Day 9

I now understand comfort food so much better than I have before. This weekend has brought with it some stress related issues, and for some reason I didn’t care about drinking Cokes and eating ice cream. Who could have guessed? I have always talked about comfort food in the abstract, always knowing that I had them but never really thinking about what they were. Coke and ice cream. I’ll bet if I had had any chocolate in the house that would be gone by now, too.

So how much does one eating binge hurt a weight loss program? I can’t tell you yet. You see, my wife’s curling iron fell onto my scale in just the wrong place and popped the spring. Now the scale is stuck on 170. I guess I could stand on the scale and pretend that I have gotten down that far, but I will probably just have to go get another scale.

Tomorrow starts week 2 of pushups, so I had better get some rest. Maybe after a bowl of ice cream.

Day 7

And the magic number is…182 pounds. That is 2 pounds down in the first week. I know better than to get excited about this. First, my home scale is the old-fashioned spring-based model, so I am trying to read the little hash marks. Second, I could probably regain the weight by dinner if I tried. But I am moving in the right direction, so all is good.

Here is what I have changed: 1) I cut way back on the Cokes. In the last 7 days I have had four, which is down from a typical 10-14. I am still not drinking enough water, but one thing at a time. 2) I have cleared out my snack drawer. Usually I have something sweet in there to munch on while I work. I may get some pistachios there eventually, but for now it is empty. 3) I focus on proteins over carbs, especially at breakfast. 4) I cut back on my nighttime snacking. Usually I like a bowl of ice cream or a brownie, but I decided I can do without most of that. I often have a few hunger pains when I go to bed, but I can live with that easily enough. 5) I started the 7 Weeks to 100 Pushups plan. Exercising 30 minutes per week won’t drop my weight by itself, but it may reshape what I have and, just possibly, get me motivated to do other things as well.

Speaking of pushups, this was the end of week 1. Today’s reps (with 120 second rest intervals) were 11-15-9-9-max (at least 13); my final rep was actually 17, so I think I did pretty well! Now I take a few days off and start fresh on Monday.

Day 6 - Cheesecake and the Rapture

Have you heard that the world is ending on Saturday? According to the people who run FamilyRadio.com, the Lord will come back to rapture all Christians on May 21 at 6:00 pm local time, advancing around the globe hour by hour. Stringing together a bunch of scriptures and some bad mathematics, they are not the first to predict the second coming, nor will they be the last.

I’m really not interested in the theology, not today anyway. What interests me is the irony of the Lord coming so soon after my starting a weight loss program. If this week was my last on earth, would I want to depart doing what I can to lose weight, or would I want to go out with cheesecake? Improving myself is good (even going into eternity), but I do love cheesecake. Tough call.

Anyway, tomorrow is weigh-in day. I have not been working strenuously at this, so I don’t expect much loss yet, if any. But I feel that I am on the start of something good. Tomorrow I’ll write about what I have been doing.

Day 5 - Deluged by Diet Books

Pushup day again! Today it was 10-12-8-8-max (at least 12) with 90 seconds between. I did 14 in my last rep, putting me up to 52 total for the day. The good thing is that I am not as sore afterwards as I have been. Let’s see how I am doing on Friday.

I went to Books-a-Million yesterday to check out the section on diet books. Wow! I knew there would be a lot, but there were conservatively 150 titles jammed on the shelves. (Someone jokester had wedged a copy of I’m OK, You’re OK in among them!) Being neither a nutritionist nor a speed reader, I can’t offer any significant insight on them other than to say that most seem to fall into one of two categories: cut calories or cut carbs. There were also the random books promoting weight loss through hypnosis, veganism or grapefruit, but carbs and calories still top the list.

One book that did catch my eye was James Beckerman’s The Flex Diet. I liked it because it is not so much a diet (despite the title) as a lifestyle change. He recommends 200 ideas from journaling to restricting eating after dinner to wearing a pedometer. You choose the ones that fit best with your own lifestyle and start down the path to weight loss. His ideas are more common sense than groundbreaking, but I suspect that is true of most diet books. Despite generations of research, there seems to be no consensus about how the human body should go about losing weight. I am inclined to think that never has so little insight been packaged in so many different ways.

Day 3

I started off the day with a green smoothie. Leanna and I have one for breakfast 2-3 times a week. It’s not the most low-carb friendly breakfast, but it’s healthy nonetheless. Now I was ready for my pushups!

Speirs’ website recommends exercising three times a week for ten minutes at a time. A workout consists of several pushup reps with a break between each. Today’s reps were 10-12-7-7- max (at least 9) with 60 seconds between. I was still sore from my test two days ago, but I managed to get through with two pushups to spare. Next time the reps and the rests will both be upped.

So does the soreness ever go away? (You can tell I have never done regular exercising!) I guess it’s no pain, no gain. Anyway, I like having a specific goal of reaching 100 pushups. I’m not out to have a ripped body (like that would ever happen), just to tone up what I have.

Day 2 - Losing Weight

I don’t like the word “diet”. I know that it is a legitimate word, but for me it carries the connotation of a fad that doesn’t do much. So I am going with “eating plan” or “eating regimen”. I want to start an everyday way of eating that I can stick with for a long time.

What kind of eating plan is right for me? Well, I know this about me: I am lazy. So unless it is pretty simple I won’t stick with it. That means hardcore calorie counting is out. I am leaning toward a high protein/low carbohydrate plan, sort of neo-Atkins. I admit that part of this is because I like meat. But part of it is because I eat way too many carbs. But I need to do some reading. Maybe Gary Taube’s book Why We Get Fat and What to Do About It is a place to start.

What I know for sure is that two days into my new way of living we had a church potluck. Not a great place for healthy eating unless banana pudding is a part of my eating regimen.

Day 1 - Exhaustion Test

My official starting weight is 184. That may not seem like much to some people, but it is 7 pounds more than I weighed four months ago and 20 pounds more than I weighed a little over a year ago. I am going up fast. I want to start my weight loss now before I reach 210 and my path is more like a mountain than an steep grade.

My friend Doug recommended a book by Steve Speirs called 7 Weeks to 100 Push-ups. Since I am on the road to becoming that hollow-chested guy with a pooch over his belt, this seems like a good place to start. I am cheap by nature, so I am working from his website instead of buying the book.

Speirs says to start with an initial test by seeing how many pushups you can do in one stretch before dropping into a sweaty heap. I made it to 23, which is better than anyone in my family thought I could do. (So there!) According to the chart, for my age range that puts me at level 3 out of 7.

Now I have to wait a couple of days before starting Week 1. It is a three day per week program to help you reach your goal. That will give me a couple of days to research eating regimens.