Plateau 1 and Diet v2.0

When you have a lot of extra weight like I did that you can lose you will more than likely run into a plateau for losing weight. When this happens you will get stuck at a particular weight for a while and it will seem like the results aren't as good if you are strictly going by the weight on the scale. For lots of people this can wind up being very frustrating and sometimes they might even give up on their workouts and diet, this FYI is the wrong move.

In November of 2011 I had hit such a plateau. I got down to 245 lbs, from 270 lbs since I had started, and then the weight just seemed to stop coming off. When you hit a plateau  (which you most likely will unless you have super genes for losing weight and building muscle) make sure to not let it get you down. When you reach a plateau make sure to realize there are many reasons for it and also several things you can do to get back on track. Hitting a plateau is one of the biggest reasons you need to track your success via multiple styles, when the number on the scale stops dropping you often still notice a difference in pictures and how your clothes fit better.

First off I will go over a few of the reasons why we have plateaus in our weight loss as we get in shape. If you were like me and pretty badly out of shape your lean muscle mass will have been pretty low. Shortly before this I had finally started lifting heavy to promote building muscle since I had gotten healthy enough to do so by building my base strength. Right off the bat when you start doing heavy lifting you will build up quite a bit of muscle in a short amount of time before it tapers off. This muscle you are building weighs more than fat per volume of space, which will make it seem like you are not losing weight. On the contrary, you will still be losing weight in fat loss which you will notice in pictures but not on the scale. Another reason you might run into a plateau is because your workout has become stagnant. What I mean by this that you get into a set routine and just go to the gym and lift the same amount of weight for the same amount of reps with the same types of exercises. If this happens your body will become too accustomed to the amount of work you are doing and it will wind up being too easy of a work out.  The last thing that will make us plateau is not being careful with your diet (this is what caused my plateau). If you are badly out of shape like I was when you first start working out you can have a pretty wimpy diet and still see lots of weight loss right off the bat. The reason for this is because you haven't worked out in so long your body will react highly and you will burn a lot of fat. After this initial fat burn your weight loss will slow down as your body grows more accustomed to working out, which is where your diet will come into play to make the big difference. My beginning diet was pretty lackluster and it was causing me to slow way down in my weight loss.

To help me get back on track after seeing how my weight loss had been stuck for about a month I decided I better have a second look at my diet and wound up starting Diet v2.0. If you recall, I had been shooting for around 2250 calories per day, eating 3 meals, and cutting out junk food and that was the extent of my diet. After doing some looking I figured I should find an actual number of calories that would apply to me and my weight loss efforts. First off I didn't know how many calories I should have daily just to operate normally so I went about figuring that out. In doing this I found out about your BMR (Base Metabolic Rate) or also sometimes called RMR (Rested Metabolic Rate). Your BMR is how many calories you burn just to stay alive, even if you were to lie around all day you would burn these calories. This is caused by all the functions your body performs naturally like breathing, blood circulation, thinking, digestion and all of your other vital bodily functions. Just check out a BMR calculator and plug in a couple numbers and you can find this out very quickly. My BMR turned out to be 2100 calories. To successfully facilitate weight loss you need to be in a caloric deficit from your BMR (eating less calories than you burn normally throughout the day). Most dietitians recommend to subtract 3-500 calories from your BMR to steadily and healthily lose weight. I changed my diet and decided to do 1500 calories per day, so 3 meals at 500 calories each (this was a bit too aggressive of a caloric reduction as you will see in a later article - don't be stupid like me listen to the safe amount). After I changed my diet and was making sure to be at a caloric deficit my weight loss got back into action.

Other than tightening up on your diet to get back on track after hitting a plateau you can also change up your workout.  Like I had mentioned earlier if you think you might be hitting a plateau because you have let your workout become stagnant step it up a notch. Start making sure to up your weight to push yourself harder with heavier weights or if you want to stay at the same weight for a bit longer add more reps to all of your exercises. If you get on the treadmill and typically run at 5 miles an hour for 20 minutes bump it up to 5.5 miles an hour for 20 minutes. This will help you spur your body into having to react to overcome these new challenges and it in turn will respond by building more muscle and burning more fat. If we don't push our bodies they won't react, but when we do push our bodies we get great results.

So, make sure to mix it up with either your diet or your workout if you wind up hitting a plateau and you will soon start seeing positive results again. Remember if you give up once you hit a weight loss plateau you will never get results, so instead continue on and it will be a bit tougher but you will wind up reaching even greater heights in your fitness success.

Walking Dead Season 4

Who else is excited for the multitude of new episodes for the TV season for all their favorite shows? I am in particular excited about the return of The Walking Dead with their 4th season this year! This year we will be getting even more love than last year since the new season will be a whopping 16 episodes rather than what it previously had been last season with 13 episodes. This year Season 4 kicked off on October 13th, the season premiere had an amazing 16.1 million viewers. With 16.1 million viewers the new episode broke the previous record held by the season 3 finale of 12.4 million viewers. With these outstanding numbers The Walking Dead has secured a solid spot as the most viewed show in basic cable history. Just yesterday October 27th we just had episode 3 air (going to watch it as soon as I finish this post! lol). This year we will get 8 episodes up to December 1st and then it will take a dreaded 2 month break and return to airing the final 8 episodes of the season in February 2014!

In this highly anticipated new season, we see Rick and the group of survivors fostering a thriving community in the safe haven of the prison. Sadly, in this brutal world, happiness is short-lived with the danger from walkers and other outside threats along with numerous dangers brewing inside their own fences. With the joining together of prison dwellers and Woodburyans not everyone is going to get along. In fact, there's going to be some major head butting, and some new alliances that form from the merging of the two factions. The group's home and new way of life will be thoroughly tested, and their struggle to survive has never been so perilous.

With this new season there will be several additions to the cast this year. The lovely Christian Serratos from the Twilight series will be introduced playing the new character of Rosita Espinosa. Rosita Espinosa is a tough girl in her mid 20's. Rosita is a character that originated in the comic series, where she and two friends, Abraham and Eugene, meet up with Rick and his crew at Hershel's farm. Rosita, who is likely to be introduced later in the season, will also probably be introduced at the same time as Abraham and Eugene. Also there is Larry Gilliard Jr. who will be playing the character of Bob Stookey. Bob Stookey is another character who originates from the comic book series, Bob is a new group member who was a former army medic. With the show they changed his character from a mid 50's  Caucasian to a African American in his mid to late 30's. And lastly Alanna Masterson will be introduced as a new survivor who will show up sometime around midseason. Little is known about the character officially, though it's said she'll be a recurring character this season.

This season looks to be very promising and just as good if not better than the last 3. Perhaps the best tease on what to expect in Season 4 came courtesy of Gimple at Comic-Con, when he told the fans, "It's going to get insane very quickly." So I hope you all enjoy the upcoming madness as much as I will.

"One Bad Meal"

Today's PotM (picture of the month) is all about cheating on your diet with "One Bad Meal". I can't over emphasize how important it is to have a good diet and stick to it. Your diet is the most important factor to helping yourself lose weight. Because no matter how hard you work out if you eat too many calories and are not at a caloric deficit you will not be very successful in weight loss. However one bad meal won't break you and in fact I would recommend, depending on your personal diet and eating schedule, to have a cheat meal once every week or two weeks.

Just as the picture indicates being on a diet is a change in how you eat overall for the majority of your meals. If you stick to eating clean for 20 of your 21 meals for the week or 41 of your 42 meals for 2 weeks or however your meal schedule breaks down you will still be able to get results. When you do cheat though just make it a small cheat and plan for it. After your cheat meal is done enjoy it and make sure to get back on your diet. Having a cheat meal every so often that is planned for and scheduled can be helpful for many people. Let's face it if you are like me and you love to eat all sorts of things that are tasty treats it can be very helpful to help curb your cravings. If you are constantly eating a particular set of food because it's easy to make and healthy for you sooner or later you will get tired of it and have cravings. So once in a while plan to indulge those cravings so that they don't get out of control. Humans are creatures that enjoy diversity so give yourself a little treat once in a while and eat something you love, just make sure once your done get back to your diet and don't beat yourself up over it.

A lot of times people get too down on themselves for eating a single bad meal and start to beat themselves up over it. If at all possible please try to avoid this. Having one bad meal is not the end of the world and having negative thoughts like I cheated, I ruined my diet, or I failed my diet are steps in the wrong direction. When you start being negative and getting down on yourself like that it just leads to bad results. Have you ever heard the statement "I think, therefore I am"? If you continuously think things like I cheated, I failed,  or I ruined my progress you quite simply will wind up doing so.

So again if you have one bad meal that is fine, just remember what counts is what you are doing with the other 95% of your diet that will make the difference in achieving your results. Worst case scenario if you do this you will lose 1-2 lbs instead of 1.2-2.2 lbs. If you struggle with cravings and wanting to eat tasty stuff try incorporating "One Bad Meal" into your diet and see if it helps you!!

Starting my Heavy Lifting v1.0

After a couple months of just working on increasing my base strength at home I went and signed up for a gym! The gym we had available that was affordable was Planet fitness so that was where we went. Planet Fitness isn't the most killer of gyms but they did have all the equipment you could need to do all of the different exercises. It fit our needs just fine. After I started at Planet Fitness I continued to do lower weights with higher reps on the machines for a while to continue to build my strength up to be ready for some hard workouts. In August of 2011 I decided to finally start doing free weights and go to a workout routine that was heavy weight lower reps to start working towards building muscle.

When I started to go about changing my routine I looked up a few pointers online to try and get started in the right direction. After doing a little research I decided to go for a routine where the amount of weight was just enough that I could barely finish 4 sets of 8 reps. Now that I look back on it most of the weights I was doing were probably somewhere around 70% of what I could do for a 1 rep max (as much weight as you can possibly do only being able to complete 1 rep). My goals were to continue with that weight until I could do 4 sets of 10. Once I could do 4 sets of 10 then I would up my weight a little bit so that it was hard to do 4 sets of 8 again and work my way back up. Make sure that once you can do 4 sets of 10 to do it 2 or 3 times in a row to make sure you can get repeat results. This will help make sure you don't go upping your weight too fast. I had to learn this the hard way as you will learn later on in another post about how I wound up injuring my back. If you are unsure about starting heavy lifting by yourself ask pointers from people in your gym, do some research on the internet or take a class or two to get tips from a personal trainer.

When you go about doing weight training like this to build muscle make sure you try to exercise all the different muscle groups. It is important to exercise all your muscles and build total body strength because it will make you more healthy and you also want to avoid causing imbalances in your physique. Some problems can occur if you cause imbalances in your physique. For instance if you do lots of shoulder exercises but never work your rear shoulder it can cause problems in the way your shoulder joint moves since there is an imbalance in the muscle strength in the front and back of the joint. To avoid problems like this make sure to do plenty of research to get a good complete workout for all your muscle groups. Getting a complete workout will ensure that your muscles build up equally and you will build a better overall complete strength. Also the more muscles you work out means the more lean muscle you will be building throughout your body, this will assist in raising your BMR (Base Metabollic Rate) and helping you to lose weight faster.

Also for the girls out there don't be afraid of lifting weights. I can assure you that you will not look like the crazy bulky body builder chicks that everyone so dreads. First of all it is impossible for women to look like that naturally. To do that they train 5-7 days a week on a pro body builder schedule (3-4 hours a day or more) and secondly and most important they take hormones such as testosterone (male hormones) and supplements to force their muscles to grow like that. If you are a typical fitness girl that goes to the gym 3-4 times a week and lifts some weights you will become toned and curvy, develop a nice booty, and feel more energetic. You will wind up looking like the girl below. So guys and girls make sure to get out there and after you have rebuilt your base strength start pushing yourself and lift some heavier weights to build muscle!!

My Bad Knee.

When I first started working out to get back into shape my right knee was very bad. It was so bad that when I tried to run I was at the risk of hyper extending it backwards. In fact one time when I was playing baseball with my friends it did just that to a minor degree. For a few days it was very sore. It also made me apprehensive to try and stand on just my right leg for fear of it bending backwards. The joint was very sloppy, it caused me pain whenever I tried to move weight with it, and it was much weaker than my left leg (I am right side dominant).

This was a big concern for me as I was starting to do weights. I knew that I had to strengthen it and slowly work it out to get it back to being healthy. Even after starting to do heavy weights on my upper body I was still slowly working on my right leg. For gradual progress I did very light weight and a medium amount of reps. I continued to do my leg exercises but made sure to take it easy with very low weight on the exercises that aggravated it the most. During this recuperation period I made sure to pay very close attention to the aggravation and the pain. If anything at all felt more aggravated than normal I would take additional breaks and do less reps. If it was too much still I would lower the weights even more. If my knee just wasn't feeling up to it sometimes I even had to take a week or two off from doing a particular exercise to let it recuperate. 

I had to baby my leg along for months but eventually It started getting stronger and having less pain. As the pain gradually got less I would slowly add additional reps first and once I could do more reps I would bump up the weight a little bit. I would rinse and repeat doing more reps up till I could do 15 - 20 reps then up the weight again. I would say it probably took me about 8 to 10 months of this slow progression till my knee started to feel much better and became stronger. After about a year and a half I would say my knee was back to 100% strength and all the pain was gone. It took me a long time but the functionality and strength in my right knee returned. At this point I could stand on my right leg and it would crisply lock into position without me having to worry about it hyper extending because it was so bad. I was then able to get in the gym and start doing some serious leg workouts with squats and leg press.

So if you guys, like me, have certain body parts that ache or are bad make sure you still work them out. Even though it may hurt a little these are the most important places to workout to make sure you get completely healthy again. So when you start don't ignore them, instead start with really low weight and reps and make sure to be very careful as you work them. If you are not sure what to do yourself I would highly recommend talking to a physician or a physical therapist to get advice on what to do and what exercises to use. Also they can give you advice on what to avoid or take easy as well until it starts to heal. And when you start to workout these body parts make sure to be attentive to pain and don't over do it. Injuring yourself further will only set you backwards in your progress.  So make sure to strengthen your weak body parts and be careful while you do it!

Hard Work!

The new PotM is all about hard work!! I really like the message behind this picture, not to mention it is a really cool concept for the art. I do believe this picture ties back to propaganda for WW1 and WW2 when women were needed to fill the roles of the jobs typically done by males since they were all sent off to war. In the traditional poster it was a woman called "Rosie the Riveter" and she was doing this pose saying "We Can Do It!". To view a copy of the original picture click on this LINK and look at entry 21 about two thirds of the way down the page. It was a very famous and iconic image used to help motivate females and promote the power of what women can accomplish (Rock on girls!! ^_^).

Alright back to talking about the message in this picture, Hard Work can out-do Genetics!! I love this statement because it is such a simple truth that so many of us don't fully understand for ourselves and I feel it applied to me also. For a lot of us we think that we are destined to be fat because of bad genes, this couldn't possibly be further from the truth. Yes bad and good genes make a difference in our disposition to put on or lose weight and be in good shape, but bad genes do not make it impossible. Bad genes only make getting in shape slightly more challenging. Ultimately it comes down to diet (mostly diet) and exercise that will determine if we become overweight. Claiming you have bad genes is just an excuse and should be cast aside because they can be overcome!!

This is the beauty of fitness and good health because everyone can attain it. Yes it will take some hard work, a bit of dedication, and willpower but everyone can become healthy and strong if they put their mind to it. For those of us with bad genes we will have to do a bit more hard work than the rest but we can still get there. Results don't just magically happen for anyone, they happen for the people that go out and try hard. So let's all make sure to get out there and work hard and if you do you will see results!! Not only does hard work apply to overcoming genetics and getting in shape, but it applies to everything we do in our lives. So make sure to put forth your best effort everyone and make your health and your life the best one it possibly can be with hard work because you only live once!!

Beginning my Diet v1.0

As I got started into the fitness portion of things on my way back to getting healthy, I also decided to start taking a look at my diet and doing something about it. All I knew for sure was that I definitely ate way to much and that I needed to do a bit of analysis on my diet and change what I was doing for my food intake. The first place I started was to try and figure out how many calories I was eating on a typical day. I went online and started looking up all sorts of calorie information on foods I was eating. After a bunch of meticulous searching for caloric information I found out that depending on how much junk food I was having during the day along with the regular meals I was consuming anywhere from 3500 - 5000 calories. When I realized this I was absolutely shocked. It never occurred to me that I was eating such an exorbitant amount of calories per day. Food I ate that contributed highly to this were things like greasy foods such as burgers, fried chicken, and french fries or lots of soda and juice or lots of junk food like cookies, cheesecake, and ice cream. All these high calorie foods along with the fact that I love to eat and eat large quantities was a bad recipe for me putting on weight.

Along with eating way too many calories throughout the course of a day I also had a couple of other bad habits that needed changed. For one I often would eat my dinners very late at night right before I went to bed. This is another very detrimental thing to do if you don't want to put on weight. Eating right before you go to bed will cause the food when it is digested to more actively go towards fat storage because you are using minimal amounts of calories while you sleep. I would also get up and have midnight snacks which is another big no no because it will also cause the same results of additional storage of calories to fat.

After figuring out how many calories I was taking in in a day I decided to change it up. I didn't do anything too crazy as far as investigating diets (I do later on as I progressed with my fitness and diets) or figuring out how many calories exactly I should have, but I did decide to aim for 3 meals a day at 750 calories each for a total of 2250 calories. The second thing I wanted to focus on was to get rid of all my snacking on junk food and to swap from drinking soda and juice to just drinking water. The last thing I decided to change about my eating habits was no more late night meals right before bed and no more midnight snacks. I figured this would at least be a step in the right direction for starting towards a more healthy lifestyle in my eating habits.


I had tried earlier in life to do some extreme type diets that I wound up failing, so this time around I decided to try an take things at a slower pace since this was going to be a permanent change for me. The benefits of starting gradually and working your way to a more strict diet are numerous. First by starting off with something that you can handle easier in the beginning you will be less likely to cheat on it. Also I didn't really eliminate any foods my diet but was focusing on much less overall calories which made it easier for me since I could still eat things when I had cravings for certain foods. Being able to eat any food also helped me not want to cheat. I would eventually go on to much stricter diets and watching specific things like carbs, protein and fat consumption but for now I started off easy. The other benefits of starting off gradual with your diet is as you begin to lose weight you will probably eventually run in to the ever dreaded plateau where weight loss will slow down for a while because your body is becoming accustomed to your diet and workout schedule. When you plateau this is a good point in which you can tighten up your diet some more to help bolster your weight loss again.

So when you are starting off remember that no matter who you are you can't out exercise a bad diet. You have to get your eating under control and be careful about what you eat. If you do you will have much better results and become healthier faster. If you want go ahead and start slow to make it easier on yourself so you will be less likely to cheat and quit your diet, but remember you eventually need to get it to where you are eating balanced and at a caloric deficit (I'll cover this later on in Diet v2.0).

Life Change

This week I picked something for PotM (picture of the month) that was resonating with what was going on in my own personal life, change. I decided on this topic because there is a large change taking place in my life this week. I am moving from Fairbanks Alaska to the Denver Colorado area. As I am writing this post I am currently sitting in a hotel room in Prince George Canada.

For those of you that know me this was a very big change for me. I was born in Homer Alaska and grew up there all through high school. Three years after I started college at the University of Alaska Fairbanks I moved up to Fairbanks. This was the first place that I lived after I moved out of my parents house. Up until a few days ago I had been living in Fairbanks for the last nine years. Everyone I have known and everything I have accomplished so far have been up in Alaska. But despite all that I chose to move to the Denver Colorado area. I chose to move  because I was finally ready to press on with my life. I wanted to work on my goals of furthering my career in the IT field. Despite all the things and the amazing friends I left behind I know this will be a step in the right direction for making progress in my life.

As the quote by Confucius in this picture indicates we must change what we do in life often to make us happy and to continue to learn new things. For it is only through change that we can press on in life and see what the world has in store for us. As in my own personal situation you can see how it is hard to leave the people and things that are important to you behind and press ahead towards life changes. However if you stop and put things in perspective you can see that when choosing to make a change for the better in your life that the  positive gains will outweigh the negatives.

This very same principle of making a choice to work towards a life change for yourself applies to your health and fitness as well. Choosing to lose weight and get in shape always works best when you come at with the approach to change your life for the best. If you merely approach the situation with the mindset to work at it for a few months and lose weight and stop after you reach a goal weight you will often experience failure. Your health is like a lawn in the summer. If you mow it once and trim around the edges it will look nice for a while. If you then stop maintaining the lawn it will become overgrown, weeds will pop up, and it will turn yellow and deteriorate in places. To successfully have your lawn look good and stay that way you need to constantly maintain it, you must mow it, trim it, pick the weeds, and give it fertilizer. This is the exact same as your health and fitness you must continuously work at it to keep it.

So hopefully this PotW will inspire all of you  that are reading this post to make a Choice to take a Chance and make a Change to better your life by getting fit and in shape. You will have to work hard and be dedicated to maintain your fitness but I guarantee you will never regret the sacrifices you make to get there.