Greg's Weight Loss Blog

Yesterday I had a blistering run. Literally. Tuesdays are my hill/interval days and yesterday was no different. I was planning on running 8x400m (0.25 mile) intervals on a treadmill at 5% incline. I prefer to run the hill intervals on the treadmill as they are more consistent and more controlled than running up a hill. But the weather was just too nice in the morning so I ran right in front of my neighborhood on a 2.8% incline instead and ran 8x368m (0.225 miles). I started with a 10 minute warm up then did the 8 runs up and down the hill and finished with another 10 minutes of cool down for a total of 5.9 miles. It was a good run and I ran the intervals hard. Here are my splits and paces for the 8 segments:

I think I did really good but after the run I felt a bit of a pain on my left foot. As soon as the shoe and the sock came off I was looking at a huge blood blister the size of Texas. It was right next to the other blister that I got a month ago on a 6 mile long run which was actually a lot bigger than originally anticipated. I went on with my day and didn’t know what to do about the blister or how it would affect the rest of my running for a while. On my way home I went to Walgreen’s and bought some Moleskin just in case I decided I needed it.

It turns out I needed it. I tried to research the best way to deal with a blister but there just wasn’t a lot of information available especially when I was looking for answers about “how to treat the blister so I can run another 28 miles this week on it?”. So I made the best decisions I could on my own and hoped for the best. I punctured the blister last night and drained it. It felt better already with the pressure relived. I let it heal and dry overnight then this morning I cut a nice patch of moleskin to go over it and went for a 6 mile easy run.

When I run I generally go out and back so it would have been 3 miles out then 3 miles back. But with the fear of not being 100% due to the blister I took a more cautious route and ran out 1 mile then did four laps of a mile loop and ran back for the last mile. The worry was unfounded, the Moleskin held up awesome and is probably one of the best running aids there is. I will apply this stuff to my foot in these areas even if there is no blister next time that is how good this stuff is. Big thumbs up for Moleskin! The run was uneventful, averaged 8:34 min/mile (5:19 min/km) and listened to some tunes. I left the moleskin on all day and I couldn’t even tell that I had it on or that I had a blister. I took it off for the evening bath but I think I’ll put on another patch tomorrow morning before I head out for my 45 minute tempo run.

I’m not that happy with toady’s set of photos. I actually don’t look as lean in them, especially in the front flexed as I did 4 days ago. But the trusty tape measure begs to differ. I’m down half an inch on my chest and hip measurements and my bicep is officially now 13″.  On 11/12/09 when I started measuring my bicep was a lofty 14.75″ and I thought it was all muscle. Clearly I was wrong. But I think it happens with a lot of people who say “I’m not fat, I’m just big”. Well guess what? You’re just fat! At least that is how I was. I wasn’t big, I wasn’t big boned, I was just plain old fat. And 13″ arms might sound measly but I can actually see a vein on the front of the bicep and my triceps are visible in the back I’d rather have these over the 14.75″ fat covered ones any day. It’s kind of weird how one day the photo will show improvement and the measuring tape would stay the same and on others it’s the measuring tape that gives me the positive feedback while the photos let me down. Nevertheless I’m heading in the right direction one way or another.

03/23/2010 Transformation Picture

I don’t have a specific topic in mind for today’s post so I thought I’d just write down a bunch of the tings that have been happening and I feel might be relevant.

Yesterday was a long run day for me and I ran 8.1 miles (13 km) in an hour and 9 minutes. This was the longest run I have done to date and it was a pretty good one. I have enjoyed it greatly. I find that running gives me time to be with my thoughts alone and think about various things I wouldn’t have time to think about. I think about my family, my kids, office stuff, what I will write on this blog once I get back, stupid stuff or whatever else comes to my mind.

Long runs are meant to be easy and ran at a conversational pace. Even though I have tried it to be easy it turned out to be pretty tough due to the weather. I had to run in 45 degrees (7 C) which is actually a pretty good temperature to run in, not too hot and not too cold. What made the weather tough was the wind. We had 30+ mph (50 km/h) sustained winds with gusts up to 40+ mph (65 km/h). Running in this kind of wind can be anything but fun. Luckily the wind was blowing in my face for the most part heading out and it was behind me pushing me home on the way back. Had it been the other way around it would have sucked even more. It was like getting a second wind (no pun) for the return 4 miles. My pace certainly reflected the shift in direction; I have averaged 8:51 min/mile (5:30 min/km) on the way out and averaged 8:24 min/mile (5:13 min/km) on the way back for a total average of 8:37 min/mile (5:21 min/km) which is right smack the same as my usual easy running pace. So the wind didn’t affect my overall pace as much as I would have thought it would and it helped me produce a really nice reverse split. Reverse split is when you run the second half of a run faster than the first half.

What made the run also tough was the elevation. This particular route has 414 ft of elevation climb in it. Most of it, 250 ft, comes in the front half and the rest in the return. This, combined with the wind caused my pace to be all over the map instead of being a steady slow run. But I have concentrated on heart rate, ie. effort, instead of pace and my heart rate was pretty level throughout the run. I think I handled the run rather well and it was pretty good for my first 8 miler. I’ll be running a lot more than this later so it better feel good. I also managed to break the calorie consumption barrier with this one, I have burned 1,000 calories in the 70 minutes I was out running. That is a whole lot of fat off my tush!

So Sunday was a pretty good run and today called for an easy 3 mile (5K) recovery run. I did it in the evening as morning temperatures were freezing but by tonight the weather was really nice in the upper 60s (20 C). Today’s diet was very clean and low cal, I had brown rice, steamed veggies and canned salmon for lunch and grilled chicken for dinner. It has left me with about 400 more calories to eat after my long run. I have a good friend who I used to fight fires with while I was on the fire department. We would meet up at Whataburger and get some shakes and chat. Lately he has been very busy with work and a newborn son so we hadn’t been seeing much of each other lately. I figured with the extra 400 calories to burn I could afford to get a shake tonight. A 16 oz Kid’s Vanilla Shake is 440 calories, mostly sugar and no real nutritional value. I thought I could afford it once in a blue moon so I called him up before my run but he didn’t answer. I left him a message and went for my 3 miles.

Once I got home there was still no message from him so I thought the evening was a bust and I ate a granola bar, 190 calories and I was just about contemplating eating some bananas to bring my daily calories up to their required 1,800. That is when I got the text message from him that we’re good to go and he’d see me at Whataburger in 10. Darn! I so wished I hadn’t had that granola bar at this point! But I already ate it! What should I do?

I went to Whataburger and ordered the Kid’s shake but I also asked for an extra 16 oz cup and split the shake in half. I drank half of it and my buddy drank the other half. This made me stay within my calorie budget yet still enjoy his company and talk for 45 minutes before he had to head back home to tend to his family. I am really glad I got to see him and we got to chat just like in the good old days over some vanilla shake. The only difference was that I had half of a kid’s cup instead of a regular or large. And quite honestly I can’t tell the difference, all I remember is having great conversation and shake tonight.

Week 21 has came to an end but my transformation is nowhere near done. I still have so much more to go it’s not even funny. But let’s recap where I stand and how the last week went.

Caloric intake wise it went great. I have averaged 1,803 calories for the week which is exactly where I want to be. I had 152 grams of protein a day on average, again, another excellent value that is hard to beat. I even went to a party this weekend and since I’m not big on drinking I stuck with water and luckily the catered food was barbecue which is great even if I had to eat some barbecue beans and bread instead of steamed veggies and rice. I skipped dessert but I did collect two fantastic recipes to make them once I can start eating like a madman when I’m going to weight maintenance mode and running. I will try to reduce protein to the 140g range and increase my carbs a bit due to all the running I have been doing.

Speaking of running, this week I ran a whopping 34.1 miles (50.5 km)! 19 of it was easy running the other 15 was part of some kind of speed or tempo run. Spring training is not about mileage it’s about building up mileage and speed. I have also managed to burn over 4,300 calories last week with running, averaging out just shy of 620 calories a day.

The scale says (rolling average) I have dropped 2.1 lbs (1 kg) this week. That’s 7,350 caloric deficit, 1,050 calories a day. Given my intake of 1,803 and running of 618 calories a day it gives me 2,235 calories as my basal metabolic rate. That seems to be right in the same ballpark that I had been calculating for the past three weeks. The biggest milestone had been the fact that I’m actually under 180 lbs (81.6 kg) this week. I have been under that magic 180 lbs mark for the past 5 days and I see no way of climbing over it ever again short of falling off the wagon. But this train is steamrolling forward at full speed and there is no way for me to fall off as I’m holding on super tight!

So what lacked this week? It has to be the gym and strength training again. Mondays and Fridays are my strength days and I did do strength training on Monday but Friday it didn’t work out (no pun intended). I was going to go with a co-worker to his gym at lunch but things came up for the personal trainer we were going to visit so we had to cancel and I went out for lunch instead. And since my son had soccer practice right after work that left me no time to to lift weights after work. I really need to do a better time with the weight training scheduling, this is just not working when I skip 50% of the gym days. Again, I won’t beat myself up over it, I still think my muscles know I need them and hopefully tomorrow I’ll remind them again.

Overall I think it was another awesome week. 11 more of these and I’ll be in the home stretch!

• Today I weighed in at 179.7 lbs! Under 180! Woo Hoo! Feeling pretty awesome about it. #
• Ran my first morning run. It was quite different from running at lunch/evenings but I liked it! I'll do it again tomorrow. #

Running is supposed to be cheap. It’s supposed to be one of those hobbies/sports/entertainment that costs close to nothing. But as everything else, it can cost a ton if you choose so.

I’m one of those people who like to do everything full steam. I had written about my prior hobbies before, model helicopters, remote control cars, photography, paintball, and I must say I had spent a great deal of time and money on every single one of them.

Model helicopters aren’t a very cheap hobby to being with and they can be downright draining if you’d like to fly one of the bigger birds with lots of power doing all kinds of maneuvers. I was pretty cautious with the spending but even then I still managed to spend over $2,000 for equipment not to mention the $20/gallon fuel cost. And those birds, as small as they might be do drink a lot. A gallon a weekend adds up in a hurry. My R/C car racing stint that lasted about 3 years was even more expensive. The radio, car and pit equipment was coming in over $2,000 again and weekend race fees and tires were close to $100 per race weekend. Again, another expensive hobby. With paintball, fast electro-pneumatic markers (they don’t call them guns, they call them markers) can cost north of $1,000 while other equipment and clothing can total over $500 as well. But then you also pay $20 for field and compressed air fees and another $20 for each bucket of paintball that you go through trying to hit the other guy in the crotch. Photography can be very expensive with $10,000+ spent on lenses, camera bodies, flashes and light modifiers. But since the digital era at least you don’t have to buy film and developing solutions constantly, you only spend money on faster and better computers and software updates.

As the economists would specify, each hobby has a fixed cost and a marginal cost. Fixed cost is the minimum amount of equipment you’d have to purchase to engage in the hobby for any length of time. With remote control toys, it’s the cost of the vehicle, the cost of the radio and other equipment. With paintball it’s the price of the initial gear. With photography, it’s the cost of the lens and camera body and editing software. Marginal cost is the price you pay for each outing/photo/shot/mile. With remote control stuff it’s the price of fuel, wear and tear parts, tires etc. With paintball it’s the field cost and ammunition. With photography it used to be the cost of film and now there is not much marginal cost in photography that is why people take thousands of photographs every day instead of shooting a roll of film at Christmas and another at the cousin’s wedding in the summer.

Running is not much different. There is the initial cost of running then there is the marginal cost. The initial cost can be as little as a pair of good quality running shoes. You go out, buy a pair of shoes, put on your regular cotton shirt and your old worn gym shorts and off you go. You can run and you can have fun for practically nothing. But if you are like me, you will need some more gear. So far this is what I had spent on the sport of running:

• 5 technical shirts – $120
• 4 running shorts (some of my co-workers call them Speedos, that is how short they are) – $100
• 8 pairs of CoolMax running socks – $40
• 2 sets of warm-up pants/tops – $150
• 2 Under Armour long sleeve winter shirts – $100
• Under Armour winter running tights – $50
• Running Vest – $40
• Running Jacket – $100
• 2 pairs of running gloves – $30
• 3 running hats – $40
• Pepper spray – $18
• RoadID Tag – $30
• Reflective belt and light – $40
• 3 pairs of running shoes – $240
• Polar RS800cx heart rate monitor with footpod and GPS – $600
• Racing bib strap – $18
• Mp3 Player – $60
• Headphones – $90

Overall I have spent close to $1,900 on running gear and related equipment. This is my fixed cost. It might seem like a ton of money but I think of it as an investment in my future and an investment in my health. And in the grand scheme of things it is not much more than what I had spent on any of my prior hobbies as the entry fee. The single most expensive item on the list was my heart rate monitor and it was one that many would think was probably the most unnecessary. Especially when you consider that I had a perfectly fine, working heart rate monitor that I just replaced with it. Sure, my old one didn’t have all the bells and whistles the new one has but it was still displaying my heart rate which is ultimately what you buy a heart rate monitor for. But if the capability of logging my runs and keeping track of my improvement is what it takes to be a better, more diligent runner then I think the cost was more than justified.

So what about the marginal cost of running? The only real expenses are going to be shoes and race fees. At the rate I’m running I’ll be going through shoes in about one every two-three months. That means it’s a cost of $30-$45 a month that I need to budget for shoes. I’ll be doing some racing in the near future and at $20-$100 a race they can be expensive even if they’re local to you, not to mention travel cost if you decide to go out of town for a race.

So unlike some other hobbies where the entry price is fixed, running can be done as cheaply or as expensively as you want. And unlike some of my other hobbies the marginal cost of running is relatively low. You can run 3 miles every day in your trusty old shorts and t-shirt for practically nothing or you can train with the latest gadgets and tech apparel for a $100 race on the weekend out of town costing a lot of money. It doesn’t matter which one you choose, the only important part is to get out and run!

I really don’t know why I’m doing these any more other than the original commitment to them. Maybe that is a good enough reason to post pictures of me in my underwear every 4 days on my blog…. If my math and estimation is right there will be about another 21 of these updates coming before I can officially call the initial transformation phase complete. So bear with me for the next 12 weeks before I can finally slow down with the photo updates.

This set is pretty much like the last set. In terms of how I feel about my look, this was the first week where I actually felt that I’m looking pretty good with clothes on. The new 32/32 jeans that I got last weekend really feels and looks great. I have noticed a vein on my right bicep a month ago but it hasn’t been very defined yet. Now I’m noticing it’s counterpart on my left bicep. I’m also noticing a ton of veins on my hands indicating lower and lower body fat percentage.

The other day at the gym I was looking at my legs and the definition in my quads is clearly coming in. You can actually see my quads now. Which is to be expected as I have lost another 0.25″ off my thigh measurement while everything else stayed the same. My bicep is only hanging onto the 13.25″ by a thread and very heavy flexing. I think I’ll lose another .25″ off the guns by the next measurement day.

My love handles are getting smaller and while it might not look like that in the photos, I can tell because the underwear sits higher than before. So while the amount of muffin top hanging over seems the same it is actually a good bit less. I’m actually getting concerned that the 8 pair of expensive underwear I recently invested in might have to be replaced by the time this whole transformation thing is over. But at this point I’m willing to pay that price to look and feel my best.

03/19/2010 Transformation Picture

That’s a whole lot of numbers for a blog entry title but I thought it was fitting to kind of compress the state of my progress into a tiny little one liner. So let’s look at the numbers one by one.

200 Miles. That is the number of miles I had run since the first time I have started running again. Well it’s actually 215 miles and it’s from the time I started tracking my running which wasn’t until three days after my first run. It has been a great experience so far with the running and I am extremely happy that my runner self has finally broken out of the fat guy prison and runs free. Running empowers and invigorates me and makes me feel great! I can’t really describe the feeling I get on a run and how I feel the urge to go and run more the next day. There is no denying it, I’m hooked! It just feels totally fantastic.

200,000 calories. This one’s explaining requires some basic math. As we all know from the nutritional information label that is posted on every single food item we buy 1 gram of fat contains 9 calories. One pound equals 453 grams so 1 lbs of fat contains 453 x 9 = 4077 calories. But to lose 1 lbs of body fat you only have to burn 3,500 calories because there are other factors that come into play such as ATP reactions turning body fat into actual energy, but I’m sure someone with an organic chemistry degree could answer this question better. Bottom line is that to lose 1 lbs of body fat you have to burn an excess or consume a deficit of 3,500 calories or a combination of the two. Based on the 3,500 calories into a pound of body fat math 200,000 calories equals 57.14 lbs. And this is the exact amount of weight I have lost so far from my starting weight of 237 lbs down to today’s 179.7 lbs. I have generated a 200,000 calorie deficit in the past 145 days. Let’s put that 200,000 calorie number into some digestible numbers. 200,000 calories equal:

• 370 Big Mac sandwiches
• Or 3,636 Oreo Cookies
• Or 1,700 large apples weighin 847 lbs (384 kg)
• Or 576 8 oz Filet Mignon Steaks

Bottom line, it’s a TON of food and a TON of calories. And I no longer carry it on my body. I’m just so glad I have made it this far. I know I can make it all the way to the end now and maintain it with my new found running and lifestyle.

The last number is just a more realistic representation of the 200,000 calories. I am officially under 180 lbs (81.6 kg). The metric celebration of 80 kg will have to wait another week and a half.

I have measured my resting heart rate a month and a half ago and it came out to about 52 bpm based on recording my heart rate while asleep. Since then I have been training hard, running hard and losing fat hard. I figured all this must have some kind of effect on my resting heart rate. But what really drove the message home happened to me on Monday just before my recovery run of 3 miles.

As I was standing out in front of my house waiting for my GPS to lock onto the satellite signals I was looking at my heart rate monitor to see what my heart rate was. And right there, just standing and waiting it was reading 50 bpm. I wasn’t sure if it was a fluke so I wiggled the chest strap but the reading stayed at 50 bpm and hasn’t moved. So I knew something was up and my resting heart rate must be even lower than my standing heart rate waiting to start my slow 3 mile recovery run.

I did my 3 miler went to work but I have decided that I would repeat the resting heart rate test from last time to see just where my resting heart rate really stands. I recoded two hours worth of data while asleep, over 5,000 heart beats, and plotted them on a distribution chart similar to the one I did last time. I was shocked! My resting heart rate dropped drastically. I’m not talking about 1-2 beats per minute. I’m taking about over 13 beats towards the low end and over 20 beats at the high end. You can see all this in the comparison chart with my last set of data.

My resting heart rate is in the 30s now. High 30s, closer to 40 actually, but 2% of my heart beats were below 40 for the two hour period. The lowest heart rate that I registered was 32 bpm. During my last test the 2% cutoff was at 52bpm and the lowest heart rate registered was at 46bpm. You can also see that the slope of the distribution graph is a lot more level indicating a more steady resting heart rate. I could bore you with the R-R frequency analysis of the data but the bottom line is that I’m just tickled pink about my new resting heart rate as it converts into greatly improved working zones when it comes to running. My body never seizes to amaze me just how responsive it is to training, exercise and proper diet!

I managed to take today’s required pictures just in time to post them. Nothing has really changed, my measurements were identical to the ones from four days ago and the scale seems to show the same number as well although my rolling average clearly indicates a pound loss. I really can’t add much else to today’s pictures, but here they are, part of my commitment.

03/15/2010 Transformation Picture