Weight Loss Progress 2/21 (Things were going well then vacation happened)

Posted on February 22, 2015 by admin

Starting Weight: 175
Previous Week’s Weight: 169 lbs
Planned Weight: 165 lbs
Current Weight: 169.8 lbs
Weekly Loss -0.8
Total Weight loss: 5.2 lbs
Body Fat %: 23.9

Obviously things aren’t going smashingly, but I am not overly concerned yet. Things were going well, but the last three weeks have been hard due to vacation and then travel for work. The first of those three weeks, I didn’t track the work outs and food as well as I had initially because there were a lot of things going on the week before vacation… last minute things to take care of, kids having unexpected days off from school, etc. Week 2 was vacation, and even though I did run three of the five days on vacation… well, it was a vacation. I was just happy that when I came back home, the scales were where I had left them. Week 3 unfortunately not monitoring and being vigilant has caught up to me. Fortunately the scale only ticked up 0.8 of a pound.

So this week it’s back to close monitoring and getting back on track and the weight loss trajectory in the right direction.

Weight Loss Progress 1/25

Posted on January 28, 2015 by admin

Starting Weight: 175
Previous Week’s Weight: 170.6 lbs
Planned Weight: 169 lbs
Current Weight: 170.4 lbs
Weekly Loss 0.2 lbs
Total Weight loss: 4.6 lbs
Body Fat %: 23.7

This week obviously wasn’t as good as the previous two weeks. However, I was expecting it because I did let my diet and to a certain extent my exercise slide as well. i did run as much as I had planned but I didn’t get around to doing the elliptical as I had planned. In addition, I had a couple days of eating out where my caloric intake was greater than I had planned. I also went out last Thursday and I didn’t manage that and the next day so well from an eating perspective. One other things that also went down hill this week was my tracking calories. Thankful that my overall trajectory was downward, and time to get back on the ball again!

I did however, buy a weight scale with a body fat measure on it. So this will help me gauge my efforts using another directional factor. As you can see from the current number it is slightly on the high side. My goal, in addition to bringing my weight down is to get my body fat to about 14 percent initially.

Weight Loss Progress 1-17

Posted on January 18, 2015 by admin

Previous Week’s Weight: 172.8
Planned Weight: 170
Current Weight: 170.6
Weekly Loss 2.2 lbs

Estimated Caloric Deficit:7170
Actual Caloric Deficit: 5350

Second week of 2.2 pounds loss. I was a little surprised since my diet was as controlled as I would have liked. Went out for Mexican food for dinner on Tuesday as well as for lunch on Friday with co-workers.

On the exercise side, my running was more consistent, however, my elliptical dropped off since I didn’t manage my time in the morning well. However, the elliptical was only for about 10 – 15 mins on M/W/F after interval training. Also since my long runs overlapped this week (Sunday and Saturday) I’m assuming this helped make up for the diet as well as the elliptical.

I’m thinking I should probably buy a weigh scale with % fat measurement to give me one more measure to track.

Weight Loss Progress 1-10

Posted on January 12, 2015 by admin

Planned Weight: 172
Previous Week’s Weight: 175
Current Weight: 172.8
Weekly Loss 2.2 lbs

Estimated Caloric Deficit:7170
Actual Caloric Deficit: 4395

This week, I lost 2.2 pounds. My assumption however, is that some of this was due to the reduction of salt in my body due to not eating salty junk food, and therefore not carrying as much water weight. Especially since my actual caloric deficit doesn’t indicate the loss of 2 lbs. However, it could be my inaccurate estimation of how many calories I’m taking in and how many I’m burning. I’ll have to see how the next week trends to be able to better gauge how my estimates relation to my weight loss. Hopefully

This week’s caloric deficit was less than I had estimated mostly due to the weather. The temperature in Chicago hovered in the negatives in the morning with significantly lower windchills. This kept me from taking the train and losing the approximately 40 minutes of walking per day. In addition, two days, I had to shovel snow in the morning and wasn’t able to work out. While I did burn calories shoveling, it wasn’t as much as having run or done HIIT with the elliptical. BTW, god do I hate the elliptical. I can run for 2 hours (like today) but 15 minutes on the elliptical and I’m struggling.

Food-wise I did okay. I probably snacked a little more when I was home vs. working at the office, but it was still definitely less than what it had been in the past.

Overall I’m happy with this week’s progress. Waiting to see what next week brings.

Creating a Weight Loss Risk Heat Map

Posted on January 4, 2015 by admin

When I think about when my unnecessary and extra caloric intake happens, it generally tends to be during idle time. Infrequently it may be at lunch or dinner, but more often than not, it happens when in passing when I’m walking past the snack shelf at home, and also more often then not it happens when I don’t have planned activities. This, not surprisingly, is also when I’m watching TV.

In order to recognize this risk that idle time leads to watching TV which leads to snacks which leads to more calories which leads to unnecessary weight, I first needed to identify the times when I am most likely to have time for television or snacks. In order to do that I created the following weight loss risk heat map in excel by creating a daily timeline and identifying times I generally watched TV and snacked.

This heat map gives me a good picture of the days and times I’m at a high risk of indulging (in red) and also times where I am at a moderate risk (in yellow). Grey are minimal/no-risk times.

So what is the point of this heat map? Understanding the days and times of high risk is the first step in helping me manage them better. I’m planning on printing this out and posting on my refrigerator so that it is something I constantly see and am conscious of so I can make better decisions. I know these times I will need to either find other activities or food alternatives to keep the extra caloric consumption to a minimum. This will help me as I map out the food and activities for the week (in a future blog post).

Losing 24 pounds in 2015

Posted on December 29, 2014 by admin

Losing weight is one of the most, if not the most, popular New Year’s resolutions every year. So who am I to buck the trend? l’ve set a goal to lose 24 pounds in 2015. I know it sounds like a lot, especially for someone who currently weighs 172. That’s approximately 15% of my current body weight and would bring my weight down to 148. I know it will not be an easy task because weight loss has been a goal many times before and many times I’ve failed. The times I’ve succeeded my target weight loss has been less and it has been short lived. This year, I’m hoping that the power of social media provides some pressure and motivation to keep me on track. So why 24 lbs? According to the Ideal Weight Calculator at Runningtools.com this is my ideal weight. But it’s not just some online calculator that I’m basing that goal on. I’ve been down to that weight many years back and internally I know that is the right weight for my body type. My goal is to focus on losing about 1 pound a week over 25 weeks, which could bring me to my goal weight at the end of May. Here is the baseline graph.
If you want to create a graph to outline your own weight loss goals and track your progress, you can download my template here – Weight Loss Graph. I plan on updating this chart as well and posting relevant diet and exercise information on this page on a weekly basis. I hope you’ll come back and check on how I’m doing!

Marathon Indecisions – Time vs. the enjoying the race

Posted on October 5, 2014 by admin

In exactly one week, I’ll be running my first marathon. While I’ve been running for a while without much interest in running a marathon, I have to say, I’m am excited and looking forward to it. It’ll be a nice conclusion to a whole lot of early mornings and long runs. I feel pretty prepared, I’ve done my miles and exceeded by pace goal during my 20 miler training run, but it was a hard run. It was all one foot in front of the other for the last 2 miles. Although I will say that I did lose some of my gels along the way so that may have contributed to my fatigue. It was a good lesson learned though… wear shorts with deeper pockets!

While my goal is under 4 hours, I’ve been thinking a lot about whether I want to focus on my pace, or get a slightly higher time and enjoy the race. The two ultras that I’ve done before were all about just finishing, so there wasn’t as much a focus on pace and time. I really enjoyed the camaraderie of those experiences. Plus I didn’t have a lot to be able to compare them against. But with the marathon, I feel like my whole training has focused on trying to get a 9 min/mile pace. I know a lot of this will eventually depend on factors that are outside my control like rain or high temperature or even spending too much time dodging people. And a lot of it will also depend on how I feel that particular day. But I keep thinking that I’ll miss some of the experience if I focus too much on hitting the 4 hours and I’m not sure I’ll do a marathon, at least one that’s this large, again.

Though in the past running at a single pace has been a challenge for me, my plan right now is to run with the 9 min pace group for at least the first 18 miles. Then if I’m still feeling good, pick up the pace a little for the last 8. Otherwise, I’ll try to keep up with the group and hopefully find people to talk to who will keep me motivated. Worst case scenario, I can drop back a little as I will still have some leeway at that point to slow down and meet my goal. If for some reason I don’t reach it, I’ll still be satisfied with a sub 4:30 time, and happy with a 4:15. And I keep telling myself that regardless of what time I come it at, at the end of this, I’ll have had the experience and the achievement in the books, which ultimately will be more important than how quickly I finished. And if I am not happy with my time, I can always run another one.

Sitting the new smoking? My Standing Desk Alternative

Posted on September 17, 2014 by admin

I’ve been looking into buying a standing desk for a few months now. While the recent inspiration has been articles such as this one from Runner’s World, I’ve generally found that I think better standing up and walking around. In fact most of my walls in my home “office” (/mancave/fortress of solitude/place of banishment) are covered with post it flip charts with notes.

I looked online for a good standing desk at various places, from Mayfair to Amazon to Walmart. However, I found most of those weren’t a good fit, they were either too small (enough to fit a laptop) or too big and bulky to move around), and most were upwards of $50 for a small one to a few hundred for a bigger one.

However, today, was working from home and out of habit I found myself working in my bedroom because there is more light there, and for calls I get better reception there. Eventually I noticed that I was setting up my computer and papers on the ironing board that was sitting out and it was the perfect height. Not only that it was also the perfect size to allow for a laptop, notes and my phone.

Sooo, after my meetings in the afternoon, I dragged the ironing board to my basement and am testing it out to see how it works out over the long run. I mean at $20 – $30, you can’t go to wrong. Plus it’s easily adjustable to get my kids in the habit of standing and working too!

Christmas in July 6-hour Run

Posted on August 4, 2014 by admin

After running my first 50K last year, I decided to try another this year–partially to keep my motivation for running longer long runs and partially to prep for the Chicago Marathon this year. Last year’s race was during the day, hot, partially over trail and with one big hill. This year I decided to do the inaugural Christmas in July put on by Runners4Wellness. This was an overnight six hour timed run, on pavement and for the most part flat, from what I’d heard. However, there was one big thing I was concerned about and that was that this race was over a one mile loop (see map below). The reaction from everyone I spoke with was “ugh, a one mile loop?” But I was running it with two friends and hoped that it wouldn’t be that bad. One thing tough, I figured there would always be someone running close by, so there wouldn’t be long periods of running by myself if I separated from the two people I was running it with.

The 6 hour run started at midnight. The 12 and 24 hours runners had started earlier so there were already runners on the path. For the 6-hour, there were about 50 people who were at the starting line. The loop was a little less than a mile. On the map to the right, the run started at point A. There was a slight elevation near the beginning and then a slow downhill. At point B was the major hill of the course (15 – 20 feet elevation). At point C there as a sharp right turn that continued a small elevation and then after that, for the most part, it was either downhill or flat. I don’t recall the exact temperature but it was probably in the 70’s.

I ran the first 7 loops before taking a short gel/water break. To my surprise the first 7 loops didn’t seem as arduous as I had imagined. In fact they went by rather quickly. As did the next 7 loops. Around the 15^th or 16^th loop, I ended up separating from my friends, but as I had initially thought, there weren’t too many times that I was running by myself and the nice thing about the one mile loop ended up being that during the rest of the race, I was able to group back up with my friends periodically. However, at the times when I was running by myself, it was really nice to have the supports there. There was a gentleman near the beginning, and another near the sharp curve at point C, however, my hat goes off to the woman who was half way up the hill at point B. She was there at least for the six hours that I ran and the whole time she was standing up and cheering. At times, I think that may have been a more difficult thing to do that actually run.

At mile 21, my left knee started to hurt. This was most likely due to the sharp turn at point C and the constant run in a clockwise direction. We were supposed to switch directions after two hours but there was glitch in the sensors I believe and we weren’t able to. I was glad I had brought a knee support with me though I hadn’t used it in the last four years. It definitely helped me continue with running. Also, after this, I made sure to walk up the hill as well at the turn at point C. I finished my 26^th loop at around 4:40. This was also the time that the sun slowly began to come up. It was around loop 29 that I really started to lose my energy and motivation. I’m not sure it was just the mileage or whether it was the fact that the sun was out and I could much better gauge the distance I had left in each loop but it seemed for the next two loops it was really one foot in front of the other. Fortunately on my last loop, another runner started talking to me. I can’t recall her name, but she was from Naperville and doing the 12 hour run. Her energy and conversation really made the last loop bearable, and luckily for me, I caught up with one of my partners in crime and we were able to finish the last loop together.

At the end of this, I had completed 32 loops in 6 hours for a total of 31.04 miles. About 0.03 miles less than a 50K, but at that point, I wasn’t really counting. I had a great run. The race was surprising well organized and the swag was great (a hoodie, a shirt and a medal), the runners were a great bunch of people to be a part of and the volunteers and supporters rocked!

I definitely plan on running this race again next year.

Trash talk! An analysis of my garbage

Posted on April 23, 2014 by admin

Being a family of four, I’m amazed at how much garbage we produce during the week. I don’t think it’s anything more than the average family, two to four 13 gallon bags, and that amount is in addition to about the same amount of recycling. If you were to ask me what the contents of the garbage are, I would be clueless. It could be food, it could be materials that should be recycled, or it could just be we’re not compacting/crushing things we’re throwing out, so that mass isn’t that great, just the volume.

One of my goals for this year was to reduce my contribution to landfills and Earth day seems the right day to start this goal. Being a consultant, of course the approach that I want to take for this is the same approach I would take with a client who wants to reduce waste or make improve efficiency, etc, but taking this project through the phases of analysis, plan, implement and repeat the cycle until the desired goal is met.

The first step I will be taking is analyzing my garbage for the next few weeks to understand the content. The result of this will directly impact the strategy to reduce waste and the outcome. For example, if a majority of garbage is food, reducing the amount we cook or order will not only reduce waste, but can also lead to more savings. Unfortunately we’re dealing with garbage and I have absolutely no plans to go through what we throw out in detail, but I do plan to make a visual record of what we’re throwing out. This will consist of category and quantity. My current plan is to record this on a daily basis, but knowing myself, it’ll probably happen more randomly than that.

The currently categories I have are: food, non-recyclable material, recyclable material and mixed items. Currently I’m not sure what other categories our waste to consist of. As I see patterns, I will add additional categories. For each of these items I will also track large/small space to determine if the garbage bag gets full just because items being thrown out take up a large space, but don’t contain a log of material.

My next step after I collect this information will be to analyze ways to reduce the amount of items thrown out, either through decreasing consumption or converting garbage to recycling, etc. For now, my next post on this subject will be after I have collected four weeks of data.

If you have taken on a similar endeavor, I’d love to hear from you

Mukesh Pitroda

running. writing. martial arts