By the time you read this, the battlefield of food and frolic that people call “the holidays” will be a far distant and probably somewhat hazy memory. However, at writing, memories of the conflict are still fresh, and Twelfth Night and Three Kings Day (Epiphany or the start of Mardi Gras) are just around the corner. My line of progress for this month looks more like the humps on Nessie’s (aka the Loch Ness Monster’s) back rather than the straight-edge downward slope of previous months. December was hard.
Still, by January 1, I managed a good showing and maintained the average amount of progress that I have become accustomed to (about 10 lbs. of loss in a month). I think I was able to do this partly because I knew I had to be accountable to you in this summary article on my ongoing quest for health and well being.
This brings me to the first of the three major lessons I have learned so far in my journey: be accountable.
1. Accountability
Endeavors like this rarely prosper in secret. Almost 20 years ago, not long after high school and before the Internet age had really got into full swing, I went an entire year without eating any sugar. This was one of many attempts to get a hold of my health over the years, and the last really successful one up until I started this project last spring.
So where did it go wrong back then? We went on a vacation to Solvang (a little tourist trap near Santa Barbara in California), and they had this great little candy store. I was on a vacation, after all, wasn’t I? So I slipped. Slipping wasn’t the problem, though. Everyone slips (oh, temptation, thy name is December).
The problem was that this sugar-free lifestyle I’d been leading was a big secret. Only my family knew what I was trying to do. I was so embarrassed by my weight and body that I didn’t want to share my progress or talk about what I was doing with anyone. I even avoided going some place “safe,” like Overeaters Anonymous, because I didn’t think I could talk about how ashamed I felt of myself to anyone. I was absolutely mortified at the thought. Talk about self-repression. Well, it really was a different age.
If I’d had some kind of support system and accountability beyond my immediate family, maybe things would have been different. Maybe I would have just stepped right back into stride with my year-long, sugar-free lifestyle instead of rationalizing my way back into self-destructive behaviors in the privacy of my own home. Years later, I felt like that trip to Solvang was the beginning of the end for me, the beginning of a cycling descent into the abyss.
It seems to me that people are more open than they were 20 years ago about overcoming their personal struggles and sharing the hard experiences of their life. This gave me the courage to try to be more open myself. As I’ve recounted in previous articles, I started with a blog on my hiking, and later started tracking my food and exercise on www.myfitnesspal.com, which offers automatic updating to your Facebook profile (if you enable it in your settings).
It has never been easier to share progress on a goal. With Facebook (feel free to friend me), Twitter, and blogs or other social networking programs you can set up in as little as five minutes, there’s no reason or excuse not to create some social pressure for yourself. Instead of being mortified, I am rewarded with kind comments for being so open about the whole thing.
This kind of self-inflicted eustress (good stress) is the kind of thing that made it possible for me to not only recover from, but plan for, slip-ups during the yearly holiday food festival—from neighborly food gifts to our own family’s traditional Christmas Eve celebrations (I actually made myself sick over the Christmas weekend).
The following week, tired of the way all that food made me feel and a wealth of accountability to live up to, I returned to my food tracking and, with the help of some tips from Tim Ferriss’ new book, The 4-Hour Body, proceeded to lose all the pounds I’d gained back plus four and a half more.
When I reported my loss to my social network the week after Christmas, I got comments like, “Amazing! Keep it up, my friend!” “You are a rock star!” “Way to go!” and “Fantastic! You are a wonderful inspiration.” How’s that for positive reinforcement? All in all, I did as well in December, weight-wise, as in any month of the year.
2. Tracking
Working hand in hand with accountability, tracking gives you something to report to your network. Separately, tracking has been proven to be an effective and powerful tool on its own.
I began this quest with a tracking goal: to finish all 60 hikes in Greg Witt’s excellent guidebook for the Salt Lake City area. I had to modify this goal a tiny bit, because I am not a rock climber and have no aspirations to become one, but the goal is still attainable with a few substitute hikes. As I’ve recounted before, we finished 37 hikes last summer and are looking forward to the spring to start hiking again.
This goal provided me with all kinds of data to track. I don’t know that it was the right data for my ultimate goals, but hiking got me started on keeping track of something. I mostly tracked miles and elevation gain and could see significant advances in my endurance over time. All that hiking was mind altering. It changed my outlook on life, health—everything. But I’ve since come to the conclusion that I may have been over-training my body and slowing my weight loss. I still wouldn’t change anything about the hiking, but if weight loss was really the only ultimate goal (it wasn’t—I was also trying to prove something to myself about myself), then I should have added consistent food and weight tracking earlier than I did.
Studies have shown that those who keep a food journal lose two to three times more weight than those who do not. Another study suggests that taking photos of your food before you eat it may even be a more effective solution (The Flash Diet). Both journaling and photography make the process of eating a mindful activity, and I think that is what is key: mindfulness. Ferriss (4-Hour Body) recounts the case of Phil Libin, who lost 28 pounds in six months by simply tracking his weight on a graph with the goal and time line already laid out; he made no other changes to his lifestyle. Less than five pounds a month is a bit slow for my goals, but the case of Libin goes to show that tracking works on us in more than conscious ways. Tim’s conclusion on tracking is “Track or you will fail.”
Tracking data can help you reach your goal faster. This doesn’t just apply to health. I have an excellent tenor friend, Brian Manternach, who was gracious enough to lend me his talents in performing the lead role in my second opera, The Other Wise Man, a few years ago. He was sharing some of his 10-year running stats on Facebook, and I commented that I’ve become a personal stats convert. He then mused about it maybe being the right time to start keeping track of his vocal practice for improved time gains there as well. Why not? One could track time on languages, coaching, performance, personal rehearsal, warm-ups, or simply time spent singing.
Whatever the goal, make sure you are tracking what you want to improve and not something closely related but ultimately irrelevant. In my case, this was endurance vs. weight-loss stats. Adding the food journal got me off a plateau and has kept me moving and realistic about food ever since.
3. Well Being: It’s All in the Moves
In regards to exercise, my progress with Pilates has been fulfilling, and I’ve added a couple more intermediate exercises from the mat work. I’ve biked and written, working on my makeshift laptop stand. I’ve walked around the perimeter of several malls. I’ve started practicing the kettle bell swing. I’ve sold most of my free weights and started using my resistance tubes more. I switch it up at every opportunity.
I was doing herculean amounts of movement in the summer with three hikes a week, often lasting 7-9 hours a day with little rest. Now, I’m experimenting with an hour or two each week (as mentioned above). The results seem to be the same. How much or how little I do has very little effect on the amount of weight I’m losing (as stated, an average of 10 lbs. a month). So why do it at all?
I’ve come to the conclusion that if I am faithful with tracking and accountability, all I need to do is add a little movement into the mix to round out my well being. It is not about the weight loss—it is about feeling good. Exercise makes you feel alive. It is as simple as that. If done properly, it removes the pains of an abused body rather than adds to them. And it can be so much fun!
I love hiking now. I love to feel the wind fly through my hair while biking. I love the feeling of the Pilates “roll-up” or “rolling like a ball.” I love to swim, and there are so many things I am excited now to try that I have never done before or have done once or twice and want to do more—ice skating, dancing, Indian clubs, horseshoes, etc.
The key here is to be disciplined long enough in one area of movement to find joy in it. Once you’ve found the joy of a particular activity, let that infection either drive you to greater performance or to play around. It doesn’t matter how good you are at any of it (unless you mean to compete). The very act of moving will fill you with well being, and you will take more pleasure from your life. That’s the reason to move.
Farewell and Adieu
This is the last article I’ll be writing on this subject for Classical Singer. Will I be able to keep going without the mass accountability this article has created for me over the past four months? I think so. I’ve added accountability at almost every level of my life now.
