Weight: 218.0 (-13.2)
Fat: 34.4% (-4.9%)
Meals: Dinner, Fast 2 end 7pm
Exercise: Cardio (Treadmill 27:00 WL5 - 348 calories, 1.96 miles)
Pictures: Front/Side/Back/Flex
As promised yesterday, today I'm going over my current plan to lose weight. It's by no means my final plan, or the one true way. Over time I suspect I'll make adjustments as I learn things, but for now, here's what I'm doing.
Difficulty
Before getting into the details, I'd just like to say first and most importantly, at the end of the first month I don't feel like quitting. When I was doing boot camp I was looking so forward to simply being done with the whole thing. When I did calorie counting I began to fall apart on recording my foods and would jot down little notes which I'd start to lose. When I made it a point to run just 5-6 days a week on the treadmill I struggled to do it every day and when I got on there I dreaded the session and couldn't wait for it to end. I honestly can't remember ever engaging in any sort of weight loss or fitness program where I was a month in and hadn't either quit or struggled to continue at that point.
Getting Started
I started my program with two commitments: to get moving every day, and to record my daily progress (which I'll discuss more below). The promise to move more every day wasn't specific, although it has taken the form of running on the treadmill. I intentionally left this vague as I wanted to remain flexible. If I ran out of time that day, or I wasn't feel all that well, I left the door open to some jumping jacks, a bit of walking, climbing stairs, or anything really.
The important thing was to make an effort each day, not to burn calories or push myself hard. Since then, I've learned that the real opportunity to use up excess stored calories (ie. fat) is not in working out but in making changes to your diet. As a result I've been able to focus on using my workouts to feel better about myself and to emphasize fitness over weight loss. Since my goal wasn't simply to burn calories, I was able to take a slow, steady route to increasing the intensity of my workouts, building momentum over time, instead of my traditional work hard, burn out fast routine.
In fact for the first two weeks, I did nothing but walk/jog on the treadmill, with more emphasis on the walking than the running. I've made an effort to shorten my workouts as well, both because injury risk increases exponentially while benefits decrease, but also because a shorter workout is much more difficult to skip out on. Running 45-60 minutes is a pretty big commitment, while a 23 minute run seems so small by comparison that it's much more difficult to skip out on. And when my body weight comes down and my ability ramps up, I should be able to run a full three miles in 30 minutes or less.
Strength Training
As I was adjusting to moving more every day and tracking my progress daily, I continued to do research on the best ways to not only accelerate my weight loss, but to do so in a sustainable manner that I would feel comfortable continuing with even after I reach any weight loss goals. I knew that part of that equation was strength training. I bought a fairly decent set of dumbbells at some point in my past (part of another failed plan to lose weight), and so I decided that I should utilize those before I even consider buying anything new. I almost bought a better bench, but decided to put that off as well until I could prove to myself that I can stick with this workout.
Lifting weights isn't really that difficult, but it's not nearly as simple as running. For one thing, while running is something you can do an almost infinite amount of (although your joints will disagree), it's very possible to overtrain when it comes to weights. Muscle building is not accomplished by simply lifting a weight repeatedly, instead the purpose of lifting is to cause cellular damage to the muscle tissue and your strength gain comes from the rebuilding process. If you don't give your muscles enough rest time, you're actually retarding the muscle growth process.
Additionally, I'm not an expert on anatomy and my knowledge of the muscle groups is fairly rudimentary. It's simple enough to flip through a few books or websites and create a list of dumbbell exercises. Doing so wouldn't necessarily be the most effective though. I'm not going to be entering any contests and my goal isn't to bulk up and build enormous biceps, so I'm not worried about creating the perfect program. Lifting badly could mean an increased chance of injury, or putting a lot more effort into the workout while getting far fewer results out of it. So I did some studying.
Ultimately, I still need to put more energy into improving this and creating a dynamic program that changes over time. Coming up with "the ultimate workout" is a bit of a holy grail and I decided it was best to just start lifting with what I've learned and make adjustments on the fly. Remember, it's usually better to do something than to do it right.
Diet
The biggest concern I had going into all this though was making changes to my eating habits. I like running (relatively speaking), and resistance training isn't so bad. Neither activity takes up more than a few hours a week at most. But eating is something I've struggled a lot with and I do several times a day. Social events are often centered around food, we plan dates and gathering around meals, and grocery shopping is primarily food-based.
Even worse, my research confirmed that the only real effective way to lose weight is to control your eating. A calorie reduction is necessary to lose weight, and although you can burn calories by working out, it's difficult to keep your food consumption level while increasing your activity level. Just working out increases your appetite in the long run, which is why so many people jump on the bike or elliptical every day and don't see any results over time. Burning 300 extra calories is nice, until you realize that post workout "refuel" is just as many or more calories.
Every diet I've come across has made me anxious. Reduce the amount of fat in your diet. Carbs are bad, protein and fats are good. Bulky foods help you feel full, so you should load up on vegetables. Calorie counting allows you to eat what you want but you have to be careful about recording everything. The list goes on.
Then there's the bad food/good food debate. Avoid this, eat more of that. Refined carbs are bad, you should eat more whole wheat. Starchy vegetables are bad for you, eat more leafy green stuff. Processed foods and preservatives aren't real food, you should only eat things that are natural. Egg yolks... are good or bad depending on who you listen to.
Finally, there's the issue of meal frequency. More and more I've come across this idea that six meals a day, also known as grazing, is the best way to eat. It'll keep your metabolism boosted, just make sure you keep eating. I can't begin to explain my relief at finding out this was a myth.
Ironically, all diets do work, because they include some form of calorie restriction. They all rely on different methods to achieve this reduction, but any plan that accomplishes this will help you lose weight. At the same time though, all diets don't work, because they're either a temporary measure or they're difficult to adhere to. Losing weight and then resuming your old eating patterns will only result in a gain back to your old weight (and often a little extra). So forget macronutrients, specific foods or types of food, meal frequency, etc... the single most important factor in whether or not a diet will work for you long-term is adherence. If your plan is difficult to maintain or unpleasant to follow, it's not going to work.
Eventually I came across something called Intermittent Fasting. Instead of worrying about every detail of eating, I simply pick two 24 hour periods a week and... I don't eat. When I reach my weight loss goals and I start maintenence, I alter that to one fasting period a week. Eventually I'd like to work on eating better and healthier, but the important thing to keep in mind is, losing weight has far more health benefits than what you eat. Sweating the details and losing the big picture is just dumb; I should know, it's what I've always done.
Anyway, this plan works so well for me. It's flexible, I can choose any two 24 hour periods, and I can move them around freely both in date and time. I don't have to obsess about what I eat or when I eat. I don't have to do extra tracking or rituals that will be difficult to maintain. I can continue to enjoy the foods I like and/or crave without feeling guilty. And best of all, if I want to go out to eat, I don't have to scour the menu for something that fits my meal plan, or cancel social events with friends because I can't afford the calories.
Getting better results for less work is pretty flipping amazing in my opinion, but that's what it is. Sure I get a little hungry, but even that is kind of a benefit as I've learned a lot about what makes me hungry, what real hunger feels like, etc.
I'm developing a few extra "eating rules" to go with the fasting, which I'll elaborate on further. But the focus of my "diet" so far is fasting, and it's working great and I can easily see myself doing this for the rest of my life.
