reality during that time. Specifically, even though I lost 125 pounds and I was getting compliments from everyone I knew and everywhere I went, I didn’t see much of a change in the mirror. Now, before you go and think that I have some type of body dysmorphic disorder (look it up), I certainly knew that I looked different and I definitely knew that my body was a different shape at 260 pounds versus at 385 pounds.

However, for better or for worse, whenever I looked in the mirror I just saw… me.

Was my stomach smaller? I guess so. Were my arms and chest more defined because of the intense lifting that I was engaged in? More or less, I guess. Did I see the same changed person that everyone else saw when they looked at me? Nope.

Maybe it was because I’m a pretty strong-minded person and I knew that even though my body changed, I was still “me.” You see, society seems to think that if you lose a lot of weight and your appearance changes dramatically, then you must be a “new” person. This weird cause and effect is played out in the media and in popular television shows (it’s actually the core root of NBC’s The Biggest Loser). Yet, becoming a “new” person was never my motivation to lose weight when I dropped 125 pounds and it’s not my motivation as I lose weight this time around.

That’s probably enough background, but feel free to ask for more if you’re interested. Now some more present day comments on this topic…

I decided to write this entry because yesterday I hit a pretty big milestone in my current weight loss efforts. Yesterday, I weighed in at 314.6 pounds, which is 50.4 pounds less than when I started losing weight at the beginning of the summer. That’s pretty damn good!

Just like when I lost all of that weight last time around, I’m doing the same things this time around – eating less and working out more. That’s the big “secret” to weight loss. It really is the secret!

And, just like last time around, I’m not “seeing” much of a difference in the mirror. However, because I was aware enough at the beginning of the summer to know that my eye-to-mind connection would lie to me again about what I was “seeing,” I took a measure to prevent myself from believing (disbelieving?) what my eyes saw in the mirror.

I took pictures of myself.

No, you’re not going to see those pictures on this website so don’t ask. However, I glance through the pictures every once in a while to get a view of the pre-weight loss version of my body versus the current version of my body. And truth be told, there is a striking, noticeable difference between the picture of me at 354.6 pounds (after already losing 10.4 pounds is when I started taking the pictures) and the picture of me at 335.0 pounds… but that’s about it as far as my eyes can “see.” I’ve also taken pictures of myself at 330.4 pounds and 326.8 pounds; I have yet to take some pictures of myself at my current 314.6 pounds.

However, here’s the thing – I don’t see a difference in the pictures between 335.0 pounds and 326.8 pounds.

Is there a difference? Well, there would have to be, right? I mean you don’t weigh 8.2 pounds less than you did a week or two prior and not look different. Yet, I don’t see it in the pictures. Sure, maybe I’ll see the difference in the 314.6 pound pictures, but I don’t see the change now.

And that’s the root of this entry because I’m finding it pretty hard to get as excited as I should be about losing the 50 pounds so far. Most folks would be jumping up and down for joy after losing that much weight and while I’m glad about it, I’m not ecstatic about the 50 pound drop. Part of me believes that I’m not excited because, frankly, I’ve been here before. In fact, I’ve gone another 54.6 pounds down this road and will likely retrace those very same steps in the next 6 months. But I’m just not overly elated at what I’m seeing in the mirror.

The analyst in me thinks that I need to heed the title of this entry and see the bigger picture in the physically smaller pictures of my body. In other words, I think that part of my problem is that I need to realize and begin to achieve the bigger picture items that come along with losing weight before my mind will allow me to see the physical benefit of losing the weight. What does that mean? Here’s an example: I go to the doctor again next Friday (second day of September). At that appointment, I will have hopefully lost a total of 55 pounds since I last saw the doctor. That’s an astounding amount of weight to lose. I think, however, in order for me to realize and achieve the bigger picture items that come from losing this weight, I’m going to need my doctor to lower the amount of my medications (currently at 10 pills and 1 shot each day).

I’m pretty confident that a development like that would begin to wrench open my mind’s eye so that it can see the smaller figure standing in the mirror.

__________

The paragraph above is the end of this entry. Though, since this is a weight loss-themed entry, I thought I would add a few comments on my next goal and the longer-term goals that I have for losing weight. If you’re interested, read on…

The next goal is to drop below 300 pounds. As any big guy can tell you, when you’re losing weight that 300 pound figure looms above your efforts like a storm cloud waiting to burst. Once I break through that level and begin weighing something in the 290s, I’ll be content that this weight loss effort may actually have some longer-term legs. And on those longer-term legs, I’d like to carry myself to 275 pounds by the middle of October – in time for my older brother’s wedding. Again, as any big guy losing weight can tell you – once you breakthrough beneath the 300 pound level, 275 pounds doesn’t seem that far away (and it’s not in the grand scheme of things).

That’s about it in terms of my weight loss goals. Sure, one day I’d like to weigh around 230 pounds (I don’t know about going much lower than that weight, actually), but I’m in no great rush to get there. I could be very happy sitting at 275 pounds for a while just like I’m content taking small steps to get to that weight. If you’re interested in following this weight loss effort, stick around on JerseySmarts.com because I plan to chronicle as much of my thoughts and experiences as I can during this journey. It should be interesting. 🙂

NOOK Book Review: The Primal Blueprint by Mark Sisson

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A few months ago, I realized that I felt somewhat “good.” Now, I don’t know how to properly define what it means to feel “good,” but I do know that after spending the last ten or so years of my life not eating fast food, drinking soda, or putting an excessive amount of harmful stuff in my body (hey, we all need to get drunk every once in a while), that I just felt pretty good.

In fact, I felt good enough to begin a weight loss contest with my roommates. My hope was that the weight loss contest would motivate me to go to the gym more often and, in the process, eliminate some of the nagging nuisances of being so overweight. For example, my joints (knees, ankles, and hips) tended to feel extra stressed after laying on a couch or sitting on my leg (which I do often in my home office area). You know – typically overweight stuff.

Those somewhat nagging physical inconveniences aside, I’m constantly trying to put myself in a situation where I can learn new things about topics that I’m interested in. For the last few months, I’ve been reading up on different diets that focus on simplicity and common sense and I found myself looking at the paleo diet. After a little bit of research I wound up on Mark Sisson’s website (MarksDailyApple.com) and flipping through a sample of his book called The Primal Blueprint. Flipping through that sample made me realize that the trajectory that I’ve been on for the last ten years is pretty much a combination of Michael Pollan’s food rules, the paleo diet, and The Primal Blueprint – so I purchased the eBook version of The Primal Blueprint and began reading.

And you know what? I really enjoyed reading this book.

Sisson goes into detail about his ten rules for living a primal lifestyle. To do this, he uses a fictional, catch-all character named Grok – one of our cavemen ancestors who lived a simple life that consisted of foraging and hunting animals for food and running for dear life when that food started to attack! Conceptually, the entire basis of The Primal Blueprint is built around Grok’s life and how it can translate to today’s world. It’s a brilliant form of writing because by using a fictional character that the entire world can relate to (a caveman), Sisson is able to start each reader of his book (or his website) at a similar “square one.” In other words, in order to understand and accept The Primal Blueprint, you have to understand and accept that cavemen lived simple lives.

Which is a simple enough concept to grasp, I think!

The core of The Primal Blueprint diet is to reduce the amount of grains that you eat and increase the amount of fresh fruits and vegetables. That’s about as a boiled down as I can make the discussion about food without getting too technical (for example, don’t eat just fruits and vegetables – eat organic fruits and vegetables). And Sisson – as many health writers are these days – is a big proponent of eating meat (grass-fed, organic). Eating a good portion of meat is part of Sisson’s war on Conventional Wisdom (a defined term in The Primal Blueprint and thus why it is capitalized here). Sisson argues that Conventional Wisdom is what made the majority of Americans fat and overweight while living unhealthy lifestyles with little to no play time or exposure to the sun.

While I was reading this book, I looked at the world around me and it’s very easy to notice that Sisson is absolutely right on many of these anti-Conventional Wisdom points.

In addition to the deconstruction of Conventional Wisdom, the other main point in the book that stuck with me was the attack on Chronic Cardio (another defined term, thus the capitalization). For Sisson, Chronic Cardio is what most of us get engaged in when we say we’re “going to the gym.” You know how it works – you get on the treadmill, steadily increase your pace, stay on for a little while, move on to the elliptical machine, repeat the same procedure, move on to the stationary bike, repeat the same procedure, and call it a day. Sisson argues that this isn’t healthy because it puts your heart beat range in a dangerous, unnatural zone and conditions your body to stop burning calories (i.e. the plateau effect when trying to lose weight). For the anti-Chronic Cardio discussion alone, I’d advise clicking through Sisson’s website or flipping through his book at the local Barnes & Noble (which I did before I purchased the cheaper, more cost efficient NOOK Book version).

One of the annoying parts of reading the book was the constant references to going to Sisson’s website to get more information on a certain topic. Sure, it’s nice that there is a free resource to access additional information on a topic, but I don’t need to be reminded about that free resource every few pages.

Granted, there were a bunch of formatting issues when reading the NOOK Book version of The Primal Blueprint, but none so egregious that I had to stop reading the book at any point. I have to imagine that the reason why there were formatting issues is because this book is pretty much self-published and didn’t have the benefit of a big publishing house to review every format and aspect of the book. No worries, though, the NOOK Book version is very accessible (and very easy to read while I was on the treadmill or the elliptical at the gym).

Crazy Fat People Thoughts – How Many Pairs of Jeans Do YOU Own?

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Before I write my little diatribe today, I thought I would try to comment on the title of this entry. The title of this entry starts with “Crazy Fat People Thoughts” and then talks about pairs of jeans. Please understand, I’m not suggesting that all fat people are crazy or that fat people, in general, have crazy thoughts. However, after being a fat guy for the majority of my adult life, I do have some excellent first hand knowledge of the sometimes crazy point of view that fat people have on certain issues.

For example, I once weighed 385 pounds and then lost 125 pounds to settle at 260 pounds. After a while, I wound up gaining back around 100 pounds. Not good. But to show you how sometimes fat people can be crazy, when I weighed 260 pounds I would look in the mirror and see every bit of the 385 pounds that I used to weigh. In fact, despite the nearly non-stop compliments that I was receiving on losing all of the weight, there wasn’t a doubt in my mind that I looked exactly the same as I did when I weighed 385 pounds. No doubt in my mind at all – even though I was completely wrong.

A huge stack of unworn jeans sitting in my closet

The point is that I understand the crazy thoughts that fat people have from time to time. And on that subject, I figured now would be as good a time as any to report to you all about my recent weight loss efforts and one of the positive outcomes of those efforts. I began a weight loss contest with both of my roommates at some point in June. The winner of the contest will get free rent for the month of September (a $587 value). The contest ends in 13 days and I’m in second place by a few percentage points.

Since the contest started, I’ve dropped about 42 pounds. That’s pretty significant. However, since I know from my previous experience that I’m prone to having crazy fat people thoughts, I started snapping pictures of myself (front shot and profile shot) in just my underwear at different weights. Unfortunately, I didn’t start at the 363.6 pounds that I weighed when the contest started (or the 365 pounds that I weighed a week before the contest started), but I did begin taking pictures somewhere around 356 pounds. Again, my purpose for taking these pictures is so that I can see for my own two eyes a “before and after” shot of my body before I began losing weight and after the weight has come off.

And wouldn’t you know it, but the pictures don’t lie. I can clearly see a marked decrease in the size of my torso between the 356 pound picture and the 321 pound picture. In essence, I’m trying to use these pictures to trick (or untrick, really) my brain into recognizing a difference when it looks in the mirror. I don’t know if it’s working yet, but I do know that I have picture proof of my body getting smaller.

Along with that picture proof has come a little bit of pride in losing the weight so I did something the other night that I haven’t done in a while – I took out pairs of jeans that I know I can’t fit into and tried them on. That’s the picture above – an entire stack of jeans (rotated sideways so it can fit in the JerseySmarts.com format). Now here’s where the craziness comes into play – most of those 20 or so pairs of jeans have never been worn! And when I say never been worn, I mean the tags are still on these things! That’s one of the crazy things that some fat people do – we buy things that don’t really fit because we know if we lose a little bit of weight then they’ll fit just fine.

Of course, most folks never really lose the weight and thus what they wind up with is either a huge stack of unworn clothing sitting in their closets like you see in the picture above or a huge stack of unworn clothing that they donate to charity (and ultimately get less of a tax benefit on a per dollar basis than if they just didn’t buy these things in the first place). And to wrap up this part of the conversation, I thought I’d let you know that while I did manage to fit into about 6 or 7 of those pairs of jeans, I put the rest of the stack back and will give it another round of testing after I drop another 20 pounds or so.

To finish up this entry, I thought I’d make a brief observation about what I’d “win” if I win the contest. Sure, I get to keep $587 at a time when I could use the extra funds (with my brother’s wedding coming up and his bachelor party, etc). However, even if I don’t win (and, in truth, my roommate’s lead will be tough to overcome), I am still going to reap a financial benefit. By losing weight, I’ll reduce the number of prescriptions that I need to take each day and thus reduce my medical bills. By losing weight, I’ll be able to fit into some of these jeans that are sitting in my closet that I haven’t been able to wear until now – that saves me money by not having to buy new clothes! So, even if I don’t win the contest, I’ll still reap a financial benefit – and that’s enough to make my crazy fat person thoughts dissipate for a little while!

This is What I’ve Been Eating for Breakfast Everyday… For Weeks!

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As I was cleaning out the pictures on my new HTC Droid Incredible 2 (this is some phone), I thought that I’d post up a picture that was lodged in there of what I’ve been eating for breakfast for the last few weeks. So, here it is:

Berries - the Breakfast of Champions!

That’s right – I’ve been eating berries every morning for breakfast and they’re delicious! That bag is a mixture of blueberries, blackberries, strawberries, and raspberries. Each week, I go out and buy a carton of each berry and then put them in a big bowl. Then, every morning I grab a small Ziploc bag and fill it with the berry blend. It’s really pretty good.

If I’m working from home one day, I’ll usually take the berries and put them in a bowl and then pour hot, cinnamon oatmeal over the top of them. That’s a meal and a half right there – let me tell you. And, you might notice from the newly placed MyFitnessPal.com widget on the side of JerseySmarts.com (scroll down), that I’ve lost a few pounds. No, I’m not on any type of “diet” or anything like that (at all). I’m just eating a little bit less and trying to work out a little bit more – which, of course, is the big “secret” to weight loss.

So there you go – just thought that I’d share.