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.

Major Milestone: I am down to 1/8 of a ton

I haven't blogged on Back to the Well, in...well, ten months. But that doesn't mean I haven't been busy.

For the first time in five years I am back down to 250 pounds. How did I do it? Writing down everything I eat and tracking Weight Watcher points. Like Charles Barkley. Also walking and doing the eliptical.

What's next? First, 240. Then 230. After that, 220. Then 210. My ultimate goal is 208, the highest weight allowed by the Marine Corps for a man of my height and age. Why 208? That's a long story. I'll save it for another time.

So here's the plan:

• Write everything in the food journal
• Have 38 points a day
• Walk, run, lift with high reps

I'll write something more entertaining next time. For now, get ready to go out and buy my new novel, A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S GUNFIGHT, coming out in May. I'll write more about that too.

"I Used to be Fat"

Have you ever seen that show on MTV, I Used to Be Fat? I am not usually a fan of the extreme weight loss reality shows (like Biggest Loser), since people who lose weight and keep it off typically lose 1-2 pounds a week -- as opposed to 90 pounds is 100 days. But something about this show reminds me of the single-minded determination I used be able to muster.

My plan is to get to 211. I weighed 266 at the end of 2010, so that means I need to lose 55 pounds. Now I could go on I Used to Be Fat and lose it in a month and a half, but I'm thinking I'll take it a little more leisurely than that.

I will eat 2400 calories a day--600 calories for each of the three thirds of the day: 6-12, 12-6, 6-bedtime. I'll do the 100 Pushups plan and cardio on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, and I'll lift weights Tuesday and Thursday.

I'll divide it into three phases:

• Phase One will be from 266-250.
• Phase Two will be from 250-225.
• Phase Three will be from 225-211.

I'll write about each phase once I figure out what each will entail. :-)

Wei Wu Weight Loss

Okay, this has gotten embarassing. It's like the episode of Friends when Phoebe first tries to visit her father, and she sits there in the front seat of the cab, with Joey and Chandler encouraging her from the back, and she keeps saying, "Okay, so here I go. I'm going. Here I go." And yet she doesn't budge.

That's like me and my recent weight loss attempts. Bold proclamations followed by...nothing. My weight has continued to hover in the 260-270 range.

Still obese.

But now I am changing my tact. The Taoists have a phrase, wei wu wei, which means doing without doing. This is most often taken to mean doing without striving or fretting or over-thinking. In martial arts, it is like the concept of no-mind. Letting your subconscious or muscle memory or whatever do the moves, while your mind remains essentially at peace.

And so that's my new plan: have no plan. Just get healthy.

Not sure how engaging this will be in terms of blog entries. We'll see. You can always comment to let me know.

One more round, Tommy, one more round

Okay, so here I am, back at it. I weigh 266 -- down from the infamous high-point of 280. Finished 10 weeks of Weight Watchers at Work with a net loss of, like, six pounds. (The first half of the session I gained weight, no fault of Weight Watchers, just me.)

So here's the plan:

• Count Points (a Weight Watcher thing)
• Work out everyday at lunch
• Lift twice a week with Josh
• Walk a lot

Not rocket science.

My ultimate goal is 208. Since my current weight is 266, that means I've got 58 pounds to lose. I've set the following milestones to achieve:

• 256
• 248
• 240
• 232 (weighed this briefly -- one week -- in 2006)
• 224 (weighed this in 1995 at Saturn before Josh was born)
• 216
• 208 (weighed this in 1987 before I got married)

Not much more to the plan at this point. But I've got some momentum.

I'll keep you abreast of my progress.

Sine Qua Non: Exericise (without which, it ain't happening)

I am certain -- as certain as one can be without examining the actual DNA -- that I have the fat gene. This is the little piece of code in one's DNA that predisposes one to packing on the pounds. This is why some people are happy with little portions of healthy food, while others of us crave piles of pasta and sacks of Big Macs. This is why some people eat all they want and stay thin as a rail, which others of us look the wrong way at a piece of cake and put on a pound.

This fat gene, called the FTO gene or more affectionately the "Fatso" gene, is on the 16th chromosome. This explains why I have always harbored a secret dislike of 16 (through not nearly as much as I dislike 43 and his dad, 41).

But just when you thought all was lost, the Amish come to the rescue. Researchers discovered that, among Amish men and women, those who were very physically active were able to circumvent the negative impact of the Fatso gene. Exercise, therefore, is the first number of the combination lock, the secret ingredient -- the sine qua non, that without which it ain't happening. (This is the sort of losey-goosey translation that would make my Latin teachers at Choate cringe and suggest I try Spanish or French.)

So my first step is to take my first step. Walk, that is. Rather than worry too much about what I eat, I am going to focus all my effort on establishing the habit of getting regular exercise. At first, this will be walking a lot. At least once a day for 20 minutes. We'll see where we go from there.

Gaining and losing: the great, cosmic weight loss yo-yo

As I was walking from Park Street to South Station, I glanced at my reflection in the storefront windows, and it dawned on me: it ain't even Christmas, but I'm already working on my Santa belly!

Fast on the heels of that thought was my realization that, despite my confidence at the outset of this blog, I can no longer deny the underlying irony -- I have no idea what I am doing when it comes to getting down to and maintaining a healthy weight.

Well, that's not exactly true. I know a lot. I am just not particularly successful at applying my vast knowledge.

Okay, here's what I do know. To get down to and maintain a healthy weight, you need to do one or more of the following:

• Exercise regularly to rev your metabolism and keep your head in the game
• Drink water to stay hydrated and avoid thirst masquerading as hunger
• Eat less calories (to lose) or no more (to maintain) than you burn
• Eat vegetables and fruits
• Eat lean protein
• Eat whole grains
• Drink some skim milk
• Avoid refined starch, sugar and alcohol
• Limit fat
• Eat six small, as opposed to three (or less) large meals daily

Is there anything else? I think that's pretty much it.

If it's so freaking simple, how is it that I cannot manage to get down to a healthy weight and stay there?

Perhaps the secret lies in why I, or anyone for that matter, eats. What do we hope to get out of the meal. Perhaps it is one or more of the following:

• Energy
• Nutrition
• A full belly
• Serotonin
• A pleasant, sensual experience
• Relief from stress (see serotonin)
• Relief from boredom
• Relief from fatigue (see energy and/or nutrition)

Are those the only reasons? Seems like the bulk of them.

So, given my encyclopedic knowledge and first hand experience, this should be easy. But, judging from the reflection in the storefront windows, it is not.

So, I will go back to the drawing board and I'll be back with the new plan. Stay tuned.

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.

Compute Your BMI -- without an advanced degree in mathematics

For those of you motivated by my last inspiring post to determine your own Body Mass Index, here's an easy BMI calculator from the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute:

BMI Calculator

My Goal: Become Overweight

Body Mass Index (BMI) was invented so people of different heights could compare there relative fatness...I mean fitness...in some meaningful way. Somehow, some scientist somewhere said, "What if we take a person's weight in kilograms and divide it by the square of his or her height in meters?" (An obvious solution....) And so BMI was born. To convert that crazy formula to English measurements (i.e., to use pounds and inches), you just have to multiply the whole crazy mess by 705. In other words, here's the formula:

BMI = Weight (lbs.) / Height (in.)2 x 705

So, according to BMI, I am currently Obese. At 280, my highest weight and the point from which I began this recent weight loss, I had a BMI of 37. As you can see from the chart above, that put me at the high side of Obese. Eleven more pounds, and I would have been categorized as Morbidly Obese. Yikes.

Now, at 253, I have a BMI of 34 and I am now officially closer to being merely Overweight. To actually attain my goal of being merely Overweight, I'd have to weight 217. That means losing 36 more pounds.

But at 217, I feel and look pretty damned good, to tell the truth. To get down to Normal, or 187 pounds, would put me at a weight I haven't seen since 1982.

Let's just work on getting down to Overweight. We'll see where we go from there.

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.

Back to the basics: losing weight and getting in shape

Okay, so I got a little carried away with the making money part of blogging and forgot my mission: eating right, working out, losing weight, and getting back in kick-ass shape. My original goal was to motivate myself and anyone else who wanted to come along for the ride. And that's what I'm going to get back to.

"But what about the how-much-money-I'm-making-from-this-blog posts?" some of you are wondering. "I liked that part."

Not to worry. I've spun that off and created a new blog called Blogging for Fun and Profit. In that blog, I'll let you know how much your clicks on my Google Ads and purchases from my Amazon.com recommendations have netted so far. In this blog, I'll let you know how much weight I've lost and what my body mass index (BMI) has dropped to.

Also, some of you have asked that I include the weight I lost prior to starting the blog. On December 23, 2007, already stuffed with holiday feasting, I tipped the scales at a hefty 280. At 6'1", I had a BMI of 37.

At last weighing, I was 260. So I've lost a total of 20 pounds and my new BMI is 34.

My long-term goal, as I've mentioned before, is to get down to 208, the highest acceptable weight for my height according to the United States Marine Corps. That would give me a BMI of 28.

I'll look at the whole crazy subject of weight charts and BMI another time.

Eat right. :)

Pounds pouring off, payola piling up

Perhaps I am easily impressed, but I can't believe I have made $22.30 by writing about my battle to get back to the lean, mean Jason Hunt of my youth. It took me years to write my two mystery novels about Deke Rivers, and yet my blog earnings have already outstipped my novel earnings...by $22.30.

Maybe I almost missed my true calling. Think about it. All America has been transfixed on the Herculean efforts and phenomonal transformations of contestants on NBC's The Biggest Loser. Maybe, just maybe, I am meant to at last attain my fame and fortune not by writing hardboiled classics, and not by matching the weight loss heroics of those biggest losers, but rather by endlessly struggling for merely meager results -- and writing about that.

Maybe I am supposed to be America's Most Moderate Loser. Or America's Least Impressive but Funniest Loser.

Hmm. I'll continue to comtemplate the possibilities, and you can continue to click on the ads, and together we'll see just how far this thing goes. If any of you have other ideas for how to make this blog into even more of a cash cow, please post a comment.

And yes, with $22.30 of revenue, I think I am now successful enough to once again dust off and reveal to the world my secret weapon in the battle against pudgacity and out-of-shape-itude. Yes, beginning with my next post, I will start sharing the secrets of "The Healthy Elvis Diet."

"Thank you. Thank you very much."

Till then, eat moderately, exercise enthusiastically, and click gratuituously.

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.