Bill Clark

In my previous post, I detailed my experiences with the South Beach Diet and my weight loss since August. Tomorrow is the beginning of my second stab at Phase 1 of the South Beach Diet, and also the first day of the John P. Health Challenge. While I had already planned on sticking with the diet, I’m joining the Health Challenge for fun.

I urge anyone who’s trying to lose weight or just get into shape to join me in the Health Challenge. It runs from January 1 through February 28, 2010. It’s pretty simple, and there are only 6 rules to follow.

The Rules

from John’s blog

1. Eliminate as much sugar from your diet as possible. No more candy, cake or cookies. You are allowed Two otherwise illegal candy bars per week IF you follow all of the other rules.
2. No sugary drinks like Coke (here’s why) or alcoholic drinks (huge calories)! In fact, nothing but water, unsweetened tea or coffee to drink! You are allowed Two otherwise illegal drinks per week IF you follow all of the other rules.
3. Decrease food portions by 30-50% for all meals. Instead of eating whatever portion you are given, slow down while eating and stop after you feel full.
4. Snack all you want, but only fruit, veggies or nuts are allowed!
5. Exercise at least 5 times a week. This doesn’t mean long exercise daily! It means frequent bursts of exercise. Pushups and situps a few times a day for example.
6. Publicly update the rest of us and encourage others to keep going! (Twitter, Facebook, etc.)

For more details on how to join the challenge, take a look at John’s Health Challenge post. There’s a section on how to join at the end of his post.

I haven’t quite decided exactly how I’m going to track my progress. I use Traineo.com to track my weight goals, but that’s about all I use it for beyond the forums. The diet tracking leaves a bit to be desired. I’ve also been playing with dailyburn.com, but it’s a little too cluttered for me. I think I may end up with an Excel spreadsheet to track my progress. Whatever I ultimately choose for tracking, you can be sure I’ll be posting updates here every few days with my progress.

Here’s to a healthy and happy New Year!

Cheers!

January 1, 2010 is almost here. In recent years, I had given up on making new year’s resolutions because I never stuck with them beyond the first few weeks of the year. This year is going to be different.

For as long as I can remember—as far back as my early teens—I’ve been overweight. I’ve always had a gut. I’ve never really been “fat” as I think of fat. My arms and legs have always been lean, all my excess weight has been kept in my midsection. I smoked for over 10 years, but I quit on May 5, 2005. I gained more weight when I quit, but I don’t know whether that’s tied to my quitting smoking or my increased consumption of beer. Probably both.

In August, Rachel and I decided to try out the South Beach Diet. I’ve never really believed in diets, and honestly have never tried one. I was skeptical, mainly because of all the negative things I’ve heard and read about fad diets in the media. Rachel’s parents used the South Beach Diet a year or so ago, and they seemed to have good luck with it, so that contributed to my consideration of the diet. After reading the book—which isn’t as long as it looks, nearly two-thirds of it is recipes—my opinion of the diet had changed somewhat. I still thought of it as a diet, something I might or might not stick with.

After the first two weeks, known as “Phase 1″ in the book, my outlook had completely changed. It truly is a change in eating habits rather than just a fad diet. The first two weeks was much easier than I thought it was going to be. Giving up sugar, beer & wine, sugary drinks, and most carbohydrates was easy. I wasn’t hungry all the time, and didn’t need to snack throughout the day. Eating lean meats, green vegetables, nuts and low-fat cheeses for the first two weeks was so easy, and I’d lost so much more weight than I had expected that we decided to stick with Phase 1 for an extra week or so. I’d lost nearly 15 pounds in the first 3 weeks of the diet that there was no question in my mind that I would stick with the diet.

We’d gone from eating out 2-3 times a week and eating processed foods to eating healthy, home-cooked meals every night. Rather than ordering my regular sandwich at the cafeteria at work, I switched to salads for lunch on the days that I didn’t bring leftovers from the previous night to work. I was surprised at how easy it was to make the change in eating habits. The main driving factor for me behind sticking with the changes was the weight loss. In 5 months, I’ve lost 25 pounds and I’ve never felt better. Not bad for only changing eating habits without adding any kind of exercise. Fitting into clothes that have been in storage bins for years is a great feeling!

Over the past couple of weeks, however, I’ve gained about 3 pounds. I’m back up to 207 pounds from 204 the last time I weighed myself. I knew that I would gain a few pounds over the holidays, so I’m not surprised but I am a little disappointed. My goal of getting to 200 pounds by January 1 isn’t going to happen, but I’m not deterred. On January 1, I intend to update my goal to get to 185 pounds by June 2010. With a little luck and adding some exercise to the mix, I think it should be fairly easy to meet this goal.

All of that said, I invite and encourage anyone reading this to join me in my quest to get into shape and increase your general health and well-being. My plan is to update this blog at least once a week, and link to it from both my Facebook profile and Twitter. If you think this is something you’d like to do, please leave a comment and let me know!

I’m providing a few links to sites and apps I’ve used to help track my progress, and some places I’ve turned to for inspiration.

Traineo: Traineo is a simple tracking tool that allows you to track weight, measurements, and quality of diet. I say quality of diet because it doesn’t allow you to track everything you eat, but it allows you to input calories consumed and rate your diet. Their forums are great, a good sense of community and inspiration to keep you on your path.

Weightbot: A beautifully-designed, simple weight tracking app for the iPhone. The interface is simple, user friendly, and just plain great-looking.

South Beach Century Club Recipes: A great collection of South Beach Diet recipes. Be careful when looking at the Phase 1 recipes, some of them contain ingredients not recommended during Phase 1, but it’s not widespread. There are a few great recipes I enjoy on this site.