Losing Weight...Geek Style!

Well...another good week, sort of....

I lost 2.5 pounds, but only one pound was actual fat! Since they are remodeling the gym, and I have been in serious sloth mode, I decided to do some Geek Style training, and try to fit in my exercise while playing role-playing games and watching Dr. Who. Here is what I did...

Arm Exercises: I bought some inexpensive wrist/ankle weights from Target . All I do is three sets of twenty of the following: Curls (those are the ones where your arms are at your sides, and you bring your fists to your shoulders.

After twenty of those, I move on to the exercise I call "The Sexy Jesus," named after a song from "Hamlet 2." I stick my arms straight out to the side (the Jesus pose) then I do ten rotations of my arm forward, then ten backward. (On a personal note, no disrespect is meant to the J-man, to whom I give mad props.)

Then I do twenty of an exercise call "I Give Up!"--this link has the best description of it I can find. But basically, raise your elbow to the ceiling, touch your neck with your hands, then raise your hands to the ceiling. Add weights and you are good to go!

I basically do three sets of each while watching television. If can get in all of these exercises before the first or second commercial break of MythBusters or Dr. Who.

(For those of you who love Arnold Schwarzenegger and going to gym to work, you have to check out this site...HI-LARIOUS picture of the California Governor!)

Cardio: What's a Geek to do when her apartment complex has shut down the gym and she is too lazy to leave her GeekCave to go to the gym (plus she really, really doesn't want to change into exercise clothes!) Mini-cardio bursts! Many people do not realize this fact, but you just need to exercise for 30-60 minutes a day to stay healthy! Plus, those do not have to be consecutive minutes!! You can do them in 10-15 minute increments! SWEET!

When I am in a non-exercise mood, all I do is stand in front of the T.V. and walk. If you walk from one commercial break to another, that is roughly ten minutes. If you have DVR, you can walk up to a mile briskly while watching Stephen Colbert (or another half hour show), if you fast forward through all the commercials. You can also try this technique when you are playing Facebook games and Civilization. How much time to we really spend waiting for our crops to grow or our turns to finish-- a lot! I guarantee, if you just stand for 20-30 minutes instead of sitting while playing your games, you will lose some weight! (For gadget Geeks--think wireless controllers!)

The bottom line is you can walk up to four miles in one hour in front of the t.v, but can you burn fat while playing role playing games? YES!

Here is my trick: at my weekly RuneQuest game, I stand for ten-fifteen minutes during the game three times. Standing doesn't burn lots of calories, but it does burn more than sitting. It also takes me away from all the food that abounds at such events (which is the subject of a different post!) I also take a brisk walk with a friend an hour before our game, which revs up the ole metabolism before I sit down for six hours and attempt to kill fiends of Chaos with my pencil and some dice.

My point is that we all have down weeks exercise-wise. Every bit of activity counts, and you don't have to sacrifice doing those things you love to get some exercise into your life!

For my non-geeky friends...I haven't tried incorporating exercise into crafting or reading, so if you have some tips...leave a post!

Outer Goal: 160 (30.5 more pounds to go!)

Inner Goal: World Peace, Inner Peace, and, honestly, a piece of cheese!

Three Pounds BABY!

Despite the gym being closed in our building and my total sloth-like attitute, I still managed to drop three pounds since my last weigh in!



Here's some stuff I learned that might be helpful to everyone in the blogosphere:

Sleep matters! I got a minimum of seven hours of deep sleep every night this week by not drinking more than a few ounces of water an hour and half before bed. (I used to be up all night processing all the liquid I was consuming.) I also do three minutes of deep, abdominal breathing before going to sleep. It's relaxing and helps me sleep better. I found out that a good night's sleep reduces the cortisol in your body; cortisol is a hormone that is part of the reason why people retain fat (it has to do with the fight or flight response).

Activity not exercise! Despite being banned from the gym due to remodeling, I still made time to do some mimimal activity everyday. Yesterday I walked up three flights of stairs and didn't even breath hard! I've been making a special effort to take extra trips to the office (1/4 of mi round trip), to squeeze in a few extra steps. It's phenomenal how many calories one can burn by parking far away or taking the stairs instead of the elevator! For those of us who despise working out, thinking about activity instead of having to dress in spandex and fight with body builders for time on the nautilus machine is A LOT better!

Outward Goal: 160 pounds (33 pounds to go!)
Inner Goal: Sylph-like body in manner of Olivia de Havilland or Taylor Swift...and World Peace!

See you next week!

The dreaded....PLATEAU!

Yes...even on 960 calories a day, one can hit a plateau apparently! In real world terms, I actually lost a good bit of weight: 1.5 pounds. Most people would be thrilled with that amount (as my doctor reminded me as I was whining to her!). The bottom line is that my body is 30 pounds lighter, so it doesn't need to shed weight as quickly. As I remind my students about life, "it's a journey, not a destination."

However, it is hard to not feel bad when you have had two weeks in a row wherein you have lost three pounds each time. I just need to remind myself of some simple things, like..

1) I am only 15 pounds heavier than I was when I got married.
2) My daughter has never known me to be less than 200 pounds, now she does.
3) I can shop in the regular section of department stores now (that's mainly due to the fact that 30% of women are overweight, so they put larger sizes in the regular sections now. I remember a time when 12 was the largest size available in the standard sections!)
4)My blood pressure is in the healthy range!

In our class, we call these "non-scale" victories. I call them hints of what my life will be like when I finally get to my goal.

External Goal: 160
Internal Goal: Ommmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm!

Leave me a post!

Did I Break 200 lbs?

YES!!!

And, yes, it is true that I did the cabbage patch in the lobby of the medical office! I guess discrete is not exactly my middle name!

For the first time in almost a decade, I am below 200 pounds! The Tanita scale at Kaiser stopped at 197.5! Usually it taunts me by pausing...then adding two pounds! Not so this week!

So here is the kicker...I actually lost 4 pounds of fat last week, but I gained a pound of water---so that is even better news! In my mind, the fat loss is so much more important that the actual number of pounds lost! So far, I have lost 18.5 of just FAT. Since fat mass puts soooooo much pressure on my knees (three times as much as anywhere else), my knees think I have lost 55.5 pounds. Ahhhh knees, I knew you were my favorite part of my body for a reason!

Challenges this week:

1)Staff Appreciation Day: FREE YUMMY FOOD ALL DAY AT WORK!
2)Remodeling: My building is remodeling the leasing officeand GYM! Working out is a challenge!
3) I made Coq a Vin on Friday--apparently it was delicious....sigh....

So, my goal for the week: 194.5
My outward goal: 160
My inward goal: self discovery, getting rid of the batwings, oh and of course! World Peace!

See you guys next Thursday!

Tips and Tricks for the Optifast Program...

Okay, so my friends and I have been on the program long enough to provide you with some tricks for being on a super strict diet..here they go!

Optifast tricks for weeks 1-15 (General Tips are below!)

--- You can use the vanilla powder in diet root beer and it tastes like a root beer float. Same with diet orange soda, mmmm creamsicle.

--- Warm up the Double Berry bars in the microwave for 10-15 seconds. It softens them and makes them taste better.

--- When faced with free food, look at the offerings and think about what you could eat to maintain your weight loss after you are "off product." I do this all the time and it really helps. That's how I got through the last few weeks. When you think, "Wow, I really shouldn't eat that stuff at all at any time!" you feel less deprived. It also helps you train your brain for when you are no longer on the Optifast.

--- A few dashes of hot sauce in the soups makes them taste so much better--even if you are not a hot sauce person.

--- Safeway sells zero calorie flavoring for water next to the Crystal Light. It's tart--but Optifast is so sweet that it is a nice break.

--- After a few weeks, try varying your program. Instead of shake, bar, shake, bar, soup, bar--try two liquid things then two solid things. It breaks the monotony.

--- Try a new flavor once a week. I hate artificial Vanilla and Strawberry, but I took a chance and found some products that ease the monotony of Chocolate. What's the worse thing that could happen? You eat something that is slightly grosser than normal?

General wisdom from my Wednesday class:

1. Plan, Plan, Plan: Example: I went away for the State Speech and Debate Finals thinking I would be leaving Sunday morning. I was sooooo wrong! It turns out I had to stay all day! Thankfully, I took a full days supply of meals. Taking extra meals along in my purse has saved my butt more than a few times, since my schedule can be so erratic!

2. Live your life. Don't get on a routine that is too dissimilar from your regular life--meaning don't live like a monk or something. While on Optifast, I have thrown dinner parties, gone out to eat, and gone to several events with mounds of free, delicious food. Don't get me wrong, it was hard, but when I am off this diet--I will be faced with the challenge of eating in new ways. I may as well learn how to assert myself now.

3. Change what isn't working for you. You need to live your life normally, but you need to exercise and plan more. Write down what you do, what you eat, and what you feel for one or two days. Is there something that is preventing you from staying on your diet? Change it. You don't need to change your whole life, but changing small things everyday really adds up. I did this and I literally added 3000 steps a day to my pedometer.

4. Enlist allies. I have a joke that everyone in world knows about my diet. In a way, it's true. I have gotten support from friends, servers at restaurants, advice from colleagues, and kudos from students. These allies are especially supportive if you have a unsupportive partner or family (which is the case for some of the people in my Wednesday night class--but my family is 100% behind me!). Sometimes, the people closest to us are anxious about our lifestyle changes. I have heard of husbands buying sweets and unhealthy food for their wives to sabotage their efforts. Actually they are mad, mad that you are changing something important to them--even if that change is positive. Change is threatening. Having a network of support is important.

5. Dig deep. This time in your life is a great time to reflect on yourself and your needs. You have control over what you put in your body; every successful dieter owns this fact. It's also a time to get rid of excuses. There are so many excuses we give ourselves for not doing the right thing. Being honest with ourselves will improve our well-being. By being mindful of our decisions (like: "I am watching Biggest Loser instead of working out.") helps us understand how we allow ourselves to wallow in our pain. However, don't beat yourself up. Just acknowledge and plan for a different decision next time. For example, I am going to wear my sneakers to work everyday this week to remind me to exercise.

I really want you to post your tips for our readers! So please comment!

Week Seven Weigh In...Did I break the 200 lb barrier?

Nope!

I lost 2.5 pounds which brings my weight to 200.5. The worst of it is that the scale taunted me--that's right--TAUNTED ME! It hovered at 198.5 for at least a second, just as it was going to settle...BAM! Biggest Loser moment--it shoots up a full TWO POUNDS.

I hate you scale.

The good news is that I will probably break 200 this up coming week plus I FINALLY will have a my first day off in 21 days on Saturday!

Can I be honest here? I only worked out once last week, which is why I didn't lose more weight. I am worried that I am not going to be able to make my training goals for my June 20th 5K. Oh motivation, why have you abandoned me?

In Other News...

So, those of you read my first post know that I am doing this crazy Optifast thing so help my hernia. It does feel better, but since losing the weight, it is so much more OBVIOUS. Remember the movie Alien? Yeah, my tummy sort of looks like that--there is a big, squishy lump on the left hand side--ewwwww!

My Outer Goal: 160
My Inner Goal: World Peace, Inner Peace, and Whirled Peas

Anyway...let me know how you guys are doing! See you later!

A mini post from Trav: the math of weight loss...

Lots of folks have been asking me about how I have lost so much weight. I tell them the same thing that everyone else says: calories burned-calories consumed=weight lost/gained.

However, I used to work out and eat less all the time and loss little or no weight, and I finally figured out why!

It's not hormones or enzymes or whatever...it's MATH! That's right, we've been doing the WRONG MATH!

Okay...so here's what you have to do...

A) calculate your RMR (http://www.caloriesperhour.com/index_burn.php)...for newbies that's your RESTING METABOLISM RATE.

B) Then...you have to figure out how many calories you expend doing normal tasks (i.e watching tv, cooking, whatever...).

C) Figure out how many calories you burn jogging, doing aerobics, walking the dog...whatever you do for exercise when you are trying to lose weight.

D) Now here comes the hard part! Normally, to lose weight we increase exercise. We get excited, because the treadmill has been telling us we burned 150 calories or something! You feel chuffed. "I have burned an extra 150 calories today!" WRONG, WRONG, WRONG! You have only burned 150 minus the number of calories you would have burned sitting on your butt watching tv or something.

EXAMPLE: Trav burns 185 calories on the treadmill in a 1/2 hour. She burns 25 calories watching TV for a half an hour. So my work on the treadmill only counts for 160 extra calories burned than if I had done nothing--NOT 185. I know this sounds weird, but this kind of thing adds up over the course of a day. If you think you are burning 500 calories a day more, but it is really 350 or something, you are going to lose weight slower than you expect.

That's why my weight was dropping at such a slow pace or not at all! I was consuming too many calories, so I was maintaining my weight--not dropping it!

The cool thing about knowing your RMR, is that if you adjust your calorie intake to be lower than your RMR, you don't have to worry about all this stuff--you can just do the simple math every day. So, if your RMR is 1500 calories a day, you can drop it to 1300. 200 times 7 equals a deficit of 1400 calories a week, which means an almost guaranteed weight loss of 1/2 pound in a week. That's why skinny people and older people lose weight slower--their RMR is lower than younger, heavier people. If you want to lose a pound a week--guess what--you will have to burn 1750 calories extra that week. What's nice is that even the biggest couch potato burns calories on top of their RMR--you just need to figure out how many (I'll give you a hint: a couch potato --and the a majority of the US population-- burns 1.2 times their RMR.)

Doctors say you should NEVER go below 1200 calories a day without medical supervision. So people with low RMR's need to exercise a lot more. That's why everyone (like Bob, Jillian, and your Aunt Sally) tell you if you want to lose weight, exercise! (http://exercise.about.com/cs/exbeginners/a/exforbeginners.htm)

That's also why every weight loss plan in the world bottoms out at 1200 calories a day.

Anyway, if your weight loss is stalled: first things first. Figure out how much you eat, figure out how much you burn. Do the math, then get off the couch. You may just need a brisk walk to kick start the ole metabolism!

Remember: as you lose weight, your RMR drops--so check it again every 3-5 pounds you lose!

See you Thursday!