Let me see if I can explain this.  I’m going to tell you about my morning weigh-ins for the last few days and my eating and exercising routine so you can understand my thinking.

This past Thursday, I weighed in at 167.6 pounds.  During the day, I drank at least 100 ounces of water.  That evening I went on an “epic” mountain bike ride.  When I say epic I mean it was a challenging ride.  I was the slowest in the group - and I am no slouch when it comes to mountain bike riding.  We did a ride in the Boise foothills that included ~4000 feet of climbing.  The total ride time was close to three hours for 21 miles of biking.  I was exhausted when I returned home.

You should also know that for dinner prior to riding I had a bowl of Cherrios.  Yes, that’s right, a bowl of Cheerios and nothing else.  I wasn’t working with much fuel on the ride.

So what did I do when I returned home from the ride-to-end-all-rides?  The better question to ask is what didn’t I do.  I didn’t eat anything. One of my weight loss secrets has been to NOT eat after dinner.  Technically, I ate dinner and it was after dinner.  That was mistake number one.

Just out of curiosity, I decided to weigh myself before going to bed.  That’s not something I typically do as I assume that I am not at my lighest in the evening.  I weighed in at 166.4 pounds - that’s 1.2 lbs lighter than when I woke up in the morning.

I went to bed and … just laid there.  I couldn’t fall asleep, much too restless.  My body was not settled down.  Finally, after midnight, I went downstairs to the kitchen and ate some apple sauce.  I think that helped. I was able to fall asleep after that.  Lesson = I should have eaten something after the exercise effort to help my body recover.

Woke up the next morning, stood on the scale and … drumroll, please … 164.4 pounds.  Yes!!!!  I lost three plus pounds in one day.  Hello 155 pounds, here I come.  The night before, I figured that if I didn’t eat after exercising, I was sure to weigh less the next morning.  And here was the proof.  I was feeling pretty good about NOT eating the night before - with the exception of the midnight snack.

Friday was uneventful.  That is until I got home later that day.  Not that I was hungry, but for whatever reason, I basically gorged myself on whatever I could get my hands on.  Cashews, cottage cheese, apple sauce, chips and salsa - I just had to eat.  And this was just before dinner.  I ate so much before dinner that I couldn’t even finish the one burrito that was for dinner.  Oh well, my body needed it.  Let’s just call this mistake number two.

Saturday morning’s weigh in … hold on to your hat for this, 168.8 pounds.  Yes, you read that right (I checked twice).  I weighed 4.4 pounds more than I did on Friday morning because of the Friday afternoon gorge fest.

The lesson I took from this is to keep the effort steady.  Extreme efforts to lose weight - even though my mountain bike ride was not intended as a weight loss session - can be quickly followed by actions that undo weight loss and even add weight.

In the future, you will find that if I do an extreme mountain bike ride like that one I did last week, that I will follow it with a sensible meal to replace some of the fuel that I burned through.

See, I’m learning.

Technorati Tags: mountain biking, exercise, Boise foothills, crash diet

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I did my weights last night.  I also tacked on some rowing on the ergometer before and after for good measure with the following results for 1000 meters and 2000 meters, respectively.

3:38.3  1:49.1  26
:54.6  1:49.2  26
:55.2  1:50.4  26
:55.0  1:50.0  26
:53.6  1:47.2  28

8:18.2  2:04.6  24
2:05.9  2:05.9  25
2:05.0  2:05.0  24
2:04.0  2:04.0  25
2:03.7  2:03.7  24

Yes, the second rowing effort was much slower than the first.  I did double the distance and my muscles just weren’t into rowing after lifting weights.

About lifting weights … I’m not sure how it is supposed to feel, but it doesn’t seem to hurt.  Shouldn’t I be sore or something?  I’m loosely, and I mean very loosely, following Tim Ferriss’ routine (just the weights, not the eating) for weight lifting.  This month I am doing two thirty minute workouts in the gym.  My lifting consists of low repetition, high weight efforts broken up by long breaks - two to three minutes between each set.  While I am not hurting after these workouts, I am finding that I can barely complete some of the repetitions.  For instance, I did some pull downs.  Set the weight and could barely pull it down, repeated this two more times for this set trying to keep a slow, even tempo on the up and down.  So, why am I not sore today OR should I be sore - I feel like I am missing something here.

Technorati Tags: ergometer, weight lifting, Timothy Ferriss

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This weekend I went on a mini-bender of sorts.  Had my fill of cookies after my wife returned home from grocery shopping.  Mind you, this wasn’t a “full force” eating festival.  More along the lines of returning to the cookie jar every so often.

Still, I was surprised when I weighed in this morning and found my weight unchanged from over the weekend.  I thought for sure, I would weigh at least a pound more than I have been.  I’m speculating that my weight didn’t increase because I am loading up on water.  One of my thirty day goals awhile back was to drink at least 64 ounces of water per day above and beyond what I would drink anyway.  I purposely bought a one liter water bottle that I fill up every night and stick in the frig for the next day.  During the course of the day - usually around noon - I would have finished that bottle and load up another liter worth of water.  Recently, though, I have been drinking three bottles of water each day.  That’s consistently drinking three bottles - over a hundred ounces of water - every day.  And hold on for this, there are some days when I am drinking four bottles a day.

My “theory” of why I didn’t gain weight this weekend is that I was too bloated from drinking water to properly stuff myself.  That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

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I know the feeling Jimmy … welcome to my world.  No offense, but what took you 2 years to figure out, I figured out in about 2 months.

Ever since I lost 180 pounds on the Atkins diet in 2004, it seems I have reached a point where my weight just refuses to go down beyond a certain point. I’ve been okay with this for over two years, but I believe now it’s time for me to act.

Looks like somebody set the bar to low.  I hit my thirteen month weight loss goal of losing 23 pounds in just 6 months.  I could have been happy with the results, but I realize that doesn’t do me any good.  If I don’t have to stretch myself (in hindsight, losing 23 pounds seems relatively easy because of all the small little things I did to accomplish my weight loss goal), then I’ll likely slip back to my old ways.

On the other hand, if I have to work hard to accomplish my goal, then it is unlikely I will undo all of my hard work.

I realize that it isn’t the most “friendly” line of thinking, but it is what works for me.  So Jimmy, my hats off to your Kimkins journey and your public commitment to:

“I fully EXPECT to lose at least 50 pounds quite possibly by this Fall.”

Don’t worry, I’ll be watching for your results.

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I just finished a hour long run that included some intervals.  Went down to the Boise high school track and did a couple 1600 meter intervals and one 400 meter interval.

1600m 8:17 = 2:07, 2:08, 2:04, 1:58

1600m 7:00 = 1:45, 1:46, 1:45, 1:44

400m 1:33

In case you are wondering why the first interval was so much slower than the second interval (or why the second was faster than the first) - its hot out.  My energy level is low and slow.  You would think that with the weather as hot as it is (91F as of 3:05PM) it wouldn’t take much to warm up.  Don’t let the words “warm up” throw you for a loop.  Even though I was sweating like a horror in church, my body wasn’t ready for a significant running effort.  The only warm up I did was jog down to the track, ~10 minutes, jog a mile on the track, ~ 10 minutes, then the first interval.

I jogged a lap after the first interval, then stretched and, probably more importantly, I told myself that I was going to run the next 1600 meter interval in 7 minutes or less.  And I did.

How’s that for tricking myself into doing something?  I simply told myself that I was going to run the next mile (lose 23 pounds) in seven minutes (in 13 months).  Hmm, I guess I hold the keys to my own destiny, go figure.

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