10 lbs!

I broke the 10 lbs mark a few days ago, at 196.6.  10 lbs is no small feat.  unfortunately, there's another 30 to go!  But one step at a time.  I put on my jeans newly out of the wash today, and they actually felt comfortable, and I tried my suit on (I have a business trip coming up) and it actually fits.  All good signs!@

Happy new year to everyone who's reading!

Almost to 10 lbs off!

I was 197.0 this morning...almost 10 lbs down from 206.8.  If I had a suckier scale, it would be 10 lbs.  Unfortunately I have my fancy 0.2 lbs resolution scale, so I'll have to wait a little longer.  10 lbs is a bunch, but still a drop in the 40 lb bucket...so I guess it's inconsequential which day I get there.  But it's good to have new records every few days.

Good news...little bit of progress

The last two days I've been up a little bit.  this morning I made my first progress in three days...down to 197.2, 9.6lbs below where I started in 3.5 weeks.  Not too bad for no exercise.  I would be happy to maintain this rate for 4 months or so.  We'll see how possible this is.

Merry Xmas and Happy Chanukah to whoever is reading!

Slight disappointment

Well, this morning I had a slight disappointment....I was back up to 197.8.  Not a super big deal, but it was nice having monotonically decreasing numbers for the last several days.  The upside was that my body fat level was down to 32.8%, the first it's been below 33% in a long time.  Still, there's a long way to go as I have to get to 24% just to be "obese."  And down to 20% to be normal.  13% of roughly 200 lbs is 26 lbs, so that's still a ways out there, as I doubt I'll be able to lose 3 lbs a week consistently for 9 weeks.  If I could do two lbs/week for 13 weeks that would do it, but again my experience with diet alone is about 1 lb per week after the first few weeks is all we can expect.  If I add in exercise, I could possibly get 2 lbs/week. 

Btw, I use a Tanita scale from Amazon.  It looks like Amazon doesn't sell them, but merchants at Amazon do.  The scale tells you body weight and fat %.  You can also find out fat lbs, % water, bone mass and some other data.  You can configure it for up to five people in your house so that everyone can track together.  I can't imagine more than two people sharing it, but to each their own.
 

other blogs/forums

I just went on the web to look for other diet blogs...or to see if mine showed up. I did a search for "atkins diet blog" and found thousands if not more. One site that sounded cool was 3 fat chicks which is a site/forums about losing weight.

btw, I lost another 0.2lbs since yesterday, so I'm at 197.6, 9.2 lbs down, another 27 to go (for milestone 1).

9 lbs down

I hit 197.8 this morning. I cheated a little bit by waiting til 8:30 to weigh in, since it's a snow day...but I guess that will catch up to me tomorrow or Monday. Anyway, it's nice to make progress.

I also rowed on our rowing machine last night. One of the problems with rowing machines/treadmills/exercise is that it is so boring. I recently ordered these headphones from amazon. I bought them for watching TV when the furnace kicked on (my TV has been banished to the basement), but they were great for using on the rowing machine. I could watch TV, row, and actually hear the TV. The rowing machine I bought off of craigslist for $50 lightly used, and has lived in our basement (lightly used) for a couple years. So it's good to put it to use.

Progress

199.2 yesterday, and 198.8 today. Incremental progress every day! well, almost every day. I've taken to adding a second weigh in before dinner in the evening. This is really obsessive, and probably not helpful, but it gives me a forecast of what I could be in the morning. This helps me control my appetite at dinner. Actually, if it's low I want to eat less because I will set a new low, and if it's high I want to eat less because I don't want to go backwards.
I bought a "baby loaf" of hot pepper jack cheese and cut a few slices for dinner to go with either a small steak or a few slices of summer sausage. You can make a steak and if you cut it in half you can eat it for two days, or in thirds eat it for three days. This is good for your pocket book as well as for your belly.

Last comment for today...make sure you eat enough. The worst thing you can do is to stay on the diet all day, and then be starving at night and munch snacks throughout the night...or even worse, binge on a pint of ice cream. Good to not have binge-foods in the house, btw.

A tangent -- acupuncture

For the last several years, I found that I'd get a sore right shoulder from time to time. It would get worse when I was stressed and/or writing a lot. One prime example was when I was preparing a document for an upcoming meeting with our CEO. Then I was stressed and typing a lot. Last year, it got bad enough that I went to my PCP, and he wrote me a referral to a physical therapist. I had to see her twice a week for about 5 weeks or so, and she never had appointments at a convenient time. (What does this have to do with acupuncture, you ask? I'm getting to that.) So at $35/copay, I spent about $350. At the end of this time, my shoulder felt better.
It was better for about a year, and in October it started being sore again. I made an appt with my doc (that took two weeks). At the appointment he took X-rays, and he looked at them and said nothing's out of whack. (X-rays cost what, $50/pop and we did 6 of them -- insurance covered it). He then wrote me a script for an MRI, which I did the next week. I went back to him the following week and he read me the radiologists report that said everything was normal. After a month of trying to get diagnosed, he gave me another script for PT and told me to get an ergo workstation.

So after a month of working through the PCP, I am still in pain. He gave me a script for muscle relaxers, but they didn't help at all. I then found an acupuncturist through a recommendation of someone at work. I got an appt 2 days after I called. She spent about 15 minutes taking my pulse (that's how they diagnose your problems) and then stuck about 20 needles in me. That was last wednesday, 12/10. On Thursday, my neck and shoulder felt better. She charged me $90 and the insurance company nothing, because they don't consider acupuncture as a treatment for neck pain. It certainly seems like Aetna would have been better off paying the $90 than sending me for six X-rays and an MRI. I went back today for another round of needles and got a neck and shoulder massage as well. Total cost, $80.

While I was there, she told me that my liver and heart were out of balance, and that she is fixing those with needles. That's interesting, because when I went to the doc my blood test said that my liver enzymes are high, and my "c Reactive Proteins" are high. I have to go back in two months to get another blood test, so it will be interesting to see if the liver enzymes and cRP's are down.

I'm not 100% cured from my back pain, and we don't have test results on the enzymes, but right now I'm pretty bullish on the acupuncturist. I tried to get her to give me a needle to help me lose weight, but she said that she thinks the appetite suppressant points don't work very well. Oh well. More to come. I have my third appt next week with her, at which point she thinks that the initial treatment will be done (ie no more shoulder pain and liver and heart back in balance). Then I can go back for "maintenance" acupuncture once a month.

Monday morning -- below 200

This morning was the first time I've seen a 1 at the start of my weight in a while! I weighed in at 199.6 after an up and down weekend. Friday was 201.4, Saturday morning I was at 200.0 (although that was after a heavy drinking night on Friday, so dehydration was a factor), and 201.2 on Sunday.

For those who like to have a drink or three sometimes, the Atkins program recommends against. But if you do have a drink while you're doing the Atkins (or any other diet), here are some tips...drink wine not beer. Red wine has about 1g carbs per 4oz glass, beer significantly more. Whiskey has no carbs, but when I tried that I ended up drinking too much. (Three double Crowns on the rocks is a lot of drink). The other piece is when drinking the drink your inhibitions are down. So focus on not eating french fries, onion rings, or burgers with buns. We were at two bars Friday night and I found vegetables to dip in blue cheese, chicken wings and steak on a skewer at our happy hour buffet at the first. At the second, where we went for dinner, they had a steak salad. So even though I drank a little too much, it didn't kill my diet.

The other thing to remember is that you often will have a low weight after a night of drinking, it's because you are dehydrated, not because you lost weight!

Thursday -- good half a week

This morning I was down to 200.4, and 33.6% body fat.

How did I do that, I'm even outperforming my own expectations this week. One nice thing my wife did was to buy a tray of 30 deviled eggs, and stick it in the refrigerator. So in the morning when I'm in a hurry off to work, I can grab a couple deviled eggs (which are one of my favorite foods). Since they are basically eggs, mayo and mustard, there's no carbs. I mix that with a couple pieces of string cheese (80 calories, 0 carbs) and that makes a good breakfast for me.

I usually get hungry in the mid morning, so I go down to the snack shop/drugstore and grab a pack of beef jerky. The thin kind, not the chewy kind. The chewy kind has a ton of corn syrup -- ie sugar, which means it's 5g carbs per serving. The thin kind is closer to 2g/serving. Btw, beef jerky is incredibly expensive, but I find it's worth it to lose the weight and maybe live longer. For lunch, we have a salad bar in the building where you can build your own. I usually make a salad and then either get eggs, salmon or chicken wings to provide protein. Make sure you get a zero-carb dressing, like blue cheese or ceasar. Stay away from anything that says "light", as that's sure to have carbse. If we don't go to the salad bar, most sit down restaurants have a salad with some kind of meat -- steak salad or (in the northwest) blackened salmon ceasar salad...mmmmmm.
For dinner, when I get home late I will eat deviled eggs, string cheese and beef sticks (old wisconsin from Walgreens). And I try not to snack after I have the dinner, although I often will end up eating 1 or two more string cheeses later in the evening.

Monday Morning

I woke up this morning and weighed 203.0. Some people say that weighing yourself every day and recording it to the tenth of a pound isn't productive. I disagree. Daily weigh ins keep focus on what you're doing (losing weight) and give you a chance to quickly correct if you have a setback. of course lots of things affect your weight day over day -- what time you ate last night, what time you weigh in the morning, did you use the bathroom before you weighed in, are you dehydrated. I have found that if you optimize to get the lowest weight, ie after you've used the bathroom and before you have anything to eat in the morning, you will get a good "lowest possible weight" trend. I sometimes wait as late as possible before weighing, but that always ends up biting me, because I will have to weigh early the next day and get to work.

Anyway, what did I eat yesterday...I have foregone the "Atkins bars" (for now) which have low net carbs, but high carbs. People are dubious if they are really atkins friendly. I find them yummy, although my wife doesn't like them at all. For breakfast, which I ate late on Sunday morning, I had a three egg omelette with beef summer sausage and mozzarella cheese. To get the pan ready, I fried a few pieces of summer sausage and ate them too. So four thin slices of salami, and half a 3-egg omelette. I could only finish half. I think that's a good sign of my appetite getting to diet levels. I had two slices of string cheese and some more summer sausage throughout the day. I am not sure how many oz or whatever of these that I had, because that's not the Atkins way. For dinner, my wife made a quiche (from the store). I scooped out the quich-y part in the middle, and ate that. Left the crust behind. So basically eggs, cheese and spinach. All low carb. To go with that, we had a salad -- spinach leaves from a bag, Cardini's ceasar dressing, kalamata olives and feta cheese. Very yummy and no carbs...well, there are a little in the spinach. Atkins limits the amount of veggies that you can eat for the first couple weeks, but I figure spinach and lettuce are good no matter what diet you're on. Also, I checked my Fat percentage on the scale -- 33.8%. This is another good metric to watch (along with actual belly size). For me, I want to target about 20%. Right now, I have about 69 pounds of fat (204*34%). If I could get to 20% and be at 170, I'd be at 170*20%=34 pounds. 69-34=35. So if I lose 35 lbs of fat, I will be at about 168. That seems about right. This is also important if you start exercising/lifting weights. You don't want to penalize yourself if you start putting on weight from the exercise, but continue to lose the fat.

Still no running - but week into atkins

I started on the atkins diet last monday (it's sunday now). It took a few days to get it dialed in. One of the keys is a good breakfast -- I recommend three eggs. They've got 80 calories each, and they will fill you up. When I don't have eggs for breakfast, I'm hungry all morning. That leads to snacking and bad things. You can also have a three egg omelette with melted cheese inside...yummy and totally atkins compliant.
Last night, we went out to Romio's Pizza in Greenwood and had "Atkins Pizza" where they put the toppings on a plate and heat it up. It's not super atkins compliant because there is lots of tomato sauce. you can ask them to make it with garlic oil base rather than tomato sauce. Then it's pretty atkins compliant.
After a week I'm down from 206.8 to 203.8. So not so bad, but not great. Hopefully I can get out and jog at least a little bit sometime this weekend.