HealthyFitGuy.com

Last night I decided to join WeightWatchers Online.  Why?  Well, even though I know that some of the recommendations in their system aren’t really healthy for you, such as replacing sugar with Splenda, they do have a “system” in place to help you stay on track and to lose weight.  So, I decided to sign up and to see just how their system works.  I knew a little bit about their “Points” system before I signed up and it sounded like a pretty simple way of tracking your daily food intake, without counting calories.

At first glance, it looks like the US version of the system might be more sophisticated than the Canadian one, but I can’t be sure as I’ve only signed up for the Canadian one.  Once you sign up it establishes your current weight, you setup a weigh-in day (once a week), and it calculates your ideal weight based on your height and age.  You then setup a 10% goal for weight loss, as well as an ultimate goal based on a weight you pick.  For example, it told me that my ideal weight should be between 139lbs and 167lbs and asked me what “ideal goal” I wanted to go for.  I think on my frame, if I was 139lbs I would look like a skeleton so I set my “ultimate goal” at 160lbs for now.  As I get closer to it, I can always adjust.

I’m kind of disappointed that they don’t track body fat index.  Meaning, they basically ignore the fact that if you’re building up muscle tissue as you’re working out towards your goal, your body fat % might be dropping but your weight might stay the same.  I guess their target market customer isn’t supposed to be building muscle mass on the program?  Anyway, I will just track body fat % on my own anyways.

The tools they have online are pretty cool, but I was somewhat disappointed at the foods they have in their database.  I went out for dinner to Red Robin yesterday and I tried to input their data into their system and it seems like they have every restaurant in the system except Red Robin.  If I was Weight Watchers, I would have a full time staff member just dedicated to searching out restaurants in North America and typing in their food values.  If it’s a franchise restaurant with more then lets say 10 locations, it should be in the database.

I tried to go to Red Robin’s menu’s online and using their nutrition guide typing in the calories and fat and fibre content to calculate how many points the foods were, but it’s kind of useless because Red Robin online reports their American versions of the meals which are totally different from the Canadian version.  For example, I ordered cheese sticks, and the Canadian version came with like 5 or 6 cheese sticks, but on the Red Robin menu it shows the American version picture and it looks more like 12 cheese sticks, and the dipping sauces are totally different too.  So, basically I was left with no choice but just to guesstimate how many points those were.

One cool thing is that if you exercise, you can earn points back to add to your daily total.  For example, I run on the treadmill for 30 minutes each day, and so I earn an extra 5 points for that.  However, even there the system is just a guesstimate, as you just pick “Jogging” as the form of activity, and type in how many minutes and it calculates 5 points based on 30 minutes.  However, what if someone is jogging really fast for 30 minutes, compared to really slow for 30 minutes?  If I run 1.5miles in 30 minutes versus 3.0 miles in 30 minutes, it seems like I get the same number of points.  I’ll have to research this a bit further and figure out the true point value of my daily exercise.

I’ll keep reporting my findings as I get more used to the system.  For now I wouldn’t say that I’m totally blown away by it, but it is pretty cool.

Well, on January 31st I completed the first 31 days of my new health and fitness plan.  I just wanted to go over some of the highlights. 

Firstly, lets start with the stats.

The very first goal I set for myself was to run for 30 minutes per day on the treadmill starting on January 2nd.  I succeeded in accomplishing this goal, and ran every day without missing a single day.  I ran a total of 81.16km during that time, and burned 7,676 calories according to my Nike+ tracker.

Secondly, I implemented my new diet plan on the 5th day and stuck with it for the rest of the month.  Some of the basics of the diet I followed are:

- try to eat at least 80% alkalizing foods
- don’t drink any pop, coffee, tea, etc. 
- I only drank water with lemon in it, and real orange juice
- I tried to eat as much vegetables with every meal as I could
- no chocolate, no chocolate bars, no doughnuts, no refined sugar foods, no “treats”
- for snacks I ate fruits.  A lot of grapefruits and apples, as well as some oranges and bananas
- I ate a lot of salads and oven baked veggies
- no beef, no pork, no chicken.  The only meat I ate was fish (salmon mostly).
- I had almost no dairy at all, with the exception of a little bit of ranch dressing on some of my salads and a bit of cheese in the Quizznos veggie sandwiches.

By January 31st, my weight dropped by 11.3lbs from 203.5lbs to 192.2lbs, and my body fat index dropped by 2% from 28.5 to 26.5%.

I still have a while to go before I reach the ideal weight that I’d like to reach, however I am very happy with the results of losing 11.3lbs in less than a month.  Also, the daily habit of working out, running on the treadmill and eating healthy has been fairly established now so it’s really easy to keep going.  Today is the 3rd of February and I’m still running, still working out etc. almost effortlessly now.

Well, I shouldn’t say effortlessly.  I still sit there every day and my ego thinks up another excuse why we don’t want to do our run today or why we should go and have some ice-cream or some chocolate cake, but it’s a lot easier to just ignore it now.  I do want to experiment with doing my workout earlier, however, because there were a few times in the last month where I didn’t end up doing my run until like 1am in the morning or even later and I didn’t really enjoy that so much.  I’m glad my dedication to stick to the plan made me stick to it and do the run even at 1am in the morning, but it’s not something I’d like to develop a habit of doing.

First thing in the morning running just doesn’t appeal to me, but perhaps I can get my runs done right after coming home from work.  We’ll see.

Also, now that I’ve finished off the month of January, I’m not going to post daily listings of what I ate and what I did, but I will update the View Progress page with just the basic stats.  Instead, on the blog I plan on writing more in-depth articles relating to my theories on dieting and healthy eating and exercising etc. instead of just reporting what I did each day.

Well, it’s day 8 since I started my diet and I’ve lost 7.4lbs so far. I’m really excited about this. It’s good to see progress when you’re working hard.

Although I’ll go into more detail as to what my diet is later on, I’ll share a few points to the philosophy I’m following.

It is basically based on not allowing foods that are “crap” to pass my lips, and instead focusing on eating foods that nourish my body. As long as a food is good and nutritious, I can eat however much of it I want. I do not count calories or try to portion my food. If I’m hungry I eat. Anytime I want. I just eat nutritious food, that’s all.

For example. Here are some foods that are on my “crap” list that I haven’t eaten for the last 8 days:

Crap Foods:
- No Pop of any kind, I used to be addicted to drinking 2-3 Coca-Cola cans every day
- No Concentrated Fruit Juices (I only drank 2 glasses of Tropicana Orange Juice in the last week)
- No White Sugar
- No White Rice
- No White Flour Products (Pasta, Breads, etc.)
- No Beef, No Chicken, No Pork, Fish Once or Twice a Week is OK
- No Eggs
- No Milk (I used VERY small amount of Ranch Dressing I have left-over two or three times this week)
- No Other Dairy Products (ie. No Sour Cream, No Cheese, etc.)

The basic premise is to eat at least 80-90% water rich, alkalizing vegetables at my meals, either raw or steamed/stir-fried, with 10-20% denser foods such as beans, legumes, nuts, sprouted grain flatbread, etc.

Nutritious Foods:
- All Kinds of Alkaline Veggies (Green Lettuce, Broccoli, Cauliflower, Green and Red Peppers, etc.)
- Some Starchy Veggies in small quantities, such as potatoe’s
- Some Fruits, the less Acidic the fruit the more I can eat of it. For example Cantaloupe, Melon, Grapefruit and Apples are better than Banana’s, Oranges, etc. The lower the Glycemic Index the better.
- All Nuts are OK except for Peanuts.  Pumpkin Seeds, Sesame Seeds, Pine Nuts, Almonds etc. are good. Still trying to find real RAW Almonds, not the fake RAW ones form California.
- Drinking 6-8 Glasses of Alkaline Water / day (I put pH drops in my water as well as Lemon)

Supplements:
- I’ve taken a few Kre-Alkalyn Creatine Pill Supplements
- I’ve taken a few Innerlight Supergreen’s Capsules
- Both of which, plus some Innerlight Multivitamin and Minerals I want to start taking every day.

That’s the basics of what I’m doing.