Working out

Completed workout number two today. Did lower body yesterday and upper body today. Added 30m of shooting baskets on the court as well. I did both of these in the wee hours of the morning and will need to continue to do this as my nights seem consumed with other “work”. While this worked out pretty well, I am a little tired – I tend to stay up late. Too late.

I am planning on hitting the gym 4 times per week. I will also try to get there for basketball and racquetball. So far, there do not appear to be many lines waiting for machines or courts.

Week 17: Progress Report

Been out of town for another week and did pretty well. I did not visit the gym, but chose to walk to many of the venues for dinner and fun. One way ended up being just over a mile which was nice. I’ve noticed that I tend to drink a little more coffee (decaf) than I would when at home. Next time I will need to bring my water bottle that makes it too convenient to want to drink anything else.

Cranial Activity

On this trip, I had a chance to hear a talk about change from Chip Heath. Chip and his brother Dan wrote a book, “Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard”, that I highly recommend you read. It is written in a style that provides content along with great examples. Chip is also an outstanding speaker (check out this snippet about his last book, Made to Stick), who among other things talked about how hard it is to eat right these days. With the complexities of nutrition combined with the lack of clarity from things like the food pyramid, it just makes it tough. He mentioned a book to cut through the confusion titled “Food Rules”, written by Michael Pollan. This is quite possibly the best way to start rethinking about what and how to eat. I read this on my Nook and was very satisfied with the experience. Some books on food and nutrition have lots of pictures and charts which don’t translate well, but this book was ideal for my Nook.

Physical Activity

Before I left on my trip, I joined LA | Fitness. In addition to the membership, I will be working with a trainer to continue my work on really getting healthy. I am very proud of the progress I have made which includes changing my eating habits as well getting moving. However, I think the next step is to add a bit of strength training to build a some muscle. This will need to be a combination of continuing to lose weight, working towards my health goal and getting stronger to increase my metabolism. I have my initial session tomorrow morning – looking forward to it!

Obligatory Chart

I am still on a bit of a flat point on losing weight, but am ok with it. It is a challenge to do the right things when travelling,but I made good choices and still managed to drop a pound when it was all said and done.

That said, I need to pay a little closer attention to what and how much I am eating now that I am back home. Getting into a rhythm on walking, mini-tramp and gym workouts again will bring back the balance.

Next Milestone – Weight=180, target date = 05-DEC-2010

Reminder: This will take me out of the obese classification and simply into overweight.

Post Rate

Recently I have been asked two questions by folks because my weight loss has become more noticeable.

1. Are you losing weight. Yes, I am working at it.

2. What is your secret?

I’ve thought a lot about the last question and how to describe what I am doing to get healthy and in hiking shape. Clearly there is no secret, but describing what I am doing in a short small-talk conversation is not easy. Here is what I have been using:

I eat right and control my portions. And I move.

Short and to the point. It may generate probing questions or clarification, but serves as a good summary. However, there are two other components that I really believe help keep me on the right track.

The first is maintaining a diary of my eating habits. With the exception of the travelling week (week 14) I have done a good job of maintaining an accurate account of what I eat. Over time it has become easier to estimate how much I am eating and yes, tracking restaurant food is always a pain, but I try to keep it as accurate and timely as possible. One quick note, this is a lot easier when mostly eating unprocessed or over flavored foods when dining out.

The second key item is my FitBit. I have described it as a super fancy pedometer, but in reality, it is like a personal trainer whispering in your ear that you need to move more. You need to get your steps in – otherwise it will be a yellow or even worse, a green day. This has a subtle influence to help ensure I take the steps when faced with stair-elevator option. It reminds me to take a little walk around the park when waiting for a sporting event to start rather than sit in the stands for 15 minutes. I know there are other products out there that do similar things, but this is what I have and it works wonderfully. I charge it about once a week and keep it on the rest of the time (sans shower and pool). It’s wireless sync is awesome and I have the home page in my IE startup favorites so I check every few hours to see how I am doing.

So if I update my spiel, it should look more like this:

I eat right, control my portions and journal my meals. And I move, tracking my efforts with my FitBit.

Not too bad and it may generate even more discussion. But there is one more component that is helping and that is this blog. By taking a few minutes to capture my thoughts, ideas, moods and progress, I am providing an outlet for all the work I have been doing. What prompted this post was a quick look at the post count per month. I started strong in July with a bunch of thoughts and energy but as other things kicked up, my post count dropped to just a progress report weekly, then every other week and with the last one every third week. I have found that I enjoy this and need to get back into a rhythm of writing.

Week 9: Progress Report

Now this was a busy week, and as I’ve said before, these present the biggest challenge. Living live and doing the right things to get healthy. Well, there were some days that had my first meal starting with lunch, Some days with a weak step count, but overall, I am still making progress! My weight loss is becoming more and more apparent and I am getting comments from people followed by the question, how are you doing it? My answer is generally eating like a human and getting more active. I’m going to think about a better answer, that can be delivered quickly (not preachy), but with a very positive spin.

You can see, based on the last three weeks, I have more work to do. I like the little frowny face letting me know that this week was not great. Things should be settling down a bit with the house, school and work so I hope to get back to the “pink” levels.

I managed to lose a few pounds this week and continue to move the BMI dot in the right direction. Still working on getting the right mix of food, nutrients and C-F-P ratio.

The nice little bonus I noticed this week is that I was a bit to coarse in setting my latest goal. I was looking to move into obesity class I and thought a BMI score of 34 is what I needed. However, the class starts at 34.9 – so I have achieved this mini-goal! Actually did it last week. I am very happy with that milestone. Very much looking forward to getting out of the obese classification in the coming weeks!

My week 9 Carb-Fat-Protein ratio is: 64% – 14% – 22%. So still a little high on the carbs; I did have a few sandwiches this week. Still looking for a way to get more whole gain goodness without going overboard on “bread carbs”.

In tracking a few nutrition specifics, I’ve been doing pretty well.

Fiber
Recommended: 25mg / day
I’ve been above that for the last 6 weeks (range 27mg – 32mg)

Sodium
Recommended: < 2300mg /. day
Been working to reduce this as much as possible. I’ve had less than 23000mg per day for 7 or the last 8 weeks. Most below the 2000mg level. This is a tough one, especially if you eat out once in a while as not all restaurants provide nutrition information. With that in mind, the lower everywhere else, the better.

Water
Recommended: ~64fl oz / day
This is a huge change for me. I drink water almost exclusively anymore. I will have a decaf coffee every few weeks or a green tea (will try to get more of this when it cools down) and a beer once in a while. But that’s about it. I’ve exceeded the 64fl oz for the last 8 weeks, usually having 100fl oz or more daily.

Sugar
Recommended: < 32g / day (natural sugar outside this value)
This is a tough one, because the recommendation is for sugar that is added to foods and beverages. However, naturally occurring sugar (fruits) is different and not counted the same. I eat a lot of fruit and try to find the best kinds (high fiber, lower sugar), but it still adds up. I consume about 60g per day, but the majority all comes from fruit. I need to look into this a bit more to get a better idea of a reasonable target.

100 Days of Vitamins
One more milestone this week, I have had 100 days of taking a vitamin. I’ve tried to take multi-vitamins in the past and normally had a stomach reaction and have thrown it right back up. I have no idea why this was the case (not a good breakfast, brand?). Before I had my awakening, I picked up a bottle from Target and started taking them with no issue. I have since added an additional vitamin D3 and fish oil supplement to my daily regimen. Clearly this is super important when we consider the type of food that is available today and I’m glad I am back on the vitamin path.

Next Milestone – Weight=200, target date = 12-SEP-2010

This is a mini-milestone, I can’t remember that last time I weighed less than 200lbs.

Stretch Break

We have software at work available to us that reminds you to stretch every 30 minutes. I’ve known about it for a long time, but never really gave it much thought. With everything else I am doing, I thought why not, let’s give this thing a whirl.

The software is called Stretch Break and pops up every 30 minutes to remind you to stretch. You can configure it to different intervals, but I left it in default mode. When it pops up, it give you three stretches to do then goes back to sleep. The stretches themselves vary in what they work and include both sitting and standing stretches. There are some for your hands, shoulders, neck and eyes. It does a pretty good job.

The thing that really got my attention was how quickly the 30 minutes seemed to fly by and the next session begins. As I sit in my office, I imagine there are times when hours go by and I am just glued to my computer – not really moving more than my hands. It definitely feels good to get up and stretch. I will keep this going and play with the duration to strike the balance between stretching enough and not breaking concentration too often.

Just another in a series of eye opening events.

Week 5: Progress Report

I think I am in the norm for weekly weight lose: 2-3 pounds. I’m ok with that – it seems reasonable and healthy. It definitely sets the tone for the next year to really get into the weight loss and general health I am looking to attain.

I dropped a few pounds this week and continue to move the BMI dial as well. I still need to dial in on the type of food I am eating. As you can see from the chart below, I am high on carbs. Part of this is the fruit I eat and the other thing I need to do is ramp up the protein a bit. I went to a health store today and picked up some flaxseed to add to my oatmeal and some protein for shakes. I’ll give that a shot. A few years (ok, maybe 7) I was doing some lifting and had been doing something similar. I’m going to start slowly and see what it does to the ratio. I did finally get some fish this week (tilapia) that was pretty good and introduced some lean hamburger. I am careful to watch the portions pretty closely. I grilled up a bunch of chicken today as well and will be taking that to work. It will be a good lunch and save some money at the same time.

From an activity standpoint, I am making progress (moving from sedate to very active) and achieved my incremental weekly goal. You can see this is largely due to the high activity at the beginning of the week. Very slow ending to the week. Consistency will be important going forward. Today was a great day; I got a really good swim in the morning and took a 40m walk in the evening. The colors on this chart are interesting. the pink means I made goal for the day and the green means it was a lazy day. A bit strange.

Looking Ahead

July has been a month of getting started, spending lots of time thinking about health, nutrition, activity and it has been great. August will start to get busier as things at work pick up and as school gets closer. Lots of this stuff has to be automatic and at the same time, I need to step up the exercise. Cardio and easing back into an active life is part of what I need to continue to do, but I also need to start doing calisthenics, resistance training and some weights. Looking forward to a good month.

I have made good progress on the book I am reading (The Way to Eat), about 100 pages. I’ve done this between other things and just need to carve out some time to get through it. The beginning talks about common issues and struggles and ways to cope. It has an interesting slant on why we behave the way we do – and why the results are different for different people. He ties the way the body works to our ancestors and how they had to adapt in order to survive. I’m pretty happy that a lot of the things I’ve been doing are recommended ways to stay on track. Some of the later portions of the book look good, so I will keep pushing.

I had my blood taken this last week and expect the results in the next week. The last time I had it checked was September, 2009. At that time I was doing nothing to improve my health. My doctor told me to eat right and get some exercise and come back in 3 months. I think I actually ate worse after that point. It will be interesting to see where I am now. Eight of the last nine months were carefree, eat what I want and let future me worry about exercise. July, the last month is where I really dug in. This should be a good baseline.

Next Milestone – Weight=204, BMI=34 (class-1 obesity): target date = 19-SEP-2010

Walking

I really don’t like walking, but need to get over that and enjoy it for what it is. Outdoor time, quality conversation without electronic interruption (mostly) and the obvious health benefit. Well, I’ve been using the FitBit (souped up pedometer) for almost two weeks and tonight was the first night I actually walk walked. It was nice, pace was pretty good and I felt good after.

If committed, this will get better and more frequent. I know this is good for more than just calorie burn, but the fact that what I burned off was just a little more than eating a Snickers is astounding. I’m hoping that these little nuggets that pop up keep me honest as I get a little deeper into this process.

Next: Still need to get through my book! Will do some reading tonight.

Motivator

I can see this being a pretty good motivator. Done!

Where do you start losing fat first?

I was wondering where you start to lose fat first. Not sure why that popped into my head, but I did some looking and it appears that you tend to lose weight from the top down. Starting with your face and head then moving down to your body.

It gets interesting when you have problem areas like the pelvis, buttocks, and thighs of women and the bellies of men. In these cases you need to give those areas extra love (crunchies etc.) in order to burn fat. Another interesting note, the fat that women develop has an advantage during pregnancy (none beyond that) while the fat that men accumulate does nothing except shorten our lives.

Curious about what happens to the fat? The following is from the Mayo Clinic website, one of my favorites.

Body fat breaks down during a series of complex metabolic processes.

When you burn more calories than you consume, your body uses fat (triglycerides) for energy. This causes your fat cells to shrink. In turn, triglycerides are broken down into two different substances — glycerol and fatty acids — which are absorbed into your liver, kidneys and muscle tissue. From there, the glycerol and fatty acids are further broken down by chemical processes that ultimately produce energy for your body.

These activities generate heat, which helps maintain your body temperature. The resulting waste products — water and carbon dioxide — are excreted in urine and sweat or exhaled from your lungs.

– Katherine Zeratsky, R.D., L.D.

FitBit added a bunch of new stuff to their site yesterday. There is now a Premium area that adds a bunch of analytics and reporting as well as the FitBit trainer. This is designed to move you along from a sedentary to active lifestyle. It analyzes the activity that you record and creates goals and encouragements. I did the trial and here is how it looks for the daily view.

As you can see, I have a little more work to do tonight. Will hit the mini-tramp while catching an episode of something (probably MI-5). A got a swim in today and it was good. Getting my wind back and enjoying the time to think while in the water. It cracks me up a bit to get out of the pool and sweat. It makes sense, but seems wrong somehow.

Just another day in the life

Pretty good job eating today according to FitBit:

Daily Calorie Composition: 57% from carbs, 18% from fat and 25% from protein.

Activity on the other hand was different tonight. No walking, mini-tramp or swimming. Rather, 3.5 hours doing moderate activity (volunteer helper for huge school clothing order). It was fun and burned some calories in a different way.

Otherwise another relatively sedate day at work. Did manage to get up and down the stairs a few extra times today. Should be some good sleep tonight in any event.

There is so much to really learn to eat right. Each day I start thinking about different aspects. calories, carbs, vitamins, sodium, sugar (especially in fruit) and most recently fiber. Made a minute amount of progress in the book. Need to spend some quality time holed up in my office and get through it.

17 Stones

Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants. Move. Journal.

journal