Weekly Weigh-In 2006-04-30 April 30, 2006
- Current Weight: 96.4 kg (212.5 lbs)
- Change this week: -1.11 kg (-2.4 lbs)
- FFM: -0.45 kg (-1.0 lbs)
- Fat: -0.66 kg (-1.5 lbs)
- Total lost to date: 13.6 kg (30 lbs)
- Number of days exercised: 2
Wow! I got sick this week, and it caused me to lose about 3 kg according to my daily measurements. That undoes the whole Easter binge in just two days! Who’d have thought getting sick could be so good for you?!
After I got over the effects of my illness, I was able to go out jogging again. I started off with a really good 7 km route (I had plenty of time, since I was still off work), which included 3 km of running and 4 km of walking. It took about an hour, which was a lot shorter than I expected. I actually wasn’t going to run at all, since I was trying to ease back into exercise, but I felt so good half-way through that I just decided to go for it. My break must have done me good, as I ran faster and felt better than I have on previous runs.
I’m pleased to have hit the 30 lb mark in my weight loss. That’s a cool milestone to reach, and probably marks the half-way point for me. I expect my final weight will settle somewhere in the 80-85 kg (175-187 lbs) range.
Technorati Tags: weight loss, diet, exercise, fat
Illness Helps Weight Loss April 27, 2006
I’ve just spent the last two days out of action with vomiting and diarrhoea. While not a nice experience at all, I did lose 3 kg (6.6 lbs) – more than making up for my Easter weight gain!
I’ve missed a few more days of exercising, but going off past experience that won’t affect my fitness much at all. I’m planning to go for a run tomorrow morning, as long as the threatening rain holds off.
Oh well, I’m better now and happy that this little adventure is behind me.
Technorati Tags: weight loss, illness
Blood Test Results April 25, 2006
I had a blood test done a couple of weeks ago (before the Easter blow-out!), and thought it’s probably worth posting the results here.
My total cholesterol score was 3.6, triglicerides was 0.8, and fasting blood glucose score was 4.6. According to these health assessment guidelines, those look like pretty good scores. My total cholesterol is actually lower than the ‘healthy’ range – I’m not sure what that means, but my doctor doesn’t think it’s a problem.
I wish now that I’d gotten around to having a blood test done before I started losing weight. It’d be interesting to see how those numbers have changed over the last several months.
I did a urine test at the same time, and the woman who analysed that remarked that I had high ketone levels. When I told her I’d been losing weight for a while and had fasted for the blood test, she said it would be expected. I guess it’s good to know that my body is in ‘ketosis’ – that means I’m burning fat.
Technorati Tags: weight loss, blood test, blood glucose, triglicerides, cholesterol, health, ketosis
Weekly Weigh-In 2006-04-23 April 23, 2006
- Current Weight: 97.5 kg (215 lbs)
- Change this week: +0.16 kg (+0.35 lbs) (i.e. a weight gain!)
- FFM: +0.11 kg (+0.2 lbs)
- Fat: +0.05 kg (+0.1 lbs)
- Total lost to date: 12.5 kg (27.6 lbs)
- Number of days exercised: 4
My 0.16 kg weight gain this week was made up of 0.11 kg fat-free-mass gained and 0.05 kg fat gained. I’m taking some consolation in the illusion that I hardly gained any fat this week, just bulked up my muscles 
.
Although the graph for this week looks awful with all that red, my trend line hasn’t risen by too much. Going off daily measurements rather than the trend, it looks like I put on 2 kg over Easter. That’s pretty close to what I expected, and should take 2-3 weeks to lose at a very doable rate of 0.7 to 1.0 kg per week.
Now, it’s time to get the runners on and repair the damage!
Technorati Tags: weight loss, diet, exercise, fat
Easter Weight Gain! April 19, 2006
So, how did everyone go with their diets over Easter?
I put on nearly 2 kg (4.4 lbs)! Although my weighted average is only showing about 0.1 kg (0.22 lbs) gain. I hate seeing that red on the graph, and will be working extra hard to try to get the weight back down before the end of the week.
Easter turned out to be a perfect storm of calories this year. Last weekend was my daughter’s first birthday party, and that involved a lot of junk food and leftovers for the following week. We were also going away for 5 days over Easter, so we had to eat down the food in the fridge and cupboards.
We stayed with friends for 5 days over Easter. They own a restaurant out in the country, and are fantastic chefs, so we ate a lot of cooked breakfasts, roast lunches and dinners, huge BBQ steaks, delicious desserts, etc. We also visited an open day at a local winery, attended the town’s annual festival, drank a lot, ate tons of chocolate, and enjoyed their daughter’s seventh birthday party.
I took my running gear with me, thinking it’d be really nice to jog on the flat country roads (my coastal town is very hilly). Between looking after the kids, the late nights, the alcohol consumption, and the chilly autumn mornings, I didn’t get out for a run even once!
I decided early on to just ditch the diet for this past week. I knew I’d probably gain a couple of kilos, but it would be worth it to spend quality time with friends we see only a couple of times a year, and to enjoy Easter, the parties and the festivals with our kids. It’ll take me a couple of weeks to burn those kilos back down, but that’s OK. Sometimes you just have to enjoy life!
Technorati Tags: weight loss, dieting, chocolate, Easter, weight gain
Weekly Weigh-In 2006-04-16 April 16, 2006
- Current Weight: 97.3 kg (214.5 lbs)
- Change this week: -0.21 kg (-0.5 lbs)
- FFM: +0.02 kg (+0.04 lbs)
- Fat: -0.23 kg (-0.51 lbs)
- Total lost to date: 12.7 kg (28 lbs)
- Number of days exercised: 3
I’ve now got a little body fat measurement gadget that I’m using to track my body fat percentage. It’s cheap and nasty and probably not very accurate, but it might be interesting to see how it changes over time. According to the gadget, my 0.21 kg weight loss this week was made up of 0.23 kg of fat loss, and 0.02 kg of fat-free-mass gain. I’ll be tracking these numbers in the Weekly Weigh-In posts from now on.
I wasn’t able to get much exercise in this week, mostly because we were busy getting things ready for a short (5 nights) holiday with some friends in the country.
We had H’s first birthday party on the weekend, and that caused a little bit of a blowout diet-wise. I was fairly careful, though, and it wasn’t as bad as it could have been.
For the week ahead, while we’re on holidays, I’m just going to forget about the diet and exercise program.
A week off the diet shouldn’t cause too much weight gain (and I’m not going to go totally nuts with the food), but I want to be able to enjoy myself. It’ll be Easter, we’ll be attending my friend’s daughter’s birthday party, my friend is a chef and will cook great meals, and we’ll be going to the town’s annual festival. That’s too much merriment to miss!
A week off the exercise plan shouldn’t cause any problem at all as far as my fitness goes. I’ll just enjoy the sleep-ins, and get back into the jogging when we get back.
I’ll probably put on a couple of kilos over the next week, but I now know I can lose them again within 2-3 weeks without too much stress. That’s the whole point of approaching weight loss as a lifestyle change rather than simply a diet that’s “on” or “off”. Once we return, my diet and exercise habits will be back to normal and my weight should continue trending down towards where it should be without me needing to get too concerned about it.
Technorati Tags: weight loss, diet, exercise, fat
Surviving A 1st Birthday Party… April 12, 2006
…with your waistline intact!
Having just survived my third daughter’s first birthday party, I thought it a good time to give some tips on making it through a party without ditching your diet and bursting your belt.
- Give yourself permission to eat junk food, drink a little, and have some fun. It’s only for one day.
- Only eat during the hours of the party (e.g. 3pm to 6pm). No snacking while preparing food, and no eating stuff while cleaning up afterwards!
- Serve some healthy food and eat smart (at least a little bit!). We prepared several plates of healthy stuff like raw vegetables and dip, dried fruits, water crackers and salsa, and fruit salad with dessert. If you’re just nibbling while you talk, try to go mostly for this stuff. Other parents will also appreciate the gesture, and one of the kids might surprise you by eating celery instead of chips!
- Sit or stand at the far side of the party from where the food is being served. If you stand right next to the food table, you’ll unconsciously keep reaching for more and you’ll eat way more than you need to. Make your laziness work for you!
- When eating junk food, go for the sugary stuff (lollies, jelly, meringues, etc) more than the high-carbohydrate/high-fat stuff (cake, donuts, fairy bread, chips, sausage rolls, mousse, cream, chocolate, etc). You can still enjoy a bit of both, but try not to overindulge on the fatty stuff.
- Enjoy the junk food that you do eat. Eat it slowly, and really savour the sweetness and flavour. You probably haven’t eaten much for a while, so don’t waste this opportunity for indulgence by just gulping it down!
- Don’t drink too much. It’s a kids’ party, don’t go overboard and get drunk. Besides, there are more calories in alcohol than you’d think. Jogging the next morning won’t be fun with a hangover, either .
- Get involved in the games. It’ll take you away from the food table, and you’ll burn a lot of that sugar off running around, playing musical chairs, dancing, etc. And the kids will love you for it! At the end of the day, the kids are a big reason you’ve been working so hard on getting fitter.
- Give away as much of the leftover junk food as you can after the party. Send cake home with the kids, give away all those half-packets of lollies, give parents leftover/unused food, soft drinks and desserts to take home as a thankyou for helping. The less of this stuff that stays in the house, the less you’ll have to eat over the next few days!
- If you do end up with a lot of leftovers, freeze what you can. There’s no point pigging out on leftover sausages all week when you could freeze them in small batches and use them in moderation over the coming weeks.
- Make sure you get up in the morning and go for a walk or jog. You’ve got to burn off those extra calories!
Technorati Tags: weight loss, dieting, parenting, diet, calories
Exercise For Parents April 11, 2006
Those with young children (and those who can remember when their children were young!) will appreciate this series of Adam@Home comics from last week:
Weekly Weigh-In 2006-04-09 April 9, 2006
- Current Weight: 97.5 kg (215.1 lbs)
- Lost this week: 1.0 kg (2.2 lbs)
- Total lost to date: 12.5 kg (27.6 lbs)
- Number of days exercised: 4
I did a lot better this week than I was expecting. 1 kg (2.2 lbs) is right on target for the weight I want to be losing every week.
We had H’s 1st birthday party on Saturday, and I knew I’d be eating and drinking a lot while playing with the kids and catching up with friends. I was prepared to scrap the diet for a day, though, given it was such a special occasion. You can see the jump upwards in my weight for Saturday and Sunday on the graph! Hopefully those extra couple of pounds will peel off fairly quickly over the next few days – in the past I’ve found that a single day ‘off the rails’ normally just causes a weight spike for a couple of days and then disappears again.
Almost every day this week I took leftovers to work for lunch, instead of my usual single sandwich. The leftovers must have been double or triple the calories I normally eat at lunch, easily, but it didn’t slow my weight loss like I thought it would. I’m not sure why that is, but I won’t argue it!
Technorati Tags: weight loss, diet, exercise, fat
Running With A Friend
Yesterday at H’s first birthday party, I got talking to a mate (we’ll call him ‘A’) who lives just down the street from me. He has been talking about losing weight and getting fitter for a while now, and has been through a few fads trying to find something that works.
For example, at the start of summer he bought a surf ski with good intentions of taking it paddling every morning. I think he’d been watching the Iron Man races on TV! He stopped after about 3 or 4 weeks, mainly because of the hassle of loading it onto his car, driving to the river, and cleaning it off when he came home. A session on the ski takes 1 to 1.5 hours, and he found that wasn’t sustainable every day of the week.
So he asked me if I’d mind if he tagged along on my jog the next morning. “No problem,” I said, “but you’ve got to be waiting out the front at 5:45 am!” I knew he wanted to come, but I honestly didn’t really expect him to be there. Night-guy is very good at making commitments that morning-guy can’t keep, especially after a few beers!
A is about the same height as me, but he’s roughly 10 kg (22 lbs) heavier than I am. Last December, I was nearly 5 kg (11 lbs) heavier than him, so he knows that whatever I’m doing is working. I think he wanted to pick my brains as much as join me for exercise!
To my surprise, on Sunday morning when I walked out the front door, he was waiting in the driveway!
A isn’t the fittest of people, but that wasn’t a big problem. We decided to just do 60 second run/60 second walk intervals and see how he went. He was able to maintain that pace for much of the 3 km course, occasionally needing to go a bit longer walking or to stop running a bit earlier. Mostly it was the hills that were getting him.
I found it fairly easy to jog beside him, and actually enjoyed the shorter run/walk intervals. I was rarely out of breath, and was able to chat most of the way around. His contributions to the conversation were mostly monosyllabic .
The experience was almost like going back and running with the ‘me’ of a few months ago. I was around the same weight and level of fitness then as he is now, and would have barely been able to go at the same 60 second walk/60 second run rate. It really made me aware of how far I’ve come in such a short time, and I think it was motivating for him to see where he’d be in a couple of months if he keeps it up.
After we’d finished, A was weary but feeling pretty pleased with himself. He did better than I thought he would, and he’s keen to join me again on Tuesday morning.
When I got home, I checked the stats on my heart monitor. Normally, I’d take about 28 minutes to do my run (including walking for a bit both before and after) and I’d burn around 470 calories. I’d spend about 7 minutes in my target heart rate zone for weight loss – the heart monitor usually told me 30% of my calories were “fat burning”.
This morning’s jog took about 33 minutes, but 19 of those minutes were within my weight loss target heart rate zone. Although the exercise was a fair bit easier, we took longer to cover the course, so I still burned around 420 calories. But the most interesting bit was that the heart monitor told me 45% of those calories were “fat burning”. So I actually burned off more fat during this easier jog than I do when I run faster!
My friend enjoyed the jog and is planning to join me every second day until he builds up his fitness some more. He doesn’t want to push himself too hard and says he needs a day’s break after each run to recuperate, but I think he also feels like he’s holding me back. But according to the heart monitor he’s actually helping me to burn more fat!
Running with A on alternate days will work out well. I still want to do the harder runs, as they build my fitness more than easy runs will. It just means that now I’ll be doing a “fitness” run every second day, and a “fat burning” run on the days in between. I think that will work out really well. If nothing else, knowing that A is waiting for me out in the chilly darkness will stop me from turning off the alarm and going back to sleep!
Technorati Tags: running, jogging, walking, exercise, health, fitness, endurance
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