My monthly fatloss progress report....

Today's Post:  Monday, 9-17-2012

This month’s report is much better news in several parts.

Last month my news was that the local man, Bryan Wassom, who created an exercise desk using a recumbent bicycle lost 18 pounds in 9 months and lost enough inches from his waist he had to have his clothes redone to fit.  (I’ve since found out his heart health measures also improved that much.)

When I was so enthusiastic about the health and fatloss benefits when I contacted him, he offered to give me one to beta test here in my office day job.  (He had used it and found it workable in his home office but had not yet had someone in a regular office use one.)

At this point, I’ve used the recumbent bike exercise desk now for six weeks as of last Friday. 

1.  Here’s the good news first!

a) In that 6 weeks, I’ve lost 5 pounds and since my last monthly report, I’ve lost 4 & a half pounds!  At this point, I’m suddenly almost at my initial goal weight.

So, since I’m still getting up to speed on using it enough by remembering to start using it at appropriate times, it is clearly working to help me with my fat loss.

So far the scale results are far better than I expected! 

My estimate on the calories burned per hour of 200 I knew was at least slightly conservative.  (4.5 x 3500 = 15,750 calories for an average per week of 3937.5 and my estimated calorie burn was 5400 total for 1350 per week average.  To be sure, I could have eaten that much less.  But I certainly didn’t do so that I noticed!  The difference may be that I do gradually feel a good bit warmer as I run the pedals and that warmth lasts for some time after I stop, so my overall metabolism may be boosted by more than the calories burned during the actual exercise time.

And, other than it making it much harder than I’d like to move around my office and  do work not on my computer, I AM finding I can write posts or emails or reply to emails and read emails as well or better than I could before I began using it.  Running the bike as I work is not a distraction.  I do occasionally find I stop if what I’m writing is a lot of extra effort.  But even then that’s less common already.

In fact, I think I may average a bit sharper mentally than I was before using it.

b) The second way that I’m very pleased with using the bike is that there is a health impact of how many calories per week you use on the average with your health.

People who do less than 500 to 600 calories per week of exercise, the totally sedentary people, routinely gradually develop poor health.  Their brains shrink.  They gradually get fatter, they tend to develop heart disease and type 2 diabetes and their risk of cancer and dementia goes up.

People who get 600 calories or more a week of exercise do dramatically better.  Some of those harmful effects such as brain shrinkage no longer happen.  And the other things happen enough less that their health improves 40% as much as someone on an ideal amount of exercise each week.

People who get more than that, particularly twice that much or more, 1,000 to 1200 calories a week on the average have much better health results.  Before I got the exercise at my desk bike from Bryan at ActivDesk, I was getting about 1100 calories a week of exercise.  And though I was still fatter than I wanted to be and according to the studies more at risk than my blood indicators said heart wise, I was doing decently.  But I was close to maxed out on how much time I had to exercise.

But adding even my conservative and not yet up to full use 1350 calories a week at work using up almost no added time means I am now getting at least 2400 calories a week of exercise that studies find in the healthiest people!  (Averaging 2,000 calories a week or more of exercise does that.)

Even better, I have a shot at averaging the 2900 calories a week of people who lose fat and keep it off permanently if I’m not already reaching that now.  And, with just a bit more consistent use, I’ll average 3500 calories a week of exercise that is the ideal amount.

So for health and weight loss, it’s already clear this method of at work exercise rates an A+.

2.  For me there was one piece of bad news for this report however.

Since my original height was 5 feet 8 inches, 68 inches, one health measure of having your waist be half that for best health means my waist should be 34 inches.  And when I was in high school from age 15 to 18, I think it was about that.

So my goal has been to reduce my waist from almost 40 inches to about 34 inches. 

But even though I lost that many pounds last month and I did lose from 3/8 inch to half an inch off my waist since last month, I’m still at about 39 inches.  The rest is coming off fat on my chest and hips which went down by a half inch and an inch last month.

Perhaps in another 8 months when I’ve lost all the fat on my chest and hips, the fat will finally come off my waist.  That’s possible.  The 3/8 inch to half an inch off my waist I lost since last month times 8 months if it keeps going is 3 or 4 inches and 12 more months might be from 4 and half to 6 inches.

THAT would do the job.  I certainly plan to keep up my use that long and then keep using it after that.

  

3.  I was able to maintain all my food cutbacks and controls too during the month.

People who stop doing so or start adding tons of desserts when they exercise more do fail to lose much weight or fat.

I know not to do that.

The good news is that eating what I’m used to eating instead of more has been quite doable.

I have NOT been extra hungry!

4.  Last month, I spoke of a way to increase my strength and muscle building efforts, see my post on Thursday, 8-16 where I describe it. 

Last month I wrote, “So far, it’s working for me and will enable me I think to add a few pounds of muscle right away – even BEFORE I can get to the gym once a week to use heavier weights too.

If this keeps up, I may be able to lose another half inch to inch off my waist by four months from now.”

The bad news is that it stopped working. I was using it successfully and am still stronger than I was.  But I developed some mild muscle tears in my shoulders that have so far kept me from continuing to improve. 

I’m able mostly to keep my gains and I can still do most of the exercises.  But instead of making a bit more progress, I’m now waiting for my body to heal before I can resume improvements.

In the past that sometimes has taken months to do.  But I plan to hang in there. I’d like to add muscle to increase my chest and hip measurements with muscle.

That is known to shrink your waist which is the other reason to do it!

5.  My interval cardio on my Nordic Track is better however.  I made a major improvement there when I added two evenings a week of just 5 minutes or so of jump rope.

When I began my riding at my desk, on the Nordic Track I did well in the first half but not as well as usual in the second half because I wasn’t quite used to the extra exercise and hadn’t become fitter yet.

Last Saturday however, my second half was so good, I set a new overall record.

We’ll see how next month does!