bearing blog

It is Sunday, and I am resolutely resting.  My iPad is propped up on my lap, and I am about to indulge in some blogging.

Advent is when I like to start my new year, partly because it is the start of the liturgical year and I like being countercultural, partly because it gives me an excuse to procrastinate all the Christmas things.  So over the past couple of weeks, I spent time setting up a new notebook.

Are you familiar with the “bullet journal” productivity fad?  If you have so far escaped knowledge of this, and you are prone to declaring that there exist no individuals who have time for such activities, I have a suggestion: Take a look at the original concept by the man who coined the term and then this minimalist self-proclaimed ugly version by a woman working in tech before you do any such fool thing as google “bullet journal ideas.”  

Especially without the -pinterest tag.

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Paper notes and lists have always pleased me more than digital ones.  I have a near-religious devotion to the utility of taking class notes on paper.  I write out daily to-do lists for my K-8 homeschoolers.  I still make my grocery lists on paper forms, and I go through post-it notes and index cards terrifyingly fast.

Some transitions I have made.  I was one of the last people I know to move from a paper calendar on the wall to a Google calendar, but it has been years now and I am completely comfortable with it.  I have stopped making paper flash cards for the students I tutor and have encouraged them to get onto Quizlet.  I store some lists (notably, meal plans) on Wunderlist so I can access them from anywhere.  I use my email inbox to capture miscellaneous thoughts I have now, and email ideas to my future self via followupthen.com.  Every Saturday I shoot out a series of emails to all the homeschoolers I supervise with their assignments for the week.

But I can't see myself going full digital quite yet.  I still love thinking on paper, and I am used to finding information I've written down by flipping through a book.  So I carry a paper notebook around in my bag, next to my iPad. 

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What I do NOT do:  

• color-coding
• calligraphy
• write out a year-at-a-glance page or month-at-a-glance pages
• have an expensive boutique-quality paper notebook 
• elaborate layouts
• numbered pages and a table of contents
• daily to-do lists

What I DO use it for:

• periodically writing out master lists (“brain dump”) of tasks, projects, and “someday/maybes”
• making notes of things as I go through my inbox each day or two
• thinking through things by writing about them
• planning how to spend time
• blocking out project timelines in the form of a mini-calendar
• taking (or rewriting) notes to organize information
• taking notes I’ll never look at again just to help me listen and pay attention
• as handy paper to write the odd grocery list

As a system it is semi-intentional.  I observed how I do and don’t use it, and constructed a standardized (not idealized!) algorithm.

As I was transferring information into my new notebook this year, I decided to add a tabbed index, but not a table of contents.  In a journal where notes are added chronologically, tables of contents get too jumbled up for me to find them useful. Instead,  I created just a handful of broad categories and used a blacked-in square at the edge of the page to tag pages.

The categories are:

• Pages copied from last year’s journal and core pages
• Task lists and brain dumps and notes from going through inboxes
• Planning out projects and time
• Thinking on paper
• Insights I want to remember

There’s a last category, but instead of giving it a tab I write it from the back toward the front by turning the notebook upside down and backwards:

• Notes just for listening

This lets me treat the back of the book as a simple chronological notebook of things I was trying to pay attention to.  It keeps the organized matter at the front from being interrupted by scrawls of low importance.

CORE PAGES

So in the very front of my notebook, which is just a quadrille-ruled composition book with a plastic cover, I have made:

• a page with my contact information
• the tabbed index with the list of categories
• a page of long-term goals (roughly ten years out)
• a page labeled “Backlog” of tasks that aren’t urgent but I want to get around to
• a couple of pages of memory-joggers for when I am making task lists.

There is also a set of pages of reference information that I copied forward from last year’s notebook.  For example, the long-term school planning chart (picture above) that tells me what grade everyone will be in each school year for the next ten years.

BRAIN DUMPS

My system starts off with a master task list, a.k.a. a “brain dump.”  This corresponds roughly to a monthly review and task migration in the minimalist bullet journal system, or to a weekly review in GTD, but I don't do it at set intervals.  I dump my brain whenever I feel that it is starting to fill up with loose ends of things that I need to remember, or whenever the existing lists start to feel out of date.  It is a mini fresh start, best done on a Saturday morning after one and a half cups of coffee.

 I usually make a brain dump onto a two-page spread, and often put items into categories, depending on how I am feeling.  Sometimes I categorize by people:  a list for self, for Mark, for each of the children (or sometimes just a KIDS list), extended family and friends, community.  I often do that if I am trying to jog my memory and write down all my current responsibilities toward other people.

 Other times I categorize tasks by context.

Context means the environment where I can perform the task.  The idea is that when I find myself in a particular context, I should work from the part of the list that contains the tasks I can do most easily there.  

Sometimes context is a physical space and sometimes it is more of a state of mind, or both.  My contexts include

• Web (researching, purchasing, reading, other)
• Phone calls (for which I need quiet)
• At home, with quiet access to my school materials, archives, and files
• Emailing
• Household tasks (for which quiet is not necessary)
• Brick-and-mortar errands and shopping
• Coffeeshop work
• Tasks to delegate to someone else
• Complicated multistep projects (not really a context, but important to put on the same page as the brain dump)

YESTERBOX

This is what I call the intermediate step between the brain dump/master task list and today’s to-do list.  It is kind of like a daily review.  I don’t do it every single day, although I probably should.  

The concept of the yesterbox comes from Tony Hsieh, who wrote about it concisely here.  It works brilliantly with the technique of using your email box as a way of collecting tasks and thoughts.  I already email myself reminders pretty often, so I have found it useful.  The basic idea: Yesterday’s inbox is today’s to-do list.   Every day you must deal with the emails that came in the previous day, and then you may call yourself done (with email, anyway).  There’s some fine print at the link for how to adapt it as needed, but that is the basic idea.  

I have employed synecdoche, calling the whole daily review a “yesterbox,” to remind me of this focus.  I open the notebook to a new page, date it, and then start going through my email from yesterday (including any email reminders I sent myself).   Here I write down new tasks that the emails suggest to me.  I also add events and scheduled tasks to my digital calendar at this time—these do not go into my notebook, since I will get an electronic reminder about those.  And I note things coming up on the calendar.  Anything else that comes to mind, too.  I also look at notes I made for myself yesterday (i.e., yesterday’s yesterbox) and carry things forward as seems appropriate, or delete them if they have become irrelevant, or cross them off if I actually accomplished them.  In any case, I can stop when I get through all the emails and reminders that came in yesterday.  Or, if I wish I can look at older emails and at new ones that came in today.

I do not use the yesterbox as today’s task list.  It’s too long.  So the next thing I do is:

THE INDEX CARD

I make my daily to-do list on one side of an index card.  This prevents me from making a to-do list that is too long.

I write down things I know I must do today first. Then I select tasks from the yesterbox list and copy them onto the index card.  If I know I am not going to get to a yesterbox task today, I might copy it back onto the master task list if it is not already there.   That would be the best and most organized thing to do, but I often don’t have the self-discipline to admit to myself that I am not going to get to it today.  So sometimes just leave it there for now where I will be able to see it tomorrow and carry it forward onto the next yesterbox.

If my card is not full, I go back to the brain dump (working master task list) and pull tasks from there to put on my index card.  

 The index card goes in my pocket or purse and follows me around.  I sometimes write information on the back, like a phone number I need to call.  At the end of the day, whether I have finished everything on it or not, I put it up on the prayer shelf above my desk and forget about it.    

Most of the tasks are duplicated in the notebook, so I won’t lose any vital information.  Shelving the cards, finished or not, up on the little shrine of sorts where I keep a crucifix and some devotional images, is a way of letting go of the day’s obligations and making peace with my imperfections.   A stack of to-do cards grows there, like a little pile of offerings.  Every so often I throw them away.

BACKLOG

This is a relatively new addition to the notebook, but I have high hopes for it.  It comes into play when it is time to make a new brain dump.  My plan to try for this year is to migrate every non-obviated task from the old brain dump:  either forward onto the new brain dump, if it is still relatively fresh; or, if it has fallen to “if I get around to it” status, backward onto the backlog.  Anything that I just don’t need to think about anymore (I missed my chance, or somebody else did it, or it became irrelevant) can get crossed out, but things I still hope to do will be captured either on the new brain dump, or saved in the backlog for possible future consideration.  The old brain dump is no longer active or useful.

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Well, that is a decent overview of my hybrid digital-paper system, such as it is.  No glitter, washi tape, stamps, or fountain pens allowed.  And I break my own rules all the time.  Does it still count as a system?  Well, I am on maybe my fourth notebook in as many years, so I think it does.  I still probably use it to procrastinate more than anything else, but it makes me feel organized, and sometimes that is enough of a boost to get some things done.

  A couple of weeks ago, a friend emailed me to check on me, because I hadn’t blogged.  And here it is, even later than that.   What happened?

I am not sure, but I guessed it had something to do with Christmas.  The holiday season descended upon me, as it does this time of year, and fell with a quiet, suffocating thump.   I cannot seem to help it, but I always wilt under a sense of obligation, this time of year.  I think the stress is mainly associated with presents, and I joke (okay, it isn’t actually a joke) that I have a Gifting Disorder.  So I have tried to reduce that, through asking relatives if we can’t just skip it.  I also have reduced the number of people I spend time at the holidays down to people I actually want to spend time with.  And yet this generalized holiday-season dread remains.

 It is usually all right once I actually arrive at the party, or exchange presents.  It turns out fine, mostly.  But there is a nasty dread in the anticipation.   It’s just a sense of not being able to dredge up the correct feelings and motivations.  “Giftmas” makes me feel like a bad person.  I am grateful to be aware that Christmas depression is not uncommon and to recognize the pattern in myself, because I know it is temporary.  The soft slumping weight will all melt away in January.

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It has helped for me to remember that Advent is a season of preparation.  Some of my FB friends and I were grousing good-naturedly (I hope) about pastors who preach from the pulpit to keep Advent peaceful and watchful  and not do things like put up the Christmas lights until Christmas.  We were observing that perhaps Father doesn’t realize that if you want to have a “nice” Christmas, it takes about a month to get ready.  I suggested that waiting patiently with joyful anticipation during Advent is appropriate if one is in a stage of life, such as being four years old, when Christmas is something that just comes along; but when one is in charge of making Christmas, the only way to keep Advent meaningful is to think of it as a season of preparation.  Which it is.  

I was thinking about the parable of the ten virgins, which was one of the daily readings sometime in the last couple of weeks, I forget when.  Everything eschatological applies to Advent and vice versa, I think, so it seemed appropriate.  As Advent gets closer and Christmas draws near, we must get ready; we must fill our lamps with oil.  It is a huge effort for me to do this.  I want to crawl into bed, forget the lamps, and hide from it.  Part of what I am hiding from are people who appear to be one-upping each other with gaudy, complicated, blinding lamps that take a lot of work.   

I do not know whether those other people’s lamps are full or not, but the thing I have to keep in mind is that all that is required is that the lamp be full of oil on the inside.  I mustn’t let the outward appearance of others get me down so much that I don’t fill my own.  Preparation for Christmas is not optional.  It is necessary.  Some work is necessary.  Even some of the work that intimidates me!  But not all of the bustle and business is part of what’s needful.  Wake up, fill my lamp, trim my lamp, don’t worry about the standards set by other people and their fancy glittering lamps.  Eyes on my own work.  It is real effort, this quieter, appropriate preparation.  And that part is worth doing, even if it is hard not to just crawl into bed.  

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 Related (probably):  I have been ill for weeks, off and on.  There were cold symptoms at some point, and Mark had them too, and some of the kids.  I thought I was better, then got tired and achy again.  I have missed a lot of workouts, but not all of them, since just before Thanksgiving.  Maybe I have managed one per week.  This past week I haven’t managed any; I have slept a lot.   I began to wonder if I had some kind of mononucleosis-type viral infection, either milder than mono or maybe it was mono and I was one of the lucky people who was only mildly impaired by it.   Then this Monday a blister like a cold sore erupted on my hard palate (so, exactly like a cold sore, the rarer intraoral type), and then on both Tuesday and on Friday I took 4-hour naps in the middle of the day.  And also the nodes on the left side of my neck are tender to the touch, off and on.  I keep thinking I am better and then crashing again.

I don’t get cold sores very often.  Years and years go by between them.  I know that flare-ups of HSV (the cold sore virus) are often associated with stress.  I must have had a primary infection at some point before this, but the  first time I remember getting them was the week my mother died.  

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Christmas is not as bad as all that, of course, but it is undeniably a source of stress, even though objectively speaking there is no real reason* for me to be stressed.  A lot of the things that I used to point to as stressful are not really there anymore.  Many dreadful gift-giving situations have gone away; we deliberately see fewer people than we used to, and all the ones we do see are people I am genuinely excited and happy to see; I guess it is just residual association?  But I am willing to believe it is a strong one.

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*After writing this, I remembered that in a short number of days I have to drive 12 hours with all the kids (and without Mark).  Also, before that, there is the usual checklist of things like packing and cleaning up the house, with some added responsibilities such as present-wrapping.  This possibly counts as a “real” reason to feel somewhat burdened.

Let me tell you what I had to eat yesterday (still following along in my French book of meal plans):

Breakfast called for coffee or tea, 50 g of bread, and 20 g of cheese.   

………I had: coffee, a packaged English-style crumpet (49 g) and 20 g of four-pepper goat cheese spread on it.  140 calories.

Lunch called for 100 g of chicken "escalope grillée;" 120 g of pasta, rice, or quinoa; vegetables; 1 teaspoon of oil to dress the vegetables; and 1 unsweetened dairy product.

……..I made salsa chicken rice bowls to feed the co-schooling horde for lunch.  I had:  shredded chicken breast cooked in the crockpot with salsa; 120 g of mixed brown rice and red beans; a pile of braised green peppers and onions; 1/4 avocado in lieu of the oil ; and 20 g of shredded cheddar cheese.   500 calories.

Dinner called for 200 g of a velouté of winter vegetables with a teaspoon of crème fraîche stirred in; 2 soft-boiled eggs; 40 g of whole grain bread; and 2 clementines.

……..I had:  200 g of some leftover curried squash soup that contained coconut milk; 2 soft-boiled eggs; 40 g of homemade whole wheat waffles; and the prescribed two clementines.  I also indulged in some syrup for my waffles, but skipped the sausage patties that everyone else had.  400 calories.

Also:  I chose to have half a doughnut at snack time—it was a birthday, with candles in the birthday teen's doughnut—165 calories—and enjoyed a gin and tonic at the theater (215).  The latter probably had something to do with my decision to eat a cold waffle out of hand when I got home, and also some saltine crackers (let's call that an additional 175 calories). 

I'd say the doughnut and the gin and tonic were celebratory pleasures that I freely chose to enjoy, and fit nicely into my overall-moderate day; but consuming the cold waffle and crackers was an impulse that represented the kind of behavior I want to minimize in long term. 

As maintenance has stretched into years, distinguishing between freely-chosen pleasures and not-so-pleasurable impulses has gotten easier and easier.

Remembering to put down the cold waffle, in the moment?  Not really any easier, especially under the influence of G&T-induced munchies.

 Still, the distinguishing is the first step.

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A couple of weeks ago, I decided to take another look at my long-term goals regarding weight, eating, and fitness.  The point of this exercise:  to inject some sanity and, well, serenity.  Too often I swing wildly between two poles:  either panicked feelings of lost control, or rigid, unhealthy obsession.

Fact:

If a time traveler from the future

came back and told me that I would weigh the same at age 55 as I do now

—even at my highest recent weight, which is ten to fifteen pounds more than I wish I weighed—

I'd be thrilled.

Because most of my anxiety surrounding weight gain has to do with slowly creeping back up to my old weight in the long term.  Where I am is a fine weight to grow older in. 

Sure, I'd be a little more thrilled to learn that future-me would weigh ten pounds less.

Or, better, to find out that I would weigh the same but would have more muscle mass because I will have made the time to lift weights consistently.

The point is that the difference is not so big as to call "I weigh the same at age 55" a failure.  If it comes to pass, I will count it a measure of success.

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The number "55" is not an arbitrary number, but it's a generous estimate.   

That's because at age 43, the most sensible long-term timeframe is "the other side of menopause."  No matter what, that'll be a time to take a new look at things.  So there's not much point in looking far beyond that.

I'm healthy now.  So one way to look at the long term is:  

What conditions do I want to persist until after menopause?

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(Before reading on, please recall that I'm under five feet tall.  People who forget this tend to gasp in horror)

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As long as I'm not engaged in systematic weight training, I would be happy to see my weight remain between 117 and 125.   The latter number represents a BMI that is just barely into the "overweight" category, but especially as I age, I'm fairly certain that it would still be a fine weight for me. 

(I am extremely skeptical of the boundaries of the "normal" BMI range for people as short as me.  Really?  I could go down to 92 pounds and be healthier than I am at 125 pounds?  This beggars belief.  When I briefly weighed 108 pounds, people said I looked unwell, and I was freezing cold all the time.)

In my last post in this series, I laid out my theory that numbers aren't goals, they're metrics.  

But I do have a goal related to those numbers.  The goal is:

 Stop myself from freaking out at weights between 117 and 125.

I know what many of you are thinking.

 Erin, do you really freak out at the scale when it measures between 117 and 125?

The answer is:  Yes.  Yes, I do freak out at these numbers, which are 40-45 pounds lower than the weight of the average American woman (who's only four inches taller than me, by the way).

And this is not a sign of good mental health.

Anxious feelings are not always under our control.  I'm aware of that.  But one way we can dispel anxious feelings is to look critically at the picture of reality that they are painting for us.  We do that by holding on to pieces of objective reality to which we can compare them.  And this is such an anchor.  When I feel anxious about numbers that are between 117 and 125, I must talk myself down from it:    

Your feelings do not reflect your rational thinking about this number. 

This is a good number. 

This is a number that you have already decided is a fine place to be, not just now, but far into the future.

Mind you, I'm not giving myself permission to indulge in anxiety when my weight is out-of-range.   Anxiety at those times, however, is a different problem, and not a problem I have right now.

Dealing with my present problem requires me to banish the periodic delusion that the good place I happen to be in will never be good enough.  

And while "I don't freak out" is more of a metric than a goal, because anxious feelings aren't entirely under my control:  I can set a goal to react to them by consciously changing my thought patterns.

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I have now-until-55 goals for exercise too.

Because I'm engaged in many activities that put pressure on my time and that I wish to prioritize alongside fitness, my long-term fitness goals are modest.  

I very much want to maintain the level of fitness that I have.  I can run three to four miles without stopping, I can climb stairs, I can sprint to catch a bus or a fleeing child, I can climb at a climbing gym, I can ski any intermediate downhill terrain, and I can hike all day carrying a weighted pack.

I can do that, I believe, with three workouts per week.  Where a workout is defined as any of the following:

• A run at any pace around any of the local lakes
• 30 minutes of running in a gym or on a treadmill
• At least 20 minutes of steady lap swimming
• 1 hour spent at the climbing gym
• 60 minutes of continuous walking
• 30 minutes of walking with a weighted pack

A secondary goal is to record performance data.  That's to give me more than one number, so the scale gets less important by comparison.

How many workouts per week?  That's the simplest thing to record.  But I'm also tracking, now, my average running and swimming pace.  I hope, no, expect, to speed up and eventually plateau, at a point where I would have to change my priorities to go faster; and then, if I don't want to change my priorities, I suppose I will have to be satisfied with maintaining those paces.

If I decide to take up weight training between now and then, I'll re-evaluate my goals.

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These are my long-term thoughts.  I do have short-term and medium-term ones.  I touched on those at the beginning of this post and in my latest maintenance story, where I explained my post-vacation austerity measures working with the French book of meal plans.  In the next post I will try to tie the short-, medium-, and long-term thinking together.  This might require me to repeat myself, but I think it'll be a little more organized presentation of the information.  Stay tuned.

A side note on logistics.

I've been dabbling in serving "first course" before "mains" at family meals ever since our first European trip three years ago, and it's a habit that has persisted remarkably well.  I wrote about it for the first time here:

[O]ne thing I noticed that I liked is the serving of meals in courses.  Yes, I know that is a totally normal thing to do "over here," but it's nothing we ever do; we tend to put all the serving dishes in the middle of the table and help ourselves to everything at once.  

There's nothing wrong with that per se, but I wonder if I could slow us down just a wee bit, and have a first course.  

Not make anything extra.  I typically have two or more vegetable side dishes at each meal anyway.  Just take that salad, or that soup, and put it out ahead of time so we can warm up to the table and to each other before we start snarfing down our meat and carbs.

In the next post after that, I listed some examples of potential first courses.  But I don't think I have written much about it since then, until yesterday when I wrote about searching for meal-planning guidance in French bookstores.

There appeared in the comments a question from ChristyP:

I was thinking yesterday about the logistics of separate courses and quickly became overwhelmed by the number of dishes and potentially serving pieces to wash.

You certainly have more helpers, but are you actually running the dishwasher after the first course so that it can be emptied and refilled with the rest of the dishes from dinner?

Or do people keep the same plates and have other items served upon them (possibly with wiping up any extra salad dressing with a paper towel between courses)?

I can answer this one! 

There are several reasons why I have been able to execute this without getting overwhelmed. 

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Simplifying factor #1.  I make a maximum of 3 "family-style" meals per week.

How is this so?

• Mondays we take turns preparing meals with another family whose kids and grownups are going to the same Monday night meetings.
• Wednesdays are self-serve Leftover Buffet Nights.  
• Saturdays, one of the kids makes dinner.  They take turns.  I don't micromanage the planning, cooking, or serving.
• Sunday dinner is a cheese-and-meat board with bread, crackers, and crudités.

Not doing it every day is surely one of the reasons it is not overwhelming.

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Simplifying factor #2.  Though I might have three "courses," it's only two sets of dishes, not three.

Except for parties, I basically never make a sweet baked dessert or anything else that couldn't go on the same plate with the mains.  The sugariest thing I might cook to go with a regular dinner is a baked apple.

For the most part, until this year, I only ever tried to manage two courses:  a first course (usually a salad or other vegetable), and a main. 

Lately, inspired by careful attention to French magazine articles and serving suggestions on French prepared-food packages, I have been putting out a "dessert course" which amounts to a platter of either cut fruit or wedges of cheese, at the same time as the main and sides.   

I have been enjoying taking my portion of the fruit or cheese after I have finished the main course, but of course anyone can serve it to themselves as a side.   It goes on the same plate as the other food, or on the bread-and-butter plate if the main happens to be soup or something else that requires a bowl.

So if you're imagining three sets of plates, banish that.  Think two, max.

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Simplifying factor #3:   Smaller plates.

This really helps with the dishwasher.

Shown below, stacked from bottom to top:  (1) a "standard" 10-3/4-inch dinner plate, (2) our dinner plates, (3) the plates we typically use for first course (or for a bread plate if we're having soup):

Shown below, stacked from bottom to top:  (1) a bowl for first-course soups for Mark and teenagers, (2) a bowl for first-course soups for me and middle-size children, (3) a ramekin for first-course soups for smaller children:

I generally get away with two dishes per person.  And unless I have to break into our "standard" plates for some reason, every plate and bowl can fit on either the bottom or the top rack of the dishwasher.  So it's not terribly difficult to get them all in.   

That is, it wouldn't be difficult if we started with an empty dishwasher.   In truth, with six people here all day long, the dishwasher is almost never empty, and there's usually a backlog waiting in the sink; so maybe the real reason it seems easy is that seven extra dishes from first course don't make a noticeable contribution to the pile.  

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Simplification #4:  It's routine.

In practice, when I am in charge of a multicourse dinner, I plan it this way:

• I plate the first course and put it on the table while the table is being set. 
• We wait for everyone to come to the table and say grace before we let anyone dig in (or complain).
• As we start eating, the main course items (including the stealth fruit-or-cheese-course) are in resting on the counter, chilling in the fridge, or staying hot in the oven, depending.   
• When most of us are done with the first course (except for the 3yo, who can't be reasoned with yet), I get up, take away those plates and drop them into the sink or stack them by the dishwasher. 
• I then bring the dinner dishes in a stack and hand them to a teenager to distribute. 
• While he is doing that, I fetch the serving dishes to the table. 
• I'm not above just putting the soup pot or the crockpot insert on the table, by the way.  I draw the line at serving from the rice cooker because I am not tall enough to see over it when seated.
• We pass the rest of the dishes family style.

If I really needed to conserve plates, I think I would not be above using our divided plates and serving the first course in one of the sections of the divided plates, and letting people keep those plates between first and main courses.  Alternatively, I could allow people to opt-in to the multi-plate dinner, keeping their first plate unless it really bothered them that there were traces of salad dressing or whatever on it; in that case they could get their own clean plate if necessary.

I personally find the rhythm of changing the plates to be pleasanter. 

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Simplification #5:  I have three offspring who can load and unload the dishwasher and hand-wash dishes without help, plus one apprentice.

I almost never wash dishes in my own house.

As ChristyP noted, this surely is part of what makes it all seem feasible.

Before starting, a few things à propos my last post. 

On the subject of publicly available advice from the French on "what should I serve my family?":  

• Read French?  Here is a website (put out by the French national health program Manger Bouger) that will generate random menus for your week, with links to recipes for everything.  To stave off despair, don't forget to check the "Express" box which will give you meals that are supposedly quick to prepare and include convenience foods.  You know, like individual pots of prepared tiramisu, which I'm sure you can find at the supermarket.
• Are readers interested in my doing a little more live-blogging of my experimental menu-planning with the help of my weird little French eating-plan book?  It may have to wait till I finish my maintenance series.   But it would be something along the lines of:  hey, breakfast on the plan today is yogurt, 30 g of cereal, and 10 g of nuts; I'm having a mix of Cheerios and puffed kamut, with pecans, on my yogurt.
• Forgot to link yesterday, but the weird little book is available on Amazon.fr here.  There is also a second volume which I will probably acquire.

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On to the Only One Number trap.

I've written before about The Numbers:  as I put it, "the weight on the scale, the dress size, and even the calorie count."

"[T]he numbers" are not under your direct control. Behavior and habit development are under your direct control; the numbers aren't. If weight/size control for health is your desire. the numbers are useful — not as goals or targets, because you cannot really aim at them — but as diagnostics to evaluate existing habits and behaviors….

[I]f you're going to freak out and feel like a failure, don't do it because the numbers are bad. Focus all concern about failure, all motivation to succeed, on the behavior. Not on the numbers. The behavior is what you can control. The numbers are an indirect effect.

Let me restate the point of that post as follows: 

Nothing that is a number is useful as a goal nor a resolution.

Self-deception is required to "resolve" to lose ten pounds or some such thing.   We can only resolve to act upon things that are under our direct control.  To do or do not.  And none of the numbers are things we can control.  

(Really?  Miles per month?  Can't I control that?  Sort of— you can decide to do it, but the resolution comes down to things like "I will set my alarm to go off every Tuesday and Thursday at 5 am" and "When my alarm goes off tomorrow, I'll get up and go running").  You don't just…. run 15 miles this month by force of will.  Real, deception-free resolutions are, basically, yes-no questions and not quantitative ones.)

A better way to think of each number (the scale, the dress size, the lipid levels, calories per day, cigarettes per week, miles run per month) is this:

Numbers are metrics that measure our response to our resolutions.

They are measures of our body's response to the things we can control.

They are, mostly*, objective tests of whether our resolutions have been useful.

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Successfully reframing numbers as metrics rather than as resolutions takes away the power of the number as a number to cripple us with shame or despair.   

The anguished question of "Why can't I make this number change?" fades away, because the plain truth is that no one can make this number change.    

Instead, when the number fails to do what we hope, there's really only one question** to ask:

What resolution can I make that would be more useful for this number?

If we have kept a resolution faithfully and given it plenty of time but the number has not responded the way we want:  That resolution is not useful, at least not for changing this number.

If the problem seems to be that we have made a useful resolution but have failed to keep it:  The only useful resolutions are the ones that we keep.  If we find that we have not kept a resolution, it needs to be tweaked until we do keep it.

So:  

Nothing, here, about Why can't I keep my resolutions?!? either. 

No Why can't I??? at all.  

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 All that is ground I've covered before.  Here's the new bit:

Multiple metrics help you identify useful resolutions.

If the only metric I use is the scale, then I might give up too soon on resolutions that, behind the scenes, have been helping me in other ways.

Maybe I've changed my diet and my weight hasn't budged—but perhaps I haven't noticed that my blood pressure has gone down.  Maybe I've been getting to the gym a couple of times a week for months and my pants size hasn't changed—but perhaps I haven't noticed that I can now climb a whole flight of stairs without getting out of breath.  

I risk giving up, never having noticed that the effort I made was paying off in better health.  And if I give up on enough resolutions, I may give up making new ones at all.

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One of my newer maintenance resolutions, therefore, is to actively track more numbers.

The number on the scale is not one that makes me happy on a regular basis, even though the news it delivers me is not objectively bad.  I would like to decrease this metric's significance, its hold on my imagination. 

I could do that by stepping, permanently, off that scale.   

I'm not ready to take that step.

But… I am ready to make it just one of several numbers.

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Here's what I'm doing.

First:  I'm adding physical performance metrics.

I'm  trying out the free version of an app called Runkeeper to store exercise data.  So far I'm tracking:

• my average running pace in 5K workouts (currently 12:30 minutes/mile)
• my average lap-swim pace, without regard to length of workout (currently 48:15 minutes/mile)

Second:  I'm adding behavioral metrics.  Right now, I'm tracking

• number of workouts per week (Runkeeper stores this data too)
• (temporarily) daily caloric intake, for which I am using the premium version of the app Lifesum

Besides these, I'm looking for a good data-recording method to track

• fraction of days on which I did, or didn't, have feelings that my habits were "out of control" 

The third category is "body" metrics:

• the number on the scale
• upper arm measurement
• hip measurement

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I'm wary of tracking too many things, too often.  I hope these aren't too onerous:

• Calorie entries are the most time-consuming and have to be entered every time I eat.  I don't intend to do it every day for the rest of my life.
• Exercise metrics need to be entered into my app at the end of every workout.  That's usually pretty fun and easy because I always feel satisfied to have finished the workout and eager to see progress.
• I'm trying to step on the scale only every few days rather than every single day.   Once a week is plenty.
• There's no point in measuring with a measuring tape more often than every month or so (although getting average readings from several days in a row isn't a bad idea, because measuring tapes aren't so precise).
• I'm least likely to remember to do the "how did I feel about my eating today?" but in many ways it is the most important metric because it is probably the poorest metric related to my diet.

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What numbers could be useful for you to measure?

___________________________

*Remain humble and allow for the possibility that the numbers changed because of circumstances that are out of our control, not necessarily because of our smarts, strength, or lack thereof.  It does happen.

** Supposing, of course, that the desired change would be a real good for us that is worth real effort.

If there is a pattern in my years of maintaining most of the 2008 weight loss, it is a succession of stories:  In Which I Try Something New For A While To See How It Works.

"Works" is pretty mild here.   I haven't done the slow creep of weight gain (I'm heavier now than before my last pregnancy because I didn't drop back down quite as far, but am stable).  So none of these things seem to have mattered in terms of keeping the weight off.  It's staying off, it seems. 

What I'm looking for is, I guess:   Does this new thing (intermittent fasting, rule-based eating, No-S, whatever) make it feel easy?   Does it make prudent-yet-pleasurable dining second nature and reinforce good habits?  Does it get me out of an unhealthy headspace of obsession?  Does it keep me from being terrified of re-gaining weight?  

Here's the story of my Something New for right now.

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One of my goals, going into the couple of weeks my family spent in France this past September, was to spend several hours in bookstores.  Because there's no substitute to being able to browse through stacks of physical books, and I don't get to do that very often in my second language(s).

I had literary items on my to-do list, both fiction and nonfiction.  But I also had a couple of, shall we say, lifestyle-related items to tick off.  What I really hoped to find would be a practical book about feeding families, by French and for French families:  about keeping the traditions of the family meal, the leisurely, conversational, multi-course family meal, while under the pressures of dual-income families (or single-parent families), busy school and sports schedules, and all the distractions that tug at individuals and pull them apart. 

I especially hoped to find realistic and practical meal plans:  daily menus that reflected the courses that French families put before their children on the dinner table.  

I know that there is a tradition of entrée, plat, dessert–where "dessert" is often fruit, cheese, or both—and where the entrée is likely to be a vegetable first-course.  

I know that you can take an American square meal and, theoretically, untangle it so that (for example) the vegetable side dish comes out first, the fruit or a dairy product is pushed back to last, and what's left (meat and complex carbohydrates) becomes the plat, or main course.  

But I wondered how this looks in real life.  And I wondered if any enterprising French author had taken it on herself to explain to bewildered French millennials exactly how to perform this fundamental familial magic, à la Adulting.  I wanted to see meal plans for a whole week that would tell me, for example:

    WEDNESDAY DINNER

• Entrée:  Grated carrots in lemon and olive oil dressing
• Plat:  Grilled chicken with herbed rice and sautéed mushrooms
• Dessert:  Wedge of Camembert
• White Burgundy, or Belgian bière blanche

…. and so forth, all set up to make it easy to use up leftovers.  All set up to give many examples to show how to feed both children and adults with a balanced and pleasant meal, made of excellent ingredients, simply prepared and served in tidy little courses.

Sadly, I could not find such a thing in the shelves of childrearing, education, or cookbooks.  It seems that the French, even millennials, are not yet so disconnected from their roots that they need people to tell them how to eat dinner.

But I did find something very like it, somewhere else, by accident.

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I was browsing through a spinning rack of French self-help mini-books, because I am fascinated by the existence and format of self-help books and was curious about whether French ones were different from American ones. 

Stop being a workaholic!

Learn to meditate!

Get organized! 

As you might expect, a number of these were faddish exercise or diet books:  yoga, juicing, etc.   When I came upon a generic, non-faddish-looking one (Mon cahier minceur, or "My slimness workbook"–the French don't mince words and call their goal "health" or "weight loss"), I picked it up and opened it to a page.

And!  It was full of meal plans, very like the ones I was wishing for (only, for the benefit of those pursuing the elusive minceur of the title, the plans suggested quantities in grams).

So I bought it, of course. 

• It was a cheap little paperback, and the meal plans looked like normal, non-faddish, non-fat-free, whole-foods stuff, on the principle of Reasonable Or Reduced Quantities of Good Things.
• Furthermore, they were simple and modular—very unlike your average "Drop 7 pounds in our 7 days of meal plans" American magazine article, which pretends that you will put together a vegetable frittata for Tuesday morning breakfast and whole-grain waffles on Wednesday.  (Fun for a few days, but hard to sustain in the long term.) 
• The suggested gram-quantities are different for different people (I took the little quiz and wound up in the second-lowest-quantity bracket).   This is a weigh-some-of-your-food plan but not a count-your-calories plan.
• There are three weeks of "regime" menus, to be repeated as long as necessary, followed by two weeks of "stabilization" menus, to be repeated for as many weeks as one was on the "regime."  The "stabilization" menus have larger quantities, meant to ease the person into maintenance.
• Finally, they have a slight but unmistakable French accent.  Breakfast is present but unimportant, almost a careless throwaway half-meal; there's cheese and yogurt and crème fraîche everywhere, and also bread with butter (though a scantier smear of butter than I would like); dinner comes apart nicely into courses; and there are strict warnings against the dangers of eating between meals.  

I decided to follow it as much as I could, for as long as it was enjoyable, as my post-vacation Austerity Measures.

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Today's Tuesday, so here's a sample Tuesday menu.  The gram-quantities for you might be different than those for me, by the way. 

Breakfast:

• Tea or coffee
• 50 g of seven-grain bread (pain aux céréales)
• 20 g of cheese

Lunch (imagine this as a large salad with the yogurt for dessert):

• Crudités (example:  carrots, celery, grated cabbage).  Unlimited.
• 1 teaspoon of oil to make the vinaigrette [understood:  mix with as much vinegar, salt, pepper, mustard, etc., as you like]
• 2 slices of cooked ham 
• 150 g of cooked green peas, flageolets, or lentils
• 1 plain yogurt [this means 125 g, and it's not nonfat, but French "demi-écremé," which is executed better than our low-fat yogurt.  I just eat whole-milk yogurt and enjoy it.]

Dinner:

• Green salad seasoned without oil; e.g., make a vinaigrette with 1/2 tsp mustard + pepper + 2 tsp. vinegar + 2 tsp milk + lemon juice
• 100 g of roast beef
• Gratin dauphinois made with 175 g potatoes sliced and layered with 15 g grated emmenthal and 30 g crème fraîche mixed with 50 ml milk, baked 1 hour at 350° F
• 1 fruit

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This is pretty representative.   

• Plain vegetables are always unlimited. 
• Fruits aren't weighed, but the number is set: half a grapefruit, one apple, two kiwis.   
• Added fats, such as butter, oil, mayonnaise, and cream, are present at most meals in restrained amounts. 
• Breakfasts are always complex carb (bread, sometimes buttered, or cereal) plus dairy (cheese, milk, or yogurt).   
• Lunches and dinners are quite square:  a serving of meat or fish, a serving of complex carbs, usually both vegetables and fruit, and nearly always a serving of dairy.
• There is one very simple recipe given as part of one meal each day, such as the gratin dauphinois that accompanies Tuesday's dinner.   

And let's take a look at that dinner, shall we?  Here's how I would render it into a family meal:

• First course:  Big green salad (full of things the children like, including red bell peppers and cucumber, with cold roast beef strips on top, and croutons for the rest of the family, and their favorite bottled dressing for the children; but for me, an oil-free dressing with lots of strong dijon mustard)
• Second course: That lovely potato gratin, which finished baking while you had your salad.  And if your family would prefer it with cheddar cheese, do it that way.  You could add extra cheese to people's servings, too.  
• Cut fruit — I would put it on the table at the same time as the second course, and people could decide whether to have it together or separately.

Obviously, you could serve a plainer salad first and then put a beef roast next to the gratin; but I don't really like roasting beef, so I'd put deli meat in the salad.  YMMV.

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I've been surprised how much I don't miss my Egg For Breakfast (eggs have been moved to lunch, where they are just as pleasant).    It helps that I have replaced it, often, with buttered toast, which is one of my very favorite things.

One of the best parts of all this:  lunches that end with 20 g of good cheese.  I had forgotten how good a creamy blue cheese can be as a course to end a meal.  I would absolutely eat Stilton for dessert, any day of the week.

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To my surprise, the whole plan seems to work very well for me.  At least by the measures of suppressing panic and obsession, enjoying my food, and supporting good habits. I'm a little sheepish that I'm having such a good experience with what is basically an unusually-well-put-together "magazine plan."

That's not to say that everything I've eaten in the past few weeks is by the book.  I've demolished a few piles of chips and guacamole here and there while getting together with friends—but one of the things I want out of daily moderation and simplicity is that it leaves room for feasting.

Next post:  escaping from the Only One Number trap.

I don't know if you can believe it or not, but next month it will be the ninth anniversary of my six-month push to a 40-pound weight loss which took me down to a weight 52 pounds lower than my highest nonpregnant weight.

Since then I've had two babies and — mostly — maintained it.  I say "mostly" because 

• after a few months at that weight, I decided that too many people were asking me if I'd been ill, and deliberately re-gained about 6 pounds, at which point the concerned questions stopped.
• after my most recent pregnancy, not quite all of that came back off, and I stabilized at a weight that was, let's see, ten pounds heavier than that.  

And that's more or less where I've been for the last two years or so, with some seasonal and vacation-related fluctuations.  I did manage to get within three pounds of my pre-pregnancy weight at one point, but it proved difficult to maintain and I went up to the ten-pounds-higher one.

Still in the "normal" range, though!    And  that's why I feel like I can keep saying I maintained the weight loss.  I maintained most of it and am pretty stable.  As in, for the last two years I have not been working particularly hard, and my weight has not changed much at all, apart from some seasonal-type fluctuations.

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Let's just label as "seasonal-type" the few extra pounds I took back with me from my five weeks in the French Alps, the Italian Riviera, and London. 

I knew it was coming.  I had spent the last few weeks drinking a lot of pints of bitter and glasses of good red wine, and eating a good deal of cheese, pasta, and meat pies.  Somewhere in there I made a deal with myself that I would stop worrying about it, enjoy myself thoroughly, and implement Austerity Measures as soon as I returned.

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Austerity Measures seemed like a better name to me than a lot of the other trendy ones burbling around these days, like Clean Eating (with which I have a word association problem) or Whole 30 (why exactly thirty?)  or, uh, I don't know… Dump Dinners?  Can we get rid of the phrase Dump Dinners?   Just for the hell of it?

Anyway, having come so recently from France, I decided on some decidedly French Austerity Measures before I got home. 

British Austerity Measures are not nearly as pleasant.  Trust me, when you are in London, you want abandon, not austerity.  You want three pints a day and plenty of meat pies.  The same goes for Italy.   You want pizza and pesto and gelato (and more gelato) and lots of wine.  

But actually, French-style Austerity Measures aren't too bad.  I will elaborate in upcoming posts.

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I also want to write a little bit about:

• the trap of Only One Number, and my recent goal to generate other interesting numbers to distract me from it;
• long-term (first medium, and then very long-term) thinking;
• my ever-present concern (since about 2010) that in writing about weight control at all, I'm contributing to a culture of body shaming, making an idol out of Looking Not Fat, and putting myself in a not-so-good headspace;
• and the surprising situation I'm in, of thinking about my physical self in a future that, likely will have no more babies in it.

Be patient with me, it'll probably take me a month to get all four or five or so of these posts out there.  But:  that's November, my goal-weight anniversary month, and I can't help but be thinking about it a lot.  So I guess I might as well take you along.

 Continuing from the last post and the one before that.

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Assassins d'avant by Élisa Vix

This one is another roman policier.

One of the nice things about reading to improve one's language is that you don't really have to read things that are very literary.  Popular works, for the sake of their popularity, can be instructive all by themselves.  Not that this isn't going to be literary; I don't know whether it is or not.  But I don't need it to be.  I just need it to be interesting enough to keep the pages turning.

The back-of-the-book summary:

Manuel Ferreira is a cop.  When a young woman asks to interview him about the ranks of the police, he's charmed at first.  But when she pulls out a photograph taken twenty-five years ago, the worst of memories rise up to the surface.

Adèle Lemeur is no journalist, but a medical researcher.   Her mother was Marie Moineau, the fifth-grade teacher killed in front of her classroom of students, including Manuel himself—who never forgot that terrible scene, and maybe became a cop to exorcise it.  

She wants to know why her mother died, and Manuel is the only one who can help her find his former classmates, the witnesses to the crime.  He says yes:  because he wants to see her again, because of his unhappiness, because of his love for the one woman he has no right to love.

In a novel as incisive as it is mysterious, Elisa Vix drives her heroine on the trail of a truth that lies in wait to snare her.  Twenty-five years are not enough to repair the wounds and the lies.  And what if Adèle has been sheltered from these things for her own good?  And what if there is no such thing as a family without something to hide?  Adèle will go farther than she ever imagined.

 So, there you go, pretty standard French detective novel.  Maybe a little psychological thriller throw in for good measure.

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Le Chemin de Mère Adèle Garnier by Gianmario Pica

First things first:  I did not buy this book.  It was handed to me for free by Sister Thomasina of the Tyburn Nuns when we visited the shrine.

 But it wound up in my hands (in England), and I will probably crack it open at some point, so I may as well mention it.  

Mother Adèle was, of course, the foundress of the congregation, and her cause for canonization has recently been opened; she has formally received the title "Servant of God" as of, oh, about a year ago.  This book came out in 2013.  Some Googling reveals a few details which the Catholic press found interesting, namely that the foundress is said to have witnessed multiple Eucharistic miracles.  But Sister Thomasina hadn't mentioned that to me, stressing instead Mother Adèle's personal holiness and the great gift that is the Martyrs' Shrine.

 Here's the brief biography of Mother Adèle on the Tyburn website.  I am interested to know more about this woman and her work.

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L'Équation du Nenuphar:  Les Plaisirs de la Science, by Albert Jacquard

Waterlilies again!  

I stood in the bookstore for a long time with several books by this author in my hand.  I was looking for nonfiction essays, and I couldn't decide which of his books to buy. 

My eye had lit upon his name as I scanned the "essais" section, because I noticed right away that he appeared to have published books essays on at least two distinct topics:  general science and philosophy.  The philosophy book was entitled, Petite philosophie à l'usage des non-philosophes, that is, "Little philosophy for non-philosophers."  That interested me, because I am not a trained or certified philosopher, but I do my share of philosophizing. 

The science book purported to be the sort of thing to demonstrate the beauty and pleasure of science to people who (unlike me) are not trained scientists.  So in one sense, the other book was for me, and this book was not for me.  But on the other hand, there is the potential to enounter the pleasure of science in French.  That would be new.  And I like the idea of reading philosophy by scientists, and of studying and performing science with the eye and mind of philosophy — which is what's necessary to know science's place in the scheme of things. 

So I immediately knew I wanted to get one of this guy's books and see what he had to say.  It was just a matter of whether to get one, both, or neither.  In the end I put down the philosophy book and promised myself I could order it later if the science book made me think I wanted more.

Jacquard, who died in 2013, seems to have been quite the polymath:  double baccalaureates in math and philosophy, master's degree in factory engineering from the École Polytechnique, civil servant, additional studies in population genetics and an appointment at the WHO as well as at several universities.  He has written numerous works of professional and popular science as well as works of politics and philosophy.  I'm interested to meet this author:  it may well be that we will have points of difference in our politics, but in any case I should enjoy some of the work I'll have to do to hear him out.

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A Stack of Magazines

Not much to explain here!  Most of these are cooking magazines, and one is sort of a French equivalent of Scientific American.  I set reminders on my calendar to dole them out to myself at the rate of one every two months. 

I do have a couple of other things, namely a couple of cookbooks, but I'll bring those up if and when I ever make some food with them.  As I got some interest from these, I will probably attack Et ils eurent beaucoup d'enfants first.  I hope to report back with at least a few pages read.