weight loss

After 3 days straight of eating exclusively oatmeal, gum and flødeboller (chocolate-covered marshmallow cream balls), I made it below my target weight. I was aiming for 50.1 and this morning I weighed 49.8! It took just over one month. So those of you who guessed one month were the closest.

I guess it goes to show that it's not what you eat that makes you lose weight, but how many calories. This was also the result of a study from today's New England Journal (http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/short/360/9/923). It looks like the percentage of fat vs. protein vs. carbs has little if any bearing on how much weight one loses. It's simply adherence to calorie reduction. Interestingly, higher education and income may actually have more of a bearing on success than the diet one choses (http://www.ajph.org/cgi/content/abstract/95/9/1539?ijkey=008854a87208e56ec0c7b8ded8aa33fc193d3e5b&keytype2=tf_ipsecsha). Of course I did feel like crap after three days of that diet.

Though I'm happy about the weight loss, I keep thinking about how step-daughter told SR that when she moves to Denmark she promises she'll be as thin as me. There is a fine line between trying to be healthy and a fast runner and being obsessed. This line woulnd't be so important if I didn't have kids. It is astounding the impact we have on our kids. There was an interesting article in the NY Times about orthorexia http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/26/health/nutrition/26food.html?_r=1&em (when one becomes obsessed with "righteous eating") and the affect parents with orthorexia have on their kids. Having a kid with an anxiety disorder seems like a slightly worse problem than eating a Kit Kat bar.

Running Song of The Day: Do You Know What it Feels Like? by Enrique Iglesias

Stepmom again

This past week my parents and step-daughter came to visit Næstved.

My parents were of course happy to be here seeing The Bois, but it was step-daughter who could barely contain her excitement. She talked about how it had been her dream "her whole life" to live close enough to a grocery store that she could walk to.

She loved her room in our apartment. And there is no doubt it is the coolest room of any house or apartment I have lived in. Then she made a Danish friend who lives upstairs. And for her birthday we bought her a little pink laptop computer (which is staying here). Happily, she seemed to be in heaven.

But then the crying started midweek; she wanted to stay in Denmark. Her life has been very hard the last three years. There is no doubt she has changed since I first met her. She used to be a content girl who loved to play and be the center of attention. Now if things don't go exactly as she wants she either pouts (perhaps for an entire day) or, as my dad says, "believes in punishing people." These are not good traits for an eight year old to have. But her life has been very unpredictable. She used to spend every day with her dad and now she doesn't. She used be involved in sports and activities and now she isn't. There are many things that are beginning to concern us, including the fact she seems to be stalling in school.

But this week, she got to step away from all of that. And I hope it was a good experience for her.

At the airport security gate, she was screaming and crying. She wouldn't let go of SR. I think even the security guards may have gotten a tear in their eye. 5 months until she moves here. I think I speak for all three of us (plus The Bois) when I say that time can't come too soon.

One Year

The Bois just celebrated his first birthday.



After a long year of growth and development and a lot of birthday partying, he "fell asleep at the roll."



It has been a year of very good times and many challenges. But since this is (sort of) a blog about running, I'll just point out that, if anything, having a baby helped my running.

I PR'd in the mile, the 5k, the 10k and the marathon. I won a 5k, a 6.2k, a 10k and a marathon. And I ran my first two 50k's and my first 50 miler. I think I deserve to fall asleep at the roll, too.

So the obvious question is, what's next? Well, first of all, full time work. But other than that, we've got the major goal of the 7 day trans-alpine run in September. And we're hoping to get into orienteering running. But honestly, the major challenge is going to be to stay in shape while working full time.

Speaking of which, the weight was at 50.4 this morning. 0.3kg from my goal. Some would settle for taking a diuretic and reweighing.

Running song of the day: Kun for mig by Medina

Working mothers, Part 2

This subject has certainly stirred up emotions. And I think we all basically agree: taking care of our children is perhaps the most important thing we can do with our lives. And I, for one, left my residency program in the United States because they only offered 15 days of maternity leave and to me, spending time with the little Bois and breastfeeding him was my number 1 priority.

But I would like to respond to what Abbie wrote. I totally agree that having an education is an asset to being a mother. And often (especially when daycares have untrained employees), children get much better care from their mothers than from daycares. But I must ask, if everyone who held bachelors and masters degrees dropped out of the working world and raised children, what would happen to our society (be it Danish or American)? Take another example: what if all men and women who went to medical school suddenly decided that it was more important to stay home and raise their children than to contribute to society as doctors? Life as we know it would fall apart. And what about all of the public funds that go to education? At least here in Denmark, a university education along with medical education are paid for by the government. Can you imagine how all of the tax paying citizens would feel if the money the spent to educate doctors went instead to those doctors staying in their homes and only sharing their education with their children? That just wouldn't be fair to the society that educated them (and this applies to any degree).

I do, however, think that women everywhere should have the right to chose what she does with her life (as opposed to the situation Olga described in communist Russia). But it is sad when daycares are so expensive or of such poor quality that women are compelled to stay at home. After all, having a fulfilling job can make a mother very happy and, in turn, (maybe) make her a better mother.

On another note, I've been entertaining myself by reading what a certain forum has been writing about me and my blog. They say that The Bois is nothing more than an accessory to me (because I just want to send him to daycare and go to work). I immediately thought of the Flav-o-Flav clock necklace.

But then I thought that if by accessory they meant a compass, then there is truth in that. Not to sound sappy, but he gives direction to my life with his beautiful, unconditional love. And I'm sure that anyone who has had a child can relate to that feeling.

Please see the related poem by John Dunne "A Valediction Forbidding Mourning" (http://www.luminarium.org/sevenlit/donne/mourning.php)

And I am so proud of him. He did so well in his obligatory 1 hour speed crawling session on the treadmill (we need to get rid of that rear end cellulite!). Here he is afterwards with his personal trainer.

Working mothers

Okay, so neither the running nor the dieting are going very well. I just finishing a two and a half hour run when I heard a snap near my butt. No turtlehead this time. Just a tendon that had gotten so tight it had to move. Now I've got sciatic pain so badly that I can barely walk. Since the marathon, I've had nothing but a slew of injuries.

And the scale said 51.0 this morning. So, those of you who guessed 2 weeks were (unfortunately) wrong.

So, I've decided to talk about something I'm a little bit more excited about. That's being a mommy returning to work. I started my "praktik" (or unpaid doctor work) last week in the Ophthalmology department. There are a lot of hoops to jump through in order to get paid here as a doctor, but I should start getting an income in March. Yes, the kind of "surgical resident" I was in the US was an eye surgeon (not an optometrist, grrrrr).

Anyway, a small part of me wants to just hang out with the Lorax and be one of those stay-at-home moms. Then I could run and swim and do as I please. Perhaps an easy and comfortable life. But I just could never do it; it is not how I was brought up. And being back in an ophthalmology department reminded me why I got a good education and how excited I am to start again.

But, according to SR, being a stay-at-home mom in the United States is just "normal." I remember him infamously saying to me before we started dating that he thought women should be stay-at-home moms (of course he just wanted to see my reaction). But can it possibly be true that it is "normal" to just stay home? Is America still so far from equality between the sexes? Or is his perspective biased?

I had to do some research (of course). It turns out that over 90% of Danish mothers work. While in the US, 58 % of mothers with children under the age of six work, and about 75% of those with children between the ages of 6 and 18 work. The percentage of working mother peaked in he US in the 1990's and plateaud since then.

Why the discrepency between the countries? For one, employees of daycares in Denmark have a long, formal training before they can begin to work. The public institutions are extremely successful in the social, emotional and intellectual development of children (so much so that in the paper today it was annouced that daycare will be compulsory for immigrant children). But in the US, there is no consistency in the quality of daycare. An NICHD study of early childcare showed that children who were placed in high-quality childcare settings had better language skills and social/emotional development than those who were placed in centers with poorly trained adults or a high number of children per adult caregiver.

Despite those findings, the US has not started following the Danish model. And the inequality between men and women in the workplace will thus persist.

Is the high percentage of working mothers in Denmark one of the reasons it's considered the "happiest" country in the world? I tend to think there's a correlation.

Running song of the day: We are Blind and Riding of the Merry-Go-Round byAlaska in Winter

I've stalled

This morning the scale once again said 50.8.

Perhaps those of you who said I'll never lose the weight are feeling good in your skin.

There's nothing more motivating than announcing your diet on the internet. But Thursday night I only got 3 hours of sleep (partly because I was starving, partly because The Lorax just woudn't sleep). I've never know sleep deprivation like I've experienced the last few weeks (now that I'm starting formal Danish lessons and work) and it is hard to lose weight while sleep-deprived. At least that's been my experience. (Happily I slept a solid 9 hours last night!)

Plus it takes a long time to recover from a road marathon. I still can't run with any sort of speed. I have developed a strange quadriceps tendinitis over my left knee. It didn't show up until a week after the race.

Well, I'm just rambling now.
Enjoy the weekend!

Running song of the day: Furr by Blitzen Trapper

The Bois and Music

First a weight update.

Weight on 1/17 - 51.7
Weight on 1/21 - 50.8

Yes! I'm over half way there. Perhaps those of you who guessed 2 weeks on the poll were right (but then again, I may stall). The secret has not been giving up chocolate. The secret has just been eating fewer calories overall.

Now, as for the part about music.

When I think back to the historic inaguration of Barak Obama, I will remember it with happiness. Partly because the USA inaugurated its first black president and partly because The Lorax had a baby orgasm as Yo-Yo Ma, Itzhak Perlman and Anthony McGill performed the John Williams version of 'Tis a Gift to be Simple. He was standing in front of the tv, grabbing onto Yo-Yo's cello, with body convulsing, smiling and screaming in excitement.

This is not strange behavior for The Lorax. Starting two months ago, we noticed he was dancing along to the music at a Mexican restaurant. Around that same time, we put a flower music box with a pull-string in his crib. The first night the flower was in there, he just kept pulling the string to hear the song over and over and over until his little corpus was so tired that he finally fell asleep.

He has, since that time, danced to all the music we have on. He has even been attempting to play our keyboard. Today for the first time, he actually sang along to "Groove is In the Heart" by Deee-Lite. Okay, he didn't sing the words, but he immitated that background wind instrument that slides up and down.

I have to say I am amazed by this. Have other parents have similar experiences? Has your baby become very musical right before becoming verbal (he only says "mama", "dada", "dahtin" (who knows what that means) so far)?

I have to wonder if he's experiencing synesthesia. Is that why he has these baby orgasms?

I'll leave you with his favorite dancing song:

Man. I'm a man machine.
Check out my style 'cause I'm goin' real wild.
I'm pluggin' in keyboards one at a time.
And then I've got a song got a song in no time.

My Secret Lover by Private