My monthly fatloss report....

Today's Post:  Monday, 4-20-2013

[This month’s report is a mixed review with some positive and some negative events to report. I both gained some leverage and lost some. That status seems like AND IS where I’ve been stuck for some time!

My hope of course, is that I’ll gradually make progress by relentlessly continuing the things that have lost and kept off the fat I no longer have;

Having the things I’ve added get traction and gradually help lose some more fat;-- AND find things with more leverage that work well when I try them -- and then keep doing them also!]

A.  This month’s report:

1.  The big news is that my new scale had me at 166.8 lb up 4.3 pounds from 162.5.

Oops!

Pretty sure what did it: 

a) Lower fever and less coughing than the previous month but still not having my exercise routines 100% back did part of it. That likely caused at least a pound of the 4.3 pounds I gained.

(I’ve had this one happen before:  For me, being sick despite doing far less exercise, I tend to lose weight; but the month after I also tend to gain it.  So I’m sure this had an effect this time.)

b) My wife got us some of the almond butter that caused me to gain 6 pounds in a month last time I had it in the house.  Love the stuff! Though I was much more able to eat one spoon on occasion instead of uncontrollably eating two to five every day, the one or two a few times as an extra food I did allow myself, easily could have added one of the four pounds.

c) Much to my surprise, my stress load from outside pressures went up so much the last 4 weeks I drank extra wine and may have eaten a bit extra too. 

(I once saw evidence that the two extra glasses a week more of wine I’ve been drinking if I keep doing it indefinitely, will add 3 pounds of fat.)

So that likely added at least two pounds of the 4.3 pounds I gained.

What I’ll do now:

a) I’ve already begun getting back to my normal exercise routines.  That should help!

b) Mercifully my wife decided on her own to not buy any more almond butter.   That WILL help!

c) I may make some progress on turning off the cause of the outside stress in the next 4 weeks which will likely help.  The work has been started and it may begin making progress during the month.

Then too, I’ve been delayed in getting a supplement I think I can take instead of half a glass of wine as stress relief when I first get home from work.  I finally found out how to get it and will be able to start trying it soon! Whew!

(Lemon Balm does have a calming effect.  My hope is that taking one capsule plus a half glass of red wine will cut my stress as much drinking one glass of red wine before. That’s what my hope is. And I’ll soon be able to try it to see!)

If that works, instead of drinking 2 glasses a week of red wine over my weekly goal, I may well be able to drink 3.5 glasses a week of red wine less!

d)  I’ve planned an increase in my vegetable intake for after I get a Vitamix and a reduction in milk and oatmeal. 

But this recent jump of how much I am over my goal weight from 1.5 pounds to 5.8 has motivated me to try some workarounds now to do that before I get a Vitamix.  (More on that later in this post.)

2.  The other bad news is that my waist and other measures went up – all by at least half an inch.

My waist and hips went up a half inch which was clearly fat.

The only good news is that my chest went up by an inch more besides that half inch for a total of one and a half inches.  Oddly, the only exercise that got better over the last 4 weeks was pushups.  So maybe an inch of that was muscle.

(I’ve decided to add a more accurate tape measure to my planned purchases for tomorrow.  I did get in some extra money. So that small a buy is doable.  The problem with my inch measures is not the tape.  It’s measuring myself with two hands when a third one is needed.  The tape I’ll buy solves that by cinching up when someone measures with two hands providing a kind of replacement for the third hand.)

Summary for the past month is simple:

For several reasons, I gained fat last month.  Two are temporary.  And, I hope my plan to turn off the third one works

3.  My cardio program upgrade news:

a)  Several months ago I wrote:

“Apparently, the progress in my new PACE or high intensity cardio session of 5 sets I added of abdominal exercises -- both toned my muscles and tightened them up or maybe added some of the three pounds over the last two months as muscle.

I’ve now gone from 14 reps to 90 of the 98 reps I plan for each of the new 5 sets!

Clearly it has helped me to gain muscle instead of fat.  I may well be burning 300 calories or more each week than I was a few months ago.”

b) Month before last I wrote: “Since we moved and slightly before, everything is so changed and cramped, to get to work on time, I’ve had to almost eliminate that whole extra cardio program!” (I also had to give up my once a week Nordic Track.)

c) Since that report, I dropped the most time consuming and unpleasant and least effective of the five new sets and have found a way to resume doing the remaining four new sets besides the four high intensity ones I’ve long ago become so skilled at doing. Once again, I’m doing all 8 sets, the 4 previous ones plus the 4 new ones three times a week.  So when I get the new 4 sets back to 98 reps each, I expect to lose some extra fat.

Last month I wrote: The bad news is that the 4 new sets are challenging enough and the weather has warmed up enough it will be more challenging to get from 56 reps per set to 98 per set again.

This month I’ve lost ground instead of gaining it: Getting the rotten cold and the resulting chest congestion cut me back to 28 again.  I have gotten back up to 42; but it will be at least two months before I see 98 again.

So, this upgrade will eventually cut a pound or two of fat I think.  But it will take a few months.

But I’ll keep on it until I get back to 98 each!

4. I have kept up the added vegetables.  I’m actually doing well with maintaining it each week!

Losing enough more fat to cut it from my belly fat as I want to do will mean adding even more vegetables than I eat now as Vitamix drinks.

My routine clearly still lacks enough intake of daily organic vegetables.

(Over a week it averages about 4 a day now and for fat loss it needs to be 7 to 10 each day.)

But the fair intake 5 days a week and good intake on my two strictest days each week is now stable and routine and I can continue that easily.  So any fat it has helped me keep off or any health benefits of it will stay as good as they are until I can do more!

Several months ago I bought and read a book that suggests that both adding even more vegetables AND taking one week in four where I also eat less of many other foods – other than vegetables, may produce net and sustainable fat losses.

I’m still limited in what I can do now.  BUT, I am on the right track and will do what I can get to now and plan for much more when I can.

(Possible change in this one!  See the last piece of news at the end of this post!)

5.  As I mentioned above, one of the continuing good news stories is my strength training. 

The progress is still VERY slow but if I continue getting stronger every week or two AS I HAVE BEEN for the past several months and continue for another few years and am able to add back more safe to do leg exercises and make that progress with them, I will keep adding muscle when most people 15 years younger than I lose that much muscle or even more in the same time period!

a) Much to my great shock, I’ve actually gotten stronger on a few upper body exercises despite the disruption from our move!  Hooray!

(Between now and my April report, I’ve thought up a new way to see if I can boost my one weak exercise without setting back the ones in which I’m doing well.  I’ll put it last. That way while it may be a bit weaker at first the extra effort I add will allow my strong sets to keep progressing.

Nope.  The cold has prevented that from being a wise thing to do.  For now, I’m back to just working to make progress on the sets I have been doing.)

b) Two months ago I reported that I had a small setback on healing the stress fracture in my left foot.  This was understandable from the need to carry so many boxes during our move and focus more on getting the job done than being careful with it.  “I’ll just pause my rehab a week or two longer.  I’ll get it healed and strong again eventually. It was already a several month project.  So adding a week or two won’t make that much of a change.”

Since my February report and less stress on it from the carrying for the move, the stress fracture seems a bit better and my VERY slow rehab is not bothering it. I didn’t have to pause my progress after all!

AND, I found an old post I’d forgotten that shows research found that adding the supplement strontium DID cause new bone cells to form AND that, besides your bones becoming heavier and denser, taking strontium ALSO leaves your bones flexible with the result of far few fractures!

So, once my order for the strontium supplement comes in, my healing of my stress fracture AND preventing new ones looks likely to do VERY well indeed!

My strontium finally did come in. I also added a new kind of vitamin K2 since last time which I’ll continue. Now I can depend on simply rehabbing slowly confident the stress fracture repair will keep holding up, I’ve already begun the faster pace rehab with no trouble!

c) Overall, my muscles LOOK a bit bigger, particularly my arms and shoulders; and though my middle is still fat, my thighs have some definition and are clearly hard and toned.

So even though I’ve not gained enough muscles in size or weight to increase how much they weigh and the calories they burn as I’d like to do ---  After another year or so, I may gain a pound or two of muscle at an age when most people lose 5 pounds of muscle instead!

6.  It’s just a matter of time too to the day I can get and use the Vitamix to boost my vegetable intake enough to lose some fat that way.   

a) I have plans already begun that may speed that up. And, I made some progress on each of the three ways to get it done since last time.

b) The over 4 pound fat gain got my attention in another way.  I’ve developed a three part workaround and will try a fourth one by next time.

It will only remove a pound or two a month by my calculations.  But it might keep doing it for a year.

Next month, I’ll see if I’ve done it successfully as I have currently planned to do.  I’m confident it will work if I can establish doing it.

My partial conclusion is that by doing the things I have planned to add between now and next time, I have a shot at reversing the 4 pounds of fat gain and may do even better than that.

So the overall conclusion is that despite being hammered more than usual by outside negative influences, I’m still maintaining most of my efforts that lost fat for me to begin with.  AND, I’m still adding promising new things that are working already or might work.

AND, I plan to both continue doing that and have even more in the pipeline for as soon as I can manage to add them.  

B.  New & earlier news on ways to do more than I have been able to until now:

1.  One of the health emails I got had a new supplement that you had to pay to get and get information on that promised to almost wipe out the effect of stress on abdominal fat.

This sort of thing usually is smoke and doesn’t work in practice. 

But it WAS a potential solution to the exact problems I have.  If true, it would enable me to lose as much as the entire 24 pounds of belly fat I’m still carrying.

I then looked up the information that WAS in the ad on Google to see if there was more information elsewhere for free.

Here’s what I found: 

The effect may in fact be real but not enough by itself to do more than half the job without adding a safe way to boost my level of growth hormone closer to my youthful levels.

(And the existing supplements using it have other ingredients to help it boost heart health which I’ve already done.  So not only are those likely a bad fit for me, they might not be entirely safe as my heart indicators have almost gone past optimum now!)

However, this class of active ingredient is in lemon and orange peel. 

And, at Whole Foods I can get the organic lemons and oranges that would make them safe to add to my Vitamix drinks often enough to at least lose 12 pounds of belly fat.

This is VERY interesting to say the least. 

Last month while eating at a restaurant, I got a fish dish and ate most of the lemon rind.  I found this easier and far less sour than eating the main part of the lemon!

And, I got some organic lemons and an organic orange at Whole Foods to try in the next few days. I was also able to eat the peel for those with no trouble eating them.  But the set up was a bit more time to do than I have had since.

I WILL need the Vitamix to add enough EVERY DAY consistently enough to do much. 

And I think I may be more in need of the safe growth hormone boost I don’t yet know how to get.

If drinking the whole organic lemons in a Vitamix drink only helps me cut 3 pounds of belly fat once I begin it, I’ll be very pleased.

And when I add the Vitamix and more organic vegetables every day, I may lose another 9 pounds of belly fat.

The other possibility is that adding back two faster recovery supplements might enable me to do more on my strength training and get some growth hormone boost and lose more belly fat from that.  (Astaxanthin is one of them.)

2.  Wow! I’d forgotten a post I’d written on a natural compound that acts as if it was an anabolic steroid but has NONE of the expense or lack of safety or side effects of anabolic steroids!

Ursolic acid is the compound.  It seems to make the growth hormone and fat removal hormones you already have much more effective. 

This was so true in the tests, it looks like it may make you stronger, your muscles bigger, and make you less fat even without exercise.  (This was thought by the researcher to be possibly a way to help cancer survivors and people in nursing homes who can’t currently exercise maintain to their muscles.)

Needless to say when added to a decent strength training program, it likely would be a massive help.

A month’s supply of the supplement costs $89.95!  So it was out of reach for me at the time and now.  But there is some in Brewer’s yeast and the oregano and basil I add several days a week to my dinners.  I’ve been making do with that small amount as what I could then and now afford. (The richest source is red apple peels.  But it is extremely hard to get apple peels – even those listed to be organic – that haven’t been sprayed with something you’d not want to eat tons of.)

BUT, now I’ve been reminded, I will try the supplement when I can afford it!!

3.  There are two vegetables that when juiced at the level of the Vitamix, cause drops in blood pressure comparable to the drugs for high blood pressure or even better but which have ZERO side effects if the vegetables are organic!

a)  Celery for those not allergic to it, has an ingredient that does this.  But in order to work, you need to eat the celery itself to get the ingredient in massive and affordable doses AND along with the cofactors in the celery it needs to work!

b)  Juicing beets also has a similar effect with a big extra work out boost!

It seems that to get the boost in nitric oxide that relaxes your blood vessels and improves the health and flexibility of your endothelium, the insides of your blood vessels, you need to get nitrates from vegetables in contact with the saliva in your mouth.

The workout bonus is that besides the much better blood flow, this also may boost growth hormone levels after your workouts!

In fact, beet juice has been tested to show performance enhancement!!

So, I’ve long planned to add this one!

But I’ve no funds yet for the Vitamix for either one.

c) Here’s the brand new news!

I’ve got to make do with what of this I can do with our existing blender if I want to avoid taking drugs that will ruin my quality of life because our recent move’s stress drove my blood pressure up enough it will harm my kidneys if I don’t do that OR get it done with this!

And, I CAN afford the organic celery!  Plus, I CAN afford the nitrates plus not have to have the mess of beets!  The superfood dark greens like kale and cabbage and water cress I already should be eating more of ALSO have that level of nitrates.

I plan to have a positive report on that next time!

So, the conclusion is that some of what I’m doing and will keep doing is working.  I’ll keep doing them all!

And I have several planned improvements likely to work and these new and very promising things that might – one of which I’ll try before next time.

Report on this for March:

I’ll keep up the beet root extract supplement in case it has some effect.  But for lowering my blood pressure, it looks like I’ll need the Vitamix and more vegetable intake daily.

Or I may need to clear out some calcified plaque buildup in my arteries or get even more stress relief.

So far the supplements haven’t dropped my blood pressure enough.  So I need to do more.

The good news is that the nitrates are a MUCH better solution than the blood pressure drugs.  And that is certain! 

Report on this for April:

So far, despite doing great at taking the beet root supplement EVERY time I planned, it’s had little effect on my blood pressure.

Clearly I need to find a way to add the actual vegetables too and get more effective stress relief besides the supplement.

I ‘ll try my new workarounds to add some of the vegetables and the new stress relief supplement and my plans to lower the stress -- each may help.

Hope to have progress to report on those next time!