15 percent loss club

And We’re Back!

2010-11-14T15:36:00.001-08:00

Morning Weight: 181.4lbs

Well its been a few years since I was on 20/20 and its happened. My weight has creeped back up. About a year ago while spending two weeks in Cleveland at the hotel next to the Cleveland Clinic, I got very motivated and disciplined and got my weight below 180. I was in the 177-179 range all the way through spring 2010 until the summer.

Then over the summer I traveled so much that I didn’t exercise. I didn’t really pay very close attention to my weight.

That’s gotta stop. So I’m back on the 20/20 week 1 plan. Yesterday was Saturday and I spent the day watching college football and it was tough to get through it without having any beer, but I did. Today is easier, knowing that I got through yesterday.

Stage 2: Vegetables

2008-12-21T14:47:00.001-08:00

One serving of vegetables is 25 calories. For leafy greens, one serving is a full cup. For other vegetables, one serving is 1/2 cup. Vegetables with high fiber are marked ** and at least one serving of high fiber vegetables should be eaten each day. For sauces and salad dressings, the contents should be <5>

Leafy Greens:

Arugula
Bibb
Endive
Escarole
Red or green leaf
Romaine
Spinahc

Green Vegetables

Artichoke
Asparagus
Broccoli **
Brussels Sprouts (yuk)
Collard Greens
Green beans
Kale
Mustard greens
Snow Peas **
Sugar snap peas **
Swiss Chard
Zucchini **

Other Vegetables

Bean Sprouts **
Beets
Bell peppers
Cabbage
Carrots **
Cauliflower
Celery
Cucumber
Eggplant (yuk)
Garlic
Hot peppers
Jicama
Leeks
Mushrooms
Onions
radishes
Scallions
Tomatoes
Water Chestnuts
Yellow Squash **
Spaghetti Squash

At this stage, avoid high starch content veggies:

juice
corn
peas
potatoes
yams
sweet potatoes
winter squash.

Stage 1: Protein

2008-12-21T14:13:00.001-08:00

I looked back in my blog and noted that I already posted the list of acceptable proteins back in June, so I don’t need to retype that all now.But the list is posted below. The goal is to get 12oz of lean or very lean protein each day from meat. Of course I also get some more protein from snacks and shakes, so the 12oz is really the minimum. In actuality, I should be getting 150 grams of protein, 150 grams of carbs and 30-50 grams of fat in my diet each day. The different stages fo 20/20 basically just add in sources for the protein, fat and carbohydrates. Additionally there is a goal of 25-40 grams of fiber per day.

Very Lean Protein list:

Chicken (white meat no skin)
Turkey (white meat no skin)
Chicken Breast
Ground Turkey or Chicken Breast
Cod
Flounder
Haddock
Halibut
Trout
Tuna Steak
Tuna canned in Water
Ground beef (4-5% fat)
Duck or pheasant no skin
Venison
Buffalo
Bison
Ostrich
Egg whites (2)
Egg subs (1/4 cup)

Lean Protein List

USDA or Choice grades of Lean Beef trimmed of fat (Round, Sirloin, Flank Steak, Tenderloin, Roast, Steak (T-bone, porterhouse, cubed, filet mignon), Ground Round, Skirt Steak, Pot Roast
Fresh Ham
Canned cured or boiled ham
Canadian Bacon
Pork Tenderloin
Pork Center Loin Chop
Pork Rib Roast
Lamb Roast, chop, leg or cubed
Lean Veal Chop or Roast
Chicken Duck or Turkey dark meat, no skin
Chicken white meat with skin
Ground turkey
Herring, Salmon, catfish,

The Stages of 20/20

2008-12-21T14:01:00.001-08:00

Now that I am almost done with the 20/20 Lifestyles program, I'm posting the different stages here as a reminder to myself about how good nutritional habits work. I should have probably written this stuff down when I first was going through the program, but at this point its been 6 months, so I need a refresher anyway. Coming up: stage 1.

Great Running Music

2008-08-28T08:30:00.001-07:00

Something that I didn't add to yesterday's blog... one of the things that kept me going and pumped up during my run yesterday was the music that I had on my Zune. On the way to the gym I heard "Firestarter" by The Prodigy. I realized that I had that album loaded onto my Zune, so I started it as I started to run. My run took me from "Smack My Bitch Up" to all the way through "Climbatize"... Very fast paced music and great to run with...

Great Morning Run

2008-08-27T10:06:00.001-07:00

Morning weight: 174.6lbs

This morning I managed to drag my butt to the gym for a morning run. I had gone to the gym on Monday in the evening and I ran out of energy earlier than I wanted, so I thought if I ran in the morning today maybe that would be different. I walked into the gym thinking that I was tired and that this was going to be a crappy run. Boy was I wrong... I warmed up at 6mph for ten minutes and since I was feeling good, I bumped up to 6.5mph. Ten minutes later I bumped to 6.7mph. Finally ten minutes later I bumped to 7.0mph and ran for Ten minutes. That's 40 total minutes, and it felt great! I'm also noticing my mood is significantly better this morning than it was yesterday at this time... Don't know if its the exercise, but I'm just going to assume so! :)

This week is going to be a really solid week for exercised... I've already gone to the gym Monday, Tuesday and today. I'm meeting my trainer tomorrow, Friday AND Saturday, so I will have earned a very deserved rest day on Sunday!

Get Going Again

2008-08-06T15:47:00.001-07:00

Morning Weight: 178lbs

I'm attaching my latest weight chart to provide some accountability for myself. As you can see the last two weeks have NOT been optimal. This past week I've been consuming too many salty foods, caused primarily from eating out almost every night. My weight is up about a pound from a week ago and you can see what large fluctuations I've had in the past two weeks. Clearly I did not have these fluctuations prior to this period, so I need to closely follow the guidelines of my diet now and get things under control.

I will be in Austin next week and will have no choice but to eat out, so I will not eat at a restaurant until then if I can help it. I also will talk to my dietician in another hour and a half, but my preference would be to not add anything back into my diet this week... I've not been worried enough about what I've been eating and so have not been truly paying close enough attention. So, I'm recommitting myself to this plan as of today!

Weekend Recap

2008-07-29T09:49:00.001-07:00

Morning weight: 177.6 lbs

Tuesday morning is granted a bit late to recap the weekend, but there are several things that are top of mind that I want to get into here. Friday we went to our neighbor's house for a BBQ and I was very good about watching what I ate- I brought over my food scale and some measuring cups so that I knew exactly how much chicken and tomato/cucumber salad I ate. Then after that I eyed a chicken sausage that was sitting there begging to be eaten. It was delicious. It was also full of sodium and it caused me to retain a massive amount of water leading to a weight reading on Saturday morning of 180.8lbs... well above my 180 pound threshold that I was so proud of crossing.

To make matters worse, I really did not eat enough carbohydrates on Friday and did not get enough sleep. The result is that my run on Saturday morning, which was supposed to be 1 hour long ended up being half an hour and a 15 minute walk back uphill home. I felt miserable and deflated..I had no energy left, and after such a great run on Wednesday last week I had expected a much better run.

Sunday was a MUCH better day... although I stayed up late watching the Sopranos on Saturday and fell asleep on the couch, I still managed to sleep in on Sunday morning and had plenty of time to chill/wake up slowly. After my breakfast and morning snack I started to feel more energetic, so I went to the gym to do a treadmill run. That run felt fantastic! I ran solidly at 6.5mph for 30 minutes and then did a speed workout for the next 30 minutes. First interval was 90 seconds walking followed by 8.5 minutes at 6.7mph. Second interval was 90 seconds walking followed by 8.5 minutes at 7mph. The final interval was 90 seconds walking followed by 3.5 minutes at 7.5mph. (all of this was at a very modest 0.5% incline).

My legs have definitely felt sore after the speed run, but it really felt good and I'm glad I did it. Even more encouraging was that my heart rate was in the upper 160's even during the 7.5mph section... normally I would have expected 170's, so I'm getting in much better cardio shape these days.

28.5 to 20

2008-07-25T10:12:00.001-07:00

Morning weight: 179.2lbs

Yesterday I had my 5 week measurements taken at the gym. Actually, it has been 7 weeks since I started the 20/20 program, but this was the first opportunity to get the measurements taken. Overall I've done extremely well. In the 7 weeks, I've lost 21 pounds, lost two inches from my hips, 1 inch from my waist and here's the kicker: I wend from 28.5% body fat to 20.0% body fat. My lean body mass has remained constant at 141pounds. If I maintain that lean body mass, then when I hit my goal weight of 160 pounds, I will be 11.9% body fat. If I increase my lean body mass, which I do expect to do, I will have even lower body fat.

I'm excited for a sunny weekend in Seattle... I'm going to go for an hour run on both Saturday and Sunday. I hope that these runs feel as good as my run on Wednesday felt! This is getting fun!!!

What a great run

2008-07-23T21:39:00.000-07:00

This afternoon I went on a run with my trainer, and it was really a great feeling run for a change. Its been quite a while since a run actually felt good. Today we ran some trails near the club....we did several short but steep hills. The hills didn't feel too great, but hills never do. What felt great was how easy the run on the flat areas felt....it didn't quite feel effortless, but so much better than a month ago.

I know that my cardio shape is improving quite a bit- before I started this program, my resting heart rate was 62. Now its 58...that's a pretty good improvement for a month and a half! My trainer said that by the time I'm done with the program in December, it could be as low as 49! We'll see....

Bring on the Legumes

2008-07-23T12:36:00.001-07:00

Morning Weight: 178.6lbs

I tried blogging yesterday but Windows Live Writer froze and so I never got the blog posted. I bring this up because this is now the third blog entry I have written where my weight is below 180lbs. Why I mention that is that each time when I write in my weight, my fingers naturally gravitate toward writing 180 something vs 170 something. I just keep second guessing myself- whether I truly am 178 as opposed to 188!

With that in mind, below is my latest weight chart, which is starting to look like a mega mountain to go skiing on!

Today I will have my weekly appointment with my dietician and I expect to get legumes back in my diet. Legumes are things like kidney beans, chick peas/garbanzo beans, soy beans (EDAMAME!!!) and others. While overall as a category, this doesn't seem quite as exciting as say the vegetable category that I got back in week 2, I am super psyched about it due to the fact that I will be able to eat Edamame again, which makes it worthwhile to go out for sushi. I won't be able to get any sushi rolls or nigiri sushi, but I will be able to get edamame and Sashimi. YUM! I cheated yesterday at lunch. I got a 20/20 Chop salad from the ProClub. It was only cheating because it was a Stage 6 food that included legumes and not a Stage 5 food, which is the stage I am currently in. It wasn't really good...the dressing was terrible so I won't be buying that one again.

For the First time in Four Years

2008-07-21T16:01:00.001-07:00

Afternoon Weight: 179.6lbs

I am under 180lbs for the first time in four years!!! I'm very excited about this because for years I have been trying to get back under 180 and have never quite made it due to numerous issues (Willpower, schedule etc...)

I knew I would lose weight while in Atlanta, but I didn't completely expect to be under 180. Atlanta was tough because I did not have my regular food sources to run to... I didn't have berries or shakes or even adequate food sources in some cases. But I did pay close attention to what I ate and didn't overdo it.

OK, so now the goal is to get under 170 in a month's time! Woo hoo!

Getting Close

2008-07-11T13:11:00.001-07:00

Morning Weight: 182.2 lbs

Only once in the last four years have I been lighter than my weight reading this morning. I am getting excited about breaking through this barier and getting in better and better shape.

I've taken a few photos over the past month using my work PC's web-cam. I made a video out of the photos this morning- I think they do a pretty good job of showing the weight coming off! Hope the quality doesn't suffer with this upload!

Slower going

2008-07-09T15:23:00.001-07:00

Morning Weight: 183.2lbs

Here's my latest weight chart. I'm still making steady progress downward, but the last week has been quite slow going. I'm basically down 1.6 pounds since a week ago. Given that I was traveling and had a few non-dietary moments over the past week, its still good to see the loss. But I really do want to be closer to 2 to 2.5 pounds per week. The good news is that of all the measurements I took over the past year, there are only 7 where I was of equal or lesser weight than where I am now. The lowest was 181.8lbs, and it happened when I was sick last year and didn't eat much for a few days, and as soon as I got better I ate more and gained it back, so I don't really view it as a solid weight measurement.

I added fruit back into my diet last week, but I really didn't eat much fruit over the past week, so I'm considering not adding anything back this week...I would be adding Dairy back in, but I don't think I really integrated fruit into my diet yet. I did have an apple today after lunch, and I have to say it was delicious.

So my goal for next week before I leave for a week in Atlanta is to hit 181.0 lbs. Then when I come back from Atlanta I would like to be below 180... I will have to really watch what I eat in Atlanta, and I don't like the fact that everything will be essentially buffet style conference food. That type of food is rarely of the variety that will be good for me. I'll talk with my dietician about that today.

Glad I didn't run the Seafair Marathon!

2008-07-01T09:06:00.001-07:00

Morning Weight: 184.4lbs

I'm still losing weight steadily, but boy is it ever slower than the first week! Now I understand why diets are so difficult to succeed at- you really have to be dedicated to continuing eating well on a daily basis. One interesting observation I made in the last week- on Friday I ate Isiernos Chicken Sausage for dinner. My overall caloric goals as well as percentage from Fat, Carbs and Protein were all right on target. However, given that the sodium content in the sausage was high, I ended up 1.4 pounds heavier on Saturday morning than I was on Friday night. That's a ton of water retention!

Speaking of water, the annual Seafair marathon and half marathon was held here in Seattle this past weekend. I had considered targeting this race at some point in the future. I am really happy that this wasn't the year with all the issues they had- 400 people were left stranded by inadequate bussing and never made it to the starting line. Secondly, the course was far hillier than the course profile represented. Thirdly, they RAN OUT OF WATER on a VERY hot day!! That's inexcusable- it puts runners lives in danger! So I'll stick to my mediocre/cold weather races for now!

Hot Dogs, Hamburgers and Potato Salad...Oh My!

2008-06-27T14:15:00.001-07:00

Morning Weight: 185.2lbs

Today we had a division-wide "Morale Event" which basically consisted of gathering everyone on the soccer field at MS and feeding them lunch. There were also some prizes, but alas, I was not a winner! Lunch consisted of sorts of summer treats that I would normally gorge myself on: Hamburgers, Hot Dogs, Potato Salad, Ice Cream. I had to stand there eating the occasional Cucumber slice (which they had as one of the garnishes for people's hamburgers). I was tempted, but I resisted.

But the GREAT news is that I have a working grill again! Woo Hoo! Tonight I may grill up some chicken sausage or a steak... Haven't figured it out yet and I have a trainer appointment between now and then.

Seattle Drivers = Crazy

2008-06-26T08:15:00.001-07:00

Morning Weight 186.4lbs

OK, so I must have a sign on my car today that says "Please force me off the road". First as I was merging onto 520, some jackhole in a Scion decides that he really does not want me to merge. So at 40 miles an hour with the end of the on-ramp looming I had to force myself into the lane...I had to merge while the front of his car was still about a third of the way overlapped with the rear of mine. Then just after I405, a motorcycle driver on a very big touring bike decided that he could merge in front of me with literally inches to spare. Its not like he was accelerating into my lane to go faster. He merged at the exact same speed and forced me to heavily brake to avoid killing him. Whoever it is parked in the garage below my building, so I am tempted to leave a truly nasty note for him. Finally, as I was exiting 520, at the last minute some idiot in a small pickup truck decided that the HOV lane was not where he wanted to be- he wanted to be in the exit lane. He swerved directly into my path and almost even hit the divider between the HOV lane and exit ramp.

On the diet front- I went to see my dietician yesterday and I am now permitted up to two servings of cheese a day! Woo hoo...naturally it must be low fat cheese, but I'm ok with that. Also, a serving is not necessarily defined as whatever the cheese label says it is. It's defined as 7g of protein. That means for the Laughing Cow Lite cheese, I can have up to 3 wedges per serving!! That's more than I usually eat, so I'm happy about that. I lost 2.4 pounds over the course of the past week, and the dietician told me that I am really doing well in terms of eating well and losing weight. 2.5 pounds/week is a healthy amount to lose. One concept that I will need to get used to is not expecting every day to have lost weight. Today for example I am .2 pounds heavier than yesterday. I will continue to monitor on a daily basis, just because I enjoy graphing it out, but I won't worry about not losing from day to day, so long as I am down by next week's dietician appointment.

Starting Week 3

2008-06-25T09:16:00.001-07:00

Morning Weight: 186.2 lbs

Today I will see my dietician for the third time and I will begin week three of this diet. I'm down 2.4 pounds from a week ago, which I am told is about what I should expect for an average week- two and a half pounds. However, since I lost much more than that in the first few weeks, it seems a bit of a letdown for me. I didn't exercise as much this past week, mainly due to my trip to Austin which killed two days of exercise.

In another 5 pounds, I will have some more clothes to wear. Technically I can now fit into a number of pairs of jeans that I couldn't fit into a few weeks back, but they are still a bit tight.But with five more pounds, they should be good to go!

New Chart

2008-06-24T13:06:00.001-07:00

I just saw Lane had posted her revised chart, so I'm going to post mine as well. I agree with Lane that this is just too hard to want to do this again, so I will have to learn how to maintain once I've lost what I want to lose!

My Jeans are loose!

2008-06-24T11:10:00.001-07:00

Morning weight: 186.6 lbs

I'm walking around in my jeans today and I noticed that they are feeling significantly looser these days! Today was the first time I have gotten up on the scale after a trip to Austin where I actually weighed less than I weighed before I left. My diet was a bit weird though yesterday in Austin. I had primarily a lot of protein, but not much in the carb department. I forgot that in Texas if you order a vegetable skewer to go with your 6 oz Filet Mignon for lunch, its going to be drowned in butter. So I didn't eat the veggies at all. I didn't really have a dinner, though I had several snacks (soy nuts) during the day to make sure my calorie intake was where it was supposed to be.

Tonight its back to the gym for a workout. I ran on Saturday but since I wasn't feeling well on Friday I had cancelled my session with my trainer. So it feels like I haven't really exercised in a long time, despite the fact that it hasn't been so long.

Coughing again

2008-06-20T11:03:00.001-07:00

Morning weight: 187.2lbs

Well I woke up this morning coughing and congested. I had feared the scratchy throat over the past two days would develop into something like this. It doesn't feel too bad, so hopefully with some good sleep tonight and tomorrow night it will be a memory by the time I get on the plane to Austin on Sunday afternoon.

I made salmon for dinner last night, and although it was quite tasty, I'm starting to think that it's not worth making salmon at home. Reason number one: The house stunk like fish for the rest of the night, despite having the windows open. I even still smelled it a bit this morning. Reason number two: Bones. I HATE having to pick bones out of my salmon. So much so that I prefer to just not eat it!

Today I am taking a rest day - with my cough I want to take it easy.. I canceled my training appointment for the day and will not do any cardio. I'll pick up the cardio again over the weekend.

Vegetables!

2008-06-19T08:27:00.001-07:00

Morning Weight: 188.0 lbs

I am now in that part of the plan where consistency will be key. I'm losing little bits of weight each day rather than the large amounts I was losing each day during the first two weeks. But I am ahead of where I thought I would be, so that is great. I have a calendar set up in Excel on my computer which shows how much I will weigh each week on each day if I assume that I can lose 2.5lbs/week. I'm rather excited, because after plugging in my actual weight for this week I'm already 3lbs ahead of plan. This means that I could reach my goal weight of 160lbs three weeks before the end of Phase 1 of my program. That's good because then I will have that much more time to determine how to maintain my weight and build good maintenance habits. That's something that I will really need to learn- I know how to lose weight, but maintaining is a completely different story!

The big news (hard to believe I am calling this big news) is that as of last night I can have vegetables again - at least most vegetables. In celebration of this I cooked up a mixture of zucchini, carrots, peppers, onion, broccoli and asparagus last night. Never in my life have vegetables tasted so delicious. And since I used cooking spray instead of oil, there was no fat content in the mixture. Normally I would have used quite a bit of olive oil, which as far as oils go is a very healthy one to have, but I know that I must use way too much. Also, my dietician told me about numerous ways to substitute foods for the shakes that I'm having to consume. Now I think I may only have to drink 1-2 a day. This morning I was going to cook up an egg white omelet with onions and asparagus, but I couldn't figure out the proportions correctly to get it right. So I just went with the standby strawberry protein shake with blueberries and peanut butter.

Feel a cold coming?

2008-06-18T10:08:00.001-07:00

Morning Weight : 188.6

Yesterday I finally got to do some weight training, though not a lot. Since I had hurt my hand at Christmas time, I have not been doing any pushups…let me tell you… they were really tough even though I only had to do 15 of them. Granted it was right after I did 15 reps of bench press, but still I was shocked at how hard they were. I'm looking forward to getting back in shape in my upper body.

I am down a bit more than 5 pounds from a week ago, so I am happy with my first week results in 20/20. I will meet with my dietician today…hopefully I will get to add some vegetables into my diet at this point, if not I'll have to wait a week. One thing is that this morning I woke up with the feeling in my throat that I'm getting a cold or something. I REALLY don't want to get sick again… I was sick almost the entire month of May, and I've been feeling good, eating healthy, getting good sleep, so hopefully I will be able to fight this off.

Today I will take the day off from cardio…my legs are definitely feeling the increase in activity. Yesterday I did 30 minutes on the bike and 15 minutes on the much dredded stepmill. I hate that thing. At least with my trainer there talking to my while I'm on it, the time does go by quicker than if I were to do it alone. My hope is that I will be in the 183lb range when we go to Warren in two weeks…that will be a good weight. I will have to buy a blender and a food scale for the house in Warren to keep to my diet!

Plateau

2008-06-17T06:27:00.001-07:00

Morning Weight: 189.2lbs

Well it happened. Despite being 100% on plan yesterday, my weight did not budge at all, which goes to show that now that I've pretty much lost the excess water weight, it may become very frustrating to weigh myself every day. I did weigh myself an hour and a half earlier than usual (5AM vs 6:30AM), but I don't think that should have made much of a difference. Getting up at 5AM for a 6AM meeting was quite the shock to the system…its different than when I travel East and get up at 8AM because even though it is technically the same time, there is no activity in the streets here, and that makes it seem very early!

I'm getting used to the shakes again… There are two flavors that I can tolerate: Strawberry Protein shake with Blueberries, and Vanilla protein shake with Blueberries. For my morning snack, I've made a vanilla protein shake with strawberries, so we'll see how that goes. I will get a free lunch at the ProClub today…I found a coupon in my startup package for a free shake and free protein, and that expires at the end of the month, so I thought I better go ahead and use it!

Too Few Calories yesterday

2008-06-16T10:49:00.001-07:00

Morning weight: 189.2lbs

I underconsumed yesterday. I never thought I would hear myself say that, but its true. I had my normal morning shake with berries and peanut butter. But at lunchtime we were watching the European Soccer games at a bar with friends and all I had was 4-5oz of grilled chicken with no shake. I did have half a protein bar about an hour later to try to compensate, but it wasn't enough. The rest of my day was on plan but I essentially missed the calories from a morning snack and half of my shake calories at lunch.

It was not a good idea. I had trouble getting up this morning despite great sleep and a good amount of it too (8.5 hrs)…and when I woke up I had a bit of a headache…it went away quickly after I had my morning shake, but clearly being under on calories was not a good thing. So I guess I will continue to choke down the shakes and protein bars. '

At least the weather this past weekend was good and Lane and I got to take Lucy out for two long walks, which helped me to get my step count high for the two days. Today I'll do a 30 minute run and then a 30 minute bike ride. Hopefully by getting back on meal plan today I will have enough energy.