And we’re back for yet another weekly update of Operation Healthy Dad. This week, we’re going to do something a little different than we have thus far, and for a reason that I think embodies the very spirit of this program, but before we get into that, how about another weight update, shall we?

Yesterday I did weigh myself on the official super secret weighing device, and the numbers were, well, a pleasant surprise. If you’ll remember, last week I had dropped about four pounds to bring my weight down to 270, though that was with some reservations. For one, the rate of weight loss for a single week was a little on the high side (optimal weight loss should be approximately 1-2 pounds per week). On top of that, I suspected that the increased weight loss was a result of dehydration which occurred the day before the weigh in. As such, I stepped on the scale with some trepidation. I did have some expectation that I might actually exhibit some minor weight gain as a result of rehydrating to the proper level. But as it turns out, the official week 10 number is 268, two pounds under last week’s weight.

Even more important, this brings us to eleven pounds lost since I started weighing myself on week 4, or an average of 1.8 pounds per week which is exactly in the middle of our band for healthy weight loss. This means that what we are doing is right on track. And why is OHD successful? Well, I think the answer might be found in this article my wife sent me last night.

The short answer as to why I am so excited about this program and why I have so much faith in its continued success in the near and distant future is because I designed it to be the very OPPOSITE of all the crash and fad diets that lead to the yo-yo phenomena discussed in this article. For the long answer, there are a number of specific attributes about OHD that I have built in that I believe allow it to succeed where other plans and programs fail.

1. Minimizing the sacrifice: The fact of the matter is that the more of a sacrifice a diet feels like, the harder it is to maintain. Now some diets attempt to disguise this sacrifice with a little quid pro quo. They will lure you with a treat to make you think you aren’t sacrificing, but eventually this falls through. Think about every milkshake diet that lures you in with a “delicious shake”, or the famous low carb diets which attempt to ease the suffering by promising you can eat all the meat you want. Eventually, you start craving a loaf of bread, and once your will power runs out, so does the effectiveness of your diet. I take a different route towards minimizing sacrifice. Instead of bribing you with treats, OHD lets you work on your lifestyle at your pace, allowing you to make the changes that you need to make at the pace that your body is comfortable with.
2. Building a strong multi-facted foundation: Most fad diets are one trick ponies, and once a pony fails you, the diet fails you. OHD works by offering up a number of body-shapers that work in tandem. It’s not necessarily important that you religiously adhere to all of them, but instead simply try your best to work on all the ones you can. As such, if you slip in one area it’s not catastrophic as there are plenty of other body-shapers to help you stay on your path to fitness.
3. No guilt: Guilt can be a major demotivator. Once you’ve slipped up in a diet, the feelings of guilt and worthlessness and hopelessness that ensue can make it easy to quit and relapse. I’ve strived to make this diet as free from guilt as I can. Instead of seeing slip ups as failures, the philosophy behind OHD is to recognize areas where you are struggling and using those as points to assess and improve your lifestyle.
4. Teaching you how to make decisions: This is probably the most important aspect of OHD. Instead of making you dependent upon some sort of specially formulated food, or pill, or habit, the whole point of OHD is learning how to make good healthy choices whenever your decision making skills are put to the test. Not only that, OHD teaches you to look critically at your lifestyle, identify areas that could use improvement, and then engage a plan to improve your behavior.

Now, as a result of a car accident last year, my wife and I got a new car that came with six months of Sirius satellite radio. After a little apprehension, I fell in love with the service although I’ve noticed that some of the commercials are more than a little whacky. One commercial I’ve heard a lot lately is for this Hollywood Cookie Diet. I kid you not, this guy gets on the radio and promises that if you eat four of his cookies for breakfast and lunch, you’ll lose all kinds of weight and it will be awesome. No, it’s not too good to be true, the announcer assures us.

But, of course, it is. That’s the point.

For one, the entire program relies upon you strictly adhering to the regiment prescribed by the diet. Four cookies for breakfast, four cookies for lunch, and a “sensible” dinner. So what happens the first time you just can’t overcome your hunger? What happens if you don’t really know how to put together a sensible dinner? Does this program instill in you the discipline needed to stay on the diet successfully?

And let’s say you do successfully stay on the diet until you reach your target weight. Now what? Does the Hollywood Cookie Diet teach you how to live after the diet, or does it expect you to continue buying cookies until you die, or worse, until the program goes out of business? Somehow, I doubt it.

Which brings us to this week’s body-shapers, or lack thereof. Being able to assess and adjust is key in the viability of OHD, and this week we’re going to take that to heart. There will be no new body-shapers this week, and that’s mainly because there are three that I’m having difficulties with and would like to reevaluate.

The first I want to look at is the nightly food cut off body-shaper. This has been one of the hardest body-shapers to maintain, and as such, the one I slip up on the most. On one hand, I have all but eliminated my midnight snacking, but I’ve also found that I will often get hungry shortly before going to bed and then once I’m in bed, I have little else to focus on besides how hungry I am. This is a problematic situation to be in, and so I am thinking about shortening the cutoff time (to as close to a half hour until bedtime), or to at least for the time being just ban midnight snacking.

Secondly I want to reevaluate the physical activity following a meal body-shaper. I don’t think this is a particularly stringent or taxing body-shaper, but it can be inconvenient, annoying, and easily forgotten, especially if you are like me and break your meals down into lots of smallish meals as opposed to three big meals. In those cases it can be so easy to eat, and then ten minutes later realize, oh man, I should be doing some activity right now. So I’m thinking about quantifying this body-shaper to make it a little easier on everyone, especially those of you with a really hectic schedule.

Finally, I need to look at more specifically defining the one scoop rule body-shaper. Partly to eliminate confusion in certain areas, and partly to accomodate my lifestyle a little better because I end up eating all meals but breakfast out of my backpack.

So no new body-shapers this week, but do take this time to assess how well you are doing on your body-shapers, and see if there are any improvements you can make. And I think that pretty much covers everything in this week’s OHD update. Have a good week, keep working at it, and always remember that being a healthy person doesn’t have to suck.

Hey! Were you lucky enough to have a long weekend? Did you actually enjoy it? Why am I asking these things? I don’t know other than to acknowledge that this week’s post is coming on a Tuesday instead of a Monday because of Memorial Day. It’s been a long weekend and it’s time to kickoff a short week with what I think will be a particularly good OHD update.

As always, we’ll begin with our weekly weigh in, remember, if you’re playing along at home you are not obliged to weigh yourself weekly, and in fact I would discourage it. Frequently weighing yourself can have all kinds of psychological effects that can actually make it more difficult to change your lifestyle and live healthier. But I do weigh myself at least once a week and I do this FOR SCIENCE! Okay, actually, I weigh myself weekly as it’s the best way to quantify the results of OHD and allow me to assess its successes and failures. This week the big number comes in at 270! That’s right a whopping four pounds under last  week’s 274. Is this a good thing and what happened?

As I’ve said before, healthy weightloss occurs at a rate of about 1-2 pounds a week, meaning that our four pound weight drop in one week is actually too fast. Right now, though, my leading theory on this is that the day before I weighed myself I ended up working out in the blistering heat for about five hours straight. I did the best I could to stay hydrated, but I’m fairly certain that I probably suffered from minor heat exhaustion and some dehydration. If this is correct, than at least some if not all of the weight I lost that was recorded on Monday might have been water weight, and if this is the case, than I would expect next week’s weigh in to show a smaller than expected weight loss if not a minor weight gain.

My other theory is that I’m just going to have to get used to accelerated weight loss as a result of being so far overweight and having so many positive healthy habits in place. If this ends up being the case, then what we might see is an extended period of accelerated weight loss that will slow down as I get closer to what would be a healthy weight range. The final theory is simply that the effective weight loss involved was only two pounds, but because of the fact that your weight can fluctuate up to two pounds within a day, this could be a statistical representation of that phenomenon.

In any case, only time will tell, and what we can say definitively is that we continue to enjoy a nice downward trend in our overall weightloss, suggesting that OHD continues to be a success. With that, it’s time to take a look at the new body shapers for the week.

DIETARY

1. No fast food
2. Eat one vegetable based meal a day
3. No eating within 2-2 1/2 hours before bed time
4. Drink at least FOUR glasses of water a day
5. Eat at least one fruit a day
6. Minimize soda consumption to 2 liters in 2 days.
7. Use the one scoop/serving rule.

Physical Activity

1. Complete one hour of physical activity a day
2. One hour of physical activity can be substituted by a half hour of exercise
3. The first hour spent in the lab (or any other activity of your choosing for which you normally sit), must be spent on your feet.
4. TWO half hours of exercise each week (done on separate days).
5. Rolling push up goal (5 a day for this week).
6. ONE 15-30 minute high impact exercise session each week.
7. Engage in light physical activity after each meal.

This week’s body shapers are going to focus on portion control, or minimizing how much food we eat, and then making sure that we are maximizing the benefit and minimizing the downside to our meals. Don’t worry, both body shapers sound kind of scary, but you’ll soon find that they aren’t half as bad as all that.

The One Scoop Rule

Just the name of this body shaper, I realize, might sound like we’re finally going on the classic diet where we tiny amounts of everything and are hungry all the time. This isn’t true. What we’re going to do instead is employ a simple rule that will help us pay more attention to how much food we are eating, and make it easier to stop eating long before we hit that moment where we are so full it feels like our stomachs will literally burst through our skin.

But first, I want you to stop and think a moment about your current approach to portioning out your food for meals. For an extreme example, think about the last time you went to a buffet, but in general just reflect upon several sit down meals you have had with your family. What kind of decision making process goes on in your mind when you are spooning food onto your plate? Chances are there are two things that drive how many scoops of mashed potatoes wind up on your plate next to how many strips of roast beef. The first is how hungry you are. So let’s say you really LOVE mashed potatoes and your stomach is growling, The safe bet would be that two or three heaping scoops of mashed potatoes are going to wind up in front of you when the bowl gets passed around your way.

And then what happens after the food finds its way on your plate? That’s right, you do everything you possibly can to take it off that plate and put it in your belly. It’s only natural. We see the plate before us and we think, ‘this is MY food. I get to EAT it!’ And that’s exactly what we do. What’s more, many of us are unwittingly conditioned to finish what’s on our plate by our parents. No, I’m not saying your parents were bad parents, nor am I saying mine failed me here. What happened when we were kids it that our parents gave us portions that were just about right for our age (or at least they did their best). By telling us to eat everything on our plate, they WERE encouraging good health by making sure we got all the nutrients we needed to be healthy kids (as well as teaching us not to waste our resources). We needed the nutrition, the only problem is that this probably ingrains in us the behavior of at least attempting to finish everything in front of us.

Just like when we were kids, this isn’t a bad thing if we’re talking about the proper foods in the right portions. If the foods or portions aren’t right, though, the impulse can do more harm than good.

As a result, we institute this One Scoop Rule, or a One Serving Rule. No, I’m not limiting you to one scoop of everything per meal, I’m simply limiting you to one serving per round. To the best of your ability, only put one scoop or serving on your plate. Just one modest scoop of mashed potatoes, one modest scoop of veggies, and one or two slices of roast beef (you’ll have to eyeball it I guess). If you’re talking about cereal, no don’t fill it up until you have this bran based mountain towering over the bowl, but whip out the measuring cup and fill up with one cup of cereal. As much as possible try to keep servings down to the quantity specified in the nutritional information on the package (this can also help you later on when it comes to calorie counting and so on).

Now, here’s the thing. If you are still hungry after eating your first round, you are more than welcome to go back for seconds as long as you continue to use the one scoop rule. You can go back as many times as you need to not be hungry anymore, but you do need to use the smaller servings. It is very important to the integrity of OHD that we not feel hungry, especially AFTER a meal. persistent hunger can very quickly erode one’s resolve to stick with a healthier lifestyle, and as such, I would rather people go back for seconds and thirds than to eat these really tiny meals for a week and then come to the realization that they can’t maintain any longer.

My intent here, though, is pretty simple. I think that when we serve ourselves, we tend to not be very good judges of how much food we should eat. Couple that with the tendency to try to eat everything on our plate regardless of if we need to or not, and what you have is a recipe for an expanding waistline. If we use the one scoop rule, though, what we do is give ourselves a better opportunity to stop eating when it most benefits us. Instead of gorging ourselves on three scoops of mashed potatoes, we can eat one scoop and then ask ourselves, “Am I really hungry enough to go for more?” I think you’ll be surprised with how often the answer to that is no.

And I’ll tell you, at least preliminarily, it works. Yesterday, we barbecued. Now normally when we barbecue we have all this meat and I’ll usually pile a ton of it on my plate and eat until I can’t moved. But because I was already starting with this week’s body shapers, I had one scoop of rice, one scoop of veggies, and one hot dog, knowing full well if I wanted to go back for a piece of chicken or a hamburger, I could. You know what, though? I didn’t. After eating a fairly small dinner, it turned out I didn’t need any more food. Later on I would have one of the really small hamburgers, but A) this didn’t violate any of our body shapers in the slightest, and B) this extra hamburger and the original hotdog probably would be about a third of what I normally eat on the days we barbecue. So the one scoop system does show lots of promise.

Do some physical activity after each meal

I’m not going to say much about this. The only real intent here is to kick start your metabolism after every major meal so that your food doesn’t languish and eventually make its way to all those places in your body you are trying to keep it away from (you know, mid section, thighs, etc.). I was originally going to put a time requirement here, but I’m going to leave it to your discretion. Maybe you might want to plan one meal before your hour of physical activity for the day, and another before you do your daily push ups. Take a walk around the block, or maybe hike up a set of stairs. Whatever, just do something that gets you on your feet after a meal.

And I think that about covers it.  Good luck, and remember that being a healthy person doesn’t have to suck.

This is kind of interesting. Now, I have a super secret scale that I’m using for Operation Healthy Dad. Because I’m weighing myself more for a kind of scientific data collection and trend analysis than for anything else, I’ve chosen the scale I’m using and I’m deliberately avoiding al other scales.

Until just recently.

Earlier this year, weeks before I started OHD, I weighed myself with an old scale here at work. It’s the same scale all the military folks use to do their semiannual official weigh ins (which I remember with no amount of fondness at all). Anyway, when I weighed myself then, I tipped the scale at 295.

Just yesterday I saw that very same scale in the hallway, and I couldn’t resist. My weight on that scale now? 276. It’s not a data point that I have any intention of putting in my own personal trend analysis, or even take seriously (remember, my last official weight was 274). But it is exceptionally heartening to see that so far this year I have lost 19 pounds according to one scale.

This is also another good argument as to why you shouldn’t weigh yourself too frequently if you are trying to lose weight. On my weekly weigh-ins, my largest record of weight loss is I think 2 pounds, with some weeks showing no loss at all. That can be very tough to see if you are putting a lot of effort into something. But if you stop with the daily or even weekly weigh ins and just keep plugging at it and weigh yourself every month or so, you should see good strong results which will help boost your self esteem and keep you on the right path.

As for me, I’m pretty happy with my progress so far, and I’m starting to notice small changes in my physical appearance which is a definite bonus.

So have a good weekend, I’ll see you next week, and maybe I’ll try to sneak in another quick health hint sometime over the weekend.

Hey! Yup, another long gap between OHD updates, but if you knew just how rough things have been around the homefront lately, you’d probably understand. In truth, I did want to take this time to point out how impressed I have been with the OHD system, and how well it has held up during times of adversity. Given the various problems my family has been hit with, now would seem the best time to revert to old habits, skip out on physical activity, or to do something terrible like hit a drive thru. But even when it felt like life was pushing me into making a bad decision, I have continued to make the right decisions.

These good decisions are reflecting themselves positively in my weight loss trend. Today I tipped the scales at 274 lbs. If you’ll remember, we started measuring weight at 279 about two weeks into OHD (and measurements prior to starting OHD unofficially had me between 285-290). This means that over the course of 6 weeks, we’ve lost about five pounds. Further, when you look at a trend analysis of my weight loss, you’ll notice that the downwards slope is intensifying. I suspect that as we develop even more good habits, and we intensify those good habits that we already have in place, the weight loss will continue to improve from week to week.

I’ve also been struggling with naming all the things we do each week in OHD. I’ve been calling them goals, but only a few are really goals, rules, achievements, etc. and the thing is nothing seems to universally fit. But I think I’ve got something, at least I got something that will work until something less cheesy comes along (of course, I don’t think we can top Operation Healthy Dad when it comes to cheese). So from now on we’re going to call these body-shapers. Yes, I know, groan and get it over with.

Also, I’ve noticed that I’ll list the old body-shapers, but the new one for implementation I leave hidden in text, so from now on when we list our body-shapers, the new one will join the list and be written in bold. So let’s get going, right?

DIETARY

1. No fast food
2. Eat one vegetable based meal a day
3. No eating within 2-2 1/2 hours before bed time
4. Drink at least FOUR glasses of water a day
5. Eat at least one fruit a day
6. Minimize soda consumption to two liters in two days.

Physical Activity

1. Complete one hour of physical activity a day
2. One hour of physical activity can be substituted by a half hour of exercise
3. The first hour spent in the lab (or any other activity of your choosing for which you normally sit), must be spent on your feet.
4. TWO half hours of exercise each week (done on separate days).
5. Rolling push up goal (4 a day for this week).
6. ONE 15-30 min. high impact exercise session each week.

So let’s talk about these, shall we. You’ll note that when it comes to our dietary plan, I’m limiting soda to two liters every two days. To understand the impact this has to do on my diet, you have to understand how much soda I used to drink. My usual routine would be to pick up a Double Gulp (64 oz/ about 2 liters) of soda after I dropped the kids off at school. Then when I went into work, I might get it refilled. Within a couple of hours of arriving at work, I would be finished with that, and need more soda, so I would stop off at the convenience store next door and get two one liter bottles of soda. Allowing for various fluctuations in my schedule, this means that on an average day I could consume anywhere from four to six liters of soda A DAY. That’s pretty bad, right?

Now, I’m not exactly sure when I started doing this, but I dropped all the extraneous soda shopping and went to the local grocery store. I found out that if you buy the store brand of soda, you can get four two liter bottles of soda for only 3 dollars. And that’s what I started doing, and I started limiting my soda consumption to one bottle a day, thus not only reducing my intake by as much as 66%, but also significantly reducing the amount of money I paid out on a daily basis to get my fix. Because water is the healthiest thing we could drink, I’m continuing to focus on reducing soda consumption by cutting my intake by another 50%.

You may wonder why I say 2 liters in 2 days as opposed to 1 liter per day. Well, that’s a bit of slight of hand that accomplishes several things. For one, it lets me continue to purchase soda in 2 liter bottles which is the cheapest way to go (remember, OHD cares about your pocket book as well as your waistline!). But there’s a decision and discipline mechanic at work here as well. If I feel like I need more soda on a given day, then I can drink more, but I do so with the specific knowledge that this excess today must be paid for tomorrow. And so rationing out 2 liters over two days ends up being great practice in self discipline and portion control.

Moving onto the physical activity based body-shaper, we’re going to add some high impact to our regular work outs. What’s a high impact aerobic work out? Generally, high impact exercises tend to be more strenuous and thus have a higher impact upon your body. The basic rule of thumb here, though, is that high impact exercises are those activities where both feet leave the ground for a time. So while walking is a low impact activity, jogging is a high impact activity.

You’ll notice we’re going to keep our high impact exercises relatively short, going down to as little as 15 minutes per week. The reason why is because I want us to start breaking into high impact exercises, but at the same time I want to avoid burnout or worse, physical harm.

Here’s the deal. high impact exercise is important. Yes, you can burn calories, tone muscles, and make modest improvements to your cardiovascular system with low impact workouts, but of course high impact exercises will have a greater effect. If we really want to strengthen our hearts and lungs, and burn more calories for our time’s worth, high impact is where it’s at.

But with improved results come some heavy price tags. If your body is not conditioned properly, over working it could result in significant medical problems and even death in extreme cases. Plus, high impact exercises can be notably difficult and will take some time to acclimate ourselves to to the point where they become routine. So if you are doing this along with me, there are some things I want you to consider.

First, consult your doctor. If you haven’t had a check up recently, now might be a good time, and during this visit you’ll want to tell your physician that you plan on starting a high impact exercise routine. You may have medical complications that could impair your ability to safely exercise at this level. Your doctor can also give you more detailed advice than I ever could about how long you should start exercising for, and what precautions you can take to best protect your body.

Second, put together a list of high impact activities you would like to do to satisfy this body shaper and perpare yourself for them. My plan is to split up my high impact workouts between Dance Dance Revolution (and trust me, if you DON’T think that’s high impact, you haven’t played it for thirty minutes straight), and swimming laps.  You may wish to try an aerobics class or running. Whatever you do make sure you get the proper equipment, and pick an exercise you’ll realistically stick with (I, for instance, probably won’t ever incorporate running because, frankly, I hate running).

Third, remember you’ll need to warm up and cool down. During these exercises your heart rate is definitely going to elevate, which is good. But remember that once the exercise is done your heart rate is going to come back down and letting it drop too quickly can be dangerous, and potentially deadly. Also keep in mind that your body will perform much better and more safely if you prepare it for a workout properly as well. Prevent cramps and pulling a muscle by stretching first, and give your heart a boost by doing some lower impact exercises before getting down to the main event. So, remember, whne you schedule your high impact workout, remember to allow for a warm up and cool down period before and after as well.

And that’s about it for this week. Next week, we’re going to maybe look at portion control, or snacking, or even how to keep the metabolism going after meal times. Until then, keep at it and remember that being a healthy person doesn’t have to suck. 

You never know when hunger could hit you, that’s why I recommend that as much as possible try to pack several healthy snacks and a light meal wherever you go. The reasoning for this is pretty straight forward; if you find yourself in a situation where you are hungry but you don’t have your own food, your available options usually tend to be few, and of dubious health value at best.

Time and time again I have bemoaned the evils of fast food. Plenty of fast food restaurants offer sandwiches that alone exceed 1000 calories. But what about our friend the vending machine? Let’s just say that vending machines aren’t exactly our friends either. I like Snickers bars, but when we pop over to Snickers’ website, we learn that a standard sized snickers bar has 280 calories and 14 grams of fat. That’s border line full meal quantities right there, but while Snickers’ various slogans may suggest that Snickers will sate your hunger, the truth is that it will only do so for a short period of time.

Sometimes, you just find yourself stuck between a 1200 calorie burger, or a 300 calorie candy bar, but that’s why I say you should always pack your own food. If you don’t keep a few snacks and at least one light meal on you most times, you’ll eventually come across a situation where you will have to make that choice. But by planning ahead, you can insert option C: reach into your purse, briefcase, or backpack, and pull out a piece of fruit, a granola bar (I happen to like Nature Valley which has only 140 calories, and Quaker Oats Chewy which comes in at only 100) or maybe even a sandwich.

Personally, my backpack and I are virtually inseperable and I keep minimum two meals and half a dozen granola bars packed away at all times. This helps make fending off Whopper cravings far easier.

As it turns out, climbing stairs is such good exercise that someone actually invented an exercise machine that emulates the act of walking up as many flights as you need. Of course, for many of you, there’s little need to dole out gym fees to use one of these machines if you have a staircase in your home, apartment complex, or place of work. For a little added exercise in your day to day life, simply walk past the elevators and take the stairs instead.

Granted, our access to stairs is different from one person to the next, and we all have differing levels of physical fitness. Perhaps you work atop a very tall building where it just isn’t feasible to hike up dozens of flights of stairs each day, or maybe you only have one flight of stairs in your office building but you don’t need to go upstairs often, or you are in good enough shape to where one climb won’t offer much in the way of exercise. Adapt. If you’re in a tall building, don’t worry about walking the whole way, but instead climb a couple of flights and take the elevator at the fourth floor as opposed to the ground floor (you’ll also probably have fewer people waiting and the car will likely have emptied out by the time it gets to you. If your situation is closer to the latter, wait until your lunch break, and use the staircases as a kind of lunch time workout.

Just remember that climbing stairs can result in a pretty hefty cardiovascular workout, so stretch before hand, and be sure to engage in a low impact activity afterwards to allow your heart rate to come down steadily and safely.

Sorry that this week’s Operation Healthy Dad is coming later than usual. For this I apologize, but it’s been a crazy week and there’s little I could do.

Because this is in the middle of the week, this might be a slightly abbreviated weekly update. I haven’t had much time to consider new goals, for one thing, and we’re going to get back to having our next update on Monday again, so trying to go big in two updates pushed closer together than normal might hurt. So smile, we’re going to go a little easier this week.

But first, the weigh in. If you will remember, last week I weighed in at 278 lbs., down one pound from the baseline 279. Now, according to the super secret official OHD weighing thingummy, I am down to 277 pounds. This suggests that at least over the course of the past two weeks there has been some weight loss, however, this still does technically remain within the two pound weight fluctuation a person can undergo in a given day. As a result, I will say that this is encouraging news, though nothing to outright celebrate as an unmitigated victory.

I will say this. Prior to beginning OHD I did weigh myself on a different scale on several occasions, and my weight had reached up into the 285-290 range. I hate using this data and comparing it to the scale I am currently using, but if there is not that large of a disparity between the two instruments, this suggests that since beginning Operation Healthy Dad six weeks ago, I have lost potentially as much as thirteen pounds. Remember, healthy weight loss exists in the 1-2 pounds per week range, and since I think thirteen pounds might be pushing the boundaries of credibility here, the more realistic number of 8-10 pounds is well within our target range.

Further, I expect that as we continue to build more good healthy habits and work our way away from the poor habits, this weight loss will become more consistent. Depending on your body fat percentage and level of participation, I could foresee potentially faster weight loss than the recommended 1-2 pounds per week.

Which is a good time to remind you that OHD is sort of a self paced program even as I continue to build it. If you are taking this journey with me, find a pace that works for you. If you can’t accomplish a goal at your point in the program, don’t push yourself to do something you simply can’t do. On the other hand, if you feel like you can do more with ease, don’t be afraid (in many cases, I myself treat my challenges and goals like minimums as opposed to hard rules. For instance, as of Week 5, one half hour of exercise is required per week, however, if there are two days in which you want to exercise, go for it). The only other thing I would suggest is that you be wary of pushing yourself too hard. I specifically am designing this program to move slowly partly to avoid getting burnt out on the program and giving up. A great indicator that you may need to slow down is if you do notice that your weight loss is exceeding two pounds per week (depending on the circumstance, you may wish to see your physician in cases of extreme weight loss. Also please remember that OHD is not intended to be performed with the aid of dietary supplements, thermogens, weight loss pills, or other fad diet programs).

With that said, let’s take a quick look at what our goals will be. First, let’s not forget that we’re already on a rolling goal with pushups, meaning that last week we did 1 push up a day, and now we are on 2. When it comes to our diet, we’re going to up the ante on water, and require 2 larges glasses of water a day minimum. Ultimately, we want to push it to the point where we are drinking 8 glasses of water, with minimal non water beverages on a regular basis, and for great reasons. Water will hydrate you better than anything else you can get on a shelf, you don’t have to worry about empty calories, drinking water at the right times can help give you a full feeling which could curb your appetite and help you eat properly, and then there’s this little bit of math that our friend ZXO provided in a comment from way way back:

You’ve got me curious as to how much energy goes into warming up ingested cold liquids. You can skip to the end if you don’t like math.

OK, 8 glasses, let’s assume 8 oz each = 64 oz, which converts to just under 2 L, so let’s just go ahead and make it 2 Liters. One food calorie is actually a kilocalorie, which is defined as the energy to raise 1 kg of water 1 degree C. Based on the density of water, 2 L of water = 2 kg. If we start with absolutely ice-cold water, that’s 0 C, and body temperature is approximately 40 C (for simplicity– if your temp is ever actually 40C, get to a hospital!)

so 2 kg * 1 cal/(kg*C) * 40C = 80 calories burned by 8 glasses of ice-cold water. Of course, this also works for soda or anything else you care to drink, as they are essentially water as far as their heat capacity is concerned.

So yeah, 80 calories is not insignificant. I’m not sure how it compares to sticking your hands in a bucket of ice water for a while, or even just hanging out in a powerfully air-conditioned room.

Z’s little calculation here suggests that just drinking ice cold water could help you burn calories, which I think is pretty awesome.

Now on top of our rolling goal in Physical Activity, we’re going to also tack on another day of exercise per week, bringing us up to 2 days. So our updated goals are:

DIETARY

1. No fast food
2. Eat one vegetable based meal a day
3. No eating within 2-2 1/2 hours before bed time
4. Drink at least TWO glasses of water a day
5. Eat at least one fruit a day

Physical Activity

1. Complete one hour of physical activity a day
2. One hour of physical activity can be substituted by a half hour of exercise
3. The first hour spent in the lab (or any other activity of your choosing for which you normally sit), must be spent on your feet.
4. TWO half hours of exercise each week (done on separate days).
5. Rolling push up goal (2 a day for this week).

As we look ahead, what we need to realize is that while we started off pretty lax, we’re starting to put together a pretty serious health regime aren’t we? That means that pretty soon we’re going to have to start making some tougher decisions and setting some more challenging goals. As you finish up this week, I want you to think about a few things. Let’s look at our diet and how we can make it better and healthier. Right now I’m torn between several different goals all of which I think will make a major impact on how you eat. As for physical activity, what do you count as exercise? Are all exercises created equal? Between now and Monday, I’m going to look at the difference between high impact and low impact exercises as well as aerobic activities and strength building activities. Likely the rules of a half hour of exercise may change to reflect these differences.

Finally, I’m thinking of establishing a kind of baseline week in the near future. That’s to say that when we are building good habits, you just build the habit, but if we are going to set standards for quantifiable measures (calories eaten in a day, miles walked in a week, etc.), it’s a good idea to see where you start at, and to set your goals based not on some arbitrary number, but instead on a percentage of that baseline. So as we get further on, be prepared to track a lot of data surrounding how you eat and exercise.

And with that, I think we’ll call it a week. I’m sorry I’m not as active here as I would like, but I promise once sanity returns, we’ll get back into things normally. Until then, good luck, and remember that being a healthy person doesn’t have to suck.

It’s monday, meaning another Operation Healthy Dad post and two new goals/guidelines. But before we get there, the weigh in.

Last week I weighed in at 279 pounds according to my official super secret scale, this week that number has come down a pound to 278. Some thoughts. First, I’m going to say statistically speaking this isn’t a weight loss at all. That’s because the human body’s weight can fluctuate as much as two pounds on any given day based on a number of factors from hydration to where your body is at in its digestive cycle. As such I wouldn’t call any single point reduction of less than two pounds real weight loss, but instead “statistical noise”. Now if I come back next week and weigh 278 or even 277 I will say that I am experiencing weight loss.

That being said, this is still good news as far as I’m concerned. For one, this isn’t a gain, and so at least we know that at this point in the OHD program, weight gain is curbed (at least, we can say this with a little bit of confidence). Curbing weight gain can be just as much of an achievement as weight loss, especially if you are transitioning from overweight to obese, or from obese to morbidly obese (which is sort of what it felt like I was on the verge of doing prior to starting this thing). But the other thing to keep in mind here is that slow weight loss is healthier and more dependable than fast weight loss; not only are you more likely to put the weight back on, but rapid weight changes can adversely affect your heart and your immune system. As a result, the optimal amount of weight loss is approximately one to two pounds per week (which puts us right in the sweet spot if next week’s weigh in confirms the trend). That might not sound like much, but think of it this way, if you stick with even 1 to 2 pounds of weight loss for a year, you could end up losing fifty to a hundred pounds in one years time.

The only time you should engage in more rapid weight loss is if your current weight and body fat poses an immediate and serious health risk, and even then that weight loss should be under the direction of your doctor.

And now, let’s take a look at our existing rules.

DIETARY RULES:

1. No fast food.
2. Eat one vegetable based meal every day
3. No eating within 2-2 1/2 hours before bedtime
4. Drink at least one glass of water a day

PHYSICAL ACTIVITY RULES

1. Complete one continuous hour of physical activity every day
2. One hour of physical activity can be substituted by one half hour of exercise
3. The first hour spent in the lab must be spent on my feet (for everyone playing at home, take one regular chore or task you usually sit for and for at least an hour, do it standing up, walking in place, etc.)
4. One half hour of exercise (instead of or in parallel with physical activity) per week.

I’ve found it pretty easy to keep up with this stuff and so should you. There’s little in this list that’s particularly difficult. I will admit that there was one night where I caved on the midnight snacking front. It was one or two bites of the pulled pork we had for dinner, but that’s fine. Again, we need to expect to slip,and remember if you’re at a place where you just can’t resist a midnight nibble, try to aim for your lean means and stay away from the carbs.

This week’s new goals are going to start off easy, but one of them, what I will call a “rolling” goal, will get more challenging down the road.

As far as what we put in our bodies is concerned, we’re going to make it REAL easy. Now, on top of everything else you have to do, what I want you to do is eat one piece of fruit every day. My wife tells me you should shoot for one of EACH COLOR, but I say that’s a little much, at least for now.  We’re going with this this week for several reasons. One is to build up our energy and get the proper nutrients, and another is to acclimate ourselves to a food type we… uh… might have shunned in the past (oh all right. I don’t eat fruit, okay? Dry it out and coat it in sugar and I’ll think about it, but fresh whole fruit has been missing from my life). But here’s my other hope for this. Snacking is something we all do. Sometimes for good reasons and sometimes for bad. Snacking isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but often what we snack with can be terrible. So a major ambition of this goal is to open the door for apples and bananas and pears to come along and replace twinkies and cupcakes as a common snack in our diets.

Now our next goal is going to be what I will from now on call a rolling goal. Your body is constantly changing, and in this program, we’re hoping that it is constantly changing for good. What that means, though, is that you have to slowly change your routine to match your body’s increasing capabilities. As a result, a rolling goal is one that starts off very slow, but you work your way up (in a way, the goal of drinking one glass of water a day is a rolling goal in that I intend to increase the number of glasses of water slowly over time, meanwhile, avoiding fast food is pretty much as unlike a rolling goal as one can get because you can’t eat LESS fast food if you are already avoiding it completely).

So our physical activity rolling goal is simple. Do one push up a day, adding one push up every week. So, every day this week, as soon as you flop out of bed, do a push up and carry on. Starting next Monday, do 2 and be about your business. There are a few other caveats to point out for anyone else doing this.

First, when I say push up, I mean one solid, good form, push up. Your feet should be together, and you should be on the ball of your feet, knees straight, body straight, neck straight. Your hands should be exactly shoulder width apart and when you go down you keep going until your elbows make an exact ninety degree angle. Then, exhaling as you go, push your body up until  your arms perfectly straight again.

I want to say that until you can do a push up with good technique, do not advance beyond one a day. This is because if you aren’t doing your push ups correctly, you aren’t really getting the level of exercise out of the pushups that you should. You can do ten bad push ups and not get the same benefit you would get out of doing one push up with perfect form. Now, if doing one good perfect form push up is really that difficult, there are some tips to help you slowly build yourself up to fighting form. For one, instead of using the balls of your feet, rest your lower body on your knees. Also, you can place your hands WIDER than shoulder width to get an easier push up. Do not bring them closer because that will be more difficult, and if you go inside of your shoulders, you really start to change which muscles are bearing the brunt of the workout.

But take however long you need to get the technique down and THEN start rolling on every monday of every week. Lucky for me, I can still do one good push up, I’m just shaky on the second…

Oh, and one other thing. I should say that, at least for now, our push ups shouldn’t be considered as part of our thirty minutes of exercise or one hour of physcial activity. Anyway, I know that one push up may seem small to the point of ridiculous, but much like our weight loss discussion earlier, small numbers over time can add up. I go on vacation with my family in August, by then I should be up to fourteen push ups every day–not a full work out, but definitely something that will have a noticeable impact.

And I think that about covers the main weekly Operation Healthy Dad post this week. I know I haven’t done a quick health tip in a while, but this is largely because I’ve got a ton of them up in my head right now and I need to nail down a few and go over the science and stuff before I pass them along. So good luck, see you next week,and never forget that being a healthy person doesn’t HAVE to suck.