Weight Loss Wednesday: Week 1
24 Comments Published by Ryan March 21st, 2007 in Fitness, Food. Share This
First of all, I’d like to say thanks to the sizable majority of folks who have wished me luck in public and private as I move forward with this. Most people have been very cool about the whole thing, very understanding and supportive. There are also plenty of people in the middle who may or may not think what I’m doing is a good idea, and offer their thoughts one way or the other; I’d like to thank those people, too. Then there are the douchebags.
Turns out everybody has an opinion (shock!) and a small but unfortunate number of folks have rolled their virtual eyes at me and essentially called me an idiot. Some people reacted like those self-righteous parents everybody hates, who offer snide unsolicited advice to all other parents because their way is like totally better. Generally I’m fine with that—I never claimed to be much above an idiot and I don’t mind listening to other people’s opinions (even when they’re obviously delivered with the intent of aggrandizing oneself rather than helping me)—but to save future know-it-alls from commenting and emailing the same snarky advice, I would like to take this opportunity to address some of the most common whines.
- BMI doesn’t mean anything, you idiot. I’ve heard this more often than just about anything, and while I agree with the underlying sentiment that BMI is not by any means the be-all-end-all in determining your level of health or obesity, I am compelled to ask of the whiners, “Where did you get your medical degree, Quincy?” It is true that one’s health risks might be more clearly ascertained by pulling out the tape measure and going around the belly and hips, and doing a comparison—belly:hip ratios greater than 1.0 in men and 0.8 in women may give a better indication of increased risk. But I’ve never seen a doctor do this, and I don’t need a tape measure to tell me my belly hangs out limply over my waist like the wrist of a queened-out prancing fairy at the pride parade. My doctor uses BMI (plus, you know, looking at my fat ass) as a guideline to determine potential risk, and that’s good enough for me.
- Weight doesn’t mean anything, you idiot. Spoken like a true not-fat person, or perhaps a jaded reformed fatty. While I tend to agree that weight is kind of useless as a comparative metric between people, even those of similar height and proportions, I think it is vastly useful to plot trends and do comparisons for one person. For one thing, I know how I looked at 170 and would like to look like that again; but aside from that, tracking it now will help chart my progress, while tracking it long-term after the weight loss will illustrate on paper which things create peaks and valleys (we’re mostly concerned about the peaks) on the scale. Why would I want to do this? As America’s blubbery waistline can attest, it’s way too easy to eat more than you should and when this thing is over I have no intention of becoming some anal calorie counting maniac. Rather, I intend merely to keep a closer eye on the scale so that when those 5 or 10 pounds creep up I can abolish them immediately instead of waking up one day (again) and saying, “Holy shit, I’m fat!” Control seems to be the key, and trust me, it’s really easy to ignore the pounds packing on until you find yourself grunting and straining while you tie your shoes.
- Prepackaged foods are evil, do it yourself you idiot. As a serious home cook with an overwhelming preference for fresh, minimally processed ingredients, I can totally sympathize with this. In fact, just a few weeks ago I might have given the same advice; when Joel posted about his success with prepackaged foods back in October, I tended to agree a bit with commenter Grady, who said, “Buying prepackaged food is horrible advice…” We all know the processed stuff is loaded down with sugars, salt, trans-fats and various other nastiness, and is about as far from its natural state as anything one can aspire to consume. While MediFast is not even close to your standard TV dinner diet in that regard, it is nonetheless highly processed, and I had to do some serious internal debate before deciding to take the plunge. The main factor in my decision was the wretched tedium of counting calories, which I did for a few weeks before becoming completely burned out on it. The MediFast product promised to be, above all, easy. Much easier than weighing and measuring and tabulating every meal every day, and faster to boot. Plus, it’s entirely temporary. Many people eat fast food every day for years and don’t keel over, so I doubt eating prepackaged, highly processed meals that are formulated to be as healthy as possible, for a mere few months, is going to do me any long term damage.
All that said, I did come away from some comments debating about what measurements to include in my updates. Weight is a given, and BMI I will probably stick with, too. I had thought about adding body fat percentage, and I may go ahead and do so at some point, but for the moment I decided instead to break out the tape measure and give the old belly a good measuring. So last Thursday, the day after the first Weight Loss Wednesday, I measured in at 45 inches at the bellybutton, including the pudgy flabhandles hanging around the sides. Just so you know.
With that out of the way, I’d like to talk a bit about the program itself. I was expecting my body to fight back a bit, but the first couple days were at worst a little bit uncomfortable as my body adjusted to the dramatically reduced calorie intake. I have been under around 1,000 calories every day so far, and for the past 5 days or so I have not only not been hungry, I’m actually finding that I have to keep a close eye on the clock or I forget to eat entirely. Not really what I expected, but in reading the support forums apparently this is not uncommon.
As for the “Lean and Green” portion of the diet—which for those not familiar, is a daily meal you cook yourself within specific guidelines: 5 to 7 ounces of lean protein plus 1.5 to 2 cups of green veggies—I have been finding that 5 to 7 ounces of lean protein is actually more than I want, which came as rather a surprise, so I will be talking to the MediFast Nutritional Support staff to see if there’s anything I should do to substitute. Indeed, while the first few days of L&G left me hungry and wishing for more, the last several have left me surprisingly stuffed. I’m not sure whether my stomach has shrunk or what, but something has definitely changed. As far as what I’ve been eating, I went ahead and picked up this smoker, which I’ve used almost every day since last Wednesday. It is absolutely fantastic, and imparts the delicious smoke flavor I have come to crave after years of being spoiled by Kansas City barbecue. So far I’ve smoked chicken breast, lean ground beef patties (the hickory smoked hamburgers almost made me cry) and pork chops, all with great success. By far the best were the burgers, which I kept moist by introducing salt, diced onion and raw portabellos into the patties prior to smoking. Just thinking about them makes my eyes well up.
Now for the updated statistics:
Date: 03-21-2007 (Days on program: 7)
Weight: 216 (Total lost: 11 pounds)
BMI: 32.8 (Category: Obese)
Belly: 44″ (Started: 45″)
24 Responses to “Weight Loss Wednesday: Week 1”
- 1 Pingback on Mar 28th, 2007 at 2:42 pm
Self-improvement is never an idiot’s errand, good luck and I hope you get to where you want to be in this. As for my two cents, which you’ve undoubtedly heard ad-nauseum, I find that its not so much what you do, so much as you do it consistently.
I don’t remember you saying in your first post or not, but do you drink? If so, have you stopped or cut back or changed your habits? Just curious.
Best of luck dude, and great work so far.
how’s the food/process/etc? i read some of the posts on their site/support boards …i consider you to be more of a ‘real’ person though. I’ve been looking into the same diet and some real feedback would be nice …
Damn dude, 11 lbs in 7 days is impressive. But I think you’re supposed to lose 2lb a week maximum, but I can’t remember why. Some sort of health thing. I’ll tell you in 2011 when I’m out of med school.
You always lose a lot of weight on most diets, because your body dumps a bunch of water and (literally) shit.
I think what Joel intended to say is that you always lose a lot of weight “at first” on most diets. Sorry I’m a bastard stickler.
joflow said, “I don’t remember you saying in your first post or not, but do you drink?”
I enjoy the occasional fine beer or wine, I actually brew beer at home, but for the purposes of this weight loss program I am not drinking at all.
tahddeus said, “how’s the food/process/etc?”
The food is pretty good for the most part. I haven’t found anything to be inedible, although there are a couple things I don’t really like. The shakes and puddings taste pretty much all the same to me, but they’re not awful. Just kind of bland. The process so far has been easy enough, seems like it shouldn’t be a big deal to stick this out for a few months.
senseigmg said, “But I think you’re supposed to lose 2lb a week maximum, but I can’t remember why. Some sort of health thing.”
Yeah, two pounds per week is a safe average for you standard diet and exercise. With this program you can average up to five pounds per week (relatively) safely. I don’t anticipate continued weight loss of this magnitude.
I think what you’re doing is awesome and brave. I could never put pictures of my belly on the internet, even if i was in great shape. Does the food taste any good?
Good job, Ryan. I recently dieted myself—I went from 221 to 183 in less than 12 weeks. It started as a pre-New Years resolution (that way I couldn’t just shrug it off as another resolution I couldn’t keep). I basically do 30 minutes of cardio 6 days per week, weights 4 days a week, and abs every day. I do a low-carb, high protein diet—with fat content somewhere b/w South Beach and Atkins. When I’m not in the mood to cook, I have a couple of slices of cheese and a low-carb Slimfast (not so tasty, but not that bad and it’s balanced nutrition). Also, I always let myself have one cheat meal—whatever I want (usually something fried) per week, which I think is important.
I feel so much better and all of my clothes fit again! My long-term plan, is that once I get down to 179.5 (my goal/where I remember being for a while before my office induced sloth), I’m going to continue the exercise program and switch to portion control.
Hang in there. It’s not an easy thing, but you’ll be glad you stuck it out.
Good move starting this regardless of the method and what other people think. As a fellow fattie who started on this process 8 weeks and 23 pounds ago I commend you and would like to offer this small bit of advice: If you fall off for a day or two (or more) don’t worry, just get back onto it and stick with it. It will be worth it in the end.
Wow, mean, that is alot for one week! Gratz!!!!
CanesFan said, “If you fall off for a day or two (or more) don’t worry, just get back onto it and stick with it. It will be worth it in the end.”
Good advice. I’ve actually considered “falling off” on purpose for a meal or a day, just to break some of the monotony. I think the key may be in *planning* to slip a day, instead of giving into a spontaneous urge I’d feel guilty about later; but who knows, I haven’t actually done it yet. :)
Holy hell!!! 11lbs is tremendous. Good Job. I hope you’ll keep us posted after you finished this experiment and maybe check in 6 months to a year afterwards.
11 pounds! That’s awesome, man! Congrats! Your post last week motivated me to get up off my ass and get rid of the 10 pounds of vanity weight I keep threatening to drop. 2 gone so far! Many hugs for Ryan next time we’re back in KC.
I definitely second (or third) the idea of having at least an “off” meal a week.
And yes, I meant “at first.” It may be the easy weight, but it still is weight and it feels good!
It is your body and your self-esteem so it’s your choice.
Huge respect for putting your pics up. I’ll be watching closely as I have been struggling for a while and have now decided to get with the program properly.
Best of luck future thinner bloke.
I would highly suggest a colon cleanse from a site like blessedherbs.com (organic) or colonix. You would be shocked at the amount of sludge that packs your large intestine, essentially blocking nutrients from passing thru. not only does this sludge actually make you crave more food (to get the nutrients that your body is missing), it is also the main contributor in the development of colon cancer.
good luck!
I am wrapping up the whole body cleanse from blessed herbs and have lost 17 lbs in a month.
I even shit parasites. Worms. Gross. It could happen to you.
You should definitely have a cheat/off day. When you restrict calories, your body, after an amount of time, will be accustomed to the amount of calories you take in and your metabolism will sow to compensate. By eating more on one day (though obviously not thousands more) your body is tricked into believing that it has ample supplies of food and it will sort of kick start your metabolism once a week. The bonus, is that you won’t feel as though you’re going insane.
I personally lost about 100lbs from July 2004-early/mid 2005 going from 250 to 155. The 155 was at the peak of training for a marathon. I actually way around 165 now, but it’s because I’ve been running for almost three years now, and I’ve gained some muscle from the 65mpw I’ve been averaging as I gear up for another marathon.
Keep it up.
I just bought a heart rate monitor today (polar F6, $110-$10 @ sports authority). After 25 min on the stair machine doing intervals, I had burned over 350 cal. I highly recommend getting one just so you can see how much your hard work is paying off. The machine said I had burned ~280 btw, not very accurate.
J said, “I would highly suggest a colon cleanse from a site like blessedherbs.com (organic) or colonix.”
I’ve heard this from a few people, but I can’t find a single peer-reviewed study that indicates colon cleansing is necessary or desirable.
Ryan-
I don’t work for them, I am in the financial industry. I fasted for 5 days and kept crapping 3x/day the entire 5 days. Without eating anything. Really. That meant that all those weird ropey things were never going to come out otherwise, because I had never seen anything like it before. Or after. And I am not even 30.
As for the presence (or lack thereof) of peer-review studies, the results of kits like this will vary greatly from person to person. This is all contigent upon body chemistry, past diet, current health, etc. There will be no double-blind placebo persona non gratis studies that produce extensive results. There are plenty of proponents, albeit quite an oddball selection of flakes sprinkled with actual insight from some.
Let me say that I didn’t do the kit with the intention of losing weight, it was only a byproduct.
It’s important to note, that when you use a heart rate monitor or the like, that the calories burnt is gross calories. You may have burnt 350 calories, but you’d have burnt some just standing around with your thumb up your butt. So really, you need to figure out what your basal metabolic rate is and subtract it to find out the actual net loss.
It’s the net loss that is the key to success. To many people see a stellar number, and then figure they can go out and have some ice cream because it’s 300 calories and they burnt 600. These people will be sorry.
The biggest bummer of all, is that once you are fitter, the amount of calories burnt in a given activity actually goes down because your body adapts to the stress you’ve placed on it.
boobs and stuff aside, the human body really does kick ass and it’s amazing what you can push it to do if you are persistent.
Bill:
My scale says BMR is around 1780. I’ve been trying to keep my intake of calories to around 1600.
Also, drinking lots of water helps keep you from eating.