today was a very depressing day.

i have to travel to our headquarters office next week and i started packing some formal clothes for the trip and realized how bad my weight gain has been. i had donated pretty much most of my clothes last year, but had just kept a few of my tighter clothes around. i tried these on and they almost fit me perfectly. i really did not feel happy about not having to buy new clothes for the trip, but i was quite depressed about the fact that i could fit into these old clothes.

i have now gained a little more than 17 lbs after losing a total of 51 lbs.

you can see the prosperity in my waist area

the depressing part is not that i gained weight. the depressing part is that i gained weight inspite of eating very healthy, going to the gym regularly and hiking quite a bit. i even hiked 10 miles in the grand canyon earlier this year!!!!

i think it is in my genes that i will gain weight no matter what i do. sometimes i feel real envious of folks who eat all that they want and still manage to stay thin. i eat 3 slices of pizza one day and put on a lb of weight the next day.

the weight gain story

since i wrote such a long post about my weight loss story, i have to write about how i ended up gaining weight.

- i put on about 9 lbs in the 1 month i was there in india last december. 7 out of these 9 lbs came from just the 6 or 7 meals i ate at my brother-in-law’s wedding. a typical indian wedding meal has about 20 different food items spread over 5 courses and will easily run around 2000-3000 calories. of course no trip to india is complete without eating some home cooked delicacies and a trip to few specific restaurants.

- i came back from the trip determined to lose all the weight. my parents visited me here and used to cook dinner everyday and i used to eat a proper dinner everyday.

- we did a little bit of traveling across the country over the past 7 months and this meant eating out and no exercise – a true double whammy!!

oh well. that is the story. gaining 17 lbs after losing 51 is quite bad. i have been struggling to reverse the trend, but have been not quite successful. i am planning to hike the entire grand canyon in october and just started preparing for it. lets see if this preparation helps me out in losing these extra 17 lbs.

wish me luck!!!!

i am sure all of you have seen this. if not the duel between jon stewart and jim cramer is a must watch……

sometime back i wrote a post about my frustration with the product packaging that is typically used in electronics –> http://blog.sreekantan.com/2007/09/25/packaging/

i came across this article a while back on amazon planning to use hassle free packaging for some of their products…  i wish every company follows amazon’s path and simplify product packaging.

image courtesy: amazon.com

it is just not me who is frustrated with packaging. i realized that my son who is 18 mths old also experiences the same frustration. he wants to get to his toy as soon as he sees it and the packaging just frustrates him…

i have been quite lazy to post anything in my blog. i keep my son’s blog updated, but have been slacking on this one. well, i had some news that was worthwhile posting. i lost something and losing something has never felt so good.

over the past 7 months, i managed to lose about 45 lbs!!! (almost close to 50). it really feels so nice to have lost all that weight.

i bought that trouser in jan 2008

here is a picture that explains how i feel. i bought the calvin klein trouser in january of this year for 30+ dollars. i donated it today evening along with a whole bunch of almost new clothes today in a local cloth donation box.

some of my friends asked me how i did it. so, i thought i would write about it here. there were only two major items that i had to do.

my part

1. stress
i think the thing that helped me the most was reducing stress. among other things i was kind of a little stressed out about the direction in which my career was headed. i do have a great job and work with a bunch of great folks. but there were some elements that used to stress me out. i have realized stress does a lot of bad things to you -  it increases your cholesterol, it increases your blood sugar, it makes you overeat, it disturbs your sleep, it grays out your hair among other bad things. and i have noticed that all these little things just keeps piling on and plays a big role in putting on weight.

i am still kind of concerned about the many different things i have in my mind. i am just not worried about it. i am taking appropriate steps to alleviate the concerns without getting too caught up with thoughts in my mind. things are looking much better now and i am hoping they will turn out alright in the end. even if does not, i am not going to let the stress “kill” me.

2. balance
if you notice, i did not say anywhere that i “dieted” to lose the weight. because i really did not. with the exception of white rice, i have been eating all the things i used to eat all along.  the only thing i altered is how much i ate and where i ate my food. i did not take any medication, pills or any weird stuff like that.

one of my friend’s father recently said “one should always have a positive bank balance and a negative calorie balance”. this is what exactly i have been doing these past 8 months – maintaining a delicate balance of food intake and exercise.

i started maintaining a very simple excel spreadsheet that tracked the food intake per day and the calories i burnt exercising. i used it to ensure that i ate a net of no more than 1200 calories per day. i exercised pretty vigorously to maintain the balance. it was a very tough job in the beginning, but now i feel quite comfortable maintaining the balance. i let it slip once in a while but try my best to get it back on track pretty quickly.

food

here is a random listing of all the changes i did with my eating habits to maintain the balance.

• heavy breakfast (500 calories), moderate lunch (300 calories) and light dinner (200 calories). last meal is done around 7 pm, 3 hours before sleep time. there are about 3-4 100 calorie snacks in between the meals.
• i still eat pizza, chocolate, burgers, dosas, icecream etc…., i eat them all in moderate quantities once or twice a week.
• more importantly i note down the calorie content of what i eat to ensure that i will not exceed my balance. we all assume that item X costs Y calories and the assumptions are way off almost all the time. i recommend browsing around to really calculate exact calories. always round off on the higher side.
• avoid foods with high glycemic load like white rice as much as possible. they do not fill you up, but add to your calorie count.
• snacks are usually comprised of fruits almost all the time. eat high protein content like edamame seeds to keep you full longer.
• lots of water to make you feel full. (at least 1 gallon a day)
• the most important thing i did was to reduce eating out. once you realize that a veggie burrito @ chipotle costs about 1100 calories, you would not be so tempted to eat there every week, a lunch entree of fettucine alfredo in olive garden costs close to 800 calories, a single slize of cheese pizza in costco costs 750 calories. heck, even the so called 6 inch subway veggie patty sandwich costs about 750 calories with cheese and some dressing.

exercise
here is what i did for my exercise routine. it was pretty rigorous at times. but nothing too drastic though. i mostly just run on the treadmill or play a racquetball game.

• equivalent of 4 miles (500 calories) at least 3-4 times a week.  (40 minutes)
• equivalent of 6 miles (800 calories) every day of the weekend. (60 minutes)

i ran a charity 3 mile run a few weeks back and it has made me more interested in running. off late, i have been trying to run a total of 15 miles during the weekend. i can now run 8-10 miles in one stretch.

help from others

there were a whole bunch of other things that my wife and friends did to help me all along.

1. motivation
of course i could not have done any of this thing without motivation and support mainly from my wife and some friends. i started this weight loss initiative after a botched up medical test that produced some weird errors. even though i came to know that the test results were wrong, i still continued to work on my attempts to lose weight.

one thing that i observed is the plateaus that i hit. there will always be a steep weight loss phase, followed by a plateau and even a slight gain in weight. the most important thing to do is not to lose hope at this point. i have had 2 plateaus already and i am right now in my third plateau.

my wife and friends have been always encouraging me at all these plateaus and it was a big help. and oh btw, it is very important to buy a good weighing machine and weigh yourself every morning at the same time to note down progress. it is a really helpful thing to do.

2. change of lifestyle
my wife has changed her eating habits upside down to support me in this weight loss efforts. she is always used to eating rice, rasam and curry everyday. she changed her food habits along with me to eat light dinners, pack a salad for lunch and count calories on all the food she eats. she does not have to do any of that, but still decided to do it with me. it proved to be a great help for me. it has also helped her lose some extra weight.

it was the same with my friends. at work we always used to go out to eat lunch as a group every friday. we pack lunches on fridays now and have not gone outside in almost 3 months. i have noticed many situations where i have had friends make special low calorie food for me during potluck dinners and other get togethers.

next steps

i still have a long way to go. – i need to get my body fat down to a more reasonable level and lose about 5-10 more lbs. i need to lose a lot more stuff around my waist. i hope to make some progress in the next few months.

the biggest challenge i have ahead is way more difficult than the actual weight loss itself – keeping the weight off is a big challenge.  especially for a obsessive eater like me who has no self control!!!. especially when i am going on vacation to india!!. my hope is not to add more than 5 lbs in the 3 week trip. lets see how that goes…..

monday mornings are always terrible. nowadays they are more terrible than sunday evenings.

• it hurts to wake the little one up from his early morning sleep.
• it hurts when i change his clothes and he wants to stretch and relax and play.
• it hurts to see him scan the room with his big eyes looking for his mom.
• it hurts to stuff him in his car seat, cheat him with a toy and he does not have a clue he is going to daycare. he just smiles and giggles.
• it hurts the most when you leave him at his daycare and he realizes he is being left there and his eyes fill up with tears.

after all this, on the few days when work turns out to be not that exciting, it just hurts more.

ah those painful monday mornings….

i slacked off and have not bothered to update this blog for a long time. have been somewhat busy bonding with my little one. now that i have started writing, i have to write about my little hero sometime soon.

ok the main thought for today is that motorola sinking is a very good thing. they make really dumb software. both in their phones and for pc connectivity.

i try to launch their motorola tools software to update some images. their software update center opens. there is no option to cancel it. i said OK to go ahead and check for updates. it showed up 2 updates (145 kb and 13 mb). i said i just need to launch the software and unclick both of them and hit next. it tells me that i “have” to select at least 1 update to install. i picked the one that had the smallest size and hit next. it went ahead and still updated all the items in the list. took close to 20 minutes to do it.

and then it took another 10 to install the updates it downloaded. it then restarted the software and popped open another download dialog for another software update. this time it is 75 mb. took another 30 to dowload and install. all this for a crap piece of software that is used to sync media back and forth between the phone and the pc. the software did eventually come up and crashed twice.

yep. their software converted me for good. i am never ever buying any more motorola shit.

p.s. – i know some of you iphonies are going ga-ga and thumping your chests on how great your god phone is. well, i am sure it is somewhat better, but definitely not worth the TCO.

i was reading this article in cnn money and came across this line.

“…”come to Ohio.” There are now more payday lending shops in the state than McDonalds, Burger Kings and Wendy’s restaurants combined…”

is this really true ? the only word that comes to my mind is “wowouchuhwtf“

check out this really cool car. it gives a whopping 230 mpg and is really slick.

i love my prius. hybrids are just super cool. i think i can live with the automatic since it is a hybrid. and, i have always wanted to buy a motorcycle.  my motorcycle license is just being unused. this is sort of a covered motorcycle.

i am pretty sure my wife would not let me buy 2 new cars in a year. so, i am not trying to get my hopes too high. and i think i should check out the car on the road before getting too excited

the previous site has been dugg. so if it goes down, try these other sites to check out the car. the aptera site looks like it is still being worked on.

http://www.inhabitat.com/2007/10/09/aptera-diesel-electric-hybrid/

http://aptera.com/

i hate many things. of course shopping is one. another thing i hate so much is the packaging that they use for electronic products.

u got to a store. buy a new gadget, pay for it, and the first thing you want to do either in the car or as soon as you reach home is to rip off the packaging and reach in and feel it.

there is no time to search for  a scissors and of course there is no point in being patient and opening that thing carefully. the main motive is to get to the gadget. so of course, you end up choosing the first thing that comes to your hand and most times it is a knife.

and when you do that this is what happens. here are some samples.

• victim story #1
• victim story #2

when trying to understand why they do such packaging, i came across this interesting and informative article.

http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2006/05/70874

the main reason seems to be theft prevention. there are a whole bunch of other reasons. there is also an award called the “oyster award” for the worst packaging.

whatever may be the reason, i am going to still hate that stupid packages. if i can’t get to a gadget within 10 seconds of purchasing a package and leaving the store, that packaging sucks.

http://news.therecord.com/Business/article/236315

it makes me wonder if i would have quit my “work from home” job had i had a gadget like this ?

for those who did not know, i got frustrated working from home and quit an earlier job i had. the frustrating part was that i liked the job a lot. it has been more than a year since i quit.

i got the “oohs” and “aahs” and “you idiot” from some friends who said that it would be stupid to give up such an opportunity.

would you want to work from home permanently ? what are your thoughts on that. i would like to know what others think of working from home.