I've had more than one person ask me how I went from 249lbs to 199lbs in a little less than three months. A couple of people have said, "Is that even healthy?" Well, when you are 90-100lbs overweight, losing that much over that short a period isn't as drastic as being 30 pounds overweight and losing 20 pounds in 3 months. I'm doing fine, physically, other than being sore from exercise, so I think I'm doing something very right. A few people have asked what I'm doing to lose this much weight without fad diets or starving myself. Weight loss is an individual thing, so what I'm doing may not work for everyone, but to answer those who are asking, here we go. I have made four changes to my lifestyle. Major changes. Changes that were not easy, even though I may not have acted like they were hard. I'm going to talk about each one of them here, and explain them. Before you try any (or all) of these, please read up on them. These things may not work for you, or may not be good for you depending on your health. All I'm doing here is showing you that I'm not starving myself, nor am I doing Keto, Atkins, or eating nothing but kale and oatmeal.
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1. Weight Watchers Freestyle. Yes, we've all heard of WW. I made fun of it for years. But that fat guy on the couch has no room to make fun of a weight loss plan. My wife decided she wanted to try it, and like every good partner should, I told her I would do it also. I didn't expect her to do it alone, and I keep eating as we always had while she made changes to her diet. Weight Watchers Freestyle allows you to have whatever you want to eat, but you have a maximum number of "points" you can have per day. Every food has a point value. So if the food you are eating has zero points, you can eat pretty much as much of it as you like. You can't gorge yourself, but you can enjoy those kinds of foods guilt-free. If you are allowed 30 points a day for example (Weight Watchers has a calculator for your individual body type and weight.) if you want that jelly donut, fine--but it's probably at least 10 points, so that donut is a third of your food for the day. So you plan your food around your points. You know what foods you like, and you can find ways to make them lower in points. If you like fried chicken, for example, if you make it oven-fried chicken, and instead of using buttermilk and flour, use bisquick, and use chicken breast only, you literally cut the points in half. Season it with spices instead of coating it with bisquick, and you cut the points down by almost 85%. Weight Watchers has an app that you can scan food with in the store so you can see exactly what you are taking in. You can read more about it at the link below.
https://www.weightwatchers.com/us/article/how-ww-freestyle-works
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2. The next part was a personal decision. I felt God calling me to do this. For those who don't have a faith walk, you can call it a personal desire to change something major about your diet. I went cold turkey on this, also. I can't "step down" like many people can, because I'll go back to where I started in no time. When I quit smoking, I didn't do patches or pills. I threw away my cigarettes and was an ***hole for two weeks until my body didn't need them physically anymore. Same concept here, but without the ***hole part. Ready for this? It involves giving up two things completely.
Refined sugar. I gave it up. Anything with added sugar--from sweet tea to white bread--gone. Refined sugar is horrible for your body, and your body can only process so much of it before it gives up and starts storing it as fat. So if your body can process 1/4 cup of refined sugar a day, and you are drinking four bottles of Mountain Dew a day, you have already gone over by double. Those other two bottles went right to your belly fat. Refined sugar is pure poison in unhealthy amounts, which for most people is a fraction of what they consume. Natural sugars like those in fruit are fine, but if the food you are eating has sugar added, your insulin levels are reaping the harvest of your intake. So I gave up sugar--completely.
Foods with little or no nutritional value--gone. Potato chips, candy bars, beer, white bread, snack cakes--gone. I won't go into the why's of this part. It requires no explanation. If a food has no nutritional value, all it's doing it sitting on your gut until it converts itself to fat. Can you have the occasional candy bar? Of course. But that daily snack time Snickers bar has zero benefits to your body. So yes, I gave up junk food.
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3. Intermittent Fasting. This is a popular and talked about diet change that actually returns your body to a state it should be in. It involves setting aside a particular block of each day for eating (responsibly) and the other block you only drink water, or zero-calorie liquids like sugar-free flavored water, tea with Splenda, or water with lemon. In this time of "fasting", you don't eat anything. During this time, your body naturally digests and burns off the calories you consumed during your time of eating that day. The most popular ratio is 16:8, where you eat normally for 8 hours (the same 8 hours each day, and they must be consecutive) and the other 16 you only drink water. This is actually easier than it sounds, because, for 8 of those hours, you are sleeping.
You can also do it 18/6. Where you block off 6 hours (like between 12pm and 6pm) to eat and the remaining hours you only drink water. Your weight loss is more accelerated this way, but it requires more discipline.
The final option is 20/4. Just like it suggests, your eating window is 4 hours, and the other 20 you only drink water. This has the most aggressive weight loss effect, but if you choose this route, you have to eat WELL. You have to make sure both your meals are full of goodness and balanced nutrition, because they are gonna sustain you for the following 20 hours.
I chose the 20/4. Some people start with 16/8 and work up to 20/4, but I can't taper off things or I will go right back to where I started. So I set my eating hours as between 5pm and 9pm. When I get home at the end of the day, I'll have bananas and natural peanut butter until I'm satisfied. Then for dinner, I might have roasted chicken with Brussel sprouts and sliced tomatoes. And I eat until I am FULL. After that, for the next 20 hours, I only drink water. (Well, I usually do flavored water with Splenda...but that's it. Those little Mio squirt bottles are a GODSEND to me.)
For anyone who says "That's not healthy. You can't just eat for four hours and then starve yourself for twenty.", consider this: Your body (during your fasting period) is doing something very important. It's processing the food you put in it during those four hours. It's surviving off the nutrition you gave it during that time. And it works. During my 4 hours, I probably put away 1800-2000 calories. The other 20, my body burns off those calories. Your body burns calories just breathing, your heart beating, and your eyes blinking. The human body can survive for three weeks without food. This is only 20 hours. Totally doable and okay health-wise.
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4. This next part was the hardest part. Exercise. Yes, you have to do it. What exercise you do is up to you, as long as it gets your heart rate up. Swimming, yoga, Zumba, step-aerobics, weight training. Doesn't matter. Do what works for you. The only requirements are that is must get your heart rate up, and it must STAY up for the entire time you are exercising. If you need a water break, grab your water bottle, drink for 20 seconds, then get right back into it. Do this for at least an hour a day. The exercise you choose is up to you.
I chose walking.
Each morning (except for Sunday when I rest) I walk between 5 and 8 miles. I grab my water bottles (two 34 ounce bottles) and leave the house at 7am. I go down to the Riverwalk and walk. I take the stairs when they are available to me. I take the hills instead of the flat paths. I love the feeling of my heart rate elevating, and riding those endorphins for a couple of hours--or more. I walk 3 miles, loop back around to my car, drink one of my bottles of water, then get right back out on the path again. 3 miles later I'm back at my car and drink my other bottle on the way home. By the time I get back that second time, I'm out of breath, and feeling so accomplished and overjoyed that I DID IT.
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On a final note, let me say that this is what I am doing. This may not work for everyone, and I encourage you to make healthy lifestyle changes that work for you. The important thing is to know you can do it, and don't give up on it. If you stumble, get back up and keep going. You can do this.
When I graduated from high school in 1993, I weighed 158lbs. I could bench press 240 pounds, and I could run a mile without getting winded. Three months ago, I was 249, I struggled to get through the day without being exhausted, and running even 10 seconds wiped me out. I finally decided I was done with that nonsense.
I may not get back to 158, but I'm shooting for at least 175.
This is my journey.
Now start yours.
(Update, 9/4/19. I feel better than ever, and I'm now at 191lbs.)
