Persevere

Its Monday evening and there’s a new face at the gym. He’s been exercising for about a week and he knows exactly what he wants. He’s had it with being overweight. He’s had it with being unhealthy. He’s got something to prove and he’s training like it. The regular crowd is doing their thing. The posers are glued in front of the mirrors, eyes fixed as if in a trance. The talkers are standing around chatting about their lives and current events. The old timers are dutifully performing their task just as they have year after year. The new guy is different. He’s insane. He’s on a mission. He’s going to train as long and as hard as it takes to reach his goals. He won’t slow down, he won’t quit, he won’t,,,,,,,

He won’t be back next week!

How many people have you known like this?  Someone so excited about losing weight, toning their body, getting healthier.  Someone new coming to the gym ready to hit the elliptical until they are ready to puke.  Coming to work on Monday morning telling everyone about how great their new diet is and how fast the weight is going to melt off.  So eager to change his life, become a new person, regain the body he had in high school.  But two weeks later he's back to eating Jack in the Box and watching a Harry Potter marathon all weekend.

What happened?

Our friend has made an important discovery that his parents, teachers and guidance counselors who all took turns wiping his chin neglected to share with him. Life is hard and worthy goals are not achieved without effort. Exercising and eating healthy are hard work. If it weren’t everybody would be doing it.

I want you to succeed. I don’t want you to be just another fad dieter who ends up yo-yo dieting and steadily gaining weight after each new diet attempt fails. I want this enough for you that I feel compelled to share one of my greatest secrets with you about how I lost 65 pounds and lowered my cholesterol, blood pressure, resting heart rate, and liver enzymes. There is no easy way.  There is no pill that will make it happen.  There is no fad diet that will make you healthy.  There is no quick way to lose weight and keep it off.  If you aren’t mentally prepared for this truth then you might as well start pre paying for your spot in a nursing home now.

You have a decision to make. Your reading this blog because you want something. You want to be healthier for your family.  You want to look physically fit.  Are you prepared for the mental and physical challenges you are going to meet on your way towards you goals?  Are you ready to ignore hunger?  Are you willing to miss your favorite tv shows to spend time on a treadmill?  Can you pass up the donuts your coworker brought to work and eat your bowl of oatmeal instead?  Will you spend an extra 20 minutes at the grocery store so you can read food labels?  Are you prepared to set your alarm clock earlier and give up an hour's sleep so you can meet some friends for a morning run?  

Its up to you. I like success stories and have little tolerance for excuses or failure. Will you be at the gym next week?  Next month? Do you really have what it takes? It's in your head and in your hands to achieve your goals but you must understand that sacrifices do lay before you. Take pride in yourself.  You are working toward something that everyone else wants but few have the unbending will to achieve. Are you truly up for the challenge? 

Expect pain.  Be tough like Huff!

Run a 5k

If you sometimes find yourself getting bored with just going to the gym for your workouts you might consider training for and competing in a fun run. A fun run will offer you an opportunity to take some of your workouts outdoor. Running outdoor can be a different experience each time you go. Head east today, and west tomorrow. Run in your neighborhood this week, on the high school track next week. The variety of your scenery is only limited by your imagination. You can run in the park, on the Seawall, on trails, at the college, or take it back to the gym on the treadmill for some cool air conditioning on hot days.

Just about every fun run offers a 5k distance. That's 3.1 miles for those who flunked the metric system in school. Training to run a 5k can be done in 3-4 workouts a week, each lasting about 15-35 minutes. Of course you can do more if you want, but if you are just getting started running, this is all the time you need to commit to successfully run a 5k. Give yourself about 12 weeks to train if you haven't been running.

If you are in the Houston area you can find a pretty good list of local races and fun runs at the HARRA race list. The list is not quite complete, so you might stop by The Runner's Link, On the Run, or Fleet Feet.  These running stores will have flyers for all the local races that are upcoming. Also, you can talk to the sales people, who are also runners, and they will be happy to help you find an event that is well organized and well supported.

Expect to pay $15-25 to participate in a fun run. For your money, you should get an event t-shirt, water stations along the race route, fruit and water after the race (sometime even cookies or hotdogs), and you will be supporting a local charity. Also, you will get an official time. If this is your first race, you are guaranteed to get a PR (personal record). From there, your goal will be to improve on this time.

It will be helpful to find a training program to follow at looks like fits your ability. If you haven't been doing any exercise up to this point, you can search online for a C25K (couch to 5k) program. These training schedules are designed to take a sedentary person and train them for a 5k race in 9-12 weeks. They will start with walking, build up to walking with some running, and take you until you are running all or most of the milage.

If you feel that running is a little to intense for you at this point, you can find a program that trains you to walk a 5k. Fun runs welcome walkers, former high school track stars, and everyone in between.

Here's some great news for anyone wanting to lose weight or fight off the weight creep at comes with age. Walking a mile burns about 75 calories, and running a mile burns about 125 calories. These numbers are dependent on your weight, but you can get a general idea of how many calories you are burning with these numbers. If you want a more accurate number, you can purchase a heart rate monitor for about $100. These devices are able to take your weight and age and calculate it with the information in gathers while you run and give a much more exact number of calories burned.

Where do you go from here? First, find a race that is about 3 months away from now and commit to it by pre registering. Then, find a training program online that you think you can follow. Print it out and stick to it. Try not to miss any of the workouts. If you have to miss one, commit to make it up on another day. Finally, post photos on facebook and show everyone how awesome you are!

Carbs, fat, protein, and weight loss

People are forever looking for shortcuts to lose weight. Pills, drinks, weight loss tea, Atkins diet, meal replacements, South Beach, protein drinks, juicers, on and on. The problem in giving a one size fits all approach to weight loss is that we are all different. Some are recently overweight, some have been fighting weight problems for years. Some are genetically disposed to be thin, others genetically heavy. Some are men, others women. Because so many are searching for the answer to weight loss, I want to address some common myths.

Myth: Carbs are fattening.

Truth: Excess calories are fattening. Calories come from carbs, fat, and protein. Carbs and protein each have 4 calories per gram, and fat has 9 calories per gram. Another source I haven't mentioned before is alcohol (7 calories per gram). The main dietary demon is fat. Butter, margarine, oil, mayonnaise, and grease are obvious sources of fat. But there is also, cheese, nuts, peanut butter, and hidden fat in meat. Remember that although some fats are healthier than others, they all are equally fattening. Dietary fat is easily stored as excess body fat; carbs are easily stored as muscle fuel.


Myth: High protein, low carb diets are the best way to lose weight.

Truth: Your best bet is to eat smaller portions and create a calorie deficiency for the day. The type of calories are less important than the number of calories eaten. All calories count. My biggest personal hang up about this type of diet is that it doesn't provide the energy you need to be active. To be your healthiest, you need to control what you eat as well as participate in exercise. Carbs give you the energy you need to exercise. I also don't believe in starting any diet that you can't maintain the rest of your life, and if you plan on living an active lifestyle, this just won't work.


Myth: Food eaten after 8:00 pm turns into fat.

Truth: If you have calories left in your calorie budget, and you are hungry, it's okay to eat late. Better to honor your hunger than end up binge eating.
The verdict is still out if eating late is inherently fattening in itself. The real problem might be what we eat. Binging on ice cream, buttery popcorn, or fudge brownies before bed adds a lot of calories to your calorie total for the day. Be sure you are eating plenty of your calories during the day and not skipping breakfast. This will help you not to binge at night.


Myth: The more you exercise, the more weight you'll lose.

Truth: The more you exercise, the hungrier you will be and the more you will eat. You can spend an hour exercising and burn 500 calories. Reward yourself with a bag of chips and eat 600 calories in 10 minutes. Your body has natural urges to protect itself from wasting away. This is why it is harder for women to lose weight than men. Nature wants men to be lean hunters, and women to be able to reproduce. No offense ladies, I'm not trying to destroy all the efforts of the bra burners in the 70s. The "ideal" man has 4% body fat, and the "ideal" woman has 12% essential body fat. This difference allows women to nourish a baby if she becomes pregnant. Try to get below these levels and nature is going to fight you. Again, you have to create a calorie deficiency through a combination of diet and exercise.


Myth: Train for a marathon, Ironman, Tough Mudder, etc. and the body fat will melt off.

Truth: Wishful thinking. Training for triathlon I burn 5000-7500 calories a week above my basal metabolic rate. If I ate a normal diet of 1800-2000 calories a day, I should be losing about 2 pounds of fat a week. But I've weighed between 149-151 pounds for months. One thing about training that hard is that you tend to be more sedentary the rest of the day. I can tell you that I have gotten much better at napping on the couch over the last several months. Also, I'm not trying to achieve a calorie deficiency, so I tend to eat larger meals and more snacks.

Myth: Exercise kills your appetite

Truth: It does for a short time, but after you cool off and recover, your hunger will catch up with you. Body temperature does show some effect on appetite. So being hot after a gym workout can slow your appetite, but being cool after a pool workout can actually make you hungrier. Try to fill the hunger with a low calorie, nutrition dense snack or meal full of colorful vegetables.

Myth: By exercising you can turn your fat into muscle.

Truth: Fat and muscle are two separate entities and are not interchangeable. Fat does not turn into muscle. The reverse is also true. If you have been exercising and stop for some reason, your muscle is not going to turn into fat. Ever buy an untrimmed brisket and see how there is a layer of fat on the meat? You have a layer of fat over your muscle just like that. Create a calorie deficiency and you body will convert the layer of fat into energy it can use and the fat layer will shrink. Eat more calories than you burn and your body will store the excess calories for later and the layer of fat will grow. Work your muscles and the muscle fibers grow and expand. Stop working the muscles and the muscle fibers will actually shrink.

If there is one common theme in all this it is that if you want to lose weight, you need to create a calorie deficiency, either by consuming less, burning more, or a combination of the two. Personally, I feel that if you do it all through diet alone, you are cheating yourself out of the health benefits of exercise. If you try to do it all through exercise, it will be a long, slow road, and if you continue to ignore a diet low in saturated and trans fats, you will not realize all the health benefits you should.

The most important meal of the day

To live a healthy and active life, every meal is important. But the one that gets neglected the most is breakfast. Some have e notion that skipping breakfast will save on their daily calorie count. Others, who are probably staying up to late and so can't wake up earlier, don't have time for breakfast. But breakfast is important enough that it is a meal that you should eat 7 days a week.

Skipping breakfast is not part of a good plan to control weight. It can actually have a negative effect on your weight. The body will want to make up any calories that you miss from breakfast later in the day, so you will be more likely to eat unhealthy snacks and to over eat at later meals. Eating breakfast cuts down on the urge to snack between meals. It will also kickstart your metabolism, which has been slowed through the night as you sleep, and help you metabolize food more efficiently throughout the day.

Traditional breakfast foods fall into two categories - the healthy, and the deadly. the latter category is made up of foods high in sugar and saturated fats. Bacon, ham, donuts, sausage, and fried eggs make for a fine tasting meal, but will shorten your life.

A health breakfast gives you an opportunity to get the day started positively by allowing you to get focused on eating from the 5 food groups - whole grains, lean protein, fruits, vegetables, and low fat dairy. You have a great chance during breakfast to get a jump on your daily fiber intake. Focus on including whole grains like oat and cereals. Think Wheaties, not Froot Loops. These will provide a chunk of your daily fiber. Also, cereals are fortified with vitamins and minerals which will give you some micro nutrients you might otherwise miss out on.

Other food to choose from include fruit, juices(pure juices, not cocktails with added sugar), skim milk, and low fat yogurt. I also enjoy whole grain toast, bagels, or English muffins with peanut butter or a fruit spread.

Eggs are a toss up. Personally, I'm not a fan of egg yolks. I understand that the yolk is full of goodness, but it is also full of cholesterol and calories. One egg yolk has about 200 grams of cholesterol, and the RDA is only 300 grams. So just 2 whole eggs will put you over the recommended daily limit. You'll have to make your own choice about eggs. I have an aversion to the yolks from my days of chunkiness when my cholesterol was high. If you want your egg with yolk but want to limit your cholesterol, try mixing 1 whole egg with a couple of egg whites. This might be a good compromise for your omelets and scrambled treats.

I usually have a bowl of oatmeal most mornings with some cinnamon and Splenda. Occasionally I add a banana or strawberries. If I'm board with that, I might instead have a whole wheat bagel with apple butter, an English muffin with peanut butter, or an egg white omelet.

My egg white omelets are hearty meals! I start with the whites from 5 eggs. If I have it left over from spaghetti, I like to add a little seasoned ground turkey. For veggies I include bell pepper, onions, mushrooms, and spinach. Finally, I'll top it with some fat free shredded cheddar, fresh pico de gallo if I've got it, and splash on some tabasco. I'll put that up to bacon and fried eggs any day.

If you must eat on the run, a dry toasted bagel, a banana or apple, or a bag of dry cereal are easy to eat in the car.

So for weight loss, weight control, health, and energy, make time for breakfast each morning.



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Portion sizes and food labels.

Learning to measure and judge portion sizes will lead you to smaller jeans sizes. For the first few weeks as you begin counting calories, you are going to have to plan to spend a little extra time at the grocery market(so you can compare food labels), some time online looking up calorie counts for foods that don't have food labels(fresh vegetables, fruits, beans, meats), and a little effort weighing out meat portions.

You will never be able to account for every calorie, and if you start trying to, it might be time for an intervention. Knowing your calorie consumption is not about being paranoid. It's just to get a number close enough that you can be confidant that you are eating fewer calories than you are burning. And, someday soon, you will achieve your healthy weight and you will need to add calories to your diet to achieve an equilibrium, that is eating and burning the same amount of calories so that you don't lose or gain weight. At that point I don't worry so much about a daily equilibrium, but just trying to keep it even every few days. So if I take my girls out for ice cream tonight, I know that's okay as long as I make up for it over the next day or two.

The first part of getting a calorie count is to check the food labels as you shop. There is a lot of information on the food labels you need to be able to read to choose healthy foods, but to keep it simple for now all we are going to concentrate on is what you need to lose weight. With that in mind, the most important info on the label for you will be the calories per serving and the serving size. You cannot just look at the calories per serving by itself. Different companies will use different serving sizes when calculating calories per serving. So comparing two products together side by side is not always as easy as it might seem.

I'll give an example using some imaginary numbers that will be easy to calculate, then an example using numbers more like what you might see in the supermarket to show how it can get tricky. You may even want to plan to take a calculator at first, or use the one on your phone.

Example #1: You are comparing lunch meats. The first package lists 100 calories per serving. The second lists 50 calories per serving. If you stopped right there it would seem that the second package has the best calorie deal for you. But if we look at serving sizes we might see that the serving size for the first product is 150 grams and the serving size for the second product is 50 grams. So if we compare equal serving sizes we will see that the second product actually has 50 more calories than the first product. The first product has 100 calories in 150 grams. The second has 50 calories in 50 grams (multiply the grams by 3 to make the serving sizes equal, and you also triple the number of calories). So a 150 gram portion of the second product would have 150 calories.

Example #2: The math for the previous example is not too tough since our imaginary products had nice round numbers. But on actual lunch meat it might look more like this...
Product #1 - 65 calories per serving, serving size 50 grams.
Product #2 - 50 calories per serving, serving size 45 grams.

I've always been pretty good at math, but I'm not good enough to look at those two products and tell you which one is the winner.

So pull out you calculator. Divide the # of calories by the number of grams, and you will get a calorie per gram count. The one with the lower number is the winner.
#1 - 65/50 = 1.3 calories per gram
#2 - 50/45 = 1.1 calories per gram

Doing this might save you 35 calories when making a sandwich for lunch. That might seem insignificant to you, and if it does, I would say you have never tried living on 500 calories a day less than you burn. If I can save 35 calories on that sandwich, I can add those 35 calories somewhere else. Those extra 35 calories equals more food. More food equals less hunger. See the benefit of those few calories? It could even mean I get to add an extra slice of meat to that sandwich.

Okay, I know how to compare the calories, but I have no idea what 50 grams of sandwich meat looks like. Well, young padawan, let the food label lead you. The food label will tell you what a typical serving size looks like. In the case of lunch meat, it might say that a 50 gram serving size is equal to about 4 slices. So I know I can put 8 slices of meat on my sandwich and it equals 90 calories.

Now you can start putting a meal together. The bread package says that a serving size of bread is 1 slice and has 100 calories. A package of fat free cheese says a serving has 50 calories is equal to 1 slice. Make a sandwich with 2 slices of bread, 8 slices of turkey breast, 1 slice of cheese, and some deli mustard(0 calories per serving). Add it all up and your lunch is at 350 calories. Probably room for some raw vegetables on the side since their calorie count is so low.

Say your goal for calories is 2000 a day. That meal will account for about 400 of them. That leaves you 1600 for your other 2 meals and 2 snacks. You'll have to figure how to divide your calories on your own, but if I were targeting 2000 a day I would probably aim for 500 calories for breakfast, lunch and dinner, and 250 each for a mid morning and mid afternoon snack.

Back to food labels.... Some items might say a serving size is 1/2 can, or there are 4 servings per box. These are convenient ways to estimate your portion sizes. Note that you don't have to eat half a box of a food just because is says that is 1 serving. You can eat as much or as little as you want as long as you count the calories correctly.

For products such as fresh fruit or vegetables, you'll have to google them to find serving sizes and calorie counts. I wouldn't worry about getting to exact with these. For example, a medium banana might be listed at 100 calories. Are you thinking what I'm thinking? How big is a medium banana? You could find out calories per gram and then weight your banana on a kitchen scale, but I say just to use your best judgement and go with it. In this case, if you're off by 20 calories we'll just let it slide. Hopefully you'll be 20 off in your favor, not against you.

I do suggest weighing out your meat portions for the first couple of weeks. If you want to put a 1/4 pound of meat in your two whole wheat tortillas, it will be easier to get that amount if you weigh it. After a couple of weeks, you will be able to just look a a portion of meat and judge the size.

It might sound as if you will have to spend lots of extra time at the market comparing products. The truth is, you will at first. But after the first couple of trips, you will just be able to begin replacing products with the ones you already know are the calorie winners.

This is a sustainable way to eat, even after you no longer need to run a calorie deficiency. You will always need to count calories in some form. If you just go back to eating like you always have, you will put extra fat back on. But I no longer count my calories like I did. I used to stick at 1800 a day, and some days add another 100 from popcorn at the end of the day if I needed a late snack. But what you will find is that during the 2 or 3 or 6 months that you are accounting for all your calories, you will develop an awareness of what you are eating that you will be able to rely upon to not gain your weight back.

What I found in my case was that as I was experimenting with how many calories I could increase to to reach my calorie equilibrium, I lost another three pounds. After 5 months of 1800 calories a day, I slowly added calories each day until I stopped losing weight. Just like you will be able to look at a lump of hamburger meat and know that it is 1 serving size, you will be able to look at your daily diet and know it was between 2200 and 2400 calories.

Next we'll find how to find what a healthy weight is for you so you know where to set your target. Until then, why not spend some time online making a list of the calorie count of some of your favorite fruits, and what the main vitamins are in them?

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Getting started

I think here is where I'm supposed to insert something like "consult your doctor before starting any exercise program." Though I'm not a doctor, I am confident enough in my knowledge to say that you will become healthier by losing weight and living an active lifestyle.

There are two components to losing weight. The first and many say easiest is by controlling your diet. Going back to the fact that a pound of fat contains 3500 calories, and as you consume fewer calories than you expend your body will use these calories, it is easy to see that by eliminating calories from your diet you will lose weight. Start off with cutting out some easy things you consume every day. They don't have to be big things, small things will add up each day, and the days will add up each month. Cutting out just 100 calories a day adds up to 3500 calories in just over a month. There goes a pound of fat! Ka-Pow! It could be switching from regular cokes to diet cokes, using an artificial sweetener in your tea or coffee instead of sugar, getting the apples with your Subway instead of the chips. Do small things now, and as you get into it, you can get radical with it. I got myself down to about 1800 calories consumed a day. Every day. No exceptions. One thing you need to know about me, I don't believe in cheat days during weight loss. They make it too easy to fall of the wagon, and only postpone you being at a healthy weight.

The second component is exercise. This is the harder part, and is not as beneficial as you might think. Don't get me wrong, you have to exercise, and there are many more benefits to exercise than weight loss. But you can cut about 300 calories from your day by cutting out 2 cokes. That is almost no effort, and takes no time. To burn the same amount of calories on the treadmill, you will have to run 2-3 miles, depending on your body size. That will take you about 20 minutes and may be a lot of effort for you. So never, never, never reward yourself for a good workout by giving yourself a treat. The calorie burn in a 2 mile run can be completely wiped out by just 3 Oreos. There goes all your hard work for about 30 seconds of pleasure. Just don't do it!

Notice the benefit of putting cutting calories and exercise together. If you cut out 100 calories from your diet, you will lose a pound of fat in just over a month. Add to that 100 extra calories burn each day through excersize, and that pound will be gone in just over 2 weeks. Sounds easy right? Just this alone could lead to a 20 pound weight loss in a year. And some of you will be okay with that. But if you are like me, 20 pounds in a year is just too slow. For you, I say get started like this, then crank it up as you settle into it. Cut more calories...excersize more. You'll have to find your own limit on the lowest amount of calories you want to eat. If you try starving yourself, you won't be helping your health, and you will find it very difficult to have enough self-discipline not to binge.


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Calculating your base metabolic rate

When trying to decide how many calories you want to consume each day, it is helpful to know first how many you burn throughout the day. If you sat around watching tv all day, you would still burn a large amount of calories just from breathing, your heart pumping, digesting food, and other metabolic functions. There is a formula that you can use to figure this amount. You can also google "basal metabolic rate calculator" for calculators that will do this for you. Here is the formula:

Women: 655+ (4.3 x weight in pounds) + (4.7 x height in inches) - (4.7 x age in years).

Men: 66 + (6.3 x weight in pounds) + (12.9 x height in inches) - (6.8 x age in years)

As an example, I am 150 pounds, 66 inches tall, and (almost) 39 years old. So my calculation would look like this:

66 + (6.3 x 150) + (12.9 x 66) - (6.8 x 39) =
66 + 945 + 851 - 265 =
1597

So I would burn about 1600 calories just by laying in bed all day!

Of course, none of us lay around all day...

So to modify this number for activity, simply pick a modifier to multiply by from the list below:

1.25 if you are lightly active
1.4 if you exercise almost every day
1.6 if you are a full time construction worker (sorry, operating a backhoe doesn't count) or a professional athlete (not an armchair quarterback).

So in my case again I would multiply 1600 x 1.4 = 2240.

If the math is stressing you, find an online calculator and just plug in your weight, height, and age. Good luck!


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Everything you need to know to lose weight.

Here's what you need to know to lose weight.

1. Your body uses energy for all of its chemical reactions. The chemical reactions are what we refer to when we talk about your body's metabolism. That includes muscle contractions (from walking to your heart beating), hormone creation, repairing cells, creating new blood cells, growing hair, digesting food, etc.
2. If you eat more calories that your body needs, your body stores most of the extra energy in fat cells.
3. If you eat less calories than your body needs, your body takes the extra energy from fat cells to make up the difference.
4. A pound of fat contains 3,500 calories. So when you accumulate an excess of 3,500 calories, whether in a weeks time, a month or a year, you will have added 1 of fat to your body.
5. When you create a 3,500 calorie deficiency from your diet to your body's need, you will have "burned" 1 pound of fat.
6. If you eat exactly as many calories as you "burn", you will reach and equilibrium and neither gain nor lose weight.

So losing weight becomes as simple as burning more calories than you eat. To know how many you eat is easy to find out, though it will be some work to find the info and add it up.