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  • "Every great accomplishment begins with the decision to TRY!"

    "People take different roads seeking fulfillment and happiness. Just because they're not on your road doesn't mean they've gotten lost." --H. Jackson Brown

    "Decide what you want; decide what you're willing to exchange for it; establish your priorities, and go to work." --H.L. Hunt

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    Friday, October 13, 2006

    Please Understand Me

    Fans of the Myers Briggs personality profile inventory are legion. I've taken the "test" a few times myself, and I've always received the same result: Introverted, Sensing, Feeling, Judging. If you're NOT in the know on this one, suffice it to say that one nickname for my personality style is "Protector Guardian."

    Lots of people who know me imagine that I'm an extrovert, because I love to talk a lot, I'm very animated in conversation, and I work part time as a group facilitator. But the best way to think of it is this: at a social gathering, an extrovert gathers energy, whereas an introvert spends energy. So on Saturday mornings I may deal with 100 people and enjoy every minute of it, but by noon, I'm beat and I need to sit alone quietly for a couple of hours.


    The Sensing/Feeling is a little harder to explain, but its a sort of "people pleaser" who seeks social approval and makes decisions based on data that arise at an emotional level. I like to say it makes me charming and empathetic, but often factually vague.

    The reason I find all of this important is not that it pigeon-holes me or explains everything I do. Rather, an examination of the different components ends up being a very useful way to understand how my perceptions can be different than others'. Its why Devin can look at an excel spreadsheet and intuitively see patterns and formulas in the numbers, and why I need to format the fonts, draw gridlines, and use shading and spacing to guide me through that same data. We both look at the other and think "god, I can't believe its so hard for him to see things MY way."

    At any rate, discussion of Myers-Briggs came up in my spiritual studies class the other night and it got me thinking about those old categories. They really do help me see things clearly, even if I have to be cautious and not take it all too seriously. The insights can be very profound.

    For example, for a very long time it sort of bugged me that I felt I "needed" support in order to maintain my weight at a healthy level. The idea that I "had" to attend meetings, I "had" to ask people for help, and I "had" to constantly find inspiration made me feel sort of weak.

    It was only when I realized that the truth is I WANT this support that I felt a lot better. Rather than needing all of that help -- I THRIVE on it. Its a way of energizing myself and developing a sense of calm and contentment. In turn, I also enjoy the process of sharing this information with others, even acting at times as a mentor or guide. That's why blogging is such a natural fit for me.

    Although I strive hard to display my sense of humor, only those who know me very well think I'm at all funny. One quote I found kind of sums it up -- "their shyness with strangers is often misjudged as stiffness, even coldness, when in truth it ought really to be seen as an expression of their sincerity and seriousness of purpose."

    So today I just want to thank you for reading. Just knowing you stopped by the blog gives me all the warm fuzzies I need in order to skip that maple scone calling my name from across the street.

    4 Comments:

    I can completely relate to the comment "at a social gathering, an extrovert gathers energy, whereas an introvert spends energy." If I deal with a lot of people, or even just a few people, and don't have time to recharge the batteries, it leaves me mentally exhausted.

    It happened to me just last night at a high school football tailgate party I went to with my family. It took all of my energy to be there, and I didn't allow myself the usual comfort of diving into the virtual starch buffet spread out for us. I left feeling like I'd been run through the ringer, and I was semi-depressed the rest of the night.

    This morning, however, I feel proud of myself for not seeking solace in the stromboli or the baked ziti. I didn't wreck all the hard work I'd done all week and didn't feel guilty about how bloated I would have felt this morning. I just wish I could have felt that positive about it last night. I guess it's something to work on.

    By Blogger Vashta Narada, at 5:25 AM  

    When I find myself stuck in unpleasant social situations, I find it helpful to use meditation techniques. I breathe slowly. I acknowledge my negative feelings, and check out where I sense them in my body. Am I clenching my jaw? Is my stomach churning? Then I try to turn my attention outside, to observe everyone talking around me without judgment. Then as I inevitably judge, I acknowledge my thoughts and go through the entire process again.

    I can't say this process convinces me to enjoy myself, but it does help, and I learn about why I'm in distress. Maybe I realize that I feel a lot of pressure to seem charming, or I'm making assumptions about how others perceive me.

    And if all else fails, there is the time honored social management tool, alcohol.

    By Anonymous Anonymous, at 11:34 AM  

    Interesting...I'm an INFJ, the "Counselor Idealist" I like your differentiation between introvert and extrovert, because most people wouldn't believe that I'm an introvert. I love being with people, it just takes a lot of focused energy.

    By Blogger Elizabeth, at 4:04 PM  

    Jonathan,

    So glad that you get warm fuzzies from your hit count on your blog! even though this is the first comment I've posted, I am a big fan, and read you several times a week.

    A lot of your posts really resonate with me. thanks for putting words to my thoughts and letting me know that there are other folks out there like me!

    I also live in the bay area (berkeley) and am 1 lb away from my goal weight! I've lost 65 lbs since January of this year. I can't wait to join you in maintaining my weight loss soon.

    By Anonymous Anonymous, at 4:05 PM  

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    Thursday, October 12, 2006

    How Baby Steps Become Giant Leaps

    I’m frazzled from a long day. So no real post this time around, just some random thoughts about things that are crucial to me now that I wouldn’t have dreamed of, five years ago.


    Here’s what happened today:

    (1) I woke up at 4:15 this morning with a full roster of stuff to do, but even in my sleep deprivation I was excited because … I got to try out my brand new running shoes!

    (2) Later, when I stopped by Peets, as I stood in line I drooled over the pastry case. When it was my turn, my inner voice cried “I’ll have a maple scone” but the actual words that came out of my mouth were “I’d like a medium black coffee.”

    (3) In a rush today buying lunch, I was halfway to the register with a small (maybe 10”) avocado wrap sandwich that had a nutrition label. 140 Calories. Not bad. But wait – servings per container: 3.5 Yes, THREE AND A HALF. I don’t think so. I got a salad instead.

    (4) Tonight I was in heaven when I got home because I had two packages: Reflective running gear from roadrunnersports.com and 80 calorie chocolate muffin tops from vitalicious.com

    So who says maintenance is a bore!

    2 Comments:

    I love this post. This is why we love Jonathan!

    By Blogger Nan, at 7:55 PM  

    Good call on the wrap! Three and half serves - hah!

    By Anonymous Anonymous, at 12:16 PM  

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    Wednesday, October 11, 2006

    Forever 99

    A couple of weeks ago I bought a very expensive combination mobile phone-data assistant that handles phone calls, surfs the web and --most importantly-- synchronizes with my work calendar. Since I work two jobs, am going to night school, and have gym and other schedules, its really good to be able to keep everything in one place.

    As I was entering some recurring appointments and meetings, however, I was struck by something. If, for example, you want to program a meeting you usually have at 10 on Wednesdays it offers you the option of repeating it for a set period of time, or ... forever.

    Forever. (Or 99 occurences, I'm not exactly sure which).

    I don't know about you, but no matter how dedicated I am to doing something, I find a little hard to wrap my mind around the fact that I'll be at it ... forever. Even my mortgage (which sure SEEMS like forever), will supposedly be paid off in twenty-five more years.

    When I run, particularly when I run long distances, I have a habit of NOT looking ahead towards the horizon. I like to keep my head low, and my gaze focused no more than about 50 feet in front of me. Sometimes I might look at the view from a hilltop, or I might check out an interesting sight, but I rarely if ever glance at the distance that looms ahead. Its not that I'm in denial about the fact I'll be running a mile (or ten miles). Its just that I don't like to THINK about it in such large increments.

    At any rate, my guess is that its this factor which makes long-term healthy weight maintenance so damn hard. After all, if you're engaged in an activity to LOSE weight, chances are that you have an end goal in mind, and with each passing milestone you feel closer to "finishing." I hear this all the time. "I'm skipping that dessert until I reach goal." Or "I'm going to the gym five days a week until I lose those last three pounds."

    But when you're in that weird place of simply wanting to "continue to be healthy," you lose that near-term focus. And personally, no matter how happy I am with being healthy and controlling my weight sensibly, if I have to look up towards the years looming ahead, it can be a bit daunting.

    I wonder if that's why I spent the entire day fantasizing about having a food or meal that I could really blow the bank on. I sensed this longing to just throw off the traces and stop counting and tracking, diving into a choco-vat and going for a swim. The thought of it tumbled around in my head over and over.

    Fortunately, I was brought back to reality when I checked out the nutrition info for a chocolate shake at the burger joint next to my office: 1310 calories, 57 grams of fat ... yikes. Because in fact, I wasn't hungry at all. I was just feeling restless. And the more stuff I looked up online, the more I realized that all I really wanted was a change of pace. So tomorrow I'm going to shake things up and make sure I try a few new things.

    After all, no matter how good they are, I can't just keep eating the same old foods .... forever.

    4 Comments:

    Jonathon - are you're sure you're not living inside my head? I have "food porn" fantasies all the time. But that's all they are - fantasies. I know I'll never eat another Mars bar. For one thing it would make me feel quite sick, but I like to toy with the idea from time to time!

    As for comments like "I'm skipping that dessert until I reach goal" and "I'm going to the gym five days a week until I lose those last three pounds", those two sentences sum up why 95-98% of dieters fail. People just don't understand that "diets" don't work - you need to make it a lifestyle.

    By Anonymous Anonymous, at 10:39 PM  

    I'm with Susan. Today I was eyeing a Fifth Avenue Candy Bar (!) the entire time I was in a s l o w line.
    I'm sure it would be nowhere NEAR as heavenly as I was imagining it might be--It just caught my eye for some reason. And the fantasy just clicked off as I paid for my onions, mushrooms, and other ... reality foods.

    By Anonymous Anonymous, at 9:26 PM  

    LOL at "reality foods"! I think I'll adopt that expression!

    By Anonymous Anonymous, at 12:20 PM  

    Here's what helps me:
    - I have lots of short-term goals. I want to be thin for my organization's Annual Conference. I want to be thin when I go home for Christmas. I want to be thin for my annual girls' trip to Mexico in February. There's always some other event just around the corner that I need to maintain my weight for. It also helps that when I get to all of these events, I take a break from maintenance and allow myself a much higher calorie consumption than usual.
    - I have a mid-term goal of maintaining for two years. If I manage to maintain my weight for two years, I get to trade in my Honda Civic for a convertible. People (my partner, in particular)think I'm joking about this, but I am totally serious. Once I get to the two-year mark and I buy my convertible, I'll have to come up with a new goal.
    - I'm not doing this forever. When I get to 80, all bets are off and I'm eating whatever I want. If I maintain to 80, I will have lived a full life and if my diet causes me to die earlier, well, that will be just fine. I don't need to live to 100. And, at that point, who cares if I'm overweight. I know 80 seems a long ways away, but the thought still helps.

    By Anonymous Anonymous, at 1:25 PM  

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    Tuesday, October 10, 2006

    Past, Present, Future

    The other day it was raining and I had a gloomy onset-of-winter
    feeling, and I posted here a sort of rhetorical question about whether
    maintaining good health habits (and weight) was do-able in the season
    of holidays ahead. Now, however, Indian summer has returned with warm
    and sunny days (just as it SHOULD in San Francisco in October!) and
    suddenly I'm feeling a lot more rosy.

    So yesterday I started to get curious about how I had fared in the
    four (count 'em, FOUR!) seasons that I've experienced so far as a thin
    person. One upside of my compulsion for record keeping is that I was
    able to put my hands on the information for my weight (so that I could
    neatly graph it all on an excel spreadsheet, but that's another
    story).

    The upshot was sobering. Not terrible, but eye-opening.

    My first "lean" season (roughly mid-October through mid-January), my weight fluctuated normally within a band of about three pounds. Year two was pretty much the same story.

    Then came year three. I began the season by recording my weights, but abandoned the effort in mid November, only to emerge SEVEN POUNDS heavier four months later in April. Wow.

    Fact is, 2004 was one of the most difficult and painful years of my life. Years of unemployment, my Father's death, and a general malaise through me into a tailspin. I had what I call a "mild nervous breakdown" around then, but emerged alive and unscathed (and clutching a bottle of welbutrin and a bill from my shrink) in early 2005.

    Last year -- season number four -- was the opposite. I had just begun my blogging efforts at the SkinnyDaily, I was finally employed suitably in my profession, and (most importantly) I had just gotten married. I weighed each week faithfully and by mid January 2006 I had
    LOST seven pounds.

    So here I am, looking at those graphs and numbers and trying to divine whether there is something in there that's going to predict the next 90 days. Since the sun IS shining, I'm feeling optimistic. My goal is to stay within my normal fluctuating band of 3 pounds, as I have in
    the past.

    But more importantly, my overarching plan is to find myself in January 2007, looking back and thinking "Wow. I was so satisfied with the choices I made: eating the must-have foods, avoiding the don't-go-there events, and never feeling deprived."

    Can I do it?

    Watch this space!!

    1 Comments:

    Jonathon - you went through a really rough patch and gained only 7 pounds. That's quite an accomplishment in itself. Don't worry about the future - you've proved you can handle what life throws at you.

    By Anonymous Anonymous, at 11:25 AM  

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    Monday, October 09, 2006

    My perfect day off

    Previously I’ve written about the fact that I’m not really into “relaxing.” Which is to say that when I have free time, I prefer to feel as though I’m doing something valuable. Its not that I have to work, or do chores, and its not that I can’t goof off. But I want to feel, at the end of the day, as if I made the best possible use of those precious hours.

    Today was one of those unexpected holidays that mostly bankers and bureaucrats have off, while everyone else works. So I took full advantage of it:

    • Slept in late, even though my partner had to go to work.

    • Left the dog at home, so I could go for a longer run than usual for Mondays.

    • Drank in the beauty of the morning, and the perfect weather – clear, cool, and still. So nice not to run in the pitch dark!

    • Made a large and tasty breakfast, savoring my time over coffee with no rush to get to work.

    • Did loads and loads of laundry, caught up on some correspondence.

    • Picked up my clarinet for the first time in months and honked out a few tunes.

    • Biked to the gym for a solid, strenuous workout.

    • Once home again, made a healthy lunch and read the newspaper.

    • Prepared for my evening part time work, for once having the leisure to slowly and thoughtfully plan how I’d like to run the meeting.

    • Stopped at the Chinese supermarket on the way to work, and loaded the trunk with four huge bags bursting with fresh vegetables … for about $30!

    • Enjoyed an easy, quiet time at work, with lots of time to chat and catch up with coworkers.

    • Drove home by way of the “regular” supermarket to pick up some lo-cal ice cream

    • Washed and chopped veggies for 30 minutes, preparing 8 bags for future use, and one serving to stir fry up for dinner.

    • Enoyed a nutritious and amazingly tasty dinner

    And last, but not least…

    • Had the ice cream!

    0 Comments:

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    Sunday, October 08, 2006

    I got music

    On Sundays I do my "long run" for the week -- a nine mile route that meanders through five or six different neighborhoods and includes a nice long stretch in Golden Gate Park. Although the rest of the week I only run two miles a day, my Sunday run is usually something that I feel comfortable with. The only trouble I seem to have some days is just getting out the door to start.

    One motivating strategy is to try something new -- new shoes, or sox, or better sunglasses or a 'high tech fiber' shirt. Anything to pique my interest and keep me inspired. There is a lot to be said for variety.

    Still, the single most important factor in keeping me on my feet is music. I simply can't run without it. My personal preference is for high-energy dance music (not the creepy trance stuff that's popular in clubs, or the profane hip-hop songs that they play in the gym, but rather upbeat vocals and a good melody). I spend endless hours online searching for new stuff.

    Last week, about six miles into my run, my iPod battery ran out. I was mortified! The prospect of running for a half hour without my musical distraction was really bleak. What I did to keep myself from giving up was to try and listen and identify every single sound I could hear. I know from experience that if the only thing I focus on is my own breathing and the sound of my own feet, I soon become bored and exhausted (go figure). So I named the sounds ... "bus" "airplane" "dog barking" over and over until I got home.

    It was do-able, but I just have to say that my hat goes off to those people who always run without distraction. I much prefer getting out there when the world has an artificial, electronic soundtrack. Especially at 5 in the morning.

    Much to my chagrin, the iPod continued to give me trouble all week. As I approached Sunday, I became pretty worried. How was I going to run if that darn machine didn't do its job?! So on Saturday, I convinced my very generous significant other to donate to the cause. I expropriated his iPod shuffle and downloaded a couple of hours of my music onto it (thereby erasing ALL of his music).

    This morning I had a long, enjoyable and easy run. The weather was stunning. Blue sky, cool temperature, light breeze -- a remarkable San Francisco day. I saw the usual sights and did the usual people watching and totally lost myself in thoughts about the day ahead. It was a calming and energizing experience that set me up for a really pleasant and restful day.

    And all thanks to Devin and that wonderful, hi-energy soundtrack.

    4 Comments:

    I could not work out without my Shuffle, and have also been in the situation where the battery gave out before I got home. The remaining walk/run was excruciating!

    I rely on www.djsteveboy.com for my music. It only took one session to get comfortable with his techno-dance mixes. The advantage, for me, is that the beat is constant, steady and at a pace I choose, since he has speeds ranging from slow to nuclear.

    I've never run in a race, but am hoping to by next year. I'm already wondering if anyone competes plugged into his or her Shuffle!

    By Blogger Debbi, at 4:05 AM  

    Debbi - I ran the City 2 Surf in Sydney, Australia, last year plugged into my Shuffle. It really helped me as I competed to the same soundtrack I had been training to, so I had a Pavlovian reaction to the music!

    I did some research beforehand - apparently wearing headphones during a race is frowned on in the States. It's another story here in Australia - many of my fellow runners were also plugged in.

    By Anonymous Anonymous, at 4:54 PM  

    I used to feel shallow wearing an MP3 player for all my runs. I thought I was supposed to reconnect with nature/myself/the universe. Possibly even become the Dalai Lama before I finished.

    That is, until I just read in RW magazine that 80% of runners are plugged in. THANK GOD. If I'm shallow, then at least everyone else is too! I've also read that for safety reasons, music is frowned upon in US races, but I'm gonna have to risk being mowed down because I absolutely, positively need my music. And LOUD.

    I was once in a half marathon when a man next to me began screaming and cursing for no reason. It was quite foul. I was actually kinda scared, until I saw him reach down and start to bang the hell out of his MP3 player. Then I knew. And I understood. I think I would have done the same thing.

    By Blogger Jolene, at 9:58 PM  

    I'm not a runner, but I am a firefighter. Our "exam" is a 3 mile walk carrying a 45 lb. pack and we have to do it in 45 mins or less. I've done mine wearing a Walkman a few times now (boy - how yesterday is that?). This year, one of my co-workers wore her IPod - she'd been training with it. Now I have the techno-envies! But whatever makes it easier or gets you out the door - do it!

    By Anonymous Anonymous, at 12:16 PM  

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