MikeIsLosingIt.com

 277.6 lbs today. 5.4 lost since last week and 44 total. The big loss this week makes up for the Buca di Beppo and Pappasito’s inspired no-loss week I had last time…Yum! but I’m glad to be back on track. I took a few more pictures last night since it has been a couple of months and 29 lbs since I took the last ones. Not a huge difference yet, but quite noticeable to me. Here’s the before and after…the first ones at 306.4 lbs (15.2 lost) and the second ones from yesterday at 277.6 (44 lost):

Someday I’ll post the ones without the shirt. But for now I doubt anyone ones to see before and after pictures of a shirtless fat guy and slightly less fat shirtless fat guy. 🙂

282.8 lbs this week, which is 1.8 lbs up since last Wednesday. But, since I had tasty Buca di Beppo for our 15th anniversary on Thurday and then Pappasito’s for Father’s Day on Sunday, I expected nothing less. I’m actually a little surprised that it wasn’t up even more. After having lost 6.8 lbs the week before and bumping my calorie intake back up from 1000 per day to a more reasonable 1800-2000, plus eating out twice, I fully expected some sort of dramatic shift this week.

I’m glad things are now back to normal. The physical is behind me, my weight was where I needed it to be, and all my tests came back perfect. Now I can return to my normal training regimen and eating my regular diet. What a relief!

Last week Louanne decided that she wanted to do a square foot garden in the backyard, so I volunteered to get it all set up for her, including running drip irrigation to it from our patio. The irrigation would involve digging a trench across the yard and running a hose to it from the faucet. I did a similar project almost exactly a year ago to run drip irrigation to some trees we planted the previous year, and boy do I remember that job well. It was hot, exhausting, and took me several hours to finish (around SIX if I remember correctly), plus a couple of hours the next day to fix some problems I encountered. I was completely wiped out and sore for days afterwards. By the end of it, digging that trench all the way across the yard felt like I had been digging my own grave.

I anticipated at least a few hours of misery again this time, but was amazed at how easy it all went. It took me two hours, including looking everything over at the beginning and taking a 30 minute break in the middle for some water and to cool off. It was really no big deal at all. When I finished I felt like I could have done it all over again and still wouldn’t be tired from it. No exhaustion, no soreness, nothing. I couldn’t believe how different the experience could be between the two similar projects. Clearly, working out with a trainer for four months has had a much more significant effect on my strength and endurance than I realized. That’s very encouraging and motivates me all the more.

If you want to see the result of the project, Louanne put a post up about it on our family blog.

Today is doctor day, the day of my physical. My weigh-in at home was 281 lbs, which is 6.8 lbs for the week and 40.8 lbs total. At the doctor I need to be 285 or less to meet my under 40 BMI requirement. We’ll see, but I think the “safety zone” I left for myself will be sufficient. I’ll update this post in a few hours when I know for sure.

—Update—

Success! 281 lbs at the doctor, the same as my scale at home. That officially puts me at 39.2 BMI, which is still WAY obese, but at least it meets the requirement I had to hit for the physical. Now I can bump my calorie intake back up to around 2000 per day. 1000 calories was getting very old, and lately was causing me problems with my energy level during workouts. After the last few weeks 2000 calories is going to feel like I’m gorging myself.

Buca di Beppo here we come.

I’ve lost over 6.2 lbs this week, with still one day to go before my official Wednesday Weigh-in! That’s incredible considering last week’s disappointing 1.6 lbs.  Surprisingly I lost 1.6 yesterday alone, which puts me at exactly 40 pounds lost since I started. I’m 3.4 lbs below where I need to be for my physical tomorrow, so no worries now. Even with a little fluctuation or scale difference I’d be amazed if the difference was THAT much. After my physical tomorrow I’ll be bumping my calories back up to the 2000 or so I was eating before…and we are going out for Italian on Thurday for our 15th Wedding Anniversary. Cause for a cheat if there ever was one.

I wasn’t able to get to my normal Wednesday Weigh-in post yesterday, so here it is a day late. Last week I had one of those weird weeks where my weight constantly fluctuated up and down as much as 1.5 lbs each day. I’d be down a pound one day, up a pound and a half the next, down a pound again…it was annoying. Consequently I lost only 1.6 lbs this week, which was much less than my goal, since I have to be down another few pounds to make my BMI requirement before my physical next Wednesday. I’m sure it has something to do with water retention and other factors, because between my diet and the heavy exercise, I know I didn’t just burn a pound and a half of fat last week. Case in point, this morning I was down another 1.2 lbs, which put me at 286.6. That’s still only 2.8 lbs in eight days, but it’s more encouraging and puts my goal within reach.

On an even more encouraging note, 286.6 puts me at exactly 35 lbs lost since I started. Woo hoo! As my trainer regularly says, “I’m seeing less and less of you every day.”

I bought a Polar FT80 Heart Rate Monitor the other day and used it for the first time today. I didn’t pay the outrageous price Polar sells it for ($350), but instead got it from Amazon.com for the much better (but still hefty) price of $260…but that’s without anything like GPS, a foot pod, etc. If you want that then you have to pay a lot extra.  I didn’t get any of those extras because I have absolutely no need for any of them, since I’m pretty confident that I’ll NEVER take up running, triathlons, or anything similar. I’ll be using it in the gym almost exclusively, so the built-in features will be sufficient.

I researched a lot of monitors, but finally settled on the FT80 because of its versatility, and primarily because of its strength training feature. It is the only monitor I found that includes that feature, which makes it perfect for those like me who divide their workouts between weight training and cardio. You can set the training mode to Strength Training and it will give you a graph that rises as your heart rate increases during a weight lifting set. After the set, the graph will begin to fall as your heart rate decreases. When it reaches a specific point predetermined by your max heart rate and zones, it will beep and tell you to start your next set. For me today it worked excellently. During a set my heart rate would get up to around 155-165 and then when it came down to about 125 the watch would tell me to start the next set.

The FT80 also has something called a STAR Training Program, which can be automatically generated for you by doing a “fitness test” (which unexpectedly is performed by lying down and doing nothing for five to ten minutes) and specifying what your training goal is: Improve Fitness or Maximize Fitness. I chose “Maximize” because I met that category’s prerequisites: to have been training for at least 10-12 weeks and have no problem training almost every day. The STAR training program generates four weekly goals for you. You have a specific amount of time you are to exercise in three heart rate zones, and how many calories you are to burn. For me the program set two hours in zone 1, three hours in zone 2, and forty-five minutes in zone 3. The calorie goal was set to 4700. It will automatically monitor the time you spend in each zone as you exercise and approximate the calories you burn. For example, I worked legs today and it said I did 11, 25, and 24 minutes in zones 1, 2, and 3 respectively, and I burned 918 calories. Pretty cool. Further, the program is updated automatically each week and sets new goals for you based on your progress, but of course I haven’t seen this first hand yet, since I just started using it.

The FT80 has a bunch of other features, including the ability to sync the data online, download specific strength training exercises to the watch, and other features that I’ll get to know over time. All isn’t perfect though…it does have one glaring problem. The contrast of the face is poor at best. It is still usable, but I find it strange that they continue to sell it that way. It should be MUCH brighter. And if you check out various reviews online they all agree, the contrast/brightness of the face is the one major weakness of an otherwise excellent product.

All in all, though, and am very satisfied with it so far, and I’m looking forward to getting a lot of use out of it.

289.4 today. That’s 5.4 lbs this week, and six days of it was with my daily calorie intake reduced to 1000. That’s 32.2 lbs total.

I have two more weeks to lose 9.4 before my physical, which I seem to be right on track for. In addition to reducing my calories, I’ve upped my cardio significantly. For the last two days, however, I’ve been really hungry in the afternoon and evening, and today during my workout I noticed my energy level down a bit, so I’ll probably up my calories by a couple of hundred to see if that knocks it out. Hopefully that will take care of the problems, and that small increase shouldn’t interfere with the weight loss enough to cause me to miss my goal. After the physical I’ll be upping it a few hundred more.