Week 10 Results- Merry Christmas

Hello everyone! I wanted to make a quick update for my weekly results. This week, I was able to go to the gym 5 days and was able to stick with the diet.

I had to cut the gym visits short a few times this past week and ended up pulling a muscle in my leg tryng to get some extra work out on Friday.

Its healing up nicely and I fully expect to get to the gym a few ties this next week.

This week, I am down to 197.2 LBS. This is a loss of almost 2 LBS from last week.

As this is the last Sunday in December, I am please to post that I have hit my End of December goal of 200 LBS as of last week.

Have a wonderful Christmas!

This Blog

 The reason I keep this blog is to keep myself accountable for everything I do with this diet and exercise. Keeping a real time log of each weekly weigh in, articles I find interesting and what I am doing to lose this weight gives me the ability to review what worked and what hasn't.

Making this public and updating facebook and twitter with each update allows friends to monitor what I am doing and celebrate my successes with me. My hope is that my story will be an inspiration for those who are also struggling to lose weight. On my 26th birthday, I was in the worst shape of my life. At this point, ten weeks later, I am coming close to being the lowest I have weighed since I was a high school freshman.

This being said, I recently came across an article from Men's Health that said that keeping your diet and fitness routine a secret could help you lose weight by avoiding those all too common 'one piece of cake won't hurt' and 'you have done well all week, you can take a break on Saturday' type of temptations.

My thought is if you don't have the will power to say 'Thanks, but I can't. Maybe next time.' OR if you do have that piece of cake, stay an extra 20 minutes at the gym to make it not matter, a diet might not work for you. . .

Diets are TOUGH. Sticking to a diet where you have to cut out most of your favorite delicious foods is even tougher.

I am glad you all are enjoying the blog. Have a wonderful Christmas and/or Hanukkah! 

My Motivation

I know that I have mentioned this a few times, but I am getting married in August 2012. I fiancee is a wonderful woman who has been by my side in good times and bad, prosperous and times when I didn't have a job, and no matter how big I was, she has loved me and I her.

In early October, we went out with a few friends and as friends with fancy smart phones will do, they took a picture of us. When I looked at this picture, it was the final straw. I needed to lose weight. Not for myself, but for Ashley. Ashley who has done everything she could to make our wedding wonderful. I know that wedding pictures last lifetimes and I wanted to look back on our wedding photos with pride, not "Oh my God!! Ashley is beautiful and I am a blob in a tux next to her."

I wanted to post the picture that finally got my butt off the couch and into the gym.

My face was rounder than I have ever seen it and a shirt I had just purchased and wore one time prior, no longer fit.

This weekend, we went out and got smart fancy phones of our own. With it, my fiancee took a picture of me. While I still need to lose weight, the 20 + lbs that I have lost is evident.

While not looking directly at the camera, you can see that my face has lost some weight and believe me, clothes are definitely fitting better.

Snack Time

If you are anything like me, you love to snack. I know I sure do! Snacking away has not led to a very healthy lifestyle. Craving some candy or chips or something even worse (cake, brownies, sugar laden soda), can cause my diet to take a 180 straight into gaining weight (and not the good muscle weight I hear so much about)!

In the past, I would eat tons of sugar or salty chips (sugar in the form of carbs) then sit around watch tv and go to bed. No Activity! No calories burned! This is how I was able to balloon to 230 LBS.

The problem here is that I still love to snack. At work, at home, long drives, to get rid of stress (when I am not at the gym), snacking still comes to mind. What is the worst part of it all, is that I am not even hungry, most of the time I do have a desire to snack on something. I learned early on in this diet that I am very bad at stopping myself from snacking. What I can control is how much and on what I am snacking.

Yogurt has become my go to evening / after work our snack. I will cut up a piece of fruit, throw some almonds in there and you have a delicious, crunchy, healthy and low carb snack! If yogurt is not available I will eat a pickle, some almonds or a piece of fruit. Choosing the healthy snack option is definitely the way to go.

December 9

December 9 was a BIG day. My little brother turned 21. In addition to his birthday celebration- a friend at work also celebrated his birthday Friday at work.

With all of the excitement, I was not able to stick with the diet. Hopefully one day of a few extra carbs won't affect the end results this week.

Getting Started -- New to Working Out

To say that I am happy with my results after 7 weeks is an understatement. I am thrilled with how much weight I have lost and that I keep losing it.

Here is what I am not doing:

• I am not starving myself
• I am not taking any diet drug, diet shake, appetite suppressant
• I am not 'killing myself' at the gym for 3 hours a day

Here is what I am doing:

• Diet
• Limiting the amount of large carb items (20 or more carbs for a apart of a meal) to TWO a day. This included sugar, bread, pasta, cereal, granola, oat meal, potatoes, sweet potatoes, pastries and bananas
• Portion/ snacking control. Rather than have another mini meal, I will grab a yogurt, piece of cheese, piece of fruit, pickle, or (if under my carb limit) a bowl of oatmeal as an after dinner snack.
• I should note that I have never been a big breakfast eater. I do snack on Almonds and get many calories from the cream in my 3 cups of morning/ afternoon coffee
• Exercise
• My goal is to lose weight, not become John Cena in 6 months (though that would be pretty awesome!)
• Building up your endurance is the best way to get started. 
• Start on a treadmill at 2.0 MPH for 15 minutes, then longer and a little faster.
• I have been losing fat through burning calories. My favorite way to burn calories to do the treadmill at a slow pace and a high incline.
• I will typically spend 70 minutes (60 minutes PLUS 10 minute cool down) on the treadmill and follow this with 20 minutes on a stationary bike or at weight training machines. 
• I will keep a slow/ moderately slow pace for the stationary bike OR do various machines at a small weight (30 -70 lbs depending on machine). 
• On the weight training machines, I will between 50 and 200 reps at the smaller weight and then move to the next machine. I focus on my legs and my back so that I can maintain the endurance of the treadmill without throwing out these important muscles
• Getting Started
• It may seem obvious, but these are the steps we took to start this routine:
• Stop buying carbs. It took us a good week or two to ween off of carbs. Stopping cold turkey (you can definitely eat cold turkey on this diet!) might knock your system through a loop or the cravings might be too much to handle.
• Get someone to go to the gym with you. Most gyms will give you a couple free passes for friends. Starting off with a friend or family member will help you keep to the routine
• Set a goal. Having my goal of losing 47 lbs or being at 175lbs by May 1st allowed me to really get a full picture of what I need to accomplish each month to reach these goals.

Good Luck

Exercise VS Stress

Going to the gym about 5 times a week for seven weeks teaches you a few things about yourself. It shows you how can make yourself disciplined enough to spend hours at the gym, rather than on the couch eating. One thing I learned is that going to the gym takes my mind off of stress.

Much better than smoking, over drinking, shopping, and my previous problem, eating; going to the gym relieves most of my day-to-day stress. Focusing on the routine and to a smaller account, the blog has helped keep me motivated to lose the weight.

If you ask anyone that knows me, I stress out over things too much. I mean WAAAYYYYY too MUCH!

I worry about things outside of my control: "What is going on in politics?" "What is happening in the economy?" And I worry too much about things I can barely control: "Are we going over on our Wedding budget?" "How Can I be better at my job?"

Money, job, family concerns all stress me out. In the past I would turn to food (sweets, greasy food, carbs galore) to combat these stresses, and maintaining my sanity.

While never being completely overwhelmed or consumed by stress, I do stress about things both big and small more than I should. I'm still the same 'worry wart' that I was when I was a kid.

What I found out about myself is that exercise is a great stress reliever. Spending an hour on the treadmill and focusing on the workout takes my mind off all the troubles in the world. It is a great feeling to come out of a work out burning 700 calories and all the stress from the day. Burning calories, losing weight and stress all at the same time, sounds pretty good to me.

So I will continue to go out there and hit that treadmill hard so I can shed these 30 last pounds and the everyday stress that bogs us all down!

Week 6 Results

Sorry for the lack of posts this week everyone.

As I mentioned before, I had two Thanksgivings this week. This means that I get to have twice as much turkey, stuffing and the fixin's!! This also means having to manage with twice as many carbs. I decided well before this festive American Holiday that my diet would have to, let me repeat that HAVE TO go on a shelf a couple of times this week.

This week should be summarized as the good, the bad and the painful.

The bad:
On Thursday then again on Saturday, I overloaded on carbohydrates, both simple and complex. Ranging from mayonnaise and potatoes through bread stuffing to my favorite of favorites, pumpkin pie, the carbs were there en masse! Coupled with these two days of deliciousness, I was unable to go to the gym both of these days.
The painful:
After weeks of dieting and watching what I eat, two days of over eating has caused a painful stomach ache. Though i am layed out at home this morning, plenty of rest should knock this thing out.

In preparation at the gym, I kicked it up a notch this week. I discovered that if you max out the incline on the treadmill, you can burn upwards of 800 calories at the gym.
I start the workout at an incline of 15 at 2.5 miles an hour increasing it up to 3.5 miles an hour over a FIFTEEN minute interval. Then I will go back and forth between 2.5 and 3.5 MPH and decrease the incline 1 full degree every ten minutes.
At 15 minutes, I decrease to 14 degrees
At 25 minutes, I decrease to 13 degrees
At 35 minutes, I decrease to 12 degrees
At 45 minutes, I decrease to 11 degrees
At 55 minutes, I decrease to 10 degrees

Over 5 days of going to the gym this week, I burned between 500 calories and over 1000 between the treadmill and other cardio. This extra hard workout was worth it, but was painful getting started and with a work schedule like mine, very difficult to get through every day.

The good:
Besides the excellent food, of course, which I could go on about for days; the premptive workouts, keeping to the diet on the rest of the week (despite the promise of left overs) and getting more than one night of 8 + hours of sleep, I have positive results this week.

At weigh in this morning, I am at 205.4 pounds which means I lost .4 LBS this week. Not great results for a normal week, but seeing as this is Thanksgiving week, I am more than happy with these results.

Today also marks the last Sunday of November, which means that at 205.4 LBS, I have exceeded my goals for Novmeber! My goal for December 1st is 210 LBS. This also means that I am 5.4 LBS from my Decmeber goal, but with Chrstmas, family, friends and work functions, hitting that 200 LB mark may be the most difficult pat yet.

Overall, I have less than 31 LBS to go! Having maxed out in May of 2011 at 230 LBS and starting the diet in the beginning of October at 222 LBS, I feel much healthier than I have felt in a long time. 17 pounds is about one third of the way there, and I have no idea if the next 17 will be easier or more difficult to lose.

Week 2 - Complete

Two weeks into the new diet and exercise lifestyle, and I am feeling good! I call this a new lifestyle, because it is. For the first time in two weeks, I exceeded my allotted carb amount for the day. This Saturday night, I allowed myself a 3rd carb. While this might not seem like a big deal, there was much convincing of myself to do this. I went out with a number of friends yesterday, many of them groomsmen, and of course, we had to have a couple drinks and go out to dinner.
Adding together my two drinks:
Bacardi and Coke Zero (no carbs in the coke Zero) and a Twisted Tea (my favorite beer alternative)
and my dinner:
Grilled Shrimp Tacos (awesome, if I may add)
This adds up to more not allowed carbs in a short period (about 4 hours) than I have had in almost an entire month.

Hopefully, I won't find an excuse every week to take a break from the diet, but I know a couple that will for sure be treated very cautiously- Thanksgiving and Christmas. I will talk about these in a future post.

Here are this week's stats:
Gym

• I went to the gym FIVE out of SEVEN days this week. Spending over 90 minutes each time. 
• Week 1 - I had family come to the gym with me, I can bring a friend with me unlimited numbers of times, three of the five days I worked out which helped keep me there longer.
• Week 2- My fiancee was able to go with me once, which had similar outcomes, but I have noticed that I peak at about an hour and a half if I am there alone
• I have not figured out if the bike is helping or a waste of time. While an excellent source for cardio, miles on the bike and miles on the treadmill do not result in the same number of calories burned/ mile. I may change my routine to focus on treadmill, other cardio machines, and weights and leave the bike for weekends when I can get a full two hours in.
• Weights: I have added a number of weight machines to my workout, most working out my legs and back. 
• I gain a lot of weight in my legs. Working out the various muscles in my legs, will help tone the muscle and shed this weight.
• I want to focus on my back, so when I begin doing abdominal exercises or more extensive workouts, I do not want to hurt myself.
• I have started adding in different weight machines from time to time, but again not a focus

Diet

• Other than one extra carb out on 'Boy's Night' - I have stuck to the diet. 
• My hope is to add more vegetables to the diet and increase the variety of my lunches for future weeks, I ended up having lots of yogurt two days this week due to my lack of preparedness

Continued Goals/ Things to Work on

• During the week, with this new schedule, I have not been as attentive to cleaning the apartment as I should be- dishes, picking up, laundry, etc. have all been put aside one time or another due to my new schedule
• Vitamin C- I need to ingest more Vitamin C and maybe get a flu shot over the next couple weeks with everyone around me getting sick. I have fought off a cold thus far, but can see it coming in the near future.
• Schedule. I want to try to make it to the gym 5 days a week, if not more. I will have to figure out how to structure this when I travel for work.

Week 2 Results
At my Sunday morning weigh in, I was at 211.4 LBS. This is a loss of just under 3 LBS for a week of work outs and diet.
As this is October 30, 2011, I can say proudly: October Goal: 218 LBS- Achieved!
Upcoming Goals:

• By November 1- 218 lbs
• By December 1- 210 lbs
• By January 1, 2012- 200 lbs
• By March 1, 2012- 185 lbs
• By May 1, 2012- 175 lbs

 At this point, I am less than 37 lbs from my goal and 26 weeks to go to May 1. If I can average 2 lbs a week, I can achieve my end goal.

Cravings and Advancements

I have gone longer on this diet (over three weeks at this point) than I have ever dieted in my life. During the first week, the everyday mass-carb consumption was missed. Pasta and rice are easy and quick to whip up, cooking veggies and a full dinner take time. Lucky for me, my wonderful fiancee filled the first two weeks with carb alternative meals that kept me from thinking about carbs until around much later in the evening.

I am a snacker. Yogurt and granola, a bowl of oatmeal or cereal, left over dinner, or ice cream have been my go to snacks at around 9:30 every night for years. This seems to be a habit I have not been able to quit and is next on my list. Before you accuse me of cheating on the diet, given my list of snack items, I have been turning to yogurt sans granola or fruit, and the occasional second helping of dinner.

This makes me believe that I need to reverse this and eat breakfast more often. maybe starting the day with a piece of fruit or yogurt will help me from this late night hunger. Let's hope anyway.

This week, I realized that it was time for me to give up latte's completely forgetting how sugary and bad for me they are, I usually hit Sbux during lunch for a coffee and the occasional latte. While Coffee has a number of health benefits for men and women (even more if guys throw cinnamon in their coffee over sugar), sugary, foamy lattes are not, in general good for you.

This got me thinking about my two weaknesses and what I miss most about not caring about what I ate.
1. Sweets- I overly enjoy pastries, donuts, cake, etc. Too much of these obviously helped lead to my weight ballooning. Regardless, I love sweets. While incorporating a brownie, or birthday cake into the '2 carbs a day' diet, I refuse to make this an everyday or every other day excuse. As the diet continues and holidays come closer, I am sure I will wish for more pumpkin pie, caramel apples, and those free Sbux pastry samples.

2. Soda- I like pop. or soda, or sodapop or Coke. What ever you call it, high fructose corn syrup, carbonate water, cola flavoring and the rest  . . . I enjoy these carbonated beverages much more than I should. It has been over a month since I have had an actual Coca-Cola (in the Red Can, with the fake real sugar). Luckily for me, there are the Zero and Max versions of name brand sodas, where I can get my non-coffee/ tea caffeine fix. These versions have 0 carbs, but also have 0 nutritional significance.


Despite these challenges and temptations, I have been able to make it the gym 3 of 5 nights this week and plan to close out the week strong with two more solid gym visits.

Until next time . . .

Week 1 - Complete

Today is October 23,2011 which marks the beginning of Week 2 of the full diet and exercise program that I have developed to drop weight for my wedding with my beautiful fiancee, Ashley, on August 11, 2012. I want to be around for a long time and I have never been 'in shape' in my life. The only shape I have been is round and I have a keg rather than a 6 pack.

Saying this is Week 2, may be a bit of a misnomer though. The truth is that we, my fiancee and I, started the diet about a week into October and I did sign up for and go to the gym one time before this week (Friday, October 14).

I feel that it is easier moving forward with the blog and the diet looking towards my goals and using Sunday, October 16, as the start day for the diet and exercise program, as that was the day of my first weigh in.

Here is a brief summary of the diet, routine, and goals, if you have missed any of my previous posts.

• My fiancee and I are on a low carb, high fresh fruit and vegetable diet. Weening down our carb intake. 
• Ideally, we would like to get to about 70 g of carbs a day, while shunning most simple carbs (candy, sugar, honey) all together. 
• Like many things I have found, there is no real answer to what is the ideal amount of carbs. The Atkins diet calls for 20 g of 'net carbs' (Carbs minus fiber) a day or less. Atkins Site Regarding Carbs
• A number of diets to maintain a health lifestyle recommend 120 total grams of carbohydrates a day Low Carbs on About.com 
• One concern that we both have is the negative responses to a high protein diet Negatives of a Low Carb Diet
• Our first challenge is limiting our simple and wheat related carbs (bread, wraps, pasta, oatmeal, cereal and granola) as well as potatoes to 2 a day.
• I am going to the gym, a minimum 4 times a week. Doing a combination the first 4 weeks of 70% cardio, 30% weight training. 
• For the Month of October, my goal was to get to 218 LBS by October 31 and 210 LBS by November 30.
• Starting Weight: 221 LBS
• Current weight: 214.2 LBS

One week in and then some

After one full week of the diet, I lost one pound. dropping to 221.2 pounds. After that week, I decided to join a gym- something I had never considered in my life.

The diet is not nearly as difficult as we would have thought and we are doing well. Lots of fruits and vegetables. Lots of squash.

We did have one issue entering into week 2, my 26th birthday. With all birthdays, there is a certain amount of sweets that come with it. At work, my wonderful colleagues got me all sorts of cupcakes and my wonderful Ashley made me a Harry Potter/ Hogwarts themed cake.

While the diet is in full swing, the awesome power of cake and cupcakes can be overwhelming. Ashley and I have done well thus far and I am looking forward to the gym membership.

The Gym:
Thus far, I have gone twice. My first experience was limited to cardio and after about 45 minutes of machines, and sweat I was done. My second adventure was over 90 minutes long and was much more involved.

As I continue to go, I am sure that I will talk more about the work outs, the weigh ins and the diet.