My Weight Loss Blog
March 3, 2009: 60 minutes vs. 75 minutes; and weight training
Over the past couple years I have gradually increased the length of my ExerBent workouts from short workouts of 20 minutes or so to 30 minutes, then 40, 50, and 60 minutes. An hour per day of spinning seemed like a good number to use, and I did so most of the time.
However, a couple times I have increased my workout from 60 minutes to 75 minutes mostly just to see if I liked it, or perhaps to try to burn more calories for awhile. When I've tried this, I generally kept the 75-minute habit up for a week or so.
After some experience with this, I have decided that at least for me, it is actually preferable to do only a 60-minute spinning workout instead of a 75-minute workout! Why? I have found that I'm not really burning too many more calories during the longer workout. While the time is longer, I think I tend to not work quite as hard over the entire 75 minutes as I otherwise would, and therefore I don't burn 25% more calories as expected. Also, my butt tends to get sore more frequently if I spin for 75 minutes instead of just 60.
Instead, I have decided that the time is right for me to vary my workouts a bit by adding some upper-body weight training and some stomach crunches/sit-ups. I own some dumbbells, 10-pound and 25-pound, which work excellently for bench presses, bicep curls, and tricep curls as well as some forearm work. And I have recently added an inexpensive ($50 at Walmart) but good Gold's Gym workout bench that has an variable incline back rest and ankle pads to lock your legs (necessary when doing sit-ups).
I've been doing weight training now for about 3 weeks and I really am enjoying the variety it brings to a workout. After my first day's try I had to stop for a few days due to sore muscles. Then for awhile I was weight training every day, and most recently I've decided that every other day might be a better idea: one day of weight training + EZ spinning program alternating with one day of spinning only, but using a harder spinning program. On the days when I do weights, it adds about 15 or 20 minutes to my hour of spinning.
I've also had a little stomach-crunch device that I've used on and off for years and I started using it again occasionally, or doing sit-ups or half-sit-ups on the bench. Who knows--perhaps one day I'll discover that I actually do have ab muscles underneath that one gigantic piece of fat that is still my "beer gut".
An hour a day--keep plugin' away!
February 23, 2009: I almost hosed my exerbent!
Yesterday (Sunday), the left side of my pedal housing started squeaking annoyingly and loudly. This happened about a year ago, too, and I thought for sure the problem was in the pedals so back then I had ordered a new pair. But when I installed the new pedals the annoying squeaking was still there. 
So I pulled apart the pedal and crankshaft and gave the axle a good dousing with WD-40; sure enough, this solved the squeaking problem.
So, if it worked back then, it should work again. Spraying on some WD-40 from the outside of the housing didn't work so I once again pulled apart the pedal and crankshaft. This isn't as hard as it sounds; it's just a matter of removing the little external plastic piece at the pivot point of the crankshaft, then using a socket wrench to completely remove the bolt and washer securing the crank to the axle. I did this, made generous use of my WD-40 spray, the re-assembled the crank and pedal.
Unfortunately, I wasn't careful when re-attaching the crank. In fact, the two pedals are supposed to be at 180 degrees offset with each other, but I completely wasn't thinking about this, and the pedals ended up having an offset of only either 60 or 120 degrees (I realized later that it was actually an offset of 90 degrees, not 60 or 120, because the crank connects to the crankshaft with four sides, not six). No problem--just remove the crank again and then align it correctly, right? But after removing the bolt securing the crank to the axle, I wasn't able to remove the pedal and crank-- it was completely stuck! Arrggghhh. I tried to get that thing off for a good 10 minutes using some tools I had lying around but no such luck. I believe it got stuck because there was likely some rust or other bit of metal that got jammed when I tightened the retaining bolt.
I ended up getting frustrated and leaving the problem overnight, hoping that the WD-40 might loosen the crank. I approached the problem today before my workout with some better tools (a claw hammer and a little crow bar) and luckily as I had indeed hoped, the crank and pedal came off relatively easily. This time, I re-attached it paying better attention to lining up the two pedals at a 180 degree offset. Now, my exerbent is healed again and the squeak is fixed! Yay!
I'm hoping to add some video to exerbent.com in the near future that will demonstrate how to remove pedals and cranks and lubricate them.
February 13, 2009: Do I feel better?
My health care providers and some other folks have asked me if I feel better now that I've lost a bunch of weight. My initial reaction was: "no, not particularly". However, after some thought and the realization that a number of individual aspects of my body's daily operation and my state of mind, I would have to say that "yes, a number body/life/health-related items work together to cumulatively make me feel better overall". Here's a list of some of these individual things that contribute to this better overall feeling:
- Feeling of Accomplishment: After most of my almost-daily workouts I'm usually sweating profusely and am tired, but I definitely have a feeling of having accomplished a small step toward better health and this makes me feel good *about* myself if nothing else. Plus, after a workout I can definitely justify being a couch potato the rest of the day.
- Clothes fitting: I've shopped for clothes only at big 'n' tall shops for the last 20 years or so. After my waist out-grew size 48 pants, I finally switched to wearing jeans with a stretchy waist most of the time. But now I find that I can once again easily get into size 48 waist pants. In fact, some are way too big and I have to really yank on my my stretchy belts to get the pants to stay up. Plus, many of my already-oversized shirts now look *really* oversized. But I don't mind these things.
- Bodily functions: In general, I think the peeing and pooping aspects of my life are better; I used to get up a few times during the night to pee, but the past 6 months or so, most of the time I no longer have to get up even once. Also, I used to get acid reflux at night and now that's rare--I can't remember the last time acid reflux bothered me at night (I believe this is mostly due to the fact that I no longer gorge on sugary foods just before bedtime).
- Endurance and sweatiness: The more I exercise, the easier it is for me to do tasks like mowing the lawn and shoveling snow. And I've always sweated a lot even just doing tasks like shopping or even taking a long hot shower. But now I find I sweat much less or not at all in those situations.
There are probably some things I'm forgetting, but while none of those things individually might not cause me to "feel better", taken as a whole they all definitely contribute. Kewl!
February 3, 2009: Yikes!
On January 23, 2009 I weighed in under 270 pounds for the first time in probably about 15 years. A few days later on 1/29, I weighed in after a workout at 266.6. Then Super Bowl weekend hit and I knew I'd be eating some junk. And eat junk I did over the course of a few days: cookies, donut holes, chips, Culinary Circle Pizza with fresh mushrooms, Lucky Charms cereal, and so forth. I used the Super Bowl as an excuse to pig out.
Sunday night after the game I weighed myself again just to see what damage I'd done. I weighed in at a whopping 276.8 pounds. That's a difference of over 10 pounds in just the course of a few days. YIKES!!!
I therefore have been doing 75-minute exerbent workouts the past few days instead of my normal 60 minutes, and I also plan to get some balance instead of just aerobic workouts by visiting our local gym. I re-weighed myself tonight after my workout and I was back down to 268.6 pounds, but DANG it's scary that my weight can fluctuate that much over the course of just a few days.
It makes me consider a few things:
- I think I'm losing more water weight by sweating from spinning than I had originally figured, maybe up to about 3 pounds in a single workout
- Since this weekend mirrored my old eating habits, I'm wondering why my maximum weight was only 325 pounds (about +6 pounds a year for 20 years); if I can gain 10 pounds in a single weekend I'm surprised I wasn't 400 pounds or more like Jared the Subway guy.
- What precise things are happening to cause this? I can't imagine that I actually ate 10 pounds or more of food; was a lot of this just water weight?
- Perhaps I need to pay closer attention to calories, especially fat calories.
At any rate, I appear to be back on the wagon for now and I have no more excuses to eat a lot in the foreseeable future.
January 21, 2009: 2008 Stats
I've taken a look at my stats for 2008 versus earlier years and I've impressed even myself.
One nice side result of having used an exerbent extensively over the winter of 2007-2008 is that when it got warm enough for outdoor excursions on my trike, my legs were more fit and I was therefore able to increase the number of outings.
My average distance, average time and of course total distance in 2008 versus 2007 are below (the average distances are including some outings of just a few miles doing errands):
Trike Usage |
2007 |
2008 |
Increase (%) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Number of Excursions | 12 |
65 |
442% |
| Avg. Distance (Miles) | 5.95 |
10.38 |
74% |
| Avg. Time (Minutes) | 43.2 |
65.5 |
51% |
| Avg. Speed (Mph) | 8.27 |
9.51 |
15% |
| Total Distance (Miles) | 71.36 |
674.66 |
945% (!!) |
...So I biked over nine times as much distance in 2008 as in 2007. My goal for the summer of 2009 is to bike 1000 or more miles (then maybe in 2010, take a trike trip somewhere like Yellowstone).
My exerbent usage also went up significantly from 2007 to 2008:
Exerbent Usage |
2007 |
2008 |
Increase (%) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Number of Excursions | 65 |
196 |
202% |
| Avg. Distance ("Miles") | 11.24 |
14.74 |
31% |
| Avg. Time (Minutes) | 51.9 |
60.0 |
15% |
| Avg. Speed (Mph) | 13.00 |
14.74 |
13% |
| Total Distance ("Miles") | 730.80 |
2,859.00 |
391% |
...Keep in mind that an exerbent "mile" is not the same as a real mile on a trike.. Based on average speeds above, I would estimate that 1 mile in the real world is about 1.5 miles on an exerbent.
My walking numbers actually decreased, mostly due to to the fact I was biking a lot more.
January 19, 2009: Setbacks and Walls
I'd like to be able to report that my weight has been going down non-stop since I started seriously exercising 14 months ago, but unfortunately I can't. There have in fact been two times when I've regained about 5 pounds over the course of about a week:
- The first of these occurred when I went out of town for a week around the end of September 2008. I didn't eat too great and despite having my recumbent trike along, only went for rides a few times. But I did manage to lose those 5 pounds back and another 10.
- The second wall I hit was over my birthday and the holidays in December 2008. Then, I also gained about 5 pounds back, which I've nearly managed to lose by now. The issue this time was a nice big cake for my birthday (and a yummy Godfathers' pizza) and a bunch of junky fatty foods over the holidays.
The funny thing is, looking back at the extra unhealthy food I ate in December, if I had it all to do again, I'd probably do the same thing. (I wonder why the holidays 2007 wasn't an issue? I can't remember.)
Despite such setbacks, I've so far managed to re-lose weight that I've put back on, again usually at the rate of about a pound a week. I've come up with a mantra of sorts that is keeping me motivated and active: "Keep plugin' away, an hour a day".
December, 2008
As of December 2008, my most recent weigh-in came in at about 272 pounds for a total weight loss to date of 53 pounds (but I tend to round off to the nearest next lowest 5-pound increment, so I consider this to be about 50 pounds).
So, the thing that worked for me where nothing else has worked was the addition of 1 hour of vigorous exercise per day. In actuality, I end up doing formal exercising about 70% of the time (about 5 days a week), and another 20% of the time I'm doing some other activities like walking to the Post Office and back (total of 3.2 miles), mowing, shoveling, cleaning house that also cause me to get a good sweaty workout. About 8%-10% of the time I don't do any exercise either because I'm not feeling well or just don't have time today. But this has worked and I'm psyched!
At the moment, I want this to continue. About a pound of weight loss per week is what I've been doing so far, and my long-term goal is to lose a total of 100 pounds, which I hope to do by early-to-mid 2010, but we'll see how it goes. So far so good!