Category Archives: Losing Weight

Health, Losing Weight

I’m Tiptoeing Around

Richard Ha writes:

Goal: lose one pound per week for 39 weeks
Starting weight on 5/23/06: 214.6 lbs.
End goal, on 2/18/07: 175 lbs.

This week’s target weight: 205.6 lbs.
Today’s actual weight: 202.9 lbs. 7/23/06

I am 2.7 lbs. ahead of schedule
I lost .6 lbs. since last week

Weight loss since 5/23: 11.7 lbs.

Resting heart rate 5/23: 65 beats per minute

Today’s resting heart rate: 56 beats per minute.*

* This goes down as one gets into better shape. Lance Armstrong is said to be 32. George W’s was reported to be 47 beats per minute. Out of shape, mine is in the 70s. My best was 52, many years ago.

* * *

I’m 61 years old now. Is that old?

Prior to starting this weight loss program, I’d been feeling what I thought were the effects of aging. The symptoms were general aches and pains, especially in and around the spine.

I’ve been noticing that if I accidentally bumped into a rigid object, like a wall, I would feel a jolt run all the way down my spine. This had been coming on over the last five years. More noticeable is that over the last year I have felt a jolt go up my spine when stepping off a curb or down a step.

Before I started this weight loss program, I noticed myself taking a little longer to straighten out my back after sitting for a while, like after dinner or after sitting in the office for a while, and when getting out of the truck after driving for a bit. I hate to admit it but I was starting to acquire the gait of an old person. The gait had to do with avoiding aches and pains.

I was starting to wonder if this was all age-related. Or did it have more to do with being overweight and out of shape?

My recent program of weight loss has already helped me answer the question of whether it’s old age or under-use of my muscles.

It’s now eight weeks into the weight loss program. I’ve lost 11.7 pounds and I’m in much better shape. I’m moving around a lot more and I’m regaining the spring in my step.

I found myself tiptoeing around the house the other morning. This is significant, because tiptoeing has to do with the condition of one’s calf muscles. The calf muscles allows one to step toe-first and so cushion one’s step. Watch yourself walking or running down stairs—it’s toe, then heel.

Before, I was feeling a jarring and pounding sensation when walking down steps. It was because I was taking steps flat-footed, with no shock absorption. To protect against the discomfort, when no one was looking I would take the three stairs at home one at a time. It should be left, right, left and gone. But for me it had become more like left and right, one; left and right and two; then left and right and down.

It just occurred to me that I ran down the stairs the other day, and that I no longer drag myself out of a chair hoping I’ll be able to straighten out before it becomes noticeable. Now I find myself sliding out of the chair at a restaurant, jumping up and going straight to pay the bill. When did the pain go? One day, it dawned on me: It’s gone.

A light bulb went on the other morning when I found myself tiptoeing around the house trying to be quiet. I had forgotten I could do that.

Chris Seymour, owner of The Bike Hub in Hilo (mountain biking is his real job, and the bike shop is what he does to kill time) walks around on his toes more than anyone I know. His calves are so strong that it looks like he has a hard time staying down on the ground. He has major shock absorbers.

The good news? I’ve learned it’s definitely not age—it’s non-use. “Use ’em or lose ’em” is a true statement.

Age 61 is not yet old, my granddaughter’s opinion not withstanding. Just don’t let yourself get too heavy. Don’t let gravity win. When your calf muscles are overtaxed, it sets you up to slow down even more.

Second, get your resting heart rate down. The heart is a muscle and a strong heart takes less effort to do its work.

And that is the heart of the matter.

Losing Weight

Good Music

Goal: lose one pound per week for 39 weeks
Starting weight on 5/23/06: 214.6 lbs.
End goal, on 2/18/07: 175 lbs.

This week’s target weight: 206.6 lbs. 
Today’s actual weight: 203.5. lbs. 7/16/06
I am 3.1 lbs. ahead of schedule
I lost 1.1  lbs since last week 
Weight loss since 5/23: 11.1  lbs.

Resting heart rate 5/23: 65 beats per minute
Today’s resting heart rate 55 beats per minute.*
* This goes down as one gets into better shape. Lance Armstrong is said to be 32. George W’s was reported to be 47 beats per minute. Out of shape, mine is in the 70s. My best was 52, many years ago.

***

I realize I’ve become overconfident in my ability to lose weight, as if it is automatic. I’ve started to wait until Thursday to focus on my weight loss goal for the week. This week, because of the strenuous bike ride last week, I took two days off the elliptical. That’s 1000 calories that I did not burn off.

At about the same time, Etsuko, our son Brian’s mom-in-law, made banana bread. She makes really, really delicious, moist and heavy banana bread. If one serving of steak is supposed to be the size of a deck of cards, I think I’d eaten six decks of banana bread by Thursday.

I decided to do the 1,000 extra calories on the elliptical by Saturday evening. This was pushing it a bit. But I could just feel that if I didn’t do it, I wouldn’t meet my goal. 

All’s well, though. I lost 1.1 lbs.

It is important to remember that burning fat and training for athletic improvement (lowering the resting heart rate) are two different things. Working extra hard for a short time does not change the rule that 3,500 calories equal 1 lb. (I’m talking to myself.)
 
In retrospect, I should have done at least a few calories of work on the elliptical, instead of taking those days off completely. If I had done 250 on each of the two days, I would only have had 500 calories to catch up, instead of the full 1,000.  I need to keep this in mind next time. 

My resting heart rate is going down. I have been sneaking in interval training sessions. These are short bursts of high heart rate work. Two or three bursts in a 30 minute total workout session. 

I don’t like to suffer for a long time. I’d much rather do a few bursts that reach a higher peak than suffering long, mind-numbing grinds. 

When I am totally out of shape, my resting heart rate is in the 70s. When doing sporadic training, it’s in the 60s. When I’m on a scheduled program, it’s mostly in the high 50s. 

Ten years or so ago, when I was on the mountain bike a lot, it was 52. It’s now 55 and I’m pretty sure I can drive it lower. I’m much wiser now. And besides, George W’s resting heart rate is 47. When I get my weight and heart rate down, and with a little practice,  I may be able to ride with him and the boys on the Kulani trails.

I bought myself an Ipod and loaded it up with tunes to reward myself for last week’s accomplishment of breaking 205 lbs. My granddaughter checked out the playlist and said, “Papa, you have good music!!!” as if I broke the law or something.

For a second, I thought, “You have a cool Grandpa.” But more likely it was because I downloaded the celebrity list of American Idol judge Randy Jackson’s Top 20 songs. Oh well.

Bike, Hamakua Coast, Losing Weight

There is Hope

Richard Ha writes:

Goal: lose one pound per week for 39 weeks
Starting weight on 5/23/06: 214.6 lbs.
End goal, on 2/18/07: 175 lbs.

This week’s target weight: 207.6 lbs.
Today’s actual weight: 204.6 lbs. 7/9/06
I am 3 lbs. ahead of schedule

I lost 3.8 lbs since last week
Weight loss since 5/23: 10 lbs.

Resting heart rate 5/23: 65 beats per minute
Today’s resting heart rate 55 beats per minute.*
* This goes down as one gets into better shape. Lance Armstrong is said to be at 32 beats per minute. My lowest was 52 beats per minute many years ago.

Baby Boomers, there is hope.

It is now really clear that the heart of my weight loss program is exercise.

If one pound equals 3,500 calories, then all I need to do is move around enough to use up 500 extra calories per day, seven days per week, and I’ll lose one pound. This absolutely works.

It takes approximately 30 minutes on the elliptical trainer to do this. I use the elliptical because it is easy on the joints, it shows the amount of calories used and it’s very time efficient. Get on for 500 calories, do a little extra and get off. Done.

I highly recommend that one record his or her resting heart rate early when starting a weight loss program. This is like a before-and-after photo. You need it so you can feel good about your progress.

Successfully lowering your resting heart rate is actually more important than the speed at which you lose weight. A strong heart pumps more blood with one stroke. It’s more efficient at helping to get oxygen into the system and waste out of the system. This must be good for one’s brain, wouldn’t you think?

New studies are starting to show that fat and fit may be better than slim and unfit in relation to cardiovascular issues. It seems to me that the primary goal should be to maintain a lower resting heart rate.

I don’t worry about dieting. This is not rocket science: Like in the food pyramid, fruits and veggies are good, fat is not good, etc., etc. If the food tastes good and is worth the extra effort it takes to burn it off, go for it.

I rode my bike down to the ocean and saw a lot of changes along the way. Five years ago, everything was open and there was one fenced pasture. Now, there are seven houses in various stages of construction. Many properties are fenced and have a few cows, horses or goats. It is starting to look and feel like a rural small agriculture community.

Flying downhill, maybe more like coasting, I startled a baby goat, which ran bleating back to mama. I passed a temporary canvas dome house on a wooden platform. It looks like the main house will be coming up soon. Pedaled down and across the highway overpass that sugar cane trucks used to travel to get to the mill and coasted down to the old railroad grading intersection. Crossed the paved road onto a gravel section that started looking more and more unused the further down I rode. A barbed wire fence blocked the road at the bottom.

I turned around and started back up the hill when a large dog started running and barking at me from a new house. It was a huge puppy. I need to make friends with him while he’s still a kid. He ran up, bumped into me and slobbered my leg.

The owner came out and we chatted for a bit. At first I thought that he might be a new person from the mainland. But, surprise, he’s a fire rescue guy. Because he flies over in a helicopter, he knows more about the area surrounding the farm than I do. “When are you putting up a farm stand?” he asked. Nice guy.

The last quarter mile is a downhill unpaved section, which runs down to and along the ocean. I needed to get out of the saddle, pay attention, work both brakes and use the suspension. The road along the ocean is still there but it’s not used much and guinea grass crowds in. A break in the fence lets hikers and mountain bikers through.

The old fishing road running along the coast is bordered by 100-foot ironwood trees planted maybe a hundred years ago to protect the sugar cane from wind and salt spray. There was no one in sight. I stopped and did the usual quick scan for fish underneath as the waves built, on top for honu and on the rocks for ‘opihi, ha’uke’uke, ‘a’ama crab and limu. Pedaled down the coast for awhile and then started back up on one of the old sugar cane roads. The dirt and gravel surface was hard, dry and fast but it would be muddy and challenging in rainy weather.

This is a “play now and pay later” kind of a ride. You coast down to the ocean, enjoy the sights and sound, and then climb back uphill all the way. My heart rate monitor is showing 120 beats per minute. A short distance later it’s in the 130s. I make my way back to the old railroad grading intersection and now the climbing starts. I drop it into the small chain ring and second gear. I want to make it to the overpass before stopping, about a half mile further up. Grinding away, my heart rate is in the low 150s.

Five years ago I would ride the whole way uphill without stopping. This is definitely harder work than what I’ve been doing on my elliptical. But it’s very enjoyable, and I know that I’ll get into much better shape. I can’t wait.

I’m keeping everything in perspective. Mike Tanabe and Chris Seymour and the guys could do this short loop that I just did, put it at the end of a 30 mile loop and still be shifting up on the climb. But having fun is all relative. If you’re having fun, you’re having fun.

As our Hamakua Springs tomato houses come into view I cannot help but think about how fortunate we are to live in such a beautiful place, working with good people and growing good food in a good way.

Bananas, Food and Drink, Losing Weight, New York City

Weight: Up, Up and Away

Richard Ha writes:

Goal: lose one pound per week for 39 weeks
Starting weight on 5/23: 214.6 lbs.
End goal: 175 lbs.

This week’s target weight: 208.6 lbs.
Today’s actual weight: 208.4 lbs. 7/2/06
I am 0.2 lbs. ahead of schedule

I gained 2.4 lbs from last week
Weight loss since 5/23: 6.2 lbs.

Resting heart rate 5/23: 65 beats per minute
Today’s resting heart rate 56 beats per minute.*
* This goes down as one gets into better shape. Lance Armstrong is said to be at 32 beats per minute. My lowest was 52 beats per minute many years ago.

We arrived back home from New York City on Wednesday evening and immediately jumped on our accurate-to-1/10-of-a-pound home scale.

I gained five pounds in the last part of the trip, when I stopped exercising at the fitness center because I wanted to rest and recover for the trip home.

Here, by the way, is the view from the fitness center there.

View_from_fitness_center

Because the fitness center was where the scale was located, during that period I wasn’t exercising I had no accurate way to monitor my weight. By the end of the week, back home and with a little exercise and eating a little less, I had cut that back to a net gain of 2.4 lbs. for the week.

I’m back in my normal exercise routine now. Since the unexpected weight gain has been on my mind, I have cut back a little at each meal. Not much, but just enough to know that I’m doing something positive.

And I’m putting in a few more minutes of training. Not much, just a little more than I normally would. I don’t need to get it back all at once. The lower my expectations, the better the chance of exceeding them.

I’ve been on the scale four times a day since I got back. Fortunately, I was nearly three pounds ahead of schedule before I gained all that weight.

This has been my basic approach:

1. It’s important to keep track of one’s weight. Because I stopped going to the gym two days before leaving NYC and did not weigh myself for four days, I had no way of knowing I was drifting.

It was only a few pieces of cheesecake from Juniors. I needed to try the different ones to really know about good cheesecake. And, oh yes, the Italian food and gelato was unreal. In no time I gained five pounds.

Get a good scale. If on your scale you can make your self “lose weight” just by shifting your weight around, throw the scale out. I use the Weight Watcher scale. It is accurate to one-tenth of a pound and is relatively inexpensive. It has a leveling mechanism that does not allow you to seemingly lose weight just by shifting your weight. Weigh yourself as often as you like. This is a good thing. It will help to prevent five pound weight gain surprises.

2. Set goals so they’re easily achieved. I set mine at one pound per week for 39 weeks. That allowed me to get ahead of schedule. And then instead of quitting after unexpectedly gaining five pounds, it gave me an excuse to feel good. Like, “Boy was I smart to have been 3.6 lbs. ahead of schedule.”

You need to set yourself up to have a lot of little successes as you lose weight. It’s good for your psyche. I had one disappointment. Yes, it was five pounds’ worth. But I’ve had four days of successes since then. Had I not set myself up for small successes, I might have quit the program right then. The term “blowing your diet” comes to mind. But I don’t even have a diet to blow. Instead I’m feeling pretty good about myself.

3. Find any excuse to reward yourself. If I must cut back on quantity, then I plan to reward myself by going for the best tasting food. I now make salads with lots of little intense flavors. I like anchovies (great Caesar salad and great pizza must have anchovies). Rasberry salad dressing is good and sharp crumbled cheeses are good. Cocktail tomatoes, Japanese cucumbers, baby lettuces are all good. Throw some apple bananas in; why not? Doing this makes me feel happy instead of deprived.

I also plan to reward myself for every five pound increment that I hit. The next one is 205 lbs. I haven’t decided what the reward will be. Maybe I’ll hang the portable TV in the garage, hook up the music channel and get good earphones that will make my granddaughter jealous. And for hitting 200, that should be extra special, right?

Now I’m thinking of what else we can grow that will taste really good. Hmmm. What about sweet onions? Asparagus? Those would be good in the salads. And if we are eating less, maybe we need to grow (and eat) things that are more intense in color, for their nutritional value in addition to their good taste. This makes business sense to me. And I’ll bet that my thinking about this is fairly typical of baby boomers.

Food and Drink, Losing Weight, New York City

Food by the Pound

1 Comment

Richard Ha writes:

Goal: lose one pound per week for 39 weeks
Starting weight on 5/23: 214.6 lbs.
End goal: 175 lbs.
This week’s target weight: 209.6 lbs.
Today’s actual weight: 206.0 lbs. 6/25/06
I am 3.5 lbs. ahead of schedule
This week I lost 1.5 lbs.
Weight loss since 5/23: 8.6 lbs.

Resting heart rate 5/23: 65 beats per minute
Today’s resting heart rate 59 beats per minute.*
* This goes down as one gets into better shape. Lance Armstrong is said to be at 32 beats per minute. My lowest was 52 beats per minute many years ago.

My resting heart rate today is two beats per minute higher than last week. I’m guessing it is because I am only cruising at 70% of max. I haven’t done higher heart rate interval training since leaving Hawaii.

It’s interesting–I’m starting to pay attention to what I’m eating since I’ve set this one pound per week weight loss goal. I’m trying more salads and sandwiches. Somewhere along the line my stomach shrank some and I’m starting to request a doggy bag for the other half of the sandwich. What’s up? Subway

We just got strawberry cheesecake from Juniors on 45th. So I’m not deprived or starving.

We caught the subway and walked around at Columbus Circle off 59th street.  CNN’s New York studios are in the Time Warner building. We took a tour and found out that Lou Dobbs, Nancy Grace, Anderson Cooper, Paula Zahn and Larry King’s show are broadcast from there. Imagine, all that and a Hamakua Springs Country Farms bumper sticker, too.

Inside_cnn

We saw them setting up a red carpet and so we hung around to see who would show up. It turned out that the Gracie Awards were being given out that evening. The Gracie “Allen” award honors programming for, about and by women in electronic media.

Susanlucci

People were being interviewed on the red carpet. Julie Chen of the Early Morning show was interviewed on TV, Susan Lucci came over to chat with the people and many journalism personalities walked by.

I asked Larry King what the dress code at the White House is nowadays. I think he said that it’s now coat and tie. Short pants optional.

Richard_ha_and_larry_king1_2

Now that I’m on this weight loss program, I notice how convenient it is to combine and buy salads and main dishes by the pound. One can custom make a meal according to one’s whims. I saw this at the gourmet food store Eli’s on the upper east side as well as the Whole Foods at the shops at Columbus Circle.

Food_by_the_pound_whole_foods

We can kind of do this now at work. There is a good selection of fresh produce growing on the farm. We have several different types of colored lettuces, different types and sizes of tomatoes, Japanese cucumbers for the crunch, as well as apple bananas for the potassium. And we’re adding to that all the time. All we need is dressing and some precooked chicken or meat to make a good nutritious meal that’s low in calories.

Bananas, Food and Drink, Losing Weight, New York City, Travel

Treadmill over Manhattan

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DATELINE–New York:

At 8:00 a.m. on Sunday, June 18

Goal: lose one pound per week for 39 weeks
Starting weight on 5/23: 214.6 lbs.
Goal weight: 175 lbs.
This week’s target weight: 210.6 lbs.
Today’s actual weight: 207.5 lbs.
I am 3.1 lbs. ahead of schedule
This week I lost 1.2 lbs.
Weight loss since 5/23: 7.1 lbs.

Resting heart rate 5/23: 65 beats per minute
Today’s resting heart rate 57 beats per minute.*
* This goes down as one gets into better shape. Lance Armstrong is said to be at 32 beats per minute. My lowest was 52 beats per minute many years ago.

I knew it was going to be a challenge keeping to the one pound per week weight loss schedule in New York City. New York is known for its wide variety of good food and I planned to try it all.

My approach to weight loss has been simple. I don’t count calories very well but I can do exercise. So if I plan to eat more, I exercise more. With this in mind, I have upped my daily exercise to 50 minutes at an easy, 70% of max heart rate. And it appears that I am actually losing more weight than I did at home. Now I have a choice: wine or dessert.

Here I look down on Times Square from the treadmill. It’s better than TV.

Yesterday I got elbowed by a guy carrying a baby. I think he was using the baby as cover. My impression of New Yorkers is that they play it pretty close to the ragged edge. Generally, everything is cool. This particular guy was an opportunist, but I don’t think he’s the norm.

We’re walking many blocks just to get the feel of the city, as well as to burn calories since we’re eating all kinds of stuff. We’re now looking for corned beef sandwiches and pastrami sandwiches at a real New York deli. Next: Little Italy and authentic Italian food.

If anybody has deli or restaurant suggestions, please let us know.

Bananas here look great on the outside but are bruised inside. After breaking off all the bruised parts of one, I ended up with only one small bite, and that tasted pretty bad. Modern day banana ripening rooms, with their precise humidity and temperature controls, can make the yellow skin color look so uniform and attractive that it looks almost like plastic fruit. The computer control rooms look like the cockpit of a 747. The technology can actually disguise bruising of the skin. Bruising is the consumer’s early warning signal and disguising it is not a good thing. No wonder per capita banana consumption has been declining for the last few years.

But I can say with a high degree of certainty that local Hawaiian bananas taste absolutely, without a doubt, better.

I’ve been losing weight for nearly a month now and feel comfortable that I won’t wake up one day and discover I’ve gained five pounds without warning. Setting a goal of one pound per week is easy to do. Now I know that if I’m behind on my weight loss schedule I just need to exercise for a longer period of time at a fairly easy 70% of max heart rate.

Piece of cake.

Bike, Losing Weight

Reward

At 8:00 a.m. on Sunday, June 11:

Goal: lose one pound per week for 39 weeks
Starting weight on 5/23: 214.6 lbs.
Goal: 175 lbs.
This week’s target weight: 211.6 lbs.
Today’s actual weight: 209.3 lbs.
I am 2.3 lbs. ahead of schedule
This week I lost 1.2 lbs.
Weight loss since 5/23: 5.3 lbs.

Resting heart rate 5/23: 65 beats per minute
Today’s resting heart rate 59 beats per minute.*
* This goes down as one gets into better shape. Lance Armstrong is said to be at 32 beats per minute. My lowest was 52 beats per minute many years ago.

I plan to treat myself every time I lose five pounds. This week I went to Hilo Bike Hub and bought myself a bike-mounted speedometer and heart rate monitor combination. It’s okay—I don’t golf, so I’m saving money.

I did a test ride from the farm to the ocean. Decided to go only part way as I am not in good enough shape to smile the whole way. I’ll be working on that in the coming weeks. I’m starting to remember how tough the Kulani trails really are.

At Kulani, the outside perimeter roads are the easier ride. I need to start there and take the inside trails as I make progress. They become progressively harder and more brutal. No matter what, riding over a three-foot log that lies across the trail without unclipping is something that I probably will never be able to do. But the bike is light; I’ll carry (run?) it over.

Your whole body is active, riding over rocks and roots and stumps and making uphill turns with a tree just at the wrong place so you cannot lean where you want to. One should use bike shoes that clip the shoes to the pedals so you can pull up when the other foot is not in a position to push down. But, when trying to put a foot down, it is counter-intuitive to move your heel to the left or right to unclip before saving your life by putting a foot down.

I can remember yelling often, while falling in slow motion, because I thought that I could not afford the time that it would take to unclip in order to put a foot down. So I would be stuck to the shoe, which was clipped to the pedal, while falling over. It’s funny how you always yell when this is happening. But that goes away after some practice. The yelling goes away at the same rate that you stop falling. After you pass through this phase you get to smile when you hear someone yelling in the forest.

In Kulani, you need to go faster than feels safe to get the momentum necessary to carry you over obstacles. In Kulani it is all about momentum. But if you’re overweight you cannot maintain momentum—you can only think about not falling over, because you’re going too slow.

So it is a challenge and great fun to be able to ride the Kulani trails, especially if you’re over 60. I’ve got a long way to go. Not, no can. Can!!!

If I could finish one of the fun rides or races there, it would be one of the most satisfying things that I can think to do.

Losing Weight

Losing It

Richard Ha writes:

At 8:00 a.m. on Sunday, June 4:
Starting weight 214.6 lbs.
This week’s target weight 212.6 lbs.
Today’s actual weight 210.5 lbs.
I am 2.1 lbs ahead of schedule
This week I lost 1.1 lbs.

Goal 175 lbs.
Weight loss since 5/23: 4.1 lbs.
Starting resting heart rate 65
Today’s resting heart rate 61 beats per minute.*

* This goes down as one gets into better shape. Lance Armstrong is said to be at 32 beats per minute. My lowest was 52 beats per minute many years ago.

I lost 1.1 lbs. this week, when my goal was to lose 1 lb. Overall, I’m 2.1 lbs. ahead of schedule now.

I’m starting to realize that all the things you read about losing weight are pretty much true: Lose a little bit of weight at a time; eat breakfast; check the scale frequently, and you start to feel better—it’s all true. I’m not feeling deprived; just a little more disciplined.

They say that one of the characteristics of successful weight losers is that they check the scale frequently, and it is interesting to weigh frequently. I’m doing that and I’m starting to spot patterns and I’m actually modifying my eating behavior on the fly. For instance, last week I gained almost 2 lbs. for no apparent reason. I deduced that it was due to eating too much sodium, like in the beef jerky that we bought from Costco. I eat way too much of this when I get my hands in it. So, I just found out what “retaining water” means.

It is true, too, about weighing in at the same time each day. In the morning after everything is stable works for me. The rest of the time, I’m trying to figure out what causes the temporary ups and downs. Kind of interesting.

In terms of exercise, I use a heart rate monitor to determine how hard to work. Effective training involves just the right amount of stress combined with adequate rest. This involves monitoring one’s heart rate. The heart is a muscle and needs to be trained accordingly.

There are training programs that are based on one’s theoretical maximum heart rate. There are on-line calculators that will calculate your maximum heart rate and there are training programs that tell you how long to train at what heart rate. So this involves watching your heart rate monitor and working harder or less depending on what your schedule calls for.

I am on what is called an interval training program. I train hard three times per week and cruise for the other four days. For the first three weeks, the training days are progressively more intense but for shorter durations. The fourth week is an active rest week where I cruise for at least an hour three times during the week.

On the days I am not scheduled for intense training, I cruise until I get 500 calories expended. On my elliptical trainer at 70% of maximum heart rate, which is considered active rest, it takes me about 40 minutes to accumulate 500 calories.

Because I like to lift weights I throw weightlifting into the mix as long as my heart rate is where I need it to be. One word of caution: one should refrain from over-training.

Here’s a Calvin and Hobbes cartoon to keep it all in perspective.

I cannot wait to break 200!

Bike, Losing Weight, Tomatoes

3 Down

Richard Ha writes:

I’ll be posting my training updates here on Mondays. Here are my first week’s results.

At 8:00 am on Sunday, May 28:
Starting weight 214.6 lbs.
Week’s target weight 213.6 lbs.
Today’s actual weight 211.4 lbs.
I am 2.2 lbs. ahead of schedule

Goal 175 lbs.
Weight loss since 5/23: 3.2 lbs.
Starting resting heart rate 65
Today’s resting heart rate 63 beats per minute.*

* This goes down as one gets into better shape. Lance Armstrong is said to be at 32 beats per minute. My lowest was 52 beats per minute many years ago.

I’m 2.2 lbs. ahead of schedule this week. I lost 3.2 lbs. this week when my goal was to lose 1 lb.

Although I am not dieting, I find myself looking up the caloric content of what I might be eating. And because I’m exercising, I find myself eating more apple bananas and snacking on cocktail tomatoes a lot, which have zero penalty points on the Weight Watchers list of foods. Fortunately, we grow these things at Hamakua Springs, and we grow the ones we do because of how great they taste.

Tomatoes

Losing this weight by exercising means I’ll be stronger and in better shape than I am now. I won’t be able to keep up with “the boys” on the Kulani trails. But maybe I can soon keep up with our mountain-biking President if he joins them.

The leader of “the boys” is Chris Seymour, owner of Hilo Bike Hub. He is featured with Chris Clark and Ray Brust from Oahu in the Hawaiian Airlines in-flight magazine Hana Hou. He is a friend of mine; I went with him to the bank to vouch for his bank loan when he started his bike shop, though he didn’t need me at all and had it well under control.

His riding is at a total different level than most people’s. Mike Tanabe is up there as well, relative to his age group (he’s 58). That’s an indication of how fun the Kulani trails are—something less challenging wouldn’t keep their interest.

When I can easily do the long ride from the farm to the oceanfront and back, then I will be ready to try Banana Hill. The bike riders named it that: it’s the uphill Kaupakuea Homestead Road ride in Pepeekeo, straight up from the farm to the forest line. If I can do this ride without weaving back and forth in first gear searching for flat ground, I will be making good progress.

This coming week, I’ll start to ride from the farm down to the ocean and back.

Bike, Health, Losing Weight

39 pounds in 39 weeks

1 Comment

Richard Ha writes:

Since I got that email from Mike Tanabe I wrote about here last week, I have a new goal. I’m going to lose a bunch of weight.

Aside from health reasons, my reason for losing weight is to be able to ride my bike on the Kulani trails and have fun. The Kulani trails are an insider thing that only mountain bikers know about. I’ve ridden there before, but that was ten years ago when I weighed about 195 lbs., and at that weight it was more work than fun.

I estimate that I need to get down to 180 lbs. to have fun, and 175 to have a lot of fun.

Right now I weigh 214 lbs., so I have 39 lbs to lose and since I’m planning to lose a pound a week, 39 weeks to lose it.

About losing one pound per week: One pound equals 3,500 calories. To lose one pound per week I need to either eat 3,500 less calories or exercise 3,500 calories more than I do now. Or, some combination that results in a 3,500 calorie deficit. I can’t do diets and I can’t count calories, but I can do exercise.

My plan is to exercise so that I use up 500 calories per day. That times seven days equals 3,500 calories per week. I use an elliptical trainer, which is easy on the joints so fat old guys can use it. So it’s all doable.

I’ve been thinking about this for a long time now, sort of like when I quit smoking cigarettes. One day, 25 years or so ago, I quit cold turkey. I carried around a partial pack of cigarettes in my glove compartment for many months without even seeing it.

I’m at that point now with the weight loss. It took running into Mike and then his email to push me over the edge.

I’m going to post here every Tuesday re: how it’s going with my “pound a week” goal. Knowing I’ll be checking in here will keep me on track.

At 8:00 am Sunday, May 21, 2006:
Weight was 214.8 lbs.
Goal 175 lbs.
Weight loss to date —–
Resting heart rate* 65 beats per minute.

* This goes down as one gets into better shape. Lance Armstrong is said to be at 32 beats per minute. My lowest resting heart rate was 52; that was many years ago.