RE.net waist-loss challenge: Mid-term report cards

by Greg Swann

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

We’re about half-way through the RE.net waist-loss challenge, so it seems like a good time to pull out the scales and the tape measures. This was the plan I laid out for myself in March:

My goal: A 34-inch waist by August 1st.

My plan: A half-hour a day on the stationary bike, while reading nothing work-related. Eat half as much, twice as often — or less. Add real bicycling as the weather warms up. Add free-weights and crunches as appropriate.

No crunches at all yet (O, the pain!), but everything else proceeds apace. I got sick a little while ago, and I haven’t yet reintegrated the weights before bedtime. I finally got onto my mountain bike a couple of weeks ago. I hate anything like cold weather, so I won’t ride if the outside temperature isn’t what most people would think of as blistering. Anyway, I found out right away that the recumbent bike is a vigorous way of sitting down. By now I can do 45 very hard minutes on the bike, but I haven’t yet found myself tempted by any of the nearby mountains. Eating less and better has been no problem at all. Food has always bored me, but the weights and the bike lead me to a certain fascination with protein.

Consequences? I’m down 30 pounds from the start of the year, but that doesn’t really matter. I care a lot less about weight than about converting fat to muscle. That much seems to be working well. I’ve burned two inches off my belt, but that vast beach ball above my belt is much deflated. Riding a mountain bike is an excellent workout for every muscle from toes to glutes (plus some upper body stuff), so the biggest muscle groups in my body are getting substantially stronger. Plus which, while free weights are beyond excellent for building fat-burning muscle, working out with weights is blindingly boring, where riding the bike is always interesting.

Even so, there is a degree to which all exercise sucks. There is nothing quite as pleasant as laying down on the sofa and sinking into another fascinating episode of the eyelid show. To go to the weight bench instead, running through 30 reps each of 18 or 20 exercises, will result in a much better, deeper night’s sleep. Even better, where the nap will turn dinner into another layer of fat around the belly, working out will bump your rest metabolism for the next eight hours at least. In other words, if you’re willing to pay the price, working out is the gift that keeps on giving.

And giving. And giving. Increasing your muscle mass results in a consistent increase in your rest metabolism: Muscle burns more energy than fat. And the more muscle mass you add, the more you can add. Even better, since fat is parasitic weight in every possible interpretation, the more fat you burn, the easier it becomes to burn more fat. And kinesthetic memory and the good attitude that results from better habits combine to make it easier, day by day, to choose working out over the nap — or to choose four ounces of lean beef over a Grilled Stuffed Steak Burrito.

To be frank, I would welcome more dramatic results. I’m thinking I might be at or at least near the point at which accumulated gains start to yield accelerated gains — the hump — but all I can do is do what I’m doing, day by day. Doing nothing would be much, much easier, but when you do nothing, nothing changes. Or, worse, everything changes for the worse.

With one exception, I’m not going to hold anyone’s feet to the fire, but if you changed your eating or exercising habits in response to my earlier post, I’d love to hear how you’re doing.

Here is the one exception: Russell: I’m not applying for a job. I’m bragging.

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