<p>“I wonder what my levels were when I was drinking a 2 liter Pepsi a day?”</p>
<p>:)</p>
<p>I am pretty sure my number is higher now, but I am in the process of lowering it. I don’t drink soda which helps. I am trying to cut my carbs. I guess I mean bread.</p>
<p>I am having trouble finding foods to eat. I can only eat so many salads. :)</p>
<p>Are non cream soups ok?</p>
<p>I would love to burn 3600 calories in a day like Michael, but that is not going to happen. I guess I better go work out now. :)</p>
<p>To burn 3600 calories a day you have to spend 8 hours a day doing hard physical labor, like chopping down trees. Or train like an Olympic swimmer. Or bike 70 miles. :)</p>
<p>My workout today: spending 30 minutes in the crawl space under the house trying to figure out how the heck a rat got in there (we heard some noise under the floor, put a rat trap…). I came out dirty (but I located the hole!) and decided to shower instead of going for a run. So it is just weights and pushups for me tonight.</p>
<p>I hope soup and salads are OK. I live on monster salads. I have one for lunch about half the time and some kind of dinner salad at least once a week. I load them up with olive oil and cheese and the croutons are about the only “bread” I eat. Or, sometimes I have chopped walnuts.</p>
<p>One of my favorite lunches is sauteeing a cup or so of chopped onion, celery, carrot, and bell pepper in a TBS of olive oil and then dumping in a can of Progresso chicken something or beef something soup. The bit of pasta in those soups is pretty much all the pasta I eat. Soup is great because it’s so filling, but mostly water. Actually creamy soup is OK, too.</p>
<p>Between the soup and the salads, I finally went and bought a big tupperware bin so that those four veggies are in one easy container (“salad fixin’s”) to make it quick and easy. Just grab it from the fridge and start chopping. Saves having to fish around for each ingredient.</p>
<p>“To burn 3600 calories a day you have to spend 8 hours a day doing hard physical labor, like chopping down trees. Or train like an Olympic swimmer. Or bike 70 miles.”</p>
<p>I guess that explains why I can’t burn 3900+ calories in a day. (I misread what Michael said. He said 3900+. :)</p>
<p>“I hope soup and salads are OK.”</p>
<p>You hope? I am counting on you, interesteddad. I don’t eat that much cheese. I should eat more nuts. </p>
<p>Your soup sounds good.</p>
<p>I just burned off 420 calories in the gym. Makes me happy because I was a little tired and was hoping to burn off 300 calories. I also walked there
and back. That is probably another 150. And that was the second time at the gym today, so with that and everything else, I burned off about
1300 calories today. </p>
<p>I don’t know. I kind of like working out at 10 or 11 pm. After a few years of waking up at 3:15 in the morning, I can now actually stay up later. It’s nice. :)</p>
<p>A year ago in September, as my 58th birthday gift to myself, I decided to get myself back into the kind of shape I was in when I was in my early to mid 20’s. A bit delusional, perhaps, since none of us can totally reverse the march of time. At the time I made this commitment, while I still was working out regularly, including both lifting and cycling, my weight had ballooned from 146 in my early twenties to 186 and my lifting routines had become sloppy and unfocused. My cycling performance had plateaued and I was becoming stale on the bike.</p>
<p>My first step was to come up with a nutritional plan. Eating healthy foods and avoiding junk had never been much of an issue for me. Portion control and my predilection to enjoy vodka based drinks when out to dinner were my nemesis. Counting calories and grams of protein, fat and carbohydrates was too tedious for me. I decided to give the Weight Watchers Point System a shot using their smart phone application as a convenience. It turned out to be a great tool for me. Easy and convenient to log what I eat, make decisions on how to expend my “points” and monitor compliance with my plan. I remain very conscious of how I am expending my points and avoid all junk food, limiting myself to nutritionally balanced meals and healthy foods. I make sure to get plenty of protein and balance out fats and carbs after that without getting too caught up in counting actual grams. </p>
<p>I also revamped my workouts with the assistance of my daughter who is a personal trainer among her various professional endeavors. My workouts consist of 4 days of cycling and 3 of lifting (upper body) during the riding season and 3 of cycling and 4 of lifting (add a day of legs) during the off season. Every 10-12 days, I take a day or 2 off as recovery time as needed.</p>
<p>The net result has worked for me. Now, 59, my weight is down to 152-153 and holding steady. My cholesterol has dropped 30 points naturally. My wife now calls me her “underwear model” which is the best pay off of all! ;)</p>
<p>Michael, I love your post. Sounds great. You are working hard and smart. You deserve the results.</p>
<p>“The net result has worked for me. Now, 59, my weight is down to 152-153 and holding steady. My cholesterol has dropped 30 points naturally. My wife now calls me her “underwear model” which is the best pay off of all!”</p>
<p>I just want to say my goal for 2012 was to do one 5K, and yesterday I just did my second :-). My time is still slow … I’m basically ~ 12 minute mile / 37 minutes - but I did it, and I have another one in 3 weeks! Maybe I’ll have as a goal for 2013 either cutting my time significantly (what is reasonable??) or doing a 10K.</p>
<p>That sounds fast to me! I did Saturday’s 5K in 44 minutes and change with an average pace of 14.15 minutes per mile… 37 minutes would be world record pace, in my book!</p>
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<p>Well, my salads are super healthy in terms of fresh veggies, good fat (olive oil), and so forth. But, they are not low calorie. I figure my lunch salad is about 500 calories and my dinner salads (with chicken or proscuitto or salami/pepperoni slices) are pushing 1000 calories.</p>
<p>PG: congrats on your second 5K! If I were you, I’d go for the longer distance. I used to run years and years ago. My ex-husband and I trained and ran the NY City Marathon–we divorced a year later! For me, it was almost easier to do the marathon than a shorter race, i.e., my goal was to conquer the distance and not focus on time (I didn’t do too badly–4:22). I haven’t done any races since that time, so take my suggestion knowing that I’m speaking from my own experience–a long time ago.</p>
<p>IDad: your triglyceride numbers are great. Mine is 70. I’d be interested in seeing if moderating my carb intake (trying to keep it under 100g per day) makes a difference. I’m supposed to re-test in December. BTW thank you for posting the information on Mark Sisson. I’ve found his Primal diet materials, especially the website, to be very helpful.</p>
<p>Walk today–3.5 miles. Also did the three exercises that Sisson says are important–squats, push-ups, and pull-ups. Can do the first two without modifications–do modified version of pull ups (inverted pull-ups on the Smith machine.)</p>
<p>Yeah… I find that he has a good common-sense approach to this stuff. I tend to shy away from the really hardcore nutritional dogmatists. Some of the best low-carb experts focus excessively on “ketosis” – below 50 g of carbs per day – that I think is probably unrealistic for most of us. I think Sisson’s range of 100 to 150 grams a day is a sensible target. I know that works for me. I like that he rationalizes a teaspoon of sugar in his morning coffee, because it really is about the big picture. If you don’t really, really enjoy what you eat, you have little prayer of sticking with it over the long haul.</p>
<p>On exercise selection, Mike Boyle has a simple way of describing the same three exercises: “Just do a push, a pull, and something for the legs…”</p>
<p>This is a non-scientific “study” underway in South Africa with two identical female twins. One is eating a low carb diet. One is eating a low fat diet. They are posting weekly diaries as well as getting tests (weight, body fat, cholesterol testing, etc.) at regular intervals.</p>
<p>Oh, no kudos for me. Just for Pizzagirl. I didn’t run an official 5K on Saturday, just my usual little 5K route in the neighborhood. One 5K was enough for me. I punched it off my bucket list and that’s that.</p>
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<p>I know absolutely nothing about chocolate. For better or for worse, it was never one of my craving foods. I mean, I like it. I can plow through some chocolate if you put it in front of me (especially Peanut Butter cups), but I can take it or leave it. My passion is Red Twizzlers and Sour Gummi Worms…</p>
<p>Congratulations on the four pounds. That’s fantastic.</p>