Saturday, October 30, 2010

Results Oriented: -181 Pounds!!! Arriving at a Destination...

New weight as of 6:30am this morning is 234.0 for a total loss of 181 pounds so far.

I also completed 6 full chin-ups and 2 full pull-ups at this weight!


Here is my updated weight chart as of today 10/30/2010:


 Less than 31 pounds now until I am no longer officially obese and only 21 pounds until I am half the man I used to be!

Even better than where my weight is at - I am not scared to death of what will happen when I get to where I originally set out. I have completely changed my lifestyle and where I am at is the new "normal" - I am not "dieting" for a period of time or until I reach some specific goal. I have been through social situations, work, family events, road trips, cruises, vacations, and even Italian restaurants while being comfortable with my choices - and I have the pleasure of those choices being what I feel is luxuriously.

I'm still on a journey but I have already made my destination - if that makes sense...


-LL

Saturday, October 23, 2010

Gratuitous Meat Pictures!!

I mentioned in my last post how I smoked my meat for last week so I figured I would throw up some pictures of the finished product - 20 pounds of brisket from my local butcher!

Everyone loves good meat pictures:

Right off the smoker!     

After slicing the flats and pulling the points:

Turning down the volume...of food. Finding my eating Zen.

I discussed a few weeks ago how, in my opinion, at some point calories do count for something. As I was sitting down last night in a local steakhouse and choosing a nice 10 oz. ribeye (rare with steamed broccoli and salad....yum) - I thought about how far I have come from my pre-change state. It was actually  pretty powerful to think about what and how I used to eat versus what I currently had on my plate.

Not just at a steakhouse - but at any restaurant I was always concerned with how much (volume wise) I could get, always worried about feeling full, and always had an insatiable appetite. For example in this steakhouse the typical meal used to always include a starchy appetizer just for me (nachos/loaded fires), the biggest steak 18oz+, two sides usually processed/starchy (mac and cheese/fries), and then a nice sweet desert. So roughly three full size plates of food altogether - without even looking at the macro levels of carbs/proteins/fats it was a holy cow thought!

Saturday, October 16, 2010

On Excercise - Less is My More

I don't know exactly how many times now I have been told to keep up the "hard work" and other similar comments implying that I am struggling Biggest Loser style hours a night to lose all of the weight. However I do know that I have heard it enough to come to the conclusion that general public is convinced staying physically fit requires herculean effort and huge amounts of time...

I generally just nod and smile and take the encouragement. Every once in a while though I will decide to have some fun and say something along the line of "thanks, but I don't really work out all that much - maybe an hour a week total". Generally the person looks a little confused and nods politely - I haven't figured out if they just don't believe me or are straight up confused how I could lose almost 180 pounds now and not spend 24 hours a day in the gym. 

For a while I was also convinced of the necessity of logging as much gym time as possible - I went through at least a 3 month period of working out at least an hour a night for six days a week with free-weights in my basement. Then I re-evaluated my approach and gradually phased down to my current ~ 1 hour a week spread over 2-3 days. That hour is typically one short sprint session of ~5 minutes and two body weight workouts running 20-30 minutes each. My rate of weight loss has actually increased since going to short periodic body weight episodes and my strength still improves every week (I can actually do a pull-up now for the first time in 33 years).

Results Oriented: -177.6 Pounds, -4 Shirt Sizes, -9 Pant Sizes

New weight as of 6:30am this morning is 237.4 for a total loss of 177.6 pounds so far.
 
I also completed 5 full chin-ups and 1 full pull-up at this weight!

I have gone from 56 pant size to a very loose 38 (although I can squeeze size 36 now  I am not counting it yet) - that is 9 pants sizes.

I had gone from 4XL shirts to XL - this week I am starting to wear some plain old Large - that's 4 shirt sizes!!

Here is my updated weight chart as of today 10/16/2010:



Thanks for stopping to share in my success! It can be done - step by step!


-LL

Saturday, October 9, 2010

A Beautiful Graph

My updated weight trend from 9/2001 to today:

Ditch the Standard American Diet (SAD) - I did and that decision is saving my life!

-LL

Results Oriented: -173.4 Pounds, +4 Pull-ups

Quick update on the Saturday weigh-in. Current weight now stands at 241.6 for a total loss to date of -173.4 pounds since February 14, 2009. Also completed 4 pull-ups this week!

-LL

Sunday, October 3, 2010

My Calorie Manifesto

I frequent a lot of lowcarb, paleo, and fitness websites and blogs and it seems there is a persistent "discussion" regarding whether one needs to count calories when low carbing and/or eating primally. Some folks insist they can eat whatever they want as long as they eat under X grams of carbs. While others insist anything over 1500 calories per day and they stop losing weight and gain.

So I would like to join the discussion by saying yes and no!

Let me explain....

No they don't count:

If you have a lot of weight to lose, have been eating a high sugar, and refined/processed diet - than initially calories aren't nearly as important as reducing the carbs and normalizing your insulin levels. This was me the first year or so - I lost over a 100 lbs. without watching my calories only the carbs.

I will not say that I ate huge calories over the whole time though because as the weight dropped and insulin response improved I ate less calories (how much I don't know and don't care). So this is where the calorie side of the argument says see it's just the calories and that they do count.

It is six, half dozen, one or the other..... the whole argument to me is stupid. For the person losing the weight initially what matters PRACTICALLY is that if they can start by reducing the amount of carbohydrate than they will lose weight.  Why burden them with counting calories on top of everything - with the obesity crisis in full swing we need to start people down the right road as soon as possible with the best chance of them sticking to it.

If we could only get people to reduce carbs and go to whole foods without ever mentioning calories - what a HUGE monstrous impact we would have on the obesity problem.

With that said....

Yes they do count: