A good week and a good weekend

Three interesting and encouraging things happened this week.
The focus on weight loss can be contagious...
Earlier week I had lunch with a friend of mine and mentioned that I had lost 10 lbs on the Atkins diet.  We had lunch at McCormick's, the pub/restaurant in our building, and I had the blackened salmon ceasar salad -- 0 carbs if you don't eat the croutons.  I told her I either get that or the salmon omelette.  Again, no carbies.  And they are both awesome.  So that afternoon I ran into her in the hall.  And she told me that she was inspired and had ordered the South Beach Diet book and Amazon was shipping it (Prime).  She had challenged herself to lose 10 lbs.  Her husband told her that her ideal weight was 4 lbs less than what she weighed (really, that doesn't sound like a good thing).  Anyway, she doesn't need to lose weight.  But she's gonna try the south beach diet, which seems to be what people do when they want to do low carb but have a bad "unhealthy" perception about Atkins.  They are both low carb, but my experience with reading about South Beach is that it is much more complicated.  You eat a 1/2 oz of low fat yogure here, and some skim milk at another time...whatever, atkins is simple.  Anything that doesn't have carbs -- meat, cheese, eggs, vegetables.  Anyway, it is nice that other people think it's cool.  I'm cheering for you, Michelle!

Then this weekend, my friends Chris and Mike got back from their Xmas vacation at their parents/in-laws houses and decided they're going to lose some weight too.  We often have playdates because we both have four year olds, so this weekend we loaded up the kids and took them over to Greenlake, a local lake with a 2.8mile path around it.  We walked the whole thing.  When I was actually running, the trainer told me to keep my heart rate below 156 for optimal training.  And when I was at the gym, the fat burner thing said to keep it at 118.  To do that, I had to go 1.6 mph on the treadmill.  So I compromised, and it turned out walking briskly, I could keep my heart rate at 140-150.  this was about 18 min/mile, or a little over 3mph.  We did that and then all had low carb brunch at a local pub.  I had veggie omelet, and they had salads.  Yum.

This morning, I weight in expecting to be at a new low (below 196.4).  Unfortunately, I was a little above that.  About 196.8.  This was a little disappointing after the exercise, but I've noticed this sometimes happens after the exercise.  I think it's because you actually build muscle which adds weight.  And I've been doing crunches too.  Anyway, the good thing was I was at 30.7% body fat, about 5% down from where I started.  That was lowest I've seen, which adds to my theory about the muscle.  That is encouraging, but it would be nice to make progress on the weight as well.

Finally, I got my first comment, from someone I don't even know that has been reading along.  This was the high point of the weekend, so thank you!  It has encouraged me to make this long post.

I did a little pre-bedtime weigh-in tonight and I was below 198.  That's encouraging as I often lose 2 lbs overnight.  So maybe will have a new local minimum tomorrow!

Two steps forward, one step back

I did a good job of keeping it low carb yesterday -- new year's eve. But even so I ate too much. We went to a NYE party and I grazed on (beef) salami and pepper jack cheese, with a side of a couple of glasses of wine and some champagne. I was back up to 197.6 this morning. So I guess I got a one month jump on all the New Year's resolution dieters, but now I'm gonna have to buckle down to get the next 30 lbs.
I'm going to try to make it out to run a couple miles this afternoon. Low carb + running = twice as fast weight loss. I went to the gym the other day and put the treadmill on the "fat burner" mode. The fat burner mode tries to keep your heart rate at something like (220-your age)*0.65. I'm 38, so it was 182*0.65=118 beats per minute. Guess what, I didn't have to go very fast to get to 118 bpm. It was embarassingly slow -- 1.6mph, which is about a 37 minute mile. I could actually walk around the block and my heart rate would be higher than 118. But it's not much sense of accomplishment.
Why does the fat burner want me at 118? You will burn more calories at higher levels, but the higher your heart rate is, the more calories are burned from carbs. The lower the heart rate is, the more calories are burned from fat. I went in and had a study done at the physical therapist and they found (when I was running much more) that the crossover for me from burning fat to burning carbs is 156 bpm. So I could probably do more than 118 and be ok. The other thing to think about is that if you're on the atkins diet, you don't have any carbs to burn so maybe you can go higher with heart rate without burning carbs.

Anyway, there's a lot of people with lots of opinions, but one consistent message I've seen is it's better to run slower and for longer times, than to run shorter distances faster. This will help you burn more fat. It's tough if you are a macho guy to run 12-13 minute miles (or even 37 min miles), but that's probably the most effective weight loss strategy.

Also, the Seattle Rock n Roll marathon is coming up in June, and if I want to run I have to start training now! It will take at least six months to get in shape from the state of atrophy my body is in today.

Happy New Year to anyone who reads this.

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).