Well, this is your fault. You had your chance to sufficiently discourage me by telling me the first post was terrible, but, instead, you opted for polite encouragement. You probably thought, "Aw, he'll never post again, anyway, so I'll just say something nice." I made this mistake once. On night shift, three of us used to cook in the admin office every other weekend. We brought electric grills for bacon and eggs. We'd cook sausage gravy, and bake biscuits in the toaster oven. I suspect the morning shift came in after we'd cleared away the evidence and wondered why it smelled like a Denny's. On one such night, one of our group brought in this lemon bundt cake for dessert. It was just meh, but, of course, I politely said it was good. I spent the next two years secretly throwing away lemon cake and enduring the accompanying statement, "I brought that lemon cake you guys love." I should have known better, and you should have known better. You had your chance to tell me I stink like old seafood, and now you guys are stuck with lemon bundt cake because you didn't have the heart to risk hurting my feelings.
I reviewed my first post, and I realized I left out a few things I wanted in. It probably was already a little long to begin with and couldn't fit much else in it, anyway, so I'll update my progress in this one, and post the things I forgot. I also have one correction. I said my goal was half a pound a week, but it really was one pound per week. I have achieved an average of half a pound of loss a week. If you have ever had a similar result, you will likely agree that it's disappointing not to hit your goal. Try to look at it this way, though. When you're trying to amass wealth, it is better to accumulate it slowly, than to lose it quickly. A similar philosophy can be applied to weight loss. It is better to lose weight slowly, than to gain it quickly. I guess I could have shot for two pounds per week, and maybe settled for one, kind of like setting the alarm thirty minutes early so you can hit the snooze bar three times, but it's been hard enough for me to come close to the one pound goal. Failing miserably by shooting for two pounds might be too discouraging, though, so I'm sticking with the plan.
Now for some things you need to learn to help lose weight. Be ready to waste money. Eating less should mean buying less, right? And saving you money? Wrong-o. And I don't just mean buying the more expensive organic foods instead of the dollar menu at McDonalds. In fact, McDoubles, and Wendy's Double Stacks are a staple in my weight loss plan. They're like four or five hundred calories, and they're the type of meat, grease, and cheese on a bun foods that satisfy my cravings. The part that saves me from blowing the daily calorie limit is skipping fries. If you can't do that, then you probably have to skip fast food. The way they sucker you is that the cost of the value meal is practically the same as getting the sandwich and drink without fries, so we tell ourselves that we may as well get the meal. A six inch Subway sandwich is like three or four dollars, but you can get a foot long for five. You have to be ready to waste money. Skip the value. I know it's hard. Spending the same amount to get less stuff hurts, but you have to make this a new habit.
The other part that goes along with wasting money is wasting food. I've heard all about starving kids in Africa. I even made my kid cry once with that one when he was particularly ungrateful for the dinner we served. Do yourself a favor and forget that crap your parents taught you. It's making us fat. I know you've had "clean your plate" drilled deep into your psyche, but do the opposite, especially when the food sucks. Half way through a mediocre sandwich? Throw it the fook away. Eating a shitty meal will make you feel full for a bit, but it doesn't make me feel satisfied. I can still feel cravings for food even when I feel full if I haven't enjoyed it. If this happens to you, then you know what I'm talking about. It's better to satisfy the craving so you can stop thinking about food for a bit than to be full, but still dreaming about eating something good. Don't like crust on pizza, and eat it because you can't stand hearing people say, "but that's the best part"? Stop eating the damn crust if you don't like crust. As I typed it I heard in my head the part in quotes in the high pitchy-est, whiniest voice imaginable. If you heard it in that whiny voice as you read it, then, congratulations, you are as unbalanced as I am. Every time you can be full or satisfied, and manage to throw away half the fries, or half the slice, or half the drink (or skipping the refill that you always get because you want to get a little more for your money) you will be doing yourself a favor. If you will permit me to use another money analogy, in blackjack, you may be faced with a hand where no matter what you do, the odds are that you will lose the hand. In this situation, the correct play is the one that will lose the least. The correct play for any hand of blackjack is the one that will gain you the most money or lose you the least money. We know going all Ghandi and starving ourselves on hunger strike isn't the answer. We have to eat something, so try at every opportunity to make the play that either helps you lose the most weight, or, if that doesn't work out, then make the play that helps you overeat the least.
The other thing that has helped me greatly is having a fat dog that I feel obliged to walk. I could write a weight loss book that goes like this. Step one. Get a fat dog. Step two. Walk the fat dog until you're both skinny. The end. Kidding, but only kinda. There are so many days that I have absolutely no willpower whatsoever left to take a walk in the evening, but there he is, the forty pound rescue that was twenty six pounds at the SPCA before we got him. He was too thin from losing weight at the pound, but we remedied that in a hurry. In a month he gained an extra fifty percent of his former body weight. He used to be able to jump on the bed. Now he has to have a box near the bed for makeshift stairs. It's nine pm, and I'll be walking him after I publish this...even if it's raining. No dog? Borrow your neighbor's dog. As soon as you see it tethered in the back yard, just take him around the block a couple times. They prolly won't even notice. Even if their dog is not fat, practically every dog likes to walk...unless it's one of those little rat dogs that gets tired just walking outside to do its biz. Don't like dogs? Well, we can't all be perfect. Got a kid? I hear those guys need exercise, too. Play tag or soccer or something. No kid? Do NOT borrow your neighbor's kid. That shit is very illegal. No matter how much weight you need to lose, the police will not be sympathetic. On the other hand, the parents are probably desperate for a night out without kids, and you don't have to tell them your real motive is substituting out your zumba dvd for their rug rat.
I'm at one thirty seven, now, down from one thirty nine when I first posted about a month ago which is still about a half a pound a week, and, although the weight isn't falling off as quickly as I'd like, it took years to put the weight on, so I can't expect it to fall off overnight. I'm a little nervous about the holidays coming up. I'm leaning toward giving myself a "weight gain allowance" so that I can enjoy the holidays without feeling guilty for failing to stick with the diet. Not sure if that's wise or not, but I want to avoid getting discouraged and giving up. I will continue to daily document the calories so that I know exactly how bad I'm being, though. I think that will be important so that I'll be more likely to be bad when it's something I really like, instead of just gorging for the sake of stuffing my face. Laters for now, I've got a date with a fat dog.
Saturday, October 19, 2013
Tuesday, September 24, 2013
Every diet works
The other title I considered was "Weight loss adventures of a skinny punk." Why do skinny punks need to lose weight you ask? And why would I want to hear about it? I mean, skinny punks can just eat whatever they want and stay skinny right? And no one wants to hear that crap. Well, I guess it should be "former skinny punk," since age catches up with just about everyone, and I seem to have gained two pounds for every year since high school. I remember wrestling 119ish, and I topped out within the last year at 156.
Now, I don't envision this as a weight loss blog, and I like to think eventually I'll address some "heavier" topics, but this is what's been goin' on lately, so here it is. This is also the first time I've ever blogged anything, so I don't really know wtf I'm doing. And you gotta start somewhere. Man, I almost feel like I'm apologizing for the content and/or apologizing for the quality before I even begin, and I hope, eventually, I'll be able to write with more confidence.
So back to punks which are skinny. If you mention weight loss, prepare to be undermined. If you mention you'd like to drop a few pounds, but you don't look like you're about to drop dead of a heart attack, people often say, "you look fine" or "what?! You don't need to lose weight" or "I wish I was that thin" or "look at me, I'm the one who needs to go on a diet." All of these comments, though likely meant as a compliment, are discouraging, and when you're a lover of procrastination like I am, well, never mind, I'll tell you about that later. I know discouragement isn't just lobbed at skinny punks. Well meaning people do this a lot, and to anyone, who puts it out there that they're going to try dieting. It's just really, really easy to buy into these comments when you're not "that" overweight. For me, it's about how I feel, physically, and the numbers don't lie, either. Every year my cholesterol and triglycerides keep getting a little worse. The good cholesterol was low, and the bad was high. When five minutes of tag with your kid feels like an asthma attack, there's a problem. I'd also be lying if I didn't say looks figured into it. When your 10 yo plays jiggle drums on your bare belly, it gets your attention.
So, when you're not the skinny you once were, and you decide to do something about it, you're left with the all-important question. What to do about it? What is the best diet? After reading about all the health sites arguing about this and that diet, what works, what doesn't, you gotta exercise, you gotta eat snacks every other hour, eat more to lose more, I put dieting to the science test. That's what led me to the conclusion in the title. Every diet works. And this doesn't just apply if you only want to lose twenty pounds. Every diet, if it involves consuming less calories than the calories that are burned, will result in weight loss. Any diet that does not conform to this formula isn't a diet. It's that simple. Don't get me wrong, simple does not equal easy. Hunger, putting it mildly, is a strong motivating factor. Now I'm not much of a pc guy, and I hope this will be the only politically correct statement I condescend to making, but it really is that simple unless you suffer from food addiction or some other eating disorder. Virtual lawyers all over cyberblogspace approve this statement.
Why does every diet work? Physics. The human body cannot create something from nothing. In order to operate on a daily basis the body burns calories. If it doesn't get enough calories from food, it has no choice but to convert some stored energy (burn fat or muscle) to stay alive. Until someone creates a perpetual motion machine, we're stuck with this model. You can work out until you're a puddle of mush, but if you out-eat your calories burned, you will gain more weight.
I tried on my own, just eliminating soda, eating less, and exercising more, but for about six months I kept losing and regaining the same three to five pounds. I figured this would work since, once in a while, I break myself of my caffeine addiction by giving up soda for a month. Every time I do I lose about a pound a week. I finally had some continued success after getting the app, Lose It. This ain't a testimonial or an app review, but I will say it finally helped me really KNOW whether I was eating too much. I kind of enjoy the game aspect of the challenge, too. It's like a puzzle trying to fit in a couple of decent meals under the calorie cap. And if you want to eat a little more, you can always earn it with a bit of exercise. At my current weight, a brisk fifteen minute walk burns sixty six calories. So putting your morning and afternoon break at work to good use, you can almost cancel out that can of soda. I'm down to one thirty nine from one forty nine using the app (and three or four pounds I lost on my own before downloading it).
It ain't all good, though, and I was tempted to wait to post this until I had made another dent in the last bit of weight I'm shooting for, because for the last month I've been stuck at one thirty nine. If what I said is true about the only important things for a diet being the calories in and calories out, then what happened? It's because I started lying to myself...in a bad way. At first I lied to myself in a good way, and I would overestimate how much I consumed just to be on the safe side. If I had a twenty ounce soda, I might not subtract out the ice, so I really only consumed sixteen ounces but claimed twenty. As you start to lose weight, though, your daily calories burned just living and breathing gets smaller, so as you lose weight you have to eat less and less to get the same weight loss, or exercise more and more to compensate. This is probably why so many people complain they can't lose the last bit of weight after having initial success. It really does get harder. It's not an illusion.
The keys to making the calories in-out method work are being accurate and being honest. So, initially, I was conservative and erred on the safe side, and, later, when it started getting harder and harder, I started erring in the other direction, so I could make my goal for the day. You have to actually figure out what a portion size is, too. If you think you ate a six ounce steak, but it was really ten ounces, you're going to fail. So, you have to be accurate with the portion size, and be honest, too. Sometimes the worst thing for me is a little success. When I experienced weight loss at first, I got the impression that, "hey, I can lose it any time I want." That attitude works against you when you just eat a couple fries or just a couple chips, and figure you don't have to count it. You tell yourself you'll only lose a quarter pound instead of a half pound (half a pound a week was my goal), no big deal right? Well, what if you miscalculate, and you don't lose any, or, gasp, gain some back. That's what happened on the first week of football season. I accurately counted the entire can of jalapeno cheese I ate, but who the frig counts tortilla chips? I estimated that I ate like 20 chips, but later I realized it was probably eight servings at seven chips per serving, so more like fifty or sixty. But even little omissions add up, and over the last week I've started trying to be more honest about my portions and exercise. I've gone jogging maybe once a month over the last few months, and done those work out dvds maybe every other week at most, so those work outs you see on The Biggest Loser aren't really necessary. I use them if I want to earn a treat when I don't have enough calories left in my budget for what I want.
DISCLAIMER: this is not about making some miracle life change, eating healthy, and getting aerobic exercise. It's about losing weight. If you try to save the whole world, it will seem overwhelming, but if you choose one cause that's particularly important to you then you might be able to make a difference. I save up calories for my weekly Sunday Blizzard from DQ. I skip breakfast, and eat just a hot dog for lunch so I can smunch a Five Guys cheeseburger. If you're thinking, "but zomg, you can't skip breakfast. It's the most important meal of the day. Eating breakfast will increase your metabolism," and all that rot, that's ok if you can take that stuff into consideration and still lose the weight. I can't. If that six meal a day stuff works for you, great. It sure as hell doesn't work for me, and I bet a lot of other people, too, 'cause if it did, there wouldn't be so many people looking for the next "perfect" diet. I see all of these websites talking about how to boost your metabolism or <insert too good to be true miracle here>. If it doesn't involve reducing intake below daily expenditures, then it's what I like to call bullshit. Eating little snacks in between "sensible" meals doesn't curb my appetite. Jogging and other aerobic exercise drives my hunger pains through the roof so sometimes I will get so hungry I eat more than I burned. If that stuff does you good, then super. I feel satisfied when I've consumed grease, protein, meat, cheese...you get the idea. I'd rather starve half the day, and feel satisfied the other half, rather than feeling slightly unsatisfied the whole day.
That brings me to my last topic. Do what works. If you need to set your goal for a pound a week to lose half a pound, then do that. But if shooting for a pound, and only getting a half a pound is disheartening, and makes you want to quit, then don't do that. If you need to set your goal for half a pound a week in order to have a more attainable goal, then do that. If you can do the whole life transformation thing while you lose the weight, then good on ya. If you need to skip meals to be able to afford to eat a meal that will actually satisfy you, then do that. If skipping meals causes you to overeat later, then don't do that. The only thing that matters is staying under your weight loss number. A calorie is a calorie is a calorie. If you can count your calories accurately, the laws of physics guarantee success.
Now, I don't envision this as a weight loss blog, and I like to think eventually I'll address some "heavier" topics, but this is what's been goin' on lately, so here it is. This is also the first time I've ever blogged anything, so I don't really know wtf I'm doing. And you gotta start somewhere. Man, I almost feel like I'm apologizing for the content and/or apologizing for the quality before I even begin, and I hope, eventually, I'll be able to write with more confidence.
So back to punks which are skinny. If you mention weight loss, prepare to be undermined. If you mention you'd like to drop a few pounds, but you don't look like you're about to drop dead of a heart attack, people often say, "you look fine" or "what?! You don't need to lose weight" or "I wish I was that thin" or "look at me, I'm the one who needs to go on a diet." All of these comments, though likely meant as a compliment, are discouraging, and when you're a lover of procrastination like I am, well, never mind, I'll tell you about that later. I know discouragement isn't just lobbed at skinny punks. Well meaning people do this a lot, and to anyone, who puts it out there that they're going to try dieting. It's just really, really easy to buy into these comments when you're not "that" overweight. For me, it's about how I feel, physically, and the numbers don't lie, either. Every year my cholesterol and triglycerides keep getting a little worse. The good cholesterol was low, and the bad was high. When five minutes of tag with your kid feels like an asthma attack, there's a problem. I'd also be lying if I didn't say looks figured into it. When your 10 yo plays jiggle drums on your bare belly, it gets your attention.
So, when you're not the skinny you once were, and you decide to do something about it, you're left with the all-important question. What to do about it? What is the best diet? After reading about all the health sites arguing about this and that diet, what works, what doesn't, you gotta exercise, you gotta eat snacks every other hour, eat more to lose more, I put dieting to the science test. That's what led me to the conclusion in the title. Every diet works. And this doesn't just apply if you only want to lose twenty pounds. Every diet, if it involves consuming less calories than the calories that are burned, will result in weight loss. Any diet that does not conform to this formula isn't a diet. It's that simple. Don't get me wrong, simple does not equal easy. Hunger, putting it mildly, is a strong motivating factor. Now I'm not much of a pc guy, and I hope this will be the only politically correct statement I condescend to making, but it really is that simple unless you suffer from food addiction or some other eating disorder. Virtual lawyers all over cyberblogspace approve this statement.
Why does every diet work? Physics. The human body cannot create something from nothing. In order to operate on a daily basis the body burns calories. If it doesn't get enough calories from food, it has no choice but to convert some stored energy (burn fat or muscle) to stay alive. Until someone creates a perpetual motion machine, we're stuck with this model. You can work out until you're a puddle of mush, but if you out-eat your calories burned, you will gain more weight.
I tried on my own, just eliminating soda, eating less, and exercising more, but for about six months I kept losing and regaining the same three to five pounds. I figured this would work since, once in a while, I break myself of my caffeine addiction by giving up soda for a month. Every time I do I lose about a pound a week. I finally had some continued success after getting the app, Lose It. This ain't a testimonial or an app review, but I will say it finally helped me really KNOW whether I was eating too much. I kind of enjoy the game aspect of the challenge, too. It's like a puzzle trying to fit in a couple of decent meals under the calorie cap. And if you want to eat a little more, you can always earn it with a bit of exercise. At my current weight, a brisk fifteen minute walk burns sixty six calories. So putting your morning and afternoon break at work to good use, you can almost cancel out that can of soda. I'm down to one thirty nine from one forty nine using the app (and three or four pounds I lost on my own before downloading it).
It ain't all good, though, and I was tempted to wait to post this until I had made another dent in the last bit of weight I'm shooting for, because for the last month I've been stuck at one thirty nine. If what I said is true about the only important things for a diet being the calories in and calories out, then what happened? It's because I started lying to myself...in a bad way. At first I lied to myself in a good way, and I would overestimate how much I consumed just to be on the safe side. If I had a twenty ounce soda, I might not subtract out the ice, so I really only consumed sixteen ounces but claimed twenty. As you start to lose weight, though, your daily calories burned just living and breathing gets smaller, so as you lose weight you have to eat less and less to get the same weight loss, or exercise more and more to compensate. This is probably why so many people complain they can't lose the last bit of weight after having initial success. It really does get harder. It's not an illusion.
The keys to making the calories in-out method work are being accurate and being honest. So, initially, I was conservative and erred on the safe side, and, later, when it started getting harder and harder, I started erring in the other direction, so I could make my goal for the day. You have to actually figure out what a portion size is, too. If you think you ate a six ounce steak, but it was really ten ounces, you're going to fail. So, you have to be accurate with the portion size, and be honest, too. Sometimes the worst thing for me is a little success. When I experienced weight loss at first, I got the impression that, "hey, I can lose it any time I want." That attitude works against you when you just eat a couple fries or just a couple chips, and figure you don't have to count it. You tell yourself you'll only lose a quarter pound instead of a half pound (half a pound a week was my goal), no big deal right? Well, what if you miscalculate, and you don't lose any, or, gasp, gain some back. That's what happened on the first week of football season. I accurately counted the entire can of jalapeno cheese I ate, but who the frig counts tortilla chips? I estimated that I ate like 20 chips, but later I realized it was probably eight servings at seven chips per serving, so more like fifty or sixty. But even little omissions add up, and over the last week I've started trying to be more honest about my portions and exercise. I've gone jogging maybe once a month over the last few months, and done those work out dvds maybe every other week at most, so those work outs you see on The Biggest Loser aren't really necessary. I use them if I want to earn a treat when I don't have enough calories left in my budget for what I want.
DISCLAIMER: this is not about making some miracle life change, eating healthy, and getting aerobic exercise. It's about losing weight. If you try to save the whole world, it will seem overwhelming, but if you choose one cause that's particularly important to you then you might be able to make a difference. I save up calories for my weekly Sunday Blizzard from DQ. I skip breakfast, and eat just a hot dog for lunch so I can smunch a Five Guys cheeseburger. If you're thinking, "but zomg, you can't skip breakfast. It's the most important meal of the day. Eating breakfast will increase your metabolism," and all that rot, that's ok if you can take that stuff into consideration and still lose the weight. I can't. If that six meal a day stuff works for you, great. It sure as hell doesn't work for me, and I bet a lot of other people, too, 'cause if it did, there wouldn't be so many people looking for the next "perfect" diet. I see all of these websites talking about how to boost your metabolism or <insert too good to be true miracle here>. If it doesn't involve reducing intake below daily expenditures, then it's what I like to call bullshit. Eating little snacks in between "sensible" meals doesn't curb my appetite. Jogging and other aerobic exercise drives my hunger pains through the roof so sometimes I will get so hungry I eat more than I burned. If that stuff does you good, then super. I feel satisfied when I've consumed grease, protein, meat, cheese...you get the idea. I'd rather starve half the day, and feel satisfied the other half, rather than feeling slightly unsatisfied the whole day.
That brings me to my last topic. Do what works. If you need to set your goal for a pound a week to lose half a pound, then do that. But if shooting for a pound, and only getting a half a pound is disheartening, and makes you want to quit, then don't do that. If you need to set your goal for half a pound a week in order to have a more attainable goal, then do that. If you can do the whole life transformation thing while you lose the weight, then good on ya. If you need to skip meals to be able to afford to eat a meal that will actually satisfy you, then do that. If skipping meals causes you to overeat later, then don't do that. The only thing that matters is staying under your weight loss number. A calorie is a calorie is a calorie. If you can count your calories accurately, the laws of physics guarantee success.
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