Back to the Docs

Back for my monthly Dr's appointment this morning and she's quite pleased with my progress and doesn't feel the need to change medication or anything. I've lost a solid 3kgs since the beginning of April which I too am pleased about but still wish it could have been more. My April 1st blog entry mentioned that if I hadn't lost 5 kgs by now I was going to try a formal diet plan. However, with 3kgs I'm encouraged to continue with what I'm doing but I will refine it a little more to start with by writing down my daily meal plans and sticking to them. (That's the plan anyway...)

BP is hanging around 130/75 which I'm pretty sure I can drop into the 120 zone if I'm a little stricter with my salt intake and/or drop a few more kgs.

My Dr does leave a bit to be desired though. I mean, she does ok but the service isn't exactly personal. She never remembers me from one visit to the next and we seem to have pretty much the same conversation every time. eg She tells me if I keep going the way I'm going, one day I'll be 150 kgs and heading for an early grave. I tell her I've already been 150 kgs and I've been fighting my way back from that for the last 3 years and every time she's surprised to hear that. She seems to think she's caught me on the brink of a downward spiral rather than on the way back like I am.

What is it with Drs and appointment times anyway? I swear I've never waited less than 30 minutes when I show up on time for an appointment. I mean, why tell me the appointment's at 10.30 if there's never going to be any chance she'll see me before 11. Why not just call it 11 for goodness sake?

She also places a lot of stock in BMI (Body Mass Index) figures. (Just Google "BMI Calculator" if you want to find out your BMI). According to most charts a healthy BMI falls in between 18 & 25. Over 25 is overweight and over 30 is obese. Which would mean at my height of 180 cm I'd need to be below 85 kgs to be healthy.

BMI figures unfortunately don't work if you're carrying a bit of muscle. For example, apparently George Clooney, Brad Pitt and Matt Daemon all fall into the overweight category according to their BMIs.

I haven't been in the 80 kg bracket since I was 14 years old and I can tell you now there wasn't much fat on me then. I would have been well under 10% body fat. These days I guess I'm built like a front row rugby player (well, one with a beer gut) and your average rugby player has a BMI of 32 while I'm currently sitting at 35.

A better indicator if you're carrying a bit of muscle is your girth measurement. Anything over a metre (for men) is bad. (90 cm for women). There's also hip/waist ratios if you're an unusual size or shape but I think at the end of the day if you can look at yourself naked in the mirror and like what you see then you're at the right weight. My girth is currently 115 cms and when I look at myself in the mirror I reckon getting under 100 cms would be just about right.

Fitness wise I've been making an effort to increase my weights in the gym and I'm making great progress there. My strength on the bike has also increased markedly and I'm now clearing hills that I previously had no hope of getting up a couple of months ago. Unfortunately that extra strength has been a bit much for the bike and what I thought was an unbreakable combination is now starting to fail me and I've started spitting out spokes on almost every ride. They usually break under the most extreme torque loads that occur as I traverse the most extreme climbs (ie veins sticking out every where and lots of grunting). It would appear that fatigue is the cause and/or an inferior grade of spoke so it's in the shop at the moment getting a new set of heavy duty spokes and a professional rebuild which should hopefully mean the end of my troubles. In the meantime I'll have to slum it back on the old gearie. :(

Another year older

Another year older and as usual it's time for some self assessment. While I have made considerable progress with my fitness and strength and I'm stoked with that, to my disappointment I haven't lost the weight on the scales that I expected to by now. As a matter of fact my scale weight isn't all that different from what it was on my last birthday so I guess it's time for some changes...

Change No 1. Eat bodybuilder type foods.
These include lean sources of protein such as eggs, tuna, skinless chicken breast and the occasional lean cut of beef and "clean" low GI carbs which includes oats, wholegrain breads and heaps of veges except white potatoes.

Change No 2. Cut the junk food.
No more fast food, chips, biscuits or lollies. (I don't really have a lot of these anyway but at this stage of the game I need to get serious it seems if I'm going to reach my goal weight).

Change No 3. Allow more recovery time.
Over-reaching is a bit of a problem for me so I'm going to back off the training to no more than 1 high intensity session per day. There's evidence to suggest the right balance might mean less is more when it comes to training, the theory being that muscle growth occurs while you're resting and too much activity might mean excessive hunger so you end up eating more than you burn.

Change No 4. Consistency.
I'm going to keep rearranging my training schedule to keep it fresh and also schedule my workouts on days and times when I'm more likely to stick to it. For example, I can't seem to motivate myself to train on a Friday afternoon and I have difficulty doing anything heavy in the mornings. That means scheduling weight training sessions Mon - Thurs either straight after work in the afternoon or after a 30 minute warm up session on the bike in the mornings. (I seem to cope a lot better with weights in the mornings once I've got my pulse up with some aerobic activity). I'll combine the weights with some long, slow(ish) mountain bike rides on Mon, Tues, Wed nights and some marathon efforts on the weekends.

Change No 5. Accountability.
Adopt a diet coach. In my case I've finally been able to convince the Mrs to keep me motivated and to keep an eye on me to make sure I'm not skipping workouts or eating foods not in my plan.

We shall see how we go now...

I've considered just switching to standard diet plans but after talking to my Dr she doesn't think they're the right way to go for me and will just leave me flat with the amount of physical activity I do. I've been doing some research and have found that the more active you are, the harder it is to lose fat (that is, if you are an athlete with fat to lose) and it takes a very strict diet, higher in carbs than protein so you get the energy to fuel the workouts.

Add to that lots of patience because it ain't gonna happen overnight...

Flatline

I started out the day a little disillusioned when I realised my weigh-in this morning was exactly the same as it was last Friday morning. The frustrating thing was I knew I'd made progress though. I had a lot more power on my MTB rides during the week and had endurance to burn, plus my pants are feeling a little looser. So why aren't the scales showing it?

I started thinking that maybe what I'm doing just isn't working and maybe it's time I started thinking about taking on a "proper" diet, but then I had a re-read of my 3 steps forward, 2 steps back post a fortnight ago about "dieting as hard as I train" and the criteria I'd given myself before I would fall back on a structured diet. I also noticed that my Monday weigh-in was 1kg heavier than Friday so I'd managed to put on a kg over the weekend. I thought about that and remembered I was fighting a cold that weekend and had spent the whole time on the couch watching TV and pigging out. Plus I'd missed my usual marathon bike ride I do most Saturday mornings. Then I remembered a few donuts, sticky buns, chippies & chocolates here and there during the week and a big feed of fish, chips and tater scallops one night...

No wonder! I think I've actually done pretty good not to put on weight after that effort.

I've also been reading about how low carb diets work great for your average Jo trying to lose a few kgs but aren't actually all that good for physically active people. If you're like me and fat but physically active, losing fat is extremely tough and the way to do it is with a low fat diet that's high in carbs. Active people need the carbs to fuel the activity, but with that being said, we need to take a great deal of care about creating a slight negative energy balance to burn off the fat without sacrificing muscle or burning out. That unfortunately means walking a very fine line between losing maybe .5 - 1 kg per week, not losing anything or even gaining, which means not one biscuit, chocolate or potato chip until I reach my goal weight. After that I can slacken off a bit and get away with it but I can't get away with it while I'm trying to lose weight.

The average body-building diet with natural & low GI carbs like oats, whole grain breads, basmati or brown rice, most veges (other than white potato) and lean sources or protein such as eggs, tuna, skinless chicken breasts and protein shakes, and extremely limited amounts of fruit and nuts is the best way to go for me. And to stick with it this week I'm going to start putting more effort into preparing my own food and learning more about cooking so when I get hungry I eat something decent and avoid going the easy fix of whatever I can find in the cupboard.
And water, water, water!

I do have date with a lovely lady at Hogsbreath on Saturday night (gosh has it been another year already?) but I think I can deal with that without going crazy. ;-)

Glasshouse Mountains mini-epic ride

I did a 50 km ride with a bunch of mates on Sunday around the Glasshouse Mountains. (Click here for a bikely route map). I was a bit concerned about going the distance beforehand but I knew plenty of the other people venturing out were at a similar or worse level of fitness so I'd be amongst good company. I needn't have worried as it turns out. I managed the distance with ease and could've gone even longer. Mind you, once I was home I wouldn't have been keen to head out for another ride that day...

Lots of people thought I was super-keen to tackle it on a single speed bike with no suspension but I couldn't imagine a better bike to do it on, even retrospectively. The gearing was perfect for the location and the steel frame and big 29 inch tyres soaked up anything gnarly we came across. I found it interesting that my riding style appears to have changed a bit and I now seem to have the Viking Theory approach. When approaching a hill I kept wondering why everyone in front of me slowed down so much. It was almost like they put their brakes on. I'd be weaving and swerving around people up hills as they sacrificed momentum for an easier gear and then I'd zoom away on the descents because of my weight. (Being a heavyweight does pay off on the descents as the heavier mass outweighs the air resistance of the larger size when approaching terminal velocity)

Weather and conditions were perfect and we just hit a minor shower as we were leaving as if to tell us to hurry up and pack up. I'm not sure when it last rained in the area but there was still plenty of mud and lots of huge puddles.
The amount of sand was also surprising seeing we were so far from the coast. Our bikes and bodies were caked with it at the end. (Another advantage with the single speed bike is not having gears and derailleurs to get all of that sand out of now).

Getting up at 4am on a Sunday morning wasn't the most pleasant thing I've ever done though but it was worth it and I'm hoping this ride becomes a regular event now.

I don't know whether to be annoyed or chuffed that I'm capable of activities like this and holding my own against much lighter riders now, but it is exciting when I think about what I might be capable of when I get reach my goal weight. I was interested to read comments by swimmer Nick D'Arcy's coach that at 75kgs Nick was capable of a 100kg press and 16 reps of 120kg lat pulldowns. That's pretty impressive! I've got a good 40kgs on him and he's kicking my butt but it is inspiring to realise that I won't necessarily sacrifice size for strength.

Speaking of inspiration, I read a response by Biggest Loser Trainer Shannan Ponton when asked "Have you ever let yourself go?"

"After the last show I went to Bali with my girl for three and a half weeks and I put on 9kg. I went from 83kg to 92kg. I did nothing but eat rubbish and really relax. Then I came back and trained for City to Surf. Seriously, I'd be a porker if I didn't train".

It is so comforting to hear that most fit people aren't that way naturally and have to work at it just as hard as the rest of us. That's about the same rate of weight gain as I experience when I stop training (which makes me dread getting an injury or developing a condition like Lisa Curry-Kenny's Myocarditis).

How hard does Shannan train to keep in the shape he's in? According to the article quoted above in the Sunday Mail 6/4/08 his average weekly workout consists of "Three spin classes, two freestyle aerobic classes, one body attack, boxing with a coach and two runs totalling 9km, and six hours' weight training". Whew!

How close am I to that? Let's see, at the moment I'm trying not to do more than one high intensity workout per day and I keep those around the 30 min - 1 hr mark and back it up or alternate with low intensity stuff in 1 - 2 hr sessions. It's hard to compare it with Shannan's because he has such a varied routine and he doesn't mention how long his sessions are but I'm doing 2 high intensity road bike rides, 3 low intensity road bike rides, 4 low intensity mountain bike rides and two hours of weight training. Going by Shannan's routine I could probably get away with adding a run or two and/or one or two boot camp or kickboxing sessions to add some variety without risking overtraining. Food for thought...

3 steps forward, 2 steps back

I think I have a diet-resistant personality. Sure I make progress, sometimes 2 or 3 kgs in a week, but it always comes back. It seems as soon as I dip more than say 2 kgs below the 120kg mark I've been hanging around for the last year and a half, I get sick and can't train and/or my appetite goes through the roof until I'm right back where I started again.

It's depressing, I'm over it and I feel like giving up. But I can't. Even if this is the best I'll ever get, it's a lot better than when I was 150kgs. And while I really, really, really want to lose another 20kgs, right now I'm extremely pleased that I'm fit enough to do anything I want so there's no way I'd be happy to toss it away and gain back what I've lost so far.

I've just got to find a way to press on and that's all there is to it. If it's not working, I need to change something to make it work.

The Beck Diet Solution has helped a lot but I need to read it through again and continue to go over the principles regularly so they stay fresh in my mind. I was also thinking I need a more structured diet such as the Great Australian Diet or Tony Ferguson like several people I know are succeeding with, but I'm certain the plan I'm following now will work fine. I just need to keep myself reminded that I am on a diet and work at it just as hard as I train. It doesn't take much to gobble down an extra 500 calories in a day and that is the difference between losing a kg in a week or not.

It's time for a Plan B anyway. I've just bought another couple of month's supply of Dymatize protein powder so let's say if I haven't dropped a good 5 kgs by the time it's finished I'll switch to one of the diets above. I doubt it will be a completely pleasant experience but at least I know it'll be for a limited time and I should be able to do my 20 kgs in about 3 months with either diet. At the end of it I know I can maintain my weight doing what I do now.
I do have concerns that these diets won't give me enough energy or nourishment to cope with the amount of training I do but I'll just have to HTFU and deal with it. If I can't, I'll have to either back the training off a bit or add a bit more Minestrone.

In the meantime my current plan isn't too far off the Great Australian Diet TrimShot plan which has some shakes for morning & afternoon smoko so I'll double my efforts to make sure I don't "accidentally" eat anything unplanned, particularly at night. (Amazing how it's possible to accidentally eat. Like food magically appears in your mouth and gets swallowed... People who have never had a weight problem will be scratching their heads at that one.).

The Blood Pressure

I went back to the doctor's for a follow up visit last week and showed her my blood pressure chart which I do every morning. I was still hanging around the 145/80 mark so she increased my medication to Micardis Plus which includes a diuretic (Hydrochlorothiazide) which apparently inhibits the kidneys' ability to retain fluid which lowers the volume of blood which in turn lowers blood pressure. So far it's working well and I've dropped to 129/75 in the week since I started it (120/80 is the target) but I may be experiencing some not so great side effects:

• The dizzy spells that occur when I stand up have increased in intensity (strangely they don't seem to hit me until I've gone about 20 paces across the room)
• I had a most unpleasant breathless sensation while mountain biking on Sunday. It was frustrating because my strength is way up and I cleaned several trail features I usually struggle with, but then I actually had to stop to catch my breath and let my heart rate catch up in other places involving a bit of endurance work where I normally wouldn't have a problem.
• I've been sleeping at least 8 hours a night lately, which is a bit more than usual, but it still didn't seem like enough and I felt like I was walking around in a daze all of the time.

Today I feel much better and those symptoms appear to be all but gone but I haven't had a hard core workout since Sunday to say for sure. I broke a spoke about 2 kms into this morning's ride so I cut it short and came home again but I plan on a pretty heavy duty night ride tonight so time will tell. I'm hoping the issues over the last few days were just temporary or some sort of virus that I'll get over soon anyway. The effects on my blood pressure seem to make it well worth persevering with. It seems to drop a bit more each day and I'm sure I should be able to get my systolic under 120 with just a small amount of weight loss from here.

I love my loathsome car

Yesterday someone pulled up beside me in a car park to let me know I had no brake lights.

Fantastic.

But it's something I've become accustomed to with my piece of crap land barge that has served as the family car for the last few years.

It's a Falcon Wagon. I have no idea what model or year and have never bothered to find out. It's ugly, uninspiring and I don't think there's much on it that hasn't broken at least once on it at some stage. However, it was when I went to pick it up from the mechanic that I came realise how much I actually love it and that came as quite a surprise. I'd grabbed a bike from home for the journey to the mechanic and it was during the act of loading (chucking) the bike into the back that it struck me: This car does everything I need it to and never causes me a moment's concern. And that's how it should be.

A car should make life easier and not add to the daily stress of living.

Not only did the bike fit in there with ease but I didn't give a crap about marking the paint or upholstery in the process. Looking around the car there's countless shopping cart & door dings, strawberry jam finger prints on every piece of glass and the rear passenger area is knee deep in toys and assorted garbage that the kids have left in there. The rear bumper has a ding where someone backed into it which I'm sure I didn't notice for several weeks after the event, and the front bumper has a vent missing on the left hand side where the Mrs rear-ended someone once when she was distracted by the kids screaming in the back.

Good grief! I drive a suburban cliché!

This is such a sharp contrast to the place I was just a few years ago. I was a diehard, certified car nut. I loved V8s in particular, could strip and rebuild a 4 barrel Holley blindfolded and there wasn't much I didn't know about any Holden, Chevy, Ford or Chrysler built from about 1940 up to 1990. I could name every model in order, every engine & transmission option and tell you the most cost effective modifications to get them really cranking.
I'd never have been seen dead in a Ford, let alone a wagon so how did I end up here, liking a car I probably care as much about as what type of washing machine I own?

Well, the end of my car loving era came as I went to take my prized drag racing HG Monaro for a spin and the battery was flat due to lack of use. That had been happening a lot and I'd also have to give it a wash and dust the cobwebs off prior to any drive and I started to wonder why that was. If I loved it so much why wasn't I driving it?
Well, when I thought about it I realised it had become a pain in the arse. It cost a fortune to run, I hated letting it out of my sight if I took it anywhere in case it got scratched or nicked, it was impossible to insure and it attracted police attention. All in all I suddenly realised instead of being a source of pleasure, it had become a source of stress and it was time for a new interest.

It seems I'm not alone in my thinking. In the Wall Street Journal there's an article about how Japanese and European youth are finding cars a bit passé (crikey, that's twice I've used a "é" word in the same article).

"Unlike their parents' generation, which viewed cars as the passport to freedom and higher social status, the Internet-connected Japanese youths today look to cars with indifference, according to market research by the Japan Automobile Manufacturers Association and Nissan. Having grown up with the Internet, they no longer depend on a car for shopping, entertainment and socializing and prefer to spend their money in other ways."

"They were surprised to find that many youths world-wide felt cars were unnecessary and even uncool because they pollute and cause congestion"

Pretty much the same reasons why we're now a one car family too.

Bicycles fulfil all of my wheel lust these days. They're cheap enough so I can have lots of them (one for every occasion) and there's no ongoing costs in fuel, rego or insurance. I can customise them, upgrade them and aspire to better ones. I can get an adrenaline rush hanging onto a mountain bike down twisty single-track or hitting 80+ kmh on a road bike on a sharp decent, passing cars, or I can lay back and cruise boulevards and coastal bike paths. I get to feel a sense of accomplishment when I nail a nasty, rock-strewn climb or finish totally spent after a non-stop 2 or 3 hour ride. They're much easier and cheaper to repair & maintain than cars, oodles of fun and keep me fit.
And I can fit several in the back of my big, ugly land barge along with my whole strawberry jam fingered family all at the same time. What more could I ask for?

Single Speed for the road

Since I've been having so much fun on my new single speed 29er Mountain Bike, I've been starting to get evil ideas about doing something similar with a road bike for my road training rides. There's something magical about riding single speed that is difficult to describe. Sure, there's the maintenance and simplicity factors but there's something about how they actually ride that is quite different to riding a geared bike. Without derailleurs there's a lot more chain tension so they're much quieter, and you can actually feel the extra efficiency. For example, I can push a much bigger gear up hills, even at a very low cadence, which I'd seriously struggle with using identical "gear inches" on a geared bike.
I think at the end of the day it's a kind of cycling Zen though...

I also may have been slightly corrupted by Fixed Gear Gallery machines, and I can avoid the fashion police to ride a bike with road geometry while still wearing MTB shoes and Camelbak and not have to dress like Lance Armstrong.

So where do I start this project off?
I know there's several ingredients that I must have, such as:

• a powder coated, chromoly steel frame & forks (steel is real man)
• a Brooks saddle
• Velocity Deep V wheels.
• I can't decide whether I like flat bars, traditional drop bars or bull horns so I'll probably just keep all 3 in the garage and change them to suit my mood. However, I'm starting to think bullhorns with some tri-bars could be just the thing for keeping the cadence up into the head-wind I seem to always cop on the return leg of a Redcliffe Peninsula ride.
• Cost wise I don't really want to to blow out much over $1000.00 (mainly because I can get a pretty good 105 equipped roadie for under $2k and it'd bug me if I spent that much on a bike with no gears)
• Weight wise I want to keep it around the 10 kg mark (give or take a couple)
• I'll need braze-ons for brake cables and I'm also having thoughts of maybe trying an Alfine Hub (if I ever want gears again) so I'd need braze-ons for that cable as well.

I could keep my eyes open for a good old 80's or maybe even a vintage frame. These would add quite a few coolness points but I couldn't be sure of the type of steel (eg high tensile vs cro-moly), the condition (how stressed and safe it still might be) and getting modern parts like bottom brackets and threadless headsets to fit. Still, I won't count this option out just yet and will keep my eyes and ears open for opportunities.

There's a few off the shelf frames such as the Salsa Casseroll, Surly Cross-check or Steamroller that would do the trick. However, these all come in around $700 or so for just the frame & forks so the price is quickly reaching the upper limits of my budget. However, they are nice & light and extremely good quality with good reputations. I can probably count the Steamroller out though (as yummy as it is) because of it's lack of braze-ons.

A couple of other options are the SE Lager or Redline 925. Both of these can be had around the $600.00 mark. A big plus is I'd have a rideable bike right away and I could customise/upgrade bits as I go using eBay or whatever.
I think they're a little heavier than the Surly or Salsa frames, but I'm not sure that the difference is that great. In any case they're still lighter than what I'm riding now and I'm sure once I've changed a few of the bits (like the wheels) the weight should come down under 10kgs which would be more than respectable for my purposes.
Both brands have been around for quite some time in BMX circles and there's other niceties such as the SE stickers aren't under the clear coat so I could peel them off if I wanted to mask its origins a little.

I've gotta say, at the moment it seems to be out of the SE or Redline but, in my usual style, there's still lots of procrastination to be done, opinions to be sought, beer to be drunk and researching to the nth degree to happen before I get close to a full decision. ;)