13 Weeks: Week Six — Surprise, It’s Saturday!
These are the adventures of Charlie Martin, his 13-week mission to follow a Taubes-inspired low-carb eating plan with high-intensity training, to find out what the hell happens and hopefully lose some weight and improve his health besides. Follow me here on PJ Lifestyle, and on the 13 Weeks Facebook page.
Yeah, it’s Saturday. I forgot to mention last Sunday that to fit in with the new weekly schedule for Lifestyle health-related posts, we’re moving to Saturday. So strictly, this is really sort of week 5 1/2, but roll with it.
This really has gotten to be sort of the boring middle — my blood sugar continues its slow decline, and I’m still more or less plateaued: my weight hovered at 278.2 exactly for 6 days before breaking below that this morning. Except, maybe it’s not a real plateau: my weight is still fitting a trend line of about 1 pound every four days. We’ll see on Sunday.
In the mean time, though, there’s been one thing I’ve noticed: I’ve been letting the exercise slide. There are several reasons, or excuses, for this — I really did feel bad right after Thanksgiving, and last week was a terror, with one all-nighter programming and a cold. But still, I’ve been back to my old habit of the most exercise I get being the trip from the parking lot to my desk at the office, and I’ve been parking closer to the door than usual.
And that nonsense has got to stop. Starting today, I’ll be carefully recording the exercise on Lose It! and I’ll be announcing it in my morning updates on Facebook. Every time. Days with no exercise I’ll also mention in my morning updates. That’ll keep me honest.
I did notice one interesting thing this week. Here’s my Physics Diet chart from the start of the experiment:
The line along the bottom is daily weight; the straight line is the linear-fit trend line and the blue line is a exponentially weighted moving average. What’s interesting is the way it seems there’s almost a pattern to it — a bump up, a plateau, then a sudden decline. I don’t know what to make of that. In any case, the current plateau is going to be challenged quite a bit this weekend; I’m having a little procedure done this Monday, so I’ll be on clear liquids for the weekend.
What? What procedure? Just a procedure.
Oh, all right: it’s a colonoscopy. Happy now? Another of the joys of middle age.
You’ve set a difficult task for yourself. An active life-style which includes regular heart-pumping, sweating exercise is just that – a life-style, not a permanent boot camp of sorts. Exercise is fun: hiking, swimming, biking, jumping rope, running, playing frisbee, etc.
And the weight lifting has nothing to do with nothing in this. And watching calories isn’t fun. One doesn’t watch calories, one burns them, and with high-impact heart-pumpers that strengthens bones and muscles of the entire body, not lifting weights.
I hope this works, but I never thought it would; not for you, for anybody. It’s going about it the wrong way in my opinion and even if that wasn’t true, it can’t be sustained.
If it falls through, try playing frisbee for an hour 3 days a week, biking an hour 2 days a week, and walking 2 miles two days a week – just that, no dieting, no weights. You might be surprised. Maybe throw in some swimming and skipping rope once in a while. It’s fun and sustainable. The heart is the heart of it. A healthy heart will take care of body management. Doing such things lowered my resting pulse to 48, (the biking became a manic charge up San Juan Hill) and my bone density was very high. I measured my progress by my resting pulse, nothing else. Everything followed that.
Well, it’s a little early. I wrote this on Thursday night, thinking it had to be ready for publication friday — and last night I did the full Tabata with kettlebells and it felt pretty good.
Burton has a point … about lifestyle … personal experience here is that just walking for 1/2 to 1 hour daily results in significant weight loss. But that eats up that amount of time every day … every day … most people can’t change their lives to that extent. Lifestyle, not boot camp. It’s a hard thing. Best wishes and congrats to you Mr. Martin on making this attempt. And you really are looking good.
“One doesn’t watch calories, one burns them, and with high-impact heart-pumpers that strengthens bones and muscles of the entire body, not lifting weights.”
Who says that weightlifting can’t result in high-intensity (note: intensity is what you want, not impact) “heart-pumpers that strengthens bones and muscles of the entire body”?
If you actually believe that, you’ve obviously never done CrossFit.
For information on the benefits of high-intensity training that includes weights, see the following.
http://snowgoosechronicles.blogspot.com/2012/12/intensity-vs-cardio.html
Oh, by the way, I’ve now lost 2 lbs since Wednesday: 276.2 this morning.
I’ve been doing a Taubian thing since this summer. It’s all Instadude’s fault. I’m down to a single reflux pill and a single BP pill once every 1.5-2 weeks as opposed to daily. My weight peaked at 255 (6’2″) and am now down to 223 as weighed this morning. Primarily staying away from sugar, starches and carbs and having 1-2 protein shakes daily replacing 1-2 meals. I’d make sure my scale is accurate. The one I started with was our 20+ year old bathroom spring scale which turned out to be rather erratic. So it got upgraded.
It seems to be but I just ordered one that takes body fat and connect to the computer by WiFi….
I’ve plateaued at 274 but I think that was more the result of having my birthday and my wife making me a cheesecake… I’ve promised myself to do better this week.
Charlie, thank you for inspiring many other folks to make a positive change in their lifestyles.
I’m not trying to talk you out of exercising by any means. But for weight loss, the food side of the equation is much more important than the exercise side. Many of my patients have lost excess weight simply with very-low-carb eating. Exercise does help prevent much, if not all, of the muscle loss seen with many diets.
Exercise is most important for long-term maintenance of weight loss, along with other benefits such as longer life span.
Hang in there!
-Steve