OMG! I Think I May Have Gotten In Touch With My "I'm Full" Signal Again!

I hate to jinx myself but I think I've been getting the "full" signal from my stomach lately and now all I have to do is listen to it.

It's been tempting to ignore it because it has come at unexpected times, like early on in a feeding. But I've been heeding it lately and expecting that I was wrong to do so, only to find that I did, in fact, have enough to eat (because I didn't get hungry again right away.) I always want to eat until my stomach is literally full and straining to contain my meal. That's the signal I've been using to stop eating rather than the proper "I'm full" signal which we learned about in Craving Change.

My job now is to get to know that signal and get to trust it. For me, I worry about getting hungry after the table is cleared and there's no more food around. That's been a long-standing problem for me. Having snacks around that I can eat if I do get hungry will help put me at ease. This all fits in with eating smaller meals in larger numbers rather than three big meals.

Try fishing around for your "I'm full signal" next time you eat. It might just be calling you but you're not hearing it.

I'll keep you up to date on how my signal-listening is going.

What does the "Ideal You" Look Like and How does S/he Live?

Is the "ideal you" like celebrities or supermodels?
Or is the "ideal you" who you are now?

I write this blog for the benefit of myself and for people like me: the very overweight. I know a lot of you are sick of me going on about how exercise "saved my life" and are wondering when I'm going to talk more about eating. I've got lots to say about my eating issues and I promise to open up about them as I discover and think about new revelations.

The fact is, though, I feel pretty good these days. I rarely feel like I have anything wrong with me. My only annoyance is going to stores and trying to buy clothes that fit. I'm still too big for even oversizes available at department stores.

Honesty is a central part of my blogging. I like to spill my guts and not hold back. So I have to tell you that it bugs me to hear people talk about that next pound they're trying so hard to lose.

My question to you is: Why are you trying to lose weight?

It's a legitimate question and I'll give you my honest answer at the end. Is it because you want to be more healthy? If that's the only answer, then my response is, based on what happened to me, you'd get more healthy by going for a walk every day than starving yourself and worrying about every calorie.

Let me make a list of reasons of why I suspect people want to lose weight. I compiled this list from discussions with people struggling with their weight and from reading I've done recently (about what people struggling with their weight say.)

• I want to fit in.
• I want to be attractive.
• I want to be loved.
• I feel like a failure being fat and it's embarrassing.
• People think I'm a joke.
• My doctor says it's not healthy.
• Society says being fat is wrong.

If you've been overweight all your life like I have, then you've probably had some of these things ingrained in you. It's hard to change your own attitude after so many years of believing something. It's like being told up is down and down is up. It simply can't be true that being fat is okay.

I lost most of my excess weight once (295 to 170 pounds.) I felt great but I was disappointed in the skinny me. Contrary to my life-long expectation, being skinny didn't solve all my problems. It didn't give me happiness and it didn't give me all the babes I thought I deserved because I was now a stud! Being fat, it turned out, wasn't my problem. So as you can guess, the weight started to come back on.

What does the ideal you look like? Have you envisioned him or her? Is s/he the same person as you are now or a different person? Is s/he just a skinny version of yourself who also sits on the couch all day but is somehow happier? Does the world somehow change if you're thin? Is the sky the same colour if you're thin?

Are you more loved? Are you a better person? Are you more respected? Consider these questions and think about your true feelings on the ideal you.

I'll share with you some thoughts I've had over the years on the ideal me. The ideal James is the happy man in TV commercials. He rock climbs, kayaks and he hosts social gatherings (possibly with ice-cold beer.) He has sexy barbecues. He travels. He may even skydive, because the ideal James lives every moment to the fullest. He has many friends and is the perfect father. He is loved by all. All women want to have his babies.

The latter, of course, is not a very realistic goal for anyone. Is Brad Pitt any happier because most women find him hot? Confidence in one's sexuality does not equal happiness. I think of all the horrible women over the years I might have ended up with if I looked like Brad Pitt. Fortunately, my wife (the best woman in the world) has modest standards (or gets drunk far too easily, you decide.)

Does the perfect you exercise? Is the perfect you a fitness freak? The best looking people in the world, as well as the most powerful tend to be fitness enthusiasts. They tackle life by doing things--fun, exciting things that go far beyond sitting on the couch. 

So if I may presume that the ideal you is a person who moves her or his body a great deal, why can't you do it now? Why do you have to obsess about weight when right now you could be going for a walk and building on basic fitness that can improve a little every day? Right now, you could be doing what the ideal, thin you would be doing. You could be living your life, even if that means a short walk to the light post down the street and back is all you can do. At least you're getting some fresh air and doing something huge for yourself. There might be a dozen reasons why you ate poorly today but, if you're at all able-bodied, you probably don't have any valid reasons why you didn't do something physical for yourself.

If you love yourself, set yourself free and get moving! If you don't love yourself, see a counsellor and begin working on what's really wrong with you, because it's not your waist.

If your excuse is that it's too much work, I ask you how is it that you are willing to diet? Dieting is one of most difficult and complicated things people embark upon. Losing weight and keeping it off is complicated. It's a giant pain in the ass to obsess about it night and day. Improving your fitness is simple and fool-proof. It's easy by comparison.


Unlike dieting, the less you think about it, the better.

Why not start being the ideal you today and re-examine why you want to lose weight in the first place? I'm not saying you shouldn't lose weight. I'm not saying you shouldn't eat the best you can. But one part of what you need to do is complicated and one part is easy. One thing is prone to failure, one thing is fool-proof.

Having said all that, in full disclosure, I do want to be smaller. Here are the reasons I currently want to lose body fat: I feel if I have less excess fat on me I can move around even more and therefore do even more in my recreational life. In other words, I can have even more fun. Secondly, I want to buy clothes that fit more easily. Shopping for clothes is the only time I feel abnormal nowadays.

In every other way, I'm ideal.

(My) Misconception: Exercising in Cold Weather Means Being Cold

The Antarctic: Is he cold? Not in the least! He's dressed for the weather.

The very large are full of misconceptions about themselves and the world, at least in my very humble, but always right opinion. So I thought I'd continue to write about misconceptions I had which I have since proven wrong to myself as I continue on my journey to "reclaim James."

Just because it's minus 40 outside, doesn't mean you have to be the least bit cold going out there. See my exciting recent post on the subject. I have proven to myself that you can stay toasty warm even in the coldest weather. The most important things are a warm pair of gloves/mitts and covering your face. I recommend a descent balaclava for that, one that blocks the wind (not wool.)

The other night I was out walking in -25 Celcius with woolly socks in all-leather runners (they weren't meshy so they could breathe) and my feet got too hot! If you're constantly moving to the point where you sweat, your feet don't get cold. For most of us, walking is enough to make us sweat. I switched to normal socks the next night and now I'm fine in all temperatures. No boots needed.

Avid runners, on the other hand, exercise at a higher intensity and they probably have to underdress and start off cold so they can work up to their "operating temperature."  Unless they want to be shedding layers as they run, which seems like too much of a hassle. I could be wrong, but I'm usually not. (Don't forget that I'm humble.)

I'm far colder sitting on the couch these days than dressing properly and moving my body outside in frigid temperatures. If you're worried about being cold, best get up and move.

Eating Problem: I Don't Cook

Recently, I've been talking about "a thousand trees," referring to what seems to be countless little eating problems I appear to have that may have contributed to my getting obese. I've talked about the habit of allowing myself more than I need because something tastes good, for example. I think if you've got a serious weight problem, you'll identify with some of the problems I write about and maybe think of some of your own. You may or may not, however, identify with this one: I don't know how to cook.

Not cooking leads to more unhealthy choices like consuming processed foods (often high fat, high calorie) and fast food. It also prevents me from having good quality, satisfying meals. And it likely keeps healthy foods like vegetables out of my belly.

I was so bothered by this last summer, I made efforts to find someone to teach me basic cooking skills. I've come across this problem in other obese people as well. A lot of us can't cook and there's really no one to teach us as adults. I checked into basic cooking classes and as far as I can see, they don't exist in my area.

But I'm not a man who gives up easily. I've wanted to have a decent house to live in so over the past decade I taught myself how to renovate. A couple of books and hours watching home improvement shows helped me build upon basic skills I learned in high school woodworking class. But there are two things in high school I wish I had taken: auto mechanics and home ec (so I could cook.) It'd be nice to fix my own car then cook up a tasty meal!

I've tried watching The Food Network to see if it would rub off on me like the home renovation shows did but they don't teach basics. I am, however, quite inspired by watching them. They get me all worked up to try cooking dinner.

In the fall I made progress by getting over my fear of cooking meat. Instead of buying precooked hamburgers like I usually do, I finally tried cooking raw burgers on the barbecue. I have always worried that I would not cook them thoroughly and it would be gross and I'd make my family sick. Chalk it up to a minor phobia.

Since then, we've had the most obscenely delicious burgers at home, much better than the ones I've been choking down in the drive through line for most of my life. I make them how I like them, with old cheddar, red onions, mustard and relish. Oh, and lettuce, tomato and half fat mayo. We use PC brand Blue Menu lean burgers. We tried the Safeway version and they tasted like hockey pucks (and don't think I've never tasted a hockey puck.)

Tonight I boldly attempted to make a stir fry. I got the idea from watching my wife eat at a food court last week. I began watching YouTube videos on making a chicken stir fry with rice. It all seemed so easy and, like the reno viewing I did, I cross referenced different videos. You watch a bunch of videos on one subject and they begin to fill in the blanks (doubts or questions you may have.)

Cooking is big on the Internet so there's no shortage of info out there.

I get queezie about eating my own experimental cooking but what I made tonight was palatable. We decided the "Chinese style" soya sauce was a little different than your normal run of the mill soya sauce (don't ask me why) and it was a little off in flavour. But there I was chopping yellow onions, green onions, etc. using the rocker chopping method (thank you, Food Network!).

It's a baby step but it's a big one for me.

• Here's a short playlist of videos teaching basic cooking of a handful of foods.

I Just Did Something Remarkable, Surreal, and Previously Unimaginable

It actually warmed up an hour after I got home.

I went for a walk, but this post isn't about fitness. Hell, this isn't even about obesity, really. I headed out in a -31° C. temperature with a dangerous wind chill of -45° C. Let me quote to you from this evening's government-issued weather warning: "At these extreme wind chill values frostbite on exposed skin may occur in less than 10 minutes."

Wow, what an amazing experience I just had! When you get older and you don't have a lot of money, new and amazing experiences are hard to come by. But they're what make life great. They're what slow down the ever-increasing speed of time as you age. They're what help keep you young.

Before you have me committed, let me explain. This is like petting a snake if you have a snake phobia. I have a bit of a winter phobia. It's more of a mindset that when winter comes, we have to cocoon. And therefore, winter is bad. That's a terrible attitude to have because winter is 2/3rds of our year where I live on the Canadian prairies.

Two reasons why I did this: Firstly, I bought a pair of traction aids for walking on slippery snow and ice today. They were on clearance for $8 from $25 (Bentley, Northgate Mall, Regina.) They're not the coil style, they're the cleat style. I didn't want to wait this cold snap out to see how they work. I have had lots of near-slips when I'm out walking because there's a lot of ice due to the warm winter (yeah, it's certainly not warm any more.)

Secondly, I wanted to see what the limits of my winter gear are, and find out how effective my layering method of dressing is. I hadn't planned on going past my driveway but when my traction aids made walking seem incredibly easy and secure (like walking on dry pavement), I had to see if I could go down to the end of the block. Then I had to see if I could go further. I felt like I was the first astronaut walking on Mars.

Earlier in the evening, we went out to a modest dinner to celebrate my wife's birthday. Most people in Regina  stayed home tonight. It's bloody cold, even for here. I was in pain from the cold wind just from the few seconds it took me to plug our car in and run into the house when we got home from the restaurant. Our whole family huddled under covers for an hour to warm up after the cake was consumed. So what on earth drove me to go do this? Curiosity, I guess. And a little determination.

The wind was strong coming off the open highway near our house. I didn't feel any discomfort so I kept going, afraid to stray too far from home under such adverse conditions. After a few minutes, my wrists started to get cold. I pulled down my sleeves a bit further and my gloves up on my arms a bit. Problem solved and I returned to my home but decided to keep going, right into the fierce, potentially deadly wind.

I was fine. The only part of my body exposed were my eyeballs. As I approached the open area around the highway, the bridge of my nose got cold. I pulled down my woolly toque over my eyebrows but it only partially helped. I decided to walk into the relative shelter of a street. From then on, I wasn't cold anywhere. My biceps, of all things, were a bit cool, but not uncomfortably so. There must be something weak in the lining of my coat. It could have been solved by wearing an extra long sleeve shirt or maybe a different fleece middle layer.

I was out in that for half an hour. The worst part was worrying that I may have died and it was all a post-death dream. It was just too easy. With ski goggles, who knows what I could have accomplished out there.

Here's what I wore, from head to toe:

Thick woolly toque over:
MEC Outdoor Research balaclava with mesh over the mouth area
Wind River gloves ($45, Mark's)
Short sleeve t-shirt
Fleece jacket from Walmart as a mid-layer
Cheap Walmart winter jacket as an outer layer
Three layers of sweat pants, with the wind-breaking pants on the outside
Old fashioned thick wool socks (Mark's)
An old pair of worn out runners
Traction Aids pulled over my runners

My feet weren't the slightest bit cold, I swear to you. When your core is warm while you're doing the slightest bit of exercise, your extremities are toasty. It's one thing to read this, it's another to prove it to yourself.

So...I just kicked winter in the ass, maybe even K-O'd it. Take that, winter! That's for repressing me and all those I love for all these years!

It was remarkable. It's especially remarkable for the fat person who is always making excuses not to go outside in any weather, let alone this. Who in their right mind would go for a walk in -45 windchills? Certainly not the fat guy.

The obese person has a lot of voices in her or his head saying, "You can't." My perceptions of what are possible have changed once again, while I learn that those voices aren't necessarily right.

I'm still not quite sure I'm not dead. Will I do it again? Why not? The side walks aren't very crowded in this weather!

Shovelling in Cold Weather

In the interest of science (and fun, of all things), my 8-year-old son and I decided we'd go out tonight in -30 Celsius temperatures and do some recreational shovelling. I used it as my exercise of the day.

Shovelling snow as cross-training? Why not?  I came in all sweaty so I must have accomplished something. Last year I'd fear having a heart attack while shovelling. No so now.

It was another chapter in my fight to tame my winter cold weather fears and misconceptions. I dressed warm (something that's easy to learn with trial and error--layers make it easier) and I didn't feel cold. Instead of breathing stale air inside the house, I lived a little, got a couple tiny icicles on my eyelashes and felt like a hundred bucks. I got out there with my boy and breathed in some fresh winter air and moved my body a little to prove to myself once again that I wasn't dead.

An added side-effect is that my walk and driveway are clear.

--------------

And now a video on how to dress in layers. It's good advice if you're running, shovelling your walk, or going to a football game in November. Although he's American, I can vouch that this stuff works in the coldest weather even here in Canada.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8eC5toC0vms

My Twitter

Just a note about my "JamesFitUpdates" Twitter account.

You may well not understand what Twitter is, but you've certainly heard of it. A lot of people couldn't be bothered with it. If you're one of those people, you can still see my Twitter feed in the right hand column of this blog.

There in among the Nike Plus updates (apps I use while exercising that keep and publish records of my walks/runs) are news stories, articles and blog posts from others I come across on the web that are related to obesity, weight loss or fitness.

They include a title to the news story and a link to where you can read it.

Or you can find a teenager to hook you up with the Twitter.

What I Learned from my Morning Cup of Coffee

As I said in my thousand tree post from last week, there seems to be countless little problems I have with eating. My obesity is like a plane crash: there's not just one thing that led me here, there's a series of problems that made it happen. Maybe there's a thousand little problems that got me to almost 2.5 times my ideal body weight.

Taking the Craving Change class several months ago has helped me become aware of the many little problems food and I have in our relationship. Although much of these minor revelations happen sporadically over a long period of time. Nonetheless, I'm learning, albeit slowly.

So as you may have heard, I've been brewing a really good cup of coffee at home in the mornings (with a single cup coffee maker) and have eliminated my Tim Horton's/McDonald's coffee ritual. Usually I have one regular sized cup of coffee and look forward to it each morning.

When I was enjoying a particularly good cup the other morning, I had a typically-unhelpful self-nurturing thought. I thought it was a really amazing cup of coffee, therefore I must brew a second one. I didn't need a second one, I just felt that I deserved to experience more pleasure. If some pleasure is good, more must be better, right? Not always the case with food. We start losing that level of pleasure as we eat more.

I suspect people without eating problems will enjoy their cup of coffee, rave about it maybe, but they know something tasting good isn't a license to over-indulge. I know that cup will be there tomorrow, just as good.  It's a Keurig, so it's foolproof. But there's a voice inside me that regularly tells me to have more when something is good. Or maybe when I'm having a crappy day. Or maybe because my sports team lost. Or who knows the number of reasons I have to impulsively overeat?

I should keep a list.

Dieting is Not the Way to Address Obesity: A Manifesto from James

Hey you! You're probably overweight if you're reading this. You've probably lost dozens, if not hundreds of pounds in your lifetime. You're an expert on losing weight. You may, however, be less of an expert on maintaining it.

I have a particular point of view at this moment in my life, you're probably aware of it if you've read this blog before. I concede that my point of view may change, it often does, but here is what I firmly believe in now, based on what has happened to me in the past months.

A lot of people tackling their weight read things on the Internet that tell them weight loss is 80% diet, 20% exercise. This only relates to calorie-reduction and expenditure since exercise doesn't really burn that many calories. In other words, if the problem of obesity is being too large, then you want to get smaller and that's mostly diet with a little exercise. But what if you focus less on the aesthetics and look solely at the ill effects of obesity. Recent studies say you can be healthy and still be fat, as long as you're fit.

I believe that I'm living proof exercise can cure most of the ill effects obesity. It did so relatively quickly. Do I look good in a Speedo? No. Am I healthy? Yes!

A lot of people think you can go to the gym for an hour, get all sweaty and then hit a buffet and everything will be fine. It won't. I'm never comfortable with the notion of exercising to burn calories. There are much better reasons for doing it.

The 80-20 formula is very common on the dieting/lifestyle web sites, but I'd like to turn that around. In my view, curing the symptoms of obesity, that is to say eradicating the health problems of obesity, could well be 80% exercise and 20% diet.

Society is hell-bent on reducing of the number on the bathroom scale. It shouldn't be your measure of success. This is nonsense because it doesn't mean much in the improvement of your health. Many doctors and scientists are now talking about this. I'm living proof. I'm a huge man, 100 pounds of body fat more than the threshold of BMI-measured obesity. Yet I've turned my health drastically around. From an achy, sore, tired, bed-ridden sedentary lifestyle to being a man with near-normal health and abilities who is past the prime in his life. (I've also cured the problem of aging, to a degree. You can thank me later.)

Do you know what a fit person looks like? You probably do. But can you tell a fit thin person from an unfit thin person? You've been led to believe all your life that thin is fit. It's not. Do some people-watching sometime and try and tell a fit thin person from an unfit thin person. The unfit thin person is pear-shaped to varying degrees, is tired all the time and, in  my opinion, usually grumpy. They look weak when they move around and their lives are quite obviously boring, frankly. You can see it in their soft, pale, pudgy faces. They sit at home picking at vegetables and watch what I presume to be really bad television shows on the couch. It's possible they see playing Checkers as a sport.

Fitness isn't for fat people. It's what makes us healthy, regardless of our BMI. You probably think you'd be healthy and happy thin. But you'd be much healthier and much happier if you embraced fitness throughout your life until your dying day, regardless of your waist size.

The older you get, the more important fitness is to maintain a healthy body. Kids find their own fitness. They're constantly wiggling and moving. Adults are always telling them to sit still. Children build up lean muscle mass from all that moving and playing. When they become grownups, they stop moving and sit behind screens all day. Over time those muscles soften and become marbleized. They need fewer calories and their cardiovascular system wastes away while their arteries slowly clog. Perhaps they have more emotional control and don't over-eat like we do but they too have become unhealthy.

Stop using the scale or your clothing size to judge your health. I'm considered huge by most standards, yet I can do more than a surprising number of thin people my age, and I'm only getting started.

I'm probably 150 pounds over being perfectly ("normally") thin. I defy you to find me a marathon runner who could run on a treadmill for 20 minutes like I do with a 150 pound weight on their back. What we do with our heavy bodies is remarkable. Just walking down the street to your car is athleticism. There's an athlete in all of us yet we choose to keep her or him locked up, shackled and gagged.

(Yesterday I jogged at 4.0 MPH on the treadmill for 12 minutes at a reasonable 87% heart rate. Six months ago, jogging at 3.0 MPH for more than 30 seconds could have easily caused me to have a heart attack because my heart rate would have quickly maxed out at 100% in mere seconds. I can't tell you what this achievement does for my confidence and my feeling of well-being. Your body is just waiting for you to do something so it can adapt and become stronger.)

So what does dieting do for you? I'm no expert but it seems to me there are lots of benefits in eating better. Have you seen the entertaining documentary Supersize Me? The film about eating only McDonald's food for a month showed how crappy the subject eating a high-calorie, high fat diet felt all day. He was tired, sickly, and irritable. I imagine that all severely obese people eat like that to some extent, or have at some time in their lives to get to that level of weight. You'll probably feel better by eating well. Your joints will thank you for putting less weight on them. But is there anything else? Better eating helps, but will it really cure many of the effects of obesity?

I do know there there is no end in the ways exercising has helped me while losing only a small percentage of my excess fat. Although I am still technically obese, I don't feel that way. I don't go out into public ashamed of myself. I'm not afraid to exercise in public any more because I know I'm strong and in control of myself.

Severely obese people often have other chronic health issues along side their excess weight. Let's break down that viral video 23 1/2 Hours and see what science has found in the benefits of moderate exercise. In a  nutshell:

Knee arthritis down 47%
Dementia and Altheimers down 50%
Diabetes down 58%
Post-menopausal women 41% reduction in hip fractures
Reduced anxiety by 48%
People suffering from depression, symptoms were relieved by 30% with a "low dose" of exercise and 47% with more exercise.
23% lower risk of death in one study
And fatigue, of course, was highly cured with exercise.
Overall quality of life improves (who wouldn't want that?)

People seem so ready to starve their bodies to lose weight. The body goes into stress mode as it consumes itself and then does whatever it can to regain that weight. Your body thinks it's not healthy when it's below its maximum weight and tries to help you out by doing what it can to gain it back, so we're in famine mode. Yet exercise seems like so much work that we avoid it at any length. The truth is, once we're out there, once our bodies start to adapt, it's fun. Going for a walk is fun. It's the way we should be living our lives anyway, regardless of our weight or age. Let the skinny out-of-shape people sit on their couches and hate the world. Don't be one of them. Live your life to the fullest and don't worry so much about your weight.

Interesting Nutritional Discovery in My Hot Cocoa

Santa brought me a Keurig single cup coffee maker (on sale for $44 at Walmart but I got Futureshop to price match it because the buggers were always out of stock.) Would-be environmentalists have been critical of my acquisitions, but in truth, my purchase has  been a boon for the environment, and my belly.

My habit of the last two years has been to go to McDonald's or Tim Horton's (a popular Canadian doughnut chain) and get me a fix of extra large coffee with lots of cream and sugar (I'm still a bit of a virgin coffee drinker.) Being a fat-body, of course I added things to my order: A breakfast sandwich, usually. Then there's the gas. Those restaurants are relatively close but there's sometimes a fifteen minute wait in line, idling the mini-van. This habit cost me calories and carbon emissions (including flatulence after the meal.) What a waste of time, money and pollution!

Thankfully, and unexpectedly, my Keurig cured me of that bad habit (or at least downsized the habit, depending on how you look at it.) I found the perfect coffee K-cup for me (the Donut House K-cup), used some filtered water, bought some coffee cream and I'm set. Furthermore, I'm enjoying a single, normal sized cup to start my day and not the giant XL cups from the stores (and their wasteful containers.) (Yes, I'm aware that K-cups produce waste in their lined plastic little cups, but surly it's less than my trips to the store.)

My breakfast consists of more modest, higher fibre (and therefore more slowly digesting) breakfast fares at home. I'm saving a fortune. With gas, it must have been at least a $6/day habit. That's nasty. When the kids tagged along on the weekends for some doughnut holes, it got more expensive.

Having said that, my trips out for coffee constituted some quality James Time. Usually, I was alone and in the relative peace and quiet of my vehicle (no screaming kids within earshot.) But now my James Time is on the couch with my coffee.

My Cocoa Discovery

We keep some hot cocoa K-cups around for a treat (a lazy treat.) I was surprised that each cup of Green Mountain Hot Cocoa K-cups are only 60 calories. More surprisingly to me, they contain 3 grams of fibre per cup.

It's hard to find a non-fruit/vegetable that has that much fibre in a 60 calorie snack. Even harder to find one that does something to satisfy one's chocolate cravings. However, it's got 3.5 grams of fat and it's all saturated!

I couldn't find much info on the Net but the cocoa industry seems to be including part of the cocoa husk to up the fibre in their products and therefore make them more appealing to health-conscious consumers.

A Thousand Trees and One Great Big Rock

I'm a slow learner when it comes to self-discovery.

I'm still learning things about myself based on CBT sessions dealing with chronic anxiety that took place and ended several years ago. This is also happening with me as I learn about problem eating patterns and causes that I began discover in Craving Change, a group workshop series of classes that ended many months ago. In that class I began to be aware of things ingrained in me that made me eat the way I do.

The more discoveries I make about myself on this front (not solutions, just discoveries), the more daunting a problem it seems. There appears to be no end to the reasons why I eat in ways that compromise my health. Some problems originated in childhood, more than likely. Others seem to be because of general personality traits I have like impulsiveness and risk-taking tendencies. There's many emotional reasons, it seems, and many habits built up over a lifetime. The reasons, although not clearly or fully understood by me yet, are nonetheless intimidatingly numerous.

Reading Dr. Sharma's blog on obesity and scanning the various studies that appear in newspapers and on the Internet, one might sometimes be led to believe that the fight against obesity is hopeless. I don't have the solution for myself or for others. There is no secret diet, and the body works against itself to gain back weight.

My own struggle is navigating a forest of countless and varied personal issues that have caused me to be severely overweight. I can't even see the other side of the forest, but I resolve to cut down one 'tree' at a time until I can make it through to the other side, one day, one far off day in this lifetime.

But there is one thing I am certain of. There is one thing I can control. There is one thing that I can be a master of and that is foolproof. It's exercise. Getting fit is a no-fail endeavour. You do the work, you cannot fail. You do the learning, you will have the knowledge--the secret--to overcoming the problem of obesity. It works for me; it works for everyone and there are no questions, no uncertainty about this.

I'm unsure about a lot of things in my struggle to tame my disease but exercise and fitness is the rock that I can always rely on. Exercise is well understood by science and even by me. I have total confidence in exercise and my relationship with it. It's a relationship that comes naturally to anyone who gives it a chance.

Obesity is a long way off from being fully-understood or cured. But that's okay. I have exercise. Exercise is the road I walk on, the path I return to while I walk through the forest of eating issues and chop down one at a time. One day it will lead me to daylight.

I Did What a Kid Would Do: I Kept Going

I declare myself fit.

After an hour at the gym this morning, I tobogganed for nearly two and a half hours tonight with the family under the moon and star, and nothing in my body told me to stop. It was my mind that did, after I looked at my watch. I outlasted my kids and they don't have 150 pound backpacks on their backs.

No looking at my heart rate monitor, no stopping to catch my breath, just constant climbs to get that next rush of flying down the hill. That's what a kid would do. If you're having fun, if the adrenaline is flowing, you just keep going. My body has never before cooperated like this, it's always been the party pooper.

It's no exaggeration to say that a year ago I couldn't sit for two and a half hours, let alone climb a large hill repeatedly.

It goes against good judgement, but we let our four-year-old go on her own sled down the big hill with us. There was rarely a concern but she did crash twice. Once was my fault and she cried after flipping at the top of the hill. But she was just crying because she didn't make it down the hill. Then at the end of the night my wife sent her flying over a big ramp (by accident) that the daredevil snowboarders had set up. Everyone ran in horror to see how hurt she was, but she lay there giggling.

I slammed into a pile of compost, which had my son laughing all night long, even after we got home and well past bedtime.

We'll remember these last two nights of our 2011 Christmas vacation for years to come. I don't remember much of the ones I spent on the couch.

Achieving and Surpassing My Winter Goal

It's amazing to me how quickly I've been moving from fantasies, to dreams, to goals, to achievements and beyond. Cycling moved quickly that way for me in the summer. At first it seemed nearly impossible or something that would take years to achieve. I came up with tobogganing with my kids as my winter goal this year and I'm amazed, as I was with cycling, how fast I moved from a dream to an everyday, no-big-deal, occurrence.

I noticed last night that I wasn't looking at my heart-rate monitor watch on a regular basis. Only once did I glance at it to make sure I wouldn't push my heart too far. When I did look, it was a little over my target maximum of 85%, but that's okay. I knew what was happening. My heart, and hill-climbing muscles were all getting stronger and more efficient, to the point that it was no big deal to walk up that big hill.

This means I felt like a normal, fully-capable person, for the first time in many, many years. Maybe even more capable than some sedentary thin people my age. This feeling is very different than what I experienced on the same toboggan hill a year ago with my kids. Then, I stood at the bottom of the hill and watched. Occasionally, I'd sneak halfway up the hill, slowly and with long pauses to rest, and shoot some pictures of my kids having fun. It was ingrained in me that I couldn't do what they did. I was ostersized from the world of the healthy.

After a couple exhilarating runs down the long toboggan hill last night, I stopped near the bottom, looked up at the surreal, artificially-lit winter scene, felt the strong but harmless winter wind in my face, and thought that I hadn't had this much fun since I was a kid. I later found myself alarmed by this realization. How much had I really missed out on all my adult life? And how much more fun should I be perusing in my future?

I'm not sure the answers to these questions yet, but I do know, a day spent without being active is a day wasted.

My First Run Tobogganing Tonight

"National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation"

She stood above me, majestically, and I paused my approach. "This isn't 'The Bowl,'" I thought, remembering the fun and relative safety of my last run with a sled, New Year's Eve at a family tobogganing hill. But her peak seemed to kiss the clouds and her light at the top reminded me of an angry moon, coming down and in close to have a stare-down with me face to face. Its beeming halogens were like eyes peering through me, baring witness to my every weekness and fear.

The wind blew hard and the snow cascaded across the slopes, backlit from ahigh. 'The Bowl' seemed big too, at the time, but I began to think I was wrong about that. This slope had twenty bowls in it, if it had one. Child's play this was not, I warned myself, as a waft of cheep teenager cigarette smoke caught my nose.

I climbed her slowly but with intent. I had been here before and survived I told myself, yet I could feel her heart and soul beneath my feet and was in no way reassured. At the summit, there were Asian students trying out yellow rain coats as sleds. They giggled and chortled until their rides disintigrated beneath them, just a quarter way down the slope.

I paused to let Amelia start her run, just part way up the mountain on what seemed like a gentle, less slick, less used portion of the hill. She picked up speed and headed right for me. I darted aside as she rocked past with a stearn look on her four-year-old face. I must have imagined the flames I thought I saw shooting out from behind her. She disappeared beyond the light's reach and finally stopped too far for my unspecticalled eyes to see.

I proceeded to climb, my heart now stronger than previous ascents, so strong I didn't feel the need to check my heart rate watch. I sat upon my trusty new sled after ripping it from the grasp of the wind's strong hands, unrestrained at top of the hill. I glanced around at the lights of downtown below, far below, in the distance. It would be okay, I thought. This wasn't the slickest part of the hill. Hell, this wasn't even a section I'd bother to go on on any other night. I'd take it easy, I told myself, catch up with Amelia who was somewhere in the abyss beyond the normal sledding range of the hill.

I nudged myself forward and the compressed snow started to creek below me.  With my son at my side and before I even picked up speed, I said aloud, "This ain't no bowl any more. This ain't no bowl!"

I quickly accelerated beyond any speed I had previously achieved, and, as I the broke the sound barrier, a loud double boom deafened me and echoed off the now-towering slopes. I leaned forward in a vain attempt to save my spine but something was wrong. The hill was faster than it had ever been. Was it the wind creating some sort of black ice like it does on the highways? Was the slope just faster at night?

I tore down to toward the base of the mountainside and tried to dig my hands into the snow to slow my ascent but it was pointless. It was like trying to touch a running fan blade without getting hurt. By the bottom of the hill, I had no sense that  I was slowing down. If anything, I was picking up speed. The sight of my daughter's face flew past me, aglow from the lights and already rosy from the cold wind. The sight of her loving face was comforting, I thought, as the severity of the situation escaped me for a moment.

Just when I thought there was no end, I suddenly started to slow, far past any part of the valley I had ever penetrated before, at any time in my life. And then, finally, thankfully, I stopped. I was alive and relieved, feeling that exhilaration one feels when you cheat death, but it was short-lived. My heart started to sink, along with the rest of me. Apparently, I was teetering at the edge of some sort of drainage  ditch or culvert that I wasn't aware existed, and I began to plummet again.