Deflabbify

On again, off again

Since Budgets Are Sexy is running a PF Blogger Showdown later today, and since I mention Deflabbify over there, I suppose I should post what I’ve done here over the past three months, no?

Anyway, this blog is a bit on again, off again — much like my weight, I suppose — but the good news is that I’m within only a couple of pounds of my goal for the end of 2009.  I just weighed myself in at 238 pounds.

NCN is off a little weight as well, which is a very good thing.  I can completely understand how busy he’s been because he, like myself, had a new house purchase on his plate.  Hopefully his went more smoothly than mine, but if it didn’t I’d be one of the first to give him some slack.  Buying a house, especially a foreclosure, can mean putting out fires and turning on a dime.

The one thing that has been keeping me plenty active has been the blizzards that have hit the East coast.  We have a long driveway that needs a lot of shoveling, so the unexpected work has also been good exercise.

So here’s to thawing out and getting back on track a bit.

Wii Fit Plus is in da house, and it makes you think

My wife bought Wii Fit Plus at Costco earlier this week.  I think she bought it to encourage me some more.  I’ve been pretty good about watching what I eat very carefully and exercising for at least a half-hour each night on the Wii.

I talked about some of the Wii Fit Plus features over at Slimmify but the biggest overall difference is that this software makes you think.  It tests your memory, judgement, and the extent to which you can achieve mental disconnect between different parts of your body.  Some of the games are really, really tough, not necessarily in a physical sense but in a mental sense.

It’s like walking and chewing gum on steroids.

What’s the other half of the battle?

It’s likely that you’ve heard the phrase, “Well now you know, and knowing’s half the battle.”

OK, knowing is half the battle, but what’s the other half?

I asked this question over at Slimmify.com:

How do you combat the late-night munchies?

User “robulus” (who runs a website LiveAndMove.net) came up with this response.  Here’s an excerpt, with my emphasis:

I am constantly hungry, and I eat constantly. I snack in between my snacks. But I know that I don’t need to, that my body is designed to go longer periods without solid food. Water is of course a continual necessity. So, when it’s late at night, I do not let myself eat. To be honest, it doesn’t always work, but it is a process of mind over body. The battle is won in the mind. [...] Knowing is half the battle… the other half is deciding.

Late at night, I can choose to throw down a bowl of mac and cheese, or I can have a glass of water, or some tea, to stave off the hunger.  It’s a decision. Each decision not to pig out at night makes the next decision not to pig out a little bit easier.  The last few nights I’ve managed to either drink water (with some sugar-free flavoring) or have low-calorie snacks like a fruitsicle or a few corn cakes (like rice cakes, but corn).

Here’s to battling and deciding!

Extreme weight loss is possible, apparently

Tough Money Love was kind enough to stop by with a comment on my last post to tell me that I was making things too hard on myself.

He provided a lead to a guest post he did over at Lazy Man and Health. He lost 52 pounds in 136 days, and has kept them off for almost a year and a half. That’s over 2 1/2 pounds per week for almost twenty weeks.

How did he do it?  He limited himself to 1,500 calories a day by eating several smallish meals spread throughout the day, and did moderate exercise in the morning.

His free website of choice for calorie-counting and was FitDay.com.  I went over there to sign up for an account, and by their calculations (using my height, weight, gender, and activity level) they said I was burning about 2,800 calories per day.  Since my weight has been relatively constant over the past few months, one could assume that I’m taking in that amount per day.

Taking in only 1,500 calories per day would mean cutting my intake nearly in half, but I’d be losing weight at about the same rate that Mr. Tough Money Love did.  These kinds of results would support the notion that the amount you eat is far more important than how much you exercise.  It’s hard to argue with the results it can bring.

It gives me hope that I can achieve my weight loss goal, and also that NCN can hit his, too.

(But I’ll still keep exercising, though:  I got my gold Wii Fit Bank for working out a total of 40 hours! )

Mixed in some yoga in my Wii Fit routine tonight — plus a cool website

Three nights in a row with 30 minutes or more logged in on Wii Fit … better than the past few months anyway.

Mixed in a little bit of yoga — Sun Salutation and Half Moon baby! — as well as an in-place run around the happy island.  Just about missed completing the tilt-the-board game.

My wife found a site that produces Wii Fit workout routines called, aptly, Wii Fit Routine.  It has a number of different types of routines with different lengths and different difficulties.  It also can be used to generate workouts tailored for specific goals: endurance, strength, flexibility, and balance.  There are a few other extras:  recipes, articles, and the like, as well as goal-tracking for weight, BMI, and other things.

Definitely worth a peek.  And it’s free!

Some more Wii Fit, but need to avoid candy

Work is pretty evil as far as candy goes. I don’t have to look very far for free, bottomless supplies of sweets. There are at least three places — no, make that four — at work that I can pick up some Sourheads®, some bite-sized chocolate bars, Twizzlers®, whatever. Forget the healthy stuff on my desk — sugar is what gets me going.

I’m going to postulate for a second here.  I eat pretty much whatever’s available to me.  If I have a box of Stroopwafels, a pack of gum, a 2-liter of soda, or a six-pack of Saranac, I just consume it until it’s gone.  (Well, the beer I’ll stop at three or so per day.  Thank goodness my wife hides the beer and doles it out to me.)

Much like what NCN found, stuff that’s just there gets eaten.  No really good reason beyond that.

But on the bright side, I did do another 31 minutes on Wii Fit tonight, and got another perfect score on the soccer ball heading game.  I found last night that I slept better after some exercise.  Hopefully that will repeat tonight.

Cracked out Wii Fit for the first time in a while

And it didn’t even make a snide comment at me!  Probably was speechless because it thought I was dead.

Thirty-one minutes of Wiixercise:  11 minutes of Hula-Hoop® (no, there’s no video), 13 minutes of rhythmic boxing, a couple games of soccer ball heading, one round of table tilting the balls down the holes, and one game of penguin slide.

Wii Fit wouldn’t let me make a 2 1/2 month goal so I made a three-month goal to lose 14 pounds, which is about the same as my other short-term goal of getting down to 235 pounds by the end of the year.

NCN has a goal so I have one too

Thanks NCN for being man enough to admit that you’re starting anew with your goals.  I probably wouldn’t have done that.

I need to do this too.  I’m at 247 pounds, which is six pounds heavier than I was when I began this blog.  My original goal was to hit 151 pounds by May of next year.  The correct assessment of my progress toward this goal is:  Fat Chance.

So, well, I have to readjust my goals.  I e-mailed NCN to see if we could be accountable to one another, and he’s up for it, so we’ll post and spur one another on to good deeds.  Here are my new goals:

• Down to 235 pounds by the end of the year (Thanksgiving and Christmas are in there, so this probably isn’t as easy as it sounds)
• Down to 200 pounds by this time next year

So there you go.  Let’s try this again!

Is the key to weight loss exercise or eating less?

Jim and I read this Time article at about the same time:

Why exercise won’t make you thin

(A friend on Facebook pointed me to it.)  The article suggests that exercise has comparatively little to do with weight loss. What does make the difference is simply eating less.  The calorie-burning effect of exercise is marginalized or negated by a few things:

• Replacing 10 pounds of fat with muscle only results in an extra 40 calories per day burned.
• Exercising doesn’t burn as many calories as you might think.
• People tend to eat more than they should after exercise, and there are a number of reason why they do.

The article does not state that exercise is unimportant.  There are other health benefits to exercise, such as enhanced cognitive ability and cardiovascular health.

Just don’t expect to get skinny without eating less, too.

Signed up for Man vs. Debt’s weight loss challenge

I’m on Team Delta for the Man Vs. Debt weight loss challenge.  I’m joining 29 other personal finance bloggers in a competition to reach weight goals.  The challenge will run from June 1st through July 31st.

I’ve set as a goal to lose 10 pounds during that time.  So it’s more Wii Balance Board, more elliptic trainer, and less candy for me!  (I’m actually up a bit since I stated my interest in losing weight.  Guess I wasn’t that interested!)

Anyway, let’s try again!