"Further Weight Loss is Not Advised"
Anyone who knows me also knows that I could stand to gain a few pounds. It's true! I'm what they call a "hard gainer"--putting on weight is quite a chore. Probably those of you out there with slower metabolisms are now hating me, but the fact is that being an underweight guy is pretty much as uncool as being overweight.
Thanks to a friend at my last job, I came across "
Body For Life" by Bill Phillips. The book really just made a lot of sense to me. Do cardio and weights, and for your diet balance carbs and protein while avoiding fats and sugar, eating more and smaller portions. So simple right? I gradually started following the program, using their ready-made charts to keep track of my sets at the gym and paying attention for the FIRST TIME IN MY LIFE to what I ate.
Seriously. Before I started the BFL program, I never paid attention to the Nutrition Facts on anything I ate. I always just ordered or bought what sounded yummiest. Well, I'm older than 25 and the warranty is off, so to speak, and sure enough I noticed that the trousers that I would have fit into so easily at 19 were not fitting so well anymore. It was time for a change.
Can I just say that avoiding sugar and fats in American food is NOT easy. They sneak it into everything! One sinister example: Larabars. This bar LOOKS like its supposed to be something healthy, and it wears its "100% organic" label with a particular pride. I bought it at Westside market, thinking it would something similar to a
Clif Bar (love those, by the way). But a quick check of the ingredients shows that those Larabars are basically just a big chunk of sugar and fat! The only thing they have going for them is a fair amount of fiber--but other than that you may as well buy a freakin' Snickers bar! So much for the supposed health advantages of organic food. They're not above using the same unhealthy things to reel you in as everyone else.
Anyway. So I made the difficult transition to paying attention to what I eat, together with exercising 6 times a week (3 times doing weights, 3 times doing 20 min. of intense cardio on my awesome road bike). The result?
I've lost 14 pounds and about 1 inch of waistline.
That's right. I dropped nearly 10% of my weight! Not good. I wanted to go the other direction! But the reduction of waistline was nice.
This came up recently in the physical I had last week--the doctor commented that my
body mass index was well within the healthy range for my height and weight, but, as he said in the written report, "further weight loss is not advised and exercise to add bulk has been recommended." Um, yeah! Knew that.
That's where my roommates enter the picture--as it turns out, we're ALL hard gainers. And we need motivation. So in the very near future, we're going to be having a roommate vs. roommate contest to see who can gain 10 lbs of muscle first! The rules are to gain 10 lbs without gaining any fat mass (as measured by a
pinch test). I'm going to win. In fact, just today a guy in the locker room said to me, "You look like you know what you're doing!" I think I'm on the right track.
So look for a link here to our new blog which will track our progress--it should be exciting. And you should all cheer me on!