Category: exercise

Diet-wise, I’m doing great. I ended last week right on the nose, 1700 calories per day, averaged over the week. My “bonus” calories were consumed in the form of a molasses cookie from Starbucks… Mmmmmm.

Exercise-wise, also good. Went running with friends last night (see previous post) along the waterfront and the Esplanade. My “trainer” said only 2 miles, but I ran the same route as my friends, starting on the west side at Columbia, running north until the Steel Bridge, crossing the river then running south to the Hawthorne Bridge and crossing back to the west side to finish. Caleb thinks it’s around 3 miles, Jake thinks it’s less than that. I’m too lazy to Mapquest it, and I’m too cheap to buy a GPS. My friends being who they are, they were full of ways to figure out exactly how far it is, but it’s not that important to me.

The important thing is that I did the whole distance and only spent about 2 minutes of the time walking. It’s the farthest distance I’ve ever run; the first of many milestones in my budding running career!

And all this is just buildup to the main news… (cue drumroll)…

This morning I weighed in at 184 lbs!

Go, me! I’m less than 10 pounds from my goal weight! At the rate I’m losing, I’ll reach goal very soon.

Of course, as my weight drops, so does my idea of what is possible. A couple of years ago, I never would have thought that I could have done this well, but now that I’m doing it, I’m thinking that I could go even lower. Is this the beginning of an eating disorder? I’m mostly kidding… but regardless of where I end up in terms of weight, I’m pretty happy with what I’ve done so far. It’s a huge confidence-booster for me.

This post is just for me, to keep track. A friend who is a professional runner made up a training schedule for me, to get me ready for the Shamrock Run, and instead of printing it out, I wanted it somewhere handy:

Brian,
Okay. Here is a schedule.

• Monday – Run waterfront ~ 2 miles *moderate effort
• Tuesday – Do 30 minutes elliptical and 30 minutes bike or swim (no weight bearing exercise).
• Wednesday – Run Terwilliger *Goal is to go up hill 2miles/down hill 2 miles, even at slower pace
• Thursday – OFF (if you feel a need to workout, do upper-body!!!)
• Friday – Run somewhere you like; * 3 miles. Within each mile, do 2 “bursts” of 60 seconds each. Total 6 bursts in 3 miles. *Should be a hard effort.
• Saturday – Run waterfront ~ 3 miles *easy effort (goal is to just finish the 3 miles without walking! Don’t get crazy!)
• Sunday – OFF you deserve day of treating yourself nice after this week of workouts.

Did I mention before that I’ve switched to counting calories? ‘Cause I have, as of last Monday. And it’s gotten my weight moving downward again. Plus I get to eat bread and noodles and pasta again, which is probably a good thing. At least my friends will stop making fun of my diet… OK, they won’t, but that’s what friends are for, right? I just keep pointing to the results — At the end of January, I was 193.5 lbs, and today I weighed in at 186.0, meaning in four weeks I dropped almost 2 lbs per week. Not bad for a “fad” diet.

Of course, the proof is in keeping the weight off. That’s one of the reasons I switched to another diet. It’s how I keep interested; finding new ways to tweak and obsess over numbers and figures. I have a spreadsheet now that I use to track daily calories, and I’m banking the extra calories every day to give myself a reward at the end of the week.

I figure, with all the working out I do, and the walking, and taking the stairs at work (my office is on the 8th floor, and I also provide support at a 7 story building plus four other locations downtown), etc. etc., I burn around 2200 calories per day. I’m allowing myself 1700 calories per day, a deficit that should lead to a pound of weight lost every week (500 calories * 7 days = 3500 calories).

But for this first week (which isn’t over), I’m averaging 1598 calories per day. Is that too little? Am I hurting myself? Don’t know. Some nights I’ve gone to bed hungry, it’s true — the days I only ate about 1450 calories per day (those are the days that have dragged my average down, I’ll admit). So it’s likely that I could be less strict and eat a bit more.

The problem is that I tend to have a huge lunch, which doesn’t leave many calories for dinner. It’s hard to find something filling that’s only 200-300 calories. I’ll have to work on a) reducing the size of my lunches, and b) finding lower-calorie dinners.

Exercise:

Ran two miles this morning! Whoo-hoo! Felt pretty good. I did less walking this time. I ran the entire first mile (after warming up for 5 minutes) then walked two blocks, then started running back. I couldn’t quite keep running back, though, and had to walk a couple of times. Finally (but before the halfway point back) I decided that I would run the block, then when crossing the street I would slow to a walk. And that did it; I could maintain that pace all the way back home.

Oh, and I did some calisthenics (pushups, stomach crunches, stretches) before running, too.

I’m kinda worried about the Shamrock Run. It’s in two weeks, and I can’t yet run continuously for more than a mile. But I’m going to keep working it.

Runners, it seems, eat a high-carb diet. Maybe my Atkins diet hurt my performance? Oh, well, I’m back on bread again, so hopefully that will help.

I’ve got 500 calories “extra” so far, and it’s sooooooo tempting to go eat a huge chocolate chip cookie. Mmmm… chocolate chip…

Let’s get the diet-y and exercise-y stuff out of the way: Weight is holding steady at 188 for the past two days. Whoo-HOO! It means that my weight has dropped below 190 for the first time since, oh, I don’t know, High School? It feels great.

I’ve switched to counting calories, although the calories I eat are still mostly Atkins-y. F’rinstance, I had BBQ Beef Brisket for lunch. I’m aiming for 1700 calories per day, which is approximately 500 fewer per day than my body burns, working out to a one-pound loss per week.

I happen to think that the Atkins diet is just a sneaky way to restrict your calorie intake, as counter-intuitive as that seems to people unfamiliar with the low-carb diet. “What?” they shriek, “you’re eating nothing but fat and bacon! How can you possibly be eating fewer calories?! That’s just not right!” Truth is, though, I do eat vegetables; Salads, green beans, broccoli, all good for me and included in my diet. Atkins is more about restricting white flour and sugar (and other starches, like potatos or corn or rice) than it is about stuffing your face full of bacon and pork rinds.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

Hey, a tangent. Where was I..? Oh, right.

Exercise-wise, I’m doing great. Went running with some friends on Monday (to celebrate my last Monday off; schedule change, it mostly sucks), and managed to not hold them back too much. I went about 2 miles, which doesn’t sound like much until you realize it was uphill. We were running from Duniway Park up Terwilliger Blvd, and then back down. My faster friend, Jake, ran ahead and covered the first mile in seven minutes, give or take. He stopped around where there’s some stairs leading up from the road to some building. (Sorry these descriptions are so vague; I’m not that familiar with the area). Jake missed the stairs and ran past, then stopped and came back to me. I had been running and mostly keeping up with Caleb, but Caleb had pulled ahead of me by then. Jake reached me, then we continued up to the stairs, which Jake promptly ran up.

I tried to run, but ended up plodding up the stairs one by one. At the top, Jake asked me if I was tired.

Dumb question. But, actually, I didn’t feel that bad. No pain, just short of breath.

On the way down, I met and talked to a girl who works at the hospital on the hill. She was dressed all in black and had on some seriously clogg-y looking shoes, but had some trail shoes sticking out of her backpack, which prompted my conversation. She seems nice. I ended up walking the rest of the way back to Duniway Park, where Jake was waiting for me.

Yesterday I ran 6 miles on the elliptical trainer, and today I rested. Tomorrow, back to the elliptical trainer, unless the rain lets up in the morning; then I’ll go running again.

Diet: Still not so good. I’ve got to do something different, I think. I’m cheating almost every day. I’m giving myself a 3.5 out of 10 for the past couple of days.

Exercise: Good to great. Ran 6 miles on the elliptical yesterday morning, then walked over 3 miles (from my apartment to SE 12th and Division) after work. And that doesn’t include the .4 miles from my house to the bus stop that I walk at least twice a day. I’m a walking fiend.

Weight-wise, I’ve been stuck at 190 lbs for the past couple of weeks. I managed to get the scale to read 189.5 this morning, but that was after my “official” weighing (I always weigh myself immediately after waking up and going to the bathroom. And I’m naked) so it doesn’t count, really.

Note: the weight figure is accurate, though!

Oops.

I just checked both Yahoo Maps and Mapquest, and it was only a 2-mile run. My bad.

I remember checking a couple of weeks ago, and the 2-mile number stuck in my head. Guess it was the round-trip number, but I misremembered it as the one-way mileage. Then, this morning (my first run not on a machine in weeks), I doubled what I thought was the one-way mileage.

Went for a 4-mile run this morning before work. I weighed in at a slim 190 lbs. for two days in a row. I’ve now lost 35 lbs. since starting the diet in November, and am down 50 lbs. from my all-time high of 240 lbs. 4 years ago.

I’m in the best shape I’ve ever been in my life, and it’s only going to get better.

Ironic that I still worry about my health, then, isn’t it?

No, I’m not ready to talk about it yet.

Just got back from the gym. Today was weigh-in day.

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaand the score for this week:

• I lost another 3 lbs!

Whoo-HOOO! I’m below 200 lbs. again! Last time I weighed this much was about two years ago, which was about a year after starting my exercise plan for the first time. A reason (not necessarily the reason, mind you, just a reason) that I gained some of it back is because I started dating a lot more, and lost focus on my fitness. Several of the women I dated did not put an emphasis on exercise and diet.

I’ve learned that I need to include people who exercise and eat right in my circle of friends so I don’t lose sight of it again.

Just got back from the gym. Today was my weigh-in day. And this weeks’ tally:

I lost another 3 lbs! Whoo-HOO!

• Total weight loss since starting the Atkins diet and exercise routine: 24 lbs.
• Current weight: 201 lbs.
• Body-to-mass index (BMI): 32.0 (29.9 is considered the high end of “Normal”)

Go, me!