4737 posts 3/29/2008 3:59 am
Last Read:
4/12/2008 3:47 pm
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Losing My Load
When it comes to dieting I’m like the smoker who is really great at giving up smoking because he’s given up loads of times. And because I have a fairly sound knowledge of human physiology I tend to think I know best, so I’m pretty sceptical about all the diet fads, which may or may not necessarily be a good thing. To me dieting is all about energy in and energy out. If you don’t overeat and you burn calories through exercise, which also raises the body’s basal metabolic rate (BMR) you will lose weight.
It’s a simple balance sheet. Just like your bank account, except you’re trying to overdraw your income to lose assets……
And lose ass along the way!
Now your image of dear old Warm is probably shifting by the moment as you read this post. “OMG!” I hear you mutter to yourself. “Warm is really nothing more than a big fat old couch potato. That picture he posted of his ass is a FAKE! Shame on you Warm …… etc. etc.”
Au contraire, dear bloggie ones. You can relax. That is my ‒ dare I be so bold as to say it ‒ fine ass and there is an explanation.
You know when you go to the airport check in your baggage gets weighed? And if you’re on a light aircraft you might be weighed as well? Well this is because there is a relationship between how heavy something is and how well it flies. There has been at least one passenger flight that crashed with total loss of life because all the passengers were overweight. It’s feather and brick stuff. For a paraglider pilot weight is really critical and a few pounds difference can make a massive difference to how you fly.
Now you might think that getting much lighter would be a really smart thing to do. That means getting up in the sky and climbing to the dizziest of heights, which is why those who free-fly fly in the first place. But there are three problems with this.
The first is getting down. You can get stuck in the sky. There are a number of conditions can make you so buoyant that you might want to come down but your wing doesn’t entirely agree. It was made to fly after all. Now you can take measures like pull the wingtips in, go into certain types of stall, or spiral dive your way to the ground, but they can go wrong on you and there’s nothing quite like something going wrong in the sky for being really scary. No-one in their right mind flies simply to scare themselves, and all flyers I know have been scared by one situation or another. Much as it doesn’t seem that way at the time being scared is good ‒ it stops you from killing yourself.
Unless of course you panic. That's NOT good. There is a fairly recent case of a relatively inexperienced paraglider pilot who plummeted to his death from about 3,000 feet in Tenerife. He had a perfectly good, working reserve parachute that hadn’t been released.
Scared = good
Panic = bad
But that’s another story.
The second is that the lighter you become the slower your glider flies. The trouble is if you are caught by a strong headwind. These can appear within seconds and catch you totally unawares. Valley landing in the Alps can be into very strong headwinds and I’ve seen paragliders there go backwards. Once you are pinned in one place there is no turning out of it and if you don’t have much height then a downwind landing really is a non-option. Hitting the ground at over 40 mph is like coming off a motorbike, and your legs simply can’t run that off. Ouch! Oooyah! Bounce-bounce-bounce! Even worse is seeing the ground going the wrong way beneath you and the only option is to get yourself down as quickly as possible and hope there are no barbed wire fences, trees, powerlines and stuff behind you. Been there ‒ don’t want to go there again. What I call an “Oh shit!” moment.
Then there’s the fact that if you’re too light for your wing there is simply not enough tension on the wing. This means it is more prone to collapses and less quick on recovering from them. Partial wing collapses are frequent with paragliders ‒ to the point of expecting to deal with them most flights that the conditions are anything but totally smooth. The sort of air movements that glider pilots use to get lift are the very same that cause bumpiness in flight ‒ you know, those disconcerting movements aeroplanes make when some passengers reach for that<b> waterproof </font></b>paper bag in the pocket in front of them.
“Urrrrrrrrrrrgh!!!!!! If only I’d learned to glide I would have got used to this…….
………… Hmmmmmm! Where did all those carrots come from?”
A little bit of rough never did anyone any harm. Rough air I mean.
But back to the point ‒ too light’s not necessarily good, but being light gets you up there. I have no intention of becoming anorexic, and it is a bit late now for me to develop a body image problem anyway.
Too heavy by the same token is not good either.
Being told by a flying buddy, “Hey warm, you flew like an eagle,” has a certain feelgood element to it that, “Hey warm, you flew like a turkey,” hasn’t.
I’ve only flown a wing for which I was seriously overweight once. Off a steep ridge called Ditchling Beacon. Seeing the treetops come closer than you’re used to seeing them approach wasn’t fun, nor was the landing …….. not a pretty sight either! Never again.
Well I’ve been trying to lose weight for a month now and I have lost a few pounds. At first all was well. The weight seemed to fall away. A brisk walk either side of the boat commute to work, light lunches, drinking tea rather than coffee, so no sugar intake, and no snacking all seemed to be adding up. A beer or two with friends from time to time didn’t seem to have a bad effect……
 ELDS
Eat Light Don’t Snack
Working….
Go warm! Go warm! Yay! Yay! Yay! 
And then, just as all seems to be going swimmingly well THE WEIGHT GOES UP AGAIN!
Not a huge amount, but the rapid weight loss grinds to a halt, and every gram shed becomes a battle in itself. Each minor indiscretion has a price to pay ‒ taking family and friends out for a meal, each Chinese takeaway …….. just looking at Easter chocolate stuff (which if I do eat will be a morsel at a time) all are lost battles in warm’s “gotta be an eagle - mustn’t be a turkey” campaign.
Then Defeatist Warm chips in……
Maybe I’ll be an action hater
Yup, be a sessile couch potata
Stay online, and just get fat
On ayeffeff I’ll blog and chat
Booze and snacks ‒ oh what a treat
And no more angst ‘bout what to eat
Tempting, huh?
Not when Gung-Ho Warm replies in a perfect take-off of Sinatra (Frank, that is, not Nancy):
Come fly with me, let's take off in the blue
Once I get you up there, where the air is rarefied
We'll just glide, starry eyed
Come fly with me, let's fly let's fly away 
Thanks Gung-Ho for reminding me.
Maybe I’ll be an action hater
Yup, be a sessile couch potata
Stay online, and just get fat…….
No DW. Not this time.
It’s just got to continue, hasn’t it? Flying in the Alps is now less than two months away, and there really are real eagles out there to soar with. I know most people have much more sense and want to keep both feet on the ground, but those whose feet leave the ground become enchanted and hopelessly addicted, and I’m one of them.
“He who has tasted flight will walk the earth with his eyes forever turned upwards, for there he has been and there he longs to return.”
What makes me think that Leonardo Da Vinci actually flew one of those two hang gliders he designed, with a sentiment like that?
So I have the incentive ………. I’ve just got to continue the struggle and somehow balance that against my inner being that takes not too much pleasure in being unduly hard on itself.
Now has anyone any advice?
And in case you were wondering ...... No ‒ that isn’t me in the lovely pic! And even though I might live in London you’d NEVER find me paying some celebrity chef a few hundred pounds for that meal! What are you try to call me .... a metrosexual??? |
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15173 posts 4/8/2008 3:00 pm |
I know you will achieve what you set your mind to warm..*hugs*
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13513 posts 3/31/2008 9:45 pm |
I love to eat...love to eat healthy...and love to drink
water. What makes the big difference is doing that cardio...
or not. Gotta eat...gotta move...and gotta take care of the
body so that the body can take care of you in or out of the air!
Knowing that you are justttttttttttttttttttt right! {=}
Just a little food for thought.............
If you really want to be happy, nobody can stop you... {=}
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3/30/2008 2:35 pm
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I have no advice. I don't own any scales (I lie, but they have not been used in about 9 years), because I believe obsession is what leads people to get fat.
Loved your info about being too light and too heavy though. My little one, Ted, weighs approximately 300 grams, and I'll always afraid when he wants to walk too near to a cliff edge that the wind is just going to pick him up and blow him away. He'll never be a glider until he learns to eat!
Seriously, here in Portugal there are all these fishermen casually sitting atop the cliffs with long lines to the sea below, and Ted wandering forward with interest....
Blogito ergo sum.
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32403 posts 3/30/2008 8:48 am |
gallons of water
You cannot conceive the many without the one.
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12250 posts 3/29/2008 11:17 pm |
P.S. If you mix the low-carb thing in with the 'cheaters' diet {where you re-jump your metabolism, by very small amounts} that could work as well. Just stay away from artificial sweeteners because they tend to react just like the 'real' stuff, don't give in to too many 'natural' sweet things {like over eating fruits, etc.}, and stay away from too many preservatives {bad ones in certain things like some bacons, etc.} along with MSG. It talks about all this type of downfall on otherwise working diets {or what would work if not for different things/pitfalls} in Why Diets Don't Work.
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12250 posts 3/29/2008 11:15 pm |
I did the 'snacking' thing because it kept my metabolism going. I also did the low-carb thing because not only does my body react very quickly and badly in multiple ways to sugar but it seems to be in everything {especially added in to processed foods of all sorts}. Had I not gone completely off of it before gradually increasing, I wouldn't have gained so much back {if any}. Still, I'm about to try again; that time I went from close to 250 down to 170, and yes the doctor checked me before/after. She said cholesterol and all that was absolutely healthy, and that I was in really good shape {then}.
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3/29/2008 2:31 pm
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I threw my scales away - they became an obsession and that's wrong.
Eat little and often to keep the metabolism going rather than having peaks and troughs. If you leave it a while between meals, the body doesn't know when it will get food next and starts to store food. Snack but make it fruit or something healthy (boring !!)
 Mistress Innuendo
Taking what you say and turning it into something naughty !!
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3/29/2008 1:23 pm
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Now I am worried and afraid to go on the scales.
Haven't a clue what to do. Maybe instead of sitting on your boat ride to work, walk around the boat. Walking keeps those bones strong and that is what I think about more than weight.
OralCall4U2
 Requiem 
[blog Brit_Bints] Who are they?
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