Over the Fourth of July weekend, when I decided to start this diet, I weighed about 240 lbs. At 5′8″, that means I was fat. I had already lost about 25 lbs, which means I was even fatter before, and it’s kinda embarrassing to admit how bad it had gotten. I was buying 40-30 pants. Some people don’t even realize they make pants like that for short, fat people, but they do.
I set a goal of 190 lbs by January 1, 50 lbs in six months, which seemed reasonable, considering I’d lost 25 in six months without really doing anything seriously. To lose 50 lbs in 26 weeks, I had to be about 1000 calories short per day (to lose ~2 lbs per week), and I started by aiming to eat 1200-1500 calories per day, thinking I probably burned less than 2500 calories per day, on average.
Here we are, November 1, and the scale shows 190. I know a single day weigh-in doesn’t mean much, but it’s pretty cool to see that number on my scale. It’s the weight listed on my driver’s license, and it hasn’t ever been correct until today. I had to buy new pants because my 38’s were too baggy to wear. I put on a pair of 34’s today. I can’t remember the last time I did that, it must have been when I was 13 or 14.
I still think I could stand to lose another 15-20 lbs, but I’ll have to react to what my body tells me. I may set a new goal for 175 and see what happens. I think I should keep going, rather than level off here and maybe start again later, since starting it back up will be a pain and I’m kinda in the zone right now.
I think one of the biggest things I need to keep in mind is that my experience is mine alone, and it hardly makes me an expert. It seems simple, and the numbers don’t lie, but that doesn’t mean it will work the same for anyone else.
I have to renew my driver’s license this week. I wonder what weight I should use.
So I’ve been on a diet for a while now, and my wife recently told me that some people are curious about what I’ve been doing to lose the weight. Hopefully this answers their questions, and if you just happened to stumble upon this post, perhaps it will help you. Either way, feel free to comment. Open dialogue can be very useful.
I really started consciously trying to eat better (fewer sodas, fries, etc.) around January 1. It’s amazing how much of a difference something so [seemingly] small can make. Sometime in May (or maybe June) I found The Hacker’s Diet. I spent a few days perusing its many pages and for some reason things clicked for me. It didn’t really have any information that I didn’t already know, but it was apparently presented in a way that worked, and I recommend giving it a read. It is a LOT more descriptive and in-depth than I will be.
My diet is pretty much the hacker’s diet; perhaps it’s more like a slacker version. One of the basic ideas in the hacker’s diet is that the human body can be roughly “modeled” as a rubber bag of water. I kinda think of an assembly line inside the bag, running in reverse: finished product (food) goes in and as it goes down the conveyor it is reduced to its basic elements, and what’s left at the end is tossed out.
Note: the “stuff” on the conveyor belt is not weightless; if you change the amount of input, it takes a while for the output to reflect the change. This is not your body burning fat (or packing it on, if you increase intake), it is just equalizing output with input. It is nice, though, to see pounds “melting” off so quickly at the beginning!
Put simply, our bodies burn calories. Not fat, not carbs, not tacos, just calories. [Technically, a “calorie” is just a measurement of energy, but from a weight-loss standpoint, and for simplicity’s sake, I look at it like a basic component of food.] Some foods are more calorie-dense than others, and fat is among the most calorie-dense at 3500 calories per pound. Since we are just calorie-burning machines, everything we eat has to be broken down into its caloric components before it can be used. 100 calories of fat behaves almost exactly like 100 calories of sugar or 100 calories of bread or 100 calories of alcohol, though the mass of each is different (you can usually eat more of a “low-fat” something than you could the “full fat” variety to get the same amount of calories).
I suppose I should say right now that I’m not and have never been a dietitian or doctor. This is just my personal experience, and it may or may not work for you. I realize that ignoring amounts of fat, sugar, or any other nutritional component is not a great idea for a sustained happy healthy lifestyle. But neither is being fat. It’s also important to make sure you’re getting the necessary nutrients, and vitamin supplements are the easiest way to do it.
I’m using this diet as a tool to lose weight and hopefully, by the time I get down to my target area, I’ll have a better idea of what my body actually needs, and I should be in a healthier place than I am now. I’m also not really going into the exercise side of things, because it’s not necessarily required to lose weight. That’s not to say I don’t recommend exercising; I just think it’s something that should be done for physical fitness, not for weight loss. Exercise can only help, though; it will make any diet more effective, especially when you build muscle, which in turn can increase your metabolism and burn more calories.
Right now I’m down over 60 pounds since January 1, and I’ve lost about 35 pounds on this diet since July 1, which is somewhere around 12 pounds per month, or [very] roughly 3 per week. That means I’m about 1500 calories SHORT every day. I was originally aiming at 1200 for a 500-800 calorie shortfall, but apparently my body burns a lot more than I initially figured. I doubt most people could handle cutting 1500 calories per day, so I can’t really say my experience is typical or recommended. It also means that for me to be as fat as I was, I must have been eating an obscene amount of calories every day. I don’t want to do that again.
My diet is pretty simple, but apparently some people have a hard time actually doing it (which may make it pretty much just like every other diet on the planet):
Step 1: Weight yourself every day, preferably at the same time, in the same situation, and write it down (even if you aren’t dieting yet). A common scenario is every morning before (or after, as long as you’re consistent) your shower, naked. This will avoid the “do these pants weight more than yesterday’s?” questions. Note: urine (water) is heavy. Weight can vary over a pound based on whether or not you have “evacuated”. Don’t worry about daily fluctuations in your weight, water will be the biggest contributor, and it will all even out if you keep a good log.
Some people have a strong aversion to weighing themselves every day, but it’s the single best way to determined what your weight is doing. If you’re low on water and weigh in on Sunday, and then lose a pound or two over the course of the week, and then weigh in on Sunday again, and you happen to be heavy on water, you may see the same number on the scale, even though you lost weight. That is disheartening and not helpful in determining what your body is doing in regards to losing weight. Weighing in every day lets us smooth those outliers out of the graph and gives us a more accurate trend.
Note: Water is important, especially when dieting. Fat becomes home for lots of nasty stuff, and when it’s broken down it releases them. Drinking a lot of water will help evacuate the nasties, as well as keep you properly hydrated. It also helps to stabilize the amount of water in your body, which makes your weight trend more accurate. I have a 28oz bottle at work and try to fill and down it at least twice per day. Most beverages count too, bonus if it’s calorie-free (iced tea is great).
Step 2: Find out how many calories are in the foods you eat, and start logging it. Most foods have nutrition information available, whether it be on a label on the package or posted online. Many fast food chains and restaurants provide information for their full menus online or on the counter. The most important number is the calories; fat and carbs aren’t the key. I have two main “lunches:” a spicy chicken sandwich from Wendy’s (440 cal) with an iced tea (0 cal) is one. Three crunchy tacos, fresco style, at Taco Bell (150 cal each, 450 total) is the other. If you like diet coke or diet pepsi, they’re fine. Personally, I prefer coke zero, diet mt. dew, or diet dr. pepper, but they’re rarely available at restaurants, so I go with iced tea or water. Another benefit of dieting is that it’s significantly cheaper. The Taco Bell near my work has crunchy tacos for 49 cents. My lunch costs me a whopping $1.58, including tax.
Step 3: Pick a daily calorie intake target. Based on the info from steps 1 and 2, you should be able to roughly determine how many calories your body burns in a day. The idea is that by restricting your caloric intake by 500 calories per day, you will lose a pound per week (7 days * 500 calories = 3500 calories = 1 pound of fat). For myself, I ballparked myself around 2000 calories burned per day (I wasn’t logging anything when I started), so I aimed for the 1200-1500 calorie range for my daily intake. After a few days, I fell into a fairly comfortable place around 1200 per day. After a few weeks, I realized that I must be burning around 2800 calories per day, which still surprises me. I would probably put a minimum at 1000 calories per day; if you can’t reduce your caloric intake by any significant amount and stay above 1000, you should probably increase your physical activity, rather than cut calories. Again, I’m not a doctor, that’s just my opinion, and again, any exercise you do will only increase the calories your body burns, which should increase the deficit, which should lead to weight loss.
Note: the hardest part of the diet is the first week or two, when your body is used to more calories. Until your body adjusts and starts burning its calorie reserves to make up the difference, you will probably be hungry. Once your body is in “burn mode,” that hunger should taper off. One way to shorten the duration of the transition is to do a semi-fast at the beginning. By cutting your calories to the 500 per day range (or lower, if you can manage) for a couple days, it will force your body to kick-start the burn mode. You will probably be hungry as hell for a couple days, but it may be preferable to a week or two of being hungry all the time.
The key is to stay within your framework and calorie limit, and the key to doing that is by logging everything. I use FitDay.com. It lets me log my weight and food in a simple interface that is easy to deal with. Most importantly, it lets me create “custom foods” that I can easily add to my daily food log. By taking a few minutes now and adding nutrition information for most of the foods I eat, I cut the time it takes to log down to practically nothing. Two classic tacos from Del Taco? Click “View my custom foods,” find the entry for “Del Taco - Classic Taco,” and click “Add to my food log.” It adds it and shows me the log, where I change quantity to 2 and click save. Done. All the nutrition info is automatically tallied for me.
It can be frustrating going out while dieting; the “never-ending pasta bowl” at Olive Garden is especially difficult for me, when I realize that I can’t even eat one whole serving, let alone two or three different combinations of pasta and sauce. Adding in a breadstick (150 cal) or two, and a bowl of zuppa toscana (170 cal) makes it hard to find something that stays within my calorie limits. Using the nutrition information on their website, I found five cheese ziti al forno, which weighs in at 1050 calories. When I get it, I draw a line down the middle of my plate and only eat half of it, which nets me around 525 calories, and leaves room for the soup, a couple breadsticks, and a glass of wine, for around 1000 calories (plus a to-go box with about 525 calories of pasta, pre-measured, ready to be eaten at a later date).
It’s things like this that probably put most people off dieting and make it so difficult, but in some ways helps. I don’t usually have to think very hard when I’m ordering, because I already have a pretty good idea what I’m going to get. I could also go with linguine alla marinara and eat the whole thing (430 cal). There are plenty of options. I find that most of the portions are plenty large enough for me to eat half and take half home, but it may be different for other people. Again, a little work beforehand (look at the website, get at least a rough idea of what you can eat without going over budget on calories) makes things a lot easier. You can even enter all of your options as “custom foods” beforehand and just add what you picked. If you only ate half, just change servings to .5 and it automatically recalculates.
Another thing that has helped me are the “lean cuisine”-type prepackaged meals. I personally get Weight Watchers Smart Ones. They’re complete meals, and all the nutrition information is right there on the box. Enter it into FitDay once and you’re set. Most of the meals I buy are $1.50 each, so they hardly break the bank. I think the more expensive ones are around $2.50. They’re much better than they used to be, and it’s not at all like eating sawdust or cardboard. The key is to find stuff you like; hot sauce and peppers and things like that add negligible calories, so feel free to add them to prepackaged meals to spruce them up. They’re quick and easy, and they’re all around 300 calories.
I imagine this is just like most diets, in that the hardest part is actually DOING it. I have found that for me, having this kind of structure in place helps. It does take some willpower, but it’s actually not that hard, once it’s rolling. I have 1200-1300 calories to play with every day, and if I go a little over one day, it’s not the end of the world (just don’t make it a habit!). It is helpful that I don’t have a problem eating the same thing every day. It’s not hard to find a variety of food from a variety of places that fits into my daily limits, but sometimes it’s great to have a go-to meal that I can eat any day, sometimes several days in a row. If I know I’m going out later, I usually go very light for lunch and try to leave around 1000 calories for dinner. Even when I cut back, I haven’t really had any problems with hunger on this diet, which surprises me, since I’m eating so few calories.
I’m happy to answer any questions or discuss any of this, if anybody is interested enough to ask. I hope someone finds it informative and useful!
So for some reason, I keep wanting to start posts with the word “so.” I don’t know why, maybe it makes whatever I have to say sound more like a random idea that I happen to be offering to an old friend in passing. Perhaps it feels more like a continuation of the conversation, rather than its own separate entity.
So I have to watch for it, though I guess it doesn’t really matter in the grand scheme of things.
Last night while my wife and I were washing dishes (technically I was drying), I noticed that our son was backing tentatively away from the dishwasher. I commented on it, my wife commented on it, and I even went so far as to get in between him and the dishwasher to “protect” him from the scary noises being generated therein. (I suppose I should clarify that in this scenario, I mean the mechanical dishwasher, not my wife, though I can’t imagine anyone actually making the mistake)
A few minutes later:
Wife: Did you turn on the dishwasher?
Me: No, I thought you did.
Wife: No, we just emptied it, there are like 2 things in there.
Me: Well, no wonder he was so afraid!
So apparently the little guy was just innocently pushing the non-button buttons on the dishwasher and all of a sudden it started growling at him, and neither of his parents, standing less than five feet away, noticed. They had just emptied the dishwasher and put the stuff away in the cupboards, and neither questioned why the dishwasher was on again.
Then, later, I started pondering whether or not I should explain why we were washing (and drying) dishes right after emptying the dishwasher, and just now I decided that I can’t really describe hand-washing toddler bowls and steak knives in any kind of clever way, so I’ll just shut up.
When I was putting him to bed tonight, I told him he was a very good boy, and he nodded emphatically. I love that kid.
I read an article the other day about how 95% of blogs are considered abandoned because they haven’t been updated in 120 days. This site falls into that category of 120+ days without an update (before this post), but I don’t really consider it “abandoned.” I didn’t start with any expectations of money or readership, which is good, because I lack both in significant quantities.
I suppose in some ways that’s the reason I don’t have much to say here; there’s little motivation. I don’t really want to just gripe about politics or be one of the many nameless voices reactionarily hurling (maybe this post qualifies, I don’t know and it doesn’t really matter, and is “reactionarily” even a word?). I rarely feel the need to talk about my day, as many people do.
Most days I don’t have much interest in posting for a couple reasons. The first is that I don’t feel I really have anything interesting or exciting or original to say. Calling the President an idiot loses its luster after a while (unless his name starts with a B and rhymes with “push”) and I don’t really have any interest in doing that anyway, as it serves no real purpose. I don’t feel I’m a particularly good writer (like using “I don’t feel” so often, maybe I should have gone with “think,” but which one to change? Either would probably be fine, but I didn’t pull the trigger.), and I don’t even know offhand whether or not the comma should be before or after the parenthetical aside, so I just put it where I thought the pause should be.
The second is that, as I said before, I have little motivation. I get an occasional comment, but for the most part, I’m pretty much spouting into the void, and it gets old. I could spend hours formulating a post, adjusting the sentence structure, working on the flow, and rearranging ideas until I’m happy with it, then click “Publish” and have zero to show for it. No interesting dialogue, certainly no federal policy changes. I definitely appreciate Beast’s comments, as they are pretty much the only ones I get, on the rare occasion in which I actually post.
So why bother with all the time and effort? Maybe I’d be better off tweeting my random thoughts, not bothering with proper sentence structure or coherent paragraphs. Maybe I’d be better off shuttering this blog and forgetting about it; it’s barely using any of the 120GB of space I get with my $5/mo hosting plan, and the domain is included, so it’s hardly breaking the bank to keep it up. Maybe I’d be better off starting another sentence with “Maybe I’d be better off,” or maybe not.
I can’t expect anyone to pay attention to this if I don’t update, and I don’t feel like updating if people aren’t paying attention, so I suppose I’ll have to either update more regularly or walk away.
Dear Mr. President,
I have not always agreed with you, nor have I always disagreed. That’s how things go, especially in politics, but I appreciate your efforts and your willingness to undertake the challenge of the most difficult and scrutinized job on the planet.
My hope, as you leave office, is that those who have chosen to make you a scapegoat get some closure and move on. Pointing fingers does not solve problems, and a continuing partisan crusade of blame (rather than finding a way to fix things and move forward) does not serve the interests of we, the people.
I fear that many have unreasonable expectations of the incoming administration, which were completely and strongly encouraged during the campaign. Again, that’s how things go, especially in politics.
Best of luck in all your endeavors, Mr. President.
Sincerely,
Me
For anyone who may be confused about the term “sandwich” or how to make one, fear not, for McDonald’s has you covered. They have applied for patent WO/2006/068865: “METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR MAKING A SANDWICH“.
Yes, Kathryn V. Proper, Henry T. Ewald, and Paul G. Simmons have come up with the novel idea of “making a sandwich, which may be a hot or cold sandwich, quickly by pre-assembly of various sandwich components and simultaneous preparation of different parts of the same sandwich.”
From the description:
The methods may include one or more of the use of preasseribled [sic] sandwich fillings, assembly of garnishes in advance of a customer’s order or while ether [sic] portions of the sandwich are being heated using the sandwich assembly tool, the simultaneous heating of a bread component and the sandwich filling, placing the bread component over the tool containing garnish, and inverting the tool and bread combination to deposit the sandwich garnish onto the bread component.
Is that a really long-winded and terribly-spelled way of saying “we make it before you order it so it can sit around until we microwave it”? What’s wrong with using your hand to put the “garnish” on? And what sandwiches have an ether portion? I must be ordering the wrong thing.
Oh, and FYI, from BitLaw:
Section 101 of the U.S. Patent Act sets forth the general requirements for a utility patent:
Whoever invents or discovers any new and useful process, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter, or any new and useful improvements thereof, may obtain a patent, subject to the conditions and requirements of this title.
In other words, for an invention to be patentable it must:
1. be statutory,
2. be new,
3. be useful, and
4. be nonobvious.
Does it stack up?
Look at this dancer. Is she spinning clockwise or counter-clockwise? Keep looking. Does she change directions? Can you make her switch?
Found here.
I’m sure the nipples are necessary for the effect. Or maybe I’m just imagining.
“The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.”
- Winston Churchill
“Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty.”
- John F. Kennedy
“When great changes occur in history, when great principles are involved, as a rule the majority are wrong. The minority are right.”
- Eugene V. Debs
“Democracy is worth dying for, because it is the most deeply honorable form of government ever devised by man.”
- Ronald Reagan
“As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master. This expresses my idea of democracy.”
- Abraham Lincoln
“Democracy is a device that ensures we shall be governed no better than we deserve.”
- George Bernard Shaw
“Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.”
- Winston Churchill
“Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people are right more than half of the time.”
- E.B. White
“Ask not what your country can do for you - ask what you can do for your country.”
- John F. Kennedy
Saw an interesting quote today:
“If you don’t have a record to run on, then you paint your opponent as someone people should run away from. You make a big election about small things. Ohio we are here to say, ‘Not this time, not this year, not when so much is at stake.’”
-Barack Obama, Oct 27, 2008
Ok, so John McCain is the one without the record to run on? Seriously? Obama has spent half of his one term in the Senate in a presidential campaign.
Paint your opponent as someone people should run away from?
“He voted with Bush 90% of the time!”
“We can’t afford John McCain!”
Check.
Make a big election about small things?
“Change!” (without explanation)
“Change!” (without definition)
“Change!” (without qualification)
Check.
Not this time, not this year, when so much is at stake?
Oh wait, that’s a big fat hypocritical FAIL.
