For those that aren't aware, Monday is my weigh in day for Weight Watchers. As a general rule, I try and publicly update my weight on Mondays along with my progression toward my goals and the like. All measures are, of course, in pounds, because I'm a dirty American.
Current Weight: 334.4
Last Weigh-in: 337.8
Net Loss: 3.4
Total Weight Lost: 65.6
Current Goal: 300
Percent to Goal: 65.6%
Final Goal: 200-225
Percent to Goal: 32.8-37.5%
One of the amusing things is the weight tracker on the WW website will wag a virtual finger at you if you lose more than two pounds in one week. This week and last week, I've gotten the finger wag and the admonition not to lose weight so quickly. Having watched my body since going on WW, though, I'm not terribly worried about it as it all balances out in the end. I tend to go in fits and spurts as I go down the scale. I'm just in one of the spurt modes currently.
I did, however, make it to the gym three days last week, which was a big deal for me. As my left ankle bothers me on and off to varying degrees, it often limits my ability to exercise. This past week, though, I did three sessions of cardio, walking for 35 minutes each time at between 3.3 and 3.8 mph at a 3.0 incline. Each of those netted me 4 activity points, which I didn't touch (nor did I use all my weekly points, though I did dip into them heavily on Saturday for some of Marlow's heavenly carrot cake).
My standard goal now is going to be hitting the gym Tuesday and Thursday afternoon and Saturday morning. I know the optimal time to push my metabolism is to go in the morning, but I've accepted now that I'm just not going to get into the gym before work (at not unless I find a racquetball partner that wants to get up that early). Having dropped over 65 pounds, I did notice a difference in my endurance when I was on the treadmill. I was able to keep going at a higher pace for longer than in the past, which gives me a very meaningful gauge of the good the weight loss is doing me. My resting heart rate is also at 64 currently (having just checked it), which is a marked improvement over the past.
All in all, it was a good week on the weight loss and general health front.
Monday, March 29, 2010
Wednesday, March 24, 2010
High Fructose Corn Syrup
More and more, I'm becoming one of those people who points at high fructose corn syrup as a contributing factor to obesity in the US. I'm not saying it's the sole cause (after all, we're a nation of lazy fat asses), but it's definitely a contributing factor. Apparently researchers at Princeton University agree, however. The following portion of the article was quoted on Creative Loafing's article about it:
I will freely admit there have been times where I've wanted to throw things at the TV screen when one of those commercials from the corn industry came on trying to claim that high fructose corn syrup was a-ok because it was made from corn. After all, corn is natural, so it's okay, right?
As a general rule, I avoid HFCS as much as possible. I have to give major kudos to Pepsi for bringing back sodas made with cane sugar rather than HFCS, at least in limited quantities. It means if I want to indulge in a non-diet soda, I can grab a Mountain Dew Throwback or a Heritage Dr. Pepper. It's also nice that Kroger carries the imported Coca-cola from Mexico that's made with cane sugar (if you ever get a chance, compare the ingredient labels on one of the cane sugar sodas to the HFCS variety if you want to see more of the differences).
It's good to see research coming out to support the idea that we're making things harder on ourselves by chintzing out on the sweetener in our food.
A Princeton University research team has demonstrated that all sweeteners are not equal when it comes to weight gain: Rats with access to high-fructose corn syrup gained significantly more weight than those with access to table sugar, even when their overall caloric intake was the same.
I will freely admit there have been times where I've wanted to throw things at the TV screen when one of those commercials from the corn industry came on trying to claim that high fructose corn syrup was a-ok because it was made from corn. After all, corn is natural, so it's okay, right?
As a general rule, I avoid HFCS as much as possible. I have to give major kudos to Pepsi for bringing back sodas made with cane sugar rather than HFCS, at least in limited quantities. It means if I want to indulge in a non-diet soda, I can grab a Mountain Dew Throwback or a Heritage Dr. Pepper. It's also nice that Kroger carries the imported Coca-cola from Mexico that's made with cane sugar (if you ever get a chance, compare the ingredient labels on one of the cane sugar sodas to the HFCS variety if you want to see more of the differences).
It's good to see research coming out to support the idea that we're making things harder on ourselves by chintzing out on the sweetener in our food.
Tuesday, March 23, 2010
Back to the Gym
In line with starting up this blog today, I decided I needed to stop being lazy and go back to the gym. After getting home today, I got my son, and off we went to the YMCA. It's wonderful they have child care there, and he really enjoys playing there while I'm in the gym. As a sign that it had been far too long since I'd been to the gym, my Fitlinxx login is deactivated, so I need to get that fixed at some point. My goal today, though, was just for some cardio to get back into the swing of things.
My original intention had been to do 30 minutes plus the 5 minute cooldown period. Instead, I made it 21 plus the cooldown period. The main reason for this wasn't my getting tired. It was, instead, my right knee starting to hurt.
Just from walking, I can hear people exclaiming. The trick, though, is that I set it to the cardio routine. For my weight and age, it decided the proper heart rate for me to maintain was 147. The issue, however, is that even for as much as I weight, I'm in generally good shape, including my heart rate. So in order to keep that 147 heart rate at a 3.8 mph walk, it was cranking the incline up to between 7 and 8. After 15+ minutes of this, my knee wasn't exactly pleased with me.
The important thing, though, is that I made it to the gym. My intention at this point is to go on Tuesday and Thursday evenings and then Saturday mornings. I'll keep things posted here about how well I'm doing on that idea so this will hopefully keep me honest. Just doing weight watchers will only get me so far. There has to be more physical activity than sitting at a desk all day for me to reach my goal.
My original intention had been to do 30 minutes plus the 5 minute cooldown period. Instead, I made it 21 plus the cooldown period. The main reason for this wasn't my getting tired. It was, instead, my right knee starting to hurt.
Just from walking, I can hear people exclaiming. The trick, though, is that I set it to the cardio routine. For my weight and age, it decided the proper heart rate for me to maintain was 147. The issue, however, is that even for as much as I weight, I'm in generally good shape, including my heart rate. So in order to keep that 147 heart rate at a 3.8 mph walk, it was cranking the incline up to between 7 and 8. After 15+ minutes of this, my knee wasn't exactly pleased with me.
The important thing, though, is that I made it to the gym. My intention at this point is to go on Tuesday and Thursday evenings and then Saturday mornings. I'll keep things posted here about how well I'm doing on that idea so this will hopefully keep me honest. Just doing weight watchers will only get me so far. There has to be more physical activity than sitting at a desk all day for me to reach my goal.
So how did I get here?
This morning, I received an email from a friend asking how I got the point that I needed to lose this much weight. She was very polite in her prying and openly admitted she was prying. Obviously I didn't mind the question since I'm responding here publicly rather than privately just to her. I think in the long run doing it here could help someone else in a similar situation, if for no other reason than to give an idea of how someone could get to where I was.
At my heaviest, I was somewhere between 420 and 430 pounds. The majority of the standard scales you can find won't read that high and it took adding a counterweight onto the scale in the doctor's office to get an adequate reading, hence the approximation. How I got to that point was a combination of factors. To get the big one a lot of overweight people will hide behind out of the way, it definitely wasn't just genetics that got me to that point. Yes, I come from Northern European stock that tends to bulkier sizes. I cannot, however, blame my weight simply on genetics. Over the years, I had myself checked for thyroid issues, hormonal issues, and the like in some vain hope of finding a silver bullet to deal with it in a meaningful fashion, none of which came back with anything.
At the end of the day, it was a combination of lifestyle, laziness, and poor choices. I was raised in a Southern Family where 'clean your plate' was the order of the day. Given there was very little portion control, this lead to massive overeating on my part. It's taken years for me to break this habit. I still have problems at times not cleaning my plate due to that ingrained conditioning. It's taken me putting much smaller portions on my plate or, if I'm at a restaurant, asking for a box from the get go to make any dent in this part of this problem.
Laziness was another big issue. The first twelve years of my life, I lived outside of Winston-Salem, NC. I was a reasonably active kid, though I was always tending toward being "husky." I actively played baseball, rode my bike, and did various things to keep me moving that helped somewhat. When I was 12, my family relocated to Atlanta due to my Dad's job. Once I was down here, I lost touch with a lot of the things I'd done to stay active. Instead, I turned into your standard gaming geek who would rather site around a table all weekend playing RPGs rather than being outside doing anything. Add this to a natural proclivity to being lazy and the 'clean your plate' mentality mentioned above and you have someone who is going to start packing on the pounds.
The only time in my life other than the last few months where I made any concerted effort to do something about my weight was the second half of my college years (I phrase it that way only because I graduated from college in 3 years rather than 2). I lived on campus at UGA, walked pretty much everywhere, and played racquetball three to four days a week. I didn't get into good physical condition by any stretch of the imagination, but I was certainly in better physical condition than I'd been at any other point in my life. Once I graduated from college, however, that went by the wayside as I moved back to Atlanta and rediscovered the world 'you can't walk everywhere.'
At various times since then, I've made some sort of effort to lose weight. The issue, at the end of the day, was accountability. I really had nothing that kept me accountable for what I was doing and how I was doing it, so eventually I'd drop it and fall back into old habits. I had good success on phase one of the South Beach Diet a couple of times, but I would also stumble when I transitioned to phase two. There was no real daily accountability to it and as I pursued it, it was more along the lines of 'feel free to each however much you want as long as it's within these categories.' Therefore it simply compounded the issue and led to much more rebound weight gain and the like.
At the end of the day, it was my own laziness and willingness to put up with being overweight that got me to this point. It's going to be finally having enough and getting off my ass that will get me out of it. I still struggle with parts of it. There are some days when I really crave a specific thing (for instance, General Tso's Chicken is a major comfort food for me) or when I just don't want to worry with this. This happens, I accept it, and I move on without letting it derail me. If I give into a craving, I make a note of it, and stay on the horse past that point. Keeping myself accountable, even if it's only to myself through the Weight Watchers app on my iPhone, is a large part of this. The structured way I'm approaching this helps me out much more than the loose 'eat less, exercise more' mantra of past years. It's just a matter of keeping to this until I reach my goal.
At my heaviest, I was somewhere between 420 and 430 pounds. The majority of the standard scales you can find won't read that high and it took adding a counterweight onto the scale in the doctor's office to get an adequate reading, hence the approximation. How I got to that point was a combination of factors. To get the big one a lot of overweight people will hide behind out of the way, it definitely wasn't just genetics that got me to that point. Yes, I come from Northern European stock that tends to bulkier sizes. I cannot, however, blame my weight simply on genetics. Over the years, I had myself checked for thyroid issues, hormonal issues, and the like in some vain hope of finding a silver bullet to deal with it in a meaningful fashion, none of which came back with anything.
At the end of the day, it was a combination of lifestyle, laziness, and poor choices. I was raised in a Southern Family where 'clean your plate' was the order of the day. Given there was very little portion control, this lead to massive overeating on my part. It's taken years for me to break this habit. I still have problems at times not cleaning my plate due to that ingrained conditioning. It's taken me putting much smaller portions on my plate or, if I'm at a restaurant, asking for a box from the get go to make any dent in this part of this problem.
Laziness was another big issue. The first twelve years of my life, I lived outside of Winston-Salem, NC. I was a reasonably active kid, though I was always tending toward being "husky." I actively played baseball, rode my bike, and did various things to keep me moving that helped somewhat. When I was 12, my family relocated to Atlanta due to my Dad's job. Once I was down here, I lost touch with a lot of the things I'd done to stay active. Instead, I turned into your standard gaming geek who would rather site around a table all weekend playing RPGs rather than being outside doing anything. Add this to a natural proclivity to being lazy and the 'clean your plate' mentality mentioned above and you have someone who is going to start packing on the pounds.
The only time in my life other than the last few months where I made any concerted effort to do something about my weight was the second half of my college years (I phrase it that way only because I graduated from college in 3 years rather than 2). I lived on campus at UGA, walked pretty much everywhere, and played racquetball three to four days a week. I didn't get into good physical condition by any stretch of the imagination, but I was certainly in better physical condition than I'd been at any other point in my life. Once I graduated from college, however, that went by the wayside as I moved back to Atlanta and rediscovered the world 'you can't walk everywhere.'
At various times since then, I've made some sort of effort to lose weight. The issue, at the end of the day, was accountability. I really had nothing that kept me accountable for what I was doing and how I was doing it, so eventually I'd drop it and fall back into old habits. I had good success on phase one of the South Beach Diet a couple of times, but I would also stumble when I transitioned to phase two. There was no real daily accountability to it and as I pursued it, it was more along the lines of 'feel free to each however much you want as long as it's within these categories.' Therefore it simply compounded the issue and led to much more rebound weight gain and the like.
At the end of the day, it was my own laziness and willingness to put up with being overweight that got me to this point. It's going to be finally having enough and getting off my ass that will get me out of it. I still struggle with parts of it. There are some days when I really crave a specific thing (for instance, General Tso's Chicken is a major comfort food for me) or when I just don't want to worry with this. This happens, I accept it, and I move on without letting it derail me. If I give into a craving, I make a note of it, and stay on the horse past that point. Keeping myself accountable, even if it's only to myself through the Weight Watchers app on my iPhone, is a large part of this. The structured way I'm approaching this helps me out much more than the loose 'eat less, exercise more' mantra of past years. It's just a matter of keeping to this until I reach my goal.
Starting something new
After receiving a question from a friend via email today, I made the decision to start up this blog. The intention here is to chronicle my weight loss in one place that isn't cluttered by other things in my livejournal and to be able to keep things in one place for later use.
The title of the blog describes what my goal is. In July of 2009, I find the final decision to lose the weight that I'd been carrying around for years, totalling in the range of 200 pounds. My intention is to drop half my body weight in two years, putting me losing weight at a rate of approximately 8.3 pounds a month (or just shy of 2 pounds a week).
I have a young son and a daughter on the way. The way I was a year ago, I didn't have the energy I wanted to be able to play with my kids and was on a fast track to developing some sort of health ailment that would likely have had me dead before either of them reached adulthood. That was something that simply wasn't acceptable to me and finally pushed me into doing something about it.
At the same time, I'd seen the success two friends of mine had had using Weight Watchers. As this was something I hadn't tried before, I wanted to give it a go to see how it worked for me. Going forward here, I will likely have commentary on Weight Watchers and it may come off as a commercial for the program at times, but this is simply because, for me, it works. Since July of last year, I have lost 62.2 pounds (approximately since I may have been above 400 at start). This has all been done primarily just on Weight Watcher with very little added physical activity.
If you're reading this, I hope you find something here that will peak your interest, inspire you to do something similiar, or just to stick around to read now and again. At the end of the day, this is just my way of chronicling this journey and keeping myself honest during the journey.
The title of the blog describes what my goal is. In July of 2009, I find the final decision to lose the weight that I'd been carrying around for years, totalling in the range of 200 pounds. My intention is to drop half my body weight in two years, putting me losing weight at a rate of approximately 8.3 pounds a month (or just shy of 2 pounds a week).
I have a young son and a daughter on the way. The way I was a year ago, I didn't have the energy I wanted to be able to play with my kids and was on a fast track to developing some sort of health ailment that would likely have had me dead before either of them reached adulthood. That was something that simply wasn't acceptable to me and finally pushed me into doing something about it.
At the same time, I'd seen the success two friends of mine had had using Weight Watchers. As this was something I hadn't tried before, I wanted to give it a go to see how it worked for me. Going forward here, I will likely have commentary on Weight Watchers and it may come off as a commercial for the program at times, but this is simply because, for me, it works. Since July of last year, I have lost 62.2 pounds (approximately since I may have been above 400 at start). This has all been done primarily just on Weight Watcher with very little added physical activity.
If you're reading this, I hope you find something here that will peak your interest, inspire you to do something similiar, or just to stick around to read now and again. At the end of the day, this is just my way of chronicling this journey and keeping myself honest during the journey.
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