Friday, January 4, 2019

Top down, bottom up diet approach!

Losing weight has been a sort of 'project' of mine for what has seemed to be forever. Ever since I turned 50, and I had stopped smoking, my weight had been a medical issue! Maintaining a proper weight was an up, down, sideways and around affair. Some things worked while most did not. In all cases, it was a tough slog, made even more difficult by someone who enjoyed the taste of beer!

But then, a series of events in late 2018 change the whole diet paradigm, just a tad. Let me set the stage for you. Back last Christmas Day, I came down with the flu. A really bad form that threw everything at this poor slob; body aches, sore throat, lung congestion AND a loss of appetite! A virus that represented the Golden Grail of illness for anyone who needed to shed a few pounds. And, for the next solid week, from Christmas Day to New Years I was very sick and did not have much desire to eat much at all. And, it showed! I went from 200 to 195 like an express elevator headed straight to hell! Through bleary red eyes, each morning, I'd look up from my bathroom scale and smile... The days went by in sick bliss [sic]...

Inevitably, however, I got over that bug! And, with my improved state of being, my hunger came back with a vengeance! I suddenly found myself starving at 4AM! Shit. And, of course, my weight started to creep back upwards... By the second of January, I was back to 196... And, I was hungry! AND, it was still four in the f'ing morning!

Lying in bed on that dreary day, I had the following thoughts; 1) one of my big problems, when dieting, was my tendency to eat most of my calories in the early part of a given day, so that by the time the afternoon came along, I was already rationing the rest of the day's food! 2), as I didn't really like exercising, I would often put it off to the point that the day was about over and I'd think 'what the heck'! I needed to do something about that, and that's when I came up with the graphic pictured here!

In order to understand what you are looking at, picture the left triangle as meals eaten versus a second triangle of exercises performed. Note that when I'd begin my day, I would plan to take on the smallest calorie load while, at the same time, perform the majority of my exercise routines. Then, in the middle of the day, I'd have a moderate lunch followed along with moderate exercise. Finally, toward the afternoon hours, I would still have the bulk of my allocated calories to chew through and only a very light amount of work to perform. Such a plan would see me eating about a thousand to 1200 calories per day while exercising off a hundred or so. That worked out to a .2 to .14 pound loss of weight per day, theoretically! [As a kicker the two triangles combined formed a parallelogram. What that meant, I had no clue, but it looked pretty cool].



MY PLAN - Repeat the same menu day along with doing the same exercises. And, whenever I strayed in the food consumption department, I would 'square it off' via more exercise. Note that when you squash the 'box' shown below, you get a straight line, which is unity. A bit of quantum physics at play here, ya think? Anyway, give this a try. it seemed to be working for me!

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