I got to chat with Jared last Thursday on a conference call with four other bloggers: Courtney from My Dallas Mommy, Julie from Wii Mommies, Mindi from Moms Need to Know, and Jessica from Fringies…Knitting with One Needle. I also want to apologize to them because I was the moron who kept accidentally hitting buttons with her cheek for the first 10 minutes. As I said, I’m thirty now and can no longer operate technology.

The roundtable nature of the interview created a nice conversational atmosphere, and we got to learn a lot about Jared, his foundation, and his training as he prepares to run the New York City Marathon on November 7. (Good luck, dude!) Jared seems like a nice, down-to-earth guy, who’s still grateful for all the opportunities Subway has given him. Here’s what he had to say on a variety of topics, based on my notes and questions he answered from all the bloggers. (And I admit, I stole most of my questions from your comments on my last Jared entry.):

How do you maintain your healthy eating and training schedule while traveling for Subway gigs?
“It is by far the hardest challenge,” Jared said. When you travel, especially for business, you have to remember you’re not on vacation. You have to make healthy eating a priority. Jared tries to ask about what restaurants he’ll be eating at so he can prepare in advance. He orders sauces and dressings on the side, but the key is to stay “mentally strong.”

You’re very recognizable as the Subway spokesman, but do you ever eat at competitor’s restaurants like McDonalds or Pizza Hut?
Jared laughed and said he doesn’t go to any quick service restaurants because they don’t serve food he wants to be eating. He also said that he’s aware that the Subway spokesman probably shouldn’t be seen at those places. “You don’t want to see me under the golden arches.” However, he wanted us to know he doesn’t eat Subway for every meal. When he eats out, it’s at sit-down restaurants.

How did you become the Subway guy?
Believe it or not, Jared didn’t have a 5-year-plan or 10-year-plan to become the Subway spokesman. He was a business major at Indiana University when a friend wrote an article about his weight loss for the paper. That led to more articles and television interviews until the Subway spokesperson opportunity came up. When he graduated, he had to decide if he wanted to keep pursuing the Subway gig or get “a real job.” He decided to stick with Subway as long as it was still fun and he wanted to do it.

When I trained for a half-marathon, I had to take some days off for injuries. Have you faced any obstacles like that in your training?
Yes, running is completely new to Jared, but he knows you have good days and bad days. The important things is to have the mental will to push through the bad days. He’s fortunate that he hasn’t had any knee problems like I did from damage I did when I was overweight. He’s come to like running, and plans on continuing to run 5-8 mile distances after the marathon. He’s never gotten the runner’s high, but he loves the feeling of accomplishment he gets at the end of a long run.

What has training for the marathon been like?
“Twenty-six miles is a very, very, very long way to go.” Jared has been building up to the distance and has successfully completed several shorter races, including a half-marathon. He says he breaks it up mile by mile. He allows himself 20-30 seconds of walking at each mile. That’s time he uses to drink fluids and mentally recharge. He’s also got a watch with GPS, heart monitor, and pace intervals that he uses to monitor his progress. He’d like to finish the marathon in about 5 hours, but his real goal is to simply complete it no matter what his time.

What advice do you have for other who want to lose weight?
Phase 1 is losing weight. Phase 2 through infinity is keeping the weight off, which is much harder than Phase 1. “Until they create a carrot stick that tastes as good as a mozzarella stick, it will be difficult.” The key is to find exercise that is fun to do and not a chore.

Congrats on your recent marriage! Is your wife a runner? Does she go on training runs with you?
Jared’s wife is not a long-distance runner, but she leads an active life. Sometimes she’ll run a mile with him on a training run and then turn back home. She’s been very understanding of his training schedule. Jared admits, “I’ve seen my trainer this year a lot more than my wife.”

What are some of the best experiences you’ve had as a result of being the Subway guy?
Jared’s gotten to attend the Superbowl for several years, which he loves as a big sports fan. He also enjoys meeting with Little League teams. He got to meet President George W. Bush when he was in office, and Bush told him that at the Texas ranch he’d often ask the secret service guys to run out and get him Subway sandwiches. Jared also got to meet President Obama before he was president, but after the Democratic Convention speech that made him famous. Jared was walking down a hallway and recognized Obama, but wasn’t going to bother him. A few seconds after they’d passed he heard Obama say, “Jared?” They then had a conversation and Obama said he likes how Subway is toasting their subs now.

Can you talk about your foundation?
The Jared Foundation aims to stop childhood obesity. Jared particularly emphasized that he wants to find techniques that actually work, and not just ideas that sound good but have little impact. They’re starting a pilot program in Indianapolis (where Jared lives) in which they’re handing out pedometers to school children and challenging them to reach a certain number of steps.

You’ve been doing this for around 11 years now. What question do you get asked a lot that you’re absolutely sick of answering?
Jared laughed and said one common misperception people have is that he only eats Subway. He wants us to know he does eat other foods. He also feels lucky that people still care, and he hasn’t had to get a “real job” yet.

And where did you get those cool specs?
Jared laughed. “They’re Burberry.”

Thanks to Jared for taking the time to talk to us! As part of the Subway Commit to Fit program, I’m giving away a $25 Subway gift card. To enter, post a comment below listing what your favorite Subway sandwich/cookie/wrap/salad/whatever is. You must be a US resident to enter. The contest ends at 11:59pm on Thursday, November 4, 2010. Winner will be drawn randomly. For more information about the Commit to Fit program and for a chance to win up to $26,200, visit the Subway Facebook page.

This is the last Diet Dr. Pepper I had. The photo is date-stamped for August 5th, which means I’ve been off of sodas for…hmmm…let’s see…FAR TOO LONG!

I’ve had an on-again, off-again relationship with soda dating all the way back to our first break-up in 2004. If diet soda were a person, all my friends would be telling me to ditch that guy for real this time because he’s no good for me or my teeth. Then I’d reply, “But he can be so sweet and bubbly! You don’t know him like I do!” I know in my head that he’s no good for me, but my heart (or my tongue) just can’t say no.

This time around the dissolution of our partnership was ordered by my new headache doctor. New state, new neurologist. He’s making me avoid artificial sweeteners and preservatives because they can inflame your nervous system and___________ (fill in the blank with the bazillion reasons I know fake foods aren’t good for you, but that I don’t want to hear).

Anyway, I have no reasonable counterargument to convince either my doctor or myself that TV dinners and Nutrasweet are headache reducers, so I’ve been enforcing the diet restrictions as he prescribed…mostly. He wants me to go off coffee too and I haven’t yet sit down with Mr. Coffee to serve him our divorce papers.

Do you know what I’ve been drinking? Water. Just water! For days and days and days! It’s been AWFUL. I have to get up and pee in the middle of the night because of all the water I’m drinking.

Even though I know these diet changes are probably good for me, I miss my fake foods! Plus, preservatives and artificial flavorings are in everything! When you read the labels, you discover they add them to yogurt, ketchup, bread, soup and practically everything at the grocery. Eating only “real” foods is hard, and much more labor intensive. And even though I know diet changes like this help some headache sufferers, I went through this song and dance two years ago and saw no results, so I get the feeling all this work and suffering is going to do nothing for my suffering.

I figure, I will try this for a month and when it doesn’t do anything for my headache I shall schedule a consultation with my favorite doctor: Dr. Pepper.

Disclosure: I received a free copy of this book to review.

Savor: Mindful Eating, Mindful Life is a Buddhist guide to healthy living and weight loss co-authored by Thich Nhat Hanh and Dr. Lilian Cheung. The former is a Zen master whose name looks like a word scramble of the phrase “Ninth hatch, hah!” Odd name aside, it must be pretty bad-ass to put the words “Zen Master” on your business cards, assuming Zen masters have business cards. Dr. Cheung is a lecturer and director of health promotion at the Harvard School of Public Health’s Department of Nutrition. It must be pretty bad-ass to put the word “Harvard” on your business card too. Dr. Cheung is also a student of Hanh, who is a well-respected Buddhist monk.

I’m always slightly hesitant to read diet books because many of them retread the same ground. If you’re going to write a diet book, you’d better have something new to say or say it in a new way. Savor certainly meets those standards, presenting a plan for healthy living using the principles and truths of the Buddhist religion. The first half of the book is aptly titled, “A Buddhist Perspective on Weight Control,” and relates several philosophies of Buddhism, such as the four noble truths, the four nutriments that sustain us, and the four foundations of mindfulness. (You’ll have to read the book for more info on all that.) The second half, titled “Mindful Action Plans,” gives specific information on how to live a healthy life and how to incorporate that knowledge with the concepts related in the first half.

I found myself liking Savor, though probably more for the Buddhist concepts than for any information on carbohydrates. The theme of the book is that you should live your life mindfully. Savor every moment and sensation, every bite of an apple you eat, every breath of air you take in. Buddhists believe everything in the universe is connected and interdependent, so a weight problem is not something isolated to be fixed on its own, but part of the complex system of your emotional life, your society, and your thoughts. Your weight needs to be inspected and tended to on all those levels. By being present, aware, and observing yourself, you can recognize your suffering, find its root, and transform it into joy and inner peace.

Like I said, it’s very Buddhist.

A few ideas particularly clung to my mind:

• One, that we are driven by “habit energy” in our lives, like a rider on a horse. “Where are you going?” someone will yell at the rider, who responds, “I don’t know. Ask the horse!” Savor asks you to look at behaviors in your life that are habit, and like the horse are taking you somewhere out of your control.
• The authors also used a term, “sangha,” which refers to a group of like-minded people that help each other. Like the blogosphere! We’re our own little sangha, I guess.
• Interestingly, one of the relaxation and breathing exercises in the book is pretty darn similar to a technique the behavioral psychologist at my headache clinic taught me.

One other thing that really made me dig this book was the use of wise-sounding analogies. I am a sucker for stories about a lotus in the mud or parents who eat their child’s flesh. Um, ok, maybe not the latter. But seriously, the parables made me think of concepts in a different way. Buddhism seems to be very much about accepting yourself, the bad and the good, and using the bad to foster the good, like you use trash in a compost heap. (Their analogy, not mine.) I guess I’m just a sucker for spiritual self-examination, particularly now that I’m almost 30 and trying to figure out what the hell I’m going to do with the rest of my life and what is the meaning of everything anyway if eventually all the stars will die and no one will exist to remember anything that happened on planet Earth, even though we all thought our lives were oh, so, very important at the time, but are basically an insignificant blip in the cosmos, like the life of that ant I just smashed into the carpet.

So, uh, back to the book.

Overall, I’d give it 3 out of 4 stars, because Buddhism seems to be big on the number four. It’s given me a lot to think about, and I’ll probably read up more on Buddhism. I’m not sure if it will stop me the next time I want to drive to CVS and buy a bag of M&M’s, but if it doesn’t, at least I’ll be mindful of what I’m doing.

You can buy Savor on Amazon.com. You can find a full list of the Savor blog tour stops here on the TLC Book Tours web site.

I know many of you were waiting to hear about my experiences on week three of The Beck Diet Solution, but after putting off the entry for longer than it would have taken to complete the first three weeks over again, I realized I have no desire to continue the plan. I think it has some merit, but I don’t want to spend that much time thinking about my weight, my food, and my fitness every week. Not right now, anyway.

Beck burnout seems to have occurred to other people before. It makes me wonder if there is a secret chapter in the middle featuring a wonderful surprise. I heard of a software company that offered a free $100 bill to the first person who actually read their terms of service to find the offer. Dr. Beck might give away free ponies in chapter 32! I’ll never know. If you’re looking for someplace to discuss the book, it looks like Prior Fat Girl has a discussion page set up.

After ditching Beck, I read my One More Time in 2010 post again and thought, “Man, I was really fired up! Did you see how fired up I was?!” That’s all good, but I’ve simmered down from the fireworks and transitioned into a slow burn instead. I am content to do it the slow way, or even the super-slow way. I was listening to the Two Fit Chicks podcast this weekend, and Shauna, aka DietGirl, mentioned that she spent five years reaching her goal weight. That made me stop and look at my iTunes for a few seconds thinking, “If it takes me five years to lose fifty pounds, that’s fine. As long as I keep heading in that general direction, I don’t care how much time it takes.”

Back when I hit 235 pounds in 2006, which is a bit higher than my current weight, but not by much, I wrote:

“I could never lose another pound and I would honestly be happy with my body. Wow. There are girls who look 10 times better than I do who wouldn’t be able to say that.”

And amazingly enough, that’s still true. My current size doesn’t limit my lifestyle. I can buy clothes. I can walk around without getting winded. I probably have a higher risk for diabetes and other obesity-related diseases in the long term, but, well, no one’s perfect and I have to die of something. I’m going to hold the line and slowly push towards a lower weight, but it CANNOT be the sole topic on my mind night and day. And lately, it has been on my mind way more than I’d like for it to be.

When I first lost weight, I was doing it for myself, to make my life better. This go round however, it’s been more about other people. There was a man at my old workplace, Joe Anonymous, who had lost a few hundred pounds via weight loss surgery, but had recently gained back seventy of those pounds. A few of my coworkers and I passed him as he got off the elevator. As soon as the doors closed, one person said, “That was Joe Anonymous. He had weight loss surgery, but he’s gained a lot of weight back.” Immediately, I felt sorry for Joe Anonymous, not just because he’d gained back some weight, but because I doubted we were the first group of people to talk about him in the elevator. He wasn’t morbidly obese anymore; he was much thinner, but evidently not thin enough. I didn’t want people to talk about me that way in elevators, focusing only my body and comparing it to how big or small it’s been before.

The only bad thing about my current weight is all the time I spend thinking about what other people think about my weight. It’s a problem caused only by itself, like a snake eating it’s own tail. It’s a cyclical worry cycle, and I’m getting dizzy spinning around and around in my head all the time. I’ve wasted so many hours worrying about food, the scale, what I ate, what I should eat, and nagging myself to exercise, all because I’m worried people might be disappointed about how big I am if they meet me. Aaaaaaah!! It hasn’t been about about me and my health, it’s been about other people.

That’s why when I’ve gained a few pounds, I freak out a bit and feel like I should do something drastic, because WHAT WILL PEOPLE THINK?! When really, I should just chill out, and get over myself. People don’t think of me half as often as I think they do, and people who judge me on my weight aren’t people I want to like me anyway. I should just get my slow burn on and take care of myself for my own sake, not because I want people I don’t know to like me. It’s so easy to make up a reason that I should be ashamed of my weight. At my thinnest, I worried I was still fat. Now that I’m fatter, I worry that I’m not thin. It’s got to stop. There’s no way to win.

Lately, I feel like I’ve been running for mayor of Crazytown. I’d really like to retract my bid for that office because I don’t want to fritter my life away worrying, especially worrying about what people think of me. I don’t want to get ginormous again either, so I’ll always have to monitor my weight to some extent. I wish I could magically maintain my weight without thought or effort, but that’s not going to happen. I’d like to find a happy medium where I’m spending some time thinking about my healthy living habits, but not so much that I wind myself up over it or feel like I have to justify my choices to the rest of the world. I would like my weight to be between me and myself, not me and the world, but I also know it’s my own damn fault for writing a book and a blog about it.

Which is all to say, The Beck Diet Solution isn’t the solution to my problems right now. Chilling out and getting over myself, probably is. If I lose weight, it has to be for me, not for you. You can talk about that in the elevator if you want to.

PastaQueen goes to Applebees, but doesn’t eat any apples.

Disclosure: Applebee’s sent me a free gift card to try their menu.

“Is that the Mortal Kombat theme?” I asked my brother as we waited for my mom to meet us for dinner at Applebee’s.

“No, it’s that song, Twilight Zone by 2 Unlimited.” My brother used to DJ and has an encyclopedic knowledge of dance tunes.

“Oh, wow. It’s like 90′s night here,” I said. We’d already heard One of Us by Joan Osbourne and Adia by Sarah McLachlan. I was starting to have flashbacks to high school, when I’d lay in bed listening to WDJX with a blank cassette in my tape player, ready whenever I felt the need to slap the record button to capture a song I liked. This was before Napster.

“Yeah, they’re probably playing this stuff because people your age are having kids and bringing them to Applebee’s,” my brother, the business and marketing major, said. I sat dumbstruck for a moment as I thought about all my high school friends on Facebook whose profile pictures included babies and toddlers these days.

“Oh my God. You’re totally right,” I said. “I’m ancient.”

My mother showed up soon, before I shriveled up and died of my old age. She arrived just after a table of ten across from us left. Their party included several toddlers who were all loud enough to ensure promising futures in the bingo calling industry. Their departure made our dining experience more pleasant than it would have been otherwise. We got down to ordering some food that was on the house because of the free gift card an Applebee’s representative sent me.

Applebee’s has an Under 550 Calories Menu and the restaurant also lists the Weight Watchers points for several of their entrees. This can be handy for anyone watching what they eat. I always feel like I’m playing roulette when ordering off of most restaurants’ menus, trying my best to guess what is low-calorie. Unless you have a web browser handy to search the Internet for nutritional info, it can be hard to figure out what is the best item to order. You can view the Applebee’s menu here.

We started off our meal with a Spinach & Artichoke Dip appetizer, which was tasty, as most cheese-based items are. My mom ordered the Spicy Shrimp Diavolo, my brother got the Pecan-Crusted Chicken Salad, and I ordered the Grilled Dijon Chicken & Portobellos. My mom liked her dish, but warned us that it was definitely spicy. My brother was less impressed with the salad and said the chicken tasted like it’d been microwaved. I was satisfied with my meal, though it wasn’t anything worth swooning over. The broccoli was a bit crunchy and it wasn’t all that much better than a TV entrée. My mom ordered the Chocolate Mousse for dessert, which came in a small cup that she said was just the right size. And really, it’s hard to go wrong with chocolate. Mmm, chocolate.

When the bill came, I was able to cover the cost of the appetizer, three entrees, a dessert and the tip with the $55.00 gift card I received, which was rather impressive. Applebee’s is definitely an affordable choice if you want to take the family out or don’t feel like cooking for yourself. When I looked around the restaurant, I saw a lot of families with kids, so it’s probably a good choice if you have kids and don’t want to get nasty looks if they start acting up.

So overall, the food was mediocre, and it wasn’t quite the atmosphere I would personally go for, but I think they have a niche that appeals to a lot of people. I liked that I left the restaurant knowing I hadn’t binged horribly. The best part though, was just hanging out with my family for the night, laughing and catching up. On that level, Applebee’s definitely hit the spot.

Previously on PastaQueen.com!

PastaQueen regained fifty pounds during a period of chronic pain and depression, but vowed to lose the weight one more time in 2010. She bought a copy of The Beck Diet Solution, a cognitive therapy program, and is reporting on the results each week. Unfortunately, due to thee days of nausea induced by the H1N1 vaccine, she put off Day 8 of the plan for three days, which ironically is called, “Create time and energy.”

Day 8 – Create time and energy

Once I finally found the time and energy to read this chapter, I was tasked with writing a schedule for when I would exercise and complete other activities necessary for weight loss. As a freelancer, my schedule is pretty flexible, so it wasn’t hard to schedule time to exercise. I also decided I can spend two hours on Saturday or Sunday planning and preparing dinners for the week to get it all over with at once.

Day 9 – Select an exercise plan

I’m going with The 10-Minute Total Body Breakthrough as I blogged about earlier. I’m hesitant to do too much at once in regards to exercise. This is a chronic illness thing. We can’t upset the balance!! My goal most days is to simply maintain an equilibrium. If I can get through a day without feeling like crap, it’s been good day. I don’t have to feel super-duper great, just ok is fine with me. I’m afraid to rock the boat by trying to do too much at once and radically changing my schedule by, say, suddenly training for a marathon.

Of course, exercise is ultimately good for your health and I know it would be beneficial in regards to my illness, so I should stop making excuses and just do it. That’s why I’m starting with a 10-minute plan. It’s better than nothing and doesn’t seem totally overwhelming.

Day 10 – Set a realistic goal

Dr. Beck recommends demands, that your goal be to lose 5 pounds. That’s because 5 pounds is a small, achievable goal which won’t overwhelm you. Once you lose 5 pounds, your goal is to lose another 5 pounds, until you get to a weight you’re happy with.

I understand the reasoning behind this, which is why I set my first weight loss goal to 20 pounds although 50 pounds is my overall goal. So…even though I get what she’s saying, my goal is still to lose 20 pounds, not 5. Sorry, Dr. Beck! To say otherwise would be a lie!

Day 11 – Differentiate between hunger, desire, and cravings

Some of the other days have been pretty easy to do since they’ve only gone over things I already knew, but this one contained some information that made me really think. During the day I had to write down my hunger level on a scale of 1-10 before and after each meal. The exercise was meant to make me focus on whether I was actually hungry or if I simply desired or craved a food. Here’s how each is defined:

Hunger – When you haven’t eaten for many hours and have an empty sensation in your stomach, often accompanied by stomach rumblings.

Desire – You eat a big meal and yet still want to eat more.

Craving – You have a strong urge to eat, accompanied by a feel of tension or an unpleasant yearning sensation in your mouth, throat or body.

Focusing on this topic made me realize I sometimes eat out of desire and not real hunger. I also eat because of cravings, but that ain’t no surprise.

Day 12 – Practice hunger tolerance

On this day you were asked to skip lunch, unless you had medical reasons not to. The practice is supposed to show you that hunger may be uncomfortable, but it is not something to fear. Being a bit hungry won’t kill you, so the next time you’re tempted to eat something extra that is outside of your food plan, this exercise is supposed to remind you that you’ll be ok even if you don’t have that extra cookie.

However, when I mentioned on Twitter that I was attempting this, a few people sent me concerned emails, afraid that I was on a crazy, crash diet or that I had suddenly become anorectic. Thank you for your concern, but I assure you that I enjoy eating far too much to start skipping lunch on a regular basis. Besides, when you think of all the people starving in Haiti right now, it doesn’t seem like a big deal to wait a couple hours to eat lunch. I caved after two and a half hours anyway and made myself a peanut butter sandwich. Yum!

Day 13 – Overcome cravings

Dr. Beck reviews some strategies to overcome cravings in this chapter. At the beginning of the text she says:

The more often you wait out your cravings, the less intense and less frequent they’ll be in the future. Eventually, you’ll experience a craving, and, instead of feeling bad, you’ll feel good. You’ll spontaneously say to yourself, “This is great…I’m feeling a craving, but I know I can tolerate it and it’ll go away…It’s great that I’m tolerating it!” Instead of feeling deprived, you’ll feel good—proud, strong, confident, in control. Dieting will get so much easier.

My response to this was, “Bite me, bitch.” I certainly wish it were like that, and maybe after I practice a lot there is a remote possibility it could become like this, but for real y’all, that just sounds like bullshit. Cravings are not fun. Cravings are CRAZY!! My cravings get the worst when I’m having a bad headache day, a headache day that lasts for at least 16 hours of consciousness, meaning I want to eat some ice cream all day. I don’t foresee myself ever feeling great about not eating the ice cream. Instead, I have long 30-minute debates in my head about why I shouldn’t eat the ice cream vs. how much better eating ice cream will make me feel, because it will.

So, uh, Dr. Beck gives you some of the usual advice about cravings, basically that you should step away from the food, drink some water, and try to distract yourself with something else. There are also some mindset techniques where you’re supposed to recognize and label the feeling as a craving, tell yourself it will go away eventually, go over all the reasons you want to lose weight, and ultimately tell yourself there is no choice, you simply can’t indulge the craving.

I’ve tried these techniques 2 or 3 times this month and…they are only moderately helpful. The truth is, when my head hurts, I want some frickin’ ice cream, and the feeling of pain is NOT going away, sorry Dr. B. I’ve tried distracting myself with video games, which is mildly effective, but cravings just suck and I hate them and that’s about it. I just try to keep the bad stuff out of the house because I rarely feel well enough to drive somewhere for my fix when my head hurts.

Day 14 – Plan for tomorrow

For the last day of the week, you’re supposed to write out a plan for what you will eat tomorrow. Like my cats, I already have a fairly predictable feeding pattern. I wrote it out anyway, with a few snacks having an option 1, option 2, and option 3 depending on what I want to eat. My dinner is the most variable part of the day, so I should start planning those out in advance, probably on Sundays.

End of week impressions

At this point in the plan, I’m getting really sick of reading my weight loss advantages list over and over again. I’ve been getting my email reminders to do so and just deleting them. Perhaps I should just cut back to reading it 3 or 4 times a week? I also didn’t find the advice about cravings all that helpful, since it doesn’t seem to account for people who are in chronic pain.

On the bright side, I have been having much longer debates with myself about my cravings, even if I still lose a lot of the time. I’ve been paying much more attention to the eating experiencing too, focusing on what I’m eating and enjoying it as much as I can instead of mindlessly snacking. I’ve also been more mindful of my hunger, reflecting on whether I really need to eat before going to the kitchen. Also, simply following a new plan has kept my mind focused on weight loss in a way it hadn’t been for awhile.

On to week three!

I will be following the Beck Diet Solution for the next six weeks and blogging about it every Monday. I’m actually at the end of week two right now, but I’ll try to catch the blog up with my real time behavior in the next few weeks. The book assigns you one task a day, letting you gradually change your behaviors little by little until you’ve changed the way you think about food and exercise. Dr. Judith Beck says it’s sometimes ok to do two or possibly three days of tasks in one day, just as long as you don’t overload yourself. The book requires that you keep a journal and sometimes write on note cards as part of the program. As I said before, I’ve already got my Hallmark-approved journal ready.

Each week has a theme, and the first week’s theme is “Get Ready: Lay the Groundwork.”

Day 1 – Record the Advantages of Losing Weight

First off, I had to write a list of the reasons I want to lose weight. I’ll be reading the list at least twice a day, every day, as well as during times I feel challenged. I saved my list in Google Documents so I can access it online anywhere. I also uploaded a few pictures of myself at my thinnest to accompany the list.

This idea sounded pretty dopey to me at first, but it has been helpful to keep me focused on what I want to achieve. I’ve been visualizing the moments I want to achieve in my mind instead of just reading the list by rote. For instance, I have to weigh in at the headache clinic I visit every other month, so I visualize myself stepping on the scale there and having the nurse record a lower weight than last month.

To remind myself to read the list, I set up a calendar in Google Calendars just for reminder events. I set this task as a recurring daily event at two different times, and set each event to email me a reminder one minute before the event. I now get an email twice a day reminding me to read my list with a link to the Google Doc included.

Day 2 – Pick Two Reasonable Diets

You’re supposed to pick a primary diet and then have a backup in case the first one doesn’t suit you. I’m doing the South Beach Diet again, and I put The Zone Diet down as my backup because I like its advice about balancing your carb, protein and fat portions during meals, though measuring that out for every meal seems more complicated than I like.

Day 3 – Eat Sitting Down

Dr. Beck recommends that you only eat when sitting down because it forces you to be purposeful while you eat. A lot of dieters sabotage themselves by standing in front of the fridge taking a few nibbles of something or licking the spoon a few too many times while cooking. If you see everything you’re going to eat laid out in front of you, it gives you a better sense of how much you’re actually eating.

I’ve been doing pretty well on this one, though I grabbed a few walnuts from the cupboards to snack on while I was waiting for a meal to heat up in the microwave. I also tend to take one or two bites of food while I’m carrying it from the kitchen to my chair, which seems like borderline ok behavior, though I doubt Dr. Beck would see it that way :)

Day 4 – Give Yourself Credit

A lot of dieters have problems with negative self-talk, so on this day you’re supposed to give yourself credit for things you do right. I don’t consider myself to be a Negative Nancy or a Debbie Downer, so I skipped this day. I already give myself credit.

Day 5 – Eat Slowly and Mindfully

Ugh. This was by far the hardest day of the week. I love to scarf my food, like a human Hoover. I’ve noticed this about myself for many years, but I’ve never really worked to slow down. There was a guy at my old workplace who was the slowest eater I’d ever seen. He’d literally take twice as long to eat his lunch as I did, taking ten minutes to eat a 6 oz. yogurt cup. One day I tried to pace my eating with him, but I cracked after a minute or two. PastaQueen want food now! NOW!!

So, I’ve been sitting down and focusing on savoring every bit because I can’t eat as much as I’d like to (i.e. the entire contents of the Keebler Elves’ bakery tree). There are still some days when I find that I’ve been mindlessly eating a pear in front of the computer or crunching on carrots in front of the TV. I then have to force myself to pay more attention to the eating experience.

Day 6 – Find a Diet Coach

Accountability is important, so Dr. Beck recommends you find someone to talk to about your dieting successes and struggles. You have to check in once a week, but you can talk more than that if you wish. I found an Internet friend who agreed to be my coach. I love simple days like this!

Day 7 – Arrange Your Environment

For the final day of the week, you have to arrange your environment so it’s optimal for weight loss. Basically, this meant throwing out any leftover Christmas cookies and asking my roommate to keep her junk food in her room so I wouldn’t see it. Otherwise, I already buy lots of healthy foods, and I’ve got vegetables being delivered right to my door every week, so I’m pretty good. Also, because I work from home, I don’t have to worry about arranging my workplace. The cats never run out and buy a box of Panera bagels like my old boss did.

Conclusion

Week one went pretty well. As the weeks continue, I’ll be building on the things I learned this week and checking to make sure I continue observing these behaviors as I learn new skills. I’ll keep you posted!

Those are the things I ate on vacation.

When I stepped on the scale Wednesday morning, I held my breath, stared at the nail hole in the closet wall in front of me, and dreaded looking down when the scale beeped. Then I exhaled and smiled because I had lost four pounds. I suppose all that nonsense about French women not getting fat was true.

Even though I ate all those scrumptious, delectable foods listed above, I also walked so far that my feet hurt at the end of every day. I walked and walked and walked because I knew something old and/or magnificent was hiding just around the corner, like a Metro stop leading back to the hotel. I probably walked 6 or 7 miles every day. I got blisters. I walked and walked and didn’t gain a single pound, even though I ate total crap.

Now that I’ve been back in the states for a week, I have been missing this alternate reality I lived in for 8 days. I very much enjoyed this universe where I was able to eat a chocolate sandwich for lunch and make more room in my jeans on the same day. It has made me wonder on the couch how I could make this reality a part of my daily life, but it occurred to me I’d have to get off the couch to do it. Walking 6 or 7 miles a day would start to get old pretty fast, especially when I wasn’t seeing new and fascinating things every day.

So, I’ll go back to my normal life instead, where I walk 2 miles during my lunch break and my feet don’t always hurt and sadly, there are no chocolate sandwiches for lunch.

I have been studying South Beach for the last few weeks and have decided it’s the path I’m going to follow for a while. My question for you is how closely you followed it especially in phase 1. Did you make every meal he tells you to or did you modify based on your likes and dislikes for food? – Kim

One of the reasons I didn’t say what diet I was following in my book is because I don’t want people think there is only one way to lose weight. If you are on a sane, healthy, balanced diet that results in burning more calories than you consume, you will lose weight. There are lots of plans that will get you there and South Beach is only one of them. I like South Beach, but honestly, I don’t care what you’re eating. (Unless you have a Cadbury Crème egg, in which case – Look! Over there! Something shiny! *PastaQueen steals chocolate-creamy goodness and stuffs it in her face.*)

That being said, I’ve gotten several inquiries into what I eat during different phases of the plan, so I’m just going to share some of the foods I munch on when I’m not swiping other people’s chocolate. I have a list of all the meals, snacks and foods I can eat. When I have a food craving, I can refer to the list for ideas. It helps to focus on things I can eat instead of lamenting everything I cannot eat.

The South Beach Diet book has a list of foods to avoid and to enjoy during both phases of the diet which I used as my guideline. If you’re going to do this plan, you should really just cough up the cash to buy a copy of the book. You can probably get it cheap at a used book store. I didn’t use any of the recipes in the original book, but I’ve used some in other cookbooks I’ve listed here.

Phase 1

Phase one of South Beach is two weeks of a low-carb diet. It’s meant to curb your carb cravings, but I suspect it’s also there because you lose a lot of (water) weight quickly and get valuable positive reinforcement for your efforts. I only managed to do the suggested two weeks of this once when I started in 2005. I tried it again once in 2008 and lasted about 9 days before I cracked and had an apple. What did I eat when I wasn’t dreaming about fruit?

Light mozzarella sticks

Fish (or as my friend calls them, swimmy meats)

Plain yogurt with artificial sweeteners (I don’t care if my babies have 2 heads)

Omelets (lots and lots of omelettes)

Scrambled eggs

Grilled chicken

Green veggies (Broccoli, green beans, spinach, oh my!)

Stir-fry

Lean Cuisines (one of the only TV dinners I’ve found that has low-cal meals without potatoes, rice, or pasta)

Ricotta-based desserts

Roasted veggies

Cottage cheese (sometimes with tuna and green peppers)

Protein shakes

Phase 2

Phase two adds carbs back in, but you still avoid white flour, white rice, and potatoes. It’s also recommended that you stick to veggies, lean meats and other healthy stuff like that instead of eating a whole loaf of whole-grain bread.

Oatmeal

Sweet potatoes (good in muffins and pancakes)

Whole-grain spaghetti

Flavored light yogurts

Hummus

Fruits (sweet, sweet, fruits!)

Couscous

Brown rice

Sugar-Free Fat-Free pudding

The other traditional tips apply. Prepare food in advance. Have it handy so you don’t have an excuse to eat a candy bar. Eat until you’re full, but don’t pig out. If you have to pig out, try to do it on celery sticks. Losing weight is hard. It’s more than just the food you eat, but hopefully this information will at least help you in that area.

Though he has not cured me, I like my allergist very much. I was hesitant at first, sitting in his waiting room which looked like it had not been renovated since the early 80′s. I further psyched myself out as I waited in the examination room reading a chart with about 90 things I did not know you could be allergic to. Then the doctor walked in, an older man who has seen it all and is on the case and poked at the problem from all angles (including poking me in the back). He demonstrated quick knowledge on a breadth of topics, which impressed me. “I haven’t given up on you,” he said, which was nice to hear even if I’ve basically given up on myself. So I’m trying some new pills and getting some new tests.

The allergist also suggested I try an organic diet, which essentially means if you can’t pull it out of the earth, don’t eat it. No artificial preservatives. No artificial sweeteners. No pesticides or growth hormones. “The 21st century may not be good for you,” he said. I’m rather fond of the 21st century, what with the civil rights and the Internet and the ability for women to vote and own property. But I get his point. “You can eat Amish chicken!” he said, which made me wonder where I would find any Amish people around here. I’ve seen hitching posts at the Meijer in South Bend, but that’s three hours away. I suppose I am supposed to shop only at Trader Joe’s now, even though it’s a bit of a drive.

So, I’ve been trying to do this organic diet thing since the weekend, but it is really, really, really, really hard. All the food at the grocery store has fake sweeteners or preservatives in it like my flavored yogurts, my beloved easy TV dinners, and my diet sodas. I’ve been drinking water. Water! And I bought….sugar. Real, organic, authentic sugar. Not Splenda. Not Aspartame. Sugar. It felt so wrong. It felt so dirty. All those calories packed into tiny white crystals in a bag. I may as well have been buying crack.

Then I discovered that Splenda actually is sweeter than sugar. It’s not just their marketing tag line. To get my coffee to taste as sweet as it does with two packets of Equal, I have to use three packets of sugar. So not only am I using more product, it’s costing me 45 calories. Ironically, I only started drinking coffee because it has essentially no calories. Now I’m hooked and it’s costing me the equivalent of one fat-free cheese stick for every cup.

I can’t chew sugar-free gum.

The only positive part of this experience is that the organic apples are sweet and delicious, much better than the wax-coated non-organic ones. But I have to pay extra for the deliciousness. And I don’t even know if any of this will work. Most likely my headache will persist and I will simply be slightly poorer and have eaten more calories. There was a study awhile ago that said artificial sweeteners make you gain weight because they’re not as filling. My only hope is that it turns out to be true and eating real sugar keeps me satiated. I’ve only been doing this a couple days, but I’m willing to accept it might be true. I haven’t been hungry right when I come home as I normally am. This might be because I’m getting real sugar in my coffee, so I’m more full from more calories. I dunno. We’ll see if it continues. It’s weird not eating right when I come home. I want to do it just out of habit.

I still have a headache though, and even if it didn’t, figuring out this organic diet would have given me one.

* Please do not comment on suggest remedies for my headache. I’ve heard it all, y’all and being the 40th person to tell me to see a chiropractor is not going to win you a warm spot in my heart. In fact, it will put you on my shit list.