By the Time I Get To Regina, I Will Have been Clean For Six Weeks

My name is Brian and I am a carboholic.

I love eating doughnuts, cookies, cake, bread, pasta, and potatoes.

I love drinking wine and beer and assorted cocktails.

I love them all, but they don't love me.  They don't care about my health.  They give me intense pleasure, yet are totally indifferent if I develop diabetes or drop dead from a heart attack.  Yes, we have a love/hate relationship: I love their taste and texture, but I hate what they do to my body.

So, I have decided to make a clean break.  Well, not 100% clean.  I still allow myself one cheat meal per week, a precious moment when I can indulge my cravings for pizza or pasta with a glass of wine, even a clubhouse sandwich with fries, but for all my other meals and snacks during the week, I do not eat any high calorie carbs.

So far so good.  I'm coming up to the six week mark of eating clean, which more or less coincides with arriving in Regina on my Cross Canada Challenge: 3100 kilometers down, 1334 kilometers left to go.

As well, I have cut back on how many kilometers I walk during the week, but increased my number of workouts from one to three per week.

What kind of difference is this making?  I don't know.  The other thing that I decided to do is put away my scale until the end of the year.  All I want to know is what change occurred after a year's effort.  I don't want to deal with the frustration if I am not making much progress. 

At this point, I know I am all in.  I am very, very active with the amount of walking that I do.  I even have a desk at work and in my home that allows me to stand while I am working (all my blogs are now written while standing up).  I have reduced my alcohol consumption by 80% and have almost eliminated high calorie carbs from my diet.

However, this is as far as I go.  I have a life to live and, although I would like to make some health gains, I will not go so far as weighing my food and counting calories.  Having a healthy body is not a life project in itself.  Rather, it is a means to an end, like being able to enjoy time spent with loved ones.

As a result, I think it's time I addressed the question of what does it mean to be lean and fit.  Should we focus exclusively on the number on the scale or should we take other things into consideration?  For example, do we place too much importance on the Body Mass Index (BMI) to tell us whether we are healthy?  Perhaps, we need to consider notions of body set weight and our leanest livable weight.

In my next blog post, I'll explore these issues.

Bye for now.  

I'm Back!!! Having Left Halifax, I Have Arrived in the 'PEG'

It's always extra special for me to make it back to Winnipeg, even if it's only on a virtual tour.  As you can imagine, the thought of my home town brings back some sweet memories.

One thing I remember is that I lived in an urban village now referred to as Norwood Grove. It definitely has a lot of old growth trees, and to tie this in with my Cross Canada Challenge, Norwood was entirely walkable:  I walked to school, to the hockey rink, to the rowing club, and to hang out with my friends in the park, aptly named Happy Land. 

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Welcome to Winnipeg Homeboy

I guess you could say that during my formative years I discovered the pleasures of walking long before I would come to learn of its health benefits.  Today, walking has, for the most part, relaced my exercise regime, and I am reaping the health benefits.

Looking back at the last six months and the 2575 kilometers that I have walked, the equivalent of the straight line distance between Halifax and Winnipeg, I can say that I haven't felt this good since I was in my early twenties.  I sleep well, manage my work stress, eat healthy, and have more energy than I know what to do with.

With regard to the changes to my body measurements, I thought that I would have dropped much more weight than I have, only three pounds to date.  However, on closer examination, the lack of weight loss has been offset by a change in my body composition.  Since the beginning of the year I have lost 8.5 lb of body fat while gaining 5.5 lb of lean body mass.  Not bad at all.  Not great.  But definitely moving in the right direction: a healthier, fitter, leaner me.

Probably the biggest change that has occurred during this trek is the manner in which I think about being active and exercise.  I guess you can teach an old dog new tricks.  For example, I now realize that it is far more important what I do during all of my waking hours than what I do in the gym.  It's good to spend an hour doing resistance exercises, but it's all for naught if I spend the rest of the day sitting in front of a screen.  So, in keeping with my not so recent discovery, I am writing this blog while standing up.

All in all, I think the real test is coming when I get to compare by blood tests from two years ago to this year's.  Hopefully, I will see some improvement.

In any case, it has been nice chatting with you, but I need to get back on the virtual road and head off towards Regina.

Talk to you later.

Halfway There With Two Weeks To Spare

Last week, I passed the half way point in my Cross Canada Challenge, walking the equivalent of the straight line distance between Halifax and Vancouver as measured by my pedometer.  It is turning out to be quite the challenge since it requires a lot of discipline to log in the miles week after week, like walking two complete marathons and then some each week.  As well, because of the energy it requires, I am no longer riding my bike and I have reduced my gym time to one workout per week.  Barring injury, I can keep up the pace for the rest of the year, but once it is over, I think I'll reduce the number of kilometers that I walk, get back to cycling. and add another workout each week.

One thing that I have to say is that setting a SMART goal for distance does make a big difference.  I know how many kilometers I need to walk each day and that it is OK to walk less on the day I work out since I know I can make it up later in the week.  Having the overall goal broken down into daily tally also forces me to plan out the activity spread out over the day, taking into consideration the weather and any social plans that I have made, knowing full well that more often than not visiting someone means sitting for a long stretch.

In two weeks, I'll be half way though the calendar year.  That's when I'll have another official weigh in, letting me know if I have continued to lose fat and hopefully having retained muscle mass.  In any case, I feel great and that's what really counts.

Hasta luego.

Sittin', I Mean Standin', on the Dock of the Bay

Well, five months have passed since I took up the Cross Canada Challenge (walking the equivalent of the straight line distance across Canada in one year or less) and I have pushed past the 2000 km mark.  To put that into perspective, that's the straight line distance between Halifax and Thunder Bay.  In order to keep on pace to meet the challenge, one has to walk the equivalent of two marathons per week, each and every week, for an entire year.  Of course, it helps to break up each marathon into many shorter distances that can be walked several times a day.

That's what I'm doing.

In the morning when I arrive to work, I park my car as far as I can from the door to the building.  Instead of going for coffee in the morning, I go for a 15-20 minute walk.  I always take the stairs, only three flights.  At noon, after eating my lunch, I go for a 40 minute walk.  Throughout the day, I try to maximise my steps.  Three weeks ago, I received a standing desk at work and while I'm waiting for my computer to refresh, I take a few more steps.  I also deposit any garbage in the lunch room garbage bin and not in the waste basket in my cubicle.  After work, when I pick up the ingredients for supper, I again park far from the supermarket.  After supper, I take a final 30-40 minute walk.  By the end of the day, I have taken 20,000 or more steps or approximately 15 km.

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Another Life Lesson Learned: We Can't Exercise Our Way Out of a Sedentary Lifestyle

As you can see, my strategy has changed since I started out on my journey to become lean and fit.  Now, I only make it to the gym once a week to lift weights.  Importantly, I want to lose fat but retain my muscle mass, so the time spent in the gym (only 1 hour) focuses on building muscle, and the fat loss comes through my non-exercise physical activity: walking, standing, doing the dishes, making supper, ironing clothes, etc.  In other words, I want to keep the slow burning fat loss going as long as I can during the day and to avoid sitting for long bouts like the plague.

Speaking about the plague of excessive sitting, I invite you to read the following article: Confirmed: He Who Sits the Most Dies the Soonest.

In closing, for anyone who sets out on the Cross Canada Challenge from east to west, there is a special moment when arriving in Thunder Bay, the place where Terry Fox had to abandon his Marathon of Hope for health reasons.  Terry, wherever you are, you inspired a nation, and we are forever humbled by your courage.

God bless you Terry.

Another Life Lesson Learned: We Can't Exercise Our Way Out of a Sedentary Lifestyle

We all have beliefs that we do not want to examine because the truth of the matter would impose making some changes in the way we live.  For me, it was the belief that I could simply train my way out of a bad diet.  When I was younger, I thought I could eat and drink whatever I wanted and as much as I pleased, and, until I was thirty-something, I was able to without gaining weight, without getting fatter. 

Then, I became a father and started to work in a office full-time.  Slowly, I began to gain weight steadily, nothing drastic, three or four pounds a year, the amount of weight we pack on at Christmas.  Twenty years later, I was obese, and I could no longer fool myself by thinking I had a carte blanche with regard to my food choices.  So, having researched the subject, I went on to change my diet.  Now, I am eating six to seven servings of fruit and vegetables daily, very little high-glycemic-index carbohydrates, and I drastically reduced my consumption of alcohol.

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

Looking back, losing the first thirty pounds was relatively easy.  I cut back on calories and increased my amount of exercise and incidental activity.  Then, I hit the plateau and stayed there for about eight months.  Increasing the amount of exercise didn't work.  I couldn't cut back any further on food calories, but I could reduce liquid calories by going from 6-8 glasses of wine per week to just one or two.  So, I did.

That left one remaining big, fat elephant to deal with, the amount of time I spend sitting on my ass.

Think about.  On average, a person living the North American lifestyle sleeps seven hours, is behind the wheel for two, sits at his or her desk for seven, and then adds on another three hours of screen time in the evening.  That's 19 out of 24 hours a day.  Now, that's what I call a sedentary lifestyle.

Sleep is good, so we shouldn't cut back there. But what about the twelve hours sitting on our butts? 

Sitting, as we have been recently told, is the new smoking.  It is an easy way to take years off your life and put slabs of fat around your middle.  Watch this one minute explanation video of why sitting is bad for you.    

So what's to be done?

Simple.  Get off your ass and move.  Going to the gym three to four times a week doesn't do it because while you are sitting, your body stops burning fat as a fuel and starts stockpiling the glucose that your muscles or not using into your fat deposits.  In short, prolonged sitting negates the benefits of exercise.  In fact, in my case lifting weights combined with long bouts of sitting was a recipe for getting big and strong and fat! 

What good is it being big and strong if you develop Type II diabetes, or worse yet, get cancer or have a heart attack or a stroke, all of which have a greater likelihood if you lead a sedentary lifestyle, regardless whether you exercise regularly?

Fortunately, you can teach an old dog new tricks.  The first step for this Big Dog was to to increase his non-exercise physical activity, concentrating on the most natural movement known to man, walking.  That would explain the cross-Canada challenge of walking within one year the straight line distance from Halifax to Victoria.

The second step is to reduce the time sitting on my ass.  To that end, I now have a desk that rises and allows me to write while standing up.  No longer am I sitting seven hours a day at the office, and at home I simply place my laptop on top of a box that sits on a counter.  Indeed, this is my first blog that I have written while standing.

Like making any change in lifestyle, time will tell if the benefits pan out, and you know that I'll get back to you on that one.

One thing is for sure.  During the afternoon, my mind is more alert and I get more work done.

Hasta pronto.

Slow and Steady Wins the Race

I think the biggest harm the television shows like "The Biggest Loser" bring about is to create false expectations with regard to weight loss.  Certainly, I tip my hat to anyone who can lose one hundred or more pounds of body fat.  More so, if they are able to keep it off.  However, the reality of the matter is that if we use the criteria of success as a 10% loss of body weight, kept off for at least one year, 95% of those who try will fail.

Personally, I am all too aware of the challenges of trying to become lean after fifty.  Hormonal changes mean that our bodies are less apt to react quickly to changes in diet and exercise regimes.  Nevertheless, we can achieve encouraging results, but we need to be realistic when setting our goals.

Presently, I am about 16 months into the journey of trying to become lean and fit.  Like many, I experienced rapid weight loss as result of reducing calories and exercising more.  In 2014, I lost 30 lbs.  Unfortunately, I lost 20 lbs of muscle and only 10 lbs of fat.  I now regret having chosen this method because I will never be able to regain all of the muscle lost, which is important since the amount of muscle mass one carries is one of, if not, the best indicator of increased longevity and reduced morbidity. 

Moreover, as could be predicted, I hit the plateau of weight loss.  Additional exercise, in my case cycling to work each day, did not bring any additional benefits.  Most probably, my metabolic rate slowed down and the only thing that increased was my level of frustration.

This year, however, I have changed my method.  Walking remains my primary activity and I have set my sights on walking the equivalent of the distance across Canada, but now I am focused on calorie shifting instead of calorie reduction.  I have abandoned the calorie in, calorie out approach.  Instead, I am now eating more fat, more protein, and less carbs.  As well, my carb intake is mostly complex carbs, high in fiber.

So far, so good.

After four months of this new approach, I have lost seven pounds of fat and gained one pound of muscle.  For some, this might seem to be a meager result, but as far as I am concerned this is a great result because, unlike last year, I am now becoming leaner without losing muscle mass.

Now that the good weather is upon us, I am interested to see how I will do.  I always have the expectation that becoming more active will bring about better results, and I am always disappointed to learn that my expectations have not been met.

Will this summer be any different?  I don't know.  What I am hoping for is that this trend of losing body fat without muscle loss will continue.  At least this summer, I will be able to enjoy a big fat cheeseburger without any qualms, as long as I skip the beer and the potato salad.

Have a great summer.  Move more and eat better. 

Taking Up the Cross Canada Challenge

I'm now ten weeks into my fitness challenge for 2015.  It's time to take stock and adjust.

On the positive side, with the frigid part of winter now behind us, I can say that this first part of the year has been a grand success with regard to rolling out the kilometers.  As of today, I've walked a little over 1000 km, averaging 95 km a week.  I now know that I set the bar too low when I decided to aim for 4000 km for the calendar year, which requires moving ahead at a pace of only 77 km per week.  So, I have decided to raise the bar.

As it turns out, the straight line distance across Canada, from Halifax to Victoria, is 4,473.3 km, which works out to about 86 km per week, slightly less than what I have been doing since the beginning of the year.

Say, no more.  I'm up to the challenge.  In 2015, I will walk a distance equivalent, if you were to draw a straight line, from Halifax to Victoria.

I think I'm going by myself a new pair of walking shoes.