My family does not own a scale so I only get to weigh myself when I either go to my parent’s house or when I go to the receiving office at my work.
The last time that I weighed myself was back in the middle of December and I was still sitting at 200 pounds, my lowest in a few years.
Yesterday I had a chance to weigh myself using another quality scale at my work and found that my had ballooned over the Spring to 206 pounds.
My Recent Weight Gain
This recent gain may not seem like a big deal but as I have mentioned earlier on this blog I had it easy over the summer riding my bike to and from work and now I am at a little bit of a loss with driving instead so I am going to have to start riding the exercise bike and getting back to the lifting that I gave back a little while ago.
So now I have to make some changes. Many of you probably know my wife is very health conscious in the kitchen and I follow the ideals closely but not the diet.
I have made a list of the changes I am instituting now for the winter so that I can lose that holiday but more importantly I can gain some muscle and bring back my metabolism. Here are the changes:
1. I am going to reread Burn the Fat Feed the Muscle. As I have said in my review this is a great book and it always reminds me of what I am doing wrong.
2. Get back to increasing my water intake. In the winter there is much less water in the air and air conditioning becomes much more a way of life. Also I know how much better I feel when I am drinking lots of water throughout the day and not just in the morning.
3. Weight lifting in the morning. I like the Body for life system of working out in the morning doing half my body one day then cardio on the second day, the other half of my body and on the third and the fourth day cardio and then repeat. The system calls for six days of exercise in a row and then the seventh day off.
So there is a little overlap week to week to mix things up. I can do weights in the morning but will have to do the cardio at night on cardio days as my bike and elliptical trainer share a room with our bed and my wife probably does not want to get up when I do just to watch me workout, then again maybe she does?
4. Start eating six times a day again. At the moment I am eating a bagel with natural peanut butter in the morning and would like to replace this again with my all bran and milk for breakfast to start with. I will post soon about what would be a good six meals but right now I am probably only getting in about four.
5. Cut out refined foods. To me refined foods include things like bread and crackers and other empty calorie type foods. Since I will be pushing my muscles harder I will need all the nutrients I can get and don’t really need any empty carbs.
6. Cut out sugar and pop. These are my two real weaknesses. I have not gone a day without pop and chocolate in at least a few years and not only are these another empty carbs but also these two ‘foods’ are a killer for keeping my blood sugar at an even keel throughout the day which I have had a little trouble with.
7. Stretching twice a day. I always feel better when I am stretching and it always helps to heal sore muscles when doing a lot of hard and heavy lifting. My stretching really only takes about ten minutes a time so it is pretty easy to put this back into my schedule
8. Get my energy and attitude up. When I have a strong, positive attitude I just exude energy and this, although never really proven, I feel really raises my metabolism. When my metabolic rate is higher I burn more calories at rest, have more powerful exercise sessions and have better concentration and mental abilities. This is always a good thing
9. Increase my intake of protein and drop my carbs. This means that I will be getting more of my carbs from fruits and vegetables and replacing my starches with more protein instead.
I could never do an Atkins type diet as I feel there is a real danger to your body to really drop your carbs to zero, but it is also important to get enough protein to recover from hard cardio and lifting workouts. My extra protein of choice? Canned tuna rinsed to get rid of some of the sodium. I am a big fan of canned tuna especially when I mix it with diced cheese and pickles.
10. Sleep in more. In the fall I was sleeping quite well but now again I have fallen back into my bad habit of just getting six or seven hours of sleep a night. I know I personally need eight and that is what I will try to average again.
None of these changes are earth shattering at all but as we all know it is the consistency of the changes in the right direction that makes you healthier.
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