Getting Started

So you've read my story, and yet in a couple weeks when Biggest Loser starts up again you'll probably still be watching on the couch eating full-fat ice cream out of the tub with a tablespoon. "Oh that doesn't apply to me", "I don't have time right now", "Yeah but it's just so hard to do what you do" or if you're like I was "Hee hee...fatties". Seriously, and I'm telling you this from the bottom of my heart with all due respect and compassion :

Shut the f**k up.

Are you kidding me? Getting healthy is the easiest thing you'll ever do because it's your body's natural state of being. What you're doing to it now with saturated fat, sodium and sugar is what is unnatural. Your body will respond if you treat it right, you just have to take the time to learn what to do. And since you're obviously looking for answers here, I guess I'll help.

The problem with getting started is YOU. Your excuses AND your expectations. People walk around looking for the magic program, the magic pill, the magic DVD or diet or gym or apparatus or specific food that's the ONE thing you can do/take/eat to get rock-hard tasty abs washer-board style. Well guess what. I've tried all that kinda crap, and there is no magic. Nobody's coming to save you, nobody's gonna do it for you, I'm afraid YOU are all we have to work with.

The thing is, the people who manufacture these things, we'll call them "The Weight Loss Industry", they are very smart people. Smarter than most of us apparently. Because they know the #1 thing that FAT people love to do is sit on the couch, pull up their Super Big Gulp and watch TV. So they research when and where they think the most FAT people will be watching (usually late-night cable, I imagine Fox News Channel is overloaded with them), and then they bombard us with horrible, unreasonably falsified ads, sometimes with images so obviously photo-shopped that it's not even funny. And you're so desperate to lose weight that you fork over hard-earned money for crap you don't need when you could be getting results all by yourself for little or nothing at all.

People ask me stuff all the time now, like how many times a week I work my abs, what's my bench, what exactly am I eating, or what gym I work out at, etc. I realize some of that information might help - so OK a. what's an ab, b. Johnny, c. ex-squeeze me, a baking powder? and d. I work out at the world-renown Mia Casa but again...it's part of trying to take the easy way out by asking me to do your work for you. Really I could talk till I'm blue in the face and not do you any good until you hit rock bottom. And the rock bottom has to include the knowledge that the buck stops with you : your excuses must end, radical changes must be made in your lifestyle and these changes must be things you can live with for rest of your life.

That said, there's some things I would recommend to those starting out :

1. Diet monitoring - whether you use Weight Watchers for the simplified "Points" method or some other website such as fitday.com, sparkpeople.com, dailyburn.com, etc. it really doesn't matter. I won't make any specific recommendations other than to say I found Weight Watchers the easiest to do for its simplicity, and because my work gave me a discount. And I bought a year subscription to it so I'd really feel like shit if I bailed. But honestly the only thing I use it for is tracking what I eat and what exercise I do - there's other functions like message boards and recipes and stuff, but that's way more than that for which I have patience. If you have a tracking tool, and it sets hard limits for you based on your weight, age and activity level, you'll be less likely to eat bad stuff because you're being watched. Or you could be an attention whore and write a blog to broadcast to the world, really, your choice. Just understand that when you cheat on the monitoring by omission or however, you're not cheating on anyone but yourself. One note when adding up ingredients to foods not found in your tracking tools - calories are additive. So don't leave anything out that you added in like butter, sour cream, mayo, etc. - all that crap adds up.

2. Portion size - read the package labels of what you eat. If it doesn't come in a package, generally speaking it's probably better for you than something that did, but look it up on the internet anyway. Measure portions that you eat exactly (by scale or spoon or cup) until you learn what they look like. Being off by a tiny bit won't matter later on, but in the beginning your cup is probably a bucket to the rest of the world, and your teaspoon is a shovel. Otherwise you wouldn't be FAT.

3. Exercising - you don't need to join a gym or spend thousands on home equipment. I have a treadmill that I bought second-hand for $500, a good pair of running shoes ($120), a thick exercise mat ($25 - my floors are hardwood), two sets of dumbbells ($40 - 20 lb and 25 lb), a swiss exercise ball ($30) and a 10 lb medicine ball ($20). So altogether all that stuff is about $735 and it's all I've used for the past 6 months. Add in the Weight Watchers subscription and we're up to $900 total, still less than the 2-year commitment plus fees they're gonna ding you for at your local gym, and it's always open. The two things I would definitely recommend out of that are the exercise mat, doing stuff on the floor sucks otherwise, even if you just use it for stretching it's worth it; and nothing is going to save your knees and shins better than a really good pair of running shoes - just be sure you go to a real runner's store like Fleet Feet Sports so that you get fitted correctly. So there, I just cut it to $150 for you (I think sparkpeople.com is free). But there are literally hundreds of ways you can work your body without weights or exercise, you just have to find the easiest way to start and gradually push yourself into more difficult stuff. Walking is good. So is playing with your kids. Or jumping jacks. Honestly, doing ANYTHING at the start is going to show results. So get off your ass.

4. Make plans and stick to them - plan out when you take your meals and when you do your exercise. When you allow yourself to improvise throughout the day with food and exercise you know very well what ends up happening - you don't exercise and you wind up eating a ton of garbage because you were starving and needed food FAST. Your mom was close with the "30-minute rule" - generally speaking, I don't exercise moderately less than 1 hour after eating, and I don't exercise strenuously less than 2 hours after eating. Unless you enjoy feeling like you'll puke your guts up, that is. But if you're writing down a plan and sticking to it, that is a key to success. I often find that I plan entire days in the Weight Watchers tracking tool while I'm drinking my coffee in the morning. Then it's just a matter of executing that plan and doing it well.

5. Set small measurable goals - this is in keeping with #4, and the simpler you make these goals to start, the better. Nobody finishes a marathon with one step, unless of course you are Yao Ming. However, no one ends a marathon without taking a first step either, otherwise you are merely standing still. (Hit the gong, please). You might never run a marathon, it doesn't matter. But don't go into this thinking you're gonna take over the world or the gym or even your living room right away. Start with what you can handle, like walking around the block or riding your bike for a few minutes, and work up from there. Just be sure to do something every single day no matter how lame you think it is. In fact if you start off with lame stuff you're less likely to disappoint yourself by attempting to bite off too much right away. Start with walking a mile, then two miles, then go back to a mile and try to do it faster. Small moves.

..and finally, the big one...
6. Keep your expectations in line - as media consumers, we're bombarded with images of beautiful people on a daily basis. Not everyone can have the ideal perfect body, especially if you've been doing years of damage to it by sitting in one spot and eating uncontrollably. In fact "the ideal perfect body" is not necessarily what you see on TV, it's what is healthy for you and your life. If you watch these weight-loss shows and you see people dropping 10, 15, 20 pounds in a week please understand - although it DOES happen on that show under the constant 24-hour supervision of doctors, trainers and professionals, that is completely unrealistic in real life. Those people are competing for money on a time limit. You are not competing for anything but health, and if you're lucky there's no time limit on that either. So don't get discouraged if you don't hit your goal weight in 6 weeks or even 6 months. I'm not even at mine and I'm sure it'll take me another couple months to finish up. The average person losing weight at a healthy clip does so at 1-3 pounds per week, and does not hit a plateau until they've been at the same exact weight for several weeks in a row (going neither up or down). I've hit at least two plateaus so far, and broken through both. If I can do it, anyone can.

Diet for Thursday 9/4/09:
Breakfast

• Fiber One Original 1 serving with 1/2 cup fat-free milk
• 4 oz. orange juice w/vitamins
• one big cup of coffee
• Two slices of wheat bread with yogurt spread

Lunch (I went out for lunch with some friends)

• Southwestern Grilled Chicken sandwich w/a slice of cheese
• 1/2 cup cole slaw
• two glasses of Diet Coke

Dinner

• one 3-4 oz grilled chicken breast
• 2 ears of corn on the cob with butter/salt (I ran out of yogurt butter)
• 3/4 cup mashed potatoes (potato, yogurt butter, 1/3 cup fat-free milk, 3 dashes of garlic salt)
• water

Dessert

• 1 cup of Breyer's low-fat chocolate chocolate chip ice cream

Exercise for 9/4/09:

• 5 min warmup on treadmill @ 3.5 mph
• 10 minutes stretching
• 11 PM Neighborhood run
  • Number of miles run : 3.2
  • Number of minutes : 27 (new record)
  • Avg. speed : 7.1 mph
  • Number of feral cats freaked out : 2
  • Number of times tripping on uneven sidewalk : 0 (also a new record)
  • Number of skunks smelled but not seen : 800