February Nutrition Goals

As promised, here are the nutrition goals for February (hopefully monthly goal declarations can be short enough to be a single 'blog post in the future - but in this case, Umstead is looming like an 800-lb gorilla.)

background in five pictures
Once upon a time, I weighed 400 lbs.


Then, in 1999, I lost a lot of it, bottoming out at 300lbs.


By 2004, I had gained about half of it back, probably to over 350lbs.


And in 2007, I lost a lot again, bottoming out at 270lbs.


Since then, I've fluctuated between 285 and 305.


September 2009
I decided in September that I've had enough of the fluctuation and turned to an Ultrarunnin' Registered Dietitian to give me a meal-plan that would prepare me for Umstead. She came through, and I was doing awesome for a couple of weeks, losing 10-15 lbs in a short amount of time. But even now, a familiar story returned - my discipline waned and I stopped sending updates to the dietitian. Before long, I had regained the weight I lost with her, and Thanksgiving/Christmas were taking over my attention, with predictable results.

January 2010
With the initiation of a planned year-long running streak, I paid a little more attention to nutrition, trying to eat healthy and limit calories - but when training hard, the balancing act between "caloric deficit" and "nutrition required to support training" is really difficult to maintain. I wasn't just jogging a half hour per day but rather red-lining most of those workouts; running them as hard as I could. That kind of training takes energy, and I wanted to make sure I got enough of it. But, try as I might, I apparently still could not maintain a significant caloric deficit, as I lost a little bit of weight, but not nearly enough to reach my goals.

I know what you're thinking the obvious answer to this was. I knew it too, but for some reason I ignored it. But by the end of the month I was frustrated enough to pull out the meal plan that the dietitian gave me. And I resolved that, from now until Umstead, I would follow it to the letter. Not only did it work last fall, it also was developed by a licensed professional who knew what she was doing. By not following the advice that I had paid her to give me, I just wasn't being rational.


Let's face it, irrationality is the largest reason people are obese.

Goals for February

So, here are my nutrition goals for February.

1. Follow my dietitian's meal plan
2. Log every food I eat. on paper.
3. Plan every bit of food I eat

I will do this every day, without exception, from now (Feb 3) until March 1.

New entries for Steve's blog are published every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday at 10:00am NY time and can be seen at http://www.tursi.com