Blackmail diet update — I made it!
26-Apr-08
On February 1st, 2008, I weighed 198.6 lbs. I had a 40 inch waist.
As of yesterday, I weighed 180.0 lbs. I now have a 36.5 inch waist.
Which means, that I met the target for my blackmail diet!
Here’s some pictures I took today:
Many thanks to evillinn for agreeing to monitor my progress! And also thanks to Saul Jimenez, proprietor of Peninsula Crossfit, for provide a superb training environment and regimen. And thanks to gentlemaitresse for providing some early support and encouragement.
Some thoughts:
The first few weeks of the diet, I kept a detailed calorie count. However, I eventually slacked off. Nor did I post pictures to my blog as I had planned.
I also did not eat as uniformly as I had planned. I found that too often I wanted to eat out for social reasons, and the scheduled meal was not available at the restaurant of choice. Instead, I ate more variety, but tried to keep to a mostly paleo plan–lots of fruits and vegetables with a generous serving of meat (chicken, fish, beef).
Also, rather than eating less every day, I found it easier to fast one day a week. My typical eating habits were as follows:
Mon – Thurs — lunch plus dinner (with most of the calories at dinner). Lunch consisted typically of a marinated chicken pita from Daphne’s. Dinner would typically be a takeout meal from Whole Foods (teriyaki chicken plus grilled vegetables and asparagus or broccoli). Occasionally, I would splurge, and buy a cookie, or a piece of pie.
Fri – On Fridays and Saturdays, I would fast from Friday morning to Saturday afternoon. Then I would eat more calories than normal on Saturday evening and Sunday during the day. This timing coincided with many of my social activities, so it worked out well.
As for exercise, on Wednesday’s and Saturday’s I would go to an hour long self-defense class. On Tuesday’s and Friday’s, I went to an hour long Crossfit class.
As you might expect, I would often bonk during my Friday Crossfit classes, due to the fasting. But I knew I would be eating heavily on the weekends, so consistent with the Premack principle, I wanted to “do the hard thing first”, then reward myself on the weekend. In the future, I still plan to fast on Friday, but will schedule my time better so that I do Crossfit earlier in the week.
So what next?
As you can see, I’m still carrying a fair amount of flab. I think if I lose another 15 lbs, I’ll be close to as lean as I want to be. So, after a week’s break, I’m going to start another round.
In retrospect, a 1.5 lb/week calorie loss was ambitious. If I had to do it over again, I’d pick a 1 lb/week schedule. So this time, I’ll set the target to be 165 lbs. That’s 18 lbs over 18 weeks, about a 1 lb/week. ( I expect to gain a pound or three during my break. :> ). At that point, I’ll re-evaluate and see if I want to focus on losing more weight, or if I want to emphasize more muscle growth.
Thanks everyone, for all of your advice and encouragement!
Bay Area Futurists
29-Feb-08
Went to the Bay Area futurists meeting tonight. It was held in a conference room at SAP’s offices at 3410 Hillview Avenue, Palo Alto, CA 94304. Very nice venue, and SAP sponsored some delicious food (bacon wrapped jalepeno peppers, stuff with cheese, fresh fruit, cheese quesadillas).
The scheduled speaker called in sick, so it was open mike night. Each speaker presented a 5 minute talk on a topic of interest to them, followed by a five minute Q&A.
My favorite talks were by Eric Boyd and John Smart. Boyd talked about his website, xprizecars.com, on which he provides uniform comparisons of all known cars competing for the Automotive X-Prize. The Aptera is my favorite so far.
John Smart talked about chemical fixation/plastination as an alternative to cryopreservation. I certainly think it’s better than nothing, but I’m skeptical that it preserves enough information for restoration and that the brains would degrade during room temperature storage.
i gave a talk on the Blackmail diet. It seemed to go over well, even though I had not prepared anything in advance.
I got to meet several new people, as well as talk briefly with nasu_dengaku, who I didn’t know was going to be there beforehand.