I went on a trip that lasted roughly ten days. I didn't really take any meals with me, I decided to try "roughing" it and just being kind of careful of what I ate.
The trip consisted of one 11 hour day in the car, then a 6 hour day in the car to reach the destination. We ate out a lot. Once in awhile some fast food...McDonald's for breakfast meant a McMuffin, for example, or we had the hotel breakfast buffets to save some cash. Other times we ate out at places like the Rain Forest Cafe or Bubba Gump's.
I knew I was eating more than I should, but I tried making sure I never ate until I felt uncomfortable. Most of the time I began to wonder if the pouch was stretched out; I'd eat the mushroom burger (the meat wasn't meat, from what I could tell) at a restaurant, and I wasn't hurting or uncomfortable at all.
We walked a lot. We walked a lot. One day was spent in Chicago, and I swear I don't remember walking so much in my life in one day. We walked the zoo, we walked around parts of town, we walked 10 blocks to the Navy Pier and 10 blocks back in stifling humidity. And I loved it.
The walk back from the pier, after the fireworks, my 5 year old son was complaining about the distance. He wanted to get to the hotel to see if he and his sister could go swimming, and we didn't know when the pool would close; we'd be getting there rather late. I knew we needed to step it up, but as my wife put it, "Daddy, your legs are longer...every step you take is two for him."
So I stopped and said, "I'm already stinky and sweaty, but what the hell...," and picked him up and placed him on my shoulders. "C'mon dude...we're going to get to the hotel!"
He leaned down and said, "You're my favorite Daddy!"
And you know what? We got back to the hotel in time for him to have a good swim.
I've never seen so many people walking everywhere. We saw runners everywhere we went in Chicago. We walked a lot at our destination, inside a giant mall, but that was more like meandering while shopping than actually walking in a city. I walked until my feet throbbed. I walked until my fingers swelled. I had sweat glistening on my arms in less than half an hour from 80+ degree heat and humidity high enough to swim through the air, and I didn't care. I stank. You stank. Everyone was sweaty and hot. I didn't care!
It was fun. But I was certain from the food that I had gained 10 pounds.
When I got home...I only gained 2.
Nice.
Showing posts with label exercise. Show all posts
Showing posts with label exercise. Show all posts
Saturday, August 7, 2010
Wednesday, July 14, 2010
Weight Loss and Exercise
I saw this story and thought that the author's conclusions rather echoed the conclusion I've drawn after researching exercise and caloric intake after my surgery. As a matter of fact, I posted a comment to the Weighty Matters blog about it!
I probably had said it before, but basically, exercise simply isn't a great way to maintain weight loss. It's good for you and does great things for the body but for weight maintenance, it simply isn't a panacea.
First, people tend to reward themselves for working out. "I was good!" they say. "I exercised, sweated a lot, I can afford this donut..." or extra bit of pie or extra slice of pizza, whatever you want to stick in there as a treat. I'm sure there are plenty of people who go to the gym and not indulge, but there are plenty of average people who do.
Second, have you looked realistically at the amount of calories you burn versus what's in a cheeseburger? Walking for a couple hours at a decent pace will burn out a plain cheeseburger of 300 calories. If you wanted to work off the average American's meal, you'd be in the gym for four or five hours doing moderate work. That's a LOT of exercising, a lot of time, so if you don't get exercise in as part of your job (as in you're a professional weight lifter or aerobics instructor of something of that caliber), good luck with your exercise routine making a huge dent in your weight.
Third, I don't know about you, but I'm a creature of routine. Knock me out of my routine, and I will fall right off the wagon. I'm terrible about this. I like biking, but if I can't go out (like when it's snowing out, or raining, etc.) I can't do it on a regular basis, and that is exercise I can't do on a regular basis. Walking? When I can, but it's still not something I routinely fit in. Even going to the gym got to be a hassle as I was annoyed by some of the other people there.
Overall I've found, from my reading, my research, and experiences, that the best way to control weight is to play with your caloric intake. You don't need to work off calories that you don't eat in the first place.
For exercise, I do try to walk more; I don't mind parking a little farther away in the parking lot. I don't mind taking the stairs. I don't mind having to walk around a building, or walking to a destination when it won't take too long. But I don't do exercise to rely on weight maintenance anymore, and anyone pushing it as a weight-control item instead of just being beneficial for your health (your bones, you heart, etc.) is fooling you.
I probably had said it before, but basically, exercise simply isn't a great way to maintain weight loss. It's good for you and does great things for the body but for weight maintenance, it simply isn't a panacea.
First, people tend to reward themselves for working out. "I was good!" they say. "I exercised, sweated a lot, I can afford this donut..." or extra bit of pie or extra slice of pizza, whatever you want to stick in there as a treat. I'm sure there are plenty of people who go to the gym and not indulge, but there are plenty of average people who do.
Second, have you looked realistically at the amount of calories you burn versus what's in a cheeseburger? Walking for a couple hours at a decent pace will burn out a plain cheeseburger of 300 calories. If you wanted to work off the average American's meal, you'd be in the gym for four or five hours doing moderate work. That's a LOT of exercising, a lot of time, so if you don't get exercise in as part of your job (as in you're a professional weight lifter or aerobics instructor of something of that caliber), good luck with your exercise routine making a huge dent in your weight.
Third, I don't know about you, but I'm a creature of routine. Knock me out of my routine, and I will fall right off the wagon. I'm terrible about this. I like biking, but if I can't go out (like when it's snowing out, or raining, etc.) I can't do it on a regular basis, and that is exercise I can't do on a regular basis. Walking? When I can, but it's still not something I routinely fit in. Even going to the gym got to be a hassle as I was annoyed by some of the other people there.
Overall I've found, from my reading, my research, and experiences, that the best way to control weight is to play with your caloric intake. You don't need to work off calories that you don't eat in the first place.
For exercise, I do try to walk more; I don't mind parking a little farther away in the parking lot. I don't mind taking the stairs. I don't mind having to walk around a building, or walking to a destination when it won't take too long. But I don't do exercise to rely on weight maintenance anymore, and anyone pushing it as a weight-control item instead of just being beneficial for your health (your bones, you heart, etc.) is fooling you.
Friday, February 12, 2010
Exercise isn't Fun
I've been bad lately about exercise.
I haven't gone to the gym for some time. I've not been carving time to go there.
I have reasons that I find valid. Parent meetings after work, feeling blah after getting home as the sun is falling due to this stupid time change crap, circumstances surrounding having to get a new car after totaling my old car in an accident...it just plain sucks.
I have been trying to ride my exercise bike instead in the basement a few times a week to keep from totally falling off the bandwagon, reducing the impact instead to something more like holding on to the back of the bandwagon by one arm.
Exercise is something that is rather hard for me to justify. I didn't see visible results from going to the gym. I feel stupid going without having someone there to "hold my hand", so to speak, and verify that I'm doing things properly. The primary reason I was exercising was to try losing weight, even though I know there are other reasons to do so, and my research shows that the plain 300 calorie cheeseburger easily takes an hour on the treadmill to burn off. An hour?! Better off just not eating the burger...those reasons alone are really big demotivators balanced with the whole having to get changed, drive there, exercise, come home and shower and redress and in the process get a nice change of clothes that now needs laundering.
It just seems hard to justify when exercise isn't exactly an item on my "Hey, I have an hour to myself, what can I do that's productive and fun!?" list. It's lonely. It's boring. The only thing I do that seems immediately productive is burning through my collected downloaded podcast items on my iPod.
Again, I've not been adding much to the bariatric blog lately, and most of that is because I've been spending more time on my editing of a novel draft rather than running around the gym or having blood drawn. The only real change I've had lately to my routine was avoiding the gym and instead doing more with the bike. We finally had a snowfall outside, so I'll probably end up eventually taking the snow blower/thrower out to clear off our rather large driveway, and somehow justify that as an exercise.
I still browse blogs (Hi Lee!), I still occasionally get some work done (Hi novel! Oh, and day job, there you are...). I still stick to a pretty routine diet for simplicity, and haven't had any blood removed recently for testing.
If you're interested in my occasional blathering, there are other blogs. My profile should have them listed. The most active...even though it, too, has been quiet as I've been working on editing more than creating new material, is my New Author Chronicles blog. Check it out or my other blogs. My updates dwindle as I'm filling time on other projects, but I am still very much alive out here!
I haven't gone to the gym for some time. I've not been carving time to go there.
I have reasons that I find valid. Parent meetings after work, feeling blah after getting home as the sun is falling due to this stupid time change crap, circumstances surrounding having to get a new car after totaling my old car in an accident...it just plain sucks.
I have been trying to ride my exercise bike instead in the basement a few times a week to keep from totally falling off the bandwagon, reducing the impact instead to something more like holding on to the back of the bandwagon by one arm.
Exercise is something that is rather hard for me to justify. I didn't see visible results from going to the gym. I feel stupid going without having someone there to "hold my hand", so to speak, and verify that I'm doing things properly. The primary reason I was exercising was to try losing weight, even though I know there are other reasons to do so, and my research shows that the plain 300 calorie cheeseburger easily takes an hour on the treadmill to burn off. An hour?! Better off just not eating the burger...those reasons alone are really big demotivators balanced with the whole having to get changed, drive there, exercise, come home and shower and redress and in the process get a nice change of clothes that now needs laundering.
It just seems hard to justify when exercise isn't exactly an item on my "Hey, I have an hour to myself, what can I do that's productive and fun!?" list. It's lonely. It's boring. The only thing I do that seems immediately productive is burning through my collected downloaded podcast items on my iPod.
Again, I've not been adding much to the bariatric blog lately, and most of that is because I've been spending more time on my editing of a novel draft rather than running around the gym or having blood drawn. The only real change I've had lately to my routine was avoiding the gym and instead doing more with the bike. We finally had a snowfall outside, so I'll probably end up eventually taking the snow blower/thrower out to clear off our rather large driveway, and somehow justify that as an exercise.
I still browse blogs (Hi Lee!), I still occasionally get some work done (Hi novel! Oh, and day job, there you are...). I still stick to a pretty routine diet for simplicity, and haven't had any blood removed recently for testing.
If you're interested in my occasional blathering, there are other blogs. My profile should have them listed. The most active...even though it, too, has been quiet as I've been working on editing more than creating new material, is my New Author Chronicles blog. Check it out or my other blogs. My updates dwindle as I'm filling time on other projects, but I am still very much alive out here!
Wednesday, December 16, 2009
Maintenance
I had the surgery 8 months ago. Doesn't seem that way...seems like a distant memory.
I was told that the surgery's effects will continue for a year to 18 months down the road. But seeing as it's the holidays...which can be a trying time for nerves as well as stomachs...I thought I'd reflect a little on the current state of maintenance.
As a note, I've lost about 190 pounds total. That was including the pre-surgery mandatory weight loss (the irony is still not lost on me). But for the past week or two I've been fighting a mean plateau that keeps me in the 265 pound range. The bad news is...still obese. The really bad news is...it's enough of a weight loss that I have a lot of sagging skin, making me feel like a basset hound and keeping me embarrassed enough to not show my arms (and stomach, but I normally don't show that off anyway) in public.
I keep to the same diet I've had for the most part. The big change I recently made was to cut most of my peanut butter consumption. See, I have a couple food vices, which have changed over time a little. For example I loved soft drinks. Diet Pepsi, diet orange soda, etc...the doctor said I couldn't have it anymore. Not if I had the surgery. No bubbly stuff.
Begrudgingly I gave them up.
Mini donuts and brownies? Rich, think, cakey brownies? Gone. Pumpkin pie? Gone.
Even my Chef Boyardee I last had as a puree' shortly after the surgery...not since.
Jiminy jilikers. This is getting depressing.
Two things I didn't really give up; cheese, and peanut butter.
The problem is that I slide the slippery slope. I liked peanut butter. I indulged in peanut butter. I had too much peanut butter. It's a high calorie "slider food" that when not careful will add to weight. I wondered if that contributed to my plateau.
So now I have salsa on my broccoli instead of PB.
Let me tell you I preferred it a LOT more the other way. But hey...if it means taking off more pounds, I need to cut back on it. I have a taste on a piece of it or two and that's it. But in the afternoon, I have a little bowl of broccoli with salsa.
Snacking? Yeah, I do that. Apples and bananas. More expensive, unfortunately, but it is more healthy and relatively lower in calories.
Cheese? I have 2% cheese. A couple slices on my meals. That comes to 100 calories per meal. When I look at my pre-packed lunch/breakfast/dinner, I have a tortilla from Azteca (190 calories), cheese (100 calories total), plus a couple slices of thin-shaved meat (turkey or ham) and either some tomato sauce or salad dressing rolled up with a little bit of mushroom to add bulk. So I'd roughly estimate...350 to 400 calories? 1200 a day from meals? Plus my apples and bananas I wouldn't be too surprised at a 1500 calorie to 1600 calorie day. I don't think that's horrible, but I'll have to wait and see what happens with the plateau now that I've cut out 90% of my PB intake.
I still exercise to cut (according to the computers) 300 to 500 calories or so. I haven't been to the gym as much lately; I have tried making up for it on my recumbent bike. I've had a lot of other things to do with the holidays and family and whatnot, so it's just been a pain, especially as the weather gets colder, I'm learning the ropes of a coal stove for the first time, and it's freakin' dark by the time I get home from work, making it harder to get my butt out there. Excuses? Yes, I know, but to a degree justified. If it were a top priority these excuses wouldn't stop me.
The truth is that I have trouble finding the motivation to go. I don't have a trainer. It's not exactly a bit hurrah to go to the gym; it's not a rockin' place. It's hot, sweaty, and I'm never sure if I'm doing anything right with the freeweights.
Pain. In. The. Butt.
That said, I do still go. It's just more of a drag for me than when it was sunnier during the late afternoon.
So that's my progress with maintenance. Stuck in a plateau, depressed at the holidays and riding a recumbent as I type this, about to check once more if the coal stove is getting up to temp after having to refill the coal bed. Quick note to self...coal fires really like big deep red-hot coal beds. Let it get too thinned out and it'll die quickly, heat and firewise. And that sucks.
Until next time...feel free to share your dieting stories for maintenance and challenges to that weight!
I was told that the surgery's effects will continue for a year to 18 months down the road. But seeing as it's the holidays...which can be a trying time for nerves as well as stomachs...I thought I'd reflect a little on the current state of maintenance.
As a note, I've lost about 190 pounds total. That was including the pre-surgery mandatory weight loss (the irony is still not lost on me). But for the past week or two I've been fighting a mean plateau that keeps me in the 265 pound range. The bad news is...still obese. The really bad news is...it's enough of a weight loss that I have a lot of sagging skin, making me feel like a basset hound and keeping me embarrassed enough to not show my arms (and stomach, but I normally don't show that off anyway) in public.
I keep to the same diet I've had for the most part. The big change I recently made was to cut most of my peanut butter consumption. See, I have a couple food vices, which have changed over time a little. For example I loved soft drinks. Diet Pepsi, diet orange soda, etc...the doctor said I couldn't have it anymore. Not if I had the surgery. No bubbly stuff.
Begrudgingly I gave them up.
Mini donuts and brownies? Rich, think, cakey brownies? Gone. Pumpkin pie? Gone.
Even my Chef Boyardee I last had as a puree' shortly after the surgery...not since.
Jiminy jilikers. This is getting depressing.
Two things I didn't really give up; cheese, and peanut butter.
The problem is that I slide the slippery slope. I liked peanut butter. I indulged in peanut butter. I had too much peanut butter. It's a high calorie "slider food" that when not careful will add to weight. I wondered if that contributed to my plateau.
So now I have salsa on my broccoli instead of PB.
Let me tell you I preferred it a LOT more the other way. But hey...if it means taking off more pounds, I need to cut back on it. I have a taste on a piece of it or two and that's it. But in the afternoon, I have a little bowl of broccoli with salsa.
Snacking? Yeah, I do that. Apples and bananas. More expensive, unfortunately, but it is more healthy and relatively lower in calories.
Cheese? I have 2% cheese. A couple slices on my meals. That comes to 100 calories per meal. When I look at my pre-packed lunch/breakfast/dinner, I have a tortilla from Azteca (190 calories), cheese (100 calories total), plus a couple slices of thin-shaved meat (turkey or ham) and either some tomato sauce or salad dressing rolled up with a little bit of mushroom to add bulk. So I'd roughly estimate...350 to 400 calories? 1200 a day from meals? Plus my apples and bananas I wouldn't be too surprised at a 1500 calorie to 1600 calorie day. I don't think that's horrible, but I'll have to wait and see what happens with the plateau now that I've cut out 90% of my PB intake.
I still exercise to cut (according to the computers) 300 to 500 calories or so. I haven't been to the gym as much lately; I have tried making up for it on my recumbent bike. I've had a lot of other things to do with the holidays and family and whatnot, so it's just been a pain, especially as the weather gets colder, I'm learning the ropes of a coal stove for the first time, and it's freakin' dark by the time I get home from work, making it harder to get my butt out there. Excuses? Yes, I know, but to a degree justified. If it were a top priority these excuses wouldn't stop me.
The truth is that I have trouble finding the motivation to go. I don't have a trainer. It's not exactly a bit hurrah to go to the gym; it's not a rockin' place. It's hot, sweaty, and I'm never sure if I'm doing anything right with the freeweights.
Pain. In. The. Butt.
That said, I do still go. It's just more of a drag for me than when it was sunnier during the late afternoon.
So that's my progress with maintenance. Stuck in a plateau, depressed at the holidays and riding a recumbent as I type this, about to check once more if the coal stove is getting up to temp after having to refill the coal bed. Quick note to self...coal fires really like big deep red-hot coal beds. Let it get too thinned out and it'll die quickly, heat and firewise. And that sucks.
Until next time...feel free to share your dieting stories for maintenance and challenges to that weight!
Friday, December 11, 2009
Exercise And TV
The diet-blog has an article about a Fun eXercise Bike, or FXB, for your Nintendo Wii. Basically it's an exercise bike that interfaces with video games, an example they cite on the Amazon site includes Mario Cart.
The Diet-Blog site blasts it because it's an "excuse to spend more hours in front of the TV screen in the name of exercise." From the posting: "What ever happened to fresh air and riding real bikes outside? Why does every aspect of life need to be centered around the magic glowing box?"
I enjoy riding my bike outside. But I also enjoy my stationary bike, and have put far more miles on it. Why?
A) Weather. It's bloody cold out there right now. And the weather in here is pretty stable, thank you.
B) Hassle. I have to pack my bike to drive somewhere and ride it. There are hardly any bike trails in the area, and riding on the road guarantees that at some point I'm going to get hit.
C) Information. Stationary bikes are pretty good at tracking speed, distance, and probably aren't terribly off in their calories burned ratings. Pony up more money for a bike computer and get it set properly and you can get more information from your regular bike too, but it's still more hassle.
D) Maintenance. "Real" bikes take "real" maintenance. I don't remember having to clean and mend a chain on a stationary bike. Or clean it. Or scrape dog crap off the tires before putting it in the van.
E) Routine. I need routine. I crave routine. Biking outdoors means commitment to riding in rain, snow, sleet, wind, hail...unless you change that routine. Biking on a stationary bike? Not so much. I can count on my stationary bike being ready to go when I am. My regular bike needs to have tires checked, and the weather can't be in the 90's or in the 30's. Sorry, I'm just not that hard core.
So is there something wrong with this Wii bike? I don't think so. It's a way to encourage exercise, and it costs $99 while my regular "real" bike was around $400, and "real" bikes can easily run into the thousands (I'd love to try out a nice recumbent bike sometime...)
We live in an age where exercise is artificial. People in gyms are pumping hunks of iron, steel and aluminum and riding fake bikes and walking and running on treadmills that go nowhere. There are people who decide to get up and "go for a walk" to get exercise during the week.
In the past, people were "pumping" rocks and lumber and carrying crops and food for animals. They walked because it was the only way to get from the house to the store and back. People didn't set out to exercise. They didn't have a bloody choice in the matter.
It used to be that exercise was a side effect of trying to survive. Today it's a scheduled activity. Why complain about what form it comes in as long as you get the exercise?
The Diet-Blog site blasts it because it's an "excuse to spend more hours in front of the TV screen in the name of exercise." From the posting: "What ever happened to fresh air and riding real bikes outside? Why does every aspect of life need to be centered around the magic glowing box?"
I enjoy riding my bike outside. But I also enjoy my stationary bike, and have put far more miles on it. Why?
A) Weather. It's bloody cold out there right now. And the weather in here is pretty stable, thank you.
B) Hassle. I have to pack my bike to drive somewhere and ride it. There are hardly any bike trails in the area, and riding on the road guarantees that at some point I'm going to get hit.
C) Information. Stationary bikes are pretty good at tracking speed, distance, and probably aren't terribly off in their calories burned ratings. Pony up more money for a bike computer and get it set properly and you can get more information from your regular bike too, but it's still more hassle.
D) Maintenance. "Real" bikes take "real" maintenance. I don't remember having to clean and mend a chain on a stationary bike. Or clean it. Or scrape dog crap off the tires before putting it in the van.
E) Routine. I need routine. I crave routine. Biking outdoors means commitment to riding in rain, snow, sleet, wind, hail...unless you change that routine. Biking on a stationary bike? Not so much. I can count on my stationary bike being ready to go when I am. My regular bike needs to have tires checked, and the weather can't be in the 90's or in the 30's. Sorry, I'm just not that hard core.
So is there something wrong with this Wii bike? I don't think so. It's a way to encourage exercise, and it costs $99 while my regular "real" bike was around $400, and "real" bikes can easily run into the thousands (I'd love to try out a nice recumbent bike sometime...)
We live in an age where exercise is artificial. People in gyms are pumping hunks of iron, steel and aluminum and riding fake bikes and walking and running on treadmills that go nowhere. There are people who decide to get up and "go for a walk" to get exercise during the week.
In the past, people were "pumping" rocks and lumber and carrying crops and food for animals. They walked because it was the only way to get from the house to the store and back. People didn't set out to exercise. They didn't have a bloody choice in the matter.
It used to be that exercise was a side effect of trying to survive. Today it's a scheduled activity. Why complain about what form it comes in as long as you get the exercise?
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
Exercise Alone Doesn't Help You Lose Weight?
It seems that there is more research buzz pointing in the direction that exercise isn't as big a factor in losing weight as people are led to believe.
The first time this splashed on my radar was from this article in Time Magazine. The author was getting virtually speared online by various pundits and squawkers for suggesting that exercise wasn't a panacea in weight loss, and worse, may actually contribute to weight gain (I exercised a lot today, so I deserve this donut!)
So you can imagine my surprise when I found this article on the diet blog saying that exercise alone won't help you lose weight. Funny enough this article references the Time article, but goes on to cite other recent work that indicates that exercise is a marginal influence on weight compared to your diet.
I've suspected this for awhile. It's not just the BS that gets spread around by gym rats like, "You're heavier because muscle weighs more than fat!" and evidently forgetting that a pound is a pound, no matter what you're weighing, and that in order to actually gain muscle a person has to be eating a surplus of calories to gain building material in the body from which to build more muscle.
I also suspected it when I found out that fat burns only about four to six calories less than muscle per pound. If you replace five pounds of fat with muscle, your body will metabolize only 30 more calories a day at rest. That's a slice of 2% cheese. I vaguely remember having touched on the topic before.
And remember, to build muscle you need to increase your intake of food. Food fuels you but it is also the supply of building material from which your body grows and repairs itself. That means you need to monitor your calorie burning while exercising to make sure you don't have a surplus in calories leading to weight gain, which in my case would be counter productive!
I suspected exercise wasn't a huge key in weight loss again when I found that walking an hour on the treadmill at between 3 and 4 miles per hour would usually lead to an estimated calorie burn of approximately one McDonald's cheeseburger. Not the meal. The burger. Plain cheeseburger (which is 300 calories, by the way). This isn't much of a dent when people snarf double cheeseburgers in two's.
One hour on the treadmill and all I can get for it is a single cheeseburger? Ouch.
Of course some of the gym rats will say things like, "Exercise revs up the metabolism for an hour or two after you exercise, so you lose weight that way too!", or, "building more muscle means burning more calories even at rest!"
Which may be true. But driving your car speeds up the erosion on it's paint and metal on the fenders due to friction with the air and bugs and pebbles that bounce off it while speeding down the road. It's technically true. Just as wind and weather wear away at rocks over time, you're speeding up these same effects on your car to some degree by driving it, since it's like having a constant 45 to 65 mile per hour wind with rocks and bugs hurling into the surface of the vehicle, thus eroding it away. Yet it's not enough of a significant impact to warrant serious concern.
It's about time for an attitude shift in exercise from health fanatics. This evidence is pointing to the need for primarily altering your eating habits, and exercise would just augment this change. None of these articles are saying you shouldn't exercise; to the contrary, they say that exercise has other benefits, while weight loss isn't really one of them. It's still well known that exercise reduces osteoporosis risk as we age. It helps with balance. It does contribute to weight loss to a small degree (although you wipe this out if you celebrate your dedications to the gym with going out for a slice of pie at that local ice cream shop.) Exercise helps your heart and keeps you fit. I'm told it improves your mood as well but I've yet to experience that.
Being active helps you with weight maintenance. But it is an adjunct to adopting better, more reasonable eating habits. Maybe even from schools; I don't recall having a class that focused on telling you that the typical American diet had you eating like a chemical-laden pig, but I do remember wondering what the point of "phys ed" was (oh boy! I get to play a sport that I can't stand watching on TV...oh boy...yeah...not fun.)
Think about it. In an hour at the gym the average person burns up what, 300 to 500 calories? Roughly? Maybe 600. That, for the average person, is the calories in one or two snacks. A snack bar is roughly 300 calories. Some go as high as 500. So your hour in the gym may have bought you a five-minute snack. It doesn't even cover a "full" breakfast at a fast food joint.
And if you're trying to lose weight it's the calories that count.
3500 calories over your burned calorie count is a pound of fat. That means cutting back 500 calories from your diet each day will result in losing a pound over the course of a week. Or every two weeks if you cut back 250 calories per day. When you look at bread and see that a couple slices amount to 100 calories or that your average slice of whole-milk cheese is 100 calories than you can see that trimming your calorie intake here and there can have a bigger effect than jamming more exercise into your schedule, especially when in real-world activities fewer people visit the gym each day and keep up sacrificing their time to hang at the gym and of those gym-goers there's apparently a healthy number that like "treating" themselves to an ice cream cone or extra slice of pizza because they were good about going to the gym.
How about you? Have you noticed a significant impact from exercise on your weight? Or have you noticed that eating less has a bigger impact on yoru weight?
The first time this splashed on my radar was from this article in Time Magazine. The author was getting virtually speared online by various pundits and squawkers for suggesting that exercise wasn't a panacea in weight loss, and worse, may actually contribute to weight gain (I exercised a lot today, so I deserve this donut!)
So you can imagine my surprise when I found this article on the diet blog saying that exercise alone won't help you lose weight. Funny enough this article references the Time article, but goes on to cite other recent work that indicates that exercise is a marginal influence on weight compared to your diet.
I've suspected this for awhile. It's not just the BS that gets spread around by gym rats like, "You're heavier because muscle weighs more than fat!" and evidently forgetting that a pound is a pound, no matter what you're weighing, and that in order to actually gain muscle a person has to be eating a surplus of calories to gain building material in the body from which to build more muscle.
I also suspected it when I found out that fat burns only about four to six calories less than muscle per pound. If you replace five pounds of fat with muscle, your body will metabolize only 30 more calories a day at rest. That's a slice of 2% cheese. I vaguely remember having touched on the topic before.
And remember, to build muscle you need to increase your intake of food. Food fuels you but it is also the supply of building material from which your body grows and repairs itself. That means you need to monitor your calorie burning while exercising to make sure you don't have a surplus in calories leading to weight gain, which in my case would be counter productive!
I suspected exercise wasn't a huge key in weight loss again when I found that walking an hour on the treadmill at between 3 and 4 miles per hour would usually lead to an estimated calorie burn of approximately one McDonald's cheeseburger. Not the meal. The burger. Plain cheeseburger (which is 300 calories, by the way). This isn't much of a dent when people snarf double cheeseburgers in two's.
One hour on the treadmill and all I can get for it is a single cheeseburger? Ouch.
Of course some of the gym rats will say things like, "Exercise revs up the metabolism for an hour or two after you exercise, so you lose weight that way too!", or, "building more muscle means burning more calories even at rest!"
Which may be true. But driving your car speeds up the erosion on it's paint and metal on the fenders due to friction with the air and bugs and pebbles that bounce off it while speeding down the road. It's technically true. Just as wind and weather wear away at rocks over time, you're speeding up these same effects on your car to some degree by driving it, since it's like having a constant 45 to 65 mile per hour wind with rocks and bugs hurling into the surface of the vehicle, thus eroding it away. Yet it's not enough of a significant impact to warrant serious concern.
It's about time for an attitude shift in exercise from health fanatics. This evidence is pointing to the need for primarily altering your eating habits, and exercise would just augment this change. None of these articles are saying you shouldn't exercise; to the contrary, they say that exercise has other benefits, while weight loss isn't really one of them. It's still well known that exercise reduces osteoporosis risk as we age. It helps with balance. It does contribute to weight loss to a small degree (although you wipe this out if you celebrate your dedications to the gym with going out for a slice of pie at that local ice cream shop.) Exercise helps your heart and keeps you fit. I'm told it improves your mood as well but I've yet to experience that.
Being active helps you with weight maintenance. But it is an adjunct to adopting better, more reasonable eating habits. Maybe even from schools; I don't recall having a class that focused on telling you that the typical American diet had you eating like a chemical-laden pig, but I do remember wondering what the point of "phys ed" was (oh boy! I get to play a sport that I can't stand watching on TV...oh boy...yeah...not fun.)
Think about it. In an hour at the gym the average person burns up what, 300 to 500 calories? Roughly? Maybe 600. That, for the average person, is the calories in one or two snacks. A snack bar is roughly 300 calories. Some go as high as 500. So your hour in the gym may have bought you a five-minute snack. It doesn't even cover a "full" breakfast at a fast food joint.
And if you're trying to lose weight it's the calories that count.
3500 calories over your burned calorie count is a pound of fat. That means cutting back 500 calories from your diet each day will result in losing a pound over the course of a week. Or every two weeks if you cut back 250 calories per day. When you look at bread and see that a couple slices amount to 100 calories or that your average slice of whole-milk cheese is 100 calories than you can see that trimming your calorie intake here and there can have a bigger effect than jamming more exercise into your schedule, especially when in real-world activities fewer people visit the gym each day and keep up sacrificing their time to hang at the gym and of those gym-goers there's apparently a healthy number that like "treating" themselves to an ice cream cone or extra slice of pizza because they were good about going to the gym.
How about you? Have you noticed a significant impact from exercise on your weight? Or have you noticed that eating less has a bigger impact on yoru weight?
Tuesday, October 20, 2009
The Anti-Gym
I heard about this in a podcast. It's a gym in Denver called "The Anti-Gym". The website is found here.
When I first heard of the "Anti-Gym" I thought it was referring to a lounge, spa, or restaurant. Some kind of hedonistic self-indulgent resort where you do everything but exercise. I was wrong.
Apparently it's a self-styled extreme gym with their own "no chubbies" policy, generating controversy and publicity galore. They apparently endorse alcohol and marijuana as part of a healthy lifestyle (or at least they aren't against having them integrated with your lifestyle). They have their own brand of motivation to keep you going in your workouts.
You should really check out the commercials they have posted online. The owner has this thing for popping out of fridges.
In all seriousness, this gym seems...interesting? Is that the right word for it? I think it's novel. It definitely has a narrow appeal...it's expensive, it's crass and crude, and it has a very driven philosophy by which it works.
If you're someone looking to lose weight and get in shape by the use of being berated and bullied (name calling, pastries thrown at you in public, basic humiliation) then this is the place for you.
The owner makes some good points. I think he's also making them in what is quite possibly the most politically incorrect way I could have imagined, and despite this the gym looks like it's making a decent amount of money. It seems to endorse a lifestyle change to lose weight and get in shape. Portion control. "Eat to live, don't live to eat". Assessment of your progress. Things that ordinarily would make a good gym great. This gym simply crosses the border into obnoxiousville, though.
I admire the novelty of it. Personally I think it seems to be one long hazing ritual, and that just isn't for me. I can get humiliation enough just from walking through the mall and letting my imagination run free as to what other people are thinking as they pass my wide load arse. This place takes those fears and makes them real.
Here's an article that was run on the gym in the Denver Post. Yelp.com had some sparse reviews of the gym. One blog has some experiences from someone who wanted to go but was chased off by the extremely high price of admission.
Then again, if Jezebel dot com is to be believed, the gym isn't even open anymore (and the owner was critizing our new surgeon general for being too fat to serve at her post). If this is true, then the appearance of the website and the reality of this story is a wonderful example of some of the principles behind effective marketing. That is one slick website for a company that doesn't exist anymore...
When I first heard of the "Anti-Gym" I thought it was referring to a lounge, spa, or restaurant. Some kind of hedonistic self-indulgent resort where you do everything but exercise. I was wrong.
Apparently it's a self-styled extreme gym with their own "no chubbies" policy, generating controversy and publicity galore. They apparently endorse alcohol and marijuana as part of a healthy lifestyle (or at least they aren't against having them integrated with your lifestyle). They have their own brand of motivation to keep you going in your workouts.
You should really check out the commercials they have posted online. The owner has this thing for popping out of fridges.
In all seriousness, this gym seems...interesting? Is that the right word for it? I think it's novel. It definitely has a narrow appeal...it's expensive, it's crass and crude, and it has a very driven philosophy by which it works.
If you're someone looking to lose weight and get in shape by the use of being berated and bullied (name calling, pastries thrown at you in public, basic humiliation) then this is the place for you.
The owner makes some good points. I think he's also making them in what is quite possibly the most politically incorrect way I could have imagined, and despite this the gym looks like it's making a decent amount of money. It seems to endorse a lifestyle change to lose weight and get in shape. Portion control. "Eat to live, don't live to eat". Assessment of your progress. Things that ordinarily would make a good gym great. This gym simply crosses the border into obnoxiousville, though.
I admire the novelty of it. Personally I think it seems to be one long hazing ritual, and that just isn't for me. I can get humiliation enough just from walking through the mall and letting my imagination run free as to what other people are thinking as they pass my wide load arse. This place takes those fears and makes them real.
Here's an article that was run on the gym in the Denver Post. Yelp.com had some sparse reviews of the gym. One blog has some experiences from someone who wanted to go but was chased off by the extremely high price of admission.
Then again, if Jezebel dot com is to be believed, the gym isn't even open anymore (and the owner was critizing our new surgeon general for being too fat to serve at her post). If this is true, then the appearance of the website and the reality of this story is a wonderful example of some of the principles behind effective marketing. That is one slick website for a company that doesn't exist anymore...
Sunday, October 11, 2009
Going Fer' a Walk
Here's another relatively short posting.
I've been trying to do some kind of exercise, mainly to supplement weight loss but also because it's supposedly a requirement to not waste away or lose muscle and bone mass. It's hard. The gym in my area has lots of equipment, but no training program for the noobs, or if they do they don't advertise it. I'm making a hobby of figuring out which muscle is going to ache because I think I did something wrong with the free weights.
One thing I am doing new now is walking outside. I don't do it often since outdoor weather isn't as predictable as indoor weather at the gym and I can't get some idea of distance, pace, etc. when walking in the woods compared to a treadmill. On the other hand the gym doesn't have cool looking mushrooms to look at.
This isn't always a great idea though. Turns out the gym is usually safer.
Last night (keep in mind this is being posted later with auto-scheduling) I was planning on going for a walk at the state park. My son and wife had gone the first time I decided to try hiking a trail, and my son actually ended up enjoying it. Well this time around they weren't too hot on the idea so I went by myself.
It was around six o'clock when I left. When I got to the park and started walking there was plenty of daylight. I decided to follow one of the longer trails to see how far I could get.
Lesson one: find a way to track your distance, even if it's a pedometer, if they don't mark the trail well.
I finally reached an open point where I saw a lovely cloud formation at the sunset and a sign saying I was 1.2 miles from the trailhead.
Lesson two: pay attention to details. Notice I said sunset at the middle of the trail I hadn't been on before?
I turned back at that point and started down the trail. I was feeling a little worried because most of the trail turned out to be a HILL. I was scaling an incline a good 75% of the time and my chest was giving a hollow thump...something I need to talk to the doctor about at my next appointment.
Lesson three: the gym sucks, but it has a defibrillator. Luckily I didn't need it.
The woods are lovely. The massive trees with their turning leaves and lichens and mushrooms...getting back to nature is nice once in awhile for a tech-head.
Lesson four: there may be enough light to see when in a field or open area. The woods will be approximately %50 darker. Once it's dim out, the woods will be near-black.
As I was heading down the incline to where my car was I heard more crashing through the woods than I was overall comfortable with. That's when I remembered that making noise helps alert animals...like black bears in the area that also happen to have the perfect camouflage for the night...that you're coming. It wasn't a problem when I first started since there were dried leaves all over the trail. Here? Not so much. It was mostly dirt and roots and rocks.
Lesson five: I started counting my steps out loud. Yes, I did hear a few more things moving in the woods after I did that. Not like a mass exodus of an army of gnomes, but I heard something out there...
I finally hit the end of the trail and it opened to the road. The problem was that I didn't recognize it. I must have missed a turn somewhere along the way.
Lesson six: new trails without a map...bad idea.
I had seen the occasional sign along the way, I simply must have taken a zig when I needed a zag. I wasn't overly worried since as a tech that needs to use tools and flashlights, I started carrying a small LED flashlight clipped to my belt. I was able to read the few signs I passed. That was actually my first inkling that I was in trouble. I found a sign that I didn't remember seeing before shortly before the trail ended at an unmarked road.
Lesson seven: while I didn't have a medical kit, which I should have had, I did have a flashlight and a small toolkit. Just in case. Unfortunately it's a just in case while I'm at work or just going about my day. Anti-venom kits and band aids aren't typical hazards in my day. Bonking my head on rocks from tripping on a root in a trail isn't part of my workday hazards. Hiking around the woods, probably should be more careful here.
I did find a small sign that said that I couldn't park along the road anywhere and at any time, and instead had to park at the lake a the bottom of the hill. The trail ended with a road that was...you guessed it...on a hill. So I walked down. Five minutes later I could discern, barely, the outline of the lake and the guardrail preventing drivers from plunging into it, and recognized where I had parked.
That was my adventure for that night. Some more experience under the belt, and I walked nearly two and a half miles.
I've been trying to do some kind of exercise, mainly to supplement weight loss but also because it's supposedly a requirement to not waste away or lose muscle and bone mass. It's hard. The gym in my area has lots of equipment, but no training program for the noobs, or if they do they don't advertise it. I'm making a hobby of figuring out which muscle is going to ache because I think I did something wrong with the free weights.
One thing I am doing new now is walking outside. I don't do it often since outdoor weather isn't as predictable as indoor weather at the gym and I can't get some idea of distance, pace, etc. when walking in the woods compared to a treadmill. On the other hand the gym doesn't have cool looking mushrooms to look at.
This isn't always a great idea though. Turns out the gym is usually safer.
Last night (keep in mind this is being posted later with auto-scheduling) I was planning on going for a walk at the state park. My son and wife had gone the first time I decided to try hiking a trail, and my son actually ended up enjoying it. Well this time around they weren't too hot on the idea so I went by myself.
It was around six o'clock when I left. When I got to the park and started walking there was plenty of daylight. I decided to follow one of the longer trails to see how far I could get.
Lesson one: find a way to track your distance, even if it's a pedometer, if they don't mark the trail well.
I finally reached an open point where I saw a lovely cloud formation at the sunset and a sign saying I was 1.2 miles from the trailhead.
Lesson two: pay attention to details. Notice I said sunset at the middle of the trail I hadn't been on before?
I turned back at that point and started down the trail. I was feeling a little worried because most of the trail turned out to be a HILL. I was scaling an incline a good 75% of the time and my chest was giving a hollow thump...something I need to talk to the doctor about at my next appointment.
Lesson three: the gym sucks, but it has a defibrillator. Luckily I didn't need it.
The woods are lovely. The massive trees with their turning leaves and lichens and mushrooms...getting back to nature is nice once in awhile for a tech-head.
Lesson four: there may be enough light to see when in a field or open area. The woods will be approximately %50 darker. Once it's dim out, the woods will be near-black.
As I was heading down the incline to where my car was I heard more crashing through the woods than I was overall comfortable with. That's when I remembered that making noise helps alert animals...like black bears in the area that also happen to have the perfect camouflage for the night...that you're coming. It wasn't a problem when I first started since there were dried leaves all over the trail. Here? Not so much. It was mostly dirt and roots and rocks.
Lesson five: I started counting my steps out loud. Yes, I did hear a few more things moving in the woods after I did that. Not like a mass exodus of an army of gnomes, but I heard something out there...
I finally hit the end of the trail and it opened to the road. The problem was that I didn't recognize it. I must have missed a turn somewhere along the way.
Lesson six: new trails without a map...bad idea.
I had seen the occasional sign along the way, I simply must have taken a zig when I needed a zag. I wasn't overly worried since as a tech that needs to use tools and flashlights, I started carrying a small LED flashlight clipped to my belt. I was able to read the few signs I passed. That was actually my first inkling that I was in trouble. I found a sign that I didn't remember seeing before shortly before the trail ended at an unmarked road.
Lesson seven: while I didn't have a medical kit, which I should have had, I did have a flashlight and a small toolkit. Just in case. Unfortunately it's a just in case while I'm at work or just going about my day. Anti-venom kits and band aids aren't typical hazards in my day. Bonking my head on rocks from tripping on a root in a trail isn't part of my workday hazards. Hiking around the woods, probably should be more careful here.
I did find a small sign that said that I couldn't park along the road anywhere and at any time, and instead had to park at the lake a the bottom of the hill. The trail ended with a road that was...you guessed it...on a hill. So I walked down. Five minutes later I could discern, barely, the outline of the lake and the guardrail preventing drivers from plunging into it, and recognized where I had parked.
That was my adventure for that night. Some more experience under the belt, and I walked nearly two and a half miles.
Sunday, September 20, 2009
The Truth About Lactic Acid
Ever hear the story that when you exercise your muscles build up lactic acid, and that causes soreness, pain, and general fatigue?
I've heard it. I know I've heard it associated with pains from exercise. "Your muscles build up lactic acid and that's what makes you feel the burn!"
Turns out it's not true.
For people that are regularly immersed in sports medicine or weight training, this we probably already well known. For those of us that are allergic to exercise the old wives tales are usually close enough to reality that we don't care enough to research it and find out the truth.
This time around the truth just sort of stumbled into my lap. Here's a story from 2006 at the New York Times that discusses how the old "lactic acid = pain" story first emerged in the 1920s and persists today, despite it being established that the lactic acid is actually fuel for the muscles.
Interesting if you didn't know about it before, eh?
I've heard it. I know I've heard it associated with pains from exercise. "Your muscles build up lactic acid and that's what makes you feel the burn!"
Turns out it's not true.
For people that are regularly immersed in sports medicine or weight training, this we probably already well known. For those of us that are allergic to exercise the old wives tales are usually close enough to reality that we don't care enough to research it and find out the truth.
This time around the truth just sort of stumbled into my lap. Here's a story from 2006 at the New York Times that discusses how the old "lactic acid = pain" story first emerged in the 1920s and persists today, despite it being established that the lactic acid is actually fuel for the muscles.
Interesting if you didn't know about it before, eh?
Tuesday, September 8, 2009
How Do You Maintain Weight Loss?
I just ran across yet another article in a blog asking about how someone can maintain a weight loss. This person said they lost 20 pounds and regained it all in 16 weeks...oh no!
I was going to quote the article in question (I try to avoid just tossing around crap into the blog without some pointer to where I got the information...it's bad form not to) but thought, y'know, I've run into this several times before, it's like some kind of group whine. Why not just do a quick Google and post the results?
"Maintain weight loss".
Holy shnikeys...
I'm not a diet guru. I'm not a scientist (although I enjoy science-related articles). I'm not a believer in woo, and like to fancy myself a bit of a skeptic.
But from what I can find on the topic, the answer is quite simple. The person who gained it back didn't change their lifestyle. They went on a "diet", then went off it.
"Yay! I lost twenty pounds! Time to have a cookie because I deserve it!"
No. You can lose weight temporarily by dieting. Eventually the diet mutates into a number of, "Oh, what would it hurt?", and "Just one more"'s until your waistline gets bigger and bigger and your skinny jeans make you look like a stuff sausage.
The answer is to change your lifestyle.
That's right, you need to actually change your lifestyle to accommodate a less calorie-centric lifestyle. Just check this article out.
If you enjoy your happy pasta-carb-sweets-relaxing lifestyle, then the lifestyle that keeps pounds off sucks. Go ahead and admit it. You don't like the sweaty life, then living it will suck. So you have to evaluate if the weight loss is worth changing gears.
There are times I hate my new lifestyle. I force myself to go to the gym during the week. An hour of walking the treadmill and playing with weight machines still hasn't seemed to make me a sweet prize on the beach, but I still do it since there's a pre-paid year's membership that would be wasted without it. As I type this I'm biking on my recumbent stationary bike and sweating like a pig (thank $DEITY for the USB keyboard or my laptop would be a mess). I've burned 239 calories so far according to the readout of supposed burned calories while surfing the web and working on this. And I'm still pdaling away...about 8 mph and 4.33 miles. I think...hope it's not in metric...
Anyway, lifestyle. I had the surgery (duh...I mean, Barry Atric?), and the real benefit to it is that it frees people with my brain wiring from having to come up with reasons to not indulge in what other people want you to do to fit in and end up sliding up the scale. Yes, RnY reduces your body's ability to absorb as many calories and that helps. But in the end your body heals up to the point where you can still cheat it and gain the weight back. A pouch isn't going to stop you from slowly slurping ice cream and shakes or pureeing Oreos. Eating a meal slowly will allow it to slip right through the pouch.
Okay, sugars can cause you to have cramps and explosive poo. Gross, but true. You need to know that if you're considering the surgery anyway. Also you'll be more sensitive to certain foods...I've noticed that if I try having too much of a portion of pasta, for example, I don't quite feel as well as usual. Not sick, but not exactly the best of shape either.
The more in tune you are with your body the more you notice the effect.
Where was I? Oh yes. The surgery gives you an excuse. I have fear of certain foods; go to a restaurant, and you don't know what's on the steak or in that burger. You don't know if the oil something is fried in will cause a quick run to the restroom or cramps that will make you want to vomit. So I would like certain things like pancakes from the breakfast buffet, but...not worth it. I recently went to a farewell lunch at a chinese buffet in town for some short-term coworkers moving into sunnier pastures...and ate nothing. The stuff I enjoy are things I shouldn't have because they could all trigger some nasty side effects. I could probably have lettuce and some cheese and egg, yes, but...nope. Not worth it when I had something packed for lunch that I know I like and tolerate.
The excuse is just to explain...I had surgery. Stomach doesn't work like yours.
And it's true.
A friend of mine had a birthday party. My wife and I were talking about plans for it, and I can take my lunch (I actually ended up having half a Panera sandwich before going, since his party was in mid-afternoon), and my wife said she couldn't take something if she didn't have lunch because it would be a social faux-pas. "It's rude!" she proclaimed.
I don't see a problem with it. If your diet is different than other peoples, whether by preference or choice or surgery or a combination (as it is with me), I don't see a problem with reducing their burden of having to accommodate me by supplying food for me. I feel bad for schools where one kid with a peanut allergy means no kid in the class is allowed to have a PB&J sandwich because Frankie could fall over with a reaction; the many have to change their choices because of one person. I don't want to be that one person.
So I take stuff with me.
The surgery means that I take stuff in to some places with me. Fast food joints don't care, especially if I order a water and am with other people eating their fare. Most small restaurants...like the buffet breakfast I went to and the chinese place...didn't charge anything because I didn't eat. Some could probably be set right if I showed them the ugly scar on my gut. Apparently most people don't know how to react to that and it's easier to back off than pursue a ten dollar bill for food not eaten.
I've talked about the surgical help. But I did this once before. I lost a couple hundred pounds several years ago, back around 2001, by going on a very low calorie diet. It was about 600 calories a day, and I lost a lot in just a year's time.
There are those who shudder at this. "How can he do it!? It's not sustainable!"
The only side effect were gallstones. My gall bladder had to be removed after ending up with acute pancreatitis. I just lost weight too fast, I guess.
But the diet itself I didn't mind. Why?
I have aspergers, and some of the traits lend itself well to changing lifestyle at times. In particular, if you change a habit over the course of a few weeks and don't alter them again, I get into a "groove" that tends to work for me. I had a lifestyle that enabled me to eat a certain schedule with certain things like tracking calorie counts with foods available at the supermarket and I got into a routine of when to buy what. It was relatively cheap and efficient, too. I took all my meals with me. And also thanks to my mental wiring, I quite frankly didn't give a @#$ what people thought of the fat guy carrying a plastic Glad box with an Egg Beater sandwich into a restaurant and ordering water.
Well, that's not entirely true. After I started dating my now-wife, and meeting her family which included a person well versed in managing food services, along with the constant disapproval from a few people close to me I did start changing my habits again. I started to fall back into my depression behaviors, namely not giving a damn anymore about what I'd done. So I gained it back. So while the battle of not caring about what the general public thought was true, the war with those behind enemy lines did kind of wear on me; my environment was changing and I in the end used it as an excuse to go back to my old habits. Even that's not entirely true...I gained most of the weight back, not all, and it was through new sets of bad habits.
I know I wasn't microwaving pizza rolls in the middle of the night to gain the weight that the surgery took off, for example.
The point is that when I lost weight, major weight, both times it came through some form of change, not just a temporary gimmick. No pills or special berries or what is being touted on TV. I had to change my lifestyle.
Some diet plans even incorporate this. Weight Watchers is partially successful because of this. It's a diet that "you can live with" and "incorporate into a healthy lifestyle". Atkins becomes a religion for their followers. If you can get "into" a diet, the you're pretty set to keep your weight off. But for people that just crash diet or go a month without their Starbucks and Dunkin' D visits...nope.
The answer is simple. The implementation is not.
Notice there's a difference.
I have come to the realization that my surgery, in my case, was largely a crutch to institute a long term change as a get-out-of-jail card. "I had surgery, I can't have your pie." Unsaid: don't be offended. I'll get sick if I eat your food, but I'm sure it's very good, and believe me there's a part of me that would love to dive in.
I said I have aspergers, so this also helps in situations that I don't fully understand, like the birthday party. I don't see it as a faux-pas to take something with me if I like it for food. Other people...normals...apparently get offended. Well now I have an ace. I had the surgery. I can't indulge. I came here because I wanted to see my friend and wish him a happy birthday, and I appreciated being included in the invitations. It was a lovely time. My wife and son had some food that was prepared. The extent of my food intake was a slice of cheese, and it was more than enough for me.
When it comes to food there are so many implications for society that we don't even realize it anymore. It has it's own rituals, its own meaning. It's an insult; I stopped trying to cook post-surgery after my wife accused me of trying to make her fat (I wasn't; I was fascinated by the disconnect between hunger and sensory input I had shortly after the surgery, and was exploring how wonderful everything seemed even though I wasn't hungry for it. So WEIRD!). People get offended if you aren't eating their beans at a family picnic, or don't have their burgers and hot dogs, even though most of the time it's something they threw together in an hour and not something they labored over for hours. We eat to comfort (you never heard of comfort food?), to encourage (Want ice cream? Win the game! Want dessert? Finish your spinach...), to socialize (farewell dinners, birthday party in the conference room), to make friends (snacky tray for work anyone? Be a hero and get a box of bagels!), to pass time,...it's confusing for those of us that aren't wired like the majority are.
So when I say it's an easy answer, it's true. Change your lifestyle. Doing it? Not so easy. Finding a way to properly frame your changes, your perspective, that's the key. In order to keep that weight off you need to figure out how to ask the right question.
It's a long trip. Grab a six-inch ham sub at Subway without the mayo and some walking shoes and head down the road until you find the answer. If you're serious about the change the answer will come to you.
I was going to quote the article in question (I try to avoid just tossing around crap into the blog without some pointer to where I got the information...it's bad form not to) but thought, y'know, I've run into this several times before, it's like some kind of group whine. Why not just do a quick Google and post the results?
"Maintain weight loss".
Holy shnikeys...
I'm not a diet guru. I'm not a scientist (although I enjoy science-related articles). I'm not a believer in woo, and like to fancy myself a bit of a skeptic.
But from what I can find on the topic, the answer is quite simple. The person who gained it back didn't change their lifestyle. They went on a "diet", then went off it.
"Yay! I lost twenty pounds! Time to have a cookie because I deserve it!"
No. You can lose weight temporarily by dieting. Eventually the diet mutates into a number of, "Oh, what would it hurt?", and "Just one more"'s until your waistline gets bigger and bigger and your skinny jeans make you look like a stuff sausage.
The answer is to change your lifestyle.
That's right, you need to actually change your lifestyle to accommodate a less calorie-centric lifestyle. Just check this article out.
If you enjoy your happy pasta-carb-sweets-relaxing lifestyle, then the lifestyle that keeps pounds off sucks. Go ahead and admit it. You don't like the sweaty life, then living it will suck. So you have to evaluate if the weight loss is worth changing gears.
There are times I hate my new lifestyle. I force myself to go to the gym during the week. An hour of walking the treadmill and playing with weight machines still hasn't seemed to make me a sweet prize on the beach, but I still do it since there's a pre-paid year's membership that would be wasted without it. As I type this I'm biking on my recumbent stationary bike and sweating like a pig (thank $DEITY for the USB keyboard or my laptop would be a mess). I've burned 239 calories so far according to the readout of supposed burned calories while surfing the web and working on this. And I'm still pdaling away...about 8 mph and 4.33 miles. I think...hope it's not in metric...
Anyway, lifestyle. I had the surgery (duh...I mean, Barry Atric?), and the real benefit to it is that it frees people with my brain wiring from having to come up with reasons to not indulge in what other people want you to do to fit in and end up sliding up the scale. Yes, RnY reduces your body's ability to absorb as many calories and that helps. But in the end your body heals up to the point where you can still cheat it and gain the weight back. A pouch isn't going to stop you from slowly slurping ice cream and shakes or pureeing Oreos. Eating a meal slowly will allow it to slip right through the pouch.
Okay, sugars can cause you to have cramps and explosive poo. Gross, but true. You need to know that if you're considering the surgery anyway. Also you'll be more sensitive to certain foods...I've noticed that if I try having too much of a portion of pasta, for example, I don't quite feel as well as usual. Not sick, but not exactly the best of shape either.
The more in tune you are with your body the more you notice the effect.
Where was I? Oh yes. The surgery gives you an excuse. I have fear of certain foods; go to a restaurant, and you don't know what's on the steak or in that burger. You don't know if the oil something is fried in will cause a quick run to the restroom or cramps that will make you want to vomit. So I would like certain things like pancakes from the breakfast buffet, but...not worth it. I recently went to a farewell lunch at a chinese buffet in town for some short-term coworkers moving into sunnier pastures...and ate nothing. The stuff I enjoy are things I shouldn't have because they could all trigger some nasty side effects. I could probably have lettuce and some cheese and egg, yes, but...nope. Not worth it when I had something packed for lunch that I know I like and tolerate.
The excuse is just to explain...I had surgery. Stomach doesn't work like yours.
And it's true.
A friend of mine had a birthday party. My wife and I were talking about plans for it, and I can take my lunch (I actually ended up having half a Panera sandwich before going, since his party was in mid-afternoon), and my wife said she couldn't take something if she didn't have lunch because it would be a social faux-pas. "It's rude!" she proclaimed.
I don't see a problem with it. If your diet is different than other peoples, whether by preference or choice or surgery or a combination (as it is with me), I don't see a problem with reducing their burden of having to accommodate me by supplying food for me. I feel bad for schools where one kid with a peanut allergy means no kid in the class is allowed to have a PB&J sandwich because Frankie could fall over with a reaction; the many have to change their choices because of one person. I don't want to be that one person.
So I take stuff with me.
The surgery means that I take stuff in to some places with me. Fast food joints don't care, especially if I order a water and am with other people eating their fare. Most small restaurants...like the buffet breakfast I went to and the chinese place...didn't charge anything because I didn't eat. Some could probably be set right if I showed them the ugly scar on my gut. Apparently most people don't know how to react to that and it's easier to back off than pursue a ten dollar bill for food not eaten.
I've talked about the surgical help. But I did this once before. I lost a couple hundred pounds several years ago, back around 2001, by going on a very low calorie diet. It was about 600 calories a day, and I lost a lot in just a year's time.
There are those who shudder at this. "How can he do it!? It's not sustainable!"
The only side effect were gallstones. My gall bladder had to be removed after ending up with acute pancreatitis. I just lost weight too fast, I guess.
But the diet itself I didn't mind. Why?
I have aspergers, and some of the traits lend itself well to changing lifestyle at times. In particular, if you change a habit over the course of a few weeks and don't alter them again, I get into a "groove" that tends to work for me. I had a lifestyle that enabled me to eat a certain schedule with certain things like tracking calorie counts with foods available at the supermarket and I got into a routine of when to buy what. It was relatively cheap and efficient, too. I took all my meals with me. And also thanks to my mental wiring, I quite frankly didn't give a @#$ what people thought of the fat guy carrying a plastic Glad box with an Egg Beater sandwich into a restaurant and ordering water.
Well, that's not entirely true. After I started dating my now-wife, and meeting her family which included a person well versed in managing food services, along with the constant disapproval from a few people close to me I did start changing my habits again. I started to fall back into my depression behaviors, namely not giving a damn anymore about what I'd done. So I gained it back. So while the battle of not caring about what the general public thought was true, the war with those behind enemy lines did kind of wear on me; my environment was changing and I in the end used it as an excuse to go back to my old habits. Even that's not entirely true...I gained most of the weight back, not all, and it was through new sets of bad habits.
I know I wasn't microwaving pizza rolls in the middle of the night to gain the weight that the surgery took off, for example.
The point is that when I lost weight, major weight, both times it came through some form of change, not just a temporary gimmick. No pills or special berries or what is being touted on TV. I had to change my lifestyle.
Some diet plans even incorporate this. Weight Watchers is partially successful because of this. It's a diet that "you can live with" and "incorporate into a healthy lifestyle". Atkins becomes a religion for their followers. If you can get "into" a diet, the you're pretty set to keep your weight off. But for people that just crash diet or go a month without their Starbucks and Dunkin' D visits...nope.
The answer is simple. The implementation is not.
Notice there's a difference.
I have come to the realization that my surgery, in my case, was largely a crutch to institute a long term change as a get-out-of-jail card. "I had surgery, I can't have your pie." Unsaid: don't be offended. I'll get sick if I eat your food, but I'm sure it's very good, and believe me there's a part of me that would love to dive in.
I said I have aspergers, so this also helps in situations that I don't fully understand, like the birthday party. I don't see it as a faux-pas to take something with me if I like it for food. Other people...normals...apparently get offended. Well now I have an ace. I had the surgery. I can't indulge. I came here because I wanted to see my friend and wish him a happy birthday, and I appreciated being included in the invitations. It was a lovely time. My wife and son had some food that was prepared. The extent of my food intake was a slice of cheese, and it was more than enough for me.
When it comes to food there are so many implications for society that we don't even realize it anymore. It has it's own rituals, its own meaning. It's an insult; I stopped trying to cook post-surgery after my wife accused me of trying to make her fat (I wasn't; I was fascinated by the disconnect between hunger and sensory input I had shortly after the surgery, and was exploring how wonderful everything seemed even though I wasn't hungry for it. So WEIRD!). People get offended if you aren't eating their beans at a family picnic, or don't have their burgers and hot dogs, even though most of the time it's something they threw together in an hour and not something they labored over for hours. We eat to comfort (you never heard of comfort food?), to encourage (Want ice cream? Win the game! Want dessert? Finish your spinach...), to socialize (farewell dinners, birthday party in the conference room), to make friends (snacky tray for work anyone? Be a hero and get a box of bagels!), to pass time,...it's confusing for those of us that aren't wired like the majority are.
So when I say it's an easy answer, it's true. Change your lifestyle. Doing it? Not so easy. Finding a way to properly frame your changes, your perspective, that's the key. In order to keep that weight off you need to figure out how to ask the right question.
It's a long trip. Grab a six-inch ham sub at Subway without the mayo and some walking shoes and head down the road until you find the answer. If you're serious about the change the answer will come to you.
Friday, August 28, 2009
Reactions Towards Those Who Notice Weight Loss
I recently went to some little social outing. Small thing, but I still didn't really want to go.
My wife said that maybe my mother just wanted to "show me off" with my weight loss.
The problem is that when there are people in the area that I know who suddenly comment on my loss of weight from what I was in January, I get mad, not grateful or glad.
I can't help but think that these people live in the area; they could stop in, they could call, they could do a lot of things. Instead I'm a five-minute topic of conversation (unless I'm a topic behind my back; that's a distinct possibility as well).
I live with food cravings all the time under various circumstances. I can no longer indulge in things that used to offer comfort, relief, and familiarity. An outing to Red Lobster is no longer a heaping serving of pilaf-strewn coconut shrimp; Applebees no longer offers me cheesy fried delights. Parties no longer offer ice cream and cake and no-bake cookies are a no no.
My only comfort now is peanuts and peanut butter, but even that I take only if I'm exercising. It's become a chained reward; I let myself have nuts as long as I am going to be working out at least an hour that day. It used to be that I would feel a little dizzy or light-headed if I didn't have them and I worked out...I don't know if I've adjusted by now, but as long as I'm losing weight I don't see as much need to alter that right now.
I live with this twenty four hours a day. Okay, maybe not when I'm sleeping, as far as I know, but when I'm awake, it's still an issue for me. These people, many of whom are related, don't visit. Don't skype. Don't call. But suddenly I'm worthy as a topic of attention for five minutes, some trite conversation piece to fit in with what Aunt Trudy recently got as a deal at Kohl's and how Mr. Howard has to get a new water heater. I feel as if it minimizes me. I know I didn't make it to the olympics or win a million dollar lottery, but where were you people before?
On the other hand a consultant friend came out to do some work at the business I'm in and he stopped to say how much I changed. He asked questions about the surgery, nodded politely while I talked about things like avoiding sugars and bariatric alcoholism ("I'm a cheap date now! Ha ha! The alcohol more literally goes straight to my brain!"*)
He seemed honest in his compliment, and he travels and hour to come to the site to work with us so he hasn't seen me in a long time. That little jabber session didn't tick me off at all...actually, he was taking time to listen when he should have been getting to the garage to pick up his car before they closed. He started asking the questions, so it wasn't my fault. I tell myself it's his fault if I bored him in that particular case.
But if you live ten minutes away and are a local phone call...please don't pretend I'm a topic of interest. Especially if you couldn't be bothered to contact me at all over all this time, or even notice on those occasions when you did see me that I've changed.
Maybe it's something I need to talk to the therapist about; there are a lot of emotional issues that go hand in hand with obesity and surgery, and coping mechanisms don't always work the way they used to (especially if your coping mechanism begins with C and rhymes with "rake"). I sometimes wonder if they didn't say anything at all if I'd still be mad; going through all this and yet nobody notices a damn thing!
I keep thinking that there was a period of time when I would have appreciated the interest. Back when I lost 70 pounds on my own...no one noticed. Back when I changed eating habits; I could barely eat anything when other people were pigging down at the Chinese Buffets or Country Buffets...no one noticed. I went from losing an Ashley Olsen to a Johnny Depp and suddenly I'm a five minute topic of passing interest before, "Ooh! Shiny!" and flitting away.
Anyway, it just bugged me and hopefully declaring it here will get it out of my head a little.
My wife said that maybe my mother just wanted to "show me off" with my weight loss.
The problem is that when there are people in the area that I know who suddenly comment on my loss of weight from what I was in January, I get mad, not grateful or glad.
I can't help but think that these people live in the area; they could stop in, they could call, they could do a lot of things. Instead I'm a five-minute topic of conversation (unless I'm a topic behind my back; that's a distinct possibility as well).
I live with food cravings all the time under various circumstances. I can no longer indulge in things that used to offer comfort, relief, and familiarity. An outing to Red Lobster is no longer a heaping serving of pilaf-strewn coconut shrimp; Applebees no longer offers me cheesy fried delights. Parties no longer offer ice cream and cake and no-bake cookies are a no no.
My only comfort now is peanuts and peanut butter, but even that I take only if I'm exercising. It's become a chained reward; I let myself have nuts as long as I am going to be working out at least an hour that day. It used to be that I would feel a little dizzy or light-headed if I didn't have them and I worked out...I don't know if I've adjusted by now, but as long as I'm losing weight I don't see as much need to alter that right now.
I live with this twenty four hours a day. Okay, maybe not when I'm sleeping, as far as I know, but when I'm awake, it's still an issue for me. These people, many of whom are related, don't visit. Don't skype. Don't call. But suddenly I'm worthy as a topic of attention for five minutes, some trite conversation piece to fit in with what Aunt Trudy recently got as a deal at Kohl's and how Mr. Howard has to get a new water heater. I feel as if it minimizes me. I know I didn't make it to the olympics or win a million dollar lottery, but where were you people before?
On the other hand a consultant friend came out to do some work at the business I'm in and he stopped to say how much I changed. He asked questions about the surgery, nodded politely while I talked about things like avoiding sugars and bariatric alcoholism ("I'm a cheap date now! Ha ha! The alcohol more literally goes straight to my brain!"*)
He seemed honest in his compliment, and he travels and hour to come to the site to work with us so he hasn't seen me in a long time. That little jabber session didn't tick me off at all...actually, he was taking time to listen when he should have been getting to the garage to pick up his car before they closed. He started asking the questions, so it wasn't my fault. I tell myself it's his fault if I bored him in that particular case.
But if you live ten minutes away and are a local phone call...please don't pretend I'm a topic of interest. Especially if you couldn't be bothered to contact me at all over all this time, or even notice on those occasions when you did see me that I've changed.
Maybe it's something I need to talk to the therapist about; there are a lot of emotional issues that go hand in hand with obesity and surgery, and coping mechanisms don't always work the way they used to (especially if your coping mechanism begins with C and rhymes with "rake"). I sometimes wonder if they didn't say anything at all if I'd still be mad; going through all this and yet nobody notices a damn thing!
I keep thinking that there was a period of time when I would have appreciated the interest. Back when I lost 70 pounds on my own...no one noticed. Back when I changed eating habits; I could barely eat anything when other people were pigging down at the Chinese Buffets or Country Buffets...no one noticed. I went from losing an Ashley Olsen to a Johnny Depp and suddenly I'm a five minute topic of passing interest before, "Ooh! Shiny!" and flitting away.
Anyway, it just bugged me and hopefully declaring it here will get it out of my head a little.
Thursday, August 27, 2009
What Is A Calorie?
The basic definition of a food calorie (yes, there's actually more than one kind of calorie) is the amount of energy required to raise one kilogram of water by one degree Celsius. There's information on the Wikipedia page on calories. Basically it's a unit of energy.
Since it's a unit of energy, things other than food can be measured in calories. I just saw a story about a kid in China that wanted to be like his hero, Optimus Prime, so he drank gasoline. Unfortunately gasoline is not only rather poisonous to humans but I suppose it could be rather fattening if you could metabolize it...a gallon of gas contains 31,000 calories (technically, kilocalories).
So your car runs on calories. The neat thing is that you, like your car, can't use all the energy. Your car is only about 15 to 20 percent efficient (see here and here)...meaning that when you put ten bucks of gas into your car, eight of it will have nothing to do with propelling your vehicle. It disappears as friction and heat loss. Nice thought, eh?
Calories on labels are already estimated so they're inaccurate; that said, you don't get the full story from the label since your body can only metabolize food to certain degrees depending on how hard it is to convert to energy (digest it).
Confused?
Here's an example. Take about 100 calories of peanuts, a little bit of peanut oil, and a pinch of salt. Take the same amount of those items and mash them together...in case you didn't know, that's basically how you make homemade peanut butter. So you have 100 calories of nuts, and the equivalent as peanut butter.
Both contain 100 calories each. But if you ate them, you won't get 200 calories.
The peanut butter, with the softer texture, will allow your body to break it down more easily and absorb more of the calories; the harder nuts, less. The article cited studies that there's a variance of 5 to 20 percent from the current Atwater-based calorie scale.
Yikes!
I got to thinking about these items again after listening to part of an interview with the author of The End of Overeating, David Kessler. He mentioned in part about obesity today coinciding with foods that are...well, I'd say engineered, but that carries the connotation of genetic manipulation, so I'll just say foods that are targeted for consumer tastes. The food industry works on the same principals as the rest of our capitalistic economy; everyone wants to make more money and to do so they do everything possible to boost demand so we'll return and buy more. Part of this means filling foods with a trifecta of ingredients that actually stimulate certain parts of the brain and condition us to want more more more; salt, fat, and sugar.
This is of course combined with studies on creating attractive textures (oddly enough, usually it goes towards "soft"), aromas, packaging, etc...then the industry turns around and claims that it's the customer's fault if they overeat. They're supplying what there's demand for (makes sense, though, yeah? How can you make money if you create a cupcake that smells and tastes like sewage?)
We don't properly frame what we're eating in context. Do you know how much sugar you're eating when you eat pop tarts? I mean, you can read the numbers and gloss over them easily...but what if you actually saw the amount you're taking in? You can. Here's the website that shows you with sugar cubes. I'd like to try that with someone...just sit down with a baggie of sugar cubes and have someone eat that instead of whatever yummy concoction they were going to have, just to see if they would be so willing to do it.
Sugar, fat, and salt are added to foods to make them not only more palateable but also more attractive. Textures and smells are altered to make them more attractive. The last step is to make it socially acceptable to snack on them...voila! You have a formula for an upwards trend in obesity.
I know it seems as if I'm veering a little bit off topic, but it still ties back together. See, a calorie is a calorie. People don't like to think of it this way, but weight gain and loss (and maintenance) is a matter of you taking in X amount, and burning Y. If X is more than Y, you gain. If X is less than Y, you lose.
Now we know that certain properties of food affect how much of the calories you can extract, just like an internal combustion engine's efficiency affects how much energy is actually put to use from the gas you put in. Raw foods, hard foods, these make it harder to extract energy than softer, more tender prepared foods.
And now we have people in industries that for the last several decades have been perfecting the art of convincing you to eat these more attractive (and higher in metabolizable calorie) foods.
In other words...a population that doesn't care about what they're consuming has plenty of predators waiting to take advantage of ignorance, and we as a society don't care.
Maybe that'll give you something to think about before your next trip to Starbucks. Take a look at the nutrition information from their website or even iPhone/iPod applications that list nutrition information (or the online information from your hangouts of choice), then go to your kitchen and grab a tablespoon and pile up the appropriate amount of sugar on the counter. If you don't want to eat that pile of raw sugar, you might want to reconsider your choice of food when you go out.
Since it's a unit of energy, things other than food can be measured in calories. I just saw a story about a kid in China that wanted to be like his hero, Optimus Prime, so he drank gasoline. Unfortunately gasoline is not only rather poisonous to humans but I suppose it could be rather fattening if you could metabolize it...a gallon of gas contains 31,000 calories (technically, kilocalories).
So your car runs on calories. The neat thing is that you, like your car, can't use all the energy. Your car is only about 15 to 20 percent efficient (see here and here)...meaning that when you put ten bucks of gas into your car, eight of it will have nothing to do with propelling your vehicle. It disappears as friction and heat loss. Nice thought, eh?
Calories on labels are already estimated so they're inaccurate; that said, you don't get the full story from the label since your body can only metabolize food to certain degrees depending on how hard it is to convert to energy (digest it).
Confused?
Here's an example. Take about 100 calories of peanuts, a little bit of peanut oil, and a pinch of salt. Take the same amount of those items and mash them together...in case you didn't know, that's basically how you make homemade peanut butter. So you have 100 calories of nuts, and the equivalent as peanut butter.
Both contain 100 calories each. But if you ate them, you won't get 200 calories.
The peanut butter, with the softer texture, will allow your body to break it down more easily and absorb more of the calories; the harder nuts, less. The article cited studies that there's a variance of 5 to 20 percent from the current Atwater-based calorie scale.
Yikes!
I got to thinking about these items again after listening to part of an interview with the author of The End of Overeating, David Kessler. He mentioned in part about obesity today coinciding with foods that are...well, I'd say engineered, but that carries the connotation of genetic manipulation, so I'll just say foods that are targeted for consumer tastes. The food industry works on the same principals as the rest of our capitalistic economy; everyone wants to make more money and to do so they do everything possible to boost demand so we'll return and buy more. Part of this means filling foods with a trifecta of ingredients that actually stimulate certain parts of the brain and condition us to want more more more; salt, fat, and sugar.
This is of course combined with studies on creating attractive textures (oddly enough, usually it goes towards "soft"), aromas, packaging, etc...then the industry turns around and claims that it's the customer's fault if they overeat. They're supplying what there's demand for (makes sense, though, yeah? How can you make money if you create a cupcake that smells and tastes like sewage?)
We don't properly frame what we're eating in context. Do you know how much sugar you're eating when you eat pop tarts? I mean, you can read the numbers and gloss over them easily...but what if you actually saw the amount you're taking in? You can. Here's the website that shows you with sugar cubes. I'd like to try that with someone...just sit down with a baggie of sugar cubes and have someone eat that instead of whatever yummy concoction they were going to have, just to see if they would be so willing to do it.
Sugar, fat, and salt are added to foods to make them not only more palateable but also more attractive. Textures and smells are altered to make them more attractive. The last step is to make it socially acceptable to snack on them...voila! You have a formula for an upwards trend in obesity.
I know it seems as if I'm veering a little bit off topic, but it still ties back together. See, a calorie is a calorie. People don't like to think of it this way, but weight gain and loss (and maintenance) is a matter of you taking in X amount, and burning Y. If X is more than Y, you gain. If X is less than Y, you lose.
Now we know that certain properties of food affect how much of the calories you can extract, just like an internal combustion engine's efficiency affects how much energy is actually put to use from the gas you put in. Raw foods, hard foods, these make it harder to extract energy than softer, more tender prepared foods.
And now we have people in industries that for the last several decades have been perfecting the art of convincing you to eat these more attractive (and higher in metabolizable calorie) foods.
In other words...a population that doesn't care about what they're consuming has plenty of predators waiting to take advantage of ignorance, and we as a society don't care.
Maybe that'll give you something to think about before your next trip to Starbucks. Take a look at the nutrition information from their website or even iPhone/iPod applications that list nutrition information (or the online information from your hangouts of choice), then go to your kitchen and grab a tablespoon and pile up the appropriate amount of sugar on the counter. If you don't want to eat that pile of raw sugar, you might want to reconsider your choice of food when you go out.
Wednesday, August 26, 2009
Some Thoughts on Gyms
I've been going to the gym for awhile now on a regular basis. Well, awhile for me, since I am allergic to exercise.
It's true. Every time I exercise I end up breathing really heavy and sweating a lot and by the time it passes I'm all achy and sore. Look it up. Sounds like an allergy to me.
Anyway, the gym I go to isn't really all that bad, but I think it could stand some improvements.
Thoughts that occurred to me while working out...
I still don't like exercising. But at least I'm catching up on my podcasts...I'll change my mind when I am able to lift the front of a VW Beetle.
It's true. Every time I exercise I end up breathing really heavy and sweating a lot and by the time it passes I'm all achy and sore. Look it up. Sounds like an allergy to me.
Anyway, the gym I go to isn't really all that bad, but I think it could stand some improvements.
Thoughts that occurred to me while working out...
- The stereotype about muscle bound behemoth that lives in the corner of the gym apparently is unfounded. There are some guys I see in there that could obviously inflict a lot of bare-knuckled damage to me, no doubt. For the most part the people I've seen there are toned...moderately muscled, some of them...but none of them look like they could lift a Buick.
- Other clients don't stare as much as I thought they would at the Fat Guy (tm)
- I thought that the stereotype was for hot dressed-for-pilates women to hang out at the gym. Maybe that's just in LA. I'm glad for that, actually...less embarrassing.
- I figured there were gym people and people who loathe the gym; I'd go and find people who were at home with all the protocols and etiquette that I'd have no idea about. Turns out that my reading clued me into the basics of things like spraying equipment down after using it with their spray-bottles of stinky crap. Nope. Other people often use the machines and move on without a second thought.
- Gyms aren't too forward with offering help. Supposedly my gym offers trainers and special programs and even special services for clients with one-year contracts (which I have). For the most part they leave you alone. I don't know how I feel about that...irritated? Or glad they leave me alone and not make me feel quite so stupid around others that seem to know what they're doing? Hmm...
- If I ran the gym: one, no typos on signs. Equipment is spelled "equipment". Not "equiptment". Maybe that's why other patrons aren't wiping down the "equiptment" after use. Two: offer a policy where if you're new you can wear some colored armband as an indicator that you're looking for feedback on what the heck you're doing.
- I hate the TV's on the sports networks. It's nice when I'm there on the slow days (I always try going on the slow days, Sunday, Tuesday, and Thursday) and NCIS is on. But usually they have something on ESPN. Two of the TV's have a radio transmitter so you can listen quietly, but another babbles on about Michael Vick loud enough to infringe on my iPod.
- Use an iPod! I listen to podcasts and audiobooks while trying to pull my arms out of the sockets. At the end I'll slam on some movie scores...lately I've found the score to the Transformers movie and Iron Man to work really well at squeezing out the last mile from my dripping flesh before hobbling out of the building.
- If you have an iPod, get an armband. Sucks when it falls out of your pocket or bounces against you with each freakin' step you take on the 'mill. Elastic armbands are in the neighborhood of $20 for most iPods
- Don't get a Zune. That's not a gym thing. I just don't like them.
- Remember, once you extend your muscles and lift a pile of weights up, you didn't reach an achievement until you gently return said pile of really heavy weight back down to the point where they're supported by the Earth.
- Don't use the machine I'm going to next. Not that you'd know which one that is, but it annoys me. Safest thing for you to do is leave until I'm done. People don't seem to abide by this rule of thumb though.
- Don't sit at a machine or bench and stare at the TV. It makes me want to poke you with a barbell without warning.
- Stop chomping gum with your mouth open like some kind of deranged cow. I keep having this obsessive fantasy that you'll trip and choke while on the treadmill while smacking your lips with your incessant open-mawed chomping. Don't worry if you do, though...I'll save you by poking you with a barbell without warning.
- Turns out there really is a machine called the "butt blaster", and it has nothing to do with passing gas. At least it's not supposed to. I don't use it.
- I take secret pride in maxing out one of the machines (my lower back exercise is set to 200 pounds for 15 reps...I think I can add ten more pounds to it and that's the upper limit). Turns out fat people have latent strength in their legs and back, unless you blow them out.
I still don't like exercising. But at least I'm catching up on my podcasts...I'll change my mind when I am able to lift the front of a VW Beetle.
Wednesday, August 19, 2009
Progress Wrapup (Or, Diet and Exercise Sucks)
There were a couple comments about my progress since the surgery. Ironically, I had queued up an entry for today that dealt with a topic from going to the gym, but I bumped it ahead a day to put this in.
First, some info on weight.
I had my surgery back in the beginning of April, on April 7th. It's now August 19th (technically 18th as I'm typing this). That means it's been a little over four months; I've been tracking my weight since roughly Christmas (I actually recorded starting in January what my weight was).
In January...the entry is dated 1/5/09...I started at 458 pounds. At that point I began the quest to lose weight in earnest; it turns out that you have to lose weight in order to have weight loss surgery.
I know. It's stupid.
I was told it was insurance issues. The place I was supposed to have the surgery supposedly only deals with patients less than 450 pounds, and that was a close cutoff. They wanted the patient to be closer to 400 pounds. Otherwise they ship me off to a medical center in Rochester where I'm told they are better equipped to handle morbidly obese patients. The doctor said it was due to insurance; the equipment wasn't rated for higher weights, and if something happened such as the table collapsing and they knew I was over the weight cutoff the insurance company will crap a brick.
As much as I'd love to see the insurance company get ticked instead of the usual routine...you know, the customer getting ticked because they're getting hassled and put through the wringer...the way the explanation was framed made the hospitals stance understandable if not a little silly. I mean...c'mon! You have to lose weight because you're too fat for weight loss surgery?!
But I digress.
I weighed 376 pounds the day before my surgery. That was 82 pounds from 1/5 to 4/6.
I just weighed in this morning. My weight on 8/18 is 290 pounds, meaning since surgery I lost 86 pounds and my overall weight loss is 168 pounds.
Yeah...at a little under six feet tall, I'm still morbidly obese. I've also gained a lot of flabby skin. Supposedly it can be removed for another thousand dollars worth of copay at some point, but it can't even be considered until I'm at least a year out from the surgery. It's uncomfortable; I wince when I see the batwings under my arms. I sting from infections under the apron of what was my stomach; I need to periodically powder it now that the weather has turned humid and hot, so sweat accumulates and makes it break out.
Oh. Yeah. Quick warning that I'm mentioning something kind of disgusting, so if you have a weak stomach don't read what I just wrote.
I spend a lot of time trying to just cover up the flab and flesh. On the plus side, the vicious scar running vertically in my midsection from the open Roux-En-Y surgery isn't quite as visible. The fat and flesh kind of caves inward in the front, hiding the purplish scar tissue deep in a valley of fat and excess skin.
But I'm not too concerned about the scarring. If I were, I'd not have used the surgeon I did; I went into this knowing he only did open RnY. Other surgeons today often use laproscopic RnY for reduced recovery time and far less scarring; I went full scar so I alway have a reminder of the painful month of recovery and memories of the bleeding and the memory of what I had done to myself in getting so rotund in the first place. That scar won't be going away for a long time.
Quick story. While recovering I happened to be in a place where a teenage girl I didn't really know was whining about the total intense pain she felt after giving blood at a Red Cross blood drive at her school. Oh, the band aid, oh, the pinching, oh the bruising, whine whine whine...
I was recovering. I could get around by then; it was a couple weeks after the surgery, but with open RnY, I was stapled, bloody from leaks, bandages that had to be changed periodically...in general, it wasn't pretty, and I was still struggling just to manage to get out of bed without assistance, and while she was chugging juice and cookies to compensate for her boo boo I was eating puree'd Chef Boyardee from baby food jars.
After listening to her whine, I got a little fed up. She commented on how much it hurt.
I looked at her and calmly said, "No, this hurts," and I lifted my shirt. Just enough to see the train tracks of staples, the deep bruising, the dried clotting clinging to some of the staples in the line...you get the picture.
Her eyes were like softballs. They snapped so wide I wondered if it was possible to sprain her eyelids.
She didn't complain any more.
Anyway...
I started exercising. The doctors and support people were telling me I needed to exercise. I rode a stationary recumbent bike in the basement, but it's a pain in the butt. Not as much as a stationary upright bike, but it's still a pain. I got pretty good at it though. I typically rode 10 miles a day eventually.
Eventually my parents bought me a year membership at a local gym. I started going every other day, but lately I've been going almost every day. I started out kind of slow...I mean, I don't know the first damned thing about "working out". I was very much the guy who was anti-gym and anti-exercise. Still am most of the time.
Learning what to do in gyms is a full time job. If you want to build muscle you do one thing; if you want stamina, another. Cardio this, weight train that, this many reps and this many sets to do this and achieve that. It's hard. Really hard. And get this...if you want to gain muscle, you have to overeat. That SUCKS! How am I supposed to gain muscle mass if I can't even eat much to begin with post-surgery?
Lately my routine has become alternating "upper body" machines one day and "lower body" the next. I start out with a 1/5 mile walk on the treadmill at various inclination; takes about 10 minutes. Then I typically end with another 1/2 mile on the treadmill. Those two walks alone burn usually around...well, today it was 348 calories together.
In an attempt to gain some muscle mass, from what I've pieced together, you're supposed to do fewer reps at a higher weight, basically pushing yourself closer to your tolerance for moving weight. Toning and stamina comes from more repititions at a lower weight, muscle bulk comes from fewer reps at a higher weight. At least that's what I've pieced together. I don't have a trainer and probably couldn't afford one if I wanted to. So right now I'm usually 2 sets of 5 repetitions at the following weight in pounds, in case you're curious...
compound row: 200
lat pulldown: 165
pec fly: 185
vertical chest: 100
lateral raise: 125
overhead press: 95
bicep curl: 80
tricep extension: 80
lower back: 205 (10 reps each)
abdominal: 120 today
leg press: 400
leg extension: 130
seated leg curl: 195, usually 190
abd/adduction: 200
I have no idea of this is good or bad or just neutral. One person told me that doing 500 pounds on the leg press is considered really good; I'm assuming that was a typo in the email since the machine at the gym only goes up to 495 pounds. Perhaps this would mean more to someone who knows more about working out in the gym; my eyes glaze over when I look at the list, and I have to fill in the bloody form every day I go.
The rough part is that I don't know how much good it really does. I was told that the biggest results are in the first 30 days; it's been about a month and so far no one will think I can rip phone books in half or lift small cars. That weird wriggling crap under my skin? I don't know if that would look this way if I didn't go to the gym. I don't know if it wouldn't, either.
Someone asked me not long ago how much weight I was supposed to lose, what weight I was going to stop at. I honestly don't know. I don't know how I'm supposed to look or appear, or what number I'm supposed to aim for. I'm just losing weight. Or at least I keep trying to. I figured it would stop when it wanted to stop. I'm still obese so regardless it appears that I'm wearing a small tent. I'm the one that would end up shirtless if our boat is marooned on an island because the professor needs a sail to use in building a new boat. It's still my lot in life. I deal with it.
I was told that the surgery is supposed to knock off something like 70% to 75% of the excess weight; so if you are 100 pounds overweight, the RnY is supposed to knock off about 75 pounds when all is said and done, meaning you're still overweight but not quite so much.
Oh...other changes...I'm off diabetic medication. The surgery means supplements...lots of them...every day. But I'm hoping to get off some of the pre-existing medications this year. Each morning I take: iron, B100/complex, B12, a multivitamin, something for blood pressure, something for cholesterol, a medication to cut down on stomach acid (prilosec? doesn't matter, I go off it in October), and calcium with vitamin D. Oh, and vitamin D. Some supplements are just lifelong because of the surgery...RnY introduces a deficiency in your digestive system from shortening the intestine, so you don't take in as many calories but you're also not absorbing the nutrients you need. Other pills...the cholesterol and blood pressure medications...are doc-prescribed until they see improvement in my test results.
Nine pills in the morning.
At night, I take another multivitamin, a B12, and iron.
But I went off byetta and metformin. My blood sugar has been diet controlled, sticking around the 100 mark in the morning and night. Another plus.
So that's been my progress. I have a nice scar in my abdomen to remind me of my bodily transgression as well as a really long belt that I've had for years in which I add more notched holes when I need to tighten it more. I blogged about the length before. It's...pretty darn big. It's my reminder of what I've done. And a symbol of hope for what I will achieve. Plus it makes a really loud thunderclap sound when snapped against itself like some kind of Foley soundstage sound effect tool.
This pretty much sums up my changes since the surgery. Or even before the surgery, technically. Now I spend my time at work, the gym, and trying to get a writing show entry completed...I think my gratis editor is almost done with the second draft suggestions. I'm really hoping that sometime later today will be an update on the status of that story!
So until next time...um...any suggestions for a good exit tagline here?
First, some info on weight.
I had my surgery back in the beginning of April, on April 7th. It's now August 19th (technically 18th as I'm typing this). That means it's been a little over four months; I've been tracking my weight since roughly Christmas (I actually recorded starting in January what my weight was).
In January...the entry is dated 1/5/09...I started at 458 pounds. At that point I began the quest to lose weight in earnest; it turns out that you have to lose weight in order to have weight loss surgery.
I know. It's stupid.
I was told it was insurance issues. The place I was supposed to have the surgery supposedly only deals with patients less than 450 pounds, and that was a close cutoff. They wanted the patient to be closer to 400 pounds. Otherwise they ship me off to a medical center in Rochester where I'm told they are better equipped to handle morbidly obese patients. The doctor said it was due to insurance; the equipment wasn't rated for higher weights, and if something happened such as the table collapsing and they knew I was over the weight cutoff the insurance company will crap a brick.
As much as I'd love to see the insurance company get ticked instead of the usual routine...you know, the customer getting ticked because they're getting hassled and put through the wringer...the way the explanation was framed made the hospitals stance understandable if not a little silly. I mean...c'mon! You have to lose weight because you're too fat for weight loss surgery?!
But I digress.
I weighed 376 pounds the day before my surgery. That was 82 pounds from 1/5 to 4/6.
I just weighed in this morning. My weight on 8/18 is 290 pounds, meaning since surgery I lost 86 pounds and my overall weight loss is 168 pounds.
Yeah...at a little under six feet tall, I'm still morbidly obese. I've also gained a lot of flabby skin. Supposedly it can be removed for another thousand dollars worth of copay at some point, but it can't even be considered until I'm at least a year out from the surgery. It's uncomfortable; I wince when I see the batwings under my arms. I sting from infections under the apron of what was my stomach; I need to periodically powder it now that the weather has turned humid and hot, so sweat accumulates and makes it break out.
Oh. Yeah. Quick warning that I'm mentioning something kind of disgusting, so if you have a weak stomach don't read what I just wrote.
I spend a lot of time trying to just cover up the flab and flesh. On the plus side, the vicious scar running vertically in my midsection from the open Roux-En-Y surgery isn't quite as visible. The fat and flesh kind of caves inward in the front, hiding the purplish scar tissue deep in a valley of fat and excess skin.
But I'm not too concerned about the scarring. If I were, I'd not have used the surgeon I did; I went into this knowing he only did open RnY. Other surgeons today often use laproscopic RnY for reduced recovery time and far less scarring; I went full scar so I alway have a reminder of the painful month of recovery and memories of the bleeding and the memory of what I had done to myself in getting so rotund in the first place. That scar won't be going away for a long time.
Quick story. While recovering I happened to be in a place where a teenage girl I didn't really know was whining about the total intense pain she felt after giving blood at a Red Cross blood drive at her school. Oh, the band aid, oh, the pinching, oh the bruising, whine whine whine...
I was recovering. I could get around by then; it was a couple weeks after the surgery, but with open RnY, I was stapled, bloody from leaks, bandages that had to be changed periodically...in general, it wasn't pretty, and I was still struggling just to manage to get out of bed without assistance, and while she was chugging juice and cookies to compensate for her boo boo I was eating puree'd Chef Boyardee from baby food jars.
After listening to her whine, I got a little fed up. She commented on how much it hurt.
I looked at her and calmly said, "No, this hurts," and I lifted my shirt. Just enough to see the train tracks of staples, the deep bruising, the dried clotting clinging to some of the staples in the line...you get the picture.
Her eyes were like softballs. They snapped so wide I wondered if it was possible to sprain her eyelids.
She didn't complain any more.
Anyway...
I started exercising. The doctors and support people were telling me I needed to exercise. I rode a stationary recumbent bike in the basement, but it's a pain in the butt. Not as much as a stationary upright bike, but it's still a pain. I got pretty good at it though. I typically rode 10 miles a day eventually.
Eventually my parents bought me a year membership at a local gym. I started going every other day, but lately I've been going almost every day. I started out kind of slow...I mean, I don't know the first damned thing about "working out". I was very much the guy who was anti-gym and anti-exercise. Still am most of the time.
Learning what to do in gyms is a full time job. If you want to build muscle you do one thing; if you want stamina, another. Cardio this, weight train that, this many reps and this many sets to do this and achieve that. It's hard. Really hard. And get this...if you want to gain muscle, you have to overeat. That SUCKS! How am I supposed to gain muscle mass if I can't even eat much to begin with post-surgery?
Lately my routine has become alternating "upper body" machines one day and "lower body" the next. I start out with a 1/5 mile walk on the treadmill at various inclination; takes about 10 minutes. Then I typically end with another 1/2 mile on the treadmill. Those two walks alone burn usually around...well, today it was 348 calories together.
In an attempt to gain some muscle mass, from what I've pieced together, you're supposed to do fewer reps at a higher weight, basically pushing yourself closer to your tolerance for moving weight. Toning and stamina comes from more repititions at a lower weight, muscle bulk comes from fewer reps at a higher weight. At least that's what I've pieced together. I don't have a trainer and probably couldn't afford one if I wanted to. So right now I'm usually 2 sets of 5 repetitions at the following weight in pounds, in case you're curious...
compound row: 200
lat pulldown: 165
pec fly: 185
vertical chest: 100
lateral raise: 125
overhead press: 95
bicep curl: 80
tricep extension: 80
lower back: 205 (10 reps each)
abdominal: 120 today
leg press: 400
leg extension: 130
seated leg curl: 195, usually 190
abd/adduction: 200
I have no idea of this is good or bad or just neutral. One person told me that doing 500 pounds on the leg press is considered really good; I'm assuming that was a typo in the email since the machine at the gym only goes up to 495 pounds. Perhaps this would mean more to someone who knows more about working out in the gym; my eyes glaze over when I look at the list, and I have to fill in the bloody form every day I go.
The rough part is that I don't know how much good it really does. I was told that the biggest results are in the first 30 days; it's been about a month and so far no one will think I can rip phone books in half or lift small cars. That weird wriggling crap under my skin? I don't know if that would look this way if I didn't go to the gym. I don't know if it wouldn't, either.
Someone asked me not long ago how much weight I was supposed to lose, what weight I was going to stop at. I honestly don't know. I don't know how I'm supposed to look or appear, or what number I'm supposed to aim for. I'm just losing weight. Or at least I keep trying to. I figured it would stop when it wanted to stop. I'm still obese so regardless it appears that I'm wearing a small tent. I'm the one that would end up shirtless if our boat is marooned on an island because the professor needs a sail to use in building a new boat. It's still my lot in life. I deal with it.
I was told that the surgery is supposed to knock off something like 70% to 75% of the excess weight; so if you are 100 pounds overweight, the RnY is supposed to knock off about 75 pounds when all is said and done, meaning you're still overweight but not quite so much.
Oh...other changes...I'm off diabetic medication. The surgery means supplements...lots of them...every day. But I'm hoping to get off some of the pre-existing medications this year. Each morning I take: iron, B100/complex, B12, a multivitamin, something for blood pressure, something for cholesterol, a medication to cut down on stomach acid (prilosec? doesn't matter, I go off it in October), and calcium with vitamin D. Oh, and vitamin D. Some supplements are just lifelong because of the surgery...RnY introduces a deficiency in your digestive system from shortening the intestine, so you don't take in as many calories but you're also not absorbing the nutrients you need. Other pills...the cholesterol and blood pressure medications...are doc-prescribed until they see improvement in my test results.
Nine pills in the morning.
At night, I take another multivitamin, a B12, and iron.
But I went off byetta and metformin. My blood sugar has been diet controlled, sticking around the 100 mark in the morning and night. Another plus.
So that's been my progress. I have a nice scar in my abdomen to remind me of my bodily transgression as well as a really long belt that I've had for years in which I add more notched holes when I need to tighten it more. I blogged about the length before. It's...pretty darn big. It's my reminder of what I've done. And a symbol of hope for what I will achieve. Plus it makes a really loud thunderclap sound when snapped against itself like some kind of Foley soundstage sound effect tool.
This pretty much sums up my changes since the surgery. Or even before the surgery, technically. Now I spend my time at work, the gym, and trying to get a writing show entry completed...I think my gratis editor is almost done with the second draft suggestions. I'm really hoping that sometime later today will be an update on the status of that story!
So until next time...um...any suggestions for a good exit tagline here?
Monday, August 17, 2009
Getting Buff...
Here's some thoughts I've been pondering over a the past few days.
I've been faithfully going to the gym on Sundays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays, doing a full circuit on the upper- and lower-body machines along with my walks on the treadmill. I haven't been recording it here because It's kind of a waste of space; just reposting the same type of information over and over. I'd rather just post about issues and thoughts on doing the workouts than my statistics since I doubt anyone would be interested in those numbers.
But what am I getting from the workouts?
I'm obviously not "buff" and muscular. It's too much to think that would happen overnight. Or over a month, I suppose.
In working out you're supposed to have a goal. It could be to tone your muscles, to define your body shape (with all this excess skin I could be toned out the wazoo and you'd never see it anyway). It could be to help your cardiovascular system. It could be to just burn some calories.
I was thinking that muscle mass is supposed to burn fat and in the process boost your metabolism. Okay, it doesn't burn a lot of calories, but it's still better than fat. So I'm thinking I should try focusing on building some muscle mass.
That's where the problem comes in.
See, every site I look at for building muscle with weight training states that to do it, you need to take in more calories so there's more material from which to rebuild muscles. My understanding is that basically when you're building muscle, it's done by creating micro-tears in your existing muscle and then waiting 24 to 48 hours for those muscles to rebuild and repair the tears and in the process experience the effect of increasing muscle and becoming stronger.
I found information at
Muscle Building Tips
How To Get Bigger Muscles And Six-Pack Abs
The 10 Commandments of Muscle Building Nutrition
There are many other sites, but I wanted to just cite a few of the sites I read over; but the pattern of information gleaned from my Google search seemed to corroborate each other (or they all get information from the same sources).
But after weight loss surgery, the focus is on reducing the number of calories you take in. As a very very rough guess I'm thinking I have 300 to 400 calories a meal three times a day for a total of probably 1200 calories, all said and done. It's a rough average because I probably have about a cup of nuts (mostly peanuts) over the course of the day with my meals; I found that if I didn't have these I started to feel kind of wonky around my exercise time (usually I'm riding the stationary bike for an hour or so if it's a bike day or I'm at the gym for an hour doing weight training with Nautilus machines).
I don't eat until I feel stuffed or full; I figure that if I habitually do that, I'm going to stretch the stomach and just keep going after awhile. I have some nuts during the day but my meals I weigh with a kitchen scale to keep at less than 6 ounces each (although I aim for 5.5 ounces).
My surgeon will beat me if he sees this...
I know I'm eating far less than I used to. I forego a lot of the things I used to enjoy. But this has been what I'm working with now. I eat less and have been pretty good about getting in my exercise.
Before I go any further off the point I'll bring up my worries. The sites state that building muscle means consuming extra calories and increasing the weight you lift until you can only do four to eight reps before ending the set.
Basically you push your body to find the limits to your strength before experiencing failure. Oddly enough, building strength through finding your failure point is apparently controversial. Another reason I hate exercise...to be any good at it, you basically end up having to live exercise, making it one of those things that pushes the hobby limit to a career interest, and I have no interest in making the gym my career.
Which basically makes figuring this stuff out just that much harder.
Caloric intake is also an issue. Some articles are saying that weight training involves people building muscle by consuming three thousand to five thousand calories a day over the course of six meals! No way I could do that now; it would ruin my surgical alterations. Some of it is specifically banned from me like weight lifting diets that involve sky-high amounts of particular fats or protein powders and additives (my surgeon told me not to take protein supplements after I went off my soft diet).
For now I'm going to stick with my program as I have it laid out and then start making adjustments to "toughen it up" as I grow comfortable with the weight levels. I'm thinking I might have to increase the weight and do fewer reps and see how that works out.
Keep in mind that I've pre-queued this entry; it's actually mid-July. So by the time you're reading this I've adjusted my routine and I'm either injured or I had a successful transition to increase my strength level.
Anyone want to take bets on how this had turned out?
I've been faithfully going to the gym on Sundays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays, doing a full circuit on the upper- and lower-body machines along with my walks on the treadmill. I haven't been recording it here because It's kind of a waste of space; just reposting the same type of information over and over. I'd rather just post about issues and thoughts on doing the workouts than my statistics since I doubt anyone would be interested in those numbers.
But what am I getting from the workouts?
I'm obviously not "buff" and muscular. It's too much to think that would happen overnight. Or over a month, I suppose.
In working out you're supposed to have a goal. It could be to tone your muscles, to define your body shape (with all this excess skin I could be toned out the wazoo and you'd never see it anyway). It could be to help your cardiovascular system. It could be to just burn some calories.
I was thinking that muscle mass is supposed to burn fat and in the process boost your metabolism. Okay, it doesn't burn a lot of calories, but it's still better than fat. So I'm thinking I should try focusing on building some muscle mass.
That's where the problem comes in.
See, every site I look at for building muscle with weight training states that to do it, you need to take in more calories so there's more material from which to rebuild muscles. My understanding is that basically when you're building muscle, it's done by creating micro-tears in your existing muscle and then waiting 24 to 48 hours for those muscles to rebuild and repair the tears and in the process experience the effect of increasing muscle and becoming stronger.
I found information at
Muscle Building Tips
How To Get Bigger Muscles And Six-Pack Abs
The 10 Commandments of Muscle Building Nutrition
There are many other sites, but I wanted to just cite a few of the sites I read over; but the pattern of information gleaned from my Google search seemed to corroborate each other (or they all get information from the same sources).
But after weight loss surgery, the focus is on reducing the number of calories you take in. As a very very rough guess I'm thinking I have 300 to 400 calories a meal three times a day for a total of probably 1200 calories, all said and done. It's a rough average because I probably have about a cup of nuts (mostly peanuts) over the course of the day with my meals; I found that if I didn't have these I started to feel kind of wonky around my exercise time (usually I'm riding the stationary bike for an hour or so if it's a bike day or I'm at the gym for an hour doing weight training with Nautilus machines).
I don't eat until I feel stuffed or full; I figure that if I habitually do that, I'm going to stretch the stomach and just keep going after awhile. I have some nuts during the day but my meals I weigh with a kitchen scale to keep at less than 6 ounces each (although I aim for 5.5 ounces).
My surgeon will beat me if he sees this...
I know I'm eating far less than I used to. I forego a lot of the things I used to enjoy. But this has been what I'm working with now. I eat less and have been pretty good about getting in my exercise.
Before I go any further off the point I'll bring up my worries. The sites state that building muscle means consuming extra calories and increasing the weight you lift until you can only do four to eight reps before ending the set.
Basically you push your body to find the limits to your strength before experiencing failure. Oddly enough, building strength through finding your failure point is apparently controversial. Another reason I hate exercise...to be any good at it, you basically end up having to live exercise, making it one of those things that pushes the hobby limit to a career interest, and I have no interest in making the gym my career.
Which basically makes figuring this stuff out just that much harder.
Caloric intake is also an issue. Some articles are saying that weight training involves people building muscle by consuming three thousand to five thousand calories a day over the course of six meals! No way I could do that now; it would ruin my surgical alterations. Some of it is specifically banned from me like weight lifting diets that involve sky-high amounts of particular fats or protein powders and additives (my surgeon told me not to take protein supplements after I went off my soft diet).
For now I'm going to stick with my program as I have it laid out and then start making adjustments to "toughen it up" as I grow comfortable with the weight levels. I'm thinking I might have to increase the weight and do fewer reps and see how that works out.
Keep in mind that I've pre-queued this entry; it's actually mid-July. So by the time you're reading this I've adjusted my routine and I'm either injured or I had a successful transition to increase my strength level.
Anyone want to take bets on how this had turned out?
Sunday, August 16, 2009
Time Magazine: Exercise Doesn't Work?
Wow...interesting how much noise is being made about this article at Time postulating that exercise doesn't help in weight loss.
I thought it was interesting. Then again, I think much of the article correlated with what I've observed in my time with exercise and people's habits, so it may be simply a matter of noticing some form of confirmation bias on my part.
I read the article about a week ago. But now there's blog entries and articles appearing to comment on the piece. This article from juancole.com declares the article to be an "epic fail", concluding that:
*********
The science on all this is perfectly clear. Vigorous exercise (both aerobic and resistance training) combined with a low-fat diet is what allows people to take weight off and keep it off. Time is shockingly wrong.
*********
The diet-blog had this snippet:
*********
n summary, the article essentially claims that exercise won't help you lose weight, and may in fact be responsible for people GAINING weight. Hmmm... The author, John Cloud (ooh the irony in that surname) goes on an anecdotally-based tirade, side-stepping contradictory evidence and common sense on route to his perplexing hypothesis.
*********
I thought this was an interesting claim since in the article author quotes Eric Ravussin of Louisiana State University as well as the journal Public Library of Science...diet blog implied that the entire thing is anecdote-based.
Further, the article doesn't say you shouldn't exercise; it states right in it that "In short, it's what you eat, not how hard you try to work it off, that matters more in losing weight. You should exercise to improve your health, but be warned: fiery spurts of vigorous exercise could lead to weight gain. I love how exercise makes me feel, but tomorrow I might skip the VersaClimber — and skip the blueberry bar that is my usual postexercise reward."
In other words, the article is saying that exercise is good for you, you should exercise for those benefits, but exercise alone won't necessarily help with losing weight.
The article states that people wipe out a lot of the calories burned by going out and eating more because, after all, they worked hard at the gym...what's the harm?
I've been going to the gym and found that a half-mile brisk walk on the treadmill...ten minutes...burns about 150 calories. That means that if I walked about 3 miles per hour for twenty minutes, that's a plain cheeseburger at McDonalds.
Keep in mind that most people don't eat a cheeseburger. If it's not a double cheeseburger or bigger, most people won't order it. With fries. And rarely do I see people getting the diet soda.
The article emphasizes that alterations in your diet are necessary for losing weight, not keeping the same habits except for an hour at the gym.
The blowback I've been reading online like to comment about how the article is so wrong, how exercise helps you lose weight, la la la...please. Weight loss isn't a subject that boils down easily.
I know that empirically speaking, this isn't evidence, but sometimes you have to sit back and start analyzing your own observations and using common sense.
First, in order for you to maintain your weight you have to look at your Basal Metabolic Rate; basically it's the calories you burn when you sit on your ass all day. It's the energy used for metabolizing food, breathing, generating body head, circulating blood, and maintaining your weight level. Yes, fat does take calories to maintain. Just not as much as muscle. When you look at the BMR for what it takes to maintain an overweight body, you should get a very rough idea of what a 400 or 500 pound person is eating each day in order to stay at that weight level, regardless of how much he or she protests that they eat as much as their skinny friends do or exercise as much as their friends do. The body doesn't absorb mass from osmosis through your skin. Raw materials...water, protein, etc...come from your food and drink. You eat; the body processes it and integrates some of the material as fat or other tissues, the rest is excreted as sweat, urine, feces and water from your breathing.
Second, I find far more people who refuse or actively ignore simple things like counting calories or reading food labels. Food-wise, one of the great sources of depression I've found comes from finding out just what is in those McD's burgers and breakfast wraps and all the labels at the supermarket. I have had virtual sticker shock from discovering just how many calories I was actually shoveling into my gaping maw over the course of the day; a slice of cheese there, an extra helping of Chef Boy-R-Dee there...it adds up. It's amazingly simple to pile on a couple hundred calories by just adding on an extra helping at lunch and dinner. Eating out? Oh lord...the foods taste good because they have fat, salt, and sugar in various forms added. Wonderful taste, but they're all essentially treats; foods that should be eaten sparingly. Read the labels. The wraps I prep at home have far fewer fats and processing in them compared to McD's sausage burrito for breakfast, despite in some ways being similar. But the difference adds up. One of the most effective weight loss plans for the long term involves keeping a food diary...most people simply won't do it.
Third, as the article states, I've seen people who reward themselves because they've been working hard for the day or think they cut back a lot at lunch (do they actually check how many calories they saved, so they could treat themselves? One huge muffin from popular fast coffee chains can easily top 400 to 500 calories...that's most of a meal in itself...so an entire hour or more of a workout could be wiped out with ten minutes of yummy time. While in college the fraternity I belonged to had a "wing night" where we'd all meet at a local sports bar and generally hang out and eat wings and be obnoxious (although the waitress put up with us because we were regulars who ended up leaving a nice tip for putting up with us, and since they were nice while we were there we'd usually try picking up after ourselves as a tip-of-the-hat for their patience). We happened to pick a night that apparently a local weight loss group does their weigh-in. We knew because later that night the same group of very overweight individuals would come in and order pie as their "treat for the week".
Yes. Morbidly obese individuals were coming in from their diet group to celebrate making it another week on their diet by eating pie.
I bring that up because:
So this article in time isn't necessarily misleading from what I've seen and experienced. The article's points sum up as exercise is healthy and you should do it because it has many benefits, but for weight loss you need to rely on cutting down calories and changing your habits more than relying on exercise. I don't know why this is a point of contention for people on the blogosphere. The article isn't saying you should drop the gym membership or stop the cardio routines. It's saying you need to stop getting off your arse if it's to walk to the fridge or pantry for a "little snack"...
I thought it was interesting. Then again, I think much of the article correlated with what I've observed in my time with exercise and people's habits, so it may be simply a matter of noticing some form of confirmation bias on my part.
I read the article about a week ago. But now there's blog entries and articles appearing to comment on the piece. This article from juancole.com declares the article to be an "epic fail", concluding that:
*********
The science on all this is perfectly clear. Vigorous exercise (both aerobic and resistance training) combined with a low-fat diet is what allows people to take weight off and keep it off. Time is shockingly wrong.
*********
The diet-blog had this snippet:
*********
n summary, the article essentially claims that exercise won't help you lose weight, and may in fact be responsible for people GAINING weight. Hmmm... The author, John Cloud (ooh the irony in that surname) goes on an anecdotally-based tirade, side-stepping contradictory evidence and common sense on route to his perplexing hypothesis.
*********
I thought this was an interesting claim since in the article author quotes Eric Ravussin of Louisiana State University as well as the journal Public Library of Science...diet blog implied that the entire thing is anecdote-based.
Further, the article doesn't say you shouldn't exercise; it states right in it that "In short, it's what you eat, not how hard you try to work it off, that matters more in losing weight. You should exercise to improve your health, but be warned: fiery spurts of vigorous exercise could lead to weight gain. I love how exercise makes me feel, but tomorrow I might skip the VersaClimber — and skip the blueberry bar that is my usual postexercise reward."
In other words, the article is saying that exercise is good for you, you should exercise for those benefits, but exercise alone won't necessarily help with losing weight.
The article states that people wipe out a lot of the calories burned by going out and eating more because, after all, they worked hard at the gym...what's the harm?
I've been going to the gym and found that a half-mile brisk walk on the treadmill...ten minutes...burns about 150 calories. That means that if I walked about 3 miles per hour for twenty minutes, that's a plain cheeseburger at McDonalds.
Keep in mind that most people don't eat a cheeseburger. If it's not a double cheeseburger or bigger, most people won't order it. With fries. And rarely do I see people getting the diet soda.
The article emphasizes that alterations in your diet are necessary for losing weight, not keeping the same habits except for an hour at the gym.
The blowback I've been reading online like to comment about how the article is so wrong, how exercise helps you lose weight, la la la...please. Weight loss isn't a subject that boils down easily.
- Fast foods and processed foods are inexpensive and convenient. They're also loaded with fats and preservatives, sugars, and salt. They also make up most of the American diet.
- Americans are fat and getting fatter. If it were as simple as waving a wand or just declaring that we want to lose weight, we wouldn't have this problem. We do.
- Americans overindulge. We simply eat too much. Portion sizes are out of control.
- Our media barrages us with images of foods that are engineered to make us want more and to eat more. It's socially acceptable to eat a brownie at the convenience store or slather on fat-laden dressings. Foods that seem like healthier choices aren't necessarily healthy (salads are good for you! Until you put on the dressing...chicken is good for you! Until you see the salt content...). Sound bites alone apparently don't help us make the right choices once you dig below the surface.
- Lots of health nuts talk about things like "muscle burns more calories than fat". Yeah...it does. Except it's not a dramatic difference overall. It's about 4 calories per pound. Muscle burns 6 calories per pound, fat burns 2. So if you replace 10 pounds of fat (burning 20 calories) with 10 pounds of muscle (60 calories) you're burning 40 calories a day more. That's it. One cup of sugar-free jello pudding (chocolate) is 60 calories. Ten pounds of added muscle isn't enough to burn off the sugar free pudding.
- They also like saying that muscle weighs more than fat...that is supposed to make you feel better about not losing weight while exercising. Which is interesting to me because, quick! Which weighs more? A pound of feathers or a pound of sand? Um...they're both a pound. Plus, in my researching muscle training for lifting weight, you actually have to eat more calories because muscle won't build itself. You have to supply more energy and building material in order to bulk up. If you're truly focusing on losing weight, you're not gaining muscle, because you're eating less. Otherwise you're on a weight training regimen where you're eating more and working really hard to track what you're eating and how you're working it into your body properly.
I know that empirically speaking, this isn't evidence, but sometimes you have to sit back and start analyzing your own observations and using common sense.
First, in order for you to maintain your weight you have to look at your Basal Metabolic Rate; basically it's the calories you burn when you sit on your ass all day. It's the energy used for metabolizing food, breathing, generating body head, circulating blood, and maintaining your weight level. Yes, fat does take calories to maintain. Just not as much as muscle. When you look at the BMR for what it takes to maintain an overweight body, you should get a very rough idea of what a 400 or 500 pound person is eating each day in order to stay at that weight level, regardless of how much he or she protests that they eat as much as their skinny friends do or exercise as much as their friends do. The body doesn't absorb mass from osmosis through your skin. Raw materials...water, protein, etc...come from your food and drink. You eat; the body processes it and integrates some of the material as fat or other tissues, the rest is excreted as sweat, urine, feces and water from your breathing.
Second, I find far more people who refuse or actively ignore simple things like counting calories or reading food labels. Food-wise, one of the great sources of depression I've found comes from finding out just what is in those McD's burgers and breakfast wraps and all the labels at the supermarket. I have had virtual sticker shock from discovering just how many calories I was actually shoveling into my gaping maw over the course of the day; a slice of cheese there, an extra helping of Chef Boy-R-Dee there...it adds up. It's amazingly simple to pile on a couple hundred calories by just adding on an extra helping at lunch and dinner. Eating out? Oh lord...the foods taste good because they have fat, salt, and sugar in various forms added. Wonderful taste, but they're all essentially treats; foods that should be eaten sparingly. Read the labels. The wraps I prep at home have far fewer fats and processing in them compared to McD's sausage burrito for breakfast, despite in some ways being similar. But the difference adds up. One of the most effective weight loss plans for the long term involves keeping a food diary...most people simply won't do it.
Third, as the article states, I've seen people who reward themselves because they've been working hard for the day or think they cut back a lot at lunch (do they actually check how many calories they saved, so they could treat themselves? One huge muffin from popular fast coffee chains can easily top 400 to 500 calories...that's most of a meal in itself...so an entire hour or more of a workout could be wiped out with ten minutes of yummy time. While in college the fraternity I belonged to had a "wing night" where we'd all meet at a local sports bar and generally hang out and eat wings and be obnoxious (although the waitress put up with us because we were regulars who ended up leaving a nice tip for putting up with us, and since they were nice while we were there we'd usually try picking up after ourselves as a tip-of-the-hat for their patience). We happened to pick a night that apparently a local weight loss group does their weigh-in. We knew because later that night the same group of very overweight individuals would come in and order pie as their "treat for the week".
Yes. Morbidly obese individuals were coming in from their diet group to celebrate making it another week on their diet by eating pie.
I bring that up because:
- It illustrates the mentality of depriving yourself or torturing yourself in the gym means an obligation to treat yourself. It's an unhealthy attitude because it's so easy to go overboard...do I really think they were just having a slice of pie once a week? I'll put it this way...in the years I was at the college, they never really changed the way they looked when they came in.
- I'm fat. Grossly, morbidly obese. For some reason this seems to give a free pass for making observations about other overweight people. But this doesn' t really matter in America because, as it's been said before, the two classes of people that are still socially acceptable to make fun of are fat people and smokers.
- These people were like millions of other Americans. I've heard some of their conversations. I have little doubt that they were looking for a simple way to lose weight that involved anything except what's known to work...take in fewer calories than you're burning. They would try all the diet plans, pills, herbs,...the most telling is if you ask someone on a diet how many calories they're getting a day and they just kind of give you that glazed-over look, then they're not tracking what they're eating.
So this article in time isn't necessarily misleading from what I've seen and experienced. The article's points sum up as exercise is healthy and you should do it because it has many benefits, but for weight loss you need to rely on cutting down calories and changing your habits more than relying on exercise. I don't know why this is a point of contention for people on the blogosphere. The article isn't saying you should drop the gym membership or stop the cardio routines. It's saying you need to stop getting off your arse if it's to walk to the fridge or pantry for a "little snack"...
Sunday, August 2, 2009
Book Review: Weight Training for Dummies
It took me about a week to finish reading Weight Training for Dummies (this review is being posted long after I've finished the book) by Liz Neporent, Suzanne Schlosberg, and Shirley Archer.
The book includes the trademark Dummies 5th Wave comics and is filled with the entertaining, down-to-Earth writing style I've come to expect from Dummies books. At a glance, the book includes chapters on "Before You Pick Up a Weight", "Weighing In with Weigh Training Wisdom", "Tackling the Exercises", "Setting Up Your Workout Programs", and of course no Dummies book is complete without "The Part of Tens".
I'm a complete novice at the whole weight training thing. More than that, I hate the whole fitness "thing". Hearing people slinging lingo like "abs" and "glutes" makes me immediately try to tune out the conversation and being lectured about the importance of fitness sounds like one long la la la la la...
However, due to the surgery, I had to do something to try exercising. I love biking, but the area I'm in makes it difficult to ride. I managed to stick with a stationary bike routine but I still wanted to do something to add some variety.
I mentioned to my parents that I was considering doing something with a local gym and they decided to gift me with a one-year membership there. Knowing nothing about working out in a gym, I picked up this book to try learning some of the ins and outs of what to expect with a workout routine.
Keep in mind that I am anti-fitness and knew next to nothing about it.
This book communicated in a clear and fun way to a complete novice different things to remember when weight lifting, from safety to courtesy in gyms to some background on the Nautilus machine versus the Nautilus brand.
If you're considering starting a weight-lifting routine and don't know a dumbbell from a barbell, you should definitely start with this book to start your learning journey. I didn't finish the book an expert by any means but I definitely had a better grasp of my goals and understanding of working out; it was at least enough to help put me a little more at ease the first time I walked into that gym.
The book includes the trademark Dummies 5th Wave comics and is filled with the entertaining, down-to-Earth writing style I've come to expect from Dummies books. At a glance, the book includes chapters on "Before You Pick Up a Weight", "Weighing In with Weigh Training Wisdom", "Tackling the Exercises", "Setting Up Your Workout Programs", and of course no Dummies book is complete without "The Part of Tens".
I'm a complete novice at the whole weight training thing. More than that, I hate the whole fitness "thing". Hearing people slinging lingo like "abs" and "glutes" makes me immediately try to tune out the conversation and being lectured about the importance of fitness sounds like one long la la la la la...
However, due to the surgery, I had to do something to try exercising. I love biking, but the area I'm in makes it difficult to ride. I managed to stick with a stationary bike routine but I still wanted to do something to add some variety.
I mentioned to my parents that I was considering doing something with a local gym and they decided to gift me with a one-year membership there. Knowing nothing about working out in a gym, I picked up this book to try learning some of the ins and outs of what to expect with a workout routine.
Keep in mind that I am anti-fitness and knew next to nothing about it.
This book communicated in a clear and fun way to a complete novice different things to remember when weight lifting, from safety to courtesy in gyms to some background on the Nautilus machine versus the Nautilus brand.
If you're considering starting a weight-lifting routine and don't know a dumbbell from a barbell, you should definitely start with this book to start your learning journey. I didn't finish the book an expert by any means but I definitely had a better grasp of my goals and understanding of working out; it was at least enough to help put me a little more at ease the first time I walked into that gym.
Monday, June 29, 2009
Fitness Books and Options Galore
We had the family out recently to a Barnes and Noble bookstore and while there I asked my wife if she had seen any Dummies books on fitness. I had looked in the exercise section but found nothing.
Turned out they were having a display of the Dummies books elsewhere in the store, 30% off, so I didn't see it in the "right" place. Whoops. Did I mention my wife had a professor whose daughter was a cofounder of the company that makes the Dummies guides? Yeah. Neat factoid. Hard for me to type that without instantly thinking of the quote from Spaceballs when Dark Helmet tells Lone Starr that "I am your father's brother's nephew's cousin's former roommate. "
So she picked up a book on fitness and I skimmed it. I was looking at trying to find ideas for alternative methods to build some strength and stamina while primarily working off weight, hopefully with something that can fit my habits with minimal interruption and preferably minimal expense. Yeah, I know, it's a pipe dream.
I skimmed through part of the book and...geez! I don't think you can really get into the fitness realm with any real knowledge of your arse from a hole in the ground unless you turn it into a full fledged hobby, which is not something I want to do.
Hmm...riding equipment. I have some space in the basement, I enjoy my stationary recumbent (and am considering pricing a newer one out because this one hurts my butt after an hour). What does it say? There's upright bikes, recumbent, elipticals, treadmills, weight machines, machines that simulate climbing, rowers, steppers, freeweights...whoa. By the way, treadmills are most accurate for estimating calorie burn, if you're interested. And many manufacturers lie or fudge estimates. One of the authors had a guy from a company admit they use a formula that boosts the number by some 30 percent so that customers subconsciously prefer their brand over others.
Okay, okay...lotta machines, I get that. How about a gym? You have to look at fitness trainer availability, classes, hidden fees, cleanliness in changing rooms, security, does it specialize or is it generalized, how new is equipment, upkeep in current equipment, fees for initiation,...okay. Overload. Stop there.
Screw it. Let's try something simple. Body only. That should be cheap. It talked about Pilates, aerobics, step-aerobics, kick boxing, martial arts, dance, stripper pole workouts,...AAH! Stop!
Okay, no no. Let's go outside. Biking? Recumbent or straight? Inline skating? It talked about how many injuries the ER sees from that every year. Rules of the road. Trying not to get hit. Bad weather. Ack. Let's go back in.
Pilates sounded interesting. It is supposed to focus on your core muscles, helping you with flexibility and strength through movements derived from animals. It originally was to help injured dancers stay in shape. Flip a few pages...um...easy to do wrong, recommend hiring an instructor, depends on if certified, get DVD, maybe public class for less, join a gym for possible discount, private trainers go for $50 to $200 bucks a session!? Um...well, there is just the DVD option...it recommended going to Amazon for some reviews...oh geez.
So much to learn. Maybe I'll do something any idiot can do and run.
Shoes cost how much? And are replaced after 400 to 500 miles?
Walking?
They last for one thousand miles, eh? And you need to do what to monitor your heartrate? Shoes should have added what support and reinforced whats? And there's an actual technique to walking for exercise? I've been doing it wrong for over thirty years?? Holy smokes.
I remember quite firmly why I thought fitness work was for the birds. Every time I look at that book after about ten minutes I'm ready to shove those pecs and abs and all those other wonderful jargon words up someone's glutes.
Sigh. But I'm still looking at it. I'll figure something out, I suppose.
Turned out they were having a display of the Dummies books elsewhere in the store, 30% off, so I didn't see it in the "right" place. Whoops. Did I mention my wife had a professor whose daughter was a cofounder of the company that makes the Dummies guides? Yeah. Neat factoid. Hard for me to type that without instantly thinking of the quote from Spaceballs when Dark Helmet tells Lone Starr that "I am your father's brother's nephew's cousin's former roommate. "
So she picked up a book on fitness and I skimmed it. I was looking at trying to find ideas for alternative methods to build some strength and stamina while primarily working off weight, hopefully with something that can fit my habits with minimal interruption and preferably minimal expense. Yeah, I know, it's a pipe dream.
I skimmed through part of the book and...geez! I don't think you can really get into the fitness realm with any real knowledge of your arse from a hole in the ground unless you turn it into a full fledged hobby, which is not something I want to do.
Hmm...riding equipment. I have some space in the basement, I enjoy my stationary recumbent (and am considering pricing a newer one out because this one hurts my butt after an hour). What does it say? There's upright bikes, recumbent, elipticals, treadmills, weight machines, machines that simulate climbing, rowers, steppers, freeweights...whoa. By the way, treadmills are most accurate for estimating calorie burn, if you're interested. And many manufacturers lie or fudge estimates. One of the authors had a guy from a company admit they use a formula that boosts the number by some 30 percent so that customers subconsciously prefer their brand over others.
Okay, okay...lotta machines, I get that. How about a gym? You have to look at fitness trainer availability, classes, hidden fees, cleanliness in changing rooms, security, does it specialize or is it generalized, how new is equipment, upkeep in current equipment, fees for initiation,...okay. Overload. Stop there.
Screw it. Let's try something simple. Body only. That should be cheap. It talked about Pilates, aerobics, step-aerobics, kick boxing, martial arts, dance, stripper pole workouts,...AAH! Stop!
Okay, no no. Let's go outside. Biking? Recumbent or straight? Inline skating? It talked about how many injuries the ER sees from that every year. Rules of the road. Trying not to get hit. Bad weather. Ack. Let's go back in.
Pilates sounded interesting. It is supposed to focus on your core muscles, helping you with flexibility and strength through movements derived from animals. It originally was to help injured dancers stay in shape. Flip a few pages...um...easy to do wrong, recommend hiring an instructor, depends on if certified, get DVD, maybe public class for less, join a gym for possible discount, private trainers go for $50 to $200 bucks a session!? Um...well, there is just the DVD option...it recommended going to Amazon for some reviews...oh geez.
So much to learn. Maybe I'll do something any idiot can do and run.
Shoes cost how much? And are replaced after 400 to 500 miles?
Walking?
They last for one thousand miles, eh? And you need to do what to monitor your heartrate? Shoes should have added what support and reinforced whats? And there's an actual technique to walking for exercise? I've been doing it wrong for over thirty years?? Holy smokes.
I remember quite firmly why I thought fitness work was for the birds. Every time I look at that book after about ten minutes I'm ready to shove those pecs and abs and all those other wonderful jargon words up someone's glutes.
Sigh. But I'm still looking at it. I'll figure something out, I suppose.
Thursday, June 18, 2009
Fat Acceptance Movement
Lorraine at The Renewal blog posted an article about finding another blog called The Rotund where the maintainer is an advocate in the Fat Acceptance Movement. She actually (Lorraine, that is) saw the owner of that blog on a segment of Good Morning America.
The Fat Acceptance Movement is all about...well, accepting fat people. I've heard it grumbled before that the obese and smokers are the last two groups in America that it's "okay" to make fun of socially and ostracise. Fat people who smoke can probably cut the tension with a steak knife when they walk into a room.
HA! Get it?
Anyway...yes, the movement. The movement itself is supposed to be about fighting stereotypes and myths and general prejudice against overweight people. Which I suppose is noble.
Part of me is torn on the topic though. While in theory advocating equality and lack of prejudice is a good thing, I think that what goes hand in hand with this is a tacit advocation of the cause and having experienced things from the fat side of the fence I'd have to say that I'm not sure it's a great thing to promote.
The health care industry is already a mess with vultures swooping in to take their share of the pie plus some extra whenever the opportunity arises. Obesity carries increased risk for heart attack, stroke, diabetic complications,...the list goes on and on. Each of these are used by the vultures to help justify their outrageous costs and fees; obese people contribute unevenly to the social system in comparison to the amount they take out for care.
The movement also is anti-diet, saying "dieting doesn't work". I really think that this is a mischaracterization...many diets work. The weight maintenance fails. That's not necessarily a problem with the diet though...it's the attitude that a diet is this temporary thing that once done is completely done, like painting a fence or cleaning the toilet. It's simply not true. You achieve a lower weight by modifying your lifestyle.
But I digress...
Where was I? Oh yes. It's hard to say that I'm against a group that proclaims to support you accepting yourself as you are. There's been a big movement for people doing just that, that body image is an issue for men and women because of unreal stereotypes perpetuated by images in media. But aren't they going to the opposite extreme?
I've been a big advocate for what I call "leaving me the hell alone". It's a system where if I don't unreasonably bother you, you don't have a right to unreasonably bother me. If someone wants to not wear a seatbelt, who are they going to hurt except themselves in an accident?
Unless they live, in which case they impose medical bills that are picked up by shared-risk organizations like the Medicare system or insurance companies.
So what about the super obese? Should we be just left alone without prejudice if we're footing our own medical bills, and then let our bodies fester in disrepair and slowly break down from the added stress our obesity places on the body as long as we're not bothering you?
Part of me says that if it's not bothering anyone else, why is it their business? Leave us alone. We all carry demons. The obese just happen to carry a demon that's visible, probably one among others. I doubt that the normals are without some private demons of their own, and it's simply fashionable to boost their egos at the expense of the overweight.
The other part says that if I have to foot a disproportionate amount of the bill for a guy that lays in a hospital because he ignored twenty years or more of warnings about taking care of himself then I'm a little peeved. It also is the part of me that twitches a little when they...the movement...distorts facts into propaganda by promoting ideas like "diets don't work." It's a half truth. You failed the diet so you instead redefine "fat" as "normal".
I also don't want to give the illusion that I support being overweight because I have been there and can say that there really are a lot of mechanisms in place to rationalize and justify the situation and quite frankly, while they can be a consolation but it only numbs a pain that you're constantly aware of. You're aware of it when you can't fit a seat belt. When that theater seat pinches your cheeks together more tightly than you can pinch them together. When you realize your plate at the buffet has two trips worth of food. When you find yourself second-guessing if the seats in the party hosts' home will buckle under the weight of your ass, or becoming self-conscious of how much you're taking from the dishes compared to other guests. When you're the one that gets volunteered to walk on the ice first to make sure it's safe for the kids or be the anchor for tug-of-war, but you're the last one picked for a game of ball. Unless it's football. When you're fat it's generally assumed by every redneck armchair coach that you "should go out for football because you'd be great at it!"
So you console yourself with things like, "I'm overweight, but my doctor has been surprised because I don't have the complications that people my weight are supposed to have!" I thought I was the only one to use that excuse (many years ago). I was wrong. Looking back I think it's a common delusional belief to make myself feel better for being so morbidly obese, and as with all good things the good health slips away, slowly, chipping away in bits small enough that you don't notice it at first...until you find yourself flipping through a Dummies book on Weight Loss Surgery and wondering how you allowed yourself to get to that point.
I don't know at this point. I haven't dedicated a lot of time to thinking about the topic. What do other people think? Rights of the individual before the rights of the public? Or is this just a splinter group of delusional overweight people trying to make themselves feel better by finding others who have given up trying to feel healthy and redefined themselves to embrace their "unhealthy" state? Or am I totally off base here?
The Fat Acceptance Movement is all about...well, accepting fat people. I've heard it grumbled before that the obese and smokers are the last two groups in America that it's "okay" to make fun of socially and ostracise. Fat people who smoke can probably cut the tension with a steak knife when they walk into a room.
HA! Get it?
Anyway...yes, the movement. The movement itself is supposed to be about fighting stereotypes and myths and general prejudice against overweight people. Which I suppose is noble.
Part of me is torn on the topic though. While in theory advocating equality and lack of prejudice is a good thing, I think that what goes hand in hand with this is a tacit advocation of the cause and having experienced things from the fat side of the fence I'd have to say that I'm not sure it's a great thing to promote.
The health care industry is already a mess with vultures swooping in to take their share of the pie plus some extra whenever the opportunity arises. Obesity carries increased risk for heart attack, stroke, diabetic complications,...the list goes on and on. Each of these are used by the vultures to help justify their outrageous costs and fees; obese people contribute unevenly to the social system in comparison to the amount they take out for care.
The movement also is anti-diet, saying "dieting doesn't work". I really think that this is a mischaracterization...many diets work. The weight maintenance fails. That's not necessarily a problem with the diet though...it's the attitude that a diet is this temporary thing that once done is completely done, like painting a fence or cleaning the toilet. It's simply not true. You achieve a lower weight by modifying your lifestyle.
But I digress...
Where was I? Oh yes. It's hard to say that I'm against a group that proclaims to support you accepting yourself as you are. There's been a big movement for people doing just that, that body image is an issue for men and women because of unreal stereotypes perpetuated by images in media. But aren't they going to the opposite extreme?
I've been a big advocate for what I call "leaving me the hell alone". It's a system where if I don't unreasonably bother you, you don't have a right to unreasonably bother me. If someone wants to not wear a seatbelt, who are they going to hurt except themselves in an accident?
Unless they live, in which case they impose medical bills that are picked up by shared-risk organizations like the Medicare system or insurance companies.
So what about the super obese? Should we be just left alone without prejudice if we're footing our own medical bills, and then let our bodies fester in disrepair and slowly break down from the added stress our obesity places on the body as long as we're not bothering you?
Part of me says that if it's not bothering anyone else, why is it their business? Leave us alone. We all carry demons. The obese just happen to carry a demon that's visible, probably one among others. I doubt that the normals are without some private demons of their own, and it's simply fashionable to boost their egos at the expense of the overweight.
The other part says that if I have to foot a disproportionate amount of the bill for a guy that lays in a hospital because he ignored twenty years or more of warnings about taking care of himself then I'm a little peeved. It also is the part of me that twitches a little when they...the movement...distorts facts into propaganda by promoting ideas like "diets don't work." It's a half truth. You failed the diet so you instead redefine "fat" as "normal".
I also don't want to give the illusion that I support being overweight because I have been there and can say that there really are a lot of mechanisms in place to rationalize and justify the situation and quite frankly, while they can be a consolation but it only numbs a pain that you're constantly aware of. You're aware of it when you can't fit a seat belt. When that theater seat pinches your cheeks together more tightly than you can pinch them together. When you realize your plate at the buffet has two trips worth of food. When you find yourself second-guessing if the seats in the party hosts' home will buckle under the weight of your ass, or becoming self-conscious of how much you're taking from the dishes compared to other guests. When you're the one that gets volunteered to walk on the ice first to make sure it's safe for the kids or be the anchor for tug-of-war, but you're the last one picked for a game of ball. Unless it's football. When you're fat it's generally assumed by every redneck armchair coach that you "should go out for football because you'd be great at it!"
So you console yourself with things like, "I'm overweight, but my doctor has been surprised because I don't have the complications that people my weight are supposed to have!" I thought I was the only one to use that excuse (many years ago). I was wrong. Looking back I think it's a common delusional belief to make myself feel better for being so morbidly obese, and as with all good things the good health slips away, slowly, chipping away in bits small enough that you don't notice it at first...until you find yourself flipping through a Dummies book on Weight Loss Surgery and wondering how you allowed yourself to get to that point.
I don't know at this point. I haven't dedicated a lot of time to thinking about the topic. What do other people think? Rights of the individual before the rights of the public? Or is this just a splinter group of delusional overweight people trying to make themselves feel better by finding others who have given up trying to feel healthy and redefined themselves to embrace their "unhealthy" state? Or am I totally off base here?
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