How to Lose 50 Pounds and Keep It Off!

When I was younger, I never had a weight problem. Or better said, I never a problem being overweight. In fact, I had a hard time gaining weight in high school. I graduated at 5'-5" (my adult height) and about 120 lbs. A few years into college, I had ballooned up to 125 lbs. I even started drinking weight gainer shakes to put on a few pounds. Nothing really seemed to work (seems like a nice problem to have now). Then I got married, had a child and I put on a few pounds. Got divorced, re-married and put on a few pounds. Had another child with my new wife and gained a few pounds. Before I had a chance to look back I was 33, had a wife and 2 kids and looked like that (to the right). It wasn't a big deal at first. I kept buying larger and larger clothes and although I wasn't happy with how I looked, I wasn't bothered by it. Then, I was climbing a rock wall at a carnival with my kids and my wife's friend commented at how "big" I had become. That was the moment that everything changed! It was just that little nudge that I needed to motivate myself.

First of all, don't go on a diet. The word "diet" implies that you're cutting the amount of food that you eat for a temporary period of time while you try to lose weight. I hate that term and I never used it. When someone would ask me about my "diet", I would say I'm not on a diet. Call it whatever you want; a nutrition plan, a new way of life but anything but a diet. You have to buy into the fact that this is the way you have to eat if you want to live healthy. Secondly, nutrition is far more important than exercise when it comes to weight loss. It's probably 80% of the effort given at losing weight happens in the kitchen! If you're not willing to balance your nutrition, then don't bother! You will fail.

Early on, I found an incredible amount of bad and misleading information on the web about weight loss. Every site I visited had a different plan about how to lose weight. It was discouraging. I can see why people give up so easily. Some of the ranged from mildly reasonable to outrageously dangerous. So after a while, I made my own plan. It wasn't a perfect plan, in fact it was more of a guide because I was constantly making changes and adjustments as my body was changing and I was learning more about myself. If you're reading this because you want to lose some weight, I encourage you to do the same. I don't have any magic secret and I don't have a plan for you but I am hoping that by sharing what I did and what I went through, you might be better able to stick with and adjust your plan to your body and be successful.

• Some experts say not to weigh yourself daily but rather weekly so as not to get discouraged with normal day to day weight fluctuations. I say the opposite. Weigh yourself every single day at the same time. For me, it was wake up, pee, measure weight! That way I could eliminate as many outside factors and get a true day to day measurement. I wanted to be accountable for any slip ups.
• Watch your sodium! Some of the lower calorie foods you find substitute salt for natural flavor so your sodium intake can go through the roof if you're not careful. That could lead to a host of other issues, not to mention water weight that messes up your scale!!
• I found parmesan cheese to be a great way to add flavor. I would make sauteed vegetables in olive oil, chicken broth. Tastes boring until I sprinkled 1 tablespoon of grated cheese on top (only 20 calories).
• I love pasta but it's all carbs!! Look for Shirataki noodles at the supermarket. It's all fiber, has almost no taste and consistency is like spaghetti. Pour your favorite pasta sauce on top and you have nearly zero-carb pasta!
• Joseph's Lavash Bread - 4 net carbs per servicing. It's like a wrap but without the carbs. I use them with ham and cheese, eggs, salad wrap. I even toast it plain and add a little butter for something to crunch on!
• I bought liquid egg whites to bulk up my omelets. Add 1/2 cup with 1 whole egg and you boost the protein count without adding to the fat and cholesterol in whole eggs!

Once I weeded through the garbage that's online about weight loss, I found one common theme. If you eat fewer calories than you burn, you will lose weight. The concept really is that simple, but the practice is more challenging.

The first thing I did is start tracking my daily food intake. Everything you see says an adult should consume 2,000 calories per day but I had no idea how many calories I was eating. I found fitday.com to help me keep track. There are dozens of others you can choose but I liked FitDay and stuck with it. I found that for my height, my daily caloric intake should be around 1,800, not 2,000 so that become my target. I also wanted to lose about 2 pounds per week so I needed to burn an extra 1,000 calories per day to keep on track (1 pound = 3500 calories). So I bought a food scale on eBay and started tracking. The first thing I noticed is that I could cut almost 500 calories per day from my food intake just by changing what I drink. I eliminated all sugar from my beverages. I have never been a drinker so eliminating alcohol was unnecessary, I wasn't drinking to begin with. The next thing was lunch. I'm not the kind of person that can brown bag it. There's something about preparing your lunch ahead of time and storing it in the office fridge that just isn't appealing to me. How can I decide what I want for lunch at 7:00 in the morning? I think it's more mental for me because every day I started getting salads. I would rotate between MacDonald's, Wendy's and Papa Gino's (local Boston area pizza chain). I would get some kind of salad with grilled chicken and an olive oil based dressing. MacDonald's has the Bacon Ranch Chicken Salad which is great. I substituted the ranch dressing for balsamic and the whole meal was under 400 calories. For dinner, I probably wiped out an entire generation of chickens by myself. Whenever boneless chicken breast was on sale, I loaded up. I would eat a chicken breast with sauteed vegetables most nights. Some nights, I would cover it with pasta sauce and parmesan cheese. For an evening snack, I got low-fat cheddar cheese, turkey pepperoni and pickles. Sounds strange but it was great. There is something very satisfying about crunching! The pickles gave that to me. On a side-note, I found that keeping your hands busy distracted me from wanting to snack. I found that playing video games in the evenings was far better than watching TV. I wouldn't feel like snacking while killing zombies but watching a movie or sports on TV found me craving a snack.

Anyway, it took me a while to get the hang of it but eventually I found that I could eat under 1500 calories per day and not be hungry, as long as I ate high enough quantities of low calorie foods (salads, vegetables, etc.).

I learned quite a lot during the first month. Here's a few tips that I found along the way:

• Running on the treadmill was hard for me. Instead, I found that I could burn more calories and last longer if I walked steadily at 4 mph but set the incline as steep as possible.
• Start slow and work your way up. I was only doing 20 minutes at a time when I began but as I strengthened my body, I was able to do more and more.
• Don't forget to warm up. Start at 2 mph for 10 minutes before jumping up to 4 mph.
• Allow yourself to cool down before you shower. I found that if I went right into the shower from the treadmill, I would come out of the shower still sweating. Even if the shower was cool. Not good when my next stop of my office!!

Let me first say, I hate going to the gym. It has nothing to do with exercising but everything to do with the atmosphere. I don't like being there! Imagine my excitement when my boss told me we were going to build a gym in our office. We are a company of less than 10 employees so I knew I wouldn't have to share it with many people. Anyone that did come to use it, would be co-workers, not strangers. Well it turned out, no one else used it except for me so I ended up with my very own gym! I have some free weights, weight machine with cable attachments, curl bar, straight bar, treadmill, yoga ball and a shower! I took full advantage of it too. I started coming to the office early before work and walking 20 minutes on the treadmill, took a shower and then went up to the office. After work, I would do some light weights before heading home. Over the course of the first few weeks, I steadily increased from 20 minutes to 30 minutes, then 45 minutes, then 60. Once my body became adjusted to it, I would wake up at 5:00 in the morning, walk on the treadmill for 99 minutes (that was the most I could set the treadmill to) and then shower and go upstairs to my office. After work, I would do a more intense weightlifting routine. I would do this 5 days a week and then on Saturdays, I would come in and just do the treadmill. Sunday was my rest day. I was burning over 3,000 calories per day and eating only about 1600. I steadily and consistently lost 3 pounds per week every week!

I started in October 2009 at a weight of 191 pounds. With a drastic change in my nutrition and an energetic push in the gym, the weight started falling off! Of course I kept track of everything and here is my progress (chart below). It was smooth sailing all the way to February, I hit a plateau. For weeks, my weight just stayed the same. I tried increasing my cardio, cutting a few more calories but it didn't work. My body had adjusted to the routine so the routine had to change. It took a few months for me to figure it out but it was simple. I started to cycle my calories. I kept my weekly intake the same but from day to day I would go from 1300 one day to 2500 the next. I forced my body out of the new routine and my weight loss continued. I was able to reach my goal of losing 50 pounds at the end of June of 2010.

Over the course of the next few years, I continued to learn about health and fitness as well as nutrition. I cut back on the cardio because I was starting to look a look too scrawny when I reached my lowest weight of 138 in 2012. I started a new routine of building muscle after that. Along the way, I found out a few things that would have made it easier on me at the beginning.

The biggest was cutting carbs. I tracked everything I ate but I wasn't too concerned with my macro nutrient balance. I kept it relatively even. 1/3 carbs, 1/3 fat 1/3 protein. If I had cut carbs down to 15-20% or less and increased protein and fat intake (healthy fats), I could have lost weight easier, spent less time in the gym and not have lost the amount of muscle mass that I did along with the fat. Reduced carb is how I live now and it's so easy to keep my weight steady.

Also, I wish I knew about calorie cycling at the start too. There were days that I felt hungry but resisted eating because I had reached my target for the day. I could have satisfied my hunger and then made up for it later in the week. I was determined but I can see how people would give up when faced with this.

I learned a tremendous amount about nutritional supplements. They were a great help and continue to be. They are ever a replacement for real food but great when you need a well balanced snack after the gym or before bedtime. I found True Nutrition online which allows you to custom blend different nutritional shakes. I learned all about what different types of proteins do for your body and different times and I blended my own morning shake, post workout shake and bed time shake. They are not expensive either. In fact, it is less expensive than most protein powders at GNC or the Vitamin Shoppe!

I have also since learned how to listen to my body. During my journey, I would force myself to do the work every single day. Now, if I'm not feeling it, I don't push it. If my mind isn't engaged in working out, my body won't be engaged completely and you risk injury. On the other side of it, even if your mind is determined, your body may not be. Look at the muscle mass I lost from March to June because I was determined to reach my goal. Since that time, I've had to work hard to build that muscle back up.

Like I said in the beginning, this wasn't a diet for me. It's a different way to live. It's now been 3-1/2 years since I started this and I have no trouble keeping my weight between 145 and 150. I play soccer on Sunday mornings in the spring and fall and mix in 2 or 3 days of weights during the week. In summer and winter, I do some cardio 2-3 days a week along with weights another 2-3 days (sometimes on the same day). I keep it brief, no more than an hour each session but usually I can get done what I want in 40 minutes. I can even do it on my lunch break! I still keep my carbs pretty low. An average day for me has about 75 grams of net carbs which is very low for the average American. In closing, I found some expert advice that I did the complete opposite of. We are all different and what works for me, might not work for the next person. The only advice I would ever give is to listen to your body, try different things and figure out what works for you! It might just be the exact opposite of what the experts are saying!