Week 2 Update

March 28

Day 15

Weigh In:   345.5lbs

To goal:         95.5lbs

So I'm down 10 pounds from where I started.  It sure came off quick.  I've got to stack two normal days together so that I can have Easter be a "normal" day.  I'm a little worried about gaining from all of the extra eating days.  Hopefully I wont undo any of the work that I've been doing.  Saturday will be a fast day, so that'll be good.

I ate a little too much today, due to some bad circumstances.  I had to get some blood work done before I went to work, so I couldn't eat breakfast at home.  I was hungrier than normal since the day before was a fast day, and I had to abstain from eating everything from 7pm onwards.  I ended up getting some fast food, and I'm sure I had at least 1000 calories.  I wasn't planning on doing anything special for lunch, but I was invited out with some coworkers to a Mexican restauraunt, and I'm sure I ate way too much.  I had a fairly sensible dinner of sandwiches and an orange.  Unfortunately, my wife pulled out a big bag of M&Ms later in the night, and I ate way too many.  It's amazing how much easier it is to have self control when you have the hard limits of a fast day.  It's almost as if there is some freedom in the restrictions.

Looking at my health so far, I still feel pretty normal.  My pants are definitely feeling a little too big.  I had to make a new notch in my belt, as it was a little too lose.  I don't notice much change in the mirror, but the scale doesn't lie, and I AM losing.  I'm really looking forward to getting past Easter and back on to my new normal ADF schedule.

Going forward, I think I need to make and follow some hard standards for when I have to have extra normal days.  We'll find out at my next post fast day weigh in on Sunday if too much of my hard work was undone.

Weekly updates:
Week 1
Week 2
Week 3
Week 5
Week 10
Week 11

Day 13

Yesterday was a fast day. It went really well. I didn't have time to cook anything for breakfast, so I left the house with an orange I planned on eating. I made it till lunch without being hungry, so I skipped the orange. I had a cup of carrots and two hard boiled egg whites for lunch. I got home from work, and decided to just eat a lean cuisine dinner. That left me with 268 calories, so I made a late night air cooked popcorn snack with a little butter.  All in all it turned out to be a good day. I really wasn't any hungrier than a regular day.

I weighed myself this morning. I was pleasantly surprised to see I've lost ten pounds. I didn't expect to lose quite so fast. Onwards and downwards.

Day 12

Yesterday was a normal day, and I probably had a few things I shouldn't have.  We went out for breakfast after Church, and I got my normal breakfast.  It's anything but light.  Dinner was a bunch of beef and broccli that I'm sure I would have been just fine with eating significantly less.  I ate some pie that I took home from my Grandparents house on Saturday.  Overall, it was pretty normal.  My hope is to keep my non fast days below my pre-diet normal.  I need to eat, because I don't want my body to slip into starvation mode, but if I can keep my calorie count low enough to still have a calorie deficit for the day, that would be awesome.  I don't think I managed that goal yesterday.  I'll need to come up with some tasty items I can order for breakfast.  I like the unhealthy stuff too much for my own good.

Day 11

Yesterday's fast day was both difficult and easy.  Hunger was not an issue.  I had three fried egg whites for breakfast,  a half cup of carrots for lunch, and then a giant chicken salad with tomatoes for dinner.   When all was said and done, I came in right at 600 calories.  I had a hard time finishing the salad because it was so filling.  Hunger was the easy part.

The difficulties were an unexpected offer for lunch.  I was at my elderly grandparents house fixing a computer problem, and of course, they wanted me and my wife to stay for lunch.  It was pretty hard to tell my grandparents that I couldn't eat any of the stuff they made.  I mean, even my grandma's salad was a layer salad with more calories in a single serving than I could eat on a fast day.  Eventually I agreed to stay, but I limited myself to a handful of baby carrots.  I really don't like to explain that I'm on a diet to people, and that's half of why I liked this diet in the first place.  With ADF, I can eat normal half the time, and as long as I know it's coming, I can probably move days around so that I don't have to miss social gatherings or go and feel awkward.  It's hard to say no to your 92 year old grandma who even though she is still recovering from a broken hip just 3 months ago, she cooked a home made pie for you.  If only they had talked about Lunch a few days earlier when I arranged the time, I wouldn't have had a problem.

On the plus side, my hard work paid off and I lost another 1.5lbs.  Hopefully I can keep it up long term.

Week 1 Update

March 22nd

Day 9

Weigh In:   349lbs

To goal:         99lbs

So, I'm one week in to the diet.  I already had to mess with my schedule a little bit.  Wednesday was supposed to be a fast day, but I had a family birthday dinner scheduled, so I tried to make sure I ate well below my calorie break even point (~3800 per LoseIt).  The party was fun.  I ate too much I'm sure.  Luckily, that’s not to much of a problem right now, as pounds are flying off.  The thing I tell myself, for better or worse, is that if I didn't make the decision to diet, I would have eaten just as much (if not more) and then done nothing special the next day.  By following the ADF technique, I can start to make drastic, visible changes in my diet that will impact change.  Even if I make some bad decisions on my normal days, it will all work out in the end.

At the end of week 1, day 9, I am down to 349lbs.  That's 6.5lbs lost.  I'm sure some of that was the initial pop you get when you make big changes in your diet.  I'll be interested to see how I do the next week.  I know conventional wisdom tells you not to weigh yourself every day when dieting.  It's easy to get distracted by the little movements that come from water and whatnot.  I just am to excited to not weigh myself every morning.  Even after a normal day, I like to see how I did with keeping to a reasonable diet.  I'm tracking everything on LoseIt.com with my phone, so it gives me a good history of where I've been.


Weekly updates:
Week 1
Week 2
Week 3
Week 5
Week 10
Week 11

Alternate Day Fasting

So if you read my first post, I've decided that I need to lose some weight for various reasons.  That leaves me to figure out how best to work things for me.  I've always been skeptical of any gimmicky diets.  I've joked that I should sell a diet book called, "Eat Less, Exercise More and Lose Weight".  Most people don't want to eat less, and people flock to pills, surgery, and gimmicks to try to cheat the system.  Dieting isn't rocket science.  Your body burns X calories a day.  If you eat less than that, you will lose weight.

So if losing weight is as simple as eating less calories, than why is it so hard?  That's simple enough to answer.  It's because humans are built to want to eat!  It wasn't until modern times that we've been able to have food so readily available.  Modern factories, preservatives, and refrigeration has allowed food to be readily available in your home.  If you run out, you can just rush out to the local supermarket and stock back up.  It wasn't long ago that you grew most of your own food and had to preserve and store it for the winter.  If you overate, you might end up without enough food to last you the winter.  That's pretty good motivation to exercise self control.  All of that easy food means that we can finally indulge in eating.  Going against your primal urge to eat results in a lot of failure and disappointment.

Where does that leave me?  I've tried just counting calories.  It's simple enough, and there are some great apps for phones to make the task easier, but it has one major flaw.  The more complex a food is, the more difficult to figure out the calories.  For instance, if I make myself a sandwich, I can easily calculate two slices of bread, 3 oz of meat, 1 slice of cheese, and 1 Tb mayonnaise.  Now when I make homemade lasagna, it's got a few more ingredients.  And you can forget about going to family/friends houses for dinner.  Even if you have a ballpark figure, overeating by 2-300 calories is very easy, and that can kill all of your calorie deficit for the day.  I tried to keep track of my calories using the app LoseIt, and I found that all of my hard work staying low at breakfast and lunch were ruined at dinner.  Tracking was virtually impossible, and that left me struggling to have self control.  Sure, I didn't gain weight, and maybe I would have SLOWLY lost weight, but it sure wasn't a way to lose a ton of weight.

I've tried doing Atkins before, and that seemed stupid to me.  I'm sure it works, but I could never give up carbs long term.  It's also very hard to function out of the home, and that makes it hard for me.  I did Weight Watchers years ago, and that suffered from much of the problems of calorie counting.  I'm also cheap, so I hate to give money to some organisation so I can hear some feel good talk every week.

I was stumbling on the internet, and I found some interesting information.  I found some people turning conventional wisdom upside down.  We've all been told that you need to eat 5-6 small meals a day to get your metabolism running faster.  It's common sense.  Skipping breakfast is as helpful to dieting as a Chinese buffet is.  It makes sense.  If you don't eat, your body enters starvation mode and slows things down.  Sounds like common sense.  Apparently it isn't.  I'm not going to go into the details here.  If you want to read more about it, here is the "Top Ten Fasting Myths Debunked".  This got me interested in the Alternate Day Fasting (ADF).

ADF is kind of a gimmicky diet, but it's one of the simplest diets to explain ever.  Eat every other day.  Sure, you can go online and buy a book on it, but that would be pretty silly.  Just eat every other day.  You can tailor it to fit your life if you like.  If fasting every other day is too much, than just do it 2-3 days a week.  Does the idea of eating nothing seem impossible to you?  Than you can eat a little on your fast days.  The common practice is to eat 500 calories if you're a woman, and 600 if you're a man.

Eat like normal every other day, and then have a very sparse menu of 600 calories on my fast days.  You may be asking, isn't this all just the same as counting calories and restricting your diet?  Well, yes and no.  Lets assume you need to eat 2500 calories to break even.  So a week of eating would include 2500 x 3.5 and 600 x 3.5 (on average).  That's an average of 1550 calories a day.  So you've got a calorie deficit of 6650 calories in a week.  That's crazy!  Even if you eat a little extra on your normal days, you'd be hard pressed to eat 6650 calories extra in a week.  So if ADF is just like eating 1550 calories a day, why not just do that?  Good question, but one with a very easy answer.  Some of the answer is psychological.  No matter what diet you use, it's hard.  You will fail.  The nice part about ADF is that if you fail on your fast day, you can just make it a regular day and then fast the next day.  It's impossible to fail on your normal days since you don't have any restrictions.  Apparently, there are also a ton of health benefits to fasting.  Our bodies weren't designed to eat all the time.  Going without food helps.

I started my journey on ADF a little over a week ago.  It's a lot easier than I anticipated.  I've found the fast days are a joy to get through.  I'll get deeper in to what my average days look like in a future post.  I can totally see myself doing this long term.  The nice thing is that I can adjust the days as I see fit.  I've been finding new and filling ways to eat 600 calories.  I've also lost a lot of weight in a very short time.  I'm looking forward to losing massive amounts of weight.

My Humble Start

As long as I can remember, I've been overweight.  I don't know exactly when it started, but it was definitely in early grade school.  I could blame it on a ton of environmental things, but ultimately I ate too much and exercised way to little.  I've always been bad at sports and I've never really enjoyed much physical activity.  Growing up, I let vide games and TV eat most of my free time.  As I got older, I ate more.  I'm not sure exactly when I hit my current weight, but I feel it was in my late teens.  I've been holding strong around 350 for over 10 years now.  I'm 31, and I really need to lose some weight. 

Three years ago, I got married.  Back in December, God graced us with a precious baby boy.  I really want to see my son and wife grow old, and I know that the more weight I have, the less likely that's going to happen.  As a test, I want you to think of the oldest morbidly obese person you know...How old are they?  Would you say they have a high quality of life?  If I answer that truthfully, I don't think I like the answers.  I can't let that happen.  Not for me, and not for my son.  I don't want my son to live the life that I did being overweight.  I don't want to have to worry that I can't go in a canoe with my wife because of the weight limit.  I don't want to worry that a folding chair might break under me.  I really don't look as heavy as I am, but imagine how much better I'd feel, look, and be if I lost weight.  I need to change.

So let's talk current.  As of 3/14/2013, I weighed 355.5lbs.  I need to lose weight.  The first question is how much?  Well, lets figure that out.  According to www.thecalculatorsite.com, At 355 lbs. and a height of 6'3", I have a BMI of 44.4, which means I'm "Heavily Overweight".  Nothing surprising there.  In order to reach the "Normal Weight" I would have to weigh 200 lbs.  Doing a little searching around, I found a nice pretty chart that gives me similar numbers.

http://ygraph.com/graphs/weightheightchart-20110718T235834-zg4jalf.gif

I'd consider myself a "Large" frame size, so lets say that I need to weigh 176-202 lbs.  That means I have to lose 150 lbs.  Wow.  Let's make the goal a little easier to attain.  Let's say 250 lbs. is my goal.  That means I need to lose 105.5 lbs.  Once I reach that, if I still feel like I need to lose, I can keep going.

Lets talk time.  How long will it take?  Well, I guess that depends on how fast I lose.  I know it will start off fast and slow down as I move along.  If I could average 2 lbs. a week, that would give me a one year time frame (52 x 2 = 2 104lbs).  This isn't going to happen over night.  I'm looking at a long process.  Realistically, this could take twice that.  You know what though?  If I don't start today, this will take even longer.  If I don't make a change today, this could take 20 years.  Lets just make this happen.