I'm a 6"3' male who just recently dropped under 200 lbs again after hitting a high of 250 lbs over a decade ago from eating the standard american diet and drinking in college and knew I needed to make a change. The idea of being closer to 300 than 200 really scared me and I didn't know how to slow it down. That was around the time Atkins was first becoming popular and I can't remember why but I decided to check him out after having no success and continually creeping up in weight with weight watchers and other diet programs.
I tried his methods and started losing weight rapidly and was so excited to finally have something in the tool belt that I knew worked and would allow me to have some control. It was very difficult though to eat everything so lean so I had difficulty sticking with it for long periods of time. This began the yo-yo phase where I was basically in maintenance, go hard for a few weeks to a month low carb and lose 10-15 pounds then go back to my previous diet that I enjoyed and start creeping back up.
Lesson learned: you can control your weight! It's just a problem you have to figure out. My time in college as an engineer studying mass and energy balances on a closed system helped here but it wasn't until I saw the results on the scale that I really hit home.
Around that time I started reading reddit a lot and discovered /r/keto from someones comment. I had no idea what ketosis was but I looked at the top posts and was amazed at the progress pics! I went for it and fell in love, it was low carb, not as low as Atkins but it was sustainable because it embraced fats, something Atkins had basically villified. Eating meat & veg cooked in butter or olive oil was something I could do with a lot of variety and it was satiating, yes!!
I stayed on/off keto for several more years as needed and sort of stair stepped my way down but also undid a lot of progress as I was also getting into home brewing as sort of a friendly competition between a few buddies of mine at work and not always being diligent about packing a lunch so would go out to eat with co-workers and make not ideal choices. The extra carbs added up and stalled me out for awhile.
Lesson learned: Don't drink your calories! (which was crazy for me because I grew up on gallons of orange juice, milk, juicy juice, soda, etc.). Always though those were healthy, minus the soda I guess, so did my parents.
Eventually I went through a somewhat messy divorce and decided I still wasn't happy with my body. I started lifting /r/stronglifts for about 6 months and made significant strength and size gains but overdid it with free weights and ended up injuring myself a couple times and had to step back to recover.
More recently I have taken up /r/bodyweight fitness with some lighter free weights and slower progression and I and am enjoying it much more. In fact I just did my first ever chin up from a dead hang today! A longtime goal of mine! Shout out to Jerry Texteira on YouTube and Twitter, great guy, took time to give me personal advice and is just super friendly. Taught me just moving our own bodies through space is more than enough to get an incredible physique.
Lesson learned: strength training and building muscle mass is important for everyone but injury will set you way back, as with diet listen to your body and you don't need to throw heavy weights around to get in great shape.
Around the time I was recovering from my injuries I discovered Dr. Jason Fung, and learned so much about how our food supply has been manipulated for profit over time from his book The Obesity Code and also about the many benefits of fasting. /r/Fasting was the next step in my journey, I had always thought that was just unhealthy but after reading Dr. Fung it made so much more sense as something we have been doing through millennia burning fat for fuel while retaining muscle mass. In fact, if you are not eating right at this very moment you are fasting as well, congratulations! ;)
I dove in head first and did a 7 day fast, it was a surreal experience and I felt pretty good over all because I was already "fat adapted" (burning your body fat for fuel instead of carbs) from keto which made it much easier. I actually only ended it because I was worried I was overdoing it but I know now those concerns were unfounded and I just needed to listen to my body. It was another breakthrough moment for me to learn the power of fasting, I saw significant reductions in fat, bloating, cravings, etc. and by the end it was very apparent to me that it was a very healthy state to be in.
I did a few multi day fasts after that but more generally just adopted an intermittent fasting schedule where my first meal of the day would be a keto dinner after work (meat + veg cooked in butter), and then some snacks in the evening, mainly nuts but I had to be careful as they were really easy to overeat.
Lesson learned: fasting is a natural thing we all do every day intermittently and every night while we sleep. It is another tool in the belt and has many beneficial effects, not something to be afraid of at all and worth trying out.
I was still drinking at the time though so I stayed in maintenance for the most part, I kind of saw it as eating clean allowed me to drink and enjoy myself. Easy access to some homebrew taps in my garage took it's toll though and I again started creeping up. One thing I noticed around this time when I was experimenting with fasting is that whenever I would drink a beer within a few minutes my FUPA (lower GI tract) would swell up and I would get really gassy and uncomfortable. I loved brewing and drinking beer so this was a tough pill to swallow, I had never noticed it before because I never gave myself enough time without drinking for my system to clear itself out, fasting helped me realize that connection. In the end I decided my love for beer was not worth the discomfort, gas and weight gain it was causing me so I gave it up.
I switched to wine/liquor which did not give me the same GI issues but soon I was overindulging there as well which ultimately caused me to stall on my weight loss goals (mainly because 2am drunk me didn't give a damn about keto and always went for the most greasy fried food I could find to "soak up" the alcohol or scratch that itch for sweet by eating all the sugar in the house). In the end I realized that if I wanted to achieve my goals of being healthy (and getting a 6 pack, not there yet but definitely getting closer and seeing some really good definition!) that I needed to give it up for good. I am happy to say that I just passed 1 year sober and plan to keep right on rolling, shout out to the app "I Am Sober" and the /r/stopdrinking community for keeping me on track and motivated.
Lesson learned: if you really want to achieve your goals you have to be present in the moment at all times, quick slips when in the wrong frame of mind can certainly set you back, especially if it's a regular habit.
I am so much more present and attentive with my children now and I can't imagine ever going back to how I was before, always regretting the previous nights decisions and dragging myself through my day just so I could finally "relax" that evening with a few drinks while not giving my kids the attention they craved. Everything is better sober and I am so thankful for making that change.
A bit before getting sober I learned a few things from Twitter, the first was the dangers of seed oils from P.D. Mangan @Mangan150 which are in damn near everything!!! I am so thankful he brought attention to this as I had no idea before that how much the profit driven food industry has poisoned our food supply with this stuff.
Lesson learned: seed oils are not natural and are very harmful, avoid at all costs, but good luck because they have been slyly introduced everywhere in our food supply. The only real solution is to not eat anything that has been processed in any way. Basically only the deli or produce sections are safe. Even fancy restaurants use seed oils for cooking and frying. To really avoid them you have to cook your own food from whole ingredients.
I also started seeing more and more discussion about the carnivore lifestyle happening on twitter from Dr. Shawn Baker @SBakerMD and others who were recommended by several fitness people I was following and I started following the /r/carnivore and /r/zerocarb communities.
Actually seeing Jerry Teixeira's before/after carnivore pics and reading the success stories on meatheals.com is what really sold me. Jerry mentioned that even though he had the same workout routine before and after the swelling around his midsection and GI tract never went away while he had carbs in his diet.
I tried out carnivore not knowing what to expect and again had another breakthrough, my weight just started melting, my GI issues and FUPA disappeared, any cravings I had subsided and in general I just felt great, better than I ever had, energy and mental clarity to spare. I wasn't restricting myself either, whenever I was hungry I would eat fatty meat (steaks, slow cooked pork, burgers, brisket, bacon/eggs, cheeses, cooking with heavy cream and butter, etc.) until I had enough then just wait until I was hungry again.
That's when I realized the connection that it was always carbs that were slowing me down or creeping my weight up, through the calories I drank as a kid and an adult to the sugar present in so many things that I learned to avoid from keto to even the nuts and veg that I kept in my diet on keto. I'm sure many people can keep the nuts/veg and do great on keto but for me it was obvious they were holding me back once I removed them.
Lesson learned: carbs are not necessary and in many cases might actually be getting in the way of your progress (especially sugar). Carnivore is like an elimination diet, start with the basic most nutrient dense food that we have been living on for millennia and see how your body feels with only that for awhile, later on add back things that you might feel you're missing out on, probably veg, fruit, nuts, dairy, etc. and just observe how your body responds. Iterate, adjust and thrive!
I'm still not at my 6 pack but getting very close and the goal is in sight. I would guess I still have another 15-20 lbs or so to lose to really get the definition I'm after but I have probably lost 60-70 lbs of fat overall when you add in the muscle gains as well. With some additional muscle I think an ideal target will probably be around 190 lbs for me as a 6'3" guy when I have the physique I want but YMMV so go with what you think is best for you.
Final words of wisdom:
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Avoid seed oils like the plague, but in order to do so you basically have to eliminate all foods you don't prepare yourself. Even fancy restaurants. Deli and produce sections are basically the only safe space.
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Cook your own food with healthy fats, butter, olive oil, ghee, duck fat, bacon grease, etc.
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Eliminate things from your diet for awhile and observe how your body responds when you add them back, it may be easiest to just start with a baseline carnivore diet for a month or so and then add things back one at a time. Keto is a very good baseline too though for people starting out but don't trust any packaged item claiming to be "keto friendly" it's all BS.
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Fasting can be an extremely useful tool to reset your body and in general we do not need 3 meals a day, we do not even need to eat daily (it makes a lot of sense if you think about the meal schedule of our hunter ancestors who sometimes went days between kills).
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The food pyramid is BS and upside down. In The Obesity Code by Dr. Fung he covers the influence the agriculture lobby has had on shaping the FDA guidelines on nutrition to favor cheap grains to maximize their profits. Makes me angry still just to think about how I just accepted it as true as a kid because the FDA must know what a proper diet looks like, not!
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Listen to your body, iterate, adapt, conquer!! You got this!
