On Dieting

For the past month my girlfriend and I have been simultaneously dieting from a program called the “Fat Smash Diet” (which was supposedly made famous by VH1’s Celebrity Fit Club. Wherever it came from, it’s the first diet program I’ve ever tried and it’s working. I’ll reveal some of the results in a bit but I wanted to share some thoughts I’ve learned since starting the diet.

• Dieting with a partner is much easier. — I don’t think I would have been successful with a diet program if my girlfriend (and roommate) were not doing it at the same time. It’s much harder to diet when you are living with someone who is continuing to eat the things your diet doesn’t allow. This may have been why “dieting” while living with other roommates a year ago may have been impossible for me, since they would have been buying and eating the very foods I would be missing, making it much harder to keep away from them. Instead, my girlfriend and I stopped buying the bad foods and bought up tons of vegetable, fruits and other foods that our plan allowed. By keeping the other foods out of the house and out of sight (and out of mind), we were able to stick to out plan. Plus, we were able to encourage each other and slap one another’s wrists when we craved food like pizza.




• Dieting is 100% a mental challenge. — Everyone has the ability to diet and eat healthily, it’s all a matter of will power and mental fortitude. I love food. Love it. And unfortunately, I’ve loved the worst foods. It’s a product of childhood habits, food industry advertising and the addictive nature of things like sugar. Also I was unfortunately bestowed with genes that didn’t give me the best metabolism in the world. At a point I actually convinced myself that my body was the body I was stuck with and I should just live with it, accept it and move on, eating whatever I felt like. I never thought dieting would work because I loved food too much. Fortunately for me, I was wrong, and I realized it was all in my head pretty early on.




• Following a specific diet plan works better. — If you say to yourself, “Oh, I’m just going to cut back on a few things and eat more fruits and vegetables”, it won’t work. I’ve tried that before. I am in no way trying to be a spokesman for this diet plan, but having a schedule of phases and strict limitations made the whole process much easier to stick to. There are several plans out there so it may be a process of figuring out which one works for you, but it doesn’t always take counting calories to lose weight. Our program spelled out specific foods to eat for predetermined periods of time. The first nine days (called the “detox” period) was strictly water, veggies and fruits only. From there every few weeks we can add more things back in.




• Dieting helps you rediscover your love of healthy foods. — Previously for me, snacks meant potato chips, soda, and other unhealthy foods. By going cold turkey in the “detox” period, I realized that fruits and vegetables can actually be satisfying and filling as snack food. I’ve always like apples, bananas, grapes and oranges but I never went out of my way to include them in my diet. Now these items are always in our shopping cart because we go through them so quickly. I also love cucumbers as a snack food, and to make things easier, I bought a vegetable peeler ($5 or so) so I can quickly skin a cucumber and eat it whole (read: delicious).




• Results are encouraging. — The great thing about the “detox” period which opened our diet plan was that it provided early results that motivated us through the rest of the program. During that period I quickly shed about 8 lbs, and while the results weren’t terribly visible, the quick numbers were enough to encourage us to continue to diet.




• It’s better to eat more than less while dieting. — The point of dieting isn’t to starve yourself, it’s actually the opposite. You lose more weight when your metabolism is running for a longer period of time. For me this meant eating some fruit for a snack in the late morning when I woke up, having a healthy lunch, snacking in the afternoon, and then a large, but healthy dinner. This keeps the metabolism churning throughout the day. When you starve yourself you’re telling your body to store fat because it thinks you’re in a famine. By continuing to eat healthy foods throughout the day it counter acts this, and losing weight is much easier.




• Diet and exercise just make you feel better. — Aside from lowering your fat levels and cholesterol, dieting and working out make you feel better all around. This is partly a physical change due to dieting and getting in shape, but it’s also mental. You know you are doing your body good by dieting and working out so mentally you feel better about yourself and feel more active. It’s easy to feel like a slob when you’re out of shape and eating bad food, but eating healthy can quickly turn this mental state around.




My Results So Far

I’ve had pretty successful results in the last month since we started our diet. I even managed to not gain weight during a six day trip to Boulder and San Francisco, and if it hadn’t been for that trip I may have even lost further weight. It’s been a long trek, but here’s a list of some of the foods I’ve managed to avoid for a whole month.

• Fast food
• Breads
• Pasta
• Pizza
• Beer (except for a few in Boulder and San Fran)
• Candy
• Junk foods (chips, and other snacks)
• Soda (except 1 diet soda a day, which is allowed in stage 2)
• Fried food
• Desserts (ice cream, cake, etc)

The list is likely much longer, but those are the key ones – the foods I ate on a normal basis that attributed to my weight gain. In my best shape from my days of marching drum and bugle corps I was about 165-170 lbs and had the ability to run for miles without getting winded. Here’s a photo from 5 years ago when I looked my best. For a while I told myself that looking that way again was unrealistic because of the grueling regimin of rehearsing for drum and bugle corps (10 hours days, outside in 110 degree weather, wearing 40 lb drums). Hopefully I can approach this physique again.

When I started the diet program a month ago, I was 220 lbs and outrageously out of shape. Climbing stairs would get me breathing heavily. At 5′11”, 220 lbs is the lower limit for obesity, according to body mass index. The upper barrier of normal weight is 175 for my heigh, and that is my goal.

In the last month I have managed to lose 20 lbs from dieting and exercising, just shy of halfway to my goal. I currently weight 200 lbs, and the visual differences are not shocking, but they are significant. I will share those when I hit my goal of 175 – only 25 more pounds to go. I can also run without being completely breathless for about two miles, or 30 minutes on an elliptical machine, which burns about 300 calories. I try to do this every day.

Hopefully this can be a bit of encouragement to others, as I had all but given up on my body before starting to work out. I am taking pictures every week or so, and I suggest others do this too. You don’t notice the changes yourself because you see yourself every day. By taking a snapshot, you will be able to actually see the change that has happened, and that will motivate you further.

I think I’m going to use this picture as a means of self-motivation.

Photo from Flickr user Smitten.