2 Potato Week 3

January 22nd, 2009
I’d like to say I’m sorry about not posting this week but since I was busy with school and THE INAUGURATION!!! I just can’t say that :).

I’m going to give you a quick round up of my weigh ins this week. First off, I did nothing on inaugural day except celebrate, I didn’t weigh in and I surely didn’t count my calories. Evidently jumping up and down, crying freely and whoopin n hollerin burns a lot of energy.

Week 3 Calories and Weight

	Sat	Sun	Mon	Wed	Thur
kcals	890	996	1476	1346	1271
lbs	227	228.4	228	227.4	226.4

OK So if I’m so hot at this eating right thing why isn’t the weight rolling off? Basically, because I’m doing too much movement. I was a total slug for three months trying to pass my PhD. qualifiers (my retake of the final exam was moved back AGAIN! ARrrrggghhh!!). Now I’m walking some almost every day and have been putting on a lot of muscle. How do I know? Certainly not by the, admittedly, wonky fat and water readings on my scale. I secretly measured myself a few days after starting the diet. I meant to diary that part sooner but some days it is a choice between talking about lifestyle tweaks and actually tweaking.

So I took a third set of measurements today. Let’s see how it’s going:

Measurements Week 3

	Calf	Thigh	Hips	Waist	Upper Body	Arms
1-13	41.5	67	130	102	98	35
1-17	42	64	125	100	98	34
1-22	41	63.5	121.5	97	97	34

All I can say is: WAAAHOOOO!!! I’ve lost 1.5 inches off each thigh, 3.5 inches off my butt and 2 inches off my waist. And I’m finally losing a weight too.

Let me share with you my philosophy of taking my measurements. I know, if I’m feeling desperate, I’m going to try to cheat subconsciously by pulling tighter on the tape measure. So, I start out pulling it as tight as I can. These measurements are not good for buying new clothes unless you like feeling like you’ve been stuffed into a body stocking and have a pathological hatred of deep breathing. So you’ll need to take a second set if you decide you need to buy clothes. But it keeps me honest. I like to measure the six points on the chart. Upper body is measured by running the tape right under my armpits. If you want to do your bust instead of or in addition to your upper body remember to wear the right undergarments ladies.. they have to fit right! It’s also important to measure the same spots each time. I have a mole, a tattoo, a freckle etc. to keep track of where I measure.

It’s really hard for me to lose on my upper arms. I have frozen shoulder in both shoulders which restricts both my movement and my upper body strength. Also, I need to dance more. That will help a little. If anyone has any suggestions for working around my issues I’m glad to hear them! I hate that flapping underarm wing.

OK I promise to write more tomorrow.. no, really I do!
January 23rd, 2009
The Thermogenesis Effect–Saving the Environment and Yourself at the Same Time.

That title reminds me of Trek..oh well.. onward.

More correctly, today I’m going to talk about Thermoregulation which includes Thermogenesis and the caloric usage of cooling methods. Thermogenesis is the effect of a living being producing heat. There are two main ways to produce this heat, NEAT (Non Exercise Associated Thermogenesis) and EAT (You guessed!.. it’s Exercise Associated Thermogenesis). We covered one aspect of NEAT already, fidgeting. But I want to talk about another aspect.

Humans are mammals and as such are all homeotherms (with the possible exception of Darth Cheney) and as such have to maintain homeostasis (or a constant temperature). When our environment is too hot or too cold, we make adjustments (or more accurately, our mitochondria make changes) to maintain an internal temperature at which our enzymes can perform their at optimum functionality and at which our constituent cells don’t die. The advantages of homeothermy are many (including allowing Fred Flintstone to outrun that T rex JOKE!) but one ‘disadvantage’ that we can turn to our advantage is that it requires more food to be burned.

So how do we use Homeothermy to our advantage and save the environment all in one fell swoop? In the winter, you turn down the heat a few degrees and in the summer you don’t turn on the air conditioning quite as often. Since it’s Winter here we’ll talk about keeping the temperature a degree or two cooler first.

There are three main ways to turn up your internal thermostat: movement, chemicals and shivering. Movement we’ve talked about but it always bears repeating. If you turn down your thermostat one degree lower than normal and you start to get cold, get up and march in place for a minute or chair boogie! You should be fidgeting anyway and therefore producing more surface internal heat. Let’s not counteract that by cranking the heat so we have to do less thermoregulation!

There are also chemicals that increase your internal thermostat. That’s how caffeine works to help you lose weight as does capsicum, ginger and ephedra. I’m not a fan of caffeine as it does many other things especially to those of us already prone to diabetes or heart disease.

Moderate negative effects of caffeine include:

* Headaches
* Irritability
* Increase in breast tenderness
* Restlessness
* Mild insomnia
* Increased heart rate
* Increased blood sugar
* Difficulty concentrating
* Mild stomach upset

Severe negative effects of caffeine include:

* Panic attacks
* Irregular heartbeat
* Sleep deprivation
* Continuous stomach problems
* Prolonged depression
* Sleep disorders

Nor do I advocate ephedra because, you know, it’s a drug and I’m trying to avoid taking drugs by losing weight.

Possible Side Effects of Ephedra

* nausea
* headache; dizziness
* irritation of the stomach; diarrhea
* anxiety; psychosis
* kidney stones
* tremors
* dry mouth
* irregular or rapid heart rhythms; heart damage
* high blood pressure
* restlessness; nervousness; sleeping problems
* decreased appetite
* flushing; sweating
* increased urination

Use of ephedra has also been associated with stroke, seizures, psychosis and death.

Ginger and capsicum (spicy component of hot sauces and peppers) I use all the time though because they enhance my culinary experience! Whenever I make tea I toss in a dash of ginger and I warm up not just from the heat of the drink but also from the effect of the ginger.

Shivering is great if you’re going to freeze to death but I’m not advocating turning the heat down that low. Really, that would be too uncomfortable to become a lifestyle for most people. I’ve dropped the temperature to about 63 during the day and 57 at night for the general house and it’s 2 degrees F warmer in here because of all the electronics and the large aquariums and ponds. If that’s too cold for you, just turn it down one degree. Go on, you know you want to. What’s one degree? 1 degree can reduce your carbon footprint and cut your heating bills by 10 percent and help you lose weight.

Babies (and hibernating mammals) have a fourth way called brown fat which is actually a form of muscle and which has a lot more mitochondria (leading to the brown color). Remember when two decades ago they said you could produce more by eating brown rice or whatever they were advocating that day and create more brown fat. Well, not so much. We have what we form as a baby and that as they say is that, for now. They are working on genetic therapy ways to stimulate the formation of more brown fat in adults but we won’t see that for a decade or longer.

I don’t know about you but I can’t wait that long to lose weight! By then I might be just bones! Additionally I wonder if producing a bunch more brown fat cells won’t lead to feeling hot all the time or at the worst moments I might start sweating. Oh wait, we already have that it’s called menopause.. blech!

Additionally, you burn calories to cool yourself off. But this is a lot trickier. Most of what you lose when you’re really hot is just water. This is especially true for women, while men actually sweat fats and oils (and toxins!), darn them! It is critical that you drink water and compensate for the salts and minerals that you lose through sweating. Frankly I’m not the least bit concerned about water gain, but I do worry about water loss. Remember on that first day when I talked about wanting to be more water than fat? I still do. But, turning that air conditioner up a degree is good for the environment, your heating bill and can make a small difference in calorie usage so why not?

Today’s weigh in is falling in line with my weight loss goals:

226.0 lbs 99.2 lbs fat 92.4 lbs water and 34.4 lbs other. GO WATER GO! Fat.. just GO!
That is 7.4 lbs lost in 3 weeks plus those inches we chalked up yesterday. I’m happy!

Today is my breakover day so expect a bounce up tomorrow and Sunday as processed foods hit my system. I wish there was better food at the tavern!

Oh, yeah what about that EAT portion of thermogenesis? We don’t say the E word here. More movement is great though! In fact, why don’t we all get up and boogey to the kitchen and get a cup of three of ginger tea? I know I’m going to.

Image Credits to:
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2045/2105724861_de303117e5.jpg?v=0
http://www.thedailygreen.com/cm/thedailygreen/images/YL/watch-thermostat-tip-2-lg.jpg
http://pro.corbis.com/images/42-17343563.jpg?size=572&uid={793d7a0a-f05c-44ab-956f-32c5b2b6bbfb}