Octopus Overlords

If it was 6 Id still be hungry. I make 2 out of it if Im hungry. If Im just eating to have food I can make it into 4. I add water and heat then eat it over a slick of bread. Shit on a shingle. Usually I add flour to make the liquid thicker as a gravy but been out of flour for weeks. Ill get more in a couple weeks. Rats got my last bag.

Daehawk wrote: ↑Fri Jan 29, 2021 11:24 pm If it was 6 Id still be hungry.

That's what the sides are for!

I usually only eat one item a day as a meal. Just the other day though I did start adding a side item with it to break up the monotony and change it up. So like instead of beans 2 or 3 times in a day Im having beans and potatoes once or twice a day. Today was only the meat and bread though. It was so high in fat and cal I wanted a chili dog around 8pm but passed . I ate the meat and bread at 4. That will have to make do until tomorrow. Gotta be portions.

Figured tomorrow Id make some of those powdered potatoes to put the meat and juice on top of.

I have learned one thing...powdered milk is really good.

5 days on the bike, 55 miles ridden.

Another week, another pound down.

I've been holding steady at 200 or just below for months, which is heavy for me. Since my running and eating tend to be sporadic, with really good weeks and really bad weeks, I've decided to incorporate one piece of consistency every day.

The plan is to walk 2 miles a day at lunch. I work from home, no reason I can't do it. I feel like if I can introduce one constant that is very easy to control, I may be able to build off that and make some progress. I'm not trying to change the world here, just drop 15 pounds and I'd be a happy camper.

Big drop there. It isn't a coincidence that the new medication I'm on for ADHD (a new development for me) is also used to treat binge eating and is a fairly effective appetite suppressant. I've had to start tracking my intake again, but now I'm doing it backwards: making sure I get enough to eat when I'm simply not hungry all day. Before I started doing that, I looked back on a couple of days and realized I'd eaten 1400 and 1200 calories on those days. That's not healthy.

TOTAL +0.9

Miles walked this week 2.6
Miles walked this year: 8.0

Miles walked 2020: 652.6
Miles walked 2019: 488.8
Miles walked 2018: 449.4
Miles walked 2017: 514.5
Miles walked 2016: 725.8
Miles walked 2015: 593.9
Miles walked 2014: 735.7

Yup, still winter out there.

I'm down 10 pounds so far this year since starting tracking. I'm not posting my weight until it looks better though. Between the daily steroids for the last 2.5+ years (and for the rest of my life), COVID, and my more sedentary lifestyle, I've packed on the pounds. Maybe I'll do like Blackhawk and just report the weight loss amounts weekly.

I've been using My Fitness Pal to track my calories and exercise and calories for years now, but I'm about done with it. The ads have gotten more and more intrusive. Now they pop them up right when they know you're about to hit the screen (IE - between entering items) so that you're guaranteed to accidentally click them. They've moved more and more features to their subscription service, including your own history. I'm looking around for an alternative.

Not nearly as much poundage lost in last two weeks, but this is one of those cases where the scale is lying. 1/29 was right at the cusp, and within a few days of that I made several changes. I went on a new medication for ADHD that has the side benefit of reducing impulse eating (which has always been a problem for me.) I got the Rift-S. I also bumped my stationary bike time from 20 minutes a day to 25 minutes a day (I started up after the nine-month break in mid-January.) I also started tracking my food intake again, this time to make sure I was eating enough rather than the other way around (again, my meds reduce the urge to eat.) After doing some research, I also reduced the percentage of carbohydrates and fat in my daily intake and increased my protein intake to match it. I also started doing some core strength exercises after being told about encroaching spinal arthritis. It isn't a lot, but planks and bridges, five days a week, plus a set of stretches is making a difference. In addition to sitting a lot less thanks to the VR.

Net result? Between biking for 25 minutes a day, standing and moving while gaming instead of sitting, and playing some higher intensity games, I'm getting a lot of workout time. The CDC/WHO recommends 75 minutes of high-intensity or 150 minutes of moderate-intensity exercise per week. Right now I'm getting both. The bike keeps me at my target heart rate for about 15 out of the 25 minutes (plus a warmup and a cooldown.) At 70-80% max heart rate, that's 75 minutes of high intensity. The other 50 minutes is low intensity, plus I'm playing at least 30 minutes of Beat Saber and Pistol Whip per day, which is well into the 'moderate' exercise range of activity (Pistol Whip is like playing Rainbow Six to music while doing squats.) That's 75 minutes of high-intensity, plus 260 minutes of moderate-intensity exercise per week, plus the small amount of strength stuff. All while eating less (but enough, and with extra protein.)

So the scale has barely changed lately. With all the exercise plus the extra protein, I'm packing on new muscle as fast as I'm losing fat. The scale can't tell the difference. But my pants don't lie, and I'm having trouble keeping them from falling down.

My plan is to bump the bike up to 30 minutes next week, but drop it to four days a week. I wouldn't have done that when it was my only source of exercise, but with the other exercise I'm getting, it's enough. It'll still be 80 minutes of high-intensity plus 40 of low (from 75 and 50 right now, which still puts me above the recommendation), and it won't affect the 250+ I'm getting from other exercise. But it will get me off of the bike one extra day a week. I really don't enjoy the bike (it's mind-numbingly dull), plus it is hard to schedule with all of the other morning stuff I have going on, which sometimes leads to weeks where I have to work out five days in a row without a break to rest and heal (which is too much.) Same amount of exercise, but easier schedule.

That's great Blackhawk.

My Spartan team at work started posting "homework" workouts twice a week, so I've been trying to complete those pretty religiously. Those tend to be pretty intense and I definitely feel like I'm gaining strength from them.

Otherwise I'm trying to do just light jogging. I really haven't gotten my cardio back up to where it used to be.

Combined, it's probably not enough of what I need to do to really lose a lot of weight, but at least it's *something*. I'm hoping as the weather starts getting warmer (and drier), I'll be more inclined to get on a training schedule to get my running consistent again.

FWIW, my end goal is somewhere around X-100.

I'm resolved to start walking again tomorrow. It's supposed to be warmer and dry for the next few days. I have to get back in the habit, even though the sidewalks are still going to sporadically be icy for a few more weeks. Not going to report my weight until I have some mileage to go with it.

Here's my problem:

Monday - Friday - Healthy meals, run/walk/bike or Spartan workout daily.

Saturday/Sunday - Cinnamon rolls for breakfast, McDonald's for lunch, pizza for dinner, and hell let's have some pie for dessert.

I've got to break that cycle, and it's a cycle of convenience. During the week, the kids are in school, I'm by myself, and I can easily make healthy choices. On the weekends, we're all on the go and kids are dictating food. I'm undoing most of the week's progress every weekend.

I know 5 days of good habits vs 0 days is still a net positive overall, but I'm handicapping myself severely. I've got to be able to break that convenience of eating what the family eats, or at least control portions/make better decisions.

YellowKing wrote: ↑Sun Feb 28, 2021 11:09 am Saturday/Sunday - Cinnamon rolls for breakfast, McDonald's for lunch, pizza for dinner, and hell let's have some pie for dessert.

So along the same lines we get McDonald's for dinner every Monday. I started out with a Double Quarter Pounder, medium fries and diet coke. Switched the Double to a single and kept the fries and diet soda. The I looked up the nutritional information. Now I have 5 chicken nuggets and 2-3 fries. Yeah I know that's not on the menu. The kids are chicken nugget fiends and we get the 40 piece nugget deal and I take 5 from that. I am pretty sure McDs has food that isn't burgers or fried mystery meat too.

Also, we get pizza every Friday. I went from eating half a large pizza to 2 slices. Pizza night is still probably my worst meal calorie wise but it's a lot better than it was.

I can't help you on the cinnamon rolls except maybe split one with the wife.

A tiny sliver of pie gets you the taste without the full consequences.

YellowKing wrote: ↑Sun Feb 28, 2021 11:09 am Here's my problem:

Monday - Friday - Healthy meals, run/walk/bike or Spartan workout daily.

Saturday/Sunday - Cinnamon rolls for breakfast, McDonald's for lunch, pizza for dinner, and hell let's have some pie for dessert.

I've got to break that cycle, and it's a cycle of convenience. During the week, the kids are in school, I'm by myself, and I can easily make healthy choices. On the weekends, we're all on the go and kids are dictating food. I'm undoing most of the week's progress every weekend.

I know 5 days of good habits vs 0 days is still a net positive overall, but I'm handicapping myself severely. I've got to be able to break that convenience of eating what the family eats, or at least control portions/make better decisions.

I know this problem! For years I ate healthy by simply not buying unhealthy food. Then when Michelle and the kids moved in full-time a few years ago, I didn't find it reasonable to force my habits on them, so I started floundering when I suddenly found my house full of junk food.

What I did was:
1. Talked to them all and explained the problem, and asked them to reduce it some if they were willing (they were.) Instead of having deserts here all week, they get deserts for one night a couple of days a week. That's easier to avoid.

2. I asked them to each get their own junk food rather than just getting 'family' junk food. That means that if I want to get a bowl full of (whatever), I'm taking it away from someone else, and that's enough to keep me away.

3. I gave myself one 'special' meal per week. That's either a shopping day meal (I can get something perishable) or if we're watching a movie that week, it's the meal during the movie. I let myself eat crap, guilt-free. Sometimes it's something greasy and homemade, sometimes it's fast food - whatever. That one meal is probably as much fat and cholesterol as any two days, and as many calories as any normal day, but it's one meal. It's not enough to make a dent in my progress, but it doesn't force me to 100% deprive myself of my favorite stuff. Because I always know that meal is on the horizon, if I get a really bad craving, I know there's a way out: I just plan to have that craved food for my meal. Plus, from what I've read, having one unhealthy meal once a week or so can actually keep you healthy if you're trying to lose weight by keeping your body out of 'starvation conservation' mode, keeping your hormones in check, and other benefits.

And I think of it this way: I eat at about a 1,000 calorie deficit based on my BMR on a normal day (done carefully, making sure I get extra protein, 150-200 grams per day, and eating extra to compensate for calories burned from exercise.) A large pizza is maybe 3,000 calories. Let's say I go nuts and eat half. That puts me at about 500 calories over my BMR. Assuming I don't exercise any extra, that's worth about 1/7th of a pound gain for that day. That week I lose 2.5 pounds of fat and gain 0.14 pounds. Sounds like a big net improvement to me, and if it helps me stay on track the rest of the week and not feel deprived, it's an excellent trade-off. And yes, it's two days worth of saturated far, cholesterol, and sodium, but on a normal day I keep those things well under 50% of the day's max (saturated fat is usually close to zero.) Over the course of a week, I'm still getting well under the recommended maximums (quick math shows that the way I normally eat, getting a 150% of a day's saturated fat in one meal and single digits the rest of the week means I'm getting... 29% of the recommended maximum for the week, which isn't at all terrible.)

Continuing to lose weight, plus I'm still gaining muscle, so I'm losing more fat than the 17.5 pounds would suggest. I've bumped my stationary bike time up to 30 minutes (my pre-COVID normal that I've been working my way back up to), and have cut the workout from five days a week to four. I timed myself over the past few workouts. If I'm careful about not letting my heartrate exceed my target (80% of max, or 147 BPM), I am getting about 20-23 minutes in the 70%-80% range per day, which qualifies as an 'intense' workout. The recommendations for adults are 75 minutes per week of intense exercise per week, and I'm getting 80-92. I'm still blowing their 'moderate' exercise recommendations out of the water (~250 out of 150 minutes.) Given that the recommendations are either the moderate or the intense (not both) I'm really happy with what I'm doing.

My exercise bike (nine year old Schwinn 240) is driving me nuts by actively sabotaging my workout. I use the heart rate based workout that increases resistance until you hit your target heart rate. It then keeps you in that range, reducing the resistance if you go over the max to keep you from going too high. The problem is that it doesn't decrease it slowly to keep you at, say, 75%. Instead, it waits until you pass 80%, then it drops it. It gives you about five seconds to get back under 80%, then assumes you're having a heart attack and drops it really, really low. It then raises it slowly back up as if you were restarting the warm-up.

In practice it looks like this: My target heart rate is 121-147. It starts me out at resistance level 3, then bumps it to 5, then gets me into my target zone at around level 7. I stay there for 12 minutes or so of good workout time, get my heartrate up to, say, 144, and then do something that causes it to jump briefly, usually taking a drink of water (which interrupts my breathing for a couple of seconds.) My heartrate jumps to 149. The bike drops me to level 6. Five seconds later it's at 148, and the bike drops me to level 2. Now the second half of my workout is spoiled, because my heart rate very quickly drops down to 95 or 100, way, way under my target range, and it increases the resistance so slowly that it only gets back up into the target range five or six minutes later - after which it decreases the resistance for the cooldown phase. I get 12 minutes out of 30 of target range exercise rather than 20+.

I'm getting around it by watching carefully and if I start to get toward the top of the range, I slow my pedaling down (I normally stick right at 90RPM) until it drops toward the bottom of the range, usually 20 or 30 seconds, then pick it back up to full speed. But that kind of defeats the purpose of the automation. There is one setting I'm thinking of trying. When you set up the heartrate based workout, there are options for target range, time, and 'Fit' or 'Getting Fit.' But there is absolutely no information about what 'Fit' and 'Getting Fit' do. I've been using 'Getting Fit' because I'm, er... getting fit. I'm not fit yet. The manual only says, "Set the workout level: Fit (beginner) or Getting Fit (Advanced.)" Not only does that seem backwards, it tells me absolutely nothing about what the change or what qualifies as one or the other. Hopefully the 'Fit' setting will give me a few more seconds before assuming I'm having a coronary.

I was at 203.5 this morning, which shatters my al-time record high. I think it's evident at this point that the work from home and/or metabolism changes from just getting old are really kicking in. I used to be able to eat whatever I wanted and still never go over 195.

Not getting discouraged though. I've been doing my Spartan workouts twice a week and doing some sort of activity on the off days - whether that be walking, biking, jogging, or kettlebell workouts (which are fun, by the way - I highly recommend getting a kettlebell. The workouts don't seem particularly difficult while you're doing them, but then the next day you FEEL THE BURN).

Have been doing MUCH better on the eating front this week as well.

At this point while I know I absolutely need to lose some belly fat, I feel soooo much better in general from the daily workouts that I don't really care that much how fast I lose weight. As long as I'm feeling good, I'm OK with rocking the dad bod.

YellowKing wrote: ↑Thu Mar 04, 2021 3:13 pm At this point while I know I absolutely need to lose some belly fat

I convinced my daughter that it's actually a "beer muscle" and she will rabidly argue the point in my defense when my wife claims otherwise.

But then to demonstrate she punches me in the gut as hard as her little 4 year old arms can manage. Now she occasionally treats me as a body bag and rapidly punches me as hard as she can. For the moment, the beer muscle is resilient.

YellowKing wrote: ↑Thu Mar 04, 2021 3:13 pm I was at 203.5 this morning, which shatters my al-time record high.

Your all-time record high is lower than my eventual goal!

Blackhawk wrote:Your all-time record high is lower than my eventual goal!

Well we all have different body types. I weighed 130 in high school and was skinny as a rail. I settled in at a 185-190 level for pretty much all of my 30s and most of my 40s until recently.

My dad is pushing 300 (same height as me), which is really what I'm trying to avoid. While he was always bigger than I ever was due to being heavy into body building back in the day, I know I could go down that path if I'm not careful.

Whatever your current weight or your goal weight, I'm really proud of everyone in the thread who is taking steps to get healthier.

Yeah, I was 'blessed' with a football player build. I don't actually start to look fat until I hit 240-250 or so.

Blackhawk wrote: ↑Thu Mar 04, 2021 1:58 pm When you set up the heartrate based workout, there are options for target range, time, and 'Fit' or 'Getting Fit.' But there is absolutely no information about what 'Fit' and 'Getting Fit' do. I've been using 'Getting Fit' because I'm, er... getting fit. I'm not fit yet. The manual only says, "Set the workout level: Fit (beginner) or Getting Fit (Advanced.)" Not only does that seem backwards, it tells me absolutely nothing about what the change or what qualifies as one or the other. Hopefully the 'Fit' setting will give me a few more seconds before assuming I'm having a coronary.

Nope. The 'fit' selection is much more conservative than the 'Getting Fit.' Instead of easing the resistance when I exceed my target range, it does it when I'm ten beats below that.

I did discover today, however, that I can manually up the resistance during the heart rate controlled workout. That'll help, especially if I can speed up the 'warm up' period getting to my target rate, from about 10-12 minutes to maybe 5 To be clear, I'm not skipping a warm up. I don't start my workout on the bike cold, but after my other exercises, including leg work. I'm already fairly warmed up and stretched when I sit down.

Going to reset my weight tracking starting today with weekly weigh-ins and goal weight.

TOTAL +1.1

Miles walked this week 3.8
Miles walked this year: 11.8

Miles walked 2020: 652.6
Miles walked 2019: 488.8
Miles walked 2018: 449.4
Miles walked 2017: 514.5
Miles walked 2016: 725.8
Miles walked 2015: 593.9
Miles walked 2014: 735.7

Finally, a break in the weather. Should be able to walk semi-regularly again. Not going to set a mileage record this year after sitting out all of January and February.

I'm starting a new post for me too. I started working out and dieting on February 15th, I weighed in at 211. (Last year I started the year at 212, so I guess I maintained).

I started a pretty strict Keto Diet for the first time ever, I paired that with "4 weeks of the Work" (It's on the Beach Body App) for exercise. As of 3/10/2021 I was down to 202. I am losing weight a hell of a lot faster with a low carb diet and about 1200 calories a day than I have at any time in the past 4 years.

Weigh ins:

2-15-21 211
2-23-21 207
3-10-21 202

I seem to be at a plateau right now as far as the scale is concerned, which is fine. And I'm still building muscle, which means that if the scale isn't changing, I'm losing fat.

February was not a good month for me, but I have managed to burn that all back off and get back to my end of January weight. Don't have specific figures now but will be tracking again next week.

I'm still fighting with my exercise bike being too aggressive about easing off toward the high end of my target range. I want it to ease off if I exceed my target range, not while I'm in it. I've tried a variety of things, but I think I've found a solution. I implemented it today, but I'll test it tomorrow. I need to have it go into 'slowdown' mode about 4 BPM later than it does. So I lied to my bike: I told it I was four years younger. If it calculates target heart rate normally, that'll increase it by 4. I know 4 BPM doesn't sound like much, but in a range that's only 26 beats (121-147), losing 4 is narrowing it quite a bit.

I checked my heart rate recovery today (how fast heart rate recovers after exercise in BPM.) It was -30 at 1 minute, -49 at 2 minutes, but I also found that I tested it at too high of a starting rate (I did 90% of max, while 75-85% is what should be used, plus I did it after a full work out.) Still, that puts me in the 'good' to 'very good' range, with 15-20 at 1 minute being average. Given that my resting heart rate is usually in the low 60s ('excellent' range for my age), that makes me pretty happy given how out of shape I still am.

Slight gain this week but not too concerned. This week was all about establishing healthier habits I could live with, and by that measure it was a success. Lots of water, no fast food, no sodas, drastically reduced sugar, daily activity.

coopasonic wrote: ↑Tue Feb 23, 2021 12:25 pm

Code: Select all

20210102 - 145.2 -- apparently eating an entire coffee cake over the course of a week on top of Christmas dinner and holiday related treats has consequences...
20210219 - 142.0 -- 10 pounds since August. Once I hit the 130s I think I call it quits.

Never going to hit the 130s without changing something it seems, holding at 142 (141.4-141.8) for a month now.