There's a fire that burns away the lies, manifesting in the spiritual eye
I should have bet someone on how quickly I could lose the weight. This morning, I was down to 218 lbs. I will say, I did eat a lot over the weekend, and, um, I did expel a lot of it on Monday and yesterday. Let’s say that I was a bit backed up on Sunday. So with that, and running and eating well, I knew that I would shed it quickly.
Now comes the problem. I need to try to pick up on this and keep going for several weeks, get my body to the point where I am burning calories 7 days a week, not 3 or 4 and then overeat for 3 or 4 (depending on when I’ve let it all start.) That seems to be my pattern the past few months.
On a positive note, I have cracked the mystery of the 3 miles in 30 minutes. The past 2 days, I’ve hit 3 miles exactly in 30 minutes. It involves less warm up and less cool down and more running at 7 mph, but it is worth it. I am very happy to have reached this goal, but it is so much tougher than I thought it would be.
And now on to the sad truth of right now (and why I am not happy about the weight loss at the moment.) I don’t know what I have done, but I can’t get rid of my gut. And before you say that it is the hardest part to lose and all that happy crap, you don’t know that I was getting rid of it by the middle of May, and then…that stopped.
I remember the night before we left for Amsterdam, I was at Carl’s, ready for bed, and he noted that you could tell that my stomach was much smaller than it had been. And I agreed. When I put on my pants the next day, I noticed that the stomach, while not flat, was a lot smaller, and when you tried to pinch the love handles, you could tell that they were mostly loose skin that remains when you lose weight.
Nowadays, even though I am technically at my pre-Amsterdam weight again, it has come from my thighs and upper chest – I can tell when I look in the mirror that my upper chest is saggy from just being skin, and my thighs have extra skin on them, but my gut is still large. I know it isn’t large like it was in 2003, but it is still larger than it was before the summer, before Amsterdam.
I am guessing that I need to start looking into doing sit-ups, and move on to the weight lifting portion of my plan. I was hoping to get down to about 210 lbs before I started weight lifting, but I don’t know if much more weight loss is going to occur. I seem to have hit a plateau at 218 lbs in the recent past, and I haven’t ever gotten below that yet.
Problem is, once you start doing weight lifting (in this case, the Bowflex that has been sitting unused at my parents house for a few years – it was given to me free, I didn’t spend any money on it, so I don’t seem to feel the same need to use it that I do my $2000 + NordicTrack treadmill) you should really start eating more protein, and more calories as a whole, and I just don’t feel like I want to give up my 1600 calorie/day diet yet. And I don’t want to give that up just yet.
I will make a deal with myself. I will give it all one year total, at least running. I started running in October 2005, so instead of freaking out about my enormous gut, I will just keep running and eating, and if nothing has changed, or I still don’t feel like I’ve lost enough of the gut, I will start the Bowflex regime. Good thing about Bowflex is I have a software program which tells me (and shows me) exactly what exercises to do to achieve what I want to achieve. No research to do, no asking anyone else, just pop in information into the software, and it will tell me which lifts to do, and even has a grid form it will print up to track progress.
Wish me luck.
Now comes the problem. I need to try to pick up on this and keep going for several weeks, get my body to the point where I am burning calories 7 days a week, not 3 or 4 and then overeat for 3 or 4 (depending on when I’ve let it all start.) That seems to be my pattern the past few months.
On a positive note, I have cracked the mystery of the 3 miles in 30 minutes. The past 2 days, I’ve hit 3 miles exactly in 30 minutes. It involves less warm up and less cool down and more running at 7 mph, but it is worth it. I am very happy to have reached this goal, but it is so much tougher than I thought it would be.
And now on to the sad truth of right now (and why I am not happy about the weight loss at the moment.) I don’t know what I have done, but I can’t get rid of my gut. And before you say that it is the hardest part to lose and all that happy crap, you don’t know that I was getting rid of it by the middle of May, and then…that stopped.
I remember the night before we left for Amsterdam, I was at Carl’s, ready for bed, and he noted that you could tell that my stomach was much smaller than it had been. And I agreed. When I put on my pants the next day, I noticed that the stomach, while not flat, was a lot smaller, and when you tried to pinch the love handles, you could tell that they were mostly loose skin that remains when you lose weight.
Nowadays, even though I am technically at my pre-Amsterdam weight again, it has come from my thighs and upper chest – I can tell when I look in the mirror that my upper chest is saggy from just being skin, and my thighs have extra skin on them, but my gut is still large. I know it isn’t large like it was in 2003, but it is still larger than it was before the summer, before Amsterdam.
I am guessing that I need to start looking into doing sit-ups, and move on to the weight lifting portion of my plan. I was hoping to get down to about 210 lbs before I started weight lifting, but I don’t know if much more weight loss is going to occur. I seem to have hit a plateau at 218 lbs in the recent past, and I haven’t ever gotten below that yet.
Problem is, once you start doing weight lifting (in this case, the Bowflex that has been sitting unused at my parents house for a few years – it was given to me free, I didn’t spend any money on it, so I don’t seem to feel the same need to use it that I do my $2000 + NordicTrack treadmill) you should really start eating more protein, and more calories as a whole, and I just don’t feel like I want to give up my 1600 calorie/day diet yet. And I don’t want to give that up just yet.
I will make a deal with myself. I will give it all one year total, at least running. I started running in October 2005, so instead of freaking out about my enormous gut, I will just keep running and eating, and if nothing has changed, or I still don’t feel like I’ve lost enough of the gut, I will start the Bowflex regime. Good thing about Bowflex is I have a software program which tells me (and shows me) exactly what exercises to do to achieve what I want to achieve. No research to do, no asking anyone else, just pop in information into the software, and it will tell me which lifts to do, and even has a grid form it will print up to track progress.
Wish me luck.
posted by Mike at 8:18 AM
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