Oh, do I dare? I read an article on T-Nation.com a while back and have been tempted ever since. Dan John has created what looks like a devilish little back yard exercise device. It’s really very simple, apparently costs about $20 and looks like it promises hours of entertainment (if you watch other people use it).

Here’s the link to the original article by Dan John: http://www.t-nation.com/readArticle.do?id=1749686

Basically, you take a 9 foot long PVC pipe, fill it about two-thirds full of water (which obviously requires caps too) and then carry it around, lift it, drag it, whatever.

Sounds crazy, I better try it.

One of the things you’ll discover as you continue with a long term weight loss program is that the scale, while it may be the defacto measurement people use, is not necessarily the best one. It’s a great guide and for a general look at how you’re doing it’s very useful and important. However, taken by itself, it can be misleading.There are actually quite a few measurements that should be tracked on a regular basis. BMI (Body Mass Index) is a very common one. Doctors are starting to use this more often as a general guideline to someone’s health. There are all sorts of charts on the internet indicating where you should be considering your gender, age, height, weight, etc. Here’s an example from http://www.consumer.gov/weightloss/bmi.htm

You can get a rough estimate of your BMI from lots of calculators. The site I mention above has one. BMI is not without it’s problems. The biggest issue is that it doesn’t do a good job taking muscle into consideration. It’s simply a table based on height and weight. Line up the x and the y axis and wherever those two meet in the middle is your BMI number.

Body Fat percentage is another measurement that’s important. For a normal person (i.e. some not in a clinical environment or with access to expensive equipment), this is measured either with body fat calipers or using a Bioelectrical Impedance Analysis (BIA) device. I’ve tried the calipers, they’re a pain to use. I’ve read other people’s experiences with the device that indicates with practice it gets better; easier to take measurements and more accurate. If you want to put the time in, go for it. On the other hand, a typical BIA device is a piece of cake. You just enter your height, weight and age and grip the device. The problem is, those devices aren’t cheap (I use the one at my gym so it’s “free” as long as I’m a member). To do the same thing, you can get one of those scales that takes the measurement when you step on it. I have the Tanita BF-679W. It seems to work okay but it disagrees with the one at the gym by quite a margin. I think the main thing to concern yourself with when considering these devices is consistency. Use it at the same time of day, under the same circumstances, as much as possible. For example, right after you get out of bed and go to the bathroom.

Yet another method of measuring yourself is with a cloth tape measure. This happens to be my personal favorite. Doing this by yourself can be quite a trick (just try measuring your own bicep one handed with a cloth measuring tape). Fortunately, I found a device at a local sporting goods store that fixes that problem (and comes with a body fat caliper in case you want to try that too). The device is called the Myotape Body Tape Measure from Accufitness. It’s a nifty little device that makes a loop out of the measuring tape and lets you lock a measurement in place so you can see what it is. Here’s a picture it:

This little guy works great. It sells online for as little as $5.99 (Accufitness sells it for $9.99). I don’t recall how much I paid for mine, it was around $15 but it came with the calipers too. I like the tape measure method because this is a good way to indicate to myself that I’m having a real, visible impact on my goal of “becoming a former fat guy”. Once I’ve reached that goal, I’ll probably have to come up with something else. For now, it’s the one I like. The other benefit of this method is that it’s not one you should do all that frequently. Because you should spread it out to a weekly or monthly measurement, it’s not something you can obsess over.

What’s the best method to use? I don’t think any of them are “the best”.

The thing to keep in mind is that your weight is going to go up and down. Sometimes you’re going to feel like you’ve made great progress but look at the scale and not much will have changed. If you’ve been tracking your belly diameter (or arm, thigh, hips, etc.) or BMI or Body Fat percentage (or all of them) in addition to what the scale says you’ll be able to see that you’re having an impact (or not).

If I were using the scale as my only yard stick, I’d be a pretty sad sack right now. Since last April, I’ve only lost about 15 pounds. That doesn’t seem like much progress in 9 months. Fortunately, that’s not the only measurement I’ve used to track my progress. Besides losing 15 pounds, I’ve lost about 8.5 inches off my belly (with several other measurements like chest, thighs, etc. also going in good directions). I’ve lost about 6% in body fat, I can run (keep in mind, I said “I can run” not “I can run longer/farther/faster”). I’m more flexible, can lift more weight (I’m up to 3 chinups now).

I’m just trying to point out that the scale is not the only way to look at things and if you allow yourself to focus on that one thing, you’re risking losing a lot of valuable data points that can help you feel good about what you’re doing and that will lead to even more success.

Oh yeah, and don’t forget to take those dreaded “before” pictures.

Yesterday was the first day of the 2 week transition phase of the diet. I have to say, I went a little overboard. I ended up gaining two pounds back. I’m okay with it. I’m already back on track and in the long run, the occasional (especially if it’s really occasional) cheat/setback/whatever is okay and probably a good thing.

My meals for today are from my new Precision Nutrition Cookbook. I’m having a Tuna Wrap for lunch and sauteed salmon with a spiced Cauliflower Saute for dinner.

The key difference with the Tuna wrap from a normal tuna wrap is that this one uses half an avocado instead of mayonaise. The fat content may be similar but the quality of the fat is much better. I haven’t tried this before but I like avocado so it sounds interesting to me. Plus, I’ve done that kind of exchange in other sandwiches (like a turkey or chicken sandwich) and it works great.

I’m modifying the recipe a little by swapping out a whole wheat tortilla with a mission low-carb tortilla. The carb count goes way down and the calories go down a bit. I’m also pulling out the peas in the cauliflower recipe (I hate peas) and maybe the carrots. All in all, my “meal” calories will amount to around 1000-1100 calories so I’ll have two protein shakes (or maybe three with 1 scoop instead of 2 scoops) so I’ll end up with about 1500 calories for the day.

Tomorrow I’ll make sirloin skewers and sauteed shrimp to bring to the office as afternoon snacks/meals. They each total around 300 calories. Tomorrow is a a workout day so I’ll make up the remaining calories with the protein shakes and the post-workout surge.

BTW, by the time I finished writing this, I had already eaten the tuna wrap and it was excellent.

The workout I went through this morning seemed a little more grueling then normal.

20 front squats with 40lb barbell
6 assisted chinups (don’t know weight but I barely got them done)
10 box jumps
6 assisted dips (same weight as chinups)
10 burpee’s
3 sets, not rest between sets

and then

10 bicep curls (40 lb easy curl bar)
10 tricep push-downs (don’t remember weight)
Back and forth between the two, over and over again, no rest,  for 10 straight minutes.  I managed to get 10 full sets in of each so I did 100 curls and 100 tricep pushdowns in 10 minutes.  Next time I can do better.

That was a demanding workout!  I highly recommend it. 

Spent a good 20 minutes in the locker room waiting for the sweat to stop pouring off so I could jump in the shower.

Yesterday was the last day of fasting phase of the velocity diet.  Now I start a two week transition phase where I’ll eat 2 meals a day with the rest of the meals made up of the same protein shakes I’ve been eating.  The goal will be to still stay in the 50g-ish range of carbs on the non-workout days and 100g-ish carbs on workout days (where the extra carbs come from my post-workout drink.

Results so far, I’ve lost 13 pounds.  A little less than I hoped, but still awesome.  Even more exciting, 5.25 inches off my belly measurement.  As far as  I can tell, the weights I’m lifting are getting heavier, not lighter so I don’t think I’ve lost any discernible weight from muscle.  Its even possible that I’ve put some one.

On to the next two weeks.

I’ve been using my “walking” playlist, described in a previous post, for a couple of weeks now. While on the Velocity Diet, my cardio has basically consisted of NEPA walks (Non-Exercise Physical Activity) so I’ve kept my pace in the neighborhood of 3 mph on the treadmill (with an incline between 3.5 and 4.5). My original playlist had my pace start around 3, escalate up to about 4, then decrease back to 3. I’ve cycled that back a little and pretty much kept it at three for the duration of the walk (30 minutes). As a result, my playlist has changed a bit. I’ve found a few new songs to throw in and learned a couple things about Tangerine. The new songs are:

I Grieve by Peter Gabriel. I’m a big fan of Peter Gabriel and I randomly shuffled across this song. It turns out it’s the perfect cadence for me at 3 on the treadmill. Plus, it’s 7:25 minutes long and it’s a good song so it worked out great. Family Snapshot has a very similar BPM but it’s not nearly as good for walking, in my opinion.

Love can damage your Health by Telepopmusik. Ever since finding “Breathe” from a TV commercial, I’ve liked Telepopmusik. This song turns out to be another perfect tempo song for walking. But, you need to be at least a little bit into electronic music. I find it’s pretty good music for walking. It typically has a very obvious baseline, which helps with establishing a rhythm.

Eggshells by Landon Pigg. Another TV commercial find (Diamonds are forever commercial, song is Coffee Shop). I ended up buying his album and like it a lot.

Life in the Fastlane by the Eagles. Don’t need to say much there, Eagles rock.

As far as Tangerine goes, I’ve discovered the BPM calculator isn’t super accurate. It’s pretty good most of the time, but when I set my iPod on shuffle, I find songs that fit really well with my walking cadence. When I go back and check iTunes later, I find the BPM has been set by Tangerine to some odd number. The manual BPM calculator seems to work well for making it more accurate but it’s a little annoying to find this out after I bought the software.Oh well, it’s a work in progress. Finding songs while walking along makes the time go by a little faster.

I just read this article from the Health on the Net Foundation about dogs helping people with diabetes detect hypoglycemia (low blood sugar).  Many people have heard of the ways dogs are being used to help people with medical issues.  The ubiquitous seeing eye dog being the most obvious but now they have cancer sniffing dogs, some limited success with seizure alerting dogs and many other forms of assistance.Fortunately for me, I haven’t had any hypoglycemic issues.  This past month on the Velocity Diet definitely pushed the envelope.  I know I had a couple of instances when I tested and found myself in the 60’s (typically the target range before eating is 70-130) so it’s something I need to stay aware of as I exercise more and do a better job controlling my diet.  Funny, it could be a negative aspect of “success”.
At the moment, I have two cats.  Not sure how much (especially the old man) they’d appreciate a rambunctious puppy in the house.  Given the special training required for the hypoglycemic detecting dogs, I suppose the real/best reason to get one (besides the companionship) would be the exercise.  I don’t think I’ll be picking one up in the near future buy you never know.

I’m coming down to the last bit of the diet.  I seem to have settled into about .5 pound per day for weight loss so I anticipate finishing at about 15 pounds (13 so far).  I find myself getting very tempted to just “go ahead and cheat this one time, I’m almost done anyway” but I’m holding out.  The only “cheats” I’ve allowed myself through this was to occasionally have 3-4 almonds with some water just to give myself the satisfaction of eating something.  One time I had to modify things a when I got stuck away from home and didn’t have the ability to grab a protein shake.  I grabbed some water and a single serving bag of pistachio’s.  I actually didn’t feel at all guilty about that.  Other than a slightly high sodium count (which I’m not really worried about) I think that was a pretty healthy alternative.  Pistachio’s are really high in fiber (7 grams of carbs, 5 of which are fiber) and have healthy fats and some protein.  If you’ve got to make a change, I think this one seems pretty reasonable.

I’m headed to the grocery store tomorrow for dinner supplies.  I’m going to try Nathan Lyon’s Salmon en Papillotte.  It looked like a great recipe, I haven’t decided if I’ll try the Avocado and Fennel salad that goes with it.  I’m not a huge Fennel fan.  Might switch it out for that roasted cauliflower I had before, that was goooood.

I haven’t put the work into figuring out my meal plan for next week so I’ll probably get that done before shopping and get all my food at once.  That will make Sunday and interesting day.

I thought I’d put in a little visual representation of how well I’m doing on the Velocity Diet. I’ve been keeping a spreadsheet of various measurements with my weight captured almost every day (the blank spots in the graph below are days I missed. I only have 4 more days left, I wonder if I’ll hit 15 pounds?

Here’s how I’m doing so far:

Getting closer and closer to the 200 pound mark. I think I was probably a teen ager or at least early 20’s since I’ve been that low.

From the fitsugar blog, I found an eDiets article that was interesting. I’ve been subscribed to the eDiets newsletter for quite a while. Honestly, most of the time I delete the newsletter after scanning the headlines but the site does provide some good articles on occasion. This article in particular was interesting. After reviewing the list of the10 habits of fit people I decided I currently have 6 of the 10 habits and I’m aware of the rest and working on them. How many of these habits are you familiar with and practicing?