Weighing In Again

A few months ago I talked about wanting to lose some weight. My maximum weight since the beginning of 2007 was 195lbs. Now, I'm 5'11" so I was carrying the amount I was overweight pretty well. Still, I didn't like dancing that close to 200 and decided to do something about it.

First, and foremost, I really focused on counting my calories to stay under 2000 a day. That meant making some dietary switches.

I went through the regular soda 12-packs that were in the garage (Coke and Pepsi) and switched over to a zero calorie drink instead - Coke Zero. I know, a zero calorie is a diet soda but for years I never liked the taste of diet sodas. Coke Zero, however, tastes much closer to original Coke than Diet Coke does, so making the switch wasn't so hard on my tastebuds. Now, instead of one can of regular soda a day I drink one can of Coke Zero, lopping 150 calories off my bottom line right there. While it is a little bit, over a week's time it'll add up.

The next change was in my sandwich for lunch. I switched over from PB&J on white-wheat bread to a turkey sandwich on wheat bread. The turkey is thinly sliced and I only use two pieces (less than a serving). I put in a low-fat cheese slice and use very little (a thin slide across the bread) low-fat mayonaise - just enough for the flavor. I could even throw in the occasional lettuce or tomato slices if we have them fresh in the house. I'm probably pulling in the same amount of calories here, but it is more healthy for me in a lot of ways. So, another good change.

I've also made sure to add in three pieces of fruit to my lunch box for through out the day. Coupled with drinking only water at work, that's also helping me more.

With dinners, we're really trying to eat a lot more healthier as a family. More vegetables are on tap for each meal. Meat portions are scaled back in serving sizes, and we often do a lot cooking of those in our George Foreman Grill (again, to let the fat run off).

All these changes seem to be helping. Over the past month or so I've had a pretty steady drop in the weight on the scale. As of this week, I'm sitting at 185lbs - which is only ten pounds off the goal I had for next summer (I wanted to be at least at 175lbs or less for my 25th High School reunion). The challenge, naturally, is getting through the holiday season coming up - when it seems like there is a lot of parties and celebrations with food involved. That's where will-power, heavy monitoring of portion control, and perhaps a few extra exercise sessions per week are going to come into play. The nice thing is that the weather is going to start cooling off soon (hopefully - who needs temps in the 90's in October?) and that means I can do some laps around the parking lot during lunch at work to help burn a little here and there.

Weighing In

According to what I've found on the Internet, the ideal weight for a man of my height (5'10") is 166lbs (falling in the range of 132lbs to 173lbs). Now, I'm currently sitting at 192 which, according to another chart I've found, puts me approximately in the 60th percentile or so for other men around my age (meaning, populationwise, a lot of us have a lot of work to do!).
One of my friends quoted something that was mentioned on Oprah recently: that if you take your height in inches and divide by two that is the waist size you should be shooting for. So, for me 5'10" is 70 inches - divide by two and I get 35. Okay, I feel a bit better. I wear 36 inch waist pants. Not so bad, really. I know I'm not too far off the market either. My recent BMI (body mass index) number was 28.1 - and the goal for someone my age/height is 25 or under. So, I guess this all puts me as slightly overweight.

I'm pretty good about my caloric intake. Sure, I'll spluge once in awhile - a super-sized meal here or a desert there - but I'm usually pretty good. I don't have much of a sweet tooth, so I'm safe there. I do like chips though, so I really need to focus more on ones with less fat (and, of course, have them occasionally - all in moderation). No, my big problem is my sedentary lifestyle.

It wasn't always this way for me. All through high school and college I weighed 130lbs with a 32 inch waist. I walked a lot back then. From the age of seven through eighteen, I walked a mile home from school every day. During the summer, I biked and swam, and as I got into my teens walked an eighteen-hole round of golf most weekdays. I ran cross-country in the fall and tracks in the spring (the two-mile) during the early part of my high school career. In college, I know I walked the quarter-mile between the dorms and the class buildings at least four times a day (if not more). And I'd usually go out dancing a few nights a week to boot.

It all really switched gears when I started to work full-time. As a programmer, I sit eight to ten hours a day in front of a computer screen. The first few years I was still going out dancing, but that bit stopped once I met my wife and got married in 1990. By the time I hit 30, two things happened: my metabolism finally started to slow down and my wife got pregnant. Now, during those nine months, I ate a lot of fast food - in part because the smell of food cooking didn't agree with her (she had morning sickness all day for six months). That probably didn't help. When my son started on solid foods and such, I probably did what a lot of father's did - cleaned up the scraps left on his plate that he didn't eat. So, really, poor eating habits since 1995 are part of the problem.

In any case, I know I need to make some changes. Going from regular soda down to a zero calorie will help (for my one can a day that I have). Switching to whole grain bread will too. Eating more fruit and veggies and drinking water can't hurt. And I need to exercise more too. Weekends aren't too much a problem fitting it in; my key is going to be fitting in twenty to thirty minutes Monday through Friday. If I can do that, I can try to reverse a bit the upward trend from the last twelve or so years. I'd definitely be much happier being closer to 175 than being spitting distance from 200.

Oh, and just to note something amusing: there was a story Thursday about a study from Harvard Medical School and the University of California-San Diego regarding obesity being a sort of socially-contagious 'disease'. related news story

Does that mean I can blame my friends and family for the shape I'm in? Nah. Gotta take the responsibility myself. Can't blame a guy for trying though.