Adjusted Reality

So one of my guilty crap-tv indulgences is The Biggest Loser.  I’m not sure WHY I watch it.  Maybe, it’s because I used to have a lot in common with the people on the show – I felt so heavy and out of control and like I’d need a miracle to get my weight under control.  Now, of course, I know that all I needed to do was have some patience and make little changes that added up and stick with it, but back then – I had no faith that I could lose 10 lbs let alone 100.  It might be a selfish thing – as in, hey, I look better than the people on TV  – since normally comparing my physique to anyone on TV is as useful as comparing my cooking skills to the chefs on Food Network – I might think I look pretty cute today and might have enjoyed the spicy lentil soup I cooked up, but these people are making careers of it.  Of course I can’t compare.

It also might be that in a world of ridiculous reality TV, at least these people are getting some sort of benefit out of the show.  I think that’s why I like Top Model too (this has sound, be warned) – as twisted as it is, Tyra is helping these girls live what is for most of them a life long dream.  Stuff like Rock of Love or Charm School or Tool Academy (things that would NEVER grace my TV, but I can’t help what’s on TV when I’m at the gym.  I have to look at SOMETHING and the wall that says Austin, Texas gets boring), no redeeming value whatsoever.  These people are being given what a lot of us former marshmallows dreamed of – a fresh start in a skinny and fit body by the end of the show, and an opportunity to continue the rest of their lives with what they learned.  Even though a lot of them end up gaining weight back because, well, easy come, easy go – at least they get a chance.

However, the minutiae of the show sometimes gets to me.  I really hate the obvious product placement – not that I mind them advertising healthy food/items, but it just seems so fake and contrived trying to slip it in as part of the show.   I know the show is a game as well – but it just gets to me when they throw a fit about only losing, like, 5 lbs in a week.  I’d be happy with 1 lb.  Really.

One episode, they were making lower calorie versions of fast food like pizza and burgers.  This is good!  I have learned how to cut calories on many indulgences by making them at home.  What irked me was one team that made a burger of some sort, don’t remember what was on it, but it had a little ramekin on the side of mustard and ketchup.  When they were grading the submissions, they lost on calories and the food guy supposedly giving them tips said it was because of the mustard and ketchup on the side.

Excuse me?  I don’t know what’s up with that.  I’ve heard that from a few people that eat their burgers dry because they think mustard and ketchup are what’s bad for you on a burger.  Each tablespoon of mustard is essentially calorie free, under 5 for sure.  Each tablespoon of ketchup is about 15.  So a normal human will ingest MAYBE 20 extra calories if they ingest a tablespoon of each.  Who can eat a burger dry?  I can’t.  I would honestly rather eat something else rather than go without my 20 calories of condiments.  I’ll concede that ditching the bun, while not my thing, does offer significant calorie savings.  Ditch the plastic cheese for about 60 calories less – fine, I don’t need cheese.  Like it, but don’t need it.  Forgoing the squirt of ketchup and mustard – not significant.  What else are you going to put on it?  Mayo at 90 calories per tablespoon?  Ranch or Bleu Cheese Dressing at 75 calories per tablespoonBBQ sauce at 20-25 calories per tablespoon gets a bad rap too – seriously?  Wanna tell me we’re all fat because of BBQ sauce?  No!  It’s the bacon, cheese, and mayo on that burger that’s killing you.  I promise.  Leave freaking mustard and ketchup alone!  What a horrible example!  If I didn’t know better, I would think, “crap, I’d never eat a hamburger without condiments.  I guess I’m just destined to be fat”.

What really got my goat though… there was one show where one team got 24 hours of luxury.  They started with dinner, and then went to the bar, and then had late night munchies.  One of the women, god forbid, had a few puffs of a cigarette, and actually put it out because she said it tasted gross.  Sure, they went overboard, but wouldn’t you if you were essentially trapped in diet deprivation hell for the 10 weeks prior?   They came back and got totally lambasted by Jillian for indulging.  She looked like her eyes were going to pop out of their sockets while she was yelling at them about fried food, tequila shots, and other bad stuff.  She went on and on about the woman who took 2 puffs off a cigarette.  Really?  You’re going to tear down the woman who was curious, had a puff, and then actually drunk-as-a-skunk put it out because it tasted crappy and said she was done with smoking?  Commend her.

The funny thing is – the team still won the weigh in.  I’m glad that after all that, it still shone through that one day of indulgence is just that – one day.  In the grand scheme of things, if you are good 80% of the time and not so good 20% – you’re making progress.

It’s not all crap though.  Two weeks ago they had all the contestants run a half marathon (I didn’t see it until WAY after I decided to run my own, so I’m not copycatting, I swear!).  Most of them are obviously strong for their weight because of all the workouts they’ve been doing, but they definitely did not look like the type of people that roll up to the starting line at your local race.  The lightest gal was about 180 and the heaviest man was around 330.  Only one guy did not finish (and it was due to his knee problems more than just his general overweight-ness), and two finished actually pretty respectably – around 2:15.  I’m glad it showed that you don’t have to wait until you’re the perfect weight to go after something ambitious, which is something I’m still working on myself.

I just wish it wasn’t 2 hours.  I mean, I love watching it on a Sunday morning while I’m making the grocery list because it only needs half my attention, but it’s usually afternoon by the time I finish the show!  Anyone else out there watch TBL?  What do you think of it?  Am I banished from the kool kids klub for admitting I watch it?

I had high hopes for this little experiment.  I had visions of finding that “sweet spot”, like last year, where I could establish a program where I ate a certain amount of food, exercised a certain amount per week, and reliably lost 1-2 lbs per week.  You see, besides the times in the past when I was at a happy weight, this was probably the happiest I felt about weight loss in general.  Being stuck chipping away at the last 18 lbs, ounce by ounce, is incredibly frustrating.  While I would have told myself a year ago to shut up and die for being angsty about that, but it’s just been such a long quest.  I want to see this through to the end.  The tunnel keeps getting longer and longer though.  18 lbs would have been a little over two months when I first started.  A year ago, it would have been reliably about 4 months.  Now – who knows?

I guess the point of my bellyaching is that I really was hoping that this month I would find the magic formula – no, not the “take these magic acai berry pills and become 50 lbs skinnier in 2 weeks” type of magic, but as I said before, the sweet spot.  That is, the amount of calories I can eat and not starve myself, and how much I can workout for that calorie intake without overtraining.  I know it’s supposed to go down as you lose weight, but for me it almost stayed static from about 235 to 170, and then it become like pulling teeth (though I guess pulling teeth would take off a couple ounces…tee hee).  January and February gave me a taste of what it’s like to lose regularly again, but March, oh March – you saw me stall out again like an old hippie’s VW Bus.

Let’s get down to nitty gritties.  The first week, I worked out normally (actually increased it a bit due to birthday indulgence guilt) and counted my calories.  The second week I worked out the amount the first week dictated by adding up all my calories and applying the formula I determined at the beginning of the month – 9100 calories (or 1300 per day) was the minimum, and with that, I would do the minimum of workouts (3-30 min sessions plus strength and yoga twice).  My normal calorie intake was 10200, and I would do my normal workouts at that point (4 a week sessions with about 3.5 hours cardio, strength, and yoga).  For each 100 calories over 10200, I would add 7 minutes of intense cardio (running, DDR, or the arc trainer) or 15 minutes of relaxed cardio (walking, biking easily around the neighborhood).

Week 1 (3-1 to 3-7): Calorie intake approximately 11000, cardio 300 minutes/3417 calories burnt.  Starting this experiment with my birthday week, where such things as tex mex hangover brunch buffets, wings, burgers, garlic fries, chocolate heaven, and much much more happened was a doozy.  I knew I was a little over by the end of the week but 800 calories?  Yikes.  8×7 = 56 minutes, so basically, I had to add a whole ‘nother workout day.

Week 2 (3-8 to 3-15): Calorie intake approximately 11100, cardio 270 minutes/3732 calories burnt.  Then, the birthday celebrations just kept going.  The beginning of the week was great cal-wise, but then there was the comedy club and appetizers and drinks.  Then there was Zliten’s birthday party.  On top of it, I had to add in an extra workout, which oddly enough seemed to directly correlate with wanting more food.   Fancy that!

Week 3 (3-16 to 3-22): Calorie intake approximately 10200, cardio 315 minutes/397o calories burnt.  This week I worked REALLY, REALLY hard to get my intake back down so I didn’t have to work out so much the next week.  It was miserable.  I was grumpy.  I just wanted to EAT some days.  EAT as much as I wanted, until I felt full, damn the calories.  I think there were some day I took bites out of the refrigerator of turkey pepperoni, cheese, chocolate, jelly beans, etc and then just blocked them from my head because I was not going to friggin’ work out for an extra TWO hours the next week.  I also found this week I went from craving salty food to sweets.  It’s been insane.  For the longest time I used to be able to take or leave sweets but now I feel like I could live on fruit, chocolate, etc.  For some reason, my body started processing things differently – it wanted FUEL ME NOW food, nothing with staying power.

Week 4 (3-23 to 3-29): Calorie intake approximately 10500, cardio 370 minutes/4418 calories burnt.  This week was a little more normal, I was able to keep the intake down alright and I almost missed the extra day of working out.  Oh yeah, I didn’t.  I went on an epic bike ride instead.  I would have been at 10200 but I let myself have a little more than normal Sunday because I burnt so much.  I was still having the crazy sweets cravings, but I felt less like I was on a desert island rationing my food, awaiting a rescue.

This week would be a normal workout week if I was going to continue on, but I’m not.  I’ve found that I definitely don’t want to eat less – or at least my life doesn’t lend itself to doing so.  I also found I don’t really mind working out a bit more, but I also don’t relish HAVING to do it to pay for my sins the week before.

I’ve also reconfirmed that this part of my life is a juxtaposition right now.  The healthy living thing that is making me happy is exercise.  However, exercise seems to have very little correlation to weight loss.  If I do some, it’s good for me.  If I do a lot, I don’t seem to do better.   The hard part is calorie cutting.  I do NOT like limiting my food intake all 7 days of the week.  I do NOT like having to restrict fun stuff.  However, when I get all uppity about it and become Quix-the-diet-gestapo-grumpsalot, I see progress.  I also realize the months where I lose very little weight I AM still making progress.  My pants have gone from OK to baggy since March 1.  I am a much stronger runner than I was at the beginning of the month.  The pants I was wearing yesterday were too-big 11/12s.  The new pants I’m wearing today are actually size SIX (though I’m pretty sure they’re vanity sized, I haven’t worn this size since my gymnastics days, can’t deny it feels good!).  I’ve increased my weights and reps.  I am all around harder, better, faster, and stronger.  It’s not all doom and gloom.

That being said, I’m done with being uber focused on the calorie counts, at least for a while.  I don’t want to live and die by the amount of food I’m eating.  I work out pretty darn hard already, I’d rather not have to work out more just because I indulged a bit.  And to top it all off – I lost LESS weight this month than ever – I went from 155 to 152.6  (and let me tell you, I have not seen that number since last Thursday, I’m floating all over the place in the 153-154s).

Anyone else have a better weight loss month last month?  Achieved a really awesome goal?  Hit me up in the comments to bring a ray of light to this not-so-thrilling post…

First of all, hooray for being back in bloggy-town.  I needed that break that the evil spammers gave me, but I felt weird not writing!  I hope that the spam comments will be back down to the one or three a day they used to be.

I got my bike almost 2 weeks ago and was sorely disappointed that I had only been on one 30 minute ride around the neighborhood.  Wind and rain and just general laziness have been plaguing all attempts to go on a nice ride with Zliten so far.  Yesterday, the plan was to get groceries during my special “heathen time” window (when all the other good people are at church – typically before 11am Sundays) when the stores are nice and mellow, not full of screaming children and families.  Nothing against them, I’d just rather get in and out of the grocery store without having to play demolition derby with my cart.  Then, some cleaning, which ended up just being “crap, at least get the laundry done”, and then we were to head to a nearby park for our neighborhood picnic.  It seemed like a perfect excuse to get a bike ride in, so we strapped on our helmets and headed down.

When we got there, we discovered that we were approximately an hour and a half early.  We thought it started at noon, but the sign plainly said 2pm.  Since we were hungry THEN and didn’t relish the idea of sitting around waiting for the barbeques to spark up, we just kept riding.  We both decided that a sandwich shop a few miles down the road sounded yummy, and like a good target, but when we got close, we decided to keep going.  It was a beautiful day, and we weren’t ready to stop yet.  We kept riding and riding, and soon we were downtown 6th Street.

We were going to find a nice place with a patio to get lunch and a beer, but I had brought up an area slightly south where I said I wanted to bike to someday called Barton Springs, so we pressed on and headed there.  After an interesting uphill curly cue ramp and having to walk the bike down some stone stairs, we arrived.  We ended up at a place called Uncle Billy’s BBQ, about 9 miles from the house, and soaked up some sun on their patio, enjoying a nice, tasty local Hefewizen, listening to live music, and splitting a gigantic BBQ plate of chopped beef, pulled pork, turkey, coleslaw, and potato salad.  At that point, we were almost regretting how far we had gone from home, and decided we would try to ride home, but would be ok if we had to take the bus at least partway instead – also leaving open the option to find another nice patio, and another nice beverage.

We rode back down the curly cue ramp again and back up downtown – went up and down once and decided that the places that were open didn’t look that inviting.  After a monster hill we had to stop at the top of, we headed up to the college area.  Shops and restaurants, sure, there were tons of things that looked interesting, but no bars.  We then decided that we’d stop closer to home, and then soon…we were about a mile away and decided the best place to stop was OUR patio.  I was not dead tired by the time we got home, but I was definitely ready to stop.  And I was crazy sunburnt.  Hey, I started the day with a long sleeve shirt and a jacket, and figured I’d be sitting in the shade for an hour or 2.  I didn’t expect to have my sleeves rolled up as far as they could go by the end of it.

Total time – about 3.5 hours (with about 2:20 ridden).  Approximate calories burnt: 798 (not bad for a day off).  Total guilt for indulging in a beer and some BBQ – 0.

I learned 2 main things on my first ride today.  First, I now know why a lot of runners cross train on bicycles – it almost as intense of a workout, but used COMPLETELY different muscles and was even more gentle on my feet than DDR or Cybil the arc trainer.  And – it was a hell of a lot of fun.  We spent the majority of the afternoon outside, on a beautiful day, exploring the city.  Score!  The second is that Austin keeps getting smaller and smaller as we find different ways to get around.  There are places that are 15-20 mins away by car but are a pain to park at so we avoid them.  However, they are also a 40 minute bus ride away.  And now, just under an hour bike ride away!  I don’t think that it would ever be practical to jog down somewhere to grab BBQ and a pint and jog back, but it’s an option…

We’ve resolved to do one long ride like that AT LEAST once a month.  I don’t know why it took me so long to decide to get a bike again, but I’m so glad I did!  Today, however, I embark on another avenue of fitness-ical pursuits.  How did March go?  What am I into now?  Stay tuned for actual posts this week!