Kanes Brain

Works been so busy lately and I’ve been taking a “own my own time” course offered for my job so I’ve been slacking big time on the exercises.  Next week is the last 2 sessions of my class so I’m thinking it’s a great week to ramp up a new challenge.  I’m going to try and push myself to complete the 100 push up challenge (along with pushing myself back into a 2 to 3 times a week running habit).

If you’re interested in joining me on the challenge, you can do so by taking a look at their website: http://hundredpushups.com/

On another positive note, the Fitbit company replaced my Fitbit under warranty!  I’m going to get it setup and start logging steps again which is good for me because I’m honestly finding myself talking me out of walking / running now that I don’t have any sort of metric for how much activity I had all day.

As I was leaving home yesterday my Fitbit literally grazed the edge of our leather couch and separated.  I was able to put it back together however the clip area has cracked and it won’t stay together at this point.  I’ve emailed the company as I’ve only had the Fitbit since Jan 26th so hopefully they will replace it… I sure feel weird not wearing it.

/sadface

On a more positive note I’ve been able to get my 1 mile average run down to between 12:00 and 12:30.  I’m finding that I’m doing more of a faster paced walk though and less of a jog in the mornings.  I’ve been walking to dog every other morning and the poor thing isn’t in good enough shape to jog the whole 2.5 miles so we end up walking a lot of it.  I’m thinking I might start trying to go every day until at least the dog is in better shape and can keep the pace I want to go.  My next goal is to average 10:00 miles or better but at this point I don’t think I can do that with the dog.  We’ll get there!

So it’s often said that calories in < calories out and you’ll lose weight. That’s pretty easy right?  Well guess what, it’s not exactly that simple all the time. There are some things you should calculate to figure out exactly how many calories you should be shooting for – I think this is something that programs like Weight Watchers simplify with their points system and your point goals that you set.

So, what is basal metabolic rate? Well here is what Wikipedia defines it as:

Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR), and the closely related resting metabolic rate (RMR), is the amount of daily energy expended by animals at rest. Rest is defined as existing in a neutrally temperate environment while in the post-absorptive state. In plants, different considerations apply.

The release of energy in this state is sufficient only for the functioning of the vital organs, the heart, lungs, nervous system, kidneys, liver, intestine, sex organs, muscles, and skin.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basal_metabolic_rate

The Wikipedia article also has some fairly in depth equations for calculating this. To save some time I’ve put together an Excel spread sheet.  Click here to view it.

So a simple walk through of the spread sheet, you need to enter in your weight, height, and age.  The sheet calculates the rest for you.  The “Calculated BMR” that shows up in fields A4 and A5 is calculated for your “at rest” body functions. As you add activity your daily calories need increase. For simplicity sake, I defined the activity levels as follows:

Sedentary – desk job, you walk less than say 8,000 steps per day
Light Activity – desk job, walk less than 12,000 steps per day, light exercise (heart rate not over 120 bpm for 30 min per day)
Moderate Activity – walk less than 15,000 steps per day, light/moderate exercise (heart rate between 120-140 bpm for 30-45 min per day)
Very Activy – Moderate/heavy exercise (heart rate between 130-150 bpm for 30-60 min per day)
Training – you’re a pro (and I’m jealous)

As an example, at the start of my lifestyle change I was approximately 225 pounds so my BMR looked like this:

I considered my life at the very sedentary and the sheet showed me at 2619 calories/day to sustain my weight. In order to lose weight I had to drop approximately 1000 calories (500 calories to drop 1 lb/wk and 1000 to drop 2.5 lbs/wk). I’ll need to find where I got the 500/1000 calorie rule of thumb as I don’t think that is good or valid advice for anyone with a BMR under 1,500 calories.

Here is my what my current BMR looks like:

I consider my activity level somewhere between sedentary and light so my intake needs to be between 2,052 and 2,223 calories per day to sustain this weight.

At any rate, I hope it’s easier to get an idea of what it means to say you need to eat less calories than you expend now. It doesn’t mean starve yourself, but it does mean that you’ll probably want to add exercise to your routine and cut some food out of your eating habits.

I spent the last week literally trying to force myself to run in 90+ degree heat. Last night it was everything I could do to talk myself into getting outside and running but I did it and I’m glad I did. I’m still working my 5k time to get it down into the 30-40 minute range and although I only ran 2.5 miles yesterday I would have made my goal at an estimated 34 minutes had I ran the full 3 miles.

So far my fastest mile was 9 minutes 40 seconds and last night I did an average of 11 minute miles. Hopefully in the coming few months I’ll start to see 10.xx minute miles and eventually have the 5k under 30 total minutes! Having this goal has been able to keep me running so I’m starting to think that I need to add another goal to my routine and get myself doing more strength training.  I’m thinking my next goal will be the 100 push up challenges that I’ve read about and doing the random daily ab workouts I’ve linked to on the right column of the blog.

If those goals don’t help me get motivated I might have to figure out how to make the more extreme motivational route shown below happen:

Some motivation required

Well thought out goals have been enough for me to stay on track up until recently.  I really don’t like strength training but I’m really hoping to push myself and get more of it accomplished.

Wow, my wife found some pictures of me just before I decided to drop the weight… all I can say is I’m glad I did it.  Let me share with you another crazy picture.

McDonalds in Madrid

I haven’t shared my results picture yet but I think I’m going to follow this lunch of champions picture with a more recent face profile of me just so I don’t feel so embarrassed for posting that one.

Me in June 2011

What a huge difference!

So here’s the situation… you’re craving sweets or that awesome 10 piece wings from the local Wing Stop. Oh wait, you’re trying to lose weight too though right?  Well, good news everyone! You actually can eat the things you want and get away with it. Let me give you some helpful hints on how to not fall off the wagon even when you do, well, fall off the wagon.

Lets remember, the key to weight management and loss is keeping the mindset that you’re making a conscious life change and that you don’t intend to over eat. With that in mind, you can still get away with a “cheat meal”. I came across this very helpful and insightful thread on Scooby’s forum:

http://www.askscooby.com/nutrition/how-often-do-you-eat-cheat-foods/

In particular you’ll find an extremely helpful tip from Scooby as reply #4

This is where bodybuilding is as much an art as a science, you really have to know yourself well.  Cheat too often and you will get fat, dont cheat enough and you might end up doing unhealthy binges and lose any progress you have struggled to achieve.  How often to have cheat meals is also dependent on where you are in reaching your goals.  Somebody whose weight and bodyfat percentage has been stable for years can have more cheat meals because they have a track record of keeping their bodyfat percentage in check. For someone who has a lot of bodyfat to remove you need to be more strict.  For someone like this, a whole bad-food-day is too much.  In one day you can negate an entire week of eating well.  I would suggest keeping it to one specified day a week (like Saturday).  If you dont use it, you lose it!  I would also keep it to one meal and dont go hog wild, just enough so you dont feel deprived.  If one meal isnt enough, maybe add one meal on another day.  I also suggest making your cheat-food meal either a breakfast or a lunch but not dinner.  The reason is this gives you time to burn off the excess calories rather than going to bed with it sloshing around in your stomach.  If you can do your daily cardio after your cheat meal, not before.

hope that helps

S

Read more: http://www.askscooby.com/nutrition/how-often-do-you-eat-cheat-foods/#ixzz1QAfLQJOw

I personally have found that I tend to be able to maintain my healthy eating habits when I can snag a bit of chocolate on the side every once in a while. My secret to the chocolate snack is to eat a dark chocolate and only 1 square off the bar (I buy Ghiradeli 72%+ dark chocolate bars and will eat 1 square every 2-3 days). The “cheat meals” when I eat out are typically lunches and are at my favorite restaurants which are typically mexican food of some sort.  On days when I’m considering eating out for lunch I’ll try to eat a lighter breakfast than normal and eat very minimal snacks during the morning with lots of water.

Turns out I’m a huge nerd. For those who know me this will probably come as no big shocker… I like collecting data. Here are some neat gadgets that have helped me in my weight loss:

Fitbit – automatically track your fitness and sleep

I’m a huge fitbit fan. I’ve been using mine for several months now and it’s been a huge help at motivating me to go for runs and walk places I normally might not have or volunteered to go grab things for coworkers were as in the past I would have let them walk to the other lab and get it themselves.  Click here to see my fitbit profile.

As in my previous posts you can already tell I’m a big Livestrong.com fan and user. Below is an image of my weight loss data, I typically weigh myself twice a day and it’s pretty common to see a 2-3 pound delta from morning to night weight. I typically only log my morning weights on Livestrong.

Along with the fitbit and the tracking tools on Livestrong.com I also use the Nike+ GPS app for my iPhone. I think it was by far the best $1.99 I have ever spent even though they recently had it for free for a Nike+ anniversary promotion. If you have an iPhone and are interested in running I would highly recommend it as a motivation and tracking tool.

It’s funny, my typical wish list has changed from TV’s and Xbox games to these toys now:

Wahoo fitness Run Pack

Withings WiFi Body Scale

Ok I think I’ve geeked out on fitness and data collection enough for one sitting. If you have a fitbit or use Nike+ please feel free to add me as a friend! I’d love to use some of the Nike+ challenges to have some fun competitions on 1-3 mile runs.

There is one recurring question people who haven’t seen me in a while ask me about losing weight. It’s not “Did you get surgery?”, it’s the far more common “How did you do it?”. I think most everyone wanting to drop a few pounds knows the secret, less in more out and you lose weight. I had a good friend tell me one time on the phone “You’re not some super human, if you go to the gym for 30 honest days you’ll start to see a difference”.  This was extremely inspirational to me. In fact, I think it was an ideal that I never really considered up until it was put to me in such a straight forward way.

As before, I wasn’t overly excited to visit the gym so don’t get me wrong… I didn’t take his motivation and run off to sign up at Gold’s. What I did instead was take what he said and use it to keep myself honest about what I ate. I still felt strongly that I needed to get my food intake under control before I worried to much about my burn rate. It’s extremely important to know the nutritional information on every single piece of food or drink you put into your body. Keep yourself honest by eating a complete single serving of even your cheat snacks and log everything! Let me state that again because you might have missed one important part – every single piece of food or drink you put into your body.

I work an office job, people are always bringing doughnuts to meetings, ordering pizza, ordering chinese food, or asking if I want to go out to lunch with them. To combat these cravings I found it easier to constantly chew a very strong mint flavor gum… literally always. If I caved to a craving (damn whoever was bringing in the sourdough pretzels!!), I made sure to eat exactly one serving and log it so I knew what I needed to do. On the days I caved, I used the treadmill and made sure I didn’t get off it until that single serving was the same calorie number the treadmill told me I burned.

There is no secret science to this, calories in has to be less than calories out. Calculate your BMR using the links in my last blog and make sure you’re taking in less than that and you’ll drop weight. The secret, just be honest about what your intake is so you know where you’re at. Everyone has bad days! If you had a bad calorie day don’t try to starve yourself the next day to compensate.  Get back onto your calorie plan and keep plugging along. In the end, it’s the total effort that counts even when you slip up a little.

I found the most helpful step in learning to eat correctly was to know exactly how many calories I was currently eating then determine where I needed to go. I weighed 225 lbs for the better part of 3 years at the point I decided to do something about it so I felt pretty confident that whatever number of calories I was eating was sustaining my weight.  To figure out what that number was I did two things, I logged every single piece of food I put into my mouth on Livestrong.com’s “My Plate” and I used some online tools like Scooby’s Calorie Calculator.

I determined that I was eating around 2600 calories daily to maintain 225 lbs. This didn’t seem like much at the time but now I couldn’t imagine eating so many calories and not feeling stuffed to the brim! After I started logging my food at Livestrong it just became habit for me and I did this daily (and still continue to log my food). I found their food database to be extremely helpful even when my wife and I ate out so I also grabbed their iPhone app.

In order to lose the desired 2 lbs/week I wanted to, I determined I needed to cut my intake down to 1300 calories a day (or add a LOT of exercise to my routine). Not being overly excited to exercise at this point I opted to cut my calories. I did so in 2 stages, at first I cut 500 calories for 2 weeks then I cut the remaining calories to get me down to my goal over the next 3 weeks.  During the second phase I added 30 minutes on the treadmill every other day with the goal that I would never skip more than  1 day between days I used the treadmill.

Here is what a typical day’s eating looked like for me after I reduced my calories:

Learning to eat again was quite a task, the life style changes my wife and I decided were best suited for us included cutting beef and red meat out of our diets (although not entirely, we do still eat a steak on occasion). We switched our meats over to learn turkey, lean pork, and chicken breast. We started getting used to the idea that we didn’t need to clear our plates and consequently had to either adopt better “left-over” habits or not feel bad about tossing food we didn’t eat. We also got regimented and strict about making grocery lists and not buying anything we didn’t have on our list.

I want to stress here that I’m not a nutritional expert and the changes we made to our diets although researched may not work for everyone. In addition to changing our diets and reducing our calorie intake we both saw a physician and had blood work done. Both of us also take a multi-vitamin daily.

I guess the atypical programming 1st “Hello world!” is appropriate.  I’m putting together this blog to tell the story about the last year of my life which I’ve spent dealing with my weight. In March of 2010 I got back from a 8 week work trip to Spain and at that time I weighed in at the heaviest I’ve ever been, 225 lbs.  For a guy 5’9″ who has a relatively sedentary lifestyle that’s a fairly substantial amount of excess weight to be hauling around everywhere.  I decided that next week to make some important life changes.

Over the course of the next year I went from a heavy set 225 lbs and 38″ waist to a far healthier 151 lbs and 30″ waist. I did it all through diet and exercise and a determination that what I was doing wasn’t a diet but instead a change in the way I was planning to live the rest of my life. I think that anyone with a little determination and dedication can certainly obtain their weight loss goals in a healthy manner and relearn healthy habits.

Here is a rather embarrassing “before” picture of me:

That’s my friend Hank (left) and I (right) at the Firebird International Raceway in Phoenix in the summer of 2009.  I’ll reveal my “after” picture in the coming weeks as I tell the details of the decisions I made, the tricks I used, and the struggles I faced getting healthy.