July
6
2010
Ugh…
Had a good weekend until Monday, 7/5. I was lucky enough to have a paid day off, but just after lunch, the stomach cramping and discomfort set in. This unleashed about 8 hours of pure hell for me. Just before bed the awful body aches and chills kicked me around and left me miserable. This morning I called in sick for the first half of the day, but now that I’m here, I’m struggling through it. Whatever this bug is seems to not be gone 100%. Hoping by tonight I feel normalish again.
That’s it. Wish things were more exciting around here, but life is just busy. I have lots of writing ideas, but I’m holding off for credibility’s sake. Once I have cut a reasonable amount of weight, I will share some ideas and theories I have once I feel like I have a platform to stand on.
-Dan
Popularity: 2% [?]
July
3
2010
Welcome to July. Here we go…
This week I got back to the weight from about 3 weeks ago, before I was the poster boy for epic failure. It is still progress after all. I weighed in at 311.8 lbs. Down 1.2 lbs from last week and a total of 6.4 lbs since 4/30/10. Sorry the pic of the scale is hard to read. I guess I need to use a flash with a backlit display like that so the blue light is not visible.
The tape budged 1/8″ this week, down 1/8″ from last week and 1 1/8″ total since 4/30/10.
In 2 months of this journey I have only had posts that made me feel positive, but never proud. The last 2 or so days of this week I believe I finally found a calorie level where I can progress up with weights I lift and down with the scale. I am truly hopeful next week brings a weight I see and feel proud of.
-Dan
Popularity: 2% [?]
July
2
2010
I was on call this week, and I had to take care of something this morning when I woke up. Following that I fed my youngest and got ready for work, completely forgetting to take pictures. I will get it done tomorrow morning.
A common thread with FAT bloggers is that they, for the most part, can recall that “aha” moment where they decided enough was enough. Some may call it a wake up call. Some may have had a heart attack or a diabetes diagnoses. For me, the last few years have been a continual “aha” moment, with events coming and going where I feel depressed and disappointed in myself for having fallen this far. Nothing so far has made me step back and feel a sense of urgency, aside from my own negative feelings. Then last night I had a miniature moment…
My wife hates sleeping with me. I snore, I fall asleep in seconds, I wheeze and choke on my own fat. It’s overwhelmingly sexy, really. I am a heavy sleeper, she is a light sleeper. When her husky husband is sprawled on his back dying a slow death by sleep apnea, she gets annoyed, but she does not get sleep. The last several months she has set up shop on the couch…I get the bed BUT I get up with the baby, and she gets the couch and has the night to sleep. It works for us for now.
She was voicing her frustration with me last night, and she said she is really worried about me, and my health. She says the breathing in my sleep has gotten worse, and it concerns her more than usual. This to me was beyond just words. It was hard to hear, because it was true. Waking up with pounding headaches is something I experience every once in a while…likely from my brain getting a lack of consistent oxygen. I did sleep studies a few years ago and was given a CPAP machine, but I couldn’t use it. If you zoom in on my pictures, you will see the incredibly crooked nose. A deviated septum (diagnosed already) combined with a CPAP = FAIL. You can’t force air through a nose that is half blocked.
It is all true. I sleep like a fat sloth because I cannot breathe. These problems are non-existent at 240 lbs and below, so add that to my motivation…
-Dan
Popularity: 2% [?]
June
29
2010
Some who approach dropping bodyfat do so because they just eat like shit all the time. Breakfast (if they eat it at all) is coffee and pastries, maybe a sandwich of some kind with a Coke and chips for lunch, and dinner is a casserole, cheeseburger and fries, etc. This diet, repeatedly, yields a high caloric content and a low nutritional value, and it lacks protein while having a gross over abundance of processed and sugary carbs, and saturated fat. I just presented the meal plan of a large percentage of our country’s population…
Then there are people like me. People who, at birth, were hand selected to receive a bottomless pit in place of a stomach. No lie…I can eat. I’m not talking I can eat junk, but I can eat about 4 servings more than the average person and still not be full…content MAYBE, but full, no way. A few weeks back after a Friday Weigh In, some work people hit up Buffalo Wild Wings for lunch, and I joined them. I put down 42 wings without blinking, and had I not had a full afternoon of work planned, it’d been more. I struggle so, so much to restrict food intake. When I said in my last weigh in post that I had to clean up my diet, you might as well read it as “put the brakes on the portions!”
My typical diet consists of a few protein shakes, meats of various kinds, rice, vegetables, diet soda, water, yogurt, fruit, etc. That is about 95% of what goes in my body…the problem being that the 2500 or so calories I realistically NEED to promote fat loss and muscle gain…isn’t enough to make me feel satisfied. Then the snacking ensues, and then I get into trouble, and next thing you know it’s Friday Weigh In time and I’m explaining why I lost 0.4 lbs in 7 days. Frustrating, but a vicious cycle…
One of my failures over time was trying to duplicate my 2003 summer of massive progress…the one that got my leaned out for the Hulk costume HERE. That summer I was pounding weights and pounding cardio, but then I went to work at a restaurant with an upstairs and downstairs layout, and no elevator for food. As a server, I was doing those stairs 50-100 times a night, and we were BUSY. I cannot now, with my desk job, burn the kind of calories and eat the amount of food I did then. The fat MELTED away for me then, but now, I need to scale back the food to meet my caloric expenditure for a desk job.
Dieting is hard, because I’m hungry. I don’t like thinking so much about food, but I do. All day. I cannot wait to be at a level of bodyfat where I can begin eating a little more and getting bigger and stronger. That of course is about a year away, but still, I cannot wait.
-Dan
Popularity: 2% [?]
June
25
2010
Mixed feelings this week…
I came in once again at 313 lbs, which is a loss of zero pounds from last week, but a miracle if you’d seen my weight Sunday morning…My total loss from the beginning of my journey on 4/30/10 is 5.2 lbs. And, nobody rocks the camo boxer briefs like I do. NOBODY.
The tape made me smile, because I went back down to 53.5 inches, which is down 1/4 inch from last week and a total of 1 inch in…8 weeks? 7? I don’t remember…
Now for the reflection portion of the post…I spent a fair amount of time thinking about where I am at after 8 weeks, compared to where I THOUGHT I would be and they aren’t terribly close. In other words, it sucks. The small victory here is that the Dan from the last 5 years or so would look at the pics and progress above and say, “Fuck it, I’m going to just eat whatever I want this weekend and start over Monday morning.” The translation to that statement is, “I didn’t make the 7 lb drop like I’d hoped, and now I’m frustrated, so the only way I know to provide temporary happiness and relief from my disappointment in myself is to gorge on shit I shouldn’t be eating.” Come on…I can’t be the ONLY one who does that?!?
The loss on the tape was nice to see. It at least validates the cardio a bit. Prior to taking all these pictures, and even prior to the start of 2010, I was around 290 last fall. How’d I do that? I tried something by Lyle McDonald called the “Rapid Fat Loss Diet”. Lyle is a smart guy who advocates low carb eating, but he wrote this book for those needing to lose fat quickly in a short amount of time. It is basically a starvation diet of zero carbs and zero fat. You eat protein and green vegetables, and usually under 1000 calories a day, depending on your current height, weight, sex, etc. It is a hard diet…I’m not going to lie about that. It works but when you run super low calories and carbs like that, you can usually shut your metabolism down quickly if you do it for too long. Guess what? That’s what I did. My body began eating away at my muscle mass after a while, and I believe that is part of why I’m losing so slowly NOW.
I think all this heavy weight training is slowly rebuilding my lost mass from my previous dieting (I lost A LOT). I’m giving myself a stimulus (weights) and fuel (food) and it is regaining lost muscle. If I did only cardio for the last 8 weeks, the results would be more dramatic, but I like feeling strong and lifting a few times a week.
Final thought here is on putting it all together. The first 5 or so weeks I had the diet and weights dialed in pretty well, but the cardio and rest were non-existent. Then last week the rest was about the only thing I had going on, and I gained on the scale and tape. This week the cardio, weights, and rest were good, but the diet was lazy and off. OMG if I could put those 4 pieces together for a week the results would be wonderful! So, that is my goal by next week. Put those 4 things together and let’s see if we can’t push the scale down to 310 or even less!
-Dan
Popularity: 2% [?]
June
24
2010
Today was my best day of cardio yet. The weather was great today…bright and sunny, and about 65 degrees. Got outside for a brisk walk with a little bit of intermittent jogging built in. I did a whopping 45 minutes, which is the longest I’ve gone so far.
But…my shoes absolutely ruined the day. My father in law was nice enough to order me a new pair of cross trainers about 6 weeks back. He ALWAYS orders off the Eastbay website whenever he gives the gift of athletic footwear. I have NEVER been a Nike guy. I cannot stand their shoes, and even after trying many, many pairs, they never feel like they fit my feet. Reebok I have had better luck with, though my complaint with them has usually been that they tend to wear and break down a little faster than they probably should. I have always been an Adidas guy when I had a choice.
Steve (in law) ordered THESE and had them sent to my house. I wore them for a few weeks for simple, low duty uses like working around the house, errands, etc. They seemed fine, though they felt a little stiff, which I thought was just a lack of being properly broken in. If you look at all that clear stuff on the soles, it is much harder and less giving than it looks. Anyway, recently I have been adding in cardio, and the pain has begun.
My feet have NEVER hurt like they do with these. The entire outer portion of both feet literally burn when I’m walking in them. They make my shins ache, and I cannot wait to get them off. It feels like there is no padded sole at all, and if you put your hand in the shoe and poke at it, the insert is a pathetic, thin, hard piece of material. I am terribly disappointed with the quality of them, and at this point I’d rather do cardio in my sandals (which are Adidas BTW)… I plan on writing Adidas or Eastbay (or both) later today, which I NEVER do…I don’t like to complain or make a big deal out of things, but these shoes are so awful I cannot help it.
Looking forward to the weigh in tomorrow…never thought I’d say that!
-Dan
Popularity: 2% [?]
June
23
2010
It’s only 9:30 am here, and it’s a GOOD DAY.
My 3.5 month old son, Tobin/Baby Hercules, now seems to sleep until 6 am, or a bit longer. Crazy I have been begging for this kind of sleep from him, and now I am wide awake at 4:30 am, expecting to be on his old schedule. I mean…I am wide awake, in anticipation of hearing him crying for me. Then I get up to go to the bathroom and lay awake a while before finally going to sleep for a bit longer…and if you’ve ever done a similar sleep schedule, you know that little nap can be TROUBLE because you wake up more tired than you started.
I am proud to say I got up and fed him at 6 am, then hit the weights in my downstairs, home gym, before hitting 21 minutes of cardio on the treadmill. I just feel a sense of accomplishment knowing it is out of the way. I hate going home knowing I need to somehow squeeze in a workout after a long day of work, etc. Sometimes you have unexpected events at home and working out gets pushed off until later, and suddenly it is 9pm and you are ready for bed. Today’s workout means I can work on other stuff tonight, play with my boys, etc. I am also proud to have 2 of the 3 morning cardio sessions completed that I committed to doing a few days ago before my next weigh in.
I cannot emphasize enough the damage this past weekend did to me. I think there was a lot of water weight, but instead of forging forward, I’m just trying to get back to my last weigh in numbers…stupid, stupid. At least I’m honest about it and I am admitting I messed up and went overboard.
That is all for now. Have a great day to the 3 of you who read this from time to time…
-Dan
Popularity: 1% [?]
June
21
2010
First…the bad news:
I had tooooo much fun this weekend at my parents’ place. I know now why my brother, who lives with my parents, is very overweight, and why I struggled when I lived at home. We took the boys 75 minutes north on Saturday to visit grandma and grandpa for the whole day. The plan was to let them play, nap, have a nice dinner, and come home. My wife and I said we should only have steaks, baked potatoes, and salad for our meal. The problem is my mom doesn’t know how to just do that…
My parents are old school farmers who grew up with minimal luxuries, but earned everything they had. My mom is a classic homemaker who insists every meal should include a main dish, a vegetable, a roll or bread of some kind, dessert, and multiple glasses of milk. Add the calories up on a typical well rounded, but hefty meal and it is hard to restrict your eating when there. My mom ALWAYS goes overboard when preparing food…so much so, that my wife said “just watch, we’ll get there and she will have an apple salad, corn, 2 desserts, and probably something else.”
Kate was correct, except she forgot to mention the cheesy garlic bread. I rarely have a spread in front of me of that magnitude, so I went to town and back (about 4 times). It was delicious, but I nearly shit my pants on Sunday when I got on the scale and saw the hole I’d buried myself in for the upcoming Friday weigh in…definitely a “OMG” moment…
Now, the good news:
My little 3.5 month old man slept a LONG time last night. Don’t know if this will be a permanent thing, or if he was tired from the weekend travels, but he was out until 6:30 this morning. After feeding him I made it to the treadmill for about 22 minutes of cardio, before coming upstairs to help my wife get the boys out the door. That puts me 33% of the way to my commitment to cardio, and to get things rolling on the higher activity levels for myself.
One last story…I had a big motivation to improve my conditioning last weekend while at the Thomas the Train outing. Saturday morning we were swimming at the water park, and I took my older son Madden on the tube slides. Since I didn’t want to hold up the line, I carried him in one arm and the double tube in the other…up 3 flights of stairs to the top of the slide. After doing this 2-3 times with him, I was spent. I mean, huffing and puffing and exhausted. At age 29, COME ON!! I remember thinking to myself how awful it felt to feel so pathetic and out of shape. I need to remember that every time it is 6 am and I don’t want to get out of bed for a workout…
-Dan
Popularity: 1% [?]
June
20
2010
I, like many, have been checking in with Tyler over @ 344pounds.com. He has been stating for weeks that he wished from the start he’d taken his weight training more seriously, and not focused most of his energy on cardio. Part of me agrees with him, but you cannot argue with how much his life improved after dropping over 125 lbs in a year. Tyler posted his lifting routine recently, and it was something he found online and opted to use.
This got me thinking…If you’ve never touched a weight before, and if you never spent HOURS reading on muscle forums, how would you know what to do for a routine? Chances are, you would Google something pertaining to weights, and pick whatever pops up and looks promising. Am I right?
I spent some time thinking, based on all I have tried and all my reading, and I came up with 6 characteristics of a solid, sound training program.
1) It doesn’t promise miraculous results. If someone tries to sell you a program, and it claims you’ll gain 25 lbs in 8 weeks, run the other way. You simply cannot make a blanket claim on what you’ll gain, when you figure in genetics, diet, etc etc. I bought several e-books from 2001-2004 because they all had HUGE web pages with info on unlocking the “secret underground German hypertrophy muscle building” details. I spent HOURS searching for the most convincing looking programs and web pages. I would read through them and the sales pitches all sounded great, and then when you reach the bottom, you realize you need to spend $20, $40, or even more to download their e-book with the program layout. I cannot tell you how much money I pissed away on these routines, because I wanted the shortcut to the big, lean, muscular body I dreamed of. Looking back, these programs were terribly flawed and were tossed together for the purpose of making someone else rich. It is incredibly easy to use a genetically gifted guinea pig who is fat and sloppy, take a “before” picture, and have them bust their ass for 8 weeks for a convincing “after” shot.
2) The routine has produced results for many people. Just because something works for one person, doesn’t mean it works for all. Genetics are HUGE when it comes to building muscle, but no one with an agenda will ever tell you this. If someone claims a program is solid, research how many people have done it and succeeded. Some of the absolute best programs out there are classic, old school powerlifting programs that have passed through gyms for decades. These are mostly basic, simple, and highly effective programs. They don’t need to be flashy to be effective. Sometimes people want flashy with exotic exercises, but KEEP IT BASIC!
3) It uses compound exercises. Whether you are trying to triple your current bench press, or simply tone up and get a little bit stronger, always choose compound exercises over isolation. For example, choose a bench press over flys for your chest. Or a squat versus leg extensions for your legs. It is more efficient to use compound movements because compounds work multiple muscle groups. You could bench, squat, and deadlift 2-3x a week and be just fine, because all your major muscles are covered. Doing compounds, especially if they are heavy, elicits a better growth response from the body as well.
4) It focuses on progressive resistance. If you don’t plan to get stronger, why bother? If you send your kids to school, you expect them to learn new things and experience new knowledge. If you start walking for exercise, you eventually work up from 10 or 15 minutes to more and more time. If you want to build muscle, you HAVE to get stronger. A stronger muscle, is a bigger muscle. When you challenge a muscle and make it work, the body’s response is to adapt and get stronger for the next time it faces a similar stress, so it is easier when put up against that stress. In other words, if you challenge your body with heavy weight, and allow your body to recover, there will be a small increase in muscle size and/or density to compensate for the next time. Do this many, many times consistently, and you build muscle.
5) Volume is low to moderate. The first ever program I did that my high school gym teacher didn’t write was straight out of Arnold’s Bodybuilding Encyclopedia. I mean, Arnold is legit, right? It HAS to be a good program. The beginner’s program had me in the gym 5 times a week, and each day was between 30 and 50 sets. Yes, I said SETS. What I did not know at the time is that this type of training works well if you are on an immense cocktail of steroids and other drugs to aid in recovery. The average, or even above average lifter who is going at it naturally (no drugs) is only capable of recovering from a certain amount of work. I was well beyond that with this program, but didn’t know it. After about 3-4 weeks I remember I lost strength, and was totally wiped out. This was something called OVERTRAINING. A decade later I now know that you only need to do enough work for a growth response. If you do 3 sets of 10 on flat bench, what do you do next? Many people do incline bench for the “upper chest” or flys to “isolate the pecs.” Come on…if you are building a house and you are framing the walls with a hammer and nails, how do you do it? Do you pound the nail until it is just beyond flush with the surface of the wood? Or do you hit it 5 or 6 more times after that? Those flys don’t make much sense when I put it that way, huh? In many cases, keeping your workout at or below ABOUT 12-15 sets is plenty provided the weights used are challenging. The are some exceptions of course, but that is a general guideline in my opinion.
6) A deload, cruise, or time away from the gym is built in. Call it whatever you want, but you need this since you are not a machine. If you are pushing yourself, it is just not possible to go week after week pushing the weights without giving the body a break. For some that means taking a week and not touching a weight. For others, you use about half the normal poundage and have several lighter workouts so the body can recover and get ready to go again. Your joints will thank you.
Those are the best 6 tips I have. What are yours?
Popularity: 4% [?]
June
18
2010
This will be a short post, because A) I’m not at all proud of it and B) Monster storms are moving through and I’d rather not have the computer on to get hit by lightning.
Gained some weight and inches today…no surprise really as I’ve done no cardio and I have been wiped. Weight jumped to 313, up from 311.8 lbs. The tape also increased slightly.
The one NICE thing I learned last night is why I’m so useless in the morning. For a while I had been taking 1-2 Benadryl pills at night, because it helped my allergies, and the drowsy side effect calmed me down and put me to sleep. I truly didn’t believe I was suffering when morning rolled around. Fast forward to 6:30 am when I woke to feed my son…I was alert and much more clear headed….BECAUSE I DIDN’T TAKE A BENADRYL the night before. SO…maybe now, miraculously, I’ve figured a way to do morning cardio. Yay fat kid. I’m out. Sorry it was a dismal weigh in, but I saw it coming.
-Dan
Popularity: 2% [?]
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