This post is the first in a series of weekly progress that I am going to post as I go through my second year on my fat loss and fitness plan. Many weeks I see that I've made little or no progress and I think "damn, must try harder next week" but I don't really pinpoint specific issues I had or look at ways that I could do better. By blogging about it I hope that I will be a bit more diligent.
Weight GAIN: 0.25 lbs
Oh dear! Not a good start to my second year. I didn't just not lose but I gained weight! I didn't bother doing the measurements and bodyfat calculations this week as the results will not really change much with such a small weight change. I usually do that when there's been a change of around 1lb.
Changes in Exercise Routine
Last week I tried quite a different routine to the norm. For quite a few months I had a fairly regular routine of doing cardio weekday mornings, weights weekday lunchtimes, karate two evenings a week and nothing at all on the weekend. This routine had two drawbacks. Firstly it took 14 hours out of my week, phew! Secondly it was all concentrated into 5 days and then I did nothing on weekends and that is when I tend to overeat the most.
I've had a week of illness and then a week on holiday and around that time I also realised that I could no longer afford to spend 14 hours of my week on exercise so I've changed things around quite a lot. I now exercise daily, but no more than twice daily (cardio, weights AND karate in one day is just overkill) and I started replacing cardio at the gym for running near my house as that's something I want to improve.
Running Problems
My current routine has me running 4 times - both weekend days and also two mornings during the week. I had real issue with my mid-week runs as I was doing these straight after getting up at 6am. I don't like to exercise immediately after waking as I'm like a zombie for a while. Secondly, I am greatly dehydrated when I first wake up. Usually I'll have a big glass of water first thing but by running first I missed out on that. Lastly, I'm hungry and have no energy.
I was having a very hard time with the running, feeling terribly lethargic and I kept getting headaches. This week I'm changing the routine to overcome these problems. I'll still run on weekends but not straight away. I'll get up, have my water, have breakfast and wake up a bit before I go. I did that this morning and felt much better for it. During the week, I'm dropping the running and replacing it with two cardio sessions instead. I always workout very well doing cardio at the gym because I put in a solid 40 minutes and I monitor my heart rate the entire time and keep it pretty high.
Snacking
Last week I snacked quite a lot, mostly on sweets and chocolates but I also had peanut butter on toast in the evening twice. Snacking has always been a problem for me and I don't think I'll ever be able to completely give up sweets, chocolates, cakes biscuits etc. Well it's not so much that I can't give them up, as I don't want to. However, I need to do something about it so next week I'll try and compromise by allowing myself one unplanned treat daily. If I raid the receptionists sweetie bowl (she has toffees! how can I resist!!?) then no chocolate and no toast that day!
Those Indulgent Days
Unfortunately I've already got myself off to a bad start this morning by eating a cheese burger! I do my weekly shop on Saturday mornings (which I hate) and a few months ago they went and installed an in-store McDonalds! Usually it doesn't tempt me as I'm not actually a huge fan, I find their food pretty gross really but today I was just so hungry and I caved.
Not only that but in an hour or so I'm taking my son to Legoland where I will no doubt eat more crappy food like burgers. And we always have one of their scrumptious chocolate dipped waffles when we go there! Usually I take my own food with me but I'm just having one of those days today and I just can't be bothered! Lastly, I just know I'll be knackered tonight and I wont want to cook. I've already decided that we're having a Chinese takeaway - I even bought the crispy duck already as I can get it at the shops a lot cheaper!
I don't beat myself up about days like today even though they do tend to sabotage my progress for the whole week. It doesn't happen every week and I still get a life. The key point though is that I go straight back on plan the following day, I never lose sight of the big picture.
Saturday, 14 July 2007
Thursday, 12 July 2007
How I Developed Persistence
My last post talked about my progress after one year on my fat loss & fitness plan. One year is a long time, especially for me. I started gaining weight in my early twenties and I have been overweight for around 12 years. I don't know how many times I tried to lose some weight but it was many. I tried for a while, lost a few pounds, gave up, put a few pounds back on; the same old cycle repeated by a great many people I'm sure.
My progress over this last year wasn't as good as I would have liked but it was persistent, week after week and month after month. I never once "fell of the bandwagon", though I did jump off it a few times but with every intention to jump back on it once I was done doing whatever it was. A good example is my recent holiday. I ate a heck of a lot of food and I didn't do any exercise at all. I drank wine or beer with almost every meal, loaded up on french bread, pate, chocolate, cheese, everything and anything that was on offer! Yet never once did I think "oh well I've blown it now, may as well give up". I knew I would gain weight, and I did - five pounds, but when I got back holiday I just got straight back on plan. In fact the morning of my last day on holiday was spent doing my food plan for the following week.
So what was different this time? I've thought long and hard about it in the hope that I can figure out the key elements that led to this persistence so that I may apply it to other areas of my life, and maybe even help you do the same.
1) I Wanted it BAAAAAADDDDD!
What is really behind persistence of any kind? Motivation. And where does motivation come from? From wanting something. If you want something bad enough, you'll do whatever it takes to get it. Before starting Uni I lost some weight (I talk about that a little further down) and I dropped a clothes size, bought myself some new clothes and felt quite good about myself. As soon as I started feeling good about myself the desire to lose more fat dwindled so it gradually piled back on.
I figured that if I was going to keep this up I was going to have to want it badly so I put a lot of mental effort into making myself really want to lose that fat and get fit. I wrote down all the reasons why I wanted to get slimmer and thinner, I thought about all the things I would do if I felt better about myself and so on. I thought about this day in, day out. Sometimes I wanted it so badly that it hurt.
2) I Used Visualisations
Partly a spin-off from number one... As a tool to help kindle that burning desire I used visualisations to help me.
I developed scenarios, fantasies really, about situations in my future and saw myself as I wanted to be. For example, one of them was a day out at the beach with my family and some friends. I saw exactly how my body looked, exactly what I was wearing and so on. I had about five of these scenarios and I'd make a point of running through them in my mind over and over.
I don't really use them now as I simply don't need to - the habits have been formed now.
3) I Dumped the Excuses
For as long as I can remember I've had no shortage of excuses for my weight, my food habits, and my lack of exercise. When I started on my plan I dumped the lot of them. I made the decision that I would no longer tolerate excuses. And as it turns out, they were just excuses because over the year many of the circumstances that I used as excuses cropped up and I dealt with them this time. Here's a few examples:
"My schedule is too erratic, so there's no point trying to begin an exercise routine"
I'm a routine-aholic (yes, I just made that up!) I like routine because it allows me to plan the routine and planning allows me to tweak my plan to perfection. While I was at Uni my schedule would indeed change every few weeks so this became my biggest excuse. It was crap of course because I had exercise facilities available to me both at home and on campus.
"I don't have the time"
What a classic that one is! I've always used that one. The funny thing is, once I started work (which is when I started my plan) I found that I had a lot less time than before and I immediately regretted not spending my time more wisely while I had it. Yet despite this illusion of lack of time (everybody has exactly the same amount of time as anyone else - we make the time for something or we don't) I now exercise daily as well as spending many hours in the kitchen every week preparing food.
Those were my two biggest excuses. What are yours? Who are you trying to kid?
4) I Wanted to Start My Job Right
The beginning of my plan coincided with the start of my new job. When you go into a new job the people there know nothing about you so your behaviour in the first few days can make a lasting impression. I decided right away that from day one I would make it clear that I went to the gym every day at lunchtimes and I brought food into work. I felt very awkward at first because everybody else had a ritual of going together to the sandwich shop for lunch and they either stayed in the office or all went down the pub. I on the other hand brought in several meals and ate them at weird times. However, I did indeed establish this as a habit and now everybody knows me and I get people all the time at work coming to me for diet and exercise advice.
Now if I'm having a bad day and I'm seen eating a cake or chocolate or something they'll all pick up on it straight away. That's much better than feeling peer pressure from your work colleagues to eat unhealthily because they do. I don't get that.
5) I Believed I Could Lose the Fat Because I Had Lost Some Before
About 5 years ago I joined a slimming club and lost nearly two stones. In actual fact my lowest weight was the weight I am this week! However, that was done with diet alone. I did no exercise, I was still unfit and very flabby. I look better now than I did then. Still, I did lose the bulk of the fat and I became a consultant for the club, and ran my own class for a few months before going to Uni.
I figured if I could lose fat with no exercise and with a crappy diet (which it was), then I could certainly lose it with a proper exercise and nutrition plan.
6) I Began to See Fat Loss as a Numbers Game
Calories in v calories out. Yes of course it's not that simple but that's the essence of it. Calculating the numbers is the easy bit, eating and exercising the right amount of numbers is the hard bit. However, once I re-read my Burn the Fat book (I really must write a review of that soon!) I started to realise that it all boiled down to three habits:
Conclusion
First and foremost, you have to want it. Whatever it is you need to be persistent with starts in the mind. You also have to believe in yourself - another mind game. Ask yourself the question "why can I do this?" and you'll come up with answers. If you are negative and start thinking about your past failures you'll just get more of the same. Focus on what you want, not what you don't want.
All this thinking is great but after that it's action that counts. Dreams and goals don't mean squat if they stay locked up in your mind and are never acted upon. Figure out what you have to do, boil it down to the essentials and in particular, look for habits. Speaker and author Jim Rohn says that "Failure is a few small errors in judgment, repeated every day. Success is a few small disciplines repeated every day." Find those disciplines and make them into habits.
When the going gets tough go back to the mind games. Re-evaluate why you want it and what it's going to give you. Make sure you feel the emotions and let them penetrate into your soul. If what you are doing isn't working for you, look at the numbers. Are you exercising enough? Eating too much? Tom Venuto who wrote the Burn the Fat book says that usually when it's not working you just have to work that bit harder. That isn't always the case but many times it is!
Think.
Act.
Repeat.
My progress over this last year wasn't as good as I would have liked but it was persistent, week after week and month after month. I never once "fell of the bandwagon", though I did jump off it a few times but with every intention to jump back on it once I was done doing whatever it was. A good example is my recent holiday. I ate a heck of a lot of food and I didn't do any exercise at all. I drank wine or beer with almost every meal, loaded up on french bread, pate, chocolate, cheese, everything and anything that was on offer! Yet never once did I think "oh well I've blown it now, may as well give up". I knew I would gain weight, and I did - five pounds, but when I got back holiday I just got straight back on plan. In fact the morning of my last day on holiday was spent doing my food plan for the following week.
So what was different this time? I've thought long and hard about it in the hope that I can figure out the key elements that led to this persistence so that I may apply it to other areas of my life, and maybe even help you do the same.
1) I Wanted it BAAAAAADDDDD!
What is really behind persistence of any kind? Motivation. And where does motivation come from? From wanting something. If you want something bad enough, you'll do whatever it takes to get it. Before starting Uni I lost some weight (I talk about that a little further down) and I dropped a clothes size, bought myself some new clothes and felt quite good about myself. As soon as I started feeling good about myself the desire to lose more fat dwindled so it gradually piled back on.
I figured that if I was going to keep this up I was going to have to want it badly so I put a lot of mental effort into making myself really want to lose that fat and get fit. I wrote down all the reasons why I wanted to get slimmer and thinner, I thought about all the things I would do if I felt better about myself and so on. I thought about this day in, day out. Sometimes I wanted it so badly that it hurt.
2) I Used Visualisations
Partly a spin-off from number one... As a tool to help kindle that burning desire I used visualisations to help me.
I developed scenarios, fantasies really, about situations in my future and saw myself as I wanted to be. For example, one of them was a day out at the beach with my family and some friends. I saw exactly how my body looked, exactly what I was wearing and so on. I had about five of these scenarios and I'd make a point of running through them in my mind over and over.
I don't really use them now as I simply don't need to - the habits have been formed now.
3) I Dumped the Excuses
For as long as I can remember I've had no shortage of excuses for my weight, my food habits, and my lack of exercise. When I started on my plan I dumped the lot of them. I made the decision that I would no longer tolerate excuses. And as it turns out, they were just excuses because over the year many of the circumstances that I used as excuses cropped up and I dealt with them this time. Here's a few examples:
"My schedule is too erratic, so there's no point trying to begin an exercise routine"
I'm a routine-aholic (yes, I just made that up!) I like routine because it allows me to plan the routine and planning allows me to tweak my plan to perfection. While I was at Uni my schedule would indeed change every few weeks so this became my biggest excuse. It was crap of course because I had exercise facilities available to me both at home and on campus.
"I don't have the time"
What a classic that one is! I've always used that one. The funny thing is, once I started work (which is when I started my plan) I found that I had a lot less time than before and I immediately regretted not spending my time more wisely while I had it. Yet despite this illusion of lack of time (everybody has exactly the same amount of time as anyone else - we make the time for something or we don't) I now exercise daily as well as spending many hours in the kitchen every week preparing food.
Those were my two biggest excuses. What are yours? Who are you trying to kid?
4) I Wanted to Start My Job Right
The beginning of my plan coincided with the start of my new job. When you go into a new job the people there know nothing about you so your behaviour in the first few days can make a lasting impression. I decided right away that from day one I would make it clear that I went to the gym every day at lunchtimes and I brought food into work. I felt very awkward at first because everybody else had a ritual of going together to the sandwich shop for lunch and they either stayed in the office or all went down the pub. I on the other hand brought in several meals and ate them at weird times. However, I did indeed establish this as a habit and now everybody knows me and I get people all the time at work coming to me for diet and exercise advice.
Now if I'm having a bad day and I'm seen eating a cake or chocolate or something they'll all pick up on it straight away. That's much better than feeling peer pressure from your work colleagues to eat unhealthily because they do. I don't get that.
5) I Believed I Could Lose the Fat Because I Had Lost Some Before
About 5 years ago I joined a slimming club and lost nearly two stones. In actual fact my lowest weight was the weight I am this week! However, that was done with diet alone. I did no exercise, I was still unfit and very flabby. I look better now than I did then. Still, I did lose the bulk of the fat and I became a consultant for the club, and ran my own class for a few months before going to Uni.
I figured if I could lose fat with no exercise and with a crappy diet (which it was), then I could certainly lose it with a proper exercise and nutrition plan.
6) I Began to See Fat Loss as a Numbers Game
Calories in v calories out. Yes of course it's not that simple but that's the essence of it. Calculating the numbers is the easy bit, eating and exercising the right amount of numbers is the hard bit. However, once I re-read my Burn the Fat book (I really must write a review of that soon!) I started to realise that it all boiled down to three habits:
- Eating the right food
- Cardiovascular exercise
- Weight training
Conclusion
First and foremost, you have to want it. Whatever it is you need to be persistent with starts in the mind. You also have to believe in yourself - another mind game. Ask yourself the question "why can I do this?" and you'll come up with answers. If you are negative and start thinking about your past failures you'll just get more of the same. Focus on what you want, not what you don't want.
All this thinking is great but after that it's action that counts. Dreams and goals don't mean squat if they stay locked up in your mind and are never acted upon. Figure out what you have to do, boil it down to the essentials and in particular, look for habits. Speaker and author Jim Rohn says that "Failure is a few small errors in judgment, repeated every day. Success is a few small disciplines repeated every day." Find those disciplines and make them into habits.
When the going gets tough go back to the mind games. Re-evaluate why you want it and what it's going to give you. Make sure you feel the emotions and let them penetrate into your soul. If what you are doing isn't working for you, look at the numbers. Are you exercising enough? Eating too much? Tom Venuto who wrote the Burn the Fat book says that usually when it's not working you just have to work that bit harder. That isn't always the case but many times it is!
Think.
Act.
Repeat.
Saturday, 7 July 2007
One Year On - How Have I Done and What's Next?
7th July - Funny Date to Start Something New
Two years ago today, a cyst on my ovary ruptured, requiring surgery. The surgery should have been routine but something went wrong and two days later I was in intensive care. I was in intensive care for a week, sedated for 2 days and had another major surgery whilst I was in there. The whole ordeal lasted 11 days and left me heavily scarred both physically and emotionally.
The experience stayed with me for a very long time. I even had some weird symptoms that lasted almost a year. The incident happened during the summer holiday between my 2nd and 3rd years at Uni so when I went back to Uni for my final year I was not long out and still recovering. I found it very hard to get around campus between lectures. I needed to get myself better and boost my health but instead I threw myself into my studies, put on a truckload of weight and did zero exercise.
Fast forward almost a year to 6th July 2006. On this day I graduated from University with a First Class Honors degree, an award for the Best Student, and a new job all lined up. It was time to make a change. The very next day, the anniversary of the day I went into hospital, I would clean up my diet, start exercising, build up my new career and change my life for the better.
One Year on the Plan
Now here I am a year later. How did I do? Well the first most obvious point is that I am here writing about it, I have worked my plan for an entire year. I had been overweight for about 12 years and I had tried tons of diets and been on and off countless exercise plans. Nothing usually lasted more than a few weeks. I had some brief success with a Simming World club, but I didn't really make any permanent changes with that. This time around I had stuck to my plan, and tweaked it constantly for an entire year. My life has changed for the better!
Lets See Some Stats!
I started out my measuring, weighing and seeing just where I was at. These were my starting stats:
Weight: 161 lbs
Bodyfat: 40.6%
Lean Body mass: 93.2 lbs
I was shocked at first. 40% body fat? Wow that seemed really high. Here's an important point I woud like to make about this. There are many different ways to measure body fat and none are all that effective but if you always use the same method to measure then you can at least ensure that the number is getting smaller. That is what I have done. I use a tape measure to take measurements of my waist and hips and plug them into this website to get the numbers. I know its flawed because my tummy often gets bloated, especially around period times but these are just blips. Over a long length of time, (especially a year!) you can see a trend.
Here's a couple of pictures from 2006 when I started:
Ugh! Check out the rolls of flab!
Graduation Day. I look fat & tired.
After figuring out where I was, I set about setting a goal. At first I wasn't too sure what I could achieve so I just plucked an arbitrary figure from out of the air - 25% body fat. That seemed like fairly average and figured that would be a good starting point. I plugged the number into my spreadsheet along with my lean body mass and figured I would need to lose about 28lbs to get there. In hindsight, I now know that spreadsheets don't always reflect reality as two weeks ago my loss had reached 27lbs and my lean body mass was higher than it started but still my body fat was over 30%.
My Current Stats
Ok where am I now? Well unfortunately I put on a whopping 5lbs on holiday so I have undone some of my progress but that is life. Here's the numbers:
Weight: 138 lbs (23 lbs lost)
Body Fat: 31.2% (9.4% lost)
Lean Body Mass: 95.2 lbs (2 lbs gained)
It's all positive but not as much as I would have liked. A few weeks after starting, I began to plan more carefully and figured I could lose 1lb a week. After a year I have lost only 23lbs so that's an average of about half a pound a week but it did not work out like that. I have plotted a little graph of my progress over the year:
I started off really well, for the first four months I actually lost more than I had planned. That took me to November when it all started to go horribly wrong. For me Christmas has always been a very bad time, but not just Christmas Day or even Christmas week. Oh no, for me Christmas starts when the shops get the Christmas stuff in. Now I dunno about the rest of the world but here in the UK that starts in October! Usually I could put on a stone over the whole of the winter period.
Looking at the chart I slowed right down in November then from December to January I had a sharp increase in weight. January I didn't do too badly and I lost most of what I had gained but I took another bad turn in February and put more back on. From November to March I had lost a net total of 1.5 lbs! That's a crappy four months. I got myself back on track in March and steadily lost all through the summer until my holiday when I had that massive jump back up!
Here are some recent photos. I don't have any flesh revealing ones yet this year but on the closeup I can see a marked difference around my neck. I hated looking so fat around the face so I'm glad its come off from there.
Same baby as before, we both have more clothes on!
I've been snapped eating, hence the odd expression!
Plans for the Coming Year
Obviously I'm not done yet. I haven't reached my goal, and as I discovered recently, I don't think 25% is good enough anyway. They say that the closer you get to your goal, the harder it is to lose but I don't really buy that. After a year, I've learned a few things and I have found stuff that works for me and stuff that doesn't:
15% Body fat, 95lbs lean body mass by 7th July 2008.
Breaking it Down
One of the mistakes I made last year was that I set my one year goal but I never broke it down further. I knew I wanted to lose 1lb a week roughly but if I had a week where I didn't lose enough or I gained I just said "oh well, there's plenty of time yet, I'll lose next week". The time period was too long and I simply didn't notice how badly things were going during the winter.
So this time I have started to break down that goal and I have set myself goals for the next three months and I'll continue to re-evaluate those as the year progresses.
Conclusion
When I came out of hospital I said that I wanted to improve my lifestyle and become a fit and healthy person so that I would never have to go through that again. I somehow attributed my poor lifestyle to the first operation going wrong. Whether that's true or not doesn't matter. It took me a year to actually start doing something about it but at the back of my mind the whole time has been the overarching goal to be healthy - not just thin.
Sure I wanted to lose the flab, but I wanted to get fit too. I wanted to change my habits and make healthier choices the norm for me. Even though I have not lost as much body fat as I had wanted in this year I am way, way fitter than I was back then, and I am much healthier.
As I tell people in the Burn the Fat newsgroup that I subscribe to, it's not a matter of losing as much fat as quickly as possible thats important, it's imprinting the right habits onto your life that are going to make the difference long term. I will continue my plan for another year, and I get real excited when I think about what I can achieve in my second year at this.
Two years ago today, a cyst on my ovary ruptured, requiring surgery. The surgery should have been routine but something went wrong and two days later I was in intensive care. I was in intensive care for a week, sedated for 2 days and had another major surgery whilst I was in there. The whole ordeal lasted 11 days and left me heavily scarred both physically and emotionally.
The experience stayed with me for a very long time. I even had some weird symptoms that lasted almost a year. The incident happened during the summer holiday between my 2nd and 3rd years at Uni so when I went back to Uni for my final year I was not long out and still recovering. I found it very hard to get around campus between lectures. I needed to get myself better and boost my health but instead I threw myself into my studies, put on a truckload of weight and did zero exercise.
Fast forward almost a year to 6th July 2006. On this day I graduated from University with a First Class Honors degree, an award for the Best Student, and a new job all lined up. It was time to make a change. The very next day, the anniversary of the day I went into hospital, I would clean up my diet, start exercising, build up my new career and change my life for the better.
One Year on the Plan
Now here I am a year later. How did I do? Well the first most obvious point is that I am here writing about it, I have worked my plan for an entire year. I had been overweight for about 12 years and I had tried tons of diets and been on and off countless exercise plans. Nothing usually lasted more than a few weeks. I had some brief success with a Simming World club, but I didn't really make any permanent changes with that. This time around I had stuck to my plan, and tweaked it constantly for an entire year. My life has changed for the better!
Lets See Some Stats!
I started out my measuring, weighing and seeing just where I was at. These were my starting stats:
Weight: 161 lbs
Bodyfat: 40.6%
Lean Body mass: 93.2 lbs
I was shocked at first. 40% body fat? Wow that seemed really high. Here's an important point I woud like to make about this. There are many different ways to measure body fat and none are all that effective but if you always use the same method to measure then you can at least ensure that the number is getting smaller. That is what I have done. I use a tape measure to take measurements of my waist and hips and plug them into this website to get the numbers. I know its flawed because my tummy often gets bloated, especially around period times but these are just blips. Over a long length of time, (especially a year!) you can see a trend.
Here's a couple of pictures from 2006 when I started:
Ugh! Check out the rolls of flab!
Graduation Day. I look fat & tired.After figuring out where I was, I set about setting a goal. At first I wasn't too sure what I could achieve so I just plucked an arbitrary figure from out of the air - 25% body fat. That seemed like fairly average and figured that would be a good starting point. I plugged the number into my spreadsheet along with my lean body mass and figured I would need to lose about 28lbs to get there. In hindsight, I now know that spreadsheets don't always reflect reality as two weeks ago my loss had reached 27lbs and my lean body mass was higher than it started but still my body fat was over 30%.
My Current Stats
Ok where am I now? Well unfortunately I put on a whopping 5lbs on holiday so I have undone some of my progress but that is life. Here's the numbers:
Weight: 138 lbs (23 lbs lost)
Body Fat: 31.2% (9.4% lost)
Lean Body Mass: 95.2 lbs (2 lbs gained)
It's all positive but not as much as I would have liked. A few weeks after starting, I began to plan more carefully and figured I could lose 1lb a week. After a year I have lost only 23lbs so that's an average of about half a pound a week but it did not work out like that. I have plotted a little graph of my progress over the year:
I started off really well, for the first four months I actually lost more than I had planned. That took me to November when it all started to go horribly wrong. For me Christmas has always been a very bad time, but not just Christmas Day or even Christmas week. Oh no, for me Christmas starts when the shops get the Christmas stuff in. Now I dunno about the rest of the world but here in the UK that starts in October! Usually I could put on a stone over the whole of the winter period.Looking at the chart I slowed right down in November then from December to January I had a sharp increase in weight. January I didn't do too badly and I lost most of what I had gained but I took another bad turn in February and put more back on. From November to March I had lost a net total of 1.5 lbs! That's a crappy four months. I got myself back on track in March and steadily lost all through the summer until my holiday when I had that massive jump back up!
Here are some recent photos. I don't have any flesh revealing ones yet this year but on the closeup I can see a marked difference around my neck. I hated looking so fat around the face so I'm glad its come off from there.
Same baby as before, we both have more clothes on!
I've been snapped eating, hence the odd expression!Obviously I'm not done yet. I haven't reached my goal, and as I discovered recently, I don't think 25% is good enough anyway. They say that the closer you get to your goal, the harder it is to lose but I don't really buy that. After a year, I've learned a few things and I have found stuff that works for me and stuff that doesn't:
- I now have a very good idea of the ideal meal for me, how many calories, the macronutrient ratio etc and I have built a ton of recipes that match it for breakfasts, lunches and dinners. When I started out I had to largely wing the food and just make small adjustments along the way. Now I have it sorted pretty well.
- I have identified many things that sabotage my diet and I've come up with strategies for dealing with them when I want to.
- On the other hand, I also know that I can lose fat when I want to which allows me to go out an enjoy good food on occasion without worrying about it. Over the long haul, I'm making progress in the right direction whilst still having a social life.
- I've started running. This gives me a form of cardio that I can do anywhere so that I am not tied to a gym. I still have a long way to go with running but that's something I'm going to work on in the coming year.
- I now know that during the winter months I crave chocolate and comfort foods heavily, and I also hate getting up early! I can use this to my advantage. I have done a plan for the year but I am only planning to lose just 1 lb a month in the winter months.
- Exercise has become fundamentally ingrained into my lifestyle. I do some kind of exercise every single day - whether it's cardio down the gym, going for a run, karate, or weight training either at the gym or at home. This is a habit I intend to maintain for the rest of my life.
- Oh yes, how could I forget - I started karate this year. Not only is it something I have wanted to take up for years but its an excellent form of exercise.
15% Body fat, 95lbs lean body mass by 7th July 2008.
Breaking it Down
One of the mistakes I made last year was that I set my one year goal but I never broke it down further. I knew I wanted to lose 1lb a week roughly but if I had a week where I didn't lose enough or I gained I just said "oh well, there's plenty of time yet, I'll lose next week". The time period was too long and I simply didn't notice how badly things were going during the winter.
So this time I have started to break down that goal and I have set myself goals for the next three months and I'll continue to re-evaluate those as the year progresses.
Conclusion
When I came out of hospital I said that I wanted to improve my lifestyle and become a fit and healthy person so that I would never have to go through that again. I somehow attributed my poor lifestyle to the first operation going wrong. Whether that's true or not doesn't matter. It took me a year to actually start doing something about it but at the back of my mind the whole time has been the overarching goal to be healthy - not just thin.
Sure I wanted to lose the flab, but I wanted to get fit too. I wanted to change my habits and make healthier choices the norm for me. Even though I have not lost as much body fat as I had wanted in this year I am way, way fitter than I was back then, and I am much healthier.
As I tell people in the Burn the Fat newsgroup that I subscribe to, it's not a matter of losing as much fat as quickly as possible thats important, it's imprinting the right habits onto your life that are going to make the difference long term. I will continue my plan for another year, and I get real excited when I think about what I can achieve in my second year at this.
Wednesday, 4 July 2007
To Plan Or Go With the Flow?
As I mentioned in my previous post, I have a tendency to plan things in great detail. I do this with all things related to my fat loss goal such as planning of all of my food and my exercise routines. The main reason I do this is because it gives me a sense of certainty. For example, if I know that I need 2000 calories a day and I plan my food to exactly 1500 calories a day then I can be fairly sure that I'll lose 1lb of fat in a week as there are 3500 calories in 1lb of fat.
Planning Problems
However, there are problems when it comes to planning, especially when that plan relies on a certain amount of progress being made. Here's an example: when I first started running I had a goal in mind. I wanted to run 5k on the 22nd July for the Race for Life event. I also knew what my starting circumstances were so I took a logical approach and drew up a plan of how I could go from where I was to where I wanted to be (in running terms) in the time that I had available.
The plan went something like this... I started out running something like 10 minutes in blocks of two minutes at a time and walking for a minute in between. Each week I would increase the overall duration of the run and over time I would increase the length of each block. The aim was to get me to a point where I would be able to run for 40 minutes non-stop. I did this on a spreadsheet in a very linear fashion and it all looked fine but there was a fatal flaw in the plan - it did not take into account my physical and emotional states and capabilities.
Plans Have to be Executed by People
When I first started out I made progress quite quickly and looking back I think the reason for that is that my fitness has increased quite a bit from my other exercise so I started out being able to do more than I realised. However I soon hit a wall and then workouts became serious effort and this is where the problems started. I find running hard, really hard. And painful. There were times when my legs were screaming and I can't put myself through that kind of pain unless I'm in a certain emotional state. I have to be feeling highly motivated and fired up, and physically feeling fresh and strong. But of course I simply don't feel like that every day.
Many days I would drag myself down the gym early in the morning, I'd be yawning away not looking forward to another day in the office and just feeling generally low. On days like that I just didn't want any more pain. Yes I'd think about my goals and visualise the results I wanted but on some days I simply didn't care! I was happy to do a workout as long as I didn't have to push too hard and for me, running was always hard.
Plans Must be Able to Accommodate Change
I found myself getting stressed because the routine was not going according to the plans I had laid out. In my first plan I was trying to increase my overall duration by three minutes per week and at the time I ran three times per week so that equated to a minute more on every run. Once I began to hit that wall I couldn't find that extra minute in me and then of course the next day I'd need to run an extra two minutes if I wanted to stay on plan and that's the problem with a plan that relies on a linear progression - one slip and the whole plan falls apart.
Another problem is that if I push myself really hard it tends to have repercussions later on. Sometimes they are physical - I'll get such cramps in my legs that I wont want to run for a few days or they are emotional - I keep thinking about how much the last run hurt and I end up skipping gym sessions in the following few days. This is counter productive - two average workouts would be better than one great one and one skipped one!
Ditching the Plan
I've already decided to pull out of the race so I feel like the pressure has been lifted but I would still like to persevere with running simply because it's such a convenient form of exercise. I don't need a gym and I can run anywhere. A week off work doesn't have to mean a week of missed exercise.
After a holiday in France I wanted to get back into it but I didn't want to dive in and push too hard and just put myself off again so I started off very gently. I went right back to basics. I had plotted out a 3k route and my only objective was simply to complete that route on foot, be it walking, jogging or some mixture. I started out just walking and I didn't look at my watch at all. Of course after a while I was warmed up and I felt fine so I moved into a jog. When I got tired I just stopped and walked again. I didn't check my watch, I didn't try to 'reach the next milestone' - I simply did as much as I felt like without pushing too hard.
Of course it was not a fantastic workout. I would have burned more calories by doing a workout on one of the elliptical machines at the gym but that's not the point. What I am trying to do here is reintroduce myself to the idea of running as a form of regular exercise. I can supplement my routine with gym sessions to ensure I do enough real fitness but as far as running goes I just want to try and get comfortable with it.
Progress Still Needs to be Measurable
The question is, will I get any better? If I just go with the flow in this way and don't try to set myself any goals or time myself in any way then how will I know if I am getting any better? And if I don't get any better then what is the point? What I think I can do here is use a couple of methods of measurement that are much less formal than the plans I used to draw up.
Firstly, I can plot new routes that are longer. My 3k route took me 30 minutes and I walked most of it. Ideally I'd like to be doing a 30 minute workout that is mostly running but as I physically can't do that yet I'll settle for longer routes that I walk large chunks of. If I make the route longer then I know I am doing more without having to explicitly measure anything.
Secondly, I can time the overall route. Where as before I would have a strict schedule such as run 8 minutes, walk 2 minutes, and repeat three times, now I can just do a run/walk mixture as I feel able and time it on a regular basis to see if I am getting any faster. Plus, I can use my intuition. How do I know I walked most of the route if I didn't do any timings? Well I just know! I can use that same sense to give me an idea of whether or not I am running more than before. Every week or so I can time the run so I have a better idea. If after a few weeks the same route is taking me the same time to cover then I know I am not making any improvement. Perhaps then I could try and use more formal methods to step up the effort a little.
For now, I'm going to just go with the flow and see how that works out.
(01/07/2007 13:40 | delete)
Planning Problems
However, there are problems when it comes to planning, especially when that plan relies on a certain amount of progress being made. Here's an example: when I first started running I had a goal in mind. I wanted to run 5k on the 22nd July for the Race for Life event. I also knew what my starting circumstances were so I took a logical approach and drew up a plan of how I could go from where I was to where I wanted to be (in running terms) in the time that I had available.
The plan went something like this... I started out running something like 10 minutes in blocks of two minutes at a time and walking for a minute in between. Each week I would increase the overall duration of the run and over time I would increase the length of each block. The aim was to get me to a point where I would be able to run for 40 minutes non-stop. I did this on a spreadsheet in a very linear fashion and it all looked fine but there was a fatal flaw in the plan - it did not take into account my physical and emotional states and capabilities.
Plans Have to be Executed by People
When I first started out I made progress quite quickly and looking back I think the reason for that is that my fitness has increased quite a bit from my other exercise so I started out being able to do more than I realised. However I soon hit a wall and then workouts became serious effort and this is where the problems started. I find running hard, really hard. And painful. There were times when my legs were screaming and I can't put myself through that kind of pain unless I'm in a certain emotional state. I have to be feeling highly motivated and fired up, and physically feeling fresh and strong. But of course I simply don't feel like that every day.
Many days I would drag myself down the gym early in the morning, I'd be yawning away not looking forward to another day in the office and just feeling generally low. On days like that I just didn't want any more pain. Yes I'd think about my goals and visualise the results I wanted but on some days I simply didn't care! I was happy to do a workout as long as I didn't have to push too hard and for me, running was always hard.
Plans Must be Able to Accommodate Change
I found myself getting stressed because the routine was not going according to the plans I had laid out. In my first plan I was trying to increase my overall duration by three minutes per week and at the time I ran three times per week so that equated to a minute more on every run. Once I began to hit that wall I couldn't find that extra minute in me and then of course the next day I'd need to run an extra two minutes if I wanted to stay on plan and that's the problem with a plan that relies on a linear progression - one slip and the whole plan falls apart.
Another problem is that if I push myself really hard it tends to have repercussions later on. Sometimes they are physical - I'll get such cramps in my legs that I wont want to run for a few days or they are emotional - I keep thinking about how much the last run hurt and I end up skipping gym sessions in the following few days. This is counter productive - two average workouts would be better than one great one and one skipped one!
Ditching the Plan
I've already decided to pull out of the race so I feel like the pressure has been lifted but I would still like to persevere with running simply because it's such a convenient form of exercise. I don't need a gym and I can run anywhere. A week off work doesn't have to mean a week of missed exercise.
After a holiday in France I wanted to get back into it but I didn't want to dive in and push too hard and just put myself off again so I started off very gently. I went right back to basics. I had plotted out a 3k route and my only objective was simply to complete that route on foot, be it walking, jogging or some mixture. I started out just walking and I didn't look at my watch at all. Of course after a while I was warmed up and I felt fine so I moved into a jog. When I got tired I just stopped and walked again. I didn't check my watch, I didn't try to 'reach the next milestone' - I simply did as much as I felt like without pushing too hard.
Of course it was not a fantastic workout. I would have burned more calories by doing a workout on one of the elliptical machines at the gym but that's not the point. What I am trying to do here is reintroduce myself to the idea of running as a form of regular exercise. I can supplement my routine with gym sessions to ensure I do enough real fitness but as far as running goes I just want to try and get comfortable with it.
Progress Still Needs to be Measurable
The question is, will I get any better? If I just go with the flow in this way and don't try to set myself any goals or time myself in any way then how will I know if I am getting any better? And if I don't get any better then what is the point? What I think I can do here is use a couple of methods of measurement that are much less formal than the plans I used to draw up.
Firstly, I can plot new routes that are longer. My 3k route took me 30 minutes and I walked most of it. Ideally I'd like to be doing a 30 minute workout that is mostly running but as I physically can't do that yet I'll settle for longer routes that I walk large chunks of. If I make the route longer then I know I am doing more without having to explicitly measure anything.
Secondly, I can time the overall route. Where as before I would have a strict schedule such as run 8 minutes, walk 2 minutes, and repeat three times, now I can just do a run/walk mixture as I feel able and time it on a regular basis to see if I am getting any faster. Plus, I can use my intuition. How do I know I walked most of the route if I didn't do any timings? Well I just know! I can use that same sense to give me an idea of whether or not I am running more than before. Every week or so I can time the run so I have a better idea. If after a few weeks the same route is taking me the same time to cover then I know I am not making any improvement. Perhaps then I could try and use more formal methods to step up the effort a little.
For now, I'm going to just go with the flow and see how that works out.
(01/07/2007 13:40 | delete)
Monday, 2 July 2007
Why do Plans Change so Quickly?
Just over a month ago I posted that I was going to start Slacking Off Before my Deadline. In that post I had decided that I was exercising far too much and I decided to trim it down to just one session per day. At that time my exercise consisted of cardio at the gym, weight training and karate. I had pretty much stopped running.
Then just a couple of weeks later I had another go at running after discovering that I had previously been Running Too Fast. After this post I decided to re-incorporate running into my regime so my routine changed again.
Then about a week ago, just two weeks after planning to start running again, I stopped all over again and pulled out of the Race I had signed up for! At the same time I decided to cut back my exercise further to give me more time for other areas of my life.
Now, just a week later I feel myself wanting to change once again! I've just got back from a holiday in the South of France. It was lovely out there but I did absolutely no exercise and I ate truckloads of food. I've come back 6 lbs heavier! I knew this would happen but that doesn't stop me feeling bad about it. My gut reaction is to get down that gym twice a day like I was before to try to shift the excess again as fast as possible and just sod everything else!
So why so many changes in such a short time? Am I the only one who goes through this? I think that one of the issues that I personally face is that I like to plan. I like to have a set routine that I follow - I don't like to just 'wing it' when it comes to exercise or food. I plan things in great detail and when anything changes in my circumstances I go and re-work my plans. So I guess that I notice these changes more than others.
Looking at the reasons behind the changes I see nothing out of the ordinary. I was getting a bit obsessive over exercise so I cut back a bit, I introduced running after trying something new, a week of illness and a holiday threw my plans out of whack. I'm sure these are things that happen to us all a lot of the time.
The same thing can be said of food. How many times have I planned food only to have those plans compromised because of a stay with family, a day out, a meal out, somebody's birthday etc etc etc. This happens all the time. Why?
Because LIFE happens!
This is just life isn't it? Stuff happens. Life happens, that's just the way things are. Things change, things get in the way, people get in the way. In my case I change my plans every time something changes and this gets very annoying when I spend a lot of time planing and have to keep changing it but at least I'm adapting. I fear it would be much worse to just ignore those changes and not deal with them.
I'm learning to accept it now. I find this problem cropping up in all areas of my life - not just my fat loss goals. Things always change and we need to be able to adapt if we want to keep up with the times and keep moving forward with our goals.
Then just a couple of weeks later I had another go at running after discovering that I had previously been Running Too Fast. After this post I decided to re-incorporate running into my regime so my routine changed again.
Then about a week ago, just two weeks after planning to start running again, I stopped all over again and pulled out of the Race I had signed up for! At the same time I decided to cut back my exercise further to give me more time for other areas of my life.
Now, just a week later I feel myself wanting to change once again! I've just got back from a holiday in the South of France. It was lovely out there but I did absolutely no exercise and I ate truckloads of food. I've come back 6 lbs heavier! I knew this would happen but that doesn't stop me feeling bad about it. My gut reaction is to get down that gym twice a day like I was before to try to shift the excess again as fast as possible and just sod everything else!
So why so many changes in such a short time? Am I the only one who goes through this? I think that one of the issues that I personally face is that I like to plan. I like to have a set routine that I follow - I don't like to just 'wing it' when it comes to exercise or food. I plan things in great detail and when anything changes in my circumstances I go and re-work my plans. So I guess that I notice these changes more than others.
Looking at the reasons behind the changes I see nothing out of the ordinary. I was getting a bit obsessive over exercise so I cut back a bit, I introduced running after trying something new, a week of illness and a holiday threw my plans out of whack. I'm sure these are things that happen to us all a lot of the time.
The same thing can be said of food. How many times have I planned food only to have those plans compromised because of a stay with family, a day out, a meal out, somebody's birthday etc etc etc. This happens all the time. Why?
Because LIFE happens!
This is just life isn't it? Stuff happens. Life happens, that's just the way things are. Things change, things get in the way, people get in the way. In my case I change my plans every time something changes and this gets very annoying when I spend a lot of time planing and have to keep changing it but at least I'm adapting. I fear it would be much worse to just ignore those changes and not deal with them.
I'm learning to accept it now. I find this problem cropping up in all areas of my life - not just my fat loss goals. Things always change and we need to be able to adapt if we want to keep up with the times and keep moving forward with our goals.
Friday, 22 June 2007
Pulling Out of the Race
A couple of weeks ago I made a breakthrough with my running and this was about 6 weeks before the scheduled date of my 5k Race For Life. Until then I had been tempted to pull out but my breakthrough had convinced me otherwise. I immediately came up with a little plan of increasing the length of the route I run by 0.5k each week until the race. I used a cool tool called GMaps Pedometer to plot my routes.
Unfortunately I didn't get a chance to put it into action. The morning I was supposed to go for my first run I was feeling really ill. I phoned in sick to work and went back to bed. I stayed off work for a couple of days then felt a bit better so went back. I planned to try a run again at the weekend. However, my flu-like symptoms developed into a nasty cough and by Saturday morning I couldn't go more than a couple of minutes without coughing up something gross so I skipped the run again.
This cough has persisted for a whole week and all week I've done no exercise whatsoever. Today I have a wedding to go to and then tomorrow morning we go from the hotel to the airport to fly out to France for a week on holiday. I might be able to do some running in France but obviously I can't do my usual route; I have no way of knowing how far I go so it will be haphazard at best.
When I get back I'll have just 3 weeks before the race. If I was to train hard it can be done, anything can be done. But having thought about it, I am simply not willing to put in that much effort in such a short space of time so I am pulling out of the race after all.
I have mixed feelings about this. Firstly I feel a huge burden has been lifted! But of course the downside is that I feel like a failure. My definition of failure is not missing a goal but but quitting on a goal and that's exactly what I have done. However, when I look back over how I arrived at this situation I realise that I have not failed in my physical capacity to run, but in my planning and training. I simply have not trained for this event. I've done a little bit of running here and there; it has been extremely sporadic.
If I was going to continue running I could take it very slowly. I could go for just one or two runs a week and slowly build up the length of the run. If I did this continuously for a whole year I should be able to run 5k quite easily next year and I feel quite confident about that. I haven't quite decided if I want to do that but I have decided to pull out of this year's race.
Oh well, we can't win 'em all :)
Unfortunately I didn't get a chance to put it into action. The morning I was supposed to go for my first run I was feeling really ill. I phoned in sick to work and went back to bed. I stayed off work for a couple of days then felt a bit better so went back. I planned to try a run again at the weekend. However, my flu-like symptoms developed into a nasty cough and by Saturday morning I couldn't go more than a couple of minutes without coughing up something gross so I skipped the run again.
This cough has persisted for a whole week and all week I've done no exercise whatsoever. Today I have a wedding to go to and then tomorrow morning we go from the hotel to the airport to fly out to France for a week on holiday. I might be able to do some running in France but obviously I can't do my usual route; I have no way of knowing how far I go so it will be haphazard at best.
When I get back I'll have just 3 weeks before the race. If I was to train hard it can be done, anything can be done. But having thought about it, I am simply not willing to put in that much effort in such a short space of time so I am pulling out of the race after all.
I have mixed feelings about this. Firstly I feel a huge burden has been lifted! But of course the downside is that I feel like a failure. My definition of failure is not missing a goal but but quitting on a goal and that's exactly what I have done. However, when I look back over how I arrived at this situation I realise that I have not failed in my physical capacity to run, but in my planning and training. I simply have not trained for this event. I've done a little bit of running here and there; it has been extremely sporadic.
If I was going to continue running I could take it very slowly. I could go for just one or two runs a week and slowly build up the length of the run. If I did this continuously for a whole year I should be able to run 5k quite easily next year and I feel quite confident about that. I haven't quite decided if I want to do that but I have decided to pull out of this year's race.
Oh well, we can't win 'em all :)
Reducing Exercise: Can I Still Burn the Fat?
I have recently encountered a situation in my personal life which has put sudden and great demands on my time and attention. Having looked closely at where I spend my time, I realised that a large proportion of it is spent on exercise. I'm usually spending about 10 hours a week on exercise. That's not to say that I am physically spending 10 hours doing the exercise, just that when you take into account time to get to the gym, shower, get changed etc, that it all adds up to that amount of time taken out of my week.
I have to cut it back. This is painful for me as over the last few months I have been slowly increasing my exercise just to maintain my fat loss and it has grown into a healthy lifestyle that I enjoy. If I cut back now that it going to hurt my progress and it will also weaken the exercise habit which could have long term repercussions. But the alternative is worse, so I have to figure out a way to deal with it. I recalculated my calorie requirements based on a lower activity level and if I want to continue with my target deficit of 500 calories a day which would allow me to lose a maximum of 1lb a week, then I need to reduce the calories I eat from 1650 to 1500 a day. Ouch!
This is a major nuisance for me, because over the last few months I have tweaked all my recipes to the point where they are all a very similar number of calories so I can just mix and match as I please and my calories for the day work out about right. I have hundreds of recipes, and I'm going to have to tweak them all over again. *Bashes head against desk in frustration*
I believe that life sends us these little trials in order to test us, and there must be something good to come out of it. So I had a look at my food and asked myself the question, "how can I eat less calories and not go hungry?". The answer was simple - eat better quality food. Ever since starting up this plan I knew that my food was not perfectly 'clean'. There's still too much fat, especially saturated fat, still too much sugar and other simple carbs. I had a look through some of my recipes and found that I could reduce the calories without reducing the amount of food in any way by being more strict with the extras such as dressings and sauces.
So the downside is that I have to spend time re-doing these recipes but I'm going to just take it a week at a time, doing just the ones I need for that week. But the upside is that this forces me to eat cleaner. Now what happens if in a few months from now I resolve my personal situation and find that I have more time for the gym again? Then I can exercise more and lose the fat even more easily than I do now. I have a feeling I'll reach my target weight before I get my time back but either way, it's always a good thing to be eating more healthily than before.
I have to cut it back. This is painful for me as over the last few months I have been slowly increasing my exercise just to maintain my fat loss and it has grown into a healthy lifestyle that I enjoy. If I cut back now that it going to hurt my progress and it will also weaken the exercise habit which could have long term repercussions. But the alternative is worse, so I have to figure out a way to deal with it. I recalculated my calorie requirements based on a lower activity level and if I want to continue with my target deficit of 500 calories a day which would allow me to lose a maximum of 1lb a week, then I need to reduce the calories I eat from 1650 to 1500 a day. Ouch!
This is a major nuisance for me, because over the last few months I have tweaked all my recipes to the point where they are all a very similar number of calories so I can just mix and match as I please and my calories for the day work out about right. I have hundreds of recipes, and I'm going to have to tweak them all over again. *Bashes head against desk in frustration*
I believe that life sends us these little trials in order to test us, and there must be something good to come out of it. So I had a look at my food and asked myself the question, "how can I eat less calories and not go hungry?". The answer was simple - eat better quality food. Ever since starting up this plan I knew that my food was not perfectly 'clean'. There's still too much fat, especially saturated fat, still too much sugar and other simple carbs. I had a look through some of my recipes and found that I could reduce the calories without reducing the amount of food in any way by being more strict with the extras such as dressings and sauces.
So the downside is that I have to spend time re-doing these recipes but I'm going to just take it a week at a time, doing just the ones I need for that week. But the upside is that this forces me to eat cleaner. Now what happens if in a few months from now I resolve my personal situation and find that I have more time for the gym again? Then I can exercise more and lose the fat even more easily than I do now. I have a feeling I'll reach my target weight before I get my time back but either way, it's always a good thing to be eating more healthily than before.
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