How I Lost 175 Pounds

No, there's no typo in the title, I've lost 175 pounds!  Here's how I did it:

20 pounds in middle school
25 pounds in high school
30 pounds in college
35 pounds in North Carolina
65 pounds on my latest journey

Now I apologize for the teaser title, I never did say I lost it and kept it all off.  There is a point to this article, however,  that I think is very important to anyone trying to lose weight.  I learned a lot from all these losses and I'll share these learnings shortly.  But first I need to re-live these events to put things in perspective...

• In middle school I weighed 180 and the weight limit to play football was 160.  I lost 20 pounds in 3 weeks when my parents put me on a grapefruit and egg diet.  Essentially I ate nothing but hard-boiled eggs and drank nothing but grapefruit juice for the entire diet.  On the last day I threw up and 25 years later I can still remember how sick I was from that diet.  I didn't eat hard-boiled eggs for years and I've never had another sip of grapefruit juice.
• As a freshman in high school I weighed 220.  On valentine's day the school had one of those charity events where you could buy a carnation for someone special.  You could get a red one for love, pink for a secret admirer, or white for a friend.  As a football jock I had a lot of good looking friends and I watched them all get tons of carnations.  Me?  I got 1 white one that I later learned came from one of my relatives.  I decided I would go on a diet.  The flavor of the month back then was low fat, so I basically shunned anything that had any fat in it and consequently that meant shunning anything that had any flavor.  I ate a lot of rice cakes during that time.  I lost 25 pounds in my freshman year.
• After my first year in college I weighed 310.  I got a job cleaning the dorm rooms during the summer.  The job came with a free room in one of the dorms but it was essentially empty so my evenings were quite lonely.  I took it as an opportunity to try again to lose some weight.  By then it wasn't just low fat, but high carbs that was supposed to make you lose weight because they digest so quickly.  I had a microwave, so my dinners were ramon noodles or pasta.  I also incorporated some exercise; I started jogging each night and I had a book on getting a flat belly by doing a whole list of ab exercises.  I did lose about 30 pounds that summer but I didn't get the six-pack abs.
• When I got out of college and then moved down to NC, my wife and I started a routine of eating out almost every night.  We never lived in a big city and to have so many restaurants nearby was just too much temptation.  Within 2 years I had ballooned up to 349!  My mom told me about a new diet called The Six Week Body Makeover.  Unlike past diets, this one required me to eat 4oz of protein 6 times a day and carbs were rare.  I also couldn't have any salt, sugar, or dairy at all and I had to drink 100+ oz. of water.  This was my most successful diet; I lost 45 pounds in six weeks.  After the first six weeks I tried to do the diet again, but it was just so hard because it was so restrictive.  Once off the diet, most of the weight came right back.
• A year later my first daughter was born.  By the time she was 2 my focus had shifted from my weight which was about 315, to my smoking.  When I quit, it stuck, but the price I paid was in my weight.  A year later I was back at 349.  It should be noted that I've always listed my max weight at 349.  Twice in my life I've seen that number on a scale, but the reality is that I was probably even heavier.  The scale I had only went to 330, but it would roll over so you could add more if you weighed more.  I suspect that I probably went beyond the physical boundaries of the scale but since it never read more than 349, that's my story and I'm sticking to it.
• That brings me to the journey I'm on now.  I started it about 2 years ago at 349 (still sticking to my story).  My first phase was using The Abs Diet that I read about in Men's health.  I like the Abs Diet because it's not really a diet; it is more like a guide toward what you should eat and there are no restrictions.  I was pretty successful with this diet and lost my first 35 pounds on it after 6 months.  The next six months brought a time of no gain or loss.  I was very busy remodeling my house so I didn't focus on my diet but I was more active and I think that made up for it.  The important thing was that for the first time the weight didn't come back.  Looking back it was because I stayed active, and I had begun to learn how to eat right instead of restricting myself all the time.
• At the start of last year I was at 315 when I started the bet with my friend.  This brought me a lot of motivation.  In 6 months I lost another 25 pounds.  This time I decided the way to go was to eat a balanced diet and exercise regularly.  I kept the parts of my other diets that made sense and threw out all restrictions.  The weight didn't come off really fast, but it did come off regularly.  After 6 months my family and I moved to Virginia.  It sounds like an excuse, but the move was tough on everyone and when I got here the recession was just beginning.  Through this time I bounced between 299 and 290 regularly.  Again though, I didn't gain all the weight back...I think I'm on to something here.

 

So here I am now back at it.  I'm losing weight slowly and as of this writing I'm in the 280's placing me at 65 pounds so far.  I still have a long way to go but I've learned a lot from my success and from my past failures:

1. Be wary of fad diets - Back in the 80's the grapefruit diet was one of the big fad diets.  The diet I did was a variation of it and looking back I realize just how unhealthy it was.  Now before you go blaming my parents, remember there wasn't as much information about healthy diets back then as there is now.  Also, the diet was successful and they spared me the humiliation of not being able to play football because of my weight.  Some fad diets or reasonable, but some are downright dangerous!
2. Exercise and physical activity is required - Did you notice that I gained 90 pounds between high school and college?  In high school I gained roughly 10 pounds each year.  When I got to college I turned the freshman 15 into the freshman 50.  The reason for that was the abrupt change in my physical activity.  I played all sorts of sports up through high school but it stopped when I went to college.
3. Any eating style that cannot be maintained indefinitely is likely to fail - The Six Week Body Makeover worked great but was so restrictive it was impossible to maintain.  Most diet books have the same format;  They devote half the book to the science of why their diet works followed by the other half telling you how to do the diet.  Then at the end there's a cursury 10 pages or so that tell you what you should do after you've lost the weight.  Usually it involves "loosening" the restrictions set forth on the original diet.  They tell you to "eat normal" weekends, or go off the diet until you see some weight creeping back in and then go back on.  If this paragraph describes the book you are currently reading, learn what you can then throw the book in the trash.  (Note - authors and publishers are not stupid.  Current trends have shown a migration towards creating a long term sustainable diet.  Just because the book calls it's plan a "lifetime change in eating style" doesn't make it so.  Read between the lines and decide for yourself if you could live the plan forever).
4. Trends change over time - First fat was bad, then it was OK if it was the right kind.  Cholestoral nearly killed the egg council...until they discovered there was good and bad types of cholestoral.  Next came carbs...Glycemic index anyone? Now the enemy is HFCS and artificial ingredients.  There will always be a new diet discovery of the month and many times they contradict each other.  Science discovers new things all the time.  Try what's reasonable and throw out anything that sounds too good to be true.
5. Don't be afraid to try new things...then learn what works for you and what doesn't.  The best diet you can go on is YOUR OWN DIET.  When you try to follow someone else's diet, it's easy to pass the buck.  If it doesn't work you can easily blame the diet.  Even if it does work, it wasn't yours so as soon as you stop you go back living your bad diet.  By all means try different things and learn what works for you... then make your diet your own.

No matter what changes come about, the one diet style that can't be beat is a balanced diet and plenty of exercise.  It may not be fancy and it definitely isn't fast, but it does work.  I've learned this through many years as a dieter and so far it is still proving to be true.  Maybe you should give it some thought.  How much weight have you lost in your lifetime?  What can you learn from it?

 

[Photo: Flickr / Graham Richardson]

FogDog's Healthy Meals

I spend quite a bit of time at other weight loss blogger sites, and I'm always amazed at the number of people eating uninspired meals when they try to eat healthy.  It's hard to stay focused on a diet when the thought of your next meal is less appealing than the thought up cleaning up baby vomit.  Bad food at home is a sure-fire way to find yourself at the local drive-thru regularly.  One thing I can say about myself is that I just absolutely have to eat food that is more than just nutritious; it also has to be delicious.  Fortunately I've done a lot of trial and error on many healthy meals and recipes so I have a pretty good arsenal to draw from.  I've decided to share some of my favorites as part of my blog (note the new list on my sidebar).  Some will be full meals and others may just be healthy snacks.  I'll try to get a new one out each week as time permits.  I also found a great blog from written by Weezel that is all about recipes.  What I like about it is that this blogger is actually a food service director and she takes requests from her audience.  Not everything on her site is healthy, but many times she does offer healthy alternatives.  Feel free to check it out it's called "What's Cooking? ". 

Not all my recipes are designed from scratch.  Many of them have been modified or adapted from books, magazines and on the internet.  I've picked up quite a few ideas from my Men's Health Magazine  in their Abs Diet Recipes, they have some really good meals.  When appropriate I will reference the source of the inspiration or adaptation along with a link to the reference (when available).  These recipes are designed to have 3 key components to them:

1. They must be healthy (low in fat, calories, not swimming in salt, etc) 
2. They must be filling (what's the sense in eating a healthy meal if you are starving 2 hours later)
3. They must taste good (no rice cakes smeared with low fat cottage cheese)

Now please understand that many of these recipes will be high in protein.  I strive for balance in my meals, but I do tend to skew a little towards the high protein side.  That's because my workout consists of a lot of strength training so I eat a lot of protein to support muscle repair.  You may need to modify these recipes to suit your own needs or tastes.  If you do find an alteration that works well, please feel free to share in the comments section as I am always looking for new ideas. 

Also note that I almost never use anything "light", "fat free", "reduced fat", "diet", "low sodium", or any other label that represents an unnatural form of something that tastes good.  You can't be afraid of fat, sugar, and salt.  When used in moderation they add flavor and make the meal more enjoyable.  Besides, all of those so-called "healthier" versions of these ingredients replace the good stuff with artificial ingredients and I'm not a big fan of artificial sweeteners, flavors, and fillers.  Trust me when I say you can eat a healthy diet with all natural ingredients.  Good food is about taste as much as about being healthy.  In my house our philosophy is to spend a little more and get high quality, great tasting food because if our meals taste like cardboard we'll just end up going out to eat all the time.  That's no good for your weight or your wallet!

Journal Update 11/22/09

As you can see from my last post I managed to have another good week.  In fact, I feel like it has been a great week because it was a very hard week for me and I still managed to take some weight off.  I worked a lot this week and had a really important but stressful project due on Friday.  Usually when my routine changes it gives me an excuse to stop eating right.  I managed to pull it off and I feel really good about it.  I was still shaking off a cold for most of the week so still no exercise yet.  I didn't track my calories either, but I did eat right all week long.  Last Sunday my wife made a small pan of brownies, I ate 1 small piece on Sunday and then another small piece Monday night.  For me this was another small victory (small victory #3) because usually when my wife makes brownies, they are usually gone the day they are made.

The middle of the week brought the usual challenges.  In preparing for finishing my big project (Thursday and Friday) I was very busy.  I struggled a little getting my water in but always got at least 60 ounces each day.  I ate balanced meals and I've also discovered a great oatmeal breakfast:

1/2 Cup Oatmeal
1 Cup 1% Milk
3/4 Cup Frozen Blueberries

Mix the 3 items in a bowl and microwave for 1 minute 3 times stirring in between each time (3 minutes total).  Let sit for about 5 minutes to thicken up and then drizzle a little honey on it.  It tastes great and is just under 400 calories!  I had it every work day this week for breakfast.

The end of the week brought my biggest challenge yet.  On Friday we had completed our final presentation for closing the project.  All went extremely well so as a reward my friend and I bought our team lunch as a "thank you" for working so hard (they did a really great job).  By the time we got the pizza I was starving.  At first I told myself that I would just go to my office and eat the lunch I brought, but as the leader of the project, that really didn't feel right not to participate with the rest of the team.  Instead I decided that I would only eat 2 pieces of pizza.  I ate my 2 pieces and drank water instead of soda (small victory #4).  I wanted to eat a whole pizza myself, but I knew I had to weigh in the next morning and I think that helped me stay on course.  Afterward I felt great!  It was nice to have a celebration with my team and not eat like a pig.

Since I met my goal for the week, I cut myself some slack this weekend.  However, unlike last weekend, this time I managed to control myself a little better.  On Saturday we took the kids out for lunch.  Being kids, their idea of a good meal is the local pizza buffet.  I have to say, buffets are my arch nemesis.  I have probably gained more weight from buffets than any other restaurant type including fast food joints.  I mentioned it before in a previous post that I have a hard time separating value and cost.  At buffets I feel like I have to get the most for my money so I eat and eat and eat whether I'm hungry or not.  This time was going to be different.  All week long I've been realizing how much my weight problem is in my head.  I went into that restaurant convinced that I was going to enjoy myself, but under no circumstances was I going to come back out feeling like a big fat pig.

I started off with a salad and even though my wife paid for me to have a soda, I got water instead.  Usually when I go to a pizza buffet, I usually get 2 slices of everything I like and 3 slices of anything I really like.  Then for dessert I get at least 2 of everything.  This time I decided to only get 1 slice of the kinds I like and then I didn't eat the crusts.  Why fill up with all that crust on the end of each pizza, all it does is sit like a rock in your stomach.  I also made an effort to actually taste the pizza instead of just wolfing it down.  It was nice, I actually enjoyed all the flavors from the different pizzas I like.  After that I had 1 small piece of each of the desserts and that was it!  Now I know this isn't exactly a knockout as far as calories go, but for me this is huge.  I have NEVER walked out of a buffet without feeling absolutely stuffed.  On Saturday I did just that and it felt great! (small victory #5)

Now it's time for my first really big challenge.  Thanksgiving week is finally here.  On Tuesday night I'm driving all the way up to Maine to visit with my family.  I'm really excited to go, but I know it will be difficult to eat right.  First I have to drive 14 hours through the middle of the night.  It's hard to eat healthy on the road, but we are packing a lot of healthy snacks so I don't have to stop a lot along the way.  When we get there we are going out with my family for dinner on Wednesday.  The place has already been decided; Chinese Buffet!  Everyone in my family is overweight and usually when we get together it usually turns into a pig-fest.  I love Chinese, so my big challenge here will be to do as well as I did when I went to pizza buffet.  Of course the next day is Thanksgiving so I'll have to watch myself there.  After that, we drive back to NJ to visit with my in-laws before going home on Sunday.

In order to survive this trip I'm going to need a plan:

1. I already mentioned, we are going to pack a lot of healthy snacks for the drive up.  By packing healthy snacks it should help me to resist the temptations to eat junk from convenience stores or fast food restaurants.
2. I'm going to have to find ways to get some exercising during the trip.  I already know my calorie intake is going to be higher than usual so I need to burn a little more.  The hotel we are staying at has a gym so I plan on hitting it for at least 30 minutes each day we are there.  I'm also going to try to get some exercise in on the days before we leave.
3. During all the family get togethers, I am going to try to focus on eating really slow.  I haven't seen my family for quite some time, so if I spend more time talking than eating, I should be able to keep my calories down some.
4. I'm going to have fun!  If I feel like I'm suffering on this trip it's only going to push me toward a binge at some point.  I'm not going to worry about every little bite and I definitely want a piece of my mom's pecan pie.  Remember this is a lifestyle change so I have to be able to deal with family events.

Wish me luck, I'm probably going to need it.

Journal Update 11/14/09

It was a decent week for me. As I reported in my last post I managed to drop 5 pounds. Though it's certainly positive, there are still some oppotunities for improvement. At the same time I also managed to fight off some temptations.

Monday was probably my best day of the week. I ate all my meals and snacks as planned and got 100 ounces of water in. Tuesday was a little tougher. On Tuesday I could feel the start of a cold coming on so I felt lousy most of the day. To make matters worse I was hit with a big temptation. The factory I work at today was having a pizza party for great performance last month. This is where I struggle the most. For some reason I have a hard time separating value and cost. The pizza, soda, and cookies are all free but they have very little value. With the exception to providing me with a short term euphoria from scarfing down large quantities of free food, there’s really nothing else it can offer me. My choice… I ate the lunch I packed and then went out to my vehicle to work on my blog (small victory #2).**

Of course the food remained in the cafeteria all day and I couldn’t help but notice every time I went to refill my water. I stayed the course though, but it was tough. Hard to believe such a simple thing is so hard to control.

By Wednesday and Thursday I was pretty sick. I would've taken a day off if not for the tremendous amount of work I have going on right now. In the manufacturing world, the end of the year can be quite busy for engineers. Usually there's a big push to get everything done and paid for before the next yearly budget. Anyway, I still ate my meals and snacks, but I didn't drink much water. I might have gotten 20 ounzes in each day.

Friday brought the end of the week and I could feel the desire to go out dinner creeping in. Fortunately I got home late and my wife had already started dinner (a delicious salmon dish) so I didn't have the opportunity to ask her about going out.

Today I had to go into work, but not before getting on the scale and learning how well I did. As I mentioned before, by meeting my weekly goal I am allowing myself a few indulgences, but unfortunately I went a little too far today. When I got to work someone had bought sausage biscuits from the local fast food place. I had 2; not too bad for breakfast, but it didn't end there. At 9:00AM we had our morning meeting and again someone else brought breakfast sandwiches and doughnuts. I had one more sandwich (bacon, egg, and cheese) and a doughnut. So much for moderation!

All in all it was still a good week. It's funny, usually when I go on a diet, I hit it really hard the first week and then taper off each successive week. This time I'm taking my time and rolling things out slowly. I'm not in a hurry because this isn't a diet; it's a new way of living. I wrote down everything I ate in my food journal but I haven't checked the calories yet, and I haven't even started exercising. Maybe by taking my time, I won't get so ovewhelmed by change and fall off the wagon. Until next time...


** - Note small victory #1 was actually getting this blog started!