Monday Weigh In: Crap. 209.5 pounds, up a pound and a half from last week. Things are not moving in the right direction. However, today I stumbled upon some guidance from an unexpected source.
I’ve mentioned before that one of my favorite websites is deadspin.com due partly to the fact that I went to school with the founder of the site. Well today one of the writers discussed how he has lost 60 pounds over the last five months and gave his point by point directions on how he did it. You can find the article itself at http://deadspin.com/5545674/the-public-humiliation-diet-a-how+to.
(Like everything else on Deadspin you can pretty much assume that you will find something distasteful or objectionable in either the article itself or the comments. I probably should have put this disclaimer before the link but oh well, it’s the internet. The entire web is either objectionable or distasteful.)
Anyway, anyone who can lose 60 pounds in 5 months while being a blogger deserves my attention so here is my breakdown of his steps and my thoughts on what I am doing right and what I am doing wrong.
1) Buy a scale: I did that years ago so I’ve at least done this correctly. It is digital and only measures to the half pound. I know there are new ones that measure to a tenth of a pound but if you are trying to be that accurate then the idea of shaving off all of your hair in order to lose weight becomes a viable idea.
2) Weigh yourself daily: I’ve only been weighing myself weekly. I’ve heard different things about how often you should weigh yourself. Some people are behind the everyday approach since it keeps your weight front of mind and you can find out if you have fallen off the path quickly. On the other hand, there are a lot of day to day variations so it is really only in the long term that you see results. I’m going to switch to daily now because I am clearly not progressing using my method.
3) Post that weight daily on Twitter: Well, I do post my weight weekly on here. That does encourage me to try to work harder and hopefully I’ll pick up some support along the way as I lose weight. Again, I know that my weight just makes me overweight and not obese so it is not as though I am a contestant on The Biggest Loser. However, I am at least 20 pounds over my proper weight and all of that is being stored as belly fat so it is the most unhealthy thing imaginable. I just need to knock these pounds off. I’ll still just post the weekly number to the blog though because there is no way in the world that I am starting a Twitter feed.
4) Never eat after dinner: This is probably my biggest weakness. I’ve been eating a lot after dinner. Not just one light snack either; I mean like half a bag of chips or lots of chocolate chip cookies. Even my healthier snacks like dried fruit I just eat and eat until I’ve downed way more calories than I needed to right before I go to bed. In fact, I’ve been working out, showering, and then eating some more thus negating the entire purpose of the workout. No wonder I’m fat.
5) No snacks except for fruit: Drew mentions the diet idea that you should eat numerous small meals a day and dismisses it because they tend to turn into numerous large meals a day. I have to say I agree with him there even though a lot of people swear by the small meals idea. I still think a small snack every few hours is ok as long as it is sensible. Fruits, nuts, the occasional pickle (a stealth health food, pretty much 0 calories but alleviates your craving for salty snacks.) Basically I have to knock out the crap of chips and cookies and the like.
6) Don’t have seconds: This has never really been a problem for me. Understand that in college I weighed 145 pounds which is theoretically healthy for someone who is six-one but really wasn’t. I spent years of my life trying to gain weight. I still could work on portion size but one of the benefits of my lifestyle is I tend to make my meals for myself.
7) Don’t eat sweets: I am good at some of this and bad at other parts. I cut soda out of my diet years ago, which makes me wonder just what I would weigh today if you added in a couple of cans a day for half a decade. Chocolate and other candies are a serious weakness though. I don’t know why (well, I kind of do) but I had just been craving chocolate chip cookies these past few weeks and that simply hasn’t helped my weight. I’ve at least cut out the snacking on candy at work. If I can stop eating it at work and prevent myself from buying it at the grocery store I can do this.
8) Avoid carbs, but don’t go nuts about it: Yeah, I tend to eat a lot of bread. Philly is a pretzel town so we always have a lot of pretzels in our cafeteria or the office and they are really, really tasty. They are also carbriffic so that probably isn’t the best choice. I’ve also been having rice with most meals, which seemed healthy until I realized that I was having two servings of rice with every meal and that second serving was another 200 calories. When you start thinking of that in terms of time on a treadmill you begin to question a lot of your eating habits.
9) Drink unsweetened green tea: I don’t want to turn this into an ad for HonestTea but every fitness magazine I read swears by that brand. This is amazing because I sat through a presentation by those guys in business school and I didn’t expect them to be in business at the end of the year. I might try green tea since I never have but I’m really just trying to increase my water intake. The only (well, not really, see next point) other beverage I drink is decaf coffee black. Not too many calories there. True, there is no purpose in drinking decaf other than saying I enjoy drinking bitter hot water but that is the state that I am in.
10) Drastically cut down on boozing: Ok, so I do drink some beverages with calories. The interesting thing is I really have cut down on my drinking at least compared to my KC days. Back then I would be out four nights a week, mainly playing trivia or seeing concerts but always at a bar. I honestly can’t remember the last time I went to a bar out here. Still, I do imbibe so I should at least try to either control the amount or drink light beer. For the record though when drinking champagne everything goes out the window because it’s champagne.
11) Make sure everything you eat is awesome: This is where I could be so much better. Kim mentioned this weekend that I never make anything fresh. Everything comes in prepared meal formats or is in a bag where all I have to do is defrost and heat. In fact I don’t really cook as I mainly heat. I really think that if I spend time learning to cook and actually spend time in the grocery store buying ingredients for a meal that I will be much better off. This was one of my New Year’s resolutions. I should probably get working on it.
12) Exercise but understand that it is not the most important thing: I spent 45 minutes this evening working out on EA Active and theoretically burned 377 calories. For those wondering, the workout consists mainly of cardio boxing, step aerobics, resistance band exercises and body weight exercises. I don’t know if I can trust the calorie count but when I am done I am a sweaty mess and am spent so it is a good workout. I mention this because a vending machine size bag of baked Lays potato chips is 130 calories. You know, one of those bags that you scarf down in two minutes. Those two minutes of eating that leave you just as hungry afterwards were equivalent to a third of my workout tonight. You have to exercise and I do enjoy it and can already see myself getting more fit but really I have to focus on my diet. For some reason it wasn’t until I did this math that I realized just how important that is.
13) Take a fiber supplement: Ah, my Fiber One bars. You haven’t lived until you get a third of your daily requirement of fiber in one granola bar. Fiber is one of those requirements for weight loss but it really doesn’t make you very popular. Trust me on this one.
So the good news is that even on those steps that I’m not following I at least agree with them and understand that I should work towards it. I’m happy with my workout routine and have begun to feel the benefits already. Basically I just need to cut out the snacking, eat more fruits and vegetables, reduce my portion sizes and stay focused on my end goal, which is to look damn awesome in a tux when I get married next year. It’s not going to be easy but I will get it done.
No comments:
Post a Comment