Fat Loss Day 2

Well, so it begins another day.  I have to make a series of small steps today to help me lose fat.  I did not go to the gym today.  I went for a brisk walk around my neighborhood.  I would not say I was power walking, but I was walking quickly.  I walked for about 30 minutes.

Walking doesn’t do much to increase my metabolism, but it does burn a few calories.  More importantly, it helps get the blood moving in my legs.  Yesterday’s workout has caused DOMS to set in.  So my legs are very painful today, as I discovered when I hopped out of bed and almost fell on to the floor.  Boy do they hurt.

So let this a lesson to you out there.  Whenever you are beginning to workout or returning after a long break, take it easy the first couple of workouts.

Breakfast was chicken and egg faux burritos.

Ingredients:

• 2 eggs
• one chicken breast
• two kale leaves

I scrambled the eggs.  I added black and red pepper  and a few other spices.  I have the chicken breast pre-cooked.  So I nuked a breast.  The kale leaves I have are about 8 inches across.  I put half the scrambled eggs one each leaf.  I cut the chicken into small strips and put half on each leaf.  I rolled the leaves up like a burrito and ate them.  Pretty good.

Well off to work now.  I will have to look at ways to increase my NEPA while I am working today.

I’ll be back tonight to summarize my day.

The Finish of Day 1 for Fat Lost

Well, it is almost the end of the first day.  I had a dinner of pork bulgogi, lettuce, kimchi, rice and soup.  Finished work and headed home to a hectic house.  After not getting much sleep last night, I am headed to bed early tonight.  Had a nightly snack of cheese and a persimmon.  About to brush my teeth and go to dreamland.

Goal Checklist

• workout at gym – check
• find ways to increase NEPA – check
• Limit myself to 2 diet sodas – I drank no sodas today – check
• Drink 1 gallon of water – check
• Eat no sugar or other junk food – check

I think I’ll call day one a success.  364 more to go.  Yippee!

Day 2 starts tomorrow bright and early at 6am.

Fat Loss: Day 1

Well, today was the big day. I started my program today. I decided to get up at 6am to go to workout. I changed that to 7am when I was still awake at 2am. It was a struggle but I was awake and moving by 6:30. I’m running now on very little sleep. I should be able to go to sleep early tonight. I am shooting to get 8 hours of sleep a night.

First thing this morning, I stepped on the scale. Talk about shocked! I knew I had put on some weight, but my goodness. The scale said 136.6 kg. For those of you in the US that is in KILOGRAMS. That is 300.5 pounds. Read that again 300 pounds! Maybe I need to lose more than 100 pounds. But the goal is still to lose 100 pounds. So by November of 2010 I will weigh 200 pounds (or less).

Here is a picture of the scale. Remember those of you in the US, the scale reads in KILOGRAMS!

 

This was really shocking. It is in KGs. This was really shocking. It is in KGs. Now what did I do today in the gym. I did a strength exercise, metabolic circuit, and intervals. So here are the details. I am just going to list exercises, set, reps, rest times. I will not list the actual weight because I don’t think it is that important to you to know what I lifted. If you are really interested, ask me and I will post the weights, too.

I posted this on my other site http://www.myeverdayfatloss.com.  I tried to repost it here and the formatting screwed up.  Please check out the other site.  I will fix this one later when I have some more time.

Thanks for understanding.

New site

I have just started a new site before too many people begin to use this site.  I purchased a domain name.  So I am moving everything over to my other site.

I will keep posting here daily, at least for a little while.  So check in here often.

The link to the new site is in the margin.  Be sure to check it out.  I plan on offering more things on my other site.

So What’s the Plan?

Well I have taken care of goal setting and motivation.  I have more to motivate me and more goals that I set.  But I think that those of you reading this want to know what it is that I am going to do to lose the fat.  If you are expecting something earthshaking, I am sorry to disappoint you.  If you are expecting a “Lose 10 pounds in 10 days” diet, you will be disappointed too.

I am planning to take it slowly.  Now later own I might decide to try out a workout from another person, but for now not.  I think that I have read and understood enough to develop a program for me to follow.  I am calling it my everyday fat loss program.  It will have several parts.  All fat loss programs have several things in common.  The most basic being “Eat Less, Move More.”  This is the philosophy I am going to follow.

THE WORKOUTS:

By workouts, I mean things I will do when I actually go to the gym.  There are two things I need to do when I’m in the gym.  First, I need to try to build muscle, or at least protect the muscle that I have.  Second, I need to burn calories so that I can burn fat.

Save muscle

I want to build or save muscle for several reasons.  I’ll just cover them briefly here.

1. Muscle burns more calories than fat.  Now some people say that one pound of muscle burns 50 extra calories an hour.  I have also read that it’s only 50 calories a day.  Some say less than that.  Whatever, the point is that muscle does burn calories while fat doesn’t, so if I have muscle I will burn more calories.
2. Our bodies look for the easiest way to find energy.  Our body uses what we have eaten first and then it looks for energy in what we have stored.  I have heard many people say they are starving themselves so that their bodies will burn stored fat.  Unfortunately, it doesn’t work this way.  When our bodies are looking for energy they will break down our muscles first.  They are many reasons for this and they are beyond what I want to write about.  Just trust me and if you don’t look it up on the internet.
3. This one is selfish.  Once I finish losing all the fat I have, I wan to have some muscle.  Not bodybuilder huge muscle, just look decent, like I workout muscle.

So then what am I planning to do.  Each workout will have to do something to either build or protect muscle.  So this means strength type exercises.  Higher weight and lower reps.  I will do these at least 3 times a week.

Burn Calories

Well this one should be obvious.   I am trying to lose weight so I need to burn calories.  There is a pretty complex relationship between what we eat and what we burn and how much our body needs each day to survive.  I don’t want to write about that now.  Maybe later.  For now let’s just all agree that I need to do something to increase the amount of calories I burn each day.

Part 1:  Metabolic circuits

I will be using different metabolic circuits each workout in order to elevate my metabolism and burn more calories.  These circuits are designed to pack an insane amount of work into a short time.  The idea is that these workouts will help me burn calories during the workout but also throughout the rest of the day.  This is the same thing that some other expert call Afterburn or Turbulence.  I will be doing these each workout.  Some of these will be equipment based while some will be bodyweight.  I will do these after each strength workout.

Part 2:  Interval Training

The next thing I will be doing is interval training.  The idea behind interval training is simple.  You alternate period of high intensity work with periods of low intensity work, wash, and repeat.  I am doing this for the same reasons and the metabolic circuits listed above.  I will be using a exercise bike for now.  The reason is that I am overweight so I don’t think I will begin with running sprints.  I will be doing interval workouts at least 3 times a week.

Part 3:  Low intensity Aerobics

I will also be using low intensity aerobics when I have time.  I am planning on doing this every evening.  I will be walking.  I plan to walk outside around my neighborhood.  Not speed walking, but walking a little faster than normal.  If the weather is bad I will go to the gym.  I’ll try 3 miles per hour at no incline and adjust it if I need to.

Part 4:  NEPA

I will try to increase NEPA.  NEPA stands for Non Exercise Physical Activity.  This means I will just try to move more each day.  Some examples, I will park as far from my company as possible so I have to walk more.  I’ll take stairs instead of elevators.  I’ll play with my kids.  Anything that makes me move instead of sitting still.

OK this is a long post.  I’ll stop here.  Next I will post my workout plan for the week.

 

Until tomorrow, baby steps.

Setting Goal part 2

Goals

Well, I talked about setting goals and I talked about motivation.  Today I am going to continue.   Well my goals are set, and now I need to write them down. Most of the diet books I have read from writers I trust have talked about the importance of not just setting goals but of writing them down.  I have never gone so far as to write them down before.  And you know what, I’m still FAT!

This time I am writing them down.  I typed up a form for both my long term and short term goal.  Here’s a picture of my sheet:

My goal sheet

That’s kinda small anyway it says :

Today is Monday, November 9^th, 2009.  Today I weigh ________ pounds.  By November 8^th, 2010 I will weigh _________ pounds.  I will do this by exercising and eating consistently.  I will make small changes everyday to do this.  I will do whatever it takes to lose the fat.

The other one is the same except it is for only 1 month.  I left the weight blank because I will weigh myself Monday morning and fill in the blanks.

Motivation

I did the same thing with motivation.  I wrote up several sentences that should help me stay motivated.  I used sentences like:

• Before you open this door, ask yourself, do you really need to eat anything right now?
• Get up and go outside for a walk.
• Don’t stop and buy anything.
• Is this going to help you achieve you goals?
• Take a break and go outside.
• Once you go to the gym, you don’t have to worry for the rest of the day.
• Look at your kids, you are doing this for THEM.  Don’t give up!

I printed these out and pasted them around my house.  Like this:

The sign on my fridge.

You get the idea.  I put them on the fridge, computer, in the bathroom, in my car, in my work bags.  My idea is to have them in so many places that I will see them all the time.

Setting Goals

Well today’s topic is setting goals.  Before we can begin we have to have a destination in mind, right.  Honestly, how many times do you jump into your car and just start driving with no idea where you are going?  Maybe a few years ago some of you did this, but with the price of gasoline as high as it is I bet no one does it now.

Before I take a trip I always decide where I am going.  This is no different.  I look on this as a journey.  So I have to decide where I want to end up.  I have decided on 100 pounds.  That is my ultimate goal.  Now how to a get there.  Well this is such a large amount of weight that I am going to divide it into smaller amounts.  I am going to set mini goals for myself to reach along this path.

Oh, by the way I am setting goals not just for the amount of weight I want to lose but for other things as well.  Then I can keep track of how well I am reaching my goals.

Today I just want to look at the goal of losing fat.  I want to lose 100 pounds in one year.  So my major goal is to lose 100 pounds by November 7 of 2010.  I will write this down on a slip of paper.  I think I will also post it around my house in several places.  Since this is my major goal I will only put it up in a few places.  My smaller short terms goals will be posted everywhere.

Now for the short terms goals.  First, I have a short term goal of losing 25 pounds in 3 months.  So I need to lose 8 pounds a week for each week and that will give me 28 pounds by February 5th.  So my mini goal is 2 pounds a week and 8 pounds a month.

I am going to write these on separate papers and put them everywhere: on the fridge, tv, in the car, at my desk, in my pocket, etc.  I mean everywhere.

I will leave you at this for today.  Tomorrow we will continue with my other goals.

Until tomorrow baby steps.

Finding the Motivation to Lose Fat

Today’s topic is motivation.  This is a big issue and many people are going to skip over this part without giving it much thought.  To be quite honest with all of you, in the past I have always just skimmed through this part.  Hmmm, could this be why I am still fat?

Why should I lose weight?

That is a very good question.  The answer to this question is going to be the cornerstone of my weight loss plan.  It should also be the cornerstone to your weight loss plan.  Why do I want to lose weight?  I thought of all the usual things:

• Look good naked
• Wear nice clothes
• Be able to shop in any store and not just the big and tall sections
• Put my socks on without losing my breathe
• Climb up the stairs to my apartment without feeling like I want to die
• Be able to walk around the zoo without having to stop every 15 minutes

You know, these are the usual things.  They are really good reasons to lose weight.  But are they good enough.

Staying Motivated

This is the key ingredient I was missing all the times I tried to lose weight before.  So I thought about it some more.  I can rationalize me way out of every single reason I listed above.  This bothered me because if I could find a reason why these things didn’t matter then how can they motivate me.

For example, I am already married to a wonderful lady, who loves me as I am.  So if I don’t look good naked it really doesn’t matter.  My kids love me even if I don’t take them to the park.  This process kept going.

If they aren’t that important to me, how can they make me exercise when I really don’t feel like it?  How can they make me wake up an hour earlier every morning?  I was already rationalizing my way out of losing fat, and I hadn’t even started yet.

I needed something more.  Something stronger.  I wanted to look deeper and find the real reasons I wanted to lose weight.

The SOMETHING more…

As I was thinking about why I really, honestly and truly, wanted to lose weight, my two kids ran into the room laughing.  My son is 4 and my daughter is 1 and a half.  As I watched them play I thought about how happy I am my life has turned out the way it has.  I love my family and I don’t ever want them to have to worry about anything.  That’s when a light went off inside my head.  In that moment I realized something I had never realized before.  This was my thought;

You know if you don’t change your lifestyle, you won’t be around long enough to enjoy watching your kids grow up.

Go back a read that again, especially any of you with children.  Let me summarize it for you.  Warning, this is a little blunt:

If you don’t change, you are going to die SOONER not later.

Sorry about that, sometimes I need it put bluntly or I don’t accept it.

I stopped everything I was doing and really thought about it.  I mean I was floored.  I had never thought about it like this before.  Of course, I had read a lot of things over the years and I knew I was at risk, but it had never hit me like this before.  I might not be around to see my kids grow up.

I read somewhere that if you’re a man and your waist size is over 40 inches you have a greater risk of heart disease, heart attack, diabetes, and a whole mess of other bad things.  Well, I’m a man and my waist size is about 48 inches.  So I am in real trouble.  I really started to shake and tremble the more I thought about it.  It really scared me.

My motivation

Now I’m motivated.  Let me tell you, I’m really motivated.  Now how do I go about staying motivated.

I know this sounds weird, but this is what I want to do.  I want to be able to recreate that feeling of helplessness and fear I felt when these thought first hit me.  I want to be able to recreate it at any time I need it.  How can I do this?

This is what I’m doing.  I took a picture of my kids.  I wrote on the back of it “You are doing this for them, NEVER GIVE UP!  Now get your sorry butt to the gym.”   I carry this in my wallet everywhere.  When I go to sleep I put it beside the bed so I can see it first thing when I wake up in the morning.

Now when I am feeling tired, all I have to do is look at the picture.  When I first wake up and just want to roll over and go back to sleep, I don’t.  Almost immediately after looking at the picture, those terrifying feelings return and my motivation is chugging ahead at full steam.

What this means for you

I know this is a long post but bear with me for a few more minutes.  What lesson can you learn from this?  Here is what I want you to remember.  Before you begin to lose weight, you need to find you own source of motivation.  I think that the more personal it is.  The more it terrifies you.  The better it will be for you.  What you want to do is to create a very strong, deep and personal bond with whatever motivates you.  Once you find this motivation, you need to think of ways to constantly remind yourself of it.

How can you do this?  I used a picture.  You can use a picture.  You can write notes to yourself and paste them all over the house.  Put them on the fridge, the computer, the TV, and in all the places you usually spend time.  Find ways to constantly remind yourself “WHY.” Why are you doing this?  I’m positive that if you do this, you, just like me, will never have to worry about finding the motivation to change.

Next time we will talk about setting goals.  I think this is a pretty important step that I have usually not taken the time to do.  This time is different.  I will show you how I set my goals.  I’ve got the motivation, now I have to decide where I want to end up.

Until tomorrow, just take baby steps

Prepare to Lose Fat

Well, I am getting ready to begin my everyday fat loss quest. I decided I will begin on Monday, November 9. This is D-day. So I am making final decisions now. I have been working on motivation. I am also setting goals.

It’s late and I have been working extra hard today. I need to spend more time preparing and less time writing just now. So I will be back tomorrow with a much longer and more detailed post.

Until tomorrow.

Strive for Fat Loss Everyday

Fat Loss Everyday

Who am I? I am a person interested in everyday fat loss. I am just like most of you. I am a husband and a father to two wonderful (well most of the time) children. My wife and I are expecting our third child early in 2010. I work from 9:00 am to about 8:00 pm Monday to Friday. Between work and family I don’t have much time left over to exercise. I can’t spend two hours a day everyday in the gym. I tell you this so you will know that I am just an ordinary, hardworking person like you.

I am beginning a journey to improve myself and I want to invite each of you along for the ride. Share with me the good times and the bad times. The times we will jump for joy and the times we will break down in tears at the setbacks. Be with me and together we will overcome all the difficulties we face and emerge from this ‘everyday fat loss’ challenge triumphant. Am I an expert in the field of losing fat? Not hardly. I am the anti-expert. The difference between the experts and I is that I am very overweight.

Who should we listen to? Which coach has the right idea? Well, my answer is all of them and none of them. I think I have read hundreds if not thousands of articles about fat loss. Some have been very well written and informative and others have been, well, putting it nicely, worthless. After reading all these articles, I am often more confused then I was when I started. I’m sure that if you are like me you feel the same way.

Let’s look at the coaches and experts. How many of these experts have ever been really, really fat. There are some I know, but most I have heard of have never been really fat. Sure, some of them had a little fat to lose but it was only 15 to 20 pounds. I mean come on how can you compare someone with 15 pounds to lose to a person trying to lose 100 pounds? YOU CAN’T!

Have you ever read some of the programs these experts write for an average ordinary person? They usually have exercises like bench press, push ups, pull ups, or deadlifts. Now bench press or pushups, I have no problem with, but seriously how do these “experts” think that a person 100 pounds overweight is going to be able to do one pull-up much less 3 sets of 10? Do they realize who they are writing these programs for? It seems they are really interested in helping people with a little weight to lose, but not a lot of weight.

I have tried multiple times to lose fat and some of those times I have been successful and other times not. It seems though that each time I succeeded that I ended up back where I started, or worse. I have listened to what the experts have said and I am still in the same place I was years ago. How can I find the right way to lose fat and keep it off? So with this in mind I, I challenged myself to really try this time and lose the fat and more importantly keep it off.

I want this blog to be special. I plan to use some of the ideas I have learned over the years to lose fat. I will weed out the things that don’t apply to really overweight people, like me. I will then use my body as a laboratory to test all these ideas and maybe some new ones. I want people like you to follow along with me and share my experiences on the everyday fat loss challenge. I hope that I can inspire you to do what I do. I want you to let me be your inspiration and let me help you lose weight. While I am losing, I also will be making lifestyle modifications so I can keep the weight off. After I finish the Everyday Fat Loss challenge, I will keep it off.