Obesity In America.

Quite frightening isn't it?
This chart stops at 2000 but you can see a steady rise accross the board. While some of us consider this a cosmetic issue, obesity is in fact a serious health risk. An apple a day or staying active is not just a good suggestion but seems to be mandatory to maintain good health. It is simply to easy for us to consume foods that do nothing but pack on weight.
This is quite eye opening in my humble opinion.

The number of obese adults has doubled in just 20 years, with 67 percent of the adult population overweight or obese, according to recent figures from the Centers for Disease Control.

The chart is courtesy of obesityinamerica.org

Free Diet Plan

I have not used this source myself but if it's Free why not try it.
If you are interested in optimizing your diet for fitness click HERE.

Bad week for my football pool picks!

Good Lord what a bad week.

I THOUGHT I had won 5 games going into the Monday night game. Somehow I inadvertently picked the Giants over the Cowboys so I only have 4!!!!

My worst week of the season, thank god I don't gamble!

TREATS!

OK, so I gave you all a general overview of the things I did to lose as much fat as I could while not killing myself. There is good news however!
While I was diligent in my approach I took time to treat myself and still experienced good results.
For example, the 1st few months I not only allowed myself to eat whatever I felt like eating one day a week I still went out and socialized and YES drank.
Contrary to what most people think, unless you are going to compete, you can still see good results if you follow your plan 6 days a week.
Think of this, most likely most of us are doing little to nothing to try to improve our physique. If we can maintain a productive diet as well as a workout regimen for 5 or 6 days a week your body WILL improve.
After you reach a certain point it is simply a matter of maintaining what you have done. For example, last month all I really did was circuit training and ab work. For the last 2 weeks I have been suffering from a cold so I have deviated from my diet and only been to the gym once. Yesterday I stepped on the scale and was 183lbs. That's still 27 lbs less than what I started at last year and within 3 lbs of my lightest weight all year long!
So the morale of the story is put in the work up front and the results will follow.
Look, I know I am not ever going to step on stage and compete. I also know at my age that my best days are behind me, BUT I believe that I can look younger and feel better by being smart and disciplined. I hope you feel the same way.
In upcoming blogs I will continue to talk about my journey as well as include reviews on some products I use to help me along. I will also talk about random happenings in my life, such as my dealing with my son, fantasy football, the football pool I am in and LOSING as well as other topics of interest(to me).
:)

Protein

I would highly suggest picking up some PROTEIN , it takes more calories to digest protein, it keeps your metabolism up and it feeds the muscles. Not to mention a shake is easy and quick and it helps get you those 5 meals a day you should be consuming.

MY Progress pics

Click HERE to see them!

The Workout!!

Last post I talked about the types of foods that I ate to lose the fat. Next I will talk about the workout I used during this time as well.
One thing to consider is that I really have no interest in getting "big" or even getting "strong" my only interest was fat loss. On the other hand I HATE doing cardio so I devised a weight routine that would get my heart rate up and work my muscles at the same time.
The routine I used for the better part of 6 months looked like this:
Mon: Chest / Back
Flat Dumbell Press / Bent over dumbell rows
Incline Dumbell press / Lat Pulldown
Pec Deck / Cable rows

Tues: Legs
Leg Press / Stiff leg deadlift
Leg extension machine / leg curl machine
calf raises

Wed: Shoulders/Arms
Overhead Dumbell Press
Front dumbell raise
side dumbell raise
Alternate dumbell curls/ Tricep pushdown
Barbell curls / Overhead Tricep extension

Thurs: Misc
I would get in on Thursday and do whatever. In general I would do 2 or 3 movements for abs and then some more calf work. I might even hit chest once more.

The key to my workouts was not so much the movements I was using, but the manner that I did the movements.
For example I would take NO MORE that 60 seconds rest between a movement then I would jump right into the next movement. As a weight got easier to do I would increase the weight the following week, decrease the rest or both. For the movements that you see : movement 1 / Movement 2 , I did not rest at all in between these movements. This is called "supersets".

After 6 months of doing this I saw GREAT results. In fact I saw good results in just 2 months. After 6 months of working out this way I did modify my workouts somewhat for about 2 weeks at a time in order to "fool" my body and energize my workouts.
I even began adding "drop sets" where I would do on movement and when I could lift that weight no more I would lower the weight and keep going. I would drop the weight 3, 4 sometimes 5 times to get a great "pump" from this method.
For example if I was doing dumbell one arm curls I might start with 50 lbs. I would lift that probably 6-8 times, once I could not lift it anymore I would drop to 40lbs, then 30 etc..
Try that sometime and tell me how it feels.

:)

I hope this helps.

My next installment MIGHT be more workout info if you are interested (post comments silly)
or just some random stuff.

Thanks

Things I ate on "GOOD" days

In my previous post I mentioned several things I would talk about. I am going to start with what I feel is the most important part of the whole equation, DIET!

The word diet does not have to be a 4 letter word. Well ok diet IS a 4 letter word. LOL
I consider the word diet to mean simply, what I am eating. It's just that simple. It's not some miracle meal plan out of a box, nor is it starvation.
To me it's a method to eat in order to make my body more efficient and using the calories I AM taking most effectively.

I determined in order to reach my weight goal that I would have to find out how many calories my body needs to maintain THAT body weight, not my CURRENT body weight.
I found that 2000 cals/day was good for me to get around 180-185.
Then I discovered that insulin is a storage hormone, control insulin and you force your body to store less calories as fat.
It is a fact that white, refined sources of carbohydrates force your bodies insulin level to go through the roof. When insulin shoots up like that it is basically telling your body that there are plenty of calories so go ahead and store them as fat.
When you eat low GI carbs like brown rice, whole wheat bread etc.. your body gradually raises insulin and there is not as much of a spike which in turn stores less fat!
So here is a sample of what I might eat in a day.
7 am Oatmeal mixed with protein powder
9 am protein shake
11am chicken breast w/ a cup of brown rice
1pm protein shake
6pm whole grain pasta w/shrimp and broccoli and a mild sauce.
That's 5 meals! You see 3 solid meals and 2 shakes, the key is I kept my insulin under control while giving myself plenty of calories for energy.

Some things I decided

OK, a few days ago I discussed some of the rules of the game. I decided prior to New Year (don't we all) to get into better shape.
I also have a life to lead so I wasn't going to be "hardcore" by my standards but maintain a reasonable discipline. To accomplish this I decided to record my calories, protein,fat and carb intake 5 days a week. I also decided to go to whole grain carbs as opposed to starchy or sugary carbs. Finally I decided to increase my protein intake.
To let you know I weighed in at the Doctors office late December at just over 210lbs, currently I am weighing in around 180lbs. There is more good news, I actually PUT ON 5 lbs of muscle which means I had lost about 35 lbs of fat!!!!!!! By the way I did this while still indulging in weekend alcohol, having a cheat DAY (not a cheat meal) where I just ate ANYTHING I wanted. Anyone that knows me can attest to the fact that while I am a social drinker, I DO put some down when I have the chance.

I will talk more about what food I ate, how I tracked my meals, progress, lifting logs and how I measured my FAT loss. Weight loss was NOT the goal, fat loss was but I knew because of my condition that I WOULD lose weight in the process.

Thanks for stopping in!

Testing

I am just testing the email to blog feature.