Deflabbify

Hundred Pushups, Week 4, days 1 and 2

Two days’ worth of updates:

Week 4, Day 1, Column 1: 16, 13, 13, 11, max = 21 (total 74)
Week 4, Day 2, Column 1: 16, 14, 14, 12, max = 20 (total 76)

I’m still being pretty generous with the breaks in between the different levels but I cut them down a little bit tonight. (I should be resting 90 seconds in between the sets, but I’ve been taking more like three minutes.)

It’s nice seeing a small amount of definition in my arms again.

If you’re interested in keeping track of your workout on your iPod, Peter over at Quick to Fit has just the download for you. (Or you can get my analog version here.)

One ounce at a time

Someone passed on a copy of Fred Brooks’ software classic The Mythical Man-Month to me. The introductory page to the chapter on progress tracking has this question and answer:

Question: How does a large software project get to be one year late?
Answer: One day at a time.

Small slippages here and there add up, and if left unchecked, they add up a lot.

But this is a weight loss blog, not a programming blog, so:

Question: How does a large guy get to be one hundred pounds overweight?
Answer: One ounce at a time.

I weighed 140 pounds at one point of my adult life, in my first year of graduate school. Through the next few years I put on some weight, had an operation to fix the effects of Crohn’s disease, and subsequently went up to about 180 pounds. I worked off 30 pounds of that over the next year or so just doing a lot of cardiovascular workouts. Then I started writing my thesis and that took precedence. Then I moved to my current location. Then I got married. A year after I was married I was 210. Five years after that I’d crept up to 240. That’s up 100 pounds.

One pound is 3,500 Calories. One pound is sixteen ounces, so one ounce is 219 Calories.

Each day that I consumed a can of soda, a beer, or a candy bar more than I burned off, I put on an ounce. One day doing this, and one day exercising a little harder or one day pushing that soda away, evens out. But when those offsetting days aren’t there, that’s when the weight creep shows up, one ounce at a time, and it adds up.

I gained this weight one ounce at a time. I have to take it off one ounce at a time, too.

Carnival participation

I appreciate the inclusion of my article on working out with Wii Fit in the Carnival of Weight Management and Fitness #20 over at Weight Master!

Hundred Pushups, Week 3 wrap-up

Got through another week!  I thought week 3 would get me but I squeaked by.  Here’s my progress so far:

One thing I did find myself doing is “powering through” the pushups more (meaning I did them faster). That and I continued to take a little extra time in between the levels (somewhere between 3 and 5 minutes rather than 1 to 2 minutes). I can see the number of pushups I’m doing going up steadily, so that’s what really matters, I guess.

Sticking with the program is going to be most of what gets me to the hundred. Since I was so fat to begin with I set my expectations of getting to 100 in six weeks as being zero.  I’ll be happy if I can get there in anywhere close to six months.

But that’s all right.  It’s helping me to get into better shape.

My biggest health or fitness vice

Nickel at Fit36 tagged me to post on my biggest health or fitness vice.

I just plurked on this:

I love beer, but beer doesn’t love me back.

Beer might have some health benefits but for the most part it’s empty calories, and any health benefits I might have gotten from it are offset by the extra pounds.

One thing that helps is my wife plays “beer fairy” and hides them where I can’t find them, thereby allowing her to ration them a little more. (I play along and don’t look for the beers.) That, and it is a bit fun to summon the beer fairy, I must admit.

Hmmm, who to tag next? How about:

• Pete over at Quick To Fit
• Kevin over at Weight Ladder
• MizFit over at MizFitOnline

(Rules of the Meme: 1) Post on your biggest health/fitness vice; 2) link back to the person who tagged you; 3) tag some more people and let them know they’ve been tagged! Oh, and have fun!)

Hundred Pushups, Week 3, Day 1

This one was tough, and I thought I may have pulled a muscle in my right arm doing it. Powering through sixty-four pushups isn’t a good thing to do if I injure myself in the process.

Week 3, Day 1, Column 1 (based on my exhaustion test result of 19): 15, 12, 12, 10, max = 15. (No overachieving on the maximum this time around.)

This week may be one I’ll have to repeat since I’m coming close to injuring myself in the process. I probably overdid things a little bit by also doing Rhythm Boxing on Wii Fit
at the encouragement of my coach, who came back this evening with her mother from a trip to West Virginia.

My arm is feeling better as I write this, but it’s something to watch and be careful about. I do some stretching of the push-up muscles but a warm-up period and more stretching probably wouldn’t hurt.

Hundred Pushups, week 2 summary

Well I just managed 19 pushups for my post-week-two exhaustion test. Here’s the progress so far:

My 19 pushups will put me in column 1 for week 3, which is just fine with me since I think that will be plenty. However, it’s really nice to see that I can do more than twice as many pushups in a row as I could a few weeks ago!

The killer hidden cost of weight-loss programs

BankRate.com had this article on MSN Moneycentral:

What does it cost to drop 30 pounds?

The article runs down the costs associated with well-known diet programs like Jenny Craig, Nutrisystem, Weight Watchers, and The Zone Diet. These programs aren’t cheap. The cheapest of the four for losing 30 pounds is under $100 (for online registration at Weight Watchers, not including food) to over $5,000 for daily food delivery in some cities for The Zone Diet.

A former member of our church went on one of these programs (his was $10 per day including food) and lost the weight initially, but then it came back.

I can see the plans being pretty difficult to stick to, and I can see it being pretty easy to cheat (eat food outside of what’s allowed). And that’s the killer cost.

I’m sure the added external structure of these programs is worth the money, but let’s face it: It’s not in the best interest of these companies to get you to a point where you don’t need them. They make money by selling controlled portions of food and other services. And they also make money when you fail and come back.

So though these programs may be good at kick-starting a diet, the dieter should look for a way to maintain the eating habits without that company. Also, if one of these programs doesn’t seem to be working or is just too painful to follow for whatever reason, get out. That’s not failing; that’s just being pragmatic. Try something else after figuring out why that particular plan didn’t work. There’s no real reason to pay a premium for food if it’s not serving its intended purpose.

What is the body mass index?

Each time I do a Body Test on Wii Fit my body mass index (BMI) is computed and displayed for by viewing (dis)pleasure. Mine hovers in the 36-37 range, which is off-the-scale obese.

My ideal BMI according to Wii Fit is 22, which would put me at a sleek 140 pounds.

But how the heck is this calculated? The original BMI was developed in the mid-19th century by Adolphe Quetelet and is simply the ratio of a person’s mass to the square of his height. So if I express my mass in kilograms and my height in meters, then

BMI = mass in kg / (height in m)²

Or, if I don’t want to convert to the units that the rest of the world uses, I can just use pounds and inches, and multiply by 703:

BMI = 703 (weight in lbs) / (height in inches)²

(To see why 703 works, substitute 2.2026 lbs for 1 kg and 39.37 inches for 1 m. Now, 2.2026 / (39.37)² is 0.001421, or 1/703.7.)

BMI is most useful on populations (i.e. large-number statistics) and there may be other reasons why a healthy person could have a high BMI. (I don’t think this applies to me. I’m just fat.) But clinically obese people like myself do run a higher risk of heart disease, diabetes, cancer, and other problems.

BMI is a measure that does carry some weight (!) but it’s possible that a BMI higher than 22 is just fine for some people. But again, it probably has to be quite a bit less than 37. )

Hundred pushups, Week 2, Day 3

Still managed to get through my workout tonight. Week 2, Day 3, Column 2: 10, 10, 8, 8, max = 15, for a total of 51 pushups.

On Friday I’ll do the exhaustion test to see which column I start in for Week 3.