MikeIsLosingIt.com

After my last post a few weeks ago I modified my diet, but I quickly found that my stress-level immediately increased again and my energy-level dropped. Clearly I still wasn’t ready for a reduced calorie diet again. Therefore I reversed my decision, still modifying my diet to be healthier (well…except for several days of Halloween candy) but without any significant calorie reduction. Simultaneously, I made some amazing strength gains, which indicates that I have definitely increased my muscle mass.

I’m now working with my trainer four days per week instead of three, and since I switched to a strength-building regimen a couple of months ago, my bench press has gone up from 205 lbs to 235 lbs, my deadlift from 235 to 265, and my squats have increased an amazing 70 lbs from 205 to 275. The deadlift and squat maximums were at 4 and 3 repetitions respectively, which means my one-rep max would be significantly more than that. This has continued to be fun and I have no intention of switching my exercise routine. I did, however, finally switch back to a reduced calorie diet on Monday, without any significant energy-loss or stress.

Hopefully now I can see some significant weight-loss again, since I have lost very little in the last four months—only about 5-7 lbs. At the beginning of the week my weight was at 270 and as of this morning it is 266.4 lbs. It is very hard to lose fat and build muscle at the same time, but I’m making every effort to do so. I will continue with my strength routine and have tailored my diet to maximize my chances. I’m eating about 1800-2000 calories per day, with low carbs, low fat, and high protein. I’ve been eating three omlettes per day made with six egg whites (that’s right, 18 eggs), a large chicken breast with brown rice, a protein shake, and a few snacks like some string cheese and popcorn.

My hopeful goal is that I can see the 240s by the time we travel to China a couple of months from now.  We’ll see what happens.

It’s time for a break! For weeks now I’ve been discouraged about the significant slowdown in my weightloss despite my strict diet and exercising as much or more than ever. I’ve tried multiple things and nothing has helped significantly. I intensified my workouts but just felt tired. I changed my diet and had a quick 3 lbs loss, but within two days it was back up more than a pound and continuing with the same very slow rate I’ve been seeing for the last couple of months. Furthermore, for the last week my discouragement has progressed into total burnout. I’ve been on my regime for over seven months now and the calorie-restricted diet portion of it for five months. I’ve lost 59 lbs on the scale, and probably more like 65-70 when you factor in muscle gain. Things were going great, but now I’m just feeling stressed all the time.

I don’t know for sure what’s wrong (pushing down my metabolism, over training, whatever), but regardless of the actual causes and effects, I need a break from the diet and major cardio/endurance workouts−I need some time to rest and recover. Even the thought of another low-calorie diet day and endurance workout stresses me out. I am burned out, burned out, burned out. I’m sick of the diet, sick of feeling exhausted after my workouts, and sick of seeing the scale inch down by about one pound per week for my trouble. Did I say that I’m burned out and need a break? Well, I do. ::insert primal scream here::

I talked to Tim about it, and starting today I did a complete change in everything. No weightloss diet and no crazy cardio/endurance workouts. I’m upping my calories to about 3000-3500 per day and switching to a muscle-building regimen. For the next month or so (at least) I’m going to work on building muscle and not concern myself one whit with losing weight. So, today we did chest and triceps, higher weight and lower reps. I benched 205 lbs, and for now we will work toward a tentative starting goal of me eventually being able to lift my own body weight. And you know what? I had FUN today. Wow, what a novel idea! I actually had fun…at the GYM. I left the gym today feeling good and with a smile on my face…and I’m actually looking forward to my next workout. I don’t know if I’ve ever said that since I started this back in February. I’ll still be doing a modest cardio workout a few times a week, but I’m leaving the other stuff behind me for awhile.

Maybe in a month or two, if things are going well and I feel ready and recovered, I’ll switch back and hopefully get a “reboot” and see good losses again. But right now even the thought of switching back makes me feel like finding a padded cell and drinking a lithium smoothy…so I won’t be thinking about that for a bit. For now I’m going to enjoy…hmm, yes, “enjoy”…going to the gym and doing something that I like for a change.

Last week Louanne decided that she wanted to do a square foot garden in the backyard, so I volunteered to get it all set up for her, including running drip irrigation to it from our patio. The irrigation would involve digging a trench across the yard and running a hose to it from the faucet. I did a similar project almost exactly a year ago to run drip irrigation to some trees we planted the previous year, and boy do I remember that job well. It was hot, exhausting, and took me several hours to finish (around SIX if I remember correctly), plus a couple of hours the next day to fix some problems I encountered. I was completely wiped out and sore for days afterwards. By the end of it, digging that trench all the way across the yard felt like I had been digging my own grave.

I anticipated at least a few hours of misery again this time, but was amazed at how easy it all went. It took me two hours, including looking everything over at the beginning and taking a 30 minute break in the middle for some water and to cool off. It was really no big deal at all. When I finished I felt like I could have done it all over again and still wouldn’t be tired from it. No exhaustion, no soreness, nothing. I couldn’t believe how different the experience could be between the two similar projects. Clearly, working out with a trainer for four months has had a much more significant effect on my strength and endurance than I realized. That’s very encouraging and motivates me all the more.

If you want to see the result of the project, Louanne put a post up about it on our family blog.

I bought a Polar FT80 Heart Rate Monitor the other day and used it for the first time today. I didn’t pay the outrageous price Polar sells it for ($350), but instead got it from Amazon.com for the much better (but still hefty) price of $260…but that’s without anything like GPS, a foot pod, etc. If you want that then you have to pay a lot extra.  I didn’t get any of those extras because I have absolutely no need for any of them, since I’m pretty confident that I’ll NEVER take up running, triathlons, or anything similar. I’ll be using it in the gym almost exclusively, so the built-in features will be sufficient.

I researched a lot of monitors, but finally settled on the FT80 because of its versatility, and primarily because of its strength training feature. It is the only monitor I found that includes that feature, which makes it perfect for those like me who divide their workouts between weight training and cardio. You can set the training mode to Strength Training and it will give you a graph that rises as your heart rate increases during a weight lifting set. After the set, the graph will begin to fall as your heart rate decreases. When it reaches a specific point predetermined by your max heart rate and zones, it will beep and tell you to start your next set. For me today it worked excellently. During a set my heart rate would get up to around 155-165 and then when it came down to about 125 the watch would tell me to start the next set.

The FT80 also has something called a STAR Training Program, which can be automatically generated for you by doing a “fitness test” (which unexpectedly is performed by lying down and doing nothing for five to ten minutes) and specifying what your training goal is: Improve Fitness or Maximize Fitness. I chose “Maximize” because I met that category’s prerequisites: to have been training for at least 10-12 weeks and have no problem training almost every day. The STAR training program generates four weekly goals for you. You have a specific amount of time you are to exercise in three heart rate zones, and how many calories you are to burn. For me the program set two hours in zone 1, three hours in zone 2, and forty-five minutes in zone 3. The calorie goal was set to 4700. It will automatically monitor the time you spend in each zone as you exercise and approximate the calories you burn. For example, I worked legs today and it said I did 11, 25, and 24 minutes in zones 1, 2, and 3 respectively, and I burned 918 calories. Pretty cool. Further, the program is updated automatically each week and sets new goals for you based on your progress, but of course I haven’t seen this first hand yet, since I just started using it.

The FT80 has a bunch of other features, including the ability to sync the data online, download specific strength training exercises to the watch, and other features that I’ll get to know over time. All isn’t perfect though…it does have one glaring problem. The contrast of the face is poor at best. It is still usable, but I find it strange that they continue to sell it that way. It should be MUCH brighter. And if you check out various reviews online they all agree, the contrast/brightness of the face is the one major weakness of an otherwise excellent product.

All in all, though, and am very satisfied with it so far, and I’m looking forward to getting a lot of use out of it.

Near the beginning of my weight loss program at 306.4 lbs. 

321.6. That’s how much I weighed three months ago on February 15, 2010. It was the heaviest I’d ever been, and at 5’11” that meant I was fat…fatty fat fat…fatty-boombalatty even, and it’s nothing new. I’m 44 years old and started down that road around 6th or 7th grade and have been overweight ever since. Except for two very brief times in my life when I slimmed down to near where I should be, being overweight has been a constant struggle. Like most people in my position I’ve yo yo’d up and down countless times. I’ve tried low carb, high carb, Zone, Protein Power, exercise at home, starvation, liquid-diet, exercise at a gym, and every other thing I could think of to lose weight. Despite all of that, the results have always been temporary–I’ve been unable to keep it off, just like 90-95 percent of all those who attempt to lose weight.

At the beginning of the year I found myself on the verge of getting a Lap-Band, thinking maybe that could finally solve the problem. It is a surgical procedure where an adjustable band is placed around the top of your stomach, preventing you from eating large portions of food. It’s nowhere near as invasive as a gastric bypass, which essentially reroutes your digestive system, and it is completely reversible, but it is still surgery nonetheless. Consequently it is expensive and has significant risks. Further, the more I examined the success rate the more I began to doubt it as a true solution. In all the research I did I found that regardless of which procedure is chosen, the average person can expect to have lost and kept off about 50% of their excess weight after five years.

Losing 50% of your excess weight and keeping it off is a much better statistic than just about any other weight-loss program, but in my view it wasn’t anywhere near good enough. In fact, I thought that actually sounded pretty lousy. From my perspective that meant I could expect to still be about 75 lbs overweight…after five years and $10,000! And I wouldn’t be the slightest bit more physically fit than when I started. My heart would be no stronger and I would have no more muscle than when I started (actually I’d probably have much less). I’d simply be 75 lbs overweight instead of 150. How could that be viewed as a good thing? At best, I could view that as not quite as abysmal as not having the surgery at all.

So, what was the alternative? I reasoned that if I were willing to spend $10,000 on surgery that would likely result in a mediocre outcome at best, I might as well put that money toward a personal fitness trainer instead. After all, that same $10,000 could pay for a personal trainer three times per week for two years, and at the end of that time I should theoretically be in excellent physical condition. Even if I lost only a pound per week I’d have still lost more weight in that two years than I could expect to have lost and kept off after five with surgery. Yes, unlike surgery it would require me to have enough discipline to go to the gym at least three times per week, but considering I would have an appointment, which I had paid for in advance, my guess was that it wouldn’t be a problem. I would not miss my paid-for appointment without a truly valid reason like sickness or a definite work commitment. If I just had a gym membership and tried to do it on my own (which I have tried many times in the past), before long I’d miss it once, then again, and in no time I wouldn’t be going at all. The personal trainer would make the difference.

I’m happy to say that so far my assumptions have been correct. In the three months since I started training I haven’t missed at all, except for twice in one week when the whole family was down with a virus…and even then I immediately rescheduled and made up the days the following week. I started off the regime with only weight-training–I didn’t make any diet changes at all. I thought that sticking to the exercise would be stressful enough at first without adding a diet to the mix as well. I figured that as I got used to the routine I’d add in a diet change later.

Doing exercise alone I lost about a pound-and-a-half per week for the first couple of months. As I expected, the first few weeks were brutal. I was stressed and in pain most of the time, and I HATED going to the gym…every…single…time. But, I kept going anyway because I knew I needed to, I had an appointment, and I had paid a lot of money for it. So, misery be damned, I went every time. Now, after three months I still can’t say that I actually like going, but at least I dislike it much less than I used to, and sometimes I don’t actually mind going at all. Also, I frequently have a definite burst of energy a couple of hours after I workout, which is a very good thing to experience.

About three weeks ago I took the next step and had my trainer give me a diet program to follow. I’m following a very standard body-building, weight-loss diet: very high protein, low carbs, a lot of water, and eating about five times per day. I feel like I’m eating a ton of food, all day long, but it is still only about 1700-2000 calories on any given day. Since I added the diet to my regime I’ve been losing about a half a pound per day. So, in all I’ve lost about 22 pounds since I started with the trainer back in February, with 10 of it being in the last three weeks alone. I haven’t been the slightest bit discouraged and have had no significant problems.

I believe I’ve finally found my solution! I’m in it for the long haul and fully intend to workout at least three times per week for the rest of my life. Even when the two years are finished I intend to continue with a trainer at least a few times per month and workout on my own the rest of the time…since by then it should be so ingrained in me that motivation won’t be a problem. My goal? I want to be down to a single-digit body fat percentage within about a year, and I fully expect to make it there.

I’ll be posting regularly on this blog from now on, and I hope that some of you might find inspiration and encouragement from it. I’ll also post pictures from time to time to document my progress.

Cheers!