Greg's Weight Loss Blog

Ever since I have started shedding the fat I have still been wearing the same XXL shirts and sweaters and I must admit they were getting pretty big. The only thing I have replaced since I started the weight loss has been my jeans, went from a snug size 40 to a loose size 34, and a belt as after punching four new holes on my old belt I just decided to spring for a new one. Oh and I also got some fantastic new underwear.

You see, in Hungary we celebrate name days. A name day is like a mini birthday and it happens the same day of the year for everyone who shares the same first name. Women generally get flowers while men get wine from friends and family. Kids might get a small toy. Mine, the Hungarian version of Greg, happens to fall on March 12th and I’ve got some new clothes from my dear wife.

As most men, I’m not big on clothes shopping and I rather go to the dentist for a root canal than the mall to pick up a new shirt or pair of pants. It seems like I’m in for a whole bunch of root canal type pain in the near future as my wardrobe needs a desperate makeover. Luckily my wife can do most of the shopping for me so I hope I’m out of the woods. For my name day she surprised me with some new polo shirts and sweaters from The Gap. I am very happy with how they look and feel on me. Everything is size Large and quite honestly I think I will outshrink these too eventually. she only bought two of each so they should hold me over in the interim until I’m down to Mediums.

I have attached my photo sporting my size 34 jeans and my new shirt and sweater. I think I’m looking pretty good, if I say so myself . It’s seldom that I post photos of myself on this blog in anything but my underwear so enjoy them while you can .

I was told twice the other day that I’m obsessed with my fat loss and it is pretty much all I can talk about. The first person was a co-worker while the other one was my lovely wife. Apparently they’re more tired of my “diet” than I am. The question that I had been pondering is am I really that obsessed? Sure, my new lifestyle is a huge part of who I am now and considering how relatively new it is it is naturally something I tend to talk about a lot. But obsessed? I don’t think so!

I have stumbled upon a great quote that I think pretty much sums it up how I feel about being obsessed:

OBSESSED is just a word the LAZY use to describe the DEDICATED.
- Russell Warren

One one hand I can actually understand why my friends and family would consider me being obsessed. I’m the kind of guy who doesn’t do anything half assed. When I get into something I really get into it. I used to do remote control helicopters. I was really into that. I learned everything there was to learn about them. I flew them every weekend or every chance I got. It was a great hobby that I have enjoyed a lot. Then somehow I got out of it and haven’t touched a remote control for a long time. Was I obsessed with model helicopters? I didn’t think so.

I used to be a volunteer firefighter for two and a half years in my community. I got state certified by the State Firemen’s and Fire Marshall’s Association and I also completed the National Registry of Emergency Medical Technician’s First Responder training and I am a state certified Emergency Care Attendant. All this while holding down a full time job and trying to raise my son. I was top volunteer responder for two straight years. If there was an emergency I went. I’m surprised I’m still married, my wife hated the whole thing; the half finished family dinners, the fire alarms in the middle of the night, the missed family outings, everything. I was really into it. And I made sure everyone knew about it. I told stories about firefighting and what really happens when you are a volunteer firefighter. Was I obsessed? If you ask my wife you’d get a definite yes. If you ask me I’d say I was just dedicated. But since August, 2008 I’m no longer serving my community as a volunteer firefighter and I haven’t been back to the firehouse since.

When my son was born in 2004, I picked up photography, a long lost hobby. I did take photography classes in college and I was shooting 35mm film but it wasn’t until my son’s birth that I got back into photography seriously. I spent more on camera equipment and accessories than some smaller countries GDP. I really got into it and luckily I have a ton of pictures to show for it. Am I obsessed with photography? If I look at my equipment list and the  time I spent image editing you’d say yes. But I’m just really dedicated. This hobby is still mine, alive and well and I do take photographs of other things besides myself when my time allows.

So how will my lifestyle change and newfound running pan out in the long run (no pun)? Am I obsessed with it? Am I dedicated? Will it be a phase like firefighting or the helicopters or a life long journey like photography? I certainly hope that it’s the latter. I guess you’ll just have to hang in there with me, wait and see .

I’ve been skipping the updates lately on the blog, but I couldn’t skip the photo update. I made the commitment I just have to do it. Today’s photo update is showing more of the same as the last one. Or should I say less of the same ? My measurements haven’t changed at all except for the hip which dropped another 0.25″. Everything else is the same. In terms of the pictures it seems my abdomen is caved in even a bit more than 4 days ago and my back might started to have a bit more definition but certainly nothing super impressive. My hands are getting more and more visible veins in them and I can start to see them in my forearms a bit too. My triceps are coming in nicely too.

03/11/2010 Transformation Picture

Today’s pictures turned out great! You can actually see that my gut is actually further in than my ribcage in the front flexed picture! I haven’t seen that ever before. All in all I think I’m shaping up quite nicely, if I say so myself . My measurements had dropped again, a quarter inch from my bicep (bye-bye 13.5″), chest (under 40″ now), hips (down to 39″) and thigh (22.25″). All in all I’m getting slimmer everywhere I look. My size 34 jeans that I bought back in December are becoming looser and looser and the matching belt is almost on its last notch. I’m very pleased with the changes from the last set as small as they might be.

03/07/2010 Transformation Picture

This week was a fantastic week again. Well I’m calling it fantastic but if you care about my strength exercising or my lean body mass retention this week kind of sucked.

The week started out good, I did strength training on Tuesday but I skipped my Friday session. I went to the driving range with my buddy and hit some balls instead. Then I couldn’t go to the gym after work because my son had soccer practice so I was just screwed. This is the second week with a single strength exercise session. It’s getting a bit concerning but I won’t beat myself up over it.

I really don’t think that skipping one strength day has anything to do with it but my lean body mass has shrunk considerably this week. I don’t know if it’s the scale or I’m really losing muscle but the numbers indicate muscle loss. I really don’t want to lose any muscle! I think the muscle loss has more to do with the extra cardio I had been doing thanks to the fantastic running week. I ran 7 days straight with no rest day just as the plan has called for. I managed to put in a total of 29.4 miles ( 47.3 km) this week which is more than I had done before. This number has to climb substantially once I’ll get into marathon training mode though. Luckily the 10K didn’t bother my legs and I feel fully recovered ready to go for next week’s runs.

My eating had been really great this week. Due to the extra cardio I have tried very hard not to eat any less than 1,800 calories and my average shows 1,797.9 for the week. I’m pretty happy with that number. I’m also happy with the 153 grams of average protein intake of the week.

Since I ate 1,798 calories a day and burned 552 calories a day on average it means my net caloric intake was 1,246 calories. According to the rolling average of my weight I had lost 2.6 lbs this week (1.2 kg) which means 9100 calorie deficit in the week which converts into 1300 calories a day. That means my BMR is 2,546 which is significantly higher than last week’s. What this means is that my heart rate monitor underestimates my caloric expenditure or I’m overestimating my caloric intake. I’m betting on the former as I don’t think my metabolic rate jumped 200 calories from one week to the other. I’ll just have to keep an eye on it. 2.6 lbs for the week is pretty steep, maybe I’ll have to start eating around 2,000 calories if I am keeping up with the exercise regime.

Today I ran my first fartlek run. Fartlek is a funny word and it originates from Sweden. It literally means “speedplay”. The goal of a Fartlek run is not unlike the goal of a tempo run. It is meant to improve lactate threshold. While the tempo run is meant to be a gradual steady incline in heart rate to lactate threshold levels fartlek runs are supposed to be random and they should be run as you see fit. Just randomly vary your speed from slow jogging to downright sprinting. You should also vary the duration of each segment. Just pick a building or a telephone pole in the distance and run to it at a set pace. Then pick another point and run to that with a different pace. Just keep alternating faster and slower or even faster run segments as your heart dictates it.

Well today I just ran my first one of these fun runs. I started out pretty quick down the hill and up the hill in my neighborhood so I got my heart rate up to working rate fairly quick. Then I slowed down and kept bouncing up and down as I felt it. All in all I ran for 30 minutes and I put in 3.7 miles.

As you can see my speed was all over the map. I ran as slow as a 10:35/mile and as fast as 5:00/mile. My heart rate closely followed my pace while lagging a bit behind. I have tapped into my lactate threshold level several times during the run, any time you see the blue line go above 83% and stay below 88% I was in my lactate threshold level. But what’s really interesting is that while my current run’s chart looks nothing like my tempo run’s chart from two days ago my averages as very close to each other.

On Thursday I have averaged 80% HRR for the entire run, today I averaged 80% HRR as well. On Thursday my average pace for the run was 8:32/mile today it was 8:36/mile. The two are almost the same. So as you can see they were two vastly different runs which felt vastly different while running but they accomplished the same thing. They got my heart rate up in the lactate threshold zone so I could keep on improving my lactate threshold level. My training plan calls for one tempo and one fartlek run per week for the next 11 weeks so I’ll be doing a lot more of these in the near future but I probably won’t bore you with their details.

As you probably have figured it out by now what started out as a fat loss blog is turning into a running blog. I’m still very much into my fat loss, but now I run like crazy instead of spending time on the elliptical machine to get my daily dose of cardio exercise. I really enjoy running and I’m really enjoying my training plan. Right now I’m in a bit of a holding pattern as my 30 week training program won’t start for another 2 weeks so I’m trying to make the best of these two weeks by doing the first week of the program three times.

There are various types of running that one should do during training to exercise different parts of their body. I’m not talking about different muscle groups I’m talking about different physiological parts of your body. Running performance depends on several things but it basically boils down to three basic items:

1. VO2Max
2. Lactate Threshold Level
3. Efficiency

There are different running paces and training intervals and distances that are specifically targeting one or many of the above three areas. Today I ran a tempo run which is targeting item number two on the list; lactate threshold level.

Lactate threshold has to do with aerobic and anaerobic exercising and a combination of the two. When you run fast your body burns a lot of energy. To burn this energy your body needs oxygen. Lots of it! The more oxygen you can provide the better/faster you can run. When you can no longer provide enough oxygen to sustain a given running pace your body has to turn to anaerobic energy sources and it will start to get energy from anaerobic chemical reactions. Aerobic exercise is when your muscles run on oxygen. Anaerobic exercise is when they run on something else. Your body prefers to run on oxygen as it is a lot more efficient but when push comes to shove and you’re at your peak performance it has to use what it can. So it starts the anaerobic energy process.

So what is wrong with anaerobic exercising? Other than the fact that it’s a very inefficient way to convert energy into movement and it would cause you to burn up your fuel (glucose and glycogen) a lot faster than aerobic exercise it has a nasty byproduct; lactate or lactic acid. Normally your body generates amounts of lactate and your heart, liver, kidneys and muscles all use it and convert it back to glucose (liver) or metabolize it for energy. Unfortunately your body can metabolize only so much lactate at a time. And when you generate more than you use use it starts to build up in your bloodstream as the equilibrium is broken between production and consumption. When this point is reached it’s called Onset of Blood Lactate Accumulation (OBLA). You can only accumulate so much of this lactate on your system before your muscles just give up, throw in the towel and call it quits. They will seize to operate until lactate levels drop back to an acceptable level. This can be a really bad situation when you’re in the middle of a run or a competition. This is why you can see some marathon runners on TV just stopping completely in the middle of a race unable to go on at any speed. Their body shuts down and there is nothing they can do about it at that point they’re already saturated with lactate and they just have to wait it out until their lactate level drops at which point they’re long out of contention. So what can you do about lactate while trying to increase your running pace?

You can either improve your cardiovascular delivery system so you can provide more oxygen to your muscles and they don’t get oxygen deprived and can operate aerobically longer (item number one), you can concentrate on your running form and improve it (item number three) or you can improve your lactate metabolism so your body can get rid of lactate faster from your bloodstream (item number two). And this second option is where tempo runs come into the picture. They make you run and operate above your lactate threshold level so there is lactate buildup in your system. This buildup is gradual and it sends triggers to your body to boost and improve your lactate metabolizing system. During a lactate threshold run you won’t reach saturation but you want to build up enough lactate so the effects of it cause your body to adapt.

Today was one of these runs for me. I ran 5.9 miles (9.5 km) and I have stayed in my lactate threshold level for about 20 minutes. Lactate threshold level is different in different people, this is the whole point of the exercise; to change it and push it upwards. In beginners it’s around 77%-83% of your Heart Rate Reserve while in experienced runners it’s between 82%-88% of HRR%. So I have tried to stay about 80% and below 88% with my HRR during the run and I tried to build up gradually after a 10 minute warm up. You can see that I ran the first mile rather easy and my heart rate stayed low, below 75% of HRR. Then I gradually started running faster and faster and you can see how my heart rate climbed along with my pace.

At the half way point I turned back and I caught a nasty head wind. This is the reason why my heart rate kept on climbing yet my pace was dropping. This is why it’s important to gauge your effort based on heart rate and not on pace. I kept my heart rate high for a while then I started slowing down towards the end to finish the run with a good cool down and you can see that I actually had to run much slower than during the warm up just to reduce my heart rate to a similar rate as the warm up. This is called EPOC, Excess Post-exercise Oxygen Consumption. My body was still going through oxygen just to rid my system of the excess lactate that it has gathered during the middle of the run. This is how you can tell that your tempo run really worked.

All in all it was a superb tempo run and I had great fun out there. The run started slow then built up gradually hitting its peak at the 2/3rd mark then it gradually dropped down again towards the end. This was the fastest I had ever ran during warm up, I was running close to 8 minute mile pace just to warm up which is just unbelievable. Tomorrow I’ll be running a slow 3 mile recovery run after today’s hard tempo session so it should be quick and easy. I’ll do it after work while I take my son to soccer as I’m planning on playing golf hitting the driving range with my buddy at lunch.

I actually think I looked better in the last set than this set but it’s mainly due to the more lost fat in the abdomen that now caused my stomach skin to get even looser and hang a bit over my pants. Once I lose even more of the fat the skin will be tighter again and it will look even better than before.

As for the numbers, I have dropped a quarter inch on my chest, hip, neck and thigh measurements so I’m feeling really good about it. Things are happening and they keep going in the right direction.

Sometimes I compare my current numbers to the original measurements and extend my tape measure to get a visual on how much bigger I actually was and I find it close to impossible to believe that my chest was all the way out to there or my stomach was that far out. But the numbers are here to prove it so it must be true.

03/03/2010 Transformation Picture

The day of my big race came and gone. I ran my first 10K race in over 18 years. Had you asked me last summer or even last fall if I would ever run again I probably would have said no way. But here I am with a 5K race and a 10K race behind me and things could not look any better! I have signed up for the race just a bit over a month ago and I am really glad I did. It was a real blast to run with another 3,600 people with one goal in mind; to cross the finish line in a reasonable amount of time.

The race was scheduled for 7:30 AM which is mighty early for me. I’m a night owl who stays up and writes blog entries well passed midnight. Getting up at the crack of dawn is really not something I excel at. I was going to get up at 6AM and leave the house around 6:30 and make it to downtown in 30 minutes so that would have left me with 30 minutes to warm up and get ready. But my co-worker who ran this event the last three years said that traffic can be terrible and I better shoot for being there by 6AM! At this point I really had doubts whether this whole running and racing is worth it or not.

So I compromised and set the alarm for 5:30AM and I was out the door by 5:50AM well on my way. The trick was to have all my clothes set out ready to go the night before. Traffic was not bad at all it was actually really light and I made it to downtown in record time. My wife works downtown so she has a monthly parking pass in an underground garage so I went straight there. It turned out that the pass was unnecessary as it was free parking everywhere but it was still great to know where to park instead of trying to look around for a place. I was only about 500 yards from the start so I walked up to the starting line to size it up and make sure I can get there in time. There were a handful of runners already hanging out and warming up but I think they were just trying to stay warm.

Weather was freezing, it was a chilly 34 degrees (1 Celsius) with some good gusts of wind that really made it feel a lot colder. I had another one of those “what the hell am I doing?” moments and I quickly walked back to the parking garage and spent the next hour in my wife’s office waiting for the start time to get closer. As I was waiting for the time to pass I kept looking out the window to see if the crowd would grow bigger around the start line but I saw no real progress for the longest time. Around 7AM I decided it was time to drink my morning shake which had just the right amount of liquid and carbs for the run. I was also happy that I did not have to stand in line out in the cold for the port-a-potty I could use a much more civilized restroom in my wife’s building.

By the time I arrived to the start area there were a lot of people there. I did some warm up and around 7:20AM I got in line. It was pretty crowded and I honestly didn’t know where I should be standing with my planned target time of sub 50 minutes with the hope of under 48 minutes. I ended up what felt like the back of the pack but after post race analysis of gun times vs. chip times I was at the 25% mark. There were about 900 people in front of me and another 2,700 behind me. It sure felt like it was the other way around. At one point I also felt a bit like Apollo Ohno before the race; yawning and wearing my tight pants. But I must assure you the similarities ended right there. I might have watched a bit too much winter Olympics to make that connection. But hey, he’s also a runner and used to be chubby so there might be more similarities between him and I!

At 7:28AM I thought I heard the national anthem being sang by the front of the crowd but the singing didn’t quite travel to my area by the time it got to the end. Then at 7:30AM they promptly blew the air horn and the race was on. Well it was on for the folks at the front of the queue. For me it didn’t really start for another 40 seconds or so and even after successfully crossing the start line I was not really running for another 40 seconds. It was more like dodging people and trying to pass them any way I could.

At this point it became clear that next time I should be more aggressive about my starting position and go to the front of the line. I will not be stuck behind all the casual 1 hour plus runners next time for sure! I still kept passing people for the next mile and a half but things got better as the race progressed as the pace really started to spread us out.

My goal was to run an even split race. I was trying to run the first half as fast as the second half. This meant running the race smart and not overdoing the first half. This is where a heart rate monitor really comes handy. It’s kind of like a speedometer in your car that helps you to put your pace on cruise control without worrying too much about what the other people do around you. I just had to run my own race and ignore everyone else as hard as that is when there are this many other people around. Based on my training I knew what my heart rate was supposed to be and I ran the race based on heart rate rather than pace. I knew from training that as long as I kept my heart rate in check my pace would fall right in place.

So I ran the first half of the race at 92% of my Heart Rate Reserve which for me meant 174 bpm. Then during the second half I have upped it to 94% which was roughly 177 bpm. These are actually pretty high numbers and well into anaerobic exercising range which means it’s not really sustainable for any longer than a 10K run.

When said I have upped my heart rate for the second half it didn’t really reflect itself in increased speed. It basically just meant that my pace did not fade too badly. Due to the nature of Fort Worth’s downtown which sits on a knoll it is inevitable to run downhill for the beginning of the race and having to run uphill towards the end. This can catch you by surprise if you didn’t plan for it. I knew that the incline was coming towards the end and I was watchign my speed decline and my heart rate increase as I was reaching closer to the finish line. Fatigue really started to kick in around mile 5 out of the 6.2 and I knew that I still had ways to go and I kept myself running the pace by concentrating on not the next mile but on running the same pace to the next parked car or the next telephone pole.

At the last 200 yards I have decided to gun it and I ran a pretty decent sprint to the finish. But as you can see my finish photos had to suffer because of it. I look like I’m in horrendous pain when in reality I wasn’t. I was just getting tired and worn out but the minute I crossed the finish line, gathered up my finisher medal and a cup of water I was feeling great. Oh and how did I do? My chip time was 45:42 which meant I have finished 125th out of the 3416 finishers. In my age and gender group I have finished 10th out of 188 finishers. Out of the 933 people that started in front of me I had to pass 837 of them. The interesting thing in the results data is that out of the 45 people that started the race from the front of the pack (gun time and chip time are identical) their average time for the 10K is 1 hour 10 minutes and 4 seconds. The average for all 3,400+ finishers is 1 hour 10 minutes and 55 seconds. Apparently there are a lot of runners who are not very clear on just how good or bad of a runners they are.

All in all the race was great and I had a great time. While the pictures might indicate a complete agony I actually enjoyed every minute of the race and can’t wait to do it again.

As you could see on my last weekly update my weekend calories were much higher than the weekday calories. On Sunday I have reached an all time high of 2,233 calories, a number I have not seen since November 11th, 2009. In November it was Olive Garden, an Italian restaurant, for dinner and leftover from Pei Wei, a Chinese/Thai joint, for lunch that did me in. This time it was crêpes that caused the trouble.

Saturday’s overeating was mild, and the main culprit was the impulse banana I had at the finish of my 10K race. I just couldn’t say no to this delicious sugar and potassium filled snack after running for 10 kilometers (6.2 miles). Considering that I had just burned 887 calories with the running the banana was justified. I had a mild lunch with eggs, whole wheat toast and some mixed vegetables that clocked in at 585 calories so I thought I was in the clear and I managed to offset the banana. And had we not gone out to Carino’s Italian Grill for dinner I would have been just fine. But dinner ended up being 846 calories in itself which is a light fare when you consider that I just went to an Italian restaurant where my favorite dish, Chicken Milano, clocks in at a respectable 1,418 calories, 824 of which comes from fat. Considering my entire meal consisted as much calories as there is fat calories in my once loved meal I think I did awesome. Oh, and I didn’t count the 2 loaves of bread that I used to devour before salad or soup would even hit the table. This time I had no bread.

Sunday’s eating was a completely different story. I didn’t have a banana at a race, we didn’t go to Carino’s for dinner. But we did go to the zoo with the kids and when we go to the zoo it also means we’ll have lunch at Panera Bread. Panera Bread is conveniently located right across from the zoo so we stop in every time on our way home. My wife loves sandwich café places like Panera Bread, Corner Bakery or La Madeline. I went for my usual order which ends up at 540 calories usually. Unfortunately this time I couldn’t stop myself and ate the baguette piece that came with my meal as well and added another 180 calories to my meal. So now instead of my usual 540 I ended up at 720 calories for lunch.

After the 180 excess calorie lunch I still felt I was under control and had I stuck with the plan of eating light for dinner with some lean meat or fish and some steamed veggies I would have been perfectly fine. But this is where the crêpes come in the picture. My family loves crêpes. But we’re not the “let’s go to the mall and stuf our faces full of crêpes” kind of people. We’re more the “Daddy, I’d like crêpes, can you make some please?” kind of people. So my son was pretty persistent with the crêpe request and who can blame him? It’s not like I make crêpes every weekend or even every month. It’s more like a twice a year deal where I succumb to making crêpes.

Making crêpes is not really that big of a deal. But for some reason it always seems too time consuming and we abandon the idea before we’d even make the batter. But once you get down to it it’s really not much worse than making any other meal. The toughest part is the part where you have to flip the crêpe from one side to the other and this is where you can really screw it up and you can end up with a lump of flour paste instead of a nice flat crêpe. My wife, as great and awesome of a cook she is, simply will not make crêpes because of this very fear of screwing up the flip and producing rejects. So crêpe making in my family is a man’s job.

In my home country we actually have a signature dish that is made with crêpes and it’s not a dessert. It’s actually a meat filled crêpe. My son obviously prefers the Nutella filled variety over the meat filled one but I actually love crêpes both sweet and savory. Since they take the same crêpe I made a large batch of crêpes while my wife made the meat filling, 85/15 turkey instead of veal, and we also made a sweet filling from farmer’s cheese mixed with granulated sugar and lemon zest for sweet crêpes.

I would usually eat 4 or 5 of the meat filled crêpes and I’d probably have another 2 of the sweet ones as dessert but this time I had two of the meat filled ones (610 calories) and one of the cheese filled dessert ones (264 calories). I also ate a good amount of steamed veggies to go with it and fill me up. So the crêpes did me in when you combined it with some heavy lunch from Panera Bread. I just couldn’t resist the thin crust over the minced meat and the creamy sweet filling for dessert.

But to prove that all this can be done in a moderated fashion I had leftovers of the crêpes today. Two meat filled ones with steamed broccoli and cauliflower as sides for lunch and one with the cheese filling for dessert after my shrimp with rice and veggies dinner. And today I only had 1,803 calories even though I had the same three crêpes as yesterday. The difference was the low cal dinner of shrimp with moderate portion of rice and the lighter breakfast of yogurt and nuts instead of the eggs and toast. So I think I got the crêpe craving out of my system for at least another 4 months. As for my son, he had one of the meat filled ones yesterday for dinner and one of the cheese filled ones today and yesterday for dessert. I’m just glad he liked the meat filled one too.