TT Thursday : Weight Loss Challenge Week 13 and Ace of Cakes Duff Goldman on losing weight

TT Thursday : Weight Loss Challenge Week 13 and Ace of Cakes Duff Goldman on losing weight

I lost another 1.8 pounds this week on my HealthyWage weight loss challenge and dropped down to 224.8.  Okay, not as exciting as last Thursday but I’ll take it. It is a challenge to lose weight. I was a little worried that I had plateaued again yesterday I dropped the pound so had something good to report.  Phew.  Especially since I found my mom’s unopened stash of Okinawan candy : cut pieces of brown sugar from sugar cane.  It’s like a childhood treat for me.  And no, I didn’t eat the whole bag.  I stuck it in the freezer but I do admit a couple days there, I ate a piece here and there.  I gained a couple pounds over the weekend and thought, awww, shit! But then I made my throw-everything-in beans where I take every vegetable I can find and throw it in a saucepan with beans, boil, then simmer.  It’s pretty good, uses up all your veggies that are starting to get a bit dated but takes days to finish off. I had some fresh cilantro, parsley and thyme that got thrown in too. It’s what finally broke my plateau this week.

Duff Goldman of Ace of Cakes loses weight

Last week, I wrote about Richard Blais and his losing sixty pounds.  I love Top Chef, Ace of Cakes and other foodie shows.  Duff Goldman is another chef who celebrated losing weight last year, posting his before and after pic on Instagram and some of his “eating clean” meals.  What you don’t know Duff Goldman and his Ace of Cakes show?  You poor thing!  I love that show.  They make the most incredible cakes.  Look at this Harry Potter cake!

The show ran for ten years.  And he became sugar king of the food shows.  In 2012, he did “Sugar High”, eating desserts across  the United States and gaining thirty pounds in a few months of filming.  He said, “I was doing nothing but traveling and eating crap. Nonstop eating garbage over and over and over and over for the camera. And there are ways to do that, to make sure the camera gets the shot you need. But my problem is: I would eat when the cameras were off, too. It was what I love most in the world. Good food. Butter and sugar and fat and pork.” (From Sun Magazine: A little less Duff)

Ok, I know I shouldn’t have looked but I had to look at Food Network’s clip of his Sugar High’s Boston Creme Fried Dough episode.  It’s one of those things.  I can look but I can’t touch!

He could see how his body changed while he rode his motorcycle over the various episodes. Back then he joined a gym with a coach who had him lifting weights and on a strict diet: no sugar, no fat, no dairy, no carbs.  He lost that 30 pounds he’d put on during “Sugar High.”  More recently, last year he started posting on Instagram about losing weight through clean eating (snapping pics of his meals: meat and veggies), bicycling and doing weights. To the left is the Duff Goldman instagram pic that made it all over news channels last August.

Duff was not always into bicycling — favoring the motorcycle you could see in his Ace of Cake and Sugar High shows.  Then in 2015, his friend chef Jeff Mahin, who is said to have put LA pizza on the map, asked Duff to ride in the first California Chefs Cycle with chefs riding 300 miles for the No Kid Hungry charity. Duff remembers, “I said I’d give it a whirl and pretended to train for a couple of weeks, but then chickened out.” Then in 2016, he joined them on their second race and completed 70 miles.  Duff said, “I’ll sometimes get out for five, six-hour rides. I just fell in love with it. I just go and go and go, and get into a rhythm that frees my brain.”  (How Cycling Changed “Ace of Cakes” Star Duff Goldman’s Life)

In 2017, he completed all 300 miles of the race.  Pretty good, right? I admire that, especially going from 0 to 300 miles in two years.  (Looks at my bike, uhhh.  Hey I’m walking 3 miles occasionally now and carrying 30 pounds of groceries — doesn’t that count?)

I was hoping to find a low cal recipe or menu to share from Duff but that’s not how he’s known. For a man whose career is sugar (can’t get away from that, his latest blog post is how to make Lemon Chess Pie), it looks to me like he balances his sweetness career at other meals but mostly with burning calories.  One of his latest instagram post is of him and Richard Blais after a game of lacrosse. His daily routine includes getting up at 4am to hit the gym at 6 before going into work. (Duff Goldman of Charm City Cakes says the thrill of baking never gets old).

I’m still going over how Duff went from wondering if he could bike 5 miles to cycling 300 miles over a 3-day course in just two years.  That’s not a very long period of time really and yet such a big change. It’s impressive.

I think as I explore how chefs lose weight (like I said I like food shows so I get to plop a show in if I visit the lives of chefs), what I am realizing is that the journey to lose weight and develop a healthier lifestyle is individual.  People don’t do it in the same way because our lives are different.  Some people give up all sugar, fat and carbs; other people bike for 6 hours.  Not everyone don’t have 6 hours of time they can give up and others won’t give up butter. There is no one right way, no one secret that solves everything.  Whatever choices you make takes sacrifice whether it’s food choices, exercise choices, time choices or any combination. After awhile though, your choice doesn’t feel like a big sacrifice.  I used to eat ice cream practically daily but now hitting that sweet coldness once every couple of weeks and I’m good.  I don’t even need a full serving either. I wanted a snack today.  I ate some cherry tomatoes.  They tasted sweet to me.  They were enough.  I don’t need a candy bar or ice cream.  (Still feels weird to think that). We change. The choices we make everyday changes us, becomes habits, becomes us.

Transportation is one key to losing weight.  Duff switched from riding a motorcycle to riding a bike. I’ve noticed in the past when my car went down and then I got it repaired after a couple of months, that I would gain 20 pounds.  Walking and biking everywhere versus driving and riding is worth 20 pounds easy. I still haven’t fixed my car.  Some days it’s inconvenient. Fixing the car right now is weighed against my continuing to lose weight.  I know myself.  If I have a car, I will drive because it is so much easier to get around and I’m inclined to be lazy. So I put off the decision again for another week. I don’t need the car this week.  I can walk and take the bus.  I’ve hit more than 10,000 steps once a week now.  Considering I was doing 2,000 when I started, that’s pretty good. It’s not 300 miles but it is an improvement.  I’m beginning to think I should repair the car to sell it but I’m not ready to go carless yet. Knowing I can repair it if I want to gives me a safety net. I keep thinking of that kid’s song, “Put one foot in front of the other and pretty soon you’ll be walking out the door.”

Weight Loss Challenge progress report

Okay, my progress on my various HealthyWage challenges.

I am still waiting for HealthyWager to show me that I’m approved on the video for the 6% loss I completed.  The payout is September 10 so I think that little sign won’t change until then.  It’s hard to be patient though.

On the HealthyWage Going for Goal Jackpot Challenge, which is not due to be done until November 4, I am only 5 pounds away from the finish weight of 219.7.  I figure I’ll finish early within a couple of weeks but I can’t do an offical until October 26th at the earliest.  Shrugs. That’s ok.  Once I hit the goal weight, I’ll start another 6% off challenge. They help keep me on track.  Little goals are easier than big ones. I am still playing catch up on the big goal for 65 pounds loss.  I have 5.9 pounds to catch up to where I should be but I have 80 days.  I know it says 90 days but it’s better to be at the goal weight more than a week ahead of time because you can weigh in up to two weeks early.

I probably should do their 25% increase in steps challenge but it peeves me when they calculate your starting steps, they don’t include any days under 4,000 steps and I have a lot of days under that.  It’s like they want you to be already semi-fit to start.  I think the people who need the most encouragement are the ones who are couch potatoes. One mile is about 2,000 steps and a couch potato usually only average 1,000 to 3,000 steps a day.  So a person who does 4,000 steps daily is already walking two miles.  That’s a lot. Ok.  I get it.  I should bite the bullet.  It’s time to get more fit along with the weight loss. I wonder how long it takes to ride 100 miles?

 

HealthyWage Disclosure: I generally sign up as an affiliate for things whenever I can.  I am signed up as a HealthyWage affiliate.  If you join through the links above, I’ll get a commission.  However, they also have a friends link, if you join up by clicking this friends link, it adds a $40 to your HealthyWager award if you complete your goal and $40 to my HealthyWager award if I complete my goal.  We don’t get the $40 if we fail.  I think the $40 is for HealthyWager challenges only and not the other ones like the 6% individual challenge or the team challenge. The HealthyWage affiliate link doesn’t matter if anyone succeeds but there is no benefit for the friend, just for the affiliate no matter what kind of challenge they join. I think joining through the friends link also lets you view your friend on the dashboard: you’ll see their name and what % they’ve lost so far but not the actual weight.  That’s private unless you make it public.  So far I have earned $0 commissions and no one has joined on as a friend.  If I do earn anything, I’ll post it just so you know.

 

 

12 Replies to “TT Thursday : Weight Loss Challenge Week 13 and Ace of Cakes Duff Goldman on losing weight”

    1. I already decided to lower the bar. the bet is 65 pounds to reach 185 which I am fairly confident of doing, even if I don’t make it by the bet date. After that I will go for 150 pounds but I don’t think I’ll bet on that mostly because I’ll want to start firming up with more exercise and muscles weighs more than fat so I don’t want to be worried about a deadline. Hopefully the focus then will be increasing more activity in my life and continuing to build better eating habits. Reading Duffy’s thing, I’m thinking I want to incorporate biking much more but first I need to get it repaired.

    1. I agree. They’ve shown that walking moderately for half an hour beats running for 15 min. They were measuring people losing weight by distance. I imagine someone running for half an hour would beat the walkers though. I like walking.

        1. Most things that require change is hard work but it’s feeling worth it … except when I miss chocolate or ice cream or … lol. I’m learning though, little by little.

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