Ok so here’s the deal, I am just a regular guy (moderately athletic) that was always pretty thin or average weight and and never had to worry too much about it. Fast forward to my late 20’s and for multiple reasons I am 240 pounds. The why I will touch on a little later. I don’t really post to reddit but having lost 60 pounds to yo-young back up after a sports injury to then successfully losing it again and keeping it off, I have learned a great deal about fitness and health. I even went down a personal training path but never officially got the certification because my professional life took a different direction. I hope that maybe by posting this I can help even just one person along their journey. See I never knew that much about the fitness/health/diet industry and got into a bad enough place where I had to figure it all out. There’s a quote “Some people badly need to be ill for their own sake,” well I certainly did. Now I have a wealth of knowledge that I can draw on for the rest of my life through hard work and simply learning as I went. Let me say I do not work for any company and am not some health certified expert or fitness guru, I am just a regular guy that had to figure it out the hard way.
Ok so, WHAT I HAVE LEARNED.
I am going to break this up into multiple sections
Mind,Diet,Exercise
THE MIND
It goes like this in my opinion Mind>Diet>Exercise
You first have to be hungry enough to start and then practice discipline to stay on track but it’s not all mental willpower because that would be exhausting long term. It’s turning “I shouldn’t” into “I don’t” etc.
Practice mindfulness. Learn it, live it, love it. I went from not controlling how much I ate to eating a bowl of (insert healthy meal) and actually thinking eh you know what I’m actually full and content. Ice cream sounds good but it will be there tomorrow. Understanding when you are actually full and not needing anymore comes with mindfulness
Learn how to meditate and do it regularly.
Learn breathing techniques.
If you have sleeping problems you may be able to fall asleep without sleep aids and such by just deep breathing before you lay in bed every night.
Get good sleep. It’s just as good as good sex.
De-stress your life by removing poisonous things or people.
When you have a clear healthy mind you can do anything.
You can follow any weight loss program/ diet/ or exercise regime to get quick results but ultimately fail and yo-yo if you don’t learn to control the mind and de-toxify your life.
Next, DIET (I most likely will get some negative comments or people that may disagree with my statements but I am just sharing what has worked successfully for me)
Let me start by saying no matter what, abstinence of alcohol will give you tremendous results when trying to lose weight. (If you must, avoid beer and stick to liquor neat or very dry wine, but If having an issue with abuse, completely avoid)
I absolutely love Intermittent fasting. The one thing that remained constant as I got results no matter what I ate, was IF. Whether I was in ketosis or eating pints of ice cream or eating within the restraints of travel, I was was using IF with a very short feed window. However, I understand that this may be difficult for some. For instance my dad would have an extremely difficult time, as he feels he needs to eat the second he wakes up. I have always wanted to wait before eating and am more of an afternoon eater anyways. So with that being said some people are more drawn to it then others I think but no matter what I did, that was always a constant and I had fantastic results with it. My personal con with IF which is really the only one I can think of, was abusing caffeine. That’s definitely something to watch out for.
Now, KETO. Both times, I started my “diet” by doing keto and both times I did not finish in ketosis. Once getting to maintenance mode, I was certainly not doing ketosis. Keto was fantastic for me to START, because it got me off of sugar dependence and alcohol and left me feeling satiated, however it was not sustainable for me at all long term. I found it very difficult to eat with friends or family and was very expensive. It was a very isolating diet for me but absolutely gives results. This is because whether you like it or not our society does not function that way.
What my plate looked like.
Heaping pile of Brussels sprouts oven baked with coconut oil, a big fat piece of wild caught salmon baked in more fat of your choice, some sea salt, maybe some lemon on top (so you don’t get scurvy :) with a sweet potato on the side. Throw in a bunch more greens just because. How about Spinach, broccoli, cauliflower mix! (Your plate mostly has greens on it) Then some goji berries and more water for dessert.
Felt like a warrior but after 6 months or so got expensive and hard to maintain while living amongst society.
After KETO, I started transitioning back into a carb based diet still with the inclusion of healthy fats and oils but changing the ratio. This allowed me to not be so Isolated, eat with others, while traveling etc. Still got results but I was always using IF. This is where I ate more “normally” and had my ice cream sometimes but followed more of a “calories in/calories out” mentality and still opted for healthy options most of the time. This allowed more room and flexibility and was ultimately much more sustainable.
What my plate/day looked like.
More sweet potato/rice. Big fat pice of salmon/steak/chicken whatever cooked in healthy oil of your choice but less. A whole bunch of vegetables. (Your plate mostly has a bunch of greens on it.)
See I pretty much adopted the principle of always filling my plate with a tremendous amount of vegetables, but out of keto I was slightly less restrictive and even though I did that most of the time I could bend it a little bit more.
Don’t get in the habit of counting calories, it will drive you nuts. However, buy a scale to understand what certain amount of calories actually look like, so you can learn to accurately eye ball. I was blown away by how many calories I was actually consuming.
No matter what you do, you should just learn to like vegetables. Try different cooking methods or whatever you need to start liking them.
I never really snacked except occasionally and what I would do is buy a bunch of pumpkin seeds/goji berries and 90% or so dark chocolate and make little snack bags with a serving of the mix.
I was also always hydrated.
My take away. Avoid sugar as often as possible. Avoid alcohol as often as possible. If you want to play with your macros then fine but keto or not, fill up on vegetables and hydrate. It really couldn’t be simpler.
EXERCISE (feel like I’m going to get chewed alive by weight lifters but this is my opinion)
Let me start by saying after interval training/weight training/and biking excessively and uncontrollably I felt amazing until I got injured. Overuse injury, chronic knee pain. It sucked. As I healed got super into PT techniques and such and started delving into form and proper techniques and such. My take away? I wanted to be fit but live a pain free life and just have good functional strength.
My recommendations
Walk a whole bunch. Don’t sit a lot. You should do yoga to stretch and open up your body. You should also just stretch in general. Foam rolling is a must and you should be doing that often. Swimming is fantastic. Strength has its benefits but I am a fan of functional strength. Sometimes do some deadlifts, bench press etc. Biking is ok but make sure your bike is fitted for your body. Don’t follow hype or trends
Foam rolling, myofascial release, properly stretching. And deep tissue sports massages changed my life. In fact I would learn as much about this is possible. And make sure it is absolutely a part of your life.
Just adopt an active lifestyle Know when your body needs to rest. It is so easy to over exercise when in a weight loss journey because mentally you are ready to do anything it takes to get the weight off. This is a problem because you can injure yourself by overtraining. Find that boundary between pushing to your limit and when to back off and let your muscles recover.
If a personal trainer or dietician wants to break these claims down further then by all means go ahead. I am just sharing what I have done and learned to get results.
Lastly, I will say that I do not mean to preach or claim or to be any type of guru or expert, all I know is I have gone through rock bottoms to losing half of my body twice and finally getting to a place of being fit healthy and happy and I wanted to share what I have done to get there. At the very least this can open up other conversations and such.
Also KNOW some of the conspiracy theories behind food such as “natural flavoring,” “sugar conspiracies” etc. while some of this is unfounded, there are certainly very highly suspicious things that go on within the food industry in order to make a bunch of money. Be careful of organic labeling. (I eat as organic as possible) While it may be extremely beneficial for meat and certain items, it may not make your bag of chips any healthier and they are using the word organic to sell you something you don’t actually need to eat. I also question “meals” and meal times like “breakfast, lunch and dinner” I feel in a way companies push these popular meal times to promote certain foods which you may not even need to necessarily eat in order to be healthy. Like cereal for example. I would encourage to forget about when you are supposed to be eating and focus more on when your body actually needs sustenance and no, it’s probably not as immediate as you think that it is.
I wish you all the best in your journey and if you have any further questions please message me!
