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One of the questions that I asked myself along my Journey is; What is different this time? Why do I feel so good about what I am doing and things are working so well? This page summarizes some of the techniques I found valuable on My Journey in addition to this page the concepts in Motivation and The Journey are also very important. The Keys on this page fall into 3 areas: Mindset, Nutrition, Exercise Mindset I was on My Plan, conceived and designed by the person who knows me best (me), fine tuned by me. You get the idea, you can only stay on someone else's plan so long then you ditch it because it it doesn't fit you. Who is going to tell you what to eat the rest of your life? You will! You need to be driving the bus, not be a passenger on someone else's bus (not even my bus). I developed my plan around foods that I liked and that were excellent sources of nutrition. My exercise sessions use exercises I enjoy and are fun for me. A bad plan that is your plan is better than a professionals plan, because it is yours, you can change it, you can fine tune it. I became very aware of keeping a balance between sustainability and satisfactory progress. Keeping the journey sustainable is very important, because as long as you are making any progress and feel OK, time is on your side. There were times when I got too aggressive with cutting back on food and began to feel like giving up, I also had times where I ate too much, made little progress, and again felt like giving up. This balance point is a fine line and is an important part of being in control. I kept a journal and recorded progress, thoughts, weight and measurements. The foundations of my book and this site were laid in my fitness journal. Part of the records are the pictures that you see, it is hard to be discouraged when I look back and see how far I have come. I linked my success or failures to changes in behavior, progress in exercise ability and making continuous improvement. Weight has become less important than waist size, how my clothes fit, did I stay on my eating plan. Weight is a fickle measurement and I would assert that most weight loss efforts end by stepping on the scale and not seeing expected numbers come up. I weighed myself once a week, and that was probably too much. Fat comes off slowly, my weight will change dramatically but fat is generally not going to come off faster than 1-2 pounds per week. Remember weight loss does not necessarily equal fat loss. Another thing I came to understand is that there are some things you can control and some things you can't. I can control if I am getting up to exercise, I can control if I am planning my meals and tracking my progress, I can basically control if I am becoming more or less fit. What I can't control is what changes happen when, I need to do the right things and my body will work on where it needs to and get around to the areas I want to see progress in. Burning fat off your body can seem like watching grass grow, there doesn't seem to be much progress day to day. If you are fertilizing and watering and doing the right things it will eventually happen. I learned to think long term, investing in exercising and considering eating as fueling my body instead of short term thinking (entertaining my mouth). I continued to research and fine tune my nutrition and exercise plan to continuously improve. Nutrition I counted my calories to make sure I was not getting too much food energy or not enough; too much and you make no progress, not enough and you get too hungry. Counting calories is tedious but necessary because I really never learned how to eat the correct quantity of food. One of the quirks about me is I don't need to have a big variety of foods from day to day. I eat pretty much the same thing daily but I rotate different foods into my daily plans. I will have weeks when I have potatoes and Yams about every day and weeks when I won't have any. This keeps the calorie counting simpler. I use an Excel spreadsheet to enter the number of portions of foods that I commonly eat and it totals the calories and grams of carbs, fat and protein. I try to eat more fuel foods (carbs and fat) in the meals early in the day and have a higher percentage of Protein in my meals at the end of the day. That being said I would have some protein at all meals and wouldn't stop eating carbohydrates until 3 hours before bed. Early in my journey I would stop all eating 3 hours before bed but I found I slept better if I had an omelet or other high percent protein snack before bed. The worst thing you can do if you want to lose fat is to eat high fat, high carb foods (cookies, cake, ice cream) right before bed. One of the mistakes I made early in my journey to avoid dietary fat was cutting way back on my protein consumption. Protein is important to provide the building blocks for ongoing cell replacement. Your body stores fat (obviously) and carbohydrates (glucose stored as glycogen) but it does not have much storage for protein, I eat some protein about every 3 to 4 hours through the day. My nutrition plan with protein and carbs is a little unusual but not way strange, I am probably off the deep end on avoiding fat. Most of the last year I have eaten around 2000 calories a day, for a large guy that provides a decent calorie deficit. I have probably averaged around 250 grams of carbohydrates a day (50% of calories), 200 grams of protein (40% of calories), and about 20 grams of fat a day (10% of calories). Most experts recommend less protein and more fat, I think that's fine, they can eat whatever they want, this is my plan! Actually my theory is that I want to eat protein at a 25-30% level of what my normal calorie intake would be and I want my body fat to provide the operating fat for operations of the body. One of the funny things that has come out my research and fine tuning is that even though I am dietary fat phobic I take a fat pills (fish oil) every morning to supplement omega 3 fats. Exercise
Then of course there is stair climbing,
which really suits me pretty well. The way I figure it I have the heart, lungs
and legs of a 340 pound man, I'm like a mid-size car with a Cummins diesel drive
train, I may not be real fast but I can pull pretty well. I train for stair
climbing at Eagle Center which is also
my church, I am very thankful for a great place to train that is so close to my
home.
Another thing I get asked is, When do you find time for all this exercise? Remember I have a demanding job, wife and 4 kids, church activities, house, dogs and vehicles to take care of. My solution is getting up early in the morning to exercise. I began getting up a half hour earlier than normal, now I'm generally up at 3:30 or before. On the other end of the day I go to bed earlier so there is some sacrifice of time with the family in the evening. There is a bonus here, I used to sleep 9 or 10 hours a night and would drag myself through the days. I now sleep about 6 or 7 hours a night and am almost always up before the alarm goes off. I have a ton more energy through the day and am more productive and generally in better spirits. When asked about time I remember what my dad would tell me when I said I didn't have time: "You have time for everything you want to do." I believe that exercise and eating go together, when I eat badly my workouts suffer, I just don't feel like working out after I have eaten with bad judgment. This makes for a death spiral, I over eat, so I say forget exercise, so I feel bad, so I over eat and it goes on. On the other hand good exercise drives good healthy eating to fuel the works. I have a sign posted for myself in my office: You worked too hard this morning to screw up your day with sloppy eating. I built my workouts around my strengths (strong legs, good lungs) and what I enjoy. You are welcome to come run steps with me but feel free to find what works best for you. Another key to Success is determination, a friend of mine writes a column for a local paper and wrote this article on determination that refers to my Journey, I thought it was a very good article. |
