After about a month they did some blood-work again to see where my levels were. They discovered that I was still firmly a gingerboy at: 223, and considering that the goal is for me to be between 400-500, the doctor increased my dosage by 20%. They will do a full work-up again the first week of April to see where I stand, and then adjust it again if necessary. The doctor (let’s call him Dr. Staubach, since he HAS to be a quarterback), said that if I was already seeing positive results with the lower dosage then he expected me to see significant improvements with the increase. That is very welcome news to me…we’ll see.

Currently I’m finding that I don’t get tired quite as fast as I did a few weeks ago, although my energy level is still way down from where it used to be a year or more ago. I’ve also stopped gaining weight. I’m not losing it yet, but for the moment I’ll take what I can get. What Dr. Staubach keeps telling me is that it is a slow process, and that 90 days is really the amount of time it can take to determine if it is helping significantly. Considering that I’m already seeing steady progress, the future looks encouraging.

LowT Center update: Sadly, KISS is gone. Perhaps they have been exiled to a far corner of the office…maybe to the restroom. They were knocked out by a framed boxing robe. Further, I noticed that by the scale there is now a signed picture of Lou Ferrigno as the Incredible Hulk. Now there’s a picture that I find completely appropriate! Ferrigno has probably taken more testosterone in his life than all of the LowT Center’s patients combined, so who better to have framed and prominently displayed? Maybe next week I’ll find a Chuck Norris photo there…but of course I hear that Chuck Norris doesn’t take testosterone, his body produces so much of it naturally that he donates the extra to a poor body-builders fund.

 After feeling bad for so long, it was gaining so much weight in such a short time that finally pushed me to the doctor Thursday afternoon to get things checked out. All my blood work and vitals ended up being normal, except for my testosterone level. An optimum level would be in the 400-600 range, low would be under 300…mine was 70. That’s so low that he wanted me to come back and be tested again in the morning, since testosterone levels are highest in the morning. If the morning test showed less than 150 then I’d have to go for an MRI. Thankfully I squeezed by at 162, so no MRI, but they started me on Testosterone Replacement Therapy (TRT). This amounts to an injection every week, a blood test again in a month, and then blood work every three months after that for, well, forever.

I did a lot of research and read a ton of articles before continuing, because I’m not comfortable with the thought of potentially having to get an injection every week for the rest of my life.  The main difficulty I have with it is that there have been no large, long-term studies done yet. All of the studies I read about (as positive as they are) have been fairly short-term, such as two years or less. Bigger studies are being done, but they’re not finished yet. The short-term benefits, however, do look very promising, and the known potential side effects are relatively minor and manageable as long as you are monitored.

The cost is significant, but if it solves the problems I’ve been having then I’ll be happy to pay it and deal with the modest risks, because I want the part of my life back that I feel like I’ve lost in the last year. The expected results from TRT vary, but the research so far indicates that about 10% of men in my position are ecstatic with the results, 10% see no improvement, and the other 80% have varying levels of improvement. I’m just hoping I’m not on that “see no improvement” side.  The doctor told me that the results aren’t quick, but some improvement is generally seen within 30 days, but most is within 90-180. In any case, I had my first injection this morning and I’ll regularly post any progress I see.

One side note. I’m getting the therapy at the Low T Center, which in retrospect should have a giant banner flying above the building reading, ”Caution! Testosterone Stereotype Work Zone Ahead.” All the employees seem to be ”perky” young women who lead you past the waiting room (equipped with a large HDTV that apparently only gets ESPN) through a building where every foot of dark, oak, wall space is covered with sports memorabilia. There are framed and signed things everywhere: photos, jerseys, shirts, balls in cases, helmets in cases, Wheaties boxes, NASCAR models, and so on. I had my blood drawn in a shrine to UT Football/Peyton Manning and got my injection in the NASCAR shrine next door. I’m positive that the doctor who saw me today replaces his lab coat with quarterback pads after work and hits the field for practice. Strangely, on one of the walls in a hallway there was single, forlorn frame with a couple of signed photos of the ’70s rock group KISS. I guess the doctors figured they needed to throw a bone to their 50-year-old-rocker patients. I’ve never been a sports (or KISS) fan, so I was left feeling a little cold and out-of-place by the whole thing. But who knows, maybe next time they’ll give me my injection in the heretofore unseen Classic Movies room. Oh well, what’s a gingerboy to do?

Regardless of exactly how much fat I’ve lost, I know it isn’t even remotely near what I lost the first nine months or so of my program. Something has definitely changed in the last 8-10 months. If I get really strict on a reduced-calorie diet I lose very little weight, at least relative to what I used to lose. I also find that as soon as I cut the calories I get tired much quicker during a workout and have a hard time making it to the end. After a few weeks of that I start getting stressed, start thinking about food all the time, and the tiredness progresses beyond just workouts and starts affecting me all the time. Before long I can’t continue like that and I give up on the diet, just to feel “normal” again. According to all the research I’ve done, however, this isn’t something significantly out-of-the-ordinary for someone in my position. For the better part of the last year and a half I’ve been following a pretty strict diet and have lost in the neighborhood of 100 lbs of fat. That takes its toll on the body and can have a variety of unintended consequences (i.e. lower metabolism, out-of-whack body chemistry, and the like).

So where do I go from here apart from just continuing my four days of training per week? Clearly low calories isn’t working for me any more…it is just causing me to yo-yo up and down like I used to. I keep setting goals and missing them because I can’t sustain the diet for more that a few weeks at a time, with very little weight loss even while I’m on it. What do I try now? What have I decided?

First of all, I’ve increased my cardio after each weight-training session. I work out with the trainer about 45 minutes and then do an additional 45-60 minutes of cardio. I typically burn from 900-1000 calories per workout. Secondly, I’m done with low calories. Done. Finished. It’s over. I can’t handle that any more. I’m tired of being tired and tired of the stress. For now I’m going to try modifying my diet to something close to what I’d do if I were finished with weight loss, except the calories will be slightly reduced. I’ll be eating the same sorts of food that I eat now (i.e. lean meats, good carbs, egg whites, and the like), but much more of it. I’ll still be counting calories but increase them to around 2800-3000/day. My hope is that I’ll be able to lose at least a half a pound per week, or possibly a bit more. Even if that means it takes me another year or more to lose the rest of the weight, that would be better than the last year, and without all the stress and tiredness. I’m also considering doing another body composition test at the Cooper Clinic to see exactly where I stand now—how does my lean body mass now compare to where it was over a year ago? While I’m at it, I’m thinking that it would probably be wise to get a blood workup as well, to make sure there isn’t something else going on that’s contributing to my problem.

In any case, I’m still at it, working out as hard as ever, and not giving up.

According to my heart rate monitor I’m burning about 3000-4000 calories per week during my workouts, and since increasing the cardio I’ve been seeing a drop of about two pounds per week. That’s a little less than I’d like but I can live with it. If that rate continues I should see the end of the weight loss portion of my program right around two years after I began, in February.

I ate somewhere around 49 lbs of taffy and 63 boxes of Pop Tarts on the vacation, so I have no doubt I’ve I gained some weight, but no worries. The trips are over, the house is pretty much in order (although we are still waiting on new flooring due to the water damage), and I’m just about ready to start hitting the diet fairly hard again. As of this afternoon I was able to get back in the gym with Tim and get the normal routine going again. It was a painful and exhausting workout, but that was expected after a three week break.

I’ll end this post with a couple of photos I’ve been intending on posting since Mother’s Day. The last several years we have made it a Mother’s Day tradition to go out to eat at P.F. Chang’s for dinner. I was amazed when I saw the picture we took this year and compared it to the ones from last year and the year before. It’s easy for me to forget how far I’ve come until I see a comparison picture like this. It helps encourage me and keeps me motivated.

Tuesday morning after trying to work out yet again with zero energy, I decided that I seriously needed to try increasing my calories for awhile. That day I ate, and ate, and ate some more. The tiredness was mostly gone almost immediately, and working out Wednesday was like a totally different experience. Today has been even better…I didn’t work out today, but my energy level has been great. Quite the difference!

Tuesday I didn’t even bother to monitor the calories…I just ate all day, but yesterday I ate around 2600 and today I’ll likely do the same. My plan is to eat around that much every day for at least a week or so and monitor my weight loss during that time. Then I will adjust it up or down accordingly. It might slow things down, but I’d rather lose the rest of the fat slowly and have a lot of energy than lose it quickly and feel like I did the last few weeks. The last few weeks of the program were terrible and stressful.

I’ll be paying much closer attention to my energy-levels from now on, and basing much of my calorie intake on that.

My goal is to lose another 30+ pounds by the end of June when we take our big vacation to Myrtle Beach. I hope to be somewhere between 210-215 by then. When I get to that point it will put me very close to the end of my total weightloss goal…probably within 5-15 pounds. My final goal, as far as weightloss, is to hit a single-digit body fat percentage. When I think I’m at that point I’ll be visiting the Cooper Clinic again for another round of body composition analysis. Then my goals will switch entirely to building muscle.

The day I can more than double the calories of my diet will be a day of great relief. I’m tired of the severity of it and the lower energy that comes with the restrictions. Right now my daily intake is generally in the 1100-1300 calorie range. To stop losing weight I’ll need to increase it to around 3000 per day, and possibly a little more to help muscle gain.

Strict weightloss is getting VERY old, but I can actually see the end in sight.

I’d also like to leave everyone with this bit of encouragement. If you are in a state similar to me when I started all this–150 lbs overweight, sedentary life, tired all the time, and so on–then you CAN get where I am now. You can. It has taken me exactly a year to get where I am and it will take me a few more months to get where I want to be, but that won’t be the end. There is no “end” to it. For the rest of my life I’ll be exercising, eating differently, and living better. You can do it too, but you have to change your lifestyle.

I’ll finish this post with something I’ve said on multiple occasions, “If you want to lose weight and keep it off, stop living like a fat person on a diet and start living like a fit, athletic person in training. It takes a lifestyle change, so change your lifestyle.“

Since I’ve been back from China for about two weeks now and I’m finally getting back into the swing of things, I decided that it was well past time for me to post an update about what’s been going on.

Our trip to China was eventful to say the least. If you want to read about it in detail, then go to our family blog at Dwimble.com and start from February 8th. In a nutshell, we went to adopt our second daughter and were there just under three weeks. We started off staying several days in Beijing to visit some friends and adjust to the time difference, moved on to Yinchuan in Ningxia province (where our child was waiting) for several more days, and last stayed for eight days in Guangzhou where the U.S. Consulate is located. We all got upper respiratory infections, coughed constantly because of the pollution and dust in Yinchuan (it’s on the edge of a desert), and I got an ear infection and lost most of my hearing for the last week of the trip and the last two weeks here at home.

Louanne hurt her side in Yinchuan (possibly from coughing so hard she bruised a rib or pulled some muscles), which required me to do pretty much everything for both girls the last half of the tip…including carrying them both around all the time. Fortunately I have what my trainer calls “Dad Strength,” which every father can relate to and will see you through in a pinch. In truth, if I hadn’t been training for a year with Tim then the trip would have been ten times harder than it was. The one year anniversary of starting my fitness program was actually Feb 14, the day we got our daughter. That year has made all the difference. There was one day near the end of the trip where I was carrying both girls and the stroller at the same time up several flights of steps and across a bridge and didn’t really think anything about it. I didn’t even feel winded. A year ago I probably would have passed out…or I’d have at least found out just how fast my heart can beat before cardiac arrest.

The hardest thing of all didn’t have anything to do with the trip–the workouts since getting back have made the screaming kid, jet lag, ear infection, and coughing fits seem like a walk on a spring day. Tim took it easy on me and I still felt like I was going to die…and I haven’t even done any cardio yet. I’m going to add that back in next week. I did legs Monday, for the first time in a month, and six days later they still hurt. They STILL HURT. In spite of that, I’m still glad to be back in the gym. There were actually a couple of moments (just a couple) while I was doing the bench press that I thought it felt good to press the weight up. The feel and pressure of the weight felt good. Weird, I know. I haven’t gotten back on my diet yet, but plan to do that within the next week or so as well. It has been hard enough the last two weeks just getting through the workouts…no way I was adding the diet to that stress.

My plan is to be back to my full, pre-trip regimen within the next week, and my new goal is to have lost another 40 lbs by our family vacation at the end of June. That should put me near the end of my weight loss, but I won’t know for sure until I get there. After that I’ll concentrate solely on strength building.