The Question: How Did I Do It?

A couple posts ago, in response to my entry, "A Life Altered Yet Again", Tyler asked me the following question:

"I'm curious, how did you lose weight?"

I've gotten that question a lot, especially from people who knew be "before", and who hadn't seen me in a while. The usual remark is "WHOAH!" followed by, '"How did you do it?''

I wrote a reply out to Tyler, and realized that it's the same answer I always give. I may have even put this in another blog entry someplace. But it bears repeating...the things I did that made a difference for me.

HOW I DID IT:

#1, I started weighing myself daily. Knowing anybody fluctuates up to 2-3 pounds daily, it was just a "check-in" to see how I was doing. If I went up over 3 pounds, I knew I was doing something wrong. Weight Watchers tells you to NEVER do this...but it works for me.

#2, I read YOU: On a Diet by Drs. Mehmet Oz and Michael Roizen. It reinforced that losing weight is PHYSIOLOGICAL, not psychological OR the whims of the "Diet Gods" (whom I was convinced hated me anyway). They actually have all sorts of good stuff online now, through their website, "RealAge" (which helped me learn how to eat)...but I read the book. Old-fashioned, perhaps, but it worked for me. I re-read parts of it when I felt especially persecuted by those blasted Diet Gods...

#3, I walked. Then I jogged. Then I ran. And I decided to join a club to add the weightlifting component to work on my strength. The trainer there, a wonderful guy, told me NEVER to do the same thing two days in a row. He said your body needs time to recover, and doing things two days in a row doesn't allow it the time to recover and rebuild. So I did weights AND 30 minutes on the elliptical 3x a week, and walking/jogging 3x a week, alternating. The trainer said my walking/jogging was my "weight loss" effort, so aimed for my elliptical training heart rate to be at something like 80% of maximum to train my cardiovascular system. It worked! My cardiovascular system ended up in fabulous shape; I could out-walk and out-run my teenaged niece without huffing and puffing! The trainer was a great help and I stuck with his program for a couple months, then met with him again and started a new program...until I really got serious about running...then I ended up just running most of the time. Mistake--I should have stuck with the weights. It would have made me a stronger runner. Even though I could run half marathons and do triathlons, I was mostly strong on my legs/hips, but not so much in my core and arms.

#4, I wrote down EVERY LITTLE THING I ate and tallied the calories. When I hit 1800 calories (up to 2000) I stopped eating. Period. It only took a few days for me to start to nail down what I could do to maximize my nutrition/satiety without piling on the calories. I noticed that foods that were closest to their natural state (i.e. apple vs. juice) tended to fill me more and "cost" me less. But I did NOT play games and eat junky, tasteless food just because it was low in calories. I ate whatever I wanted, even dark chocolate (Lindt, mmm) but just "budgeted" my calories accordingly by making sure I ate lots of healthy stuff in between--like fruits, veggies, whole grains, and lean proteins. And I tried to make sure I ate the veggies FIRST when I had dinner, and used a lunch plate instead of one of those huge dinner plates. That helped. If you split your plate into halves, then the half into halves again (so you have two 1/4ths and one 1/2), put the veggies in the half side...and in the 1/4 portions, that's for your lean protein and whole grains. That helps a lot.

#5, Take a multivitamin and calcium, and yes, that's important for guys too. Although I got far better nutrition from the new way of eating anyway, I just wanted to be sure I was covered.

#6, I made healthier choices to lower my cholesterol. It was over 200, and I dropped it to something like 159, with excellent HDL levels, low LDL levels, and oustanding triglycerides. The exercise was a huge help too, but I made sure to eat olive oil instead of butter or margarine, whole grains (whole wheat bread, wild/brown rice mix, etc.) and I had oatmeal daily...I love oatmeal, so it wasn't a tough sell. I also ate salmon weekly if I could, and just tried to eliminate all those trans-fats (hydrogenated or partially-hydrogenated oils) and high fructose corn syrup (HFCS), both of which are in just about everything (even crackers!). I think HFCS is the spawn of the devil. :)

Incidentally, my doctor, when I went in for my checkup after telling him I wanted to take care of my cholesterol by myself (without drugs) first, nearly danced when my numbers came in. He was giddy, it was so funny! He called me a "poster child" and said that I was living proof that "diet and exercise work!"

And by the way...one more thing: I NEVER use the word "diet" except to mean "eating plan" as in, "That's part of a healthy diet." I have young, impressionable girls, and I NEVER want them to diet. Ever. It's a roller coaster that you can't get off of. I simply called it "eating healthier", and my daughter knows I eat healthy...but has never once said I was on a diet. I want it to stay that way. Diets are temporary--eating healthy is a permanent choice.

That's not to say some Oreos don't go amiss now and again...!

:)

There. The Answer to The Question. I hope it provides some insight for you, and helps you out in your weight-loss and/or maintenance efforts.

Good luck!

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Disclaimer: I'm not a doctor. However, I am a teacher certified in both California and Maine to teach science curriculum, including the human body (and health/nutrition) to kids in grades K-8. This blog is my attempt to wade through the current thinking on weight loss, and to present it in a way that makes sense to everyone. As a woman who is successfully recovering from obesity herself, I feel it's even more important to help others understand what I did to lose the weight; what worked, what didn't, and what the struggle has been like as I went from morbid obesity to fitness. It doesn't mean that I have all the answers, however. If you want to lose weight, by all means, read my blog--I think I can provide some help and clarity. BUT, please know that I am NOT a medical expert, and you should most definitely consult with your own doctor or family physician before undertaking any weight loss efforts yourself. Weight loss is a personal journey. I'm making mine visible to the world, but each of us has to take our own steps with our own doctor's guidance; please make sure you check in with yours before you try to do anything I have done. Good luck and God bless!

Having a Plan

Today, I went to the Club, completely psyched. I was finally going to do the new workout that Isaiah gave me last week, when Kent was still at GenCon. It's a combination of some of my old strength exercises with some new ones--Lat Raises, Reverse Flys, Lower Back Extensions, and Leg Extensions.

First, though, before I could do the strength work, I needed to jump on the Elliptical Trainer and do some "running". My new goal: 40 minutes, exercising at 80% of my maximum heart rate which, for a 41-year-old woman, is 143 BPM (beats per minute).

My old goal was 30 minutes on the Elliptical, and I discovered over the summer that the 30 minutes had really ramped up my stamina. In San Francisco, I was able to walk very quickly from Fisherman's Wharf, past Pier 39, and all the way to the Embarcadero Center without being winded OR having my heart pound! It's benefited my heart in other ways too; my resting heart rate has dropped from 80 BPM or higher to just under 60 BPM.

My doctor would love to see this!

Anyway, while I was on the Elliptical, I saw two different women (one older, one younger) moving abound the club, doing some exercise. I watched the two of them for a while, and pretty soon I got really impressed...with one of them.

One of the women was about 80. She was dressed in a pretty blouse, slacks, street shoes, and carried her purse. She was using the strength machines.

The other woman was much younger, probably no more than 15-16, and she was wandering around fully kitted-out in exercise gear, even down to the iPod strapped to her arm. She was also using the strength machines.

I am a firm believer in dressing the part, so at first I just grinned at the sight of the older woman as she went up to a machine, adjusted it for her settings, set her purse down and went to work.

But then I noticed the young woman. She may have been dressed for the part, but her attitude and demeanor were drastically different from the older woman. The younger woman was LITERALLY wandering around.

Whereas the older lady clearly had a goal in mind (you could see it as she purposefully went from one machine to the next and made sure to adjust the settings properly), the younger woman was simply flitting from machine to machine. There was no clear goal apparent, as she literally wandered around the club, "trying" different machines.

I can't say she was exercising on each one, because she'd do four or five reps, get up, and wander off to another.

And her expression during the entire thing was a combination of "really pissed off" and "total boredom".

When I got off the Elliptical, I needed to use one of the machines, and the younger woman was on it. By this time, I'd watched her for five or ten minutes, and I realized that all I needed to do was wait a moment and she'd be off to another machine.

Bingo. It was less than one minute from her getting on the machine until she got back off.

Meanwhile, the older lady continued to plug along!

These two demonstrated what for me has become a central theme for my exercise:

I have to have a plan.

All along I have been saying, "Just tell me what to do, and I'll do it."

Tell me what to eat (well, how many calories anyway) and I'll do it. Tell me how long of which type of exercise, and I'll do that too. Tell me how to get my baby to sleep all night so I don't have to wake up repeatedly to feed her, and I'll be your friend for life.

OK, sorry, I digress.

For me, having a plan means I need to use someone else's expertise to help guide me. I don't know enough about fitness, weights, machines, cardio and whatnot to be able to put into place a self-created plan, so I needed someone who could do it for me. When I found out that my club offered the use of a trainer to assist you in creating a fitness plan, I was completely sold.

When I found out it was Isaiah, the same nice guy who helped me buy some dumbbells at a local sports store, then spent ten minutes giving me tips and pointers, I was even more psyched.

Having Isaiah helping me has been so critical to my improvement. I give him this kind of credit because he's my "planner" guy. That's critical because if planning out my workout was up to me, I wouldn't be so focused, and frankly I might not even be going as consistently as I do now. I know this because I've done it before. I have tried going to a club with a self-created plan, but unfortunately my plan was based on what machines I liked to do and how much I could lift--not on any specific goal of improvement.

Without a plan that would help me reach my specific goals, I would end up flitting from one thing to another, with no real idea of exactly what I wanted or how to get there. Eventually I'd stop going, because I had nothing to work toward, and thus no way to measure my progress.

A study just came out that says much the same thing. If I can find a link to it, I'll post it here. It basically says that people who have a goal and a plan work harder and more consistently, and reach their goals, than people who simply go "work out" without goals in mind.

So back to Isaiah. Having a trainer is a critical part of my success. Granted, I told Isaiah what my goals were and, granted, I also am the one who did the work; however, he, as the trainer, gets the credit for my improvement because had the knowledge of the exercises and machines available, and was able to match up a plan with my goals.

I'm lucky because his expertise comes with my membership at the club. But I've learned enough to know that eventually, if I am no longer at this club or if I no longer have access to Isaiah or another trainer, I'll hire my own.

It's that important.

So here I am. A new routine, and new goals: stronger back, arms and shoulders. More stamina for my upcoming half marathon and SprintTriathlon. Upper body strength to manage the long walks/runs without fading out on proper posture (which apparently kills your ability to run).

Going into a brand-new routine means, of course, working hard all over again to learn new exercises, and then working through the soreness the next one, two and even three days later.

It's feeling like a rank amateur, a rookie, and pushing with all your might to move a 30 pound weight a few inches.

It's feeling like there's never going to be a day when you can say, "OK. I've mastered this and my body's too used to it now. It's time for a new plan."

But it's all worth it, because I've seen what it does for me. The stamina, the strength, the flexibility, and the weight loss have all been tremendous.

You gotta have a plan.

That's why, if you asked me which of the women that I watched today was the most impressive to me, I would say it was the older lady with the street shoes, slacks, pretty blouse and purse.

She came not with the proper workout gear, but with the proper attitude.

More importantly, she obviously had a clear goal in mind.

And THAT makes all the difference.



__________________________________________________________________________________
Disclaimer: Look, I'm not a doctor. However, I am a teacher certified in both California and Maine to teach science curriculum, including the human body (and health/nutrition) to kids in grades K-8. This blog is my attempt to wade through the current thinking on weight loss, and to present it in a way that makes sense to everyone. As a woman who is successfully recovering from obesity herself, I feel it's even more important to help others understand what I did to lose the weight; what worked, what didn't, and what the struggle has been like as I went from morbid obesity to fitness. It doesn't mean that I have all the answers, however. If you want to lose weight, by all means, read my blog--I think I can provide some help and clarity. BUT, please know that I am NOT a medical expert, and you should most definitely consult with your own doctor or family physician before undertaking any weight loss efforts yourself. Weight loss is a personal journey. I'm making mine visible to the world, but each of us has to take our own steps with our own doctor's guidance; please make sure you check in with yours before you try to do anything I have done. Good luck and God bless!