How to Lose Five Pounds in a Week

First of all, I'm not calling you fat.  I'll leave that to your mother-in-law.

I weighed 178 when I started marathon training.  I weighed 183 during the marathon.  After numerous weeks of summer travel, I weighed 186.  It was time to lose weight.  Training for another marathon was obviously not the answer, at least not the way I was training.

If you're like me (and for your sake, I hope you're not), your marathon training encompassed fast runs, long runs, and recovery runs that weren't really recovery runs because you ran them as fast as you could but were too tired to run within 2 minutes of your hoped for time.  If you're like me, your training runs--especially the long ones--were followed by gorging on refined carbohydrates and sugary treats.

I gained weight because I was training too hard, too much and eating like a four-year old without parental guidance.  Here are the changes I made.

1. If you follow this blog (I'm speaking to all three of you), you may remember I started using a heart rate monitor to slow myself down.  Other than one race, I've kept my heart rate under 142, which has forced me to slow way down.  It's also taught my body how to burn fat instead of sugar for energy.  I've also incorporated some P90X 2 workouts in as well because I need to feel like puking during workouts at least once per week.
2. Because I'm not completely exhausting myself every run, I don't feel it necessary to pig out every meal.  I have seriously reduced my intake of refined carbohydrates and sugar.  I still ate a cupcake and had pasta at three meals last week, so by significantly reducing I mean not eating refined carbs every meal.  I also ate a cupcake on my daughter's birthday and a chocolate covered banana on mine.
3. Because I didn't eat refined carbs every meal, I needed to replace them with foods that filled me up.  This was accomplished by drinking more water,  eating more vegetables, and consuming better fats.  After workouts, I drink a mixture of this green powdery substance made from vegetables, chia seeds, and water.  That's the only loopy kind of thing I do.  I follow this mixture up with two fried eggs a couple hours later, a decent lunch in the afternoon, and pretty much whatever I want at dinner.
4. Because accountability leads to success, I keep track of what I eat.  It's a simple system based on Weight Watchers.  I get a certain number of points per day + whatever I earn from exercise.  I chalk up a certain number of points after EVERYTHING (I've never done all caps before.  This is exciting!!!!!!!!!!!) I eat.  I tally each 16-ounce cup of water I drink until I reach 8.  I tally up every serving of vegetables until I reach 10.  I just mark it on the white board next to the telephone in the kitchen.
5. I eliminated diet soda.  That was tough.

I have no idea if this will work for you.  It's worth a shot.  At the very least, you won't be tempted to click on the "How to eliminate belly fat" ads that appear all over the web.

The Best Weight Loss Plan Ever?

We all know that Bulimia is a very stupid weight loss plan, but what about Reverse Bulimia?

Reverse Bulimia, by the way, does not involve eating puke--yours or anybody else's--although I've a friend who ate puke once (he also ate spiders and hot peppers).  In order to fully incorporate Reverse Bulimia into your training regimen, you need to catch the stomach flu, which is not as hard as you think.  All you have to do is hang out where people with the stomach flu congregate--hospitals, public trash cans, and Burger King, for example.

I was fortunate enough to hang out at a place where the stomach flu was on the rampage this week: my house.  Here's how Reverse Bulimia works:  I got sick and was unable to eat much on Friday.  On Friday night/Saturday morning, everything I had eaten for the past couple days exited my mouth via my esophagus.  I had no desire to eat most of Saturday.  The evening came and I needed food, junk food, so I went to the store and bought a bag of potato chips.  After downing those, I raided the fridge and made some peanut butter and jelly pancakes, followed by a trip to the pantry for some Hostess cupcakes.  I don't even know why there are Hostess cupcakes in my pantry, but I didn't care.  My wife saw how hungry I was, and not knowing of my foraging, made me some potatoes fried in butter, which I doused with ketchup and gobbled down in about 23 seconds.

Twinkies are an integral part of the Reverse Bulimia Training Regimen.

Fruits and vegetables were strictly off limits.

When all was said and done I had eaten some of the worst-for-you, delicious junk food in existence (oh, I forgot about the cheese) and didn't gain a pound because I had thrown up prior to the binge.  If you do it right and plan your stomach flu for non-running days, you can participate in the diet and not slack on your training.

Give it a try and let me know how it goes for you.

*****

Training Update: Skipped Saturday's short run and took it easy today with an 8-miler at about an 8:34 pace (I'm just kidding.  It was far from easy).  I'll resume two-a-days tomorrow. This chest cold is getting old.  Set a pr for dry heaves today. 

I realize I've been writing a lot about vomit lately.  This trend should end (as should my vomiting).  There's only so many angles you can approach throwing up from.