One of many Ways to Eat, but it Works for Me

Over the past year I have been struggling with a tear in the meniscus of my knee which has not only limited my activity in many ways when in flared up, but also has been my excuse to eat more than I should. Due to this fact I put on a fair amount of weight. Now to be fair most of that came on after I had surgery to fix the problem which was just before the Christmas season so with all the extra food I as very limited in activity through that time. By the beginning of the year I was able to return to my regular sort of workouts, and I did, starting the Turbulence Training Transformation Contest early in January.

Initially I did well with my approach of fasting one of two days a week and counting my calories near maintenance on the other days using Myfitnesspal. However, late in January and into early February we had 4 deaths in our church. The added stress, not to mention the luncheons following the funerals, resulted in a standstill on my weight loss and even a slight gain, although it was all water weight.

Looking at things following this, I realized that the stress was not going to go away for a while since I still had after care with the families of those who died, and the emotions of having people I have known and come to care for over the past 15 years no longer being around to visit. Part of the problem was I had too many options eating wise.

Now don't get me wrong, I love options. I love being able to eat what I want as long as I number 1, fit it in my calories, and number 2, fit it in my macro nutrient profile. However, when I was stressed and busy, those options became an excuse to either not log what I was eating, or make bad choices.

Enter the "One Day Diet." Not meaning a diet that does everything in one day, but one that is basically a framework for eating one day which one just continues with. http://www.getresponse.com/archive/17cheatfoods_rpt/The-ONE-Day-Diet-step-by-step-instructions-inside-9897175.html

I had received a e-mail, several actually, concerning this early in January; but had disregarded it since what I was doing was working with my life. I knew it would work. I just did not need the change. After all the deaths, I needed the change desperately. So I decided to try it. It cuts back the options, and makes it much easier to eat because I don't have to devote a lot of time to planning out my menus.

I have done it now for a little over a week, and it is working wonderfully. Took off the water weight, and I am back to losing consistently.

The lesson from this is that while pretty much any diet will work, you have to find the one that works for your life now. I will likely get back to my previous approach in the future when things get more normal, but for now, this One Day Diet works well for me. Find what works for you and do it, but don't be afraid to change it up if your situation changes.

Tomorrow Is the Day

Tomorrow I will be 46, and in celebration I plan to cycle 46 miles from my home in Exeter, Ontario to my mother's house in London, Ontario. No the direct ride there is not 46 miles, it is only 30, so I had to map out a longer less direct route. I have done the 30 mile rides 3-4 times in the last month or so, and several other 20-25 mile rides as well. Having started back in 2009 before getting sick at 255 or more pounds, and completely sedentary, for me this is a major goal to reach. If I do it, I plan to continue to celebrate every year adding a mile until I cannot do it any longer. If I have the energy when I finish, I might even bang out 46 bodyweight squats, 46 push-ups, and who knows maybe 46 of some other bodyweight exercise as well. At this point the weather looks to be cooperating with a forecast for clear and pretty much windless weather. Now to wait and see what tomorrow brings.

Bodyweight Workout July 3, 2012

I have been putting this together for a while now, but decided to try it this evening. It was pretty good. I only got through it 3 rounds, which is probably more of a reflection of my current fitness level since I have been laying off the workouts for a couple of weeks. Hopefully this will signal getting back into it.

Here is the workout:

Day #1 Workout A
Warm-up
Foam Rolling (only first time through)
BW Squats x12
Push-ups x8
Stick-ups x10
Jumping Jacks x20
Lying Hip Extensions x12
Plank 30 seconds
(Rest 30 seconds and Repeat)

Workout
Prisoner Squats x10
Mountain Climber x15
Chin-up x5
Elevated Push-up x6/side
Lunge x8/side
Spiderman Climb x10/side
Inverted Rows x8
SB Leg Curl x12
Jumping Jacks x15
Rocca Press x6

(Rest 1 minute and repeat up to 3 more times)


Finish with stretching of stiff muscle groups.

Tips to Help you Stay within your Calories

One of the things that most if not all people on calorie restricted diets will run into are times when they just seem hungry even though they have eaten. For some this is a constant struggle. For others it happens from time to time with a day or two where they just don't feel satisfied no matter how much they eat. When those times come what can you do to help you stay within your calorie allowance?

First if you do overeat, don't beat yourself up. Instead get back to eating well as quickly as possible. The only true failure is when you give up completely. A momentary failure will not destroy everything. In fact you can use this as a learning experience.

That leads to the first piece of advice. Examine what you have eaten to see if it might be the cause of this hunger. If there is something that was different from your normal eating that may have been the trigger. In general triggers can be sugary foods, foods low in protein and fiber, or for some food with artificial sweeteners. If you ate foods like this they may have triggered your hunger. If you see a food, even one not mentioned here, that may be linked to your hunger because it is different from what you normally eat., cut it out for a while and see if it helps.

Related to this look at what you are eating. Is it high in fiber and nutrients? Are you eating sufficient protein and fat. Often "diet food" is high in carbohydrates, but very low in fat and protein. The reason for low fat is both the misunderstanding the fat will make you fat, and the fact that fat has a lot more calories per gram than both carbohydrates and protein. The thing is protein and fat will both help you feel full longer. My personal preference for them is 40% of your Calories from carbohydrates, 30% of them from protein and 30% from fats combined with eating at least 30 grams of fiber (more is better).

The other possible trigger is emotional stress. Many people, myself included, have an unhealthy tendency to deal with stress by eating. When stress comes, they want to eat and eat and eat. If this is you I can suggest what often works for me. I exercise. I take that stress energy, and put it toward something positive for my health. Often this will be enough to get rid of that desire to eat. So do something physical.

All this is fine, you may say, but what about when I am hungry? Is there anything I can do to help? As stated exercise can help, especially more endurance types like jogging, cycling or even a long walk. Also try drinking several large glasses of straight water. Sometimes people mistake thirst for hunger, and water will deal with the thirst not to mention fill your stomach. Another thing that can help is brushing your teeth with a minty toothpaste. This will often remove the desire to eat, and will make food that you might eat after brushing taste much less appetizing.

Hopefully these hints help you. Do you have any to add?

It Is Working

Just a quick update. My knee is recovering well, and the approach of putting together an upper body only exercise program has helped me keep on track with my eating. Other than Saturday when I attended a 50th wedding anniversary of good friends of ours. Then I took the approach I usually do, eat and enjoy as it is only one day. Taking this approach has worked in the past, and it did this time as well. I actually lost a pound over the weekend.

Upper Body Exercise During Injury

Needing some sort of exercise program for while I am recovering from the flare up of my meniscus that won't aggravate my knee further I decided to put together an upper body only exercise program.

In designing this I took several things into consideration.

First, what upper body exercises do not require stabilisation from my legs. Things like standing exercises are out for sure, and kneeling exercises like stability ball roll-outs or one arm dumbell rows may be a problem. After some experimentation I found that stuff from knees like one arm rows and stability ball roll outs work fine.

Second, I want to make sure to work more than just one muscle group. This can't be all pressing exercises. It needs to work chest, back, shoulders, and ideally core muscles as well. Of all these the core might be the hardest to work well since core exercises often require at least a partial use of legs.

Third, I want to get my heart rate up. Interval training is out for now so I need to design the workout in a metabolically challenging manner. Thus some sort of cardio strength training would be good.

With this in mind I decided on three supersets with no rest between exercises, but rest between the supersets would do the trick. Exercise wise I settled on the following:

With each superset go through all exercises without resting between them. When the superset is completed rest for one minute, and repeat.

Warm-up going through Superset 1 twice at 50% of weight you plan to use. Rest one minute after each time through.

SUPERSET 1

DB bench press x10

Pull-ups x8

SB rollout x12

(Go through Superset 3 times with 1 minute rest after each time)

SUPERSET 2

Seated DB shoulder press x10

Supermans x10, (3 second hold)

One-arm rows x8/side

(Go through Superset 3 times with 1 minute rest after each time)

SUPERSET 3

Incline DB press x10

Hanging leg raise x10

Reverse DB raise x10

(Go through Superset 3 times with 1 minute rest after each time)

Finish with stretching.

Injuries

For the past year or so I have been dealing with a torn meniscus. For those who don't know what that is, it is part of the cartilage in the knee. It is not a constant problem, but flares up when the torn piece moves out of position thus causing a fair amount of pain, and locking up my knee.

Yesterday that torn piece did just that, and while the pain is not overwhelming, it is substantial. At this point any lower body work is out, so I am going to try to focus on upper body stuff. Carrying weight around is also out, so changing the plates on the barbell will be limited. I plan to focus mainly on bodyweight and dumbell exercises since I can have my powerblocks right where I am working out so I can change the weight easily without walking around with them.

All this is meant to lead up to my main comment. My past experience is that when I am injured and unable to work out, my eating gets really bad. I eat way to many calories, and can't seem to stop. This has been very unhelpful in maintaining my weight loss, and since I have had these flare ups fairly frequently has resulted in fairly substantial gains. With this pattern in mind, instead of repeating it yet again I thought I would make a plan.

The big issue for me is that working out and maintaining a good diet seem directly connected in me. When I workout I find it easy to eat well. When I don't, or in this case, can't workout, I eat badly. My plan then is to find a way to workout that works around my injury. Hopefully this will help me keep on track with food as well.

What all this does is give a reminder that we all need to watch for these patterns in our lives. When we find them, we need to come up with a plan to try to change them. Then we need to try that plan to see if it works. If it doesn't we need a different plan.

Hopefully this will work for me. I will post an update when I find out.

Getting Back to It

One of the reasons I started this blog was to help keep me on track. It was also meant to be a place where I could gather information and sites I found helpful, and to hopefully encourage others to seek to improve their health as well. I'm sure it would help with this if I stuck to it.  The thing is that is true about most things in life, not the least in terms of health.

The biggest challenge is to stick to it. Pretty much all diets will work if you stick to them. Pretty much all exercise programs will achieve what they are designed for if you stick to them.

What that tells me is that the key to success in diet and exercise is finding a program that you can stick with. Realize there are basic fundamental principles that need to be met, and find what helps you meet them in a way you can stick with in the long run.

Since I am posting this from my tablet, I am not going to get into details. Hopefully in future posts I will do that.

Are you in Denial

I was reading an article today that stated most Canadians are in denial about their health. They think they are healthy, and will report they are healthy in surveys, but at the same time the things that would be used as health markers are anything but healthy.

I bring this up because I know what it is to be one of those people. I thought I was fairly healthy, until it all came crashing down when I got pneumonia and then had a stroke. It was only then that I was forced to realize I had taken my health for granted because I was not really sick. The thing is, leaving it to that point could have meant the end of my life, and strokes can and do kill. Worse yet, it could have left me with major physical or mental disabilities due to the brain damage a stroke causes. If you think about it, would you rather own up to the fact you are not as healthy as you like to think you are right now, or would you rather wait for a major health crisis caused by your denial which might take your life one way or another? I am guessing you would rather not go through a heart attack or stroke to prove that you have let your body go.

The good thing for me is I was able use what happened to me as a motivation to change. It has been a few days over a year since I had my stroke. I am still dealing with some of the effects even today, and thanks to God I am still recovering and seeing improvement. In that time I have lost 66 pounds and gotten much healthier both in what in eat and how much I do.

My question for you today is are you ready to change? If so get going to eat less and do more.

Weight Loss and Diet

One of the things I like to do to spur me on in my continuing quest to loose weight and get fit is watch TV shows where people who are out of shape seek to get in shape. I find things like Biggest Loser can be very encouraging.

Having said that, I was watching the X-Weighted episode "Jill" from 2006 this afternoon while I did various administrative tasks, and I was very unhappy that the message they seemed to deliver at her mid-point weigh in was that it was her lack of exercise that was hindering her weight loss. Now she was the one who stated that first, but the trainer, Paul Plakus did not correct that view. Instead, he encouraged it by his response talking about how many calories (3500) she would need to burn to lose a pound.

The thing is, while exercise can and does help lose weight, the vast majority of a person's weight lose will be because of diet, not exercise. It all comes down to eating less calories than you use in a day. Exercise, when all is said and done, will contribute only be a small portion of that. Exercise gets you fit and strong.

My personal experience is that was true even for me back when I was on the various fad diets out there. The thing that made the difference was calorie consumption. If I controlled that I lost weight whether I was exercising or not. That is why most of those diets work be it the Atkins, South Beach or whatever. They all cut a persons calories consumed.

With that in mind in this episode of X-Weighted the person, Jill, was at the gym having a snack. Now the snack was an improvement on what she said she would have had before, but it was still rather high calorie for a "snack."

"What was that snack?" you ask. It was an apple, almonds and water.

While those are all healthy options, and are good for you, the almonds in particular are quite high in calories. It looked like she had about .5 to .75 of a Cup of almonds. That would mean just for the almonds (assuming dry roasted not salted) a calorie count of 412 to 618 calories. This assumes I estimated the amount of almonds correctly, and I was trying to be conservative in my estimate. Add a medium apple at about 95 calories and that snack come in at 507 to 713 calories. That is probably more than half the calories she should be eating a day if she wants to lose weight. By the way, it is more than most of the full meals I eat especially if the amount of almonds was closer to .75 of a Cup. I am guessing any of the calories she burned while on the stationary bike at the gym were replaced immediately with that "snack."

When she was disappointed with her weight loss, I can say based on what was shown, she was simply eating too much. A better snack would have been 2 apples and water or one apple and maybe and ounce of almonds. Better yet, if she could do it, just have the water with no "snack" at all.

The lessons from all this are pretty straight forward.

1) If you want to lose weight you need to know how many calories are in what you eat, and how many you want to eat per day or week. Without controlling your calories, you will not have significant weight loss.

2) Don't fall for the idea that exercise will make you lose weight quickly even if you don't take care of how much you eat. It simply won't happen. You will get more fit, a good thing in itself, but you will not get rid of the fat quickly with just exercise.

Insanity Is Great

The more I use it, the more I like it. I mean, any workout that can get your body working good and hard before you are even done the warm-up is the exact sort of workout I like and for that matter, need. I have not slept well the last few days which made working out difficult. Add to that a bunch of snow falling and the need to clean that up, and workouts were not being done. Today, after having a good night sleep, I got back to it after a couple of days off. Insanity did it. I couldn't get through the whole workout, but what I did finish worked me out really well.

Before and In Process December 2010

I was looking at some pictures on my facebook account and saw some from Christmas 2 years ago. While the position I am in in that photo is less than flattering, it compared to the photo I have from December this year shows what I have changed. Now that change came all in this year. If anything I was fatter when I started in January than I am in the December 2008 picture.

Before: December 24, 2008



In Process December 5, 2010

Insanity

Insanity, an exercise plan on DVD has become one of my favorite ways to exercise. I have not used it following its official plan, but have worked in various workouts from it into my regular exercise routine. For months I used Tae-bo exclusively, and I still like it a great deal. However, I noticed a month or two back that my heart rate was not being raised sufficiently with the Tae-bo DVDs I have. I tried P90X, another Beach Body product, but found its dependance on Yoga did not interest me at all. Then I saw Insanity at Costco and decided to try it out. The first time I tried it, I barely got to the end of the warm-up. My heart rate was higher than it had been for weeks, if not months, and I loved it. Since getting Insanity I have started to do it more and more, and Tae-bo less and less. I still have not gotten through all the routines completely, but even with that, the workout I am getting is great.

Having said that, there are a couple of cavets. First, if you have knee problems or hip problems, this is not for you. It fairly high impact with lots of lateral action. Second, this is not for beginners. You need to be somewhat fit to do these. If you are not, you will find that you will have a great deal of difficulty doing this.

All in all, if you are looking for something that will push you to the next level, this is an exercise program that will do that. I am guessing that you could modify some of the moves yourself, if you take the time to figure it out, to make that lower impact, but some of the stuff will be very difficult to modify.

Eat Stop Eat

I have now done two fast days, and so far the results are very positive. On the fast days I find I still have lots of energy, and frankly going from 6PM to 6PM for a fast is not that difficult. Think about it for a minute and you will realize that for 8 hours of that time, give of take, you are sleeping. Keep busy through the day, and 6PM comes before you know it.

The results so far are that I have come down from 196.8Lbs to 193.0Lbs. Now some will say that is all water weight, but it clearly isn't because on the days I eat the weight does not come back. Others will say it is all muscle, but based on the fat percentage, the majority of the weight loss is fat.

Now I realize this is but one week. Having said that, I am thinking this is something that I could do for the rest of my life, and in the end it will not require constant measuring of food and a careful diet. I still have to watch my sodium consumption due to my high blood pressure, but with Eat Stop Eat it has come down consistently this week. I am hoping the trend continues and I can get off more medication for the blood pressure.

Revolution in Diet? I'm Think So.

Recently I was at Coach Lauren and read this post. In it she points to an e-book by Brad Pilon called Eat Stop Eat. Lauren does an excellent job outlining the major points of this program, but it all boils down to intermittent fasting, basically 24 hours once or twice a week.

I have not tried this as of yet, but am seriously considering it, as constant measuring of calories consumed gets tiring and difficult after doing it for 6 months. I can only imagine what it would be lie to do it forever. Yes, during that time you can learn to eat healthy, but even "healthy" food if eaten in excess, ie. eating more calories than you burn, will cause you to get fat. This approach has the advantage of allowing your body to use its own God given abilities to keep your weight under control and even loose weight.

It is well worth giving it a look. I am going to try it in the near future once I get used to my new exercise routine.

My Weight Loss - Diet

My weight loss started when I we ill first with pneumonia and then with my stroke and its attendant high blood pressure. The first 10 pounds were a result of the diuretic I was put on for my blood pressure, as in the week following being put on it I lost that weight while changing nothing in my diet. That just shows how much fluid my body was retaining. The next 10 pounds came with the stroke and my time in hospital. So basically the first 20 pounds came off in 2 weeks or so.

Following that I did not lose anything for a couple of months even though I was eating "healthy" and exercising. Part of that was simply a result of losing so much weight so quickly, but a bigger part was my buying into the eat healthy food and you will lose weight while forgetting the number of calories consumed compared to the number burned is what determines weight loss.

The thing is, there is some truth to the "healthy" food belief, but it is not that you can eat as much of that so called healthy food and still lose weight. The grain of truth is this, healthy food generally contains more fiber and is less calorie dense. By that I mean for a fairly large serving of beans, you are actually consuming less calories and will feel more full than and similar sized serving of say white flour pasta with a fatty ground beef in tomato sauce. Furthermore, with the healthy food, you will probably also consume more vitamins and minerals your body needs to stay strong and healthy. From this, the myth that you can eat healthy food and not gain weight developed. Don't get caught by this one. What matters is consuming less calories than you burn.

Eventually I realized that and seriously started counting calories at the beginning of June. At that point I was about 230 pounds. Counting calories by carefully measuring everything I eat has resulted in me dropping my weight to 197 as of a couple of weeks back. Better yet in that time my body composition changed dramatically. I started out at 230 pounds total, but that weight was made up of a fat mass of 102 pounds and a lean mass of 128 pounds. When I reached 197 my body composition changed to a fat mass of 59 pounds and a lean mass of 138 pounds. What that means is in that time where I lost 33 pounds total I really lost 43 pounds of body fat and gained 10 pounds of muscle. I still have more weight and fat to get rid of, but this is certainly a great start.

Just as a side note here, a scale that measures your body fat percentage or getting something else to do so is a very valuable tool to help in healthy weight reduction. It will give you a good picture of what is happening in your body, and can help you realize that even though you seem to be losing weight slowly, you may be losing fat quickly.

From all this there are a couple of lessons I would point to. First and probably most important, watch how many calories you eat. You need to create a deficit of calories burning more than you consume. Without measuring calories and recording them you will have a great deal of difficulty doing this. What can help is reading the nutrition labels, and actually measuring out your servings. At first I was surprised at what a serving was, but now I am used to it. A kitchen scale, especially and digital one, can be a great help in this. Second, remember that the quality of food matters. High fiber in particular, is very helpful in weigh loss. Yes you can get rid of the pounds eating whatever you want, but I find with the low fiber, highly processed stuff I would get more hungry and be more inclined to cheat than with the less processed, more natural, high fiber stuff.

With all this I also exercised a great deal, but that is a topic for another post.

Why I Started This Blog

It all started during the last half of 2009. Due to various things, my life had become very high stress, and being an emotional eater, I dealt with that by eating. The first hints that things in my body were not well, at least the ones beyond being obese, was that by October I was getting sick fairly frequently. Then at the beginning of November I got the H1N1 flu. I got over it in a week or so, but had a lingering cough. Slowly that cough got worse, but I didn't really notice it. Slowly I found going up and down stairs I would run out of breath, but I figured it was just because I weighed so much for my frame (250-260 pounds) and needed to get in shape. So I started to eat healthier and workout again, but I still kept running out of breath and coughing. Then on Sunday December 13th I got up coughing. I could barely breath, had a fever, and was coughing up mucus mixed with blood. I called Telehealth Ontario and was told I needed to see a doctor in 6 hours. They contacted the on call doctor at the medical clinic where my doctor practices and they got me in there in a couple of hours. I had pneumonia, and by the next day when my x-rays came back and I saw my doctor, I found out I had a bad case of it.

The next several days were spent sleeping, when I could, and trying to recover. After a month off work I had a follow-up X-ray only to find the pneumonia had not cleared at all, I had just gotten used to being sick. They put me on two strong antibiotics and scheduled a CT scan of my lungs. They also found that I had extremely high blood pressure, and while I can't remember the exact numbers they were extremely high.

The next antibiotics worked well, and in two days I felt much better. Six days after finding out the pneumonia had not cleared at all I had the CT scan and it showed things clearing up. Then several days after that I woke up with the right side of my face feeling numb, similar to how it would feel after the dentist administered Novocain. I was also slurring my speech and had lost the fine coordination in my fingers so I had a hard time typing. Later that day I saw my doctor. Even with meds my blood pressure had again skyrocketed and she sent me on to the hospital where the eventual diagnosis was that I had had a small stroke. After another CT-scan, this time of my head and neck, an MRI of my head and neck, and a Cardio-echo of my heart, not to mention a huge amount of blood tests in the hospital they had no real idea on why I had the stroke as nothing was conclusive.

I got out after 5 days and went home. Feeling better, but still unable to work for another month or so, I went home realizing that I had to change my lifestyle. I needed to loose weight (something that had already started with all this having my weight go down from 255 to 235 in the two weeks from finding out my pneumonia had not cleared up) and get healthy. I needed to change what I eat, and how I live. That was a necessity for me.

In time it was determined that the stroke was caused by either an atypical pneumonia or a virus that took advantage of my decrease immune function due to the pneumonia to reduce my heart function (when they did the Cardio-echo in the hospital my ejection fraction was 30-35% and should have been 60-65%) causing a small clot to form. It broke loose and went to my brain causing the stroke. Thanks to God, my heart function returned to normal by May, when they did a follow up echo, and barring the same thing happening it is unlikely that I will have another stroke.

It is part of my quest to get in good shape, loose fat, gain muscle, get my blood pressure down and get off all the medications I am on, that I have started this blog. The good news is over the past several months I have lost weight (currently I am around 200 pounds) and my medications have been reduced. I no longer take ramipril, my metoprolol dosage has been reduced, as has my dosage of amlodipine. My blood pressure is better, although since reducing the amlodipine in August, it has not been as good as it was before that change. I still have 30-40 pounds to loose, but that looks like a much more attainable goal since I have lost more than that already.

That gives some of my background, and why fitness is a necessity for me. The reason for this blog is to put down my thoughts and provide helpful information to others who also realize the necessity of fitness.