This Post Is Pretty Boring. No, Really.

I’ve been following the Food Guide Pyramid, exercising differently, reading about the wickedly hard workout known as “interval training”, and learning surprising new things in the process.

I decided to follow Uncle Sam’s nutrition advice to the T, committing to really Do This Thing if I’m going to bother. Surprise number one was that I wasn’t eating enough food. That’s right. I was eating small volumes of supremely healthy food, and then, at the late-afternoon energy crash and grumbling tummy time, filling up on Famous Amos cookies, cheese, peanut butter. Now I’m eating a helluva lot more food, but it’s not as calorie-dense, so I’m eating fewer calories total. Who would’ve guessed?

Pyramid lesson number two was that, although I ate animal protein but twice a week, I was still eating way more protein than I require. I’m practically a vegetarian compared to most people I know, and yet, I was consuming too much, between tofu, tempeh, lentils, one weekly portion of fish, and one weekly portion of chicken. I’ve cut way back on the “Meat and Beans” and increased my intake of whole grains, and I have more zip. As G. cleverly observed last night, protein builds muscle. Unless you’re a teenager or a professional body builder, you probably don’t need all that much protein.

Onto exercise. Interval training is hard. Deadly difficult. I consider myself in decent cardio shape, what with the hour-long, nonstop-movement Nia (dance) classes, the walking, and the volleyball, but a mere 26 minutes of interval training kicked my ass. I wondered why. I looked it up online. I didn’t understand all the jargon (VO2 max? huh?), but I came to understand that intense, short-duration cardio (such as interval training) burns more calories and trains the muscles and cardiovascular system in a totally different way than longer-duration, lower-intensity cardio. (It also has the nice benefit of being a shorter workout.)

This investigation lead me to the concept of specificity. Basically, when you train your muscles to use oxygen for one activity, it does not train them at all for using oxygen in another activity. For example, a fit swimmer has great cardiovascular endurance for swimming, but take her out of the pool and that trained, fit body does not know how to run. She will huff and puff. In other words, my volleyball, walking, and dance did not train my body for intense intervals (or for any intense, short-duration cardio exercise). It trained my body for volleyball, walking, and dance.

Turns out that short-duration, intense cardio is much better for weight loss. It burns more calories than low-intensity cardio and causes the body to continue to burn more calories after the workout than does low-intensity cardio. Plus there was some benefit I didn’t understand about how it makes the body use specifically fat stores more quickly than does low-intensity cardio, something about VO2 max and anaerobic thresholds. Low-intensity, longer-duration cardio (like Nia class, or marathon running, or distance swimming) teaches the body to use up fat stores in a different way. A slower burn or something. I didn’t really get it. Don’t ask me to explain. Don’t quote me.

Next: weight lifting v cardio. Weight lifting is important, but it turns out that no matter how much one defines his muscles, that won’t be apparent if they are covered with a layer of subcutaneous fat. For those who need to lose fat, such as yours truly, the method seems to be more cardio than weights, with cardio 4x/week and weight training only 2-3x/week. However, for a thin rail of a person, more weights and less cardio is recommended.

I never intended to have a weight loss blog; I just find this new info fascinating. Thank you for your patience. For the next post, I will write about music. Who wants to read this much about exercise physiology? Come back soon.

Always My Undoing, Plus Idioms

Visits to my father-in-law's house result in massive overeating of rich, salty and/or sugary foods. Happy Father's Day! We had meringues (awesome), huge slices of black forest cheesecake (wow), and generous slices of the best pizza outside Italy (amore). We were sent home with cheesecake and baked French toast covered in sugared pecans. You see the problem. It's especially dangerous to stay with them for a few days, as we did over Christmas. I happened to notice today that my father-in-law's waistline has grown more generous in the year he's been married to the producer of cookie, cake, French toast, and cheesecake wonders.

Uncle Sam tells me I ate more calories than I expended today. No shit, Uncle Sam. That said, I'm very glad I got up early to exercise, or I could be in even more dire straits.

One of my first ESL tasks is to notice all the idioms around me. Fall behind in your work...keep your eyes peeled (that one makes me squirm anyway)...eyes are bigger than your stomach...G. and I say, "You idiom!" when we catch each other saying one.

The Government Wants to Help

'Round about last week or the week before, Ann was writing interesting things about RMR tests and habit-changing. Back a while ago here at Italian Camp, I was ranting about Weight Watchers coming into my workplace. (BTW, my fears have not materialized, but I've since found 2 female colleagues--women who are longtime WW devotees elsewhere--who also found it creepy.)

An interesting side effect of finding a way to change careers is that I feel like I can change other things during this time of transition. As long as you're going to the store, could you get lemons, too? As long as I'm making one transition... To my surprise, the volleyball playing has done very nice, toning things for my arms and abs. It's the kind of thing where no one else could see it, but I can. So I thought, why not track food for a while and drop a couple pounds? As long as you're dropping psychic weight, how about losing a little physical weight, too? And don't forget those lemons! Besides, there's nothing like a brutal heat wave to make a person want to have minimal insulation.

Anyway, the point of all this heavily-linked lead-up is simply that the US government has an awesome, free-if-you-don't-count-taxes, interactive version of the Food Pyramid with a calorie tracker and nutrient analysis and everything! Yes, I've always been a little skeptical of the Pyramid, suspecting it may be in bed with the USDA and the Farm Bill, which together create a Machine of Evil for the ages. Still, I think it's a great interface, and it's qualitative enough for my head while being quantitative enough to be useful. Only trouble is the tedium of entering everything every day. And my love of dessert, let's be honest. Two problems. Oh wait, and there's no way in heck I can eat as much dairy as they want. OK, three. Nonetheless, I like the interface.

UPDATE: The Government is giving me a Sad Face because I didn't eat enough grains today. I got happy faces for meat and vegetables, and earned a neutral face for dairy by forcing myself to eat an extra piece of reduced-fat string cheese. Uncle Sam is giving me Sad Faces for my fat intake, but there was no option to explain that I had "Veganaise" instead of mayonnaise on my tuna salad or skim milk in my cappuccino.

UPDATE 2: Hey, there's 2.5 lbs less of me than there were last Sunday.

Calcium Dreams and Sweetness

I seem to sleep better and have sweeter dreams when I take my calcium supplement before bed. (I discovered this by forgetting to take it in the morning a few days.) Try it. Let me know what happens.

Sweeter than calcium dreams, sometimes too sweet, is apricot nectar. I froze little ice cubes of it last week, wanting just a frozen splash of the pretty juice at a time. This morning, waking thirsty from last night's volleyball, I blended a few cubes with soymilk. It's SO. Delicious.

Being Tibetan

Tomorrow is the long-awaited Compassion Festival sponsored by my sangha! The monks have been working on the sand mandala for a week. I saw it today, almost finished, and it is stunning, beautiful, glorious, gorgeous, touching.

Late this afternoon, I went to the high school hosting the mandala and festival to help with food prep. I was surprised to find pretty fliers on the school's doors advertising dharma talks our monk gave for students throughout the week. The high school was massive, the main office closed, and no map to be found. Some students pointed me in the right direction. I wondered how I would know when I was approaching the right place.

I need not have worried. At the foot of the stairs, I heard recorded Tibetan chants and saw the bright yellows and greens of Tibetan Buddhist banners. There were four or five cinnamon-robe-clad monks. One was working on the mandala, measuring the edges with a compass. His sneakers peeked out from beneath the red robes. People clustered around the mandala for a glimpse. Were they parents of high school students, or just people who lived in town? I paused for a moment, bowled over by this work of art, deeply afraid of sneezing. Further down the hallway, I saw Lobsang, "our monk," answering questions, and his best friend, Amdo (another monk), at his elbow. At last I spied a woman wearing an apron dusted liberally with flour, and asked where the kitchen was.

I expected to slog through boring hours of chopping, but I was essentially treated to a cooking class on stuffing and shaping Tibetan dumplings. Chef Viktor, our leader, seemed impressed with my work, and the high school cafeteria manager half-jokingly offered me a job. It was great fun to socialize with the sangha members who were there, but meeting Chef Viktor was the real treat. He made sure that his volunteer cooks tried the carrot fudge (ohmygod, like the best carrot cake you never had) and enjoyed the samples of reject dumplings. When the other cooks cleared out and I stayed with just a few others to clean, I had the chance to chat with Chef. He grew up in Mozambique, has lived in 7 countries in 3 continents, and has studied the cuisine of all of them. He uses only Succanat for sweetener and has fascinating insights about the mineral and nutritional value of sweeteners. We both admire Jacques Pepin.

I also enjoyed the cleaning, the pulling long streams of cling wrap across trays. It reminded me of my college work study days in the Kosher Kitchen. I missed the Beatles compilation we used to play during cleanup.

As we cleaned and tidied, Lobsang and Amdo entered the kitchen. Lobsang does not know my name, but often greets me with a warm bow-handshake-hug, a fusion hello which always delights me. Chef explained that he may not return tomorrow, as he lives far away, and a Tibetan who speaks no English was slated to be running the kitchen. (I had already volunteered to lead the crew to fold the remaining 150 dumplings and fry all 300 if Chef couldn't return. Chef was glad to have me when I mentioned my high school summers frying up clamcakes.) It turns out they found another Tibetan chef who does know English, and Lobsang charmingly requested Chef's return tomorrow. You can't say no to a monk, especially one as charismatic as ours, so Chef and I will be manufacturing the dumplings together in the morning.

The food we made today is just the snacks to sell in the afternoon. The evening's dinner for 300 will be prepared by the Tibetan crew tomorrow. I wonder what time service will really happen. It's scheduled for 6. Based on my limited exposure to the Tibetan sense of time, I would guess we will eat somewhere between 6:45 and 9.

As we walked out, Chef told me the mandala is so beautiful it made him weep. We looked at it from the second-floor balcony, mesmerized by the colors and intricate patterns. Two high school girls were departing from extracurriculars at that time. They leaned over to look at the mandala again. "It's sooo beautiful," one whispered in awe.

My parents are coming up for the festival, too! Yay!

Fascinating Facts

...at least to me.

I am learning all about glycemic index, and it fascinates me. The body and brain's goal is to have steady blood glucose at all times. Some bodies regulate this better than others, because of mashup of genetics, lifestyle, and body fat.

I read a great explanation of why eating a little fat and protein with carbs is good--a little avocado or almond butter with that whole grain bread, for example, slows absorption of glucose in a favorable way, minimizing blood sugar spikes--but too much fat with carbs (like pepperoni pizza) slows absorption too much, leading to high blood glucose for too long a duration. Which explains the pizza coma. And the burger with fries coma. And yes, the Chinese buffet coma.

Fiber, like fat and protein, also mitigates blood sugar spikes (and subsequent crashes) by increasing digestion time. Which is why whole fruit, although sugary, is good for you; but juice, devoid of fiber, can cause trouble.

I'm also learning that some of the alternative medicine stuff I learned about regulating blood sugar--such as eating almonds and cinnamon--has been studied scientifically with favorable results.

There's the nutrition/A&P geekiness for the week. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm off the bake an apple stuffed with cinnamon, walnuts, and a teeny wittle pat of butter for dessert.

PS It seems that all of this points toward a simple, ancient way of eating, with lots of whole foods. Or, as Michael Pollan wrote: "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants."