Stellar Path

This is a quick post that is unrelated to weight loss, fitness, or nutrition.  It’s about one of my hobbies.  Painting.

I’ve dabbled in both watercolors and oils.  I like oils for the way the finished product results, unless I’m the one doing the painting, in which case it just looks muddy and fairly unimpressive.  I like doing watercolors for the ease of clean up and forgiving quality of the medium, but my pictures never quite have the depth that I want.  I can picture what I want, and with some gauche watercolors, I’ve been able to almost achieve the look that I want, but not quite.

This isn’t a post saying I’ve given up these two mediums.  In fact, I plan to continue painting in them for some time.

This is a post saying I have found a new medium, and I am extremely excited about it.

It isn’t acrylics.

It isn’t pastels.

It’s spray paint.

Seriously.  Recently, I saw an artist take cans of spray paint and in a matter of literally minutes make a beautiful, awe inspiring work of art.  Best yet, the painting was of a space nature, which if the name of my website hasn’t already given you the hint, I love.  I’m fascinated by astronomy, and that is one “landscape” of painting that I haven’t approached yet.

Spray painting will allow me to do that.  I’ve been putting off actually getting started, because any time you start a new hobby like this, there is a financial start up fee.  Spray paint isn’t always cheap.  However, this weekend, I decided to go for it.

I’m pretty sure I still suck, but like with any new talent, practice will make me better.  I’ve only sold a few watercolors, but I must admit, I really look forward to getting good enough at spray painting that I can actually sell my art.

Sorry for the delay in posting this, but I’ve had a pretty lengthy couple of days.

We had our 3rd week weigh-in last night.

I lost 1.6 pounds. This was not the three or four I was hoping for, but I’ll happily take it, because it’s a loss.

Overall, the guys lost. The girls beat us. Go blue team; you kicked our butts. The red team lost by an entire percentage point. (In fact, one of the girls lost over 9 pounds, which is a big mystery to a lot of us, as we don’t understand how she lost THAT much in the third week of the contest.)

On the red team, we all lost, except for Vaughn. Vaughn gained. Four pounds. In fact, he ended up weighing more last night than at his first weigh-in before the competition started. So we had absolutely no chance of winning, because it was four guys trying to pull five. Even worse than that, we were pulling a guy with a negative percentage.

So Vaughn is going home. Sorry, Craig. He’s out of the competition. And honestly, I’m glad we lost, because Vaughn was the only person who actually had a negative percentage. To me, it wouldn’t have been fair for a woman to go home simply because she was on the losing team, when we had a team member who had lost less than her.

I have lost 14.6 pounds overall, weighing in at 337.4 last night. I should be more pleased with my number than I am, but I can’t figure out how to do more. I’ve upped my calories, which sounds weird but my trainer said would help me, and it seems like I am losing steadily but slowly. I’m doing TONS of exercise, around 3 or 4 hours of cardio a day. I am going to start lifting more weight and not as much cardio, mostly because I miss the weight room but also because muscle does burn more than fat, blah blah blah. You know the spiel.

So what can I do different? I was in fifth place last week, but this week, I am in sixth. In a few short weeks, I could be out of this competition, and that sucks. I definitely don’t want to see that happen. Anyone have any advice?

We have a new video!  (For reason I still do not understand, the video will only show when you look at this post on its own page and not on the main page.  So to see it, please click the title of this post, and the video should be embedded on that page.)

In other diet news, I’ve decided to up my calories. I was eating around 1500 to 2200. Now, I’m eating around 3000 to 3500, and so far, it seems to be making a difference.

I have heard from various sources that eating a different amount of calories per day can help keep your metabolism a little higher than it might otherwise. So, in my variable calorie diet, I may have 3700 one day, 3000 the next, 3500, 2400, etc… I just want to keep my metabolism humming along. My trainer told me that I wasn’t eating nearly enough for as active as I’ve been, so I’ve definitely upped how much I’m eating. I must admit that I feel a LOT better, and because I’m eating healthier foods, I feel like, for the first time in months, that I’m actually satisfied.

Yesterday, I ate around 3800 calories. Today, I plan to eat around 2500. I want to keep it low for a day and see if I can get a weight loss spike. Tomorrow, I’ll up it to 3500ish again.

I also found an amazing resource in Fitday.com. I had been using SparkPeople, but it’s become more of a social networking site, and while there’s nothing wrong with that, I want something that is simpler and easier to use. I stumbled across FitDay, and so far, I love it. I just enter every bite of food that goes in my mouth, and it gives me a running total of my calories, percentage from carbs, fat, and protein, and some other cool facts.

Nutrition for 2-2-10

As you can see, I am off low carb. I felt too run down, and while I’m sticking to the spirit of low carb by avoiding everything white, I had to incorporate fruits and vegetables back into my diet. I also added some whole grains. I feel 100% better, and I’m going to stick with this. This is a diet I can live with, because low carb isn’t. I realized I was in a very bad place mentally about it because I kept saying to myself, “As soon as the contest is over, I can have a banana again.” That’s not a good mindset, and frankly, that won’t help me.

Back on track – FitDay will even keep track of your calories burned, and you can actually enter every activity you do for a solid 24 hours and know (relatively speaking) exactly how many calories you’ve burned. I don’t take it to that extreme; I tend to enter how much I slept, along with my cardio or weight lifting exercise, and I use that to roughly estimate how many calories I burned for the day.

Activity for 2-2-10

So far, I am keeping under how many calories I’ve burned. I’m pretty pleased. Funny thing is, according to FitDay, I burned about 700 calories more than I took in yesterday. That’s 1/5th of a pound. My scale this morning showed that I have lost 1/5th of a pound. I realize it won’t work out that perfectly every time, but it’s kind of neat that it did today.

I’m about two pounds lower than I was last Friday. I’d love to lose two more. I don’t even know if that is possible in the next two days, but I’m going to try. I was hoping to drop double digits this Friday.

Damn the Biggest Loser for skewing my perception of possible weight loss!

And also, did anyone else find themselves actually liking Miggy last night for the first time ever? I thought she was the problem; maybe it was Migdalia?

We were also hoping the Blue Team would come back instead of the Yellow team, but I really respected what O’Neal said about wishing the Victoria, the blue team daughter, could take his place. Frankly, I wish they had made that work out. It would have been a nice twist, if the parents of each team had gotten together somehow before and said, “Let’s approach the producers about our kids teaming up and us going home.” But I digress. But not too much, because I’m still talking about the Biggest Loser.

I’m rooting for Stephanie, who I think is adorable, and Tina and I both love her, and the Grey Team, who just have such a great attitude. I also like the Black Team. So far, this season has quite a few people that I like on it. Much better than last season’s, where I really wasn’t that fond of that many people. (Still not as good as season seven. Tara was awesome. I wish she had won.)

In other news, I am still walking across Rhode Island. Nebraska is my next state. Anyone with me? What’s your progress?

I’m walking across Rhode Island.

Castle Lighthouse in Newport, Rhode Island

Okay, not really. I’ve only been once, and that was several years ago. And I was in a car for almost the entire time. I think I have spent a grand total of forty minutes of my life in Rhode Island.

However, starting today, February 1st, I am going to walk across Rhode Island. Virtually. Sort of. In a symbolic, kind of way.

I wear a pedometer everyday. I’m not overly anal about getting my steps in, but I like to see how I’m doing. One day, it occurred to me – if I added up all of the steps I’ve taken this month, how far could I have walked?

Well, I’m a bit of an obsessive thinker, so that got me thinking a lot of different things, and before I knew it, I had come up with the idea to keep track of my steps and see how far I could walk over the course of my weight loss journey. And that then led to the thought of, “Wouldn’t it be cooler to know I had walked across this many states instead of just, I’ve walked this many miles?”

So I spent some time over the weekend going through Wikipedia and Google, calculating how wide or long each state is. (In the case of Hawaii, I decided to use the width or length of its major islands.) I decided to go with the longest measurement for my count. In other words, for a state like my home state of Kentucky, it’s length is much different than it’s width, so I’m going to walk it’s width. It’ll take longer.

I decided to start with Rhode Island, because it is the smallest state and therefore can be completed the quickest. It’ll be a nice little boost to complete a state right off the bat. I’m not sure what the next state I’m going to trek across will be, but I will post here that I’ve completed Rhode Island and announce the next state I am walking across.

For the record, Rhode Island is 48 miles across. I can walk a mile in about 1900 steps, so for me, I’ll complete Rhode Island in 91,200 steps.

I’d love it if some people wanted to take this journey with me! I’m not sure how do to this except for the honor system, but if you’d like to walk across the US with me, please let me know!

For those interested in the distance across each state, I’ve made a nice little list. Remember, the miles given is the maximum of width or length, not the shortest way across. (And I realize diagonal would be the longest way across in some states, but that involved way more work than I was willing to put into this.)

Rhode Island, 48
Delaware, 96
Connecticut, 110
New Jersey, 150
Vermont, 160
Massachusetts, 183
New Hampshire, 190
Ohio, 220
West Virginia, 240
Maryland, 249
South Carolina, 260
Arkansas, 261
Indiana, 270
Pennsylvania, 280
Georgia, 298
Oklahoma, 298
Hawaii, 299
Missouri, 300
Iowa, 310
Wisconsin, 310
Maine, 320
Alabama, 330
New York, 330
Mississippi, 340
North Dakota, 340
Utah, 350
Oregon, 360
Washington, 360
Wyoming, 360
New Mexico, 370
Kentucky, 379
Louisiana, 379
Colorado, 380
South Dakota, 380
Illinois, 395
Arizona, 400
Minnesota, 400
Kansas, 417
Nebraska, 430
Virginia, 430
Tennessee, 440
Florida, 447
Michigan, 456
Idaho, 479
Nevada, 490
North Carolina, 560
Montana, 630
California, 770
Texas, 790
Alaska, 2261

I have currently walked across zero states. I’ll post an update with the state colored in as soon as I’ve completed one!

No States Walked Across Yet

In my quest to do a healthy low carb diet, I have been on the search for some good, tasty, and healthy low carb recipes. There are some great webpages out there, but one thing I have found across the board is that they frequently call for ingredients that I don’t have access to.

One common ingredient used in these recipes that I cannot purchase around here is almond flour.

I decided to make a simple substitution, and so far, the two things I have made with this simple substitution have been amazing.

I’ve been using flax seed meal, which has about 10 grams of net carb per cup. In addition, flax seed is an immensely healthy food, containing plenty of fiber, omega 3 fatty acids, and antioxidants. I just put my flax seed in a coffee grinder, grind it on the “fine” setting, and it makes a nice flour substitute. It gives a slightly nutty flavor that reminds me of wheat, but I enjoy wheat and nuts, so it’s a wonderful find for my current low carb diet.

Flax Seed

Flax Seed Meal

I’ve made a few different things with it, and I’ll be posting recipes pretty regularly for the next few weeks. Some are modifications of other recipes I have found in cookbooks or online, and others were made entirely from scratch by Tina and me. Please enjoy!

My first recipe was made to combat my sweet tooth. I was craving cobbler, and that was what led me to come up with the idea to try flax seed meal as a flour substitute.  I had frozen blackberries on hand (picked locally, so they were 100% organic), which I placed in a 9″ baking dish that I had greased with butter.

I wanted to make the berries a little sweeter, so I sprinkled them with just a little bit of splenda.

In a measuring cup, I melted 1/2 cup of butter.  To this, I added 1/4 cup of splenda, 2 eggs, 1 cup of heavy cream, and a teaspoon of vanilla extract.  I blended this with a fork, and then I tossed in 1/2 cup of flax seed meal and mixed it together until it made a doughy-like consistency.

At this point, I dropped it on the blackberries in the baking dish.  I spread it as evenly as I could, which wasn’t that easy with the sticky consistency, but I was still able to completely cover the berries.

At this point, it went in the oven at 375 degrees for twenty-five minutes.  One thing to be aware of – it did not change color in the slightest as it was cooking.  I took a photo of it after I pulled it out of the oven when it was done, and it literally looked just like this photo of it raw.  I had planned to cook it for fifteen minutes, but it was still quite damp.  Twenty-five minutes seemed to be about right.

When done, I cut it into fourths, put it in a serving bowl, and topped it with whipped cream made with heavy cream and splenda.

The taste was amazing.  This was definitely a wonderfully sweet, fruity cobbler.  If you don’t like the flavor of wheat, you probably won’t like this, as the flax meal to me tasted like it had been made with wheat flour.  However, I like that taste, and it was amazing.  But even Tina, who hates wheat, said she thought the sweetness of the berries and the whipped cream made it taste really good.  She described it as more nutty than wheat-y, so I guess it’s somewhat up to interpretation.

Don’t be mistaken – this isn’t a fluffy, white flour cobbler like grandma makes.  However, for someone on a low carb diet, this thing was AWESOME.  It will definitely be made again.  Obviously, other fruit could be used in this.  I used blackberries because that’s what I had on hand, but I think I may try making some with blueberries, soon.  I think peaches would be great as well.

Total net carbs fora serving of the dessert, if you eat 1/4th of it, was about 4 grams.  To me, this was most definitely worth 4 grams.

Another recipe will be coming tomorrow.

We had our 2nd week weigh-in last night.  Last night’s weigh-in was the last freebie.  Starting next Friday night, we’ll lose one person per week.

Craig, I have sobering news.  Last night, if it had been “for real,” we would have lost Vaughn.

The men’s team lost.  Poor red team.  Stupid blue team kicked our butts last night.

Okay, not really.  They beat us by 0.15%.  As I pointed out immediately, earning a sad head shake from a few and laughs from others who knew I was right, that’s just one good trip to the bathroom.  We’ll beat them next week.

To be honest, I kind of wish we were on teams of mixed gender.  I am not one of these guys who are insisting, “Women can’t win this!  Men must!”

No, I am only saying that because they divided us by gender, and MY team must win.  That’s the only reason.  I could be the only guy among four females, and I’d still be saying the same thing.

Anyway, for my results… I weighed in at 339.0, which is a loss of 1.6 pounds!  I am honestly thrilled with this.

I don’t remember everyone’s results, but I do know that we had only one gain, and that was Daniel, who gained 0.4 pounds.  Last week, he lost 17 plus pounds, so a gain of 0.4 isn’t too bad.

I am, unfortunately, currently ranked fifth.  I’m not worried about it.  I still have time to pull ahead.  I’m just reminded of the winner of the first Train to Lose, who was NEVER in the lead until the last week.

1. Jeanette
2. Chris
3. Daniel
4. Christi
5. Me
6. Angie
7. Kayvan
8. Patrina
9. Deanna
10. Vaughn

This Friday, the team with the lowest percentage will lose a member with the lowest percentage.  One thing that I do like is that the percentage is from the beginning and not the week before.

My trainer is urging me to go a little easier on the cardio, and he really stressed one rest day a week.  I’ve decided to follow his advice, and I’m going to take today as my rest day.  For a few days, I’m going to limit my cardio to 2 hours a day.  I’ll just see if it really does make a difference.

Today is an easy day to take a day of rest for one big, snowy reason.

Snow Day!

We finally have snow!  And for south central Kentucky, this is a decent snow!  We currently have about six inches of the stuff on the ground, which for us, is HUGE.  This is a city that sometimes shuts down at the mere mention of snow.  This is a lot.  I’m not housebound by any means, I do have a four-wheel drive, but it’s just nice to stay in.

Hope everyone has a wonderful weekend!

Just a quickie post with my video weigh-in this week. For some reason, the videos don’t always work on this page, but they always work on the page with just a single post, so if you can’t see it here, if you click on the title of the link, that should bring up a page where the video WILL work.

I hope I have lost at least four pounds this week. I don’t feel like I’ve done fantastic, but I don’t feel like I’ve done awful, either. My exercise has declined, just because I’ve been so busy with work. I’ve only managed about an hour and a half to two hours a day. I will DEFINITELY be getting four hours tonight. I have to. Weigh in is in just two days!

However, WBKO posts their weigh-in videos on Wednesday, and here is last weeks! Apparently, I have gotten the amazing honor of being the first one in the line up. I’m not sure why; my name isn’t first, but I’ll take it anyway. And no, I don’t remember what I was doing with my hands right after my single hand clap. Apparently, I turn into shades of Ricky Bobby on camera.

One way I am going to be getting in some more activity, if not aerobic exercise, is to do workouts with my kids. At my job, I run an after school program for kids Kindergarten through about sixth grade at three different sites. I plan to travel to a different site, or maybe even sites, per day and do some activity with them. I’m on the lookout for some kid-friendly exercise videos. If you know of any, please let me know. I found one by a PE teacher named Judy Howard that may be good I’m going to try and get a hold of.

Random fact about me: I once wrote a blog that featured MST3K-type commentary from an imaginary blue dragon named Mason. It was fun; I enjoyed it. I think I’m bringing Mason back tomorrow.

We are still in the pool. I’m beginning to think we may be in the pool forever. In all seriousness, I think we’re staying in the pool until the third week is over, with perhaps some land cardio in between. I’m ready to hit the weights.

One thing I can say positive about the pool is that our trainer, who has never trained anyone in the pool before, is kicking our butts. I literally leave the pool sweating. (Well, I’d leave the pool sweating if I didn’t keep ducking my head under to cool off.) Over the course of an hour, we do running suicides, flutter kicks on the side of the pool, knee jumps (where you jump out of the water as high as you can and get your knees as high up as you possibly can), underwater squats (where you go under and explode out of the water as high as you can), flyes with weights, jumping jacks, butt kicks, and a variety of other things (usually done for a minute or more at a time) until we are out of time and all wiped.

I’m still trying to get my own workout in as well. I want to do three hours a day. It’s tough. My routine is to be at the gym by 5:45 to do an hour on the treadmill (elliptical if possible, but the gym is so busy at that point it’s almost possible), an hour in the pool from 7 to 8, and then elliptical from 8ish to 9. I also have an elliptical at home, and if I’m up for it, I do a little more. I am being VERY sure to get in 8 hours of sleep though, which I sadly missed last night, just to give my body time to heal.

Dietwise, I’ve started adding a few healthy carbs back in. I’m avoiding the white stuff, but I am eating fruits and vegetables. I found myself slipping into an Atkins mindset of, “Well, I can’t have an orange, but I can have four servings of pickled baloney!” Not good. So I’m trying to eat healthy fats, lean meats, whole grains, fruits, and vegetables. In fact, I have a spiralized zucchini with pesto for lunch. On Weight Watchers, that’s a nice 1-point lunch, and the pesto should help my body assimilate more nutrients out of the zucchini. (I’ve always heard that fat helps your body do more with veggies, which is why I tend to go for full-fat dressings and just use less than to drown a salad with low-fat dressing, which also tastes weird to me.)

First place may elude me this week. My weight loss has, indeed, hit the second week slump. We’ll see. My week isn’t over, and I still have three more nights of good workouts ahead of me. I may even squeeze in an hour of cardio Friday morning just for good measure.

They should air our video update in the morning, and I’ll post it here as soon as they do. But for now, I have the video intro they had us film the night the contest started. It’s just a short video about why we joined the competition.

More tomorrow! (If the video above doesn’t work, my apologies. I’ll try to fix it later!)

I am currently in 4th place with a loss of 11.4 pounds this week. Given that probably three or four pounds of that was water, I am pretty pleased with my weight loss. I would have liked a bigger number, (who wouldn’t?), but given that I have been exercising and watching my diet for weeks, that just wasn’t to be. So this makes me think that perhaps I can have a big loss again next week. After all, HOURS and HOURS of cardio, combined with a healthy low carb diet, may do it.

I am not a fan of low carb. I do not like the spirit of it, I do not like the practicality of it, I do not like anything about it. I do not like the way I smell when I do low carb. I do not like the way I feel when I do low carb. (Although I must say, the excessive cardio is releasing some major endorphins, so I feel pretty good right now.)

However, my trainer (my personal trainer, who has known me for a year, not my contest trainer who has known me for a week) has recommended I do low carb because she’s noticed signs of insulin resistance in me, and this is one proven way of getting the weight off. I trust her judgment on this, because she is a big advocate of a balanced diet and recommends low carb only as a last resort to prevent diabetes.

I do low carb now because I am in a contest to lose weight and I want to drop big numbers. The handful of times I have done low carb, even for a few days, I’ve lost big. We’ll see if this maintains. I certainly hope so. When I am clearly over the hurdle of being insulin resistant, I will go off low carb and do a healthy, balanced diet of lowered calories.

I’m not sure if I’ve told exactly how the weigh-ins work, so I’ll give the rundown now. (And I’ll post the video as soon as they release it, which will probably be Wednesday.) For the first three weeks, we are completely safe. On the weigh-in at the end of the third week of training, two weeks from tonight, the team with the lowest percentage of weight loss will lose their lowest percentaged member.

The guys, the red team, beat the girls, the blue team, by 0.2% tonight. That’s not much. If this had been the fourth week, the girls would have lost their member with the least percentage, which I believe would have been Denise tonight.

The top winner was Daniel, who lost 17 pounds. After him was Jeanette, who lost 16 pounds. After that was Chris, with 12 even, and then me with 11.4. After me was Kayvan with 9.8, and to be honest, I’m not sure how everyone else broke down, although I do remember that Vaughn only lost 2 pounds this week. I hate that for him; I could tell he was definitely upset about it, but what can you do?

So I’m hitting it as hard as I can this week. Even this contest has rumors of the second week slump. I plan to be the biggest loser next week, and I am going to pull ahead of everybody. I’m winning this contest if it kills me.

They aired our “sort of” weigh-in on WBKO this morning.  It pretty much consisted of us standing in front of the scale, the majority of us (me included) looking like dorks, while a voice over said our name and our weight.  Hey, I was just thrilled I didn’t have to take my shirt off.

Apparently, they’ll be doing our weigh in on t.v. every Wednesday morning.  Here’s the embedded video.

Workouts are going great. We have been in the pool everyday. I’m getting around 3 to 4 hours of cardio a day. I’m a little worried, honestly, that I might not be eating enough. Does anyone know how many calories someone my size (352 according to weigh in) should eat when doing 4 hours of cardio a day? I’m trying to keep it between 2000 and 2500. I hope that’s enough. I don’t want to go into starvation mode.