Now, I know it's been awhile since I last blogged. And, I'm sorry. I really am. There's no excuse other than that I've been really busy. But, who isn't? I promise to work harder this year about blogging more often.
That said, I wanted to kick it off with a post that's a bit off-topic. I hate to do the fatblogging like Jason Calacanis, but as some of you know I've taken control of my weight the past year and I've had lots of questions of how I did it. I think many times I've simplified it too much, and I want to get this out of my head and into a post somewhere. If it helps even one of you guys, I'm happy.
To give some background, nearly one year ago I had finally hit that point where I had it. I was miserable, frustrated, and upset. I was starting to believe that I would never get back down to my old weight. Here I was, 6' 2", and right at 260 pounds. I had hit the 40" waist club, too, and even they were getting tight. I was deathly afraid of spilling over into the 42" range and having to head to the Big & Tall store for clothes. And, I had 4 year old and a 1 year old that I want to be around for as long as possible, and be able to get out and play with them if I wanted to.
I had recently noticed one of the guys at our user group had dropped a substantial amount of weight, and when I cornered him about it he just said that he had started watching his calories in and calories out, and excercising. Wow! I totally expected him to talk about some miracle diet that was working wonders for him, but he didn't. Surely it couldn't be that easy.
Looking around on the Internets I found http://sparkpeople.com and was intrigued. Sparkpeople.com really works with you to understand the calories you're taking in, and the calories you're burning. They help you set goals, telling them how much you want to lose and by when, and they tell you how many calories you should be eating daily to reach that goal. From there, they have an incredible application that helps you track your daily caloric intake (with a huge database of items in it already, with other screens to help you easily enter nutritional info off of items that aren't in their database), and can even help you build your grocery list for the coming week.
Seemed like a big step, but what the hell. I didn't have anything to lose at this point. So I dove in and started trying to record my meals and snacks. I did this for about two weeks, quickly realizing I was about 3k+ calories a day. I had no clue! I thought, "Hey, I'm eating chicken, this should be fine." meanwhile it would be smothered in sour cream sauce, queso, butter, something. And, if that wasn't enough, instead of having a decent serving I would have three. I mean, it was chicken, it should be fine! Boy, was I wrong.
So, Sparkpeople told me I needed to get down to around 1,500 calories per day. Dang, that's tough. That meant cutting my meals in half. And, I won't lie, it wasn't easy. But, with some time and effort I was getting down to that level. I'll admit, I had/have my bad days, but I kept trying instead of just giving up the first time I fell off the wagon. Slowly the weight started coming off. It wasn't drastic. I was losing 4-5 pounds/month. It wasn't like the Atkins where you lose 10-12 pounds/month. That's not healthy for you to lose that quickly. And, losing that quickly doesn't help you set the habits and life style that you'll need to maintain the weight loss.
Now, nearly a year later, I'm down 50 pounds to 210 and I'm still losing a little here and there (but I'm really focusing on maintaining at this point).
I'm not trying to brag or expect any "attaboy!"'s... I'd like to give you some advice if you're in a similar situation I was in a year ago:
- Small, Attainable Goals - Don't set this big, looming goal that you'll never hit. Let's be practical about it - sure, you'd love to lose 50 pounds but it's much better to say lose 10 pounds 5 times. The problem I've had in the past is I would set this big monster goal that was just not possible, and after a month or so I'd get frustrated and give up. But, by telling myself I wanted to lose 4 pounds a month, I felt like that was a much more attainable goal. And, I was less likely to give up if I missed my goal for one month.
- Educate Yourself - Start understanding what you're putting into your body. As they say "Your body is a temple", and you shouldn't just put crap in your body without understanding what type of nutritional value it is. Start writing down the calories you've eaten, use Google to find out the typical calorie count on your lunch, it DOESN'T HAVE TO BE PERFECT. Start paying attention to the those white nutritional info boxes on stuff, and pay attention to the number of servings. One of the tricks is that they will set the calories really low, but then jack up the number of servings in the package. For instance, they may say 100 calories, but there's 10 servings in a box. If you're not paying attention you might eat the whole box thinking it's only 100 calories, then you've blown 1000 calories in one pop! That's rough.
- Don't Diet - This isn't a diet. This isn't a fad or something you're doing right now and that later you can go back to doing whatever you want. You have to make the mental decision that this is a change of lifestyle and that it's not an option to stop doing it once you've started. You have to create some sense of permanence to it, otherwise it's way too easy to just give up.
- Be Patient - Again, this isn't going to happen overnight. If you lose 20 pounds in a year, that's awesome! That's 20 pounds lighter than you were a year ago! Keep in mind that 20 pounds in a year is 1-2 pounds per month of loss. That's not much, but it adds up! Keep the big picture goal that you don't have to lose a pound a day, or 10 pounds a month... that's crazy. Look at your goals a little bigger: how are you doing after 3 months, 6 months, etc...?
- Go Ahead and Cheat - Yes, that's right. You're going to have bad days. You're human, you can't eat rice cakes and water only for 12 months. It's not possible to maintain a silly diet-like menu of things you can and can't eat, but just educate yourself on what it means to eat that one bad thing. Initially, I started off saying that I would eat bad only on Saturdays until I had a better understanding of my food and calories. Later, as I got better at things, I knew I could eat bad on different days, or levels of bad eating that I could eat throughout a day.
- Keep a Running Tally - First, I used Sparkpeople.com to understand what I was eating and help me keep up with it. Nowadays, I keep a running tally in my head of how many calories I've eaten and how many I have left for the day. You could come to me at any point of the day and ask me and I could tell you. I know, it sounds crazy, but it gets easier I promise.
- Quit Snacking! - I used to snack constantly. I thought it couldn't be bad becuase I was just eating little portions of whatever. But, once I realized what I was eating I was ingesting 200-400 calories per snack in most cases. You're wasting valuable calories for the day! I'd much rather "save" those calories and have enchiladas for dinner, personally. Ado hears me tell him constantly about this, anytime he grabs a snack I tell him, "empty calories dude". Yes, I know, that's annoying... but that's my mental checkpoint that keeps me from eating that one granola bar in the snack room.
- It gets easier, I promise. - Early on, you'll seem like you're starving, I know. Early on, just take small steps in the right direction. When you're hungry go grab one of those 100-calorie snack packs (I love those), grab some jello (0 CALORIES! GREATNESS!), something. You don't have to starve yourself. This goes back to #5 - if you try to starve yourself, you'll eventually break down and give up. You don't have to be super strict to make this work. Remember, this is a marathon, not a sprint.
So, with that being said, please feel free to come talk to me (if you're a Telligenti), email me (jalexander [at] telligent [dot] com) if you have questions/thoughts/whatever, and I'm glad to help.
And, just remember to do small, achievable goals; it's okay to cheat; and this is a marathon, not a sprint.
Good luck!
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