Sunday yet again and time for another weekly weigh-in.
Well, this is it, the last weigh-in post of the calendar year. It's been a really long and involved year for me this year. Graduated from college, had the wedding, had to hunt around for a job there for a little while, the wife had to hunt around for a job for a while longer, and I lost around 27% of my body weight. All told it's been a pretty good year. Sure right here at the end the holidays give me some setbacks in my eating habits, but nothing that can't be ridden out and overcome.
So where do I go from here? What do I have left to do? Well, I've decided, in conjunction with a few friends along the way, on a number of things to do to challenge myself in the next calendar year. After all the running I've been doing, and because it's a cause that is important to me, I've decided that I want to enter both of the Susan G. Komen Races for the Cure that happen in Arizona each year. The Southern Arizona one in April and the Phoenix one in October. Each will be a 5K race, a distance I know I can run in one shot even if I'm unsure of how respectable my time would turn out to be, and most likely a decent time for a great cause. I'm also seriously considering a "fun run" called Warrior Dash going on in late April just because it seems like a good time.
On the less organized front I'm going to make an attempt at completing INSANITY and P90X during 2011, out of a combination of a desire to prove to myself I can and the desire to see what might happen to me if I do. After that, if I still have the time and motivation, I'll probably just try and up my run distance and my utility with bodyweight exercises and some relaxed running. So it looks like it should be a decent year for me whether I live up to all these challenges I've set for myself or not. Because either way, it will be a fun journey to places I've never pushed myself to go before, and really that's what life is about sometimes. Fun times with people you care about.
So, lots of hope for the future but what does the scale have to say about your relationship with the past? 208, up 2 pounds from last week. Not really that bad overall I guess. This was a tough week for me in terms of food, and that amount of fluctuation is actually fairly small, so I'm willing to live with that for now. Onward and downward to something a little more palatable for the long term I think.
Sunday, December 26, 2010
Sunday, December 19, 2010
Weekly Weigh-in (Week 48)
Sunday yet again and time for another weekly weigh-in.
This week was a fairly good week all around I think. Got some Christmas shopping taken care of, made up some salad dressing and packed salads for lunch for the latter half of the week, and finished week 9 of the Couch to 5K plan. All told, that's a pretty good week.
Speaking of said plan, I mentioned that there was some more information to my usage of my ipod while I run than just using it for Runkeeper, and so today I shall share that with you all. Some of you reading this may have thought to yourself in the past that running isn't for you because it's boring. To that I have two things to say, firstly that you should make sure you are running outside in the real world and not on a treadmill if boredom is something you want to counter. Secondly, you might want to consider adding some music into your runs, as it can be a rather interesting thing to help keep you aware of what's going on around you. That said, I will caution you that you should make sure that the music isn't getting in the way of your awareness of your surroundings. You need to make sure you are keeping track of any traffic, your form, the sound of your footfalls, your breathing, and so many other things. But, if you can keep track of all of those things music can be a nice addition to your runs. Especially if it's also functional.
The benefit of the Ct5K plan, is that it uses intervals to help you progressively increase your running time toward a full 5K. The downside, is that you need a way to track either the distances or the times that you are working on for your intervals. The free version of Runkeeper doesn't do that, so I needed another way to track that, enter Podrunner. Podrunner Intervals uses high energy music, timed to the intervals set out in the Ct5K plan, to help keep you moving at a good pace for the times you need to get yourself to where you want to be. They have sets for each week of the plan, and all 3 days in weeks 5 and 6. They also have sets past the 5K program for training your way to 8 or even 10K runs. I very much enjoy these podcasts, and reccomend them highly to anyone looking to try out the Ct5K plan, who wondered how they would manage the timing, or those who didn't as well.
Well, all of the small accomplishments piling up, where does that leave me with the scale? 206.0, down 3.6 pounds since last week. Making steady progress in the direction I want to be going for now. Finally nearing the end of my period of weight loss, and getting to a point where all I have left to do is manage my body fat. See you all next week.
This week was a fairly good week all around I think. Got some Christmas shopping taken care of, made up some salad dressing and packed salads for lunch for the latter half of the week, and finished week 9 of the Couch to 5K plan. All told, that's a pretty good week.
Speaking of said plan, I mentioned that there was some more information to my usage of my ipod while I run than just using it for Runkeeper, and so today I shall share that with you all. Some of you reading this may have thought to yourself in the past that running isn't for you because it's boring. To that I have two things to say, firstly that you should make sure you are running outside in the real world and not on a treadmill if boredom is something you want to counter. Secondly, you might want to consider adding some music into your runs, as it can be a rather interesting thing to help keep you aware of what's going on around you. That said, I will caution you that you should make sure that the music isn't getting in the way of your awareness of your surroundings. You need to make sure you are keeping track of any traffic, your form, the sound of your footfalls, your breathing, and so many other things. But, if you can keep track of all of those things music can be a nice addition to your runs. Especially if it's also functional.
The benefit of the Ct5K plan, is that it uses intervals to help you progressively increase your running time toward a full 5K. The downside, is that you need a way to track either the distances or the times that you are working on for your intervals. The free version of Runkeeper doesn't do that, so I needed another way to track that, enter Podrunner. Podrunner Intervals uses high energy music, timed to the intervals set out in the Ct5K plan, to help keep you moving at a good pace for the times you need to get yourself to where you want to be. They have sets for each week of the plan, and all 3 days in weeks 5 and 6. They also have sets past the 5K program for training your way to 8 or even 10K runs. I very much enjoy these podcasts, and reccomend them highly to anyone looking to try out the Ct5K plan, who wondered how they would manage the timing, or those who didn't as well.
Well, all of the small accomplishments piling up, where does that leave me with the scale? 206.0, down 3.6 pounds since last week. Making steady progress in the direction I want to be going for now. Finally nearing the end of my period of weight loss, and getting to a point where all I have left to do is manage my body fat. See you all next week.
Sunday, December 12, 2010
Weekly Weigh-in (Week 47)
Sunday yet again and time for another installment of the weekly weigh-in.
Been an interesting week this week. Running has been going rewardingly, starting in on the 9th week of the plan tomorrow, and I feel great for it. Been eating decently, when I've even felt like eating. Hoping to keep up the momentum I've had through the remainder of the year, but with Christmas and New Years both ahead, we'll have to see how things play out.
Today I am going to talk about another of the wonderful tools I use to make my life easier on the path to the new better me. Runkeeper is a free app for the iPhone that I have come to love since I started running. It uses the GPS on the phone to track your location while you run, and then uploads it to the Runkeeper website. They recommend against keeping your phone in your pocket while you run as it might interfere with the GPS readings, but I have found that if it does, it doesn't interfere to a degree that I have taken issue with, so it's not something I worry about.
I just fire up my music, more on that next week, start up the GPS tracking in Runkeeper, lock the phone, and then go on my run. When I get home I unlock the phone, tell it I'm done with my run, enter any notes, and then stop my music. It's as simple as that. It then uploads the information for my route, distance, and pacing to the website where I can access it later. Since my running right now is training for a 5K, I have it track my distance in kilometers, and because I prefer it that way I have it display not only my distance but also my pace. I don't pay any attention to the app while I'm out for my run, so I don't actually know what features it has while it's tracking an activity, but after the fact it gives you access to a map of your route, and a graph of your pace or speed each minute throughout the activity. It also displays overall pace, total distance, and calories burned based on what type of activity you told it you were launching when you started your tracking. It keeps all of the activities you've tracked using the app locally, and they are working on 2-way syncing for upcoming updates so that should allow tracking of activities using the phone for things you entered into the web interface manually.
That brings me to the website. Each activity is uploaded automatically to the website, which tracks your distance over time, the number of activities per month, and various other stats. You can enter things manually instead of through the GPS, or edit a GPS run. I don't yet have a heartrate monitor but if you do you can upload either an average heart rate for the entire activity, or a graph of heart rate over time provided by certain Polar heart rate monitors. The stats guy in me loves this website, because it has so many things for me to look over and play with. The runner in me loves it simply because it tracks what I do, and gives me feedback on how I've improved since the last time I was out. Either way, I enjoy the app and the website very much. Both have paid versions, I have tried neither at this time but I may try them in the future, if so I'll let you know if I find it to be worth the cost.
So, now that I've talked about some more of what I do when I run, let's see what it has done for me on the scale. 209.6, down 2.8 from last week. That leaves me down 73.5 pounds since I started, which is about 25% of my starting body weight. So far it looks like the momentum is working in my favor, just have to keep it that way.
Been an interesting week this week. Running has been going rewardingly, starting in on the 9th week of the plan tomorrow, and I feel great for it. Been eating decently, when I've even felt like eating. Hoping to keep up the momentum I've had through the remainder of the year, but with Christmas and New Years both ahead, we'll have to see how things play out.
Today I am going to talk about another of the wonderful tools I use to make my life easier on the path to the new better me. Runkeeper is a free app for the iPhone that I have come to love since I started running. It uses the GPS on the phone to track your location while you run, and then uploads it to the Runkeeper website. They recommend against keeping your phone in your pocket while you run as it might interfere with the GPS readings, but I have found that if it does, it doesn't interfere to a degree that I have taken issue with, so it's not something I worry about.
I just fire up my music, more on that next week, start up the GPS tracking in Runkeeper, lock the phone, and then go on my run. When I get home I unlock the phone, tell it I'm done with my run, enter any notes, and then stop my music. It's as simple as that. It then uploads the information for my route, distance, and pacing to the website where I can access it later. Since my running right now is training for a 5K, I have it track my distance in kilometers, and because I prefer it that way I have it display not only my distance but also my pace. I don't pay any attention to the app while I'm out for my run, so I don't actually know what features it has while it's tracking an activity, but after the fact it gives you access to a map of your route, and a graph of your pace or speed each minute throughout the activity. It also displays overall pace, total distance, and calories burned based on what type of activity you told it you were launching when you started your tracking. It keeps all of the activities you've tracked using the app locally, and they are working on 2-way syncing for upcoming updates so that should allow tracking of activities using the phone for things you entered into the web interface manually.
That brings me to the website. Each activity is uploaded automatically to the website, which tracks your distance over time, the number of activities per month, and various other stats. You can enter things manually instead of through the GPS, or edit a GPS run. I don't yet have a heartrate monitor but if you do you can upload either an average heart rate for the entire activity, or a graph of heart rate over time provided by certain Polar heart rate monitors. The stats guy in me loves this website, because it has so many things for me to look over and play with. The runner in me loves it simply because it tracks what I do, and gives me feedback on how I've improved since the last time I was out. Either way, I enjoy the app and the website very much. Both have paid versions, I have tried neither at this time but I may try them in the future, if so I'll let you know if I find it to be worth the cost.
So, now that I've talked about some more of what I do when I run, let's see what it has done for me on the scale. 209.6, down 2.8 from last week. That leaves me down 73.5 pounds since I started, which is about 25% of my starting body weight. So far it looks like the momentum is working in my favor, just have to keep it that way.
Sunday, December 5, 2010
Weekly Weigh-in (Week 46)
Sunday yet again and time for another installment of the weekly weigh-in.
This week has been a rather interesting week for me. Schedule got thrown into some disorder due to Lara's work schedule changing. Didn't get in the way of my food intake at all, but it's caused some adjustments in my sleep schedule and also my running to a degree. All told it was a good week.
Now, I think it's about time I actually spent a little time talking about my running. This week was week 7 out of 9 of the training program I've been doing. It's called the Couch to 5K running plan. It can be found here. It uses intervals to help you increase the duration for which you can run as opposed to walk. I know when I started I couldn't keep up a run for anywhere near as long as I can today. In the 7 weeks I've been using this plan my up intervals have gone from 1 minute to 25 minutes, and in the next two weeks to 30 minutes.
Intervals have always made sense to me as a workout strategy, and I can say with certainty that it works for increasing your capacity at least, though I can't speak at this time for it's calorie burning properties, the running seems to have done a decent job of that. Look in the next few weeks to see updates on where I am planning on going in my fitness efforts, plus at least one more app review and some thoughts on footwear. For now, suffice to say the Ct5K plan is one I recommend to anyone interested in running for fun, exercise, or competition.
So what does the scale have to say about my weight this week? 212.4 down 2.6 from last week. That pushes me over the 70 pound mark since I started this in January. Almost all of that was during a time I was doing nothing different despite eating less than I was when I started. I'm steadily approaching my initial goal for the one year mark, and it looks like I should be able to make it in the 6 weeks I have remaining. I'll be back next week with further updates, and more insight into my practices and future plans. Until next week.
This week has been a rather interesting week for me. Schedule got thrown into some disorder due to Lara's work schedule changing. Didn't get in the way of my food intake at all, but it's caused some adjustments in my sleep schedule and also my running to a degree. All told it was a good week.
Now, I think it's about time I actually spent a little time talking about my running. This week was week 7 out of 9 of the training program I've been doing. It's called the Couch to 5K running plan. It can be found here. It uses intervals to help you increase the duration for which you can run as opposed to walk. I know when I started I couldn't keep up a run for anywhere near as long as I can today. In the 7 weeks I've been using this plan my up intervals have gone from 1 minute to 25 minutes, and in the next two weeks to 30 minutes.
Intervals have always made sense to me as a workout strategy, and I can say with certainty that it works for increasing your capacity at least, though I can't speak at this time for it's calorie burning properties, the running seems to have done a decent job of that. Look in the next few weeks to see updates on where I am planning on going in my fitness efforts, plus at least one more app review and some thoughts on footwear. For now, suffice to say the Ct5K plan is one I recommend to anyone interested in running for fun, exercise, or competition.
So what does the scale have to say about my weight this week? 212.4 down 2.6 from last week. That pushes me over the 70 pound mark since I started this in January. Almost all of that was during a time I was doing nothing different despite eating less than I was when I started. I'm steadily approaching my initial goal for the one year mark, and it looks like I should be able to make it in the 6 weeks I have remaining. I'll be back next week with further updates, and more insight into my practices and future plans. Until next week.
Sunday, November 28, 2010
Weekly Weigh-in (Week 45)
Sunday yet again and time for my weekly weigh-in.
This week was a tricky one for eating smart. As most of you probably know, and the rest of you are probably among the ranks of the undead, Thanksgiving was this week. Due to both sides of my family being in town, that meant not one but two large and delicious meals in honor of said day. I did my best to limit myself to reasonable portion sizes, and I feel like I did a decent job, though we'll see what the scale has to say about that later on.
Last week I mentioned that I was done talking about the diet part of my plan for a bit and that I'd be filling this space with something else this week, and going forward, and so here it is, let me know what you think in the comments.
Diet is only really one part of the equation when your goal is more about being in better shape than merely losing weight. As such I moved a while back from a plan based almost exclusively on diet to one that includes at least a reasonable amount of exercise as well. Those who have known me a while know that I have never been one for dedicated exercise, or really much at all, in past years. When I was younger, as is probably the case with most of you, I was much more active than I am now. I played sports when I was young, and then again in high school for a little while, and for a while I even did martial arts. I enjoyed all these things when I did them. But for some reason I got it into my head that I didn't like exercise and thus I didn't do it.
Recently I've been bitten by the bug, and my interest has been piqued. As a result I've started running. 3 times a week, 30 minutes or so at a time. I'm using a training plan I'll talk about more in a coming installment. It's been really great for me I think. I tend to do my runs in the morning before breakfast or work, so that it wakes me up and leaves me energized most of the day. I'm much more awake than I was before on less sleep than I was getting. All in all I am really glad I started doing this because I feel better, and combined with the weight I've been working on I look better too. I was never really that big on what I looked like so it's nothing like that, but I'm much more comfortable in my skin now than I used to be, and I like it. I feel great and I hope to continue along the path to feeling even better. I've got some designs on how I'm going to get there as well.
That's about all I've got for now, so time to get to the numbers. What does the scale have to say about my thanksgiving week? 215.0, down 2.8 pounds since last week. So it would seem that I'm doing alright for myself. Let's hope I can keep it up. See you all next week.
This week was a tricky one for eating smart. As most of you probably know, and the rest of you are probably among the ranks of the undead, Thanksgiving was this week. Due to both sides of my family being in town, that meant not one but two large and delicious meals in honor of said day. I did my best to limit myself to reasonable portion sizes, and I feel like I did a decent job, though we'll see what the scale has to say about that later on.
Last week I mentioned that I was done talking about the diet part of my plan for a bit and that I'd be filling this space with something else this week, and going forward, and so here it is, let me know what you think in the comments.
Diet is only really one part of the equation when your goal is more about being in better shape than merely losing weight. As such I moved a while back from a plan based almost exclusively on diet to one that includes at least a reasonable amount of exercise as well. Those who have known me a while know that I have never been one for dedicated exercise, or really much at all, in past years. When I was younger, as is probably the case with most of you, I was much more active than I am now. I played sports when I was young, and then again in high school for a little while, and for a while I even did martial arts. I enjoyed all these things when I did them. But for some reason I got it into my head that I didn't like exercise and thus I didn't do it.
Recently I've been bitten by the bug, and my interest has been piqued. As a result I've started running. 3 times a week, 30 minutes or so at a time. I'm using a training plan I'll talk about more in a coming installment. It's been really great for me I think. I tend to do my runs in the morning before breakfast or work, so that it wakes me up and leaves me energized most of the day. I'm much more awake than I was before on less sleep than I was getting. All in all I am really glad I started doing this because I feel better, and combined with the weight I've been working on I look better too. I was never really that big on what I looked like so it's nothing like that, but I'm much more comfortable in my skin now than I used to be, and I like it. I feel great and I hope to continue along the path to feeling even better. I've got some designs on how I'm going to get there as well.
That's about all I've got for now, so time to get to the numbers. What does the scale have to say about my thanksgiving week? 215.0, down 2.8 pounds since last week. So it would seem that I'm doing alright for myself. Let's hope I can keep it up. See you all next week.
Sunday, November 21, 2010
Weekly Weigh-in (Week 44)
Sunday morning yet again and time for the weekly weigh-in.
Been a hectic week for me, as this weekend was the opening of the biggest movie so far since the end of summer. That said, I've been pretty good about my food this week. Kept myself to reasonably sized meals, and often only 2 of those a day. Sporadic cravings for salad have been helping keep me feeling nice and healthy about my choices too, mental victories if nothing else.
Now, last week I mentioned that I was using some statistics magic to help me track my weight, and I thought I should give a little credit to where I got the idea for that. A few weeks ago I found a book online called the Hacker's Diet. It was written by a computer programmer who had struggled with weight problems for years and had finally beaten them and decided to share what he had learned in that time. While much of the book was things I already knew, the reading was quick and included a few things I either didn't know or hadn't realized before.
Losing weight is easily, and at least mostly accurately, abstracted by looking at simply the amount of calories in compared to the number of calories out, if you are putting out more calories than you consume you will most likely lose weight at a rate related to that imbalance. That combined with the fact that fat contains about 3500 calories per pound can help you estimate how much of a defecit you need to run to lose a given amount of weight. That won't really hold up perfectly in all cases due to varying body composition and what types of exercise you are doing etc. but it works well enough for now. By tracking your calorie intake and your weight you can estimate your calorie burn more accurately than the values you can look up on a table, but those are a good starting point for figuring out how many calories a day to start with.
Tracking weight is an important subject as well. If you just look at the readings from a scale every day they fluctuate a lot. You can reduce that fluctuation somewhat by taking your measurements at the same time of day, wearing the same amount of clothing, or various other means, but no matter how hard you try it will fluctuate, sometimes wildly. Why is that? Water. The human body is composed of about 75% water by volume. The amount of water you have in your system at any given time causes your weight to fluctuate, and factors like having eaten a salty snack before bed can cause your body to have more of it in the morning than if you skipped the snack and went straight to bed. So some way to account for the randomness becomes a handy tool to have for tracking weight. For that I have come to use an exponentially smoothed moving average. Which is a fancy way of saying that I take each days reading, combined with the previous result, and apply a small amount of math to it to help make sure that random fluctuation doesn't throw off the average wildly, and that things which happened more than a week ago are less relevant to the average than things which happened yesterday. All in all, it smooths out the graph and helps me see what my weight is a little more accurately than I did before. If my weight is above the line that day the average goes up, if it's below, it goes down. Pretty simple.
So, feeling good this week, got the tools and the knowledge to monitor what goes on with my weight and my diet, what do I have to show for it? Well the scale tells me that today I'm 217.8, same as last week. No progress, but nothing gained either so I'll take what I can get. This is probably going to be the last post focusing on the diet and measurement part of my weight loss for a while, though I will still be posting my weekly weight change each week. Stay tuned for what will fill the middle of the posts in the future.
Been a hectic week for me, as this weekend was the opening of the biggest movie so far since the end of summer. That said, I've been pretty good about my food this week. Kept myself to reasonably sized meals, and often only 2 of those a day. Sporadic cravings for salad have been helping keep me feeling nice and healthy about my choices too, mental victories if nothing else.
Now, last week I mentioned that I was using some statistics magic to help me track my weight, and I thought I should give a little credit to where I got the idea for that. A few weeks ago I found a book online called the Hacker's Diet. It was written by a computer programmer who had struggled with weight problems for years and had finally beaten them and decided to share what he had learned in that time. While much of the book was things I already knew, the reading was quick and included a few things I either didn't know or hadn't realized before.
Losing weight is easily, and at least mostly accurately, abstracted by looking at simply the amount of calories in compared to the number of calories out, if you are putting out more calories than you consume you will most likely lose weight at a rate related to that imbalance. That combined with the fact that fat contains about 3500 calories per pound can help you estimate how much of a defecit you need to run to lose a given amount of weight. That won't really hold up perfectly in all cases due to varying body composition and what types of exercise you are doing etc. but it works well enough for now. By tracking your calorie intake and your weight you can estimate your calorie burn more accurately than the values you can look up on a table, but those are a good starting point for figuring out how many calories a day to start with.
Tracking weight is an important subject as well. If you just look at the readings from a scale every day they fluctuate a lot. You can reduce that fluctuation somewhat by taking your measurements at the same time of day, wearing the same amount of clothing, or various other means, but no matter how hard you try it will fluctuate, sometimes wildly. Why is that? Water. The human body is composed of about 75% water by volume. The amount of water you have in your system at any given time causes your weight to fluctuate, and factors like having eaten a salty snack before bed can cause your body to have more of it in the morning than if you skipped the snack and went straight to bed. So some way to account for the randomness becomes a handy tool to have for tracking weight. For that I have come to use an exponentially smoothed moving average. Which is a fancy way of saying that I take each days reading, combined with the previous result, and apply a small amount of math to it to help make sure that random fluctuation doesn't throw off the average wildly, and that things which happened more than a week ago are less relevant to the average than things which happened yesterday. All in all, it smooths out the graph and helps me see what my weight is a little more accurately than I did before. If my weight is above the line that day the average goes up, if it's below, it goes down. Pretty simple.
So, feeling good this week, got the tools and the knowledge to monitor what goes on with my weight and my diet, what do I have to show for it? Well the scale tells me that today I'm 217.8, same as last week. No progress, but nothing gained either so I'll take what I can get. This is probably going to be the last post focusing on the diet and measurement part of my weight loss for a while, though I will still be posting my weekly weight change each week. Stay tuned for what will fill the middle of the posts in the future.
Sunday, November 14, 2010
Weekly Weigh-in (Week 43)
Sunday morning again and time for my weekly weigh-in.
This weekend I'm having a change of scenery and visiting some good friends down in Tucson. With good friends come good times, and with that food that while good may not be good for me. But, I'm not worried. I've learned a lot about watching what I eat of late that I feel confident will keep me from any serious pitfalls. This week saw a bit of a plateau in my daily weight that was a tad worrisome to me. Now, I knew there wasn't a real reason to be worried, I've moved past focusing on the daily weight and toward a focus on the more long-term trends in my weight . To help smooth out the randomness that gets introduced by the human bodies fluctuating water levels I use a little bit of stats magic and daily weigh-ins to help give me a better picture of my weight over time. That has been steadily downward, though at varying speeds.
So, with that knowledge giving me the surety that this was if anything a temporary setback I decided that I'd try and see what I could do about it anyway, as 3 days of the same weight felt like good enough reason to try something. So, by accident more than anything, Wednesday and Thursday both ended up including a fairly harsh calorie restriction by the name of intermittent fasting. In neither case did I really feel much hungrier than on a normal day so nothing to worry about there, but I feel like it's helped me power through that plateau from early in the week and might help me see some good results. If so it's likely that the intermittent fast may become a part of my regular regimen for dealing with such annoying weight stability, and if not I may still do it if only because it actually felt rather nice at the time.
So, did my trickery yield results or did my trip to Tucson have more of an impact on my weight than I thought? That is to the scale to decide. 217.8, up 0.4 since last week. So it looks as though my efforts balanced out my weekend at least. Have to see what I can do to power through this flat spot next week.
This weekend I'm having a change of scenery and visiting some good friends down in Tucson. With good friends come good times, and with that food that while good may not be good for me. But, I'm not worried. I've learned a lot about watching what I eat of late that I feel confident will keep me from any serious pitfalls. This week saw a bit of a plateau in my daily weight that was a tad worrisome to me. Now, I knew there wasn't a real reason to be worried, I've moved past focusing on the daily weight and toward a focus on the more long-term trends in my weight . To help smooth out the randomness that gets introduced by the human bodies fluctuating water levels I use a little bit of stats magic and daily weigh-ins to help give me a better picture of my weight over time. That has been steadily downward, though at varying speeds.
So, with that knowledge giving me the surety that this was if anything a temporary setback I decided that I'd try and see what I could do about it anyway, as 3 days of the same weight felt like good enough reason to try something. So, by accident more than anything, Wednesday and Thursday both ended up including a fairly harsh calorie restriction by the name of intermittent fasting. In neither case did I really feel much hungrier than on a normal day so nothing to worry about there, but I feel like it's helped me power through that plateau from early in the week and might help me see some good results. If so it's likely that the intermittent fast may become a part of my regular regimen for dealing with such annoying weight stability, and if not I may still do it if only because it actually felt rather nice at the time.
So, did my trickery yield results or did my trip to Tucson have more of an impact on my weight than I thought? That is to the scale to decide. 217.8, up 0.4 since last week. So it looks as though my efforts balanced out my weekend at least. Have to see what I can do to power through this flat spot next week.
Sunday, November 7, 2010
Weekly Weigh-in (Week 42)
Sunday yet again and time for my weekly weigh-in.
Been feeling the urge for salad the past couple days, an urge I make a point of sating whenever it comes up for two reasons, if my I'm getting a craving for something I generally consider there to be only a couple reasons, my body is trying to tell me I need that, or that it thinks it needs it. Since I fail to see myself as a salad addict, I'm going with a legitimate need. Secondly, I actually like salad.
I've been doing falling down a bit on my fruits and veggies of late, which probably accounts somewhat for the salad craving, but I've been doing better with my calories most of the time. Now, last week I hinted that there was a reason I put all the calorie information for various dishes that went into my pocket index into excel, and this week I'd like to share that reason. An iPhone app called Meal Diary. Meal Diary has been deprecated in favor of another app, but I prefer Meal Diary for a few reasons I'll detail below.
The reason I put together the excel chart is because using that I was able to have the system calculate an average and standard deviation, which I used as the Small, Medium, and Large sizes for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and snack on Meal Diary. I like the way it handles calorie entry for meals because I can either enter an exact number if I know it, or just pick if it's Small, Medium, or Large if I don't know the exact number. Once it's entered in the app takes care of charting the data, and provides charts for the past couple weeks for calories in. It also can track calories burned from exercise and etc. so that helps keep my calorie counts that much more accurate.
It also allows you to enter in weight measurements which it tracks and graphs much like the calorie measurements. I like Meal Diary better than it's replacement because of the calorie entry method, it is much simpler than a slider which I cannot easily get to the right number, or having to look up each individual food item to add to my meal. The thing I really like about Meal Diary is how simple it is to track my calorie intake on the go. I can quickly and easily enter in a decent approximation of what I'm eating, and that works well enough for my needs right now. Tracking my calories is my current plan for helping manage my weight, if I can balance my calories in with my calories out, and manage the in appropriately, it should help with my weight. I'm aware that it's slightly less simple than just calories in vs calories out, but the subtleties there are something I'll save for a later date.
So let's look at the scale for this week. 217.4, down 3.8 pounds since last week, 65 since I started. Only about 10 pounds away from my next big milestone. I've come a long way, and my life has been made all the better for it. Even still, I've got a ways to go before I'm at a place I'm really happy with, so I'll see you all next week with an update.
Been feeling the urge for salad the past couple days, an urge I make a point of sating whenever it comes up for two reasons, if my I'm getting a craving for something I generally consider there to be only a couple reasons, my body is trying to tell me I need that, or that it thinks it needs it. Since I fail to see myself as a salad addict, I'm going with a legitimate need. Secondly, I actually like salad.
I've been doing falling down a bit on my fruits and veggies of late, which probably accounts somewhat for the salad craving, but I've been doing better with my calories most of the time. Now, last week I hinted that there was a reason I put all the calorie information for various dishes that went into my pocket index into excel, and this week I'd like to share that reason. An iPhone app called Meal Diary. Meal Diary has been deprecated in favor of another app, but I prefer Meal Diary for a few reasons I'll detail below.
The reason I put together the excel chart is because using that I was able to have the system calculate an average and standard deviation, which I used as the Small, Medium, and Large sizes for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and snack on Meal Diary. I like the way it handles calorie entry for meals because I can either enter an exact number if I know it, or just pick if it's Small, Medium, or Large if I don't know the exact number. Once it's entered in the app takes care of charting the data, and provides charts for the past couple weeks for calories in. It also can track calories burned from exercise and etc. so that helps keep my calorie counts that much more accurate.
It also allows you to enter in weight measurements which it tracks and graphs much like the calorie measurements. I like Meal Diary better than it's replacement because of the calorie entry method, it is much simpler than a slider which I cannot easily get to the right number, or having to look up each individual food item to add to my meal. The thing I really like about Meal Diary is how simple it is to track my calorie intake on the go. I can quickly and easily enter in a decent approximation of what I'm eating, and that works well enough for my needs right now. Tracking my calories is my current plan for helping manage my weight, if I can balance my calories in with my calories out, and manage the in appropriately, it should help with my weight. I'm aware that it's slightly less simple than just calories in vs calories out, but the subtleties there are something I'll save for a later date.
So let's look at the scale for this week. 217.4, down 3.8 pounds since last week, 65 since I started. Only about 10 pounds away from my next big milestone. I've come a long way, and my life has been made all the better for it. Even still, I've got a ways to go before I'm at a place I'm really happy with, so I'll see you all next week with an update.
Thursday, November 4, 2010
A Life without Flash
A rare midweek post from me today.
It's struck me recently, in part due to a post from Daring Fireball in turn from Ars Technica, that Flash is a huge resource hog. I've known this for quite some time, hell I've got not one but 2 programs running on my system at all times whose only purpose is to keep Flash from running away with my system resources. But today I finally asked myself a question. Why? Why do I still have flash installed if I go to the trouble of blocking it from loading on the majority of all webpages? Why do I want to have something that requires to programs simply to keep it from eating my system? Why would I have something that decreases battery time by as much as a third when left unchecked, and that's just browsing normal websites, imagine what that would be like if you were on flash intensive sites. Why not simplify everything and just get rid of it? So I did. I uninstalled Flash Player, and will be browsing the web without it for the foreseeable future. At the very least for the next week I will not be installing Flash, hopefully ever again. I'll try and remember to post updates on this but I'm not going to promise anything.
It's struck me recently, in part due to a post from Daring Fireball in turn from Ars Technica, that Flash is a huge resource hog. I've known this for quite some time, hell I've got not one but 2 programs running on my system at all times whose only purpose is to keep Flash from running away with my system resources. But today I finally asked myself a question. Why? Why do I still have flash installed if I go to the trouble of blocking it from loading on the majority of all webpages? Why do I want to have something that requires to programs simply to keep it from eating my system? Why would I have something that decreases battery time by as much as a third when left unchecked, and that's just browsing normal websites, imagine what that would be like if you were on flash intensive sites. Why not simplify everything and just get rid of it? So I did. I uninstalled Flash Player, and will be browsing the web without it for the foreseeable future. At the very least for the next week I will not be installing Flash, hopefully ever again. I'll try and remember to post updates on this but I'm not going to promise anything.
Sunday, October 31, 2010
Weekly Weigh-in (Week 41)
Sunday morning yet again, and time for my weekly weigh-in.
This week I feel has been one of my better weeks for my weight. I've been eating a bit less fruit, but there are lots of worse things one can do than not eat quite enough fruit. Life is full of stressful events, luckily I've been learning of late much better how to just let the stress flow around me without having much lasting impact. The reason I mention that here is that I know for many, myself included, stress can be a factor in over eating. Another over eating trigger I've been less good about controlling recently is big changes in my schedule. A party comes up or etc. and you end up eating more than you should, or something else out of the ordinary happens and throws off your calorie intake. It's a hard thing to work with, but I'm hopeful that I can manage it, and if not 1 bad meal doesn't remove all the benefit from the other 20 good meals that week, just lessens them somewhat.
Now, the first in what will turn out to be a string of segments in this post about the things I've been doing to help manage my weight. For the first installment, I'm going to talk about what I've been doing the longest for this, diet. I don't really like to call what I do a diet, because the word seems to imply to me something that ends rather than being the lifestyle change that eating right needs to be. When asked what diet I'm on though my usual answer is "The Don't Be a Fatass Diet." It works something like this, don't eat like a fatass and you won't be a fatass. Now, for reference, before I started on my weightloss trend my average meals were running close to 1500 calories in many cases. That's not a good thing at all. So I decided to sit down and figure out what I should be eating at the places I went to the most.
Most restaurants have their nutrition information posted on their websites, and those that don't can usually be found through sites like dailyplate.com. I went through and set myself a per meal cap for lunch and dinner, at the time the two meals I actually ate, and codified what I would eat at each place that was in that calorie range. I put all that together into an excel sheet that calculated an average and a standard deviation for said figures, for reasons I'll explain in a future update, and then printed it off on a sheet I carry around in my wallet. That way when I go out to eat to a place on my list, I can look up what I should order and know that I'm being smarter about my calories than I was before.
This has been a large part of the secret to my success I feel. Just eating reasonable portion sizes cut my calorie intake per day massively and has helped me burn off a lot of fat. In the past week or so I've decided to up the ante and start trying to count calories pretty extensively in an effort to help further manage my intake and thus my weight, we'll see how that works out as the weeks go by.
Well, what does the scale have to say? 221.2, up .6 from last week. Up a little this time around, but not much, especially considering how much I overate on a couple occasions this week. I'm going to be trying to do better next week, but even still, I'm in much better shape than I was this time last year, or even a few months ago, and that's something I'm proud of. I'll see you all next week, probably with the explanation for why I had excel doing math on my food list.
This week I feel has been one of my better weeks for my weight. I've been eating a bit less fruit, but there are lots of worse things one can do than not eat quite enough fruit. Life is full of stressful events, luckily I've been learning of late much better how to just let the stress flow around me without having much lasting impact. The reason I mention that here is that I know for many, myself included, stress can be a factor in over eating. Another over eating trigger I've been less good about controlling recently is big changes in my schedule. A party comes up or etc. and you end up eating more than you should, or something else out of the ordinary happens and throws off your calorie intake. It's a hard thing to work with, but I'm hopeful that I can manage it, and if not 1 bad meal doesn't remove all the benefit from the other 20 good meals that week, just lessens them somewhat.
Now, the first in what will turn out to be a string of segments in this post about the things I've been doing to help manage my weight. For the first installment, I'm going to talk about what I've been doing the longest for this, diet. I don't really like to call what I do a diet, because the word seems to imply to me something that ends rather than being the lifestyle change that eating right needs to be. When asked what diet I'm on though my usual answer is "The Don't Be a Fatass Diet." It works something like this, don't eat like a fatass and you won't be a fatass. Now, for reference, before I started on my weightloss trend my average meals were running close to 1500 calories in many cases. That's not a good thing at all. So I decided to sit down and figure out what I should be eating at the places I went to the most.
Most restaurants have their nutrition information posted on their websites, and those that don't can usually be found through sites like dailyplate.com. I went through and set myself a per meal cap for lunch and dinner, at the time the two meals I actually ate, and codified what I would eat at each place that was in that calorie range. I put all that together into an excel sheet that calculated an average and a standard deviation for said figures, for reasons I'll explain in a future update, and then printed it off on a sheet I carry around in my wallet. That way when I go out to eat to a place on my list, I can look up what I should order and know that I'm being smarter about my calories than I was before.
This has been a large part of the secret to my success I feel. Just eating reasonable portion sizes cut my calorie intake per day massively and has helped me burn off a lot of fat. In the past week or so I've decided to up the ante and start trying to count calories pretty extensively in an effort to help further manage my intake and thus my weight, we'll see how that works out as the weeks go by.
Well, what does the scale have to say? 221.2, up .6 from last week. Up a little this time around, but not much, especially considering how much I overate on a couple occasions this week. I'm going to be trying to do better next week, but even still, I'm in much better shape than I was this time last year, or even a few months ago, and that's something I'm proud of. I'll see you all next week, probably with the explanation for why I had excel doing math on my food list.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
