FatBloggers.net A little push to lose the tush.

HT to Lou at Male Pattern Fitness

According to this article in the Washington Post, women usually lose 10-12 lbs. before the onset of dementia.   But the same study shows that there isn’t a similar correlation for men.

Apparently men lose their marbles for unknown reasons.

Up until now this whole weight loss thing has been pretty smooth sailing for me. I’ve worked really hard and been fortunate to have 11 straight weeks of losses. This weekend turned out to be my first major gale. I know it’s something you have all gone through.

This weekend I made the decision to stop worrying about my calories and enjoy myself for the weekend. A rational decision after 11 weeks of counting every little calorie. I was on vacation after all. Unfortunately, giving myself permission to stop counting calories some how translated into giving myself permission to stop working out and to stop watching what I eat.

I ended up gaining back the three pounds that I lost last week. And it is looking very likely that I am going to have my first gain in 11 weeks.

I am not so worried about how much I ate this weekend. In the grand scheme of things it wasn’t horrible. I didn’t sneak snacks or eat any more than everyone else. I even made a few smart decisions (Turkey brats instead of regular, etc.)

I’m not even that worried about the possibility of a gain.. beyond being disappointed at breaking my 11 week streak.

I had a great weekend with my family and I didn’t let the weight gain ruin it!

Here are the two things that really worry me.

1. After feeding my body at something approaching my old rate of calorie consumption, my body is seriously joensing for more, more, more. I am having cravings like I haven’t had for nearly two months now. I hope that getting back on routine this week will help settle things down, but it was a challenge not to break down and sneak a snack or two on my solo trip to the grocery store on Sunday.

2. It was way to easy to not go out for my run on Saturday and Sunday. Sure the weather was lousy, but I had plenty of opportunities to get out and walk and I didn’t take them. Instead I sat around watching TV all day.

I thought I was beyond this point. I thought it would be harder to back slide than it turned out to be. And that is what really scares me.

If I am someone who is truly addicted to food, then my vigilance will need to be a life time thing. It is not something I will be cured of after I get to my goal weight. I had started to think that I was invincible to food. I got cocky and now food has put me back in my place.

So we start over, get back on routine and hopefully take heart in the lesson learned: I have a long way to go!

Tony
8/21: 242.4 lbs.
Goal: 220 lbs.
22.4 lbs. to go

I’m having a pretty good day (more on that in the next post), so I thought I would start putting a bit of my own  fingerprint on FatBloggers.

I just moderated a comment on a post Lady Rose wrote back on July 18th entitled ‘Rethinking healthy eating plan’. The commenter made the point that where you eat is almost as important as what you eat, he then linked to an online polling site. Rather than sending our readers away, I have posted a NEW POLL on the right to make the sample group more focused to our purposes (college statistics paying off).
So, vote away and leave your thoughts!

Well, my excuse for not posting and not keeping a close eye on my Weight Watchers is just about up.  I’ve moved to a different town, I’m just about settled in, and I now have the Internet in my home again. 

It’s not that I have abandoned my weight loss; it’s quite the opposite, in fact.  For the past week and a half or so I’ve been working without a net, just choosing what foods I should have and what I shouldn’t, but not really keeping track of it officially on the Weight Watchers site.  I also made a couple of trips to Seattle in the time, a distance of about 300 miles one way for me.  Eating on the road is tough–John, I don’t know how you managed your trip to Montana. 

So, starting today, I’m getting my food recorded again.  I’m under my points so far for today.  And at some point in the next week or so, I’m going to be paying a visit to a local WW meeting and posting my results on here.  I may be up a little, I may be down.  The main thing is that I’m staying accountable for all of it, and that’s the reason I started this blog in the first place.  Technically, I’m on maintenance, and I have six weeks from my last weigh-in (July 3) to be at 247 or less.  Hmmm…that was a month ago, so I’ve just got a couple of weeks to go.  Looks like I need to get on the stick. 

One thing about my new hometown:  It’s relatively flat, and there are bike paths all over the place.  I’ve been utilizing them quite a bit the last few days.  Plus, there is a biking club that meets Tuesdays and Thursdays for road trips. 

Glad to be back, folks.  It doesn’t get much better than this.

I have read many different postings on the recent study that fat spreads amongst social networks. I think I may have a reasonable explanation for this.  That doesn’t use alot of scientific and sociological mumbo-jumbo.

Fat people hang out together… or grow fat together because of what they enjoy doing together. Back in the day, I had a friend and our favorite place to socialize was Izzy’s. For those of you not from Oregon, Izzy’s is a phenomenally yummy pizza buffet restaurant. Their jo-jo’s are so heavenly, it is the one thing that my wife craved when she was pregnant with the twins.  My friend and I would ‘compete’ in the number of plates we filled and emptied. Disgusting, right?

On the other hand, healthy, studly people do things like; climb rock walls, go on nature hikes, play basketball and lift heavy objects together down at the gym before going to Abercrombie & Fitch to buy clothes that enhance their studly physiques.

They could have saved a lot a time and money on this study if they had just asked me for the correlation.  What are you thoughts? Does your fitness/health match the company you keep?

Tony commented on my Week 30 post:

Nice job John! Keep up the great work. 30 weeks is along time. It’s very impressive and inspiring to see how dedicated you still are.

He is not the first person to say something along that vein. I have mentioned the diets I’ve been on, the money I’ve spent and the tonnage that I have lost and gained. If Tony is impressed, the comments I am getting from people that have known me for any length of time are slightly less than encouraging.

I have posted on my personal blog, the list of mini-goals I have placed in front of me, currently working on losing 25 lbs. between Memorial Day and Labor Day.

Yesterday I heard a comment at Weight Watchers about “being successful in the long haul“. To tell you the truth, I am surprised that I am still having success 30 weeks into this journey. So I made some calculations as to just how LONG the long haul is going to be.

Over the last 30 weeks, I have lost an average of 1.8 lbs. per week. At that rate, it will take 78 weeks to reach my goal weight of 196 lbs.

78 weeks sounds like a LONG time!

But there is something else that is only going to be around for another 78 weeks.

Something that is a bit MORE in the public eye.

I removed  the link/animation I had here… I’ll give you a hint… 78 weeks takes me up to around January 20, 2009.

There will be a MAJOR event taking place that day.

As a dedicated calorie counter (I try to limit to 1200 calories per day), I’ve found a new favorite (chain) restaurant.  It’s Uno Chicago Grill.  Now, I admit may seem like an unusual, and possibly terrible choice for someone on a diet.  After all, their signature single serving deep dish pizzas start at 1700 calories, and go as high as 2330 calories per serving!!  Talk about a great way to blow a diet.  By the way, that 2330 calorie option is the “Farmer’s Market Vegetable” pizza - so don’t pick that one thinking it’s the most healthy…

Given that information, what could I possibly like about this place?  Two things: they have a lot of other good choices besides those calorie stuffed pizzas, and they make the nutritional information of their entire menu available from a little computer kiosk at the front of the restaurant.  I know exactly how much of what I can have, and still stay 100% on target for my diet.  Perhaps more importantly, it simply lets me enjoy myself while eating at a restaurant, which is extremely difficult when I have to worry about what and how much I can or can’t have to stay on target. 

I was even more thrilled the last time I went to Uno’s, because they had a new “summer fresh” menu, which was just a two page menu addition with some new salads.  Certain items on this menu had a “under 600 calories” designation right on the menu.  I didn’t even have to go check their in-store computer.  I knew I had enough calories left for the day to allow for at least 600, so I happily picked one, and thoroughly enjoyed my Asian Chicken Salad, to the last bite.

As far as I’m concerned, if Uno Chicago Grill can make their dish’s nutritional information readily available on location, anybody can (and should!).  I know a lot of places don’t agree though.  Some business are throwing fits about a New York Board of Health requirement that calorie information be printed on menus, in the same size as the menu item description.  I’m not sure that dictating exactly how the information is provided is a good idea, but the backlash from some business is ridiculous.  Coldstone Creamery is apparently so angry about this, they have simply stopped providing nutritional information altogether, unless you e-mail them and wait about 5 days for a response.  They don’t publish the information online at all anymore.  That pisses me off.  Just because I’m on a diet doesn’t mean I don’t want some ice cream sometimes.  I just want to be informed and smart about it.  Now they’re forcing me to make a uninformed decision about my diet, or to eliminate me as a customer. 

The worst of the worst however are the large chain restaurants that don’t provide nutritional information at all.  In the case of small places, I understand that may be a cost they can’t afford to take on, but the big guys really have no excuse.  Case and point, Red Robin.  Apparently they’re so ashamed of their food, they won’t tell you a single thing about it.  Not online, not in the store, not via e-mail, not anywhere.  I recently had the unhappy experience of finding this out only AFTER I had dinner there one night.  I did my best to eat reasonably, assuming I’d be able to check and confirm my choices were ok online after I got home, but there was no information to be found.  Searching for it only turned up more complaints and dismissive form-letter-type responses from folks requesting their nutritional information. 

I have to admit I never expected I’d get so worked up about nutritional information at restaurants, but being serious about my diet means I really have to take this kind of stuff seriously.  Dieting is hard work.  Anybody that makes it easier gets gold starts in my book.  I guess anybody that makes it harder just doesn’t care for my business.

I think our scale is possessed! At the least, it has a really bad sense of humor. We have one of these fancy digital scales that records weight losses and gains for up to four people. For the the last three weeks our scale has been messing with my head. After pressing the person two button, I step on the scale and rejoice at the massive weight loss. Then I think to myself, “There is no way I lost 7 pounds again this week.” So, I step off the scale, rezero it and step back on, only to be smacked in the eyeballs with disappointment as the real weight is revealed. I can almost hear those little circuits laughing.

Last week the scale said 257 when I first stepped on. For a brief moment tears of  joy started to well in my eyes… and then I remembered, stepped off the scale, took a deep breath and tried again.

The biggest problem with this whole scenario is it makes my very respectable losses of two and three pounds initially disappointing because I have been tricked into the false hope that I am some sort of super loser.

Curse you, you mean old scale.

Man I hope  my scale doesn’t read this. It might get ticked off and really start messing with me.

Tony
7/10: 262.2 lbs.
Goal: 220 lbs.
42.2 lbs. to go

Cross published at Guess Who Much I Weigh 

Several weeks ago, I made a post on what it would take to lose a pound of fat. It seems that is a popular way to gauge the enormity of what all of us are doing here. This site calculates more information that you probably wanted to know about just what you have accomplished.

So far, I have lost a bit over 49 pounds. When I input that info, I find out that:

Cutting 171,500 calories would be like saying no to:

To burn 171,500 calories, it took:

All in all, a pretty impressive accomplishment.

Several of you use the Body Mass Index (BMI) to see if you’re considered normal, overweight, or obese. According to this calculator, I’m considered obese. However, I’m only about 10 pounds away from my goal weight, which has been approved by a doctor. If I get down to the weight where I’m considered “normal”, I’d be about 197. I was in the 8th grade last time I weighed that much. I’m 6′5″, and graduated from high school in good shape at 230. Any insight into this?

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