• Mr Low Body Fat’s Blog
• Dr J from Calorie Lab
• Fat Loss Perls of Wisdom
• Fit to the Finish

I encourage you to find your own favorite blogs so you can “figure out” what works for you! Try these blogs out if you have not seen them before.

In this post I will examine this idea of diet and/or exercise to lose the weight. I mean are they mutually exclusive or is one or the other more important? I will talk about my meandering approach to this over the last couple of years and the answer I have found to work for me. I will also update the first month (of my two month) experiment of journaling my calories and the affect this has had on my weight loss (I’ve reached a new low!). Here is a video about how to create a calorie deficit.

I like this video as it points out that to lose weight – you need a calorie deficit. Now how you do it is the real question that I want to talk about in this post. I bet you are wondering why I used “or” when I framed the question, “Is the question diet or exercise to lose weight…”? Lets talk about that.

Back in the early 90’s when I wrote my book (free on this website) entitled, Slimmer Zimmer – I had bought into the low-fat and aerobic exercise mantra of weight loss. Now that approach worked for me and I was able to keep off the weight for several years but I never did figure out what that approached worked and more importantly why it eventually failed for me.

You see eating tastless foods (10% to 15% fat) did allow me to eat way more food and my power walking did increase the amount of calories my body needed to break even (maintain) weight. But in retrospect it was a fad diet. I mean I could not keep eating that way for life. As I got busy I lost sight of my calories and fat so the same amount of food allowed a weight gain.

A couple of years back (January 2007) I started back on the diet and exercise bandwagon but this time the internet was around. I was able to find blogs about people with similar goals and what they were doing to get healthy! I decided to start my own blog but for the wrong reasons initially.

I thought I had a plan that worked and I’d just start doing it again and make tons of money on a back-end sales system (selling stuff via annoying popups in a sequential sales email strategy). I came to my senses before I got a chance to implement that, so I just use passive ads from various sources. By the way I don’t endorse ads so use some common sense if one appeals to you.

Reading the other blog I soon realized that people did not need yet another diet plan to waste their money on (that collected dust on a book shelf) but they did need some positive reinforcement about what does work!

So the reason I use the “or” in the title is because I tried to keep eating the same basic way (just eyeballing foods for calories) and increasing my exercise to lose the weight!

I was 50 years old and had not kept my body in shape (other than round) as I was 260 pounds and got out of breath walking to the refrigerator (although that did not stop me).

I did try to jog often and kept injuring my knees. I did experience some weight loss when I journaled my calories on a spread sheet but as soon as I made some gains – I would go back to eyeballing my foods again. Eventually I got good enough at eyeballing that I was able to maintain my weight loss two years later but I was in a state of a constant plateau!

So Dr. J made the comment to one of my posts where I mentioned I had exercised 15 hours that week; he said that I should lose the weight via diet. What I thought? What difference did that make how I got the calorie deficit?

What I was doing by eyeballing my foods and massively working out was eating more because I was hungrier. So the calorie deficit did not really happen for me and I was in a 6 month plateau. One the positive side I did maintain my weight loss over the holidays last year but it was too much work… I don’t think I could maintain that forever!

So the question is not really diet or exercise but I thought it was. I tried exercise over and over and kept failing. It is a harder way to go to try just exercising (at least for me).

My approach that is consistently working is keeping a food journal (I use excel) that tracks my calorie deficit (2000 calories = 1 pound lost per week and 1500 calories = 2 pounds lost per week).

I have tracked fat only to make sure I eat enough. I shoot for at least 30% fat but often times I have to struggle to eat that much because I don’t eat fast food.

So by keeping up the fat percentage, I ensure the food will taste good enough and I can keep eating this way for life.

I also try now to get five hours of any kind of exercise a week and that seems pretty easy to do. Every kind of exercise counts from walking the dogs, hiking up the local mountains, kicking the bag, lifting weights and jiu-jitsu practice.

My results are astounding after one month of journaling. I have lost 9 pounds. I actually have lost a bit more as my doctor took me off of the diuretic pill. I was at 225 pounds when that happened and the next couple of days my weight climbed to 227. It took a week to overcome the water weight gain – back to 225 and this morning I am down to 223 pounds!

I have two to three pounds to go until I transition from obese (bmi > 30) to overweight (bmi <30)! I am at BMI 30.2 this morning at 223 pound for a 6 foot man.

So I would like to leave you with this thought – it is not so important how you get a calorie deficit as the video states but rather that you find foods you can eat, foods you can journal, and exercise you can do to reach your goal!

Needless to say we went all out and even visited the Red Lobster to partake in their endless shrimp (and I had the endless belly to show for it)! I also was trying to impress for some reason and I baked four loves of bread! I love fresh bread but I tend to use it as a snack food for days whenever I bake some bread.

I really went to town in the exercise category before I got sick… I was averaging 10 hours a week. One run I started off just doing the two hills but figured out a way to add a third hill where I jogged up an animal trail for 25 minutes… and as I did not think I had enough… I found 45 minutes of animal trails through the grasses down the other side of the hill at twilight! That run turned from two expected hours to three and a half hours.

I’ll speak about my ideas of how to keep up the exercise in a way that makes sense for me and my lifestyle and also talk about my latest surprising lipid panels. Here is a chart of the past couple of years test results.

I started this latest iteration of trying to get into a shape other than round, in January 2008. As you can see from the HDL and LDL from last year to July, they stayed about the same. You see I had gained most of my weight I lost in 2008 back and was on the losing track again but not really doing the exercising and diet religiously.

After I went back to the doctor at the end 0f June this year, he told me he was not that impressed with my borderline to high blood pressure and subsequently after he saw the lipid panel – he was not impressed with my progress there either.

His solution was to put my on a diuretic pill in the moring and cholesterol pill in the evening. I decided to turn up the heat on my exercise program from a couple of hours a week maybe to over five hours a week! I soon averaged seven or more hours of running, hiking, bag work, jump rope and katas a week!

Well the other day during the week I took off from exercise and was eating like a pig – I went in for a fasting blood test (the lipid panel). I was surprised and the notable difference!!! The ones that are supposed to be low are low and the HDL came up! What I don’t know is how much is due to the medicine and how much is due to the increased exercise?

I’m going to keep up the medicines until March or so because we are changing health plans. The new plan is a high deductible plan so I will be concentrating on keeping myself in the best medical condition I can with diet and exercise. I think 10+ hours a week is too much just like blogging every other day was too much.

I’m going to strive to do the following during the rest of the year:

• Exercise 5 hours a week and  not overdo it
• Stay on the diet except for Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays!
• Keep my stress level down so binge eating should not be an issue

I hope all is well in your neck of the woods!

I have been thinking about this because one of my main goals for losing weight is to gain back about half of what I used to be able to do. I don’t want to climb 80 foot trees and hunt game without regular weapons. I just want to be in great shape for a middle-aged man!

In this post I will highlight my diet and exercise for the past week, speak of my progress and talk a bit about my goals and aspirations with body weight exercises! Here is a extreme (although it would not have seemed so when I was a kid) fitness video.

It is kind of funny but when I first started fighting black belts as a 165 pound brown belt, I used to escape sometimes by running up the walls on one corner and escaping on the other side! It seemed like the lesser of two evils – you know try and extreme escape or get pounded into the wall!

This past week was kind of stressful at work and home so I only ended up doing one bag workout. The reason is intricate karate/boxing routines take a lot of thought and motivation. Too much to deal with if there is a lot of other “stuff” going on so I did several runs as the majority of my workouts! Running to me is a mindless activity that is great for negating stress.

I lost another pound so now I am down 30 pounds from my heaviest. I have another 10 pounds to go before I am not obese! I’ve been thinking more and more about what my goal should actually be. I know I will get under 200 pounds by next Spring easy but should I shoot for my old fighting weight of 165? My feeling is to go for my heavier but still strong weight of about 175 to 180 because I can start to focus on strength building body weight exercises along the way.

Right now I have to be careful about pull ups, push ups and such because my body is not too toned. It is in ok shape for punching and kicking the bag because I have worked up to is slowly (as I still am) so perhaps if I just start out slow on the body weight exercises – it will be ok.

My wife and I had another cheat meal at a Fillipi’s Pizza Grotto, a delicious medium pizza (I had two slices) along with a salad! The wonderful thing about taking a meal off each week is I feel like I can still make it through the week. If I end up eating out with a friend or family during the week, I am not too worried that I am now off of my diet. You see taking a meal off is part of my diet. I found this funny Korean pizza commercial.

I guess the whale likes srimp too!

My goal for this next week will be to start incorporating body weight exercises into my workouts slowly. I have already started jumping rope before my bag workouts. I hope all is well for your plan.