About some weight loss

Since April 2009 (so over the course of almost a year and a half, as I write this), I have shed almost fifty lbs. People have asked how I did it, and invariably appear either disappointed or awed when I tell them. There's no secret; it's the stuff you already know:

• Exercise hard six days per week;
• Don't eat crap;
• Keep track of your progress.

I'd like to elaborate on each of these three factors, and then I'll add a fourth, which I've come to think is the most important.

Exercise hard six days a week.

In Younger Next Year (from which I got most of these ideas), Chris Crowley makes an argument that you've got to do at least an hour each day, and you should mix up what you do. I don't do an hour a day, and I'll admit, I only started mixing it up three months ago; prior to that I was doing the same exercises each time, viz:
Rowing machine for 25 minutes, at a fairly high rate. I started at about 800-850 strokes in 25 minutes; now I'm up to a little over 1000.
85 pushups. (I started with 30 and added five at a time as I could).
45 “plank” flexes on each side. I lie on my side, spread my legs so that the lower leg is forward and the upper leg is back, support myself on one arm, then raise my waist so my torso-legs-waist are straight, then lower my waist. Turn over and do 45 more on the other side.
150 “sit-up crunches”. Instead of a full sit-up, I raise my shoulders until my upper body is about 40-45 degrees from the floor, and relax.
80 “back crunches”. I lie on my stomach, put my hands behind my head, and raise my shoulders and my feet off the floor 80 times. I find it helps to turn my head a little.
150 (not-quite-straightarm) lifts of two 25-lb. dumbbells.
When I start to tell people about my exercise routine, they generally stop me after the rowing, and I'm left with the impression that they think that's all I do. It's true I spend the most time with that, but the routine is all of it.

Don't eat crap.

You know what crap is. Don't eat it.

This doesn't mean you never eat anything you like. It means you eat healthily, most of the time. It means that there will be times when you're going to want to eat stuff that you know isn't healthy... and when you do, plan it into your food budget. I found I needed to plan some junk or treats into my food schedule several times per week, or I wouldn't stick with the food plan. It does mean that I don't eat stuff that's full of sugars and fats and artificial initials just because it's there, or for any other reason than I really want to, and I've either planned for it, or I'm going to allow for it later (or both). It also means, frankly, that there are times when I'm hungry. Tough. I'm 55 years old; I'm not a baby who has to get everything he wants all the time anymore.

(I don't talk about “diets”. It wasn't what the word meant originally, but “a diet” has come to mean something like, “I'll eat this way for a while, but I'm goin' back to the daily brownies and fried chicken as soon as this phase is over.” I had to change the way I eat all the time, for the long haul. It's not “a diet”, it's how I eat.)

Keep track of your progress.

I weigh myself every day, and keep daily track of my weight. I use the Hacker's Diet tracking website (there's also an excellent program by Jon Thysell for OpenOffice.Org that is almost as good, if your internet access is questionable). I like the Hacker's Diet stuff because, in addition to keeping track of your daily weight, this system also looks at your trend – so if you ate at your mother-in-law's one day, and your weight is up because you're full of salt and retaining water, you don't get disappointed and quit the whole thing. Or, on the other hand, if you visit your health-food-only friends, and your weight is down because you've ingested nothing but radishes and onion grass for a day, you won't finish a whole pecan pie the next afternoon just because the scale was friendly that morning; the trend tells you where you really are.

But I've come to see that there's another factor. I think it's more important than the other three. I didn't number them, because I don't know which of them is most important (and because it's not easy to start an ordered list in HTML with “2”), but I'll number this one “1”, because it's so important that you'll never do any of the others without it:

1. You've gotta really want to do it.

I really didn't want to go on medication. I really didn't want to go on medication; I don't like what it means to be on medication that's not for an acute, short-term condition – it means that I have a body with systems that aren't completely intact anymore, that I need special help, and maybe that I'm starting to show the condition that's eventually going to be responsible for my death. And two-years-or-so-ago, my doctor was making the most unpleasant noises about stuff like blood pressure and blood sugar. And my wife (who's really much more into this stuff than I am) thought that we might be able to control these guys by getting my weight down and exercising regularly.

That's when I started doing the other three things (after moping around for a few months).

It turned out I had to start medication anyway (Atenolol). I'm sticking with the routine, because I'm in the habit now, and because I don't want to give up the gains I've made... and because I genuinely feel better, and because about every two hours, I find another article that talks about how exercise is the one thing that's going to keep me from becoming a peeing-my-pants, doddering oldster. (But I did make an angry, too-expensive purchase after I got the prescription. Bought new wheels for my bike. Oh, yeah, starting about three months ago, I added bicycling to the exercise mix; I cranked out 80+ miles over the past two days.)

I think the people who ask me how I lost the weight are looking for the easy way. I don't think there is an easy way. But I think you're more likely to stick to the stuff that works if you really want it. More than you want the crap food, or the sociability of eating what everybody else is eating, or to avoid the boredom and pain of exercise and eating right and keeping track.

One last thing: I've had all the breaks in this. My wife buys food and makes meals that support this kind of life, and we keep good exercise equipment in the house (and she winks at my expensive bicycle toy purchases); we don't have kids to worry about sugar and cereal and stuff; we have both money and time enough to shop, eat, and exercise like this, and I'm nerdy enough to do the internet research and the recordkeeping. These may not be available to everybody; I understand that. Each of us lives his or her own life.