The branches of my family tree hang low from supporting a lot of overweight people. I’ve worked hard to keep myself from falling into that same category, but I’ve been far from perfect. For the past decade or so I’ve been about 35 pounds above where I was in college. I’m fortunate that it’s fairly well distributed, rather than hanging out together and giving me a massive gut, but it still adds up.
Over the past months I’ve had several friends try wacky diets like Beer and Eggs, or an All Smoothie diet,and for a while I thought just hearing so much about their menus would put me off my appetite. No such luck. I also have friends who play with Paleo and other trendy diets to different degrees of success. The problem I’ve had with all of those methods is that they tend to be temporary “dieting” rather than really “changing your diet ,” which often leads to gaining some or all of the weight back when it ends.
But they nonetheless spurred me to tackle my own weight in the most boring, uninteresting way possible: eat less and exercise more.
Eat less – I used the MyFitnessPal app for the iPhone and tracked every single thing I ate two two weeks. All of it. Every sugar packet in a cup of coffee, every piece of toast, and every single beer. The app gave me a calorie target and that detailed food tracking helped me hit it. I learned what 1,700 calories a day really looked like. I also learned that I couldn’t track everything I ate for long or I’d go nuts, but I did it long enough to retrain myself on what a “full meal” is. It changed my behavior.
Exercise more – I got back into running and biking, and tracking it in RunKeeper. If I don’t run, bike, or walk one of our dogs for a mile or more, then my fallback is a drill of the 7-Minute Workout. There’s just no way, no matter how busy I am, that I can’t find 10 minutes to run through that routine, so I am now doing something physical every day. The result has been not only better cardio and overall conditioning, but I’ve had far fewer back pains in the past two months (I was in a bad car accident in college and have had problems ever since).
Between the two things I started losing weight. I dropped a bunch right away, then it settled into a nice, slow, continuous trend. I weigh myself twice a week just to make sure I’m on track, and don’t kill myself for a cheat day once in a while. Of course, those cheat days don’t add up to much because I just can’t eat anywhere close to what I used to. Then just last week I hit the 20 pound mark, and I feel great! I still eat all the things I love (just less of it) and I’m down two pants sizes in the process.
Pretty dull, eh? No fancy theories and no crazy formulas. Just eating better and exercising and changing my habits, but nobody would buy a book about that.
Maybe I’ll say I got the idea from aliens… hmmm…
Congrats, Jeff – that is fantastic!! I also like using Fitbit to track steps, and iFit for my boring ol’ treadmill. It allows me to sync up with Google Maps and walk/run a different National Park trail every time I fire it up. Wishing I were as steady at all of this as you are, though! Darn love handles…
Keep at it, Carrie! It’s been slow going for me, and I’ve just been keeping at it. The results will come, and even my obstinate love handles have retreated a bit!
It isn’t what we do to loose weight- it is what we do to sustain the weight loss. I suggest replacing dessert with a cigar at least once a week
My intent is to kill both birds with the same stone. The changes I made to lose the weight should be the same thing that helps keep it off.
But I would not presume to argue with doctor’s orders on the cigar front!
I’ll just leave this here 🙂 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VKs0oEIVOck
Ha! That’s perfect. I think I’ve had almost that exact conversation with people.
So have I, sadly. Someone will notice I lost a few pounds, and when they ask how and I tell them I ate a little better and exercised more they are almost DISAPPOINTED. 🙁
I follow the South Beach guidelines – upon advice of cardiac doc. I don’t call it ‘diet’ since we have changed the way we eat. Weight gone for over 12 months… Yea us! Cheat days are good – how else can we enjoy Arizona wines and brews?!
Looking around, I feel that in a few years, America will be a lot less obese. Almost everyone I know is trying to be healthy.
I don’t move much, but eat less and eat self cooked food. Over the years I realized that exercise didn’t do much for me. When I started on my diet of “less of everything”, I started getting results. I am almost 25 pounds less than my peak weight. I am comfortable where I am now and try to keep it there.
I think that speaks more to the people you know than national trends. With easy, sugar/fatty calories available for pennies coupled with poor nutritional education, obesity is on the rise.
Congratulations on your own loss, and for supporting your friends. I can’t change the national obesity problem but I can try to influence people I know what at a time.
Exactly what I did to lose about the same amount of pounds in early 2012. Worked great, if a bit tedious at times, but worth it for two months.
Congrats.
Thanks, Tyler. It is definitely tedious at times, but I’m quite happy with the overall result and can’t see any way I could ever put it all back on.