Health: September 2008 Archives

Well.  At least they are playing along with project subsize me:

Abstract:     
We estimate the impacts of Wal-Mart and warehouse club retailers on height-adjusted body weight and overweight and obesity status, finding robust evidence that non-grocery selling Wal-Marts reduce weight while grocery-selling Wal-Marts and warehouse clubs either reduce weight or have no effect. The effects appear strongest for women, minorities, urban residents, and the poor. We then examine the effects of these retailers on exercise, food and alcohol consumption, smoking, and eating out at restaurants in order to explain the results for weight. Most notably, the evidence suggests that all three types of stores increase consumption of fruits and vegetables while reducing consumption of foods high in fat. This is consistent with the thesis that Wal-Mart increases real incomes through its policy of "Every Day Low Prices," making healthy food more affordable, as opposed to the thesis that cheap food prices make us eat more.

In all seriousness, WalMart does some pretty abhorent things,  but the company isn't all evil.  Sam Walton would have been disgusted at the human resources practices that have gotten the company in trouble in the last decade.  But in shaking their fists at big corporations, people tend to forget that they have pretty big benefits.  The fact that WalMart makes a ton of stuff affordable to people with lower incomes is NOT trivial.

Hat tip to Tyler Cowen.

That's the scale today.  I think I am getting lucky and weighing myself at the low peaks of the volatility in weight.  Good for motivation!

I know it's all just in my head, but I feel spritelier when playing basketball.

People at work obviously hate me.  This is our kitchen table.

I weighed myself this morning.  A smart person would have weighed himself before day 1.  I'll spare you the full-body pics because weight-watchers porn is icky.

I'm about 30 pounds overweight.

Ok, I'm about 40 pounds over what the BMI will tell you is ideal for a 6 foot male.  But, seriously, screw that.  I'd be happy at 188 lbs, and the BMI has all sorts of problems with it.  I know that "Big boned" is an excuse, but I also know that even when I did weigh 185, I had broad shoulders and I looked skinny.

The main problem for the last year or two has just been my attitude towards food.  It's all classic, straight-out-of-the-textbooks addictive behavior.  I eat more shitty food "in secret", i.e. when my wife isn't around to complain about it (as an aside, I don't respond well to her complaints about my eating habits, and the fact that she happens to be completely right doesn't seem to matter much.  I doubt this is just the irritability that is also classic behavior in a junkie, but rather my own irrational hatred of when people point out that I am being stupid).  I feel guilty about certain meals.  I get sugar lows.

I keep making half-hearted attempts to start eating better (I won't call it dieting), but there are several problems with my previous attempts:

1.  They have been undocumented and unpublic, so I have no fear of failure/embarrassment/etc to keep me 'honest'
2. number 1) is also a common part of addictive personality behavior patterns, in that it is indicative of a failure to admit that there's something wrong
3. my goals have always been just "to lose weight"

Hopefully this attempt will go more smoothly, because this time:

• I intend to document it on the blog.  If I don't, you will all just have one more little bit of proof that I am full of shit.
• Documenting this is proof that 2) is not a problem here.
  
• My goal isn't (just, anyway) to lose weight.  I want to be less worried about my health (I'm old enough to start worrying about my heart, etc).  I want my back to hurt less.  I want to be able to jump again -- these days when I play ball, I go up for layups and usually end up having to heave the ball high and far because I am about a foot further away from the hoop than my brain expects me to be, and it isn't just from getting old.  I want to be free of headaches.  I want to sleep better.  I want to not breathe as hard while running up and down the court.  I want to not feel guilty after eating.  I want to have more energy.  I want the elastic bands at the top of my underwear to stay straight instead of being bent in half by the flab in my belly.  Wow, just typing all these makes me feel more motivated.

So, today I started Project Subsize Me.  Sort of the opposite of Supersize Me as I won't be eating much at Micky Ds.  My food goals include:

• No refined sugar. I mean this in a zen way.  I'm not going to boycott stuff that has sugar because that is 80% of the supermarket.  I mean no products whose main ingredient is refined sugar.  Starburst, chocolate, ice cream, etc.
• No fried foods.  Chips, Fries, fried fish, etc, etc.
• No white bread (includes pizza which is basically a lotta white bread)
  
• No donuts, cake, etc, made from white bread, even if they aren't already disqualified because of the whole sugar thing

and

• More chicken, lamp, fish, and less beef.  In fact, as little beef as possible although giving up steak entirely is probably wishful thinking.
• Getting a bit of fruit for breakfast in the morning
• Drinking more water and less soda (probabably the hardest part of this list as I'm addicted to diet pepsi)
• cooking more, eating out less
  

Today actually started pretty MEH because I missed breakfast, but this is certainly better than getting a donut for breakfast.  At lunch I had some spicy chicken w/ salad from a nearby terriyaki joint.  I didn't get the sugary terriyaki sauce and I didn't get the (icky, btw) sweet dressing they usually put on the salad.  At least it wasn't a fried meal or a fatty Quizno's sandwich.

More updates to come.  If I slack off, I suck.

And for futher inspiration, see another ballers attempt to increase his vertical.