12 Piece Dickens Dinner

February's Book: Freakenomics

2012-03-05T17:55:00.000-08:00

For my February read I chose "Freakenomics: The Hidden Side of Everything". The books is an interesting look at how economics can be used to look at different topics and give them a different spin. If you're expecting to know if the stock market is going to go up or down or how or to make better investments, this isn't that kind of book.

The only thing being cheated here is gravity.

One of the first chapters looks at what Sumo wrestlers and teachers have in common: they both have an incentive to cheat. Sumo wrestlers are put into divisions based on a two-week tournament. If you have a winning record in the tournament you stay in the higher class and obviously if you have a losing record you're in the lower class. The benefit of the higher class is that you get paid more and the wrestlers in the lower class are basically your butler.

What they discovered is that if two wrestlers meet in the final match of the tournament and one is 7-7 and the other is guaranteed to have a winning record, the 7-7 wrestler wins a disproportionate amount of time because the other wrestler is throwing the match to give the 7-7 wrestler a winning record.

For those of you with a child in school, you know that most teacher now just test to the damn standardized test because of No Child Left Behind. Many teacher's incentives, including keeping their job, has been tied to the results of the standardized test so they are doing whatever it takes to have their kids get good scores, even cheating. The authors found a number of teachers in the Chicago school systems were changing their student's answers after they had turned in the test or even giving their kids the answers on the test outright.

A basic principle of this book is that there is an incentive to do everything. The key is to find what that incentive is and make it work in your favor.

Another chapter in the book looks at how an realtors and members of the Klan use information imbalances in their favor and how the internet has neutralized both groups. In the case of realtors, their house stays on the market an average of 10 days longer and sells 2% higher. It's in the realtors best interest to sell your house as fast as possible. If you've got a house on the market for $200,000 and you get an offer for $190,000 the realtor is going to push you to take the offer. Even if you think you can get $200k by keeping it on the market for two more weeks the realtor is going to push to take the $190k offer because their additional commission for the extra $10k is not worth the effort they would have to put in.

The last two chapters of the book examine how much of a role to parents really play in how educated & successful their kids turn out. It's the basic nature vs. nurture with the authors coming down on the side of nature. They do several cause and effect breakdowns to see if certain things matter when it comes to a child's success. One comparison was what matters more: the number of books in the house vs. if parents read to their child. The higher correlation to a child's success was with the parents that had more books in the house. The rationale was that parents who have more books in their house tend to be more educated and that led to a greater likelihood that the child would be smarter.

The biggest lesson from the book is that there is always another way that you can look at everyday situations. With the exception of the part about the realtors, I don't know that I gained an lessons that I can apply to everyday life like "Switch" but it may start peaking my curiosity in a different way every now and then.

On the fried food front there isn't much new to report. I will say that I have noticed a different in my body when I eat crappy food. The other night we had pizza for dinner and it was pretty greasy. It wrecked my stomach for the rest of the night because I'm not used to eating like that.

It is becoming much easier to turn down eating bad foods when I'm out. As they say, if you can do something for a 2-3 weeks it will start becoming a habit and after two months of not eating fried food I can turn down fried food pretty easy. That makes it easier to eat out, now if I can just get my portion control under wraps.

One big score for me recently is that I found out the pizza place we pick up from does not fry it's wings. They bake them so when I'm on a wings jones I can go there. Their wings are pretty good and it's a rare find for a place to not fry its wings.

For the March read I've gone with the book "How Lucky Can You Be." I was looking for a book that was just a story and different from my last two books. With March Madness just around the corner I was also looking for a book about basketball and this is about a college basketball coach. I'd heard a little bit about it and I picked up for cheap when I went to my friend Joe's wedding in Cleveland. It was at the Boarder's going out of business sale.

I've got you, under my fried skin

2012-02-21T19:15:00.000-08:00

"But why should I try to resist when, baby, I know down well
I've got you, under my skin"
-Frank Sinatra

It's been a while since my last post. This is by far the busiest time of the year with basketball ending and spring sports beginning. Add in that Madison is finishing up her own basketball season as well as the start of club volleyball, to go along with Melissa looking for a job and February is a busy month.

Typically when things get their busiest is when I fall the hardest off the wagon. When you're running around doing a million things at once it's easy to grab something that's quick, cheap and bad for you versus avoiding fried food and exercising. While my exercise level hasn't been as great lately, I've managed not to eat fried foods so far.

It was tough the other night when we stopped at BW3 - at my suggestion - to eat on the way to Orlando. I love BW3 - the fact that it serves wings in over two dozen flavors easily makes it one of my favorite places. Smelling all that fried delicious goodness was tough, but I was able to find a few grilled items on the menu and mimicked the same experience.

When we're on the road traveling for Madison's tournaments most of our meals are at restaurants. This is always the hardest since half the menu - and most of the delicious appetizers - are fried. Side dishes - at least the good tasting ones - are also fried as well. I may have to give up watching Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives because every tasty sandwich is served with greasy french fries.

I'm in that spot when my will power starts to break down and things go haywire. In a number of my posts on my opening book "Switch" most people have a finite supply of will power. The best way to get change to be permanent is to create new behaviors or processes that become automatic so it doesn't take up much of your will.

Eating at home more is one way to avoid eating fried foods. If I'm in an environment where no fried food is available, I don't have to worry about eating it. In theory I could do the same by not going to Madison's tournaments, but that's not going to happen. Maybe I need to skip the appetizers page all together and just go to entrees. The same could be said for not even looking at side dishes and just automatically go with a salad.

February's book is Freakenonomics, which is subtitled the Hidden Side of Everything. It's a very easy read that is very interesting. It's examines a lot of every day situations and puts an economic spin on the analysis. One chapter is title "What do teachers and sumo wrestlers have in common?" The answer is they both have an incentive to cheat. I'm almost finished with the book and I'll have a full review then.
The overlying theme of the book is that everyone is motivated by incentives. The question is finding out what incentive works for the right situation. This is key factor if you're parent and want to get your child to do something they don't want to by finding their incentive.

Unfortunately we haven't found that one incentive that works all the time with Madison, particularly when it comes to school work. We can threaten to take away tv, her i pod, etc. and none of it seems to matter to her. We try to go the positive route and dangle carrots in front of her like money for good grades or something else, but that is only temporary motivation. The only thing that seems to have much of an effect is going to bed early, but that doesn't work all the time.

I want to see this New Year resolution through to the end. I think the one month book resolution will be easy to keep because I enjoy reading and find myself enjoying it even more. However, the fried food resolution will be much tougher, but hopefully in the end the reward will pay off with a healthy life.

"But each time that I do just the thought of you
Makes me stop before I begin."

Switch: The Book Review

2012-02-03T20:49:00.000-08:00

For my first book of the month club I selected "Switch: How to Change When Changes Is Hard". The book focuses on three areas: The Rider, The Elephant and Shaping the Path. I chose this book because I thought it would be a good way to jump start a few changes I wanted to make this year: losing the last few pounds via not eating fried foods for the year.

The essence of the three elements is that the Rider is your rational side, the Elephant is your emotions and Shaping the Path is mode for making the change happen.

The Rider can get bogged down with too much analysis and so the Rider needs to look for Bright Spots - which are people, companies or organizations who are doing things the right way. Or a Bright Spot could be something you're doing successfully in other parts of your life that you can apply to the aspect you're looking to change.

One man was charged with helping combat malnutrition in Vietnam. He could have spent years trying to clean up the water supply or help bring in better food, but he wasn't given that much time. He found a bright spot in a few mothers in a village whose children were healthy despite high malnutrition amongst the rest of the village. All the families were living under the same basic set of circumstances, but these mothers were doing something different. The gentleman had those mothers meet with the rest of the mothers in village to explain what they were doing. A few tweaks and adding one or two items, that were readily available, to their diets and the nutrition in the village improved dramatically.

Another key to the Rider is having Destination Postcards - a vivid picture of from the near future that shows where you're headed. If you're trying to lose some weight, take the skinny jeans you haven't fit into in a few years and hang them where you can see them everyday and remind yourself of where you're trying to get.

Most of the books was spent covering the Elephant because emotions play the biggest part when it comes to making changes last. One of the challenges of motivating the Elephant is finding which emotions or feeling is going to trigger the change.

Once you tap into the emotions and get the Elephant motivated you need to keep encouraging the Elephant. A big lesson that I've taken from the book is to celebrate small victories. I don't think I've done that enough and I don't think others do it enough either. Another important aspect along those lines is that being negative rarely works. Yes you can use some scare tactics to jump start the changes, but if you want the change to continue you have to be positive.

Another way to encourage the Elephant is to remind it what it's already accomplished. Two sets of car wash customers were given reward cards. One group was given a card that required eight visits to get a free wash and the other a card that required 10 visits, but they were given two free stamps. Even though both groups needed to get the same amount of stamps, the group with the two free stamps had a much higher rate of completion because they felt like they were already on their way.

A great way to celebrate small victories is to set yourself to have them by Shrinking The Change. By setting small, meaningful goals that are within immediate reach gives you the chance to celebrate small victories. The more small victories you can celebrate, the greater the Elephant's confidence grows. When the Elephant is less scared, changes is more likely to happen.

Shaping the Path may have been the smallest section of the book, but it's the means by which the change happens. A key to Shaping the Path is separating a person's behavior from the environment their in. Many people act completely different depending on the environment they're in. A normal guy from Milwaukee became addicted to opium when we went to Vietnam because of its prevalence. When he returned home he eventually kicked the habit without very much intervention because he was back in an environment that didn't promote drug use.

Since our environment plays a big part in Shaping the Path, tweaking the environment is very important when it comes to change. Many times the most successful changes don't happen because of grand gestures, but rather small changes that make the right behavior a little bit easier and the wrong behavior a little bit harder. My tweak is the using the small plates when I eat. In my mind I'm full when my plate is empty so even if I continue to do that, but using a smaller plate I'll shrink my caloric intake.

Action Triggers are preloaded decisions that help make the decision making process almost automatic. One of the things we've learned is the Rider's self control to make difficult decisions can get drained - just like your energy level drops as you work out - and when the Rider runs low on self control the Elephant can easily take over and make bad decisions. Action triggers are a way to make the hard decisions just a little bit easier.

One manager was having a problem with his sales people focusing too much on getting new clients and not cultivating the relationship with existing clients. To work on this, the manager told his sales staff that every morning when they pour their first cup of coffee they were to make a follow up phone call to a current client. Pouring the coffee was the Action Trigger for getting the sales staff to follow up with existing clients.

If you're looking for any sort of change in your life - be it with yourself, your children, employees, etc. then I recommend reading "Switch". We're tried many different things to get Madison's grades up. She knows that good grades are important (The Rider) and wants to have good grades (The Elephant). We've tried rewarding her, we've tried taking things away from her, but neither has worked so we're going to try to tweak the environment when she studies to see if we can shape her path.

Wasting Away Again

2012-02-01T10:33:00.000-08:00

Last night was the seventh Jimmy Buffett show that I've attended. Buffett shows are like pizza and sex, even when they're are mediocre, they're still pretty good. Provided he's still alive hopefully it wont' be my last, but the desire to attend is slowly diminishing.

The crowd was great last night and when some of the hits like Volcano, Fins and Margaritaville get played there is always great energy. It would have been nice to get to the venue to tailgate instead of arriving close to the start of the show, but sometimes work schedules don't let that happen.

Without a new album in the last few years, Buffett's tours are becoming a Greatest Hits Tour. Not that a greatest hits tour isn't a bad thing considering most of his new albums have had one solid song and 10-12 okay songs that you'd rather not here in concert. Given the choice between "We Learned to Be Cool from You" and "Boat Drinks" I'll gladly take the later.

While I will always sing along to "Last Mango In Paris", "Why Don't We Get Drunk" or "It's Five O'Clock Somewhere" if I never heard them again it wouldn't be a big deal. I can also take or leave "Southern Cross". It's a great song that brings back a lot of good memories from Ohio U, but some nights he just butchers the hell out of it. For anyone who is really into Buffett - and those are the people that don't say "I've never heard of 'Life Is Just A Tire Swing'" - you'd rather hear "God's Own Drunk", "Death of an Unpopular Poet" or something more rare.

At this point in his career, Buffett is not about selling more albums - of course he never has had a huge mainstream album sales - so why not start mixing in more good songs that aren't "Pencil This Mustache" like "The Stories We Can Tell", "Banana Republics" or "Growing Older But Not Up". Get the average fan to start listening to some of the older albums instead of just buying "Live in (Insert baseball stadium here)".

Apart from lack of creativity in the set list, I wasn't a big fan of the tempo of most of the songs. I know it takes a lot to play 28 songs, but most of them seemed rushed like he was trying to play them as fast as possible to get the show over with. He played "Knee Deep" his song with Zach Brown and the song is meant to be played much slower. I did like that he played "Back Where I Come From" which is a song one of his band members wrote for Kenny Chesney.

The next time I see Buffett it's going to have to be at an outside venue. The last three times I've seen him they've been in arenas and you just don't get the same feel. Buffett shows are meant to be played outside. It's tough to get up and dance when you're sandwich between two people.

Unless he comes to a town that I'm living in, I'm not sure if I'm going to make the effort to see him on a week night. I would have much rather enjoy the evening and not have to worry about getting home around 1 a.m. to be up in a few hours to go to work. I could have taken the morning or day off, but that seems a bit much for a concert. Much like how my preference for watching sporting events is on TV in the comfort of my house versus being there in person, I may be listening to more Buffett shows on Radio Margaritaville then attending.

You're Going To Fail

2012-01-31T10:22:00.000-08:00

If there is one lesson that I'm going to take from reading "Switch" this month it's that you're going to fail. It might not be the lesson you're looking for, but it may be the most important.

What you have to take from that lesson is that your ideal switch isn't going to happen on the first time, every time. Or probably the second or third, There is going to setbacks and things you're going to have to do differently because the path you chose was the wrong one. The key is learning from the failures and making the right corrections.

In terms of eating fried foods, I'd say I've been at a 99% success rate 31 days into 2012. My slip has been a potato chip or two one day and a few crackers the other. Chips and crackers you don't automatically think about as fried, at least I didn't. Once I came that realization it was hello Triscutts and Baked Lays.

When your decision making is as bad as this woman's, youre in trouble.

For me, I fail on the weekends. Monday through Friday morning I do a pretty good job of eating and drinking well. It's not 100% success, but it's in the 90th percentile. However, Friday, Saturday and Sunday my decision making when it comes to eating and drinking moderately is on par with Kim Kardashian's relationship choices.

Part of me thinks that my Rider works so hard Monday through Thursday that by the time Friday hits I'm too tired to make the right choices. The Elephant is tired of eating Lean Cuisine, chicken breasts and water, it wants carbs, sugar and booze.

Take this weekend for example. Friday was okay, but Saturday we went to Hilton Head to see my parents. My mom made lasagna, which is fantastic and is my favorite thing that she makes. Since I only get to have it twice a year I can easily justify to myself to have a second piece. I certainly don't need it, but that doesn't stop me. In addition I had a brownie with ice cream, several handfuls of various peanuts and four to five beers.

On Sunday we had a late breakfast and we were going to meet one of Melissa's players out for her birthday. Given our new financial situation, we decided that we would have a lite bite out and then dessert at the restaurant. By the time we got home in the late afternoon I was starving so I had some carrots with hummus, which wasn't bad. Then I had a peanut butter and banana sandwich. We went to 5 Guys Burgers and Fries, where I had just a small cheeseburger and no fries. I really didn't need the burger, nor did I need to help out with the ridiculous dessert that a few people ordered. Throw in a couple of Captain & Diets and the day went from promising to a Chris Humphries.

My other failure is buffets or when there is a large amount of food available at something like a reception. Yesterday we had a reception for our volleyball and soccer teams in the late afternoon. If the Rider had control of my Elephant, I would have limited myself to just one small plate of a few appetizers knowing that I was going home for dinner. Instead, the Elephant ran roughshod over the food as I had two small plates with plenty of dip and other assorted goodness. I topped that off with a small portion of dinner, but by that time it was already too much.

What did this 72-hour bender cost me: 2.3 pounds. I usually weigh in on Wednesday but since I'm going out of town for a concert tonight - more bad decision making opportunities - I figured I'd weigh this morning. Sure enough, my hope of getting into the 160s - I was at 170.5 last week - was smacked in the face by a gain of 2.3 pounds.

Lovely.

Two weeks of good work thrown down the pisser faster than an NFL player can get arrested after the season is over.

However, I'm not deterred. I've gotten back on the right track with my decisions today and hopefully I can get back into the negative next week. What I've got to do a better job is thinking ahead when it comes to the weekends. Now when I know I'm going to a restaurant in advance, the Rider starts to think ahead and tells me what I can have to eat - shaping the path - so that when I get there my mind is already made up. I'll find real success when I can start applying that to the weekend.

Validating My Resolution

2012-01-27T07:26:00.000-08:00

Not that I didn't know this already, but I saw this article this morning. No surprise that there are three fried foods on this list. 1500 calories and 4500mg of sodium from boneless wings.

For the Super Bowl next week I'll be making wings, but either grilling or baking them. I may throw in some guacamole or nachos, with baked chips of course, but they will be made with healthy recipes.

Celebrate The Small Victories

2012-01-25T10:31:00.000-08:00

The biggest portion of "Switch" is dedicated to The Elephant: aka your emotions. You can make all the analyzing you want (The Rider) and set up a great system (Shape the Path) but if the Elephants wants to go in a different direction, that's where your heading.

One of the latest lessons from the book is that you have to celebrate small victories. I don't think people do that enough when they are trying to make changes. I watch "The Biggest Loser" and people get disappointed when they "only" lose four or five pounds in a given week. From what I've learned, any step in the right direction should be cause of a small celebration.

When you take time to make that small celebration you're helping build a positive emotion to help keep The Elephant on track. The more frequent you can celebrate those accomplishments the more likely you are to keep on the path to change. I've managed to go nearly four weeks without eating fried food, that I'm aware of. Yes it's been tough in a few instances and the reward for the sacrifice doesn't always manifest itself immediately.

Even small victories are worth a celebration, but not on top of cars.

A couple of times when we've gone out to eat I've picked salad over fries or onion rings. It's tough because the smell of the grease and potatoes compared to lettuce and tomato is not even close. At the time you really can't pat yourself on the back, but I've lost one pound each of the last three weeks and there is a direct correlations to making those decisions and losing the weight.

This weekend I didn't do the greatest job of eating so I figured I'd gained some weight. I was pleasantly surprised to have the scale read that I was down a pound to 170.5. That's lower than I weighed during my marathon training and my lowest since 2009. Naturally I celebrated with a dozen Krispy Kremes and a gallon of chocolate milk.

The key now is going to be using that positive emotion the next time I have to make an eating decision. For now it's pretty easy to make the commitment to not eating fried foods, but will that commitment still be there in April? September? 2013? Small victories like today will help make that switch.

These Are A Few Of My Favorite Things

2012-01-18T11:47:00.000-08:00

Last weekend I volunteered to work during a local club hockey tournament. An annual event in Savannah, it's always a good time and somewhat amazing that people will pay to see bad college hockey teams. That's one thing that separates the South from the North. Their sporting identity is tied to college teams rather than split amongst college and pro so if there was a Georgia-Georgia Tech sudoku challenge, 5000 fans would show up.

At one end of the rink is a VIP room that is fully stocked each night with free food and drinks. Naturally a good portion of the food is fried in the form of wings and chicken fingers. Sure there were meatballs, cheese, veggies, and fruit, but it's tough to get filled up on 1 oz cheese cubes.

To make the temptation worse, the wing prep was being down outside by where we filled up the drink coolers for the teams each night. The magnificent scent of deep fried chicken wafted through the building and was only cut by the disturbing stench of the players.

Wings maybe my favorite fried food, but here is a list of the numerous items I'm giving up this year:

Wings
French Fries (regular, sweet potato)
Egg Rolls
Crab Rangoon
Deep Fried Moon Pie
Chicken Tenders

Bang Bang Shrimp

Hushpuppies

Fish & Chips

Calamari

Onion Rings

Jalapeno Poppers - though in all honesty I couldn't tell you the last time I had one of these.

Fried shrimp, oysters and clams

Fried Chicken
Funnel cake
Chips & Salsa/Guacamole
Corndogs
Homemade Potato Chips
Fried Pickles
Beignets
Monte Cristo Sandwiches
Donuts - Okay I just came to the realization that donuts are fried. This may take a minute for me to get over. I'm not a donut feigned, but I do love a good donut. I haven't had a donut in 2012, but this is going to rock my world for a little bit.

18 days in and a long 348 to go.

Falling off the Elephant

2012-01-16T10:23:00.000-08:00

One of the three big overlying metaphors in "Switch" is The Elephant, which is your emotions. When the Elephant decides it wants to go a certain direction, that's where you're going, no matter how hard The Rider tugs.

The third metaphor is shaping the path. That's how you're going to get The Rider to steer The Elephant. One of the early stories the book tells is a study done at a movie theater where movie goers are given free popcorn. The catch is, it's stale day old popcorn. Movie goers are given two different sizes of popcorn buckets and regardless of how bad the popcorn is, the people with the bigger buckets always eat more.

In an effort to help me do a better job with overeating, I decided that I would try to shape my path by using a smaller plate at dinner. I have a fixation with having to have a full plate and to eat everything that is on the plate. There are many studies out there that say if you use a smaller plate, you will feel just as satisfied as you would with a big plate, even though you're eating less calories.

Through the first week of January I did a good job of using the small plate, even though I only had to make that decision once. The second time around I failed myself. I got home late and was extremely hungry. My natural instincts kicked in and I got a normal plate and filled it with food. It wasn't until later in the evening that I realized what I had done.

Great athletes talk about being in the zone and how everything just seems to happen. That happens to me, but not in a good way. Whenever I'm starving or get around a lot of food, I got into a zone as well and I'm about as unstoppable as John Elway running the two minute offense against the Browns. I make bad decisions like a single girl without a date at a wedding.

Tackling this problem is going to take a lot of work, you don't just undue 30 some years of bad eating habits overnight. Hopefully I've made one good decision by trying to switch the size of the plate that I use and that will minimize some damage. At some point I've got to teach myself when I get into those situations, I need to do as Little Penny says and "go outside and do some thai chi to come myself down"

Ten Days of Temptation

2012-01-10T18:39:00.000-08:00

Since we don't own a deep fryer - sorry Yoders - my battle against fried foods is wages virtually when eating out. Ten days into the New Year I haven't wavered in my fight.

My first temptation came last week when I met some co-workers at the mall food court. As I got near the door I could smell the fries wafting from the Chil-fil-a that is right at the food court entrance. In the first few weeks it's pretty easy to stick to your resolutions, at least for me, so this was a pretty easy one to resist. In case you're wondering, I went to a Japanese place and had stir-fry chicken, noodles and vegetables. Next time I think I'm going with just chicken and double vegetables.

As I'm discovering, at least right now, resisting fried food isn't the problem. Realizing before hand is kind of the punch in the gut, so to speak. It almost takes the fun out of going out to eat, which is horribly sad. With Madison at a sleep over, Melissa and I decided to go to Bonefish Grill for dinner. Typically when we go to Bonefish, we get at least one order of Bang Bang Shrimp and usually calamari.

For those of you who haven't dined at Bonefish, Bang Bang Shrimp is fried shrimp coating in a spicy sauce. It's delicious as all hell - perhaps one of my favorite appetizers - but it's horrible for you. Calamari is just as bad for you. In theory if it was grilled, it would probably be a great appetizer. We settled for saucy shrimp, which is probably not great either, but it meets my mandate.

I housed nearly a loaf of bread as well, which almost just as big of a problem. Yes nothing is fried, but in the grand scheme of things I might as well have eaten the damn bang bang shrimp. One thing I'm struggling with early on is robbing Peter to pay Paul. I'm great at rewarding myself by saying - yes I didn't eat anything fried so in my mind that gives me the right to go hog wild with everything else. I'm not going to see real weight loss until that happens. Realizing the problem isn't my issue, making the right decision is.

'Switch' tells you that you have to appeal to both the Rider (Mental) and Elephant (Emotional) in order for real change to occur. I understand what my problem is, but I can only imagine what it would be like to look down one day and not see a spare tire, but something happens when it comes time to make the right decision. When the rubber meet the road, I fail and the Rider falls off.

The other incident where I realized things are going to have to change is when we went to Banditos Burritos. While the burrito is obviously not fried, the chips are. I can devour a basket of chips like it's my last meal on death row. One time at Moe's I noticed that they dropped the chips in the fryer - why it took me a while to realize that I don't know - so as we pulled into the restaurant I was pretty sure that chips were out the window.

Even though it was my first time there, I'm a big fan of Banditos because they make everything fresh and it's healthier than say a Moe's or Qudoba. While it's a healthier option, sure enough they deep fry their chips. So that's out. From now on I have to assume that every place fries its chips. One of the things that I like is that instead of chips, they'll make you a salad.

People in our department like to go out for Mexican on Thursdays. I enjoy going for the camaraderie - the food isn't that good. But when I'm trying to lose some weight I typically pass on the invitation. For the most part I know it's because again I'll have a basket of chips while waiting for the meal and then I'll shove two tacos or fajitas or whatever down my gullet.

Maybe instead of fried foods I need to concentrate on free foods. In the men's health emails I get they always say to skip the free food at restaurants. Some days I can pull it off, other times not.

When I watch the Biggest Loser and read success stories, they always say that they are changing their lifestyle. I'm not there yet. I'm hoping that this year can jump start this and that it's not just a terrible solution. My Elephant is not there yet, but I'm hoping that I can train him over the next 12 months.

How I Lost 7.5 lbs In 4 Days

2012-01-07T19:27:00.000-08:00

"I lost 7.5 pounds in four days and you can to!"

This would be the opening line if my last seven days was an infomercial.

On New Year's Day when I weighed myself the 181 pounds was a bit of surprised, considering I had worked out virtually everyday during the break, but not really since I had eaten like shit on top of that. I was a bit disappointed, but determined to take the weight off.

I continued my workout routine with a solid mix of running and lifting plus much better eating. When I'm serious about losing weight I get on the Wii Fit every couple of days to check my weight. Many weight loss suggestions say you should weigh yourself everyday.

Wednesday morning I got back on the scale and hoped my weight had dropped maybe a half pound, even maybe a pound. As surprised as I was to see 181 on New Year's Day, I was more surprised to see it read 173.5 pounds. If one of the four bases falls off the Wii Fit it can give you a wrong reading on your weight, but all four were there.

I haven't gotten back on the scale since then - I'll get back on Sunday morning - but I think the weight loss was the perfect storm of bad timing. I weighed myself first thing in the morning, after a night of several cocktails and plethora of bad food. After going for a six-mile run New Year's Day I proceeded to hit the toilet three times that day to "Take the Cleveland Browns To the Super Bowl". I have a feeling that that was key to losing all the weight, though I'm secretly lying to myself that it was through sheer hard work.

Making the Switch

2012-01-02T17:44:00.000-08:00

One of the underlying themes I'm picking up early on in "Switch" is that big problems are often solved with small changes. In one instance a community was struggling with obesity. Of all the solutions that solutions that ended up making a difference was having people switch from whole milk to skim or 1%. No one worried about low fat vs. no carbs, just a simple switch.

My simple switch is using small plates, bowls and cups. I've ready numerous reports that say people overeat when they use a bigger plate - the size of plates has actually gotten bigger over the years - and people who use smaller plates actually feel just as satisfied as those who use bigger plates, but they consume less calories. Despite having this knowledge, I hadn't acted upon it. Tonight I used a smaller plate for my meal and hopefully I can continue this trend.

Another lesson I'm learning from the book is that if you have to keep making decisions time after time that you get tired mentally. As the book points out, it's the same was lifting weights. Sure the first rep is easy, but after you lift the bar 10-15 times your muscles get tired. It works the same way with decision making. I think I've experienced this fatigue so I'm trying to make just two conscious decisions when it comes to my diet: use smaller dishes and no fried foods.

I haven't quite figured out how to curb a third culprit of my weight gain: grazing. This nails me in two situations: When there is a plethora of food available, like at a dinner party, buffets or during hors d'oeuvre night. When food is just sitting out I feel compelled to eat it, even after I'm full. The easiest way to curtail this is to just leave the room, but it's not as easy as it seems. This dovetails into my other grazing problem...

The other time grazing hits me is when I'm hungry and in the kitchen preparing dinner. While the food is cooking I'll find food in the fridge, cupboard or somewhere else to nibble on. By the time the meal is ready I probably shouldn't bother eating since I've been grazing for the last 45 minutes. Using small dishes should help this a bit, but I've got to somehow change my mindset in terms of grazing.

"Switch" breaks making changes down to three elements. The second element is called "The Elephant" and it's your emotional side. The first part is "The Rider" and the Rider can only steer the Elephant for so long until at some point the Elephant is going where it wants to go and there is nothing the Rider can do to stop that. I've got to figure some way to get my Elephant in check when it comes to grazing.

Getting Started

2012-01-01T10:39:00.000-08:00

So this is my newest endeavor. For the second half of 2011 it was chronicling my ups and downs as I trained for a marathon. I failed to reach my goal. Hopefully I won't fail in the overlying theme of this blog.

And what is that theme you ask? Well if you're a friend of mine on facebook, which if you're reading this post you probably are, you know that I'm trying to give up fried foods for a whole year and read a different book every month.

Why fried food? Because I'm trying to get my weight under control. Over eating and eating too fast are the real cause of my problems, but that's not very sexy to write about. Fried food is.

Let's also be clear about something at the onset, it's not like I'm morbidly obese. I weighed in this morning and I weigh 180 pounds. Based on my height and accordingly to Wii Fit, that makes me obese. I'd like to get my weight down to 165 lbs or so and in addition to trying to eat slower I'm giving up fried foods for a year. It's going to be tougher than I imagine.

As for reading a different book a month, I got suckered into signing up for a bunch of magazine scriptions a while back. I'm tried of reading all of them so I've canceled all but two subscriptions - Esquire and Fast Company - and turning my attention to books. Also I've got a bunch of books piling up so I need to start knocking some of them out.

The first book on the list is "Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard" I figured it's a good place to start. I'll weave a few books like that in with two of my favorites - "On The Road" and "Fear and Loathing In Las Vegas". I used to read them about once a year, but it's been a while so I need to revisit them. I'll give a brief book report after I reach each book.

Thanks for reading, hopefully both of us will make it to December.