Pheidippides’s BodyBlog

I’m not sure it’s eating clean so much as eating less, but it’s working.  Today I measured 169.2 on the scale. I haven’t measured my waist yet; I’ll dig the tape measure out of the closet later when my wife wakes up so she doesn’t get too cranky. She can’t stand my early rising habits already; no need to add fuel to the fire.

Yesterday I had much the same diet — cereal for breakfast, fruit and leftover parmesan chicken and cauliflower for lunch (she cooked a LOT of parmesan chicken, folks and it’s really good — and I sort of skipped dinner.  I got home from work very late last night — after 10:30 p.m. — and had a small bowl of Great Grains cereal.  I doubt that fits within the normal definition of cleaning eating, since it has processed sugar in it, but it’s still reasonably packed with vitamins and my nightly calorie consumption was low.

So all in all I’m still on track.  I was 174 Monday morning and I’m 169.2 today.  A lot of that is just processing garbage out out of the digestive system, and probably a little water loss, but it’s still something.

I should try to exercise today.

Diet yesterday: stayed on track.  1 bowl of cereal; 1 scrambled egg with hot sauce.  The rest of half carton of yogurt (90 calories) for breakfast.

LUnch: steamed broccoli and about half of a large boneless chicken breast, Chicken parmesan style.

One container of gatorade.

Dinner: 1 1/2 small bean and rice tostadas; some grapes and cherries.  Steamed cauliflower.

Drank a lot of water yesterday.

Ran yesterday: 6 miles in 52 odd minutes; mostly slow recovery pace (9 minute/mile plus) but with four VO2 max intervals of 1/2 mile at 3:21, 3:18, 3:24, 3:28.  Temperature was mid or high 80s, which affected me for last two intervals.  I wanted my last one to be the fastest but couldn’t quite hold the pace.  Still, pace for intervals was 6:36-6:56 min/mile, not too bad considering heat.  Slower than I’d like for vo2 max intervals.  Estimated total time at or near Vo2 max (based upon estimated 2 minutes to get there for each interval): 5:31 minutes.  Drank a swig of gatorade before hand and the rest of it right after.

Saw 1/4 inch improvement in waist from day before.  But this a.m. my weight was higher — 172.4 — as was BF — 21.5%.  Go figure!  I ate pretty well yesterday, although I overdid it a bit at dinner.  Could be all the water I drank at the end of the day after I went running.  I will stay on diet and see.

So far so good.  This a.m. weighed 170.8; BF 20.6%.  Weight 2.2 pounds down from previous day, so with light eating I was able to shed some weekend bloat.

Eating was completely under control yesterday:

Breakfast: two bowls of grape nuts and cheerios; two turkey sausage; 1 1/2 cups of coffee at home and a medium nonfat chai tea latte on way to work.

Lunch:  1/2 of a parmesan chicken breast, with tomato sauce and a hunk of mozzerella cheese and about 8 tater tots.

Dinner:  I didn’t really have dinner.  I worked out, was home close to 9:30, and to put a little post-workout fuel in my belly had maybe 10 grapes and 5 cherries and about 80 calories of lowfat strawberry yogurt.

O.K., O.K., so it wasn’t the most serious daily diet ever — seriously light on green vegetables, I guess — but it was within the parameters of my diet and it was definitely fewer calories than i burned yesterday.  I’ll get some greens today.  I count it as a success.

This a.m.:  1 bowl grape nuts and cheerios.  1 scrambled egg with Habanero pepper sauce.  The remainder of the yogurt (about 90 calories).  In the middle of two cups  of coffee.

I will drink a lot more water today.

Workout yesterday:  38 minutes on the elliptical machine at the gym.  Kept watts fairly high, around 270, and my HR was sustained around 150 for a fairly long stretch of it.  Burned 740 calories.

I may go running today.

Weight this a.m. 174, a bit more than I would have liked, but not a catastrophe.  I’m eating very lightly today and I am sure will be lighter tomorrow morning.

Waist today measured 36.25.  I measure right at the belly button, which is near the widest place, since it is where my love handles are.

So I jumped into this challenge thing, not really knowing what it was about, when it started or ended, or what I had to do.  After doing so I realized it had already started.  I’m not exactly sure how to do this, because my emphasis is not going to be on strict clean eating (my eating is always at least somewhat dirty), but upon moderation in how much I eat, avoiding the worst stuff, and exercising a lot to reduce fat.

I’m not really interested in addressing my "backside" per se, because that’s not where the main problem is.  Since my love handles can be seen from the backside, however, I think they fit within the scheme of things if the term "backside" is generously interpreted. I’ve thought about renaming my own version of "Baby Got Back" either the "Don’t Go to Waist" or the "I’m All Out of Love Handles" challenge.  But I’m not going to spend a lot of time on that.

The goal: reduce weight to 165 by Labor Day and significantly reduce love handles and waist by the same day.  If I get my waist to 34 inches (that’s at the widest point — near the belly button) I am sure I will see a significant difference.

Plan:

Aerobic exercise for at least 30 minutes 5 times a week, preferably in the form of running 3 or 4 times per week, with remainder divided among biking, swimming, and gym machines.

Some strength training — maybe one to two gym sessions per week and crunches, pushups, and curls with my free weights at home.  Not a strong emphasis on this.

Diet parameters — from which I will not cheat for a period of three weeks:

This isn’t going to be overly strict, because with my exercise it won’t need to be.  I will lose weight by dropping some of my current bad habits.

1.  No bad food after 8 p.m.  No crackers, chips, or ice cream.  A small bit of yogurt with fruit is O.K.  I will allow myself a bit of ice cream as long as it is no more than about a heaping tablespoon.
2.  Cut back alcohol a bit.  No more than 4 times a week.  No more than 1 drink equivalent (one beer/one glass of wine/one jigger of hard booze) per day, except on one day when I will allow myself two.
3.  No more than two moderate sized bowls of cereal in the morning.

4.  No fast food.

5.  Lots of vegetables, with plenty of variety, plenty of fruit, but watch sugar intake with fruit.
6.  For each meal, stop eating just before I get full and don’t have seconds.Watch portion size at meals.
7. try to have a little protein with each meal.

8.  Have one day a week where I eat VERY little — not quite starve but really eat just a little bit. I’ll make today that day since I’ve had very little so far.
9.  Generally stay away from the bad stuff: crackers, chips, soda, sugared drinks (I’ll allow myself a very little fruit juice once in a while), candy. I won’t completely give up ice cream — just mostly.  Minimize processed food.

10. Go a bit lighter on dinner.  Eat well for breakfast.  Keep lunch moderate.

That’s all I can think of now.  Other rules to keep pace with my challenge:

1.  Keep a log of what I eat every day.

2.  Measure weight, bodyfat, waist every day.

3. Take some pictures of the offending regions fairly often.

I’ll stick to this diet for two weeks for today and see how things go, and either keep it up or tinker with it through Labor Day as needed or appropriate.

Here goes.

Just weighed myself.  7:20 p.m. weight:  173.2 pounds.  BF 20.6%.  Not as bad as I expected, especially for early evening.

Will weigh again tomorrow morning, and go to gym.

Julofthenile has some last man standing (man?) challenge going.  I don’t exactly understand it, how long it lasts, how you win, etc.  But details seem unimportant, so I’m in.  My initial goal is to get weight down to 165 by Labor Day for three reasons:  1) to shrink my waist, 2) to reduce bodyfat percentage, and 3) to improve my running potential by getting lighter.  I’m somewhere around 172 or so, sort of, although currently am probably somewhat bloated beyond that because of a weekend wine tasting and indulging with friends.  Friday I was 172.2 in the a.m.  I’ll weigh myself tomorrow morning.

Ran yesterday a.m. around 7:15 — 10 miles in 81 minutes 21 seconds.  Felt good — much, much better than my run mid-day Thursday, which was in 90 plus degree weather, no clouds, awful air, and in the midst of mild asthma symptoms brought on by a cold.  My wife thought I was an idiot to be running, of course.  But I said, "If I feel awful anyway I may as well feel awful running."  And I did.  My pace was slower than 10 minute/mile — somewhere around 6 slow painful miles in 1 hour 2 minutes.

Back tomorrow morning!

Last week I experienced a new hazard of running: crime.  I left my car at the end of the road near river levee where I can access the bike trail on which I run.  Just as I finished my hour-long run, I heard an alarm go off.  At first I thought it was a house, but then I thought, "Uh Oh."  I sprinted over the levee to my car, and, sure enough, thieves had busted open my right front window, grabbed my gym bag, and taken off.  I think I saw the getaway car.  They didn’t take much, no credit cards or money or valuables, but they did get my driver’s license and my change of clothes.  Plus, I have to get the window repaired.

That had never happened to me before, but I should have known better.  It’s a common break-in site.  I called the Sheriff and filled out a crime report, and with any luck they’ll catch the culprits.  In the meantime I’m going to be a lot more careful.

Back to the subject of fitness, I did have a good run, and I had an even better one Sunday morning, running 10 miles in 79 minutes 21 seconds, a 7:56 pace.  That’s the fastest I’ve run 10 miles in a while, certainly since last year some time.  So I seem to have a decent foundation from which to build to try to achieve my race goals this fall, if my Achilles tendon will just hold up.

Back from vacation — a week long cruise from Seattle to southeastern Alaska.  Very rainy, but still a great vacation for the family.  With free food available for eight days, however, I did not maintain careful attention to my diet.  So it’s back to square one with the de-flabbification plan.

Saturday morning post-trip weight was 174.2, not as bad as I thought it might be but worse than in early June when I initially resolved to lose weight this summer.  My goal is to get under 165 by Labor Day.  That gives me seven weeks from today.  I estimate I can reduce weight by about two or three pounds over the next few days just be being careful and shucking off my trip-earned bloat.  That will give me about seven weeks to lose seven pounds.  Ambitious, but doable with careful eating, continuous aerobic activity, and some strength training thrown in.

I ran eight miles on Saturday the morning after returning from the trip.  The air quality in Sacramento was finally decent — you could actually see the sky and the sun, which I was told you could not for most of the week we were on vacation.  The fires seem to be abating and the air in Northern California is returning to normal, which is to say, bad, but not horrendous.

The run went well — eight miles in 63:25 — 7:56 min/mile pace — but my Achilles tendon is sore again, so I have to be careful.  I may have to scale running ambitions back, which means I’ll have to swim and bike to make up for any lack of running.  It’s sort of day to day, so we’ll see.

We’ll see how things go over the next seven weeks.  I have not weighed 165 pounds in over 20 years, so it will be a challenge, but this is the right time to try to do it.