Lean and mean

How I made weight for my race

The big story this week is my weight and nutrition.  I was whining about being ‘jiggly-fat’ last episode so I did what I do when something is important, I focused on it, came up with a plan and executed.  And over the last few weeks and have dropped from a high of 196 pounds in June to just over 180 this morning.  I intend to go into my target race in the mid 170’s.

“Oh my Gosh Chris!” the enquiring masses inquire, “How on Earth did you do it? Did you find a magic pill? Did you do Paleo? Are you a Vegan? What is your secret?”

Well, yeah, sorry, turns out the secret is exercise and eating healthy and consciously.  But specifically here are the steps:

1. Commit to the change or the goal. Whether it’s weight loss or exercise or anything most people aren’t committed so they fail after a couple days.  Another principle here is to expect it to be difficult at times, especially in the beginning.  For any project involving change you go through 3 phases.  First, in the early phase it’s extremely uncomfortable but you can usually get through that because you have the momentum from your initial commitment.  The second phase is actually the trickiest because you’re still uncomfortable but you’ve lost your initial commitment. The third phase is where you internalize the change and it becomes part of your ‘normal’.  You can still relapse after that but there will be reverse resistance to change. My point is to get an understanding of these phases into your big brain so you can have the appropriate expectations and strategies.
2. Step two for me was to get a coach.  I’m going to get Rachel on the show to talk about methodologies, but for me she didn’t have to do much because I was committed and already knew the basic principles of clean eating.  Where she came in handy was to tweak some of my nutritional balances and hold me accountable.
3. The diet itself that I’ve been following is fairly unremarkable.  I eat 2,000 calories a day.  I log all my food.  I weigh in each morning when I’m home.
   1. I eat healthy food with lots of vegetables, fruits and leafy green things.  It’s not any of the current, popular, easy-to-label, cult diets.
   2. Of course the definition of a diet is what you don’t eat.  My don’t eat list includes:

i.    Beer, wine or any alcohol.

ii.    Dairy products for the most part.

iii.    Bread and pasta for the most part.

iv.    My standard, suburban ‘too lazy to make dinner pick up the phone’ options

1. Pizza, Chinese, Chipotle…etc.

v.    Most packaged foods.

vi.    Stuff I never ate anyhow, like soda, candy, and, yes, my nemesis potato chips.

1. I’m not slavishly anti-dairy or anti-meat I just try to minimize it, and keep it clean, so I can stay within my 2,000 calories.

4. Step four is planning.  If you know you’ve got a certain calorie total and you want to fill it with healthy food you do have to think ahead and do some preparation and procurement.  This is especially true for me where I have been traveling extensively for the last few weeks.  I have to do my best to avoid the situation where I’m trapped without food and starving while surrounded by opportunities to make poor nutritional decisions.
5. Step five is just to execute every day.  Get up and focus on what you are going to do that day to meet your plan, which at the end of the day will get you to your goal.

Let me take a shot at addressing some obvious questions.

First, how did I come up with 2,000 calories and how do I log my food?

• For my daily calorie count I just used the MyFitnessPal wizard to come up with a number that makes sense.  I know from experience with my activity level, age, size and other factors that a number somewhere between 1500 and 2500 calories is a good diet number for me.
• Since I’m in training right now 1500 calories would be a starvation diet for me and not appropriate.  I’m trying to meet a race goal and that means fueling properly not damaging myself.
• The bottom line is that it really doesn’t matter what number you pick.  Use the wizard and start with a number in the middle of the recommended range. You can adjust it as you go. It’s just a target.  If you can get within plus or minus 300 calories a day, that’s great.
• The problem with the calorie targets is that people start to game it.  They forget the point of eating healthy and start playing games, like “If I skip lunch I can have a bowl of Ben and Jerry’s.  The calorie count is just a ruler to use to make sure you’re in the neighborhood of your goals and to give you some boundaries to make eating decisions on.
• Focus in eating well not weight loss.

I log all my food, as best I can in MyFitnessPal.  You have to be careful because some of the food definitions that people have added are totally wrong.

A couple time saving tips:

• Eat the same thing for a major meal and you can use the quick tools to copy from that meal to today’s diary entry – saving you, for instance to re-enter 5 individual supplements that you take every day.
• If there is something complex that you eat frequently like a smoothie or a big salad create a ‘recipe’ for them so you don’t have to enter the individual ingredients every time.
• Get the MyFitnessPal App on your phone and use the barcode scanner for things that come in packages like Almond milk, nuts, hummus, health bars, etc.  These will quickly give you the manufacture’s nutrition break down.
• If you get stuck just estimate by searching for something similar or plug in some total calories.
• I gave Rachel access to my food diary so she can hold me accountable and make suggestions.

Another question you might have is what am I eating? What does my typical day look like?

• Breakfast for me is a bowl of oatmeal with blueberries, raw almonds and honey.  This is what I’ve always eaten and I didn’t need any change here.  Rachel suggested adding some healthy fats but I’m not doing that for breakfast.  The other big change she influenced me into was cutting my coffee intake to 1-2 cups.  This was a rough transition for me and took about a week for me to feel normal.
• I eat a couple pieces of fruit during the morning.
• Lunch for me is some kind of salad.  The one change Rachel gave me was to get some more protein into my lunch.  I’ve been adding some almond milk mixed with vegan protein powder.  It give you better balance and makes you feel fuller.
• During the afternoon I eat some more fruit and maybe a health bar of some sort.
• For dinner I usually have about 800 calories left which is a nice sized dinner.  I’ll eat some sort of healthy vegetable dish. Fortuitously, my daughter who is home from college decided to go vegan for the month and I came home to some wonderful experiment every night I was at home.  It’s great.
• Sometimes I still do a little binge eating but when I do I try to make it healthy – like one night a sat on the couch and ate a whole container of red pepper hummus with yellow beans form my garden. I was over my calorie quota for the day but they were good calories so it didn’t really matter.

What have I done to stay on target while traveling?

• The last couple weeks I brought food with me in my carry-on.  Including salads from my garden in throw-away containers.  I also stocked up on stop-gap foods like cliff bars and other bars and I threw some vegan protein powder in a baggie.
• This past week I opted to stay at an extended-stay type hotel with a kitchenette so I could cook my own meals.  I also rented a car so I could go to the grocery store (as well as get to a track for my workout).
• When I did have to eat a business meal in a restaurant I got whatever version of grilled fish salad plate they had with a veggy side.  For lunches you can get away with a grilled chicken salad or even a Cobb salad and it won’t do too much damage.

A big tip for you would be to focus on eating healthy not on losing weight.  If you screw up and fall off the wagon for a meal don’t stress about it just start from where you are and try to do better next time.

One key benefit I have is that I’m in training so some of my workouts burn 2,000 – 3,000 calories. I’m only running 4 days a week, but even one of my step up runs burns 1,000 calories.  This makes it easy for me to lose weight quickly just by eating healthy.  I already have the calorie burn and deficit.

The big question is how do I make this sustainable?  I don’t know the answer.  I asked Rachel and she just said ‘keep doing what you’re doing’.

We’ll see what happens if and when I start to work the beer back in!