I feel as if I’ve stumbled across some enlightened understanding of what it takes to lose and keep off weight. I’ve always known some of these things however until recently I never really had to put them into action.
You see, I’ve always been relatively thin. I’ve worked out for most of my life since my late teenage years and I’ve had a pretty good metabolism. This allowed me to eat virtually anything at all that I wanted with little to no negative effect on gaining weight (fat).
I also lifted heavily in my 20’s so the more I ate the better, because that would be transferred to muscle due to the weightlifting.
Well father time (and gravity) has a way of humbling you. It wasn’t until my late 30’s hit when I was shocked to find that I could not just work out and eat whatever I want. You see I would sometimes go a few weeks without working out and I’d still be making some unhealthy choices, but I’d always be able to see those pounds fly off once I started hitting the gym, it was amazing.
That wasn’t the case anymore and I began to panic a little bit, and it kinda brought me down.
Then we had our first child, and the time leading up to the birth and the subsequent chaotic lifestyle changes that took place really led both my wife and I down an unfortunate path of unhealthy eating and lack of exercise. I hadn’t gone to the gym in weeks and due to the lifestyle changes we weren’t eating healthy as it was really the last thing on our mind.
Fast forward several months and I came across a guy on twitter named Alexander Juan Cortes.
He’s a personal trainer and I actually came across his feed from reading some other motivational guys. Anyways he said something that for some reason really resonated with me and set me on a course of thinking differently than I ever had before about health.
“Anytime you have a day where you are at a caloric deficit you will burn fat”
It sounds simple right? This is why people count calories and choose diet soft drinks.
This is why the “no fat!” exclamations on food products sell so well. Just cut the calories and you’ll be all good! Well not exactly. He also said something else that really resonated with me and I am paraphrasing but it was something to the effect of “getting enough sleep is important because you burn fat when you sleep” I had visions of myself actually breathing out the fat and that really made me want to get at least 7 preferably 8 hours of sleep. Man what a difference that has made! I have more energy and I know it has definitely aided me in losing weight.
At my heaviest when my daughter was born I weighed 189lbs, which I know may not sound like a lot, but for me it was. Although when I was lifting heavy weights I hovered around that 196lbs mark, that was a lot of muscle and muscle weighs more than fat.
I’ve been able to get down to 167lbs now and I feel good about that weight but my target is 160. Finally my clothes fit me again and I don’t feel out of breath walking up a flight of stairs.
So I’ve broken down a few small but important steps that I’ve taken which I believe have made the biggest difference in my weight loss journey:
1. Eliminate carbs. You don’t have to 100% eliminate them, but if you’re going to eat them, do it early in the day, before lunch time. This will give your body a chance to burn it off as you go through the day. Some carbs are better than others. Roasted potatoes and hash browns are better than a big bagel or a sugar laced donut. No pasta/bread/chips etc. Look at the label, if it has a lot of carbs, don’t eat it and especially avoid processed carbs.
- Eliminate sugar. Same rule but more strict. You gotta get rid of sugar, especially the refined/processed crap. You can have some fruit but don’t over do it because they have sugar as well. Mainly DON’T DRINK ANY, AND I MEAN NONE, ZILCH, NADA, SOFT DRINKS!!! This was one of the biggest steps. I’d have a rule of I’d only have a soft drink when I’d go to a restaurant, but that had to go. I drank water only, which brings me to my next point…
3. Drink tons of water. Ever drank so much water that you get annoyed having to get up to pee all of the time? And when you gotta go you REALLY GOTTA GO?? This is what you need to do. Water speeds up your metabolism. Get a water bottle, a pitcher, yeti cup, gallon of water, whatever, just make sure that you’re steadily drinking water. This will also aid in appetite suppression, which brings me to my next point about eating…
4. Skip one meal a day, either lunch or dinner. Substitute that meal with water. For me, lunch is easier to skip because I can just work and swig water all day, but for some dinner might be better. Don’t skip breakfast because you’ll be super hungry and likely make a bad food decision at lunch time. Also when it comes to dinner…
5. Don’t eat any food past 7pm. Think like a gremlin, eating late is really bad for your metabolism and the later you eat the less fat your body will be able to burn off while you’re sleeping. Going to bed hungry might be a little uncomfortable at first but just remember, if you go to bed hungry you’ll be breathing out so much fat while you…
- Sleep for at LEAST 7 hours a night. If you don’t do this you won’t be burning as much fat. You’ll lack energy, and you’ll also make some bad food decisions, I guarantee it. You should be going to bed on an empty stomach since you haven’t eaten since 7pm, which might be hard but not if you tried at least once to...
- Water Fast for 24 hours. I know, this sounds horrible, but it’s really not that bad when you account for sleep. What worked for me was starting my fast after lunch one day. I had a big lunch and I was drinking a ton of water. That night I really wasn’t hungry because my stomach was so filled with water and remnants of the big lunch. The next morning when I woke up I resumed my furious water drinking pace, and then before I knew it, it was lunchtime and my 24 hour fast was complete! The benefits of fasting are well documented, in my case it REALLY helped me to learn how to deal with feeling a little hungry. I was able to shut off the negative effects from hunger (irritability, tiredness, feeling unhappy/unfulfilled etc) so now when it comes to avoiding one meal a day I don’t have a problem with it. I don’t feel like I’m “missing a meal” anymore because I’ve pushed my physical senses past the typical boundaries that my body was used to when it came to feeding it. Now, it’s not even a question of if I’m going to eat something and it’s after 7pm if I’m just home on a normal night. There’s no way!
8. Get moving. Exercise, weight lifting, cardio etc are all great and I do think that everyone should try to be more muscular in the fight against gravity. Age will catch up with all of us and the more physical strength you can carry into your later years the better off you will be, no doubt about it. The problem is that some people believe they can just start exercising and lose all of their weight. Join this program, buy this disc, start running etc, and all of sudden they find that they’re not losing the weight, they’ve lost the motivation to do the workouts, and why not just say the hell with it and down that pint (or gallon) of blue bell ice cream? To borrow another phrase from Alexander Juan Cortes “You can’t out exercise a poor diet”. Fitness and weight loss is 20% exercise 80% diet. If you want to maximize your effectiveness, you definitely need to get some vigorous exercise in, but if you can’t do that for whatever reason, you can adjust how you eat.
Now I’m going to say something that a lot of people will not like, but outside of some extraordinary thyroid condition or some other physiological ailment, there is no reason for someone to be morbidly obese.
Got a bum knee and can’t run or lift weights? You don’t have a bum hand that malfunctions and keeps stuffing your face with garbage food.
Can’t get the motivation to do 10 burpees a day? You won’t be able to come close to having the willpower to stop drinking 3 sugar packed soft drinks a day.
You don’t have a biological predisposal to being overweight. You do have a mental deficiency that is going to give you a health condition.
Look around, do you see that many really overweight people in their 70’s and 80’s?
No?
That’s because they’re all dead, and if they’re not dead, they’re not out in society because they can’t leave their house with any sense of comfort. As you get older it will only get harder to make these changes and the weight will become more of a part of how you see yourself.
It’s not too late unless you’re dead.
Even if you’ve tried so many diets and exercise programs and failed, you probably were trying to build a mountain before you could even stack one rock on top of another.
You can’t lose 20, 30, or 50lbs until you lose 5, and keep it off.
Some people might think this sounds harsh, or mean spirited, but no it just sounds hurtful because it’s hard, and if you’re hurt by the thought of something being hard, you need to look in that place before you start looking for solutions from any salesman or network marketing program that your friend wants to get you signed up for (and then if you get your friends signed up you can make money, and they can make money if they get their friends etc.)
Stop contributing to building pyramids and start contributing to building yourself, one pebble at a time.
