Seventeen pounds. O.o
I've lost seventeen pounds since my last doctor's appointment six months ago. IIRC, I first played KS and started trying to lose weight sometime around late March/early April. I've been naturally losing two or three pounds between doctor's visits for some time now, so accounting for that, I've dropped 12-13 pounds over the past few months.
Holy sh*t,
it's working.
The real kicker? I haven't actually exercised for quite a while now.
I've been dealing with wonky work schedule stuff due to a bureaucratic screw-up on the part of my superiors, and haven't had the morale to get up and do it like I should. Which means most of that weight loss is due solely to my diet.
Oh...and speaking of which, I'm on a diet. :p I thought I'd talk about that a bit in here, since AFAIK the thread has so far been focused mostly on the exercise side of things.
For those of you who are curious, the diet I'm on is a calore-based diet - the intent is to reduce calorie intake as much as is reasonably possible without starving myself. I got started on it after reading Fitness for Dummies, and here's what I took away from it:
-The human body, on average, burns somewhere around 2,000-2,500 calories a day to maintain its own metabolism and vital functions, with pluses or minuses either way depending on how big your body mass is and how much you exercise. This is the reason why all those nutritional labels are marked "based on a 2,000-calorie diet" or the like.
-One pound of fat is equal to about 3,500 calories.
-Body fat buildup is mostly dependant on calories - not so much on the fat content of what you eat. The idea is simple - if you consume more calories than you burn in a day, you gain weight. If you burn more than you consume, you lose weight.
-If you want to lose weight, you need to A> reduce your daily calorie intake, and B> increase your daily calorie burn. The former is done by eating intelligently, the latter via exercise.
In this case, "eating intelligently" doesn't just mean reducing the *amount* you eat to reasonable levels (don't pig out); it also means watching *what* you eat. Basically, reduce or eliminate high-calorie foods, and replace them with low-calorie alternatives. If you're hungry, don't eat those big fat pieces of high-calorie pizza - eat a couple of sandwiches instead and you could walk away with half the calories consumed.
PAY ATTENTION to the nutritional labels on the foods you buy, and note just how many calories you're consuming - and how many you could afford to shed. Once I read up about it all in the book, I started going through all the stuff I ate on a regular basis, and was downright *shocked* at how many calories I was consuming above and beyond the normal 2,000-2,500 range. Those peanut-butter-on-waffle sandwiches I'd often have for breakfast? 400 calories *each*. Two of them to start the day and I'm already up to 800 calories.
That big bag of Doritos I spent most of the day grazing on instead of eating real meals? 1800+ calories - that's over half a pound of fat in one container.
Once I knew what to aim for and what to avoid, I found it wasn't all that hard to switch to lower-calorie alternatives. That waffle breakfat I mentioned? Now my daily breakfast consists of two sausage links (each wrapped in a slice of whole wheat bread like a half-sandwich) and two or three eggs' worth of Egg Beaters (the yolkless, cholesteraol free egg stuff you get in a carton). Calorie total - about 400 or so. I chopped half the calorie intake off my breakfast, and frankly I like the sausage better than I do the peanut butter as a breakfast food.
My current diet involves four meals a day, each around the 350-400 calorie mark thanks to smart food choices and the stripping away of anything I stand to do without. Add to that another 200-300 calories for daily beverage intake of things like milk and V8, as well as the occasional (very) light snack before bed, and I'm coming in at anywhere from 1700-1900 calories a day. It may not seem like much below the 2000-2500 mark, but every little bit counts - every day I get away with eating only 1800 calories, I'm losing at least 200 calories' worth of fat. Add that up day after day after day and it really does count.
Of course, the other side of all this is that you have to know when to *stop*. Your body *needs* a minimum amount of caloric intake every day - and if it doesn't get it, Bad Things happen. If your calorie intake drops too low (around 1,200, according to my book) then your body goes into conservation mode - you rmetabolism drops as your body struggles to avoid what it perceives as starvation, and you stop losing weight and start having health problems (ever seen that episode of Metalocalypse?). Lowering your calorie intake does *not* mean you should stop eating - that's just about the worst thing you can do in this instance. You *need* to eat right to stay healthy, and as I said, starving yourself just makes your body fight your weight-loss attempts. Instead, seek out low-calorie foods that will allow you to eat like you need to while still reducing your calorie intake.
The other element of weight loss is exercise, but as the book points out, it's actually the *minor* part. The simple fact of the matter is that working doesn't burn that many calories in and of itself, at least not compared to your caloric intake. The idea of pigging out and then burning off the excess calories you just ate? It
does not work. While exercise obviously burns calories, it doesn't burn *enough* of them to be able to compensate for bad eating habits the way many people think it can.
An example: walking at 3mph on flat ground burns about 240 calories an hour. That's enough to burn off, say, a lean roast beef sandwich without much in the way of trimmings, but not nearly enough to burn off that high-calorie grease-fest of a combo meal from Mc Donalds.
With regards to weight loss, exercise is best used as an extention of proper dieting. Cardio exercise directly burns calories; meanwhile, exercising to build physical strength increases the size of your muscles, which increases your body's metabolism (in other words, stronger muscles = more calories burned naturally every day). Neither really adds up to all that much on a daily basis (unless you enjoy spending 3-4 hours a day running on the treadmill), but as with a calorie reducing diet, it creates small daily increases that *add up* to gradual weight loss over time.
That's the important thing to realize about weight loss - it does *not* happen quickly. Doing it right means making small changes that slowly lower your weight over a long period of time, and then maintaining those changes *over* that long period of time without letting them slip. Crash diets and running yourself into the ground at the gym won't give the results you want - the human body just doesn't work that way. Put in a reasonable amount of work every day, and try to be patient.
Anyone else want to throw their thoughts in on this?
On a side note, one change I made to my diet was to eliminate white bread completely and replace it with whole wheat bread. Whole weat food products contain complex carbohydrates - they provide long-term energy and make you feel fuller longer (mmm, fiber). White bread and other 'processed' grain products contain mostly simple carbohydrates, just like sugars - the kind that gives you quick energy but leaves you feeling all 'bleh' afterwards. They're both about the same calorie-wise, but choosing whole wheat foods over processed grains may help you feel better overall in terms of energy.
although on the flip side, people you do meet have a 50/50 chance around here of trying to knife you).
Might crack out the ol' kevlar
Important note: kevlar body armor does *not* stop knife blades.
Kevlar is meant to stop bullets, but due to the way it works, a knife stab will pierce right through the fabric and into your abdomen. I recommend ceramic plate armor, or perhaps one of those hyper-padded anti-attack-dog suits.
(really do appreciate it)