Wellness Wednesday - Husband's Corner

Hello all, this is the husband typing!

You may know me from various more or less flattering pictures scattered around on the blog and on Facebook. My name is Hans, I'm 31 years old and I'm from Denmark.

I met Laina through an online game (named Utopia) on which we've both spent countless hours of our life that we'll never get back, but it was a great ride. At the time we met we were both about ready to kick the habit, and we did so shortly afterwards. We got interested in each other really fast, and after a month I went to Texas to meet her in person. I visited her a total of 4 times for about 2 weeks each time, and she visited me once for 3 weeks. Then I kidnapped her (using a pretty little ring as bait) in August of last year, and she's been here ever since. We just had our first trip back home in May, we had a great time and her parents were overjoyed to see us again.

I really wanted us to watch a movie that I got a couple days ago, and as usual we were running late after dinner. So I had to promise Laina that I'd fill in for her on the blog if we were going to watch it. So it's 22:45, and I'm hard at work.

For this Wellness Wednesday post, I'd like to offer my perspective on Laina's experiences with health related matters here in Denmark over the past year. I'm happy to say that it's a sunshine story, things are good and looking up. It hasn't been a ride without bumps, though! This first post will focus on weight loss, I'll touch on other things in later posts if she invites me again.

Laina has struggled with her weight since childhood, partly due to PCOS (polycystic ovarian syndrome). In her younger years she played too much soccer, and at 16 (or 17, her long-term memory is horrible!) she had to quit playing because of multiple injuries. Her doctor warned her that she may not be able to walk by the time she turned 30 if she didn't quit playing. She turned 30 this year, and I'm happy to report that she's upright! Her body had a hard time adjusting to a radically lower activity level, and she kept eating like she was still playing.

Fast forward 12 or so years to August 2010 when she arrived in Denmark. Her weight was a health risk, and I'll admit that I was concerned. We had already talked a lot about this (and everything else) during the prior year that we had spent dating looooong distance, and she was motivated for dealing with it. For the first half year there were no immediate results, her weight stayed put. We'd discussed lots and lots about the right way to lose weight, without really agreeing or committing to anything.

Then around February, things changed. She was looking into online food logging systems which basically help you count your calories (and proteins, and carbohydrates, and fibres, and sugars, and saturated fat, the list goes on and on). Most of these systems frustrated the crap out of both of us. Maybe we just looked in the wrong places, but they were pretty user hostile. So I went ahead and made her a spreadsheet of my own (I have a secret identity as Excelsior, Excel whiz extraordinaire, I make spreadsheets for fun and sport), and it was a stunning success! It was easy to use, could have all the silly colours she liked. Here's a picture of the marvel in action:

It is in Danish, but many words are the same or similar in English.

How it works is that you have a database of all the foods you eat, with nutritional information per 100 grams recorded for each one. During the day you then enter what you eat and how much, and the spreadsheet calculates how many calories that adds up to (as well as carbs, proteins and fat). You can set a standard size for items that are always the same weight. For example, a slice of rye bread is 50 grams and she puts around 10 grams of cream cheese on a slice. So she just has to enter how many slices she's having and whether or not there's cream cheese on them.

Main thing it does is count calories, and she's put herself on a 1200 calorie diet. We're not sure if this is the right goal, but it seems to be working quite well. She doesn't usually complain all that much about all the good stuff she's losing out on, and provided that she plans well she can very easily get full. There's even a bit of room for treats, provided they're selected carefully.

The main benefit of the spreadsheet is that it encourages her to make choices about menu items and portion sizes. If it's regular cheese vs feta, regular cheese probably wins out. But if it's 20 grams of regular cheese vs 75 grams of feta, feta suddenly becomes a very appealing option as 20 grams don't go a very long way (for you silly Imperials, 1 ounce = 28 grams). Rather than eating however much she feels like (which usually means trying to keep up with me, and I eat like a race horse), she will simply decide in advance how much food to prepare and then the rest isn't there to tempt her. If she's still hungry (which usually doesn't happen anymore, we're getting good at guesstimating good portion sizes), there's always extra vegetables to fill up on.



Her diet is quite simple:
- 1200 calories a day'
- Weigh everything, and plan out portion sizes ahead of time
- Focus on lean meats and stay away from saturated fats
- Pick high protein foods
- Don't go too high on carbohydrates
- Factor in treats and snacks, and make sure there's room for them

If anyone is interested in trying out the spreadsheet, I'd be happy to send you a copy. Note that you'll need to update the food database yourself, as it currently only has Danish items.

That's all from me for today! Thank you for your patience, I hope you found it an interesting read. If I can find the time (provided I'm not busy with computer games, chocolate, playing pool or less important stuff like work) and Laina will let me, you'll hear from me again.

-Hans

P.S. Due to the length of time it took to type, it's now Thursday here in Denmark. Thankfully, it's still Wednesday in the US.