The Challenge: Week Four

Weigh in Beginning Week 4:
Weight: 357 lbs

I have received some great feedback from everyone so far. I really appreciate all your letters of encouragement and support. I mentioned this to my team members and we all want to give back to you in a small way. We would like to invite you to join us Saturday morning for a brisk walk. We are going to meet at City Park by the water park at 10:30 AM this Saturday morning, February 12th. Let’s get those bodies moving!

Global Fitness has stepped up and for anyone that meets us for this week’s walk they have a special deal for you to join the gym and participate in the weekly challenges with the Get it Back teams. You must attend the walk to receive this great deal.

Congrats to the Yellow Team with our first set of team weigh-ins! We have come out on top by almost a full percentage point. Great job everyone! There are some big losses out there for all teams.

Week Four is under way and life had decided to get in my way this past week. I picked up a cold for the weekend. I had just done a great job at the Charity spin event Thursday night and woke up Friday morning drained of energy and stuffed up. I missed boot camp Friday morning, I couldn’t do anything all weekend and I missed our training session Monday morning as well. Tuesday was my first workout back at it. I knew it was going to be tough but I also knew that the sooner I did it, the better I would feel in a few days.

In previous attempts this would have been a great excuse to keep missing workouts due to a cold. I would tell myself that I wasn’t feeling good so I should stay home and rest. Then that turns into one too many rest days and then I am too afraid of the pain of getting back into the swing of things. The difference this time was that I had been through three weeks of hard work. I have lost some weight, my clothes are fitting loose, but I have so much further to go. If I keep staying at home my lifetime change will not happen. So for the first time in my life I was really looking forward to getting up early and meeting with my team for a good work out.

Since I missed some work outs I don’t have any big stories this week, so I thought it would be a great time to talk about some diet guidelines our trainer has given us. The picture you see attached to this article is a portion control system she gave us. The idea is to take your stretched out hand and place it on your plate. The red area (the palm of your hand) is where your meat and protein should be. The green area (from your thumb to your pinkie finger) is the amount of veggies that should be on your plate. The little sliver of yellow on the one side is the amount of carbs and starches you need.

This has been instrumental in how I have been looking at eating the past few weeks. If you are like me you grew up with a big piece of meat on your plate, mashed potatoes piled high on the other half of the plate and a little tiny sliver of veggies somewhere in the middle. For some people this works great if they are active enough to burn off the calories. I know of several people that eat like this and they stay within their little bubble of normal weight. For someone like me this is a sure-fire way to put on the pounds.

As you can see the big shift is the amount of veggies and starches you eat. Don’t you need starches for energy? You sure do, but nowhere near the amount we are accustomed to. Unless you can burn off all that energy there is no reason to load up on that amount of carbs.

I don’t read a lot of books but one I did take some time to read the GI Diet. The Glycemic Index ranks foods on how quickly it turns into sugar in your body. The lower amount of sugar in your system the better chance your body has to burn that extra fat and thus lose weight. This isn’t a ranking of good or bad foods, just simply an index of sugar levels.

Take orange juice for example. It is full of vitamin C, it comes from a fruit and is considered healthy. It is a high GI food. It doesn’t mean it’s a bad food, but if you want to lose weight you need to really watch how much of it you take in each day. I used to drink almost 2 litres of fruit juice every evening - the frozen cans you buy and mix up with water. That amount of juice has almost 3000 calories in it. Add that to the normal 3000 calories of food I would normally take in and you get 6000 calories a day! Most programs state I should be in the 2000 – 2500 calories per day area to lose weight. This most definitely added to the cause of my obesity. The good news is this is an easy one to fix. I don’t drink fruit juice anymore.

The bottom line is, if you eat more low GI foods and change your portion levels and increase your activity level you are going to lose weight. The only question is how much and how long will it take. I challenge any of you to go a week without fruit juice, pop or energy drinks. I also challenge you to have at least one supper meal and shift your portions according to the magic hand in the picture. I wouldn’t be surprised if you lost a pound or two just by making those changes. Try it, I dare you!!

Get it Back – Give it Back is a FREE three month fitness and weight loss challenge for anyone wanting to rediscover their health and wellness. The selected applicants will receive a 3-month fitness membership and weekly training, nutritional advice, weekly challenges, weekly tips, all valued at over $1,800. Plus a chance to win prizes monthly and the opportunity to win the Grand Prize valued over $2,500.

Dan Boundy, Marketing Consultant for Castanet Media has accepted this challenge. Dan is 37-years-old, 6 ft. 4 in. tall and his starting weight was 373 lbs.

To view Dan's previous articles, Losin' It

This article is written by or on behalf of an outsourced columnist and does not necessarily reflect the views of Castanet.