Business as Usual and an Apology

I feel like things are going well. I lost weight this past week at a slower rate than the week before, 1-2 pounds compared to the amazing 4.5 I did the week before. I'm not disappointed because I didn’t consider the 4.5 pound week to be the norm. As long as I'm losing weight at any rate I'm making progress, so that is good.

I still ride the stationary bike a minimum of 30 minutes every day m-f, and I commute on my real bike to work 2-3 days a week. I also did ride again on Saturday. We did 20 miles with some really nice hills in the middle. I also had three flat tires, including having to repair both front and rear tires before I even left the driveway...that was annoying.

Saturday night I had another 3 glasses of scotch, but other than that I've still not "cheated" in the food area at all in the past 4 weeks. Of course I’ve had some saturated fat here and there, but not often, and I'm in a caloric deficit every day.

I do have an apology to make though. I've found that I now read the labels on EVERYTHING as I must do so I know what I'm putting in my body. Often, I'm amazed at the numbers I see. It's no wonder I put the weight on I did over the past few years...

Anyway, my reaction when I see "the numbers" on something I'd often eat without thinking about before is often "Oh my god!", "That's horrible!" , "How could I have eaten this?!".

Well, I didn’t really think about how the people standing around me are eating those exact things. Some of them might have even tried and failed to go on "diets" and lose weight.

So, to those people, I apologize. I didn’t mean to be rude, and my comments were aimed towards myself, not you. I'm not judging you for your food choices. From now on, when I read a label I will keep my thoughts to myself. I will respect your lifestyle choices and you can respect mine.

That's all I have, talk to you all later.

Stupid Scales

I've been using a POS scale at home. It's consistent, so I know how much weight I've lost, but I think it's wrong. Yesterday, I went to Linens and Things looking for a real scale, like the kind you can sell drugs with. They didn't have those, but they did have a dozen or so other "electric" , and regular analog scales on display.

I took about a half dozen of them down and stood on them, and little to my surprise I found that my weight fluctuated as much as 6-7 pounds depending on which scale I stood on. Another note I made is that even the one that gave me the highest number was still a pound or so less then my scale at home.

So what does this mean?

It means they don't like it when you get naked to weigh yourself at Linens and Things.

It also means that I probably weigh less than I thought by up to 5 pounds.

What does it change? Nothing.

I'm still going to go by my home scale since it's at least consistent. If some day I do find an out of work pot dealer willing to part with his tool of the trade, I will just adjust my numbers accordingly. If the scale says I'm 5lbs lighter my goals will be adjusted by 5 lbs.

And in the overall picture, when will I decide to stop losing weight? It actually won't be when a scale says a certain number, but instead when I can look at myself in the mirror and can be 100% happy with what I see. I don't know what that number is so scales are just a measure of progress at this point.

I wonder if you have to be clothed to use the mirrors at Linens and Things? Only time, and the local Police Department will tell.

Whoa! Progress!

Wiegh-in today: 285.5

So in the last week I've apparently lost 4.5 pounds! I know thats a little bit more than normal, but I kind of makes sense to me. IN the last 10 days I've done the following:

Exercise:
-Biked a total of 242 miles on a real bike. (This includes 180 miles from last weekend’s trip, 40 miles this past Saturday riding the hills around my house, and the rest from commuting to work that I started last week.

-Stationary bike for 30 minutes every morning m-f (if I don’t commute in to work on the bike I ride the stationary at work for 30 minutes at a very brisk pace. I actually leave two sweat puddles on either side of the bike by the time I’m done, and it’s air-conditioned in the gym at work, gross.

- Lifted weights (still sticking to my plans to lift every t-th afternoon. I haven’t missed any days of this yet)

In the past 10 days I've only taken two days off with no moderate exercise. One of those days was the day after my trip to let my legs heal, and one was yesterday. Although, my gf and I cleaned out basement out yesterday, and someone I think carrying 35 heavy boxes up two flights of stairs and sweating my @#$ off might qualify as some type of exercise.


Food:
- I've not "cheated" once for three weeks, including last night at a birthday dinner where everyone had ice cream and chocolate pastry things for dessert. I think my caloric intake has been about 2000-2400 a day, even on the heavy exercise days when I've bikes for 4+ hours.
Sometimes I do get a little hungry when I don't get to eat all of my 5-7 small meals a day, but I wouldn’t go as far to say I'm starving myself.


So, tomorrow will be the end of the third full week since I've started this blog, and in the time, not including today I've lost 9 pounds. I'm happy with that, and I'm feeling confident I can get to my goal of 275 by Sept 15th (my birthday).

When I get to 12 pounds total loss I was going to post a new pic to see if there are any differences. With any luck, that could be later this week.

One other note, I stopped weighing myself EVERY day, and instead do it the same time of day, but every 3-5 days. Much like I cover up the time counter while doing cario in the gym, it's less like watching a pot boil and I feel mentally more like I'm seeing the changes. Works a little better for me.

Thats it for now, talk to you soon!

Doing the Math

So with my new push to "Get Serious" one of my plans is to start counting calories in an attempt to shore up the diet portion of my "get fit" routine.

I'm hoping that once I do this long enough, I'll just be able to know roughly what I can and can't eat, and what my intake is going to be. I really don't plan on counting calories every day for the rest of my life, but for learning purposes, and just so I know I'm doing the right things, I'm going to try it for now.

I registered at Calorie-Count.com as some people here have suggested. First off, it called me "severely obese" based on my BMI which it calculated by the numbers I put in. Thanks a lot Calorie Count, I love you already :\.

It seems like it will really be helpful in aiding my in finding what the numbers are for certain foods. That said, I was really hoping it would have a tool where I could input my own intake and it would track it for me. Does it not? Am I missing something?
Can anyone else suggest any other sites that they've had success using? Also, based on my height of 6'3", being a large frame, and weighing 290 pounds at the moment, does a 2850 daily caloric intake seem right in order to lose 1.5-2 pounds a week? That is what the site told me. Does that take into account my daily exercise?

I guess I still have lots of questions and I'm going to keep reading and researching, but I thought you all might be able to help make sure I'm on the right track...

Until then, Later

-Brian

Let's get serious!

I'm a little annoyed with myself today for a few reasons. First of all, I took off yesterday from cardio just to give my legs a rest after the three days of biking. My plan today was to get back to my routine of coming to work an hour early and biking for 30 minutes. Well I overslept and didn't have time (Dope).

Not a big deal, I can ride the bike this afternoon sometime or during lunch. My next minor annoyance was my weigh-in this morning. Yesterday it was 190. Today, 191.

Now, my scale is an electronic POS. Sometimes it gives me different numbers during the same sitting. Very annoying. For all I know all of my numbers are incorrect. I need to spend the money and get a good scale. Any suggestions?

Then there is my goal of loosing 15 more pounds by sept 15th, 5.5 weeks away.
Is it too ambitious? I know my bike trip was a big accomplishment, but I feel like I need to step it up a bit here.

Aside from these things, I think I'm doing well in the food department. I just need to get more active in the physical department.

[arnold voice] Let's get serious![/arnold voice]

Tour De Delaware Bay

Myself, my friend Dan, and my father made it back mostly unscathed yesterday afternoon from our loaded bike trip. According to my dad's odometer this is what we rode mileage-wise:

8/3 66
8/4 74
8/5 42

The last day was actually cut short because I had a second flat tire 11 miles from the end that we initially thought we wouldn’t be able to fix. A fellow cyclist ended up driving me back to our car and I came back and picked up my ride-mates. In the meantime my dad was able to get my tire fixed. I was kind of disappointed we had to cut that part out early, but all in all I'm very happy with my own personal performance over the weekend. It was very hot, around 100 degrees and very humid the first two days. I was almost always in the lead and according to both other riders, the strongest rider. At no time did I "bonk" or lose steam and I really felt like I could embark on another cross country trip and although I know my body would need some adapting, I would be able to do it. In fact, I impressed myself enough that I'm planning on riding a one day Century (100 miles) this weekend. It shouldn’t be to bad considering I already did 74 miles in one day with an extra 40 pounds on the bike and felt like I could have done more.

I ate as healthy as possible during the entire trip, with the exception of 1.5 beers I had at the end of day 2. Aside from that my meals were something like this:

Day 1:
Breakfast: banana nut muffin, special k with skim milk
Late lunch: chicken teriyaki sub at subway with some baked lays
Other: half of a power bar
No dinner because of the late lunch. We usually only eat two main meals while biking.

Day 2:
Breakfast:
-steak and eggs (which I ate less than half of because the place we landed for breakfast was really gross as was the food...)
-glass of orange juice
-protein bar
Late lunch:
-Steak with onions
-side of cucumber salad, apple sauce, and two shrimp my dad couldn’t eat.
As mentioned I also had 1.5 beers.

Day 3:
Breakfast:
-Coffee with low-fat creamer and no sugar
-yogurt
-sesame seed bagel with low-fat cream cheese
Late lunch:
Another steak with Onions :)
House salad (no cheese or croutons)
Other: Large Deli style dill pickle.

Aside from all of these things I of course drank a LOT of water. I also had a few small bags of salted peanuts because salt helps you retain water, which we definitely needed. I tried to stay away from Gatorade as it has a lot of sugar in it, but I did manage to have one or two bottles.

The end result of the trip is that even though my quads are a little sore today, I feel strong, and I feel like I could continue riding 50-80 miles a day if I had the time. My plan is to use this trip as a springboard to continue riding as much as possible, especially since it makes losing weight all that much more fun. At very minimum I ride the bike in the gym every morning for 30 minutes.

I'm really hoping to be able to post an improved follow up pic to the one on the right soon. I was thinking I would after I've lost 10-15 pounds total. Hopefully that will be within two weeks.

That's it for now!

174 Miles in 3 days

Tomorrow I leave on my bicycle/camping mini tour. I'm going to be carrying a few power bars and a protien bar I found at REI. Aside from that I also plan to pack a bag of mixed nuts and some bananas.

We eat our main meals at restaurants on the way, so we're basically stuck with whatever is close by when we're hungry. So I'm just going to try to eat as healthy as possible at those places. Steaks and Eggs for breakfast, salads for lunch, etc.

I've seen people eat salt because it helps with cramps. Anyone familiar with that? Anything else to add? Does anyone have any last minute suggestions for what to bring food-wise?

For anyone interersted, here's a map of where we're riding:

Day 1 - 52.7 Miles

Day 2 - 62.3 Miles

Day 3 - 59.1 Miles

Map of entire trip