Procrastination

Why the hell has it taken me so long to write this?

Procrastination is an intransitive verb that simply means to delay something, to postpone it, or to put an action off until later.  Somehow the spoken word itself has an auditory connotation that feels vaguely sexual to me, but that could just be my dirty mind.  Or it could be because procrastination is akin to self-abuse.  When we sheepishly utter those shameful words, "I procrastinate," we are admitting to ourselves (and to others) that we have somehow lost control of our ability to enact a plan or fulfill a vision--or to pay a bill on time, buy a birthday card or make a lunch date with someone we don't really like very much.  Procrastination is bad and ugly, but we all do it.

Why?

The simple answer is if you are procrastinating a task then you don't really want to do that task at all.  You're not just putting it off, you're putting it as far away as you possibly can until you absolutely have to face it with no two ways around it.  This is obvious, but what isn't so obvious is why you have to do the task in the first place.  This requires some observation and introspection.

Some chores are mandatory.  If you don't do the dishes on a regular basis then the dishes pile up, there's nothing to eat on after a few meals, and twelve months later you're being featured on "Hoarders: Buried Alive" as that freak who never did the dishes and now has a family of rats living in her sink.  Carpooling is another mandatory chore.  You can't procrastinate carpooling or your kids and your neighbor's kids won't get to school (or back) and then suddenly you'll find yourself living in a neighborhood infested with stupid, immature criminals and you're their Mama.

Other chores aren't mandatory, but they are desirable if you want to maintain your health and sanity. Like putting your clothes back in the closet when you finish laundering them.  Or picking up all those scraps of junk mail and receipts you seem to leave all over the house.  Or stocking up on toilet paper before you run out.   You don't HAVE to do these things, ever, but you probably should.  Procrastinate if you want, but know that you'll most likely end up doing this category of chores eventually or people you know and like will stop coming over for tea.

But then there are the things we take upon ourselves to do that we then find ourselves putting off.  Like volunteering to write an article for that church newsletter.   Or knitting a scarf for a second-tier friend.  Or cleaning the basement.  Or organizing your CDs (do people still have CDs?).  Or responding to a bevy of humorous but unimportant emails.  Or scrubbing the floor of the shower.  Or getting the dog's teeth cleaned.  Or writing the next Great American Novel.  These are the tasks that  feel good upon completion, but summoning the energy to do them is harder than licking lint.  They move from #10 to #4 on our To-Do lists and then, when they reach that coveted #3 spot, the spot where they might actually have to happen, one new email or phone call breezes in and suddenly, Chutes & Ladders,  they're pushed back down to the bottom of the list.  For another year.


You will procrastinate all tasks you don't enjoy that you don't really need to do in the first place.


My advice to stop procrastinating is to stop committing to doing things you don't want to do. That seems simple enough--AND IT IS.  Just don't do it.  Consider your consequences. Are they really so terrible?  Let's see:

The church newsletter doesn't get your article so someone else steps in and you get a reputation as being unreliable.  So what?  You're off the hook forever for that insidious job!  Your good-hearted religious friends will have to understand because religion teaches us infinite tolerance and acceptance, hiyah, hiyah.

Your distant friend doesn't get the scarf you promised to make him.  Will he freeze to death come Winter?  And would that really be on you if he did?  You can always buy him a scarf if you feel that guilty about it, and then just blame your carpal tunnel.

You didn't clean the basement (or attic or garage) so now your children will clean it when you die and they'll find your moldy treasures and get rich off them, or throw them in the trash.  Who cares?  You're dead!  If you haven't looked at or used the stuff down there for at least three years, chances are you never needed it in the first place.  So is there really a loss?  If you have The Most Precious Thing In The World down there you would have put it on your mantle in a glass dome instead of storing it next to those paisley cummerbunds (and porn) you found at that weird garage sale.

You didn't organize the CD's.  Big deal.  It's not like you can't find the song you want to listen to when you want to hear it anyway, right?  CD collections are like your VHS movie collection or your cousin's coin collection or your Grandma's crystal animals collection.  Rethink it:  the fun is that they remain random and useless.

The funny emails go unanswered and unforwarded.  Do you think the idiots who sent them will stop sending them because they didn't get a reply?  Chances are Not.

So you don't clean the floor of the shower.  Twice a year hire someone to do it for you.  You'll miss the $50 but you'll save yourself some gross afternoons.

So the dog's teeth didn't get cleaned, and he spent his last three years toothless.  Yeah, that's pretty shitty.  You should take care of your dog, asshole.

As for writing the next Great American Novel, if you procrastinate on that then it wasn't inspired and worth writing and no one would have wanted to read it anyway.  If it WAS worth writing, you'd be writing it.  All of the excuses in your life would fall away because you would channel your passion and summon your creative forces and the book would take precedence.  Art is unprocrastinateable.  Instead of dreaming about writing it, you would shut the door, disconnect the modem, turn off the phone, staple your spouse's mouth shut and you would write it.  You Just Would.

No one procrastinates playing golf.  No one procrastinates flying to Europe for free.  No one procrastinates going to an amusement park.  No one procrastinates eating cookies.  No one procrastinates visiting a dying, beloved relative.   We all procrastinate paying our taxes, but think of the relief you'd feel if you just hunkered down and put your figures together and sent in your package on January 2nd (or the day you get your W-2).  When everyone else if freaking out in April you'll be kicking up your heels and drinking a martini.  Try it in 2012 and you'll see what I mean.

If you don't want to do something, just admit you don't want to do it and then don't do it.  And if you have to do it, if you have to pull the weeds from the garden yourself, rip off that band-aid and do it as quickly as possible and be glad it's done and pat yourself on the back for being responsible.  Then see if you can rethink your choices and avoid getting yourself into that position where you may have to do it again.  This may require more money, but that's for another post.

Think about your choices.  Do it.  Go think.  Now.

SNEAK PEAK Theatre Review: JERUSALEM

Don't be confused by the title--it's not a play about Zionism. 

Tony and Olivier Award-winning star Mark Rylance portrays Johnny 'Rooster' Byron in the brilliant new play Jerusalem.  In the backwoods of Flintock, England (near Stonehenge) a former daredevil motorcyclist and modern-day Pied Piper, drug-dealing, super-friend/antihero is served an eviction notice on his airstream as a new housing development is slated for construction.  With his gypsy-esque lifestyle, thousand-year lineage, and motley assortment of alcohol and drug-addled friends he lives on a nebulous boundary of insanity and utterly-clear logic while negotiating a relationship with his son, ex-wife, the city council and the world at large.  Throw in a missing girl with an abusive stepfather, mythic themes and a flawless set and you'll find yourself lost for three crispy hours in an unwavering world of brutal and radiant humanity.   Ian Rickson's direction feels natural and clean, but fully embedded with details and layers that made me want to see the show a second time and right away.  The cheeky dialogue is cunning, hilarious and wrenching.  Each moment of this play pulls at you, forcing you to question your own judgmental nature and moral compass while profound ideological battles rage.  On the surface it's a simplistic play about a misplaced man, but playwright Jez Butterworth scratches until a remarkable and haunting profundity is unearthed.  And then he scratches even deeper, forcing our blood to rise.

Mark Rylance attacks and embodies Byron with an astonishing ferociousness and sensitivity that will undoubtedly garner him further deserved awards.  Jerusalem already won the 2009 Evening Standard and London Critics' Circle Awards, the 2010 Writers' Guild of Great Britain Award for Best Play, and Mark Rylance won the Olivier Award (Britain's Tony).  We saw a preview last night--the play opens tomorrow.  If the ten-minute standing ovation was any indication, this show will win a spate of more deserved Tony's on June 12th and it will undoubtedly join the canons of unparalleled and memorable Broadway theater.   Don't miss it.

http://www.newyorkcitytheatre.com/theaters/musicboxtheater/theater.php

Music Box Theatre
239 W 45th St, NYC 10036

Running Time:
2 hours and 55 minutes, including two 10 minute intermissions

Cast Members:
Mark Rylance, Mackenzie Crook, John Gallagher, Jr., Max Baker, Geraldine Hughes, Molly Ranson, Alan David, Aimeé-Ffion Edwards, Danny Kirrane, Charlotte Mills, Sarah Moyle, Harvey Robinson, Barry Sloane, Aiden Eyrick, Mark Page

Punctuality

I’m sitting in the car, waiting.  A gentle Spring rain pitter-patters down the windshield, fueling the early-bursting flowers—and my rage.  Our happy orange Mazda has become a Chinese Water Torture Chamber from a 1980’s Elvira movie.  Soon my eyes will start a bout of uncontrolled spasms and before long I’ll be blathering and blubbering and seething.  Our friend is having a dinner party that starts at 6:30, and she specifically asked that we arrive early so it can start on time.  It’s 6:28 and she lives six minutes away.  We haven’t left yet, and we’re late.

When I was in drama class it was put to me like this:  “Take every minute you’re late for a rehearsal, miss a cue or show up after you’re expected and multiply it by the number of people waiting for you.”   By that calculation, if you’re only 12 seconds late for your cue in a play and there are 450 people in the audience then you’ve squandered an hour and a half.  An hour and a half from just 12 seconds!!  Now I’m sitting in the car, wondering when Jon is going to come out of the house, and I’m already calculating that we’ve lost nearly an hour by making 13 people wait for four minutes.  Yikes.

I’m being dramatic for effect.  It’s not like this dinner party was lost-productivity for a Fortune 500 company or a space shuttle launch or the opening number at the Academy Awards.  We ended up being just a few minutes late—no big deal.  We arrived at 6:36 and were actually surprised to find everyone was, in fact, waiting for us.  We were rushered (rushed and ushered) to our seats and I felt a tinge of humiliation from the raised eyebrows.  We were late.  We were guilty.  We had killed everyone’s time and we were judged. 

In 2004 we traveled through Japan.  On the last day we gave ourselves seven hours to get from a moutain-top resort in Hakone to the Narita airport, an adventure that required the use of a small toy train, a larger bullet train, a subway around Tokyo, and yet another shuttle train to the outskirts-international airport.  We arrived two hours before our flight and learned we’d missed it because there wasn’t enough time to process our luggage.  Who knew you had to go through an extensive customs procedure to leave Japan?  The next flight was the next day and in the end we were quite happy to have another chance to explore Tokyo.  Still, our error cost us hundreds of dollars as we had to find another hotel and transportation and food in the capital wasn’t cheap.   But that wasn’t about punctuality.  That was about bad timing and misinformation—and there’s a difference.

Punctuality is the art of being on time, neither early nor late.  My grandmother used to sit in an airport for up to three hours before a flight.  That’s not punctual—that’s just freaky. 

There are general rules-of-thumb regarding being on time.  If it’s a meeting or an interview, arriving ten minutes early IS being on time because arriving on time forces the engagement to begin after you’re ‘settled in’.  In high school you had to arrive in your classroom before the bell, not during the bell and not after the bell, so being punctual meant arriving 1-2 minutes before class started.  Theater always starts eight minutes after the time printed at the ticket, but arriving seven minutes after the ticket-time means you’re late because the aisles are tiny and no one wants to deal with you putting away your cell phone and coat.  That’s just gauche.

I grew up Jewish and we always joked about JST—Jewish Standard Time, which was a general excuse for everyone to be late.  Services started at 9:15 but I don’t know anyone, save a few older men, who were ever there before 9:45.  My mother and sister were known for being chronically late.  I haven’t lived with them for twenty years, so maybe they’ve improved, but I do remember that we were always the last kids picked up after school.  I’m sure there was a valid excuse.  There’s always a valid excuse.

Sometimes it’s incredibly uncomfortable to arrive on time, like, say, at a club or a hip party.  But since I rarely go to cool things like that, I can’t write about it.

Now I’m an adult and in charge of my own time.  Our bedroom clock is set twenty minutes fast so if the appointment is at one and the clock reads one then we know we’d better get moving.  The kitchen clock is 10 minutes fast (our house is so big it takes ten minutes to get from the bedroom to the kitchen, I guess).  The bathroom clock resets every time the power dips and we’re too lazy to change it so we just ignore it instead of unplugging it.  The bathroom has its own time zone.  Yes, that’s weird.

In our general mode, I’m always a little early and Jon is always a little late.  Both alternate modes are uncomfortable for both of us.  I think he’s selfish and he thinks I’m a manic people-pleaser.  We’re both right.  Our friends know we’re going to be late no matter what time they say to arrive.  The smart ones set the time early for us.  Of course, we’re smart, too, and we know who tries to manipulate our schedule to suit their selfish needs to eat at a particular moment… so nothing really works.

Late people will always be late and punctual people cannot change them.

I wish I didn’t miss the beginning of The Lion King on Broadway.  I wish I could watch trailers before movies.  I wish I could go to a dinner party without spending ten minutes waiting in the car first.  But these are bourgeois wishes and I’m not going to waste important wishes on trivialities.

As Bono said, “I cannot change the world, but I can change the world in me.”  I’m sitting in my Mazda watching the rain drip and the clock tick past 6:30 with no sign of Jon, so I decide to change my perception.  We were going to be late, but I was in the car at 6:15, so it wasn’t my fault.  I would lower those raised eyebrows with a forthright pronouncement that I did the right thing and I didn’t cause you this time-injury and I am perfect, I am perfect, I am perfect!!

Of course, no one cares if you’re perfect when you’re late.

Problems, Problems

My mother recently informed me she had to replace her refrigerator after 24 years.  They did a full kitchen remodel about two years ago but kept their old fridge. It was working fine and they were assured the space they were creating in the new kitchen would fit any newer standard refrigerator when it came time to replace the old one.  I personally thought the decision to keep that loud dinosaur was strange.  Why contaminate a new and expensive kitchen with an old almond appliance that still had magnets and postcards from my youth plastered to the façade?  Going home and seeing the old fridge was like reuniting with a childhood friend who somehow remained a child.  It gave me… chills (pun intended).  Still, I’ve learned when it comes to my parents and their decisions, Do Not Intervene.

So my Mom informed me that, as it turns out, new refrigerators do NOT fit in the space they had created for the old one.  After 24 years, refrigerator designs, like most people, have changed their shape a bit.  To get the same width they needed two more inches in height and that meant a major retooling of the upper cabinets.  Instead they chose a slightly narrower refrigerator and now their interior space is compromised.  And right before the holidays.  Oy.  They also have to deal with leveling problems and they had to wait for a part… according to my Mom it has been a small and exhausting nightmare.

So I sent her this cartoon and wrote:

 Dear Mom, 

You can substitute the word Monday with the word Life.

There are always issues, problems, trials, downturns, surprises, misfortunes, mishaps and quandaries around the corner.  ALWAYS.  The trick is to turn those corners first and confront them before they run into you on their own.  Kick them down the street before they kick you.  Or mail them to another zip code.  That's really all you can do.  Love, Mike”

Allow me to elaborate:

We had a cat problem.  On the other side of our next-door neighbor there used to be a condemned building with dozens of stray cats livin’ da life.  When the city tore down the building to prepare for new condos many of the cats relocated to other hovels in the neighborhood.  However, our dear neighbor cherished these cats, missed their wailing, and decided to feed them.  Daily.  So instead of having dozens of cats two doors down we now had dozens of cats on the other side of our fence.  They quickly dug under and started using our yard as their litter box.  It became a problem.

There are always problems.

In the case of the cats we chose to turn the corner first.  Before the cats had a chance to breed and move into our window wells and start decorating we called Animal Control and we got traps.  One by one they fell in love with the divine food we set for them and one by one the 50+ cats made their way to the local shelters where they were treated for their health issues and malnutrition.  The cats were neutered or spayed and most were adopted out.  Yes, some suffering feral cats were euthanized, but I still affirm it was a kinder fate than starving to death in a Saratoga winter. 

We also caught some possum.  We knew they would be instantly killed, as no one takes in a possum for a pet because they’re viscous, smell bad, bite, scratch and use the f-word.  So we took our problem into another zip code and released them into the wild woods 45 minutes away. 

Had my mother asked me for my opinion during her kitchen renovation I would have suggested that a 22-year old refrigerator was not only inefficient, but it would have to be replaced within a few years anyway.  I would have prodded her into a new purchase because, really, when you’re spending tens of thousands of dollars what’s another $1500 for a fridge at that point?  Also, it’s strange to show off a new kitchen with an old refrigerator.  It’s like having a wedding at The Ritz and then wheeling out leftover cake from the bridal shower.  But my mother didn’t ask, and now she’s got her small nightmare because there are always problems, and this problem turned the corner first.

Some problems cannot be foreseen.  Air conditioners fall out of apartment buildings all the time and of course we cannot avoid walking down the street.  We can, however, avoid a lot of problems by using our forward-thinking brains.  Don’t drink and drive.  Don’t drive on ice.  Don’t drive if you’re seven or ninety-seven.  Put down that second piece of cake.  Don't build a city below sea level in a hurricane-zone.   Don't build nuclear reactors on fault lines.  Smoking is like inviting future problems into your living room and asking them to get naked with you. 

Hey, we all make bad decisions.  That's part of life and that's how we learn.  Just yesterday I thought I could throw a forty-pound fireplace andiron into a six-foot high metal scrap bin without help.  The gash and bruise on my arm testify I was, in fact, somewhat incapable.  Oh well.  At least I didn't lose any money.  The point is if I took three seconds, a deep breath, and assessed my situation more accurately I would have seen that my machismo stunt was exactly the kind of idiocy that ends up on Tosh.O.  It could have landed on my head instead of my arm.  It would have seriously affected this blog.  Instead of leaving trouble bubbling in a distant wasteland, I called it over and we shook hands.  Ouch.

There are always problems, so let yourself off the hook when the random ones occur.  At the same time, do your best not to manifest new ones.  And always spring for a new refrigerator when you redo your kitchen.

MG

C. Eating Tips

1.  Eat a small portion and then wait 20 minutes before eating more.   Last night we ate two portions of chicken and then ran into the kitchen to get two more.  That was a big mistake.  We should have waited 20 minutes and then decided if we were still hungry.  It takes 20 minutes for the hunger triggers to reset, so if you eat too fast you eat more than you need to.  If we'd waited I would have realized that I wasn't actually hungry anymore, or that maybe one more chicken instead of two would have been sufficient.

2.  Eat the biggest meal in the morning.  This is tried and true because it ties in with how our metabolisms move from sleeping to waking and our energies from morning to night.  It’s difficult for me to do because I don't particularly enjoy breakfast foods.  My trick?  Eat backwards.  I’ll have the biggest meal (protein and veggies) in the morning around 10am and eat a salad in the afternoon, around 2 or 3pm.  Dinner at 7pm is oatmeal or eggs or cereal (not a sugar cereal!) and some a piece of fruit for dessert to clean the palate.  Surprise, I’m never hungry and I’ve burned my fuel efficiently throughout the day!  Note: waffles and pancakes are never allowed, whether you eat forwards or backwards.  Sorry. 

3.  Eat less.  Yes, that’s the simple stupid truth.  Duh, how easy!  Ugh.  It’s not easy.  Last week one night I ate two full fish fillets and half a bag of broccoli AND a salad.  That was WAY too much.  While I was making the food it felt appropriate—fish isn’t very filling, after all, but I could have had the two fish fillets and half the portion of broccoli and no salad and been just as satisfied without the additional 400 calories.  Again, look at rule #1: wait 20 minutes to digest before going back for more. And remember that the protein should only be the size of your palm. One fish fillet.  Every time you eat is an opportunity to work on eating right.

 

4. The level of your hunger does not determine how much food you need.  It seems like when we're REALLY hungry we eat LOTS more to fill ourselves back up.  The body doesn't work like this, though.  Hunger is just a trigger, and the trigger goes away when the food strikes it and the chemicals are secreted.  You can't re-dunk the clown once he's in the water.  If you're REALLY hungry, eat a little first—even if it's just two crackers.  Yes, crackers.  Consuming those 70 calories should make the trigger go away long enough that you can prepare a sensible-sized meal.  Also, as my friend Wendy pointed out, when you think you’re hungry you might actually be THIRSTY.  The thirst trigger feels and acts just like the hunger trigger, except it occurs more often.  If you feel hungry, try drinking an 8oz glass of water over 2-3 minutes (don’t chug—sip).  Chances are you won’t remain hungry when the trigger abates.  Test this theory on yourself.  It’s actually quite surprising.  Keep this in mind when you grocery shop.  NEVER shop hungry.  Always drink some water before you go into the store.  Trust me.  

5.   Wine is a food.  Wine has 100-150 calories per pour, and a pour is 5oz.  Each bottle of wine has FIVE glasses in it, NOT FOUR.  When Jon and I share a bottle of wine we're consuming as much as 375 calories each.  It's like eating that carrot cake all over again.  Plus, it slows the metabolism, which is the opposite of what we're trying to do.

6.  Ice Cream is Pure Weight.  A pint of Ben & Jerry's is easy to eat in one sitting because it's so small, but its actual serving size is set for four per container and each serving is 250-300 calories.  If you want to eat Ben & Jerry's for dessert, that's fine (I suppose) (not really), but instead of sharing a pint as one dessert for two you need to learn to stretch it to at least two days, maybe even three.  Think of it as "continuing the joy."  A single delicious sundae with the whipped cream and the hot fudge will set you back 1000 calories of progress, or two full days.  Even if you discard the cherry.  If you have to have the sundae, learn to enjoy the kiddie-size.  It's cheaper and it WILL make you just as happy.  Your tongue is what you're satisfying with these foods and nothing else.  The tongue only has two 'emotions' happy or unhappy.  There is no mid-range; there is no ambivalence with the tongue.  It will be happy with ten coatings of sugary cream.  It doesn't need twenty to be any happier. 

7.  Portions are Proportions.  The bigger the portion the higher you're making the mountain you're trying to climb and the more difficult it will become to reach the summit.  If you want the ice cream, eat half and put salt on the rest.  If you want the wine, drink 1/2 a glass.  Eat on smaller plates.  Eat in smaller bowls.  Eat with smaller utensils to it takes more time to eat, hitting that hunger trigger sooner.

8.  Plan your snacks.  Snacking is the most difficult thing to avoid, but planned snacking reduces guilt and calories.  KNOW that you WILL snack, but make your choices accordingly.  Purchase berries and have them at the ready.  Atkin's bars ARE candy bars.  See the soda ingredients in my other posting, and triple them for Atkin’s bars.  It's scary, weird, crazy stuff.  It's better to eat a smaller piece of genuine dark chocolate now and then to get over a sweet craving.  Trader Joe's 73% dark chocolate bars are 40 calories for a quarter of a bar, but you can train yourself to be satisfied eating that, since it's truly about the wonderful taste of things anyway.  Andy Warhol's spit-out-the-chocolate-after-you’ve-tasted-it is a good trick, albeit a little gross...

9. Fat has double the calories of carbs or proteins.  DOUBLE.  Like burgers?  Make turkey burgers.  Like fries?  Bake them, don't fry them.  Beware low-fat substitutes, though.  They only add other creepy chemicals to make up for the fat.  Instead find real foods that don't contain the same fat content.  Like turkey or soy instead of beef.

10. Don't Freak Out About Labels.  We used to look at the carb count on everything.  Then we looked at the sugar count on everything.  Then we looked at the fat count on everything.  What's the protein count?  Fiber?  Cholesterol?  It's all important but it's also all confusing because we make ourselves see what we want to see.  We can compare two foods and pick the "better" one, but does that mean it's still good for us?  We have to train ourselves to finding our new favorite better foods, sticking to the outside margins of the market and avoiding the interior preservative-laden shelves as best we can.  In the end, look at the CALORIES and look at the INGREDIENTS.  Carbs and fats can vary depending on whatever scary chemicals are being used to get those numbers where the manufacturer thinks the consumer wants it to be.  Seek out WHOLE ingredients, not chemical substitutes, and use www.caloriecount.com to look up how much fuel you're really putting into your tank.

B. Slipping

Jon and I had a fight last month over a carrot cake purchase at a Trader Joe's.   We've had our disputes over other desserts as well.  It's horrible that we both have a sweet tooth, but that's not uncommon.  Eating sweets is a pleasure and we attempt to treat is as a luxury, which is good, but we like our luxuries, don't we...  and frequently…

Trader Joe's mini-carrot cakes have 400 calories in just 5 ounces.  That means eating just 1/2 of one, which is 5 or 6 bites, is almost 1/2 a day of exercise and careful-eating progress down the drain.  Plus, it's cumulative.  Losing a day doesn't mean you can work twice as hard the next day to catch up, it means you’ve actually LOST that day.  The clock is set back one day, the goal is set back one day, the morale is set back, the future happiness is set back.  Ask anyone who’s ever died and they’ll tell you how important just one day can be. 

But we don’t just luxuriate with the obvious things, like cakes and sweets.

Eggplant is healthy, but it’s best as Eggplant Parmesian and that has 280-400 calories per serving.  Sure, chicken is good, but just the SKIN on a 1/2 chicken has 250 calories.

Every green olive has 20 calories, so adding just five little olives to a salad adds another 100 calories.  When you’re attempting to curtail the daily calories at 1800 you have to pick and choose very carefully. 

You will slip.  We all slip. The Law of Attraction attitude about slipping is to accept it and thank it for providing the necessary information so we can flip the stick and retune our thoughts towards our goal.  If you get angry about slipping you'll be focused on slipping and you'll slip again.  So just accept that you slipped and move on—quickly.   Take away the focus from the pleasure of that cookie ("dinner tonight will be a really delicious and healthy salad with skinless roasted chicken breast") and don't think about the guilt either ("well I ate a cookie so today is ruined anyway and I'm a loser so I may as well eat six more").  Learn from the consequences of slipping so the next time you slip you won't slip as much.  Or at all...

What can we do?  We try to be careful.  We generally eat salads and proteins for lunch and dinner, and maybe some healthy snacks during the day, and maybe we skip breakfast.  But that's not the best way to eat, is it?  Let's move on to Eating Tips.

A. Beverages

Some of the fuels you may use are polluted.  Did you know that refineries add chemicals to gas in the winter and it makes your mileage per gallon less efficient?  They also offer different types of gas, 85, 87, 89, 91, 93, each with a different purity that has a clear effect on the miles-per-gallon.  Getting better mileage means the fuel that is being used is burning cleaner.   When the fuel burns cleaner, the engine is cleaner and the car is more efficient overall.  My car gets 45 miles to gallon when I use 93-grade gas.  It gets 36 when I use 87.  This is not a coincidence.  

Here are the two most important principles I can possibly relate to you:

1. THE ONLY BEVERAGE YOUR BODY EVER WANTS IS WATER.

2. YOUR MIND IS IN CHARGE OF YOUR BODY, NOT YOUR TONGUE.

Think of what you drink as gas.  Is it 87, 89 or 93?  Water is actually 100.  With lots of water your body is zippy and fantastic.  Tea is a 93 beverage.  Tea can be important as it may provide specific nutrients that can aid in speeding the metabolism (for a short while) or theoretically cleansing specific internal organs.  Sometimes we'll put in a fuel additive to give the car that extra little oomph and clean out some gunk.  That’s a good thing to do now and then.  But tea with a sweetener (any sweetener) and milk or cream brings the 93 down to an 89, or even an 87.  It is counterproductive to drink tea with additives that can gum up the works.  A little of this and little of that never hurt anybody, true.  One footprint in the sand won't affect the beach, but a million will alter its shape forever.  The silver door in Mecca that every pilgrim touches used to be 14' thick and now it's 6'.  Every finger takes a molecule.  The same thing happens with the additives in the tea.  Every molecule that isn't H or O goes somewhere in your body, sometimes to do good things, but sometimes not-so-much.  We can't survive on water alone, we do need other materials, but those will come through our food and the WATER will wash away the impurities the body finds in those foods.  Adding impurities to your water is counter-productive.

Diet Sodas, on the fuel-meter, are worse than an 85, the lowest grade gas you can get.  If water is 100, they are a big loser zero.  Calories, Fat, Sodium, Carb, Sugar and Protein are all zero which makes them very attractive.  And they taste good, right? (sort of?).  But here's the skinny on skinny sodas: 

Carbonated water means your adding C to your H and your O.  What does your body want with more Carbon?  It’s got enough already.  In fact, your body gets rid of carbon with every breath.  

Natural Flavors are produced in labs and manufactured using replicated elements found in nature.  Don’t fool yourself into thinking Ginger Ale has real ginger which is beneficial to your digestion—it has a molecular copy of the essence of ginger and your body knows it’s not the same thing.  

Citric Acid: anything that says Acid will make your tongue say yummy! But your heart, stomach and other tissues will scream What’dja Do That For?  

Potassium Citrate is a salty acid that people take to get rid of kidney stones.  But what does it get rid of if you don't have kidney stones?  Adding salt to water is, again, counterproductive, dehydrating, and only benefits the tongue.   

Potassium Benzoate is another salty acid that they put in there to make sure your beverage doesn't grow yeast or mold.  Pure water never grows yeast or mold so it doesn't require it.  Anything that needs an additive to prevent yeast or mold from growing means the manufacturer knows it might sit on a shelf for a long, long time (or at least long enough to grow yeast and mold).  This preservative also eliminates many types of bacteria.  Our bodies harbor millions of beneficial bacteria, especially in the digestive tract.  What does killing our healthy bacteria do?  How will we process our nutrition without our microbial friends?  

Sucralose is non-caloric because the body cannot break it down. At its root, Sucralose IS table sugar, but it undergoes an intensive process of chlorination and acetylation that alter the molecular structure, then they use phosphorus oxychloride to remove the acetyl groups they imposed on the sugar. In the end the table sugar becomes sucralose, 600 times sweeter than the original sugar and now, tada!, indigestible—except not entirely.  11-27% doesn't actually get absorbed in the GI tract.  And of that remaining 11-27% that floats around your body, only 90% gets cleaned from the blood by the kidneys and expelled in your urine.  The remaining molecules stay in the body, and are stored in.... you got it... the fuel reserves, nestled sweetly in the fatty tissues.  This potentially happens even if you’re not overweight.  Incidentally, Sucralose is termed an organochloride that is immune to the effects of wastewater treatments, meaning it doesn't dissolve until it hits actual nature where it degrades slowly—possibly at the rate of some styrofoams.  This is probably not something you want residing in your fatty tissue as it could stay in there for the rest of your life.  Oh, hey, we're not done yet.   

Acesulfame Potassium is added to diet sodas too because it masks the aftertaste of the Sucralose.  Acesulfame Potassium has it's own aftertaste, however, which is counter-masked by the Sucralose in a crazy symbiotic aftertaste-masking relationship.  Lord knows we wouldn’t want to taste either of their crazy concoctions, right?  Acesulfame Potassium also stimulates insulin secretion and could be a possible carcinogen, although the jury is out (note that when the jury is out I tend to believe someone is paying the jury for their vacation, through marketing or new studies or whatever else manufacturers can use to delay the truth).   

And finally, Caramel Color which is made by taking sugar (glucose or fructose) and heating it with acids, alkalis or salts using antifoaming agents along the way until it is fully oxidized and becomes water-soluble.  In addition to adding color, it's also an emulsifier that prevents flocculation, meaning the other chemicals in the soda stick together properly and we don't see any caking of any of the elements on the sides of our plastic bottles.  Caramel Color can also be derived from corn, wheat, barley or milk and there's enough of it in the soda, even though it's the tiniest last ingredient, that people with allergies are warned against consumption.  Also, note that if Caramel Color is ensuring everything is bonded together then when the residue of your drink ultimately reaches your fatty tissues it could possibly remain tied together at a molecular level. 

Why are you drinking diet soda?  Because you’ve trained yourself into thinking that water is boring, somehow.  The fact that water doesn't have a taste is what makes it so purely delicious, in my mind.  Pure, Fresh, Clean, Delicious.  And it doesn’t require an ad campaign to get you to consume it.

The Food Lesson

I walked through the grocery store and saw an overweight woman looking at a box of cookies.  She studied the label and then put it in her basket.  I picked up a box and asked her if they were any good. She replied, “They’re okay.  They have organic sugar instead of corn syrup, so they’re healthy.”

Telling yourself you are eating right doesn't mean you are eating right.  Just looking at labels isn't the same as understanding what they mean in conjunction with everything you eat. 

Atkins, South-Beach, Low-Carb, Low-Fat, Blood Type, The Zone, Fit-For-Life...

We've been through them all and they all work—and then they fail us.

They have compelling and logical theories, but they also have caveats that make them difficult or impossible to maintain as a constant lifestyle.  In the end we all become diet-dilettantes and ultimately revert to what we like to eat—typically because we miss “our foods” so much.  So what can we do?

First, let’s go back and remember that food is fuel.  Cars and airplanes and other mechanized vehicles can't burn more fuel than they have in their tanks or they’ll stop. We are better than that… we CAN burn more fuel than we put into the tank every day.  The difference?  Motorized vehicles don’t change their sizes, but organic vehicles, like our bodies, DO change size.  It’s really magical!  We can burn more fuel than we put into our tanks and we can put more into our tanks than our bodies should hold because we have the capability to expand and contract based on our reserves.  So the goal is to figure out how to tap into those reserves and start using them in conjunction with what we put in the tank.  We want to fill the tank less and borrow from our reserves more until our size becomes tolerable and healthy.  We add weight when we put in more fuel than we use.  We become overweight when instead of going into our reserves, we overstock them.  If we were like cars and extra calories (fuel) backwashed out of our bodies from our mouths when we overfilled ourselves we’d probably never overeat.  In fact, we do have natural triggers that do tell us when we should stop fueiling—but we’ve learned to fool them and trick them into letting us do what we want.  It’s time to stop playing the games.  We feel like since we can’t see the extra calories that we’re storing they are easy to ignore… until they’re obviously not…

Sometimes the intake and output of fuel seems simply unbeatable and requires a more drastic approach then changing the calorie input/burn equation.  We now have medical techniques for cutting off the extra reserves, sucking out the reserves, or banding or stapling the fuel intakes so we can’t over-fuel.  I don’t advocate this per se, but I do understand the psychology.  Sometimes people need a fresh start.  Like warfare, sometimes you have to pull out the big guns to win the battle, or at least to gain ground.  And this is a war…

However, in this blog I’m going to focus on what can be done without cutting.  Remember that the Law of Thermodynamics states that the reserves WILL become the fuel source when the primary fuel is depleted.  Again, we’re not like cars.  Our machines, our bodies, won’t simply turn off on the highway when the fuel runs out.  The body wants to keep going for the rest of the day and it will find the fuel it needs—you’ve stored plenty over time.  We have to learn to control our fuel intake.  We'll learn to give ourselves slightly less than we need to run so our reserves get tapped.  We will never put in more than we need because our reserves are already far too full—in fact, the reserves are overflowing past our belts. 

The next few posts will go into detail about some of our fuels. 

The Exercise Lesson

Let's talk a little about aerobic exercise vs. anaerobic exercise. 

Both are healthy for the body and necessary for weight loss, but they work very differently in the way they burn calories.  Aerobic exercise, also known as cardio (running on a treadmill, for example), spikes your caloric burn which returns to a resting stasis typically within 1-2 hours.  Anaerobic exercise, also knows as weight training, only spikes your caloric burn about 1/3 as much as cardio, but it increases your resting metabolic rate by 20-50 calories per hour for the rest of the day.  So which is better?  You know what I'm going to say here... neither is better than the other.  In fact, you need to do BOTH do lose weight effectively.

Why?  Exercise is about oxygen.  When you exercise aerobically you intake and expend tremendous amounts of oxygen through your lungs but when you return to stasis the oxygen levels return to normal, along with your breathing.  In anaerobic exercise the "interior" oxygen in the physical muscles gets "squeezed out" (okay, not literally, but it's an easy way to understand the process).  Throughout the day following a muscle-building workout the muscles require more oxygen as they "rebuild" themselves.  It's this rebuilding that makes them harder, stronger and sexier.   Your muscles require fuel to obtain the oxygen that's necessary for this process, and they get it by burning your calories.  Since it takes a long time for the muscles to rebuild you continue to burn your calories throughout the day, even long-after you're done with the exercise and the heavy breathing. 

It's kind of like the tortoise and the hare.  The hare is aerobic, sprinting and leaping and expending great amounts of energy, but also taking complete rest stops along the way.  The anaerobic is like the tortoise, slowly and steadily and sure-footedly moving along, burning those calories evenly to the end.

The BEST way to lose weight with your exercise is through INTERVAL TRAINING, also known as a Boot Camp.  You need both the tortoise and the hare to fully understand the story and interval training brings the two together.  Interval training combines cardio with strength, and it also requires you to TAKE FREQUENT BREAKS.  The frequent breaks part is the secret key to your success.  The hare doesn't lose the race because he stops, he loses because he naps.  Stopping and resting is not only okay, it's encouraged.  Napping is not allowed when you're exercising. 

So rabbits and turtles are your new best friends.  The problem is most of us prefer kids and dogs and spouses and jobs to rabbits and turtles.  We don't have the time or financial resources to attend weight loss camps that specialize in interval training.  Nor do we have six hours a day to train.  If we did we'd already be at our goal weight, right?  Our kids and dogs and spouses and jobs are very important to us.  So how can we live in the real world and still find the time to be with our rabbits and turtles?

There is a way...

If you step on a stairclimber for an hour by the end of it you're sweaty, your heart is pounding, your breathing is insane and your legs hurt.  You get off, proud of what you accomplished, but utterly exhausted and already dreading the next session a mere day away.  You've worked out for an hour and the effect of the spike will last another 1-2 hours, max.  Then you're back to normal, burning your 85 calories an hour and wishing you could take a day off.

Instead, do this:

Warm up through an 8-10 minute deep-stretching abbreviated yoga session.  It's short but necessary.  It will condition your body for what's to come and set up your breathing for good inflow/outflow.  I'll put up a video shortly demonstrating the positions you need to know.  Don't worry, you don't need to be a yogi master to do them--I'm not going to make you pull your feet over your head or do anything scary or dangerous. Promise.
For now, stretch the way your gym teacher taught you, but do take a full 8-10 minutes to be fully comfortable and relaxed and ready.
THEN:

Do 25 jumping jacks.

Do 10 push-ups (on your knees is okay if you need to).

Do 15 stomach pulls (use a device, or do sit-ups)

Sit down and rest for THREE FULL MINUTES, sipping water slowly.

If you're at a gym do one full routine of a single muscle-group exercise, meaning do your arms or do your legs or do your torso.  Don't do all three, just do one.  Keep the weights at a moderate level--don't hurt yourself or push yourself beyond your limits.  This should take about 20 minutes, tops. (I'll post a video soon about how to exercise anaerobically if you don't have access to a gym). 

Sit down and rest for THREE FULL MINUTES, sipping water slowly.

Do 25 jumping jacks.

Do 10 pushups.

Do 15 lunges on each leg (30 total).

Sit down and rest for THREE FULL MINUTES, sipping water slowly.
Stairclimb or treadmill or use the elliptical s-l-o-w-l-y for three minutes, and then at the maximum speed you are comfortable with for a full 15 minutes.  It's okay to really push yourself here (but don't hurt yourself).  When the 15 sprint-like minutes are up, walk it down slowly for 3 minutes or until your breathing returns to a more normal state. 

That's it!  You've worked out, start to finish, for less than one hour and fifteen minutes and you've not only exercised your heart and lungs with terrific cardio, you've built your muscles too.  You've burned the same number of calories you would have just treadmilling the whole time, but now your resting caloric burn will increase to 125 calories per hour for the rest of the day, including when you sleep.  This little extra, for only fifteen minutes more than your current routine, will add up to beyond the 500 extra calories you need to burn every day to lose weight.

The psychological benefit to this form of exercise is in the variety.  Walking on a treadmill for an hour can seem daunting, but sprinting for 15 minutes, well that's very doable.  The weight training is fun, but it doesn't hurt because you're not overdoing it by throwing your body into every possible contortion in one session.  The constant rests and sipping water will keep you hydrated and energized.
It's just like eating:  A salad is not lettuce, it also needs tomatoes and cucumbers and some dressing and maybe almond halves to keep it interesting.  Your proteins need a veggie on the side.  Think of your exercising the same way--a routine with variety, an interval training session, will keep you motivated and excited in a way a solitary stair-climb cannot--even if you are watching a good episode of Dr. Who while you do it.

AND...
Don't make it a one shot deal.
Think of your body like a car.  It needs to be turned on consistently to maintain the fluids and the systems.  Rest = Rust.

Every four hours do 25 jumping jacks and 10 pushups or lunges.
This little boost will take 3 minutes out of your day, but it will keep the metabolic machine running smoothly and the fuel flowing.  You take breaks to snack, why not take breaks to work them off too?  Why limit your exercising to the "I gotta get to the gym" when there are things you can do in your kitchen while your waiting for the green beans to defrost?  Do it with your kids.  Call out "Homework break!" and dance in the living room.  Do it on a road trip.  Call out "Firedrill!" and run around the car like maniacs three times.  Do it at work.  Go into the supply closet and jump, Jack, jump.

As the Brady kids sang, "We gotta keep on... keep on... keep on movin'..."

The Emotions Lesson

As a good friend recently pointed out, yes, when it comes to calories the math is the math, but knowing the mechanics is fairly irrelevant.  Few people walk into buildings to visit a doctor or get the dog groomed and think about the structure, the columns, the glass, the air conditioning, the acoustic tiles.  And even those dorks of us who do think about these things don't choose not to use the building if the door opens the wrong way or the windows are too small.  We just use the building the way it's meant to be used and the calories are going to burn the way they're meant to be burned.  What's more important is WHY we're in the building.  Is it for the doctor or the dog?  Or are we loitering?

This component is called The Emotion and it’s typically the emotional connection to food that keeps people from losing it.  Our identities are tied up in our self-assessment of our self-image and going from heavy to thin means change, and change is scary.  Remember when you stopped sucking your thumb or finally put away your childhood teddybear or blanket?  Scary.  Rembember when you had your first sleepover at someone’s house--your first night alone in a different bed in a different place?  Scary.  Remember when you lost 100 pounds and started to see a new person in the mirror smiling back at you?  Just as scary.  Even though these things are desired it doesn’t mean they don’t frighten us. We are creatures of habit, and changes scare us because we have to take ourselves out of our comfort zones and dip our toes into the unknown.  Ironically, change is also necessary.  Stagnant waters fester.  Stagnant foods go moldy.  Stagnant people become unhappy (and even diseased).

I’m going to oversimply (because that’s what I do) but I’ve found in my life that when I’m miserable about something, and I mean truly miserable, whether it be about a job I hate or a relationship I can’t stand or even just a blue day with gray weather, if I take a step back and breathe I’ll discover the emotion I’m feeling is fabricated.  This doesn’t mean it isn’t a real emotion, or genuine, or necessary.  What it means is the emotion is coming from a factory of multifarious components that conspired to put out a product that somehow I ordered--even if I didn’t know it.  I saw the gray day and a difficult client and my brain processed all the gray days and difficult clients I’ve seen and attempted to replicate the way I deal with gray days and difficult clients because that’s what it knows how to do.  That’s the factory I’ve built, and my Gray Day Difficult Client Factory puts out a product I call Gloom. 

The nice thing is, I own the factory.  I forget this, but it’s true.  I own it outright and I can change the orders and the components at will!  I can say, “Hey, Gray Day Division--we’re going to replace component 31B: “Sadness with not being able to play in the park” with component 31B-2: “Delight that we don’t have to mow the lawn” and 31B-3: “Joy that we have an excuse to hibernate under a blanket.”  And instead of being a negative source of aggravation, my difficult client will now be perceived as an opportunity: This person’s high demands forces me to exercise my ability to say No, which is tough, but good for me.  I can take pride in going the extra mile in my job.  If I satisfy this client I'll know I can satisfy any client I ever meet.   This type of thinking takes practice, but the emotional assembly lines are ready to do what you command.  You own the factory, but you have to concentrate on what it is you really want to produce.   You have to learn to manufacture the emotion that gives you the results you know you need.

How?  Here’s a technique for when you find yourself in a slump or feeling miserable about something: 
 
Literally stand up and take three big, deliberate steps backwards.  Picture yourself stepping away from your emotions.  Picture yourself literally taking the contents of your state-of-mind and stepping back from them.  You can see it all in front of you, but you’re not connected to it--you are now three steps behind your feelings.  Close your eyes, knowing those feelings are still there, hovering in front of you.  Breathe in deeply from the base of your abdomen, up through your lungs and fill them to maximum capacity, as slowly and as comfortably as possible.  Then exhale naturally--don’t push it out forceably.  The breath will come out quickly at first and then taper off.  Breathe in again, slowly, same way.  Exhale again, same way.  Repeat one more time.  Now you’ve taken three deep, cleansing breaths.  With each exhale you’ve blown away the emotions you were feeling, the ones that were three steps in front of you.  Each breath broke apart those emotions and they dissipated.  They still exist, of course, but now they’re all over the room, blown to the corners, trapped in the carpet, stuck on the walls.  Without your direct connection, they will dissolve on their own.  Open your eyes and you’ll see that they’re not there anymore, holding the space where you were.  They’ve moved on.  Take three big steps back into the place where you were and you’ll feel different now--proof that those negative emotions have been cleared.  You are open now to fill yourself with the emotions you want to feel.  If you want to run around the room and recollect all those hard feelings, feel free, but it might be easier to fabricate some new ones in your sparkling emotional factory. 

The Law of Attraction, at it’s core, reminds us that You Are What You Think.
I know you know this, but it needs to be reiterated because it needs to be lived, and living is action, and all actions start with your thoughts.

If you think of exercise as a struggle that you have to get through every day, it will be a struggle that you have to get through every day.
If you think of yourself as fat you will be fat.*
If you beat yourself up for not losing weight then you are focused on not losing weight and you won't lose weight.
If you are frustrated with not losing weight then you will remain frustrated and you won't lose weight.
If you hate to exercise then exercise will be a chore that you hate.
If you feel like exercise is the only way out of this but it doesn't seem to work, then it won't work as your only way out of this.

*when I say fat here I don’t mean overweight, which is a truth about one’s physicality, I mean the word fat as a description with negative connotations that makes us feel bad about our physicality and affects our emotional well-being.

Every thought has a counter-thought.  Flip the stick when you think these thoughts.  Flip the stick and look at the gem at the top instead of the part that's stuck in the dirt on the bottom.

Exercise is strength.  It takes strength and it creates strength.  While you do it you feel strong and when you finish you feel strong.  Feeling strong feels good.
Your body is the size it needs to be right now to do the things it has to do.  Your body is becoming the size you want it to be to do the things you want to do.
You are changing your body to the size you want it to be with every step and with everything you eat.
You are satisfied with the process of your body changing size because it is a healthy process and a natural process.  It is a happy process.
You are healthy.  You are doing the right things.  You are making the right choices.
You are privileged to have the tools you need for exercising when you need and want them.
You are happy to be able to move and everything works as it should.  You enjoy wearing the spandex because it makes your tushie look sexy.
You are confident the exercise will work because you’ve seen and felt the exercise working.
Exercise is a joy because it works.
Exercise is a joy because it feels good.
Exercise is a joy because it creates strength.
Exercise is a joy because it is healthy.

MG

The Calorie Lesson

The Law of Thermodynamics applied:  Calories-out must be higher than calories-in to lose weight.
The body cannot manufacture weight out of nothing. 
All weight is imported, through food. 
All weight is exported through movement.

Take ONE WEEK and actually journal your calories-in, meal by meal, snack by snack, beverage by beverage, nut by nut.  Use www.caloriecount.com as a guide.

Then try to journal your expenditure calories-out as well.  Add 15% to whatever the stair-climber or treadmill says to account for its effect post-workout.  If it says you burned 500 calories mark it as 500 and then add 75 more to it.

Okay, now scrap that.  You didn't burn 575 calories today just because you walked three miles up a hill and made new pit-stains on your favorite t-shirt.  Logging your calories-out is next-to impossible because there's no way to be 100% accurate.   You cannot ascertain your calories-out for the parts of the day when you’re not exercising, when you’re running around the grocery store, watching television, taking a shower, having sex in the shower, or sitting in your kid’s piano lesson. 
Calories-out fluctuates constantly and there are too many variables.

To add to the problem, even the treadmill’s readout cannot be read as absolute truth because it doesn't take into account your body type, age or other factors.  For example, two people can run the same distance at the same speed at the same incline on a treadmill, but if one person is 20 and weighs 150 and another is 50 and weights 220 they will burn calories at completley different rates.  Plus, what did they do to warm up?  What is the temperature of the room?  Is one of them at sea-level and the other in the Alps? Again, too many variables to be positively accurate.

And then, if you ARE overweight, whatever the machine says you burned can likely be deducted from the total, but as a percentage.  For example, if you're 30 pounds overweight, then the machine is possibly reading you as much as 30% higher than your physical, personal reality.   If it says you burned 500, it may only be a true 350.  The treadmill is just computing a formula for speed, incline, time and maybe your weight and age, but that's not enough information.  Sorry!  I'll explain why this is later on (keep reading).  Of course there’s no hard-and-fast rule to this--it’s not science and, despite what’s coming in this section, please note that I wasn’t a math major.  

There is another way to look at the math (of course there is) and it is more accurate, but it's also more complicated.  Life is complicated.  Bear with me here...

Basically, there is BMR (Base Metabolic Rate) and RMR (Resting Metabolic Rate) which correlates to the waking and sleeping burning of your calories. 
This can be expressed using two different formulas:

The Harris-Benedict equation for BMR
    * For men: (6.2 x w) + (12.7 x h) - (6.76 x a) + 66
    * For women: (4.3 x w) + (4.7 x h) - (4.68 x a) + 655

The Mufflin equation for RMR:
    * For men: (4.5 x w) + (15.9 x h) - (5 x a) + 5
    * For women: (4.5 x w) + (15.9 x h) - (5 x a) - 161

w = weight in pounds,  h = height in inches,  a = age

For your daily calories burned, assuming you sleep 8 hours a night:
(.66 x BMR) + (.33 x RMR) = Total Calories Burned. 
But then, to make it even more fun, take your Total Calories Burned and multiply it by your Activity Factor:

1.2            Sedentary Little or no exercise and desk job
1.375        Lightly Active Light exercise or sports 1-3 days a week
1.55          Moderately Active Moderate exercise or sports 3-5 days a week
1.725        Very Active Hard exercise or sports 6-7 days a week4
1.9            Extremely Active Hard daily exercise or sports and physical job

It takes a little time to plug in the numbers, but for someone like me, 172 pounds, 69 inches, 38 years old with 1.55 activity factor getting approx 8 hours of sleep a night, according to the formulas I burn approximately 2257 calories a day.  Again, not 100% exact, but it’s a good guideline.
([(6.2x172) + (12.7x69) - (6.76x38) + 66] x .66) + ([(4.5x172) + (15.9-69) - (5x38) +5] x .33) x 1.55 = 2257 calories.

If I were a woman with the same height, weight, age and Activity Factor getting the same sleep I would be burning approximately 1957 calories a day.  Sorry, ladies.  Your love burns strong, but slower...
([(4.3x172) + (4.7x69) - (4.68x38) + 655] x .66) + ([(4.5x172) + (15.9-69) - (5x38) - 161] x .33) x 1.55 = 1957 calories.
Again, this isn’t always the hard-and-fast 100% true rules for everyone on the planet.  But it's a good guideline.  (Thank you, www.caloriesperhour.com for these formulas).

Now here’s where we run into trouble and here's what the number really mean:
Let’s say I ate mass quantities of Taco Bell and now I'm 50 pounds overweight.  My waist has expanded, my face is broader, I might be developing some boobs...  But on the inside the mathematical formula as it relates to my body changes as well.   Even if I was just as active as before I would be burning more calories; my new body mass would require I consume more calories just to stay put.  Totally unfair!  At 222 pounds with the same exercise routine I have now I would be burning more, 2689 calories, in fact, or 432 more than I was at 172, but even that additional burn would only be enough to keep me at 222.   What is means is that to lose weight I would have to burn not only what my body is already burning, but another 500 calories to start losing that weight.  I would have to raise my activity level almost to the 1.9 level to achieve that.  And that's a lot of work!

Still with me?  I'll say it again in another way:  If I weigh 172 pounds and I want to lose weight I’ll have to burn 2257 calories to stay even, and then I'll have to burn more to lose the weight.  But if I weigh 222 pounds I’ll have to burn 432 more calories that that just to stay even, and then even more to lose weight.   Let's say I add another twenty minutes a day to my exercising and I burn an extra 100 calories at my 172 weight.  To achieve the same effect, at my 222 weight I would have to do three hours of exercise to burn 532 calories. Do you see what I’m saying?  Do you see what this means?  That’s why it’s so much harder to lose weight when you’re overweight.  That’s why fat people hate skinny people who seem to be able to eat whatever they want and still stay thin.  It’s not the same world for fat people and skinny people because they are burning calories at completely different rates.  This totally sucks, doesn’t it?!

But, of course, you don’t have to exercise away that extra 500 calories a day to get rid of it. 
Remember the Law of Thermodynamics?
All weight is imported, through food. 
All weight is exported through movement.
Consume 500 calories less each day and you’ll achieve the same goal without the all-day workout.

Another thing you need to know is that the Activity Factor is the BIGGEST VARIABLE in the equation.  If I take a day off of exercising my calories burned that day goes down to 1810.   If I eat to maintain my current weight at 172 that means I’m eating 2257 calories on the days that my activity factor is 1.55.  If I eat the same way on my “day off” and I’ve only burned 1810 then I’ve kept 447 calories that day.  And keeping it means storing it and it gets stored in our tissues as fat.  If I was 50 pounds overweight my caloric burn at Activity Factor 1.2 would go down to 2081, but I would be used to eating 2689, so now I’ve added 608 calories to my pot belly.  Again, incredibly not-fair for overweight people because the days they lower their Activity Factors they put on more weight than people who aren't overweight who take a day off.  Again, the math is the reason skinny people seem to be able to eat more... the reason skinny people suck...
 
Days-off are hugely disruptive to losing weight.  The only viable solution is to eat less on the days you don't exercise because you’re burning less calories when you're sedentary.  The irony is most of us enjoy our days off tremendously and it’s on those days that we typically eat even more. 
This is the Doubly-Whammy that keeps us imprisoned in our over-weight bodies.

Here’s the fantastic conclusion that wraps it all up with a silver bow:

In order to lose just one pound a week 

you need to reduce your caloric intake 

by 500 calories PER DAY, EVERY DAY. 

Whether this means exercising another 500 calories away or eating 500 calories less, or maybe splitting the difference, 500 calories seems to be the magic number for losing pounds. 
If you eat more, you’ll lose slower; if you eat less you’ll lose faster.**
If you exercise more you’ll lose faster;  if you exercise less you’ll lose slower.

**Maintain your nutrition!  This is where making smart choices about what you eat comes into play, but we'll deal with that in future posts, I promise.

The very super-best news I have for you regarding The Calorie Lessson is that once you start losing your weight then the numbers ALWAYS work in your favor, maing it easier to do more with less.  Think of all of this math and your body as a grocery cart:  As you load it up it gets heavier, harder to push around, it takes longer at the check-out, you have to move more bags into the car and then the kitchen, and it takes up more space in your refrigerator and cabinets. Also, it costs more.  But if you put less in your cart it’s easier to move around, you can use the fast lanes, you can throw it on the front seat and put it away in a flash--and save money.  The numbers work in your favor in the very same way. You can do more, save more and have more time--with less in your cart, less on your plate.... 
Less junk in your trunk, as they say.

MG

On Being Overweight (Intro)

I am not overweight.  I am a 38-year-old male, 5’9” and 172 pounds with a BMI of 20. 
According to the US Army I should weigh 184.
Accoridng to Metropolitan Life Insurance Company I should weigh, at the very most, 167.
According to US National Center for Health Statistics I should weigh 178.
According to North American Association for the Study of Obesity I should weigh 161.
Those all average to 172.5, so I pretty much weigh what I should.

At my lightest at this height I was 155.  That was 25 years ago.
At my heaviest at this height I was 190.  That was six months ago.  And that scared me.

My husband is overweight.  Since we eat, travel, make plans and coexist with similar schedules in the same dietary house I have often wondered why he can’t seem to lose the weight that I was able to shed.  He attributes it to age (he’s a little older than I am) and metabolism.  While I agree those are compelling factors, he expressed his frustration to me about his weight issues and I told him I have ideas on things he can do.  I wanted to help.  He told me, point blank, that I’m unqualified to advise him because I Don’t Know What He’s Going Through.  This is true, but he’s also wrong.  I’ve been watching what he’s been going through for 16 years.

On the next few posts you’ll see lessons, tips, opinions, advice, perspectives and other things I wanted to tell him that might help with regards to the universal problem of losing weight. I don’t know if they will help him, but they helped me shed 18 pounds in six months.  I haven’t been able to lose the last seven to reach my goal, no matter how much I exercise, how much or little I eat, if I eat on a schedule or sporadically, if I drink some wine or don’t drink some wine...  Every time I hop on a scale it reads the same number no matter what time of day, what day of the week, before or after I walk the dog...  I thought maybe the scale was broken, but it appears that 172 is just my weight.  Still, I continue to persevere to reach 165, which is an arbitrary number that sounds like it would feel better than 172.  Maybe when I get there I’ll think otherwise, but it’s good to have goals to strive for, even when everything seems to be working out. 

Perhaps for someone who may be morbidly obese,  or maybe for someone who is uncharacteristically overweight for the first time, what I’ve written so far may sound like whining.  Poor me, 172, bitch bitch bitch...   Well, for anyone who’s ever tried to lose that last seven pounds you know what I’m going through.  For anyone who’s tried to lose 70 pounds, this stuff might fit too.

Again, my standard disclaimer applied: I am not an expert, I am not trained, I am not a doctor, I am not a specialist, I am not a therapist, I do not have a fitness device, a degree, backers or credentials.  But I do have a body and I do have a mouth.  Always seek advice from your health care professional before embarking on anything that may affect your body and health.  Don’t listen to me.

This essay was intended for my husband, but he wasn’t entirely interested.
Rather than waste the words, I decided to post them for you.
Do your best, love yourself and go for it!

MG

Welcome to NonWisdom

I am not an expert.  I am not trained.   I am not a doctor.  I am not a specialist.  I am not a therapist.  I do not have a fitness device for sale.  I am not on television.  I am not a movie star.  I am not a guru.

I do have a brain.  I do have a body.  I have a dog.  I have a husband and family and friends.
I travel.  I eat.  I watch too many movies and I read too few books.  I try to remember to floss.

I have had success and I have had failure.   I've had over a million dollars and I've been through bankruptcy and foreclosure.  I have been happy and I have been depressed.  I have been in love (still am, actually).  I have also been hurt and I have hurt others.

Through it all I've learned a few things--and these are the things I want to share with you.

Welcome to NonWisdom.
MG