The Plateau Breaks
Well,
The plateau has broken, and the weight has started to move down. By tomorrow I estimate I will have lost over 50lbs of weight since I started. That is 37% of my goal of losing 135 lbs. I think I have found a temporary solution to my weight loss needs.
I have been doing research on my own and reading a fabulous periodical called Men’s Health. First for anybody interested in an excellent general interest magazine, check this one out! It has recipes, workouts, reviews of gadgets, sports, nutrition, relationships, sex, etc. It is truly a general interest men’s magazine. I am going to subscribe.
I was reading some info on how the body works during a workout based on what we eat. It was quite interesting. When we eat a carbohydrate (any carb), it is broken down in our blood and converted into glycogen. Glycogen is a fancy name for a bunch of glucose molecules all stuck together in our tissues and blood. When we exercise or do anything physical our body uses this glycogen for energy. However if we eat a few too many carbohydrates, this is what happens…our body realizes that our blood sugar is too high, there is a lot of good glucose swimming around that could be better used later. So our body triggers our pancreas to produce insulin. Insulin catalyzes the transformation from glycogen into fat for storage.
What happens though when we really limit our carbohydrate intake? If we are active, our body realizes something. Oh crap! We don’t have any glucose in our blood to power what we are doing! The body then instructs the liver to produce a hormone called Glucagon. Glucagon is in a sense the opposite of insulin. Glucagon causes our body to liberate stored glycogen (fat) into our blood as glucose. When this happens fat is destroyed and glucose is produced to power our activity.
I’ve been keeping my carbs very low for the last several days and the plateau broke. In a sense I am forcing my body to use my stored fat to power my processes. It appears to be working. Now I have been doing a lot of reading on both sides of this whole “low carb craze”. Just because you don’t eat carbs doesn’t give you license to go and pound down fatty meat with like 60-70 g of saturated fat. I still eat vegetables. I just limit them to the high fiber low carb ones like Broccoli. I just avoid carrots, corn, and potatoes (as delicious as they are). I can’t really say enough as to how delicious broccoli is. Although, I find cooked broccoli more delicious than raw.
In addition to this I limit myself to lean meats, like boneless skinless chicken breasts, fish, and very very rarely some beef. It is not easy to do sometimes, because towards the start your body screams for the carbs it is used to. You have no idea how much I miss pasta. However, I am committed to eating this way for 4 weeks to jump start my fat loss again. All the while I still count my calories and try and make sure I come in at about 1200 calories a day or just above. Now this seems really low, especially since a man of my size should be eating about 3500 calories a day, but consider this…even after losing almost 50 lbs, or 15% of my bodyweight, I am still classified as morbidly obese.
Do you know what the word morbid means? It comes from the latin Morbidus meaning diseased. In the common parlance morbid means gruesome, grizzly, disgusting. It is medically defined as productive of disease. Meaning if I can’t turn this around I will get sick and I will die early.
Those huge fat people you see on the show “Big Medicine” are put on 1200 calorie diets when they enter the hospital. For someone classified as morbidly obese, it is necessary to save you from your early death. So when it comes to saving my life, nothing is too drastic. I am getting so used to this now, that sometimes I have to force myself to eat more to hit this target. So no worries.
I was at the doctor the other day and I got some very positive results from him. Since starting this, my resting heartbeat has dropped from 115 bpm to 65 bpm. My blood pressure has gone from 135/90 to 120/76 (120/80 is the norm). I feel a lot tighter, fitter, and have higher stamina. I have been using the treadmill a lot and was a little surprised the other day. I was waiting for my brother to pick me up from work and walked down to a lake to relax while I waited. I saw his car coming and I knew that he was going into the parking lot a distance away. I ran uphill and the rest of the distance to his car, and I was not even close to winded. The 3 month ago me would have had side stitches and would have been gasping for air. I was pleased.
I think I can say now that fitness and nutrition have become hobbies. There are 3 things I daydream about at work. My rabbit, my cat, and what I am going to work out in the evening.
I have this increasing desire to be active. I keep thinking of all these activities I want to do, but I am not sure how to fit them in. One thing I am super happy about, my friend Noriko and I are going to be taking some ballroom dancing classes. That is going to be super fun I think.
Happiness (^o^)
-S-
The plateau has broken, and the weight has started to move down. By tomorrow I estimate I will have lost over 50lbs of weight since I started. That is 37% of my goal of losing 135 lbs. I think I have found a temporary solution to my weight loss needs.
I have been doing research on my own and reading a fabulous periodical called Men’s Health. First for anybody interested in an excellent general interest magazine, check this one out! It has recipes, workouts, reviews of gadgets, sports, nutrition, relationships, sex, etc. It is truly a general interest men’s magazine. I am going to subscribe.
I was reading some info on how the body works during a workout based on what we eat. It was quite interesting. When we eat a carbohydrate (any carb), it is broken down in our blood and converted into glycogen. Glycogen is a fancy name for a bunch of glucose molecules all stuck together in our tissues and blood. When we exercise or do anything physical our body uses this glycogen for energy. However if we eat a few too many carbohydrates, this is what happens…our body realizes that our blood sugar is too high, there is a lot of good glucose swimming around that could be better used later. So our body triggers our pancreas to produce insulin. Insulin catalyzes the transformation from glycogen into fat for storage.
What happens though when we really limit our carbohydrate intake? If we are active, our body realizes something. Oh crap! We don’t have any glucose in our blood to power what we are doing! The body then instructs the liver to produce a hormone called Glucagon. Glucagon is in a sense the opposite of insulin. Glucagon causes our body to liberate stored glycogen (fat) into our blood as glucose. When this happens fat is destroyed and glucose is produced to power our activity.
I’ve been keeping my carbs very low for the last several days and the plateau broke. In a sense I am forcing my body to use my stored fat to power my processes. It appears to be working. Now I have been doing a lot of reading on both sides of this whole “low carb craze”. Just because you don’t eat carbs doesn’t give you license to go and pound down fatty meat with like 60-70 g of saturated fat. I still eat vegetables. I just limit them to the high fiber low carb ones like Broccoli. I just avoid carrots, corn, and potatoes (as delicious as they are). I can’t really say enough as to how delicious broccoli is. Although, I find cooked broccoli more delicious than raw.
In addition to this I limit myself to lean meats, like boneless skinless chicken breasts, fish, and very very rarely some beef. It is not easy to do sometimes, because towards the start your body screams for the carbs it is used to. You have no idea how much I miss pasta. However, I am committed to eating this way for 4 weeks to jump start my fat loss again. All the while I still count my calories and try and make sure I come in at about 1200 calories a day or just above. Now this seems really low, especially since a man of my size should be eating about 3500 calories a day, but consider this…even after losing almost 50 lbs, or 15% of my bodyweight, I am still classified as morbidly obese.
Do you know what the word morbid means? It comes from the latin Morbidus meaning diseased. In the common parlance morbid means gruesome, grizzly, disgusting. It is medically defined as productive of disease. Meaning if I can’t turn this around I will get sick and I will die early.
Those huge fat people you see on the show “Big Medicine” are put on 1200 calorie diets when they enter the hospital. For someone classified as morbidly obese, it is necessary to save you from your early death. So when it comes to saving my life, nothing is too drastic. I am getting so used to this now, that sometimes I have to force myself to eat more to hit this target. So no worries.
I was at the doctor the other day and I got some very positive results from him. Since starting this, my resting heartbeat has dropped from 115 bpm to 65 bpm. My blood pressure has gone from 135/90 to 120/76 (120/80 is the norm). I feel a lot tighter, fitter, and have higher stamina. I have been using the treadmill a lot and was a little surprised the other day. I was waiting for my brother to pick me up from work and walked down to a lake to relax while I waited. I saw his car coming and I knew that he was going into the parking lot a distance away. I ran uphill and the rest of the distance to his car, and I was not even close to winded. The 3 month ago me would have had side stitches and would have been gasping for air. I was pleased.
I think I can say now that fitness and nutrition have become hobbies. There are 3 things I daydream about at work. My rabbit, my cat, and what I am going to work out in the evening.
I have this increasing desire to be active. I keep thinking of all these activities I want to do, but I am not sure how to fit them in. One thing I am super happy about, my friend Noriko and I are going to be taking some ballroom dancing classes. That is going to be super fun I think.
Happiness (^o^)
-S-