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.

Note to self…

Re-read this post in 30 weeks. Make sure the bit is still flipped.

Week 2: Progress Report

First of all, I don’t envision doing this every week. The good news is that things are heading in the right direction without a bunch of “pain and suffering” on my part. As I described in prior posts, I’ve been really paying attention to what I eat (i.e. no junk food, good fast food choices etc.). Second, portion control – when I start to get full then stop eating. Also, take smaller portions initially. This goes back to my childhood, but I still feel the need to eat what is on my plate and if I take bigger portions I would still eat even when full. The third element is activity. You’ve just got to keep moving! So, I’ve been swimming, walking and hitting the mini-tramp when the other two are just not options.

Part 1 – Weight & BMI

My weight has dropped from 250lbs to 234lbs. Along with that, my BMI has dropped from 41.6 to 39. Now the BMI drop may not seem like a lot, but it takes me out of the class-3 obesity. The more common name for that is “morbid obesity”. I know the first bit of weight loss can be easier than the road ahead, but this is a nice little milestone. Class-2 still has the nice common name of “obese” thus acting as a motivator. Wondering about the rest of the BMI scale – take a look at the table and chart below.

Part 2 – Physical Change

The biggest change with all of this is that I am thinking about activity. I think about the next round of walking, swimming, stair climbing I will be doing. In the past, I would get absorbed in whatever I was doing and give no thought to activity. Some days I would take stairs, the others the elevator. Again, for just getting started these things are becoming nice habits. As I get into a bit better shape and ramp up the exercise and training, I’ll need to keep these habits I am developing right now. My hope is that I will train my body to expect it and want it.

Part 3 – Mental Change

This is a big deal. There is a difference between going through the motions and trying to make good choices and maybe some exercise. But my “flipped bit” has allow me to really dig into all aspects of accomplishing my goal of Getting into Hiking Shape. This includes taking a little bit more time in the morning to pack healthy snacks and lunch additions to doing research on how much sodium I should be consuming. Using the FitBit website to track my food choices is really eye opening. Knowing what you are eating makes a difference. One other element relates to Part 2 above – the change to get up and take action. Getting away from the “in a minute” and excuse generation to go do something. Attitude play a big part in this as well. My wife has been trying to get me to walk regularly for awhile and I have resisted. In some cases to the point of being a real ass. Granted, I don’t like walking (prefer running), but that was just an excuse.

All these little changes add up to a budding new lifestyle.

Next Milestone – Weight=204, BMI=34 (class-1 obesity)

the danger zone

Here is where things get interesting. There are times when things are very busy with regular or work life that horn in on my time to exercise. And as it happens, these intrusions tend not to involve much physical activity. In my case a day of being chained to my desk for 12 hours working on a deadline based project and spending a day in the car. Literally a whole day. This is where the rubber meets the road. Good food choices, get your activity anywhere you can (extra walking, extra stairs) and hope you have more time the next day. And do what you can today – like hitting the mini-tramp while I wind down with some TV.

One more note, I am adding Fish Oil to my routine. Did a bunch of research and it seems to be a no-brainer. I am starting with 1000mg per day. Some recommend taking that amount three times per day, but I am starting small. Also, I am taking it at night to reduce any of the possible side affects (thought they are minor). The other specific vitamin I will be adding is D (D3). This has so many benefits for male health that it too is a no-brainer.

Fish Oil – Day 1: No real issues.

Choices, choices

Today was an average day. My step count was around 7000 – not bad considering I spent a bunch of time in the car and at a concert. I did manager to complete a 40m swim. The tricky part of eating right is clearly what happens at a restaurant, trying to make choices without a nutrition roadmap. I ate at another Chinese buffet tonight. There was little choice, as I was pinched for time and it was right next to the other store I needed to be at. I didn’t know if was a buffet until I went in – it was lower end, cheap food. I was happy to see they had brown rice and then went looking for the best stuff I could find. Skipped the egg rolls and crab rangoon and found some beef with broccoli. With a serving (small) of that and some moo goo gai pan, I added some green beans and sat down to eat. For desert I had a few gelatin squares (way more calories than I thought) with some watermelon, pineapple and peaches. The latter two clearly canned. It was still a reasonable meal even consider the large amounts of hidden sodium and other stuff (MSG). The key remains portions and I’m sure I could have dialed it back a bit from what I did. Having said that, I LOVE Chinese food and normally would have had much more. So there are a few victories worth quick little happy dances.

Oh yea, time to come clean. I did have a diet Sobe Graprfruit drink on the drive over. This would be the first fizz drink I’ve had in over a week. Otherwise, I’ve been drinking the right amount of water along with some skim milk.

As I think about recording that drink, I find myself getting better at estimating the amount of food that I eat. As I mention above, portions being kind I have to keep getting better at estimating amounts.

Keep Moving!

Friday

Today was a busy day at work, but most of the busy occurred at my desk. I ended up with a measly 4400 steps. Have been staying up too late to be getting up so early and had the good sense to take a nap when I got home. Which was fantastic! However, it did delay eating dinner until just after 8:00p violating my no food after 8:00p policy. I’ll have to write myself up.

For lunch I was going to get chicken or fish but noticed they had turkey – so I got that thinking it would be good and good for you. Just to set the record straight, it looked like a grilled turkey breast, but it turned out to be a turkey burger. It was pretty good, but a bit high in sodium. I also decided to get a cup of chicken noodle soup – fearing it would be super high in sodium. It did not fail to deliver in that department. The next big task is going to be preparing breakfast and lunch and brown-bagging it. The café food is not terrible, but it is over processed and more expensive than just doing it myself. I’ve already started bringing in fruit and veggies as snacks and components to those meals, just need to step it up and bring the rest.

Been thinking about my cholesterol levels. Quick side note, it is never good when you have to learn to spell a new word that is not related to a fun exotic event. The question is how do I raise my HDL (good cholesterol). The Mayo Clinic website has a good article explaining what it is and how it helps. I really like their site, great content in digestible articles. Check it out! Here are the recommendations for improving HDL:

Don’t Smoke
Maintain a Healthy Weight
Get More Physical Activity
Choose Healthier Fats
Drink Alcohol in Moderation

Now, all of these are on my plan – just need to continue to execute. In addition to these steps, there are references to fish oil (omega-3 fatty acids) that could help as well. I’ve read that the our ancestors used to get “fish oil” from the animals they hunted and ate. As we’ve domesticated our herds and changed what they eat, this has gone away. With the proliferation of fish farms, they are starting to see fish without the fish oil as well. I guess that’s progress. I have been taking a daily multivitamin again and will likely add an omega-3 supplement after doing a bit more research.

A day in the life

I had a pretty good day today, though no swim. Ate pretty well, though I did go out for dinner. The salad with grilled chicken wasn’t too bad. Ok, it had some cheese and guacamole (which was all avocado so that should be reasonable). My step count was pretty low when I got home, not a lot of foot traffic at work today. I did make a few extra runs up and down the stairs. I made up for it on the mini-tramp earlier this evening.

I’ve decided to make Tuesday my check in day. I’m not really interested in tracking daily weight. Weekly is likely the bare minimum that makes sense.

I did update my profile with relevant statistics and measurements. I will probably keep that the same over time and track monthly or quarterly progress on another page or a blog entry. I will continue with this program and do a check in with my doctor in a month or two. Curious to see what real work will do to my blood work.

Education

I’ve found a bunch of good websites (Mayo Clinic quality) and have discovered a lot of good information. I need to capture it and think about it. More urgently, I need to keep reading “The Way to Eat” by David L. Katz. I’ll refer back to my initial post, I don’t want a diet that offers short term wins, I want to understand how all this stuff works and then have the ability to make great decisions all the time.

Progress: Page 0 (just re-read the Introduction). Needs work.

Bookends

Not a bad day today. Got up at the crack of dawn, did 35m in the pool. Then sat in the car for 90 minutes and hit work. Work is mostly represented by the gray in pie chart below. Desk bound. However, as I continue to build on my routine, I will be sure to add more intraday walking – it will be good for me and it will be good for the team. I ended the day with about an hour of cardio (got a little trampoline today) while watching an episode of MI-5 (s5.e7). That worked pretty well – much better than an elliptical. Granted, this is new to fitness type exercise and will need to grow, but it was smashing tonight.

I picked up a flyer (possibly from the cafe at work) awhile ago that is mostly a photo of a cow in a field. In the foreground is a guy eating a salad. The main caption is “We’ve got to stop MEATing like this.” It is about being a flexitarian.

Semi-vegetarianism is a term used to describe diets that are not vegetarian, but include less meat than typical diets. The term has no precise or widely accepted definition, but is generally defined as the avoidance of red meat and/or generally following a vegetarian diet, but eating meat occasionally. The term is sometimes used interchangeably with "flexitarianism".

This definition is not quite right for me. I am starting by skipping meat once a week. Starting this week. Starting today. This will help me avoid some of the issues with eating too much meat as well as help grow my knowledge of nutrition like the need to find decent protein replacements. Week one … check!

Questions

Sodium: How much do you need?

According to the 2005 Dietary Guidelines for Americans:

Don’t exceed 2,300 mg of sodium a day if you’re a healthy adult.

Don’t exceed 1,500 mg of sodium a day if you have high blood pressure, kidney disease or diabetes; you are black; or you’re middle-aged or older.

Sodium-free or salt-free. Each serving in this product contains less than 5 mg of sodium.
Very low sodium. Each serving contains 35 mg of sodium or less.
Low sodium. Each serving contains 140 mg of sodium or less.
Reduced or less sodium. Product contains at least 25% less than the regular version.
Lite or light in sodium. Product reduced by at least 50% from the regular version.
Unsalted or no salt added. No salt is added during processing of a food that normally contains salt. However, some foods with these labels may still be high in sodium.

Interesting Website that Merit Investigation

http://www.epicurious.com

http://nutritiondata.self.com

zzzZZ

Here is the result of my first night trying the sleep function on fitbit.

No wonder I’m a little tired, need to get to bed earlier. Smart eating is tough. Trying to get some protein mixed in and sodium skyrockets. Not sure all the numbers for food nutrition are completely accurate, but they give a good estimate (checked a few other sites) and really open your eyes to the hidden junk.

This was a typical work day (didn’t get a morning swim – will save the stray dog story for another day and need to get some sleep so no walk either). 7200 steps seems pretty good for just “walking around”. I did make sure to take the stairs every time today. Got a friend who has has not ridden an elevator for 3 or 4 years – this is a good next practice.

My calorie count seems a bit low, but keep in mind some of those are estimates. In any event, I am working on portion control as well (um, except for the buffet the other day). I find my self hungry more times a day than I can recall experiencing in a long time. Also adding no eating after 8p. No need to make the body work harder instead of getting good sleep.

Daily Summary
Walk a lot (park far away at work) and always take the stairs
Portion control – stop eating when first sign of “full” hits
Eat breakfast and then snack on fruits and veggies during the day
– I’ve got to make sure I understand sugar in fruits as well. *sigh*
Don’t snack in the evening
Go to bed such that you get a good nights rest (7 hours minimum)

17 Stones

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