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Grex > Health > #51: The Weight Loss Diary of "Dr Straight" | |
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| 25 new of 77 responses total. |
remmers
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response 18 of 77:
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Oct 21 13:13 UTC 1998 |
I've lost about 5 more pounds since the beginning of September, making
my total weight loss since I began this regimen about 20 pounds. Body
fat has gone from 28% in May down to 21%. Body mass index (BMI) is 25,
down from 28. Lean body mass has remained unchanged.
No significant weight loss for the last two or three weeks. I expected
this leveling off - less time for exercise with the semester underway,
colder weather, the distractions of work. Eventually I'd like to lose
another 10 to 15 pounds, but I'm in no hurry. That can wait until next
spring. My immediate goal is not to gain anything back.
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otter
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response 19 of 77:
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Jan 21 01:59 UTC 1999 |
<kick-starts the item>
It's been nearly three months since your last progress report. How's it going,
remmers?
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remmers
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response 20 of 77:
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Jan 21 14:04 UTC 1999 |
Some further progress. Lost 5 more pounds since my last report, but
for the last few weeks I've been holding steady in the 150-155 lb
range. I'm somewhat surprised that I lost anything, since my exer-
cise level is way down due to the time demands of the school year.
Losing another 5 pounds or so would be nice, but I suspect that
will have to wait until spring/summer when I'll have more time to
work out.
I feel pretty good at my current weight, actually. Waistline is down
3-4 inches since I started all this. It's nice to be able to fit
into clothes that I haven't been able to wear for 8 or 9 years.
The bulk (no pun intended) of my success -- and especially the fact
that I've continued to lose weight during the school year -- is due,
I'm convinced, more to my radical change in eating habits that any-
thing else. Restricted calorie intake (around 1500 cal/day), with
an effort to balance carbohydrate, protein, and fat calories in a
40/30/30 percentage ratio at every meal or snack (the so-called
"Zone Diet"). In particular, carbohydrate intake is way down --
no more binging on bagels and pretzels, which I used to do a lot.
And I've been able to do all this without feeling like I'm starving
myself.
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keesan
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response 21 of 77:
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Jan 21 20:40 UTC 1999 |
Maybe you have reached the correct weight for your genetic makeup. You looked
quite healthy to me at the UPS potluck.
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remmers
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response 22 of 77:
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Jan 22 13:49 UTC 1999 |
Thanks.
I'm skeptical that there is such a thing as "correct weight for one's
genetic makeup" though. Certainly genetics has something to do with it,
but weight depends a lot on lifestyle choices too. My example is a case
in point.
Although I generally feel a lot better since I've lost weight, I was
interested in getting an objective reading on any actual improvements,
so I asked my doctor to prescribe a blood test to measure cholesterol
and such. Compared with six months ago, the last time I had this done,
indicators such as the total cholesterol to HDL ratio, and the
triglycerides to HDL ratio, have improved significantly. My doctor
wrote "excellent" on the lab report.
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otter
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response 23 of 77:
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Jan 23 06:09 UTC 1999 |
Three cheers and a pinch. Good job!
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beeswing
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response 24 of 77:
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Jan 30 05:28 UTC 1999 |
grad school has contributed to my weight loss, since I plain do not
have time to eat during the day! I know that's not good, but it was so
hard to integrate something healthy to eat. There's places on campus to
eat but it's all greasy, fried or sugary crap. I can't eat that every
day.
So, I carry around a can of Balance, a natural alternative to Slim Fast.
I get it at the natural foods store. It's got vitamins and all and is
tasty, does not have that "aluminum" taste because it doesn't have all
the icky chemicals. Only $2 a can, which is cheaper than anything I
could eat at school. It really does fill my tummy, I don't drink it and
go, "Aaagh solid food!!!"
I am also working out 2 to 4 times per week. 30 minutes on the bike or
cross country ski machine. I break a sweat but am not spent when it's
done. If it wore me out, I'd get burned out way quick and not stick to
it. I exercise to get energy, not to kill myself. I also do weight
training. The weight is slooowly coming off but it's coming off.
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remmers
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response 25 of 77:
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Jan 31 11:44 UTC 1999 |
Nice going, bees. If it's coming off slowly, and you're working out,
it's much more likely to stay off, I think.
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otter
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response 26 of 77:
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Jan 31 14:37 UTC 1999 |
Agreed. And keep up the good work, bees!
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beeswing
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response 27 of 77:
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Jan 31 22:26 UTC 1999 |
yeah, but i was bad today, i ate one of those brie-en-croute things.
(Brie inside bread). WEll I hate half, it's so rich and goopy there's no
way you can eat a whole one. Still, it's like pure fat. After I ate it I
was like, "ugh". It does stick though, that was several hours ago and I
am still not hungry.
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scott
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response 28 of 77:
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Feb 1 00:16 UTC 1999 |
It's OK to occasionally eat something huge and heavy. Just keep up the normal
good habits and it won't make muchof a bulge.
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remmers
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response 29 of 77:
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Feb 1 15:28 UTC 1999 |
Right. I depart from my usual regimen now and then (like yesterday,
when I pigged out on Chinese food). I find it doesn't hurt.
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beeswing
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response 30 of 77:
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Feb 1 19:28 UTC 1999 |
True... I was being a bit hard on myself. Usually I compensate,
balancing a big lunch with a smaller dinner, etc. I'm getting to where I
like exercising (probably because I no longer go with the intention of
wearing myself out), so when I eat something not-so-healthy I know I can
go to the gym that night to burn it off.
I'm not sure how many calories I eat per day; I just can't sit down and
add up all that. Yawn. I know I can eat 2200 a day and maintain, but
since I want to lose I try to keep it around 1700 or so. So if I want
the little debbie swiss cake rolls, and it turns out I'm nowhere near my
limit for the day, I just eat it. I know they're empty calories, but if
I didn't exceed the limit then would it do harm?
When I took karate as a PE credit in undergrad, I was working out 1 1/2
hrs twice a week. Ate my typical fattening diet, which included lots of
pizza and beer back in those days. I still lost. But I was 21 or so
then, and five years has changed me somewhat. It's a little bit harder.
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remmers
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response 31 of 77:
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Feb 1 21:39 UTC 1999 |
The current wisdom on exercise (as reported in the Feb '99 issue of
Consumer Reports) is that you don't have to exercise intensively to
get the health benefits of exercise. Half an hour a day (or on most
days) of moderate exercise - like brisk walking - is enough. It can
even be spread out in smaller chunks over the course of a day.
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beeswing
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response 32 of 77:
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Feb 2 19:13 UTC 1999 |
Yep. Some days I'm in the mood to break a sweat. Other times I just want
to get my blood moving is all. I can't do aerobics classes and such.
They bore me to death, and those instructors are just too damn perky. :)
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beeswing
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response 33 of 77:
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Feb 12 18:57 UTC 1999 |
i am now in another range. my current weight is where i was when i was a
freshman in college, before it caught up me. i am down a total of 21
pounds from my highest weight. but i am almost 15 pounds lighter than i
was last semester.
my jeans are loose, but not really falling off. the thighs and hips are
the last things to budge, argh. i feel lighter on my feet. my face
does look thinner, my cheekbones are more pronounced. no one's really
commenting on my weight loss, but it may be hard for people to tell
because i'm still wearing my loose clothes. and they don't study my body
as much as i do (i hope).
yesterday and today though i am like FOOD! I just want to eat all day!
I've been snarfing Pretzel Flipz all day. I may have been a little too
strict calorie-wise the past few days and my body was like "you better
feed me more or else".
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keesan
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response 34 of 77:
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Feb 15 01:57 UTC 1999 |
Apples are filling.
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rcurl
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response 35 of 77:
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Feb 15 05:08 UTC 1999 |
Yes, I just used some for filling in an apple pie.
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remmers
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response 36 of 77:
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Feb 15 18:06 UTC 1999 |
Re resp:33 - I have days like that too, and usually give in to the
urge (but try to keep to the 40/30/30 ratio of macronutrients when
I do). So far it hasn't resulted in my gaining any weight back.
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beeswing
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response 37 of 77:
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Feb 16 04:43 UTC 1999 |
Ehhh. It caught up with me. I am up about a pound and a half. But some
of that's probably water. I didn't eat well all weekend, definitely too
much fattening things. It's showing in my skin too. Why did I
deliberately do this to myself?
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otter
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response 38 of 77:
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Feb 27 15:28 UTC 1999 |
ref #37: Good question. Have you come up with an answer?
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scg
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response 39 of 77:
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Sep 9 05:21 UTC 1999 |
Interesting item. I just discovered it.
I'm guessing the pound or two bees was talking about having gained
probably wasn't anything significant. When I've had regular access to a
scale, I've found myself fluctuationg by that sort of amount very regularly.
Anyhow... I dont' own a scale, in part because I've never gotten around to
buying one, and in part because I've never been convinced that weight alone
was a terribly good indicator of health. However, I was discovering last
winter that in addition to looking fatter than I had ever looked before and
having a lot of my older clothes fitting quite tightly, long walks or climbing
stairs were rather difficult. This became especially noticable when visiting
my parents in their London townhouse, with every room on a different floor,
such that I was constantly going up and down stairs. I found the first couple
of days to be rather exhausing, before I started getting used to it and having
an easier time of it. In the couple of years before that I had gone from bike
racing, and training for that a couple of hours a day, to being mostly
sedentary, and eating whatever horribly fatty food was available when I
remembered to eat, which wasn't on any sort of regular schedule. I weighed
myself at that point, and discovered that I weighed around 190 pounds (up from
120 when I stopped getting taller, and 140 the last time I had been living
a "healthy" lifestyle). I set out to get myself back into shape.
That trip to London helped a lot in getting started. The constant running
up and down stairs forced me to get into some semblance of shape very quickly,
as did walking everywhere. Visiting people who were eating reasonably healthy
food on a fairly regular schedule helped as well, since after a few weeks my
body started expecting that. By the time I left there, I was already feeling
much better physically than I had when I got there. When I got home I started
eating on a much more regular schedule than I had been before, eating
breakfast (which I hadn't done on a regular basis in years), lunch somewhere
close to lunch time, rather than forgetting about it all day, and dinner at
something resembling a usual dinner time, when I previously would have finally
been getting around to eating lunch. Without even thinking about it, I cut
out almost all of the vending machine junk food I had been eating before,
since eating on a more regular schedule meant that I wasn't getting hungry
for snacks in between. I think I'm now eating more food than I was when I
was gaining lots of weight, which seems counter-intuitive, but I've read that
the body starts storing lots of energy as fat when it doesn't know whether
it's going to get fed again anytime soon, so eating on a regular schedule
probably helped with that a lot. I think I'm eating a lot less really greasy
food than I was before, mostly because when I'm exercising regularly greasy
food stops tasting very good, but I haven't been ebing very picky about what
I eat for my meals, as long as I'm eating something.
The other piece of what I started doing was regular exercise. The biggest
thing has been lots of walking (at least an hour, sometimes a lot more, almost
every day). The time I've been spending walking is time I previously would
have spent at work or watching TV. I seem to have downgraded the importance
of my job in my time priorities. Being less of a workaholic is probably a
good thing in general. I also started biking again, which I hadn't done much
in the last few years. I haven't managed to work biking into my week day
schedule much, but lately I've been doing an hour or two of road riding on
one weekend day, and a few hours of mountain biking on the other weekend day.
It's now been eight months. The most important change from my perspective
is that I now feel a lot better than I did before. I'm also finding that I
have a lot more energy. I haven't weighed myself recently, but I'm assuming
I've probably also lost a considerable amount of weight. I think I look a
lot thinner, and clothes that were quite tight a few months ago are now rather
loose. I'm assuming that if I were to go back to my previous sluggishness
and poor eating habits I would probably once again start feeling like a slug,
and would once again start gaining weight quickly, but I have no plans to do
that.
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remmers
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response 40 of 77:
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Sep 9 11:06 UTC 1999 |
Congrats on your progress, Steve. I've found that healthy, regular
eating, plus a reasonable amount of exercise, works wonders. And feeling
so much better is motivation for staying on track.
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beeswing
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response 41 of 77:
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Sep 10 04:17 UTC 1999 |
I've been off track lately. I had more free time and was more sedentary
during the summer, and it's taken its toll. Now school has started back
and I have less free time and am forced to do a lot of walking. The
first week was hard... my classes and work are on the fourth floor and
the elevator's too slow to bother with. Now I need to incorporate the
gym again, I haven't been in over a month. I am thinking of trying a
yoga class too.
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keesan
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response 42 of 77:
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Sep 10 20:04 UTC 1999 |
I lived on the thirteenth floor one year in Macedonia (the first floor was
one flight up) and decided not to use the elevator. This was a handy skill
as it was often broken and I was one of the few people who stopped caring.
The first few days were somewhat tiring, of course. (There was also one
person who managed to walk into the elevator shaft when the elevator was not
there, which may have converted a few other people to walking. The dorms were
not always maintained properly.)
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