I lost “my bike” with my Garmin Vivofit!

(I lost 31lbs in 8-weeks)

Alright…so the hook is in the title and I’ll preface with this: I’m a very satisfied Garmin Vivofit user and I still own my beloved Trek Stache mountain bike.

Anyone who’s ridden Midwest singletrack knows that shaving a bit of weight off your mountain bike is pretty noticeable in the woods because all we do is pedal the entire ride. No ski lifts…no long uphill with a downhill reward to enjoy. Just pedal, pedal, pedal the whole ride…so we try to build the strongest bike possible with the lightest parts we can afford. My own completely custom bike is on the burlier side of hardtails so it weighs 31 pounds, but I’m a bigger rider and don’t shy away from jumping or little cliff-drops on our local singletrack so a heavier, strong bike is a necessity. I often wondered what it would be like to ride a sub-20 pound rocket again…but I know it would implode beneath me on our rough terrain.

·         Spoiler: This is actually a weight-loss story about how I was able to lose 31 pounds in 8-weeks utilizing my Garmin Vivofit 2 watch.

My wife won a Garmin Vivofit 2 but she already owned and used a smartwatch, so she gave it to me. At the time, I wasn’t tracking any steps or calories and basically eating whatever, whenever. I started wearing it just as a watch for my work at a local hospital. After downloading the Garmin Connect app to my Android device, I spent some time touring the options in the app and the functions of the watch and decided to start tracking steps.

231.4 pounds

On July 8th, I visited my physician about a sinus infection and she weighed me at 231.4 pounds. My jaw hit the floor.

 In the mid 2000’s (in my 20’s), I put down the guitar and started mountain biking again. I lost about 30 pounds from Thanksgiving to Christmas and started to race the State Games and only weighed 185. Since then, I knew that my weight had been steadily creeping back up since I quit racing. I kept promising myself that I’d pick up the pace and put down the fork…but it “seemed” just too difficult. When I hit 195, I was a little panic-stricken…but soon dismissed it after I had the best French Silk pie of my life. Similar panic arose at 205 and 215, but when I found myself at 220…I decided to join a Biggest Loser group at work. I failed. It lasted 2-3 days and I was back into the rut.

I ultimately gave up on all of it and chalked it up to me creeping into my mid-40’s. I essentially gave up and said to myself…“I feel good, I still ride my mountain bike, I’m longboarding now…I’ll just be happy with where I’m at.” I know I was able to drop from 215 to 185 back in my 20’s…but now I’m in my 40’s and maybe my metabolism is just too slow.

My spreadsheet over several weeks

After this last trip to the doctor and weighing over 231 pounds, I'd finally had enough. I started a spreadsheet utilizing Google Sheets tracking my entire caloric intake and started tracking all of my caloric burn with the Vivofit 2. I knew by doing a bit of research that 3,500 calories is equal to roughly 1 pound of fat. It wasn’t long before I was able to easily track my caloric burn with the Garmin Vivofit and Garmin Connect app. At this point it seemed like a no-brainer. I just did the math. “I ‘could’ just burn 500 calories per day more than I eat and I’ll lose a pound per week.”

My total loss graph and projections graph

I’m not the type of person who can do anything on a basic level. I have to try to be that obsessive overachiever in whatever endeavor find myself in. I remembered back when I raced that losing 2-3lbs per week is actually pretty doable, so I shot for 700-1500 calorie burn surplus per day and was astonished at how quickly I started losing weight. My Vivofit 2 doesn’t have any mapping ability or GPS tracking, so I utilized another app on my phone for mountain bike and skateboard calorie tracking and added it into my spreadsheet. There are definitely more impressive options out there by Garmin that will do all of this for you and much, much more.

My calorie tracking spreadsheet over 6 days

In the first 2-weeks, I lost 9.3lbs. I was elated to say the least, but I wasn’t feeling fantastic knowing I was overdoing it in classic “Me” form…so I backed off a bit.

I was longboarding (skateboard) with my daughter and started pushing up a mild incline when I felt a snap in my right calf. I just knew I’d been shot in the leg…but there was no blood. I had torn my medial gastrocnemius muscle in my calf. This happened to me in 2015 on the other leg while sprinting up a steep hill…so I knew exactly what had happened.

“How am I going to maintain momentum when I can’t skate or ride my bike?!” I muttered to myself. This was the first time in my life that I relied solely on the math of calorie counting to lose weight and began eating healthy. I lost 4lbs that week alone. I decided to up my protein intake considerably to help my muscle heal faster. I also started intentionally seeking out more fruits and veggies and I have to be honest…I wasn’t all that hungry and the weight kept melting off.

By week-5, I was back on the bike…but only spinning smooth circles through neighborhoods. I still couldn’t ride the longboard because pushing directly affected my healing medial calf muscle. I still relied heavily on my Garmin to track calories burned and continued to seek out healthy food options.

Somewhere around this same time, my wife started noticing how much thinner I appeared. I had visibly lost fat, not muscle. I was eating plenty of protein and now doing 75x pushups and 60x 25# dumbell curls per day, so I was actually gaining muscle while still losing weight at a fantastic rate.

My wife decided to start doing the same thing given how easy it appeared. I built her a spreadsheet for her phone and she tracked her caloric intake and burn similarly. Within 4 weeks, she had lost 15 pounds which was an even greater victory given the fact that she’s diabetic and has to treat her low glucose levels with straight-up carbohydrates. For this, I’m so much more proud of her than I am myself…her success to date far outshines my own.

After only 8-weeks of changing my lifestyle, I found myself 31lbs lighter which incidentally…is the same weight as my mountain bike. I finally hopped back on the trails and was astonished at how easy it was to climb our punchy, technical climbs now over thirty pounds lighter. It was almost like I sold my gnarly hardtail and bought a new weightless alien mountain machine…or E-Bike.

Me minus 31 pounds

 My wife and I are now both eating healthier foods, reading labels, and experiencing victory-over-adversity every week as we reach our health goals together. I also look forward every day to enjoying her company during some pretty long daily walks together.

As I am typing this, I’m down about 34# now and remember that I reached a vivid realization halfway through my first 8-weeks that really opened my eyes. I no longer had to ask myself “If I can get down to a certain weight”.  I now just set a goal of “When I reach this weight on this date”. I also didn’t pay much attention to the BMI charts online during the process because they always seem to be a bit heavy-handed. Given the fact that I am a mountain bike enthusiast…I have a lot of leg muscle which weighs more than fat and my BMI at 6’2” will be a little higher than the norm because of it.

My first goal of 200 pounds was quickly reached mid-week on week 8 about 1-week ahead of schedule. My next goal is 195. I know that I’ll attain that goal by the end of week 10. (likely sooner) My ultimate goal as a 6’2” mountain biker is to hover between 190-200lbs. When (not “if”) I drop to 190lbs, I’ll evaluate how difficult it was to attain, how I feel at 190, and how difficult it is to continue maintain. If I’m still relatively comfortable, then I’ll continue to 180’s. That will be the end of my journey given that I just want to be healthy, feel great, and enjoy my passions of mountain biking and longboarding.

I have taken a wealth of information from this experience so far:

• ·        I’m the type of person that needs a scoreboard with plenty of numbers on it to crunch and obsess over. If I hadn’t weighed myself every single day, if I hadn’t kept score on my spreadsheet, if I hadn’t obsessively tracked my caloric burn and intake…this would have just been another failed attempt.

• ·         There were a few times during this journey when I gained a little from day to day. Other times my weight plateaued. I fought to keep positive because my overall weight trend steadily dropped and continues to do so as I see results and experience victory over adversity almost daily.

• ·         I feel so much better. My clothes fit me again. Some of my newer clothes are falling off of me. I can ride my bike faster, longer, and without the fatigue. I will save money on bike parts that I won’t be breaking under my lighter weight. My bike is quieter now that I don’t have so much weight causing all of those annoying little ticky/creaky noises.

·         My self-confidence is high in how I look, feel, and perceive my ability to maintain goals.

Overall, I’m just a happier and more satisfied person now.