Greg's Weight Loss Blog

Bye-bye Pam! No more aerosol and “who knows what’s inside” cooking spray for me! I went to Bed Bath and Beyond and found this fancy looking aluminum can that was advertised as a “Gourmet oil sprayer“. I just had to have it. It wasn’t cheap but I figured that if it works I’ll save at least that much and then some on not buying cooking spray ever again.

I used to put a good amount of bacon fat under my eggs and pour salad dressing onto lettuce by the bucket load. Well that second statement is a lie, I was never too big on salad dressing, I always use sparingly even when they give you 4 servings of it in a packet. So when I started my transformation into healthy eating I gave up the bacon fat, I still eat bacon just not the fat, and started cooking my eggs in non-stick pans with no oil. As long as you do scrambled eggs you’re OK, most of it comes out and you can scrape the rest of it with a wooden spoon. But as soon as you start venturing into the land of “sunny side up” or “over easy” you start heaving problems with the egg sticking to the non-stick skillet. So I had been using cooking spray on the days I was making egg varieties with the nicely cooked white and soft yellow in the middle.

But when I saw this sprayer at BB&B I knew that I would no longer buy Pam and I will be more environmentally friendly while still staying healthy. And I was right! Misto works as advertised! It’s super easy to use, you just fill it with oil then use the built in pump to pressurize the can and BAM! you’re misting oil into the pan. I have no idea how Pam can still stay in business when there is such a product on the market that does it just as good for practically nothing.

The best part is that you don’t have to use canola or olive oil in it, you can use any kind of “gourmet” oil for your cooking needs. I have tried almond and chestnuts and they both are great. I also use it to spray it on my salads and salmon if I want to go light on the lubricants. I’ve been using it for the last couple of months and I could not be more pleased with it. All in all Misto is a great product and I think every kitchen should have one!

Today was the last day of my son’s soccer camp and for the past four days I’ve been eating lunch with him at various places. Monday we went to McDonald’s, a place where he’s only been about 3 times in his entire life. Tuesday I took him to my favorite lunch spot, a Thai restaurant where he had his very first Pad Thai and he liked it a lot. Wednesday we went to another favorite of mine, Chipotle, and he got a taste of their chicken quesadillas. For some reason today he said he wanted to eat Chick-fil-A. It was a really odd request as he’s only been to Chick-fil-A about as many times as he’s been to McDonald’s which is not many. I wasn’t even sure if he knew what Chick-fil-A was serving.

Since he told me about his lunch plan in the morning I had plenty of time to look up their nutrition information and calorie counts on the Chick-fil-A website. Since their menu is rather simple it was very easy to make my choices. I knew that i would not eat anything that was fried so that left me with their grilled chicken options which were two sandwiches, one with cheese and bacon and one without and two salads, one with fruits and one without.

I carefully weighed the calorie count and decided that I would have a salad for good filler and good volume and I would also eat a chicken sandwich for taste and some more carbs. The two salad options were Chargrilled & Fruit Salad or the Chargrilled Chicken Garden Salad. If you look on the nutrition page the fruit salad is 230 calories and boasts 17 grams of sugar while the plain chicken salad is a mere 180 calories and only 6 grams of sugar. So you would naturally say that the fruit salad is the worse choice and you would opt for the regular salad. But those extra 9 grams of sugar all come from healthy fruits such as strawberries, apple, grapes and mandarin oranges. So it’s a bunch of healthy stuff. And the story doesn’t end here.

What Chick-fil-A doesn’t make apparent at this point is that this calorie count does not include the dressing, croutons, sunflower seeds, granola or whatever else you might end up putting on the salad. The fruit salad comes with Harvest Nut Granola (60 calories per serving, 2 grams of fiber) while the garden salad comes with Butter Garlic Croutons (60 calories, no fiber) and Honey Roasted Sunflower Seeds (90 calories). So once you put all the add-ons onto the salads the fruit salad is sitting at 270 calories while the garden salad is up to 330 calories. So at this point the Fruit salad certainly looks like a better choice in terms of calories. but the story doesn’t end here.

We still have to add salad dressing to the equation. If you go with Ranch or Caesar dressing you just added another 160 calories to either of these two salads. If you opt for the Light Italian dressing you’re only adding 15 calories to your salad. The fruit salad comes with the Reduced Fat Berry Balsamic Vinaigrette which clocks in at 70 calories per serving, but you can certainly opt for something else. So if you get the Fruit salad as listed, with the balsamic viegarette,  it would be a total of 340 calories for the salad. If you ordered the garden salad with ranch it would be 490 calories while if you opt for the light Italian you’d be at 345 calories. At this point I have decided to go with the fruit salad and the balsamic vinaigrette for a total of 340 calories. But the story doesn’t end here.

For the sandwich I chose the Chargrilled Chicken Club, with bacon and cheese for 410 calories. But it’s only 410 calories if you skip the Honey Roasted BBQ Sauce packet that comes with it whether you want it or not. That small packet of BBQ sauce adds 60 calories to the sandwich if you choose to squeeze it on there. I decided ahead of time that I would not use the packet and only eat the sandwich. So I was ready to go in and eat 750 calories for my lunch which is not a terrible amount of calories if you’re eating 2,300 calories a day. It’s actually quite a healthy amount of calorie with decent macronutrient breakdown. But the story doesn’t end here.

Once I ordered my salad and sandwich, to my surprise, they not only gave me the salad, the sandwich, the BBQ packet, the salad dressing and the granola packet but they also threw in the sunflower seeds, which were clearly not listed as an ingredient on their website. They have clearly just “supersized” my lunch by adding another 90 calories to it with a mere 0.5 oz of sunflower seeds that most people would not even notice whether they ate it or not. But that wasn’t even the biggest surprise. The biggest surprise was the salad dressing. The size of the packet was something that could serve a family of four and the label clearly mentioned it. Serving size: 2 tbsp (37g), Servings Per Container: about 2.0. So Chick-fil-A just gave me an extra 70 calories worth of salad dressing which would be invisible to the casual observer. Had I opted for the 160 calories per serving (a serving of Ranch is only 30 grams vs. the 37 grams of the vinaigrette) Ranch Dressing I’d be in the hole for another 160 calories. So that 180 calorie garden salad can end up being a 650 calorie meal once you factor in the croutons, sunflower seeds and the two servings of Ranch dressing that you’ll receive whether you want it or not.

Don’t misunderstand me, I really like the fact that every addition is clearly labeled with calorie content and that Chick-fil-A lists all this on their website and the separate packets give you the option to have a 180 calorie salad or a 650 calorie salad but it’s a minefield and a danger zone for the casual observer. I’d also mention that they list no sandwich on their menu that would beat the 650 calorie salad monstrosity in calories, not even their most calorie dense Spicy Chicken Deluxe Sandwich can top that with its measly 580 calories. And let’s not forget that while the Spicy Chicken Deluxe Sandwich contains an impressive 27 grams of fat, 8 of which are saturated and 9 grams of sugar that dream garden salad with double ranch (who could stop at half a packet I mean one packet is one serving, right?) dwarfs those numbers with a whopping 49 grams of fat, 9.5 of which are saturated, and 10 grams of sugar. And if you’d think that at least you’re getting some fiber if you go with the salad, think again as it’s only 1 gram more fiber vs. the Spicy Deluxe Sandwich with 5 grams vs. 4 grams.

I have enjoyed my lunch at Chick-fil-A today despite all the horrors that I have witnessed, but it just shows that if you’re serious about controlling your weight you have to be on the absolute lookout for yourself as everywhere you go things will try to sabotage your every move towards healthier eating.

Just for the record, I actually ended up eating the Fruit Salad with only 14 grams (less than half a serving) of the Berry Balsamic Vinaigrette dressing, I didn’t eat the granola nor the sunflower seeds and I had the Chargrilled Chicken Club Sandwich sans BBQ sauce for a total of 664 calories. As for my son? He was very happy with his two strips of fried chicken, waffle potato fries and Milk for a total of 650 calories. It’s kind of shocking to see that he ate as much as I did and this is the very reason why he’s only been there 3-4 times in his lifetime which is not much fewer than the times I happened to end up there.

I run races. And I’m kind of an extrovert, in case you haven’t noticed. I also enjoy the crowd support at the races where they can yell at you all kinds of things. But i prefer when they cheer for me personally. One way to achieve that is by having your name on your shirt. It is not uncommon for runners to race in a custom shirt with their name printed on the front so the crowd can read it and yell out their names. So I have decided to have a custom shirt made with my name printed on it. I have found Running Banana, a company that sells customized shirts for runners and walkers, or pretty much anyone who’s willing to pay for them.

Their store has several designs to choose from and they have designs that you can customize with your own name. Or they offer you the option to send in your own design and they’ll print it on the shirt of your choice. The nice thing about Running Banana shirts is that they’re all made from technical sweat wicking fabric and the printing process actually dyes the white shirt in its material, the image is not screen printed onto it which means that the shirt retains the fabric’s feel and sweat wicking capability. Since I’m kind of technically inclined and dabble with photo editing I have decided to make my own shirt design. It turned out to be a mullet shirt.

So how is my shirt a “mullet shirt”? Well it’s business in the front and party in the back. In the front I knew I wanted my name to be clearly visible and legible so people could cheer me on. This was the primary goal. But since Running Banana gives you a large area to play with it would have been a waste to leave the rest of the shirt’s front empty. So I also put the US flag and the Hungarian flag on the front along with my website address for a bit of self promotion.

For the rear I had no idea what I wanted to do until I have chatted with a friend who said I should put something funny. So I did. I designed the rear design from scratch and I think it turned out pretty good. I’m also thinking about making a second design with a different caution logo along the lines of “CAUTION: This Runner Makes Frequent Stops”.

I took the shirt on two test runs so far and while I’m extremely happy with the design and the quality of the shirt, unfortunately it chafes me in the armpits. the first time I took it on an interval run and I got minor discomfort in the armpits. The second time I took it out for an easy run and it chafed me again. Tomorrow’s the first race that I’ll be wearing it at, a 10K, and I’ll apply liberal amounts of Body Glide under my arms to see how it works. I figure if it gets bad I’ll have to figure something else out for longer races and maybe buy a different size or different style. At any rate, here is the shirt design:

It’s no secret that I have been tracking my calories since day one of my transformation very diligently and based on the results I’d say with great accuracy and success. When I started I was going to do a simple diet that was going to contain the same food every day. This would have meant no worries about counting calories, you set up the menu once then you keep eating the same thing over and over again until the cows come home. It is a great method to stay on track but it’s also a great method to fall off the wagon due to utter boredom with food. Just because I’m eating at a caloric deficit it doesn’t mean I didn’t want to eat a variety of foods and enjoy the occasional indulgences. And eating the sam thing day in day out is not something that can be sustained for a lifetime. So I had to use a different approach.

I knew if I wanted to eat a wide variety of food items I could not rely on memory and estimation alone to ensure that I’d say within my daily calorie allocation. I had to track it. Luckily there is an abundance of information and websites available on-line that help you with tracking your caloric use. There are even iPhone apps that will do it for you. Since I don’t have an iPhone that was not an option for me. The website choices are abundant, there are plenty of free ones and there are plenty of pay ones.

I have stumbled upon myfooddiary.com somehow and I found the site very intuitive and easy to use. It was relatively easy to use and had a great user interface. It also allowed me to add customized food items and recipes to my profile which was great as I could add all my wife’s home made recipes to it and still enjoy home cooked meals every once in a while once I figured out how many calories they contained. Myfooddiary.com is a pay site that charges $9/month for their service to keep track of your food items. They also have great charting features, progress reports and handy little smiley faces and frowns for things you ate during the day.

For example, if you start your day with a high fiber breakfast it rewards you with a smiley face for the day. But if you eat too much saturated fat you get a frown. It’s a great motivator but I’m not sure I agree with all the smileys and frowns. For example, if you eat a nice shrimp and veggie stir-fry with half a pound of shrimp you will end up getting a big fat frown for the day for going over the cholesterol limit. I think it’s stupid, there is no study that links food cholesterol to blood cholesterol, really. So go ahead, eat all those eggs, you’ll be fine. You also get a frown if you eat, what the software considers, too much protein. I have hit that wall on numerous occasions with some nice red frown faces. But the software simply follows the USDA recommended servings and ratios so I can’t really fault it for these minor things. All in all I was very happy with the way it tracked my calories.

But there was one thing with it that it simply did not do. There was no way for me to look up dates when I ate something last. This was frustrating because sometimes I was curious about when the last time was I had a cookie or when I had red meat last time. I couldn’t do it. I have asked their customer support about this feature and they told me it would not happen in the foreseeable future as their improvements are all planned out in advance and it’s not on the near future plan.

There is one other issue with these on-line tracking systems. If you quit paying your dues all your data goes bye-bye. So it seemed like I was on the hook forever, unless I was ready to give up my precious nutrition data that I oh so diligently logged into the system. They provided no means to back it up or export it.

So I started to look for alternatives, I was thinking about having some kind of web app running on my own server to log my food diary, it could not be all that hard to write something like this, but I hate to reinvent the wheel so I figured someone must have done it already. And I was right. There were open source web applications that already did calorie tracking on your own server with your own database. But they didn’t even come close to the detail and sophistication of myfooddiary.com. Then I finally found an open source app that actually does everything that myfooddiary does and then some!

Say hello to CRON-o-Meter. CRON-o-Meter is an open source multi-platform application that runs on Windows, Mac and Linux. It comes pre-loaded with the entire USDA food database and you can add your own custom foods as you need them. It also does a heck of a lot better job with setting up portions for your food items. One of my major gripes with myfooddiary.com was that you could only set up one unit of measure for every food item and most foods should have more than one unit of measure. Sometimes I measure my veggies by the cup, sometimes I weigh it on the scale. Sometimes I want a tablespoon of flour, sometimes I want to use two cups of the stuff. With myfooddiary.com this was not possible. But CRON-o-Meter handles units just the way the USDA defines it which is awesome. So I have decided to give CRON-o-Meter a test run.

I’m happy to report that I have been using CRON-o-Meter for my nutritional tracking for a month now, and it works great! I can log all my food items the way I want to, I have built custom recipes with it and I can enter all my custom foods with different units of measurement. And best of all, it’s free! So what’s the catch then?

Well, the biggest issue was, how was I going to save my data from myfooddyary.com? Luckily they provide a daily detail page that lists all the food items for that day with nutrient breakdown in a tabulated format. I had to manually copy/paste every day into a spreadsheet but now I have extracted all my data for myself, stored on my home PC. I had to write some Excel macros to be able to convert and format the data but even with the over 1,500 items of food that I had consumed over my 4 month myfooddiary.com tenure it was a relatively painless task.

The only drawback to CRON-o-Meter is that it lacks the nice charts and statistical summaries that were present in myfooddiary. But since I’m only really interested in daily total calories and macronutrient distribution, I just copy those over into an Excel spreadsheet and I can produce the pretty charts myself. I have actually been doing that since the end of January so it wasn’t that big of a deal to keep doing it. Now, CRON-o-Meter still doesn’t provide a search feature in historical data, ie. the last time I had candy but I now keep a food diary in Excel that is just a copy of the daily food items from CRON-o-meter. And Excel allows a quick search of this data which is great. And this way all my data is mine, on my PC and I can data mine it all day long any way I want to.

This all might sound like a ton of work but it really isn’t. Once you get the system down, logging your calories really becomes second nature and takes hardly any time at all. And while I used to do every single meal as I consumed it, now I just enter them all in bulk as I’m getting pretty good at keeping a mental count of my daily calories. When you do it as long as I have been doing, you just look at a slice of whole wheat bread and you know that you’re looking at 100 calories worth of complex carbs with a couple grams of protein and fat.

Bottom line is, myfooddiary.com out, CRON-o-meter in! My monthly subscription on myfooddiary is expiring in 3 days and I’m certainly canceling it. It helped me tremendously but had I known about CRON-o-Meter from day one I would have just used it instead.

Yup, you have read it right! I went and bought some new wheels. I call them my ruby slippers. I have a 5K race coming up this weekend and I just felt that the New Balance MR1224 that I have been using might be a bit too heavy for such a short distance. So I went on the quest of finding myself some racing flats.

Racing flats? Aren’t those only for the elite athletes who care about seconds coming off their time and fight for a win? Why would someone like me, a beginner runner who was seriously obese a mere 5 months ago, want to run in racing flats designed for the top performance athletes? Why? Because I am actually pretty close to the top of my class, I finished in the top 4% at my last race, as amazing and impossible as it might sound. Plus I wanted to be sure that there is nothing for me to blame other than myself if I get an abysmal result.

First, I started looking at various racing flats on-line from different manufacturers and I had to conclude that there are about a dozen or so perfectly fine racing flats out there but most of them are made with not only very little cushioning, they are racing flats after all, but they also lack support which would be an issue for a mild overpronator such as myself.

Pronation is the process where your ankle buckles inward upon impact, aka heel strike. To offset this buckling shoe manufacturers make the inside part of the midsole from a harder material, called the medial post, than the outside so it presents more resistances and forces the feet to stay level as they roll forward to the ball of the feet for push off. With the exception of a select few, running flats lack this heavier material on the inside of the midsole.

After research and some recommendations from on-line message boards I have found three shoes that were going to fit the bill:

• Asics GEL-DS Racer 8
• Saucony Grid Fastwitch 4
• Brooks Racer ST4

All three shoes are running flats designed with a medial post to provide some stability in such a lightweight shoe. I went to the LRS (Local Running Store) but they didn’t have any of the three shoes in stock or available. So I went across the street to the other LRS in town, how convenient, and they had all three shoes on display. I asked for a sample from all of them. They only had a half size smaller in the Asics than my size, they had none of the Saucony in my size and they had the Brooks in my size. Both the Asics and the Brooks actually fit my foot, but the Asics felt a bit too tight in the heel area while the Brooks felt just right.

The assistant also brought out a Brooks T6 Racer which is a true racing flat for neutral gait. I have tried it on but it felt too tight on the sides. So I settled on the Brooks Racer ST4 which felt like a great shoe. But this is where things got interesting. We went over to the treadmills and they made me run on them with the new ST4 on. The guy said that my left foot actually was suppinating now, the ankle was rolling outwards instead of rolling inwards or tracking straight. He said even the mild support of the ST4 was overkill for my now neutral gait. I didn’t believe him. I had to get a second opinion. I also went to the car and brought in my trusty MR1224s with 280 miles on them and my thin running socks.

The second shoe fitter said the exact same thing. I was clearly wearing too much support and I needed neutral shoes. They also watched me and videotaped my feet while running with a slow motion camera in the various shoes. The rolling of my left ankle was clearly visible and it looked the worst in my MR1224s. They said that my MR1224s are pretty worn down and it makes matters worse but I would most definitely need a neutral shoe. They were actually surprised that I didn’t get shin splints in my stability shoes. So I tried on the Brooks T6 Racer again, this time with my thin running socks, and the darn thing fit like a glove.

I ran in them on the treadmill and my suppination was gone. I was tracking as if I was on rails. They were clearly the racing flats for me. So I bought them. In obnoxious red. That was the only color choice. I really don’t understand the manufacturers and the lime green, bright orange or obnoxious red colors of all racing shoes. The sales guy said “If you’re wearing racing flats chances are you are one who want to be noticed”. I much prefer the blue on white look myself, thank you very much. But I had no choice so I took home my new ruby slippers, the Brooks T6 Racers.

I couldn’t wait until next day so even though I already ran my 3 mile easy run at lunch I went out and ran another 2 miler in the new shoes. They felt great. They are super light, 6 oz each, half the weight of my MR1224s. My easy run clocked in at an 8:00 min/mile pace which is the fastest I had ever run easy miles. Today I ran a 30 minute tempo run in them and I have clocked a 7:03 min/mile (4:23 min/km) pace for 3 miles (5km) in the middle. Obnoxious or not, these babies are on fire!

So today I had another issue I had to deal with. I had two brand spanking new pairs of MR1224s sitting in my closet. One had 10 miles on it, the other one hasn’t even left the box. I bought them two moths ago on sale and I felt pretty awesome about it. And now, 2 months later they’re no good for my feet. The receipt was long gone. I tried my chances and I managed to return them to Academy for store credit. I’m sure I’ll find a way to blow through $140 at Academy in the near future.

I also went back to my LRS today to pick up my goodies bag and bib for the Saturday race and while I was there I bought a new neutral trainer for my runs. I bought a pair of the Brooks Ghost 2. They are lightweight and feel super comfortable on my feet. I can’t wait to take them out for a spin tomorrow for an easy 3 miler just before the race. I have always been a New Balance guy but these Brooks shoes sure feel pretty damn nice! Hopefully they will last and I’ll be able to run injury free in them.

As to why my gait has changed from a mild overpronator to a neutral one in 2 months I can only speculate. I had a gait analysis done 2 months ago, I have seen the video, I was clearly a mild overpronator back then. I think the change has to do something with the fact that I’m 25 lbs lighter now so my feet are getting a good bit less stress and force on impact. I think it also has something to do with my feet muscles and ligaments getting stronger over the past two months providing more support on their own. The bottom line is, don’t invest in expensive shoes, not even on sale, when you’re new to running or you’re in the process of severely changing your body composition as your running gait might very well change rendering the shoes wrong for your new and changed running gait.

I’ve been talking about my running a lot lately. I wrote about the different kind of running days I have, hill intervals, tempo runs, fartlek runs and long runs but I never really talked about why I’m doing the different runs and whether there is a reason behind the different runs that are seemingly random.

There are people who are completely new to running, never ran a mile in their life and they just want to get started with running. They even have special programs such as the C25K (Couch to 5K) to get people running. I have ran before in my life. I actually used to run a lot. So for me to get off the couch and start running wasn’t as big of a change as it was for someone who never used a pair of sneakers for their intended purpose. But this doesn’t mean I didn’t need a plan. It just meant that I could start my newly found running career from a more advanced level.

I’m sure it’s crystal clear by now that I’m the kind of guy who likes to do everything full steam and with great attention to detail. This meant a lot of research and I spent a lot of time to figure out what it takes to run and to run better, faster and longer. So I consulted numerous websites and my best advice came from a co-worker when I told him that I would want to run a 10K race and I would need a training plan. He recommended that I would look at Hal Higdon’s training plans.

Hal Higdon is a marathoner and author who ran over 100 marathons in his life and wrote numerous books about running. He also has a great website which might look spartan but it is full of valuable information that is absolutely free! He also teaches training seminars and has interactive training plans available for those who need it. So for my 10K race I followed his 10K Intermediate plan. It’s an 8 week plan and I only had 7 weeks so I started with week 2 and went on from there.

During week 5 I got injured and had to pretty much skip week 6 but I still finished the plan and ran a pretty good 10K race at the end. After that plan I was hooked. I needed a new plan and I started on Hal’s Advanced Spring Training Plan 5 weeks ago. I’ve completed 4 weeks and doing week 5 currently. It is a pretty tough plan full of speed work and fast runs but as they say if you want to run fast you have to train fast. So this is the reason why I’m doing all the different kind of runs which might make no sense for the average runner who just run to get some fat off their tush and they put in 3-4 miles every night for the cause. I’m a bit more dedicated than that and this is why I’m doing the exercises that cause me to get blisters on my foot or leave me completely exhausted by the end of the run.

It wouldn’t be me if I wouldn’t have a log of all my runs. Well I do. And I have actually found a way to make them all public. So say hello to my new running log at http://runs.gregstransformation.com. It’s looking pretty good, it has all my logged runs in it but it has some minor issues with English and Metric unit conversions and currently it displays everything in Metric only. The software I used to display it is open source so I will make some changes to it as I have time to be a bit more user friendly with different units of measurements and correct units on some of the uploaded data that currently get doubly converted from English to Metric. It’s still a start, feel free to check it out. It’s more of a novelty for everyone else, it’s not a whole lot of interesting to look at my running logs I’m sure.

Today I started a new pair of shoes. My current pair has 62 runs and 266.8 miles on it. I have also noticed that the sole is getting a good bit worn and the mid sole is probably losing its elasticity too. So I have started a new pair with a 3 mile easy run and I will follow up with a fast hill interval tomorrow. As for what kind of shoes did I get? I actually have 3 pairs of New Balance MR1224 shoes that I bought on sale when I bought my first pair. I knew I would need them and I knew they fit me right so I stocked up on them when they were cheap. They are discontinued and I will have to buy something different once I go through all three of them but I’ll worry about that when I get to that point. I will still use my old ones for easy runs and long runs for another 100 or so miles but I’ll use the fresh one for speed and tempo runs and races.

Speaking of races, if you look at my advanced spring training week 5, you would see that I should be running a 5K race this coming weekend. And I actually am! I have just signed up for a 5K race, the Run For The Riders 5K event. I went to the running store and plopped down my $20 and signed up for the race. I also bought a nice Mizuno Creation Singlet and a Mizuno Maverick Short. Both look and feel pretty nice and I feel I just shaved off 10 seconds from my mile time. My stopwatch begs to differ but who cares? I’m running in style!

Ever since I have embarked on my lifestyle change I have been facing challenges at every step of the way. Elliptical machine breaking down, injury that would hinder my running, weights getting harder and harder to lift instead of easier, but the biggest challenge still has to do with food.

A proper diet is the most important aspect of the healthy lifestyle trinity; diet, strength training and cardio exercise. And this is the part where a lot of people fall short or sabotage themselves, their goals and progress. I have seen a lot of people going to the gym then eat a juicy burger with fries afterward and wash it down with a large soft drink. I have seen people crossing the finish line at the 5K race and head straight for the cookies and Gatorade at the recovery table instead of the carrots and water. I have seen people stepping off the elliptical machine to gulp down 400 calories worth of “recovery drink”. And I have heard of numerous people doing a P90X training program but ignoring the nutritional booklet that comes with it.

I can safely say that I am trying to stay on top of my diet. I have no cheat meals, no cheat days, no cheat weeks. I just have healthy eating day in day out. But there are times when you get a curve ball thrown at you and you just have to roll with it. Eating out with family and friends can definitely be a huge curve ball.

Every time we have a birthday lunch at work I get very concerned. I’m hoping that the birthday person will pick something healthy and I would feel comfortable picking a food item off the menu but usually people are quite inconsiderate of my food choices when they pick their birthday lunch. It’s their birthday after all. So how can you cope with this kind of problem?

I could simply say “no thank you” and not go. But somehow I feel that is not the right thing to do. I want to be part of the team and partake in the company lunch. So I am obligated to go. I could always just go but not eat. I have a co-worker who does just that. He will go out with the rest of the lunch crowd and have an ice tea with no sugar and just partake in the social aspect of the lunch. But he definitely gets a lot of crap for it every time. I on the other hand love to go out. But I always fear the menu and I feel like restaurants are like a box of chocolate: you just don’t know what you’re gonna get.

I’m getting better and better at navigating the menus at restaurants and I can put together a mental image of what every item probably contains calorie and nutrient wise. I always try to look up the restaurant’s menu and hopefully nutritional guide on-line before we arrive to the place. If nutritional guide is not available I will try to find nutritional information for a similar restaurant and go with their estimates. I mean a fajita is a fajita and probably contains similar amounts of meat regardless which restaurant prepared it.

Like my favorite Mexican restaurant Uncle Julio’s does not provide nutritional information. But On The Border does. So I am pretty sure I need to stay away from the chips and salsa regardless of which one I end up at. I also know that eating 4 flour tortillas is probably not the best thing to eat and maybe two should be a wiser decision.

Then you also have the situation when you check out their menu and nutritional guide at home, go to the place and they don’t serve what you picked out. Panera Bread claims to be healthy eating. They are, as long as you stick with their vegetarian black bean soup, which is very tasty, and half a Frontega Chicken Pannini. But if you go on a Sunday instead of a Saturday they don’t serve vegetarian black bean soup. Instead they have sugar infested tomato soup or saturated fat horror baked potato soup. So what do you do? You suck it up and roll with it. It is not the end of the world and you just make the best decision you can.

Sometimes I go to a restaurant that I used to visit often but have not been back in a long time, especially since my lifestyle change. These places can be a total crap shoot. You can walk in all confident believing that you know the menu and end up sorely disappointed with the once loved food. This actually happened to me at Razzoo’s just a couple of weeks ago. You can also find a pleasant surprise and find a completely different section of the menu with food selections you would have never considered in a million years before.

Sometimes I end up at restaurants that I have never visited before. And they also tend to be hole in the wall time establishments that don’t even have a website let alone nutritional guides. So you go and fly blind. You hope for the best and you make the best of it. The office group recently visited a restaurant called Yucatan Taco Stand. They make decent burrito bowls and fish tacos but they don’t provide nutritional information. I was going to order something extravagant off their menu had I known the nutritional value but since I was clueless I stuck with a burrito bowl instead and used Chipotle’s nutrition guide to estimate the calories. I have also tried to contact the restaurant via e-mail but they chose not to respond to my query.

So as much as I love eating out nowadays it’s a mixed feeling every time the office party decides to go out. I feel like I’m out of my comfort zone and it puts me into a new challenge every time. I love challenges but I feel the rewards are not always worth it. So how do you feel about eating out when on a diet? What do you do? Do you have any advice for me how to tackle situations like this?

I’ve done a very minimal amount of product review so far on this blog mainly because:

1. I’m not big on advertising something I don’t believe in.
2. No one is sending me free stuff to review.

If you are someone or you know someone who’d like me to review stuff that is weight loss/fitness related make sure they contact me. I love free stuff and I love to be a consumer advocate. Well today that’s about to change.

As you might remember I have bought an mp3 player a week or so ago. Usually the earphones that come with an mp3 player are rather cheap and mediocre quality and anyone who gives a flip about music will get their own set. I’m not a big fan of portable music and I’m certainly not a fan of earphones. They are tinny, they feel like they are about to fall out and they are just plain not comfortable. And the set that came with the Sansa Clip+ was no different. However, the set I ended up buying is quite the opposite!

As usual I have started my extensive research prior my purchase and it seemed like that Sennheiser was the only player that really had a decent set of sport earphones. And lucky for me they have just introduced a new series of earphones designed and developed in conjunction with Adidas. I think Sennheiser gave the speaker technology while Adidas gave the fitness know-how to produce these puppies. They sell four different versions of them.

• PMX 680 neckband headphone – has a band that goes around the back of your neck
• OMX 680 earclip headphone – has clips that go behind the ear like your glasses
• MX 680 earbud headphones – your usual earbuds that go inside your outer ear
• CX 680 ear-canal headphone – these plug into your ear canal for a tight fit and sound

The PMX, OMX and MX all seem to use the same driver and they all retail for $79.99 and street price ranges from $47 to $59 on them. The CX seems to be the top of the line with a suggested retail price of $119 and they can be had for around $89. I wasn’t too keen on having anything dangle around my neck so the PMX was out of the race before it even started. I run with sunglasses on so I wanted to keep my ears clear of other stuff hence the PMX was not an option. That left me with either the MX as regular earbuds or the CMX which goes into your ear canal. The CMX is substantially more expensive but it has a better driver and I felt that it would have a much tighter fit. I ride my motorcycle every now and then and I wear earplugs so I know exactly how it feels to have something in your ear canal. If you never stuck anything in your ear before you might want to test it before you decide whether it’s for you or not.

So I have ordered a set of the Sennheiser CX 680 and waited with anticipation. $89 for a pair of earphones seems like a lot of money so I was really, REALLY hoping that they would be good. They cost more than the mp3 player I bought for crying out loud!

When they arrived as soon as I took a look at the box I knew I was dealing with a quality product. The box looks great with black/blue colors and a reflective shiny inside that showcases one of the earbuds. On the side of the box there is a window that displays the volume control prominently. I could hardly wait to rip the box open and I really had to control myself not to tear it apart before I took some pictures of it for your viewing pleasure.

As you can see the earphones look very sharp. But running and music is not a fashion contest so the more important question is how functional are they?

As far as fit goes they are fantastic. They come with three sets of rubber buds for different size ear canals. I’m using the smallest one as that is what fits my ear and it fits it just perfect. The little devil horns also come in three different sizes to accommodate three different outer ear sizes. I am using the middle one and, again, it fits me perfect. There is also a blank cover that has no horn on it if you just want to wear them around the office or on the subway but I find the horns so comfortable that I don’t see why I would want to wear it without it. There is also a clip that can be attached to the bright yellow chord to keep the wires in place while you’re running. Keeping the wires from moving is important as the sound of the wire thumping on your chest/arm travels all the way through to your ear which is unavoidable with the in-ear design. When I’m out on a run the earbuds don’t even budge and I tend to forget they’re even in there. They feel very natural, all in all a perfect fit. The bright yellow cable is made from DuPont kevlar material so it’s supposed to hold up well under the daily abuse of my active lifestyle.

The cable and the earbuds are not only resilient to abuse with their kevlar mateial they are also sweat and water proof. They can be washed under running water in the sink which is a great plus if you sweat as much as I do. I also like that there is no foam on the buds, just rubber so cleaning them is an easy task. The only foam piece is inside the plastic tube that is in the middle of the rubber bud that goes in your ear channel to block out particles entering the speaker. Sennheiser was kind enough to provide some spare ones and a tool to replace them with. They also provide a nice pouch to keep all the giblets in when they are not in use.

There is one more extra accessory that is pretty handy which is a cable extender that comes with a built in volume control and a clip on the volume control itself. Luckily the cable that is on the headset is really short at 1.97 ft (60cm) so it does not have a lot of slack when you mount it on an armband. If you want to stick the player in your pocket just attach the extension with the volume controller and you can keep the player in your pocket and still adjust volume on the fly. Sennheiser is so confident in the quality of the earbuds and the wire that they give a two year warranty on the unit which is unheard of when it comes to earbuds.

So the fit and finish is superb on these puppies but how do they sound? I must tell you that I am not an audiophile. I do like good music and I did pay $1,000 for the sound system in my car and I spent a lot more than that for tunes in my previous car. I have also sang in a children choir when I was younger and I have played the clarinet with great success. But as far as music goes coming out of a portable mp3 player I really don’t care all that much. And this earset sound great to my ears. The bass is loud but not overwhelming and the highs are very clear. The Sandisk Sansa Clip+ is supposed to be one of the best portable mp3 players as far as sound quality goes and when they are paired with this headphone they sound fantastic.

My bottom line verdict is that these as probably the best set of earphones anyone can buy for running or an active lifestyle. They are not cheap but I think they worth the price big time! If you like music on the run I highly recommend you pick up a pair of these.

First of all, I am a gadget freak. I love to have the latest electronic gizmos and the coolest gadgets. But I have never ever owned a portable mp3 player. I just never thought I would use one. I mean I did have satellite radio in my car and I have ripped all my CDs into mp3s at one point or another and I occasionally listen to music at home but most of my music listening has been in my car. I am actually pretty proud that I have been resisting the purchase of an iPhone or an Android phone for the longest time now as I really don’t feel I need one. Sure it’d be nice to be able to browse the net from wherever at will but I can’t justify the $30 monthly charge to do such thing.

Now that I spend a lot of time alone outside of my car, mostly running, on the elliptical machine and at the gym, I thought it would be nice to be able to keep myself entertained with some tunes. So I decided it was time to buy an mp3 player. When I decided that there is an actual need that has to be fulfilled by one of the latest gadgets I research them. I knew I wanted something small and portable. I didn’t care about touch screens, big LCD screens, all I wanted was something small that I can stick in my pocket or snap on my arm and go for a run.

I have never been a fan of Apple and their marketing department. I’m a PC guy. I’d get an Android phone before I’d get an iPhone, mostly because my carrier is T-mobile and I’m certainly not switching to AT&T. But I must say that their iPod truly has a great user interface and it is very well designed. That user interface is by far the nicest and most useful I have seen. But I swore I would never be found toting an iPod with the white earbud like a drone who succumbed to the marketing hype. Plus their Nano is too big for running, has too many features that I don’t need and I will not install iTunes on my Windows 7 machine unless someone is beating me with a stick. The shuffle looked like a super unit though. It is as small as mp3 players get. But it still has the mandatory iTunes requirement to put music on it and it needs a headphone adapter if I ever wanted anything but the $5 junky earpiece. So I opted against it.

Luckily Sandisk came to the rescue and I purchased a SanDisk Sansa Clip+ 8 GB MP3 Player. This unit is truly amazing. It’s tiny and packs a great feature set. And best of all it’s not an iPod. I have loaded a ton of music onto it already and we’ll see how I’ll like running with the music in my ear as soon as I’m back on my feet running. It is audio book and podcast compatible as well as has an FM tuner in it. Since I’m not too big on finding my own music I might try one of their new slotRadio cards. They’re supposed to have 1,000 songs on them from a given genre and play like a commercial free radio channel. This just might be the thing I need.

I have written yesterday about my great disappointment in Razzoo’s food choices and lack of nutritional information. I have also mentioned that I wrote them an e-mail letting them know about my great disappointment about their nutritional values or lack thereof. Actually their food seems to be loaded with nutrition it’s just not the right kind nor the right amount in my humble opinion. Well today I have received a response and it came from the president of the company no less. As I have promised them that I would post their answer  being true to my word here is what he had to say:

Greg,

I appreciate your feedback but I’m going to respectfully take you to task on a few things and defend myself and Razzoo’s a bit. I noticed immediately that you said you “had doubts” and it seems in my humble opinion that you were in somewhat of a pre-determined mindset. You said that you were “stuck” in Razzoo’s being the dining destination. Wow, I’m already at a disadvantage.

We handle multiple requests for lighter options everyday even though we don’t list such options on the menu. Greg, our food is hearty, authentic and appropriately spiced. But, you stated that “you knew for sure there was no way you could eat anything healthy” at my establishment”. ? Really? I don’t read anywhere that you asked your server anything other than what kind of fish we served.

We work very hard to accommodate guests looking for healthier options. I would suggest a few items that are far from difficult and actually very easy for us to prepare. If our servers are asked for ideas of alternative cooking methods they are skilled at offering suggestions. About 10% of our food orders come in without any form of special instruction or request. At Razzoo’s “the answer is always yes, so what’s the question friend?”. It’s printed on the menu. I would propose:

Blackened Chicken? How about grilled chicken, lightly spiced, with white rice. A green dinner salad, no onions, no dressing or dressing on the side.

Blackened Fish? How about not blackened (It’s Tilapia by the way), lightly spiced or not spiced, grilled with white rice instead of dirty rice? Same dry salad as a substitute fro veggie.

We can boil or grill shrimp instead of frying. We have multiple salads on the menu that can be made as simply as a dieting guest prefers. The croutons can actually be left out. We have pastas that can be served with no sauce or sauce on the side. We have fresh green beans in house that we use for fried green bean appetizer. They can be easily sautéed and served as a side veggie with any item. We can do it. Do it everyday in every single restaurant.

As for nutritional information? I’ll never do it as to not mislead my guests. We are a fresh-prep concept. Subtle differences in ingredient amounts from dish to dish lead to substantial variances in fat and calorie content from one dish to another of the very same item. Those numbers can’t be reliable within an acceptable scientific range. There is enough scientific data on this available so as to not belabor that point.

I want you to enjoy your experience at Razzoo’s or at least have enough information to decide that it is not for you. I believe we can not only show you a great time but certainly provide you a meal that can meet your needs….if asked.

I’ll buy you and your family dinner to prove it. I hope you take me up on it. Let me know.

You can post this or forward as you wish. I realize that some are genuinely interested in productive, healthy discussion and debate and that some just want to pick a fight or argument or engage in “gotcha” contact with businesses. I’m ok with that. I am very serious about responsible restaurant and business management and am very proud of what we do.

I look forward to any further input you have and hope to see you in for dinner with us soon!

Respectfully,

Jeff Powell
President

Pretty solid argument with some fair points but I just wasn’t entirely convinced so I shot him another response.

Jeff,

First of all I would like to thank you for such a courteous and prompt response. It’s not often that you get a real response from a real person especially in such a short time.

As I have written in my earlier e-mail I was a frequent visitor of Razzoo’s before I have decided to shed some fat. I wouldn’t call myself a regular but we probably visited your restaurant half a dozen times a year. I was familiar with your menu and I was familiar with the options in food you had. I never bothered to look further than what was on the menu as I have always managed to find something different that I liked. We liked the tasty and zippy food just as much as everyone else who eats at Razzoo’s. When I wrote I “had doubts” it was an educated doubt based on prior experience. I knew your food and I knew it can’t be that good for you. I want you to know that it’s not only Razzoo’s where I have doubts. It’s practically every restaurant that I re-visit since the start of my transformation into more conscious eating. I always go in with concerns whether they offer anything that could be remotely close to healthy. I attribute the fact that I have found your food overly salty this time to my new eating habit that is significantly lower in sodium than before and my palate have re-adjusted to a much lower threshold level.

I have asked our server, Greg, several times in several ways if you provided nutritional information on any of your food items. It should have been a clear sign that I was looking for something on the healthy side. I agree, I did not ask for a special custom meal, it simply did not cross my mind. I will be sure to remember that in my future restaurant outings. I guess our server could have been a bit more pro-active about the situation but come to think of it the blame is probably just as much mine. I really wish you had been our server that night as the options you have offered in your response sure sound better than any of the alternatives that I could pick off the menu. It’s a real shame that I wasn’t offered any of these options by our server.

Nutritional information for made to order food can certainly be misleading. Even on prepackaged food studies have found that the actual caloric value can be off by as much as 18%. I am not denying this fact. But I am also positive that if the menu showed that the Tricky Fish with dirty rice and crawfish etouffee contains 1,800 calories and 5000 mg of sodium we can agree that it doesn’t really matter whether that 1,800 becomes 1,700 or 1,900 depending on how big of a dollop of butter was used when the fish got blackened. I will most certainly not order it.

As I have reached this point into my e-mail writing another response hit my inbox from Jeff:

Greg,

I’ve read your review after responding to you. I respect your opinion but find it inaccurate, pre-determined and without any fair objectivity. Most disturbing I find your comments about the patrons on-site judgmental and disturbing. Your efforts to improve your health are admirable. Congratulations. I question whether that gives you an appropriate platform to make such judgments or at least inferences about those around you based on their appearance.

Best of luck to you.

Jeff

So I had to respond to his last e-mail as well and I have added the following passage as closure:

I just received your second e-mail as I was writing this response. I might be sitting on a high horse now that I have gotten a handle on my own eating and health. I might be more judgmental of other people around me now that I’m no longer obese. But after eating part of my unhealthy meal I could not help but wonder as to “who eats at Razzoo’s?”. And there was not one person in sight that I would have called healthy looking. It might have been a coincidence but it is a fact. I also just became a US Citizen (hence the celebratory trip to Razzoo’s) and I truly value the rights and liberties the constitution gives me, especially about free speech. I will post your response on my blog tonight, I’m a big fan of “let the other side be heard too” mentality. I think by posting your response I will have provided an appropriate and objective position.

On a side note, I’d like to mention that my blog ranks 16th for “Razzoo’s Nutrition” on Google search as of this morning, a mere 10 hours after my blog entry has been posted.

Again, thank you for your time and response, I appreciate it.

Regards,

Greg

I think at this point we’ll just have to agree to disagree. His statement about the fact that only 10% of orders come in without special request makes me wonder though. Does he consider holding the mayo on a burger a special request? Or does it mean that 90% of the customers are unhappy with the menu choices by default and they have to make changes to it just to make it palatable. I’m pretty sure if Hell’s Kitchen with chef Gordon Ramsey would have a 90% special request rate he’d tell every one of his customers to “piss off!”. If I were a restaurateur I’d probably wonder why 9 out of 10 of my customers want to change the food items and alter my food. But then again, I’m not one.

I also find it perplexing that he mentions that they do special healthier portions for customers on a daily basis all day every day at all his restaurants. Wouldn’t that be a clear sign that there is a demand for it and maybe it’s time to stick it on the menu? I mean I’m not a businessman or anything but this kind of stuff seems to be Economics 101. But as long as people vote with their wallet and mouth and Razzoo’s is doing well who am I to stop them? I’m just saying if you made the commitment for a healthier lifestyle and eating habits you might want to pass on Razzoo’s unless you are comfortable with asking for special requests of grilled chicken with steamed rice.