Re: Losing Weight with Andysutherland
 

Awesome job, Ian! Keep it up. The last time I lost weight and dipped below 230 (227 to be exact) I couldn't lose anymore. I stayed the same for four weeks straight, even when exercising regularly and eating right. It made me upset, so I took a break. That break turned into a two year absence from trying to live a healthy lifestyle.

Re: Losing Weight with Andysutherland
 

Thanks. I've been told that sometimes we can hit a wall, or at least a plateau, where the body needs time to adjust. We just have to not get discouraged, stick to our guns, and stick with the plan.

I've also heard that we also have natural weights that will take a great deal of effort to get past. If I can't get lower than 230, but can remain active and eating healthy, I'll be happy enough.

Re: Losing Weight with Andysutherland
 

Yeah, when you hit that plateau one has to shake up their metabolism. I know that now, and I'm not gonna get discouraged.

Re: Losing Weight with Andysutherland
 

Still feel rough today. Ate a country ham and egg biscuit for breakfast and a sausage egg and cheese mcgriddle for lunch. Not the most healthy meals in the world, but I hope that putting something heavy in my stomach will help fight off this cold. I was back at 243 this morning. Weight has been fluctuating all week as a result of this cold.

Re: Losing Weight with Andysutherland
 

Tomorrow is the weigh-in. I don't think that I'll have lost any weight. This cold got me this week, plus I ate good on Friday (everybody has to splurge once in a while). I'll be back on track for next week though (if this cold allows). Who knows? I just may have dropped a pound through all of this anyways.

Re: Losing Weight with Andysutherland
 

I don't know how it happened, but it did. I didn't workout one day this week. I overate twice this week. I had a cold and have been weak for four days now. But somehow... somehow... I managed to lose 4lbs. This weeks weigh-in has me down to 242. I don't know how, but I won't complain. :D
19lbs down so far!


Now to start week 8:

Breakfast: Oatmeal
Lunch: sunflower seeds
Dinner: unknown


Starting to feel better. The cold is almost gone, yet my throat is killing me. Not sure if a workout will be good or not. I think I'll try anyway when I get home. I'll at least go walking.

Re: Losing Weight with Andysutherland
 

Glad you lost a few Andy...

I did not get much exercise last week, but ate pretty healthy. I am back down to where I was two weeks ago!!! I did make it to the gym this morning... and plan on making it every day this week.

Have a great week guys...

Re: Losing Weight with Andysutherland
 

Awesome news! :tu

Re: Losing Weight with Andysutherland
 

Baked spaghetti for dinner.

Re: Losing Weight with Andysutherland
 

Week 8, Day 2


There's gonna be some shake-up in my diet plans over the next few months. I am going to abstain from all meat and dairy for Lent (except on Sundays). I'm not doing this for dietary reasons, rather I feel that I am led to do so at this time for spiritual reasons. As Baptists, we do not observe the period of Lent (don't know why, we just don't), but it is becoming more "popular" among all forms and denominations of Christianity. I have decided to observe this time period, even though my church is not. No meat or dairy will probably help me in losing weight, but that's not what this decision is about.

With that said, today is Fat Tuesday (Mardi Gras), and I'm on a meat and dairy kick today.

Re: Losing Weight with Andysutherland
 

i haven't been able to follow weight watcher here like i wanted to, most stuff is homeade and i havent been able to ask whats in it. Plus some alcohol. I probably lost weight cuz i've been walking and we went to the gym on saturday. I am SO sore, my muscles kill, and i did stretch properly. ARgh

Re: Losing Weight with Andysutherland
 

I thought I was going to be in trouble from the weekend, but looks like I'm back on track to at least stay the same.

Congrats on the lent decision Andy. It will be interesting to see what you use as substitutes. I have a good friend who was an Ovo-lacto vegetarian for 9-10 years and I worked for a couple of months in a field camp with a guy who was vegan.

Myles, don't forget to eat some protein right after your workouts to help repair the muscle damage. It should help with the soreness.

Re: Losing Weight with Andysutherland
 

I know how you feel. After not working out for a while, that first workout will make you sore for days. Hope it quits hurting soon.
I don't know if I'm going to use substitues of any sort (no tofu or soymilk for me). I do know that I'm gonna eat a whole lot of grains, nuts, and vegetables.
Good to hear that you're back on track for the week. A couple of days are hard to make up for sometimes.

Re: Losing Weight with Andysutherland
 

well i worked out again today, even tho the muscles were still sore, figured yesterdays no worktout should have been enough to recover, hopefully tmrw will be less sore

Re: Losing Weight with Andysutherland
 

Hi Andy
Thanks for the information on Weight Watchers I will have my wife eating right in no time, and I really like the smokes you hid in the box, I am still searching for your address to return the favor, someone will help me, maybe if I look at the box harder I might find it. ;) :dance: your time is coming. Sorry did not mean to Hijack your thread. :rolleyes:

Re: Losing Weight with Andysutherland
 

What address? :D

Re: Losing Weight with Andysutherland
 

Week 8, Day 3

Hump Day

Went all out for dinner last night: two slices of pizza, sweet n sour chicken, pork lo mein, and some of the wife's general tso's chicken. Today is Ash Wednesday, and so begins my first day of fasting. No meat is gonna be harder than I thought. I guess I'll get a veggie sub on the run for dinner tonight. I have a meeting after school and church tonight, so it'll be busy all day.
The fasting is a personal and spiritual thing for me, not a diet program, so I'll try to keep it out of this thread for the most part, but I will have to mention it as it does affect my diet greatly.

Re: Losing Weight with Andysutherland
 

Just popping in to say congrats to those who've been doing well losing some weight. The signatures are looking good!! Got on the scale today (not an official weigh-in) to see that I was at my lowest in 5 years. Hope it lasts through to Friday!

Re: Losing Weight with Andysutherland
 

wooohoooo!!!! i finally wieghed myself today. just about 25lbs in a little over eight weeks. now to lose more!! my runnning time is getting shorter, but need to do it more than once a week. I have been hitting the gym mon, tue and wed for about 4 or 5 weeks now and have been dieting since about 01/05. now the hard part begins, at least for me.

keep up the good work everyone, we all stumble every now and then, we just gotta pick ourselves up and continue the fight.

Re: Losing Weight with Andysutherland
 

Awesome job to both Ricky and Greg! Glad to hear the great news! Y'all keep it up.

I hope to hit the twenty pound mark by Monday too.
Posted via Mobile Device

Re: Losing Weight with Andysutherland
 

Way to go everyone.

I went to a Ju Jitsu class tonight with a friend. Barely survived the first 15 minutes of "warm up". Learned some cool techniques and held my own on the ground. Really need to work on the conditioning though.

With what I sweated off tonight, I should be OK for my weigh in tomorrow. If I can get out of bed that is.

:pu

Re: Losing Weight with Andysutherland
 

Well, I guess the pain is worth it. I hurt this AM, but manged to get up.

I dropped 2.4 for an even 237, and a total drop of 12.2 lbs.

So, I'm back to familiar territory (I usually weigh ~236). Now I have to keep this momentum going and see if I can get below 230.

More climbing this evening.

Hmmm...
Breakfast = ???
Lunch = Wor Wonton soup
Supper = ???

Re: Losing Weight with Andysutherland
 

Congrats, Ian! Way to go. Seems that we are all getting somewhere lately.
This no meat or dairy thing is harder than I thought. I brought along some granola bars for lunch, and when I look at the ingredients, it has dehydrated milk in it.:(

I guess I'll just stick to my sunflower seeds. Nothing but seeds so far today. I'll have to eat a killer supper to make up for it.

Re: Losing Weight with Andysutherland
 

Went overboard at the Mexican restaraunt last night. Ate two bowls full of chips and salsa to myself, and then overdid it on the vegetarian fajitas. I went home stuffed to the gills. At least it was all vegetables. My friend is having a pig-pickin' this Saturday. I'm very, very, very tempted to eat there. I told him I was getting a to-go plate so I could eat it on Sunday though. Temptation's a b!tch!:mad:

No exercise this week yet. That cold made me lazy and I don't want to start back. Gotta get back on track w/ the exercise.:(

Re: Losing Weight with Andysutherland
 

I am back up to 261.027 due to a long weekend (carnival) with a lot of food/beer. The weather is almost good enough to jog in the morning. I want to try to run twice next week between 5 and 6 am for 30min.
I will start with my drivers license classes next week and that will cost two of my usual work out days... :( .
I am going to add a couple of new workout/lifting goals next week.
I hope that the rest of you is having a better week than i had...

Re: Losing Weight with Andysutherland
 

We all have bad weeks. Don't get discouraged. Carnival is a good excuse for a bad week. Sometimes it's worth it to indulge.

Re: Losing Weight with Andysutherland
 

Still at 202 today. No up or down. Looking for a better week next week. I desperately want to break the 200 mark.

Re: Losing Weight with Andysutherland
 

Let's keep the faith gentlemen. It will be hard at times (like the Chinese buffet I was at last night) but we can do it. We may even have setbacks, but we have to jump back on that horse again and keep striving for the goal.

Ceral for Breakfast
Sandwich for lunch
supper is open at the moment.

Exercise = some shoveling and maybe some crunches, pushups and squats.

Re: Losing Weight with Andysutherland
 

Can I jump in on this? I guess I need to know the premise...but 17 pages is a lot to read through.

I guess to start, I was at 257 lbs on July 12 2008. My heaviest ever. That was even after running 5 km a night for over 2 years.

So, I joined a gym that was more expensive that I wanted to afford. It helped me stay motivated (nothing like motivating a cheap bastage by making him pay first and create his own results second).

At this morning, I was down to 219.8 lbs. I was at this weight also just before Christmas, but then bobbed up to 225 during/after the holidays especially with lots of military out-of-town taskings and moonlighting work keeping me from the gym. But I am back this morning to the lowest I have weighed in close to 8-9 years.

My goal is 208. That is the lowest weight I have been in my adult life. Should have me pretty ripped.

I guess my successes have come from a change of focus away from weight and towards "performance". Instead of weighing myself frequently (maybe once a week), I focus on various other numbers. For instance, my fastest mile-and-a-half run (on treadmill) has been 8 min 52 seconds. It took months of slowly squeeking down the number on a daily basis. Each workout at 05:30 would have various time trials (on treadmill), weight machines and core exercise, working up to a peak at about 06:20 and then cooling down. At the peak, is a 1.5 mile sprint starting at some speed above 8.5 mph and working up to 10 to 11 mph for a various time. That top day I went straight to 10, and climbed from there. I deemed that was the fastest I would ever get, so I had to change my goal or face injury. So, now I aim at duration of run at 10 mph. So far, this morning I bested myself at 13 minutes 16 seconds at 10 mph before I felt I had to stop or immediately injure myself.

Beyond that, I have slowly climbed up on benchpress and lats pulldown until I can stack the machines. Now I am slowly climbing on the number of reps I can do at top weight. A balance this with similar strategies vs the delts, biceps, triceps, traps, rhomboids...thats the majority of the big musles in the upper limbs. I generally have poor enough form that the other secondary muscles get a good work out too ;) .

This all has down great for me.

My resting heart rate is in the low 50's, my BP is 110/60 (any lower is probably not any better, even now I get dizzy if I jump up too fast without an adrenaline rush to help pump the pressure up).

But, I guess that is my intro into this club. Thanks for having me. I am guessing it will take me about 6 months to drop these last 12 lbs. Afterall, it was my son's birthday today so I have had 2 big macs, a piece of chocolate cake, a rum and coke, ice cream and that doesn't include the dinner party I am about to go to. Good thing I only weigh myself once a week and that it won't happen again until next weekend.

Cheers to you all, motivational thoughts for you all and lets banter it up.

Cyanide

Re: Losing Weight with Andysutherland
 

Welcome aboard, John. :tu And good luck too.

Re: Losing Weight with Andysutherland
 

Haven't updated in a while, but wanted to let you folks know that I'm still working at it. Down to 212 lbs, and going to make a few more modifications to my plan. Lack of gym is killing me (for weight training), but trying to make the best of it. Will have to admit, doing the fundamentals has been a good experience thus far. 15 good form push-ups takes a bit of effort compared to 7 when first starting out. Core stuff is proving to be the hardest part. Just can't seem to build up a "sense" of strenght in my core just yet.

A new wrinkle to my cardio is starting up the "Couch to 5k" jogging/running program. I found out the local college opens the track to the community and I can run/jog on it when it's no reserved so I'm going to start taking advantage of that.

Re: Losing Weight with Andysutherland
 

Changing my weigh-in day to Wednesday temporarily. I can eat meat on Sunday, so that will be my splurge day. I don't want to weigh-in the day after a high eating day. So I am moving my weigh-ins to Wednesday. Weighed in this morning at 243, up one pound. I had a feeling this would happen, and have been debating the weigh-in move for a week now. Today's pound gain assures me that Wednesday will be a much better day to begin the week.

After Easter, I'll probably move weigh-ins back to Monday.
So, no report today, hopefully will have good news on Wednesday.

Re: Losing Weight with Andysutherland
 

Glad you're still with it. Keep up the hard work.

Re: Losing Weight with Andysutherland
 

I'm finding Thursday a great day for weighing in. If I splurge on the weekend, I find it is easier to make up for it earlier in the week.

I have a lot of making up to do because I feel off the wagon hard this weekend.:bh

Re: Losing Weight with Andysutherland
 

I had a tough week last week. Traveled a bunch so I didn't eat or exercise well. Didn't go up in weight at all but the pants feel a little tight this morning. Hopefully, I will do better this week.

Great job Ian!!!

Re: Losing Weight with Andysutherland
 

For those with:
a) an ipod
b) a large potential to increase their motivation level through music

I have found the podcast:

podrunner

useful.

It is roughly 1 hour of a set pace that is mixed fresh each week. Its techno music, so, over time I have stopped using it because I like Metallica better. But, really, it is great stuff, no pauses between songs (its one long "song"), all the BPMs are the same and it is purpose-designed (for running, spin class etc).

Give it a try. I think it must be up to nearly 100 episodes by now.

Cheers

Cy

Re: Losing Weight with Andysutherland
 

I just found out about them (it's who I was referring to in my earlier post). I'm using their interval program, specifically the Today to 5K program, to start up for running. We'll see how it goes!

Re: Losing Weight with Andysutherland
 

Not looking good for tomorrow. :(

Maybe it'll still turn around. This dietary change is taking some getting used to, and throwing my system off. It'll balance out and I'll be back on track shortly I hope.

Re: Losing Weight with Andysutherland
 

As an additional motivational factor, I have filled out the Mantracker Prey Application today. Think I will submit it once I have a suitable partner.

Cheers

Cy

Re: Losing Weight with Andysutherland
 

Tried the first week of the Podrunner Interval program. Considering I've done most of my intervals on a treadmill previous to this, it's a lot more tricky on a track/road. However, this is a good challenge and I look forward to continuing this!

Re: Losing Weight with Andysutherland
 

Week 8 results: No change. Still at 242. Didn't hit my 20lbs goal at the two month mark. No sweat. Gotta focus and take the exercise serious. I don't exercise daily anymore, haven't done it at all in two weeks. That cold I had got me off schedule, and I never picked back up after it had gone. Focus, focus, focus! It probably also didn't help that I ate almost a pound of veggie chow mein the night before weigh-in.



Two months down, and I've lost 19lbs. Not the best in the world, but not too shabby either. Now it's time to redouble my efforts and get to it. Best of luck to you all!

Re: Losing Weight with Andysutherland
 

Nothing wrong with that cut sir. I'm hoping for status quo, at best, tomorrow. I haven't been as active this week and food choices and amounts were just silly.

I do have a ju jutsu class tonight that should be a real help, then I will be right along beside you on the focus train.:tu

Re: Losing Weight with Andysutherland
 

All aboard! CHOOOOCHOOOOO!:D



Peanut butter granola bar for breakfast today with coffee, w/ sweetner and no cream.

Peanut butter granola bar for lunch today w/ diet Mt. Dew

12" veggie sub from Subway for dinner w/ a Sprite Zero.


I know I'm gonna eat some salted peanuts today sometime. Peanuts are a good protein source, supposedly.

Re: Losing Weight with Andysutherland
 

I'm down to 241 today. Too bad it's not my official weigh-in day. I'll get there eventually. 225 sounds like a long ways off.

Breakfast and lunch: Granola bars for both.
Snack: Roasted salted peanuts (in the shell)
Dinner: ??

Keep the faith people.

Re: Losing Weight with Andysutherland
 

Keep going Andy!

I've had a bit of a setback. Back up to 240 even, a gain of 3lbs.

I knew it wasn't going to be good though, eating was way out of hand last weekend and beyond.

Time to buckle back down now. Climbing this evening. Not sure about supper yet.

Re: Losing Weight with Andysutherland
 

I'm dead even with you today, Ian. I weighed in at 240 also. Too bad this isn't my official weigh-in day.

Linguini noodles w/ garlic and olive oil, french bread w/ dipping oils, and a little bit of garlic herb ricearoni for dinner last night. Noodles as a main course was quite satisfying.

Please, someone slap me if I don't exercise any this weekend.

Re: Losing Weight with Andysutherland
 

Yesterday was splurge day, and I OD'd at the chinese buffet. I did manage to get in some exercise. Rode the bike for 5 miles (with two of the kids) and did some yardwork. Tired as all get out after the bike ride, but it was a blast. Plan on doing more this week.

Re: Losing Weight with Andysutherland
 

More than 1/2 way to your short term goal....keep it up, Andy! :)

Re: Losing Weight with Andysutherland
 

Weight in was this morning. Scale says... 209 lbs. Slow yet steady weight-loss, so I'm happy with that. Also had a friend note that I seemed to be losing weight. Good sign!

So everybody, stay the course and keep at it! :tu

Re: Losing Weight with Andysutherland
 

Great work! Keep it up:dance: