Weight Loss Journal, Entry number one

Okay, it is a little comical to keep writing these "Nothing can stop me now" posts, only to log back in 6 months later and have to admit I've actually gained weight! I think I was 253 when I last posted six months ago, and I'm about 268 now. Up 15. At last year's physical, I was 248, which means I am up 20. So, if one definition of "insanity" is doing the same thing over and over while expecting different results, then I am afraid I'm a nut job.

Oh well.

So what can I do differently? Eat three moderate meals and three small snacks and nothing in between? Hmm, not exactly rocket science. What else? Go to OA meetings? A possibility. Walk daily? Sure. Um. There, that's a plan.

And...drum roll, please...document the entire thing in this blog. Seriously. If writing is helpful (one of the OA "tools," then writing a blog that might be helpful to others has got to be helpful too. So this is entry number one. More soon. :-)

Okay, let's be real: no, that is not my arm. But let's not be disparaging. The guy in the picture is obviously working hard, and if he keeps it up, someday his arm will undoubtedly be as large as mine.

My thigh, that is.

I am shooting for 245 by May 30. I am about five pounds away. My more astute readers will realize this means I haven't really lost anything since the conclusion of my LAST bet. Not true! I have lost the five pounds I immediately gained back since the conclusion of my last bet and the commencement of this one.

Enough math. The burning questions is this: how am I going to pull off losing five pounds in four days?

First, let's discuss the buffer. I learned from the last bet that if I throw on the sweats and do one hour on the eliptical in the cardio zone I can sweat off four pounds. But I have also learned that a crisis at work can easily prevent me from getting to the gym in the morning, so I can't bank on that. I need a legitimate strategy.

Here are the "silver" bullets:

• Write everything down 
• Eat only 39 WW points
• Drink, drink, drink -- water, not wine
• Move, move, move -- walk, cut the yard, go up and down the stairs
• Play ultimate with the kids
• Hit the speedbag

I think I need to plan to rev the metabolism every two hours (on the even hours) for at least 10 minutes. And drink one cup of water or tea.. Okay, then, two more bullets:

Every two hours (on the even hours):

• Do 10 minutes brisk activity
• Drink 8 ounces of water or tea

Okay, so that sounds like a plan, then. I'll update this -- probably, maybe -- throughout the weekend to keep you posted.

The Time Has Come: The Healthy Elvis Diet

I have concluded my final diet bet. It was a draw. Now I have to figure out how to motivate myself to get back on track and again begin moving down to 208.

In other words, it's time to resurrect my own diet creation: The Healthy Elvis Diet.

The Healthy Elvis Diet began with a simple premise. Anyone can lose weight if they make healthy versions of the foods they normally eat. I remember thinking to myself, "Even Elvis." And just like that, a diet was born.

I bought a book of Elvis's favorite recipes and healthified them. The obvious place to begin was the king's signature sandwich: peanut butter and 'nana. I substituted whole wheat for Wonder, natural salt-free peanut butter for Skippy, and the toaster for the skillet full of butter. Voila.

That is the first step in this diet. Eat a healthified peanut butter and banana sandwich every day. I like mine at breakfast, but you can have it any time, really.

Do that for a week, then we'll go on to step two. Oh yeah, and drink 48 ounces of water a day. Just those two things: PBB and H2O.

Lose [the bet] to lose [the weight]

Okay, the time has finally come to say "Enough is enough."

You can not lose weight and keep it off by crazy dieting. Everybody knows this, but most of us -- myself included -- still harbor the secret desire to drop the weight fast and then get sensible. But I (and I suspect more than a few of you) are living proof it doesn't work that way.

The last weight bet I'll ever make concludes on September 2. I have 15 or so pounds to drop between now and then. And you know what? I could do it. I'm serious. I could eat cabbage soup, work out like Michael Phelps and drench layer after layer of sweatclothes, and I could drop that insane amount. And even as I say it, there's a part of me egging me on, saying "Yeah, man. Do it! Win!" But in this case, losing (the weight) is losing (the war).

To be healthy, we have to...be healthy. We have to eat in moderation. Not too much, not too little. We have to exercise regularly -- and at a healthy intensity and duration. And until we embrace this truth, we will never reach a healthy weight long enough to enjoy it. We will always bounce back up.

So I am refusing to do it. I am turning my back on the cash (glorious cash) and the short-term satisfaction of Pyrrhic victory. Instead, I am cutting my losses (literally and figuratively) and going back to slow and steady. Going back to counting points and tracking what I eat on weightwatchers.com. Going back to trying to be healthy -- not just thinner.

In other words, I have to be the loser to actually lose and thereby win.

The Second Weigh-In: The Diet Bet Dilema Continues

This is just a quick update on, yes, another diet bet. And no, it's not "my friend," it's me. And yes, I have to drop an unrealistic amount or weight to win, thereby violating healthy weight loss rule #1, never try to lose an unrealistic amount of weight.

Be that as it may, here's the scoop: I have to weigh 247 1/2 by Tuesday, July 5. Last I weighed, I was 258. So once again, it's 10 pounds (10 1/2 actually) with 4 days to do it. It reminds me of a line from a Bob Dylan song:

"Here I sit so patiently,
waiting to find what price,
you have to pay to get out of
going through all these things twice."

I guess I'll go with the winning strategy from one of my earlier entries.

After this, though, all bets are off. Seriously. For a while anyway. The goal is to lose slowly and to keep the weight off. Crazy diets and diet bets are not the best way to achieve that. So this is it. The last diet bet.

Blogging and jogging for bucks

Okay, so let's make this interesting for my homies in Corporate America. It is not enough that I am slogging through the early morning fog, knees throbbing and sweat raining down, in an effort to shed unwanted pounds. (If the slow, steady tedium of diet and daily exercise is agonizing on the participant, how much more so must it be for the spectator.) To keep readers, I need to spice up this blog, add some hard numbers and inject massive doses of motivation, to make it more engaging for you -- and potentially more lucrative for me.

So I've added stats. I've started with the birth of this blog, and I am tracking the following figures:

• How many days the blog has been up


• How many posts I've published in that time


• How much weight I've lost


• How much money I've earned from people clicking on the ads


• The rate in lbs./wk I'm losing


• How much money I've earned in $/lb.

Goal-setting

My goals for this little experiment are as follows:

• Lose 60 lbs.


• Maintain a rate of 1.5 lbs/wk


• Earn, via ads, $10/lb.

The last goal seems the most ambitious, but that's where you come in. Everytime you check out my latest, ever-more-motivating entry, click on all four ads in the upper righthand corner. (You have to use the down arrow each time to get to new ads -- a usability faux pas, if you ask me.) Then send a link to the blog to everyone you know who is even remotely interested in losing weight and getting in shape -- and remind them to click on the ads. You can explain to them that it is an experiment in grassroots e-commerce.

I know $10/lb. sounds tough. But together we can do this. :-)

What's my motivation?

Let's see. I started this blog on June 9, 2008. In the 36 days since then, I've made 9 entries, lost 7.5 lbs., and earned $11.00 from people clicking on the ads. That's a pound a week and thirty cents a day.

I am getting neither skinny nor rich.

So what's missing? Is it motivation? I have the bet. (Yes, if you didn't see through the pathetic charade, my friend in the bet is me.) I definitely have the desire to be lean and Adonis-like. I wouldn't mind Armstrongian stamina and buns of steel. So what's the problem.

It's hard.

Yes, losing weight and getting in shape -- particularly after a decade-long hiatus -- is no piece of cake. (Ah, cake....) Let's face it, being half-Italian, and growing up to the battle cry of "Mangia," makes everything short of a plateful of pasta look like an infant's portion. Three ounces of something is meant to be mopped up with an extra piece of Italian bread. And why drink 6 glasses of water a day when you can just as easily swill down that much chianti.

But I am hanging tough. I am down 20 pounds from my all-time high of 280. Despite an aching right knee, I still hit the road four or five mornings a week. I even scaled Mount Monadnock last weekend (hence the sore knee).

So I just keep forging ahead. Slow -- painfully slow -- and, for the most part, steady.

So what's my motivation? I am just too damned stubborn to throw in the towel. I am headed for 208, and I intend to get there one painful pound at a time.

Round One is a Tie, Round Two Begins

So my friend and his accomplice both achieved their goals. Yes my friend managed to drop the 10 pounds and tip the scales at 255. The competition logged her second 4-pound weight loss week to exceed her goal by two pounds. Both win, the jackpot rides, and round two is under way.

This time they have five weeks over which they must maintain the rate of loss they picked for the first round. That means by August 4 my friend must lose 7.5 pounds to tip the scale at 247.5.

But while I have focused primarily on my friend, it is his opponent who we can all learn from. The keys to her success are a virtual how-to for losing weight in a way that leads to life-long maintenance. They are as follows:

• Pick a fitness regimen and stick to it -- rigorously.
• Eat a moderate, healthy meal or snack every three hours or so.
• Occasionally cut yourself some slack and enjoy the things you usually avoid.
• Be consitent. Five or six good days and one or two so-so days, over time, will get you to goal. Three or four excellent days will, over time, never be enough to undo three or four horrible days.

My friend was more than a little surprised he pulled off the tie, but he knows he's gonna have to copy his opponent's strategy if he wants to keep up with her for the long haul.

Congratulations to both!

The night before

A quick update on "my friend's" weight bet. It ends tomorrow. If he has lost 18 pounds, dropping from 275 to 257, he wins. (At least half the cash.) That means he's had to lose 10 pounds in the past four days. What it really means, is that he will have sweated off a bunch tomorrow morning.

His plan for the morning: many cotton sweats and roadwork. If it stays hot, like it is tonight, he stands an okay chance. Maybe.

Anyway, once this madness is over, he can go back to slow, steady, Point-counting weight loss.

Wish him luck. He's gonna need it.

Two Days till Weigh-In

It is Saturday morning, and my friend -- the one with the weight bet -- is sweating. Not literally yet. He had 10 pounds to lose and four days to do it. Now he has two days and no scale. (He keeps it at work.)

So what's the plan? Starve himself? No way. That'll backfire. Saturday or Sunday night will come around, and he'll snap and pizza, beer and chips will fly into his mouth like planets, stars and asteroids getting sucked into a black hole. So he's just gonna to eat light, avoiding sodium. And he's going to drink. A lot. NOT beer. Water. Probably not diet soda, either. That somehow seems to make him hungrier than drinking water. Maybe that's just psychological. Maybe it's all just psychological.

So the keys are these:

• Eat light, lots of fruits and vegies.
• Avoid sodium.
• Drink water like a big, thirsty sponge.
• Move. Walk, work around the house, jumping jacks. Anything.
• Don the sweats at 4:30 Monday morning and SWEAT.

Every bullet is key, but the last will be the clincher. He'll be going to the weigh-in pretty much blind, not knowing if he made it or not, so the morning sweatshop session will be key.

And if he loses, it's not the end of the world. He actually likes his competition and would be happy to see her succeed. But he would be even happier for her to lose all but .5 pounds of her goal and for him to exceed his by the same amount.

Either way, he's going for it.

Can't Lose Weight? Wanna Bet?

Losing weight and getting in shape can improve your health, increase your lifespan, reduce the risk of cancer, diabetes, heart disease and stroke. It can improve your relationships, let you live a fuller, more satisfying life. It can increase your confidence and, as a result, allow you to earn more and progress more quickly in your field.

And yet somehow, while all these benefits may fail to motivate us, bet someone $100 you can do it, and, BAM, you are all over it!

I am the greatest transgressor when it comes to this. I made my first of countless diet bets while I was in high school at Choate. When my plans to become a football hero were dashed by a nasty broken leg -- one of those twisting, shattering, full-cast-for-six-months kind of breaks -- I managed to pack on some extra pounds. When the piano player in my band, Caruso and the Busboys, said there was no way I could get back in shape for our big gig at the end of the month, I bet him a bass guitar I'd lose 20 pounds in 4 weeks.

And I did.

"So what's wrong with that?" you ask. Nothing. Except that I gained it right back. This has been a theme ever since. Gain weight. Get fed up. Make a bet. Loss the weight, collect the prize, and start the upward climb almost immediately.

But I have learned something in the process. With that first bet for the bass guitar, I lost 20 pounds in 4 weeks and gained it back in...five? I don't remember exactly, but it came back fast. The last bet I made was a couple of years ago. I lost about 30 in 3 months, and it took me a whole year and a half to get back to square one.

So what's the significance of this? "It's still a yo-yo," you say, "just a slow yo-yo." The significance is that you have to slow down before you stop. And what I have finally learned is that the thing you have to slow down is the rate at which you lose the weight.

This is America. We are the land of instant gratification. The land of silver bullets. The land of no payments till 2009. Unfortunately, this is not how the body works. Millions of years of evolution have hardwired various survival mechanisms into our DNA. One such mechanism is the "don't starve" mechanism. That's the scientific name, I believe. Simply put, our bodies will do what they can to prevent us from starving to death. That means, at the first sign of starvation, the body turns down the furnace. In other words, our metabolism slows so we need fewer calories. That is how prisoners of war are able to survive for years on bowls of gruel. The body slows down when we cut our intake dramatically.

The only way to circumvent this is to lose weight slowly. The slower the better. One to two pounds a week max.

There is a lot more to all of this, but it'll have to wait. I've got to get something to eat.

To be continued...