Food! You are a friend, but mostly a foe

Counting calories has never been a big deal for me. When you're just counting points or calories, you can pretty much eat whatever you want. If I'm allotted 1,100 calories per day, I could even eat a gigantic slab of cheesecake with hot fudge and pecans, which runs about -- you guessed it -- 1,100 calories. So as long as I'm OK with not eating anything else that day, then bon appetit!

My program is not that easy. I have to keep my fat percentage under 20 percent, and I'm amazed at how limiting that is. Forget about all the obvious things: rich desserts, greasy foods like fries and pizza, pretty much anything with cheese in it. But even seemingly harmless things like tuna (mixed with too much low-fat mayo), red meat (that's not lean enough), even Ritz crackers can be a danger.

It's tricky, and it's required me to get creative with my meals. Especially when I go out.

On a diet, you still have to be social. You still have to be able to pick up quick meals on the go. So I thought I would share some of my research with you.

Let's talk about food!

1. Subway. It's the obvious suggestion, so let's get it out of the way. The nutrition info is plastered right on the sneeze-guard. So use it. It's helpful.

2. The Pita Pit. They have a LOT of food that will meet a variety of dietary restrictions. My personal favorite is the chicken pita with veggies and tzatziki sauce. You can go to the restaurant with your order in hand by visiting their website first. You can build your pita with toppings, and it gives you nutrition information as you go.

3. Applebees. Sometimes you'd rather go to a sit-down restaurant and have someone bring you food. Applebees has their under 550-calorie Weight Watchers endorsed menu, which is so helpful. For someone like me who's tracking fat, too, however, you'll want to visit their website with nutrition info. Unfortunately, the steak dishes are too high in fat to work for me. But they have great pasta dishes and a shrimp and rice dish that are delicious.

4. Panera Bread. A restaurant with the word "bread" in the title -- especially when it's as wonderful as Panera's bread -- probably wouldn't jump out as healthy. And certainly, like all restaurants, you can find many things that won't work for your diet. But there's lots that will. I love the Nutrition Calculator on the website that lets you build your meals and get the numbers before you go. May I suggest the vegetarian black bean soup? It's one of my favorites.

5. Noodles. I love Noodles. It's one of my favorite places. And there are various things I can have, especially if I opt for the small size portions (which aren't that small). I love the Japanese Pan Noodles with shrimp or grilled chicken. (The shrimp is zero fat and only 35 calories, by the way.) And the Bangkok Curry, which has a lovely coconut flavor, is one of the lowest-calorie items on the menu as far as the actual noodle dishes go. My favorite thing to order is the regular size Chinese Chop Salad with shrimp. All together, with dressing and everything, it's only 345 calories, and there is a ton on the salad. Lots of crunchy stuff, which is a must. You can find lots more nutrition info on their website.

More food later!
For now, must exercise ...

The gym of the future absolutely ROCKS

At this point, it's not really the difficulty of an hour of cardio that makes me watch the clock tick down. It's the tedium. So ... frickin' ... boring.

Once in a great while I'll hear a pop song loud enough to be heard over the whirring of the treadmills to occupy my attention for three minutes. But most of the time, the Life Center offers a constant buzzing sound and muted TVs with subtitles scrolling across the bottom.

I know, I know. I need a radio. I bought one, but it crackled the whole time I used it and didn't get very good reception. I'm sort of not an mp3 person. And as a friend told me, if I were to bring a CD walkman into the gym it would "look as big as a suitcase" and would draw sneers and laughs from all.

Anyway, this got me thinking today, as I was staring out the big picture windows at cars driving by, about what the perfect gym would be like. Dream with me ...

You'd climb onto an elliptical or treadmill, and a screen would come out of the wall in front of you and wrap around three sides, sort of like the Omnitheatre at the Science Museum -- you're completely surrounded by a screen, and it blocks out your peripheral vision. Then, a virtual menu would appear, and you could choose a course. Maybe you want to walk through alleyways in an ancient Italian city. Maybe you want to take a jog through Central Park, or climb up the Eiffel Tower. For the more adventurous among us, they could choose the rainforest voyage, and hike through rural Brazil, avoiding giant spiders and snakes along the way.

And the virtual system would read our hydration level, and every time we got thirsty, an ice cold water bottle with a straw would appear and give us a drink.

Can you imagine? I'd stay on that darn thing all day. There's no patent pending, so feel free to put this plan into action. I just ask that you give me a free membership for coming up with such a cash cow idea.

Jackie is a tricky one, but I know enough to be scared of her

Fourth session with the lovely Jackie today. I'm starting to learn her tricks, which only makes me more nervous to head to the gym on Mondays and Thursdays.

I now know, for instance, that when she sets up a circuit of four exercises, I will be required to do the circuit three times through. ...Always in threes.

I also know that when I'm toward the end of the third round of one circuit -- sweating and straining and heart racing -- that she will start scurrying around to various corners of the weight room to retrieve items in preparation for whatever hellish circuit she has concocted next. I watch her out of the corner of my eye, ever wary of gaining any sort of comfort or confidence in regard to the props she's collecting.

For example, when she brings over a weight bench, I have learned not to think, "Yes! I get to lay down for my next group of exercises. This will be easy." Today the weight bench was used for reverse crunches, among other things, which are my arch enemy. Anyone pear shaped knows how horribly hard it is to lift your legs up and bring them toward your chest without bracing yourself in any way. I remember watching "The Biggest Loser" in previous seasons and thinking, "Really? You're really grunting like you're in labor on national TV over an abdominal crunch?" Well, today I very much sounded like I was in labor. I think that might have been the reason there were no boys in the weight room today.

The coup de grâce, however, was the stool. Jackie brought over a stool today, like a stool so high I could comfortably sit on it and work at my computer in the office. A stool so high, an adolescent could probably sit on it and swing their legs. A stool so high, I thought, "There's no way she's going to make me step on and off that thing." (Because, in the past, you see, benches and boxes have been used to step onto and kick my legs and step off about a billion times until I could practically cough up blood.)

But, oh, indeed: In a circuit of four exercises, including sit-ups on the BOSU (after my abs were already begging for mercy), calf exercises and arm exercises, she said I had to cross my left leg over my right, step onto the top of the stool and step down, alternating the leg I use, and one time there and back equals one. Do that 10 times. ...And then do the whole circuit three times.

I was a sweaty noodle when the clock struck 8. Never was I so happy to see 8 a.m. in my entire life. But, I got through it.

And having received conflicting information on the scales in the women's locker room and the hallway by the Life Center, Jackie was kind enough to break out the Iron Man scale again so we would know for sure where I'm at. Since my very first weigh-in Jan. 3, I'm down 9 pounds in 2 1/2 weeks.

At first I wasn't sure what to think about this. I'm coming from a place where, when I want to lose weight, I cut down to 500 calories or something, don't do a lick of exercise, and watch the pounds melt away.

Jackie always reminds me: "You know how to cut calories. That's not what we're doing."
She's right. I know how to do it wrong. And wrong works! It works fast! But it DOESN'T LAST. The second you start to eat even a normal, healthy amount of calories, the weight comes back on. So, this isn't about losing 30 pounds in three weeks or something crazy like that. This is about: slow and steady wins the race.

A hard pill to swallow, but having tried Dexotrim, MetaboLife and whatever other fad pill has hit the market, I'm hoping this one will have long-term positive health affects.

I was told there would be no math involved

Today at the gym, I actually caught myself ENJOYING my time on the elliptical at the Y. It only lasted a minute, so let's not get too excited. I still hate exercise, overall. But a minute of not hating it was kind of cool. Then I cranked up the resistance, thinking if I was enjoying it then it must be too easy, and then I hated it again. My trainer would be so pleased.

I'll tell you what I do NOT enjoy: calculating the percentages of fat and carbs in everything I eat. If this is Jackie's way of making me not enjoy eating, then she's an evil genius.

Simple math, you're thinking. How hard could it be?
Well, No. 1, I am a journalist. I like words. I hate numbers.
And No. 2, it's not as easy as you might think. Allow me to demonstrate ...

Every gram of fat in food is equal to 9 calories. Ever gram of carbs is equal to 4 calories, as is every gram of protein.
So, let's say you have a 100-calorie items, which contains 4 grams of fat and 14 carbs. You take the grams of fat (4) times 9 calories and you get: 36 calories of your 100 calorie-item comes from fat. Then you divide 36 by the total calories (100) and you get: .36.
That means, 36 percent of the calories in that item comes from fat. You use the same formula to determine your carbs and protein percentages.

My goal is to keep my fat content below 20 percent of what I eat. This is much harder than it sounds.

Yesterday, I had a cup of fruit, a lean cuisine pizza, a fruit and yogurt parfait, and a Subway salad with green peppers, onions, yellow peppers, fat free sweet onion sauce and tuna.

Seems like a harmless day, doesn't it? Roughly 1,160 calories. Good job, me! ...Not so fast. The tuna is where I went wrong. The fat in the tuna made up 45 percent or so of the calorie content of that meal. So my percentage for the day was 32 percent fat.

This is hard! And it's not fun! And it just makes me not want to eat at all because who wants to do math over a nice turkey sandwich? Not me.

Off to eat an apple ... I'm assuming that's OK, but I guess I won't know until I break out the damn calculator.

Really, really, really bad day

Today was tough. I got to the gym for my Monday weigh-in, having put in 5 hours and 30 minutes of exercise last week and averaged about 1,200 to 1,300 calories per day. I thought for sure I was going to see a smaller number on the scale. I did not. I didn’t lose any weight last week.

Before I could even report this bad news to Jackie, she said, “Your metabolism is shot.” She had taken my food journal home with her over the weekend, and she came to a few conclusions. Anyone my weight, eating the small number of calories I’ve been eating, and doing the amount of activity in the gym I have been doing, would be losing a lot more if their metabolism were in order. But mine is not. The past 18 years of starvation diets for several months and then candy and ice cream for dinner for several months after that -- well, I’ve ravaged my body.

And right now, she said, my body is saying, “I know what you’re up to,” and it’s hanging onto the weight. This is bad news. Getting healthy is still going to happen, she said. But it’s going to be much harder than anticipated. I have to retrain my body how to metabolize food and how to handle exercise.

The program just got more strict. The plan last week was to shoot for about 1,500 calories, and I could spend those calories however I wanted, but I just couldn’t go over. New plan now. Jackie said to shoot for 1,100 calories per day, and there are stricter guidelines that go along with that:

- I have to keep track of the grams of fat, carbohydrates and protein in everything I eat, and I have to calculate the percentage of each in what I’m eating.

- My fat content in my food cannot exceed 20 percent for the day.

- I should be eating as much lean protein as I can.

I was eating a Chipotle bowl every now and again, but that’s out now. I was putting shredded cheese on my salads, and Jackie says that’s a no-no. The goal is to avoid giving my body reserve energy to burn off through fat and empty carbs.

I have to admit, during today’s workout -- which was extremely hard -- I was feeling very defeated. I sort of had that moment of, “Is this really worth it? Why am I even bothering?” And it stings to think of how hard I worked last week for what seems like no reason.

But what I keep trying to remind myself of today is that, more than just weight loss, I’m learning and adapting to a new lifestyle, to a healthier way of living. That should be the focus, and the weight loss and increased strength and flexibility will come as a result ... eventually.

I just have to accept that I’ve really done a lot of damage to myself for more than half my life and correcting those issues won’t happen overnight. No matter how badly I wish otherwise.

My heart's catching up with my mind

This post is for anyone I may have discouraged the past two weeks with my tales of woe. I had somewhat of a breakthrough today at the Y.

Just two Mondays ago, I climbed onto the elliptical, and after the three-minute mark, I was watching the clock, breathing heavy, wondering how long I could keep it up without any resistance. I went about 15 minutes, and by the end, my heart rate was in the 160s.

Today at the Y, I climbed onto the elliptical, resistance set at 5, and instead of watching the clock, I watched HGTV and glanced occasionally down to watch the calorie count climb and climb. It took 15 minutes before I started breathing out of my mouth. It took until the 45-minute mark before my heart rate hit 160. Otherwise, I was cruising at about a heart rate of 145 with a feeling like I could stay on the darn thing all day.

My trainer, Jackie, told me that my body would start to acclimate quickly. I believed her, but I had no idea how fast the cardio would become manageable. It was pretty cool. I'm sure the strength-training will take a bit longer. I've only worked out with Jackie twice, so that will take a while yet. But it was sure nice to actually feel some progress being made.

First of many small victories along the way!

They're not always thinking what we think they're thinking

As a gym newbie often surrounded by physically fit gym veterans, I’ve been spending a lot of time not making eye contact with people. It’s crazy to watch some of these buff and agile women in spandex climb up onto a machine without a lick of disdain on their faces, eager to get a good sweat going. (The look on my face before mounting the elliptical mirrors that of a contestant on “Fear Factor” about to eat a plate of worms.)

Like the other day a woman I recognized walked into the Life Center. She taught step aerobics classes I used to take four or five years ago. A few of the girls called her “Killer Beth” because we’d all be totally out of breath by break, let alone the end of the 45-minute workout. Killer Beth climbed up on an elliptical, cranked up the resistance, and went at it. It looked like she was cross-country skiing away from a polar bear for the better part of an hour, yet still able to keep up a conversation with her neighbor. (My resistance was set at 2, and I looked as if I was taking a leisurely stroll through the park.)

So, needless to say, I keep to myself. Always kind of a little self-conscious. (I’m so American, aren’t I? So sure that everyone in the room gives a crap what I’m doing.)

Then the other day, I’m in session No. 2 with my trainer, Jackie. And it’s going pretty well. But still, I was in the free weight room where mostly big, beefy boys hang out and get buff. And there are usually always a couple of muscley hunks buzzing around, pumping some major iron. That day was no different. There was a guy in there working out, and I couldn’t help but feel like he was snickering to himself watching me poorly handle my 5-pound dumbbells.

I was glad to move back to the Life Center for some other exercises, except I’d forgotten my purple Hannah Montana water bottle in the weight room. I ran back to retrieve it, and as I scooped it up, the guy smiled and said, “My daughter would be so jealous. She loves Hannah Montana.”

I thought, huh, maybe when we assume people are judging us, they’re actually thinking something totally different. Food for thought. Still, I don’t think I’ll be striking up any conversations with my elliptical neighbors. I couldn’t keep it up if I tried.