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.

A very busy day.  Nothing to report besides my stats for today.

So here are my stats:

Cardio: Treadmill - 30 Minutes - 1.55 Miles Ran
Strength Training: Shoulder Press - 25lbs/side - 25 Reps

Breakfast:
Nothing

Lunch:
Large Salad - Greens, Red Cabbage, Avacado, Pumpkin Seeds, Pine Nuts, Sundried Cranberries

Dinner:
Large Salad - Greens, Red Cabbage, Avacado, Pumpkin Seeds, Pine Nuts, Sundried Cranberries
Organic Tomatoe Soup

Snacks:
2 Bananas

Today’s workout was really good. I ran 2.01 miles on the treadmill in about 32 minutes or so. I normally only do 30 minutes of cardio, but I was on the treadmill and I was thinking about something and I lost track of time and just kept going past the 30 minute mark. I’m not going to complain. It’s getting really easy to run on the treadmill now, which makes it more enjoyable.

For strength training I’m following my new workout plan I started yesterday. Today it was time to work on the biceps. Holy smokes. By the time I was done, I felt like I ran a marathon with my biceps.

Here’s what I did. I lowered the weight down to 20 lbs and used my Bowflex to do bicep curls. I did slow and steady curls going up and down really slowly, which really gets them burning. At a certain point they really started to burn with pain. That’s the whole point of this type of workout, to really focus on the single muscle you’re working out and to go past the pain to bring the muscle to near-failure. That’s what stimulates it’s growth. This is done with a light weight, not a super heavy weight. You just keep going up and down as normal, except really really slowly.

Once the burn was really unbearable, I kept going for a little bit longer and then it kind of just faded into the background. It’s like the pain started to go away, but I couldn’t lift the weight anymore at that slow speed. So I stopped for about 30 seconds and just wiggled my arms to let the blood circulate through the muscles. I waited another 30 seconds to let the muscles just rest a bit and then went and did probably about 20-30 really rapid bicep curls feeling the burn getting really intense. When I didn’t feel like I could do any more, I pushed myself to do 10 more.

At the end, it really felt like my biceps ran a marathon. Here’s the weird thing. After a few minutes they felt energized. Very strange. I bet tomorrow they’re going to be as sore as my pecs are today.

So here are my stats:

Cardio: Treadmill - 32 Minutes - 2.01 Miles Ran
Strength Training: Bicep Curls - 20lbs/side - To Failure

Breakfast:
Nothing

Lunch:

Salad - Greens, carrots, avacado, grape tomatoes, pumpkin seeds, pine nuts, a bit of dressing.

Dinner:
Salad - Greens, carrots, avacado, grape tomatoes, pumpkin seeds, pine nuts, a bit of dressing.
Bowl of Organic Tomato Soup

Snacks:
2 Bananas
Organic Apple
Half a Cantaloupe

Today I did something a bit different for my workout routine.

Firstly, I pushed myself a bit harder on the treadmill and ran 2.01 miles in the 30minutes on there, instead of the usual 1.75 miles I normally run.

Secondly, I wanted to change up my strength training up a bit. Instead of doing bench press, bicep curls and triceps curls on the same day, I decided to try a slightly different muscle building technique I learned the last time I was working out. Basically it involves doing one muscle group, in this case being my pecs. What you do is you basically push that one group of muscles to failure instead of just doing three sets of a certain number of reps.

You pick a weight that’s a bit easier to lift than your normal weight for doing your sets, and what you do is you go up and down with the weight really slowly, concentrating on that one muscle group you’re working out. You basically take like 3-8 seconds to lift the weight and then 3-8 seconds to lower the weight without pausing at either top or bottom of the lift. You’re basically just moving the weight up and down really slowly without relieving the muscle of strain at the top and bottom by locking your elbows.

What this does is that it pushes your muscles to fatigue really quickly and you keep going until you basically can’t lift anymore at all. Once you get to the point where the muscle is pretty much unable to lift any more, you kind of hit a stopping point where you’re TRYING to lift the weight and your hands are shaking but it won’t budge anymore. At this point you lower the weight slowly and then you’re done. DON’T DO THIS WITH FREE WEIGHTS without a spotter. I’m using a bowflex so if I can’t lift any weight anymore I can just lower it without getting injured.

Once you do one muscle group like this, it will burn like crazy and you’ll feel it the next day. You then give that muscle group a whole week, YES 7 DAYS, to recover. So tomorrow I’ll be working on a different muscle group. I’ll pick 7 exercises and try this out for a while.

So here are my stats:

Cardio: Treadmill - 30 Minutes - 2.01 Miles Ran
Strength Training: Bench Press - 110lbs - To Failure

Breakfast:
Pacific Brand Organic Tomato Soup

Lunch:
Veggie Sticks - Cucumbers, Carrots, Celery, Cherry Tomatoes, with a bit of dip
Baked Vegetarian Spring Rolls

Dinner:
Seafood Salad - Wild Salmon, Grilled Praws, Shrimp, Greens, Crispy Noodles, Avacado, Sprouts, Papaya

Snacks:
Organic Grapefruit

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.

Well, it’s been exactly 7 days this morning since I started on my diet. I’ve lost just under 6lbs in that 7 day period. Not bad at all.

For todays workout I decided to take it easy on the treadmill, only running about 1.47miles instead of 1.75miles, but I bumped up my Squat and Calf Raise weight up to 280lbs from 260lbs. It felt fine. I’ll stick with this weight as long as my knee doesn’t hurt tomorrow. Oh yeah, I just remembered about my slightly tweaked knee. Somewhere along the way the pain just went away and it’s totally fine now.

Breakfast:
Salad - Greens, Cucumber, Dried Cranberries, Pine Nuts, Small Amount of Dressing

Lunch:
Apple

Dinner:
Roasted Veggies - Young Potatoes, Brocollini, Zuchini

Snacks:
Organic Grapefruit
Apple

Cardio: Treadmill - 30 Minutes - 1.47 Miles Ran

Strength Training:

Squats: 280lbs x 8 reps x 3 Sets
Seated Calf Raises: 280 lbs x 8 reps x 3 Sets

Today was a pretty good day for my workout. I had a lot more steam on the treadmill so kicked it up a notch. Did a bit of burst running. Instead of my usual 1.75miles ran in 30 minutes I ran 1.87miles. Not a huge difference, but I felt that my lungs have been adjusting to the running much better now and I’m hitting a longer wind when I do my run.

I also bumped up my strength training weights just a bit.

Bench Press: 110lbs x 8 reps x 3 Sets
Bicep Curls: 25lbs x 8 reps x 3 Sets
Tricep Reverse Curls: 25lbs x 8 reps x 3 Sets

For food today I had the following:

Breakfast:
Nothing

Lunch:
Big Salad - Lettuce, mixed greens, radishes, red cabbage, cherry tomatoes, avocado, pumpkin seeds, pine nuts, flax seed and some sprinkled on dehydrated cranberries.

Snacks:
One Organic Apple
Half a Melon

Dinner:

For dinner we had some wraps. Inside the wrap was fried up green peppers, onions, garlic, portobello mushroom and zucchini.

Well, I’m pretty sure the flu is gone for good.  Didn’t hit too hard.  I attribute it to the cardio exercise and eating healthy.  Yaaay!

Breakfast:
Nothing

Lunch:
Big Salad - Lettuce, mixed greens, baby spinach, green onions, red pepper, radishes, cherry tomatoes, avacado, cucumber, pumpkin seeds, pine nuts, flax seed and some sprinkled on dehydrated cranberries.

Dinner:
Veggie Chicken Breast with Pesto Sauce, and Big Salad

Snacks:

Organic Grapefruit

Today’s workout consisted of the following:

Cardio:

Treadmill - 30 Minutes - 1.75 Miles Ran

Strength Training:

Squats:
Set #1 - 260lbs x 8 reps
Set #2 - 260lbs x 8 reps
Set #3 - 260lbs x 8 reps

Seated Calf Raises:
Set # 1 - 260 lbs x 8 reps
Set # 2 - 260 lbs x 8 reps
Set # 3 - 260 lbs x 8 reps

This morning I was sneezing like crazy on my way to work. I am pretty sure that flu is in me. However, I am fighting that sucker. I felt some more stomach cramps after lunch today for the majority of the afternoon but then they subsided. I don’t feel too bad right now. I had a pretty good workout.

I reduced my weight for the shoulder exercises as I felt last time I wasn’t doing them to proper form due to picking a weight that’s a bit too big. I reduced my seated lat row and real deltoid row to 80lbs (from 100lbs) and my dumbbell shoulder press to 25lbs (from 40lbs). I felt a lot better with those weights.

Here’s what the workout looked like:

Cardio:
Treadmill Run for 30 minutes -1.77 miles - 271 calories burned.

Strength Training:

Seated Lat Rows:
Set #1 - 80 lbs x 8 reps
Set #2 - 80 lbs x 8 reps
Set #3 - 80 lbs x 8 reps

Rear Deltoid Rows:
Set #1 - 80 lbs x 8 reps
Set #2 - 80 lbs x 8 reps
Set #3 - 80 lbs x 8 reps

Dumbbell Shoulder Presses:
Set #1 - 25 lbs/side x 8 reps
Set #2 - 25 lbs/side x 8 reps
Set #3 - 25 lbs/side x 8 reps

Big Rubber Ball Sit-ups: 25 reps

As for diet, here’s what I had:

Breakfast:
Nothing

Lunch:
Stir-fry leftover from yesterday. However, I only ate about half of what I brought with me as my stomach wasn’t feeling well.

Snacks:
One Organic Grapefruit

Dinner:

Pita Wrap with saute’d green peppers, onions, zucchini and refried beans. It was an experiment I did, wasn’t very good.
Big Salad - Lettuce, carrots, red cabbage, radishes, pumpkin seeds, flax seeds, pine nuts, dried cranberries, and a tiny bit of dressing.