Last week I completed my sixth go-round on the 9 Week Program on my EA Sports Active 2 exercise program. Since beginning I’ve completed more than 200 workouts, run over 100 miles, exercized for hundreds of hours, performed thousands of crunches, curls, squats, and lunges. If the calibration of the system is to be believed, I’ve burned more than 60,000 calories. Even if the calibration is off there isn’t much question that I’ve expended at least 10% of that or, roughly, the equivalent of two pounds of fat (if the calibration is even approximately correct I’ve burned the equivalent of 16 pounds of fat).
I think I’m a bit stronger and have better endurance. My wife says I look trimmer than I did when I began. Despite maintaining rigid and systematic control of my calorie consumption I haven’t lost a pound. I have the same waist and jacket size I did when I began the program more than a year ago (my jacket size is 8 inches larger than my waist size).
I absolutely, positively have not been cheating. My interpretation of all of this is that, at least for me, the simple thermodynamic model of weight loss is just plain wrong. It may be that I’ve replaced a little fat with muscle but, given the stability of my sizes, I don’t think that really explains what I’m seeing. My biceps and triceps are a bit larger but that’s hardly an improvement. I’d like to be one jacket size smaller and two inches smaller in my waist (maintaining my 8 inch drop) but that may not be practically achievable.
As I think I’ve mentioned before I’m built on a very different scale from most people. Putting it politely, I am very long-waisted with a very deep chest. Less politely, I’m short and squat with legs shorter in proportion to my total height than practically anybody else. I’m not actually short. Medium height.
My body works pretty differently than those of others in other ways as well. My body temperature at rising is around 92°F and never rises above 96°F unless I’m running a fever (I am clinically euthyroid, a bit on the low side, although I suspect I am thyroid resistant). I have a full head of hair (most gray now), all of my own teeth, just three fillings, I take no medications, and can run without getting out of breath. I rarely get sick. I look about twenty years younger than I actually am.
My body does not train well. My 100th exercise session hurts about the same as my first one did. I have never broken a bone even under conditions when it might have been expected (I’ve been in several serious auto accident—none my fault). I tell a lie. I broke a rib once in a bizarre non-contact accident during a judo tournament. My muscles contracted so powerfully it broke a rib.
On the rare occasions when I do take medications idiopathic or even perverse reactions are common. It’s a familial characteristic. One of my siblings was recently prescribed a painkiller following an operation. It induced pain.
All things considered I should be grateful.
I begin my seventh 9 Week Program next week.
What do you eat?
Roughly 150 gm of carbohydrate, 115 gm of protein, and 50 gm of fat daily. Carbohydrates mostly whole grains, fruits, and vegetables. Proteins lean meats, chicken, and salmon. Fat that isn’t from the meats, poultry, fish, grains, and vegetables mostly from olive or canola oil.
To save you the trouble of calculating it that’s about 1,600 calories per day. That’s divided among three small meals and two very small snacks per day, carefully timed about three hours apart.
Have you tried cutting out grains entirely? In my experience the ideal diet for managing mass and volume is to go japanese, i.e. rice, fish and vegetables. I know some people who have had considerable success with that.
Yes. Nothing until I go below 800 calories per day which is not for me a livable lifestyle. I have little interest in a crash diet. I’m looking for a healthy way of eating.
I’m trying to get my head around your body description to understand where you want to get from where you are. I’m a 30 inch waist with a 38 inch chest, so those proportions are identical to yours and which women usually find pleasing. Is it possible you’re being overly critical of your appearance? The regimen you’ve adopted is not easy to maintain in a modern lifestyle, so your level of self-discipline seems admirable.
Let me put it this way. I had a 40 inch chest when I was 16 and I was pretty slender then. I’m, er, bigger now than I was back then (when dinosaurs ruled the earth). My minimum goal is to stay, essentially, where I am right now. So far that’s successful. My best case scenario is to lose two inches from jacket size and two inches from waist.
My lean body weight (I had it measured competently once) is around 175. I have no intention of trying to get there—it would be unhealthy. Getting within 30 or 40 pounds would be nice, though. As I said, I’m built on a different scale.
This may sound extreme, but have you tried swimming? Specifically, swimming daily in cold water? I can tell you from vast personal experience that operating in such an enviroment is the most efficient way of forcing your body to cannibalize fat, very quickly.