Who Am I?
I am 40-something years old and have ALWAYS had a tough tough time losing weight. You know the deal ... work all day, tired at night, etc.
I got fatter and fatter as I gradually eliminated exercise from my life altogether while eating too much during the day especially at dinner time.
I’m not a doctor and I don't consider myself an expert. I’m not writing this to tell you how to lose weight or even to give you advice.
This is my personal fast weight loss tip ... or I should say success story. I encourage you to read it and take it for what it's worth.
This story and this weight loss tip demonstrate successful FAST WEIGHT LOSS from my personal experience without drugs, surgery, or even much exercise
(although exercise certainly helps the cause).
Click Here for Fast Weight-Loss Without the Drama
Evidence
Here's my before-and-after comparison picture to offer some sort of evidence to you that this fast-weight loss tip (system) actually works.
After you read my full account below, I think it'll become clear that the system makes sense. Oh, why no face on my pictures?
I don't know, the openness of the Internet still kind of creeps me out.
Accepting the Problem (What's My Motivation?)
At some point, we look in the mirror or stop halfway up the steps and say to ourselves "I've got to do something about this." "I'm too fat"
or "I've got to get in shape."
What motivated me to lose weight? For starters, my 20th high school reunion was coming up and I did not want to be lumped in with the rest
of the guys who let themselves go over the last 20 years. Beyond that potential crisis, I couldn't stand to see myself at the pool or at
the beach. The flabbiness! Ugh! It wasn't so much that I was obese, but I was puffy. I couldn't stand to see full-body reflections of myself
in store-front windows or in mirrors. 226 pounds did not look good on my 6-foot frame!
Needless to say, I had a growing collection of pants that didn't fit me anymore.
I don't think I need to say more. We all can relate to the motivation.
Defining the Outcome
If there is one thing I've learned in the working world, it's that success is best achieved if you have a goals and desired outcomes in mind.
Otherwise, how do you ever make progress?
In that light, I knew there was no way to successfully lose weight unless I had a target in mind. What did I want to weigh? Or, more
importantly, what did I want to look like? How much was enough? Well, I knew I weighed 190 pounds in college ... and, I looked pretty
good back then. Don’t laugh! It’s perfectly reasonable at the age of 40 to desire to be the same weight as in college – 18 years ago. Isn’t it?
So, there it was! The goal was to lose a bunch of weight. Return to a weight of 190 pounds was my target - my desired outcome.
I was working out routinely in college so I had more muscle mass back then.
Achieving 190 this time would still leave me with more body fat than I had at 21, but I was (and still am) willing to live with that.
Wait a second. We’re talking 36 pounds, folks!
Here's the Plan
Here’s the secret formula. This is just between you and me - don’t tell anyone! Just kidding. It's really very straight forward and just
requires a little common sense and some basic math skills. Are you ready for the ultimate fast weight loss tip?
We burn a certain number of calories a day. To lose weight, we need to consume fewer calories than we burn in a given day. Isn't it really more complicated than that?
That's it! That's the fast weight loss plan - or, in business, the strategy.
Step 1.
Calculate the number of calories I burn in a day. There's no way to do that without outside help. Here's a nice little web site to help with
that: http://www.calorie-count.com/calories/calories-burned.php. This gives a number based on age, weight, hieght, and activity level.
Here's another web site that gives calories burned by activity. Using that, I could add it up myself based on what I typically do in a day.
http://www.primusweb.com/fitnesspartner/jumpsite/calculat.htm. Even sleeping and watching TV are listed as activities.
With those tools, I figured I burned about 2,500 calories per day just doing what I normally do. That means, I need to consume 2,500 calories
in a day to maintain my weight. If I consume less, I lose weight. If I consume more, I gain weight. how's that for a no-brainer fast weight loss tip?
Step 2.
Figure out how much weight I want to lose in a week. I say week as opposed to day because I always hear the experts say that it's not healthy
or realistic to lose more than 2-3 pounds per week. Since 3 is a bigger number, I decided to attempt to lose 3 pounds per week.
Step 3.
Determine how much to consume per day. Math time! At 2,500 calories burned per day, I burned 2,500 x 7 = 17,500 calories per week.
A pound of fat supposedly equals 3,000 calories, so 3 pounds is 9,000 calories. To lose 3 pounds a week, I had to limit my caloric intake
to 17,500 (needed to maintain) - 9,000 (desired to lose) = 8,500 calories. 8,500 divided by 7 equals approximately 1,200 calories per day.
After doing that calculation, I got a little less aggressive. I decided to target my caloric intake to 1,500 per day. So my deficit was 1,000
calories per day or 7,000 calories per week or 2.3 pounds per week.
And with that decided, I could calculate how long it might take to lose the weight. I weighed 226 pounds and wanted to weight 190 pounds.
The difference is 36 pounds. Losing 2.3 pounds per week would take me about 16 weeks or 4 months (36 divided by 2.3).
This very simple common sense approach really worked for me! How's that for a fast weight loss tip?
Time to Weigh In!
I got on the scale every day. I knew I needed to track my progress or I’d never know how my weight-loss plan was working. Measuring my progress
was a necessary evil but it also became a great motivator. I got really excited the first week when I noticed I lost 8 pounds. But calmer minds
prevailed. I knew that it wasn’t all fat loss that first week. It turns out that by modifying my diet, my body was getting rid of other excesses as well.
Honestly, I struggled with the subsequent weeks when the scale revealed losing ONLY 2-3 pounds per week. Two pounds just doesn’t seem like a lot
when it means going from 218 to 216 pounds. I had to remind myself that the plan was to
lose 2-3 pounds per week. Any more than that is a fantasy
... if it does happen, it likely isn’t healthy fat loss.
Tips for Weighing Myself: I would weigh myself every day, but only once a day. My weight fluctuated throughout the day and there’s nothing more
demoralizing than weighing more than I did 4 hours ago. For consistency, I always weighed myself at the same time every day and always used the
same scale. We all know about those scales that read too heavy or light – kind of like those mirrors in the department stores.
Keeping a Log and Learning from It
An absolutely essential step to this fast weight loss tip was for me to keep a log of everything I ate. There’s something to be said for accountability. Since I wasn’t working
together with someone to hold me accountable for sticking to the plan, I had to be honest with myself. Forget about being honest for a second.
Do you realize how hard it is to really track what you consume everyday? This is especially true for someone like me who likes to graze – a
cookie here, crackers there, a piece of bread, etc… It all adds up. I stopped grazing so much because of the hassle of having to log it.
I created a log in an Excel spreadsheet, which is nothing more than a table of rows and columns. On each row, I listed the food (or beverage)
that I consumed along with the date & time, the amount, the calories, and the basic nutritional information (protein, carbs, fat, and fiber).
Why did I log in the nutritional info if all I was doing was counting calories? Well, because I thought it might be interesting to see how
those items stacked up. And as it turned out, I learned a lot.
I won’t lie to you, logging everything you consume is a pain in the you-know-what! But the awareness it gave me along with the accountability
that I had to the log was well worth the inconvenience of keeping it up to date. Now, there are a couple of ways to approach it. Most of the
time, I was able to record entries in my log as I consumed. Sometimes, like on the weekends when I wasn’t at a desk all day, I would just
scribble down what I ate and how much on a piece of available paper. Whenever I had a chance, I would enter all of the scribbles into the
log after the fact. That’s when I really had to be honest with myself – going a period of time without truly knowing how many calories I
was up to. I got pretty good at it after a while. I could guess what the calories were and my guesses were overstated to be extra safe!
Oh, there’s a very important aspect to the way I logged the food and drinks I consumed. How did I always know how many calories were in that
chicken sandwich or what were the ingredients in that “Creole Shrimp & Grits” at the restaurant? This is where I relied heavily on some
resources other than food labels. Let’s be honest, a lot of what we consume does not have a food label on it. Or, if it does, it may be
combined with 9 other things in a recipe that made up one dish. Let’s just say I got good at researching, documenting, and sometimes guessing
nutritional info and portions. Here are some handy online resources I used to research food items:
I have no affiliation with any of these web sites. They are the few resources which gave me the most helpful information when tracking my
food & beverage consumption. The latter two will not only give you nutritional data about common food items, but they also list nutritional
info for menu offerings from popular restaurants.
Dieting "Low Carb" Style
Everyone's heard about the low-carb craze. It's nothing new. It comes around every so often under different a name promising fast weight loss.
I tried it myself in the past. I'll be honest - it worked. I dropped about 30 pounds over several months. But, there were several negatives.
My energy level was low and it was difficult to find foods that were low in carbs without being too high in fats. I'm afraid to know how my
cholesterol was impacted. Also, I knew I couldn't eat like that indefinitely. So sure enough, I fell off and went back to my old habits and
it didn't take long for me to balloon back up over 220 pounds.
My Struggles
This plan was definitely better for me than the low-carb diet. But don't get me wrong. I had a fair share of struggles in this plan too.
The one that I remember the most was feeling hungry at night. It lasted for a few weeks but then subsided, either because I got used to it
mentally or my body adjusted to the change in eating habits. I probably could have done a better job with the combination of foods I ate.
Looking at my food log, the hungry nights seemed to happen when I had less carbs for dinner.
Another struggle I had was how it affected my wife. She complained that we couldn’t eat fun foods like chips & queso dip and ice cream.
I told her to go ahead, but she felt guily eating "bad" foods without me.
As far as energy level is concerned, I definitely felt better than when I was doing the low-carb diet. But, it's hard to know how my energy
level really was because I didn’t exercise at all during this diet. Well, I did play tennis once or twice a week and my endurance wasn’t
adversely affected. But, that was doubles tennis, which is a lot less demading than singles.
The first week or so is difficult to stay disciplined. I had failed many diets in the first three days. I believe the key is getting through
the first week! Accountability is also VERY important. If I didn't have the food log, I would not have been able to stay honest.
A final thought on struggles is this. No matter how we eat, good or bad, we gain weight and lose weight in different proportions. When we gain
weight, it tends to be in some predetermined, disproportional way. Some people gain more in their belly, others more in their hips and thighs.
However, when we lose weight, we tend to lose it proportionally throughout our body. It’s not fair but we have to deal with that fact of nature.
"Oh, No! I Cheated!"
Face it. It's going to happen. “I guess I really blew it,” I thought to myself as we got home from dinner one night. It was a Saturday night
out with the family and I couldn’t NOT have those chips and that tasty queso. A few chips and a one or two dips of cheese shouldn’t be too bad.
What I neglected to consider was my lack of self-discipline. My problem has always been an issue of quantity – I don’t know when to stop. I
have to avoid something all together or it’s off to the races! So after downing over half the basket of chips, tortilla slices and queso in our appetizer,
it seemed foolish not to have a couple of beers and 10 chicken wings. At that point, it would have been easy for me to say “it've been on a
good run on this diet, but I can put it aside for a while.” Heck, I had already made it four weeks and had lost 12 pounds. But, I decided I
wasn’t going to give up. When I got home, I figured up all the calories and made my log entries. Although I surpassed my day's 2,500 calorie
utilization (not to mention my 1,500 calorie limit), I wasn’t going to let one bad outing knock me off course. In the whole scheme
of things, it only set me back a few hundred calories which is insignificant over the course of any entire week. The pain and guilt of having
to admit to the log was enough to get me back on track.
As a result of that experience, I decided to give myself one bad day, actually one bad meal per week. No boundaries! Eat what I want and however
much I want! What a great idea that was for me psychologically! It gave me something to look forward to because I LOVE to eat.
What I learned was that one day (even two days) of falling off “the wagon” in any given week wasn’t going to reverse all the progress I made.
If I got right back on course, then the progress would continue as it had before. Sure, those one or two days were lost opportunities, but the
overall impact on my success was minimal.
Excuses, Excuses, ...
We all have many excuses, but there are more reasons to lose weight than there are excuses to give up the
chase. It all boils down to a great quote I heard on the radio one day, “There’s no food that tastes better than the feeling of being thin.”
Wow, that sums it all up, doesn’t it?
The Punch Line
If you've ever lost a significant amount of weight, you know the great feeling you get. Not only is it a sense of accomplishment, but the other
stuff that comes along with weight loss is nice. I feel better and have more energy. My old pants, shorts, and belt are way too big to wear. I went from a 36-inch waist down to a
32-inch waist. My Mom, who I see every couple of weeks, complains to me that I am “too thin” (ha!). Also, I used to sweat a lot in the Summer --
I mean A LOT! Even in the winter I had sweaty underarms in dress shirts. That stopped completely. Then of course, there's looking at old
(or not so old) pictures. "Did I really look like that?" "Was my face that chubby? And, look at my chins!"
Thanks for reading my fast weight loss tip!
Allan D.-
P.S. If you need a system that guides you through a process - one that is a more sophisticated system of weight loss, then please check out the program below.
It's a very popular fast weight-loss system that many people are raving about.
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