Back on the Wagon

Routine is really important.  For several weeks, things were going really well – I was eating, sleeping, drinking well and getting some sort of exercise in every day.  The 10 days I was gone in Iowa really got me screwed up, though.   I rode some, but when I got back, I was so disorganized that I didn’t really get back into the groove that I was in at all.  So, here I am a couple of weeks later and I haven’t done much at all, except for a couple of mountain bike rides.  I’ve sorta fallen off the wagon.

But, I’m clawing my way back on this week.  I’ve worked up a schedule for riding this week and I should be able to spend the foreseeable future in a fairly disciplined manner.  The big deal is good, right now – I need time to cook food for the week and I’ve been really busy with work.

For some reason, my back has been bothering me a lot recently – I’m pretty sure that it has something to do with the terrible chair that I sit in at work.  The cubicle world that most of us work in is a real contributor to the sedentary lifestyle that a lot of people lead.  My core is probably really weak and I think that the past year and a half of sitting at a computer has probably aggravated my back.  I’ve contacted the facilities people to try and get a different chair, but they’ve ignored me for the past month or so.

It’s good to be back on the wagon again – hopefully I haven’t set myself back by a month and I can still make some decent strides in my fitness level by Christmas.

 

Mid-Trip Update

For the 3 people actually following my blog, I should explain why I’ve been absent the past week or so.  I’m actually on a weeklong bicycle tour of Iowa.  RAGBRAI is an incredibly popular, organized bicycle tour across this state – 10,000 riders from all over the world come here to ride, drink, and party their way past 500 miles of cornfields.  I’m here as a support driver, but I’ve been able to ride a little bit.

As you might imagine, the food here is rather interesting.  Corn, pork, etc.  Beer all over the place.  Not the best place to try to maintain a disciplined diet.  All in all, I’ve done pretty well, but I’ve basically stopped trying to keep track of what I’ve eaten or how many calories I’ve gotten.  This week and a half will probably wind up being dead weeks on my record.  Nevertheless, I’ve not abandoned my eating habits and started immersing myself in fried potstickers, pulled pork sandwiches, or any of the other gnarly stuff I’ve found.  Since I drive from town to town and buy most of the food, I’ve made a conscious effort to keep downing fruit, water, vegetables, and avoiding all of the nasty stuff.

Beer is another story.  Part of the fun here is sharing a few drinks with the guys after the ride, so I’ve drank a bit more than I normally would – I cleaned out the rack at a Wal-Mart the other day.  I got the last 6-pack of Fat Tire in the state of Iowa, I think, as well as the Newcastle.  At this point, I think I’m doing alright.  I should be back in Denver by Sunday night, in time for a picture, a post, and some measurements.  Hopefully, I haven’t gained anything from my time out here – I’d probably be happy just maintaining this week.

 

Week 2: Summary

Two weeks down, twenty-four to go.  I don’t really see a whole lot of difference, but some of the stats have changed a little bit.  Here are the stats after two weeks.

Weight:  198 lbs

Chest:  44″

Neck:  16.0″

Waist:  39.5″

Abdomen:  42.0″

There are a couple of noteworthy items here, one of which is the neck dimension.  I’m a little uncertain as to how good my measuring skills are.  Before I started this little endeavour, I have a shirt with a 16″ collar that I couldn’t get my neck into.  I remember straining in order to get it buttoned a couple of weeks ago.  The tape actually measured something less than 16″, which was somewhat shocking – but, after two weeks, the collar buttoned easily and I slipped right into it.

Assuming that my scale is accurate, my weight has dropped down to 198 lbs.  I’m trying to be consistent with how I weigh myself and when, but it would appear that I’ve dropped 9 lbs since starting.  That’s encouraging, but it’s also a little bit worrisome, since I don’t want to lose muscle in the process.

Some of the weight I’ve lost might also be water — I rode over two hours yesterday on the road bike and wentt on a three hour mountain bike ride today.  Both were in some pretty hot temperatures, so dehydration might be a part of it.  But, my diet has been really good the past week and I’ve been drinking a lot of water, so dehydration might not actually be a problem.  I know my body pretty well when it comes to hydration and I’m pretty sure that I’m getting enough.

 

First Major Speed Bump

Before and during my time at university, I worked as a bicycle mechanic for a locally owned bike shop,  It was actually one of the larger and more professional shops of its kind in the country.  The owner had been making an annual trip to Iowa to participate in RAGBRAI.  If you’ve never heard of it, imagine Sturges for cyclists – something like 15,000 riders usually participate and the ride crosses the entire state of Iowa.  Two  years ago, I went as a driver / mechanic for the owner and a number of his friends.  I made a good deal of money that week.  The problem isn’t the riding….it’s the food and beer.

RAGBRAI is a ton of fun – you ride all day, drink all evening, and repeat until you hit the western edge of the state.  However, if you’re serious about training and getting fit, it can be a dangerous place to be.  I’ve been asked to reprise my role as super-domestique and uber-mechanic again, so I’ll be leaving Thursday night for the eastern edge of Iowa.  The toughest part is going to be turning down all of the pulled pork, smoked meats, etc. that I’ll be surrounded by that week.  Iowans pull out all of the stops and are everywhere, hawking their wares.

I’ve largely cut beer out of my diet for now – this weeklong extravaganza is a real threat to the clean eating that I’ve been training myself to stick  to.  As I’ve said before, this isn’t really a diet.  It’s the first six months of my forming a series of lifestyle changes regarding how I eat.  I’ve never intended to do things that I don’t see myself continuing to do after this six month experiment is over.  So, with that in mind, I don’t intend to spend the entire week without having a beer or a pulled pork sandwich.   After all, I’m taking a weeks vacation to do this.  But, unlike the majority, I simply can’t let that become the norm.  So, lots of fruit, lots of water, and a couple of brews that week.  I want to keep my intake around 1900 cals/day, even though the opportunity to double that will be omnipresent.

 

Week 1: Summary

This past week went pretty well, though I’m still learning how to get the protein that I need.  I also still need to raise my calorie intake a little bit, but as a start towards making some much-needed changes in my lifestyle,  I’m fairly pleased.  This week, I was able to get in 3 gym workouts which were probably too strenuous.  I was extremely sore for the majority of the week.  I also got out on the mountain bike twice.  Last Monday was fairly light, but today was really intense.  We rode for just over two hours, about 3/4 of which was spent climbing.  Currently, my road bike is in pieces, but I should have it back together tomorrow evening and will hopefully be able to get cardio training kicked up into high gear soon.  I’m planning a trip to Moab sometime in October and I’m hopeful that I’ll have started seeing some serious results by then.  My suspicion is that such a trip will be filled with beer during the evenings and biking during the day….but, before the gardens must come the fighting.  Here are this week’s stats:

Weight:  205 lbs

Chest:  45″

Neck:  16.5″

Waist:  39.5″

Abdomen:  42.5″

I’m trying to be consistent when I make measurements, but it will probably be a while until I get really good with the measuring tape.  Additionally, my cheap $15 scale might not be all that reliable either.  The neck measurement changed an entire inch, which leads me to believe that I might have made a mistake last week when I measured it.  Overall, it looks like I lost about 2 lbs this week, which may be a simple  fluctuation due to water weight or meal variations today.

 

Some Lessons Learned on Food

As I mentioned in a comment I made a few days ago, I’ve been tracking my caloric intake at www.fitday.com.  Now that I’ve reverted to an athlete-like diet, I’ve learned several things that I wasn’t aware of.  First, a word on how many calories I’m trying to squeeze my diet into.  According to this, a male with my physical characteristics needs to take in around 2400 kcal/day in order to maintain bodyweight.  Since my goal is to lose about a pound of bodyfat per week, I subtracted 500 kcal from this and have made my daily goal to stay around 1900 kcal/day.  Over the past week, I’ve found this exceedingly difficult to do.  Not because I’m eating too much, but too little.

There are essentially two constraints that I’m trying to balance: caloric intake and sources of calories.  I’ve eliminated most processed starches (e.g., breads, pasta, etc.) and have found that hitting 1900 kcal/day is somewhat difficult.  In particular, the real problem has been protein intake.  I’ve read that I should be trying to take in something like .88g of protein for every pound of bodyweight, which means that I need around 180g of protein per day.  Unfortunately, I’ve only been getting about 100-120g and my calorie intake is about 1,700 kcal/day.  I’m going to spend the next few weeks playing around with my diet to see if I can find a way to jockey all of the numbers into the right place before I consider adding something like a protein shake.  I think it’s just a matter of coming up with another way to introduce more protein without pushing my caloric intake too high.

A lot of this seems to come down to balance.  I’m aiming for 33/33/33 percentages of fats/proteins/carbs.  Thus far, I’ve been getting around 30/25/45, which isn’t bad, but I need to get my protein intake up to make sure that I can stay healthy and not get injured or sick.

Anyway, I’m off for a ride.  I’ll be posting tonights picture and stats when I get back.  Thanks for following along.

 

The 4th of July

I knew that the 4th of July was going to pose a problem, since I’m trying to really focus on clean eating during the first month of my journey here.  I had two BBQs to go to yesterday.  All in all, I did pretty well.  The first BBQ I went to was a co-worker’s that had just moved into a new place.  I ran the grill for a couple of hours and ate a bratwurst and drank a beer.  My contribution to the piles of meat that were consumed at BBQ #1 was a rack of pork ribs, which I had rubbed down with olive oil, rosemary, salt, and black pepper.  I picked the meat off of one of them to make sure that they were good (they were).  Before I went to college, I spent several years as a cook in a number of different kinds of restuarants, so I know my way around food.

BBQ #2 wasn’t so much a BBQ as it was a soiree watching fireworks and drinking beer.  I had another couple of bottles of microbrew.  Afterwards, I headed home and crashed out.  I’m trying to make lifestyle changes that will be apart of my diet after I’m finished with my six-month experiment, so I’m not going to cut alchohol out completely.  But, I’m definitely going to make it more of an occasional thing – it’s so easy to down 4 beers and a pizza in a couple of hours and not realize how unhealthy that is for me.

 

Thoughts on Exercise

For some reason, it’s always seemed to me that training and exercise worked for other people but not for me.  I’ve entertained a belief that my body simply didn’t respond to working out or training.  It’s probably because change doesn’t occur overnight and I was impatient.  Part of my desire to track my progress through this little experiment is so that I can prove myself right or wrong.  If I’m correct and there is something wierd about my physiology that makes me impervious to training, I’ll have 26 pictures that all look alike.  On the other hand, if I’m wrong, I’ll have a record to prove it.  Here’s hoping it’s to the latter!

 

10 Reasons for Getting Fit

I should mention here at the outset that this isn’t some going to be some grueling six month trial followed by a 3 month pizza bender.  To be sure, the goal is a physical transformation, but the process goes a bit deeper than that.  It’s a lifestyle change that I’ve known for a while that I needed to do, but have never gotten motivated enough to actually start forming good habits.  I wish I had decided to do it 10 years ago, but I don’t have a time machine.

Here are a few reasons why I finally decided to pull the trigger and start fixing some of my bad habits.

1. A lot of people get distracted with marriage, job, etc. and don’t realize their health is important until they hit 45 and their doctor tells them they have high blood pressure.  I’m not going to be that guy.
2. I love cycling and have made up my mind every February for the past 4 years that I was going to start training so that I could race that season.  The future is going to be different – I’m going to build a large base between now and the end of the year and then be in a position to start training seriously for the 2010 cyclocross season.
3. None of my suits fit and since I’ll probably be looking for a new job next January, I want to be able to wear them without needing to grunt in order to close the buttons.
4. I’ve always been fairly lean, but I’ve never had a gut that I was proud of.
5. Changing my eating habits will actually save me a decent amount of money.  Pizza and beer are my nemeses and aren’t cheap.
6. I’m going to visit Panama over Christmas and want to be able to enjoy the beach without feeling self-conscious.
7. I’ve been nursing a sore back for the past month or so, largely due to the sedentary lifestyle that I’ve adopted over the past few years.  Making exercise and nutrition a better priority should keep things like that from becoming commonplace.
8. Now that I have a decent income, I want to dress the part.  But, I don’t want to spend my hard-earned cash on nicer clothes until I can actually fit in them.
9. Some of my family members passed away due to illnesses that could have probably been avoided if they hadn’t lived the life they did.
10. Not to be shallow, but I’m single and women aren’t blind.

 

In The Beginning…

The name of this blog is pretty self-explanatory. One picture a week. 26 weeks. Join me on my mission to forge a six-pack set of abs.

The past three years have been a real mess – graduated from university, got a job, went on a two year World of Warcraft bender, and several other things. I went from cycling 4-5 days a week to sitting at a computer 17 hours a day.  Not good.  The long and short of it is that I realized I’m on the road to being a normal, out-of-shape, 31-year old, American male. Oddly enough, most people wouldn’t consider me out-of-shape, but then again, I’m not ripped or anything like that…at least, not yet.

That’s the whole point here. I’m not really all that eloquent, so for all my readers out there, here’s what you can expect between now and Christmas.  A picture on Sunday night.  Measurements during the week.  Diet and activity records over the past  week.  From now until December 27, 2009 I’ll be faithfully updating this blog with how my efforts are going.

Anyway, here are some initial stats and a picture as of 06/29/09:

Weight:  207 lbs

Chest:  45″

Neck:  17.5″

Waist:  39.5″

Abdomen:  42.5″

Shoulders:  51.5″