Shrinking
After several pings by people encouraging me on some recent success with weight loss, I want to post how I’m doing it. Please know this: it’s only been two weeks, and it’s a far cry from what I’d consider a success. That said, I have lost ten pounds in two weeks and there’s a learning nerd spin to this.
Eat Right
First, it’s all about increasing awareness and engagement. If I’m aware of what I’m eating and can stay aware of how it measures against what I’m supposed to eat, I can adjust and learn to plan my eating. I’m using DailyBurn to do this, and they have two iPhone apps that really help: Foodscanner and DailyBurn.
Foodscanner allows me to simply scan in the barcodes for any packaged food or search by name for the food in their database. All the nutrition guide information is there, and if you can’t find the food, you can create it in the app and anyone can find it afterwards. Foodscanner is how I get data in about what I’m eating. The simplicity of scanning barcodes with the app and it basically auto-filling the information, and then the occasional manual search or manual entry has reduced the time and effort for me to record what I eat, and so I’m doing it.
The recording of what I’m eating is one thing, as it keeps me actively engaged in one kind of activity (recording). It’s the monitoring (awareness) that really has made the difference for me so far. The DailyBurn app is how I can monitor how I’m doing. It’d be really nice if both the collection and scanning of what I’m eating and the monitoring of how it adds up, nutrition-wise, was all in one app. At least the two apps work well together thanks to the web application. The important “awareness” part for me is monitoring not just how many calories I’ve taken in compared to what I’m supposed to consume, but how that’s broken down. That bagel with peanut butter I ate this morning? Seriously took a chunk out of what I’m supposed to do for Carbs and Fat. Meanwhile, I need to load up on lean protein to balance it out. Keeping aware of the realtime shift in my eating until I have a better handle on planning is the key for my success so far.
I can also keep track of my exercise, which I’ve started doing again right after New Year’s. I do this to be consistent in my reporting in DailyBurn, but I’m actually using iMapMyFitness to concentrate and socialize my exercise progress. More on that in the next section.
The DailyBurn app gives me a nice overview of where I’m at for the week. The iPhone app displays it very well for the small format, but I want to show you what the web portal looks like. It’s a nice dashboard.
Basically, by keeping it easy to enter and easy to monitor information wherever I am (// mobility), DailyBurn is working where WeightWatchers’ PointTracker web application never did (although WW does have an iPhone app now). Best part, for everything I’m doing, DailyBurn is mostly free (I spent $1.99 on Foodscanner). Years ago, when I was on WeightWatchers, dutifully filling out my slips and entering my information online, this was the kind of application I was hoping for. Moving it to the phone which is also my iPod is the right move.
Speaking of moving…
Exercise
When I signed up for DailyBurn, I asked a few others to join me and they did… but they haven’t tracked anything yet. I don’t want to razz them. Some people are already finding success with their routines, others are comfortable about sharing their weightloss experience in different ways than me; it’s cool. My buddy Will signed on to DailyBurn (he came back) and encouraged me to try MapMyFitness which is where he’s active about his exercise. This gets me to what Steve Howard broached me about — finding others to work out with. For me, it’s about sharing the experience — a two-way street. I don’t want to feel like I’m alone in doing this. I also want the people I’m going through this ordeal with to hold me accountable to committing, sticking with and executing on my goals.
So Will has egged me on to workout and I have. And he’s been very supportive (considering Will is… Will). 
Seriously, MapMyFitness is an interesting tool. Not as pretty an iPhone app or a website as DailyBurn and it has some annoying usability quirks. But the integrated GPS tracking of my walks, bike rides (if I was riding right now), etc is pretty key, especially given how easy it is to record, report and share what I’m doing.
What to Learn
Again, I’m two weeks in. I don’t have it all figured out and I can’t say with any certainty that I’ll be able to stick with it. As a learning person, awareness and engagement such that I’m called to participate are vital things for me in any endeavor. DailyBurn has me figured out as far as awareness — it’s not perfect but it’s darn close. MapMyFitness, as a tool being used by active participants in my network of trust, is working. Partly because I’m engaged, and partly because I don’t want Will giving me crap about not doing it. The social accountability piece is absolutely crucial to affecting change in myself — which is why I decided to socialize this to begin with. I know me. I know that I won’t hold myself accountable. I know which friends will hound me if I fall off the wagon.
Abundance is great… but sometimes scarcity works, too.
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Good stuff, Aaron. I’m on a similar path. Knowing you’re on MMF and DB helps. Look for invites to make fun of me for not doing my Wii Fit for the day soon. Accountability is definitely key!
I’m glad you signed up, Brian. It’s good to do this with you. Even though you’re already in shape and you can put golfing down as an exercise and it’s always 65 or warmer where you live. I HATE YOU.
I can’t say how impressed I am, both with your approach and your openness.
I would suggest two other supports to your plan. The first is what Ken Cooper (the USAF MD who developed the original aerobics program) called “the training effect.” He had data to support the contention that after about six weeks of regular exercise, the cumulative improvements in fitness become such that the habit had begun to set in–you’re physically doing better, mentally doing better, and developing a pattern that’s a virtuous cycle.
Another support, one I recall reading in Consumer Reports Health newsletter, is that weighing yourself daily correlates very well with success. It seems to me that’s much like the apps you’re using–the regularity makes the monitoring habitual, the habitual monitoring helps to instill an awareness.
Dave, I don’t know that I have it in me to weigh myself everyday. Maybe when I start feeling like there’s a sense of flow to what I’m doing and it’s not so arbitrary — maybe I can then connect weight fluctuation with diet and exercise more granularly than I can now.
I totally subscribe to the idea that if I can do this consistently for a month or two that it becomes habituated. That’s what I’m trying to enforce. This week will be clutch. If I can lose another pound from last week — three straight weeks of progress would be clutch for my motivation. I don’t care if it’s only one pound a week — as long as there’s progress, I’ll stick with it. I’m most afraid of the plateaus until my behaviors are more engrained.
Thanks, as always for the support, Dave. My approach in being open about this is pretty simple. I’m a big guy. It’s hard to hide that if you meet me in person. I’m struggling with things everyone else struggles with (except Philip Hutchison — that dude is a rail). Awareness is so important for learning, and fundamentally what I’m working through is a learning problem — I need to develop and mature my sense of awareness about what, how and how much I eat and exercise.
RE: weighing everyday, that’s what the Wii Fit is meant to support. Great way to track progress, too, and very fun to play.
I knew I bought that Fit for something. I guess it’s time I started using it. As of today, you’ll see an entry for my Wii Fit activity. Done.
Wow! 10 pounds is major success in anyone’s book!!!
You’ve taken the ‘do it with someone else’ suggestion into a whole new direction (for me at least) and I am impressed. I need to do the food monitoring thing, though since I eat practically nothing that comes with a barcode, I’ll have to be extra honest
thanks for sharing, and keep up the good work.
heh… the “do it with someone else” notion — it’s not like I didn’t try to do it with people who are actually physically near me. One guy on DailyBurn is, but he’s literally 100lbs less than me and training for another marathon — there’s just not much we’re going to do together in a gym as we’re on completely separate planes (for now).
Going virtual in some ways makes it easier to do asynchronously, and you can get the visual of how they’re doing and how much they’re doing and that’s a motivator for me. Or a clue to kick them in the butt to do something.
I’m defintely happy about the 10lbs, but right now I feel like losing the weight is just easier — it’s the newest weight. There’s a whole lot of weight that’s been around a lot longer and that’s gonna be harder to take off. Not sure of the actual biomechanics in this theory, but that’s my theory.
At any rate, Steve, thank you SO MUCH for all your encouragement and support. It is so very very needed to have the courage to stick with it through bad days to know both that people really want you to succeed; and because you’re sharing what you’re doing, you are accountable to others to share what’s going on. Helps keep you on the path both intrinisically and extrinsically