Is "working out" working out?

If you've read my introductory entry, you may remember that before I started out doing this I was a pretty hefty fellow. I'd have to say I was topping about 300 lbs around the time I discovered all of this. What's worse is I hadn't done much beyond sitting on my posterior and playing World of Warcraft for the better part of two years. Just walking around my house once would leave me winded. I knew that if I wanted to be effective as an RLSH I had to do something about my general health. 

Read on after the jump to find out what I did.

Now I had a few ideas on how to lose weight and get in to shape. Mainly I needed to exercise. I figured that I was so completely out of shape that simply being active would work wonders. That turned out to be true... to an extent. At the time I had started a new job - Security guard. My weekend post had me walking up and down a ten story building and casing the parking lot three times a night both Saturday and Sunday.

I don't think I need to tell you what effect the first few days of that had on a guy who was used to spending all day on his backside. I was hurting and I was hurting bad. After a few weeks of this I discovered that the sore calves and shins were becoming pretty tight, hard muscle and my tight fitting security guard pants weren't quite as tight anymore. YAY, something is happening! But it wasn't enough. I needed more.

Luckily my dear wonderful fiance, La Femme, brought home a book by Jackie Warner titled: 

 "This Is Why You're Fat!"

I found the title rather insulting, but the information inside really opened my eyes. I learned that the food we eat contains vitamins and minerals that can either help make us healthy or can severely restrict our body's ability to keep us healthy. I learned that by making simple changes to our every day diet can actually cause our body to start burning fat. Imagine that, burning fat by eating!

Well, we went through this book and decided we were going to make major changes to our life styles. First thing first? Bye-bye, soda. Yea, I was drinking somewhere around eight cans of Pepsi a day. The amount of sugar and sodium in that was insane. We switched to diet Pepsi and began the task of cutting down to where I now drink between one to three cans in a day. 

The second task was to cut out the sodium. This was hard, because I'm a salt-aholic. I salted pretty much everything... and excessively. But I had to do what I had to do... Would you believe that after just one week of switching to low sodium my waist went down nearly one and a half sizes? Because of the amount of sodium I was consuming my body was retaining water a tremendous amount of water! Lemme ask you a question, and please be honest now: have you ever felt the belly of an overweight person? You know how some people feel solid, like if you flick their belly it will make a need "thunk" sound, like your thumping a ripe watermelon? Yeah, that's because of sodium. I always felt like I was carrying a sandbag on my chest. 

After a week without all the sodium my stomach seemed to deflate. Oh the fat was all still there, it just became jiggly and settled lower, rather than looking like an overinflated beach ball. Believe it or not it was actually easier to breathe.

Next was the meals themselves. We added a whole lot more vegetables to what we already ate, which is the main source for all those minerals and vitamins I was talking about earlier. Now I learned during all of my researching, as well as from the book, that people who eat once or twice a day are in a bad spot because their body feels like it's being starved between meals, so it will store most of what you eat as fat, since it doesn't know when it's going to eat again. The way to battle that is to eat several small meals a day. The body knows it's getting food soon, so it uses all of what you eat instead of storing it. yay. So we began eating our regular three meals a day, just in smaller portions, and between meals we would have a snack, like fruit or a stick of string cheese, or a healthy smoothie.

This whole portion control thing was especially hard for me. I could eat nearly an entire large deep dish pan pizza from Pizza Hut and only feel marginally sore afterward, and a Little Ceasar's hot and ready large pizza? Forget about it. My concept of portions were all wonky. If I had a sandwich for lunch it was two sandwiches. I could eat two double Whoppers and a double cheeseburger in a sitting. I would watch Man Vs. Food and pretty often finding myself say "Where's the challenge in that?"

So yea, the portion control was a challenge. Luckily La Femme stepped up and took control of the cooking initially. That was difficult also, because I'm a pretty damn good cook myself. But I acquiesced.

So now I'm in the right situation to promote weight loss and to maintain it. Not a new diet, but a new way of eating. We don't really deprive ourselves of the "good stuff", but we prepare it in a healthy way and we eat smaller proportions. And since before I rarely bothered with vegetables, now I've discovered a whole new world of great tasting food. I used to hate bell peppers. Now they are one of my favorite food. I still loathe onions though... *shivers*

Anyway, yea, I'm eating healthy. My legs are used to walking a good couple of miles during my shifts, but I get winded just carrying in the groceries. The wight is dropping, but not as fast as I would like, and what's worse, my belly is really starting to droop instead of tightening up. I need to exercise. Badly.

Now I'm not a trainer. I didn't consult with one nor did I consult a doctor. I do not recommend what I'm about to discuss to anyone. I want to make that clear right now.... It just happened to work really well for me... so yeah...

I was horribly out of shape. I tried a few of those workout segments you can find On Demand (I love Fios) and they just hurt. I mean they expect you to have at least a certain level of fitness going in, which I most certainly did not. I realized I actually needed to build myself up to the point where I could work out. Can you believe it? 

Well I'm not an expert in anything. I am pretty familiar with my own anatomy and I had an idea. I figured that if I started really small and began to build up one specific area of my body, that it would bring my overall health up to a certain level, at which I could add start working on other areas, bringing up my overall health more, and so on and so forth until I was working out my entire body. Does any of that make sense? Well it did to me at the time, so I started doing just that.

I picked up two five pound weights, one of those elastic band work out sets, and a shadowboxing set (padded gloves and two padded punching mitts) and started working out my upper torso. I'd begin with multiple reps with the five pound weights, working out different areas of my upper arms and shoulders, ending with some resistance training (holding the weights at arms length in different positions for a certain length count). Then I would take the elastic bands and strap them around the bar at the end of the kitchen counter and start doing a full shoulder/arm workout (it's a lot like having a Bowflex. It's a pretty good workout). 

I started out doing reps of ten (because that's literally all I could do) and on some days I found myself too sore to progress to the bands. It was slow going, but after a couple of weeks I found this strange thing happening. I was starting to feel pretty good after working out. So I started pushing myself harder. I increased the reps to twenty each and would push myself until I was finished with each exercise.

After I noticed that the shape of my shadow was beginning to look a little more manly (The shoulders themselves were kind of growing and rounding out, and my trapezius muscles were starting to look like a body builder's) I decided to work my way down. I pulled the old Ab Lounge out of the garage and started working out the abs. Now I was doing my full regular workout and roughly thirty crunches with the ab lounger (this was always a challenge, because my lower back would start aching at about fifteen... ouchies) and I was beginning to do modified push-ups (off the kitchen counter, as opposed to on the floor. I wasn't ready for that yet.)

So now I'm at a place where I'm eating healthy, taking my vitamins, following my exercise plan as well as doing those work out segments On Demand (did I mention I love Fios?) and every day I actually work out until "failure", which basically means until your body literally cannot do any more (as opposed to your mind telling you you're done... there is a difference) 

I still have a long way to go. I've gotten to where I can do fifteen proper push-ups before my arms give out (yay) and thirty proper crunches before my lower back starts screaming, and every day I try to push myself a little bit farther. I'm losing weight at a rate of about three pounds a week and am calculated to reach my weight and fitness goal somewhere around April of next year. My fingers are crossed.

I'm pretty well pleased by how this is working. I'm accomplishing a goal and I'm doing it in a way that I know I can, rather than following a method that I know would be doomed to failure. It suits me.

Anyway, if you want to know more about Jackie Warner's book, "This Is Why You're Fat", you can check out her site HERE or you can check out Barnes & Noble . It's definitely a life changing book.

I think that's enough writing for now, don't you? Keep watching out, there's more to come soon!