The Amiel Blog

Body fat update after 9 weeks

This morning I found myself in the Bod Pod once again.

After the trainer took this picture, he showed it to me and asked if I liked it. I shook my head up and down and moved my arm to signal yes. This corrupted the results (25.2%!), so we did it again. The second time, the number was 22.8%. This was good news, though not as good as I had hoped. This fact, combined with my weight today, 160.6 (essentially unchanged from 9 weeks ago) means:

• My body fat decreased from 24.5% to 22.8% in 9 weeks. That's about 0.2% per week.
• My lean weight increased from 121.3 lb to 124.0 lb, a gain of 2.7 lb . This is almost exactly what The Happy Body folks suggest is possible. Their formula for muscle gain is 0.2% of ideal body weight per week. For me that would be 0.002*165*9 = 2.97lb. So my muscle gain was par for the course. I feel pleased.
• My fat weight went from 39.4lb to 36.6lb, a decrease of 2.8 lb. While admirable, this is much less than suggested by The Happy Body folks. Their formula for fat loss is 1% of your ideal body weight per week. For me this would be .01*165*9 = 14.85lb. So I lost much less fat than projected. I feel disappointed.

Driving home, I was tempted to stop at Sanborn's for German Pancakes ("Why be so good if it doesn't have much impact?) but resisted. In a more grounded place and with Julie's assistance, I was able to identify a few causal factors for my fat loss being less than I had hoped:

• During my recent week-long trip to NY, I relied on situps and pushups rather than weights and did not stick to my nutritional program.
• My cheat day was 36 hours ago, so the fat was higher than it's been.
• Maybe I've been eating too many calories a day.
• Maybe I've been eating too few calories a day.
• Perhaps it's the 2-3 squares of 70% dark  chocolate I eat most days thinking the sugar is pretty low.

 The big question for me is how much to eat. Happy Body says two things that seem contradictory. On the one hand, you will lose fat approximately five times faster than you gain muscle, so if, like me, you're overfat but underweight, expect to lose weight before gaining it back. This suggests eating less until I hit the bottom. On the other hand, the book suggests that overfat-but-underweight  people eat a lot starting on day one. So...I'm confused, and I'm going to send them a note asking for clarification. Stay tuned for their reply.

Loosening the ego's defenses

After seven years as a student of the Diamond Approach, I'm finally starting to get a hang of it. The spiritual practices and the teachings behind them are intriguing me, and my assessment of them is both more positive and more grounded. Let me explain...

Imagine listening to what you consider a boring talk for 45 minutes, then engaging in an experiential exercise that is wonderfully revealing, then taking a break and listening to another boring talk. This is, more or less, what my experience has been going to DAS (Diamond Approach Seattle) large group weekends for the past three years. A month ago, I felt so perturbed at the end of a weekend that I said to myself, "I'm going to finally quit." Then, three minutes later, something unusual happened. I said to Julie, "I want to quit but before I do, I want to plunge myself fully into this work rather than be halfway in. Then decide whether to continue or stop." This plunging in I have termed "doubling down." (Gambling is always the best source of metaphors for spiritual practice).

This declaration shifted me from the language of complaint to the language of commitment. It also involved an awareness of a way of being that, to put things kindly, was not so helpful. The way of being shows up in thoughts like this: "I'm doing my part showing up. They're not holding up their end of the bargain. So screw them." But that's not all. Also thoughts like this: "I'm so sick of this, but I need to be loyal here and stick with the program." But that's not all. The way of being also expressed itself as furrowed eyebrows, tight belly, and a global somatic contraction. Proof, in other words, that my personality structure was alive and well.

The genius of the Diamond Approach is that it provides a simple and practical way to work with this personality structure. Rather than ignoring it or trying to transcend it, it challenges me to inquiry into this structure as it shows up moment to moment. 

So once I "doubled down" on the Diamond Approach--by practicing the "kath" meditation every day, doing inquiry with Julie a few times a week, beginning to do weekly phone inquiry with a new friend, listening to Hameed Ali on mp3, and reading his books--suddenly I began to discover the fascinating ways this personality arises. I'll give more examples of these in another post. Suffice it to say that the experience of staying with my present experience and peering into the personality has on numerous occasions allowed it to release its grip on me, opening to a more spacious awareness.

Dedicating my strength training practices

Shawn Phillips book Strength for Life informs my strength training practice in many significant ways. One I'd like to briefly mention here: the use of dedications. 

Shawn suggests beginning each day's strength training (or cardio intervals) by dedicating it to someone in your life. The idea is that we do it not just for ourselves, but for someone else. We could just as easily dedicate it to a place, and idea, or a quality, but Shawn points to the immediate benefit of focusing on a person. So I have done this--at least half of the time (when I remember)--over the past three years.

A few things I have found:

• The best person to dedicate the practice to is the one who comes into my mind at the moment I am about to begin. 
• It doesn't matter whether I know this person well (a family member or close friend), recently met them, or just heard of them. 
• What determines the impact of the dedication is the degree to which I allow that person's being, concerns, and commitments enter my awareness--how much I am touched by them. 
• Dedications also remind me that not only my strength training, but my life as a whole, is about something much much larger than Amiel Handelsman. So the dedication stretches my sense of self outward.

 

Enneagram mantras and mudras

Another wonderful week with Russ Hudson and other teachers at the Enneagram Institute. This time in upstate New York and with an experiential focus on the somatics of each type at varying levels of health. An energetic and wise woman named Andrea Isaacs showed us how each of the nine types moves its body in the world at healthy, average and shadow levels. And she asked us to practice this ourselves. We actually moved around the room in each of these twenty seven permutations of somatic experience.

By the end, each participant developed a mantra (saying) and mudra (body movement) for the healthy level of each type. Yes, not just their own type, but all nine types because each type lives within us.

Here are my mantras and a description of the mudras. (Sometime I'll get photos of me doing the mantras):

• Type 8: Stately inner solidity. (Stand upright with arms down and palms facing out)
• Type 9: I have depth. (Press left foot firmly on ground, then repeat with right foot, feeling my connection to the earth)
• Type 1: I have dignified poise. (Hold both hands in front of my chest with palms facing each other, then move them together outward and hold).
• Type 2: I am receiving your love. (Reach out both hands and scoop the air toward my heart)
• Type 3: I am the greater glory. (Pull arms out to sides and then above head, meeting to form a circle)
• Type 4: Quiet deep emotional strength. (One hand on heart center and one on belly)
• Type 5: Infinite clarity. (Create circular shape with thumbs and pointing fingers, place in front of each eye, and project arms outward)
• Type 6: Strong and confident. (Move arms as though doing biceps exercise then hold in downward extension)
• Type 7: Rapture and elated. (Move up the front of my body and out to the sides).

Each mantra and mudras evokes a different type of energy and mood in my body. "I am receiving your love" evokes warm feelings in my heart and a sensation of taking in. "I am the greater glory" produces a sense of brilliant grandeur, a feeling of being large. "Raptured and elated", particularly when said with a raptured tone, produces this very feeling in my being. The mantras and mudras for types 8, 9, 1, 4 and 6, while different, all call forth deep presence and solidity.

So the question then becomes: when to practice the mantras and mudras? For the past week, I've practiced them at least once a day. Last night, we experimented with incorporating them into our Shabbat ritual. After three cleansing breaths and before the candlelighting, I did the mantras and mudras while Julie and Jacob watched. It takes about 45 seconds. I have offered to share my Enneagram notes with Julie so she can create her own. As for Jacob, I hope that hanging out with us while we embody these qualities will nourish his development and his access to the many dimensions of human being-ness. (More on other experiments with Shabbat to make it "our own" while building on the tradition in a future post).

 

No can do (too sweet)

Looks tasty, right? I thought so, too, when I sat down with this large mocha on Saturday afternoon at Vivace Coffee House & Creperie in Portland. Jacob and I were there with my friend, Gary, and his 11-month-old son, Dash.

Half-way through the mocha (as pictured here), which I was savoring per Shawn Phillip's prescription for Cheat Day eating, I paused. My taste buds were telling me "Too sweet!" It was actually unpleasant. So I followed Martin Seligman's tip on what to do when you are savoring something and your "happiness in the present" is no longer happy: stop. 

There would be no more mocha for me today.