It’s lots of hard work, but it’s easy to work hard when you’re getting clear results

At the beginning of 2004 I started working on getting in better shape and losing weight. About six months later I was doing well; feeling better and down about 20 pounds from my peak. But I was also starting to plateau – I hadn’t made any progress in a few months and my doctor was getting on my case a bit, saying things like exercise more, especially cardio, and eat better. I’d try to do some of these things, but really didn’t know what I was doing.

I started thinking about outside help. My health club offers a big crazy lifestyles and weight management program. I thought about it a bit, but decided it was too much for me. But after several friends went through the program and said nothing but good things about it I started looking into it a bit more. After some more research I was convinced. I knew what I needed to do on my own, but it wasn’t happening – I needed some professional guidance.

I signed up, and for the past 10 weeks I’ve been devoting large amounts of time and energy to this program. I meet with a dietician each week, a personal trainer a few times a week and every now and then have appointments with doctors and counselors to make sure I’m staying healthy through this dramatic change.

And it has been dramatic. People I haven’t seen in a while keep saying things like “you’re a shadow of the man you used to be” and “where’s the other half of you?” I can’t wear most of my old clothes any more. I honestly didn’t think it was feasible for me to look like this – especially in such a short time.

How did I do it? Nothing you haven’t heard before: eat better, exercise more. There’s no real trick or gimmick to it. It’s not like Atkins where you get to ignore years of conventional wisdom. There’s no magic bullet fat burning diet supplement involved. But there are a lot of specifics involved. It’s not just eat better, it’s eat better in the right way. It’s not just exercise more, it’s exercise more in the right way. That was the problem I was having before the program – I’d try to do better, but I wasn’t doing things in a balanced way that would work for me. The biggest benefits I got from this program are clear: professional help on how to do better and accountability to actually follow through.

I’m clearly not qualified to provide professional advice to you, and I can’t help you with accountability or motivation, but I can share what I learned.

I’ll start with the exercise part, since that one’s easier.


Exercise (and lots of it)

The exercise program is pretty simple: lots of cardio combined with weight training to build lean muscle mass. We do 45 minutes of cardio five days a week, and another 45 minutes of weights three days week.

The cardio is the most important part. At the start, it doesn’t really matter what you do, just that you get your heard rate up and keep it there for at least 40 minutes. My traditional problem with this is when I exercise I feel like I should be working hard, but if I’m working hard enough to feel it after 5 minutes I won’t last for 40. There are two good ways to determine if you’re working at the right intensity. The best is to learn about heart rates and then go buy a heart rate monitor. This allows you to easily track your heart rate through the whole exercise and know how you’re doing. A decidedly more low-tech method is you should be able to carry on a conversation while you’re exercising. Working harder then this is fine, and I often do, just be sure you can keep the heart rate up consistently for at least 40 minutes when you’re doing cardio work.

Lifting weights is an area I know much less about. I know we started out doing long sets at moderate intensity (one set of 20 for each exercise.) Now I’ve shifted to the more traditional two sets of 10 for each exercise. Honestly, I’m not really sure what the differences are. If you’re new to lifting like I was I highly recommend hiring a personal trainer for just a couple of sessions to give you a workout plan and help you with your initial technique.

Now we’re on to the tough stuff, the diet.


A Balanced Diet

The diet that I did was dictated to me weekly by a dietician. I eventually had to ask what it’s most similar to after people kept asking me what I was on. My dietician claims it’s a cross between the South Beach Diet and The Zone Diet. Looking over the literature for both of those I tend to agree.

If you’re looking for a diet plan to follow the one that is most similar to what I did is South Beach, and I’d recommend it. Beware; it’s pretty harsh – especially in the early weeks. This sucks, will make you miserable, and all together not a nice person to be around. But it gets better around week three – and the whole thing doesn’t work if you’re not strict at the start.

If you’re just looking for some tips I can relate my big takeaways for improving any diet.

1. Eat five times a day. Be sure to get a good breakfast, then eat a morning snack and an afternoon snack.
2. Eat protein, fat, and carbohydrates with every meal (even the snacks.)
3. Limit high-glycemic carbohydrates.
4. No liquid calories! These will not reduce your overall calorie intake.
5. No alcohol! Technically this is covered in the last one, but it’s important enough to warrant it’s own item since alcohol will mess with your fat burning.
6. Track what you eat, it’s a pain – but it’s worth it.

The program talked a lot about being in chemical balance. My take is that’s really just fancy talk for keeping your blood sugar levels stable. The first three items on my list are all about that. First, look at this chart:



The key here is carbohydrates break down very quickly, protein a little slower, and fat burns slowly for a long time. What happens if you just eat lots of carbohydrates is your blood sugar will spike, and then drop. When that drop happens your body will freak out a little bit, and send you on a message to get the blood sugar back up. The fastest way to do that is with refined carbohydrates so you crave those, and the cycle continues.

Instead, eat often and eat each of those types of foods with every meal. Now even though there’s a small spike from the carbs, by the time it’s gone down the protein has kicked in, and then the fats are working all day. Your blood sugar will go up and down a bit, but it won’t have the dramatic changes that will cause food cravings at random times during the day.


Not All Carbs Are Created Equal

You can also help this process by limiting high-glycemic carbohydrates. Not all carbs release into your bloodstream at the same rate. In fact, there’s a whole different chart that looks just like that carb-protein-fat chart, except it’s with different kinds of carbohydrates.

Low-gylcemic carbs like fruit, yogurt, and for the most part beans are like the fats in that last diagram. They’re pretty good. Whole grain products like whole wheat bread or brown rice are ok, they’re like the proteins from that first chart. Then bad ones are the refined carbohydrates that most of us know and love; things made with white flour, white rice, sugars and the like.

The key difference between these two charts is in the first one you want to get a balance between the three. But with carbohydrates you always want to limit the high-glycemic choices in favor of low-glycemic foods. This doesn’t mean they’re gone forever, just be careful about them and look out for food cravings or hunger after you eat them.

But how do you know what carbs go where? The tricky one is deciding which grains go in the medium category and which one are the bad ones. My dietician provided some helpful rules and guidelines. They’re pretty easy, but you’ll have to spend some time looking at the nutritional info on the package.

First off, a serving is between 80 and 120 calories. For breads, rice and pasta you want each serving to have 3 or more grams of fiber and 3 or less grams of sugar. For cereals it’s a little more liberal. Each serving needs 3 or more grams of fiber and 9 or less grams of sugar. There you go, it’s that easy. These grains will be better for your blood sugar levels then the ones you’re probably used to. But I’ll warn you before you head off to the store, not many products will fit into these rules. Look for whole wheat and low carb products – those are your best bets.

Balancing all these out can be kind of tough. When I’m focusing on losing weight I have a whole set of rules to follow with specific guidelines on how much of which kinds of food to eat at each meal and overall servings of each type for the day. I won’t share this, both because it’s complicated and because it was tailored over the course of the program to my metabolism and exercise levels.


The Plate Model

But when I’m not focused on losing weight I go by the plate model. This is sort of the lifetime maintenance theory. It’s easy to do and helps keep everything balanced. Following the rule of threes there’s another three way split in the plate model.

• Protein
• Non-starchy vegetables (no corn, potatoes, etc. allowed in this category.)
• Everything else

For the plate model you just eat equal volumes from each group. I used this on Thanksgiving and it was pretty funny looking. I had a big pile of turkey, a mountain of steamed green beans, and then little small servings of mashed potatoes, dressing, corn casserole and cranberry sauce. It’s easy to know if I’m doing it right, since I just look at the piles on my plate and make sure they’re all about the same size. Pairing the plate model with good carbohydrate choices makes for a remarkably healthy diet for maintaining weight.


Losing Weight

But weight loss is the goal, and the plate model isn’t good enough for that. We hear a lot about which foods to eat to lose weight and which things to do. But for the most part our bodies are just thermo-dynamic systems. We have energy inputs and energy expenditures. You get energy in the form of eating (calories are a measure of energy) and your body burns energy to function. It’s a pretty simple deal: to lose weight you have to burn more energy then you eat.

This is why you always hear diet and exercise together. Diet reduces your energy intake while exercise increases your energy burn rate. The reason it’s hard is your body will fight you. It doesn’t want to lose weight. It thinks all the weight you’re carrying around is a survival bonus since soon enough there won’t be much food around and you can burn all that fat to make it through the tough times.

Fortunately most of us don’t have to worry about those tough times anymore and it’s unlikely that we’ll ever have issues with starvation (minor political note: this is not true for a large chunk of the world’s population.) Your body will fight you in all kinds of interesting ways as you try to get it to burn your fat. It will tell you to go eat more, it will make you tired when you try to up your activity level, it will lower your body temperature and metabolism to reduce your calorie burn rate, and more.

This is why weight loss is so hard. You have to push through all these ways your body is fighting you. I couldn’t do it on my own. I needed experts and professionals telling me exactly what to do and holding me accountable for doing it. To lose weight I needed a very strict regimen that I could follow. And it had to be hard core with strict calorie intakes and lots of exercise to increase my burn rate.

And just in case you’re wondering, in order to lose a pound you have to have a 3,500 calorie deficit. So if your goal is to lose one pound a week you have to average eating 500 fewer calories a day then you burn.


Calorie Counting

In the end all reasonable weight loss diets are about reducing your calorie intake (there are other diets geared towards things like lowering your cholesterol or blood pressure or dealing with diabetes – but note that weight loss will usually help out these problems a bit on it’s own.) This is harder then it sounds though. Many people just say “eat less.” But that doesn’t really work. I used to try to eat less, but then I’d start craving certain foods, my body was fighting me wanted to get the same amount of energy it was used to getting. Imagine reducing a child’s allowance. Think of all the nagging and complaining that goes on after that. Our bodies do the same thing, and it’s no fun at all to go through every day dealing with our bodies nagging us to eat more. It’s almost impossible to do, especially long term.

The key is if you eat the right balance of things, you can eat much less and still feel ok. It will take you a little bit to get used to, and those few weeks will suck, but then you’ll be set. For me, I estimate that I cut my daily calorie intake in half at the start of the program. It’s gradually gone back up, but I figure it’s still is a solid 1000 calories a day less then I used to eat.

How do I know this? How can you be sure you’re keeping to your diet plan? There’s only one good solution, and that’s carefully tracking everything you eat. Yes, it’s a pain. Yes, I really dislike it. But I’m convinced it’s a necessary part of weight loss. But once you start leaning how many calories are in most things it starts getting pretty easy. Being the computer nerd that I am, I mostly used the Calorie King Website to look up my foods. They also have a small pocket sized book you can buy that I used some. Then I tracked all my food in an Excel spreadsheet (you can see it if you like: it’s here.) Now I’m like a little encyclopedia of calorie counts – at least for the foods I was allowed to eat on my diet.

But how many calories should you eat? I can’t really help you there. I’d suggest talking with a doctor or dietician about it and they’ll be able to give you a target range. There are also some websites out there that can give you an idea (like this one.)


Wow, This Sounds Hard

It was hard. Some days it was really hard. But there are some key things to remember:

• One bad day will not blow your whole diet away. One bad day is just one bad day. The next day is a whole new opportunity to be better. Sure, it may slow your progress a bit. But it’s recoverable. Both bad days and really good days are outliers. The key is in your averages. Your average day needs to be good, and then you’ll do good.
• There is no way I could have done this on my own. The professional guidance and motivation I received was invaluable. Lida Buckley, my dietician, and Andri Halverson, my trainer, are very good at their jobs and take great pride in their work. I’ve had a wonderful time working with each of them, and they get my eternal thanks (and recommendations, if you’re looking for a dietician or trainer give them a call.) If you’re serious about a major lifestyle change and are having trouble doing it on your own go find some professional help. If it’s between doing it with help and not doing it at all, that’s an easy choice.
• Weight loss has got to be a lifestyle change. The only way to achieve long term weight loss (and all the great health benefits that come with it) is to permanently change your habits. And once again there’s no silver bullet. The only way to maintain a certain weight is to eat the same number of calories that you burn. Any long term solution has to include regular exercise and sensible food choices. When selecting a diet plan look for one that has a nice gradual path out of the hard core weight loss mode into a sustainable maintenance mode.

Results Speak For Themselves

No kidding, I feel like this is a strange dream or something. Like it’s not real. I’m in shock that I went through this transition in such a short period of time.

Since this is technically a movie site, I’ll do one movie reference. Remember in The Matrix when Morpheus is explaining the matrix to Neo and says that the way we look in the matrix is our “residual self image” – the way we see ourselves in our minds eye. My residual self image had been a little skewed for years. I always saw myself in my head as thinner and more fit then I really was. I didn’t like most pictures of myself since they confronted this inaccuracy with reality.

But now I really do look like I imagined I did before. It shows up in all kinds of places in my life too. I’m happier with pictures. It’s easier to shop for clothes (no more hunting for XXL shirts, and 36x30 pants are much easier to find then 42x30.) I’m more confident in myself and my appearance. I’m faster, can jump higher and run longer when I play sports.

The whole thing is something that I didn’t think was possible in such a short time. I still have lots of work to do: there’s a bit more weight to lose and maintaining a healthy weight is going to be a life long project. It’s a long road ahead, but I’m thrilled with the part of it I’ve traveled already and I feel like I have to tools to stick to the path for a very long time.


Chris


Other Resources:
20/20 LifeStyles Program - The program I went through, it was great!
Daryl's 20/20 Blog - Weekly entries by another program participant.