Wellness Wednesday... late (or early)

Wellness Wednesdays are about improving my physical (and mental) health. The first step is an inventory/assessment of where I stand. Possibly followed by an analysis of how I got there and then a plan of attack - goals need to be set in order to know how to reach them.

 

I weighed myself on Sunday morning (May 1st) and was pretty sad with the results - 266. After any bariatric surgery (and mine was in July of 2008), there's a year called "the honeymoon" where weight loss is generally effortless. Mostly this is because it's nearly impossible to eat enough of the foods that would keep you at the heavy weight that you started at, but also there are some medical reasons - calorie malabsorption being the primary one. I originally weighed somewhere north of 400 pounds, and had been able to drop to +/- 5 pounds from 230. To creep up almost 40 pounds since I'd reached my lowest weight was something I'd really feared happening. It's called "the rebound" in the weight loss surgery world, and I was happy telling myself it wasn't going to happen. But it did. I needed to do something about that.

 

A couple of years ago I read a wonderful book called "The 4-Hour Workweek" by Tim Ferriss. It details "lifestyle design" which I've also seen referred to as "lifehacking" - the idea being that you can make your life more efficient/successful by challenging the status quo and looking for shortcuts, new ways of doing things, and not just taking "common sense" as something that is gospel. Not being ultra-responsive to email (checking it just twice a day), taking mini-retirements, etc. Recently the author applied that same template to the body/health in a book called "The 4-Hour Body". Several of my friends had already picked up the book and read through it and taken much of the advice and applied it, particularly the diet (referred to as "slow-carb"), and had very good results. I decided to look into it.

 

Now you may be saying - "Mason, you had life altering surgery, why are you investigating some crazy diet?" and I'd say that while I have had alterations made to my innards, my brain remains the same. One of the things I appreciate the most about Tim Ferriss' approach is that he refuses to take the status quo as something you can't walk away from. I've always been willing to challenge the usual thinking and so I was ready to read the book and see if there's something to it for me. At no point would I have approached the diet if it felt "crazy" and it does not. Essentially it's what's known as "Paleo" or "Caveman" diet, which means if a caveman could not have eaten it, neither could you - but there are some substantial differences. The gist is as follows: Avoid white carbs; Avoid dairy Avoid fruit;; balance every meal with proteins, legumes, and veggies; cheat once a week to keep your metabolism from adjusting. I'll write a more detailed post about the diet in the future, but those are the guidelines to get started with. I don't feel like I'm eliminating anything that my body NEEDS (because I'm not eating enough fruit as it is to get my vitamins from them) and I'm also not overindulging in anything that I would consider gross. I'm just approaching it with a balance and with some recompositing of my food choices. I'm still taking in all of my supplements that weight loss surgery requires of me, and of course I have Jennifer keeping guard on my health like a hawk.

 

One of the things suggested in the 4-Hour Body is to take some measurements so that you have a baseline to see how you improve, so here's my baseline (along with some of Jennifer's information for reference).
                 Me   Jenn
Left Bicep 13.5  12.5
Right Bicep 13.5  12.5
Left Thigh 25 22.5
Right Thigh 24  23
Waist 50  36
Chest 39
Pants size 44
Weight 266  163

 

Those measurements were a week ago. Today... I realized that Jennifer and I fall outside of those measurements, except for weight and how our clothes fit. Our skin is too funky to be accurate.

This morning I weighed 254.5 and Jennifer weighed 158. So good progress for both of us. Then, our first cheat day!