One week in to my two month challenge

So, on February 24th I was at 286.1 lbs. A week later, and I'm at 278.3. I'm making strides int he right direction.

What's working so far: I'm drinking two high-protein, low carb shakes a day. That gets me 60g of protein for 320 calories.

I'm going to the gym multiple times a week to do cardio on the elliptical and my strengthening exercises to rebuild my muscle and flexibility after my surgery to repair my ruptured Achilles.

I'm limiting carbs reasonably most days.

That's basically it. Lots of protein, watch the bread, work out. I'm generally not that hungry. When I am, I eat something good for me. I keep expecting my weight to bounce back up, but so far it's pretty steady.

Eight pounds down, but it's the easy 8 pounds. 12 to go in 7 weeks. I think I can do it.

A month of transition, sort of

Well, I didn't transition the 'approved' way, as we decided to cut out the majority of our Medifast purchases.

In the past month I've taken to eating Yoplait 100-calorie greek yogurt with granola, protein meal replacement bars from Aldi, and Campbell's 'on the go' soups, and still eating the occasionaly Medifast shakes, bars, and etc from our stash.

I've also started eating more carbs and variety at dinner. Some pizza, some pasta, even some bread.

I haven't been tracking very religiously, I wanted to see what would happen if I tried to just wing it. Well, I moved between 254 and 262 lbs. About an 8 pound swing over the past month, but never got a new low.

I know that I was going to immediately add some weight as my carb intake increased, so that's ok. And I also was on a steroid regimen for my foot, and I know that increases water retention. And finally, while I was at GenCon I was eating a out more, since I was, you know, at a convention.

Well, I think I've learned that while I can fairly easily maintain myself at this rate, it's time to buckle down and start tracking seriously again. I'm going to reset my MFP to a new baseline next week. that will give my body one more week to recover from the steroids and once there, I'm going to create new spreadsheets and track everything to try to get a feel for my actual BMR while eating real food.

Currently my food plan is:

Breakfast: Turkey Bacon and eggs, or a shake
Morning Snack: Greek Yogurt and Granola
Lunch: various: soup, tuna, mac and cheese, leftovers, etc
Afternoon Snack: protein bar
Dinner: lean meats and veggies, occasionally go out
Dessert: protein smoothie or low-cal ice cream treat

Expect to see more weekly charts and graphs again starting next week as I keep transitioning off Medifast and onto something permanent!

Week 26?! Yes, week 26! Broke through my plateau.

Ok, summer has been horrible for my blogging. It's also not done a great thing for my diet plan, I was in a plateau for quite some time, but this week I have pushed myself to make the right choices and get back on plan.

This summer has been great. I feel better than I've felt in ages, and we're doing a lot of stuff outside. We're also going out to eat a little more, and even treating ourselves. Since the summer started I've been on a cruise (made reasonable food choices, but did not 'diet'). Spent a week with my family (more reasonable food choices but still no dieting). Since we got back we've gone out to dinner a few times (reasonable choices, staying as close to lean and green as possible). We even had a small celebratory night out at a hotel, with dinner (reasonable), dessert (fresh cannoli), breakfast in bed, then crepes for brunch.

Finally tonight, we've got one more kid-free evening before our daughter comes back from camp, and we're going out one more time on a date night.

The key to all of this is that despite all of this 'not on plan' eating and activity, I've managed to maintain, and not gain. And then once I buckled down, this week I had over a 4 pound loss! I expect this is because I've spent most of the summer eating enough carbs to have glycogen stored up again, and this week I've burned through some of it.

As of this morning, I was at 254 pounds. Seven months ago, I was at 332 and had put a goal of 250 pounds as a far future goal, nearly impossible to attain. Now I'm a stone's throw away. I reset my goal to 240, so that I would go off plan and regain glycogen and still stay under 250 and have that be my maintenance weight, but now that I'm nearly there, I think I can do a little better.

So, while I'm not to goal yet, it is time to take a pretty hard look at things. In a couple of weeks (whenever I hit 250, I think) I'm going to start transitioning off Medifast and start eating more real food. I want to do the transition properly and then shift into a standard 'IIFYM' (if it fits your macros) style of eating to focus on building muscle and losing fat slowly. So over the next few weeks I'll be looking into that and see where I think I need to set my intake on carbs, fats, and proteins. I expect I'll still be low-carb for a long time, but not quite so low carb as I am now.

I'd like to be in transition before the end of this month, and off Medifast sometime in August or September.

Medifast has been amazing, even with the last few weeks (they were frustrating at the time, but honestly, I wasn't on plan consistently for any of my plateau, so it's hard to complain with 'maintaining/slight loss' when you aren't actually following the diet!).

The biggest lessons I've learned are: consistent meal planning, cooking every day, bringing lunch to work every day. Those are huge, because of course you're going to gain weight when you grab a biscuit at Mc Donald's for breakfast, eat chinese buffet for lunch, and then order pizza for dinner because you don't want to cook. One of those as a special occasion? Sure. All three in one day, and multiple days a week that look like that? Bad idea.

Ok! Enough talking. Time to break out some graphs. I've been a slacker this summer, but it's time to end this thing with a bang, so it's back to daily blogging and weekly graphs and charts!

Click to embiggen!

Here you can see the tail end of my plateau. It started at the middle of may when I hit 260 and then started hovering, dancing between 258 and 262 for a few weeks. I started this week in a good place, 258.0, my previous low. Even with dinner at Blueberry Hill, cannoli, and crepes, I only went up to 259.9 and decided to knock it out of the park the rest of the week. I hydrated, followed Medifast, limited snacks, and broke through.

The 6-week plateau is obvious here.

Taking a look at the weekly, you can see the stall, hovering at 259-261. Despite that though, I ended week 26 at an even 3.0 pound loss week, and that's good enough. I still think I can manage to hit my goal by mid-August.

And here's my weekly graph. Still pretty impressive, even with that flat bit. Not much longer now!

19 weeks! Getting closer to goal!

I'v enot been a very attentive blogger for the past couple of weeks, and I also hadn'tbeen tracking as well as I should. I have lots of reasons, but they don't matter! It's time to get back on this horse. So, for the first time in a while, here's a full blown weekly update!

Here's some details to get us started.

Click to embiggen!

My weekly average has dipped below 4lbs a week to a respectable 3.8. I had an up and down week this week after posting a slight gain last week. I ended on a good note though, and feel like I'm back on track after Geekway. At my current rate I've got 5-7 weeks left on Medifast before I start transitioning.

Let's take a look at my weekly progress now:

We've moved away from those big sweeping drops and settled in two knocking out 1 spot a week. That's to be expected now that I'm 'off the scale' for 1lb and 2lb losses. If I stick with a 3.x loss then I'll hit 240 5-7 weeks. That will put me in July, and then I'll transition. I think that's still feasible even with the slowdown I've seen recently.

Click to embiggen!

Looking at my TDEE, the past couple weeks have seen me eating more net calories. I need to make sure I'm getting in my exercise (I haven't been getting my extra in) and limiting some of my extra calories. I can exercise and eat more, or I can eat on plan and not exercise, but eating more and not exercising is a bad combination.

And finally:

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My expected and actual weight for the week rejoined one another. My expected loss by TDEE overall keeps dropping away from my actual, but I think that's clearly to be expected. I just need to track better and keep my hydration up and I think this will be more accurate. If nothing else I can track it over time and adjust my TDEE based on reality.

So, there's my status update. I'm hovering just over my low weight right now. I just need to put in a few more weeks and then I can shift out of this mode! Then it's keep tracking, keep weighing, and making sure I maintain the loss.

Not much longer now!

Brief weekly update (Week 18!)

It's been a hectic week and I haven't had as much time to blog as I'd like. I'll try to get a full weekly update post up soon, but here's a quick one!

Progress: I lost over 4 lbs the week before Geekway, but this week I ended up 1lb over last week. I know exactly why: working out last night, not drinking enough water at the convention, and not staying on plan. I had rice, potatoes, bread, etc while at Geekway, and all those carbs reloaded my glycogen stores, so it's back to the Medifast Plan at a fairly strict level for the next few days to get back on track.

Here's my weekly progress chart:

My weekly average has dropped to 3.8 lbs/week, which is still pretty awesome. I expect to have  a big loss this week as well, if I'm right about holding onto glycogen.

Since I don't have any scale victories this week, I'll add a couple non-scale: I had to add ANOTHER (this is #3) hole to my belt. It's really ridiculous at this point for me to still keep it, it's so long.

Also, last night at workout class, I got about 75% of a pull-up done. This is the first time I've actually gotten most of the way there, and I think I'll be able to knock one out in a couple of weeks.

16 Weeks. Zero loss this week, bleh.

Between exercise, being sick, or whatever, this week was a static week for me. I ended up exactly where I was last Thursday, with my weight bouncing from a low of 264.5 (1.3 lbs down from previous low on April 27th), to a high of 267.4 (1 lb more than last week's final weigh-in, and 2.9 lbs over my low).

Not sure who the culprit is, but I'm hopeful that this means I'll have an easier time losing next week. With 4 days of Geekway throwing a wrench into Lean and green, I'll need all the help I can get.

15 Weeks. FIFTEEN WEEKS!

It is actually pretty surprising to me how well this has been going for the past 15 weeks. Am I sticking 100% to the 5 and 1 plan? No, no I am not. I'm eating a lot of extra lean protein over and above the recommended amount. Be it cans of tuna, a few extra ounces of chicken, a bag of turkey jerky, or some light cheese.

I'm also adding more sauces and condiments than you're really supposed to. However, I know that if I was eating bland chicken every night, I'd not be here right now, so adding sauces and spices over the recommended amounts just makes sense. Yes it is increasing the sodium and making me lose weight slower... however, it is also letting me stick with this.

Last week was frustrating, with only a 1 lb loss. This week started out amazing, then took a U-turn, and finally ended up in a great spot. I try not to think too much about daily changes, but it's hard not to.

Where did I end up this week? 66 pounds down from start weight. 25 pounds to go for my initial goal weight of 240. (Interestingly enough, I no longer think 240 is where I'm going to want to be. I'm not sure, but I think 225 is going to be right about where I should be. However, I'm likely going to try to get there via transition and maintenance and do it slowly, so 240 is almost certainly still the weight that I'll choose to start transition.)

Another week is down, though, so let's look at some data!

Click me to embiggen so you can actually read this!

Three huge losses to start the week, then three gains, then another big loss. this is what happens when you don't manage your water and exercise, you hang on to all that water and don't let it go. I think I would have been down a couple more pounds if I'd wrangled my water better, but as you can see from week 14, I wasn't really focused on that. I'm making a point to keep drinking my water today and I'm going to see if I can have a steadier week for week 16.

For my weekly progress chart, you get the full one this week. I'm staying a week ahead of the 4 pound a week average for now, but I'm steadily backsliding and I expect that in a couple weeks I'll be at a 4lb average. However, there's some exciting stuff going on here... I closed out the 2/lb column this week, chewing up three spots! Also, I'm 6-8 weeks from goal weight at 3-4 lbs a week. I think I can maintain 3+ a week, so that means I'll be very close to goal when we go on our cruise!

Click to embiggen!

On the TDEE front, I was just about where my spreadsheet says I should be. I'll take it. I'm sliding away from the 'expected overall' still, but I did better this week and that's good enough. I still think going by a Sedentary TDEE and then tracking calorie burn is a good system, but I also know that my calorie burn is based on voodoo and not any reality, since I'm doing a mix of cardio and strength and never wear an HRM.

Finally, let's look at my graph.

You can click me too!

My actual weight dipped just below my expected weight for this week, while my expected overall continues on its steady drop. I hope to get those lines a little closer together next week, but chances are that I'm not going to overtake that line again. That's ok, being ahead of the game for the early part makes this journey a lot easier, and I'm a LOT closer to the bottom of the graph than the top.

Week 14 complete! 1lb down for the week, 61 total.

Despite having  a bad day (2.4 lb water gain in one day, ugh!), I managed to end the week with a moderate loss. It's been a while since I've had a 'bad' week, though so I'm not terribly worried about it.

This week saw me doing some lawn work, but I cut back on my EFX cardio training a lot. I think that the extra strength training (pushing lawnmower up and down hills, cutting trees, pulling ivy, trimming and edging), combined with a criminal lack of water some days was the culprit here, and as such it should melt away pretty quickly.

Enough of that though, let's look at some charts!

Click to embiggen!

This week was a bouncy one, with a 2.6 loss one day, a 2.4 gain another. A couple minor gains, a flat day, and a couple minor losses. All together that adds up to sodium and lack of water playing havoc on the numbers. I need to make sure to pay better attention to that. I'm very swollen now, in fact, despite working hard to drink water yesterday.

No new numbers blasted :/

Weekly, I dropped to 271 but that wasn't enough to blast out any other numbers in my 4 pound, 3 pound, or even 2 pound columns. We'll resolve that next week though.

Blue Leader, stay on target!

It had to come eventually... my actual weight bounced up over my expected overall loss. We'll get him back in line soon, though!

So that's it for charts and graphs! Now I need to go fill up my water glass...

Three months complete! 60 pounds down!

Week 13 (91 days! Three months!) is complete, and I'm 60 pounds down from my starting weight!

Medifast is still working for me, although as time goes on I'm less shy about supplementing my Medifast meals with things like extra protein, cheese, and condiments. While this is certainly slowing my potential losses, I also believe it's helping me maintain muscle mass and keeping me on target.

I missed posting my charts and spreadsheets last week due to PAX, so it's been a while since you've seen these. Let's take a look!

Click to embiggen!

3.3 and 3.4 pound losses, right where I want to be. In addition, my BMI finally dropped below 35! I still am not a big believer in BMI, especially for my build, but even when I have no illusions about ever getting my BMI down to 18.5-25, I do think that I can get it to about 30.

My exercise numbers for PAX are pretty insane, but that's what walking all over the convention center for 8-12 hours a day will get you.

How are we doing towards goal week-by-week? Not bad.

Another column obliterated!

I'm still keeping just ahead of the 4lb/week average, although I'm still trending towards 3. The fun thing this week was that I hit the end of my 2/lb a week column! I like watching those numbers fill up. As of right now, I'm 8-10 weeks away from goal if I keep my current losses going. Probably closer to 10, and honestly I will expect to slow down even more as I keep getting closer. Hydrostatic bodyfat testing is available at my gym this May, though, and while i'd planned to wait until I hit 240 to do that, I may take advantage of it now and get a better feel for what my goal weight should be.

Now, time to take a look at TDEE:

Click to embiggen!

For 5 weeks running, my expected loss has been higher than my actual loss. This is telling me that something is wrong with my numbers... TDEE itself is based on the H-B method, which is pretty solid. I'm going with Sedentary and then calculating my Net calories as intake from MyFitnessPal minus exercise by way of Fitbit and MFP. Obviously this is not terribly accurate, and that's where I expect the disconnect is coming from. I'm fairly sure it will be a combination of not tracking everything accurately plus an overestimation of some calorie burns. However, it's close enough at my current weight that I'm not concerned with adjusting things yet. 

And lastly, a look at my graph:

Click to embiggen!

The blue line is my actual weight. Red is my expected weight based on the previous week's weight minus this week's expected burn. Finally, the yellow line is my expected weight based on TDEE from Week 1 tracked all the way out. According to my numbers, at week 13 I'm basically right on schedule.

In other news, last night we had a great Goalbusters class, and I'm looking forward to it warming up enough to get into tennis. I've got a couple of lessons that I'm itching to take, and then I think I may play in a league this summer!

Week 11 - I have new stats to track!

Unable to leave a good thing alone, I made another tweak to my existing spreadsheet. I'm now tracking BMR/TDEE and expected losses. Obviously this isn't totally accurate, as I'm not 100 percent perfect in tracking my food,  but it does make my graph a little more interesting. Also, this week I'll be discussing my spreadsheet itself a little bit, as well as the data that I'm collecting.

So, let's hit the detail page first!

Yeah, you'll want to click this if you want to actually read it.

So, 2.2 pounds down for the week, and fairly heavy exercise. I'll take it. But you've seen this before, so let's talk about how this sheet works.

• Date, day, weight: These three fields are static. I was able to copypasta the Date and Day to fill them, and weight is entered manually every day. Basic stuff.

• BMI: this field is interesting. First, it's a formula. It grabs today's weight and divides it by my height in inches (I have that number stored on a separate stats page), and multiplies by 703. The formula itself looks like this: =(C90/(Stats!$A$2^2))*703. This generates the number, and then I have a conditional formatting on the fields that changes the color. It started as a brick red (over 40), and will be Red until it dips below 35, at which point it will change to yellow.

• Notes: manually filled.

• Loss Today, Total Loss, Avg Loss/Day, Avg Loss/Week, Total Loss/Week: All of these are calculated fields based on today's weight compared to historic weights. Here's what the formulas look like:

• Loss today: =C89-C90 

• Total Loss: =$C$2-C90

• Avg Loss/Day: =G90/K90

• Avg Loss/Week: =G90/11

• Total Loss/Week: =C82-C90

• Days on Plan: Pre-filled.

• Exercise Calories, food Calories, Carbs, Fat, Protein, Sodium: I enter all of these manually each day

• Net calories: Calculated with a basic formula (=N89-M89)

• Weekly Net calories: a slightly less basic formula: =SUM(O82:O89). For this formula, I'm using Thursday as my start day and Wednesday as my ending day, because I enter weight in the AM but Calories at night. That gets me a full week of data.

This sheet does all of the heavy lifting, and from it I build my weekly tracker, my graph, and my new sheet. You'll see the new sheet soon, but first let's hit my weekly weight loss progress table.

click  me!

I got to tick off a couple of boxes this week, and I'm moving closer to goal! I won't go into as much detail on this, but I am pulling the Weight number from my first detail sheet and calculating all the averages based on starting weight and the current week. Colors/highlighting is all done manually because honestly it's easier for me.

Now... on to the new sheet!

Ooh! New sheet!

This sheet keeps track of weight loss by week (pulling the week and actual weight from my weekly tracker sheet, above). It calculates my actual loss, and then also calculates my BMR using the Harris-Benedict Principle (formula: =66+(6.23*B2) + (12.7*Stats!$A$2)-(6.8*Stats!$B$2))

I'm grabbing the weight from the sheet, and my height and age from my stats sheet. Then I calculate my TDEE by taking that and multiplying by 1.2 (for my Sedentary desk job). I multiply by 7 to get my weekly TDEE (yeah, I'm abstracting this to the week and not doing daily calculations), then I grab my Weekly net calories from my first page. I do a quick subtraction to get my deficit. I count my TDEE as sedentary since my FitBit and MFP are tracking my calorie burn. From this, I get an expected loss per week (deficit/3500), and an Expected Weight.

I'm unsure how accurate this will ever be, since my calories burned/consumed are all abstractions, and the H-B method isn't without flaws either. That said, it's a good baseline.

I did all this and it made my graph more interesting!

Look! TWO lines now!

So now I am tracking not only my actual weight, but my expected weight based on Calories In vs Out. You can plainly see the extra loss in the first couple weeks, where I'm dropping weight super fast as water falls off, and then a hiccup in week 7, when I held onto a ton of extra water, and now the lines are moving nicely in step. I'm a little above my expected, but I'm not surprised, as I expect my calories burned is over estimated by MFP and my calories eaten is almost certainly a bit too low since I don't track every condiment and add-on. As long as the two lines are keeping fairly close though, then I know I'm accurate enough.

And finally, I hit level 10 in HabitRPG and became a Rogue! Woo? Woo!

10 Weeks! That means it's time for spreadsheets and graphs!

I've made it 10 weeks through Medifast and am at a lower weight that I've been in years. In fact, I'm not sure when the last time I weighed 280 pounds was. It's been a while.

But, 280 pounds is one thing, another is how this week went. Let's take a look at my numbers.

Click me! Click me!

So, first off, a 3.4 pound loss, which is right in the area I want to be. That's great! However, my low weight was actually on day 3 of the week! Sunday I barely drank any water, and it showed. Then I has a workout class and still didn't drink enough water. I finally did start drinking my water again on Tuesday and Wednesday, and then had another workout class. So the lesson of the week is: DRINK YOUR WATER!

A secondary lesson is: Eating out on this diet is definitely doable!

That said, the fact that we managed to go out to eat twice in two days and stay on plan doesn't mean I want to start eating out 2-4 times a week again. Eating out is almost certainly the biggest culprit in our weight gain, so we need to plan around it and have eating out be a social vector for time with our friends, and limit the 'I just don't feel like cooking tonight' to as close to zero as possible.

How are we doing on our goals? Let's look at my weekly chart and see!

You could click me too, if you really wanted to.

Not as impressive this week. I only ticked off two new boxes, a 3 pound box and a 2 pound box. I was a couple tenths of a pound away from snagging a couple more. However, I'm still on track to be at 275 for PAX and 260 for Geekway. I'll take it! Any week I lose over 3 pounds is a good week!

Now for my graph. Again, it's pretty basic... I should probably add some more data points to it to make it more interesting, especially since I'm tracking calories, but that gets really mathy, and while I can make excel do some cool stuff, I'm not terribly interested in digging deep into writing formulas to calculate my projected losses based on calories in vs calories out.

In almost all my hobbies, I want to watch numbers go up instead of down.
This is the exception.

We've got a nice, fairly steady drop resolving itself over the last few weeks, and if you take out the one anomalous week at the start and a second anomalous week 7, then it's a very steady decline. Of course I will keep tracking, but I think I'm settling into a ~4 pounds a week drop as of now. As I continue to lose weight I expect this to keep slowing down a bit.

10 weeks down and at my current rate another 13 to go to hit 240 pounds and then I will take stock and revisit my goals.

Week 9 defeated!

This week wasn't looking great for the first half... I wasn't staying hydrated and combined that with a couple heavy workouts and I had gains early. But then, I focused on my water, made sure I was eating reasonably, and the last three days saw me ditch all that water I'd latched on to.

Here's my stats!

Click to embiggen!

Saturday was a crazy day, I know I already posted about it, but a giant workout, cleaning house, a couple of long walks... I made the continually sub-par choice of turkey jerky as a snack, as well.

That said, I recovered well and saw the water weight melt off. My average is still trending down towards 4 pounds a week, as well.

How are we doing on our goals, though?

Click to embiggen

284 pounds! This weigh in was when it clicked that I was no longer 'Over 300 lbs'. I haven't been for a few weeks, but this was the week when I realized that if I quit Medifast right now and just followed a reasonable diet and exercise plan, I'd stabilize under 300 instead of over 300.

Obviously, that's not good enough. But it's nice to see! I'm three weeks ahead of the 4 pound/week schedule, and nearly 2 months ahead of the 3 pounds/week schedule. 

I've got a couple of mini-goals ahead. First, I'm going to PAX East in 3 weeks. I really want to be 275 pounds for this. That will have me in better shape than I've been in for a decade if not more. Flying should be a lot more comfortable at this weight, as well... the last time I was on a plane I was likely between 315-330 lbs.

Second is Geekway to the West in two  months. I'd like to be 260 for this. Last year at Geekway I weighed around 325 or so (I wasn't keeping good records, so this is an assumption). Getting down to 260 is doable and would have me in better shape than I've been in for about 15 years. (Actually, more than that... the last time I was at 260, I was doing no weight training at all, it was all cardio and martial arts... I was in decent shape, but I'll be in better shape this time when I get back there).

Oh, and before I forget, I had a workout last night! Only 5 of us showed up so I partnered with the instructor and here's what we did! (it was the last night of the session, so we got hammered. Next week we start fresh and it will be easy again!)

Warm-up

• Passing medicine Balls in a circle (5 people, three balls... 10, 12, and 15 lbs) 2 minutes
• Jumping Jacks, 30 seconds (I got 37 in this time)
• Ankle mobility, 30 seconds
• Split squats, 30 seconds each side
• Push-ups, 30 seconds
• Mountain climbers against the wall, 30 seconds

Partner Warm-up (repeat 2x)

• Hold a wall squat while partner does squats
• 100 body-weight squats

Partner Circuit (repeat 3x)

• Seated double waves with the heavy rope (simultaneous with partner, on a mat), 1 minute
• Kettlebell squats, 35 lbs (alternate squats, handing off kettlebell each time), 1 minute
• Isometric Holds, blue bands, 1 minute each side
• Wall squat with a medicine ball bounce pass across the gym, 15 lbs, 1 minute

Cooldown

• Stretching

That ended the session. Next week Christy and I are back to Monday and Wednesday nights for the new Goalbusters session. 

Week 8 Complete! Lots of details and stats on this one.

After last week's disappointing gain, my body dumped tons of water and fat this week and I had another 6 pound loss. A pattern is starting to emerge in my numbers (patterns are good! They give some justification for all of this spreadsheeting!)

I'm gonna share a lot of spreadsheet images this week, so let's jump in. First, the Week 8 Detail:

Click to embiggen!

Showing off the tail end of Week 7 as well as all of week 8 here. Now, week 7 was an anomalous week. Visiting family, using a 'foreign' scale multiple days, lots of travel, TONS of stress (driving for hours on snow-covered highways at 15-20 miles an hour, eek!). At the time, last Thursday, I was pretty bummed, but looking back it is clear that with everything going on, it makes a lot of sense. I was worried about over eating and getting off plan, but I think it was all pretty much just stress related from travel.

Week 8, though, has been solid. I had one minor gain after a crazy intense workout day, but outside of that saw drops every day. Also, I baked a chocolate-orange zebra cake for my daughter with homemade dark chocolate buttercream frosting and didn't eat a slice of it. I got to the gym every day, as well, and my diet stayed on track with just the normal extra proteins I eat.

Now lets take a look at weekly progress!

Click to embiggen, not that you really need to on this one.

Here we can see that static week from 6 to 7, and then the 6 pound drop to week 8. I'm still three weeks ahead of my '4 pounds a week' aggressive target, 7 ahead of my desired 3 pound a week goal, and the 1 and 2 pound a week goals are becoming irrelevant quickly as I push them off the chart. This diet is a huge success for me right now, and in fact I'm now weighing less than I ever did when I was on Weight Watchers (Weight Watchers was fairly successful for me briefly, but then plan changes happened and it stopped working for me, and I never bothered to go back to the old way.)

I've also added a graph in my spreadsheet, just because I can. This was more of a joke to myself that came to talking to my friend Sarah about my spreadsheet. It's very basic and not as sexy as some of the other graphs I've made, though.

It's actually rather boring, isn't it?

So that's the story of this week, but I haven't shared a big progress report in a while I thought about typing it out like I did a few weeks back, but instead I'm just going to dump my entire spreadsheet here for you to look at!

This one you really will need to click to embiggen, unless you have Magic Eyes.

Since the last time you've seen this, I've made a few improvements. BMI now color-codes itself based on the number. BMI is a bogus number for me, since I'm male, tall, big-boned, muscular AND fat, and even when I'm not fat I'll still be 4 of those 5 things, but I still like to track it. I'm keeping track of my macros and calories, the super-high sodium days aren't really that much of an outlier insomuch as they are just days I bothered to track condiments in MFP.

Now, that's enough details. Let's talk about last night's Goalbusters class briefly. Christy skipped class to go run in preparation for the 5K she is running for charity (please donate! It's for HavenHouse, a great cause!), and so I went by myself. We had a medium turnout, 10 of us and I ended up being the only guy so I partnered with Mary Jane, as Bob didn't show up either. We got started and here was the circuit:

Warm-up

• Pass a medicine ball (6, 8, 10, and 15 lbs) for 2 minutes
• Jumping Jacks, 30 seconds
• Staggered Squats, 30 seconds each leg
• Ankle Mobility, 30 seconds
• Push-ups, 30 seconds
• Mountain Climbers against the wall, 30 seconds

Partner Warm-up (repeat 2x)

• Hold a wall squat while partner does 80 body-weight squats
• Do 80 body-weight squats

Circuit

4 minutes of single-arm kettlebell work, no stopping, just keep going through this cycle until the 4 minutes is up:

• 5 right arm kettlebell swings (30 lb kettlebell)
• 5 left arm kettlebell swings (30 lb kettlebell)
• 5 left arm imbalanced kettlebell squats (30 lb kettlebell)
• 5 right arm imbalanced kettlebell squats (30 lb kettlebell)
• 5 right arm kettlebell shoulder presses (30 lb kettlebell)
• 5 left arm kettlebell shoulder presses (30 lb kettlebell)

Then, 4 minutes of partner work

• 2 minutes alternating push-ups against a mat-stack (hold a push-up position, partner does a push-up, when they come up, you go down)
• 1 minute isometric holds (right hand primary), blue band
• 1 minute isometric holds (left hand primary), blue band

Then back to the kettlebells for double-arm work for 4 minutes non-stop.

• 5 kettlebell squats (35 lb kettlebell)
• 5 kettlebell squats into a high row (35 lb kettlebell)
• 5 kettlebell shoulder presses (35 lb kettlebell)

And finally back to the mats for 3 more minutes

• 1 minute alternating push-ups against a mat-stack (hold a push-up position, partner does a push-up, when they come up, you go down)
• 1 minute isometric holds (right hand primary), blue band
• 1 minute isometric holds (left hand primary), blue band

Cooldown

Stretching and then done.

Week 7 - Posted my first gain for the week

So, I weighed this morning, and after yesterday's ballooning up of retained water, I did't expect much.

Yesterday when I weighed in, it was at 297.1, but I hadn't gone to the bathroom yet. After bathroom and stripping down, it was 296.1. Still bad, but not as bad. That had me backpedaling about a week. So I drank lots of water, and closely watched my sodium, and stuck to my standard Medifast meals and a very basic L&G of fajita turkey breast and mushrooms. However, I noticed something: I really wasn't going to the bathroom enough despite the water I was drinking.

So this morning, when I woke up, I was actually a little surprised that I'd dropped all of my gain from yesterday and a bit more. I was back down to 293.4, which is .4 lbs over my low from last week. However, I still am not peeing like I should be. I've decided that for whatever reason, my body is clutching onto water and not letting go. Maybe it is being a little sick, maybe it was too much sodium, maybe it was workout, maybe it was stress from driving on ice for 60 miles... probably a combination of all four.

After last week's 6.5 lb drop, a rebound week doesn't actually seem out of place. Even with a gain this week, my average is still 5.5 lbs. And, I fully expect to see things 'revert' to normal soon. I know that my caloric intake is within 100 calories or so per day of being accurate, and it is impossible for me to gain fat with my deficit. As soon as I start peeing again, I expect to see another big drop, and then go back to a more steady pace.

click to embiggen!

In other news, the workout last night was insane. We had 11 people show up for our Goal Busters class, and Kevin set up two main stations... a circuit of 7 exercises in one half of the gym, and mats in the other half. So, we did our workout:

Warm-up:

• 2 minutes of passing the medicine balls in a circle
• 30 seconds of Jumping Jacks
• 30 seconds of staggered squats, right leg
• 30 seconds of staggered squats, left leg
• 30 seconds of ankle mobility
• 30 seconds of push-ups
• 30 seconds of mountain climbers against the wall

Partner work up (repeat 2x):

• 60 body weight squats
• Hold a wall squat during partner's squats

Circuit:

• 1 minute: Standing Rows, Alternating arms (30 lbs each) on the cable machine
• 1 minute: plank
• 1 minute: 2 mountain climbers into a pushup against a mat stack, on glides
• 1 minute: plank
• 1 minute: Kettlebell Swings (35 lbs)
• 1 minute: plank
• 1 minute: Heavy Rope double-overs
• 1 minute: plank
• 1 minute: Bosu Balance with dumbbell clean and press (15 lbs each)
• 1 minute: plank
• 1 minute: run against an anchored heavy band
• 1 minute: plank
• 1 minute: monster walks with a blue band
• 1 minute: plank

Cool down and stretch

After class I went home and watched Survivor (Yay! Survivor is back on!) and had a Medifast smoothie. Normally I use chocolate pudding for these, but this time I screwed it up and it was actually not bad. 

Medifast Dark Chocolate Smoothie
1 Package Brownie Soft Bake
1/2 cup cold water
1 1/2 cups crushed ice
1 Tbsp PB2 powdered peanut butter
1 Tbsp Unsweetened Cocoa Powder
1/2 tsp Vanilla extract
Put all ingredients in your blender (I use a Ninja). Blend the ever-loving heck out of it. Check consistency and add ice  if too thin, water if too thick. Pour into a glass and eat with a spoon or drink through a straw.

It was thinner and less 'creamy' than the pudding-based smoothies I make. I think I can revisit this though, and add light cream cheese to it to thicken it up and give it that dairy hit that it was missing. 

Ok, my first 'bad' week is over and done with on this plan. Time to keep working and erase this! I've got 5 weeks til PAX and 7 weeks til Geekway, and I want to be in better shape for both of them!

Week 6 Complete!

Well, we're in Week 7 now and I can say that Medifast is solidly into my routine now. I'll post some updated stats, but first... last night's workout in my Goalbusters Circuit training class

Warm-up

• Passing medicine balls in a circle, 2 minutes
• Jumping Jacks, 30 seconds
• Split squat, 30 seconds each leg
• Ankle mobility, 30 seconds
• Push-ups, 30 seconds
• Mountain Climbers, 30 seconds

Partner work (repeat 3 times)

• Hold a wall squat while partner does 50 body weight squats
• 50 body weight squats

Circuit:

• TRX Squats, 1 minute
• Triceps Extension with 30 lb Kettlebell, 1 minute
• TRX pull-ups, 1 minute
• Goblet Squats with a 25 lb kettlebell, 1 minute
• Penguin walks, with Black Band attached to a wall anchor, 1 minute
• Chest Presses, Blue and Red band doubled up and attached to a wall anchor, 1 minute
• Alternating Biceps Curls, 15 lb dumbbell, 1 minute
• Monster Walks in place, Blue Band, 1 minute
• Dragging a 200 lb chain between cones, 1 minute (with partner)
• Dragging a 200 lb chain the other direction, 1 minute (with partner)
• Heavy Rope, alternating waves, 1 minute
• Freestyle on the Heavy bag, 1 minute

Core:

• Modified Jackknifes, 1 minute
• 6-inches, 1 minute

Stretch

That was a great workout, I really liked how fast we bounced between exercises.

Now, onto this week's progress. Here's my spreadsheets!

Click to embiggen!

Ok, first off, last week's 1.7 drop has bounced back remarkably. This week everything looks pretty solid. Sunday there was no workout to speak of, but it was a D&D day and I just didn't have time to get one in.

Monday we see a bad decision... I'd worked out hard that morning, and never really restored my protein from it, and after a late meeting I was feeling light-headed. I didn't bring a Medifast meal or a snack with me, and so stopped and got some buffalo chicken bites from a gas station. It didn't seem too out of whack, but they ended up being 360 calories and 16 grams of carbs. They spiked my sodium too. Ugh. Lesson learned... check nutrition FIRST, and bring a snack with you.

I recovered by drinking tons of water and doing a lot of cardio on Tuesday, and got a boost by having had big workouts Friday and Saturday as well. But still, bad decision and I'm glad it didn't have any big negative effects for me.

So how am I doing on my goal to 240? Let's look!

Click to embiggen!

Week 6 down, and I'm three weeks ahead of my most aggressive schedule, and 7 weeks ahead of my expected schedule. I still think I've got about 14-18 weeks to go, minimum, as I don't foresee me being able to keep this average up.

My plan is still to hit 240 lbs on Medifast and then get a Hydro static body fat analysis done, see exactly where I am, and go from there.

Week 5 complete! 1/3 of the way there (in weight, not time)

Week 5 was a weird week. My weight bounced around a lot, and I lost less than expected.  I was also retaining a lot of water, and I think the culprit was me increasing intensity on my workouts. I plan to keep the workout intensity going strong though, so we'll see what happens in the next week.

Also, today I'm going to limit exercise to treadmill or elliptical, after last night's Goalbusters class, so that may lead to a large drop if my muscles let go of extra water in response. We'll see!

First, here was last night's Goalbusters Circuit:

Warm Up:

• Group circle passing medicine balls, 1 minute (6, 8, 10, and 15 lb balls)
• Jumping Jacks, 30 seconds
• Ankle Mobility stretches, 30 seconds
• Split Stance body weight Squats, 30 seconds each leg
• Wall Push-ups, 30 seconds
• Wall Mountain Climbers, 30 seconds

Partner warm-up, alternating 3x each:

• Wall Squat
• 40 body weight Squats

Circuit (repeat 2x, 1 minute each station)

• Alternating Waves on the Heavy Rope while squatting into a chair
• Alternate between these on the two circuits:
• Hip Rotations with Glides from a raised push-up stance
• 'Stir the Pot' with a Body Bar (18 lb) while balanced on a Bosu
• TRX Triceps extensions
• Squat Lunges with overhead arm pulls (Blue Band)
• TRX pull-ups
• Alternate between these on the two circuits:
• Kettlebell Squat, Clean, and Press - right hand (35 lb)
• Kettlebell Squat, Clean, and Press - left hand (35 lb)
• Alternate between these on the two circuits:
• Cable Machine Standing Chest Presses (60 lbs total weight)
• Heavy Bag freestyle workout

Stretching

That was it for the workout. I tried briefly doing 80 lb chest presses, but quickly realized there was no way I was going to hold out for a minute when it was the last exercise of the night, so I dropped it 10 lbs per side to finish off.

Now onto the Week 5 details... First, my progress Chart.

Click to embiggen!

Last week I ended at 301.2, and this week I finished off at 299.5... so with rounding, there's only a one pound difference when we look at my weekly progress chart. Even so, at week 5 I'm ahead of the game... matching week 8 at the aggressive 4/lb a week rate and week 10 at my target of 3/lb a week. Next week I should completely blow the 1/lb a week average off the chart... just 1/10th of a pound and I could have done that this week! I still fully expect to lower my average weight loss down to the 2-3 lbs a week range, so these numbers should start to flatten out soon.

Click to embiggen!

Now onto my detailed sheet. the first thing that jumps out at me here are the three gains this week, which I believe is entirely due to increased water retention from harder workouts. Also, this week I've incorporated FitBit calorie adjustments into my exercise. Here's how I'm tracking my exercise so far:

Circuit training: MyFitnessPal claims I earn over 800 calories. I cut this to 400 which I think might still be a little high.

Elliptical: I input age and weight and keep my hands on the HRM pads as much as possible, and use the amount declared by the machine.

Strength training: I log this in MFP with the cardio version as well as the strength details. I cut the calorie expenditure MFP declares by half, because I just don't believe it.

FitBit adjustment: I log all of my exercise in MFP with time stamps, so that the FitBit can know to adjust the calories it declares. On the day I did no gym work at all, this gave me a negative adjustment, which I'm ok with.

I feel like all of these exercise calories are likely a little inflated, but that's ok, because I know my calorie counting of food is also a little low. While it's easy to track the 5 Medifast meals, the lean and green is tougher... I don't track condiments well at all, and there's a lot of calories (and sodium!) there that isn't making it into my spreadsheet. 

That said, this is a new week starting tomorrow, and if I don't have a decent loss in the morning, I may make it a point to accurately track *everything* I cook, actually getting out the measuring cups, spoons, and scales and tracking it all. One week of that might be an interesting experiment, just to see if it makes a difference.

4 Weeks Done! 28 days on Medifast

Four weeks! I'm still going strong and have had quite a few victories that I did not expect:

Friday Bagels and Donuts: for years my company has provided bagels and donuts every Friday (along with unlimited sodas every day), and while I was able to cut out my Diet Dr Pepper habit after coming back from Mexico last year, the bagels and donuts were a big deal. I've avoided them though, and managed to not eat them. Now I can go into the break room on Friday for my water or tea and not even care.

Various office foods: currently, this is King Cake. None of the really good ones (the ones with rum-infused cream cheese filling) have shown up, but even so the normal ones are popping up and I'm turning them down. Same thing with cookies and candies.  I even have a couple of people at work telling me not to succumb to temptation!

Cooking every day! With a couple of exceptions, I've cooked something using meats and vegetables every day this month. We've gone out to eat twice, but other than that, cooking every night. Our groceries are almost all being bought on the 'edges' of the store, and not in the middle where all the processed foods are. If I can keep up this habit then that alone will make a huge difference by cutting out the massive amounts of fast food and take out and sit down meals we did, just because we didn't want to deal with cooking or going to the grocery store.

 Now on to the progress report, weeks 1-4:

Week 1:

• Lost 14 lbs total
• Biggest daily loss was 4.2 lbs
• Smallest loss was a gain of 1.1 lbs
• Average loss of 2.0 lbs/day  

 Week 2:

• Lost 6.6 lbs total
• Biggest daily loss was 4.1 lbs
• Smallest loss was a gain of 0.1 lbs 
• Average loss of 0.9 lbs/day  

 Week 3:

• Lost 7.3 lbs total
• Biggest daily loss was 1.8 lbs
• Smallest loss was a gain of 0.3 lbs
• Average loss of 1.0 lbs/day  

 Week 4:

• Lost 2.9 lbs total
• Biggest daily loss was 2.2 lbs
• Smallest loss was a gain of 1.3 lbs 
• Average loss of 0.4 lbs/day  

Total:

• Loss of 30.8 lbs total
• Average loss of 1.1 lbs/day 

I'm 1/3 of the way there, but obviously the next 60 lbs will slow down. I think the loss this week, 2.9 lbs, is probably much more likely to be the types of losses I will see from here out. At 3 lbs a week, that's 20 more weeks. But, 4 weeks in, I'm now certain I can do this.

Week 3 complete!

So I've completed week 3, and am still losing rapidly. I've added more exercise (both cardio and strength training) to my weekly regimen, and that is going well.

Another thing I've done is get my spreadsheet that I use for daily tracking nice and polished, with lots of automation in it. I thought for today's blog post I'd share a couple of screenshots of what my spreadsheet looks like.

 First there's the primary screen:

Click for full-size

On this page I input my weight every morning as soon as I wake up, and it does all the calculations (BMI, Loss today, total loss, avg, loss, and weekly total/avg losses). It even color codes the days I'm up. I input my food and exercise calories. I'm tracking all of this even though MyFitnessPal holds all this information, because I want to have more control over seeing trends.

Then I have a progress screen:

Click for full-size

This screen pulls in data from the previous sheet every week, grabbing the weight I was at on my end-of-week day (Thursdays). It also calculates out the 'average loss per week' for me, and then I highlight the week and where I am on the four schedules manually. This lets me see where I am now compared to where I want to be fairly easily.

Week 2 complete

I've completed week two of Medifast, and it's been successful so far.

The food choices are edible. It's gotten me cooking and eating healthy. My energy levels are up, weight is down, and I'm sleeping better. It isn't negatively impacting my workouts.

We'll try more foods, and learn more recipes, but I think this is something that should be easy to stick with through the next few months. There will be some challenges (Mardi Gras, conventions, cruise) but I don't see anything preventing me from being successful short or long term now.

Deciding to do Medifast has 'set' the desire to eat and cook healthy better than I expected. I've been playing at eating better for several months, but never stuck to it. This is getting me 'stuck in'.

Here are some statistics for weeks 1 and 2:

Week 1:

• Lost 14 lbs total
• Biggest daily loss was 4.2 lbs
• Smallest loss was a gain of 1.1 lbs
• Average loss of 2.0 lbs/day  

 Week 2:

• Lost 6.6 lbs total
• Biggest daily loss was 4.1 lbs
• Smallest loss was a gain of 0.1 lbs 
• Average loss of 0.9 lbs/day 

Total:

• Loss of 20.6 lbs total
• Average loss of 1.47 lbs/day 

I think that Week 1 was clearly an outlier, week 2 might partially be one. I expect to settle in to 3-4 lbs a week at this point, and for that amount to steadily decrease as I get closer to goal.

At 4lbs/week average, I'll hit goal at Week 23

At 3lbs/week average, I'll hit goal at  Week 31

Two weeks down. 

More Thoughts after week 1 of Medifast...

One full week of Medifast has come and gone and now I have to make sure I can keep this up for a few months to make my goals.

 So far, I think that's perfectly doable. I *like* a lot of the food. The shakes, the cereal, the crunch bars, the soft bakes, the puddings are all good. I would like to find a crunchy savory snack that i actually like, but  that won't be the end of the world.

 The macaroni and cheese, once you've 'enhanced' it with a laughing cow wedge, some Tony Chachere's, and maybe some mushrooms and an oz of lean protein is a good filling lunch.

For dinner, I'm eating a ton of mushrooms, can do lots of different things with ground turkey breast, chicken breast, shrimp, fish, and eggs. I need to incorporate some more veggies, and will probably start incorporating some squash soon, and it's about time to try to learn how to eat lettuce.

In a surprise twist, eating three servings of mushrooms and 5-7 oz of lean protein (after cooking weight) is actually too much food. So that will make it a lot easier to plan on my lunch taking some of that food over.

I believe the biggest boosts this diet will give me are the following:

Meal Plans - I eat 5 pre-packaged meals a day. This prevents me from skipping breakfast (which I did way too much), it makes it easy to eat lunch (which I often skipped or ate very late). It has a night-time 'dessert' planned in every night (a soft bake cookie/brownie or soft serve made from pudding mix).

No going out - I'm cooking real food every night. Since this is 'Just Required' we have meat and veggies in the house every night. We aren't going 'let's just order pizza or grab McDonald's on the way home'. If we get a habit of cooking every night and only going out for occasions and to socialize with friends, instead of it just being easier, then that is a huge win.

Stomach size - No lie, I think this will make it easier to eat smaller meals more often. In the past week I have not once gone 'ugh why did I eat all that'. As my stomach contracts and I get used to 6 meals a day, I think that I'll be able to keep that schedule going after it becomes habit.

 And that's the whole trick here, of course, is to use this to make good habits. Obviously eating meal bars and meal shakes isn't the habit I want... the habit is 'small healthy meals with reasonable snacks'. If I can get into a mode where I'm eating a reasonable breakfast, lunch, and dinner, with reasonable snacks, then I think this will stick.

 The hardest part so far is social eating. But, that's not been a big issue so far. Tonight I'm just having to skip a social meal (I'll be there, but won't eat) since it's at a pasta place, but honestly a small piece of lean meat and some low-carb veggies is doable a lot of places... I just have to expand my diet and start eating green things.

That's gonna be the hard part.