31 thoughts on “WGOM Fitness: October 25, 2012, Three Months”

1. I think the rate at which you move is less important than the direction. As long as you're still losing, it's okay if the pace slows down a little. It's only if you stop losing, or start gaining again, that you need to be concerned.

   On a personal note, I have managed to lose the five pounds I gained over the summer, and even lost an extra pound or two. I'm a little worried about the next few days, though. Saturday night is the firemen's supper in Agar. Sunday noon is the Harvest Festival in Gettysburg. Sunday night we're meeting a group of friends in Pierre for supper. Monday I go to spend a couple of days with my Mom's cooking. I will do my best to take it easy on the eating, but it will be a challenge.

   1. Absolutely. I am now down 30 pounds. It took me twice as long to lose the last 10 as it did the first 20, but that hasn't deterred me. I'm still making progress and that's all that matters. About 10 more to go, if anyone cares.

      I can sympathize with you on being worried about leaving the house, too. When I go for a weekend to see my friends or visit my parents I'm not in control of the portion of food that's put in front of me and I can't help myself but to eat it all. That's what got me in this mess in the first place. If I stay good during the week (and I always do) I lose everything that I may have put back on in the weekend, though. Up and down, but always heading in the right direction.

      1. That's terrific. I agree that not being in control of eating is a real problem. During the diet portion of this plan, I completely control what I eat, except in certain business situations. However, my wife tends to overcook -- i.e. she provides too large of portions. Part of what will have to change will probably be me taking over cooking dinner when I am home. I am perfectly capable of doing it and I'm probably more likely to be portion conscious.

         1. I bought a little kitchen scale, and have of late been weighing meat portions, limiting them to 5 oz.

            1. I am totally going to get one of these. My goal is to reduce the amount of food that is prepared (and wasted) in our house. Savings will be applied to the food budget to buy higher quality foods.

               1. Or get tupperware and plan on eating leftovers with frequency?
                  Most Sundays, I cut up most of our leftovers from the week and throw them into our big stockpot with a can of diced tomatoes, or some stock, and add a few ingredients, spices, etc as I think would work together. (Which almost always includes Smoked Paprika, I really can't imagine what it doesn't go with.) I keep leftover bones if we have any from the week and will start a weak stock from them & water on Saturday. Gives me incentive not to eat the small leftovers.

                  It's probably not perfectly hygenic, but with four small kids, there's a lot of picked-over food bits. I save them and throw them in, too, but in my defense, they do get sterilized by being boiled, right?

                  Point being: less wasted food.

         2. I do most of the dinner cooking in my house. My wife has solved the portion control thing (I serve her too much food) by not letting me dish her plate anymore.

2. Lolo Jones is now a member of USA bobsled. That'd be so cool to actually get to meet her after seeing her at Relays and on TV before. Just gotta hit that gym. I'll probably weigh myself today. Here's hoping I cracked 160 (again).

   1. Only 158 today. I'm still trending upwards (just), but not as fast as I'd like. A job = money = more food would help a lot.

      1. Back in late August, early September, I wound up eating less for a while (things got busy, wasn't paying as much attention to my diet) and I dropped from about 174ish to 166ish, though I was leaner than the last time I was at 166. I'm adding some milk back into the mix, which seems to help with gaining.

         1. I've been see-sawing between 155-160 for about 2 months now. I started this at 155, got up to 160 before the move, lost 5 pounds, and how have put 3 of them back on. As with you, this 158 is a lot leaner than the previous 158s.

            1. peanut butter and banana sandwiches, dude.

3. Today's workout strategy is to (continue to) till the area under the deck and lay down weed barrier. No little rototiller to help this time. Broke two tines on the Garden Weasel (is there a warranty on those? I've had it for ~19 years now, I think) but it actually works better with just the one. I'm working up a good sweat, and the dog is enjoying some outdoors time. Win-win

4. At the Orlando airport waiting gor my plane. Not a great trip as I only got in one workout all week after vowing to exercise every day. But I did do a ton of walking and except got Tuesday night I was pretty good about food choices - lots of fruit and salads at the meals do that helped. Tuesday the boss took us to dinner and I had a chopped salad and mixed grill - 5 oz beef tenderloin and a fish fillet with a creamy crabmeat sauce, mashed potatoes, asparagus and spinach for sides. It was the tiramisu that made me feel guilty, though. Last night was the big blowout party and I found a pretty tasty pale ale called Magic Hat #9. So I had two of them. And a Yuengling. And a Sam Adams. And a Stella Artois. Oh, well. Tomorrow is another day.

5. Last night, we celebrated AJR's "potty party" that she got for filling in her potty-training chart. We dressed up and danced and broke open a piñata. My wife and I both easily fit into our wedding dress and suit, respectively. My suit's pants' waist was where I'd've thought of having them taken in if I got any smaller and the wedding was coming up. (But I conceded that I am cheap and wear a belt, so I wouldn't unless it were completely awful.)

   Today, at our office, we have a "biometric screening" so our insurance company can keep tabs on us help people with chronic issues get appropriate treatment. My BMI was barely under "Obese". I'm thinner than I was at 22, but something that says I'm borderline obese loses so much credibility with me. I'll admit I could lose a few, but for various reasons, I was about 30 lbs lighter a year and a half ago, and my wife said I looked sickly.

   1. I agree on BMI. The lower end of normal for 5' 10" is 127 pounds. 127 pounds at 5' 10" is not normal.

      1. Out of curiosity, I put my current height and target weight into a BMI calculator. Came out at 27, which is middle of the "overweight" range.

         1. But much of your body mass is muscle, right? I know BMI's supposed to be less usable for people who are have an athletic, muscular build. But that's not me.

            1. Right, when/if I hit my goal, it'll be a lot of lean muscle and I'll be in undoubtedly the best shape I've ever been in. With our recurring conversations about the effectiveness/accuracy of BMI as an indicator, I just wondered what it would say about future me. For the record/reference, I'm at 20.5 right now, which is pretty "normal".

   2. I'm somewhere between 5'11" and 6'0", and lately I've been around 166. That puts my BMI somewhere between 22.5 and 23.1, in the normal category, but not that far from the overweight category. I haven't put a tape measure to it, but I have about a 32" waist, and you can see some of my ribs. I've made moderate-to-good strength gains over the last year, and some muscle mass, but I don't think anyone would describe me as muscular. For instance, no one has mentioned that I look different since I started strength training a year ago, even though I now have some semblance of shoulders and an ass. And while I've spent a lot of time working out, I'm not some kind of genetic freak of nature. I haven't had to buy new clothes (except jeans because they got too tight in the thighs), but now I realize how poorly my clothes fit me when I lacked shoulders, for instance.

      I really don't know how seriously to take any of the BMI categories, at least at my height. They say "it may overestimate body fat in athletes and others who have a muscular build," but they give no guidance as to what constitutes an athlete (CC Sabathia? John Daly?) or a "muscular build." I mean, sure, it's safe to say that the BMI categories don't apply to Johan Santana at 6'0" and 210 lbs (BMI of 28.5, overweight), but there's a gaping chasm between me and Johan as an athlete, and where is the line? Plus, it's not like Santana even has an exceptionally muscular build for an athlete.

      1. The true test is a body fat analysis. My BMI is at almost 30, but my scale attempts to measure body fat by sending some sort of weak electrical current through me while I am being weighed. It says my body fat is at about 27.5, which is considered obese by some scales, but in the average range for my age (but toward the upper level of average) by others (see chart lower in the link). I think my "ideal" body fat percentage would be somewhere around 19%. That probably means < 200 pounds (or a lot more muscle).

         1. Sure, an accurate BF% is ideal. For most people, I think that a scale and a tape measure are good for measuring progress. I just tend to not like broad categorization like the BMI categories. We might not all be special snowflakes, but there are differences and it's not always helpful to be boxed in a particular category. I tend to think you're way ahead of the curve in looking at the rolling average of your weight and not getting too caught up in the daily fluctuations, and likewise, I doubt you'll get too caught up with what your BMI (or even BF%) is when you get to feeling in shape. I could see it being detrimental for some folks, though.

6. Yesterday, I was able to get a decent 5-second L-sit, which felt awesome. I've made a lot of progress in that over the last 2-3 months. So far in Q4, I've been able to follow my workout plan all but one day. My main lifts are still progressing, though the squats are getting awfully tough and the press is finally heavy enough that my top set takes something out of me.

   1. My squats are increasing, but I need to focus more on them, especially since so much power in pushing the sled is generated from the butt. Minimum, I need to get up to squatting 220 for the combine, realistically more like 250-275 (as that's about 1/2 the sled weight in 2-man sledding).

      1. My long-term goal is a 2xBW squat, but I don't have a competition or anything to train for, so my main goal in the squat is adding 5kg/month. If I could maintain that increase for about 16 months, I'd hit my long-term goal, but I'm sure I'll stall and be forced to reset at some point before that. I want to do a lot of backpacking next summer, and I figure the more I squat, the easier it'll be to hike around carrying a heavy pack.

         1. My long-term goal is to be functional and mostly pain free. Enjoy your youth, you bastards!

            [now, GOML]

            1. My even longer term goal is to be functional and mostly pain free when I am old like you. 🙂 These days, every now and then, I'll see some 70-80-year-old marathon runner in a video (TV/movie/internet/whatever) as a paragon of health. Look at this old person being active, you can do it, too! Unfortunately, most of the time when I see such a person, I wince in pain. While their heart and lungs may be in good shape, they usually look like they have serious mobility issues, for instance, many of them look as though they couldn't do a single unweighted lunge, or may have problems raising their hand above their shoulder. I'm hoping to avoid that fate, so I try to listen to what my body tells me. And I don't care what you say, those voices in my head are real!

               1. I can't tell you how depressing it is to see one body part after another start to go south. First it was my eyes (from better than 20/20 all my life, to now needing cheaters). Now it's my shoulder. Obviously, my problems are moving downward, and in a few years, I won't want to talk about it.

                  1. Of course you won't need to talk about it, they have pills for that now!

                     It is a bummer about your shoulder problems. I see a lot of people at the gym who have crappy shoulder mobility. A lot of them are stronger than I am (some of them much, much stronger than I am), but their terrible mobility both limits the weight they can move and puts them at greater risk for injury. One thing I'm grateful of is all the information I have at my disposal these days, I think it would've been harder to train well back in the day. (Also, surgery used to not be as good as it is now, so if you snapped something, you would be stuck with it.)

7. I went over to St. Joseph's University (used to be College, wonder how much that upgrade cost to CT taxpayers?) for Fleet Feet track workout this evening.

   I've been doing these throughout my Half training - fun outing, always something different/interesting - focus on tempo runs.

   Tonight was New Balance Prediction Mile. In this event, after several warmup laps, you run the first mile using whatever technology you want (I use nothing) to gauge your mile pace. We then ran the first mile, with the Fleet Feet dude shouting out your times. Then you go over and sign up for what you predict the timing will be for your next mile. Then you run the next mile, with the FF dude shouting out your finish time, which you log.

   A well-attended event for a cool (but not cold) October evening. St. Joseph track lites come on about 10 minutes later that you think they should.

   Prizes (nice stuff - free NB shoes, GPS devices, backpacks, hats w/ built-in lites) were awarded to those with the closest time to their prediction. I was off my prediction by 7 seconds (and won a lesser prize). The winner was spot on.

   After that we did 4x400's.

   1. My Wednesday running group is through the local Fleet Feet. They seem pretty cool.

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