![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Exercise 1, Depression 0
Jan. 9th, 2011 12:03 pmToday was my monthly weigh-in. Last month I had a down period which lasted about two weeks and during my down periods I tend to eat more and exercise less. For example, in November I spent 30 hours on the exercise cycle and only had poutine once while this past month I spent just 20 hours on the exercise cycle and had poutine three times1. So I was expecting at best to have maintained my weight and at worse to have gained back a pound.
As it turned out, I lost another four pounds, bringing me down to 234. I've now lost 10% of my body weight.
In keeping with last month I don't notice any difference in the fit of my clothes, but that's fine. The quick shrinking of my waistline early on served it's purpose of helping to keep me motivated during the crucial startup period. I'm now comfortable with waiting for further visible benefits. It's enough knowing that my cardiovascular system is slowly looking less like the "after" picture of the Pont de l'Alma tunnel and more like "before".
Of course, I wouldn't be me if I didn't spend at least some time analyzing why my expectations were so far out of whack with reality, so let's take a look.
First off, I have a tendency to focus on the negative and dismiss the positive. (Yeah, I know, you're all shocked.) So the two weeks of low exercise loomed much larger in my mind than the last 10 days where I put in extra time to make up for it. If you'd asked me before I tallied it up, I would have guessed that I'd spent closer to just 15 hours on the exercise bike.
Second, I was looking at the difference relative to last month (10 hours less exercise) rather than relative to where I was at before I began this program (20 hours more exercise). Even if it had only been 15 hours of exercise, that's still 15 more than I used to get and represents a significant bucket of sweat. It's about 10,000 calories burned, which is roughly 2.8 pounds of fat. A couple of extra servings of poutine and few additional slices of toast with peanut butter aren't going to undo all of that.
Third, I didn't give enough weight (so to speak) to the exercise I get when I'm geocaching. I got out ten times last month versus just three outings in the preceding month2. Not all of those outings required me walking long distances or climbing hills, but a lot of them did. When I'm geocaching I'm working a lot more than just my legs so it feels less intense than the exercise cycle, which focusses almost exclusively on a narrow set of leg muscles. That might account for why I tend to discount it. That and the fact that I actually enjoy geocaching.
Finally, I guess there's the benefit of the increased metabolism you're supposed to get when you exercise regularly. Even if you slack off for a bit, you're body's still buring calories more quickly than it used to. At least that's what I've read, and the results from this past month certainly do nothing to disprove it.
Oh, I guess I should explain the title of this post. It means that even though I did have a period of depression this month, I didn't let it beat me. I managed to beat it back with exercise.
As it turned out, I lost another four pounds, bringing me down to 234. I've now lost 10% of my body weight.
In keeping with last month I don't notice any difference in the fit of my clothes, but that's fine. The quick shrinking of my waistline early on served it's purpose of helping to keep me motivated during the crucial startup period. I'm now comfortable with waiting for further visible benefits. It's enough knowing that my cardiovascular system is slowly looking less like the "after" picture of the Pont de l'Alma tunnel and more like "before".
Of course, I wouldn't be me if I didn't spend at least some time analyzing why my expectations were so far out of whack with reality, so let's take a look.
First off, I have a tendency to focus on the negative and dismiss the positive. (Yeah, I know, you're all shocked.) So the two weeks of low exercise loomed much larger in my mind than the last 10 days where I put in extra time to make up for it. If you'd asked me before I tallied it up, I would have guessed that I'd spent closer to just 15 hours on the exercise bike.
Second, I was looking at the difference relative to last month (10 hours less exercise) rather than relative to where I was at before I began this program (20 hours more exercise). Even if it had only been 15 hours of exercise, that's still 15 more than I used to get and represents a significant bucket of sweat. It's about 10,000 calories burned, which is roughly 2.8 pounds of fat. A couple of extra servings of poutine and few additional slices of toast with peanut butter aren't going to undo all of that.
Third, I didn't give enough weight (so to speak) to the exercise I get when I'm geocaching. I got out ten times last month versus just three outings in the preceding month2. Not all of those outings required me walking long distances or climbing hills, but a lot of them did. When I'm geocaching I'm working a lot more than just my legs so it feels less intense than the exercise cycle, which focusses almost exclusively on a narrow set of leg muscles. That might account for why I tend to discount it. That and the fact that I actually enjoy geocaching.
Finally, I guess there's the benefit of the increased metabolism you're supposed to get when you exercise regularly. Even if you slack off for a bit, you're body's still buring calories more quickly than it used to. At least that's what I've read, and the results from this past month certainly do nothing to disprove it.
Oh, I guess I should explain the title of this post. It means that even though I did have a period of depression this month, I didn't let it beat me. I managed to beat it back with exercise.
1 Don't worry, I'm not obsessively tracking everything I eat. It's just that I only have poutine at burger joints and I (normally) visit those infrequently enough that even my feeble memory is capable of recalling the last few occasions. Two months is about my limit, though: I've no idea how often I hit the burger joints in October.
2 You may have noticed a discrepancy between the three geocaching outings that I say I had in November and the five outings that I mentioned in my journal posts during November. That's because here I'm talking about the period between weigh-ins, which runs from Nov 9 through to Dec 8, not the calendar month.
What's that? You say that you've got better things to do than fact-check me by combing through my old journal entries? And you call yourself a friend!
2 You may have noticed a discrepancy between the three geocaching outings that I say I had in November and the five outings that I mentioned in my journal posts during November. That's because here I'm talking about the period between weigh-ins, which runs from Nov 9 through to Dec 8, not the calendar month.
What's that? You say that you've got better things to do than fact-check me by combing through my old journal entries? And you call yourself a friend!
