Sarah Davies

One week check-in! Here are the weight results so far:

So I’ve dropped about two pounds. I’m a little surprised! Before this, I generally ate a ton of pasta and rice, drank my fair share of wine, and my only exercise was swimming for half an hour about twice a week. So I thought my weight loss would be more dramatic.

However, my energy level has been good, and I’ve been doing an increasing amount of Wii Fit everyday as I unlock more new games and more reps on my existing games. I started at 18 Wii Fit Credits per day (each Wii Fit Credit is one minute of exercise), and I”m now up to 40. I like doing Wii Fit, and it’s something I’ll continue after the detox. It’s an intense workout, and I’ve definitely had sore muscles, so I suspect that one of the reasons my weight has been stable is that while I am losing fat, I’m gaining muscle. And that’s great if that’s what’s happening, but I’m not sure how to tell. Maybe I should start measuring my waistline?

I did have issues with hunger the first few days, but those have subsided entirely. I now feel a good mild hunger before each meal, but nothing uncomfortable. I also felt lightheaded the first few days, but that has dissipated as well. I am eating a larger mass of food than I ever thought I could. This experiment is actually getting a little more expensive than I realized. Without the carbs and oils in my diet to fill me up, I’m going through about seven pieces of fruit, two bags of salad, and a can of beans every day, not to mention cooked veggies and soups, which is exactly what the book says I should be eating. I’m going to switch to non-organic from now on, though, because it’s about half the price in my neighborhood.

My motivation is suffering a little. We’re having a big problem trying to get any flavor into the foods. Curry powder, basil, and salsa seem to be helping the most, but they can get a little old, even after only one week. I suspect that my pallet is still used to salt and oil and cream. I’ve heard rumor that the subtle flavors of veggies become more prominent as you eat less salt, sort of like getting used to a dark restaurant from a bright street, but I haven’t experienced that yet.

I thought I would have substantial weight loss to motivate me, but I don’t. If two pounds is the difference between eating whatever I want and eating a very restrictive diet, I’ll take the two pounds. But the book says give it six weeks, so I’ll give it six weeks.

Without weight loss as a motivator, I’m thinking about adding in a glass of red wine every night. The book says it’s not great, but it is okay. What do you guys think? Is one indulgence okay when motivation is flagging?

Dawn Foster, BarCamp Portland Organizer
photo by Josh Bancroft under CC-BY-NC

I’ve been doing some reading for a discussion group that I attend in Seattle semi-regularly. They would call what we talk about “transhumanism” or “H+”, I would call it philosophy of technology, particularly with regard to the future.

This week we’re talking about leadership. To what degree do we (Gen Y) have it? To what degree do we need it? How does the increasing pace of technology affect our need for leadership?

I think this topic is particularly interesting in light of the Obama campaign. It was a true grassroots campaign. I would say that it had many distributed leaders, with one person (or maybe a few people) setting the goals and direction. That was without a doubt made possible by technology.

What Obama is doing now – listening – worries me slightly. Don’t we know by now what the problems and concerns of the American public are? I think it’s concerning that the campaign spent two years organizing a distributed leadership and engaged volunteers, and now, rather than switching those people’s goals immediately from electing someone to going out and solving the problems, we are asking them to have fireside chats with their neighbors about healthcare?

I have faith that Obama is a good leader for Generation Y, and I suspect that there may be other motives behind listening. For instance, a majority of the listening he is doing is online. Online communities skew vastly younger and more liberal than the rest of the country. So perhaps he is trying to compile evidence showing that Americans want liberal policies. Perhaps it is a diplomatic nod toward W, to not start picking up his mess before he’s done playing.

I think that the Obama campaign changed our concepts of efficient effective leadership to include Generation Y, and I see potential for the Obama administration to do the same. I hope all that innovation was not engineered to win an election, only to be abandoned when the real fight begins.

Starting today, my partner Brian and I are going on a vegan detox diet. We were originally turned on to this particular diet after Joi Ito gave it a glowing review. We haven’t been getting any thinner as we enter late-twenties/early-thirties, and we’ve gotten a bit set in our ways in terms of food. So we’re diving in the deep end and spending 44 days planning, buying, washing, chopping, preparing, and eating a ton of fruits and vegetables (a pound a day is the recommendation).

The diet is called Eat to Live by Dr. Fuhrman, and it’s intended for folks who are morbidly obese and agree to follow a ridiculously strict diet because if they don’t, they will die. We aren’t dying, but we are serious about lifehacking – proactively intentionally making changes to our lifestyle to make it faster! better! stronger! and food isn’t an area we’ve tackled before. We also don’t need death as a motivator when we have you, dear blog readers, to hold us accountable for cheating or quitting. We are allowed to plan two cheat days where we can eat and drink whatever we want after lunchtime, recklessly retoxifying ourselves in the name of sanity. Those will be January 24th (a good friend’s wedding – can’t pass up the champagne!), and January 17th.

The premise of the diet is basically that you can eat unlimited amounts of fruits, vegetables, and beans, and about one cup of whole grains each day. He includes several recipes in his book, so we should have a decent amount of variety.

I’ll be blogging weekly on my energy level, hunger level, weight, and any other odds and ends that seem relevant or interesting.

Come Valentines Day, if we’ve stuck to our plan the whole way through, we’re going to eat and booze our way through Seattle in as many courses as we can muster.

Have you done any food/nutrition hacking? Leave your experiences in the comments!