Saturday, August 11, 2012

The Battle Plan: Part 1

      
      Since I've changed the format of The Fat Kid Chronicles people have either been writing me, or calling me, or coming up to me and saying, "Hey I read the blog and I have a couple of ideas for you." Let me tell you something, that is wonderful thing. I want dialogue to come from this. Some folks will come and offer advice. People have offered to train me. I've gotten recommendations on new fitness apps and all kinds of new healthy foods to try. All great stuff.

     Have you guys ever seen the movie, Angus? I've seen most of it on TBS at one point or another. I remember wanting to see it because James Van Der Beek was in it and I was a big Dawson's Creek fan in high school. (Yeah, I know what I said. The Creek, seen every episode of that shit. Big deal, wanna fight about it?) Anyway, Angus. There's this line I remember from the flick. I couldn't find the exact quote on IMDB so I'm paraphrasing here, but the lines go something like this. 

   The girl Angus likes, this cheerleader, is having a bit of a breakdown at the end of the movie and confesses a secret to Angus. She looks at him at one point and says, "I'm bulimic. Do you know what that is?" Angus responds, "Of course I know what that is. I'm a Fat Kid!" 

   I don't consider myself an expert on anything...okay, maybe Dawson's Creek. Seriously though, I’m certain that over the course of my journey toward a leaner me I'll learn a great deal about health and nutrition that I didn’t know before. However, being that I too am an Angus style big dude, which after typing that I realize sounds like the next burger creation coming from McDonald's this fall, I too know quite a bit about fitness and nutrition. I've been educating myself about it since I was in junior high. I sadly just decided to not apply any of it...until now.

   Let's talk about a battle plan. Let's talk about how exactly I plan to make this work. Now I know that once I list some of the ways I’m going to approach this, some of you will say, "No Mergs, that's not right." That's okay! I invite you to disagree. If you think you have a better idea, let's hear it. I also know that some of these ideas may not seem like enough. Some of them don't seem like enough to me, but remember that the point of this approach is starting small and then building on those successes. Like my man Kevin Smith says, "You gotta do the little goals too. Sometimes you just gotta lay the bar down and step over it, so you can feel accomplished.” Okay, here we go.

The Food

    Someone told me once that nutrition holds roughly 90% of the keys to weight loss. I agree. 

    First, let's create a caloric deficit. Some folks will say that you shouldn't count calories. I disagree. I think it's a must especially in the beginning. I've spoken to nutritionists, I've plugged my stats into a new app that I'll talk about in a moment, I've read up. I can take in 2400 calories a day, and stay the same weight. That's what it takes to run my body for one day. We all know that in order to lose weight we must take in fewer calories than we burn. So, I'm looking to take in just under 2000. Even without exercising, that number should technically be low enough that I would drop a pound or two a week. I'm hoping that with the workouts it'll be two to three pounds per week. That's the neighborhood I want to live in.

    There's an app for the iPhone called, "Lose It!" I's essentially a fancy food journal. It allows you to keep track of caloric intake as well as carbs, protein, sodium, and so on. It's super easy to use and I'm giving it a FKC endorsement. (I think it’s tragic and hilarious that the abbreviation for my blog is the jumbled version of KFC.) I'll record all I take in on the app. Along with that, okay deep breath; I will list my caloric intake right here, every day.  The letters CI/The Date/The Number, will be listed every day, starting today. 

    Now, let's make those calories count. I'm going to allow myself just about anything so long as it doesn't put me over that limit. There are two terrible key things that I've gotten rid of in the past week. Soda, including diet soda, and fast food. For some reason those two monsters have crept back into my life over these last few months and the extra calories I've taken in from them are ridiculous. Neither of the two provides any nutritional value and I've felt quite good about ditching them. 

   I'm also going to try to drastically reduce sweets and any refined sugars, white flours, and starchy carbs like my friend the potato. I'm also going to cut down, but not cut out, dairy. Let's now up the intake of vegetables, fruit, and lean protein. Breads, pasta, and rice should be brown whenever eaten. Coffee, tea, and club soda will be my drinks of choice. Also, water. Lots and lots of water.

   The booze...I mean, why does everything awesome in life have to be bad for you? I'm going to keep it to one day a week and be much more sensible about it. It too will be recorded. The truth is, booze is just horrible for you. There are no health benefits other than the one glass of red wine a day thing. It's just empty calories that fuck up your metabolism and pack on the pounds. It has to be closely monitored if weight loss is going to happen. So, I'll still see my friends Mr. Daniels and Mr. Jameson, just not as much.

   Also, let’s break the meals up. Six small meals a day is annoying and not convenient for me personally. Four meals a day works better. Also, I go to bed around 2:00AM every day. That being the case, let's make the last meal of the day happen no later than 9:00PM.

So, that’s where I’m starting with the food part of things. Like I said feedback is welcome. As far as the exercise portion of the show, I’ll have to wait until tomorrow to tell you about that. Right now I gotta run. I want to hit the gym before work.

Enjoy your Saturday gang.

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