Week 24: Day 6: Work Events & Good Friends

I'm down 4 lbs from last week! This is good but not as good as I was hoping...so what went wrong?

Last week was the Employee Assistance Program Week so don't you think this should have helped me? Their idea of assisting the employees was by giving us muffins & Belgian Waffles first thing Monday morning and then cake Thursday afternoon! My problem is my addiction to carbohydrates (donuts, baked goods, chocolate etc.) so where they not helping me with this issue? I find it funny that these work place help programs encourage unhealthy eating. I guess they know that unhealthy food is a comfort to me!

The second event was a dinner at our good friends place. They are vegetarian and they're always making good food...we love visiting them! They know we're trying to lose weight so they always have a challenge on their hands when we come because I'm also a bit lactose intolerant so large amounts of dairy products our out of the picture. If I can keep to small portions then a visit to their place is OK but the food is always so darn good! We have decided we will not be sacrificing these dinner parties with our friends so I will just have to work harder to keep the portions smaller and drink more water while we're there.

These two minor brakes in my program caused me to get cravings at least 2 times last week in the evening. I had to have an extra chocolate protein shake on those nights. This extra food didn't make me gain weight overall but it did slow my loss this week.

I have one major goal for this next week and that's to get my food journal done everyday so they have a look at it next week. This may be able to help me out a bit so they can give me some tips. They're already a little worried about me because I'm not eating a variety of meals and the meals I'm eating are simple. Keeping the meals simple and the same is important so I can have continuity in my daily tasks because of my personality.

Have a great day!
-Ian

Week 9 Day 7: Salty Bosu Balls

Salt intake is keeping us from losing weight faster! I guess a problem with a balanced diet is when you have a higher than normal salt intake it has adverse affects on your water retention. One salty meal means weight gain or several days of no weight loss because of water retention.

So how can you help prevent the bad effects of high salt intake?

Lemon Water...and a lot of it!

I've been told real lemon is the best but we use the lemon juice in the big bottle. Start drinking it right after your high salt meal and continue for the next 2 days at least 3 times a day. Since you should be having a snack between meals this is another opportunity to have more lemon water making that 5 or more cups per day. I have blogged about it before but water intake is very important for weight loss and this will help you get the water intake you need each day.

In an attempt to start exercising more we went out to buy Kettle bells...but they didn't have any! Boo! But they did have a Bosu ball! So we spent the $120 to get the half ball just so we could do the 6 Minute Abs workout from Timothy Ferris's book The 4-Hour Body.

I only did 4 of the full motion crunches on the Bosu ball before writhing in pain on the floor for about 3 minutes. When I regained my composure I did about 8 Cat Vomit exercises but they didn't hurt as much as the crunches. I spent 3 days this week with extremely sore abs!

The plan was to do more again on Friday evening or if I was still sore I would wait longer to do them again. This falls in line with The 4-Hour Body rules of giving your muscles enough time to build and repair before working them again. I did the exercises again Friday and they still hurt like hell but I'm starting to feel real good about myself. The pain I got for 3 days after the first workout seems to gone already after a day and half so this might be a good thing.

On a side note: We found kettle bells at the local pool exercise room that we could use! This will save us over $100 because we don't have to buy them. Using kettle bells as a main weight loss exercise is also from The 4-Hour Body!

I have updated the My Stats page to reflect weekly averages for my body weight, body fat, BMR and BMI. My spreadsheet is setup to go from Sunday to Saturday so I will try to post these numbers every Saturday morning.

Also, I will be setting up an e-mail list that you can join to get my top weight loss tips and favorite recipes. I decided not to post them on the blog because some of this info is from sources that may object to me reprinting or sharing the info for free. So I figured an e-mail list will be a happy medium.

Have a great day,

-Ian

Week 4 Day 5: 8813

I'm excited this week because I'm getting new found energy and just a little ambition to do things. Don't get me wrong I will always love movies and video games but now I feel like I can start doing other things. Now this is just a feeling...getting up and doing things is still a mental fight.

Some fights I'm winning this week are: 2 lunch time walks, 22 to 24 cups of water per day, new hole on my belt.

Because of my first lunch time walk I got a new personal best steps in one day 8813! It really didn't seem that hard to do that much walking. I'm already thinking of working to 10000 steps.

On our Wednesday visit to the weight loss clinic I was informed that for my size I should be drinking at least 22 cups of water per day. That's over 5 L man this has been a challenge both for drinking and pee breaks! After upping the water intake over 3 days I lost 2 more pounds so I can't really complain.

Making the new hole so my belt was smaller was fun! This little win made me feel really good...because my jeans were beginning to slide down. Don't worry, Ethel didn't see anything!

I have decided to start tracking my Body Mass Index (BMI) as well. It can't hurt to track something else. So check out the stats page to see updates for that. Also, you can find some helpful links to Wikipedia to help you understand BMI and Body Fat Percentage.

Have a great day,

-Ian

Week 4 Day 2: Water for Slave Lake

So this weekend 40% of my childhood town of Slave Lake Alberta was destroyed by a forest fire. I was so shocked when I first saw the pictures of the new town hall & library burning. Then I got scared because my little sister and step mother still live in Slave Lake. I also have extended family and friends in Slave Lake.

Slave Lake Town Hall & Library Burning

I couldn't find much news except for Facebook, YouTube and Twitter. It was amazing the info that was getting out from people in Slave Lake but I don't know if this was helping or making things worse. I didn't hear from my little sister till almost 1am that night. They were safe and heading to Westlock. The roads out of town were closed due to 3 forest fires that seemed to be all around the town so they had to wait before being allowed to leave town.

I was in shock most of Monday and didn't go in to work. There was a chance my little sister and step mother may be dropping in to stay with us because they didn't know if their trailer in Slave Lake was destroyed.

By mid morning we heard word that my older sister and family who live in Wabasca, that is 123km north east of Slave Lake, may also be evacuated. So now we had a chance of having a big group of visitors. Turns out things are fine for now in Wabasca and my litter sister and step mother didn't have to come to our house.

With all this excitement I didn't get my 5000 steps Monday and I don't think I drank enough water. We did make it to the weight loss clinic and still lost a pound so I'm happy for that.

But I'm still sad about my childhood memories that went up in flames.

-Ian

Week 3 – Day 6: Water for Occam

This busy life of shopping, cooking, eating and now a bit of exercise is really taking a lot of our time. I may only try to post one or two times per week. Maybe one long post on Saturdays and a short post Monday or Tuesday nights what I will try for. Saturdays we have more time and Monday evening is our official weigh and measuring night at the weight loss clinic so I will want to update you with the my stats that day.

Speaking of stats I'm trying to record more information for comparison. Something that I'm hearing from everyplace especially from Timothy Ferriss's book “The 4-Hour Body” that I will talk to you more about below. So I will be posting pictures on my pictures page along with tracking my weight, body fat percentage and measurements. I will be posting all the stats on a new page and updating that as I go. If I'm really busy I may just update the stats page without posting a main blog post so check it even if you don't see something new here. Like I said I will try to post my stats every Monday or Tuesday.

Now for some bad news...I gained 2 LBS one visit to the weight loss clinic. It was a little upsetting but they gave me the suggestion that I may not be drinking enough water. I always thought I drank enough water before joining the weight loss clinic and after we joined I started drinking more water. I was averaging 10-15 cups of water before program and was getting 13-17 cups after joining program. So it was even more upsetting to have them tell me I need to drink more water!

Well the next day I began drinking more water and now I'm averaging 15-20 cups of water each day. Guess what? The next weigh in I lost 3 LBS!!!! Crazy what the right amounts of water can do. Funny but at the same time I was reading the part in Timothy Ferriss's book about how he recommends large amounts of water also. Needless to say I got this message compounded into my brain this past week and it paid off!

Now that we know the program is starting to work we have begun telling some of our friends and family about it. I was nervous about telling people because we have been trying to lose weight for so long I didn't want to hear any negative comments. We have chosen not to tell people about how much money we spent pre-paying for 25 weeks of the program again just to avoid any negative comments. Our health is important and we are at the breaking point.

Two friends we told last night where very supportive and asked us a lot of positive questions while giving us a few tips. The experience of telling them was better then I expect from say our close family members. These friends are very into cooking so they got very interested in our meal plans and we even made plans to have them over for a healthy smoothy tasting. This should be fun we have it planned for two weekends from now.

Our friends were also very interested in the vitamins and supplements that we're taking as part of the program. When we joined the weight loss clinic the girl doing our consultation was explaining the program and showed us a book called “Nutrisearch Comparative Guide to Nutritional Supplements” by Lyle MacWilliam. This book shows independent research about the quality and absorption rates of over 1500 nutritional supplements available in the United States and Canada. This was the real kicker that got me to agree to dish out the money for the program. The company that makes the weight loss clinic's vitamins we would be taking got a 5 out of 5 star rating! It's crazy but common big name vitamins like Centrum rated 1 star or less and many of it's products rated 0 stars. Anyway I think this book will be very useful when you're trying to choose the right vitamins for yourself or family.

4-Hour Body – Review Part 1

So the new book I bought last weekend “The 4-Hour Body” by Timothy Ferriss is great! Don't bother reading any more of my review because if you want to transform your body, lose weight, gain muscle, recover from any injury, improve sleep or improve your sex life you need this book...BUY IT!

Ok...I'm a little mad that I spent all that money joining the weight loss clinic when all I needed was this book! That being said the money spent has been a real motivator so I don't really have any regrets. My plan is to stay with the weight loss clinic for the full 25 weeks we paid for and lose as much weight so we can adjust to a new healthy lifestyle. While doing that I will begin implementing some of the ideas set forth by Timothy.

The ideas Timothy sets forth in his book are simple to the point of non-believable at first. He always backs up his crazy ideas with research of top people and pictures or facts of his personal experience.

Have you heard of Minimal Effective Dose (MED) or Occam's Protocol?

That's when taking a certain amount of a drug or doing a certain amount of something is the minimum amount needed to get a result. You only need 1 or 2 pain killers to get rid of your headache so why take 3 or 4? In regards to bodybuilding if you want to gain muscle mass you only need to do enough exercise and the right exercise to stimulate the hormones in your body to start building muscle THEN give your body several days of rest. Muscle building hormones stay in your body building muscle for days and over training can hinder your muscle growth.

Occam's Razor: “Entities should not be multiplied beyond necessity” or rephrased as “The simplest answer is usually the correct answer ” but I like to say KISS – Keep It Simple Silly!

Occam's Protocol page 193 of his book is what I plan to be using to gain muscle mass in the weeks to come. I may not start if for a few weeks as we adjust to our healthy lifestyle more. The Protocol is a workout plan that has 2 different workouts that should only take about 30 minutes to do and are alternated every 3 or 4 days. So workout A today then 4 days later workout B another 4 more days before workout A again and so on for about 4 hours of workout time per month. This is where the book got it's name...you only need to work out 4 hours per month to build a great body!

I also read the section on weight loss but I will not get into that until after we complete the 25 weeks at our current program. At the start of the book Timothy recommends reading the basic parts of the book first and then reading the parts that interest you like a reference book. If you're only looking to gain muscle mass then just read those pages or just read the pages on improving your sex life.

I will post more reviews of the book another time also I will not be updating my stats here because I'm about to build that new stats page to keep everything in order.

Have a great day!

-Ian

Week 2 - Day 4: 5000 Steps

 So I wanted to tell you about the exercise the program is having us do…not much right now.

For the first week they didn’t want us doing much at all as we did the detox phase of the program. This is because after a day or two we would feel tired and possibly have headaches or a foggy brain. The toxins in our bodies were being released at this point helping to improve our liver function and the function of our body in general. They really stressed the need to drink a lot of water during this phase to help flush our systems.

Not really a fun time and certainly not a good time to begin a hard core exercise routine. I spent too much time trying not to give in to my chocolate and ice cream addictions in no way would I have had the ability to concentrate on exercise.

This week as we started phase to we started taking metabolism boosting vitamins, we got pedometers and a Yoga DVD. The vitamins are giving us our energy back thank goodness! They didn’t tell us to start using the Yoga DVD yet but they did tell us to use the pedometers.

My pedometer reading today!

5000 steps per day is the first goal they gave us. Sounds like I lot and my wife though she would have trouble getting to that but I thought it wouldn’t really be that hard. Well it turns out my wife is getting 6000 to 7000 steps per day easy making me look very bad. I’m barely getting over 4000 steps on days we don’t go shopping and just under 5000 on shopping days.

I have decided I need to add some extra steps somehow:

• Short walk a lunch time
• Short walk during my 15min brakes
• Short walk right after work because I have about 5-10min I have to kill so I don’t show up to soon to pick up my wife from her work.

If anyone has any simple ideas please post a comment!

Today I feel good but at our visit to the clinic today I only lost 1lbs and my wife stayed the same. I think maybe it’s our activity level and maybe a few small changes we can make in our food. I’m trying to avoid any changes to our food so more activity would be better.

Have a great day,

Ian