400 Things: The Great Slog

For the past six years I have kept a storage unit full of ten years worth of stuff. Honestly, I don't fault myself for keeping the unit or taking so long to deal with it. I did need the time and distance from it. Also, it just seemed an impossible task. Where was I to take it all? 

Avoiding the challenge of dealing with the memories piled up in that little room hasn't been cheap and, more recently, the urge to just get rid of it all has become an obsession. I cannot move on in my happy lifestyle re-design with all this stuff dragging me into stagnation. 

I wished that my problem could be solved as it often is on a reality show where long tasks are presented in fast-forward. Two days of work can flash by in two minutes. Instead, it has been nearly ten months since I began to deal with the storage situation in earnest.

I started off with this mess. The bed was my biggest roadblock. I had to move it every time I tried to get into the unit and nearly killed myself each time. Thankfully, a good friend bought it. Now I was dealing with . . .

this situation, which was still a lot of stuff, a lot more than I felt capable of dealing with. Still, I finally wanted to be free of it more than any benefit I got by ignoring it. And the cost of the unit was killing me. It was significantly over $200.00 per month! I had no choice but to tackle it. This time, however, I did get help from a friend. It was a amazing experience. The two of us were able to get all of this stuff into . . . 

this space in just four hours. And I wasn't even sore afterward. I was in the middle of a juice feast, too, yet never felt too tired to continue.

It felt really good to see the old space empty. It gave me hope of a time when I would no longer have a storage space at all. Of course, the new (much cheaper) "in-between" unit now looked like . . .

This! Still, I felt as though I had achieved something truly significant, not the least of which was saving about $70.00 per month. I made that move in October of 2013.  It took until February of 2014 for me to have the cash to implement the next part of my plan.

Truly I wish that I could just load everything into a truck and take it to a dumpster but I can't. There are too many sensitive documents in that awful heap: I have to go through each and every box, at least glance at each and every document and then decide where everything goes: Shred, Trash, Donate, or Keep.







To keep the "keep" pile manageable, I decided to rent a much smaller unit into which I would place the things I chose to keep. I figured I could afford it since I had already paid for the larger unit and believed I would done sorting everything by the end of February.

This is the Keep Unit. The photograph does not do justice to how much smaller it is than the in-between unit. I saw immediately that I was in for a really tough battle keeping myself to just four hundred things. I might be at four hundred right there.

I got to sorting like a frenzied demon. Based on my pace and the size of the unit, I felt confident that I could finish in eight days total.

Every day I pulled out the boxes I had sorted through the day before in order to get to the un-sorted boxes.

My life took over the hallway. Thankfully, none of my neighbors came to access their units. That would have been a . . . challenge.

The friend who helped me to load in the good back in October is 6'5" tall.  He and his long arms stacked boxes and bags above his head. I am 5'1"at best. So a good friend of mine loaned me this nifty ladder (thank you Elaine and Dave!!!). I got to work bringing boxes down from on high.

I thought the point just behind
the black file storage units was half way.
That's actually half of half way. See the big brown
box on the floor behind the black storage units? Look
for it in the next picture . .  . 

Remember how I said that I figured it would take me eight days? Apparently my memory had significantly faded in the four months between October and February. I got to what I thought was the half way point, moved a bag at the top of the stack and discovered, to my horror, that I had actually only gotten through 1/4th of the unit!

That point behind the big brown box on the floor?
That is half way.

I am realistic enough to know when it is time to re-calibrate. Of course I had chosen the shortest month of the year in which to attempt my goal (and a non-leap year at that). So I have paid for another month with the in-between unit and I will be returning the small keep unit until I am done with this ginormous task. On the upside, my biceps are looking pretty good. 

400 Things in 28 Days from Scratch from Scratch

Ok - I'm back. I could have blogged the 28 days. Then school started and my focus went in that direction. And I made a more basic error.  While I did create a calendar for the month, it looks like this:

I never got the proper stickers! Took that little sticker in the March 1 box from a different project. It fell off. I tried using these as stickers.

They are left over from my moot court days. But they are too big and not very inspirational. Don't get me wrong - the month itself was not so bad. I stayed completely dairy and gluten free. But I ate restaurant food about four times rather than the twice I had challenged myself to do. And I didn't always observe the carb/veggie/protein ratios. It wasn't a disaster but it wasn't a triumph either.

Breakfast:
Oatmeal, Steamed Purple Cabbage, Scrambled Eggs.
We call this "Struggle Breakfast"

Steamed Purple Cabbage with Red Lentil Mash

Scrambled Eggs with Tomato;
Spinach and Mashed Sweet Potatoes 

Scrambled eggs with Corn Phutu; Steamed Purple Cabbage and Carrots
Finally got the ratios right

One lesson I have definitely learned is this: Losing weight really isn't about exercise. Exercise is about physiological health - muscle strength, cardiovascular performance, balance, agility, flexibility. Those kind of things. Weight loss is about nutrition. It is quite possible to lose weight and keep it off without ever breaking a sweat. I am not recommending that; exercise is essential. However (and I say nothing new here), one cannot hope to lose weight by exercising and eating junk.

No amount of exercise can compete with what you eat. I worked out once for ten minutes during January. That's it. Aside from the work of lifting boxes, I really have done no exercise since then and yet I have maintained my weight and still lost inches. What's that about boxes, you might ask?

Remember the 400 things project? I heard Dee Williams, a bright light in the Tiny House Movement, mention that she was inspired to simply her life following some time she spent in Guatemala. She sold her big house, built a tiny house (84 square feet), and reduced her possessions to about 300 things. I was intrigued and I wondered whether I could do something similar.

I have a storage unit full of a lifetime of junk and memories. I have things in for about six years. For many reasons (and I forgive myself for all of them) I have not been able to touch that storage unit . . . until now. The time has come for me to clean out the closet.

In September I moved from the large storage unit . . .

 to a smaller one.

The Much Smaller Unit

I started working on the storage unit around February 10th. The goal was to sort everything into shred, trash, donate and keep piles. I rented a much smaller unit for my keep items.

It just kept on going!

I looked into my medium-sized storage unit and thought, eh. Two weeks. I can do this in two weeks. And I set to work. When I thought myself half way done, I patted myself on the back, took a short break, and then moved a stack of boxes to discover, to my horror, that the unit was actually twice as deep as I had remembered it. I was in serious trouble.








My new plan is to finish by the end of March. I cannot afford to rent two units, so I am returning the smaller unit until I am done with the primary unit.


So, March is the month of the 400 Things in 28 days from Scratch from Scratch, proving that you can always start again.

Twenty-eight Days From Scratch: The Budget

It's time to talk dollars and cents! One of the reasons I hear many people give for preferring fast food over fresh whole food is cost. I cannot for the life of me understand how that can be. I might have mentioned this before but in college I ate quite well on about $20 dollars a week. Being vegetarian helps a lot and, during that time, I did not buy juice, fruit, eggs or cheese, rice or potatoes (I had to carry my groceries for a significant distance; potatoes and rice added more weight than I could justify) and I rarely bought tomatoes, bread or  pasta.

A few times a week I ate at one of the cafeterias on campus. That is when I would have fruit, rice or bread or some of the other foods that I did not purchase from the store. What I bought consisted of the following: One pound of split peas or lentils (I alternated each week), carrots, spinach, cilantro, oatmeal, peanut butter, lactaid milk (I liked the taste), onions, garlic, and a can of cream-of-mushroom soup (I hadn't noticed the MSG).

On Sundays I would combine the peas or lentils with the carrots, spinach, cilantro, onions and garlic and cream-of-mushroom soup to cook up a big pot of soup (but cooked thick, almost like a stew). I would eat a bowl of that for lunch and/or dinner. For breakfast I had oatmeal with peanut butter and milk (that's how my mama used to make it, ok). I also worked out five-days a week and I was in the best health of my life. I had never looked so good.

The Twenty-eight Days from Scratch challenge replicates that diet in many ways. I have a bit more variety built in (fruit, for example). Food costs have gone up - so I do expect to spend more. I'm setting the budget at $50.00/week.

My grocery haul for this week is:

One pound of Brown Jasmine Rice
One pound of Red Daal
One pound of Green Split Peas

.14 pounds of Fresh Ginger

Five pounds of Carrots
One head of Red Cabbage
Threepounds of Frozen Spinach
Two packages of Frozen Squash

Three Apples
Two pounds of Bananas
One bag of Frozen Pineapple

16 oz Egg Whites

The grand total: $33.88. I will eat for a week on what an average restaurant meal costs.

I have $16.12 left. I am running out of peanut butter and honey (I like that in my oatmeal) so I might re-stock on that. I like to get the big jars, though, so I might save some cash from this week and increase next week's budget so that I can get larger jars of each (which is more economical). I might also need to re-stock olive oil, onions and garlic during the week and I'm thinking to get some tofu for protein. There is plenty of room in the budget for that if I don't get the peanut butter and honey. Lets see which wins.

Twenty-eight Days from Scratch Day Two: Feeling Full

Steamed Cabbage and Red Daal Curry (it turns yellow when cooked).

I couldn't finish my lunch yesterday! I posted a picture of yesterday's breakfast in the last post. This is a picture of lunch: Well steamed purple cabbage seasoned with a bit of salt and a teaspoon of olive oil and red daal cooked to thick but soupy consistency and seasoned with red onion, garlic and a yellow curry bullion cube.

I gave myself an out for this meal (it is only two colors) since I had just added the new three colors rule and hadn't yet gone shopping for the veggies I needed.

The Daal was so wonderfully seasoned that about half-way through, I suddenly felt satisfied. I was done.

To this day I am a dutiful child, however, and my mother's command to clean my plate stuck with me. So I valiantly chowed on. Again I got the full signal. So I put the food down for a bit and did something else until it seemed I could eat again. This time, when I felt full, I remembered how folks in Okinawa, which is a Blue Zone, advise only eating until one is 80% full. I put the lid on that puppy and called it over.

One Granny Smith Apple, four carrots, ginger to taste

I have a pineapple banana smoothie on tap for later in the week (the bananas are ripening) so, for something sweet, I decided to make a carrot-apple-ginger juice. That, and the left overs from lunch, was dinner.

Apple Carrot Ginger Juice

Surely, I feared, I would be ravenous by bedtime so I decided to go to bed early and hope that I didn't wake up in the middle of the night gnawing off my arm. Anyway, going to bed a little hungry is also a recommended Blue Zone habit.

I wound up blowing my bedtime (Superbowl). While I felt a bit of tummy growling when I did go to sleep, it wasn't that gnawing hunger that leads to shaking and thoughts of ripping apart the fridge. I slept pretty well.



I felt fine when I woke up in the morning. Again, a little hungry but not ravenous. So i did what has been recommended all my life: I started the morning by drinking a quart (four cups) of warm water. I didn't down it all at once; I drank it over the period of about forty minutes. I'll try this again tonight. I get the sense that, as with the Juice Feast, day three will be the proving ground.

The 28 Days From Scratch Challenge: Day One

Breakfast!

28 Days from Scratch Challenge Day One: Today I followed the spirit if not the letter of law. It looks like a slight modification might be in order. I am working on a project that involves interviewing people and my interviewees are demonstrating a distinct preference for meeting at restaurants. And eating food. My first meeting coincided with the first day of the 28 Days from Scratch challenge. This created quite the . . . opportunity. Let's be optimistic about this.

The challenge does allow me to eat two restaurant meals during the month. I'm the cautious type. If I have a "Get out of jail free" card, I like to hold on to it for a while before choosing the most strategic time to use it. Here I was on Day One, famished and holding a Brunch menu describing the most scrumptious sounding food. I agonized over whether I should just throw in the towel and use that card on Day One.

I took my time reading that menu. The hostess must have though that something was wrong with me considering how intently I read that menu. I read every ingredient in each description and (except for the meat) imagined how each morsel would taste in my mouth. I settled on two choices.

I read further down the menu and there in the bottom left-hand corner was a little box labeled "Sides". What happened to be one of those sides? The Fruit Bowl. Ah. Hmmm. What to do? The fruit bowl would technically get me out of using the card. It was just fruit, after all, no manipulation or other ingredients involved. But I was SOOO hungry! And the whole restaurant smelled SOOOO goooood! I could hear my taste buds chanting: Choose the food! Choose the food! Choose the food!

My guest arrived and we sat down. I explained the challenge to her and when our server arrived I asked her to get my guest's order first so that I could have a few extra moments to think. My guest ordered and then I decided to use conditions to help make my decision. If the fruit had been frozen I would not eat it. I'd order the regular brunch. My mouth and tummy reluctantly agreed that, fine, that would be the test.

Of course our server said that the fruit was not frozen, it did not come from packages. The restaurant received the whole fruit from the vendor and chopped it up right back there in the kitchen. Yes, it was refrigerated but never frozen. I knew what I had to do. My taste buds and my stomach said, "Heeey, wait, hold up a second, we had an agreement here!" I bowed my head for a moment, took a deep breath and charged forward.

"I'll have the fruit bowl," I said as my face crumpled up with fake tears. My guest laughed and so did the server. "Ahhhhh!!!" I wailed, "This is sooo hard!" I could hear every taste bud shouting, "Nooo, stop! Take it back! Take it back!" My competitive streak is too strong, however, and the strategist said, "Don't use the card today!!!" And so I ordered the fruit bowl - with some modification.

I told our server that I don't like fruit cold - I like it at room temperature. I really don't understand eating refrigerated fruit. One loses out on so much of the juicy sweetness. We improvised. She brought the fruit bowl (which was generously sized, to my pleasant surprise) along with another bowl filled with hot water.

We placed the fruit bowl in the hot water and that actually did the trick. Eventually the fruit came to room temperature and I really enjoyed it. In fact, by the time I finished, I felt satisfied. When our meeting ended, I got up and felt really skinny! My pants felt loose and my tummy wasn't heavy as it usually was after eating at a restaurant. I was really pleased with myself and now I have a viable solution for how not to use the card and still eat at a restaurant.

Because I am never satisfied with accomplishing a challenge by anything more than the skin of my teeth, I've upped the ante on this challenge. It isn't enough that all but two of my meals be cooked from scratch, they must also be balanced and must follow the 1/2, 2/4ths rule. Also, except for soups and other liquids, I must eat my meals with chopsticks. Eating with chopsticks means eating more slowly which means feeling fully satisfied with less food.

Here is how the 1/2, 2/4ths rule works: Divide your plate in half. Fill half with vegetables. In the other half, fill 1/4 with protein and the other 1/4 with grain. To accomplish balancing, make the plate as colorful as possible. Aim for at least three colors per meal. Your plate should look something like this:

Top left: Scrambled egg whites with caramelized onions, garlic and olives 

Top right: Steamed purple cabbage with olive oil

Bottom left: Stiff Mealie Pap

Bottom Right: Steamed carrots with olive oil

I chose this container because it came with a divider, provides for reasonable portion sizes and because claims to be leak proof so I can cover it and take it with me.

I tested it with water and found that there was was a little bit of leakage. That only happened if I vigorously shook the container, though, so I think it will be ok. Next time I'll write about how to make time for all of this.

Stickers! The secret to my success.

My time of sloth is nearing its end. A new semester has begun and a new month begins tomorrow. It is a perfect time to start a new challenge and I have (finally) decided what to do.

First, for the month of February, I will only eat food that I have cooked myself from scratch. I will neither purchase nor eat baked goods, vegan cheese, canned beans, and so forth. If I want cupcakes I must bake them myself. There are two exceptions. First is Tofu. Second, I may eat out twice in the month.

I was inspired to do this challenge by this video in which Michael Pollan claims that I can eat anything I want, so long as I cook it myself. The premise is that fattening foods are also labor intensive. It is much faster to cook healthy food than to bake pies and make french fries. So much time goes into making the high calorie dishes, goes the rationale, they will become dishes for special occasions only. I can see this. Think of how long it takes to make a good lasagna from scratch. And apple pie - when you have to make both the crust and the filling from scratch? So that is the first challenge.

Second, in the month of February I will complete a Plank & Jump Rope challenge and 10 Sun Salutation challenge. I'll post the details about those in the next blog.

I am just like the next person when it comes to picking a goal and sticking to it. I suck at it. Witness the month of January. I do believe I will be more successful this time because I have strategy on my side. A recent episode of The Colbert Report featured the author Charles Duhigg who has written the book "The Power of Habit".

Duhigg's main point is that forming a habit (or understanding one) isn't just about repeating an action over and over. It is essential to understand the underlaying reward that entices one to repeat the action. What is it about the habit that really gives you pleasure? 

His epiphany came when he realized the real reason he took a break every afternoon to go to his company's cafeteria for a cookie: He really enjoyed seeing his friends. It didn't matter what he ate, hanging out was the real reward. He stopped getting the cookies - and lost some weight. I can dig it.

I asked myself, in the instances when I have successfully reached a long-term goal, what reward kept me going?

With the juice feast, it was the pleasure of posting pretty pictures of gorgeous veggies. I enjoyed the challenge of arranging them and creating the lighting and deciding on what angle would best show off my masterpiece. I could post pictures of my meals - but that would get tedious after a while since I do tend to repeat meals a lot. 

With the 30 Day Bikram Yoga Challenge, the reward was much simpler: Stickers! 

That is really all it took. Every day for 30 days I endured temperatures above 105F at 50% humidity for 90 minutes of pretzel twisting torture all for the sake of coming down the stairs and plopping myself in front of the receptionist so that she could give me my sticker. It was like first grade all over again. And it WORKED! I am so proud of my little calendar and I can't wait to start a new one. 

Imagine something that simple, inexpensive yet emotionally pleasing being the magic behind your successes. Would it work for you?


Gotta run - I have some grocery shopping to do.

Doing Nothing

It is I 

I have a confession to make. I've been avoiding my blog, circling it as though it were a dangerous wild animal, looking at it sideways, pacing before it. I had a fabulous experience that I could have been blogging about. I finished a 30 day Bikram Yoga Challenge. That's pretty amazing! I started on December second and finished just in time for New Year's Eve on the thirty-first. It felt so good to end the year with another major accomplishment under my belt. Why, then, wasn't I blogging about it?

I'm thinking as I write and I'm realizing that perhaps I was actually rebelling against the driven over-achiever's culturally embedded imperative to always be producing. Without planning it, without acknowledging it, even, I took a break.

In the middle of the Bikram Challenge I started thinking about the next challenge. I needed to have something in place so that I didn't fall into idleness and wreck my goals for lack of planning. I had ideas. A jump rope challenge, a plank challenge, trying out a new style of yoga. It turns out that when I finished the Bikram Challenge, I was finished. I felt no motivation to jump into the next thing.

It has been nearly a month since I have done much of anything. Only now do I realize just how much I needed the down-time. I feel so much more creative and effective. I'm brimming with ideas for my classes (the new semester starts next week) and I have a couple of articles in the works. Yes, I know. Of course. Duh. Everybody knows this. Knowing is only a tenth of the battle.

This break was not my choice, really. I was scheduled to teach a class over the winter session at the institution I serve. The class was cancelled and I found out (due to my own distracted state) too late to line up another gig. I spent a few days panicking and then decided that I was not going to wind up wandering the streets. I had resources; I would use them. And then, uneasily, fretfully, I allowed myself to rest.

Although I have pretty much stayed on course food wise (no dairy or gluten but more carbs and fewer vegetables than I really should do), I've only worked out once since I finished the Bikram Challenge. I planned to make a bunch of videos and even set up my studio. I recorded myself singing one song, took a couple of pictures (see above and below) and that was it. I spent the rest of the time on marathon Hulu sessions and Facebook. I enjoyed being snowed in during the Great Polar Vortex of 0'14. Occasionally I left the house. Last week I started busking again. I'm going to need the money to cover what my savings don't cover until I get my first paycheck sometime in mid February.

Really resting is still new to me, believe it or not. United States culture has a prejudice against resting anyway (the local word for it is "lazy") but at least the tradition of a taking a vacation (inhumanely short though it might be) does exist. Thing is, my family, being from overseas, never caught on to that tradition.  My parents were both students and then both working. We never took an actual family vacation and I never learned how to truly give myself a break. Generally speaking, I work pretty much non-stop.

That ends this year - with one caveat. Next time I will be better prepared so that I can take a month off without worrying about my bills. I will be deliberate about it. I plan to have no plans. Doing nothing is highly underrated. Try it if you can.