Category: Diet

October 16, 2013
Max Diet, fitness, Life , , ,

The Top Secret Weight Loss Formula.

I see lots of people pontificating about some new wondrous diet or other and how they have lost endless weight by following them. There are some seriously strange ones that are popular at the moment too.

I may have eaten too many pies

You may have eaten too many pies

I also see endless people hopping from faddy diet to plain weird diet and failing to lose any weight at all. Or more often, losing a bit, then putting it all back on again and again.

Here is the secret.….

If you are over-weight and you want to weigh less, eat less food and burn more calories.

It is actually that simple.

Your body needs food in order to function, but if you over-feed it, then it turns the excess food into fat and stores it for use later.

If you consistently over-feed your body, you will continue to add to the fat stores.

When you move around, when you heart beats, when you are awake, when you are asleep, your body uses energy. If there is not enough food available to burn, then those reserves of fat are raided.

Again though, if there is more food available than you need, then the excess is added to the fat stores.

Depending on how old you are, what sex you are, how much you weigh and how active you are on a daily basis, your body will burn a reasonably calculable amount of calories.

For example, At my age, given my relatively sedentary lifestyle and my current weight, I need around 2500kcals per day on average to maintain my weight.

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March 18, 2013
Max Diet, fitness, Life , , , , ,

Roadies vs Mountain Bikers….

I have recently taken to the idea of a Sunday morning ride.

For the last three Sundays I have ridden one of my bicycles around 22-25 miles on one of a variety of loops in the area. I am not the only one, there are a lot of people out riding. I often catch up with a group or a couple of riders and tag along until we go different ways or I run out of legs, or they drop back. Regardless on my previous couple of rides on my road bike there has been a level of camaraderie among the riders. We all speak to each other and often wave.

What I did not realize is that you need to be a part of the clique. If you are riding a road bike or in my case a ‘bitsa’ Tri-bike, then fellow roadies will wave and smile and encourage you to join them.

Now try exactly the same ride on a mountain bike, albeit one with city tires.

On Sunday I rode a slightly different loop, my usual loop sees me riding north, then east, then south and then west to get home, this time I followed the north trail and it took me towards the cost (west) before I eventually turned left and headed homeward. At about the twelve mile point I encountered a group of riders, they were all in their 30’s and 40’s and all riding multi-thousand dollar road bikes.  They were all dressed in various team replica gear, cycling shoes, ‘sponsored’ helmets, the works. As I moved through the pack I said ‘good morning’ to the rider that I was alongside. They pretty much all look away, or straight ahead or otherwise ignored me. At one set of lights I turned to the rider that pulled up alongside me said ‘I guess I am the odd one out huh ?’ He said ‘you could say that’ and looked away.

The reason that they ignored me is simple, I was not conforming to the rules.

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February 3, 2013
Max Diet, fitness, Life, Photography , , , ,

Too fat to be photographed…..

Yesterday a friend posted a link to a blog entry called ‘So you’re feeling too fat to be photographed . . .’.

All of the comments on the link were overwhelmingly positive.

But to me, the idea that even family and friends will look past the blubber is a little weird. Sure I look at the latest photos of my family and think ‘yeah, its lovely to see them’, but I also think ‘good grief, that loved one has put some pounds on since the last time I saw a photo’ or similar…

I notice and I am sure that I am not alone.

So reassuring fat people that you look great to your family, when, well, you are actually obese, or more, seems wrong.

So I wrote a comment that basically said that I thought that the ‘you look great to your family’ concept was right up there with ‘everybody’s baby is beautiful’ and that rose colored glasses prolong the issues. Simply anyone that is tipping the scales at the obese level (or more) has a much larger chance of running into serious health issues later in life. Fat is not healthy.

I may have also suggested that in pretty much all of the examples, that they looked to me like they all needed to get there fat asses to the gym and stop inhaling calories. But as the thread is long deleted, I cannot exactly remember.

I did have the grace at least to mention that one of my personal motivators on my weight loss journey has been a photo of myself looking rather rotund.

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January 23, 2013
Max Diet, fitness, Life , ,

218lbs Now merely Over Weight….

As of this morning I am down to 218lbs – for my British friends that is 15st 8. This means that my BMI is down to 28.

At 6-2 and 218lbs I am merely overweight, rather than obese.

This is pretty significant as my progress over Christmas was inthe wrong direction, from December 6th to January 8th I went from 219 to 225 and then back to 221. The last two weeks have seen me back on track, losing 1.5lbs per week on average. I over ate all holiday season, but I continued my fitness regime.

My target of ‘about 185’ remains in place, I have lost about 33lbs (2 stone 5) and I have another 33 to go, so I am, I guess, half way to my target.

While being ‘merely half way’ after all of these months of watching what I eat and working out on a regular basis may seem a little sad, I feel like I am much further towards my goal that the scale actually tells me.

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September 6, 2012
Max Diet, fitness, Life , ,

Becoming a little less fat..

I have been slowly gaining weight for the past few years going from about 210lbs in 2000 all the way up to a not so comfortable 250lbs recently.

I have tried eating a little less and I have tried going to the gym on occasions.

I ride a bicycle too, but nothing was working – the weight continued to accumulate.

In a recent photo I barely look like ‘me’. I look like a fat guy with a bad haircut and a misguided moustache.

I pass that photo on the stairs every day.

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