Richard Ha writes:

Because I can’t exercise strenuously yet, I’ve decided to eat a higher percent of vegetables—nearly 100 percent, in fact, to help me keep my calorie-intake under control.

Last night I made a salad from stuff we grow: Manoa Lettuce, spinach and watercress. Then I diced up three different colored heirloom tomatoes, diced some sweet onion that we grew, mixed in Grey Poupon mustard, minced garlic, alae salt and coarse black pepper, and tossed it with olive oil and balsamic vinegar.

It’s really nice to be able to grow stuff we like to eat. We always focus on good taste first, but recently we’ve been looking at increasing nutritional content in our vegetables, as well. In other words, we produce what we feel really good about eating.

I think that my weight, at 205, will start to decline as I become more active. This morning my resting heart rate was 60 beats per minute, instead of the mid-60s as it was last week. I’ve started exercising lightly, and will gradually increase it in the coming weeks.

I was interested to see a Honolulu Advertiser article the other day with the headline Private donations fill gaps at Isle schools. That’s exactly what our adopt-a-class project is all about.

Our “adopt-a-class” project is coming along very nicely, by the way. We only need to fund approximately three and a half more classes, and then every Keaukaha Elementary School class will be able to take school buses and go on excursions during this upcoming school year. It’s beyond everyone’s expectations.

There’s an editorial about our adopt-a-class project running right now on Kama‘aina Backroads. View it here.

Richard Ha writes:

Two weeks ago I concluded that I need to do more than just exercise in order to keep losing weight, and I said I was going to devise a routine to control my calorie intake. But before I put this plan into effect, I got sidetracked.

Then last week I realized that it was after I stopped loading the delivery van four times per week, with several hundred boxes each time, that I started having a hard time losing weight. Since I like to exercise more than I like dieting, I decided to increase my exercise volume and intensity instead of making a calorie intake plan.

And that brings us to this week. My weight is 196.2 now, and I lost the half pound I wanted to lose this week. But I am now exercising six days per week and losing much less weight than expected.

On four days, I exercise 30 minutes twice a day at a low heart rate of 110 or so. On the other three days, I do 30 minute sessions. On one of those days, I do three or four intervals of 150 beats per minute, and the other two sessions are done at 130 beats per minute or so.

This is improving my resting heart rate, which is now 53 beats per minute. When I’m not exercising regularly and am out of shape, my resting heart rate is usually in the mid-70’s. A low resting heart rate is an indication of an efficient cardiovascular system—a strong heart takes fewer strokes to move a given volume of blood around. I am trying to lower my resting heart rate below 50 beats per minute.

Several days ago, when I was sitting in the doctor’s office waiting for a flu shot, it was 57. This is pretty good since I usually can’t relax enough at the doctor’s office to get my heart rate down below 60.

But for the amount of time I spend exercising, I am losing very little weight. So I am going to try a routine that Leslie is finding successful. Her routine involves eating a reasonable breakfast and a reasonable lunch. Then, around 10 a.m. and 3 p.m. or so, she allows herself a pre-planned snack. After a reasonable-sized dinner she brushes her teeth and doesn’t eat anything more that day. “Not a grape,” she told me. It is working very well for her and makes a lot of sense to me.

I plan to maintain my exercise program and copy Leslie’s eating plan. I need to figure out the amounts I can eat on that plan to accomplish my goals.

Richard Ha writes:

Today’s weight: 198.3 lbs. This week’s target weight was 194.0 lbs. I am 4.3 lbs. behind schedule. Instead of losing one pound, I gained 2.6 lbs. this week.

First of all, Thanksgiving dinner and all those leftovers did not help my weight loss efforts at all. I didn’t try very hard to control myself. Perhaps I should have.

And last week I wrote about that article that said red wine helps you lose weight. I tried hard to prove that this works, and if it really did work I would have lost lots of weight.

But instead I gained lots of weight. So much for that experiment. I think I’d better limit myself to one or two glasses.

When I started losing weight on May 23rd of this year, I weighed 214.6 lbs. In the last six months, I have lost 16.3 lbs.

This week I must regain control. It will take more than just exercise to continue losing weight. I need to work on controlling portion size, and limiting snacking.

My friend, who is also trying to lose weight, started following the Ha Ha Ha! weight loss plan recently. She said she liked the idea of it being so mechanical—that if she worked off 500 calories every day on the elliptical trainer, she’d lose one pound a week. That was working, but then she told me she noticed if she cut down on portion sizes, didn’t eat as many carbohydrates, and stopped snacking so much during the day and eating after dinner, the weight dropped off even faster.

She admits she got lazy about exercising, but by watching her food intake she kept losing. Maybe I should try combining that approach with my exercise plan.

I’m just the opposite of her. I love to exercise but I tend to drift when it comes to controlling calories. This week I exercised six days for 40 minutes each at an aerobic rate, and once at 90 minutes at a slightly relaxed pace. I thought this would keep me on track.

But looking back, I realize we got takeout from Hilo Rice Noodle twice, and once I ate the gorgonzola cheese hamburger at Hilo Bay Cafe for lunch. And then there was the Thanksgiving meal at Kimo and Tracy’s, plus some take home pumpkin pie.

I look into the refrigerator way too many times in a day. I think I’ll start writing down each time I open the door and what I did. I’m afraid to guess how many times a day I open the refrigerator door.

I guess I should be happy I didn’t gain more weight. But it’s pretty apparent to me that I need to pay more attention to how much and what I eat.

Tonight we go to Tracy and Kimo’s house for Kapono’s birthday. We won’t bring home pie this time.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!!!

We’re thankful to be able to say what we want, think what we want and do what we want.

We’re thankful for friends and family. We’re thankful for our workers and our partners who help us do what we do. Thank you, everyone.

Richard and June