Photo by marfis75
This morning I weighed in at 246.8 pounds, I have gained 4.2 pounds in the last week and I have lost 28 pounds since August 16th, 2009.
When I take a week off, I really take a week off. As I mentioned in my last post the past week was so busy and I was so tired that I did not get to the gym. When I made the decision to not go to the gym I also decided that it would be a week without counting calories as well. Clearly a bad idea. I ate a lot of crap during the past week.
Brownies, candy bars, potato chips, cookies were all available to meat a church retreat I went on over the weekend. I ate, I ate a lot and I felt guilty about it the instant I took the chance to think about it. I tend to eat a lot more during social events than when I am even by myself. This is such a weird thing, I am sometimes embarrassed by how much I am eating but yet I eat more when other people are around. So, anyway, I ate a lot and that is over with.
With my guilt fresh in my mind I went grocery shopping yesterday and bought us a whole lot of veggies and fruit for us to enjoy throughout the week. Tonight we are going to the gym and I intend to go back at least 4 more times after that. I have the goal of breaking at least 240 pounds in my sights and I will get there before February is over, you can count on that.
Photo by freddles
This past week has been so busy that I have not been able to get the gym at all. I cannot blame this completely on how busy I was but, I really was busy and really tired this past week. Plus, Michelle and I are going away for the weekend so I can’t go to the gym over the weekend. Not going to the gym snowballed into not counting calories and even eating too many sweets.
I don’t know what happened, it almost feels like I just gave up. I went to the gym 5 days a week for 2 weeks straight and then this week nothing, I feel so guilty about it. I feel like I have become so reliant on the gym and particularly the elliptical. One of the things that I love about working out on the cardio machines at the gym is that it tells me how many calories I have burned, I am able to tell how hard I am working out and then track this info on Livestrong.com. It is really satisfying for the machines that I am working out on to tell me that I have burned so many calories after working out for an hour or more.
If I wasn’t so reliant on these machines and my specific calories burned I could have maybe gone out on a run or something this week with the limited time I had, but maybe I am just using it as an excuse. Next week is going to be different, not only am I going to get to the gym but I am going to try and slowly wean myself off of the cardio machines and do some workouts outside. I am also considering some big diet changes in the next couple of weeks, perhaps delving into a raw food diet, but we’ll see.
So I am feeling sad and guilty about my lack of dedication this week. I was tired, busy, and made excuses for myself, this will not happen next week. Maybe I just needed a little break this week so I can go in full force next week. Considering that I lost focus this week I am more than a little concerned about my weigh in on Monday.
Photo by DailyM = eF-eM + JeeeM
This morning I weighed in at 242.6, I’ve lost 3.4 pounds in the last week and 32.2 pounds since August 16th. My BMI is now 35.83, down from 36.33 last week.
I can’t believe I have lost over 30 pounds, it seems I am finally back on track. I have changed two things in the last couple of weeks. First, I have been using livestrong.com to track my calories, both eaten and burned. Second I have been working out at least five days out of the week.
Tracking my calories has been hard but it is clearly such a huge help to get the weight off. During the week I have been eating less than 1800 calories a day. I know this seems a little extreme but I don’t really feel like I am starving myself and I generally am pretty satisfied at the end of the day. The hardest thing is tracking my calories for dinner. I like to cook improvisation-ally, adding ingredients as I go so that I can adjust the taste. This style of cooking does not make tracking specific calories easy. So I usually make my best guess as to how much I have used in the meal, usually including more calories than are actually in the meal just in case I am counting wrong. According to my losses in the past two weeks this seems to be working okay.
I have found that I am much more cautious about what I am eating when I am working out five days a week. When you realize how hard it is to burn calories off it really affects you when reading those nutrition labels. This past week was the second in a row that I have worked out for five days, including all 3 weekend days. In fact, on this last Saturday I was at the gym for over two hours and according to the different cardio machines I was working on I burned over 1800 calories in one gym visit!
I am gonna keep focused and see how long I can keep this up. I feel like I am finally making the changes in my life that will help me become a truly healthy vegan, changes that will stick for the rest of my life.
Photo by mikebaird
I am not a big reader. I love reading magazines that I am interested in, but I am not a big book reader. I would like to read more though, so when I received a gift certificate to a book store I decided to pick up this book that I had been hearing a lot about called Born to Run.
I am fascinated by amazing true life tales and in particular inspiring tales of athleticism or adventure. Perhaps this is because I am not an athletic or particularly adventurous person in real life, I like to live vicariously through others. In the past I have dipped my toe into running a couple of years ago I discovered barefoot running and Vibram Five Fingers. When I found out that there are actually people who run without shoes I was fascinated because I had always been told by society that I was supposed to wear shoes, but I hate shoes. I signed up for a 5k run to do in my then recently acquired pair of Vibram Five Fingers, unfortunately for me I was in much worse shape than I am now and I did little training to prepare for this run. I finished the run, but I was sore from head to toe, thought it was my muscles that were sore, not my feet, legs, or back. Through some research on barefoot running I stumbled upon Barefoot Ted, an avid supporter of barefoot running. Barefoot Ted is featured in this book Born to Run which is one of the reasons I picked it up. It is also about some other amazing athletes and a tribe of people in the Copper Canyons of Mexico who run hundreds of miles at a time with little food or rest, without shoes. This is just one big explanation of how I came to be interested in and eventually bought Christopher McDougall’s Born to Run.
I just finished the book and I can honestly say it is one of the best books I’ve ever read, granted I have not read a lot of books. A big part of the book focuses on the Tarahumara Indians of Mexico’s Copper Canyons. They become the inspiration for the climax of the book, an ultra marathon with the Tarahumara and some of the greatest ultra marathoners in the world. The author, Christopher McDougall, searched out these Indians because he began to feel pain in his back when running. After many doctors and scientists told him he just had to stop running because it was hard on the body he decided to seek out these people who were capable of running great distances with simple sandals on their feet and without pain.
Front Cover of Born to Run
The search and subsequent discovery of the Tarahumara propels the book forward into an amazing story. It includes some history of ultra running, including some profiles of particular ultra marathons and ultra marathoners. Another part of the book talks about barefoot running and how our feet are perfectly designed to run on their own without the aid of super cushioned shoes. In fact over the last forty years or so as more and more cushioned running shoes have been introduced it has been proven that these shoes have actually been hurting us, rather than helping us. The book outlines an interesting study’s findings that state “runners wearing top of the line shoes are 123% more likely to get injured than runners in cheap shoes.” This is because cheaper shoes have less cushioning and cause your foot to do more work. Following that philosophy running barefoot or in a pair of Five Fingers makes your feet do all of the work it was supposed to be doing in the first place. In addition running barefoot causes you to have better form, because you cannot do a heel strike (it would hurt to bad), you run on the balls of your feet, your posture gets better, and your back straightens up.
Also featured in the book are several ultra marathoners of note. Among them Scott Jarek, who is considered by many to be the best ultra marathoner in the world. He has won several of the most respected ultra marathons including the Spartathalon (152 miles) and the Badwater Ultra Marathon (132 miles in 120 degree heat). I am completely fascinated by people like Scott, people who are capable of doing amazing feats of endurance or strength are so inspiring to me. After first reading about him in the book I began doing some research online where I discovered that he is vegan! I could not believe it, I know that a healthy Vegan diet is one of the best ways a person can eat and just to prove that even more here is this amazing athlete who could choose to be eating scientifically designed sports drinks, gels or bars to help him with his races, but he chooses to eat humus and olives to keep him going. He is the best ultra marathoner in the world and he is Vegan!
The most amazing part of this book is that it made me want to go out and run; barefoot of course. I learned that running is not supposed to hurt, that it can be fun and that it is something that our bodies are designed to do. As soon as it gets a little warmer here in the Boston area I can assure you I will be outside with a brand new pair of Vibram Five Fingers getting some free exercise. I may even enter a couple of races, not that I expect to win, or even do well for that matter it would just be fun. I can’t believe I just wrote that.
Definitely check out Christopher McDougall’s Born to Run it was hard for me to put down.
January 25, 2010
This morning I weighed in at 246 which means I have lost 2.9 pounds in the past week and 28.8 pounds since August. According to skinnyr.com my BMI is now 36.33. I am really proud of myself this week, not only because I lost almost three pounds but because I actually got to the gym four times in one week. I was really hoping for five days but Sunday was super busy and stressful so I did not make it. Guess I will just try again this week.
My workouts this week were based completely around cardio. Everyday that I worked out I burned over 800 calories except one day that I only burned 700 because of a time crunch. Working out so much really had me thinking about what I was eating. Because I was so focused on the calories that I was using I was also very focused on the calories that I was putting into my body. Of course this did not stop me from eating some pizza and bread sticks on Sunday night.
For some reason this week it was a much different experience for me at the gym. Because I had a goal of burning at least 800 calories with each gym visit it seemed easier to just get there, get the 800 calories done and be happy that I finished. On some of the days I was so inspired that I kept going and on Saturday I burned 850 calories, dare I say I was actually enjoying myself.
Another thing that I have been really focusing on is spending a full hour in my target heart rate. This is challenging for reasons I was not anticipating. My ideal heart rate is between 143 and 168. While I am trying to burn as many calories as possible I sometimes will go above 168, so I have to slow down. But it has been a good challenge for me and I am looking forward to going to the gym tonight and burning 800 more. It is certainly easier to get to the gym when I see results on the scale like I did this morning.
Last night Michelle had no plans of going to the gym and although I was tired I figured that I should go. I wanted to spend some time with my wife so we made dinner together, talked about our days and then it was 8:30 PM and we were both relaxing on the couch, where does the time go?
Even though it was one of the last things that I would have liked to do I got up and got dressed and headed out the door to the gym. While I was working out I did not feel tired or sad, I felt energized about being there and I was proud of myself. I worked out for a full 65 minutes and spent 60 of those minutes in my target heart rate zone, the other 5 were actually above that. According to the machine I was on I burned a total of 701 calories which I was pretty happy with.
There are two different types of elliptical machines that I have used. One uses your arms and legs while the one I used last night just worked my legs. It seems that I am able to burn calories more quickly on the first type. On Wednesday I used the one that works out arms and legs and I burned 841 calories in 60 minutes while last night I burned 701 in 65 minutes. Perhaps I was working out harder on Wednesday, either way I have burned 2372 calories so far since Sunday and I plan on burning 800 calories at the gym tonight, Satuday, and Sunday. I have a good feeling about Monday’s weigh in.
