This is the third in a series of posts about my fitness journey. If youhaven’t read them, here are links to parts 1 and 2.
The past few months have been ones of revelation, plateau, and reaching goals. I found out I was an athlete, my body decided it was happy in a spot, it moved around a bit more, and now I’m looking at my progress over the past 3 years. Also along the way I’ve had some people ask me a bit more about what I eat, so in this post I’m giving away my secrets of tasty foods that have helped me balance my macros.
Me at DSU’s Commencement. April 30, 2021, 212.2 pounds.
So to start, you might wonder how one finds out that they are an athlete. It started with noticing a toggle in my Arboleaf Scale app for “Athlete mode”. The description stated that it was ‘designed for people who were muscular, have been long engaging in intensive physical activities, or have been working out regularly’. When I got the scale, in April 2020, that did not describe me, except for perhaps the muscular part. In late May, 2020, I did start working out regularly, but even after several months, I still did not feel entitled to “flip that switch” so to speak. I wasn’t an athlete, I was a fat guy.
Around the end of April, however, I started to wonder again about that little toggle. I had read several articles that noted that BMI overestimated fat content of taller people (I’m 6’3’’) throughout the past year, but as someone who had an initial body fat reading of around 50%, I figured “How far could it be off?”, and didn’t care to use the “athlete” mode that would change the calculations based on a muscular physique. But the month of April 2021 got me thinking – mostly because the scale stopped moving.
For comparison, here was my trend line per week of weight from May 2020 to July 2021 (as of today): May 2020: Down 2.1 lb/week June 2020: Down 3.3l lb/week July 2020: Down 2.9 lb/week Aug 2020: Down 3.2 lb/week Sept 2020: Down 2.5 lb/week Oct 2020: Down 2.2 lb/week Nov 2020: Down 2.2 lb/week Dec 2020: Down 1.5 lb/week Jan 2021: Down 1.8 lb/week Feb 2021: Down 2.1 lb/week Mar 2021: Down 2.1 lb/week Apr 2021: Down 0.8 lb/week May 2021: Down 0.9 lb/week (And strangely, June 2021: 1.4 lb/week, July 1.2 lb/week… but more on that later)
So yeah… a bit of a dramatic difference in April & May with no change in my diet or exercise. What had changed? Well, obviously I would expect to lose less per week as I had less to lose. But to go from 2.1 lb to 0.8… that made me wonder if something else was going on. So I started looking into this “Athlete” mode stuff, and finally found a way to quantify it in the manual of my Omron Body Fat analyzer. It gave me a calculation for a “Fit Index”, which told me based upon my exercises, frequencies, and intensities, I was an Athlete. So on April 28 I flipped the switch. And while my BMI and Weight obviously didn’t change instantly, my body fat reading went from 21.9% to 15.2%. I started to wonder: Was my body telling me that I had reached a healthy weight? After all, 15% put me firmly in the Fitness category, and it certainly didn’t seem like my body wanted to lose anymore. I was 213.8 pounds, or just over 200 pounds down from my highest recorded weight in May 2018.
About a week after discovering I might be fit, I decided to transition into weight maintenance mode instead of loss. This mostly meant I allowed MyFitnessPal to factor my workout calories into my daily calorie allotment, I stopped rigorously following my Lumen’s daily advice (Might as well have some carbs again, in moderation), and decided that I’d eat snacks after dinner if the mood struck me. Since making that decision around May 1, my weight had stayed well within a 2 pound range, somewhere between 211-213 pounds most mornings, unless I had a late dinner or a lot of fluids the night before.
At the same time, I still kept doing my regular workouts, which have been not packing the same punch as when I started them – my body is well and truly adapted to walking 3 miles per day, and I do plan on switching up my workout regime after the summer completes. Why did I wait? Because I had a rather stupid goal: Make it 365 days of closing my Apple Fitness rings, with daily walks as my primary component since that’s where it all started. So without further adieu, feast your eyes on these image:
(Today = July 28, 2021)
Closing the Rings
So there you have it – I’ve come a pretty long way since May 29, 2018 at 415.2 pounds. Goals are good, but this one was probably particularly stupid – I didn’t give myself any rest days, which we know are essential to have here and there. So don’t be like me, set healthier goals than “never take a day off” (I will admit that after I made it year, I dropped my goals in Apple Health so that I wasn’t pushing myself unrealistically!).
And then, as I drafted up this post at the end of May, getting ready to publish around June 1, something strange happened. I started losing weight again. The plateau broke, and as I type this at the end of July, I weigh in each morning between 199-204. 8 week plateaus aren’t unheard of, but I never thought I’d experience one.
Me on Father’s Day with the shirt my kitten children, Coconut and Kinja gave me. My weight was 200.2 that morning. After a tasty coconut cream pie, brownies, and special meals, I did end up going up a few pounds for the next week! Still well within the 200-205 range, however.
So I’ll close this portion of the post by answering a question people have been asking: What is my end goal? Answer: I’m pretty much at it. Ideally I’d drop to somewhere between 190-195, but with a body fat percentage around 15%, a resting heart rate of 60 bpm, a Vo2 max around 41, and the ability to walk long distances (and even jog 20-30 minutes at a time), I feel pretty good.
But before I finish this post, I want to point out a few foods that have really helped me over the last year. This is mostly because I’ve told people about them, similar to how I mentioned my Lumen in the first post, and wanted to have a blog post I could point people to if they were interested as well. So here’s my “secret” food list, using affiliate links if possible.
Magic Spoon Cereal – Sometimes you want a bowl of cereal but you don’t want all the carbs. While these cereals are a bit more expensive (think $2.50 a serving), they are supremely tasty, and filled with a good amount of protein!
Bootylicious Muffins – And sometimes you want something that looks like cake. These are easy to make in the microwave and also very tasty!
Optimum Double Chocolate Whey Powder – You add this to a mug of unflavored coffee (e.g., McCafe works fine) and you blend, and bam = instant hot chocolate.
Whisps – Like cheese? Want cheese as chips? These are just toasted cheese, but make for excellent lunch options or snacks.
Highkey Keto Chocolate Chip Cookies – Excellent little cookies for when you have a sweet tooth but also don’t want to blow your carb count on a single cookie.
These 1, 2, 3 excellent Fiber One or Atkins bars. Again, great for lunches on the go.
Old Wisconsin Turkey Sausage Snack Sticks – When you need some protein and something that will keep you full, pair 2-3 of these with a stick or two of cheddar cheese.
Elite Donut – Donuts rock, these are tasty, especially the cinnamon sugar!
Hello Fresh meal boxes – An absolute godsend during the height of the pandemic. Karey & I would eat 3 meals a week, and go to the grocery store once per month for staples. I usually have some “free boxes” for them, so if you’d like one, reach out and I’ll see if I have a better code than my affiliate link.
What about specific meals?
Want a good lunch option? Can of chunk chicken breast warmed up in a pan with a little butter, cumin, paprika, and garlic powder, plus cheddar cheese to top. Basically you have a southwestern chicken bowl.
Another good lunch? Walmart (and others) sell flash frozen salmon and tilapia. Pop that in a convection oven for 7 minutes or so and you’ve got a healthy lunch you can spice however you like.
And if you are going to splurge, splurge on something really good – carbs go best in the morning, and ya know what pairs really nicely with good coffee (Blueberry Cinnamon Crumble is my favorite flavor, but Almond Amaretto, Sun Kissed, and Maple Cream are good as well): Chocolate Éclairs.
Yes, honestly flavored coffee (which I don’t have to put sugar or cream into) and bakery have been my go-to breakfast for the past few months. You can lose weight and enjoy food – don’t get suckered into the “100% clean” idea that everything you eat has to be meal prepped bland chicken and greens. If you make that your diet, you will jump off of it very quickly.
So there you have it – my secret food list. If you’re looking for a gift for me, pretty much anything on that list is a great option (Even the éclairs, just don’t be surprised if I save them for breakfast over 4 days!). And that about wraps up this post. As I type this I weigh 201 pounds, waking up this morning at 199. When will you hear from me next? Likely after a few more months of maintenance. I look forward to letting you know how I continue to tweak and maintain!
On my home network, my laptop (a MacBook Pro) has a static IP address, and is accessible over VNC (screen sharing). This means that I can enjoy peak laziness – instead of getting off the couch to see if something has completed, I can just pull it up on my phone. But what about when I travel and I’m not on my home network? How can I be lazy from across campus, or a friend’s living room when my laptop is upstairs? A simple little script that connects my laptop to my home VPN on demand.
The Problem
Corporate networks, as well as the network of a friend or family member, typically aren’t under our control. I can’t ask my friends to open ports on their router so I can connect to my machine when it’s on their network just as a matter of politeness. And my corporate network really won’t like me asking for a static IP and a network exception just to VNC into my machine.
In theory, I could sign up for a service that enables Remote Desktop through a central service – something like LogMeIn, GoToMyPC, or TeamViewer. These are all great services, but they add an extra layer onto the system – my laptop already has VNC built in, and installing VNC is easy and simple on machines that don’t have it. The problem is that VNC is meant to be connected to on the local network, and while VNC connection services are available, that’s again, another layer.
In theory, I could have my laptop always connected to my home VPN when I’m out and about. I’d have to remember to connect it each time, and depending on my settings, it might route all traffic through my home network which slows things down and inflates my internet usage. I really only need it to connect when I need to VNC in, and that’s why this script is useful.
How It Works
The script works by checking for a file on my web server ever 2 minutes. If that file is present, it runs a script to connect the VPN. If the file isn’t present, it does nothing. Here’s the code:
if curl –output /dev/null –silent –head –fail “$yourURL” then pgrep -f -x “$COMMAND” > /dev/null 2>&1 || $COMMAND fi
All you have to do is replace the COMMAND with the connection command for your VPN solution (or anything else you want to remotely trigger) and the yourURL with the address you want to query. On my web server, I can use a command such as ‘touch connect-vpn’ in my web directory to create the file, and then simply ‘rm connect-vpn’ to reset. On my computer, I have saved this script as macbook-vpn.sh and use the following CRON entry to run it every 2 minutes, although you could run it however often or as little as you like:
*/2 * * * * /Users/jon/macbook-vpn.sh
From here, you could make this as complex or as simple as you like. You could have another URL that, if found, would disconnect the VPN. You could also script multiple things into your VPN connection/disconnection. In the past I’ve used this script to create a reverse SSH proxy connection, effectively giving my firewalled PC a publicly accessible port – useful again when I need to get into something remotely and securely.
A little while ago, I posted my Epic Long Post about Losing 170 pounds in 11 years. Before I get into my update, I want to thank everyone who reached out to me with well wishes and support, especially those who told me that my blog post really helped them with their own weight loss and health journeys. I’m so happy to have been able to help you by sharing my story! If you haven’t read the first part, I suggest going there and reading it first!
Anyway, since my last update, the biggest nemesis to weight loss aficionados happened: The Holidays. And while the time period didn’t cover one of the primary gluttonous holidays, Thanksgiving, it did cover the 1-2 punch of Christmas Eve/Day and New Years Eve/Day. These two celebrations come just 1 week a part, feature special meals for many, and can cause a dieter to have to choose between “being good” and “being jolly”. Well friends, I’m here to report on my journey through the Merriest or Happiest of Seasons, with perhaps some advice for how to survive it without feeling totally bummed out. Spoiler Alert: You will gain weight… temporarily.
Christmas
Prior to December 24, I was losing at a rate of 2.0-2.2 pounds per week. I had achieved this through rigorously tracking everything I ate, aligning it with my Lumen’s (affiliate link) recommendations, and not cheating. I also would walk every morning for about 2.5 to 5 miles. December 24, Christmas Eve, my wife and I planned a small feast: crab legs and asparagus, and on December 25, we planned to have a prime rib, cheesy potatoes, and yams. Add into that an abundant supply of Christmas cookies and other snacks (I was particularly proud of my perpetually soft and chewy gingerbread cookies), and I was pretty nervous about how I’d walk the line between enjoying myself, and enjoying myself too much. My compromise was this: Eat whatever I want on 12/24 and 12/25, but continue to take my long walks each day in the mornings. I figured that my body would probably enjoy the time out anyway – walks do end up stretching you literally in ways you realize you miss when you stop doing them for awhile (As I’d find out in February!).
So with much trepidation, on 12/24 I weighed myself and was 240.3 pounds. I then went for a 3.66 mile walk, and burnt 423 calories. I was ready for the day. Feasting was done, and on Christmas Morning, looking at the pretty presents waiting for me helped me not focus too much on the change on the scale – I was 242.5, just 2.2 pounds heavier. Crab isn’t a bad food, but the sheer amount of it and the butter that accompanied it was probably a bit to blame. I went for another walk, 3.96 miles this time (burning 480 calories), and enjoyed round two of “eat whatever”, including a very good spinach artichoke dip around lunch time that I simply could not stop eating (my wife is an excellent cook!)
And on December 26, at 6:58 AM, I weighed myself… 245 pounds. By 9:27 PM that night, I was up to 247.4.
7.1 pounds. To put it into perspective, the last time my weight averaged 247.4 pounds had been December 6. So in 2 days I’d seemingly undid 18 days of progress.
Now I know what some of the savvier of you are saying: There are a TON of factors that go into those 7 pounds. Increased amount of food, for one thing – it takes time for your body to process those things that you ate, even if they aren’t calorie laden. Increased amount of water, through both drinking more beverages and through the carbs retaining water that they would eventually release. And yes, increased calories do mean you’ll go up a little over the next few days. I knew all of these things, yet it was still a tad depressing. Don’t get me wrong, I wouldn’t have changed what I did – I truly enjoyed eating special meals with my wife on two very special days of the year. But to see your progress seemingly evaporate, even temporarily, was disheartening. I kept thinking “I wish I knew how long it would take to bounce back”, which is part of the reason I’m writing this blog post. Maybe future dieters will stumble upon this and realize that life will get back to normal fairly quickly.
Over the next few days, going back to my usual diet plan (and eating Christmas leftovers in small quantities), I got back down slowly. 245 one day, 246 the next, 244, 243.2, 242.7, and finally 241.6 on another monumental day: December 31, the last day of the dreaded year 2020.
OK, so again, special food for special days, and again, a predictable rise, with the highest weight being on Sunday, January 3 at 244.2 pounds. Not as bad as Christmas, but still a bit depressing. All of this time I kept thinking “When will I get back down to 240.3?!?” Turns out, the answer to that would be January 6, two weeks to the day after Christmas Eve, I weighed in at 240.0.
Along the way, my Lumen started to notice my body acting a bit differently, as did my body fat scale – you see, as I neared 238.8, I was getting toward the cut-off from a BMI of 30+ (Obesity) to 25-30 (Overweight). BMI is a very troubling number – with lots of debate around how useful it is to describe someone’s overall health, so I’ve never really put much stock in it (Of course, when your BMI is 40+, you don’t need someone to tell you that you’re morbidly obese – it’s just something you know about yourself, like your eye color). Around the same time, my Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR) started to get closer to what it “should” be for someone my age and height. Lumen started playing around with giving me more carbs, which caused me to experience wild shifts in my weight loss rate – at one point I dropped as low as 1.2 pounds per week. Toward the end of January, I went back to my previous Lumen settings (assuming no workouts, just walks) and after a 10 day plateau, started losing again.
Finally, February saw me losing weight at a reduced clip, but I am continuing to drop. A big accomplishment for me came on February 12, when, for the first time, my weight hit below 230 (229.0), and my body fat went below 25% (24.8%) according to my scale. I can’t tell you how amazing it feels to compare the numbers below from April 9, 2020, to February 12, 2021. Imagine looking at the first screen below on your phone, after already losing 80 pounds over the last 18 months, and thinking “Well… guess I got another 100+ to go…”. If that is you right now, as you read this, then know… it’s possible. If I could do it, you can do it.
April 9, 2020 – this thing just loved calling me Obese and Below Average!
February 28, 2020 – now it just likes to tell me that I’m 3 years older than I really am.
And if you’re curious, here’s the February weight chart. February posed a very interesting challenge for me – the inability to go for my morning walks. Something I’d planned for but hoped wouldn’t happen.
First, the planning: on December 14, Apple released Fitness+, their answer to Peloton and something that I would get for free through my Apple One subscription (or at least 3 months free since I’d bought a Series 6 Apple Watch). I was very interested in trying it out since many of the workouts could be done without equipment, and they promised to offer modifications for those who were starting out with exercise. On December 23, I started with the Absolute Beginner Strength workout, the Absolute Beginner HIIT workout, and a Mindful Cooldown – 25 minutes of exercise after my regular walk, and I enjoyed the variety. A week later I did another HIIT workout, and was happy to have an alternative to my walks.
Then, on January 19, it happened: I broke my walking streak of 222 days – instead of a long walk, on that rainy morning, I did a HIIT workout, a dance workout, and a Cooldown. I was happy to still get my exercise in while also not having to come home and dry off (Just to shower and dry off again!).
This preparation was very useful come Thursday, February 11 – the day that the Mississippi Delta got hit with a small ice storm. Campus was closed, and it probably wouldn’t have been a great idea to go out walking – so I did a bit of HIIT. The next day? Yoga. The next day? Core and Dance. And so it went, until February 24 when I was next able to get out and walk – because after the ice storm, came snow which lasted for almost a week.
My Workouts during the first week of Ice and Snow
As mentioned earlier, getting back into walking was something I really was happy to do but something that in just 1.5 weeks my body feel out of routine with. The nights of February 24 and 25 my legs were a little sore! But thankfully just a few days of walking built them up again.
So, not only have I ticked off the boxes for getting below my body fat, I’ve also added a bit more to my exercise routine, and found that I actually like HIIT workouts… and that Yoga can really whip me in ways I never expected! As I write this, February is ending on a “low” note – low weight. High note in other respects.
So that about wraps us up for this weight loss update. As of today I’m down 190.2 pounds from my high, within the home stretch to get to maintenance mode, and have dropped below 25% body fat. Nearly there. My next update will likely be once I go into maintenance mode, and how that works for me.
Thank you all for your support,
Jon Westfall
February 28, 2021 – 225 pounds.
P.S. In a fit of irony, when I posted my last update, my weight went up about a pound the next day, and it was 3-4 more days before it got back down to where it was on the post. Perfectly normal fluctuation, but of course, something one can’t help but roll their eyes at. Thanks body, I was just bragging on you… 🙄 😁
Well friends, we’ve made it past 2020. I figured we could all use a bit of a pickup after that, so I’ve created “[That 2021 Energy Mix](https://music.apple.com/us/playlist/that-2021-energy-mix/pl.u-doljWcNmzzm)” – songs sure to pump you up, in a thematic playlist. Let’s walk through it!
Well friends, we’ve made it past 2020. I figured we could all use a bit of a pickup after that, so I’ve created “That 2021 Energy Mix” – songs sure to pump you up, in a thematic playlist. Let’s walk through it!
Neutron Dance (12” Remix), performed by The Pointer Sisters, written by Allee Willis & Danny Sembello
We start our list with the song that I’ve heard most this past year – because it leads off my Workout playlist that my Apple Watch defaults to start playing when I start a new workout! So obviously, a theme here is energy and activity. But there’s more to that. Allee Willis describes the lyrics of her infectious ear worm as due to “all this stuff going on in my life: I don’t want to take to anymore, I’ll just stay here locked behind the door. Just no time to stop and get away, because I work so hard to make it every day” Source. Willis, who would later go on to write the theme song to Friends, I’ll be there for you, and other music you’ve heard, describes a sentiment a lot of us have felt in 2020 – and offers a way out, perhaps, in this nuclear dance option.
Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me, Kill Me, written and performed by U2
While released in 1995, this often overlooked U2 power tune has origins dating back to the song “Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me” released in 1952. Always a good “pump up” tune, I figured this one would nicely keep us active while also moving us from the 80s to the 90s. And guess what, we’ll then keep up this decades theme with a jump of 14 years to our next entry!
Uprising, performed by Muse, written by Matt Bellamy
Ah the 2000s, a decade that started with a false scare (I’ve heard that 2020 is the Y2K we never got), and contained some of the most formative times for things we take for granted today. Smartphones, social media, and so much more. But turning to specifically this tune – how many of us have wanted to stage our own rebellion in 2020? A sense of despair hard to avoid, the only way we move forward is by resisting it We Will Be Victorious!
Burning Up, performed by Marianas Trench, written by Josh Ramsay
Moving to the 2010s, one of my favorite finds in 2020 was this track. Initially added to my “Get Up!” Apple playlist (Generated each week automatically), Burning Up is actually off of an amazing album, Astoria, a concept album by Canadian rock group Marianas Trench. Really I could have included most of the album on this playlist! Pure energy in this track (Made better by the fact that Marianas Trench also put the whole album out in instrumental form if you want some good “jam” music without words), sounds harkening back to the 80s, and a song you can just enjoy without thinking too much. Speaking of the 80’s…
Why Can’t This Be Love, performed by Van Halen, written by Eddie Van Halen, Michael Anthony, Sammy Hagar, & Alex Van Halen
A good energetic track that starts our love story with 2020. You see, a year ago in January, 2020 seemed like it could be a great year. The opportunity for change in the air with the new decade, enthusiasm for a strong economy, and a relatively peaceful world (to the perception of most Americans, at least), there was no reason to believe 2020 would give us trouble. Sure, there was this thing in China that seemed really annoying, but most of us figured it wouldn’t grow out of control. After all, it hadn’t yet. Too bad that 2020 would soon show us why it couldn’t be love.
Hit That, performed by The Offspring, written by Dexter Holland
A song released on my birthday in 2003, “Hit That” tells us All the world is getting with, I say. Consequences are a lot but hey, that’s the way, that’s the way things go. 2020 definitely got with everyone, in ways we didn’t really enjoy.
Humpin’ Around, performed by Bobby Brown, written by Antonio Reid, Kenneth Edmonds, Daryl Simmons, Bobby Brown, Thomas Keyes, & Jan C. “Stylz” Styles
I think it was probably somewhere around March we started to think that perhaps 2020 was, to use the rumored original title to this song, F***ing Around on all of us. We became a bit more guarded!
You Win Again, performed by The Bee Gees, written by Barry Gibb, Robin Gibb, & Maurice Gibb
With it’s pulsing bass line, You Win Again tells a story of defeat that we started to feel in mid-2020. I recall thinking in April “Well, this sucks, but it will be better again in July”, only to have July be, personally, my worst month last year. I’m going to hit you from all sides, lay your fortress open wide
I Blame Myself, performed by Sky Ferreira, written by Sky Ferreira, Ariel Rechtshaid, Justin Raisen, Daniel Nigro, & Jordan Benik
How many of us sat around feeling like we couldn’t pull ourselves out of the 2020 funk? Blaming ourselves for our mood. A comment often made to me was “I feel really depressed, and then I realize I have nothing to be upset about – I still have a job/loved ones/my health”. 2020 abused us all and even though some were hit harder than others, it’s perfectly fine to understand that your losses and stresses are valid. Stop blaming yourself for your reaction, and start moving forward. Damage can be repaired.
Big Girl (You Are Beautiful), performed by Mika, written by Mika, Jodi Marr, John Mercant, Andres Orue, & Dan Warner
An easy to have missed 2008 track from Mika, this is the turning point of our little 2020 story. One quote that I heard in 2020 that cracked me up was “You either come out a monk, a hunk, a chunk, or a drunk”. No matter what you came out fo 2020 as, self-value is something you should never doubt. We’re all beautiful, even if we’re works in progress.
Born This Way, performed by Lady Gaga, written by Stefani Germanotta & Jeppe Laursen
Another power tune to push us back in the right direction!
New Divide, written and performed by Linkin Park
As one of my wife’s favorite bands, Linkin Park makes an appearance in a lot of my lists. But like the previous two tracks, this echos a positive turn around. While there is still so much to do to get back to normalcy in the world, we all have reason to fill this hole [and] connect the space between… across this new divide
Freedom Must Be Now (W/ Mykal Rose), performed by Third World and Ibhola Lethu, performed by Juluka & Johnny Clegg
Two great songs filled with energy. In the case of the latter, you really don’t need to know what the lyrics mean, but if you want a hint, here it is
This Ain’t a Scene, It’s an Arms Race, performed by Fall Out Boy, written by Pete Wentz, Patrick Stump, Joe Trohman, & Andy Hurley
Moving into 2021, we can recognize the truth to lyrics like I’m a leading man, and the lives I lead are oh, so intricate, and hopefully But the real bombshells have already sunk!
Cult of Personality, performed by Living Colour, written by Corey Glover, Vernon Reid, Muzz Skillings, & Will Calhoun
Not only a great energy song, Cult of Personality reminds us that it can be really easy to fall into the crowd following each other toward whoever or whatever promises us hope. Let’s try to avoid that one in 2021 – because it’s only through our own independence that we can conquer the challenges we have.
Water Under the Bridge, performed by Adele, written by Adele Adkins & Greg Kurstin
2020 man, it’s water under the bridge!
Better Country, performed by Paul Brandt
Canadian country singer Paul Brandt released this track in 2018, but it sure seems applicable to a different year and different country than Canada!
Family Tree, performed by Kings of Leon, written by Caleb Followill, Nathan Followill, Jared Followill, & Matthew Followill
Relaxing the beat a little bit in this one as we get toward the end of the playlist. Thanks for being part of my family tree by reading this!
Help Myself, performed by Maggie Rose
If there was ever a song about coping with 2020, this one is it. I’ve spent a lot of time walking this past year, and some of that was jamming to the lyrics:
Maybe we’re all just out of minds,
One step away from fine and dandy,
Pills and candy,
Gotta cut straight to the happy ending,
Maybe we’re all just out of our heads,
Despite what the experts said,
I’m only here to help,
I just can’t help myself
DuckTales Theme, performed by Felicia Barton, written by Mark Mueller
A fun one to wrap us all up, with a modern twist thanks to the reboot of the past few years on Disney. What 80s kid doesn’t smile when hearing this (or a kid of any decade, perhaps!)
I hope you’ve enjoyed my little journey through 2020 and on to 2021. Keep the energy moving!
On March 16, 2011, I weighed myself for the first time in over 10 years. What I saw shocked me into action, confused me regarding my past, and launched me ultimately on a journey to lose over 170 pounds (and counting). This article details the whole story, from inspiration, to action, to relapse, to action, to technology, to macros, and to the goal of finding something good about 2020: myself.
As I said, this is going to be a long article, however I’ll try to segment it up a bit so you can jump to the portions that you find most interesting. We’ll start with history, then we’ll move to what didn’t work for me (lessons learned) and then finally what I did over the past year: a combination of changes aided by technology and a pandemic (Note, I don’t suggest starting another pandemic if you want to replicate my results: Just carve out more time in your life!)
Also, a quick reminder: My doctorate is in experimental psychology, not nutrition, dietetics, physical education, or anything else that this post speaks to. This was my journey as an individual, not sponsored by any person or group, and solely my opinion. In other words, your mileage will vary.
Ye’s Question
On March 16, 2011, I was sitting in my office at Columbia Business School talking with a fellow postdoc, Ye Li. Ye and I were actually sharing one room at that time (For some reason, we moved around a lot in our 3 years working there!). Anyway, as we chatted about life and health, Ye asked me a question, which I’ll paraphrase as “Not to be mean or anything, but how much do you weigh? I’m curious.”. I told him that I didn’t mind talking about my weight, but I honestly didn’t know. That took him by surprise. How could I not know? Well… I hadn’t weighed myself or been weighed in over 10 years.
A Photo of me from February, 2011, holding my first commercial book, after I found it in a Barnes & Noble in Bellevue, Washington. I weighed approximately 415 pounds.
Growing up, I had always been a ‘big’ kid, both in height and weight. I was fairly active until my teen years, when I became a giant computer geek, both metaphorically and literally. I can recall that at some point in my early adolescence, the scales we had at home stopped working for me – they’d spin around past their end point and stop. So around age 11 or so, I simply stopped knowing how much I weighed. I also didn’t keep much in terms of documentation of the time, only starting this blog in 2004 when I was 21, and not keeping a regular journal (as I do now). I also don’t have any medical records from that time that include my weight. The only shred of information I have is a scan of my first drivers license, issued in 1999. To my recollection, I had lied and told the clerk that I was 250 pounds, but I vividly remember knowing that it was a low-ball lie. The memory of the lie is what would end up amusing me quite a bit in July, 2020, but more on that later.
So, when Ye asked me that question in March, 2011, I told him I had no idea how much I weighed. I agree this was probably a strange thing to hear from someone, especially someone overweight. Pop culture tells us that if you’re fat, you’re either completely fine with it (in a “Pass the snacks, please” sort of way), or you’re obsessed with your weight and always trying the latest fad diet to lose it. I was neither – I wasn’t particularly comfortable at my weight, but my weight hadn’t held me back from anything I had wanted to do. I could still go for walks if I wanted, I didn’t get tired out from daily life or even vacations that included physical activity, and I had no recurring health problems. So in my mind, I was fat, but it wasn’t really impacting my life.
When Ye asked about my weight, I told him that I guessed I was around 375, but it was really just a ballpark figure. I then asked him why he asked me. His reply was interesting: He told me that as we had been sharing an office for the last few months, he realized that I rarely snacked. Indeed, unlike many of my friends at Columbia, I didn’t keep a cache of snacks at my desk. I’d eat lunch each day, and drink coffee, and if someone brought cookies or muffins in, I’d have some, but I wouldn’t absentmindedly eat as I worked. He was surprised by this, because as he admitted to me later, he had always assumed that fat people stayed fat because they just kept eating a steady diet of calories every day. Finding out I didn’t snack puzzled him. This is interesting to me because it points out how those who are not overweight really don’t give too much thought to how people who are overweight got that way. And if you listen to pop culture, it’s pretty easy to fall into the “Fat people eat cake every day between every meal” myth.
Telling Ye about my eating habits, I told him that when I did eat, I tended to eat tremendous portions, but that I hadn’t been a real snacker since adolescence. As soon as I had projects to work on (College degrees, jobs), eating became more of a “set side aside to do” thing than a “boredom” thing. As I said, I was a giant computer geek, and it’s hard to program or hack when you’ve got fingers covered in orange dust (despite what stereotypes tell you).
I figured I was fat primarily for 3 reasons:
I didn’t eat well when I did eat – Buffet restaurants were great in their variety.
I ate a lot when I ate – Buffet restaurants were unfortunately great for this too.
Despite having a 2 hour door-to-door commute, I wasn’t overly active. I’d walk in short bursts from train station to train station, and building to building on campus.
I figured that this, plus the fact I wasn’t really into any sports or physical activities regularly, meant that I probably never entered a state of fat burn. And since I wasn’t gaining weight (as evidenced by the fact I rarely needed to buy new clothes), I figured all was fine. I wasn’t stopped from doing things I wanted to do, had no chronic health problems (that I knew of), and felt “good” most days. So why lose weight?
Curiosity Kills the Myth
The Downtown 1 Arriving at Marble Hill, March 8, 2012.
That evening, as I sat on the Uptown 1 Train, I thought back to Ye’s question. I realized that all of the excuses that I had been setting for not dealing with my weight were gradually going away. I think in the back of my mind, I had always wanted to lose weight, but figured it wasn’t the right time. I was working on a degree, or a project, and would get to it later. in 2011, I was getting ready to head out onto the academic job market, so the only major milestones left on my “to do” list were really to find a permanent position, and perhaps become a tenured faculty member somewhere. I had no reason not to start looking into losing weight.
So I bought a scale. A $36.95 “Eatsmart Precision Plus” scale (that you can still buy on Amazon, for $23.60 today). It’s capacity was 440 pounds, and I figured that would be plenty high. On March 22, 2011, I weighed myself. The number read 415.6. Or 40 pounds higher than my “worst case” high weight estimate in my mind.
It was at that point that I kinda, sorta, thought that maybe I should lose some weight. I also realized that I didn’t really have any clue how to do that. At that point, the original FitBit Fit tracker was the most “fitness-y” thing I owned (having purchased it in January, 2010), so I did some research on how to use it more effectively, diet ideas, and settled on a simple plan: Count calories. Seemed very simple: Figure out how much of a caloric deficit I needed to lose a pound a week, and start adjusting my intake to match. I downloaded MyFitnessPal, and started logging everything I ate. I got frustrated at the amount of time it would take to search for a fast food menu item, so I did what every good programmer does: I wrote an app with a local database of over 100 fast food restaurants that simply gave you the calorie count for any item on the menu. Over the next few years, that app would get over 100,000 downloads on the Google Play store, and made me almost $700 in ad revenue.
Fast Food Calorie Lookup, the app that I wrote so that I’d have easy fast access to calorie data without waiting on a data connection.
And I had early success. Starting daily weigh-ins on April 1, 2011, I was at 406.4 (ah, that initial drop!). By April 18, I had dropped down to 400 pounds. And on May 1, I was at 397. This weight loss thing was easy! I’d be at 375 in no time, and then I could just keep going down. That was what I thought, until I hit that dreaded weight loss mainstay: the plateau. That started hitting me around July. Between July 8 and August 28, I had dropped just 8.6 pounds. My lowest weight of this first ‘phase’ of weight loss was 365.6 pounds, on October 27, 2011. At that point I was pretty much done with this diet plan. I had been cutting calories, denying myself, and felt pretty damn good about losing 50 pounds. So I lightened up a bit. After all, I’d done a good job for over 6 months – much better than those who go to the gym exclusively from January 1 to January ?? each year, right?
You can probably predict what happened next, although you probably wouldn’t be right about the speed. I gained the weight back, as you would predict, but it took 7 years. Not exactly the rubber-band rebound us fat guys are supposed to make.
My Weight from 2011 to 2018. Colors indicate where I was living: New York, Louisiana, or Mississippi
Officially, I didn’t hit my 2011 weight again until January 7, 2018, when, after recovering from a great holiday, I weighed in at 417.4. I wasn’t too concerned. After all, I knew I could lose weight if I wanted to because I did in 2011. And as a life-long fat guy, I figured “What really was the point”? I still felt fine, I was doing everything I wanted to do in 2018. Why rock the boat?
Gotta Lose Weight
On May 27, 2018, I was lazily waking up at a friend’s house in suburban Chicago. Karey, myself, and another friend, had driven up there for Memorial Day weekend, and Karey & I were staying in a spare bedroom of our host on our air mattress. I received a phone call from a family member that morning telling me that another close family member was at the hospital. What turned out to be nothing (A fall with no serious repercussions to the human, although a stove was injured), got me really thinking about my own mortality. I realized that if something like that were to happen to me, getting me to the hospital would be an ordeal, given my massive size. Thinking about Karey seeing me on the floor, unable to even try to move me, I laid up against the air mattress and thought “I gotta lose weight”. I took a picture of what I had been staring at the entire time I as on the phone, to remember the moment, and put it in my journal.
My journal entry
So, as I said before, knowing that I could lose weight if I chose to, I went back to my old habit: Counting Calories. I also incorporated a new goal – a vacation a year away. We were planning to go to Walt Disney World in May 2019 with close friends and their family, and I thought “It would be great to be 350 when I go to Disney”. Realistically I thought I’d be happy to just get back down to 367. After all, it took me 7 years to put all the weight back on – I could easily buy back 7 years in 12 months, right?
Vacation with Karey’s Family in June 2018. I weighed approximately 405 pounds.
On June 1, 2018, I weighed in at 414. By the next day, I was at 409.4 (ah, always love that initial drop!). By July 1, I was at 406.4 (There was a family vacation that slightly derailed me in June!). By August 1 I was back below 400 (399.8). By December 1, I was down to 371.8, and on January 15, 2019, I was back to 367 – the weight I figured I’d be happy with. But by this point, I had started to adapt pretty well to my diet, and Disney was still a few months away. So I kept losing. On April 3, 2019, I was 349.6 pounds. I’d made my goal. Recall that all of this was just doing one thing: counting calories. I didn’t really change what I was eating, when I was eating, where I was eating, etc… All I changed was how much I was eating. When I’d hear people talk about exercise (ugh!), and counting macros (huh?), I told them that I was happy with what I was doing. And by and large I was. I went to Disney in May 2019 (If you’re curious, I gained 6.6 pounds on that vacation, it took me about a week to get back down to my pre-Disney weight), and then thought “Ya know what, maybe I should just be happy at 350”. So there I sat, literally and metaphorically. It’s worth noting that, while you can clearly see a difference in my body from the photo above in 2018 to the one below in 2019, I didn’t feel anything had changed. My internal body image was exactly the same. I felt physically exactly the same (Well, I felt hungrier, but that was about it). I knew I was losing weight, but only because the scale told me and sometimes other people who hadn’t seen me in awhile would say something. I thanked them, but secretly thought “It really isn’t any different”. I knew they wouldn’t lie to me, but I honestly didn’t see any difference myself.
Karey & I at Disney Animal Kingdom in May 2019. I weighed approximately 345 pounds.
The Long Plateau & The Loss of All Excuses
On June 1, 2019, I weighed 347.4 pounds. On January 1, 2020, I weighed 344.8. In that time, my average weight was 344.9 pounds. Unlike the last time I stopped dieting, I did keep doing one thing that I think helped – I weighed myself every morning and recorded it. If I saw the number start going up, I’d cut back for a week or so. On the way home from Christmas travels, I thought it would be good to get back to weight loss in 2020, after proving to myself not only could I lose if I wanted to, I could also keep the weight off for multiple months at a time. The plateau wasn’t great in terms of progress, but it did tell me that once I stopped ‘caring’, I wasn’t going to immediately rebound.
Yet despite resolve to make 2020 my year of weight loss, January and February didn’t see much difference for me. There was really no incentive – life was normal, including social events, restaurant meals, and more. On February 27, our Provost sent an email to all faculty with the subject “Instructional Sustainability in Uncertain Times”, and it was the first time Covid-19 impacted me in any way – my boss telling me “Hey, have a plan in case we have to go fully online”. I never thought that was even possible, and lamented having to put together a plan I didn’t think I’d ever use. Looking on my journal for that day, I noted that there were some really good parts of the day. Ah, ignorance is bliss.
Our last trip prior to the Pandemic, to visit our niece Ryan, and her family in Austin, Texas. I weighed 343 pounds.
On March 2nd, I noted that I felt like I overrate. Likely because we had left over food in the office from a friend’s wedding on February 29, which myself and other friends helped organize the food for (and I provided the music, given that I have a loud speaker!). March 4th was a Fried Chicken Wednesday (a tradition at our cafeteria, which is all you can eat), and that afternoon was filled with meetings. Life seemed really normal. March 6th was the first time I started to notice the pandemic – I noted in my journal that I couldn’t find hand sanitizer in travel size at Walmart, but that I found some at home. Karey and I then drove off to see her brother in Texas, for what would be the last time we were out of our county. By the time we got home on March 10, the pandemic was starting to become national news. By March 23, my classes were all online, and Karey & I were working from home. Life, it seemed, changed in an instant.
Over the next month, I finished the Spring semester up and tried to stay sane. I worked on the final proofs of my R book, waited to hear about my tenure & promotion process, and knit or crocheted a lot of random things. With venturing out only once a week or so, perhaps for groceries, I began really noticing what I was eating, and surprisingly started losing weight. When we went into the new normal on March 23, I was 336.8 pounds. By May 10, I was 327.6. I picked up a new scale in early April that could track body mass and fat percentage, and I had fun seeing the new metrics every morning and night (even though they all basically said “You’re really fat”). May 10 was also the day I decided “Why not go for a walk?”. So Karey & I took a half-hour walk.
The first walk
Walking seemed like a good thing. So I did it some more.
Walking the Earth with Technology
I walked every day between May 15 to May 26, and then from every day from May 28 until… today (and I intend to go tomorrow). Most days around 2-3 miles. Along the way I’ve learned a number of interesting paths around my apartment to take, fallen into some routines (Saturdays & Sundays typically see me do a 5 mile walk), and spent a lot of time listening to podcasts or talking to my mother. The walks also have provided some much needed reflection time in my day. For an hour or so each morning, I have something to do – a task to complete – before coming home, showering, and starting my day. It’s also been interesting to see the temperatures for my walks going from 90s to 20s – needless to say, these days I bundle up before I head out! And I also found, much to my surprise, that I can jog if I want – my record is around 32 minutes at a pace that’s slightly slower than my walk… but it’s a jog nonetheless. My 9th grade PE teacher, Mr. Boynar, would be amazed.
I walked 400 miles between July 1 – October 15 for the Highway 61 Walking Challenge, Cleveland, MS to New Orleans. I weighed 289 pounds when this photo was taken.
Along with walking the earth, I also radically changed my diet in response to one of the tech gadgets that I purchased, this crazy thing called a Lumen. Buying technology to help me track my progress became something of a side hobby in 2020 (It had been on and off for several years), So let’s take a trip into the Random Technology Purchases that I made this year, in an attempt to super charge my fitness journey. In 2020, I’ve purchased the following gadgets, which I’ll give you my mini-review on:
I should start by saying that the most influential technology that has helped me this year has probably been my ⌚️ Apple Watch, starting with a Series 4 that I bought in 2018, and then a Series 6 that I purchased in September, 2020. And along with it, the AirPods Pro that have been with me each walk. Having metrics has always been useful to me but when trying to exercise and also track what you eat, you really need something with tight integration and reliability. My Apple devices do this well (although I have no doubt that devices by Google, Samsung, or FitBit would do just as good a job – I don’t think Apple has any secret sauce on this – unless Fitness+ really changes the game). Without my Apple Watch I wouldn’t have a lot of the data that I am showing off in this post! However that being said, let’s talk about the other gadgets:
First of all, one cannot track progress without knowing where they are. My old scale did this well, but in the years since I bought it, “smart” scales with body fat analysis have become ridiculously cheap, so I thought “I should buy one of those”. I took my first reading on April 3, 2020 – and have made some substantial improvements since then, as you can see in the screenshot below! If you’re going to buy one thing on your journey, this is probably the one to have – something that keeps your data in a place you can reference, timestamps (so you can see differences in morning vs. night weights), and gives you comparison graphs.
Down 92 pounds, 17.6% body fat, and 11.6 BMI since April 3 (Data as of December 13, 2020)
The Oura Ring is a smart ring that tracks a variety of metrics, designed to help you determine your overall readiness each day. Famously it was the ring given to NBA players when they entered the “bubble” earlier this year to finish the 2019-20 season. I purchased it primarily in order to get sleep tracking data, as I wasn’t wearing my Apple Watch to bed with me each night until about Mid-October. I do find the readouts that the Oura Ring provides to be interesting, and have used them to correlate “readiness” with exercise, but honestly the ring hasn’t given me amazing insights into my weight loss. It’s definitely more of a “FYI” purchase than a necessity. However it does have the ability to potentially tip you off to the fact you’re getting sick, which I suppose might be useful if my body realizes it’s under attack before I do. It does this by tracking how long it takes for your body temperature to lower at night, and compares it to your baseline.
This one looked so promising – get the same information your body fat scale tells you in the morning anytime you like through a custom Apple Watch band. However in practice, it has been quite a bit different. First, it took at least 3 months to arrive – not a great sign – and then I found it to be very buggy with my Apple Watch 4. It’s been a bit more stable with the AW 6, however the readings tend to be wildly different depending on how I hold my wrists together when taking a reading – and I’m not sure what is the “proper” way since their diagrams have subtle differences. Every so often I take this out and play with it a bit more, but I’d recommend passing on it. You won’t get much bang for your buck, unlike the next item, which has probably been my single most important “new” gadget – the Lumen.
OK, this one is probably the craziest yet seemingly most effective thing I’ve bought this crazy year. And I bought it pre-pandemic, ironically. Basically it’s the answer to a question I’ve had for years – what exactly is my metabolism doing?, or more appropriately “WTF?!?”. You see, prior to lumen, I had noticed some strange things about my metabolism:
It loved carbs – burned them like nothing else – I could eat pizza for dinner and drop a pound that day, no problem. This whole “low carb” thing seemed really strange. People’s reactions to carbs seemed strange to me too – I never felt a “carb slump” like my friends did after a high carb meal. I just felt energized.
My metabolism didn’t react to protein the way that it was supposed to – I’d eat a steak and gain weight, despite the low calories and everything “good” I was hearing about high protein / higher fat diets.
Exercise didn’t seem to matter at all – in fact, at one point in Shreveport I had worked out 5 days a week for 5 weeks and lost absolutely nothing. So apparently my metabolism DGAF about my physical activity.
So anything that could help figure me out was going to be helpful. Lumen provided it by telling me if I was burning carbs or fat. A very simple thing – take a series of 2-3 breaths through something that looked like a giant kazoo, or the world’s most incredibly lame vape pen, and get a score between 1 – 5. 1 means my body is burning mostly fat, 5 means my body is burning mostly carbs. The simple goal: Take a reading every morning, and follow the nutrition plan that Lumen gives me. The goal: Metabolic flexibility – train my metabolism to switch back and forth between fat and carbs more easily. I was extremely skeptical about the Lumen when I started, but thought “Eh, it’s worth a shot”. I’m glad I took that shot. One of the reasons I felt comfortable with Lumen was the fact that they specifically warned against seeing their device as a weight loss tool – it could help you lose weight, but that wasn’t its goal – its goal was metabolic flexibility. As someone whose metabolism didn’t seem to exist, let alone could be flexible, this was very attractive.
So let me walk you through my Lumen Journey thus far. When I received my first Lumen unit, I did calibration day – a day where you essentially eat a ton of carbs. They’ve since done away with calibration days, but at the time this was their way of figuring out what your body does naturally. I ate my carbs, woke up the next morning, and blew a “3” – halfway point. That seemed a bit strange to me. Later in the day I blew a “4”, and by bedtime, I was at a “5”. This was on a day when my carb servings, by Lumen’s plan, were 45 grams of net carbs – low carb to be sure. Friday of that week, Day 3 with the Lumen, I woke up and blew a “5”, which aside from an hour or so after my walk, I stayed at a “5” until bedtime, when it dropped to a “4”. Lumen gave me no carbs that day. With low carb servings, by Monday morning, day 6 of Lumen use, I blew a “1”. First lesson learned: My body did not like switching away from carbs. I had a lot stored, and my body was going to use them all. It was at that point I realized I’d probably never actually “regularly” burned fat in my life. I probably burned it only during intense physical activity or extreme food deprivation.
So everything was going well with Lumen until Monday night when I had a hard time getting the unit to take a measurement. I eventually did, but thought “Hmm… I guess I just need more practice doing these long breaths”. On Tuesday morning I woke up, blew a “2”, and then went for my walk. When I got back I was surprised to see a message from Lumen technical support in my email inbox. Basically they’d noticed that my Monday night reading was really difficult (lots of stops/starts) and found a defect in my Lumen. Good news: They were going to send me a new one for free. Bad news: They told me to stop using the old one as the data might not be accurate. So after waiting 3 months for my Lumen to ship (I had ordered it in February), I now had to wait for another. But it was very impressive how quick their customer service was to reach out and tell me “Hey, we see there’s a problem”. Since receiving my new Lumen, 9 days after that email (Super fast shipping from Israel!), I’ve used it every day in the morning, and followed the diet plan it gives me. Fairly quickly you see the logic behind the plan, which in my case is designed to help me lose weight: Spend 2-3 days on low carb, then a day at medium carb, then a “Boost” day – a day where you eat a lot of carbs. Over time you train your metabolism to be more responsive. After 4 weeks you get a “Lumen” flex score, which in my case started at a “7” out of 21 – the lowest level of “medium” flexibility. After using the Lumen for 6 months, I’ve risen to an 18, which I’m told (thanks to a weekly report) is at the 90th percentile of Lumen Users. and most importantly, my metabolism makes sense to me. Eventually I’ll transition my Lumen into the “Metabolic Health” mode, where it will keep my metabolism flexible, but give me more calories to work with every day.
My Lumen Data from the last few weeks. My Flex Score, an 18.12 is in the 90th Percentile. The circles show daily readings (The days cut in half are boost days, showing my morning reading + my reading after a high carb meal, indicating I’ve shifted into carb burning)
I cannot recommend the Lumen enough – it’s given me so much information on how my metabolism works, and it’s helped me feel more in control of what I’m doing. Plus it was probably the only way I would have ever thought to track macronutrients. Lumen + Daily Walks tookme from losing 1.2 pounds per week to losing 2.5 pounds per week (with a few months in there of 2.5-3 pounds per week).
Counting Calories alone, without Walks or Lumen
Walks + Lumen, counting Macro Nutrients, my best month for weight loss.
Walks + Lumen – a typical month for me now.
So, in sum – Lumen is either a particularly useful placebo effect (if you’re a skeptic or cynic), or an awesome tool that should be in your arsenal. I’ve been pretty happy with it.
The Apollo Neuroscience Band is a pretty interesting idea – wear a wristband or ankle band that helps you either rev up or cool down based upon stimulating your parasympathetic nervous system. I spent over a month using it and wearing it, and did notice some changes to my Oura Ring readiness scale – I had a statistically significant increase in readiness on the mornings after I’d used the Apollo on the “going to sleep” setting. I’m comparing data in an A-B-A single-case experiment right now, and so I’ve stopped wearing it for a few weeks to see what happens. At $349 it’s a bit steep for the benefits it gives, but it is an interesting product that I plan to keep using and analyzing it’s possible effects on me!
The most recent addition to my arsenal of tech is the Bello Body Fat Scanner. Honestly I’m not quite sure how it fits in at this point since I know I have a lot of subcutaneous and visceral fat on my stomach. I do think it will get more useful when I eventually switch away from just weight loss to more strength training or toning of my body. Right now it’s a neat toy that I was able to get for $199 on Black Friday, but I really can’t justify anyone buying it at this point!
So now that you’ve heard about the technology, the walks, and the history, let me wrap up this long post by simply talking about the present (What I do each day now) and my plans for the future.
My Daily Routine
Prior to this year, my daily routine was pretty minimal – wake up, get dressed, go to work, come home, go to sleep. So what does my daily routine look like now? Here’s a brief rundown:
5:50-7:30 AM: Wake up, based upon whatever time I need to be either on my computer for a meeting or out the door if going to work. Start my daily routine (Which takes about 60-100 minutes):
Weigh myself on the Arboleaf Scale
I use the Happy Scale app to see my weight (automatically read through Apple Healthkit, where the Arboleaf Scale wrote it), and see projections for the future.
Do a variety of random tasks while I wait for the recommended 20 minutes after wake-up to do my Lumen measurement:
Practice my Spanish on DuoLingo
Add today’s New York Times cover to my Day One Journal just to have it for future reference on “What was going on in the world that day”.
Read email, social media, news feeds.
Post my Bad Joke if it’s Saturday.
Sync my Oura Ring
I use the awesome “Streaks” app in order to check off my daily tasks.
Take my Lumen morning reading.
Go out for my walk. Right now I’ve been doing this mostly “Rain, Shine, Cold, or Wind”, although I’m hoping to perhaps add in workouts from Apple Fitness+ in the next few months, so I can exercise while staying warm and dry!
Come home, brush my teeth, shower, and get ready for the day.
Noon: Eat lunch. If it was a boost day, I may have had breakfast of some sort, but most of the time, lunch is the first solid food of the day. Coffee, tea, or a great protein Hot Chocolate mix – mix that with mild coffee and you’ve got a hot chocolate.
5 PM: Eat Dinner. HelloFresh has made this super easy – full nutritional information!
Make an entry in Day One about my day. Maybe only 1-2 sentences, but at least something I can look back on in the future.
Take an evening Lumen measurement, mostly FMI (for my information).
Use the Bello body fat analyzer
Take an evening measurement on the Arboleaf Scale.
Use the Apollo Neuroscience band to relax.
Overall my day stays very nicely routine, even during a pandemic. I am curious how it will adapt whenever I can start traveling again! Most of the changes are probably sustainable when I travel, although I will have to modify the exercise to something do-able in a hotel room or fitness center.
The Future
So what’s next? Well, obviously I don’t want to ever get up to 417 pounds again. I’m pretty optimistic about not getting there though, because of the following changes that have happened in the last 11 years:
My brain has (mostly) caught up with my stomach – in that after eating a reasonable size meal, I feel full within 20 minutes. Previously this had taken 50-75 minutes. This is probably the single biggest misconception that I read all of the time online in the “advice for fat people written by skinny people” columns: “Just wait 20 minutes, you’ll feel full” – No, if you’ve always eaten large quantities of food, your body might not send the “full” signal for way more than 20 minutes. In my case, even as recently as August, I timed it at about 50 minutes. Even now when I have a reasonably sized meal (my lunch recently was 2 slices of pizza), I have to remind myself that I will feel full in just a little bit.
I’ve changed the way I plan food, thus eating food has become more of a structured necessity. I was never a big snacker, but now I can count on one hand how many days of the month I eat anything after dinner. Probably around once a week I’ll eat something between lunch and dinner. Most days I try to have my meals planned out well in advance, that way I feel much more like I’ve ‘earned’ whatever I’m enjoying, and not that I’m being irresponsible when I have a high calorie meal.
I don’t feel like I have an industrial-sized case of Imposter Syndrome when I work out. I fondly recall years ago watching a stand-up comedian say that thin people shouldn’t be at the gym – they should go home – they won – it should only be fat people at the gym! Yet a fat guy working out is, for some reason, horribly stigmatized. And when you’re the fat guy, you feel it. Once you lose some weight, though, you start to feel like you belong, whether it be at the gym or out walking or jogging with others.
Doors that were once sealed shut now seem much more likely to open for me. Nothing major, just little things like being able to buy clothing at a store (Most of the retailers around me didn’t carry my size before), eat dessert without feeling the eyes of the people around me burning into my skull, and the ability to do physical activities with friends (when I can see them again) that before might have concerned them (e.g., “Let’s walk a 10k” etc…).
So in sum, it’s been a long road. My goal now, as I head into 2021, is to drop a little bit more weight until I hit a BMI classification of “overweight” (as opposed to “Obese”), and then once I’m comfortably in that range, perhaps start weight training, aerobics, or exercise to tone the body I have. Regardless of where I go from here, I have learned a ton of lessons over the past year. Most importantly: It isn’t that I can’t lose weight, it’s simply that I didn’t want to lose weight before bad enough to learn how to lose it. If I want to lose it, I can lose it.
Stay strong my friends, and feel free to put any comments you have below!
Jon Westfall, December 15, 2020 Weight: 243.4, 171.8 pounds down.
Looking for the next chapter of the story? Click Here… to see how I survived the holidays!
On October 1, 2019, two new books of mine will be released! One of them is a short story collection. The star is a little ghost named Franklin, who just doesn’t get the whole haunting thing. Interested to read the first 2 parts (of 4) of Franklin’s story, and to see the Table of Contents for the book? Then click on the Download link below!
As promised, when my Facebook Author page reached 200, I wrote a story based upon poll results. Here’s the Evil Item of Clothing story…
“He was shot in both eyes?”, Detective Horne said, incredulously.
“Yes, apparently so, although the killer was a bit off with the left eye – it was slightly off center. Right appears dead on.”, Crime Scene Investigator Carr noted. They found themselves at the scene of a murder – the victim, 25 year old Campbell Smith.
Campbell was known to the police force, as he frequently pressed his luck with the women in town. Perhaps he’d even gone too far a few times, to hear some of the ladies tell it. But it was 1947, decades from the MeToo movement of 70 years in the future. Women knew to stay clear of Campbell, and perhaps he’d crossed the wrong woman this time. Or perhaps it had been a fight over some other illicit thing. The dark alley they stood in was home to many potential crimes, of passion, of power, or of vice. And while the case stayed open for the requisite amount of time, no leads ever panned out, and the death of Campbell Smith was never solved. Carr and Horne, though, kept it somewhat alive over the following decades.
It was 2019, and Whitney Smith had developed a new talent over the past few weeks, one that amused her new husband of just under a month. It seemed that she’d found that the cushions on their couch were just rough enough to pull off a minor miracle.
Whitney and Rodney had moved into the old townhome, which had sat abandoned for a number of years. The neighborhood was coming back – and they were among the first to join the party. An old coal town that had died out amidst the energy crisis of the 1970s, it was now the home to several new families and businesses. All thanks to a tech giant that had opened a new corporate office just a few miles away. Both Whitney and Rodney worked for that company, transfers in from the West Coast, excited to start married life in a new place.
“Are you doing it again?”, Rodney asked, as they sat watching TV. He couldn’t help but notice his wife shifting oddly against her seatback.
“Almost… almost… GOT IT”, she replied. Feeling a sense of freedom, she slipped her arms deftly into her shirt one at a time. She then reached up under her outer garment and emerged with the offending item – her bra. Tossing it across the room, it landed in a pile of its siblings. Rodney just shook his head.
“How many do I have over there?”, she idly asked. He did a quick count.
“Three.”
“Must be Wednesday”, she said with a laugh. Indeed, it was.
Later that week, due to the fact that newlyweds are not flush with money and, thus, bras were not expendable, Whitney walked over to the corner of the room that had become her upper torso undergarment repository. Picking up the pile, and realizing she couldn’t remember the last time she washed a few of these items, she pushed them down into the laundry chute. Older homes had such conveniences, although this was the first time they had decided to make use of it. Coming down to the basement, Whitney opened the chute, to find a surprise.
40 years earlier, Investigator Carr found Detective Horne as the latter pulled a shot glass out from his desk drawer, and a bottle of scotch. It had been 30 years since Campbell Smith’s murder, yet the two cops recalled it as one of the oddest of their career thanks to the twin bullet holes.
“You here to tell me I don’t need this?”, Horne said to Carr.
“On the contrary – given what I’ve been reading about over the past few months, we might both want to take a drink”, Carr replied.
“What ya got?”, Horne said, pouring two shots and placing one across the desk.
“It’s on the Smith case”, Carr began, “I guess I’ve never been able to give it up. Found this crazy idea after reading some newspaper ads.”
“A shot in the dark… well, two shots… is how we got into this mess. Maybe it’ll help us get out. As long as we have two shots of our own.”, Horne said, finishing the sentence and the shot.
“OK, stick with me. This is a bit weird.”
“Go for it”
“OK. So, do you know who Mary Phelps Jacob is?”
“Uh, no”
“Yeah, not many do. Popular belief would have it that she invented the lady’s brassiere in 1914. However, I’ve uncovered something a bit more… sinister?”, Carr said, with confusion.
“You aren’t sure of your own story?”, Horne asked.
“It’s just too weird. I found it in an old historical text, and I’m still digesting it.”
“Well get it out – especially if it will help us stop talking about this case after this long.”
“OK… OK… so… apparently the brassiere was actually invented by the Devil.”
Horne looked at Carr with incredulity.
“The Devil?”
“Yep”
“The guy with the horns, tail, and penchant for punishment?”
“Yeah”
“OK… and you read this?”
“I have a friend who is studying ancient religious texts. He told me about a few books that the Council of Nicene ruled as too scandalous to include in the Bible. One is the Book of Basanizo, which translates to torment in Greek. It tells of the creation of restrictive clothing, a punishment straight from Old Scratch himself.”
“You know this sounds crazy”, Horne said, pouring another shot.
“Yeah… but it gets worse… Ever hear of Lilith?”, Carr replied.
“Uh… no”, Horne said.
“Well, Lilith is a sexually wanton demon of the night. Apparently she wasn’t too happy with Satan’s invention, and decided to create her own version to help even up the playing field.”
“Wait… so a demon developed lingerie to compete with the Devil himself?!? How much grass have you been smoking, Carr?”, Horne demanded to know.
“I swear – it’s in the book”.
“I think you and I both need to retire – this job has cracked us”.
Dumping the pile of bras on the washer, Whitney counted six. Thinking that this was the right number, she soon realized that it was Saturday, and she’d been able to go without a bra thus far. Eyeing the oddball garment, she realized it was much older. A style popularized in the 1940s. Having a penchant for vintage clothing, she began to wonder if it might be useful the next time she cosplayed. As it wasn’t in too bad of shape, Whitney wasn’t weirded out about used undergarments, and it looked like it was a sister size to hers, she washed it and thought nothing more about it. A lucky find in the chute.
Until a year later, when cosplaying as a 1950s housewife, that she bent backward to stretch her back and heard gunshots. Peering forward, two slight scorch marks had formed on the front of her blouse. And she was quickly asked to leave the convention center before something more than a cardboard cutout of Han Solo was damaged. Lilith’s invention, the bullet bra, had struck again.
One of the great things about being a professor is that we’re essentially trained to be project managers – people who are specialists in a given topic area but also trained through graduate school to be self-sufficient. It surprises many to learn that when I’m assigned a course to teach, I receive very few ‘mandated’ guidelines. Yes, periodically we have required sections in our syllabi on university policies, or perhaps my curriculum committee (of which I’m a member) requires certain courses to use the same book or have a common assignment. But otherwise, no one tells me what content I must teach, what assignments I must give, or how to evaluate my student’s work. The same is true in the realm of scholarship and service – I am expected to select my own projects, manage them to completion, and provide service to my institution and discipline. When it comes to my formal workday, I’m expected to be in the classroom to teach when assigned, to be available for 10 office hours a week, and to be available for meetings as needed. Beyond that, there is no 8-5 expectation on professors – we’re asked to fit our lives around specific class times, not a traditional workday (Which is also why, at my institution, we don’t get personal leave).
However this level of freedom can be challenging for some. Recently one of my colleagues posted on Twitter a request:
How do you manage to be productive when you do work at home? I usually try very hard to not take work home with me, but when I do I find the quality of work I do is sub par.
As someone who has worked from home a lot in my past (I lived 50 minutes away from my undergrad institution, 120 minutes away from my graduate institution, and a 2 hour commute away from my postdoc), I’ve picked up a few tips I’m happy to share.
1. Have The Essentials At Home
My Home Office Setup, an Apple 27” Cinema Display connected to a 2015 MacBook Pro, with full size keyboard, external trackpad. Wireless headphones and desk fan off to the right.
It is extremely important to have everything you need in your home workspace. In 2010 I bought a 27” Apple Cinema Display for work, and while pricey ($999) I fell in love with it at work. So when I had enough money, I bought a second one for my home office. There is absolutely no way I’d be able to do as much work at home if I didn’t have a large monitor on par with what I have at my office. The portability of a laptop, in my case a 2015 MacBook Pro, is key for a mobile professional – but you need to have a good place to park it at home where you can enjoy larger full-sized screens and peripherals. Also included in the setup is a full keyboard with number pad (essential for entering data), and an external trackpad so I don’t have to reach forward to touch the one on my Mac. Finally I have a set of wireless headphones (Beats Solo 3’s) that I can use to block out the world if need be.
However physical setup is only one part of the essentials – you also need to be able work on anything you need, anywhere you are. To do this, I leverage cloud storage extensively (OneDrive is my preferred storage provider these days, I purchase a home version of Office 365, which provides MS Office + 1 TB of space), as well as iCloud storage. I also install TeamViewer (Free for personal use) on my computer on campus so that I can securely connect up to it remotely in case I do happen to leave a file there. I also never use USB drives if I can avoid them – it’s horrible to have just 1 version of a file, and even worse if you lose the USB drive that the file is stored on, or if the USB drive fails!
2. Have a working To-Do Setup, With Start Dates
One thing I realized years ago was that I needed a To-Do list, and more importantly, I needed one that didn’t show me things I couldn’t do just yet. Having dozens of tasks ahead can be daunting, but it’s even worse when you see things that there is no way you can complete – perhaps you’re waiting on someone else, or they’ve told you “We’ll make a decision on that 3 months from now”. Leave the to-do on the list, and you feel like you’re not accomplishing anything. Take it off, and you never remember to put it back.
So years ago I started setting “start” dates on all of my tasks, so that I wouldn’t see them on my list until the first day I could do them. This helps me focus much more on what I need to do, versus what I will do down the line. It also means that I don’t fear putting a task on my list for the far future. I’ve actually had people remark to me “Wow, I can’t believe you remembered that” – it wasn’t memory, it was the item I put on my to-do list a year ago!
3. Be Mobile
I didn’t have an office for the first half of my professional life. I lived completely out of a bag, setting up shop at coffee shops, fast food restaurants, libraries, and in my car. As a former Windows Mobile MVP, I learned a number of tricks for staying productive while away from a dedicated workspace. They include…
Having a dedicated set of mobile tools – power cables, chargers, mobile mouse, anything I could possibly need. I don’t take all of them everywhere everyday, but I do keep them in a special case at home, so I can easily pull out what I need for that day. Also makes traveling a breeze – everything is in one place, and I don’t have to tear apart my home every time I pack – my bedside charger stays where it is, for example.
Exploring all possible productivity applications to see if they’re worthwhile. Some are, some aren’t. For example, recently I’ve been using Siri Shortcuts on my iPhone and iPad to script my nightly journal entry, to quickly open up files that I use frequently (e.g., open this specific spreadsheet), and more. Lately the mobile Microsoft Office suite has really stepped up it’s game – I can pull up pretty much anything on my phone or iPad that I can bring up on my computer.
Upgrade your tools as needed and use them to your advantage. See this as an investment in yourself and your productivity. While it’s tempting to tell people “Look, I just use my phone to make phone calls”, you’re basically saying to them “Look, I use this thing for just a small fraction of what it can do.”
4. Stop saying “I don’t have time”
I’ve heard people say “I don’t have time to learn X” or “I don’t have time to work on Y”. To them, I say “You can’t afford NOT to learn X” or “work on Y”. XKCD comics has a good example of what I mean here – this one. Think of learning new skills as an investment – one that crosses over from work to personal life, office to home productivity.
5. Have a Clear Goal
Finally, when I’m working remotely, I realize I need a clear goal of what I need to do. When working at my office, this happens somewhat naturally – my mind natively thinks of things that I do at work. However when I’m out of my office, I need to remind myself (with the help of my to-do list) what needs to get done, when it needs to get done, and what today’s task builds on for the future. It helps me avoid distraction, because I know what needs to get done. I’m not wandering aimlessly at home thinking “Wouldn’t it be more fulfilling to watch TV right now” – I instead have the thought “It’s going to be great to get this done before I go to my office tomorrow morning”.
Working from home (or anywhere other than your office) is a freeing experience, and something that I definitely think is useful for an academic – part of our jobs is to be in tune with the world around us, lest we become antiquated. However it can be challenging, and ultimately everyone finds their own solution. Just keep plugging away at the problems you find in your own system until you have it up and running smoothly!
I teach psychology for a living, and each and every time I talk about the Big 5 personality traits, I reflect a bit on my own mental makeup. If you’re curious, it looks something like this
What stands out?
Aside from the fact that I don’t tend to favor the middle in any factor, the one there that might seem amazing is Emotional Stability – the 99th percentile. What is Emotional Stability you ask? Well, it’s the opposite end of the the spectrum commonly known as Neuroticism. You can also think of it as Emotional Reactivity. And as you can see from the above… I basically don’t react.
Now not reacting has benefits. I rarely feel depressed or anxious (by rarely, I mean perhaps 2-3 times per year for a period of about 1-2 hours), I don’t “freak out” over many things, and I tend not to panic. In fact, I am the epitome of the phrase If you see me running, try to keep up.
However when you have a very neutral to positive mood the majority of the time, it also means you don’t react to positive events the same way as most people. Tons of good things have happened to me in my life – far too many to name. And for the most emotionally charged, good or bad, I always feel that I don’t emote enough compared to most. And while it’s somewhat normal for some to be stoic at funerals (as opposed to throwing oneself on the coffin), I’ve had a few instances on the opposite end of the spectrum where I clearly did not communicate to others the level of positivity that I felt. Here’s an example: October 16 this year.
What was on my desk on October 16 this year.
Bosses Day
At work I have the privilege of leading a small team of dedicated professionals, and this year on the somewhat-dubious holiday of Bosses Day, they showered me with gifts. Playful certificates, donuts, a gift certificate, and a personalized mug that read “World’s Best Boss” on one side, and something fairly transgressive (a.k.a. profane) on the side that faces me if I were to drink from it.
Now when I saw this on my desk, my mood elevated quite a bit. The day wasn’t bad by any stretch, but after seeing their hard work, my little grinch-y heart grew three sizes, to steal a seasonal phrase. And while internally my mind kept thinking “That’s so nice of them, I’m touched they thought of me, that they came up with original ideas, and that they understood exactly what I would love to have the most on Bosses’ day”, the best I could do was go out to them and thank them repeatedly.
Later, I heard through the grapevine, that my reaction, the reaction of someone with an emotional stability of the 99th percentile, was a bit confusing. With some wondering if I truly liked the presents or if I was just being nice. This is one of the most misunderstood thing about us emotional stable types – our emotions don’t get “big” enough by most standards.
Over the next year, I’m looking forward to a ton of events that are going to be positively charged – vacations with friends and family, a family wedding, and more. However at each one, I’ll likely feel just a little bit of self-consciousness about my reaction. So if you see me (or other non-neurotics), and we say we’re happy, please just believe us. And if you’re one of those people who is on the other end of the spectrum, who wrestle with anxiety, mood swings, and more, it might be some solace to realize that you also have the ability to experience more passionate and “loud” emotions.
Oh, and before I finish this “mind rant” of sorts, I should probably point out that I wouldn’t change my personality – I’m quite happy with who I am, while also maintaining a growth mindset. So perhaps this year I’ll invest some time in learning to act excited. If that sounds crazy, it’s actually a method of therapy for those on the Autism spectrum. While I don’t have a problem recognizing a suitable reaction, I do have a bit of work to do to regularly produce it!
… What is in this mysterious manila envelope taped to my office wall. Well, here’s the story. Friday, September 2, 2016 was the last day of a crazy week. My first year as FYS Coordinator, I had a ton of things going on at the beginning of that school year. And this was about 2 weeks in, when I sat at a point of utter exhaustion. After speaking about this exhaustion for quite a few days in advance, I walked into my office to the following scene.
So now you know… inside that envelope is the contents to remedy another Friday emergency!
