Archive for 2010

Weight loss FAQ

·

As most of my friends and coworkers know, I’ve lost a whole lot of weight over the last year. Folks that see me for the first time ask me a lot of the same questions, so consider this my attempt to answer the most common ones.

1. How much weight have you lost?

As of this morning, just under 60 pounds.

2. Why did you decide to do this?

When we realized we were going to have a kid this fall, I figured out that I’m going to be over 50 when he graduates high school. At the rate I was going with my health and weight… well, I just wanted to do something about it. My initial goal was just to shed 15-20 pounds and ride my bike consistently. The rest has just been bonus, in large part because sticking with the new habits has been pretty easy.

3. How did you lose the weight?

Combination of eating better & exercise, but mostly eating a lot better. I use the Weight Watchers iPhone app & online tools to track and guide what I eat. I also started exercising consistently once or twice a week. That’s pretty much it.

4. Weight Watchers, huh? Why? Don’t you have to go to meetings or buy their food?

I did Weight Watchers because a few folks I know through Twitter were having great success with the program. I also used a Points guide a bunch of years back to understand my diet. I didn’t really follow the program then, but I was familiar with the concepts and it made sense to me: measure calories in, keep it slightly below calories out to lose weight.

The good thing about Weight Watchers is that you don’t need to buy any particular food. You can eat whatever. It’s really about moderation and making healthier choices on the whole. The meetings are also not necessary. Some people need the motivation and the support. I just need the data, and the iPhone app and online tools were perfect for me.

The program assigns a points value to food based on it’s nutritional value. Based on your weight, age, and activity level, they give you a daily point budget. You track what you eat and make sure you stay under the daily limit. On nights when you’re out with your friends or out for a special dinner or you just need a treat after a rough day at work, you also have a weekly budget you can draw from. Finally, you can bank extra weekly points by exercising (which could be playing Wii Fit for 30 minutes, or mowing the lawn…).

There are lot of other apps out there for the iPhone that take a very similar approach. Many are cheaper. The Fitbit, for example, has calorie tracking functionality.

5. How much are you exercising?

Not a whole heck of a lot. The key thing is that I have fun with it. I don’t particularly like the gym. So, last summer, I started biking regularly, starting with short rides (20-30 minutes) and building up. I then realized how much I really enjoyed being out on my bike. This past summer, I rode my bike for 60-90 minutes once or twice a week. I played 9 holes of golf walking & carrying my bag (even in the pouring rain) with our office league once a week. That’s basically it. Most weeks, I’d have a full days worth of points banked from just one bike ride and 9 holes of golf.

As the weather has gotten colder, and I have less free time because of the baby, I’ve started running instead. I can get a workout that feels good in 30-40 minutes instead of 90. Plus, it’s more fun than I imagined.

I keep bringing “fun” up because I want this to be sustainable. Exotic diets or constant gym routines aren’t sustainable for me. This works.

6. Any other tips?

The one thing I have been using more than I imagined possible is a small, inexpensive food scale. I don’t use it to be precise about portions. I use it to be lazy about dishes. If I wanted to know how much 2 tablespoons of, say, olive oil is, or a quarter cup of cheese, I’d have to use a measuring cup or a spoon, then wash it. If i have multiple ingredients, I dirty more dishes. With the scale, I can just weigh each step and then turn the scale off and I’m done. Most nutrition labels indicate serving sizes by both volume & weight, by the way. Pretty handy. And, yes, I’m that lazy.

The other thing is to find activities that work for you. I’m imagining that most guys will be alright with an excuse to play golf, and walking is awesome on a beautiful golf course. Heck, it’s the only reason I kept playing all summer because, honestly, I’m the worst golfer I know. Plus, its cheaper than renting a golf cart each time.

7. When will you stop trying to lose weight?

I basically kinda have. In the last 7 weeks, I’ve lost ~5lbs, which is less than a pound a week. My official goal is to get my BMI to be in the normal range. I’m technically still just on the overweight side of that line. Once I hit that goal, I’ll switch the Weight Watchers plan into maintenance mode and then focus on my fitness goals instead.

‘Our Great Education Challenge’ at the CT Forum

·

I attend each Connecticut Forum event hoping to leave smarter than when I arrive. This is usually a slam dunk, no doubt it’ll happen thing for any given Forum event. Except, that is, for last night.

The topic was Our Great Education Challenge. The panel consisted of:

  • Davis Guggenheim, the filmmaker behind Waiting for Superman & An Inconvenient Truth
  • Lily Eskelsen, VP of the National Educators Association (NEA), the largest teachers’ union
  • Joel Klein, the current and outgoing chancellor of the New York City public schools
  • Deborah Gist, Rhode Island Commissioner of Education
  • Jon Schnur, CEO of New Leaders for New Schools
  • The panel was moderated by MSNBC correspondent Norah O’Donnell.

Looking at that list, it seems like this group was (unintentionally, I’m sure) set up to fail to reach any sort of consensus or real conversation.

It helps, at this point, to be familiar with Waiting for Superman. If you haven’t seen the movie, you can quickly read my review of the film. Short version: the film concludes unions are at the heart of America’s education problem because they prevent principals and schools from coaching, firing, or adequately managing teachers.

As it turns out, every person on the panel (plus the moderator) basically took the Superman position as a given except Lily Eskelsen (the sole union perspective on the panel). This is unsurprising considering their backgrounds – two are school administrators who spar with unions constantly. Guggenheim obviously agrees with his own film. Excluding Schnur, then, you have the makings of a pile on for Eskelsen. So, that’s essentially what we got. The entire Forum consisted of the panelists delivering applause lines ripping on the unions or going back and forth with Eskelsen.

It would’ve been more productive to talk about specific union concessions that would make school improvements easier, or to discuss whether the union even has a purpose in today’s school system. I’d be interested in understanding why only 17% of charter schools perform better than public schools, or why Joel Klein thinks that’s a success rate worth “cherishing.” Or, why Deborah Gist thinks school systems would negotiate these weird, applause line worthy rules into their teacher contracts.

It’s not that I believe these people are playing fast and loose with the numbers, or have some hidden agenda. In fact, I believe they have sound reasons for their perspectives (and they wear their agendas pretty plainly out in the open). I just think they’re used to talking about this topic with other educators and school reformers. So, they mention things like “alternative evaluation systems” without explaining what that means because, well, everyone on the panel knows.

This seems like a flaw in the Forum format. The moderators are often prepared to discuss the issues and to facilitate conversation among the panel, but not so much to facilitate understanding for the audience. It’s really a missed opportunity. I would love a moderator who worked to get panelists to explain terms or concepts that may not be obvious to non-experts.

For example, teacher evaluation was a key topic of discussion. During the Forum, Eskelsen brought up concerns with using test scores as a sole measure of teacher effectiveness. A number of panelists mentioned that some districts were testing alternative and more comprehensive teacher evaluation systems. No one, however, ever bothered to explain what some of them are or what else they look at beyond a standardized test. I was really curious about that and felt let down when the topics shifted.

My other takeaway from the forum was that there were lots of anecdotes or quips that highlighted some ridiculous policy or other that everyone universally could hate or be amused by. Applause lines, if you will. Last night, I called it sloganeering. That still seems like the best description of last night’s conversation.

For example, at one point, Norah O’Donnell turned to the audience and called teachers heroes who have a tough job and work very hard. Its the constant refrain, didn’t seem particularly sincere. Mere minutes later, a panelist cracks a joke about teachers leaving at 3PM even though their schools are failing. Well, which one is it? There’s a weird sort of contradiction that comes up in education reform conversations. Teachers are both working really hard and lazy, overpaid and underpaid, and so on. Doesn’t really help the conversation.

Ultimately, I walked away with the same questions I had at the end of Superman, which was disappointing. There was one exception, though. During the audience Q&A portion, O’Donnell asked a question I submitted about class size (cool!). Joel Klein pointed out that one of the Harlem charters has 30 kids in some classes. Eskelsen pointed out that she’s taught up to 39 in one. Pretty big difference, and one reason I remain skeptical that firing teachers has anything to do with charter success.

I’m hoping we can continue this discussion in the coming weeks among ourselves. I have some ideas on how to bring this conversation along, and I want to start by looking at some of the questions I asked in my review of Superman. I also have a bunch of questions jotted down in my notes from the Forum last night. Between the two, there are a lot of items worth a follow up. On that front, the Forum was a rousing success.

Following up on my @ctforum tweet

·

I wanted to briefly expand on a few tweets I made during last night’s Connecticut Forum. The topic was “The End of Civility?” and the panel featured David Gergen, Stephen Carter, Christopher Buckley, and Gina Barreca. It was a good discussion, and what I’ll address was only one aspect of it.

The rise of the political blogs is as much about a shift of power as it is about technology. Having a panel of elites decry the rise of blogs is a bit one-sided. Three of the panelists were the children of university professors or, uh, William F. Buckley. They grew up with access and opportunity – I doubt any of them would’ve had trouble meeting a Senator or Congressman as a high school or university student.

Technology enabled others outside the establishment to get heard. That’s what explains the rise of blogging. Buckley’s characterization of blogging as the equivalent of “Ask Any A**hole” in newspaper-speak is an oversimplification. There are smart bloggers and stupid bloggers and rabble rouser bloggers. They’re not all the same.

Take it another way: we’ve seen this with lots of other technological shifts, from the advent of the printing press and cheaper presses to the rise of radio and TV. I haven’t studied this closely, but my sense is that we’ve seen similar noise before things sort of settle down, e.g. yellow journalism, conspiracy newsletters, pamphleteers.

We’re still settling down with the Internet in our political sphere. The fact that we’re still getting used to how it fits into the discourse shouldn’t be a surprise.

For the forum, I would’ve preferred some representation of bloggers on the panel. It was bordering on annoying listening to 3 scions of establishment elites decry the rise of the “rabble.” It would’ve been more interesting to have Gergen chat with, say, Duncan Black of Eschaton or even Michelle Malkin or one of the intense right wing blogs. The conversation would’ve really gotten into the civility of current political discourse a lot faster.

For long time friends and readers, my opinion on the lack of civility won’t surprise you. I look to an abdication of the referee role by our TV media, instead becoming passive stenographers of the news. Or, worse, active partisanship on the part of Fox News and the WSJ and WaPo editorial boards.

It would be easier to add perspective to the lies and attack of the blogs if there were a referee. That doesn’t exist. Even worse, we have national press taking explicit sides. Fox News didn’t come up once, by the way. It’s hard for me to believe that their active encouragement of the worst sorts of rumors and falsehoods from the blogs isn’t hurting the civility of our discourse. But of course, they’re on TV, so it’s not their fault.

(yes, they brought up cable news as a broad topic, but Fox News as a network is a phenomenon more akin to yellow journalism. The other networks aren’t the same in that regard. Individual shows may be, e.g. Olbermann, but there is no network as partisan as Fox.)

Nurses make all the difference

·

It’s hard to find time to blog or write or do much of anything aside from take care of our new baby, but I’ve been itching to write this post since we left the hospital last week.

When you’re expecting a baby, you can tour the hospital. They show you the rooms in labor and delivery and in maternity and the nursery wing. They tell you about the amenities, the security, and medical technologies they have available. After our stay at Hartford Hospital, I can honestly tell you that none of those things are that important. What made our stay there amazing were the nurses and care staff. To a person, they were thoughtful, kind, attentive, and, most of all, helpful.

Helpful is under-appreciated. Helpful could be knowing what to say when a mom is upset because her son isn’t latching on right. It could be the nurse that stays in the room reassuring the new parents because, let’s face it, new parents worry a lot (especially us). Or it could be the PCA that gets the mom some extra supplies or juice containers. Our nurses and PCAs at Hartford Hospital were the best.

To all the nurses and care staff at Hartford Hospital that took care of Heidi and my son, from the bottom of our hearts, thank you. You made our time at the hospital comfortable and helped Heidi and I get comfortable with caring for our new son, from swaddling instructions to breast feeding help. Our time at the hospital exceeded our expectations in just about every way. Thank you.

Acadia National Park: one of my favorite places

·
Bubble Pond, along the carriage road

For so many reasons, Acadia National Park is special to Heidi and me. If you haven’t been, you’re missing out on one of the treasures of the National Park system and, really, of the east coast. The beauty of the park is remarkable (just look at the photo on the right!). Acadia’s real strength, though, is how accessible and easy it is to explore. The park is crisscrossed with miles of easy to ride carriage roads and easily reachable trails. It’s an easy, if long drive up to the park from New York or anywhere in New England, and has a great little town right outside the park in Bar Harbor. Whether you go for a drive on the Park Loop Road, or a hike or bike ride on the trails or carriage roads, you’ll be rewarded with spectacular views of water, islands, and the rugged coast of Maine.

On our most recent trip, I made time to take a long bike ride through the eastern half of the park. The carriage roads, built by John D. Rockefeller, Jr. as a labor of love, run through some of the most beautiful sections of the park. There are different loop combinations possible, allowing you to choose the duration and difficulty of your ride, run, or walk with ease. Some of the roads hug the lakes and ponds through the park, while others follow ridge lines or climb mountains in the park, leading to spectacular views out over all of Mount Desert Island. There are some challenging climbs, but since the roads are graded for horse-drawn carriages, there aren’t many of them. On the other hand, because of Acadia’s mountains and glacial past, there are really no flats anywhere. As one of my guide books said, the good thing is that nearly every climb is rewarded with a good view and a nice downhill after.

The route I chose covered about 33 miles, around 30 inside the park on the carriage roads (there’s a map below). While riding, I saw a number of families and groups riding around. I even saw a number of older couples (60+) making their way around the carriage roads. The western part of my loop (miles 6-13 in the map below), and the climb to the top of Day Mountain were among the quietest portions. I passed only a handful of riders and joggers. The portions closer to Jordan Pond & Eagle Lake were the busiest. If you know the park at all, that probably wasn’t surprising. I highly recommend getting away from the busy portions if you have the time. Just bring some food & a decent amount of water and give yourself enough time to take breaks and enjoy the views.

The one thing I wish I had was a guidebook for Acadia. I carried a bike map and a small guide for the roads, but concerned about weight, I left everything else except the water and my cell phone behind. After I tweeted about my ride, though, a developer based in Maine sent me a tweet about an iPhone & Android app he’d built for Acadia National Park. He offered to let me take a look for free and to offer feedback. After taking a look, I really wish I had it on the ride. The app is Chimani Acadia National Park, developed by Chimani, LLC. The app is beautifully designed and well thought out. It contains trail maps, cycling routes, sunset/sunrise info, ranger events and even an audio tour for the Park Loop Road. The app also has a schedule and route map for the free Island Explorer busses. Best of all, everything works without a network connection. Acadia may be many things, but cell phone friendly it isn’t, so this is a requirement for a park app.

Ride cheat sheet
5 right
3 left
2 left
4 right
6 right
9 right
11 right
13 right
18 left
19 right
20 left
21 left
14 right
15 left
16 left
17 left or loop day mtn
7 right
6 right
4 right
back to Bar Harbor, shop

My guide book was a little better in a few ways, though. First, the app’s maps don’t really have a turn-by-turn set of instructions for any of the routes or trails. They just indicate the starting position of a route or some portion, and list out points of interest. It would be great if they included turns at the sign posts. Every intersection on the carriage roads is numbered and is usually a three way intersection, so your choices always basically boil down to right or left. For each route, then, “directions” are a list of left & right turns. For example, the box to the right shows my cheat sheet for the ride (Note: I amended this while on the ride, so it doesn’t match the route above). It would be great if the app either listed the turns or allowed the user to create a cheat sheet like this.

That being said, it’s a great complement to a good bike map. The routes all include points of interest with some background info. For example, the carriage roads include many beautiful stone bridges throughout the parks. If I would have used this for my ride, I would’ve tweaked my route to include the Cliffside Bridge, which sounds spectacular.

Overall, the app looks solid and worth having if you’re going through the park. My only advice is not to rely on the app as your primary map when you’re hiking or biking. For one thing, the maps aren’t detailed enough. Most importantly, though, batteries don’t die on paper maps. Many of the maps you can pick up at the Visitor Center are also waterproof. For what it’s worth, I usually keep my phone inside a ziplock back when I ride in case it rains along with a little cash and one credit card.

My paper map was an awesome one that’s available at the Visitor Center. It’s the “Complete Hiking Trail & Carriage Road Map” by the Friends of Acadia. It’s $3.50 and well worth it.

Top of Day Mountain, Acadia National Park

This ride was also the first time I’ve been on any sort of mountain bike in years. I rented a nice Cannondale F4 from Bar Harbor Bicycle Shop. This was my first time renting there, but I’d be happy to do it again. You really can’t go wrong at any of the shops along Cottage St. in Bar Harbor, but they had a full bike shop attached, which was great for last minute gear I needed.

The F4 is a nice ride. While it felt super slow compared to my road bike, it was really pretty damn fun to zoom around the park without worrying as much about the gravel or rocks. I recommend staying away from road bikes on the carriage roads. I wanted the wider tires of a comfort bike or mountain bike on the gravel. I also really appreciated the hill friendly gearing on the mountain bike. I’ve been on the roads using a comfort bike and was fine, so just use your judgement. Bikes aren’t allowed on the hiking trails, so there’s no real easy opportunities to truly go trail riding, as far as I know. It was the first time I really wish I had a cross bike.

Heidi and I also went on a whale watch. This was my first time doing one. I didn’t really expect much from the trip, thinking we might be lucky if we saw even one whale. Boy, was I wrong. We saw at least 4 finback whales playing and diving. No breaches (leaps out of the water), but we saw a fin slap and a number of terminal dives where we saw the tail before it disappeared below the surface. We did a sunset whale watch, so we were treated to some beautiful views on the way home. If you’ve never been on one, highly recommended. Just remember to dress warmly. We were freezing out on the water, and when the boat really gets moving, you feel like you’re in a wind tunnel experiment about wind chill. We were both freezing, but didn’t want to take a chance we’d miss a whale sighting. Definitely, bring fall/winter layers (sweatshirt or fleece plus windbreaker or warmer jacket, etc.). It’s a great way to spend time with nature when you don’t want to be out in the park or can’t hike (say, if you’re with a pregnant wife, for example 🙂 ) I’m really glad we went on this.

Beyond all the nature and hiking and biking, Bar Harbor and the other towns on the island have great, great restaurants. A lot of places are very vegetarian friendly, and there’s a variety of cuisines to suit whatever you might want. There are great restaurants all over, including Thai, Mexican, Greek, Italian, and lots of seafood. A lot of the restaurants use locally sourced ingredients, too. Good stuff. Some of the places we like include Guinness & Porcelli’s, Lompoc Cafe, McKay’s Public House, and a number of the pizza joints on Cottage and everything on Rodick St. There are also some great restaurants in Southwest Harbor and in some of the other towns on the island, so be sure to get out and explore!

Atlantean Inn, Bar Harbor

Finally, getting a place to stay up there can be a bit expensive during the high season. The best thing we’ve found is to rent a house for a week and try to go up with another couple or family. We’ve done this a few times now and it’s really the most cost effective way to go. You can eat in, since you have a kitchen, and make lunches for your hikes/rides/whatever. The other thing we’ve done is camped. The park has a number of campgrounds nearby and many are reasonably priced and have showers and other amenities. We’ve stayed at Smuggler’s Den Campground. They had a shower and a pool and a shop on the campgrounds for things you may have forgotten. On our most recent trip, we went a little more upscale, since it was our anniversary, and stayed at a phenomenal B&B called the Atlantean Inn. The owners were awesome, balancing the being helpful but giving us space thing perfectly. Our room was great, and the breakfasts were amazing. They cook vegetarian breakfasts, but I’d be surprised if most non-vegetarians would notice or care, the food was that good. I really loved staying there. Too bad they don’t allow kids, otherwise we’d probably plan another trip in a few years.

Acadia National Park and Mount Desert Island are really great places to visit. Hopefully this has given you a taste of some of things you can do there and why I really love the place. Even with everything I’ve mentioned, there’s so much more (the only fjord on the east coast!, the first place in the U.S. to see a sunrise!).

I have a lot of good photographs up on Flickr from our recent trip, and would also suggest checking out Faith’s beautiful photo set from her recent trip. This is a gorgeous park and a rugged and beautiful part of the world. Whether you’ve been there before or not, I hope you get a chance to visit soon.