This blog marks my decision to give up on fad diets and do what actually works; eating right and exercising. During my journey, I will be trying out various diet plans to find what works best for me as well as sharing tips, recipes and some humorous news about the latest diet snake oil on the market.
On the morning of Christmas 2005, I opened my new scale and learned for the first time just how much I really weighed -- 441lbs! For nearly two years, I tried every snake oil diet on the market. I tried things like three-day water fasts and drinking lemonade with cayenne pepper. In that time, I only managed to lose about 20 pounds.
For the past few years, I've had a reoccurring problem during the winter where I get a sinus infection. This year I managed to avoid it and I thought I was going to make it to spring without getting sick. But today proved otherwise. I woke up with an earache that eventually progressed to a fever and sore throat. Thankfully, my co-workers had some Tylenol and cough drops, so I was able to make it through the day.
Tonight I stopped to get my own supply of over-the-counter remedies and I came to a startling realization -- there is sugar in medicine. I was comparing the active ingredients in different medicines when I noticed they all had sugar in them. I ended up picking up a caplet cough suppressant instead of a liquid and cough drops made with aspartame instead of sugar.
I suppose that these medicines would taste horrible without sugar in them, but still -- who enjoys taking medicine? I take it because I want to feel better and not because it is tasty. To make matters worse, drug labeling is vastly different than food labeling, so I really had to look to figure out which products were sugar-free.
Remember Jared from Subway? He's the guy who lost nearly 100 pounds in three months eating at Subway. I've read before that the diet he ate was dangerously low calorie, but Jared has been able to keep the weight off for ten years, so he must have found something that works for him. It probably doesn't hurt that he gets big paychecks from Subway as long as he stays their thin spokesman.
I didn't change my eating plan at the beginning of February. I was planning to change to the one supposedly featured in the book The Slow Burn Fitness Revolution but it turns out that the book was only an advertisement for another, The Protein Power Lifeplan. Instead of rushing right out and buying a second book, I just stuck to Atkins. It has only been two extra weeks, but that decision is wearing on me. I miss the rush of starting something new and the motivation that naturally comes with it.
As a result, I've decided to try Jared's plan for the next two weeks -- without forking over all that money to Subway. I picked up hoagie rolls, lunch meat and vegetables from the store tonight. Adding in some baked chips, the meal comes to about 400 calories. Three of those a day will put me at the recommended minimum. We'll see how it goes, and it is only for two weeks. That should be enough to jolt me out of my current plateau and then I'll start something new for March.
Those wacky scientists and the media are at it again (still). In one week, I'm reading two different opinions on caffeine. One says that it is the best thing you can do for your body and the other says it can make you fat. According to this month's issue of Men's Health, scientists at Harvard found that drinking five cups of coffee a day cuts the risk of developing diabetes in half. At the same time, researches at Duke University are reporting that consuming the caffeine in four cups of coffee can raise a diabetic's daily sugar level by 8%. I suppose these two things don't really conflict, since one deals with non-diabetics and the other with diabetics, but it still could lead to consumer confusion.
Well, personally, I know I'm addicted to the stuff. If I go a day or two without it, I get headaches and cranky. That is probably a bad thing, but I really don't have time to battle with the addiction. I'm thinking of doing some sort of caffeine detox on my vacation in May, but we'll see how that goes then.
Thankfully, there are plenty of caffeine sources for me to rely on in the mean time. Snickers Charged is a new candy bar that has 60 milligrams of caffeine, taurine and other vitmains in it. I'm sure it has a ton of sugar in it, so I'll be sticking to my Monster Lo-Carb. In a recent comparison of energy drinks, Monster was the all-around winner when considering both taste and energy delivered. While the ill-named Cocaine energy drink gave more energy, it apparently tasted like pure pain. Thanks, but no thanks.
Have you seen the trailer for the new Iron Man movie? It looks wicked awesome and I can't wait to see it. My birthay is in May, so I'll probably drag my wife off to see it.
So what does that have to do with weight loss and fitness? Well, apparently a lot of men my age have a superhero complex that keeps them from visiting the doctor regularly. I don't hesitate to go to the doctor when I'm sick, but I don't go when I'm healthy. The last time I was really sick, I had a leg infection and I ended up going to the doctor every few days for a month until we found the right antibiotic. After that, I think I had enough of going to the doctor for awhile.
But, I do want to schedule a physical later this year. The guys who wrote You: Staying Young recommend a number of vaccines and tests and detail how often you should get them from your doctor. According to their list, I'm due for a tetanus shot and cholesterol tests. I plan to get the cholesterol tests done soon since I'm losing weight and eating a lot of fat, but I'll be honest -- I don't want to go to the doctor right now.
Last time I was there, I was so sick I hadn't eaten for days and I was down to 405lbs. Once I got healthy, I shot back up in weight but now I feel like I haven't lost much in their eyes. If I go there and tell them I'm losing weight, they won't know just how serious I am. Apparently, I want some praise from my doctor and not another "talk" about my weight. I've heard it all from my doctors over the years -- from "it is just baby fat, don't worry" to "here, take this pill" to "you're hopeless, get bypass surgery."
I'll admit it -- last week, I only walked one day. To make it worse, the day that I did walk was only because I wanted to get out of the lunch room and didn't have anywhere to go before my lunch ended. I did find a neat abandoned road that leads to a dead end so it has seen more traffic from geese lately than from cars.
I walked today and my plan is to keep at it since, according to a recent study, an irregular exercise pattern may add pounds. While the study focused on runners who move a lot more miles per week than I do, the advice can't hurt. Hopefully by walking more regularly, I'll build up to huge numbers like 30 miles per week.
When commenting on the study, Paul Williams of Berkeley Lab’s Life Sciences Division said:
We are getting fat because we don’t exercise sufficiently and consistently. The real solution to the obesity epidemic is getting people to exercise before they think they need it, and to stick with it. The ounce of prevention is indeed worth a pound of cure.
I'll be the first to admit that I'm not a big sports fan. It is awesome when my local sports team does well, but I can't stand watching the games. I was recently at a Flyers game and after the first thirty seconds, it was boring. If it wasn't for every food related blog I read mentioning party snacks this week, I would have had no idea that today was the big game.
Of all the articles I've read this week, the most interesting one wasn't about party food. Apparently, the number of cardiac emergencies doubles during big, important sporting events and triples just when considering men. The article mentions reducing stress during the game to protect your heart but it also goes so far as to warn off fatty foods during the game.
That point struck me as odd for two reasons. First of all, bad food choices can hurt your heart health, but that quickly? If you eat a bad meal right now, does it raise your risk of heart attack in the next two minutes? Secondly, I would rather recommend people eat healthy, low-carb snacks. How many people will enjoy cola and candy at the game and think they did something good for their health? "I avoided all that fatty guacamole and steak!"
So while I normally don't like to toot my own horn or boast, I would like to announce that for the first time in my weight loss journey, I've met one of my goals! I wanted to lose ten pounds in January and I did it! I weight from 400.8lbs to 390.4lbs, even with a few bad weekends. I could lose more if I stuck to my eating plan 100%, but I know myself and I know that my weight loss chart will always look more like a series of hills than a water slide.
I'm sure that one of my sources of motivation this past month has been this blog. Even if only a few people are reading it, I know that someone is keeping tabs on me. Sharing your goals means that if you fail, you have to tell someone!
Here we go again! February is a little shorter than January, so it will be a little harder, but I'm aiming for 380lbs by the end of the month. I've also added a Flickr photo album to my blog with the charts of my weight loss since I started. I use the tools over at the Hacker's Diet Online to track my weight because I really like the trend line. Even if I have one bad day, it lets me know that over all, I'm still losing.
