The Successful Struggle to Control My Weight

Back in the days when I thought Stella Artois was a great source of protein. NOT!

My weight and its control have been major issues for me since childhood. I remember as clearly as yesterday the spring morning in Grade 3 when during a recess on the playground my compassionate fellow classmate Tim Ebner knocked me to the ground and stuck a safety pin in my buttocks.  As he did he proudly proclaimed that he was “letting the air out of your ass.”  I never liked my body after that.

I was a wrestler for a couple years in high school and did so in the 154 pound class.  For a 5’5” freshman that was a bit chunky but I endured.  On May 29, 1969, when I graduated from high school I weighed 165 pounds and on January 1, 1970, I weighed 180 pounds. By now I was 5’9” tall but that didn’t help hide the weight very much.  Several years later I met and married someone who was a fantastic cook and along with loving her, I loved the food she prepared and the pounds kept packing on.

As I aged I kept telling myself that I would take care of the weight issue “one day” but that day never arrived.  It didn’t help that I was drinking like a fish and 99 percent of the food I consumed was processed. Chris Haney still tells stories about the time we shared a house together in Athens, Georgia, and I would make dinner consisting of a loaf of Wonder Bread and as many hot dogs as it took to fill me up.  The weight kept piling on.

Eventually much to my horror, during one visit to my family practice physician’s office, I stepped on the scales and topped out at 311 pounds.  That shock caused me to go on a Weight Watchers diet and I can say that I lost some weight, eventually getting down to 297 pounds. That however, was after being on Weight Watchers for 3 years!  Something needed to be done and the sooner the better.

My weight issues could possibly be genetics-related.  Half of my genes originated among the svelte codfish eating, fjord-living hearty soles on the coast of northern Norway.  However the other half originated in Eastern Europe.  Certainly one quarter of them originated in what is now the Czech Republic and the other quarter originated in what was then Poland but is now Germany.  Having traveled to both the Czech Republic and Poland it is easy to understand where my mesomorphic body type may have originated.  There are a lot of people walking around in Warsaw and Prague that look a lot like me in body form but luckily most were not as heavy.  I could blame my weight issues on my Eastern European genetics but to be fair it is best to blame me and my laissez faire attitude toward my own body. 

As my weight increased so too did my blood pressure.  Along with the higher blood pressure I developed atrial fibrillation which has been linked to obesity and was at a higher than usual risk of contracting adult-onset diabetes.  Also, as a dear friend from college who has a similar hate: hate relationship with his weight recently found out, obesity can also contribute to contracting esophageal cancer.  These maladies are just a partial list of what can befall those who have weight issues.

America is at the epicenter of an obesity epidemic.  Currently Arkansas has a 35.9 percent obesity rate – the highest in the nation.  Curiously most of the southern United States, where fried food is king, have not only the lowest rate of high school graduation but also the highest rate of obesity among its residents.  The cost of health care for people suffering from obesity is staggering.  Several years ago one of the cable networks began broadcasting a television show titled “My 600 pound life” as a matter of fact way of looking at people whose weight was completely out of control.

My weight remained out of control and I did nothing about it (except eat more pizza and drink more beer and make half-hearted attempts at walking off a few pounds now and then) until late September 2015 when a former love interest put her foot down.  She had purchased tickets for a couple of performances at the Van Wezel Performing Arts Center in Sarasota in mid-January 2016 and she wanted me to lose enough weight so I could fit into long pants for those performances.  There were other relationship-related issues that came out in her statement that evening that made it abundantly clear if I wanted to remain in a relationship with this woman I needed to get off my fat ass and make it more slender.

Crunch Fitness Was the Answer

Worried more about losing her than about my health (I still have her!) I joined Crunch Fitness on University Parkway in Sarasota in early October 2015. There for $10 a month, I had access to an abundance of weight machines, cardiovascular exercise equipment, free weights and, best of all, access to a one-hour free consultation with a personal fitness trainer.  Purely by luck when I called to make that appointment, Crunch set me up with Bryn Edwards, a 26-year-old body builder whose muscles had muscles on their muscles.  This kid was massive!  Bryn and his knowledge turned out to be the best investment I have ever made.

The only thing Weight Watchers did for me was help me watch the weight pack on

Resistance Training

"It's not how much weight you move, its how you move the weight."... Bryn Edwards, Personal Trainer

After discussing my weight and health goals, and the timetable I had established for myself, Bryn set me on a five-day resistance training cycle.  At first Bryn had me on a schedule of: Day 1 – Legs, Day 2 – Chest and Abs, Day 3 – Upper Back, Day 4 – Shoulders and Day 5 – Biceps and Triceps.  My initial plan was to set the weights at a certain number (let’s say 60 pounds) and then 12 repetitions of each exercise, and do 3 sets of repetitions. In other words, for exercise “A”, I would lift 60 pounds 36 times.   Soon however that became too easy and I increased each exercise to 4 sets giving me 48 repetitions.  The weight started to slide off.  Eventually my weight loss plateaued and through the help of Ed, another excellent trainer at Crunch Fitness, I mixed up my workout routine. I did this mainly to trick my metabolism.

After several months of the same exercises every fifth day, my body knew that I would be doing 48 repetitions of 120 pounds when I did Leg Press.  However to trick my metabolism I reduced the amount of weight I was lifting but increased the number of repetitions.  Where at first I was doing 48 repetitions of 60 pounds, I was now doing 100 repetitions of 40 pounds.  My body and my metabolism responded accordingly. 

Still later to fool my metabolism even more I began “Pyramiding” my weight lifting.  Where I was now doing 100 repetitions of 40 pounds, I switched to 60 repetitions of 40 pounds, 20 repetitions of 60 pounds and 20 repetitions of 80 pounds.  Again my body and my metabolism responded positively.

My current workout plan is presented at the bottom of this blog post.

April 29, 2016 - 240 pounds and dropping

Nutrition

Along with the resistance training, my trainer developed a nutrition plan and suggested that I follow it.  He called it a nutrition plan because, as he explained it to me, “Diets are for dieters; nutrition plans are for people serious about their health.”

My nutrition plan was high in protein, high in fiber and encouraged me to eat good fats and good carbohydrates.  Along with consumption of the correct foods I made a self-imposed ban on drinking alcohol to see if that would aid with weight loss.  The nutrition plan, inserted below, allowed me six meals per day but I could rarely consume more than four.  To aid the quest I recorded every morsel of food consumed on a FitBit program on my computer.  The program tracked the protein, carbs, fiber, fats and sodium in each item I ate each meal which was essential knowledge for maintaining my weight loss.

My trainer Bryn Edwards has muscles on the muscles of his muscles.  Its my goal to one day have shoulders and biceps like him.  Its a lofty goal but at least I'll try

My common sense weight loss and maintenance nutrition plan was so successful that I actually lost 1.8 pounds during a 5 day cruise in early November 2015.  By now I was conscious to the point of being self-conscious about what I ate and how much I ate. During that cruise I only had egg white omelets for breakfast, and ate in the sit-down restaurants each lunch and dinner (avoiding the buffet line completely).  The result was losing weight on a cruise.  As Mike Bentze, my primary care physician said in astonishment after my cruise, “NOBODY loses weight on a cruise!”  However I did.

At first following the nutrition plan was difficult because my eating habits had become so bad and I’ll be the first to admit that it was difficult giving up comfort foods like cheese curds and Ben and Jerry’s Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough ice cream, and at least one and often two Domino’s pizza’s each week.  However with determination I did it.  A major factor in making me do it was the FitBit program.  Whenever I would get curious about a food I was not to have, or if I started Jonesing for some pizza, I would pull up the FitBit food tracker, look at the calories in what I wanted to eat, marvel at all of the bad fats in food I wanted to eat, and then pick up a few strawberries and eat them instead.

The weight began sliding off me.

Recommended Nutrition Plan for Weight Loss and Maintenance

Among 42 meals a week you’re allowed to “splurge” on 3 of them

Meal 1 6 Egg whites   (1 cup)                         1 Fat choice 1 Veggie choice 1 Carb choice                                                  6 Egg whites (1 cup) Meal 2 1 Lean meat choice 1 Carb choice                                      1 Veggie choice Meal 3 1 Lean meat choice 1 Veggie choice 1 Fat choice Meal 4 1 Lean meat choice 1 Veggie choice Meal 5 1 Lean meat choice 1 Veggie choice 1 Carb choice Meal 6 1 Lean meat choice 1 Veggie choice 1 Fat choice Notes: Berries (1/2 cup) Avoid apples because of sugars Use cinnamon on oatmeal not milk Meat should be baked or grilled NOT fried Cucumbers any time

Lean Meat Choices (5 ounces per meal) Chicken breast Turkey breast (93 % or leaner Fish – tilapia, salmon, cod, tuna, flounder, shrimp Steak – sirloin or round Ground beef (90 % or leaner Egg whites (1 cup) Veggie Choices (1 cup) Green beans Squash (spaghetti squash) Broccoli Spinach Lettuce Cauliflower Tomato Green Pepper Red Pepper Yellow Pepper Mushrooms (a fungus not a vegetable but close) NO Carrots, peas or corn Good Fat Choices 1 tablespoon of almond butter 1 ounce of raw almonds 1 egg yolk 1 tablespoon of coconut oil Good Carbohydrate Choices ½ cup oatmeal (measured dry) 4 ounces of sweet potatoes ¼ cup cream of wheat ½ cup of beans (black, garbanzo, etc)

Cardiovascular Training

Estimates vary depending on with whom you talk regarding the value of cardiovascular training.  I’ve heard some people say that as much as 50 percent of weight loss can be obtained from proper cardio training while others contend that the percentage is much lower.  Regardless of which estimate you hear and which one you believe, I have learned that cardio training is great for toning your thighs and it does wonders for reducing your blood pressure.

When I began my weight loss odyssey I focused on elliptical machines where I set the resistance level at “6” and huffed and puffed my way through 6 minutes of a supposed workout.  With the passage of time I increased the resistance level to 12 and increased the time to 40 minutes.  An additional consultation with another Crunch trainer, Matthew, resulted in me changing my cardio routine in another attempt to trick my metabolism.  Matthew suggested that I lower the amount of minutes on the elliptical to 20 minutes but do the training in “intervals.”  By that he meant walking at a normal pace for 2 minutes and then run move like I was being chased for one minute.  Doing so would cause my heart rate to fluctuate and that would help burn more calories.

Matthew also suggested further that I mix up the cardio routine and employ not only an elliptical machine but also a stationary bicycle and a treadmill.  He further instructed me to do cardio training 3 times a week instead of the daily routine I had been doing after each of my resistance weight training opportunities.  My current cardio routine is also displayed at the end of this blog post.  My current workout regimen is set on an 8-day cycle that includes five days of resistance weight training and three days of cardio training.  Because I’m a tad obsessive-compulsive, I now work out 7 days a week so I’m hitting each muscle group a minimum of four times a month and devoting 12 days a month to cardio training.

June 28, 2016 - 228 pounds and still dropping

The Results?

On October 7, 2015, when I had my first training session with Bryn Edwards, I tipped the scales at 297 pounds.  My trainer measured my percent body fat that day using an impedance calculator and discovered that my 44.4 percent of my body was fat.  On that day my frame was carrying 131.1 pounds of fat.  On July 13, 2016, slightly over 9 months later my weight was 224 pounds and my percent body fat (measured with the same machine) was 20 percent.  On that day I was carrying 45.9 pounds of fat, a loss of 85.2 pounds of fat or a loss rate of about 9.5 pounds of pure fat per month.  At the same time I had added about 13 pounds of lean muscle for a net weigh loss of 73 pounds.  As of August 2, I have lost an additional 2 pounds of fat bringing my current weight to 222 pounds. 

A year ago today I was fitting snuggly in size 2XL work out shorts. Today I fit loosely in size Medium workout shorts.   A year ago today my two pairs of long pants were each size 46 waist;  along with them was a belt with a similar size.   Today I'm wearing size 36 waist pants and dress shorts.  One year ago today all of my shirts were 2XL and some were 3XL.  Today those shirts (the few that I still have) fit like a tent.  Now I only wear size Large shirts (both t shirts and dress shirts).   I'd like to try for some size Medium shirts but I think my chest is just too large to accommodate that size.  I'll try just for the hell of it however.  Its all related to weight loss and toning.

Best of all, a year ago today my blood pressure (while on blood pressure medicines) averaged 132/90.  Today I average 104/62.

My goal now is to drop a further 12 pounds which would return me to a weight to 210 pounds – a place I have not been since 1993 when I moved to California.  I also want to reduce my percent body fat to 15 percent because according to one table I viewed, that would put me squarely in the “lean” category for a male my age. 

Once I reach my desired weight the key will be to maintain it.  Certainly I will fluctuate but as I do so I won’t be burdened by the bad eating habits of the past.  Recently I saw an advertisement at McDonald’s for “2 Sausage and Egg McMuffins for $3.00.”  Quickly whipping out my FitBit program I discovered that there were 760 calories in ONE Sausage and Egg McMuffin at Mickey D’s.  If I followed old habits I would have purchased both of them, scarfed them down and consumed 1520 calories in one sitting.  Now by using my head and eating wisely I have four full and nourishing meals each day and among them the combined total caloric intake usually ranges between 1,300 and 1,500 calories. There is no way I’m going back to a McDonald’s for breakfast sort of lifestyle. 

Not long ago while visiting a friend who had suffered a stroke I was talking with a 25 year old hard body nurse regarding my friend’s status. As I talked to her I noticed that she was talking to my chest and biceps rather than to me.  She told me that my friend was out of his room for an hour or so and I replied that I would just go to Crunch Fitness and workout for an hour.  A sly smile crossed her face as she said “You can work out with me anytime.”   If only I could have halved my age in an instant.  However regardless of my age or hard body nurses I’m never going to allow myself to go back to the body I was living in.  It’s simply not worth it.

August 2, 2016 - 222 pounds and 20 percent body fat.  I'm almost there

Current 8-Day Workout Regime

My current 8 day workout regime is a modification of what I originally began working on.  I changed it so that I could “fool” my metabolism and if you follow this regime eventually you will want to change yours as well. I learned after about 7 months that by doing the same exercises daily your body gets into a “ho hum, this again” mode and doesn’t respond like it did when you first began working out.  The regime described here is likely not the one I’ll be working on in a couple of months; by then it will be changed out and I’ll be trying something more adventurous.  For now, however this is working for me and it will likely work for you.

DAY 1 – LEG MUSCLES (1 Hour 15 Minutes)

Exercise	Weight Used	# of Repetitions	# of sets of Repetitions
Prowler/ Sled	70	5	1
Squats	100	20	4
	120	20	1
Leg Extension	25	20	4
	35	20	1
Kneeling Leg Curl	20	20	4
	30	20	1
Standing Calf Stretch	40	20	3
	60	20	2
Leg Press	50	20	5
Seated Calf Raise	45	20	4
	90	20	1
Lying Leg Curl	40	20	3
	50	20	2

DAY 2 – CHEST MUSCLES (1 Hour 10 Minutes)

Exercise	Weight Used	# of Repetitions	# sets of Repetitions
Butterfly Pectoral Fly	40	20	3
	60	20	2
Incline Push Ups	0	20	5
Leverage Incline Chest Press	20	20	4
	30	20	1
Leverage Decline Chest Press	20	20	4
	30	20	1
Chest Press	45	20	4
	60	20	1
Flat Bench Dumb Bell Press	20	20	5
Incline Barbell Bench Press	25	10	5
Incline Dumbbell Press	15	20	3
	25	20	2

DAY 3 – CARDIOVASCULAR and ABDOMINALS (1 Hour 5 Minutes)

Exercise	Weight Used	# of Repetitions	# sets of Repetitions
Horizontal Crunches	0	20	5
Hyperextensions (Back extensions)	35 (against chest)	10	5
Kettle Balls	25	10	2
Planks	60 seconds each	6	1
Machine	Time	Level
Stationary Bike	30 minutes	12

DAY 4 – UPPER BACK MUSCLES (1 Hour 20 Minutes)

Exercise	Weight Used	# of Repetitions	# sets of Repetitions
Wide Grip Lat Pull Down	55	20	3
	70	20	1
	85	20	1
Seated Cable Row	55	20	3
	70	20	1
	85	20	1
Close Grip Front Lat Pulldown	55	20	3
	70	20	1
	85	20	1
Seated Row	40	20	3
	50	20	1
	60	20	1
Iso-Lateral High Row	50	20	4
	70	20	1
Hammer MTS Row	30	20	4
	40	20	1
Shrugs (hold each for 3 seconds)	60	20	2

DAY 5 – CARDIOVASCULAR and ABDOMINALS (1 Hour 5 Minutes)

Exercise	Weight Used	# of Repetitions	# sets of Repetitions
Horizontal Crunches	0	20	5
Hyperextensions (Back extensions)	35 (against chest)	10	5
Kettle Balls	25	10	2
Planks	60 seconds	6	1
Machine	Time	Level
Elliptical Machine	30 minutes	12

DAY 6 – SHOULDER MUSCLES (1 Hour 5 Minutes)

Exercise	Weight Used	# of Repetitions	# sets of Repetitions
Dumb Bell Shoulder Press	15	20	5
Dumb Bell Hammer Grip	15	20	5
Shoulder Fly	10	20	5
Barbell Bench Press	50	20	5
Rear Deltoid Butterfly	40	20	3
	50	20	1
	60	20	1
Machine Shoulder Press	40	20	3
	50	20	1
	60	20	1
Lateral Raises	20	20	3
	25	20	1
	30	20	1

DAY 7 – BICEPS and TRICEPS (1 Hour)

Exercise	Weight Used	# of Repetitions	# sets of Repetitions
Triceps Push Ups	0	20	5
Triceps Push Down	30	20	3
	40	20	1
	50	20	1
Standing Dumb Bell Behind Head	30	20	5
Triceps Press Down	35	20	3
	45	20	1
	55	20	1
Machine Biceps Curls	40	20	3
	50	20	1
	60	20	1
Triceps Extension	40	20	3
	50	20	1
	60	20	1

DAY 8 – CARDIOVASCULAR and ABDOMINALS (1 Hour 5 Minutes)

Exercise	Weight Used	# of Repetitions	# sets of Repetitions
Horizontal Crunches	0	20	5
Hyperextensions (Back extensions)	35 (against chest)	10	5
Kettle Balls	25	10	4
Planks	90 seconds	6	1
Machine	Time	Level
Stationary Bike	30 minutes	12

ADDENDUM:  After consulting with trainer Erin Fuller at Crunch Fitness on August 4 2016, I am adding two additional exercises to my Cardiovascular and Abdominals workouts.   The exercises will aid in tightening my core muscles and especially the abdominal obliques (the love handles - or quickly becoming the lack of love handles :D)  These include 

Wall Sit With Medicine Ball - 60 seconds each, 5 repetitions 1 set

Resistance Band Torso Twist - 3 seconds each, 20 reps, 5 sets