So, those whom have had the (mis)fortune to meet me in person (all two of you who read this) will have no doubt noticed that I am not the smallest of individuals. For the vast majority of people who have not met me, newsflash: I am not the smallest of individuals. I am, in fact, one of the larger people I know.
I could wax poetic and say it’s not my fault, it’s genetics, it’s whatever-the-in-vogue-excuse-is-this-week, but bottom line is that I likes me some grub. Portion control is, always has been, and most likely will always be my bane. I was a powerlifter early in life, and never really lost that appetite, even after I stopped competitively lifting. Add to that my dad is an executive chef, and SWMBO is a cookbook author in the making, well, I am certainly not denied any opportunity to indulge.
I must point out at this time that there was a point in my life, about 8 years ago as of this writing, where I was running 2+ miles a day, 5 days a week (we have treadmills and ellipticals at work) and consuming about 1600 calories a day. And I weighed about 350 pounds. This is what the body of a fat man looks like in starvation mode. I plateaued there and have subsequently slid backwards, albeit slowly, ever since. Needless to say, I’m not happy where I am. This must change.
I’m not going to turn this into a fitness or diet blog or anything like that. I am going to use this as a medium to start charting my progress.
SWMBO and I do not own a scale. I’m OK with this on principle, but logistically, it poses a few challenges, and one opportunity. I have access to a scale at the gym in the office. Using only one scale, at least I don’t have to worry about calibration. As of 10 minutes ago, I was out of range for that scale. In total honesty, that means I’m probably in excess of 440 pounds. My immediate goal is to get into range here. I hope to do so in two weeks.
To that, I’ve acquired a copy of The 4-Hour Body by Tim Ferriss. At almost 600 pages, it’s quite a read. I’m not finished, but a lot of what I’m reading makes sense. As someone who’s been trapped in the starvation mode plateau before, the one-day-off-six-days-on seems promising. The slow-carb approach jives with what I know about the glycemic index, and the whole concept of MED (read the book) makes sense. I jogged a quarter mile (180 seconds-ish) while I was in the gym failing to weigh myself. That was my second trip in today, and I’ll make one more before I leave work today.
I don’t know where this is going. I’m not setting a hard end-state goal – I carry a lot of muscle and skeleton around; I’ll probably never see the underside of 200 pounds, and I like being able deadlift more than half my body weight. Still, I view any progress in this arena as good.
Look for an update in two weeks, we’ll see how I did.
I Shoot Stuff 