zio
Mr. Atlas
- Jul 28, 2000
- 2,291
- 0
Four weeks ago, zia (my wife) decided we are too fat. She dug our “Body For Life” book out of the closet & went on a rampage. I’ve been fighting the fat ever since my son was born almost 4 years ago. Prior to that, I had been hitting the gym every morning for 1 to 1 ½ hours, 5 days a week for close to 14 months. I was in better shape than ever, looked decent, and felt great about myself. I didn’t try to educate myself about what I was doing, and now know I didn’t make the most of my efforts. I’m posting this to possibly educate & motivate any DRN’er who’s currently training, on the fence about starting a new training program, or discouraged by their increasing pant size.
First of all, as with anything, education is the key to proper fitness. It’s like jetting- the more you learn, the more you realize there is to learn. It’s never ending. And you’re constantly saying to yourself “geeze, if only I knew that last week” and so on. It’s part of what motivates me to keep pushing. There are several good websites that give good, free, scientifically supported data that I’ve almost become addicted to: www.hussman.org/fitness, and www.bodybuilding.com.
For anyone who wondered why they can’t seem to lose weight, let me start off by giving an overview of how I used to eat. I ate fast food at least once a month, sometimes lots more. I love bread. I love tortillas. I love chips. I love pasta. I don’t like vegetables. I don’t get a sweet tooth often, but I’ve been known to down a pint of Hagen Daas now & then. And I like beer. Lots of beer. I rarely ate breakfast (just didn’t really have an appetite), but when I did it was usually biscuits w/ butter & jelly, or cereal. Lunch almost always consisted of a big sandwich or a burger w/ fries or chips. Dinner was similar. My portions were huge. I love taking big bites. I love feeling stuffed after a meal. I would often feel guilty about they way I ate, and go on a “health” kick for a few days to make up for it. My “healthy” meals would be a sandwich w/ lettuce & no mayo (but lots of cheese), getting the grilled chicken breast combo from Wendy’s instead of fried chicken, drinking diet coke instead of regular, and eating a few bites of broccoli with a meal. Boston Market always felt like a healthy alternative to McDonalds, too. I even quit snacking in between meals in an attempt to slow down the growth of my spare tire. And I never drank a glass of water.
Here’s what I’ve recently learned that has totally changed the way I eat, probably for the rest of my life....
We burn fuel just like our dirtbikes do. Each of us has a certain base-level of calories we burn each day, based on our age, gender, height, and lean body mass. Let’s call this “idling”. Fitness folks call it your Base Metabolic Rate. If all we did was idle in the pits all day, we’d burn this much calories. Here’s the basic formula to calculate your BMR (taken from www.hussman.org/fitness):
Men: BMR = 66 + (6.23 x "typical" pounds) + (12.7 x inches) - (6.8 x age)
Women: BMR = 655 + (4.35 x "typical" pounds) + (4.7 x inches) - (4.7 x age)
The 66 and 655 aren't typos.
So, let’s take me, for example. 66 + (My total weight is 195 x 6.23 =1214.85) + (My height is 71 inches x 12.7 =901.7) – (my age is 29 x 6.8 = 197.2) = a BMR of 1985.35 calories/day.
Eating fewer calories than needed isn’t like running out of gas 20 miles from your truck, though. Nor is overfilling the tank before you hit the trail. Your body has ways making it’s own energy in the event of a deficit, or storing excess energy consumed for that “rainy day”. For most of us, we’ve banked a few years worth of “rainy days”. When we take in fewer calories than needed to burn in a day, that’s called “caloric deficit”. When that happens, our brain sends out a message to the General Forum “NEED FUEL! BURN FAT!”.
So the first lesson is, if you want to lose weight (fat), you need to create a caloric deficit. Every pound of fat is equal to 3500 calories. Therefore, if I want to burn a pound of fat each week, I need to create an average caloric deficit of 500 calories a day. If all I did was lay in bed, that’d mean I had to keep my intake below 1485 calories/day.
Also, there’s such thing as eating too few calories. If your body thinks it’s being starved, it’ll actually attempt to store many of those calories as fat & instead burn some muscle. That’s not good. So the solution is to eat several small meals a day (5-6) and keep your body from feeling hungry. A small caloric deficit throughout the day is what stimulates your body to burn the fat stores! Most experts say that you should never consume less than 10% of your BMR
Obviously, we burn more calories in a day than just our BMR. If you’re daily life is still fairly sedentary (like mine), multiply your BMR by 1.15 to get a better idea of how many calories you burn a day. If you’re more active, multiply it by 1.2. If you exercise, you obviously will burn more calories than your BMR. If you DO INTENST exercise for 20-40 minutes, change that to 1.5 to 1.6 times your BMR for that day. So for me, that’d equal roughly 2977 calories burned per day. I’ve been keeping my caloric intake between 1800 and 2100 a day. Plus I’ve been exercising each day, so I’m still creating a caloric deficit of at least 800 or so each day. It’s not that hard. Now that I know what I know, it’s never been easier to pass up a Big Mac. Anyone want to guess how many calories one of those has?
I mentioned in the beginning that I’m doing Body for Life. For those of you who haven’t heard of it, it’s nothing new. It’s not really a diet like The Zone or Atkins (which, btw, is very unhealthy. I have tons of new info on that & will post later). This is changing your whole life & how you treat your body. It’s a 12 week challenge, wherein you eat 6 small meals a day, and exercise 6 times a week. 3 of those days are weightlifting for 40-45 mintues, 3 are cardio workouts of 20 minutes. Sunday is your off-day. You can even cheat & eat a pizza & chips if you want on Sunday. Bill Phillips (the man who wrote the book & started the annual challenge) just borrowed from lots of different folks & put it all together in an easy, motivational program that works.
Zia & started on 2/3/03. We’re on week 3. We’ve both lost several pounds. It’s hard to tell by the scale, because I’m building muscle as I burn the fat. But I feel 10 times better physically than I did 3 weeks ago, and I can even see a small difference in the mirror. I took a before picture that I’ll post here, and I’m going to take a new photo every 4 weeks.
If you think it’s too hard to stick to a diet, let me give you an example of what I eat in a typical day:
Breakfast: one packet of instant oatmeal (maple & brown sugar), ½ cup of lowfat cottage cheese.
Snack: protein shake
Lunch: tuna fish (no mayo) on toasted wheat w/ lettuce, half a pear.
Snack: protein par (man, these things taste good!)
Dinner: Baked Mahi Mahi (garlic, butter, seasoning), broccoli (as much as I want), 1/3 cup brown rice
Snack: protein shake
And I drink at least a gallon of water a day. That’s probably the hardest part. I’m never hungry, but man I sure pee a lot. Otherwise, there’s only really one big meal that I have to prepare. The rest is as easy as eating junk food. If I’m traveling, I take an extra protein bar & some beef jerky with me for the road. And if I have to eat out, I just stick with grilled chicken salads w/ fat free dressing. Food has become a tool for me. I don’t see it as recreation any more. I’m interested in it from a nutritional standpoint, but that’s it. I’ll even swallow green beans if I have to.
It really helps that zia is on board with me. Actually, it’s more like I’m on board with her. But as the days go by, and the fat sheds, my interest and passion for living this way grows. We’re driving everyone we know crazy. We’re always excited to get home after a workout to tell the other how awesome it was. Zia has pictures cut out of muscle magazines plastered all over the house.
I’ll get more into the workouts later. It’s time to eat my afternoon snack, and I’ve got to pee like you wouldn’t believe. Looking forward to my workout today (upper body). I’ll post more about the workouts later.
First of all, as with anything, education is the key to proper fitness. It’s like jetting- the more you learn, the more you realize there is to learn. It’s never ending. And you’re constantly saying to yourself “geeze, if only I knew that last week” and so on. It’s part of what motivates me to keep pushing. There are several good websites that give good, free, scientifically supported data that I’ve almost become addicted to: www.hussman.org/fitness, and www.bodybuilding.com.
For anyone who wondered why they can’t seem to lose weight, let me start off by giving an overview of how I used to eat. I ate fast food at least once a month, sometimes lots more. I love bread. I love tortillas. I love chips. I love pasta. I don’t like vegetables. I don’t get a sweet tooth often, but I’ve been known to down a pint of Hagen Daas now & then. And I like beer. Lots of beer. I rarely ate breakfast (just didn’t really have an appetite), but when I did it was usually biscuits w/ butter & jelly, or cereal. Lunch almost always consisted of a big sandwich or a burger w/ fries or chips. Dinner was similar. My portions were huge. I love taking big bites. I love feeling stuffed after a meal. I would often feel guilty about they way I ate, and go on a “health” kick for a few days to make up for it. My “healthy” meals would be a sandwich w/ lettuce & no mayo (but lots of cheese), getting the grilled chicken breast combo from Wendy’s instead of fried chicken, drinking diet coke instead of regular, and eating a few bites of broccoli with a meal. Boston Market always felt like a healthy alternative to McDonalds, too. I even quit snacking in between meals in an attempt to slow down the growth of my spare tire. And I never drank a glass of water.
Here’s what I’ve recently learned that has totally changed the way I eat, probably for the rest of my life....
We burn fuel just like our dirtbikes do. Each of us has a certain base-level of calories we burn each day, based on our age, gender, height, and lean body mass. Let’s call this “idling”. Fitness folks call it your Base Metabolic Rate. If all we did was idle in the pits all day, we’d burn this much calories. Here’s the basic formula to calculate your BMR (taken from www.hussman.org/fitness):
Men: BMR = 66 + (6.23 x "typical" pounds) + (12.7 x inches) - (6.8 x age)
Women: BMR = 655 + (4.35 x "typical" pounds) + (4.7 x inches) - (4.7 x age)
The 66 and 655 aren't typos.
So, let’s take me, for example. 66 + (My total weight is 195 x 6.23 =1214.85) + (My height is 71 inches x 12.7 =901.7) – (my age is 29 x 6.8 = 197.2) = a BMR of 1985.35 calories/day.
Eating fewer calories than needed isn’t like running out of gas 20 miles from your truck, though. Nor is overfilling the tank before you hit the trail. Your body has ways making it’s own energy in the event of a deficit, or storing excess energy consumed for that “rainy day”. For most of us, we’ve banked a few years worth of “rainy days”. When we take in fewer calories than needed to burn in a day, that’s called “caloric deficit”. When that happens, our brain sends out a message to the General Forum “NEED FUEL! BURN FAT!”.
So the first lesson is, if you want to lose weight (fat), you need to create a caloric deficit. Every pound of fat is equal to 3500 calories. Therefore, if I want to burn a pound of fat each week, I need to create an average caloric deficit of 500 calories a day. If all I did was lay in bed, that’d mean I had to keep my intake below 1485 calories/day.
Also, there’s such thing as eating too few calories. If your body thinks it’s being starved, it’ll actually attempt to store many of those calories as fat & instead burn some muscle. That’s not good. So the solution is to eat several small meals a day (5-6) and keep your body from feeling hungry. A small caloric deficit throughout the day is what stimulates your body to burn the fat stores! Most experts say that you should never consume less than 10% of your BMR
Obviously, we burn more calories in a day than just our BMR. If you’re daily life is still fairly sedentary (like mine), multiply your BMR by 1.15 to get a better idea of how many calories you burn a day. If you’re more active, multiply it by 1.2. If you exercise, you obviously will burn more calories than your BMR. If you DO INTENST exercise for 20-40 minutes, change that to 1.5 to 1.6 times your BMR for that day. So for me, that’d equal roughly 2977 calories burned per day. I’ve been keeping my caloric intake between 1800 and 2100 a day. Plus I’ve been exercising each day, so I’m still creating a caloric deficit of at least 800 or so each day. It’s not that hard. Now that I know what I know, it’s never been easier to pass up a Big Mac. Anyone want to guess how many calories one of those has?
I mentioned in the beginning that I’m doing Body for Life. For those of you who haven’t heard of it, it’s nothing new. It’s not really a diet like The Zone or Atkins (which, btw, is very unhealthy. I have tons of new info on that & will post later). This is changing your whole life & how you treat your body. It’s a 12 week challenge, wherein you eat 6 small meals a day, and exercise 6 times a week. 3 of those days are weightlifting for 40-45 mintues, 3 are cardio workouts of 20 minutes. Sunday is your off-day. You can even cheat & eat a pizza & chips if you want on Sunday. Bill Phillips (the man who wrote the book & started the annual challenge) just borrowed from lots of different folks & put it all together in an easy, motivational program that works.
Zia & started on 2/3/03. We’re on week 3. We’ve both lost several pounds. It’s hard to tell by the scale, because I’m building muscle as I burn the fat. But I feel 10 times better physically than I did 3 weeks ago, and I can even see a small difference in the mirror. I took a before picture that I’ll post here, and I’m going to take a new photo every 4 weeks.
If you think it’s too hard to stick to a diet, let me give you an example of what I eat in a typical day:
Breakfast: one packet of instant oatmeal (maple & brown sugar), ½ cup of lowfat cottage cheese.
Snack: protein shake
Lunch: tuna fish (no mayo) on toasted wheat w/ lettuce, half a pear.
Snack: protein par (man, these things taste good!)
Dinner: Baked Mahi Mahi (garlic, butter, seasoning), broccoli (as much as I want), 1/3 cup brown rice
Snack: protein shake
And I drink at least a gallon of water a day. That’s probably the hardest part. I’m never hungry, but man I sure pee a lot. Otherwise, there’s only really one big meal that I have to prepare. The rest is as easy as eating junk food. If I’m traveling, I take an extra protein bar & some beef jerky with me for the road. And if I have to eat out, I just stick with grilled chicken salads w/ fat free dressing. Food has become a tool for me. I don’t see it as recreation any more. I’m interested in it from a nutritional standpoint, but that’s it. I’ll even swallow green beans if I have to.
It really helps that zia is on board with me. Actually, it’s more like I’m on board with her. But as the days go by, and the fat sheds, my interest and passion for living this way grows. We’re driving everyone we know crazy. We’re always excited to get home after a workout to tell the other how awesome it was. Zia has pictures cut out of muscle magazines plastered all over the house.
I’ll get more into the workouts later. It’s time to eat my afternoon snack, and I’ve got to pee like you wouldn’t believe. Looking forward to my workout today (upper body). I’ll post more about the workouts later.
