Embarked on a new diet plan today October 3rd, 2011. I decided to write about it as this isn’t really any particular plan out there that I am following and I think this will help me stick with it and also hopefully inspire others to lose weight and get healthy using something that is actually sustainable in the long-term and doesn’t mean I have to stop eating the foods I like.
Note, my plan does involve regular exercise as a way to mitigate my calorie budget whenever I go over the amount I am allowed for each day. This lets me splurge whenever I feel like it (nearly every day!) and still end the day with the right amount of calories. I’ll go over some helpful suggestions on ways to get your daily exercise and calories burned for some common things.
What You Need
First off, the tools that will help you along the way. There is a free smartphone app available on all the major platforms (iPhone, Android, Blackberry) called MyFitnessPal. I highly recommend this as you can log your exercise, your food (it has thousands of foods already entered in the database and downloads new ones other people upload) and track your weight loss! I also recommend if you can afford it getting a decent recumbent exercise bike for your home use that you can place in a room with your TV, game console room, or even just somewhere you can play some music over speakers. The one that I purchased before starting on this is well built and can be found on Amazon here (the Nautilus R514 – I paid $499 for it). You do get what you pay with an exercise bike and one of my favorite features about this model is it has a wireless heart rate strap included and the receiver built into the computer on the bike. You can do heart-rate controlled exercise which is very effective for burning calories for weight loss!
Starting Weight and Realistic Goals
One of the problems I think of a lot of people’s attempts at weight loss is that they don’t set a realistic goal for how quickly they can lose the weight. Think about how many years you spent packing it on, you can’t lose that weight in 2 weeks or even 2 months. To lose a substantial amount of weight you need to plan on taking closer to a year so this can’t be a short-term commitment on your part. I started this weight loss plan at 286 pounds as a 6’5″ 29 year old male. I want to get to 186 pounds so I can lose an even 100 pounds. My starting BMI was 33 which is definitely in the “Obese” category. My waist size at the beginning is 46″ which is far beyond the 40″ max recommended as healthy for males of any size! I carry the weight well so I don’t look super fat (I may post pictures later if I get more confidence!) at least i’ve been told that I carry it well. It is possible people were just being nice. Needless to say I need to lose weight, I weighed 220lbs just 7-8 years ago. Having a job involving computers (I’m a programmer and project manager) results in a lot of sedentary days working with the keyboard and mouse which doesn’t burn many calories. This type of work also tends to lead to going out to lunch to get away from the desk with colleagues at work which is a sure path to gaining many pounds! That’s why you see a LOT of IT people and office workers who are very overweight.
A realistic and healthy goal for weight loss is 2-3 pounds a week and doctors will advise you not to lose weight any faster than this. I will say that the first week you start on your weight loss plan you can see some amazing short-term results which is how those 2-week diets work. You lose a lot of “water weight” your first week or two of reduced caloric intake. In your first week you can easily lose 5-10 pounds once you embark on my totally unscientific-yet-it-works weight loss plan.
One thing I encourage you strongly to do is get a bunch of starting metrics done at your doctor’s office or your workplace during your annual health and wellness screening (if it is offered) so that you can track your health metrics by more than just your weight. Shown below are my starting cholesterol values, blood pressure, and blood glucose along with my BMI again.
Values taken 9-19-11 before starting weight loss plan:
Total cholesterol: 150 mg/dl
HDL: 26 mg/dl
TC/HDL Ratio: 5.7
LDL: 92 mg/dl
Trig: 158 mg/dl
Glucose: 106 mg/dl non-fasting
Blood Pressure: 115/81 mmHg (systolic/diastolic)
Pulse: 63pm
BMI: 33
So that’s a bunch of numbers, what the heck is healthy for them? Those numbers by themselves don’t mean a whole lot to any of us non-medical types! Well luckily the health screening I had included a helpful brochure outlining what is healthy and not so i’ll go over those values briefly here.
For cholesterol, total should be < 200 and you are high risk if >= 240. For HDL > 60 is desirable and <40 for males and < 50 for females is high risk. HDL is the “good cholesterol” and was explained to me as the the type that fights the LDL cholesterol in your blood. LDL should be <130 and you are high risk if >= 160. TC/HDL Ration should be < 3.5 and > 5.0 is high risk. Triglycerides should be < 150 and >200 is high risk. As you can see from those cholesterol values I need to work on my HDL, my TC/HDL ratio and my Triglycerides. To boost HDL you can increase your fiber in your diet and weight loss is also KEY! Every 6 pounds of weight lost should equate to at least a 1 point gain in your HDL cholesterol, it’s that easy!
For blood pressure, normal is < 120 systolic and < 80 diastolic. Pre-hypertension is 120-139 systolic or 80-89 diastolic. Stage 1 hypertension is 140-159 systolic or 90-99 diastolic. Stage 2 hypertension is >= 160 systolic or >= 100 diastolic. Pulse normal is 60-100 and resting rates lower than that mean you are in pretty good shape (of course there are exceptions for medical conditions i’m sure). My resting heart rate is down to 53 some days now since i’ve been exercising regularly! Marathon runners i’ve seen have rates in the 30s-40s! Your heart has to work less when it is more efficient. Blood pressure is very important since if you think about it this metric shows how much force is needed to push through all that nasty cholesterol in your blood veins.
For body composition, normal is 18.5-24.9, Overweight is 25-29.9 and Obese is >=30. Body Mass Index or BMI is probably the most controversial measure among all of the friends i’ve ever discussed it with. A lot of Americans thinks it is bogus and over categorizes people as overweight or obese and that the “normal” range means you would be far too skinny. I don’t know how many people i’ve had tell me that BMI doesn’t account for muscle mass or being “heavyset”. Doctors can actually account for body builders but you have to be a major one for it to affect your BMI to the extent that it says you are overweight when you aren’t. Body fat percentage is also a good measurement if you think the BMI is not reading correctly for your body type and build. All of the values in this brochure i’m quoting from were pulled from the National College of Sports Medicine and the National Cholesterol Education Program.
The Common American Delusion
I hate to say it but I think American culture reinforces the idea that it’s ok to be fat because everyone else is. 50 years ago when people had to work a lot harder physically to produce food and food was a much more expensive commodity, we didn’t have the same obesity problem that we did now. Nobody can legitimately argue against that the fact that fast food and fried foods are not more prevalent, cheap, and easily available to the masses today than they were 50 years ago – and the corresponding and alarming rise in obesity shows this. I have numerous friends who when they lose weight will tell me their goal is to only get to “230″ and they were 6-8 inches shorter than me and my goal is 185-190! If they want to be a bit stocky they can stick to the upper end of the normal BMI range but it is a not a legitimate argument to say that you are “big-boned” and thus cannot or should not lose weight to get to a healthy goal. I’m not saying go be super skinny, but be honest and don’t think that a goal that seems unreachable is unrealistic. Take it in small chunks. Try to lose 5 pounds, then 10 pounds. Eventually you will notice some real difference. For men I think the neatest and easiest test for those working in a business environment is what I call the belt test. The very first place you will notice weight loss at least in me is going to be in your belt holes (which one you are using). You will one day wake up and tighten your belt to where it feels right and it will be in a shorter hole than it was the day before! This is an awesome feeling as it shows you tangible weight loss with very immediate and noticeable effects. Eventually, as you keep losing, that belt will not become a fashion accesory you will need it to hold your pants on until you can buy some smaller ones. On that note: huge weight loss is going to cost you some money, buying new clothes that fit! Be sure to donate your old ones to good will or your church so somebody can get some use out of them, you aren’t going to need them anymore since you won’t be going back to your old self again!
Ok, enough talking down to the diet plan and how this crazy thing seems to work. I will write a blog post each day of the diet detailing what I ate and showing what the calories were for each meal and my total for the day. I’ve set a realistic but still aggressive goal of 1700 calories a day which for my starting weight of 286 pounds will result in significant weight loss each week of 2-3 pounds or more. An important and difficult fact: as you lose weight, your calorie budget will have to go down because you don’t burn the same amount of calories each day maintaining 285 pounds as you do maintaining 260 pounds, or 230 pounds. I think this makes weight loss more difficult for women because your ideal weights are generally much lower than taller / larger men so if you need to get to 130 or 140, your daily calorie budget will have to shrink a lot to the point that following this crazy diet plan will involve a bit more portion control. I know that I will have to be more discerning as I lose the weight but starting out fat actually makes this pretty easy due to the higher calorie budget to start with!
The plan: eat a light breakfast every day (do NOT skip breakfast – this leads to bad amounts of snacking before lunch) consisting of cereal and skim or 1% milk. You can also eat 2 nutrigrain bars w/ water or a diet soda if you prefer that. Other options of course can include fruits such as eating a couple of apples and a glass of milk or orange juice (be careful though, OJ while good for you has a LOT more calories than you think since it is high in natural sugars!). As an example, a regular bowl of Cinnamon Toast Crunch with skim milk clocks in at only around 216 calories! For lunch I plan to eat either something like a lean pocket, 2 dannon light yogurts and a diet soda OR something horrible like a Wendy’s Hamburger and LARGE french fries! Woo hoo, aren’t you liking my plan already? For dinner, if I ate healthy for lunch I can eat something like say HALF of a Domino’s medium 1-topping pizza hand-tossed crust OR something healthier like what I mentioned for lunch. Then after dinner, I will ride my exercise bike while watching a movie or TV until I equalize my calories back to the daily budget to make up for any overage on my part through ridiculous eating. Who thought you couldn’t eat a hamburger and french fries while on a diet? You were WRONG! The worst kept secret about dieting that all these crazy restriction plans often leave out is that it doesn’t particularly matter WHAT you eat, in the short-term anyway, but how many calories you take in. Weight loss takes about 3500 net calories per pound which means you need to take in 3500 calories LESS than what your body needs to maintain your weight in order to lose a pound. If I need 2500 calories a day at my current weight and I take in 1700 a day, that means each day I am losing 800 toward that 3500 per pound! You can literally eat Twinkies and Little Debbie cakes every day as the only thing you eat and lose weight and lower your cholesterol. I’m not kidding someone actually did this and proved it! If a twinkie is 200 calories and you eat 8 a day at my current weight I WILL absolutely lose weight doing that. It will get really nasty after a few days if I only ate twinkies though so I don’t want to try it!
The next post will start the daily food posts and I will post tips regarding how hungry I was feeling and what I did to deal with it each day. There are also some *awesome* snacks that you can eat that taste gluttonous but are really very low calorie for how much you get to snack that I will mention whenever I eat them!
