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.