I’m not blogging as regularly as I would like these days, but I didn’t want to let today slip by. According to my records on the Calorie Count website, I achieved my goal weight of 155 lbs on October 19, 2009. That was about 40 lbs lost from my heaviest weight, and I lost a few pounds after that before leveling off. Since then, my weight has fluctuated within 10 lbs (6%) of that number, as I have made the transition from a calorie deficit and primarily cardio on the treadmill, to weight maintenance and circuit-based training using exercise DVDs. I’m not very good at measuring body fat with a caliper, but I have seen some changes in my muscle composition and strength. My waist size has stayed at 32 inches (down from 42 inches), give or take an inch. I have tracked my calorie intake most days, and periodically I have adjusted my ratio of carbohydrates, fat, and protein to see the positive effects on my health and fitness.
Achieving my weight loss goal was only the first step towards lifelong health and fitness. I needed to learn the habits that would keep me in the zone between “dieting” (which I hope never to do again), and sliding back to my previous weight (and shape). Here are the main healthy lifestyle changes I have kept or adjusted over the past three ]years:
Calorie Counting
Yes,
I have continued to track my meals using
Calorie Count. I am not one of those people who has decided that “food is fuel” in an effort to talk myself out of enjoying it. Instead,
I consider calorie counting to be a budgeting tool. I certainly don’t have an unlimited calorie budget (as I did when I was gaining the excess weight), but I’m doing fine with three meals and two snacks per day, an average of 2300 calories. I have some “cheat” days, on a Saturday, Sunday, or holiday, but not every week, and not two days in a row. As noted above, I have been making slight changes now and then to increase my consumption of protein or fat, although it’s been tough to convince myself to lower carbohydrates past a certain point.
Exercise
If you’ve read the blog at all, it’s easy to see that
I’ve been exercising almost every day for the past three years. If I am on a P90X or P90X2 schedule, it’s about 60 minutes per day, 5-6 days per week. For Jillian Michaels DVD workouts, it’s 30-40 minutes, 5 days a week (at a faster pace, as explained at length in my comparison of
Jillian Michaels workouts vs the P90X approach). Combined with my calorie maintenance, this has allowed me to gain some muscle and keep my waist size pretty consistent. There might be some dietary and exercise changes that would give me a more ripped physique. At this point, I’m doing OK for a guy who spends most of the day at a desk.
Exercise Breaks
At some point over the past few years, I became aware of the
negative health effects of sitting for long periods of time. As noted in the
Exercise section, I sit a lot to do my work at a computer. I haven’t followed through with the often-suggested
standing workstation, but I do take two or three exercise breaks during the day, in addition to standing up and walking around every hour or so. For my exercise breaks, I sneak off to an empty, windowless conference room, and do 2-3 minutes of jumping jacks, push ups, squats, or some portion of an exercise circuit. For instance, I might do one circuit (5 minutes) from Tony Horton’s aerobic workouts in his book
Bring It!: The Revolutionary Fitness Plan for All Levels That Burns Fat, Builds Muscle, and Shreds Inches.
If you ever see me coming out of a conference room looking a little disheveled and out of breath, that’s what I’ve been doing. Honest.
Education and Inspiration
When I finally got serious about losing weight, I began to read more about health and fitness, listen to podcasts related to those topics, and interact with like-minded people who could encourage me to keep going. Over the past few years, I’ve found entire communities of people who are working to improve their own health, as well as offering a helping hand to others. For example, the
Team Beachbody website provides professional as well as community-based support to users of Beachbody workouts such as P90X. I’ve even made some small steps toward creating a community on the
Home Fitness Geek Facebook Page. If you’re looking for some encouragement, especially if you feel like the only person you know who is trying to make healthy changes, then seek out the help of a group.
You Can Do It!
Three years ago, I achieved my weight loss goal. To be honest, if we were to go back in time to five years ago, I wasn’t so sure I would make it. Many days, I promised myself I would eat better “tomorrow.” I was not a calorie counter; as a matter of fact, my attempts at portion control were inconsistent and ineffective. What made the difference for me was starting a food journal (which happened to be on the
Calorie Count website), and making the decision that I would be honest in my journal, no matter what. Make those two decisions for yourself, and see what can happen in your life!
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