This Year's First Report Is Looking Good

Well, let's get with it.  The SMART goals are in place and you're wondering how I'm doing.  I must say pretty damn good!

This year I'm tracking kilometres walked, number of resistance workouts, units of alcohol consumed, and body weight broken down into lean mass and body fat, made possible by my new Aria scale from Fitbit.

Here goes.

Kilometers Walked

Week 1    95.97
Week 2    93.30
Week 3    98.17
Week 4   104.99

Total       392.43    Weekly average:  98.10 k

Required weekly distance to meet goal of 4000k in 2015: 77 k
Surplus kilometers to date: 84.43 k

Resistance Workouts

Week 1   2
Week 2   2
Week 3   2
Week 4   1

Total       7

Required number of workouts per period: 8
Deficit to date: -1

Units of Alcohol Consumed

Week 1   0
Week 2   1
Week 3   1
Week 4   1

Total       3

Maximum number of units to be consumed per period: 4
Surplus units waiting to be consumed: 1

Body Weight

Sat. Dec 27, 2014: 259.7 lbs   37% fat
Sat. Jan. 24, 2015: 256.0 lbs   36% fat

Weight loss: 3.7 lbs


Lean vs Fat

Dec. 27    162.6  lbs lean    97.1 lbs fat
Jan. 24     164.4 lbs. lean    91.6 lbs fat

Lean mass gained: 1.8 lbs
Fat loss: 5.5 lbs

Summary

This is the kind of start that I wanted.  I don't expect that I will be able to maintain the same level of fat loss and lean mass gained through the upcoming 4 week periods.
However, compared to last year these results are far more encouraging. For instance,  instead of aiming for only 10,000 steps per day, now I aim for 17,000 steps.  Last year I dropped 30 pounds.  Unfortunately, it broke down into 20 pounds of lost muscle and only 10 pounds of fat.  My goal for this year is to maintain my lean body mass and lose the fat.  Since this is the first time that I am tracking body composition, I really don't know what is possible over the course of the year.  As a result, I am not setting a meaasurable objective other than keeping the muscle and losing the fat.

My SMART Goals for 2015

A New Year has begun and with it a new opportunity to put into place a set of goals to guide me for the upcoming year.  To get better results I make my goals SMART: Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Timely.

So, as a result, I have decided that by the end of 2015, I will have walked 4000 kilometers; I will have completed 100 resistance workouts; I will not have consumed more than 50 units of alcohol; and I will be able to fit into a pair of 36-inch-waist-jeans.

Using my Fitbit tracking application to divide the year up into weeks, I started my year on December 29, 2014, and my first week was a smashing success.  I walked 94.27 kilometers, did two workouts at the gym, and didn't consume any alcohol over the week..  To reach my goals, I will need to walk approximately 77 kilometers each week, hit the gym twice, and limit myself to one unit of alcohol.

As you can see, I have already built up a small surplus of kilometers walked and units of alcohol that were not consumed, and I am on pace for the 100 workouts.

No, I didn't try on the jeans.  It's far too early to even think about it, but as soon as those 38-inch-jeans start to feel loose, I'll be heading to the store to try a smaller size on.

Wishing you all the best with your plans and projects in 2015!

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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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.