Drop

Two-pound drop. If you weigh yourself every day like I do, you learn to treat those impostors -- two-pound gains & two-pound losses -- just the same.

I am at my lowest spot weight since November, and my lowest 7-day average since December. My spot weight bottomed out at 175.2 and my seven-day average at 176.1, both in October, about three months after I stopped the Shangri-La routine.

I've now run 32 days in a row. My year-to-date mileage (243 km) has surpassed last year's January through March mileage.

Life Fitness T3-5

I promised a review of our new treadmill, and I'm now officially breaking that promise. I wrote a review, then read it, and realized that I don't have much insight or authority.

I will say that I like it very much, and it's a wonderful Survival of the Thinnest tool. With just a few button presses, I tell it to get my heart rate to 160 and keep it there for 30 minutes, and it does the rest. Well, I have to run and run and run, and for a few minutes I have to run up a rather steeper incline that I would like.

I run daily at 11.5 km/hour, which is almost exactly my half-marathon pace from last September. It gives me 2 or 3 minutes to warm up, then starts to crank up the incline until my heart is pumping at my goal rate. The incline usually gets to around 5% or 6%, but I've seen it go above 8%. Then the incline goes gradually down (and occasionally back up a little) for the rest of the run. Some days it gets all the way back to 0% incline, and once even that wasn't enough to keep my heart rate low enough, so it slowed my pace a notch. I bumped it back up manually, and my heart rate stayed near enough to 160 that it didn't try to slow me down again.

I have a couple of minor complaints about the treadmill. It doesn't show pace in minutes per km (or mile), other than briefly while one is manually raising or lowering the pace. Other than that, it just shows km or miles per hour. I'd say that most runners think in terms of minutes per mile, not miles per hour. Another thing is you have to take what it shows you on the display. If you want to know how many minutes you've run, and it instead happens to be showing how many minutes you've been in your target heart rate zone, well, you just have to wait. Eventually it will switch back to showing total minutes. The Precors I'm used to let you change the display at any time.

But those are minor quibbles. I'm quite pleased with it.

Currently my running streak stands at 25 consecutive days, with the last 21 on the Life Fitness. 25 may be more than I've ever done in my life. Certainly it is in the last five years.

I've noticed that my appetite at meal time is lower lately, but between meals I often crave snacks. This is the opposite of when I was on Shangri-La, when I rarely snacked but when meal time came, I was often pretty hungry. Maybe it was just the forced twice-daily two-hour flavorless windows that cut down my snacks; or maybe the oil was the snack.

In any case, the 25 days of running hasn't had a dramatic effect on my weight. My seven-day average has dropped only 1.6 lbs. since my running streak began.

What to eat

There was a fantastic article in the New York Times yesterday: Unhappy Meals. It's a good description of what science doesn't know about food and nutrition.

wt: 181.2 lbs.
seven-day average: 181.1 lbs.

Back into the swing

wt: 180.2 lbs.
seven-day average: 181.2 lbs.

I've put in five short runs so far this week. Sunday and Monday my left knee was bothering me a little, so I took Tuesday off. Since then, it's been much better.

It's turned very cold here. Some people, not me, run outside when it's this cold. I have free access to treadmills at work, but the weekend hours are limited. Mrs. Weighty (hmm... probably shouldn't refer to her that way...) & I are considering buying a treadmill for our home. It wouldn't see much use in the summer, but boy, in the winter it would be nice to have.

Speaking of the Mrs., she's trying the Shangri-La Diet. I'll report her progress, or better yet, get her to do it herself.

Back from vacation

wt: 180.8 lbs.
seven four-day average: 181.7

I was at about 1600 km running for the year just before Christmas, which is just short of 1,000 miles, and I didn't make it. The holidays, immediately followed by a long vacation via automobile, stopped me from getting in those last 5 or 6 miles.

Despite getting almost no exercise, and eating out a lot, I kept my weight gain to a fairly modest level. I'm back in my routine now, so I hope to start losing a bit again. I've set some running challenges for myself for this year that I think will require me to drop a little weight. I'll have more to say about that later.

Day 266: down 18.8 lbs.

wt: 179.6 lbs.
seven-day average: 180.5 lbs.

I'm still in a plateau. My seven-day moving average has been in a narrow range all month, hovering around 180 lbs. I'll be on vacation after today, and I probably won't have any more blog posts for a few weeks. I won't even weigh myself most days.

I'm about 6 miles away from hitting 1,000 miles of running for the year.

Day 217: down 18.8 lbs.

wt: 179.6 lbs.
seven-day average: n/a (I've missed too many weigh-ins lately to get a meaningful number)

It's been a long while since I've posted. I've found it hard to stay interested, even to the point of not weighing myself. Probably as a result, I've drifted up a few pounds.

I'm still off of Shangri-la. My wife is talking about trying it. Given the success that so many have had, I'm gently encouraging her. Like me, she exercises a lot, and anecdotal evidence on the Seth Roberts forums tend to make me think that dampens the effect of Shangri-la. But it's most certainly not unhealthy, and if it works for her, great.

My running is going reasonably well, but I'm not making it out every day. It's turned very cold here lately. I'm lucky enough to have a gym at my workplace, so during the week it's easy to get in a short treadmill run over my lunch hour or before work. The weekends are tough.

I missed five days in November, but my monthly mileage was second-highest of the year. With winter here, and road races a distant memory, it's a little harder to stay focused. Through the end of the month I'll be thinking hard about my running goals for next year; maybe that will get me motivated.

David Hariton's Survival of the Thinnest

I promised more to say about another genetics-based weight-loss theory, described in a book Survival of the Thinnest. I've been putting it off until I had time to do it right, but I can see that it's not going to happen. So I'll just dash out a few thoughts.

Hariton's basic theory is that the genetics of humans direct them to be thin if they are active, and fat if they are sedentary. This goes beyond mere calories-in, calories-out, much as Seth Roberts's Shangri-La Diet does. Neither of them deny the basic equation, that your energy expenditure must be greater than your consumption in order to lose weight, but they both say that the elephant in the room that most everybody is ignoring is hunger. Your genes are telling you to eat in some circumstances, and to stop eating in others.

Hariton's prescription is 30 minutes of rather vigorous aerobic exercise every day. Every day, for the rest of your life.

I stumbled on this same routine several years ago, and it worked like crazy. I lost just over 30 lbs. in only 60 days, and I was not hungry. I can't imagine why I ever stopped, but I did, and gained half or more of it back. I'm now well below that weight, and still dropping.

My chosen exercise is running. Hariton is a bit antagonistic towards running. He thinks it's too hard on one's body, which can be true. He lists 10 do's and dont's for running, which he doesn't for any other form of exercise. A couple of these are downright laughable. He says not to run competitively, or even make any running friends!

Well, for me, that train has left the station. Running is my chosen exercise. It's what I like to do. I run for fun; I run in road races; I have running friends; I read about running; I think about it; I run and run and run.

On the other hand, I see his point. Running for weight loss and running -- training -- to get faster probably aren't entirely compatible. Runners like to do things like alternate long & short days; easy & hard days, and take days off for recovery. I think there's a good chance that those things undermine weight loss. In my own case, probably the best thing that's going to make me faster is to lose some more weight. Current training theory talks about things like improving your VO2max, lactate threshhold, and running economy. Those things have their place in my future, but for now, I need to lose my big belly.

What does Hariton do? He rides a stationary bike. That's certainly easier on one's joints.

I may, over the winter, experiment with substituting stationary bike or elliptical trainer for running a day or two each week.

Despite his views on running, I think the Hariton book is quite good. I recommend it to anyone who wants to lose weight. I think it works.

Day 140: down 18.8 lbs.

I've now been off of Shangri-la for 70 days, after having been on it for 70 days. I lost 13.8 lbs. in those first 70 days, and 5 lbs. since then. The last 10 days or so have seen just about the worst results yet, with my weight up 3 lbs.

My seven-day moving average, which I put more stock in than the daily numbers, bottomed out last Saturday at 1.6 lbs. below what it is now.

My eating habits have been pretty terrible lately. Too many trips to the vending machine. I need to get back in the habit of bringing healthy snacks to work.

With all of the road races I've run lately, I've also skipped more days of running than I would like. I have a 15-mile race on Saturday (which will be my longest run ever), then not another race for over a month, so I hope to get back on my daily running routine.

tags: Shangri-la Diet