Mar 23 2009

Twitter #10morepounds Community Weightloss Project: Week 1

Category: Fatblogging — Jeremy Wright @ 10:34 am
This entry is part 1 of 2 in the series 10morepounds

Over the last couple of months, my weight loss has stalled in the 225 pound range, down from 255 pounds ish. This morning the scale hit 229, and I decided it was time to step it up again. And what better way than to get a bunch of others involved, get some motivation and accountability going, and share tips/tricks/successes/failures?

So last night I started a new Twitter tag: #10morepounds for folk to lose 10 pounds in 10 weeks.

I wanted to kick this off with some simple tips, tricks and thoughts for those who haven’t been in weight loss mode for the last year, or who just need a bit of an extra kick.

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The Participants

Before I do, though, here are the participants (comment/tweet at me if you’re not on the list, or if you want your name to link to somewhere else like your webpage!):

How It Works

Alright, this is pretty darn simple:

  • 10 weeks
  • Lose 10 pounds
  • Every Monday take your weight, and state on twitter how much you lost (note for girls: not your actual weight, unless you went to)
  • Every Monday, I’ll post my tips and such. If you have any of your own, comment on one of the series posts!

Week 1 Tips

I’ve written a bunch about my weight loss tips, but since that’s old and there’s a lot of it and its overwhelming, here are some thoughts for simple things you can do now to kickstart your metabolism, drop some bad habits and start the hard stuff (like EXERCISING).

This photograph shows two pink grapefruits (Ci...
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First, though, some basics:

  • The more water you drink, the more weight you lose
  • The more you split your meals up, and eat smaller portions throughout the day, the more weight you lose
  • The less grease and fast food you eat, the more weight you lose
  • The less pop you drink, the more weight you lose
  • The more grapefruit specifically, but fruit/veg generically, you eat, the more you lose
  • The more you keep your heart rate up for more than 10 minutes a day, the more weight you lose

If you do these things, you’ll lose weight. But more importantly, doing these things will probably break most of your bad habits, get your body processing food more efficiently and set you up for success over the next 10 weeks!

If you aren’t doing moost of the above, don’t even worry about the rest of the stuff below. It’ll just make it harder to remember everything. If you’re already most of the above, here are some more specific things I used to do, and now need to get back into the habit of doing!

  • Use programs such as 100pushups and 200situps to lay a foundation of daily exercise (I swap out between each program each day, as it works a different part of your body). Since we have 10 weeks, it’s perfect to get both programs done (since you’ll undoubtedly miss some weeks, do some weeks over, etc). Start today! Do them in the morning.
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    Do 20-30 minutes of cardio. Goal here is to sweat for 10 minutes. Walk if you’re out of shape, jog if you can, run with the dog, play frisbee, play football with your kids, play basketball… Just get out and do something. You can even just run up and down 2 steps in your house if you want. Just get the heart rate up for 5 minutes, then do something slightly more leisurely for a minute or two, then back at it again. Do this a couple of times a week.

  • Weigh yourself at the same point every day. Early morning, pre eating, post… erm, release is best.
  • Eat half a grapefruit every morning. Grapefruit covers a multitude of sins!
  • Do other kinds of workouts. Don’t have a gym? Use one of the hotel workout regimens out there.

Now Get To It!

You signed up to lose 10 pounds in 10 weeks. It is TOTALLY doable. In fact, you’ll probably lose 2-4 pounds this week alone if you hit this. But you’ve got to keep it up for the whole 10 weeks.

And here’s the dirty little secret… If you do, you’ll be in the habit of all of this, and you’ll keep losing weight afterwards!

Talk Back

Have thoughts, tips, etc? Comment so other #10morepounds folk can learn along with you!

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Interested in Joining In?

Use the #10morepounds tag on twitter, comment or email me (jeremy@b5media.com)!

Some extra articles that MIGHT help (haven’t read them all, so I dunno!)

Mar 30 2009

#10morepounds – Week 2

Category: Fatblogging — Jeremy Wright @ 12:20 pm
This entry is part 2 of 2 in the series 10morepounds

Well, it’s now the start of Week  2 of #10morepounds! How’d you do?

If you answered this question with “I sucked, I binged, I didn’t work out enough, etc” then let me reboot your perspective. Did you do better last week than you would have done otherwise? Did you make healthier choices? Did you drinnk less pop? Did you get into the mindset of “healthy is better than giving into my urges”?

If so, then you’ve made huge progress this week, and you deserve a big pat on the back. I’d mail you one, but that’d be creepy ;-)

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Week 1 Recap

To recap, the goals for week 1 were pretty simple:

  • Get started
  • Drink more water, eat smaller more frequent meals
  • Start some form of regular exercise, but nothing that’ll burn you out
  • Eat better, especially grapefruit, drink better (especially no pop)

Did you do these? How many? How often? Every step counts. Celebrate your victories!

How We’re Doing

Well, personally,  I’ve gone from 232 to 226, so 6 pounds in a week. I know most of that was water and that the real work starts NOW though!

Only a handful of people have reported in so far today (come on, report in y’all!), but weight loss so far is: 32 pounds!

New Participants

Here is a list of new participants (if I’m missing you or you want to join, let me know!):

Week 2 Goals

For week 2, we really just want to build on week 1. You probably weren’t perfect (not that perfect is the goal), so stepping up your food, spacing of meals, water, pop intake is all critical. Your eating habits are the ones you need to change most because they’ll have the biggest impact on your heart, health, blood pressure, cholesterol, etc.

GLENDALE, CA - JANUARY 04: A bottle of Xenadr...
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But, since our goal is weight loss, adding in some exercise will only accelerate that.

If you don’t have a regular exercise program, my recommendation is to build a “tiered” approach. The problem with doing something big like “go to the gym 3 times per week” is that it’s easy to feel like you’ve failed. By building a 3-tiered program, you’re able to feel like you’ve done 2/3 things or 1/3 things, instead of “pass/fail”.

The way I do this is the following:

  • Foundation: easy, regular, quick workouts 3x/week like 100pushup challenge, 200situps challenge, etc (Google if you don’t know what these are). I’ve recently added stretches to my mix. This takes 5-10 minutes per workout, so is easy to fit into your day.
  • Cardio: Cardio = life. It’s great for your heart. It’s HARD to start (ask @acowboyswife!), but so worth it. 20-30 minutes twice a week is huge, will increase your energy and make you feel great.
  • Sculpting: Some kind of toning, whether it’s yoga, weights, resistance training, etc. Getting this in 1-2 times per week is ideal.
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If you’re doing nothing now, start with the foundational stuff. Next week, add cardio. The week after, add some kind of sculpting.

By varying stuff, and doing multiple things, you’ll keep your body guessing, work different muscle groups and generally feel like you failed less.

Talk Back

Have thoughts, tips, etc? Comment so other #10morepounds folk can learn along with you!

Interested in Joining In?

Use the #10morepounds tag on twitter, comment or email me (jeremy@b5media.com)!

Some Useful Articles

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