It seems unfair

Since finally getting over the back-to-back cold, bronchitis, flu triple whammy of my winter break, I've returned to my daily commute to school. I had estimated the walking portions as being about 2-3 miles, though I'm not sure what the basis for this estimate was. It turns out my walk is actually more like 4 miles, which I recently confirmed both by wearing my pedometer last week (I finally changed its battery) and checking the walking distance on Google Maps in case I was wearing the pedometer in the wrong place or making some kind of error.

This means that on an average day (of which I have at least four per week this semester), I walk 4 or more miles, usually about an hour of which is at what the pedometer considers a moderate pace. That translates to roughly 400 calories burned (and possibly more, since I am carrying a heavy backpack, negotiating hills and stairs, and so forth). On other days, I've walked 8 and a half miles or more. One would think the weight would come ripping off.

And yet, I must be doing something terribly wrong with my diet if my weight won't budge.


Some Math

To lose one pound of fat, a person must net a loss of 3500 calories. That is, the amount of calories eaten less one's basal metabolic rate and those burned through exercise must together tally up to 500 less per day if one wishes to lose one pound in a week.

For my height, weight, age, and sex, my basal metabolic rate (BMR) is approximately 1611 calories. (You can calculate yours here.)

If I am burning 400 calories a day, yet staying the same weight, I must be eating minimally 400 calories more than that 1611, which puts me at 2000 calories a day or more.

When I did that math, I blinked, dumbfounded. Can that possibly be right??


Examining Thoughtless Days

Since cutting out all take-out and fast food, I would say I eat a fairly healthy diet. I've been resisting actively dieting because I have too much on my metaphorical plate already, and I assumed that getting the grossly unhealthy foods off the table would take care of the situation.

Yesterday, here is what I ate, with approximate times of day:

- 10:00 am: 1 SlimFast meal replacement bar
- 1:15 pm: a second SlimFast bar
- 5:00 pm: a ham and cheese sandwich, on multigrain bread
- 9:00 pm: 2 mint Oreos
- 11:00 pm: half a bag of frozen cauliflower, with a pat of SmartBalance butter spread, salt, and pepper
- 12:30 am: a small handful of raisins
- 1:30 am: instant Ramen, beef flavor

I wouldn't have said that was such a bad day, in so far as I didn't eat a formal "dinner," but I thoughtlessly snacked on the equivalent of a dinner and then some. I've been eating those SlimFast bars because they fit in my purse and I have ten minutes between my morning and afternoon classes, but then when I came home I was so hungry I had a sandwich. That would be fine if that were my dinner, but I had a second dinner through grazing.

Here was Monday, a less typical day when my mom came to the city:
- 9:00 am: SlimFast bar
- 3:00 pm: street vendor hot dog with sauerkraut and mustard
- 7:00 pm: fried rice chip things with peanut sauce, 1.5 curry puffs, large serving of green curry with beef over jasmine rice, big slice of chocolate mousse cake
- 11:00 pm: 2 mint Oreos

Again, I would have said that while I had a huge meal with my mom at dinner, the rest of the day wasn't so bad. Yet the hot dog was a much bigger meal than it seemed, calorie-wise, and I had the same calories in the SlimFast bar as in two Oreos (why do I even have Oreos in my apartment?!).

In my delusional thinking, I've been "pretty good" this week, but clearly I have slipped up a number of times and probably do so every day.

I read suggestions for how to cut calories from one's diet, and they're always absurdities like "Instead of having an egg McMuffin with cheese for breakfast, have a bran muffin!" or "Trade your 600-calorie Starbucks drink for a 200-calorie hot chocolate!" It's always struck me as a little ridiculous, since I am already eating the bran muffins and having neither lattes nor hot chocolate, but calorie-free diet soda instead. I already eat fat-free dressings and a minimum of condiments and sauces, I use SmartBalance cholesterol-reducing spread instead of butter, I eat whole grains, and I've even started drinking water (ugh). More than a few times, I've lamented, "What am I supposed to cut? Real food??"

Well yes, that is precisely what I have to do. I act like I am eating a basically healthy diet, but I sneak treats in. Dessert at dinner, packages of Oreos hanging around the apartment, appetizers instead of salads at dinner, cocktails and beer. When you add up all these little treats, they are precisely the extra calories that my minimal activity can't offset.


So what do you do about it?

I am still endlessly frustrated by the friend of mine who keeps dropping weight by doing Atkins. She's doing it wrong, essentially cutting all carbs from her diet (as in the induction phase) and not reintroducing them or learning how to eat properly. She's also doing minimal exercise (yoga once a week or so), yet she's steadily losing weight, and it drives me nuts. Then again, she has a lot more weight to lose, and after dieting for the past 6 or 8 months, she's only just reached the weight at which I freaked out and decided an emergency intervention was necessary to get my weight under controlled.

I know that I have to stop comparing myself to her because I've already decided that I don't want to lose weight that way.

I also know that I don't have the time or wherewithal to succeed at a formal diet right now. I can try smaller portions and healthier choices, continue eschewing fast food and take-out, resisting desserts and appetizers, drinking more water, eating more vegetables, and so forth.

And that leaves me with a dramatic increase in exercise.

Where I'm at right now, I will basically maintain my weight, give or take, by walking to and from school and not suddenly increasing my calories. My body has established an equilibrium around 180, and if I want to change that without appreciably changing my caloric intake, I need to introduce a big shock of exercise.


Choosing a More Active Lifestyle

When I was young, I never had trouble with my weight. At times, I actually struggled to keep weight on, and for a brief while I was clinically underweight. I know that my metabolism was much higher because I was younger, but more than that, I was an athlete and when I wasn't in training, I had a very active lifestyle.

When I was 14 or 15, my favorite activities were rollerblading, bicycling, playing tennis, swimming, and so forth. A typical spring or summer day would include rollerblading across town to meet up with friends, play tennis, then maybe rollerblade to the beach for a swim. When I was in training, I would make time for 5-mile runs, weight-lifting, and random calisthenics throughout the day. The first time I ever gained weight was when my friends started driving (they were all a year or two older than me) and they no longer wanted to rollerblade or bicycle places, but rather drive to a movie or sit around in basements and drink.

Living in a city, my lifestyle is a sort of hybridization - I walk everywhere now, yet I am walking to sedentary activities or drinking. I walked 9 miles the other day, but I was walking from a restaurant where we had pizza dinner to a bakery where we had cupcakes (it was my friend's birthday). Other days I'll be good all day (like actually good, not delusional good), then blow it with two beers, a bacon cheeseburger, and fries with a friend.

My challenge, I know, is to mitigate socializing with healthier eating. As an example, last week rather than meeting up to sit and drink, I suggested that my friend and I spend the evening at an art museum (obviously this was mainly because I was more interested in art too). We walked all around, then walked between the museum and dinner, which I can only hope offset the drinks and meal a little. I've asked that same friend if instead of meeting for dinner and drinks this weekend, we can go ice skating at a park in the city. Obviously there will be drinking and dinner as well, but I have to think that a couple hours of ice skating are better than a couple hours sitting at a barstool.

The weather here has been so bad that my plan to force myself to "go jogging no matter what" can't get off the ground. It's one thing to force oneself out in the cold or light rain, but it's quite different to try to jog on sidewalks with feet of snow or treacherously slippery ice.

That leaves me with things I can do in my apartment.... hula hooping, push-ups, sit-ups, and miscellaneous calisthenics. I have several books of workouts that can be done indoors, including the New York City Ballet Workout and the College Dorm Workout. I vaguely remember how to do yoga, and I could probably find a DVD I've bought at some point.


It still seems unfair

The point, I guess, is that I really need to do something and it seems unfair that I can't just eliminate carbs and solve all my problems. I have to keep reminding myself that the reason I want to lose weight primarily through exercise is because I need to develop a healthy lifestyle. That means activity, finding ways to incorporate exercise into my day, and discovering things I can do to offset the calories from occasional treats.

I have held, in the back of my mind, the excuse that I gained all this weight at once when I first went on antidepressants many years ago. While that may have been true at the time, I haven't addressed the problem and I am obviously eating in a way that sustains 180 pounds of me. I don't want to feel fat and ashamed of my body anymore, and it doesn't really matter how legitimate I think my excuse for gaining was, I am still fat and it's not going to go away on its own. I don't know if it would feel better to have gotten this fat by pigging out on cupcakes and drinking to excess, or like my friend, to have always been obese. I imagine not.

Though it seems a crutch at times, the most powerful weapon I have in my fight to lose weight is the fact that I used to be really fit. I know what my body can be like and how it feels to enjoy it, and the struggle is to get back in touch with that, rather than grasp flailing at some tenuous and imagined abstraction.