Today is the third day of Week 8 and it’s time to recall week 7.
Last week was somewhat a rest week, courtesy of my knee which plagued me till week. I think I can work the knee starting this week. For now I’m back to my fat burning workout,which is very gentle on my knee but not for every other part of me.
You may be wondering why I wrote “Getting Bigger” in the title. Well, it’s exactly means that I’m getting bigger: weight wise I’m the same, but my muscles are showing (finally). I’m getting to be as bulk as those rugby players (i hope).
I’m adding new measurements to my stats. These stats will be used to measure my body fat percentage (BFP). Because I don’t have the fancy body fat percentage-slash-weighing scale, I’ll get my BFP the old fashion way: with a tape measure, a calculator, a some nifty formula used by the US Navy Seals.
So here are my Stats:
Weight: 227lbs
Height: 70in
Waist: 45in
Hips: 41in
Neck: 16in
Body Fat Percentage: 33%
If you want to lose weight, aside from exercise, the major components of your program should be diet. Diet entails managing, not restricting, the food you eat and that includes the nutrients and calories.
To manage the calories you consume so that you lose weight you need to monitor your calorie consumption or “count your calories”.
The core idea of calorie counting is too eat less calories than you actually need. You need to create a caloric deficit, which simple means that the amount of calories you consume should be less that what you need to maintain your body weight. You may ask, “Isn’t that dangerous? Isn’t that going to starve your body?” Frankly speaking it does but you have stored energy (calories) in the form of fat that your body can use. Don’t tell me you want to keep all that excess fat of yours?
Seriously, calorie counting can be dangerous if done incorrectly. A lot of people who has tried and failed with calorie counting focused only on the number of calories they consume instead of minding the sources of the calories they consume. A good example:
Someone whose daily caloric requirement for fat loss is 2000 calories can get all these calories from unhealthy food like sodas or potatoes chips. Did that person reach his/her daily caloric consumption target? Yes. Did that person receive all the nutrients he/she needs to be healthy? NO. That’s why calorie counting can be dangerous if done improperly.
I first learned about calorie counting from my friend who used it to lose weight. She lost 60lbs managing her calories and doing exercise.
The body fat burning program I’m following now doesn’t advise strict calorie counting. It only suggests that you get an idea of the total number of calories you’ll need each day for fat loss then divide it by 5 or 6 to get an idea of how many calories you’ll need from each meal or snack, but don’t obsess over it.
To have an idea of how much calories you typically eat, use the Metabolic Rate Calculator. You just input your details and it will give you the number of calories you need to consume to maintain your body weight. It will also show you the amount of calories you need to consume to lose body fat.
For example, let’s use my case:
Sex: Man
Height: 70 inches
Weight; 228 pounds
Age: 31 years old
Activity Level: 1.4 (There’s an explanation of what this value means in the actual Metabolic Rate Calculator)
Enter this information in the respective fields in the calculator then press the Calculate Your Metabolic Rate Caloric Levels button.
The Body fat Maintenance field will be updated and the Body Fat Loss field range will also be updated.
What do you do with the information now? You make sure you don’t eat more than the calories from the Body fat Maintenance field.
You should also monitor your calories and make sure that your calories are coming from healthy and nutritious sources. The fat burning program I use gives you a meal plan that’s divided by portions of calorie sources like carbohydrates, protein, and vegetables and fruits.
Sounds hard to follow? Not really. But don’t worry, I also found another great tool to help you monitor the food you eat and how much of the nutrition you’re getting from all the calories you intake.
That tool is the MyPlate feature of the DailyPlate section of LiveStrong.com. The link is: http://www.livestrong.com/thedailyplate/users/myplate/
I created a short video on how to use the MyPlate feature and posted it below. It’s the first video tutorial I recorded with my voice so give a little understand.
For now, I’m doing baby steps with all these dieting stuff. You know how diets can be boring if done quickly: they should be incorporated into your lifestyle to be successful.
I hope the information I provided above helps you with your weight loss journey.
Finally! After 3 weeks of hitting a weight loss plateau, I was able to lose 1 Kg in a weeks time. As I mentioned in my previous weekly update, I will be sticking to the the fat burning program I’m using, and true enough, I was back in the game.
Diet
The biggest change to my lifestyle now is in my eating habits. I don’t eat to be full, but instead I eat to kill the hunger. I eat 6 times a day at 2-3 hour intervals. To avoid craving for food, I eat oatmeal or drink water in between meals.
Fitness
I tried to go back to running, doing short jogs and sprints for about half an hour. After that, I felt old knee pains: my old knee injury has been awakened. Just a quick flashback: On my second year in college, I played american football with my platoon mates. I got tackled real bad, causing my knee to twist so bad I tore my Anterior Cruciate Ligament (ACL). My orthopedic doctor suggested either surgery or change of lifestyle (which includes staying away from high impact sports like track and field, football, rugby, and other knee crushing activities). I took the non-surgical option. Since then, I gained weight because I couldn’t do my favorite sports such as athletics and mountain climbing. Check my Fitness History page to read all about my weight gaining experience.
So now I’m back to the reason why I tried the Fat Burning Furnace: low impact, high fat burning exercises that I can do without a gym. I’ll try to run again when I get half way to my weight loss goal so that I don’t stress my knee with the additional weight.
This week’s stat:
Weight: 103 Kg.
I hope I can maintain the 1Kg per week weight loss.
I’m starting Week 6 of my 35 week journey to BMI 25 on a sad note. I haven’t lost any weight in the past 3 weeks. There’s definitely something wrong with what I’m doing because I’m hitting the weight plateau too early.
I have evaluated my current fat burning program and came to the conclusion that I am doing it wrong. I’m cutting corners by not doing everything in the program and not giving it my all during my workouts.
For those that haven’t figured it out , I’m following the fat burning program, “Fat Burning Furnace” by Rob Poulos. You can read about it at http://bestfatburningprogram.info. What the program promotes is doing workouts to muscle failure, counting calorie consumption, having proper nutrition, and getting proper rest periods. So far I’ve only succeeded in the workout portion.
So now, I’m forcing myself to do everything in the program. It will go like these:
Workouts: Time to make my muscles scream! No more half baked efforts: nothing but muscle failure.
Diet: I’ve succeeded in counting calories for 5 days (i won’t count calories on weekends). That’s a good test run. Tomorrow I’ll start with the actual daily recording.
Rest: So far, I’ve managed to force myself to rest at least 6 hours a day. The recommended duration is 8-9 hours. Six hours is already an accomplishment for me since I normally sleep for just 4 hours.
Here are the sad details for week 5:
Down:
No weight lost—again
Back to drinking 3-in-1 coffee mix
Averaging only 10 glasses a day
Can’t get enough of that indian food
Up:
Averaging 6 hours of sleep a day — finally!
Successfully track my calorie consumption during the week
More information on my calorie counting efforts on my next post.
Week 5 starts today, but I’m having doubts about losing weight with what I’m doing now. I guess cutting corners doesn’t helpful. So starting this week, I’ll do the complete fat loss program I’m following instead of just doing the workout part. As always, here are the details:
Down
Didn’t lose weight again
Up
Averaging 3-4 litres of water a day
Endurance-wise, I can do more reps with my workout
Yesterday was the start of Week 4. Week 3 was a disappointing work in terms of workout and diet.
Here are the ups and downs of last week, downs first:
Down
Didn’t lose weight again!
I was hitting 3000 calories per day! It should only be 2500!
Ups:
Same as last week:
I feel much more energetic .
My muscles are firmer.
Still drinking 3 litres of water everyday.
Didn’t drink or had the urge to drink soda or sweetened drinks except coffee.
Things to do this week:
Complete the 3 times a week 30-minute workouts
Include 2 days of High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT)
Stay away from coffee
Have more fiber in my diet
Eat more vegetables
I’m getting bulkier but losing fat. This can be a good thing, but my BMI is not going down. I’m still technically obese but I don’t think and I am (compared to the Biggest Loser Asia contestants, that is).
After 12 weeks, I’ll evaluate my approache and see how this goes.
I was looking around in youtube for some workout or fitness videos and I came across this interesting video. It’s a workout program for women but I think men would also enjoy watching this.
So for the women readers, here’s something you might like to try out, and for the men, well, just watch.
IF you’re obese, and you’re flying Air France, you can now book a second seat beside you so that you overflow your excess weight over to that. Funny right? but really this is how widespread obesity is.
In some airlines, if you can’t be secured in your seat with a seatbelt even if they use belt extenders, they won’t allow you to take the flight.
Sounds fair to me, since if you’re not securely seated you’d be thrown and shaken if the plane meets a lot of turbulence.
Is this discrimination against fat people? I don’t think so. It’s only logical since your safety is their primary concern (after their profits, of course). Having a huge seatmate who spills over your space can also be discomforting. Imagine a big chunk of flesh crushing you to the side of your seat. That’s how it’s like.
So if you’re obese, and you know in your heart that one seat won’t be enough for you, do the right and gracious thing: buy the seat next to you. Do not burden your seatmate with your excessive humanity. If you can’t afford to buy two seats, call the airlines and tell them of the situation. They’ll probably figure something out for you: you’re a potential customer to them anyway.
By the way, one of the main reason airlines impose bigger fees on the obese people is that they assume you would be an obstacle in case of emergencies, especially when you’re blocking the exits or your seated on aisle seats, or when you’re stuck in your seat and couldn’t stand up.
I just hope they don’t start weighing passengers now.
I’ve started on week 3 of my journey to BMI 25. Last week was the start of my 37 week workout program that focuses on fat burning, muscle building and proper eating.
The program is divided like this:
12 weeks beginner stage
12 weeks intermediate stage
12 weeks advanced stage
Here are the ups and downs of last week, downs first:
Down
Didn’t lose weight! but based on my photos i did lose some fat.
Wasn’t able to follow a balanced diet again: I’ve eaten more calories than I can burn up.
Ups:
I feel much more energetic.
My muscles are firmer.
My belly doesn’t sag that much compared to last year.
I’m drinking 3 litres of water everyday.
Part of the program is proper diet, focusing on balancing the food that you eat and making sure you eat from all the major food groups. I haven’t succeeded on the diet part. There’s a skill that I need to learn and master so that I don’t eat too much. That skill is:
Learn to eat to satisfy your hunger. Don’t eat until you’re full.
If you think about it, you don’t really need to be full, you just need to satisfy the hunger. Most of the time, you’ll be wondering why after having a full stomach, you’ll be hungry again. We must make feeling not hungry equal to feeling full, well that’s my goal anyway.
