Fatty

On April 25th I weighed 185.5. On April 27th I weighed 187.2. This morning I weighed 182. Of those three markers, the first one is most reliable. My current weight is more likely 183 which puts me at about 2.5 pounds lost thus far. It’s been a slower start for me this year but last year I was well into 10-11 hour weeks by the time I started losing weight. This year I’m only in the 5-7 hour range.

The tool I’m using the track my weight has me down for 1.1 pounds lost. The tool calculates the moving average and plots it against the actual data points. As long as you keep your actual daily weights under the curve, you are on track. For the first month, the tool stays a little behind your actual weight loss. But once there are enough data points, it track quite nicely. The point is to get people to refrain from obsessing over daily weight fluctuations — which are going to happen — and concentrate on overall trends.

Anyway, My weight is going down. And it’s going down at a reasonable pace.

I’m hungry a lot lately. While it’s not a pleasant sensation, it’s an indication that I’m losing weight. My body is telling me to eat something because it doesn’t like the taste of itself. I eat — what might seem like a normal amount of food for most people — but there are times during the day when I’m hungry. I’m hungry right now. It’s a low grade feeling in my abdomen and my head that I can ignore if I busy myself with something else. It will become more insistent in a little while and I’ll have second breakfast.

I’m not going to say that hunger is my friend. However, it does tell me that I’m on the right track. My cells are metabolizing fat (and some lean tissue too) to keep me going. You know, on a training ride, when you’re out of the comfort zone and your legs and lungs are complaining? That’s a good feeling since it tell me that I’m working hard, that I’m getting stronger. Hunger is like that when you’re fat. It’s training to be lean.

If you want to get faster, burying yourself on every ride is going to be counterproductive. Similarly, getting too cozy with hunger is not going to be healthy. Listen to your body and eat when you need to.

I’ve seen lot of people set unreasonable goals for weight loss. They will start on a radical program where they cut out huge calories and drop 3-4 pounds in a week. Then they expect to be able to continue that trend and inevitably fail. The key is to set yourself up for success. The first step to take is to understand that a good expectation for sustainable weight loss is about a pound a week. So if you want to lose 20 pounds, count on 20 weeks. Sure, that sounds like a long time but weight loss isn’t easy.

Usually people who want to lose weight have been eating too much for a while. The good news is that their metabolism is probably pretty high. And for cyclists, the news is even better because their metabolism is further stoked by regular (or at least fairly regular) exercise. Their metabolism is humming along at a breakneck rate. That means that the first month can be a real windfall for weight loss. With only moderate caloric reduction, quite a bit of weight will come off. If you are disciplined, it’s not uncommon to be able to take off a couple pounds a week for 3-4 weeks before your results taper.

When I say disciplined, I mean that you really stick to your program of eating better and exercising. The weather may be crappy right now but can you get out for 45 minutes or an hour a day? Can you get on the trainer for a while each week? I think so. As far as eating goes, try not to make wholesale changes overnight. The first thing you should do is to take a look at how frequently you eat throughout the day. Many people make two mistakes about eating; 1) eating too frequently, or 2) eating too infrequently.

Let’s talk about eating too infrequently, which may seem counterintuitive to some. You should eat smaller portions at regular intervals throughout the day. The reason is twofold. First, if you eat frequently, you won’t get as hungry. That means that you won’t feel miserable and crave snacks (that might be unhealthy) and you won’t be tempted to eat large portions or seconds at mealtimes. Second, if your body is taking in nutrition throughout the day, it will be less likely to slow your metabolism to make up for the reduced caloric intake.

A typical day for me is:

Breakfast: oatmeal with fruit (frozen berries and a smooshed banana)

Second breakfast: cup of yogurt with some raw oats mixed in

Lunch: Turkey sandwich with some cheesie crackers (very small portion)

Afternoon snack: carrot sticks

Late afternoon snack: apple

Dinner: Something reasonable

Desert: nothing or maybe some popcorn with salt — to get my salty fix

Armed with a new cook book,” 3 Bowls Vegetarian Recipes from an American Buddhist Monastery”, and the fact that I had stuck my neck out to Brooke to jump on board with the program, I started out todat with a newness, trying to only eat when needed and only eat foods that served a purpose!

Did I succeed well it started off great all day sticking to grains, fruit and water and then the wife suprised me with a little Chinese take out! I can`t say no and hurt her feelings, besides I can`t say no to Chinese or Mexican food it is my Kryptonite!

Friday will be the next new day!

Last year I topped out at my highest weight in many years and I decided that it was time to lose the weight. I’d been racing for several seasons weighing 10-20 pounds more than was good for me. I knew I needed to lose the weight and that it would make me faster on the bike but I never got any weight loss to stick. Last spring, I was able to lose about 20 pounds and raced at my lightest since the early 90s. Typically, the holidays are a time when I pack on the extra pounds but this past December and January, I managed to be pretty disciplined and didn’t gain more than a few pounds.

The rest of the winter didn’t work out so well. I’m up 15 pounds from my racing weight last season. I know how it happened — not much riding and too much eating. Enough is enough and it’s time for me to get down to the hard work of losing the weight and getting fit.

On this site I plan to talk about losing weight. I’ve done it before and I’ll do it again. The trick is to eat right and exercise. Pretty easy, huh? Here are the key points that I’ve found to successfully cutting calories:

1. Delete dessert
2. Moderate portions for dinner and NO seconds
3. No extraneous during the day snacks
4. Don’t derail on the weekends
5. Avoid rich foods
6. Look for fiber

I usually have oatmeal or Grape Nuts for breakfast with some fruit and I pack my lunch for work. Where I have quite a bit of trouble is when I get home. I’ll often snack upon getting in the door, eat big portions for dinner, often get seconds, and then have something for desert. Those are bad eating habits and a recipe for weight gain. Then I’ll usually eat too much on the weekend when I’ve got the refrigerator handy.

Anyway, I know what I need to do to get things done and I started yesterday. My weight this morning was 185.6 and my goal is to lose 20.6 pounds in 3 months. Since I’ve done this before, I have a pretty good idea of what my weight loss curve is likely to be. The first 4-5 weeks I can count on about 2 pounds a week. The next 4 weeks I’ll average around 1.5 to 1.25 pounds per week. Then the next 3-6 will average .7 to .5 pounds per week. So August 1st I should be at my goal weight.

I’ve found that I’m more motivated to stay on track if I make my goals and progress public so that’s the rationale behind the blog. I also want to invite others to participate along with me. Do you need to lose some weight and have found it difficult or impossible? I can’t promise that you’ll lose pounds by posting here but at least you can talk about what’s causing you difficulty and crow about the pounds you shed.

While I support healthy weight loss and want to be inclusive, if you are looking to lose that last five pounds to drop your body fat from 6.5% to 5.75%, then perhaps you should just keep that goal between you and your teammates. I’m hoping to attract folks who need to cut ten or so percent of their body weight to be healthy. I’ve seen lots of cross racers and I know there are a bunch that could benefit by losing a few pounds. If you’re interested, just leave a comment. I’d like to know how much you weigh and what your goal is.

I use PhysicsDiet.com to track my weight and I created a new profile to track my weight for this blog. Their charts looks confusing at first but use it for a couple of weeks and things start to look more interesting. I suggest you create a profile and check the box to make it public. You can see that I linked mine off the right under the blogroll.