On the Doing of a Thing

In a recent Facebook status update, I reported that I was one pound away from hitting my college weight again.  Many delightful and encouraging responses followed, and of course there was the inevitable question from more than one quarter: "How did you do it?"

In a word: slowly.  I did it slowly.

And of course, since I'm a gadget junkie, there was some electronic help as well, but I'll get to that in a second.

"College weight" is what I'm calling my target—I'm pretty sure I was hovering around 185 by the time I graduated.  (And at 6'3", that weight is squarely within the Normal range.)  The specific memory I'm clinging to is when I was walking through the Boston Common, past the fountain at the corner nearest Downtown Crossing, and some guy sitting at the fountain said something or other to me—and then called me "Slim."

These are the sorts of things we remember.  I weighed 185 when a complete stranger called me Slim.  Almost a quarter century later, that's why that particular weight is my target weight.  It's completely silly, and it's just as valid as any other reason for picking a target weight.  (In truth, in high school I was five to ten pounds lighter than that, so I could pick a lower number if I wanted, and maybe in time I will.)

There was a span when I was gaining about a pound a year, which seemed fine till I realized what would happen in thirty years.  And indeed, shortly after I moved to Los Angeles, something I should have foreseen happened: because I now lived in a place where I drove rather than walked, I gained weight.  A lot of it.  And fast.  Before I could blink, 200 pounds had become 220.

Enter a gizmo.  The iPhone, and a free app called "Lose It."  I had already, with exercise and a little diligence, gotten 220 back down to a range between 205 and 210.  But what Lose It does turns out to be invaluable: it's a simple calorie tracker, and it presents a clean, graphically unmistakable chart with a red line denoting your maximum caloric intake on any given day.  If your bar graph representing that day's food intake passes the red line, you've eaten too much.

There's a large database of brand-name and restaurant foods with the number of calories, the amount of cholesterol, etc. already programmed in, and that helps with the data entry.  I still end up entering a lot of things freehand, but there are lots of websites out there that will tell you the calorie content of almost anything, so it's not too hard to get accurate information.  No, the hard part is really this: you have to be honest.

If you don't enter that third cookie you had, sure, you'll stay on the correct side of the thin red line, but your body will still know the difference and you will have defeated the whole purpose of using the app.  That kind of truth-telling is hard as hell, but there are rewards to be had.

I lost weight slowly.  Very slowly.  Started using Lose It early last February when my weight was 206, and only now have I reached 186.  There are always thresholds, where you'll hit a weight and won't seem able to dip below it for a long time; then suddenly you'll drop far below it and find a new threshold.  Naturally, my current threshold turns out to be 186, so I haven't been able to get below it yet, haven't been able to grab that one last pound.  But it'll happen, I'm confident about that.

I'm no nutritionist, but I have to think that losing weight slowly is better than losing it fast.  Because if you lose it fast, you're very likely to gain it back, just as fast.  In other words, if you go on a crash diet where you follow some program and crush your daily caloric intake and blah blah blah, you're making a temporary lifestyle change.  You hit your target, you congratulate yourself, then you go right back on the rotuine that got you overweight in the first place.

But here's the beauty of Lose It: I didn't change my diet.  Didn't change the sorts of foods I ate, not at all.  (Okay, there was one change: potato chips had to go.  There was no way they could fit into any day without driving me over the red line.  And man, do I love potato chips.  But one sacrifice isn't so bad.  Now, if I'd had to give up pizza….)  (And yes, a nutritionist would hear all this and shudder for reasons that have nothing to do with weight gain.)  (And by the way, even as I write this I am eating a nice lovely cookie.  So there.)

Around last October, I stopped using Lose It for a while.  "I've got the system down," I said to myself.  "I know the quantities, I know when to stop eating.  No problem.  The app got me started, now I can continue on my own."  The result was no surprise at all: the amount I ate started to slide upward, so slowly I never really noticed—till I got on the scale.  And sure enough, the weight was starting to slide upward again.  I got back onto Lose It, saw how many days were well over the thin red line, and realized that this little app, and its descendants, will probably be with me for a very long time indeed.

So that's the answer to how I did it.  (And am doing it still.)  By losing weight slowly, not by dieting, not by eliminating food I like (with that one notable exception), but by simply paying scrupulous attention, being honest with myself, and sticking with the program on a long-term basis.  It's not necessarily easy, but it sure as hell ain't that hard.  Now go forth and shed ye the pounds.

The Wanting of Toys: The Inevitable Sequel

Okay, I’ll admit it: the iPhone is kind of great. (Come on, you knew this one was coming.)

Bear in mind, I never owned a Blackberry, so this whole notion of being able to check email on my phone is new to me, and I’m enjoying it like crazy--particularly since I’ve been away from home a lot recently, and it’s nice to know things I wouldn’t ordinarily know unless I was at home--how well Zen Noir is selling today, for instance. And when our composer, the estimable Steve Chesne, sends an email with a question, I can respond right away.

Plus, you know. It’s a toy, and toys are good. Didja know you can download this free application that’ll make your iPhone sound like a lightsaber? That’s awesome! And the “More Cowbell” application is so silly it’s sublime.

The question is, was it worth standing in line for three hours? (Particularly after my little diatribe several days ago.) Well, see, here’s the thing: those lines are deceptive. No, really. I happened to be in Century City last week, so I wandered by the Apple Store. There were fewer than ten people waiting outside and I didn’t have to be anywhere so I figured, What the hell? Got in line, the line soon edged forward a little, so it wasn’t moving fast but it was moving. Enough time had passed since the chaotic launch of the phone, surely the wait wouldn’t be so bad these several days later.

Of course, there were about thirty people already inside the store. (The window advertising pretty well obscured what was going on inside.) Then something happened, with the servers or whatever, and suddenly the line wasn’t moving at all, for an astonishingly long time. (The Apple employees blamed AT&T, and AT&T put out a press release that essentially said it was all Apple’s fault.) Now, by this point I’d already been there for a while and was invested in the time. It felt like an even worse crime to discard the hour I’d already spent waiting, so I waited yet longer. At least there were some entertaining folks in the line around me, and by the time we were done we’d all gotten to know each other reasonably well. And of course we were all questioning our sanity by then, but hey, at least we all got iPhones.

And as I say, it’s a pretty incredible little object. The secret key is also joining MobileMe, Apple’s online service. I don’t need their me.com email address and haven’t given it to anyone, but MobileMe is what allows my email to find me on the phone without actually syncing the phone with the computer. It does the same with my contacts and calendar items as well, so that I can add something to my calendar on the iPhone and it’ll automatically add itself to my desktop computer’s calendar as well, and vice versa. As things get busier, this alone will become invaluable. Plus there’s the GPS-in-a-phone thing, which will help when I get lost and am not in the car where I’ve already got GPS. I get lost easily, see. My sense of direction is permanently discombobulated now that I live on the west coast and the ocean is on the wrong side.

Plus, the toys. Eight gigs of music that now come with a phone, web browsing at will, the whole deal. I make no secret of being a bit of a gadget freak (yes, the Engadget site is bookmarked), and this one is I think up there with the TiVo in terms of general terrificness. Does the iPhone fit anywhere on the chart of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs? Of course not. But still. Toys!

The Wanting of Toys

So the brand-new whoa-golly iPhone 3G was set free into the world on Friday, and the world accordingly said Gimme! And because hype works, people said Gimme! in mind-boggling numbers.

I was completely able to resist the iPhone mass madness the first time around (only one short year ago), but this time it's got more of the stuff I'd want, plus my needs have changed and it would be a nice thing to have. So on Friday, since I happened to be nearby, I figured what the hell and wandered over to the Apple Store in Century City.

And was surprised to find that it really wasn't so bad. I'd heard all the stories about activation problems and "bricked" phones and delays delays delays, and figured that would mean that hundreds of people would still be lined up outside. Turns out there were only about fifteen people waiting, in a line that barely reached to the entrance of the store next door. "Well then," thought I, "maybe I'll just go ahead and get one." I got in line. Five minutes passed. A couple other people got in line behind me. One woman said she'd come by a few hours before and there'd been people herded in an improvised holding area at the opposite corner of the mall, so she was amazed that the line was now so short.

We were just beginning to speculate on why that might be when the security guard approached. "Are you on the list?" he asked. "What list?" we asked.

Yep, the cowpen was still active. Six hundred-plus people on the list (representing the whole day--they had moved through about five hundred of them already). So I got out of what was not in fact a proper line outside the store and, knowing that I would not be buying an iPhone today, decided to walk over to see the line. And was rewarded with a string of hot, weary people who looked pretty thoroughly bored and miserable, and you just had to wonder: why on earth?

I mean sure, it's fun to be the first on your block with a whatever, but when thousands of people line up across the city, you have to admit you're just not gonna be first. So, then, what's so awful about being second? Or 10,000th? Shouldn't the thing itself, the iPhone, be more important than the over-hyped aura surrounding it?

The activation troubles reveal the truth.

Apple made a colossal mistake: they tried to do three major things at once. Four, actually. They tried to launch the iPhone, they tried to launch a new 2.0 software update that would work on the original iPhones as well, and they tried to roll out a major upgrade of their online service .mac, which is now called MobileMe. They also made a catastrophic decision to try and force people to activate their new phones in the store rather than at home as they did last year. What this meant was a massive load on their servers that affected every single one of these initiatives, drastically. The MobileMe rollout was supposed to take six hours; it took well over 24, and the service still isn't working terribly well. Trying to active the phones in-store when the activation servers had gone phfft! meant that it took forever to process each customer, until finally they just started sending people home and telling them to active the phones at home, whenever they could. And people trying to download the new 2.0 software ended up leaving their phones useless, only able to make emergency calls, for several hours on a Friday afternoon.

People howled online, because that's what people do online. The freedom to howl, oh joy. "I've got a business to run and now I don't have a phone!" several of them shrieked. But really, you've got to wonder: if their business is so important, why did they download the new software at the first possible moment, early in the morning on a weekday? If you've got business to do, hang out for a day, do your stuff, maybe check online to see how the software is working out, then download it Saturday, or Sunday morning, sometime that isn't nearly so critical.

"I've got a business to run" is, of course, the excuse they use. The real truth is simple: "I want my toy and I want it now!" The infantilism of America reached yet another crybaby threshhold on Friday, and probably some hapless project manager at Apple will get fired for it.

Me? Nope, no iPhone yet. The lines were certain to be long again this weekend, all those frustrated Friday people, and why bother? I just don't need the thing that badly, I can wait a few days. I'll be back in Century City later this week, and I'll probably run by the store, and if there's not a line I'll probably stop in. Get a phone, set it up, and get on with my life.

I say all this not because I'm so wonderful, so immune to the hype (yeah, sure, I'd like a toy, too), but because--because I feel the desire, I do, I remember going into a store and running to the aisle with the toys and that kid is still inside saying "Gimme!" But sometimes, I mean come on, if we're going to be adults let's be adults, shall we?