Stellar Path

Archive for the ‘Train to Lose’ Category

I thought about naming this post “And then there were three…” as that is what my trainer said to me as I left tonight.

The guys lost. Again.

I lost a grand total of 0.2 pounds. There have been MANY, MANY, MANY times that I have seen a small loss, or even a gain, and while I was upset, I would have to say, “I know exactly why this happened,” even if I didn’t want to admit it to myself. This week, I have no idea why I had such a small loss. I have worked my tail off. I have measured every bite of every morsel of food that has gone in my mouth. I have drank tons of water. I honestly don’t know why.

Maybe it’s just one of those things. I can accept that. The human body is weird, and sometimes, weight gain or loss just doesn’t always make sense. It is what it is. Tomorrow is the start of another week.

As far as tonight goes, as previously mentioned, the Blue Team kicked our butts. Well, the beat us by 0.2%, but it was still enough. I don’t remember exactly how much everyone lost, but I know that Jeanette lost over four pounds, Chris lost over six pounds, I lost 0.2 pounds to come out at 337.2, and Angie and Kayvan neither one lost or gained. Dead zero. I’m pretty sure Deanna and Patrina had small losses. Kayvan was the lowest member on the guy’s team, and he is the Red Team member who was sent packing. Bye Kayvan.

What does this mean for me? If we don’t win again next week, I am probably going home. I am currently in dead last on the men’s team and in 6th place overall. The ranking from last week hasn’t changed at all. I’ve gotta figure out something to boost my loss. I’m also wondering if I should just stay the course or try something new? I had someone suggest that I try eating my carbs early in the day and only do protein and healthy fats in the afternoon and evening. I may give it a shot. We’ll see.

Let me also give you a rundown of my $5 Weekly Goals!

Last week’s goals

1. Reach 333 – Fail! I only lost 0.2 pounds this week. I currently weigh 337.2. Not quite 333.
2. Finish walking Rhode Island – Success! I completed Rhode Island early this morning, and I’m already 13,000 steps into my new state of Nebraska! (I’ll post more about walking Nebraska later this weekend.)
3. Write 2,500 words on my novel – Utter fail. I think I wrote… uhm, zero words. I really thought I would make this one. Oh well.
4. Finish 4 complete workouts in the weight room – Little fail, but still a fail. I did three workouts in the weight room. An act of God intervened on this one, as on one of the nights Tina and I were going to lift, a snowstorm came and the gym closed at 8 p.m. We didn’t have time. Oh well. It’s still a fail.
5. Begin the 100 Push Ups Challenge – Success! I utterly suck at push ups, but I have both done my initial assessment and done the first day’s work.

Thus far, I have earned $2 toward Super Mario Brothers Wii and you all have earned $3 toward your first giveaway. Still not sure what it’s going to be yet, but when I have about $10 or so saved up, I’ll figure it out then.

This Week’s Goals

1. Reach 333
2. Write 3,000 words on my novel
3. Drink at least one gallon of water a day
4. Do at least 2 extra at-home workouts
5. Finish 4 complete workouts in the weight room

These are my goals for the week. Hopefully, I’ll do them all.

As always, if you are viewing this post on the main page, the video may not load. However, if you click on the title of the post so you are viewing it on its own page, the video should load. Not sure why it’s doing this, but it is. On with the rest of the post…

I am a huge dork in this video, but I’m okay with that, because everyone was so lifeless, and I decided to just go for it and celebrate. Granted, I thought I had lost 2.6 pounds instead of 1.6, but if I was going to take Craig up on his challenge and throw a thumbs up out there, I knew I had to celebrate. The thumbs up is just there for half a second, but I held the thumbs up the entire time I walked back from the scale.

So I did. I threw my hands over my head, and because my shirt has shrank in the laundry (stupid dryer), you can see my gut. Oh well. They have my weight up there, and I’d wager that a lot of guys who weigh 337.4 either have a gut or they are approximately twelve feet tall.

There is also a shirtless picture of me on the internet now! The horrors!

They took our photo, swore to us that it wouldn’t be used anywhere but in our file for purposes LATER if we chose to use it, but the big fat liars lied. The lying liars. Granted, this is just a shoulders-up shot, kind of like on Fear Factor (but without the spinning), and it really doesn’t bother me. I just wish they had told me they were going to use it so I would have flashed my best driver’s license smile. Tina made fun of me because my chest hair looked like the top of a heart. It does and she already knew this, but apparently, this picture in 8×10 form in our gym makes it a little funnier. Who knew?

As stated previously, we ended up losing Vaughn Flickner.

I’m very nervous about this week’s weigh-in. I have a hunch I’ll be nervous about EVERY weigh-in. I just don’t think I’ve lost much. I hope I can lose a pound or two, but… we’ll see. Still, I’ve lost 14.6 pounds in three weeks, and I have to recognize that that is an achievement in and of itself.

I’d still love to win the whole flippin’ contest, though.

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?

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.

Train to Lose 2010 has officially started!  There are ten of us, five guys and five girls.  The girls are the blue team, and the guys are the read team.  We have a male trainer named Daniel who has arms the size of softballs.  I haven’t been trained by him yet; I’m looking forward to it.

Me on the Red Team

My diet has been impeccable this weekend, and I have exercised more for the past two days than I believe I may have ever before.

Tina and I did our first water aerobics class at Total Fitness Saturday morning.  I’ve been hesitant to take a swim class for one very big reason.

Man boobs.

I have ‘em and I don’t want mine exposed in public.

However, I made it in the contest, and the entire first week of personal training takes place in the pool.  I decided that the best way to deal with this is to just deal with it.  After all, I’m clearly fat, and it’s not like people can’t see that I have man boobs even with my shirt on.

So we went to TFC at about 8:45, I changed into my trunks, showered off, walked out to the pool, and took my shirt off and got in the pool.  Imagine my surprise when NO ONE burst out laughing.  I was surprised at what a non-deal it was and how comfortable I got with it.  It was surprisingly liberating.

Remember – other than Cancun, I have not been seen shirtless in public since before puberty.  This was a big deal for me.

And the class was an absolute blast.  I loved every minute of it.  It was an hour workout, and it was led by the trainer of the female team in Train to Lose, Linda.  This is the only time I have ever sweat in the pool.  It was amazingly tough, and I plan to go back every Saturday at 9 a.m. that I can.

We went back to the gym later in the day and did an hour of cardio.  After that, we did a ten minute exercise video from Instant Netflix, and then I played Wii Fit for 30 minutes.

Wii Fit was surprisingly fun, too.  Some of it did not feel like much of a workout at all, but others, such as Step routines, cardio boxing, and hula hoops, really had me sweating.  I did 30 minutes Saturday night and 45 minutes tonight.  The Miis kind of freak me out, and the albino personal trainers are a tad disturbing, but other than that, it is so much fun.  Can anyone recommend any other good fitness games for the Wii?  I have Jillian Michaels game, and while I am completely in love with Jillian Michaels and she is one of my five freebies, her game sucks.

Jillian Michaels

Anyhow, today, in addition to the Wii workout just mentioned, we did 45 minutes on the treadmill, steep incline, 15 minutes on the elliptical, and then an hour in the pool, water walking, lunges, kicks, swimming, and the like.  We were both exhausted, and my legs kept cramping up.  I definitely should have eaten more before I came to the pool.

I’ll keep you updated on the status of the competition.  They filmed our commercial Friday night, and I’m pretty sure I looked pretty lame during it.  I’ve noticed that when I smile for a photo, such as a driver’s license, I have a very strong tendency to end up looking like a back alley rapist.  I’m afraid the same thing may have happened when I had to hold a smile for thirty seconds during the commercial.  We’ll see.  As soon as WBKO posts it on their website, I’ll post the link here.

I was picked to be on the Biggest Loser!

Okay, well… not THAT Biggest Loser, but my gym, Total Fitness Connection, has a contest called Train to Lose.  They pick five guys and five girls, and we compete for ten weeks to see who can lose the most weight.  The top three winners get a year’s gym membership, which isn’t too shabby by itself, and the grand prize winner gets $3,000!

Train to Lose

I AM going to win this thing.  If it requires me doing true Atkins because I really am pre-diabetic and my body just can’t process carbs the way it should, then so be it.  I am winning this contest!

More details as I get them.  It starts next Friday night, but we have an informational meeting next Thursday.

And even though she’ll probably never read this, I have to give huge thanks to Dr. Pam Petty.  She’s one of my bosses.  I teach a literacy class at Western Kentucky University a few nights a week from 5:30 to 8:15.  This contest requires a mandatory workout from 7 to 8 every weeknight.  My first thought when I found out about that was that I couldn’t make it to Train to Lose, which would make me ineligible, and I would lose my spot to someone else.  However, with nothing more than a quick email, she is going to let me switch my class to first thing in the morning so I can still workout and be part of Train to Lose.  Dr. Petty is awesome.