I just discovered virtual cycling videos on YouTube! I’ve done enough real-life cycling that the first one I tried was pretty immersive. Gonna put my new handy-dandy tablet holder on the recumbent bike tonight and try another one!
2 week weigh-in, 270. I’ve been told that this is mostly water weight, but still excited.
Lunches can be challenging for me because I’m trying for lots of protein per day and most soups don’t have enough. Most days I bring a big salad with protein (can of tuna, chicken, turkey) but even that involves a level of planning I’m not always able to do. I try not to eat tuna too many times per week because of mercury, so I need to make sure I have protein sources.
I’ve been snacking on edamame a lot, which is a big hit of protein and fiber. But then I worry about too much soy…
I started back at crossfit this week and I’m crazy sore. We did “deck of cards” the other day, where each suit was a different exercise (e.g., hearts are burpees, clubs are kettlebell swings, spades are goblet squats, diamonds are situps). The coach shuffled the deck then drew cards one at a time, and we’d have to do whatever suit plus card value it was. 8 burpees, 4 goblet squats, etc. All face cards were 10 reps. So we ended with I think 94 reps of each once we’d gotten through the whole deck. Oh, and each ace was a 200-meter run. Great workout, but hard!
I’ve dropped 50 pounds since August, and I’ll likely get another 30 off by summer.
I’ve overhauled my eating and exercising habits. Don’t call it a diet (a special course of food to which one restricts oneself): it’s a diet, (the kinds of food that a person, animal, or community habitually eats).
I used an online calculator to figure out my basal metabolic rate, and I’ll eat at least that much a day plus maybe 200 calories. So typically, at minimum, 1850 calories a day – which is a lot of food when the bulk of that is lean proteins, good fats, leafy greens, and fruit. I went zero tolerance on alcohol for the first three months, and that was huge (calorie-wise) for me. Now I’ll have half a glass of red wine a few nights a week, but that’s fine compared to the cases of beer and handles of booze I used to put down in a month. I’m still zero tolerance on soda. I drink water, coffee, green tea, and yerba mate – pretty much in that order. Juice is too high in calories for my daily goals. I’d rather eat the apple.
Workouts have been a gigantic component of my progress so far. I want to look *and *feel good, so why shred all of this fat if I’m not going to find some muscle underneath it all when it’s down to a healthy, maintainable percentage? Muscle burns calories all day long too, and I think resistance training is too often overlooked in a long-term weight loss plan.
To that end, I’m about two weeks away from wrapping up my second 90 days of P90x classic. About 45 days in to the first round, I started a doubles hybrid program mixing in P90x3 and 30 minute Insanity workouts. So six nights a week, I’m working out for an hour and a half to two hours. This was my couch time / my internet time / my Netflix marathon time, and I don’t regret leaving it largely behind. I was really proud of myself the first day that I was able to do free-hanging, unassisted pull-ups and chin ups again. I lost that ability somewhere in the fog of my undergrad years a decade ago. Now I’m busting out more than I did at my high school athlete peak.
I’ve got enough occasional aches and pains that I think I could get an Aleve sponsorship, but I started out at a maintainable pace, with the proper weight selection, and I modified some high-impact moves for the first couple months to ease my knees into this fresh hell, and it is working.
I’m not a fitness guy, and I’ve got nothing to sell, this is just what I’m doing now, and it’s working for me. Your mileage may vary.
Sardines and salmon eat lower on the food chain and contain less mercury. The better sardine brands (packed in olive oil) are really excellent – especially if you already like tuna. Garbanzo beans and quinoa are an easy (and filling) way to bump up the protein intake too.
It seems that my last set of scales was lying to me before they broke. 
I’ve just purchased a new set and weighed myself at 20 stone. :eek: A quick Google and it seems that weight gain is a side-effect of the medicine I’ve been taking for my eye infection.
Exercise isn’t the driver for most weight loss itself, but I find that it is really important for me to exercise since it puts me in the right frame of mind to control my diet. It’s a complementary thing, it tempers my desire to snack.
We totally share the same thoughts there. could’ve said it any better
Well. shit. Now I’m in a #)(@#*#(*# walking cast thing (what I call a Frankenboot) for my damned PTTD, with an MRI being scheduled to see if it’s ruptured. :mad: This in not in my trip prep plans. Doc says no recumbent bike for the time being.
On the positive side, I bought an exercise peddler to use under my desk at work a few months ago, and I’m going to take it home and set it up on a table as an arm bike. I’ve got to do SOMETHING for cardio!
up to a half stone gone 
Jan been OK, not feeling that its “hard” or anything yet. Exercise dropped off a little in latter half of month due to work etc, but as long as I get back to it I suppose it’s no biggie as the diet portion of the plan alone gets it done.
Cant really tell ive lost any weight apart from scale reading, but 1/2 a stone isn’t that much.
That’s kind of how I feel about ironing: starting it up feels like the heaviest chore ever. Then I start ironing. Then I put the board, iron and basket away and if any of my relatives are around they ask “what did you leave?” “
What did you mean, what did I leave? I did it all!”
Now if I could ever find an exercise like that…
Weighed in at 79kg (my highest ever) after Christmas, down to 77.4 now, but there’s a relatively high risk I’ll have to move to eating out every meal. Portion control is my friend, portion control is my friend, portion
I’ve found that too much ironing resurrects the RSI I had with computer mice.
Guys! She passed out from hunger! 
Good news/bad news: extreme depression has me not eating much. Not a long-term strategy, and not good for weight lifting. But hey, flat stomach!
YAY! I went for the follow-up after the MRI on my foot, and there is no tendon rupture! So, three more weeks in the boot thingie, during which time I am to transition to a regular shoe as I can tolerate it.
And I can ride the recumbent bike!
And I had a follow-up on an MRI for a foot injury I got in July, and it’s fractured. I have to wear orthotic inserts for 4 weeks, and if that doesn’t make it heal, I’ll have to have surgery. A boot would have helped at the time of injury, if the ER doctor had taken my word for it that it wasn’t just sprained.
Aw, crap, Alice The Goon! I hope the orthotics enable you to avoid surgery.
Thanks, freckafree, I appreciate that. I hope your foot heals quickly and without complications. Foot injuries are the worst when you’re trying to be active and have a healthy lifestyle.
I’m having a hard time with the inserts. They slide down my shoe to match my shoe’s instep, leaving the heel loose and giving me blisters as I walk. This does not seem normal. But I’m seeing my podiatrist tomorrow about it and hope to find a solution.
On a positive note, down 46 pounds since June!
Congrats Alice The Goon!
Final weigh-in for January, 260.4 down almost 18 pounds. I promised myself I can buy a digital camera for my microscope when I get down to 225. Can’t weight!
Since this post I’ve kept making progress – mostly strength gains. I’ve signed myself up for the Chicago Tough Mudder in May. I’ve already got the upper body strength to complete the course, so I’m going to keep plugging away at cardio till then with a goal of jogging six consecutive miles at a good pace and without being wiped out.
Checking in!
I’m down another 10 pounds since this post. I’ve been frustrated lately because my weight loss has been slowing somewhat, but breaking through the 250-pound mark this morning was immensely satisfying.
I know that it doesn’t -really- count until I normalize out below 250 rather than just weighing in there at my lightest first thing in the morning, but I’ve still had a smile on my face all day. This summer I’m going to go to Busch Gardens and take a victory lap on all the roller coasters that I was too fat for last time I went.
My update…
Well, I’ve dropped below the 65kg goal I mentioned last, and have been as low as 63.9kg, but am about 700g up from that today.
I’m a bit frustrated that this process hasn’t been paying off in health dividends for me… I’ve had my first fibromyalgia relapse in about a decade and am struggling with the fatigue that brings. My daily step count is about a third less than it was late last year, but I’m still maintaining a 10k/day minimum most days.
I’ve had weird buzzing sensations in my hands, feet and legs, and that’s earned me two sets of blood tests that show everything is fine (yay!), and a referral to a neurologist. I can’t get in until May, so I’m just waiting that out now.
My doctor told me to stop losing weight because of the buzzing sensation. I considered his advice and decided to mostly ignore it and I’m still going to press on to my goal of 60kg. It’s less than 5kg below my current weight, so it’s not like it’s an enormous drop, and the doctor didn’t seem to think the weight loss and buzzing were connected anyway (I think his concerns were that I was going to push too hard to get my weight down). I have decreased my weekly weight loss goal from 1kg to .25kg, which gives me a less strict kilojoule goal to aim for.
I went to the gym for the first time this week (what did I say about gyms not being for me a few weeks ago?). My weight is in the healthy range on the BMI scale but my body fat percentage is still in the obese range (31%). I think the only way I can fix this is through -sigh- exercise. The first session went well,but it will be a few weeks before I really know if this is working for me, especially with fibromyalgia raising its ugly head again.