From: Jonathan Davis (jonathan.davis@lineone.net)
Date: Wed Sep 17 2003 - 08:01:39 MDT
I think Mermaids idea is excellent.
A few months ago I weighed myself and had an horrible shock. I was 123kg
(271 lbs) fully ten kilograms heavier than my father was at his fattest
(when he was alive) and an impossible 33kg (72 pounds) from my lightest
adult weight. My father was 6'3'', I am 6'1''. I always thought of him as
very fat.
"How did this happen?" I asked myself. This incredible deterioration had
taken place over 5 years. Steady eating (healthy but massive portions),
regular drinking and no-exercise.
Now I am not blubbery fat like you might be imagining. Like my father and I
carry the fat well on a massive skeletal and muscular frame. I have a huge
belly, but my legs and arms are muscular. I am a classic barrel on stilts,
the highest heart risk type. My dad died at 59 from a massive heart attack.
My grandfather at 56, ditto.
I needed to take urgent action.
Back in 1995 I had managed to stop a 40 Marlboro a day smoking habit with
relative ease. In 1998, fairly overweight, I went on gym binge and shrank
down to a skinny (for me) 87kg. I did this with a brutal regime of swimming
2km (circa 85x25m) then doing an hour of cardio followed by a weight session
6 days a week. I maintained this for about 5 months before my immune system
gave up. I was weak and gaunt, then I contracted Chicken Pox. My game was
up. I backfired massively and a huge homeostatic urge pulled me right back
towards my genetic baseline of above average adiposity.
Five years of being in a happy relationship, good (but sedentary) jobs,
heavy eating and drinking combined with a the self-fulfilling nature of
obesity (fat encourages fat, absorbs corrective hormones and peptides, it
messes with the endocrine hunger controls etc.) and I was a fat man. A VERY
fat man.
I resolved to go for a long term, slow-but-sure weight AND health management
approach. The flash fire method I tried before failed, so I resolved to lose
no more than 2lbs a week through a combination of moderate exercise and some
dietary changes.
I realized that I need to sew exercise into the fabric of ordinary
operations so I started cycling to work (which is 5.5 miles from my home).
This warms me up for either a gym session or Yoga class every week night. I
try to do a gym session or Yoga class over the weekend, but it is optional.
I have stopped drinking during the working week (except for special occasion
or a very occasional glass of wine). I now calorie count, which is super
easy because everything here in the UK is clearly labelled with exact
nutritional values. Given my size, my basal calorific intake needs to be
around 3000 calories just to be static ( I used a formula in the superb book
Warriors by Robert Paterson -
http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0749921668/ ). To lose weight I
simply need to cut that by 500 calories a day. This is surprisingly easy
when one sees where most of our calories come from.
I have shrunk from 123kg at the beginning of July 2003 to just over 112kg
now. I have another 12 kilos to go on my way to my first waypoint of 100kg.
After that I think weight loss will be very slow.
I am finding the standard benefits are abundant (more energy, better mood,
better sleep, greater alertness) and there are already supplementary
benefits such as I no longer suffer from the chronic heartburn I suffered
for the last few years (necessitating a packet of Rennies every day). The
biggest changes have been meta
If anyone wants a list of books, software (spreadsheets), websites, methods
and techniques the let me know and I will post them.
Regards
Jonathan
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