Plaidophile

I've always had somewhat of a weight problem. It's a combination of genetics, lifestyle, and diet, just like for everyone else. I'm not morbidly obese or anything, but I am overweight (mostly in the gut) and I could stand to lose a decent amount of fat.

When I was in grad school I started on a strict DDR regimen, and got my weight down to 178 (pounds, not kilos!), and I more or less maintained this weight while I lived in NYC (since I walked a lot and couldn't afford to eat very well), but as soon as I came to Seattle I started to pile on the pounds again (I'd eat both breakfast and lunch at the gourmet cafeteria at work, which I drove to, and I didn't play very much DDR). At my peak I was up to an astounding 197 (ugh), and I'd been sitting there for a while.

Anyway, lately I've been losing weight again. Back in March my group moved downtown to the Union Station office, and it no longer made sense to drive to work (parking is extremely expensive), so now I get plenty of walking in again just as part of my commute (at least a mile per day), and because there are dozens of restaurants nearby there's no gourmet cafeteria, and since almost all of those restaurants are overpriced Asian food I usually just go for something cheap and fairly nutritious. I was still sitting at my new "rest weight," though.

Recently, I've seriously cut back on my soda (I'm mostly drinking tea these days) and when I do drink soda I usually go for a diet option (the terrible taste is I think helping me to lose my soda cravings).

For dinner I've taken to having something light and vegetable-oriented. I've been doing a lot of simple French foods (French onion soup, brie and baguette, etc.), as well as healthy Asian foods such as vegetable stir-frys and spicy coconut tofu soup. I'm also typically making lunch my major meal and keeping dinner fairly light. At the same time I don't feel like I'm starving myself or anything.

Over the last couple weeks I've come down from 195 to 188, and I think I've finally found a plan which works for me.

Soon I think I'll take up DDR again. It's been long enough that I probably won't be utterly bored with it. I'll probably stick to the older mixes, though, since back then the games were still fairly unknown and so they had a more eclectic song mix (the latest mixes are full of the reasons why I haven't listened to the radio regularly in about 10 years).