Steve's Weight Loss & Fitness

Back on Track?

2007-05-09T10:29:00.000-07:00

Well, it's been quite a while since my last post, for anyone who's been watching. I fell off the program big time last fall. I guess I haven't quite figured out the mental part yet, as I alluded to in a previous post.

Anyway, I started up again about two months ago with a similar diet and fitness program. Unfortunately, I had gained more than 10 pounds in the meantime, so I'm working to get back to where I was in the fall before I can make any further progress. I'm down from 202 to 192 in the past eight weeks. Not too bad, but I need to keep it up for another 8 - 10 months if I hope to meet my goal of 155.

I'm going to make my posting schedule here less ambitious. I'll try for once a week or so. And I'll be working primarily on the mental side of things, the mind-set and discipline that it takes to persevere. I think I have the rest of it where I want it, more or less. I'll write about that too, but only occasionally.

Peace.

Steve

Some Setbacks & Progress

2006-09-27T20:48:00.000-07:00

For anyone who's watching, I certainly haven't given up, but there have been some setbacks. After my workout last Wednesday, which was the first time recently that I'd done really serious strength training for my legs, I had pain in my bad knee, the right one, that made even moderate cycling impossible for a few days. In fact, I haven't been back to the gym in a week.

I will go tomorrow. I think it's recovered enough.

I really believe that diet, exercise, and mental discipline have to go hand in hand for lasting success. I'll write more about the mental side when I feel I have a better handle on it.

The good news is that I weighed in on Sunday at 190, so I did lose 2 pounds in the first week. That's better than going in the other direction!

Wednesday Actuals

2006-09-20T23:50:00.000-07:00

I almost didn't want to post today, because my eating plan is still not really going too well. The exercise plan is going great, though. I fulfilled the basic Wednesday plan with good effort and intensity. No problem there and no need to elaborate.

As for eating, I still managed only three meals, with dinner the largest. That's not what I'm aiming for. I'm going to have to try harder. The dinner number below is a very rough estimate. We went out to a restaurant, so the best I can do is guess.

Breakfast: 400 calories
Lunch: 300 calories
Dinner: 1300 calories

So if I'm right about dinner, that was a 2000-calorie day. That's barely a deficit. Not enough to keep the body wanting to burn fat, I don't think. We'll see when I measure on Sunday.

Tuesday Actuals

2006-09-19T21:43:00.000-07:00

Stuck to the workout plan, more or less. I had a very good session of high intensity intervals on the bike. After a 20-minutes warmup I did seven one-minute intervals in about 30 minutes. So that's one one-minute interval in every four to five minute period. I don't time the recovery periods. Rather, I watch the heart rate monitor until it's recovered below 85% of maximum.

Okay, I'd better explain in more detail. Like most folks, my lactate threshold heart rate is between 80% and 85% of my maximum. (That's why the standard charts say that your cardio training should be in the 70% to 85% range. That way you'll stay below your lactate threshold, meaning that you should be able to continue as long as you like without getting particularly uncomfortable, and still get a decent training effect.)

When your intensity passes the lactate threshold, it means that lactate is accumulating in your muscles (typically the legs, if you're running or biking) faster than your body can clear it out metabolically. At that point, your breathing becomes irregular and you start to feel pain in your legs. If you drop the intensity down a little, you can move back into a comfort zone where you can train indefinitely. This is often called LSD, for Long Slow Distance work. Many trainers think that it is the foundational key for endurance training.

However, if you're trying to lose weight and you want to get more bang for the buck out of your cardio training time, you must exceed your lactate threshold (and therefore your comfort zone) regularly. High intensity intervals are one way to do that. They involve cranking up the intensity to as much as you can tolerate for periods of 30 to 90 seconds, alternating with recovery intervals anywhere from one to five times the length of the high intensity intervals.

During each high intensity interval, you want your heart rate to rise to around 95% of maximum. At that intensity, you feel rapidly increasing pain in your legs, and your breathing quickly becomes panting. What you can achieve is closely connected with how well you can mentally tolerate the leg pain. I find that on some days I have more mental toughness about this than on other days. Today was a pretty good day that way.

So here are some specifics. My maximum heart rate (HRmax) is around 190. My lactate threshold heart rate on the bike is around 160 (or 84% of HRmax). I get to a steady state of 160 at about 110 watts on the ergometer. So if I leave the bike set at 110 watts, I can cruise along until I get too bored. That's LSD training.

For high intensity intervals, after warming up I crank up the resistance to 220 watts and try to go at least a minute before setting it down again to a recovery level. Now, I find that I can't use 110 watts as a viable recovery level. At that resistance I recover too slowly. So I set it down to about 85 watts during the recovery periods. That's about right for recovering to a 160 heart rate within three to four minutes after each high intensity interval.

So that's the workout. Repeat six to eight times and cool down. I find that after a couple or three intervals, I can't go nearly as long at 220 watts resistance, so I change that setting to 200 or so, then drop it even further toward the end of the workout. But I'm getting the same metabolic effect and achieving the same heart rate. It just takes less resistance as my legs tire.

I've found in the past (the last time I trained seriously like this was years ago) that as fitness improves it's possible to recover effectively at higher resistance settings. That's one good way to mark progress. After a few weeks, I'll start trying 95 watts during recovery instead of 85, for example.

Another variation on this plan is what I've called for on Sundays: "very high intensity interval training." What I mean by that is simply shorter intervals (30 - 40 seconds) at higher resisitance settings with shorter recovery periods. It remains to be seen whether I can really complete 40 minutes of that, as the Sunday plan says. More on this next Sunday!

As for the chest and triceps today, I found that presses and flyes are out of the question. (I've been getting physical therapy for a shoulder problem, and I can tell from the way the shoulder feels when I try certain exercises that they aren't a good idea.) So I found I was able to do cable flyes (crossovers) just fine, as well as cable triceps pushdowns, as long as I keep strictly to form and use rather light weights. That's enough for my purposes. As I said in an earlier post, I'm not looking for a big upper body. My genetics probably won't support it in any case.

As for the eating plan, I'm still not succeeding in switching to more, smaller meals. I had three meals today:

Breakfast: 500 calories
Lunch: 400 calories
Dinner: 800 calories
Total: 1700 calories

At least the total is right about where I want to be. I figure that my average calorie expenditure when I'm working out this hard is around 2400 calories. So 1700 is a deficit of 700 per day, which should be right around 1-1/2 pounds per week lost. (Deficit equals 7 days x 700 calories = 4900 calories per week. To lose 1-1/2 pounds, 3500 calories per pound x 1-1/2 pounds = 5250 calories. Pretty close.)

Monday Actuals

2006-09-18T22:29:00.000-07:00

Today it was spectacularly easy to stick to the workout plan. It's a scheduled rest day, and I did not work out.

The eating plan was not so great. A social occasion involved a large dinner. No excuses, but that's what happened.

Breakfast: 500 calories
Lunch: 400 calories
Snack: 200 calories
Dinner: 1100 calories

Total for day: 2200 calories

Not good for a rest day especially. That's probably more than I burned. I must be more vigilant when eating socially. Dinner need not be the largest meal of the day. That's a perennial downfall for me.

Sunday Actuals

2006-09-17T22:40:00.000-07:00

Stuck to workout plan - very high intensity intervals on the stationary bike. Peak heart rate was about 180 at end of three out of eight intervals. That's around 95% of maximum, which is exactly what I'm aiming for in this kind of workout.

If you go by the formula (220 minus age), my maximum heart rate ought to be 162. Obviously it's higher. I haven't actually gotten it to 190 recently, but I believe it would still get very close to that. (I saw it read 192 a couple of years ago.) I'm not sure what to make of my numbers compared to the formula, which is based on averages in large population studies. Do I have the heart of a 30-year-old man? It would be nice to think so. Or am I just a statistical fluke? Or (more likely) does the formula reflect an average decline in fitness as people age? I have kept up my cardio fitness fairly well, though it isn't what it was 4 - 5 years ago, when I could still run. My knees have made running more or less impossible recently, so it's been mostly the bicycle for me.

As for the eating plan, today was not so great. Instead of 5 - 6 small meals I had one medium and one large one. Overall calories probably 1800 - 1900, which is okay. Ideally I'd like to keep that in the 1700 - 1800 range.

Workout Plan

2006-09-17T10:17:00.000-07:00

Here's the basic workout plan I will be following. Most of the cardio will be done on a programmable stationary bike (LifeCycle) at the gym.

Monday - rest day or light cardio (walking, slow cycling)
Tuesday - 30 - 40 minutes high intensity interval training; chest (press, flye, cable flye); triceps
Wednesday - 30 - 40 minutes medium intensity cycling; legs (leg press, extension, curl, calf raise)
Thursday - 40 - 60 minutes low intensity cycling; back (pulldowns, rowing); biceps
Friday - 30 - 40 minutes high intensity interval training; shoulders; abs; lower back
Saturday - 30 - 40 minutes medium intensity cycling; legs (leg press, extension, curl, calf raise)
Sunday - 30 minutes very high intensity interval training; 20 minutes low intensity; 10 minutes very high intensity

This gives me strength training for the legs twice a week and each other body part once a week. I think I get the most bang for the buck this way, since my thighs are the easiest place for me to build muscle (that's probably genetic) and I'm not looking for big pecs or delts, just a balanced, lean upper body.

Initial Measurements & Measurement Goals

2006-09-17T10:05:00.000-07:00

OK, I'm engaging the plan beginning today.

Here are the basic measurements:

Weight on scale: 192 pounds
Skinfold at iliac crest: 34 mm
Implied bodyfat percentage: 33.2%
Calculated lean body mass: 128.25 pounds
Waist: 42 inches
Hips: 42 inches
Height: 5'9"
BMI: 28.4
Comfortable pants size: 36 or 38, depending on cut

I'm a little skeptical of the skinfold-to-bodyfat charts, which assume that everyone gets fatter as they get older. I think my actual lean body mass is a little higher than 128. Sometime I'll cross-check with an alternative method, probably electrical resistance, to see how consistent they are.

Okay, here are the pictures I promised. These are unretouched "before" shots as of September 17, 2006. I'm holding reasonably good but casual posture. My abdomen is not totally relaxed nor is it pulled way in.

I will post new ones every two weeks or so, which is also when I'll do my official weigh-ins and post new measurements.

Measurement Goals

I'm looking for lean body mass between 135 and 140 with bodyfat percentage of 12. That implies overall weight of around 154 to 159. With those goals achieved, my clothing and other goals will fall right into place.

For those of you into BMI, my height is 5'9", making my present BMI 28.4 - definitely overweight. At 155 my BMI would be 22.9, which is toward the high side of the normal range. At 12% bodyfat, it will be fine.

Goals & Affirmations

2006-09-15T22:00:00.000-07:00

I am affirming and energizing these goals for this program:

By January 1, 2007, I fit comfortably into size 32 trousers without having to inhale.
I am reaching my ideal weight and body composition by April so I can show off poolside at the gym.
I am buying new clothes to show off my new lean body.
I am working out at least five times a week in the morning.
I am refining and sticking to my workout plan.
I am eating five or six small, healthy, high-protein meals per day.

I'll post starting measurements and photos tomorrow morning.

Starting a Weight Loss & Fitness Program

2006-09-15T21:48:00.000-07:00

Having decided, at age 58, to get serious finally about getting fit and lean, here will be the public chronicle of my progress. I wake up sluggish. I'm at least 30 pounds over my ideal weight. My fitness level is not so terrible, but I haven't been consistent in working out and it could be a lot better.

So I figure that if I write this public chronicle, I'll force myself to get serious. Perhaps I'll even get a little encouragement from some kindred spirits.