Too Long...Too Much

OK, so it has been way TOO LONG since my last post and (I suspect not so coincidentally) I have gained way TOO MUCH weight in that time. Along with some friends (and friends of friends), I have started an exercise accountability group called Synergy Energy (join us if you'd like). But I've found that while it is encouraging, there really doesn't seem to be a way for it to hold the members accountable, without it being overly intrusive in people's lives.

Well, that set me to thinking about who we should be accountable too (don't worry, the preacher isn't about to step into the pulpit on this) and I couldn't help but conclude - ourselves.

The reality is, there is very little in this life over which we can actually have complete control. Oh, we like to think we do, but that's just a facade we design for our own sense of comfort. I'm not saying that that is a bad thing; in many ways it is the ultimate coping mechanism. But there are a few things over which we do have nearly complete control. One of those is our weight.

Now it is true that there are those who have medical issues that cause them to have much less control over their weight, but even in those cases they can choose to be at the healthiest weight they can manage. And it is also true that it is much harder for some people to maintain a healthy weight than others (dang metabolism!), but it is also true that someone who is 5 foot 6 inches has a much harder time of dunking a basketball than someone who is 6 foot 6inches, but Spud Webb not only did it but he also the NBA dunk contest in 1986.

The point is we tend to let our self prescribed "realities" dictate what we believe we can and can't do. That's true in general and it is true for weight loss as well.

I, like many other people, tend to pretend for the preservation of my own positive self image that there is just too much going on in life to do what it takes to loose weight and keep it off. I tell myself I have too many responsibilities and too little time, to lose weight. Which is a real blessing when you think about it - I get to have my cake and eat it too (quite literally and quite unfortunately). I get to be fat and not feel too bad about it because I have excused it away and managed to preserve a bit of a positive self image (albeit contrived) as well.

Life is to short to live in this constant state of self created false reality (unfortunately, for those of us who are overweight, life is statistically shorter than those who are fit). So, today I jump back on the fitness wagon...time to stop being under-fit.

Whose with me?!

Crunch Time?

Crunches\Sit-ups will not help you lose weight around your tummy...at least not any more than push-ups or many other exercises.

There is a long standing myth that if you want to lose that belly, you need to do more sit-ups. I can not tell you how happy I would be if that were true, but the reality is: targeted weight loss (weight loss that focuses on one specific "problem area") is a scam.

The reason for this is pretty simple actually. When your muscles burn fat (that's a big part of their fuel) they don't just burn it from the fat closest to them. Your body is a fully integrated system. When muscles burn fat, it comes from all over.

Crunches\Sit-ups ARE a great exercise. When you exercise you want to get as many muscles as possible involved and there are a lot of muscles in your mid-section. And...that washboard abs look is achieved (in part) by doing crunches. The problem is, you can actually have washboard abs but they can be covered by fat if you aren't living a healthy lifestyle.

The trick to losing belly fat is the exact same trick to losing ANY fat. Exercise (build muscle, keep your resting metabolism up) and eat a healthy diet (very little bad fats, sugars and enough protein, vitamins and fiber).

For many of us, when we start a weight loss program some of our belly goes first (probably sub-cutaneous belly fat), but that last bit (probably visceral fat) seems to be the hardest to get rid of. The trick is, just like before when you hit plateaus (I still can't believe that's the way to spell that), trust your system.

Also, now that you are in better shape, it might be time to step up the interval training a bit. So, try short bursts of whatever exercise you are doing followed by a recovery period of exercise. In other words, if you are jogging in place (a great weight loss exercise), try doing a 45 second burst of energy every 5 minutes and then resume your normal jogging pace. This has lots of health benefits, but the one I like best is that it is a very good way of encouraging your body to burn visceral fat.

So, it's not that crunches are bad – they are actually good! They just might not be doing what you think they are!

Keep at it – you can do this! And let me know what fitness tip you'd like to know about!

Die Diet, Die!

Diets don't work. Really. Sure you can lose weight with diets, but making your diet your primary focus (which is what diets do – hence the name), does not address the problem.

Look at it this way, if (before they were outlawed) your neighbor had tossed a Lawn Dart that inadvertently crossed your shared fence and landed directly in your noggin and you went to the doctor and his or her solution was simply to shoot your head full of Novocain and then send you home – well let's just say I am quite certain you'd never be going back to that quack again. Yet, we go back to diets over and over again, even though each time we only receive temporary fixes that don't address the real issues at hand.

Much like the doctor who treats the symptom (pain in the head) rather than the issue (there is a lawn dart sticking out of your head), we treat the symptom (weighing too much) rather than the real issue (unhealthy lifestyle and bodies that are bad fat burners) when we go to diets over and over again, only to never quite lose all the weight we needed to lose and frequently gaining much of it, if not all of it, back.

We don't need Novocain (diets) to mask the issue and when we make a particular “diet” the primary way we lose weight, that is actually what we are doing. We are probably losing some weight, but in the end we are not transforming our bodies into lean bodies – just lighter bodies.

You can not permanently become a skinny person on a diet. End of story. Diets do not produce muscle. Worse yet overweight people actually store up more fat from the calories they do eat than skinny people (I know, I know – life is very cruel). You need to change your body to that of a lean person not a lighter person. You need to be treating the real issue not the symptom.

There is only one way to do this. Exercise. Plenty of skinny people, while not over weight, are over fat...because they don't exercise. Even blessed with naturally high metabolism, they are very unhealthy because their Body Mas Index (indicator of body fatness) is high and it is always a big surprise to friends when they have heart problems. A diet will not fix that situation. Exercise will.

A diet will not fix my issue (or yours). Exercise will. And not just a walk around the block every day. While that is a good start, it is not what your body needs to build more muscles to convert yourself to a lean fat burning machine rather than the fat producing machines that we over-fat people are.

You need, at least 4 times a week, to exercise for more than 20 continuous minutes (no stopping and starting) at 65-80 percent of your maximum heart rate. Now, forget about that “65-80 percent of your maximum heart rate.” Don't forget about doing it, just don't worry about calculating it. We could learn to do it and to measure our heart rate while exercising – but where's the fun in that. Just use one of these two measures. After 12 minutes you should either be breathing deeply but not gasping for air or you should only be able to carry on limited conversations not tell stories. After you hit 20 minutes you are in the zone for turning fat marbleized muscle in to lean mean fat burning machines.

I do need to say, the RIGHT diet will help you get to your lean body faster, but it should not be your primary focus – that should be exercise.

Since my last post, I've dropped another 2 lbs. That's a total of 24 lbs in a little over 4 weeks. I had hoped for 25 in 4 weeks, but that's still pretty good!

Keep at it – you can do this! And, please, let me hear from you. What do you want to hear more about?

Lean Not Light or Weights not Weight

In my last post, Give Me Some Skin, I said I'd go into some more detail about what you can do to reduce your body fat percentage.

The good news is that you already know all of the answers...the bad new is that, really, you already know all of the answers. If you have been reading this blog from the beginning, you have the foundation for loosing body fat. Yes, this is a weight loss blog, but my approach to weight loss isn't to make the scales give you a lower reading. If it were, I wouldn't have allowed myself to go about 10 days with no weight loss what-so-ever. I could have easily lost weight during that time by encouraging the loss of muscle. Instead, I spent the middle of those 10 days, watching my weight increase by 4 pounds – and I continued to lift weights KNOWING that it might increase my weight for the short term. Why?

Because I trusted my system, a system that is actually more interested in a healthy body than a low weight body. A health body is one that has an appropriate body fat percentage. The interesting thing is that when you have the right body fat percentage – you tend to be an appropriate weight for your ages, sex and height.

Much like in my second article, Kick It Up A Notch (or 2 or 3), where I said the most important thing about losing weight isn't calories, or protein, or exercise but rather metabolism - the goal for losing weight isn't to get the scale to read the number for which you are looking; it's to get your body fat to an appropriate level – everything else you want (including no loose skin) comes with it.

So, my personal system isn't so much a “weight loss” system as it is a “fat loss” system. That's why, in post after post, I talk about what good fat burners muscles are. Changing your diet alone will not help you get rid of loose skin (fat loss); it may help you lose weight, but as we know now – the two are not the same.

For continued fat loss you have to build muscle. That also means that eating too low a calorie diet, while possibly helping you lose weight, is not going to help you lose loose skin (you have no IDEA how hard I worked to use those two words next to each other – English major in me I'm afraid...). When you deprive your body of the appropriate amount of calories it goes into starvation mode, saving up the long term energy sources (fat) and burning of the quick sources (muscle). So, the first thing is to eat enough.

The next thing to do is don't eat too much – because you want to build muscle, not fat.

Then, begin understanding your metabolism – that's your best tool for burning fat (as long as you are not eating too little). One of the keys of ramping up your metabolism is building muscle. And the best way to build muscle is exercise.

So, like with everything else in weight loss, there is no magic pill (and don't believe the marketers that try to tell you otherwise). It takes work and dedication. It takes exercise and just the right amount of calories …. and enough patience to trust that over time the system will work.

And that is a great lead into my latest news. Since my last check in where I had lost 3 lbs after going 10 days with no weight loss, I have lost another 4 lbs! W00t! That's 7 lbs so far this week!

Keep at it and let me hear from you!

Just The Fats Ma'am

I have bad news (hey, whaddya' expect? It's a weight loss blog). You don't just have fat. You have two kinds of fat. (No that is not the fat version of the joke, “He's two kinds of stupid.”) . Our bodies are comprised of two kind of fat: subcutaneous and visceral. The question you should be asking yourself about now is, “why do I care?”

Well, have you ever noticed that when you loose weight belly fat is not only the hardest to get rid of but the last to go? That's probably because it is visceral fat and because visceral fat is so deeply embedded, it is twice as hard to loose. Subcutaneous fat is the fat the resides just under your skin (hence, subcutaneous – clever huh?). Diet alone will actually help to reduce subcutaneous fat. But visceral fat is a different story. It seems to be very stubborn.

Visceral fat is sometimes called organ fat, because it is the fat that not only makes beer bellies, but also wraps around your organs (very dangerous stuff this visceral fat). That is actually a bit of a misnomer because both fats are actually organs themselves. Yep – that's right. Fat isn't just a lifeless blob, it is an organ that produces hormones (we've mentioned that before) and even sends signals to a lot of other organs.

Back on topic – Visceral fat is deeply embedded, surrounds organs, and leads to all kinds of health issues including heart disease, stroke, diabetes and hypertension. So, while it takes longer to get rid of, you really want to get rid of this stuff. The question is how?

Exercise - and not light exercise. You need to get at it. At least 30 minutes a day of moderate exercise, 6 days a week. Don't fall into the trap that infomercials perpetuate – you can not spot reduce. In other words, sit-ups do not focus your fat burning in the stomach area. It will help tone those muscles so that eventually, once the visceral fat is gone, you'll be well toned, but nothing more.

If you want better, faster results, try interval training. It is the best way to loose visceral fat. Interval training basically means going at the exercise hard very briefly and the taking it a little easier for a bit, then repeating the process. You may recall me mentioning that as I get into shape I like to start each mile of my bike ride with a sprint. Well, as I continue to get into shape, I like to increase the interval at which I do a sprint but, at the same time, I shorten the length of the sprint.

Research shows that the quicker the intervals of intense work out, the greater the results in lowering visceral fat – even when the duration of each intense workout segment is shorter! So, as I ride my bike I sprint for say 10 sections of pavement then peddle at a moderate pace for 15 – sprint, peddle – sprint, peddle – sprint, peddle – sprint, peddle.

So, find the interval training that works best for you and get at it! We've got fat to burn!

I'm looking for weight loss topics you'd like to know about. So, let me hear from you.

Keep at it – you can do this!

Dude, You Threw Off My Grove

I've decided to go back through my previous post and clean them up a little. You may have noticed my annoying little habit of staying focused on the point at hand at the expense of other possibly useful information (usually, found in brackets like this with a promise to explain it latter). So, I'm going back over them and posting the other (possibly useful) information.

The first I want to cover comes from “Dumbells - Yeah, I'm Talking To You." We talked about the importance of both aerobic and anaerobic exercise. At some point, in my oh-so-charming-way, I offhandedly mentioned the importance of changing the types of exercise you do – not just switching back and forth from one type of aerobic exercise to one type of anaerobic exercise.

Well, besides the simple (and slightly obvious) reason of it helping you avoid getting bored of your exercise, there is also a very good physical reason for it. Plateaus (did I spell that right? Hmmm, just looks odd – weird word). That's right plateaus (seriously, looks odd doesn't it?). If you've ever dieted before or tried to achieve an exercise goal before, you know that that six letter word is really a four letter word (so to speak).

Nothing can suck the drive and focus right out of you like hitting a week long plateaus (does somebody wanna' look that up ? 'Cause it still looks wrong to me). Repeating the same exercises over and over, while probably giving you early success, is a sure fire way to hit plateaus (if for no other reason than getting bored). Really, though, it makes sense. Most of us who are overweight are also under-exercised. So, we work the same muscles over and over and produced pretty good (and sort of instant) results. However, there is a point at which those particular muscles become reasonably well worked and the improvements on them and our added weight loss due to new muscle begins to decline and eventually level off.

Like I've mentioned before, that Darwin was on to something. Our bodies do adapt and remarkably quickly I might add. Our body's systems (muscular, cardio-vascular) adapt to training routines faster than you might think. So, don't let your routine be...well, so routine. Mix it up. Exercise different muscles and give them all a chance to perform (that means you'll be making even MORE fat burners!).

So, while many of us like routine, when it comes to loosing weight, it is not your friend. So get out of that groove and and rotate your exercises to maximize your results.

Oh, and two of those four pound I gained are already gone - nice!

Keep at it – you can do this! And let me hear from you.

Dumbells - Yeah, I'm Talking To You

Today it is time to start thinking about exercise. (Did you hear that, I think it was a collective groan). For most of us the thought of exercise is not appealing – at all - in any form – what-so-ever. So, for me at least, it makes sense to understand why you are doing it and to understand what kinds are the most effective. I don't know about you, but if I'm going to exercise, I want to be sure I'm getting everything out of it that I can. I'd be less than pleased to find out I was having no, negative or very little impact on my weight loss because of how I was exercising.

As I mentioned yesterday, we are going to consider two basic types of exercise: aerobic and anaerobic. The difference between the two has to do with the amount of oxygen being delivered to your muscles (of particular concern are the enzymes we talked about yesterday). Just as their name's suggest, aerobic means enough air and anaerobic mean not enough.

Now, right off the top, thinking about yesterday's post, you may say, “OK, great, just tell me what exercises are anaerobic and I'll avoid them like the plague.” After all, who wants the pain that can sometimes go with it and, as we learned yesterday, who wants to be breaking down all those wonderful enzymes that eat carbohydrate, fat, and protein without also building the enzymes back up? Seems counter productive.

Well, don't jump so fast. While those somewhat negative qualities of anaerobic exercise are true, anaerobic exercise (weight lifting, sprinting) also has some big (and I mean BIG) up sides. For starters, it burns more calories than aerobic exercise (at least short-term). It also builds muscles and like I said yesterday, muscles are FANTASTIC fat burners. More muscles will also help you do aerobic exercise for longer periods of time thus enable you to burn more calories for even longer periods of time. It also gets the old metabolism cranking and it stays running at elevated levels for longer than anything else will do for you.

Aerobic exercise (running, swimming, biking, tennis) allows you to burn calories constantly over a longer period of time and if you are doing it at the right level your body will be breaking down fat, carbs and proteins and at the same time rebuilding enzymes (enzyme biosynthesis), so you can keep burning them away!

What does all this mean? Well, do them both. Early in my weight loss, I like to alternate the two. One day building muscles and getting that metabolism to ramp-up for longer periods. The next day I ride my bike or some other aerobic exercise (need to keep changing what you do, more on that in another post) in order to burn more calories over time (it also makes more red blood cells, which care more oxygen, which we know is used in burning carbs, fat and protein as well as helps in enzyme biosynthesis – so we can exercise longer over time and born more calories – sweet!).

Once I am in a little better shape, I like to combine the two. Sometimes this means speed walking with weights and every 10 minutes or so I do as many curls as I can. Or when riding my bike I start every mile with a sprint. You get the picture.

So, get out there and exercise – mix it up – and before you know it, the old metabolism will be working with you, not against you.

I'm taking a day off on the weigh in. But numbers will be posted tomorrow.

Keep at it and let me hear from you!

Break It Down or It's All Geek To Me

Metabolism. It is still just as important in today's post as it was in yesterday's. But today we are adding the consideration of two big .50 cent words, which (when put together) are a key to weight loss as well as a key to staying fit. They are enzyme and biosynthesis. Together they make enzyme biosynthesis.

The great news is that as speciously science-geeky as it sounds, we've already talked about some of the key parts of enzyme biosynthesis. (See now, it gets less scary every time we say it! Say it with me again, “enzyme biosythesis”).

I went out on my first bike ride in 6 months yesterday. I was moving along at about 12 mph (not blazing fast, but probably not the best speed for an overweight guy who hadn't been on a bike for 6 months). About 20 minutes in, my right calf cramped like mad. I stretch and repositioned it over and over trying to get it to stop...but, being determined, I continued to petal away. Then my left calf followed suit. They were awful by the time I made it home, but in minutes after stopping they were completely normal.

Was it lack of muscle fitness that caused my pain? Well, if it were, it probably wouldn't have stop when I stopped. My pain was caused by pushing my body too far too fast.

Back to the science-geek stuff. Metabolism is ramped up by enzyme biosynthesis. In order to make energy (a direct benefit of metabolism) your body has to breaking down molecules (carbs, fats and protiens). In order to do it, it uses enzymes (delicate little tools made by DNA from protein). That process of making enzymes is called.... (you guessed it) enzyme biosynthesis.

Why is it so important? Well, you need enzymes to break down carbs, fats and proteins. But, as I said, enzymes are both PROTIEN and DELICATE! So, it turns out that not only do they break down (as proteins), but they breakdown faster than the others (they are delicate). So, in order to build a body that burns calories well (if you weren't gifted with genes that do it for you), you have to constantly encourage your body to be in the process of enzyme biosynthesis. It is KEY to raising you metabolism.

How do you do it? Eating right and exercise (more importantly the right kinds and amounts of exercise). Which brings us back to my bike ride. My pain was caused by the build up of acid in my muscles. There's a long nerdy explanation that is really needed here which involves pyruvic acid, lactic acid, conversion of oxygen and a few other very uninteresting biological concepts, but it is sufficient to say – I over did it - and while my muscles could keep up, my lungs and heart could not, so I didn't get enough oxygen to my muscle cells. Enzymes need oxygen to do their work. Too little exercise and you don't encourage them enough to do their work – they will let you know about this by not breaking down the fat in your body and you'll find yourself buying bigger and bigger pants. Too intense of exercise and you won't be able to give them enough oxygen to do their work – they will let you know about this by sharp pain and probably a reduced ability to lose weight.

For me, my over doing it (even though I was on target with my calories and protein yesterday) meant that I seriously impeded my body's ability to burn carbs, fat and protein – all the while I was building muscle as I exercised which of course is heavier than fat. Net result, weigh in today – 263. I lost 1 lb. (of course that's the equivalent of 3500 calories, so nothing to complain about).

Tomorrow, more on the exercise\oxygen relationship – aerobic vs. anaerobic exercise. And...let me hear from you! It's easier when we are all in this together!