Something new this way cometh…
I’m not even sure “cometh” is even a word, but I assure you that I will have lots to say come the New Year. I’ve taken a few more steps towards a healthier lifestyle and physique. It’s going to be an interesting journey because I’ve never done anything like this before.
The long and the short of it is I’m getting help. Real help and on top of that a plan will be in place. A new friend of mine who has years of training experience said to me the other day… “I saw your blog on trying to lose weight. I thought it was pretty ballsy to put it all out there, but I also knew you were doomed to fail. Not because you lacked motivation, not because you lacked intelligence. You were doomed to fail because you didn’t have a plan.”
I had to admit, there wasn’t much of a plan. Just a desire to stop being fat.
So now there is a plan.
It’s gonna be an interesting ride.
We’ll talk more in the New Year.
Until then…
Love, Peace and Hairgrease.
brodg
Weigh-In Week 8 – Two months of focus!
Hey everyone, it’s your friendly neighbourhood fat blogger… it’s been a while since I posted.
For those of you keeping score we’re now in week 8. I suspect some of you think there is a trend going on here. “Hmmm… whenever Rodgers doesn’t lose weight we don’t seem to get a blog post. Seems to me we’re only getting the positive side of things here.”
Not true, well it is true but not by intention. After week 5 my week 6 weigh-in was not exactly earth shattering – while I didn’t gain any weight I didn’t lose any either. However if I was keeping with the trend that would mean in week 7 I didn’t lose any weight either which is also not true.
The truth is the Rodgers family got clobbered with the flu – it’s now been more than 2 weeks since it hit me and the lovely and talented Mrs. Rodgers, Michelle, is going into her 2nd week (although we are SO much better than what we were). It’s been a while since I’ve been knocked on my ass like that by the flu. It pretty much had me in bed for 3 days straight by necessity and I could’ve used an additional 2 more.
Despite that I’ve been pretty consistent over the past few weeks, at least with my diet. Exercise has been out of the question as I’d just end up coughing till I threw up (Yes I know nice image).
To be frank I am surprised to see week 8 arrive. I’m not known as a “Finisher”. I think I made that statement in one of my very first blog posts. I’m a great starter that’s for sure but I can lack focus when it comes to the long haul. For me 2 months of paying attention to this thing is pretty impressive. For those of us with short attention spans it’s pretty darned good. The crazy thing is I have many more months ahead of me. I probably have at least a year of paying attention to my diet, lifestyle, exercise, yadda, yadda… and that’s just to lose the weight. After that I have years plural to maintain and keep the weight off. I try not to think of if it that way. Sure I look at the big picture, you have to, you need to understand where the goal is. But I don’t dwell on it. It’s much easier to take it one day at time and then look back and see that you’ve actually had some focused commitment for an extend period of time. Despite having the attention span of a gnat.
That kind of led me to this weeks post. The fact that I haven’t exercised in 3 weeks and am still losing weight is interesting to me.
Here is the bottom line for those of us who are obese and trying to lose weight. Make sure you read that right, for those of us who are obese and are trying to lose weight. The bottom line here is diet. DIET! WHAT YOU ARE EATING!
I have heard so many different theories, philosophies, theologies and practices over the past 8 weeks on how to lose weight, if I had a dime… you know the rest.
People have said to me…
“Brent, you shouldn’t have to count calories man – just lower your (carb, sugar, fat, saturated fat, gluten, alcohol, cholesterol, parasol, lordhelpusol - insert any number of additional things here) intake and you’ll be fine.”
“Brent you don’t need to weigh things or measure your food or anything like that – just use a smaller plate.”
“Brent just chew 150 times between each mouthful of food… take a drink of water between every bite… put your fork down between each bite… stand on your head and then run around the house between each bite…”
Yes I exaggerate. But only a little bit. Listen to me people… if you are trying to lose weight (remember what I said – if you want to lose weight) you need to EAT LESS! …and that is truly the bottom line. Eat less. At the end of every day you need to have burned more calories than you have taken in. That’s honestly it distilled down to it’s base form. You can also do this any way you want. If you have a maximum calories intake of 1500 calories per day, you can drink 10.71 cans of Coke per day as your only calorie source if you want and you will lose wight. You will… and probably lots of it. Would I recommend that? Of course not! But that’s the thing about calorie reduction, if you reduce your calories you will lose weight. Even if you do it with the wrong foods/drinks – you will still lose weight – you may feel like crap and as soon as you go back to normal eating you will probably gain it all back.
That’s why this lifestyle needs to be sustainable, that’s why you DON”T drink your daily calories per day. That’s why when you snack after dinner you look for smart snacks that help you. Total deprivation or being extreme does not help you – you will only deprive yourself for so long before you give in or cave.
So that’s the reality here – if you are obese and trying to lose weight… 95% of the battle is what you eat or don’t eat.
Well Brent what about exercise? Yeah definitely, totally important – do it and do it everyday if you can. But it’s very difficult for you to work off that Baconator Combo from Wendy’s on the treadmill – push-ups will get rid of some of that extra beer you drank on St. Paddy’s day but it won’t touch the 8 slices of pizza you ate. Think about it… how many of you have been going to the gym for years regularly seeing the same guys there sweating like dogs every morning at 6am and looking EXACTLY the same as they did 2 years ago!?! Yeah that’s right, nothing has changed and maybe that’s you too.
It’s the diet man – people seem to be able to make the sacrifice in the morning for the gym but won’t get rid of the sugar in their coffee or the bagel & cream cheese for a 10am snack at work. It’s the Diet man. Personally I’d much rather eat less than get up early.
Here is the other thing. If you are fat then you are just like me and have absolutely no concept of portion sizes anymore. That’s why I measure/weigh almost everything I put in my mouth. Portion sizes now are insane. Your morning Double Double from Timmy’s in the morning… is it a large? Is it the large from 2 months ago or the current large? Cuz if it’s the large from 2 months ago that’s now a medium and the new large now is the old extra large from before. Confused yet? This is why we have no clue about portion sizes, because restaurants are dictating what size of plate we need. All of the fast food joints sizes have slowly moved up in the scales over the years – so much so that the original portion sizes would now be considered a joke and not worth the money.
So to those of you who say “You don’t need to weigh your food…” I say BS – I’m fat for a reason, I’m fat because I eat too much, I’m fat because I think anything not Super Sized looks too small. It’s BS because I need to know what a proper portion size looks like. When I first started doing this I would eat 2 cups of rice at dinner. That seemed like the right amount. Now? 2 cups looks like a massive amount of food on my plate. I slowly cut down the portion size in quarter increments until I arrived at where I’m at now – 1 cup of rice at any meal and it’s more than enough. You need to train your stomach to eat less.
Another thing I’ve heard from others is that they’re not losing weight even though they’re counting their calories. Well sure that’s totally possible, I mean it’s not the counting of calories that helps you lose weight. It’s the eating of LESS CALORIES! You need to eat less!
The truth is folks you have to be absolutely ruthless with yourself …
Look I have had 3 weigh-ins where I either didn’t lose a single pound or I only lost a single pound. At first I had this like indignant outrage at the scale, as if the scale had betrayed me. I mean how could this be!?! I was counting calories after all! In the end I always realized that I was lying to myself on my calorie count. I was betraying myself. Half a cup of coke here (not recorded or accounted for) a sour key or two there (not recorded or accounted for) stupid snacks that are small in quantity but large in frequency (Cadbury’s Mini-Eggs. Those suckers’ll sneak up on ya!) – which aren’t THAT bad but I haven’t tracked them – so sure I ate 1500 calories for the day but also ate an extra 600 calories that didn’t show up in my calorie count for the day. Do you know how hard it is to exercise away 600 extra calories? It ain’t easy let me tell you.
In the end I’m lying to myself. On paper the calories don’t show up, but they do show up in my gut and third chin. You are almost always found out when you lie to yourself. Why do that? It’s not like your telling everyone in a blog anyways, nobody else needs to know but you – but if you’re gonna do it at least be honest with yourself. You’ve been cheating yourself for a long time now – that’s how we got to this obese, unhealthy slothful state. Don’t keep doing it. The truth is folks you have to be absolutely ruthless with yourself otherwise you are just lying to yourself.
I have a feeling I may sound a bit angry or cranky in this post, that’s not case, really, I just feel pretty strongly about this – we have so much access to so much information when it comes to weight loss and fitness. Yet so much of it is crap, gimicky distractions that make us think there is an easy way to get out of this mess. I maintain that I am not an expert and I have certainly simplified the process to work for me. But it’s a pretty easy concept to get. Eat less weigh less. I know the further I go with this that it probably will be come more complicated. At some point food will be more like medicine designed to fuel my body. But at this point I’m pretty damn overweight and I just need to eat less food (and healthier food) on a consistent basis.
There is no easy way out of this dudes. You got fat and unhealthy and now, now you gotta fit and healthy. That’s going to take some work and sacrifice and some common sense.
Oh jeez! I nearly forgot – the weigh in! 
So I weighed-in this morning on the trusty Wii Fit with my Biggest Loser video game and was very pleased to see that I had lost 4 pounds! Here is how the past few weeks looked like from a weight loss stand point.
Week 5 Feb 27 – 222lbs
Week 6 Mar 5th – 222lbs
Week 7 Mar 12th – 218lbs
(Current) Week 8 Mar 19th – 214lbs
That’s a grand total of 23 pounds over the course of 8 weeks – an average weight loss of 2.88lbs/week or a total percentage of weight loss of 9.7%! Not too shabby I must say! Feeling pretty good.
It was certainly not my intention to get on a soap box this post, but I have to admit my passion for this is building every week . Especially as I talk with more and more people who are on this journey with me.
I’d love to hear if any of you are having some success – it would be great to hear your story so please don’t be shy. I hope you feel encouraged by one (not that mad) fat man’s struggle to get healthy.
Love, Peace and Hairgrease
brodg
Weigh-In Week 5 – I can’t believe it’s week 5 already!
Man time really flies doesn’t it? The last time I blogged was 3 weeks ago. I bet there are a number of you figuring (and rightly so, for those who know me well) that I’m off the wagon. You figure because I’m not crowing about how much weight I’ve lost I’m hiding. Well fear not you fowl figurers (figurers?) I am still dedicated and working it.
The reality is I’ve just been busy. Whether you can tell or not these posts really take some time and I just haven’t had the ability to sit down for some quality blogging time without distractions.
Anyways no matter I’m back and that’s the point! I wouldn’t say there is too much new or startling going on right now. Although something interesting I’ve been introduced to is Crossfit. (www.crossfit.com) It’s interesting to me not because I’ve tried it – it looks pretty brutal I’ll tell ya – but because it seems to be focusing on looking at training a different way. It seems to me, and I’m no expert, that it’s more of a holistic way of looking at getting in shape. By holistic I mean WHOLE-istic – it’s encompassing the whole body and natural moves that people make in their everyday lives – one of the WODS (Workouts of the day) is basically heaving sandbags into a wheel barrow and racing them to point A and then doing it all over again. It takes into consideration speed, agility, flexibility as well as muscle strength and cardio level.
Most of the guys who are doing this aren’t huge – I mean they look awesome but they have a lean, slim look with fantastic muscle definition. Even the bigger guys at 6ft are weighing in at 178lbs. So they aren’t monsters by any means. As apposed to what you see in the muscle mags. Maybe cuz I’m new I think it’s new – I dunno but I think it’s pretty cool – like I said it looks pretty brutal but fun at the same time.
Speaking of workouts… my pal Sean calls me up Saturday night to let me know he’s coming up to show me a new work-out… one that the Navy Seals do. I’m like “Dude! Navy Seals!?! Who do you think you’re dealing with here!” He says “Naw it ain’t that bad – at least not as bad as you think, let’s give it a go”. I really didn’t have much choice regardless so I said I’d give it a try.
This particular Seal workout was considered a “re-entry” to the Seals. So in other words when Seals got back from time-off and hadn’t trained in 6 months or so they needed to gradually work into their old routine – meaning getting back from furlough they were only extremely fit, they needed to get back to super-human fitness.
I won’t go into all the routines, but basically it leveraged all your own body weight. V-Sits, planking, sit-ups, crunches, lots of push-ups. It would make slight changes to the normal routines which was interesting – a normal push-up moves into a diamond push-up where you put your hands together forming a diamond with your fingers and push-up from there – which proved to be pretty well impossible for me. Another interesting one was going from full jumping jacks to half jumping jacks. I was astounded by the difference. The half jumping jacks produced an amazing burn and winded me a lot more than the full ones.
Sean had a funny comment when we were doing regular sit-ups. I may be admitting too much here but I frankly couldn’t do a full sit-up. Not even one and he looks over at me and says… “It’s a physics thing Brent.” I’m like “What do you mean physics?” He says “Well the reality is your GUT just won’t physically allow you to reach a full sit-up.” I wasn’t quite sure how to take that.
The more I do this, the more I start to feel a real sense of accomplishment, understanding I have a long weigh to go (see what I did there?). The more weight I lose the more determined I start to feel. I’ve been thinking about this more and more.
I’m not trying to sell myself short here by saying this, but if you don’t have a visible talent or skill that distinguishes you from the pack, fitness can be the ultimate equalizer. Getting fit doesn’t take much talent or skill for that matter. All of the info is at your hands on the internet and through well meaning friends and family (strangers too I’ve found). But getting fit, and I mean really fit does take heart. It takes mental toughness and focus. It takes desire and motivation.
Despite it’s occasional cheesiness, one of the things I like best about the Biggest Loser is the fact that near the end of the contestants stay at the ranch there is usually a switch that you see turns in their head. It usually happens during the final marathon. Where a player all of a sudden has the revelation that they can actually do more than their body says they can. That it can actually be mind over matter. That you can push yourself beyond what you ever thought your body was capable of.
That’s an amazing moment – all of sudden people’s perception of them has changed. They’re no longer “all talk no action” or people without the ability to endure “short term pain for long term gain”. All of a sudden they are winning, they have won the mental game. There was no skill testing question or an audition to see if you qualify. All you had to do was bare down… AND DO!
…it can actually be mind over matter!
I want to get there. I want to be there.
This is not about looking good. It’s not 100% about being healthy for my family – while that is a huge component that’s not all of it. It’s about control. Control of my lifestyle and my health. It’s about self denial for bigger and better things – like my family. Now, I realize I won’t have 100% control over everything. But I will at least put myself in the ballpark. Even though I’m a candidate for all sorts of heart disease why should I help speed up the so called inevitable. Why would I want to sit back and not fight it? Well that’s what I’ve been doing for a long time now and it doesn’t help me.
I’ve still got a long way to go and I know I won’t always be motivated but I will continue to try and push through. To be honest this blog helps because it keeps me accountable and it forces me to think about what I’m doing or not doing.
Anyways – enough about that – got on a bit of soapbox there – I’m sure I’m preaching to the Choir.
I lost 2 lbs during week 2 for a total over 2 weeks of 9lbs from what I recall. I’ve had 3 more weigh-ins since then, not all great but mostly moving forward. Week 3 I lost 1 measly pound and I was surprisingly discouraged by that. It took more of a toll on me than I thought or would like to admit but it did force me to stop lying to myself about how much I was eating (so easy to do!). Week 4 I lost 3lbs which was a huge boost and when I stepped on the scale this morning I discovered I had lost another 2lbs!
2 pounds this week for a total of 15 pounds lost – from 237 – 222! That’s a total of 6.33% weight loss for those so inclined.
I’m still working very hard to maintain a calorie count of 1500. I’m usually averaging about 1700. One of the things my brilliant wife Michelle has done is stock up with boiled eggs for snacks. For some this may not be that appealing (I put Red Hot and pepper on it. Yum!) but if you’re hungry at 9pm and need a snack it gives a good shot of protein (so you won’t want to eat 30mins later) and they’re only 70 calories. I found now that eating has become the easy part. It’s the exercise that I’m less motivated on. Pain can be a strong deterrent!
So there you have it folks. For those of you on the same weight-loss journey (and I know there are many of you now) let us all know how you’re doing in the comments section of the blog. There is strength in numbers and everyone can use some encouragement as well as tips and hints along the way.
Have a great day!
Love, Peace and Hairgrease
brodg
Weigh-In Week 2, the Superbowl & dealing with reality
I just got in the door from my evening walk/dash/jog with my brother Grodg. Feeling a little tired and a little weak so this may be a short one. I always think that when I’m writing these. “This is gonna be a short one…” and it never is. Who knows maybe you’re lucky and I’ll keep it brief today.
It was an interesting week, week two. Interesting because the “newness” had worn off and reality had set it. In week one I worked out 5 out of the 7 days. I evangelized to my neighbours and co-workers about my newfound “lifestyle” (I know 2 weeks does not make a lifestyle but cut me some slack, I was a new convert and on fire). I watched my food intake fastidiously, religiously even. My body was a temple!
Like I said, week two reality sets in. I started off the week great. Worked out on Monday night with the Grodg and was pretty sure I was going to go again on Tuesday as well. That is until I woke up on Tuesday morning and I could barely walk, my whole body hurt but mostly my legs and heels. (Don’t forget I have Plantar Fasciitis) My feet felt like they were on fire and it was like my calves had been shortened by 4 inches. I was shocked and in pain. I assumed that as the day went it would get better but it didn’t. Oh sure I was walking better, sort of, as things loosened up, a little. But I wasn’t very mobile. By around 3:30pm that day I realized that there was no way I was going out that night, I needed a break. My muscles were sending me a message.
So I took a break Tuesday and went out Wednesday, again with the full intention of going out Thursday except this time it was worse. That wrote off Thursday and Friday because I figured my body needed the holiday. At the same time I was getting a bit worried because I didn’t want to start blowing off work outs – that’s what got me in this position in the first place, but I knew my body needed a break and so I let it rest. I went out Saturday and had my slowest time yet over 5 km but I didn’t kill myself and felt a helluva lot better on Sunday morning.
None of what I’m saying is new to most of you – even me, but I’m the sort of guy that has to figure things out on his own. I guess I need practical experience even when I have the theory down pat in my head. This is where reality set in… as of today I have worked out 8 times. Only 8. I will probably have to keep doing this the rest of my life to avoid illness, heart attacks etc. When you hate working out after 8 times. When your body is screaming at you after only 8 times… that can be a bit disheartening I gotta tell ya.
The reality is… despite only being two weeks in this is my new lifestyle.
But nothing brought that home more than Superbowl Sunday…
I don’t know about you but I’m a pretty big facebook fan. I love having it on my blackberry because I love the running dialogue of status updates and information. It also gives me a chance to post funny comments on what people are saying. I’m frankly not all that concerned with the information I’m just looking for an opportunity to post something funny and see the reaction.
Good example: 1 min left in the Olympic Gold Medal Hockey game and I post… “game over we WIN!”
You can imagine the response when the U.S. tied it up with only seconds left to play. I remember one response being “If we lose I blame YOU Rodgers!” The rest I can’t type. This is a family show.
Anyways all that to say my BB buzzes all weekend with updates from FB and Superbowl Sunday was no exception. Here’s the thing… I had no idea how much the Superbowl revolves around food. Not football but FOOD! I was getting all these updates about all the crazy amounts of food and chips, dips, spreads, pop, beer, pizza, wings (oh wings!) fries, cheesy fries, even poutine (my lone Quebec FB friend) people were eating.
No big deal right? Well yeah… IT IS! I was now starving one hour before kick off, dying for junk food, pizza, pop and wings. At one point I even ran it past Michelle saying “Would it be so bad just to order pizza? Maybe just a small?” I got an interesting look from my wife on that one. Finally I said to Michelle… “Honey, I need help I don’t think I can do this game with just bread and water.”
I don’t know if I’ve mentioned it before but my wife is awesome. She’s also a fantastic cook. The next thing I know she’s told me to relax, sit down, watch the game and stay out of the kitchen, for my own good. She came up with this awesome dinner that you have to see to appreciate. One of them was grilled chicken Caesar with creole shrimp on the side and the other was jumbo butterflied herb and garlic shrimp with grilled chicken and salad. Soooo good! And, it had the desired effect. It took my mind of the food and kept it on the game -both of them the diet and the Superbowl! Here are a couple of pics.
I’m so thankful for the support I’m getting from Michelle – I could not do this without her that’s for sure. I might add that I appreciate all the support I’m getting from all of you who are reading my blog. It’s always pretty astonishing when people mention it to me and I’m flattered by the comments (But what former actor doesn’t love the attention at the same time eh?)
So I guess I should get get to the point – the weigh-in. Like I said last week, anyone who’s watched The Biggest Loser knows that week two is usually the toughest week by far and mine was no exception. Three workouts over 7 days and and average of 1687 calories per day. By the way that seems low to me – there was a couple of days where I lost track and don’t think I recorded everything I ate accurately but it is what it is. I started last week at 230lbs after losing 7 so I was really hoping for another big week.
With Bob Harper watching me out of the corner of his eye I stepped on to the trusty Wii Fit (you know the fitness tool that’s never been more than a glorified weigh scale?) the numbers run by and again I’m nervous and filled with a sense of dread. 230…231…225…228…228? Yup 228lbs – only 228?! I groaned. But hey a two pound weight loss is better than no weight loss so I’m gonna take it. When you think about it, I’ve lost 9 pounds over 2 weeks so really I’m averaging about 4.5lbs/week which is pretty good (and probably not sustainable).
When dealing with reality you need to manage your expectations. 5 workouts per week was probably unrealistic (in fact many told me it was, remember that bit about figuring it out for myself?) 7lb weigh loss per week was definitely unrealistic - although to be fair I wasn’t expecting that, just hoping. However with help you can realistically deal with Superbowl Sunday – dealing with reality means getting and asking for help when you need it. Hopefully, like me, you have people in your life who care enough to hold you accountable and work to make you successful.
This week I plan to up the work outs from three per week to four. This seems appropriate and gives enough time for my body to recover. Plus my workouts tend to be front loaded – at the beginning of the week which makes it tough if I happen to overindulge on the weekend with no workout scheduled to burn off the excess calories. Luckily we have no real holidays coming up that revolve around food so I think I’m good for that.
So there you go… another week another weigh-in. I’m down 2 lbs in the week 2 weigh-in.
230lbs down to 228lbs.
That also translates into 3.8% of weight lost – cool eh?
I’ll keep you posted on all the latest as it happens but stayed tuned for my next weigh-in for week 3 next Monday or Tuesday.
Love, Peace and Hairgrease
brodg
The Big Day – Weigh-In Week 1
Alright I said I wouldn’t chicken out and I haven’t. It was a busy weekend to say the least. Fraught with food dangers trying to tempt me into doing the wrong thing.
Saturday night was a great night, we were at a party, a reunion of sorts with our former Saturday Nite@UAC family to watch old performance video and rehash funny stories. I must add, for those of you who attended SN@UAC, those performances really were great. Much love to the Baldwins for hosting. Anyways like most parties there was copious amounts of food and drink to be had by all. I’m not one to turn away from free anything let alone food and beverages. The plan was to eat a reasonably healthy dinner with my folks so that I was going to the party fairly full and not really wanting. My mother was generously watching the kids and had also volunteered to cook us dinner so we could just run out the door. Which is great and nice and generous but healthy? Calorie free? Not in your life! Mom’s showed up with an awesome lasagna and tons of garlic bread and pop to drink. (Believe it or not she knows I’m trying to lose weight)
Lovely.
I suppose when you’re 80 yrs old the definitions of healthy, low-cal eating are different. It was a good test though, I ended up eating half of what I would normally eat of the lasagna and half a can of pop. The garlic bread… well… I kinda ate too much garlic bread but I justified it with that fact I’d worked out that day. Once at the party I didn’t use a plate. I just picked up one thing at a time and tried to spend more time by the fruit platter, (that’s a huge sacrifice for me cuz I hate fruit!) limited alcohol intake – being the designated driver helps for that and just stayed away from the desserts all together. To be honest in the end I have no clue how many calories I had but I worked hard to minimize the damage.
Sunday was fine until I ended up at the emergency room in Southlake with my brother-in-laws family while they got checked out after a car accident. That proved to be a mental game because when you’re in the waiting room at Southlake they have a huge vending machine just staring at you, begging you to purchase a savory or sweet treat. It was 12:45am and I hadn’t eaten since 5:30pm – talk about hungry! I was totally justifying why it would be just fine to buy a bag of chips considering the situation, hadn’t eaten in 5 plus hours, I deserve it, yadda, yadda. But I did not cave! I mean I had a weigh-in the next morning!
So that brings me to the point. The weigh-in.
Drum roll please….
I started the week at 237lbs. I exercised 5 of the 7 days and I maintained a calorie intake of approx 1900 cals per day. I use our Wii fit to weigh in because our digital scale gives me a different answer very time I step on the damn thing. (I usually go with the lowest number). Ironically in the 5 or 6 years sine we got the thing… the “Wii Fit” has never been used as a fitness tool – just a glorified weigh scale.
With bated breath and boxers I stepped on the scale, hands trembling I could see Bob Harper from The Biggest Loser watching me (We have the Wii Biggest Loser fitness game – it records my weight and saves it) I didn’t want to let him or my new found blog readership down.
The numbers rolled and I sweated. I’m glad I don’t do this with a studio audience watching! 237… 235… 232… 230… 230? 230lbs! Woo hoo! I lost 7lbs in one week! Awesome! So I’m down 7 – but here’s the thing… as anyone who watches the Biggest Loser knows, Week 2 is really the week to watch. Coming down off the high of losing the weight in Week 1, now the drudgery of the daily grind sets in. Reality – this is a marathon not a sprint – it’s a lifestyle change.
I lost 7lbs in one week!
Here is how it looked in the dailyburn.com tracker dashboard (kinda anticlimactic)
The challenge continues. Another week of sweat and pain and self denial. I’m ready for it. Others have mentioned to me that they’re ready too. So I encourage any of you on the same journey as me to join in – let us all know how you’re doing, feel free to leave comments with tips, tricks and inspirational stories. I’m noticing the more I do this and have others watch, how much easier it becomes. Probably because people are joining in either to encourage or to do the same as me – get healthy. Power in numbers people – and accountability.
Recap – Week 1 weigh-in 7lb wight lose – 230lbs.
Have a great week everyone. I will have another weigh-in update next Monday or Tuesday.
Love, Peace and Hairgrease.
brodg
Confessions of a Mad Fat Man – Part Deux
In the spirit of the title I have to admit that I have a confession to make… I was petrified to write this post. Actually I’ve been petrified to write this post since about… oh… November!
Yeah wasn’t too anxious to give you all the goods on my success (or lack thereof ) after my grand announcement in October that I was going to embark on a weight loss journey. Oh it started enthusiastically enough, I said all the right things, even did the right things – I was keeping track of my calories and watching what I ate – started eating smarter. It was great and it lasted all of 2 weeks.
That’s when the excuses started piling up. “Well it’s October, Halloween is here. How do you expect me not to eat all the kids left over candy” and then it was “Hey man it’s Thanksgiving, you really think I’m gonna miss out on turkey dinners during Thanksgiving! Give your head a shake!” Then Christmas arrived and well… by then everything was out the window. I skillfully avoided any discussions about my blog post. I ate whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted and in copious amounts. I pretty much gave up. I was disappointed in myself to be honest and preferred to steer clear of any weight discussions. This went on till the 3rd week of January. Me blissfully avoiding the issues (meanwhile packing on even more pounds) while others around me became concerned. Actually one of our friends happened to ask at a party when my next blog post was going to be (Blast you Will Walton) which I laughed off with a witty comeback, but internally I knew I had done absolutely nothing since the last post.
That’s when what I like to call “the intervention” happened. I like it because it sounds very dramatic and serious and if this was a documentary and not a blog there would be people – family, friends, those dear to me – gathered, unbeknownst to me, in my living room waiting for my arrival to finally confront me on my issues. Raised voices would ensue, harsh words would be said, tears would flow and I would head to rehab full of contrition and anger. Alas this intervention was not quite so dramatic. It basically started with my loving wife carefully mentioning… “so I was talking with your brother…” and I knew immediately what this discussion was going to be about. Graham and Michelle had talked and they wanted me to know that now was the time to do something about my weight. (at one point Michelle even said that when she saw me sitting on the couch the other day I actually looked pregnant! LMAO! which is true, of course she said it in the most loving way possible.)
Michelle didn’t know it at the time but I had quietly stepped on the scales and knew things were not good. In fact much worse! I was now 237 lbs. (last post I was 230) I didn’t tell her at first but later on confessed when she started her own workout sessions and started marking her weight weekly for us both to follow. I should say right now that my wife is awesome. The support she’s giving me is fantastic, she’s setting aside her own schedule to allow me to get in workouts at night while juggling the kids bedtimes and all the other stuff she has to fit in. She does the shopping and the junk food I love is no longer purchased. She quizes me on my portion sizes to make sure I’m not overdoing it and keeps me on track to not eat after dinner (I get the serious stink eye when I do).
This past Monday night my brother Graham showed up at the door to go for a walk. Now you need to understand when I say walk, we’re talking serious power walking here. You know how when you were a kid and you’d walking with your dad and you would have to run along beside him every so often to keep up with his pace? That’s what it’s like walking with Graham even as an adult. His walking pace is my jogging. I think he’s doing like 8km’s an hour. I don’t think I could run 8km’s that fast.
I should point out however he looks absolutely ridiculous when he’s doing it. Here’s something that should give you an idea of what he (we) look like – give a click below…
When I was out with Graham last night I was very clear in that I would only ever be doing this under the cloak of darkness! Nobody would see me doing this in the light of day. The great thing is he doesn’t care how it looks and he really pushes me – Coach Graham.
At the same time my pal Marcus down the street is trying to get back in game shape after tearing his achilles tendon a few months ago and he asked me to join him in a walk/run. He’s doing the thing where you walk for 1 minute and run for 1 minute for a total of 30 minutes obviously increasing the time you run and the total overall time as you progress. He asked me to go on the Tuesday and I was all in cuz I had just been out with my bro the night before and I was freaking sore! Besides he’s still a cripple from his injury and I figured he was more my pace!
… he’s a cripple from his injury and was more my pace!
To date I’ve been out four times this week. Each time has been between 4km – 5km and I’m tracking the time – it’s been around 50 mins each time. It aint easy I tell ya. I took tonight off because I’m just too sore and I need a break. Hopefully I’ll be out tomorrow as well weather permitting.
I’ve also been using a great website for tracking my food intake called www.dailyburn.com
It’s really useful because you can either add your own foods with all the nutritional value or search for the food in their user database. On top of that you can do the same for workouts that you create or find in the website to track. It’s a huge help because when you first start keeping tabs on how much you eat it’s rather astounding (embarrassing) how much you actually pack away. The screen shot below is your nutrition dashboard.
This shot is your detailed listing of the foods you’ve eaten and their nutritional value
The best part of it is that it’s free, if you don’t mind the ads. If you’ve got an iPhone you can download the app to keep tracking when you’re on the move and need to remember what you’ve eaten for the day.
While I wish I was giving you an update on my rip roaring success unfortunately I’m not. However I am being honest in the struggle of the battle of the bulge. I started the week (on Monday) at 237 lbs and while I haven’t weighed in yet I will be doing so this coming Monday. I’m pretty sure I’ve lost some weight as my belt has loosened up one notch. I’ve averaged about 1900 calories per day for the past 5 days and ran/walked about 15-20 km’s so far. To be honest it’s a tough row to hoe. The folks on the Biggest Loser make it look easy and as cheesy as it may sound they are pretty inspirational.
In the end I’m writing this for accountability, so many people mentioned the last post to me, everyone has been so encouraging. Making it public makes it difficult to avoid, I mean if Toronto Mayer Rob Ford (www.cutthewaist.ca) isn’t able to do it he’s gonna lose his voters. I’ll just lose face (heh heh). Plus, my kind brother Graham has decided to start posting our results and possibly (shudder) pictures on his facebook page. I figure I’ll be preemptive and get the word out before him.
So you all can expect a short post on Monday or Tuesday after the weigh-in to see if I’ve dropped, gained or stayed the same.
Good or bad, I won’t chicken out this time I promise.
Love, Peace and Hairgrease.
brodg
Confessions of a Mad Fat Man
Great title for the newest blog post eh? I figure I better have something catchy since I haven’t posted anything to this blog in over 2 years. Frankly I’m surprised my password still worked.
Since turning 40 what I’ve realized is that with age, apparently, comes weight. That’s right weight. Some of you may have seen my recent status update on facebook lamenting the fact that I was now bigger than my 5′ 11″ buddy, who happens to be one of those guys who lifted a lot of weights in his day. I, however, am 5′ 5″ on a tall day. I clocked in on Monday morning at 230lbs. (holy crap!) I’m quickly becoming as wide as I am tall.
Those of you who knew me growing up know I wasn’t exactly a big fellah. I was about 150lbs all through high school until I was about 27. After 27 real life hit… I got married, had a real job (most of the time) eventually kids arrived and everything else that comes with them. I stopped water skiing, snow skiing and hockey, life had become very busy.
See? I used to be athletic!
I no longer had time. Of course I kept eating and drinking exactly the same despite the drop in activity. (Well maybe not the drinking part but you get the point) so slowly the weight crept up on me.
Of course it isn’t just the weight that’s crept up on me it’s health issues as well. Anyone that’s ever had the pleasure of living with me knows that I snore like a chainsaw. About 7 years ago it became pretty clear that I wasn’t snoring but basically choking my way through the night. I was diagnosed with sleep apnea in 2005 – according to the Dr. I stopped breathing something like 75 times an hour. Basically I wasn’t sleeping.
Along with that I developed Plantar Fasciitis (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plantar_fasciitis) which is really painful and means I walk like an old man every time I get up from sitting for a long-ish period of time.
Both of these conditions are fairly minor in the grand scope and I’m not complaining - many people have these issues and much worse but that’s the thing… so far… it’s not worse. It’s practically in my DNA to have a heart attack. My Dad has had a triple and quadruple bypass, a heart attack and angina. If there is a candidate to have a heart issue I would seem to be one. Thankfully nothing has arisen, I went for a stress test with the family cardiologist back in March and everything was good. I had to laugh because the Dr.’s comment was
“…well Brent things are actually good! Which is surprising considering your… uh… shape.”
Besides that I’m having trouble putting my socks on and tying my shoes as well! That can’t be a good sign, I’m out of breath before getting into the car in the mornings just because I tied my shoes! Yeah not good.
Every year we do a guys weekend in Parry Sound and Killarney. We start in Parry Sound at the cottage and make our way north to Killarney to do a canoe/hiking trip to the top of Silver Peak. It’s about a 45 min canoe ride to the opening of the trail then about 5k to the base of Silver Peak. After that it’s another 1.5km mostly straight up. For a person in reasonable shape it’s a challenge and in the end it’s about a 6 hour round trip, give or take.
The eastern flank of Silver Peak in Killarney Provincial Park
Last year around this time we made our annual trip. I was going in at about 190lbs. I had shed some weight over the past 18 months due to taking on a new role at a start-up company in St. Catharines and I had started to work out fairly regularly. It was during this time that I found that stress went directly to my stomach. Some people “stress eat”, I stress starve. I can’t eat when I’m under stress so as a result I had dropped over 30lbs before going on the yearly boys trip.
Last year I was like a gazelle just bounding my way to the top, to the surprise of most of the guys on the trip – got back to the base camp feeling like a million bucks and thinking “Man, I gotta keep this up!”
This year? Not so much… last to the top, last to the bottom. To be fair my cousin Michael was last but he broke his kneecap a couple of years ago so he get’s points just for making the trip, besides I certainly wasn’t way ahead of him when we finished. Got back to base camp feeling like a buck fifty thinking “Man, I should have kept it up.”
That lead to me asking our fearless leader Sean how much he was weighing in at this year only to discover he was lighter than me. That would be the TSN Turning Point for me.
So now I’ve gotta do something about it. Problem is I’m an awesome starter but a not so great finisher. I’m a fairly competitive guy so usually what I do is challenge a couple of other people to a “Biggest Loser” contest. Which is good – usually some money is laid down which makes it even more important for me to win. (I tend to be money motivated) And I’m good, real good while the contest is on.
The last time I did one of these things I went so far as to take x-lax the day before the weigh-in. Nothing in the rule book prevented it although it didn’t really take affect until 2 days later which was a bit of an issue and it wasn’t much of an advantage in the end, butt I was committed because there was like 400 bucks at stake! I won in the end, I was moved. (see what I did there? Oh my sides!)
Still, I’m not a great finisher – I’m pretty sure my wife is rolling her eyes just reading about me starting another weight loss run, thinking “here we go again”. But as always she will support me and do what she can to promote a healthy lifestyle despite the fact her hubby has the focus of a 4 year old. (She’s a good woman and I love her so!)
Because of that I’ve decided I’m going to blog about trying to lose weight this time around. I’ll tell you what, nothing creates accountability like telling as many people as you can through one of the largest communication vehicles ever created in the history of the world that you’re going to get yourself in shape and lose weight. Not sure if you’re going to want to read about it on a monthly basis but I’m gonna do it anyways. You can watch me fly or fail.
I’m no expert but basically what I’m going to do is count calories and start some light exercise to get things going. Essentially this is how I’m looking at it.
3500 Calories = 1 pound of fat
You basically burn 13 calories per pound (depending on your activity level). Body weight x calories = daily calories intake. Right now at 230lbs I’m eating 2990 – my goal weight is 170 – now before you all react saying “dude that’s 60lbs!” keep in mind that my ideal “medical weight” should be between 141 & 154lbs. (I know crazy). So calories for me daily should be around 2210 which means I should be losing about 1.5lbs per week.
Calorie counting is interesting because it almost always starts with bad decisions on food and drink. Initially you think “Hey! I can eat anything I want as long as I don’t eat more than 2210 calories per day! Woo hoo! Pour me a beer! ” The reality is that wears of quickly when you realize you’re either drinking most of your calories throughout the day or eating stupid things like sour keys (oh how I love sour keys!) and are totally hungry all the time. Smarter decisions start after that – looking for high protein foods and snacks etc.
So we’ll see. I did my first 4k last night. And it was fun. If you like running in the dark, rain and blinded. By the way just for the record when I say “run” I really mean walk – I just can’t bring myself to say in an excited tone that I “went on a 4k walk last night!” Nomesayin?
For some unknown reason I woke up Monday morning and decided I needed to throw my last pair of contact lenses down the sink. (I’m really not going to try and explain it) So now I’m wearing my glasses – which I hate. When I went out last night decided I wouldn’t wear them – it’s raining, they won’t stay on my nose, yadda, yadda. So out the door I went in my black workout pants and navy blue fleece. I live in a fairly rural area and about 15 mins in I started to realize that maybe wearing practically all black at night wasn’t such a hot idea – considering there are no side walks where I was walking. Did I mention it was raining? Plus I wasn’t wearing my glasses – my vision is terrible during the day and that much worse at night so I really can’t see anything very well. No sidewalk, dark, black outfit, poor vision, fast cars on the road – At one point I nearly fell down a bank on the side of the road – couldn’t see – and I ended up almost straddling a fence at one point as it started off at ground level and worked it’s way up – cable kind, very uncomfortable – of course, again, I couldn’t see it, right? Jeez.
Anyways those are just some of the fantastic stories you have to look forward to if you decide to read this blog on a regular basis (how many actually do now is questionable). Maybe you’ll find it inspiring or maybe you’ll find it trite and dumb – doesn’t really matter I guess the point is to get off my ass and do something.
So here are the starting numbers:
October 4th - Weight- 230lbs
- goal weight 170lbs – no date set yet
Calorie intake – 2210 calories per day.
Wish me luck – talk to you in a month!
Love, Peace and Hairgrease.
brodg
