Resolution 2011 – Where I’m coming from (and where this is going)

A year ago about this time I had made the New Year resolution to lose weight. I know it’s cliche but it’s just one of those things that, unless you are a male underwear model or Olympic swimmer, you know that you need to do each and every year. For the record, I absolutely abhorred the gym each time I’ve ever gone to it and still do. Whether it was Gold’s, Planet Fitness or whatever, the gym is the LEAST conducive environment I’ve ever been in to losing weight and getting into shape, and I don’t see forthcoming reason that this opinion will change. What’s more is that I don’t even like exercising. If I wanted to labor intensively on physical activity, I wouldn’t have become a software engineer. Welcome to the nerd mystic.

Still, I knew that I needed to get it done and I also knew that I wouldn’t be able to accomplish it. I needed help, so I got my best friend on board to help me stay on track. My buddy is no gym rat, but he is capable of driving people to keep on track with something by the sheer nagging nature of his personality. While over the years I had grown a pretty tough skin to his relentless pushing, but its something that you never become immune to. I was counting on this relentless attitude of his to get me through my goal of losing 50 lbs. across the 2010 calendar year. Then his wife left him, and going to the gym with me wasn’t the biggest thing on his mind. Needless to say, I didn’t lose my 50 lbs. in 2010.

The sad truth is that I gained weight during last year. On any given day my weight will fluctuate 10 lbs, give or take, so I don’t worry about it when my weight goes up unless it stays up for more than a couple days. With a major project coming to fruition over this past summer coming with about two months of long hours at the office, eating junk and convenience food, then immediately going home and crashing, I found myself at the end of the summer weighing the most I have in my entire life at and even 300 lbs. The weight has yet to come off and now 2011 is my critical year, the year that I need to make something happen.

As I mentioned I’m not a real fan of exercising, it’s just not how this nerd rolls. So towards the end of 2010 I went looking for alternatives. I’ve mostly heard from people (mostly the gym rats) that the key to weight loss is simple… calories in versus calories out. If you want to lose weight you need to eat lots of low calorie foods to effectively fool your body into thinking it has more than enough energy and that you aren’t starving yourself, as well as exercise to create a calorie deficit. This makes perfect sense in a perfect and normal world, however as I’ve learned over time my world is far from normal.

I’ve known since I was a young boy that I’m not normal. I knew that I wasn’t normal when I my teacher pulled me out of class in 3rd grade to participate in a school-run trivia contest comprised almost solely of 6th graders. I knew I wasn’t normal when at age 10 after reading “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea” by Jules Verne that I spec’d out and created schematics for the Nautilus as described in the book. I knew I wasn’t normal when in 7th grade they asked me to take the SAT’s four years early and scored higher than the 11th graders I took it with. I knew I wasn’t normal when a few years after college, when I had gained 100 lbs since graduating high school, that my waist was just 4″ larger than it was when I weighed 165 lbs.

The real turning point on the calories in vs. calories out convention came for me when early in 2010 when I subscribed to weight watchers and actually found myself eating MORE with the program than I did before. Obviously conventional means were not going to work for me.

I suspect it has something to do with my body’s structure. Throwing out how much I currently weigh, I’m not a small guy. I’m 6’1″ tall, which isn’t towering, but I have the skeletal frame of a man 6″ or 7″ taller than me. Even at my current weight my ribs can be felt on my sides, and with my arms flat at my sides my shoulders fill all but 3″ of a standard door frame. People have never been able to accurately estimate my weight, from casual observers to the the nurses at the doctor’s office that weigh me. I am by and large far stronger than any of my friends, including the few that are bigger and in better shape than I am.

Each time I’ve tried losing weight I’ve wanted to spend the time investigating all of the methods and theories out there for losing weight in the most efficient manner. Each time I shot these ideas past people, I was told that I “… couldn’t research myself into losing weight…” and that I just had to get to the gym and start exercising. In the past I reluctantly agreed that they were probably right and got to work, and each time I failed miserably. I always thought that there had to be a better way, a SMARTER way to lose weight and getting into shape, a way that would appeal to my nerd sensibilities and my lack of desire to spend countless hours in the gym. What I’ve found so far is, at least to me, a very interesting set of ideas.

I’ve read that a better way to lose weight is to increase your Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR). Running for 3 hours on the treadmill at the gym is a great way to lose weight in short bursts, because you burn a large number of calories while you are running, but it effectively stops when you stop running. You increase your BMR by building muscle such that your body burns more calories when it is at rest. I think its fantastic if you have the time to run for 3 hours in order burn 500 calories, but I’d much rather increase by BMR by 50 cal/hr so that I can burn 1200 calories per day while doing nothing special besides breathing.

Makes sense right? I think so anyway. So that on a high level is what I’m shooting for and what I’ll be working on. I’m out to disprove my friends and casual observer’s mantras that one MUST just go to the gym and kill your desire to live by working endlessly for minimal results. That’s not how I do things around here… I do the research and develop more efficient ways to do things. That’s what I get paid to do in my professional life and that’s what I am going to do for my endeavor to lose weight and get into shape.

For the time being, this blog will be focused on sharing the tips and information that I find along the way of building a better body using nerd tactics… brains over brawn… that kind of thing. I hope that what I dig up is ultimately effective (for my sake) and informative as a way to blow away the barriers of conventional wisdom constructed by the meatheads at the gym. I’ve started diving into my first round of information, the book “The 4 Hour Body”  by Tim Ferriss, and the Nerd Fitness blog of Steve Kamb.

So Happy New Year everyone, and cheers to 2011 and building a smarter body!