The Measure of My Success in 2014: I Dropped Three Pant Sizes

When it comes to fitness and getting into shape, there are many measures of success.  For example, it could be the number on the scale, a change in the percentage of body fat, or the waist to hip ratio.

For me, this year, the best indicator of my success is that I now wear the same make and style of jeans that I wore at the beginning of 2014, but three sizes smaller.

I guess you can say that I walked my butt off.  Having hit the pavement for 3800 kilometers and having biked for another 1400 kilometers, plus severely restricting my simple carb consumption along with alcohol, I think I may have finally figured out what works for me.

Move more.  Eat better.

Not all that difficult to do, but I had to get out of denial.  I had to drop my belief that since I went to the gym regularly, I could eat whatever I wanted, when I wanted.  As well, I had to admit that my moderate alcohol consumption was sabotaging my efforts to get into good shape.

Sometimes the most difficult part of making transformative change is coming clean with our dysfunctional behavior, especially when the behavior in question brings considerable pleasure as eating bread, pasta, and pastries and drinking alcohol most certainly do.

It's not that I can no longer eat my favorite foods and drink my favorite wine; it's just that I can only partake once in a while, one cheat meal and one glass of wine per week.

I can live with that.  In fact, I will live longer with a better quality of life if I just keep on keeping on with what I am doing.

Cheers!!!

Well Folks, I Made It! 5000 Km in 2014

Last year, I received a Fitbit for Christmas.  Since then I have been faithfully logging my distance covered each day on foot.  When summer rolled around, I decided to do the same for my bike, using the GPS in my cellphone.

When I began the year, I had no idea about how much ground I could cover over the next twelve months.  In this instance, what can be measured definitely counts.  Once I started tracking my daily movement, given my personality, I started to push myself.

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Get Yourself a Fitbit and Don't Leave Home Without It

Welcome to Winnipeg Homeboy

The first goal was to get up to 10,000 steps a day, which is for me about 7.8 km.  After a while, reaching that goal was relatively easy.  Just moving about around the house and at work brings me to 4000 steps, so to get to 10,000, it only takes about an hour of walking.  Add in two, 15-minute coffee breaks and a half an hour at lunch and voila, the Fitbit reads 10,000 or more steps by the end of the day.

I then decided to increase my goal by 30%, in other words to move up to 13,000 steps per day, which works out to be 10k.  That I can do, but it requires more discipline, in particular, at least 30 additional minutes of walking in the evening.

Sometime in the late fall, I realized that I had already walked the equivalent of the distance from Ottawa to Calgary.  I then added the number of kilometers I had cycled and knew that I had covered approximately 4600 km, the distance from Ottawa to Vancouver.  Then I thought, "if I pick up the pace, I'll make it to 5000 km before the end of the calender year."

As a result, over the last six weeks, I have been walking on average 12km per day.  That means parking the car as far as possible in the parking lot at work and when I go shopping, taking the stairs, and a minimum of 30 minutes on the treadmill in the evening.

Well, I made it to 5000 Km with two weeks to spare, and I must say I feeling pretty good about myself.  In short, I have walked on average 10km a day for the entire year.

Pretty good for someone who was 56 years old until today, my birthday.

Without question, the best gift I have given myself has been the heath gains I have experienced over the last year.

I am definitely looking forward to 2015, the year in which I can hopefully say with confidence that "I am lean and fit!"

Welcome to Calgary and While We're at It, Vancouver

Lately, I have been adding up the numbers to get an idea on how far I have travelled over the course of 2014.  By the end of October, I had walked 3100 km, which is about the distance from Ottawa to Calgary.  If I add in the distance I covered on my bike this summer, about 1400km, I have travelled the equivalent of the distance from Ottawa to Vancouver. 

Not too shabby.

Add in approximately 100 workouts with the weights, you might think that I would be ripped by now.

No, not me, for I am cursed what my doctor refers to as a thrifty metabolism.  I am incredibly efficient and turning glucose into fat and storing it.  Restricting my intake of simple carbs has helped a bit, but no where near what I thought I could bring about by combining a lot of exercise with a low fast-carb diet.

So, what's left to do?

Well, since I have come this far, I might as well go all the way -- cutting back on alcohol.  I read lately that besides the extra calories and the stimulation of the appetite, one of the negative effects of alcohol consumption, especially for people who are trying to shed fat, is that our bodies will burn off the alcohol first before returning to burning glucose and fatty acids.  In other words, a couple of glasses of wine with a good meal is a great way to undo the positive effects of all the exercise during the week.

Consequently, I have decided that in addition to limiting myself to one cheat meal per week, I also will limit myself to just one unit of alcohol.  So far, so good.  I haven't had any alcohol for the last three weeks.  We'll see where this brings me.

According to my son, who also works out and watches what he eats, if this one last piece of the puzzle doesn't bring about the fat loss that I'm looking for, I should accept the fact that I will die fat.

"Fit-Fat", I replied.  Even if 25% of my body mass is fat, you have to be in pretty good shape to cover 5000 km during a single year.  At the moment, I am right on track to do so.

It would be a great way to end the year! 

Exercising More Did Not Bring About the Desired Results

This year I thought I would do a little experiment.  A couple years ago, I remember cycling 25 or more kilometres every day for 30 days in a row.  I thought that I would drop a few pounds.  It didn't work.

When I went to see my doctor, I brought up my frustration.  She told me that my body was extremely efficient stocking fat.  In other words, I have a thrifty metabolism.  She went on to say that I would have to give up most carbs.

Thanks a lot doc.  I think that I would rather stay heavy.

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Sooner or Later We Discover that We Can't Train Our Way Out of a Poor Diet

Well this year, I thought I would try something different.  I had already cut back on a lot of carbs.  I was avoiding bread, potatoes, rice, pasta, and pastries.  Moreover, I was cycling again, around 100 kilometers per week.  This was over and above, the 10 kilometers a day I was walking.  Taking into consideration, the calories in, calories out prescription, the pounds should have melted off me.

No such luck.

I must say that I did let a few carbs slip back into my diet, a third of a cup of oats in the morning and some flavoured yoghurt (I know that the yoghurt has sugar added).  But hey, with the amount of exercise I was doing, that shouldn't have impeded my progress.

But it did.

Before hopping back on my bike, I had already reached a plateau concerning my weight loss -- I had lost 30 pounds in the previous 6 months.  I could rationalize and say that the additional exercise produced more muscle mass that negated the weight I lost from losing fat.

Maybe, just maybe there was something else at work.  Indeed, perhaps the whole calorie in, calorie out approach is a sham.  In fact this is the claim made by Jonathan Bailor in his wonderful book, The Calorie Myth: How to Eat More, Exercise Less, Lose Weight, and Live Better.  I highly recommend that you give it a read.

Bailor asserts that our bodies are not calculators, adding and subtracting calories incessantly.  Instead, our bodies are genetically programmed to seek homeostasis and to maintain our body set weight.

Try as we may, our bodies will fight off any attempt to lose body fat that simply focuses on eating less and exercising more.  Losing weight? Well let's just lower the basal metabolic rate to compensate for the reduced caloric intake.  And if that's not enough, let's increase the production of the hunger hormone ghrelin and lower the effect of the hormone leptin, which tells you that you are full and to stop eating.

For Bailor, it's not about calories in and calories out.  It's all about the hormones, and in particular, it's 90% about what we eat and how it affects our endocrine system.  In summary, if you want to lose weight and keep it off, you are going to have to undo the damage, otherwise known as metabolic syndrome, that your bad eating habits have brought about.

Essentially, you need to change what you eat and how you exercise, focusing on quality instead of quantity.

What do you have to lose? Give it a try!

I have and in the first five days of adopting Bailor's suggested regime, I lost two pounds and broke through the 255 pound barrier for the first time.

At the moment, I am concentrating my efforts on eating very well, more protein and non-starchy vegetables.  I am refocusing my energy so that I am even more disciplined regarding what I eat, knowing that pressing on this lever brings about better results than increasing the distance that I cover on foot and on my bike.

So far, so good.  You know that I will keep you posted.

Welcome to Winnipeg Homeboy

Well, I made it.  Two thousand, one hundred and twenty-four kilometres later, I can say that since the beginning of the year I have walked the equivalent of the distance from Ottawa to my home town of Winnipeg.

Over and above having achieved my first SMART goal of the year, I have also cycled just over 1000 kilometres, mostly to and from work.  As you can imagine, I'm getting pretty fit and am experiencing some of the benefits that getting into decent shape can bring.

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Walking to Winnipeg

Walking to Winnipeg: Welcome to Wawa

For instance, during my trip to New York City, I was able to explore the city first hand, walking more than 15 kilometres a day in the heat of summer.  As well, upon my return I dug out a 12x12 foot space for my future stone garden by myself with just a shovel and a wheel barrow.  It was tough slogging because I had to excavate about 5 cubic yards of compacted earth.  Not bad for someone who will be celebrating his 57th birthday later this year.

Perhaps, the biggest payoff from having made significant changes to my lifestyle -- which I could sum up with the simple phrase: move more and eat better -- is that I will be wearing my favorite tailored suit that I haven't been able to wear for ten years as I attend my step-daughter officially being called to the Bar, the culmination of her many years of hard work to get through law school.

I think that we both can be proud of what we have accomplished.  I also know that to reach my destination of being fit and slim I too will need to sustain my efforts and show perseverance in order to achieve a most worthy goal.

To Reap the Benefits From Your Workouts You Need To Be Moving Throughout the Day

Now that summer is upon us and I have been on my bike for a few weeks, I am reminded how important it is to be physically active on a daily basis.  Specifically, we need to be moving throughout the day not just when we make it to the gym or play our favorite sports.

As we grow older, the North American lifestyle takes it toll, especially for those of us who are raising kids and holding down a full-job.  On the one hand, we spend a great deal of time driving to and from work, the daycare or school, and ferrying our kids to their organized activities.  On the other, we our glued to our computer screens during the day and then add on extra hours using our portable devices or crashing out on the couch watching HD TV.  To say the least, this is a sedentary lifestyle.

If you where a tracking device, it doesn't take long to realize that a so-called normal day means taking about only 3000-4000 steps.  For me that means burning somewhere around 2300 calories for the day.  Adding in two or three workouts is not enough to counterbalance the lack of physical activity as I carry on during the week.

Say that I work out twice and burn an extra 700 calories per session, add some extra calories burned after the workouts due to an increase in my metabolic rate, but minus the extra calories I consume due to my increase in appetite.  All in all, I would estimate that the workouts bring about a very modest calorie deficit of only 1000 calories.

In other words, with such a low baseline of daily activity, the two workouts will have a negligible effect if any on my body weight and composition.

However, if I increase my activity level to taking 12,000 steps a day, I now burn about 3400 calories a day.  In this scenario, my workouts now create a significant calorie deficit.

For example, going to and from my work is about 28 kms.  This works out to be an extra 850 calories burned each day that I commute by bike.  In the best case scenario, weather permitting, I commute five times during the week while maintaining the same number of steps taken daily.  On these days, I burn well over 4000 calories each day.

Of course, it is imperative not to significantly increase calorie consumption, and I am able to do this but sticking to a slow carb regime that severely limits my intake of high glycemic carbs contained in bread, rice, potatoes, sugar, and refined flour products.  Instead, I fill up with about 7 to 8 portions of fruit and vegetables per day in addition to the two portions of protein that I consume.

So far so good and I am looking forward to getting back to you by the end of the summer with a portrait of my results.

Falling Into the Fat Trap

This week we saw some startling figures concerning obesity rates around the world.

Researchers found more than 2 billion people worldwide are now overweight or obese. The highest rates were in the Middle East and North Africa, where nearly 60 per cent of men and 65 per cent of women are heavy. The U.S. has about 13 per cent of the world's fat population, a greater percentage than any other country. China and India combined have about 15 per cent.

So, in other words, if you are feeling like a fatso, you are not alone; you are a member of the 2billion person club.

Given the incredible advances in science, how come we aren't able to help people maintain a healthy weight?

In a nutshell, for most of the last century, our understanding of the cause of obesity has been based on immutable physical law. Specifically, it’s the first law of thermodynamics, which dictates that energy can neither be created nor destroyed.

When it comes to body weight, this means that calorie intake minus calorie expenditure equals calories stored. Surrounded by tempting foods, we overeat, consuming more calories than we can burn off, and the excess is deposited as fat. The simple solution is to exert willpower and eat less.

 

The problem is that this advice doesn’t work, at least not for most people over the long term.

 

According to Dr. Mark Hyman, the average person gains five pounds for every diet that they go on.  Even worse, when the lose weight, they lose muscle and fat.  When they regain the weight, they gain back all fat.  And since muscle burns seven times as many calories as fat, their metabolism is slower than when they started the diet.  The cruel fact is that they need even less calories to maintain their weight.

 

But what, as was pointed out in a recent NY Times article, we’ve confused cause and effect? What if it’s not overeating that causes us to get fat, but the process of getting fatter that causes us to overeat?

 

This is what I call the fat trap, a percentage of body fat that alters significantly a person's metabolism, rendering the person metabolically inefficient, a downward spiral in which the person gets fatter and fatter.

 

According to this alternative view, factors in the environment have triggered fat cells in our bodies to take in and store excessive amounts of glucose and other calorie-rich compounds.

 

Since fewer calories are available to fuel metabolism, the brain tells the body to increase calorie intake (we feel hungry) and save energy (our metabolism slows down).

 

Eating more solves this problem temporarily but also accelerates weight gain. Cutting calories reverses the weight gain for a short while, making us think we have control over our body weight, but predictably increases hunger and slows metabolism even more.

 

In other words, once you have fallen into the fat trap, it is extremely difficult to get out.  Quick fix solutions like diets only make things worse.  It's as if once your fat cells reach a critical mass, they take over, forcing you to feed them so they can multiply over and over again until you can no longer see your nether regions.

 

Alas, all hope is not lost, but if you are going to climb out of the fat trap, it is going to take a major transformation of your lifestyle.  Counting calories is not going to work.