In my last post I wrote:

So how did I do in terms of Diet? Well let’s just say that weight management and all inclusive resorts with all you can eat buffets don’t mix too well and I think I’ll need to write another blog post about that one…

And “Jim” posted a comment on my blog saying:

Tweets are boring. Let us know how all this training is impacting on your weight now that you have fallen off the chuck wagon —- so to speak! It is always my major problem and I am interested to see whether you are coping better than I do. I am sure others are too!

So I think I owe an update on how my training is impacting my weight. Last time I blogged about my weight I was down to 164.8 lbs (74.7 kg) after a month of not counting calories and eating healthy. That was 2.5 months ago. Since then I have been training for a marathon, running a lot of miles, some weeks over 50, I traveled to Europe and ate a lot of garbage while I was there. I not only quit counting calories I also quit weighing myself while I was in Europe.

They say a picture is worth a thousand words, so here is a picture (chart) of what happened to my weight in the past two and a half months:

Holy smokes Batman! Despite burning calories at an alarming rate my weight has not been doing as well as I would have hoped. The gap in the chart shows my European vacation and you can see the sudden climb in the average weight as soon as I returned and stepped on the scale. I gained about 3 lbs (1.3 kg) in two weeks while I was on vacation. That means a 750 calorie daily surplus! If you consider that I needed to eat about 2,600 calories a day just to maintain my weight it means I was eating over 3,300 calories a day while on vacation. Knowing what I did I find it not at all surprising that I have gained all that weight and ate all that much food while I was there. All inclusive, all you can eat and drink, resorts are bad for the waistline.

Once I came back from my trip I have been trying to maintain my weight with more or less success. I’m currently sitting on a 168.7 lbs (76.5 kg) rolling average which is still 4 lbs higher than my all time low of 164.6 that I reached at the end of July. I don’t think I’m on a runaway train by any means but I know that I will have to make a more diligent effort at keeping my food intake in check and keeping my calorie intake in line with my caloric expenditure.

I did manage to lift weights twice this week which is a first in a really long time. I felt fine with the weights but I definitely need to get back into the rhythm and keep going on a regular basis.

My running was great this week. I clocked 34.6 miles (55.6 km) this week which is not as much as I have been running lately but it was the first week of my marathon training plan so it was supposed to be easy. I’m actually looking forward ramping up the mileage a bit, the week just seemed pretty easy.

All in all it was a solid week with a bit of wondering off the right path in the eating department but it wasn’t anything that I can’t fix.

1) I am no longer going to track waist size. My waist hasn’t changed a bit in the last 3 weeks. I’m still measuring 33″ (84 cm) around the navel and I’m wearing size 31 waist pants that are now getting a bit lose. But I think my waist size is stabilizing so there is really no point in charting it any more.

2) I am no longer going to track body fat percentage and lean body mass. Unfortunately my trusty scale that I had been using all along is now giving me grief. It actually has been giving me grief for the past two weeks where it puts up “Err.” instead of giving me an estimated body fat percentage. It is still accurately measures my body weight but I just can’t rely on the body fat percentage numbers any more. This morning it told me I’m 23% body fat which is clearly ridiculous. If I’m over 13% I’d be very surprised. Since I no longer have an accurate, not that it has been all that accurate lately, method to measure body fat I will no longer measure it or post the data as it would be mostly wrong. I know where I’m heading and I know that I’ll see it when I get there. Until then there is really no need to measure it with an estimate that is not right.

3) The daily calorie chart might show blanks. As you can see there is no chart for last Monday in the calorie chart. The reason being is that I simply stopped counting calories for the bigger part of the day. I ate pretty good but I just couldn’t get myself to log everything and measure every single potato chip that I consumed by the poolside on Memorial Day. So there might be days from now on when calories won’t get counted nor posted. I still feel like I need to track my calories if I want to shed the last couple of pounds but if I skip for a day it’s not like I would gain it all back so I will allow myself cheat days or days where I just don’t track.

With all these changes in effect my week still wrapped up nicely. I have lost 1lbs (0.4 kg) on the rolling average scale which I’m happy about. Average caloric intake was significantly higher this week than any other previous weeks. Not including Monday, I have averaged 2,644 calories per day with 141 grams of protein. The interesting thing about these two numbers is that 2,644 calories sounds like a ton of food but when you put it in perspective with respect to the amount of exercising I have done it’s not bad. The other interesting thing is that while i used to eat 40 grams of protein supplements daily before to achieve 140 grams of daily protein at the beginning of my diet, now I’m struggling to keep it under 140 grams without eating anything but whole foods. I love meat and I have no problem with keeping protein at a high level. It’s actually a bit too high for me with all the running, I should be eating a bit more carbohydrates instead. Regardless, it was a good week in terms of eating. It’s quite amazing that I had 800 calories more per day this week than I had when I was in the beginning phase of my transformation and ate 1,800 calories a day.

I don’t feel like talking about strength training this week as it has been non-existent. I really need to quit socializing at lunch and head for the gym instead. I’m also thinking about buying a pull-up bar for home so I can just crank out my upper body workout at home without the gym if I need it.

I have been concentrating on my running exclusively this week. I have broke 600 miles ran for the year and I also broke 45 miles ran for the week, the most I’ve done in a single week. I actually ran 45.3 miles (73 km) this week and I feel fantastic about it. I have also started tracking my mileage and workouts on dailymile.com. It’s another venue for me to find active runners in my community and for others to keep tabs on my workouts. I still have the lot more technical runs.gregstransformation.com database running which not only lists my runs but it shows my logged data for every run. I also had my first group run this week which was great! I really enjoyed running with the pack on the weekend and I will do a lot more of that in the future.

I’m very pleased with the way my week turned out, a couple more of these and I’m right where I want to be!

Eating was spot on again, I really don’t know what else to say about it any more. Food is a non-issue for me at this point. I think 7 months is definitely enough to build new eating habits. I’m certainly not dieting any more, it does not feel like a diet. It feels just normal eating. I only ate above my 2,400 calorie allocation one day and I ran 13.1 miles that day and burned 1,500 calories in the process. So eating a whopping 2,700 calories that day were more than justified. Thanks to that day I have averaged 2,446 calories for the week as my daily intake. Protein was at 131 grams, which is a bit more than I’d like but unlike most people who have problems with not eating enough protein, I’m quite the opposite and I tend to eat quite a good amount of protein. And I eat all this without protein shakes. I don’t remember the last time I had a protein shake.

Running has been great this week. If you look at the chart you will see that I had two days where I didn’t run and I only had a measly 2 miles on Sunday. This is because of my race schedules. I had a race on Saturday and I ran a really fast 13.1 mile run on Wednesday so I needed two days to rest and get my legs ready for the 5K race. On Sunday I only ran 2 miles to keep my legs moving and ready for the next race on Monday. So I only ran 31.4 miles this week which is much lower than last week but it is actually still a pretty good mileage and it is a lot of hard miles. This weeks mileage was about quality vs. quantity. Calorie wise I have burned 3,464 calories with the running this week.

I skipped the gym altogether this week. I performed no strength training. I feel bad about it but I just couldn’t find the time or motivation to go.

Weigh loss has been steady this week, my rolling average indicates a 1.2 lbs (0.6 kg) drop for the week which would mean my BMR is 2,551 calories. It is higher than before so I’m either not counting all my calories burned or I’m counting too many calories for intake. This is quite the opposite problem than what most people make when they start counting calories. They tend to underestimate the calories in and overestimate how much they burn. It’s nice to have this problem for myself.

Overall I’m really pleased with the way the week went, I think it was a great week. A couple more is all it will take to get to my target!

Eating is really on auto pilot at this point. I don’t think a whole lot about what to eat, how to it, how much to eat. It really comes pretty darn naturally now. This weekend We went to the Chinese buffet and I just naturally gravitate towards the green bean stir-fry, the broccoli beef and the steamed rice while before I’d fill up on sweet and sour chicken with fried rice, a couple of cheese won-tons and egg rolls. Granted I ate 1,100 calories worth of food in one sitting at buffet but I was stuffed afterward. I could not have eaten another bite even if I wanted to.

Now you might think that 1,100 calories in one sitting is excessive. And I would agree with you. I certainly don’t do it every day. But Sunday I ran 11 miles in the morning and burned 1,200 calories. Then I went and rode the same 11 miles and then some with my family on a bike burning another 600 calories. So Even with the 1,100 calorie dinner and close to 3,100 calorie daily intake I was still in a severe caloric deficit for the day. This is the beauty of diet and exercise working in harmony. When you put in the amount of exercise I put in you can get away with eating like a crazy pig every once in a while. But what’s still beautiful about those 3,100 calories today is that they were extremely well balanced: 20% protein (152 grams), 58% carbohydrate and only 23% fat. On a regular day I actually find it quite difficult to eat 2,300 calories, I have to resort to making two servings of oatmeal at 9:00PM just to get in my daily calories. Once I stop my weight loss I’ll have an even harder time to stuff my face with 2,700+ calories a day on average.

In terms of numbers, I have averaged 2,438 calories a day which is mainly due to the well justified 3,100 calorie Sunday. I have averaged 128 grams of protein a day which is a bit more than I need but nothing extreme, I’m gladly taking those numbers.

Strength training is still a struggle. I did put in one exercise on Wednesday but I had to skip Friday again as I had to take my son to soccer right after work which left me no time to go to the gym. I just really need to quit eating out so much and trying to knock out the gym at lunch time. I sound like a broken record with this statement though. Maybe I should actually do it instead of just talking about it.

Running was phenomenal this week! I broke another record, I ran over 40 miles (65 km) in a week for the first time! I actually had to adjust the scale on the chart to fit all this mileage. I also ran my longest run ever with 11 miles this weekend which felt fantastic. And to top it all off I ran a personal best in a 5K race on Saturday morning with a 19:05 time. More on that later. All in all I have burned a whopping 5,149 calories doing running and that one 12 mile outing with the bike on Sunday. That’s a lot of calories!

So based on the calories in vs. calories out where do I stand in terms of weight? The rolling average indicates that I have lost another 1.4 lbs (0.6 kg) this week which is right where I want to be. 1.4 lbs of fat equals 4,900 calories which means that my BMR is 2,402 calories. It means that I have been eating pretty darn close to that maintenance, within 35 calories of it and I have generated all of my weight loss with the exercise that I had put in. It means if I were to quit running today and I would stick with a 2,400 calorie diet I would be able to maintain my current physique. But we all know that I’m not quitting the running and I’m not stopping with the weight loss either until I see some abs.

I have eaten significantly more this week than any other week before, not counting last week’s 3 day weekend binge. But overall my days have been hovering around the 2,400 calorie mark instead of the 2,300 calorie mark where I would have liked them to be. I had some hard running days and I just felt the urge to eat more and more. Remember, 2,400 calories a day is still under maintenance for me with all the running I’m doing. I have averaged 2,467 calories a day thanks to the 1,500 calorie dinner on Saturday at Macaroni Grill that contained my all time favorites; Penne Rusctica and their rosemary peasant bread. Those 1,500 calories made me clock in at over 3,00 calories for the day. But quite honestly, I didn’t care. I knew that I have burned close to 900 calories that morning while running a 10K and I was going to burn another 1,000 calories the next day running a 7+ mile long run. So even at 3,000 calories for that day I was still in caloric deficit overall.

I seem to be only hitting the gym once a week now, I really need to get better about making it in there twice. the problem is clearly that I prefer to play spades or go out for lunch on my lunch break and when 5 o’clock hits I just want to get the hell out and come home instead of sticking around for another 30 minutes to put my strength training in. Something will have to change. I either have to give up the social aspect of my lunch breaks or just tough it out after work and do my strength training then.

Running was fine this week. It was a race week with a 10K race on Saturday so the mileage was lower than last week’s training, but I still put in 30.9 miles (just shy of 50 km). I had a solid interval session on Tuesday, a good tempo run on Thursday, a 10K race on Saturday and a 7.6 mile run on Sunday. I also ran 3-3 miles of recovery on Monday and Wednesday. I have burned a total of 3,629 calories this week for a daily average of 518 calories.

Since my Intake was 2,467 and I have burned 518 calories with exercise my average net caloric intake for the week was 1,949 calories. Based on the rolling average of my weight I have lost exactly 1 lbs this week which is 500 calories a day. So my BMR is right around 2,449 calories which is still in the reasonable ballpark. I guess I’m doing what I set out to do which is eating my maintenance calories on average and only lose weight based on calories lost due to running.

All in all, I am very pleased with the week and my weight loss. I certainly need to keep a check on my food intake, I’m eating more and more and I need to know when to stop. I can’t eat 3,000 calories a day just yet.

As you can see in the chart my diet was flawless for the first four days, maybe a bit excessive on Thursday, but it is to be explained with the 3 slices of cheese pizza I ate at my son’s end of the season soccer party. And even with all that pizza I came in at a respectable caloric intake and if I account for my cardio for the day I was still in deficit. But for Friday, Saturday and Sunday I just have no excuses. I actually do, so let’s take it day by day.

I have already blogged about Friday. It was a day that started out good, even dinner was OK but I should not have let myself eat the two slices of cake (technically one was a piece of pie) and the cheese and chips that night. Saturday looks almost as bad as Friday, it is certainly over 3,000 calories for the day. So what happened?

It was my daughter’s birthday and we got her some awesome chocolate mousse cake that’s what happened. One slice of that stuff is a whopping 430 calories. But given that it was a family event I could not say no to the cake plus I quite honestly didn’t feel like saying no to it either. It was delicious and I felt it was so worth the calories. But how did I end up eating 3,000 calories when all I had was 430 calories worth of cake? Well Saturday we also happened to attend a wedding. My boss’ daughter was getting married and my wife and I were invited. So we went to the wedding and it was great. I’ve been to a couple of weddings and as far as weddings go this one was up at the top of the list of weddings I enjoyed.

It was a very casual atmosphere, the ceremony was outside and the weather could not have been any more perfect. It was a breezy low 70s (22 Celsius) day. The reception was also very casual and the food was pretty darn good. I stacked my plate high with veggies and roasted beef and turkey. So far so good. But I also ate a good amount of stuffed mushrooms which, I think were the highlights of the culinary experience at the wedding. They were splendid. I had some fruit as dessert but I also had to have some of the grooms’ cake, I kind of felt obligated to have a piece. So I did. So not only I had two pieces of cake on Friday, I did a repeat and had two pieces of cake on Saturday. The two slices of cake were over 660 calories so it’s safe to say had I not had them I would have been more than OK for the day.

Sunday I was certainly trying to maintain a more reasonable diet and I kind of did but we had friends visit us and we made some fantastic filet mignon for them with some shrimp on the grill to go with it. I used to enjoy going to steak houses but now I much rather make my own surf and turf. It was a very nice dinner with some quinoa, steamed zucchini and squash, and fennel puree as sides. And for dessert, you guessed it, I had another slice of the leftover chocolate mousse birthday cake. So even with the extra 430 calories that came in with the cake I still managed to eat a somewhat more reasonable 2,600 calories on Sunday.

So with all the “festive eating” , that is properly justified as you can see, you might wonder what my weight had been doing. Well, if I look at my rolling average I have lost 0.9 lbs. If I look at the scale on Sunday morning from a week prior I have gained 0.5 lbs. So the truth probably lies somewhere in between those two numbers. Even on the rolling average my weigh has been climbing for the past 3 days which was a first. So far every single weigh in was below my rolling average but this time the numbers have been constantly higher than my rolling average indicating that my rolling average was going in the wrong direction. I’m still happy with where I’m at, I know that this week was an unusual week with a trifecta of heavy days but the chances of such alignment of events and gatherings in the near future are slim. So eating was not the best, how about strength training?

Well I did go my lifts on Wednesday but I skipped Friday. I had to leave early from work for the company event so I couldn’t stay and put in my workout. I did do some push-ups, 25 of them, on Saturday morning but I would not consider it a workout. But if there is anything this week that I’m particularly proud of, it has to be my running.

I have logged 37.8 miles (60.8 km) with an average pace of 7:57 minute/miles. This is the most miles I had run in a week so far. I am extremely happy with my running. I had a solid 10x400m interval repeat on Tuesday that almost killed me in the 90+ (30+ C) weather. I also had a great 10.8 mile long run with my co-worker again on the same route we did last time and burned over 1,100 calories in the process. This is why I don’t feel all that bad about the cakes. All in all I have burned 4,194 calories with running this week.

Based on the average caloric intake of 2,654 calories and the average daily caloric expenditure of 599 calories my net daily calories were 2,055 calories. Combined that with the estimated weight loss of about 0.7 lbs and you get about 2,400 calories as my BMR. Certainly within the ballpark that I have been calculating all along.

So while the week was nowhere near perfect I still managed to generate a caloric deficit and lose weight even if it was at a slower pace than ever before. Had I not exercised at all this week I would have gained about 0.5 lbs this week instead.

My diet is looking solid. I’m transitioning into maintenance mode so I’m trying to eat as much food as I would need to maintain a sedentary lifestyle without any running or exercise. This means I should be eating around 2,200 calories a day. My weekly average came in at 2,257 calories which is very close. I’m definitely happy with the number. Protein wise I have averaged 138 grams of protein a day which is another very good number that I’m pleased with. I will stay at this number until I drop the last 6-8 lbs which means I won’t deviate much from it for the next 6-8 weeks probably. Eating 2,300 calories vs. eating 1,800 calories is a big difference. It’s 500 extra calories a day. It means i can be a bit more lenient and have some fruit when I want one or the occasional 100 calories of popcorn or not the healthiest chocolate covered pretzel snacks. It is definitely a diet that is very easy to maintain. It gives me opportunities and possibilities that were very seldom on the tighter 1,800 calorie diet.

Strength training was non-existent again. Since I had my medical procedure done I have taken it easy for a couple of days and on Friday my son had soccer again and I had to bolt. But the real reason is that I’m simply getting a bit lazy with my lunches and instead of going to the gym at work on my lunch break and eating my prepared lunch that I bag from home I tend to go out and have fun with the guys instead. I really need to kick the habit and get back into brown bagging my lunch more often again.

Running was a ton better than I originally anticipated. I was planning on taking the entire week off due to the surgery and maybe run a 3 mile recovery run on Saturday and run a 6 mile longish run on Sunday. Instead I started running Wednesday with an easy 3 miler then did a solid fartlek run on Thursday, another easy 3 miler on Friday, a 30 minute tempo run on Saturday and a fantastic 10 mile long run on Sunday. The 10 mile run was great! I ran it in 1:21:20 which is an 8:08 minute/mile pace which is very good for long runs. It also felt really good and my sensitive knee was gone and the only thing that bothered me was the blister I ended up with on my right foot. I’ve had the mirror image of the blister on my left foot a couple of weeks ago so I’m not entirely surprised. I was running in my new Brooks Ghost 2 which only had about 25 miles on it and I had yet to run more than 6 miles in them before. So the blister was kind of par for the course. All in all I have clocked 27.3 miles (44 km) for the week and burned 3129 calories in the process.

Given my ever climbing caloric intake and my reduced weekly mileage I have only lost 0.9 lbs (0.5 kg) this week which corresponds to a 3,150 weekly calorie deficit. Based on the fact that I burned almost that very amount of calories with my running my BMR is right around the 2,257 calories that I ate. So my goal of eating at maintenance and lose weight through running is working out awesome. I can’t even imagine what I will do in terms of food intake once I hit my target weight and I will have to start maintaining it with 50 miles a week of running. I still have yet to have an above average weight measurement which means I’m still constantly dropping the weight even if the slope of the rate is getting smaller and smaller. I am extremely pleased with this week and I’m hoping for a week just this good for the next one.

Diet has been good. As you will see on the chart, I am easing up even more on the calories than before but it’s on purpose. I am gradually trying to switch over to maintenance mode from weight loss mode. I have been upping my calories for the past 4 weeks and this week was the highest average weekly caloric intake by far during the past 6 months. And when I say high I’m talking about 2,070 calories on average, still well under my maintenance calories. I had 115 grams of protein on average which is a good, solid amount of protein. Less than before but still well over the USDA recommended ridiculously low amount. I am still very pleased with the way my diet has been going especially since Monday and Tuesday I was out of town and ate out every single meal for the days. I even had ice cream on Tuesday on the way home and it was a fine treat to share with the kids and the whole family. But while I would have had a two scoop portion for myself 6 months ago, this time the whole family share two one-scoop orders instead.

I have not hit the gym during the week at all. Monday I was out of town and by Friday I couldn’t due to a medical procedure that I might or might not write more about at a later time. Bottom line is I could not work out on any of my workout days. Plus I actually pulled my chest muscle the week before and it still has a bruised feeling on the left which does seem to get better but is still not 100% fine. So taking it easy was probably a good idea.

Running went great this week. I only ran 5 days, but it was planned that way. After Friday I could not run due to the medical procedure but because of it I have moved my 10 mile long run to Friday morning instead of Sunday. And to boot, I tried to run it at a 10 mile race pace. It was a success in failure. I ran the first 10K (6.2 miles) in 43 minutes but I ran the last 3.8 miles at 8:15 mile/minute pace for a total time of 1 hour 14 minutes and 35 seconds. It was still a solid run and I am very pleased with it but it wasn’t quite the best run I had hoped for. Overall I have burned 3,268 calories with running this week and ran 28.1 miles which is not bad for 5 days only.

Weight loss, as expected based on the reduced number of calories out and increased number of calories in was less than before. Based on my rolling average I have lost 1.2 lbs (0.5 kg) this week. That is the lowest amount of weight loss for a week so far. But based on these numbers my calculated BMR is 2,203 which very accurately reflects reality. The more I’m switching over to maintenance mode with the diet the lower the weight loss rate is going to be.

As you can see my calories look pretty decent for the week considering I was out of town for the weekend. The Friday binge can be explained with my purposeful carbohydrate loading that I was doing for the Saturday morning 10K that I ran. More on that later. The very same race is the reason why there was no running or exercise logged for Friday either, it was a rest day before the race. Average caloric intake for the week comes in at 1,890 calories with 123 grams of protein which is right where I want to be at this point in my transformation.

My weight has still been on a steady decline even though the weekend really did a number on my weight due to excess sodium and the carbohydrate loading of Friday that caused me to retain more water than usual. My rolling average indicates a 1.7 lbs (0.8 kg) loss for the week which I will gladly take. The days of 2 lbs weekly loss are gone but I’m perfectly happy with where I’m at right now.

Running was great all week, I even did a 6.2 mile run while out of town on Sunday. I have ran 28.9 miles and burned 3,541 calories which is very similar to the mileage and calories burned on my 5K race week two weeks ago. It averages out to 506 calories a day. I only did one strength training on Wednesday and my chest is really sore from it. I think I tore it up pretty bad so I’m taking it easy for the next couple of days until I think I’m back to normal.

Based on the numbers of 1,890 calories in with a 506 calorie daily cardio output and 1.7 lbs of weight loss which translates to 5,950 weekly, 850 calories of deficit daily my calculated BMR is 2,234 calories. Again, this is right in line with the guides. I either cheat on every number or I’m hitting them pretty close to reality. I chose to believe the latter as I have no reason not to.

All in all I think my weight loss is right on track even if it’s slowing down lately. Looking at where I came from and where I’m going I have absolutely no problem with the slowing down, I actually feel pretty darn good about the whole thing overall.