In the previous post I explained how my body attained an equilibrium state of perfection at age 31. I ate the equivalent of a small apple a day over my metabolic rate for a span of nine years.
The picture in part 3 was taken when my body had stabilized its size and it had spent four years integrating my neuro mechanical system to optimize its operations at a massive girth. The picture on the cover of the blog (doing a handstand inverted pike from a pair of stationary steel hoops) was taken at the end of last summer, four and a half years after I started losing my weight and one year after I started reintegrating my neuro mechanical system to my new bodily paradigm.
Both bodies were as perfect as one another. In the year 2000 photo I was optimized for carrying 280,000 stored calories. Based upon my activity level, my body could go if I had adequate water and a multi-vitamin a day 80 to 120 days without food. In the fall 2009 photo my body is half way through the re-optimization process for speed, agility & integrative compound muscle group strength. The work in process body can do assisted standing back flips, and it is nine years older than the body optimized for mass girth and stored fat survival.
Both body forms have their strengths and weaknesses. In my opinion neither body is better than the other. If I tried to do a handstand followed through with an inverted pike from my old body. My shoulder's would have disintegrated pulling myself up to the stationary steel hoops. Assuming I could arch my back into the handstand position my spine would have dislocated at almost every vertebrate. Getting into an inverted pike would have torn my rectus abdominus muscles in half, and the increased blood pressure to my brain would have killed me with an embolism. If I tried to live off of multi-vitamins and water with my new body, I would be dead in less than one month. The old body had a 5cm layer of insulator blubber, and it tolerated cold like an Inuit. The new body has maybe 3mm of insulator blubber and I swear a cold damp draft could kill me. I became physically no better. I simply became optimized for a different environment, yet I remained living in the same place.
When I was 35 years old, and weighed 250+ pounds I listened to the experts and the nutritionists. I got my recommended daily intake of nutrients and I made a point of consuming foods that the nutritionist experts told me were good for me. My physician told me when I was 39 that if I did not lose weight I would most likely be dead by age 50. He would not tell me how much weight I had to lose as he knew I would have told him where to go. He set a simple goal for me, lose 20 pounds and see how I felt. He told me to start going for walks, and he told me NOT TO RUN unless I could get my weight below 200 pounds. He explained to me that he was too fat at 180 pounds and he was my height. He was going to lose 20 pounds himself and he dared me to do the same. I was facing two choices, either accept my physicians dare or start sleeping with an oxygen mask life support system for sleep apnea. I took my physicians dare.
Stage 1 was the journey from a 250 pound fat man to a 200 pound fat man took three and a half years. The caloric math worked out as follows:
50 pounds overweight x 3,500 stored calories per pound = 175,000 surplus stored calories.
Days in three and a half years = 1,278 days
Caloric deficit required versus average daily metabolism = 137 calories per day
To go from a 43 inch waist to a 37 inch waist in three and a half years only required a caloric deficit of 137 calories per day. Assuming your weight is completely stabilized and does not fluctuate outside of a five pound band, losing 50 pounds in three and a half years requires burning a very small number of calories per day over your average daily metabolic rate.
If you are consuming sufficient calories per day to meet your average daily metabolic rate and your lifestyle does not change, your weight remains constant. The first step is to figure out what your average daily metabolic rate is. There are several calculators on the web where you input several factors such as your weight, age, height, activity level and body type. Based upon these factors, the calculator makes a best estimate of how many calories a day your body requires to remain at a stable weight. An important thing to note is that as your weight drops your average daily metabolic rate cetirus paribus (Latin for all other things being equal) drops as well. So the way to do it take your current weight and compute the average daily metabolic rate. Then you take your weight minus 20 pounds and compute your average daily metabolic rate. Take the average of these two numbers and subtract 137 calories. Cetirus paribus, if you can maintain this diet for seventeen months you will lose 20 pounds.
Reducing 137 calories a day is as simple as having:
1> 1 1/2 tablespoon per day reduction of trans fat free margarine or mayonnaise
2> 1 1/4 tablespoon reduction of olive oil per day
3> one ounce less whole grain per day
4> one and a half fewer small apples per day
5> one 6.5 ounce glass less of not from concentrate pure grape juice per day
The journey from a 250 pound fat man to a 200 pound fat man took three and a half years and the elimination of trace amounts of what the experts told me was good for me from my diet.
As I said earlier, Rome was not built in one day. To get your body to where it was took time. To take your body to where you want to have it and to be able to keep it that way will take time also. The funny thing I have noticed about the results that any experts have had with their diet plans, is the people who listen to the experts tend to look far worse five years later.
I am not an expert on nutrition. I am a raging heretic. However I know one thing for certain, I look and feel better five years later.
To be continued
0 comments:
Post a Comment