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.