Random thoughts

Three things I wanted to post before I forgot about them.

1) I think I’ve finally figured out how to curb my overeating. It took me forever to figure this out but I’m gonna try it for a while. I still believe in the 4-6 meals a day thing for no other reason then if I do it right then I don’t overeat as much. The problem comes when I wait until I’m really hungry and then I go crazy. When I do it right and eat every 3-4 hours I’m able to eat a smaller meal and not feel the need to keep going.

Example. I really like peanut butter sandwiches and a glass of milk. If I eat one like 4 hours after my last meal then I’ll just eat one and be done. That’s about 400ish calories. If I wait 5 or 6 hours then I’m really hungry and I eat my PB&J with my milk and then I’ll eat some yogurt or some almonds or some other “healthy” food and then I’m sitting at 600-700 calories! Do that enough times and then I’m eating like 500-1000 calories more then I intended every day.

2) I think I made it clear that I need to increase my intensity while I lift. Doing what I did over the last six months is simply not going to get it done. I’ve got to work HARD in the gym or I’m wasting my time. It’s a little scary worrying about my back  all the time but I’ve got to be tough and get it done. There is simply no excuse for me not squatting AT LEAST 225 and deadlifting 315 by this time next year. NONE.

I need to be smart about it. Need to go up slowly. Still I need to go up. If I don’t then I’m wasting my time and I’ll be sitting here next year complaining about not losing weight.

3) I’m gonna be roped in to more running. I can already see it happening. My wife wants to run, my family wants to run, my friends want to run. Everyone is on a running kick. My facebook page has degenerated to nothing but people trying to pick a race.

I vaguely remember  posting entry after entry about how much I hated running. As time goes by, though, I seem to only remember the good runs. I still think about some of the really special ones from time to time. I guess that’s how things go.

The odds of me running a 10K in this calendar year are probably 99%. The odds of a half marathon are probably 95%. The odds of a full marathon, though,  are still negative one billion percent.

Hal Higdon’s Marathon Training, week 7, day 4

132 minutes (12 miles)

I just ran for 2 hours and 12 minutes! I’m a two hour runner!

I brought along a protein bar for this run and I think that was a good thing. I ate it around the 90 minute mark. Things usually start getting pretty bad at that point so I figured I needed some calories. I felt a lot better afterwards. I only ended up drinking two of my water flasks during the run. I downed the other two as soon as I finished.

The run was tough but nothing to write home about. The worst part was that I ended up running after the sun went down. I spent about 40 minutes running in the dark. There were long stretches where trees were blocking out moonlight and it was virtually pitch black. I don’t want to make a habit of doing this. One bad step and ….. I don’t want to think about it.

The walk home was much more painful then the run. This is starting to become a regular thing. I manage to grind out the run and then the second I start walking the pain hits me. I kept telling myself that it was part of my workout and it was going to make me better.

I tweaked my post run nutrition today. I added bananas and watermelon. I read that that’s what the Kenyans eat after their runs. That and a whey shake. I’m pretty much done with whey so I just had some chicken instead. I also had a glass of milk like I always do. I read somewhere that that’s what a lot of college football teams are drinking after their workouts. Finally, I had a bottle of gatorade like always but I’m thinking of phasing that out.

My trip home – everyone thinks I’m skinny and I eat like a pig

Just got back from my trip home.

Interesting experience….

Every single person I met raved about how “skinny” I was. This was a little puzzling since they all saw me at Christmas and I only weighed 20 pounds more back then. I don’t know. It seems like that’s just the thing to say, I guess. I’m the guy who’s lost a lot of weight. That’s my identity. If they see me, that’s the conversation starter.

I told my wife that I hope there comes a day when nobody mentions my weight. It’s really nice to hear people say that I look good but it’s also a reminder that I used to be really fat. I forget about that when I’m
living my day to day life.

My eating down there was outrageous. I gave zero thought to calories. If I wanted it I ate it. If I wanted more I ate more. I can’t believe how much ice cream and cake I ate. My mom had four different kinds of ice cream and two cakes. I had more then my share of all of them. I also stopped at Ben and Jerry’s immediately after eating fast food at the airport – twice!

The meals I ate at home were decent, for the most part. I had smaller servings. Not because I had any thoughts of staying on some diet. I just stopped when I didn’t want any more. Had to save room for all of the desserts. It’s amazing that I never got sick the whole time. I also never got that lethargic feeling that you get after a HUGE meal. Maybe I didn’t eat as much as I thought I ate? Maybe you don’t get that if you’re in better shape? Don’t know. Never eaten like that since I’ve been doing this weight loss thing.

I weighed 234 when I left for the airport and I just weighed in at 244. In the past I probably would have freaked out but I’ve been through this process for so long that I’m not worried. I’ll be under 240 in a day or two. I’ll be within shouting distance of 234 in a week. No big deal. If I had it to do over again I wouldn’t change a thing.

Sunday weigh in

237.0

WOW! Four pounds lost this week. I’m only 1.2 pounds from my low.

I played around with my diet this week. Started measuring things again. I figured out that my breakfast had been a lot bigger then I thought it was. Probably 500 calories more! The funny thing is that I added those 500 calories back at the end of the day in the form of two small snacks.

I ended up eating six smaller meals a day instead of the four larger ones I had been having. I also added a few extra miles of walking this week that just happened because I had more errands to run then usual. Those two changes along with the 15 miles of running were the difference.

Two years of weight loss

Today marks the beginning of my third year of losing weight.

It seems like another lifetime ago. April 1, 2006 was the day that I first started taking the baby steps that got me to where I am now. On one hand, I’m incredibly proud of what I’ve accomplished over the past two years. On the other, I’m a little disappointed because back then I thought I’d have reached my goal by this point. I remember thinking that I’d hit 200 pounds in the summer of last year. My body had other plans, I guess.

I managed to lose about 40 pounds this year. That’s a marked decrease from the 77 I lost in year one. All things considered, it’s still a good number and I made a lot of great strides last year.

I fully expect this to be my year. By April 1, 2009 I expect to weigh in the sub 200’s. It can be 199 for all I care. I just want to get there. That seems like a perfectly reasonable goal. If I don’t have any huge snags along the way I might even be able to reach it before the start of the new year. Thirty six pounds in 9 months would total out to about a pound a week. Knowing what I know now, though, that seems to be a best case scenario. A lot of things would have to fall into place but still it’s possible.

Either way, be it 9 months or 12 months (or even longer if necessary) I know that I’ll get there. I’ve proven to myself that I have what it takes to accomplish my goal. It’s not an if but a when. Two years ago this whole thing seemed like a dream. Now it’s just a matter of time.

Missing the gym but hitting my diet

I never managed to get those two runs in this week.

A year ago I would have posted some garbage about how mad at myself I am. Some pity party. Whatever. I’m a grown ass man and I didn’t get it done. I get home at 8:30 and flat out don’t feel like it.

Quitting the gym must be kind of like quitting smoking. The first few weeks suck but afterwards it gets much more manageable. I don’t have any burning desire to go to the gym anymore. I just feel really tired when I get home.

Luckily, things seem to be working out with my diet. I haven’t had any bad eating days since I stopped logging everything on fitday. I imagine that I’m eating right around 2000 calories every day. I attribute that mostly to eating the same thing for lunch almost every single day. Also I’ve got a huge selection of protein bars that I carry with me.

I’ve got to give a lot of credit for my weight loss during this stretch to eating a lot of meals. I probably eat six or seven times a day. A lot of times they’ll only be 200 calories but that’s good enough. When I do that I don’t freak out when I’m forced into bad food situations. For the last two day we had pizza delivered to our office because the restaurants are closed on the weekends. Both days I ate a slice and a half but didn’t eat the crust. I only ate that much because that’s all I wanted. The pizza wasn’t THAT great. In the past I probably would have ate until I couldn’t eat anymore. It wouldn’t matter if the food was good or not. It was food so I ate until it hurt. That just seems stupid now. I knew that I could eat one of my protein bars whenever I wanted. They taste good. I wasn’t making any sacrifice.

I don’t want to make too big of a deal about the whole pizza thing but it really was a big deal to me. I haven’t eaten pizza since my wife and I went for my last “cheat meal” many months ago. My thinking on food has changed dramatically. I ate the first slice until there was nothing but the crust (it was the thick kind). I looked at it and thought, “I don’t like crust. I’ve never liked crust. Why in the world do I eat that stuff?” So I didn’t eat it. I still felt kind of hungry so I got a second slice. I ate about half of it and then looked at it again. I wasn’t hungry anymore. I started picking at it – moving the cheese around and watching the grease fall off of it. It started to look kind of gross. After staring at it for a few minutes I finally decided to throw it away.

That was probably the first time I ever did that. It felt very wasteful. I’ve always felt you should clean your plate. I don’t know that this idea was ever implanted in my head from childhood by anyone. It just always seemed like the right thing to do. If you’re going to take food you should eat it. Someone else might have wanted that slice. Now I feel like that mythical someone will just have to suffer. If I don’t want it all I’m not eating it all.

I don’t know. Maybe I’m just rambling because I’m tired but I still wanted to post something on my blog anyway. I feel like most people reading this will see this as the biggest non event in the history of blogging. That half a slice was probably 100 calories tops. Nothing to brag about. That’s not going to be the difference between weighing 350lbs and 200lbs. Still it felt kind of big because I wasn’t doing it as some kind of dietary punishment. I did it because I wanted to. Also, over the course of a few years, those thrown away calories might start adding up.  

I wish I didn’t suck at the internet

I’m trying to figure out how to post my fitday charts here on this blog. I really like the weight chart on there because it’s dipping down really far right now. The problem is that the picture is too big. It’s got to be sort of big just so you can see everything but right now part of it gets cut off when I try to post. I’m going to play around with paint for a while and see what I can do. Look for that that…. someday. If anybody has any pointers I’m all ears.

The problem with counting calories

Yesterday I wrote a post stressing out about my caloric intake but I think I forgot to take into account an important factor.

Calorie counting isn’t an exact science.

I THINK I’m eating 2000 calories a day but am I really? Probably not. I can imagine that despite my best efforts it would be quite easy for a few 100 or so calories to slip by undetected. In fact, the more I think about it, that scenario seems much more likely then the idea that I am eating exactly 2000 calories. Maybe I’m taking in 2600 right now and don’t even know it. Maybe when I thought I was taking in 2600 I was really taking in 3000+.

This line of thinking is making me feel better about gradually dropping my calories. It also makes my calorie number and my lack of hunger make a lot more sense.

Notes on my diet – At least I know what I don’t know

If you’re paying attention to my Fitday journal you might notice that I have a lot of days where I eat right at 2000 calories. Every day I don’t lift in fact. I’m still playing around with my numbers so I’ll try this for a while.

My main problem with diet, I think, is paralysis by analysis. I have become so invested in research on the subject that I don’t know how to make heads or tails out of it all now.

On one hand I think I should be eating around 2500-2600 calories because you’re supposed to eat around 10x your bodyweight. That seems to be the prevailing wisdom anyway. I don’t want to eat that much though. I don’t know why I eat that much on lifting days. I think I’m scared that I’ll lose muscle if I don’t. Maybe I will anyway. Maybe I need to eat 3000 calories to keep muscle. Who knows? Does it even matter if I eat more on days that I lift? Does it even matter if I eat more protein on days that I lift? Is that all balanced out because I’m eating less food as a whole and more specifically less protein on all the other days? I’ve got a million questions.

At the present time 2000 calories is more then enough to keep me full. I never deprive myself. In fact I eat my last 500 calorie meal only because I want to reach 2000 calories. If I didn’t I would probably be hungry at night but not starving. My total number of meals has dropped from 6 to 4. I basically eat four 500 calorie meals a day spaced pretty evenly throughout.

The big worry I have is that if I don’t eat enough I’ll sabotage my progress. I’ve read enough to know that eating too little is actually counterproductive. You’re body starts fighting with everything it’s got to preserve your weight. That makes sense. Eating 1000 calories or less a days sounds like madness. Living a life where you are constantly hungry is madness. Also, any plan like that is ultimately doomed to failure. I know that. If I was constantly hungry eventually I would cave. I don’t want to reach that point.

The problem is that 2600 calories does not work for me. It simply doesn’t work. I don’t lose weight. I eat more then I want. It seems counterproductive. Everything I read about weight loss seems counterproductive. The idea of eating more to lose weight seems to fly in the face of common sense.

I’m currently reading a horribly depressing book called Rethinking Thin. The whole book is depressing in that so far it seems like it says that it’s impossible to lose weight without regaining it because the whole thing depends on your genes. Whatever. The depressing part for me was reading about diets that people used in the past. They seem positively medieval today. Of course there were people starving themselves but there were also people eating a very low protein diet. That was actually a diet fad! Can you imagine someone saying that today? We might bring back burning people at the stake just for them. Reading those things got me to thinking that 100 years from now people will probably think the same thing about us. They will probably look on all of our current knowledge about diet and fitness and just stare in amazement at how dumb we were. The more I think about it, the more I’m positive that it’s gonna happen. We don’t have the answers and we probably never will.

All I can do is do what works and discard what doesn’t. 300o caloires doesn’t work. 2600 calories doesn’t work. 2000 calories seems to be working and maybe I’ll experiment with going as low as 1600. I’ve even had the crazy notion of just not eating until I’m hungry and then stopping eating when I’m full – calorie numbers be damned.

I just can’t escape the feeling that I’m over thinking things. Shouldn’t my body be a pretty good gauge of how many calories I need? I never listened to it before. I just ate whenever I wanted. I don’t listen to it now. I just eat at timed intervals. Eating when I’m not hungry seems incredibly stupid but at the same time I can’t escape the feeling that not eating at least a certain number of calories is incredibly naive.

The more I learn about diet, the less I know.

I’ve finally found my calorie number

I feel so damn dumb right now. After dropping my calories down to the 2000-2600 range I’m finally starting to lose weight. I started with around 3000 calories two months ago. I don’t even remember the reason I went so high. I think I was worried about feeding the muscle or something like that. I remember reading somewhere that you’re supposed to eat even more to lose weight. I actually saw someone say that a 260 pound guy should eat 3500 calories!

I guess I’m glad that went through all of this anyway if only because I have a better understanding of what that much food does to my body. Basically 3000 calories keeps me at about the same weight. If I wanted to weigh 260 pounds for the rest of my life I would stick with that number. I don’t, so I dropped it, and I’m seeing results. Trial and error is pretty much the only way to go with pretty much anything fitness wise. Whether it’s a lifting plan or an eating plan, if you don’t try it you’ll never know if it works or not. Now I have a better understanding of what works.

It’s a little ironic that today on Alwyn Cosgrove’s blog he pretty much laid out what I should do. He got an email from someone who weighed 260 and was looking to lose weight. The interesting part of it for me was that Alwyn recommended 2600 calories. I assume he chose that number based on the 10x your bodyweight formula I recently learned. Should a 250 pound guy eat 2500? Does 240lbs = 2400 cals? I can only assume that’s right. Maybe I’ll email him or something.

He also recommended high protein and more vegetables along with reducing starchy carbs. That’s what I’m doing right now. I’m actually eating green stuff with my meals now. I’ve also drastically reduced my bread intake. A loaf of bread lasts me 3-4 weeks now. It used to be gone in less then one.

The point of all this is that I was a little worried that my calorie numbers were off and I was sacrificing muscle to lose weight. I want to do things the right way. I guess my recent horrible lift got me thinking. Any doubts I had are now gone. I’m officially sold on 2600 calories. Any stupid worries about losing muscle or anything like that are gone. At this point, I’m buying whatever Alwyn’s selling. I know I bitched and moaned about my lack of weight loss recently but the plain truth is that my body has transformed significantly over the past six months. My stomach doesn’t hang over my belt. I’ve also lost the man boobs. In fact, I’m actually starting to see muscles in my body. Huge stuff. Even without losing a single pound. It’s all thanks to New Rules of Lifting and Afterburn.

Now I feel like I’m right where I need to be calorie wise. I just wish Alwyn had posted that entry two months ago.

Clean eating, fitness cartoons, meeting guys at the gym and more!

Never let it be said that I don’t give the people what they want. Long ago I promised myself that I wouldn’t do what everybody else seems to do when they suck at the gym or life in general and post some motivational crap. I can’t sleep because I’m still thinking about things, though, so I figured I’d do something constructive.

Like every one else on WordPress I routinely check my little blog stats thing and I’ve noticed that I get a ton of hits from searches on a few things. Here’s some more about what you seem to be interested in.

1) Clean eating

Wow. I did this post two weeks ago and it’s already one of my most viewed ever. While this is cool it’s also pretty sad. This is my third year of blogging! A lot of people are searching for information on clean eating. Diet posts in general are by far the most popular but wow. Just wow. My statcounter has blown up since then so I hear you loud and clear. More posts on clean eating. If I ever figure out what that is. Read this post from the Men’s Health forums and tell me what you think. I’m not at the point where I’m deciding between low and high GI carbs yet but it’s… interesting, I guess.

I suggest you read the entire essential reading thread if you’re totally new to weight loss and more specifically weight lifting. Lots of stuff to think about.

2) Fitness cartoons 

I love fitness cartoons and apparently you do too. I posted this link I got from Straight to the Bar back in May and that post is still very popular here.

A few more I’ve discovered along the way are Brawn’s Gym and Guido and Luigi. They’re geared more toward weight lifting specifically which in my mind makes them even more awesome.

3) Meeting guys at the gym

I don’t know why this search term is so popular. It’s interesting I guess. I don’t know that there is a blogger out there who is tackling this subject. If you ever decide to do so I’m pretty sure there’s an audience for it. My experience in the gym tell me that these are not women doing these searches. If, by chance, they are though, it’s pretty simple for a women to meet guys at a gym. Three step process. 1) Be attractive, 2) make eye contact 3) smile. That’s pretty much it. For the guys….I don’t know. Same thing?

The whole idea of meeting people in the gym kind of creeps me out. I’m married and met my wife long before my gym days but I feel like the gym is kind of like work. It’s a “you don’t want to shit where you eat” kind of thing. The last thing you need is drama when you’re getting your workout on. That’s just my two cents.

Thanks for stopping by anyway.

4) How to make a weight loss journal

This one started popping up quite frequently around the beginning of the year. I guess they would find me when “weight loss journal” is in my url.

I don’t know. Do your thing is all I can tell you. People want to see the numbers so go with that. I’m really partial to the little weight loss box on the right side here. Feel free to steal it if you want to. I think you can right click/view source to get the source code. Put that stuff in a text widget if you’re using WordPress.

I assume people want to know how to make a popular weight loss blog. I can’t really tell you. I think it’s a combination of an interesting writing style and a commitment to being a part of the weight loss blogging community. That means making comments on every elses blog. I imagine that those things combined with a lot of success in losing weight would complete the trifecta. Oh yeah, and post often. Don’t bail when you have a few bad weeks. That’s lame. So, I just gave you four. What’s the word for that? Quadfecta?

I wish there was some central source to find all the weight loss bloggers. Maybe they could divide them between women and men, people who need to lose 100+ and people who need to lose less then 50lbs, etc. You could register your blog there or something like that. That would be awesome. Maybe a wiki? Somebody did that for my first blog’s subject matter. I get an email one day and they’re like, you’re in the wiki dude. Next thing I know my hits exploded. Seriously, why doesn’t someone get on that? Everyone could do a post about it. It could be huge. Maybe there already is one and I’m just not cool enough to be invited. You never know.

Until then I guess I’ll just check everyone’s blogroll.

Finding the right calorie number

Since I’m still a little bummed out about the last lift I figured I should mention something positive.

I weighed 258.8 for the second day in a row this morning. That’s the second time this week that I weighed exactly the same thing two days in a row. Weird. The big positive is that according to Fitday my average weight this week is 259.6. That’s pretty sweet.

I think cutting my calories to between 2000 and 2600 over the past week has to be the difference. I wonder if this is going to have a huge impact on my strength in the weight room. Maybe that has something to do with today’s thing. Who knows.

Whatever. My main goal is weight loss. 3000 calories wasn’t working. 2800 calories wasn’t working. This range is working. I’m gonna ride it out and hopefully sneak in a new low in a week or two.

Weight update

After two days of weighing exactly 260.0 I weighed in at 259.6 this morning!

I’ve dropped my calories to between 2000 and 2600 this week. I think I’ve been eating too much, especially on cardio days. There’s no need to eat a meal an hour before and then have a post workout shake. From now on, on cardio days, I’ll have something before I run and then eat 3 or 4 hours later when I’m supposed to. I’m still going to do the shakes immediately pre and post workout on lifting days. Those things are over 600 calories but I believe that they’re worth it. 

On days when I don’t go to the gym (Sunday) I’m going to work really hard to stay below 2000 calories.

All this seems to be working so I’m gonna stick to it for a while.

Trying hard not to freak out

I just weighed in at 263.4 this morning.

That’s a gain of 2 pounds since four days ago. I am trying my hardest not to freak out.

Everything was going great until I had that 2000 calorie day. I gained weight the next morning. I followed that day up with the highest calorie day I’ve had in forever. Gained wieght the next day. I can accept this. Whatever. It’s just two days.

Now, two days later, after eating within my calorie limit and going to the gym twice I’ve managed to gain another pound. I’m going the wrong way and I don’t know how to stop it.

I’m trying to be cool. I’m going to stick to between 2500 and 2800 calories for the rest of the week and hope for the best.

I guess I’m just a little on edge since I’ve been hovering over my all time low for so damn long. I just want to get back there. It was exactly six months ago today that I hit that number. Since I started counting calories last month my weight finally started dropping steadily and now this. Incredibly frustrating.

It’s going to work out. Gotta breathe. It’s going to work out. I’m gonna be laughing about this in a week or two. Hopefully.

Insomnia and weight loss (or lack thereof)

This morning I weighed 261.8.

That’s a 0.4 pound loss from last Sundays’ weigh in. It’s a pound more then my lowest this week. Sigh.

Here’s the thing. I haven’t been sleeping. All week I’ve been getting around 5-6 hours.

Yesterday, I had the lowest calorie day I’ve ever had since I started counting on Dec. 3 (2000 cals). This was because I was so tired that I just went to bed after eating only 4 meals. I was probably awake only 12 hours yesterday. I wasn’t trying to limit calories I just ran out of time. So I go to sleep and I wake up 5 hours later STARVING. I tried to go back to sleep because I was so tired but I simply couldn’t ignore my stomach.

Unfortunately I’m not one of those people who can’t go back to sleep an hour later. I also can’t take naps. I can be frustrating sometimes. It’s usually not a problem because I’m a deep sleeper. I have actually slept through a major hurricane. When I’m up, though, I’m up for good.

I can’t help thinking that if I had forced myself to eat before I went to sleep I would have been able to sleep 8-9 hours and I would weigh 260ish right now. That got me wondering if the 200-300 calorie reduction I’ve been experimenting with this week has anything to do with my lack of sleep. If things stay like they are for another week I might go back to 3000 calories for a while just to see if it helps. I can’t imagine that the two are related but you never really know.

My future clean eating diet plan

After posting about my calories and macros I started thinking about my long term plans for cleaning up my diet.

In the future I hope to live by the maxim “If it comes in a bag or box don’t eat it.” I’m not there yet but I’m working on it. I need to eventually lose the cereal and chicken in a bag. I also probably eat too much cheese and I have developed a bad habit of eating my wife’s weight watchers ice cream fudge cups. Other then that I think I’m doing decent.

I’ve made some progress in that I’m using the old George Forman grill now. I’m making burgers and chicken (rarely) so it’s a start. My vegetable intake is FAR too low. Maybe when I start making the chicken breast on a regular basis I can add the vegetables. I don’t really hate them. In fact, I’ll eat virtually anything.

I don’t have an excuse. At first I was bothered by the packaging. Every pack I’d find had multiple servings. I really wanted something in one serving sizes. Now that I’ve been measuring the crap out of everything for a month now I’ve really got no excuse.

So, in conclusion, diet is still hard but I’m getting better.

Random thoughts about calories and macros

So after a month of counting calories I think I’ve figured out a few things about diet.

1) Calories

First, while I agree that you have to eat plenty of calories in order to lose weight, there has to be a limit. For a long time I worried about hitting some arbitrary goal of 3000. I think that was a tad too high. I’ve been around 2800 for the past week and I’ve started dropping steadily. I’m gonna reevaluate in a few weeks but for now I’m gonna try to stay in the 2600 to 2800 range. This still leaves me feeling full but occasionally I’ll get a slight feeling of hunger when I’m going to sleep. It really doesn’t bother me physically but I have this strange worry. Something like “OMG, you’re not FEEDING YOUR MUSCLES!!!!”

200 calories is not going to be the difference in letting my body know it’s not starving and keeping it from falling back into “starvation mode.”

As the pounds drop I’m gonna slowly drop my calories. With my current calculations, the lowest I will ever go is 2200-2400 calories and that’s when I get close to 200 pounds.

2) Macros

My next thing is to play around with the macros in my diet.

A) Protein

Getting enough protein is the first goal. I currently have an arbitrary goal of 200 grams of protein every day. That’s been pretty easy so far. I feel like that’s enough to keep me from feeling hungry even with all the working out I’m doing. It’s also important for keeping muscle. I think there’s some rule where you’re supposed to get 1 gram of protein for every kilo you weigh in order to preserve muscle. My 200 grams keep me well over that mark.

B) Fat

I’m not too worried about fat. I think I have a relatively low fat diet. I rarely go over 100 grams in a day. I think that’s decent but I really have no idea. To be perfectly honest I don’t really care right now. Managing fat intake is my lowest priority right now.

C) Carbs 

Carbs, and more specifically the timing of carb intake, is my major focus right now. I’m never going to go low carb. I just can’t live like that. I’m not going on a “diet.” I’m trying to build a eating plan I can live with for the long haul. I’ve been reading some things that advise loading up on the majority of your carbs in the early morning and pre and post workout. After your post workout meal you’re supposed to dramatically reduce the carb intake. This makes a lot of sense to me because you’re not as active at night so you don’t have any need for the carbs. If you’re gonna take in a lot it makes sense to take them when your body really needs them.

I’m not really sure how low carb I can go at night since I’m really relying on a lot of it for every meal. I’m thinking about almonds right now. That’s still 6 grams of carbs. Too high? I could also probably do my regular egg and canadian bacon thing. That would still be 5. Is it even possible to eat zero carbs for a meal? Does it matter? I don’t know. I need to do some research on the whole low carb deal just so I can get some ideas for my late night meals.

I’m gonna play around with all these things and see what happens. That’s really all I can do. In a few months I’ll know more.

Happy New Year

Eating with my wife requires me doing a lot of math.

I’m gonna have to figure out the nutritional info of the lasagna I’m about to eat. The main problem is the ground beef. There isn’t any info on the wrapper. The package is 85/15 and 1.77 pounds. I think the wife’s gonna cook half of it. Then I’m gonna eat a quarter of that. This is gonna be hard. I’ll have a rough estimate figured out eventually, I guess. Who knew that going to the gym was the easy part?

I wonder if I’ll still be doing all this work on 1/1/09.

Update: If you’re interested, here’s the math.

One serving of 85/15 ground beef as listed on caloriecount.com is 3 ounces. 1.77 pounds is 28.32 ounces. The lasagna is gonna be 4 servings and the other half is 4 servings. 28.32 divided by 8 is 3.54 ounces. To get the last 0.54 ounces, I divided it by 3 to get 0.18. Each of my servings are gonna be 1.18 actual servings. That was easy enough.

Random thoughts about goals (and potatoes)

Item 1: This morning I weighed in at 262.8. That was after three straight days of weighing exactly 264. Pretty sweet.

I say that to say this. I’ve been playing around on Fitday and you’re supposed to put in a goal date to hit your goal weight. I set my goal weight at 200 and my goal date as April 1, 2009. That seemed pretty symmetrical to me since I started losing weight on April 1, 2006. Three years of weight loss exactly.

That date is currently 65 weeks away. That means I need to lose a little less then a pound a week to hit it (.96 lbs to be exact). I can do that. I hope.

Item 2: No gym today. I didn’t feel like skipping the NFL games. That’s gonna be the case for the rest of the playoff run. Lift is tomorrow. Only 5 more left in Strength II. I’m pretty excited about that. As of today I’m kind of looking forward to switching back to Fat Loss. For a while I thought about doing Hypertrophy but now I’m not so sure. I’ve still got over a month before I finish Strength III but I like thinking ahead.

Item 3: The wife cooked today. It probably took me 20 minutes to write down all the nutrition info on that thing. We had some potato dish and we decided to divide it into fourths. I figure that my section of just the potato dish was about 650 calories. Um, DAMN. I’m still gonna stay under my 3000 calorie limit but that’s a lot of damn calories without much of a payoff taste wise. Also had some chicken so I’m sure that’s good for me. The problem with that big ass potato dish is that I’m not getting the amount of protein I’m used to. I try to hit 200g per day. I’m gonna need to fit in 75 grams in my final 1000 calories. I think I can do it but I don’t like cutting it this close. Looks like my good friend whey protein is gonna have to save the day.

More Christmas party fun

Another flight to a city I’ve never been to in a few hours. More Christmas party fun. Apparently they really love my wife down there. They’ve asked her to move down quite a few times. I pretty much put my foot down and let everyone know that I’ve always wanted to live where we live now. We just got here last year. I don’t want to move. Might not matter though. For all I know a moving van might show up at the front door as I’m heading out.

The wife says that everyone is really eager to meet me. Guess that means I’m gonna get the chamber of commerce sales speech for the next 24 hours. Fun times.

What does this little trip mean for my weight loss? Not much. I’m not gonna log anything in on Fitday until Monday but whatever. I’m trying not to be so type A about that stuff. Everything will work out and I won’t be 300 pounds when I get back. I’m gonna try to sneak my last run of the week in as soon as the gym opens this morning. Should be back Sunday night so I can stay on schedule and do my next lift on Monday.

The real drama starts next week when I fly home for Christmas. I’ll gonna try to not think about it until then. No use prematurely freaking out. Waste of energy. I’ll do plenty of it on the day I leave anyway.

Edit: It’s Saturday. I can’t even go one week without forgeting about the later gym opening time on the weekend. Nevermind. Run is on Sunday or Monday.

One week on Fitday

This morning I weighed 260.6. That’s a 2.2 pound loss after one week of counting my calories on fitday.

Not bad but I’m a little bummed. I weighed 259 at some point this week. Don’t know what happpened but I just went right back up to 260 the next day. Still happy with two pounds though. That’s a completely healthy weight loss and I should know that by now.

As for Fitday, I really like it. I thought it would be difficult to keep up. In fact, that’s what has kept me from counting calories all along. It’s not difficult anymore. For the first two days I devoted a LOT of time to that site. I manually entered in the nutritional information of every single food I put in my mouth. Seriously, it seemed like my whole day revolved around looking at labels and typing them down. By day three I found that 90% of the foods I eat were already entered. Every once in a while I’d enter a new food but it wasn’t much of a hassle. By the time I entered yesterday’s entry it took 5 minutes max. Almost everything I eat now is entered onto the site so it’s just a matter of a few clicks. In fact, it’s so easy for me now that my wife decided to go through the hassle of entering her foods and counting calories.

Aside from helping me count my calories and helping me make sure I stay around 3000, an interesting thing about Fitday is the reports. It tells you your break down of carbs, fats and proteins. Last week I ate 40% carbs, 30% fats and 30% fats. Seems reasonable. I also learned that I ate around 225 grams of protein a day. I’d like to eat my body weight in grams of protein but that’s just too difficult right now. As I lose weight I think I can get closer to that goal.

All in all, an interesting little experiment here. I’ll definitely keep it up for a little while longer since it’s so easy at this point. Hopefully I can have some success now and start losing consistently. If I stop losing I”m going to experiment with zig-zaging calories and other things like that.

I feel really good about counting my calories on fitday. It feels like I’m finally doing everything I can to lose weight. If I can stay committed to logging my workouts on this blog and logging my calories on fitday I think 2008 is going to be the year that I get this done. I’m extremely excited.

Saturday weigh in

259.6

Funny thing is that last night I was about 600 calories short of my goal before bed. I forced myself to eat two bowls of raisin bran. This is so weird. It’s working though. Five days of eating 3000 calories and I’ve lost three pounds.

If I lose 2 more pounds I’ll be back at my pre-Thanksgiving weight. Problems is that I’ve got 12 days until I go home again for Christmas.

Life is not fair sometimes.

Another servings shocker

I usually eat raisins and almonds as a snack. When I do I get a handful of each and count that as one serving each.

Wow. I was not even close. Today I measured out both and I’ve been eating AT LEAST 2 serving of both this whole time.

Counting calories – day 2

I’m not going to do this every day but I wanted to jot down some things I’ve thought about after two days of my counting calories experiment.

First of all, my weight this morning was 261.0. That’s almost another pound lost. I can’t even believe this is happening because I’m eating SO MUCH.

Second, I naturally eat right around a serving size for almost all of my meals. These past two days I have used a 1 cup glass thing and multiple metal little spoons that measure in sizes smaller then that. It’s been a little awkward to put my food in the spoon and then dumb that onto my plate but I managed. Luckily nothing sticks to the spoons. It turns out that I usually eat about a cup of cereal and a cup of milk. I like just about a cup of cottage cheese. I like to put about 1/3 of shredded cheese on my salad. Etc., etc. etc.

The only things that I don’t do the serving size of are snack foods. Combos and pretzel serving sizes are a joke. I poured some of my Hanover Buffalo Wing Pretzel pieces into a 1/3 cup spoon and just stared at it. That’s a serving? Wow. There’s nothing there. You should try something similar just for giggles. It’s really eye opening to say the least. I allowed myself two servings. Still a lot less then I usually eat but that’s all I was willing to spend on what amounts to pretty much “empty” calories.

Things are going great with Fitday. I’m almost at the point where I’ve entered all the foods I eat. This morning for example took me about a minute to enter my breakfast. I spent a LOT of time entering nutritional information over the past few days. Now it’s finally paying off. I’m also excited that I found calorie-count.com. You can look up restaurant food there! That was my biggest concern with this whole counting calories thing. Now I have no excuses.

Observations after one day of counting calories

Eating 3000 calories is HARD DAMN WORK.

I remember a few years back whenever I heard some guy saying he couldn’t eat enough I just rolled my eyes. These guys wanted to get bigger and they just couldn’t stuff enough food down their throats. I just wanna say to those guys – I feel ya bro.

Yesterday I probably ate 1000 calories more then I usually do. I thought I was gonna puke a few times. I liked all my foods but it just got rediculous. Is it really possible that I wasn’t eating enough all this time? I’m gonna take the leap of faith and guess that I was.

Back in the day I’d eat 2000 calories for lunch. Now that burgers, fries and a coke are off the menu it’s a little more difficult. One thing I’ve noticed is that my breakfast is too small. I need to get more of my calories in the morning and midday. It can’t be good to stuff 1200+ down in the last 5 or 6 hours like I did yesterday. I just got nervous that I wouldn’t hit my mark. Totally underestimated how much I usually ate. I’m still a little worried about upping my calories so much but I’m committed to this 3000 calorie thing. I’ve got to try it, at least for a few weeks. Maybe this will be the answer. At least I’ll know either way.

I don’t even want to think about what my weight is going to be tomorrow. I feel like I weigh 300 pounds.

Day 1 of Fitday

262.8

That’s my official day 1 morning weigh in for this little counting calories experiment.

Getting serious about weight loss

I’m becoming obsessed with this weight loss thing. It truly is taking over my life. I think about it around the clock. I don’t know if that’s a bad thing. I believe that the people who are obsessed with winning are the ones who win. The problem is that I haven’t been obsessed with my diet. In fact, I’ve been pretty damn nonchalant about it. I kill myself in the gym and hope for the best with my diet. That’s not good enough anymore. 

I’ve been stumbling around like a child looking for some miracle diet to hold my hand and walk me to the finish line. I’ve wanted something easy that didn’t require me to do too much thinking. It’s time to grow the hell up. I’m going to start counting calories.

I’ve found the time to post on this blog almost every day. I’ve detailed EVERY SINGLE LIFT AND EVERY SINGLE RUN for almost two years now. I can find the time to count my calories and document them as well. I’m going to use Fitday.

I’ve done some research on basel metablolic rate and based on my height, weight and activity level the amount of calories I need to stay at maintenance is around 3600. My actual number is 3768 but fitday gives me 3600 so I’m gonna stick with it. This isn’t an exact science but that number is a pretty good estimate in my opinion.

To lose weight I’m gonna cut that number by around 500 calories. I’m gonna try to stay under 3100 calories a day and see how things go for a few weeks. I’ll adjust that number up or down if things aren’t working.

So basically my diet is this: I’m going to eat whatever I want so long as I know the nutritional content and I can stay below my 3100 calorie limit. If I don’t know the calories, I’m not eating it. The biggest challenge is going to be measuring. I need to measure the hell out of my food. I can’t just eyeball it anymore and say it was X number of calories. I need to KNOW the number.

I’m still going to try to stick to 5 or 6 small meals a day. I’m still going to try to make healthy food choices. I’m just going to be posting my meals every day on my Fitday page and working to make sure I stay under my calorie goal.

This new diet plan seems foolproof. All I have to do is make sure that I’m accurate with my calorie count and continue going to the gym as usual. It’s going to take a lot of work up front putting in all the numbers. Once all the meals I usually eat are stored, though, it shouldn’t be anything more then a few mouse clicks to keep it up from there.

I can do this. A little extra dedication is gonna pay off with huge dividends in the future. If I can stick to this through the bulk of 2008 I’ll reach my weight goals in 2009. It’s going to be worth it.

Back home

Just got back and I couldn’t be happier.

My diet when I’m away from home is an abomination. I feel helpless when I can’t eat my normal meals every three hours. On Friday, I bought some protein bars and a bag of trail mix and that might have saved me somewhat. Might not make up for all the damage I did with an open bar and trays full of chocolate and cheesecake though. Well see. I think I have a real shot of weighing in below 265 tomorrow. That’s gonna have to be good enough.

The party wasn’t as bad as I thought it was going to be. Everybody was really cool and we had a fun time. I still felt really guilty about missing the gym but that’s over now. Tomorrow is a new day.

Over the weekend I finally made a decision on what I’m gonna do with my diet. I’ll talk about that in my next post.

Changing my diet

I rarely post anything about my diet but it’s about time that I look into it. I’m not losing weight and it’s not because of lack of exercise.

I’ve been pretty faithful to the Abs Diet for a long time. I eat at least five meals a day with mostly high protein stuff. I eat a lot of almonds, oatmeal, eggs, peanut butter, chicken, whey and dairy. In fact, I’d say that those foods make up the vast majority of my diet. Nevertheless, the pounds aren’t dropping anymore. It’s time for a change.

I thought about what I can change and I realize that I’m eating a really high carb diet. I’m probably taking in 200+ grams of carbs a day. I’m thinking about trying something low carb for a while and seeing how it works. My wife was interested in the South Beach diet a while back. Maybe I’ll try that.

Maybe diet is like lifting in that you need to change it up every now and then to see results. That’s my thinking anyway. This is something new and the least I can do is give it a try.

I’ll make a decision on what exactly I’m gonna do in a few days.

Three months with no weight loss

The last time I posted a picture of the scale on this site was three months ago. 

I’ve gone up and down a lot since then but haven’t seen the 250’s in what seems like forever. This has been the longest I’ve gone without a loss during this whole experience. To say that it has been frustrating is an understatement.

I’m hovering around 262 these days. I hit 261 sometime last week but haven’t seen it since. I wish I understood why this was happening. I’ve been working really hard in the gym and on my diet.

I’m not in any danger of quitting. I’m happy with my time in the gym and I plan on continuing to go for the rest of my life. Even if I weigh 260 in another three months I’m still gonna go. It’s what I do now. It’s who I am.

So, if anyone has decided to try to lose weight and has stumbled on to this little blog, this is further proof that losing weight is hard. You can do everything right and get nothing back in return for a long time. The way I see it, when this happens you can either quit or you can fight. I’m gonna fight. We’ll see what happens.

Fitness cartoons

Scott, at Straight to the Bar, recently posted a link to Randy Glasbergen’s site. There you’ll find hundreds of weight loss and fitness related cartoons.

As someone who checks out the political cartoons daily I have to say that this is pretty cool.

Experimenting with vegetarianism

I haven’t eaten any meat in the past 4 days. I’m not on some crusade here. That’s just the way things have worked out. That’s so crazy to think about because I basically eat round the clock these days.

I guess I haven’t been completely vegetarian. I did eat one egg during this time. Also, I’ve probably drank my body weight in milk. I think most vegetarians consume those two though.

The number one reason this has happened is my discovery of Morningstar Farms veggie burgers. I can’t put into words how much I love these things. I was at the grocery store last week and just decided to do a little experimenting. I bought a bunch of this stuff just to try it out. I really like it. I’m going to permenantly add this stuff to my diet just because it tastes good and it’s quick to make.

It turns out that the only meat I eat every day is tuna and chicken. It was getting kind of boring eating the same thing every day. I decided to temporarily replace the chicken with the veggie burgers. I couldn’t believe it but they have the same amount of protein – 17g. I’ve been eating peanut butter and jelly instead of tuna. I’m giving up a ton of protein here, 20g vs. 8 g, so that’s not going to continue.

I’ve continued my practice of eating almonds, raisins, oranges and high fiber cereal as snacks. Throw in my two protein shakes (whey, PB, yogurt, strawberries, milk, and ice) and that’s a lot of eating!

It would be tough to go vegetarian full time but I can see now that it’s not as difficult as I once thought. I’ll probably break my streak sometime today. I’m craving a tuna melt right about now.

I think I might have lost 100 pounds

I was talking to my wife earlier today and we think I’ve lost 100 pounds.

Here’s how I got there.

The last time I remember weighing before I started losing weight in April ‘06 was in January ‘06. That’s when I saw 350 pounds. In February and March I was working a lot of hours so I never really had the time (or the inclination) to check the scale. During those two months I had fast food every single day. Many of those days I had it twice (lunch and dinner). During the day I occasionally bought regular soft drinks and snacks (snickers and such) from a nearby store. At home we had tons of ice cream, candy bars, chips and other assorted junk food. I didn’t eat that stuff every day but I had some every now and then. My exercise at this time was really low. I had to do more walking then the average desk job requires but nothing crazy. 

There’s no way that I didn’t go over 350 during that time. I just have no idea what that number was. I wonder if it’s possible to gain 15 pounds in two months with a 3500+ calorie diet and little exercise. 

It doesn’t really matter what number I think it was, though. The number that I know it reached was 350 so I’m gonna stick with it. That means I’ve officially lost only 85 pounds.

I can’t wait to see 250lbs. That will officially be 100 pounds lost. That will also be officially awesome.

Beer and nachos make me lose weight

I went off the diet again last night. I had a ton of beers and shared a big plate of nachos with a bunch of people at the bar.

This morning I was only a pound over my lowest weight.

Beer and nachos make me lose weight.

Chips and salsa make me fat

I’ve been very meticulous about my diet for the past month. I’ve planned out my meals and stuck to the plan 99% of the time. Only twice have I had something that wasn’t on my plan. Both times it was chips and salsa. Both times I gained weight the next day.

Chips and salsa make me fat.

Yesterday I had a tuna sandwich for one of my meals. It was good and filling but I just had to have some chips and salsa. Don’t know why. So I pulled out a bag of baked “scoop” chips and had some. This morning I weighed and saw that I was 275. I’ve been weighing in at 275 pretty consistently all day.

The same exact thing happened a few weeks ago. Had some salsa and gained 5 pounds the next day.

Every other time I have been consistent with my diet and my weight has stayed consistent as a result. Two screw ups and now this.

I know that the weight will drop soon. I’m not really concerned about that. What I am concerned with is that I don’t think I’ll ever be able to really enjoy chips and salsa ever again. I LOVE CHIPS AND SALSA. If I ever do indulge I’ll be worried about gaining a ton of weight the next day.

I wish I knew what the deal was. There are not 5 pounds worth of calories in chips and salsa. Is it somehow causing me to hold water? I had them with my last meal. Is eating it so late the problem? This little discovery is driving me crazy.

I might not ever know. One thing I do know is that I won’t be eating chips and salsa again for a LONG DAMN TIME.