weight progress
Some friends have been asking me how I have managed to stay on track and stay motivated through the past seven weeks while trying to cut fat and get in shape. These are my best tips for anyone starting a program or trying to stay on track. This is of course from my experience so if something works better for you, then I applaud you and ask that you share but for those curious, here is how I lost 17 lbs in 7 weeks.
I avoided sugar at all costs (both the real, the fake, and the hidden)
There’s not a ton of things your body can do with too much sugar other than make you fat, make you tired, rot your teeth, and give you type 2 diabetes. Sugar makes you hungry too. When I learned to cut out all added sugar and foods with hidden sugars, my cravings for sweets all but disappeared. There are times I do crave sweet things but the beauty of cutting out excess sugar is that the natural sugars in fruit become amplified. A cup of grapes or slice of melon taste like candy to me.
I switched to whole, fresh foods
One thing you realize very quickly when trying to cut out added sugar, high fructose corn syrup, dextrose, sucrose, aspartame, sorbitol, etc, is that you’re going to have a hard time ever buying anything in a box, bag, or can again. Most processed foods contain a huge number of additives, especially those marketed as healthy, light, or diet. Because our nation has a skewed perception of what ‘healthy’ is, typically natural fats and nutrients are stripped from foods and sugars are added to make them taste better.
Whole foods are usually found around the perimeter of your grocery store. They are rarely endorsed by a cartoon character or celebrity. Their nutritional labels are a dead giveaway. They typically only have, well, one ingredient – the food itself. Real food rots, wilts, and goes bad within a few days or weeks and should be eaten fresh (organic when possible and affordable). Foods in their natural forms have more nutrients than the same foods in processed forms so go for whole and fresh.
I ate an abundence of fruit and vegetables
There are an abundence of nutrients found in natural fruits and vegetables. While most people will not disagree that a good amount of fiber is good for you, some don’t realize that fruit and vegetables contain not only great nutrients and phytochmeicals, but are high in fiber. It doesn’t make sense to drink a glass of orange juice, which has the sugar equivalent of about 5 oranges when you can eat 1 orange and get the added benefit of the fiber of the flesh while minimizing your sugar intake. I never met anyone who got fat eating apples and oranges. Don’t go crazy with them, but eat them regularly.
I have limited overall caloric intake in my diet but have never felt hungry. One reason is the amount of fat and protein I eat but also because I eat an abundance of carbohydrates in the form of high volumes of vegetables. Every meal I eat typically has around 3 cups of fresh vegetables. I often crave dessert too, and so I have a piece of fruit or some berries.
I eliminated most grains, breads, cereal, flours, and starches
This one will be a subject of great debate for a lot of people, but my personal belief is that your body has little use for cereal grains, breads, flours, and starches. I have not totally eliminated these things from my diet and do still include some wheat bread here and there as well as some slow cooking oatmeal, but typically this is at most 1 or 2 servings a day.
Breads and grains and starches are not very different from sugar and your body doesn’t get much from them that it doesn’t get from the fruit and vegetables you eat. So yes – I basically quit eating non-vegetable non-fruit carbohydrates. The old theories that you need to carb load for workouts and energy is basically false. I eat plenty of carbs, but I do not eat wheat, gluten, flour, or starches. My blood sugar and insulin is stabilized, evidence by the fact that I am rarely hungry or tired, wake with lots of energy, and feel in general much better than when I was carb addicted.
I ate plenty of fat, beef, poultry, and seafood
Real fat is good for you. Canola, olive, and other oils are healthy, tasty, and filling. If you think your body doesn’t need you to eat fat, you are probably suffering from a brain deficiency, which really is no surprise considering your brain is made up mostly of, you guessed it, fat.
Fake fats such as margarines and hydrogenated oils are not healthy fats. I tossed all the fake fats in my house and stocked up on almonds, walnuts, macadamia nuts, avocados, and olive oil. I eat these foods in abundance everyday. Some people are confused by fats because they can be high caloric, and thus make weight loss difficult but they are not detrimental to your health in the right portions.
As for animal fats, I eat a lot of chicken and beef but try and stick to grass-fed and pastured products. These are higher in omega 3’s, lower in omega 6’s, and are not what is causing cholesterol and obesity problems in our country. It’s good for you and it’s yummy. If the meat at the supermarket is making people sick, it’s because we are feeding our cows corn and grains which is not a natural diet for them. Eat grass-fed beef and lots of wild seafood.
I do not eat a high protein diet. I eat no more than 28 grams of protein per meal for a total of around 100 grams a day. Protein and fat, along with controled carbs, keeps you satisfied, makes it easier for your body to burn stored fat and prevents it from storing excess fat. It’s balanced and it works.
I learned to steam, saute, broil, pan grill, and pack leftovers
Eating well is not that easy. A number of companies make a ton of money by selling you processed packaged food. They make so much money that they can afford to make these foods cheap for you. Packaged food is basically the enemy and so I had to cook a tremendous amount of food. I bought a steamer, a cast iron skillet, ziplock bags of all shapes and sizes, and some tupperware. I cook often and when I do, I cook 2-4 portions so I can eat one immediately and save portions for later. Sunday nights are busy nights for me and I usually cook enough food so that lunch and dinner is done for 3 or 4 days. I also freeze portions in zip lock bags for emergency on-the-go meals.
No one is going to hand-feed you good nutritious food, in fact, inexplicably the nation seems content on being hand-fed food that is killing them. If you are going to eat well and live a healthy lifestyle it’s going to take work and community. I have found friends, online and off, to help share ideas and suggestions with as well as to keep me in check. Success here is about preparation and it is going to take work so if you want to make progress, you need to commit to the effort it will take.
I exercised 3-6 times per week
When trying to lose weight, diet will do more for you than exercise. This is not to say exercise is not good and helpful, but if you were to do only 1 thing, then you should fix your diet. Once that’s done, learn how to workout. I have worked out 3-6 times a week during this time and learned not only to enjoy, but to look forward to my workouts. I’m not a masochist but after a few days, and definitely after 1-2 weeks in, the change in how I felt provided enough momentum and motivation to keep me going back time and again. I was injured at one point and took a week off to heal but immediately after, it was back to 3-6 times a week.
One of the best parts about my workouts has been that as I’ve shedded some excess fat, my workouts have become easier and more efficient, thus letting me push myself harder. This is an important thing to note. Think about all of the things your body does in a day such as keeping your heart beating, growing hair and nails, digesting food, pumping blood, renewing cells, etc, then think about what a sick overweight underhealthy body does in a day.
If you are out of shape, your body is working extra hard just to try and compensate for your health. It may be pumping blood harder, spending more time on trying to heal, helping you breathe since the excess weight constricts your lungs and other organs. When you start losing weight and getting in shape, your body flourishes and you will experience exercise in a whole new light.
I kept a journal
For me staying on track is a matter of being honest with yourself and keeping my goals in mind. I still don’t understand this but for some reason it’s incredibly easy to fall off track then slip into a sort of denial. For me it’s literally like a switch has been flipped. I’m either on track or off with no other in between.
This is the reason for this blog. The couple times I cheated badly, I considered lying on the blog, not blogging, or silently deleting the blog to get myself out of it. I have chosen instead to actually write about those cheats and commit them to paper. I now know how to moderate. Even if I have a completely off track cheat, I keep those to 1 or fewer per week. I know when I’m honoring this rule and when I’m not because I can review my posts and see it in front of me.
So keep a journal with yourself and be completely honest on it. If you write down all the bad stuff, and realize it’s mostly bad stuff, believe me, it will be very difficult to continue straying off track.
I worked extremely hard, but kept it fun, kept an eye on progress, and took many breaks
As I said before, this isn’t easy stuff. I needed to make a mental leap into committing to my goal. I have read about ‘lifestyle’ changes but they never really made sense to me. They did in theory but every routine I started, I started with secret expectations that after 4 or 6 weeks I’d be at goal and then be able to revert back to my previous ways of eating and being lazy.
Make a serious lifestyle change. Choose between staying sick or staying healthy. This has taken me a lifetime of yo-yo programs before getting this to really stick. At this point I’m tired of the roller coaster and feel so much better now, that I can’t imagine ever giving up.
Keeping an eye on your progress should help keep you motivated. Pay attention to EVERYTHING. If you’re weight fluctuates, which mine did, pay attention to how your clothes fit, how well you’re sleeping, your mood, your energy, etc. Health is the result of a healthy lifestyle, it is not a single end goal so be sure you are enjoying the positive effects a healthy lifestyle is rewarding you with, even if you haven’t hit your goal weight or strength. That part comes. This is about the progress and maintenance, not the goal.
Lastly, once in a while, be nice to yourself and take a break. I have probably taken more breaks than necessary and will honestly tell you to be careful. Breaks from your diet and routine have a way of sneaking up on you and becoming the norm. So again journal it all and keep yourself honest, but do have fun and treat yourself once in a while. Eat cake at family birthday parties, when you visit mom, try her spaghetti (or take it home and freeze it), and if it’s a holiday, toss everything out the window eat what you want, and get right back on track immediately after.
