PhysicsDiet.com

Last week we went bike shopping. I wanted a bike that I could ride on the road and on some of the local bike trails. I decided I needed a hybrid bike.

After doing some research the Trek hybrids looked promising. At the low end of the price range, the Trek hybrids are a great value.

I didn't want a Trek 7200 or 7300 though. I wanted something more like the old 7200 FX or 7300 FX. But I couldn't find any information on the FX series on Trek's site. I suspected the 7X00 FX series got replaced by the 7.X FX series for 2006. But I couldn't confirm that.

When we got to the bike shop I was able to confirm that the 2006 7.2 FX did indeed replace the 2005 7200 FX. The bike shop had a 7.2 FX in stock so I took it for a test ride. I really liked it but at $410 it was a bit more than I wanted to spend.

I noticed that the bike shop had some 2005 models on clearance. I asked if they had a 2005 7200 FX. They did, and it was only $324. Since it is basically the same bike, with the exception of a few minor upgrades on the 2006, I decided to save $80 and go with the 2005 model. I used the $80 I saved to buy the cadence and speed sensors for my heart rate monitor.

After riding my bike for a week I am very happy with it. I don't have anything to compare it to, but there is nothing about it that I dislike.

We got my wife a 2006 Trek 7000. She hasn't ridden hers as much as I've ridden mine, but so far she loves it. I'd show you a picture of it, but Trek's site is seriously broken and I can't find the women's version of the 7000 on their site.

We got a Schwinn trailer for our 3 year old. And we got new bikes for two of our older girls. We are now ready for the year of the bike

I recently bought a Polar S625X Heart Rate Monitor. I love it.

My stationary bike has a heart rate monitor built in. But I wanted to be able to monitor my heart rate while doing other exercises. I also wanted something that would help me stay in the right heart rate zones while doing interval training. And I wanted to be able to download the heart rate data to my computer and track my workouts over time.

I knew I'd be getting a bike, ideally I wanted a heart rate monitor that would help my track my cycling workouts too. I also wanted something to help me track running and swimming workouts.

The S625X fit the bill perfectly. It comes with a foot pod that you attach to your shoe. The foot pod monitors your steps so the heart rate monitor can track how fast you are walking or running and how far you have traveled. That makes the S625X a heart rate monitor and a running computer combined.

The foot pod is water resistant so you can use it in the rain. It is surprising light weight so you don't notice it on your shoe.

The accuracy of the foot pod technology isn't perfect. It is best to attach it to your shoe the same way every time you use it. And you should also calibrate it. Even then it isn't perfect. But it is good enough for my purposes.

The S625X is also water resistant to 30 meters. So you can use the watch and the heart rate transmitter in the pool. Heart Rate monitors don't always work for all people in the pool. I haven't tested mine in the pool yet so I'm not sure if it will work for me or not. But even if the heart rate monitor doesn't work while I'm swimming I can still use the stopwatch features on the watch to track my swim workouts.

The S625X can also be used as a cycling computer. You can purchase the speed sensor to track the speed and distance of your cycling workouts. You can add the cadence sensor to monitor your pedaling rate. Those sensors cost about $40 each. There is also a power meter available that let's you monitor the power you are producing on the bike. But that is much more expensive at about $350.

The S625X can communicate with your computer using infrared or sound. It comes with Polar Precision Performance (PPP) software that lets track your workouts.

So far I'm very happy with the S625X. I just got the speed sensor and the cadence sensor for my bike. They both work well. The foot pod works well enough. I could have gotten a GPS based heart rate monitor. But the GPS monitors are much bigger than the S625X. And I have plenty of experience with GPS and I know how unreliable it can be in certain situations.

One of our PhysicsDiet.com users - ttgf - has a blog called Time To Get Fit. You can read his introduction here in the forums.

His blog has a lot of great information. You can also follow his diet and exercise progress. Check it out.

I lost 4.95 pounds in March. My average weight dropped from 255.56 pounds to 250.61 pounds.

My average body fat % dropped from 27.85% to 26.09%. I lost 5.79 pounds of fat and gained 0.84 pounds of fat free mass.

I'm eating about 2000 calories a day again. I tried eating 1200 calories a day for about a week. But I wasn't happy with the drop in energy. I also started losing fat free mass.

I'm still eating six meals a day. I find that spreading my calories throughout the day helps me stabilize my blood sugar. The other day I accidentally skipped a meal and I got very crabby. I used to get that way on a daily basis, but this is first time I'd felt that way in a couple of months. I can't believe I lived like that for years. I am amazed my wife put with it for all these years

I'm losing about 1.5 pounds of fat per week while maintaining my fat free mass. I'm happy with that progress. I feel so good now the weight loss is secondary.

Here are my charts for March:

Have you ever had a sloshing sensation in your stomach while exercising? Like you can feel the water you drank sloshing around. I had a problem with that a couple of months ago. I was drinking water while working out instead of Diet Coke. A couple of times it got bad enough that I had to stop exercising.

I never had that problem when I drank Diet Coke. I didn't know what was going on. I thought I wasn't waiting long enough between my last meal and exercising.

After a few days I switched back to Diet Coke because supposedly caffeine encourages your body to burn fat for energy rather than using the glycogen stores in your muscles. I haven't reviewed the research on that so I don't put too much faith in that theory. But I do prefer drinking something other than water while exercising so I stuck with the Diet Coke.

Apparently the sloshing sensation is caused by drinking water without enough sodium present. Your body doesn't absorb fluids readily without sodium, so drinking water alone can cause the sloshing sensation. That explains why I've never had that problem when I drink Diet Coke.

I heard this while listening to archives of the Active.com Sports You Do Show.

PhysicsDiet.com is down right now. My host upgraded the database server that PhysicsDiet.com runs on. Unfortunately they didn't get things configured correctly on the new server. I'm working on getting the site back up now. Your data is safe, you just can't access it right now. I'll post when I have more information to share.

Update: It appears that it may not be a configuration problem on the database server. The database server is down. I'll keep you updated.

Update: The site is back up. Sorry for the problems this morning.

I felt much better after my 10am meal and drinking a diet coke. I think I was just tired this morning.

I had a great lower body workout tonight. This seems to be the week I'm getting my weights and exercise form dialed in.

I have especially struggled to get my form and weight right on leg curls. At first I was using too much weight and I was cheating way too much. Then I was too far up on the bench and I wasn't able to really isolate my hamstrings. Tonight everything fell in to place and I'm really feeling it.

I can't wait to do my cardio workout first thing in the morning.

Last night my wife and I went shopping. We stayed out longer than I expected so I missed my 5-6pm meal. At about 7pm we stopped at a coffee shop. I had a 12oz sugar free latte with skim milk. I'm not sure how much milk it had but I'll assume it was about a cup which I now know is about 80 calories. But I couldn't remember that last night

Before we left the mall I almost bought a Cliff bar at the sporting goods store. I could tell that my blood sugar was low but since I wasn't sure how many calories the coffee had I decided to wait until we got home to eat.

I used to drink Diet Coke as my primary beverage from the time I got up to the time I went to bed. Last week I cut way back and started drinking more water. I went to bed around 11:30pm. But then I woke up at about 1:30am. Drinking coffee that late was probably a mistake too. I finally fell back to sleep around 3:30am so I got about 3 more hours of sleep.

This morning I felt like crap. I ate my breakfast about 2 hours ago and I feel a little better. But I still feel drained. I'm drinking a diet coke now and I plan to eat a few more calories than usual for lunch.

Tonight is my lower body workout. I'm going to see how I feel during and after my workout. If I run out of energy I may have to increase my daily calorie intake to 1600 calories per day.

For the past month or so I felt better than I have in years. One thing is for sure, I won't feel like crap every day just to double my rate of fat loss.

I had a great upper body workout last night. I finally got the weights right for most of the exercises. I was still about 5 pounds too heavy on the bicep curls. And I still need some lighter dumbbells for the hammer curls.

I've struggled with my upper body workout since I started Body-for-Life (BFL). I think part of the problem was that I've never had much upper body strength and it took a while gain the strength and endurance to handle a full workout. But I also had to stumble along trying to find the right weights for each exercise. That is part of the process. But I'm glad I'm through that stage.

Weight Loss

I skipped a week of progress reports so I'll cover two weeks this time.

Two weeks ago I lost 1.59 pounds total. I gained 0.34 pounds of lean body mass and lost 1.93 pounds of fat.

Last week I lost 1.13 pounds total. I gained 0.07 pounds of lean body mass and lost 1.2 pounds of fat.

More Diet Changes

It's been 3 weeks since I started Body-for-Life. I feel better than I have in years. I think it is a combination of eating more protein, strength training, and eating 6 times a day.

But I want to pick up the pace of my weight loss again. I'm going to continue eating balanced meals, but I'm going to reduce the number of calories I'm eating. I'm shooting for 6 200 calorie meals a day.

My goal is to lose another 20-30 pounds of fat in the next 2 months while minimizing the amount of lean body mass I lose.

If I continue doing what I've done for the last 3 weeks I'd lose about 12 pounds of fat in 8 weeks. I want to double my fat loss to 3 pounds per week. That is about the rate I lost body fat the first 3 months of my diet. But I was also losing about 2 pounds of lean body mass per week. This time I want to maintain as much lean body mass as possible. I think the combination of eating adequate protein and strength training will let me do that. We shall see.

Here is my current 30 day weight chart and body fat chart: