No Big Deal

Monday 13 February, 2012

07:47 - First thing out of bed and I get on the scale. The moment of truth. Just how good are these 7 Fitness Rules anyway? Time to find out. Time to measure. Time to see the result of the effort (such as it was) this week. I am nervous because I spent the last four days doing absolutely NOTHING as far as exercise and not much in the way of any other Fitness Rules either. I try to stand on this electronic scale as lightly as possible... For a moment, while the numbers are flashing the electronic zeros, I feel like a contestant on the biggest loser... The electronic zeros are still flashing... There's a knot in my stomach... I look down... 176.4.

Success.

With that, the knot is gone. I have done it. I reached my goal. I started at 182.8 pounds on Monday, February 6th and planned to lose 6 pounds in a week. I lost 6.4 pounds and you know what? That's no big deal. Sure there's a lot of crazy ways to lose way more than 6 pounds in a week. There's a lot of crazy stuff you can do to loose way more weight than that in way less time. But you know what? That's exactly the point I'm trying to make: it was no big deal. But I'm getting ahead of myself. Let me back up a day.

Sunday 12 February, 2012

08:02 - Snick. Beep. 95 mg/dL. A good number in the morning. Salads love me (and they will love you too) and I had one for dinner last night. This is a good number to start today and I'm off to church with my fried egg sandwich folded over on one piece of white bread. 16 carbs and 2 units of NovoLog insulin. I gobble down the egg sandwich noticing how much I do not miss the cheese or the mayo or the three or four slices of ham - all extra calories I can really do without. There's a pot luck after church and it's going to be hard enough to eat less and eat less crap and I know there will be no exercise today as there is just too much going on.

12:22 - My beautiful wife made some beautiful Mounds brownies for the pot luck and as she's cutting them up I'm going to try the first one of course. Wow! Talk about awesome. My teeth are sinking into the quicksand of sugary goodness and I hate to even think about how many carbs might be in these so I don't. For long. I guess about 25 grams for the half a piece that I share with my wife. Man they are good! I've got to keep track because I will need to dose my insulin. Unfortunately I cannot find my blood glucose monitor. I might have left it at home. I wade into the potluck as I assume that my serum glucose is good.

I grab two plates like I always do. One for a big salad and one for the food. I get a humonsterous cabbage roll, about 7 of my wife's grape jelly meat balls, a big pile of green beans, some carrots and some chicken curry. All of it was deelish. For seconds I went back for another plate full of salad and had some scraps of whatever baked chicken was left too. It's always hard to really know how many carbs are in food that you don't prepare yourself so I guessed an amount that 7 units of NovoLog insulin would cover and hoped for the best. Oh, and two smallest I've ever seen gingerbread cookies that my wife had hand picked special for me. I love potlucks.

18:50 - Snick. Beep. 105 mg/dL. Where did the day go? We are finally not feeling full any more from the potluck earlier and now realize that there is nothing thawed out to prepare for dinner and not really enough left-overs for a decent meal for everyone. I suggest two options to my wife: " we could microwave a 60 carb frozen burrito or I could take you out to dinner?" We pack up the kids and head over to Wingers. The "60 carb frozen burrito" has not failed me yet. I try to keep a few in the freezer at all times.

After walking my kids through their options on the kid's menu I take a moment to look over mine. It's all I can do to keep my hand out of the popcorn bowl that's just sitting there on the table staring me down and begging me to dig in and take a bite or two or a hundred bites. Ugh, why did we come here? Do you know how many carbs are in barbecue sauce. Especially Winger's barbecue sauce. A lot.

I want to eat something that I like. I want to eat something that has a slim fighting chance of offsetting the fact that I have done nothing in the way of exercise for the last four days. I want to eat something I like. I want to eat something that at least gives the impression that I am making an effort to obey my own Fitness Rules. Obviously I want ribs and wings and sauce and fries and everything else with too many carbs and too many calories. I ask my wife what she is getting because I'm going to want to eat some of whatever she is getting too. It's just how we do it in my family.

She is going to order the half chicken. Barbecue chicken of course. With barbecue sauce. OK. I tell her I will just get a water. She doesn't even flinch. She just rolls her eyes because she knows that's a load of crap. I can't fool her. I order the fish tacos. They come with chips and salsa plus the twofer deal we are doing comes with an all-you-can-eat salad. Yes, it seems, we are the all-you-can-eat family. I eat my three bowls of salad without the croutons and mix balsamic and blue cheese for my dressing. In moderation of course.

I trade my wife a fish taco for about about 3 ounces of her barbecue chicken. I split my chips between my four kids to make their kid's meals a little more robust. I also scrape the fish tacos out of the tortillas and into a bowl and dump the salsa in there too. I fold up the tortillas and my kids split those as well. 6 units of NovoLog insulin is going to shoulder the load. I have a few bites of everyone's fries as I try the different barbecue sauces available at the table but to my credit I lay off the popcorn and we don't order dessert.

23:22 - 15 units of Lantis insulin and it's almost time for bed. I think about riding my bike on the trainer. I think about doing something - anything - that might help me feel like I've at least put forth a little effort to lose the 6 pounds that I was talking about at the beginning of the week. These are my Fitness Rules after all. I think about it. For a second. But I don't.

I am looking forward to finding out how things have gone when I get on the scale first thing in the morning. I realize that I really haven't done much but it seems that I have done enough that my jeans are slipping down around my hips a little more than they were before as I head down the stairs toward my office for work. I've been tugging up on my belt loops lately and I haven't had to do that in quite a while. In the morning, we will see how things have gone.

What happened here?

Success. I lost a little over six pounds in a week of really doing not too much out of the ordinary. And really, nothing very hard or anything that felt like it was requiring too much sacrifice. In other words, it was no big deal. If I could lose 6 pounds every week for the rest of this year I will have lost 276 pounds. The trouble is I only weighed 183 pounds when I started this one week experiment of obeying my own Fitness Rules. That would put me at a minus 93 pounds and you can't weigh a negative amount. So what does all this mean?

First and foremost it means that in general I do and had been eating too much. You probably are too. Most people do. The food just seems to find a way into our mouth. Some of that too much food gets there because we are doing things that the experts or the government has told us we should be doing. A lot of that too much food is finding it's way into our mouth in the name of good healthy eating. Well look at the result. Do you have love handles on your spare tire? Look in the mirror and if you are not pleased with what you see there you need to eat less. Get on the scale. When you measure things it is easier to see the truth of the results. If your scale runs and hides from you every morning as you stand there in the bathroom you need to eat less. So eat less.

Second eat less crap. Don't let the dump truck back up to your mouth every day and dump its load after load after load after load of crap into your mouth. C'mon back. beep beep beep. Every time you eat, hear the dump truck. Every time. Hear the dump truck backing up to your mouth. Beep beep beep. Remember the 80/20 rule. Are you eating the power window breakfast? Are you eating out a box or a wrapper all the time? Are you falling prey to the insulin flood producing overload of carbs on the food pyramid? Are you eating bad fat or are you wallowing in it? Crap makes you fat. Eat less crap.

Third work out hard core. You don't need to do anything exotic. Nothing too out of the ordinary. You don't need an X or a shred or Billy Blanks. You don't even need Gilad. None of that will hurt though. All you need to do is build the big muscles in your body. Muscle burns fat plain and simple. If you want to burn fat then you have to build muscle. As you build the big ones in your legs back and chest all the other ones are going to come along for the ride and you will turn into a fat burning machine. All it takes is 5 minutes a day three to five days a week. Really. Try it. Work out hard core.

Measure what you want to improve. Measure your food every so often. Do you really know how much you eat? How many calories it really truly is? No you don't because if you did, you would be at or below your ideal body weight. Eat a good power breakfast. A power breakfast will turn off your body's own fat factory. A power breakfast will help you lose weight. Watch out for Twinkie the Kid and actually learn what a good breakfast is. For other meals, use a small or at least a smaller plate. Use the peace sign portion technique.

And what ever you do - don't diet. Diets don't work. They never have and they never will. Change your lifestyle instead. Live and eat a  healthy lifestyle. Really think about anything you are doing now or considering for the future. Ask yourself: is it something I can do for the rest of my life? Really? Make sure it is or you'll be getting right back on the fat roller coaster in short order. Don't diet. It doesn't work. Instead try this: follow these 7 Fitness Rules and see how great and how fit and how slim your life can be. Go ahead. You are worth it. Go ahead. It's no big deal.

The 7 Fitness Rules

Fitness Rule #1: That which gets measured gets improved.

Fitness Rule #2: Diets don't work. Lifestyles do.

Fitness Rule #3: Eat Less.

Fitness Rule #4: Eat a power breakfast

Fitness Rule #5: Exercise.

Fitness Rule #6: Eat less crap.

Fitness Rule #7: Get plenty of rest and recovery

There you have it. No big deal. Right? Is it really that easy? Is it really that simple? Yes it is. It's so easy that it's hard. It's so simple that it is one of the most difficult things you will ever set out to accomplish. Simple. Easy. And cheap. Nothing exotic. Nothing weird. No needles. No pills. No 20 pack of DVDs. Nothing that really even takes a lot of time. Oh, and there's no excuses either. There's really nothing new when it comes to losing weight and fitness. There hasn't been for a long long time. This stuff has been around forever. No big deal.

Think about it. Go back and look at the food I ate and where I ate it. Restaurants, a pizza party, Maverick, Maverick, Maverikc and a potluck. Pizza, eggs, bacon, a cupcake, cookies, milk and all-you-can-eat how many times? Wienie wraps, chili cheese dog and corn dogs. Interesting isn't it? Four days with no exercise. It's a little plus a little. It's slow change. Its commitment. It's awareness. C'mon back. Beep beep beep. It really is that easy. It really is that simple. It's the 7 Fitness Rules. That is all it is. A lifestyle. No big deal.