2 Yr. Update - Todd's 60-54 Weight Loss Plan

[Phog Allen]

Gents, I cannot believe it has been two full years since I started on this journey. A small recap for those who did not see the original threads. On 15 July, 2016 I took a weight reading. It was not good. 260lbs/18.5 stone/118Kg. NOT GOOD. I was 53 years old. Six feet on a good day after a decent night's sleep. Whatever that is anymore. I was not happy. And my body was screaming at me to do something about it.

I won't go into the minutae of the regimen. Suffice it to say I made sure to cut out just about any trip to the fast food places. Period. DO NOT DO IT. They are nothing but calorie bombs. I also flatly refused to buy into diet foods, special low fat packaged meals, etc. It is a load of bollocks. I ate and still do regular old foods. Just much less. Carbonated beverages were never a real issue as I always found them too sweet. Pastry was my downfall and I have scaled WAY back on it.

Okay, results. I did drop 40 pounds in two months. I am still unsure of just how I did it but I don't care. It came off. I spent the next eight months losing 20 more. So exactly one year after starting I weighed 200 pounds. Hooray. I do hit the gym 5-6 days per week but that is not the main player. Dietary intake was.

Okay, fast forward one more year to yesterday. 15 July, 2018. I weigh regularly now and noticed a slight uptick in weight to about 204-206 pounds. Not what I want but usually behaving at the dining table and studious workouts drop it right back down to 201-02 in a week. At first I could not understand since since my clothes were not really tighter. Then it became clear I have added some lean muscle and that is much denser than fat. So yeah, I still need to be diligent, very diligent with intake. But I am maintaining two years on and to be frank, I wondered if I could.

Alright, enough for one post and some modest(I mean that truly) bragging rights for now. I will add a few more posts listing nagging issues and wanted suggestions. Thanks for reading. Wish me continuing success.

 

[Phog Allen]

Issues. No matter what people tell you about eating this or doing that for muscle building, it is next to impossible for middle aged guys to do this without horrendous intake levels of food and RIDICULOUS workouts. Add in joint strain as you age and it becomes clear as to exactly why you don't see 50 or 60 year old MMA and boxing champs. God has a sense of humour and plays it out in your bodily strength. I am actually much stronger than two years ago but would not describe myself as a really strong man. I am also struggling with cardio. I cannot just pump it out or I invite joint injury.

I used to hit the elliptical hard 30 minutes a day on top of my workouts. I still do but admit to missing it at times out of lack of energy or a fatigued feeling. Cardio is pretty important for sitting heart rate and overall endurance. I am not fanatical about being a cardio champ but do not want to fall into bad habits.

I was also given a really good piece of advise by one of the young guys at the gym. He calls it 'doing negatives'. Probably old hat to workout hounds but was new to me. It simply involves doing the particular move, say bicep curls on a machine, as normal but after making the curl, take 4-6 seconds to return to resting position. Good gravy does this work your muscle group! And that is a good thing. I had steadily increased the weight and reps of my sets but at times felt like I was not doing enough to really work them over. After trying this technique for the first time a week or so ago I immediately noted I could do the equivalent of three sets at my starting weights(I always pyramid up in weights as I work out) before hitting exhaustion. This was readily apparent in workout burn in the muscles. Simpler way of saying it is that it is working. I really like it and it allows me to work at slightly lower weights with nearly the same reps because doing it this way is almost like double reps. An up and down HARD working of the muscles. Sound okay or is this a bad way of doing things? Next post diet. Ahem...

 

[Phog Allen]

Diet. This is the biggest issue of all for 95% of people. Working out or not. I would say the lion's share of my health problems(feeling well/energy, not medical disease or similar) was eliminated with the reduction of high carb, high sugar, foods. And as I said, I refuse to give up the morning toast or a bagle, croissant, cherry pie, etc completely. If a bit of tummy fat or slightly higher cholesterol is the result then so be it. I don't eat much of it anymore and treat it like a prize for behaving myself at the table. Lately I have been too rewarding and need to get back to basics. No issue. I can do it. The days of craving a bag full of crisps or half a fruit pie are over. No going back.

Your body does however plateau at energy, metabolic rates, etc and needs kick starting from time to time. With that I am considering a couple of dietary disciplines to shock start my body. Ketogenic and carnivore. I know some of this is controversial but if you take a really good look at historical evidence, there is little to support the stuff that came out in the 60s about never eating red meats, no saturated fats and all that. The subject is much too complex to simply say one thing is completely bad and another great. That same thinking has lead to the carb explosion in western society. And we shan't let anyone off the hook either. STOP EATING TOO MUCH. That's where most of it lies.

Still, I want explore the two mentioned above and try it out to see how I react. The most common experience I have had related to me about Keto is the first week makes you feel like you have a mild flu bug or similar. Yes/no?

Carnivore. This really is not what most think. Ah, just a way to gorge on burgers and fat steaks, eh? No. You still need to maintain a caloric intake commensurate with needs or you will A; put on weight or B;starve if too little is ingested. And we know the latter is unlikely. I bring this up because the carnivores I see who espouse this related something I noticed early on in my weight loss effort. When I first started I would have two eggs and maybe a piece of sausage or bacon in the morning. This is only a few hundred calories. Large eggs run about 75 calories per egg so they give good nutrition per calorie and mass. Same with meats. It was only when I would eat buttered toast I would notice this rather lethargic feeling and more hunger later on. If I stuck to the more protein side of things I was not up and down with the munchies. I didn't even really notice at first since I was adjusting my whole caloric intake at the same time. What do you guys think about 3-4 ounces protein a couple of times per day with small amounts of veg/simple carbs in between? Just thinking right now.

I did see one gent who would eat about 100 calories every hour from eight in the morning til eight at night. This was not supplemental but his intake. This kept it to 1200 calories a day and he lost boat loads of weigh which he needed to do. One of his staples was boiled eggs and protein bars. Each about 100 calories each. This kept his metabolism up and hunger down. Hey, I am throwing darts here. Please chime in.

 

[ackvil]

Congratulations, Todd. That is a great achievement.

Doing negatives and keeping good form is essential for a good workout. We have two older men - but younger than me - that I call Mr. Partial and Mr. Partial Jr. They want to lift as much weight as possible and to do that they cheat on every exercise. When doing a bicep curl they swing the weight using their backs to swing the weight and only go 1/4 of the way up. Then they quickly drop the weight without any negative part of the exercise. When they bench press, for example, they lift the bar perhaps 3 - 4 inches from their chest and bounce it off their chest for the next rep.

We have one guy at the gym who is in incredible shape. He is 66 years old and has very little body fat. He keeps excellent form and does the full range of each exercise. He alternates two weeks with lighter weights and 20 reps per set followed by two weeks with heavier weights increasing the weight until he can do no more than 5 reps.

 

[Phog Allen]

Jim, that is almost exactly what the young lad at the gym recommended. I was speaking with him this morning and he told me to to hit the lighter weight at negatives for a couple of weeks and then go back to higher weights at lower reps and so forth. I think it is pretty solid. This kid is fit and has some serious arm musculature. I have watched him him lift and you see him on the machines at 40-60lbs and dumbells at what looks like about 25 pounds. Slow and steady all through the motion. The guy is a horse. He is not banging out huge weights all the time but he stays lean and darned fit. I would hate to have to tussle with him.

As to the monkey swing on the weights. Uh yeah, I see this all the time from guys from 20-60. And I cringe at it. They are swinging their arms, shoulders, and back in horrid contortions to look like they are chucking the weight around. I can almost feel the injuries. I must have done something similar when starting out because at one time I could barely curl 35-40 pounds on the bicep station. I was getting burning, shooting pains down my bicep and forearm. Particularly on my non-dominant arm. A sure sign of pulled muscle. I did not entertain 'working through it' like so many tough guys say you should. I stayed at the lower weight for 2-3 weeks and what do you know? After awhile I was cranking out 80-90lbs sixty time in sets of 10 each. With the negatives I doing sixty at the starting weight of 80 for ten reps. It works you hard. When I do plain curls I work up to around 125lbs in the last two sets. No plough horse for sure but about double what I could do two years ago. Oh to be a youngster again.

 

[ackvil]

Jim, that is almost exactly what the young lad at the gym recommended. I was speaking with him this morning and he told me to to hit the lighter weight at negatives for a couple of weeks and then go back to higher weights at lower reps and so forth. I think it is pretty solid. This kid is fit and has some serious arm musculature. I have watched him him lift and you see him on the machines at 40-60lbs and dumbells at what looks like about 25 pounds. Slow and steady all through the motion. The guy is a horse. He is not banging out huge weights all the time but he stays lean and darned fit. I would hate to have to tussle with him.

As to the monkey swing on the weights. Uh yeah, I see this all the time from guys from 20-60. And I cringe at it. They are swinging their arms, shoulders, and back in horrid contortions to look like they are chucking the weight around. I can almost feel the injuries. I must have done something similar when starting out because at one time I could barely curl 35-40 pounds on the bicep station. I was getting burning, shooting pains down my bicep and forearm. Particularly on my non-dominant arm. A sure sign of pulled muscle. I did not entertain 'working through it' like so many tough guys say you should. I stayed at the lower weight for 2-3 weeks and what do you know? After awhile I was cranking out 80-90lbs sixty time in sets of 10 each. With the negatives I doing sixty at the starting weight of 80 for ten reps. It works you hard. When I do plain curls I work up to around 125lbs in the last two sets. No plough horse for sure but about double what I could do two years ago. Oh to be a youngster again.

As George Bernard Shaw is alleged to have said: "It's too bad youth is wasted on the young."

 

[TinyTim]

I'll be 70 later this year. I started my better-living-through-exercise program in my late 40s. It has certainly made a difference in the way I feel, especially now that I am an old fogie. Smart exercise is a key for me. I try to listen to my body and push it a bit, but not punishingly so. For weights I start at 8 repetitions of an exercise with a weight that I can do with good form. I do 2 seconds for the push part and a slow, 4-second return to starting position. I also include daily stretching and core exercises a few days a week.

It is very easy to injure yourself when you're a geezer and overdo it. I tore a calf muscle playing table tennis when lunging for a shot I should have let go by. Live and learn.

 

[beginish]

These are great results, Todd. I’m working my slow and steady approach and am down 10 lbs this year. I upped my activity level through swimming and it’s working for both cardio and strength.

The biggest change for me this year was with food. I have used calorie counting off and on for 15 years with variable success. This year, I stopped. Now I just eat what I want. There was a study published this year comparing calorie counters with people who are what they wanted, but got Bi-Weekly information sessions about eating sensibly. Turns out that the ‘regular’ eaters lost more weight and kept it off compared to the calorie counters.

Obviously, we can’t all have biweekly reminder sessions, but for me, I stopped sweating about overeating or eating junk and just took it in stride. Like your experience with slight blips up, I would gain a pound or 2 but just put a bit more thought in what I ate and it corrected pretty quickly. It has all come down to just being more mindful. Have I gotten much exercise lately? How about an extra piece of fruit at lunch? That sort of thing.

It’s been kind of freeing, not giving much obsessive thought to it but just being more sensible. When I eat my stress, I don’t beat myself up about it, but hit the pool a bit more...works off the trail mix and takes care of stress too. It’s the best I’ve felt in years. I’m still 25 lbs over ideal weight, but I’m 50 now and will get there when I get there.

 

[BigJ]

CONGRATULATIONS!!

To me, your biggest accomplishment is that you have sustained these improvements over time!!

 

[Phog Allen]

These are great results, Todd. I’m working my slow and steady approach and am down 10 lbs this year. I upped my activity level through swimming and it’s working for both cardio and strength.

The biggest change for me this year was with food. I have used calorie counting off and on for 15 years with variable success. This year, I stopped. Now I just eat what I want. There was a study published this year comparing calorie counters with people who are what they wanted, but got Bi-Weekly information sessions about eating sensibly. Turns out that the ‘regular’ eaters lost more weight and kept it off compared to the calorie counters.

Obviously, we can’t all have biweekly reminder sessions, but for me, I stopped sweating about overeating or eating junk and just took it in stride. Like your experience with slight blips up, I would gain a pound or 2 but just put a bit more thought in what I ate and it corrected pretty quickly. It has all come down to just being more mindful. Have I gotten much exercise lately? How about an extra piece of fruit at lunch? That sort of thing.

It’s been kind of freeing, not giving much obsessive thought to it but just being more sensible. When I eat my stress, I don’t beat myself up about it, but hit the pool a bit more...works off the trail mix and takes care of stress too. It’s the best I’ve felt in years. I’m still 25 lbs over ideal weight, but I’m 50 now and will get there when I get there.

Bob, good work! And you were correct to not wait til you were one day older to start. I tell everyone who asks how I did it; I don't know but don't wait til you're middle aged. Do it when you're young. It is a whole pile easier to maintain the regimen from younger years than to start later.

I look back a short two years ago at my starting point and realise how badly my strength and stamina had deteriorated. I can now horse around weights that were simply not going to happen then. Even at that i am far from what I would call a strong person. What I do notice is that my musculature is more solid if not bulked. I can feel it under my skin. Lots harder under there now.

And I know this will be disputed by some but for the most part forget bulking up after 45 or so. God has a sense of humour and when men approach middle age He allows your mind to tell you you can do what that 30 year old over at the squat rack can do. Then you start realising that bilogy says your body will not convert protein into lean muscle mass like it does in your 20s or 30s. It just doesn't. You can certainly tone it and do it vey well but packing on pounds of lean muscle? Well, see Stallone about some hgh or something.

The average 50 year old is not bulking. And that is not necessarily a horrible thing. You need very specific dietary balance and workout regimen for that sort of thing. And lets not forget time. It takes time to recondition your musculature. Even a younger guy will need a solid year or two to to get his muscle memory into consistent results. The first six to eight months I did this I was constantly beset with minor injury. I have now gotten to where I feel the bad form or over exertion coming on and back off. That's where 'yute and stamina comes in. Young bulls can motor through a lot of that better than we can. And recover faster. It is why you don't see guys our age in a ring with Conor McGregor. I now look back to guys like Jack Lalane and realise how HARD he worked to maintain that physique. A lifetime of dedication. I don't need to be Jack. I just want to stay healthy going forward. Next up for me is dietary refinement. I am exploring carnivore and some other options but only really see this stuff as jump starters so to speak. I watched a video by a bodybuilder who went carnivore and while it worked and he liked it, he said something I found humurous; I really really like toast! The point being that denying yourself something you really likemis not always a god thing. I really like like toast as well...and continue to enjoy it. Carbs be hanged.

 

[Phog Allen]

Also, sorry for misspeaking in earlier post. I did not lose the first 40lbs in two months. It was four months. Still very happy about that but wanted to correct myself.