Losing it!

It all started in September of 2009. My family was visiting me in Virginia and my wife made some unkind remarks about my exploding waistline. I was pushing 200 pounds and it was showing up everywhere. The tell tale buckle marks on the leather belt, the triple chin, you name it... The blood report confirmed the indulgent lifestyle, with soaring cholesterol and triglycerides.
After they had left, I tried taking a shot at redemption through exercise. For the first time in about a year of living there, I ventured into our community Gym. It had 3 treadmills and 2 ellipticals. I climbed atop one of the treadmills and was pretty impressed with the results. I did about 4 miles in 30 minutes. I went around boasting about it to others in my office till finally another guy living in the same complex finally burst my bubble. It seems all the 3 treadmills were seriously mis-calibrated giving fools a false high. I decided to validate the theory. I got a free one day pass to a near by Washington fitness center and tried repeating the magic. To my embarrassment, I hardly completed about 0.5 miles @8 miles an hour before I had to get off the treadmill panting.

I finally switched over to ellipticals and found them most useful for burning calories. They don't stress your knees and yet they could be as effective (or more in some cases) as the treadmills.

I also started to read up about losing weight, probably for the first time in my life. It seems one needs to burn 3500kcal to lose 1 pound. Typically if you exercise hard like a regular you could burn about 700-800 kcal in an hour. It meant if I did not change my diet, I would have to exercise about 5 days a week to lose a pound. And so in another first, I started looking out of healthier eating options. I found a great app, loseit on iphone and I started keeping track of what I ate and how much I exercised. Loseit is a great app, and I'd recommend it to anyone trying to lose weight. Unfortunately, it does not have good data on Indian food. So I had to research the net to find the cal value of butter chicken, chole and some and add them to the list.

The results started showing in about 6 weeks. Loseit kept count of cal deficit and with minor adjustments, I calibrated it to weighing scale at home. By the time I returned to Mumbai, in May-10, I had lost more than 25 pounds and 2 inches off my waist.

For the first time since leaving grad school(10 yrs), I could fit into 32" trousers. It felt great. I actually threw away all my 34" trousers with a commitment to self that I'll stay within 32" waistline.

Its been almost a year since my return and I have to admit that the battle of "bulge" is never won. I have to keep an eye on my food as every now and then I binge and then it shows up on the weighing scale. So far, I've been able to keep my weight and my promise to self, but then I fight this battle every day.