Category — polyphasic food

Today's a day for titles pulled out of random things the TV is saying in the background.  Underneath that information-rich skin, though, it's just the three-week P90X update — sorry if that's disappointing.  ;)

So.  When I lost weight using the 6x 200-calorie meals / day "Polyphasic Diet", it took about 5 weeks to really start showing.  It was pretty easy to maintain by that point, but whew, I remember about three weeks in thinking, "This is just impossible."

And tomorrow will be the last day of week 3 of P90X.  Next week I'll be 1/3 through, but the chunks go [(3 identical weeks + 1 different week) x 3], so it does feel like the end of this week is accomplishing something. 

But of course, it's still week three.  I don't really see much difference*, and man, I'm missing the time and effort this is all costing.

Fortunately, many things have taught me not to quit at week three, probably most of all polyphasic sleep itself, which is really easy to quit at about week 3 if you're not careful…The early exhaustion can be gotten through with guts alone, but the following couple weeks of time and effort to work it into one's lifestyle fully are, I would argue, sometimes even more exhausting than zombie-mode.

*It's not that I see no difference — actually my arms and stomach are minimally, but noticeably, tighter, and my shoulders and legs are definitely on the muscliest side of normal for me.  But it's not really a motivating difference.

I had prepared a bit for this, though that preparation came in the form of just plugging along, in a sense.  But I've made sure to let my days of success (which has been all but a few of them) accumulate weight that lends more legitimacy to my fitness as an ongoing enterprise, deserving of effort and investment**.  As such, my awesome workout clothes (all sale items, thank goodness) should be here any day, and my giant box of awesome Builder's Bars got here yesterday.  I'm also perfecting chocolate milk — improvements include a few trials of protein powder and an upgrade (definitely upgrade) to soymilk.  These little advances function not just for making things easier as they go forward, but also as gifts — achievement rewards, to the MMO-acquainted — to help motivate me forward.

**I would like to make it less of an effort and investment than it is now, don't get me wrong.  But changing takes a lot of effort itself, and once you've gotten past that part, you can work on making things more efficient.  I'm still holding out hope that I can try getting my polyphasic schedule back during the remaining 9 weeks of P90X, but if not, I'll focus on finding a maintenance workout to follow P90X with that takes less time and isn't so intense that I can't go back to Everyman.  (Yeah, going back to Everyman is not optional; I miss it crazy bad.)

The diet goes well too, though hitting the protein/carb balance they want for the first three weeks (50%/20%) is haaaarrrd, and there've definitely been days that I was off by a bit.  Having too many carbs vs. protein will make the "slimming down" part go slower (or possibly just not work I guess, though I should be/probably am losing fat just from burning extra calories and building muscle too — and I had minimal extra fat anyway), but that's not my biggest worry.  I like being on the thin side, sure, but I'm also old enough now to not care so much — I've shaken off the ad industry's insistence that thin is (and only is) beautiful, thank goodness.  I do find health beautiful, but I can feel totally gorgeous with a little plump on me, no problem.  (And personally speaking, I dig curvy women — I'm too small to be a proper one myself, but healthily plump hourglassy women are my favorites to look at for sure.)

Also, slipping in a totally unrelated thing at the end…I've written some new verses to an old song, and am considering the rather typical YouTubeing of myself singing a song.  Interesting idea?  Or just stupid?  Your opinions matter, Internet, even if only to this one lowly IP address!

Peaceful yet Interesting Times,

PD

Oy, I have to stop waiting to be able to finish one of the bigger/better posts before I give an update, or it'll never happen…I have like six drafts started that I can't find time for (so pardon this post being a bit rough). 

So, I'm about to Be A Bad Example again.  I knew this was coming, but now that it's here I don't want it to be…I want my naps, darnit!  Everything (and Everyman) was going so well, but I knew the lurker on the threshold would get here eventually, and it looks like it officially has.

The Lurker is a project I have at work:  A big project, massive, bigger than anything I've ever tackled and the kind of thing that sets your resume in a precious unbreakable resin — and on top of that, it's fun.  How can you complain, right?  Well, you can complain when it means your afternoon (1pm) and evening (7pm) naps are constantly getting eaten alive by working straight through lunch and then staying late almost every day!

The project culminates in the first two weeks of July, for all or part of which I'll be working pretty much constantly.  (Yes, I will have no Fourth this year, but that's actually ok; I would miss Michigan's lax fireworks-enforcement too much if I tried, anyway.  SPLODEY!  What good is a holiday about war if you can't 'splode some things??  If there's anything else fun about war, I missed it!)

I'm trying to hang on to my schedule, to at least sleep my 4.5 or 6 at night depending on whether I got one or two naps during the day (let's face it, I've only gotten all three about once a week for the last several)…but even that is starting to get shaky.  Yesterday, for instance, I got just one nap, but didn't go to bed until almost midnight, making getting up at four an adventure, to say the least.  (I hate sleeping in now, and will only do it if I feel I must for health reasons, which usually means on weekends when the grind catches up with me.)  I'm also starting to do my eating mostly on weekends, or in the cracks of the day with whatever's at hand, and to drink an order of magnitude more coffee than water…not good, not not good.  Especially when the other thing I'm doing — my non-computer thing — is kungfu, and I'm doing it more as I grab opportunities whenever I see them; but it sort of requires a baseline of health, food and sleep being rather important pieces there.  (I am going to try to fix the food thing…I'm shopping more — er, mostly thanks to Boston's proclivity for letting you get anything delivered — and working to re-implement my "polyphasic food" (many tiny meals) system that worked so well for me before.  Wish me luck.) 

So I'll need to do everything better, even as I suspect the next month and a half is going to push me to doing worse. 

Good thing I'm ok with paradoxes, eh?

;)

Anyway, my writing time is evaporating — and that, at least, is something I've been good about preserving, even if it is often at the cost of as much sleep as I need — and one thing I've been learning is that I have certain needs that really determine how a day goes for me:  Food and sleep are nice, but I can live without enough of them for a day or two and suffer pretty much no direct impact.  (Thankfully, I'm young-ish and very healthy.)  But kungfu (of some variety) and writing are not optional — if I skip them, I have a significantly crappier day, and the impact is immediate.  If I even get a few paragraphs in and some stance-work and meditation, things go dramatically differently.

Do you have key things like that?  If so, I'd love to hear about them, just because I'm finding the concept fascinating.

But otherwise I'm outie; and here, since that wasn't much of a post, have a video that made me laugh and got in my head all day.  (That's right, inhale my netviruses!) 

(In minor but cool related news:  I actually scored a gaming group for a weekly Tabletop RPG night!  So yeah, there goes my sleep on Saturdays…but who cares.  Woot! Roll a D6!  ;)

I’m not a foodie-type.  I can cook with relative suburban competance, but that’s it.  My two best friends, on the other hand, are foodie-types and mad cooks, so I’ve learned some things about higher-order food from the perspective of a well-used taste-tester, mmm-hmm.

However, this "recipe" is my own, and I’m rather proud of it.  I call it "People who don’t like Brussels-sprouts will like these" Brussels-sprouts; and as a bonus, there’s a nearly-identical version called "People who don’t like asparagus will like these" asparagus.  It is, as you’d expect from someone like me, who has little time and less kitchen-skill, stupidly easy.  But it is also delicious, as you’d expect from someone who’d been spoiled on the food of awesome cooks.  ;)

Here’s the "recipe":

1. Put tinfoil on a cookie-sheet (preferably one with sides) and put a few tablespoons of oil in the middle.  I use olive oil, but you know, whatever.
2. Heat up the oven to about 400.  Lower temps take longer, but I’ve cooked them at everything from 350 to 450 and they don’t really seem to care.
3. Wash the sprouts / asparagusses.  (Asparagi?  Or as my mom calls them, "Asparagrass", which if you’ve ever grown them makes some sense, too.)
4. For sprouts, cut the bottoms off and whack them in half.  For asparagus, snap the bottoms off with your fingers.  They snap pretty automatically in the right place, which is cool.  (If you’re worried about time or hate knives, make asparagus; it’s much easier to prepare.  Not that cutting Brussels sprouts is an olympic activity.)
5. Throw veggies in the pan.  Wick around with a spoon/spatula type thing until they’re all oily.
6. Add a good amount of salt and pepper.  If you’ve got fancy stuff like sea salt and fresh-ground pepper, by all means use it, but it isn’t required or anything.
7. Cook for about 15-20 minutes, or until they’re not crunchy anymore.  Stop before they turn completely black.  I’ve found that they helpfully begin to smell really good just a few minutes before they’re done.  If you’re not sure, open the oven, stir them around and eat one; add 5 min. if it’s not done.
8. Serve with butter.  Generally speaking, the less salt & pepper you put on, the more butter you’ll want.  I once cooked a batch that I accidentally COVERED in S&P, so I served it with almost no butter and voila, it was awesome.  You really almost can’t ruin these.  ;)
9. Collect accolades from everyone.

So, now that I’ve gotten the "useful content" out of the way, an update:  I’ve discovered new depths and horizons to stress; I’m impressed as hell at my brain for not simply snapping like a twig.  My sleep-schedule has mostly survived it, though there have been a few "screw this, I’m going to bed" naps.  My diet has pretty well died — I did lose about ten pounds in the 5 or 6 weeks I did it, and I’ve stopped losing weight now but haven’t gained any back.  I’m still working hard to snack better and eat a lot more vegetables and keep my portions small, so though I’m not at 1200 cal/day anymore, I’m still eating less and better than I was before.  I’ve learned a ton, too.  Here, since you’re here, have a sample of my hot sweet lessony goodness:

• it’s easy to pack low-calorie, filling lunches in a bento box.  Buy crackers, raw veggies, dried fruit, and other healthy things, and use about 3/4 of the bento box for that.  (Use one of the little divider-containers for dip for your veggies.)  Put leftovers or rice balls in the other 1/4.  Add a small treat for "dessert" (I’ve found that 2-3 pieces of candy is perfect), and voila!
• find decadent-tasting things with low calories and stock up on them; let yourself have one every day and you won’t feel nearly as deprived.  My favorites are Japanese candy (which is almost always surprisingly low-cal; a whole package of their version of Starbursts–which is OMG better than the American kind anyway–is only 120 calories), non-fat frozen yogurt with a spoonful of jam or flavored syrup, and mascarpone cheese mixed with a spoonful of honey as a dip for fresh fruit (holy shit is this orgasmically good, and it’s barely over 100 calories a serving). 
• if you BUY raw vegetables and some things to dip them in and put them in your fridge, you’re a lot more likely to eat them.  I found that telling myself, when I get hungry, to eat some veggies first and then if I’m still hungry I can have something else, means that about 50% of the time, I only eat the veggies and that’s enough.  Also, be creative about stuff to put in/on raw or gently-cooked veggies:  salsa, hummous, olive oil with spices, etc. are all low-calorie options that taste better than you think on veggies.  Something I really fell in love with was the goat cream cheese at Trader Joe’s (yes, this was foodie-friend’s fault) — it’s good on almost any vegetable, and a small serving is very low-impact.
• speaking of servings, small ones are much easier to deal with if you eat them slowly and make yourself pay attention to how they taste.  In fact, this habit alone is incredibly valuable, because it lets you eat less and be satisfied with it, and also quickly trains your body to not be cool with scarfing large amounts of food.  Also, the calorie restriction itself is a nice way to make good food-choices, because when you only have 400 calories left today, you are NOT going to want to burn half of them on a can of Coke.

See?  Wisdom!  It’s not as much of a superpower as being able to make cookies from scratch that will sway the will of world leaders, but it’s pretty awesome, still.

I do think I look a bit better too; in reality I think I’d only want to lose another ten, maybe fifteen pounds from here anyway.  But I do want to see if I can lose that too — I maintain that as a martial artist, it’d be nice not to be pudgy, even just a little.  ;)  However, I go to visit Major Foodie Amazing Cook BFF on the east coast next week, and there is NO point trying to have a diet around her, so I’m not going to worry about fixing it until I get back.  It was awesome to lose the ten pounds and to know that simple calorie-restriction works, and that I can do it — woot! 

Today’s bento box lunch:  Half a string cheese, piece of leftover kielbasa (SO GOOD the way my boy makes it, cooked all day in sauerkraut, MMM), three big crackers (can’t remember what kind they are; I got them from Trader Joe’s and they’re really tasty), handful of sugar snap peas with cream cheese to dip them in, three dried apricots, and two small sesame candies for dessert.  Calories:  about 250 if I ate it all, but in reality I couldn’t finish all the cheese & crackers.  WOOT.

Yes, I am losing weight, too.  Probably less than ten pounds so far, but it’s definitely noticeable — my clothes are looser in the tummy; a darn good sign.  I’ve pushed my calories to 1200 a day minimum (instead of maximum; I had more 800-1000 calorie days doing that than was probably healthy). If I eat raw veggies at the first sign of hunger, 90% of the time it goes away, so I’ve barely been hungry at all through this — yay! Things like bento boxes, low-cal snacks like apples and grapefruit-slices, and drinking lots of water really help too. I’m going on a month of this, and it’s been WAY easier than I thought! The hardest part has actually been the Weirdness of realizing how fast I got used to healthy food and smaller portions…for example, I bought myself a Ramune (Japanese pop; I’m a crackhead for Japanese food, if you couldn’t tell) last week and I still haven’t “felt like” drinking it!

Also, I did some research into circuit training (on the advice of a wise commenter) and realized that, with a little tweaking, my daily workout routine could produce better results. Circuit training sounds complicated, but all it actually means is taking 7-10 exercises and doing them fast for 30-60 seconds, with a 30-second break in-between exercises. You do the whole “circuit” between 1-3 times, no more than 4 times a week. Simple, eh? And fast, and, based on my reading, it’s the most scientifically-sound method for burning fat and building strength.

Also, sleep is going well. (That’s totally the detailed update you were hoping for, innit? ;) I fell right back into my schedule much more easily than even I anticipated — “adjustment” was about 48 hours long. Even a weekend full of Fail and bad alarm clocks didn’t stop me from hopping right back on without any problems, though I did take the excuse to buy a new alarm clock, which I’ll review when I get it. I’m still “Crazyphasic” and I’m still working to get things more regular and reliable — story of my life, that — but I’m certainly not tired and I’ve got my extra time back. Yay!

But here, that was a really skimpy sleep-update, so here are some Random Sleep Tips to make up for it. (I thought of a few lately, and haven’t had anywhere else to put them, heh.)

1. If you have a morning nap, consider putting it so that you’re falling asleep when it’s still dark, but you wake up as it’s getting light outside. Natural light is a good switch-thrower to make you feel more awake.

2. If you’re super tired and about to take a 20-minute nap that you’re worried you might not wake up for, drink a coffee right before you lay down. It’ll take 20-30 minutes to “kick in” (note: use more or less caffeine depending on your tolerance), and you’ll be more inclined to wake up and be alert.

3. When you want to sleep but shouldn’t, go somewhere you CAN’T sleep, like in the shower or outside. Sometimes just relieving the strain of constant “but I could just lay down and…” from your brain will help you feel less tired.

4. Know the difference between not getting ENOUGH sleep, and not getting GOOD sleep. If your problem is that you’re not sleeping well (whether you’re polyphasic or not), sleeping more won’t solve it — nor will switching sleep-schedules, unless you’re sleeping badly because you’re sleeping at the wrong times, which is possible but less likely than that there’s another factor, like a high-sugar diet or bad sleep environment. If you’re sleeping but not feeling rested, make sure to troubleshoot for quality of sleep, not just quantity!

5. Learn to be a complete bastard about getting your naps uninterrupted. I mean, don’t actually BE nasty, but if you’re like me you’ll feel like a total jerk for being as firm as you need to be to actually get people to leave you alone. If you don’t feel like you’re being a jerk, you probably aren’t being firm enough about it. I learned this one the hard way (more than once, d’oh) so you can trust me on it: be a jerk. Most people hear “nap” and they think “optional luxury”; it’s your behavior and only your behavior that gives them any other impression. So bark a little. If you get woken up, rain a little fire and brimstone to make the point that waking you up is NOT something they want to do again. As I’ve said in my better moments, unless someone is dying, it can wait twenty minutes, PERIOD.

Peace and naptime!
PD

Hm.

Okay, gonna fall off-schedule this weekend; it’s unavoidable.  I’ll deal, try to stay well-rested and pay for it with a groggy Tuesday, but needless to say I would rather have not.  Thankfully most of what’s keeping me from napping tonight, and probably killing my core-nap on Saturday, is fun stuff; and fun stuff is worth a tired Tuesday.  It’s a holiday weekend!  And I dunno about you, but I busted some significant tail this week, so I plan to be equally diligent in my relaxing.

Actual-dieting continues to go well.  I’ve had less-than-perfect days, but I’ve also come in under 1200 calories at least as often as I’ve gone over — today, for example, it’s 10pm and I’m only at 350 calories, so I’ll need to eat some more before bed.  It doesn’t surprise me that once I start restricting calories, I would tend to take it too far (gee, really? me?), but it’s still unnerving sometimes.  Also, again predictably but still kind of unreal from my perspective, I continue to exercise more as I keep getting more addicted to it.  My latest thing is to learn to do the situps where your upper body and knees come up at the same time, meeting in the middle as you balance on your hiney.  It’s glamorous stuff, hiney-balancing.  Rawr. ;)  (If you care, I can only do about 10 of those, but I can do 25 if I let my toes slide ‘long the floor.  My woot! for the day though is that I can do 30 pushups without breaking rhythm. *woot*)

So the conclusion for now, I suppose, is that I still stand by my statement that if I don’t lose weight this time, my fat must have the Great One’s own permission slip to be here, and I doubt I’ll go any further specifically trying to lose weight (provided I stay healthy).  …I know my own obsessive tendencies, and I’ve worked really hard to not end up obsessed about my weight; I know I would have gone to extremes and hurt myself.  It hasn’t been an easy ride, since I was just chubby enough as a kid to really develop a complex about it.   The gods really threw me a lifeline when they gave me an awesome hot husband who could give a crap less about a few pounds, though, didn’t they?  Wow.  Anyway, my local medical authority says it can take up to a month to get started, so I’m Being Patient.  This is week three.

Also, adapting is a pain in the patoot.  I didn’t think about the fact that I have a “rolling” off-schedule day basically every Friday, due to an evening appointment that almost always eats my nap.  I think I’ll try adapting around it, since I can’t get rid of it.  It usually means 4.5 – 6 hrs sleep on Saturday, but most weekends I can get things back on track by Sunday.  Just not this week, unfortunately.  This week, I had to go and grow a social life.  Oh well; it won’t last.  ;)

Happy Day Off, Americans!  And Happy Something Else, Everyone Else!

PD

Dear Valued Customer.  If you like amusing slander of credit-card companies, you might enjoy reading that.  Also if you have a thing for strikethroughs, I suppose.

It’s day three and for some reason I’m posting neat original content on LJ and chatty updates-on-life to pd.com.  Eh, I’ll just roll with it; it seemed like this food thing I’m doing might merit more details.

I’m really amazed and amused by how very like an Uberman adaptation this experience is.  There’s that shift in everything, how time passes and things stand out and you realize all kinds of things you’ve been thinking habitually forever that suddenly don’t make sense anymore.

I’ve been surprised by all the changes, but I shouldn’t have been — I drastically changed my whole diet.  It’s somewhat telling that it didn’t occur to me before that this would have a big impact, isn’t it?

So, I get fuller much easier now, which isn’t surprising as I haven’t had a meal over 200 calories in three whole days now.  Those meals fill me up nicely, and when I get hungry between them I have some kind of raw vegetable (though I’ve been thinking, adding cooked ones would increase the variety; I dunno), and that fills me up too.

The food I eat, I taste. It’s really odd how strongly everything tastes.  But it’s nice; nothing tastes bad or anything.

Oddly, my problem isn’t overeating — that’s what I want to do of course, but so far I haven’t — what I have done is eat too little.  During the day, I don’t want to eat one of my “meals” in a rush, or just grab something; I have to think about it.  So I put it off, and end up eating nothing for half a day like I did today.

I’m not sure if that’s a big deal or not.  This diet isn’t really predicated upon eating at certain times, is it?  I chose not to make up the calories that I missed out on earlier (because from what my sources say, it’s actually good when starting a calorie-restriction gig to cut waaay back the first few days, as it kick-starts the necessary processes).  Although, when I had to ask myself if I should have that artichoke in addition to the already-170-calories I’d had for dinner, even though it would probably push it over a bit, the fact that I was already down 400 for the day made it easier to say “hell yes, artichoke!”.  Which is as it should be, right?

So anyway, yes, this is proving interesting.

Crap.  I just realized that I should probably buy a scale, eh?  Well…maybe.  But I’m NOT putting one of those goofy slider-bar .gifs on my blogs.  That’s a little masturbatory even for me.

Okay, peace ya’ll, time for some real writing before bed.  I’ve got another story almost done and another one starting.  Woot!

P.S.  Also, something special coming up soon…Content from Beyond!