100/100: A Health Challenge
What's "100/100," you ask? It's a heading that
will be appearing here from time to time, with the scale icon. (I'm hoping to
phase in category icons). But what does it
mean?
OK. Here's the deal.
I have set myself a goal: to lose 100 (actually 102) pounds in 100 weeks (actually, two years, 104 weeks). I will occasionally report progress here. I am not using any sophisticated diet, simply managing my food intake, with a view to returning my weight to what it was (actually 3-7 lb lighter than) when I was at peak fitness, which I define as the summer of 1982, when I was in 10th Special Forces Group, before going to Ranger School. When I reach that goal, I may reassess my position, because I'm not as muscular now as I was then. Still, it's a simply mind-boggling number. 100 pounds? Am I out of my mind? Can I do it?
Why Are You Doing This?
Because, while I once was extremely fit, I'm not; I came danger close to extremely fat. In fact, I peaked just two pounds from "morbidly obese" by BMI. Further, I have serious joint problems resulting from a career in Special Forces, chronic joint pain from gout, and a January, 2004 accident. This makes my youthful approach to health -- eating mass quantities of junk food and running it off, essentially full-time carboloading -- a really, really bad idea. Not to mention, it doesn't work. I was already 40 lb. over when I broke my heels. I added 60 lb. since then. These pounds are not welcome in my neighbourhood -- not one of them. They must go.
(continued)
I have set myself a goal: to lose 100 (actually 102) pounds in 100 weeks (actually, two years, 104 weeks). I will occasionally report progress here. I am not using any sophisticated diet, simply managing my food intake, with a view to returning my weight to what it was (actually 3-7 lb lighter than) when I was at peak fitness, which I define as the summer of 1982, when I was in 10th Special Forces Group, before going to Ranger School. When I reach that goal, I may reassess my position, because I'm not as muscular now as I was then. Still, it's a simply mind-boggling number. 100 pounds? Am I out of my mind? Can I do it?
Why Are You Doing This?
Because, while I once was extremely fit, I'm not; I came danger close to extremely fat. In fact, I peaked just two pounds from "morbidly obese" by BMI. Further, I have serious joint problems resulting from a career in Special Forces, chronic joint pain from gout, and a January, 2004 accident. This makes my youthful approach to health -- eating mass quantities of junk food and running it off, essentially full-time carboloading -- a really, really bad idea. Not to mention, it doesn't work. I was already 40 lb. over when I broke my heels. I added 60 lb. since then. These pounds are not welcome in my neighbourhood -- not one of them. They must go.
(continued)
(from the front
page)
And then, there was the walk down the hill to drop off mail in the mailbox. That went fine... but then I had to pause for breath on the walk up. Wait a minute. I used to run marathons! I used to be the first guy in my company in at the end of the 12-mile rucksack march (by running it with a 55-lb pack... less load than I carry now just walking around). This was bull. The weight had to go.
The specter of disease hung over me. My heart is arrhythmic already (not a serious problem, but because the Mass. National Guard medical system is so bad, it nearly kept me home when my unit went to war in Afghanistan. I had to pay many thousands out of my own pocket for medical tests the Guard demanded, but would not fund... it turned out that the Guard "expert" reading the EKGs was a dermatologist... typical). I know that high blood pressure, heart and lung diseases, diabetes and all kinds of maladies stalk the obese. And I just hate the word "obese." The voice of R. Lee Ermey echoes in my head: "You are not a Special Forces soldier. You are a disgusting fatbody!"
All my friends and family members were deeply concerned about my weight gain. ("If he looks like this," my parents thought, "he'll never land a woman and get us any more grandchildren." I'm sure that's what they thought). But too often, I took their well-meaning advice and heartfelt concern as nagging. I am a willful, stubborn man and I had to come to the epiphany on my own, but standing on the hill below my house, oversize belly heaving, sweating on a cool summer night -- I was out of places to run and hide from myself. It was time to act, and the next day I acted.
I did not tell anyone right away. What if my willpower failed? But during that first week, I realised that telling everyone was, indeed, a very good approach... now my willpower can't fail! Although I'm not sure if "willpower" really is the right word. It's more a matter of persistence, of consistency, of "stick-to-it-iveness." My real objective, after all, is not so much to alter what I eat and how I exercise today. It is to change my habits, habits developed over forty years into something that now threatens my survival.
It also helped that my boss at Aero-News, Jim Campbell, has been watching his weight carefully, in order to get in better shape for the Rocket Racing League. Jim's dropped a lot of pounds, and he's clearly healthier and has more energy. Positive reinforcement like that helps!
Oh, One Other Thing...
I've cheated a little on blogging this. You see, I had my epiphany on my weight and health way back in June. The first day of keeping a log was June 29th; so today, August 31st, actually makes nine weeks that I've already been on the diet I chose. So please let me explain what I chose, why I chose it, and report some immediate results.
The Problem With Name Diets
Currently, the happening diet seems to be the Atkins Diet. Lots of people have had success with it; my friend Mike Hill (another SF vet) used it to get fit with a view to going back in; writer and financial advisor John Ross calls it the nearest thing to a miracle he's ever seen. The South Beach Diet, which my father has used, is a similar low-carb diet.
To me, these diets were too rigid. I don't think they're necessarily bad; I just doubt my ability to stick to them, and that was going to be the critical single point of failure in my system. The same goes for the scores and hundreds of diet books, which regularly lard the nonfiction lists as the populace gets larger and larger. Clearly, people are buying the books; presumably they're reading them, but they don't seem to do any good.
In my business, aviation, I'm more and more frequently asked about larger and larger people taking flight training, which sometimes requires them to use larger, more expensive aircraft; and everyone has had the unpleasant experience of a commercial flight next to some unfortunate person who does not fit in his or her seat. The FAA has had to revise the standard passenger used in weight calculations upward as the nation grows, and sizes that once required a trip to the big and tall store are now on the racks everywhere. So that's the trend.
I would rather start a countertrend.
Similarly, I dismissed group-based "therapeutic" or "12-step" weight-loss cults like Jenny Craig, Weight Watchers, etc. Everybody I know who did that lost and then regained weight. I can't do that, I must permanently lose the weight by changing my behaviour. Everyone I know who has sustained a long-term weight readjustment has done it by changing his or her behaviour.
There is no shortage of people who have found something that works for them. (I'm fascinated by Dave at thecrisper.com who shops the perimeter of the grocery store, avoiding the packaged foods within). There's no shortage of people who want to help. What was lacking in my case was the commitment. Well, lack solved.
I Go Online For Help -- And Find It
I formed the idea that my basic problem was pretty simple -- I was eating a lot of junk, true, but the bottom line was that I was just eating too damn much. I decided that I ought to try restricting my caloric intake to 1700 kcal/day, and then thought I ought to check online to see what people said, since I pulled that number out of thin air based on dimly remembered nutrition lectures from the Army. (Which tells you all the facts, but feeds you 7000 cal. of fat and sugars a day, with almost zero fresh vegetables).
The first thought after looking at some pages of Google results -- "oh my, there's an awful lot of nonsense written about dieting." But as usual, some good things began to be teased out of the results. And I finally found a website that I like, and rely on, and visit regularly: CalorieKing by Allan Borushek.
Now, I don't know Borushek from Adam, but it says here that he's a registered dietician, and for someone who's calorie counting for weight control, his site is a Godsend. It has many restaurant meals' calories listed on it (even fast food and junk food) and you can also use it to look up specific foods. You can go further, by joining the site, or ordering logging software, but I also wanted to track other health status, so I passed on that (they even make a Palm version, which was tempting). CalorieKing suggested that for my height and weight, 2000 calories and a 45-minute walk would lead to a sustainable 1-2 kb. loss a week. About what I need to do, and close enough to my 1700 -- I choose to stick with my original figure. If I find myself starved at 1700, I have 300 calories to play with. I know there will be days when I have trouble. (Meals at Mom and Dad's, for one).
Then I needed to keep track of my results. So I made an Excel Spreadsheet. One page has the data entry -- each day I record my weight, pulse and blood oxygenation, what I eat for each meal and what my calories were -- also the time of day of weigh-in, and of each meal. At the end of the row, a simple formula adds up my daily calories -- if I broke 1700, the spreadsheet makes it bold, in red. Reinforcement! Next to my weight, another formula calculates my BMI. If it's in the Morbidly Obese range, that shows up bold and red; Obese is orange, overweight is black, and in the zone is bold and green. I also record my exercise on the same sheet -- don't do a calorie calc on it, just record what I did.
The next two pages are Daily Weight and Weekly Weight charts. Here they are:
As you can see, the Daily chart shows some fluctuation. Partly this is based on the time of weigh-in; body weight in my case changes by 8-10 lb. during an average 24-hour period. Partly, it really does fluctuate a little. Trend shows up better on the weekly chart. The period of stagnation on the daily chart is a backfill I put in to cover two weeks when I was on the road (at Airventure in Oshkosh, Wisconsin), trying despite travel to hold to the data, but unable to keep the sheet up. My weight kept coming down during this period, albeit slowly. This is more clearly visible on the weekly chart.
Note that on the weekly chart, the "weeks elapsed" is off by one. It should start counting at zero, but it doesn't. Ah well, I figured out all the other Excel stuff, I'll figure that out too. Excel is not rocket science.
And So, The Numbers...
My weight at epiphany time was 262, a weight I also recorded in the evening of the 2nd day (note the spike on the Daily chart). My actual first weigh-in was 252. My objective is 160 -- a total loss of 102 lb. As of today, I am 232, so 30 lb are off, and 72 to go.
I have eaten a mean of 1567 Calories a day and a median of 1642.5 -- these numbers, initially accurate, are skewed high because I set my intake to 1700 every day for which I don't have data. The lowest I've done is about a thousand, and the highest 2725 -- a day that involved helping my brother move heavy stuff, and two meals out.
There are some notable interior goals before the final goal of 160 lb. AT 165, I will be normal weight, not overweight. At 197, I will be overweight, not obese. (Boy, I am so looking forward to being overweight. Which sounds funny, huh?). And when I pass 230 -- coming soon -- I will be "merely" obese not, as now, severely obese. (Note that these calculations are all based on BMI, which is a fairly crude yardstick, especially for muscular men. But I'm not muscular like I was in my days of 3-hour daily workouts and 12-mile fun runs in lieu of lunch). I would also not be human if I did not note such major numeric milestones as 200 lb.
And How Do You Feel About That?
As a psychiatrist might ask... actually, I feel much better. I have more energy. Even though the exercise leg of the chair isn't going as well as the diet leg, instead of being unable to walk up my hill without a breath break, I can do it swinging 5 lb. heavyhands weights, twice, as part of an hour and a half fast walk.
I'm a long way from SF fitness still, but I'm also a long way from June's disgusting fatbody already. (Not quite ready to present myself to Gunny Ermey, though). I think I am making a permanent alteration in my diet. No hunger pangs or cravings. I am astonished at the size of the portions I used to think were normal... on many foods, I now eat 1/4 as much -- literally! And some foods have proven to be real favorites. I do have some concerns -- I think I'm eating too much prepared junk, and getting too much sodium. But first I'll address volume, then I'll find-tune ingredients. I don't expect the fat to go without a fight, but I do expect it to go. So far, so good.
And then, there was the walk down the hill to drop off mail in the mailbox. That went fine... but then I had to pause for breath on the walk up. Wait a minute. I used to run marathons! I used to be the first guy in my company in at the end of the 12-mile rucksack march (by running it with a 55-lb pack... less load than I carry now just walking around). This was bull. The weight had to go.
The specter of disease hung over me. My heart is arrhythmic already (not a serious problem, but because the Mass. National Guard medical system is so bad, it nearly kept me home when my unit went to war in Afghanistan. I had to pay many thousands out of my own pocket for medical tests the Guard demanded, but would not fund... it turned out that the Guard "expert" reading the EKGs was a dermatologist... typical). I know that high blood pressure, heart and lung diseases, diabetes and all kinds of maladies stalk the obese. And I just hate the word "obese." The voice of R. Lee Ermey echoes in my head: "You are not a Special Forces soldier. You are a disgusting fatbody!"
All my friends and family members were deeply concerned about my weight gain. ("If he looks like this," my parents thought, "he'll never land a woman and get us any more grandchildren." I'm sure that's what they thought). But too often, I took their well-meaning advice and heartfelt concern as nagging. I am a willful, stubborn man and I had to come to the epiphany on my own, but standing on the hill below my house, oversize belly heaving, sweating on a cool summer night -- I was out of places to run and hide from myself. It was time to act, and the next day I acted.
I did not tell anyone right away. What if my willpower failed? But during that first week, I realised that telling everyone was, indeed, a very good approach... now my willpower can't fail! Although I'm not sure if "willpower" really is the right word. It's more a matter of persistence, of consistency, of "stick-to-it-iveness." My real objective, after all, is not so much to alter what I eat and how I exercise today. It is to change my habits, habits developed over forty years into something that now threatens my survival.
It also helped that my boss at Aero-News, Jim Campbell, has been watching his weight carefully, in order to get in better shape for the Rocket Racing League. Jim's dropped a lot of pounds, and he's clearly healthier and has more energy. Positive reinforcement like that helps!
Oh, One Other Thing...
I've cheated a little on blogging this. You see, I had my epiphany on my weight and health way back in June. The first day of keeping a log was June 29th; so today, August 31st, actually makes nine weeks that I've already been on the diet I chose. So please let me explain what I chose, why I chose it, and report some immediate results.
The Problem With Name Diets
Currently, the happening diet seems to be the Atkins Diet. Lots of people have had success with it; my friend Mike Hill (another SF vet) used it to get fit with a view to going back in; writer and financial advisor John Ross calls it the nearest thing to a miracle he's ever seen. The South Beach Diet, which my father has used, is a similar low-carb diet.
To me, these diets were too rigid. I don't think they're necessarily bad; I just doubt my ability to stick to them, and that was going to be the critical single point of failure in my system. The same goes for the scores and hundreds of diet books, which regularly lard the nonfiction lists as the populace gets larger and larger. Clearly, people are buying the books; presumably they're reading them, but they don't seem to do any good.
In my business, aviation, I'm more and more frequently asked about larger and larger people taking flight training, which sometimes requires them to use larger, more expensive aircraft; and everyone has had the unpleasant experience of a commercial flight next to some unfortunate person who does not fit in his or her seat. The FAA has had to revise the standard passenger used in weight calculations upward as the nation grows, and sizes that once required a trip to the big and tall store are now on the racks everywhere. So that's the trend.
I would rather start a countertrend.
Similarly, I dismissed group-based "therapeutic" or "12-step" weight-loss cults like Jenny Craig, Weight Watchers, etc. Everybody I know who did that lost and then regained weight. I can't do that, I must permanently lose the weight by changing my behaviour. Everyone I know who has sustained a long-term weight readjustment has done it by changing his or her behaviour.
There is no shortage of people who have found something that works for them. (I'm fascinated by Dave at thecrisper.com who shops the perimeter of the grocery store, avoiding the packaged foods within). There's no shortage of people who want to help. What was lacking in my case was the commitment. Well, lack solved.
I Go Online For Help -- And Find It
I formed the idea that my basic problem was pretty simple -- I was eating a lot of junk, true, but the bottom line was that I was just eating too damn much. I decided that I ought to try restricting my caloric intake to 1700 kcal/day, and then thought I ought to check online to see what people said, since I pulled that number out of thin air based on dimly remembered nutrition lectures from the Army. (Which tells you all the facts, but feeds you 7000 cal. of fat and sugars a day, with almost zero fresh vegetables).
The first thought after looking at some pages of Google results -- "oh my, there's an awful lot of nonsense written about dieting." But as usual, some good things began to be teased out of the results. And I finally found a website that I like, and rely on, and visit regularly: CalorieKing by Allan Borushek.
Now, I don't know Borushek from Adam, but it says here that he's a registered dietician, and for someone who's calorie counting for weight control, his site is a Godsend. It has many restaurant meals' calories listed on it (even fast food and junk food) and you can also use it to look up specific foods. You can go further, by joining the site, or ordering logging software, but I also wanted to track other health status, so I passed on that (they even make a Palm version, which was tempting). CalorieKing suggested that for my height and weight, 2000 calories and a 45-minute walk would lead to a sustainable 1-2 kb. loss a week. About what I need to do, and close enough to my 1700 -- I choose to stick with my original figure. If I find myself starved at 1700, I have 300 calories to play with. I know there will be days when I have trouble. (Meals at Mom and Dad's, for one).
Then I needed to keep track of my results. So I made an Excel Spreadsheet. One page has the data entry -- each day I record my weight, pulse and blood oxygenation, what I eat for each meal and what my calories were -- also the time of day of weigh-in, and of each meal. At the end of the row, a simple formula adds up my daily calories -- if I broke 1700, the spreadsheet makes it bold, in red. Reinforcement! Next to my weight, another formula calculates my BMI. If it's in the Morbidly Obese range, that shows up bold and red; Obese is orange, overweight is black, and in the zone is bold and green. I also record my exercise on the same sheet -- don't do a calorie calc on it, just record what I did.
The next two pages are Daily Weight and Weekly Weight charts. Here they are:
As you can see, the Daily chart shows some fluctuation. Partly this is based on the time of weigh-in; body weight in my case changes by 8-10 lb. during an average 24-hour period. Partly, it really does fluctuate a little. Trend shows up better on the weekly chart. The period of stagnation on the daily chart is a backfill I put in to cover two weeks when I was on the road (at Airventure in Oshkosh, Wisconsin), trying despite travel to hold to the data, but unable to keep the sheet up. My weight kept coming down during this period, albeit slowly. This is more clearly visible on the weekly chart.
Note that on the weekly chart, the "weeks elapsed" is off by one. It should start counting at zero, but it doesn't. Ah well, I figured out all the other Excel stuff, I'll figure that out too. Excel is not rocket science.
And So, The Numbers...
My weight at epiphany time was 262, a weight I also recorded in the evening of the 2nd day (note the spike on the Daily chart). My actual first weigh-in was 252. My objective is 160 -- a total loss of 102 lb. As of today, I am 232, so 30 lb are off, and 72 to go.
I have eaten a mean of 1567 Calories a day and a median of 1642.5 -- these numbers, initially accurate, are skewed high because I set my intake to 1700 every day for which I don't have data. The lowest I've done is about a thousand, and the highest 2725 -- a day that involved helping my brother move heavy stuff, and two meals out.
There are some notable interior goals before the final goal of 160 lb. AT 165, I will be normal weight, not overweight. At 197, I will be overweight, not obese. (Boy, I am so looking forward to being overweight. Which sounds funny, huh?). And when I pass 230 -- coming soon -- I will be "merely" obese not, as now, severely obese. (Note that these calculations are all based on BMI, which is a fairly crude yardstick, especially for muscular men. But I'm not muscular like I was in my days of 3-hour daily workouts and 12-mile fun runs in lieu of lunch). I would also not be human if I did not note such major numeric milestones as 200 lb.
And How Do You Feel About That?
As a psychiatrist might ask... actually, I feel much better. I have more energy. Even though the exercise leg of the chair isn't going as well as the diet leg, instead of being unable to walk up my hill without a breath break, I can do it swinging 5 lb. heavyhands weights, twice, as part of an hour and a half fast walk.
I'm a long way from SF fitness still, but I'm also a long way from June's disgusting fatbody already. (Not quite ready to present myself to Gunny Ermey, though). I think I am making a permanent alteration in my diet. No hunger pangs or cravings. I am astonished at the size of the portions I used to think were normal... on many foods, I now eat 1/4 as much -- literally! And some foods have proven to be real favorites. I do have some concerns -- I think I'm eating too much prepared junk, and getting too much sodium. But first I'll address volume, then I'll find-tune ingredients. I don't expect the fat to go without a fight, but I do expect it to go. So far, so good.
Posted: Thursday - August 31, 2006 at 10:46 PM
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Published On: Aug 06, 2007 08:06 PM
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Published On: Aug 06, 2007 08:06 PM