Tarjema Translations

Seventy-five pounds lost. You can see from the pictures, I already look like a new man. I still feel like me, and I am surprised from time to time when I see a mirror and that guy isn’t the one I expect to find there.
I’m down to size large for t-shirts, shorts, and even Nike brand running tights and stuff. I haven’t been a large in a long, long time. My old military coats are just on the cusp of fitting, even though I have 15-20 pounds before I get to my military weight. Of course, that just proves my point – I have a lot less muscle now than I did then, and fat squashes around much more easily than muscle.

Before I get to the big question, I want to talk a bit more about plateaus. I decided, back when my daily budget was around 1500 calories, that when I got to 1100 calories (the budget drops as you lose weight), I would make that the bottom line and adjust my budget so I stayed at 1100. The problem was this:

I hit 1100 around the 12th or 13th. As you can see, I practically flatlined for about a week, then started to GAIN for the next five days or so! Unacceptable! I have been participating in the Lose It! online forum since I started this stuff, and several people there have talked about how too few calories can send one’s body into starvation mode, forcing it to preserve everything you eat rather than use it. So, we had the 20th as a weekend away and I didn’t worry too much about my budget – I worked out to burn some of the extra calories, but not enough (obviously); that’s when I started to gain. So on the 22nd of November I decided to bump my budget up to 1300 calories per day. Two hundred calories would not slow me down much, and it might help, I figured. Obviously, it did. I’m back on schedule, and back up to over 3 pounds per week. I’m not at 4 ½ anymore, but I knew that as I got closer to my goal it would slow. I’m sure by the end of December I’ll be in the mid 2’s, and it will eventually get down to one pound a week for that last handful. That’s OK.

The last handful… That brings up the big question. When do I stop? I’ve been chugging along like gangbusters so far. I’m just a 3-4 pounds from being “overweight” instead of “obese” on the BMI scale. Most people who see me now don’t judge me as fat at first glance, and some friends and family are already saying I’ve done enough. I don’t think I have. As a matter of fact, I’m not sure if I am going to stop at 170 (don’t let my wife hear me say that, though!). Here’s the scoop:

When I was an active duty Marine I spent most of my time hovering around the 190-lb mark. Sometimes a bit less, sometimes a bit more. But I was incredibly active. Even with all of my running now, I was more active then. I lifted stuff and hauled it around. I had a lot more muscle then. I came up with 170 because I figured I probably have 20 pounds less muscle now. Truth be told, I’m starting to think I underestimated the muscle mass. My Wii says that I should be aiming to weight 155, and I am starting to think it might be right. So here is the deal.

I am going to stick with 170 as my goal weight, but I am seriously starting to do training for longer distances. I did a 5k, I’ve got a 10k in two weeks, and according to several web sites I could get from my current condition into shape to finish a half-marathon in 12 weeks. That would get me on a half marathon by March or April, about when I should get to the 170-lb mark. If I am digging the long distance running – and the only way to know will be to keep on trying it – then the best thing for me to do for further distances would be to drop more. The less you carry, the faster you can go, right? But I know that 160 is really thin. I’ve got Boot Camp photos to prove it. So I’ll get to my goal, and re-evaluate. No matter who says so, though, I don’t plan to stop until I get there. I might decide I’m happy at 175, but I’m not stopping now, nor at 200, nor at 190.

Semper Fi!

By now you know that I am losing weight, I hope.

This process, for me, is all about calories. The more I don’t eat, the more I lose. But a part of that equation – as you can see by the run data – is what you burn.

Over on the Lose It! forum, Trish put up a great post giving a general guide.

How much of my daily exercise calories should I eat?

NONE – If you are on Maintenance and burned less than 300 calories.
- If you are trying to lose weight and burned fewer than 400 calories or exercised for 30 minutes or less.

SOME (up to half) – If you are on Maintenance and burned 300-600 calories.
- If you are losing weight and burned 400-800 calories.

MORE THAN HALF – If you are on Maintenance and burned 600-1000 calories.
- If you are losing weight and burned 800-1200 calories.

MOST – If you are on Maintenance and burned over 1000 calories.
- If you are losing weight and burned over 1200 calories.

I used to hate math. However, now that I am using it to shrink my way back to my old self, I am starting to enjoy it.

The revelation started when I learned (as most people seem to know these days) that one pound of human fat is equal to about 3,500 calories. According to my nifty scale that provides BMI and calorie estimates, I could eat about 3300 calories and maintain my current 240 lbs (I am 5′ 11″, 39 years old).

Should I trust the scale? Let’s do the math!

I used the Lose It app on my iPod Touch (that’s the thing that annoys all of you with my calories and weight loss every day. I’ll shut if off if it too annoying for you) to schedule a 2 lb/week weight loss program. It has this math built-in, so it gave me a budget of 1940 calories to eat per day at my current weight (it was quite a bit higher when I started at 290 lbs).

Losing weight sucks. I want to get it over with as quickly as I can without causing myself harm, so I knocked that down by an extra 750, so my daily budget is 1190. In addition, I have been exercising to the tune of 300-400 calories a day – walking, C25k, EA Active on Wii, etc. and I might eat around 100 calories or so of what I burn, as a pick-me-up an hour or so after the workout. If we take out 150 for the exercise & snack, that makes about 2260 per day as a deficit, based on the scale’s number.

On top of that, I’ve been about 1,000 under Lose It’s budget each week since I started, so tack on an extra 140 per day (1,000 / 7), we get a daily deficit of 2,400 calories.

From the other side, we have a simpler set of numbers to get an average: I started my diet at 287.4 on August 1. Today, 67 days later, I am down 47.4 pounds. Multiply that by the number of calories in a pound, then divide by the time… (47.4*3500)/67, it comes out to a daily deficit of 2476.

So, 2400 is a pretty good estimate for my deficit. Add in what I eat (call it 1200), take out the exercise (call it 300), we get (drumroll): 3,300 calories per day to maintain 240 pounds.

Sweet.

This is why I tell my friends that dieting is more like balancing a checkbook than anything else. No magic food, no magic nutrients. No pills, shots, or surgery. As long as I accurately record the transactions (what I weigh every day, the calories I eat and the calories I burn working out), and stick to the budget, I keep dropping pounds – no matter what the week-long plateaus try to make me believe.

I’ve been reading a lot lately, especially as I am going through this whole weight loss thing. A lot of weight loss forums talk about exercise, no surprise. As I’ve mentioned, I’m using an app on my iPod Touch called Lose It, and at LoseIt.com, there is a forum associated with the application that is no exception. In this forum I was reminded of an interesting program called Couch to 5k, or C25k for short. I decided to give it a go; I did a 5k a couple of years ago and enjoyed it (not the run, but the fun of being out there with all of those people). I started doing the C25k workouts so I could run the 5k the day before the Seattle Marathon.

Among the things I have been reading is a very interesting running tale called Born to Run by Christopher McDougall. It is fascinating. I am not done, so I don’t want to do a full review here, feel free to read what people have written about it over at Amazon or on Chris’ website. The upshot, as far as this post goes, is that the more supportive and more cushioning a running shoe is, the more likely you are to suffer a running injury while wearing them.

Really?!?

Well. That might just explain a whole lot. Have you ever had plantar fascia pain? I never did while I was in the Marines. Back then I ran in boots and the cheapest running shoes that I thought would get the job done – military pay does not go very far, and good shoes were an expense I could live without. But when I decided a few years ago to ‘get in shape’ for the 5k – the Pumpkin Push, in case you were wondering – I went to a good running store, had my stride analyzed and bought two pairs of decent running shoes. Around $100 a pair. Then I started hitting the treadmill and the road. Then I started having the weirdest pain. I would wake in the morning and had to fight with all my willpower to put my feet on the floor. It was all I could do to stagger to the bathroom. The pain, covering the entire sole of my foot, was excruciating.

So, tonight, I decided to run barefoot on my treadmill. I’m not brave enough to run barefoot on the street yet. My stride, gait, foot placement, everything was different. I am still woefully out of shape, but barefoot running was a very different experience. The few times I hit the belt heel-first, like I normally do running in shoes, I really felt it. I immediately shifted to a more centered footfall. My calves felt it, but not to the point of real pain. I have one hotspot on the ball of my foot – the precursor of a blister – but that isn’t a surprise; my bare feet haven’t done anything harder than getting the newspaper in my driveway on a Sunday; walking barefoot inside the house is not practice for running barefoot, even on a treadmill.

I think I’ll try this for the next couple of weeks. If it is good, then I’ll get some Vibram Five Fingers over at my local REI and take my (almost) bare feet out on the road.