The Biggest Loser - Shaping Up in More Ways Than One

Well, things are finally beginning to shape up on The Biggest Loser. Despite NBC hinting breathlessly at more Neil drama to come, he actually behaved himself for the most part last night, especially after his trainer, Bob Harper, called him out for voting out his "friend," Ryan, last week. I'd be lying if I didn't admit I enjoyed watching him squirm, and kudos to Bob for not letting Neil off the hook.


Talk about squirm-inducing...that little scene with Amy and Kim was bad. I'm not a huge Amy fan, but I thought Kim over-reacted when Amy said she was hurt by Kim telling the Red Team to vote her off right in front of her face. Kim also lost points with me for her use of the "f" word; that wasn't professional at all. It seemed like the two of them were trying to out-whine, and out-accuse each other, and both did a really bad job of trying to portray themselves as a victim.

Kim, you threw Amy under the bus in a very pubic way. Step up and own that and stop feeling sorry for yourself. It's unattractive.

You had conflicts with Amy, and even with David, who seemed like an absolute sweetheart. He got off the treadmill and left the gym rather than listen to your mouth any more. So maybe you have some soul searching to do about how you interact with your team members?


Amy, the reason Kim picked you to go is that you did nothing but complain from day one. You didn't ever want to do the work; you always had some cry baby excuse about why you couldn't do your share. Last night, instead of being happy for Julie to get picked to go home, you whined and cried and complained that you didn't get picked. Why would you have been picked? Did you and Hollie have some great friendship? No, you didn't. But congratulations on successfully continuing your journey at home. You look great, and I hope you have learned a few lessons about your own character as a result of being on the show.

Now on to the challenges. I continue to be stunned by the ongoing junk food challenges. On a program where contestants are supposedly being taught new ways to look at food and better nutritional and exercise habits, to force them to eat the worst possible food in order to win some prize or benefit is downright sadistic.

This week, contestants were faced with a sea of doughnuts, thousands stacked one upon the other and inside one, a wooden disk good for $5,000. The catch was, in order to be able to dive in and search for the disk for 60 seconds, the contestants had to eat one 300-calorie doughnut.

No one found it, so they had to eat a second donut to search for another minute, and then a third to be allowed to search until the disk was found. Every single contestant went for it instantly, except for Kae. She was the only one with the intestinal fortitude to pass the temptation. The others inhaled their donuts, willingly downing 3 each in order to be able to search for the disk. Bill finally found it and won the money, leading some contestants to complain about his luck since he won the car last week, too.


Okay, I would have been jealous, too. I don't understand karma, how some people just seem to have good luck and good things happen to them over and over again.


I think it's disgusting that all that food went to waste. The temptation was like a college cafeteria food fight. With all the hungry people in the world, the idea that probably several hundred dollars worth of donuts simply got destroyed is disturbing.

But what really makes me mad is that ever since I watched the show, I can't stop thinking about donuts. I am probably going to have to just go and eat one just to remind myself how bad they make me feel.

Hint to The Biggest Loser producers: I watch the show for inspiration on my own weight loss journey; not to be reminded that there are bad but wildly tasty foods out there I have purposely eliminated from my life.

Congratulations to Bill who reached the 100 pounds lost mark this week! I think he and Bryan are probably my two favorites out of the remaining contestants.


In the end, Amy went home. I was amazed that Jillian Michaels tried to get her team to vote out Bryan and keep Amy. I think Jillian was just trying to be supportive of Amy and keep her word, but Amy was dragging the Black Team down.

As for my own weight loss challenge, I'm back down to 201 pounds again, not in time to be able to post it on weigh-in day, but a hopeful sign that some day I will get below 199 pounds. I have this weird mental thing that once I break 200 pounds and stay there, my weight loss will somehow accelerate. Probably a goofy thing to think, but that's my fantasy.

I'm glad The Biggest Loser is shaping up to be more entertaining and less gag-inducing than the last few weeks, but I do wish they would either cut way back on the product placement or do it in a less disingenuous way. Bob Harper seemed truly ill at ease when he advised a contestant that eating instant oatmeal loaded with sugar, salt and preservatives was a good idea for a weight loss program.

Dangerous Territory

Four days ago, I blogged with a great deal of excitement about reaching 200.8 pounds, and pledged that I would reach 199 pounds by today. To that end, I doubled my walking time from 30 minutes to one hour, and was especially careful about what I ate.

Now mind you, I am logging everything I do, good or bad, keeping track of my food intake and exercise in a journal so that I can study what I do and when I do it and see if there are any patterns emerging that might help me tackle my weight problem a little more effectively. When I slip off my diet, I say so, both in my journal and on this blog.

Saturday night, I made a conscious decision to eat something I normally don't eat, french fries. I truly don't enjoy them all that much; I prefer my potatoes mashed and slathered with butter. But Saturday was a very busy day and I had no time to prepare a healthy, delicious meal to take to work as I usually do. I had skipped lunch altogether because of time constraints, again, an unusual thing for me to do. By seven p.m., I was starving. I had my most immediate deadlines out of the way, so I asked my supervisor if I could run pick up a sandwich or a salad; there's a healthy market about two miles away from where I work, but he was expecting something new to come over the wire any second, so he asked me to make it quick. There's a burger joint a block away, so a burger it was.

I got the small meal, really not happy about doing it, but so hungry I probably would have cheerfully gnawed on cardboard at that point. I calculated the calories, then wolfed down all the fries, ate half the burger and drank half the soda, the first I'd had since starting the program.

The soda tasted sticky sweet, the burger was grey mystery meat on a gluey, pasty white bun that looked like someone had sat on it. The lettuce was limp, the tomato flavorless and I had just downed 956 calories, even with halving the portions. Bad choice and I knew it.

Eating that disgusting meal was like swallowing a hand grenade. No sooner had I finished than the yucky stuff started expanding like a hot air balloon, churning precipitously around in my stomach. I felt nauseated, not from guilt or shame; I had made a conscious choice based on expediency, not desire. But I was actually nauseated from the food I had eaten.

My body is used to me treating it better. I just have to ask, why doesn't it return the favor?

Yes, I ate a bad meal, but my calorie count for the day was still under 2,000. With all the regular physical activity I now do, a nutritionist I consulted told me it would take 2,300 calories a day to maintain my weight. If I eat 1,800 calories a day, a perfectly reasonable plan, I should lose a pound a week.

Should lose. Should lose.

I eat about 1,800 calories every single day, some days closer to 1,700, and that one day just a little over 2,000. Remember I have doubled my exercise time from what I told the nutritionist I was doing. And yet, on the morning after that one fast food meal, I weighed FIVE POUNDS MORE than I had the previous morning. I was swollen like a bad melon and just a few ounces away from my original starting weight.

That was yesterday, Sunday, and I walked and walked and walked on my treadmill until I was dripping sweat from every pore. I ate a small breakfast, large lunch and no dinner, so by this morning I had it back down to 203.2 pounds, meaning that I gained weight this past week, didn't lose it, and my blood pressure has sky rocketed, too. It also means I can kiss 199 pounds goodbye, at least for several more weeks.

I still simply cannot make myself believe I gained five pounds overnight from just one heavy meal. Did the rest of the week not count at all? Did I really negate all my hard work by going through one drive-up?

Yes, apparently I did.

I ate 20 reasonable meals over the course of last week and 14 healthy snacks. Even on the day I ate the yucky meal, I still stayed within 200 calories of my daily goal. And yet my weight shot up to almost 206 pounds overnight after that one meal. How is that possible? How can two months work of work and sacrifice be wiped out by a single meal?

Yes, I learned a valuable lesson. But my frustration level is almost unmanageable. I am drifting into dangerous territory, the "dammit, if I'm going to weigh 205 pounds or so for the rest of my life, I might as well enjoy it."

Then I have to remind myself...I weighed 206 pounds and was gaining weight, 6 pounds in as many months. So maybe my reality is that I have to keep exercising and watching every bite just to keep from turning into The 700-Pound Blob.

I am a geek girl, a science-based writer who knows quite a bit about health and wellness. So what I know intellectually, is that what I am doing should work. I should be losing weight and getting more fit and healthy. But here's what my utter lack of success is doing to me.

I suspect most of my friends don't believe I am exercising 6 days a week even though I am, and I suspect they think I am a midnight snacker or closet binger, because any time someone has stuck to a well-designed, thoughtful program for two months and produced no measurable results, well, they think the only answer is, I must be cheating or lying, or deluding myself. I can assure you I am not cheating or lying, but I most certainly am deluding myself...because I thought if I stuck to a good diet and exercise program faithfully I would be rewarded with some positive physical changes.

I have seen none. Yes, my resting heart rate is now down to 60, and my blood pressure is usually under better control. But guess what? You don't walk into a cocktail party and get rewarded with admiring glances for lowering your resting heart rate. That hot guy in the corner isn't going to look at me and say, "Hey, that chick has a slammin' resting heart rate."

No, he's going to look at me and say, "Oh, my God! Look at the size of her ass! I better get out of here before she knocks the whole planet out of orbit."

So, I am discouraged today. More than discouraged. I haven't lost an inch in weeks, my weight keeps going up, not down, and I have been at it for two months. I know it's going to take time to see real results, but this much time?

I really just want to quit, but I won't let myself. I have to believe that if I keep going, some halcyon day I will wake up, look at myself in the mirror, and like what I see...not just who I see.

Planet Fat Cat

Anticipation is Gaining Me Weight...

The only reason I ever like rules is that I then have an excuse to break them or, more likely, make fun of people who are caught and punished for breaking them. So when I set a "rule" for myself that I would avoid the dreaded scale except at weigh-in on Monday morning, I fully expected that eventually I would, you know, weigh myself at other times, perhaps constantly.

Because I live on the edge folks. Watch out!

But what I didn't expect was that the damn thing would keep disappointing me by claiming that I had gained weight. Come on, people. It was supposed to be something more like, "Golly I'm sorry Fat Cat, but every day I get on the scale it keeps going down... maybe I should get that checked out while I'm buying some new, smaller, sexier clothes down at the Abercrombie store and auditioning for that GQ cover model thing."

It was NOT supposed to be: "Congratulations Fat Cat for losing fifty pounds while I continue to baffle medical science by proving that a human body can in fact create matter out of nothing. Goodbye conventional physics! Hello, Sea World's newest attraction, Pinky the Flesh-Colored Whale!"

Which is a long way of saying that this morning I weighed an ass-tounding 215.5 pounds, dry.

Since declaring that I would, for snickers and doodles, lose weight along side Fat Cat, I have gained five pounds.

Now I haven't come each day to explain what I have done to promote weight loss, but I assure any skeptics out there that I have made an effort to do so. I exercise, vigorously, at least ten hours a week. Already this week I had four days where I exercised 2 hours each or more and included both aerobic and muscle building activities. Since some people are squeamish, I won't detail my exact training methods, but I promise that my program is legal, strenuous, and exceptionally sweaty.

But I am not losing weight... and that disappointment makes me want to eat a candy bar... factory.

So instead of taking Saturday and Sunday off to rest my aching joints, I will go ahead and exercise another few hours and try to pull off a miracle for Monday morning. Any prayers to that effect would be most appreciated.

Unless prayers have mass, in which case keep them to yourselves.

Pigassus

The Biggest Loser - This Week, Not So Outrageous

Well, I have to admit I liked this week's two-hour edition of The Biggest Loser. My favorite part was the challenge. It was amazing to see all the refuse that junk food generates, especially the mountain of 148,000 soda cans.

I am a big recycler and have been for almost 20 years. In fact, I have to watch myself to make sure I don't take it overboard because when I get busy and can't get to the recycling center, it does clutter my house. I recycle plastic bags, bottles and other containers, clear and colored glass, cardboard, paper and aluminum. One really nice thing about giving up Coca-Cola other than the health benefits is that I don't have dozens of cans to recycle every week. That used to take up a lot of space in my utility room. I know I am only one person but I figure I will do what I can as an individual to help the planet. Most people can just throw stuff away but I practically have to appoint a standing committee before I can decide if something is garbage, trash, compost or recycle. I am very careful about what I put in the garbage.


Well, enough about recycling. On to the show. When I heard Julie's story about giving up her car so she and her husband could afford for her stay home with their new baby son, my opinion of her immediately shot up. I used to feel rather neutral toward her; she seemed very nice but didn't really stand out. But on Tuesday night, I really wanted her to win the car. She and Bill busted their butts to win, in fact, Bill was almost superhuman, with the result that they gathered 96 pounds of cans, more than twice what the two lowest teams each gathered. I was really glad they won the cars. I feel like the two of them are really deserving. When I saw Julie's emotional reaction to finally having a car of her own, I felt even happier for her.


I was glad Ryan got booted instead of Isabeau. It's about time that one of the cheaters went home. But Neil seems to stay on week after week. And the promos don't augur well for next week because NBC breathlessly hints that Neil again does something funky to "change the game." So I guess he'll just be allowed to cheat and get away with doing whatever he wants to do, just because the producers like the drama he creates when he cheats. Ugh, it makes me sick but I can already see them setting him up to be the big winner. The Biggest Loser winners are supposed to be inspiring people; not cheaters.

I just saw the promo for The Biggest Loser again and it's nagging at me like a thorn in my shoe. I know its probably nothing; just something the promotional people cooked up to lure viewers, but it sure does seem like they are hinting that Neil does something bad again.

I guess we'll see next Tuesday.

Planet Fat Cat

A Moment for Posterity...and for Posteriors

Okay, I know it's not my regular weigh-in day but I just had to record this moment for posterity. This is Day 54 of my 90 Day Fitness Walking Program. I was discouraged yesterday because I had to climb a long flight of stairs and seven or eight steps in, I was blowing air through my nose like a whale. Is this what fitness feels like? I asked myself, because it didn't feel fit to me to get winded just by climbing stairs. And seeing as how I am more than halfway through the program and have not only been faithful but done more than asked each day, including doing my walks on a 2% incline, I think I should be more able to handle stairs by now.

Then I remembered. I may have been walking for almost two months now, but I've only lost 3 pounds and my body fat percentage and muscle mass have not budged on my fancy-dancy scale. Hauling more than 200 pounds up a long staircase would be hard work for anyone, but especially for an overweight someone born in the Jurassic Age. Still, I was ticked when I got to the top of the stairs and was huffing and puffing and sweating like a pig, even though my dainty little, erm, not-so-dainty big self usually does not sweat no matter what the provocation.

So imagine my surprise and delight to get on the scale this morning and see that not only am I down to 200.8 pounds, a loss of almost 6 pounds since I started this program, but my body fat has actually dropped by point-two percent and my muscle mass increased by point-one percent. Yay! Those are the first positive changes in my body composition I have seen and that is very encouraging to me.

So, you may be asking yourself, why is she being coy about her total percentage of body fat when she's not coy about anything else? It's because, if my readers knew how much fat I was toting around on my carcass, some sensitive or paranoid soul among you might report me to the Department of Defense as a weapon of mass destruction.

Oh, heck. I just remembered. I published my percentage of body fat on this blog already. Okay, so I'm down to 40.2% from 40.4% and up to 28.9% muscle mass (it was 28.8%). I consider these HUGE changes because it is the first time since I started this journey that my schizophrenic scale has noted any changes whatsoever in my body composition. I can weigh six times in a minute and get weights varying by as much as two pounds, but the body composition and muscle mass NEVER CHANGED. And now they have.

In physiological terms, it means simply that I am a bit stronger, even if not long staircase worthy, and that my body is now slightly more efficient at burning calories than it was before.

And as far as I'm concerned, this is the biggest triumph yet! Next stop, 199 pounds. At the rate I'm going, that should only take another three or four months.

Wait. No more negative thoughts. I will weigh 199 by next weigh-in. My foolhardy little self is predicting I will achieve that milestone in just four more days. Never mind that it took me two whole months to lose six measly pounds. I will prevail.

Now I really have to exercise.

Planet Fat Cat

Attitude of Fatitude

The weigh-in this week wasn't as tragic as I expected it to be. I think the time change fooled my body, which I have by now figured out is my mortal enemy. Because we "fell back" one hour, my body forget to gain the usual 12 pounds in time for the weigh-in, so I actually lost a full pound this week, down to 202.8 pounds. I'm still a long way from my goal; I still terrify grown men on the street, but I lost a pound. I will gain it back again 20 or maybe even 40 times over the next month but for now, I can truthfully record in my journal that the pound is down.

My body is a wonder of weird science. It will not comply with the laws of nature, nor succumb to threats of extreme surgery, physical violence or bribery. It just keeps blubbering along, all proud of its fatness, while I hang my head in shame and shop in the "Big Woman" section. I hate it.

I haven't missed a day on the treadmill for 50 days now, but still no results. Maybe I'm living in a state of delusion, a fat-altered reality. Maybe when my fevered brain thinks my body is up on the treadmill pounding out the miles, in reality I have my head stuffed in the refrigerator licking butter. How else do you explain my body's stubborn refusal to shed fat?

So I have decided to develop an "attitude of fatitude" (sorry, Oprah) to match my body's behavior. Maybe that way I can trick it into doing what it's supposed to do...shrink...dammit...when confronted with far fewer calories and many more hours of intense physical exercise.

Today I went shopping for the tools required to pull off this hoax. Since walking isn't working, I'm adding a new exercise routine. I know, I said I was going to do this last week, but it takes about a week for an idea to get from my head out into the realm of reality, and then another week or two of chewing my cud before I actually get up off my double-wide and do something. Anyway, I decided I wanted to get one of those big balance balls you see on The Biggest Loser. I thought that my help me flatten my stomach so I would no longer look like "The World's Oldest Pregnant Woman."

And for those of you who are worried, no, I won't stop walking. I'm determined to finish the 90 Day Fitness Walking Program and get all 90 little checks in my journal. I just want to do the balance ball thing, too.

I went to the store and was immediately confronted with about 15 different configurations of balance balls in various colors and sizes and even more confusing, with different accoutrements. This was going to take hours, because I had to read every line of text on every box, I had to pick them up, look at them, touch them, feel them, smell them, chew on the edge of the boxes, ruminate, cogitate, correlate and relegate. That's a lot of work, and it all had to be one without raising the angst level of the store clerks who were scurrying up and down the aisles looking for places to stick up more Christmas merchandise. After all, it is November 6th already.

Some kits had resistance bands in the box, others had weights, others had resistance rings. Some had accompanying workouts on DVD, which I considered essential since I basically don't know what I'm doing when it comes to balance balls. In fact, if I followed my usual routine, I would blow up the ball, sit down on it, lose my balance, fall over, break my neck, and that would be the end of my exercise routine, if not the end of me.

So the DVD was a must-have, but equally important to me was there had to be some kind of device included to blow up the ball. Oh, shut up! I can hear you all now; "Surely she has enough hot air to blow up anything," but in fact, I don't. I am so old and decrepit I can barely breathe, must less blow up a giant ball with air from my own lungs. So naturally, the kit I liked best, that had the DVD and a pretty blue ball with color-coordinated resistance bands...did NOT have a blow up thingie included. Okay, says me. I'll just buy one, only the store clerk tells me they don't carry them since all the balance ball kits come with them.

I beg to differ and show her the soothingly designed kit with the ocean blue ball and accessories. She insists there is a blow up thingie in there and proceeds to rip open the box and scatter its contents all over the exercise aisle. Hmm, guess what? The little picture on the side of the box that shows everything included in the kit, only it didn't have a blow up thingie, well it was right.

The clerk refused to believe it and stared meanly at me as she struggled to get all the parts back in the box, which brings to mind another of Sir Isaac Newton's Laws of Physics: "Any item once removed from its box will never again go back into the same box without first performing extreme acts of legerdemain and uttering copious curse words. Even then, the box will be distorted according to the precepts inherent in the following equation: cm^–1/(kA/cm^–2)."

Actually, that's a lie. I just made it all up because I am fascinated by things I cannot understand. I stole that equation from a paper entitled:

Self-consistent solutions to the intersubband rate equations in quantum cascade lasers: Analysis of a GaAs/Al x Ga 1–x As device

just because I wanted to. But equation or not, things still won't ever go back into their boxes without a struggle and lots of broken nails. Trust me on this one.

Anyway, I suddenly spied a kit that had the balance ball, the resistance bands, the resistance rings, hand weights, a DVD and a blow up thingie, all for less than $30.00!

Only, it was one of the thousands of items designed specifically for October Breast Cancer Awareness month, and it was all titty pink.

I walked away. I could not bear the thought of bringing this hideous pink thing into my carefully crafted Zen bedroom. The color was so alarming that sleep would have been impossible with the damn thing in the room. But as I did a little math inside my head (always a dangerous thing to do...) I realized that to get all the stuff in that box individually, I would have to spend at least $100.00.

So now I'm home with the damned titty pink ball and still staring at it. I haven't yet had the nerve to take it out of its box and blow it up. I think I'll wait until it's dark, but this thing is so bright it might possibly glow in the dark.

It doesn't match a thing I have except for a bra I bought when I was feeling all girly one day. I can feel my entire house sending feelings of disapproval and puzzlement in my direction.

The Mrs. doesn't usually bring home such ugly things. Do you think she is sick?

No, that wasn't my husband saying that; it was my house. I don't have a husband, remember, because I am the size of a small out-building. I am an entire planet. When I stop losing weight it isn't because I have hit a plateau; it's because I AM the plateau. Men don't like women who are bigger than them. It scares the foo out of them, okay?

Anyway, my house, which is used to a calm, Zen vibe, which has soothing, tasteful colors, reacted viscerally to the introduction of the titty pink balance ball. I could swear I heard little groans and shrieks of disapproval emanating from the walls as I brought it through the door. But that's just too bad. I want to learn how to do a balance ball routine. I want to do resistance bands and I want to lift weights. I have no confidence that any of this strenuous physical activity will have any impact on my body composition whatsoever, but so what? I know I am destined to go to my grave composed primarily of fat cells, most of which have apparently migrated to my brain, but I don't care. I still want to do this.

Now, how's that for an attitude of fatitude?

Planet Fat Cat

A Retraction

In an earlier post I implied that didn't consider government intervention on a free society's eating choices a good or moral thing. I think I have changed my mind.

A few days ago I saw an advertisement for Domino's new twin-crust double-stuffed, deep fat pizza. Keeping in mind that they don't advertise it as "deep fat", it was still irresistible. And so I ordered one on a day that I was supposed to be eating slivers of lettuce and drawing in the vapors over boiling chicken broth (which is called, not surprisingly, the "lettuce slivers and chicken vapors diet"). I HAD to have one. I saw the crispy crust and the melty cheese and my hand shot out to the phone and dialed without even one conscious thought to the contrary. My mouth salivated in anticipation and all thoughts of diet, exercise, weight loss and health were gone.

Three or four hours later after I awoke from my carb heavy coma, I didn't quite feel the same about free markets and open societies. I no longer believe, for the sake of my hottishness, that they should offer things that tasty and delicious.

A similar thing happened at Target yesterday. I was heading down the isle with a friend shopping for healthy, organic, unspoiled Earth-centric foods and such crap when I saw a huge sign that said "ALL HALLOWEEN CANDY 50% OFF". Every non-fat cell in my body screamed "Don't do it!" but instead I grabbed five bags and headed for the checkout as if I had a football and was about to make the winning touchdown. I could not resist a sale on chocolate, it was impossible.

And so, I don't think they should allow the possession or distribution of chocolate.

Now I know that seems extreme, but something has to be done before I gain weight. Hershey's should be forced to make candy bars using only broccoli and brown rice. McDonald's chicken nuggets should be coated in soy protein, not tasty golden batter, and then boiled in ancient glacial waters instead of fried in oil. Milkshakes must be outlawed completely and replaced with lightly seasoned organic celery stalks lovingly washed with a baby's tears. They can call it the "Unhappy Meal".

Trust me, with a menu like that it will very unlikely that I will be able to afford to eat out, much less gain any weight. And it really could be that simple: make it impossible to enjoy food and VOILA! we are all thin and beautiful.

Of course I hasten to add that ancient Roman slaves ate nothing but organically grown grains and wilted lettuce and they died at an alarmingly early age. They rarely ate meat, were never fat, and got more than enough exercise yet they managed to have a life expectancy of around seven or eight minutes. Since the third minute was concerned with reproduction (and what has changed!), that left like six minutes to live.

I don't think I want to go out quite that fast.

So I guess I will just have to treat my desire for really tasty foods like an addiction and act accordingly. But I warn all of you out there: If I fail this time to lose weight, don't be surprised if legislation prohibiting the sale or use of flavor is introduced in the next Congressional session.

You have been warned.

Pigassus


Post Script: This morning was the dreaded weigh-in and at 214.0 lbs I gained one-half pound of muscle... MUSCLE. Not fat, not a half-pound of fat. Or bone. Maybe I grew a half-pound of bone. Or brain cells, though I don't feel a lot most smarter. But could be brains. Or bone.