Wednesday, August 01, 2001

Fitness update 201

Good news! I'm only 1 lb away from meeting my initial goal weight of 200 lbs (I still have another 20-30 to go). When I started last December, I weighed in at 232 and was having trouble not gaining anymore weight. I was in denial about my level of fitness and my obesity until I went to the doctor for my check-up and paid attention to the numbers that they were writing down (like a resting pulse of 88 and a blood pressure of 134/82 which is close to stage 1 hypertension). Now the doctor didn't say anything about my weight, pulse, or blood pressure; but I was curious to go home and find out what the numbers meant. I won't say that the information was scary, but it was serious enough that I decided it was time to make some changes and get back in shape. I'd never read a fitness book (figuring them all to be written by nutritional nazis or dietary dictators or just some fad that would only work for a few months), but I went to Borders and picked Dr. Bob Arnot's Guide to Turning Back the Clock by Robert Arnot, M.D. out of the pile because it looked good at first glance through the table of contents. Talk about motivational, by the time you get done reading the first few chapters, the idea that you can radically change your fitness level goes from being a "pie in the sky - someday I'll get to it - maybe later - won't it be hard?" dream to "hey, I can do this!".

Let me make one thing clear, there is no fast and easy way to lose weight, improve your fitness level, and make it permanent. If you think temporary, the results will be temporary; but if you make a permanent change you'll see permanent results (and continual improvement). All those "fad" diets are temporary solutions that cause you to lose "water weight" (e.g. you dehydrate yourself which gets you a few quick pounds but will pop right back on once you rehydrate) or they slow down your metabolism because you're starving your body. The old advice is true, it takes diet, exercise, and strength training to truly lose weight and improve your fitness.

Okay, back off of the soapbox and back onto my goal setting. Back when I started last December (gee, only 9 months ago), I had a few goals in mind. Lose 30-60 lbs, drop my at rest pulse rate to below 70, drop my blood pressure back to healthy levels, increase my aerobic fitness level (so that I don't get winded by climbing a single flight of stairs), lose the spare truck tire around my mid-section, and change my lifestyle to a more active and exercise-oriented life. I figured by having multiple goals (and my weight loss plan has multiple targets), I wouldn't be as discouraged if I failed to meet some of my goals within the first year. For weight loss, I'm not so much concerned with the number as whether or not I look thinner (e.g. losing the spare truck tire), but I also needed to move my BMI from "obese" to "overweight" to "normal". Another goal was to be fit enough to go mountain biking (real mountain biking, with big hills and technical sections) this summer. I had also heard that you had to weigh less than 200 lbs to be able to ride the burros down into the Grand Canyon out west (which is something I would love to do sometime). So I had lots of numerical targets as well as some more concrete, "get out and do things", targets.

Dr. Arnot is not kidding when he says that it's easier for some people to make a radical change and see radical results rather than making small changes and getting discouraged by small results. For the first two months, it was amazing to watch the weight drop off like stones off of a bridge, I lost about 20 lbs within the first 6 weeks just by doing a little exercise each day and changing the foods that I normally ate (I also kept a diet log and added up the calories every day using my Palm IIIx). After that I plateau'd and didn't lose any more weight for almost 4 months (work got really busy so I didn't have time to do my exercise, I was too stressed and got discouraged so I allowed myself to not exercise), but by sticking to a (mostly) healthy diet of good foods and the occasional exercise session I was able to keep from gaining weight (yeah!). Plus, I still felt better about myself because I knew that it was possible to lose the weight and keep it off (at least for 4 months). So even though I wasn't seeing additional results on the bathroom scale; I wasn't too discouraged because I knew that I could do better if I re-applied myself to getting exercise. In the last 2 months I've dropped an additional 10 lbs because I've started riding my bike 3-4 times per week for almost 2 hours each session. Now, I'm starting to see the weight start shedding again which gets me excited so I ride more which makes me more fit which makes me happier which means I push myself harder when I ride which makes me lose more fat... you see, it's a reinforcing circle!

So now I'm trying to decide what outdoor activity I want to take up next... (for when it gets too cold to go bike riding).

posted by Wuphon's at 9:43 AM