OnePhatMan

I’ve added new stuff in the sidebar to the left, pictures, a cast page, and a couple of other things. Take a look around, let me know if anything’s broken or needs clarification, please.

There’s also a picture of me from just today over on the cast page link. Plus, if you look on the right, I’ve started posting my food and exercise. When you look at Friday’s food list and freak out, remember: one day a week (Friday) is set aside for junk food, and is not how I eat the other 6 days. For that, look at today’s.

Is your life one big routine?

If you’re anything like me it is. I get up at the same time almost every day, do the same kind of workout, eat the same foods, and so on. Robyn jokes that you can set your clock by me, down even to the time I start the coffee on the weekends. Routines are easy to fall into, and they’re not bad in and of themselves, but little changes can sneak their way into your routines. Little changes that add up to big changes.

Take my recent workouts, for example.

After my shoulder surgery, I couldn’t do anything physical for several days (though I did go hiking, nine days post-up, up the hardest trail here, with one hand). When I started back doing cardio on our elliptical trainer, it was only for a few minutes at an easy level, because too much movement–even in other parts of my body–made my shoulder ache.

Plus, let’s face it, I loathe the elliptical trainer with all my being. As much as I love exercise, mindlessly standing on a machine and going round and round and round makes me batshit crazy. The whole time I’m on the elliptical, I’m counting down the minutes until I can get off it. I realize I could just go outside and walk, but the elliptical has one redeeming value: it keeps my joints happy, which means I can hike more. So I put up with it.

But I digress.

When I started back on the elliptical after surgery, I set the resistance down from my normal 15 to 10. The highest is 20, and I suspect I’d die if I tried a half hour at that level. After a couple of weeks of working out on 10, it became a routine. Even when I knew my shoulder could take it back on a higher setting, I left it alone, just because it was easier to. And it stayed a routine until this week, Thursday, when I bumped it back up to 12.

Plus, during this same time, I picked up a second bad habit when on the elliptical. Our elliptical is a dual-action trainer, which means that in addition to moving your legs in the elliptical outline, you’re also holding onto handles and moving your arms at the same time. The net effect is that you look like you’re running in place.

Because of the pain in my shoulder, I took to leaning over onto the front panel and holding the stationary grips instead of using the arm handrails, so I was getting less of a workout than before surgery. And again, once my shoulder was well enough to handle the handrails, I still used them less than before. I’d do a minute or two with the handrails, then 3 or 4 without.

See how easy it is to fall into a routine, and how things build up until they lead you to a less-than-optimal workout?

This morning, I did the elliptical the old way. I bumped the resistance back up to 15, and I kept my hands on the handrails the whole time. I ended up—according to the readout on the machine—burning just over 600 calories in 30 minutes, up almost 80 calories over where it was earlier this week.

Eighty calories here, eighty calories there, and pretty soon we’re talking about real numbers. My workout change was very minor, but I expect it will help lead to a major change for me in the form of getting those fifteen pounds gone.

But workouts aren’t the only place you can get into a routine that’s detrimental. Food routines can very easily add on the pounds. Let’s look at me as an example.

Back in May, I went to the local bariatric clinic and had my resting metabolic rate tested. After 20 minutes of breathing into a tube, the machine reported that my body required almost 2800 calories a day at rest.

Side note: the nutritionist there couldn’t get over the readout. She said I had the highest metabolism of any of their patients who’d lost weight. My resting metabolism is 32% faster than other men my age and weight.

When she kept going on about it, I went all Gump and said, “I just like to work out.”

I am dork, hear me bore.

According to it, with moderate exercise I needed nearly 3500 calories a day to maintain my weight. While I question how accurate the machine is, because I’m pretty sure I don’t eat 3500 calories a day (though I guess it’s possible I eat more than I think, since I don’t bother with weighing or measuring my food), the point is, because of my fitness level and muscle mass, I need a lot of food.

The problem is, when I got hurt and stopped being as active, my food routine stayed the same. I ate like the man who busted his ass working out every morning and spent his free time climbing the hills we call mountains around here, but I wasn’t moving like him. My failure to change my routine contributed to the 15 extra pounds I’m now carrying.

Again, see how easy it is when you’re not paying attention? Let the phat man screw up for you, so you don’t have to go through it. Learn from my mistakes—and from my successes.

To the food end, right now I’m planning three changes:

1. I’m making my nighttime snack a little smaller, by switching from oil-popped popcorn to air-popped. Please note, this change has nothing to do with the fat in oil and everything to do with eating a few less calories. Fat isn’t evil.
2. Once I eat the cottage cheese that I still have, I’m going to switch my breakfast to be higher carbs, lower protein. Right now I’m eating protein like someone who lifts weights all the time, but I’m not lifting yet.
3. I’m going to make my lunches just a tiny bit smaller. For example, when we have spaghetti I normally get six lunches from that. My goal is to now try to get seven lunches from the same amount.

See? There’s nothing drastic there, just like there’s nothing drastic on my exercise changes. They’re little tweaks, to bring everything into line with what I’m able to do and how I need to eat to support that. I may very well have to tweak differently down the road. Only time will tell.

What’s important is that I’m kicking myself out of my routine, and paying more attention to what I’m doing. Paying attention is what works the miracles, and makes things happen for you.

Speaking of you, what about you? How are your routines? Is there anything you can change, and little tweak you can make that maybe you should have been doing all along?

Remember, the only time it’s too late to change is when you’re dead.

This is what you get on you when you hike all the time.