Oh look! Now DiGiorno comes with breadsticks...

Somehow while doing the most basic task of picking up Chris's prescriptions from the Super Walmart, I developed a case of the diet Fuckits.

5 years of calorie restriction. 5 years of diet drinks, Splenda in my iced tea, limiting our carb intake, and avoiding the junk food aisles because if it's not in the house, we won't eat it. 5 years of cooking from scratch, limiting our fat intake, and only occasionally having dessert.

5 years of going to doctors, and being looked at as if I was the enabler. 5 years of the "self control and calorie restriction" speech from doctors. 5 years of disapproval and unwillingness to listen.

Now we know why. Now we know why his blood pressure and blood sugar are normal. Now we know why his heart is healthy. Now we know why he gained over 200 lbs over 5 years. Thyroid cancer can do that. The edema caused by the cancer can do that. We shouldn't have been asking why he was gaining weight, we should have been asking whether it was fat or water he was gaining.

Now we know a huge amount of it is water, and now we know why.

Chris developed his case of diet Fuckits Wednesday night following the scheduling of the biopsy. He requested steak, potatoes, crusty bread, and apple pie.

My Fuckits arrived today, in the middle of Wal-Mart, when I wanted a bag of Cheetos. Maybe some Doritos. Oh, and what's in the freezer section these days...

Chris will most likely be having surgery within the next 4 weeks, and then all of these problems might go away. In that time I may gain another 10 lbs just in emotional eating. I don't think I care right now. I think, for a short time at least, the junk food aisle can be my friend again.

Also, it's time for new toys for the doggies, and I think the reactions Jayne and Zoe have to new toys are worth about $1K of therapy...

Mel

A fitness progress report

Well, as of the 11th of this month, it was two months since we started our diet; and a month into our excercise program.

I've got pretty good news, and some not so great news.

The pretty good news? I've menaged to drop 40 lbs. I'm down from 425, to 385 as of this morning. I've actually seen as low as 377, and I've been floating up and down around 380-385 for about two weeks. I'm consistently dropping around 4 pounds a week, actually as much as seven and as little as one averaged out; which I'm pretty happy with.

Mel has had somewhat less dramatic results, she's down to about 210, and has pleateaued for a while. She's been losing 1-1.5 pounds a week average; with as much as 4lbs, and as little as even money, with no weight gain excluding water retention.

We're not hungry all the time, we're happy and satisfied with what we're eating, and we don't much feel like we're on a diet; certainly we don't feel deprived... though Mel is sometimes irritated because she cant give in to her cravings for candy.

Even better news, I've lost almost 7% bodyfat; which I'm THRILLED with (just another 25% or so to go...)

The not so great news?

Well, our excercise plan has hit a stall; or at least mine has anyway, as Mel hsan't settled on a routine.

I went camping two weeks back; and on the trip I managed to bugger up my knees a fair bit; so I've had to limit my excercise somewhat. I'm easing back into it now.

The weeks that I was excercising heavily were very dramatic in my tone, my energy levels etc... though my weight loss was reduced. I think that the significant bodyfat loss in that time period, is primarily from the heavy excercise weeks, which again I'm very happy about.

Now I just need to get back into the regular moderate excercise.

Tale of the tape - week 1

Well, it's been 72 hours since I made my decision, and started writing my post "Going on The Pill", and there's been some progress.

I've slowly eased into to the supplement stack over the last three days, and I'm up to full dosage as of this morning. When you start a supplement stack you need to load your system up to a maintenance level, or you won't absorb them properly.

I haven't deliberately changed my eating habits, but my appetite has fallen off CONSIDERABLY. I've probably eaten about half my normal intake over the last three days, and doubled my fluid intake (mostly water, but also diet soda), without really being more than a little hungry.

My energy is way up, with little stomach upset though there is always some; you wouldn't beleive the amount of sludge your body desides to dump when you go on a stack.

I've also been doing the calisthenics, and any time I have spare eneergy I'm going pushups.

Lemme tell you, my arms and chest are sore, but in a good way. I know how far to push, and when to back off. What's amazing (though I've experienced it before) is just how quickly you see an increase in tone. Literally overnight your body starts rebuilding your muscle tissue stronger, and I'm able to do more pushups without a problem.

What I'm really diappointed in, is how far I've let my stomach go. Even when I gained that first 60 pounds, I maintained a lot of muscle tone in my stomach (it's a martial arts thing), and when I'm doing my pushups it's a little depressing how the gut hangs. Ahh well, nothing to do but fix it right.

Tale of the tape:

03/25/2005 - Weight 370, waist 52", chest 56", neck 21" - 34% bodyfat

03/28/2005 - Weight 365, waist 52", chest 56", neck 21" - 34% bodyfat

I'm going to do this update every week, and we'll see how I do over the next year.

Going on the Pill

Or rather Back on the Pills; Those pills right there... 35 of them in fact.

This is how you cheat when you want to lose weight, especially when your diet has been shitty for a year or two, and this is why:

The blurry picture on the left is me the day I joined the Air Force, at 265 lbs. The picture on the right is me, about 10 years later at 370 lbs.

I've been a very large man for more than half my life. I stopped growing when I was 13, at 6'2" and 265lbs. I spent the next about 10 years between 265 and 285 at around 12% bodyfat. The maximum allowable weight for my height is s'posed to be 218, but I was never on that chart, they always had to tape me, and I NEVER recieved a conditional.

A few minutes ago I got on the scale; 370 and I don't even want to think about my actual bodyfat. I stepped off the scale and took that picture. This is the heaviest I have ever been in my life.

The difference? I expended 3500-5000 calories per day for 8+ years, then I had a severe knee injury and didn't walk more than 6 feet without a cane for six months. I gained 60lbs of straight fat, and lost a lot of muscle in that time (which of course was replaced by, more fat). That was more than 5 years ago, and the lowest I've been down to since is 295, about 18 months ago, and of course that was without gaining back all that muscle mass.

I am an immensely strong man. I can easily take my bodywight over my head, even today, and I haven't seriously worked out in years. I can still leg press more than 4 times my body weight (I tried it again last year), even with my knees.

Unfortunately strength doesnt equal fitness, or clothes that fit properly. My health is OK; my blood pressure is low, and my choleterol is fine etc... but what it comes down to; I'm not happy with my weight, my shape, or my fitness right now. I used to run 2 miles in 12 minutes, today I get winded with too many stairs. When I was 19 I did 74 pushups in 2 minutes; I just timed myself, and I did 28. I used to do 68 crunches in 2 minutes, now, 38.

A few years ago (the month before my 8 years ran out) I was recalled to active duty. I didn't find out about the recall for a few months, because I was living in Ireland at the time and failed to notify the AF. I came back to the states that christmas to be closer to my mom, and soon after I got back, I went down to the Social Security Administration to get a new card. A few days later I got a registered letter telling me to report to my nearest armed forces recruiter, national guard armory, or enlistment processing center (I forget the exact wording) within 24 hours of recieving the letter or I would be subject to immediate arrest.

So I go down there and find out that I had been issued a recall order, and that I had been recalled to extended active duty. Of course I hadn't responded to the order because I was in Ireland at the time and didn't receive it. I got torn a new asshole, and I was threatened with all sorts of charges (I was seriously in the wrong, without doubt), and reduction to my permanent enlisted grade of e5 (I hold a reserve commission as a Captain which can be revoked), and they said that I was going back in. One little hitch, I was 345lbs, and had a 50" waist and 21" neck, for their bodyfat standard of 32%.

They said that I wasnt going to get off that easy, and that I would need to come back in and restest every six weeks until I made the weight, or until I turned 34.

Ouch.

After three months I made it to 295 and a 46" waist with that same 21" neck (it doenst get any smaller, jsut bigger when I bulk up), for a 26% bodyfat, then I levelled off and didnt change at all. After few months they decided that I only had to come back once a year. I think they accepted I wasnt going to make the weight, and the press about people not showing up for duty had died down.

The air force PFT standard is 1.5 miles in 9:36, 55 crunches, and 62 pushups, and a maximum of 20% bodyfat.

You can figure the military bodyfat measurement using some basic measuerment (its innacurate, but it's what they use) as shown here: Body Fat Standards

My measurements in the pic on the left:

Weight 265, waist 38", chest 52", neck 20.5" - 13% bodyfat

My Measurements in the pic on the right:

Weight 370, waist 52", chest 56", neck 21" - 34% bodyfat

The last couple years have not been kind to my weight, or my size. I've rollercoastered all over the place with my work involving so much travel, then my mother ... anyway I'm jsut not where I want to be.

Let me say this right now, if I thought I could EVER make PFT again, I would be doing it right now. I would be working for whatever it takes to get down to 20% bodyfat so I could serve again. The second biggest regret in my life is leaving the Air Force (I left because of Clinton. The biggest is marrying my ex-wife). It was the right decision at the time, and I wouldnt have missed the experiences I've had since then, but I miss my service every single day.

At my weight today, my knees are getting worse, faster than they should be. I'm worried about diabetes. My clothes dont fit right or look right.

This was me last september, about 20lbs lighter:

I can see a huge difference in what I look like today, and what I looked like just a few months ago, and I'm not happy about it.


Enough breast beating, enough whinging, enough bullshit, I'm going to change this. I'm tired of it, I'm not going to stay this way. I'm going to change this.

My birthday is April 27th; On April 27th 2006, 13 months from Sunday, I plan on weighing a maximum of 285lbs, with a maximum 46" waist, 52" chest and a 21" neck (giving me a 26% body fat score, and most likely a lower actual bodyfat).

Funny thing is, if you take the bullshit BMI calculation, that would still make be Obese with a BMI of 37 (26 is overweight).

I have an ideal goal of 265lbs, a 42" waist, 52" chest, and 21" neck. This would bring me down to 20% bodyfat by Air Force standards, and I plan on being able to pass all but the run section of the PFT. Honestly there's very little chance I will ever be able to run 1.5 miles again given my knees, but I can definitely bike instead, and I will. Hell, there's even a chance I'll make the new Air Force PFT standards (which are a little easier than they were when I went in). Since 2004, they allow people who can't run for medical reasons to ride the bike instead. If I do make it, then maybe 14 months from now I'll be back in uniform, I don't know, let's see.

So, how am I going to do this?

Well as I outline in my post "Fit, Fat, and Thermodynamics" it's not all that hard to lose up to 10% of your bodyweight, which in my case could be 37 lbs, and it's not shatteringly difficult to lose the second 10%, which would bring me down to jsut under 300. The last 15-35 lbs are going to be the real btich, in fact I expct theyll take up the last six months of that 13 month period by themselves.

The "secret" to maintaining or losing weight is thermodynamics. Eat whatever the hell you want, so long as you burn as much, or more calories than you eat. In terms of bodyweight, your body can't tell the difference between eating 1lb of fat (3500 calories) and 2lb of sugar (about 3500 calories).

If I want to lose 85-105 lbs, in 56 weeks, I'm going to need to average about 2 pounds a week.

Not only that, but because of my muscle structure (pretty damned massive), I tend to actually gain weight to start as I work out, because I gain lean muscle mass very rapidly, and lean muscle mass weighs 1.7 times as much as fat.

Really, I want to lose 145 lbs of fat, and gain 40 lbs of muscle, so in effect I'm going to need to burn 2.5 lbs of fat every week. Thats an extra 8000+ calories per week that I'm going to need to burn, and I'm going to need to get drastic to do it successfully.

My first step, I'm going back on the supplements. This supplement package is specifically designed to make MY body burn fat, and gain muscle (you need to get a professional to figure out what you need, everyones body is different). Every day I'm going to be taking the following

Morning afternoon and evening:

5 grams of creatine
100 mg 1-Androstene-3beta, 17betadiol (1AD)
600mg 19-nor-4-Androstenediol (Norandrodiol)
35mg guggelosterone
200mcg chromium picolinate
50mg ephedrine
65mg caffeine
100mg asprin
A broad spectrum muscle performance oriented multivitamin

Before Meals:

120mg Xenical (blocks absorbtion of up to 35 grams of fat)
500mg chitosan (blocks absorbtion of up to 10 grams of fat)
2 cblocks (Blocks absorption of about 35 grams of complex carbohydrate)

Overnight:

3 ZMA (hastens muscle rebuilding, and allows sterones to metabolize better)
A broad spectrum muscle performance oriented multivitamin
5 grams of creatine
200mg of Ester C

After a month I'll run out of the 1AD and the Norandrodiol because the FDA regulated them last year under new rules for supplements, which made every manufacturer drop these products for fear of liability suits. That said, it's the first month they'll be most effective.

I'm going to regulate my caloric intake to below 3000 a day, though I'm not eating much mroe than that now, in fact most often I'm eating less, but more importantly I'm going to be reducing both fat, and sugar in my diet. Protein protein protein; I'm not going to restrict complex carbs like on atkins, thats not good for you, but I am going to focus strongly on protein.

That means lots of chicken, nuts, and beans, some cheese, some pasta, some rice, a lot of broths that sort of thing. I've done it before when I was in hgihschool weightlifting and wrestling.

What I'm NOT going to do is stop eating the foods I like. I'm just going to tweak my habits a bit.

The most important thing I'll be doing however, is excercise.

My Condo is right across the street from a gym. I get a free month there. That month stats Monday, and I'll be in there at least 1 to 2 hours a day, every day but Sunday.

Every morning, and every night, I'm going to do 50 pushups, 50 crunches, 50 side straddle hops (jumping jacks), 50 leg lifts, and 50 flutter kicks.

I'm going to pick up a cheapass slant board, a weight bench bench, and some free weights (yard sales I'm thinkin) and stick it them in my home office, and instead of just sitting on my ass watching tv while I surf the web, I'm going to be doing random excerscise.

I'm going to buy a bicycle (another yard sale item), and ride every night, for at least 30 minutes (it gets too hot here during the day), in addition to the 30 minutes or more I'm going to do on the excercise bike in the gym.

I'm going to have more sex; No I'm not kidding, the more sex you have the better, it's great excercise, and great motivation. Even at my heaviest, getting sex has never been a problem for me, it's finding someone I actually want to stay with who isnt psychotic that's the problem.

I have a girlfriend, and we have lots of sex already (though not the last two months), we're just going to have more. I'm reasonably certain she'll be 0pleased with the idea as well.

Ok, sure, I'm going to fuck up. I'm going to miss days, I'm going to overdo it some and have to stop for a few days, I'm going to get lazy, but I'm going to keep going at it, until I'm where I want to be, and even then, I'm not going to stop.

At that point I should be burning 4000-5000 calories per day, and only eating 3000. Take that across a 6 day week (one day of rest), plus the 3000 for the sixth day, and I should be able to burn 4 lbs of fat per week under ideal conditions, which means I might be able to average half that, and that's about what it will take to get me to my goal.

I'm going to have to get used to being hungry, tired, and sore. but damnit, I'm tired and sore half the time now as it is, at least then I'll be tired, sore, and looking good.

I'll update the story as it goes along.

Fit, Fat, and Thermodynamics

Warbs has a post up about why we're so fat as a nation. His basic idea is that, aside from being sedentary, we have a problem with portion control:

"In most of Europe, the dinner meal is a long process. American culture has long been one that is always on the move, always racing to finish a meal to get on to other things, and has never understood why those Europeans would want to sit down for a 3-hour dinner.

Bear with me a moment here. Think back to when the American hustling car-culture took hold. People were always in a rush, always in a hurry to finish meals. As such, we would consume our food in a very short period of time. Since the body takes a while to feel the effects of being "full", it was often that people were done with their meal before that feeling set in. Thus, restaurants worked hard to provide bigger and bigger portions (and American's wealth, another consequence of the GO!GO!GO! culture, easily financed this), such that people would never finish their meal and still feel hungry.

What happened next is no surprise. People would overeat and stuff themselves on a single meal, consuming far more calories in one meal than their body would ever need. This grew into our culture, and we continued to just grow accustomed to large portions. The large portions offered no reason not to continue eating too much, and now we're all fat as pigs."

He certainly has a point here, and it's not just related to cultural habits, or to the psychology and physiology of appetite; it's just as (if not more) related to basic physics.

The cultural ideas about our meals, menus, and portions were all set while Americans, on average, were expending from 2400 to 3200 calories per day, often in hard physical labor.

It takes 16-24 calories per day, per lean mass pound; and 6-8 calories per day, per fatty mass pound, at "room temperature" to keep lean body mass at 98 degrees. For most people this averages out to about 11 calories per pound per day, just to maintain their body temperature, to breathe, and to keep their heart pumping (oh and yes, that means most people have WAAY too much fatty mass).

These days the average American is primarily sedentary, and expends from 1600-2400 calories per day just sitting still and walking around. Unfortunately that is really just about all most of us do.

That extra 800 or so calories per day add up to somewhere between half a pound, and a pound a week in extra body weight, until your calorie consumption is balanced out by your extra calorie expenditure from the weight gain, some 60-70lbs down the line.

This is coming from a guy who weighs 365lbs, and who at his lightest was 265-285 at 7%-12% bodyfat. I maintained 265-285 from the time I was 13 (when I stopped growing), til I was 23.

The difference? I expended 3500-5000 calories per day for 8 years, then I had a severe knee injury and didn't walk more than 6 feet without a cane for six months. I gained 60lbs of straight fat, and lost a lot of muscle in that time (which of course was replaced by, more fat). That was 5 years ago, and the lowest I've been down to since is 295, about a year ago, and of course that was without gaining back all that muscle mass.

I'm a guy who can lose 20 lbs in a week if I work at it, and maybe 40lbs in a month without much difficulty. I can even lose 10lbs in a single day if I excercise a lot, but most of that will just be excess water, and I'm talking about losing real weight at that point, not just water weight. Just about everyone who isn't a professional athlete, dancer, or bodybuilder carries between 5% and 15% of their body weight as extra water, over and above their actual weight. When people see one or two pounds variation in a day, thats almost all water.

By the way, just about anyone can lose that much, at least in percentage terms, if they REALLY work at it, but it's a bit easier for me because of my muscle mass. Remember, that's only 10 percent of my bodyweight, which most people can lose in one month if they work at it (though doctors recommend you dont lose more than 5% a month).

Also remember, the bigger you are to start with, the faster your initial weight loss will be. If you limit your intake, and excercise properly, this will work for about three months, during which time you can lose from 10-20% of your bodyweight. Yes I said you could lose that much in a month, but it takes hard work, and your weight loss will slow down qick after the first 10%.

After that first three months, you need to do more. You'll probably need to take vitamin and other nutritional supplements, and you'll need to focus your excecise and your diet more, but really it still just comes down to basic physics.

The "secret" to maintaining or losing weight? Thermodynamics. Eat whatever the hell you want, so long as you burn as much, or more calories than you eat. In terms of bodyweight, your body can't tell the difference between eating 1lb of fat (3500 calories) and 2lb of sugar (about 3500 calories).

Now importantly, this is just about weight, not health. Obviously eating 1 lb of fat per day is a BAD thing for your heart. It's also not about muscle, because you need to balance your fat and protein intake or you're going to lose lean mass, which you want to keep, instead of fatty mass.

In my case, because of my muscle structure (pretty damned massive), I tend to actually gain weight to start as I work out, because I gain lean muscle mass very rapidly, and lean muscle mass weighs 1.7 times as much as fat.

If you manage it properly you can lose fat, and gain muscle at the same time; and the more muscle you gain, the more fat you lose, and the faster you lose it (remember that difference between calorie expenditure for fatty mass and lean mass).

Oh and apropos of nothing whatsoever, you may not lose weight right away, but you will get stronger, faster, better looking and healthier, which is really why most of us want to "lose weight" anyway.

Now, entirely contradicting everything I just wrote, try out some of these Recipes for REAL men.