A lot of what prompted my current discipline was just realizing that a lot of my running injuries are probably thanks to the extra weight I’m carrying, and that ditching the baggage will make running a whole lot more fun. I still have a hard time remembering long-term goals when faced with dessert, but I’m getting better about that.

With less than four weeks to go, I’d really like to do everything I can to go into my event as lean as possible. Four weeks isn’t very long, but it’s still an opportunity, and I have a plan. I’ll go into the specifics more tomorrow and Wednesday, but it’s based on what I’m learning from Tim Ferriss’s The 4-Hour Body. It seems doable (for a month, and probably beyond if I get the kind of results he describes) and certainly worth a shot.

Beyond that, I’m just focusing on keeping up with my training schedule and not getting hurt.

I’d never been to Vegas before, but I tried to do my research ahead of time. I booked a room near the convention center so that I could walk, and scoped out the local restaurants on Google Maps to see what was to be seen.

This worked so-so; I found out about many options but some of those that were missing would have been nice to know about (for instance, eGo in the hotel right next to the convention center).

Based on my prior research, I knew there was a McDonald’s about a quarter-mile south of my motel. Now, McDonald’s wouldn’t necessarily be my first choice for healthy eating, but despite (or probably because of) all the bad press about their nutritional choices, there are actually some very good choices.

McDonald’s is also the exception to many restaurants in that they actually post their nutritional information online, and in a location that’s easy to find.

Being the geek that I am, I turned this into a spreadsheet so I could sort it by my preferences (I deleted the items that weren’t appealing to me, and then did some crude math to find the healthiest choices).

I also had the brilliant idea of packing some food to guarantee that I would always have a healthy option, at least for meals where I was close to my motel. I packed some pre-measured bags of oatmeal (having read the observation somewhere that the in-room coffee maker is ideal for such a purpose), a bag of protein drink powder (counting on finding milk at McDonald’s), and two apples for each day I’d be there.

This strategy generally worked well (though you really shouldn’t underestimate the brutality of the baggage handlers; my extremely cushy packing around my apples was no match for acts of luggage violence, apparently, but I mostly just ate around the bruises).

I wasn’t sure what my food options would be at the convention center itself, but I asked a knowledgeable employee and she pointed me to a cafeteria-style restaurant where I was able to build a killer salad. I also carried some PowerBar Harvest snack bars to keep me from plunging into desperate hunger in a pinch.

My general routine was an apple and protein shake in the morning (it turns out my coffee maker was busted, but I’m too much a coffee novice to have figured that out right away; I just thought I was doing something wrong), a salad for lunch, a snack bar during the afternoon, and something reasonable at McDonald’s for dinner.

My bodybugg was a tremendous help. I logged all my foods for four out of the five days I was there, and closely watched my calorie deficit, and ended each day I tracked with my target 1000-calorie deficit. You could definitely do this without the bodybugg, but it sure made it easier.

Honestly, the only hitch in my plan was the parties. There were two big parties, both at night clubs, both at dinner time, both serving a wide array of high-calorie foods.

The first party, the food was actually so “creative” that most of it didn’t appeal to me anyway. They did have a chocolate fountain, though, and that’s a big weakness of mine. Happily, I spotted some fruit that was designed for the fountain, and helped myself to a plate of strawberries and pineapple. This worked great because it satisfied my sweet tooth, and more importantly, gave me something to do with my hands (have I mentioned I’m socially awkward? and that I don’t drink?).

The second party didn’t go quite as well from a diet perspective. It was my last night in Vegas, I’d been spectacularly good on my diet, and I was tired (and tired of apples). So when they offered me such yummy looking fried things, I took them. Not all of them, mind you (I’m still a picky eater, after all!), but probably more than I should have (“fried” being a helpful clue). That was the day I didn’t track my food.

However, when I got home, I had a slight loss, and I can’t say that’s ever happened to me while on vacation before. And I’ve continued to lose at a steady pace since I’ve been home, so I’m definitely counting this a victory.

It’s been about four and a half months since I bought the bodybugg at my local health club. I went through the training sessions (where I got some good info, even though I found the bodybugg site pretty intuitive and didn’t need a lot of help with it). I was motivated by the interesting information and synced my armband several times a day. I faithfully logged my food and saw good results.

At first.

Then, like any other long-term “resolution,” I started being a little less dedicated in my efforts. I only logged my food when it was convenient. I wasn’t as faithful about syncing. And after the included three-month subscription ran out, I let it lapse. (That was partly because I was going on a week-long bike trip and wouldn’t be able to sync, log food, or get real-time feedback, but also because I didn’t want to pay unless I was committed to actually using the service.)

What does that say about the bodybugg? Well, actually, not much except that it’s like any other tool: you have to use it to get any benefit out of it! And I did get some great benefits when I was using it.

From May 22 to early August when I started slacking, my daily average weight dropped from 150 to 139. Not the incredible numbers you’ll see on The Biggest Loser, mind you, but numbers that made me happy, particularly since my end goal is 130.

My current average weight is 143. I have no doubt that if I’d stuck with my faithful bodybugg use, I’d be at my goal by now.

So why didn’t I stick with it? Lack of focus. When I first started with the bodybugg, the novelty aspect helped me stay interested in my health, and encouraged me to make good food and exercise choices so that I could see a positive and accurate picture.

After a while, the novelty wore off, and without paying much attention, I stopped caring whether something was a good choice or not. Last night I missed dinner and ate a lot of dessert, then came home, had dinner, and ate more dessert. If I was logging food, I never would have done that.

So what can you expect with the bodybugg? I’d say it depends on your personality and habits. It’s certainly a useful tool to give anyone a kick in the butt to make a change. The question is whether you’ll be able to stick with it after it’s no longer new and exciting.

If you are the kind of person who can stick with something as long as you get useful feedback, the bodybugg is probably your dream come true.

If you get bored easily and hop from thing to thing (like me!), it will be useful as long as you’re able to remind yourself of the value, but if you don’t have confidence that you’ll be able to do that, you might end up spending a lot of money for short-term results.

(Of course, if you’re like me, you really read this secretly hoping that I would tell you, “It’s a miracle device! Buy one immediately and it will be worth your money a thousand times over!” At least, that’s what I hope people will say when I look for reviews of a product I’m considering…)

If you’re not sure whether the bodybugg is a good investment, I have a kind of wacky suggestion to help you decide:

• Determine the cost per pound/body fat % lost that would make it a good value for you personally. For instance, given a rough $400 price tag for the model I bought (they didn’t have the Digital Display when I purchased), and my solid 11 pound weight loss, that comes to about $36 per pound (or about $89 per body fat percentage point lost, because my body fat went down by 4.5%). How much would you pay to get rid of a pound of fat? If you’re willing to pay $50 per pound (and you don’t get the Digital Display), then you’re talking about losing eight pounds. If it’s only worth $10/pound to you, then you need to lose 40 pounds to make it an acceptable value to you.
• Divide the number of pounds you’d need to lose for it to be a good value by 1.5. A pound and a half is about what most people can count on losing per week if they’re making a serious effort. It’s not a hard and fast number, but it will help you figure out a realistic number of weeks for losing the weight.
• Ask someone who knows you well (and whom you trust), “Do you think I can stick with a diet plan for x number of weeks?” This is the hard one! History doesn’t always predict the future, but if your trustworthy-someone expresses doubt that you can stay committed long enough for you to get your desired value out of the bodybugg, I’d seriously suggest a waiting period before purchase. If you can get them to tell you how long they think you could stick with a diet plan, run the numbers backwards and see how it impacts your price per pound. Would that be acceptable?

Odd? Yeah, a little. But if you’re worried about making an emotional decision that could cost a lot of money, or creating family stress by spending so much on a gadget and not using it, or providing further ammunition in an argument about how you don’t finish what you start, hopefully that analysis will at least help you see it more logically. (If the analysis turns out well, you might also have a good argument to convince your spouse. )

Oh, and by the way, I’ve re-upped my subscription and have all the best intentions to be serious about my tracking from now until the end of November. Then I’ll re-evaluate.

Daniel and I spent last week on the very beautiful Wallowa Mountain Rambler cycling tour. Whew! With the tandem and about 100 pounds of gear, it was quite a workout getting up some of those hills!

Despite the work, I didn’t lose any weight (and didn’t expect to) because of the killer food available at every meal. Our guides, Celia and Andrew, did an amazing job of cooking up fabulous fare and I wasn’t about to turn it down. If you ever want to tour in the Northwest, I highly recommend Wild Heart Cycling.

Several of us were very interested in seeing elevation profiles for the route, and when we got home, I found a very cool site that makes it pretty easy: MapMyRide.com. It’s part of a larger network of fitness sites and offers some clever features, mostly based on Google Maps and Google Earth. They really did a great job of putting it together.

Here are the routes for our trip: day 1 · day 2 · day 3 · (day 4 was a rest day) · day 5 · day 6 · day 7

As you can see, the elevation profile isn’t all that bad, but remember the gear! I was glad to be on the tandem where I could take advantage of Daniel’s enthusiasm for hills. I’m considering getting a touring bike of my own for future tours but we’ll see. I’d have to get a lot stronger (or pack all the heavy stuff in Daniel’s trailer…).

We also took a whole lotta pictures of the tour which you can browse if you’re interested.

Next up: resume the dieting and get back under 140 pounds…

Where it gets complicated is in actual practice (shocker, right?). To start with, it’s hard to regularly maintain a calorie deficit. It takes work, and it’s usually not much fun. We also tend to get carried away with following trivial advice (like eating this week’s darling food of the diet world). Add to that the conflicting advice and sales-motivated explanations, and it’s no wonder people get frustrated.

Some well-meant advice can also be discouraging to dieters. One of the questions that comes up a lot is, “Can I just work off the calories I eat?” Most answers I’ve seen are along the lines of, “Yes, in theory, but it’s easier to reduce the number of calories you eat than to work them off.”

They go on to point out just how much exercise you’d have to do to burn the amount of calories in a given food. One book I’m looking at says “1 4-oz. M&M cookie = 1.1 hours of canoeing” and “3 mini-quiches = 1 hour of washing and waxing your car + 42 minutes of vacuuming”.

This is definitely a valid point. It’s pretty depressing to realize that just one donut means hours of exercise. But I’d argue that you still can achieve better long-term success by adding exercise than through extreme calorie restriction. Why do I think that?

Compare how you feel when you cut calories to how you feel when you’ve finished exercising. I don’t know about you, but when I try to cut way back on yummy food for any length of time, I feel virtuous for a little while, but then mostly just deprived and resentful. On the other hand, when I exercise, I feel strong and powerful, like I can really accomplish something meaningful.

Which way would you rather feel?

Now, reality check, I’m not saying, “Go ahead, eat anything and everything you want, you can exercise it off!” The experts have a very good point; it takes a lot of work to burn off some dietary indiscretions. It’s also very time consuming, and you have to find the time (and the motivation) to actually do the exercise. There are definitely limits; I find that I can burn about 500 calories extra on weekdays if I need to cancel out something I ate… but I still have to maintain my 1000 calorie/day deficit, so it definitely takes some effort.

What I am saying is this: if you’re generally making healthy food choices and maintaining a good calorie deficit on a regular basis, and you’re faced with some food that you’d really like to eat, doing a little extra exercise is a valid option. If you can do enough exercise to maintain your desired calorie deficit, you’ll lose weight.

How does this work in my everyday life? I might play Dance Dance Revolution at a challenging level for 45 minutes so that I can have a small ice cream cone. I might also decide the ice cream cone isn’t worth the time or the effort, and just opt not to eat it.

This method works for me, and if you genuinely follow it (i.e. you have time and don’t overdo the food), it will work for you.

One thing to be careful of: exercise will only be psychologically “easier” if you actually get positive feelings during or afterwards.  If you start thinking of exercise as “punishment” for eating poorly, it’ll be less fun to do.  It’s not supposed to be punishment, but rather, balance.

My contact at PUSH.tv told me that the DVDs usually arrive very promptly (and that was my experience with the initial DVD, just not month two) but that it can take up to 12 days with the postal system. Given the four weeks I ended up doing what was supposed to be a two-week workout, I’d rather they either sent the new DVD earlier (say, at the end of the first two weeks on a new DVD) or sent it via more reliable mail, even if it cost a couple of dollars more.

Aside from the delay, I’m pleased with the new DVD. Like the second workout on the first DVD, this new workout is a challenging-but-achievable step up from the exercises I got used to. The incremental changes keep it from being overwhelming. I’m vaguely dreading the day we do full-body push-ups on the floor, but I feel like the step push-ups I’m doing now are preparing me.

With this DVD, I’m also starting to use the “Area of Focus” section in addition to the main workout. I switched my area of focus from legs to abs (because as it turns out, my legs are killer-strong from biking, but my abs are just sad), which was good, since I never bothered with the Area of Focus segment when it was legs.

The Area of Focus is basically the same thing as the general workouts (at least for me, since I have Jessica Smith as my trainer and she also leads all of the Area of Focus exercise), except that each two-minute bit is focused on an ab exercise. The result is a tough workout, even though it’s only about 10 minutes long.

I read recently that “cycling requires core strength but doesn’t produce it.” That hadn’t really occurred to me, particularly that cycling won’t make my abs measurably stronger, hence my new focus in the workouts. I’m continuing to do the regular workouts three times a week, and then doing the abs Area of Focus on alternating days.

An indication that this PUSH.tv thing really is working: Daniel did the abs workout with me yesterday and I was stronger. Not to gloat; it’s just that I’m hardly ever stronger than him. He’s going to join me on that workout regularly, so I have no doubt he’ll be whooping up on me shortly, but it’s nice while it lasts…

As it happened, my mom was in town recently, and her main exercise staple is HIIT running—one minute running, one minute walking, five times for a total of 10 minutes of exercise.  My sister Leanna and I decided to join her for a workout.  The workout itself was embarrassingly taxing; I’m supposed to be in decent shape, after all, with all the biking I’ve been doing.  You wouldn’t know it for all the gasping and coughing, though!

When we finished up, I waited a few minutes and synced my bodybugg.   I wasn’t surprised to see that it had spiked my calorie burn rate quite nicely (up from my sedentary 1-2 calories per minute to about 8 a minute for those killer 10 minutes).  But when I checked again later, I saw that my burn rate was back in my standard ho-hum range after just a couple of minutes.

Intervals are good for other things, though, and I wanted to get at least a few data samples, so Daniel and I did 30-second intervals on the road bikes one evening for 1o minutes total (in addition to the rest of the ride).  This didn’t spike my calorie burn rate as much as running (I’m guessing because I at least have the muscles for this sport) but still moved it up nicely.  No long term burn, though.

We did more road bike intervals the next night, and I ran the one-minute intervals with Leanna the day after that.  No ongoing metabolism increase followed.

So now the question is, of course, where is the misinformation?  Is the HIIT claim inaccurate, or is the bodybugg not picking up on the effect for some reason?   I honestly have no idea, and really no way of finding out.

I’m going to continue to do intervals regardless, running because I want to encourage Leanna and I figure it’s probably good cross-training in small doses, and cycling because I want to develop the ability to sprint a little more effectively.  But it seems that I’ll need to motivate myself with gains in sport-specific efficiency rather than magical weight loss!

Fortunately this picture is not from the long (100 km) charity ride on Saturday, but instead from a short ride around town on Sunday. Daniel and my mom rode the tandem and it was windy enough that I wanted to draft on my single bike. It didn’t rain much while we were actually out riding, but a whole lot of muck from the earlier rainstorm got kicked up, right onto my face. It was still worth it for the drafting (Daniel was pushing a pretty good pace and I was working to keep up) and that’s what showers are for, right?

Saturday, on the other hand, was beautiful biking weather. It was cool-ish in the morning and warmed up to mid-70s by the time we were done. There was a good bit of wind, but it was constant, so at least what we fought as a headwind also benefited us as a tailwind.

Because of the differences in terrain and wind between this ride and the Cycle for Independence last month, it’s a little tricky to compare. This weekend I think we had a little more wind, but also more tailwind to push us along. Overall, though, I think I’m stronger. We managed to shave some time off and get it done in almost exactly four hours, and Daniel says he felt like I was stronger (his opinion is particularly significant as he was the other rider on the tandem).

Because I tend to try all sorts of things at a given time (rather than be a good researcher and do a control run, then add one variable), it’s hard to directly correlate results to one change. Did I do better because of PUSH.tv or because of all the mountain biking? Or was it because I’m slightly lighter? Who knows. But it does seem like this combination of PUSH + lots of biking + healthier eating is having the desired effect. I’m continuing all three and hopefully by my sister Leanna’s wedding (August 19) I’ll be downright buff.

In any case, tomorrow is the Bob LeBow Bike Tour, another 100km charity ride.  I’m trying to remember the last time Daniel and I rode the tandem, and I’m not sure we have since the last 100km.  It’s mostly been mountain biking lately (and I am just not gutsy enough to attach myself to Daniel on single-track, even if we had the bike for it).

This will be a good functional test of the PUSH training, since I’d only done it for two weeks before the last ride, and now it’s been five.  I haven’t done this ride before, but if it’s a similar course, the ride time and overall feeling when I’m done should be a good indicator of progress.  I’ll update you with my impressions next week.

I could swear that I came across a site a month or two ago that had user-submitted workouts online. Kind of like YouTube for exercise. Brilliant concept, and if it turns out I’m crazy and it really doesn’t exist, someone should do it. Much better than the sites trying to sell videos that just give you a little clip.

I cannot for the life of me find this site. I’ve looked through my del.icio.us links, the related popular links, searched, even went through two months of chat transcripts (because I’m pretty sure I told my friend Tricia about it). Can. Not. Find it.

Does anyone know what I’m talking about?