watchdouggo

After 7 months of doing basically the same thing (but with really good results), I’m going to change it up a bit.  I’ve been averaging about 2100 calories a day.  BUT I’m doing pilates 3 days a week and I’m up to 100 min of cardio the other 4 days.  I read an article in the latest Men’s Health with a food plan that I’ve seen on BS before.

Take your target weight (in my case I chose 190 lbs.) and multiply by 10 plus adding 1 to the multiplier for every additional hour of exercise you do a week.  In my case I came up with muliplier of 18 which gave me a daily calorie intake of . . . 3400 a day.  Oh man.  I figured out the P/C/F ratios with the rest of the formula (you can probably find it at menshealth.com) and they weren’t too different from what I’m doing now . . . only about 50% higher total than what I’m doing now.

I’m kind of nervous to try this but I feel like I need to change it up a bit.  Doing the straight math (which never quite works out to real life, huh?) I should lose about 1 lb. a week doing this.  My goal for August was 5 lbs. so if I can trust it, it will work in my favor.

Wish me luck!

I just got back from a vacation. As I thought, the food choices were brutal and without the comfort of my routine at home . . . I ate like, well, like I was on vacation. Buffets (the place we stayed was an all-inclusive resort) for about every meal and toward the end of the week, I added my old friend beer back into the mix.

I did, however, do 90 min. of cardio for 6 of the 8 days I was gone (the travel days didn’t happen b/c of the 20-some hours of airport/airplane torture). I figured that might help offset the awful food choices I was making.

So on Friday at 6 a.m. (I got to bed at 1 a.m. that same morning) I weighed in. 12 pounds heavier from the day I left. Oddly enough, the fat percentage stated that I had gained all muscle. Hilarious. I kind of freaked out a little but I know that I am dehydrated from being in a hot place and between the overdose on sodium and sugar plus alcohol . . . I’m holding water like a lake. I weighed in this morning and had already lost 5 of those pounds. Funny what a little sleep, a low-sodium diet, and a gallon or so of water will do for ya. The cool thing is I feel NO guilt about the choices I made and I was able to get right back on track the minute I got home.

I figure I’ll be back to my pre-vacation weight in a week or so. I’m wasn’t planning on re-posting a weight until the end of the month anyway and I knew that the vacation would be a struggle in that department so my goal was to maintain 225 (my starting weight July 1) for the beginning of August. I still think I have a shot at getting under 200 by January 1, 2010. I’d like to see some abs by my 40th birthday in May.

I hit my mini-goal today! The stomach virus I had surely helped for the last week but I’m confident it will stay off . . . I’m still eating well and drinking lots of water.

This is the lowest weight I’ve been since 2001. I can feel the difference in my knees and my back. I’m so happy to have made these lifestyle changes.

On Tuesday I had to go home early from work. I had a hard time getting warm the night before and didn’t sleep well. I figured I was just dragging from lack of sleep. By Wednesday morning when I finally woke up I was so weak and in agony from stomach cramps. Wednesday’s dietary intake was a handful of grapes. Then I slept through the day and night. At about 3 a.m. I woke up (for one of countless bathroom runs) and noticed that I had broken the fever so I figured I was getting over whatever had gotten into me. Still really really weak and semi-delirious. Fever was gone but the bathroom runs were still happening. I had a very tough time choking down any food at all. Today, Friday, I’m feeling a bit better. Thanks Immodium.

I knew this must have ravished my body so I jumped on the scale. Yup, down 7 pounds. NOT the way I want to lose it though!

I noticed something else interesting . . . I started getting weird food cravings today that I haven’t had in months. Quiznos, lasagna, mac and cheese, McDonald’s, you name it. If it would have been in front of me . . . I probably would have eaten it. I figured it was time to get home and make something relatively healthy and see if I could eat it. I know my calories are low low low but my stomach is not being very compliant.

So I suppose the morale of my story: if you are having hardcore cravings for “bad” food, and you’ve been able to stay on track for 6 weeks, maybe you’re not eating enough. Food for thought.

Why does every new person on here insist on eating only 1200 calories a day? I’m just curious where people are coming up with that target. If someone says they saw it on TBL, I’m gonna scream.

I did my month-end weigh in today and . . . I dropped another 1.6 lbs. this week. But the BIG news is that I’m now down over 50 lbs. from my start weight on 1/1/09 and I was rewarded with a blue star on my weight tracker.

It reminds of me of being a kid and getting stars and other stickers on my homework. A nice warm fuzzy to start my early Sunday morning.

More to come (off) . . .

. . . die by the scale. I’ve been thinking about this quite a bit over the past five months. By nature, I am a very analytic person so goals and measurements are in my DNA. In addition to that, I know how 1 or 2 pounds one way or the other can either keep me motivated and fired up or make me want to throw in the towel. I can easily check my weight every day. And I know better because I know that weight fluctuates even throughout the day and I know what it does to my mental state if the number isn’t in my favor.

Fortunately, I’ve been able to keep myself on track through the rough weigh-ins. I think the big mental change for me is that I re-prioritized what my goal is. My goal is to eat what is on my meal plan that I design every week and also to exercise every day. If I get interrupted during a workout and only get part of it in, so be it (and believe me, that is a very very difficult idea for me to grasp). But I know that the food I put in my mouth is controlled by me and only me. There are very few exceptions to that rule (which I’ll discuss in future blogs) so I’ve been able to maintain on my path for a majority of the past five months.

Like I said, I love goals and measuring how I’m doing. But working toward a number on a scale is kind of counter-productive. The point, at least for me, is to get healthier so I can live a longer and happier life. And to impress chicks (LOL). So changing the goal from the measurement tool (i.e., scale) to working the plan and staying on the path has been huge for me. Allowing that number to dictate how I feel and more importantly whether or not I stay on course is suicide.

As I continue, I think I’m going to continue the weekly weigh-ins for a while but not much longer–maybe through June which will be my sixth month. I think I’m going to try shifting more toward a 1st and 15th weigh-in just to monitor the progress and ensure I don’t need to tweak the exercise to get me off a plateau. I feel that listening to my body and try gauging my success (or not) on how I feel physically and mentally will be much more effective in the long run.

Don’t let the measurement tool stand in the way of your goals!!!

I got started on this blog almost 5 months into my weight loss. So far, I’ve dropped 49 lbs. More to go and more to come later!