$650 Weight Loss Challenge: Day 55/120
July 18, 2011 Posted by Tyler CruzI started my weight loss challenge against Paul Piotrowski nearly 2 months ago.
As a quick recap, we each must lose 14% of our starting body weight (which works out to 30 pounds each) within 4 months (120 days). If one of us doesn’t make it, then he will have to pay the other $650. If neither of us make it, then we will donate $650 to the BCSPCA.
We are now only 5 days away from the midway point in the challenge! It’s really interesting that we made this challenge for 4 months instead of around 10 weeks like we usually do. We still have another 2 months (and 5 days) of gruelling weight loss in front of us.
Below is an updated line graph comparing my daily weigh-in’s to Paul’s:
Ever since Paul went on his Dr. Bernstein diet, he has seen rather dramatic results, as can be seen from July 1st, onwards. In fact, he lost 12.2 pounds in just 17 days!
Things didn’t fare quite as well for me. I had a 2-week plateau which was very discouraging. However, I caught myself doing some bad habits and put my attention into addressing them by taking a weight loss supplement with only natural ingredients.
As a result, I lost 3.6 pounds in the last 4 days!
This graph below shows a direct comparison of our total weight loss in pounds, as opposed to just our our total weight:
As you can see, Paul passed me! Damn! It sure didn’t help that I had a 2 week plateau.
It’s not so bad though. While Paul is having an amazing month so far, his graph is still completely wonky. Yes, he’s done awesome since starting his strict diet, but it’s only been 2 weeks so far and he did gain weight 2 days ago.
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What I like is that my graph has been more or less consistent if you look at it from a distance. Paul might still continue on his Mt.Everest descent, but my decline has been fairly gradual since I started 2 months ago, which I take as being more likely that I can continue doing for the next 2 months.
Below is an update on the overall numerical data, taken from the last update to today (it’s too long to show the entire thing – if you want to know all the exact numbers, simply view the past weight loss updates for this challenge):
The Minimum Pace is taking the average amount of weight we need to lose each day (which works out to 0.25 lbs.) over 120 days in order to just barely lose 30 pounds, multiplied by the number of days so far.
The Real vs Min. Pace is the difference between our current weight loss and the Minimum Pace.
Paul has amazingly made up his Real vs Min. Pace deficit and is almost on pace to make the challenge! Two weeks ago I thought he had a 45% of making it, and now I’d probably give him 90%.
Paul may have lost more weight than me, but he has yet to weigh-in less than me!
I am still behind my minimum pace by 1.8 pounds, but it is an improvement over my last update when I was 2.3 pounds behind. Also, I have lost 12 pounds so far, dropping from 212.8 lbs. to 200.8 lbs., so that feels good regardless of whether I’m ahead or behind schedule.
My Efforts
As I mentioned earlier, after seeing myself plateau for 2 weeks, I tried to stop and look at why this was happening. I wasn’t cheating on my diet or exercise, and have in fact been stepping things up a notch. I’ve also bought a high-quality protein powder to help build muscle while still losing weight.
But upon further reflection, I realized that there were a few things that I was doing that could certainly be… fixed… or improved. I am not disclosing what those things are here as I don’t want Paul to copy them, but it’s certainly something that is related to “lifestyle” change.
It’s funny, because the same day that I started addressing these ‘issues’ – or it may have been the day after, I can’t remember – I saw this documentary on obesity on the National Geographic channel which mentioned one of the exact things that I caught myself doing! And it said that this was one of the best ways to gain weight, no less!
Other than being a bit more aware of whatever it is I’m alluding to above, I once again increased my daily walk by another minute, making it 24-minutes now.
It’s not a small decision to increase it, even if it’s just by a minute, as this is something I do every single day. And it is something I plan to keep doing every day after the weight challenge is over. My fear is that if I make it too long, it won’t be realistic to keep doing every single day… especially since I live in Canada and have to consider snow in the winter and all that jazz.
I walk 2.1 KM everyday, which works out to 63KM (about 40 miles) a month, so it does add up.
Here’s a photo of me doing my daily walk in the pouring rain a couple of days ago:
Paul’s Efforts
Paul has been continuing with his Dr.Bernstein diet which seems to be working very well for him.
In addition to the diet (which includes going into their clinic thrice a week to take B6 and B12 injections and give urine samples), Paul has been running on his treadmill at home.
I’m not sure how often he does it, but I believe it’s daily, and is for 30-minutes. He says he does a mixture of running, jogging, and walking on it, but he does it on a flat incline and it is a treadmill, so in the end, I think we do about the same amount of cardio exercise.
I don’t know if he does anything else such as push-ups and crunches like I do, but I don’t think so.
You can read his latest weight loss update here, but it’s a week old already and so is pretty out of date. He will probably have a new post up within the next day or two though (so when you read this, it may already be up).
Will We Make It? Cast Your Vote!
In my last update, I included a poll for the first time to see what you guys thought would happen in this challenge.
I can’t believe I didn’t think of doing this earlier, as it’s really interesting to see what you guys think (comments are usually more likely to be positive).
Below are the results of the past poll. I’ve closed it now, since this post is now up with our updated stats:
What will happen in the Tyler vs. Paul $650 weight loss challenge? (Day 45/120 Stats)
- Neither will make it (44%, 19 Votes)
- Only Tyler will make it (26%, 11 Votes)
- Both will make it (23%, 10 Votes)
- Only Paul will make it (7%, 3 Votes)
Total Voters: 43
Loading ...Both Paul and I are surprised at just how pessimistic many of you are, as 44% of you voted that neither of us will make it! We’re not THAT far behind, plus we’ve succeeded in all of our past weight loss challenges.
Below is a new poll for you guys to vote on, using this post with the most up-to-date stats and information.
What will happen in the Tyler vs. Paul $650 weight loss challenge? (Day 55/120 Stats)
- Neither will make it (45%, 17 Votes)
- Both will make it (42%, 16 Votes)
- Only Paul will make it (11%, 4 Votes)
- Only Tyler will make it (3%, 1 Votes)
Total Voters: 38
Loading ...I expect a large change from the last poll, as Paul’s weight has dropped significantly. If more than 25% of you still think that neither of us will make it, I’ll be very surprised.
Damn, paul is going hard!
Keep in mind that I spent the first 41 days getting the spiritual and mental side of things getting aligned first before making any dietary changes. So Tyler had more than a month of a head start on me in terms of taking action.
Now he’s behind me in terms of results and it’s only been less than 2 weeks since I implemented my diet.
Sorry to say this Paul but your 41 days of spiritual and mental preparation is complete bullshit. I agree that a diet needs a certain amount of thought/mental preparation put into it however 41 days is just ridicules. You basically panicked/bottled it and realized you had to do something to catch up. You blatantly made up that story just for your readers and they eat it up.
Your diet/lifestyle change is a lot for your body to handle and if I had to guess it is a lot less sustainable in the long run (not saying you won’t make it through this challenge). I respect the changes Tyler is making because he is thinking really long run.
Anyway regardless of my opinions I am surprised to say I am actually enjoying this weight loss competition so keep it up!
I wasn’t preparing for a “diet” for 41 days. I was preparing to accept a new spiritual and mental identity of myself in which I am not addicted to unhealthy foods. I didn’t even think about dietary changes until a few days before my intuition led me to the Dr. Bernstein diet.
Throughout the 41 days I wrote numerous Blog posts on my Blog detailing what I was doing each step of the way. There was no panic.
I don’t understand why you think Tyler is thinking long-term and I’m not based on our diets. They’re not even that different at the end of the day, except in that Tyler is keeping it a ‘secret’ what he’s doing with his diet exactly.
You guys are doing well despite the lack of faith form your readers. I am going to try and figure out your secret and see if I am doing any of these things.
Tyler doesn’t have a secret. Remember, he said that weight loss is just simple logic – “Eat healthy and exercise more.”
So his secret must be that he’s eating even healthier now and exercising even more (a whole 1 min more).
Absolutely right Pauly!
paul is ballin right now, tyler catch up 🙂
Tyler will catchup, dont you worry!
“Paul may have lost more weight than me, but he has yet to weigh-in less than me!”
Paul
Jul 1 – 215.0
Jul 18 – 201.8
Tyler
Jul 1 – 204.4
Jul 18 – 200.6
I will crush you.
-Paul
Congrats Paul You are going owesum….But still 65 day remains…let see who wins…
I am starting to love this competition, haha…nice one paul!
Don’t worry, it’s just Paul’s body that reacts directly to a new diet, the sharp decline will subside after a few weeks, fighting on with your program.
Yeah, that’s happened before on pretty much every other diet I have been on.
The Bernstein people say that on their diet you keep losing at an average of 0.75lbs/day long term though, so we’ll see what happens.
I really hope they are right, but in the past my weight loss has always been super fast in the first week, and then slowed down afterwords. My ultimate goal is to lose more than 30lbs so I hope it doesn’t slow down.
Well the first few days/weeks of a new diet always result in big loss when you’re hilariously overweight.
I had my appointment with the Dr. Bernstein clinic doctor today and he explained to me the scientific reason behind this. It actually doesn’t matter if you’re 20lbs overweight or 300lbs overweight – you initially lose weight at more than 2x the speed in the first few days because you are depleting glycogen levels in the liver and muscle tissues.
And since the same amount of calories of glycogen weigh more than twice as much as the same amount of calories of fat, you get that initial burst. Once you begin burning fat as a fuel source, your weight loss slows down by over 50% since fat stores more than 2x calories per gram of weight.
This also works backwards too. Once you stop a diet and go back to eating more calories, your body replenishes your glycogen reserves and you gain weight back really quickly for the first bit.
It’s still all proportional to your starting weight. A 150lb person and a 300lb person may both lose x% of their body weight in the first days/weeks of a new diet, but the 300lb guy will lose more *weight* simply due to his hilarious fatness.
Everything goes through your mouth! Im heading to macdonalds in a sec though :))))))
The competition is definitely heating up, you will have to reveal some of these things you learned from your national geographic taping after the competition is over!
-Jean
I have a feeling you will both fail. I mean shouldn’t you guys learn from the first competition to get up and keep the weight off? What’s the point of working out and then going right back to what you where doing as soon as it ended?
Tyler has had a steady weight loss throughtout this whole competition while Pauls kind of dropped suddenly, will be interesting to see the results.
When I think about this again, I think neither of you will make it, haha…. let’s enjoy life and eat more! 🙂
Nice to see you continue with the daily walk. No matter what exercise I do in the gym, I always make it a point to take a walk everyday, even on weekends.
When I think about this again, I think neither of you will make it, haha…. let’s enjoy life and eat more!
i am 100% certain that i can help you win your competition with Paul. Email me.
i, personally, have lost over 55 lbs of fat, and put on 25 lbs of lean muscle. The first 40 lbs of weight loss was in just 90 days, with no exercise. The exercise is good, but you are undoubtedly building muscle, so you should be measuring your body fat content, or cutting back on the strength building exercise, and stick to cardio to maximize your overall weight loss.
Like i said, email me: alexander@orderbodybyvi.com Or call me: 360-620-4007
If you are interested, i can even get you in touch with a personal trainer or a nutritional specialist i know. And, anybody else following this competition is more than welcome to contact me, as well. i am all about helping people get healthy.
Thanks for the offer, but I am rather stubborn in that I want to stick to what I’m doing… I don’t like to follow programs or diets…
i really hope you kick Paul’s behind in this competition, and keep it off, long term (rubbing it in!)! Paul talks a lot about spiritual changes and personal growth, yet both on his blog, and in your comments, puts you down and derides you… seems like a lot more personal growth is needed.
And, how come y’all aren’t talking about the amount of money Paul is throwing at this, compared to what you are doing… he has, himself, written that you are both, essentially, on a similar diet. Let’s do a cost comparison!
Paul has definitely spent more than me, that’s for sure.
However, most of the negative stuff you read from him about me should be read with a grain of salt (which Paul will eat) – it’s to encourage heated discussion as well as to try to motivate me to do better (which will in turn motivate him).