I have just finished my fourth week of the low carb diet and I am just about on track to hit my goals. My goal by the end of the first month was to go from 228 pounds to 217 pounds and I am now at 217.4. I still have two days to go, so as long as I don’t have one of those bounce up days I think that I will achieve it. Losing 11 pounds in one month is a great accomplishment for me. I thought that it was something that I could attain if I stayed with the low carb diet program and I did.
The other goals were to reduce my waist from 40” to 38”. My waist has gone down, but not as much as I would have liked it to go down. I am at 38.75” right now and I do not see how I have drop .75” in two days. I am going to keep with the low carb diet and the exercise program and I will continue to get thinner by the end of this 90 day program. My other goal is to increase the size of my biceps and I have no idea of where I am at there. I am waiting till the last day of the month before I do my measurements.
I do know that during my work outs with the P90X that I am doing almost double the push-ups and pull-ups than I was doing at the beginning of the month. I am also using heavier weights on all of the exercises. So I am defiantly getting stronger and I will find out in a couple of days if I am showing results in my arms. It feels good to be stronger as I am walking around in my daily life, so even if the measurements are not there I will still be happy with what I am doing.
My workout yesterday was back to the stationary bike and the treadmill. I thought about going outside and running because it has warmed up to the upper 30’s. But it was raining like crazy and I also did not think that I had enough time to drive to the running trails, run, drive back and get to church on time. So I stayed with the normal routine. The good thing was that I was able to improve on my 3 mile time again. I was able to run a mile, the walk .05, run .95, walk .05 and then finish up with .95. So my endurance is getting better, which helps my overall time get faster. I was able to average 10:22 per mile, so I shaved off another 10 seconds per mile.
I consumed 2045 calories, 26 carbs and 129 fat grams. We had dinner last night at our friend’s house and they served a tortellini soup with chicken. It was very good, but I only ate a few of the tortellinis since I figured that they would be full of carbs. When I check my app this morning I was right. 1 cup has 46 carbs, so I am glad I just ate 2 or 3. I had a lot of salad, and then when I returned home I had a Gold Standard Chocolate protein Shake and that filled me up for the rest of the night.

Yesterday was my day off from working out. I think that it is a good thing to take at least one day off per week, just to let your body recover from all of the new changes. And it feels good to just do nothing. But it was a little weird, there were a few times during the day that I felt like I should go out and do something.
I had an all day meeting with the elder board from our Church, so I was totally out of my routine for the day. First of all no work out, then when I got there, they had muffins, potato chips, butter horns, donuts, fruit and croissant sausage snacks. Everything looked really good and it was all full of carbs. I am glad that I had my eggs, sausage and Gold Standard Chocolate protein Shake for breakfast. I was able to look at everything and not eat any of it. A few of them gave me a hard time for not eating any of it, but when I told them that I have lost over 11 pounds and an inch in my waist they did not say too much more. All of them are in worse shape than I am and I was hoping I could be an example for them.
I brought my bag of snacks that included cheese sticks, pepperoni and powder for my Gold Standard Chocolate protein Shake. So after being there for a couple of hours I would just get one of those options and I was pretty satisfied with it. Then our lunch was delivered and it was Chinese food and I do like Chinese food. So I had to figure out what had carbs and what did not have carbs. Mostly I just took the meat out of the different dishes and I was able to get all of the different flavors without the carbs. I felt pretty good about my self control for the day.
After the meeting ended I went downtown to meet my wife and daughter for dinner and again had to figure out what would work in the low carb diet. I was able to get the short ribs and mashed potatoes with salad. The funny thing is that I made sure to eat all of the short ribs and by the time I got to the mashed potatoes I was pretty full. So I only ate a little over half of them. Then I had a couple glasses of wine with dinner instead of beer. The merlot that I was drinking only had 3 carbs, so that was much better than the beer.
My total consumption for the day was 2567 calories, 46 carbs and 156 fat grams. I thought that I did great, but at my weigh in this morning I bounced back up to 217.6. So here I go again, lose some and then gain some back. But I am not going to worry too much about it because I am doing the right things and I will continue to lose weight on a regular basis.

I really did not feel like working out yesterday. I was feeling a little groggy and did not feeling like looking at Tony’s smiling spray tan face on P90X:90-Day Extreme Home Workout Program. But I did it and this core workout stuff is good. I have done it three times now this week and I can feel that my core is stronger in just a week. I am glad that I took the time and did it. Try to think of it as your daily routine and then do some sort of workout everyday at the same time. Then after about a month it becomes your routine and you are turning into a fit person. I do like the feeling throughout the day when I do workout. So for me, it is defiantly worth doing.
During my work out at the end I am doing the ab ripper every other day. When I started I would have to stop though most of the exercises, because it hurt too much or I just could not do it. As each week has gone by I have taken fewer and fewer breaks. But yesterday I was able to go through the whole routine without stopping or taking a break. That felt pretty good, I know that I am improving every week and that is why I am doing this.
This morning I weighed in at 216.4. Wow, now that feels awesome to lose another pound after the beginning of the week I was whining and complaining. It just shows you that the work that I am putting in on the low carb diet and the workouts is really starting to pay off. Not only am I down to 216.4, but I feel much better. I feel more alert, my pants are starting to get a little loose and I my wife told me it looks like I am walking around with more confidence now than I was a month ago. So I am not only starting to look better, but all things other things are really making this worth it.
If you have not started yet, then get off your butt and start something. It does not have to be as much or as little as I am doing. I am trying to keep below 50 carbs per day and working out about an hour a day. But you might try a modified low carb diet and stay below 100 or 200. Just figure out what you are doing now and then decrease it. When working out, maybe start with walking 15 minutes per day and then increase it weekly. Pretty soon you will be walking an hour a day or start getting into a tougher work out. Just start something; you will start to be proud of yourself after you have been consistently doing it for a month.
My consumption was 1946 calories, 91 carbs and 70 fat grams. So yes I did go way over my carb goal for the day, but sometimes you have give yourself a break. I had 3 beers last night and they were 72 of my carbs, I think that I am going to start having a lighter beer in the future. I don’t want to waste all of my hard work on 3 beers.

Hello, I am back to the stationary bike and running 3 miles on the treadmill yesterday. The bike is getting easier and next week I will probably go from level 11 to level 12. I am feeling stronger and leaner now and I like it. Running the 3 miles on the treadmill, I have been getting better endurance. Because my endurance is getting better I am able to get my average per mile time down. The first run I did, I averaged 11:55 min per mile, and then 2 days ago I averaged 10:45 per mile.

Yesterday I ran a mile and then walked for .05 miles, then ran .7 miles and walked again for .05 miles and the ran for another .7 miles and walked again for .05 and then finished off the last .45 strong. It feels good to be improving on a regular basis. But running for me is like the low carb diet. The time comes down fast at first, then I hit my set point and I start to stop improving and get frustrated. This year I am going to stick with it and keep trying new things.

So in the morning I am still having my Gold Standard Chocolate protein Shake with eggs and sausage. I do think that I am becoming more alert throughout the day when I have a breakfast and I feel fuller throughout the day also. I consumed 2087 calories, 28 carbs and 122 fat grams. I am definitely not starving myself throughout the day. I always have some turkey pepperoni, cheese sticks and Gold Standard Chocolate protein Shake on hand. So whenever I feel the urge to eat, I do. At night I was craving chocolate again, so I ate another quarter of a Hershey candy bar and it really hit the spot. It is amazing how long I can make a quarter of a candy bar last now. It just takes getting used to and it is no longer a problem.

I weighed in at 217.6, so I am continuing to lose weight after that big bounce back up. At times staying with the low carb diet can be frustrating. Because you think that you are doing everything correctly and then all of a sudden your weight bounces back up. I am sure that happens with all diets, not just the low carb diet. The key is to not get discouraged and to keep on your plan. Even if you fall off for a day or two, get back on it and stay on it so you can be your best self.

I want to thank everyone who is reading my blogs. For one thing, it helps me stay on track knowing that I am going to post my daily eating and workout habits. And the other thing is that if you are taking the time to read this, hopefully you take the time to get on your low carb diet and work out program. It is a discipline that I am learning and I hope that I am helping you learn it also.

This morning I finally felt good after a weigh in, but I do not want to get over confident. I weighed in at 217.6 and this is the lowest weigh in of the year. But I have been bouncing around the 218 pound mark for about a week now. I am just going to keep on the low carb diet plan and see what happens. When my son did it, he said that you will go along for a while with nothing happening and then for some reason everything releases and you start losing pounds and inches. I am going to keep my attitude high and keep working the plan. I do feel much better than I did 25 days ago, so there is no reason to stop now.

I hope that you can learn from my experience that it’s not like you are going to be losing 1-2 pounds every day. That will only happen at the very beginning, then your body will start to adjust and wonder what is going on. Once that your body realizes that you are going to stay on this low carb diet, then it will start to give way to those unwanted pounds. Right now my body is probably thinking, “yeah, he has tried different things before, but he always goes back to eating those fattening foods. So let’s hang out and see what happens.” At least that is what I think is going on, I am not a doctor by any means. But it does make sense that the body has to adjust to all of these new changes that you are making to it.

I look at it like a remodel job on a house. First you have to tear away the stuff that you don’t want to make room for the new and improved look. So you have to knock down some walls and rip out the old cabinets and that ugly green carpet. Then you can put in the new improved cabinets, carpet and add some paint and will look great. Just think of yourself in the tear down stage right now. Then the next stage is the installation of the muscle from your work outs and hopefully by the end you will just need a little paint and you will look great. I know, kind of a weird analogy, but I think that it works in a weird way.

So I consumed 1747 calories, 44 carbs and 109 fat grams yesterday. I am keeping up with having breakfast almost every day. Sometimes it is hard to do, mostly because I don’t feel like taking the extra 5-10 minutes to cook a couple of sausage and eggs and sit down and eat them. Last night when I returned home from helping out with the youth ministry at our church, I felt like some chocolate and I knew there was a quarter of a candy bar still in the cupboard. So I went and found it and took a few minutes to eat it. It really hit the spot and it did not make me go over the 50 carb goal. In the past, that would have probably been 1 or 2 bites and now I can turn it into a whole dessert.

On my workout yesterday, I changed it up a little bit. I usually do 30 minutes on the stationary bike and 30 minutes on the stair stepper. My achillies has been hurting me so I have not been able to run at all. I have been doing a lot of stretching on the achillies and getting massages, so it is starting to feel better. When I ran a week or so ago, it hurt afterwards and I did not want that to happen again. Of course last time I went running I was not doing any stretching. So I decided that I would do the stationary bike for 30 minutes and run on the treadmill for 3 miles.

I did better than expected. The last time I ran, I averaged 11:50 per mile with a lot of walking. This time I ran for a mile without walking, then after that I walked every half mile. I ended up averaging 10:45 minute miles. I know that I am not a fast runner by any means, but it does help me get in better shape. My goal is to run Bloomsday with an average under 9 minute miles and that is a 7.5 mile run. So I have my work cut out for myself.

My consumption was 2434 calories, 45 carbs and 151 fat grams. For some reason I was having a big craving for a baked potato last night. So I checked it out on my app and it said that a potato has 37 carbs. I knew that I had not eaten very many carbs throughout the day, so I would come in under the 50 carb goal for myself. Sometimes it is just nice to be able to eat what you want and still be able to stay on track for the low carb diet.

As usual I have a Gold Standard Chocolate protein Shake in the morning and one during the day to keep me going. These Gold Standard Chocolate protein Shake really take the edge off when I start to feel hungry or a little run down. They will fill me up and it seems like I also get a bit of an energy boost when I take one.

I weighed in at 218.2 and again I was a little disappointed. Because when I ran on the treadmill, I was sweating like crazy and I was sure that I would be close to 217 when I weighed myself this morning. But I will keep my head up, knowing that I am staying on the low carb diet and it will work out over the long term. The low carb diet is not a sprint; it is more like a marathon. There are going to be some tough times along the way. Then there are going to be some down hills where it just feels like you are cruising along and everything is going your way. The first week or so felt like a downhill, but the last week or so I have been on an uphill trend. I am hoping that it will just be some flat ground coming up.

 

Alright, no need to worry. I got a little heated over my weight yesterday and vented about gaining a couple of pounds over the weekend. I can relax a little now, because this morning I weighed in at 218.0. So I pretty much lost the weight gain back in one day. I feel a little better about know that I only need to lose one pound by Sunday to achieve my first goal.

I have talked about this before and I can’t stress it enough. When you are on the low carb diet or any other diet, don’t freak out if you have an occasional weight gain during the process. All of our bodies have a set point. A set point is where your body thinks that it is supposed to be, so if you gain a few pounds, it is easy to get back down there. But if you lose some pounds, it keeps wanting to go up there. So you have to keep on fighting it until you are able to establish a new set point. My set point right now is about 218, so it was pretty easy to get down to there. The hard part is establishing a new set point. My goal weight is 205 and that is what I want my new set point to be.

Just because I say that is what I want does it make it happen. I am going to have to do some hard work to get it there and then maintain a low carb diet to keep it there. Now is the time that most people will get frustrated and quit. I could just say, “I am too busy, it’s too hard, well I lost the weight that I gained during the holidays.” But I want more from myself this time and I hope that you want more from yourself also. So don’t get your head down and start feeling sorry for yourself like I did yesterday. Pick yourself up, dust yourself off and get back on track.

Yesterday I was still feeling a little sorry for myself and I had another long day at work. When I returned home, my wife had already eaten, so I was on my own for dinner. There were three slices of pizza left over from the other night and a 100% Whey Gold Standard, Double Rich Chocolate. So I micro-waved them and that was my dinner. Each slice is 13 carbs and I knew that it would put be over my limit of 50 carbs a day, but I did it anyway. I ended up consuming 1521calories, 61 carbs and 74 fat grams. Not a ton over, but to stay consistent on this low carb diet I want to keep it under 50 everyday.

My work out yesterday was back to the P90X:90-Day Extreme Home Workout Program and it is going to be the core work out this week. Wow, I have never done most of these exercises before and some are pretty hard. It will take getting used to, but I will be doing the same thing three times this week. Hopefully I will start to figure it out by the end of the week.

The weekend is over and I am a little mad at myself. Let me tell you why. Yesterday I went a little over my goal of 50 carbs again. I consumed 3105 calories, 57 carbs and114 fat grams. Then this morning I did my weigh in and I am now 219.6, CRAP!!! I have been staying on the diet pretty well and losing weight and then this weekend I fell a little off the wagon and I gain 2 pounds over 3 days? What is up with that?

Not only am I staying on this low carb diet, but I am also working out more than I have worked out in a long time. I have really been trying to make this work, so I can get in the kind of shape that I can be proud of. But here I go gaining weight and I am only on week three. I am frustrated with the diet and myself, sometimes I get my expectations up a little too high and then when I don’t achieve them I get upset. In the past I might think about going out and having a doughnut for breakfast and then fast food for lunch and say, “screw it!”

I am not going to do that this time, I have to keep on going for the full 90 days and see what happens. That is what happens to a lot of us in life, the going gets a little hard and then we give up. It is probably one of the biggest stumbling blocks for most people including myself. This time I am not going to let it happen to me and I hope that you do not let it happen to yourself either.

If you want to achieve big things in this world, you must work through the roadblocks that get in your way. If you can take one thing away from this low carb diet plan, it would be to not give up. Just keep working through it and I am praying that in 90 days I am going to be glad I did. If I can do it to lose a few pounds, just think what you can do in other parts of your life. You can be a better spouse, a better parent, a better Christian and a better provider for your family. And there are so many other things that you can improve on if you just stick with it until it is fully accomplished.

Writing this blog everyday is a challenge that is hard to do also. But I feel that it is helping me keep on top of it and that if I can help out a few people in the world with my experience then it is well worth it to keep writing every day. One thing that it has been doing is keeping myself accountable to you. When I weighed in this morning I thought about writing down a better weight, but that is not going to help me or you. If your weight bounces up too and I keep showing you that I am losing it could get discouraging. So I am telling you the full truth in this blog, whether it hurts or not.

I can take two positive things for the week. One is I lost 1.2 pounds for the week and I lost a quarter of an inch in my waist. So all in all I can not complain. Sorry about the rant today, but I just had to let off some steam.

It has snowed about a foot and a half here over the last four to five days and it looks beautiful outside. Since yesterday was a Saturday we were finally able to enjoy the snow, instead of plowing and shoveling the driveway and sidewalks. We live on 10 acres, so our driveway is about a quarter of a mile long. I have an old rider lawnmower with a snow blower rigged up on the front, so I don’t have to shovel all week long. Even with this system it will take an hour or so to clear everything off. I have no idea how long it would take if I did not have this piece of equipment.

For my exercise, we loaded up the dogs and snow shoes and drove down to the lake that we live near. There is a trail that is not used very much that is about a mile and a half that goes down to the lake. So we walked down to the lake and it was frozen over, so we were able to walk on the lake. I grew up in a slightly warmer climate, so the lakes never froze over. It is really kind of weird to walk out there and hope that it will not break through. I used my snow poles to check and it looked to me like the ice was at least six inches or more thick. So we walked and out and the dogs thought that it was a great time.

On the way back to the car was a little tougher, since it was all downhill on the way to the lake. Obviously it was all up hill on the way back and man when you are going uphill in snow shoes with a pulled achilles, it starts to hurt pretty quickly. On the way up I needed to stop a few times to rest and it really ticked me off. But I took it in stride and just tried to enjoy the scenery. I was a fun walk and a good work out and I was able to add 5000 steps to my pedometer.

Last night we both were feeling pretty hungry for pizza. So I went on line to check out how many carbs are in different pizzas. Ok, there are a lot of carbs in most pizzas, but we still wanted to have one. Papa Murphy’s has a thin crust pizza that only has about 13 carbs per slice. So I figured that if I had 3 slices it would be 39 carbs and I would try to stay a little low on everything else. Well I failed a little on the other end, but that was some good pizza. I consumed 1564 calories, 77 carbs and 91 fat grams and weighed in at 218.6.

So now I have gone two days over the 50 carbs of the low carb diet. That is not good, but I can justify it by being way under quite a few days last week.

It’s day 20 of my low carb diet plan and things seem to moving along pretty well. I am at 218.2 pounds and feeling pretty good about it. I mean only three weeks into this plan and I don’t feel hungry all the time and I am losing weight on a pretty good clip. So far this diet is working well for me. I hope that you are staying on track and that it is working for you too.

Last night was Friday night, so this is where I usually have the most trouble in staying on the low carb diet. We went to a new brewery in our area, so of course we had to check out what they had on tap. So I tried two different beers there and they were pretty good, but again I have no idea of the number of carbs in them. I have looked on line and on my phone app and found a range between 5 and 30 for an amber beer. So I have decided to split the difference and I put a custom item in my app. I put in amber beer with 200 calories and 17 carbs. I figured that would be a good number to go on for a pint of beer.

I consumed 3029 calories, 79 carbs and 147 fat grams for the day. That night I had a steak salad, but the steak at this restaurant was very chewy. It was not quite what I was expecting. They have great burgers there and I was tempted on getting a burger with no bun and that was a mistake not to. Sometimes it works out when you try something new and other times it does not. This was not a good time to try something new.

Yesterday my work out consisted of doing the P90X:90-Day Extreme Home Workout Programagain. It was the last one in this series, it has me doing the same thing for three weeks and then next week I will be working on my core. Last time I did the P90X I never made it this far, so the core work will be a whole new thing for me. It seems like I have gotten into a grove with the stuff that I am doing now, so I wonder what is in store for me now. Then after next week of core it will be back to the regular schedule on P90X:90-Day Extreme Home Workout Program.

Another thing that I have been doing for about three years now, is to where a pedometer everyday and I track how many steps a day that I take. I think that this is a great measurement for everyone. You should be taking about 10,000 steps per day and when I have a long day at the office and check out my pedometer and see that I have about 2000 steps in then I know that there is a problem. I do cheat a little bit. I don’t where it when I do P90X:90-Day Extreme Home Workout Program or the work out equipment because it does not track riding a bike or the other stuff. So I figure that for every hour that I work out that I will give myself 7500 steps, since I take about 1500 steps when running a mile. I figure that running is harder than these workouts, so I figure 5 miles equals an hour workout. It is not scientific, but it works for me.