Welcome to the second part of this post.
It’s been more than 1 month since I posted the first part (Loose weight the healthy way (Part 1/2)). In the end of the first part I said I would probably post this second part the next day. Well, turned out the next month instead! 
Sorry about that!
The ironic thing, is that exercise itself is one of the reasons I didn’t had the time to write this second part. I’ve integrated exercise in my daily routine, so after dinner I’m already feeling tired.
Anyway, back to the topic…
Last time I talked about how I let laziness get into my life, and how I got the motivation to overcome it. This time I’ll talk about what I really do on a day-to-day basis.
First experiment
After that event that triggered my motivation, I started to slowly introduce changes in my daily routine. I think I started the all process in March 2006. I decided to pay some attention to the diet and exercise, but without being extra zealous. The idea was to see what kind of changes I could make in the long run if I just kept at it without overwhelming effort.
For the diet part, I’ve cut down on some foods. Was still eating everything, but whenever possible used common sense to avoid well known bad foods (chips, burgers, etc). I still had those once in a while, but rarely. Maybe at the weekend when going out with friends, etc. Also, since kid that I used to sit down at night (or while in front of the computer), grab a big mug of tea or milk, and stuff myself with cookies. I also learned to avoid that.
I started having more salads and fruit, and reducing drinks with sugar.
For the exercise part, I’ve started running 3-5 times a week. 3 times at least. That was the first thing I did the moment I got home from work. There were days I felt just like staying in the couch after work, so the best thing for those days was to just change clothes and get out of the door without thinking too much. I would arrive from work and in a few minutes I would be running. That’s the best way to do it to get over those lazy days. Don’t think too much…. Just do it. Just get started.
I guess in this case we can use the following quote…
“Eighty percent of success is showing up.”
In this situation it means that if you need to exercise (e.g: run), but you’re feeling lazy… just get out the door, and the rest will take care of itself. I assume the moment you get out the door, you won’t think.. “I’m feeling lazy today. I’ll just get back home and run tomorrow instead”, right ? Well, maybe you can do it… if you don’t have any dignity at all.
One other thing that helps is running with a friend. That makes it harder to skip it. We never want to let down a friend, right ?
Sometimes I would go out running alone, other times with my friend I talked about in the first part of the post. Yes, the same one that “insulted” me. He had the courage to speak the truth. One of my best friends!
Like I said above, I started this routine in March 2006. I exercised for about 45 minutes, mixing running with other exercises (sit ups, pushups, press ups, etc).
That’s no extraordinary amount of exercise, but I was decided to keep going. It wasn’t a “quick fix” (neither the diet, neither the exercise).
I started a exercise log, taking note of the days I exercised, and keeping track of my weight. I knew it would be a slow process, but I wasn’t in any particular rush. I kept doing it, slowly losing weight. I started with 74.5kgs (around 164 lb). After 2 months I lost 4 kgs (~8 lb). Not much I know, but believe me… it makes an hell of a difference in the way we look. I lost fat while gaining muscle, and looking at pictures it looked like I lost 10 kgs (20 lb).
I kept this routine for about 2 years, until early this year, when I moved to Scotland. Overall I was feeling great for someone that works in front of a computer all day.
Second experiment
After moving to Scotland, I had a settling down period where I stopped exercising again, maybe for 2 months. But I was walking to work everyday, so wasn’t that bad. I was walking at least 30 minutes each day.
During that period, I slowly started getting lazy on the diet, and consequently gained weight again. I was cooking for myself, so I was getting wild on the things I like. I simply love pasta and rice, for example. Very caloric foods.
Eventually after settling down, I decided to start exercising again. Getting started wasn’t easy, mainly because of the cold I guess. A lot colder here in Scotland than in Portugal.
This time around I decided to take things to the next level to see what kind of results I would get. I started both a exercise AND a food diary.
I started taking detailed notes of everything, controlling calories intake, and calories burned with exercise.
That was the first time I decided to keep a food diary.
Any books or decent articles about controlling weight will tell you that a food diary is one of the best tools. Normally we don’t have any idea of what we eat, or how many calories we are getting per day. If you never tried keeping a food diary, I dare you to try it for some time. You’ll probably be amazed with the results. Even if you don’t really improve your diet, you will learn valuable lessons, like:
- a better feeling for the right portions (instead of eating until full)
- balanced diet (diversified) ?
- from what foods are you getting most of your calories
It’s hard to keep a food diary. It means you must take note of everything to know your calorie intake. You need to take note of every snack, of everything you eat or drink.
I just did a quick google search while writing this post, and found this:
http://www.nutracheck.co.uk/Library/WeightLoss/fooddiarysuccess_1.html
All true.
Try keeping a food diary and you’ll find out for yourself too. There are plenty of websites that offer food diary tools (some free, some paid for).
One example is http://www.tescotracker.com/ .
If shop at Tesco a lot, it will make your life easier, since it already has a database with their products. I never tried it, but a friend of mine did. Personally I prefer software whenever available, so I didn’t bothered trying a web based solution.
I find Diet Organizer particularly easy to use. You can keep track of the exercise, diet, and weight. Comes with an extensive food database, and you can even add your own foods (or even recipes). Same goes for exercise! Comes with a database of common exercises, but you can add your own.
Also it has a basic diet planner, which can help you loose weight if you stick to it.
Overall it has most of the features you would need, but it still manages to keep it simple enough.
So, like I was saying, I’ve been keeping a food and exercise diary for about 4 months, with amazing results.
Slowly, in 4 months, I’ve lost 9kgs (~20lb) . Note that this was without any crazy diets. What I did was set up a diet plan.
Setting up a basic diet plan is easy. All you have to do is figure out your metabolic rate (calories you need to eat to keep your weight without doing extra exercise), then depending on how fast you want to loose weight, you keep your daily calorie intake below that.
So for my diet plan, I figured out that my metabolic rate is around 2200 calories (you can find online tools to calculate yours), and decided to keep my calorie daily intake 500 below that.
That means that per week, I would be consuming less 3500 (500*7) calories than my body needed to maintain current weight.
I’ve choose 500 because it seems a common value found around the internet.
Search for ” 1lb of fat 500 calories ” in google, and you’ll understand why. On practical terms, means that if you keep your daily intake 500 calories below your metabolic rate, you’ll loose 1 lb per week.
So now do the math… losing 1 lb per week means 4 lb per month. In 4 months that means (4*4=16lb) . As I said above, in 4 months I’ve lost 20lb. I’ve actually lost more weight than I’ve initially set for my diet plan. The reason for that is that I also started exercising a lot more. Taking note of everything motivated me to improve.
My calorie allowance for a day without exercise is around 1700 calories. (2200 – 500). If I exercise that basically means my daily calorie allowance increase. Common sense… If I burn more calories with exercise, I can eat more and still keep within the diet plan.
So the math to calculate your daily calorie allowance is (Metabolic rate + calories burned with extra exercise – diet plan calories )
My diet plan has turned out very reliable so far. I’ve lost more weight than planned because if I exercise, I end up not eating enough calories to make up for the ones I’ve burned exercising. So in average, I’d say my diet plan turned out ~600-700 less calories, instead of 500.
When I started this 4 months ago, my exercise (excluding the walking to work) consisted of 40-50 minutes running. My typical run was about 8 km. After the run, I would occasionally do some exercises (sit ups, push ups, press ups, etc).
About 2 months ago I started increasing the distance once in a while when I was feeling more energetic. I remember one day I did 12 km, a few days after , around 17km, and the next week I did 21 km. That’s half a marathon ! First time I did that. I remember it was on a Monday. Great feeling. Needless to say, I felt sore for a week, but was worth it.
After that half a marathon, I got back to the usual 8km with the ocasional bigger distance without any problems. I remember one week that I ran the usual 8km on Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday… and Friday I did another half a marathon without even feeling sore the day after.
Lately, I’ve permanently increased the distance, and started doing some weight lifting along with the other exercises after running, so my exercise routine has been running 12km, followed by 30-45 minutes weight lifting+several exercises.
I still plan to keep increasing the distance once in a while. The problem is not if I can, but the time it takes. I finally managed to make exercise part of my daily routine, for the worst and for the best. This means I have less time for other things too. If I account for the time I take to exercise and shower, its taking between 90-120 minutes of my day.
But the feeling is great. I haven’t felt this good in a long time, really!
I guess the next thing I’ll need to improve on is my time management skills, otherwise I can’t do anything else.
Conclusion
The conclusion is that looking back to only 4 months ago, I notice a big difference in the way I feel and look.
Slowly, I’ve improved my diet a lot (in both quantity and quality):
- I now eat a lot more fruit and vegetables
- I started making smoothies with fruits and vegetables
- I’ve cut down on meat and meat products
- I’ve cut down a lot on chips and fast food. (Sometimes I spend an entire month without having those)
- I rarely have sweets. Most of the time I snack on fruit while at work
- I’ve replaced some foods for healthier alternatives, or I keep alternating them. For example, I’ve been alternating between dairy milk and soy milk for some time now. Some brands of soy milk actually taste nicely. After a while you start enjoying it. I’ve been drinking the Tesco’s one. Can’t remember the exact name, but its a blue package (not the Value one I think)
- When I have dairy milk Its mostly skimmed or semi-skimmed
- For yogurts, I’ve having low fat ones too
On the exercise side, I managed to squeeze exercise in my life. Still too early to say for sure if I’ll manage to make it a permanent change, but I know I’m on the right direction.
I’ve already over-extended myself with this post. It’s the biggest post so far, and I could still keep going for a little more.
Feel free to contact me or comment. I’ll be glad to write more about this topic or share more personal experiences.
The saying for today is the same one I used last time.
“Motivation is what gets you started. Habit is what keeps you going.”
Check the first part of this post if you haven’t done so yet…
Tags: Diet, exercise, Motivation