Back In The Groove...

We all get lazy from time to time when it comes to diet and fitness. Busyness, lethargy, overconfidence, poor time management - all these things, and others, get in the way of our goals sometimes. I have a goal weight that I want to be at, and I'm not quite there. If you tell yourself enough times, "just once won't hurt me", those instances will start piling up, the clothes will start getting tighter, and the scale will start creeping up. Eating strict 5 days a week and not-so-strict 2 days a week will devolve into 4 1/2 and 2 1/2; then 4 and 3; and if you're not careful, the old behaviors will slip back into becoming habits.

 

I am reminded of a verse which has nothing to do with weight loss, but everything to do with slipping back into old habits: "Therefore we ought to give the more earnest heed to the things which we have heard, lest at any time we should let them slip." (Hebrews 2:1). When I was in Augusta's Biggest Loser, I gave over nearly every waking second of my time, thoughts, and energy to the process of trying to lose weight. I am finding that maintenance requires that same diligence, and I also find myself not wanting to apply it all the time. But I keep reminding myself of where I've been, what I've done, and the consequences of going back; looking through my before and after pictures in my ABL scrapbook keeps me focused on the goal. I have the broadcast of our finale downloaded onto my mp3/video player, and I relive that experience at least once a week while I am walking, running, or working out. I have faithfully kept my appointments at PHC so they can help me monitor my weight. Mostly it's gone well, but today, I feel fat. I look fat. It's definitely one of those times to tighten up the belt, or, as the King James Bible says, time to "gird up your loins".

 

One old habit I have fallen back into is the habit of staying up too late. Daris, one of the finalists on The Biggest Loser, said during the finale that he learned that if you eat supper at 5 PM, and then stay up until 3:30 in the morning, you're going to get hungry, and you're going to eat. I don't stay up THAT late, but midnight - 1 AM is about normal for me. But if the alarm is going to go off at 4:30 so I can be at the gym by 5:00, a midnight bedtime isn't going to be conducive to achieving what I want to achieve.

 

So often we know what to do; actually DOING it is another thing altogether, isn't it?

Fear of Failure...

There may be some heavy folks out there who are as brave as can be, but my experience has been one of "I can't". Not being athletic, talented, or "cool", I was always afraid to try new things. I think having a history of failures creates a fear of adding to that history and reinforcing that poor self-image. When you are used to living like that, it is very difficult to get out of that mindset.

 

Saturday morning, I was brought face to face with that old pattern of behavior, and it was over something silly. It wasn't football, baseball, running, or biking; it wasn't even anything particularly athletic.

 

It was disc golf. I was invited to go play a round of disc golf with some of the guys from church. Here's all the instructions you need to get started: Stand here and throw this round thing. Walk over to it, pick it up, and throw it again. Repeat this sequence until you land the disc in the basket at the end of the hole. I had all the necessary qualifications - I can see, I can walk, I can bend over, and I can throw a frisbee. I was on a roll of doing things I'd never done before (like strap myself into insanely-nauseating roller coasters, running for fun, losing 140 lbs., etc.), and so I willingly accepted the invitation.

 

I left for the park at the appointed time...

 

I almost drove past the park. On purpose. My fear of adding to my legacy of failure had nearly paralyzed me, and I came this close to simply driving on by and running some errands. I actually had to have a conversation with myself, and force myself to go play. Everyone I went to play with was athletic to some degree or another (although, I repeat, this sport takes little athletic prowess). I was the only first-timer in the bunch, and I did not do very well. But it did not matter - I forgot all about trying to be "good", and just focused on having fun, enjoying the fellowship, and getting outside and enjoying a beautiful Saturday morning.

 

Old mental habits and attitudes are extremely hard to break - when we rehearse them, we strengthen them, and deal a serious blow to the likelihood that we will ever do anything to change them. You can change them with time, but studies tell us that it takes many, many positive affirmations to counter the effects of one negative thought. And when that thought has been reinforced over and over through experiences, thoughts, and fears, it can be crippling.

 

After many failures, Thomas Edison said, "If I find 10,000 ways something won't work, I haven't failed. I am not discouraged, because every wrong attempt discarded is another step forward".

 

Weight loss has stopped; the media circus has ended; but I continue to grow and change in ways I never could have imagined.

 

Man, this is fun!

Augusta Chronicle Article

Because there are some people following my blog who aren't on facebook, I am posting the link to the article from The Augusta Chronicle that includes a section about my weight loss. This article ran on the front page of the religion section, and took up nearly the entire page, save for an article by a gay minister (boy, THERE'S an oxymoron), and a small article about religious iPhone apps.

 

http://chronicle.augusta.com/life/your-faith/2010-06-25/many-ministers-struggle-obesity?v=1277495605

The Struggle Continues...

It has now been almost six weeks since the final weigh-in of Augusta's Biggest Loser, and I have been on a schedule of mostly maintenance, with some stricter days thrown in. My weight has fluctuated up and down, which has taken some getting used to after six months of almost steady decline. Since November of last year, any slight gain has thrown me (and the fine folks at PHC) into a minor panic. Now it's just, "I'm up a couple... oh well. It'll come back off." During the competition, I was so focused on trying to drop the weight that I never gave a lot of thought as to how I would keep it off once the pressure of the contest was off of me. So far, it's not been too bad. There have been days I have eaten some things I wanted to - cake on birthdays, a little bite of sweets here and there, and a couple of trips to all-you-can-eat buffets. During the competition they told us to stay away from those places, but now during maintenance, they are telling me that buffets are good choices IF you go in with the right mindset.

 

It really is largely about the mindset in all areas of this journey. I can remember past attempts at weight loss, and I remember what it felt like mentally when I quit. I definitely noticed a difference in my thinking when I was "in gear", and when I just let everything slide back into neutral. Thus far, there has been no regression into neutral thinking. Although my family is sick of it, I still pull up reruns of The Biggest Loser online. I look at my Biggest Loser notebook - my written compilation of my weight loss journey - at least once a week. I watch Jillian Michaels' new show, "Losing It With Jillian". The refrigerator still is full of sugar-free jello, low-fat cheeses, and other, better choices. I guess the closest biblical analogy I can think of is to notice how many times the Bible commands us to "take heed", meaning to give constant attention to what is to follow.

 

One of the comments that was made to me online during the finale of The Biggest Loser was that I had done better than a lot of the people on the show. The other day, I went online and looked up all their statistics. For the season that just ended, there were 22 competitors, and if I had been on the show, and lost exactly the same as I did "at home", I would have done better than 16 of the 22. The only people who had a higher percentage of weight loss than I did were the final four, plus two at-home players. When you consider all the resources available to those who make it onto the show, that's mind-blowing. I cannot say enough about PHC and our trainer, Johnnie Hughes, at The Omni. Several of my friends have tried to do PHC's program in the past, and I don't know what caused their experience to be less than successful, but as far as I am concerned, those people are THE best at what they do. Are they perfect? No - no one program is perfect for everyone; we expressed a lot of frustration at times during the competition, but this "speed weight-loss" process that we went through means there's much less time for course correction. It wasn't a matter of "let's try this for a week and see what happens" - it was often literally a day-to-day change, with lots of experimenting. If something didn't work, they re-wrote the plan, or threw it out and started over. So anyway, that's my PHC commercial for the week.

 

Speaking of which... new PHC commercials should begin airing in the next few days. I will put a couple of them online later on; if you follow me on facebook, they will be up there (I do this not for vanity's sake, but because of the many friends and family that do not live in the Augusta area, and would not see them otherwise). In other media, there will be an article in the Augusta Chronicle "Your Faith" section about pastors, the church, and obesity, for which they photographed and interviewed me extensively. Hopefully something I said will make it into the article, as he interviewed several other pastors, as well. I think the last little bit of media will be CSRA Active Magazine, which said they would profile the winners in the next issue, but I have not heard from them yet. The commercials will air for the next year, I'm sure, but all the "new" will be off of them long before then. I wrote my final article for the Baptist Bible Tribune last night and fired it off to the editor. Hopefully the experience I've had and the journey I'm on will inspire someone who needs a little push and a little hope.

 

P.S. - Put on 3 pounds over Father's Day weekend / fish fry; lost all of them plus one extra for good measure. Current weight at PHC is 212, five pounds below my "danger weight". I'm small enough now that I can tell when I'm up 3 pounds, and it didn't feel very good at all. Would like to drop another four or five soon.

 

 

Weight Loss vs. Maintenance

Just a few thoughts on the topic of weight loss vs. maintenance: which is harder?

I keep going back and forth on which one is more difficult. Obviously I have had great success during the weight loss phase, and maintenance thus far has not been difficult. But in the last few days, I have let out a little more slack in the line, so to speak, and I think I have hit a spot that may turn out to be tougher to navigate than I originally anticipated. I have discovered a few tendencies that I need give more attention as I go through this stabilization process:

1. I have discovered that if I put on an unusually high amount of weight in a very short period of time, it's usually sodium and water retention issues, not fat. I can usually fix this by making sure I get extra water.

2. For me, the discipline of saying "no" is easier than the discipline of saying, "yes, with limits". Refusing to eat certain foods takes a set of blinders, but it's pretty easy to shut that stuff out. Limiting portion sizes, or knowing when to say "when", requires much more focus and discipline. I've mostly done OK with this; this past weekend brought several occasions of eating "freestyle" - a couple of birthdays, an out-of-town trip, and a couple of fast-food meals. I've not made "horrible" choices; but I can notice the cumulative effects of eating some things I have not been eating. Now it's time to see if I can get the train back on track, as I am pushing against the upper limits of where I should be pounds-wise.

3. I have not been burning calories like I was previously - last week we were at camp all week, and then out of town yesterday, and today was pretty ugly as I only got about three hours of sleep last night. So I have not been to the gym in about 12 days, and I can tell it. My energy level is down a little, and my running has lost a little (although I ran in the Six Flags parking lot yesterday, and didn't do too badly, considering I had been walking through the park for 9 hours before that, and it was brutally hot). So tomorrow morning, my schedule will be undergoing an adjustment - up at 4:45, in the gym by 5:30, an hour of work there, then a dash home to get ready for work, take my daughter to her job, and then back to the church to begin my day of work, hopefully by 8:00 AM, or shortly thereafter.

4. The standard has changed a little bit - during ABL, the only scale that mattered was the digital scale we weighed on every Monday night. Now, the only scale that matters is the one scale I totally ignored for six months - the scale at PHC, the weight loss center. I still don't really track that one too closely, because if I keep my scale at home well within my safe weight range, I will be okay at PHC. There was a little panic for me this morning, as my scale got up to around 216, up from 209 just 48 hours earlier. But seven pounds in 2 days is water weight, mostly, and it should come off fairly easily as I up my water intake and tighten the reins back on my diet.

Today, four of us "losers" had to go to a media production studio to shoot video and record a few sound bites for TV and radio spots for PHC. Nandy and I were on the call sheet, of course, as were Lisa and her son Tanner. I hope it went okay... the production people noted that I had "done this before", as my calling as a minister of the gospel frequently puts me in the position of speaking publicly. I also have done some amateur production work of my own, recording narration, voiceovers, and other bits of audio and video for various reasons. I hate hearing my own voice (who doesn't?), but hopefully my efforts were adequate for their purposes. Nandy is so bubbly, and that really comes across well on camera; Lisa is very well spoken, and does very well on TV also. I basically did it all through a walking coma, as I have a total of approximately 6 hours of sleep since Saturday night (it's currently Tuesday). But I was happy to help PHC any way I could; even if I were not contractually obligated to do appearances such as these sessions, I would still do them. These folks gave up a lot of time and attention to make sure that we losers were taken care of, and gave us the knowledge and tools to change our lives. I will be doing some work for them in the future - website updates, probably some graphics work, and hopefully, some opportunities to help some of their clients.

The Ups And Downs Of New Clothes...

One of our speakers at camp this week asked me, "What have you done for clothes during your weight loss? Obviously your sizes changed frequently..." I told him that I had to shop cheaply - Walmart, Kmart, Goodwill, etc. Now that my size has settled off and stopped changing every month, I have collected a few more articles of clothing than I had during the contest. I have tons of workout t-shirts, a few pairs of shorts, enough shirts and slacks to get me through a week at work... but one area is, sadly, rather skimpy.

 

Suits. The uniform of the ministry. Well, in our church, and in most like-minded churches, anyway... one of my facebook friends posted pictures of himself preaching in blue jeans and an untucked, button-down shirt - we at our church probably couldn't get away with doing that. I guess there are advantages to starting your own church - you can set the "rules" (or at least, the expectations) as you go. Regardless, coats and ties are what those of us in leadership at our church do, and I'm okay with that. I would personally feel uncomfortable preaching a Sunday morning service in less formal attire, but I'm not here to throw stones at anyone for how they choose to dress on the platform or in the pulpit. I suppose there could be a stewardship argument made for simpler dress - the apostle Paul might have chosen a $15 shirt and a $20 pair of slacks over the indulgences of expensive suits that cost hundreds of dollars. But anyway...

 

I purchased a new suit last month in preparation for our Biggest Loser finale. It was a pretty big expenditure for me - but a lavish change from the sport coats and casual slacks I had been wearing for the previous six months. However, it has become painfully obvious that I have exactly one suit, and it makes an appearance every other week. Now, our church takes good care of us, and I have no complaints whatsoever. A complete wardrobe change, however, is not part of our usual monthly expenses, and I feel guilty about purchasing clothing when the van needs repairs, the air conditioner is on its last leg, as well as all the other expenses that we all have from time to time.

 

This evening my wife asked me, "I'm going to Goodwill... wanna go?" Frequently I don't want to go... the women's clothing section takes approximately five times as long to go through as the men's section. But I said I'd go (I haven't seen her since Monday, except for Wednesday night), and so we climbed in the car and made the trek to Evans (about 12 miles away) to go to the "good" Goodwill. I went to the men's section to look through the single rack of suits and jackets they had. A lot of the items looked familiar - I have seen the same items on many trips to this store. Seeing as how I already have a navy blue blazer, I don't need a tuxedo, and double-breasted suits refuse to make a complete comeback, there wasn't much left to browse through. A solid gray jacket caught my eye, and I picked up the hanger - 42 long, the label said. My size. I slipped on the jacket, and it fit pretty well. I pulled it off, looked carefully at the coat and the pants that accompanied it. No flaws, no wear patterns, no nothing. Just a suit, in excellent condition. I nearly ran to the dressing room to try on the slacks - bingo! I had gone hunting, and had found my prey.

 

Excitement got the best of me, and I returned to the rack to see what else might be available. I knew the odds were pretty slim of lightning striking twice in the same place, but it did. A black suit, this time - a 4-button black suit by some Italian brand, in perfect condition. The pants had been taken in, and were snug at the waist, but closer inspection proved that they could be restored to their original size by an average tailor.

 

For the massive sum of $30, plus dry cleaning and a little alteration work, I have two more complete suits in my closet. God is good!

 

A Week of Temptation...

I have just arrived back home after a week at youth camp. Phone service was very sporadic; rather than continually frustrate myself over a non-existent signal, I decided to not write anything until I returned home.

 

My new relationship with food was cast into a stark light this week. Our camp always has the most amazing meals, for a camp. I've been to camps where breakfast is cereal and toast; we serve, on various days, pancakes (not the frozen kind, but straight off the griddle), grits, biscuits and gravy, sausage, eggs, bacon, cereal, muffins, and other treats. For lunch, there's a hamburger day, a taco day, a spaghetti day, and a sandwich day (first day of camp - an easy meal). Dinners were beef stew, barbeque chicken, ham, and chicken casserole.

 

Almost none of these items have made their way back into my food choices yet.

 

Before camp, I went back and forth between "I'm going to take all my own food and be very strict", and "I'm going to eat whatever they serve, just in reasonable quantities". I'm still early in the stabilization  phase at the weight loss center, so I didn't want to stray too far from that. Bottom line, I went without much of a plan at all, except to pack a few cans of tuna and a bag of apples. I had actually not really been aware of two things in years past  - one, I can stroll into the kitchen at any time and get anything I want to eat; and two, we have a pretty well-stocked kitchen. One of our counselors had her husband pick up a couple packages of those thin 100-calorie wheat buns, and a bagful of Carbmaster yogurt cups. I was able to eat a lot of salads, turkey sandwiches, baked chicken, and veggies when available. I splurged a couple of times during the week - had to grab a couple of homemade chocolate chip cookies (okay, they were from pre-fab cookie dough, but still); I passed over ice cream dessert, cake, and anything that was sold in the canteen besides lowfat yogurt and diet Coke. Contrary to what I anticipated, I didn't spend my week looking longingly at all the foods I "can't" have. It was more like "ya'll can eat that, but I'm not interested." I sent our nutritionists an email midway through the week, thanking them for changing the way I look at food.

 

I have to let things kind of settle out for a couple of days, but I think I did lose some of that extra weight at camp this week. I had intended to run and work out; I did run Tuesday morning, but two miles in, I realized that if I got hurt, I would be useless for the rest of the week. I strapped on a pedometer, and logged over 12 miles of walking per day just in the normal course of a day at camp. One of our speakers wanted me to help him get started on his weight loss journey, and for exercise, I suggested he start by walking. You won't lose as quickly by JUST walking, but you can still lose if your nutrition is on point.

 

Some of you may be thinking, "Augusta's Biggest Loser is over; why are you still writing about food and weight loss?" Well, I will be writing about other topics, but there are a lot of people who are on their own weight loss journey, and when you are in the beginning or middle stages of the process, it can seem like there is no light at the end of the tunnel. I continue writing to let those folks know that they can come out on the other side successfully.

 

At The Walmart Photo Counter...

Once or twice I have mentioned that all of my postings, pictures, magazine articles, etc., are going into a notebook that I will keep as a constant reminder of where I've been and what I've accomplished over the last six months. I had everything up through about the end of April, but had not printed or inserted anything after that point. I sent some digital before/after pictures, as well as some finale snapshots, over to the one-hour photo lab at Walmart. I've done this a couple of times during Augusta's Biggest Loser, without incident. I sent the pictures early this morning over the internet, and received confirmation that they would be ready by 10:00 AM. I walked into the store, went to the photo counter, and waited for someone to man their post. A lady came from the electronics area of the store, and instead of "may I help you?", she just said, "Hi!". Struck me as a little odd... but I said hello back. She didn't even ask me if she could help me - she walked over to the pictures that had been processed, pulled out my envelope, came OUT from behind the counter, and shook my hand as she said, "Congratulations! I saw your pictures when I went to cut your 5 by 7's... you look great!" She asked me a few questions about the contest - how much did I lose, how did I do it, etc.

 

Everybody wants to know how I did it, until I tell them. Yes, I did it faster than the average dieter, but in a nutshell, the answer is "diet and exercise". It was just at a pace that very few people are willing to keep. There are plenty of people at the gym that can work circles around me; there are people at PHC who are better at sticking to their food plan than I am. But by and large, the dieters won't exercise with any degree of intensity, and the gym rats won't eat right.

 

I had my PHC appointment today - my third stabilization visit. I was down nearly 3 pounds, which is good, because I had put back on some weight since the finale. Most of it was bound to return - dehydration and prolonged, intense exercise tends to wear the body down. But I'm slowly dropping again, and as long as my body is in the mood to drop a few pounds, I'll run with it. This time, though, it will be fat weight, not water and stuff-I-might-actually-need-one-of-these-days. Just before I left, my counselor Savannah handed me a white PHC t-shirt and a Sharpie, and said they were having all the Biggest Losers sign it, and they would hang it in the lobby. I was the first one to sign, so I asked if they were looking for "thank you's", or something that would help inspire their clients. She indicated the latter, and after a minute of thought, this is all I wrote: "I did it - so can you! |  342 - 199  |  Ed Chavis, WINNER!" I've never talked to Pam Segers or Bernard Milligan, the season 2 winners, but I remember Bernard saying to us that November night when we all learned our fates, "If I can do it, ANYONE can do it." He doesn't know me from Adam, but his words helped drive me forward; I hope my few words will compel someone to stick with it just a little longer, when everything in them and everything around them says, "you can't".

 

One other neat thing today at PHC: the latest copy of CSRA Active magazine is out, and inside there is a story about our journey, and the promise that the next issue will feature the winners. I hope they do a photo shoot, because the last time their reporter was out to talk to us and take pictures, it was at the end of a workout, and we all looked horrible. One way or another, it looks like Nandy and I will be gracing newsstands around the Augusta area in early September!

 

Losing Your Voice...

Today I finally got to see the entire finale of "The Biggest Loser" - not our little show, but THE show. There was a little segment near the beginning where they showed some former winners in the crowd - Bill Germanakis, who has parlayed his victory into a very lucrative speaking and consulting career; some guy whose name I don't remember right now (I didn't get into the show until after about season 4), and Eric, from season 3, who had to display to the world in a "Where Are They Now" episode that he had regained nearly all of his weight.  He was also featured in the third from the last episode of this season, serving as a warning to the contestants not to fall back into their old habits. In the "Where Are They Now" episode, trainer Bob Harper went back to Eric's house and got him to start working earnestly on his weight loss, and told him that he would be "on stage" at this season's finale. Well, Eric worked, and had lost 150 pounds by the finale, but instead of being feted onstage, he was simply a footnote on the night, sitting in the crowd, obviously with much work still ahead of him.

 

Ironically, I was looking through the book "Biggest Loser Success Secrets" today - it was published shortly after Ali Vincent's season 5 win, and included photos and tips from past contestants, including Eric. At the time the book was published, he was still sporting the physique of a record-setting winner, which, of course, lent a strong degree of credibility to what he had to say. But after spiraling out of control, his message was no longer one of hope and victory; it had been reduced to, "don't be like me". Instead of being a motivator and a cheerleader, now he was simply a bad example. He had lost his voice.

 

As I was contemplating all of this today, I realized that those of us who have lost weight, whether on our own or with help, have a very powerful message to share. The easiest thing in the world to do is to gain weight; I'm convinced that one of the hardest things in the world to do is to lose it. Flip through the infomercials each morning before the news begins - the ads for weight loss / body shaping consume about 25% of the airwaves, because EVERYONE is looking for "THE" answer. "THE" diet. "THE" workout. "THE" gadget. If you can stand up and say, "I did it, and you can, too", you have a message that will get people's attention. My message is already being put out there whether I want it to be, or not - as a result of Augusta's Biggest Loser, Nandy and I are about to be on TV in a commercial that will air so often that people will get sick of it quickly; our picture is going to be featured in the Yellow Pages ad for PHC; my name and pounds lost has been on the PHC sign since November.

 

I had these thoughts today as I was thinking about the general topic of "why should I keep the weight off". Not that I ever want to go back to the way I was, but the odds of all of us keeping our weight off for life are not good. There are plenty of casualties like Eric among the ranks of both the "pros" and us amateurs. If you can't find the desire and the drive within yourself to keep toiling away at this lifelong task, let me encourage you to think about the opportunities to change others' lives that you will miss if you go back. Far greater than the gift of getting your life back is the gift of having the opportunity to help someone else get theirs back.

 

Don't ever go back - if you slip, get back on course, and quickly. People are watching you when you don't even know it, and you could be either their last thread of hope, or their last sigh of resignation.

 

 

Facts Are Our Friends...

"Facts are our friends."

This quote from Pastor Johnny Hunt, current president of the Southern Baptist Convention, is applicable to most areas of life. Most of us have at least one area of our life where we're not really interested in the facts, because this lack of knowledge helps us look past our own faults and shortcomings. I am reminded of the classic story "Snow White", where the evil queen asks, "Mirror, mirror on the wall, who's the fairest of them all?" She was more interested in the mirror's opinion, and how she compared with everyone else, than she was in the mirror's reflection. She was enraged when the mirror declared that, with Snow White's arrival, she was no longer the fairest in the land.

In ministry, we have been known to fall into some of these same tactics - a fellow pastor asks how many we are averaging in church, and I have heard many pastors round the numbers WAAYY up. A crowd of 150 can easily become 250 through the power of the "guesstimate"; the latest trend is to add up the total number of people in every service, and that's the "attendance". If Sunday School attendance is 100, morning worship 150, Sunday evening 70, Wednesday night is 40, it is perfectly acceptable now to say that your church is running about 360 (well, 400, if you count those who would have been there if they could have been, and a few more if you count those who attended the monthly service in the nursing home).

The same thing holds true for our eating and exercise habits. Unless we are very intentional about tracking everything we eat accurately, we will often paint a very distorted picture of what our diets actually look like. One thing I discovered during ABL is that the rule of thumb is, you usually eat more than you think, and you usually exercise less than you think. This past weekend was Memorial Day weekend, and I ate some things I would not have normally eaten. I am on a stabilization plan with PHC, in which certain foods are gradually re-introduced back into the diet. I ate well outside of that list this weekend (not excessively bad, but a few things that weren't on the list). Predictably, my weight is up a little bit - with a three-pound swing in two days, I can tell you that it is water weight. When I sat down and plugged yesterday's eating into my fitday.com profile, I was rather shocked to discover that my sodium intake was THROUGH THE ROOF! During the competition, one of the pleasures that I allowed myself was the Chargrilled Chicken Sandwich from Chick-Fil-A, and I would indulge myself with this treat almost every Monday night following weigh-in. It was in the PHC book as an acceptable eating-out alternative; I ate it without giving it too much thought. Every week I faithfully wrote it down in my food journal, and I always had a good laugh about it with Savannah, my nutrition counselor at PHC. Previously I had recorded it in my fitday.com journal as a piece of chicken and a couple of pieces of bread, and figured, "ah, that's close enough". This morning, I looked up the actual nutrition information for the sandwich at thedailyplate.com (which lists almost every food you can imagine from every restaurant chain you can imagine), and discovered that my treat is probably responsible for every single mid-week gain I had during the competition. The calories aren't bad (about 300), but the sodium is off-the-charts (1120 mg). That wasn't too bad for weigh-in day, because most of us didn't eat anything between a light, early breakfast and weigh-in time at 7:00 PM. But when added into a typical day's eating, the results can be quite alarming. Yesterday (Memorial Day, remember), I ended up at nearly 4800 mg of sodium, almost four times what I would get in a normal day. Now, I can fix this... today I will be eating very low sodium foods, and will be drinking water like crazy to get my body to stop retaining the fluid.

Here's the point: you can't fix the problem until you can accurately define the problem; you can't accurately define the problem until you know the specifics. And you won't know the specifics until you overcome your fear of the facts. Fear of facts is why we won't get on the scale, or check our bank balance, or be accountable with our time. Ignorance may be bliss, but bliss can be a very dangerous thing.

Addendum: I mentioned a website in this post, thedailyplate.com. This site has now been incorporated into www.livestrong.com. Just go there, and in the search box at the top right of the page, type the name of the restaurant or the food item you are looking for. If you tell it to search in "food and fitness" instead of "all", you will get where you're going much faster. You don't need an account to access this information. If you do decide to register for an account, you will have access to features similar to fitday.com, where you can input your food and track your progress.