How To Make The Holidays Last. In A Bad Way.

I work in the financial services industry. I give credit.

That might surprise you if you're a long time reader of this blog--you know how staunchly opposed to debt I am.

I sometimes dream of getting out of my current job and finding one more in line with my personal beliefs. A job where I don't make anyone more unhealhty, and I don't add to anybody's debt.

Well, I was standing in the customer service area of a major retail chain today. Five days before Christmas, and the customer service station was bustling. The crowds didn't surprise me. I normally avoid stores around the holidays precisely so I can avoid that kind of scene.

What did surprise me was this: The masses of people weren't exchanging gifts or returning broken merchandise. They were all, almost to a person, there to apply for credit.

I listened as all around me their new credit limits were announced. The kid who couldn't have been more than 20, but who had a two year old in his cart got $2,000. The middle aged Hispanic couple got $2,300.

All of the normal tricks of the credit card companies were being employed. The young man was careful to make sure he'd been approved for the 0% APR--it was only afterwards they told him it would only apply to some of his purchases. The middle-aged man wanted to cancel the free trials of magazines that would automatically renew onto his card after a few weeks, but the salesgirl mostly ignored his broken English, and his wife really wanted to get home.

And in my mind's eye I could almost see all of them being lured into a pit by the salespeople, clutching the products their credit would purchase, telling themselves they needed them, that they were necessary, that the things would make life easier or happier or calmer or somehow just better, and with a better life it would be so much easier to climb out of the pit.

Well, it's not true. Climbing out of the pit is never easy. Every farmer and fruit grower knows there's not a thing in this world that is created from nothing--you've got to put labor in for whatever you get. Blood, sweat, and tears.

And the price of having it now is even more blood sweat and tears than if you'd just worked for it first.

Many retail chains are now at a point where they operate their store fronts at a minimum of profit, or even at a loss, because the value they get from all the financing is so great. Who needs to make a profit now when there's 10, 15, or even 20% to be made off that purchase for possibly years to come?

Other chains realize they no longer have to charge what people can afford. They can charge what people are willing to charge. So they're not having to keep prices down to what people can pay for something, since they can always swipe their cards.

So while I might wish to become not just debt-free, but to separate even my livelihood from being connected with that gnawing monster, I know I'm cutting myself off from huge swaths of occupations at one swipe.

In fact, what I really want to do most is teach and train--not a very lucrative proposition in a society that's been taught to value having more than knowing.

So here's to you having a holiday where the memories last longer than the bills, retail stores getting back into the business of selling stuff, and me finding a job that doesn't leech off people.

Ho ho ho.

Biggest Loser Season Finale

So, the twins won it.

That was pretty exciting.

You could tell Julie really, really wanted it, and she did pretty well. But the fact is, it's just hard for women to lose more weight than men. Men are inherently more capable of losing weight simply because their bodies carry more muscle and aren't as naturally inclined to store fat. When a woman does win the Biggest Loser, it will be a huge deal. And she will probably be coached by Jillian.

Jillian did great this season, with all four finalists being from her team, and both winners being from her team. According to the stats on NBC.com, her team also lost the most weight total, by over 100 pounds. Her team lost 822 pounds, while Bob's blue team lost 711 pounds and Kim's red team lost 666 pounds (No, I won't make a "mark of the beast" joke about Kim, though I'm tempted).

I was really expecting that either Brian or Neil to win it for the folks who went home--they both looked great.

But no, the twins sailed through.

Now we've got the new season coming up, with the couples in lots of different colors. Not sure how that season is going to play out. I originally thought they were doing "couples" as a way of evening out that guy/girl divide that's always been a big deal in the finale, but looking at the teams for this season, they've got guy/guy teams and girl/girl teams, so that gives those guy/guy teams a huge advantage.

We'll see how it comes out.

Eating At Restaurants

There's an interesting article over at MSN about secrets the restaurants don't want you to know.

With it being the holiday season, I've been eating out for work. A lot. The highlights were Duane's Steakhouse at the Mission Inn in Riverside, and Ten Asian Bistro in Newport Beach.

The damages, weight-wise, haven't been horrible--I weigh exactly what I weighed when I started doing the tale of the tape thing again.

Of course, I try to avoid some of the biggest restaurant calorie bombs:

Soda I never drink anything but water. I've gone on before about the bad effects of soda. To sum up, basically it's pure sugar, meaning pure fast-absorbed calories. Even diet soda has problems, my favorite being that the carbonation acts like an anti-fiber, making your body absorb calories and things faster than it would without it.

Fried Stuff Yeah, throwing stuff in the deep fryer is easy for restaurants, and there's a reason they call it golden brown and delicious. But it's oil on top of whatever simple carb they use in the breading--it's calories on top of calories. Plus, recent studies have shown that the Maillard reaction--the chemical process that browns fried foods--may interfere with your body's ability to absorb protein. So you may not be getting all the nutrients from the shrimp or calamari under there, either.

The Free Stuff They Put On The Table Whether it's bread or chips, that complimentary stuff they put out there does have calories. If you choose to much, be mindful and consider it part of the meal--if you do go in for the bread, than maybe opt for vegetables instead of the potato with your entree.

Of course, since I was actually trying to lose weight, still being at the weight I was isn't really all that much of accomplishment. However, it does give me hope that once I do get my weight back down, there will be plenty of delicious options that can help me stay that way.

(At least, that's how I'm trying to spin it . . .)

The Second To Last Biggest Loser

Well, feelings were mixed at our house after the second-to-last Biggest Loser last night.

My wife and I are both fans of Bob and Jillian, but like them in opposite order. She likes Bob more than Jillian, and I like Jillian more than Bob.

So you can guess how our feelings went after the finale last night (Spoilers ahead, o ye Tivo users!).

I was thrilled to see Jillian win the whole thing. I think the girl came back this season with something to prove, and I was excited to see her prove it.

I think only half of that was how much I liked Jillian. The other half was how much I disliked Kim.

Kim's problem is obvious: Kim never stops thinking about Kim. During every training session, during every interview, during every moment on the show, all Kim can talk about is Kim. How Kim feels. How things are affecting Kim. How people going home make her feel.

In this way, she's sort of the anti-Bob. Bob is all about trying to get inside the mind of the person he's working with, seeing the world from their point of view, and then channeling whatever energy they have inside of them.

Kim's the opposite. She thinks about the effort she's putting in, and when things get tough, she tries to make sure everybody else understands how she feels.

So it was nothing against the red team when I delighted in seeing them picked off one by one. Kim was practicing a coaching style I don't believe in, and I was glad to see it fail.

Bob didn't deserve to lose--I think that if it were work we were talking about, I'd rather have Bob as my boss than Jillian.

But this is exercise, and I think Jillian has the style of coaching that I would thrive under. And coming back after being gone, picking up the unchosen, underdog players--all of that just stacked up to have me rooting for her above anybody else.

I've also been a fan of her radio show--yes, I even called it once, if you can find me in the show archives--and agree with nearly every philosophy I've heard her express in the show, aside from her love for Caffeine.

So having an all-black team finale--that's just great news. And it looks like her new DVDs on Amazon are going to be called the "Black Pack," in honor of her victory on the show. Apparently, doing some research, they don't have anything to do with the show, but are a 3 pack of her two "For Beginners" DVDs and the Cardio Kickbox DVD that wasn't in either of the "Frontside" or "Backside" packs from her Biggest Winner! series.

So congrats to the Black Team, and I look forward to the finale next week. I'll post my thoughts on it then.

Get Off Your Duff And Lose Weight

Get off your duff and do what, you may ask?

Whatever. If you got up, you already did the part that a recent University of Missouri study says matters.

The study, which was reported by ABC news said that standing up may be more important to fat loss than exercise.

I'm always skeptical about studies like this--when my brother first told me about this article, I was thinking that what they were actually observing wasn't the results of standing, but the results of people getting up and moving. In other words, they were seeing the results of getting additional exercise.

Instead, this study was way more complicated.

They weren't just tracking results. They actually injected fat laced with radioactive tracers into people and animals, and then watched what happened to it. And what happened to it is that when people sat down, this fat didn't make it to the muscles. It just found places to gather.

Same thing when they'd monitor fat-burning enzymes. When people sat down, these went down to a mere 10% of normal. Can you imagine if your car engine suddenly became 90% less efficient?

So what does this mean for you?

It means that all that stuff you used to think wasn't really helping you lose weight, because it wasn't burning that many calories--things like grocery shopping or wandering around the mall or taking leisurely walks at the park--all those things really were helping, since they were keeping the levels of those fat-burning enzymes up, and helping fat circulate into the muscles to be burned as energy.

Personally, think that's great news. Here's to a future of a slow move away from sedentary lifestyles, and into leisurely-paced strolling lifestyles.

Monday - Tale Of The Tape

As long time readers of this blog know (and, yes, there are some of those!), Monday used to be "Tale of the Tape" day. Basically, it was weigh-in day. The day when I would measure myself and weigh myself and then humiliate myself by posting it all on the blog.

There's a number (Ha!) of reasons for this, the main ones being accountability and responsibility. If everyone's going to see the number, I've got to bring it down to establish credibility (because otherwise, I'm left trying to dazzle people with my ability to use words that end in -ility).

The other thing to notice is that I didn't wait until the first of the year. This blog started on the first of a year, and it would fit the spirit and name of the blog to have waited another month and started it then.

But I can't do that. As you can see, I let myself go, dangerously. Just a few months ago, I was in the 230s for weight, and now I'm back above 250. In just a couple of months. You think you're doing well, and then wham. The weight can just pounce back on you. It's ridiculous.

But it's also the way life works.

Actions have consequences. It's always harder to build something than it is to tear it down. And getting results always requires effort.

So here I go. December 3, 2007, starting another 365 days.

My Kryptonite

We've all got it, right? That thing you think leads to your downfall?

For some it's chocolate, for others it's donuts. For some it's chocolate donuts.

I don't have a lot of those. I don't drink soda. I don't really go for sweet stuff. Most foods I really crave are fried or some form of meat, and those aren't just things you grab in a bag and plop down on the couch with. They actually require a little preparation, so my laziness usually overcomes my craving and I do okay (Let's hear it for weight loss through laziness!).

But for some reason, I can't keep my hands out of the cereal boxes.

When I'm frustrated, bored, deep in thought, or aggravated, I tend to wander. And let me tell you, in a two bedroom apartment, wandering doesn't get you far.

For some reason, if I'm not thinking about it, I can't seem to wander through the kitchen without grabbing a handful of breakfast cereal.

We're not talking Kashi here. No, way. I've got kids. This is real breakfast cereal. I think the last handful I grabbed was Chocolate Chocolate Chip Cookie Crisp. Yeah, I guess I was the Cookie Crook.

And yeah, you read that right. By the handful. I just stick my big fat hand in the box and yank out a handful of starch and sugar the same way I'm sure my caveman ancestors pulled the Frosted Sugarcane Yak Back cereal they fed their kids out of the box.

(This was before they started putting milk on breakfast cereal. You ever try to milk a wild Yak? I'd rather kill one any day.)

So yeah. That's a big part of my downfall. Handfuls of kid's breakfast cereal I don't even really remember eating, but was just looking for something to do while I thought about something else.

Maybe I should take up knitting.

Then I could make myself a cool black Cookie Crook sweater.

How To Make Exercize More Fun

So I'm reading this book, and I'll just be upfront with you and say that it's not a fitness book. It is a work book. As in, the place you go work 9-5 and make money.

It's called The Game of Work, and the premise of it is basically this:

People will pay money for the privilege of working harder than they'll work if you're paying them.

You know what he's talking about--it's the way the same guy who grumbles about getting up at 7am for his 9 to 5 job, and about his 45 minute commute will get up at 4 am to drive 2 hours to go skiing in the freezing cold or flyfish in frigid waters.

So if we can make work more like a game, then it should make work both more motivating and more enjoyable.

One of the main things he talks about is how in these types of recreation, there's usually some kind of goal. Whether it's to win the game, catch a fish, improve your score over last time, or something else, there's usually something you're going for that's pushing you to give that extra effort.

I posted a list of all the qualities he feels that goals should have at work in order to make it feel more like play on my new blog, How To Manage People.

But it got me thinking--I think that, recreationally speaking, exercise is probably the one thing we do that feels the most like work. That's probably why we're often as reluctant to do it as we are to go to jobs we hate.

So I thought, why not incorporate some of the ideas Coonradt had about making work more enjoyable through goals, and adapt them into daily exercise?

So here is Erik's list of ways to make exercise more like a game, very loosely adapted from Chuck Coonradt.

1. Really make it a game. What sport did you used to like to play? Or what game have you been interested in, but never tried? Why not do that for exercise?

Often people say, "I know I need to exercise more, but I just hate to go on the treadmill." I think that's because you're sane. The treadmill is like that scene in the bad dream where you're running and running and not getting anywhere. If an exercise is literally something out of your nightmares, you're not going to get excited about it.

So think about what activities, if any, you do get excited about, whether you've done it before or not.

2. State your goals in positive terms. This one is straight out of Coonradt, and I like it.

Goals should be something you think about all the time, that you focus on. What happens if you state your goals in negative terms?

When we state the goal in terms of something we're trying to get rid of, it means when we think about our goals, we're focusing on the things we don't like all the time.

No basketball coach worth his title tells his team, "Go out there and don't miss baskets." The coach doesn't even want to put the picture of missing baskets into their minds. Instead, he'll talk about making baskets. He'll even have his players visualize themselves making baskets.

Similarly, if we make a goal like, "I'm not going to eat fast food," then as we think about the goal, we find ourselves thinking about fast food all the time.

Or if we say, "I don't want to be so heavy any more," we're still thinking about how much we weigh.

Instead, we can find a way to say the same things in positive terms. "I eat perfect portions of healthy, delicious foods." "I am achieving a healthier body."

Those are much nicer things to think about all they, aren't they?

3. Track stuff. The more stuff you track, the more things you have to me motivated by.

Didn't lose as many pounds as you wanted this week? You can look at the inches on your waistline.

Didn't lose as many inches as you'd have liked on your waistline? You can look at how you managed to go a full minute at level 6 on the treadmill today instead of just for 30 seconds.

Didn't go the full minute? Well, maybe you hit 1.4 miles in 15 minutes instead of 1.2.

You don't have to look like the football coach with a big huge clipboard--just a small, pocket sized spiral bound notepad is perfect.

4. Challenge yourself. It's 6am, and you're under your nice, warm covers, trying to decide whether to hit the snooze button again. If all you're doing is getting up to exercise, those covers might just hold you in.

But if you know that the last time you exercised, you came up just 15 seconds shy of getting around the block in less than 20 minutes, and you think today just might be the day you hit that mark--well, that just might make the difference.

And if it isn't enough--well, what goal would matter enough to you that it would get you out of bed? Work on that goal instead.

5. Always keep at least one goal close. Yeah, you've got that goal weight, but that's probably a good three to six months off, right? What is it you're going to see this week?

The closer the goal can be to your heart and to reality, the more it will motivate you today.

It's the thing you think you might be able to do by Friday that will get you out of bed on Monday. It might be figuring out that little quick step on your Dance Away The Pounds video that you've been stumbling over, or it might be cutting 30 seconds off the time it takes you to walk a mile.

Whatever it is, try to make it matter, and try to make it achievable.

*

Even if all of these don't work for you, I hope at least a couple of them help. And even if you're not sure about a couple, find a way to incorporate them, and see if they don't make a difference.

Which TV Show Motivates You?

Which TV show motivates you the most?

Here are the choices:

The Biggest Loser on NBC

I Lost It! on Discovery Health

Inside Brookhaven Obesity Clinic on TLC

The Biggest Loser is the show that does the most for me. And not just any episode--I get bogged down in the weekly show, and the vote-offs aren't that interesting to me.

My favorite episodes are the specials, the ones where there are just two couples or two teams or two families against each other. Nobody voted off and nobody forming alliances or stabbing people in the back. It's just people working hard and losing weight. And on the specials, it's nice because it all happens in one episode. People start the episode heavy and end it healthy.

But it still shows the part that I need to see the most--the part where they're working hard. Seeing people start out the show dying every time they exercise and then pushing through the pain and making themselves stronger by the end of the show. I need to see that.

That's the biggest thing that's missing on I Lost It! That show basically shows two people in each episode. Each person is shown in two segments--one is the "fat" segment, where they show pictures of how heavy the person used to be, and they talk about how miserable their life used to be when they were heavy, and what the big moment was when they decided to lose the weight. It's generally something embarrassing or health related.

Then, after a commercial break, they do the "skinny" segment, showing video of how they look now, holding up clothes that used to fit them, and showing how far they've come. They generally mention how the person lost all the weight, but it's generally just a mention.

For me, it's not the hardship of being heavy or the joy of being healthy that's the most motivating, but watching people hang in there during the day-to-day struggles of the time it takes to lose weight. That's what's missing from this show.

As for Inside Brookhaven Obesity Clinic, my wife has said that's the show that motivates her. Not because she has anywhere near the amount of weight those people have to lose (The show features morbidly obese people at up to almost 1,000 pounds, and my wife has far less to lose than even I do), but because of the things coming out of the people's mouths.

For example, one episode featured a man who was so large, he had to have holes cut into the walls of his house and be hoisted out by awkward cranes. Rather than come to a realization of how far gone he was, the man spent his on-camera time complaining about how no one had developed better technology for moving extremely heavy people.

My wife said seeing people so brazenly dismissing their own role in creating their problems motivated her to do get up and do something more than any of the other shows we've watched lately.

How about you? Which shows keep you motivated?

What's Up With Goals?

Why are goals so hard?

I mean, they shouldn't be hard. It doesn't make sense, rationally.

I mean, think about it. A goal is where you write down something you want, then write down the steps you need to take to get that thing, and then you go through and do the stuff.

There's no downside in there. It's about you figuring out something you want and then doing the stuff it takes to get it.

And yet goals are, generally, absolutely, unbelievably, excruciatingly hard.

It's not like that in other things. When Jack Bauer is on the phone with the guy back at CTU who's telling him which wires to cut to defuse the bomb, it's not a major issue. It's not like Jack feels any need to stop and question the guy or think about if he really wants it or put off a certain step until he feels more like doing it. He just goes through the step the guy gives him over the phone, and he diffuses the bomb.

Isn't that how all goals should be? After all, generally goals are about things we want almost as bad as Jack wants to diffuse that bomb. Shouldn't we just whip through the steps, happy as clams, and then enjoy our post-goal touchdown victory dance?

But maybe it's just because it's TV. Maybe in real life, bomb squad guys do lose focus. Maybe they do want to take a break in the middle of diffusing bombs to go read Ann Landers and have a couple of Little Debbie's cakes. Maybe they do give up halfway through because they made a little mistake and just don't know if they can ever recover from it.

I know that's what they'd do if they ever called diffusing that bomb a goal. At that point, it would become, somehow, psychologically impossible to do.

But of course, I exaggerate.

I actually read a really good book about the answer to this question once, and maybe sometime I'll tell you about it.

But for right now, as I start back down this path again, I just toss that question out into the ether of the interweb, and ponder the unjustness of it . . .

Why are goals so hard?

Back To Blogging

Well, I'm coming back.

Those of you who used to be delighted by this blog's mix of information and personal history, and have missed it since it's been gone will be delighted to know that it is coming back.

It will be back to what it used to be--a chronicle of my own efforts to get out of debt and lose weight, spiced up with (hopefully) fun explanations of principles of finance and fitness.

The goals have actually gotten a little more ambitious. Stay tuned for more details.

Also to be returning is the "Tale of the Tape," the counter that chronicles the decline in my debt, my waistline, and my poundage. All values will be reset and start over effective the 1st of December.

I look forward to rejoining you all and sharing with you some of the fun stuff I'm going to be working on for the next 365 days.

Wish me luck, and stay tuned!

Oh, You're Wondering About That Other Thing?

Things are moving forward. Keep watching.

FitTV's The Craze

In sort of a sequel to yesterday's post, I want to talk about a TV show on FitTV called The Craze. This show features The Artist Generally Known As Joan River's Daughter buying different fitness products for people, then letting them "test" them for 30 days. At the end, they bring someone from the company who makes the product to meet the person who used it, and get a "grade" on the product in a bunch of categories, ranging from ease of assembly to quality of any accompanying videos.

The buzz around the internet is that the show is crap. That it's basically an hour long infomercial paid for by the makers of the products being demonstrated. This is backed up by the fact that the "grades" at the end of the show have been almost invariably enthusiastic.

I don't know if that's true or not. Here's what I do know:

This show teaches, well, what I was preaching yesterday. That in the end, it's not the tool that matters. In the end, it's not going to matter whether you were using a thighmaster or a bowflex or a total fitness home gym or if you were going to bally's or 24 hour fitness or were just jogging outside in the fresh air and sunshine.

What's going to matter is that you made the decision that, no matter what, you're going to get healthy and get to a healthier weight. That you were fed up--either with not having energy, or with your knees hurting (a big one for me), or with something.

In other words, what's going to lose the weight isn't something you can buy at a store or get in a box or a bottle.

All of those things are just tools. And like all tools, it's fun to find which ones are right for you. Which ones you enjoy, which ones you don't, which ones don't suit you, and which ones fit your personality.

When you really mean it, anything you try will work. Until then, nothing will.

SparkPeople: Go. Sign Up. Or Not.

When last you were really hearing from me, I was praising SparkPeople.

Sparkpeople.com is a great site. I still encourage you to go there. I still encourage you to tell them docmagik sent you. I encourage you to have lots of clicky fun getting points.

Part of what I dig about tools like SparkPeople.com is the way it makes me feel in control. There's something nice about not "guessing" what I'm eating, or how many calories I'm eating, or how many calories I'm burning, that makes me feel in control and relaxes me.

But it's not that way for everybody. I was talking to a dear friend this week who says that something like SparkPeople would just add to their stress and guilt. Now, not only would they not be exercising, but they would not be logging the exercise they weren't doing on the website.

I understand that completely. See, I firmly believe that what works for one person doesn't work for others.

I also believe that just about anything can work when you want it so bad you have to it. So at that point you can just pick the thing that's fun for you and go for it with everything you've got . . .

I Saw This Guy On The TV

No, this isn't about an infomercial.

I was watching this special on the food network:

And there's this guy, John, the guy in the last picture. He's just a guy, you know? Balding, heavy set. Not some "former athlete" who's gone to seed or some other guy with some big story about how he beat cancer or something. He's just a guy with high blood pressure who enjoys food.

But he starts doing it. He starts walking to work from the subway instead of taking a cab. One day he's late, and has to take a cab, so he walks a little longer during his break to make up for it. He and his kids start dividing up snacks into little baggies for him to take to work during the week.

He's not climbing mountains like the folks on Biggest Loser or doing any big, dramatic things. He's just eating less and working out more.

And the clincher, for me, comes when he's standing in this deli. This deli where he likes to eat all the time, and he's looking over the menu for something healthy, and all he's seeing are all the things he loves to eat, all the things that got him where he is. He's just got these big puppy dog eyes as he looks at all that food, and you know he wants it so bad.

But he finally pulls his eyes away from the menu and asks the guy behind the counter if they've got any turkey burgers.

It wasn't dramatic. It certainly wasn't a big deal. But that was the point. Most days, this isn't a big deal. It's just doing it, simple, non-dramatic things, day after day.

John, you didn't move your body weight in sand bags or lose 15 pounds in a week. But in that deli, you were as much an inspiration to me as anybody ever has been.

Thank you.

For anyone who sees this . . .

Watch this space!

I have a little something I'm trying to work out for this year--a more elaborate attempt to do what I did with this blog, only on a bit of a broader scale.

I'll post about it here when I get it going. And I might post some fledgling attempts here.

Tell your friends, but don't tell "them."

What am I talking about?

Stay tuned . . . .