Slow Carb Diet Day 24: Another Gain

Morning weigh-in: 148.6 kg; +0.1 kg

Another gain. Which has happened before on a Tuesday, but honestly, I really didn't expect it this week. The weight-gain this week, up two kg from 146.6 last Friday, is really throwing me for a loop. I don't get it. I was thinking today that it might help if I could track my percentage of body fat, instead of relying pretty much just on weight. I don't really have an accurate way to measure my body fat, but I do have another set of bathroom scales that says it does it. So I think I'm going to start checking and tracking it, and see if it provides any useful info.

At one point I was tempted to just skip the cross-trainer today. But the thing is, it's not just about the numbers. They only tell part of the story. So I had my usual breakfast of two fried eggs and my bean & corn mix (385 calories), then did two sessions on the cross-trainer (5.1 km and 5.4 km; -240 calories each).

Lunch was a grilled chicken breast with mixed veggies and salsa. And corn chips. Yep, for the first time since I started this slow carb thing, I intentionally broke the rules. Maybe it's because I'm disappointed about the weight-gain. Maybe it's because I'm getting bored with the restricted food options. But for whatever reason, I ate 'em, and they were good.

Dinner was the leftover meat from my nachos the other night, mixed with a can of kidney beans and some mixed veggies (480 calories).

My daily total was 1675 calories in,  475 burned, for a net of 1200. I had planned to do at least another half hour on the cross-trainer, but I'm just not feeling motivated at all.

Slow-carb Diet Day 15: Fuck the Bleh

As expected, my weight is up today. 149.3 kg (329.1 lbs), for a gain of 0.6 kg (1.3 lbs). The thing that makes me happy is that even with the gain, I still weigh less than I did back in November. I didn't undo a week's worth of effort in a day. Well, at least not yet. I may get another gain tomorrow.

But if I do, it's not for lack of trying today. I started off with a reasonably light breakfast -- 2 fried eggs and a mix of kidney beans, mixed vegetables, sliced jalapenos, a little bit of bacon, and some salsa. That and a cup of coffee came to 300 calories.

Lunch was more of the bean & veggie mix, plus two scrambled eggs, and a few pieces of grilled chicken breast. All up, 490 calories. That's a total of 790 calories so far for today.

Exercise so far today has been three 15-minute sessions on the cross-trainer. Three hard sessions. First, I upped my pace a little and at the end of the first session, I'd done 5k. I checked back through my RunKeeper data, and that's the first time I've ever done that. Lots of 4.8s, one 4.9, but this morning was the first time I've done 5k in 15 minutes.

Then for my second session, I figured I'd do it again, and push to try to get 5.1k. I ended up with 5.5k! Once I realized that I wasn't going to die afterwards, I was pretty freaking happy with that!

Then for my third session, I decided to just take it easy, not worry about breaking any records, and just do a good, solid session while keeping my pace quick enough that I at least went 4.5k. A couple of minutes into it, I decided to up the resistance, so I took it to level 8 and then to level 9. Level 9 feels like running through water or deep sand. I could definitely feel it, but even with the extra resistance, I finished the 15 minutes with a distance of 5.1k. I'm not sure yet, but I think 5k may be my new baseline. Shit, how'd that happen?

So anyway, all up that 790 calories consumed, and 715 burned, for a net of 70. And I'm not feeling bleh any more. I think that taking a few days off from the exercise, and having a good time with the family yesterday, really helped me feel renewed, and ready to put in a solid effort this week.

My goal this week is to keep my net calories down between 500 and 800 a day. I think that if I can do that, I ought to lose at least 2 kg this week.

Update: Dinner (meatballs, a mix of borlotti (pinto) beans and veggies, plus mashed potatoes for the boys) is over, and the day is nearly done. Dinner plus an after-dinner coffee, and then an after-after-dinner coffee brought my total to 1685 calories. And a ten-minute after-after-dinner-coffee run on the cross-trainer brought my exercise total up to 1115 calories. putting my net calories for the day at 570. That's very nicely within my goal range, so I'm happy to call it quits for the day.

I'd planned to go for another 15 minutes in that last cross-trainer session, but after some sharp pains on the right side of my abdomen, I decided to quit a little after 10 minutes. I'd been going pretty hard, hitting 3k in 8:08, which at the time I thought was a new personal best, but after checking, I see that it isn't. Still, it's a pretty damned good time, and I'm pretty sure the resistance was higher this time.

In any case, that's 70 minutes that I spent on that damned cross-trainer today. And for almost every one of those minutes, I was going at it hard. Every single time I got on the thing, I was huffing and puffing within a minute or two. By the five-minute mark, my legs and lungs were burning, and by the ten-minute mark I was starting to think that maybe being fat isn't all that bad and that I should just fuck off all this diet and exercise bullshit and go get a cheeseburger! And after about 13 or 14 minutes, I was just hoping that I made it to the end without collapsing and falling off the damned thing onto the concrete floor.

So all of the calorie counters calculate a certain number of calories burned based on how many minutes I'm on the thing, but don't take into account the intensity of effort for each of those minutes. Today, I seriously worked that shit!

Slow-carb Diet Day 13: The Bleh Continues

The morning weigh-in number was 149.0, a loss of 0.3 kg. Perfectly respectable, and more than I thought I might get, given the limited amount of exercise.

Breakfast was the usual (579 calories), and lunch was a couple of eggs and some chicken breast (426 calories). I was thinking that I might end up well under 1800 calories for the day, and then I got stuck into the beer nuts. A LOT of beer nuts. Like, 579 calories worth of beer nuts. Yeah, my little "snack" ended up having as many calories as my breakfast, which was my highest-calorie meal of the day. Dinner was a hamburger steak and some mixed veggies (515 calories), so I finished the day having consumed 2100 calories.

And after subtracting the calories burned through exercise, I finished the day with net calories of 2100. Uh huh. No exercise at all today. Zilch. Zero. None. The closest I got to exercising today was walking from the computer to the fridge. Pitiful, I know. According to Ferriss, the lack of fast-burning carbs means exercise isn't necessary, but I think that's more likely when calories consumed are closer to 1200-1300 than to 2000-2200.

I'm not sure why I'm suddenly not feeling particularly motivated, but maybe I just need a bit of rest.

Slow-carb Diet Day 12: A Day of Bleh

After that big 1.2 kg loss yesterday, I was of two minds about what might happen today. I figured that either I was onto something (but with no idea about what, if anything, I had actually done to make it happen), or that it would all balance out over the next few days. It turned out to be the second one. Today's weight was 149.3, a 0.1 kg loss in 24 hours. Still, between the two days that averages out at 0.65 kg (1.43 lbs) per day, which is nothing to sneeze at.

But in any case, that small loss didn't do much to pick me up from generally feeling a bit bleh about it all that I've been in since yesterday afternoon. I don't know what it is, but I'm just not feeling motivated at all right now. I'm getting a bit tired of the food (but not enough to bother changing it up), and I haven't felt like exercising (and I haven't).

Well, actually that's not totally true. I haven't felt like working out on that infernal cross-trainer. On the other hand, I'd happily go for a nice long walk. But it's been raining again for the last couple of days, so that hasn't really been an option.

So here it is 9:30 pm, and I've only put in 15 minutes on the cross-trainer. But maybe this is another good reason for maintaining this blog, because now that I've typed that, and looked at my numbers for the day, I've decided to hustle my fat arse out to the garage and do a bit.

I'll be back shortly.

Okay, so there's another 4.7 km in 15 minutes. Not great, but better.

The usual breakfast (with the exciting switch to scrambled instead of fried eggs!) was 580 calories. Lunch was just three fried eggs and a few pieces of bacon, then another couple of scrambled eggs. No, I don't know what's going on with the scrambled eggs, but they really hit the spot. That was another 460 calories. Then dinner was a big pile of mixed veggies, some spinach, a little bit of bacon, some kidney beans, and the last of the store-bought salsa. And a hamburger steak. 720 calories all up, for a daily total of around 1825. Subtract 485 for the time on the cross-trainer, and that's a net of around 1340.

Looking back at my net calories each day, this week has gone like this: 450, 750, 775, 1300, 1380. I think I see a trend. The week before that (not counting the EWIW Saturday pig-outs), they went 165, 385, 800, 815, 932, and then a drop back to 322.

Yeah. I get it. I'll be back shortly.

6.2 km in 20 minutes, bringing my total number of calories burned up to 805, for a net of 1020. The trend has been broken. :)