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I read the forum on LoseIt.com and a common title for new threads is “I’m stuck!” or “I’m doing the same, but now I’m gaining!” Rather than comment to each of those threads, I thought I’d throw out my thoughts and ideas here. As with all my ideas, feel free to take them or leave them. I won’t be offended either way. Pour yourself a mug of water, grab an apple or ounce of almonds, and relax. (This won’t be too painful.)

I’ve said all along (as have numerous other people, far more educated than I am), the basis of weight loss is consume fewer calories than you burn (or burn more calories than you consume, it works both ways.) If you want to lose one pound per week, you need to burn 3500 calories more than you consume.  That’s it. Right?

Well, yeah. Sort of.  But there is more. There is always more.

So let’s say that you are eating at a moderate weight-loss level, yet above your BMR/RMR (Basal Metabolic Rate/Resting Metabolic Rate) and you are well-hydrated. You are also more active than you have been in the past. And the freakin’ scale stays the same, or worse, starts moving the wrong way!

What else can affect your weight?

• Medications. For example, I am using naproxen for my knee, and it caused a 3.5 pound gain in two days.
• Hormonal changes.
• General illness.
• Lack of sleep. I can’t remember where I read it, but people who sleep less than seven hours a night those weight at a slower rate than those who sleep more than seven hours.
• Routine. If you always exercise in the same pattern, your body will develop more efficient movements to match, which in turn will burn fewer calories.

And stress. Stress can throw your entire body out of whack. And before you think I have lost my gourd, let’s look at what stress/negative emotions can do to our bodies. Stress can cause flair-ups of irritable bowel syndrome (as attested to by some of my students!)  GERD (heartburn) can be attributed to stress, as can  nausea. Insomnia. Lethargy. Hair loss. (See? I’m just under stress, not getting old!) Acne. It can cause chest pain that mimics a heart attack (and could precipitate an actual attack if the person.) Personally, when I have increased stress, my eczema break out on my hands and in major stress I can have an asthma attack.thargy

Our minds are our most powerful machine and that machine has the levers to control every function in our body. Why should we think it can’t limit our ability to change our weight?

So, what to do about it? If possible, reduce the stress in your life. (Yes, I know. Easier said than done.) But try to reduce the stressors that are under your control. And stepping on the scale is one of those. Stop weighing yourself for a few days. Keep eating and drinking the correct amount. Don’t stop that, because that is what will get you to your goal. But stop looking at the scale. A watched pot never boils, is how the old saying goes (although, my variation is a watched oven never bakes … until you remember to turn it on!) Ignore the scale, especially if you have been weighing yourself daily.  Stop for a week or two. If you eat properly, your body will continue to live with the calorie deficit which will drive your weight loss.

Just eliminate one piece of stress from your emotional load, and that may be just enough to bounce you back on track.

Okay, I’ll admit it. I’ve been slacking here lately.

Oh, I am still working my plan, using LoseIt.com to track my calories eaten and using my FitBit to track calories burned. But I haven’t made a good post here lately.  I’m not sure why, but I think it is part of the edd and flow of life. When I started this blog, I was getting close to my goal. It was exciting, and a little scary to realize that I was close to succeeding.  I used the blog to celebrate my goal. When I experienced an emotional downturn (the depression at reaching my goal and losing my all-encompassing goal) I was able to talk here, and use everyone to help me through it. And now that I have enjoyed a stable weight for just over 8 weeks, it is starting to feel normal.

However, I do not want to get complacent. I guess I just need to get back to writing here. I enjoy putting my thoughts down here. It helps me stay organized and focused. So what I’m saying is that you need to prepare for me to babble a bit.

When I started running, I posted my running stats. But since I hurt my knee, the running is on hold. (I tried to run after taking naproxen. The first run went well. But during the second run, my left knee–the problem knee–started locking up intermittently in mid-stride. Not good!) It hurts. I guess I should have listened to others (and to my common sense) when it was mentioned that an anti-inflammatory only helps resolve the pain cause by inflammation, but does not necessarily heal the cause of the inflammation. My recent run (yesterday morning) seems to have been a serious mistake. It’s a good thing I still have that appointment with the orthopedic surgeon!

On the other hand, yesterday evening I pulled my bicycle out of the garage and took it for a spin. That sounds so mundane, but I haven’t ridden a bike since 1996 (and stopped when someone stole it.) I found a simple Huffy at a resale shop and it rides great! Last night I did a nice 5.5 mile ride and found out that I can still do it! And it didn’t bother my knee at all (although I will admit, after getting off it, my legs were a bit like Jell-O for a few minutes.) My wife also got a bike from the same resale shop, and after we tweak hers a bit, we will be able to go for rides together. When I get home, I will post some pics of our inexpensive new wheels.

Remember, if you are trying to control your weight or to reach a specific goal, you need to control how much you eat and you need to increase how many calories you burn. That is the core belief behind the idea of “Calories In, Calories Out.” Eat the correct amount and move more.

So, what are you doing for exercise? It’s good to change it up occasionally. It’s spring, and perfect walking weather. I still walk a lot (I love my Fitbit!) but walking is getting pretty routine. The only way to bump up the challenge is to increase the distance and that requires more time. However, I have found a couple local hiking trails (rails to trails) that are short to moderate to long in length. The short one is Devil’s River State Trail, a 14 miles long former railroad line that is covered in crushed rock. At 25 miles, the Fox River Trail is a combination of paved and crushed gravel surface that starts parallel to the Fox River and then meanders through the countryside. The longest of the nearby trails is the Mountain-Bay trail, another “rail to trail” that is surfaced with crushed gravel, and is 88 miles from Green Bay to Wausau. Time is not always in great supply, but I would like to explore those paths, just to see different scenery. Ultimately, I’d love to hike Wisconsin’s Ice Age Trail, but at approximately 1100 miles, that will need to wait until a) I retire, or b) I win the lottery (or ideally BOTH!) 

Riding the bike is a new activity for us, and really exercises the thigh muscles. I used to try to ride a stationary bike, but that just is not the same. (The same goes for walking on a treadmill as opposed to walking outdoors.) It’s nice to feel the wind on your face, knowing that the wind it created by my work. I never plan to enter any races, but it is relaxing to ride. And given that it doesn’t seem to bother my knee, it may become my primary outdoor exercise.

Here is something new! I would like some input from all of you. You know I like to prepare meals. I love cooking! But sometimes I need new ideas. If there is something you’d like me to make, and then post here, leave comment. It doesn’t need to be a full recipe suggestion. Maybe you just want an idea of how to prepare turkey on the grill or a tasty vegetarian dish. (Don’t suggest exotic meats, because I don’t have access to ostrich, kangaroo or alligator meat.) I can’t promise to make everything suggested, but I will do what I can.

A month ago, I reported that my left knee pain was bad enough that it prevented me from jogging more than three minutes. I decided to rest it for 10-14 days and then resume my training. Well, even after 14 days of rest, the knee still really hurt, even just walking. And this wasn’t muscle pain, this was pain in the bones of the joint. (I know the difference.) So last Monday, I saw my doctor and told him. He took some xrays, and reported “degenerative changes to the bone” (I knew that from just feeling the joint move, there is bone-on-bone in the joint) and some spur development under the kneecap (and I knew that, because the type and location of the pain is the same as when I torn my right meniscus seven years ago.)

He asked me, “Which would you prefer, an appointment with a orthopedist or a stronger anti-inflammatory?”

My response: “Yes. Both.”

So, now I have an appointment with an orthopedic surgeon in five weeks. And I have a prescription for naproxen. Not OTC Aleve, but prescription strength stuff. I started taking it on Tuesday, and my knee is almost pain free. Not 100%, but at the level where it really is only there when I think about it.

Unfortunately, pain reduction comes with a price. Since Tuesday, I have gained 3.5 pounds. Now, I know that weight is not fat stores. That would have required 12,250 excess calories since Tuesday, and I was within budget all those days. (For comparison, that would mean I ate the equivalent of two of these.  Not two pieces. Two entire pizzas. AND three of these.) It is fluid retention. I can accept that. But I don’t have to like it. And if it keeps up, I will call my doctor to ask for either an anti-inflammatory with less water retention (I don’t think there are any) or a mild diuretic to help get rid of the water.

But I also want to see if the fluid retention is worth it. In other words, is the extra water a necessary evil that will enable me to return to training for the Bellin 10K Run? There is only one way to find out.

“Test run” (literally) of my knee while using naproxen:
Time:  11min 15 sec
Length: 1.0 mile
Average speed: 5.33 mph

Music: A little Karl Jenkins (Palladio, Dies Irae) and Springsteen (Born to Run.)

Result: Knee pain is minimal during and after the run, and certainly did not inhibit my jog distance or speed, in fact I could have gone further, but I had forgotten to use my inhaler, and I was getting very winded.

Conclusion: The knee is stable enough to jog on, but I will use a more balanced approach.  I will jog one day and then take the next day off, but if the pain comes back more than the current levels I will stop jogging completely. And I will use my inhaler about 5 minutes before starting my workouts.

I’m starting off with something that many of us have experienced:

“Wow! You’ve lost a lot of weight!”

My response now? “Thanks for noticing.”  And then I stop and go on with what I was doing. I used to start a speech on how and why I lost the weight. (My wife, Tammy, calls those “Trev-itorials.” If you REALLY want to experience a true “Trev-itorial” ask me which American beer is my favorite!) But eventually I realized that if people want to know, they will ask me.

And many do ask the Common Question:  “So.  What’s your secret?”

And my answer is still the same. “I count my calories. I eat the correct amounts, and I walk more. I keep my eaten calories less than my burned calories.” 

And the typical response to that is, “Oh. Yeah. I thought you did something special.”

That’s when I respond with, “Something special? You mean other than losing more than 75 pounds in eight months and then keeping it off the past for seven weeks? Other than working my butt off by walking everywhere, and making the right choices, and weighing/measuring my food, and logging it all on LoseIt.com? Well, no, I guess I didn’t do anything special.”

(Okay. That’s not how I really respond. That’s just what I would like to say. But I try not to be so openly snarky.)

But it is a little frustrating. People want an easy and fast method to reach their goal weight. They want the “silver bullet”, the magic pill.  They watch The Biggest Loser and expect the same results in the same time frame as shown in television time.

But almost everyone reading this knows that the silver bullet of weight management is the same silver bullet for success in school, or on the job, or on the sports field. Focus, determination, and some hard work. You need to know what you want. You need to know why you want it. And you need to be willing to do what it takes to get it.

It’s just that simple. It’s just that hard.

Now for my urgent suggestion:

Yesterday I donated platelets at the Red Cross. The Red Cross (and many other organizations) collect whole blood, plasma and platelets for use in your local hospitals. Of the three blood products, platelets have the shortest shelf-life.  Packed red blood cells (PRBC) can last for 42 days after donation; plasma is frozen and used for up to 1 year. Platelets need to be used within 5 days of donation. Platelets are most commonly used for cancer patients, and the need is always great. If you are healthy, please consider donating platelets (or whole blood or plasma.) Call your local Red Cross or other blood bank to see if you qualify for donation, or go this link to read the Red Cross eligibility requirements. I have relatives with cancer, and others with heart disease. All needed blood cells and platelets during the course of their treatments. I gave then, and I continue to give.

It’s relatively painless, and a very good thing to do.

Come back in a little while for a look at last night’s meal (Onion-Mushroom Tart with Oven Roasted Asparagus.)

… and sometimes “it’s a swing and a miss!” (We are 17 days from the start of baseball season. Go Brewers!)

You’ve seen many recipes on this blog. They were all very good. I hope that you have tried some in your kitchen. But I hope you don’t have the idea that the recipes that I use are all excellent, or that my execution of the recipes is perfect.

They aren’t, and I’m not.

A case in point was today’s meal. My wife and I took our dog for a nice walk on a beautiful river side path this afternoon, and that ate into my cooking time. I wanted to make something relatively quick and easy. The main course was a simple salmon patty, with a salad on the side. For a carb dish, I found a new recipe using brown rice, spinach and cheddar cheese, put together to make a baked rice pie. I modified it to use wild rice instead of brown rice. It’s a simple recipe.  Nutritionally, it is a good choice.

But it just didn’t work. Oh, I ate a piece, but the best I can say for it is that it made the salmon patty even more flavorful in comparison.

I’ll post the recipe here. Maybe it will strike someone’s fancy. I will also give a few ideas on how I would modify it further if I were to make it again (but I probably won’t.) But this is an example of trying new dishes, expanding you horizons of my meal options, and running into a brick wall. To be honest, this doesn’t happen often, because I am pretty good at anticipating how the flavors and textures will blend together, but every once in a while … well, no one bats 1.000 in the kitchen! (I’m not normally this enthused about the start of baseball season, but the beautiful summer-like weather we are having is making me excited about it.  Maybe this summer I will actually go to Miller Park and watch the Brew Crew play a game there.)

It’s mid-terms at my college. That means a lot of grading papers, meeting with students to discuss their performance (or lack thereof in a few isolated instances.)

But it also means that I haven’t been very active here on my blog. It’s not that I don’t want to post my thoughts, ideas, and meals here, but I need to prioritize what NEEDS to get done over what would be FUN to do. However, I am almost through the pile of work, so I will soon be actively blogging here, hopefully on a daily basis.

Prioritization is the key to successful weight management. You need to ask yourself, “Which is more important? Staying within my calorie budget and hitting my weight target, or eating that piece of cake?”  Sometimes the cake will win, and that is appropriate. When you attend a special event, enjoy some of the treats. But limit yourself to one serving, and a small one at that. But most days, you should decide that your goal is more important to your health–both physical and emotional–than that cookie will taste.

Right now, I am still enjoying my maintenance er, my target weight range phase.   However, I am still slowly losing weight. That is not intentional, but it is a side effect of my mental inability to eat ALL my budgeted calories each day. After working so long and so hard to stay slightly under my weight loss budget, now I find myself still staying just a little under my current budget. I tell myself “Just a little under the budget, just in case I didn’t accurately measure my food.”

I need to stop that belief pattern. I know that I accurately measure my food. My Fitbit accurately gauges my caloric burn.

But old habit die hard. However, I taught myself to eat the correct portion sizes. I can teach myself to eat ALL my calories!