Sunday yet again, and time for my weekly weigh-in post.
Well, this week has been one much like many others. The main difference was that some apartment hunting happened. But I also picked up something for my wife, and got directed at a few blog posts from feeds I read, that got me to thinking about a post for this week. So, here goes.
Take a look at your feet. What do they look like? I don't mean generally, they'll be foot shaped and all, but specifically right now. Do they look like feet or do they look like shoes? Those of you who know me at all can probably guess my answer to that question, they look like feet. For as long as I can recall I spend all the time that I'm at home, and usually at anyone else's as well, barefoot and loving it. It's comfortable, natural, and leaves me feeling lighter and more maneuverable than where I to be wearing shoes. These goals have impacted my choice of casual footwear at least as heavily. My feet developed a deep rich tan matching whatever my current sandals were. But recently that tan line has been changing, a trip to Disneyland helped with that.
What has brought about this change you might wonder, and to what. Well, a change in footwear of course. Around 8 months ago now I picked up a new pair of shoes from the REI that had just opened in Tucson. A pair of Black Vibram Fivefingers Classics. At the time I picked them up to use as running shoes, and that was pretty much their exclusive use for me until mid-January or so. They did very well at that and when it warms up enough that I get back out running in the mornings again they will resume being used for that if things continue as they are now. But last month I started wearing them as my wearing around shoes instead of the Birkenstocks I had been wearing. I don't regret this at all and I don't plan to go back.
Now, a lot of you will look at these and wonder how on earth anyone could wear those. They look ugly you might think, they can't possibly be comfortable, you'll hurt yourself if you run in them, they'll destroy your feet, ruin your arches, etc. Well, I can gladly report that I've found that, potential ugliness aside, after the first week or so there was no pain at all, and the other possible issues were also non-existent. The pain was something I fully expected, and it was much reduced as I had worked out most of the kinks in my stride during my running in them. If you look at most tennis shoes and various other types of footwear you'll likely find that there is a lot of padding in the heel of the shoe and that the insole has a very defined arch built in. These things have a couple of effects. The heel cushioning reduces the impact force of your heel hitting the ground first when you walk in an effort to minimize the amount by which you are damaging your leg joints and hip joints. The defined arch keeps your foot in an arched shape at all times rather than letting it flex downward over the course of your stride. Compare those behaviors to how you walk when you are barefoot, you land further toward the front of your foot (personally, I land on the balls of my feet but others seem to land with the ball and the heel at around the same time) and your arch flexes to absorb impact.
There have been a number of studies on human strides that I won't delve into too much here, though you will find links at the end of this post, but suffice to say that the more natural impact, and the lowest force applied to the joints, happens when you don't land on your heels. As to the arch, the human body is a funny thing about that. While you might think that you need arch support to keep your foot functioning properly, structurally speaking supporting an arch is the worst thing you can do for it. Support in the middle of the arch actually weakens it dramatically, which in the case of your foot means weakening the muscles and tendons in the area and limiting how well they can do their job. In this case that's a very important job. Your foot is built so that the arch acts like a spring, absorbing impact force and then letting it back out when you take your next step. Using this absorption in your arch your stride becomes more energy efficient and you can keep walking or running over a much larger distance.
The Vibrams, and other shoes like them, have almost no cushion on them at all, and minimal structure let alone arch support. This forces your stride into a mode that better mimics the barefoot behaviors, but has the benefit of that rubber sole keeping you from cutting yourself on the glass and rocks that are so often strewn about in our modern environment. I love these shoes and can tell you certainly that they are the most comfortable shoes I have ever worn. They may seem expensive at first, but they are cheaper than the Birkenstocks I was wearing before and comparable to standard running shoes and various other high quality footwear, many of which are far less comfortable.
Speaking of comfort, here's a great example of that. I wore these shoes for 5 solid days of walking around Disneyland with minimal pain, certainly much less than I had the last time I was there for 3 days and had my Birks and a pair of sneakers, which is understandable when putting in that much mileage, even still I felt light on my feet to the point of jumping on and over random obstacles as we traversed the park. I got no fewer than 17 people asking me over the course of those 5 days about my shoes, most of whom had never seen them before, and a few of whom had considered them or just didn't think wearing them to the park was a feasible option. I even ran into one woman who also had the idea to wear hers to the park and we had a fun little chat about them with some other guests waiting near us. Shoes that are comfortable, and a conversation starter. Can't go wrong there. Plus, they are machine washable.
Well, having ditched the weight of my Birks in favor of the much lighter Vibrams has left me feeling lighter on my feet, but has it left me lighter elsewhere? Probably not, but let's see what the scale says about it. 199.5 this week, down .1 from last week. Weight staying fairly steady as is to be expected. Well, that's it for this week, until next week, go out and be the you you've always wanted to be.
P.S. For those of you wondering what it was that I got for my wife it was a pair of the Vibram Jaya's in the Black/Grey color. My only complaint from what I've heard about them so far is that they don't come in sizes big enough I could wear them.
Consolidated research on barefoot walking/running:
Unshod.org Research Page
Harvard's Barefoot Running page - amazingly comprehensive guide to what I'm talking about here
New York Magazine Article on Barefooting
Sunday, February 27, 2011
Sunday, February 20, 2011
Weekly Weigh-in (Week 57)
Sunday yet again and time for my weekly weigh-in.
Been an interesting week for me. Spent a lot of it at Disneyland having a great time. Came back to some work, and honestly been one of the better times for that I've had in a while, and now it looks like I might be coming down with a case of something or other. Luckily that should subside soon and leave me to life again.
So, I've been promising some information about my other experiment from January for a while now, so today here it comes.
Based on some information from some of my various research, and an understanding of how thermodynamics works, I decided to experiment with using cold to increase caloric burn. Now a lot of people would have you think that weight is as simple as calories in and calories out. The in is obviously what you eat, the out is the byproducts of that, and all the various expenditures of keeping the body functioning and how much exercise you do etc. Well I've already found that is overly simplistic, what you eat has a big impact how your body fuels itself. Calories are not all created equal. So what else is there to play with? The out of course.
Sure I could exercise a lot and burn more calories that way, but that's a lot of work and a lot of time to burn an appreciable amount of calories. Perhaps there is another way to tinker with the calorie equation. This is where the thermodynamics comes in. The human body has a very small range of core temperature at which it considers itself comfortable. If it's warmer than that you start sweating or doing various other things in an attempt to lower your temp toward that comfortable range, but if it's lower than that your body starts keeping the blood closer in to your core for warmth, and burning more calories to try and generate more heat. This is what we're after. By keeping yourself cooler could you increase your calorie expenditure and burn fat faster than if you were warmer?
This was where I decided to play around a bit. I took it upon myself to try a few methods of keeping my core temp a bit lower to see what kind of results I could garner. At the outset I decided I'd start my morning, after my weigh-in, with a half-liter of ice cold water. This was slightly tricky to execute and as a result I didn't stick with it long, though I feel like if I had the results I saw would have been improved greatly. I stopped even pretending to carry a jacket and just went with the temp as it was. The last thing I did, and the aspect I stuck with that I feel did the most good, was an ice pack applied to the neck and trapezius muscles for 30 minutes every evening, as my research indicated this would be the best place for impacting my core temp and also the best time of day for calorie burn due to increased glucose sensitivity.
So, the testing protocol, the first ten days of January I did no cold application to help ensure that I had a baseline and because I wanted to make sure my testing period happened while I was better acclimated to my dietary experiment for the month. The second ten days of the month I did my 30 minutes of icing each evening. The last ten days I did no icing but kept up the dietary shift to make sure I had accurate information from later on in the same end of that experiment to control for. So, what do the numbers show? The first ten days I lost a total of 4.6 pounds, 3.08 of which were fat and 1.52 of which were lean. During the icing phase I lost 1.7 pounds total, but a total of 4.107 pounds of fat and gained 2.407 of lean. During the last 30 days I lost a net 1 pound, but 2.75 of fat and gained 1.749 of lean. During the first ten days of February when I was back to my more normal diet I gained .4 pounds, having lost 2.342 of fat and gained 2.742 of lean. That's an awful lot of numbers. What do they have to say? I lost nearly twice as much fat during my iced segment than I did during the normal period in February or the latter part of January when I was still doing the Primal experiment. I also gained the second most lean that I gained at any point during this experimental setup.
So, what's the take away from this? The icing helped, and though I didn't test it specifically, I would wager that the icing with the primal eating would do better than either the primal diet or icing with a normal diet would do. So while icing can help increase what you are already doing in terms of burning fat, it's not going to fix anything on it's own. Get your intake taken care of first, and then work on your output, whether that be in the form of exercise, icing, or ideally both. So that's what I have to say about this for now. If you have suggestions on other things I could experiment with, or ideas on how to improve my testing let me know in the comments.
Well, now that we've seen a bit more of how I went about getting to the weight where I am now, let's see what exactly I am now. 199.6, down .5 from last week. Keeping up in the right neighborhood, and the fat is still slowly but surely coming down. Keeping on with life and thriving in it. Be the you you've always wanted to be, because if you don't you've noone to blame but yourself.
Been an interesting week for me. Spent a lot of it at Disneyland having a great time. Came back to some work, and honestly been one of the better times for that I've had in a while, and now it looks like I might be coming down with a case of something or other. Luckily that should subside soon and leave me to life again.
So, I've been promising some information about my other experiment from January for a while now, so today here it comes.
Based on some information from some of my various research, and an understanding of how thermodynamics works, I decided to experiment with using cold to increase caloric burn. Now a lot of people would have you think that weight is as simple as calories in and calories out. The in is obviously what you eat, the out is the byproducts of that, and all the various expenditures of keeping the body functioning and how much exercise you do etc. Well I've already found that is overly simplistic, what you eat has a big impact how your body fuels itself. Calories are not all created equal. So what else is there to play with? The out of course.
Sure I could exercise a lot and burn more calories that way, but that's a lot of work and a lot of time to burn an appreciable amount of calories. Perhaps there is another way to tinker with the calorie equation. This is where the thermodynamics comes in. The human body has a very small range of core temperature at which it considers itself comfortable. If it's warmer than that you start sweating or doing various other things in an attempt to lower your temp toward that comfortable range, but if it's lower than that your body starts keeping the blood closer in to your core for warmth, and burning more calories to try and generate more heat. This is what we're after. By keeping yourself cooler could you increase your calorie expenditure and burn fat faster than if you were warmer?
This was where I decided to play around a bit. I took it upon myself to try a few methods of keeping my core temp a bit lower to see what kind of results I could garner. At the outset I decided I'd start my morning, after my weigh-in, with a half-liter of ice cold water. This was slightly tricky to execute and as a result I didn't stick with it long, though I feel like if I had the results I saw would have been improved greatly. I stopped even pretending to carry a jacket and just went with the temp as it was. The last thing I did, and the aspect I stuck with that I feel did the most good, was an ice pack applied to the neck and trapezius muscles for 30 minutes every evening, as my research indicated this would be the best place for impacting my core temp and also the best time of day for calorie burn due to increased glucose sensitivity.
So, the testing protocol, the first ten days of January I did no cold application to help ensure that I had a baseline and because I wanted to make sure my testing period happened while I was better acclimated to my dietary experiment for the month. The second ten days of the month I did my 30 minutes of icing each evening. The last ten days I did no icing but kept up the dietary shift to make sure I had accurate information from later on in the same end of that experiment to control for. So, what do the numbers show? The first ten days I lost a total of 4.6 pounds, 3.08 of which were fat and 1.52 of which were lean. During the icing phase I lost 1.7 pounds total, but a total of 4.107 pounds of fat and gained 2.407 of lean. During the last 30 days I lost a net 1 pound, but 2.75 of fat and gained 1.749 of lean. During the first ten days of February when I was back to my more normal diet I gained .4 pounds, having lost 2.342 of fat and gained 2.742 of lean. That's an awful lot of numbers. What do they have to say? I lost nearly twice as much fat during my iced segment than I did during the normal period in February or the latter part of January when I was still doing the Primal experiment. I also gained the second most lean that I gained at any point during this experimental setup.
So, what's the take away from this? The icing helped, and though I didn't test it specifically, I would wager that the icing with the primal eating would do better than either the primal diet or icing with a normal diet would do. So while icing can help increase what you are already doing in terms of burning fat, it's not going to fix anything on it's own. Get your intake taken care of first, and then work on your output, whether that be in the form of exercise, icing, or ideally both. So that's what I have to say about this for now. If you have suggestions on other things I could experiment with, or ideas on how to improve my testing let me know in the comments.
Well, now that we've seen a bit more of how I went about getting to the weight where I am now, let's see what exactly I am now. 199.6, down .5 from last week. Keeping up in the right neighborhood, and the fat is still slowly but surely coming down. Keeping on with life and thriving in it. Be the you you've always wanted to be, because if you don't you've noone to blame but yourself.
Sunday, February 13, 2011
Weekly Weigh-in (Week 56)
Sunday again and time for the weekly weigh-in.
Alright, short post this week. I know I said there would be data from the experiment I ran on myself in January, other than the dietary shift, but I didn't get the chance I expected to write that up into a post this week, and today I'm gonna be too busy having a great time to do it, so you get a short post with numbers.
Pretty average week in terms of my food intake, though I did try some homemade indian food for the first time, an activity I will likely repeat in the future. So I don't expect much change in the weight. 200.1, up half a pound since last week. While the average has been trending up slightly over time my daily readings are actually staying fairly consistently right around 200. I'm perfectly happy with this as my system seems well adjusted to maintaining this weight with little difficulty, and sometimes that's better than losing those 5 extra pounds. Anyway, have a great week and I'll have more for you next time.
Sunday, February 6, 2011
Weekly Weigh-in (Week 55)
Sunday yet again and time for the weekly weigh-in.
This week I've been eating a lot differently than I was the last month and I can feel the difference. Other than that life is settling down and looking up and I'm feeling good about it.
So, last week I talked about what eating Primal is all about, a little about why you'd want to do it, and mentioned that I had. This week, in a shorter post, I'll talk about the results that I got eating this way during January, and what impact it's likely to have on my eating going forward.
So, firstly some of the more "intangible" benefits I found eating primal last month. At no point, except once on a cheat day, did I ever get a bloated feeling of being too full that I had gotten rather often on similar amounts of food before. Likewise, I noticed that I had fewer intestinal disturbances during this month than I had in previous months, not that the other months are really that high but still, none is better than even a small number. I felt full without being bloated, had no trouble later on, more energy with fewer crashes in my energy level, and felt more rested on the same or in some cases less sleep per day. Now maybe not all of that comes from diet, but those are all benefits I like and I feel confident that I can track at least some of them to the change in diet.
Now the numerical things I can report. I will admit these cannot be entirely tied to the shift in diet, January was also when I switched from running as my primary exercise to resistance training to fill the same niche which will impact these numbers somewhat. Also beginning the middle of the month I was experimenting with some other things that may have improved my results slightly. Regardless of either of these other factors, diet is the cornerstone of any sort of body recomposition, you can't outrun, or in this case out-lift, a bad diet, and you for sure can't ice it away.
So, numbers. At the first of January I weighed 206.8, at the end of January I weighed 199.5, which is a decrease of 7.3 pounds in total weight. Start of the month my body fat percentage was around 18.6, end of the month it was 14.3, a decrease of 4.3%. So using those numbers and some easy multiplication my lean mass went from 168.3 to 171.0, and my fat mass went from 38.5 to 28.5, which for those of you keeping up at home means that in January I lost 10 pounds of fat, and gained 2.7 pounds of muscle.
Looking at graphs of the values I track over time I can say that this didn't start showing up on the graphs until probably 10 days into the month. Now part of that is because the way I do my tracking smooths out local fluctuation intentionally so any small changes take a while to accumulate while big changes show up faster. Looking at the day to day instead of the trends which I graph I can say that it looks like there were noticeable improvements almost immediately, but I can't stand as confidently behind their accuracy as I can the trend numbers quoted above and of which I reference the graphs.
Would I recommend this dietary plan to others? Absolutely, if you are at all curious try it out and see what happens, you might feel better, you might not. Worst case it will at least give you a different appreciation for your food than you have now. What am I planning to do with these results in the future? Well, I can't say that I will commit to going fully primal from now on, that would be too difficult to do in practice and I don't like any solution that causes me to feel deprived if I can avoid it. So what I will probably do is a complicated split of meals which are Primal, meals which are "cheat" meals, meals on which I just plain fast, and meals which meet my adapted psuedo-Primal plan.
What is that plan and what does it look like? As little gluten as possible, I will still let myself have it on my cheat meals but for my pseudo meals I want to try to keep it out entirely, related to that minimal grains glutenous or not. I don't have any open reactions to corn so I'm going to allow it at least in moderation, but in continuation of my reduction/elimination of processed sugars I will be avoiding corn syrup and especially HFCS. I like rice and will be allowing that in my adapted plan, though with a preference for wild rice, and behind that brown rice. I'm going to continue to avoid peanuts in favor of healthier and tastier nuts, and reduce and ideally eliminate potatoes from the pseudo meals as most applications of potatoes tend to be rather bland or merely nutritionally devoid. Soy will be allowed, though the less processed from it's natural form the better.
Well, that should about do it for this week. Next week, barring any other things coming up, I will have some stuff to say about the other experiment I mentioned.
So what does the scale have to say for my return to a "normal" diet? 199.6, up .2 from last week. Moving in the wrong direction sure, but only barely, and my body fat is still moving in the right direction so I'm not at all concerned. The future holds many wonderful things in both the long and the short term, stay tuned to see what some of them are. Until next week, be the you you want to be.
This week I've been eating a lot differently than I was the last month and I can feel the difference. Other than that life is settling down and looking up and I'm feeling good about it.
So, last week I talked about what eating Primal is all about, a little about why you'd want to do it, and mentioned that I had. This week, in a shorter post, I'll talk about the results that I got eating this way during January, and what impact it's likely to have on my eating going forward.
So, firstly some of the more "intangible" benefits I found eating primal last month. At no point, except once on a cheat day, did I ever get a bloated feeling of being too full that I had gotten rather often on similar amounts of food before. Likewise, I noticed that I had fewer intestinal disturbances during this month than I had in previous months, not that the other months are really that high but still, none is better than even a small number. I felt full without being bloated, had no trouble later on, more energy with fewer crashes in my energy level, and felt more rested on the same or in some cases less sleep per day. Now maybe not all of that comes from diet, but those are all benefits I like and I feel confident that I can track at least some of them to the change in diet.
Now the numerical things I can report. I will admit these cannot be entirely tied to the shift in diet, January was also when I switched from running as my primary exercise to resistance training to fill the same niche which will impact these numbers somewhat. Also beginning the middle of the month I was experimenting with some other things that may have improved my results slightly. Regardless of either of these other factors, diet is the cornerstone of any sort of body recomposition, you can't outrun, or in this case out-lift, a bad diet, and you for sure can't ice it away.
So, numbers. At the first of January I weighed 206.8, at the end of January I weighed 199.5, which is a decrease of 7.3 pounds in total weight. Start of the month my body fat percentage was around 18.6, end of the month it was 14.3, a decrease of 4.3%. So using those numbers and some easy multiplication my lean mass went from 168.3 to 171.0, and my fat mass went from 38.5 to 28.5, which for those of you keeping up at home means that in January I lost 10 pounds of fat, and gained 2.7 pounds of muscle.
Looking at graphs of the values I track over time I can say that this didn't start showing up on the graphs until probably 10 days into the month. Now part of that is because the way I do my tracking smooths out local fluctuation intentionally so any small changes take a while to accumulate while big changes show up faster. Looking at the day to day instead of the trends which I graph I can say that it looks like there were noticeable improvements almost immediately, but I can't stand as confidently behind their accuracy as I can the trend numbers quoted above and of which I reference the graphs.
Would I recommend this dietary plan to others? Absolutely, if you are at all curious try it out and see what happens, you might feel better, you might not. Worst case it will at least give you a different appreciation for your food than you have now. What am I planning to do with these results in the future? Well, I can't say that I will commit to going fully primal from now on, that would be too difficult to do in practice and I don't like any solution that causes me to feel deprived if I can avoid it. So what I will probably do is a complicated split of meals which are Primal, meals which are "cheat" meals, meals on which I just plain fast, and meals which meet my adapted psuedo-Primal plan.
What is that plan and what does it look like? As little gluten as possible, I will still let myself have it on my cheat meals but for my pseudo meals I want to try to keep it out entirely, related to that minimal grains glutenous or not. I don't have any open reactions to corn so I'm going to allow it at least in moderation, but in continuation of my reduction/elimination of processed sugars I will be avoiding corn syrup and especially HFCS. I like rice and will be allowing that in my adapted plan, though with a preference for wild rice, and behind that brown rice. I'm going to continue to avoid peanuts in favor of healthier and tastier nuts, and reduce and ideally eliminate potatoes from the pseudo meals as most applications of potatoes tend to be rather bland or merely nutritionally devoid. Soy will be allowed, though the less processed from it's natural form the better.
Well, that should about do it for this week. Next week, barring any other things coming up, I will have some stuff to say about the other experiment I mentioned.
So what does the scale have to say for my return to a "normal" diet? 199.6, up .2 from last week. Moving in the wrong direction sure, but only barely, and my body fat is still moving in the right direction so I'm not at all concerned. The future holds many wonderful things in both the long and the short term, stay tuned to see what some of them are. Until next week, be the you you want to be.
Sunday, January 30, 2011
Weekly Weigh-in (Week 54)
Sunday yet again and time for the weekly weigh-in.
Been doing alright the past week. Getting some things straightened out, plans put in place, and visiting with some friends I haven't gotten to see in a while. All told, a pretty good deal.
It's the end of January now and my recent dietary experiment is drawing to a close. So today I'm going to discuss said experiment, and let you know a bit about how it went for me.
For the month of January, partly as a challenge to myself to see if I could do it, partly with a friend to see if it would increase her energy levels, and partly because I was looking for a way to start the year off differently, I decided to try and eat Primal for an entire month. Now, I'll admit it wasn't strict primal the whole time, Monday was our designated cheat day to eat whatever we felt like eating primal or not, though for the most part I found that even on these cheat days I still ate differently than I would have before the month had started.
For those of you who don't know what I'm talking about the Primal plan is based around the idea that humans are adapted to what we were eating in the late Paleolithic time period, ie pre-agriculture. As such things which do not occur naturally in the wild are avoided, grains (and gluten in particular), legumes, rice, corn, and potatoes and various other starchy carbs are cut from the diet leaving you with meat, vegetables, fruit, nuts, and seeds. At first blush that sounds like it would be incredibly limiting but I found that, despite the fact that I did often eat the same basic things out of convenience, I wasn't any more limited in my food variety than I had been before when I could eat anything I wanted. I just ate slightly different things.
Over the course of the month I can honestly say that I never felt strong cravings for carbs like some people experience, though truthfully I find I don't really eat all that much in the way of grains/carbs anymore even before this experiment. I feel great, I've been dropping fat consistently through the month and putting on muscle, and I've tried some foods I never would have otherwise (spaghetti squash may not be that full of flavor on it's own, but neither is pasta). I've developed a love for spinach I never knew I had, and discovered that I really enjoy cashews.
So you might be wondering, what does your meal list look like on a plan like this. Well, here's a couple sample meals from my month of primal dining.
Breakfast: Homemade Protein bar (made from almonds, pecans, eggs, and blueberries); or some fresh blueberries, cheese, beef jerky, and a handful or two of either pumpkin seeds or mixed nuts (but without any peanuts as those are a legume not a nut); eggs and bacon; omelet with mushrooms, cheese, bacon, and sausage
Lunch: Salad from Subway or Paradise Bakery (I prefer Subway with spinach instead of lettuce), Fajita Burrito bowl from Chipotle, Protein Style burgers from In-n-Out, chicken and wild rice soup, leftovers
Dinner: Steak and Asparagus with a Cesar Salad; Spaghetti Squash Carbonara with mushrooms, asparagus, and sausage; Chicken Soup, Pulled Pork and steamed spinach, roast chicken with mixed veggies
Snacks: Pumpkin Seeds; mixed nuts (again, no peanuts); cheese; salami; fresh fruit (blueberries and nectarines came up a few times); Trader Joe's Thai Chili Lime Cashews; Trader Joe's Jerky (I had both beef and buffalo at various points in time)
As you can see, there's a decent amount of selection up there provided you aren't a vegetarian (sorry). The most limited meal is probably lunch and that's mostly because of my schedule being a pain for eating of lunches that require any preparation. Dinner was often prepared by a trip to the store on the way home from work to figure out what meat was in the mark-down section that day, and then combine it with a veggie that was on sale and a salad kit. The protein bars I was using for breakfasts all came from a batch I made at the start of the month and have been eating off of since. All told, it's a pretty varied plan in practice even if the theory makes it sound restrictive. Well, that's about all the space I plan to dedicate to this post so come back next week for the rest of my primal wrap-up and some info on what I plan to do with the observations from the experiment.
So, what does the scale have to tell me today? 199.4 up a bit from last week, 3.2 to be specific, but not enough that I'm particularly concerned based on my behavior toward the end of the week. We'll see where it goes going forward. Even still, my fat mass is decreasing so I'm not concerned.
Been doing alright the past week. Getting some things straightened out, plans put in place, and visiting with some friends I haven't gotten to see in a while. All told, a pretty good deal.
It's the end of January now and my recent dietary experiment is drawing to a close. So today I'm going to discuss said experiment, and let you know a bit about how it went for me.
For the month of January, partly as a challenge to myself to see if I could do it, partly with a friend to see if it would increase her energy levels, and partly because I was looking for a way to start the year off differently, I decided to try and eat Primal for an entire month. Now, I'll admit it wasn't strict primal the whole time, Monday was our designated cheat day to eat whatever we felt like eating primal or not, though for the most part I found that even on these cheat days I still ate differently than I would have before the month had started.
For those of you who don't know what I'm talking about the Primal plan is based around the idea that humans are adapted to what we were eating in the late Paleolithic time period, ie pre-agriculture. As such things which do not occur naturally in the wild are avoided, grains (and gluten in particular), legumes, rice, corn, and potatoes and various other starchy carbs are cut from the diet leaving you with meat, vegetables, fruit, nuts, and seeds. At first blush that sounds like it would be incredibly limiting but I found that, despite the fact that I did often eat the same basic things out of convenience, I wasn't any more limited in my food variety than I had been before when I could eat anything I wanted. I just ate slightly different things.
Over the course of the month I can honestly say that I never felt strong cravings for carbs like some people experience, though truthfully I find I don't really eat all that much in the way of grains/carbs anymore even before this experiment. I feel great, I've been dropping fat consistently through the month and putting on muscle, and I've tried some foods I never would have otherwise (spaghetti squash may not be that full of flavor on it's own, but neither is pasta). I've developed a love for spinach I never knew I had, and discovered that I really enjoy cashews.
So you might be wondering, what does your meal list look like on a plan like this. Well, here's a couple sample meals from my month of primal dining.
Breakfast: Homemade Protein bar (made from almonds, pecans, eggs, and blueberries); or some fresh blueberries, cheese, beef jerky, and a handful or two of either pumpkin seeds or mixed nuts (but without any peanuts as those are a legume not a nut); eggs and bacon; omelet with mushrooms, cheese, bacon, and sausage
Lunch: Salad from Subway or Paradise Bakery (I prefer Subway with spinach instead of lettuce), Fajita Burrito bowl from Chipotle, Protein Style burgers from In-n-Out, chicken and wild rice soup, leftovers
Dinner: Steak and Asparagus with a Cesar Salad; Spaghetti Squash Carbonara with mushrooms, asparagus, and sausage; Chicken Soup, Pulled Pork and steamed spinach, roast chicken with mixed veggies
Snacks: Pumpkin Seeds; mixed nuts (again, no peanuts); cheese; salami; fresh fruit (blueberries and nectarines came up a few times); Trader Joe's Thai Chili Lime Cashews; Trader Joe's Jerky (I had both beef and buffalo at various points in time)
As you can see, there's a decent amount of selection up there provided you aren't a vegetarian (sorry). The most limited meal is probably lunch and that's mostly because of my schedule being a pain for eating of lunches that require any preparation. Dinner was often prepared by a trip to the store on the way home from work to figure out what meat was in the mark-down section that day, and then combine it with a veggie that was on sale and a salad kit. The protein bars I was using for breakfasts all came from a batch I made at the start of the month and have been eating off of since. All told, it's a pretty varied plan in practice even if the theory makes it sound restrictive. Well, that's about all the space I plan to dedicate to this post so come back next week for the rest of my primal wrap-up and some info on what I plan to do with the observations from the experiment.
So, what does the scale have to tell me today? 199.4 up a bit from last week, 3.2 to be specific, but not enough that I'm particularly concerned based on my behavior toward the end of the week. We'll see where it goes going forward. Even still, my fat mass is decreasing so I'm not concerned.
Sunday, January 23, 2011
Weekly Weigh-in (Week 53)
Sunday morning yet again and time for my weekly weigh-in.
It's been a rather interesting month for me, trying out this primal blueprint stuff (which I've found to be a lot easier than I expected it to be), and a few other smaller experiments on myself.
One thing I'm in the middle of is a trial of whether or not, so far it's looking like a yes to this part, and by how much localized application of cold temperatures can increase fat loss. That's a long winded way of saying that for 10 days this month I put an ice pack on my neck and trapezius muscles for 30 minutes in the evening. I'm gonna compare that to the first ten days of the month, and the last 10 days of the month, during both sets of which I am not applying said ice pack. This is the first "controlled" experiment I'm running on myself, but it won't be the last. I'll let you guys know how things turn out.
Short post this week, expect something a bit longer next week as a wrap-up for my month of primal eating.
So, what does the scale have to say this week? 196.2, down 1.8 since last week. That's not too bad. I'll see you all next week, until then be the you you've always wanted.
It's been a rather interesting month for me, trying out this primal blueprint stuff (which I've found to be a lot easier than I expected it to be), and a few other smaller experiments on myself.
One thing I'm in the middle of is a trial of whether or not, so far it's looking like a yes to this part, and by how much localized application of cold temperatures can increase fat loss. That's a long winded way of saying that for 10 days this month I put an ice pack on my neck and trapezius muscles for 30 minutes in the evening. I'm gonna compare that to the first ten days of the month, and the last 10 days of the month, during both sets of which I am not applying said ice pack. This is the first "controlled" experiment I'm running on myself, but it won't be the last. I'll let you guys know how things turn out.
Short post this week, expect something a bit longer next week as a wrap-up for my month of primal eating.
So, what does the scale have to say this week? 196.2, down 1.8 since last week. That's not too bad. I'll see you all next week, until then be the you you've always wanted.
Sunday, January 16, 2011
Weekly Weigh-in (Week 52)
Sunday yet again and time for the weekly weigh-in.
Well, this is week 52, which means it's now been a year since I started actively trying to better manage my weight. What do I have to show for that year? This time last year I was just starting my final semester of college, starting in on the planning of my wedding, unsure of what the summer held in store for me let alone anything past that. I was also 283 pounds and in generally terrible shape. This first photo is of me giving a toast at my friend Ross's wedding, you can see him sitting next to the bride in that shot.
That was a me I knew for a while I was unhappy with, but had for too long decided to just sit around and not do anything to fix. It was shortly after that wedding that I had the epiphany, wanting something to be different and actually having it be different are entirely not the same thing. That was when I decided to stop wanting to be in better shape, and wanting to weigh less, and to start doing something about it. That decision has led me to where I am no in terms of my physical well-being, and it has also helped change how I interact with the world. I feel like I spend less time as a passive observer of my world and more time making it into what I want it to be. Frankly, I wouldn't have it any other way.
Based on the numbers from last week I've lost about 85 pounds from my starting weight, around 30% of my starting weight. For comparison that's the approximate weight of an 11.5 year old child, two five year olds, 8 babies, 19 bricks, 301 1" steel cubes, this much cocaine (apparently), or any of a number of other things I found on google trying to find answers to this question. I feel amazing compared to last year. I feel much better about myself, I can sustain physical activity for much longer than I could have dreamed of last year. I haven't timed myself but I'm fairly sure I can run a mile faster than I did in high school, and otherwise outperform my high school self in any meaningful metric. I have grown as a person through the challenge of losing that much of myself, I have found more of myself than there ever was to lose. Compare the previous picture of me to this picture of me and it's easy to see the difference.
So sure there have been a lot of changes for me in the last year, but what about the next year? Well first I'm going to be trying to drop my body-fat, something I seem to be having decent luck with so far. Secondly I'm going to try and add some muscle mass, to get a more balanced look going on instead of the slightly strangely shaped appearance I have going on right now. Going to put some effort into increasing my strength and endurance through my exercise routine, and if I can find the time and money to do so I'm hoping to get back to doing martial arts at some point this year.
I'd like to thank all of you who have given me such encouragement this past year. I relaally appreciate all the kind things you've had to say, the personal experiences shared and all the advice I've picked up. I plan to keep posting these logs, but I expect the numbers are going to stop going down before too much longer and start staying pretty much the same. Hopefully even with that being the case the picture I have to put here next year will look even better than the one I had to show you this year.
So, what does the scale have to tell me today? 198 even, down .2 from last week. Just about what I expected, and around what I'm shooting for going forward, small losses until I hit my eventual target. Small because I'm trying to make sure that the losses are mostly fat and that I'm also increasing my lean over time. Until next time, take whatever you don't like about yourself and your surroundings, and change it for the better. Because if you don't nobody else will either.
That was a me I knew for a while I was unhappy with, but had for too long decided to just sit around and not do anything to fix. It was shortly after that wedding that I had the epiphany, wanting something to be different and actually having it be different are entirely not the same thing. That was when I decided to stop wanting to be in better shape, and wanting to weigh less, and to start doing something about it. That decision has led me to where I am no in terms of my physical well-being, and it has also helped change how I interact with the world. I feel like I spend less time as a passive observer of my world and more time making it into what I want it to be. Frankly, I wouldn't have it any other way.
Based on the numbers from last week I've lost about 85 pounds from my starting weight, around 30% of my starting weight. For comparison that's the approximate weight of an 11.5 year old child, two five year olds, 8 babies, 19 bricks, 301 1" steel cubes, this much cocaine (apparently), or any of a number of other things I found on google trying to find answers to this question. I feel amazing compared to last year. I feel much better about myself, I can sustain physical activity for much longer than I could have dreamed of last year. I haven't timed myself but I'm fairly sure I can run a mile faster than I did in high school, and otherwise outperform my high school self in any meaningful metric. I have grown as a person through the challenge of losing that much of myself, I have found more of myself than there ever was to lose. Compare the previous picture of me to this picture of me and it's easy to see the difference.So sure there have been a lot of changes for me in the last year, but what about the next year? Well first I'm going to be trying to drop my body-fat, something I seem to be having decent luck with so far. Secondly I'm going to try and add some muscle mass, to get a more balanced look going on instead of the slightly strangely shaped appearance I have going on right now. Going to put some effort into increasing my strength and endurance through my exercise routine, and if I can find the time and money to do so I'm hoping to get back to doing martial arts at some point this year.
I'd like to thank all of you who have given me such encouragement this past year. I relaally appreciate all the kind things you've had to say, the personal experiences shared and all the advice I've picked up. I plan to keep posting these logs, but I expect the numbers are going to stop going down before too much longer and start staying pretty much the same. Hopefully even with that being the case the picture I have to put here next year will look even better than the one I had to show you this year.
So, what does the scale have to tell me today? 198 even, down .2 from last week. Just about what I expected, and around what I'm shooting for going forward, small losses until I hit my eventual target. Small because I'm trying to make sure that the losses are mostly fat and that I'm also increasing my lean over time. Until next time, take whatever you don't like about yourself and your surroundings, and change it for the better. Because if you don't nobody else will either.
Sunday, January 9, 2011
Weekly Weigh-in (Week 51)
Sunday yet again and time for the weekly weigh-in.
This has been a rather fun week for me. Been trying some new things with my diet that so far seem to be working out alright for me, I'll go into greater detail about that in a couple weeks. For now let's just say, I've been enjoying the changes to my eating habits for the most part.
Well, as some of you commented after my last post, it's gonna take more than running to look like the picture I posted here last week. So this week I'm going to talk about what I've started doing recently that isn't running in terms of exercise, and to ramble for a while in relation to the blog from which I got the workout.
Firstly, the workout. The past couple weeks I've replaced my running, don't worry I'll be coming back to that before too much longer, with some resistance training. Specifically I've been doing the Beginner Bodyweight Workout from Nerd Fitness. It's a fairly simple workout overall, bodyweight squats and lunges working the lower body, pushups and dumbbell rows working the upper body, plank and jumping jacks to round things out with some core work. Since I spend most of my time on the second floor I usually replace the jumping jacks with flights of stairs, but other than that, I've been doing variations on that workout for the past couple weeks. So far I've been doing abbreviated versions to work my way up in terms of ability, last week it was 1 half set, 1 whole set, and 1 half set; next week it'll be 1/.5/1 instead and working up from there. I've already been noticing improvement in my skill, and am already looking at ways to make the exercises work for me in the longterm as well.
Now, a little rambling about Nerd Fitness. Nerd Fitness is a blog written by a guy named Steve Kamb. Like myself he's a self-professed nerd and it shows in much of his writing. He's also a big fitness buff. While I don't always agree with everything he posts most of the stuff I see on the site is top notch. Like with everything, don't take all that you read on the internet at face value, but do your own research and see what you figure out. Most of what I see at his site resonates with my own research into the subjects and thus I put a lot of it to use. I expect I'll end up using a lot more of his tips as time goes on, but we'll have to wait and see. For now, I will say with certainty if you are a nerd, and you are interested in being in better shape, or even just keeping yourself in the good shape you are already in, Nerd Fitness is a blog that you should check out. But you don't have to take my word for it.
Now, on to the numbers. What do I have to show for my dietary changes and nearly a year of weight loss? 198.2, down 2.6 pounds since last week. Down 84.9 overall, a full 30% of my starting weight. Nearing where I plan to try and hold my weight in the long term, so hooray for continued good news. Until next week, be whatever you want to be, but make it awesome.
This has been a rather fun week for me. Been trying some new things with my diet that so far seem to be working out alright for me, I'll go into greater detail about that in a couple weeks. For now let's just say, I've been enjoying the changes to my eating habits for the most part.
Well, as some of you commented after my last post, it's gonna take more than running to look like the picture I posted here last week. So this week I'm going to talk about what I've started doing recently that isn't running in terms of exercise, and to ramble for a while in relation to the blog from which I got the workout.
Firstly, the workout. The past couple weeks I've replaced my running, don't worry I'll be coming back to that before too much longer, with some resistance training. Specifically I've been doing the Beginner Bodyweight Workout from Nerd Fitness. It's a fairly simple workout overall, bodyweight squats and lunges working the lower body, pushups and dumbbell rows working the upper body, plank and jumping jacks to round things out with some core work. Since I spend most of my time on the second floor I usually replace the jumping jacks with flights of stairs, but other than that, I've been doing variations on that workout for the past couple weeks. So far I've been doing abbreviated versions to work my way up in terms of ability, last week it was 1 half set, 1 whole set, and 1 half set; next week it'll be 1/.5/1 instead and working up from there. I've already been noticing improvement in my skill, and am already looking at ways to make the exercises work for me in the longterm as well.
Now, a little rambling about Nerd Fitness. Nerd Fitness is a blog written by a guy named Steve Kamb. Like myself he's a self-professed nerd and it shows in much of his writing. He's also a big fitness buff. While I don't always agree with everything he posts most of the stuff I see on the site is top notch. Like with everything, don't take all that you read on the internet at face value, but do your own research and see what you figure out. Most of what I see at his site resonates with my own research into the subjects and thus I put a lot of it to use. I expect I'll end up using a lot more of his tips as time goes on, but we'll have to wait and see. For now, I will say with certainty if you are a nerd, and you are interested in being in better shape, or even just keeping yourself in the good shape you are already in, Nerd Fitness is a blog that you should check out. But you don't have to take my word for it.
Now, on to the numbers. What do I have to show for my dietary changes and nearly a year of weight loss? 198.2, down 2.6 pounds since last week. Down 84.9 overall, a full 30% of my starting weight. Nearing where I plan to try and hold my weight in the long term, so hooray for continued good news. Until next week, be whatever you want to be, but make it awesome.
Sunday, January 2, 2011
Weekly Weigh-in (Week 50)
Sunday yet again and time for my weekly weigh-in.
The week between the holidays has been rather kind to me I feel. Interim weigh-ins have been promising, I feel great, I'm looking better than I recall looking in a long time. Tried out a new workout twice this week, and while I was incredibly stiff and sore after the first time I'm so far feeling much less so after the second time. So I'm hopeful that is a sign of at least some improvement.
Alright, so now to the meat of the post. This week I am going to indulge my slightly nerdier side, and for those of you who don't care for that, feel free to skip to the end if you don't find you are the kind who cares for my nerdier rantings. Those of you who have ever played any form of RPG with me, or heard the stories I am somewhat oft to tell about them, know that I am at heart a chronic min-maxer, a power gamer if you will. Once I have a good understanding of the rules, I find a sick sort of pleasure in finding the myriad ways to push a character to the limit of said rules and see what I can make it do. It has recently dawned upon me, that there is no real reason why I cannot apply some of that skill and drive to myself just as easily as I can to my RPG characters.
I have developed a reasonable level of knowledge of the functioning of the human body, and the ways in which it can be improved and hindered through the course of my weight loss goals and my education. Combining that plus my power gaming tendencies seems like it could lead to some very interesting avenues of expansion for me personally. I picked up a copy of a new book in this vein that I have seen good reviews of, and I'm excited to see what ideas I can glean from it. I will refrain from mentioning it now but save that for when I have either good or bad things to say of it. I have decided that in addition to the goals I listed last week for 2011, I'm going to be adding 2 things to the growing list. Firstly, for the month of January, in conjunction with a friend, I am going to be attempting to eat a 'diet' dubbed the Primal Blueprint. It's a grain-free, gluten-free diet based on the diet of our evolutionary history. Going to give it a shot for the month and see if it seems to help or hinder my progress toward my other goals. I'll keep you all posted. The other thing I decided this week is that I'm going to see what I can do over the course of the year to get myself to look more like this guy.
Well, all that taken care of, and much less geeky than I really expected. Long story short, I plan to level up my life and tweak everything I can about it until I am the me that I want to be. So let's do this thing.
So what does the scale have to tell me today? 200.8 down 7.2 since last week. Now some of that is likely to be water weight, I know I've not been drinking quite enough water the past few days, but still I'm making good progress. So it is with great pride that I report that my weight has finally made it below the threshold that allows me to state, my BMI calls me Normal and not Overweight now. Not as big of a difference mentally as there was when I dropped out of Obese, but it's a nice milestone regardless. I'm down 82.3 pounds which is 29% of my starting weight. It's been a good year for me, and it's gonna be an even more interesting one this year I suspect. So until next week, be the person you've always wanted to be.
The week between the holidays has been rather kind to me I feel. Interim weigh-ins have been promising, I feel great, I'm looking better than I recall looking in a long time. Tried out a new workout twice this week, and while I was incredibly stiff and sore after the first time I'm so far feeling much less so after the second time. So I'm hopeful that is a sign of at least some improvement.
Alright, so now to the meat of the post. This week I am going to indulge my slightly nerdier side, and for those of you who don't care for that, feel free to skip to the end if you don't find you are the kind who cares for my nerdier rantings. Those of you who have ever played any form of RPG with me, or heard the stories I am somewhat oft to tell about them, know that I am at heart a chronic min-maxer, a power gamer if you will. Once I have a good understanding of the rules, I find a sick sort of pleasure in finding the myriad ways to push a character to the limit of said rules and see what I can make it do. It has recently dawned upon me, that there is no real reason why I cannot apply some of that skill and drive to myself just as easily as I can to my RPG characters.
I have developed a reasonable level of knowledge of the functioning of the human body, and the ways in which it can be improved and hindered through the course of my weight loss goals and my education. Combining that plus my power gaming tendencies seems like it could lead to some very interesting avenues of expansion for me personally. I picked up a copy of a new book in this vein that I have seen good reviews of, and I'm excited to see what ideas I can glean from it. I will refrain from mentioning it now but save that for when I have either good or bad things to say of it. I have decided that in addition to the goals I listed last week for 2011, I'm going to be adding 2 things to the growing list. Firstly, for the month of January, in conjunction with a friend, I am going to be attempting to eat a 'diet' dubbed the Primal Blueprint. It's a grain-free, gluten-free diet based on the diet of our evolutionary history. Going to give it a shot for the month and see if it seems to help or hinder my progress toward my other goals. I'll keep you all posted. The other thing I decided this week is that I'm going to see what I can do over the course of the year to get myself to look more like this guy.
Well, all that taken care of, and much less geeky than I really expected. Long story short, I plan to level up my life and tweak everything I can about it until I am the me that I want to be. So let's do this thing.
So what does the scale have to tell me today? 200.8 down 7.2 since last week. Now some of that is likely to be water weight, I know I've not been drinking quite enough water the past few days, but still I'm making good progress. So it is with great pride that I report that my weight has finally made it below the threshold that allows me to state, my BMI calls me Normal and not Overweight now. Not as big of a difference mentally as there was when I dropped out of Obese, but it's a nice milestone regardless. I'm down 82.3 pounds which is 29% of my starting weight. It's been a good year for me, and it's gonna be an even more interesting one this year I suspect. So until next week, be the person you've always wanted to be.
Sunday, December 26, 2010
Weekly Weigh-in (Week 49)
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.
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.
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