This week: Success. On track for 8/52 weeks so far.
I hit a nice milestone this past week. I’ve now lost over 20 pounds. So this is a double-win week.
Also, a surprising improvement at the gym. I ran my sprints today and they were every bit as hard as they usually are. However… my recovery time was kick ass. My heart rate dropped back to normal in no time. So, winning.
I know I still need to write my review about my Fitbit. (Short review: I love it and it loves me. I know this, because it told me that once.) But I do have something to say around measurement and accuracy. And I’ll have to bring the Fitbit up because it is doing a lot of that measuring for me, bless it’s wee little heart.
In my attempt here to lose weight and be a healthy size (finally), I am using a few different tools for measurement:
1. A Withings scale – to track my weight, BMI, fat mass and muscle mass
2. The Fitbit - to track my food, activity, sleep
3. Runkeeper and Fitocracy - to track my exercise
4. A kitchen scale and all the little measuring cups and such
5. Measuring tape.
These are my measuring cups. Cute, eh?
None of these things are always 100% accurate.
The Withings scale I know is weighing me light. When I went to the doctor’s office, I weighed in heavier. And I don’t completely trust it for the body fat percentage either.
The Fitbit doesn’t know my heart rate, so how can it measure my caloric burn exactly? And some of the time when I enter food, I over-estimate. Or I over-simplify… surely not all “chef salads” are the same, so wouldn’t there be some caloric variances from that salad from the salad I ate if I choose that?
Runkeeper and Fitocracy are as accurate as the information I put into it. But I think the GPS on Runkeeper gets lost sometimes. And I can’t always find the exercise I am doing (like Tabata sprints or reclining rope pull-ups) on Fitocracy, so it doesn’t get recorded.
And the measuring cups and spoons? I may not always fill them properly. I don’t think everyone does. It’s either a smidgen too little or a little too heaping.
And I’m pretty sure I have no idea how to properly measure myself with that tape thing. In fact, I know I don’t.
This is definitely not my body. Yet.
But does this matter? I don’t think so. It isn’t that it is 100% accurate that matters. What matters is that you are getting feedback about what you are doing and how you are doing it. It matters if you are becoming more aware of your actions.
As an example, the scale that (very kindly) weighs me light by a kilo or so… does that matter? Fuck no. What matters is that the number keeps getting smaller. That’s the part I should focus on.
Same with the Fitbit. It doesn’t matter if it is 100% accurate about my caloric burn versus the intake. What matters is that I am paying attention to what’s going into my body and how active I am being. And I can see that it doesn’t matter that I went to the gym that day if I’m going to eat an entire large Papa John’s pizza that night.
I think that’s what I need to keep in mind. It doesn’t matter if I’m measuring accurately. What matters is that I keep things moving the way they should be.
This week: Success. On track for 7/52 weeks so far.
But I need to confess something: I’m not feeling all that good about this week’s “success”. Yes, I am a lower weight since last week… but not that much lower. Which sucks, because I’ve been well behaved.
I’m trying to focus on the fact that I didn’t put this weight on really quickly (although it was rather effortlessly) and that it is dropping. I just wish it was as easy to take off as it was to put on. Stupid fatness.
On the plus side (no pun intended – ha ha) – Fitbit has informed me that it is no longer 16 October that I should hit my goal… but more like 23 September. Silly Fitbit! Don’t you know that I’m going to be a brat some weeks and drink all the beers? You should stick with that October date. I’m sure going to.
So, in an attempt to stay accountable to my goal, I’m going to announce if I was successful or not each week.
As I said in my previous post – my weight has dropped each week for the first five weeks. Going forward, I hope to do this each Tuesday.
This week: Success. On track for 6/52 weeks so far. Yay!
Now that I’ve ‘fessed up to what my big goal is (ish) for 2012, I thought I’d start detailing a bit about how I plan to do it. There are three parts to my plan:
1. Eat smarter
2. Move more
3. Measure that shit
Pretty simple, no?
Eat Smarter
For me, this has meant following what is probably most commonly known as the “Paleo Diet” (or Paleolithic Diet or Caveman Diet or Hunter Gatherer Diet). To me, it should be just the “Whole, real foods (sans gluten) diet”, because that’s really what it is. Single ingredient foods for the most part with a few little bits to make life sunnier (red wine, dark chocolate, good coffee).
It goes a lot along the lines of what Michael Pollen says in his book In Defense of Food: ”Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.”
It’s a fairly easy rule to live by.
And I’m trying to live by these “rules” about 80-90% of the time. Except this month, during which I’m subjecting myself to DEADLY DETOX FEBRUARY. Same rules as above, less fruit, the wine, chocolate and *sob* coffee (gave that up as of Thursday last week). And I’m sticking to it 100%. Six days in and no one has been maimed. Yet.
I’m going to enjoy the SHIT out of the next glass of red wine I have, let me tell you.
Move more
Actually, right now I’m failing at this pretty hard. STUPID LUNGS – BE LESS STUPID. I’m so tired all the time because of this damned cough so I’m not doing much exercise. I’m hoping that later this week I’ll be back to the plan, which is to walk in the morning, lift weights at lunch, and run in the evening. BAM.
Measure that shit
I’m actually measuring using a few tools that I’ll go into in separate posts:
1. Fitbit (food, sleep, mood, weight, activity)
2. Fitocracy (exercise)
3. Runkeeper (exercise – cardio)
4. Withings Scale (weight)
Some of these connect to each other. Some don’t. Altogether, they ensure I’m totes on top of this shit. Measurement is important – it helps track progress. I’ll give some in-depth reviews on those tools and how I’m using them in later posts.
That’s the quick and dirty outline of what I’m up to. I will try to talk about each in more detail as time goes on, and let you all know how it is all holding up.
Alright. As promised.
My goal for this year is regarding my weight, to wit: To get rid of some of it.
I tried this last year (and the year before, and the year before, etc.,etc., ad nauseam). And in 2011, until all the holidays at the end of April, it was working. I lost nearly two stone (28 pounds). Unfortunately, because I didn’t keep on keeping on… I gained it all back and then some for the beginning of this year. Not too smart.
I’ve tried a lot of different ways to measure success around this, but nothing in the last 27 years (let’s just say I’m 27, okay?) has worked. So I’m trying something different.
This is the plan/goal: For forty of the fifty-two weeks of this year, I will weigh less than the week before.
How much less is not relevant. As long as it is less. If I actually hit my goal weight (which if – IF – I behave the entire fucking year should be early October), I may change “weigh less” to “weigh within two kilos of” so I don’t go too far.
Why forty out of fifty-two? So when life throws things at me (Vegas in January, Irish wedding in April), I don’t have to feel like I can’t enjoy myself because I don’t want to fail at this goal. I’ve built in some buffers so I can stay successful.
So far it is working. It has been five weeks so far, and I have dropped every week, even post Vegas (even though that was only 0.2kg, or just under 1/2 a pound). In fact, as of this morning I’ve lost just over a stone (a stone = 14 pounds, for y’all not in Britain) since my first weigh-in on January 3rd.
So. Here is me being publicly accountable for what I’m doing with/t0/for my poor body. I am not quite ready yet for other confessions (like how much I currently weigh) but may be once I get closer to my goal. I’ll try to keep updating about how I’m doing it and how it is going.
Wish me luck! Here’s to a healthier Jodi in 2012. (Yikes.)
I’m going to try to write this before I lose my nerve.
No big confessions… but I am going to publicly announce a goal, which I’m not a big fan of doing.
Why? Because then I will feel like an absolute asshole if I don’t stick with it.
I have made public announcements on resolutions/goals before, with mixed results.
While still in university, I called off eating McDonald’s for a year. Doing that now would be so easy… I don’t even remember the last time I ate it. It’s been ages. But during uni? Easily twice or more a week. It was cheap and it was fast and I swear it is addictive.
So I called it off and announced that I was doing so. And I did it for the entire year. I had nightmares during the year, now and again, about breaking the resolution, but I never actually broke it. I did have a Big Mac on the first of January as soon as the year was up, but I made the year.
But last year I publicly announced that I wasn’t going to drink for the year. And I made it until April before I decided to completely eschew from drinking was ridiculous. Somewhat hilariously, when I started again no one said a word. It was strange that I stopped… no one thought twice when I started again.
But this year… this is a big one (no pun intended) that I’ve tried and failed again and again. I’ve never shared about these struggles… I mean, people can *see* that I struggle with it, but they don’t know how much. Okay. This was the disclaimer post about my fears around sharing this. The next one will be the share.
raR. Here’s hoping being public will help me stick with it this time.
I’m still using Fitocracy to motivate my ass to exercise. It’s a great motivator, especially if you are a competitive little monkey like I am.
But there is a secondary reason why Fitocracy is pretty awesome: The people. And not just “my people” (aka “the people I follow”), but the people in the groups I joined. Especially the fit nerds in the XKCD group.
Fit nerds don’t just run around. The like to measure and graph and talk about things like ROI and stuff. And when they have an opinion about something (ie: just focus on calories or also worry about macronutrients), most of them back that shit up with links to the studies they are citing.
I love nerds. I’m learning so much.
And here’s a lesson that I’m taking to heart. One of the guys in the group posted a link to WolframAlpha that spat out information about the effects of a run on your body, dependant on distance, speed, weight, sex, etc.
Now, I am capable of running 5km in 30 minutes (which I actually do now and again), and I knew that by doing so I burned roughly 500 or so calories. I knew that. But what does that mean?
Well, that’s where this sort of nerdy website comes in handy. That 500 or so calories equates to a QUARTER OF A POUND.
A quarter. Of a pound. 0.15 pounds. gaH.
That sucks. That sucks for how hard it is for me to run that 5km in 30 minutes. It means that to lose a pound I would have to run that hard that fast for two hours. Fuck that.
So slowly I’m learning how to game the body math. Through sprints and weight lifting, I’m making changes faster. Hopefully learning body math is going to help me see changes sooner.
Last week xkcd posted this comic:
Which made me laugh. A lot of fitness tracking websites (I use Daily Burn and Runkeeper) miss out on some of life’s best activities. I probably would have had a chuckle and left it at that… but it was the mouse-over text that caught my attention. It was:
“I felt so clever when I found a way to game the Fitocracy system by incorporating a set of easy but high-scoring activities into my regular schedule. Took me a bit to realize I’d been tricked into setting up a daily exercise routine.”
“I’d been tricked into setting up a daily exercise routine.” That interested me. So I rocked over to Fitocracy to check it out.
Fitocracy (www.fitocracy.com) is still in beta and you need an invite code to check it out. Fortunately, they were excepting “xkcd” as an invite code the day I wanted to try it (I don’t know if they still are).
It is exactly the kind of thing I like. You get to level up when you are active and there are unlockable achievements. There is a lovely sense of humour underlying the site. For example, the quest to run a mile in under 10 minutes is called “Someone is chasing me!” There is an over abundance of zombie references. I joined a group called “Getting Fit for the Zombie Apocalypse”. Not even kidding.
It seems to be pretty nerdcentric, but that also suits my temperament. I need something to motivate me to get away from my computer and out into the wild. And if I find that motivation on a website that will give me “points” for doing so… well, I have no business commenting on the other nerds rocking the site.
There is only three things missing from the site right now that would make it better. The first is a mobile site and/or iPhone/Android app. Apparently the mobile site is in the works, which would be rad. The second thing is that it doesn’t (yet) connect with my Withings scale. All things should connect to my Withings. But that too is apparently in the plan.
The final thing I’m missing is people I know who’s asses I would like to kick. I’ve joined a few groups (such as the aforementioned zombie training group) on the site, but being better than a handful of strangers is not nearly as much fun as kicking the asses of people I know.
I have ten invites (apparently) that I can give away. If any of you would like to give Fitocracy a try, let me know. I’ll send you an invite and start following your ass. And then I’ll start kicking it.
Posted in fatties
Tagged awesomeness, exercise, health, new experiences, stuff I like, tech
Actually, to be honest? It hasn’t been all that bad. Or that hard.
So, just following on from my previous post when I talked about the changes I had made starting this year and how they are going.
I’ve had no problems whatsoever with the alcohol aversion, other than having to constantly explain to people why I would do this to myself. I don’t even miss it. And I am LOVING the hangoverless mornings. Fact.
Worth noting is that while we were in Vegas (work thang) I didn’t follow my rules. The No Drinking Rule has the “out of the country” exception so I did take advantage of that a wee bit… and I just wanted a Slurpee so badly the sugar thing had to go too.
I wasn’t as bad as I thought I was going to be (or as I could have been). I had drinks, but didn’t get drunk. I ate whatever I wanted… but not too much or too bad (except that first night meal at Dennys. YOWZA.)
Other than Vegas though, I’ve been sticking with it.
On the food front, things are going well. I’ve only had a couple of mornings since the beginning of January where I have wanted to punch breakfast right in the cock. Some mornings are hard! I found that it was the worst when I didn’t get enough sleep or ate really, really late the night before. Most mornings though it is no problem. If I’m being lazy (or woke up late) I just have a couple of eggs and I’m sorted.
The rest of the food thing is going well too. I think the Saturday gorge-a-thons are really, really helping with that. Before, I would have the restrictions in place every single day, and after a few weeks I’d implode and eat a pizza. And then I would slide right back into my old habits… usually very quickly. Now, if I crave something that I’m not supposed to eat, I just say to myself, “Patience, my pretty. Patience. Soon it will be Saturday.” This Saturday was about eating mashed potatoes. I wanted them so badly I would have killed a kitten for them.
Other than the time in Vegas (and the jet-lagged work week full of training the new peeps following it) I have been an utter rock fucking star about going to the gym at lunch. I do some core training on Mondays and Fridays… and the rest of the time I just run around like an idiot on a treadmill. I even went swimming last week.
::SIDE NOTE::
One of the ‘core training’ exercises that I’m doing is a two-hand “Russian” kettlebell swing. If you have no idea what I’m talking about, this chick in this video demonstrates it pretty well:
I’m using a 20kg kettlebell and currently doing 5 sets of 15 reps, trying to work my way up to just doing 75 straight reps with the damned thing.
This is hard.
On Monday, after the first 15, I thought I was going to throw up or pass out. Most likely both. I had to put the stupid weight down and pace about for a good two minutes before I was ready to even think about picking it up again.
I was sore for the next three days, with Wednesday being the worst. On Wednesday, sitting down caused me pain. SITTING.
The good news is that when I did it again on Friday, although I still thought I might throw up after the first set, it was much easier and two days later I’m not sore. HOORAH!
::END SIDE NOTE::
Something I’ve learned about me and exercise: Like fuck I’m going to do it first thing in the morning. NO NO NO. So I’m not even going to try it any more. It is stricken off my list of things to do.
I’ve not been doing evenings either… but I may try that one again once it is lighter later. We’ll see. As long as I keep the gym sessions, I’m not too fussed.
I’ve been sleeping great. GREAT! I don’t think I have ever said that in my life ever. I think the melatonin and magnesium is helping… but so is the exercise and the fact that I’m not eating so much shit.
Overall, this experiment is working. My weight is slowing dropping, so are inches. Which is good. And my energy is up. Also good. I sleep better – excellent. And the best part is that I just feel better in general. Happier. And seeing how at this time a year ago I was the most stressed, angry and unhappy that I had ever been (and, although I didn’t know it then, just a few weeks off from being hospitalised)… I think being happier and less stressed is the best thing in the world right now. Awesome.
*I realised after posting that some people may not get what the post title is referring to. Which is sad. SAD. If you don’t know what I’m referencing, watch this clip. (Sorry about all the Hulu shit… I’m hoping that the heavy advertising means they won’t take the clip down…)
And if you don’t know which movie the Simpsons are parodying in that clip, well… there is nothing more I can do for you. You are obviously a culturally retarded cave dweller and I have nothing more to say to you.
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