Maintaining Weight
So I’ve been maintaining my weight at 198lbs. This past week saw a 2lb gain for a few days, due almost surely from a night in center city Philadelphia with some friends, drinking beer and doing shots of Irish whiskey (not my choice) to the point of…let’s just say not feeling so well the next morning. The plan was to eat some junk food too while down there but that didn’t work out.
Then the next day my wife and I took our son to Arnold’s Family Fun Center, which is always fun and includes a buffet that isn’t half bad. They make this Chuck E. Cheese-like pizza but it actually tastes phenomenal. I partook in quite a bit of it, along with diet coke, something I haven’t had in quite a while and typically avoid.
It took a couple of days to ‘bounce back’ to my current weight ‘set point’ but I did with no problem. That is in addition to eating more fruit – at least one apple and one banana a day. I love fruit and due to the carbs slipping back into my diet more often I am re-developing a sweet tooth, which is concerning, but I am keeping mindful of it and want to see how this plays out. I’m *hoping* that I can eat some carbs like this, where some ‘junk’ is eaten every 2 to 3 days with no long-term gain as a result, or more importantly, not feeling like garbage. That’s a key part of eating Paleo/Primal/Low Carb – in addition to the weight loss and health benefits, you just feel great too.
This entire year has been one big experiment on myself, to test the common paradigm of calories-in/out, exercise methods, etc. So far it’s gone well, I’ve learned a ton, and feel great. I wanna keep that up. But…I want my cake and eat it too : )
Workout Routine Changing Yet Again!
This week I re-thought my workout routine (again!). I re-visited the exercise philosophy on The Primal Blueprint fitness forum and my prior approach was wrong so I am switching it up. I am one of the few people that enjoys the elliptical trainer machine at the gym. I can go 30+ minutes on it now at a medium resistance level, pushing (pedaling?) as quickly as possible and still stay at the < 150 bpm level, which it turns out is quite good if you want to avoid “chronic cardio” syndrome.
So I’m going to do that at least 3 or 4 times a week. In addition, an old squash partner has resurfaced, so that will cover my HIT day, and add to that the change from a full-body to a “high/low” weight routine and that should cover me for a month or two.
Thanksgiving’s Right Around the Corner!
So that’s the random update. One last thought: unlike most people who either want to lose weight or maintain weight loss, I’m actually looking forward to Thanksgiving. I am in particular going to eat all the turkey (with the great, healthy fatty skin!) I want, and I expect to eat well over 3000 calories just in one meal. Interested to see if any weight loss occurs that day. I doubt it, based on the pattern, but I know if I don’t overdo it on the carbs then I can eat all the calories I want and not gain. Oh, and the vegetables will be great too. I’ll be trying my hand at some type of low-carb (preferrably no-carb but doubtful) dessert, maybe a pumpkin pie!