Weight Loss Wednesday: Week 2 (Plus a Recipe!)
Published by Ryan March 28th, 2007 in Fitness, Food. Share This
First of all, allow me to apologize for this week’s picture—it’s the same one as last week. I did take a new one this morning, but unfortunately I left it at home and therefore can’t upload it right now. Tonight I’ll upload it and edit this post to include the new image, but I’m sorry to say there’s not much of a difference.
After a first week which exceeded my expectations, this week has turned out to be a bit of a disappointment on the scale. Not, of course, that the number on the scale is all that, but I’m not ashamed to admit that I was hoping for the initial burst of super-fast weight loss to continue through this week. It didn’t, and neither has my belly shrunk by any appreciable amount. The tape measure did tighten by perhaps three-eighths of an inch, but I’m going to call that within the margin of error and ignore it for now.
The MediFast folks indicate that for the first couple weeks on the program, exercise should be kept to a minimum to give your body time to adjust to the dramatic reduction in calorie intake. After that, they suggest getting on some kind of regular routine, which is the next step for me. I was never opposed to the occasional good workout before, but aside from a bit of the old kung fu I have never worked out with any regularity…until now. I’m thinking I will start with about 10 minutes of cardio three times a week (Mon, Wed, Fri) and augment with some relatively mild strength training on Tuesdays and Thursdays. I’ll be the first to admit that I know jack shit about workouts aside from reading 7,000 conflicting articles on the internet over the years; nobody seems to agree on anything except the fact that exercise is good: Running is great! Running is awful! Pilates is fabulous! Pilates is stupid! Strength training is all you need! Cardio is all you need! Shut up you need both!
Suggestions from anybody who actually knows what they’re talking about (any personal trainers out there?) are welcome, but forgive me if I take them all with a grain of salt.
Last night I had my first planned “cheat”—being the local mayoral election, I couldn’t resist going out and celebrating with a few beers. Ah, politics and beer, what’s better? Perhaps more than anything, though, I just needed to get out of the house. The past couple weekends have been tough. Going from being out three or four nights a week to being home seven nights a week is a more difficult transition than I anticipated, mainly due to the weekend boredom. Weekdays are fine, in fact I’m saving a ton of money by not going out for happy hour on Truck Stop Tuesdays, but the weekends are a killer. For someone who doesn’t regularly go out on the weekends I can’t imagine it would be much of an issue, fortunately. And I’ll get over it.
One last thing I want to share before I go. The smoker I picked up a couple weeks ago that I mentioned last week is still performing astoundingly well, and I wanted to share a recipe I came up with for anybody who happens to have one (or any kind of smoker, for that matter). This is the best recipe I’ve come up with since starting the diet, and it is a nice, relatively low-fat, low-cal, low-carb meal that tastes fantastic and serves as the lean protein and part of the veggie dish for the daily MediFast “Lean and Green” meal.
Smoked Pork No-Bean Chili (serves 2)
First of all, you need smoked pork. This is the easy part, I just do it the night before and have smoked pork medallions as my lean protein, then weigh out the leftovers the next day to make the chili. To make the smoked pork, you need:
- 2 pounds of pork tenderloin
Complex, right? Usually when you get a tenderloin like this it will actually be two different pieces of meat (see pic), so you’ll need to separate them. Each piece should have a smooth, round side and a rough side. Lay the loins rough side down on your smoker rack and season them with salt and pepper, then insert your meat thermometer (you have a meat thermometer, right?) into the thickest part of the meat. Set the thermometer to scream at you when the meat hits 155 degrees Fahrenheit, and prep your smoker with whatever wood chips you like (I use a blend of oak and hickory). Add the meat, lid the smoker halfway, and place it on a burner set to medium (assuming you’re using the stovetop smoker, obviously).
Preheat your oven to 425 while you wait for the wood to begin smoldering. Once you can see wisps of smoke coming out of the smoker, lid it tightly, throw it on the lowest rack of your oven and wait for the thermometer to go off. When it does, pull the smoker out of the oven and let it rest (leave the lid on!) for at least ten minutes, I prefer fifteen, then slice and enjoy. If the meat isn’t so tender and juicy that you want to carve your eyes out with a spoon, something has gone wrong!
Once the pork is done, you are ready to make chili with it. To do so, you will need:
- 10 oz of our smoked pork, diced
- 1 good sized palm full (maybe 1/4 cup?) powdered chiles (I like a blend of mild New Mexico, hot New Mexico, California, Pasilla, and Cayenne, but use whatever—preferably not pre-blended prepackaged crap from the megamart, but whatever you have works in a pinch).
- 1T or more ground cumin. If you can toast and grind it yourself, all the better.
- 1/2 a medium onion, diced
- 1/2 a green bell pepper, diced
- 4 cloves garlic, minced
- 1 jalapeno, seeded and diced (leave the membranes for more heat)
- 1 can diced tomatoes
- 1T olive oil
- A little chicken broth (I always have a carton handy in the fridge, myself)
- salt and pepper to taste
Heat up your favorite chili pot over medium-high heat, and add your oil. This isn’t much oil, so be sure to spread it around so the whole cooking surface gets some. Add the onion, bell pepper, and garlic, with just a small bit of salt to help coax out some moisture. Sweat for three to five minutes, being careful not to brown anything, then add the jalapenos, powdered chiles and cumin. Ideally we want to coat everything in the pan with the chiles, cumin, and oil, but the relatively small amount of oil may not be enough to adequately lubricate our spices. Don’t worry about it, just stir it in as best you can and continue to cook for another three to five minutes, stirring to make sure the spices don’t scorch. When your house smells like a chili shack, add just a hit of chicken broth—maybe a half or three-quarters cup, just enough to get some liquid in the pan—stir, and throw in the pork and tomatoes. Allow to heat through, season with salt and pepper as needed, and voila! If anybody tries this recipe, let me know what you think.
Now, for the update:
Date: 03-28-2007 (Days on program: 7)
Weight: 213 (Total lost: 14 pounds)
BMI: 32.4 (Category: Obese)
Belly: 44″ (Started: 45″)
If you have not been super active, I would recommend just getting out and walking around. 30 mins a day will make a huge difference. No need to go balls out and run. You will probably just burn yourself out. The important thing is to be active. Walk, ride a bike, etc. Spring is upon us, get outside and enjoy it.
Hang in there. I had a similar experience. It is very common to hit a plateau by the second week. I was in ok shape cardio-wise when I started, so I began my exercise routine during the second week of dieting. Of course, that second week always sucks and I didn’t lose more than 1/2 pound. However, I heard somewhere that once you can keep up any routine for two weeks (be it flossing or dieting), it will become a habit by week three. This is totally true. By week 3 my desire to cheat on the diet totally disappeared (except for my cheat meal described earlier). Also, once you start the exercise program, you are starting up your metabolism. You won’t see the benefits of the exercise at first (you will feel good though), but after about 3-4 weeks of exercise your metabolism will be working at a much faster rate and you will have the ability to shed pounds very quickly.
Again, keep up the good work—just think how nice it will be to fit into your old clothes by Memorial day weekend!
When I began my own weight-loss deal, here are some things I discovered (if it helps any):
* combine Cardio and Weights (you need both)
* If you do cardio on the same days as weights, do cardio last, and save your initial energy for weights.
* pre-workout and post-workout nutrition are important
* Set goals (don’t just flop about with an ambiguous idea, believe me, goals work! even just milestones)
* Allow for gradual weight-loss, it’s healthier and more sane.
* By week three or so, you might look in the mirror and suddenly realize you’ve lost weight (one of the best feelings during the regimen, gets you going for a while).
* Track bodyfat %, not physical weight. Try free sites like mybodycomp.com, or look around for one.
I know nothing about your diet plan, so I don’t want to say much about that. Just keep in mind if you start up weights: give yourself a little extra carbs for energy–it’ll help. Feel free to cardio-out those extra carb calories afterwards.
And do fun exercises too! Biking! It’s spring!
And I forgot to add. Kudos to you man!
Well, I’m overweight, and working on losing some. I’ve been riding my bike to work 125 Km per week (77 miles). I had only lost 2 pounds in 5 months. I decided to talk to my sister about it (who is a personal trainer) She said I had enough cardio for sure, but that I needed to do sit-ups and push-ups (or another resistance-type workout). And over the last month, doing sit-ups and push-ups Monday, Wednesday and Friday I’ve lost 17 pounds. I didn’t change my diet too much as I eat pretty well. Sometimes too well, but I’m working on portion control too.
I’d say that balance is more important than anything else in your weight loss strategy. Do as much exercise as you’re comfortable with. Same as diet. If you go too hard then you’re more likely to quit. At least that’s been my pattern over the last 10 years of being chubby.
Those sit-ups have done wonders for me. I even look forward to them now. Weird.
Good for you for making the change - stick with it!
I’d like to second the “just be active” sentiment. You’ll get burnt out and bitter spending all your time in the gym. Change things up- take a walk, go for a bike ride, hell, kill two birds with one stone and do some spring cleaning…just get active. You’d be surprised how much that helps.
I think you’re getting way too caught up in the debate. Almost any exercise (weights, cardio, etc.) for more than a few minutes is good. Don’t worry about the optimal length and intensity of the exercise just yet. Let’s be honest, you’re fat, so almost anything where you are moving or moving something will help you. Once you start to slim down, you can revisit the literature and start tweaking for efficiency.
I like walking personally. I just walk around my neighborhood. Walking is great because you can do it alone, it requires no equipment or bloodsucking gym membership, and you can go at your own pace. It gives you time to yourself to think about whatever or listen to music, audiobooks, etc. Or if it’s boring for you, take along a buddy/spouse/your child (although my husband calls family walks “forced marches”). And even some activity is better than none at this point.
Keep it going fella. Week 2 or 3 can be disappointing after the initial fast loss. You are doing a great job so kudos.
Chris
I am currently in my own weight loss regimen getting back down to my competing weight at 220.
The best advice I could give is get an accu-measure caliper and test your body fat weekly, don’t even look at the scale. You can gain and lose 10 lbs depending on how much water you drink, and if you are an above average male in height you can sway your weight up to 20 lbs depending on your level of hydration.
Find out if you are a Mesomorph (which very few of us are), an Endomorph, or an Ectomorph. All of us are a combination of these three body types with one being more prevalent over the others. Depending on your body type you can tailor your workout because one workout will not work for all, that is why we end up paying personal trainers so much.
Build as much lean muscle as you can, the more muscle you have the more fat you burn at rest, which is most of the time. If you are not prone to overtraining Circuit Workouts kick ass because they are cardio-vascular as well as anabolic. As another poster said Cardio and Weights are important to do together. Morning Cardio will shred you. You will eventually need more than 10 mins a day, 20 0or 30 mins of cardio for fat loss, I have to do like 45 in order to lose weight. Walking uphill on a treadmill is great cardio for fat loss.
Calorie deficits will put your body into starvation mode after a while so you have to cheat, which I think you are doing I prefer the Zigzag method, it keeps my metabolism up. Study the Gycemic index and know it by heart it makes eating out a lot easier.
SLEEP!!! Sleep is very important.
I think that’s all I got. If I think of anything else I will post it.
^That is the most useful advice I’ve seen lately. I just found this easy to understand article on body types and changing your shape: http://www.clicks.co.za/clicks/Article.aspx?aid=230