The Left Coast Biased

Here is the update on our Biggest Loser Coaches Challenge. I began the competition at 210 pounds with a 27% body fat percentage. At our half way point I am Now 190 pounds with a 19.5% body fat percentage. The math on that works out like so: 27% of my 210 pounds was fat, which is about 57 pounds of fat; currently 19.5% of 190 pounds is fat, which is about 37 pounds of fat. That means that in four weeks I lost 20 pounds, all of which was fat. Kind of like this guy. I am going to tell you what I did, so you can have the fun of losing too!! Sorry, I was reading one of those self help books, and they always get real excitable. But I am going to tell you.

On the dietary front I kept things pretty simple, followed a few simple rules which are not earth shattering. It was easy to keep, so easy in fact that for the next month I am going to ratchet up the strictness of the diet to see if I can be more efficient about losing. These are the rules:

1 – Don’t be American. By this I mean get rid of the steak and potatoes and your hard earned beer. Red meat is loaded with saturated fat, having 20 times that of a chicken breast. In addition to that the grains they feed cows lead to a higher, hidden caloric/carb content and sucking down the antibiotic cesspool they toss in to keep them from exploding cannot be all that good for you. The potatoes are a fast carb that that is harder to use in exercise, turning more easily into fat. There are potatoes that when eaten with their skins provide a slow burning carb, but I generally don’t pay attention to my potato types, so I just got rid of them. Which was hard for me, as I would eat potatoes for every single meal if I could. I also threw out these All American foods: mayo, white bread, and any breading that you fry. Seriously, it is just an already sketchy food that is used to soak up fat, directly. What are we doing eating it anyway? Why not just get a high fructose I.V.? This is easier than it might seem at first. Almost any real restaurant has a chicken and veggies, or fish option. And whole grain bread is easy to find, and in my opinion tastier anyway. Alcohol of any sort by nature is an empty calorie, as in your body will not use it. I’ve heard rumor that red wine has some fat burning qualities, but not from anyone with letters after their name.

2 – Eat more. Don’t skip meals. I know that at this point it is no great secret that having six to eight meals a day is a better food processing system than doing the one meal a day plan, but it always struck me as kind of annoying. I don’t always have the kind of schedule that allows me to eat that often. This was the one more difficult aspect of the plan, but I managed by convincing myself that things like smoothies, a handful of almonds, or a sizable piece of fruit counted as a meal. I’d go to work after breakfast with some almonds, a turkey sandwich, and a banana and bingo. Three meals down. And skipping meals can either lead you to over snacking, which isn’t a real big issue if you snack the right way, or it can trick your body into starvation mode which will lead to a counterproductive storage of fat.

3 – Take a night off. When I was settling myself into this challenge I was taking advice from any number of sources. I was standing on my head for 5 minutes a day, bathing in salt water, eating only raw meat… Well, while I decided to limit my sources of advice, one thing that kept popping up is the benefit of giving yourself a night off, relaxing and eating and drinking as you like. I have heard plenty of reasons for this that are sometimes scientific, sometimes ephemeral, sometimes metaphorical, and in one case ecumenical, but I think the brunt of it comes down to most of us just not being able to deprive ourselves on a truly dedicated basis. With which I agree. At the end of the week I want to sit down with my friends and enjoy a taste beverage or 12. So I took a night off.

That really is about it. I did exercise, but I don’t really like running, so I didn’t do much of that. I worked out at a gym 4 days a week, doing ridiculously light weights, as in the kind that get girls looking at you sideways because you are lifting less than they are, and did 3 sets of 20 reps for everything. That means that I would lift the weight 20 times, take a 30 second break, and then repeat twice for those of you not fluent in gymgeek. The point of this was to be burning more weight while not putting on the pounds or bulk that comes with muscle. Which has worked out fairly well.

Which brings me to Phase 2. I have currently 37 pounds of fat hanging on my frame. That means that if I jack up the number and intensity of my workouts, and buckle down on the diet, I should have plenty of fat left to work with. My ambition is to cut another 20 pounds of fat in the next month, which would leave me at 170, with 10% body fat. I promise to let you know how it goes. For any of you who took up my challenge a month ago, I am currently winning our coaches challenge, so whomsoever of our readership wins the readers challenge will have our prize money to give away to a charity of their choosing. Best of luck!!