Tag Archives: weight reduction

It Just Ain’t Right

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A few days ago I went to a couple of eating events.  I call them eating events even though they’re really supposed to be either social activities or business meetings.

There is always food.

There may be a few low-cal selections like fruit and carrot sticks but my first reaction is to eat the good tasting stuff.  Eggs, sausage, biscuits.  Or, if it’s an evening thing, like the other day, I’ll order from the menu.

No, not the salad with a glass of water. The wrap with french fries.

Here is what the day was like….

Morning: my Rotary club – eggs, sausage, bisquit
Lunch: a Broker’s Open House (something for us Realtors) – some sandwich halves from the Atlanta Bread Co., chocolate chip cookies
Dinner: Happy Hour at Calypso Bay which is part sports bar, part Tiki Bar, part crab house. This was the wrap and french fires.
Exercise: zilch

Even with that horrible day, I managed to actually lose two-tenths of a pound.

The next day, I ate a light breakfast, a moderate lunch at Panera and a sandwich made at home for dinner. Oh yeah. I did scarf down an 80 calorie yogurt cup and some pita chips. And I went to the gym to do my treadmill thing for 45 minutes (354 calories burned).

I woke up and was three pounds heavier!  I couldn’t believe it.

There is something wrong with this picture.  It just ain’t right.

THE Scale

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Well, THE scale came in today. Yippee!  This is supposed to be the scale that is super accurate and doesn’t have a lot of other mumbo jumbo that you have to remember.  No “memory” about what your weight was yesterday or what your bone density is or what have you.  Just straight up pooundage.

It’s is little smaller than I expected it to be.  Maybe because it’s designed go into small-ish places.

It also does not slide.

This is a drawback. The scale I have now slides pretty easily across the laminate floor in my kitchen. I can nudge it under a counter over hang when it’s not in use and pull it out easily when I want to weigh myself.

Not so with this scale.  The feet have some kind of non-skid substance which makes it very hard to slide or move. That in and of itself would not be so bad except that you need to recalibrate it every time you move it. Step on, get the weight reading. Step off. Step back on to get the real weight reading.  Pain in the ass.

Of course, it needs to be on a “flat, hard surface”. No carpet or anything like that. Which makes it a problem in our house.  My wife’s bathroom has ceramic tile but it’s pretty small and she has it pretty well junked up with her stuff.  Not much room.  My bathroom has two parts – the sink and mirror part which has carpet and the toilet and bathtub part which has tile but is really too small to add the scale.

Bummer.  I may have just thrown $30 down the tubes.

I’m going to try and see if it works for me, though, and also see how different the reading is from the fancy schmancy scale.  Maybe I’m just whistling in the sark or pass the graveyard or whatever that saying is.

After all, the scale will read lower and lower numbers if I just stop eating crap and exercise more.

Day 13 of the 30 day challenge to myself

 

I Guess The Gym Helps A Little

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I went back to the gym today.

Yeah. Big Announcement.

It was a little crowded when I got there but had thinned out by the time I was ready to leave which was, believe it or not, just about 40 minutes later.

I did my treadmill thing.  Still not very fast and not for a huge amount of time (30 minutes) but I’m need to get back do pick up my speed and maybe a little bit more time, too.  I also tried an elliptical type machine but I couldn’t quite get the hang of it and I was a little nervous about going gangbusters because of a) my knee and b) my neck and c) I had never used the machine before.  I can see, though, that I really should try to switch up a little.

Needless to say even 30 minutes at 2.6 mph only burns about enough calories to cover a hard pretzel or two and I still went over my calorie limit for the day.  I am starting to log in everything, though.  I used to “cheat” and just not add stuff in.  My Fitness Pal was pretty forgiving like that,  Each day was a new day.  Lose It! is a little different.  They send yo a spreadsheet at the end of the week with your daily totals and then a weekly net.  So, if I don’t add in everything it thinks I was way under and gives me the high five I don’t really deserve.

I’ve been kind of edge today, for some reason, and the exercise didn’t “help” the way exercise is supposed to.  I guess when people talk about exercise pumping out the endorphins, they mean regular exercise over a sustained period of time.  Something I have a hard time doing…the sustained period of time thing.

Tomorrow, I give it another go.  Maybe I can make a habit of this or something…..  Hope springs eternal.

Day 10 of my 30 day challenge to myself

 

 

Exercise. I Get It!

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The last couple of days I’ve been eating “over” the calorie limit imposed on me by Lose It! which is more than the calorie limit that is being imposed on me by My Fitness Pal in order to achieve the same goal. Lose 1½ per week.  Of course, My Fitness Pal has also asked me how many calories I plan to burn off with exercise. LoseIt! does not.  In fact, Lose It! doesn’t say anything about exercise.  It does have a way to enter it into the scheme of things.

I’ve never used it.

I realize that there are two parts of the weight loss equation. One is eat less. The other is exercise more. I haven’t been doing the second  part.

Sure.  I have the excuses.  My neck has been killing me.  I’ve been going to a chiropractor who told me that the treadmill wasn’t the wisest thing and I should try the machine that is sort of like cross country skiing. Yeah. Right. I’m on it.

Then there’s the timing.  I want to go but I just can’t seem to find the right time.  I get caught up in things and then things pop up.  I guess the work around for that is to go first thing in the morning.  Bed head hair and all.  That’s what Tyler Weeks of 344 Pounds preaches on a regular basis. His hair is really short, though.  Can’t hardly mess that stuff up.

The it’s getting in the car to go to the gym.  That should be the easy part but it’s not.

Needless to say,though, exercise really, really needs to get integrated into my daily routine or ain’t nothing going to happen – new scale or no new scale.

By the way, I ordered the new scale.  It should be here June 1st.  If that’s as volatile as the old one(s), I won’t have technology to blame.

 

This is Day 9 of my 30 day challenge to myself.

The Deal With Water

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Everyone who is worth their salt (which you should definitely moderate) says that drinking water is a key factor in weight loss.  There are a lot of reasons and, I’ve recently discovered, a lot of different formulas for the amount of water I should drink and when.

There’s the old stand-by: 8- 8 oz glasses of water per day.  This formula doesn’t say when.  It just says drink it.  So, in theory, I could swill down my 64 ozs or 2 quarts in one sitting (try it, I dare you).

There are a couple of others I’ve found.  One says I should swill down 1 oz of water for every pound of weight.  In my case, that’s 280 ozs or 2.2 gallons (that’s gallons) of water a day.  Then I heard of a slightly more benign formula which is to drink a  ½ oz. of water for every pound.  That’s only 1.04 gallons or 4 quarts. Roughly double the old stand-by of 8-8 oz glasses.

Now, anyone who’s tried to consume a lot of water knows that what goes in must come out and with that much water I’m making a lot of trips down the hall. This also makes me think of the water being used to flush which makes me think that flushing every time is a terrible waste of water and an environmental no-no. Even with my low-water per flush, high efficiency toilets.

When to Drink Your Water?

Now as to when.  Some say first thing in the morning is a good time since you tend to dehydrate over night.  Others say before every meal to “fill you up” so you don’t eat as much (this has never worked for me, by the way).

However, with even one gallon on the water menu it probably means swilling the stuff down at every opportunity. Followed ten minutes later by the trip down the hall.  At least there is an exercise component to this as well.

In any case, I’ve been trying to drink more water in the hopes that it will, in fact, help with the weight loss.  But, truth be told, I’m not convinced. We’ll see.

This is Day 8 of my 30 day challenge to myself

Weekly Weigh In … Week 24 (Delayed)

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Normally this would be the day to weigh-in and report.  The idea is to keep myself accountable. Yeah.  I look at my weight every day and see what it is but if I put it here maybe it’ll make it stronger.

However, this week, I’m putting it off.

Here’s why.

I can’t freakin’ trust the scale I’ve been using.

Check this out:

5/22 — 282.4 lbs
5/23 — 281.30 lbs
5/24 — 280.2 lbs
5/25 — 278.8 lbs

In the space of 4 days I dropped 3.6 lbs and, for the first time in memory got below 280 lbs.  Sounds pretty good, huh?  I was doing the end zone happy dance and thinking I finally broke through the plateau.

I weighed myself today (the official day) and I was at 282 something.  Wait!  That can’t be right.  I really didn’t do anything different.  I stepped off the scale, reset it (it’s a fancy schmancy Sater that tells you everything about yourself that you never wanted to know) and then stepped back on.

I was up a pound.  In the space of two minutes.  Ok.  Time to let the scale “cool off” or something.  So, I have my morning cereal and toast and check e-mail and then weigh myself again.  Now I was up to 284 something!  So I had gained two pounds in 35 minutes.

No way.

I have been going over my calorie limit the past couple of days but not by the amount necessary to pile back all that weight and surely my weight didn’t fluctuate 2 pounds in less than an hour.

I guess it’s time for another scale.  I watched what I ate today and I’m 267 calories under my limit.  I’m also a little hungry.  That’s OK.  Let’s see what this wacko scale says tomorrow morning.

I’m getting a new scale, though.

This is what I have in mind…

 

This is Day 6 of a 30 day challenge to myself

Lose It! – Another Calorie and Exercise Log

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A good colleague of mine, Rob McCance, was telling me about an app he’s been using to lose some weight. Something called Lose It! I had actually heard about the app before from another source but never really gave it any serious consideration.  After all, I had started using My Fitness Pal and that seemed to be working out fine.  Except that I wasn’t using it each and every day.

So, I downloaded Lose It! onto my iPhone and started to look at it a little.  Then I went to the website and started to look at that a little.  Then I signed up and added my profile and a starting weight just to see what it’s like.

As with most of these app things, the website is a whole lot more robust and easier to use than the app. In fact, if I put Lose it! and My Fitness Pal next to each other, I have to say I like the Lose It! website a bit better.  I may even do a side by side comparison in a week or two.  I think I know My Fitness Pal well enough.  Now, I have to get used to Lose It! and see how that does.

Losing the Weight

Rationally, I know that by simply having an app or a website to log things into will not cause me to lose weight.  Both sites can offer statistics abot how their users lose weight but here’s the deal.  Losing weight requires eating less and exercising more.  If it were as easy as putting stuff into an app, I’d be kinda like Arnold Schwarzenegger without the love child.

OK, maybe without the ripped look, either.

Still, the conventional wisdom is that if you keep track of the stuff you put in your mouth and the exercise you do, the “new lifestyle” will eventually become a habit and the body will follow.

So, we’ll see. Stay tuned

Day 2 of my personal 30 day challenge to myself.

Weekly Weigh In … Week 21

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This will be another quick one….

I’ve been getting lazy about posting on the actual day I weigh-in – Thursdays.  I do weigh myself.  Trust me on this.

Week 20 – 282.0 lbs
Week 21 – 282.6 lbs
Increase – .6 lb
Year to date decrease – ~20 lbs or ~.95 lb/ week

The pattern here is that my average weekly decrease is, er, decreasing which means I’m not continuing to lose weight at a pace that will get me anywhere anytime soon.

The Reasons

  1. I’ve been lax about logging in my food to My Fitness Pal and, thus, losing track of the number of calories I’m consuming.
  2. I’ve been away from the gym way too long (I went back yesterday for the first time in a long time). – No exercise.
  3. I’ve been eating stuff.  Wednesday I went to a minor league baseball game sponsored by a title company that provided lots of hamburgers and hot dogs and potato salad and…you get the point. Last night it was Cinco de Mayo sponsored by another title company and mortgage lender which included all kinds of high calories stuff.  I could go on.
  4. I started getting into pretzels, again. Bad for the blood pressure. Bad for water retention. Not high calorie but not low calorie either.

So, I just really need to get back on track. Get re-dedicated.  It’s tough.  This “lifestyle” thing is not as easy as it sounds. There is food everywhere and occasions to eat it all the time.  It’s mind boggling.

 

Conditioned Response

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In 1927 Ivan Pavlov discovered that his dogs would begin to salivate first in the presence of food, then in the presence of the lab assistant that bought the food and then just by hearing a bell that would normally mean the onset of feeding.  The discovery of this Pavlovian Response of Classical Conditioning is the forerunner of all kinds of behavioral therapy.  The idea is that you can teach yourself or someone else can teach you to respond to certain stimuli in a certain way.

Many hypnotists try this by planting a post-hypnotic suggestion that you don’t like this or that type of food or that this type of food really tastes horrible.

The more common way we try to do it for weight loss is to try and establish new habits.

  • box up half our meal when we eat out
  • drink more water
  • avoid sweets
  • reward ourselves when we’ve reached some positive milestone

Sometime this works.  Many times it works only temporarily.

Undoing the habits or conditioned response built up over the years is extremely difficult.  Here is a story from my own experience:

Every so often I have the occasion to visit a certain part of town.  Normally, it’s a doctor’s appointment but it could really be anything.  In this part of town is a place called Bagel City. It has dozens of different bagel sandwiches and bagel preparations along with dozens of different bagels. It also has lots of snacks — potato chips, pita chips, pretzels, sodas, etc. — that you don’t see in your run-of-the-mill bagel place or any other sandwich place.  It also has a glass display case of dozens on pastries, cookies and other sweet delights.

It not a fancy place but it has fancy stuff.

Yet, I always go there, if I’m in the area, and I always get the same thing.  Purely a conditioned response. Reflex.  I sometimes even go through a little thought process trying to tell myself to pass it by. It almost never works and I almost always end up there.

  • roast beef on a pumpernickel bagel with lettuce and onions (which they automatically serve with cole slaw and a pickle
  • Dr. Brown’s Black Cherry soda
  • a small bag of Rold Gold pretzels
  • …and on my way out, a black and white cookie which is probably about 4′ in diameter

I can’t begin to count the calories and, truth be told, I don’t care (almost).  I tell this story because there are dozens of little things that have been embedded into my life that are almost purely conditioned responses.

You would think that being a human and not being a dog that it would be easier to break the bad habits.  28 days and all that stuff.  I’m hear to tell you it ain’t that easy.