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- Weight–211.6 (-9.4)
- BF%–30 (-1%)
I knew it was going to happen–I’ve had a setback. This week, food won the battle. Monday and Tuesday were tough for me and I made some bad choices. Today, I’m back on track though.
So, what did I learn this week? I have to be constantly vigilant. If I let my guard down, even for an instant, I’m going to eat something that I shouldn’t be eating. I’m not at the point where eating healthy is second nature–not yet anyway. I’ll get there.
There is a bright side. I’ve exercised at the gym 3 times this week and went for a 2-mile walk with J.D. as well. My first training appointment is tomorrow and I’m really looking forward to it. I’m going to talk about exercise and nutrition, and I should have a lot to write about afterward.
Like J.D., I spend a lot of my free time surfing for diet and fitness related articles that I might turn into an entry. Here are some interesting links that I’m not going to write about:
Time had a decent article about three new diet pills. The verdict–don’t bother.
CNN Health ran something along the lines of my recent post about foods that aren’t as bad for you as previously thought. Some of them include red meat and ice cream.
CNN also reported on a previously obese man who changed his life around and is now a fitness instructor. There are tons of these stories around the internet, and all of them motivate me to write more and lose more weight.
J.D.
17 responses so far ↓
1 greenman2001 // Jan 23, 2008 at 2:31 pm
Red meat and ice cream — formerly bad, now good! Good luck.
Mac, I’m curious: when you say, “I made some bad choices….If I let my guard down, even for an instant, I’m going to eat something that I shouldn’t be eating. I’m not at the point where eating healthy is second nature,” are you equating “eating too much to lose weight” with “eating healthy?” How do you know when you’ve eaten too much to lose weight — as I guess you did this week? What does “vigilance” mean in your program?
I’m also curious about the effect the shifting of priorities is having elsewhere in your life. Before last October, you didn’t go to the gym. Now you’re going three times a week. That means that you’re no longer doing something that you were doing prior to October. What are you giving up to make room for exercise?
2 TosaJen // Jan 23, 2008 at 3:17 pm
Did you figure out what made it OK to eat the “bad choice” in that moment? For some reason, the instant before the food went into your mouth, you made an excuse for why that was a good idea.
One of my many, many strategies is what I call “breaking the excuse”: I figure out what mental gymnastics made a back choice seem like a good idea, and make it either harder to make that choice, or break down the rationalization that made the excuse work.
If I don’t “break the excuse”, it WILL work again. (Still might work, but I try to make it less likely . . . )
3 macdaddy // Jan 23, 2008 at 3:43 pm
Jen: we had house guests from Saturday until this morning and a birthday party with pizza, cake and ice cream for my daughter on Monday night. Enough said
I’m still working on how to handle situations like these. But I’m not letting it bog my long term progress down.
4 Denise // Jan 23, 2008 at 6:22 pm
We have pizza night every Friday at our house…it is our free night from watching what we eat. I only let myself eat one regular piece or two small pieces (depending on what kind of pizza it is) and a salad.
Plus, you can still track your calories even if you eat pizza, cake, etc. For example, one piece of cheese pan pizza from Pizza Hut is 260 calories. You can also figure out (roughly) how many calories are in a piece of chocolate cake. Then add up what you think you’ll eat and figure out if you have to skip a snack or two to accomodate the extra calories at dinner.
And you already do the best thing - don’t kill yourself if you fall off the wagon, especially if it’s at your daugther’s birthday party!
5 krug // Jan 23, 2008 at 6:39 pm
Hey, Are there two of you writing this blog???
I read the RSS feed and it doesn’t say who is posting what article.
PS: Keep trying. I am 5′10″ and was in the 218-225 lb range ever since college. In the summer of 2006 I lost 20 lbs just by bringing my lunch to work. (I changed jobs and there was no fast food nearby and the cafeteria was really far, so I actually did it out of laziness ironically enough.) Then in the fall I hit the gym and kept on watching what I was eating. I steadily lost 1-2 lbs per week with the exception of Holidays like Xmas and Easter & some other ‘once in a while things.’ By April 2007 I was down to 170 lbs. I lost ~50lbs in a little under a year. I had trouble in the summer b/c I took a lot of vacation this summer and now I’m 185 lbs and working my way back down.
6 greenman2001 // Jan 23, 2008 at 7:41 pm
Thanks, Mac. You know I’m an adherent of calorie counting. I may have missed it elsewhere in the blog if you said this already, but what is your target daily calorie limit?
7 greenman2001 // Jan 23, 2008 at 8:00 pm
TosaJen, I love your approach. (This isn’t just a great approach to losing weight, but for anything that’s going haywire in your life.) This is exactly the kind of awareness exercise I was taught in therapy, and it really helps to short-circuit the negative feedback loops that get started when you make an unhealthy choice in your life.
This kind of thinking is an essential part of 12-step recovery, where you work your way back through the chain of decisions that lead you to your addictive behavior. (I drank because I was in the bar. I was in the bar because I was lonely. I was lonely because I isolate myself at home. I isolate myself because I’m uncomfortable making conversation when I’m sober. Maybe I could practice making conversation when I’m sober so it doesn’t feel quite so uncomfortable. Maybe I could practice that at the church’s coffee hour after the service this Sunday. And so on, back to some positive action that can lead you down a different path.)
I love Mac’s “enough said.” Pizza, cake and ice cream were in the room: any other questions?
8 macdaddy // Jan 23, 2008 at 9:08 pm
9 TosaJen // Jan 24, 2008 at 5:51 am
Macdaddy — Pshaw! Pizza and friends are good reasons to eat a bit of special food. So long as you didn’t take an entire pizza or the quart of the ice cream with a spoon into a corner . . . My problem with these situations is that it’s tempting to turn every challenging eating episode into “The Last Supper”: eat drink and be merry, for tomorrow we diet. The trick is to choose to enjoy everything in a limited way — first bite is amazing, then we’re in the land of diminishing returns, no? My family and my parents went to dinner for a few bdays. I ate bread with olive oil, ordered an appetizer, and shared my kids’ entrees (DD got something with cream sauce), then we split 4 desserts 6 ways. Optimal healthy eating? No. Better than I could have done — oh yes! I enjoyed the heck out of the meal, including 2-3 bites each of brulee, tirimisu, chocolate cake, and I’ve moved on.
1800 cal/day is not a lot for a guy (wishing I was a guy!). That’s not even enough for me if I’m maintaining a healthy weight and exercising much, and I’m a little thing. I know that everyone wants to win the land record for dropping poundage, but are you eating enough to be able to sustain what you’re doing forever, or are you setting yourself up to “hold your breath” until you can’t stand it anymore; repeat? This isn’t about what “experts say” you need to do to lose 1+ pounds/week– it’s about what works for you to get you where you want to go. (Aside: I track the caloric deficit — not just the calories in. The wiggle room exercise gives me in terms of maintaining a calorie deficit is just another persuasive reason to get some exercise!)
It’s likely you’ll be eating 2500+ calories once you reduce your weight, so there’s no point in driving yourself crazy with a very low number of calories for the months it will take to lose the weight. What will it matter if it takes an extra few weeks to get to your optimal weight? As in, do you get to stop eating well and thoughtfully and avoiding crap and get to go back to what you were doing? Um, no. Sorry. (I wish!) Most people find maintaining the lower weight much harder than losing weight, because there’s no “progress”, you don’t get positive outside feedback, etc. And yet you need to keep doing what you were doing to stay there . . . So what’s the rush?
10 Tom McNicholas // Jan 24, 2008 at 7:27 am
This exercise method here might interest you!
http://www.coolrunning.com/engine/2/2_3/181.shtml
11 Amelia // Jan 24, 2008 at 10:37 am
MacDaddy, the idea of creating a calorie deficit really works – as long as you are consuming less than you burn, you will lose weight. Weight Watchers does a great job of simplifying this process. You get a certain number of target calories for the day (points are really just short-hand for calories with some attention paid to fat and fiber) but also get a few more for doing exercise (Activity Points) and also a bank of Weekly Points which are “extra” for those special occasions and/or a little more each day. This is their Flex plan. They also have a Core plan that works a bit differently with less counting, but the same principles are at work. I think you can try out their online only program for a week for free right now if you want to check it out. They’re also targeting men right now and have a customized site for you since it’s been such a woman-focused program in the past. My own experience has been good – I’ve lost 5.5 lbs so far in the last couple of weeks. Like anything else, it works if I actually follow it!
12 Brigid // Jan 24, 2008 at 11:17 am
I think you are doing great and I’m not sure why you think have experienced a set-back. You show that you’re 9 pounds down from when you started and that is amazing. Just think where you would be if you didn’t do anything at all.
The idea of a healthy lifestyle is balance and moderation. This is the crux of sustainablity.
You said in your post “I have to be constantly vigilant. If I let my guard down, even for an instant, I’m going to eat something that I shouldn’t be eating.” You have to ask yourself if constant vigilance sustainable. If you are like most people - its not.
Healthy habits come in baby steps. I lost weight when I did nothing else but stop eating french fries. It was about 7 pounds over the course of 3 months which is not the kind of weight loss you would see by weighing yourself every day.
I try to live by the 80/20 rule and it’s served me well. If I can make healthy choices 80% of the time, the 20% of the time I decide to enjoy pizza or ice cream isn’t a big deal. I don’t consider eating it a set-back nor do I consider myself “bad” for making the choices I’ve made. I’ve lived like this for the past 10 years, proving that at least for me, this is sustainable.
Ultimately, I’ve learned that perfectionism doesn’t lead to perfection. In fact, it often becomes the enemy. There are certain battles you’ll need to fight - don’t try to fight them all in a day.
Keep up the great work!
Brigid
13 Denise // Jan 24, 2008 at 11:34 am
Not to be a stick in the mud, but I disagree with Jen…with your current weight, I think the max calories you should be eating a day is 1900 to 2000…unless you are working out everyday for an hour, 2500 is too many calories…in my opinion.
14 TosaJen // Jan 24, 2008 at 1:20 pm
Denise — where does your opinion come from? I was suggesting 2500+ calories as a low maintenance caloric level based on information like this: http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_many_calories_should_a_grown_man_eat
One of the sad facts of life is that testosterone means that guys have a lot more muscle than women do, and thus burn a lot more calories breathing.
15 greenman2001 // Jan 24, 2008 at 7:52 pm
The standard way of determining this (the tool that nutritionists use) is the Harris-Benedict equation for basal metabolic rate: 67 + (6.24 x weight in lbs.) + (12.7 x height in inches) – 6.9 x age. To this number you apply a multiplier based on your average level of daily activity (1.15 for sedentary, 1.3 for normal daily activities, 1.4 for someone who exercises 3-4 times a week, and so on).
Mac’s BMR would therefore be 67 + (6.24 x 221) + (12.7 x 70) - 6.9 x 33 = 2,107. Without his shiny new exercise routine, his daily level of activity would be “light”, so I would multiply his BMR x 1.3 = 2,739. This is number of calories Mac’s body will burn in a day under normal circumstances, without exercise. If he’s eating 1,800 calories a day, he’s generating a 1,000 calorie a day deficit, or 7,000 calories a week, which should result in weight loss of 2 lbs a week.
You’ll notice that if you apply a multiplier of 1.4 for exercise 3-4 times a week, your calorie usage only goes up 200 calories a day. It’s hard to burn calories exercising for an hour 3 times a week. I don’t believe in accounting for exercise calories in this way (if you jump rope for an hour straight, believe me, you’ll burn more than 200 calories), but it’s helpful to keep in mind, especially if you’re inclined to “reward” yourself with a “sports drink” after your workout.
What should Mac’s target weight be? I like to use the Metropolitan height-weight tables, which tell me that a 5’10” man of medium frame should weigh 151-163 lbs.
Just out of curiosity, once he achieves his weight loss goal, how many calories should Mac eat to maintain a healthy weight of 160 lbs, assuming he keeps up his thrice-weekly exercise routine? Back to Harris-Benedict for that: 1960 calories. Note that he’ll be a year older by then, which decreases his caloric needs by 6.9 calories per year. Why? Your metabolism slows as you age.
Some people would say that 160 lbs sounds light. What do the BMI tables tell us Mac’s weight should be? The upper limit BMI for a healthy male is 24, which for a 5’10” person means a weight of 167 lbs.
16 greenman2001 // Jan 24, 2008 at 8:26 pm
Brigid, I agree wholeheartedly: calling Mac’s weight gain a “setback” is completely unproductive (however true it may be in a literal sense). I’d call it a crucial learning experience.
Mac gathered some extremely important information this week: he not only didn’t maintain the 7,000 calorie deficit he’s been shooting for, he went on to consume an additional 7,000 calories above his maintenance threshold. That means he consumed an additional 14,000 calories this week — that’s 2,000 calories a day beyond his target limit of 1,800 calories. He more than DOUBLED his calorie consumption beyond his target.
What’s the lesson here? When out-of-town friends, pizza, cake, and ice cream are in the house, Mac is at serious risk of falling off his diet, and not in a small way.
I wonder if there are some practical tools beyond “vigilance” which Mac can bring to bear in situations like this? Along the lines of his “don’t come to a party hungry” rule.
17 TosaJen // Jan 24, 2008 at 11:05 pm
greenman2001 — Do you really think that macdaddy ate an extra 7000 (14000) calories this week in a few days of pizza and cake? I’m thinking he didn’t — maybe a few thousand — but he can speak up for himself. I would think that the weight of the food and liquid “in the pipeline” was more likely the cause of the higher scale measurement than actual fat accumulation. In my experience, water, meat, fiber, carbs, (PMS for girls), and salt can all affect the scale pounds as much or more than the calorie deficit or overload. Give the body a week or two to show what’s really going on — it’s the long-term trends that really matter.
I agree with both you and Brigid about fixing habits most of the time rather than requiring never-ending “willpower” and “vigilance”. Progress, not perfection, as they say. Make it easy, I say. Requiring myself to do it the hard way doesn’t stick when life gets hard. And the self-flagellation just doesn’t help, anyway.
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