31/1/11
Let me start by saying that all is not going according to plan. Like most of you, from time to time work, has thrown me a curve ball in the form of a
highly stressful situation with a tight deadline. Working late and poor sleep isn’t conducive to getting up at 5am for a bunch ride. I have been riding
to and from work to mitigate the situation, but that hasn’t made up for my other stress response behaviour – wine and cheese. I’m not talking a glass
and a cube here. More like a bottle of pinot noir (very nice too) and a half round of blue cheese – when the bottle was gone I switched to brandy to wash
down the remainder of the cheese.
After getting over the shame and disappointment I felt after that little splurge, I decided to go in a 10k fun run after work. My 16 y.o. son came along. I’d
done a few of these runs (orgainised by the YMCA) a couple of years ago, and had completed them in the tail end of the main group. So equipped with new shoes
I got from Shoe Science in Newmarket (they deserve a plug for brilliant service), and my recently service Polar heart rate monitor and pedometer I lined up.
The course is 3 laps of the Museum Domain in Auckland. Not long after starting I lost my speed reading, but settled into brisk pace behind my son. End of the
first lap, which is up hill, I had to let Nick go. I was panting and sweating like a porn star – an over the hill almost working for free one.
My running became interspersed with walking. Nick was long gone, so I thought. Towards the end of the second lap I saw him in the distance standing next to
the car. When I got to him, he said “I’m stuffed”. That was all the encouragement I needed to pull the pin. We got in the car and headed home with the air
con at full blast, basically coming to the conclusion that my beloved sport of cycling is for wimps and real men run.
My watch said I’d burnt about 480 calories for the 40 minute effort. I would have thought more, considering the pain and heavy breathing.
While this was a pitiful effort it has spurred me on to do more running, and now I have a benchmark. First goal finish one of these 10k runs.
Monday night I went for a run around the “block” – an undulating 8.3k. Did it in 49mins with no walking – already feeling slightly better about myself.
23/1/11
This week has been an exercising disaster, i.e. didn’t stick to the plan. The main reason has been work – too much of it and of the deadline meeting
stressful kind. Foreseeing a break with the routine, I did ride my push bike to the office 3 of the days. While not keeping to the program, riding a heavy
mountain bike with carrier bags filled with a change of clothes and a laptop did provide some kind of resistance training. I worked up quite a sweat
on both legs of the journey and in a small way assuaged my not exercising guilt.
While I have been tracking my calorie intake and expenditure using the LiveStrong myPlate iPhone app, I have become suspicious of the estimates of calories
burnt with cycling. If I take my average speed over a ride, most recently 29kph over 2.5 hours (by myself – i.e. no slip streaming) it reckons I’m burning
around 1000 calories an hour. This is brilliant. According to the calculations I could go wild and have some kind of Louis XV gluttonous banquet and
still be on track. I’ve been feeling uneasy about this, and the new set of bathroom scales backs up my suspicions, i.e. the weight hasn’t been falling
off like I thought. So instead of relying on some over optimistic sense of calculated achievement, I got my heart rate monitor fixed and will be using
that in future to measure my fat burning efforts.
So the week wasn’t going to plan and finished on a Month Pythonisque note. I was watching breakfast television while eating my healthy fruit, yoghurt
and home-made muesli. The reporter was doing a piece to camera, while in the background a nutter was manoeuvring to get in shot with his “Repent and you
shall be saved” placard. You could tell the camera man was gesturing to the reporter to keep changing position as the zealot moved. It was very funny,
and my son and were laughing out loud. This when (possibly a higher force intervened) a small piece of wheat germ got lodged in my wind pipe and I ended
up bent over having a coughing fit that went on for minutes. At one stage my wife came over and slapped my back with some force. While this didn’t dislodge
the irritant, I did feel a sharp twinge in my lower back as some muscles ripped and gave way.
And so ends a forgettable week.
14/1/11
This week marked the end of the summer holiday (this is why they say your school days are the best - the kids still have 4 weeks left!) and the return to work.
It's a double whammy. No longer can I sleep in, and exercise at my leisure during the course of the day. I have to do it early in the morning before work, or
try and goad myself into action at the end of the day, after pecking at the keyboard for 8 hours and then crawling home in the perversely named "rush hour"
traffic. In addition the last 4 weeks have seen me easily take on the persona of a functioning alcoholic. A little bit of an exaggeration, but there has
been drinking most evenings, sometimes to excess, but mostly not. Either way alcohol doesn't feature highly in any diet I've read about, or in any exercise program.
I do want to talk about beer and wine here, as I think it unreasonable to contemplate a year without drinking – and I for one don't intend to give it up completely.
To put it in perspective, a bottle of beer (not a quart), a glass of wine and a can of Coke (or any other soda – not diet of course) all seem to have around the
same calorific value of 140-150, so you can factor these values into your diet planning. People talk about alcohol being empty calories. I’m not sure exactly
what that means. Maybe that refers to feeling hungry while or after drinking. There is a good reason for this hunger. Even though alcohol is full of calories
it does make you feel hungry – the feeling is real, not psychological. So if you are going to have a few drinks, just bear in mind as you reach for the blue
cheese or cashew nuts the hungry sting in the tail.
Speaking of stings in the tail, I can’t talk about alcohol with mentioning hangovers. It is true that part of the hangover feeling is due to dehydration, but
this is overstated – after all you have been drinking liquids. As your liver breaks down the ethanol (alcohol) it is converted to acetaldehyde. Acetaldehyde
is between 10 to 30 times more toxic than the alcohol itself. This conversion depletes the liver of glutathione and other detoxifying agents, reducing its
ability to effectively remove acetaldehyde and other toxins from the bloodstream. One way to mitigate this is to support your liver and replenish glutathione
and vitamin B’s. For want of a better term, the “hangover cure” I found that works best (after years of experience) is a couple of glasses of water
with 2-4 Health Script AM capsules.
Anyway enough of that, as the party is over.
While I have been exercising regularly in the first week, I’m now going to start in a more deliberate and structured way.
I have mentally drawn up a weekly exercise schedule that looks like this
| Monday |
Stretching (legs and gluts) sit ups, push ups, arm curls with free weights 3 x 10 reps of each |
| Tuesday |
1.5 – 2 hours group bike ride |
| Wednesday |
Walk to and from work 2 hours one way so might get the bus home. |
| Thursday |
1.5 – 2 hours group bike ride |
| Friday |
Stretching and a few beers |
| Saturday |
3 hour group bike ride |
| Sunday |
Maybe another bike ride or a big walk, really depends what time I get up.
There should be at least one morning you’re not getting up at the crack of dawn. |
The thing with an exercise program (I know this from experience) is the more you do it the easier it gets. Whether its biking, running, swimming,
kayaking etc… as you get fitter and better at it you start to get a sense of floating, flowing and being in the zone and it becomes a joy instead of a chore.
And before winter is upon me I want to get into that “joy zone”, because winter is a chore by itself.
It's Friday and all didn't go according plan. This is how it has panned out so far.
| Monday |
Accomplished |
| Tuesday |
About 45 mins into the ride someone in the bunch decided to slam the brakes on. I couldn't stop in time and hit the deck. Not too much blood and carried on with the ride. |
| Wednesday |
Did walk to and from work. The walk home was a mission. Ended up about 4.5 hours of walking in one day - too much, not again. |
| Thursday |
Buggered from the day before, so slept in. |
| Friday |
Rode to and from work and had some beers when I got home. |
6/1/11
What makes the whole diet and weight loss industry even more ludicrous than costing you more to eat less, is that it keeps you fixated on food,
and for most people it’s built in self-sabotage that will keep you coming back for more – ha ha ha.
In addition to this, in affluent societies there has been an overabundance of food (since 1945), and since the advent of the computer a massive increase in sedentary jobs. Also in this time television and consumerism have become, for many the main activities. At every turn we are bombarded with fast and convenient food messages. And when I say convenient food I don’t mean apples. I think most people can relate to sitting in front on the TV in the evening after having a satisfying dinner, say roast chicken, potatoes and salad, and thinking “ooh I’m a little peckish, I think a cup of tea and some biscuits will do the trick”. Are we really hungry? I don’t think so. I think its boredom and habit, of which neither are diet issues.
When we are occupied, i.e. engaged in a stimulating activity thoughts of food and hunger are no longer top of mind. We have all heard the story of the Korean computer gamer that died at his keyboard after 48 hours of straight playing consuming only Pepsi. Obviously food wasn’t a priority for this guy. It’s completely impractical to be so stimulated, that thoughts of food never enter our heads outside of meal times, so we have to employ another tactic. Have a goal, a meaningful and specific one. “I want to lose weight” is not specific enough and doesn’t say what the “prize” is. Why do you want lose weight?
People whose weight is a life threatening issue still can’t do it. Death is not enough of a motivation – WTF? So what could motivate someone to lose weight? SEX. In fact it motivates a lot of people to lose weight and make themselves more attractive – for a while at least. I know this older guy that’s been seriously overweight for most of his life. His mother used to plead with him about it, his first wife pleaded and nagged. He’s had several heart attacks and his friends have begged him to do something about his weight. His children have been at times quite brutal and confrontational about his weight. All of this made no impact. Then a new woman came into his life (and all the possibilities that entails) and the pounds started to drop off.
Now I not suggesting for a moment that we all start having affairs to keep our weight down – actually… no, no I’m not. But we need to have a goal that has a built in reward – something that is going to make us feel really good. And we need to keep reinforcing that goal. If you work in sales (I don’t, but I hear tell), motivation is a big deal, i.e. keeping the sales force on task and on target. Even commission payments aren’t enough. Sales competitions are run, prizes are on offer.
First prize is my Cadillac, second prize is a set of steak knives and third prize is the sack Alec Baldwin in Glengarry Glenross.
The first thing we need to do is establish our over-arching goal, our end game, the thing that is going to provide us with our under-lying motivation. I want to bet my previous efforts (by some margin) in a 160km hilly bike race. Carrying several “spare tires” around my middle has been a serious impediment in the past. I reckon I’ll need to get below 78kg. About 5 years ago I went from 95kg down to the early/mid 80’s when I re-took up cycling and stopped eating ridiculous amounts of junk food, but have been stuck here. I know from previous efforts that the next 5kg I want to lose will be the hardest of all.
Establish your goal. Make it specific and put a time limit on it.
4/1/11
New year, new start.
New year, new you.
This year I'm going to lose weight.
Blah, blah, blah...
Yep, been here and done that. Don't get me wrong, these are laudable goals, but why do we end up making these resolutions year in and year out? Why is the weight loss industry so
massive? – excuse the pun. Surely losing weight must mean consuming less and thereby spending less? I can never figure out how this translates into buying “special” (and expensive)
meals from the various companies helping you to lose weight. There is NO magic weight loss bullet, and no matter how the various peddlers of weight loss products dress it up and
attempt to hide the awful truth from you, their strategies boil down to a couple of home truths.
- A certain amount of self-control and will power is required.
- Weight loss or gain is governed by the calories consumed in relation to the calories (energy expended).
( I know there are people out there who say they have some kind of hormone related condition that prevents them from losing weight. I also know this condition is closely linked
to the one that forces them to stuff donuts in their face. In the interests of complete honesty and transparency you should know I'm munching my way through a fruit mince pie as
I write this.)
While these two tenants don't give you a lot of wiggle room there are a few things you can do to make losing weight and getting fit much easier.
It's much harder to lose weight through diet alone. You should engage in a regular exercie – and by regular I mean at least 5-6 days a week. Not only does exercise burn calories, but it makes you much healthier. More on this later.
Not all calories are created equal. Basically, diet is just as much about what you eat than how much you eat. This is a huge and extremely well covered topic. Suffice it to say that for the calories in a Moro bar, you could eat enough carrots so you could see in the pitch dark. I'll go into more detail around the what’s and the what not’s of diet in future blogs.
So what now?
Go and weigh yourself.
Set a goal weight you want to achieve in 12 months’ time – remember slow and steady wins the race. Now we just have to work out how to achieve this goal.
I have the the LiveStrong web site very helpful. If you go to LiveStrong you can enter your age, height, current weight and how active
your lifestyle is, and based on how much weight you want to lose, it will tell you how many calories you should be consuming each day. This site is
American so the weights and measures they use are Imperial. Go here to convert from metric to imperial http://www.onlineconversion.com
Here we go.
- Age: 43
- Height: 6ft
- Weight: 185.2 lbs
- Goal: Lose 1 pound per week
- Activity level: Sedentary
- At work - You work in an office and sit at your desk for the majority of the day
- At home - You are working on the computer, reading, typing
My calorie goal is 1806 a day – WTF! This is what I mean about losing weight through diet alone. 1806 calories is a Siberian gulag type regime – I wouldn't be able to stick to
that for a week, let alone months.
This is why exercise is so important. I've said my activity level is sedentary, but this doesn't take into account any exercise I do. I can use exercise to offset calories
I consume. For example, if I walk briskly for an hour as exercise I can burn around 500 calories. This means I can consume 2282 calories per day and still be on target – that's
more like it.
I'm off to crack open the bubbles for some New Year's Eve celebrations. The next blog is about exercise and goal setting.
Happy New Year