Dave Fowler’s Daily Update – It’s Dark Outside

This is the first of my daily updates as promised in my last post where I talked about a sub-optimal approach to fitness and fatloss.

NOTE: The main post of the day is David Wright outlining his fitness plan.

Please go and check it out. He’ll never forgive me if I steal his thunder.

Picture: vanGTO

Monday 1st December 2008

At 4am I hauled my 198 lb carcass out of bed and put on my running gear. I didn’t know what the weather was doing and I wasn’t going to find out because I didn’t want to give it any rational thought.

I stepped outside and immediately felt the cold and the rain in my face. It’s December in England – of course it’s cold and raining.

I fully expected to be running in the pitch black but surprisingly the streetlights were all on – and it was nice that they were on but it really didn’t matter because I was going to be going running this morning come hell or high water.

I’ve been putting it off this last two weeks claiming that I didn’t have the time and I wanted to get my diet sorted first. Well, the diet isn’t quite there yet and not finding the time is a pretty lame excuse.

There were no excuses this morning. I was determined to start the first day of December as I mean to end the month – actively perusing my fitness and fat loss goals.

Woolly hat atop my head, I walked about thirty paces before breaking into a jog, and I didn’t stop until I’d completed a mile and a half.

This first run was a major victory for me. Previous attempts at getting fit have seen me quit my first run half way through and feel discouraged, but I’ve learnt from my past mistakes.

The brisk walking I’ve been doing over the last fortnight has without a doubt ensured that I was able to complete the run without having to stop and catch my breath. My legs didn’t feel fatigued but I felt a niggling twinge in my left butt cheek.

Getting out of bed at four in the morning and going running without any sort of warm-up to speak of, probably isn’t the greatest idea in the world. But it’s something that had to be done today. And I’ve done it.

Don’t forget to go and see Dave Wright who offers up a realistic approach to weight loss and diet.

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Losing Fat The Sub-Optimal Way

Fill your freezer with chicken breast portions and frozen fruit for smoothies because that’s all you’re going to eat for the next year.

Yeah right! I don’t think so somehow.

OK, so those choices can be good and delicious but oh, so, boring, if eaten day after day.

I’ve seen so many fitness sites that tell you to eat a teaspoon of peanut butter with a stick of celery at 10.30 am and then you can treat yourself to dry chicken breast and rice cracker for lunch, I mean, whoop-dee-doo – that’s something to look forward to and no mistake. Not.

Picture: ishdia

As I’m trying to build a sustainable and enjoyable lifestyle rather than embarking on a fad diet regime, there has to be some variety to keep me interested and keep me on plan. My diet, in its broadest meaning, has to include things I like to eat even if they’re not perfectly nutritionally balanced.

Those ‘serious’ about weight loss and fitness will tell you that you NEED an optimal diet. One calculated to the last calorie and comprised of the ideal balance of Carbohydrate, Protein and Fat. Maybe that’s true if you’re setting out to be a semi-professional athlete but if your goals are not quite so lofty and your life doesn’t revolve around fitness and diet then you can chose the next best option – a sub-optimal approach to fitness and diet.

Get Fit – Lose the Fat – Do it the Sub-Optimal way

This still involves making better choices, it still involves making sacrifices and comprises but it’s easier to sustain and the results can be good.

How do I know this? I’ve done it.

Last year I got down from 205lbs to 183lbs taking the sub-optimal route.

I exercised for 30 minutes a day, and I still ate things like bacon sandwiches, tuna mayo, pasta, cake and pretty much anything else I wanted – and best of all I still had sugar in my tea. Woo hoo!

All I had to do was moderate the quantity of food I ate.

So if it worked…. why do I need to lose the weight again?

The problem was not the diet, the exercise or the lifestyle, but more to do with the fact that having been thrown off the horse when I got some bad news about a posting at work, I failed to climb back in the saddle quickly enough. I let my state of mind govern my actions. That’s my Achilles heal. The rest of it worked and worked well and I’m so confident it works, I’ve jumped straight back into it.

How It’s Achieved

The method isn’t super complex…

The daily intake of calories necessary to maintain my weight (6ft, male, 200 lbs) is approximately 2600. I used an online calculator.

To lose a pound of fat I need to burn approximately 3500 calories.

Therefore I need to reduce my calorie intake by 500ish calories a day and exercise enough to burn 500ish extra calories a day to get somewhere near a 2 lb loss each week.

Both of those goals are achievable (for me) and won’t result in me starving myself, depriving myself or working-out for hours on end.

At this point I would stress that you can seriously stall your progress by eating too little and exercising too much. I know this because I’ve done it.

I’m also aware that my analysis above is greatly oversimplified but for what I’m trying to do and the way I’m going about it, it doesn’t need to be an exact science.

The general principle of what I’m trying to do here has already been stated on this site: Eat less, move more.

Ok, so you need to have a rough idea of the caloric content of the foods you’re eating. But it can’t harm to educate ourselves about what we’re consuming, or asking our families to consume. It takes a little while to adjust to these measures especially if you have to research the calorie content of certain foods, but once you’ve done this for your ‘core diet’, you can pretty much work by guestimation and making minor adjustments after that. This is NOT calorie counting though. It’s best guess estimation of portion size – mainly so that you don’t underfeed yourself!

I stress again that this is not an exact science at this level – there’s wriggle room.

Here’s what I want to achieve:

I want to get down from 200 lbs (198 as of yesterday’s weigh-in) to 173 lbs without losing any muscle in the process. I’m looking to lose the weight at the rate of 1.5 to 2 lbs per week through a combination of caloric deficit and moderate exercise. I believe I can do this in 14 weeks but this is an aiming point not a deadline.

Exercise:

• I walk the dogs daily anyway so I’ll continue to do that
• I’ll run three times a week (usually 1.5 miles)
• I’ll do bodyweight exercises three times a week (to maintain what muscle I already have).

Diet:

• I’ll eat three main meals a day
• And three snacks

This will be my baseline to work from not a set of cast iron rules. Remaining flexible is key, so that I can adapt when appropriate. I’ll be throwing in extra bits and pieces for the sake of variety and sanity but first I need to get on with achieving the baseline.

I intend to write about what I’m doing most days. The public scrutiny will keep me honest and the support will keep me on track. The only delay might be in us trying to hive off part of the website to do it, so that the front page isn’t littered with my ramblings.

I’m going to take photos throughout the process and post the pictures up on the site. The plan is I’ll see a change and be motivated to continue. I hope you’ll also see the changes and feel free to comment on what you see. And please do give feedback. Keep in mind though that I can’t alter my genetics! I just have to make the best of what I’ve got.

For what it’s worth I can see beneath the fat to the potential, and that drives me to achieve my goal.

Yes, I’ve got bed head. Yes. I’m pale. No, I won’t be shaving my chest.

And I wore my ‘Boden’ boxer shorts deliberately to take attention away from my love handles.

Without further ado… here are the before pictures:

NOTE: Picture Removeded (apologies)

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