Shattering the 200 Pound Barrier!

This was a banner week for me. I broke the 200 pound barrier, and at approximately the same time crossed the halfway point!

Wait Weight

Here's the March 2nd weight!

Belated Updates

I was on vacation the end of last week, so I'm late updating. For the sake of catching up, here's what I weighed in at for the Thursday the 24th weigh in:



While on my vacation I pretty much stayed on the diet. I went to a few Spring Training baseball games, and allowed myself a hot dog at one, and a pretzel (salty, with mustard FTW!) at the other. Other than that, I tried to eat my normal complement of fruit for breakfast and had sensible dinners. This included a Grilled Dijon and Portobello from Applebee, Pad Krapow (Thai Chicken Basil), and a Steak and Blue flatbread from Crispers.

When I weighed in the morning of my return, I was only .4 pounds below that scale pic, but that's still pretty good for a vacation!

Pushing through - no pain no gain

Another one of the diet cliches that happens to be true is that there's value in pushing through, in dieting when it's hard. Whether that means resisting getting in on the Crawfish Etouffee order at work (true story), or exercising when you're tired and just don't feel like it. Well tonight was one of those nights for me.

I worked late, I'm tired from getting way too little sleep (Civilization 5 is insanely addictive, been up until 2:30 AM, and 1:00 AM the past 2 nights), and working long hours to minimize the vacation time I have to use, starting tomorrow. Needless to say, I didn't feel like working out before eating dinner once I finally got home and sat down at 8:30. But I did. I put on the TV, and I watched a few things off the DVR. And I rowed. I rowed for an hour. Maybe not at a backbreaking pace the whole way, but steady rowing for an hour. I've got the sore back as I type now to prove it. I also have these:



It's a bit of a weird picture, the lighting is too bright and makes it look horrific, but I have some decent calluses from rowing, even though I wore gloves. No pain, no gain!

Why I'm Doing This

I realized, I didn't really get into one of the major reasons I'm embarking on this diet. My father and I will be hiking to the bottom of the Grand Canyon in August, spending the night at the Phantom Ranch at the bottom, then hiking out the next day. That means I've got this in my future:















I can't wait. However, if i want to actually make it down and back, I need to get myself into better shape. Hooray!

The Daily Weekly

Here's this week's update: I suck at doing the weight update. Still and all, here's what Mr. Scale showed this week:














w00t!

5K(ish)

I just ran the first 5K of my life!

Probably the longest sustained piece of running I've ever done. I've never been a fan of running just to run, but have never had a problem with it in the context of sports. Just now though, I just ran for 35 minutes at an eleven minute mile pace, total distance 3.25 miles.

The rub, of course, is that I did this on a treadmill. Treadmill miles are somewhere between 1/2 and 3/4 of real world miles.

Still, the muscle is building underneath this slowly dwindling wrapping of fat.

Taking a Break

I'm taking a break.

But wait, it's not what you think!

I'm taking my very first day off from doing any type of extracurricular exercise. No running, no rowing, no long walks, nothing.

The reasons for this are several:

#1 - I got home late and didn't get time to exercise until 9:30
b) - I'm physically tired from a very active last month and could use a break

• I hit a weight loss milestone today!

I decided it wasn't worth trying to shoehorn some rowing in and not end up eating until like 10:30 PM, better to just take a day to recuperate. Also, I walked 4.5 miles throughout the course of the day at work, so I got some activity in. Lastly, like I mentioned, I crossed the 20 pounds lost marker today!

"Starvation Mode"

I've heard from a few folks admonishing me not to eat too little, otherwise my body will go into "starvation mode." The admonishment normally takes the form of "You need to consume X amount of calories (1200, 1500, whatever), otherwise your body will go into 'starvation mode.'"

Now, don't get me wrong, I don't deny that "starvation mode" is a real physiological phenomena. Wikipedia, always 100% trustworthy, say it:

"is a state in which the body is responding to prolonged periods of low caloric intake levels. During short periods of caloric abstinence, the human body will burn primarily free fatty acids from body fat stores. After prolonged periods of starvation the body has depleted its body fat and begins to burn lean tissue and muscle as a fuel source."

Aha, so it's true, prolonged low calorie diets cause starvation mode! But wait:

"Ordinarily, the body responds to reduced caloric intake by burning fat reserves first, and only consumes muscle and other tissues when those reserves are exhausted. Specifically, the body burns fat after first exhausting the contents of the digestive tract along with glycogen reserves stored in muscle and liver cells. After prolonged periods of starvation, the body will utilize the proteins within muscle tissue as a fuel source. People who practice fasting on a regular basis, such as those adhering to caloric restricted diets, can prime their bodies to abstain from food without burning lean tissue. Resistance training (such as weight lifting) can also prevent the loss of muscle mass while a person is caloric restricted."

So the truth, as always, is somewhere in between. Absolutely cutting your diet down to a very low calorie intake may eventually lead to the body counterproductively burning muscle/lean tissue, but this may not happen until after the fat stores are burned up. Rather than continuing down this path, let me point to this great blog post on the matter.

To sum up my feelings on "starvation mode," I think the "you need 1200 calories or you'll go into starvation mode and not lose any weight" meme is BS. The human body is well evolved. In our evolutionary past (like, 10 minutes ago in evolutionary time) food supplies fluctuated with the season and the game we hunted. Like every other species on this Earth, we store fat to get through periods of little/no food. Yes, in periods of little/no food your metabolism may slow some, but the body needs to use a certain amount of calories, and THAT'S WHY WE STORE FAT.

Still, it's not my intent for this diet to be some sort of crash course starvation diet. I want to make worthwhile, lasting dietary changes. I also want to get more active. So that's what I've been doing. I've exercised virtually every single day I've been on this diet, in fact, I believe it's actually been every day. I've varied the exercises though, so as to not overstress myself in any one area. I've rowed twice so far. I've gone for some long walks. I go jogging.

Food-wise, I'm eating three meals a day, and nothing tiny. I just don't really care about hitting some arbitrary 1200 number, and I normally don't.

Breakfast consists of one or two (usually two) bananas. Each banana is 100-120 calories. Two bananas is certainly not a bad breakfast.

The cornerstone of lunch is Campbell's Chunky Soup. This isn't diet food, but rather "soup that eats like a meal." It fills me up at lunch. I am especially partial to Grilled Chicken and Sausage Gumbo. One can of that is 280 calories. The Chunky Soups range from 220ish to 360ish.

Dinner is more varied. Often I'll grill myself a few pieces of chicken, and make a whole bag of steamed vegetables to go with it. Often I eat a Weight Watchers Smart One's meal. Pretty much every night I also have a "dessert" of a bag of popcorn, or a bowl of Jello. Dinner normally ends up being 400 calories, give or take.

Doing the math: 200 for breakfast + 300 for lunch + 400 for dinner = 900 calories.

But I'm not starving myself. I am hungry when it reaches meal time, but I am full once I'm done with the meal. I chew gum throughout the day to help break the chewing fixation.

Fie to you "Starvation Mode" Fie.

Way Late and a Dollar Short

Sorry to be so slow on posting last week's weigh in. Here's the blurry, 3/4 asleep photo of the weekly weigh in.












Yes, I know. I only took one photo and it leaves something to be desired. Still, that reads 213.6. So after 3 weeks I've lost 17 pounds! My clothes are starting to fit differently. Even though the rate of loss is slowing down, having tangible reinforcements that the weight is going away helps a lot.

Weekend Update

So I did take my weekly scale photo, I just neglected to upload it. Rather than put up a backdated post, I figured I'd go with a weekend update (hat tip to SNL).

Here's what I weighed in at on Thursday:












A little blurry, but the gist is there. That's 12.4 pounds in 2 weeks, after losing 4.8 pounds this past week. I'd quite proud of that, and have had a great Friday and Saturday diet-wise. More on that later...

My new torture device

To help with my diet I figured I'd get some home exercise equipment to make it easier on myself. Even though I'm living in the South, it's still not a great time of year to try to go running. Besides, you can't really go running everyday, your legs will burn out.

So with that in mind, I went ahead and bought myself a Stamina 1205 Precision from Amazon.

It took a while for me to put together, especially because I continued with my uncanny ability to put things together backwards when assembling them. I put not one, but both of the handles on backwards while assembling. You'd think I would've paid more attention after screwing up the first one, but you'd be wrong.

I messed around with it a bit yesterday but kept getting text messages/having to fast forward my DVR and I wouldn't really say it was much of a workout in the 15 minutes I did. Even still, I felt it in my quads a bit this morning.

Tonight I really started to put it through its paces. And by put it through its paces, I mean it put me through mine. Unlike rowing machines I've used before, this one has hydraulic cylinders to provide the resistance. I found it to be quite grueling on the upper body and was glad I bought gloves. If I keep up with this thing, I'll have Popeye forearms in no time. Even still, as time went by, I found I was feeling the workout throughout my body. The motion was a bit different than I was used to, so I didn't row at anything beyond a steady pace, but as I sit here typing this, I can feel the workout I got all the way up my arms and behind my shoulders.

I rowed for about 50 minutes (or, to be more precise, about one episode of The Wire) and burned over 350 calories. Rowing while watching TV watching I think is a good way to stay with the exercise while also doing what I want to do in the evenings.

Revising the Terror Diet already

So I'm going to revise the rules already. But wait! It's not what you think.

I started this diet in mid/late January and set myself a goal of losing 50 pounds in 6ish months (by August 1st). However, I did so well with my diet in that ish month (the end of January), that where I stand now as we enter February doesn't feel challenging enough. I lost over 10 pounds in the last few days of January, and a Terror Diet where I have to lose 38/40 pounds in 6 months just isn't enough of a challenge for me. So I'm going to revise the rules slightly, starting from the same January start date. The new, tougher criteria (changes in red):

I will lose 60 pounds by August 1st, or I will give every one of my Facebook friends $20. Any friend who "likes" my post describing this diet, I'll up it to $40. Any Twitter followers of mine (ThaWalrus9) I'll give $5 each.

Terror.

Week 1 in the Books

Week 1 will probably be my biggest weight loss week. Even still, 7.6 pounds in a week is nothing to sneeze at. I'll take half that from here on out in a heartbeat!

There's Got to be a Morning After

So now that I've settled into my diet, I find myself quickly falling into the "is that all there is?" mindset. You know this one. After the initial excitement of really committing to something, and the first few days of fairly exciting readings on the scale, the routine of changing one's way of life sets in.

I had gotten myself into the terrible habit of pretty much never cooking for myself. The closest I've come to cooking for myself over the last several months has been baking up a DiGiorno pizza. That's obviously a terrible habit to slip into, because invariably, we all slip into the bad habit of getting food on the way home. For me, that generally meant at the end of a day where I'd been out of the house for 10+ hours and just wanted to get home. I wanted to get food fast. Food Fast. Fast Food. Bad News.

Tonight, I "cooked" my dinner for the first time in months. I should admit, I've never gotten beyond terrible as far as my culinary skills are concerned. I was banned from cooking in my fraternity after totally screwing up making spaghetti. So, my dinner tonight consisted of chicken breasts cooked on the George Foreman grill, and a microwaved bag of steamed green beans. Still, it's better than a Big Mac (curse McDonald's for being so close to my apartment that I go by them on my runs).

I also was able to force myself to put in a run that I really did not want to do tonight. I can directly attribute this to terror. Having the Sword of Damocles (now THERE'S a reference for you) of the public accountability I've undertaken on this diet certainly helped push me out the door tonight.

I've been encouraged by my weight loss so far, and I did indeed make that graph I mentioned in an earlier post. Maybe I'll post the graph at some point, but for now, I am looking forward to my weekly weigh in.

I weighed in last Wednesday night, but I don't like to do my weigh ins at night. I feel they are too dependent on what I've had for dinner, so instead, I'm going to make Thursday mornings weigh in day.

Stay Tuned!

Weekend Win!

Weekends have generally been hard for me to stick with a diet. It's comparatively easy to stick with the diet when you're at work, and that can of soup is on the shelf. Just open it up and eat it. Come on home and have whatever's in the fridge/freezer. Force yourself to go out and run for 20 minutes. Rinse, lather, repeat.

Weekends though, ah those are a different beast. You can get up whatever time you'd like, eat/drink whatever you'd like, play video games for 14 hours, whatever you want. Weekends are a diet killer. So I'm proud to say this first weekend was a big success. I kept myself really busy, and did really well. Today watching football I might've been a bit bad, but a bit bad means having light Pringles, as well as some multigrain Tostitos with salsa. That ain't exactly a Big Mac and a twelve pack.

Day 1

Did the usual activities I tend to do at the start of a new diet, feel hungry, force myself to run when I'm not feeling it, eat a salad, create a spreadsheet.

Yes, a spreadsheet. I'm an engineer and I can't help but crunch the numbers. So of course, I had to set up a spreadsheet to extrapolate my potential weight loss path. Assume I can average 1/2 pound a day loss for the first month, then down to 1/3 pound a day and so on. I'm glad to say the numbers say I can definitely get there.

Also, I actually posted this manifesto to my Facebook page. I'm now officially on the hook. I have to admit, I feel a certain urge to go back there and quickly delete it before anyone sees, but I'm not doing it. I'm all in. If there's anything to be bold in attempting, it's to improve one's health.

Let it Begin!

Next stop, 180.6 pounds!

Something like an introduction - Terror Diet

As I said, I've set up this blog to track my progress with my terror diet. My terror diet has nothing to do with what I eat, or what exercises I do. I truly do believe, and have seen in those time periods where I've stayed faithful to a diet, that diet/exercise is the way to go. I do intend to start running more, walking more, being more active, and reducing my caloric intake. I'll probably try P90x at some point.

The problem I, and many folks, have had with this diet is motivation to stick with it. It's so easy for a bad day to derail the whole thing. I recently participated in a weight loss competition at work, where the person who lost the highest weight % won a pot of $800 ($50 buy-in per person). One would think $800 would be a good motivator, and at first it was. However, my 30th birthday kicked me out of my diet, and I never really got back to it.

I've also thought about setting some sort of a goal to work towards. A new car when I reach X weight, a vacation when I reach Y weight. Even something as seemingly motivating as not allowing myself to get back into the dating game until I reach a certain weight. The problem with this type of motivation is that it's all mental.

So I considered the opposite angle. I thought about the Walk-a-thon type sponsorship approach. There again though, you've solicited money up front. If you don't finish, hey, nice effort.

My biggest need was a "stick" motivator with teeth. Obviously the "carrot" of $800, or a new car, etc isn't enough to get me serious, and keep me there. It goes without saying that overall concerns my health, while compelling, just aren't enough for me on a day to day basis.

So I got to thinking about a way that I could impose a real motivator with teeth. A "stick" motivator. Something that I absolutely want to avoid enough so that I'll keep motivated, exercise when I don't feel like it, eat a salad when I want a pizza, etc. Something that would allow me to set a realistic weight loss goal, a time frame for that loss, and the impetus to see it through.

This is where the terror aspect comes into the diet. Humans are social creatures, and we hate to be humiliated. We also really like to be true to our word. Society also makes us very money conscious.

So here's my terror diet:

I will lose 50 pounds by August 1st, or I will give every one of my Facebook friends $20. Any friend who "likes" my post describing this diet, I'll up it to $40. I currently have 100 Facebook friends, so I'm now putting myself on the hook for possibly $4000 if I don't get to my goal.

You may be saying, "Yeah, but you'll just back out." Not if I go into this diet very emphatically. No one wants to look like a weasel and I sure don't either. So again, I WILL pay this money if I fail in my goal. Many of my friends I haven't seen in years, so it'll be wildly inconvenient, not just expensive. Again, I WILL do this, IF I don't lose the weight.

So now I've either got to:

Lose 50 pounds by August 1st
Pay out $4000
Welch on my commitment and completely embarrass myself in front of all of my friends.

Terror.

Something like an introduction - Prologue

So I've set up this blog to track my progress with my terror diet. I don't imagine many folks will read this, but you never know in this connected age.

Anyway, the idea for this diet sprung from a question of motivation. The new year came, which of course lead to another "get in shape" resolution. This is not a new thing, it's become the norm for me over the past several years. I've pretty much always been heavy. I can remember my father teasing about the "husky" clothing I had to wear as a child.

In college I played a ton of intramural sports and generally was quite active. I was just dragging around an extra 20-30 pounds. Once I graduated from college in May 2002, my weight soon peaked at something close to 220 pounds, which is obviously heavy for a 5'7" man just getting out of college. After being horrified by pictures from a baseball road trip that summer, I decided to shed the weight.

I committed to the Atkins diet as well as a gym-going routine. I very often would take weekends off to drink beer and eat pizza while visiting friends, but was obsessive about getting back on the diet come Monday. Over the course of about 9 months I spoiled myself on steak, but was also able to bring my weight all the way down to 162 pounds.

Around this time I met the girl who I would end up marrying. When you're young and naive like I was, not to mention inexperienced, young love can be quite exhilarating. My gym routine was sacrificed in the name of spending more time with her, and of course courtship involves dinners out, and takeout order in. She was also a professionally trained chef and a foodie, so we both enjoyed the finer things. By the time our wedding started to approach a year and a half later, I had ballooned back up to 200 pounds.

Another determined stretch of the Atkins diet got me back down to 180 pounds, and barely into the swim trunks she'd bought for our honeymoon. After that it was a slow reappearance of the pounds. In April of 2007 I came to Mobile, AL for what was supposed to be 6 months and left her up north. Left to fend for myself in a land of good fried food, I packed on the pounds quickly, from 225 all the way to 247.

A "Fat Elvis" drivers license photo sparked another serious diet that got me back to around 220 pounds. In the time since, I've stayed in Mobile as my job assignment was extended. The wife and I divorced, as absence did not make the heart grow fonder. I've dieted off and on, but have pretty much oscillated between 220 and 230 pounds since then. So that's the past.