My Weight Loss Blog
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June 12: Record consecutive days and low weight
About a week ago, I missed a day working out because I spent most of the day struggling unsuccessfully to repair a broken lawn mower. However, that skipped day marked the end of my longest consecutive-days-working-out record at 47 days. That's 47 days in a rows of at least an hour of exercise, mostly on my exerbent, but a few days' worth on my trike. During that time period, I would work out even on days when I was shovelling, doing housework, or running errands.
That hard work has paid off, since I'm now about 15 pounds lighter than 4 months ago.
I've also had a couple remarkable weigh-ins recently, twice under 256 pounds (or -70 pounds total). But I'm not quite ready to claim even -65 pounds total since my high-water mark for weight has been fluctuating between 259 and 262 pounds. When my high weight has been below 260 for a week or so I'll claim that new mark.
For some reason, I've lately decided to: (a) weigh myself more frequently, which has resulted in understanding that my weight can easily fluctuate by up to 5 pounds each day (mostly due to sweat and liquid consumption, I believe); (b) I used to use my lowest daily weight reading as my official recorded weight, but I've started using my high daily weight instead.
So, some continued good success here. Woohoo!
May 23, 2009: Back on Track
I've been doing rigorous daily exercise for about 18 months now, for a total weight loss of between 55 and 60 pounds (17-18% of total body weight). But from February through April of 2009, I found my progress stagnating. I wasn't gaining any weight, but I wasn't losing any more either.
I was bummed out about this, as I had been continuing daily workouts (well, about 5-6 times per week), and suddenly my weight loss progress stalled. Why?
I had to think about this for a while, but I came up with three possible reasons:
- I had been adding weight training to my workouts starting at approximately this same time period
- I like drinking wine, but had to completely stop doing so about 10 years ago because it would really make me feel hung over and sick the next day, even in small amounts (I thought maybe an allergy to sulfites). But I recently found that I'm able to drink wine again, so I'd been doing so, probably adding significant calories to my diet in the meantime
- Because I had added weight training, I had been cutting back on the vigorous-ness of my aerobic exerbent spinning workouts. In fact, my average calorie burning was reduced by about 25% over this time period (really glad that I track these things)
So, I've done the obvious things--I've cut out weight training completely for now, have stopped drinking any wine, and I've bumped up my difficulty levels (and thus calorie-burning) on my aerobic workouts. And I’ve kept up doing sit-ups on occasion.
Also, I’ve been working out every day, not just 5 or 6 days a week, even on days when I do other things like errands or yard work.
I'm pleased to report that this seems to have done the trick; my weigh-ins for the past couple weeks have once again started their downward trend, into the low 260's and I now feel comfortable claiming 60 total pounds of weight loss—under 265 pounds permanently--so far.
I will resume weight training at some point, but at this point I consider continuing to lose weight a higher health priority.
Here's a little table highlighting some of my progress so far:
| Date | Weight | BMI |
|---|---|---|
| 11/2007 | 325 |
44.1 |
| 5/2009 | 265 |
35.9 |
| Goal | 220 |
29.8 |
I had originally set a total weight loss goal of 100 pounds, down to 225, but going down another 5 pounds to 220 instead gives me a BMI under 30, so I'd officially be in just merely the official "overweight" category instead of "obese" 
. Time will tell if I can keep it up and achieve this goal!
May 6, 2009: Spinning on TV!
I haven't updated my blog area in awhile; I'll hopefully have some new news in a week or so. But I did want to mention something I saw on television recently. I saw an infomercial called something like: "Spinning and Weight Loss" which featured buff and beautiful men and women in large numbers using ordinary (non-recumbent) exercise bicycles to spin to lower weight and better health. Of course the ad featured many folks who claimed to have lost 50+ pounds by spinning.
I'm not a big fan of infomercials mostly because most of the products I see advertised on them are pretty much cheap pieces of crap that cost little to manufacture, are marked way up, and usually feature outrageously high shipping and handling costs. In the case of this spinning infomercial, I believe their primary goal is to sell exercise bicycles. They include all sorts of extra overpriced "goodies" like a couple pamphlets and a water bottle (valued at $75!) and a couple DVD's (valued at $48!). And, the cost just to give the product a try is $50. I have no idea what the ultimate cost is if you choose not to keep the exerbike.
I haven't tried using this spinning infomercial's exerbike product so I can't endorse or vilify it. As far as I know, it's just yet another sales pitch appealing to overweight folks as a method for quick weight loss, and I give them some credit for creating a whole infomercial on spinning. However, I did note that throughout the 30-minute ad, users of the bike were frequently "standing up" on the pedals, not using the seat, and whether seated or "standing", the bike users were inevitably hunched over the handlebars.
So based on what I saw, while this product might work well for mostly-in-shape folks who want to shed a few pounds with vigorous workouts, I don't recommend it for very overweight folks like me who need to lose lots of weight and need to do so in a lower-impact and more comfortable way.
For more information on low-impact ExerBent spinning, see my page about its benefits.
If you're still interested in checking out the infomercial's product, see spinningtv.com.
March 22, 2009: Attributing Success
Having lost a bunch of weight now, I can look back and think about to what I can attribute my success. Since I made little progress the first 2.5 years or so of realizing I needed to be healthier, I conclude that most of my success (say 90% or 95%) can be attributed to daily vigorous exercise. I'd give the remaining 5% or 10% credit to eating healthier and eating less.
In fact, in 2008 I started keeping track of number of calories burned during a spinning workout. Using the formula 1 pound = 3500 calories (see this link for reference), I can attribute about 30 pounds lost/burned/exercised off to spinning on my exerbent in just the past 15 months. I have no idea how my exerbent calculates calories burned, nor how accurate it is, but it's maybe not bad for an estimate. Unfortunately I have no way of knowing my calorie burn rate for other activities like biking or shoveling.
In terms of lowering my blood glucose levels, I give myself some credit, maybe 50%, to having cut down on sugar intake, exercising, and healthier eating. I've seen, however, that medication--specifically the solution form of metformin--has also been effective and may be responsible for the other 50% of my lower blood glucose success. Specifically, A1C levels tend to be lower, toward normal levels, when I'm regularly taking this standard type 2 diabetes medication.
(Follow this link to see previous blog entries from late 2008 to early 2009)