Pheidippides’s BodyBlog

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.

This entry was posted on Monday, July 28th, 2008 at 7:34 pm and is filed under Training. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.