How I lost 15 pounds in six weeks working out twelve minutes a day at age 60.

As an exercise instructor, I read articles and papers on fitness regularly to stay current on what’s happening in the industry. In late July, I came across an article in a women’s magazine called “The Nest” about Jogging VS. Sprinting and Metabolism By Andrea Chrysanthou.

The article caught my eye because I am in my late sixties and have become increasingly aware of weight creeping on because of my metabolism slowing. The obvious question is,” since I am a kickboxing instructor, why didn’t I just use my kickboxing routine to get the unwanted weight off?”  The simple one-word answer is burnout. I have been doing kickboxing since I was 21 years, and while I have no problem teaching others how to do it, I would rather be raked over a hotbed of coals than do a kickboxing routine one hour a day for, on average, twelve weeks to lose the amount of weight that I want to lose (30 pounds).

In her article, Ms. Chrysanthou spoke about something called Excess Post-exercise Oxygen Consumption (EPOC) which is acquired by doing several sprints for 30 seconds to 1 minute. This forces your body into oxygen debt which is anaerobic and is the opposite of aerobic. A very basic idea of what EPOC  does is that “EPOC increases the Metabolism and causes it to burn calories for up to 14 hours after a workout”.  The other thing about the EPOC concept that sold me was that as I continued to research increasing metabolism function it kept popping up, article after article. I decided to give it a try.

At my age (and due to a hip replacement that I had 20 years ago) the thought of sprinting was not very appealing to me, but after thinking about it it occurred to me that doing a karate pattern as fast as you can be the same as sprinting and a bonus was that it took exactly 30 seconds to do.

Using very basic karate techniques I devised a ten-minute workout that combined light weights (to stimulates muscles and maintain tone), blocking routines, punching routines, a stance routine for leg strengthening, and a very basic pattern that I would do eight times to bring on EPOC. I also modified my calorie intake with something called “Caloric Deficiency” which I will explain later.  I did the workout for six weeks every morning. The results were exceptional. Here is the blueprint of how it went.

Caloric Deficiency

Caloric deficiency is a fancy way of saying, cut back on calories. I knew that to lose weight I had to modify my eating, so I monitored what I ate normally for two days, counted the total amount of calories, and cut 500 calories out.

 

BodyKarate

The next thing that I did was made sure that my workout did what I wanted it to. On the first day of my program, I weighed myself when I got out of bed. I went through a routine I had developed that took a little over ten minutes. When I completed the workout I had lost 2 ½ pounds. I allowed two pounds for water weight, that I would probably gain back during the day, and decided that if I could keep half of a pound off every day I would safely lose 10 pounds a month. The trick was, knowing that my metabolism had slowed, how do I do it?

Knowing my body, I decided, after having cut back on calories, not to compound eat, and not to eat after 6 pm. (Compound eating is when you stuff yourself so full at a meal that your body doesn’t have time to digest what you’ve eaten before you eat again. Eating just before you go to bed has the same effect as compound eating (your body doesn’t have the time to burn away the calories before you eat again in the morning).) Instead, I decided to eat 5 small meals a day instead of three large ones 7 am, 10 am, 12-noon, 3 pm, and 6 pm.

My meals consisted of Oatmeal or bran flakes, yogurt, or fruit for breakfast; banana or apple at 10 and 3; a sandwich for lunch; and baked fish and vegetables for dinner.

Note: Sometimes when I was running late, I would stop by Mc Donald’s and get one of their oatmeal’s for breakfast. It’s really good! It comes with diced apples and raisins.

To make sure that I didn’t sabotage my program by being stuck on the road, getting hungry, and going to McDonald’s I did a little research at 7-Eleven and found that they have three low-calorie sandwiches that I could choose from for $3.99- $4.99: “Smoked Turkey and Monterey Jack”, “Tuna fish” or “ Egg salad”.  Note: There is one caveat with the “Smoked Turkey and Monterey Jack” sandwich, I threw away the cheese. Cheese and other dairy products are hard for your metabolism to digest, being such they undermine the EPOC burn.

In the mornings, after breakfast, on my way to my appointments, I stopped by 7 Eleven and loaded up with my banana and apple, and my sandwich for lunch.

 

The Workout

For the weight lifting portion of the workout and the anaerobic portion of the workout, I Performed the beginner, white belt, pattern (wcrbkarate.com/white belt patterns).

The amount of weight that I used was ten pounds. (I recommend between 3 and 10 pounds depending on your conditioning, nothing higher.) The purpose of weight lifting in this program is to stimulate the muscles to help burn calories as you exercise, not to build muscle.

Using the dissected portions of the pattern, the belt blocks and counters (wcrbkarate.com/whitebelt blocks and counter), I was able to isolate the following muscles and give them a light work out with the weights: shoulders, deltoids, biceps, triceps, pecs, trapezius, lats, glutes, hamstring, quadriceps, and calves.

After the weight lifting portion of the program, I reconnected the dissected portions of the pattern and did the complete pattern as fast as I could eight times with a minute rest in between. I did this every day of the week except for Sunday. At the end of six weeks, I had lost 15 pounds.

Coming soon!

New Year’s Resolution Kickboxing and BodyKarate Gift Certificates!

Every year people make a New Year’s resolution to lose weight. This year why not help a friend (or yourself) guarantee the loss with a Kickboxing or BodyKarate Gift Certificate?

Kickboxing and BodyKarate Gift Certificates will be sold in introductory sessions and 10-pound monthly increments. Classes will be done virtually.

 

This year give the gift of extended life, the gift of health, a “New Year’s Resolution Kickboxing or BodyKarate Weight loss Gift Certificate”.

Rodney Batiste

WCRB Karate, 7547 Medical Dr, Gloucester, VA, 23061, United States (703) 241-9272 Mbconnect@wcrbkarate.com