What I wouldn’t give for a pizza.
posted by Norm on May 31st, 2008 • filed under Biking, Health, LivingI’m trying to lose some weight.
That probably puts me in the same boat as thousands of other Americans – the primary difference being that I’m attempting to do so via lifestyle alterations rather than expensive surgeries or shady supplements. Of course, I have a semi-rare advantage in this area: I already did it once before so I know it can be done again.
During the seven or so months I spent living in Japan I managed to drop a significant amount of weight. This was entirely by accident and, if you can believe it, I actually recall being surprised when I caught a glance of myself in a mirror whilst touring China. The weight loss was the result of lifestyle changes that were made completely unconsciously and enforced by the culture I was living in and the circumstances in which I found myself (poor). Of course, upon my return to the States I gained most of that weight back within a year or so but eventually managed to reach equilibrium by removing soda from my diet in all its forms.
Since moving to Madison, though, old habits returned. Of course the blame really rests with my own lack of self-control but, in true American Spirit, I will instead blame the cooler at work. It is chock full of succulent free drinks – fruit juices, vitamin waters (how fucking stupid are they?) and sodas of all kinds. Their low cost and ready availability would be my demise, along with the general stress of being a working man in a new city. Getting home tired each day, the thought of actually preparing healthy foods generally lost to the ease of frozen French fries, boxed macaroni and cheese, hotdogs and Pizza Hut. Combined with the typical sedentary office life, these factors conspired to make me…well, kind of a fatass. Let’s not pull punches here.
Anyway, I decided something had to be done a few weeks ago and, thus, set out to change my lifestyle as best I can. The first two major changes: strictly enforcing a 1600 Calorie daily menu and riding my bike to and from work twice a day (in the morning, home and back for lunch, and home in the evening). The former started out very rocky. Having gotten used to eating way more than I should, I found myself almost constantly hungry. However, the thought that I’d certainly existed on a similar diet for half a year in Japan reminded me that if I could only get used to the smaller, healthier portions again things would get easier. And, I’m happy to say, they mostly have.
I’ve managed to stay pretty much on this program for an entire month so far, during which I’ve dropped around 6 pounds. In the past two weeks I’ve added a 22 mile bike around one of the local lakes to my Saturdays which should, hopefully, help me increase that rate. Having bought a fairly accurate bathroom scale was also a good idea. I was on the fence at the start. I knew I was overweight – that much was obvious just by looking – but it didn’t gel until I saw the dreaded number two in the hundreds column of that seven-segment display. I have never, at any point in my life up until now, weighed that much, and the realization of such galvanized my motivation.
The long-term goal is to get down to around 170, which should put me safely in the healthy weight range for my height. For now I’m just hoping to see 189 by the time I head to my little brother’s high school graduation party in July. That’s a pretty conservative target, I know, but I figure it’s better to aim low and surpass it so as to keep myself motivated.
The ability to convincingly lie to oneself is probably the single greatest success factor in weight loss.
Code Monkey likes Tab and Mountain Dew?
Ahhh, Jonathan Coulton. Good times.
Good for you, though. I need to get on a similar plan. I had pretty much cut pop out of my diet, but never got anywhere on the exercise front. And then, when my parents came out for graduation, they insisted on buying me three 24-can cases of Pepsi despite my protestations. So I’m pretty much drinking pop again now because of the easy access since it would feel like a waste if I didn’t. And I’m afraid to make any major changes right now since the bar is in July and I don’t need any drastic lifestyle changes when I’m attempting to pass probably the hardest and most important exam of my life.
I can identify with that. In some sense your reasoning for not rocking the boat now is the same as mine was for letting myself go in the first place. I had just gotten a new job and moved to a new city and state and I figured, why bother policing something so mundane in comparison? Of course, that eventually came back to bite me, heh.
One thing I might suggest, though, is adding exercise – even if you don’t change your eating habits while studying. I find that it’s a great way to relieve stress and has a tendency to give me energy, which is somewhat counter-intuitive. But it does seem to work.
Good job Norm, i just started the same thing when I moved down here to Austin. The soda drinking for me is not bad at all, its the ‘drinking’ in general thats killing me. I run or bike in the mornings…and i’ve busted out my DDR pad, which helps a little.
Did you take a before pic? to later compare it to the ‘later’ pic?
Try millions, not thousands and you are definitely your father’s son…..I have also rediscovered the joys of a sedentary lifestyle thanks to Microsoft. Plentiful free food and drink. Sigh…..At least we’re on the 3rd floor and there are stairs….
You need more than 1600 calories if youre going to be biking that much. Your body will burn around 2000 just from sitting still and with all that cycling youll probably be burning 3000 or so. You should be around 2000 calories at least, otherwise you’re going to fall off that diet rather quickly because you’re going to be constantly tired and feeling like shit.
Take the 2000 calories and space them out. If you get to work at 8 am, that means you’re probably eating breakfast (oatmeal and a banana is a good, quick one) around 7 AM or so. Eat again at approximately 10 AM (yogurt, granola bar, etc.), and have lunch at 12 PM.
Then, have another small snack around 3 PM, and eat dinner at 530-630. The first few days youll feel like you’re eating too often and too much, but once your body gets in that rhythm you’ll be ravenously hungry. Also, drink 16 ounces of water directly before bed, and as soon as you wake up. Like, drink the 16 ounces within about 3 minutes of your alarm going off before you get in the shower. It supposedly increases your metabolism by 40% for the whole day if you continue drinking enough water.
And water… you need to be drinking at least 80 ounces a day with the cycling.
@Ryan: I didn’t take a before photo, actually, though I suppose I still could. Maybe I’ll ask my girlfriend to do it this weekend, heh.
@Justin: I don’t intend to make 1600 calories my permanent intake target. For now I’m in lose weight mode, which means I’ve gotta be negative calories one way or another to drop pounds. Using this method I’m down to 192 as of this morning which is roughly 2 pounds per week, a pretty healthy rate for someone of my size to be dropping pounds. As I approach 170 (the goal weight) I’ll slowly increase my intake until I’m back around 2000-2300, which should allow me to maintain without gaining.
At least, that’s the theory anyway.
How does shocking your system with a glass of water in the AM translate into more metabolism?
If I drink water right before bed, wont I have to get up in the night for the peeing?
@Norm, Justin isn’t saying you don’t have a theory. He’s saying your theory is shit more or less through and through. I’ve heard of this many small meals thing and would put my money on this plan. I’ve seen many physically successful people swear by it. Some were even qualified.
I desire the discipline and planning to eat this way.
@Water: I’ve read in more than one place that there’s no verified link between drinking lots of water and health. In face, I think they refer to that in Freakonomics when talking about the myriad cases where conventional wisdom proves to be full of shit when the data is analyzed.
In any case, I drink about 60-80 ounces a day easily. I have a 20 ounce bottle by my desk at work and I fill it 3-4 times a day, generally, plus I drink water with lunch and dinner and often in between. Getting plenty of that.
@Darth: If someone would give me a solid reason why it won’t work, I’d be all ears. The fact is that I’mnot tired and I’ve been on this diet without a single lapse for more than a month. So far I’ve dropped eight pounds at a rate that’s medically healthy. I don’t get much physical activity – I spend most of my day on my ass in an office chair. Once a week I do heavy exercise, and on that day I eat more than 1600 calories to compensate.
The reason this kind of program fails is because people eventually fall off the wagon and go back to their old eating habits. I’ll never be able to go back to eating shitty food, but once I’m down I can certainly return to intelligent eating at around 2000-2300 calories.
It’s not drinking “lots” of water, just an appropriate amount for what you have been doing.
THink of it this way… when you’re sleeping, your body is still running. Metabolism and food processing is still happening, and this consumes a lot of water not to mention what you exhale in your breath and sweat out. So you’ve been losing water for the entire 6-9 hours you’re asleep without drinking a single drop. Imagine if you went that long during the day without drinking, you’d be parched as hell.
Drinking water right before you sleep won’t make you pee. 16 ounces is less than your body will use during the night, so you won’t have to pee out any extra. You might have to pee right when you wake up, but that’s a good thing. The water right when you wake up does exactly that: it jumps your metabolism going because, again, it now has the water to continue running at full speed.
As far as water not having an effect on overall health, I don’t believe that for one second and I it’s fairly obvious the benefits it has. Any time you work out, you need to consume more protein to repair the muscles and it takes far more water to process protein in your body than it does for fat and carbohydrates. That’s why they tell you not to eat large amounts of protein when you’re stuck in the desert and water is scarce. It’s also why bodybuilders drink gallons of it, because they are on extremely high protein diets. In your case, with all the biking, around 80 ounces should be about right.
One other thing you should do is reserve one day a week, or every two weeks, to eat whatever you want. Not to stuff your face unnecessarily, but to eat the comfort or fatty foods you’ve been missing out on. That’s a good way to break the “cycle” of feeling bored with your diet, and one day most likely won’t affect you in any great significance.
Well, I didn’t mean to imply that water wasn’t important for metabolism, just that drinking a ton of it doesn’t show any strong correlation with improved health in the average American. I drink a ton of water on Saturday when I bike, both before and after, because it’s obvious I need it then. I think you over estimate the rest of my weekly biking though: I live a mile from work, so unless I go on an errand to the drugstore or something that’s 4 miles of biking a day. Not much.
That seems like a good idea, and I’ve sort of inadvertently been doing that already. I ate some brats and funnel cake over Memorial Day weekend and I went to Culver’s for burgers two weeks or so before that.
The advice is much appreciated. I’ll definitely try the 5 small meals thing you pitched earlier once I’m out of the hardcore weight loss portion of my plan.
dont let the media’s unrealistic standards of beauty control your self image. youre a pretty girl and guys will like you for your personality and can-do attitude.
Not that you needed to be told this, but the most important thing for weight loss/maintenance and an exercise program is to find something that works well for you: easier said than done, given that some people’s bodies are outside of the norm (no pun intended). Sounds like you’ve got a good thing going, and it’s healthy. Keep it up, man!
Hi Norm,
I have the same problem, sitting in front of a computer all day long definitely puts a hurter on the ol’ metabolism thing. This week I have found a great source of exercise though… Moving. I never realized how much energy you burn moving boxes and cleaning an apartment.
I have a friend of mine at work that is trying the same thing you are. He unfortunately is taking the vitamin water route instead of plain water though. I think its a waist personally but if it keeps him off of the soda I guess it is better than nothing. I told him to drink diet but he says he hates the taste of the fake sugar. If I didn’t drink diet I think I would weigh a ton by now.
Keep up the good work. I am still planing on coming down to Wisconsin sometime this summer, I’ll let you know what weekend, its been busy here lately so I haven’t had a free weekend in a while.
Sex is a fantastic form of exercise. Unfortunately, masturbation doesn’t count.
I would have to disagree, it is great for maintaining mussel structure in your forearms but you do have to watch out for tendinitis.
seriously though, loosing mussel mass is the worst problem with weight loss, it is the first to go if not maintained as it is easier for your body to convert mussel to energy than it is for fat. Any sort of cardiovascular exercise helps with this as it tends to tone the mussel instead of building mass, but it is important to do some sort of weight training to replace what is lost while in the “loose weight” mode.
No one wants to be a scrawny weakling… unless your girlfriend is into that sort of thing
Norm, while I wholeheartedly appreciate and encourage your weight loss régime, you really should plunk your rapidly slimming ass down in front of a computer and update your blog more than once a season.
Hey Norm! When you going to add another post?
It’s coming onto 2 months now! What you been doing?
You know, Norm, abstaining from posting will not protect you from contracting AIDS.