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As I mentioned before, I got another medical checkup as a part of completing Phase 1 of the 20/20 Lifestyles Program at the Pro Sports Club last week. In addition to the pictures, I wanted to share the results, which are of course very positive.

Result highlights

• I’ve lost about 25% of my weight since starting the program this Spring.
• I’m no longer pre-diabetic, as seen by my glucose counts below. This is a great personal achievement for me, knowing all the risks associated with the pre-diabetic path that I was on.
• My VO2 max (in ml/kg/min), which is a measurement of overall cardiovascular health, increased significantly from 38.8 at the start of the program to 69.1 last week. V02 max is the amount of oxygen per minute your body is able to use while exercising. The higher your V02 max, the better your endurance, which means the faster and longer you can walk, jog, bike or row.
• My flexibility also significantly increased. In addition to the daily observations just being me, they measure my flexibility by having me sit on the floor with my legs straight in front of me and reach my arms forward while holding a bar on a wire. When I started, I could reach 11.4”; last week I reached 15.1”.
• My biological age went from approximately 60 years old to 24 years old. In other words, this means that by just following proper nutrition and exercising regularly over the last 6 months, I’ve reclaimed 36 years of my life —amazing to think about, especially since I’m 40.

Detailed results

I got the results of the assessment that the Pro Club does for members at the end of Phase 1 of the 20/20 Lifestyles Program today. There’s a lot of information to talk about, but I thought I’d start by showing the pictures that they took when I started vs. the pictures they took during the assessment on Monday.

They say a picture’s worth a thousand words—these are certainly worth the thousands of flights of stairs I’ve climbed to lose the 67 pounds I’ve lost so far.

So what do I think? Well, I’ve still got 8 pounds to go—and 9 weeks to get there, but I’m very happy with the results so far. Obviously, the change is evident to me looking at these pictures, and it’s a bit spooky to see, since I don’t really recognize either set as me. It’s been a slow, day-by-day change, and though I’ve commented before that I haven’t recognized myself in recent pictures from events I’ve attended, I haven’t actually compared a set of pictures like I’m doing here.

Wow.

Week 0

Week 23

Week 0 close-up

Week 23 close-up

I’ll write more about the results of the assessment when I have a bit more time, so check back!

Just a quick post with the results of my dietitian meeting and official weigh-in today.

New to the diet this week is potatoes. I need to count potatoes as a grain serving because they’re starchy. A single serving is about the size of my fist, which contains about 100 calories on average. My dietitian advised me that baked potatoes are the best choice, especially with the skin on. She suggested making a baked potato and suggested the following ideas for toppings:

• Salsa
• Fat-free sour cream
• Ranch dressing
• Spray butter
• Cottage cheese
• Ham
• Vegetables (e.g. broccoli or chives)

Results

My official weigh-in was 198 pounds, a loss of 3.4 pounds since my last weigh-in, bringing the total lost to 67 pounds! 8 pounds to go, 10 weeks to get there.

I’m back! Yes, it’s been a while since I updated my site, but as you can see, I updated a lot today. I’ve actually been updating a local copy of my site for a little over a month now (since my week 14 results post), but I haven’t gotten around to posting everything live until today.

Note: In terms of the 20/20 program, my time in London was an excused absence, since it was a mandatory business trip, which means my program simply gets extended by a week. I ended the first of the two phases of the program while I was in London, but due to scheduling, I won’t be taking the end of phase 1 tests until this week, which is actually week 22. So I am now in phase 2 of the program, which is the same as phase 1, except that:

• I meet with my personal trainer twice each week (instead of three times)—my workouts are scheduled Tuesday and Thursday at 5:30PM.
• I meet with my dietitian every other week (instead of every week)—on Wednesdays at 5:30PM, starting this Wednesday.

As the formal structure of the program loosens, it becomes even more important for me to continue the diet and exercise routine on my own, and the London trip was a big test for me along these lines. Since my official weigh-ins are with my dietitan, I’ll be updating those every other week starting later this week.

I’m happy to say that the London trip was a successful one in all regards:

• Work was great—we got very positive feedback about our product from the MSN International folks, and more importantly, learned more about how they are leveraging our product for their sites, which will help guide future releases;
• Brian and I got to do some site seeing while there—highlights for me was a trip to Legoland Windsor on the Sunday we arrived and a Saturday afternoon exploring Camden Market before we left; and
• I was able to get 4 exercise sessions in during the 10 days we were there—not great, but far better than it could have been. The equipment at the hotel was terrible, but fortunately, the London office has a relationship with LA Fitness there, and I was able to use their facilities free of charge. Their equipment was still a big step down from the Pro Club, but it served its purpose, and it was fun to work out London style. The highlight in terms of exercise was jogging in Hyde Park on Sunday morning—it’s a very beautiful park and it wasn’t crowded at all.
• For Dad, I made it a point to try authentic Fish and Chips while I was in London—I’ve even got a picture. [My parents went on a 28-day European vacation this summer, and this was one of the things on my Dad’s list of things to do. Unfortunately, he didn’t get a chance to do it while in the UK, so I promised him I would.]
• Yes, I had a few pints whilst there—it is London, after all.
• Favorite story: upon telling some of the MSN International folks about my goal to lose 75 pounds, one of the guys didn’t catch on right away—until he converted it to stones. Apparently, I’m planning to lose 5 stones, which got a huge reaction.

The victim of the trip turned out to be my Magic Bullet blender, which I had packed along so that I could have my shakes each morning. I found a grocery store near the hotel and stocked up on fruits and milk (emptying the mini bar to make room). Unfortunately, I would only get one shake for the trip—when I made the first one, I burned out the blender’s motor. Apparently, I needed both a plug and voltage adapter, and I only used a plug adapter. I had become accustomed to just having the plug, and the voltage difference didn’t occur to me, since everything I’ve ever travelled with before was computer equipment that is capable at running at both currents.

While there, I also started the long (and fun) process of replacing my wardrobe. I wanted to postpone the new wardrobe until ending the program in December, but as everyone who’s seen me lately will tell you, it got to the point of being silly—my clothes were just hanging off me. Allison suggested that I check out the Ben Sherman store while I was there, and I’m glad I did—I found a few things that I like a lot. Thanks to Darren Wicker for being a regular Ben Sherman shopper and being able to tell me right where it was—only a few blocks from the London office, as it turned out.

I continued the shopping spree after I got back, and am now well on my way to having replaced my wardrobe. Some fun facts:

There’s no way I can overemphasize how nice of a change this is—especially since it opens me up to stores I couldn’t shop at before because they didn’t carry my size. I even ordered a few of my all-time favorite button downs: the Hyde Park by Lands’ End, which are limited in colors to just blue and white in my old size. So if you see me wearing a pink shirt and being happy about it, that’s why :)

It’s interesting to note that I did buy 2 pairs of pants about a month ago, and those were 36×30. I haven’t lost that much weight since then, but my shape has definitely changed. Another surprise: I now wear medium sweat pants.

I’ll have a medical update in about a week or so, and I hope to post pictures up one of these days as well, so check back. Sorry for going stale here for so long—I’ll try to keep more current now that the major changes to my site are in place.

Oh, and one last thing: if you’re in the market for some second hand XXL shirts, sweaters and jackets or 42×30 pants, by all means, please drop me a line—I’ll let them go for cheap.

Over the last 20 weeks or so, I’ve gotten quite a lot of useful information from my dietitian about making healthy choices in terms of diet. What follows are some additional sources she recommended to me for learning to cook healthier.

Cookbooks

Note: some of the cookbooks recommended here may not emphasize low glycemic foods, and some may call for processed grains such as white rice, flour tortillas, etc. I need to substitute unprocessed, high-fiber grains, and low glycemic load fruits and vegetables where necessary.

• Cooking Light: Quick and Easy in 15 Minutes or 5 Ingredients or Less (Cain)
• 1,000 Lowfat Recipes (Terry Bender Golson)
• Feeding the Whole Family (Cynthia Lair)
• Jane Brody’s Good Seafood Book (Jane Brody)
• Jane Brody’s Good Food Gourmet (Jane Brody)
• Quick and Healthy Meals in 15 Minutes or Less (Ponchero)
• Microwave Gourment Healthstyle Cookbook (Morrow)
• Low Carb Recipes Fast and Easy (Schweinhart)
• Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone (Madison)
• The Soy Zone (Sears)
• Moosewood Restaurant Low-Fat Favorites (The Moosewood Collective)
• Cooking the Whole Foods Way: Your Complete, Everyday Guide to Healthy Delicious Eating with 500 Recipes, Menus, Techniques, Meal Planning and Buying Tips (Pirello)

Websites

• PCC Natural Markets
• Whole Foods Market
• Cooking Light
• Recipes.com
• Amazon.com (there are hundreds of great cookbooks here)

Magazines

• Cooking Light
• Eating Well

Cooking classes

• PCC Natural Markets
• Whole Foods Market
• Sur la Table
• Larry’s Market

Here are some ideas to keep your energy up when you’re feeling sick.

You’re starting not to feel well…

• Continue to eat every 3-4 hours, regardless of hunger.
• Eat small portions throughout the day and aim for a minimum of 200 calories per meal.
• Be sure to get in a 20/20 approved carbohydrate and protein for every meal and snack.

Now it’s worse. You’ve got nausea, vomiting, even diarrhea!

• Replenish your electrolytes by drinking an 8oz glass of Smart Water or Vitamin Water (any electrolyte-enhanced water sweetened with Fructose will work) every 1/2 to 1 hour.
• Choose 20/20 approved carbohydrates—like TLC or Akmak crackers, every 2-3 hours to provide more energy.
• Cold foods decrease nausea. So, including a cold soup, a protein shake with berries, yogurt, cottage cheese and fruit or a salad is a great way to reduce nausea.

What extra step can I do to make this better?

• Decaffeinated green tea consumption will boost your immune system.
• Consuming chicken broth or chicken soup will enhance higher protein intake and may speed up your recovery.
• Remember to continue to take your 20/20 multivitamins, fish oils and calcium supplements to ensure proper nutrient intake while sick.
• For a sore throat, use Cold-Eaze zinc lozenges (available at Bartell’s Drugs).

My personal trainer gave me an interesting piece of information today—it’s the target heart rate I should be aiming for sustaining throughout my 50-minute workouts. For me, it’s 155, but anywhere between 144-165 is acceptable.

Here’s how it’s calculated, in case you want to determine yours:

1. Calculate your resting heart rate—e.g. your heart rate when you first wake up in the morning. For me, this is 77.
2. Subtract your age from 220 to get your maximum heart rate. For me, this is 220-40=180.
3. Subtract your resting heart rate from your maximum heart rate and multiply the result by 0.65 to determine the low end of your target range. For me, this is 180-77=103*0.65=144.
4. Subtract your resting heart rate from your maximum heart rate and multiply the result by 0.85 and add your resting heart rate to the result to determine the high end of your target range. For me, this is 180-77=103*0.85=88+77=165.
5. To find your target, add up the low and high ends of your range and divide by 2. For me, this is (144+165)/2=155.

To remain in good physical shape and health, you should strive to work out at this level for 50 minutes, 5 times a week.

Time’s whizzing right by these days, and I’m trying my best to hang on. Things are great and I’m making progress, but the convergence of several things in my life at the moment are creating a perfect storm of sorts:

• Phase 1 of my 20/20 Lifestyles program is set to end next week, and I find myself wanting to squeeze in as much as I can in terms of diet and exercise into this phase, just for the sake of seeing how close I can get to my phase 2 goal in phase 1.
• I’m starting to sense Autumn in the air (which means the rain will start falling soon and won’t be stopping until Spring), and a certain little voice is telling me to get out and enjoy the remaining days of Summer while I can. That voice is calling me a leaker for not running Green Lake completely yet, and reminding me that I’m going to regret spending these final dry and (relatively) warm nights inside.
• The clothes are getting a bit silly, in terms of fit. I don’t think I’m going to be able to stick to the original plan of waiting until December before buying new clothes. I’m still losing weight and my overall body shape is still transforming, which makes it hard to commit to new clothes, since I don’t know what size I’ll end up at. Oh, and I’m so close to my weight goal, that I sometimes need to remember where I put the motivation that’s gotten me this far. I did pick up two new pairs of pants (36×32, not 42×30) and a new shirt (L, not XXL) for Deanna and Brian’s birthday dinner last weekend and took some pictures that I’ll post here one of these days. We were passing the camera around the table and taking pictures, and honestly, I did not recognize myself in these photos. Very weird in a Twilight Zone kind of way, but I digress.
• Work has been a bit hectic the past few weeks, due to various deadlines and commitments. The temptation to skip the gym and focus on the job at hand is a strong one, a familiar and well-travelled road for me.
• The Microsoft annual review is done now (and I did just fine, thanks for asking). The product I’ve been working on is shipping very soon. I’m now running Vista RC1 on my primary computer and my laptop is a MacBook also running Windows XP Professional via Parallels. I’ve been reorged into a different team. Change, change, change and more change tend to make we wonder if it isn’t time for a change? Move? Change jobs? Try pizza tonight? (Oops, I did that one, I confess) Trade in the iPod for a Zune? Oh, I don’t know… lose 75 pounds? Then what?
• I’m heading to London on Friday for about a week of meeting with some of the MSN International folks, and that’s going to be a big change to my routine.
• I told myself I’d give up tobacco by the end of phase 1. I’ve had time back off of it slowly, but of course, I didn’t take it. So instead, I’m going to take an extreme measure: I’m leaving for London on Friday, and usually, I’d stock up on tobacco before leaving, since the stuff I use is simply not available in London that I’ve found. Believe me, I’ve looked. The first week will be the hardest, and quitting it in London is a forcing function to me — I’ll have no choice but to quit. A little time away from it will hopefully reduce the urge to pick it back up again when I return to Seattle. Posting it here will hopefully help as well :)
• Lastly, it’s been a while since I’ve updated the blog. I’ve been making changes to a local copy of my site all this time, but as I write this now, the last published entry on my live site is for my week 14 results. I’ve been doing a bit of a redesign, reorganization and other assorted danboe.net-ish projects locally on my Mac here at home, and the more I did, the more involved it was to get everything updated live. In the end, I decided to just do what I wanted to do locally, and then publish everything. You’re reading this post, which means I’ve finally done that. My site is always a work in progress, but some of the work has a tendency to progress slowly (and behind the scenes). I’ve also taken some time each night since starting 20/20 to post a lot more information here (mostly from recipes and handouts I get in my 20/20 meetings). There’s a lot of great information I get, but having it all on paper at home isn’t useful to me, and the pace of the program is making it hard for me to absorb everything permanently. So, I figured I’d post it here, so next time I’m in a restaurant, grocery shopping, or really doing anything away from those handouts I can simply bring up my site on my phone and find what I need.

I guess what I’m rambling on about is that the 20/20 Lifestyles program is one of several things that are occupying my time and thoughts lately. When I started writing about this journey I’m taking here, I said I’d be upfront and honest and write about what it’s like to go through the program. Well, for me, today starting week 20, it’s a bit overwhelming. The results are remarkable and I feel incredible, but life shifts and turns or something shiny catches my eye for a moment and suddenly I wake up one day…

and I realize that I haven’t been meal-tracking for 3 weeks now. There, I said it. I’m still true to 95% of my diet 95% of the time, but I don’t know exact daily calorie totals because I haven’t been writing everything down. I haven’t been doing 5-6 days of exercise per week for the last two weeks — I’ve been doing 3-4. And I haven’t been writing down my weight every morning. I’m still weighing myself, I just haven’t been writing it down. Oh, and I’m behind in my blog.

Of course, this means that my results should be bad this week, which will illustrate the relationship between cause and effect and motivate me to readjust the cause and thereby correct the effect, right?

Results

Oh, the irony. As of my weigh-in last night, I’m at 201.4 pounds, down 3.4 pounds from my last weigh-in 2 weeks ago (I had to cancel last week’s appointment, so I don’t have official numbers for week 18). This brings my total lost so far to 63.6 pounds. Less than 12 pounds to go, and 13 weeks to get there.

I just love it when cause and effect get all playful like this, don’t you?. Of course, this isn’t cause and effect — the message isn’t do less and still lose weight — no, Virginia, not even close. I’m glad this is happening now, while I still have the support and structure of my 20/20 Lifestyles team around me. That’s a big part of the thinking behind phase 2.

At the annual Microsoft Company Meeting today, Steve Ballmer made some comments about setting and working towards goals that stuck with me as I’ve been writing this tonight. I don’t recall his exact words, but the idea was pretty simple. Let’s say there’s a goal to get over a wall. Now some folks are going to get really charged up and try to get over that wall tomorrow. Others are going to step back and say um, that wall is just too high — we can’t get over that wall. Then there are those that say I don’t know exactly when yet, and I don’t know precisely how yet, but I am absolutely certain that I am going over that wall, and here’s what I know so far.

I’m beginning to get a newfound understanding of why phase 2 is going to be just as hard as phase 1 is, and why phase 3 is going to be harder still.

The plan for London

Here’s what my dietitian advised me on staying healthy while travelling:

• Try to weigh yourself everyday, but note that you’ll weigh heavier 24 hours after flying.
• Prepare. I’ve got 20/20 shake powder and a portable blender that I’m bringing along, and having stayed at the Park Lane hotel in London before, I’m familiar with the area. I hope to be able to run every day in Hyde Park (weather permitting, it’s right across the street), and plan to have a breakfast shake each day. I’m pretty sure I can get milk, all-natural peanut butter and fresh berries at a market near to the hotel.
• Snacks are often the hardest thing to control, so some good ideas are protein bars (I bought 2 boxes of 15 last night, though I haven’t tried them before). Other ideas are jerky, soy nuts, fruit, yogurt, string cheese and individual-servings of peanut butter.

Here are some things I hope to do while there, outside of work, if possible. I’ve got an entire Sunday and Saturday free at the moment:

• Visit Legoland Windsor. Don’t worry Scott, if I post pictures of that I’ll post other pictures too.
• Check out a European market — I’ve heard there are really big and fun open air markets to check out and I’ve always wanted to go to one. I seem to recall something called Camden Market, though I may be wrong on the name.
• Walk around a lot, see the sites, and take a lot of pictures.
• Bring back some Tetley Tea for Martina.
• Bring back some dark chocolate for Allison.
• Find a neat souvenir or maybe do a little bit of clothes shopping.

Back in April, 2004, when Apple announced iTunes 4.5 would support a new audio format called Apple Lossless, I downloaded the new version and immediately changed my default import format to use the new lossless format.

At that point in time, my iTunes library had 19,629 songs and occupied 71.96GB on disk. Since then, I’ve been adding more music as I’ve purchased new CD’s, and I’ve also purchased a few tracks from iTunes. Here’s a breakdown of my library as it stood recently, broken down by format:

Obviously, making the switch from AAC to Apple Lossless has come at quite a cost in terms of storage—less than half of my songs are in the lossless format, and they are taking more than 2/3 of the space. It’s not that big of an issue for the hard drive on the Mac Mini, since I have a 500GB drive and I wouldn’t mind adding another if and when needed, but the problem comes when syncing these files to the iPod.

The iPod Shuffle I have will automatically down-convert from Apple Lossless to AAC during the sync, but unfortunately, this feature is not supported for the iPod Mini, Nano, Photo or Video. The iPod Shuffle has a very small storage capacity (mine is the big 1GB), so I can understand why this feature exists. What I don’t understand is why the feature is hidden from other iPods. I’d still like to get much more music on my other iPods than I can today because I’m using Apple Lossless.

My ideal preference would be to have all music on the computer in Apple Lossless (since I play music on the computer through my home entertainment center, and quality matters there). I would also prefer having a choice between quality and capacity for the iPod, regardless of what iPod it is. Yes, I realize that down-converting takes more time to sync, which is why I’m asking for a choice here, not a change to the default behavior.

After reading a lot of articles on various strategies people have for working with iTunes and multiple formats, it seems that workarounds are more work than they’re worth to me. They either involve keeping and managing two copies of the library on the computer (which sounds like a very big pain to maintain) or using alternate approaches for syncing using scripts or other hacks that just don’t feel right to me.

Well, after considering the options, I’ve started an automated process tonight to down-convert all of my Apple Lossless tracks to 160kb variable AAC. It’s a bit of a compromise in terms of quality, but it’s a much better use of space and will make backups and syncing much faster. Oh, and it looks like it will take about 3 days straight to run—which means it won’t finish before I leave for the U.K.

Doing this will create duplicate tracks at the lower quality, and will copy all of the metadata for each track, except for the playcount (and skipcount I would assume) since the new track has not in truth been played. That’s unfortunate—since my intent is to replace the old tracks with the new ones, I really would have preferred iTunes to give me a choice to retain this metadata as well, especially given its importance in building good smart playlists (such as highly rated but not recently played tracks).

Once the automated copy is done, I need to delete the old Apple Lossless versions of the tracks from my Library.

I’ve backed up my entire library to 65 DVD’s before doing this, so I can always go back if it doesn’t work out as I hope it will. Of course, I’ll need to switch my default import format to 160KB variable AAC after completing the down-convert. That means that I won’t have Apple Lossless backups any longer, but I’ve got the original CD’s as master backups but I hesitate thinking about going through and correcting all the metadata and losing playcounts, etc. should I ever reimport from the masters again.

Update [10/9/2006]: I’ve completed the downconvert process and replaced all of my Apple Lossless files with variable-rate 192Kb encoded AAC files. My library breakdown is now as follows, which is a great improvement:

There were a few consequences of downconverting:

• Although my ratings were preserved for the AAC versions of the lossless files, I lost the playcount and last played metadata for each AAC copy. The AAC versions are reset to zero, presumably under the argument that they have not been played. I understand this, but wish iTunes would have asked me if I wished to copy this metadata to the new tracks, especially since this is valuable information for smart playlists.
• My manual playlists got a bit out of whack, since the files that they referred to were the original lossless versions. Egads.
• My smart playlists lost a bit of their smarts, since many of them were based on playcount and date last played.

In hindsight, I’m still glad to have made the switch, for it gives me far more space to grow into, and allows me to fit much more music on my iPods.

Recipe from the 20/20 Lifestyles Program at the Pro Sports Club.

Ingredients

• Chicken broth – use canned, boxed or cubed chicken broth¹.
• 2 precooked, diced chicken breasts
• 6 or more cloves of minced garlic (these will enhance your immune system!)
• 1 bunch of chopped green onions
• 2 zucchinis, diced
• Black pepper as a seasoning, to taste

Preparation

1. In a large pot, bring the chicken broth to a boil and then add the chicken breasts, garlic, onions, zucchini, and seasonings.
2. Cook on low boil for 30 minutes.
3. Keep pot covered on low heat all day so that you have quick access to your recovery soup.

Nutritional information

This recipe makes 4 1-cup servings, each having 150 calories, 2.5g fat, 135mg sodium and 25g protein.

¹ Here are some recommended broth bases for soups. You should select broths that have 35 calories or less and 5g sodium or less per 1-cup serving:

• Organic Vegetable Broth (Trader Joe’s)
• Health Valley Vegetable Broth
• Health Valley Beef Broth – No Salt Added
• Health Valley Chicken Broth – No Salt Added
• Herb Ox – Granulated Chicken Boullion (Safeway)

My work schedule conflicted with my 20/20 Lifestyles appointments this week, and because of this, I was unable to meet with my dietitian and get the official weigh-in and results. In hindsight, I’m amazed that I was able to make it 17 weeks running without a hiccup, but this week was a burp.

I’ll have to wait for next week’s appointment to post an update, which means you’ll have to wait as well.

Thanks for stopping by.