John LeMasney (lemsy) is an artist, graphic designer, and technology creative. He is located in beautiful Nelson County, VA, but works remotely with ease. Contact him at: lemasney@gmail.com to discuss your next creative project.
So, I’ve gone through a rough time lately. I’m doing very well in most areas of my life, including my nutrition and mental health, but lots of changes are floating about and only time will tell where things will land. In the mean time, I keep counting calories, exercising, and repeating. One thing that has helped me to stay focused is my exercise.
I only do one thing, really: I walk. I try to do 10,000 steps a day, or about 5 miles of walking a day. I don’t meet this goal every day, and some days I do more than 10k, and it all balances out. There are many benefits to walking as exercise:
It’s low impact and it’s unlikely I’ll get hurt while walking.
It’s passive, as I have to walk from place to place, and exercise “just happens”
I don’t have a set time I have to set aside for exercise, nor a membership with a gym, special equipment, or other costs.
I get a chance to think while I walk, and walk while I think.
I see my progress easily, and track my progress easily with a Fitbit Ultra Tracker.
I get to see some beautiful sights while I exercise, like woodland paths, open spaces, and Princeton University’s beautiful campus.
I’ve also just begun learning to meditate, and walking meditation is an easy to adopt practice.
I’m always a bit amazed at how some people so easily dismiss walking as proper exercise, as though one needed to struggle or suffer to exercise ‘properly’. I’ve achieved my 50+ pound loss (so far) exclusively by casual, non-intense walking.
And today, for instance, I spent my time walking and talking with my boys, and so, they were exercising too. We walked for part of the day in Ewing on a preserved space path. We stopped a few times, sat and laughed and talked, and even did some trailblazing. All in all, a very good day.
So, tonight, I had a really great meal. A local Chinese restaurant called Shanghai Park, in the Princeton Shopping Center, always has good food. Tonight, I had a revelation.
I read a book a while back, when I lost my first 100 pounds, and it had a deep impact on me. It’s The Volumetrics Eating Plan: Techniques and Recipes for Feeling Full on Fewer Calories by Barbara Rolls. While I highly suggest that you read it, I’ll give it to you in short here: Eating more vegetables in your dishes will help you to achieve satiation. while preventing you from eating too many calories. I can not tell you how very useful and beneficial this idea is to me, and while it’s common sense, sometimes we leave off the lettuce and tomato when the lettuce and tomato would fill us up better that the rest of the meal alone.
Feeling satiated is a key to my success.
So back to tonight, at Shanghai Park.
I had their choose-3-steamed-vegetables dish with choice of sauce on the side, and choice of white or brown rice. I chose garlic sauce and brown rice, and what came out was essentially three mixed cups of steamed broccoli (30 calories), string beans (30 calories), and snow peas (30 calories).
Chinese dinner
It was delicious, perfectly cooked, where everything still had texture and firmness to it. The vegetables were fresh, the garlic sauce (150 calories) was a perfect accompaniment for dipping, and the brown rice was fluffy and tender. I ate half (100 calories) of the rice from the cup (200 calories) they served me, and left half of it on the table. I had 4 glasses of water thanks to the steady and mindful service, and a full pot of tea (9 calories).
I walked away with a full belly, but not uncomfortably so, and it was all told about 400 calories. I want to do that at least once a week.
Curried cauliflower, egg and corn hash, with lavash bread and French-pressed coffee.
A weight loss expert who I was helping with a technology issue set told me last night, after reviewing my food diary, that I should not be eating corn on the cob, because it’s a “horrible carb”. Sigh. I really reject and resent any nutritional methodology that rejects whole food in any form.
Corn has great fiber, natural sugars, and is a delicious sweet treat with a nice crunch. It’s versatile, and can add those qualities to an otherwise purely savory dish.
I love corn on the cob, sliced fresh and straight into a pan with a bit of salt and garlic and a touch of lime when available. It’s one of the best ways in the world to enjoy about 80 calories. )
I kept saying “No… COB, corn on the COB” until she stopped telling me it was a bad carb. Meanwhile, in her kitchen, she had brownies with icing. I’d rather have the corn. I explained for a moment how despite having fresh corn about twice a week since the season arrived, that I have lost over 50 pounds in 11 weeks. I was not selling her.
If someone removes carbohydrates from their diet, they will very likely lose weight, but in my opinion and experience, they are not losing because of the missing carbohydrates, but rather the missing calories. But I get to have corn, and delicious whole grain breads, and lots of other things I’d be sad about missing. So, please keep your brownies, I’ll take the corn every time.
Swinging with David in the sunshine - lemasney.com
Swinging with David in the sunshine – lemasney.com
DATE/TIME: Aug 7 2012 – 6:30pm – 8:30pm
LOCATION: Technology Center
Spread the joy of your summer vacation by sharing memorable moments with family and friends. Technology Instructor John LeMasney will cover how to upload, organize, and edit your digital photos using Google’s Picasa. Learn how to resize, tag, add captions, create collages, and add special effects. We recommend that students bring a flash drive containing digital photos for use in class. Skill Level: Intermediate
quoted from which you can visit to sign up for this free session.
4 ghosts from Pac Man reimagined - LeMasney Consulting
So on Sunday last, my boys and I went on an unexpected adventure. It started with an afternoon, and ended in a months long project that just began. But before that, as with most great Sundays with my boys, we had breakfast.
JackCoffeeCoffee
Recently, I’ve been watching a lot of TED talks about Food. Jamie Oliver’s 2006 TED wish, to make children more aware of the foods that they eat, was a great and memorable one, in particular. During the talk, there is a segment where he brings out various fruits, and the children are not able to name them properly. This is not fun or funny, it’s scary. They call potatoes tomatoes, and so on. This scared me, that my boys were perhaps not learning enough about food and its effect on their lives, and I decided that I’d find a way to teach them, while maybe learning something myself in the process. I had no idea what form this might take, but it was a kernel of an idea. Get it? Here’s the segment he included in his talk, from his show called Food Revolution.
With the last ten weeks, I’ve grown to love some new foods. This time around, I’ve fallen in love with nuts. Walnuts, in particular, are a superfood, with great and essential fats, and have a crackin’ fun ritual attached to them. (Fun fact: They are about 26 calories each per shelled nut.) But I was making a mess. Every time I worked carefully to get two perfect halves of an English walnut out of its shell, I ended up breaking it into a disappointing pile of broken pieces. I decided to do some research and see how a walnut cracking professional might do it, so that I might get that elusive, beautiful, brain-like nut free in one or two pieces. I found this video on Black Walnut harvesting, which coincidentally showed the best, most swift technique I found of someone cleanly opening a walnut, with, of all things, what appears to be a 2×4.
It was in this video I realized that even my beautiful, brown English walnuts, that I thought of as a whole, unprocessed food, was highly processed to remove a lime green shell of flesh. I realized that I had probably walked over hundreds of walnuts in groves in my life, and had no idea what I was walking upon. I realized that I was the kid in the Jamie Oliver video too.
So, back to Sunday. After breakfast, we went and donated some old clothes that don’t fit anymore to the local Goodwill store, and took a stroll around the house goods section, as we like to do. I picked up a beautiful stainless teapot that looks like it holds a gallon of water for $3.99. Then off to the farmer’s market to see all the fresh local fruits and veg, and to say hi to the former mayor of the town. Then, back to the house for some movies and lunch and hugs and rest in the cool air. I took a pic or two of David wearing my glasses, and he decided he wanted to take some pics of me, and so there was this.
John at 250John at 250David wearing daddy’s glasses
So after that we all decided to take a long walk to the local park for some soccer and other fun. When we got there, lo and behold, there were walnuts in their flesh, littering the ground. I delighted at the synchronicity of this: I had just learned what a walnut really looked like, and found about $10 worth of them sitting on the ground about a mile from my house. It occurred to me that this was a great way to teach the boys about food, and now it’s a project. In the fall, I’m going to come and gather the ripe walnuts and learn about the harvesting, shelling, and drying processes, and teach my boys about it at the same time. These are the commercially scant American Black Walnuts, which have a harder shell to crack than the common English walnut, but they are supposedly a tasty treat.
Jack and David start the Black Walnut projectJack and David start the Black Walnut projectJack and David start the Black Walnut projectJack and David start the Black Walnut project
I got really excited when we found the walnuts and the boys got excited too. It’s infectious that way. I found a brick and started opening the walnuts, and found a few things: bugs using them as homes, soft shells and very wet, floppy walnuts. The things you buy in the store have been thoroughly prepared for you to eat: make no mistake.
So I gathered a bunch of them, we opened a few to investigate, and the rest I’m holding on to in order to learn about the harvesting so that I can get a better yield in the fall. Note that I may very well be breaking the law by taking the walnuts out of the park, but since I pay for it with my taxes, and they’d just be chopped up by mowers and trashed, I don;t think anyone will mind. I’ll find out for sure.
Finally, we took a little ride to dinner, and after the long walk and lots of learning and experimentation, the boys were really tired, and had a nice nap on the way to dinner.
Jack and David take a nap
Can’t wait for the fall to continue to study the life cycle of these delicious treats. Here’s the whole record of our day.
So, I’ve reached two almost simultaneous milestones I wanted to tell you about.
The first milestone is that I reached 250 pounds. That means that I have 50 more to go, and I have lost about 45 pounds since paying close attention to my health and nutrition again. It has been 70 days, or 10 weeks, since I’ve tried to lose weight and improve my nutritional lifestyle, starting at almost 300 pounds. I’m 39 years old, and 6 feet, 2 inches tall. I’ve lost over 100 pounds before, so I feel that this is an exercise more in practice than in theory.
The second milestone is that I’ve maintained 25% body fat percentage (BFP) for a day or two now. 25% is the well-known BFP indicating the high-end of overweight in later adult men. This is significant because, according to these standards, I am no longer obese, but rather overweight, and that is good absolutely fantastic news. According to the studies and findings associated with overweightedness versus obesity, I should see great health benefits if I can keep up this level of health versus an obese one.
I will feel less like I’m carrying a stone around in my stomach. My sleep apnea and skin issues will subside, and I will have more energy to commit to exercise and personal well-being.
However, I do not intend to stay overweight, and I am striving for a BFP of 15%, which is in the middle of the normal range. In other words, I am aiming for a final weight of 200 lb. with 30 lb. being fat. This is a significant point, because according to a different measure of overall health, the Body Mass Index (BMI), I will still be overweight, though I’ve been at 185 before, and I felt uncomfortably thin. People voiced concern for me because of my weight in a new way, and that was not fun either. BMI is often criticized for being less useful for people who are taller or shorter than the average, or who have a greater lean weight (more weight from bone, organs, and other lean material).
10 things I want you to know about how I’m losing about a pound every two days.
I am eating a lot of shelled nuts, fresh fruit, fresh vegetables, natural beverages, like coffee, and very, very little meat or fish.
I am trying to eat whole foods, when possible. Very often a meal or a snack consists of one type of food, like an ear of corn.
I am trying to cook as much of my food as possible, as opposed to leaving it up to someone who does not care as much as me about my health.
I do not restrict any kind of food, but rather prefer lower calorie, natural or close-to-natural foods. I gave up alcohol, which is the only exclusion to this rule.
I eat my adjusted calories as though I was not exercising (now about 1650 kcals), and do not “eat back” more calories from exercise, often 500-1000 calories according to my activity tracker. There is controversy surrounding this idea, but not for me.
I use MyFitnessPal.com to track my calories, and log everything I eat.
I use a Fitbit Ultra tracker and the Fitbit Aria scale to track my calories burned through movement and my daily weight and fat percentage.
I try to remind myself of sensible approaches by reading, researching, experimenting, and repeating. The black walnuts harvest project (planned for a future post) is an example.
I drink at least 64 ounces of water every day, and now crave it if I have not had it.
I eat pizza at least 5 times a week, I have fast food on occasion, I eat packaged, processed foods, I use Splenda, and I ingest about 1/8 ounce of nicotine a day via electronic cigarettes. I am not leading, by any means, the epitome of a healthy lifestyle, but I am happy and satiated. I achieve sensible nutrition, a sweet spot I plan to stay at for a while.
So, here’s to your health, and I wish you the best day.
