Having a good time, eating delicious sweets AND losing weight is a very solid feat for a trip. And it serves as an old routine breaker, giving you a chance to incorporate one or two more positive changes in your normal life going forward.

My opinion on weight and obesity and more on eating disorders, is that if you have one, focus should be not on eating less if you are overweight or eating more for anorectic or stopping the puking for bulimic. Focus should be on "how comes" and then trying to improve this, usually long list of things, that have caused your problem. If you are trying to use serious will power to get in control over your eating situation, just forget it. Will never happen long term or worse will screw you more in another direction.

What I liked in this trip, is that it was really zero will power applied to lose this 2 kg. It just kind of happened. One of the situations, where I often eat, when at home, when I probably shouldn't, is to get asleep. I usually just can't sleep if my blood sugar is below a certain level. Here it was completely not a problem, because through so much walking outside, I remembered how I slept as a child, when I didn't even know, what insomnia means.

Things with food have been completely how I think they should be. I had zero cravings in any situation, was not once pulled to the second dinner. I really want to keep that.

On health and also on eating disorders. In the vid she brings few points that everyone can do and that are absolutely necessary for good health and having normal weight. I believe that often you can't really choose what you are shoveling in your mouth. People say often that no one holds you and forces food upon you. That s not true. If your own brain forces something upon you, you can do less against it than if someone external forces you to eat. But you can bring your brain in a state that it stops to force food upon you and does generally serve you better.

Her points that to achieve that a necessary condition is to make few choices:
- to live an integer, authentic live. Basically it should be no discrepancy between your deeds, your words, your thoughts and feelings.
- to live in a wisdom and not in sorrow. We all have been hurt. The essential point is what we do with this hurts. And her point is that we shouldn't be depressed, victimized, reliving this hurts again and again, but instead we should learn and become wiser from that.
- to take risks. I have had a small bump with coon74 on this. Basically I too think that we should step occasionally out of our comfort zone to live well. We should embrace new and should take a high risk - high reward path against safe one. In russian there is a proverb : "Who doesn't take risks doesn't drink champagne".
- to use different words. I too totally believe in power of words. She suggests for example just to drop "blame, deserve, entitled" out of vocabulary and see how your life change. I try to be very careful with appearance evaluating words towards myself and towards others. I believe that no matter if you do it in positive or negative way, appearance evaluation has potential for making big damage with having little to nothing good in it.
- to bless your every day. Recognize every day how fleeting time is, how time pass and be grateful that you have this day.

Lapka, congrats on the healthy time off in Russia and the resulting weight loss. I think the weight loss and lack of fixation on food stems from being happy. Happiness goes a long way.

Tx, Aidan and Josie.

Hopefully I can continue this state now that I am back to Germany. Still to fulfill the first part of my commitment today: two hours outside doing something cool.

How far are you defined by your body? If you suddenly gained 100 lbs of fat and lost all your muscles are you still you? I ..... I don't know. No, I kind of know. I am still me even with significant changes in my body. I am more other things, but my body is my temple and so I am going also to treat it.

I have my peace with getting old and dying. I don't know if I can explain it well. I remember me seeing my first line in my face. I was about 21 y.o. . I went and spent my rent money on some crazy anti-aging lotion next day and was totally stressed by the idea of getting old. Then may be at 26~27 a guy started a chat with me in a park and somehow estimated that I am around 18 y.o. You would think that that is cool and it should have given me more self esteem. I HATED it. I SO HATED IT! It is big difference between 18 y.o. girl still in high school and a 26 y.o ending university. At 26 I had a ton more experience and was completely different personality than at 18 and I hated it to be treated like 18. That healed me forever from being afraid of visual signs of aging. I want to stay in good health, I want to stay mobile, I want to avoid all problems I can avoid in old age. I want to be with 90 somehow similar to this woman. I want to want to dance and be able to dance. But somehow.... I have my peace with the idea that life is finite.

I am registered on 15 July for mini triathlon: 500 m swimming, 22 km biking and 5 km running. I did train about the third of what I had planned, so that is not so good. Did test-run today: time 1 hour 51 min. For many here it is laughable, for me it is ok. Separated for the pieces my personal best times are:
5 km run: 21 min
22 km biking: 52 min
500 m swimming: 28 min
Combined it becomes a different game. My goal for 15 July is to stay under two hours if I do set my personal best time for this triathlon (1 hour 56 min) then I am super good. More difficult than today will be biking and swimming. The biking trail is on 15 July pretty uphill. And swimming...... Swimming will be really difficult for me. Swimming on 15 July is in an open lake with a part of it under the bridge. This part under the bridge is bad bad bad for me. I did this triathlon three times, and every time I get panic under this bridge and have to keep my head completely above the water. That costs time to no end. I don't know why I am doing this to me. Even thinking about this bridge
stresses me already now.

Was the biking on flat terrain, what kind of bike? I used to do 15km in about 40-43 minutes but I had some bitching hills to go up plus traffic was an issue sometimes and I rode a mountain bike. I'm not really sure if my time was any good now seeing your numbers lol. I felt like I was making good time.

Ok sorry I missed where you said it was hilly. Good job.

40 min for 15 km on a mountain bike is pretty good + traffic is a real ***** when you are on a bicycle. My personal best time is on racing bike. Triathlon I will do also on a racing bike. And it makes big difference. At my city bike in the city....probably about 15 km/hour.

40-43 minutes was my best time and was at night when traffic was lighter. It generally took closer to 50 in traffic. I was lucky in that a couple of kms I had bush dirt tracks, so I could pelt along there as this stretch was flat. Good luck with your triathalon!

general health stuff

One problem that I have developed in the last year, is sensitivity for shampoo. As first it was only with my high chemistry shampoo for perfect hair. And now it is even with mildest of the mild baby shampoo. When I wash my hair with shampoo my scalp starts itching afterwards and skin on my head gets super dry and dandruffy. A visit to the skin doctor didn't resolve the problem. He suggested a shampoo that had completely same result. Some self experimenting showed:
- it is indeed washing of the hair with shampoo that causes the problem
- if I use sour substance (vinegar, citrus juice, kefir, joghurt) after the shampooning the situation improves

So it is apparently to high ph value of a soap part in shampoo that causes problem. That is not so good, because that means that I have to use other alternatives to wash my hair. Soapy shampoo is out of question. Alternatives:
- egg-yolk like a grandma did it
- medical alcohol. Cleans the hair really well. All oil is removed. But has a number of disadvantages: dries the skin and the hair out and is **** expensive.
- A number of adsorption based things like rye flour, cacao powder, coffee powder. The idea is that you just put the stuff in your hair. It absorbs oil and dirt and then you just rinse it out. I have tried coffee powder and am not satisfied with result. Hair afterwards was still to oily.

So am going to research and to experiment with it further with goal to either find a commercial soap-free shampoo or construct myself a perfect mix to clean my hair.

Going to try this line: http://shop.morroccomethod.com/Shampoos
They are pretty pricey for a shampoo but at least from the description should be soap/lye free and ph neutral. And I like when all ingredients are clearly listed, and I immediately have at least an idea what they mean. It is very funny if I compare a list of ingredients for this alternative shampoo :

Aqua (Water), Saponins (Green Tea), Acetic Acid (Raw Apple Cider Vinegar), Aloe Barbadensis (Aloe Vera) Leaf Juice, Montmorillonite, Urtica Dioica (Nettle) Leaf Extract, Xanthan Gum, Cannabis Sativa (Hemp) Seed Oil, Linum Usitatissimum (Flax) Seed Oil, Helianthus Annuus (Sunflower) Seed Oil, Opuntia Ficus-Indica (Prickly Pear) Extract, Phenylpropanol, Salicylic Acid (White Willow), Tocotrienols (Vitamin E), Gaultheria Procumbens (Wintergreen) Leaf Oil, Salvia Sclarea (Clary Sage) Oil, Rosmarinus Officinalis (Rosemary) Leaf Oil, Glycerin (Vegetable), Maris Sal (Sea Salt), Citrus Aurantium Amara Fruit Extract, Citrus Sinensis Peel Extract, Citrus Reticulata Fruit Extracts, Lactic Acid, Ascorbic Acid, Citric Acid

and for a shampoo I used to use to which I became sensitive:

Aqua, Sodium Laureth Sulfate, Coco-Glucoside, Glycol Distearate, Cocamidopropyl Betaine, Cocamide MEA, Cetyl Alcohol, Parfum, Dimethicone, Sodium Benzoate, Salicylic Acid, Benzyl Alcohol, Sodium Chloride, Erythritol, Guar Hydroxypropyltrimonium Chloride, Malic Acid, Panthenol, Disodium EDTA, Benzophenone-4, Ethylhexyl Methoxycinnamate, Bis-Methoxypropylamido Isodocosane, Glycine, Laureth-4, Laureth-23, Sodium Hydroxide, Hydrolyzed Keratin, PPG-9, Prunus Amygdalus Dulcis Oil, Cocos Nucifera Oil, Cetearyl Glucoside, Gardenia Tahitensis Flower Extract, CI 16035, Linalool, Limonene.

In the second list I have no clue what about 90% of ingredients mean.

Most of the time I am happy to move my butt. I like yoga, and dancing, and swimming, and running. But sometimes my butt strikes roots into my couch, like now.

- go! go! go!
- naaahhhhh. I don't wanna. What for. mehhhhh. I am sitting so good and goofing around on the internet. go away.
- go. It is on your to-do list. You have to do something for 30 min to improve in pull-ups. gooooooooooo. You can then put a X against this point in your to-do list. Goooooooooo. gogogogogo.
- OK *not enthusiastic*

Ha! I was feeling the same way last night even after I got to the gym.

I finally managed to use this machine for pull-ups where you can change the weight you actually pull up. So now I know how much I can pull-up. It is depressing, but it is what it is: 38 kg. I weigh now 60 kg. So I think it is a good plan to try to improve at a rate like 1 kg/week. This way I should be able to do 1 pull-up at the end of the year, even if I gain few kg or if not every week will result in 1 kg improvement. I have no idea if it is realistic because I don't know how bad I was when I started this project.

I got as a gift a HUGE box with bakery stuff. I shouldn't eat it and actually have no particular pull to eat it. A part I distributed between my neighbors. It is still left about 10 pieces. I can't conserve it in any way: my freezer is to small and the pieces are partly with various cream and pudding so I can't dry them. The right option is to throw it away, but it is soooooooooooo incredibly hard for me. The inability to throw food away is a leak now days in western society. I am going to invest an hour of my time, take this box to central train station and distribute it there between junkies. It sucks, but I know if I leave it here I won't be able to throw it away. It will end-up in my stomach and I will feel like crap about it and be pissed at myself.

What a GREAT solution! +1

It did actually work out pretty well. I was thinking before I did it, that it is kind of good, but it takes time, effort (I had to bike to the central station), and, most important, it is totally out of my comfort zone. Dealing with people is basically always a little bit scary for me. But I still did it.

I biked to the station with my box and offered first piece to a junkie, who looked least scary. He asked for a second piece for a friend. I gave him three. A business dude around me looked hungry and jealous of the junkie. So I offered him a piece. In this way the whole box went away in under a minute just directly to the people around me. People were happy to get free bakery. I was happy that people were happy. Emotions are contagious. I was also happy that I found a good solution for this situation and didn't have to eat the whole box myself. Such things are a head game for me. Also happy that I moved my butt outside for an hour (biking to the station and back). And especially happy that I did it although it was scary. I do have autistic tendencies and have to do such things because, if I don't, my natural tendency to avoid any interaction with other humans will pull me direction like coon74.

Music is a big thing. Today I was sitting at work and having dialog with myself like:
Me_smart_know_it_all_young_dynamic_successful: You need to go running directly after you leave work
Me_real: Yeah, you are right. It is gonna be embarrassing on the 15 July with your triathlon. But..... Running bores the crap out of me. I don't want.
Me_smart_know_it_all_young_dynamic_successful: you know you are gonna feel better afterwards.
Me_real: *putting fingers in my ears.* lalalala

The first thing I did at home is to plant my butt on my couch in front of the internet where I stumbled upon this:


The choreo is pretty boring, but I liked somehow music, so I repeated it and now am somehow enough in the groove to actually go for a run. So off I go.

Gj

Also, and please sit down before reading this since I know it will blow your mind, you can now get a portable music player and headphones so you can listen to music *while* you go running.

I tried. Was highly frustrating. The headphones fell constantly out of my ears. I tried to listen on the phone to music and it is just not loud enough. Now that I write it out, it is clear that I have to invest a little bit time to find headphones with a clip and to find a good app or to buy something just for music instead of using my phone.

Tx for the kick.

Funny how writing works.

There is obsession here about percentage of body fat. If you read many posts you can get the impression that the best state is with zero body fat. You would be dead with zero fat. You have to have some to be alive.

In other news: sooooooo tired. Just tired whole time. I continue to do every second day a session for my triathlon on 15 July and that's it. No energy for anything else. With this triathlon I really really really REALLY don't want to be slower than 2 hours. So I have to put some effort in that.

Starting tomorrow my bike sessions are gonna be a lot longer. I commute by bike and for the next weeks I have to go to our distant office: 25 km in one direction. That is not bad because I will automatically have every day more than double of triathlon bike session (22 km).

Do you use a racing bike?

Fantastic hyperbole.

There is; however, pretty well defined definitions of bodyfat levels for healthy and athletic individuals.