Some Weight Loss

On the first day back from holiday break (January 3), I committed to a bet with four of my co-workers on who can drop the most weight by March 12.  We all put in $50 and the winner was to be determined by the most weight lost as a percentage of their starting weight.

The contest ended last month.  Against some stiff competition, I was the victor.  I won $175 but more importantly, I lost 28lbs.

Below I will enumerate some things I learned or found interesting along the way.  None of this should be shocking nor was any of it a huge revelation to me.  These are just some of the things that I found to work for me.

Exercise

• Along with proper diet, this is obviously half of the equation to weight loss.  I’ve exercised off an on over the years and remain somewhat active by biking around Cleveland, but I haven’t been on a legit regiment in some time.  At least until now.
• The key here is to create and stick to a schedule.  No matter how tired you are – go to the gym on your gym days (that you schedule ahead of time).
• I started by running the treadmill – something I loathe with much passion.  I started by running one mile and thinking I was going to die.  Then I would do a run/walk mix to get to three miles.  Then five.  Then five with no walking.  Then running six miles straight 3 days a week.
• I reached a point where I enjoyed running, kind of.  The nights I didn’t run I felt like a bum.  On nights that I ran, I enjoyed coming home tired from a legit work out, rather than staying up all night following a sedentary day with zero exercise.
• Listen to music/podcasts when you run, obviously.  It keeps things interesting and you can learn quite a bit from podcasts.
• Don’t have your cell phone by you when you run.  Don’t watch TV.  Don’t talk to other people in the gym when you’re exercising .  Those are just a few things that I felt impeded the point.
• Beyond running, I biked much more around town and for errands.  Trips to the market were now by bike (as they should be).  I often parked my car on Fridays and didn’t move it until Monday morning to go to work – I tried to bike everywhere.  I’m sure that I’ve plateaued over the years in terms of biking for weight loss – but it certainly helps on non-gym days to leisurely bike 10-12 mi., just to stay active.

Diet

• I messed with two diets on this endeavor, one traditional and one that was something new and fad-ish.  I explain each below:

• Slow Carb Diet - From Tim Ferris’ book, The 4 Hour Body (that I bought for $4 at a garage sale last summer).  It’s a diet comprised of high protein and low carb – but NOT zero carb.  Beans, lentils and other legumes are encouraged and help suppress hunger.  Here’s a gallery of a bunch of meals I ate (the plates were left over from valentines day, deal with it).  It was challenging, but effective.  The only thing that kept me going was the one day a week cheat day where I could consume whatever I wanted.  I ended up at Melt for one cheat day, and the Westside Market on the others, hazardously indulging in high-carb treats.  ¶ It’s a cool though, grilling a steak can help with the bore of dieting.  Lastly, you can’t eat fruit on this diet – which is a total killer.  Walking through the market produce building while on this diet was one of hardest things imaginable.  Dried strawberries were what I craved the most – odd.

• Low Calorie / Frequent Meals – This was just my rendition of a common weight loss approach: eat small portioned meals often.  I would eat a small granola bar for breakfast, a Greek yogurt around mid-morning, lunch was a microwave-steamed Green Giant vegetable thing, afternoon was an apple and then on to dinner.  I had the tendency to eat very well while at work but would eat larger meals when I got home or went out to eat (which happened all too often).  Regardless, this too was an effective contributor to my weight loss, I even saw more loss here than with the slow carb thing.

• It should be noted I cut my soda intake from quite a bit to absolutely nothing during this entire affair.  No diet soda, no regular.  Even no beer when I was in the thick of it.  It was extremely challenging at first, but became easier in time.  There became a point where I didn’t even crave soda, which was nice considering the junkie withdrawal symptoms that occur early on.

Data

• That’s me there in the purple (Google Docs).  The ups and downs are a result of my weekends in which I indulge in much beer and dining out:

• NOTE: I’ve officially grown bored of this post and will now rush to finish and publish after a month of it sitting as a draft…
• I initially used Google Docs to track what I ate and my weight.  
• Here is the spreadsheet used to track the competition, complete with graphs and gauges!
• I used a Garmin Forerunner to track my treadmill time.  It’s a pretty solid platform, here is one of my better runs.  

• I used MyFitnessPal.com (web, Android and iPad) to track what I ate.  Friend me here!

• AND, I just bought a FitBit.  Here’s one of my better days:

• UPDATE – check this out, Garmin Connect’s new Player feature.  It was a slow run today as I wasn’t feeling it, but watch in full screen mode.  Garmin’s cray.
• And that’s it for this post.
• It’s been a month and I’ve continued to drop.  Still running for an hour+ 3-4 times per week.  A bit more lax on my diet now, however.
• My average grocery bill has gone down a bit, too – the slow carb diet can be somewhat expensive.
• More later…