My Roosters !! AWESOME !!!

(My big Flag is in the top right image !!! YAY !!!)

(via patricktkane)

Well it has been a while since my last Blog post, but i can happily say i am still going strong !!!

I’ve hit the 25 KG’s lost mark so i am Extremly happy with my progress, i’m actually closer to the 30KG lost mark now so i am well over half way and on target for my goal!

Something that has suprised me though, is the need to fuel my engine more often now that i have lost this weight than i did before when i was larger.

The difference i found when i was larger was that i would eat for the sake of eating, where as now, i find that i eat to actually fuel my body and now that i’m at that point i find that i have more respect for what i put into my body.

In other news, i have reached some other mile stones !!!

• i can run 1km under 6min 30sec (running 10km/hr with 1 min warm up at 6km/hr)
• i can run 2km (running 8km/hr)

Anyone who knows me would understand why these are an achievement, i never used to run, me and running never mixed… now….. LOVE TO RUN !!!.

I even went for a 4km run/walk in minus temps when i was in the Blue Mountains a couple of weeks back and i LOVED IT !

But really there is one achievement that i am actually MORE proud of than all the stuff above.

I am Extremly Proud of my Darling wife Gabby, she has been working hard to get her weight down and has reached her 10kg milestone !!!

I know she is very happy to reach this mark and i am VERY proud of her !! We are in this together BABE !!!!

thefitty:

LOSING HARD FAT VS. SOFT FAT

Researchers are studying whether subcutaneous fat, or soft fat, and visceral fat, or hard fat, should be combated in different ways. More research needs to be done before a conclusion can be reached. To lose any kind of fat, however, you should plan to burn more calories than you consume. Consult your physician for help developing a weight loss plan.

Types

Visceral fat, or hard fat, is found deep within the abdominal cavity in the spaces between internal organs. Visceral fat is associated with metabolic disturbances and increased risk for cardiovascular disease and type 2 diabetes, according to Harvard Medical School. In women, it is linked with breast cancer and gallbladder problems. Subcutaneous fat, or soft fat, lies beneath the skin and accumulates mostly in the lower body. Hormones and heredity affect where your body fat is distributed.

Weight Loss

Exercise may be especially helpful for eliminating subcutaneous fat, according to a 2007 study in “Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise,” in which sedentary young women were divided into three research groups: one control group, a group that reduced calories and exercised one to two times a week, and a group that ate normally and exercised three to four times a week. Both exercising groups lost an equal amount of body fat, but the group that solely exercised lost more subcutaneous fat. Visceral fat loss seemed to be more affected by diet.

Conflicting Results

Another study suggests that exercise may help you lose more visceral fat than subcutaneous fat. In the 2000 study published in the journal “Lipids,” non-obese women followed a regular moderate exercise program without making any dietary changes for six months. While they didn’t lose weight, they lost fat, most of which was visceral fat.

Tips

To lose weight, aim to burn more calories than you consume. Be sure to include both exercise and diet in your weight loss program. Harvard Medical School recommends regular moderate-intensity physical activity of at least 30 minutes and up to 60 minutes per day to control weight, especially if you’re trying to lose visceral abdominal fat. Strength training may also help fight fat; it builds muscle, which increases your metabolism. Follow a nutritious diet as well. Focus on complex carbohydrates and lean proteins. Don’t follow crash diets, which encourage your body to cling to fat in starvation mode.

(via jodiet)

Well it’s been a massive week so far !!!

Sunday: Touch Footy

Monday Lunch: Yoga

Monday Night: Gym

Wednesday: More gym !

I’ve realised if i don’t want to plateau i need to do one of 2 things:

Eat less…. BAD IDEA

or

Get more active !

So i chose option 2 and things are going great !

I weighed in at the gym tonight with my trainer and i am continuing to lose weight which is great, but the thing that impressed me most……..

Body Fat % is down to 33.4% !!!!  now lets be honest, it is still a large number… But when you consider i was closer to the 40-45% mark about 5 months ago, i am really happy with that !

So it’s nothing special news wise, but it shows if you keep at it and work hard… YOU GET RESULTS !

You all know whats gonna happen here…… Sexy Time !!!!!

(via marcopoloo)

So yeah, it’s 11.30pm on a saturday nigight and yes let us say, i have gone against all that has been planned and been out on the piss tonight !!!

You may be suprised that i can still type coherantly….. thankgod for spell check !

But this is a call out to all those who are loohking lo lose weight, you can still have awesome nights out. being fit does not mean the end of great nights out, it just means picking and  choosing when it happens, and if you pick correctly !! you can have an awesome night !

Enjoy your night all !!! I am !

Ok, so it’s been a while since my last blog, so what better time to do one than on a cold saturday night after Australia just beat Wales in the Rugby Union.

Something i’ve picked up on from a few other blogs i follow is the concept of “Non Scale Victories”

it’s actually something new to me, i mean we all have the target of losing X kilos or fitting into a size X outfit, yeah they are our long term goals but appart from reaching a certain weight, what else do we have to drive us.

Now i am only 5 months into my journey, but looking back i had “Non Scale Victories” with out even knowing it.

A couple i had was:

*Getting 4 extra holes put in my belt so i could tighten it

* Fitting into size 42 waist Jeans

* fitting into XL jumpers and shirts

* increase in fitness and stamina

* Increase in running speed and agility

* more muscle definition

*The fact i have scored more tries in the past 3 weeks of touch football than i ever dd when i was younger and bigger !!!!!

They are a few things that i have achieved in the past 5 months that i am extremly proud about.

So for those on the Journey, take notice of these things, really do, they are the little things that keep you going to reach your ultimate goal, what ever that may be !

have-no-self-doubt:

Apple Cinnamon Protein Pancakes 

You’ll Need:

• 1/3 cup oats
• 1/3 cup egg whites
• 1/2 an apple - grated or chopped 
• 1 scoop vanilla protein powder 
• 1/4 tsp cinnamon 
• 1/4 tsp vanilla extract 

Directions:

• In a bowl, mix together oats, egg whites, protein powder, cinnamon, and vanilla extract.
• Fold in the chopped or grated apple pieces.
• Pour half of the mixture on a pan or griddle sprayed with non-stick cooking spray over medium heat. 
• Flip until they become golden brown on both sides.
• Top with extra apple slices and syrup or natural nut butter and enjoy :) 

(via thefitty)

So it’s been awhile since i posted a progress update…. so here goes !

I am feeling really good !!!

I ave really come to get used to my eating habbits, just beign smart about what i eat, staying away from processed foods, eating alot of leafy greens, steak chicken and Chilli and Jalopenos !

So that brings us to now, you see that sack of potatos….. that weighs 20 kilos……. i have finally hit that mark !! i am ALMOST HALF WAY !!!!

So the moral to the story…. keep at it people, with every kilo lost, you are getting closer to your goal !!!!

I found this article on the Sydney Morning Herald website about 4 months ago (just as i started on my Cutting the crap campaign) and was pissed off i couldn’t find it again…..until now !!!!

Please have a read, it is really informative and they have a really useful online calculator for Kilojule consumption to reach your goals ! (can be changed to calories for our American friends)

Enjoy the read !

The diet dilemma

June 3, 2012

Eat less, weigh less. Simple? Not quite, writes Nick Galvin.

Losing weight is simple in principle. The rule of thumb has been that if you cut out 2100 kilojoules a day - the equivalent of two large lattes or a blueberry muffin - you will lose about half a kilo a week until you reach that magic number on the scales.

Simple - but, as it turns out, probably way too simple.

It now appears that dietitians, doctors and others may have been getting it wrong all these years. There’s a lot more to losing weight than just kilojoules in/kilojoules out.

 

When you start to lose weight, your body slows down your metabolism. In other words, you use less energy for the same activities.

This reaction has its roots in our primitive past, says Professor Michael Cowley, director of the Monash Obesity & Diabetes Institute. “If you go on a diet, your body says, ‘Aha, here is a famine’, and it decreases energy expenditure, so you need less energy just to stay at that weight,” he says. “This is probably because we evolved in conditions where famine was frequent, and if you had an appropriate physiological response to famine, you were more likely to survive and your genes got propagated.”

The result is that if you stay on the same reduced-kilojoule diet, over time the gap between kilojoules in and kilojoules out narrows. In a paper published last year in The Lancet, researchers from the US National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK) found that for a given weight-loss goal, half the loss would occur in the first year, but the remaining kilos would take another two years to lose.

“The duration of diet you need to achieve meaningful weight loss is much longer than we used to think because there is a law of diminishing returns,” says Cowley. “If you are only decreasing food intake, it will take a lot longer for that weight loss to occur because your body fights against it.”

All this goes a long way towards explaining why so many dieters shed the first few kilos easily, then get discouraged because it gets harder to lose the rest of the weight (and then hit the nearest bag of chips out of frustration).

The NIDDK researchers also produced an online calculator that shows how many kilojoules you need to consume to lose a given amount of weight and how much you need to reduce your intake for good to maintain that goal weight.

The good news, however, is that it is possible to trick the body and override that primitive instinct to slow your metabolism in times of “famine”. You guessed it: exercise.

The National Weight Control Registry is an American research project that tracks people who have lost a significant amount of weight (at least 30 pounds, or 13.6 kilograms) and, critically, kept it off for at least a year.

Researchers are interested in what these successful slimmers have done to keep the weight off. One common tactic is sticking to a regimented diet, but another, says Cowley, is that they “exercise like crazy” for more than an hour a day. “We think this is how they are dealing with the fact that although their body wants to decrease energy expenditure, they are forcing it to [burn energy] by running on the spot or whatever.”

But even for those coming from a base of little or no exercise, that doesn’t necessarily mean racing out to buy an expensive gym membership. Exercise physiologist John Felton, from The Exercise Clinic in Sydney’s Crows Nest, says that, as well as prescribing an exercise plan, one of the things he focuses on are the “activities of daily living”.

It is all too easy for people simply to stop moving enough. “If you are in a sedentary job or you have got yourself into a sedentary ‘hole’ - you come home in the afternoon and sit down and watch television - that sedentary life becomes self-fulfilling,” says Felton. In essence, the less you move, the more difficult moving becomes.

Felton has clients wear an accelerometer for a week. The device monitors movement, from waking to going to bed, detecting spikes of energy and periods of inactivity. Incidental exercise can be as simple as doing the ironing or walking to a printer on the other side of the office.

“It doesn’t have to be a lot of exercise as long as it keeps people moving during the day to cut down those big periods of sitting,” he says. “It’s very easy to double the amount of energy expenditure with those daily activities if you start off at a low level.”

Another element, however, also contributes to the “plateau” effect in weight loss. Even as we get fitter, we often keep exercising at the same intensity rather than upping the effort and employing a training principle known as “progressive overload”.

“A lot of time that is not adhered to,” says Felton. “People will do their 40-minute or hour walk, and instead of looking for hills or aiming to maintain a heart rate, they do the same thing. If they maintain the same pace as they get fitter, their efficiency will improve and their heart rate will drop, so they will burn less energy as they do it.”

In other words, you have to keep pushing yourself to get the benefit of the exercise as you get fitter.

And stay away from the muffins.

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/lifestyle/diet-and-fitness/the-diet-dilemma-20120603-1zplz.html#ixzz1wjB6voUT