Rumblings at the gym ....

I started well on the 3 week challenge I set myself yesterday - spent over 3 hours in the gym! Had a personal training session, followed by a weights session, followed by a good stretching session, followed by 30mins on the treadmill. Suffice to say I was proudly buggered.

I also learnt something at that workout. And feel free to use the power of your mouse clicking right about now and leave - this may not be something you really wanted to know. (Especially if you frequent the same gym as me!)

I learnt that if I have any part of a fart loaded and ready .... part of a fart - he he - that's pretty funny! .... Sorry, I digress. Ahh, yes. What I learnt is that if I'm running at 12km/hr on the treadmill, there is NO keeping it in. And my sincerest apologies to the lady on the elliptical trainer behind me.

Anyway, a couple of little ones snuck out. I thought at the time, "at least they were silent". A split second after that thought wafted (sorry, couldn't help myself!) through my mind, I realised that I had my iPod earphones in my ears and couldn't hear anything butt the loud music. (Damn, I'm on a roll!) But seriously, I could have broken the sound barrier in that gym and I wouldn't have known it. People could have been dropping like flies and I just kept on running. I guess I'll have some idea if my membership is suddenly cancelled, eh?

Have you had an embarrassing adventure? I've heard that this is not uncommon for personal trainers to have to endure, but I've never heard of any stories first-hand. Feel free to share - I don't actually enjoy being the only (smelly) tosser, you know!

My Weight-Loss Secret

Well, yesterday I bored you (and me) senseless with my weight loss/gain rollercoaster history. But I also told you that I can manage to lose the weight fairly readily when I truly choose to .. and I promised to tell you my "magic ingredient" for doing that.

Sorry. I changed my mind. Ha ha .. sucked in!

Oh, alright .. I'm kidding. So here it is....

It's a food diary. But not an ordinary one. I started doing that .. just writing down everything I was eating (which was all good from a health perspective), but had no idea how it all stacked up in the maths side of calories, etc. I looked at trying to list down all the calories, protein, carbs & fat for every little ingredient, but that took WAY too long! So I developed a tool to simplify it .. a spreadsheet.

Now I'm sure I'm not the only one to have done this, but what I can tell you is that before Xmas this year I was trying really hard to lose the weight. I lost a couple of kgs in the first week or so (as you do), but then not much was happening. I was training like a demon - definitely over-training and was perpetually tired but pushing myself to do more, more, more cardio. I had a suspicion that I was probably not eating ENOUGH calories, but I was too scared to eat MORE! It wasn't working like it should, so I needed to change something. And rather than just guess, I decided to put the effort in to know EXACTLY what I was doing with my body. And do what had worked in the past.

So what my little spreadsheet does is a few things. The most basic is simply recording your stats - weight and measurements - as you take them (I'm set for weekly weigh-ins and 4-weekly measurements). It will also calculate your required daily calorie intake for both maintenance and for weight-loss (20% below maintenance). Mine is 1800-1900 .. which is way more than I would have thought - and more than a lot of the literature says (they recommend 1200-1500 for weight loss for women). Obviously it depends on your build.

But the best thing that this tool does, once you set it up, is greatly reduce the time it takes to keep a food diary and also allows you to totally plan out your day, knowing in advance how your dietary intake will end up. The way it does this is to allow you to put in up to 9 "breakfasts", 9 "lunches" and 9 "dinners" .. meals that you would regularly put together during your weight-loss phase. Which means you only need to put in the ingredients once. The diary itself then just allows you to put in "Breakfast #1" - which in my case is a protein shake with 250ml of lite milk. It will then automatically fill in the calories and the grams of protein, carbs and fat. And since I've been doing this, and sticking with 5 meals a day, a total of around 1800 calories and protein of about 25-30%, it's all been working. And if it doesn't, it gives me a solid grounding to review and change.

So there you have it. My "secret". Nothing ground-breaking .. but a much simpler and more effective way of doing something that is really necessary to get results (ie. keeping a food diary). Hope I've given you some new ideas to make the journey either easier or more effective!

Have a good one.